"Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells. For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society" ("The Communist Manifesto" p.41, Modern edition, 1998).
Karl Marx wrote this almost two hundred years ago at a time when capitalism was cocky in its self-confidence and reading it today he seems to be talking about our current recession/depression. The first burst of the Industrial Revolution refashioned the way Western Europeans lived, pushing small peasants off their land and into the filthy cities, enriching the formerly petit-bourgeois merchants, and causing a massive explosion in urban space throughout Europe. Even the kings seemed emasculated under the crushing flow of capital which seemed to laugh in the face of nation-states. The bourgeoisie seemed to have conquered the world once and for all.
Not so fast, Marx said. The brilliance of Marx as an economist--and a founder of modern economics--is his ability to see beyond the temporary triumph of capitalism and tease out the inherent contradictions within capitalism itself. Built on glorification of greed, Marx argues, capitalism by its very nature has to continuously expand in search of new markets. The Europeans would come out of the first wave of Industrial Revolution poised to take on the whole world. It would be Lenin in the beginning of the 20th century who would take Marx further by seeing European imperialism (and the ensuing Scramble for Africa) as an inevitable and quite logical phase of capitalism. The accumulation of wealth is the very engine of capitalist growth and it would be this engine that would drive the bourgeoisie to span the globe from the expanding capitals of Europe, conquering almost every patch of land mass. The British Empire alone "owned" 1/3 of global land mass by the end of the 19th century. Capitalism needed imperialism not in order to expand for the expansion's sake, but in order to survive.
And what about the crisis today? The greed of Wall Street investors, bankers, and individual home owners pushed everyone to make immensely risky bets, endowing everyone with the irrational belief that markets will just keep growing no matter how inflated the prices were. "That's simply how you make money," the financial "expert" Jim Cramer said repeatedly, imploring investors to buy Bear Stearn stock only a few days before it plummeted. The tragic thing about this mess is that this was not some Bernie Madoff-like conspiracy by CNBC and the Wall Street to dupe the investors. The mad accumulation of capital was a very logical goal that most investors developed observing the ever-expanding markets during the boom of the late 1990s and early 2000s. This is why today's so-called financial experts are so limited in their "expertise." They completely give in to the temporary orgasmic pleasures of wealth without seeing beyond the current moment and analyzing the underlying processes making them rich: for example, why the housing prices had become so inflated. No, they did not care. As Cramer so bluntly put it: "this is how you make money." And today's millions of jobs lost, peoples' savings wiped out, European banking system on a verge of collapse? All of this is the inevitable price of making money.
And Marx realized this even before capitalism had a chance to go through constant commercial crises. Marx's prediction of an impending revolution in Western Europe might have been more wishful thinking, influenced by the enthusiasm of the 1848 Revolutions, and his vague ideas of communist society left room for some of the most horrific regimes of the 20th century (such as Stalin, or USSSR's domination of E.Europe). But his brilliance as an economist cannot be disputed. The Communist Manifesto should be a required reading in every Econ 101 class. Maybe then capitalism could become more self-reflective, mindful of the limits of greed.
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2 comments:
Yes, Marx was right about a lot of things, at least when it came to his direct analysis of capitalism's inner workings and problems. (His solutions not so much.)
Tell me what you think of this: Beyond the state-centered nature of his solution to capitalism, the biggest flaw in the Manifesto is the reification of the proletariat. In other words, Hegelianism is wrong, especially when you try to turn classes of people into constructs. Industrialization created working classes in the plural, not a single working class with its own unitary consciousness. Furthermore, while capitalism wrecked the old agrarian class system, it did not reduce the number of classes to just two. (It made several working classES and middle classES). Marx's simplistic formulation of class arose from his need to fit capitalism into a system of Hegelian dualities that does reflect the complexity of modern life.
That said, where do we go from here, with the knowledge that the revolution of the proletariat is a chimera (and a disastrous one at that when put into practice)? In my old age I've become moderate and prefer a controlled brand of capitalism with an ample safety net. Are there really any viable alternatives to capitalism? I'm beginning to think that there are more humane and inhumane versions of capitalism.
Herzog, I completely agree with you that Marxism reified the proleteriats and bourgeoisie(s) into THE proleteriat and THE bourgeoisie. But I am not so sure that Marx was not conscious of this. He admits that there severe divisions among the workers mostly due to nationalism. Austro-Marxists (which would be later adopted by Yugoslav Communists) try to resolve this by arguing that nationalism should be allowed as long as it is socialist in content (while the outer shell, such as state infrastructure, etc) can be national, for the moment.
I think Marx under-estimated the emotional power of nationalism. Nationalism's ability to make people feel emotionally invested in their nation (I mean why do we agree to pay taxes, subsidize health care and welfare for people we do not know) is incredible and it has not been explained. As a self-professed "scientist" Marx tended to look down on people who think emotions to be a powerful force even though he himself recognized the national divisions among the proleteriat. I mean this is why he urges the workers of the world to unite! Because he knows they are not united.
In answering your second question, I completely agree that any sort of social engineering en masse, as it was attempted in the Soviet Union will create horrendous results no matter how good intentions are. But having said this I also think that Communism(s) have scored significant victories in Europe: the trade union movement is entrenched in most of Western Europe with no one ever questioning its power. As a result, European style capitalism has made some serious concessions to the proleteriat(s): just look at EU labor laws, welfare policies. So I am also for a social democratic moderate capitalism, like we have seen in Sweden and Germany (although I am aware that these systems are also under strain).
But what we have in the US is completely out of control and I think we are paying the price for it. I hope we are also learning the lesson Europeans learned almost a century ago.
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