Proculian Meditations says, commenting on my earlier post:
Here’s the sad part, the state of politics in the capitalist (so-called) democracies is now so degraded that anyone who points to the fundamental importance of class struggle can be dismissed as a joke or as the intellectual equivalent of a single-celled organism (aka “strident libertarian”).
This is P.M.’s “point[ing] to the fundamental importance of class struggle”:
As if elections make a difference! When all of the candidates reflect the interests of the ruling capitalist class, who cares which thief steals the election? . . .
So-called “libertarians” exist because it is in the interests of the ruling class to detach social issues like gay rights from the only issue that really counts, class struggle. . . .
Every drop of ink (or keystroke) wasted on this issue [creation science and evolution in public schools] functions to distract attention from the three issues that really count. What are those three issues? Class, class, and class.
This is in three consecutive posts; the omitted language in those three posts is barely longer than what I quoted. This is, indeed, “point[ing] to the fundamental importance of class struggle,” pointing and nothing else. As Eugene notes: “Genuine bile, not just substantive disagreement but vituperation, aimed at others on the Left who aren’t radical enough. Broader bile aimed at everyone else, thus guaranteeing that one’s appeal will be limited to readers who really enjoy being angry, contemptuous, and strident.” It’s the rhetoric that’s embarrassing to listen to, not the positions.
Now I know what you’re thinking: O.K., Volokh, but why waste all this space on Proculian Meditations? Because I actually like to read intelligent, thoughtful people of this perspective. Class struggle really is interesting, even from an economist’s perspective: lots of policies may be in the interest of a class but never get enacted; in the Marxist view, this is because the other class gets in the way, and in the economist’s view, it can also be because collective action is difficult and individuals pursuing their own goals get in the way.
The modern-day non-Marxist economist differs from the Marxist (1) in stressing methodological individualism, i.e. classes don’t act by themselves, so you have to explain behavior at the individual level; and (2) in suggesting that even once you establish that members of the “working class” (however defined) have a unitary goal and could achieve it with enough organization, maybe these goals aren’t in the greater interest anyway, so thank goodness for the failures of collective action that lead to their failure. In any case, it’s an interesting question for me, one that maybe deserves more discussion.
I also agree with P.M. that Marxism had little to do with socialism as actually implemented in socialist countries. This is an important view — see the article “There Is No Communism in Russia” by Emma Goldman, the work of George Orwell (including Homage to Catalonia); both of these authors are sympathetic to the anarchist style of communism. Maybe it’s unfortunate that the fall of the Soviet Union has discredited other possible varieties of socialism, not because I think any of these are good ideas but because these other views have subtly different counterarguments, and besides, some of the greatest anti-totalitarian writers of the 20th century were socialists/communists/anarchists of the anti-Stalinist persuasion.
And P.M. is also onto something important in his comment on Reinhardt; it’s true that the legal process often serves the function of validating the system it’s embedded in, in the sense that people can be mollified to support a fundamentally unjust system because they get the illusion that they’ll get “justice” by recourse to a supposedly independent court system. P.M. and I may disagree on whether the current system is unjust and, if so, in what ways, but the basic point is important (and is also stressed by libertarians).
And, alas, I don’t get to read as much stuff from a Marxist perspective as I’d like, so I’d like to get some in digestible blog form. So where are these intelligent Marxist blogs? ‘Cause if this is a satire, it does an injustice to the complexity of real, subtle Marxist thought; and if it’s serious, it does an injustice to the complexity of real, subtle Marxist thought.
UPDATE: Reader Gareth Morley says the following are intelligent Marxist blogs (comments are paraphrases of Gareth’s words):
- Socialism in the Age of Waiting, which considers whether Marxists should support capitalism and “imperialism” against feudal reaction in the Middle East, admitting that socialism is not on the agenda.
- Normblog, the blog of Norman Geras, a biographer of Rosa Luxemburg who is also Hitchensite on the Iraq War.
- Critique, not a blog but a Journal of Socialist Theory; interesting thinkers but terrible writers.
- The Early Days of a Better Nation, the blog of sci-fi writer and intelligent anti-Hitchensite Ken McLeod.
- And this is the web site (not blog) of Erik Olin Wright, who’s one of the school of Marxists known as “analytical Marxists,” who more or less endorsed methodological individualism and rational choice.
I’ve checked out a couple of these myself and they look interesting. Thanks!
UPDATE 2: One reader suggests Legal Fiction as an example of a Marxist blog (he calls it a “dumbass marxist blog” and says, “this dumbass thinks republicans don’t understand economics”). Well, it looks to me like it’s just a left-of-center blog that offers cogent economics-based arguments against Republican policies. Real Marxists, please! Reader Jason Walta points us to John E. Roemer‘s web site — he’s apparently “one of the foremost economists working on analytic marxism and theories of distributive justice. His primer Free to Lose (a not so subtle jab at Uncle Milt) is a classic.”
