Introduction

Recently, this question came up on twitter: Why is Marx more popular in philosophy than economics nowadays?

In my opinion, the question as stated isn’t precise enough to be answered meaningfully in a way that does justice to the Marxist understanding of these things. What’s problematic about the question as stated is the idealist assumption that the relationship between Marxism, philosophy education, and economics education can somehow be meaningfully treated without reference to an ideological tendency and an economic, historical, and social context.

I’d like to re-state the question here in a more precise way and share some thoughts on it by way of an answer. The re-stated question is: Why are bourgeois representations of Marx more popular in bourgeois philosophy education than in bourgeois economics education in contemporary imperialist academia?

Below I’d like to suggest one way of thinking about this in the context of global imperialism and the neo-colonial mission of bourgeois philosophy in the framework of contemporary revolutionary Marxism.

The Neo-Colonial Mission of Education in Imperialist Society

Neo-colonialism is a system of political control founded on imperialist economic relations. Under neo-colonialism, bourgeois democracy is the carrot complementing the stick of economic and political violence. In terms of power, the imperialist nation controls both the carrot and the stick. Neo-colonial politics can be carried out by an imperialist nation in both neo-colonies outside the borders of an imperialist country and inside the borders of an imperialist country to control neo-colonial populations consisting of indigenous nations in the case of settler-colonialism, the descendants of former slaves, and other peoples conquered and displaced by imperialism.

Today, classical colonialism has all but disappeared. The rise of national independence movements in the former colonies as well as the rise of communist forces after WWII contributed to the new global economic conditions whereby old and new imperial powers began utilizing the neo-colonialism to profitably exploit those regions of the world where direct colonial rule was overthrown. Neo-colonialism is a way to stave off economic independence and national liberation for the neo-colonies. As with classical colonialism, education expanded in the neo-colonies along with the economic structures of capitalism. The change from the classical colonial structures, settlements and occupied territories, to that of neo-colonial republics and internal neo-colonies in the imperialist countries consisted of a procession of intermediary economic forms ranging from free-trade colonialism to dependency on foreign monopoly and finance capital. Educational changes and expansion at each stage, however, has been characterized by the guiding utility of the structures of neo-colonialism: Educational changes and the relative expansion of education occurred only when education was consistent with the class and national hierarchies of imperialist economics, and especially with structural hierarchies that maintained the political and economic national elite facilitating neo-colonialism at the top.

In general, the goals and desired social effects of formal education are 1) the transmission of culture from one generation to the next, 2) the development of human characteristics that contribute to new knowledge creation, 3) economic and national order (as in career bucket allocation and class and national role), and social stability in the form of the sustainability of the economic and national order. This last consideration can be stated as the sustainability of ways of being in a class and national hierarchy according to the material interests of the power-holding classes and nations. Depending on the economic order of society (feudalism, capitalism, imperialism (late stage capitalism)) and the corresponding dominant ideology of the ruling classes and national groups, these things are positioned accordingly. So, in an imperialist settler society like the euro-american nation state with a neo-colonial political order, the goals and desired social effects of education are positioned in a bourgeois liberal way for the benefit of the euro-american nation with the familiar mythology that imperialist education is a “democratic” way for social classes and neo-colonies to “get ahead” socially and economically.

In the context of euro-american imperialism and its neo-colonial order, part of achieving the goals and desired social effects of education include carrying out the neo-colonial mission of bourgeois education: indoctrination through educational activities into the technical know-how and bourgeois ideology needed for the sustainability of the neo-colonial political order that characterizes the way of life of the imperialist nation through the domestic politics of the euro-american nation state and its international relations. It requires carrying out educational activities to support the dominance of the euro-american nation in all aspects of economics, politics, and social life while nominally satisfying democratic demands of the neo-colonial populations that are otherwise only fully achievable with national self-determination. This means regulating the native development of non-euro-american capitalism in favor euro-american imperialism, promoting a wing of the neo-colonial bourgeoisie and petite-bourgeoisie to manage the political and economic expectations of other sectors of the neo-colonies, and promoting national instability and fragmentation between the neo-colonial classes and their native political and social leadership.

