Despite a number of references to Marx, the documentary evidence I have recently seen which was focused upon a reformist transition from the capitalist mode of production to an eco-socialist mode of production, indicates further misunderstandings of Marx. This evidence suggests that some of these documents are the products of a privileged intellectual trend from within the middle class. Before considering these more recent examples further, it will be useful to remind ourselves of the problems associated with a fundamental division of labour in hierarchical mass societies. One of the crucial divisions of labour in this regard is between those individuals whose labour is predominantly manual; and those whose labour is predominantly intellectual.

Manual labour, by it’s very essence deals with real tangible objects, which can only be manipulated and recombined by considerable physical effort and using limited physical means (mechanical, electrical, or chemical) of one kind or another. Consequently, external reality is a constant, direct companion and objective tutor in correcting the efforts and final outcomes of the manual labourer. If the manual labourer gets some or all of it wrong this is obvious; the product doesn’t work or function satisfactorily.

Intellectual labour, however, deals purely with thought entities (abstractions) which can be manipulated and recombined freely at will and with relatively little physical effort. Consequently, various levels of internal virtual reality or unreality, are the constant companions of the intellectual labourer. The only objective tutor (‘reality’) is often far removed from the mental efforts of the intellectual. If intellectual labourers get their formulations wrong (eg. the sun going around the earth), it may not be immediately obvious that it is wrong. In this way, imaginary and incorrect (flat earth type) thought entities can persist widely and for many generations. Even the potential corrective of peer review (in this case by earth centred medieval religious scholars) is nevertheless still a subjective corrective, and for many generations was used to confirm rather than correct this mistake.

Unless intellectual assumptions can be experimentally confirmed, confirmation bias can perpetuate misunderstandings that are far removed from reality. Even the more science based disciplines of knowledge are frequently burdened with having to correct false and unwarranted assumptions about the reality intellectuals were at one time certain about. Marx frequently raised the problem of a growing difference between ideas and reality.

“Logic – minds coin of the realm, the speculative or mental value of man and nature – its essence which has grown totally indifferent to all real determinateness, and hence unreal – is ‘alienated thinking’, and therefore, thinking which abstracts from nature and from real man; abstract thinking.” (Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844. ‘Critique of Hegelian Dialectic’.)

Marx points out that ‘logic’, the tool we use to think about thought-entities (ie. words and concepts), often becomes indifferent to all real determinateness and thus becomes unreal – or alienated thinking. Too often thought entities are  considered by intellectuals to be real entities. For example, Plato’s ideal thought entities he considered as the true entities and the real natural entities he considered as imperfect copies of the ideal. Although in the above extract Marx was considering the philosophical mind set, (as personified by Hegel with his Hegalian pursuit of the ‘absolute’, ‘reason’ and ‘divine providence’,) yet elsewhere Marx locates this same trend in the religious and political realms of thinking.

The danger for us ‘thinkers’ he points out is that our thinking too easily becomes ‘abstract thinking’, and thus ‘alienated thinking’. By assuming our thought entities are ‘real’ entities it becomes easy for us to intellectually manipulate our abstractions and assume we have started from a ‘true’ understanding and arrived at an even greater one.  When in fact more often than not we have never even departed from the virtual world of ideas. In this way intellectual thinking can become self contained or ‘alienated’ from it’s natural source – reality! Here is an example of this type of intellectual manipulation of thought entity abstractions, that I recently came across’;

“…even in an ecosocialist, post-capitalist regime: “Ecosocialism does not exclude the possibility of pursuing further sustainable economic growth once capitalist production is overcome, but degrowth communism maintains that growth is not sustainable nor desirable even in socialism.” (emphasis added. RR.)

In this particular extract, the intellectual projection of an imaginary future transition between the present capitalist mode of production and an indeterminate ‘speculative’, “eco-socialist post-capitalist regime” (ie. mode of production complete with a ‘regime’), contains an amazing number of abstractions. The determinants of a present and future reality have disappeared from the authors mind and imaginary ‘isms’ (ecosocialism, degrowth communism and regimes) are given agency to “pursue sustainable economic growth”. The lack of any deterministic connection with reality in this extract is therefore quite mind boggling. The real agency of change – life on earth – in the form of humans, other life forms and nature along with their real contemporary context, are nowhere referenced. Such ‘thought entities’ are floating adrift in their own virtual world of abstractions.

