Why Marx Was Right

by Terry Eagleton

  There is, of course, a small minority of people known as pacifists who reject violence altogether. Their courage and firmness of principle, often in the teeth of public revilement, are much to be admired. But pacifists are not just people who abhor violence. Almost everyone does that, with the exception of a thin sprinkling of sadists and psychopaths. For pacifism to be worth arguing with, it must be more than some pious declaration that war is disgusting. Cases with which almost everyone would agree are boring, however sound they may be. The only pacifist worth arguing with is one who rejects violence absolutely. And that means rejecting not just wars or revolutions, but refusing to tap an escaped murderer smartly over the skull, enough to stun but not kill him, when he is about to turn his machine gun on a classroom of small children. Anyone who was in a situation to do this and failed to do so would have a lot of explaining to do at the next meeting of the PTA. In any strict sense of the word, pacifism is grossly immoral. Almost everyone agrees with the need to use violence in extreme and exceptional circumstances. The United Nations Charter permits armed resistance to an occupying power. It is just that any such aggression has to be hedged round with some severe qualifications. It must be primarily defensive, it must be the last resort after all else has been tried and failed, it must be the only means to undo some major evil, it must be proportionate, it must have a reasonable chance of success, it should not involve the slaughter of innocent civilians and so on.

  In its brief but bloody career, Marxism has involved a hideous amount of violence. Both Stalin and Mao Zedong were mass murderers on an almost unimaginable scale. Yet very few Marxists today, as we have seen already, would seek to defend these horrific crimes, whereas many non-Marxists would defend, say, the destruction of Dresden or Hiroshima. I have already argued that Marxists have offered far more persuasive explanations of how the atrocities of men like Stalin came about, and thus how they can be prevented from happening again, than any other school of thought. But what of the crimes of capitalism? What of the atrocious bloodbath known as the First World War, in which the clash of imperial nations hungry for territory sent working-class soldiers to a futile death? The history of capitalism is among other things a story of global warfare, colonial exploitation, genocide and avoidable famines. If a distorted version of Marxism gave birth to the Stalinist state, an extreme mutation of capitalism produced the fascist one. If a million men and women died in the Great Irish Famine of the 1840s, it was to a large extent because the British government of the day insisted on observing the laws of the free market in its lamentable relief policy. We have seen that Marx writes with scarcely suppressed outrage in Capital of the bloody, protracted process by which the English peasantry were driven from the land. It is this history of violent expropriation which lies beneath the tranquility of the English rural landscape. Compared to this horrendous episode, one which stretched over a lengthy period of time, an event like the Cuban revolution was a tea party.

  For Marxists, antagonism is built into the very nature of capitalism. This is true not only of the class conflict it involves, but of the wars to which it gives rise, as capitalist nations clash over global resources or spheres of imperial influence. By contrast, one of the most urgent goals of the international socialist movement has been peace. When the

  Bolsheviks came to power, they withdrew Russia from the carnage of the First World War. Socialists, with their hatred of militarism and chauvinism, have played a major role in most peace movements throughout modern history. The working-class movement has not been about violence, but about putting an end to it.

  Marxists have also been traditionally hostile to what they call ''adventurism,'' by which they mean recklessly throwing a small band of revolutionaries against the colossal forces of the state. The Bolshevik revolution was made not by a secret coterie of conspirators but by individuals openly elected in the popular, representative institutions known as soviets. Marx set his face resolutely against mock-heroic uprisings by grim-faced militants brandishing pitchforks against tanks. In his view, successful revolution required certain material preconditions. It is not just a question of a steely will and a hefty dose of courage. You are obviously likely to fare much better in the midst of a major crisis in which the governing class is weak and divided, and socialist forces are robust and well-organised, than when the government is buoyant and the opposition is timorous and fragmented. In this sense, there is a relation between Marx's materialism—his insistence on analyzing the material forces at work in society—and the question of revolutionary violence.

  Most working-class protest in Britain, from the Chartists to the hunger marches of the 1930s, has been peaceful. On the whole, working-class movements have resorted to violence only when provoked, or at times of compelling need, or when peaceful tactics have clearly failed. Much the same was true of the Suffragettes. The reluctance of working people to shed blood has contrasted tellingly with the readiness of their masters to wield the lash and the gun. Nor have they had at their disposal anything like the formidable military resources of the capitalist state. In many parts of the world today, a repressive state, prepared to roll out its weapons against peaceable strikers and demonstrators, has become a commonplace. As the German philosopher Walter Benjamin wrote, revolution is not a runaway train; it is the application of the emergency brake. It is capitalism which is out of control, driven as it is by the anarchy of market forces, and socialism which attempts to reassert some collective mastery over this rampaging beast.

  If socialist revolutions have generally involved violence, it is largely because propertied classes will rarely surrender their privileges without a struggle. Even so, there are reasonable grounds to hope that such use of force can be kept to a minimum. This is because a revolution for Marxism is not the same thing as a coup d'etat, or an outbreak of spontaneous disaffection. Revolutions are not just attempts to bring down the state. A right-wing military coup might do that, but it is not what Marxists regard as a revolution. In the fullest sense, revolutions come about only when one social class overthrows the rule of another and replaces it with its own power.

