Friday, March 29, AD 2024 1:30am

Poor Misunderstood Marx!

Commonweal has an article by Marxist literary critic Terry Eagleton in which he argues that Marx was right in his critique of captalism.  Go here to read it.  Go here to read a post about the article which appeared on the Commonweal blog.  ( I will confess to having a very slight  grudging respect for Mr. Eagleton ever since his memorable, and scorching,  review which may be read here, of Richard Dawkins’ inane The God Delusion.  The respect is very slight and very grudging indeed, since Mr. Eagleton also wrote a bitter diatribe against John Paul II, which may be read here, after the death of the pontiff.  He also views the Catholic Church, the Church he was raised in, as “one of the nastiest authoritarian outfits on the planet”, which is rich coming from a Marxist.)

The Marx set forth in the article by Mr. Eagleton is unrecognizable to me.  The Marx of history was not some sort of democratic eurosocialist.  He was a hard core advocate of terror.  The quotations from his works and letters on this point are legion.  Here is a typical statement he made in 1850 in an address to the Communist League:

“[The working class] must act in such a manner that the revolutionary excitement does not collapse immediately after the victory.  On the contrary, they must maintain it as long as possible.  Far from opposing so-called excesses, such as sacrificing to popular revenge of hated individuals or public buildings to which hateful memories are attached, such deeds must not only be tolerated, but their direction must be taken in hand, for examples’ sake.”

From the same address:

To be able forcefully and threateningly to oppose this party, whose betrayal of the workers will begin with the very first hour of victory, the workers must be armed and organized. The whole proletariat must be armed at once with muskets, rifles, cannon and ammunition, and the revival of the old-style citizens’ militia, directed against the workers, must be opposed. Where the formation of this militia cannot be prevented, the workers must try to organize themselves independently as a proletarian guard, with elected leaders and with their own elected general staff; they must try to place themselves not under the orders of the state authority but of the revolutionary local councils set up by the workers. Where the workers are employed by the state, they must arm and organize themselves into special corps with elected leaders, or as a part of the proletarian guard. Under no pretext should arms and ammunition be surrendered; any attempt to disarm the workers must be frustrated, by force if necessary. The destruction of the bourgeois democrats’ influence over the workers, and the enforcement of conditions which will compromise the rule of bourgeois democracy, which is for the moment inevitable, and make it as difficult as possible – these are the main points which the proletariat and therefore the League must keep in mind during and after the approaching uprising.

Nothing done by the Communist states that claimed Marx as their ideological father in regard to the suppression of adversaries and the use of mass terror to remain in power cannot find full warrant in the works of Marx.

Of course, Marx goes wrong at the very beginning in regard to his view of Man which is completely materialist.  In his A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, Marx spelled out his view that religion was an illusion which deterred the revolutionary rage of the people:

The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself.

It is, therefore, the task of history, once the other-world of truth has vanished, to establish the truth of this world. It is the immediate task of philosophy, which is in the service of history, to unmask self-estrangement in its unholy forms once the holy form of human self-estrangement has been unmasked. Thus, the criticism of Heaven turns into the criticism of Earth, the criticism of religion into the criticism of law, and the criticism of theology into the criticism of politics.

Marx was a poor philosopher who completely misunderstood the nature of Man.  He had little understanding of economics and his predictions as to the future course of history were twaddle.    What he did do however, and that quite successfully, was to produce an ideology for devoted followers to use as an excuse to seize power and to remake humanity in a Marxist shape.  This laboratory experiment with entire peoples as lab rats produced death and misery on a scale never seen before in human history. 

That a Catholic magazine would give space to a man who thinks that perhaps Marx was right after all, and who is a bitter anti-Catholic to boot, might be considered shocking to some.  (Marx would have found it bitterly amusing.  He had nothing but contempt for those who attempted to mix Christianity and socialism.  His phrase, “Christian socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat”, summed up his dismissal of this mixture.)  However, this is Commonweal, and it is merely reflecting a readership largely consisting of an aging cohort of uber liberal Catholics who have always had a soft spot in their hearts and heads for most things of the Left.  Eagleton, who apparently may now believe in God while remaining a committed Marxist, is a natural for this target audience.  For myself,  when it comes to religion I will stick with the Church, when it comes to politics with Edmund Burke, the Founding Fathers and Abraham Lincoln, and when it comes to economics, with Milton Friedman, an easier amalgam of beliefs I think than attempting to baptize Marx. 

