Is Marxism still relevant today?
Introduction
The fall of the Soviet Union and the defeat of the communist block were proclaimed as signs of victory of liberal ideas. First to say that ‘the triumph of the West, of the Western idea, is evident first of all in the total exhaustion of viable systematic alternatives to Western liberalism’ (Fukuyama 1989, p. 2). The alternative which Fukuyama (1989) refers to in his analysis is the socialist system designed according to the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. The classical ideas of class struggle and eventual defeat of the capitalist system by socialism might not succeed in the long run. However, it does not mean that the ideas of Marx and especially refined ideas of Marxism are not applicable to the modern world.
With the rapid changes, accompanied by technological progression and upheavals of social transformations, the capitalist system is exhausting its resources, ‘but it may not be socialism that replaces it’ (Eagleton 2011, p.47). However, this paper does not claim or tries to present the evidence that the era of socialism and worldwide unity of the working class is waiting. Instead, this paper aims to take a closer look at key ideas of the Marxist domain.
Some would say that the methods of analysis outlined by Marx were disproved by the collapse of the USSR. Despite the collapse of communist Russia, ‘…the breakup of the Soviet bloc enables theorists to express Marxist ideas without having to defend the heavy-handed actions of the Soviet Union’ (Cohn and Hira 2020, p.109). The crush might just be part of historical materialism. The outdated forces of production hit a deadlock when the new production relations and modes were building up. The classical idea of historical materialism is thus discussed in this paper. Looking at the Chinese social and economic organisation, historical materialist analysis is discussed.
Although the key reference to Marx work comes from the economic analysis, this paper focuses on the analysis of social structure as well as finding the evidence in the 21st century. Moreover, it is important to point that Marxism is not exclusive to the classical ideas of Marx and his methods of analysis. The paper, thus, looks at the works of Vladimir Lenin and his analysis of imperialism. For example, Fuchs (2010) using Lenin’s concepts of imperialism, presents an analysis of the contemporary capitalist system with application to macroeconomics. The works of various authors support the statement of this paper that the core concepts of Marxist tradition have not vanished away and can be used to analyse the world.
The Marxist tradition and its neo-classical interpretations also show that the ideas and concepts are relevant today. ‘Marxism is a living tradition that has changed and spread in different directions…’ (Glaser and Walker 2007, p. 4) The concept of hegemony and hegemonic domination, presented in Gramsci’s work, is also discussed in this paper. The concept of hegemony ‘is about the relation of superstructures to structure, including the relation of the social and cultural organization to the economy, or ‘the necessities of production’’ (Johnson 2007, p. 99). Physical oppression is not enough to establish total domination. It is also, necessary to win approval and control the minds of the oppressed.
The capitalist system which we are living in these days presents us with a variety of opportunities to increase the level of our welfare removing all the differences between one another however we remain unequal. Despite the upheavals of social equality and egalitarian system which are given by capitalism, the exploitation of the classes remains untouched. Even though some of the features of the world have been transformed, but the mechanism that is behind the operational side of global processes reflects Marx’s analysis. Therefore, the paper presents the analysis of historical materialism along with a discussion of the imperialist concepts. Following classical ideas of the Marxist tradition, the hegemonic theory of Antonio Gramsci is also discussed in this paper in order to support the argument that Marxism is still relevant today.
Historical Materialism: Is it relevant?
Since the first publication of Marx’s work, the world has undergone drastic changes. The changes removed powerful monarchy or open colonisation of territories. In the twenty-first century, people no longer pay attention to constant technological innovations. Technology and what comes as a side product has become a routine part of social life. Someone would loudly proclaim that we are living in a different world, thus what was written before no longer can be used to look at the bright present.
The present, however, is not so much different from the past. The time when Marx and Engels were writing their works was also different from the glorious time of knights and despotic feudalism. Every part of history moved from one system to another, finding new productive forces and transforming the outlook of social relations. With each rise of the new historical era, exhausting realities of the past would stand in conflict. To these days, even if the scenery differs, the process remained unaltered. This process is also known as a dialectical process.
The notion of the dialectical process was adopted from Hegel’s works. History is a collection of events that change the course of life.
