Progress, anti-isms and revolutionary subjects: the importance of transcending liberalism
Matthew Johnson
Introduction
In his Theses on Feuerbach [1845],1 Karl Marx states that ‘[t]he philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it’ (McLellan 2000: 173). At present, the world is experiencing unprecedented levels of economic, social, political, demographic and environmental change. Most of this change is being directed by states, organizations and institutions committed, in some measure, to the expansion of capital. Since the demise of the Soviet Union, Marxists have increasingly been associated with opposition to this change, becoming subsumed among broader anti-globalizaion, anti-imperialism and anti-war movements.2 This has reached an apogee in recent years in efforts to oppose US-led interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. The Socialist Workers Party (SWP), badged ‘an anti-capitalist, revolutionary party’, has epitomized the movement towards opposition by seeking and forming tactical alliances in the Stop the War Coalition (StWC)3 with groups apparently opposed fundamentally to orthodox Marxist goals, such as the Muslim Association of Britain (MAB) which has links to the Muslim Brotherhood (Phillips 2008: 102).4 Although expressing progressive, internationalist values, the likes of the SWP have adopted an ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ approach, believing that the capitalist West is their enemy with their enemy’s enemy, Islamist groups in both the West and beyond, their friend (Bassi 2010).5 Such opposition to Western expansion has developed to such an extent that it has been seen almost as an integral, defining feature of contemporary Marxism.
Many commentators, particularly those on the left, such as Norman Geras, in this collection, and Nick Cohen (2004) in his various columns, have challenged this instrumentalist tactic, demonstrating the ideological inconsistency in analysis, goals and methods. The tactic is doubly contentious since classical Marxism, through such key texts as The German Ideology, Communist Manifesto and Capital, is associated with a stagist account of historical development along with a core conception of progress which gave rise to qualified, instrumentalist support for the development and expansion of capital into non-Western or pre-capitalist areas. In recent years, some Marxists, such as Kevin Anderson (2010), have sought to rehabilitate Marx from accusations derived from these positions of ethnocentrism, racism and bigotry. These authors have highlighted Marx’s later thoughts on Ireland and India in order to suggest that his support for Western imperialism waned or disappeared in his ‘mature’ phase, and expounded his late thoughts on Russia to suggest a ‘multilinear’ account of development and progress. This development has appeared to give credence to the sorts of approaches adopted by the SWP.
In this chapter, I shall trace the development of Marx’s positions on development and imperialism to challenge this conclusion. I do not wish, though, to put forward a single, rigid, all-encompassing Marxian position on development, Western expansion or political instrumentalism – there simply is not one. Marx’s writings constitute nearly five decades and millions of words of work. Within these writings are developments, inconsistencies, ambiguities and, of course, errors. The notion of an entirely consistent, timeless Marx is surely as fanciful as the notion of an entirely consistent, timeless Holy Book. As is well known, there are numerous developments with regard to conceptualization, theorization and, even, terminology, with circumstance and political concerns as well as intellectual maturation influencing various shift in stance (see Adamson 1981). What I do wish to show is that there is, in Marx, a core conception of, and commitment to, progress which persists throughout his various positions on development, imperialism and non-Western/non-capitalist societies. This, along with his approach to tactical alliances, suggests that there is little justification in Marx for the coalitions formed by such groups as the SWP. By positing possible explanations for this apparent divergence from Marx, I wish to show that the approaches adopted are misguided and serve to smother potential avenues for Marxist contributions to humankind. The conclusion I draw is that, if Marxism is going to mean and to contribute anything positive and progressive to the world, it will be necessary for its proponents to abandon ‘enemy of my enemy is my friend’ approaches and put forward a practicable, concrete vision of human flourishing – a task with which Lawrence Wilde, without necessarily agreeing with my arguments here, engages in the next chapter.
Before I begin, it is necessary to clarify my position with regard to the controversial groups to whom the anti-imperialist left has offered support. Those concerned with the rise of regressive alliances within the left are often dismissed as ‘Islamophobic’, on the grounds that they are seen to harbour an irrational, ethnocentric fear of Islam and Muslims. In this chapter, I oppose alliances with certain groups which profess to be Islamic, not because of a singular, irrational fear of Islam, but because of what I consider to be reasonable concern regarding the desire of certain messianic, anti-modern, monotheists to attain positions of cultural and political power (see Bhatt’s 2006 discussion of the relationship between ‘the left’ and faith groups).6 The capitalist world has experienced the horrors of religious fervour and inter-faith conflict. Only by stripping religious authorities of power and subjecting faith and dogma to criticism, opposition and, at times, ridicule, has the modern world begun to develop the secular, egalitarian, universal tenets to which the Marxist left has traditionally been tied. I treasure the fact that racism, gender segregation and homophobia are being challenged and do not wish to live in a society in which the likes of Monty Python, Chris Morris and Stewart Lee are condemned as heretics, rather than treasured for their progressive satire. Of course, bigotry, chauvinism, racism and dogma persist in a range of faiths and secular belief systems. However, until anti-imperialist Marxists form alliances with Christian fundamentalists, such as the Lord’s Resistance Army and the Westboro Baptist Church, Jewish extremists, such as Kach and Kahane Chai, or bigots belonging to any number of other faiths or belief systems, it is necessary to focus on this particular approach towards regressive forces which profess belief in Islam. As I argue throughout this chapter, Marxism that lacks antipathy towards opponents of progress may neglect core features of its very being. I begin by discussing the ‘stagist’ approach to history.
The stagist conception of history
In the traditional, stagist model of history, advanced particularly in The German Ideology [1846], Marx suggests that human societies begin life curtailed and suppressed by nature. All efforts and actions are directed towards satisfying the most basic of needs. In this state, ‘relations are purely animal’, with humans ‘overawed like beasts’, possessing ‘a purely animal consciousness of nature . . . because nature is as yet hardly modified historically’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 51). Humans are drawn naturally to achieve emancipation from natural constraints by directing nature and resources rationally, ‘with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most worthy and appropriate for their human nature’ (Marx 1981: 959; see also Nordahl 1986: 7–9).
In striving towards this, humans ‘distinguish themselves from animals’ by developing technological ‘means of production’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 42). Initially, these means amount to basic tools (also employed by certain other great apes), such as spears and digging utensils which extract, with greater ease than by hand, sustenance from the environment. Over time, the combination of human labour and technological innovation – the ‘forces of production’ – enables an increase in productive efficiency, the creation of a surplus of raw materials and a growth in population. Additional materials and group members enable agricultural innovation and, in turn, larger scale trade between groups. These developments pose new problems to society, requiring new solutions (see Spier 1996: 5), such as means of transit. The increase in the complexity of the means of production dictates the growth of specialization in the forces of production, with ‘a division of material and mental labour’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 51) emerging along the lines of natural physical diversity (Marx 1976: 471–2).
The division of labour enables those engaged in mental labour to direct production to their own ends, appropriating surpluses as private property and creating class-based ‘relations of production’. The expropriators perpetuate their position within the relations through the creation of ‘Morality, religion, metaphysics’ or, more perniciously, ‘ideology’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 47). As Marx explains in his preface to A Critique of Political Economy [1859], these cultural devices engineer ‘false consciousness’ by presenting life, and indeed nature, in terms that obscure exploitation by representing particular, subjective interests as universal and objective. The combination of the forces and relations of production – the ‘mode of production’ – is then enshrined in ‘a legal and political superstructure’ (McLellan 2000: 425), aimed at maximizing productivity and the surplus and stifling the development of alternative orders. However, these means of conserving an order are not insurmountable.
