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MARXIST THEORY.
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Assesses accuracy & relevance of Marx's views on history, economics, class conflict in both his own time & late 20th Cent. No footnotes.... More...
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Paper Abstract:
Assesses accuracy & relevance of Marx's views on history, economics, class conflict in both his own time & late 20th Cent. No footnotes.
Paper Introduction:
This paper will attempt to assess whether Marx’s arguments for a dictatorship of the proletariat in the Communist Manifesto were faulty or not. In attempting for some historical balance, the paper will consider his arguments in light of what was known in his time, not just in terms of modern “20-20 hindsight.”
Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, and the specter of Communism is no longer haunting Europe and the world, it is possible to have a more sober look at socialism in general and at Marx’s ideas. One could hardly have known, or said out loud, during the worst of the Cold War, that Marx was one of the great founders of modern social science, but that is the almost universal opinion of modern scholars, e.g., the cultural historian Leslie White. This had to do not with his particular historical conclusions, but with his methods for analyzing the cause
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As the introduction of new technologyenabled one farmer to do the work of two men, the other farmer, out ofwork, was freed to migrate to a city to work in one of the new factories.This is the origin of the social class that Marx called the "proletariat;"they were the displaced peasant farmers. Social evolution is, in effect, limited by the amount of energyavailable for human use and consumption. Well, they might not have been if Europeansociety had continued along the path that it was on in 1848, but of coursethat society was still evolving, and Marx was no better at predicting thefuture than anyone else. In attempting for some historical balance, the paper will considerhis arguments in light of what was known in his time, not just in terms ofmodern "2 -2 hindsight." Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, and the specter of Communismis no longer haunting Europe and the world, it is possible to have a moresober look at socialism in general and at Marx's ideas. Itmay be that people discovered this gradually, say, by noticing that moreplants grew in spots where they had thrown away seeds in preceding years.In any event, the first agricultural villages were founded roughly 8, B.C., generally in the vicinity of dependable supplies of water, such assprings and rivers, and given the new and reliable food source, the humanpopulation began to grow. All the extant "world religions"--Christianity, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, Buddhism, and their minor relatives--date back to that era. He also pointed out that every social organizationis almost invariably opposed by another devoted to a different idea, andthey each attempt to prevent the other from succeeding. At the risk of great oversimplification, one could say that Hegelapparently epitomized a viewpoint which assumed that progress and evolutionwere driven from the top down, that is, that people would get a new idea,create some sort of social organization to carry it out, and then attemptto do so. This is probably why independent merchant cities, the firstof the "bourgeoisie," evolved during the Middle Ages, and these were ableto generate enough wealth that they could even import some of their foodfrom elsewhere, which allowed their populations to grow beyond the limitsthat would have otherwise been imposed by the local farming economy.However, even these changes were not radical enough to break the inertia ofancient social patterns and social classes. It wasn't really hard to see by the late nineteenth century that thefrustrations and misery of the common people would eventually led to aviolent rebellion if they were not alleviated. Hegel proposed that ideas go through a "dialectical" evolution. Finally, in America as elsewhere, there is a mixed economy:neither purely socialist nor purely free enterprise, but a continuallyshifting pragmatic balance between the two, always aimed at giving thecommon people enough of a share in the goods of society that they willcontinue to be willing to allow the privileged to retain their privileges.It is perhaps a measure of Marx's genius that, at least in America, thewealthy no longer seem to believe that they own their wealth by divineright. 