The real and present danger is that strung together thought-entity passages, like those above (and below) can be considered by non-intellectuals as ultra clever and beyond their understanding. Consequently working people start to assume that thinking about the future is best left to the intellectuals. In actual fact the extract above describes nothing real. It is not just beyond ordinary understanding it is beyond ordinary reality. In his critique of the Gotha Programme, Marx described such misguided abstractions – within anti-capitalist discourse – as verbal rubbish and ideological nonsense; and more tellingly warned that they perverted a realistic outlook. As Marx added to the above noted ‘critique’ extract, they cease to represent real nature and real human beings;

“The human character of nature and of the nature created by history – man’s products – appears in the form that they are products of abstract mind and as such, therefore, phases of mind – thought entities.” (Marx. Ibid above)

The producers and promoters of abstract anti-capitalist thought entities are not above using bits of Marx as a reputational means to support a degree of authenticity to their abstract propositions and future speculation about ‘regimes’.  Lenin, Stalin and Trotsky were exceptionally skilled at using (and abusing) Marx’s writings this way. This mode of thinking and the practice of not fully understanding the problem of hierarchical mass socIety alienations, exposes two critical things about the petite bourgeois nature of such assertions and hypotheses. 1. Their misunderstanding of the function and role ideas and 2, Their misunderstanding of the human agents of revolutionary change. Therefore when Marx noted that;

“It is not the consciousness of men which determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” (Marx. Preface to A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy’.)

Marx was alerting the reader to the fact that a persons social position in a hierarchical system (their social existence or social being) to a considerable extent, determines their consciousness and this in turn determines how that consciousness is manifested and articulated. What and how they think, say and write is not neutral or untainted by their position in the social division of labour. The partial level of understanding by intellectuals was the basis of Marx’s frequently articulated principle that the working classes should be the authors and architects of their own emancipation in any transition from wage slavery and full slavery to a post hierarchical, post capitalist mode of production. He resolutely considered that;

“The emancipation of the working class must be achieved by the working classes themselves. We cannot therefore cooperate with people who openly state that the workers are too uneducated to emancipate themselves and must be freed from above by philanthropic persons from the upper and lower middle classes.” (Marx/Engels. Selected Correspondence. Progress. Page 307.)

Marx had a number of things in mind with regard to thinking and being, but among them was the recognition that the division of intellectual and manual labour in hierarchical mass societies, was more detrimental to the revolutionary humanity of intellectual workers than to manual workers. Their privileged position in the hierarchical division of labour, creates the illusion among them of the superiority of mental workers over manual workers and the socio-economic subordination of the latter to the former. For students of the role of the Bolsheviks in the 1917 Revolution in Russia, it becomes clear that the Bolshevik Central Committee of middle class, lawyers, academics, writers and former clerics, were not aware of the principle of workers self-determination repeatedly articulated by Marx, or if they were, they clearly ignored it and set themselves up as the ‘thinkers‘ guiding and instructing the ‘doers‘.

This socially imposed hierarchical distortion between social thinking and social doing requires an appropriate recognition and remedial action prior to and during any revolutionary transition from capitalism to any post capitalist mode of production that revolutionary workers deem appropriate. Marx was clear from understanding the reality of hierarchical mass societies, that there was a need – as soon as possible – to permanently abolish the actual as well as the intellectual distinction between mental and physical labour. So when we also read the following, pre-determined speculative thoughts about an intellectually imagined future, alarm bells should be ringing deafeningly.

“… from a socio-ecological point of view the question of growth or de-growth is simple: there cannot be a yes or no answer. Some flows, stock, and activities should grow; others should not grow but decrease, for example, the production of weapons.”

And;

“In this transition, starting under capitalism, the capacity for climate mitigation and adaptation along with elimination of energy poverty afflicting the global South must be created in the form of mainly wind and solar energy supplies.”

And;

“Degrowth Communism is close in concept to Solar Communism both with a steady-state physical economy, realizing a 21st century update of Marx, “From each according to her ability, to each according to her needs”

And;

“Society, particularly in rich countries, must move towards a steady-state economy, which requires a shift to an economy without net capital formation, one that stays within the solar budget. Development, particularly in the rich economies, must assume a new form: qualitative, collective, and cultural — emphasizing sustainable human development in harmony with Marx’s original view of socialism.

And;

“But rich countries, having the historic responsibility for generating dangerous climate change from their consumption of fossil fuels with the greatest impacts on the global South, now must be held accountable to finance and help implement the necessary wind/solar energy infrastructure especially in the global South, as well as converting their own physical economies to green cities, electrified public transit, agroecologies, etc, dismantling the military industrial fossil fuel complex.”

