| Review of: | Marx and Engels: Their Contribution to the Democratic Breakthrough by August H. Nimtz Jr. Karl Marx: The Burden of Reason (Why Marx Rejected Politics and the Market) by Allan Megill |
|---|---|
| Reviewed By: | John Sitton |
| Reviewed in: | Constellations |
| Date accepted online: | 11/01/2005 |
| Published in print: | Volume 11, Issue 3, Pages 445-449 |
Book Reviews
Given the experience of twentieth-century communism, one of the most crucial questions for Marxian research is the status of the political in Marx's project. These two recent books help illuminate this question, not least of all because they arrive at very different conclusions. August Nimtz argues that Marx and Engels were the most important contributors to the development of democracy in nineteenth-century Europe. Allan Megill, on the other hand, contends that because of a philosophical orientation he retained his entire life, Marx was never really committed to democracy "at all."
Rueschemeyer, Stephens, and Stephens state that "it was the growth of the working class and its capacity for self-organization that was most critical for the final breakthrough for democracy" (quoted by Nimtz in a related article in
Nimtz argues that Marx and Engels were above all political activists: "political practice was their alpha and omega." They consistently supported the democratic struggle because it would place power in the hands of the working class, that would then proceed to establish socialism. The scholarly work of Marx and Engels should therefore be seen as "party-building activities" (ix), to clarify the ways in which, tactical democratic alliances aside, the interests of the workers and of capital are inalterably opposed. Through a long process of historical development workers themselves must come to understand why the revolutionary transformation of capitalism is necessary. This explains why Marx and Engels repudiated blueprints for a future society: it is enough for the self-organizing proletariat to come to power. As Engels put it, "Constructing the future and settling things for all times are not our affair" (7). That is the work of sectarians, not activists.
At base the issue is epistemological. The revolutionary process is the only teacher for all the participants, including the intellectuals. Whether in the guise of Blanquists, utopian socialists, anarchists, or parliamentary social democrats, Marx and Engels rejected the pretensions of a few great individuals showing the way forward. The only hope for a more humane future lies in the political capacities of ordinary workers. The task of communists, therefore, is to increase what Erik Olin Wright would call the "class capacities" of the proletariat. To this end Marx and Engels said goodbye to philosophy and participated wholly in what they never doubted was the real historical movement toward socialism. True to the famous thesis on Feuerbach, change, not interpretation, was their project.
Nimtz's book is powerfully argued and remarkably well-documented. He sheds much needed light on the meaning of the dictatorship of the proletariat and on Marx and Engels' political engagement of issues such as the peasantry, nationalism, and to some extent gender. However, his book forces us to reflect on a few issues that go beyond Nimtz's immediate purpose. The first is whether Marx and Engels were only committed to democracy for instrumental reasons, as a weapon in the class struggle leading to socialism. Their idea of the withering away of the state, however obscure, provokes this question. Although Nimtz rejects any such suggestion, he does not pursue the topic in any detail (303-304). It might well be that for Marx and Engels it was sufficient that political power be placed in the hands of the workers and they then left to decide what to do next. However, leaving aside that it is not as easy to identify the 'working class' today as it was in the nineteenth century, the experiences of the twentieth century do not allow this finessing of the question. If democratic forms are instrumentalized, a principled defense of the rule of law becomes impossible, with consequences with which we are all too familiar.
Secondly, like many others, Nimtz argues that Marx and Engels did not believe in absolute immiseration of the working class but only relative impoverishment, necessarily growing inequality between workers and capital. But if this is the case, it is hard to see why Marx and Engels were so confident that the democratic struggle would proceed to socialism. As Adam Przeworski argues in various places, if economic growth is possible and the relative shares of the product are politically variable - as they would be under democratic conditions, and as even Marx's discussion of the struggle for the ten-hour working day shows - for workers there is a third option: acceptance of capitalism as long as their share of the pie is sufficient. If the pie is growing, it may be politically irrelevant that the rewards to capital are larger. This possibility is underscored by Nimtz's repeated references to the lack of revolutionary ardor of the British working class, enjoying some portion of the plunder of British imperialism.
