Thoughts on John Rawls and the death of Western Marxism
Recently read an interesting discussion of Marxism and Ralwsianism by Professor Joseph Heath.
Some interesting narrative
So what happened to all this ferment and excitement, all of the high-powered theory being done under the banner of Western Marxism? It’s the damndest thing, but all of those smart, important Marxists and neo-Marxists, doing all that high-powered work, became liberals. Every single one of the theorists at the core of the analytic Marxism movement – not just Cohen, but Philippe van Parijs, John Roemer, Allen Buchanan, and Jon Elster – as well as inheritors of the Frankfurt School like Habermas, wound up embracing some variant of the view that came to be known as “liberal egalitarianism.” ...
If one felt like putting the point polemically, one might say that the “no-bullshit” Marxists, after having removed all of the bullshit from Marxism, discovered that there was nothing left but liberalism... But beyond this, the collapse of academic Marxism – as a body of normatively motivated social criticism – has been complete. Hence the fundamental unseriousness of contemporary Marxism in public discourse. Popular Marxism (along with the sort of Gramscian or “cultural” Marxism one finds in critical studies departments) has become a religion without a theology...
Some people have failed to notice these trends, unfortunately, because there was no point at which any one person “refuted” Marxism. Serious thinkers, for the most part, just slowly drifted away from it, the way that guests at a party filter out of the living room into the kitchen, where the conversation is livelier. In this case, the conversation that they drifted toward was Rawlsianism. That is how Rawls wound up triumphing over Marxism – by rendering it superfluous, making it so that no one needed to be a Marxist any more.
Exploitation in Marxism
The above is an interesting enough narrative, but woven throughout Heath makes the argument that normative critique of "exploitation" has become the linchpin of modern Marxists.
To make this long story short, one must start with the most important piece of bullshit in traditional Marxism. Marx always insisted that the major difference between his view and that of the “utopian socialists” was that he was not engaged in any sort of moral criticism of the capitalist system, nor was he claiming that capitalism was unjust...
This was obvious bullshit – indeed, at various points where Marx makes this claim, he sounds like he is, as the British like to say, “taking the piss.” ...
By [the 1970s] most Marxists had also realized that they needed a moral critique of capitalism, because the whole “predicting its downfall” angle had basically outlived its usefulness. So the number one piece of bullshit that got purged, at the very first meeting of the no-bullshit Marxism group, was the claim that Marxism could get along without a normative critique of capitalism.
The most natural way to specify the wrongness of exploitation is to say that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labour, and so if they receive something less than this, they are being treated unjustly. (This is why Marxists are wedded to the labour theory of value – because it makes this normative claim seem intuitively natural and compelling.
My Thoughts
I think the idea of Marxism as solely "objective" and "scientific" without a moral element is obviously bullshit, and Marx was very obviously motivated by a keen sense of righteousness and moral justice. As he famously wrote in the Theses on Feuerbach, the "point" is to "change it [the world]" and that obviously requires moral direction.
I think Marxist Humanism as a strain helps return Marxism to these roots while remaining true to Marx, correcting the bastardisations of Marxism-Leninism (of which there are many) without evolving into liberalism as these analytical philosophers did (and prior to them, Kautsky, Bernstein and much of the 2nd international era). And I think it does much better at this because it does not fall down this trap:
The most natural way to specify the wrongness of exploitation is to say that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labour, and so if they receive something less than this, they are being treated unjustly
The idea that workers are entitled to the fruits of their labour is certainly a shibboleth taken up by the likes of Jacobin, but I find it hard to accept this framing of Marx who repeatedly argues against this. Half of The Poverty of Philosophy is telling Proudhon why this idea does not work. It is clearly stated in Capital. And he clarifies this precise point in his Notes on Wagner. In Critique of the Gotha Programme Marx makes it clear that compensation based on labour time (the infamous labour vouchers he criticises in many other forms, and which also don't amount to the full fruits of their labour) are a half measure and not the end goal of communism.
