Another recent example of misunderstanding Marx recently came to my attention and exemplified the attempt to use Marx to underpin a position that I suggest had it been made while Marx was alive, he would almost certainly have rejected. I read the following assertion;

“One of the main ideas that separates revolutionary socialists from reformists is the tremendous insight that Karl Marx learned from the experience of the Paris Commune of 1871, that “the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.”[23] In other words, as Lenin expanded upon in State and Revolution,[24] the state is not a neutral body that could be used just as well by the working class for its aims, as the capitalist class uses it. Instead it needs to be dismantled and replaced by a new, genuinely democratic state that would serve the interests of the working class in power.”

Whilst the first part is essentially accurate, the second section, linking Lenin, to ‘expanding upon’ Marx is either a result of naivity, ignorance or a sectarian form of recruitment propaganda. On many levels the above extract displays the dangers of a little bit of knowledge being a dangerous thing. The assumption of sufficient knowledge – in such cases – produces confident assertions of correct understandings that are far from it. In fact the actual creation of a state against the interests of the working class in 1917 to the 1940’is purely a creative action by Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin, not Marx. In fact Lenin admitted at the 4th Congress of the Commintern as early as 1923 that the state the Bolsheviks had created was operating against them and thus against the interests of the working class. (See Lenins Complete Works Volume 33 page 428/429). But since Marx is named as the inspiration for the above extract, here is what Marx went on to say about the essential nature of the state;

“Where political parties exist, each party sees the root of evil in the fact that instead of itself an opposing party stands at the helm of the state. Even radical and revolutionary politicians seek the root of evil not in the essential nature of the state, but in a definite state form which they wish to replace by a different state form. (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Vol 3. page 197. Emphasis added RR)

Students of the Russian Revolution of the 20th century, will recognise that this replacement of the state form was essentially the key part of Bolshevik political programme. It is a common mistake to think we have grasped a complete understanding of something when only a part of it has been grasped – and even then not always fully. Indeed, it would seem from their efforts, not only the author of the above lines, but also Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and most of the Bolshevik intelligentsia had also failed to fully understand Marx. The revolutionary-humanist perspective of Karl Marx on ‘politics’ the ‘state’ and ‘alienation’ seems to have entirely escaped their attention. Lenin’s polemic in the ‘State and Revolution’ and his theoretical mention of the ‘withering away of the state’ was replaced with its absolute strengthening under his own post 1917 rule and also that of Trotsky and Stalin.

It seems that reality, rather than ideology, has still not sunk into most examples of oppositional consciousness. In fact is the hierarchical mass form of society, with its class divisions which gives rise to the need for a ‘state’. It is not the state or capitalism, which gives rise to class divisions. Retain class and other established divisions within any socio-economic system and alienation and insoluble conflict will continue and so to will the need for a state to ‘manage’ and control them. In contrast, Marx was absolutely clear on the need for the economic foundations of human societies to be free of the class control of the means of production, whether the class was comprised of ancient tribal warriors, medieval feudal aristocrats, modern bourgeois capitalists, or any kind of political vanguard.

The really sad part to me is that after more than 100 years and the availability of most of Marx’s writings, he is so little understood. Consequently, it is possible in 2023, to read the following;

“Ours is a strategy to build an ecosocialist movement powerful enough that it could overturn and dismantle the existing capitalist state and replace it with a genuinely democratic and participative workers’ state.”

Really! A “genuinely democratic and participative workers’ state.” Now what would that look like? Does the author know, and hope that the reader does, or is its inclusion just a rote-learned abstraction, plucked out of a previous historical contex? In fact a state according to Marx is “based upon the contradiction between public and private life, on the contradiction between the general interests and the private interests.” (ibid Vol 3 p 198). This contradiction and the need for its permanent removal will be briefly considered in ‘Misunderstanding Marx – 4’, to be published later. Meanwhile, land and human alienation, another source of neglected  insights emphasised by Marx.

Land! The first condition of human existence.

“To make land an object of huckstering – the land which is our one and all, the first condition of our existence – was the last step toward making oneself an object of huckstering. It was and is to this very day an immorality surpassed only the immorality of self-alienation.” (Marx ‘Outlines of Political Economy’.)

In the 21st century, it needs to be recognised that the ‘immorality’ of human self-alienation achieved within hierarchical mass societies (including their self-flattering description as ‘Civilisations’) is not the direct result of the forces of nature, as bourgeois ideology likes to imagine. It is in fact the indirect results of the human social forces of nature implemented and mediated through just one type of human social structure – hierarchical mass societies!

