Why Read Marx? After being criticized as a socialist by several critics, or worse a communist because I disagree with the bailout and the increased financial corruption of the US, I thought I would take a shot at reading Karl Marx. I downloaded the following PDF documents off of the internet:
- Capital: Book 1
- Capital: Book 2
- The Communist Manifesto
After reading parts of them I was actually quite surprised in that these books did not match my preconceived notions of them. Not that I necessarily thought they were not good work, only that my interpretation is that they would be more readable. The two books on capital read more like an economics paper with lengthy explanations on commodities and labor’s contribution to the resulting value of commodities. The Capitalist Manifesto is closer to what I expected but here again, the language used is quite surprising. On a number of occasions the paper refers to the lower classes as “scum,” which must be how the author thinks the bourgeoisie see the lower classes (which is probably true). While the book has a number of legitimate points, it undermines itself with a lot of extreme language and a lack of coherence. This actually gets to one of our main conclusions about Karl Marx and Engels (who wrote a good part of some of these books), whatever the merits of their ideas, neither of them are very good or very clear writers. (The books are translated from the original German to English; however, German is quite close to English, so this is not much of an excuse.). This fact is borne out by the fact that I needed to repeatedly go back and re-read sections, and even after doing so, was not clear as to what the author was saying. All three documents lack a coherent flow and seem to be more compilations of essays rather than books, and all of them could really benefit from a professional editor. One gets the feeling that both were rather undisciplined. The general flow seems to be that they got an idea, and wrote a chapter or section, then got another idea and wrote another chapter or section. After enough time passed, they had enough material for a book. If blogging had been around back in Marx and Engels’ time (of course they had newspapers and periodicals) this probably would have been a better outlet for their writing. What we learned from exposure to these books that that very few people are capable of reading any of them. It takes an extreme interest and extreme patience to get through them, and this is probably mostly limited to academics that are required to read them in order to complete their understanding of economic thought. One of the best explainers or interpreters of Marx we have read is Michael Hudson, a quite sophisticated economist who specializes in the history of economic thought. When Michael Hudson refers to and explains the ideas of Marx and Engels they seem to make sense, but when Marx or Engels explain them themselves without an interpreter like Dr. Hudson, they don’t seem to have the same resonance.
The Importance of Writing Clearly and Completely
Alan Macfarlane, a professor at Cambridge University, states that Marx’s work is particularly easy to understand. However, he recommends David MacClellan who extremely effectively interprets Marx.
http://www.amazon.com/Thought-Karl-Marx-Introduction/dp/0333639480/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_2
MacClellan’s books on Marx is recommended, which may provide the editor that Marx should have had. The listing on Marx in Wikipedia indicates that Marxism has always been greatly fractured with many different interpretations and fighting factions. In this way it is similar to the Bible, another work that is poorly written and quite unclear. While the bible is completely schizophrenic (due to multiple authors, the fact most the stories are second hand over 60 years after the initial events were to have said to have happened, and the recipient of multiply translations), Marx work is less so, however, it also comes across as incomplete. One gets the strong feeling that Marx was a streak writer and probably wrote more from the perspective of inspiration than discipline, and in many areas his reach was greater than his grasp. (in fact, Marx was at least 10 months late in producing the manuscript of Capital to his publisher and they threatened to find a different author.) By leaving out so much, this allows opportunists to come in and fill in the holes and in general interpret Marx work as they see fit. This highlights the importance of comprehensive writing. Neither the Bible nor Marx’s works are internally consistent or coherent, and it has lead to a great deal of arguing because of this. This is not to say there are not good ideas in the Bible and in Marx work (as well as some bad ideas), and in fact many things Marx predicted have come true, however having a good ideas is not really good enough. Especially when people will try to implement your philosophy, it’s important to be clear and to admit the areas that you have not addressed rather than ignoring them. Here are a few interesting points of Marx’s work:
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Marx predicted that capitalism would lead to increasing investments in capital expenditures and a decreasing investment in labor. How Marx determined this is hard to see, however, he turned out to be correct. Since 1973, there have been great increases in the cost of capital equipment necessary to obtain new levels of productivity, but average wages in the US have actually gone down. See this article for details
- Marx saw economic activity as a constant class struggle between those that own the means of production “bourgeoisie” and those that sell their labor “proletariat.” This is true, and is this class struggle, is essentially ignored in current economics in preference for tedious dissertations on interest rates and their effect on the economy. The lack of understanding of the class war nature of economics blinds Americans to the corruption of the financial system that is nothing more than government granted concessions that favor politically connected groups. In this way, current conventional economics is essentially bankrupt, only asking those questions that concentrated power allow to be asked. However, one thing that Marx did not see, according to Michael Hudson, was that the financial industry would actually subordinate the rest of industry to its will. So while labor is subordinated to capital and industries, industry itself is now subordinated to financial interests.
