Marxism : 
Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow
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People :
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Author : Paul Mattick

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Source: Marxism. Last Refuge of the Bourgeoisie? by Paul Mattick, edited by Paul Mattick Jr., published by Merlin Press, 1983;Transcribed: by Andy Blunden, for marxists.org 2003.Proofed: by Brandon Poole, 2009.
In Marx’s conception, changes in people’s social and
material conditions will alter their consciousness. This also holds for Marxism
and its historical development. Marxism began as a theory of class struggle
based on the specific social relations of capitalist production. But while its
analysis of the social contradictions inherent in capitalist production has
reference to the general trend of capitalist development, the class struggle is
a day-to-day affair and adjusts itself to changing social conditions. These
adjustments find their reflection in Marxian ideology. The history of
capitalism is thus also the history of Marxism.

The labor movement preceded Marxian theory and provided the actual basis for
its development. Marxism became the dominating theory of the socialist movement
because it was able convincingly to reveal the exploitative structure of
capitalist society and simultaneously to uncover the historical limitations of
this particular mode of production. The secret of capitalism’s vast
development — that is, the constantly increasing exploitation of labor
power — was also the secret of the various difficulties that pointed to
its eventual demise. Marx’s Capital, employing the methods
of scientific analysis, was able to proffer a theory that synthesized the class
struggle and the general contradictions of capitalist production.

Marx’s critique of political economy was necessarily as abstract as
political economy itself. It could deal only with the general trend of
capitalist development, not with its manifold concrete manifestations at any
particular time. Because the accumulation of capital is at once the cause of
the system’s unfolding and the reason for its decline, capitalist
production proceeds as a cyclical process of expansion and contraction. These
two situations imply different social conditions and therefore different
reactions on the part of both labor and capital. To be sure, the general trend
of capitalist development implies the increasing difficulty of escaping a
period of contraction by a further expansion of capital, and thus a tendency
toward the system’s collapse. But it is not possible to say at what
particular point of its development capital will disintegrate through the
objective impossibility of continuing its accumulation process.

Capitalist production, implying the absence of any kind of conscious social
regulation of production, finds some kind of blind regulation in the supply and
demand mechanism of the market. The latter, in turn, adapts itself to the
expansion requirements of capital as determined on the one hand by the changing
exploitability of labor power and on the other hand by the alteration of the
capital structure due to the accumulation of capital. The particular entities
involved in this process are not empirically discernible, so that it is
impossible to determine whether a particular crisis of capitalist production
will be of longer or shorter duration, be more or less devastating as regards
social conditions, or prove to be the final crisis of the capitalist system by
provoking a revolutionary resolution through the action of an aroused working
class.

In principle, any prolonged and deep-going crisis may release a
revolutionary situation that may intensify the class struggle to the point of
the overthrow of capitalism — provided, of course, that the objective
conditions bring forth a subjective readiness to change the social relations of
production. In the early Marxist movement, this was seen as a realistic
possibility, due to the fact of a growing socialist movement and the extension
of the class struggle within the capitalist system. The development of the
latter was thought to be paralleled by the development of proletarian class
consciousness, the rise of working-class organizations, and the spreading
recognition that there was an alternative to capitalist society.

The theory and practice of the class struggle was seen as a unitary
phenomenon, due to the self-expansion and the attendant self-limitation of
capitalist development. It was thought that the increasing exploitation of
labor and the progressive polarization of society into a small minority of
exploiters and a vast mass of exploited would raise the workers’ class
consciousness and thus their revolutionary inclination to destroy the
capitalist system. Indeed, the social conditions of that time allowed for no
other perspective, as the unfolding of industrial capitalism was accompanied by
increasing misery of the laboring classes and a noticeable sharpening of the
class struggle. Still, this was merely a perspective afforded by these
conditions, which did not as yet reveal the possibility of another course of
events.

Although interrupted by periods of crisis and depression, capitalism has
been able to maintain itself until now by a continuous expansion of capital and
its extension into space through the acceleration of the increase in the
productivity of labor. It proved possible not only to regain a temporarily lost
profitability, but to increase it sufficiently to continue the accumulation
process as well as to improve the living standards of the great bulk of the
laboring population. The successful expansion of capital and the amelioration
of the conditions of the workers led to a spreading doubt regarding the
validity of Marx’s abstract theory of capitalist development. Empirical
reality in fact seemed to contradict Marx’s expectations with regard to
capitalism’s future. Even where his theory was maintained, it was no
longer associated with a practice ideologically aimed at the overthrow of
capitalism. Revolutionary Marxism turned into an evolutionary theory,
expressing the wish to transcend the capitalist system by way of constant
reform of its political and economic institutions. Marxist revisionism, in both
overt and covert form, led to a kind of synthesis of Marxism and bourgeois
ideology, as a theoretical corollary to the practical integration of the labor
movement into capitalist society.

Not too much should be made of this, however, for the organized labor
movement has at all times comprised only the smaller portion of the laboring
class. The great mass of workers acclimatizes itself to the ruling bourgeois
ideology and — subject to the objective conditions of capitalism —
constitutes a revolutionary class only potentially. It may become revolutionary
by force of circumstances that overrule the limitations of its ideological
awareness and thus offer its class-conscious part an opportunity to turn
potentiality into actuality through its revolutionary example. This function of
the class-conscious part of the working class was lost through its integration
into the capitalist system. Marxism became an increasingly ambiguous doctrine,
serving purposes different from those initially contemplated.

