[This excerpt is from Chapter 5 of Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault]
Marxism and waiting for Godot
First formulated in the mid-nineteenth century, classical Marxist socialism made two related pairs of claims, one pair economic and one pair moral. Economically, it argued that capitalism was driven by a logic of competitive exploitation that would cause its eventual collapse; socialism’s communal form of production, by contrast, would prove to be economically superior. Morally, it argued, capitalism was evil both because of the self-interested motives of those engaged in capitalist competition and because of the exploitation and alienation that competition caused; socialism, by contrast, would be based on selfless sacrifice and communal sharing.
The initial hopes of Marxist socialists centered on capitalism’s internal economic contradictions. The contradictions, they thought, would manifest themselves in increasing class conflict. As the competition for resources heated up, the capitalists’ exploitation of the proletariat would necessarily increase. As the exploitation increased, the proletariat would come to realize its alienation and oppression. At some point, the exploited proletariat would decide that it was not going to take it any more and revolution would ensue. So the strategy of the Marxist intellectuals was to wait and mount a lookout for signs that capitalism’s contradictions were leading logically and inexorably to revolution.
They waited a long time. By the early part of the twentieth century, after several failed predictions of imminent revolution, not only was it becoming embarrassing to make further predictions, it was beginning to seem that capitalism was developing in a direction opposite to the way that Marxism said it should be developing.
Three failed predictions
Marxism was and is a class analysis, pitting economic classes against each other in a zero-sum competition. In that competition, the stronger parties would win each successive round of competition, forcing the weaker parties into more desperate straits. Successive rounds of capitalist competition would also pit the stronger parties against each other, yielding more winners and losers, until capitalism generated an economic social structure characterized by a few capitalists at the top and in control of the society’s economic resources while the rest of society was pushed into poverty. Even capitalism’s nascent middle class would not remain stable, for the logic of zero-sum competition would squeeze a few of the middle class into the top capitalist class and the rest into the proletariat.
This class analysis yielded three definite predictions. First, it predicted that the proletariat would both increase as a percentage of the population and become poorer: as capitalist competition progressed, more and more people would be forced to sell their labor; and as the supply of those selling their labor increased, the wages they could demand would necessarily decrease. Second, it predicted that the middle class would decrease to a very small percentage of the population: zero-sum competition means there are winners and losers, and while a few would consistently be winners and thus become rich capitalists, most would lose at some point and be forced into the proletariat. Third, it predicted that the capitalists would also decrease as a percentage of the population: zero-sum competition also applies to competition among the capitalists, generating a few consistent winners in control of everything while the rest would be forced down the economic ladder.
Yet that was not how it worked out. By the early twentieth century it seemed that all three of the predictions failed to characterize the development of the capitalist countries. The class of manual laborers had both declined as a percentage of the population and become relatively better off. And the middle class had grown substantially both as a percentage of the population and in wealth, as had the upper class.
Marxist socialism thus faced a set of theoretical problems: Why had the predictions not come to pass? Even more pressing was the practical problem of impatience: If the proletarian masses were the material of revolution, why were they not revolting? The exploitation and alienation had to be there—despite surface appearances—and it had to be being felt by capitalism’s victims, the proletariat. So what was to be done about the decidedly non-revolutionary working class? After decades of waiting hopefully and pouncing on any sign of worker dissatisfaction and unrest, the plain fact was that the proletariat was not going to revolt any time soon.
Consequently, the waiting strategy needed to be rethought.[1]
Reference: [1] Werner Sombart, a Marxist early in his career, was among the first to rethink: “It had to be admitted in the end that Marx had made mistakes on many points of importance” (1896, 87). Bibliography [pdf] [html].
[This is an excerpt from Stephen Hicks’s Explaining Postmodernism: Skepticism and Socialism from Rousseau to Foucault (Scholargy Publishing, 2004, 2011).
See also my episode on Marx and Engels’s The Communist Manifesto in the Philosophers, Explained series.
great blog, just discovered it! greetings from argentina
Thanks. Your blog looks lively too, but my Spanish is not quite up to it.
