Commemoration of 205th Birth Anniversary of Marx
P J James
May 5, 2023 is 205th birth anniversary of Karl Marx, one of the most influential figures in history. As the pioneer of scientific socialism, Marx was the first to apply dialectical materialism to present an analytical framework capable of unraveling the historical-political-economic-cultural relations of society for predicting the future. According to Marxism, revolution is possible only through a fundamental change or alteration in the material conditions and social relations. Marx succinctly put the matter in 1845 thus: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.”
According to Marxism, history of all hitherto societies is that of the history of class struggles, the struggle between exploited and exploiters, between oppressed and oppressors, and between propertied and property-less or between haves and have-nots and throughout history, society is propelled by the inherent contradictions and conflict of interests between the opposing classes. For instance, under industrial capitalism, which Marx and Engels subjected for concrete analysis, both opined: “Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – Bourgeoisie and Proletariat.”
The ‘classical’/industrial/competitive capitalism of the 19th century that formed the background of the analysis of both Marx and Engels transformed into finance/monopoly capitalism or imperialism by the turn of the 20th century and consequently Marxism had to be developed/updated for applying to the concrete context of monopoly or finance capital. It was Lenin who took up this task of unraveling the international operations of finance capital or imperialism and the inherent but complex contradictions thereof. For instance, Lenin pointed out how a section of the working class had become a “labour aristocracy” under imperialism. Leninist analysis of imperialism underscored how socialist revolution in imperialist countries and people’s democratic revolution in oppressed countries form two streams of world proletarian revolution with the immediate possibility of the latter in the “weakest links of the imperial chain”.
It is a historical fact that inspired by October Revolution and advance of Soviet Union followed by the formation of Comitern, within a few decades many countries broke away from the world imperialist chain, and by the beginning of the 1950s, one-third of world people lived in countries with a socialist orientation. Even as US-led imperialism succeeded in evolving postwar neocolonialism which has been more “sinister and pernicious” than colonialism, to counter world people’s affinity towards socialism, imperialism was forced to resort to a ‘welfare state’ as an ideological weapon for almost a quarter century following Second World War. However, the imperialist crisis as manifested in ‘stagflation’ reappeared with more intensified vigour since the seventies. By this time, followed by Soviet Union, China had also embraced the capitalist path. Taking advantage of the consequent ideological-political setbacks of the International Left, imperialism abandoned welfare capitalism and embraced neoliberalism giving way to unfettered and uncontrolled freedom for corporate finance capital to plunder both labour and nature.
Today, if we closely observe the emerging situation under neoliberal imperialism, it can be seen that many qualitative changes are taking place today. When Marx analysed industrial capitalism, the capitalist crisis was the ‘material basis’ for the starting point of new capital investment and next turn over cycle of crisis. But under imperialism, especiallly under neoliberalism, finance capital, being cut-off its links in production, is exponentially growing by ballooning the speculative sphere, through a process called “financialisation”/corporatisation such that real economy of production is like ‘a bubble on a whirlpool of speculation’. By remaining in the sphere of speculation and through a complex network of financial tools, devices and instruments, finance capital has now become capable to appropriate whatever value created by labour in the productive sphere. Here the capitalist-imperialist system is going from crisis to crisis and not to a greater productive investment and employment generation as was the case with industrial capitalism.
In the Third volume of Capital, Marx had introduced the concept of ‘fictitious capital’ that was subordinate to industrial capital. Of course, this was the situation during competitive capitalism. However, developing Marx’s idea further, Lenin pointed out the qualitative change in capitalist speculation under imperialism by unraveling the decay, decadence and parasitism of finance capital.The destructive character of finance capital and its undermining of the very basis of commodity production as explained by Lenin found its concrete expression during the Great Depression of the early thirties. But commodity production still reigned and continued as the basis of economic life, facilitated by state intervention in the ensuing period. On the other hand, today under neoliberalism, the financial manipulation and corporate swindles identified by Lenin a century ago are not only bouncing back with several-fold intensity, but the financial catastrophe and economic devastation unleashed on world people by globalised capital in the 21st century are on a scale not seen since the Depression of the 1930s and the Stagflation of the 1970s. Further, under far-right neoliberalism, unlike in the previous periods in imperialist history, making use of the rapid advancements in frontier technologies, especially those relating to Digitisation and Artificial Intelligence, corporate capital has unleashed an internationalisation of production and a new international division of labour accomplishing a super-exploitation of labour and hitherto unknown levels of surplus value extraction together with unprecedented plunder of nature making the very sustainability of life itself difficult.
