For a century, Marx divided opinion to such an extent that people went to war, killed and betrayed to bring what they believed were his ideas to life, while others, equally determined, went to war, murdered and plotted to prevent what they saw as Marxism ever happening. To his supporters, he invited the devotion of a Mohammed or Jesus Christ, a leader who would deliver them from the evils of oppression. To his opponents, he was the devil incarnate, to be blamed for everything from the collapse of house prices to the atrocities of the gulags. All this may well have surprised Marx himself who, on hearing a new French party declare itself to be Marxist, commented that ‘I, at least, am not a Marxist’.
Marxism was the creation of two men, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, but as Engels himself generously acknowledged after Marx’s death in 1883: ‘Marx was a genius; we others were at best talented. Without him the theory would not be by far what it is today. It therefore rightly bears his name.’
Although both men were deeply aware of the political consequences of their ideas, they believed that what they created was a startling new scientific theory – a new way of looking at the world based on evidence. It was this new theory that would give revolutionaries the tools for creating a new world. That was why, even though the main thrust of their ideas was summarised briefly in the famous Manifesto of the Communist Party of 1848, Marx laboured in the British Library for decades producing his great work Das Kapital, in which he examined the evidence in detail and propounded his theory. The changes that would come were nothing to do with morals and ideals, which are as changeable as fashion, Marx argued, but the inevitable outcome of natural processes.
Marx was a materialist – that is, he argued that the mind doesn’t exist independently of matter, and that the material world, the world of matter, shapes human thought. For Marx, there is no such thing as an ideal above and beyond the material world. Thus human nature, ideals and beliefs are always shaped by the circumstances in which they are formed.
The impetus for Marx’s writing came from the very visible suffering of the working class in England and elsewhere. When he arrived in England from Germany, Marx picked up on what Eric Hobsbawm describes as ‘the universal discontent of men who felt themselves hungry in a society reeking with wealth, enslaved in a country which prided itself on its freedom, seeking bread and hope and receiving in return stones and despair’. He was deeply moved by Engels’ vivid portrait of the suffering of labourers in Manchester in his 1845 book The Condition of the Working Class in England. It became their joint mission to explain how this situation had arisen and how it might be changed.
The central thesis of Marx’s ideas was that lives and social relationships are driven not by ideals or beliefs or individual ideas but by economics. Indeed, he argued that ideals and beliefs are entirely shaped by economics. Studying history revealed it as a constant struggle between classes of people with conflicting economic interests, a theory Marx called ‘historical materialism’. In the feudal era, for instance, the barons wanted to get the most out of the serfs in terms of labour, and the serfs wanted to get the most out of the barons. So conflict was inevitable, sometimes personal, sometimes class-driven as with the Peasants’ Revolt of 1381. As feudalism gave way to capitalism, so the focus of the conflict shifted to the industrial capitalist class and the industrial working class, or rather the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.
Marx argued that most ideas are class ideas, and in particular the ideas of the dominant class at each moment in history. It was, for instance, the rise of the merchant middle class that led to the challenging of feudal restrictions on freedom of trade and a demand for freedom of action. In Marx’s own time, it was the ideas of the industrial capitalist class that were in the ascendant. In the Communist Manifesto, he and Engels asserted that the state under capitalism is ‘a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie’. You could look at everything in terms of ‘production’, they asserted, and ideas are simply ‘mental production’. ‘The class which has the means of material production at its disposal,’ they wrote, ‘has control at the same time over the means of mental production.’
Marx shifted Rousseau’s famous assertion that ‘man is born free yet everywhere is in chains’ by talking of alienation. People, he argued, may appear to be free in their work, but in reality are chained, because they are alienated from themselves. With no control over what they do, they become automatons, unable to fulfil their human potential. Workers are often unaware that they are alienated because of the prevailing beliefs in society – beliefs, for instance, about human nature, which, of course, serve the interests of the dominant class. Organised religion is a perfect example. ‘Religion,’ Marx famously stated, ‘is the opiate of the people.’ Nowadays, a prevailing belief might be that we are all ultimately selfish, which keeps us forever striving to better our material circumstances, making us both eager labourers and insatiable consumers.
Perhaps the crucial part of Marx’s theory, though, was the idea that changing economic relationships drive revolutions at certain points in history that completely alter the power balance between the classes. Just as the origins of the modern world lay in the revolutionary shift from feudalism to capitalism, so the economic instability and class conflict inherent in the modern capitalist world would inevitably result in revolution and a final shift to communism, in which private property would vanish and everything would be held in common. In this future state, people would no longer be alienated from themselves and would at last be able to fulfil their human potential.
Although Marx regarded the downfall of capitalism and its replacement with communism as something that must happen, his purpose was not simply to describe the historical process. He believed that once people understood how history works, they could begin to take hold of it and direct it in a way that was good for all.
