Our topic in this debate (see the whole exchange at http://www.zmag.org/debateiso.htm) has been the relevance of Marxism for seeking social change today.
My view has been that while Marxism of course contains many powerful and important insights, adhering to Marxism as a guiding ideology that we label ourselves by ultimately does more harm than good.
Toen Richard Wright afscheid nam van het communisme schreef hij:
“An hour’s listening disclosed the fanatical intolerance of minds sealed against new ideas, new facts, new feelings, new attitudes, new hints at ways to live. They denounced books they had never read, people they had never known, ideas they could never understand, and doctrines whose names they could not pronounce. Communism, instead of making them leap forward with fire in their hearts to become masters of ideas and life, had frozen them at an even lower level of ignorance than had been theirs before they met Communism.”
Talking about Marxism most broadly, there is a sense in which Wright’s comment encapsulates my views as well – not of every Marxist, of course, and certainly not of Alan Maass, my debate partner with whom I share a great many agreements and who is the antithesis a “mind sealed against new ideas,†but of Marxism as it plays out on average for organized movements and parties, and particularly Leninist ones. But in this debate I focused on only two central issues where I think criticism may lead most constructively forward.
First, Marxism’s concepts tend to over emphasize the defining influences arising from economics, and to under emphasize the defining influences arising from gender/kinship, community/culture, and polity. This doesn’t mean that all (or even any) Marxists will ignore everything but economics, nor even that all (or even any) Marxists won’t care greatly about other matters. It means, instead, that when Marxists address the sex life of teenagers, marriage, the nuclear family, religion, racial identity, religion, cultural commitments, sexual preferences, political organization, war and peace, and ecology, they will overwhelmingly tend to highlight implications for class struggle and to deemphasize concerns rooted in the specific features of race, gender, power, and nature. The criticism predicts, that is, that Marxist movements may respect innovations coming from other viewpoints when movements force them too, but that Marxists will not generate many original and useful insights themselves regarding analysis and aims for polity, culture, and kinship. It predicts, as well, that Marxism’s concepts will not sufficiently offset tendencies imposed by society, by circumstances of struggle, or by tactical choices that generate authoritarian, racist, or sexist trends — even against the best moral and social inclinations of most Marxists. And it therefore also predicts that we will see some pretty horrible results regarding race, gender, culture, ecology, and political organization from Marxist movements in struggle and especially from Marxist movements in power, as we most certainly have. In other words, my claims about Marxism’s “economism†do not predict silly monomania about economics or even a universal and inviolable pattern of over adherence to economics and under adherence to everything else, but, instead, they predict a harmful pattern of imbalance that arises and persists on average.
Second, Marxism’s concepts fail to highlight a (coordinator) class between labor and capital defined primarily by its relation in the division of labor and not by matters of ownership or political bureaucracy. Marxism inadequately understands the post capitalist modes of production it positively calls “socialist†or critically calls “state capitalist,†and fails to see that they elevate neither capitalists nor workers to ruling economic status, but what I call the coordinator class of planners, managers, and other empowered actors in the economy. Likewise, Marxism typically favors markets or central planning for allocation, public or state ownership for control of assets, remuneration for output or power (and sometimes, for need) to determine distribution of income, plus corporate divisions of labor to define workplace organization. And regardless of hopes or intents, these commitments all propel coordinator outcomes. Notice, this doesn’t say that most (or arguably even any) individual Marxists are self-consciously trying to advance the interests of managers and other empowered actors over and above workers. It says, instead, that the concepts within Marxism do little to prevent this elevation of the coordinator class and even propel it in various ways, so that we can expect to see coordinator economic dominance emerging from successful Marxist movements regardless of the sentiments of the movement’s rank and file and slogans of its leadership – as we have in fact seen, historically, every time.
What is an antidote for the two highlighted problems? Regarding economism, in our debate I suggested that the problem is a conceptual framework that starts from economics and only then enters into other realms derivatively and with the primary intention of seeing economic implications. I proposed that we ought to instead begin with concepts that simultaneously highlight economics, polity, kinship, and culture. We ought to use concepts that first prioritize understanding each of these sphere’s own logic and dynamics, and that second prioritize seeing how each sphere influences and even limits and defines the others. In these two steps our new conceptual framework should posit no a priori hierarchy of importance to these spheres of life, but should instead see how they work out in practice. I have urged that this approach will more likely yield thorough insights about racism, ethnocentrism, sexism, homophobia, and authoritarianism (as well as economics), than will starting with economics only as our foundation.