Could you provide some resources on Marx’s view of competition? I am looking at competition in the current global market via his prediction that hightened competition will lead to most businesses failing.
Great blog!
Mars
yeah? that is why germany is the most prosperous in europe and maintains the best credit rating and countries like US is failing,, and thats why china is rising?
Nonsense, this author is just another american ignorant.
You might not able to make your conclusion only based on the result. If someone told you that you would died in a car accident on Saturday, you will definitely not drive your car (actually you will probably not even go out). Therefore, you are safe eventually. However, this result does not prove the incorrectness of the prediction becauese this prediction has already not only showed its correctness but also make an effort changing the future, as well as changing the result.
hey, we are way through the 21st c. what you are stating applies to the 20th c. what Marx talked about is exactly what is happening globally right now. billions of labourers 24/7 also due to digital immaterial labour, universal uprisings, a declining middle class and a handful of rich at the top.
I’m afraid that the value of your book lies in the previous century.
Thank you, Dr. Hicks. Great post, very informative!
Merry crisis and a happy new fear! Actually, what’s happening is exactly what the Marxians said, at least here in Europe. And I hear 80% of US citizens are near the poverty line, with 30 million below it. The middle class is disappearing. I personally come from a middle class family (a lot of doctors in my family), and we have gone from upper middle class a few years ago to lower middle class presently – and we will go straight to lower class if our government cuts funding for expensive medications because my mother has a semi-rare disease. And people are protesting in the streets, spontaneously! They are angry, furious. Class consciousness is developing, like never before.
What I don’t understand is how Marx thought that the working class is some how happy with being in the working class. Did he take in to account the human nature to want to be better than the Joneses. The problem with Marx’s Utopian dream is the simple fact that people lie, cheat , steal, are corrupt and those in power will kill to stay in power. His society would be like a world of zombies where every body is in the same trance. Capitalist competition is the source of innovation that propels every thing new in the world. What has Cuba innovated lately — nothing for the past 60 years.
“until capitalism generated an economic social structure characterized by a few capitalists at the top and in control of the society’s economic resources while the rest of society was pushed into poverty.”
Except thats EXACTLY what happened. The upper 1% own everything. And looked at on the scale of GLOBAL neoliberal capitalism, its even more clear. The middle class only ever grew EXCLUSIVELY due to New Deal policies labor unions, which were inherently socialist. And in the past 30+ years that those socialist policies have been eroded or destroyed altogether, the middle class has been shrinking at a rapid pace.
@dale “What has Cuba innovated lately — nothing for the past 60 years.”
Cuba literally just invented a cure for fetal AIDS transmission
The news out of Cuba is excellent, Will. Note that it was primarily a WHO and PAHO initiative, though, with expertise and funding from outside of Cuba. http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/releases/2015/mtct-hiv-cuba/en/
I agree 100%. The only thing Marx was wrong on was the timing. EVERYTHING those early socialists said is coming to fruition NOW.
I think the only thing Marx and the early socialist movement got wrong was the timing. Everything he predicted is coming to fruition NOW. Not the last century. Truly ahead of his time…in every sense pf the word.
He’s halfway there: http://www.stephenhicks.org/2012/11/30/marxs-10-point-plan-50-realized-in-usa/.
We should all aspire to the great socialist society that is Venezuela. It sure works great. I love working so others don’t have to.
While I think that state control of the means of production has repeatedly been shown to be disastrous, Marx seems to have hit the trifecta in his predictions.
I enjoyed the first half of the book. The exploration of Postmodernism’s roots seemed sound and informative. But the second half of the book provided what seemed like only scant detail on individual postmodern thought, in favor of critique. And, as noted, this critique hinged on a willful ignorance of trends in capitalism over the last few decades.
Continuing in the vein of the first half of the book, to describe the thesis of latter Postmodern philosophers with a minimum of judgement, would have been ideal. The flaws in the school of thought would be clearer if presented without the obvious bias inherent in a critique. Additionally, the critique undermines one’s trust in the exploration performed in the first half.
