MARXIST THEORY: An Outline.

Ted Trainer

15.2.2017

On approaching Marxism: a preliminary note.

Marx can be thought of as having offered two sets of ideas, the first of which we can accept if we
wish to, without having to accept the second.

1. Marx gave us a theory of society, i.e., an explanation of how society works, including how and
why history has unfolded, and especially of the nature of capitalism. Many see this as being of
great value for the task of describing what is going on in the world and for understanding the
problems and directions of our society today.

2. But Marx also regarded capitalism as extremely undesirable and he was very concerned with
getting rid of it. He thought its contradictions would lead it to self-destruct, enabling the
establishment of (a variety of) communist society. If you wish you can reject his values here
you can love capitalism and hate communism while accepting the value of his ideas about how
capitalism functions.

The following notes are intended to show the value of the first of these sets of ideas. One can
accept Marx's concepts as being very useful for the purpose of understanding our society without
accepting his condemnation of capitalism, his political values, his recommendations for political
action or his vision of communism. In other words, if you do not agree with Marxist social ideals
and implications for action, don't let this interfere with your evaluation of Marxist theory about
how our society works.

It is important to note that at times followers of Marx have said and done things he didnt agree
with. (Thus he once said, I am not a Marxist.) Marxism now is best thought of as
including ideas Engels and Lenin added to those of Marx.

The economic sub-structure

Marx argued that the economic situation, the substructure, that is, the form of the productive
system, is the most important determinant of all other aspects of a society, such as its social
institutions and ideas, the system of law, of morality and education. These are elements within
the "superstructure" of society.

Hence Marx is said to be a "materialist". Marx reacted against Hegel's philosophy in which ideas
were taken to be the important determinants of history. Marx argued that dominant ideas are the
result of material or economic conditions and class relations and he was therefore strongly
opposed to reformers who thought that mere change in ideas can change society.
The main types of society Marx distinguished were primitive, slave, feudal and capitalist. In a
capitalist society capitalists own and control the productive capacity (i.e., capital, factories),
workers own only their labour and must work for capitalists, who then own the product and sell
it at a profit.

The key to understanding a society at any point in history is to focus first on the mode of
production, the way production is organised. In feudal society land was the crucial productive
factor and the feudal lords owned and controlled it. In capitalist society capital, machinery,
mines, factories etc. are the key productive factors and these are owned and controlled by
capitalists (...as distinct from being owned by all members of society, which is the focal idea in
varieties of socialism/communism.)

The "forces" of production and the "relations" of production.

Marx saw the relation between these two factors as the main determinant of the type of society
existing and of social change.

The forces of production may be loosely regarded as the type of productive technology the
society has; e.g., slave labour, machine technology...

The relations of production refers to the social organisation of production; i.e., basically who
owns the productive forces, or how they are controlled. For instance in a slave society masters
force slaves to do the work, and in a feudal society serfs are obliged to work for the lord a certain
number of days each year. In capitalist society capitalists own society's productive resources and
employ workers to operate these for a wage when capitalists think profits can be made.

At first the relation between new forces of production and new relations of production is
progressive or beneficial to society in general. Marx stressed the great increase in human welfare
that economic growth under capitalism had brought. However as time goes by the situation
becomes less and less beneficial. The new social relations of production begin to hinder the full
development and application of the new forces of production. For example in the late feudal era
it was not in the interests of the lords to allow land to be sold or labourers to sell their labour
freely to any employer. These practices were inhibited although they eventually became essential
in the capitalist mode of production and therefore in the increase in production and benefits that
capitalism brought. Similarly at present we are unable to apply powerful technology to doing
useful things like designing longer-lasting goods and feeding hungry people, simply because of
the existing social relations of production. That is, the relations of production take a form in
which control over the application of productive forces is in the hands of capitalists and it is not
in their interests to do these socially beneficial things.

This is a major contradiction in contemporary capitalist society. Such contradictions have been
intrinsic in all class societies and its contradictions have become more and more glaring as each
has developed, to the point where they lead to revolutionary change.

So the relation between the forces and the social relations of production and the consequences
this generates is the major dynamic factor in history, the primary cause of social change. Marx
thus gave us a theory of how history proceeds, how the contradictory class relations in one era
gradually generate the conditions that eventually result in the replacement of that social system.

Classes, and class conflict.

The social relations of production involve different classes. The basic determinant of one's class
is one's relationship to the means of production. For example in late capitalist society the two
basic classes remaining are the owners of the means of production, i.e., capitalists, and those who
own only their labour, i.e., the workers or proletariat.

So in any historical period dominant and subservient classes can be identified. Inequality in
wealth and power was of fundamental concern to Marx. Some groups come to dominate others
and to win for themselves a disproportionate share of the societys wealth, power and privileges.
The ultimate goal Marxists aim at is a classless society, i.e., a society in which all enjoy more or
less equal wealth and power.

Marx said history is basically determined by the struggle between classes for dominance. "The
history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles".

Marxists stress that social analysis should focus on class structure and relations. In other words
the most important questions to ask about a society are to do with what groups in society
dominate or gain most benefit from the status quo, or whose interests does a situation or policy
or proposal serve most?

In capitalist society the capitalist class benefits most; i.e., those who own and control the means
of production receive a disproportionate share of wealth, power, privileges and status. There are
other classes but as time goes on these are moved into either the small capitalist class or the large
working class.

Note that there is an important distinction between big business, which includes the transnational
corporations and banks, and small business (the petite bourgeoisie). Many small firms and
family farms and shops are usually struggling, only providing their owners with low incomes.
These people are not investing capital in order to make profits from enterprises in which they do
not work, so they are more like peasants who own and work on their own farms.

It is also important to note that most people own some wealth, such as their house, but this is not
capital that is invested to make profits. They also have some savings in the bank, but the vast
bulk of capital is owned by very few people. It is now claimed that half of the worlds wealth is
owned by less than 1% of the worlds people.

History
It can be seen from the foregoing that Marx put forward a theory of history, or a principle which
he thought explained the dynamic, the driving force in history. A basic element in this is the
Hegelian idea of a "dialectical progression" whereby a) an original situation or idea or "thesis"
exists, b) an "antithesis" develops in opposition to it, c) the two are resolved into a "synthesis,
which becomes the new thesis. In any historical era, e.g., feudalism, the inherent contradictions
or class conflicts (e.g., between the dominant landowning lords and the commercial classes
developing in the increasingly independent towns) come to a head in some sort of revolution and
are resolved when a new social order stabilises (e.g., the early capitalist era). This thesis-
antithesis-synthesis idea is sometimes referred to as the dialectic.

History is therefore primarily a function of material or economic conditions, i.e., of the

productive situation. Hence Marxism is referred to by the terms "historical materialism" and
"dialectical materialism". The relation between the types of productive technology in use and the
social relations or organisation and control of those forms of production is what has determined
the nature of primitive, slave, feudal and capitalist society, and what has moved society from one
to the other.

As a system such as feudalism or capitalism matures it produces social processes and

institutions that both undermine it and will be fundamental in the society that follows it. For
instance efforts by workers trying to get better conditions produce acceptance of voting for all
(men), and unions. Thus capitalist society performs the historically essential function of creating
the institutions that must come into existence before post-capitalist society becomes possible.

Marx is saying the advent of post-capitalist socialism is a more or less inevitable product of the
way history works, of the laws of history. Thus Marx opposed many rebellions, and the use of
violence, because such initiatives failed to see that the possibility of establishing communism
depended on whether the right social conditions had developed yet, i.e., been brought into
existence by the maturing of capitalism. He argued that capitalism would not be superseded until
it had exhausted its potential, i.e., as difficulties and resistance arose it would turn to novel
strategies to continue its domination, until all possibilities had all been exhausted. In the process
it creates the new institutions that will undermine it and that will be crucial elements in the
system that will replace it. Force and violence cant establish communism (though they may
occur at the time of revolution); the maturation of capitalist system must create the conditions,
practices, institutions etc. (through the resistance in workers it causes) that must be in place
before capitalism can be transcended. For instance capitalism prompted the emergence of
unions, universal suffrage, regulation of business. Marx said, new, higher relations of
production, never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the
womb of the old society itself.

So Marx thought you could not at any old time just organise a violent revolution to eliminate the
capitalist class by force; the system could only be transcended when it had matured (though,
again force might be involved then.) This is why he was not surprised tat the French Revolution,
and the Paris Commune, failed to initiate a socialist society. Some Marxists have tried to damp
down revolutionary movements (Warren) on the grounds that conditions were not yet ripe. This
is another area where we must be careful not to confuse what Marx thought with what some
Marists have thought and done.
What is also crucial for revolutionary change is the emergence of class consciousness. In Marxs
terms, workers, a class in itself must become a class for itself, that is, aware of its situation
and the need for action.

Eventually the thesis of capitalism and the antithesis of the revolutionary proletariat will issue
into a synthesis which is communism and the dialectical process will have come to an end. This
does not mean there would be no further change or progress in history, but it does seem Marx
meant that there will be no further political conflict. Many would now say that just getting rid of
capitalism would not put an end to problems involving class and power; just consider Russia
under Stalin, or China.

The capitalist mode of production.

