Marx for a Postcommunist Era: on Poverty, Corruption, and Banality Does Not Doomsay

MARX FOR A POSTCOMMUNIST ERA When the Iron Curtain collapsed, capitalism reigned triumphant and the ‘end of history’ was declared. However, peace and prosperity have been short-lived. In recent years, anti-globalization protests have returned viol- ence to the streets, nations have been ravaged by ethnic genocide, and fundamentalist radicals have intensified their war with the West. In this uncertain climate, Marx for a Postcommunist Era: On Poverty, Corruption, and Banality does not doomsay. It does, however, seriously question the ability of market forces to deliver the greatest good to the greatest number. It rejects the class hatred and social engineering that has discredited Marxism in the past and it does argue that Marx’s emphasis on social equity, real democracy, and human capital still forcefully resonates in the modern day. After reviewing Marx’s philosophical roots and his twentieth-century reception, Sullivan applies Marx’s ideas to three major phenomena—poverty, corruption, and banality—that remain obstacles to freedom in the twenty- first century. Drawing on the 2000 US presidential elections, Russian tax evasion, the mixed success of privatization, the ascent of Hollywood and Silicon Valley, and our fascination with fake theme bars, ethno-chic fashion, and the retro trend in design, Sullivan also highlights the breadth of Marx’s legacy both inside and outside the academic world. Marx for a Postcommunist Era combines a deep understanding of Marxist thought with journalistic engagement in real-world themes. This comprehensive and timely book will be of interest to students and academics in the areas of philosophy, sociology, politics, and cultural studies, and to anyone with an interest in Marx and his legacy. Stefan Sullivan is the author of numerous articles on international affairs and one novel, The Final Slum, which won a Discovery Award at the 2001 Hollywood Film Festival. In 1994 he received his PhD in political philosophy from Oxford University with a dissertation on Hegel and Marx. He lives in Washington, DC. MARX FOR A POSTCOMMUNIST ERA On poverty, corruption, and banality Stefan Sullivan London and New York First published 2002 by Routledge 11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE Simultaneously published in the USA and Canada by Routledge 29 West 35th Street, New York, NY 10001 Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group This edition published in the Taylor and Francis e-Library, 2005. “To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s collection of thousands of eBooks please go to www.eBookstore.tandf.co.uk.” © 2002 Stefan Sullivan All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or reproduced or utilised in any form or by an electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publishers. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging in Publication Data A library record of this data has been requested ISBN 0-203-99616-X Master e-book ISBN ISBN 0–415–20193–4 (Print Edition) CONTENTS Acknowledgments vi Preface vii 1 Introduction 1 2 The twentieth-century reception 21 3 Poverty 59 4 Corruption 95 5 Banality 135 Notes 161 Bibliographical essay 173 Index 183 v ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank Duncan Foley, Gerald McDermott, Marc Pachter, and Miguel Szekely for their insights and critical comments on various chapters. Jonathan Rée, the Ideas series editor at Routledge, had the audacity to suggest that a fresh look at Marx would be a worthwhile undertaking. He has been a valuable sounding board throughout. I also owe a large debt to my Oxford doctoral supervisors, Leszek Kolakowski and John Torrance, for initially nourishing my interest in the Hegel/Marx tradition. The US Library of Congress offered a godsend to the independent scholar in the form of an office space where most of my research was carried out. My wife, Marina, not only assiduously reviewed the manuscript but, as an economist in her own right, was a formidable sparring partner on issues of poverty and development during the evening meal. Finally, my parents, David and Anneliese, are owed special gratitude for their unflagging love and support. vi PREFACE In the course of writing this book, I was subjected to countless sermons by taxi drivers, academics, journalists, and particularly East Europeans who, as schoolchildren, had digested a dumbed-down Marxist-Leninist catechism. They all had an explanation why Marxism failed and why capitalism now reigns triumphant. I realized then that to address a subject that many people consider obsolete is a thankless task. Even more so when it is a subject like Marxism on which everyone claims an expert opinion. The unseemly associations with totalitarianism, genocide, and unviable economic planning are, indeed, hard to ignore. Yes, even