The Politics of Ideologie-Kritik: Socialism in the Age of Neo/Post-Marxism

Abstract

In significant ways globalization theory derives from and is dependent on ideas originating with Marx, Engels, and Marxism. However, there are important puzzles within the Marxist heritage that need resolving, before current assessments of the global economic situation post-2007 can proceed. This is because these puzzles—about the nature of critique, the appropriate understanding of ideology, and the political power of neo/post Marxism—are part of the situation itself. Only after this clarification do Neo-Marxism and Post-Marxism make contrasting, but consistent sense. In a new era of global depression, credit crunch, and overt class struggle the multi-polar realities of the G20 nations now openly challenge the traditional dichotomies that divided democratic from one-party states, “free market” from planned (socialist) economies, and developed from developing (capitalist) economies. Globalization theory will thus require revision, and international political economy will necessarily rely on Ideologie-Kritik.

Notes

¹ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, “Manifesto of the Communist Party,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 6 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976), pp. 485, 487, 488. For a more detailed discussion of Marxism and globalization, see Terrell Carver, “Ideology in the Age of Digital Reproduction,” in Manfred B. Steger (ed.), Rethinking Globalism (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2004), pp. 95–106.

² For detailed, critical histories of the concept see Terrell Carver, “Ideology: The Career of a Concept,” in Terence Ball and Richard Dagger (eds), Ideals and Ideologies: A Reader (New York: HarperCollins, 1991), pp. 4–11; and Manfred B. Steger, The Rise of the Global Imaginary: Political Ideologies from the French Revolution to the Global War on Terror (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), pp. 19–43.

³ Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, The German Ideology, in Marx and Engels, Collected Works, vol. 5 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976), p. 36. See Terrell Carver, “Did Ideology Fall with the Wall? Marx, Marxism and Post-Marxism,” in Reassessing Political Ideologies: The Durability of Dissent, ed. Michael Freeden (London: Routledge, 2001), pp. 35–48.

⁴ Francis Wheen, Karl Marx (London: Fourth Estate, 1999), p. 1. See also the discussion in Andrew Heywood, Political Ideologies: An Introduction, 4th ed. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), pp. 123–127.

⁵ “The executive of the modern State is but a committee for managing the common affairs of the whole bourgeoisie.” Marx and Engels, “Manifesto,” op. cit., p. 486.

⁶ Engels to Bernstein, November 2–3, 1882, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 46 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1992), p. 356: “Now what is known as ‘Marxism’ in France is, indeed, an altogether peculiar product—so much so that Marx once said to [Paul] Lafargue: ‘Ce qu'il y a de certain c'est que moi, je ne suis pas Marxiste.’” Engels to Schmidt, August 5, 1890, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 49 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2001), p. 7: “As Marx said of the French Marxists in the late seventies: ‘Tout ce que je sais, c'est que je ne suis pas Marxiste.’”

⁷ For contrary views see Bhikhu Parekh, Marx's Theory of Ideology (London: Croom Helm, 1982); David McLellan, Ideology, 2nd ed. (Buckingham: Open University Press, 1995).

⁸ For an outline and defense of this view, see Terrell Carver, Marx and Engels: The Intellectual Relationship (Brighton: Wheatsheaf, 1983).

⁹ Göran Therborn, “After Dialectics: Radical Social Theory in a Post-Communist World,” New Left Review, no. 43 (Jan-Feb 2007), pp. 63–114.

¹⁰ Personal conversations in the People's Republic of China (identities kept anonymous by request); for further discussion, see below.

¹¹ Marx and Engels, “Manifesto,” op. cit., p. 495.

¹² Therborn also puts this view: “But the old maps of ‘roads to socialism’ have lost their bearings. New compasses of the left have to be made.” Therbon, “After Dialectics,” op. cit., p. 67.

¹³ Marx and Engels, German Ideology, op. cit., pp. 36–37; Marx and Engels, “Manifesto,” op. cit., p. 503.

¹⁴ See Karl Marx, “Preface to the First German Edition [of Capital, vol. 1],” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 35 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1996), p. 10.

¹⁵ Contrary to Marxist and non-Marxist scholarly projections of later concerns of the 1880s—see below “Ideology as a Departure from Kritik”—back onto Marx's life and career.

¹⁶ See Frederick Engels, “Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy,” and “Preface to the Pamphlet Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 26 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), pp. 353–398, 519–520.

¹⁷ Engels to Mehring, July 14, 1893, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 50 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 2004), p. 164, where the traditional translation “false” has been altered to “spurious.” Cf. Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Selected Correspondence, 2nd ed. (Moscow: Progress, 1965), p. 459.

¹⁸ Carver, Marx and Engels, op. cit., pp. xi–xv, 118–151.

¹⁹ For a detailed defense of this point, see Terrell Carver, “Karl Marx,” in Steven M. Emmanuel (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Modern Philosophers: From Descartes to Nietzsche (Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2001), pp. 370–389.

²⁰ See Karl Marx, “Wages,” in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 6 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1976), pp. 422–437; Karl Marx, Value, Price and Profit, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 20 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1985), pp. 103–149.

²¹ V.I. Lenin, “What is to be Done?” in V.I. Lenin, Collected Works, vol. 5 (Moscow: Progress, 1973), pp. 369, 370, 375, 383–384.

²² See Ernest Mandel, Late Capitalism, new edition (London: Verso, 1999); Fredric Jameson, Postmodernism, or The Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism (London: Verso, 1992).