The forces of production in capitalist society include the use of factories (as distinct from
production by family units within the home or by individual craftsmen, as was the case in earlier
times), elaborate machine technology, and a working class. This mode requires large investments
of capital to be made in plant, mines, etc., and it involves the extensive use of science and
technology in developing more sophisticated processes.

The most important of the social relations of production in a capitalist society are, a) ownership
and control of society's productive resources are in the hands of a few who invest their capital or
put their factories into production only if they think profit can be made, and b) most members of
society have to sell their labour to capitalists, have to accept orders in the workplace, and have
no say or stake in production other than their pay packets.

Another crucial element is the fact that capitalists are locked in deadly competition with each
other, and this produces a constant need to innovate, look for better technology, cut costs and
drive wages down. Capitalists are trapped in the system too. It is a mistake to criticise them as
individuals; what matters is the faulty nature of the system that forces everyone to play by its
nasty rules.

Marxists also insist that only labour should be able to earn money and that money should not be
able to earn money. In other words they do not think people who are rich should be able to
receive an income as interest on their savings, loans or investments, especially as this means that
the richer one is the more income one gets without having to workwhile rich people consume
goods made by people who must work for their income.

The labour theory of value.

Marxists argue that the value of things should be calculated in terms of the amount of labour that
went into their production. Conventional economics does not do this; it regards the value as
whatever will be paid in the market place. Lichtheim, (1961), says Marx was mistaken in putting
so much emphasis on this attempt to develop an economic theory based on labour as the unit of
value; it is difficult to explain various things this way, such as prices people pay for things, and it
is not necessary for his basic critique of capitalism. A great deal of time has been wasted
debating the notion. (Nevertheless in a good society we could still decide on incomes and prices
by focusing on how much labour went into producing things.)

Profit vs need.

Conventional economic theory and practice today are based on the assumption that it is best if
production and development is driven by profit. The theory is that only if capitalists produce
what people demand will profits be maximised, and therefore the most efficient allocations be
made. However Marxists and others emphasise that there can be and typically is a huge gulf
between production for profit and production to meet needs. Profits are maximised by producing
what relatively richer people want and can pay for. The result typically is that the urgent needs of
poorer people, and the needs of the environment are seriously neglected. (See TSW: The Case
Against the Market.)

Profit and exploitation

A fundamental Marxist theme is that capitalist profit making constitutes exploitation of workers.
When a capitalist sells something his workers made and he receives more for the item than he
paid for the inputs including the workers wages he is taking a portion of the value that the
worker created. The workers labour created the total value realised in the sale price but they
only received a portion of this value, and they are therefore being exploited by the capitalist who
controls the productive situation but does no work in the creation of the product.

The argument is clearest in the case of shareholders who have nothing to do with the factory
except invest their money in it and who then receive an income without having to do any work
for it. The capitalist's profits are not to be confused with any wages he might draw for his
managerial effort. Often all managers are hired workers and are paid a wage for their labour,
while all those who provide the capital do not work yet receive an income which is some
proportion of the wealth created by the labour in the factory.

The conventional counterargument is that it takes capital as well as labour to produce things and
wages are the return to labour while profit is the return to capital. Profit is the incentive that
persuades those who hold capital to put it into production, which benefits the rest of us.
However, the Marxist insists that it would be better to organise society in such a way that all
people own and/or control societys capital and no one gets an income without working for it.
(Capital could still be privately owned but kept in public banks and invested in projects that
society chooses, e.g., through elected public boards.)

Similarly, to argue that profit is the capitalist's reward for risking his capital is only to say that he
takes the risk of losing it and then having to work for an income like the rest of us!

The strongest argument for a profit-motivated economy in which firms are privately owned
might be that unearned income is a consequence of the system that is the best alternative to the
heavy handed, bureaucratic, inefficient and dictatorial planning socialism inevitably involves.
However this is to overlook the possibility of a democratic, participatory socialism in which
capital is not all owned or controlled by the state. Local cooperatives could own and control
basic factories, and many of these might be privately owned but carefully regulated by the local
community. Nevertheless among the biggest problems for socialism are how to set and adjust the
huge number of prices of goods on sale, how to enable initiative and innovation, and how to
phase out inefficient firms, when the market seems to do all this automatically, with no
arguments.

The contradictions in capitalism.

Marx argued that at first capitalism released great progressive developments, especially large
increases in production and therefore in the material wealth of people in general. However as
time passed the forces of production and the social relations of production came increasingly into
conflict, contradictions surfaced and the social relations of production began to thwart the full
application of technology and productive potential to social needs. These internal contradictions
will continue to increase in severity over time and ultimately they will result in the destruction of
the capitalist system.

Unemployment provides a good example of a built-in contradiction. As capitalists use more

automated factories to cut labour costs, workers have fewer jobs and less income and so there is
less demand for the products the factories make leading the system towards bankrupt
capitalists and starving workers, and system break down.

The central conflicts built into the structure of capitalism concern the process whereby capitalists
accumulate profits. Capitalists are involved in savage competition with each other and therefore
there is great pressure to develop more efficient production and better technology. There is a
tendency over time for capitalists to increase the percentage of their capital investment that goes
into machinery ("fixed capital") and to decrease the percentage put into buying labour. In other
words there is a tendency for what Marx called the "organic composition" of capital to change.
Consequently workers in general take home less pay and the capitalist's increasing accumulation
of wealth is accompanied by the increasing "immiseration" of the proletariat. Consequently
workers have less purchasing power and because they therefore cannot buy all the goods that the
capitalists' factories can produce there is a tendency for capitalists profits to fall in the long run
(another contradiction built into the system.)

Critics have said that in the one hundred years since Marx's death there has been precisely the
reverse of the predicted immiseration of the proletariat, because material living standards have
risen enormously. This is a somewhat confused issue. Some people argue that Marx meant that
workers will become poorer relative to the capitalist class, and it appears that this is now
happening. The real incomes of American workers have more or less not increased, and might
have actually fallen, over the last almost fifty years while the 1% has grown much richer.
Some people attribute the lingering Global Financial Crisis to declining capacity of ordinary
people to purchase. Another argument is that increases in real incomes in rich countries have
been at the expense of deteriorating conditions for the Third Worlds poor. However it is
commonly claimed that capitalism is now rapidly increasing Third World living standards. But
this is debatable too as the gains seem to have been mostly within China and perhaps India and
one to three billion people have remained in squalor for many decades while the condition for the
poorest billion probably have deteriorated. (Discussed in TSW: Third World Development.)

More importantly Marx had in mind more than just wages and material wealth; he was primarily
concerned with the spiritual conditions of the worker and saw these becoming more and more
impoverished under capitalism. Many would now say he got this right.

The important idea that capitalism has built into its nature forces and tendencies, contradictions,
that will destroy it some day now also would seem to be evident in the way it impacts on the
resource and ecological situation. The limits to growth argument is that ever-increasing levels
of production and consumption are leading to collapse of the global ecosystem. And the notion
of an inevitably worsening contradiction can be seen in the apparently insoluble problems being
generated by the global financial system, especially the fact that debt is now much higher than
before the 2008 GFC.

Accumulation.

Marxists stress that the factor which determines what happens in our society is the drive to
accumulate capital; i.e., the ceaseless quest to make profits, which are then reinvested, to make
more profit, in an endless spiral of capital accumulation. This leads to innovation and change.
Why is there now a McDonalds in your street? Why has so much manufacturing industry left
Australia? These changes have come about because competing firms are always looking for ways
of maximising their profits and accumulating more wealth.

Note that capitalists have no choice here. They must constantly seek more profitable fields for
investment, because they are competing against each other and if they fall behind they will be
killed off. It is important not to focus criticism on capitalists; it is the capitalist system that is the
problem. Capitalists are locked into deadly competition. (Korten 1995, explains how executives
who do socially noble things, such as preserve forest lands they own, will therefore not maximise
profits and will thus be targeted for hostile takeover by firms who can see that the firm could
make greater profits.)

The psychological and social effects of capitalism.

Two somewhat distinct strands can be distinguished in Marx's writings. One is focused on
economics, and the way history works, i.e., the way change and development follows a dialectic
pattern to do with productive relations, which will end with socialist revolution and the eventual
emergence of communism. However it was only in the Twentieth century that Marx's early
writings on more philosophical and social themes were discovered. Marx discussed the
damaging effects capitalism has on the psychological situation of the individual and on
community.

a) Alienation. (Later he used the term fetishism of commodities for this theme; his
discussion of it is obscure.)
Marx said that workers in a capitalist society are typically obliged to perform only a few limited
and routine operations, they rarely make the whole item nor see the final product, work is often
boring, workers have no say in what happens to the product because it is not their property, they
do not own their tools, they have no say in the planning or organisation of work, they just do
what they are told, they must work within strict rules, especially regarding time, under conditions
of intense division of labour. They have little or no opportunity for the exercise of initiative.
Their only interest in the entire work process is the money they get for working. In general work
is not enjoyable and it is not fulfilling; it makes no contribution to the individuals growth or
enjoyment of life.

By contrast the primitive" tribesman, medieval craftsman or subsistence farmer could decide
what he would work on at any moment, at what pace he'd work, how to do the job, and when to
take a break. He could control and plan and vary the whole process, and he could enjoy making a
beautiful object. He knew that the product of his work would be his to use or exchange or give
away.

