On Marx

2024-07-07

Coming back here after I've written and edited this. I did not mean to write this. This was supposed to be a quick update on what I'd been reading lately, instead it turned into a long, winding rant about Marx. Sorry about that but I hope you'll find some of what I have to say interesting nonetheless.

Let's get back to some real politics on this blog, shall we? What do I talk about here. Well generally I'm at this intersection between politics and technology. My recent posts have hung in this realm of serious non-seriousness. Give up on life, mosquitoes are morally wrong, and dystopia. I'm not exactly being serious, but I'm not exactly joking either. The worst blog post I've ever made was single issue. I legitimately can't explain that section of my life other than by assuming I went insane temporarily. What's this post about anyway. I'm not quite sure yet, I'm hoping to discover that as I write. I just want to go back over where I've been at over the past few months. We can start with Marx. Starting With Marx

I decided to go back and really try to get at Marx without baggage. Of course, that's impossible. What I meant was, I wanted to be more confident in my understanding of Marx. What I discovered is that it seems like the only commies who have actually read Marx are leftcoms. Like, the Leninists? I have no idea how you get vanguardism and socialist commodity production out of Marx. I also think that most anarchists haven't read Marx or put much effort into their reading if they have. Which is to say, Marx and Bakunin had a whole back and forth where Bakunin commits the same misunderstandings of Marx which anarchists today (including myself) commit, regarding his attitude towards the state. This is amplified of course by the fact that Marx's views on the state changed after the Paris Commune. I don't think it gets much clearer than his response to Bakunin where he says "the whole thing begins with the self-government of the commune." By my reckoning, Marx's conception of communism is much closer to the "democratic confederalism" of Rojava, with local communes holding ultimate power (that is to say, anyone who has a gun answers to the local communes), and the state being reduced to external diplomatic functions. Much like the model I discussed in "luke-warm anarchist patchwork".

"Communism is Free Time and Nothing Else"

I want to outline some of my critiques of Marx. My critique has generally begun with the labor theory of value (hereafter LTV). These days I'm not so convinced that Marx even had such an idea, at least not in the way it's commonly thought of. Here it's important to distinguish between Marx and Marxists. Let me go on a tangent here for a second. I've heard this phrase floating around on the internet: "communism is free time and nothing else". I decided to actually look up where this is from and what it means. It comes from a blogger by the name of Jehu, who argues that the goal of communism is the abolition of wage labour through the elimination of surplus labour time and the reduction of socially necessary labour time to the absolute minimum via development of the productive forces. I can translate that from Marxist standard English into regular English if you don't follow. Under capitalism, people are forced to sell their labour to a capitalist for a wage if they want to survive. The wage they earn is less than the total value they produce, since the capitalist has to earn a profit. In other words, for part of the working day, they are working to produce enough value to pay their own wage (they work as much as is socially necessary). Then, once that wage is earned, they work the rest of the day for free (surplus labour time) to make money for their boss. Capitalists want to minimise the socially necessary labour time as much as possible, so that they can get as much of the day's work for free. They do this through implementing technologies which automate parts of the job, or in other ways make it so that a worker can be maximally productive (development of productive capacities). If we were to abolish the need for a capitalist to make profit, these highly developed productive capacities could be put to work in such a way that everyone would work a lot less, which is good. That's the communism is free time and nothing else argument.

