This final article on this series of misunderstandings of Marx, by ‘Marxists’ and other commentators who misunderstand aspects of Marx’s research, concerns the idea that Marx proposed a definite economic mode of production to replace capitalism. It is a common mistake made by system designing ideologists on the left, particularly talented intellectual ones. Even among the most sincere of them, there is often a patronising wish to save working people from the trouble of having to work things out for themselves and from having to evalulate and change things when they get them wrong.

The elitist assumption, taken from the bourgeois and petite-bourgeois playbooks, is that the mass of ordinary people will need a blue-print produced by experts of various kinds, which they can then meticulously follow. The history of the Bolshevik leadership in the aftermath of the collapse of Russian Feudalism in 1917 demonstrates the results of this assumption. The Bolshevik Central Committee discussions and the setting up of the State Planning Commission and the numerous Organising Bureau’s, indicate the elitist thinking involved. Furthermore, Lenin at the ‘Extraordinary Seventh Congress’ of the Russian Communist Party convinced the delegates that what was needed in Russia was;

“…the transformation of the whole of the state economic mechanism into a single huge machine, into an economic organism that will work in such a way as to enable hundreds of millions of people to be guided by a single plan…unquestioning subordination to a single will is absolutely necessary….” (Lenin. Complete Works. Volume 27 page 90/91 and 296.)

A single plan and worker subordination to a single will, that was the alienating essence of Bolshevik socialism’. Years previous to this, Marx had written a particularly scathing analysis of an earlier ‘programmatic’ blue-print influenced by a man (Ferdinand Lassalle) who also thought he knew best how guide working people. In an letter, later entitled ‘Critique of The Gotha Programme’, Marx, describes much of the content as; “verbal rubbish; “ideological nonsense”; “trash”; and, “a monstrous attack on the understanding“. The whole document is well worth the read and he often returned to the theme. In a further example Marx notes the following;

“Individual thinkers provide a critique of social antagonisms, and put forward fantastic solutions which the mass if workers can only accept, pass on and put into practice. By their very nature, the sects established by these initiators are abstentionists, strangers to all genuine action,…” (Marx . ‘The First International and After.’ Penguin. Page 298.)

Turning from the role of individual thinkers to the role of elite created state organisations, Marx studied and wrote about the oppressive power of centralised states and concluded in the case of France and other similar examples that;

“The executive power possesses an immense bureaucratic and military organisation, an ingenious and broadly based state machinery, and an army of half a million officials alongside the actual army, which numbered a further half a million…Every common interest was immediately detached from society, opposed to it as a higher, general interest, torn away from the self-activity of the individual members of society and made a subject for governmental activity, whether it was a bridge, a schoolhouse, the common property of a village community, or the railways, the national wealth…(Marx. Surveys, from Exile. Pelican. Page 237/238.)

The multiple alienations Marx had identified in the 1844, Manuscripts, German Ideology and many other early and later writings, created by the divisions of labour in hierarchical mass societies, were given structural solidity by state institutions. Any serious student of the development of the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1923, before Stalin took over total control of the Party and State, will recognise that the above extract describes, with a high level of accuracy, the general pattern of state control established in the Soviet Union under the leadership of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and the Bolshevik Central Committee. It was a pattern which lasted until the eventual collapse of the Soviet Union and was repeated elsewhere and mirrored in either a Fascist or liberal form in a many other countries. Any serious study of Marx would conclude he was not an advocate of recreating a future hierarchical mass society state formation to replace the capitalist one.

I suggest that the many observations of capitalism and the frequent mentions of ‘socialism’ by the extremely dilligent Marx, constitute the literary basis for numerous intellectuals and commentators thinking that Marx had a definite, alternative social system in mind. Thus, at a superficial level of comprehension, Marx’s frequent references to ‘socialism’ or ‘communism’, are incorrectly interpreted as the presentation by Marx of an embryonic, alternative hierarchical socio-economic system to capitalism. However, that particular interpretation can only be upheld by ignoring the many references by Marx which not only undermines any such impressionistic idea but completely negates it. For example Marx elsewhere makes completely clear the function of communism in his view;

“Communism is the position as the negation of the negation and is hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation. Communism is the necessary form and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, but communism, as such is not the goal of human development, the form of human society.” (Collected Works. Volume 3 page 306. Emphasis added. RR.)

If main thing readers absorb from the above extract are the two mentions of ‘communism’, then their uses as abstract, (and as yet insufficiently defined process) has been intellectually transformed into representing a future system of hierarchical mass society based production and consumption. Whether or not this was the path of misunderstanding that the Bolsheviks took from an incomplete and partial reading of Marx, it is impossible to say, but it is clear from the writings of Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and many other Bolsheviks – that is how they understood the content of the terms, socialism and communism. For example, Trotsky echoing Lenin’s ‘single plan’ and single will, ‘asserted;

“..we can have no other way to socialism except by authoritative regulation of the economic forces and resources of the country, and in the centralised distribution of labour power in harmony with the general state plan. The labour state considers itself empowered to send every worker to the place where his work is necessary. And not one serious socialist will begin to deny to the labour state the right to lay its hand on the worker who refuses to execute his labour duty. (Trotsky. ‘ Terrorism and Communism’. New Park. Page 153.)