Within each mode of production lie the seeds of dialectical change. The increased efficiency, productivity and rationality that the development of a superstructure brings, enable further increases in population and the development of new needs, requiring new technologies for their satisfaction. While these technologies emerge from within the existing mode of production, once matured they require new skills and forms of organization in order to function and develop. These emerging means of production are operated by groups outside the expropriator class. These groups gradually accumulate power as the utilization of their ‘forces of production’ increases until they become the dominant productive force of the society. At this point, ‘the material productive forces of society come into conflict with the existing relations of production . . . within which they have been at work hitherto. From forms of development of the productive forces these relations turn into their fetters’ (McLellan 2000: 425).
Because of the immanent species desire for emancipation from natural and historically contingent social constraint, the antithetical forces emerge dominant from the conflict, having the capacity to satisfy needs more effectively (McLellan 2000: 426). As Marx claims in his Letter to Annenkov [1846], in ‘order that [people] may not be deprived of the result attained, and forfeit the fruits of civilization, they are obliged, from the moment when the form of their commerce no longer corresponds to the productive forces acquired, to change all their traditional social forms’ (McLellan 2000: 210) and enable new relations of production to emerge and, with them, a new complementary form of consciousness enshrined in a new superstructure.
This account of socio-cultural development is grounded analytically in the determinacy of technology. Humans need to satisfy needs. They do so using technologies. In order to employ those technologies effectively, they need to create specific forms of organization. In order to perpetuate these forms of organization, and in order to justify, preserve and enforce the appropriation of surpluses, exploitative classes create particular ideologies and particular forms of legal-political structure. As Marx puts it in The Poverty of Philosophy [1847],
The hand-mill gives you society with the feudal lord; the steam-mill, society with the industrial capitalist. The same men who establish their social relations in conformity with their material productivity, produce also principles, ideas, and categories in conformity with their social relations. Thus these ideas, these categories, are as little eternal as the relations they express. They are historical and transitory products. (McLellan 2000: 219–20)7
This does not mean that humans are mere automatons, with every action determined by an all-powerful causal relationship between need satisfying humans, the environment, the means of production used to satisfy needs and the superstructure used to reproduce the society. Rather, it means that environments, means of production and superstructures are parameters which shape the possibilities for human beings. Some structural parameters are more constrictive than others.
In the West, humans are seen to have progressed, through technological development, via primitive communism, ancient slave society, feudalism, to contemporary capitalism with mastery over nature increasing at each step (McLellan 2000: 425). Corresponding to these steps of mastery over nature has been a rise in the desire for liberation from the ideological constraints which emerged through the division of labour during the struggle with nature (Marx and Engels 1974: 51–2). Through the conquest of nature, humans create the technological conditions for the dissolution of these temporal, human obstacles to freedom. Highly developed industrial or post-industrial production requires a complex, skilled society with a free, quasi-meritocratic labour force equipped with scientific understandings of nature and proto-egalitarian social norms. These principles, combined with the inherent instability and ‘irrational’ in egalitarianism of capital, stimulate revolutionary sentiment. By creating an international market, industrial capital ‘presupposes the universal development of the productive forces and the world intercourse bound up with communism’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 56), leading to the eventual overthrow of the market and the realization of, first, state directed socialism and, ultimately, universal communism. For Marx, it is in this telos of communism that humans ‘bring their “existence” into harmony with their “essence”’ (Marx and Engels 1974: 61) in a condition of freedom from natural and social constraints.
By bringing their ‘existence’ into harmony with their ‘essence’, humans are able, finally, not simply to satisfy their needs for food, water and shelter but, also, to develop fully their extensive range of capabilities for love, reason, thought, discourse and recognition of beauty. As he argues in one of his many Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts [1844],
Only through the objectively unfolded wealth of human nature can the wealth of subjective human sensitivity – a musical ear, an eye for the beauty of form – be either cultivated or created . . . . Sense which is a prisoner of crude practical need has only a restricted sense. For a man who is starving the human form of food does not exist, only its abstract form exists; it could just as well be present in its crudest form, and it would be hard to say how this way of eating differs from that of animals. The man who is burdened with worries and needs has no sense for the finest of plays; . . . thus the objectification of the human essence, in a theoretical as well as a practical respect, is necessary both in order to make man’s senses human and to create an appropriate human sense for the whole of the wealth of humanity and of nature. (Marx 1992: 353–4)
By liberating humans from their material anxieties, advanced modes of production enable people to flourish.
Technological progress as an evaluative device
This materialist account of human progress presents a means of comparing and evaluating societies with claims to objectivity, universality and transhistoricity. For Marx, societies can be judged according to the extent to which they have the potential to satisfy needs and enable humans to develop their species-specific capabilities (Nordahl 1986: 11). The transhistorical goodness of a society increases as its productive forces develop the capacity to bend the natural world to human ends, such that capitalist societies are superior in potential than feudal societies, even where socio-economic inequalities deprive individuals of the benefits of labour. As Marx (1973: 706) puts it in Grundrisse [1858],
Nature builds no machines, no locomotives, railways, electric telegraphs, self-acting mules etc. These are products of human industry; natural material transformed into organs of the human will over nature, or of human participation in nature. They are organs of the human brain, created by the human hand; the power of knowledge, objectified. The development of fixed capital indicates to what degree general social knowledge has become a direct force of production, and to what degree: hence, the conditions of the process of social life itself have come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in accordance with it. To what degree the powers of social production have been produced, not only in the form of knowledge, but also as immediate organs of social practice, of the real life process.
It is because of this that Marx described certain non-capitalist societies in the Communist Manifesto [1848] as ‘barbarian’, ‘backward’, ‘stagnatory’ and ‘vegetative’ (Marx and Engels 1967: 222–4).8 In these societies, Marx saw parallels to the historical condition of capitalist societies, in which people were subjugated, and sometimes enslaved, by ‘their natural superiors’ in stultifying, hierarchical slave, and then feudal, relations of production (Marx and Engels 1967: 222). He believed that the consciousness engendered by pre-industrial modes of production was conducive to fanaticism, intolerance and communitarian oppression. These tendencies were, according to Marx, overcome by the development of industrial modes of production and the emergence of capital, with
National differences and antagonisms between peoples . . . daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. (Marx 1976: 488)
Marx saw in capitalism not only ‘naked self-interest’, and ‘shameless, direct, brutal exploitation’ (Marx and Engels 1967: 222), and alienation from the products of their labour, of proletarians (e.g. Marx and Engels 1974: 82–6 and McLellan 2000: 127–32), but also the kernels of liberation. According to Larrain (1991: 187), he believed that ‘the progress brought about by the new humanistic and scientific rationality in capitalist Western Europe [was] inherently superior and must finally prevail in the world against opposing forces’, affirming ‘the superior relevance, the more advanced stage and historical priority of these social processes occurring in Europe’ (see, also, Halliday 2002: 79).
