Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, exchange and property, a society that brought together such gigantic means of production and exchange, is like the sorcerer who can no longer control the powers of the underworld that he summons by his spells ” ( Communist Manifesto , Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels)
If you want to anger a conservative intellectual, try to argue that Karl Marx may have something worth saying. Or, worse, suggest that a man who wrote several volumes on everything – from German philosophy to classical political economy – may have a more nuanced theory than “rich people are bad, poor people are good”. Several decades after the end of the Cold War, many right-wing experts still do not bother to offer refutations to Marx in addition to simplistic denunciations.
Jordan Peterson described Marxism as a theory of evil and became famous for criticizing postmodern neomarxism, despite admitting during a debate that he did not read much more than the Communist Manifesto . In his latest work, Don’t Burn This Book , Dave Rubin compares socialism to Nazism and fascism, claiming that Benito Mussolini was “created in Das Kapital by Karl Marx” – ignoring Il Duce’s later efforts to imprison and silence Marxists and others “Enemies of the nation”.
More recently, How to Destroy America in Three Easy Steps , by Ben Shapiro, recycles old attacks on the “absurdity” of Marx’s work-value theory, and ignores the irony of praising John Locke for pointing out that “property is merely a extension of the idea of ownership of each one’s work; when we take something out of the state of nature and mix it with our work and add something of ours, so we make that property our own. ”
This tendency to criticize Marx without really examining his ideas is especially rich considering that Peterson, Rubin and Shapiro always repeat clichés about the importance of hard work and lively debate. An easy way to dismiss them would be to simply insist that they live up to those standards.
But I will take a slightly different approach. I will suggest that conservatives avoid seriously dealing with Marx’s work not only because he was a critic of capitalism, wrote some controversial things about religion, or suspected class hierarchy. It is because Marx’s writings reveal profound inconsistencies in the cherished conservative doctrines.
Two blatant examples: the conservative tendency to praise capitalism and lament the decline of tradition; and the tendency to invoke an immutable “human nature” against critics of capitalism, insisting that individuals must be understood in relation to the traditions and communities in which they live.
Early advocates of liberal capitalism, like John Locke, often wrote in unhistorical terms. They stated that the types of individuals and market relationships emerge with the advent of modernity, and have always been present, reflecting timeless truths about the world and human nature. It was only with Kant and later Hegel that theorists began to think critically about the radical newness of liberal capitalist societies.
For many of these thinkers, this novelty was cause for celebration. Kant’s Essay What Is Enlightenment? (1784) described humanity as awakening from its “self-immaturity” and finally facing the world as free and rational beings. Hegel was more critical and argued that the revolutionary individualism that took off in the 18th century needed to be tempered by strong institutions and meaningful social relations (something that right-wing Hegelians like Roger Scruton would later take and give a conservative shine).
Marx shared both euphoria and anxiety about liberal capitalist modernity. From his “young Hegelian” days onwards, he praised the nascent liberal capitalist order as a huge improvement over its overtly authoritarian predecessors, even though he thought the capitalist order was destined to be replaced by an even higher form of society. . But Marx also insisted that we appreciate what was a radical break with the liberal capitalism of the past.
Writing in the period between the Industrial Revolution and the era of European imperialism, Marx observed how old rural communities were being destroyed as people moved to cities, describing capitalism as a “constantly expanding market” pushing the bourgeoisie “over the whole the surface of the globe. ” He criticized the new culture of “commodity fetishism” that replaced the old religious fidelity, happily inverting the language of faith to highlight the new reverence of society for Mammon.
Although he always maintained that these developments were emancipatory in many ways, Marx insisted that these changes were also calamitous, breaking “fixed and frozen relationships” – violently, if necessary – to remake the world in the image of capital. Capitalism was a revolutionary mode of production, constantly transforming all aspects of society in unexpected and sometimes frightening ways. He was an enemy of tradition.
