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Marxian Questions, Working- Lass Struggles, Socialist

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Marxian Questions, Working- Lass Struggles, Socialist MARXIAN QUESTIONS, WORKING-CLASS STRUGGLES, SOCIALIST ASPIRATIONS Harvey J. Kaye In the face of the apparent triumph of capitalism, in the face of the apparent retreat of the labor movement, in the face of the apparent demise of socialist possibilities: How can one continue to think like a Marxist? How can one remain committed to working class struggles? How can one still hold on to socialist hopes and aspirations? Recent experience would seem to have made it easy to disavow Marxian thought, to give up on labor, and to eschew socialist visions. And, if the news of the day were not enough—if somehow our intel- lectual and political attachments survived such events and develop- ments—if we still needed persuading—then, surely, the universal chorus singing requiems for trade unions and socialist politics and paeans to the market economy and global corporations should have dissuaded us from our grand illusions. Didn’t Francis Fukuyama capture the spirit of the times on the eve of the new millennium when he argued that the victory of liberal- capitalism over so-called state socialism represented far more than the triumph of the West over the Soviet bloc in the Cold War? However much we know that his project was nanced and promoted by corpo- rate dollars funneled through the coVers of the New-Right Olin Found- ation, didn’t he make it adequately clear that we had arrived at the “end point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalization of Western liberal democracy”, in short, that we had reached the “End of History”? (Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man, 1992). Hell, what does it take to get through to folks like you and me? Not only have the likes of the antagonistic and conservatively-endowed Fukuyama assured us it is all over for socialism, so too have suppos- edly friendlier gures. In his book, Reections on the Revolution in Europe (1990), the renowned German sociologist, European Community Com- missioner, and self-anointed “radical liberal”, Ralf Dahrendorf—pre- sumably aspiring to be the latter-day Edmund Burke—not only stated that “the point has to be made unequivocally that socialism is dead, and that none of its variants can be revived”, but also, he declaimed that a deeper and richer democratic polity than we currently possess is Critical Sociology 25,1 marxian questions 17 an illusion, or as he put it: ‘We the People’ can rise against an abhor- rent regime of exploitation and suppression, but ‘we the people’ can- not govern”. Surprisingly, the voices in the end-of-history choir cover quite a musi- cal range, reaching all the way from right to left (broadly understood). Postmodernists—most of whom emanate from our own ranks, even though their intellectual godfather is none other than Nietzsche him- self—have announced that all “grand narratives” are dead and we have arrived at—or been set adrift in—“post-history”. Whatever the diVerences between the end-of-history and post-history prophets, neo-conservatives and postmodernists alike essentially deny that political struggle might possibly change and dramatically transform the present order of things, that social agencies might actually be capa- ble of making new history, let alone new forms of history, that the future could be radically diVerent and better than the present. As Daniel Singer warned in Is Socialism Doomed? (1988), together they declare “the age of capital” to be “eternal”. So, given the prevailing evidence and arguments, I ask again: How can one continue to think like a Marxist, remain committed to work- ing-class struggles, and still hold onto socialist hopes and aspirations? In the Talmudic tradition of my Jewish forebears—wherein we are challenged to answer a question with an even more critical one—I say: How can one not continue to think like a Marxist? How can one not continue to side with labor? How can one not reaYrm socialist hopes and aspirations? Against the philosophers of the end-of-history and post-history, I recall the words of Antonio Gramsci, who, locked away in a Fascist prison, had good enough reason to succumb or defer, but instead answered the Hegelians and Nietzscheans of his day quite bluntly: “The problem is precisely that of seeing things historically”. Thinking historically, has there been any time more demanding of Marxian questions, working-class engagements, and socialist visions? And, at least for those of us who reside in liberal-democratic states, has there been any time in the past 150 years more desirable to take up the chal- lenge of critical thinking, labor-movement building, and democratic advancement? Seriously, who among us would really wish to trade places with the radicals of the past, to confront, as they did, the powers and terrors of pre-liberal