A Marxist Critique Of Post-Marxists
By James Petras
Introduction
"Post-Marxism" has become a fashionable intellectual
posture, with the triumph of neo-liberalism and the retreat of
the working class. The space vacated by the reformist left [in
Latin America] has in part been occupied by capitalist
politicians and ideologues, technocrats and the traditional and
fundamentalist churches (Pentecostals and the Vatican). In the
past, this space was occupied by socialist, nationalist and
populist politicians and church activists associated with the
"theology of liberation". The centre-left was very influential
within the political regimes (at the top) or the less politicised
popular classes (at the bottom). The vacant space of the radical
left refers to the political intellectuals and politicised
sectors of the trade unions and urban and rural social movements.
It is among these groups that the conflict between Marxism and
"post-Marxism" is most intense today.
Nurtured and, in many cases, subsidised by the principal
financial institutions and governmental agencies promoting
neo-liberalism, a massive number of "social" organisations have
emerged whose ideology, linkages and practices are in direct
competition and conflict with Marxist theory and practice. These
organisations, in most cases describing themselves as
"non-governmental" or as "independent research centres", have
been active in propounding ideologies and political practices
that are compatible with and complement the neo-liberal agenda of
their financial patrons. This essay will proceed by describing
and criticising the components of their ideology and then turn to
describe their activities and non-activities, contrasting it with
the class-based movements and approaches. This will be followed
by a discussion of the origins of "post-Marxism" and its
evolution and future in relation to the decline and possible
return of Marxism.
Components Of Post-Marxism
The intellectual proponents of post-Marxism in most
instances are "ex-Marxists" whose point of departure is a
"critique" of Marxism and the elaboration of counterpoints to
each basic proposition as the basis for attempting to provide an
alternative theory or at least a plausible line of analysis. It
is possible to more or less synthesise ten basic arguments that
are usually found in the post-Marxist discourse:
1. Socialism was a failure and all "general theories" of
societies are condemned to repeat this process. Ideologies are
false (except post-Marxism!) because they reflect a world of
thought dominated by a single gender/race culture system.
2. The Marxist emphasis on social class is "reductionist" because
classes are dissolving; the principle political points of
departure are cultural and rooted in diverse identities (race,
gender, ethnicity, sexual preference).
3. The state is the enemy of democracy and freedom and a corrupt
and inefficient deliverer of social welfare. In its place, "civil
society" is the protagonist of democracy and social improvement.
4. Central planning leads to and is a product of bureaucracy
which hinders the exchange of goods between producers. Markets
and market exchanges, perhaps with limited regulations, allow for
greater consumption and more efficient distribution.
5. The traditional left's struggle for state power is corrupting
and leads to authoritarian regimes which then subordinate civil
society to its control. Local struggles over local issues by
local organisations are the only democratic means of change,
along with petition/pressure on national and international
authorities.
6. Revolutions always end badly or are impossible: social
transformations threaten to provoke authoritarian reactions. The
alternative is to struggle for and consolidate democratic
transitions to safeguard electoral processes.
7. Class solidarity is part of past ideologies, reflecting
earlier politics and realities. Classes no longer exist. There
are fragmented "locales" where specific groups (identities) and
localities engage in self-help and reciprocal relations for
"survival" based on cooperation with external supporters.
Solidarity is a cross-class phenomena, a humanitarian gesture.
8. Class struggle and confrontation does not produce tangible
results; it provokes defeats and fails to solve immediate
problems. Government and international cooperation around
specific projects does result in increases in production and
development.
9. Anti-imperialism is another expression of the past that has
outlived its time. In today's globalised economy, there is no
possibility of confronting the economic centres. The world is
increasingly interdependent and in this world there is a need for
greater international cooperation in transferring capital,
technology and know-how from the "rich" to the "poor" countries.
10. Leaders of popular organisations should not be exclusively
oriented toward organising the poor and sharing their conditions.
Internal mobilisation should be based on external funding.