The most important component of the neo-colonial mission of bourgeois education across the sciences, the social sciences, and the humanities is limiting the space of intellectual activity to what is bourgeois: first-world chauvinism, idealism, individualism, and uncritical engagement with liberalism. Imperialist educators across all dimensions of formal education in bourgeois society normalize prejudicial sanctions for ways of being and ways of doing, say economics and philosophy, that are not in this scope. This means that sanctions and penalties are applied when students carry out intellectual activity that is internationalist, grounded in an understanding on the social relations between groups of people, on the side of the people not in the imperialist countries or imperialist nations, and not idealistic. Once educational activities are limited to the bourgeois, then indoctrination into technical know-how and ideology can take place.

Education in bourgeois economics in imperialist society

Education in bourgeois economics serves the neo-colonial mission of education in imperialist society by limiting economic investigation to economic relationships under forms of capitalism and inculcating dogmatic adherence to bourgeois doctrines about them, both generally as part of socialization into bourgeois society and for the creation of specialists capable of teaching bourgeois economics and directing and advising imperialist projects. Additionally, education in bourgeois economics supports the neo-colonial mission of education in imperialist society by contributing to the base understanding of what is feasible for appeasing or pacifying the bourgeois classes of the neo-colonies, and importantly, for co-opting sectors of those classes into economic roles in the service of imperialism. These services require both knowledge transfer regarding the methods of imperialism and indoctrination into bourgeois economic ideas.

In terms of knowledge transfer regarding the methods of imperialism, it means that educational activities promote ways of advancing euro-american international monopoly capital, how to maintain the dominance of euro-american finance capital, and how to optimize the division of the world into production and market regions according to euro-american design. It also means teaching how to create and sustain a closed domestic market system that maximizes the realization of surplus value generated in the neo-colonies and maintains a stable social order for the mass base of imperialism (in the euro-american nation state, this mass base is composed of the petit-bourgeois classes and the labor aristocracies).

In terms of indoctrination into bourgeois economic ideas, education in bourgeois economics includes a minimum education in bourgeois philosophy, since bourgeois economic ideas have a bourgeois philosophical underpinning ―but this is not the main emphasis of bourgeois economics education. Instead, the ideological emphasis is on indoctrinating a minimum dogmatic adherence to the concepts and methods of bourgeois economics and receptivity to the economic features of imperialism among the educated masses of the imperialist country and the neo-colonies.

Some of those educated into bourgeois economics go on to become specialists who not only serve as drill instructors in the institutions of bourgeois economics tasked with policing ideology and method but who are also capable of carrying out propaganda activities like providing apologia and justification for imperialism in the language of bourgeois economics in the media. These specialists have the know-how to design programs to carry out economic imperialism, including all aspects of finance capital monopoly at the global level, and capital export in the form of predatory loans, bailouts and “humanitarian” aid, and global and domestic market control. And they have the expertise required for being able to advise imperialist corporate, political, and military leaders on the relative value and feasibility of foreign and domestic imperialist economic programs.

For the most part, representations of Marxist political economy in bourgeois economics come in the way of what phenomenologists and post-colonial thinkers call othering. In this case it is the practice of alienating populations whose interests are served by learning, advancing and implementing Marxist political economy (people from oppressed nationalities, from the global south, and the international proletariat) from the theater of economic investigation in imperialist institutions and prejudicing the general educated population against any such efforts. This is principally achieved through censure, ridicule, and perhaps most importantly, omission of the known ways of organizing the political economy of human society in a non-bourgeois way, which is an existential threat to the bourgeois way of being of imperialist society. Representations of Marxist political economy in bourgeois economics education, then, serve principally to delineate what bourgeois organization of the political economy of a society is not, and an articulation beyond that is counterproductive to the imperialist mission of education in an imperialist context.