and pre-democratic authorities, of imperialism and colonialism, of fascism and war, of Stalinism and the Gulag, of Cold War and nuclear confrontation? In the 1840s, who even knew of Karl Marx? He had been forced 18 harvey j. kaye to leave Germany, settling as an exile in Brussels, then Paris, and nally London. He had gotten into trouble with the authorities for concern- ing himself with the plight of workers who remained not citizens, but subjects, subordinated to the privileged, the powerful and the proper- tied. After 1848, European working people and their intellectual sym- pathizers faced the juggernaut of the age of capital, still, in the great majority, without democratic rights of organization, speech and suVrage. And, in 1871, the rightfully alarmed powerful crushed the Paris Commune, killing at least 17,000 working people in the process. Recall, along with the brief triumphs, the trials and tribulations of Leon Trotsky, Rosa Luxemburg, and Antonio Gramsci: Russian Revolution, Bolshevik dictatorship and Stalinism; the First World War, German militarism and aborted revolution; the “Occupation of the Factories” and Italian Fascism. Remarkable revolutionaries, they lived heroic lives, they suVered tragic deaths. And their experiences only take us to the 1920s and 1930s. We well know the horrors soon to transpire. Here in America, black slavery lasted until a bloody civil war nally brought it to an end in the 1860s (a mere 135 years ago). But even then the powers that be imposed coercive modes of exploitation and oppression on ensuing generations of African Americans and suppressed their democratic rights until only thirty years ago. Also, in the nine- teenth century the United States experienced the bloodiest of labor his- tories. Business and government together waged repeated campaigns against labor and the left, campaigns that have continued in various guises well into this century. The history of the American left can read- ily be told through the lives and deaths of its radical saints and mar- tyrs—among them, Frederick Douglass, Walt Whitman, Emma Goldman, Eugene Debs, Mother Jones, John Reed, Paul Robeson, and Martin Luther King Jr. To think historically entails remembering the tragic and the ironic. Yet—dare I say it in this “postmodern age”—it should also remind us that progress is possible, that justice and greater freedom, equality and democracy can be secured. Slavery was abolished, unions and political parties were organized, the civil and political equality of working peo- ple was secured (for men and women, white and black), Fascism was defeated, the foundations of social-democratic states were established, and, yes, Soviet Communism was overturned. Historical thinking should not fool us into thinking the perils are behind us (for while history attests that real democratic advances are possible, it also testi es that they are reversible). But historical thinking should enable us to appreciate the ground upon which we stand, the marxian questions 19 resources, the legacy of experience, agency and ideas aVorded us by our predecessors’ struggles and sacri ces. Instead of leading us to join the end-of-history chorus, it should make us realize that ¡La lucha con- tinua! (the struggle continues), and we have much to do. Historical thinking compels us to continue to ask critical questions, to contribute to progressive movements, to propose the extension and deepening of freedom, equality and democracy. But why ask Marxian questions? Ever the historical thinker, Ellen Meiksins Wood contends that now, more than ever, is the “best and most appro- priate time to bring back Marx”, because for the rst time, capitalism has become a truly universal system. It’s uni- versal not only in the sense that it’s global, not only in the sense that just about every economic actor in the world today is operating according to the logic of capitalism . Capitalism is universal also in the sense that its logic—the logic of accumulation, commodi cation, pro t-maximization, competition—has penetrated just about every aspect of human life and nature itself, in ways that weren’t even true of so-called advanced capi- talist countries as recently as two or three decades ago. So Marx is more relevant than ever, because he, more eVectively than any other human being then or now, devoted his life to explaining the systemic logic of cap- italism. (Monthly Review, June 1997) And in the Communist Manifesto we nd a most prophetic narrative of capitalist triumphalism: The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history . The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations . The bourgeoisie cannot exist with- out revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the rela- tions of production, and with them the whole relations of society . The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bour- geoisie over the whole surface of the globe.
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