In other words, I have argued a multi-focus approach will better push activists toward useful insights about all these spheres of social life and better ward off pressures to be narrow or even reactionary regarding any of them. The argument is structurally like one that says that starting from kinship and gender, or from polity, or from culture, and trying to understand society primarily based on that focus and in terms of affects on it, is unlikely to be as insightful regarding economics as is starting (as well) from economics — an argument that I think all Marxists accept. And I have noted as well a possible correction of this type economism even within the broad rubric of Marxism. A person could say, for example, “I am Marxist but I am also feminist, multi-culturalist, anarchist, and green, and I recognize that dynamics arising from spheres of life other than the economy are critically important and can even define economic possibilities, just as the reverse can occur. Yes, of course I still think class struggle is critical to social change, but I realize it is not alone critical. Gender, race, religious, ethnic, sexual, and anti-authoritarian struggles are also critical. I realize that just as we need to understand non-class phenomena in their relation to class struggle, we also have to understand economic phenomena in their relation to gender, race, and political conflicts.â€
But, if this new Marxist renounces ideas of economic base and extra-economic superstructure, rejects historical materialism as typically understood to impact history overwhelmingly only from modes of production, and transcends seeing class struggle as the alone dominant conceptual framework for identifying strategic issues — will still calling him or herself a “Marxist†continue to mean what it meant in the past? Will the label “Marxist†connote what the multi-focus activist intends his or her self description to connote? I don’t think so, but I can imagine overcoming this communicative problem.
In contrast, the class-definition difficulty of Marxism seems less tractable to me. The basic problem is straightforward. Capitalists are capitalist by virtue of private ownership of the means of production. No longer having capitalists above workers requires, therefore that private ownership must be replaced. So far, so good. But there is, however, another class above workers, located between labor and capital, that I call coordinators. Coordinators are made coordinator by virtue of market or centrally planned allocation and hierarchical divisions of labor that allot to them a virtual monopoly on empowering tasks and on the levers and requisites of daily decision making. No longer having coordinators above workers requires, therefore, that those features too must be replaced. The problem is, Marxists don’t generally reject markets, central planning, and especially hierarchical divisions of labor, much less try to replace them.
Yes, Marxists sometimes talk about a class between labor and capital – but they do so primarily in political terms, asserting that its roots derive from Stalinism. They rarely see a third class between labor and capital deriving from the division of labor and from modes of allocation (not ownership or politics). And they do not see, therefore, that markets, central planning, and hierarchical divisions of labor are a source of class division and of a ruling class other than capitalists above labor, even if private ownership is eliminated and the state remains or becomes democratic.
Marxists do not, in this regard, in my experience, offer a clear institutional statement of truly classless institutional aims regarding economic decision-making, divisions of labor, workplace organization, remuneration, and allocation. Yes, Marxists often offer descriptions of the justice, equity, and dignity that “socialism†should usher in. And these descriptions are most often eloquent and worthy statements that any advocate of justice can support. But, if we look at texts by Marxists to see descriptions of institutions that will propel these proposed values, we find either vague rhetoric that lacks institutional substance, or, when there is real institutional description, we find advocacy of institutions that are properly labeled market coordinatorist and or centrally planned coordinatorist. And when we look at Marxist practice, we find these same coordinatorist structures universally implemented, and likewise within Marxist movements, even those out of power.
Maar zou een marxist dit probleem ook kunnen overstijgen en zichzelf toch als marxist kunnen blijven beschouwen?
I don’t know – but, if one does, I think signs that it has occurred would be obvious. For example, such new Marxists would disavow what has been called socialism in countries around the world, not by calling it capitalism or calling it deformed socialism, but by recognizing it as a third mode of production that enshrines a different class above workers. More, such new Marxists would offer a new economic vision contrary to coordinatorism, and this new vision would very explicitly dispense with markets, central planning, and divisions of labor since these provide more empowering work to some people and less empowering work to others, as well as dispense with modes of remuneration that reward property, power, or output.
Bovendien zouden zulke nieuwe marxisten, om de retoriek te overstijgen en verder te gaan dan louter de afwijzing van doelstellingen die richting kunnen geven aan de strategie, natuurlijk niet op arrogante wijze een volledige blauwdruk voor de toekomst presenteren – maar zouden zij belangrijke bepalende instellingen voorstellen om in plaats van alle verworpen opties te zoeken. . (Degene die ik heb aangeboden zijn raden, beloning voor inspanning, evenwichtige banencomplexen, besluitvormingsnormen voor zelfmanagement en participatieve planning.) En ten slotte zouden ze ook pleiten voor interne bewegingsorganisatie, methoden en programma's die de beweging zouden belichamen, voortstuwen en daadwerkelijk zouden bevorderen. deze positieve doelstellingen te bereiken, in plaats van benaderingen die de verwezenlijking ervan in de weg staan.
