Why write about Marx at all?
Marx appears to have almost zero political and philosophical importance in the contemporary world. Hardly anyone reads him, and not surprisingly. He is a voluminous 19th Century writer who’s work is long, dense, and heavily sarcastic. His work is infused with an ‘inverse Hegelianism,’ with Hegel being one of the most difficult to read philosophers of all time.
He is dead. He is gone. Who reads, or criticises, any other social philosopher-analysts of the 19th Century such as Carlyle, Ruskin, or Spencer?
Maybe some people read Adam Smith from the Century before – but they tend to disregard Smith’s complexity. His moral theory, which is the basis of his other work, is usually ignored and all the focus goes on to the throwaway line about the invisible hand – in which ‘the market’ metaphorically becomes the hand of God. That gets quoted enough to suggest it has some social purpose the rest of his work does not.
Dismissing Marx
Anyway, it is easy to dismiss Marx and it is still done regularly.
People say he is to blame for the communist slaughter. If so, then we dismiss Jesus, Mohammed, capitalism in general and so on. Mass slaughters, dispossession, and slavery follow those movements everywhere.
What people do with a thinker or a system, is not the same as what the thinker thinks. Besides, with experience, we can always ask ourselves, what were the good bits and what led to the slaughter. Indeed, that question might be essential for any thought.
We can dismiss Marx as an atheist and a materialist. Sure, but again so what? Religion in Marx’s time was rarely (not entirely, because you can’t suppress it entirely) a field for spiritual exploration, or for consciousness raising. It was primarily about accepting your place, and obedience to those above you. It was about supporting colonialism and acting as a means of social control.
Even today, much religion is about praising, and gaining, social power. If one reads almost anything by ex-pope Benedict about the saints and thinkers of Christianity, then that is his recurring refrain – ‘this person was good and obeyed Church Authorities’.
Religion, today, is often about being rewarded by money and heaven for condemning others. It is often about turning one’s back on the poor and dispossessed, because they brought it on themselves through sin. It seems to be about buying products from God’s representatives, like preacher authored books, blessed items, wealth and salvation.
Any person with a spiritual drive might feel they had to resist some of contemporary religion’s massive obedience complex, complacency and harshess – but it is much easier and more politically acceptable to criticise Marx.
What do we mean by materialist to begin with? what do we mean by matter or spirit? Not questions people usually bother with at depth, just retreating to what they have been taught. Yet these might be vital questions, which perhaps Marx can help with…. Who knows?
We can be told, triumphantly, that Marx failed. His major optimistic prophecies did not come true, or have not come true, yet. The worker’s revolution did not come, capitalism adapted, the state did not wither away.
However, how many prophecies come true? How many other of Marx’s less optimistic prophecies appear accurate? I will say in passing that more than any other 19th century thinker, of whom I am aware, his work describes what we face now. And this is from a person who also thinks Carlyle, Ruskin and Spencer are worth reading.
Why bother with Marx?
It is easier not to bother with Marx. It is socially acceptable not to bother with Marx. It often seems socially risky to bother with Marx, certainly to praise him. Indeed we might say he has become a whipping boy to support neoliberal and corporate power.
Marx is easy to criticise because he has been made symbolic of all that is bad. Sometimes all you have to do to discredit someone is say they are a Marxist. No need to bother about what they have actually thought. Not only do certain people want to dismiss Marx without having read him, or trying to understand him, they don’t want anyone else to read or try to understand Marx either. Take Jordon Peterson….
If neoliberalism has no challengers then perhaps it can keep on steering its way to the end of the world (literally), and to increasing the fortunes of billionaires at the cost of others, and pretend this is good, or is being done by somebody else.
So one good reason for reading Marx and trying to understand him, is that ‘they‘ really don’t want you to. They will try and smear you for doing so. They will attack you for doing so. It is much easier to go along with the flow and just condemn him unread, or through reading a few lines here and there. That’s much easier.
Why don’t they want you to read him? Well that is what you need to find out, by reading him.
Tags: social theory
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