Regarding this latter question, i.e., plunder of nature and ecological destruction associated with the capital accumulation process, unlike the mechanical materialists, Marx’s position from the very beginning was unambiguous. According to Marx, human beings are nothing but part of nature. In the 1844 Manuscripts, linked with the concept of alienation, Marx explains how capitalism destroys the link between human beings and nature and how continuous interchange with nature is indispensable for survival of humankind. In the Critique of the Gotha Program, in opposition to the Lasallean conceptualisation of labour as the source of all wealth and culture, Marx had emphatically said that along with labour, nature is also the source of human existence. Here Marx had given an important insight regarding his approach to nature, by stating that the concept of man’s ownership of nature lays the basis for the concept of capital’s ownership of labour, which underlies the capitalist justification of profit. To be precise, for Marx, private ownership of nature is as absurd as private ownership of labour. And in Capital (Vol.3), Marx had clearly opined how capital destroys the two sources of human existence, namely labour and nature (soil). Later Engels in his book Dialectics of Nature had beautifully carried forward the spirit of this Marxist approach to nature. This unfinished work kept in the manuscript form kept by Bernstein could be published only in 1925 with the initiative of Albert Einstein.
However, in spite of occasional initiatives, erstwhile socialist regimes failed to have appropriate policy interventions based on this Marxist perspective to the environmental question. Infatuation with ‘American efficiency’ , slogans such as ‘catching up with the West’, conceptualisation of ‘development’ as the “absolute principle”, etc., in gross disregard of the Marxist approach pursued by mechanical materialists of all hues not only blurred the distinction between bourgeois development and people’s development but also led to a bias against Marxism even among well-meaning people. Meanwhile, as no holds barred corporate accumulation imparted irreparable damage to the environment, and as ecology has come to the centre-stage of international political economy, in tune with the ever-growing ecological consciousness among people, neoliberal centres themselves have come forward as the champions of ‘sustainable development’, diverting the entire issue of environment from the non-sustainable resource appropriation and plunder of nature by corporate-finance capital keeping total silence on the neoliberal-neocolonial political-economic relations thereof. To be precise, it is high time on the part of all concerned to revisit the Marxist approach to the environmental question beginning with Marx own writings in this regard. And it is fully upholding this Marxist perspective on environment that CPI (ML) Red Star in its Party Program has adopted the contradiction between Capital and Nature as one of the major contradictions before world people today.
Marx’s perception on the validity of Capitalist Mode of Production, that he analysed with respect to Europe is of particular importance. For instance, Marx never upheld a text-copying of the class analysis and mode of production thesis developed in the context of England and European societies to non-European societies which have different historically determined social formations and cultural structures. Unlike the mechanical materialists, Marx never proposed ‘historical materialism’ and the ‘stage theory’ associated with it as a ‘master-key’ for all societies. It was this approach that prompted Marx to conceptualise on the much debated Asiatic Mode of Production. Unlike his contemporaries, Marx never pursued a unilinear/ Eurocentric approach to oppressed peoples of the colonial/semi-colonial countries as well as indigenous peoples under ‘settler colonialism’ like that propped by the US.
This becomes all the more relevant in the case of India which with its historically determined caste system is different from other social formations. For, including his magnum opus Capital, in most of the important works of Marx such as Marx-Fredrick Engels Correspondence (1852-62), articles written in New York Daily Tribune (1853-61), Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy, etc., there are ample references to caste. While Marx’s conceptualisation of Asiatic Mode of Production encompasses many Asian societies, as far India is concerned, as many scholars have pointed out, this formulation was with reference to the caste-ridden Indian social formation. However, following the 1931 Leningrad Discussions in Soviet Union, the conceptualisation of Asiatic Mode of Production was altogether banned from the official circles in Soviet Union, following which Indian Marxist scholars also discontinued further discussion on it. In the same vein, the ‘Draft Platform for Action’ prepared by the then CPI in 1930 though put forward a concrete approach towards abolition of caste as indispensable component of People’s Democracy, the documents of Communist Party thereafter revealingly refrained from any mention on caste.
