In his review of Jonathan Sperber’s book, Karl Marx: a Nineteenth-Century Life, (http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2013/may/09/real-karl-marx/) John Gray claims that Marx’s ideas regarding communism vacillated dramatically in 1848 in that his speech to the Cologne Democratic Society (August 1848) was, “…strikingly at odds” with views expressed in the Communist Manifesto (published earlier in 1848). Gray claims that Marx rejected revolutionary dictatorship by a single class as ‘nonsense’ in his speech in August. Given that Gray thinks that this is seriously in conflict with the Communist Manifesto he presumably thinks that the Communist Manifesto argues for revolutionary dictatorship by a single class. Gray reveals such serious misunderstandings of Marx’s work in these claims and in others made in the article that you have to wonder whether the misunderstandings are wilful.
In his speech to the Cologne Democratic Society Marx was responding to Wilhelm Weitling’s desire for a small dictatorial government in the wake of the German revolution of 1848. Marx argued that Weitling had failed to recognise the revolution as a bourgeois one and suggested that the vital task of the German revolution was to eliminate the remnants of feudalism. In opposition to Weitling’s proposal of trying to achieve a dictatorship by a few (ref: Notes from the editors in Marx and Engels’ Collected Works 7 p.650) Marx argued for a more democratic solution. What Marx rejected as nonsense was, “…the intention to carry on a dictatorship in accordance with a system devised by a single brain” (ref: ‘Report of the Speeches made by Marx and Engels at the General Meeting of the Democratic Society in Cologne, August 4th 1848’ in Marx and Engels Collected Works 7 p.556)– i.e. Weitling’s proposal in the context of the German revolution of 1848. So Marx was not rejecting his own communist views from the Communist Manifesto at this meeting.
There is then the further issue of whether Marx argued for a revolutionary dictatorship by a single class in the Communist Manifesto. Marx did argue for ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat’ in the Communist Manifesto but only as a phase immediately after the revolution:
“…the first stage in the revolution of the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling as to win the battle of democracy”.
But this was only the first stage in the battle of democracy. The goal was to achieve democracy and a classless society – where no single class rules because there are no classes.
“In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms we shall have an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”
The first stage would be necessary because the bourgeoisie would not be likely to give up their dominant position willingly and a workers’ state would be needed to fill the vacuum left by the overthrow of the capitalist state.
This may sound unjust, especially to the ears of the bourgeois class. But as Marx points out in the Communist Manifesto,
“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society. All that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation.”
--It is the injustice of capitalism, the subjugation of labourers that it inevitably involves, that means that its overthrow is for the good of the majority of humankind.
So, Gray is entirely mistaken about Marx’s supposed vacillations. Opposing dictatorship by a few in the context of the German revolution of 1848 is perfectly consistent with Marx’s arguments in the Communist Manifesto for a 'dictatorship' by the majority as a means to democracy and freedom for all.
It's extraordinary how so many of these kinds of article (similarly in the NYRB) devolve to "if only Marx/Lenin/Trotsky had had the benefit of the world view of a comfortable Western liberal like me". Well written, full of the overblown confidence of the self important and self regarding, not without some (and this is what makes it pernicious) real insight but two other parts smear and simple assertion ( cf "the very different capitalism of today" when, of course, if one wants to understand the current European horsemeat and horse drugs in beef scandal , Marx on the adulteration of bread in Capital hasn't been bettered and could not be more on the money. The surface form might appear different; the mechanisms, as clinically dissected by Marx, remain the same. ). Furthermore Gray manages a whole review dedicated to asserting how piecemeal Marx's thought was only by avoiding any real engagement with "Capital". It's only a world viewed through from the perspective of the senior common room and with the rose tinted spectacles of the well fed and watered that can see Keynes as a more acute critic of capitalism than Marx. The assertion is possible only on the condition you stare straight through or above the huge majority of the world's population who starve or near to it every day or who suffer from the destruction brought about by capitalist economics played out on the fields of war.
ReplyDeleteThanks for the comment Mike! - I agree. I think there were problems throughout the article and you've put your finger on a couple of them. I just focussed in on that little problem myself because I wasn't sure what Marx had actually said and didn't trust Gray's account and went and had a look in the library to find out. It takes ten minutes to dig out the relevant book in the library and look at what Marx actually had to say. - It doesn't seem as though Gray had the time! It's amazing what passes for scholarship when it comes to Marx.
ReplyDeleteI actually also bought the Sperber book out of curiosity and read a bit of it. I don't think I could stand to read the whole thing because it would just make me angry but he makes similarly stupid claims.