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Materialist Discourse in Academia During the Age of Late Marxism

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Materialist Discourse in Academia During the Age of Late Marxism Materia!ist Discourse in Academia During the Age of Late Marxism Dario Ferndndez-Morera hronicling the last decades of the twentieth century, a future historian of C ideas (or "worker on cultural practices") might describe ours as the Age of Late Marxism, characterized by the plight of the socialist states created during the Age of High Marxism and by the concomitant institutionalizationof materialist discourse in American academia. 1 Some states have thrown out the Communist party, which has prudendy changed its name to "Democratic So- cialism" (the party of "Economic Democracy"). All have turned to the capi- talist West for economic aid and business investments (once dubbed tools of Western international exploitation). Cynicism regarding Marx's teachings had long existed even among the outwardly Marxist Nomenklatura-with the ex- ception of some members of the intelligentsia, who still hoped for a better and (always) future socialism which would salvage the (always) potentially benefic ideas of the founding father. But by the 1980s, Marx and his discourse had become the material of frequently scatological folkloric humor. In the West, "Socialist" and "Social Democratic" parties have fallen back on various forms of the capitalist Welfare State; and while still defending some socialist ideas, they have accepted fundamental capitalist structures and recon- sidered many economic assumptions of the Early Marxist Age. 2 Sweden, which had experimented with an advanced version of the Welfare State, suffers from an economic and cultural stagnation made more remarkable by the world's most humanely controlled citizenry's failure to achieve social contentment.3 In the once-socialist lands, intellectuals read subversive writers like Karl Popper, Gary Becker, Ludwig yon Mises, F. A. Hayek, James Buchanan, Rose Wilder Lane, Murray Rothbard, David Friedman, Robert Nozick, Hans- Hermann Hoppe, Isabel Paterson, Ayn Rand, and Tibor Machan. 4 Professors of economics and at least one Noble prize winner advocate the "market- place"--a euphemism for "capitalism." Professors with marketable nonaca- demic skills complain that socialism "defrauded" them of their lives by stop- ping them from using their abilities, becoming rich, and enjoying the "material" world. An academician, become Minister of Finance, chides Americans for their ignorance of the ethical and economic principles of capitalism. The greatest genuinely proletarian leader of the twentieth century calls on exploitative West- ern corporations for investments,s Marx's discourse is being expunged from the classrooms, the work place, and the political arena; and materialist academicians, who form the bulk of the profession, face mass dismissals. 6 With the thawing of censorship, the full Dario Fern~ndez-Morera is associate professor of Hispanic studies and comparative literature and theory at Northwestern University, Evanston, IL 60201. 16 Academic Questions / Spring 1991 extent of the corruption and misery of life under "really existing socialism"- long a theme of Western critics-has been exposed with far greater effect by the erstwhile socialist countries themselves. After years of hearing from teach- ers, politicians, and the media that in the capitalist West people were not really free because of the tyranny of the marketplace, whereas at home people were really free because of "national economic planning," "full employment," and "free" social services, the masses are deciding that, granted its limitations, the West is after all really more free. In the Soviet Union, Lenin's contempt for democracy, and the horrors for which "the most humane of men" was respon- sible, are under scrutiny.7 Visitors to Prague report that cabbages and Marxist books are on sale by the pound in shops near Charles University: "a pound of cabbage costs more than a pound of Marx. ''8 Such generalized betrayal understandably angered an American academician self-exiled in the USSR. His worries echo those of many socially concerned Western professors: "I find it disturbing that in the Soviet Press these days, the word 'imperialism' is gradually disappearing and too much of a gloss is put on the Western way of life.... We are alarmed by the growing influence of bourgeois and petty bourgeois elements . and those who keep silent about imperialist dominance and the superexploitation of hundreds of millions in other countries." Komsomolskaya Pravda's curt editorial comment to his words was more telling than the professor's lamentations: "There still remain people who believe in the tottering ideas. ''9 There Still Remain People Who Believe in the Tottering Ideas But while in these lands schools begin to replace the