419-432.White, Leslie A. These civilizations grew and spread, with others rising inthe Indus valley of India and in China. In hislater thought, he was able to see that the major economic divisions werebetween primitive society, ancient/medieval (what he calls feudal) society,and modern society, and these are the divisions that Leslie White has builtinto his Science of Culture. Of course, often enough a famine, war, or plague would wipeout a community anyway, but the plan was to try to fight against such apossibility as far as people possibly could. About 1 , years ago, people discovered the trick that if they put aseed into the ground, it would grow into a plant, and if they could waitfor the plants to grow, they would be certain of having enough food. The final step in the Marxist model is to realize that, just as socialstructure is limited by the technological base available to support it, sobeliefs are limited by the social structures that exist. Vol. It has also adopted the kind of free public educationthat the Manifesto calls for. All the accomplishments of the Roman Empire, the Christian Church, andmodern civilization up to the eighteenth century were based on exactly onething: the back of the peasant farmer who grew the food that people in thecities ate, and that could be fed to animals who provided food or work--which is why energy is still measured in units of horsepower. WereMarx's arguments faulty? Ifa man could not find work, he either stole or starved. He was certainly right about the opposinginterests of the bourgeoisie and the proletariat--this is actually stillreflected in the opposing policies of liberal Democrats and conservativeRepublicans in America--but he did not foresee how this tension would beresolved. He wanted to know why people would come up with thisidea, and not that one. About 5, years ago, apparently because of climate changes andgeneral population growth, the first of the great civilizations had beenfounded, in Egypt and Mesopotamia, and occupations had become specializedenough that writing had been invented, probably at first for keepinginventories. Burning the wood of a tree in a steam engine produces far moreenergy, and in a far more concentrated form, than one can get from horses;and using uranium in a nuclear reactor to produce electricity is merely arefinement of this basic fact. Ed. After the publication of Morgan's book, he was ableto think in much broader terms, as Leslie White has brought out. Marx and Engelstried to find precise relationships between ancient, medieval, and modernideologies, but this aspect of their thinking did not work out, since theywere still working essentially with societies all within the sametechnological/social stage. During themedieval era, there had been some changes; windmills and water-driven millswere introducing enough technological change to shift the demographics tosome degree. The Science of Culture: A Study of Man and Civilization. Greco-Roman civilization, thetraditional "ancient" world, actually rose on the basis of thousands ofyears of previous civilization around the Mediterranean Ocean, but, becausethere was a "dark age" between approximately the years 12 and 8 B.C.,the writings of the earlier civilizations were lost until archaeologistsrediscovered them in the late nineteenth century. This had to do not with his particular historicalconclusions, but with his methods for analyzing the causes of socialphenomena. When the displaced peasants migrated to the cities to look for work,there was no one who took responsibility for their safety and survival. One could hardlyhave known, or said out loud, during the worst of the Cold War, that Marxwas one of the great founders of modern social science, but that is thealmost universal opinion of modern scholars, e.g., the cultural historianLeslie White. That is, after all, whathad happened in France, when the lumpenproletariat tore down the Bastillewith their bare hands and went on to behead most of the nobility andintellectuals of France. (He really had not worked allthis out in detail when the Communist Manifesto was written, since much ofit depended on his reading of Lewis Henry Morgan's Ancient Society, whichwasn't published until 1859, the same year as Darwin's The Origin ofSpecies, but his thinking was heading in this direction and looking forevidence to bolster itself.) At the time the Communist Manifesto was written, Marx was stillthinking in terms of ancient, medieval, and modern society, and trying tosee how they differed. Leslie White has pointed out that for thispurpose, only the three stages of hunting-based, agriculture-based, andengine-based technological societies are different enough to havecompletely different belief systems. For example, America in 1914, by Constitutional amendment, adoptedprecisely the kind of graduated income tax that is called for in theCommunist Manifesto. Most rational humanbeings will take their chances on getting caught stealing rather thanpassively starve, of course; so this was the origin of the underclass whomMarx and Engels called the lumpenproletariat, and is now in America usuallycalled the welfare class. What Marx proposed, based on his reading of history, and especially onwhat was just starting to be known of prehistory, was that it is theeconomic or technological basis of a society that is the independentvariable. 