Professionals should design programmes and secure external
financing to organise local groups. Without outside aid, local
groups and professional careers would collapse.
Critique Of Post-Marxist Ideology
The post-Marxists thus have an analysis, a critique and a
strategy of developmentin a word, the very general ideology that
they supposedly condemn when discussing Marxism. Moreover, it is
an ideology that fails to identify the crises of capitalism
(prolonged stagnation and periodic financial panics) and the
social contradictions (inequalities and social polarisation) at
the national and international level that impinge on the specific
local social problems they focus on. For example, the origins of
neo-liberalism (the socio-political and economic milieu in which
the post-Marxists function) is a product of class conflict.
Specific sectors of capital allied with the state and the empire
defeated the popular classes and imposed the model. A non-class
perspective cannot explain the origins of the social world in
which the post-Marxists operate. Moreover, the same problem
surfaces in discussion of the origins of the post-Marxists their
own biography reflects the abrupt and radical shift in power at
the national and international levels, in the economic and
cultural spheres, limiting the space and resources in which
Marxism operated while increasing the opportunities and funds for
post-Marxists. Sociological origins of post-Marxism are embedded
in the shift in political power away from the working class
towards export capital.
Let us shift now from a sociology of knowledge critique of
post-Marxist ideology and its generally inconsistent view of
general theorising to discuss its specific propositions.
Let us start with its notion of the "failure of socialism"
and the "end of ideologies". What is meant by the "failure of
socialism"? The collapse of the USSR and Eastern European
Communist regimes? First, that is only a single concept of
socialism. Secondly, even here it is not clear what failed - the
political system, the socio-economic system? Recent election
returns in Russia, Poland, Hungary and many of the ex-Soviet
republics suggest that a majority of voters prefer a return of
aspects of past social welfare policies and economic practices.
If popular opinion in the ex-Communist countries is an indicator
of "failure", the results are not definitive.
Secondly, if by the "failure of socialism" the post-Marxists
mean the decline in power of the left we must insist on a
distinction between "failure" due to internal inadequacies of
socialist practices and politico-military defeats by external
aggressors. No one would say that Hitler's destruction of Western
European democracies was a "failure of democracy". Terrorist
capitalist regimes and/or U.S. intervention in Chile, Argentina,
Bolivia, Uruguay, Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El
Salvador, Angola, Mozambique and Afghanistan played a major role
in the "decline" of the revolutionary left. Military defeats are
not failures of the economic system and do not reflect on the
effectiveness of socialist experiences. Moreover, when we analyse
the internal performances during the period of relatively stable
socialist or popular governance, by many social indicators the
results are far more favorable than that which came afterwards:
popular participation, health, education and equitable growth
under Allende compared very favorably to what came afterward with
Pinochet. The same indicators under the Sandinistas compared
favorably to Chamorro's regime in Nicaragua. The Arbenz
government's agrarian reform and human rights policies compared
favorably to the installed government's policy of land
concentration and 150,000 assassinations.
Today, while it is true that neo-liberals govern and
Marxists are out of power, there is hardly a country in the
Western hemisphere where Marxist- or socialist-influenced mass
movements are not leading major demonstrations and challenging
neo-liberal policies and regimes. In Paraguay, Uruguay and
Bolivia, successful general strikes; in Mexico, major peasant
movements and Indian guerrillas; in Brazil, the landless workers'
movementsall reflect Marxist influence.
Socialism outside of the Communist bloc was an essentially
democratic, popular force that secured major support because it
represented popular interests freely decided. The post-Marxists
confuse Soviet Communism with grassroots revolutionary democratic
socialist movements in Latin America. They confuse military
defeats with leftists' political failures, accepting the
neo-liberal amalgamation of the two opposing concepts. Finally,
even in the case of Eastern Communism, they fail to see the
changing and dynamic nature of communism. The growing popularity
of a new socialist synthesis of social ownership, welfare
programmes, agrarian reform and council democracy is based on the
new socio-political movements.