All this is history: specifically, the history of the Second International,
which revealed that its apparently Marxist orientation was merely the false
ideology of a nonrevolutionary practice. This had nothing to do with a
“betrayal” of Marxism, but was the result of capitalism’s
rapid ascendancy and increasing power, which induced the labor movement to
adapt itself to the changing conditions of capitalist production. As an
overthrow of the system seemed impossible, the modifications of capitalism
determined those of the labor movement. As a reform movement, the latter
partook of the reforms of capitalism, based on the increasing productivity of
labor and the competitive imperialistic expansion of the nationally organized
capitals. The class struggle turned into class collaboration.

Under these changed conditions, Marxism, insofar as it was not altogether
rejected or reinterpreted into its opposite, took on a purely ideological form
that did not affect the pro-capitalist practice of the labor movement. As such,
it could exist side by side with other ideologies competing for allegiance. It
no longer represented the consciousness of a workers’ movement out to
overthrow the existing society, but a world-view supposedly based on the social
science of political economy. With this it became a concern of the more
critical elements of the middle class, allied with, but not part of, the
working class. This was merely the concretization of the already accomplished
division between the Marxian theory and the actual practice of the labor
movement.

It is of course true that socialist ideas were first and mainly —
though not only — propounded by members of the middle class who had been
disturbed by the inhuman social conditions of early capitalism. It was these
conditions, not the level of their intelligence, that turned their attention to
social change and therewith to the working class. It is therefore not
surprising that the capitalist improvements at the turn of the century should
mellow their critical acumen, and this all the more as the working class itself
had lost most of its oppositional fervor. Marxism became a preoccupation of
intellectuals and took on an academic character. It was no longer predominantly
approached as a movement of workers but as a scientific problem to be argued
about. Yet the disputes around the various issues raised by Marxism served to
maintain the illusion of the Marxian nature of the labor movement until it was
dispelled by the realities of World War I.

This war, which represented a gigantic crisis of capitalist production, led
to a short-lived revival of radicalism in the labor movement and in the working
class at large. To this extent it heralded a return to Marxian theory and
practice. But it was only in Russia that the social upheavals led to the
overthrow of the backward, semifeudal capitalist regime. Nonetheless, this was
the first time that a capitalist regime had been ended through the actions of
its oppressed population and the determination of a Marxist movement. The dead
Marxism of the Second International seemed due for replacement by the living
Marxism of the Third International. And because it was the Bolshevik Party,
under Lenin’s guidance, that turned the Russian into a social revolution,
it was Lenin’s particular interpretation of Marxism that became the
Marxism of the new and “highest” stage of capitalism. This Marxism
has quite justly been amended into the “Marxism-Leninism” that has
dominated the postwar world.

This is not the place to reiterate the history of the Third International
and the type of Marxism it brought forth. This story is well documented in
countless publications, which either place the blame for its collapse upon
Stalin’s shoulders or trace it back to Lenin himself. The facts are that
the concept of world revolution could not be realized and that the Russian
Revolution remained a national revolution and therefore bound to the realities
of its own socioeconomic conditions. In its isolation, it could not be adjudged
a socialist revolution in the Marxian sense, for it lacked all the
preconditions for a socialist transformation of society — that is, the
dominance of the industrial proletariat, and a productive apparatus that, in
the hands of the producers, could not only end exploitation but at the same
time drive society beyond the confines of the capitalist system. As things
were, Marxism could only provide the ideology supporting, even while
contradicting, the reality of state-capitalism. In other words, as in the
Second International, so also in its successor, subordinated as it was to the
special interests of Bolshevik Russia, Marxism could only function as an
ideology to cover up a nonrevolutionary and finally a counter-revolutionary
practice.

In the absence of a revolutionary movement, the Great Depression, affecting
the world at large, issued not into revolutionary upheavals but into fascism
and World War II. This meant the total eclipse of Marxism. The aftermath of the
new war initiated a fresh wave of capitalist expansion on an international
scale. Not only did monopoly capital emerge strengthened from the conflict,
there also arose new state-capitalistic systems by way of either national
liberation or imperialistic conquest. This situation involved not a reemergence
of revolutionary Marxism but a “cold war,” that is, the
confrontation of differently organized capitalist systems in a continuing
struggle for spheres of interest and shares of exploitation. On the side of
state capitalism, this confrontation was camouflaged as a Marxist movement
against the capitalist monopolization of the world economy, while for its part,
private-property capitalism was only too glad to identify its state-capitalist
enemies as Marxists, or Communists, bent on destroying with the freedom to
amass capital all the liberties of civilization. This attitude served to attach
the label “Marxism” firmly to the state-capitalist ideology.

Thus the changes brought about by a series of depressions and wars led not
to a confrontation between capitalism and socialism, but to a division of the
world into more or less centrally controlled economic systems and to a widening
of the gap between capitalistically developed and underdeveloped nations. It is
true that this division is generally seen as one between capitalist, socialist,
and “third world” countries, but this is a misleading
simplification of rather more complex differentiations between these economic
and political systems. “Socialism” is commonly understood as
meaning a state-controlled economy within the national framework, in which
planning replaces competition. Such a system is no longer capitalism in the
traditional sense, but neither is it socialism in the Marxian sense of an
association of free and equal producers. Functioning in a capitalist and
therefore imperialist world, it cannot help partaking in the general
competition for economic and political power and, like capitalism, must either
expand or contract. It must grow stronger in every respect, in order to limit
the expansion of monopoly capital by which it would otherwise be destroyed. The
national form of so-called socialist or state-controlled regimes sets them in
conflict not only with the traditional capitalist world, or particular
capitalist nations, but also with each other; they must give first
consideration to national interests, i.e., the interests of the newly emerging
and privileged ruling strata whose existence and security are based on the
nation-state. This leads to the spectacle of a “socialist” brand of
imperialism and the threat of war between nominally socialist countries.

