ReMarx, #1

First of an interminable series, corrections/objections/denunciations welcome

I’m reading Leszek Kolakowski’s magnum opus on Marxism. Doubtless, others more versed in the subject than I would advise against it as a guide. I’ve read a few other guides that do not stick in the memory at all. This one looks to be different. LK seems to be sympathetic in general, and fair. After all, he respects the subject enough to devote three volumes to it.

I could never get very far into Das Kapital. The International Publishers original edition sits on my shelves, in mint condition. Way back, I read other works, particularly earlier ones like The German Ideology, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts, and Theses on Feuerbach. I did make a dent in Theories of Surplus Value, thinking at one point that those books are logical precursors to Capital. I’ve previously confessed to my lack of mooring in philosophy in general. Of course I’ve read other economics in a Marxian mode.

To cut to the chase for this intro, the younger Marx, steeped in Hegelianism, looks wildly utopian. I fully admit that most of it is over my head. (Fun fact, Noam Chomsky thought it was stupid too.) His basic schtick is that labor is what makes the human race human, and the working class is therefore its agent of liberation. O.K. The ideas of alienation and commodities, and the implied misery in store for most workers, are reasonable enough.

The earlier work foresees ever-growing immiseration of the working class, leading inexorably to revolt and revolution. That is so not happening! One could say that immiseration has been exported from the advanced industrial nations to foreign peoples, where immiseration and worse is evident in many places, but the most abused do not become the most revolutionary. They erupt in other ways, typically along ethno-nationalist lines. Isn’t that obvious by now? Further complicating the picture is the weird case of the Peoples Republic of China.

The earlier Marx sees the division of labor arising from alienation under capitalist production. The worker loses control of his output and creates a world dominated by great hoards of wealth that enslave him. Private property arises from technical progress and the division of labor. The experience of exploitation equips the working class to reorganize and run society.

I don’t buy most of that. Private accumulations of wealth preceded industrialization. Sure, the new economics affects the nature of accumulations. My meatball theory is that inequality and private property arise from hierarchy, which is endemic to the human condition. It takes different forms in the evolution from ancient times to feudalism to capitalism, but it’s always there. I like what I take from Cedric Robinson’s Black Marxism, that along with hierarchy you naturally get racism and slavery. It’s always been with us, from way before 1619. I do like the idea that the masses are capable of self-government, where government entails the entire means of production.

Then LK gets into the origins of socialism in France and England, which of course predate Marx. He speaks of Babeuf and the “Conspiracy of Equals,” and later, Blanqui. In contrast to the airy philosophical ruminations of the younger Marx, this is a breath of fresh air. Exploitation produces inequality, which produces misery on a mass scale. Eat the rich! Share the wealth.

I’m sure I will find more to like in the critique of political economy, going forward. But so far, the philosophical Marx fails to impress.