Not just vision, then, but also strategy is at stake. It is one thing—and correct—to say that we can only reach a better future by acting from where we are in the present. Our efforts must arise from the grounds we occupy. That’s a truism, of course, not just a Marxist advisory. For getting from capitalism to a better economy as well as for getting from New York to Bangkok, say, you have to start from where you initially are. You can’t make a trip unless you leave from your initial position taking into account, of course, your options as they are defined in the present. To do otherwise is dissociated from realty or, in the political case, “utopian.†But, having said this, it is also true that you won’t get from New York to Bangkok by bicycle, nor in a plane with insufficient fuel, nor via a hot air balloon, nor by going to the bus station, nor by going in the wrong direction by plane, and so on. Strategy has to be rooted in the starting context, for sure, but it also has to aim for the sought destination. If not, strategy is very likely to lead somewhere other than where one hopes to wind up. In context of our debate, my related point has been that strategies for social change need to self-consciously seek to overcome coordinator class rule. If they instead embody organizational choices and methods that lean on and elevate coordinator class consciousness and attitudes to central authority…such as employing centralist forms of party, advocating markets, central planning, corporate divisions of labor, and so on…they will not only not eliminate coordinator class rule, they will entrench it—and Marxism’s flaws lead to this result even regardless of the desire of many Marxists to end up someplace much nicer than coordinatorism. For Marxists to talk about workers liberating themselves is wonderful. However, Marxists proposing that workers should do this by methods which will subordinate workers to a domineering (coordinator) class in the seeking of a new economy and that will make that other (coordinator) class the ruling class of the new economy once it is attained, undoes the virtues of their rhetoric, however heartfelt it may be
Maar hoe zit het met de relatie van marxisten die proberen de fout te corrigeren van het negeren van het coördinatorisme ten opzichte van de erfenis die zij voorheen vierden?
Welnu, ik betwijfel of dergelijke nieuwe marxisten zichzelf leninist of trotskist zouden noemen, maar zelfs als ze dat zouden doen, zouden ze zeker grote hoeveelheden daarmee samenhangende gedachten en acties verloochenen. Dus in plaats van bijvoorbeeld Lenin en Trotski altijd positief te citeren, zouden ze Lenin ronduit afwijzen door te zeggen:
“Het is absoluut essentieel dat alle autoriteit in de fabrieken geconcentreerd wordt in de handen van het management.”
En zeggen:
“Elke directe tussenkomst van de vakbonden in het management van ondernemingen moet als positief schadelijk en ontoelaatbaar worden beschouwd.”
En zeggen:
“Grootschalige machine-industrie, die de centrale productieve bron en basis van het socialisme is, vraagt om absolute en strikte eenheid van wil… Hoe kan strikte eenheid van wil worden verzekerd? Door duizenden hun wil ondergeschikt te maken aan de wil van één.”
En zeggen:
“Een producentencongres! Wat betekent dat precies? Het is moeilijk woorden te vinden om deze dwaasheid te beschrijven. Ik vraag me steeds af: maken ze een grapje? Kunnen we deze mensen echt serieus nemen? Hoewel productie altijd noodzakelijk is, is democratie dat niet. De democratie van de productie brengt een reeks radicaal valse ideeën voort.”
En ga zo maar door.
En ze zouden de uitspraak van Trotski (over linkse communisten) verwerpen:
“They turn democratic principles into a fetish. They put the right of the workers to elect their own representatives above the Party, thus challenging the Party’s right to affirm its own dictatorship, even when this dictatorship comes into conflict with the evanescent mood of the worker’s democracy. We must bear in mind the historical mission of our Party. The Party is forced to maintain its dictatorship, without stopping for these vacillations, nor even the momentary falterings of the working class. This realization is the mortar which cements our unity. The dictatorship of the proletariat does not always have to conform to formal principles of democracy.â€
En zeggen:
“Het is een algemene regel dat mensen zullen proberen zonder werk te komen. De mens is een lui dier.”
En zeg (met trots):
“Ik ben van mening dat als de burgeroorlog onze economische organen niet had geplunderd van alles wat het sterkst, het meest onafhankelijk en het meest begiftigd was met initiatief, we ongetwijfeld veel eerder en veel minder pijnlijk het pad van éénmansmanagement hadden moeten betreden.”