The treatment of Marxist political economy in bourgeois economics departments, when it takes place at all, happens inside the space limited by bourgeois thought. Hence, the representation in bourgeois economics is marred by first-world chauvinism, idealism, individualism and uncritical engagement with liberalism. Some important features of the representation of Marxist political economy in bourgeois economics education is positioning it as either plainly absurd, or infantile, unsophisticated, and naïve, or as a desiccated artifact of history borne out as untenable in practice, or as failed attempt to scientifically describe the features of a supposed “objective” economic reality better described by economic science that just happens to be bourgeois. Or sometimes all of this at once. Of course, from a non-bourgeois perspective, these considerations don’t matter because something impossible, like idealist objectivity, can never be the deciding factor in the evaluation of a social science’s scientific veracity. And whether an economic approach in harmony with a set of principles is proven sound will depend on the aim and the context. Similarly, absurdity and rationality are always relative to a social context and a given logic. Simple insights like these can quickly ground an investigation into economic theory by highlighting the material interests and corresponding ideologies of groups of people who have an interest in limiting the space of economics education along bourgeois lines. Still, in bourgeois economics departments, first-world chauvinism, idealism, and individualism and uncritical engagement with liberalism work together to create the space for understanding the principles, the history, and the practice of marxist political economy in an unfavorable way.

This makes sense, since there’s no veneer of proletarian economics in the imperialist countries. If we can speak of a proletarian veneer at all, it’s politics in the form of class and national struggle over distribution of imperialist plunder and social services and programs funded by capitalist exploitation in the neo-colonies. We must recall what capitalism is (Capital Vol. 1, Lenin, Collected Works vol. 3): If the means of production are privately owned and if labor power and means of production are commodities, then no social welfare programs, no amount of state involvement, no amount of regulation controlling unethical business and fraud, no amount of unionization, can change the capitalist nature of such a society. What is more, in the era of imperialism, when capitalism is industrial and finance capital monopoly, the limit of what can be achieved in terms of dressing up capitalism in a proletarian mask is just imperialist social democracy for the minority of the world’s people living in the imperialist countries at the expense of the exploitation of most of the world’s people. The most elementary proletarian economic programs for imperialist countries are not those that more equitably redistribute imperialist plunder to the minority of the world’s people ―which makes up the matter of imperialist country “left” politics― but those programs that block the parasitism of the imperialist countries on the rest of the world by means of undoing the economic conditions that enable first world people to derive their way of being not from their labor but from profits generated by the exploited labor of others globally. Economically, the first step toward establishing a proletarian economics requires abolishing private property so that the proletariat aren’t separated from the means of production while grounding the economy in commodity exchange for use value. For example, a basic proletarian economic policy in the earliest stages of the dictatorship of the proletariat and the oppressed nations in a former imperialist country like the united states would include something like reparations to the neo-colonies funded by taxes on the former imperialist population which would no longer be unproductive by design, but would produce use value not centered on the realization of profits on exploited labor abroad. A discussion of such proletarian economic programs in either scientific or historical terms is absent in all bourgeois economics education, and bourgeois society in the imperialist countries pays no lip service to them.

Education in bourgeois philosophy in imperialist society

Education in bourgeois philosophy serves the neo-colonial mission of education in imperialist society in at least three important ways: knowledge transfer and ideology indoctrination, the creation of experts capable of teaching bourgeois philosophy and of expressing the social identity of the bourgeoisie through philosophical activity across all dimensions of bourgeois society. In relation to these two services, education in bourgeois philosophy is like education in bourgeois economics. But there’s an additional service that education in bourgeois philosophy renders the neo-colonial mission of education in imperialist society because of what philosophy is, and that is the service of nominally satisfying neo-colonial people’s demand for philosophy that expresses their social identity as defined against imperialism by gutting non-bourgeois philosophy of its social and intellectual value in a way that disempowers groups of people whose social interests would otherwise be served by it.