Marx regarded these kinds of factors as being very important for a person's emotional or spiritual
welfare. Humans are somehow incomplete or deprived of something important if they cannot
engage in worthwhile and satisfying effort to produce things for themselves and their
communities, and capitalism destroys any possibility of the sort of self-sufficient, self-controlled
and intrinsically rewarding work Marx valued.

Marxs argued that in this work situation the objects the worker produces become things that are
not only separated from him (alien), but become sources of his oppression. The workers
labour has created the world he lives in, including the economic system, but those things then
dominate and exploit him, because they are elements in the capitalist system which does not treat
him well.

b) Money and commodification. Marx argued that capitalism tends to eliminate almost all
non-monetary considerations and values and to replace these with a mere "cash nexus". It makes
the market and therefore considerations of monetary profit and loss the only criteria of value,
action and exchange. Capitalism turns almost all things into commodities for sale,
especially labour. In feudal times labour, land and money were not commodities for sale.
One can now talk of personalities, behaviour and education as commodities that are
bought and sold for a price. All that matters is the price of things. However in feudal times,
whether or not one would work for another or buy or sell something depended on many
important moral, religious and traditional rules and values, not just on the prospects for personal
economic gain. The development of capitalism tore most of these considerations away and made
the overriding criterion the question of economic advantage. Hence it became acceptable to buy
and sell labour and land, to eave some unemployed, to close a business people depend on, and to
drive a rival into bankruptcy.

Marx saw the use of money as something which enabled this undesirable, alienating process, and
some Marxists today insist that a good post-capitalist society must be designed to operate
without use of money.
c) The destruction of community and social cohesion. The market and the capitalists need for
mobile workers broke up the ties people previously had to place, community, traditions, and
support networks. Large numbers were torn from their land and villages and forced into the
slums of industrial cities. Many sociologists argue that this basic process continues today,
causing decreasing connectedness, cohesion, and community. The neo-liberal triumph since
1970 is seen as accelerating the trend to a society that forces us to focus on individual,
competitive winner-take-all self interest. This feeds into the breakdown of social
connectedness and mutual support, and tends to increase family breakdown, suicide, crime,
alcoholism, drug abuse, etc., and the rising incidence of anxiety and loneliness.

(For a discussion of the historical transition to capitalist social relations, and the need to
"embed" market relations in social relations, see TSW: Religion and the emergence of
market dominated society, and TSW: Polanyi. Polanyis important discussion of these
themes is in Dalton, 1968.)

The state.

Marxists argue that the state rules primarily in the interest of the capitalist class. The state is "the
executive committee of the bourgeoisie". For example the state takes as its top priority increasing
economic (i.e., business) activity, when it is clear that increasing the GDP is now accompanied
by a falling quality of life, resource depletion and environmental destruction. The state's most
important characteristic is its power. It has the power to rule, to force members of society to
obey, to jail, fine or execute, and to make war. (

Marx claimed that the state as an authoritarian, coercive ruling agency will cease to exist when
society becomes classless. Some centralised functions will remain necessary but the coercive
power of the police and army will not be necessary to deal with problems caused by class
inequality and domination, because these will have been overcome. (However Marxist regimes
have been willing to exercise state power, typically in an authoritarian way, although Marx
thought that eventually in communist society this would not be the situation.)

Ideology; false consciousness.

Dominated and exploited classes typically do not understand their situation or their interests.
They do not realise that the way they are treated is unjust. This is usually due to the acceptance
of ideas which cast the status quo as being legitimate; e.g., peasants might believe that kings
have a divine right to rule and that God ordains that the poor should accept their lot with good
grace, or that a miserable life in this world does not matter and is not worth trying to change
because the important thing is to prepare one's soul for the next world. In our era Marxists stress
the role of the media in reinforcing the dominant ideology, especially by not giving space to
fundamental criticisms of capitalist society.

In any class society there will be a dominant ideology, which will mostly be made up of the ideas
which it suits the dominant class for people to hold. The acceptance of these perspectives and
values by the working class is also referred to as "bourgeois hegemony".
Marx thought that late in the history of capitalism workers will develop clearer awareness of
their situation and their interests, i.e., class consciousness will emerge. Workers will come to see
that the prevailing social relations of production are not in their interests.

However, even in Marx's time there was considerable debate as to whether workers will develop
sufficient class consciousness on their own to bring about revolution, or whether this will only
rise to a "trade union" mentality, which looks no further than winning gains within the capitalist
system. Lenin argued for the need for a secret and dedicated communist party, a vanguard to lead
the workers to revolt. Marx was at lrast not comfortable with this. Remember his theory of
history and of the need for capitalism to mature. If force had to be used to take state power to
make people follow the proposed new ways this meant that conditions were not yet ripe for
transition to socialism. Thats why the French revolution ended in terror.

Revolution.

Again Marx thought that capitalism contains contradictions, forces and processes which cannot
help but increase its internal difficulties to the point where it is inevitably overthrown. Through
the deteriorating alignment between the forces and the relations of production contradictions
become more glaring, there is polarisation into capitalists and proletarian classes, the class
consciousness of the proletariat increases and in time a revolutionary change of system occurs.
Bourgeois revolutions overthrew feudal society in which landed aristocrats ruled, e.g., the French
Revolution. Marxists insist that dominant classes will not voluntarily give up power, wealth and
privilege. Their control has to be taken away from them, and this might have to involve violence.

This is one of the areas where some notable later Marxists differed from Marx. Remember that
his theory of history held that as capitalism matured it would inevitably generate not just
difficulties for itself but also generate the ways, institutions, practices etc. that would become
basic elements in the system that replaced it. This is why he did not advocate use of violence to
take power. As noted above, he criticised many revolutionaries, including the Jacobins in the
French Revolution, for not understanding that conditions must be right before a new system can
come into existence and that if resort has to be made to force, violence and terror this just means
that the revolution is only political, only about transfer of power, and will only install a new
class in power, and cannot result in communism.

Lenin went well beyond Marx here, arguing that workers will not rise to revolutionary
consciousness on their own and a disciplined and ruthless communist party must lead the
workers. Marx was in general opposed to a vanguard which might operate as far beyond the
workers as Lenin's party did and was willing to use violence. Marx had a long history of
opposition to the idea of a vanguard prepared to take power and be ruthless, and Lenin had
accepted Marxs view on this until just before the Russian revolution. (Avineri, 1968, p. 257.)

This issue has been referred to as the choice between a "minimum" program, i.e., to assist
capitalism to move towards maturity and subsequent self-destruction, or a "maximum" program,
i.e., to strive directly to engineer revolution. Some Marxists (e.g., Warren) have actually
recommended against revolts In the Third World because they did not think capitalism had
matured sufficiently.
However, there were times, especially towards the end of his life, when Marx seemed to think
that a non-violent path to socialism might be possible in pre-industrial communities, notably via
development of the traditional collective Russian village, the Mir. That is, he wondered whether
it might be possible to avoid going through the long and arduous period of industrialisation and
development of a working class. This is remarkable because it seems to contradict his entire
theory of history. (Many Anarchists think it is possible to begin building a new, post-capitalist
society now, based on existing communities, without having to wait for or work for the
destruction of capitalism. This is called "prefiguring"; see TSW: Anarchism).

After the revolution.

Marx said very little about the form society would take after capitalism. Eventually a communist
society would come into existence, free of classes, political conflicts, coercion, domination and
exploitation, and the state.

Marxists generally say that immediately after the revolution when the proletariat had gained
control there would have to be a period of "dictatorship of the proletariat". (Avineri says Marx
almost never used this term.) This would be necessary to remove all elements of capitalism,
especially the ideas and values making up bourgeois ideology. In this early period of what he
called crude communism, (commonly referred to as socialism now), privately owned
productive property, capital, would become public property, but various undesirable aspects of
capitalism would remain for some time. People would still be motivated to work by differential
wages and there would have to be a strong state, in the hands of the worker's party, which ran a
planned economy. People would work for wages, there would be division of labour, and they
would work for a boss, the state. They would still have strong materialist values, in Avineris
terms, possessions and greed would still drive them. (1968.) This first stage is called
distributive communism.

However, Marx thought that in time a pure communist society would emerge from which the
mistaken ideas and values of bourgeois society had disappeared. The coercive state would have
withered away, intense division of labour and specialisation would have ceased, the outlook
and motivation of individuals would have changed from competitive to collective and
cooperative, and people would have much greater opportunity to develop and fulfil their
potential than they had under capitalism. Marx was optimistic about the capacity of humans to do
these things, seeing greed, competition and conflict as distortions produced by class domination.

Perhaps the best clue to the nature of communist society as Marx envisaged it is given by the
well-known statement, "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". This
means that all would contribute as best they could, with those more able doing more, but all
would be rewarded not according to their output, skill or status but in proportion to their needs.
So we would all do a reasonable days work although some would be able to produce more than
others, but if one person who couldn't do as much as the rest had greater needs that person would
receive more. This is the way a good family works. It is obviously a noble principle but could we
organise large systems, like a national economy this way? Anarchists think the chances of a
society following this principle are best when societies are mostly quite small, making familiarity
and cooperation on local tasks more likely. Anarchists and Marxists more or less agree on the
nature of the ultimate good society to be worked for (See TSW: Anarchism), but they differ on
transition strategy.(See TSW: Transition.)

