To Table of Contents To Ch. 3
Two
Karl Marx
Introduction
Some know it, some don't, and some don't want to know it, but almost all those today who seek to understand industrial capitalism do so at least partially with analytical tools initially forged by Karl Marx (1818-1883)--whether or not they do so in his spirit or with his aims. This is to say something else, something stronger: to understand capitalism it is necessary, consciously or not, to use Marxian tools, whatever else (and there is much else) that is also required.
That is so not only--or even mostly--because Marx gave capitalism its name and was the first to perceive its nature. It is also because his prior and ongoing scholarship and intellectual strengths led him to recognize that what was becoming British industrial capitalism constituted what he called a new social formation; and that recognition drove him for decades to discover its economic laws of motion and the fuels and machinery that propel it.1
In the pamphlet Toward Understanding Capitalism, I singled out expansion, exploitation, and oligarchic rule as the imperatives of capitalism. Each of those--or, better, the three seen as one--Marx pulled up from the complex depths of the capitalist social process, examined them at all levels of abstraction and empiricism, and, as he put it "made [capitalism] reveal itself."
For socioeconomic understanding there had never been anything like the corpus of Marx's work; nor is it likely there ever will be again. Not that Marx got everything right or that he studied everything that was necessary; he didn't, he couldn't, and he knew it--not for his time, let alone for ours.
What he could and did do was to pierce through the manifold surface appearances of the capitalist process to see them as an organic whole of interlocking and dynamically related parts with great powers, needs, and consequences--intended or not, positive or negative. For Marx there could never be complete understanding of the social process, and not only because (as he saw it) it is always shifting beneath our feet--and especially so in the capitalist social process, which both feeds upon and nourishes rapid change.2
Earlier we cited Marx's view of history as weighing "like a nightmare on the brain of the living." Here we add what may be seen as the most succinct statement of his theory of history (the most vital phrases of which I have italicized):
In the social production which men carry on they enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will; these relations of production correspond to a definite state of development of their material forces of production. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society--the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness. The mode of production in material life determines the social, political and intellectual life processes in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.3A careful reading of that, in conjunction with "Men make their own history, but . . ." is a good first step (among many that may be taken) for understanding that those who see Marx as an economic determinist are saying more about themselves than about Marx; indeed, it is not too much to say that many of the most virulent critics of Marxian analysis have never bothered to read Marx at all.4Earlier it was noted that Marx saw both negative and positive consequences of the capitalist process. Negative, it goes without saying; but positive? Just as surely. Marx's radicalism did not innoculate him against the optimism characteristic of his time (especially in Britain--which then was what the USA is now). Marx saw capitalism as the most progressive of all social formations--wrenching peoples and societies loose from a stultifying past, not least, though by no means only, because of its potentially liberating technologies. And he believed that capitalism's achievements would do it in and liberate humanity--painfully, of course. How and why?
The intended achievements of capitalism include ongoing capital accumulation. In turn, that requires and creates a working class, which, thrown together to work in large numbers under one roof (under many such roofs) and under harsh conditions, would--because workers are human--move inexorably toward the organization they need to empower themselves. And because that same accumulation process would, as Marx saw it, just as surely lead to a deep crisis of overproduction, his optimism allowed him to believe that at some point the crisis would meet with the rising strength of the working-class: capitalism would have given birth to its owngravediggers.5
We should live so long (and perhaps some of you will). That was merely one of Marx's failed predictions. In our classes we'll not be concerned with his politics or his optimism; what will occupy us is his analytical apparatus.
For several class meetings to follow, we'll extract the core of Marx's political economy, the basic arguments that constitute those economic laws of motion. They constituted an astute analysis in his own day. With considerable updating they remain so today--indeed, it will be argued that the updating when synthesized with subsequent analyses (by Veblen, et al.) renders his analytical position stronger now than in his own time.
As I was thinking through the nature and structure of this class in 1998, by good fortune I received in the mail from Ed Herman (an old friend and fellow grad student at Berkeley in the late 1940s) a copy of his recent essay "Karl Marx and the Reopening of His System," then not yet published. It has since appeared in New Politics (Winter, 1998). The central part of Herman's essay is entitled "The Marxian Core," and it consists of seven elements. I'll follow his elements, mixed in with some of his and some of my own observations.6
That core will occupy us now for several meetings. Before plunging into it, however, it seems pertinent to return briefly to Marx's notions of alienation--his first major step (1843) toward connecting his political rage with his economic understanding. As was noted earlier, his concern with alienation was focused on what we may call the sociopsychological consequences of exploitation under capitalist conditions.
