Marx’s critique of capitalism
Marx’s critique of capitalism was grounded in his theory of alienation.
Capitalist society is so organized that it allows private proporiters to appropriate the fruits of the labour of others through the determination of value in the market. Abolishing the market would abolish the ‘private appropriation’ of others’ labour and thus overcome alienation.
Abolishing the market is possible because in Marx’s view certain features of the capitalist organization of production are not natural (as the classical and new classical economists argue) but social historical.
Capitalist society is ridden with contradiction and is (partially) irrational. It cannot achieve its avowed objective of a ‘state of abundance’ (maximization of production) so that the principle of ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his need’ can become operational.
Marx endorses this principle and the rationality of the objective of seeking to achieve a state of abundance.
Marx rejects the classical / neo classical formulation of the relations of production as merely technical means for the efficient maximization of output (Theories of Surplus Value). The labour time which determines a commodity’s (exchange) value is not embodied labour but ‘socially necessary labour’. Value is labour for others, alienated labour – labour socially recognized as the essence of a commodity. Value is homogenized labour whose qualities have been reduced to the single quality of duration. Value realized through exchange (i.e. in markets) has (non natural) social foundations (Capital Vol. 1).
It is the social organization of production through the market which gives labour its ‘value form’. Marx sees capitalist property as private in the (narrow) sense in that the individual participates in production for himself and not for serving explicit social needs. The capitalist system seeks to co-ordinate the activities of ‘private producers’ which are nevertheless not producing for themselves but for others.
These ‘private producers’ necessarily alienate their own labour and appropriate the alienated labour of others. In a commodity producing (market dominated) society needs can be satisfied only through the production of (exchange) value. The division of labour is regulated through the exchange of commodities as value.
The (exchange) value of a commodity thus expresses the social relations of the people who produce and exchange. The value form of the product of labour is the most universal expression of the capitalist mode of production according to Marx (Capital : A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 pp. 571-2). Transcending this value form is a crucially important means for the overthrow of capitalist order.
Marx criticizes classical political economy for abstracting from the social context in which labour appears as value form.
Classical political economy presumes that the individual is free in two senses. He is endowed with capitalist property and is not encumbered by external moral claims and obligations.
These are necessary presuppositions for rational judgment of self interest according to the classical economists. Society ought to be organized to promote individual capitalist endowment and man’s freedom from external moral obligations (heteronomy). Capitalist society claims to be the "very Eden of the innate rights of man…. the exclusive realm of Freedom Equality, Property and Bentaham" (Capital Vol. 1, p. 280).
But argues Marx capitalist society is not a relation between abstract private individuals. In Marx’s view capitalist society is a dense network of social relationships between ‘private’ property owners.
However the ‘private’ act production is necessarily contextualized by a social division of labour expressed in the totality of capitalist relations of production and exchange.
Production organized for the purpose of producing surplus value which can be privately appropriated is according to Marx a barrier to the free development of the production forces, a barrier which comes to the surface in crises’ (Theories of Surplus Value part II pp. 527-528).
Marx defines capital as ‘value in process, money in process’ (Capital Vol. 1 p. 256). He sees capital as a process in which money / value acquires the power of self expansion (Grundrisse p. 258).
The capitalist form of the labour process allows the capitalist to ‘privately’ appropriate the total value produced, to pay the labourer a wage equivalent to the value of labour power purchased and to retain ‘surplus value’ (Capital Vol. 1 p. 291-292).
This retention is possible according to Marx because the capitalist ‘owns’ the means of production and subsistence which can be accessed by labour only through the sale of his labour power. The capitalist can / must control the labourer because the capitalist ‘owns’ the means of production and subsistence.
This (expected) deprivation is a consequence of the continuing separation of the labourer from capitalist property in the process of production. The labourer looses his substantive freedom and equality by being separated form and subjection to capitalist property (Capital Vol. 1 pp. 729-30, 733-41). It is “the monopolization of the means of production by a certain section of society confronting (workers) as labour power (embodied) in products and working condition rendered independent of labour power” (Capital Vol. III pp. 793-794) which creates and reproduces the deprivation and alienation of labour.
If the labourer could appropriate the whole of the product, alienation / deprivation would end. Locke recognized this but he also recognized the labourer’s right to assign his right to another in return for a fixed wage. Justice requires an equivalence between the value of the wage and the value of the product. Such an equivalence is impossible in what Marx calls “the capitalist mode of production” where the production of surplus value and its private appropriation is the purpose of all economic activity.
By endorsing value and class as the fundamental concepts underlying his theory of capitalist order Marx is announcing his acceptance of Enlightenment, ontological assumptions. Marx accepts Enlightenment values, freedom and equality, and endorses the quest for abundance.
He rejects the claims of classical political economists and sociologists regarding the natural / rational character of capitalist institutions – market, factory, “private” property, money, finance etc. Capitalist institutions and capitalist order as a whole is irrational according to Marx because it prevents the achievement of abundance and freedom. Market allocated efficiency does not generate freedom / abundance or equality. On the contrary it generates deprivation / alienation for the masses because of the ‘private’ appropriations of surplus product in the form of surplus value.