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T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 6:00am

In addition, Marxism has been ineptly applied by run-of-the-mill megalomaniacs like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.

Today, Glory-O!, we have geniuses like our messianic magic man Obama and Uncle Joe Biden doing it correctly.

“All attempts to create Heaven on Earth have resulted in hell on Earth.” Camus

Ah, hell on earth . . . OTOH they will make the evil rich miserable, too . . . Go for it!

WJ
WJ
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 6:17am

Both Pope Benedict XVI and Cardinal Reinhardt Marx of Munich have suggested that Marx’s critique of alienation under capitalistic forms of economic production is largely correct, while of course maintaining that the Marxist solution, because atheistical and totalitarian in practice (if not necessarily in intent) is a non-starter. Likewise, Pope Benedict XVI quotes approvingly, though critically, the great Marxist philosopher Adorno in his excellent encyclical Spe Salvi; likewise, the phenomenology of labor in JPII’s Laborem Exercens is clearly influenced by some aspects of the early Marx’s thought.

Elaine Krewer
Admin
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 6:26am

All powerful lies have to have at least a small amount of truth to them, otherwise no one would believe them. If there is a grain of “truth” to Marxism, it may be in its “critique of alienation under capitalistic forms of economic production.” Marx knew there was a problem and he did a fairly competent job of identifying what the problem was, but he was totally wrong about the solution.

T. Shaw
T. Shaw
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 7:53am

I guess “Marx” is philosophical and theological pathology.

Attention all Keynesians!

John Maynard Keynes quote: ” . . . socialism must always remain a portent to the historians of opinion – how a doctrine so illogical and so dull can have exercised so powerful and enduring an influence over the minds of men, and, through them, the events of history.” Keynes, “The End of Laissez-Faire.”

Here is why there can be no “Gospel According to Saint Marx.”

George Orwell, “Reflections on Gandhi”

The Humanistic Ideal: “Man is the measure of all things and that our job is to make life worth living.”

“But it is not necessary here to argue whether the other-worldly or the humanistic ideal is ‘higher.’ The point is that they are incompatible. One must choose between God and Man, and all ‘radicals’ and ‘progressives’ from the mildest liberal . . . have in effect chosen Man.”

I think Keynes (RIP) and Orwell (RIP) “got” it.

WJ
WJ
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 7:54am

Yes, note that, far from your assertion that Marx was simply a “poor philosopher,” Benedict describes him with the following phrases:

“incisive language and intellect”; “With great precision, albeit with a certain onesided bias,Marx described the situation of his time, and with great analytical skill he spelled out the paths leading to revolution;”

The Pope, rightly, goes on to note the “fundamental error” of Marx’s thought, but his criticism is so much the more persuasive because he has not fallen in for caricatures of Marx that you present as fact.

By the way, the question whether Marx was, himself, a “materialist”–in the strongly philosophical sense of that word–is more difficult to answer than you might expect. But that’s another issue.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 8:10am

“By the way, the question whether Marx was, himself, a “materialist”–in the strongly philosophical sense of that word–is more difficult to answer than you might expect.”

How was Marx not a materialist in a “strong philisophical sense?”

Tim
Tim
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 8:19am

I agree with this statement towards the end: “…as long as capitalism is still in business, Marxism must be as well.”

That, I think, is the best argument against capitalism.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 8:32am

The only Marx worth remembering is Groucho. As for Karl, he sponged off Engels much of his life. After Marx wrote Das Kapital, his wife was so disgusted with his indolence, she remarked, “Karl, if you had only spent more time making capital instead of writing about it, we would have been better off.”

As for capitalism and communism, the old joke applies:
Capitalism is man’s exploitation of man; communism is the reverse.

RL
RL
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 8:50am

“The reformer is always right about what is wrong. He is generally wrong about what is right.”

G.K. Chesterton (1922)

That observation is as valid today as it what then and before.

WJ
WJ
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 8:57am

Well, Hume, Locke, Kant and Plato, from a Catholic anthropological standpoint, also “got the fundamental nature of Man wrong”, although their errors are, obviously, different from both Marx’s and from each other’s. Are they poor philosophers too? (I’m leaving aside the obvious riposte that getting the “fundamental nature of Man” *right* is not something attainable by probably any single philosopher.)

