Marxism, Anarchy, Psychiatry as art and/or science
As part of our discussion of Marxism, I am introducing a new concept: that of prescriptive vs. descriptive theories. A descriptive theory argues that something is the right thing to do because it is normal; you are simply describing the way that the world is. For instance, is Jack says to Jill: "Our dating is getting serious, but I have no interest in being monogamous. I brought with me 5 studies that show that men are not naturally monogamous, so it is against my nature." This is a descriptive theory; it claims to simply describe the way that men are, rather than how they ought to be. A famous political descriptive theory is Thomas Hobbes' Social Contract Theory, in brief that all Societies implicitly involve a social contract: the sovereign provides basic stability, and the people give their Sovereign obedience in return. Therefore, if you wish to revolt and overthrow the sovereign, you should not do so if the Sovereign has met their duties in the social contract. It is a misinterpretation to read Hobbes as saying, "So if the streets are safe and economy is stable, it is morally wrong to try to overthrow the government." No: he is saying, "If the streets are safe and economy is stable, you will not be able to overthrow the government.” Whether or not people should give their obedience to a Sovereign who has provided stability does not concern Hobbes nearly as much as the fact that people simply do give their obedience when stability is present. So Social Contract theory is a perfect example of a descriptive theory.
A prescriptive theory is easier to understand, because it is exemplified by most theories you study in philosophy classes. Jack may say to Jill: "I don't think we should be monogamous, because this pamphlet on polyamory argues that loving more than one partner is like loving more than one child; the love does not diminish, but increases." Polyamorists don't claim that everyone simply is polyamorous, and existentialists claim the opposite of the notion that existentialism describes the way that morality works: instead, they are describing the way morality ought to work, with an acknowledgment that there is nothing necessarily "natural" about their arguments. They both assume that we can choose to adopt a variety of different lifestyles and philosophies. Peter Singer is another example of a prescriptive theory; he scoffs at theories of, “human nature,” and instead claims that his theory represents the way things ought be, regardless of how things “are.”
Descriptive ethical arguments tend to be more scientific (or pseudo-scientific) in nature; prescriptive arguments tend to use metaphor, emotional appeal, and broad philosophical ideas (ie, existence precedes essence) to make their point. Many theories are both.
Marxism strives to be a completely descriptive theory, to have no opinion on the way things ought to be, but instead fact-based arguments on how things simply are. Marx does not argue that the poor ought to form class consciousness and ought to start a revolution; he argues that the poor simply are forming class consciousness and that the revolution is already happening. In terms of understanding how and why Marxism spread as quickly as it did during the Cold War, this is the most important point to understand about the theory. In terms of understanding why the theory is largely considered a practical failure today, it is also perhaps the most important point. Most Marxist academics would be angry that I even bring bring it up, because, in the words of one fellow Professor, “No-one takes that aspect of Marxism seriously anymore.” My response is that people certainly did take it seriously for a very long time, so that in teaching Marxism in terms of it's actual impact and practice in the world, it is essential to include it's claims to be a “science.”
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The life and subsequent influence of Karl Marx is one of the most powerful arguments in favor of teaching philosophy, in showing that abstract ideas and theories matter, for better or for worse. Marx was a philosophy professor who, like many queer theorists and feminists today, came up with a vision for social change that was extremely systematic, conceptual, and dense, creating a whole new vocabulary to talk about human history and culture. He was frequently ridiculed as just another academic when he tried to start actual revolutions. All his early papers were written as part of the requirements to complete his academic degrees. By all accounts, he spent most of life in and around universities and libraries.
While he was alive, he was arguably not that much more influential than Christropher Hitchens, Lauren Berlant, Peter Singer, or other living philosophers and theorists who have published some widely read books and are popular on the lecture circuit. Like Singer, Marx tried to start a social revolution and, in his lifetime, failed; according to his standards, none of his ideas came into being, and he died in 1883 a popular, respected, and controversial academic.
Now, 130 years later, he is widely regarded as one of the most influential people in history; many would argue the most influential person of the last 500 years. He certainly did not invent the idea of communism, but as I will detail later, he added several theses to communist theory that are unique. Scholars estimate that, between 1917 in Russia and 1990 in Central America, approximately 100,000,000 people died fighting for or against Marxist Communist revolutions in over 30 countries around the world. That we call this the, "cold," war is one of the cruelest ironies in the study of history; it was, "cold," only in the sense that America and Russia/China never went to war directly.
I am not implying that Marx or Marxism is responsible for all these millions of deaths; it is safe to assume that many of these wars would have happened anyways, and even a strongly anti-Marxist view of history would have to see that the conditions created by 20th century industrial capitalism were such that some sort of radical egalitarian revolution was bound to happen in some form.