I haven't read Philippe van Parijs, John Roemer, Allen Buchanan, and Jon Elster, so I probably should because I'd want to understand what they think Marx's issue is with exploitation. Because I'm completely unsurprised if the focus of conservation is asking whether "exploitation" specifically is "morally" right or wrong that it results in "eh, it seems fine"
The Big Quote Dump
Marx in Capital:
This sphere that we are deserting, within whose boundaries the sale and purchase of labour-power goes on, is in fact a very Eden of the innate rights of man. There alone rule Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham. Freedom, because both buyer and seller of a commodity, say of labour-power, are constrained only by their own free will. They contract as free agents, and the agreement they come to, is but the form in which they give legal expression to their common will. Equality, because each enters into relation with the other, as with a simple owner of commodities, and they exchange equivalent for equivalent. Property, because each disposes only of what is his own. And Bentham, because each looks only to himself. The only force that brings them together and puts them in relation with each other, is the selfishness, the gain and the private interests of each. Each looks to himself only, and no one troubles himself about the rest, and just because they do so, do they all, in accordance with the pre-established harmony of things, or under the auspices of an all-shrewd providence, work together to their mutual advantage, for the common weal and in the interest of all.
And:
the product is the property of the capitalist and not that of the labourer, its immediate producer. Suppose that a capitalist pays for a day’s labour-power at its value; then the right to use that power for a day belongs to him, just as much as the right to use any other commodity, such as a horse that he has hired for the day. To the purchaser of a commodity belongs its use, and the seller of labour-power, by giving his labour, does no more, in reality, than part with the use-value that he has sold. From the instant he steps into the workshop, the use-value of his labour-power, and therefore also its use, which is labour, belongs to the capitalist. By the purchase of labour-power, the capitalist incorporates labour, as a living ferment, with the lifeless constituents of the product. From his point of view, the labour-process is nothing more than the consumption of the commodity purchased, i. e., of labour-power; but this consumption cannot be effected except by supplying the labour-power with the means of production. The labour-process is a process between things that the capitalist has purchased, things that have become his property. The product of this process belongs, therefore, to him, just as much as does the wine which is the product of a process of fermentation completed in his cellar.
There is obvious sarcasm and venom in Marx's words here, as he is somewhat mocking of the liberal/capitalist viewpoint that this is truly "neutral" and "equal" and "fair." But his point is not that this exchange of labour power for wages needs to be "made" equal or fair to end "exploitation." I will get to that in more detail soon.
Marx clarifies the above points in Notes on Wagner:
I depict the capitalist as the necessary functionary of capitalist production and demonstrate at great length that he not only “subtracts” or “robs” but enforces the production of surplus value, thus first helping to create what is to be subtracted; what is more, I demonstrate in detail that even if only equivalents were exchanged in the exchange of commodities, the capitalist—as soon as he pays the worker the real value of his labour-power—would have every right, i.e. such right as corresponds to this mode of production, to surplus-value...
The obscure man falsely attributes to me the view that “the surplus-value produced by the workers alone remains, in an unwarranted manner, in the hands of the capitalist entrepreneurs” (Note 3, p. 114). In fact I say the exact opposite: that the production of commodities must necessarily become “capitalist” production of commodities at a certain point, and that according to the law of value governing it, the “surplus-value” rightfully belongs to the capitalist and not the worker.
Engels succinctly criticises those socialists who do want to make this "exchange" "fair" or "equal" in Anti-Duhring:
it is the characteristic peculiarity of all social confusion that ruminates on "true value" to imagine that in existing society the worker does not receive the full "value" of his labour, and that socialism is destined to remedy this...
[These socialists say] the worker should receive the "full proceeds of labour" {D. C. 324}. [124] Not only the labour product, but labour itself should be directly exchangeable for products one hour’s labour for the product of another hour's labour. This however, gives rise at once to a very “serious” hitch. The whole product is distributed. The most important progressive function of society, accumulation, is taken from society and put into the hands, placed at the arbitrary discretion, of individuals. The individuals can do what they like with their “proceeds”, but society at best remains as rich or poor as it was. The means of production accumulated in the past have therefore been centralised in the hands of society only in order that all means of production accumulated in the future may once again be dispersed in the hands of individuals. One knocks to pieces one’s own premises; one has arrived at a pure absurdity...
Such is the self-destructive confusion that lies behind the “value of labour”.
