Marxism is Utopianism
Excerpt from: Deconstructing Karl Marx & Communism
An undeniably utopian component remains when Marxism is stripped of its economic and philosophical aspects. Communism is not a positive amendment of the existing world, but a radically new society that will, once and for all, resolve fundamental problems of human suffering. It will be a stable form of society that will provide a superabundance of goods, whose production and distribution will be executed to everyone’s satisfaction, to the point that people will no longer have any reason to be selfish, envious, or greedy. Even conflict itself would cease to exist, for communism is not simply a new societal arrangement, it constitutes a veritable transcendence of humanity:
“Communism is the positive transcendence [Aufhebung] of private property as a human self-alienation, and hence the true appropriation of the human essence by and for man; it is the complete return of man to himself as a social – i.e., human – being, a complete and conscious return which takes place within the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as perfected naturalism, is humanism, and as perfected humanism, is naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature, and between man and man, the true resolution of the conflict between existence and being, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. It is the solution of the riddle of history and knows itself to be this solution.”
This liturgical passage is revealing enough, but Marx concealed the utopian nature of his work by talking as little as possible about the perfect world he envisioned. Communism was, in fact, what the father of communism talked about the least. Point in case, his magnum opus is called Das Kapital, not Der Kommunismus. Most of Marx’ writing consists of critiques of capitalism, political critiques and critiques (or rather, attacks) on other socialist/communist leaders and thinkers. When it came to describing communism itself, the passages that he left to the world are few, and they never discuss much in the way of specifics.
One is inclined to ask why Marx put so little effort in presenting a complete picture of the new, wonderful society of communism, when it could have been a great selling point – if it made sense. To get it to make sense, would also not be easy – other communists’ attempts to detail the features of their promised lands bounced between the laughable and the horrific; Marx distanced himself from these failed attempts on principle. The reason relates to his deterministic vision of history: communism would emerge dialectically from the class struggle through a process as natural and inevitable as winter leading into spring. Whether spring was described in advance or not, was inconsequential to the flowers – which were sure to bloom.
Unfortunately, all utopian destinations suffer from the same problem: they are thought up by people – not by omniscient deities. A utopia can only be as good as the person who invented it, and a utopian idea will only prove effective to the extent that its creator’s grasp on reality was accurate.
Marx was unique in that he was perhaps the first utopian who did not present himself as one. He never once claimed he would lead mankind towards utopia but instead professed that certain “historical laws” (which he had uncovered) were doing as much: history itself, propelled by the dialectic, would bring about the workers’ paradise. Of course, men would act it out, but their will was subservient to the laws of history. And history had decided it was going to bring them paradise. It really had nothing to do with Marx; he was merely describing the workings of the universe. Alas, he had discovered nothing: his dialectic was not a law of nature, but merely a classifying narrative – suitable to analyze history but wholly unfit for predicting the future (ironically, Marx warned that his theories could not be used as simple formula where one just inputs some data to obtain an uncontestable result, yet maintained with absolute conviction that communism was the inevitable endpoint of history’s progress).
The historical circumstances played to Marx’ advantage: the world had been completely turned upside down by the coalescence of new technology, trade and manufacturing that was capitalism. The societal disruption caused by its explosive growth was so profound and shocking it left people both clinging to the past and looking to change the future, as the projected trajectory at the time did not bode very well. Things were evolving rapidly, at an alarming rate. Then Marx shows up, the philosopher-historian-economist-polemist-activist, the man of letters who reaches out to the poor across the social strata, roaring with the urgency of an emergency worker trying to save a gravely injured victim (only an evildoer would think to obstruct him) whose horrible fate he describes so colorfully no living creature can stay unmoved.
But the analogy isn’t a very fitting one alas, for the simple reason that emergency responders receive extensive training from their predecessors who rely on decades of experience, and the experience of those before them. By contrast, there are no courses in Utopian Engineering. And this is the unavoidable problem: no matter how competent one is in however many fields, anyone setting out to invent a utopian formula begins as an unqualified amateur at best. How does one qualify? To build a utopia would mean to devise a system that bypasses important human deficiencies (such as selfishness, corruption, …). While this system aims to eliminate human wrongdoing, it on the other hand still needs to grant people enough freedom to be happy.
In the sciences, the field of utopia-building is nonexistent; it is not a science, nor a trade. Given that no one ever managed to build a working utopia, there are no past examples to learn from. There are no manuals that can teach us how it's done, no experts to guide our hand, no oracles to consult. We can only learn from failed utopia-builders, taking into account the fact that every aspiring utopia-builder in history ended up a failure – and this includes Karl Marx (though he didn't actually aim to do any utopia-building himself, and this is what made him unique). Verily, the only thing we can learn from failed utopia-builders is how to not go about things. That is to say, Marx is mostly studied for all the wrong reasons.
I do not dismiss Marx here across the board. An institution as impactful as capitalism deserves its critics and they ought to be heard – they may well bring pertinent matters to light. And a critic Marx certainly was – a passionate and merciless one indeed. But when it comes to building a better world, a good critic does not always equal a competent man. The reason for this is that these are completely different activities; building a new world is a constructive activity, whereas critiquing is a deconstructive activity. These two types of activity have entirely different requirements, not only in terms of skill but also in terms of a person’s attitude and temperament. Were it not so, literary critics would be the best writers; culinary critics would be the best chefs; and film-critics would be making the best movies. Yet they are not – the vast majority of them are not. To put it in basic terms: a demolition expert may be excellent at his job but that doesn't mean he understands how to build a barn that can withstand a storm. As a critic, Marx was indeed an expert of demolition.
Criticizing is done from behind a desk, whereas any actual constructive activity demands a direct engagement with the physical world. It's very easy to look at the world and scrutinize everything wrong with it from the confines of a comfortable armchair – you could spend three lifetimes criticizing the world and you’d still have things to write. Actually doing something constructively is a far more difficult and altogether different enterprise. Anyone with any practical experience has learned that the world is a living thing, operating by its own rules, capable of hurting, harming, even killing whoever engages with it. The physical reality will unerringly serve up an appropriate amount of failure should one's approach, or the conceptualization behind it, be lacking in one regard or other. New ideas will only work out well in practice as long as they contain no grave incompatibilities with the world’s intrinsic operating mechanism – the actual laws of the universe.
Marx’ personal charms, massive efforts and considerable talents all fade in light of the proverbial proof in the pudding. If his utopia had come about, then he would have been the visionary with a deep understanding of reality he is mistaken for; then, his theories would have been scientific – a true reflection of the laws of the universe. But his grand claims were a delusion: though he succeeded in garnering much interest from intellectuals and academics, in the real world his ideas initiated only tyranny. Being the riveting storyteller he was, Marx managed to express his ideas so convincingly that, even today, some people of relatively high IQ’s still believe his formula has a chance of working if we just tried it “one more time.”
But must we really?
Check out the blog
Comments