En ga zo maar door.
More positively, if the topic came up, such new Marxists would indicate how they would have done things differently than the Bolsheviks and than every Marxist party since the Bolsheviks. For example, regarding the Bolsheviks, they might point out that the shop committee movement in Russia was moving in 1917-18 towards a National Congress to take over grassroots planning and coordination of the economy and note that unlike the Bolsheviks they would have seen such local agents as the best locus of planning rather than preferring the state. They might also note that Power to the Shop Committees was what the anarcho-syndicalists argued at the First All-Russian Trade Union Congress in January 1918, and indicate that they would have supported the anarchists in that, instead of opposing them, as the Bolsheviks did.
These new Marxists, noting that the Bolsheviks voted at that Trade Union Congress along with the Mensheviks and SRs to dissolve the shop committees into the trade unions and advocated “union management” of the economy, might say they would have at least stuck with that compromise instead of devolving by 1921 into advocating replacing union management with the still worse top-down “one-man management.â€
In plaats van een hiërarchisch leger zouden deze nieuwe marxisten kunnen aangeven dat zij de voorkeur zouden hebben gegeven aan het gebruik van een militie gebaseerd op de massaorganisaties, zoals het Revolutionaire Leger van Oekraïne. Ze zouden kunnen opmerken dat het argumenteren, zoals aanhangers van het bolsjewisme doen, dat dit niet effectief zou zijn geweest tegen de blanken, onredelijk zou zijn, aangezien het het revolutionaire leger van Oekraïne was dat de bolsjewieken redde in de winter van 1919, toen ze het blanke leger aanvielen. Moskou van achteren belegeren en vernietigen.
En in plaats van Oekraïne binnen te vallen met het Rode Leger om het Volkscongres van Oost-Oekraïne in 1921 te verpletteren, zoals de bolsjewieken deden, zouden deze nieuwe marxisten kunnen aangeven dat zij het Congres zouden hebben gesteund en het zouden helpen uitbreiden naar West-Oekraïne.
These new Marxists would note that instead of invading Kronstadt in 1921 and crushing the Soviet there, they would have agreed to the Kronstadter’s demands for new elections to the Soviets, even if this meant that the Bolsheviks would have to go into opposition.
Meer in het algemeen zouden deze nieuwe marxisten opmerken dat hiërarchische structuren in politieke instellingen het risico in zich dragen van een coördinatorheerschappij (evenals het creëren van een omgeving die in de moderne tijd niet past bij de wijdverbreide betrokkenheid van werknemers) en ook van politiek autoritarisme. dat dergelijke structuren in sommige moeilijke contexten moeten worden toegepast, zouden zij erop aandringen deze als een tijdelijk opgelegd hulpmiddel te zien, en dat duidelijk maken, en in alle andere opzichten de weg proberen te effenen voor niet-hiërarchische verhoudingen, nu en in de toekomst. toekomst.
En tenslotte, afgestemd op het bredere begrip van de klassendefinitie en de bevrijding van de arbeidersklasse, zouden deze nieuwe marxisten niet zeggen dat iedereen die visie en strategie anders ziet dan zij, maar zichzelf een marxist noemt, een stalinist is. In plaats daarvan zouden ze erkennen dat het marxisme een zeer onvolledig raamwerk is en de meeste mensen die het aannemen, naar onwaardige standpunten leidt, zelfs tegen hun persoonlijke neigingen in.
En ik moet zeggen dat ik, aan het eind van deze slotverklaring, over dit laatste punt in dit debat op verschillende punten, vaak impliciet, soms expliciet, afgeschilderd ben als het afwijzen en beledigen van marxisten. Ik wijs dat af. Om te zien waarom, veronderstellen we dat we ons een gigantisch stadion zouden voorstellen, gevuld met alle mensen uit het verleden en de huidige geschiedenis die zichzelf marxisten noemden (of die zichzelf nu noemen). (Dit is uiteraard geen ballenpark van gemiddelde grootte, aangezien er miljoenen mensen in zitten.)
I have argued that this huge set of people overwhelmingly, though not universally, have shared a viewpoint that has negative attributes and implications, even against the people’s finest aspirations and values. I don’t see how saying this about a conceptual framework’s likely implications for the people who adopt it is particularly degrading to those people or dismissive of them.