In these previous five quotes, we have modern philanthropic intellectuals (well meaning or not) debating what future socio-economic formations of working people should be implementing. Indeed, in reality, the abstraction ‘rich countries‘ like all abstract collective terms cannot have responsibility for anything. Countries do not generate anything. Only specific communities of people generate dangerous climate change and some very poor people living in rich countries generate very little – so why – even in speculation or imagination – should the latter be responsible for financing the global south, wind and solar energy infrastructure?

These so-called eco-socialist formulations lack a concept of the responsibility of the ruling capitalist class elites within hierarchical mass societies that have long determined productive activity. This latter formulation also implies that the existing system of rich countries will be conserved, rather than revolutionised in order to implement these green city measures. The use of words such as ‘must’ and ‘should’ indicate an implicit, if not explicit desire of intellectuals to ultimately direct what future actions in a future (as yet non existent) eco-society should be implemented. And unless stated otherwise, these ‘must-do’ measures, surely imply the continuation of a top-down model of society to ensure that what the intellectuals think rich societies, ‘must’ and ‘should’ do – is actually done.

Which is exactly what the Leninists, Stalinists, Trotskyists and Maoists achieved prior to and during (including utilising references to Marx) the early 20th century revolutionary uprisings – with such dire totalitarian consequences! Those 20th century intellectuals were consciously and systematically prescribing a privileged (vanguard) role for themselves as articulate intellectual leaders (ie. ‘thought entity’ creators and manipulators) and persuaded (and eventually forced) the oppressed to become ‘their’ followers and this intellectual ‘vanguard’ led them back into the intense exploitation of factories, fields and five year orgburo plans.

It is clear to me that although the authors of the above quotes have referenced Marx a number of times they have failed to fully understand the revolutionary-humanist principles established by Marx, many of which have been mentioned in each of this series of ‘Misunderstanding Marx’. I suggest that the authors of the quotes, instead of updating or being in harmony with Marx, are dangerously close to becoming similar to some radical activists that Marx identified during the Paris Commune and wrote about in 1848.

“In every revolution, there intrude, at the side of the true agents, men of a different stamp; some of them survivors and devotees to past revolutions, without insight into the present movement, but preserving popular influence by their known honesty and courage, or by the sheer force of tradition;…….After the 18th March, some such men did also turn up and in some cases contrived to play pre-eminant parts. As far as their power went they hampered the real action of the working class, exactly as men of that sort have hampered the full development of every previous revolution.” (Marx. ‘Class Struggles in France’. Peking edition page 84.)

Yes of course there is a need to update some of Marx’s suggestions, where the actual material circumstances have changed, but the principle essences and fundamental structures of hierarchical mass societies such as classes, multiple alienations, extreme exploitation of human and other ‘natural’ resources and unnatural divisions of labour, have not changed. The working classes are no longer assembled in massive factories, warehouses, shipyards, offices, mines and foreign- based factories, and many are now precariously employed, unemployed, homeless or desperate migrants. Consequently this ‘occupational’ change of working people needs to be factored into the lived reality of the 21st century. The ruling classes are also more numerous, more diverse and more heavily defended than in previous centuries. The degradation of nature and climate changes have also accelerated so all these changes need to enter the present revolutionary-humanist perspective pioneered by Marx.

However, the alienation and estrangement of the bulk of humanity from their own essential social-species nature continues, as does the domination of intellectual labour over manual labour in social, political and economic affairs. The continuous degradation of the whole integrated and interdependent bio-chemical planetary system which is the foundation upon which all life on earth has evolved also continues unabated. Human beings are through their natural evolution, a socially integrated and multi-talented species, but one now conflicted and divided within itself by the formation of hierarchical, divided mass societies, which started in the near and far east.

It is only in the last four or five hundred years that this capitalist based hierarchical model was imposed on the whole planet by armed Europeans in a project of armed conquest and extermination. In creating hierarchical mass societies historical individuals introduced a negated version of human social forms and this hierarchical model needs to be progressively terminated (negated) by humanity or else nature and humanity will possibly be substantially terminated by the hierarchical mass society model. In conclusion, here is final critical note from Marx on those intellectuals who assume they have all the answers needed for the future of humanity and the rest of societies individuals just need to listen and implement.

“These prophets ‘teach’ their disciples, who appear in remarkable ignorance of their own interests, how they are to work and enjoy communally.” (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Volume 6 page 47.)

I would add that those of us who have some love of mankind and nature, should like Marx, become, articulate associates alongside and with the exploited and oppressed in any movement aimed at the actual transition of the present hierarchical forms to future non-hierarchical forms.

Roy Ratcliffe (June 2023)