Well, not according to Marx

I'm not quite sure if this is an accurate reading of Marx. (Please note that I am not talking about my personal agreement or disagreement here, just my reading of Marx). This idea that capitalists are effectively stealing our labour for some portion of the working day is a common misunderstanding of the LTV, one which I used to hold, before I went back through capital and critique of the gotha programme. Also thanks to @drearywillow on youtube for being the first to point this out to me. Labour power is simply bought and sold on the market like any other commodity, and its value is therefore determined through the same process as the value of any other commodity, by the socially necessary labour time required to produce it. The difference is, or the special property of labour power, is that it's use value is the ability to produce more value. From capital vol 1 chapter 6, "The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article". Therefore, it's not accurate to frame wage labour as a social relation in which one's labour time is stolen from them without compensation. Rather, the labour time is simply less valuable than the product of that labour. How can this be? Because, as Marx states right at the start of critique of the gotha program, "Labor is not the source of all wealth. Nature is just as much the source of use values (and it is surely of such that material wealth consists!) as labor, which itself is only the manifestation of a force of nature, human labor power." To go into more depth about this, I would like to reframe the productive relation of the capitalist mode of production in terms of powers and alienation. As I said earlier, in a capitalist mode of production, the proletariat have no choice but to sell their labour time for a wage. The word "proletariat" comes from latin "proletarius", meaning "producer of offspring". In ancient roman society, it referred to the class of people who owned nothing other than their own children. Hence, the re-use of this term by Marx. Contrary to the feudal peasant, who owns her own means of production, or the capitalist, who owns the means of production, the proletariat do not own anything. Why is this important. Ownership is a social relation, to own something means you have a certain set of powers. Let's compare a feudal craftsman to a worker under capitalism. Say you're a feudal craftsman making pottery. You have a series of powers. The power to make decisions over what sort of pottery you make. The power over how much clay you buy and from whom. These powers respectively stem from the power of ownership over the pottery wheel and studio and kiln (means of production), and the Power of ownership of the clay (raw materials). In fact, it was nature which first provided the clay, and the materials with which one might construct a kiln or a pottery wheel. To go one step deeper, human labour power is simply one expression of matter in motion interacting with other matter. The formation of clay in the earth was also a product of the same physical processes of matter in motion interacting with other matter. We only talk of human labour power as being distinct from other kinetic relations of matter because capitalism divides this continuous movement into discrete waged atoms of labour time and restricts it's permitted interactions. In less abstract terms, if you are no longer an artisanal potter, but instead making pots as a wage labourer on a factory floor, you are alienated from the set of powers you once had through ownership of the MoP and raw materials. Those alienated powers are now in the hands of the capitalist, who is himself alienated from his labour power. Since all of these powers form the source of use value, it is the case that the wage worker is compensated in full for what she brings to the table, because she is alienated from her other powers. It follows that communism will reconcile this alienation of powers by collapsing the class distinction between worker and capitalist. In conclusion to this tangent, communism for Marx is not "free time and nothing else", communism is the full reconciliation of "Gattungswesen", species-being, where our powers are no longer alienated from us. I did not have time to expand fully on the Marxist concept of alienation here, so forgive me for leaving some things out in order to simplify my argument, since this blog post isn't supposed to be just ranting about Marx. (well, it turned out to just be about Marx anyway whoops)

[Edit: I'm actually not sure I got this right, take with a heavy grain of salt. I'll make another post on this topic after I research more.]

Gattungswesen? Nein danke!

Fuck that went on a lot longer than I wanted it to. This was supposed to be my critique of Marx, and I just ended up ranting about autistic details. Where I ended that paragraph does give me a good place to start with my critique of Marx, though. What is gattungswesen? Marx believed that the thing that distinguished humans from other animals was primarily their love for work, more specifically their ability to change their environment to match their desires through productive labour. From capital vol 1 chapter 7, "A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. At the end of every labour-process, we get a result that already existed in the imagination of the labourer at its commencement. He not only effects a change of form in the material on which he works, but he also realises a purpose of his own that gives the law to his modus operandi, and to which he must subordinate his will. And this subordination is no mere momentary act." This is not something I agree with. I think this focus on the imagination of bees versus man is anti-materialist. In fact, many of my critiques of Marx and Marxism come from this direction: you're not materialist enough. Marx believes that mankind's ultimate goal is to maximise the productive capacities in order to transform its environment according to its will, to match its imagination. There are many counterarguments I could make here. Starting with the obvious one, by what means and to what end? At what environmental cost? Not from a moralistic Gaia worshipping standpoint, but from a practical one. What point is there to turning the whole earth into one giant, hyper-productive machine if it makes the whole place uninhabitable? I will admit, from a dystopian aesthetic perspective this might be appealing to me, but practically speaking I know that such a system is impossible. Marx of course was not aware of the depths of environmental destruction the industrial processes were causing, but we are aware of this. I would relate Marx's position more to a radically inhuman future of machines producing for machines while humans go extinct, rather than a "species being". Maybe there is something to be said for this extremely pessimistic interpretation of species being, the most human thing of all would be to cause our own extinction. My point here is just that I don't think Marx knew what he was really assuming here. Destroying the biosphere to produce ever more luxury goods to supply ever more intense "needs" does not seem to me like a utopian dream.