Recall that philosophy is a fundamental human activity wound up with social identity, like producing art and making music. There’s many ways to characterize it, including a variety of methods that involve abstraction and critique (what is historically called “analysis”) used in arguments and drawing conclusions using some logic or another (what is historically called “synthesis”). The results are conceptual clarity, and the demarcation of landscapes of intellectual investigation tied to a way of being. There’s nothing that makes the intellectual activity of philosophy bourgeois other than when they are marked by first-world chauvinism, idealism, individualism, and uncritical engagement with liberalism, which is what happens when the social identity bound to the philosophical activity is bourgeois. In general, the bourgeois or non-bourgeois character of philosophical activity depends on how first-world chauvinism, idealism, individualism, and uncritical engagement with liberalism function to delimit the scope of inquiry and avenues of thought leading to conclusions and what counts as results.

As in the case of bourgeois economics education, the service of bourgeois philosophy education to the neo-colonial mission of imperialist education requires both knowledge transfer and indoctrination into bourgeois philosophical ideas. Knowledge transfer in the case of bourgeois philosophy education involves conditioning familiarity with the bourgeois history of philosophy and with the central concepts and questions from ancient and modern times enshrined in the culture of the powerful groups in the era of imperialism because they’re basic aspects of ideology to be trafficked by anyone who counts as educated in an imperialist society. It also involves achieving facility with certain skills like “critical” thinking (thinking along the lines of bourgeois liberalism), and analyzing and making arguments in an idealist, individualist way that privileges the way of being of euro-americans and other powerful groups. In terms of indoctrination into bourgeois philosophical ideas, education in bourgeois philosophy involves promoting idealism, individualism, first-world chauvinism, and uncritical engagement with liberalism in each of the “core” areas of philosophy: epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, metaphysics, social and political philosophy, logic and in the so-called sub disciplines, like bourgeois “feminist” philosophy, philosophy of science, philosophy of mind, and others. I’ve gone into some detail before on how all of this disarms philosophically inclined people from groups not served by economic imperialism and how it normalizes the unjust social structures of imperialism, imperialist academia, and academic philosophy for philosophically minded people.

And again, as in the case of bourgeois economics education, bourgeois philosophy education creates specialists who go on to become drill instructors in the institutions of bourgeois philosophy and who police and censure philosophical activity that is not bourgeois. These specialists are experts in interpreting social phenomena in a bourgeois way and presenting their interpretations in both literature for consumption in their narrow, chauvinistic field of intellectual investigation as well as for the public of imperialist society by means of op-eds, blogs, popular introductory books, interviews, podcasts, primary education and public bourgeois philosophy initiatives.

But unlike the case of bourgeois economics education, the additional service that education in bourgeois philosophy renders to the neo-colonial mission of education under imperialism is the nominal satisfaction of neo-colonial people’s demand for philosophy that expresses their social identity as defined against imperialism. This is where bourgeois representations of Marxist philosophy do most of the work: whereas bourgeois economics education paid no lip service to Marxism in economics as economics, bourgeois philosophy education does pay lip service to Marxism in philosophy. This is not to say that it treats Marxist philosophy as Marxist philosophy ―that is, as philosophy in the service of the proletariat and those who can be rallied under proletarian leadership to build socialism. No, bourgeois philosophy education treats Marxist philosophy in the manner of bourgeois philosophy: as something ideal to be evaluated without context, as a lifeless collection of categories, as a matter of individual choice or solely concerned with gaining insight into an abstract existential subject, as something compatible with liberalism and otherwise harmless that has been “distorted” by tyrants and used to endanger the way of being of people who benefit from capitalism during its highest stage. In bourgeois philosophy, everyone can be a “Marxist” in this sense and although even this bourgeois representation of Marxism is frowned upon ―why be a bourgeois “Marxist” when you can crunch out another piece on liberal contract theory? ― you can always get away with a “Marxist” reading of so and so, or a “Marxist” interpretation of this and that so long as it uses the methods of philosophy to express the social identity of people who benefit from imperialism ―so long as it is bourgeois.