- Something that Marx predicted was that eventually hierarchy would fall away and people would be free. This has never happened, and does not sound even remotely likely to ever happen.
Conclusion
Our conclusion is very few people have read Marx and that what is known about him is almost entirely second hand. It is a mark of ignorance to have a pre-judgment about an author simply on the basis of association or hearsay without ever having firsthand experience reading the author’s work. In this way we think that the lauding of Adam Smith’s A Wealth of Nations (which is also mostly unread due to its extremely convoluted writing style that may be related to the fact it was written in the 1700s) is similarly based upon association, and not firsthand exposure or understanding. A while ago we wrote how people do not read Adam Smith’s A Wealth of Nation. As Noam Chomsky once pointed out, “its a book you are supposed to worship, but never read.” See this post, which proposes that Adam Smith is in fact extremely rarely read.
http://counterecon.com/2009/03/27/nobody-actually-reads-adam-smith-and-a-wealth-of-nations/
Reference
Interesting video on Marx
Interesting quote from Wikipedia on Marx
The American Marx scholar Hal Draper once remarked, “there are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike.” The legacy of Marx’s thought has become bitterly contested between numerous tendencies which each see themselves as Marx’s most accurate interpreters, including (but not exclusively) Leninism, Trotskyism, Maoism,Luxemburgism, and libertarian Marxism. – Wikipedia
MacFarlane’s video presents an interesting, albeit misleading, right-wing view of Marxism: the notion that pre-capitalist systems had no classes is bizarre, and the undialectical dominance of base over superstructure is not the picture I get from Marx at all. And what of the falling rate of profit? Capitalist technological deployment does more than create mass unemployment. Also, the expropriation of surplus value by the ruling class did not begin under capitalism, but was rather disguised by it as the operation of an impersonal ‘market’. Nor do we live today in a society in which most of us are avid art collectors duped by a kind of upscale commodity fetishism and scamming (which can hardly be the basis of any theory of value).
Marx was not a ‘corporatist’ who wanted us all to return to the ‘womb’ … that is right-wing propaganda against ‘collectivism’. Nor was he a utopian socialist. What of building the realm of freedom in the kingdom of necessity? And the final scaremongering about Pol Pot as the legacy of Marxism (rather than of US ‘Foreign Policy’) does not deserve to be taken seriously.
I dare you to post this comment.
No need to dare me. I am happy to reply.
I have not read MacFarlan’s work, and I am not familiar enough with Marx to know each of the details you bring up. So I can’t comment on its accuracy in terms representation. You might be right. Professor MacFarlan recommended David MacClellan’s work as the most authentic representation of Marx. However, you don’t seem to think so and you do seem to know something about the topic. However, people interested in Marx are left in a bit of quandary. His original work is not clear, and people who are experts on him can not agree with his work’s meaning. This is actually my central theory regarding Marx, that he is in a way unknowable – hence my corollary with the Bible – which can be used (and has been used) to justify any and all behavior and institutional control. I have personally been impressed with several of his predictions, and he must be considered a courageous writer, but what did he actually mean? This is a critical question before approaching any work – is it internally consistent, is it comprehensive in the areas it purports to cover? At the top level there is some agreement, but the more detail one gets into the more muddy the water becomes.
I have another comment. I had to reread your comment about 4 times to understand it. The same thing goes for Marx when I read him. Its hard to conceive of why Marx had to create what appears to be his own vocabulary to communicate his ideas. Now economy and clarity of writing (I am speaking of his not yours) may not be everything, and no one I have read wrote more clearly, but more falsely than Milton Friedman (with all his economic accolades, he was nothing more than a lackey for concentrated power, unknown to many he was strongly motivated by the closing of his father’s sweatshop by a union) However, Marx was not an economist, and I think this is part of the problem. He may have been some type of combination of philosopher /historian. I can see this as a problem for anyone without a philosophy background in interpreting his work.