That being said, these wars, and the revolutions that followed them, would have had a different flavor without Marx. And the wars are only the beginning of Marx's influence; Marx started a conversation about the relationship of capital, politics, culture, and human nature that, in spite of the collapse of the Soviet Union and capitalism exploding both in Russia and in China, still inspires millions of people today. At the heart of his theory is a materialist understanding of human nature. It is best, I think, to look at Marx's theory as a stacked set of premises that all lead to an inevitable conclusion.
From "The German Ideology" by Karl Marx:
The premises from which we begin are not arbitrary ones, not dogmas, but real premises from which abstraction can only be made in the imagination. They are the real individuals, their activity and the material conditions under which they live, both those which they find already existing and those produced by their activity. These premises can thus be verified in a purely empirical way.
The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organization of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself — geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.
Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organization. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life…
I had a professor in grad school who said that she had a Marxist conversion experience when she was 16, and was sitting in a field next to a freeway overpass, reading the above passage, and staring at a ground-squirrel. "...consciousness, by religion, or anything else you like..." she thought, staring at the squirrel, thinking, 'maybe it cannot think and I can think, and that's why I'm different; maybe I am conscious that I exist, reflective, self-aware, and it is not; maybe I have a soul, and it does not, but none of those ideas are provable. But what is certain is that I--not I individually but people like me--built that freeway overpass.
So...Marxism, premise 1: What makes human beings different from animals is that we produce our means of subsistence. A deer's means of subsistence is plants; it does not farm the plants. A wolf's means of subsistence is deer, but it does not raise the deer. Only humans can choose to live in the dry and frozen deserts of the world; only humans have produced large areas of population (cities) where most people have no direct connection to the food that keeps them alive. In order to produce our means of subsistence, we have created division of labor.
Hunter/gatherer is the original division of labor; now, unless you work in agriculture, someone else grows your food. These two facts about human beings--that we produce our means of subsistence, and that we do so through division of labor--are the only things about human beings that we can be certain of. They are empirical observations. Other premises (ie, "we are basically good," "we are basically bad," "we are meant to love and be loved," "there is an implied social contract," "existence precedes essence,") are all abstractions. Which beings us to premise 2:
…The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc. of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. — real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process….
Premise 2: We produce religion, art, culture, sports, games, etc., in a manner not entirely unlike how we build buildings. These things, Marx refers to in his later work as the superstructure. The relations of production is the base upon which the superstructure is built.
Base: Sometimes called, "the material relations of production." This is the specific relationships involved in exactly HOW, in one specific place and time the means of subsistence are produced through division of labour. Who are the "haves"? Who are the "have-nots?" Who makes the food, and who gets the best food? Who provides the goods and services, and who consumes them? In understanding a society, this is the base.
Superstructure: All the culture (art, religion, academia, sports, etc.) that manifests from a particular base. ALL superstructure supports the base that it arose from; ALL superstructure is simply a natural efflux of that base. Human ideas--our stories, our philosophy--naturally support the base that exists, even if that base is feudalism, the caste system, living in a ghetto, or some other horror.
This is where one of Marx's most famous quotes comes into play: "Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, just as it is the spirit of spiritless conditions. It is the opium of the people. To abolish religion as the illusory happiness of the people is to demand their real happiness." It is not difficult to see how this is, at least sometimes, unassailably true: In the Hindu caste system, the untouchable caste were taught that they have no souls, and that they alone are suited to deal with human waste and corpses. During the middle ages, the Catholic church taught something similar, called the Great Chain of Being, in which serfs were on the bottom, the Monarch on top, and God is seen as having ordained it to be thus. In these examples, it is difficult, perhaps impossible, to argue that religion did not play a significant role in perpetuating socioeconomic inequality. Marx goes a great deal further, though, claiming that ALL religion does this, and also all art and literature and films; all culture helps make sense of the base that is presented to us. This includes supposedly radical works and religions that try to tell the stories of the poor, or compel us to care for the poor. Marxists are big fans of the idea that culture makes room for an appearance of dissent in order to satisfy our need to feel edgy or revolutionary, but that radical culture is almost never truly radical.
Let's develop this idea a little further to get to premise 3. Back to Marx:
Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life. In the first method of approach the starting-point is consciousness taken as the living individual; in the second method, which conforms to real life, it is the real living individuals themselves, and consciousness is considered solely as their consciousness.
