His eyes glowed with anger, his words seemed to burn He said, "I will be heard, for my life is not over- I've something to say yet, and you've something to learn"
He said, "You, who have nothing at all to believe in Oh you, who's motto is 'money comes first,' Who are you to tell us that our lives have been wasted And all that we fought for has turned into dust?"
Leon Rosselson, Song of the Old Communist
I surveyed a group of political science and philosophy students last spring about a major thinker they would like to see a class offered on. I put out about 10 people I felt might be worth devoting a class to and that I wouldn’t mind teaching. By far, the top two finishers were Byung-Chul Han and Karl Marx. Given how influenced Han is by Marx, that said something. To be honest, I’m not sure what, but I suppose I’ll find out as I’ll be teaching Marx in the Spring semester. Han actually won out (slightly), but somewhat paternalistically I decided to do the class on Marx. You probably wouldn’t really get what Han is up to if you don’t know Marx: first things first.
Why take a class on Marx? Why teach such a course? My sense is that while some on the right allege that colleges are permeated by ‘cultural Marxism’ (I think their understanding of the development of critical theory and things like critical race theory is rather off, but that they’re not exactly wrong either), I think the left basically gave up the serious study of Marx long ago. No doubt at their peril, the right (outside of Europe) have never studied Marx seriously enough. The European right at least have been studying their Gramsci and learning their lessons well.
There is a world of difference between those who first encountered Marx prior to 1989 and those who encountered him after. Marxists before 1989 were some serious folks. The world was being fought over and it wasn’t clear that the children of Marx were not going to prevail. To be honest, it doesn’t seem that ideas have been taken as seriously, politically, since then. At least until 2020; things are getting interesting again. Back in the day, you knew the tradition and all its variations: Marx, orthodox Marxist-Leninists who went about building effective vanguard parties, those pesky ‘permanent revolution’ Trotskyists (though the cute socialist chicks tended to be over in the Trotskyist parties for some reason; a young man was bound to notice), revisionism with Kautsky, those quasi-mystical, and ruthless, Maoists, the evolutionary (gradualist) Marxists with Bernstein, and the million intellectual variations with people like Gramsci, Benjamin, Althusser, and Adorno as luminaries. It was a lot of work (and it was good for you, dammit!) to keep your communists in order.
Now? Who knows? I think the ground has been cleared of all of that. Maybe we’re free to approach Marx with fresh eyes again. I sense my students are ready for that. They may not know what they’re getting into, and they may regret it, but in the pits of their stomachs they know the current order is corrupt and fated for rough things. Mostly they don’t know where to turn, but think Marx might have something to tell them. That’s my guess anyway.
The 1990’s New World Order and the ‘End of History’ line put forth by Francis Fukuyama are long dead, just as dead as the Communism they buried. If you were studying political thought in the 80’s and early 90’s, you took a lot of classes in Marx, typically, but not always, taught by Marxists. All the ‘smart people’ in academia were some sort of Marxist or at least claimed to be. When it came my turn to do the teaching, Marx was there front and center. For a short time. As things moved further and further past ’89 it became unclear why to teach Marx and how to situate him. I’m not certain, but I think I may have actually taught a history of Western political thought class that left Marx out somewhere along in there. He found his way back in though: the ideas are too strong. In 2008 I knew why he was still on my syllabus. I enjoyed dramatically launching into a lecture on Marx and talking about how he had been ‘disproved by history’ and how capitalism was clearly the ‘strongest and most stable economic system, which had not failed since…’, and I would look down at my watch and calculate the number of hours since the last bank collapse… ’36 hours ago!’
Well, even that was a long time ago and somehow didn’t fundamentally shatter our culture’s faith in capitalism. Run up enough debt and you can keep the old girl going another decade or two.
There was a time if you asked me what I was, I would have said a Marxist. That wouldn’t be my answer now and it wouldn’t have been my answer for several decades. But I think I still am, in a way. Once you put the Marxist glasses on and see the world as they reveal it be, you can’t ever really unsee that. I think the main problem around Marx today is that not enough people have tried on those lenses! I’m not saying, heaven forbid, that if we just saw the world right we would all be Marxists again. I do think though that we wouldn’t see the world quite the same way again and that how we did see the world would be richer and truer.
We ought not to worship Marx. That was an error of the 20th century. However, we ought not to ignore or remain ignorant of him either. That is the error of the first two decades of this century. My students who are smart enough to be angry tend toward the political right. I counsel them ‘don’t ignore your Marx, there is a heavy penalty that will surely be exacted of you if you do that.’ But they’re smart and they’re hearing more truth from the right than from the left.
The collected works of Marx (and Engels) runs to 50 hefty volumes. The tomes written about Marx are innumerable. Let me share with you 109 words: “In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. 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 of material life conditions the social, political, and intellectual life process in general. It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (From A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, 1859).
That is just about a whole world-view. Let’s briefly examine the four key points Marx is making here.
The Social Production of Life
We are not individually self-sufficient. Tribal people hunt and gather in groups. Slaves slave together. Peasants work the commons in common. And Proletarians work with other proletarians. Even if you manage to be a petty bourgeois and work for yourself, that is within the context of an overall social economy on which you are completely dependent for the goods and services you need. We are social animals and we produce and reproduce our lives socially.
Economic Structure
The basic options for each of us are determined. We don’t get to pick and choose. Economies are structured. In our capitalist economy go look for a job as ‘gatherer’ or ‘agricultural peasant’ or ‘social owner of the means of production.’ You can be a capitalist (own the means of production) or you can be a proletarian (sell your labor to the owners of the means of production.’ Those are the options. A quick look at the Indeed job postings: 100% proletarian jobs on offer from what I see. Have at it.
The Economic Structure Conditions the Superstructure
Ever notice how the economic elite of a given society seems to set up everything else in their favor? Odd coincidence that the legal superstructure of feudal society reinforced feudal relationships and the legal superstructure of capitalist societies enshrine private property, contract, etc…. Peculiar how the state sanctioned religions seem to have reinforced a morality consistent with the reigning economic hierarchy.
The Superstructure Conditions Consciousness
Ever notice how when the law, the political discourse, religion, the media, etc… all agree on the basic possibilities of life, people tend to think along those same lines? That is, the ‘common sense’ of each age seems to correspond to how society happens to be structured at that time.
We like to take refuge in the notion that at least our thoughts are free. At least we can see the truth, even if we’re downtrodden. Marx casts doubt on that. We are social beings. That includes our interior existence. There are no ‘private languages’ as Wittgenstein pointed out. The social structures not only define your physical situation and options but are also operative in our heads.
And a fundamental lesson for all would-be reformers or revolutionaries. You want to change the world? Change it all you like, but if you haven’t changed the basic economic structures, you really haven’t changed things.
I’m not saying this is problem free or incontrovertibly true. It ain’t all false though. Once you see the world that way, you can’t just not see it that way. You might see limits to this analysis, false applications, etc… But there is truth there and truth we owe to Marx and it certainly has not become irrelevant with the passing of time.
So, why pay attention to Marx? Well, I can tell you fundamentally why I bother to teach Marx. Because I can’t unsee it.