It is important to note that Marx's views in that connection come into conflict with his optimism concerning the overthrow of capitalism.7That is, if Marx was correct in seeing workers dehumanized by their powerlessness as workers--which seems incontestable--the question becomes how, over that same period of time, could a workers' movement strengthen to the point that it could overthrow capitalism? It would seem clear, from his own analysis, that the longer capitalism survived, the weaker the possibilities of its being overthrown by a steadily dehumanized working class.
Marx's theory of alienation, as noted earlier, was based on the consequences of being exploited in the processes of production; in Marx's time that was pretty much all that had to be taken into account. But as capitalism survives over time, it does so in dynamic interaction with industrialization, nationalism, and imperialism. That interaction was coming to mean a great deal already in Marx's time, and came to mean considerably more in the twentieth century. Thus, (1) workers in the leading capitalist countries came to achieve incomes beyond mere subsistence before World War I (and much more so after World War II); (2) nationalism and imperialism combined successfully to deflect workers' attentions from their concerns as workers and toward patriotism and the support of militarism; (3) most recently, consumerism, which heightens individualism and greed, has acted to erode workers' solidarity. These matters, weak or nonexistent in Marx's time in terms of workers' consciousness, will be discussed at some length when we examine twentieth century analyses.
The main point here is not that Marx's predictions were wrong; the complexities of the social process pretty much guarantee that virtually all predictions will be wrong--or, if right, are more likely than not to be so by chance. The point, rather, is that however capable analysts may be, their predictions are usually based on hopes and/or fears, more than on reason. Present company excluded, of course.
Now we turn to the core of Marx's political economy.
Marxian Analysis Revisited
If you have not read (or do not remember) the characterization of capitalism put forth in Toward Understanding Capitalism, this would be a good time to give it a look. The reference is to the imperatives of the capitalist social process: exploitation, expansion, and oligarchic rule. As we now examine Herman's seven elements of the Marxian analytical core, a bit of reflection will show that they may be seen as an elaboration of the foregoing three.
The seven will now be listed; we'll then spend some weeks taking them up in order. In doing so, the effort will be made to accomplish several things: (1) to clarify what Marx had to say, (2) to relate his arguments to subsequent and, even more, to contemporary realities, and (3) to see them all as--to use that phrase again, for it is important--in dynamic interaction with each other and, increasingly in our time, with all elements of the social process. I follow the order as put forth by Ed Herman:
1. The profit and accumulation drive
2. Technological change as a system imperative
3. Reserve army mechanism
4. Globalization
5. Instability and crises
6. Control of the State
7. Domination of the superstructure of law and ideology--including courts, academia, media, etc.In our next chapter, we'll begin to explore these, one by one. But before that, there is a major point to understand that compares Marx with most of the others we'll examine later (Veblen, et al.). That point has to do with what Marx saw as central to his analysis, and how that differs from some subsequent radical critics of capitalism.
For Marx, one could not even think of capitalism except as exploitative and ruled oligarchically; though his theory of surplus value revolves around them, his dynamic analysis--of the accumulation process--takes them as given. The accumulation process is what today is usually called economic expansion (or economic growth). By whatever name, that process is powered by capital accumulation (that is, essentially, investment in increasing productive capacities). In his discussion of this in Capital (I), Marx famously wrote: "Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the Prophets! Accumulation for accumulation's sake, production for production's sake . . ."
Power for Marx needn't be examined specifically, for there was no contest (except within the ruling class--e.g., between industry and agriculture). Oligarchic rule (that is the concentration of power in the hands of a few) could be assumed by Marx because the ownership and control of the means of production implies the powerlessness of the working class. Political democracy as we understand it did not exist in Britain in Marx's time. The vote was for (male) property owners only; and in any case, the State was small, necessary only for class rule at home and whatever was required to pave the way for capital abroad.
Already as the twentieth century began, things had changed in many ways. Consequently, critics of capitalism such as Veblen, Gramsci, Brady, and Baran and Sweezy (among others), had to see power as a much more complicated question.
In all the industrial capitalist nations (except Japan), formal political democracy was in place. As the century went on, and in addition to its two major wars, fascism, revolution, etc., much else had to become part of any working analysis. An adequate analysis of the capitalist process had to become explicitly socioeconomic, taking into account (among other matters), consumerism, advertising (and its selling not only of commodities but ideas), racism, the purchase of power through corruption, and, finally, the management of power.