54 vols. Marx was arguing against "idealism," as exemplified in the work ofHegel. Mortimer Adler and others. What happened was that the "ruling class" inAmerica and other industrialized countries gradually realized that they hadto take on social responsibility for the ordinary people, or they wouldeventually be beheaded also. As far as isknown from study of such societies as they have existed in recentcenturies, they would have had only a class of "shamans," one per band orperhaps two or more bands, who were the complete intellectual class all inone person: doctor, lawyer, teacher, poet, scientist, engineer--all thesemodern occupations ultimately would reach back to this same, single"medicine man." Only in agriculture-based civilizations, which could produce enoughextra food to support a small, non-productive ruling class, could there bea class of professional priests who, in collaboration with the hierarchicalgovernment, would administer the religious system of temples, schools,annual liturgies, and so on. In otherwords, evolution is driven from the bottom up, not from the top down. The Communist Manifesto. 5 of Great Books of the Western World. New York: Grove Press, 1949. Marx also arrived at the insight which is central to histhought, and which is the actual basis for regarding him as a founder ofmodern social science: that Hegel had everything upside-down. Marx liked this pattern, since it provided an analytical methodology,but he applied it at the social level, so that for Marx a "thesis" was asocial movement. It has also, in an American way, carried outdemand number 9: agriculture and manufacturing have been combined, since inAmerica almost all food is grown by the giant corporations or agriculturalcollectives. Of course, one can observe people behaving in just this way, butMarx felt that this analysis did not go deep enough to explain the overallpatterns of history. Finally, now, what is the answer to the original question? In primitive society, at what anthropologists now call the "huntingand gathering" stage, the energy available to humans was limited to thegame they could catch by hunting and the fruits and vegetables they couldgather from wild plants. This paper will attempt to assess whether Marx's arguments for adictatorship of the proletariat in the Communist Manifesto were faulty ornot. That was the situation that Marx and Engels werelooking at when the Communist Manifesto was written. As a result, the capitalists of America and Europe began gradually,grudgingly, and gracelessly to adopt the kinds of Socialist reforms thatwere needed to defuse social tensions enough to at least prevent civil war. Therejust wasn't enough food available to support more people than that. In the Communist Manifesto Marx and Engels talk about the fact that asthe new system of capitalism and technological production broke thepeasant's ties with the land, it also broke his ties with the traditionalruling class, and these were not replaced with something equivalentlyvaluable. Chicago: Encyclopedia Britannica, 1952. This aspect of contemporary Marxist thought is probably a little toospecialized to be gone into in detail here, but perhaps it will suffice tosay that a hunting-and-gathering society could not have supported a classof priests who did not help find food for everyone else. In medieval/feudal society, obligations went both ways: thepeasant farmer could not leave his farm, but he also could not be forced toleave it; the peasant had to pay taxes, but the nobility had to providesecurity against invaders, outlaws, and criminals; if there was a droughtor a famine, the nobility had to provide enough food from their storedwealth to carry the peasants through it, else they would lose their entireeconomic base. Up until theindustrial revolution, somewhere between 8 and 9 percent of thepopulation everywhere had to be farmers. During this phase of human existence, whichlasted until roughly 1 , years ago, the human population remained quitesmall, probably less than a million throughout the entire world. Thatis, an idea, a "thesis," will call up an opposing idea, an "antithesis;"the argument between these two will lead to a compromise or conclusion, a"synthesis." This last then functions as a new thesis, and the processcontinues. As Leslie White emphasize, it was only with the invention of the"engine," meaning a device that turns inanimate fuel directly into usableenergy, that the economic basis of human society changed. Cities, scholars, churches,ruling classes, constituted only the 1 to 2 percent of the populationthat could be supported by the extra food the farmers could grow to supportthem. They are the superstructures that "rationalize"the social relationships and social structure of agriculture-basedcivilizations. Works CitedMarx, Karl, and Friedrich Engels. However, they arecontinuing to evolve. Since such civilizations no longer exist, and the presentcivilization, based on the exploitation of inanimate fuels, is stillevolving, one must presume that the ideological structures that couldrationalize it are still evolving as well, and obviously with a great lag.From this viewpoint, as Leslie White implies, it should not be toosurprising that Christian churches in America do not function veryefficiently as satisfying belief and social systems.
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