As history has shown this is a strategy for a reorganization of capitalist order not a means for its overthrow. The common metaphysical roots of liberalism and socialism – Marxist or otherwise – are obvious. They become even more manifest when we examine Marx’s vision of communist society, the state of abundance at the end / beginning of history.
The communist individual, according to Marx.
1. Is interested in and able to carry out a wide range of tasks.
2. Is highly and consistently co-operative.
3. Has a masterful control over nature.
4. Regulates his activities without externally imposed laws, customs and rules.
5. Is indistinguishable from other communist men when viewed from the perspective of social divisions (race, religion occupation, family etc.)
The construction of the personality of this “species being”, is begun by the dictatorship of the proletariat and is completed under full blown communism. Marx believes in the potential divinity, there is no other word for it, of man.
He believes that each individual is driven by an inner urge to realize this potential and that the overall fulfillment of the potential of each individual requires the simultaneous fulfillment of all others.
Liberalism shares at least the first two of these assumptions and although most liberals would regard the third as unrealistic there is a never ending liberal search for social forms which reconcile the search for individual fulfillment with the quest for maximum social welfare.
That is why the overwhelming majority of the non American, non vulgar critiques of Marxism presented by liberals question not the values underlying Marxism but the social processes – revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat, organization of communist society-through which they are to be realized. As far as ultimate values are concerned there is much that is common between socialism and liberalism.
In order to unearth the individualist basis of Marx’s thought one has to focus on the relationship of the work of Kant and Hegel.
Kant argues that if freedom is to be realized pure reason in virtue of which the individual is of absolute value must itself be practical. Pure reason must be capable of determining the particular will in accordance with substantive laws that are purely rational.
Kant failed to show however how substantive moral laws are derivatives of pure reason. Within the ‘Kantian system pure reason and absolutely free will remain empty concepts incapable of determining practical, empirical life.
Hegel attempts to address this weakness of the Kantian system and to show how the self determination of a free rational will is actualized in nature and history.
In Hegel’s thought pure reason and the free will is an infinite spirit that realizes its absolute value in coming to see in the world of particulars a structure which is perfectly rational because it is purely the product of Spirit’s drive to realize its own absolutely and inherently free nature.
Spirit known itself as the creator (khaliq) and sustainer (Rab) of the world. Spirit achieves this self knowledge in the fully developed consciousness of the individual human being. The individual realizes himself as infinite spirit through his own particular life. God – or what Hegel prefers to call Geist – is man and achieves self realization through man. God is not a transcendental, external force as conceived by the higher religions.
The self realization of the free will involves the deliberate alienation of the universal will from the particular. The universal will seeks a particular determinate content for its self realization. It goes into the world of particulars seeking the actualization of its own nature – namely freedom. Freedom is to be understood “as the free will which wills the free will” (The Philosophy of Right sec 27).
The determinate content which the universal needs for its self realization is a system of purely rational laws and institutions. They constitute ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) and Hegel’s claim is that the ethical forms he specifies are demanded by the activity of pure reason (universal will) in its drive for self realization. The self determination of the universal will is the movement of pure reason in developing the rational forms of its own being out of itself. This Hegel calls “dialectical thought.”
The movement of the dialectic is powered in the sphere of practical reason by the alienation of pure reason in particular will and its attempt to find itself in such latitude. Movement occurs when there is a realization of the inadequacy of the initial unity of the universal and the particular. This initial conception is conceived by Hegel as that of “individuality”. It is a necessary element in the universal will’s self unfolding and must be preserved but the full attainment of freedom requires the development of a larger whole – a “community” (the sphere of the operation of purely rational laws and institutions). When particular men come to pursue their lives as means to the realization of the universal in them, as embodied in the rational laws and institutions of the community “the will is then universal because all restriction and all particularity has been absorbed within it”. The metaphysical assumption underlying this vision is that of the unity of the universal and the particular will. The particular will is the human individual realizing the absolute value inherent in himself as a free being and thus overcoming particularity and finitude.
In the Philosophy of Right Hegel seeks to identify existents embodying the free will. Hegel calls such existents Right. What are fully adequate forms of Right?
To begin with Hegel endorses the individualist conception of right: the right of individuals to appropriate the world as an essentially and immediately free singular personality – this is the right of (capitalist) property. This right of property and contract is regarded as a necessary element in the free will’s self realization. Other individualist rights are also endorsed on the grounds that the free universal will can be objectified only through the wills of individuals who enjoy the whole range of the rights of persons, as conceived by individualist theories. However these rights are inadequate embodiments of the universal for the particular contents of the wills of persons are not determined by the universal. Thus Hegel argues there is no way in which a group of individuals whose particular wills are determined by their own interests can overcome their reciprocal externality. This cannot be overcome by contract. The common will it creates is only the contingent unity of particular wills (and not a universal will because a common self consciousness is not produced).
In order for freedom to be actualized the individual must not conceive himself as being immediately free (i.e. irrespective of the content of his particular will) but only in so far as he himself determines the content of his particular will in accordance with what is objectively good and universally valid – a will which so determines its’ particular content is described as the ‘moral will’ (Hegel's Philosophy of Right Sec. 107). But the objective good is external to the moral will which is the will of single individuals. The individual will aimed at the good cannot yield a substantive and objective content – hence the essential emptiness of the Kantian conception of the good will.
