Documenti di Didattica
Documenti di Professioni
Documenti di Cultura
A socio, political and economic philosophy Marxism influenced the thinking of a large part of the militant
intellectuals and academics in most countries for a more than one and half centuries continue to have
it’s presence. So long as the status of the market economy remains highly uncertain and volatile in view
of the wide income disparities in every society and the increasing global inequalities, part of the Marxist
critique of the capitalist system, appropriately revised to address different local conditions, will continue
to hold its charm and retain its appeal for many.
At the same time, Marxism has received a shocking defeat from which it will not be easy for it to restore
it’s old charm and form. Marxists now than ever before reluctant to equate socialism with public
ownership of the means of production. Marxism will more insistently and intensely be questioned on it’s
obsession for ever increasing production, consumption, urbanization and concretization, for its failure
to give enough and considerate thought to the problem of defining with clarity on ever growing human
needs and to the threat and peril posed by the sway of hedonistic consumerist values in advanced
societies which serve as role models for the poorer parts of the world to emulate and follow.
According to the Marx’s forecast, capitalism was to crumble to grief not because of its moral deficits but
because the contradiction between the means and relations of production inherent in it would, at a
certain phase, become a permanent obstacle on production. Paradoxically, in revolutionary regimes, it
was the highly centralized, autocratic, bureaucratised party leadership and management of the
economy which kept production and productivity levels miserably low and clogged the socialist system
from dealing with the pace of technological change.
The paper in which Stephen Resnick and Richard Wolff argue that what failed in Russia was not socialism
but state capitalism is mere trivial. What other form public ownership of the means of production can
take, when the state itself allocates all the resources, set the priorities and targets of development and
decides how to distribute the surplus among various sections of the people, is very hard to find. It was
no coincidence that everywhere public ownership raised waste and inefficiency and created a highly
privileged caste of political and economic bosses and bureaucratic leaders who controlled every aspect
of the societal life.
Self-governance and self-management in industry is a smart socialist model. But the difficulties in
realising it have never been achieved successfully. Joseph Broz Tito’s example was in fact a warning
against entertaining any illusion on this sort. Outdated technology, poor design and messy management
which have kept a large part of the public sector permanently in the red in most countries. Perhaps the
Marxist idea that capital creates no value has also been partly responsible for inefficient use of scarce
capital resources. It certainly succeeded remarkably in bringing about a divorce between costs and
prices as well as between demand and supply in most command economies.
There are some Marxists who try to put a brave face on all that has happened in Eastern Europe or is
happening in China and Vietnam today. They cannot however hide altogether their sense of acute
discomfort. Su Shaozi is in a class apart. He is a Marxist who is not in the least apologetic about his
country's ongoing transition to a market economy. So far as he is concerned, events there have
vindicated, not refuted, Marxism. His sheer cheek in solemnly advancing this view takes the reader's
breath away. In the words of the editors, Su Shaizhi argues in effect that "the economic reforms in
China, with a foundation in the market economy, are a return to Marxist materialism". It is one thing to
say that the country has to undergo a capitalist transformation to develop its productive forces at a
faster pace. It is quite another to pass this off as the best way of preserving the Marxist legacy.
Deng Xiaoping is more honest about it. When he says that it does not matter whether the cat is black or
grey so long as it catches enough mice, what he means is that the economic reforms do not need the
prior approval of Marx or Mao so long as the new free market zones help the country sustain an
extraordinarily high rate of growth. The new experiment in China, like the excesses of the Cultural
Revolution in the late 1960s, can perhaps be interpreted in a variety of ways. But whatever construction
is put on it, Su Shaozhi's argument can only be regarded as a preposterous joke at the expense of
Marxism.
It will be rash all the same to assume that China's story can be repeated by every third world society and
that the transition to a market economy can create a propitious climate for rapid growth everywhere.
The chronic shortage of capital resources in many poor countries cannot be wished away. Nor can the
fact that their access to both new technologies and new markets is woefully limited. The globalisation
process is in fact already marginalising quite a few of them and widening the technological gap between
them and the more developed economies.
The trouble is that neither public ownership of the means of production, which has been tried out in
numerous countries under different conditions and found wanting, nor economic autarchy, which has
led in many places to both political isolation and technological obsolescence, offers a way out for those
at the bottom of the global pecking order.
All this can bring little comfort to Marxists. If market economies ever find themselves in a terminal crisis,
it will not be because of a vindication of the critique of capitalism provided by Marx but because the
affluent parts of the world cannot summon the will to come to the help of indigent societies. What is
more, liberal philosophy knows no way to define, much less contain, human needs, and can do little
either to put a stop to the increasing degradation of the environment resulting from rising consumption
levels in the developed world or reduce the increasing incidence of ethnic and other conflicts.
If neo-Marxists have any solution to these problems, there is no hint of this in the papers in the present
book. Most of the contributors seem to have missed even the irony implicit in the fact that, though it
prides itself on its scientific approach to problems of economic and social development, Marxism owes
most of its appeal to its messianism, particularly to its promise of a worldwide community free of the
scourges of war, social conflict, alienation and scarcity. Whatever remains of its old attraction, it cannot
but be painfully aware by now of its grievous limitations. It has lost its privileged position as the vaunted
worldview of a class destined by history to be the main agent of the universal emancipation to come.
The proletariat not only in the affluent societies but also in poorer countries has stubbornly refused to
take on this role.
Not one of the five or six current versions of Marxism can cope with the complexities of the
technological and other changes that are transforming life in different ways all over the world. As one
acute observer remarks wryly: "Theoretical advances in linguistics, semiology, poststructuralism,
feminism and communications theory all take their point of departure from outside the mode of
production."
Marxism has to compete now with other social philosophies on equal terms in explaining what has gone
wrong. And as it does so, it will have to become more sensitive to man's existential problems and give
up the crass notion that history and science between them can be left to take care of these. Indeed, as
access to new technology is restricted to a few, it will have to reckon with the fact, as many radicals are
already trying to, that science itself is becoming a repressive force under the prevailing conditions.