Marx’s ideas caught the mood of the times, and revolutionaries and working-class movements across Europe took them up with a passion. What had seemed just personal or local grievances suddenly had a universal explanation. It was a wonderful and exciting revelation. At last people felt that they understood what was going on, and what’s more they knew what they had to do to change it. In 1864, activists from all over Europe met with a common purpose at the Working Men’s International Association, later called the First International, and the term Marxism was used for the first time.
Interestingly, though, the places where Marx’s ideas were ultimately taken up with the most enthusiasm were Russia and China, neither of which fitted his picture of the industrial society on the brink of collapse. Both were still dominated by their rural peasantry, who were enslaved in a far more tangible way than the wage slaves in the factories. So first Lenin and then Mao ‘adapted’ Marxism to their own circumstances. Lenin, for instance, argued that the proletariat can be led to the right frame of mind for change – revolutionary consciousness – by a vanguard of professional revolutionaries. If these professionals overthrow the government and establish a dictatorship of the proletariat, they can educate the masses and leapfrog Marx’s stages to bring on the bright communist future.
Of course, the disastrous cost of these kinds of argument is written in the blood of millions across the twentieth century. The purges of Stalin and the atrocities of Maoism, followed by the collapse of the Soviet Union and the gradual economic opening of China, seemed the ultimate proof of Marxism’s failure. Marx’s critics gleefully announced the demise of the most tragically wrong idea in human history. Yet this could be a mistake.
Although Marxism is now a platform for political action for only a tiny minority of people in the West, Marx’s analysis of history has not necessarily been disproved. Marx might argue that neither China nor Russia, nor for that matter Cuba, fitted his picture of the industrial proletariat ready for change. All were still stuck in what could be described as a feudal state when their communist revolutions took place, so the revolution was directed against feudalism, and so maybe their current capitali
st (or pseudo-capitalist) phase is inevitable. Even now, China’s population is predominantly rural.
So, Marx might argue, the conditions for the lasting communist revolution around the world have simply not yet been reached. Certainly a world in which a fifth of the population are living in what the World Bank calls ‘extreme poverty’ and a further quarter are living in what is euphemistically called ‘moderate poverty’ is far from a glowing endorsement of the triumph of capitalism. The recent banking crisis and all-too-obvious flaws in the world financial system call capitalism even more into question.
Whatever the political future of Marx’s ideas, they have seeped permanently into our consciousness. We take it as a given that our ideas and culture are shaped by the times. Although the Marxist academic with his dismissal of the notion of individual creativity and emphasis on scientific analysis of the arts and media has been caricatured and ridiculed, the essence of Marx’s arguments shapes academic thinking now more than ever. Philosophers of science like Karl Popper, for instance, argue that science theories are essentially reflections of their socio-historical context, while historians are careful to avoid ‘Whig’ history – history written from a contemporary point of view that implies a continuous progress to the present.
Interestingly, even right-wing thinkers have been embracing Marx in recent years, now that the spectre of communism has vanished, claiming that he is really a capitalist. In his biography of Marx, Francis Wheen quotes an issue of the New Yorker magazine from 1997 in which Marx is hailed as ‘the next big thinker’ and the man to tell us about the nature of political corruption, inequality, global markets and much more. ‘The longer I spend on Wall Street, the more convinced I am that Marx was right,’ a wealthy investment banker is quoted as saying. ‘I am absolutely convinced that Marx’s approach is the best way to look at capitalism.’ Of course, when someone so clearly in the rich camp endorses Marx, one is instantly suspicious. But maybe he is right, and maybe Marx’s best time is yet to come.
#26 Government
In 1791, the great libertarian campaigner Thomas Paine wrote in The Rights of Man that ‘society is a blessing, but government is evil’. In his typically robust fashion, Paine argued that governments bring nothing but harm. Ordinary men can live quite happily together without government, he felt. Governments were essentially criminal. ‘If we would delineate human nature with a baseness of heart, and hypocrisy of countenance, that reflection would shudder at and humanity disown,’ Paine fulminated. ‘It is kings, courts, and cabinets that must sit for the portrait.’
Paine was writing at the time of the American and French Revolutions, and he argued that America had managed to live for two years without any form of government at all, without society collapsing into chaos. Take away government and people’s natural adaptability comes to the fore and they organise things quite well for themselves.
The founders of the American constitution did not agree with Paine, however much they admired him. They felt that government was necessary. James Madison, often called the Father of the US Constitution, later replied to Paine’s assertion in this vein: ‘It has been said that all Government is an evil. It would be more proper to say that the necessity of any Government is a misfortune. This necessity however exists; and the problem to be solved is, not what form of Government is perfect, but which of the forms is least imperfect.’
Anarchists, however, have continued to argue that people would live much better without government. It would not, they argue, descend into what is colloquially called anarchy because people’s self-interest, even if not their communal spirit, would soon mean that mutual support networks would be set up. Unfortunately, it is almost impossible to imagine their ideas ever being really tried out.
