Date: Sat, 01 Nov 1997 17:41:53 -0500
Subject: Post-Marxism and Paleo-Marxism


In my short biographical introduction, I said that if Leo Casey was a "post
Marxist", then I would call myself a "paleo Marxist". For me the essence of
"paleo-Marxism" is simply going back to Marx as a great creative theorist
with continued relevance for our time, perhaps in the paradoxical sense
suggested in John Cassidy's New Yorker article, which describes the "next
big thinker" as the old 19th century Marx.  As Leo has defined "post
Marxism" below, this gives me a chance to explore what I mean by "paleo
Marxism".

The first thing for paleo-Marxism is to go back to Marx's own works, with
Engels added to them as Marx's great collaborator, though that has to be
done with due caution as they were also two independent thinkers.

Leo appears to say that 1) Marx did not have any clear political position,
2) a wide variety of positions, including Stalinism, is compatible with
what Marx thought, 3) (at the very end) Marx's position was, wrongly, that
"only social classes organize hegemony", 4) Marx thought, again wrongly,
that there would be a "transparent" society of the future.

Re 1:  If we look at the Communist Manifesto, for a starting point, there
is a fairly definite political position.  Marx was interested in providing
theoretical grounds for a political movement and political organization,
for the creation of a Communist Party that would provide leadership in the
process of economic and social transformation.

Re 2:  This work is not compatible, say, with Stalinism because it does not
argue for a one party state or for state control of the economy, among
other things.

Re 3:  I'm not sure what Leo meant by saying that for Marx only social
classes organize hegemony, but if by that he meant that only the *major*
social classes of a period do so, that is not true.  We might discuss the
hegemony of the medieval church in feudal Europe and ask whether or how a
class perspective helps us to understand that.  Some concrete example might
help on this question.

Marx and Engels did argue that class struggle is the key to past history
(since the emergence of state-organized societies) but they qualify this
basic position, arguing that it is only in the modern era that the
polarization of the main classes of a period has become sharpened to the
point where two main classes emerge dynamically, while other classes or
other social groupings, such as feudal landlords, peasants and craft
workers, are being squeezed out.  

Nevertheless, Marx's 18th Brumaire is all about how a "hegemonic"
(popular?) dictatorship arose on the basis of some of those other classes,
the peasants and small urban producers and lumpen proletariat.  Fascism, I
think, was hegemonic in a similar sense, with its social basis in the
vulnerable middle classes (as Eric Hobsbaum argues).  So the idea of the
hegemony (in the sense of determining the dominant ideologies) of the big
capitalist class was not a dogma with Marx, but rather a tendency he saw
emerging thanks to economic processes. 

Re 1, again:  Of course the Communist Manifesto is only at the beginning of
Marx's mature period, and is followed by other works, especially his work
on the economics of capitalism.  But the later works are consistent with
the main general idea of the Manifesto in the sense that the study of the
laws or logic of capitalism has the purpose of grounding political action
with an understanding of the dynamics of the modern economy.  

In the program of the Manifesto M&E emphasized the role of the proletarian
state in economic development projects. Marx later said that the program of
the Manifesto was outdated in a number of places.  How so?  In later
writings Marx stressed the self-organizing activity of worker-owned
cooperatives as a major new development that socialists/communists should
encourage in their political work.  I believe that in his later thought he
and Engels emphasized this more than state-organized economic projects and
nationalizations (taking place, nevertheless, in a market context).  In
Capital he explains that the very dynamics of capitalism underlies this
trend to worker self-management thanks to the creation of an independent
and flourishing sector of credit.  (Steve Keen's issue?)  The change in the
political programmatic ideas reflected both a new understanding on Marx's
part as a result of creative historical experience of workers, as well as
new possibilities thanks to the development of economic life.  

The main idea of paleo-Marxist politics is to see "Communism" not as an
ideal for the future in the sense of utopian approaches or ideal societies,
but as a movement developing within the present society.  Das Kapital was a
sort of theoretical ultra sound for discerning the outlines of a new
society developing within the existing one.  The long-term projection on
this basis is for a society in which private ownership of the social means
of production will eventually disappear.  

re 4:  The "transparency" involved here is that instead of seeing the
economy as a seemingly natural process operating independently of the
activities of individuals, and to which individuals have to adapt
ourselves, people will increasingly tend to see it as what it in fact is,
an expression of they way they relate to one another in their productive
activities.  This is a matter not only of theoretical insight but of
practical actions embodying such recognition.  But this is a future ideal
only in the sense of a development already taking place in the present.
There is a "logic" here in the sense that this present incipient
transparency, in which people can begin to see how apparently autonomous
economic processes in fact stem from their interrelated activities, will
have to develop further (under pain of great suffering if this is not done).  

Marx argued that the Ten Hours Bill and related legislation, in which
conditions of work were regulated consciously by society in the interests
of workers, was the first great step toward "transparency" in 19th century
capitalist societies.  Worker coops were the second big step involving
greater "transparency", although still with opacities because of its local
character.  We might try to add to this list for the 20th century:
anti-trust legislation, trade union rights, social welfare legislation,
world agreements regarding production of ozone-depleting chemicals??

Paleo-Marxism should recognize that this orientation to social change did
not originate with Marx, but has its theoretical roots in Hegel, in
particular in Hegel's dialectical critique of Kant.  I think that both Marx
and Engels looked on Hegel as a kind of theoretical reservoir which they
had to revise in certain key ways, but which had considerable validity as a
starting point for their theoretical development in many areas.

Best wishes,

Jim Lawler

At 08:40 AM 01/11/97 -0500, you wrote:
>Doug inquires into the meaning of my identification with post-Marxism.
>
>First, I made a point of separating my political position (radical democrat)
>from my theoretical stance (post-Marxism). I believe that it is one of the
>problems within many parts of the Marxist tradition that the two are
>conflated. One can be a radical democrat without operating as a post-Marxist,
>and vice versa. I also do not believe that Marxism is a political position;
>it can, and does, inform a variety of political positions, from the most
>wildly Trotskyist to the most obdurately Stalinist, from Kautskyite social
>democracy to Gramscian hegemonists. There is little that is more of a waste
>of time and effort, IMHO, than debates about whether or not one is a genuine
>Marxist, since they involve silly and worthless attempts to fix a particular
>(invariably sectarian) political position as the sole bearer of the Marxist
>tradition. When was the last time you heard someone debating about whether or
>not someone was a genuine Weberian or a genuine pragmatist? The point should
>be, of course, whether or not the analysis has any value in orienting
>political action, not whether or not it remains within someone's notion of
>the faith. 
>
>Second, post-Marxism is more shorthand for a theoretical terrain than a
>particular body of writings or a fixed theoretical position. It is
>POST-Marxist in the sense that it no longer accepts central ideas of the
>Marxist tradition, such as the Marxian concepts of class and class
>subjectivity, the notion that history operates through an immanent logic (of
>CLASS struggle), and the concept of communism as a transparent society free
>of social conflict and antagonism. It is post-MARXIST in the sense that its
>point of departure is the development of certain ideas and themes developed
>within the Marxist tradition, such as the Gramscian idea of hegemony, carried
>through to the point where they conflict with Marxist ideas that only social
>classes organize hegemony.
>
>Leo
>
>
***************************************************
"If Adam Smith was fed daily by Mrs. Smith, he omitted to notice or to
mention it.  He did not, of course, pay her.  What *her* interest was in
feeding him, we can only guess, For Adam Smith saw no ‘value' in what she
did."  If Women Counted, by Marilyn Waring, 23.

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