The objectivity and universality of this approach, and its emphasis on immanent capabilities and desires for the conquest of nature, has been challenged on account of the marked international disparity in levels of development, with Chakrabarty (1993), Hardt and Negri (2001: 120), Katz (1990) and Lim (1992) levelling serious accusations of ethnocentricity (cf Antonio 2003: 177). One possible Marxian response to these accusations may be to suggest that, as Marx argues in Capital I [1867], developmental disparity emerges, not as a result of differences in innate potential or cultural trajectory but, rather, through environmental unevenness and particularity: ‘Different communities find different means of production and different means of subsistence in their natural environment. Hence their modes of production and living, as well as their products, are different’ (Marx 1976: 472). In some areas, environmental resources permit and stimulate rapid technological development and societal expansion. In others, environmental conditions constrain opportunities for development. At the same time, rigid superstructures can constrain whatever opportunities do exist. In the case of nineteenth-century India, for example, the likes of Avineri (1969: 10–13), Krader (1975: esp. pp. 140–75) and Lefort (1978: 93–6) argue that Marx held the relations of production and the lack of landed property to be the prime inhibitors of change, with caste and slavery precluding free labour (see also Katz 1990: 150–2). Lichtheim argues, however, that ‘the non-existence of private landed property . . . [was] due to climatic conditions’, with ‘[C]entralized Oriental despotism [arising] from the need to provide artificial irrigation’ (Lichtheim 1963: 38). Different environments and different means of production produce different parameters within which societies develop. Within these parameters, humans have the capacity to stunt or promote development through the pursuit of class interests. Therefore, the less constrictive the environment and the more powerful the means of production, the greater the potential for human liberation.
The uneven development of societies due, in this account, to environmental contingency creates a series of normative quandaries in Marxian thought. Humans are seen potentially to benefit from development of the mode of production. In order to realize communism, all societies must be developed, and an international working class must act together, with the same consciousness, in order to overthrow capital. What, then, should be done with regard to societies trapped in unfavourable circumstances?
Capitalism and consequentialism
Marx’s normative response to uneven development is consequentialist. In his writings on colonialism for the New York Daily Tribune in the 1850s he suggests, as Avineri (1969: 19) puts it, that non-Western society is ‘non-dialectical and stagnant . . . the only impetus for change has to come from the outside . . . European bourgeois civilisation is thus the external agent of change in non-European societies’. Marx’s faith, at this point, in the consequentialist value of bourgeois society lies in his analysis of its dynamic and expansionist economic foundations.
In the Communist Manifesto, Marx argues that, technologically, capitalism is unique in that, unlike previous class orders, competition dictates that ‘The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionising the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole of society’. Consequently, needs develop rapidly in a dialectical relationship, which ensures that capitalism ‘has created more colossal productive forces than all preceding generations together’. These forces require centralized, urban populations for their efficient operation, dictating the building of ‘enormous cities . . . and . . . thus rescu[ing] a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life’. The need for a ‘free’, unencumbered and flexible labour force dictates the dissolution of old, pre-capitalist relations, tearing ‘asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors”’ leaving ‘no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment”’. In turn, this undermines and revolutionizes the old ‘ideologies’, destroying ‘the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation’ (Marx and Engels 1967: 222; 224–5; 224; 222; 222). From this historical base, capitalism expands and changes all before it:
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe . . . The bourgeoisie has through its exploitation of the world market given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country . . . In the place of the old wants, satisfied by the productions of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes . . . National one-sidedness and narrow mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces ‘the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production . . . In a word, it creates a world after its own image. (Marx and Engels 1967: 223–4)9
In his speech on free trade to the Democratic Association in Brussels in 1848, Marx claims that, in creating an international, free trade economy, the domestic division of labour is mirrored, with powerful, advanced capitalist nations growing rich at the expense of subordinated nations. Marx is clear, however, that communists should reject the ‘conservative’ system of protectionism and support the advance of the destructive system of free trade on the grounds that it ‘breaks up old nationalities and pushes the antagonism of the proletariat and the bourgeoisie to the extreme point’ hastening ‘the social revolution’ (McLellan 2000: 295).
In some cases, capital expands and penetrates non-capitalist society without the support of state-level ‘hard power’. In other cases, however, expansion is facilitated by direct, military intervention and appropriation – that is, through imperialism and colonialism. For Marx, the merits of these actions are judged primarily according to their contribution to the notion of progress outlined above. In relation to his writings for the New York Daily Tribune, Avineri (1969: 19–20) concludes that ‘Marx would have to welcome European penetration in direct proportion to its intensity: the more direct the European control of any society in Asia, the greater the chances for the overhauling of its structure and its ultimate incorporation into bourgeois, and hence later into socialist, society’. Indeed, were socialist revolutions to be achieved in the West prior to the globalization of capital, proletarian imperialism may be necessary to complete the developmental process in pre- or non-capitalist countries (Avineri 1969: 21–2; 473; Warren 1980: 44–5). It is this sort of logic which led Marx to the following conclusion with regard to British imperialism in India:
Now, sickening as it must be to human feeling to witness those myriads of industrious patriarchal and inoffensive social organizations disorganized and dissolved into their units, thrown into a sea of woes, and their individual members losing at the same time their ancient form of civilisation, and their hereditary means of subsistence, we must not forget that these idyllic village communities, inoffensive though they may appear, had always been the solid foundation of Oriental despotism, that they restrained the human mind within the smallest possible compass, making it the unresisting tool of superstition, enslaving it beneath traditional rules, depriving it of all grandeur and historical energies. We must not forget the barbarian egotism which, concentrating on some miserable patch of land, had quietly witnessed the ruin of empires, the perpetration of unspeakable cruelties, the massacre of the population of large towns, with no other consideration bestowed upon them than on natural events, itself the helpless prey of any aggressor who deigned to notice at all. We must not forget that this undignified, stagnatory and vegetative life, that this passive sort of existence evoked on the other part, in contradistinction, wild, aimless, unbounded forces of destruction and rendered murder itself a religious rite in Hindostan. We must not forget that these little communities were contaminated by distinctions of caste and by slavery, that they subjugated man to external circumstances instead of elevating man to be the sovereign of circumstances, that they transformed a self-developing social state into never changing natural destiny, and thus brought about a brutalising worship of nature, exhibiting its degradation in the fact that man, the sovereign of nature, fell down on his knees in adoration of Hanuman, the monkey, and Sabbala, the cow. England, it is true, in causing a social revolution in Hindostan, was actuated only by the vilest interests, and was stupid in her manner of enforcing them. But that is not the question. The question is, can mankind fulfil its destiny without a fundamental revolution in the social state of Asia? If not, whatever may have been the crimes of England she was the unconscious tool of history in bringing about that revolution. (Avineri 1969: 93–4)
Despite, or rather as a result of, being motivated ‘only by the vilest interests’, Britain was unconsciously performing a double, almost Hegelian,10 World-Historical ‘mission in India: one destructive, the other regenerating – the annihilation of old Asiatic society, and the laying of the material foundations of Western society in Asia’. Among the benefits Marx saw in these processes were the enforcement of unity on a divided, tribal society through coercive centralization, the organization of a national army, which ‘was the sine qua non of Indian self-emancipation, and of India ceasing to be the prey of the first foreign intruder’, the development of the free press ‘for the first time into an Asiatic society’ and, vitally, the introduction of modern industry to enable global commerce, telecommunications, urbanization and the mastery of natural obstacles to progress, such as desert and drought (Avineri 1969: 90; 131–5; see, also, Marx 1976: 477–9). Although the full benefits of these goods could not be gleaned until India had overthrown colonial rule and engaged fully and on a roughly even footing with international revolutionary societies, the stimulus for development remained, in Marx’s eyes, external (Avineri 1969: 131–5).
