The ABCs of Marxism (Why We Need Theory)
Duncan Hallas
| Revision History | ||
|---|---|---|
| • Winter 1993-1994 | Newspaper: Funded by Syracuse University students. | |
| The Alternative Orange: Vol. 3, No. 2 (pp. 38) | ||
| • September 24, 2000 | Webpage:  . | |
| DocBook XML (DocBk XML V3.1.3) from original. | ||
“History,” said the auto magnate Henry Ford, “is bunk.”
A lot of people agree with him.
After all, what does it matter to anyone today whether George Washington stood up in the boat when he crossed the Delaware or whether Ben Franklin flew a kite during a thunder storm.
These stories are probably fairy tales, like a lot of other things taught in schools.
But whether they are true or not makes not a bit of difference to any of the problems we have to live with today.
Leave aside fairy-tale history and look at some of the questions serious historians have tried to answer: Why did the American Civil War take place?
Interesting questions for students, but do the answers really make a difference to us?
Karl Marx argued that the past does matter, because you can’t understand what exists today unless you have some idea of how things came to be the way they are.
The ruling class and its politicians and intellectuals have some sort of picture of the world: of how it changes, of what is possible for them—in short, of history.
The bosses make their decisions, in part at least, in the light of this knowledge.
We need our own picture—our own theory. Marxism is, among other things, a theory of history for working people.
Buy why a theory of history? Can’t the facts speak for themselves?
Facts never speak for themselves.
As a well-known modern historian put it, “The facts speak only when the historian calls on them. It is he who decides which facts to give the floor and in what order….
“The historian is necessarily selective. The belief in a core of historical facts existing objectively and independently of the interpretation of the historian is a preposterous fallacy….”
There are countless millions of facts. Which facts are important depends on what kind of theory you have, and this in turn depends on what you are interested in—on what you are trying to do.
Interested in Social Change
Marx was interested, first and foremost, in social change.
His “materialist conception of history” is essentially a guide to the present in light of the past.
The basic ideas of Marxism are simple, though their application and development is often complex.
“The history of all hitherto existing society,” Marx wrote, “is the history of class struggle.
“Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, baron and serf, guildmaster and journeyman, in one word, oppressor and oppressed, standing constantly in opposition to each other, carried on an uninterrupted warfare, now open, now concealed; a warfare which always ended either in a revolutionary transformation of the whole of society or in the common ruin of the contending classes….
“Modern capitalist society, springing from the wreck of feudal society, has not abolished class antagonisms. It has only substituted new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of warfare, for the old.”
Classes, rather than important individuals, are the important thing.
Of course, classes are made up of individual people, and some individuals are much more important than others.
But “good” Abraham Lincoln or “bad” J.P. Morgan are, from a Marxist point of view, more important for the class interests they represented than for their personal virtues.
That immediately brings up another point. If the struggle between classes is the real motor of history, then “good” and “bad” are relative terms anyway. What is good for one class may be bad for another.
The French Revolution at the end of the 18th century was a good thing from the point of view of the middle classes who were the people who got the most out of it.
It was a very bad thing for the aristocracy, who lost their privileges, land, and in some cases, their heads.
No Impartial History
There is no impartial history. Everyone is part of some society—and of some class in that society.
Historians who claim to be impartial are frauds. They are either deceiving themselves or their readers.
Ideas about society are always connected—sometimes directly but more usually indirectly—with some class interest or another.
But why should we believe that our interests are ethically better than those of the capitalist class?
There is a very basic reason. The kind of society that exists in a particular place at a particular time depends on the way that human beings are able to earn their living.
Stone axes and wooden spears go with a tribal society based on hunting and without class division.
Every subsequent technical advance—the wooden plow, water-driven machinery, the steam engine—has had social consequences.
“Assume particular stages of development in production, commerce and consumption,” wrote Marx, “and you will have a corresponding organization of the family, of orders of classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society… and particular political conditions.”
All forms of society before capitalism had this in common: the technical level—or to put it another way, the productivity of labor—was too low to allow everyone a decent standard of life.
The existence of oppressed and exploiting classes was unavoidable.
Capitalism has changed all that. The development of techniques of production under capitalism has been so great as to make possible a society free from the desperate struggle for bare existence.
It has made possible a society of abundance, but at the same time has built barriers to prevent this from coming about.
In fighting to overthrow capitalism, we know that we are not fighting merely for our own interests or even for the interests of the great majority.
We are fighting for the only way forward for the whole human race.
| ★ |