Such a situation was inconceivable in 1917. Leninism, or (in Stalin’s
phrase) “the Marxism of the age of imperialism,” expected a world
revolution on the model of the Russian Revolution. Just as in Russia different
classes had combined to overthrow the autocracy, so also on an international
scale nations at various stages of development might fight against the common
enemy, imperialist monopoly capital. And just as in Russia it was the working
class, under the leadership of the Bolshevik Party, that transformed the
bourgeois into a proletarian revolution, so the Communist International would
be the instrument to transform the anti-imperialist struggles into socialist
revolutions. Under these conditions, it was conceivable that the less-developed
nations might bypass an otherwise inevitable capitalist development and be
integrated into an emerging socialist world. Based on the presupposition of
successful socialist revolutions in the advanced nations, this theory could be
proven neither right nor wrong, as the expected revolutions did not
materialize.

What is of interest in this context are the revolutionary inclinations of
the Bolshevik movement prior to and shortly after its assumption of power in
Russia. Its revolution was made in the name of revolutionary Marxism, as the
political-military overthrow of the capitalist system and the establishment of
a dictatorship to assure the transformation to a classless society. However,
even at this stage, and not only because of the particular conditions
prevailing in Russia, the Leninist concept of socialist reconstruction deviated
from the notions of early Marxism and was based instead on those evolved within
the Second International. For the latter, socialism was conceived as the
automatic outgrowth of capitalist development itself. The concentration and
centralization of capital implied the progressive elimination of capitalist
competition and therewith of its private-property nature, until socialist
government, emerging from the democratic parliamentary process, would transform
monopoly capital into the monopoly of the state and thus initiate socialism by
governmental decree. Although to Lenin and the Bolsheviks this seemed an
unrealizable utopia as well as a foul excuse for abstaining from any kind of
revolutionary activity, they too thought of the institution of socialism as a
governmental concern, though to be carried out by way of revolution. They
differed with the Social Democrats with regard to the means to reach an
otherwise common goal — nationalization of capital by the state and
centralized planning of the economy.

Lenin also agreed with Karl Kautsky’s philistine and arrogant
assertion that the working class by itself is unable to evolve a revolutionary
consciousness, which has to be brought to it from the outside by the
middle-class intelligentsia. The organizational form of this idea was the
revolutionary party as the vanguard of the workers and as the necessary
presupposition for a successful revolution. If, in this view, the working class
is incapable of making its own revolution, it will be even less able to build
up the new society, an undertaking reserved for the leading party as the
possessor of the state apparatus. The dictatorship of the proletariat thus
appears as that of the party organized as the state. And because the state has
to have control over the whole society, it must also control the actions of the
working class, even though this control is supposed to be exercised in its
favor. In practice, this turned out to be the totalitarian rule of the
Bolshevik government.

The nationalization of the means of production and the authoritarian rule of
government certainly differentiated the Bolshevik system from that of Western
capitalism. But this did not alter the social relations of production, which in
both systems are based on the divorce of the workers from the means of
production and the monopolization of political power in the hands of the state.
It was no longer private capital but state-controlled capital that now opposed
the working class and perpetuated the wage-labor form of productive activity,
while allowing for the appropriation of surplus labor through the agency of the
state. Though the system expropriated private capital, it did not abolish the
capital-labor relationship upon which modern class rule rests. It was thus
merely a question of time before the emergence of a new ruling class, whose
privileges would depend precisely on the maintenance and reproduction of the
state-controlled system of production and distribution as the only
“realistic” form of Marxian socialism.

Marxism, however, as the critique of political economy and as the struggle
for a nonexploitative classless society, has meaning only within the capitalist
relations of production. An end of capitalism would imply the end of Marxism as
well. For a socialist society, Marxism would be a fact of history like
everything else in the past. Already the description of “socialism”
as a Marxist system denies the self-proclaimed socialist nature of the
state-capitalist system. Marxist ideology functions here as no more than an
attempt to justify the new class relations as necessary requirements for the
construction of socialism and thus to gain the acquiescence of the laboring
classes. As in the capitalism of old, the special interests of the ruling class
are made to appear as general interests.

But even so, in the beginning Marxism-Leninism was a revolutionary doctrine,
for it was deadly serious about realizing its own concept of socialism by
direct, practical means. While this concept implied no more than the formation
of a state-capitalist system, this was the way in which, at the turn of the
century, socialism had been quite generally understood. It is therefore not
possible to speak of a Bolshevik “betrayal” of the prevailing
Marxist principles; on the contrary, it realized the state-capitalist
transformation of private-property capitalism, which had been the declared goal
also of Marxist revisionists and reformists. The latter, however, had lost all
interest in acting upon their apparent beliefs and preferred to accommodate
themselves to the capitalist status quo. What the Bolsheviks did was to
actualize the program of the Second International by way of revolution.

Once they were in power, however, the state-capitalist structure of
Bolshevik Russia determined its further development, now generally described
with the pejorative term “Stalinism.” That it took on this
particular character was explained by reference to the general backwardness of
Russia and by her capitalist encirclement, which demanded the utmost
centralization of power and inhuman sacrifices on the part of the working
population. Under different conditions, such as prevailed in capitalistically
more advanced nations and under politically more favorable international
relations, it was said, Bolshevism would not require the particular harshness
it had to exercise in the first socialist country. Those less favorably
inclined toward this first experiment in socialism” asserted that the
party dictatorship was merely an expression of the still
“half-Asiatic” nature of Bolshevism and could not be duplicated in
the more advanced Western nations. The Russian example was utilized to justify
reformist policies as the only way to improve the conditions of the working
class in the West.

