Big ideas, not nostalgia, need to be at the heart of the Radical Left

On the bicentenary of Marx’s birth

The internet was awash with articles marking the bicentenary of Karl Marx. The Independent proclaimed that the World is Finally Ready for Marxism while Jacobin heralded in A New Marxian Century. Even The Economist felt it necessary to publish a video, although misleading, about the man who sought to tear down the ideology they support.

For those on the Radical Left, like myself, there is nothing novel in the notion that Marx was right (even if partially so). Neither is this trend of Marxist revivalism surprising. In 2016 I wrote about how we are facing A New Reformation, and how, like with every one before it, this one too “will be messy and fraught with trumps, austerity, and misinformation.”

Having said all this, and as welcome as these articles on Marx are, they all seem to neutralize him by focusing on his criticism on capitalism, removing the idea that, more than an economist, Marx was a revolutionary.

This might be intentional, mainstream politics had no problem with accepting Marxism as long as it was the watered down social-democratic version. The CIA even funded European publications that promoted social-democratic models to counter the rise of revolutionary sentiment. Now that that sentiment is returning, it’s easy to say that the same tactic is rearing its head once more.

Alternatively, one can say that not much was pointed as the way forward by Marx, and intentionally so. In the Communist Manifesto, Marx noted that strategies and immediate goals to bring about Communism will need to differ according to local context and in other works, he berated anyone claiming to know what the future would look like post-revolution.

These pointed to Marx’s pragmatism, but it did not stop him from embracing ideas of the dictatorship of the proletariat, smashing the state, and public ownership. It was these seismic ideas that propelled the revolutions of the 20th century and as we mark Marx’s 200th birthday it is a re-connection with big ideas that pave the future, and not our current state of nostalgia that will tilt the balance in our favour.

What is to be done?

I recently had the opportunity to deliver a TEDx talk at the University of Edinburgh on a world without money. The talk touched on the three ways money coerces us. First, as individuals, forcing us to make choices we might not necessary want when it comes to studies, family, and relocation with the hope that these ‘sacrifices’ will pay off in the future. Second, as a society into competing against one another for ‘opportunities’. And Third, through our government as it struggles with the idea of balancing its budget.

The talk also touched on the myth that money naturally developed from a bartering economy. A myth created by economists when the anthropological information we have today was unavailable.

“No example of a barter economy, pure and simple, has ever been described, let alone the emergence from it of money … All available ethnography suggests that there never has been such a thing.” — Cambridge anthropology professor Caroline Humphrey, 1985

This was followed by dismissing the usual objections to a moneyless society. What would drive innovation? Why would anyone be motivated to work? How would scarcity be managed?

The talk I gave was not perceived as either Left nor Right, it was viewed as purely transformative, and in that way, neutral. It was something everyone could get on board with and discuss because it did both, point out what’s wrong with today's systems and what a more promising future could look like and how it would function.

Of course, the talk and the ideas within it weren’t by any means neutral. The analysis of how work and scarcity can be structured and managed in a world without money was based on ideas found in anarcho-syndicalism. The analysis of the current role of government as a mediator between those who own resources and everyone else is a Marxist analysis as is the suggestion of common ownership. Anyone familiar with these ideas would have picked up on them in the talk. But in focusing on the possible end-product the historical baggage that comes with this analysis can be dropped.

Hello old friend

Much has changed in the world since Marx’s time and the world has conducted several experiments with Communism. Marx, today, might rescind his hostility towards predicting what a post-revolutionary society might look like and encourage us to move beyond his analysis. Not to turn a blind eye to him but to continue in his tradition and build on his analysis.

“No social order is ever destroyed before all the productive forces for which it is sufficient have been developed, and new superior relations of production never replace older ones before the material conditions for their existence have matured within the framework of the old society.” — Karl Marx

Anti-capitalist rhetoric has become boring, mostly because centrists and leftists have been successful at spreading the understanding that unfettered capitalism is bad (even The Economist agrees with this). People understand the detrimental aspect of rapid growth, poverty, and globalization, if not through an ideological lens then through their own humanity. Yet the Left is hell bent on continuing to beat a dead horse limiting themselves to a reactionary movement.

Embracing ideas that help us answer the question of what comes after the revolution will not only help attract new members into the movement and reconnect us with our true revolutionary and transformative roots. The ones that are being glossed over in today’s coverage of Marx. They will also allow the re-emergence of pluralism within our movements and help liberate us from the sectarianism and dogmatism that has emerged from the revolutionary experiences of the 20th century.

Big ideas will also help us move away from half-measures that continue to be promoted by other Leftists. Ideas of Universal Basic Income or Full Employment which do nothing to tackle the fundamental power dynamics found within capitalistic society, but rather reinforce them and present them as susceptible to reform.

Abandoning nostalgia

Although it’s appealing to revel in this Marxist resurgence and find some sort of emancipation in it. Leftists must move beyond the nostalgic appeal of Marx’s intellect and remind themselves of his words lest we end up resigning him to a role he would have hated.

“The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” — Karl Marx

Let us, then, not be content with a resurgent commodified image of Marx as right, and instead re-adopt and re-center our movements around the big ideas that make us right and shake of the dust that has been accumulating on our movements from the 70’s.