Student Politics - Are the economic ideas of Karl Marx important today?

CUCA - William Rowland, Communications Officer

“The assiduous German’s name can still be heard muttered across Britain today. Except, muttered by who?”

No collection of writings is more important than those of Karl Marx. An erudite economist and pertinacious theorist, a man who became stateless to martyr his radical cause, the assiduous German’s name can still be heard muttered across Britain today. Except, muttered by who? By carping students (especially the London-based lot) finding trivial contentions in points of tinpot value. Marxism has been labelled an ‘irrelevant [economic] dead-end’ by leading economists, such as Robert M. Solow. Today, Marxist historians represent a small minority of modern economists who have ‘virtually no impact’ on the output of most major economic centres and studies. Here George Stigler’s 1988 analysis of Marxian principles is agreeable, but not complete for, as stated, the theories of this great controversialist still hold minor value in economic circles. As someone who is neither in possession of rudimentary nor first-class knowledge of the intricacies of the field in question, it is testament to the inane and communistic principles that inspired some of the worst leaders the world has ever seen that even I can find such faults.

The fundamental issue is that of choice. In every circumstance where Marxist strands have inspired attempts at economic management, the liberty of the majority has been not just curbed but actively suppressed. From China to Cuba, the collectivist utopia forwarded by those unfortunate enough to have been beguiled by Marxism is unattainable under a system of socialistic sharing of wealth that simply ceases to exist once set in motion. But that’s communism, not Marxism, right? And the latter hasn’t been tested properly? Well the major ‘communist’ nations of days-of-old didn’t make up those values themselves did they – it was all foundationally Marxist and thus was Marxist in all in efforts that made people poorer. The rule of the thirty is only revived, not squandered by Marxism – so much ‘for the many, not the few’…

So why is Marxist economics still relevant today? Because it is the shadow that we must see to know there is light. We do not find perfection in capitalism, but in Marxism, we find a contrast so alarming and so ludicrous that we can live comfortably with the imperfections of the present. ▪

CULA - Peter McLaughlin, Communications Officer

If Teen Vogue is a good indicator of the state of popular discourse (and of course it is), Marx is back. As the liberal capitalist order is facing its biggest crisis since 1945, people are returning to its most famous critic. This is deeply unfortunate. Despite Marx’s fame and influence, his understanding of economy and society is stuck in the 19th century and can be no help for those of us looking to understand (or change) the world in the 21st.

Marx is often invoked by those who oppose the static nature of mainstream economics (with its focus on equilibrium) and who want to develop a dynamic political economy. And indeed, Marx was concerned with capitalist development. But he saw this development as driven by class struggle; and in the 19th century, that meant the struggle between the ascendant bourgeoisie and the exploited proletariat. Marx foresaw a proletarian revolution that would overthrow bourgeois hegemony and lead toward a classless society.

As it happened, however, the bourgeois era died not with a bang, but a whimper, through economic and political developments. For example, the rise of homeownership in the 20th century West created a middle class of capital-owning workers who straddled Marx’s definitions of bourgeois and proletarian, and who came to dominate economic life after WW2. The impact of such developments means that the class structure of today’s capitalism is incredibly different from the 19th century bourgeois-proletariat struggle. Because of this, Marx’s ideas cannot account for class and class struggle in today’s world: he had no way of theorising capitalist society after bourgeois dominance because he thought the fall of the bourgeoisie would be the death of capitalism.

Further, Marx’s belief that we should understand economic evolution in terms of class struggle is problematic even independent of his account of that struggle; for his political economy fails to properly account for politics. Indeed, Marx was not an ‘economic determinist’, but he aimed to explain political developments (like everything else) in terms of class struggle nonetheless. But although such a strategy could at least partially make sense of 19th-century politics, the central events of the 20th—the World Wars, the fortunes of decolonisation, the rise and fall of fascism, the struggles of feminism, even the life of the Soviet Union—escape it: any adequate account of these will have to refer to interests, institutions, and processes that go beyond class struggle. And if Marx’s ideas cannot make sense of these central political events, they cannot help us understand their impact on the economic order.

As Foucault wrote, “Marxism exists in nineteenth-century thought like a fish in water; that is, it is unable to breathe anywhere else.” Marx wrote in an era of class relations that history has altered irrevocably, and with an understanding of politics that the intervening time has shown to be deeply false. Those who are looking to make sense of the current crisis, or to go beyond the limitations of contemporary economic thought, should look elsewhere. ▪

“If Teen Vogue is a good indicator of the state of popular discourse (and of course it is), Marx is back”

DULC - Spencer Payne , Former Co-Chair

Despite the historical influence of Karl Marx never being understated, there are lots of popular misunderstandings of who he was and what he said. Some people have very out-there perceptions of Marx, like one contestant on The Chase who thought he succeeded Lenin as the leader of Soviet Russia. Less out-there, though, is the view that Marx was a philosopher of communism.

“Those who have not read Marx but have conceptions about what he said should consider giving him a read. They may be surprised by what they find”

This is not the case. Marx never wrote any blueprint for a system of governance or economic management. The closest thing he wrote to this is The Communist Manifesto, a small pamphlet outlining general principles and aims he believed that radical left should hold.

No, rather than being the author of a handbook to running a utopian state, Karl Marx was a philosopher who wrote, above all, on capitalism. Marx’s works were written to provide a compelling framework to understand the world under capitalism.

In Capital, he describes how market competition drives capitalists to strive for maximum output with minimum input – a striving which sounds sensible and beneficial enough until it is understood that curtailing of input means curtailing of wages, working conditions, and leisure time. Marx demonstrates this in the famous ‘Working Day’ chapter of Capital, detailing the history of the British Factory Acts, and the struggle of workers to reduce the hours of their working day down to ten. Factory owners bitterly fought to keep the hours of work unregulated to keep their products competitive in the export market.

This may seem to be the distant past, but the fight over the working day is not over. Rather than take the legislative route, outsourcing has become the preferred method to minimize the input. H&M, for example, moved its manufacture from Sweden to countries like Bangladesh, Cambodia, and Myanmar, where working days are longer, laws against child labour are more relaxed, and the minimum wage is non-existent. Nineteenth-century struggles over the working day and the serial outsourcing of industries of the present day may on the surface appear to be very different phenomena, but a Marxist perspective stresses that the end which the capitalists seek in each case is the same.

The strength of Marxism is the way in which it reveals patterns and continuities throughout economic history and society. Detailing all of these patterns and continuities is beyond the scope of this piece, but I hope I have explained the appeal of Marxism as a method of interpreting the world; Marx outlines rules which appear to have held true for centuries. Marx would have certainly approved of critical engagement with the rules he outlines, as he was always thorough in his intellectual ventures, but to do so requires reading his works. Those who have not read Marx but have conceptions about what he said, perhaps derived from a mainstream newspaper article or from a meme claiming he killed a bajillion people, should consider giving him a read. They may be surprised by what they find. ▪