though the euphoria that greeted the fall of communism has since been tainted by the rapacious greed of the ex-nomenklatura, and their carpetbagging Western advisers, few would now invoke a return to Marx. As critics of my project have been quick to point out, the human costs of social engineering have far outweighed the consequences of a capitalist system that, with ruthless logic, simply allocates to each worker the rewards appropriate to his skills on an open marketplace. To read Gulag memoirs, as apparently many communist sympathizers chose not to, or to visit Tuol Sleng prison, the unassuming secondary school in Phnom Penh where Pol Pot’s henchmen tortured and killed, is to face the sobering reality that dogma and its reckless certitude are far more dangerous to human freedom than the misery of a subsistence level wage. But I entered this crowded field not just to say something fresh and readable about Marx, but because I had an intuition that much of what Marx said about capitalism in his day still holds true in ours. This intuition has been borne out. The destabilizing impact of roaming speculative capital, the subhuman conditions in Third World industrial parks, and the corrosive impact of market forces on the democratic process and cultural goods all reflect the unhealthy dominance of the capitalist system. The evidence was too overwhelming to shy away from the common neoliberal challenge that any attempt to expose the flaws of capitalism raises a totalitarian specter. As Slavoj Aiaek, a leading contemporary theorist on the left, remarks in some- what heated terms: “liberal scoundrels can find hypocritical satisfaction in their defense of the existing order: they know there is corruption, exploitation, vii PREFACE and so on, but every attempt to change things is denounced as ethically dangerous and unacceptable, recalling the ghost of Gulag or Holocaust.”1 Indeed, though individual liberty has a compelling grip on the modern consciousness, I suspected that there was intellectual dishonesty at play among those who misconstrue freedom as the unbridled pursuit of personal gain. The only response can be to argue one type of freedom against the next, the freedom of public safety versus the freedom of gun ownership, the freedom of global health coverage, a living wage and humane work environ- ments versus the freedom of individual preferences (including how personal tax income should be allocated) on an open marketplace. In short, from the perspective of the left, the social allocation of surplus wealth and the inter- vention of the state in the name of the public good bring far greater freedoms to a far greater number than the neoliberal and conservative alternatives. But to do this, I also felt the need to restore to Marxism its intellectual integrity, one battered by the often appealing counter-arguments of neoliberal trium- phalism, the unsavory apologias for the Gulag in the past, and, often, just plain bad writing—either the sweeping generalizations of the pamphleteer, or the jargon-heavy overkill often found in academic studies. The purpose of this book is to explore Marx’s relevance in the postcommunist world. I have framed this project primarily in terms of a contribu- tion to a critique of three major obstacles to freedom: poverty, corruption, and banality. They not only encompass the economic, political, and cultural consequences of a society driven by profit and greed, they also give us a fairly comprehensive understanding of the vastness of the Marxian project. For, at its core, it is motivated by a concern no less noble than to expose the impedi- ments to a human life worth living in an alienated world. This implies, in turn, challenging the postmodernist sensibility that denies that there is any coherent world to be alienated from. By claiming that society is frag- mented into heterogeneous subjective viewpoints, the postmodernist denies the ideal forms of freedom that afford us our only hope. We may now be wary of rigid notions of the optimal social organization, but we must still strive for improvement in the regulation of the market, in the accountability of states and political agents, and in the aesthetic education of the global citizenry. For to fail to do so will allow unregulated capitalism, disguised as freedom, to continue to impede progress toward a more just and humane society. But if poverty, corruption, and banality are obstacles to freedom for many countries, at many different stages, Western civilization has now, and rather suddenly, been forced to contend with a more primal threat to the values it holds dear. Until recently this, the scourge of terrorism, seemed containable within the geographic boundaries of the Middle East and the seemingly intractable Palestinian conflict. But with 11 September 2001 the battlefield widened to encompass the whole civilized world.

Load more