In this sense, the post-Marxist view of the "end of
ideologies" is not only inconsistent with their own ideological
pronouncements but with the continuing ideological debate between
past and present Marxists and present debates and confrontations
with neo-liberalism and its post-Marxist offspring.
The Dissolution Of Classes And The Rise Of Identities
The post-Marxists attack the Marxist notion of class
analysis from various perspectives. On the one hand, they claim
that it obscures the equal or more significant importance of
cultural identities (gender, ethnicity). They accuse class
analysts of being "economic reductionists" and failing to explain
gender and ethnic differences within classes. They then proceed
further to argue that these "differences" define the nature of
contemporary politics. The second line of attack on class
analysis stems from a view that class is merely an intellectual
constructionit is essentially a subjective phenomenon that is
culturally determined. Hence, there are no "objective class
interests" that divide society since "interests" are purely
subjective and each culture defines individual preferences. The
third line of attack argues that there have been vast
transformations in the economy and society that have obliterated
the old class distinctions. In "post-industrial" society, some
post-Marxists argue, the source of power is in the new
information systems, the new technologies and those who manage
and control them. Society, according to this view, is evolving
toward a new society in which industrial workers are disappearing
in two directions: upward into the "new middle class" of high
technology and downward into the marginal "underclass".
Marxists have never denied the importance of racial, gender
and ethnic divisions within classes. What they have emphasised,
however, is the wider social system which generates these
differences and the need to join class forces to eliminate these
inequalities at every point: work, neighborhood, family. What
most Marxists object to is the idea that gender and race
inequalities can and should be analysed and solved outside of the
class framework: that landowner women with servants and wealth
have an essential "identity" with the peasant women who are
employed at starvation wages; that Indian bureaucrats of
neo-liberal governments have a common "identity" with peasant
Indians who are displaced from their land by the free market
economic policies. For example, Bolivia has an Indian
vice-president presiding over the mass arrest of cocoa-growing
Indian farmers.
Identity politics in the sense of consciousness of a
particular form of oppression by an immediate group can be an
appropriate point of departure. This understanding, however, will
become an "identity" prison (race or gender) isolated from other
exploited social groups unless it transcends the immediate points
of oppression and confronts the social system in which it is
embedded. And that requires a broader class analysis of the
structure of social power which presides over and defines the
conditions of general and specific inequalities.
The essentialism of identity politics isolates groups into
competing groups unable to transcend the politico-economic
universe that defines and confines the poor, workers, peasants,
employees. Class politics is the terrain within which to confront
"identity politics" and to transform the institutions that
sustain class and other inequalities.
Classes do not come into being by subjective fiat: they are
organised by the capitalist class to appropriate value. Hence,
the notion that class is a subjective notion, dependent on time,
place and perception confuses class and class consciousness.
While the former has objective status, the latter is conditioned
by social and cultural factors. Class consciousness is a social
construct which, however, does not make it less "real" and
important in history. While the social forms and expressions of
class consciousness vary, it is a recurring phenomenon throughout
history and most of the world, even as it is overshadowed by
other forms of consciousness at different moments (that is, race,
gender, national) or combined with them (nationalism and class
consciousness).
It is obvious that there are major changes in the class
structure, but not in the direction that the post-Marxists point
to. The major changes have reinforced class differences and class
exploitation, even as the nature and conditions of the exploited
and exploiter classes has changed. There are more temporary wage
workers today than in the past. There are many more workers
employed in unregulated labour markets (the so-called informal
sector today) than in the past. The issue of unregulated
exploitation does not describe a system that "transcends" past
capitalism: it is the return to nineteenth century forms of
labour exploitation. What requires new analysis is capitalism
after the welfare populist state has been demolished. This means
that the complex roles of states and parties which mediated
between capital and labour have been replaced by state
institutions more clearly and directly linked to the dominant
capitalist class. Neo-liberalism is unmediated ruling class state
power. Whatever the "multiple determinants" of state and regime
behavior in the recent past, today the neo-liberal model of
accumulation depends most directly on centralised state control
horizontally linked to the international banks to implement debt
payments and to export sectors to earn foreign exchange. Its
vertical ties to the citizen as subject and the primary link is
through a repressive state apparatus and para-statal "NGOs" who
defuse social explosions.