There are two broad arguments for the preservation of culture; Truth and authenticity. Truth: (1) Culture is sacred because it deals with eternal truths; the priest says, 'you cannot take away my scripture; you can try, but it contains objective Truth.' (2) The argument from rights, for cultural diversity and authenticity, what we sometimes call political correctness: we have a right to our own political and religious beliefs; trying to change someone else's beliefs, especially through coercion or force, is essentially wrong. “This is my authentic culture,” says the activist for the small native tribe that is dying out. “Who are you do take away my way of life?” Both (1) and (2) are wrong for Marx because...
(Premise 3)...culture is not sacred, and we have no rights to any abstraction of the superstructure. There is nothing to fear about our consciousness shifting and entire religions or cultural movements disappearing forever. The claim to a right to continue believing bad ideas is one of the great impediments to true Revolution. "Bad" ideas simply refers here to ideas which are counter-Revolutionary because they support the previous Base. Culture is fickle; it is ideology. Science is all that is absolute, and Marxism focuses on premises that are as scientific as possible.
Marx's view of science and ideology is one of the most criticized premises by Marxists today; "No Marxists really believe that anymore," I have often been told by Marxists who don't like how I teach the theory. Yes, I rejoinder, but they certainly used to, and it is central to his theory. More from the German Ideology:
We know only a single science, the science of history. One can look at history from two sides and divide it into the history of nature and the history of men. The two sides are, however, inseparable; the history of nature and the history of men are dependent on each other so long as men exist. The history of nature, called natural science, does not concern us here; but we will have to examine the history of men, since almost the whole ideology amounts either to a distorted conception of this history or to a complete abstraction from it. Ideology is itself only one of the aspects of this history.
Marx believed that...
(Premise 4)...His theories, which started from analysis of real, active men engaged in material relations of production, were not an ideology, like anarchism or Christianity. Instead, he believed that he had accomplished a science of human history by beginning with empirically verifiable premises. Therefore his conclusions were essentially scientific, not philosophical or ideological. Therefore his theories on what would happen after the Revolution were scientific predictions on what simply would happen, not simply theories about what ought to happen if Marxist communism gained traction.
One of the primary objects of concern that Marx was concerned with his "scientific" study of human history was the nature of private property. He saw private property as a dictatorial regime of ideologies, something that he continually writes that we, 'live under,' the same way we might live under a tyrant:
Under private property ... Each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering.
If private property is so terrible, why has it not been overthrown? Marx saw an evolution in history, from feudalism to capitalism to communism. The problem with revolutions thus far is that most of them merely changed the relations within the society, and did not actually push it along in the evolution.
For instance, every overthrow of monarchs in England simply brought in a new King or Queen; the relations of production remained the same, simply with a different monarch on top. Similarly, socially or philosophically, "revolutionary," movements never really change anything; you will not change aspects the Base (the structure of rich and poor) by changing the superstructure (by starting a religion, writing a series of books, etc.). Therefore Marx did not admire very much philosophers, novelists, religious leaders, etc. who championed the causes of the poor. Instead, one of Marx's heroes, whom he called, "the most splendid fellow in the whole of ancient history," was Spartacus, the former Roman slave who lead a slave rebellion.
Let us summarize the premises thus far, and try to reach the conclusion:
Premise 1: Human Beings produce our means of subsistence (our food, clothing, and shelter) not as animals do, but through elaborate systems of division of labor. Together, we call these things the material relations of production.
Premise 2: Human existence can thus be categorized in terms of Base (the material relations of production of a specific time and place) and Superstructure, being the culture that effluxes out of a particular base. Culture is never free or pure of the Base; it is always bound to it, always supports or explains it. Religions that tell the poor that that they are supposed to be poor are a particularly clear example of this.
Premise 3: Culture is therefore not sacred and not nearly as important as it purports itself to be. It is mostly a distraction from the gross inequalities in the material relations of production.
Premise 4: All revolutions thus far have been revolutions of ideology; social revolutions, artistic revolutions, political revolutions, and religious revolutions. None of these revolutions have dramatically changed the material relations of production.
1st Conclusion: The real Revolution is similar to that of Spartacus and his followers: the slaves must take their freedom by force; the poor must redistribute goods and services by force. The tyranny of private property must be overthrown. Nothing about the previous culture--its customs, its religion, its literature, its music--is sacred. All of it can be destroyed as the new, radically equal world order is brought into being.
2nd conclusion : Out of a new base will come a new superstructure. Religion and politics, as we conceive of them, probably will not exist at all after the Revolution. Art will exist, but will look completely different. It is impossible to imagine what post-Revolutionary superstructure will look like now, because our consciousness is comprised of pre-Revolutionary ideas.