At present, attempts are being made by the US-led coalition to introduce and expand certain features in Afghanistan. Many billions of dollars and thousands of people have been employed in Afghanistan to introduce centralized government, a national army,11 a more independent press (as part of a general push to increase the power of civil society) and modern infrastructure. In this account of Marx, there is no intrinsic reason to reject outright imperialism or to believe that external oppression is any worse than internal forms. The goodness or badness of an intervention is determined by the extent to which, rather than the way in which, oppressive, communitarian practices, parochial identities and national boundaries are dissolved and modern goods implemented – all of which are regarded as contingent consequences of specific productive activities. However, in recent years, some Marx scholars have sought to rehabilitate Marx from this contingent endorsement of ‘imperialism’, emphasizing a trend of opposition to imperialism in other parts of his work.
Instrumentalist opposition to imperialism and the possibility of skipping stages
Throughout Marx’s work on imperialism and non-Western societies is recognition of a) the harm of imposing the instruments of capitalism even where, as above, he concludes that such imposition leads to net benefit and b) the subordination of subject peoples by imperialist societies through an international division of labour which has the capacity to hinder the development of capitalism in non-capitalist areas (McLellan 2000: 295). In particular places, especially in his late writings, however, Marx suggests that certain forms of imperialism should be opposed. This opposition shares, though, the instrumental considerations evident in his support for other imperial projects and actions. In his treatment of Ireland in a letter to Engels in 1867, for example, Marx invokes instrumentalist objection to British colonialism on three grounds: first, that the British were unable and unwilling to introduce successfully the advances in industry capable of raising Ireland to a capitalist level of development; second, with Leninist undertones, that the holdings of the English landed aristocracy in Ireland served to entrench their position in England and, third, that the Irish worker served the English ruling classes as the bogeyman against which to rally English proletarians behind their oppressors (McLellan 2000: 638–40). Similarly, in Capital Volume 3, written between 1863 and 1883, Marx (1981: 451–2) notes the resistance of Indian ‘Asiatic’ social forms to capital, in which deficiencies in imperial experiments combined with indigenous social conservatism meant that the destructive and regenerative capacity of capital was inhibited, leaving communities with damaged and dysfunctional traditional modes of production in lieu of efficient capitalist industry.
Some scholars, such as Shanin (1983) and Anderson (2010), have highlighted elements of Marx’s writings on the failure of capitalist development in these areas which suggest a rejection or revision of the unilinear and deterministic notion of historical development outlined above. Marx is indeed keen to emphasize that societies develop within their own parameters of circumstance, creating particular challenges and sources of growth. For the late Marx, the stages elaborated above refer to the development of capitalism in Western Europe alone. In an 1877 letter to the editors of Otechestvenniye Zapiski, he states that his ‘historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe’ cannot be transformed
into a historico-philosophic theory of the general path every people is fated to tread, whatever the historical circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which ensures, together with the greatest expansion of productive powers of social labour, the most complete development of man. (Avineri 1969: 469–70)
Marx suggests that different historical conditions produce different directions of development, highlighting the disparate courses that ‘free peasants, each cultivating his own plot on his own account’ took in Ancient Rome and Feudal North Western Europe. While both were ‘stripped of everything except their labour-power’, only the latter became wage labourers, with the former becoming ‘a mob of do-nothings more abject than the former “poor whites” in the South of the United States’, existing alongside ‘a mode of production which was not capitalist but based on slavery’ (Avineri 1969: 470).
Leading on from this ‘multilinear’ account of development is the notion, developed late in Marx’s life, that certain societies under particular conditions, might come to skip stages in development. In this account, Marx suggests that the specific social conditions of nineteenth-century Russia might enable a revolutionary society to develop modern modes of production, while preserving elements of the commune compatible with socialism and avoiding the deleterious destructive elements of capitalism (see Lichtheim 1963: 51–2). As he puts it in drafts of his 1881 letter to Vera Zasulich:
Thanks to the unique combination of circumstances in Russia, the rural commune, which is still established on a national scale, may gradually shake off its primitive characteristics and directly develop as an element of collective production on a national scale. Precisely because it is contemporaneous with capitalist production, the rural commune may appropriate all its positive achievements without undergoing its . . . frightful vicissitudes. (Shanin 1983: 105–6)
For this late Marx, there is the possibility of skipping stages by organizing adopted modern forces of production through the commune:
Did Russia have to undergo a long Western-style incubation of mechanical industry before it could make use of machinery, steamships, railways, etc.? . . . they [the Russians] managed to introduce, in the twinkling of an eye, that whole machinery of exchange (banks, credit companies, etc.), which was the work of centuries in the West. (Shanin 1983: 106)
Although this might be taken by those, such as Anderson, who wish to advance a ‘multilinear’ Marx, to suggest that societies can develop socialism in any or a large number of forms, it is apparent that Marx retains belief in the necessity of modern technology and internationalism to progress, such that the value of the commune itself is affected by the extent to which it acquires and harnesses modern forces of production as part of an international movement towards socialism: ‘the contemporaneity of Western . . . production, which dominates the world market, enables Russia to build into the commune all the positive achievements of the capitalist system, without having to pass under its harsh tribute’ (Shanin 1983: 110).
It is not that the commune is an end in itself to be conserved in perpetuity. It is, rather, that it is possible for the commune to be transcended through engagement with modern, international, revolutionary modes of production. Transcendence would enable the commune to ‘develop as a regenerating element of Russian society and an element of superiority over the countries enslaved by the capitalist regime (Shanin 1983: 117).
How, then, should we reconcile this apparently multilinear, anti-imperialist Marx with the Marx of Poverty of Philosophy – a work he sought to republish in L’Egalite, the newspaper of the French Workers’ Party, in 1880, around the same time as he was expressing his views on the Russian commune?
Feudal production also had two antagonistic elements which are likewise designated by the name of the good side and the bad side of feudalism, irrespective of the fact that it is always the bad side that in the end triumphs over the good side. It is the bad side that produces the movement which makes history, by providing a struggle. If, during the epoch of the domination of feudalism, the economists, enthusiastic over the knightly virtues, the beautiful harmony between rights and duties, the patriarchal life of the towns, the prosperous condition of domestic industry in the countryside, the development of industry organized into corporations, guilds, and fraternities, in short, everything that constitutes the good side of feudalism, had set themselves the problem of eliminating everything that cast a shadow on this picture – serfdom, privileges, anarchy – what would have happened? All the elements which called forth the struggle would have been destroyed, and the development of the bourgeoisie nipped in the bud. One would have set oneself the absurd problem of eliminating history. (McLellan 2000: 227)
One explanation for the apparent inconsistency might lie, again, in the particular conditions of nineteenth-century Russia. The late Marx claims that the fate of the commune was seen to be affected by ‘neither an historical inevitability nor a theory’, but by ‘state oppression, and exploitation by capitalist intruders whom the state has made powerful at the peasants’ expense’ (Shanin 1983: 104–5). Whereas in Western Europe, the internal dynamics of change required the dissolution of elements of the good with the bad, the particular circumstances of Russia, with its access internationally to advanced means of production, presented additional possibilities: stagnation, capitalist development and skipping stages towards socialism. There was the possibility, if appropriate political, economic and social measures were taken, for society to transcend Russia’s mode of production effectively in a way that was impossible in feudal society in the West.