An even more obvious criticism here is: what? What are you talking about? Species-being? Who said such a thing exists? Why construct it? Where can I find this thing? Can I touch it? Sounds like Hegelian Wu to me! Hmm yes there is conveniently this spectral force underlying all human activity which happens to align with my ideology. Localised entirely in my kitchen in fact. No, you can't see it. Yeah seems like a buncha baloney to me. The common accusation from liberals that Marx "failed to account for human nature" is actually backwards. Marx constructed a human nature way too hard. Back to my affected formal style of writing, I really do not find any compelling evidence that such a construction is necessary for understanding the world. George Bataille From the Top Rope!

Marx, like other restricted economists, does not pay much consideration to consumption. He pays some more attention to surplus and excess than most other restricted economists, but he still doesn't quite realise his restriction. He comes oh so close though. Famously, Marx wrote, "The less you eat, drink, buy books, go to the theatre or to balls, or to the pub, and the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you will be able to save and the greater will become your treasure which neither moth nor rust will corrupt—your capital. The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.” Marx makes an attempt to grasp at sacrifice, "using up". He is lamenting the repression of non-productive consumption or expenditure. But he misses the mark on two counts. Firstly, he clearly explains here his appreciation for consumption above mere utility (use value), and yet he goes on to continuously celebrate a communist triumph of use-value over exchange-value. In fact, the hoarder whose savings grow, is the one focused entirely on use value. Going to the theatre is not useful, therefore I will keep my money for something more useful instead. Something productive. In other words, if Marx were to follow his own logic here, he would realise that maximising the industrial productive capacities of the human species will own subjugate us further to mere utility. How else could funnelling all excess resources towards further production be described other than growing your treasure of capital. Marx believes he is the mugwort on the surface of a half empty pond, that there is remaining space for reproduction. In fact, the pond's surface is already covered end to end, and the remaining energy must be expended without reciprocity. In other terms, the sun provides a gift to the earth without reciprocity. Within that energetic system, we must also emulate the sun in providing gifts without reciprocity. You Probably Don't Want a Revolution.