‘Every idea, every force, irrepressibly bred its opposite, and the two merged into a “unity” that in turn produced its own contradiction’. (Heilbroner 1999, p. 142)
The contradiction, for Marx, is centred on the economic component of each society. It is the forces of production that breed their own rivalry force. When the shift in the mode of production as well as in their relations of production come in contradiction, the political ‘superstructure’ is altered as a result.(Cohn and Hira 2020, p. 104)
The dialectical process is the foundation of one of the key ideas of Karl Marx. The idea of historical materialism. As this paper presents, the historical material can find its reflection in today’s world. To be precise, ‘by history, Marx means not ‘‘everything that has ever happened,’’ but a specific trajectory underlying it. He is using ‘‘history’’ in the sense of the significant course of events, not as a synonym for the whole of human existence to date’ (Eagleton 2011, p.4).
Modern capitalism is not the same as capitalism during the life years of Marx. The system is no longer based around a clear division of social classes where one class is open to oppress the other. However, the distinctive feature of the system remains the same. Its exploitative nature. ‘Spectacular inequalities of wealth and power, imperial warfare, intensified exploitation, an increasingly repressive state: if all these characterize today’s world, they are also the issues on which Marxism has acted and reflected for almost two centuries (Eagleton 2011, pp. 8–9).
What is important to the study of the present world, is the logic behind the historical materialism concept. As mentioned above every change that takes place leads to the destruction of the system the change is made in. The decisions that are made in private life, in the context of institutional capitalism, work-life, in any social group a person might join throughout the life course ‘lead collectively to large-scale patterns of change’ (Glaser and Walker 2007, p. 233). There is something predictable in every society because we are ‘socially constructed individuals within specific institutions behave in predictable ways…’ (Glaser and Walker 2007, p. 233).
To some extend the concept of historical materialism suggests that there is nothing new to be expected. There is always a struggle between new and old modes of production. With the new machinery and the new technology, people acquire new skills. The skills require wider education accessibility, intensifying competition and causing a rise in unemployment (Eagleton 2011, p.40).
According to classical Marxism, capitalism is the final stage before the beginning of the socialism and end of class struggle and any social division. The capitalist system and how it operates destroys itself. However, it is also important to note about the historical materialism analysis that ‘…the various modes of production from ancient slavery to modern capitalism follow upon one another in some unalterable pattern. Engels remarked that history ‘‘moves often in leaps and bounds and in a zigzag line’ (Eagleton 2011, pp.55–56).
The rise of the communist block did not signal the end of capitalism. Instead, the capitalist economic system and supporting ideological structure flourished and saw the end of communism. Historical materialism did not fail. The socialism which was established in post-Imperial Russia did not reach its culminating point. Moreover, the classical analysis of Marx stated that the transition to the socialist society had to take place in an economically and socially developed state. The Soviet Union did not follow such a path. ‘Marx himself never imagined that socialism could be achieved in impoverished conditions…Nor did Marxists ever imagine that it was possible to achieve socialism in one country alone. The movement was international, or it was nothing’ (Eagleton 2011, p.16).
One might take into account the developments which are taking place in modern China. The state which accepted the capitalist economic system, actively progressing from one state to another. At the same time, the social organisation and national aspirations are compatible with the Marxist stance. Even though these words might sound odd to many people who saw a crash of the communist bloc, Marx’s ideas and regenerated socialist notions of society are still alive and work well in China. Does it mean that Marx’s ideas are still relevant? One must pay attention to the modern Chinese state and its government was able to interpret Marxist’s ideas to the new realities. As sharply pointed out by Yu (2019):
‘Xi Jinping Thought on Socialism with Chinese Characteristics for a New Era follows the tradition of the Chinese communists of sinicizing Marxism. It integrates the basic tenets of Marxism with the concrete social realities of China in the new era. It stands on the ground of the new era and answers the questions of the new era. It is the latest fruit of the Sinicization of Marxism and is the Marxism of the new era in China’ (p. 577)
What is crucial for understanding Marx is his ideas, despite being written in a different context from today, are malleable and can be adapted to the present context. Therefore, Marxist tradition is relevant to look at the modern world.
Imperialism: are there any colonies?
There are no longer any colonial establishments. Each country is given a right to its sovereignty and the right to determine its pathway. The colonial past, as it is claimed, is no longer approved and highly criticised. However, it is not the case that the features of imperialism and domination are no longer present. This section states that, according to Lenin’s concepts of imperialism, the world remains divided and exploited under the system of capitalism.
According to the data, ‘we live in a world of persisting inequality that is global the phenomenon, and that therefore people are not moving close together, but tend to be more separated’ (Fuchs 2010, p. 217). Moreover, it is only 25% of the world’s population that is accounted as ‘developed’ and it’s 70% of the world’s wealth that is based in the hands of this 25% (Fuchs, 2008 cited from Fuchs 2010 p. 217).