In the sphere of morality we are concerned with the rights of the individual, to determine the particular contents of his will (in accordance with the objective good) and to be held responsible only for what he has so determined. This right has a two fold aspect: it entails a right to welfare as well as the right of (capitalist) property and contract. The good, that is to be pursued (and in accordance with which the particular content of the will of the individual is to be determined) must balance (capitalist) property and welfare rights, since they necessarily limit each other. Through the process of dialectical thought the subjective will recognizes itself as an embodiment of the universal.
The subjective will wills the universal and chooses a particular life in accordance with the objective good which harmonizes the pursuit of abstract right (property) and welfare for all. Hence the self realization of free will as the subjective will pursuing a particular good is identical with the realization of the good of a whole i.e. a community. Thus the self realization of free will is the self realization of the will of a community in the determination of its good in a system of balanced property and welfare (capitalist) rights but only in and through the wills of its individual members. The individual is free to the extent to which he can see himself as the vehicle for the existence of this system. The freedom and individuality of a person consists in his grasping in his existence a consciousness of the unity of absolute value with particular life.
The objective ethical order which alone is permanent contains three purely rational institutions: family, civil society and state. Each of these institutions embody the unity of the objective order of the community with the subjective wills of its members. This is most clearly evident in the family, where the individual does not distinguish his own particular aim from the good of the family and seeks to realize them. Bu the particular family cannot suffice for the full personal development of the individual. For this there is the institution of civil society in which the abstract right of the particular (the right of capitalist property) has its fullest development – the good of the whole is not present in the consciousness of its members who pursue their private end (although in co-operation with each other).
For the adequate conceptualization of the relation of particular individuality to the whole the development of a state is necessary. The state is the whole community – “the actuality of concrete freedom (where) personal individuality achieve(s) complete development and pass (es) over of (its) own accord into the interest of the universal and knows and wills the universal” (Hegel's Philosophy of Right Sec. 260).
The individual sees the realization of his particular ends as the realization of universal ends in the state. Hegel idealized the Bismarckian state, although he did not go so far as to assert its infallibility or immortality. It’s structures showed the way towards the achievement of perfect harmony between the particular and the universal but actual freedom can only be grasped in the theoretical realm of the pure self activity of dialectical thought and not in the course of world history and the actual empirical development of the state. The unity of the particular and the universal wills cannot be grasped in practice – Hegel concedes this to Kant and we may note in anticipation that Hegel was less of an idealist and less of an optimist than was Marx.
Marx criticizes Hegel for restricting freedom – the harmonization of particular and universal interests – to the level of the state. In the ideal communist society the state withers away and private property is totally abolished i.e. civil society is liquidated. These twin “withering” are essential for the absorption of the particular into the universal – the becoming of man into a species being. This is the central ethical idea of communist society.
Marx takes his conception of specie being from Feuerbach who argued that “the true object of infinite value is man and what he worships in God or Pure Reason is his species’ own essential powers”(The Essence of Christianity, p. 117, reference to the 1954 print edition.). It is the species which creates the individual. The species is unlimited-for ever conquering nature, surmounting limits-and immortal. However in capitalist society man is alienated from his species because he is alienated from his productive activity as expressive of his essential powers. The abolition of ‘private’ property, allows for “the re-appropriation of the specie essence by man and the return of man out of religion, family, state etc. into his human i.e. social being”.
Marx rejects the view that there is separation in the human being’s conception of his individuality and his sociability. “However much he is a particular individual, man is just as much the ideal totality, the subjective existence of society as something thought and felt. ( “Notes on James Mill” p. 150, reference to the print edition in McClellan. (ed.) Karl Marx Early Texts ). The individual’s particularity is merely in terms of its being a particular mode of existence of the species or of social life.
This leads to the very important conclusion that for Marx, (as for Feuerbach) individual self consciousness is unproblematic. Now self consciousness is problematic. To possess individuality man must become conscious of his single existence as a self constituted whole separate both from the creator (Allah) and other created beings. The problem of individuality is the problem of determining the value of one’s individual existence in terms of one’s relationship with God and other creatures. In the Christian conception this problem is “solved” by postulating the immediate unity of the finite and the infinite (the human and the divine) in the person of Christ. Liberalism builds its theory of democracy and justice on the belief that every individual is Christ. Every individual is of objective value. There is an immediate inseparable unity of the absolute value that is present in man as such with the value that is present in each and every individual. This value resides in the “life plan” formulated by self determining autonomous individuals and the social good is a concatenation of these individual life plans – each of which are of equal value. Hence in the liberal conception individuality is understood as the particular beings’ consciousness of himself as of objective value identical with his consciousness of himself as a specie being.
Hegel and Marx accept the liberal belief in the divinity of humanity (this is based on Kant’s metaphysical theory) but deny that the individual to be conscious of himself needs to constitute himself as an end by separating himself from society. such separation / alienation is the process through which spirit or dialectical thought uses the individual as a vehicle for the realization of the absolute good which is nothing but the species will. In communist (un alienated) society individual ends are ipso facto social/specie ends and there can be no conflict between them. Communism, therefore necessarily denies all forms of particularity- family , civil society, state-and in this sense can be described as empty of moral content. Morality consists of revolutionary practice in capitalism aimed at heightening individual consciousness of man’s social ends. Once permanent revolution is transcended (at the end of the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat) morality too must wither away. Communist man faces neither scarcity nor evil. He behaves as he behaves because the scientific truth on how to maximize individual and social happiness stands fully revealed. There is as little possibility of denying this truth as of denying that two plus to make four.