Soon, however, the fascist dictatorships in Western Europe demonstrated that
one-party control of the state was not restricted to the Russian scene but was
applicable in any capitalist system. It could be utilized just as well for the
maintenance of existing social relations of production as for their
transformation into state-capitalism. Of course, fascism and Bolshevism
continued to differ with respect to economic structure, even as they became
politically indistinguishable. But the concentration of political control in
the totalitarian capitalist nations implied the central coordination of
economic activity for the specific ends of fascist policies and therewith a
closer approximation to the Russian system. For fascism this was not a goal but
temporary measure, analogous to the “war socialism” of World War I.
Nonetheless, it was a first indication that Western capitalism was not immune
to state-capitalist tendencies.

With the hoped-for but rather unexpected consolidation of the Bolshevik
regime and the relatively undisturbed coexistence of the opposing social
systems until World War II, Russian interests required the Marxist ideology not
only for internal but also for external purposes, to assure the support of the
international labor movement in the defense of Russia’s national
existence. This involved only a part of the labor movement, to be sure, but
that part could disrupt the anti-Bolshevik front, which now included the old
socialist parties and the reformist trade unions. As these organizations had
already jettisoned their Marxian heritage, the supposed Marxian orthodoxy of
Bolshevism became practically the whole of Marxist theory as a counter-ideology
to all forms of anti-Bolshevism and all attempts to weaken or destroy the
Russian state. Simultaneously, however, attempts were made to secure the state
of coexistence through various concessions to the capitalist adversary and to
demonstrate the mutual advantages that could be gained through international
trade and other means of collaboration. This two-faced policy served the single
end of preserving the Bolshevik state and securing the national interests of
Russia.

In this manner, Marxism was reduced to an ideological weapon exclusively
serving the defensive needs of a particular state and a single country. No
longer encompassing international revolutionary aspirations, it utilized the
Communist International as a limited policy instrument for the special
interests of Bolshevik Russia. But these interests now included, in increasing
measure, the maintenance of the international status quo in order to secure
that of the Russian system. If at first it had been the failure of world
revolution that induced Russia’s policy of entrenchment, it was now the
stability of world capitalism that became a condition of Russian security, and
which the Stalinist regime endeavored to enhance. The spread of fascism and the
high probability of new attempts to find imperialist solutions to the world
crisis endangered not only the state of coexistence but also Russia’s
internal conditions, which demanded some degree of international tranquility.
Marxist propaganda ceased to concern itself with problems of capitalism and
socialism but, in the form of anti-fascism, directed itself against a
particular political form of capitalism that threatened to unleash a new world
war. This implied, of course, the acceptance of anti-fascist capitalist powers
as potential allies and thus the defense of bourgeois democracy against attacks
from either the right or the left, as exemplified during the civil war in
Spain.

Even prior to this historical juncture, Marxism-Leninism had assumed the
same purely ideological function that characterized the Marxism of the Second
International. It was no longer associated with a political practice whose
final aim was the overthrow of capitalism, if only to bring about
state-capitalism masquerading as socialism, but was now content with its
existence within the capitalist system in the same sense in which the Social
Democratic movement accepted the given conditions of society as inviolable. The
sharing of power on an international scale presupposed the same on the national
level, and Marxism-Leninism outside of Russia turned into a strictly reformist
movement. Thus only the fascists were left as forces actually aspiring to
complete control over the state. No serious attempt was made to forestall their
rise to power. The labor movement, including its Bolshevik wing, relied
exclusively upon traditional democratic processes to meet the fascist threat.
This meant its total passivity and progressive demoralization and assured the
victory of fascism as the only dynamic force operating within the world
crisis.

It was of course not only Russia’s political control of the
international communist movement, via the Third International, that explains
its capitulation to fascism, but also the movement’s bureaucratization,
which concentrated all decision-making power in the hands of professional
politicians who did not share the social conditions of the impoverished
proletariat. This bureaucracy found itself in the “ideal” position
of being able to express its verbal opposition to the system and yet, at the
same time, to partake of the privileges that the bourgeoisie bestows upon its
political ideologists. They had no driving reason to oppose the general
policies of the Communist International, which coincided with their own
immediate needs as recognized leaders of the working class in a bourgeois
democracy. Finally, however, it is the general apathy of the workers
themselves, their unreadiness to look for their own independent solution of the
social question, that explains this state of affairs together with its fascist
outcome. A half-century of Marxist reformism under the leadership principle,
and its accentuation in Marxism-Leninism, produced a labor movement unable to
act upon its own interests and therefore incapable of inspiring the working
class as a whole to attempt to prevent fascism and war through a proletarian
revolution.