The dismantling of the welfare state means that the social
structure is more polarised: between low-paid or unemployed
public employees in health, education, social security on the one
hand and on the other hand, well-paid professionals linked to
multinational corporations, NGOs and other externally financed
institutions linked to the world market and centres of political
power. The struggle today is not only between classes in
factories but between the state and uprooted classes in the
streets and markets displaced from fixed employment and forced to
produce and sell and bear the costs of their social reproduction.
Integration into the world market by elite exporters and medium
and small compradores (importers of electronic goods, tourist
functionaries of multinational hotels and resorts) has its
counterpart in the disintegration of the economy of the interior:
local industry, small farms with the concomitant displacement of
producers to the city and overseas.
The import of luxury goods for the upper middle class is
based on the earnings remitted by "exported" labour of the poor.
The nexus of exploitation begins in the impoverishment of the
interior, the uprooting of the peasants and their immigration to
the cities and overseas. The income remitted by "exported labour"
provides hard currency to finance imports and neo-liberal
infrastructure projects to promote the reign of domestic export
and tourist businesses. The chain of exploitation is more
circuitous, but it still is located ultimately in the
capital-labour relation.
In the age of neo-liberalism, the struggle to recreate the
"nation", the national market, national production and exchange
is once again a basic historic demand just as the growth of
deregulated employment (informality) requires a powerful public
investment and regulatory centre to generate formal employment
with livable social conditions. In a word, class analysis needs
to be adapted to the rule of unmediated capital in an unregulated
labour market with international linkages in which the reformist
redistributive politics of the past have been replaced by
neo-liberal policies reconcentrating income and power at the top.
The homogenisation and downward mobility of vast sectors of
workers and peasants formerly in the regulated labour market
creates a great objective potential for unified revolutionary
action. In a word, there is a common class identity which forms
the terrain for organising the struggles of the poor.
In summary, contrary to what the post-Marxists argue, the
transformations of capitalism have made class analysis more
relevant than ever.
The growth of technology has exacerbated class differences,
not abolished them. The workers in micro-chip industries and
those industries in which the new chips have been incorporated
have not eliminated the working class. Rather, it has shifted the
sites of activity and the mode of producing within the continuing
process of exploitation. The new class structure insofar as it is
visible combines the new technologies to more controlling forms
of exploitation. Automation of some sectors increases the tempo
of work down the line; television cameras increase worker
surveillance while decreasing administrative staff; "quality work
circles", in which workers pressure workers, increase
self-exploitation without increases in pay or power. The
"technological revolution" is ultimately shaped by the class
structure of the neo-liberal counter-revolution. Computers allow
for agribusiness to control the costs and volume of pesticides,
but it is the low-paid temporary workers who spray and are
poisoned. Information networks are linked to putting out work to
the sweatshop or household (the informal economy) for production
of textiles, shoes and such like.
The key to understanding this process of combined and uneven
development of technology and labour is class analysis and within
that gender and race.
State And Civil Society
The post-Marxists paint a one-sided picture of the state.
The state is described as a huge inefficient bureaucracy that
plundered the public treasury and left the people poor and the
economy bankrupt. In the political sphere, the state was the
source of authoritarian rule and arbitrary rulings, hindering the
exercise of citizenship (democracy) and the free exchange of
commodities ("the market"). On the other hand, the post-Marxists
argue, "civil society" was the source of freedom, social
movements, citizenship. Out of an active civil society would come
an equitable and dynamic economy. What is strange about this
ideology is its peculiar capacity to overlook 50 years of [Latin
American] history. The public sector was of necessity
instrumental in stimulating industrialisation in the absence of
private investment and because of economic crisis, that is, world
crisis of the 1930s and war in the 1940s. Secondly, the growth of
literacy and basic public health was largely a public initiative.
