Socialism, Communism, and Concrete Marxism

ABSTRACT

This dialogue begins with the question of “concrete Marxism,” which is at the foundations of “Socialism with Chinese Characteristics.” The concrete is analysed in terms of Marx’s dialectic between freedom and necessity, as also in Marx’s early work on Epicurean materialism and in Engels’s “Dialectics of Nature” and “Anti-Dühring.” We include a discussion of Hegel’s dialectic between the actual and the rational. Subsequently, we move to the relationship of socialist construction to the (non-socialist) past and a socialist future. We adduce examples from Marx’s “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte,” as well as the Chinese concept of mingyun (destiny/future) and explore the implications of Lenin’s critique of “left wing” impatience with the past. The issue here is the mistake of a “leftist” effort to make the leap—through sheer voluntary effort—into communism as an over-compensation for practical deficiencies and, on the other hand, the possibility for revolutionary socialism of appropriating and transforming the positive advances of bourgeois culture and civilisation. We conclude with some preliminary observations on the communist prospect, emphasising the concrete form of the dialectic of productive forces and relations of production and the reasons why this form highlights the importance of the former as a motive force.

KEYWORDS:

• Concrete Marxism
• dialectic
• China
• socialism
• communism

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 This assumption was particularly notable during the “wild 1990s” and its aftermath, when many contradictions of the initial phase of the reform and opening-up became apparent. However, this view has notably declined since the “new era” from 2012.

2 On the misreading of Hegel's remark on actuality [Wirklichkeit] as apologetics for the status quo, see Sayers (1987), Losurdo (2004, 35–38), and Longuenesse (2007, 110–159).

3 Noting here that the so-called “unity of contradictories” is not simply something that attends to the object, but to the thinking subject as well: “The subject is, qua thinking, therefore supposed to be […] the unity of contradictories” (see Bole III 1987, 517).

4 Althusser tried to suggest that the youthful “humanistic” Marx betrayed the mature “scientific” Marx, in terms of the effect of the history of publishing Marx's earlier “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844” ([1844] 1975) much later than the works surrounding Capital.

5 See also Deng’s advice to President Chissano of Mozambique: “There is a problem here: perhaps, given the conditions in your country, you should consider whether a headlong rush to socialism is advisable” (Deng [1988] 2008, 261; translated from Chinese).

6 We may also see this emphasis in terms of the moral incentives (alongside material incentives) in the communist movement. Many thanks to an anonymous reviewer for this suggestion.

7 It should be clarified that there is no real analogy to the role of the social-democratic welfare state of certain European countries here; for in their case, the role of the state is simply to redistribute wealth produced within existing relations of production, not the development of new productive forces in the direction of a qualitative change in relations of production, as in China. Besides, even the far more limited role of the European social-democratic state has been in marked decline for a number of years (see Gao and Chen 2022).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Antonis Balasopoulos

Antonis Balasopoulos is an associate professor of comparative literature at the Department of English Studies, University of Cyprus. His research interests involve comparative studies in utopia and utopianism, political theory and political philosophy, Marxism, and nineteenth- and early twentieth-century Anglophone and European prose. He has most recently co-edited Reading Texts on Sovereignty (Bloomsbury, 2021) and contributed a chapter on Marxism in the Palgrave Handbook of Utopian and Dystopian Literatures (Palgrave Macmillan, 2022).

Roland Boer

Roland Boer is a professor of Marxist philosophy in the School of Marxism, Dalian University of Technology. He has published many works on Marxism and philosophy, including the five-volume work, The Criticism of Heaven and Earth (2007–2014). In 2014, this work was awarded the Isaac and Tamara Deutscher Memorial Prize for the most innovative work in the Marxist tradition. More recently, he has published Socialism with Chinese Characteristics: A Guide for Foreigners (2021), Friedrich Engels and the Foundations of Socialist Governance (2021). In 2022, a further work will be published, entitled Socialism in Power: On the History and Theory of Socialist Governance.