As in 1914, internationalism, and with it Marxism, was again drowned in the
surging sea of nationalism and imperialism. Policies found their basis in the
exigencies of the shifting imperialist power constellations, which led first to
the Hitler-Stalin pact and then to the anti-Hitler alliance between the USSR
and the democratic powers. The end of even the purely verbal aspirations of
Marxism found a belated symbolization in the liquidation of the Third
International. The outcome of the war, preordained by its imperialist
character, divided the world into two power blocs, which soon resumed
competition for world control. The anti-fascist nature of the war implied the
restoration of democratic regimes in the defeated nations and thus the
reemergence of political parties, including those with a Marxist connotation.
In the East, Russia restored her empire and added to it spheres of interest as
so much war booty. The breakdown of colonial rule created the “third
world” nations, which adopted either the Russian system or a mixed
economy of the Western type. A form of neocolonialism arose that subjected the
“liberated” nations to more indirect but equally effective control
by the great powers. But the spread of state-capitalist-oriented nations was
commonly seen as the diffusion of Marxism over the globe, and the arrest of
this tendency as a struggle against a Marxism that threatened the (undefined)
freedoms of the capitalist world. This type of Marxism and anti-Marxism has no
connection whatever with the struggle between labor and capital as envisioned
by Marx and the early labor movement.

In its current form, Marxism has been more of a regional than an
international movement, as may be surmised from its precarious hold in the
Anglo-Saxon countries. The postwar revival of Marxist parties affected mainly
nations that faced particular economic difficulties, such as France and Italy.
The division and occupation of Germany precluded the reorganization of a mass
communist party in the Western zone. The socialist parties finally repudiated
their own past, still tinged with Marxist ideas, and turned themselves into
bourgeois or “people’s” parties defending democratic
capitalism. Communist parties do continue to exist throughout the world,
legally or illegally, but their chances of affecting political events are more
or less nil for the present and the foreseeable future. Marxism, as a
revolutionary workers’ movement, finds itself today at its historically
lowest ebb.

All the more astonishing is the unprecedented capitalist response to
theoretical Marxism. This new interest in Marxism in general, and in
“Marxist economics” in particular, pertains almost exclusively to
the academic world, which is essentially the world of the middle class. There
is an enormous outpouring of Marxian literature; “Marxology” has
become a new profession, and there are Marxist branches of
“radical” economics, history, philosophy, sociology, psychology,
and so forth. All may prove to be no more than an intellectual fad. But even so
this phenomenon bears witness to the present twilight state of capitalist
society and its loss of confidence in its own future. Whereas in the past the
progressive integration of the labor movement into the fabric of capitalism
implied the accommodation of socialist theory to the realities of an unfolding
capitalism, this process is now seemingly reversed through the many attempts to
utilize the findings of Marxism for capitalist purposes. This two-pronged
endeavor at reconciliation, at overcoming at least to some extent the
antagonism between Marxian and bourgeois theory, reflects a crisis in both
Marxism and bourgeois society.

Although Marxism encompasses society in all its aspects, it focuses upon the
social relations of production as the foundation of the capitalist totality. In
accordance with the materialist conception of history, it concentrates its
interests on the economic and therefore the social conditions of capitalist
development. Whereas the materialist conception of history has long since been
quietly plagiarized by bourgeois social science, until quite recently its
application to the capitalist system remained unexplored. It is the development
of capitalism itself that has forced bourgeois economic theory to consider the
dynamics of the capitalist system and thus to emulate, in some fashion, the
Marxian theory of accumulation and its consequences.

Here we must recall that the shift of Marxism from a revolutionary to an
evolutionary theory turned — with respect to theory — around the
question as to whether or not Marx’s accumulation theory was also a
theory of the objective necessity of capitalism’s collapse. The reformist
wing of the labor movement asserted that there was no objective reason for the
system’s decline and destruction, while the revolutionary minority wing
held on to the conviction that capitalism’s immanent contradictions must
lead to its inevitable end. Whether this conviction was based on contradictions
in the sphere of production or in that of circulation, left-wing Marxism
insisted upon the certainty of capitalism’s eventual collapse, expressed
by ever more devastating crises, which would bring forth a subjective readiness
on the part of the proletariat to overthrow the system by revolutionary
means.

The reformists’ denial of objective limits to capitalism turned their
attention from the sphere of production to that of distribution, and so from
the social relations of production to market relations, which are the sole
concern of bourgeois economic theory. Disturbances of the system were now seen
as arising from supply and demand relations, which unnecessarily caused periods
of overproduction through a lack of effective demand due to unjustifiably low
wages. The economic problem was reduced to the question of a more equitable
distribution of the social product, which would overcome the social frictions
within the system. For all practical purposes, it was now held, bourgeois
economic theory was of greater relevance than Marx’s approach, and
therefore Marxism should avail itself of the going market and price theory in
order to be able to play a more effective role in the framing of social
policies.

It was now said that there were economic laws that operated in all societies
and were not subject to Marxian criticism. The critique of political economy
had as its object merely the institutional forms under which the eternal
economic laws assert themselves. Changing the system would not change the laws
of economics. While there were differences between the bourgeois and the
Marxian approach to the economy, there were also similarities which both had to
recognize. The perpetuation of the capital-labor relation, i.e., the wage
system, in the self-styled socialist societies, their accumulation of social
capital, and their application of a so-called incentive system that divided the
work force into various income categories — all these and more were now
held to be unalterable necessities enforced by economic laws. These laws
required the application of the analytical tools of bourgeois economics so as
to allow for the rational consummation of a planned socialist economy.