Can a ‘multilinear’ understanding of Marx provide support to the anti-imperialist alliances formed by Marxist groups in opposing US-led forces in Afghanistan? Is it possible to suggest that particular features of Afghan society form the basis for local transcendence towards socialism?
Dysfunctional strategies
Although much is made, by the likes of Anderson, of Marx’s apparent Damascene conversion to anti-imperialism, his shift in position may have much less to do with principled objection than tactical assessment. Remaining throughout Marx’s work is, first, commitment, often implicit, to the capacity for human flourishing, second, belief in the necessity of technology to progress (as the expansion of the capacity for human flourishing) and, third, instrumental assessment of imperialism according to its effect on progress. Where Marx discusses alliances with political parties or movements which appear to defend ‘parochial’ or conservative elements of society, he does so while emphasizing clear means by which to challenge that parochialism and conservatism in efforts to promote progress towards socialism. In his address to the Communist League in 1850, for example, Marx evaluates and circumscribes tactical alliances with the petty bourgeoisie in Germany. He states that, in the various German states, there were ‘so many relics of the Middle Ages to be abolished’ and ‘so much local and provincial obstinacy to be broken’. Certain interests and aims of the petty bourgeoisie and revolutionary proletariat overlapped, such as the need to abolish feudalism, enshrine certain de jure articulations of equality and ‘propose more or less socialistic measures’. However, the petty bourgeois also sought measures which did not meet the interests of workers, such as the desire to replace feudalism with a system of decentralized, free property, in which petty bourgeois peasants would be left in ‘the same cycle of impoverishment and indebtedness’ seen among French peasants following the 1789 revolution (McLellan 2000: 310). In order to combat counter-revolutionary elements in the petty bourgeois party, Marx proposes that the workers retain their independence, ‘Compel the democrats to interfere in as many spheres as possible of the hitherto existing social order’ and ‘concentrate the utmost possible productive forces, means of transport, factories, railways, etc., in the hands of the state’ and transform the reformist democrats into revolutionaries, by taking radical reformist measures in tax and spending (McLellan 2000: 311). The point, then, is that the sort of tactical alliances examined by Marx are governed by the comparatively progressive nature of the ally, the effect of that alliance on progress and the role of the proletarian movement in promoting radical action. In Russia, Marx saw a social structure capable of harnessing modern means of production, while in Germany, Marx saw a potential ally capable of promoting progress denied by existing bourgeois parties. He simply does not entertain ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ approaches. Indeed, in his aforementioned speech on free trade he states that ‘One may declare oneself an enemy of the constitutional regime without declaring oneself a friend of the ancient regime’ (McLellan 2000: 296).
Since Marx’s death, however, Marxists have rejected or neglected his pragmatic, instrumentalist stance on imperialism and sought, instead, to change the world through forms of ‘anti-imperialism’, championing Third World ‘resistance’ movements and regarding the United States as an enemy, rather than an agent, of progress. This trend emerged, most clearly, through Lenin’s (1939) Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism, in which the acquisition of capital through imperialism is seen to consolidate capitalism by diminishing the effects and visibility of exploitation in developed countries. In order to remove this source of amelioration and stimulate revolution in developed countries, revolutionary movements are seen to be required in those underdeveloped countries subject to imperial exploitation. This shifted the primary site of revolution from the developed to the developing world, with the October Revolution and the victory of Mao in China firmly entrenching Marxism as an ideology of both development and the developing world. Wallerstein’s world-systems theory, in which an international division of labour acts to mirror exploitative relations previously confined to states, developed further this position. This analysis of a conservative, exploitative Western bourgeoisie and progressive, exploited non-Western proletariat, is reflected clearly by Guevara in the following passage:
The struggle against imperialism, for liberation from colonial or neo-colonial shackles . . . is not separate from the struggle against backwardness and poverty. Both are stages on the same road leading toward the creation a new society of justice and plenty . . . The practice of proletarian internationalism is not only a duty for the peoples struggling for a better future, it is also an inescapable necessity. If the imperialist enemy, the United States or any other, carries out its attack against the underdeveloped peoples and the socialist countries, elementary logic determines the need for an alliance between the underdeveloped peoples and the socialist countries. If there were no other uniting factor, the common enemy should be enough. (Guevara and Castro 2002: 17)
Fundamentally, the association of Marxism with the developing world and belief among Marxists that people in developing countries have a unique interest and role in achieving socialism has served to create a number of difficulties. The instrumentalism which Marx displayed throughout his various positions on imperialism has been replaced by dogmatic rejection of the value of capitalism as a mode of production and affirmation of the extraordinary value of peoples and cultures in developing, non-capitalist societies (see discussions in Warren 1980: 4–6; 47–83; Boron 2005: 16–17). In effect, a crude dichotomy has appeared to emerge in which the capitalist West is regarded as being in some fundamental form inexcusable and irredeemable and the non-West, however imperfect, excusable and redeemable through the overthrow of capitalism and imperialism (with capitalism and imperialism often conflated) (see Bassi 2010: 128).
In this context, anti-imperialist Marxists appear to have been willing to sanction and foster alliances with groups whose ideas and motivations appear intrinsically opposed to those developed by Marx – whether in his pro- or anti-imperialist tracts. The SWP’s collaboration with the MAB has been denounced by Nick Cohen, among others, for Islamist support for ‘sharia law, with all its difficulties with democracy, women and homosexuals’. In this coalition, the Stop the War Coalition failed to criticize such regressive actions of Iraqi insurgents as kidnappings, beheadings, suicide bombings and sectarianism in emphasizing ‘once more the legitimacy of the struggle of Iraqis, by whatever means they find necessary, to secure such ends’ (statement cited in Cohen 2004). Indeed, the SWP shunned the Iraqi Communist Party and the Kurds for their collaboration with the United States and attempted to silence trade union opposition to the carnage of the insurgency, while supporting Islamist and, in particular, Ba’athist insurgents. Apologism for Ba’athism should be deeply troubling for Marxists since, under Saddam, ‘Iraq had the classic fascist programme of the worship of the great leader, the unprovoked wars of aggression, the genocidal campaigns against impure ethnic minorities, and the suppression of every autonomous element in society, including free trade unions’ (Cohen 2004). What defence can there be for such tactical alliances?
For Callinicos, the key contemporary ideological figure in the SWP, the aim of uniting with ‘politically diverse’, and often conservative, ‘forces in action around a limited common objective’ is ‘to radicalize the anti-capitalist movement by giving it an anti-imperialist edge’ in order to develop ‘a movement that targets not just the Bush administration and its war drive but the imperialist system itself, with its roots in the capitalist logic of exploitation and accumulation’ (Callinicos 2002b). Yet, the politically diverse forces may have absolutely no interest in the realization of communist ends. Halliday (2002: 85) has sought vehemently to oppose such strategic instrumental forms of ‘anti-imperialism’ on the grounds of their inability to engender, and often hostility towards, progress, with activists ‘facilely aligning themselves with a range of regimes whose practice was even more remote from the emancipatory agenda than their opponents’. As Norman Geras claims in his chapter, those involved in these alliances should know better. Callinicos (2001: 398) himself claims to oppose anti-capitalist strategies of ‘deglobalization’ on the grounds that they risk forfeiting ‘the genuine gains that the technologically dynamic and globally integrated capitalism of the present day has brought with it, and . . . tends to idealize petty forms of capitalism that . . . can be more exploitative than the large-scale version’. Callinicos professes to adhere to a universal and egalitarian communism in which national, ethnic, communitarian, cultural and geographical boundaries are dissolved, exploitative hierarchies overturned and modern industry advanced (Callinicos 2003: 106–14).12 He (2003: 107) emphasizes that
any alternative to capitalism in its present form should, as far as possible, meet the requirements of (at least) justice, efficiency, democracy, and sustainability . . . I say that any alternative to capitalism in its present form must meet these requirements in order not to beg the question of whether or not some other version of the prevailing economic system could fit the bill.
