Stefan Sullivan

Marx for a Post-Communist Era: On Poverty, Corruption and Banality



PREFACE
In the course of writing this book, I was subjected to countless sermons by taxi drivers, academics, journalists and particularly East Europeans who, as school children, had been subjected to a dumbed-down Marxist-Leninist catechism. They all had an explanation why Marxism failed and why capitalism now reigns triumphant. I realized then that to address a subject that many people consider obsolete is a thankless task. Even more so when it is a subject like Marxism on which everyone claims an expert opinion.

The unseemly associations with totalitarianism, genocide and unviable economic planning are, indeed, hard to ignore. Yes, even though the euphoria that greeted the fall of communism has since been tainted by the rapacious greed of the ex-nomenklatura, and their carpetbagging Western advisers, few would now invoke a return to Marx. As critics of my project have been quick to point out, the human costs of social engineering have far outweighed the consequences of a capitalist system that, with ruthless logic, simply allocates to each worker the rewards appropriate to his skills on an open marketplace. To read Gulag memoirs, as apparently many communist sympathizers chose not to, or to visit Tuol Sleng prison, the unassuming secondary school in Phnom Penh where Pol Pot’s henchmen tortured and killed, is to face the sobering reality that dogma and its reckless certitude is far more dangerous to human freedom than the misery of a subsistence level wage.

But I entered this crowded field not just to say something fresh and readable about Marx, but because I had an intuition that much of what Marx said about capitalism in his day still holds true in ours. This intuition has been borne out. The destabilizing impact of roaming speculative capital, the subhuman conditions in Third World industrial parks, and the corrosive impact of market forces on the democratic process and cultural goods all reflect the unhealthy dominance of the capitalist system. The evidence was too overwhelming to shy away from the common neoliberal challenge that any attempt to expose the flaws of capitalism raises a totalitarian specter. As Slavoj iek, a leading contemporary theorist on left, remarks in somewhat heated terms: “… liberal scoundrels can find hypocritical satisfaction in their defense of the existing order: they know there is corruption, exploitation, and so on, but every attempt to change things is denounced as ethically dangerous and unacceptable, recalling the ghost of Gulag or Holocaust…”

Indeed, though individual liberty has a compelling grip on the modern consciousness, I suspected that there was intellectual dishonesty at play among those who misconstrue freedom as the unbridled pursuit of personal gain. The only response can be to argue one type of freedom against the next, the freedom of public safety versus the freedom of gun ownership, the freedom of global health coverage, a living wage and humane work environments versus the freedom of individual preferences (including how personal tax income should be allocated) on an open marketplace. In short, from the perspective of the left, the social allocation of surplus wealth and the intervention of the state in the name of the public good brings far greater freedoms to a far greater number than the neoliberal and conservative alternatives. But to do this, I also felt the need to restore to Marxism its intellectual integrity, one battered by the often appealing counter-arguments of neoliberal triumphalism, the unsavory apologias for the Gulag in the past, and, often, just plain bad writing - either the sweeping generalizations of the pamphleteer, or the jargon-heavy overkill often found in academic studies.

The purpose of this book is to explore Marx’s relevance in the postcommunist world. I have framed this project primarily in terms of a contribution to a critique of three major obstacles to freedom: poverty, corruption and banality. They not only encompass the economic, political and cultural consequences of a society driven by profit and greed, they also give us a fairly comprehensive understanding of the vastness of the Marxian project. For, at its core, it is motivated by a concern no less noble than to expose the impediments to a human life worth living in an alienated world. This implies, in turn, challenging the postmodernist sensibility that denies that there is any coherent world to be alienated from. By claiming that society is fragmented into heterogeneous subjective viewpoints, the postmodernist denies the ideal forms of freedom that afford us our only hope.

We may now be wary of rigid notions of the optimal social organization, but we must still strive for improvement in the regulation of the market, in the accountability of states and political agents, and in the aesthetic education of the global citizenry. For to fail to do so will allow unregulated capitalism, disguised as freedom, to continue to impede progress toward a more just and humane society.

The book is divided into two parts. Part 1 (Chapters 1 and 2) is primarily an intellectual history illustrating, firstly, Marx’s adaptation of the theological and metaphysical questions posed by German philosophy to a rigorous analysis of capitalism (Chapter 1), and secondly, the many and often contradictory forms Marxism assumed in the 20th century: from Leninist Bolshevism through the postcolonial ideologies of the developing world, to the cultural criticism of the Western Marxists and the Frankfurt School (Chapter 2). Part 2 presents a sequence of thematic chapters on poverty, corruption and banality in the postcommunist world. While exploring these topics in their own right, these chapters provide, particularly for the student reader, an overview of Marx’s and Marxism’s economic, political and cultural ideas. Chapter 3 addresses the problem of poverty and how it is perpetuated by shortcomings in mainstream economics and the exploitative tendencies at the heart of the capitalist system. Chapter 4 addresses corruption and Marx’s critique of liberal democracy based, among other things, on a fundamental distinction between political and human emancipation.

It is - the readers should be forewarned - a long and complicated chapter. This is primarily due to the need to clarify, in the course of the discussion, a number of familiar concepts of Marxist political thought that for too long have been saddled with ambiguity and confusion. Finally, Chapter 5 addresses banality; the infestation of capitalism into the sphere of leisure and culture. While the narrative evolves from a discussion of basic to more complex needs, the chapters are also largely self-contained. I have therefore foregone a concluding chapter in favor of concluding remarks at the end of each chapter.

To explore across continents and disciplines will expose me to criticism by the experts into whose territory I have wandered. But any philosopher who is faced with trying to make sense of the real world is faced with only two choices: to abstract from it or stray outside his comfort zone and risk the charge of charlatanism. True to the spirit of Marx, I have chosen the latter path. I have tried to understand the themes of poverty, corruption and banality in their own terms and disciplinary language, dispassionately and without ideological prejudice. Inevitably, I have not been able to accommodate all the literature and the academic controversies that surround them.

But wherever research could not reach, I have drawn upon personal observations from Russia, Thailand, Colombia and several European countries in addition to my native United States. From this liquid vantage point, I have witnessed poverty both tropic and arctic, corruption, both political and commercial, and banality in all its dazzling forms. Ultimately, I have realized that experience can enrich, but it can also humble. For it reminds us how so many of the big questions elude theoretical frameworks or practical solutions, and how complex and variegated they become when viewed up close. But even in our post-ideological world, the solution of the problems should not be left to the technocrat alone. The left-leaning scholar can expose and criticize a system that on a daily basis affronts human dignity, and cripples our potential. And that it is what I have tried to do.