This kind of Marxism, “enriched” by bourgeois theory, was soon
to find its complement in the attempt to modernize bourgeois economic theory.
This theory had been in crisis ever since the Great Depression in the wake of
World War I. The theory of market equilibrium could neither explain nor justify
the prolonged depression, and thus it lost its ideological value for the
bourgeoisie. However, neoclassical theory found a sort of resurrection through
its Keynesian modification. Although it had to be admitted that the hitherto
assumed equilibrium mechanism of the market and price system was no longer
operative, it was now asserted that it could be made to be so with a little
governmental help. The disequilibrium of insufficient demand could be
straightened out by government-induced production for “public
consumption,” not only on the assumption of static conditions but also
under conditions of economic growth when balanced by appropriate monetary and
fiscal means. The market economy, assisted by government planning, would then
overcome capitalism’s susceptibility to crisis and depression and would
allow, in principle, for a steady growth of capitalist production.

The appeal to government and its conscious intervention in the economy, as
well as the attention paid to the dynamics of the system, diminished the sharp
opposition between the ideology of laissez-faire and that of the planned
economies. This corresponded to a visible convergence of the two systems, one
influencing the other, in a process leading perhaps to a combination of the
favorable elements of both in a future synthesis able to overcome the
difficulties of capitalist production. In fact, the long economic upswing after
World War II seemed to substantiate these expectations. However, despite the
continuing availability of governmental interventions, a new crisis has
followed this period of capitalist expansion, as it always had in the past. The
clever “fine-tuning” of the economy and the “tradeoff”
between inflation and unemployment did not prevent a new economic decline. The
crisis and the means designed to cope with it have proved to be equally
detrimental to capital. The current crisis is thus accompanied by the
bankruptcy of neo-Keynesianism, just as the Great Depression spelled the end of
neoclassical theory.

Apart from the fact that the actual crisis conditions brought the dilemma of
bourgeois economic theory to a head, its longstanding impoverishment through
its increasing formalization raised many doubts in the heads of academic
economists. The current questioning of almost all the assumptions of
neoclassical theory and its Keynesian offspring has led some economists —
most forcefully represented by the so-called neo-Ricardians — to a
half-hearted return to classical economics. Marx himself is looked upon as a
Ricardian economist and as such finds increasing favor among bourgeois
economists intent on integrating his “pioneer work” into their own
specialty, the science of economics.

Marxism, however, signifies neither more nor less than the destruction of
capitalism. Even as a scientific discipline it offers nothing to the
bourgeoisie. And yet, as an alternative to the discredited bourgeois social
theory, it may serve the latter by providing it with some ideas useful for its
rejuvenation. After all, one learns from the opposition. Moreover, in its
apparently “realized” form in the “socialist
countries,” Marxism points to practical solutions that may also be useful
in the mixed economies, such as a further increase of stabilizing governmental
regulations. An income and wage policy, for instance, comes quite close to the
analogous arrangements in centrally controlled economic systems. Finally, in
view of the absence of revolutionary movements, the academic type of Marxian
inquiry is risk-free, inasmuch as it is restricted to the world of ideas.
Strange as it may seem, it is the lack of such movements in a period of social
turmoil that turns Marxism into a marketable commodity and a cultural
phenomenon attesting to the tolerance and democratic fairness of bourgeois
society.

The sudden popularity of Marxian theory nonetheless reflects an ideological
as well as an economic crisis of capitalism. Above all it affects those
responsible for the manufacture and distribution of ideologies — that is,
middle-class intellectuals specializing in social theory. Their class as a
whole may feel itself endangered by the course of capitalist development, with
its visible social decay, and thus genuinely seek for alternatives to the
social dilemma that is also their own. They may do so for motives that, however
opportunistic, are necessarily bound up with a critical attitude toward the
prevailing system. In this sense, the current “Marxian renaissance”
may foreshadow a return of Marxism as a social movement of both theoretical and
practical import.

Nonetheless, at present there is little evidence of a revolutionary reaction
to the capitalist crisis. If one distinguishes between the “objective
left” in society, that is, the proletariat as such, and the organized
left, which is not strictly proletarian, then it is only in France and Italy
that one can speak of organized forces that could conceivably challenge
capitalist rule, provided they had such intentions. But the communist parties
and trade unions of these countries have long since transformed themselves into
purely reformist parties, at home within the capitalist system and ready to
defend it. The very fact of their large working-class following indicates the
workers’ own unreadiness, or unwillingness, to overthrow the capitalist
system, and indeed their immediate desire to find accommodation within it.
Their illusions concerning the reformability of capitalism support the
political opportunism of the communist parties.

With the aid of the self-contradictory term “Eurocommunism,”
these parties try to differentiate their present attitudes from past policies
— that is, to make it clear that their traditional, albeit long
forgotten, state-capitalist goal has been definitively given up in favor of the
mixed economy and bourgeois democracy. This is the natural counterpart to the
integration of the “socialist countries” into the capitalist world
market. It is also a quest for the assumption of larger responsibilities within
the capitalist countries and their governments and a promise not to disrupt
that limited degree of cooperation reached by the European powers. It does not
imply a radical break with the state-capitalist part of the world, but merely
the recognition that this part too is presently not interested in further
extension of the state-capitalist system by revolutionary means, but rather in
its own security in an increasingly unstable world.

While socialist revolutions at this stage of development are more than just
doubtful, all working-class activities in defense of the workers’ own
interests possess a potentially revolutionary character. In periods of relative
economic stability the workers’ struggle itself hastens the accumulation
of capital, by forcing the bourgeoisie to adopt more efficient ways to increase
the productivity of labor. Wages and profits may, as mentioned, rise together
without disturbing the expansion of capital. A depression, however, brings the
simultaneous (though unequal) rise of profits and wages to an end. The
profitability of capital must be restored before the accumulation process can
be resumed. The struggle between labor and capital now involves the
system’s very existence, bound up as it is with its continuous expansion.
Objectively, ordinary economic struggles for higher wages take on revolutionary
implications, and thus political forms, as one class can succeed only at the
expense of the other.