Marx believed that the revolution would liberate people from the alienation capitalism imposed,
including intense division of labour and specialisation in work. We would be able to do many
varied things in our normal day. He didnt explain how this might be realised in a complex,
high-tech industrial society. (Advocates of The Simpler Way do think a very diverse, and relaxed
and enjoyable, work situation is possible and desirable.)

THE VALUE OF THE THEORY FOR UNDERTSTANDING THE WORLD TODAY.

Much of what is wrong with the world today is explicable in terms of Marxs account of
capitalism. When a few are allowed to own most of a societys capital, and to determine
economic activity according to what will maximise their wealth, the inevitable result is
production of the most profitable things, not the most needed things. In a world where there is
enormous inequality this means investment goes into producing consumer goods and luxuries for
people in rich countries, while the needs of billions of people are more or less ignored. It means
the rich few take most of the available resources because they can pay more for them (i.e., it is
more profitable for capitalists to sell to the relatively rich), it means that much Third World
productive capacity, especially land, goes into producing for export to rich countries when it
should be producing food for hungry people, and it means that the environment will be damaged,
because there is no profit incentive for the owners of capital to protect it.

In other words, in a capitalist system there is development of the wrong things (development in
the interests of the rich) because what is done is that which is most profitable. We have great
need for the production of many specific things, such as cheap housing, but these are not
produced yet there is excessive production of many luxuries and trivial items -- because this is
what maximises return on private capital. Conventional development theory says that in time this
approach will result in "trickle down" of wealth to all. There is a tendency for this to happen, but
there are also many other undesirable tendencies, most obviously to the emergence of extreme
inequality. (On trickle down development, see within TSW: Third World Development.)

We have an economy in which there is enormous waste, especially via production of items that
are not necessary, or that will not last, trinkets and luxuries. The global environment and resource
depletion problems and the bad distribution of resources between rich and poor nations indicates
that we should greatly reduce this volume of production -- but this is not possible in a capitalist
economy. There would be a huge jump in unemployment and bankruptcy. Indeed it is an
economy in which there is continual pressure to increase production and consumption all the
time because capitalists always want to increase their factories, their sales and their income. The
last thing they want is to see reduced business turnover. So there is a serious contradiction
between the dynamic within capitalism and ecological sustainability.

Unemployment and automation occur in this economy simply because capital is privately owned.
If a better machine is invented the capitalist who owns the factory receives all the benefit, while
the workers lose their jobs. So of course there is a problem. In a socialist economy the machine
could be adopted without these effects. All would share in more free time or cheaper goods. In a
capitalist economy labour is just another commodity that a capitalist will hire only if he thinks he
can make profits, otherwise people have to suffer unemployment. Similarly the only way a
capitalist society can solve the unemployment problem is to find more things for displaced
workers to produce, when there is already much more productive activity than we need.

These phenomena are well described by the Marxist term "contradictions". Capitalist society
inevitably involves huge contradictions and conflicts of interest, because the forces of
production clash with the relations of production. Another good example is that the world could
easily feed all people yet hundreds of millions are hungry while one third of the world's grain
production is fed to animals in rich countries. We have the productive capacity (forces of
production, technology) to solve this problem but this is not done because it is not in the interests
of those who control capital. They make more money selling the grain for feedlot beef
production (i.e., there are capitalist relations of production, a capitalist organisation of
production). In other words, if you allow society's capital to be privately owned then you will
inevitably run into this sort of contradiction because often what is most profitable for capitalists
to invest in is not what most needs doing. (An alternative economy might not necessarily
eliminate all free enterprise or private capital, but it would involve control and monitoring of
private enterprise to ensure that most investment goes where it is most needed.)

Understanding Globalisation
The development of the world economy in the years since 1970 would seem to further illustrate
the value of the Marxist approach to analysing society. Around that time capitalists began to
experience great difficulty finding profitable investment outlets for all the capital they were
constantly accumulating. This has fuelled the now huge push for globalisation; i.e., the move
towards a unified global economy in which there is great freedom for market forces, because this
gives capitalists more opportunities for profitable investment. (See the Globalisation section, in
TSW: Our Economic System.) The big corporations and banks have much more freedom than
before to go where they wish and trade, invest and develop as they wish. Previously there were
many laws and regulations restricting the entry of foreign investors, the capacity of corporations
to come in and take the business opportunities (sending local small firms bankrupt) and
restricting the right of financial institutions to lend recklessly. These were the rules governments
once set and used to protect their citizens, industries and ecosystems. These rules set standards
corporations had to meet regarding labour conditions, health, environmental impacts, and human
rights, and they enabled governments to control corporations and get them to locate in
disadvantaged areas etc.

Globalisation represents enormous success on the part of the corporations and banks in having
many of these regulations and restrictions to their freedom eliminated, in the name of increasing
the freedom of enterprise and trade. All governments have eagerly facilitated these processes,
which does not surprise Marxists because they see the state as always ruling in the interests of
capital.

Above all globalisation involves deregulation; i.e., governments removing controls on what
corporations can do and increasing the scope for market forces to operate, freeing foreign
investment, trade, labour markets etc. from controls by the state. Globalisation also involves
privatisation; i.e., governments selling public enterprises to corporations, thereby increasing the
amount of business for corporations to do.

In the Third World the Structural Adjustment Packages the World Bank has imposed on indebted
countries have been major forces for globalisation. Poor countries are given desperately needed
loans on condition that they open their economies to foreign investors, sell national assets to
them, reduce state spending especially on assistance to the poor, and increase dependence on
exportation of commodities.

In Marxist terms globalisation can be seen as the situation to which capitalism inevitably leads,
i.e., where the ceaseless drive to accumulate more and more capital leads the capitalist class to
try to break down all remaining impediments to its access to investment, markets, resources,
cheap labour and profitable business opportunities. Globalisation is about capitalists being able
to get into and take over business opportunities which they were previously kept out of by
government regulation, especially protection of local industries against cheap imports. Hundreds
of millions of poor people in the Third World have been further impoverished because
transnational corporations are now able to come in and take over the markets and resources that
used to be preserved for the benefit of locals.

Globalisation makes clear the great conflict of interest between capitalists and the rest. Thus
analysis in terms of class is crucial. Globalisation should be analysed in terms of winners and
losers. There are relatively few winners, mostly the corporate shareholders, those who do the
managerial and professional work for corporations, and people who shop in rich world
supermarkets. Thus the recent history of the world is primarily explicable in terms of this class
conflict. The capitalist class has enjoyed triumphant success, it is rapidly becoming richer (1% of
people are now estimated to own more than half the worlds wealth) and is dramatically
restructuring the world in its interests. Workers, unions and the Left are very weak and large
numbers of people are being completely excluded and dumped, including the long term
unemployed, and about one billion hungry people in the Fourth World. There is increasing
polarisation. Extremes of wealth and poverty are now accelerating in even the richest countries.
Globalisation and the neo-liberal agenda are gutting society, destroying the conditions which are
crucial for cohesion, such as valuing the public good, concern for the under dog and for society,
and concern for the environment.

CRITICISMS OF MARXS THEORY.

Following are criticisms that are commonly made.

- Too much emphasis is given to the economic factor in explaining social order and change.
Culture seemed to be explained as part of the superstructure, derived from the economic
"substructure". It would seem to be difficult to explain the advent of gay liberation in terms of
productive or economic or class relations. (However Marxs early writings were about
philosophical and social themes, notably alienation.)
- Even if you get rid of capitalism you might still have enormous problems of conflict and
domination in society. State bureaucracies as well as capitalists can dominate -- ask the Russians
and Chinese.

- Marxs theory of history is contradicted by the fact that industrialised countries have not moved
closer to revolution as they matured. The recent revolutions have been in peasant societies,
such as China. The richest capitalist societies seem to have become more secure from threat of
revolution throughout the 20th century.

- Many would say there are no laws of history and that Marx was mistaken in thinking he had
discovered them, and thus in thinking that his theory was scientific. (This is more a criticism of
Engels and Kautsly than of Marx.)

- Anarchists say Marxists fail to grasp the unacceptable dangers in their readiness to take an
authoritarian-centralist approach. Marxists are willing to use the authoritarian state to run society
after the revolution and to be ruthless in this. This is extremely dangerous; those in control cant
be trusted and are very likely to become an entrenched dictatorship, as with Stalinism. (As has
been pointed out this is not really true of Marx, but it is evident in many who call themselves
Marxists.)

- Many if not all Anarchists would also reject conventional Marxist theory of how capitalism can
or will be replaced, which involves confronting capitalism, class conflict, seizing the state and
taking power from the capitalist class, and destroying capitalism, a process which will probably
involve violence. (Note again that these Marxists are going beyond Marx on some of these
themes.) Alternatively some anarchists believe the change could come more or less peacefully
via increasing awareness and disenchantment, the building of alternative communities based on
anti-capitalist principles, and thus an increase in the numbers who have come to realise
capitalism is unacceptable. However socialists are inclined to say the capitalist class will not give
way but will have to be pushed aside.