In a world in motion it is always salutary to be warned against a kind of 'academic cretinism' (my phrase) that reduces Marxism to the examination of texts. However, the famous distinction between interpretation and change can be overdrawn. In their theoretical work Marx and Engels were engaged in the serious business of framing issues of capitalism so as to support class struggle. Nimtz is convincing that their interpretation should be regarded as a part of Marx and Engels' revolutionary activism, but it is an interpretation just the same. It is therefore subject to strictures necessary for analyzing theories, such as logical coherence and fruitful conceptualization, that must be evaluated independently of political purposes or commitments.
Megill has a response to both of the questions raised above. On Marx's ultimate commitment to democracy, Megill boldly states that he had none. In Megill's view, Marx was an "antipolitical political activist," wishing to get "beyond" politics (120). Marx's project was driven by a fundamental rationalism, seeking in history "universality, necessity, predictivity, and progress through contradiction" (2), that did not leave any "conceptual space" for the give and take of democratic politics (101). Although this is not a new charge, pursued for example by Jean Cohen twenty years ago in
Megill's perspective also provides an answer to the question, why socialism? In Megill's view, Marx believed that workers will proceed toward socialism because socialism, in good Hegelian fashion, is the world becoming rational. Megill argues that Marx was firmly committed to freedom, understood as self-determination. Since institutions ruled by chance make self-determination impossible, Marx rejected politics and the market as ways of organizing a more rational society (147). In the classless future, neither a state nor markets would be necessary because production and distribution issues could be decided by a scientific understanding of what is socially required.
From his own self-described "social democratic" perspective, Megill argues that the contingencies of the market and of politics are no reason for rejecting these forms of social life. He contends that it is freedom itself that makes predictability impossible in these fields, and that the growth of needs that Marx always predicated of a postcapitalist society requires markets for the "discovery" of new, previously unrecognized needs. Unsurprisingly, Megill argues that Marx's conception of socialism was disastrous. Like the French 'new philosophers' of the 1980s, Megill even suggests that there is an affinity between Marx's rationalist impulse and Stalinism (132), a position that Nimtz rejects as "idealist" (281).
Ultimately, Megill believes that Marx was a contradictory figure. But, in what he admits will be "disconcerting," Megill tries to clarify Marx's thought by focusing solely on the "rationalist" aspects of his work. Although this is an interesting approach, it sometimes results in certain wobbly interpretations. For example, Megill states that historical materialism was an aspect of Marx's quest to comprehend history as an inherently rational process (111). On the other hand, Megill argues that historical materialism was only a kind of "ladder" that Marx used to orient his research in certain directions but to which he ultimately had no deep commitment (230, 233), that in the "1859 Preface" Marx was even distancing himself from the doctrine (185). But then again, and in striking contrast to the more likely interpretation of Nimtz (255), Megill later says that Marx sought a theory that would "explain everything" (202). The confusion is recapitulated when Megill calls historical materialism "quasitheological" (265) after having pointedly rejected the same claim by Elster (201).
This vacillation is probably an inevitable artifact of trying to fit Marx into a rationalist bed. Generally, Megill wants to portray Marx as representing the "rosiest" side of the Enlightenment (40), even a "hyper-Enlightenment figure" (263). This would come as a surprise to the Marx who, reflecting on the British colonial conquest of India, described historical progress as "that hideous pagan idol, who would not drink the nectar but from the skulls of the slain" ("The Future Results of the British Rule in India," 1853).
These reservations aside, both of these works are well-researched and informative, provoking a reconsideration of our understanding of the work of Marx and Engels. Nimtz states that "Marxism is the quintessential work in progress." Indeed it is, and the future volumes promised by these authors will no doubt further help us rethink this project, a project that clearly retains its power to engage.