A very large part of Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy is criticising the idea of exchanging equal values of labour:
One hour of Peter's labor exchanges for one hour of Paul's labor. That is Mr. Bray's fundamental axiom... [A bunch of extrapolation]
...Well, then! What has the exchange of equal quantities of labor brought us? Overproduction, depreciation, excess of labor followed by unemployment; in short, economic relations such as we see in present-day society, minus the competition of labor.
And he concludes with the crux of Marxism:
...Thus, if all the members of society are supposed to be actual workers, the exchange of equal quantities of hours of labor is possible only on condition that the number of hours to be spent on material production is agreed on before hand. But such an agreement negates individual exchange.
Negates individual exchange. It is fundamental to Marxism that the goal is to form a common conscious social plan for production and consumption. It is not centred around ending exploitation narrowly, but alienation.
Exploitation is relevant not as a moral end in itself, but because of what it results in: growing relative inequality between workers and capitalists. At a certain scale, you can have very little exploitation of any individual worker but a rapidly growing inequality. One dollar pocketed by the capitalist a day adds up if you have ten thousand workers. Even if the absolute position of workers rise, their relative position can still fall, as said in Wage Labour and Capital:
If, therefore, the income of the worker increased with the rapid growth of capital, there is at the same time a widening of the social chasm that divides the worker from the capitalist, and increase in the power of capital over labour, a greater dependence of labour upon capital.
Capital grows ever greater and ever more concentrated, and out of the hands of those who produce it: alienation is core of this critique. Marx frequently criticised the "inversion" of things. In this case, capital dominating the producer. At its most philosophical, he critiques where the object and the subject are mixed around. He argues that Hegelanism "must be turned right side up again," with materialism forming the base rather than idealism. A large part of The Holy Family, in his Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right, again all of The Poverty of Philosophy, and right in Chapter One of Capital we get this view.
Poverty of Philosophy:
Instead of saying like everyone else: when the weather is fine, a lot of people are to be seen going out for a walk. M. Proudhon makes his people go out for a walk in order to be able to ensure them fine weather.
Paris Manuscripts:
the more objects the worker produces the less he can possess and the more he falls under the sway of his product, capital... the more the worker spends himself, the more powerful becomes the alien world of objects which he creates over and against himself, the poorer he himself – his inner world – becomes, the less belongs to him as his own... It means that the life which he has conferred on the object confronts him as something hostile and alien.
Capital:
A commodity appears, at first sight, a very trivial thing, and easily understood. Its analysis shows that it is, in reality, a very queer thing, abounding in metaphysical subtleties and theological niceties...
In order, therefore, to find an analogy, we must have recourse to the mist-enveloped regions of the religious world. In that world the productions of the human brain appear as independent beings endowed with life, and entering into relation both with one another and the human race. So it is in the world of commodities with the products of men’s hands. This I call the Fetishism which attaches itself to the products of labour, so soon as they are produced as commodities, and which is therefore inseparable from the production of commodities.
He's point is not that workers get short changed and ought to be compensated better, it is that the free exchange of capitalism means an ever increasing amount of wealth in the world lies outside of the conscious control of society collectively and in the hands and interests of a decreasingly few. As he says near the climax of Capital:
That which is now to be expropriated is no longer the labourer working for himself, but the capitalist exploiting many labourers. This expropriation is accomplished by the action of the immanent laws of capitalistic production itself, by the centralisation of capital. One capitalist always kills many... Along with the constantly diminishing number of the magnates of capital, who usurp and monopolise all advantages of this process of transformation, grows the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, exploitation... The monopoly of capital becomes a fetter upon the mode of production, which has sprung up and flourished along with, and under it. Centralisation of the means of production and socialisation of labour at last reach a point where they become incompatible with their capitalist integument. This integument is burst asunder. The knell of capitalist private property sounds. The expropriators are expropriated.
Or more succinctly, from the Manifesto:
Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.
So to argue that "exploitation doesn't matter" but to agree that "excessive inequality is the problem" seems to be missing a rather lot, in my view. It is the concentration and centralisation of capital that is the core of his critique, with "exploitation" being a path that gets there. Whether "exploitation" is moral or not, or whether capital concentration happens by an incidentally different mechanism, seems to ignore the larger picture.