The system which operates globally is a form of upper-class domination. To be more precise the domination of the capitalist class. The system has changed its mode of production from labour-intensive activities of manufacturing or agriculture to more invisible processes of financialisation and web commodification. With the rise of the new mode of production, we see how the upper classes were adapting to receive the benefits of the exploitation at expense of the other part of the society. The financial sector which is built on the idea of debt and speculation flourishes and expands across its native borders in a search of its survival.
The expansion of the capitalist system has been enabled by the rapid spread of the globalisation process. The process enabled us to connect all parts of the world. The global interconnectedness enables to improve the quality of life of some societies as well as deteriorate the conditions of the other. Globalisation is a change that breeds its own destruction, according to historical materialism. With improvement in travel and communication, the exploitive system of capitalism is able to increase its sphere of influence and dominance. Globalisation ‘increases their profits and helps them control the proletariat’ (Cohn and Hira 2020, p. 104). According to Eagleton (2011):
‘The new information technologies played a key role in the increasing globalisation of the system, as a handful of transnational corporations distributed production and investment across the planet in pursuit of the readiest profits. A good deal of manufacturing was outsourced to cheap wage locations…’ (p.4)
The capitalist industry, according to Marxist ideas, has to seek alternative markets in a search for new resource channels and sales of the goods. There is a constant search for cheaper labour and cheaper resources for production which can be exploited. In the modern world, most of the manufacturing is no longer located in the European countries or in any other ‘developed’ states due to high costs. The manufacturing takes place in countries that offer cheap labour forces, depriving their workers of any sort of welfare benefits or social protection. For example, ‘…women and girls from the most marginalised communities toiled for as little as 15 cents (11p) an hour in homes across India. Child labour and forced labour were rife and wages regularly suppressed’ (Guardian 2019). The exploitation which seemed to be a feature of the colonial past is present to these days, ‘…monopoly super-profits accrued through the super-exploitation of cheap labour in the colonies provide a material basis for the formation of a stratum of relatively well-to-do workers, a labour aristocracy, distinct from the mass of wage-labourers (Glaser and Walker 2007, p. 21). The form of imperialism might have changed, but its features which are enabled by the process of globalisation and which are so vividly presented in Lenin’s work finds its place in the modern world.
Continuing on the topic of imperialism, the concepts that are outlined in Lenin’s work such as overconcentration of production and capital development is also evident. The concentration refers to the rise of the large multinational corporation and their subsequent growth of power over small companies, leaving no room for the healthy competition of economic activities. As presented in Fuchs’ work (2010), ‘Lenin argued that under imperialism, big companies dominate the economy’ (p. 231). The financial sector accounts for the largest share of capital and continuously growing in the share of capital assets in comparison to other industries, according to the data presented in Fuch (2010) work. Using the Marxist concept of analysis, the modern world does not present a much different picture, rather it appears according to Marx.
Imperialism which was analysed by Lenin has not disappeared. Instead, the key features of such a system are sacred under different cover of the modern system. The global economy has become more open and interconnected due to the globalisation process. At the same time, this process allowed exploiting capitalist industries to expand their reach for the preservation of their own profits and their potential increase. There might not be any territorial domination and any evident division of superior or inferior, but there is neither equality. What we see these days is ‘a a geographically strongly divided class system’ (Fuch 2010, p. 235). Therefore, the ideas of Marxism are still relevant.
Hegemony
The concept of hegemony can take different forms. Hegemony, according to neomercantilists, is viewed as the concept from the point of state — to — state relations where a single dominates all. For the purpose of this paper, the concept of hegemony is discussed according to Marxist tradition. The domination feature of the concept is also relevant for the Marxist hegemon.
The concept of hegemony derives from the writing of Antonio Gramsci. Later, the neo-Marxist thinking and neo-Gramscian followers reinterpret the concept to fit it to the modern realities. Hegemony, according to Gramsci, is secreted in class terms. Similar to classical Marx, there is a domination of a single class or ruling class. The domination, unlike traditional Marxism, is not exclusive to physical exploitation and coercion. There is a need to dominate the consciousness of the oppressed class. Without control over minds, the chances of being defeated are high. The hegemony is about gaining ‘the active consent of subordinate classes based on shared values, ideas, and material interests’ (Cohn and Hira 2020, p. 112).