Is Marx an individualist? Some Marxists such as Tucker and Gould would affirm this view and no-one can deny that freedom is the central value of the Marxist doctrine “the category which serves to unify Marxist theories of history and nature” (Gould Marx's Social Ontology p.182). Even Croce and Hilferding who interpret Marx as essentially an unethical thinker cannot deny that to Marx man is not the product but the creator of social relations and that abstract social forces-technology, class struggle-have no causal status independent of human activity. Freedom of course presupposes similarity or Equality and the Marxist ethical system necessarily enshrines this value: equality characterizes the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat and is the means for the elimination of differentiation and particularity in the communist heaven.
Freedom and equality are thus the common values of liberalism and socialism. Liberalism asserts that the good of the state consists in the maximum individual freedom of every member and in the equal valuing of their individual life plans: society is a concatenation not an ordering of individual ends and social justice requires that each be provided equal opportunity for the pursuit of his ends with special care being taken to ensure that the relative disadvantage of the poorest section of society is gradually reduced over time. This is the view of Rawls (A Theory of Justice ), modern liberalism’s most noted political philosopher and may also be regarded as a consensual view.
Liberalism and socialism differ not in terms of absolute values or ends but about the means for the realization of these absolute values. What is desired above all is freedom and equality as a means for the realization of freedom. The liberals from Locke to Rawls believe that social arrangements which permit the individual to pursue his life plan and expand the social opportunity for him to do so are ideal for the realization of freedom and equality. Marx and other socialists argue that these social arrangements increase inequality, inhibit material progress and make freedom impossible for subordinate classes. The realization of freedom requires the abolition of all differentiation and particularities especially those associated with the existence of ‘private’ property. The dictatorship of the proletariat integrates the life plan of individuals into a comprehensive social (national) plan and is an instrument for overcoming the material conditions which make alienation necessary. A people who respond to the Marxist da’wah do not abandon the Enlightenment/Romantic values of freedom and equality. They reject merely the liberal doctrine that realization of these values requires marketised, social arrangements. They put their belief in the Marxist claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat and comprehensive social planning are necessary means for the achievement of freedom and equality. The acceptance of this claim has historically been falsified in Russia and East Europe and China by a number of factors.
The success of a socialist revolution and the establishment of a communist regime does lead to a subjugation of the market by the plan and to the abolishing of private property. But private property is also abolished by the operation of the money and the capital markets and Lenin (Imperialism, the Highest stage of Capitalism ) himself – not just Bernstein, Otto Bauer and Bukharin- took note of this fact. Abolition of private property – whether through the plan or through the financial markets – establishes the social hegemony of capital, which is neither a social process nor a stock of money, but a vice, takkathur.
Our master Maulana Muhammad Marmouduke Pickthall (may Allah exalt his heavenly status) defined takkather as “rivalry in worldly increase” (The Glorious Quran ). This formulation captures the twin vices of avarice (accumulation) and covetousness (competition).
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Capitalist society is so organized that it allows private proporiters to appropriate the fruits of the labour of others through the determination of value in the market. Abolishing the market would abolish the ‘private appropriation’ of others’ labour and thus overcome alienation.
Abolishing the market is possible because in Marx’s view certain features of the capitalist organization of production are not natural (as the classical and new classical economists argue) but social historical.
Capitalist society is ridden with contradiction and is (partially) irrational. It cannot achieve its avowed objective of a ‘state of abundance’ (maximization of production) so that the principle of ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his need’ can become operational.
Marx endorses this principle and the rationality of the objective of seeking to achieve a state of abundance.
Marx rejects the classical / neo classical formulation of the relations of production as merely technical means for the efficient maximization of output (Theories of Surplus Value). The labour time which determines a commodity’s (exchange) value is not embodied labour but ‘socially necessary labour’. Value is labour for others, alienated labour – labour socially recognized as the essence of a commodity. Value is homogenized labour whose qualities have been reduced to the single quality of duration. Value realized through exchange (i.e. in markets) has (non natural) social foundations (Capital Vol. 1).
It is the social organization of production through the market which gives labour its ‘value form’. Marx sees capitalist property as private in the (narrow) sense in that the individual participates in production for himself and not for serving explicit social needs. The capitalist system seeks to co-ordinate the activities of ‘private producers’ which are nevertheless not producing for themselves but for others.
These ‘private producers’ necessarily alienate their own labour and appropriate the alienated labour of others. In a commodity producing (market dominated) society needs can be satisfied only through the production of (exchange) value. The division of labour is regulated through the exchange of commodities as value.
The (exchange) value of a commodity thus expresses the social relations of the people who produce and exchange. The value form of the product of labour is the most universal expression of the capitalist mode of production according to Marx (Capital : A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1 pp. 571-2). Transcending this value form is a crucially important means for the overthrow of capitalist order.
