Was Marx a Mistake for the Left?
Probably.
By artist Keith Walsh/RDFA Gallery
In June 2023, Phil Magness and Michael Makovi published the final version of their paper, The Mainstreaming of Marx, in the Journal of Political Economy. The argument is simple: Marx was a somewhat obscure figure who was catapulted to global fame when his followers conquered Russia. The paper uses large scale quantitative information to verify what intellectual historians knew. The Soviets made Marx, not the other way around.
The paper is provocative for many reasons, but I will argue for the following hypothesis formed in response to this paper: Was Marx a mistake for the global Left? In other words, was it a real mistake to base your understanding of the world on specifically Marxist ideas? If the 1917 revolution had not happened, would a non-Marxist Left have been better? I am not a Leftist, so I will first articulate what I think the best version of Leftism is and then argue that Marx was a severe hinderance to that.
So what might a good version of the Left be? Here’s my take:
Leftists believe that the social world is about the repression of everyday people by some sort of ruling class, whether it be wealthy property owners, a racially dominant group, or men.
Leftists also believe that states are the right way to solve the problems of oppression, inequality, and social coordination. These problems should be addressed through state action or other very collective processes. There is a deep suspicion of private interests, with socialists arguing for property abolition.
That’s it. You might also argue that the Left has a cultural aversion to bourgeois culture, but I don’t think it is necessary.
So why was Marx a mistake for the Left? First, none of the elaborate social theory offered by Marx is required to describe the Left’s theory of the social world or offer policy solutions. Notice that I didn’t need to resort to ideas like “species being,” the labor theory of value, or historical materialism to describe the core Left beliefs. Whatever its merits as an abstract idea, Marxist social theory just doesn’t provide a lot of value added.
Second, Marxism really pulled the Left towards the most hard-core versions of socialism. If you read the end of Communist Manifesto, you hit an infamous passage where Marx says the revolution will lead to the dissolution of the market, the state, families, and religion. Being anti-market is a core sentiment of the Left, but Marxism had all kinds of crazy baked into it from the start. I suspect a more grounded Left would have embraced things like families, religion, and democracy and asked how to reform them in an authentic Left direction rather than ditch them. If you think I exaggerate, consider that many Marxist nations in the 20th century did actually try to abolish these institutions in some way, such as the Soviet Union, Mao’s China, and Pol Pot’s Cambodia.
Third, Marx and the Soviets were a package deal. In the 1920s, to be in the discussion among the Left meant that you read Marx and looked to the Soviets as a model. Over time, that softened, as Western Leftists started to discount the USSR as inauthentic
”state socialism.” But that was mainly an intellectual’s affectation. As the most powerful anti-capitalist nation ever, the USSR, and later Mao’s China, still absorbed the most attention. To be Left was to be in favor of some version of the USSR, even if it wasn’t the one we actually got.
One could say more, but this is enough to raise the point. Marxism saddles you with a mentally convoluted theory that draws you in really extreme directions, while marrying you to really brutal regimes. That’s enough to make any sensible Leftist yearn for an alternate timeline where Kerensky was able to pull it together and the Bolsheviks remained a small extremist group that sat around and read obscure German philosophy pamphlets.
Bottom line: Leftism has a core that is worth debated, but the Marxist version was cracked from the start.
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#2 seems questionable. Weren't a lot of leftists anarchists before the Bolshevik revolution? And you quote Marx about the end goal is for the state to also dissolve.