Nowhere in the world do people live without government, and every time governments have collapsed, such as after the French, Russian and Chinese revolutions, the chaos has been so frightening that many people almost welcomed the brutal regimes that stepped in to take charge. More recently, the financial disarray that followed the fall of the Soviet Union meant that most Russians sighed with relief when Vladimir Putin asserted control. Similarly, the continuing turmoil in Iraq has made some Iraqis look back almost nostalgically on the time of Saddam Hussein, when, at least, the lights worked and the streets were safe. For most people, even bad government is better than no government at all because it provides the basic necessities of life.
It is sometimes said that government is a necessary evil because people are essentially selfish and so, without government, would descend into the terrible dog-eat-dog world described by seventeenth-century philosopher Thomas Hobbes as the ‘war of all against all’. Anarchists would rightly challenge this argument. First of all, there can be no such thing as a ‘necessary evil’. If it is evil, it is unnecessary; and if it is necessary, it cannot be evil. Secondly, there is no convincing evidence to show that people are so madly out of control that without government to rein them in, they would be at each others’ throats. It is not government at all that allows 50,000 people to stand at a parade without everyone fighting for the one best place at the front. It is not government that makes people look after the sick or donate to charity. It is not government that forces millions of people in cities to interact daily and continually without strife for all but a fraction of the time.
So why is government necessary, or even desirable, then? The prevailing opinion for the last few centuries has been the idea of the social contract,[1] first fully articulated by philosophers such as Thomas Hobbes, John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau.[2] Hobbes argued that in a ‘state of nature’ people act so selfishly and aggressively that life is ‘solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short’, and so people mutually agree to be governed to bring some order to life. This is little more than the less-than-convincing ‘necessary evil’ argument. Locke took a different stance, arguing that in the state of nature there is a natural order but people are still fearful of each other and so agree to be governed for mutual protection.
Rousseau had yet another take, arguing that we each could willingly put aside our egoism in order to shape society for the best through the general will: ‘Each of us puts his person and all his power in common under the supreme direction of the general will; and in a body we receive each member as an indivisible part of the whole.’ In this way, popular government, Rousseau argued, is a civilising force, helping to mould people’s characters; we have to give up some of our natural independence, but in return we get real freedom.
The social contract theory has been enormously influential,[3] and many governments use this kind of idea as their mandate for government whether truthfully or deceptively. It doesn’t necessarily imply that the type of government should be democratic in form. People could mutually consent to be governed by a tyrant. However, as soon as tyrants behave tyrannically, they lose consent. So the only form of government that can really work with the social contract is one that renews consent continually – that is, a democratic government.
This is the theory. The practice is, of course, often very different, firstly because very few governments, if any, are genuinely democratic; and secondly because there are other forces in play such as the power of money and global corporations. And of course, for people to give their consent genuinely, they must know what they are consenting to. In reality, they rarely do. That was the philosopher David Hume’s objection to the social contract theory back in the eighteenth century – not that the idea of consent was wrong, but just that in practice it didn’t really happen. This is a fair and important criticism and one that needs to be addressed all around the world.
In fact, it is the central problem with government. Libertarians argue that because of the problems of government, government should be scaled back. The ‘smaller’ government is, and the fewer restrictions we have on our life, the freer we are. But often what they are really arguing for is freedom to pursue their own agenda, regardless of the cost to some sections of society. Their argument, in fac
t, comes surprisingly close to that of the anarchists, even though they are, on the surface, from opposite ends of the political spectrum.
Government is needed to deliver justice for all, to ensure that the world is fair, both in the sense of even-handedness and attractiveness. Most people can manage well and happily together, without any government or laws. But we need a government to ensure that the weak and vulnerable are properly looked after and that everyone is fairly treated. We need laws to protect us from disruptive minorities such as criminals and profiteers. We need a framework of order that gives us the confidence to do anything from buy a house or a car to negotiate a business deal. And we need society to be ordered so that each of us has the best possible opportunity to live safe, comfortable and fulfilled lives. In other words, we need society to be well governed.
[1] Perhaps one of the first of all established governments was that of King Hor-Aha (‘Fighting Hawk’) set up on the banks of the Nile about 3100 BC. What makes it interesting is how clearly it showed elements of the social contract, in which an educated elite are allowed to rule, in theory, for the benefit of all. At the heart of Hor-Aha’s royal control lay an unwritten bargain between the king and his people. In exchange for control over their loyalties and labours, the king offered security. This was much more than just physical safety; it was maat – a term used to describe the Egyptians’ entire sense of order and well-being. Without maat, the world would descend into isfet, or chaos. The smiting of enemies and wild beasts to keep chaos at bay was a crucial symbol of the king’s role. The king was the living Horus, maat personified, opposed by Seth, the god of chaos. It was this sense that the entire state of the world depended on the king that helped the pharaohs maintain control for over 3,000 years. Without the king, Egypt would become an unthinkable, maat-less nightmare.
The World's Greatest Idea Page 15