Marx fully knew that ‘class analysis’ designed in the European context was incapable to unravel India’s social formation where production relations as well as productive forces are determined by caste. In other words, in India where vast majority of working and toiling people historically belong to untouchable and lower castes, a Marxist analysis on property relations, division of labour, surplus value appropriation and so on becomes impossible unless the integral and inseparable relation between class and caste is understood in the proper perspective. Instead of pursuing this Marxist approach of comprehending the intertwining between caste and class, the mechanical and reductionist approach such as caste will wither way with the advance of modernity or that caste shall vanish once ‘class struggle’ becomes victorious or climbing the economic ladder enables one to overcome the social stigma associated with caste and so on did immense harm to the Communist Movement in India. While caste is capable to cut across base and superstructure and is able to transmigrate through space and time, the mechanical and Eurocentric approach to class identified caste as a mere superstructural phenomenon.
The fault was not with Marx but solely with the self-professed Indian Marxists who failed to grasp Marxism according to the concrete social formation in India – a method pursued by Marx. One of its tragic outcome was the inability on the part of Indian Communist Movement to have a positive approach to Dr. Ambedkar who could put forward caste in the proper perspective. This erroneous orientation led to a separation between the working class movement and the movement for annihilation of caste as two streams which in essence was the antithesis of the Marxist clarion call “Workers and Oppressed Peoples of the World Unite”. It is self-critically evaluating this grave mistake from a Marxist perspective that CPI (ML) Red Star in its Party Program, in the context of historically situating Indian class struggle has acknowledged class struggle and struggle for abolition of caste as inseparable and interrelated process.
Viewed in this perspective, today when we observe the 205th birth day of Marx, Marxism continues as the most sought after philosophical-ideological-political stream the world over, not only by its ardent proponents and supporters but also by its enemies. At this critical juncture when the reactionary essence of capitalism which Marx had identified two centuries back and which Lenin clarified further following its transformation to imperialism a century ago has now assumed horrific proportions. In the midst of ever-mounting imperialist crisis, as manifested in unprecedented wealth concentration with a few billionaires on the one hand, and poverty and deprivation of vast majority of world people on the other, Marxism is increasingly becoming the only ray of hope for the working class and oppressed peoples the world over. There is nothing surprising in it since Marxism is the only available tool to world people to critically analyse and alter the crisis-ridden imperialism. As its manifestation, Marx and his ideas have become more attractive to people during the years following the imperialist crisis of 2008.
Of course, Marxism is not a religion, nor a dogma. Marxism, upholds the scientific perspective that nothing is static and all social phenomena including social systems are continuously changing. Like every other phenomenon which is subject to change, Marxism also needs to be constantly updated and developed according to changes in the concrete situation. For instance, take the case of the ongoing technological revolution around AI including Generative Pre-trained Transformer (GPT), the most powerful AI language model ever created with its far-reaching dimensions that is taking place today. The main problem with it is that it takes place in a highly polarised class society and hence the immediate effect is a hitherto unknown levels of massive displacement of white-collar workers everywhere. While AI is expected to propel labour productivity leaps and bounds, with sharp reduction in the share of international proletariat in global wealth, the entire gain game from this technological revolution is going to be vested with a few corporate billionaires. And the present ruling national regimes are already exposed as incapable to regulate or deal with AI. In other words, the corporate-ruling systems cannot creatively utilise the rapid strides in the ‘explosive’ growth in such technologies. A system capable to establish perfect social control over the ‘arms race’ among corporate-technological giants is the immediate need of the hour. At this critical juncture, we can proudly say that Marxism is the only ideological-political tool capable to unravel and appropriately intervene in the complex and qualitative dimensions associated with the 21st century transformations. Otherwise, the future of humanity will be risky.