This is, though, betrayed by the alliances with regressive forces fighting US-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan. Where, in Marx, tactical alliances are tightly circumscribed in an attempt to ensure that the outcome of action is progressive, in the case of the SWP, there are no such constraints – just references to broader political aims amid intense, reactionary anti-imperialism.
Anti-imperialists may respond that to ignore the possibility of indigenous sources of progress and social organizations capable of realizing socialist progress contradicts Marx’s late writings on Russia. The point, however, is that the groups with which anti-imperialist Marxists are aligned are the very same groups which seek to conserve parochial, insular, ethnocentric structures and beliefs and which see in Marxian progress little more than decay, decline and decadence. There is no evidence that the Taliban, Moqtada al-Sadr or Saddam’s old allies have any interest in engaging in such processes – that would, surely, herald their own destruction (see Bhatt’s 2006 discussion of religious demagoguery). They are the people least willing and capable of harnessing international technological developments to transcend indigenous social structures in advancing local forms of socialism. Moreover, with the fall of the Soviet empire and the transition of China to a form of capitalism, opportunities for international engagement with forms of socialism, however distorted or dysfunctional, are few – though, given widespread Afghan opposition to Soviet occupation, there is little reason to believe that any such engagement would be welcomed anyway by these groups.
Indeed, in terms of the effectiveness of the coalition, if anything it seems that the Islamist allies of the SWP were, and may still be, much more concerned to retain a clear sense of identity and independence and avoid assimilation. Phillips (2008: 103) states that MAB pre-conditions of entering into the coalition were gender-segregation and the provision of halal food at meetings and the acknowledgement that, ‘while they could overcome misgivings about sharing platforms with some groups (such as socialists and atheists), they could never do so with others (Zionists and Israelis in particular)’. Indeed, past precedents indicate that the SWP’s confidence in their ability to inculcate their allies in socialist thought through engagement in single-issue politics may be misplaced. The case of the union of communist and Islamist revolutionary forces in Iran seems particularly relevant, demonstrating that mere opposition to Western capitalism does not necessarily ensure progressive outcomes. Even where pre-capitalist ‘Marxist’ societies have driven revolutionary change, as in the case of the twentieth-century socialist empires, the outcomes have, in Marxian terms, been disappointing. Despite some 50 years of state socialism, vast swathes of Central Asia, the Caucasus and the Balkans have been left materially underdeveloped, dominated by corrupt political and economic systems and prone to ethnic, religious and cultural conflict.
As Munck’s discussion in his chapter suggested, the legitimate response to this, of course, is that the experiences of countries subject to colonial rule by capitalist states or those which have sought to integrate into the global economy through other measures have, at best, been extremely mixed. While Marxists or Marx-influenced Warren (1980), Desai (2004), Harris (2003) and Kitching (2001) have joined neoliberal like Norberg (2003) in extolling the progressive nature of capitalist expansion, many others, such as Munck (2002), Boron (2005) and Lipietz (1982), in addition to Callinicos, have cogently and strongly argued that engagement in the global economy can stunt development and, indeed, undermine local modes of production by flooding domestic markets without adequately advancing locally beneficial alternatives. This has, of course, been a central source of objection to the Washington Consensus and the structural adjustment programmes which have sought to strip developing nations of means by which to protect local economies. Indeed, opponents of capitalist expansion can support their stance by pointing to the way in which mismanagement in the interventions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan have failed adequately to produce the new modes of production required to satisfy Marxian criteria of progress.
I do not, in any way, wish to act as an apologist for capitalist activities that undermine the long-term prospects of human beings. As Marxists, it is essential that we continue to challenge capitalist harms. What I do suggest, though, is that we advance objective, consistent means (see Bassi 2010: 121–2) by which to evaluate actions according to their contribution to human interests – the promotion of the capacity for wellbeing. As in Marx’s own work, this will mean that the actions of capitalists or capitalist societies are sometimes praised and sometimes criticized. It will also mean that the actions of non-capitalist societies are sometimes praised and sometimes criticized, but not solely on account of the extent to which they oppose the United States or are ‘oppressed’. For, whatever the mismanagement, efforts made to change Iraq and Afghanistan in a manner similar to that identified by Marx in nineteenth-century India have been, to varying degrees, undermined, thwarted and repulsed by local insurgents to whom the likes of Callinicos and the SWP have offered at least moral support. Instead of evaluating actions on account of their potential for progress, crude anti-imperialists of the SWP variety have fetishized resistance to such a degree that any and all action taken by ‘imperialists’ are rejected or denounced and any and all action taken by insurgents applauded or excused (see Bassi 2010 and Bhatt 2006). This is simply antithetical to Marx and should, I suggest, be antithetical to twenty-first century Marxism. Why, though, might this counter-intuitive and apparently self-defeating tendency persist?
Explaining alliances
Despite Callinicos’ words of caution on removing capitalism, there is a sense that elements of the Marxist left have moved from having a clear conception of means by which to improve people’s lives to fetishized opposition to capitalism in and of itself. That is, Marxism and Marxists have been subsumed within a broader ‘anti-’ movement against capitalism, capitalist war and capitalist imperialism. If the overwhelming imperative is to oppose, then a strategy of ‘the enemy of my enemy is my friend’ may appeal (see Bassi 2010: 127). The rationale appears to be that wiping capitalism from the face of the earth will dissolve obstacles to the resolution of the significant problems faced by humanity. Tying into this is the particular motivation of party politics, with the SWP reaching a far greater audience than usual through their participation in StWC (see Phillips 2008: 110). Though there seems little evidence of their ‘progressive’ ideas permeating their Islamist allies (who have taken steps to avoid losing their identity and goals in the coalition), the attention gleaned from the broader general public may appear seductive to those often dismissed as irrelevant.
Leading from these political explanations is a tendency to conflate the strong with the bad and the weak with the good, such that, in any given confrontation or situation, parties appear to be divided into the powerful, almost intrinsically bad oppressors and the weak, almost intrinsically good oppressed.13 There are both emotional and analytical reasons for this. Emotionally, common experience of such things as charity appeals tells us that many people, particularly in the modern world, sympathize14 with the weak – starving Africans, landless Palestinians and neglected animals all being good examples. This is good. We should, as both humans and Marxists, feel concern for other people and beings. However, sympathy appears often to be expressed, destructively, as outrage. The notion that this emotion is, in some way, necessarily constructive is surely misplaced. What sort of society can be created on the basis of uncontrolled aggression? Effective praxis must in some measure be grounded in calm, logical assessment of possibilities, recognition of the parameters of circumstance and consideration of others. Analytically, Marxism generally holds that groups or classes pursue particular interests, with power derived from control over the means of production ensuring that ruling classes can, more effectively than those they exploit, pursue their own ends. The corollary of this is that some Marxists excuse, in lieu of the humane methods which will flourish in communism, the use of destructive measures by the ‘weak’ or ‘oppressed’ to attain their goals (see Bassi 2010: 123; 126). This has, perhaps because of post-imperial zeitgeist in the West, particular appeal in the case of such international and intercultural conflicts as those in Iraq and Afghanistan, where some Marxists appear to apply different evaluative criteria to the activities of groups according to their level of power. This appears to be apparent in Anderson’s (2010: 52) criticism of Marx’s ‘universalistic secular outlook’, which he rejects on the grounds ‘that, by condemning all religion, [it] sometimes failed to distinguish between the impact of such attacks on a dominant religion and those on a persecuted minority one’.
