In general, Marx had not paid sufficient attention to the irrational sides of human life. He himself was a passionate man, and through literature he had obtained great knowledge about the furthest depths of the soul. But when he spoke about the future, in which the workers’ movement would march victoriously forward, it was as if he ignored these insights. People would then act entirely based on their social position. Workers would act as workers, and not also as German or French, Catholics, Protestants, or atheists.
Sexuality, and erotic passion in general, was another field where Marx did not have much to say. People would surely devote themselves to the pleasures and torments of love in another kind of society as well, but Marx did not utter a word about this. Sigmund Freud took up the question of communism in love in his book on the unpleasantness of culture. Even in a country such as the Soviet Union, sexual relations had to remain ‘the source of the strongest dislike in the most violent hostility among men who in other respects are on an equal footing’, he wrote.48 This would hold true even if the Soviet Union had developed into the ideal society it never achieved.
As regards the position of woman, Marx was conspicuously silent. He certainly imagined that woman would be liberated as women in a future classless society. But when it came to concrete analyses, he most often forgot the oppression they lived under. Even where concrete things such as women’s place in industry were concerned, he displayed a noteworthy thoughtlessness. Only here and there – such as in the case of the Paris Commune of 1871 – could he call attention to women’s efforts.
Here, his friend Engels was more observant. It was he who wrote The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State, a classic in the genre, in 1884. Even earlier August Bebel, the leading name of German Social Democrats, had written a book in which women were entirely in focus: Woman Under Socialism (1879).49
Soon enough, women would play a prominent role in the movement that in many respects originated with Karl Marx. His daughter Eleanor is one example among many; Clara Zetkin is another. Among other things, Zetkin wrote a book about the situation of women factory workers that attracted a great deal of attention, and she was the one who took the initiative for International Women’s Day in 1910. It was thus from the beginning a completely socialist initiative, but 8 March would gradually come to be celebrated by others as well.50
Neither Lenin nor others were unfamiliar with the fact that the idea of a ruling party elite was foreign to Marx. But does that mean that Lenin’s great project had nothing to do with Marx?
That would be a hasty conclusion. Marx was never in doubt about the dominant role of the workers in every workers’ movement. But where did he find himself? He was the one who developed the theory of capitalist society and its internal contradictions. It was thus also he who could determine what was possible to do, and what was futile or dangerous.
During certain periods, he was a man of compromise who only cautiously attempted to win a hearing for his own interpretation. But as soon as the contradictions sharpened, he did not hesitate to polemicize, harshly and mercilessly, with those who thought otherwise. He could be ruthless in his polemics against those with opposing opinions, regardless of their background. He was equally as sharp with the journeyman tailor Weitling as he was with the nobleman Bakunin. Proudhon the typographer was spared no more than Vogt the professor. Marx was certain that he was the one who possessed the best theory of society. This resoluteness, which not infrequently intensified into irreconcilability, can seem reminiscent of Lenin’s manner of acting. Theory pointed out one single path, and it was to be followed.
This unwillingness to compromise of course had another side: the magnificence of the project. The essential thing for Marx was the social revolution – that is, the transformation of the fundamental conditions of society. The political seizure of power was only a means, which he could imagine in various ways. In contrast to Marx, Lenin was a pure politician; he was also someone who actually gained power, something Marx completely lacked. But Lenin soon found that this power was limited as well. The Russian bureaucracy lived on, and he found no way of abolishing the dictatorship of the proletariat. In his Testament, he warned his closest collaborators about Stalin, but even on this point his words had no influence. Stalin became his successor, burying him in a mausoleum and – even more effectively – within a doctrine called Leninism over which Stalin alone reigned. What then took place had no connection with Karl Marx, who in fact became an increasingly censored author in the country that claimed it was carrying his work forward.