Winning active consent is something that practises in the modern system. The system that tries to win the ‘hearts and minds of the people in order to pursue the interests of the powerful few. The values of the capitalist system are incorporated in every social institution, including the schools where children are tough to work in order to gain a ‘profit’ in a form of a mark. Later, the system becomes more elaborate when schooling ends and student in higher education institutions have to ‘fight’ over the work placements and the passes to every other state of society. Those who did not make it do not rise against the system, trying to fight, rather it is silent consent.
The hegemony is also about control over supporting structure which enables the ruling class to maintain the subordinate. The surrounding structure encompasses ‘… specific institutions — newspapers, universities, labour unions, chambers of commerce, factories, political rallies — have an active influence on the frameworks of thought and interpretation through which various groups view the world’ (Glaser and Walker 2007, p. 238). Moreover ‘there are concrete cultural institutions through which individuals’ social consciousness (their “ideology”) is shaped, and these institutions are objects of struggle among powerful agents within society’ (Glaser and Walker 2007, p. 238).
The social control over the key structures and reproduction of the ideas such as liberal or neo-liberal economic ideas is actively present in the modern world. The dominance of the financial system is based according to western economic tradition. The financial system, for example, operates does not account any cultural difference which some might face. Instead, the system is actively accepted and supported by the benefits which come in a form of international recognition which at the same time has become so crucial with intensified interconnectedness of the world and spread of globalisation.
The values of the liberal world order are imposed on all parts of the world. Especially, such process was active after the fall of the communist bloc, offering ‘in the shape of economic shock therapy, a form of daylight robbery politely known as privatization, joblessness for tens of millions, stupendous increases in poverty and inequality, the closure of free nurseries, the loss of women’s rights and the near ruin of the social welfare networks that had served these countries so well’ (Eagleton 2011, p.14).
The consent which is exploited by the dominant class leads to ‘…growing inequalities between rich and poor in a number of states are reviving interest in alternatives to the liberal economic model’ (Cohn and Hira 2020, p. 109). This trend signals the possibility of counter-hegemony which can replace the current system if a new ideology along with a new value system and institutions of control places. Until such time ‘…by providing welfare and other benefits, the state placates the workers and gains their support for capitalism’ (Cohn and Hira 2020, p.104). These little benefits which are given not at the expense of the ruling class overshadow the great class division and exploitation. The pandemic that spreader in late 2019 worse the facts of global inequality. According to Financial Times (2020) ‘about 2bn people around the world work informally, with limited access to social protection or benefits’; poorer countries went into the pandemic with less well-resourced healthcare systems, and many have been hit by lost tourism revenue, lower remittances from citizens working abroad, collapsing exports and rising public debt’.
The silence of a large share of the population and their consent, as stated in the hegemonic theory of Gramsci, has been depicted in the modern world. The features of oppression and dominance of the single class are present and depicted according to Marxist concepts. Thus, making the tradition relevant to the modern world.
Conclusion
Marxism tradition extends to all academic parts. This paper tried to take key components of the classical Marxist concepts including historical materialism and imperialism as well as bring to the attention redefined ideas of hegemony based on the class struggle.
Looking at historical materialism, the paper tried to apply the logic of analysis in order to look at the modern trends and to depict any similarities. It is the case that the modes of production and the working relations are subjects to each other. The change in every historical stage is inevitable as technology develops the means. There are classes that are socially and economically divided. Despite the fact that the Soviet attempt to bring closer the final state according to historical materialism did not succeed, it does not mean that the logic behind the concept is not relevant to the present.
At the same time, Lenin’s accounts of imperialism are clearly reflected in the realities of the modern world. Overconcentration of the financial sector, expropriation of cheap resources and overload of the capitalist regime for its own survival continues to take place. Modern capitalism is still reliant on the tears and blood of its dominant forces. The fiscal policies, inflations and many more economic manipulations for the sake of the system put in danger the people. It is the people who are sacrificed for the sake of the system.
To support the two classical ideas of the Marxist tradition, the hegemonic theory outlined in Gramsci’s work has also been scrutinised in this work. The ideas of the dominant class and silent control over the minds of the subordinated via concessions have been reflected in the modern realities. The neo-liberal system which aims to homogenise the world for the benefit of the few is still actively pursued these days. Therefore, the paper shows that the concepts that derive from the Marxist tradition are relevant to the present day.
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