In the century and a half of free enterprise, roughly from
the eighteenth century to the 1930s, Latin America suffered the
seven scourges of the Bible, while the invisible hand of the
market looked on: genocide, famine, disease, tyranny, dependency,
uprootedness and exploitation.
The public sector grew in response to these problems and
deviated from its public functions to the degree that it was
privately appropriated by business and political elites. The
"inefficiency of the state" is a result of it being directed
toward private gaineither in subsidising business interests
(through low costs of energy) or providing employment to
political followers. The inefficiency of the state is directly
related to its subordination to private interests. The state's
comprehensive health and educational programmes have never been
adequately replaced by the private economy, the church or the
NGOs. Both the private sector and the church-funded private
clinics and education cater to a wealthy minority. The NGOs, at
best, provide short-term care and education for limited groups in
local circumstances dependent on the whims and interests of
foreign donors.
As a systematic comparison indicates, the post-Marxists have
read the historical record wrong: they have let their
anti-statist rhetoric blind them to the positive comparative
accomplishments of the public over the private.
The argument that "the state" is the source of
authoritarianism is both true and untrue. Dictatorial states have
and will exist, but most have little or nothing to do with public
ownership, especially if it means expropriating foreign business.
Most dictatorships have been anti-statist and pro-free market,
today and in the past and probably in the future.
Moreover, the state has been an important supporter of
citizenship, promoting the incorporation of exploited sectors of
the population into the polity, recognising legitimate rights of
workers, blacks, women and others. States have provided the basis
for social justice by redistributing land, income and budgets to
favor the poor.
In a word, we need to go beyond the statist/anti-statist
rhetoric to define the class nature of the state and its basis of
political representation and legitimacy. The generalised
ahistorical, asocial attacks on the state are unwarranted and
only serve as a polemical instrument to disarm citizens of the
free market from forging an effective and rational alternative
anchored in the creative potentialities of public action.
The counter-position of "civil society" to the state is also
a false dichotomy. Much of the discussion of civil society
overlooks the basic social contradictions that divide "civil
society". Civil society or, more accurately, the leading classes
of civil society, while attacking the "statism" of the poor have
always made a major point of strengthening their ties to the
treasury and military to promote and protect their dominant
position in "civil society". Likewise, the popular classes in
civil society when aroused have sought to break the ruling
classes' monopoly of the state. The poor have always looked to
state resources to strengthen their socio-economic position in
relation to the rich. The issue is and always has been the
relation of different classes to the state.
The post-Marxist ideologues who are marginalised from the
state by the neo-liberals have made a virtue of their impotence.
Uncritically imbuing the stateless rhetoric from above, they
transmit it below. The post- Marxists try to justify their
organisational vehicles (NGOs) for upward mobility by arguing
that they operate outside of the state and in "civil society"
when in fact they are funded by foreign governments to work with
domestic governments.
"Civil society" is an abstraction from the deep social
cleavages engendered by capitalist society; social divisions
which have deepened under neo-liberalism. There is as much
conflict within civil society, between classes, as there is
between "civil society" and the state. Only in exceptionally rare
moments do we find it otherwise. Under fascist or totalitarian
states which torture, abuse and pillage the totality of social
classes do we find instances of a dichotomy between the state and
civil society.
To speak or write of "civil society" is to attempt to
convert a legalistic distinction into major political categories
to organise politics. In doing so, the differences between
classes are obscured and ruling class domination is not
challenged.
To counterpose the "citizen" to the "state" is to overlook
the profound links of certain citizens (the export elites, upper
middle class) to the state and the alienation and exclusion of
the majority of citizens (workers, unemployed, peasants) from
effective exercise of their elementary social rights. Elite
citizens using the state, empty citizenship of any practical
meaning for the majority, converting citizens into subjects.