  In the case of socialist revolution, this means that the organised working class, along with its various allies, take over from the bourgeoisie, or capitalist middle class. But Marx regarded the working class as by far the largest class in capitalist society. So we are speaking here of the actions of a majority, not of a small bunch of rebels. Since socialism is about popular self-government, nobody can make a socialist revolution on your behalf, just as nobody can become an expert poker player on your behalf. As G. K. Chesterton writes, such popular self-determination is ''a thing analogous to writing one's own love letters or blowing one's own nose. These are things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly.''2 My valet may be a great deal more dexterous at blowing my nose than I am myself, but it befits my dignity that I do it myself, or (if I am Prince Charles) at least every now and then. Revolution cannot be handed down to you by a tight-knit vanguard of conspirators. Nor, as Lenin insisted, can it be carried abroad and imposed at the point of a bayonet, as Stalin did in eastern Europe. You have to be actively involved in the making of it yourself, unlike the kind of artist who instructs his assistants to go off and pickle a shark in his name. (No doubt the same will soon be happening with novelists.) Only then will those who were once relatively powerless have the experience, know-how and self-assurance to go on to remake society as a whole. Socialist revolutions can only be democratic ones. It is the ruling class which is the undemocratic minority. And the large masses of people that such insurrections must involve by their very nature are their surest bulwark against excessive force. In this sense, revolutions which are likely to be successful are also likely to be the least violent.

  This is not to say that revolutions may not provoke a bloody backlash from panic-stricken governments prepared to unleash terror against them. But even autocratic states have to rely on a certain amount of passive consent from those they govern, however grudging
and provisional. You cannot adequately govern a nation which is not only in a permanent state of disaffection, but which denies any shred of credibility to your rule. You can imprison some of the people some of the time, but not all of the people all of the time. It is possible for such discredited states to hang on for quite long periods. Think, for example, of the current regimes in Burma or Zimbabwe. In the end, however, it can become clear even to tyrants that the writing is on the wall. However cruel and murderous the apartheid system of South Africa was, it eventually came to recognize that it could no longer carry on. The same can be said of the dictatorships of Poland, East Germany, Romania and other Soviet-controlled nations at the end of the 1980s. It is also true of many Ulster Unionists today, who after years of bloodshed have been forced to recognize that their exclusion of Catholic citizens is simply no longer viable.

  Why, though, do Marxists look to revolution rather than to parliamentary democracy and social reform? The answer is that they do not, or at least not entirely. Only so-called ultra-leftists do this.3 One of the first decrees of the Bolsheviks when they came to power in Russia was to abolish the death penalty. Being a reformist or a revolutionary is not like supporting either Everton or Arsenal. Most revolutionaries are also champions of reform. Not any old reform, and not reformism as a political panacea; but revolutionaries expect socialist change to come all in a rush no more than feudal or capitalist change did. Where they differ from reformists proper is not, say, in refusing to fight against hospital closures because they distract attention from the all-important Revolution. It is rather that they view such reforms in a longer, more radical perspective. Reform is vital; but sooner or later you will hit a point where the system refuses to give way, and for Marxism this is known as the social relations of production. Or, in less politely technical language, a dominant class which controls the material resources and is markedly reluctant to hand them over. It is only then that a decisive choice between reform and revolution looms up. In the end, as the socialist historian R. H. Tawney remarked, you can peel an onion layer by layer, but you can't skin a tiger claw by claw. Peeling an onion, however, makes reform sound rather too easy. Most of the reforms we now regard as precious features of liberal society—universal suffrage, free universal education, freedom of the press, trade unions and so on—were won by popular struggle in the teeth of ferocious ruling-class resistance.

  Nor do revolutionaries necessarily reject parliamentary democracy. If it can contribute to their goals, so much the better. Marxists, however, have reservations about parliamentary democracy—not because it is democratic, but because it is not democratic enough. Parliaments are institutions to which ordinary people are persuaded to permanently delegate their power, and over which they have very little control. Revolution is generally thought to be the opposite of democracy, as the work of sinister underground minorities out to subvert the will of the majority. In fact, as a process by which men and women assume power over their own existence through popular councils and assemblies, it is a great deal more democratic than anything on offer at the moment. The Bolsheviks had an impressive record of open controversy within their ranks, and the idea that they should rule the country as the only political party was no part of their original programme. Besides, as we shall see later, parliaments are part of a state which is in business, by and large, to ensure the sovereignty of capital over labour. This is not just the opinion of Marxists. As one seventeenth-century commentator wrote, the English parliament is the "bulwark of property.''4 In the end, so Marx claims, parliament or the state represents not so much the common people as the interests of private property. Cicero, as we have seen, heartily agreed. No parliament in a capitalist order would dare to confront the awesome power of such vested interests. If it threatened to interfere with them too radically, it would quickly be shown the door. It would be odd, then, for socialists to regard such debating chambers as a vital means of promoting their cause, rather than as one means among many.