On Marx and Materialism, see George L. Kline, “The Myth of Marx’s Materialism” in Philosophical Sovietology: The Pursuit of a Science

Blackadder
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 9:07am

I stopped reading when Eagleton claimed that scarcity was the result of capitalism. I suppose I shouldn’t have expected better from a literary critic, but still.

When I was in college I read the Manifesto and was of course repulsed by it. A friend suggested to me that Marx’s really valuable insights were in alienation, so I read some of his stuff on that but it didn’t make any sense to me either (IIRC, Marx’s views on alienation had a fairly strong anti-religious thread running through it, so I’m surprised that Pope Benedict would say that it is correct, but he is undoubtedly more familiar with the subject than I).

DarwinCatholic
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 9:13am

Yeesh, that article is a rather frightful piece of utopian wishful thinking masquerading as thought, but then, who can be surprised that Commonweal would be happy to print such a thing. It seems that Capitalism (whatever one takes that to be) is very much at fault for not making things even better than it has over the last 300 years — while Marxism bears no fault at all for how any polity based upon its principles has foundered.

Incidentally, Don, have you run into Leszek Kolakowski’s delightful essay “My Correct Views on Everything“? It’s a twenty page bloodletting response to a windy 100 page “open letter” addressed to Kolakowski by British leftist intellectual Edward Thompson, explaining to Kolakowski the virtues of socialism which Kolakowski (having recently defected from communist Poland) may not realize. Hard not to love a piece which opens:

In a review of the last issue of Socialist Register by Raymond Williams, I read that your letter is one of the best pieces of Left writings in the last decade, which implies directly that all or nearly all the rest was worse. He knows better and I take his word. I should be proud to having occasioned, to a certain degree, this text, even if I happen to be its target. And so, my first reaction is one of gratitude.

And goes on from there.

DarwinCatholic
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 9:21am

Well, Hume, Locke, Kant and Plato, from a Catholic anthropological standpoint, also “got the fundamental nature of Man wrong”, although their errors are, obviously, different from both Marx’s and from each other’s. Are they poor philosophers too?

Are you saying that there is no degree to wrongness but that it is a binary quality?

I don’t think it would be a reach to say that Marx got things rather more than those, and in more key aspects — indeed, what Marx is accused of getting right is pretty trivial.

As for the other four, they’re a highly varied bunch, and perhaps arguably arranged from most to least wrong. Still, each provides at least a few useful insights into the human predicament. Marx… Well, if someone got something useful out of him more power to them, but I don’t think there’s much there one couldn’t get elsewhere.

Stephen E Dalton
Stephen E Dalton
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 9:46am

Marx was also a vicious racist. Nathaniel Weyl’s “Karl Marx, Racist” shows ol’ KM had incrediably racist feeling about Blacks, Jews, Slavs, and even Scandanavians. Racism, it’s not just for Nazi’s!

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 9:53am

Don, reminds me of all those chicken-crossing-the-road jokes:

Plato’s answer: “For the greater good.”
Marx’s answer: “It was an historical inevitability.”
Aristotle: “To actualize its potential.”
Epicurus: “For fun.”
Torquemada: “Give me ten minutes with the chicken and I’ll find out.”

WJ
WJ
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 10:08am

Darwin,

No, of course there are degrees; my point was merely to counter Donald’s too easy dismissal of Marx, which actually doesn’t allow a *substantive* or philosophically serious criticism of Marx to be voiced, because it has already constructed, and destroyed, a straw-man.

Many things which Marx “got right” are also the sorts of things that Aristotle “got right,” especially involving the importance of practice for thinking seriously about ethics, and so on. But I don’t think that, from this premise, you can get to the conclusion “Well then you don’t need Marx,” precisely because Marx makes legible how *one* broadly Aristotelian approach to society and culture might look given modern economies. Not the *right* one, necessarily, but one which, if you are going finally to critique it, you need to understand.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 10:23am

I don’t expect to buy Philosophical Sovietology due to the price on-line. Unless you have a copy of the article, I will just go with the general philosophical consensus that Marx was a materialist.

That being the case, Marx, more that Hume, Locke, Plato and Kant fundamentally failed as a philosopher.

