What Can We Learn From Karl Marx?
Adulterated by half a century of Cold War division and great empire rivalry, Karl Marx and Communism have much more to offer than a legacy of authoritarian collapse. While the practical applications of Communist political philosophy are perhaps inaccessible, there is an enduring value that is inherent in the diagnostic tools Communism places at our disposal. Thus, here the understanding of the value of Communism does not concern itself with a tangible political reality, but instead one that uses Communist philosophy as a diagnostic framework. The emphasis of this essay then, will not so heavily concern itself with Marx’s Communist solutions, but instead with the invaluable critique of modern Capitalism that is the foundation of them. The constraints of this paper do not allow analysis to stretch across the entirety of Marx’s critical commentary, and so will direct its study to one of the most primary concerns of Communism: class. With the advent of modern Capitalism, class struggle has divided industrial societies from Marx’s 19th century Germany, to 21st century America. The Communist conception of the disjuncture between those with the power of capital and those without, forged the frustrations of Marx and his contemporaries; Communism became the ideological vehicle expressing the disparity between the common man, the Proletariat, and those with the power of capital, the Bourgeoisie. The intention of this paper is to explore this class distinction, and assess the practical value of a call to revolution, in restoring a more equitable social, political and economic structure. This exploration will first uncover the roots of the Bourgeois class, and provide a deeper understanding of what it is and where it has come from. Secondly, attention must be turned to the Bourgeoisie’s counterpart, the Proletariat; what it is, how it is formed, and what potential Marx sees in it. In understanding each class independently, the truth of the class division that exists still today will come into the light of our understanding. Finally, there must be some analysis in respect to the revolutionary proposals of Marx; and a critical engagement with what revolution means to Marx, the Bourgeoisie, the Proletariat, and to Communism. By papers end what shall be understood is that there does exist a class struggle that defines a division in society, and that revolution is the ideal end to Marx’s Communism, however misunderstood or misguided.
“From the ruins of feudal society” (Marx et al., 2010, p.220) sprouted the modern Bourgeoisie. Before the French Revolution, Feudal Lords and Aristocrats stood as the conventional ruling class. With vast swathes of land under their ownership, this Aristocratic class was able to maintain their control over the means of much of the social, economic and agricultural production that was so important at the time. It was then history that would disrupt this convention, as Marx recognises in the Communist Manifesto; “history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles” (Marx et al., 2010, p.219). As Bourgeois society gained influence and power, liberated by the turn toward industrialisation; it found itself caught in a class struggle, one that inevitably led to revolution. The French Revolution has by many, been characterised as a class struggle, a class revolution, the Capitalist Bourgeoisie challenging the Feudal order of the Aristocratic class (Panitch, 2015). Seizing their opportunity, the Bourgeois movement overthrew their suppressors, and revolutionised society in their image; taking ownership of social production, employment, and wage labour (Marx et al., 2010). It is an important and interesting point put forward by Marx, that the Bourgeoisie then, are a revolutionary class of their own, and continue to revolutionise by establishing their own new class antagonisms and power, “new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones” (Marx et al., 2010, p.220). This adaptive, revolutionary nature of the Bourgeoisie, helps locate the class distinction that still exists today. From closed guilds to manufacturing; manufacturing to steam and machine industry; modern industry to world markets; world markets to globalisation (Panitch, 2015). “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without continually revolutionizing the instruments of production, hence the relations of production, and therefore the whole relations of society” (Marx et al., 2010, p.222). The Bourgeoisie was the outcome of many historical developments of an underclass rising and rallying against its suppressor, it is another product of a history of revolution; but it is also unique and distinct from the ruling classes that make up the lineage of class revolts. Marx was astounded at the marvellous capacity of Bourgeois Capitalism, its wonderment surpassing “Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals” (Marx et al., 2010, p.222). Marx looked on in awe of Capitalism, it was his fear and disgust at its popular bludgeoning however, that was at the core of his analysis of the Bourgeois Capitalist system. In its revolutionary and productive brilliance, Capitalism blunted the individual spirit and life of men; turning the “physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science into its paid wage-labourers” (Marx et al., 2010, p.222). The Bourgeoisie had commodified man, tearing him away from even the family’s “sentimental veil, [reducing] the family relation to a mere money relation” (Marx et al., 2010, p.222). Marx’s attribution of a certain uniqueness to Bourgeois Capitalism, from its preceding ruling classes, is then evident; its sheer productive capacity, its blunt force commodification of man; and perhaps most interestingly in its uprooting of history. “Constant revolutionising of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguishes the Bourgeois epoch from all others” (Marx et al., 2010, p.223). Modern Bourgeois Capitalism moves like no other industrious class before it, it has consumed all nations, positioned its introduction to new nations as a question of continued existence for societies everywhere; become part of the Bourgeoisie or perish. Huge cities, home to factories and factory workers, scattered all over the globe, from the most civilised to the most barbarian of peoples; the Bourgeoisie compel all others to become Bourgeois, leaving nothing but its contrary, the only other great class of the age, the Proletariat.