Yes, I say that the problems with Marxism’s concepts lead in their large-scale implications toward coordinatorism, not to mention toward political authoritarianism, and often even toward defending these vile results despite having other stated aspirations. But this doesn’t say that vile motives or personality or values produced the bad outcomes. It says, instead, that flawed concepts, visions, and strategies were the culprit, and that in the process of vast Marxist struggles, those participants willing to put up with or to celebrate coordinatorist and authoritarian methods and outcomes will eventually rise to top positions – as has in fact happened in history.
In contrast, to these claims about the concepts widely held by the large set of self-proclaimed Marxists that we are envisioning in our hypothetical immense stadium, ironically, those Marxists who come closest to agreeing with me on many of these issues tend to dismiss all but a tiny fraction of the stadium’s seat holders—the fraction that they don’t dismiss is usually their organization and some leaders from a hundred years ago, and Marx, etc., I guess, in the analogy, roughly those occupying a few selected box seats on the third base line, and maybe some little group out in the bleachers somewhere, too —as being Stalinist.
Dus mis ik hier iets? Ik typeer bijna iedereen in het stadion als slachtoffer van de implicaties van een reeks concepten, over het algemeen ondanks hun beste bedoelingen en hoop. Mensen in het stadion hebben de neiging bijna alle anderen in het stadion te karakteriseren als stalinistisch of anderszins gebrekkig. Wie is er afwijzend? Wie denigreert mensen?
De ironie van deze discussie is met andere woorden dat, hoewel ik een zeer kritisch standpunt inneem ten aanzien van het aannemen van het marxisme als leidend conceptueel raamwerk, in het bijzonder door andere concepten uit te sluiten, ik niettemin vermoed dat ik veel minder afwijzend en denigrerend ben tegenover de Een volledige groep mensen die zichzelf marxisten over de hele wereld hebben genoemd, dan degenen in die groep, gaat over elkaar heen, en heeft de neiging om Cuba en zijn aanhangers pejoratief te verdoemen als stalinistisch (of trotskistisch, of wat dan ook), grote delen van de voormalige deelnemers aan bewegingen in China , Rusland, Oost-Europa, enzovoort, en partijen over de hele wereld die, naast andere opvattingen of handelingen, enkele opvattingen steunen die de (marxistische) criticus ervan verwerpt.
Anders gezegd: waarom is mijn kritiek op een reeks concepten en instituties als geheel beledigend, maar als een marxist elke marxist buiten zijn of haar vriendenkring op zeer pejoratieve wijze stalinist of trotskist noemt, of (rennende hond-lakei) of welk ander afwijzend etiket dan ook? of zij dit passend en acceptabel acht? En welke aanpak is sektarisch?
Hoe het ook zij, stel dat er, afgezien daarvan, een marxistische organisatie komt die min of meer het positieve traject volgt in hun denken en overtuigingen met betrekking tot klassendefinities en loyaliteiten, economische doelstellingen, strategische engagementen en visies op het erfgoed, zoals hierboven beschreven. Zou die groep zichzelf blijven vernoemen naar Trotski, Lenin of zelfs alleen maar Marx?
I doubt that it would. I think it would find, like I found when I tried to call myself an unorthodox Marxist after having traveled essentially the trajectory noted but wanting to keep the linguistic link to the council communists like Rocker and Pannekoek, to Gramsci, to Rosa Luxembourg, and to Che…that despite my desires, the accumulated weight of past and current beliefs of those who were the loudest and most visible claimants to the mantel “Marxist†far outweighed my rejection of their views, which rejection I had to endlessly repeat just to avoid being utterly misunderstood, and that calling them “Stalinists†or even just “orthodox†to dismiss them as irrelevant to my choice of the label (unorthodox) Marxist was mere hand waving and special pleading, and not understood by anyone outside a small circle of friends. Thus I came to my choice to leave behind the label “Marxist,†and (for the most part) to avoid all the endless bickering and outright fighting over it, and to instead continue to expand my deviating views in new directions.
Ik hoop dat dit debat voor sommige mensen nuttig is geweest. Ik heb geleerd hoe dun het membraan is dat mij en sommige marxisten scheidt – en tegelijkertijd hoe stevig het is. Wie er ook gelijk heeft, en wie er ook ongelijk heeft, en hoeveel, hopelijk zullen er op korte termijn nieuwe wegen door dat membraan worden betreden, waardoor de opvattingen aan beide kanten worden gecorrigeerd.
ZNetwork wordt uitsluitend gefinancierd door de vrijgevigheid van zijn lezers.
Doneren