  Marx himself seems to have believed that in countries like England, Holland and the United States, socialists might achieve their goals by peaceful means. He did not dismiss parliament or social reform. He also thought that a socialist party could assume power only with the support of a majority of the working class. He was an enthusiastic champion of reformist organs such as working-class political parties, trade unions, cultural associations and political newspapers. He also spoke out for specific reformist measures such as the extension of the franchise and the shortening of the working day. In fact at one point he considered rather optimistically that universal suffrage would itself undermine capitalist rule. His collaborator Friedrich Engels also attached a good deal of importance to peaceful social change, and looked forward to a nonviolent revolution.

  One of the problems with socialist revolutions is that they are most likely to break out in places where they are hardest to sustain. Lenin noted this irony in the case of the Bolshevik uprising. Men and women who are cruelly oppressed and semistarving may feel they have nothing to lose in making a revolution. On the other hand, as we have seen, the backward social conditions which drive them to revolt are the worst possible place to begin to build socialism. It may be easier in these conditions to overthrow the state, but you do not have to hand the resources that would allow you to build a viable alternative. People who feel content with their condition are not likely to launch revolutions. But neither are people who feel bereft of hope. The bad news for socialists is that men and women will be extremely reluctant to transform their situation as long as there is still something in that situation for them.

  Marxists are sometimes taunted with the supposed political apathy of the working class. Ordinary people may well be indifferent to the day-to-day politics of a state which they feel is indifferent to them. Once it tries to close their hospitals, shift their factory to the west of Ireland or plant an airport in their back gardens, however, they are likely to be stirred into action. It is also worth emphasizing that apathy of a kind may be entirely rational. As long as a social system can still yield its citizens some meagre gratification, it is not unreasonable for them to stick with what they have, rather than take a perilous leap into an unknowable future. Conservatism of this kind is not to be scoffed at.

  In any case, most people are too preoccupied with keeping themselves afloat to bother with visions of the future. Social disruption, understandably enough, is not something most men and women are eager to embrace. They will certainly not embrace it just because socialism sounds like a good idea. It is when the deprivations of the status quo begin to outweigh the drawbacks of radical change that a leap into the future begins to seem a reasonable proposition. Revolutions tend to break out when almost any alternative seems preferable to the present. In that situation, not to rebel would be irrational. Capitalism cannot complain when, having appealed for centuries to the supremacy of self-interest, its hirelings recognize that their collective self-interest lies in trying something different for a change.

  Reform and social democracy can certainly buy off revolution. Marx himself lived long enough to witness the beginnings of this process in Victorian Britain, but not long enough to register its full impact. If a class-society can throw its minions enough scraps and leavings, it is probably safe for the time being. Once it fails to do so, it is very likely (though by no means inevitable) that those on the losing end will seek to take it over. Why should they not? How could anything be worse than no scraps or leavings at all? At this point, placing your bets on an alternative future becomes an eminently rational decision. And though reason in human beings does not go all the way down, it is robust enough to know when abandoning the present for the future is almost certain to be to its advantage.

  Those who ask who is going to bring capitalism low tend to forget that in one sense this is unnecessary. Capitalism is perfectly capable of collapsing under its own contradictions without even the slightest shove from its opponents. In fact, it came fairly near to doing so just a few years ago
. The result of a wholesale implosion of the system, however, is more likely to be barbarism than socialism, if there is no organised political force at hand to offer an alternative. One urgent reason why we need such organisation, then, is that in the event of an almighty crisis of capitalism, fewer people are likely to get hurt, and a new system of benefit to all may be plucked from the ruins.

  NINE

  Marxism believes in an all-powerful state. Having abolished private property, socialist revolutionaries will rule by means of a despotic power, and that power will put an end to individual freedom. This has happened wherever Marxism has been put into practice; there is no reason to expect that things would be different in the future. It is part of the logic of Marxism that the people give way to the party, the party gives way to the state, and the state to a monstrous dictator. Liberal democracy may not be perfect, but it is infinitely preferable to being locked in a psychiatric hospital for daring to criticize a savagely authoritarian government.

  M arx was an implacable opponent of the state. In fact, he famously looked forward to a time when it would wither away. His critics might find this hope absurdly utopian, but they cannot convict him at the same time of a zeal for despotic government.

  He was not, as it happens, being absurdly utopian. What Marx hoped would wither away in communist society was not the state in the sense of a central administration. Any complex modern culture would require this. In fact, Marx writes in the third volume of Capital, with this point in mind, of ''common activities arising from the nature of all communities.'' The state as an administrative body would live on. It is the state as an instrument of violence that Marx hopes to see the back of. As he puts it in the Communist Manifesto, public power under communism would lose its political character. Against the anarchists of his day, Marx insists that only in this sense would the state vanish from view. What had to go was a particular kind of power, one that underpinned the rule of a dominant social class over the rest of society. National parks and driving test centres would remain.