As to Marx’s critique of capitalism (of the Nineteenth Century) I will defer to others. As to his relevance to the situation today, I suspect the experience of the Twentieth Century answers that.

WJ
WJ
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 10:34am

Phillip,

You can get the article via Interlibrary Loan if that’s available in your community (some public libraries support this, others don’t; most colleges and some high schools do as well). I wouldn’t buy the book either!

I’m not sure that I think that Marx “failed” as a philosopher “more” than Hume or Locke, but I’m also not sure I know what that means absent further specification. I agree that Kant and Plato are (rightly) considered “greater” philosophers than Marx.

The question as to whether the existence of the Soviet Union, and the very great evils perpetrated by that regime (and other, like-minded regimes) constitutes sufficient reason to conclude that Marx is irrelevant today is a complex one. From both the writings of Benedict and Cardinal Reinhardt Marx, one gets the sense that the answer is, “it depends.” If you are looking for solutions, then, I agree, Marx is a non-starter; but if you are looking for analyses and trenchant (although somewhat one-sided) criticisms, I believe Marx still has much to offer.

Phillip
Phillip
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 1:48pm

Perhaps I mean failed in the sense of discerning the truth. Clearly all philosophers fall short of this to some degree. (Even Aristotle couldn’t discern a personal God.)

But while Hume, Locke and Kant failed in their epistemology, the latter two at least accepted a transcendent even though they denied the ability to know it with any precision. As a result, they held a measure of the truth.

Marx on the other hand, and I still hold this though we may see with the article, through his radical materialism, failed in a fundamental way to understand what is true and in turn what leads men to true happiness.

Francis
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 4:45pm

Don said above the P. Benedict has the best short summary of Marx in Spe Salvi and then quoted it. I’m going to quote part of that quote:

“He forgot that man always remains man.”

Now, find me a better anti-utopian one-liner. God bless the holy father.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 6:10pm

Don, one more chicken/road answer from Machiavelli:

So that its subjects will view it with admiration,
as a chicken which has the daring and courage to
boldly cross the road, but also with fear, for whom
among them has the strength to contend with such a
paragon of avian virtue? In such a manner is the
princely chicken’s dominion maintained.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 6:55pm

Don, worthy additions! Now you’ve got me going…

Nietsche: Because if you gaze too long across the Road, the Road
gazes also across you.

Sartre: In order to act in good faith and be true to itself,
the chicken found it necessary to cross the road.

Darwin: It was the logical next step after coming down from the trees.

bada bing

Francis
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 7:10pm

Pope Benedict: The chicken forgot that chicken always remains chicken, no matter what side of the road chicken is on.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 7:48pm

John Donne: “It crosseth for thee.”

OK, I’ll stop now. : )

Ivan
Ivan
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 9:49pm

The alienation that Marx desribes as the worker going through is largely the result of 19th century industrialisation, where through the division of labour, the workers found themselves increasingly deskilled and thus at the mercy of capitalists, who then no difficulty replacing them with women and children. The self-respect that most of us desire is to a considerable extent anchored in the value of the job we do. That the division of labour can lead to the dehumanising of workers, was easily grasped by the Luddites and the distributionists. One needn’t be a Marxist to understand it. The supremely assured F1 mechanic is not alienated from the result of his labour – he can see the car taking off at full speed – but an overeducated minion tending to a factory line machine, producing a small part of a small module of a car, certainly can be.

LarryD
Tuesday, March 29, AD 2011 10:44pm
Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 8:13am

One of the great errors after the fall of the Evil Empire was not stigmatizing Marxism/Communism as was National Socialism after its defeat. Thus, the bizarre desire to resurrect it in varied forms now. The most bizarre, and vile, is the attempt to raise it again in the Church.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 8:19am

Phil, how is Marxism/Communism being ‘resurrected’? Other than its purest form (Cuba), it’s about as dead as Julius Caesar. Even the Chi-coms are committed capitalists these days. Marx, Lenin and their ilk have become mere footnotes in Planet Earth Incorporated. Terry Eagleton must have run out of material.

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 8:56am

Joe,

It is certainly being resurrected in Academia. The Eagleton link is one piece of “intellectual” resurrection. Not that that is much of a stretch given the Marxist bias of academia. That’s just the beginning.