Early conservative thinkers were much more sensitive to the upheavals of capitalism than their descendants – and condemned the way in which capitalism overthrew the existing world and established a vulgar bourgeois culture focused on consumption and opulence rather than transcendent or heroic virtues. But later authors, like Shapiro, often ignored these problems, dismissing any criticism of capitalism as utopian or Marxist, while at the same time looking in horror at a world where urbanization, secularization and conspicuous consumption have become the order of the day.
If they had taken the trouble to read and absorb Marx, they might not have been so surprised. Its main point was that one cannot simultaneously condemn declining traditionalism and support the economic system that does “everything that is solid dissolve in the air”. Blaming cultural and academic elites at Ivy League universities for social change is like condemning smoke by fire.
Another important argument by conservatives is to reject Marx’s “theory of human nature”: either Marx was dangerously naive about human capacity for evil and selfishness – which shows why his ideal classless society turned out to be a failure in practice – , or he believed that there was no human nature, that we are infinitely plastic beings that can be made and remade by a sufficiently rational and powerful state committed to utopian planning.
Both statements are absurd. From his early ruminations about our “species being” determined by nature, to his later psychological ruminations about how our desire for recognition and status stimulates “commodity fetishism”, Marx was neither utopian nor naive about our potential for hypocrisy, cruelty and hedonism. Marx was innovative in showing how the historical and economic conditions around us play an important role in shaping our sense of identity and behavior.
This does not mean that we are purely determined by the historical context. But Marx argued that the historical and economic conditions in which we were born provide the starting point from which we must all navigate. As he said in O 18 Brumário by Luís Bonaparte , “men make their own history, but they don’t make it as they want; they do not do so under self-selected circumstances, but under existing circumstances, given and transmitted from the past ”.
Part of that argument should really appeal to many conservatives. From Edmund Burke to Roger Scruton, a common claim of the right is that radicals portray humans as unhistorical beings that can be understood purely as atomized individuals. Instead, they emphasized, every human being is inserted in layers of community, with established traditions and morals shaped throughout history and institutions, including churches and temples, nations and even the ever opaque “western civilization”. These “little brigades” affect the way we think about ourselves and what we believe.
Conservatives often insist that ignoring the importance of these historic communities could only lead to disaster. Marx would certainly agree. But I would add that we are also part of a historically distinct economic system that profoundly shapes who we are and what we believe.
It is at this point that many of the same conservative commentators who insist on applying a historical and institutional lens to understand human behavior and communities become godly a-historicists. They insist that capitalism simply flows from human nature, which has always existed and therefore must always exist, and that any effort to change it can only result in disaster, as certain as requiring fish to ride a bicycle.
The following excerpt from Ben Shapiro is representative: “No, Marx was not right. But the Left will never abandon him because he offers the only true alternative to the religious view of human nature – the view of the man who says that he is not a blank page, not an angel waiting for redemption, but an imperfect creature capable of Boas COISAS. Achieving these great things is hard work. Changing ourselves on an individual level is hard work. Talk about the ills of society – this is certainly quite easy. ”
But capitalism is no more or less natural than any other historically contingent system, including religious systems. What emerged in history can change in history. And as we move heavily into another global recession, it looks like it’s time for some big changes.
Marx wrote the famous phrase that philosophers have always interpreted the world, when the aim is to change it. Ironically, the interpretations – good or bad – of Marx did, in fact, change the world, influencing revolutionary movements. This testifies to the overwhelming power of his intellectual personality and the analytical scope of Marxist theory. Retaining the correct fundamentals of Marxism is important for any robust debate about the future of capitalism and the political antagonisms that shape our era.
For his critics, it is also a prerequisite for effectively criticizing him. Many commentators on the political right seem determined to ignore Marx as soon as possible, disdaining or downplaying nuances and specifics. They also ignore the lessons of Marxism that inconveniently disturb the sacred tropes themselves.
Marx deserves better criticism. And those of us on the left who care about his complex legacy must expect it to receive serious criticism.