The above abstract demonstrates how far a self-proclaimed Marxist intellectual such as Trotsky can get from Marx’s revolutionary-humanism even after having read some of Marx. The same applies to Lenin. Little wonder that other less intellectually gifted ‘Marxists’ have also completely misunderstood Marx. Trotsky, throughout his political career was dedicated to “authoritive regulation’ saw working people not as potentially rounded and capable species beings, but primarily as sources of ‘labour power’ to be stripped of their self-activity and detached from any common interests and subordinated to themselves and their higher power state plan.

Just how far Trotsky had kept himself away from Marx’s revolutionary-humanism can be judged by re-reading the above quote from his ‘Terrorism and Communism’ and mentally inserting the word ‘national’ in front of every occurrence of the word ‘socialism’. I invite the reader to go back over the previous quote and try it for themselves! This renders the passage entirely in line with the reality of National Socialist (Nazi) Party in Third Reich Germany. Interestingly, this whole question of misunderstanding Marx was anticipated during his life time and after his death by his close friend and activist buddy Engels. Engels wrote;

“Unfortunately, however, it happens only too often that people think they have fully understood a new theory and can apply it without more ado as soon as they have assimilated its main principles, and even those not always correctly. And I cannot exempt many of the more recent ‘Marxists’ from this reproach, for the most amazing stuff has been produced in that quarter too.” (Engels. Selected Correspondence. Progress. Page 396.)

In the context of considering the potential second hand misunderstandings of Marx’s use of the abstractions ‘socialism’ and ‘commumism’, it is important to understand that Marx – as an activist and intellectual – was not operating in a vacuum. At that 19th century period of time, there was a vibrant international activist trend among the working classes who were using the terms socialism and communism. Therefore in corresponding and meeting with them, Marx and Engels also used these commonly used and then accepted terms.

The 20th century Stalinist nightmare of authoritative regulation had not at that time totally degraded the meaning of the term communism into its political opposite – as a Fascist form of authoritarian regulation. Consequently, Marx had his own definition and interpretation of the meaning of socialism and communism – which is contained in the phrases highlighted above in bold and now repeated below. Marx in particular was concerned to identify and articulate the revolutionary role of the working and oppressed classes as part of a;

“..historical development in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation‘; and, ‘communism, as such is not the goal of human development”.

For Marx the concept of ‘communism’, therefore, did not represent the post-capitalist “goal” of yet another system of hierarchical mass society, but the term represented the generic evolving ‘process of human emancipation and rehabilitation’. Furthermore, according to Marx, no such ism was the goal of human development nor the future ‘form of human society’. Indeed, Marx had previously written that the socialism and the later communism he referred to was to be understood as follows;

“This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism.” (Collected Works. Volume 3 page 296)

So in Marx’s own words, he considered that the next stage in the process of human emancipation and rehabilitation (after the latest hierachical mass society form based upon capitalism), was to be based upon a fully developed naturalism, which equalled humanism and a fully developed humanism required a revolution to achieve. Moreover, Marx at the time, considered that capitalism would be the last antagonistic form of social production.

“The bourgeois mode of production is the last antagonistic form of the social process of production – antagonistic not in the sense of individual antagonism but of an antagonism that eminates from the individuals’ social conditions of existence…(Marx. Preface. A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.)

Of course Marx could not know that Bolshevik ‘Marxists’ would later interpret his views as the need to usher in a state-capitalist mode of social production crammed with so many antagonisms, that show trials, assassinations, gulags and tortured confessions were necessary to ensure the hyper exploitation of human labour continued under their rule. Thus the bourgeois mode of production was not the last antagonistic form of social production, the Bolshevik and Maoist led modes of state-capitalist production continued the tradition of hierarchical mass society formations. This 20th century outcome reveals in no uncertain terms that Marx, was never a Marxist, (as he asserted before he died), but a revolutionary-humanist. His Revolutionary-Humanism was so thorough that it also extended to a criticism of politics.

“Revolution in general – the overthrow of the existing power and the dissolution of the old relationships – is a political act. But socialism cannot be realised without revolution. It needs this political act insofar as it needs destruction and dissolution. But where its organising activity begins, where its proper object, its soul comes to the fore – there socialism throws off the political cloak.” (Marx/Engels. Collected Works. Volume 3. Page 206)

Marx was not always correct and even when his conclusions were entirely valid at the time he made them, the socio-economic changes which have occurred during the period since his death, may have made some of them less valid or some not even valid at all. However, few intellects have equalled him and no one has surpassed him in his economic, social and political analysis of the capitalist form of hiersrchical mass societies. Consequently, in my opinion he deserves far more respect than he is given by his detractors and more than is often expressed by his so-called admirers. He dedicated much if his life to identifying and assisting in;

“…the great transformation to which the century is moving – the reconciliation of mankind with nature and itself. (Marx. Outlines of a Critique of Political Economy.)

After two World Wars and countless wars between nations alongside a continuing war against nature in the form of climate change, insect, plant and animal destruction, air and water pollution; the reconciliation of mankind with itself – and with nature – has never been more pressing and Marx’s ‘Revolutionary-Humanist’ perspective has never been more relevant.

Roy Ratcliffe (July 2023)