Marx criticizes classical political economy for abstracting from the social context in which labour appears as value form.
He criticizes the conception of isolated capitalist individuality and the conception of production and exchange as essentially technical processes necessary for the realization of the state of abundance. Thus the social relations of capitalist production are naturalized and presented as the free expression of rationality. The individual is free to choose his ends and the efficient functioning of market processes ensures that means for achieving these ends are being optimally produced and distributed.
Classical political economy presumes that the individual is free in two senses. He is endowed with capitalist property and is not encumbered by external moral claims and obligations.
These are necessary presuppositions for rational judgment of self interest according to the classical economists. Society ought to be organized to promote individual capitalist endowment and man’s freedom from external moral obligations (heteronomy). Capitalist society claims to be the "very Eden of the innate rights of man…. the exclusive realm of Freedom Equality, Property and Bentaham" (Capital Vol. 1, p. 280).
But argues Marx capitalist society is not a relation between abstract private individuals. In Marx’s view capitalist society is a dense network of social relationships between ‘private’ property owners.
However the ‘private’ act production is necessarily contextualized by a social division of labour expressed in the totality of capitalist relations of production and exchange.
‘Private’ property, according to Marx, is a specific form of the social relations of capitalist production and exchange. The commodity is not merely a thing. It is also a social relation. In capitalist society ‘private’ property establishes a relation between an individual and a value. For the commodity is produced as bearer of (exchange) value and not merely as a thing. If the commodity is seen as a social relation between ‘propertied’ and ‘property less’ individuals, capitalist relations of production cannot be viewed as relations between isolated individuals. They must be seen as relations between possessors and non possessors of ‘private’ property.
Production organized for the purpose of producing surplus value which can be privately appropriated is according to Marx a barrier to the free development of the production forces, a barrier which comes to the surface in crises’ (Theories of Surplus Value part II pp. 527-528).
Marx defines capital as ‘value in process, money in process’ (Capital Vol. 1 p. 256). He sees capital as a process in which money / value acquires the power of self expansion (Grundrisse p. 258).
The capitalist form of the labour process allows the capitalist to ‘privately’ appropriate the total value produced, to pay the labourer a wage equivalent to the value of labour power purchased and to retain ‘surplus value’ (Capital Vol. 1 p. 291-292).
This retention is possible according to Marx because the capitalist ‘owns’ the means of production and subsistence which can be accessed by labour only through the sale of his labour power. The capitalist can / must control the labourer because the capitalist ‘owns’ the means of production and subsistence.
The purpose of capitalist production is the production of surplus value and the production of use value is merely a mean to this end. From this Marx concluded that increased production would be accompanied by increased deprivation of the workers (Theories of Surplus Value pt. 1 pp. 377-380).
This (expected) deprivation is a consequence of the continuing separation of the labourer from capitalist property in the process of production. The labourer looses his substantive freedom and equality by being separated form and subjection to capitalist property (Capital Vol. 1 pp. 729-30, 733-41). It is “the monopolization of the means of production by a certain section of society confronting (workers) as labour power (embodied) in products and working condition rendered independent of labour power” (Capital Vol. III pp. 793-794) which creates and reproduces the deprivation and alienation of labour.
If the labourer could appropriate the whole of the product, alienation / deprivation would end. Locke recognized this but he also recognized the labourer’s right to assign his right to another in return for a fixed wage. Justice requires an equivalence between the value of the wage and the value of the product. Such an equivalence is impossible in what Marx calls “the capitalist mode of production” where the production of surplus value and its private appropriation is the purpose of all economic activity.
By endorsing value and class as the fundamental concepts underlying his theory of capitalist order Marx is announcing his acceptance of Enlightenment, ontological assumptions. Marx accepts Enlightenment values, freedom and equality, and endorses the quest for abundance.
He rejects the claims of classical political economists and sociologists regarding the natural / rational character of capitalist institutions – market, factory, “private” property, money, finance etc. Capitalist institutions and capitalist order as a whole is irrational according to Marx because it prevents the achievement of abundance and freedom. Market allocated efficiency does not generate freedom / abundance or equality. On the contrary it generates deprivation / alienation for the masses because of the ‘private’ appropriations of surplus product in the form of surplus value.
It is not the production of surplus in ever expanding volume to which Marx objects – Marx is a materialist primarily because he accepts the quest for abundance as the essential force enabling social transformation. Marx objects to the production of surplus in the form of surplus value and to the “private” appropriation of this surplus value. Marxism seeks an abolition of the ‘market and of the private appropriation of surplus as a means for the achievement of abundance / freedom.
As history has shown this is a strategy for a reorganization of capitalist order not a means for its overthrow. The common metaphysical roots of liberalism and socialism – Marxist or otherwise – are obvious. They become even more manifest when we examine Marx’s vision of communist society, the state of abundance at the end / beginning of history.
Marx was tremendously influenced by the same rational and romantic thinkers who inspired the founders of liberalism. To begin with it is striking to note that in his description of ideal society Marx pays so little attention to the associations and institutional forms that will replace the structures of capitalism. He concentrates almost exclusively on describing the qualities of the “species man” whose evolution under communism finally coincides with the evolution of each individual.
The communist individual, according to Marx.