- Marx (and most Marxists today) failed to take ecological sustainability into account. They are
strong believers in industrial development and "progress", rising material "living standards" and
economic growth. They think that capitalism is responsible for all problems and that when it has
been eliminated we can release the previously restricted power of industry to enrich everyone. In
other words, Marxism has no concept of limits to growth and affluence and economic growth
are regarded as desirable and possible. We cant blame Marx for not realising there would be a
limits to growth problem, but it is fair to criticise many Marxists today for being productivists.
It is increasingly being realised that a good, post-capitalist society cannot be a growth society
and it cannot have high per capita levels of resource consumption or living standards. This
means that getting rid of capitalism is not enough; there is an even bigger problem, set by the
commitment to industrialism, growth and affluence. (However Marx was sensitive to the
ecological damage capitalism caused, referring to a metabolic rift.)

From the perspective of The Simpler Way" a high quality of life for all is achievable without
high material "living standards" or much modern technology, let alone industrialisation and IT
etc. We do not agree that human emancipation and a good sustainable and just society cannot be
achieved before technical advance delivers material abundance. We see the Marxist concept of
development as actually the same as capitalist modernisation, mainly because it assumes
capital is crucial for development. Marx was contemptuous of peasant ways and Marxists today
are not sympathetic to the notion of "appropriate development" defined mainly in terms of
"subsistence and low/intermediate technology and cooperative ways focused on local economic
self-sufficiency...which is a Gandhian way. (See TSW: Third World Development..)

- In other words advocates of The Simpler Way claim Marx was quite mistaken in thinking that
socialism would not be possible without modern technology, industrialisation and material
affluence. Achieving a good society does not require elaborate technology nor material
abundance. It depends on whether or not the right values are held. There have been societies, and
there are societies today in which people live well with very humble material lifestyles and
without modern technology. (See TSW: Ladakh; Notes on an Inspiring Society.)

- Marxist ideas on how to change society, i.e., on the strategy for transition from capitalism, are
also strongly criticised by the Anarchists. Marxists think capitalism must be fought and
overthrown through violent revolution, because the capitalist class will never voluntary give up
any of its power or privileges. There must be leadership by a vanguard party prepared to be
ruthless and to use violence, and to rule in an authoritarian way after the revolution. (Again this
is Lenin rather than Marx.) Eventually when people have developed the right ideas and values
the state can dissolve and there will be a communist society. The Simpler Way version of
Anarchism on the other hand focuses its transition theory on prefiguring, i.e., on building
elements of the post-capitalist society here and now, in a slow process of developing the
awareness that will in time lead to the big structural changes at the level of the state (such as
getting rid of growth and market forces), possibly in a peaceful way.

- Lichtheim argues that Marx was seriously mistaken to focus on the labour theory of value,
i.e., that the value of a product is determine by the labour it took to make it. Because Marx
wanted to base his account on the productive situation he tried to show that the basic fault in
capitalism is that the worker is paid less than the value his work produces, and the difference is
the capitalists profit. This left him, and generations of scholars, with the problem of explaining
how prices paid in exchange of a product are related to the labour that went into making it.
Often little labour goes into producing something for which a very high price is paid. As
Lichtheim says, Marx could have put forward a powerful analysis of capitalism in other terms.
(For instance, one could focus on the fact that because the capitalist owns the means of
production he can decide what to produce, and he only produces what is most profitable, which
inevitably means he does not produce what is most needed in societyand thus the rich get
richer, and social problems increase)

- It could be argued that Marxs theory greatly hindered the Russian revolution, and indeed
prevented it from achieving a non-authoritarian, localised, democratic society based on the
traditional village. In the 1870 90 period Russian intellectuals embraced Marxist theory in their
struggles against the Tsars regime. Because the theory asserted that socialism can only come
from mature capitalism they were confused about what to do, given that Russia had barely
moved from feudalism. (They asked Marx, who wrote three different draft replies, an ended up
saying ... you decide.) Kautsky was specially influential in promoting a very mechanical account
of Marx, whereby the laws of history Marx was supposed to have discovered determined that
nothing could be done until capitalism matured in Russia. Some factions insisted that the
revolution should install capitalism so it could mature and eventually enable the emergence of
socialism. Howrever, remarkably Marx was actually attracted to the possibility that the
traditional Russian village, the Mir, might be a base for the direct transition to a socialist society.
But because of strong adherence to the laws of history view among many Russians this
possibility was not taken seriously. Even in 1917 there was confusion about strategy. Lenin
shifted his position fairly suddenly and the Bolsheviks managed to take centralised control of the
revolution that had been generated by massive discontent with the Tsars regime. Many blame
this adoption of centralised control (which Marx had long argued against) as the origins of
Stalinism etc., and regard Lenin as having hijacked the revolution. Anarchists and TSW
advocates deeply regret that the focus had not been put on strengthening the enormous number of
soviets", i.e., workers democratic councils that had emerged to run factories etc., and making
the self-governing Mir the basic element in the new society.These could have been the
foundation for a thoroughly participatory democracy involving workers, peasants and citizens in
running their own communities in classically anarchist ways.

- Marx seems to have been inconsistent in arguing that the maturing of capitalism produces
social institutions and processes that will both undermine it and be basic in the post revolutionary
synthesis, while believing that in the immediate aftermath of the revolution, the period of crude
communism, several core elements of consumer society would remain, such as working at a
specialism for wages, working for a boss (the state), and being focused on property and
acquisition. From The Simpler Way perspective these are the most important faults in the
consumer-capitalist mentality and revolutionary change in social structure, class and power
cannot take place until after there has been radical change in these cultural and ideological
factors. (This is a classical Anarchist view.) This change is to be worked for through the long
Stage 1 process whereby local economies are developed. Marx did not seem to entertain this
notion of deliberately working to prefigure. He thought the necessary post-capitalist
institutions would fairly automatically and inevitably develop as capitalism matured, and didnt
stress any need to focus on educational effort to encourage their emergence. He thought that
the right ideas and values could be developed in stage 2 of the revolution. The anarchists put the
sequence the other way around, and you could say that they regard the development of the right
ideas and values as being the revolution.

- Marx thought that industrial capital would prevail over finance capital; i.e., investment
would be predominantly about channelling savings into creating productive firms, and
industrialists would be in control of this kind of activity. But now the overwhelmingly dominant
sector of the economy is that which lends money (mostly just created by banks; see TSW:
Money) in order to get interest back, and to benefit from rises in asset prices, repossessions,
bankruptcies, fees etc. This sector makes about 40% of all corporate profit now, and is to a large
extent predatory and gave us the GFC.

- Much of Marxs writing is somewhere between very difficult and impossible to understand! It
is strongly advised that he should not be read until you know what he is saying; i.e., read
introductory and summary material first and when you feel you know what the essentials are,
have a go at him. You have been warned.
Appendix: Where a Simpler Way critique differs from that of Marx.

The basic Simpler Way analysis of the global situation owes much to Marx but on some
crucial issues differs significantly. Marxs analysis focused on the productive process
and argued that the fundamental fault in capitalism was to be found there. In addition
his theory of how history changed was in terms of the forces and the social relations
of production. These are important themes, but TSW critique of capitalism focuses on
the market system not the productive system, and on consumption (overconsumption)
rather than production. The market creates ever-increasing and terminal problems,
primarily of unequal distribution and inappropriate development.

Marxs theory of value claimed that the value of a product corresponded to the amount
of labour in it. Workers create that value but dont get it all in their wages, then the
capitalist sells the product for more than he pays them and thus takes part of the value
they created. Thus to Marx the essential fault in capitalism is this injustice, theft, or
exploitation built into the mode of production.

However from The Simpler Way perspective the core fault is different, and obvious and
easily understood. The capitalist owns the goods produced and he sells them for the
highest price he can get, meaning that the system inevitably distributes products mostly
to the rich and that development will mainly be of those industries, factories etc. that
produce what richer people want to buy. Thus inevitably production is not geared to
meeting the needs of most people, and the development that takes place is not of
industries that will produce what they need, let alone industries using local resources
and run by local people. This is a critique in terms of exchange relations, not
productrive relations. Only local economies which prevent market forces from
determining what happens, and motivated by happy acceptance of simpler lifestyles,
can defuse the limits to growth problem and enable ecological sustainability. Fixing the
exploitative productive relationship Marx focused on is of course important, but to
achieve TSW vision much more than that must be done

Avineri, S., (1968) The Social and Political Thought of Karl Marx, Cambridge, Cambridge
University Press.

Dalton, G., (1968), Archaic, Primitive and Modern Economies; Essays of Karl Polanyi,

Korten, D. C., (1995), When Corporations Rule the World, West Hartford, Kumarian Press.

Lichtheim, G., (1961), Marxism, London, Routledge and Kegan Paul.

TSW: The Case Against the Market. thesimplerwaylinfo/MARKET.htm

TSW: Third World Development, thesimplerway.info/DEV.LONG.htm

TSW: Transition. thesimplerway.info/TRANSITION.htm

TSW: Anarchism. thesimplerway.info/ANARCHISM.Intro.htm

TSW: Religion and the emergence of market dominated society.

thesimplerwaylinfo/Religion&markert.html

TSW: Polanyi. thesimplerway.linfo/Polanyi.html

Marxism
Marxism is the movement founded by Karl Marx and Frederick Engels which fights for the self-
emancipation of the working class, subjecting all forms of domination by the bourgeoisie, its
institutions and its ideology, to theoretical and practical critique.

