Beyond Marx for a 21st Century Revolutionary Perspective

Charles Posa McFadden and Karen Howell McFadden, 11 November 2019, published on www.greensocialdemocracy.org under a Creative Commonwealth license.

Ever fearful for their own displacement as the natural leaders of humanity, the capitalist ruling class and its representatives have consistently discredited, distorted and even vilified Karl Marx (1818-1883) and those who have drawn and continue to draw from his humanistic, scientific and philosophic work. But theories elaborated by Karl Marx remain as important for the social sciences and revolutionary humanistic thought in the 21st century as those of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) for the life and medical sciences.

Nevertheless, it remains indisputable that Marx’s theoretical work is representative of 19th century accomplishments and their inevitable limitations. Although Marx was among the most far-seeing of his generation, the further development of capitalism as a relationship between social classes and with the rest of nature and of our scientific knowledge of these developments need to be considered when advancing a revolutionary perspective for the 21st Century. This is particularly true when addressing the present existential crisis humanity and all life on Earth now face and for which contemporary capitalism and its representatives deserve the principal responsibility.

Marx’s fundamental work, Capital, A Critique of Political Economy, seems to have been regarded by most of Marx’s adherents during the 20th Century as an analysis of the actual economic system prevailing in capitalist countries, with the subtitle of this work largely ignored. It might more accurately be understood as a critique of the limitations of the political economic thinking of such representatives of liberal bourgeois thought as Adam Smith and David Ricardo. In his analysis, Marx initially assumed the validity of their supposition of competition unfettered by monopoly practices. The insights he thus gained continue to represent fundamental knowledge of capitalism as a dominant system of class relationships, including the laws of value, capital accumulation and the historical tendency of the rate of capitalist profit to fall.

But Marx’s critique of Capital and the corresponding bourgeois theories of political economy remain first approximations to the actual relations between people and with nature, even in those countries most thoroughly dominated by capitalist social relations.

The tragic limitation of applying the results of Marx’s critique of the political economy of capitalism as an all-encompassing representation of contemporary economic, political and social reality is evident in the graphic model of capitalism constructed by contemporary Marxian scholar David Harvey (Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason, 2018, Oxford University Press, Figure 2, p.6). This model, faithful to Marx’s analysis, includes human nature and the products of natural reproduction as “free gifts” to capitalism, subordinating both nature and what remains of human communal relationships as components of capitalist social relations.

But this interpretation is not a mistake by Harvey. It is a continuation into the 21st century of Marx’s own simplification of reality, his adoption for the purpose of analysis of the implications (and limitations) of classical pro-capitalist political economy and its assumptions.

An alternative interpretation, one that moves beyond a first approximation to reality, includes recognition of the continuing role in societies in which capitalism is dominant of the commons (communal “property”) and corresponding communal relationships based on equal sharing and reciprocity.

Marx also interpreted the roles of previously dominant class based social systems (slavery and feudalism), as means used by emerging capitalists to acquire their initial capital, a continuing process which he defined as “primitive” capital accumulation. Instead, it might be more useful, especially now when capital faces increasing barriers to further accumulation of wealth by the exploitation of industrial wage labor, to recognize that all forms of social relationships for making our way within nature continue to operate within what remains as a dominant capitalist form of exploitation. The growing roles of usury and debt slavery might better be understood as alternative means which the propertied classes increasingly resort to for maintaining their own economic dominance as capitalism stagnates as an effective form of exploitation.

Marx’s analysis of capitalism also included another contradiction which he does not appear, at least to us, to have adequately resolved. His historical materialist theory of societal evolution recognizes each class-divided system for making our way within nature as a relationship between two antagonistic classes (slave – slave owner in the case of slavery, serf – lord in the case of feudalism, and capitalist – wage slave in the case of capitalism). The replacement of one of these class relationships by another as the dominant social relationship has never been accomplished by one of the two antagonistic classes which defined the prior system, nor could it be if Marx’s historical materialist theory were consistently applied by Marx and his adherents.

The existence of a class of wage-slaves defines the continuing existence of capitalism as a social system. The priority of every exploited class is equality within the exploitative system that defines its existence. All revolutionary transformations of society, however, are defined by the replacement of both antagonistic classes of the former society with new social relations as the dominant ones. If historical materialist theory is our guide, and we believe it should be, then the new society beyond capitalism is one that resolves the primary contradictions within capitalism.

The principal contradiction within our present global social system, now dominated by transnational capitalism, is the contradiction between all exploitative social relationships (slave, feudal and capitalist, but especially contemporary global dominance by the transnational capitalist class) and the finite character of the biosphere in which we make our way within nature. Our future depends on the active agency of the people to expand the remaining commons and corresponding communal relationships so that these become once again the dominant ones, with the aim of ending all forms of class exploitation and replacing them with a social system based on the aim of a sustainable relationship with the rest of nature and an equitable relationship between people. This necessarily must be a communal relationship between people to preserve and share equally the commons.

We have elsewhere elaborated our argument for achieving an ecologically sustainable society and our identification from current popular struggles of the dominant characteristics of such a society and the directions being taken to achieve it. This elaboration can be found on www.greensocialdemocracy.org.

The further elaboration of a 21st century revolutionary theoretical perspective and, based on such an elaboration, the organization of popular forces from all classes to realize its aims, in the first place all the oppressed and exploited, are now critical tasks before humanity, whose very survival now depends on this development.