And let’s be clear, we’re just talking about bourgeois philosophy pundits and commentators on Marx and Engels. For the most part, bourgeois philosophers completely ignore other Marxists who have produced Marxist philosophy since the times of Marx and Engels which cut too close to the bone of contemporary neo-colonialism. You see, the thing with philosophical activity is that it expresses the ways of life of groups of people in terms of fundamental notions like knowledge, justice, logic, and the like. When a group of people’s ways of life change in fundamental ways, so does their philosophy. Now, the Marxist philosophy of Marx expresses a certain group of people’s social identity in terms of their social class, as those with nothing to gain from capitalism. This expression has persisted in Marxist philosophy since the times of Marx and Engels, but it has also broken with that expression in the sense that there is more to express now since capitalism has become monopoly capitalism, and since the revolutionary experience of the people who have nothing to gain from capitalism has redefined the global landscape whereupon philosophizing takes place. Philosophical expressions of the social identity of people who have nothing to gain from capitalism and who have synthesized the universal lessons of the Bolshevik and Chinese revolutions who are currently involved in proletarian, feminist, internationalist struggles for national liberation from imperialism are never the subject matter of commentary from the bourgeois philosophers. Marxist philosophy becomes classical and inert when it is limited in a bourgeois way to nothing but what has been expressed by those Marxists who articulated the fundamental antagonism of capitalism: class. Marxist philosophy today encompasses this fundamental antagonism while at the same time comprises the principal antagonism in the era of monopoly capitalism: the antagonism between the imperialist nations and the oppressed nations. And it also encompasses those antagonisms that define the social being of all those that have an interest in being free of class and national oppression, like gender oppression and power relations in terms of ability. This means that Marxist philosophy today encompasses, at least, Leninism and Maoism, but you wouldn’t know it by studying “Marxist” philosophy at the highest levels in imperialist society.

As noted above, neo-colonialism is a system of political control founded on imperialist economic relations intended to stave off economic independence and national liberation for the neo-colonies. In the euro-american nation state, the imperialist nation is the euro-american settler nation and they wield neo-colonial political power over neo-colonies abroad and within their nation state over non-euro-american populations. This is called “white power” and “white supremacy”. Like bourgeois liberal diversity (see here, and here for an analysis of this in academic philosophy), bourgeois representations of Marxism are a tool of national oppression in the mode of imperialist social democracy and serve to give white supremacy a democratic veneer. How can imperialist social democracy be a dictatorship of the euro-american nation over neo-colonial populations if the institutions of higher education and philosophy itself are brimming with emancipatory Marxist ideas? We can ask the same thing about police forces in the euro-american nation state: How can the police be a racist institution if there are diversity hires? If the goal is to have a diverse police force doing the repressive work of white power in a neo-colonial setting, then the question points to a real quandary for bourgeois liberals. But if the goal is to abolish neo-colonialism and white power, then the question is confused at best, and disingenuous otherwise. Neo-colonialism is the form of white power where there are diversity hires in the police forces that serve the interests of the imperialist nation. Similarly, neo-colonialism is the form of white power where Marxist philosophy is common currency among the educated so long as it’s bourgeois, just an “area of competence” and not an expression of social identities defined against imperialism that serves to achieve the practical goals of national liberation and socialism for neo-colonial peoples.

Conclusion and Another Question

Why are bourgeois representations of Marx more popular in bourgeois philosophy education than in bourgeois economics education in contemporary imperialist academia?

It’s simple: the neo-colonial mission of imperialist education is to support imperialist economics and imperialist ways of life. Bourgeois economics education cannot use Marxism to advance the economic goals of imperialism in the same way that bourgeois philosophy education can use bourgeois representations of Marxism to give white supremacy a democratic veneer.