Chris Burgwald
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 9:06am

Phillip,

I don’t think it ever *died* in academia to begin with… the Marxists just quieted down some, but they’ve always insisted that the Soviets never *really* practiced Marxism.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 9:10am

Phil, granted, Academia is rife with Leftists, but their influence on the whole of society is limited.

I don’t see millionaires like Sean Penn and Michael Moore, who rail against capitalism, surrendering their private jets and vacation homes or redistributing their wealth to the have-nots.

Jesus said, “If you want to be perfect, go, sell your possessions and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Then come, follow me.”

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 9:58am

Chris,

That is probably a better way to put it. But given the time since the fall of the Wall and the current political/social situation, I think they and more of their ilk are increasing their cries for change.

As opposed to Rahm Emanuel, I think the efforts of those who are radical Marxists/socialists to exploit these crises will have more widespread effects.

Joe,

I don’t think the effect of Academia is so limited. I think they have been quite effective in indoctrinating a whole generation to their thinking. Not that a generation is Marxist in a doctrinaire sense, but certainly more inclined to favor this thinking. Particularly in the “soft, taste great, less filling” form presented by many. This includes some in the Church such as Eagleton.

As for the Hollywood types, they are hypocrites. Few are actual Marxists but some would be more than happy to run a re-education program. Most just want to feel good for ripping off people for their bad movies.

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 10:29am

One example of that “soft” indoctrination would be the Howard Zinn/Matt Damon “The People Speak.” A collaboration of Communism and Hollywood.

Joe Green
Joe Green
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 10:30am

Phil, perhaps easy to underestimate the impact of the Lefties in the classroom, although one wonders how much “education” is being absorbed in light of grim stats such as this: 67% of eight-graders in Wisconsin can’t read proficiently.

As for Eagleton, he lost all cred with his diatribe against John Paul II, arguably the greatest man of the 20th century and the most influential pope of the Church.

Back to the well-worn but always instructive mention of the dumbing down of America. John Taylor Gatto in his excellent “Underground History of American Education” offers this nugget:

In 1882, fifth graders read these authors in their Appleton School Reader: William Shakespeare, Henry Thoreau, George Washington, Sir Walter Scott, Mark Twain, Benjamin Franklin, Oliver Wendell Holmes, John Bunyan, Daniel Webster, Samuel Johnson, Lewis Carroll, Thomas Jefferson, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and others like them.

In 1995, a student teacher of fifth graders in Minneapolis wrote to the local newspaper, “I was told children are not to be expected to spell the following words correctly: back, big, call, came, can, day, did, dog, down, get, good, have, he, home, if, in, is, it, like, little, man, morning, mother, my, night, off, out, over, people, play, ran, said, saw, she, some, soon, their, them, there, time, two, too, up, us, very, water, we, went, where, when, will, would, etc. Is this nuts?”

Nowadays, Huck Finn has been sanitized and the dictionaries are filling up with new “words” such as ‘LOL’ and ‘OMG’ — further signs of the declining literacy rate in America.

Knowledge, and its ultimate fruit, wisdom, suffer greatly.

Phillip
Phillip
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 10:38am

Don’t deny education has been dumbed down in America.

“67% of eight-graders in Wisconsin can’t read proficiently.”

But they are probably up to date on the status of the Teachers’ Union.

RL
RL
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 11:00am

I don’t see millionaires like Sean Penn and Michael Moore, who rail against capitalism, surrendering their private jets and vacation homes or redistributing their wealth to the have-nots.

I wouldn’t expect them to, nor any other Marxist. Marxists and even many non-Marxist leftists are all for what they deem dignity and justice for the poor or working masses – they just don’t want, nor expect to be, part of the working mass. They want to be thoughtful and privileged administrators of the masses. They’re really just arrogant elitists and would-be tyrants, but in their mind it is okay because they know better than the common man what is best for him.

Unfortunately, we see too much of that mindset in our mainstream politics and even coming from some Catholics.

Pinky
Pinky
Wednesday, March 30, AD 2011 11:09am

Marx was a poor philosopher, if philosophers are developers and discerners of philosophy. Marx had some merits as an observer. As for the rest, it’s taken me two days to get through this post, original article, and thread (Marxism is intellectually exhausting!) and it’ll take me a bit longer to get my thoughts together.

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