Thanks for the comment. I think it added value.
English may be “close” to German in terms of origin, but German is extremely difficult to translate into English and many other language. German has innumerable words that have no exact English equivalent, so often a translator must either use the best available English word, or try to assemble a phrase that captures the spirit of the German word. However, the translation often comes out clumsy, especially when dealing with dense political and economic tracts.
Very very interesting. I suppose that may explain some of the writing style. I am curious as to how Marx works would read in their original German.
Exactly.
This is a very pertinent point, which is often overlooked.
Marxist theory is “hard to understand” because it is counter-intuitive within the context of capitalist ideology which we have all grown up with. It does not follow simple “common sense”, i.e., capitalist ideology.
But when you really start to get it you realize you have been blind to so much you live with in your daily life.
Well I can confess to not really understanding Marx, at least not entirely, but not because I have any attachment to capitalism. Actually, capitalism is somewhat of a meaningless word. What Shell does to the people of Nigeria is “capitalism,” meanwhile great innovation in say, things that Apple creates is also capitalist (although the bad side is that Apple pays very little to those to manufacture items). Capitalism can have high income inequality, or low income inequality (such as with the Netherlands), and all these things are still capitalism. Many conservatives run around presuming that Adam Smith stated that this would be capitalist and that would be socialist. Not understood by most is that Adam Smith predated economics as a field of study, or initiated it. The terms socialism and communism are equally meaningless and I think are simply categories that shut down intelligent discussion and debate. We can’t take over bad banks because that is the road to communism, even though it is actually federal law that insolvent banks be taken over by the government. Who else would want them, they can’t be sold in the “market.”
I find that many Marx experts disagree on Marx, and so I think its more than being brainwashed by “free market” ideas, as I think those that are brainwashed probably simply dismiss Marx out of hand. (Its should be recognized that a lot of things that Marx wrote came true.) But some of us are open to counter-neo-classical ideas, its just that there are few outlets. Michael Hudson speaks clearly on real world economics, so does Ha-Joon Chang also does well. It is not difficult to understand either, even though they are proposing ideas counter to mainstream Freidman-esque economics.
Anyone who would be interested in writing a few areas about Marx that are often misunderstood as a comment on this post would be greatly appreciated. I think a lot of people would like to hear differing interpretations of Marx.
I do accept that a lot of people have opinions about Smith and Marx without ever having read them. But, do you think that reading them necessarily provides you with the right opinion? If such a ‘right’ opinion is ever possible. [This is one argument-the source of this is from Barthes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_of_the_Author
And reading an author like Marx or Smith requires the reader to know or have read several other works on the history (political and economic) at their times. Appreciating/criticising an author can only be done in context; reading them out of context is likely to lead to misunderstandings. Often, we try to locate an author by going through his/her entire corpus of work.
Now, Smith is read in two diametrically opposed ways. The first argument does not mean that we cannot have an sort of reasoned or rational opinion about a ‘work’.
1) Smith promoted ‘laissez faire’
Reason: presence of ‘invisible hand’ once in his Wealth of Nations
99% of economics textbooks cite this one paragraph.
2) Smith did not want ‘free markets’ as we understand it today.
Reason: Mercantilism was monopolistic in nature and Smith championed the rights of small and individual business. He wanted freer markets. And, in fact, we know now that Wealth of Nations was supposed to be published together with Moral Sentiments.
I most appreciate your comment Alex. I would say that people in general should actually read what they quote. That would be step one, and its a step that is missing far too often. Secondly, a person should, as you said, have a good understanding of history and related works. The more the better.
I think the most important thing for people that actually favor standards in society (labor, environmental, legal, etc..) is to point out how the “free market” philosophies proposed by corporations and their heralds, are really not based in anything, and that cherry picking from books that never supported this ideology is false. Progressives need to be trained to do this because once you begin to question a corporate herald’s knowledge, they will have a harder time debating based upon facts. So I always ask, “What part of a Wealth of Nations are your referring to?” “When did you last read Das Kapital?” “What parts did you like?” Once the knowledge posing is punctured, the progressive can the go forward to comparing what has worked in different economies vs. what has not worked. Those in favor of a highly concentrated form of unequal and unjust capitalism are hiding behind Adam Smith because they can not argue their policies on the basis of the actual merits.