Marxism And The Modern World
“The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways — the point is to change it."
- Karl Marx, Theses on Feuerbach XI
In many ways this statement can be seen as the force behind Marx, his thought, and the communist vision. In it there is an expression not only of his personal conviction and commitment to the betterment of the human condition, but it is also expressive of an understanding of his position in a historical progression of philosophy. It resounds with defiance, a discerning perceptiveness, and faith in a ‘partisan truth’, which is admittedly relative. Using knowledge systems passed down to him by his historical and philosophical forbearers, Marx was able to grasp the spirit of the age. His breaking from the German idealist tradition comes precisely at the point at which he wishes to transform this spirit. His belief was that, “Knowledge is only true when it helps understanding and acting at the same time.” It is often said that ‘Marx stood Hegel on his head’. From Hegel he got the dialectic but not the belief in an ideal synthesis being the end of the dialectical process. Marx’s dialectical materialism is a method, at once theoretical and practical, of understanding the world as a concrete, continuous, contiguous historical process. In other words – he gave the Zeitgeist a material basis.

His analysis and exploration of modes of production and consequent social organisation – the material Zeitgeist – is the foundation on which he explains the class struggle, dissects the bearing the economy has on social relations, and advances his vision of revolution and a communist state. Marx sought to replace philosophical and economic conclusions – which took the shape of universal maxims (that were elevated to the status of inevitable natural or scientific laws) – with a premise that all the processes humans are subject to and take part in, are no more and no less than those of nature. Humans do not exceed nature; they are reliant on it and moreover a part of it. To understand how the world has come to its present state, it is necessary to look to the past. History is an evolution of contrary lines, and to understand its movement is to be able to see antagonistic lines dialogue and collide. Whether it is in terms of how people relate to and use nature or each other. The catch phrase being – always historicize.

The most important historical development to make its mark on the age Marx lived through was the advent of the Industrial Age. With it came new technology, a new social order, a renewed emphasis on utilitarianism, and the Faustian self-made man. This altered completely the landscape of the world, and ushered in the modern era, with its phenomenal increase in rate of change. The changes were all conquering – from production and demography, to ideology and conception of the world. The scope of human ability and need grew far beyond the capacity of old modes of production. Industrialism, capitalism and mass production entirely replaced independent peasants and artisans. They created the Bourgeoisie, a class of ‘the new society’ that owned the means of production. A class that sold its soul, only to replace everything with a check book. A class that created an epoch distinct because of a “Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbances of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation…”

Initially it is hard to fathom how Marx, being communist, is so full of admiration for the bourgeoisie. But on closer inspection it is no longer absurd. His admiration is an acknowledgment of the role of the bourgeoisie in the evolution of history. Its foremost achievement in the eyes of Marx is that it “put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic conditions.” It had also through, “it’s reign of barely hundred years, created more massive and more colossal productive power than have all previous generations put together.” The irony of the “bourgeoisie revolution” is that the processes and tools established by it can only realise their true potential, by those who overthrow the bourgeoisie. At the core of this irony is the Faustian developer who is both the chief creator and destroyer. Once the objective of the “revolution” is realised and the world is truly modern the capitalist will become his own biggest hindrance, and will be replaced. The inherent flaw in bourgeoisie production being that humans exist for the sake of development and not development for the sake of humans. Marx says in no uncertain terms that for all their innovation, and entrepreneurship bourgeoisie society is no more than an intermediary state before communism. As Marx describes it, "Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” They conjured above all else the proletariat – their gravediggers, and Marx does not forget the bourgeoisie for this.