It’s because of the neo-colonial mission of imperialist education that bourgeois economics and philosophy departments at imperialist universities are an ill fit for people who want to learn the history and science of economics to build socialism and who want to philosophically express the social identity of people who have no interest in perpetuating imperialism. An entirely different, but related question is: what can people who want to learn economics and philosophy and be able to apply what they learn against imperialism do when they find themselves in bourgeois economics and philosophy departments?

There’s a feature of the neo-colonial mission of imperialist education that I didn’t cover above in detail above because it was not directly relevant to answering the initial question but it concerns the aspect of neo-colonialism that promotes fragmentation between the neo-colonial classes and their native political and social leadership. Those people from the neo-colonies who want to learn science, social science, the humanities, and want to apply what they learn to free themselves and their people from imperialism are part of this native political and social leadership. The neo-colonial mission of imperialist education gives these people nowhere to go but bourgeois academia, where they are isolated, ridiculed, co-opted into the neo-colonial mainstream as tokens or set on one of many hamster-wheel areas of intellectual investigation that are practically useless for groups who want to be free of imperialism. In bourgeois philosophy, for example, there’s those bourgeois social democrats from the neo-colonies who promote collusion with imperialism by way of “decolonization” without national liberation ―a type of reformism promoting the idea that reforming the bourgeois liberal institutions of imperialism through increased oversight and accountability, bourgeois liberal diversity and increased bourgeois representations of feminist, anti-colonial, and anti-imperialist intellectuals is a viable method, generally, for achieving the types of changes required for expressing, through philosophical activity, the social identity of people who don’t benefit from the current setup of global economics.

In an exchange I had with Justin, the editor of the bourgeois philosophy blog Daily Nous, I wrote the following, explaining the ultimate futility of reformist programs like this within imperialist academia:

What has happened historically with reform strategies isn’t that the cultural (including philosophy) and political interests for self-determination, national democracy and freedom from economic imperialism somehow gain popular support from first world academics and intellectuals or from the mass base of imperialist social democracy. Instead what consistently happens is that people who don’t benefit from the current setup of global economics dilute their standpoint in order to gain concessions and favor from existing institutions (including institutions of bourgeois philosophy) and re-focus their energies on goals consistent with fortifying the existing institutions and barring the advancement of independent institutions ―things like “increased representation”, “diverse curriculum”, or making sure that existing institutions and people in power “play fair”. It then comes down to having to decide between sacrificing the free expression of their social identity and being completely alienated in a system that doesn’t serve their interests. Internationally, scholars from Africa, the Middle East, Asia and the Americas (the “global south”) carry out superhuman feats of intellect, grit and determination only to be treated and positioned as tokens by their most “progressive” “colleagues” in euro-american settler academia and to be shut down as soon as the expression of their social reality is at odds with the social identity of bourgeois philosophy. This is why the goal of the critique of bourgeois philosophy is not to reform or change institutions of bourgeois philosophy, to change the standpoint of Daily Nous, the opinions of individual bourgeois philosophers that may constitute its readership, or to change the standpoint of any other existing academic philosophy blog, department, professional association, journal, or conference. If that happens, great! ―it’s just not a goal of the critique [of bourgeois philosophy]. The goal is independent power.

There can be no decolonization without national liberation, that is, without independent power, and no amount of “representation” within the institutions of white power can achieve that. “Decolonization” without national liberation is a hamster wheel.

These ideas will feature in a future post on “Decolonizing Philosophy”, but here I will just say that talk of decolonization is important when connected to national liberation and that it takes on its full meaning within independent institutions that serve the interests of people whose social identity is defined against imperialism and against the neo-colonialism that prolongs its tyranny. Many intellectuals and aspiring intellectuals from the ranks of the international proletariat and neo-colonial populations find themselves in bourgeois academic departments cornered by the neo-colonial mission of imperialist education. An important task for them is to realize the value of their intellectual work by connecting to people and groups outside of imperialist academia that are focused on building independent power and independent institutions as part of a program for national liberation. It is the only way to undermine the neo-colonial mission of imperialist education.