1. Is interested in and able to carry out a wide range of tasks.
2. Is highly and consistently co-operative.
3. Has a masterful control over nature.
4. Regulates his activities without externally imposed laws, customs and rules.
5. Is indistinguishable from other communist men when viewed from the perspective of social divisions (race, religion occupation, family etc.)
The construction of the personality of this “species being”, is begun by the dictatorship of the proletariat and is completed under full blown communism. Marx believes in the potential divinity, there is no other word for it, of man.
He believes that each individual is driven by an inner urge to realize this potential and that the overall fulfillment of the potential of each individual requires the simultaneous fulfillment of all others.
Liberalism shares at least the first two of these assumptions and although most liberals would regard the third as unrealistic there is a never ending liberal search for social forms which reconcile the search for individual fulfillment with the quest for maximum social welfare.
That is why the overwhelming majority of the non American, non vulgar critiques of Marxism presented by liberals question not the values underlying Marxism but the social processes – revolution, dictatorship of the proletariat, organization of communist society-through which they are to be realized. As far as ultimate values are concerned there is much that is common between socialism and liberalism.
In order to unearth the individualist basis of Marx’s thought one has to focus on the relationship of the work of Kant and Hegel.
Kant asserts that the individual has objective value in himself and hence the particular life chosen by him necessarily embodies this value. But the particular will must respect the equal value of the particular life chosen by the other. Since the particular will in the Kantian conception has value, has an immediate embodiment of the single individual’s absolute will, it cannot as a particular will be concerned with anything but its own life – certainly not with realizing the absolute value that lies in the other. There is thus an unsurmountable separation and opposition between the particular and the universal dimensions of individual life.
Kant argues that if freedom is to be realized pure reason in virtue of which the individual is of absolute value must itself be practical. Pure reason must be capable of determining the particular will in accordance with substantive laws that are purely rational.
Kant failed to show however how substantive moral laws are derivatives of pure reason. Within the ‘Kantian system pure reason and absolutely free will remain empty concepts incapable of determining practical, empirical life.
Hegel attempts to address this weakness of the Kantian system and to show how the self determination of a free rational will is actualized in nature and history.
In Hegel’s thought pure reason and the free will is an infinite spirit that realizes its absolute value in coming to see in the world of particulars a structure which is perfectly rational because it is purely the product of Spirit’s drive to realize its own absolutely and inherently free nature.
Spirit known itself as the creator (khaliq) and sustainer (Rab) of the world. Spirit achieves this self knowledge in the fully developed consciousness of the individual human being. The individual realizes himself as infinite spirit through his own particular life. God – or what Hegel prefers to call Geist – is man and achieves self realization through man. God is not a transcendental, external force as conceived by the higher religions.
The self realization of the free will involves the deliberate alienation of the universal will from the particular. The universal will seeks a particular determinate content for its self realization. It goes into the world of particulars seeking the actualization of its own nature – namely freedom. Freedom is to be understood “as the free will which wills the free will” (The Philosophy of Right sec 27).
The determinate content which the universal needs for its self realization is a system of purely rational laws and institutions. They constitute ‘ethical life’ (Sittlichkeit) and Hegel’s claim is that the ethical forms he specifies are demanded by the activity of pure reason (universal will) in its drive for self realization. The self determination of the universal will is the movement of pure reason in developing the rational forms of its own being out of itself. This Hegel calls “dialectical thought.”
The movement of the dialectic is powered in the sphere of practical reason by the alienation of pure reason in particular will and its attempt to find itself in such latitude. Movement occurs when there is a realization of the inadequacy of the initial unity of the universal and the particular. This initial conception is conceived by Hegel as that of “individuality”. It is a necessary element in the universal will’s self unfolding and must be preserved but the full attainment of freedom requires the development of a larger whole – a “community” (the sphere of the operation of purely rational laws and institutions). When particular men come to pursue their lives as means to the realization of the universal in them, as embodied in the rational laws and institutions of the community “the will is then universal because all restriction and all particularity has been absorbed within it”. The metaphysical assumption underlying this vision is that of the unity of the universal and the particular will. The particular will is the human individual realizing the absolute value inherent in himself as a free being and thus overcoming particularity and finitude.
In the Philosophy of Right Hegel seeks to identify existents embodying the free will. Hegel calls such existents Right. What are fully adequate forms of Right?
To begin with Hegel endorses the individualist conception of right: the right of individuals to appropriate the world as an essentially and immediately free singular personality – this is the right of (capitalist) property. This right of property and contract is regarded as a necessary element in the free will’s self realization. Other individualist rights are also endorsed on the grounds that the free universal will can be objectified only through the wills of individuals who enjoy the whole range of the rights of persons, as conceived by individualist theories. However these rights are inadequate embodiments of the universal for the particular contents of the wills of persons are not determined by the universal. Thus Hegel argues there is no way in which a group of individuals whose particular wills are determined by their own interests can overcome their reciprocal externality. This cannot be overcome by contract. The common will it creates is only the contingent unity of particular wills (and not a universal will because a common self consciousness is not produced).