On this background then we can build an understanding of the Bourgeoisie’s great contrary, the Proletariat, and see the existence of the vast class divide that is everywhere in the modern Capitalist world. The Proletariat, Marx wrote, is the only true revolutionary class; “the other classes decay and finally disappear in the face of modern industry; the proletariat is its special and essential product” (Marx et al., 2010, p.231). The Proletariat too then was born out of the violent uprising of the French Revolution (Jones, 2010), an essential product of the Bourgeoisie, the Proletariat is that which does not find itself a part of the prosperity of the Bourgeois class, and so beginning its life in opposition to the Bourgeoisie. Communism’s “primordial and extra-political force, [is] the Proletariat” (Jones, 2010), seeking to equalise society and give the masses of the working class political and social capital. The Proletarian was the factory worker, the artisan, those who had only their power of labour to sell; someone who was the commodity of the Bourgeois Capitalist machinery; landless, without capital, forced to take part in the system of exchange that allowed them to subsist only, while their efforts drove the prosperity of those above them, the Bourgeoisie (Marx et al., 2010). Robert Von Mohl captured the moral and material condition of the Proletariat, the powerlessness of the worker in Bourgeois society was self-destructive to him. The worker is chained to the material reality of his need for wages and employment, and has no power of operation without the machinery given to him by his employer, he is without this “an absolute nothing” (Sheehan, 1994). The Europe of the 19th century, of which Marx was a part of, was a place of vast class divide, and provided an environment ripe for Communist ideology to develop and thrive. In German cities like Cologne, as much as 30% of the population were receiving state sponsored aid, angry mobs and protests were increasingly common, becoming more and more violent as life became harder for the Proletarians, beggar’s processions walking through the prosperous pockets of towns and cities; it was a time of desperation and dissidents (Sheehan, 1994). There are such accounts of the poor storming the local bakers, demanding they be allowed to buy bread at a price that was fair, a price they could afford. With inflation, rampant and supply of basic necessities in short supply, there took hold the popular belief that there was an obstruction of the concept of what was fair by the Capitalist system of distribution. This was a belief that stipulated “there was a fair price for basic goods, a price determined, not by supply and demand or commercial opportunities, but rather by an individual’s right to just compensation and a community’s right to buy the commodities its members needed to survive” (Sheehan, 1994, p.642). This struck at the heart of what Marx’s Communist philosophy was; that the masses, the community, the Proletariat, must supersede the commercial Bourgeois opportunism that was the driving force of global Bourgeois Capitalism. The Proletariat was united in its moral and psychological characteristics; unbound by ownership of any property, and so with no stake invested in the social order; dependent upon the fragility of wages, state assistance and individual charity; and most importantly, an awareness of the unnecessity of their destitution (Sheehan, 1994). The Proletariat, unlike the lowly classes of history shared in the lament of poverty, and possessed the raw materials of social volatility and classist ill sentiments. These were the ingredients that made the Proletariat Marx’s most revolutionary class, as he wrote; “they have nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy all previous securities for, and insurances of, individual property” (Marx et al., 2010, p.232). To destroy everything that is the Bourgeoisie is to revolutionise, but is such a destructive revolution the answer?