Earlier, I wrote that many Marxist revolutions would have happened anyways, but that they would have had a different flavor. Consider the following examples:
- Perhaps the most morally obscene Marxist revolution took place in Cambodia in the late 70's. Approximately 1/3 of the population of Cambodia was killed in only a few years; Pol Pot, the leader of the revolution, took Marx's ideas very, very literally. His troops--the Khmer Rouge--would march into a village, find everyone who owned a pair of glasses or a book, and shoot them in the head. Everyone who was left was organized into work camps. The idea: people who could read represented the previous culture; the uneducated were, relatively speaking, blank slates.
- In China's famous Cultural Revolution, Western books and musical instruments were burned en masse, as well as many classic works of Confucianism and Buddhism.
Perhaps a "different flavor" is an understatement. In Mexico in the 1930's, there would have been a social uprising of some kind, but would Catholic priests have been forced to marry if the leaders had not been Marxists? When China invaded Tibet in 1950, they showed no respect of the pacifist Buddhist culture, burning temples and executing monks en masse...this in spite of the fact that, historically, Buddhism had been one of China's predominant religions. Indeed, one of the hallmarks of Marxist revolutions across Asia was an almost pathological disdain regarding cultures that existed before the revolution; no matter how ancient, popular, or revered, previous "superstructures" are to be contained and/or destroyed, and the sages and leaders of the previous culture are to be re-educated or killed.
Marxisms' Flaws
Many different theses are put forward on Marxisms flaws; many of us would probably jump to the idea that not rewarding personal initiative is bad because there is no motive for innovation and hard work. Contrary to popular belief, Marxist communist revolutions did improve the lives of millions of people, at least for a time. Many people in China and Russia, for instance, were living lives of feudal serfs, and this social class was quite willing to work hard for no pay (which is what they were used to) under communism and receive far better housing and education than they did before. Communism's colossal failure in the 20th century is perhaps significantly due to this flaw, but not mostly, I would argue. No private property has worked on a small scale, and could theoretically work on a large one, so long as there was sufficient unity of purpose in the society.
Marxisms greatest flaw is political, not economic. Marx and his writing partner and friend, Frederich Engels, believed that after the Revolution, the need for government, as it currently existed, would evaporate, since government only existed to support the existing power structures involved in the material relations of production. Thus, again and again and again, a power vacuum was created after a Marxist revolution. Trotsky and Lenin were relatively idealistic, but they had no idea how to form a powerful government to actually govern Russia, because part of their theory was that no powerful government would be necessary. Therefore they formed various Revolutionary councils and theorized about a Russia with no central government at all until Joseph Stalin, a psychotic thug whose greatest claim to fame is that he might be responsible for killing more people than Hitler, took over, and the rest is history. Saddam Hussein's Ba'ath party was originally strongly allied with the Iraqi Communist Party; Saddam started as just another idealistic student of Marxist theory, and proved not to be the most erudite or altruistic, but simply the most brutal. This story repeated itself in dozens of countries throughout the world; the idealists who won the revolution were overwhelmed by the practical problems of actually creating a nation with no private property, and a thug stepped in to implement the system, and he never left.
The history of Marxist revolutions is a history of a stunning lack of political foresight. All the dark, cynical insights of Machiavelli, Hobbes, the Chinese legalists, and other philosophers who observed that power was an end in itself that people will seek by any means necessary, and that in seeking and maintaining power the virtues of mercy and restraint and altruism are frequently weaknesses...all of this was consciously, deliberately ignored, because Marxists believed that these were insights about dynamics within capitalism. Therefore, ironically, this theory which preaches that it will being about a system with no government at all has almost always catalyzed the rise of tyrannical dictatorships.
Marxism today
In Russia, China, Southeast Asia, and a significant part of the Middle East and Africa, communism has tried and failed to bring about an egalitarian people's revolution. There are dozens of Marxist committees and parties across the world, but simply put, there are no Marxist political movements in these places that are powerful enough to challenge the forces of globalized capitalism, lead mostly by the powerhouse economies of Western Europe, China, the U.S., and Japan.
In Western Europe and in the U.S., Marxism never took off. Perhaps because of this, Marxist theory has an unusually strong presence in Philosophy, theory, and English departments. At least half of my professors at my relatively politically conservative (compared to Harvard or Yale) University of Chicago were out-and-proud Marxists, determined not just to develop the theory further but also to support workers movements around the world. The website wsws.org presents news and cultural criticism in a tone that suggests that the workers revolution may still be happening (this is an exceptionally well-run, well written site; if you're curious about contemporary Marxist theory in practice, their take on the daily news, there's no better place on the web).