In order for freedom to be actualized the individual must not conceive himself as being immediately free (i.e. irrespective of the content of his particular will) but only in so far as he himself determines the content of his particular will in accordance with what is objectively good and universally valid – a will which so determines its’ particular content is described as the ‘moral will’ (Hegel's Philosophy of Right Sec. 107). But the objective good is external to the moral will which is the will of single individuals. The individual will aimed at the good cannot yield a substantive and objective content – hence the essential emptiness of the Kantian conception of the good will.
In the sphere of morality we are concerned with the rights of the individual, to determine the particular contents of his will (in accordance with the objective good) and to be held responsible only for what he has so determined. This right has a two fold aspect: it entails a right to welfare as well as the right of (capitalist) property and contract. The good, that is to be pursued (and in accordance with which the particular content of the will of the individual is to be determined) must balance (capitalist) property and welfare rights, since they necessarily limit each other. Through the process of dialectical thought the subjective will recognizes itself as an embodiment of the universal.
The subjective will wills the universal and chooses a particular life in accordance with the objective good which harmonizes the pursuit of abstract right (property) and welfare for all. Hence the self realization of free will as the subjective will pursuing a particular good is identical with the realization of the good of a whole i.e. a community. Thus the self realization of free will is the self realization of the will of a community in the determination of its good in a system of balanced property and welfare (capitalist) rights but only in and through the wills of its individual members. The individual is free to the extent to which he can see himself as the vehicle for the existence of this system. The freedom and individuality of a person consists in his grasping in his existence a consciousness of the unity of absolute value with particular life.
The objective ethical order which alone is permanent contains three purely rational institutions: family, civil society and state. Each of these institutions embody the unity of the objective order of the community with the subjective wills of its members. This is most clearly evident in the family, where the individual does not distinguish his own particular aim from the good of the family and seeks to realize them. Bu the particular family cannot suffice for the full personal development of the individual. For this there is the institution of civil society in which the abstract right of the particular (the right of capitalist property) has its fullest development – the good of the whole is not present in the consciousness of its members who pursue their private end (although in co-operation with each other).
For the adequate conceptualization of the relation of particular individuality to the whole the development of a state is necessary. The state is the whole community – “the actuality of concrete freedom (where) personal individuality achieve(s) complete development and pass (es) over of (its) own accord into the interest of the universal and knows and wills the universal” (Hegel's Philosophy of Right Sec. 260).
The individual sees the realization of his particular ends as the realization of universal ends in the state. Hegel idealized the Bismarckian state, although he did not go so far as to assert its infallibility or immortality. It’s structures showed the way towards the achievement of perfect harmony between the particular and the universal but actual freedom can only be grasped in the theoretical realm of the pure self activity of dialectical thought and not in the course of world history and the actual empirical development of the state. The unity of the particular and the universal wills cannot be grasped in practice – Hegel concedes this to Kant and we may note in anticipation that Hegel was less of an idealist and less of an optimist than was Marx.
Marx criticizes Hegel for restricting freedom – the harmonization of particular and universal interests – to the level of the state. In the ideal communist society the state withers away and private property is totally abolished i.e. civil society is liquidated. These twin “withering” are essential for the absorption of the particular into the universal – the becoming of man into a species being. This is the central ethical idea of communist society.
Marx takes his conception of specie being from Feuerbach who argued that “the true object of infinite value is man and what he worships in God or Pure Reason is his species’ own essential powers”(The Essence of Christianity, p. 117, reference to the 1954 print edition.). It is the species which creates the individual. The species is unlimited-for ever conquering nature, surmounting limits-and immortal. However in capitalist society man is alienated from his species because he is alienated from his productive activity as expressive of his essential powers. The abolition of ‘private’ property, allows for “the re-appropriation of the specie essence by man and the return of man out of religion, family, state etc. into his human i.e. social being”.
Marx rejects the view that there is separation in the human being’s conception of his individuality and his sociability. “However much he is a particular individual, man is just as much the ideal totality, the subjective existence of society as something thought and felt. ( “Notes on James Mill” p. 150, reference to the print edition in McClellan. (ed.) Karl Marx Early Texts ). The individual’s particularity is merely in terms of its being a particular mode of existence of the species or of social life.
This leads to the very important conclusion that for Marx, (as for Feuerbach) individual self consciousness is unproblematic. Now self consciousness is problematic. To possess individuality man must become conscious of his single existence as a self constituted whole separate both from the creator (Allah) and other created beings. The problem of individuality is the problem of determining the value of one’s individual existence in terms of one’s relationship with God and other creatures. In the Christian conception this problem is “solved” by postulating the immediate unity of the finite and the infinite (the human and the divine) in the person of Christ. Liberalism builds its theory of democracy and justice on the belief that every individual is Christ. Every individual is of objective value. There is an immediate inseparable unity of the absolute value that is present in man as such with the value that is present in each and every individual. This value resides in the “life plan” formulated by self determining autonomous individuals and the social good is a concatenation of these individual life plans – each of which are of equal value. Hence in the liberal conception individuality is understood as the particular beings’ consciousness of himself as of objective value identical with his consciousness of himself as a specie being.