Marx is no doubt heralded as one of the most revolutionary figures of modern history. His rallying against the Bourgeoisie inspired the greatest challenges to the Capitalist order ever seen, and Marx’s Communist doctrine is still informing political systems today. It does not seem possible to deny that Bourgeois Capitalist society has existing within it vast class divides; class divides that can confidently be characterised under the Bourgeois – Proletariat distinction that Marx draws, but what is the solution to this? Marx proposes that “the Proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interests of the immense majority” (Marx et al., 2010, p.232), so how does this movement of the people come to pass? And is Marx’s revolutionary answer the right one? The Bourgeoisie, raised on the back of their Feudal predecessors, ascended not against, but just beneath the surface of the Feudal system. The Bourgeois movement was able to transition from the petty underclass, subject to their oppressor, to the ruling class; able to develop antagonisms and power of their own. The Bourgeois epoch, among its unique qualities has not provided for the ascension of the Proletariat; but as we have discussed already, it has instead forced it downward, downward into pauperism; and here it becomes evident, “that the Bourgeoisie is unfit any longer to be the ruling class” (Marx et al., 2010, p.232). Marx and Communism, take aim at capital and property, the two centres of power for the Bourgeois classes. Marx calls for the removal of private property; a controversial and perhaps drastic requirement. Marx however cleverly notes that the removal of private property is already the reality for nine-tenths of the population; and that the Bourgeoisie rely on the exclusive rights of ownership of private property, “a form of property the necessary conditions for whose existence is the non-existence of any property for the immense majority of society” (Marx et al., 2010, p.237). Speaking to capital, Marx sees that to be a Capitalist is to possess not just a personal, individuated status, but a social one. Capitalism relies on the participation of all members, and finds its value only in the accumulative effects of all parties being indoctrinated into the system. Capital has no inherent value and is, therefore, “not a personal, it is a social power” (Marx et al., 2010, p.236). Marx then moves to suggest the redistribution of all property be achieved by the transition of all property into the hands of the many members of a society. Property then becomes something different, it is property that has a social character, rather than a personal one. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx’s revolutionary fervour can be felt; language that is excitable and at times violent gives the Manifesto a certain edge. It must be said that the contention of the Manifesto is to call the Proletariat to action in “abolishing their own previous mode of appropriation, and thereby also every other previous mode of appropriation” (Marx et al., 2010, p.232) from the Bourgeoisie and beyond. It seems now, after all the world has been through in its development of certain systems, the one central system being Capitalism, evolution is a more appropriate, less destructive revolutionary device than abolition. Marx identifies the essential social nature of Capitalism, and uncovers the immense power of the Proletarian masses in shaping the value and dispersion of capital. There is a communitarian undercurrent that brings together unions, associations, networks of all peoples from across the Proletariat, and inside these relations is the potential to revolutionise through an evolution of Capitalism. Marx’s desire for radical shifts in society are at times blinding, and while this is a well-documented weakness in his work, underneath the call to revolt is a wonderfully adept and poignant criticism of Capitalism; and some foundation for an evolutionary Proletariat to rise to the great challenge of change.
Marx continues to be one of the most influential figures of modernity, and possibly of all history. His work has inspired the rise and fall of communist nations and leaders from Mao Zedong to Lenin, and it was these figures among others who moved to shape the latter half of the 20th century with the vision that Marx had given them. While the drastic revolutionary measures Marx calls upon may not find such successful application, it is the critical eye that Marx uses to look at what modern Capitalism does to humanity that should be his lasting legacy. Our modern world is by no means one where we see equality or fairness for the vast majority of peoples, and it is the social character of Capitalism that Marx sees where the Proletarian masses can come together to find power. It was in the Manifesto that Marx wrote: “This organisation of the Proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually being upset again by the competition between the workers themselves. But it ever rises up again, stronger, firmer, mightier” (Marx et al., 2010, p.230). It is the call to come together that is the most revolutionary force of Karl Marx and of Communism.
References
Hunt, T. (2009). The Frock-Coated Communist: The Revolutionary Life of Friedrich Engels. 1st ed. London: Allen Lane, pp.11-46.
Jones, G. (2010). The Reception of the Manifesto. In: K. Marx and F. Engels, ed., The Communist Manifesto, 1st ed. Camberwell: Penguin.
Marx, K., Engels, F., Jones, G. and Marx, K. (2010). The Communist Manifesto. 1st ed. Camberwell, Vic.: Penguin, pp.219-275.
Panitch, L. (2015). The Two Revolutionary Classes of the Manifesto. In: T. Carver and J. Farr, ed., The Cambridge Companion to The Communist Manifesto, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Saccarelli, E. (2015). The Permanent Revolution in and around the Manifesto. In: T. Carver and J. Farr, ed., The Cambridge Companion to The Communist Manifesto, 1st ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Sheehan, J. (1994). German history, 1770-1866. 1st ed. Oxford: Clarendon Press, pp.637-653.
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