Science & Society, Vol. 78, No. 3, July 2014, 281–287
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EDITORIAL PERSPECTIVES
QUOTOLOGY, STAGES, AND THE POSTHUMOUS
ANARCHIZATION OF MARX
In our January 2014 issue, I referred to Mary Gabriel’s new biography of the
Marx family (Love and Capital, Little, Brown, 2011), which contains, along
with much else, an impressive political portrait of the “Marx party.” Marx
and Engels, and their associates, of course had a distinctive presence among
continental refugees in London, and influence on European (and world)
politics, from 1850 onward. My focus in that essay was Marx’s singular commitment to participation by working-class forces (the national movements
that made up the First International) in each country’s national–political
— electoral — process. Now I return to the scientific moment: Marx’s (and
Engels’) insistence that socialist goals and activism had to be based on systematic study of the entire sweep of social evolution, with special emphasis
(of course) on capitalist society and its laws of motion. This perspective rose,
phoenix-like, out of a veritable ocean of infantilisms: persistent conflation
of appearance with reality (especially of political and organizational forms
with the underlying class forces giving rise to them); worship of spontaneity (coupled with the assumption that Great Ideas spring into being fully
formed); failure to acknowledge the reality and objectivity of social evolution, including the presence of developmental stages (a necessary feature
of the dialectic of structure and process); and naive faith in the power of
exhortation, by eloquent visionaries endowed with those Great Ideas, about
the glorious attributes of the “international brotherhood of peoples” (from
the Gotha Programme draft of 1875) or the “solidarian society” (a more recent
terminological invention; see below).
Marxism (the “science of society,” with due concern for possible scientistic
misuse of this term) made great strides forward at the end of the 19th century
and through the middle of the 20th, as working-class movements around the
world matured and conquered new positions. Since the (re-)consolidation
of capitalist power after World War II, and especially in what we now call the
“neoliberal” period of the present, the pendulum has swung — temporarily,
one hopes — in the other direction. So it is not surprising that anarchism
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and romantic idealism have re-surfaced. This resurgence has taken the form,
among others, of new readings of the Marxist classics, in which Marx’s texts
are reinterpreted to deny the very elements of scientific advance that, I believe, have distinguished the Marxist project since its inception.
My case in point, for this essay: Michael Lebowitz’ recent work on Marx’
classic, the Critique of the Gotha Programme.1
While many readers will of course be familiar with Marx’ Critique, it may
still be useful to reproduce several key passages:
What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on
its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society;
which is thus in every respect, economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped
with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the
individual producer receives back from society . . . exactly what he gives to it. What
he has given to it is his individual quantum of labor. . . . The same amount of labor
which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another . . .
. . . these defects [of reward according to labor time] are inevitable in the first phase
of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs
from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of
society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the
individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental
and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but
life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around
development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more
abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its
entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to
each according to his needs!2
Now there is a standard interpretation of these passages, presented by
Lenin in State and Revolution and confirmed in many other accounts. This is
a two-stage (or “phase”) model. In the first phase — “lower,” although that
word does not appear — payment (what the individual producer “receives
1 “Understanding the Critique of the Gotha Programme,” written for a Turkish collection, Marksist Klasileri Okuma Kilavuzu (Istanbul: Yordam Kitap, 2013), an advance copy of which was
kindly provided by the author. An earlier version of Lebowitz’ thinking on this appeared
in S&S, October 2007: “Building Upon Defects: Theses on the Misinterpretation of Marx’s
Gotha Critique.” The Gotha Program was approved at the 1875 unity congress, held in the
German city of Gotha, that formed the Socialist Workers Party of Germany (SAPD). The
party renamed itself the Social Democratic Party of Germany in 1890. The complex history
of the formation of the SAPD, and the circumstances surrounding Marx’s Critique (which
was not published at the time) are masterfully summarized in Lebowitz, “Understanding . . .”
2 These selections are drawn from Marx’s text at http://www.marxists.org/Archive/marx/
works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
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back”) is according to labor performed, presumably differentiated by both
quantity and quality (levels of skill, effort, productivity, etc.). In the second,
“higher” phase, the labor constraint is transcended. While the text does not
make clear whether “needs” will be assessed by some social process other
than the unconstrained choice of individuals (e.g., allowances for large families, special medical needs, and so on), the context (“the narrow horizon
of bourgeois right . . . crossed in its entirety”) suggests the disappearance
of money–wage–price forms, which are, after all, the way in which the labor
constraint — the compulsion to work in order to gain access to income — is
enforced.
This conception of the higher phase, or stage, of communist society has
been subjected to numerous critiques, and clearly needs careful ongoing
elaboration and substantiation. Lebowitz, however, is more concerned with
the standard conception of the lower phase — commonly called “socialism”
— and its “defects”:
The implicit premise of the standard interpretation . . . is that workers are alienated
(from their labor, their products and each other) and that this inherited defect can
only be removed by that enormous development of productive forces that makes all
products free. . . . No need, then, to consider whether continuation of alienation
may have anything to do with the nature of relations within the workplace or a state
over and above the producers.