²³ For a study of the earliest days of this movement, see Manfred B. Steger, The Quest for Evolutionary Socialism: Eduard Bernstein and Social Democracy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997).

²⁴ See Manfred B. Steger and Ravi K. Roy, Neoliberalism: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), and David Harvey, A Brief History of Neo-liberalism, new edition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007).

²⁵ See Robert O. Gorman, Neo-Marxism: The Meaning of Modern Radicalism (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1982); Therborn, “After Dialectics,” op. cit., pp. 104–109.

²⁶ See Erik Olin Wright, Approaches to Class Analysis (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008).

²⁷ See C. Wright Mills, The Power Elite (New York: Oxford University Press, 1956).

²⁸ See T.H. Ashton and C.H.E. Philpin (eds), The Brenner Debate: Agrarian Class Structure and Economic Development in Pre-industrial Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987).

²⁹ See John C. Roemer, Analytical Foundations of Marxian Economic Theory (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981, new edition 2008).

³⁰ See Manuel Castells, The Information Age: Economy, Society and Culture, 3 vols (New Malden, MA: Blackwell, 1996–1998).

³¹ See Leslie Sklair, The Transnational Capitalist Class (Oxford: Blackwell, 2001); Beverly Silver, Forces of Labor: Workers' Movements and Globalization since 1870 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003); Dimitris Stevis and Terry Boswell, Globalization and Labor: Democratizing Global Governance (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2008).

³² See Andrew Glyn, Capitalism Unleashed: Finance Globalization and Welfare (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006).

³³ See Michael Aglietta, A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: The US Experience, trans. David Fernbach (London: Verso, 2001).

³⁴ See Michael Wallerstein, World Systems Analysis: An Introduction (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2004).

³⁵ See André Gunder Frank, ReOrient: Global Economy in the Asian Age (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998).

³⁶ See Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000); Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (New York: Penguin, 2004).

³⁷ See Justin Rosenberg, The Empire of Civil Society: A Critique of the Realist Theory of International Relations (London: Verso, 1994).

³⁸ For an overview, see mark Rupert and M. Scott Solomon, Globalization and International Political Economy: The Politics of Alternative Futures (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2006).

³⁹ See Terrell Carver, Friedrich Engels: His Life and Thought (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1989), pp. 232–252. Therborn refers to neo-Marxism as “a Marxian analysis of capitalism… shorn of the original's historico-philosophical wrapping”; he elides Marx with Marxism in a way that I have resisted here.

⁴⁰ See in particular V. Spike Peterson's rigorously argued A Critical Rewriting of Global Political Economy: Integrating Reproductive, Productive and Virtual Economies (New York: Routledge, 2003).

⁴¹ Therborn notes that neo-Marxists reassert “core analytics—minus the theory of value” and mentions Michael Burawoy and Erik Olin Wright, “Sociological Marxism,” in Handbook of Sociological Theory, ed. Jonathan H. Turner (New York: Springer, 2002), p. 484.

⁴² Therborn rightly references Amartya Sen, Adam Przeworski, and others on the “economics and philosophy” border at this point; see Therborn, “After Dialectics,” op. cit., p. 97.

⁴³ See Göran Therborn, From Marxism to Post-Marxism (London: Verso, 2008), and Terrell Carver, “Post-Marxism,” in Gary Browning, Abigail Halcli, and Frank Webster (eds), Understanding Contemporary Society: Theories of the Present (London: Sage, 2000), pp. 71–83.

⁴⁴ Terrell Carver, Karl Marx: Texts on Method (Oxford: Blackwell, 1975), pp. 28–29; see Marx to Lassalle, February 22, 1858, in Karl Marx and Frederick Engels, Collected Works, vol. 40 (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1983), p. 270.

⁴⁵ This, of course, was argued early in the 20th century in the Revisionismusstreit; see Steger, Quest for Evolutionary Socialism, op. cit., pp. 66–85. Note also the double elision here of economics with productive activity, and of human activity with matter.

⁴⁶ Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics, trans. Winston Moore and Paul Cammack (London: Verso, 1985).

⁴⁷ Therborn, “After Dialectics,” op. cit.

⁴⁸ See J.K. Gibson-Graham, Stephen Resnick, and Richard Wolff (eds), Re/Presenting Class: Essays in Postmodern Marxism (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2001), p. 19; see also J.K. Gibson-Graham, A Postcapitalist Politics (Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 2006).

⁴⁹ See Étienne Balibar, Masses, Classes, Ideas: Studies on Politics and Philosophy Before and After Marx, trans. James Swenson (London: Routledge, 1994).

⁵⁰ See Claus Offe, Modernity and the State: East, West (Cambridge: Polity, 1996).

⁵¹ See Bob Jessop, State Power (Cambridge: Polity, 2007).

⁵² See Gerrassimos Moschonas, In the Name of Social Democracy: The Great Transformation from 1945 to the Present, trans. Gregory Elliott (London: Verso, 2002).

⁵³ See Steve Bastow and James Martin, Third Way Discourse: European Ideologies in the Twentieth Century (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2003).

⁵⁴ See Sankaran Krishna, Globalization and Postcolonialism: Hegemony and Resistance in the Twenty-first Century (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2009).

⁵⁵ See Peter A. Hall and David Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001).

⁵⁶ As notoriously predicted in Francis Fukuyama, The End of History and the Last Man (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1993).

⁵⁷ See James Goodman, “From Global Justice to Climate Justice? Justice Ecologism in an Era of Global Warming,” in the present volume.