Discussion of civil society, like the state, needs to specify the
social contours of social classes and the boundaries imposed by
the privileged class. The way the post-Marxists use the term as
an uncritical, undifferentiated concept serves to obscure more
than reveal the dynamics of societal change.
Planning, Bureaucracy And The Market
There is no question that central planning in the former
Communist countries was "bureaucratic", authoritarian in
conception and centralised in execution. From this empirical
observation, the post-Marxists argue that "planning" (central or
not) is by its nature antithetical to the needs of a modern
complex economy with its multiple demands, millions of consumers,
massive flows of information. Only the market can do the trick.
Democracy and the market go togetheranother point of convergence
between the "post-Marxists" and the neo-liberals. The problem
with this notion is that most of the major institutions in a
capitalist economy engage in central planning.
General Motors, Wal-Mart, Microsoft all centrally programme
and plan direct investments and expenditures toward further
production and marketing. Few, if any, post-Marxists focus their
critical attention on these enterprises. The post-Marxists do not
call into question the efficiency of central planning by the
multinational corporations or their compatibility with the
competitive electoral systems characteristic of capitalist
democracies.
The theoretical problem is the post-Marxists' confusion of
central planning with one particular historic-political variant
of it. If we accept that planning systems can be embedded in a
variety of political systems (authoritarian or democratic), then
it is logical that the accountability and responsiveness of the
planning system will vary.
Today in capitalist societies, the military budget is part
of state planning and expenditures based on "commands" to the
producers (and owners of capital) who respond in their own
inefficient way, producing and profiting for over 50 years. While
no "model" of planning, the point that needs to be made is that
central state planning, is not a phenomenon confined to
"Communist systems". The defects are generalised and found also
in capitalist economies. The problem in both instances (Pentagon
and Communism) is the lack of democratic accountability: the
military-industrial complex elite fix production, costs, demand
and supply.
The central allocation of state resources is essential in
most countries because of regional inequalities in resource
endowment, immigration, productivity, demand for products or for
a wealth of historical reasons. Only a decision made at the
centre can redistribute resources to compensate less developed
regions, classes, gender and racial groups adversely affected by
the above factors. Otherwise, the "market" tends to favour those
with historic advantages and favorable endowments creating polar
patterns of development or even fostering inter-regional/class
exploitation and ethnic conflicts.
The fundamental problem of planning is the political
structure which informs the planning process. Planning officials
elected and subject to organised communities and social groups
(producers, consumers, youth, women, racial minorities) will
allocate resources between production, consumption and
reinvestment different from those who are beholden to elites
embedded in industrial-military complexes.
Secondly, planning does not mean detailed specification. The
size of social budgets can be decided nationally by elected
representatives and allocated according to public assemblies
where citizens can vote on their local priorities. This practice
has been successful in Porto Alegre in Brazil for the past
several years under a municipal government led by the Workers'
Party. The relation between general and local planning is not
written in stone, nor are the levels of specification of
expenditures and investments to be determined at the "higher
levels". General allocations to promote strategic targets that
benefit the whole country, such as infrastructure, high
technology and education, are complemented by local decisions on
subsidising schools, clinics, cultural centres.
Planning is a key instrument in today's capitalist economy.
To dismiss socialist planning is to reject an important tool in
organising social change. To reverse the vast inequalities,
concentration of property, unjust budget allocations, requires an
overall plan with a democratic authority empowered to implement
it. Together with public enterprises and self-management councils
of producers and consumers, central planning is the third pillar
to a democratic transformation.
Finally, central planning is not incompatible with locally
owned productive and service activities, such as restaurants,
cafes, repair shops and family farms. Clearly, public authorities
will have their hands full managing the macro-structures of
society.
The complex decisions and information flows are much easier
to manage today with the mega-information processing computers.
The formula is: democratic representation plus computers plus
central planning equals efficient and socially equitable
production and distribution.
(End of Part 1)
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