Marx’s influence remained quite great in the social democratic parties that remained in the Second International. But even there, it concerned a closed Marxism, even if it was of a Kautskyan vintage. The question of what this Marxism meant for practical politics is a subject of discussion we will not go into here. It is telling that this strain thinned out in party programme after party programme. This was so even in Germany; the last remnants disappeared in the programme the German Social Democrats adopted at Bad Godesberg in 1959.
After the First World War, it was Lenin and his Communist International that set the norm for Marxism. Rosa Luxemburg became the first deviationist, but quickly disappeared from the scene. Her words have long been forgotten: ‘Far from being a sum of ready-made prescriptions which have only to be applied, the practical realization of socialism as an economic, social and juridical system is something which lies completely hidden in the mists of the future.’51
Antonio Gramsci was essentially also a deviationist, but his notes from prison reached the world posthumously. It was only then that they could inspire freethinkers in opposition to Soviet dogmatism.
An important part of the anti-Soviet tradition of thought reaches back to Marx’s own writings, both Capital or such things as were yet unpublished. This is how the young Marx, the author of the Manuscripts, was discovered, and also how the Grundrisse came into focus for interpreters of Marx.
It has been a long time since the Soviet Union and its satellites collapsed. At that time, there were many who were glad that Marx too would now definitively be sent off to the past, to be remembered only by historians of the nineteenth century and additionally the occasional nostalgist.
But that is not how it turned out. Marx has maintained his topicality. More than that – in many respects, he has been liberated from the history of Marxism that concealed him behind various dogmatic disguises. Naturally, he will never be completely free of this history – as we have seen, there are things in his own works that anticipated both Kautsky and Lenin. But it is only now, with the perspective of distance, that we can clearly see the relationship between his works and the traditions that invoked him.
The biggest difference lies in the fact that Marx never arrived at any summation of his work, much less any system. He followed a thread, which guided his path through the labyrinth of society. But the map his followers began sketching out as soon as he had died was not his work. He certainly would have liked to have drawn such a map himself. But new questions, new material, and new books continually turned up in his path.
On the other hand, he developed an entire toolbox of critical instruments. The central element in his work, as we have seen, is criticism of political economy and of the ideas and theories, the institutions and cults and myths, that develop out of the system. In fact, this criticism applies to the whole of the capitalist society that Marx lived in and that we still live in – even if on another level.
It is true that he always saw this reality on its way towards dissolution. There was a limit to its conditions of possibility, and on the other side of this limit a new kind of society would be created – a classless society where everyone could freely act as individuals in community with others. The conception of this society – socialist, communist; the terms were fluid – was already lively and strong when Marx became acquainted with the new radicalism of the 1840s, and it continued to be fluid over a large part of the twentieth century. In the Soviet Union,
it was often said that this good society could only be achieved after enormous hardships: the misery was a precondition for a happy future. This was not Marx’s thinking. He did not ignore the risk of bloody conflicts, but he had no conception of any grind that people had to go through in order to attain a better society. Nor was the ambition to ‘create a new human’ his. He dreamed of polytechnical education in the future, through which the gulf between manual and intellectual occupations would be bridged. He probably imagined a school system that would also include the kind of education he himself possessed in such ample measure.
On the other side of the fall of the Soviet Union and China’s development into the most expansive capitalist economy of the twenty-first century, the term ‘Marxism’ itself has lost its topicality. There is no longer a norm to follow or oppose for those who want a way out of the world that has taken shape over the last two decades. So far, the opponents of this new capitalism have assembled under the slogan ‘Another world is possible’. Many different tendencies can gather under this banner: Marxist–Leninists and anarchists, Maoists and feminists, radical Christians and Muslims, environmental activists and anti-militarists.
But one name continually turns up in this new age: Karl Marx. It is no longer Marx the supposed system-builder who attracts people. It is instead the Marx who constantly sought to push deeper into the labyrinths of the age he lived in, the Marx who was never content with the magnificent discoveries he made but who saw new horizons opening over the top of every hill and therefore had to continue on his way.
