|
Some
would argue that Karl Marx, author of “Capital,”
has been proven wrong on just about everything he wrote. The founder
of scientific socialism was born 200 years ago on May 5.
These
naysayers would point out that Soviet socialism imploded decades ago,
and that China is
heading merrily
down the capitalist path. Marx and his collaborator Friedrich Engels
wrote in “The
Communist Manifesto”
that the capitalist ruling class “produced its own
grave-diggers” in the proletariat – that is, the working
class. However, we have yet to see workers pick up the shovel and
bury capitalism once and for all.
Activists
seeking to combat injustice and inequality, it can be argued, have
turned
not to class struggle but to social movements focused on gender,
sexuality, race, ethnicity and the environment. “Intersectionality”
– the notion that people are defined by multiple identities,
where class is just one among many – would seem to have a
lot more appeal
today than the effort to end “exploitation.”
However,
as a scholar
of Marxist theory and practice,
I find that such announcements of the death of Marxism are premature.
Marx’s
message is still relevant
In
the wake of World War II, various economists heralded the narrowing
of the gap
between the richest and the poorest as evidence of the disappearance
of class antagonisms.
But
the long curve of capitalist development suggests that has widened,
as illustrated in economist Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital
in the Twenty-First Century.”
The
candle of the 2012 Occupy movement may have guttered, but its mantra
of the 99 percent opposing the 1 percent is
now a truiusm.
Everyone knows that the super-rich are richer
than ever,
while for most of the working-class majority – many of them
caught in the uncertainty of the “gig
economy”
– belt-tightening
has become the new normal.
Those
laboring in the formal and informal economies of much of Asia, Africa
and Latin America, needless to say, face
conditions
that are far more dire.
Marx
was correct, it would seem, when he wrote that capitalism keeps the
working class poor.
He
was also spot-on about capital’s inherent instability. There is
some validity to the
joke
that “Marxists have predicted correctly 12 of the last three
financial crises.”
Marx’s
reputation has made a startling comeback, however, at times in
unexpected circles.
In
discussing the 2008 financial meltdown, one Wall Street Journal
commentator wrote:
“Karl Marx got it right, at some point capitalism can destroy
itself. We thought markets worked. They’re not working.”
In
2017, the National Review reported
that a poll
found as many as 40 percent of people in the U.S. “now prefer
socialism to capitalism.”
Notably,
too, the C-word – Communism – has been making a
reappearance, as is indicated by recent series of titles: The
Idea of Communism,“
”The
Communist Hypothesis,“
”The
Actuality of Communism,“
and ”The
Communist Horizon.“
Until recently, the word was largely avoided by neo- and post-Marxist
academics.
Class
analysis remains alive and well. This is because capitalism is no
longer as seemingly natural as the air we breathe. It is a system
that came into being and can also go out of being.
Is
a better world possible?
To
say that there are threads connecting the present to a possible
future of universal human emancipation is not to state that
capitalism will collapse by itself. People have to make this happen.
Those
who would like to see the world move through and past its present
state face huge challenges, both theoretical and practical. Not least
among these challenges is the need to parse out what succeeded and
what failed in the past century’s attempts to create
egalitarian societies.
But
Marxism is not equivalent to everything that has been performed in
its name. Marx’s work remains the most compelling framework for
analyzing how the conflicting tendencies in present-day society
contain the seeds of a more humane future.
Thanks,
Karl. And, happy birthday.
This
commentary was originally published by TheConversation.com
|