This will perhaps be my most controversial take in this blog post. You probably don't want a revolution. Historically, most revolutions have either failed and been violently repressed, or they have succeeded only temporarily before being overcome by counter-revolutionary forces, or they have succeeded only to descend eventually back into a similar form of despotism out of which they arose. These three scenarios in order constitute the vast majority of historical revolutions. Your life is almost certainly better now than it would be during a revolution. I doubt that in your heart you really want to give up the comforts of your life to fight in a revolutionary war. Maybe you do, hey, I don't know you. But I would imagine, especially if you live in an affluent part of the world (read, imperial), that you probably don't want to fight in a revolution. Most revolutions happen in poorer countries which have been victims of colonialism, why? Because they have less to lose. Starvation is a necessary precursor to revolution. Contrary to Marx's account, history is not moved by the masses. This is another case of not being materialist enough. You can try to pass off your idealism as social relations, but when your praxis relies on "consciousness raising" of "the masses", you're doing idealism. Very literally. I'm not necessarily saying this of Marx as much as Marxists. The common understanding among Marxists is that communist revolution is in the best interests of the working class, and the only reason that hasn't happened is that they are too stupid to realise this. Therefore, it's the job of the enlightened few, generally speaking Marxist intellectuals, to raise the class consciousness of the masses and produce the conditions for revolution. I'm sure it's just a coincidence that the Marxist intellectuals came up with a theory where they're actually really important. This theory is just obviously false. The masses are not interested in revolution, because precarious wage slavery is still preferable to risking your life in war. You can pretend this is cowardice, but it's just an application of reason. Marxists are obsessed with imagining the masses as miserable, but what if they're not? They don't act like they are. They don't act like they want to take power. Furthermore, they act like they just want someone to blame when things go wrong. They are a force of inertia. The material conditions for a successful communist revolution are a society of highly developed productive capacities and mass starvation. This is why the communist revolution hasn't happened. Because that peak of contradictory conditions just does not arise. McDonald's goes bust if people can't afford a big mac. And just recently we saw this come to a head in reality. The economy has been subject to large scale price gauging, from fuel prices to fast food. Fast food giants raised their prices above what people could afford, and subsequently people stopped paying for them. Those fast food chains are now lowering their prices to get customers back, and it's working very well for them. No one really cares why the price went up, all they care about is that the price is back down now.

The Hidden Truth

Marxists make the mistake of believing that the material conditions, that is to say, the economic reality of who owns what, is an obscured truth hidden from the general populace. That they need to force the masses to wake up and see the truth. They failed to notice that it's extremely easy to tell who owns what. No one is under the delusion that they own the company they work for. Everyone knows the billionaires who own their favourite tech companies by name. There is no hidden truth about the structure or function of the economy. From time to time, everyone gets together to clown on an internet user who asks, "why can't they just print more money?". They go on long spiels about media literacy and the failure of the education system and the mechanics of supply and demand and so on. In the meantime, the fed just prints more money.

There is a strange trend on the right wing. In their obsession over IQ, they have begun constructing strange made up tests of IQ, which you can pass by being capable of very basic cognition. Things like being able to understand hypotheticals, you know, the very basic elements of cognition. They then make wild claims regarding which IQ numbers preclude their owners from these basic cognitive exercises. They then meme themselves into believing that being able to explain how you would have felt had you not eaten breakfast that morning makes them extra special mummies special boy super smart clever aryan super soldiers. I'm sure I don't need to explain to you why this is idiotic.

I see this left-wing pseudo-materialism as a corollary to this. Historically, just as now, the reality of social relations of ownership has been very transparent. If you're a slave, you know who your master is. You know who your emperor is. You know who your baron is, you know who your pope is, you know who your boss is etc. Historically, no one has cared much about this, unless it's time to find someone to blame (or kill) when things go wrong. You're not particularly clever for pointing out that landlords don't produce anything of value for society. People are much more interested in their gods and rituals and TV and Mr Beast videos because they're just more fascinating. Not So Historical, Not So Materialist

So far I have explained how what was supposedly "historial materialism" is not truly materialist. The theory of Gattungswesen is not based in materialism, the restricted economic view which discounts solar excess and expenditure is not based in materialism, and the theory of class consciousness and mass revolution as driving forces of history is not based in materialism. I touched on a critique of the "historical" side of things here, too, and I would like to expand on that.

Marx's theories of the stages of historical development are ahistorical. Now I will say, some people have had different interpretations as to what extent Marx presents a determinist or progressive theory of history, but the mainstream understanding does seem to read him as having at least partially a historical determinist theory where society progresses through primitive communist, slave, feudal, capitalist, and finally socialist stages. Ignoring the final stage of socialism which is set in the future, Marx has to be extremely reductive to force all of history into these distinct stages. Firstly, we know now with modern archaeology and anthropology that "primitive communism" was a much more varied affair than Marx assumes. When most of humanity were not sedentary agriculturalists, their modes of social organisation were extremely varied and flowing. Yes, some were small egalitarian bands, but many others were strictly hierarchical, patriarchal, matriarchal, many were seasonally bi-modal, many kept slaves, many had high rates of homicide, some were very large and yet remained egalitarian. Some were very small and yet strictly hierarchical. In simple terms, you cannot simplify the majority of human history into one homogenous mass of "primitive communism".