This Marx is subtle enough to form the basis for precise, philosophically demanding analyses such as the 2004 work by American philosopher Anne Fairchild Pomeroy, Marx and Whitehead. Through a parallel reading of Marx and British philosopher and mathematician Alfred North Whitehead, Pomeroy seeks to show that both, in their own way, sought to overcome the gulf between subjectivism and objectivism – one with the concept of process, the other with the dialectic.52 But Marx is also resolute and direct enough to still inspire topical criticism of capitalism’s latest achievements, the failings of politics, and the genuflection of the contemporary world of ideas before a fetish like the market.
In both cases, it is the Marx of the nineteenth century, not the twentieth, who can attract the people of the twenty-first. Today, the world is globalized in much the same way as it was before 1914. Communications move much more quickly, but this is a degree of difference and not of type. People, messages, and ideas are flung around the globe. Money circulates between continents in a never-ceasing stream, poverty lives side-by-side with wealth, and capital exercises its impersonal power over all and sundry. In this world, Karl Marx lives on.
His path in our present era and our future is not a subject for this book. Here it is the Marx of the nineteenth century that has been in focus. We have followed the winding path through his life and his writings. What is the image of him that ultimately emerges?
For me, it is without a doubt Faust, the restless doctor in his dark study who is constantly seeking to increase his knowledge of the world. Marx certainly struck no deal with the Devil; in his eyes, this potentate is as much an ingredient as God is in the opium of the people called religion. No; Marx allied himself with the working class. He wanted to work for the liberation of the workers; in their liberation, he saw the liberation of all humanity.
He has no unequivocal answer to the question of the path to such liberation: the ballot box, bloody uprisings, or a combination of both. But it is not with his answers that he maintains his contemporaneity. He lives on as the great critic of capitalism. As a critic, he sometimes lets us imagine a positive contrasting picture of human activity, in which solidarity can coexist with freedom, and pleasure with seriousness. It is a possible utopia for our time as well.
Postscript
I have had a number of helpful readers who provided valuable points of view on what I have written. As always, my dear Eva-Maria has been my first reader. Some have closely scrutinized chapter after chapter as I wrote them: Maria Johansen, Per Magnus Johansson, Thomas Karlsohn, David Karlsson, and Per Arne Tjäder. Others took a position on the entire book: Michael Azar, Sten Dahlstedt, Claes Ekenstam, Victoria Fareld, and Edda Manga. Johan Lönnroth read the chapter on Capital (‘The Unknown Masterpiece’). Elena Namli provided valuable information, as has Per Magnus Johansson.
Marx Chronology
1818Karl Marx is born (May 5).
1825The first passenger railroad opens.
1830The July Revolution in France.
1830sBalzac is a success with his novels in a realistic style.
1840The term ‘anarchism’ is coined. Its competitors – liberalism, conservatism, socialism, and communism – are not that much older.
1841Marx finishes his doctoral thesis.
1843Karl Marx and Jenny von Westphalen are married.
1843Marx begins a major work on Hegel, the introduction to which is published after Marx’s death.
1843Karl and Jenny move to Paris.
1844Daughter Jenny (Jennychen) is born.
1844The weavers’ uprising in Silesia.
1844The cooperative movement begins in Rochdale.
1845Marx is deported from Paris.
1845Daughter Laura is born.
1845Marx and Engels write The German Ideology, which remained in manuscript form until 1932.
1847The Bund der Kommunisten (Communist League) forms and adopts the slogan ‘Workers of all countries, unite!’ Marx and Engels are tasked with drawing up a programme. Marx designs the final version, which is called a manifesto.
1847The ten-hour workday is introduced in Great Britain.
1848The Communist Manifesto is published.
1848The February Revolution in Paris.
1848The March Revolution in Berlin.
1848The National Assembly begins to meet in Frankfurt am Main.