This “sparse interpretation,” moreover,
supports the position of those who occupy positions in states standing over and above
society. . . . it deflects attention from the pressing need from the outset to change the
relations of production in workplaces and communities and to transform the state
into what Marx called the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat — that state
of self-working and self-governing communes fostering the revolutionary practice
through which people change themselves as they change circumstances.
Close reading of these formulations brings us to the heart of the matter.
First, the defects — the workers’ self-consciousness as individual possessors of
labor power, their alienation from the community of producers, the limited
consciousness inherited from capitalist society — are simply “bad” things
that can be rejected at will. All we have to do is “change the relations of
production” — and, incidentally, right away: “from the outset.”3 We have a
simple voluntary choice: either accept the fact that defects exist — that the
society is “still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose
3 The title of one of Lebowitz’ earlier books is Build It [Socialism] Now. Since “now” is, presumably, whenever the reader happens to be reading the book, this clearly translates to: “Build
it whenever you feel like doing so.”
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womb it emerges” — or reject that fact! How is this to be done? By creative
acts of defiance, to release those utopian Great Ideas? By eloquent calls for
“solidarian” behavior? (“Solidarian” is a Lebowitz coinage; see his The Socialist Alternative, 2010.)
Second, in Lebowitz’ view, the “standard interpretation” emphasizes
the productive forces, to the complete neglect of production relations. He
even creates an ironic paraphrase of Marx: “Develop the productive forces,
develop the productive forces — that is Marx and the prophets.” (The original
of this is Marx, writing about capitalism: “Accumulate! accumulate! — that
is Moses and the prophets.”) Now as I have argued in more detail elsewhere
(e.g., S& S, Special Issue, “Designing Socialism,” April 2012, 210–213), getting the distribution of worker income right — i.e., getting the differentials
aligned with workers’ actual experience and beliefs in terms of differences of
productivity, effort, working conditions, evaluation by team members, and so
on — is essential for progress toward higher levels of socialist consciousness.
Willful ignoring of these matters can do as much harm, from the standpoint
of the socialist goals that both Lebowitz and this writer endorse, as would the
opposite: allowing unprincipled behavior and inherited stratifications to go
unchallenged. Acknowledgment of defects — working with and through existing states of consciousness, inherited real skill differentials and divisions of
labor, rather than summarily denying them — is essential in order to transform
the production relations, as well as promote growth of the productive forces.
Are there historical instances of over-emphasis on productive forces?
One can indeed cite some of Lenin’s formulations on this. As Lebowitz always insists, however, texts must be read in historical context. With starvation
looming, capitalist military encirclement in effect, and facing widespread
destruction resulting from war, the Bolsheviks undoubtedly stressed production in a one-sided way in many pronouncements. We can also put the Deng
Xiaoping “black cat/white cat” philosophy in this category (“it doesn’t matter
if the cat is black or white, so long as it catches mice”). In Lenin’s case at least,
it seems a bit unhelpful to lecture him, from the standpoint of the future,
about placing more emphasis on relations of production, especially when
we, the future lecturers, are not facing starvation and imminent destruction.
The general point is this: stages are real. Marx may have posited two stages
in communist evolution precisely in order to grasp the essential properties
of an early stage that enable us to most effectively work through that stage
and lay foundations for the subsequent transition to the higher one. (The
old Bolshevik concept of “combined development” seems much more on
point than many present-day “anti-stageism” formulations.) Once again,
the scientific moment consists in recognizing objectivity — not to succumb
to objective reality but rather to use it, to place it in the service of social
transformation.
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Can this perspective be read into the passages from Marx’s Critique,
quoted above? Maybe; maybe not. That is quotology. What matters is: what
do we believe now?
But what about Lebowitz’ “self-working and self-governing communes”?
This too sounds like an accommodation to an aspect of long-standing anarchist conceptions, of small-scale, face-to-face communities and absence of
anything like a centralized political state. Of course, Lebowitz also knows
the wording from the Communist Manifesto: “. . . centralize all instruments
of production in the hands of the State.” He comes back, however, in more
than one place, to “self-governing communes.” This, it turns out, appears
in a passage from Marx’s The Civil War in France (First Draft), and, as usual, I
will quote in full:
With all the great towns organized into Communes after the model of Paris, no
government could repress the movement by the surprise of sudden reaction. . . . All
France [would be] organized into self-working and self-governing Communes, the
standing army replaced by the popular militias, the army of State parasites removed,
the clerical hierarchy displaced by the schoolmaster, the State judge transformed into
Communal organs, the suffrage for national representation not a matter of sleight of hand
for an all-powerful government but the deliberate expression of organized Communes, the State
functions reduced to a few functions for general national purposes.4
Lebowitz, in his “Understanding . . .” essay, quotes the phrases that I have
placed in bold type; the italicized passage is my own emphasis.
