Author: Peter Singer
Category: Nonfiction
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It is, incidentally, in these comments on the Gotha Program that Marx proposes the celebrated principle of distribution for a communist society: ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. The principle is not original to Marx, and Marx places little emphasis upon it. He refers to it only in order to criticize those socialists who worry too much about how goods would be distributed in a socialist society. Marx thought it a mistake to bother about working out a fair or just principle of distribution. He was even prepared to allow that, given the capitalist mode of production, capitalist distribution was the only one that was ‘fair’. His point was that production was what mattered, and once ‘the productive forces have increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly’, distribution will look after itself (GP 566).
Everything Marx says about communism is premised on material abundance. Remember that it is the development of the forces of production that, according to the materialist theory of history, is the driving force behind historical change. The change from one form of society to another occurs when the existing structure of society acts as a fetter on the further development of the productive forces. But communism is the final form of society. Building on the dramatic advances so ruthlessly made by capitalism, communism allows the forces of production to develop to their fullest possible extent. Production will be co-operatively planned for the benefit of all, not wasted in socially fruitless competition between individual capitalists for their own private ends. There will be no crises of overproduction, as there are in unplanned economies. The reserve army of unemployed workers required by capitalism to keep labour cheap and available will become productive. Mechanization and automation will continue to develop as they had developed under capitalism, though without their degrading effect on the workers (unfortunately Marx does not tell us how these effects would be avoided, but presumably it would be by a drastic reduction in the hours of necessary labour). No longer will surplus-value be extracted from the workers to line the pockets of the capitalists. The working class will receive the full use-value of its labour, subject only to a deduction for future social investment. We will control our economy, instead of being controlled by it.
Material abundance and the transformation of human nature provide the basis for Marx’s claim that the state as we know it would cease to exist under communism. This would not happen immediately, for at first the proletariat would have to assert itself over the other classes, in order to abolish capitalist forms of production. This would be the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’. But once capitalist production had been replaced by socialist production the division of society into classes would disappear, along with conflicts between individual and social interests. There would be no need for political power in the Marxist sense of the organized power of one class used to oppress another. Nor, given Marx’s idea that communism would come first to the most industrially advanced societies, and would be international in character, would there be any need for the state in the sense of an organization existing to defend the nation against attacks from other nations. Relieved from oppressive conditions that bring their interests into conflict, people would voluntarily co-operate with each other. The political state resting on armed force would become obsolete; its place would be taken by ‘an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all’ (CM 238).
Chapter 10
An Assessment
Any exposition of Marx’s ideas is also an assessment of them. In arguing that Marx’s main achievements – his theory of history and his economics – are not scientific discoveries, I have already rejected the accolade bestowed on Marx by Engels, confirmed by Lenin, and echoed by orthodox Marxist-Leninists ever since. But if Marx did not make scientific discoveries about economics and society, what did he achieve? Is his system now only a historical curiosity? In this concluding section I shall state my view of which elements of Marx’s thought remain valuable, and which need to be revised or scrapped.
First, though, it is necessary to say a little more about Marx as a scientist; for it cannot be denied that Marx thought of his own theories as ‘scientific’, and based predictions about the future of capitalism on them. He predicted that:
The income gap between capitalists and workers will increase.
More and more independent producers will be forced down into the proletariat, leaving a few rich capitalists and a mass of poor workers.
Workers’ wages will, with short-lived exceptions, remain at subsistence level.
13. Marx’s grave at Highgate Cemetery in London
The rate of profit will fall.
Capitalism will collapse because of its internal contradictions.
Proletarian revolutions will occur in the most industrially advanced countries.
More than a century after Marx made these predictions, most of them are so plainly mistaken that one can only wonder why anyone sympathetic to Marx would attempt to argue that his greatness lies in the scientific aspects of his work. Judged by the standards of Marx’s time, the gap between rich and poor has narrowed dramatically throughout the industrialized world. Though the gap has widened again in the last decade of the twentieth century, it is still nothing like what it was during the nineteenth century. This is largely because real wages have risen. Factory workers today earn considerably more than they need in order to remain alive and reproducing. The rate of profit has not gone into a steady decline. Capitalism has gone through several crises, but nowhere has it collapsed as a result of its alleged internal contradictions. Proletarian revolutions have broken out in the less developed nations, rather than the more developed ones.