grip of dialectical, historical, and cultural materialism with alternative discourses animated by the values of "bourgeois humanism," and academicians widen their horizons or face dismissal or professional obsolescence, in the great universities of the United States, practitioners of materialist discourse continue to be held in professional esteem and chosen for positions of power in academic depart- ments, journals, societies, and money-dispensing government agencies. Lead- ing university presses compete for materialist scholarship in the areas of literary criticism, history, philosophy, sociology, and even law and economics. Some of these academicians remain among the most highly paid members of the pro- fession. Their courses attract large enrollments; and graduate students eagerly assimilate their leading concepts and terminology, moving on to become suc- cessful practitioners of materialist discourse. More important, colleagues with hardly any Marxist affiliation continue to apply materialist concepts to their scholarly research. Key to this curious sur- vival is that fundamental Marxist epistemological and ethical assumptions re- main central to a koine which is now de rigueur among substantial numbers of university professors, and which provides the frame for apparently dissimilar academic discourses. FernS~ndez-Morera 17 It is true that materialism in academia has not remained unaffected by the new objective relations of the Late Marxist Age. Under their pressure, some of its less conspicuous characteristics have been suddenly foregrounded. Good examples are its defense mechanisms, which have become increasingly baroque. Among them is "Denial," which in its purest form affirms that no real socialism has ever existed. "Denial" is the most fundamental discursive defense and can be easily detected under every other. I~ "Relabeling" consists of an elaboration of "Denial." It asserts that the "so- cialist" (quotation marks are essential here) countries were really "Asian Modes of Production," or (in some versions) "State Capitalist," or (in another version) "Stalinist" countries. Basically, this defense argues that materialist reformers have regularly set out to bake a Socialist Paradise but somehow invariably end up with an Asian Mode or a State Capitalist hell. One problem with this defense is that professors from the socialist countries called their system real socialism and the system in the West State Capitalism.l~ It is true that, according to materialist professors in the West, professors in the East did not live under really real socialism. But it is also true that, according to materialist professors in the East, it was the professors in the West--really "bour- geois" professors-who were really wrong. Another difference between the two sets of equally intelligent and learned professors is that professors in the East have gradually stopped talking in these terms, but professors in the West have not. Much favored, "Relabeling" overlooks the fact that many intelligent and often selfless individuals in the most disparate areas of the planet demonstrably transformed their societies by diligently applying their considerable knowledge of Marx's theories about economics, history, politics, philosophy, art, and prac- tically everything else known to man. To say that all these hard-working lead- ers, political cadres, and learned professors misunderstood Marx, or set out greedily to use him to get rich and powerful, is unrealistic. They were neither more nor less intelligent, neither worse nor better-- and, in fact, probably more integrally dedicated to the creation of better people and a better world-than the Western professors, who with characteristic academic hubris claim to be their moral and intellectual superiors in the understanding and application of Marx's wisdom. The label "Stalinist" is particularly unrealistic. It presents the problem-not insurmountable for materialist dialectics- of explaining how a single individual (since individuals matter so little in history, compared to "cultural," "histori- cal," and other "forces") could have such an influence not just on the Soviet Union, but on many other "Stalinist" countries. Countries, in fact, as diverse in economic development, history, geography, climate, and ethnic composition as China, Germany, Cambodia, Czechoslovakia, Poland, Ethiopia, Cuba, Al- bania, Yugoslavia, Mozambique, North Vietnam, North Korea, and so on, whose common denominator turns out to be the avowed use of Marx's ideas as a basis for the progressive transformation of society and the creation of better people and a better world. 18 Academic Questions / Spring 1991 More original is the "Socialism Would Have Turned Out To Be Much Better Had Capitalism Not Continued To Be Around To Corrupt It" defense. Anchored on "Denial," it draws on both "Relabeling" and the standard pro-
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