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| Saral Sarkar |
By Saral Sakar, November 5, 2012
Sandip
Bandyopadhyay's article "Interest in Marxism Waning?" (Frontier,
Autumn Number, 2012) attracted my attention, because I am one of those whose
interest in Marxism has waned. It has been waning since the mid 1970s, i.e.
since before the CPI(M) started its second and long innings in power in West
Bengal and long before socialism was wound up – first in China and then in the
Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. It has therefore nothing to do with the
betrayal of Marxism or socialism by the CPI(M) or the CPSU(B) or the CPC, nor
has it much to do with the cruelties of the Stalinist regime in the Soviet
Union or of the CPI(M) cadre in West Bengal. Marxism, the ism, is not the same
as the policies and praxis of the above mentioned parties in the countries
where they ruled, just as socialism is not the same as the policies of the
Socialist Party of France or that of Spain.
In fact, in the second half of the 1960s, Marxism experienced a rejuvenation in
Western Europe. The student movements there were largely inspired by Marxism.
Young people, particularly students, again became interested in studying
Marxist literature, although they were very well informed about and, therefore,
very critical of the Soviet model of socialism and the Soviet understanding of
Marxism. In Italy and France, where, in those days, big and strong communist
parties existed and hence Marxist literature used to be sold and probably also
read, young people's interest in Marxism bypassed the established interpretations
of Marxism and took the form of an effort to understand the world of their
days. It was a different world, very different from the world in which the
classics of Marxism were written. This world, they realized, could not be
understood or explained adequately by faithfully applying the teachings of Marx
and Engels, which originated a century earlier in very different contexts. What
actually mattered was to see whether the Marxist tools of analysis were useful
for the purpose, and many found them useful.
Bandyopadhyay writes: "There are valid
reasons for questioning the relevance of Marxism in the present-day world." He does not state these reasons. What are they?
For about 25 years after the end of the Second World War – from about 1950 to
1974 – Western industrialised countries experienced what has been called an
"economic miracle". It was a long period of boom, of rapid economic
growth and, along with it, rapid growth in prosperity. Also the working class
rapidly prospered. Skilled workers, roughly speaking, rose to the middle class
level. Revisionism had already gained the upper hand over revolutionary Marxism
and lasted till the end of the 1940s. But until then, the organized working
class and their parties, the Social Democratic and communist parties, kept up
their critique of capitalism and regarded socialism as their long-term goal.
But in the 1950s and thereafter, for all practical purposes, they (except the
communist parties) openly accepted capitalism as the best or the most efficient
economic system. From then on, the only thing the organised working class
struggled for was to get a higher share of the cake. In this situation, the
vast majority of this class refused to play the role of the grave-diggers of
capitalism. Workers of the highly industrialised countries had no good reason
any more to fight against the system, to kill the goose that was laying the
golden eggs. "Pauperization" of the working class proved to be a
myth. The assertion of Marx and Engels that "The proletarians have nothing
to lose but their chains" did not make any sense anymore. Their call to
the proletarians "Working men of all countries, unite" fell on deaf
ears. The proletarians of the Western industrialised countries had well-paid
jobs and some prosperity to lose. And they profited from the colonial
exploitation of the working men of the poor countries of the world. No wonder,
interest in Marxism waned. Radical leftists understood the new situation,
namely that the working class was no longer the agent of revolution. Some of
them thought that perhaps the sub-proletariat, the fringe groups, could be the
new agents of revolution.
In India today, as far as I can perceive from this distance (I live in
Germany), the material living conditions of workers, particularly of those in
the organised sectors of the economy, have improved very much. In the wake of
India's integration in the world economy, and against the background of high
GDP growth rates, the mood has changed. Not many people are nowadays willing to
fight for a great cause or ideal. Instead, there is a rush for making money,
making career, and consuming the luxuries offered by the world market. Members
of the established communist parties are no exceptions. The only people in
India who are today struggling against exploitation, oppression, and injustice
are the Adivasi forest dwellers. And their leaders and cadre don't call
themselves Marxists.
In this situation, can Marxism again have a relevance for the struggle for a
better world? In order to be able to answer this question, we must first be
clear about what a better world should mean today.