Latin America is an exception. Many political pundits refer to the, "Latin Lefty Club," as a loose coalition of relatively successful socialist countries, including Cuba, Venezuela, Nicaragua, recently Bolivia, and sometimes Honduras and a few others, depending on how you do the math. Latin America is not an exception by accident; even a very critical history of Che Geuvara or Fidel Castro cannot compare their actions to Pol Pot or Stalin. There is virtually no history of hardcore Marxist revolution in Latin America; this is because the rise of socialist and communist movements was complemented by the rise of, "liberation theology," a style of mostly Catholic Christian theology which is supportive of communist goals. Latin American communists have never taken Marx quite as literally; with a few exceptions, such as Mexico in the 30's, there have not been movements to stamp out all previously existing culture and send rich people to re-education or death camps.
What there has been is an aggressive socialism bordering on communism. Daniel Ortega, the current president of Nicaragua, summarized the situation fairly well when he said, "The goals of the Sandinista party today, and of our Socialist brothers throughout the Americas, is no longer to bring into being a communist state. It is to curb the worst abuses of capitalism." This doesn't sound so different from some of the relatively socialist systems in Western Europe, where a high tax rate allows the governments enormous power to distribute medical care and education somewhat equally among their citizens.
Latin American socialism, which still owes a great deal to Marx, seems to still have a future, possibly a strong one (and quite possibly not). Something has to curb the worst abuses of capitalism, and a relatively socialized system such as exists in Switzerland or Brazil is one answer. Old-school Marxist communism (meaning no private property and worldwide revolution) is mostly dead in the world today, outside of English departments and online communities. It is hard to imagine it reviving any time soon. I end with a quote from one of my favorite Marxist English professors, Dr. Loren Kruger, in a lecture she gave about George Orwell, the author of 1984 and Animal Farm. Both books are considered classics of criticism of communist totalitarianism, which is deeply ironic because Orwell was himself a communist until late in life:
"Orwell was always searching for the perfect metaphor for his loss of faith in the Revolution. Shortly before his death, he wrote that being a communist intellectual after Stalin's death camps is like being a doctor in charge of a dying patient. Because you are a doctor, you cannot leave their side. And yet because you are a doctor, because of your expertise and your insight, you know, better than anyone, that they will surely die. All you can do is watch."
My own opinion (emphatically stated, even though it has mostly been strongly implied): Communism, in some form, is as natural as capitalism. Families are naturally communist, as are monasteries and many indigenous tribes. There is no reason to assume that Marx's central thesis--that capitalism alienates us from our labor--is false; in other words, no reason to assume that we are "happier" with our work under capitalism than we would be under another system.
However, classic Marxist communism, which argues in a descriptive style for a scientific view of human nature that has shown that widespread class consciousness will result in a widespread, eventually worldwide, workers revolution? This is dead, even among Marxists. That friend I have, the lesbian queer theorist, just spent 4 years at Duke taking courses in Marxist theory. We argued last time she visited:
"In my reading for my class, I emphasize Marx' ideas on the science of man converging with natural science, and his claims that Marxism is not a theory or ideology but science, and...the 'inevitable' collapse of capitalism."
"But Dave, no-one that we read, no serious Marxist intellectuals or activists, believe that anymore."
"Well, Marx believed it. Lenin, Trotsky, and Stalin believed it; Mao believed it; even Che and Castro taught some form of the inevitable collapse of capitalism as a 'scientific' thesis."
"Fair point. But it's shifting."
"Into what? In terms of real movements, into what? Daniel Ortega's, 'Socialism today means to curb the worst abuses of capitalism?' That's like liberal Episcopalian Jesus-was-so-nice Christianity, or some reformed Synagogue where being Jewish essentially means keeping traditions alive and being intellectual together, or the 'Eastern religions: which one is best for my abs?' approach to Buddhism." My sarcasm was intended to make a serious point: a more 'progressive' Marxism might work better as a theory, but it almost might lose it's teeth.
What is Marxism now? It certainly can be a profound theory on how capitalism alienates us from our labor, and a radically egalitarian society would be possible, and would be better. But it is dishonest, I think, to argue that that is what Marx himself, and most revolutionaries who took his theories seriously, argued for and fought for. Any responsible, compelling Marxism today has to admit that capitalism, especially globalized capitalism, can 'work' if by 'work' we simply mean fulfill the social contract enough to perpetuate itself indefinitely. We might call this existentialist Marxism: nothing is inevitable; Marx was right about what a better world should be, even if he was wrong about what what the world inevitably would be.
But if Marxists admit that capitalism can work, will not inevitably collapse, then are they not abandoning most of the theory? Can Marxism successfully become a prescriptive, activist theory that argues for, "no private property," as simply one viable choice among many other choices, even for whole countries? This is THE question for Marxist activists today.