Standing for the destruction of the capitalist state by the organised working class, Marxism is
opposes all forms of reformism and gradualism or evolutionary socialism; Marxism is
Revolutionary.

Marxism shares with other progressive social movements an uncompromising hostility to all
forms of domination sexism, racism, and so on, but what marks Marxism out from other
progressive movements is that Marxists struggle always to overcome the manifold forms of
domination and exploitation in and through the self-emancipation of the working class. Thus
Marxism is Revolutionary Socialism.

While Marxism stands for the destruction of the capitalist state, and has as its aim the withering
away of the state and all forms of institutionalised violence, Marxists not only support the right
of the working class to exercise a domination over the bourgeoisie, they actively fight for that,
since the dictatorship of the proletariat is the possible way to destroy bourgeois rule and open
the way to the disappearance of all classes, including the class of wage-slaves. Marxism has its
origins in the struggle for this perspective, in opposition to anarchism which seeks to undermine
all forms of authority and seeks destruction of the capitalist state without promoting and
preparing the working class for the seizure and holding of public political power.

Social power and relations of domination are transmitted in many different forms, aside from the
state, nevertheless concentrated force is required to overthrow concentrated force, so Marxists
always struggle to develop the organised strength of the workers movement. Freedom is always
limited by the opportunities that the community provides for the development of a personality.
Freedom is not enhanced simply by the removal of limitations on the autonomy of individuals.
Marxists aim to enhance the freedom of working class people chiefly by expanding the scope of
collective action and the possibilities for individual growth and creativity within that.
Marxism is a tendency within the workers movement and it is concerned with both theoretical
and practical critique. By practical critique is meant political action which undermines and
exposes the object and mobilises opposition to it. In the history of the movement, these two
sides the theoretical and the practical have from time to time become separated from one
another; one the one side academic Marxism working on theoretical questions in relative
isolation from the workers movement, on the other genuine communists doing battle for the
working class, but isolated from the creative development of revolutionary Marxist ideas.

Furthermore, although Marxism is a movement rather than simply a tendency, within the workers
movement, and a movement which at certain point in its history has been organised in a single
world-wide organisation (The First [Working Mens] International in 1864, the Second
[Socialist] International in 1889 and the Third [Communist] International in 1919), this is not the
case today; Marxism is a movement which is fragmented into many parts and tendencies, none of
which completely embody the history and achievements of the Marxist movement, but all of
which in one way or another are connected in the 150-year history of the movement since it was
founded in 1848 with the publication of the Communist Manifesto.

There is no set of principles and beliefs which can be set out once and for all and stamped with
the name of Marxism. Marxism is a movement, and as such can only be understood through a
critical examination of its history. While this movement bears the name of its founder, Karl
Marx, Marxism is not a movement of followers, but it is nevertheless a movement which is
integrally concerned with an interconnected body of theoretical and political writing which traces
its origins back to Marx.

The Origins of Marxism

In terms of practical political struggle, Marxism arose in the mid-nineteenth century in

opposition to three main opposing tendencies in the workers movement: Anarchism, Utopian or
Doctrinaire socialism, and overtly bourgeois tendencies (see Communist Manifesto, Chapter 4).
In terms of its theoretical roots, to use Lenins famous words, the three sources of Marxism are:
British political economy, French Socialism and German idealist philosophy.

At that time, the advocates of socialism were relatively charismatic individuals who promoted
some particular vision of a future society and an associated body of doctrine, who each collected
a following around them. These groups shared a more or less common vision of a socialist future
and participated in the struggles of the day, but the movement lacked any scientific basis in
existing conditions and furthermore, offered to teach the workers about socialism, but had no
conception of socialism as the self-emancipation of the working class.

Frustrated with this lack of theoretical seriousness, Marx and Engels made a decisive turn
towards critique of the existing ideology in order to be able to found a revolutionary working
class movement upon a sound basis.

The very way in which Marx approached the critical assimilation and transcendence of
philosophy, socialism and political economy was itself gained from these same intellectual
sources in bourgeois society.
The pre-eminent philosopher of Marxs youth was G W F Hegel. However, ten years after
Hegels death, i.e., in 1841, Hegel was unceremoniously dumped by the Prussian ruling class and
came under attack from all sides. After 1841, Hegel was decidedly unfashionable.

Hegels great achievement was to have shown how the forms by which human beings grasp
reality are themselves historical products. In other words, the history of philosophy contained
within it an on-going critique of all the cultural and ideological forms that have succeeded one
another through human history, a practical critique which was the work, not just of professional
philosophers, but engaged by all aspects of the life of society.

For Hegel however, this history was the work not of living human beings, but rather of a Spirit
which acted behind the backs of the actors in history, unbeknown to them. In this sense, Marx
said that Hegel took the standpoint of political economy. That is, that Hegel, just like Adam
Smith, saw people as slaves of an invisible hand, of laws which governed the outcome of
social action independently of the intention of individuals, and what is more, that the
fundamental relations of person to person by means of which this spirit acted in history, was the
property relation.

The first positive insight into the fallacy of this view was provided by Ludwig Feuerbach, who
showed that Hegel had created a kind of theology, and that far from people being governed by
either God or Hegels Absolute Spirit, these concepts were created by people as reflections of the
way they lived; for Feuerbach, the truth of religion and philosophy lay in anthropology and
physiology.

Meanwhile, the French socialists had already taken this a step further by showing that science
and religion not only had their origins in human history, but were themselves weapons and
instruments of social struggle. Consequently, people should not be seen simply as creatures of
the social system of which they were a part (the standpoint of anthropology) nor as simply
products of Nature, but rather that people were both products and creators of the world they lived
in, and the struggle over ideas was an integral part of the political and social struggle.

It should be noted at this point that Marx did not claim, and nor do Marxists today claim, to be
the originator of some brand new kind of knowledge. Marxs own claim to original ideas was
extremely modest. We stand on the shoulders of the achievements of those who have gone
before; but we subject the theories and ideas active in society to critique. That is to say, we
understand ideas as products and a part of social relations, which function in one way or another
to sustain the social relations that they reflect. In particular, attention is directed to the social
relations by means of which people produce and reproduce their livelihood and the labour
activity itself through which people live, This is after the foundation upon which the basis for the
entire superstructure of society is erected, and which underlies all forms of thought and culture.
By critique is meant the disclosure of this ideological kernel, the social interest which is
expressed in and sustained by this or that form of thought, which actually connects it to the real,
material life of people.

What then was Marxs attitude to philosophy, political economy and socialism?
According to Marx, a philosopher is an alienated human being, a kind of theologian, who is
dealing with ideal entities as if they had some existence separate from the material life of human
beings. Philosophy had been developed to such a high degree in Germany precisely because
Germany was a social and political backwater in Europe; while Revolution was being made in
France and the English making an Industrial Revolution and lots of money! Germany
remained fragmented and unable to break the hold of the nobility; so the great social
transformations taking place in France and England were reflected in Germany in art, science
and philosophy.

By subjecting these generalisations and theories to specialised study, the study of philosophy
gives us a deeper window into the nature of the social reality from which theoretical ideas have
been abstracted. Philosophy does not talk about social reality, rather, it is the purified voice of
reality. Marxs concern was not to do more philosophy, but rather, by critique of the philosophy
of his day, to expose the ideological content of the day-to-day ideas through which class rule is
maintained.

What is the day-to-day reality of bourgeois society?: buying and selling. That is, Marx found in
the theories of the political economists a distilled essence of the ideology and ethics which
actually govern the way people live under capitalism, which make market relations appear
natural, and allow people to actively give their consent to their own exploitation, entering into
relations of exchange of commodities as if this was a non-political value-free activity.

From the very beginning of his study, Marx almost single-mindedly pursued his critique of
political economy; his first work Comments on James Mill was written in 1844, while Volume III
of Capital was published after his death, in 1894.

In his critique of political economy, Marx brought out the internal contradictions within the
political economists notion of value and showed how this contradiction had its roots in the
nature of commodity production itself, and in turn demonstrated that the commodity relation
working in order to earn a living and buying in order to make a profit lay the very germ of
bourgeois society and the accumulation of capital. And further, in the naturalisation of the
commodity relation, the conception of material objects having social powers the fetishism of
commodities, lay the essential foundation of bourgeois ideology.

Marx did not confine himself to literary work, but was an active participant and leader in the
struggles of the working-class of his day. His efforts saw him deported and/or jailed on a number
of occasions and he had to settle in London to avoid continued persecution. The construction of
the First and Second Internationals were concrete leaps forward in the self-organisation of the
working class, uniting workers in many countries in a single organisation.

Marxism aims not to teach the working class, but to understand and give voice to the strivings of
its most advanced sections and generalise that striving both theoretically and practically.

The first major working class political struggle of Marx and Engels lifetime were the out-break
in 1848, right across Europe, of independent movements of the working class, pressing their own
demands within the upheavals which saw the downfall of the old order in Europe. Marx and
Engels published a daily newspaper, the Neue Rheinische Zeitung throughout this period,
agitating, advocating and organising for the workers movement.

The second major working class struggle of their time was the Paris Commune the first time
in history when the working class seized state power. From a critical examination of the
Commune, Marxism develops its ideas about democracy, the state and revolution. Even the
Communist Manifesto of 1848 was amended to include the gains of the Commune, principally
that the working class could not simply take over the state machine, but had to utterly smash it
and build its own organs of class rule, based on proletarian democracy.