Once again: quotology is about deriving from Marx authoritative backing
for one’s own point of view. It can be accomplished by selective quotation, or
by quotation out of context. It can be done by taking some words from Marx
that were written about capitalism, and applying them, mutatis mutandis, to
socialism, without addressing the question whether Marx himself would endorse the analogy. Sometimes, one’s view is indeed the same as Marx’s, and
one is entitled to point that out. When I read the above passage, what I see is
this: local organization (“self-working and self-governing Communes”) is essential. The people must be organized and active at the base. The State functions and functionaries (note the upper-case “S” in “State”; Marx is referring
here to the historically specific French State) must be replaced, to the extent
possible, by popular counterparts. And: the Communes must give shape to a
new and different type of representative government — “the suffrage for national
representation” — replacing “sleight of hand” with genuine democracy!
Does Lebowitz want to read this passage instead as a general distrust of
centralized political structures, rather than as a perspective on transforming
4http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil‑war‑france/drafts/ch01
.htm#D1s3
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those structures by changing their social content? At bottom, we will have
to do our own thinking; as earlier noted, we will not be able to resolve these
sorts of issues by turning to the authority of Marx’s texts (which, somehow,
does not receive its share of the ire directed by anarchism-influenced thinking against authority in general, or against the authority of “the state,” or
against those who, mysteriously, “occupy positions in states standing over
and above society”).
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IN THIS ISSUE
It is a bitter irony that, in proportion as the rhetoric of “free markets”
has flourished in conjunction with neoliberal globalization, the reality of
unfreedom has also become an increasingly prominent feature of labor
markets worldwide. In “Modern Capitalism and Unfree Labor,” Tom Brass
considers the phenomenon of unfree labor, in relation to Marxist theory; a
wide variety of non-Marxist treatments of the topic; and the way Marxism is
used in those treatments. His conclusion is multifaceted. First, the classical
Marxist understanding of the central position of (“doubly”) free labor in
capitalist accumulation is in need of re-examination and revision, as new
forms of unfree labor emerge throughout the world and are clearly fully
integrated into the capitalist process. (Importantly, unfreedom may take
a variety of forms, including debt; it should not be limited to a “whips and
chains” conception.) But, second, many critics of the Marxist literature, who
claim to have a more continuous and nuanced conception, actually wind up
borrowing ideas and insights that were developed earlier by Marxist scholars, even as they distort these ideas and insights in the service of a view that
denies the link between unfree labor and capitalism as such.
Jerry Harris (“Transnational Capitalism and Class Formation”) continues the long-standing project — presented in S&S over a number of years
— of developing the theoretical perspective pointing to emergence of a
transnational capitalist class (TCC) and state. In this study, Harris considers
the contribution of network theory, which studies empirical connections
among individuals and institutions: multiple board memberships, financial
links, and so on. While this perspective contributes important elements to
an overall picture of the emerging TCC, if taken in isolation it misses the
more fundamental matter of the organization and relations of production,
resulting in a view that underestimates the extent of transnationalization
and its impact on the global capitalist process.
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The noted literary scholar Alan Wald, a member of S&S’ Editorial Board,
has recently completed his Trilogy on the U. S. literary left, with publication
of American Night (2012). We note this occasion with a Symposium, consisting
of evaluations by Rachel Rubin, Christopher Vials and Barbara Foley, plus a
“Reply” by Wald. Not despite but because of Wald’s remarkable scholarship
in bringing to light the work of numerous writers, and demonstrating the
enormous creative force of the left and its impact on U. S. culture more
generally, there are some knotty issues: of the complex relation between the
personal and the political, and that between literary and political criteria of
interpretation. This Symposium, as readers will quickly learn, is not a “mere”
celebration of Wald’s work; it is a serious engagement on several fronts, and
raises questions that invite continued exploration.
The issue contains two Communications, both of which embody the
polemical function that is central to the continuing growth and development of Marxist theory. First, Charles Post replies at length to Daniel Gaido’s
critique of Post’s The American Road to Capitalism (2012), which appeared in
our April 2013 issue. This discussion is about not only the interpretation
of the specific path of capitalist development in the United States, but also
the best approach to Marxist methodology in general: the core concepts of
historical materialism, the use of data, the relation between political class
struggle and structural factors, and much else.
Second, Robin Hahnel responds to David Laibman’s article-length appraisal (S&S, April 2014) of the model of the “participatory economy,” developed by Hahnel over many years in conjunction with Michael Albert and
summarized in his recent book, Of the People, By the People. This debate is, we
think, a step in the desired direction of a more inter-critical approach to
the models-of-socialism discussion. We hope both of these debates will be
revisited in future issues.
D. L.
REVIEWS — SPREAD WIDE THE NET . . . Astute readers may have noticed that, beginning with Vol. 77 (2013), our “Book Reviews”
section changed, quietly, to a “Reviews” section. This was not an accident. The word “Book”
was dropped from the rubric of this section in order to signal our intention to expand
its coverage. We now hope to include reviews of novels and other works of fiction, films,
plays, art shows, concerts and other cultural events, museum exhibits, and anything else
that is created or occurs, and that contributes to S&S’ general concern for the arts and
sciences of social transformation.
We mention this here so that readers can watch for items of interest, let us know
about them, and perhaps consider reviewing them. We would love to hear from you.