Of course, the workers might be prepared to accept, within limits, a
decreasing share of the social product, if only to avoid the miseries of
drawn-out confrontations with the bourgeoisie and its state. Because of
previous experiences, the ruling class expects revolutionary activities and has
armed itself accordingly. But the political support of the large labor
organizations is equally necessary to prevent large-scale social upheavals. As
a prolonged depression threatens the capitalist system, it is essential for the
communist parties as well as other reformist organizations to help the
bourgeoisie to overcome its crisis conditions. They must try to prevent
working-class activities that might delay a capitalist recovery. Their
opportunistic policies take on an openly counter-revolutionary character as
soon as the system finds itself endangered by working-class demands that cannot
be satisfied within a crisis-ridden capitalism.

Although the mixed economies will not transform themselves into
state-capitalist systems on their own accord, and though the left-wing parties
have, for the time being, discarded their state-capitalist goals, this may not
prevent social upheavals on a scale large enough to override the political
controls of both the bourgeoisie and their allies in the labor movement. If
such a situation should occur, the current identification of socialism with
state-capitalism, and a forced rededication of communist parties to the early
tactics of Bolshevism, could very well sidetrack any spontaneous rising of the
workers into state-capitalist channels. Just as the traditions of Social
Democracy in the Central European countries prevented the political revolutions
of 1918 from becoming social revolutions, so the traditions of Leninism may
prevent the realization of socialism in favor of state capitalism.

The introduction of state capitalism in capitalistically advanced countries
as a result of World War II demonstrates that this system is not restricted to
capitalistically undeveloped nations but maybe applicable universally. Such a
possibility was not envisioned by Marx. For him, capitalism would be replaced
by socialism, not by a hybrid system containing elements of both within
capitalist relations of production. The end of the competitive market economy
is not necessarily the end of capitalist exploitation, which can also be
realized within the state-planning system. This is a historically novel
situation indicating the possibility of a development characterized generally
by state monopoly over the means of production, not as a period of transition
to socialism but as a new form of capitalist production.

Revolutionary actions presuppose a general disruption of society that
escapes the control of the ruling class. Thus far such actions have occurred
only in connection with social catastrophes, such as lost wars and the
associated economic dislocations. This does not mean that such situations are
an absolute precondition for revolution, but it points to the extent of social
disintegration necessary to lead to social upheavals. Revolution must involve
the rebellion of a majority of the active population, something that is not
brought about by ideological indoctrination but is the result of sheer
necessity. The resulting activities produce their own revolutionary
consciousness, namely an understanding of what has to be done so as not to be
destroyed by the capitalist enemy. But at present, the political and military
power of the bourgeoisie is not threatened by internal dissension and the
mechanisms for manipulatory economic actions are not as yet exhausted. And
despite increasing international competition for the shrinking profits of the
world economy, the ruling classes of the various nations will still support one
another in the suppression of revolutionary movements.

The enormous difficulties in the way of social revolution and a communist
reconstruction of society were frightfully underestimated by the early Marxist
movement. Of course, capitalism’s resiliency and adaptability to changing
conditions could not be discovered short of trying to put an end to it. It
should be clear by now, however, that the forms taken by the class struggle
during the rise of capitalism are not adequate for its period of decline, which
alone allows for its revolutionary overthrow. The existence of state-capitalist
systems also demonstrates that socialism cannot be reached by means deemed
sufficient in the past. Yet this proves not the failure of Marxism but merely
the illusory character of many of its manifestations, as reflexes of illusions
created by the development of capitalism itself.

Now as before, the Marxian analysis of capitalist production and its
peculiar and contradictory evolution by way of accumulation is the only theory
that has been empirically confirmed by capitalist development. To speak of the
latter we must speak in Marxian terms or not at all. This is why Marxism cannot
die but will last as long as capitalism exists. Although largely modified, the
contradictions of capitalist production persist in the state-capitalist
systems. As all economic relations are social relations, the continuing class
relations in these systems imply the constancy of the class struggle, even if,
at first, only in the one-sided form of authoritarian rule. The unavoidable and
growing integration of the world economy affects all nations regardless of
their particular socioeconomic structure and tends to internationalize the
class struggle and thereby to undermine attempts to find national solutions for
social problems. So long, then, as class exploitation prevails, it will bring
forth a Marxist opposition, even if all Marxist theory should be suppressed or
used as a false ideology in support of an anti-Marxian practice.

History, of course, has to be made by people, by way of the class struggle.
The decline of capitalism — made visible on the one hand by the continual
concentration of capital and centralization of political power, and on the
other hand by the increasing anarchy of the system, despite, and because of,
all attempts at more efficient social organization — may well be a long
drawn-out affair. It will be so, unless cut short by revolutionary actions on
the part of the working class and all those unable to secure their existence
within the deteriorating social conditions. But at this point the future of
Marxism remains extremely vague. The advantages of the ruling classes and their
instruments of repression have to be matched by a power greater than that which
the laboring classes have thus far been able to generate. It is not
inconceivable that this situation will endure and thus condemn the proletariat
to pay ever heavier penalties for its inability to act upon its own class
interest. Further, it is not excluded that the perseverance of capitalism will
lead to the destruction of society itself. Because capitalism remains
susceptible to catastrophic crises, nations will tend, as they have in the
past, to resort to war, to extricate themselves from difficulties at the
expense of other capitalist powers. This tendency includes the possibility of
nuclear war, and as matters stand today, war seems even more likely than an
international socialist revolution. Although the ruling classes are fully aware
of the consequences of nuclear warfare, they can only try to prevent it by
mutual terror, that is, by the competitive expansion of the nuclear arsenal. As
they have only very limited control over their economics, they also have no
real control over their political affairs, and whatever intentions they may
harbor to avoid mutual destruction do not greatly affect the probability of its
occurrence. It is this terrible situation that precludes the confidence of an
earlier period in the certainty and success of socialist revolution.