During the latter part of their lives, the works of Marx and Engels were translated into many
languages, and through the work of the Second International, Marxism became known and
understood in all corners of the world and deeply entered the heart of the organised working
class, now united across the world in a single organisation.

The Marxism of the Second International

During its first decades, Marxism was a few individuals intervening in the workers movement,
promoting the revolutionary perspective and criticising the programs and ideology of other
currents. By the end of the nineteenth century, Marxism had become a vast party with a mass
working class membership and in the case of Germany for example, members of Parliament.

In order to meet the needs of a mass movement of this kind, Marxism had to develop a rounded
out alternative view of the world in such a way as to arm millions of workers with the means to
challenge the bourgeoisie at every point.

The Marxist movement of this time included a number of great figures, led chiefly by Engels,
who lived until 1895, 12 years after Marxs death, and included such figures as Georgi
Plekhanov, the founder of Russian Marxism, Karl Kautsky, who had worked with Engels in the
publication of Marxs economic works, Franz Mehring, August Bebel, Clara Zetkin, Rosa
Luxemburg, and many others.

These figures produced a kind of orthodoxy, which is best summed up in Plekhanovs

Materialist Conception of History (1897) and in Lenins Three Component Parts of Marxism:
Dialectical Materialism, Historical Materialism and Marxist Political Economy (or the Labour
Theory of Value for Ernest Mandel, for example, Marx was himself an economist and it was
the duty of Marxists to defend the labour theory of value against bourgeois attacks!).

It was in the traditions of the Second International of Kautsky, Plekhanov & Co., using these
conceptions, that Lenin and Trotsky, and the generation that made the Russian Revolution and
built the Communist International were educated in Marxism. Consequently, this understanding
of Marxism is part and parcel of what Marxism is.
Dialectical Materialism

In the exposition of dialectical materialism, the Marxists summed up the achievements of

German idealist philosophy from Kant, and especially Hegel, and the critique Marx had made of
this philosophy, drawing on the work of philosophical materialism, particularly in France.

It is certainly a weakness of Marxs literary legacy that although he is the originator of these
ideas, there is very little in his works which simply and straight-forwardly explains them. It was
left to Engels, mainly, to elaborate, explain and summarise Marxs method of work. His two
works Socialism: Utopian and Scientific and Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical
German Philosophy, give the best possible short summary of dialectical materialism.

Briefly, by dialectics is meant the criticism of theory by means of the exposure of internally
contradictory propositions within it, and by materialism is meant that this work of criticism is not
a logical or literary exercise, but rather seeks the bring out the contradictions within a
concept by identifying the actual, material contradictions at work in society, which are contained
implicitly within an idea.

Historical Materialism

Historical Materialism is the whole body of historical research which Marx and other Marxists
have carried out, studying the development of forms of social organisation and consciousness,
how they have succeeded one another in history and their interconnection with the development
of the forces of production mobilised by social formations at each stage in the unfolding of
history.

In order to understand bourgeois society and its way of thinking, Marx and Engels had to
critically assimilate the whole body of historical knowledge of their time and this interest and
close study of history is an integral and necessary part of Marxism. Along with others of his
time, such as Adam Smith and Henry Morgan, Marx discerned from the historical record
important stages of development running right throughout human history and these stages of
development of politics and culture corresponded to broad stages in the development of the
relations of production. Marxs famous 1859 Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political
Economy, sum up this idea.

While the further progress of historical research continuously sheds new light on the nature of
past epochs the work of non-Marxists just as much as that of Marxists the Marxist study of
history, i.e., Historical Materialism, constitutes a continuing current within the study of history.
What characterises this current is, on the one hand, an understanding that one must eat before
one can engage in politics and culture, that how people produce and reproduce life is the single
most important fact about any given society, from which other aspects of society, its
superstructure, have to ultimately be explained, and on the other, simply that it is human
beings that make history, and not the other way around. Putting this another way: while
philosophical materialism has shown that changed people are the product of changed social
conditions, it is first of all only people who change conditions. Marxs Theses on Feuerbach sum
up these conceptions very succinctly.
Political Economy

Marx had set out to make a thoroughgoing critique of bourgeois society by showing how the
fundamental values and production relations which underlie all social life are founded on a
chimera of equality and freedom of choice. The centre-piece of this critique was his critique of
Adam Smiths Labour Theory of Value. But this was not just a piece of cultural expos. It
allowed Marx to prove to workers that there was no inherent obstacle to continuous
improvements in workers living standards by means of collective struggle something denied
by all brands of bourgeois economic theory; it gave confidence to the workers that capitalism
was not the only alternative and that their interests were not subordinate to those of their
employers, but on the contrary diametrically opposed. It also showed how day-to-day life as a
wage-slave fostered a certain kind of bourgeois ideology in the workers movement itself.

By the time of the publication of Capital in 1867, bourgeois economic science itself had
abandoned the great tradition of classical political economy, in favour of more pragmatic,
technical approaches to management of the economy and getting rich (See the Theory of
Marginal Utility).

Consequently, it came about that the very theory that Marx had set out to critique, i.e., political
economy and its labour theory of value, became associated with his name. Indeed, the classical
tradition had been more interested in understanding the origins of wealth, rather than providing
an apologetic rationalisation of capitalist exploitation and technique of accumulating money,
and which conceived of value as inherent in the process of production, rather than subjectively,
in the eyes of the beholder. Thus, Capital became, for the Marxists of the Second International,
a work of political economy, and was seen as a work which explained how capitalism came
about and offered an approach to predicting the course of its development and arming
revolutionaries with a better understanding of the phenomena of the economy.

By the time of the First World War (1914-18) however, this kind of Marxism had become
entirely respectable and orthodox, combining Sunday afternoon speechifying with the kind of
parliamentary activity we now are all familiar with in the Labour and Democratic parties of the
imperialist countries. The onset of the war created a crisis: the leaders of social democracy (as
Marxists called themselves at that time) were simply unprepared to rally the working class
against the war.

The Marxism of the Russian Revolution

Lenin (and also Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht and others) were clear that, faced with the
slaughter of imperialist war, the only policy for the revolutionary workers movement was
revolutionary defeatism: The real enemy is at home!. A conference of social democrats
opposed to the war at Zimmerwald in September 1915 finally brought about a break. After this,
Lenin began to elaborate a critique of the politics and theory of the Second International. In State
and Revolution he showed how the Second International had buried the Marxist analysis of the
state, particularly the lessons of the Paris Commune, in order to justify their own comfortable
participation in bourgeois society. In 1916, he wrote Imperialism, the Highest Stage of
Capitalism, in which he demonstrated that capitalism had entered a new stage of its development
at the beginning of the 20th century and shed light on how imperialism had corrupted the
workers movement in their own countries by diverting to their own working class, a share of
the proceeds of super-exploitation of the colonies, and how the nature of this epoch would lead to
inter-imperialist wars and workers revolutions.

The immense suffering and destruction of the war were the setting in which Lenin and the
Bolshevik Party (the Russian section of the Second International, built in conditions of extreme
repression and combined and uneven development in Tsarist Russia) were able to lead the
successful Russian Revolution and defeat the efforts of 14 invading imperialist armies to restore
capitalism. On the basis of this successful workers revolution, a new International, the Third or
Communist International, was established.

The Third International included both new parties formed from supporters of the Russian
Revolution and some cases whole parties of the former Second International. Reflecting the spirit
of its times, this Marxism sharply rejected the reformism and class compromise which had
overtaken the Second International and at its core was not some vague vision of a social society
some time in the indefinite future, but rather immediate extension of the already victorious
revolution in Russia; the more so because Russia was a socially backward country, barely one
generation out of feudalism, with a tough but small industrial working class. Marxists still saw
the advanced and organised battalions of the working class in France and Germany as the
standard-bearers of socialist revolution.

The Russian Revolution unleashed hitherto unseen resources. Millions were won to Marxism in
the wake of the Revolution, among them both masses of workers and artists, scientists and other
intellectuals, and this unleashed a flood of creative Marxist scholarship, continuing Lenins
critique of the Marxism of the Second International. The Marxism of these days was, to use
Lukacs word, Messianic; that is, it anticipated not a long historic struggle, but the immediate
conquest of socialism.

The other important Marxist among the leaders of the Russian Revolution was Leon Trotsky.
Trotsky had not definitively sided with Lenin in his dispute with the Menshevik wing of the
Russian party and only joined the Bolshevik Party on his return to Russia in April 1917. Trotsky
brought to Marxism a number of insights, broad experience and leadership comparable only with
Lenin.

Worthy of special mention here are a number of European Marxists and the Hungarian Marxist
Georgi Lukacs in particular. Lukacs subject the orthodox Marxism of the Second International to
a much more elaborate critique and restored the Hegelian aspect of Marxs original insights,
something which Lenin had only glimpsed in this own study of Marx and Hegel in his
Conspectus of Hegels Logic written while in exile in 1913-4.