“Capital consists of raw materials, instruments of labour, and means of subsistence of all kinds, which are employed in producing new raw materials, new instruments, and new means of subsistence. All these components of capital are created by labour, products of labour, accumulated labour. Accumulated labour that serves as a means to new production is capital.”
Marx held that it is wrong to look at economics as a system of codified rules, as capitalist scholars and ideologues have done, rather than as a system of social relationships of production. He established that “the existence of a class which possess nothing but the ability to work is a necessary presupposition of capital.” He exposed capitalisms inherent exploitation, showing that its vision of social production is based solely on profiteering. His analysis of capitalism deconstructed its illusory claims of building a successful and equitable society. Everything that a capitalist produces has a hidden cost. This hidden cost is labour power, and it is never fully accounted for. The worker never gets adequately compensated for the work put in to production. The difference between the actual worth of the labour power and what the labourer gets compensated for is the profit margin of the capitalist. The extraction of surplus value is the basis of capitalist exploitation. Thus Marx showed that there is a direct link between how little a worker gets and how much a capitalist profits, profit and wages are in inverse proportion. As only capital can generate more capital, wealth will increasingly get concentrated among an elite few. The capitalist pays the labourer a minimum wage to ensure that the labourer will be able to continue working. He will continuously try to expand production, while attempting to preserve the status quo. “To say that the worker has an interest in the rapid growth of capital, means only this: that the more speedily the worker augments the wealth of the capitalist, the larger will be the crumbs which fall to him, the greater will be the number of workers than can be called into existence, the more can the mass of slaves dependent upon capital be increased.”

Marx saw the liberation of productive forces, from the vice like grip of capital, as the key to the emancipation of the proletariat. The people who control capital have self-serving interests at heart, and these strangle production, and society as a whole cannot be successful without freedom from capital. Capital dominates life not only in terms of production and material wealth (the base) but also in terms of its super structures (society, politics, and culture). Although Marx saw capitalism as inherently self destructive, and as embodying a kind of positive nihilism, dialectically resulting in the establishment of communism, he believed the transition to a communist way of life would not be straightforward or simple. Various battles, democratic and otherwise would have to be fought and won. But he is vehement about its eventual success, one can see this confidence in the first line of The Communist Manifesto, through a threatening and haunting image, “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.”

“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.” It is not entirely clear what the communist state would eventually mean in practical terms. The basis of communism is often described as a fusion of English Political Economy, French Socialism, and German Philosophy. But in terms of ideology what is possibly the most lucid statement on the aim of the communist revolution is, “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” The communist vision is a vision of a true peoples power that is not patronising or sentimental, although Marx probably did have the noblest of intentions at heart. It is a power born of the course of history and not of a benevolent or benign benefactor. It is the power of the seemingly inevitable flow of history, captured at its turning point. The all-encompassing nature of this transformation he captures with a haunting almost supernatural image, “All that is solid melts into the air, all that is holy is profaned, and men at last are forced to face with sober senses the real conditions of their lives and their relations with their fellow men.”

It would be difficult to say that Marx did not to some extent see himself as a revolutionary ideologue. But Marxist thought seeks to prevent any sort of reification of its conclusions. True Marxism is never static; one of its staunchest beliefs is in a constantly progressing dialectical process. Any conclusion born of a truly dialectic understanding will be entirely dynamic, and will have to move onward from Marx’s writings, although they are remarkable in many ways. History adds another layer onto its self at every turn. Marx himself was possibly less of a Marxist than most Marxists.

Marx’s arguments were of course far more complex than I have made them out to be. But I think the real allure and power of the communist vision does not lie in its philosophical merits or demerits. It’s lies in its ability to establish unequivocally that “to give up the quest for transcendence is to erect a halo around one’s own stagnation and resignation (Marshall Berman).” Marx’s own vision of the communist state was achieved through a precarious dynamic balancing of the, “pessimism of the intellect, and the optimism of the will (Antonio Gramsci).” What he has given the people of the modern world, above all else, are his questions and the means by which to see the modern world in an unapologetically clear light, the way towards finding our own precarious balance. The power of his thought is in enabling someone like Ernesto Che Guevara to say, “I knew that when the great guiding spirit cleaves humanity into two antagonistic halves, I will be with the people.”