Thus, although Marx could safely dismiss the State as "merely the executive committee for managing the common affairs of the bourgeoisie," in the present era, we cannot; we must uncover the always spreading and deepening roots of power in contemporary capitalist societies, and integrate that into our economic analysis.8
To put things that way is to say--once more--that insofar as the capitalist social process always and everywhere produces increasingly rapid and increasingly pervasive change (pervasive both within societies and over the globe), any analysis must itself be open to change--or become not only inadequate, but vulnerable to criticisms that, in finding such analytical weak spots, can obscure whatever strengths it may have.
That has happened with Marxian analysis, and is one of the major reasons why criticisms of Marx have been effective; the other major reason is that to accept Marx's reasoning is to become an opponent of capitalism. For some of us, capitalism is part of the good life; for too many, up to now, it's the opposite.
So, on with the good life.
Notes
1. In one of his letters to Engels, Marx notes that in order fully to comprehend capitalism's laws of motion he planned to write four brochures; he only partially completed one such brochure: Capital. Vol. I was completed by him in 1867. Vols. II and III were left incomplete at his death and finished by Friedrich Engels and by Karl Kautsky. Moreover, in order to do those three volumes, Marx had previously completed many other works: the three volumes of his Theories of Surplus Value (in effect, his history of economic thought), the Grundrisse [Foundations] (almost a thousand printed pages of his notes for Capital), and his Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, from the Preface of which we'll quote soon. It was only in the 1840s that Marx, urged to do so by Engels, began his studies for those works; he continued them into 1883, when he died. Return
2. Marx's writings move through all levels, from empiricism (as in the information he presents on working conditions in Capital [I]), to very high levels of abstraction, as in the theory of surplus value (the heart of that same volume). Our earlier criticism of mainstream economic theory regarding its abstract nature was not an attack on abstracting as such, but on what was abstracted out--namely, relevant real conditions. Marx himself was clear on this matter when (in Capital [III]) he pointed out that "[T]here would be no need for theory if appearance and reality were identical." Thus, by way of example, were you to stand on a broad plain on a clear day or night, what you would see, looking up in the sky, would seem to be the inside of an inverted bowl, but that is assuredly not what astronomers see. Return
3. From the "Preface" to the Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. That was not published in English until 1904; it became the Introduction to the Grundrisse (1859), not published in English until 1933. An excellent way to read through various of Marx's works is in the collection Marx and Engels: Selected Works (1967). It is available in various editions, some in one volume, others in two. In it will be found both the documents from which I have just quoted (Eighteenth Brumaire . . . and Contribution . . . ), along with selections from Capital, the Manifesto, etc. It can be found in some libraries and some bookshops. Return
4. Much later, when we discuss Joseph A. Schumpeter (briefly), we'll see that though he was conservative to the bone, he had read Marx carefully; and though he disagreed fundamentally not only with Marx's aims but also with important aspects of his analyses, he also had a high regard for certain aspects thereof. But Schumpeter (who died in 1950) was a rarity amongst economists. Return
5. This is as good a place as any to add that although Marx expected to see capitalism overthrown, he never did lay out any program for what the ensuing society should or could be, except in his famous statement to the effect that socialism would be the first stage of the social process replacing capitalism in which at least some capitalist attitudes survived and the problem of economic scarcity had not yet been eliminated; therefore, "from each according to ability, to each according to work."
A communist society would be one in which the economic problem had been eliminated, through the growth and alteration of productive capacities, and the population had for some time been living as socialists in practice and consciousness: then the principle of income distribution could become "from each according to ability, to each according to need"--that is, a classless society. Any more detailed program, he argued, would be in the nature of "kitchen recipes for the future" and foolish. Return
6. His official name is Edward S. Herman, and he has written much, within and beyond economics, and always excellently, by himself and with others. By himself (and among other books) he did the important Corporate Control, Corporate Power (1981) and The Washington Connection and Third World Fascism (1979); with Noam Chomsky (and among other books with him) Manufacturing Consent (1988); and with Robert W. McChesney, The Global Media (1997). The reason for the title of his essay, "Karl Marx and the Reopening of His System," is that over a century ago (1889) a leading Austrian economist, Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk, wrote a blasting critique of Marx which, in English, was called Karl Marx and the Close of His System. Return
7. And when we discuss Veblen and Gramsci, we'll see that this was well understood by them. The whole matter is pursued at some length in Ollman's Alienation, noted earlier--a book very much worth reading, for this and many other important matters. Return
8. To put it as safely dismiss is unfair to Marx in an important sense: as noted earlier, it was his intention to work through and complete three other brochures, which--had he lived long enough (which nobody could)--would have comprehended the State, sociology, and foreign trade (which comprehended what came to be called imperialism). For Marx, that is, first things came first; for him that could safely mean the political economy he created. For us, the first things must comprehend the entire social process. Child's play. Return