Nevertheless, the fate of Marx’s predictions is not a ground for disregarding his ideas as a whole, any more than the fact that Jesus thought the second coming would take place in the lifetime of those he addressed is a reason for taking no further heed of Christianity. Such errors merely show that those who made them are fallible. It is better to think of Marx as a philosopher – in the broadest sense – rather than as a scientist. We have seen how Marx’s predictions were derived from his application of Hegel’s philosophy to the progress of human history and the economics of capitalism. No one now thinks of Hegel as a scientist, although Hegel, like Marx, described his work as ‘scientific’. The German term they both used includes any serious, systematic study, and in that sense, of course, Marx and Hegel were both scientists; but we now regard Hegel as a philosopher, and we should think of Marx primarily in the same way.
As a philosopher, Marx’s work endures. It has altered our understanding of our own nature, and deepened our grasp of what it is to be free.
Let us take the second of these first, for freedom was Marx’s central concern (paradoxical as this may seem when we look at the regimes that profess to follow his ideas). The significance of Marx’s idea of freedom is best appreciated by contrasting it with the standard liberal notion of freedom accepted – in Marx’s time and in our own – by those who oppose government interference with the free market. According to this view, I am free so long as I am not subject to deliberate interference from other people. Of course, there have to be limits to this freedom. The government may properly interfere with me if, for instance, I assault my neighbours; then I am deliberately interfering with others and my own freedom can be restricted to ensure greater freedom for all. This is consistent with holding that freedom is at its maximum when each individual is able to act without deliberate interference from others.
This liberal conception of freedom fits perfectly with the economic theories of defenders of unrestrained capitalism, for they portray capitalism as the outcome of the free choices of millions of individuals. The capitalist merely offers people work at, say, £1 an hour, for forty hours a week. Anyone can choose, without interference from others, to accept or reject this offer. If some accept it, the capitalist uses their labour for his own purposes, say,
to make shirts. He offers these shirts for sale at a certain price, and again anyone can freely choose whether or not to buy them at this price. And anyone who thinks he can do better than the capitalists now in business is free to set up his own enterprise.
This is not how capitalism really works, of course, but it shows how the liberal view of freedom can be used to provide a defence of capitalism which is immune to objections along the line that capitalists are greedy people who exploit the poor by selling at exorbitant prices. Defenders of capitalism can readily admit that some capitalists may be greedy, but they can also point out that no one is forced to work for or buy from any individual capitalist. So the greed of individual capitalists is not a reason for condemning the free enterprise system.
Marx saw that within its own terms this defence of capitalism is coherent; but he also saw that from a broader, historical perspective, the liberal definition of freedom is open to a fundamental objection. To explain his objection, I shall switch to a more homely example. Suppose I live in the suburbs and work in the city. I could drive my car to work, or take the bus. I prefer not to wait around for the bus, and so I take my car. Fifty thousand other people living in my suburb face the same choice and make the same decision. The road to town is choked with cars. It takes each of us an hour to travel ten miles.
In this situation, according to the liberal conception of freedom, we have all chosen freely. No one deliberately interfered with our choices. Yet the outcome is something none of us want. If we all went by bus, the roads would be empty and we could cover the distance in twenty minutes. Even with the inconvenience of waiting at the bus stop, we would all prefer that. We are, of course, free to alter our choice of transportation, but what can we do? While so many cars slow the bus down, why should any individual choose differently? The liberal conception of freedom has led to a paradox: we have each chosen in our own interests, but the result is in no one’s interest. Individual rationality, collective irrationality.
The solution, obviously, is for us all to get together and make a collective decision. As individuals we are unable to bring about the situation we desire. Together we can achieve what we want, subject only to the physical limits of our resources and technology. In this example, we can all agree to use the bus.
Marx saw that capitalism involves this kind of collective irrationality. In pre-capitalist systems it was obvious that most people did not control their own destiny – under feudalism, for instance, serfs had to work for their lords. Capitalism seems different because people are in theory free to work for themselves or for others as they choose. Yet most workers have as little control over their lives as feudal serfs. This is not because they have chosen badly. Nor is it because of the physical limits of our resources and technology. It is because the cumulative effect of countless individual choices is a society that no one – not even the capitalists – has chosen. Where those who hold the liberal conception of freedom would say we are free because we are not subject to deliberate interference by other humans, Marx says we are not free because we do not control our own society. Economic relations between human beings determine not only our wages and our prospects of finding work, but also our politics, our religion, and our ideas. These economic relations force us into a situation in which we compete with each other instead of co-operating for the good of all. These conditions nullify technical advances in the use of our resources. Rationally organized, industrialization should enable us to enjoy an abundance of material goods with a minimum of effort; under capitalism, however, these advances simply reduce the value of the commodity produced, which means that the worker must work just as long for the same wage. (In saying this, Marx was supposing that real wages would remain around subsistence level; in fact the increase in productivity has allowed real wages to rise.) Worse still, the absence of any overall planning or direction in the economy leads to crises of overproduction – that overproduction can cause a crisis is in itself a clear indication of an irrational system – and to recessions in which the economy operates in a manner that neither workers nor capitalists desire. (Here Marx’s point retains some truth, as governments still have difficulty in eliminating unemployment while restraining inflation.) Economic relations appear to us blind natural forces. We do not see them as restricting our freedom – and indeed on the liberal conception of freedom they do not restrict our freedom, since they are not the result of deliberate human interference. Marx himself is quite explicit that the capitalist is not individually responsible for the economic relations of his society, but is controlled by these relations as much as the workers are (C I 10). Yet these economic relations are our own unwitting creations, not deliberately chosen but nevertheless the outcome of our own individual choices and thus potentially subject to our will. We are not truly free until, instead of letting our creations control us, we collectively take control of them. Hence the significance of a planned economy. In an unplanned economy human beings unwittingly grant the market control over their lives; planning the economy is a reassertion of human sovereignty and an essential step towards true human freedom.
