NIVEDITA MAJUMDAR: Why We’re Marxists

"Maybe the reason young radical thinkers are not impressed by pleas to recognize “ambiguity and contingency” is because what they have seen in their lifetimes is a lesson in some pretty unambiguous facts about how capitalism works.

Even rock-ribbed neoclassical economists are coming around to the view that forty years of stagnant wages might have something to do with the attack on unions; that the decline of the labor movement in turn accelerated the shift to the right in politics; that this shift in turn led to a pretty successful evisceration of what little social support the state gave to the poor; that when the mad rush for short-term profits finally drove the economy into the tank, the state returned the favor by passing off the costs to the public and handed over trillions of dollars to the banks.

There was no contingency or ambiguity in any of this. It was a quite predictable result of a highly successful class war that transferred political power firmly over to elites. This is what capitalism looks like when the class struggle turns ugly. When self-styled progressives preach the gospel of contingency and ambiguity in times like these, is it a surprise that people turn to Marx for a little clarity?"

NB: 'A little clarity'. Marx's contribution to the human conversation was immense; and his analysis of capital a seminal criticism of capitalist modernity. This becomes evident whenever capitalism undergoes one of its periodic crises, and it must be said, the economic and political situation today is extremely dismal. But the ideological components of his system, including historical necessity (as in 'laws' of history), the inevitability of revolution, the use of naturalistic metaphors in political argument (as in 'force is the midwife' of every society 'pregnant' with a new one); and the lack of a phenomenology of violence - these features of his thought do not provide clarity. Warnings about ambiguity and contingency carry weight because the activities and ideological practices of Marxists in power have given rise to grave questions - to put it mildly. In this centenary year of Bolshevism, surely the history of revolutionary regimes should make us think about the distinction between truth and certainty? Find below some contributions to the conversation - DS

Months after its release, Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century is still getting praised in reviews and sitting near the top of bestseller charts. If the invisibility of a system is a marker of its ideological success, this can’t be a good sign for capitalism. It’s no surprise that people are curious about the causes of the injustice that surrounds them. Average workers’ wages in the US have fallen sizably from 2007 to 2012; in the same period, over 90 percent of all new income went to the top 1 percent; while around 46 million Americans live in poverty, the gap between corporate profits and workers’ wages has never been greater. Piketty’s conclusion that capitalism, if left unchecked, generates a concentration of wealth among a tiny minority sits well with this lived experience.
Merit or hard work, the standard justification for inequality, has little to do with our new gilded age.
Though he distances himself from the old man, Piketty’s analyses have been aligned in a certain sense with those of Marx. Not surprisingly, the response to the book has revealed some central misconceptions embedded in critiques of Marxism. Here it becomes clear that invisibility is not the only weapon in the ideological arsenal of capitalism. The first line of right-wing defense is denial, with some variation on the contention that the state of the economy is fine, thank you. There may be inequality, as Scott Winship or Kevin Hasset would argue, but it’s not actually harmful. They are drawing on the ideological conviction that capitalism left to its own devices rewards the meritorious and is beneficial not just for capitalists but for everyone.

Unfortunately for them, Piketty does not simply make a counterclaim; he demonstrates with irrefutable data that the cherished faith in this dual doctrine of capitalism - of the natural and just creation of a meritocracy whose resultant inequality benefits all - is simply false. This is why what Paul Krugman calls the “Piketty panic” sets in, and they move to the second line of defense. Piketty’s naysayers make a claim that is powerful in its aged simplicity: Money doesn’t matter. It is not inequality that generates unhappiness, but a lack of communitarian possibilities. Notice that they don’t question the fact of inequality or even that it might cause unhappiness, but as Megan McArdle insists, “[T]he proportion of this unhappiness due to income inequality is actually relatively small.”

Instead, McArdle contends in her review of Piketty’s book - which she admits to not have read - that what is needed “is the sense that you can plan for a decent life filled with love and joy and friendship, then send your children on to a life at least as secure and well-provisioned as your own.” In a marginally more sophisticated review, Ross Douthat similarly argues that the resurrection of Marx won’t bring much comfort because what is amiss in contemporary capitalist societies is not the lack of economic security, but the erosion of “cultural identity - family and faith, sovereignty and community . . . forms of solidarity that give meaning to life for many people, while offering nothing but money in their place.”

Easy leftist dismissals of such idealistic positions are not necessarily helpful. The reason arguments disavowing the connection between money and happiness have such a lasting appeal is because there is a kernel of truth to them. The realization of human potential and happiness is much more intricately connected with creativity, art, science, myriad cultural practices, and forms of solidarity and community rather than materiality. But here’s the thing - Marx would wholeheartedly agree! The moral power of Marx’s work doesn’t just derive from its systematic demystification of capitalism; it also flows from his insistence that capitalism cannot generate the conditions for human flourishing. He never equated material well-being with happiness, but he knew that there can be no happiness without material well-being.

The crime of capitalism is that it forces the vast majority of the population to remain preoccupied with basic concerns of nutrition, housing, health, and skill acquisition. It leaves little time for fostering the community and creativity that humans crave. 

And the injustice of capitalism is that it does so in an era of plenty.. read more:


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