1848Marx and Engels publish the Neue Rheinische Zeitung, ‘an organ for democracy’.
1849–55Four of Karl and Jenny’s children die.
1851The Great Exhibition in London’s Crystal Palace.
1852–61Marx writes a long series of articles in the New York Daily Tribune.
1853–56The Crimean War.
1855Daughter Eleanor is born.
1856–57Economic crisis in Europe and the United States.
1857–58Marx writes the Grundrisse (Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy), published posthumously.
1859War between France and Austria.
1859Darwin’s On the Origin of Species is published.
1861–1865The American Civil War.
1861Serfdom is abolished in Russia.
1864The Marx family moves to their own house in London.
1864The International forms. Marx has great significance for the organization.
1864–65Marx draws up the version of the third volume of Capital that Engels revised and published in 1894. During the 1860s and 1870s, Marx writes six different versions of the second volume of Capital, which formed the basis for Engels’s edition in 1885.
1867The first volume of Capital is complete.
1870Engels moves to London.
1870–71The Franco-Prussian War. Germany conquers Alsace and Lorraine. Bismarck’s power increases.
1871The Paris Commune is proclaimed, but is brutally crushed after less than two months.
1874The International dissolves.
1875Germany’s two social democratic parties unite in Gotha.
1875Marx writes Critique of the Gotha Programme.
1876Engels begins writing Anti-Dühring.
1878The Social Democratic Party is banned in Germany.
1880sElectric light bulbs become commonplace.
1881The International Exposition of Electricity in Paris, and in Berlin the following year.
1881Jenny Marx dies (December 2).
1883Jennychen dies (January 11).
1883Karl Marx dies (March 14).
1889The Second
International is founded.
1890sThe term ‘Marxism’ spreads.
1895Engels dies.
Notes
1The Great Project
1.Lankester turns up in Europa, a 1935 novel by the social anthropologist Robert Briffault (p. 234). As a novelist, Briffault was distinguished by having a number of real people speaking almost authentic lines. He knew Lankester personally, and he himself shared the man’s deep fascination with Marx. The quote naturally has no value as source criticism, but says something typical about the view of Marx among a number of the outstanding intellectuals of the time, especially in Great Britain. Lewis S. Feuer, ‘The Friendship of Edwin Ray Lankester and Karl Marx: The Last Episode in Marx’s Intellectual Evolution’, Journal of the History of Ideas 40, no. 4 (1979), deals with the relationship between Lankester and Marx.
2.Jacques Derrida, Spectres de Marx: L’État de la dette, le travail du deuil et la nouvelle Internatio- nale (Paris: Galilée, 1993).
3.Étienne Balibar, La philosophie de Marx (Paris: Éditions La Découverte, 1993). Balibar’s position is interesting; in his youth, he was very close to Louis Althusser. But at the time he published his book on Marx’s philosophy, he had gone in-depth into a field to which Marx himself had not devoted any deeper study, namely nationalism and racism. Together with American sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein, he wrote the epoch-making Étienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, Race, Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities (London: Verso,1991).
4.John Cassidy 1993 in the New Yorker. Similar strains were heard at the same time from American Marxist Marshall Berman: Marshall Berman, Allt som är fast förflyktigas: modernism och modernitet, Swedish translation by Gunnar Sandin (Lund: Arkiv förlag, 1987), p. 266, whose final page reads: ‘All of a sudden, the iconic looks more convincing than the ironic, that classic bearded presence, the atheist as biblical prophet, is back just in time for the millennium.’ On the phenomenon itself, see Randy Martin, On Your Marx: Rethinking Socialism and the Left (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2001), in particular p. 229. Even Indo-British economist and politician Meghnad Desai was ready to talk about Marx’s return at that time; see Meghnad Desai, Marx’s Revenge: The Resurgence of Capitalism and the Death of Statist Socialism (London: Verso, 2002).
A World to Win Page 74