DEAR MARXISTS WELCOME TO THE NEW CLASS WAR
DEAR MARXISTS
I’ve earlier made the case for not confusing the current context of runaway managerial liberalism as Marxism or communism (see, here). The argument there was that these were historically specific and situational phenomena. Assuming their particulars can be directly applied to the present moment was to miss the uniqueness of the moment and risk a dangerously miscalibrated strategy. Having said that, though, does not imply basic axioms of Marxism (sheered of their misguided Hegelian hagiography and teleology) do not remain valuable tools for social analysis (as I’ve also explained elsewhere).
The core political concept of 19th century Marxism was the dialectic of class conflict. The idea was that two classes eventually would, and under capitalism had, come into a conflict which could not be resolved under the existing conditions. Given the context of the 19th century, it was understandable that Marxists would see the conflict between the bourgeoisie and proletariat through this lens. The assumption of zero-sum provision of wealth, informed by the idea that value was exclusively determined by a measurable investment of labor, led those 19th century Marxists to believe that an entirely new arrangement of the mode of production would need to emerge out of revolutionary change to solve this historic impasse.
On this account, the 19th century Marxists were proven wrong. Both the assumptions of a zero-sum economy of wealth and the labor theory of value misunderstood economics. By the 20th century, it became clear that within the same broad capitalist framework it was possible for the working class to considerably improve its prosperity without collapsing the profit system necessary to maintain capitalist production. It was not a zero-sum game; both bourgeoisie and proletariat could (relatively) prosper within the capitalist context.
No doubt, once they realized that Marx’s predictions about the endless immiseration of the proletariat (and so the extrapolated dialectical consequences) under capitalism were wrong – and so the economic models upon which he based those predictions incorrect — some unknowable number of potential Marxists gave up the ghost. Others though just couldn’t come to terms with the new reality. Filtered through the legacy of the Western Marxists and the Frankfurt School, such Marxists now criticized capitalism for being too prosperous. Instead of criticizing capitalism for making the workers too poor, now the criticism was for making them too rich. Such prosperity supposedly blinded the workers to the inherent, dialectical class conflict which that very prosperity had disproven as an axiological principle. I know, people are funny.
I don’t want to go too far down this path, especially as many of you are already well-familiar with the story. The obsession with excess material prosperity has eventually wound its way into the contemporary climate change/global warming agenda. Now, this excess prosperity is not only responsible for crushing of workers’ class consciousness (as well as their humanity) but threatens our civilizational and biological survival. (And, incidentally, I’m not saying that there’s zero truth in any of that.) And the other fallout from the failure of 19th century Marxism, as fans of James Lindsay will know, has been the search for a new revolutionary agent. Through the innovation of — in all honesty, probably the least intellectually impressive member of the Frankfurt School — Herbert Marcuse, the idea became popular that the workers’ disappointing abandonment of their role as revolutionary agent required them being replaced by some other dissatisfied group: racial minorities, women, students, whatever.
These were always odd choices from any serious Marxist perspective. While it is understandable that 19th century Marxists might have thought that the conflict between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat constituted a zero-sum, dialectic class struggle. Having seen how both political/legal rights and economic prosperity could be expanded to accommodate the workers as capitalism expanded and developed, it’s hard to see how they could imagine that the even less “mode of production focused” conflict between these other groups couldn’t be likewise accommodated through capitalist logic.
The irony of the current situation for Marxists, though, is that right now, today, we’re all living through precisely the kind of zero-sum, dialectic class conflict that it is the Marxists’ raison d'être to expose, analyze and resolve. They only need to make one tiny adjustment to their traditional model. What Marx, understandably, misunderstood about class conflict in the age of capitalism is that the battle lines are not through ownership of the means of production, but through control of the means of production. In the mid-19th century, when owners usually did control the means of production, this was an easy mistake to make.
By the 21st century, when it has become obvious to any casual observer that ownership is widely dispersed, a kind of “democratization” of corporate ownership through the stock market, the real issue has become conspicuously one of who controls the means of production. And, as I discuss at greater length in my (must read) book, The Managerial Class on Trial, with the massive growth of industrial scale during the second industrial revolution, it has increasingly been the managerial class that controls the means of production – at least in the most economically, socially, and culturally impactful corporations.
As I’ve elaborated in a series of recent posts (here, here, here, and here), the current zero-sum dialectic class conflict is between the managerial class and the new populism. In fact, to be more precise, this could be described as a conflict between the symbolizing class and the analog class (both still applicable to the mode of production). But that elaboration is for another time. As discussed in those earlier posts: the result of this conflict has been the massive colonization of civil society and private life, through managerial liberalism, social engineering, and bureaucratic paternalism, eroding the bonds and foundations of organic communities, grounded in what Carl Schmitt called the concrete order.
Today the analog class, which fills the ranks of the new populists, finds itself cut adrift from the organic community that sustained their families, their faith, and their social norms. Middle America’s epidemics of depression, suicide, and opioid abuse are only the most heart wrenching manifestation of this massive managerial class colonization in the homeland of managerial liberalism. And the managerial class gives every indication that it has nowhere to go but to continue to invade people’s churches, schools and even homes with its managerial liberalism: e.g., imposing racialized curriculum; legally compromising parent’s ability to protect their children from clandestine moves to advance their sterilization and even surgical mutilation; and the strangely insistent agenda to require healthy children be administered an experimental treatment for an illness that poses no threat to them.
As I observed in the discussions from those earlier posts: this is a zero-sum, dialectic class conflict. It is in Schmittian terms an existential friend-enemy conflict. It is a battle for community, which is effectively, a battle over incompatible ways of life. A community cannot be both thoroughly colonized, engineered, and bureaucratically administered, and also organically generated by its inhabitants, through their tradition-building experience of real life in a local setting, grown together out of the fabric of their social interactions. These two kinds of “community” cannot co-exist. This is an existential, zero-sum battle for the future of community, and so for the future of how people will live, their relationship with their children and neighbors, the values and norms that will inform their lives.
Yes, dear Marxists, this is the dialectic class war you were looking for. It’s happening right now, and indeed – as you always predicted – the future of the world hinges on the outcome. But where are the Marxists of old? Many, as mentioned, seeing the failure of the 19th century narrative have given up the cause. Even worse, though, some in an oddly obsessive search for revolutionary agents to replace the disappointing workers have thrown themselves into advancing the cause of any perceived marginalized group, in the hope of taking them back to the good old theory days of the pre-20th century world. Ironically, the effect of this endeavor, in the context of the real world-historical class struggle, has been to contribute to the agenda of managerial liberalism, which continually highlights, heightens, and exacerbates all manner of social conflict so as to legitimize and empower the managerial class’s administrative state with its social engineering and bureaucratic paternalism (see, here).
So, in one of history’s great ironies, many Marxists today find themselves not only on the wrong side of history, but on the wrong side of the very logic of their political raison d'être. They’re objectively on the side of workers’ immiseration as well as the dominance and exploitation of those workers by the ruling class. But, dear Marxists, it’s still not too late. The game is still in play. If your real agenda was the well-being of the workers (now better understood as the analog class), and not just the managerial class domination and exploitation of the workers – that both the USSR and Communist China turned into – there’s still time to redeem yourself and your historic legacy. Side with the workers, struggling for their organic communities, in their populist insurgency. The hour is late, but twilight still lingers.
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