Marx’s penetrating insight into the nature of freedom remains a challenge to any liberal political philosophy. It is the core of Marx’s attack on alienation in the 1844 Manuscripts, as it is the core of his critique of the free market in Capital. If Marx has any claim to a place alongside Hobbes, Locke, Rousseau, and Hegel as a major figure in Western political thought, it must rest on his attack on the liberal conception of freedom. All the same, the alternative conception of freedom Marx espoused contains within it a difficulty Marx never sufficiently appreciated, a difficulty which can be linked with the tragic mutation of Marx’s views into a prop for murderously authoritarian regimes. This is the problem of obtaining the co-operation of each individual in the joint endeavour of controlling our society.
Return for a moment to our example of the commuters. They hold a meeting. All agree that it would be better to leave their cars at home. They part, rejoicing at the prospect of no more traffic jams. But in the privacy of their own homes, some reason to themselves as follows: ‘If everyone else is going to take the bus tomorrow, the roads will be empty. So I’ll take my car. Then I’ll have the convenience of door-to-92 door transportation and the advantage of a traffic-free run which will get me to work in less time than if I took the bus.’ From a self-interested point of view this reasoning is correct. As long as most take the bus, a few others can obtain the benefits of the socially minded behaviour of the majority, without giving up anything themselves.
What should the majority do about this? Should they leave it up to the individual conscience to decide whether to abuse the system in this manner? If they do, there is a risk that the system will break down – once a few take their own cars, others will soon follow, for no one likes to be taken advantage of. Or should the majority attempt to coerce the minority into taking the bus? That is the easy way out. It can be done in the name of freedom for all; but it may lead to freedom for none.
Marx was devoted to the cause of human freedom. When asked, in a Victorian parlour game, to name the vice he most detested, he replied: ‘Servility’; and as his favourite motto he put down: ‘De omnibus dubitandum’ – ‘You must have doubts about everything’ (ME 456–7). Though his own personality had an authoritarian streak, there can be little doubt he would have been appalled at the authority Lenin and Stalin wielded in his name. (Marx would probably have been an early victim of the purges.) Marx thought that under communism the state would cease to exist as a political entity. Coercion would be unnecessary because communism would end the conflict between individual interests and the common good. The end of this conflict would bring with it the end of any threat of a conflict between the freedom of the community to control its own economic and social life, and the freedom of the individual to do as he or she pleases.
Here – Marx’s second lasting contribution to modern thought – his view of human nature – ties in with his idea of freedom. Marx’s theo
ry that human nature is not for ever fixed, but alters in accordance with the economic and social conditions of each period, holds out the prospect of transforming society by changing the economic basis of such human traits as greed, egoism, and ambition. Marx expected the abolition of private property and the institution of common ownership of the means of production and exchange to bring about a society in which people were motivated more by a desire for the good of all than by a specific desire for their own individual good. In this way individual and common interests could be harmonized.
Marx’s view of human nature is now so widely accepted that a return to a pre-Marxist conception of human nature is unthinkable. Though Marx’s own theory is not scientific, it laid the foundations for a new social science which would explore the relations between such apparently unconnected areas of life as the tools people use to produce food and their political and religious beliefs. Undoubtedly this is a fruitful area for historians and social scientists to investigate. In opening it up, Marx shattered the assumption that our intellectual and spiritual lives are entirely independent of our economic existence. If ‘Know thyself’ is the first imperative of philosophy, Marx’s contribution to our self-understanding is another reason for ranking him highly among philosophers.