Biologically and economically, hierarchical mass society humanity remains absolutely dependent upon life on earth in general (ie nature), for air, water, food and non-food materials, but unlike hunter-gatherer humans and all other life forms, human individuals within hierachical mass societies do not relate intimately and directly to life on earth’s essential bio-chemical sources of nutrition (N) and other useful raw materials. In hierarchical mass societies the relationship of human individuals to their own Nutrition, Metabolism, Growth, Reproduction, Ageing and Death (N-M-G-R + A-D) life-cycle processes, are several times removed and socially mediated.

The natural materials they encounter, utilise and fashion on a daily basis, are already in an alien, socially processed form. They exist as dead, value-laden commodities. The vast majority of citizens are provided with natures products by a numerically variable, often far-distant minority, whilst the rest (the majority of citizens) are at least one, and sometimes twice, removed from continual direct contact with the other living and non-living materials, they actually need to survive. In this way it appears in their individual and social consciousness as if their survival directly depends upon the hierarchical mass society structure and not directly upon life on earth in general.

For example, the baker, does not raise the crops or grind the grain; the butcher does not hunt, raise or kill the animal; the woodworker does not grow or fell the trees, the metal worker does not mine the ore, etc. In advanced hierarchical mass societies, the vast majority of citizens see only partly finished organic raw materials to work on or finished organic materials to consume by use or digestion. For the majority of human beings in hierarchical mass society forms of existence, the direct daily link between humanity and those many other species of life on earth they actually depend upon, has been severed.

In hierarchical mass societies, even those who have retained a direct link with life on earth, such as animal breeders, herders and slaughterers, crop planters, grain harvesters, lumberjack’s, miners, etc., their relationship to their occupation has become a routine daily and weekly grind. There is little (or in some cases no) positive emotional involvement during their direct contact with the human and non-human organic world in general. Furthermore, for obvious limited sensory reasons, there is no immediately detectable connection between land and sea based plant photosynthesis and the sufficiently oxygenated air we all need to continually breathe – so it is taken for granted, instead of understood.

These (and other) natural sensory and social ‘disconnections’ represent one generic form of human alienation – alienation from the rest of nature – the very source from which humanity emerged and of which it remains an integral part. In addition, the hierarchical and occupational divisions between mass society citizens also removes most daily practical common activities between them or with the other human beings in different classes. This daily, occupational social isolation, is intensified as within classes and between classes, individuals are encouraged (or required by the system) to compete with each other for status, position, rewards, and even base line benefits, such as food and housing.

Although at one level the hierarchical mass society is a functioning whole it is a fundamentally fractured unity of internally competing individual, family or class conflicts. Hierarchical mass societies are riddled with contradictions and riven with conflicts that reach deep into the most intimate personal human relationships. These contradictions and conflicts have to be patiently endured, emotionally or chemically controlled or forcibly contained, but they are never fully resolved.

This constant competition represents another form of human alienation – this time citizens are alienated from members of their own family, their own community or their own national society. Furthermore, when each hierarchical mass society runs out of sufficient ‘nature’ (ie. natural resources) to keep its citizens in the manner they have become accustomed, the logic of the elite is to expand its geographical area of exploitation. If the area sought for land or resource acquisition is already occupied, then the compelling solution for the elite is to take what they desire by force from those already relying upon it. This represents yet a third form of human alienation – this time from other human communities. This is another form of alienation within and between it’s own species.

This lack of common daily unified tasks and in particularly the continuous deadly competition between human individuals and between their societies is therefore unique among all the other forms of bacterial cell, plant, insect and animal social life forms on earth, but not unique in a good way. The resulting intra and inter-species antipathy and even hatred produced by hierarchical mass societies since they began within the last 10,000 years, is a uniquely human and late-developed species phenomenon. It is the first of it’s kind to emerge during the millions of years that the millions of other species of life on earth have evolved.

Moreover, alienation from nature and each other in the 21st century has gone even further than in previous centuries. Individual transport vehicles driving on crowded roads, has visibly and statistically increased intolerance (road rage) of other people similarly occupied. Takeaway food (just eat), video games, and working from home has isolated individuals even further from each other, and from nature. Even the working classes (or the precarious proletariat) are no longer employed to work in large numbers together as automation and artificial intelligence have reduced their numbers in factories, fields, mines, docks and offices. In the 21st century, automation, machine learning and computer-guided robotic appendages, have relegated masses of workers to a largely redundant status.

Alternatively, it has increasingly forced many of them – ironically amid modern mass societies – to eek out a contradictory individual existence in the, self-employed, dog eat dog, gig economy. Obsession with mobile phones and computer games has also dragged many individuals further away from a positive collective social reality into an individual world of frequently competitive, negative, electronic virtual realities. In these ways, the obvious long term mental health issues promoted by social competition and alienation are continually amplified by the ‘systems’ economic and financial ‘gamers’ and compounded by escapes into their profit-motivated, gadget assisted, personal fantasies.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2023)