The assumption that the weak are innately good and that it is only through oppression that they commit acts contrary to the ends of socialism is, though, dangerous. Power enables groups to do things. There is no reason to assume that, given power and territorial security, the Taliban, for example, will suddenly adopt humanist, socialist forms of praxis. Indeed, previously ‘oppressed’ Islamist groups, such as the Taliban and post-revolutionary Iranian clerics, among others, have an appalling record of inflicting oppression on others. This cannot simply be attributed to their treatment under previous regimes – even if influenced by circumstance, their actions are, in some measure at least, volitional. Marxism should not entertain obfuscatory forms of romanticism regarding the ‘weak’ – while employing context analytically as a means of understanding elements of belief, it should evaluate the merits of particular groups and their ideologies independently of their social, economic and political standing.
The final explanation has been discussed by Alan Johnson in his chapter – the desire articulated by Žižek (2008: 119) for enthusiastic, militant, selfless, bloody action. Here, it sometimes seems that anti-imperialist Marxists interpret Marx’s eleventh thesis on Feuerbach in the most negative possible form. Any change, so long as it is not capitalist, is to be applauded – all the better if it is violent and filled with emotion.
Unfortunately, the insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan appeal to crude anti-imperialist Marxists on each of the grounds above: they are opposed to the capitalist West; their cause enables socialist groups to make broader alliances to pursue their party political or cultural ends; they are weak, and they take heroic, selfless action to pursue their ends. For such reasons, apparent proponents of progress are drawn into supporting and promoting forms of conservatism and even regression in the name of Marx.
Conclusion
When Marx wrote Theses on Feuerbach, it is hard to believe he intended Marxists to seek action without principle at any cost. In his various positions on imperial actions, there persists an admirable international commitment to advancing human interests. Marx’s account of progress persists in both his ‘pro-’ and ‘anti-imperialist’ writings. This account of progress transcends national, cultural and political boundaries. It is a view of the way in which all humans can come to develop their uniquely human characteristics and qualities and, ultimately, flourish as social beings. For Marx, such arbitrary, temporal features as Westphalian principles of statehood and cultural identities are evaluated instrumentally – where they promote progress they are affirmed and where they do not they are dismissed. This has led certain modern scholars, imbued with modern post-imperial norms, to denounce and seek to rehabilitate Marx from his ‘ethnocentrism’ or ‘racism’. This, however, misses the point. The ‘ethnocentric’ works from which Anderson, for example, seeks to extricate Marx, such as Communist Manifesto, German Ideology and the early articles for the New York Daily Tribune, actually highlight an aspect of Marx which is genuinely impressive in the context of his historical epoch: his unstinting commitment to human wellbeing and eagerness to challenge exploitation, oppression and abuse wherever it may occur, by whomever it be perpetuated and against whomever it be inflicted (see Anderson 2010: 98–9). Perhaps the most important tenet that we, in the twenty-first century, can glean from revisiting Marx’s work on imperialism and colonialism is that oppression and exploitation is oppression and exploitation whether it be conducted by those we regard as foreigners or those we regard as compatriots. Marx dispels the fetishistic notion that our ethnic, cultural or national allegiances are of any unqualified, innate value.
Yet, it is this very dogma of parochial national, religious and cultural affiliation into which groups such as the SWP play by forging alliances with the likes of the MAB and offering support to insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan. Only by adopting a clear, tangible vision of progress and associated criteria by which to evaluate practices can such difficulties be avoided. In recent years, movement towards the development of such criteria has actually been driven most clearly by liberals – proponents of the other main strand of Enlightenment thought. The capabilities approach of Martha Nussbaum (as well as, to a lesser degree, Amartya Sen) has advanced a set of concrete criteria by which to evaluate social conditions and, by extension, political, economic and cultural activities. This approach draws on Aristotelian, eudaemonistic notions of wellbeing or flourishing and makes explicit reference to the compatibility with, and influence of, Marx’s own account of human essence and being. While Nussbaum regards the approach as lying in the Rawlsian tradition of political liberalism, there is scope for development in a range of perfectionist directions. While I do not suggest that he concurs with my arguments above, in the next chapter, Lawrence Wilde revisits Marx’s own tactical decision to abstain from moral discourse on justice in order to advance a Marxism committed to influencing the global justice debate. By examining Nussbaum’s capabilities approach, he suggests means of transcending Nussbaum’s liberalism to promote tangible means of evaluating actions according to objective criteria and promoting, globally, an ethics of self realization.
It is by building constructively upon the gains of liberalism that Marxism can emerge from mere opposition, and the lure of alliances with regressive forces, to make a progressive, positive and distinctive contribution to humankind.
Notes
1 I use square brackets to indicate the year in which the particular piece was written. This helps to trace the development of Marx’s thought, particularly with regard to the shift, claimed by the likes of Anderson (2010), towards anti-imperialism in his late writings.
2 See Bhatt’s (2006) discussion of the relationship between the left and binary distinctions.
3 Phillips (2008: 110) states that the SWP ‘has dominated the leadership of StW nationally and in many local branches’.
4 The MAB eventually left the coalition following the 7/7 bombings in 2005 for fear of entering into conflict with the UK political establishment. They were replaced by the related British Muslim Initiative (Phillips 2008: 107–8).
5 Bassi presents an approach grounded in advancing a ‘third camp’ revolutionary approach. My discussion, which shares some of Bassi’s sentiments, is grounded less clearly in 20th Century revolutionary praxis and more in Marxian scriptural exegesis.
6 It is likely that, were he to express his views on Islam today, Marx would be dismissed as Islamophobic, given his belief in the ‘retrograde impact’ of faith and religious intolerance in Islamic countries (Avineri 1969: 22). In an article on religious discrimination in the Ottoman Empire in 1854, he claims that ‘The Koran and the Mussulman legislation emanating from it reduce the geography and ethnography of the various peoples to the simple and convenient distinction of two nations and two countries; those of the Faithful and those of the Infidels. The Infidel is “harby”, i.e., the enemy. Islamism proscribes the nation of the Infidels, constituting a state of permanent hostility between the Mussulman and the unbeliever. In that sense the corsair ships of the Berber States [which raided Western Europe and beyond over several centuries] were the holy fleet of the [sic] Islam’. He adds that, ‘As the Koran treats all foreigners as foes, nobody will dare to present himself in a Mussulman country without having taken his precautions’ (Avineri 1969: 144; 146).
7 See, further, Shaw (1979: 370–1).
8 See, also, Marx and Engels’ references to the Berbers and Chinese in Avineri (1969: 47–8; 67–75; 340–4) and other ‘savages’ and ‘barbarians’ in Levin (2004: 28–31).