Two
Aspects of a Better World
The
book "Limits to Growth" (Meadows et al.) was published in 1972. Ever
since, the intensifying global ecological crisis, the dangers arising from
global warming, declining biodiversity, exhaustion of all kinds of resources,
and continually rising world population are matters of great concern for all
those who, for whatever reason, are willing to look beyond their own and their
nation's particular interests. One can say, imitating Marx: Capitalists,
socialists and communists have till now changed the world in various ways; the
point today, however, is to save it. I contend that the work of saving the
world from the above mentioned crises and dangers and creating a better world
has two aspects. Firstly, the economies of the world must be transformed into
ecologically sustainable ones, and they must be based mainly on renewable
resources, which we should expend at a rate no higher than the rate at which
they are or can be replenished. Secondly, the societies must be transformed
into egalitarian ones. Egalitarian societies are not only desirable in
themselves. They are also necessary for ensuring peace within a society and
peace between different societies. A society having these two qualities can be
called an eco-socialist society.*
It has become clear that there is an ineluctable contradiction between ecology
and industrial economy we know for the last two hundred years. Marx and Engels were
very much aware of the ecological degradations caused by the industrial
economies of their days. Marx wrote:
"In
modern agriculture, as in the urban industries, the increased productiveness
and quantity of the labour set in motion are bought at the cost of laying waste
and consuming by disease labour-power itself. Moreover, all progress in
capitalistic agriculture is a progress in the art, not only of robbing the
labourer, but of robbing the soil; … . The more a country starts its
development on the foundation of modern industry, … the more rapid is this
process of destruction. Capitalist production … develops technology and the
combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping
the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the labourer" (Marx
1954: 506-507).
Here
Marx is speaking of "soil". In place of "soil", we nowadays
should read resources and the environment. And Engels, using the negative
environmental effects of deforestation as an example, wrote: "… nature
takes its revenge on us"(Marx and Engels 1976, Vol.3: 74-5).
But this awareness did not influence the theory of Marx and Engels. The
ecological degradations they described were merely presented as an extra point
of criticism against capitalism. They remained growth optimists. So they also
saw a way out, a way of avoiding nature's revenge. Engels wrote:
"…
all our mastery of [nature] consists in the fact that we have the advantage
over all other creatures of being able to learn its laws and apply them
correctly.
… with every day that passes we are acquiring a better understanding of these
laws and getting to perceive both the more immediate and the more remote
consequences of our interference with the traditional course of nature. In
particular, after the mighty advances made by the natural sciences in the
present century, we are more than ever in a position to realise and hence to
control even the more remote natural consequences of at least our day-to-day
production activities." (ibid).
In principle, this optimism cannot be flawed, except that Engels forgot to say,
firstly, that there are also limits to the possibility of this control – limits
that are also inherent in the laws of nature – and, secondly, that this control
involves costs and that such costs might be too high for a society to pay. We
also know today that some of the negative ecological consequences of our
production activities may also become irreversible.
Despite his very fundamental critique of capitalism – namely, capitalism
"saps the original sources of all wealth – the soil and the labourer"
– Marx assigned this system a world-historic role in preparing the conditions
for future human emancipation: "The development of the productive forces
of social labour is capital's historic mission and justification. For that very
reason, it unwittingly creates the material conditions for a higher form of
production." (Marx 1981: 368). That means, Marx considered modern
industrial production to be a precondition for the future communist society. In
the quote further above, however, we see that Marx criticized not only
capitalism, i.e. the relations of production capitalism, but also the forces of
production, i.e. "modern agriculture", "urban industries"
and "modern industry".
Such contradictory positions in Marx's writings allow some Marxologists, such
as John Bellamy Foster, to take pains to prove that it is "possible to interpret
Marx in a different way, one that conceived ecology as central to his thinking,
…" (Foster 2000: vi, emphasis added). After painstaking study, Foster even
"came to the conclusion that Marx's world-view was deeply, and indeed
systematically, ecological (in all positive senses in which that term is used
today), … " (ibid: viii). This is nothing but an effort to defend Marx in
an age in which many of his basic positions have become indefensible. But it is
not the duty of socialists to defend Marx. It is their duty to strive to create
a socialist society, with or without Marx.