If capitalism is failing, it certainly isn’t supported by the evidence. Marxism is beginning to look a lot like Millennialism. Like the Christians who have been saying for two thousand years, the 2nd coming is just around the corner, Marxists have been waiting for what will soon be two centuries for the revolution. Meanwhile, countries in the 3rd world are abandoning socialist economies in droves, and poverty is decreasing drastically around the world: “Most of the credit, however, must go to capitalism and free trade, for they enable economies to grow—and it was growth, principally, that has eased destitution.” https://www.economist.com/leaders/2013/06/01/towards-the-end-of-poverty
@Bhuwan Ghimire
Funny to me people always mention China and other countries doing so much “better” then the USA. Then why is it that a country of a billion people (1.379 billion) has less GDP then a country with 323 million people. (Taken from the 2016 statistics)
You need to get re-educated. China with 4.2x the population of the United States, makes about 7 Trillion less GDP then the USA. The average person in China makes about 10,000$ a year.The average American in contrast makes around 55,000$ But China has been implementing more and more Capitalistic practices since 1979. Ever since they introduced more capitalism into their market, they have been considerably more prosperous. They had a poverty rate of 88% around that time, and have steadily shrunk ever since. (Quite a significant change, with an odd correlation to when they started to implement Capitalism into their market.)
Most people don’t realize that for Capitalism to work, it’s not a zero-sum competition. Capitalism is the voluntary transaction of goods and services for money. While competition is involved, it’s been the major driving force of the world for innovation for the past century. While other countries like Russia, and China have gone through multiple famines, during that same period. (Russia directly caused a famine after seizing land owned by farmers, China went through multiple famines with a death toll over 30 million between 1900-1979)
(That’s why the 5 largest companies world wide are American. Also the reason why Smart Phones are so common in America. Almost like competitive prices, keep most things affordable. Odd how that works.)
The largest problem America has currently is obesity. With around 30% of Americans being overweight. The poverty rate in America is around 12% percent.
Socialist countries tend to constantly have famines, (like Venezuela currently, North Korea, etc) While the United States hasn’t had a real famine since 1880.
Theories in science are evaluated by their predictability. Generally, if what the theory predicts does not come to pass when tested experimentally, it is considered false and is abandoned, regardless of what people who love the theory may argue or say about it in its defense later. Physics succeeds marvelously largely because it has that attitude toward its proposed theories, whereas political science often does not. Marxism has failed its predictive tests, and that failure should be stressed in the world’s classrooms. It seems that the workers were never going to spontaneously take over the factories because they were too busy doing their own jobs, let alone taking on the managers jobs too. They wanted the managers to do that. Mussolini, originally a socialist, realized that and created the Fascist party as his “solution,” and that failed too. Socialist predictions keep failing in practice, as the Venezuelan example shows. There is also the fact that in the third world, approximately two billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the last fifteen years, largely due to the adoption of relatively free enterprise in those areas. So there seems to be no rational reason to keep beating the dead horse of Marxism.
I made a mistake in my essay that I just posted above. I said, “There is also the fact that in the third world, approximately two billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty in the last fifteen years.” I’d like to change that to, “There is also the fact that approximately 1.2 billion people have been lifted out of extreme poverty since 1990, largely due to the adoption of relatively free enterprise in third-world areas.”
Firstly Germany is has a mixed economy and definitely still capitalist and China is as capitalist as the US . Secondly how the hell is the US “failing” exactly? Its number 5 in avarge salary and has the second strongest economy on the planet.
What are you even talking about? You think there was any time in history where the middle class was larger? The global Middle class increases by 54 million people annually. The fact that third world countries are getting poorer is because their governments are stealing their money instead of building infrastructure and creating jobs. And also marxs predicted this would happen in the 19 century.
Actually, capitalism does not require self-interest, it requires only liberty. You are free to be motivated by whatever moral philosophy you desire. What it does not permit is for you to impose your moral philosophy on others.
Personally, I prefer self-interred motivation. How can one trust a person, after all, that is willing to sacrifice himself and others?
Great post! I’m also in Argentina btw!