On the “satire or not satire?” issue (which, frankly, doesn’t interest me that much), reader Mike Aracic suggests that the term “Proculian” may be intentionally obscure and inappropriate: we don’t know much about the Proculian school of Roman law (see also here and here), but what little we know suggests that it has little or nothing to do with Marxism of any sort. Mike also suggests for another good Marxist site.
UPDATE 3: Reader William Modahl doesn’t like my characterization of any Marxist thought as “real” or “subtle”:
“Real, subtle Marxist thought”? After the horrific 20th Century,
in which tens of millions of people were murdered by socialist governments, or died in wars brought about by them, I would think you would hesitate to use such a phrase. Would you say “real, subtle National Socialist thought”? (There were some serious intellectuals who wrote on it.) I don’t think so. Did you know that Hitler (in his “Table Talk”) said everything he believed came from Marx? Mussolini was a Marx disciple, and even wrote a book on Marx. “Class struggle?” A phrase stained with blood of countless victims. Russian, Chinese, and other socialist barbarisms “not really Marx?” We’ve heard that before – from apologists for tyranny. Perhaps a good starting point for you would be the short biography of Marx in Paul Johnson’s “Intellectuals.”
First, the number of people a philosophy has killed doesn’t disqualify practitioners of the philosophy from being “subtle.” A philosophy, like a philosopher, can be evil and yet subtle. I’m not very familiar with Nazi intellectuals [UPDATE: Martin Heidegger of course, hat tip to reader Robert Light], so I can’t speak directly to that point, but of course I have no objection to characterizing some of it as subtle if that’s what it was; just to repeat myself (I am large), subtlety is consistent with evil.
(What do I mean by being “subtle”? Not much — just, at the very least, using reasoned argument and not ad hominem attacks, and actually looking like you’ve thought through a particular problem on its own terms and not reused trite catch phrases. None of that makes a wrong philosophy right, or an evil philosophy good, but it does make the difference between a tirade you can ignore and an argument you should answer.)
Second, what does the “blood of countless victims” and the history of “tyranny” and “murder[] by socialist governments” prove? A lot, if you’re trying to justify actual Soviet-style (or other historical) socialism: then, just trot out the facts and let them speak for themselves. (Not that any facts, even these, can really speak for themselves; I just think these particular facts shift the burden onto the proponent to show what positive features can counterbalance these negatives.)
But if you’re trying to justify a different hypothetical implementation, it’s not enough to just produce the history of 20th-century totalitarianism. Of course, we do start out with that as step 1. Step 2 is where the proponent says, “Yes, I agree you that Soviet-style socialism was awful, I’m against it, that’s not true Marxism (or something similar), and my philosophy avoids that.” Step 3 is where you say, “But wait a minute, here’s my political-science theory where I argue that any socialism degenerates into something as bad as Soviet-style socialism, because it requires so much control over people’s behavior that you need a powerful police state, the worst get to the top, etc., etc.” Step 4 is where the proponent has to show how his proposed implementation avoids that problem.
If you’re talking to a Step 4 guy, then it’s wrong to recite all the awful facts of Communism, and it’s wrong to say something along the lines of “The fall of the Soviet Union discredits your theory.” Maybe it does, in the end, but you have to evaluate his Step 4 argument on the merits and not dismiss him by a guilty-by-association-type argument.
UPDATE 4: P.M. bashes Henry Farrell at Crooked Timber (in ways that don’t make me think more highly of P.M. himself — “a soothing bed-time story for frightened children”?) and concludes:
On a more hopeful note, Volokh the Younger actually appears to be intellectually curious about real Marxism. Perhaps, he might consider the possibility that the blogosphere isn’t the place to begin a Marxist reeducation. Sasha, how about Das Kapital?
Had I but world enough and time, William. We bloggers don’t have time for this thing you call “reading.” Seriously, though, I would prefer post-Soviet, or at least anti-Stalinist, Marxism. Not that Marx is pro-Stalinist or anything, but as I explained above, I’m interested in people who jump straight into step 4, that is, who recognize and respond to the political-incentives issues raised by actual socialist experience. Also, pace P.M., I insist on methodological individualism. You say, “If the methodological assumptions of neoclassical economics were valid, then class-based analysis would be beside the point.” I say, Yup. But seriously, you can still talk about classes within methodological assumptions, you just need to give them microfoundations. If Keynesian macroeconomics can reinvent itself, post-Lucas, why not Marxism?
UPDATE 5: Reader Jason Walta says: “On reading Das Kapital: don’t be cowed. Here’s a tip that’ll save you a little time. Skip Vol. 2 altogether, and most of Vol. 3. Pretty much all the really good stuff is right up front in Vol. 1.”
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