Most Marxists, communists, and socialists have failed to take cognizance of the
fact that in the years since 1972 a great paradigm shift has taken place in the
areas of economic, political, and social thinking. It is a shift from the then
prevailing growth paradigm to what I call the limits-to-growth paradigm. One
may also call the latter the ecological paradigm. Those who have carried out
this paradigm shift in their thinking now see the necessity of a gradual and
orderly, in fact planned, retreat from the growth madness of the economies of
the world. The socialist societies of the future will either be built in the
framework of a hugely contracted world economy, or they will not be built at
all. Obviously, that will be a newly conceived socialism, much different from
what has been conceived by the great leaders – Marx, Engels, Lenin, Mao up to
Castro and Che.
One Marxist, Michael Löwy (2003), who belongs to the Trotskyite stream of
Marxism, appears to have partially carried out the paradigm shift mentioned
above. He sees the necessity of a convergence of socialism and ecology. He
writes: "This convergence is only possible under the condition that
Marxists critically analyze their traditional conception of 'productive forces'
and ecologists break with their illusion of a true market economy." Löwy
wants to "free Marxism from its productivistic slag". But he too
wants to save (the rest of) Marxism, i.e. he wants to integrate the rest into
his brand of eco-socialism.
Another aspect of the present-day world situation that reduces the relevance of
Marxism for a socialist society of the future is the fact that the world,
especially the less developed countries, are overpopulated and that the
populations of such countries are still growing. Another great flaw in the
thoughts of Marx, Engels, Lenin and their followers has been that they totally
rejected the views of Malthus. Today, when the absolute availability of
important resources in the world is dwindling fast, population growth results
first in falling per capita resource availability, and then in conflicts,
including war-like conflicts, over resources. No amount of technological
development, which itself depends on availability of abundant and cheap resources,
will be able to overcome this problem.
Some other aspects of Marxism are however still relevant and will, I think,
remain relevant and important: historical materialism, dialectical thinking,
stress on class analysis, and thinking in terms of base and superstructure. But
the vision of socialism/communism that shines through the works of Marx and
Engels and has often been elaborated by their followers is no longer
convincing. If they were alive today, Marx and Engels would surely revise their
vision and become eco-socialists. And they would not think that the working
class would be the main agent of transformation of capitalist society into an
eco-socialist one. Marx himself once said: "All I know is that I am not a
Marxist" And that was, according to Bettelheim, "no mere
witticism" (Bettelheim 1978: 503).
The question as to which kind of people would then lead the transformation must
remain undiscussed in this short article.
----------OOOO-----------
Notes
* For my
detailed argumentation, see: (1) Saral Sarkar (1999 & 2000) and (2) Saral
Sarkar and Bruno Kern (2004/2008)
Literature
Bettelheim,
Charles (1978) Class Struggles in the USSR – Second Period, 1923–1930.
England: Hassocks.
Foster,
John Bellamy (2000) Marx's Ecology –Materialism and Nature. New York: Monthly
Review Press.
Löwy,
Michael (2003) "Überleben statt Profit", in SoZ, January 2003.
Marx, Karl
(1954) Capital, Vol. I. Moscow: Foreign Languages Publishing House.
Marx, Karl
(1981) Capital, Vol.3 (Translation by David Fernbach). Harmondsworth: Penguin.
Marx, Karl
and Frederick Engels (1976) Selected Works (in 3 Volumes), Vol. 3. Moscow:
Progress Publishers.
Saral
Sarkar (1999 & 2000) Eco-Socialism or Eco-Capitalism? – A Critical Analysis
of
Humanity's Fundamental Choices. London: Zed Books & New Delhi: Orient
Longman.
Saral
Sarkar and Bruno Kern (2004/2008) Eco-Socialism or Barbarism – An Up-to-date
Critique of Capitalism. Mainz: Initiative Ökosozialismus & Hyderabad: Chelimi
Foundation. (http://www.oekosozialismus.net/en_oekosoz_en_rz.pdf)
Köln,
November 5, 2012.
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