Hegel and Marx accept the liberal belief in the divinity of humanity (this is based on Kant’s metaphysical theory) but deny that the individual to be conscious of himself needs to constitute himself as an end by separating himself from society. such separation / alienation is the process through which spirit or dialectical thought uses the individual as a vehicle for the realization of the absolute good which is nothing but the species will. In communist (un alienated) society individual ends are ipso facto social/specie ends and there can be no conflict between them. Communism, therefore necessarily denies all forms of particularity- family , civil society, state-and in this sense can be described as empty of moral content. Morality consists of revolutionary practice in capitalism aimed at heightening individual consciousness of man’s social ends. Once permanent revolution is transcended (at the end of the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat) morality too must wither away. Communist man faces neither scarcity nor evil. He behaves as he behaves because the scientific truth on how to maximize individual and social happiness stands fully revealed. There is as little possibility of denying this truth as of denying that two plus to make four.
Is Marx an individualist? Some Marxists such as Tucker and Gould would affirm this view and no-one can deny that freedom is the central value of the Marxist doctrine “the category which serves to unify Marxist theories of history and nature” (Gould Marx's Social Ontology p.182). Even Croce and Hilferding who interpret Marx as essentially an unethical thinker cannot deny that to Marx man is not the product but the creator of social relations and that abstract social forces-technology, class struggle-have no causal status independent of human activity. Freedom of course presupposes similarity or Equality and the Marxist ethical system necessarily enshrines this value: equality characterizes the era of the dictatorship of the proletariat and is the means for the elimination of differentiation and particularity in the communist heaven.
Freedom and equality are thus the common values of liberalism and socialism. Liberalism asserts that the good of the state consists in the maximum individual freedom of every member and in the equal valuing of their individual life plans: society is a concatenation not an ordering of individual ends and social justice requires that each be provided equal opportunity for the pursuit of his ends with special care being taken to ensure that the relative disadvantage of the poorest section of society is gradually reduced over time. This is the view of Rawls (A Theory of Justice ), modern liberalism’s most noted political philosopher and may also be regarded as a consensual view.
It will be readily seen that this common acceptance by liberalism and socialism of freedom and equality as the ultimate value is rooted in the common Kantian origins of these two doctrines. Both liberalism and socialism accept the Kantian conception of man as a self determining being. Liberalism asserts that separation of phenomenal and noumenal wills identified by Kant is illusory: the noumenal self is merely a concatenation of individual phenomenal wills. Socialism argues that the duality of the noumenal and the phenomenal wills is overcome in history with the coming into being of the perfect society where scarcity is abolished, evil and good is impossible and every man is God.
Liberalism and socialism differ not in terms of absolute values or ends but about the means for the realization of these absolute values. What is desired above all is freedom and equality as a means for the realization of freedom. The liberals from Locke to Rawls believe that social arrangements which permit the individual to pursue his life plan and expand the social opportunity for him to do so are ideal for the realization of freedom and equality. Marx and other socialists argue that these social arrangements increase inequality, inhibit material progress and make freedom impossible for subordinate classes. The realization of freedom requires the abolition of all differentiation and particularities especially those associated with the existence of ‘private’ property. The dictatorship of the proletariat integrates the life plan of individuals into a comprehensive social (national) plan and is an instrument for overcoming the material conditions which make alienation necessary. A people who respond to the Marxist da’wah do not abandon the Enlightenment/Romantic values of freedom and equality. They reject merely the liberal doctrine that realization of these values requires marketised, social arrangements. They put their belief in the Marxist claim that the dictatorship of the proletariat and comprehensive social planning are necessary means for the achievement of freedom and equality. The acceptance of this claim has historically been falsified in Russia and East Europe and China by a number of factors.
The single most important of these is the fact that the realization of liberal freedom requires a high level of material development-an abundance of wealth which calls forth avarice and greed and dissolves communitarian ties. Individuals in societies, which responded positively to the Marxist message, did not have highly differentiated “life plans” and their history and their culture prepared them for participation in a social revolution which promised expanded social opportunities and heightened social consciousness, as a means for self realization. The emphasis which socialism lays on this strengthening of communitarian ties establishes a natural affinity between its teachings and that of nationalism.
The success of a socialist revolution and the establishment of a communist regime does lead to a subjugation of the market by the plan and to the abolishing of private property. But private property is also abolished by the operation of the money and the capital markets and Lenin (Imperialism, the Highest stage of Capitalism ) himself – not just Bernstein, Otto Bauer and Bukharin- took note of this fact. Abolition of private property – whether through the plan or through the financial markets – establishes the social hegemony of capital, which is neither a social process nor a stock of money, but a vice, takkathur.
Our master Maulana Muhammad Marmouduke Pickthall (may Allah exalt his heavenly status) defined takkather as “rivalry in worldly increase” (The Glorious Quran ). This formulation captures the twin vices of avarice (accumulation) and covetousness (competition).
Men who are avarice and jealousy obsessed necessarily surrender to the representatives of capital for the representatives of capital – whether ‘private’ corporate managers or communist delegates – are the true representatives of a freedom worshipping people. In such a society the dominant rationality must be the rationality of capital – for however surplus is produced and appropriated accumulation for its own sake alone guarantees abundance. A communist revolution leads to a change in the structure of capitalist order. It does not lead to an overthrow of capitalist order for liberalism and communism are routes to the same end – the state of abundance in which man proclaims his divine right to will what he wills and to reign as the sole sovereign lord of the universe.
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