During what Marx claims were the phases of slave and feudal societies, these modes of organisation were far from homogenous or dominant. Furthermore, one cannot simply state that sedentary agricultural societies constitute a more advanced stage descending from nomadic tribal societies, when they existed interdependent and in reaction to one another. People may have chosen to live as sedentary agriculturalists to protect themselves from nomadic raiders, but people also became nomadic raiders to escape taxation and state repression of sedentary agriculturalism. Without agricultural settlements to raid, nomadic bands wouldn't have been able to sustain themselves. Without nomadic bands, there would be no incentive to retreat inside walled cities for protection. This is just one example of the ways in which different modes of social organisation cannot be strictly delineated into more or less evolved forms. Many people don't know this, but Marx himself was forced to invent what he called the "Asiatic mode of production" to account for the fact that societies in Asia did not follow his Eurocentric idea of historical development (they never went through distinct slave-and-then-feudal phases). It turns out that what Marx might have considered holdouts of the prehistoric tribal society, i.e., stateless zones which existed between slave or feudal societies, were and continue to be actually formed in direct response to those societies. I want to know how Marxists can account for occurrences like the Frisian Freedom, as an autonomous region with a system of self-government in the Netherlands, which held out against the imposition of feudalism for up to 400 years. They were not tribal, slave, or feudal and certainly not capitalist. It's worth noting that the inhabitants of these historical de-facto stateless zones like Frisia or Zomia have been not straggles of tribal society, but those who escaped the surrounding states.

This is not just a historical error, but a modern one. Can the present system really be said to represent capitalism as Marx saw it? One would expect a capitalist economy to be dominated by companies which compete on a market to make a profit, but in fact our economies are dominated by companies which don't compete and never make any profit, such that they can proclaim their infinite investment potential. Rather, they are propped up by investors, and in turn, those investors don't need to make returns because, the state will print new money and deliver it right into their hands no matter what they do. These companies don't need to worry about creating products with either use or exchange value, because they can just coordinate to give consumers no other option. We can see this with the current AI bubble. The state gives billions to investors, which they in turn sink into AI, and then the companies just force it on their customers with no choice. It's much more like a command economy than a capitalist economy.

Let's just take the definition of capitalism from marxists.org and check our work. Capitalism The socio-economic system where social relations are based on commodities for exchange, in particular private ownership of the means of production and on the exploitation of wage labour. I'm not going full Yanis Varoufakis here and saying that we have completely left capitalism, but I hope you agree with me that something is in the process of changing fundamentally here. While we may still live in a form of capitalism, we may still live in a system of social relations whereby commodities are produced for their exchange value, there are also growing zones of the economy which are ever more abstracted from this doctrine. I don't believe that this alone is enough to point and say "see, Marx was wrong!" like some people do, but I think that this on top of everything I have previously outlined serves to build the case for post-Marxism.

Conclusion (finally)

I do not believe in throwing Marx away and leaving him behind. What I believe is that Marxist goals have outmoded Marxism itself. I am aware that I haven't offered any positive view here, just critique. It's easy to critique the old, it's hard to construct the new. In my mind, a synthesis is forming, but it's not all the way there yet. It may never be all the way there. I hope it isn't. If I'm ever certain of what is to be done I'm probably wrong. In fact, this constitutes a fundamental aspect of my theory: theory should be general, praxis should be particular. This article has turned out to be way too long, and I'm sure no one will get to the end. Gonna go now because I'm hungry.