Permalink, Is Classical Marxism Compatible with Liberalism and Republicanism?, cam, 1512 words, 3 comments, Karl Marx, Freidrich Engels, Liberalism, Republicanism, Communism

The question popped up whether Classical Marxism is illiberal or not. Are the political actions and philosophies in Marx' and Engel's writings repugnant to, or consistent with, Liberalism and Republicanism? There is often the reminder that Marx' writing is radically different to the political forms that were made in his name, the worst being the totalitarian excesses of Stalin and Mao - however Marx and Engel published the Communist Manifesto which was specifically written for a popular (proletarian) audience and can be compared to the principles of Liberalism and Republicanism.

I am using the common definition of Liberalism and Republicanism that appears consistently on South Sea Republic. Basically liberalism is a political philosophy which maximises freedom and individual autonomy and hence morality. Republicanism is the political science side of liberalism which minimizes tyranny with the goal of eradicating it entirely from political organisation. Both liberalism and republicanism tap into the efficiencies of self-organisation found in political, economic, social and cultural freedom/liberty.

Marx and Engel published the Communist Manifesto in 1848. This became the political document for communism and its approach to proletariat emancipation. Marx divides the political world along class lines, with the powerful minority being the bourgeoisie and the oppressed majority as the proletariat.

The bourgeoisie are the capital class while the proletariat are the commoditised labour class. Inherent in Marx' analysis of mid 19thC economic analysis is that the proletariat are oppressed into slavery by the economic and political conditions of turning a profit on the capital investment. In Das Kapital there is some recognition that the free market helps commoditise products as well, which places pressures on productivity and capital return, but the main focus is on the negative effects this has on free labour.

Marx argues that machinery is a productivity tool but when capitalists are faced with decreasing margins they turn to increasing productivity by oppressing labor - such as making them work longer, or using the commoditising effects of machinery to employ women or children.

While liberalism promotes political freedom and individual autonomy it does so with the recognition that immoral actions are repugnant. The use of child labor is such a case. Morality and social/cultural practices have progressed sufficiently that the use of child labor is repugnant.

An additional issue is that Marx was at the beginning of transformation which was initially capital intensive. Industrialism led to the digital era which has hugely commoditised many aspects of production. Marx was seeing the confluence of capital intensive production and the beginning of specialist labor.

Prior to industrialisation, specialist labor were the crafting guilds who produced one off items. Now labour specialisation is so high that professions we might have once considered blue collar have become white collar. Rather than the commoditisation of labor such that a single labourer cannot make a single item of manufacture has become irrelevant. In telecommunications for instance, what Marx considered proletariat trades, have become highly specialised labour.

The above arguments do not necessarily mean that Marx was illiberal, however his pursuit of political revolution was. For someone who seemed to understand disruptive technology and its social-political transformation qualities, he misjudged the plight of workers as being production and property based - rather than a deficit in political equality.

As a consequence the Communist Manifesto is inherently tyrannical, despotic and creates political inequity. This brings it into conflict with liberalism and republicanism. For instance:

We have seen above that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling

class to win the battle of democracy.

The focus on socio-economic class rather than political equity is the main error of Marxism. History has been a constant battle against tyranny and political inequality. Each step forward by humanity in this area has been through the retreat of tyranny under new technologies - such as constitutionalism, universal rights, enfranchisement etc.

In the quoted paragraph above Marx and Engels are not concerned with political equality or the republican principles of majority rule as long as the minority are secure in their rights - even a powerful minority. Marx and Engels have more in common with Schmitt - where the otherness is cast from 'ruling'. Unfortunately this cast comes from the state of exception.

Of course, in the beginning, this [proletariat revolution] cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

This is classic "we must suspend the constitution in order to save it" though in this case it becomes we must strip a minority of all rights, property and political freedom in order to save the majority. This is an authoritarian argument. Again this places Marx and Engels closer to Schmitt than it does liberalism.

Communism by its very description moves production from the private to the public sphere:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive

forces as rapidly as possible.

Central planning has shown to be a failure when faced with the more efficient and innovative forms of social organisation and self organisation which are found in capitalism, economic liberty and political freedom. Central to liberalism is the efficiency and collective positives that can be undertaken through self-interest and self-organisation. The collapse of a central part of economic activity - production - to the state is an inhibition and restriction on liberalistic freedom.

Commonly in Marxist communism is the misconception that the eradication of class conflict will create a utopia. This totally misses the concern of political equality and the individual being the dominant political entity. In liberalism this makes all individuals politically equal including those who are categorised by Marx and Engel as being either bourgeoisie or proletariat.

Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of

one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of

circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

This is a misjudging of the history of political technology which has been subtractive to the state by the reduction of tyranny by technological means. The main one being constitutionalism. Nearly all political innovations have been undertaken to reduce the despotic, tyrannical, dictatorial or totalitarian powers of the executive. With each step forward political equality is advanced whether it is separation of powers, emancipation, female suffrage, etc etc.

By casting tyranny as being class based - rather than state based - this enables and promotes tyranny in the name of the majority. Again we see parallels with Schmitt.

There remains the issue of property which Marx believed should be abolished in its totality. John Locke advanced the meaning of personal property when he argued that when an individual works on an item of nature, such as a tree, then that resultant product becomes his property. In my case, as a software consultant, under Locke's definition the source code I produce is my property such that it can be sold, licensed or placed in the creative commons at my discretion.

Locke's definition makes labour and goods saleable in a free market as well as enabling the cost differentiation of non-commoditised labour. Property does remain an issue especially when it is backed by the monopoly on violence that the state has.

Australia saw one of its great Republicans in Dan Deniehy rail against the squattocracy who sat atop a malapportioned Legislative Council in NSW and resisted bills from the Legislative Assembly which would remove their power. America faced their own illiberal robber barons who created cartels and monopolies rather than compete free markets and used a corrupt Congress to further their ends.

This is an issue, but in a political equitable system, this is not the issue that it appears. Certainly not to the point of revolution. Marx and Engels, while acute observers of the excesses of capitalism, would have been better in spending more time focusing on political inequity and the republican political technologies that would have enabled the full force of public opinion to be brought to bear on a liberal democratic system.

Is Classical Marxism illiberal and unrepublican? My answer is yes.

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