The Degeneration of the Third International

The Russian Revolution was subject to terrible devastation at the hands of imperialist armies,
and isolated, and the rising tide of revolution in Europe and across the world was stemmed.
Lenin died in 1922, Stalin assumed absolute power in a Soviet State already tired of revolution
and gripped by bureaucratism. Trotsky was exiled and isolated from the revolutionary workers
movement by witch-hunting and ultimately assassinated in 1941. Lukacs, like many others,
compromised, rather than suffer assassination or isolation. This historic disaster which beset the
revolutionary workers movement was equally a disaster for its revolutionary leadership, the
Marxist movement.

The official standard bearers of Marxism, the leaders of the USSR, were now promoting
Dialectical and Historical Materialism (the title of one of Stalins most famous works) in such
a way that it became synonymous with political reaction, social conservatism and conformism,
chauvinism and bigotry, lying and bullying, even torture and murder, and above all repression
and betrayal of the organised workers movement. Under Stalinism, all the weaknesses of the
Marxism of the Second International were extended into the cruellest parodies.

Apart from its Stalinist perversion, Marxism hereafter developed along three more or less
mutually isolated lines:

The Fourth International

Between Trotskys exile in 1929 and the repression of the Left Opposition within the Soviet
Union, and Trotskys assassination in 1941, Trotsky built an organisation known as the Fourth
International, which sought to continue the development of Marxist theory and practice in
opposition to the now thoroughly counter-revolutionary Third International, led by Stalin.
Trotsky and the Fourth International, which continued after his death, developed Marxist critique
of the degeneration of the Russian Revolution. Trotskys Marxism contributed entirely new
insights made possible by the actual experience of the working class taking and holding power.
Trotsky emphasised the importance of Permanent Revolution, revolution which grows over
from the completion of national democratic tasks in one country to the overthrow of capitalism
on a world scale. As leader of the Red Army and an official in Soviet government for a number
of years, Trotsky also brought to Marxism an important understanding of the problems of
democracy, economic management, uneven development, united front tactics and whole range
of issues which the Marx and the Marxists of the Second International had never had occasion to
engage.

The weakness of Trotskyist Marxism however arose immediately out of its embattled and
isolated position. The Trotskyists always sought to develop Marxist theory in the practice of
workers struggle, but the domination of the revolutionary workers movement by Stalinism
meant that the Trotskyists almost invariably operated from a position of opposition, and their
Marxism developed a polemical character in which Socialism took on the character of the road
not followed. The burden of defending Marxist orthodoxy against Stalinist distortion and lies,
hampered the effort of making practical and theoretical critique of the development of capitalism
and the broader workers movement.

Western Marxism

While Lukacs remained a revolutionary throughout his life, and compromised with Stalinism
only in order to be able to continue to participate in the revolutionary workers movement, in the
context of the defeats inflicted on the workers movement in the mid-1920s, the rise of Fascism
and the continued domination of the revolutionary workers movement by Stalinist reaction, a
current of Marxism grew up known as Western Marxism which largely took Lukacs work as
its point of departure.

Initially, the Frankfurt School had aimed to set up a kind of marxist university in Germany
to conduct social research in support of the revolutionary workers movement. It was this group
for example that invented the use of the questionnaire as instrument of social research. However,
particularly after the triumph of Hitler, they were scattered across the world, and there developed
a current of Marxist thinking which was entirely divorced from practical struggle in the workers
movement.

Marxism is inherently both practical and theoretical critique. Division of labour between theory
and practice is inimical to Marxism. However, it is an historical fact that such a split took place.
While it is not the business of Marxism to erect new theories in opposition to those of the
bourgeoisie, critique necessarily involves study and familiarity with theory and is useless unless
it constantly addresses itself to the latest products of bourgeois ideology. While there have
always been those in the Trotskyist movement who did this kind of theoretical work and made
important contributions, the job of defence of Marxist orthodoxy in the workers movement
restricted the development of Marxist theoretical critique outside of the work of these academic
Marxists.

Soviet Marxism

Under the rule of Stalinism in the Soviet Union, political opposition was met with a bullet in the
back of the head, and even genuine scientific work became extremely difficult as all fields of life
became politicised and subject to totalitarian bureaucratic rule. Nevertheless, despite this,
outside of the illegal work of oppositionists, which were utterly extinguished by the 1950s, some
development of Marxism did take place within the Stalinised Soviet Union. This was the work of
Lev Vygotskys school of constructivist psychology (Vygotsky died of tuberculosis in 1934), and
later, building on this work, the school of Evald Ilyenkov, who committed suicide in 1979. This
Marxism bears the stamp of the conditions under which it developed, being almost completely
non-political, but despite this, keeping alive and actually developing very important insights
about the nature of human thought and activity. This current only became known outside of the
USSR in the 1980s and now has its proponents across the world, but it still carries with it the
kind of non-political character which was imposed as a matter of necessity when it survived
under Stalinism in the USSR.

Post World War Two Marxism

In the wake of the Second World War, capitalism faced enormous crisis. With the Red Army in
occupation of half of Europe, the national liberation movement spreading like a world-fire across
the colonies and workers in even the victorious countries of western Europe in revolutionary
upsurge. At the same time, those Marxists which had remained in political activity during the war
had been almost exterminated by the combined forces of Stalinism, Fascism and Allied
occupation. Stalinism, on the other hand had emerged in total control of the revolutionary
workers movement and in the leadership of the national liberation movement. Under these
conditions, Stalinism exerted a considerable influence over academic Marxism, not to mention
the national liberation movements.

Capitalism had to stage a strategic retreat, instituting Keynesian economic measures, a welfare
state, and building national utilities and infrastructure through public enterprise. Capitalism
managed to restabilise itself, but in the process, this academic Marxism became more or less
inextricably interwoven with the development of progressive bourgeois social theory and
influenced by Stalinism.

It is impossible to describe the development of bourgeois ideology after world war two without
including Marxism as a component part, as its influence is everywhere. None of todays
philosophers of post-modernism, post-structuralism, post-colonialism and so on can be
understood without the component of Marxism within their thinking, however hostile they may
be to communism and however remote from the workers movement.

Marxism after the Hungarian Uprising and the Prague Spring

From the mid-1950s, not only did Stalinism begin to lose its hold on the revolutionary workers
movement, but more significantly a gap opened up between the radical intelligentsia and the
workers movement. The Soviet suppression of the Hungarian uprising began an exodus of
intellectuals from the Stalinist communist parties and after the Prague Spring and the other
events of 1968 the Communist Parties began to lose their grip on the workers' movement too.

At the same time, the Trotskyist movement grew rapidly from the influx of young people
radicalised by the break up of the Bretton Woods Arrangements and the burgeoning national
liberation movements. But while the Trotskyists swelled in numbers, they became increasingly
subject to fragmentation, splits and sectarianism. Stalinism was not immune from this process of
fragmentation, and beginning with the Sino-Soviet split in 1960, Stalinism began to fragment.

Particularly from the mid-1960s, with the development of Euro-communism, a new influx of
Stalinists turned to the re-examination of their own legacy and consequently new strands of
Marxist thinking arose, both arising out of Stalinism and critical of Stalinism.

The Womens Liberation Movement conducted its critique both of existing patriarchal society
and the legacy of orthodox Marxism, and a number of significant leaders in the women's
movement either abandoned Marxism or introduced into Marxism the concepts of women's
liberation.

These factors combined to give rise to currents of thinking which took Marxist ideas not only
away from the struggles of the working class, but actually opposed to it, even denying the very
existence of the working class and denouncing the very idea of socialism. What this meant for
the development of Marxism was that to develop further, even survive as a movement, it was not
enough to rely on the outmoded tool box of the orthodox Marxism inherited from Lenin and
Trotksy, Marxism had to subject its own theory and practice to critique.
Marxism after the Fall of the Soviet Union

It is easy to imagine how those Stalinists who had kept the faith only by means of deluding
themselves about a workers Utopia existing behind the Iron Curtain would be traumatised by
the collapse of the Soviet Union and thoroughgoing exposure of the backwardness of Soviet
society under Stalin. What may have been more surprising, however, was the extent of the crisis
that the collapse of Stalinism brought about among Marxists who had never shared this illusion.
The ubiquitous myth of the collapse of Marxism combined with the unrestrained development
of bourgeois relations in the absence of the counterweight posed by the Soviet Union the
lasting, if obscene monument to the Russian Revolution, caused a healthy re-evaluation even
among many of those who had always been anti-Stalinists.

The job of defending orthodox Marxism against Stalinist distortion was now redundant; what
was posed was the task of catching up on the now mile-wide gap between academic Marxism
and the revolutionary workers movement, extricating what is progressive and revolutionary in
the interpenetration of academic Marxism and the globalised capitalism, and continuing the
active and creative critique of bourgeois ideology and organisation in and though the
organisation of the working class.

The Marxism of the current period is therefore marked by extreme diversity with hardly two
people describing themselves as Marxists able to find agreement on what that means! This is not
something to be bemoaned or denounced. This history is the history of the workers movement
itself, and Marxism never set out to build a movement of followers all adhering to a self-closed
ideology.

Some would have it that there is some golden thread running through the history of the Marxist
movement, a correct line discernible somewhere in the twists and turns of the past, but this is
fantasy.

Marxism remains a movement rather than just a tendency however. For even though the Marxist
movement has fragmented, it remains oriented to the struggle for socialism in and through the
organised working class, and it is the struggles of the working class, united in its material
existence as a social class, which constitute the life-blood and essential thread of the Marxist
movement.