9 See, also, Marx (1976: 488; 727n2); McLellan (2000: 296); Callinicos (2002a: esp. pp. 249; 260) and Hardt and Negri (2001: esp. pp. xi–xvii).
10 See Hegel (1991: 80; 99). See also Larrain (1991: 181–90) and Levin (2004).
11 The problem of engineering security and professional armies in circumstances with similarities to those encountered in contemporary Afghanistan and Iraq is discussed by Marx and Engels in Avineri (1969: 26–8; 184–90; 442–4).
12 Boron (2005: 32–3) acknowledges that progress has been made towards the realization of these ends in capitalist societies, pointing towards individual liberties, universal suffrage and secularization as bourgeois successes.
13 I recall that, growing up in the 1990s, my own sympathies in the Balkans conflict lay, first, with the Bosniaks due to Serb oppression, then the Serbs, due to Western military support for the Bosniaks, then with the Kosovars when attacked by the Serbs and, finally, with the Serbs when attacked again by the West. This is simply an unhelpful approach to adopt. See the discussion of the postcolonial subaltern in Bhatt 2006 and Bassi’s (2010: 122) thoughts.
14 I use the term ‘sympathy’, rather than the oft-used empathy, for two reasons: first, that the distinction in circumstances, histories and traditions of the ‘oppressed’ in non-Western societies and Marxists in Western societies means that it is difficult, precisely, to understand and comprehend the emotions of others; second, that often the emphasis lies, not in mere comprehension but, rather, in affect, such that Marxists feel and express emotions derived from encountering suffering, but not necessarily the same feelings and emotions experienced by those suffering. It is interesting that the most common example of ‘empathy’ is actually shared expressions of outrage. It is important that, before validating a claim of empathy, we consider a range of psychological factors in ‘empathic’ experiences, such as projection and splitting of feelings, as it may be that apparent emotional overlap between two groups conceals the fact that they are affected by events in different ways and for different reasons. Such psychoanalytical understandings of ‘empathy’ may suggest that the emotions of others are used for personal or political gain, in which case solidarity may shift from having a positive connotation to a rather more negative one.
References
Adamson, W. L. (1981), ‘Marx’s four histories: an approach to his intellectual development’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 5. New York: Routledge, pp. 537–60.
Anderson, K. B. (2010), Marx at the Margins: On Nationalism, Ethnicity, and Non-Western Societies. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press.
Antonio, R. J., (ed.), (2003), Marx and Modernity: Key Readings and Commentary. Oxford: Blackwell.
Avineri, S., (ed.), (1969), Karl Marx: On Colonialism and Modernization. New York: Anchor.
Bassi, C. (2010) The Anti-Imperialism of Fools’, ACME: An International E-Journal for Critical Geographies, 9, 113–37.
Bhatt, C. (2006) ‘The Fetish of the Margins: Religious Absolutism, Anti-racism and Postcolonial Silence’, New Formations, 59, pp. 98–115.
Boron, A. (2005), Empire and Imperialism: A Critical Reading of Hardt and Negri. London: Zed Books.
Callinicos, A. (2001), ‘Where now?’, in E. Bircham and J. Charlton (eds), (2001), Anti-Capitalism: A Guide to the Movement. London: Bookmarks, pp. 387–99.
— (2002a), ‘Marxism and global governance’, in D. Held and A. McGrew (eds), Governing Globalization: Power, Authority and Global Governance. Cambridge: Polity, pp. 249–66.
— (2002b), ‘The grand strategy of the American Empire’, International Socialism Journal, [online], 97. Available from: http://pubs.socialistreviewindex.org.uk/isj97/callinicos.htm [Accessed 17 May 2010].
— (2003), An Anti-Capitalist Manifesto. Cambridge: Polity.
Chakrabarty, D. (1993), ‘Marx after Marxism: history, subalternity, and difference’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 6. New York: Routledge, pp. 223–35.
Cohen, N. (2004), ‘The great liberal betrayal’, New Statesman, 1 November 2004. Available from: http://www.newstatesman.com/200411010022 [Accessed 06 June 2011].
Desai, M. (2004), Marx’s Revenge. London: Verso.
Guevara, E. and Castro, F. (2002), Global Justice. Melbourne: Ocean.
Halliday, F. (2002), ‘The pertinence of imperialism’, in M. Rupert and H. Smith (eds), Historical Materialism and Globalization. London: Routledge.
Hardt, M. and Negri, A. (2001), Empire. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
Harris, N. (2003), The Return of Cosmopolitan Capital: Globalization, the State and War. London: I. B. Taurus.
Hegel, G. W. F. (1991), Lectures on the Philosophy of History, Amherst, New York: Prometheus.
Katz, C. J. (1990), ‘The problems of Europocentrism and evolutionism in Marx’s writings on colonialism’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 6. New York: Routledge, pp. 146–63.
Kitching, G. N. (2001), Seeking Social Justice through Globalization: Escaping a Nationalist Perspective. University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University.
Krader, L. (1975), The Asiatic Mode of Production. Assen, Holland: Van Gorcum.
Larrain, J. (1991), ‘Classical political economists and Marx on colonialism and “backward” nations’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 6. New York: Routledge, pp. 164–95.
Lefort, C. (1978), ‘Marx: from one vision of history to another’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 6. New York: Routledge, pp. 83–118.
Lenin, V. I. (1939), Imperialism: The Highest Stage of Capitalism. New York: International.
Levin, M. (2004), ‘An alternative terminology of development: Engels and Marx on barbarism and civilisation’, Studies in Marxism, 10, 25–38.
Lichtheim, G. (1963), ‘Marx and the “Asiatic mode of production”’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 6. New York: Routledge, pp. 35–58.
Lim, J.-H. (1992), ‘Marx’s theory of imperialism and the Irish national question’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 6. New York: Routledge, pp. 196–208.
Lipietz, A. (1982), ‘Marx or Rostow?’, New Left Review, 132, 48–58.
Marx, K. (1973), Grundrisse. London: Penguin.
— (1976), Capital, volume 1. London: Penguin.
— (1981), Capital, volume 3. London: Penguin.
— (1992), Early Writings. London: Penguin.
Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1967), The Communist Manifesto. London: Penguin.
— (1974), The German Ideology, 2nd edition. London: Lawrence and Wishart.
McLellan, D. (ed.), (2000), Karl Marx: Selected Writings. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Munck, R. (2002), Marx@2000. London: Zed.
Norberg, J. (2003), In Defence of Global Capitalism, revised edition. Stockholm: CATO.
Nordahl, R. (1986), ‘Marx on evaluating pre-capitalist societies’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 6. New York: Routledge, pp. 1–15.
Phillips, R. (2008), ‘Standing together: the Muslim Association of Britain and the anti-war movement’, Race and Class, 50, 101–13.
Shanin, T., (ed.), (1983), Late Marx and the Russian Road: Marx and the ‘Peripheries of Capitalism’. New York: Monthly Review Press.
Shaw, W. H. (1979), ‘“The handmill gives you the feudal lord” Marx’s technological determinism’, in B. Jessop and R. Wheatley (eds), (1999), Karl Marx’s Social and Political Thought, volume 5. New York: Routledge, pp. 358–78.
Spier, F. (1996), The Structure of Big History. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.
Warren, B. (1980), Imperialism: Pioneer of Capitalism. London: Verso.
Žižek, S. (2008), In Defense of Lost Causes. London: Verso.