As the future remains open, even if determined by the past and the
immediately given conditions, Marxists must proceed on the assumption that the
road to socialism is not yet closed and that there is still a chance to
overcome capitalism prior to its self-destruction. Socialism now appears not
only as the goal of the revolutionary labor movement but as the only
alternative to the partial or total destruction of the world. This requires, of
course, the emergence of socialist movements that recognize the capitalist
relations of production as the source of increasing social miseries and the
threatening descent into a state of barbarism. However, after more than a
hundred years of socialist agitation, this seems to be a forlorn hope. What one
generation learns, another forgets, driven by forces beyond its control and
therefore comprehension. The contradictions of capitalism, as a system of
private interests determined by social necessities, are reflected not only in
the capitalist mind but also in the consciousness of the proletariat. Both
classes react to the results of their own activities as if they were due to
unalterable natural laws. Subjected to the fetishism of commodity production
they perceive the historically limited capitalist mode of production as an
everlasting condition to which each and everyone has to adjust. Since this
erroneous perception secures the exploitation of labor by capital, it is of
course fostered by the capitalist as the ideology of bourgeois society and
indoctrinated into the proletariat.

The capitalist conditions of social production force the working class to
accept its exploitation as the only way to secure its livelihood. The immediate
needs of the worker can only be satisfied by submitting to these conditions and
their reflection in the ruling ideology. Generally, he will accept one with the
other, as representative of the real world, which cannot be defied except by
suicide. An escape from bourgeois ideology will not alter his actual position
in society and is at best a luxury within the conditions of his dependence. No
matter how much he may emancipate himself ideologically, for all practical
purposes he must proceed as if he were still under the sway of bourgeois
ideology. His thoughts and actions are of necessity discrepant. He may realize
that his individual needs can only be assured by collective class actions, but
he will still be forced to attend to his immediate needs as an individual. The
twofold nature of capitalism as social production for private gain reappears in
the ambiguity of the worker’s position as both an individual and a member
of a social class.

It is this situation, rather than some conditioned inability to transcend
capitalist ideology, that makes the workers reluctant to express and to act
upon their anti-capitalist attitudes, which complement their social position as
wage workers. They are fully aware of their class status, even when they ignore
or deny it, but they also recognize the enormous powers arrayed against them,
which threaten their destruction should they dare to challenge the capitalist
class relations. It is for this reason too that they choose a reformist rather
than revolutionary mode of action when they attempt to wring concessions from
the bourgeoisie. Their lack of revolutionary consciousness expresses no more
than the actual social power relations, which indeed cannot be changed at will.
A cautious “realism” — that is, a recognition of the limited
range of activities open to them — determines their thoughts and actions
and finds its justification in the power of capital.

Unless accompanied by revolutionary action on the part of the working class,
Marxism, as the theoretical comprehension of capitalism, remains just that. It
is not the theory of an actual social practice, intent and able to change the
world, but functions as an ideology in anticipation of such a practice. Its
interpretation of reality, however correct, does not affect the immediately
given conditions to any important extent. It merely describes the actual
conditions in which the proletariat finds itself, leaving their change to the
future actions of the workers themselves. But the very conditions in which the
workers find themselves subject them to the rule of capital and to an impotent,
namely ideological, opposition at best. Their class struggle within ascending
capitalism strengthens their adversary and weakens their own oppositional
inclinations. Revolutionary Marxism is thus not a theory of class struggle as
such, but a theory of class struggle under the specific conditions of
capitalism’s decline. It cannot operate effectively under
“normal” conditions of capitalist production but has to await their
breakdown. Only when the cautious “realism” of the workers turns
into unrealism, and reformism into utopianism — that is, when the
bourgeoisie is no longer able to maintain itself except through the continuous
worsening of the living conditions of the proletariat may spontaneous
rebellions issue into revolutionary actions powerful enough to overthrow the
capitalist regime.

Until now the history of revolutionary Marxism has been the history of its
defeats, which include the apparent successes that culminated in the emergence
of state-capitalist systems. It is clear that early Marxism not only
underestimated the resiliency of capitalism, but in doing so also overestimated
the power of Marxian ideology to affect the consciousness of the proletariat.
The process of historical change, even if speeded up by the dynamics of
capitalism, is exceedingly slow, particularly when measured against the
lifespan of an individual. But the history of failure is also one of illusions
shed and experience gained, if not for the individual, at least for the class.
There is no reason to assume that the proletariat cannot learn from experience.
Quite apart from such considerations, it will at any rate be forced by
circumstances to find a way to secure its existence outside of capitalism, when
this is no longer possible within it. Although the particularities of such a
situation cannot be established in advance, one thing is clear: namely, that
the liberation of the working class from capitalist domination can only be
achieved through the workers’ own initiative, and that socialism can be
realized only through the abolition of class society through the ending of the
capitalist relations of production. The realization of this goal will be at
once the verification of Marxian theory and the end of Marxism.


     From : Marxists.org

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     Marxism -- Added : March 03, 2021

     Marxism -- Updated : January 08, 2022

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