Resurrecting Marx

Analytical Marxists on Exploitation, Freedom and Justice

David Gordon

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN: 9780887388781
• eBook ISBN: 9781351493147
• Topic: Política y relaciones internacionales
• Subtopic: Comunismo, poscomunismo y socialismo

The last two decades have seen Marxism's academic renascence. In fields as diverse as law, literary criticism, history, and philosophy, Marxism once again captivates no small number of scholars. In part, this reassessment is driven by the efforts of a group of philosophers and economists to reconstruct Marx from the ground up on a more rigorous basis. The work of these "Analytical Marxists" — who include G.A. Cohen, Jon Elster, and John Roemer — is given a sustained examination and critique in David Gordon's Resurrecting Marx.

The charge of the Analytical Marxists that capitalism is inherently exploitative and unjust is the primary subject of Gordon's book. Gordon takes issue with that contention; he argues that the Analytical Marxists' withering criticism of classical Marxism is essentially correct, but that they fail to replace it with a superior theoretical edifice. Gordon also analyzes the Analytical Marxists' reformulation of the Marxian notion of exploitation, the implications of their rejection of the labor theory of value, their differences over what rights people have, and their arguments for the compatibility of markets with socialism.

1

An Introduction to Analytical Marxism

The principal aim of this first chapter is to offer a brief characterization of the analytical school of Marxism. Before doing so, however, the scene must be set so that the reader can grasp what is distinctive about this school. Accordingly, the chapter first describes some of the main tenets of classical Marxism. Next, it discusses the criticisms that have led many to agree with the philosopher H. B. Acton that Marxism is a “philosophical farrago.” Analytical Marxism arose as a reaction to the severe criticisms that classical Marxism had received. It attempts to reconstruct the system on a new basis.

Karl Marx believed that he had established scientific socialism. He makes such a claim repeatedly in his works—for example, in the Communist Manifesto, he and his collaborator Friedrich Engels contrast the positions held by their “utopian” precursors with their own views. They scorn “duodecimo editions of the New Jerusalem,” and claim that the “workingmen of all countries” now (in 1848) have an exact account of the inevitable historical transition from capitalism to socialism available for their use.

Anyone may make such a claim; had Marx stopped his work with the Manifesto, only a few specialists would today remember his name. But he, of course, went further. In his main work, Capital, he attempted to set forward the “laws of motion” of capitalism. (Only Volume One of the work, published in 1867, appeared during Marx’s lifetime. Engels issued Volumes 2 and 3 in 1883 and 1895; a further massive work, The Theories of Surplus Value, sometimes considered a final volume of Capital, appeared after the death of Engels under the aegis of his literary executor, Karl Kautsky.) Marx’s Capital, replete with formulae and technical language, retreated not an inch from the assertions of the Manifesto that the arrival of socialism could be predicted with the inevitability of scientific law.

The outlines of Marx’s theory can be quickly stated. In order to use whatever land and natural resources exist at a given time to produce profit, an economic system must find some way to extract surplus labor. Labor, in Marx’s view, is the source of all value; unless laborers can produce more than they require for their subsistence, no growth in production is possible. Fortunately, workers can, on Marx’s theory, generate the required surplus. For the purpose of analysis, they can be looked at as devices that, unlike ordinary machines, give rise to value. If regarded in this way, their value, like that of any other commodity, consists of the labor required to produce them. To produce but a single generation of workers, however, would avail the purchasers of labor but little. Workers must be given enough to enable them to reproduce themselves, so that the stock of labor is not exhausted. Put more simply, whatever goods enable laborers to live, continue to work, and reproduce their numbers suffice to “produce” them. Hence, on the Marxist theory, the labor required to produce these goods gives laborers their value.¹

But what laborers can produce is categorically different from the labor needed to produce the goods on which the laborers live. Just as a machine can be used to create other goods than the material one requires to construct the machine, so can labor make things other than goods for its own subsistence. Further, it can produce subsistence goods in quantities beyond what is needed for laborers themselves to live on. In succinct terms, “labor power” and “labor” differ entirely. The latter is a commodity; the former, a power of producing commodities.

Labor, then, resembles a machine; on the Marxist account, however, it is a machine of a very special type. Unlike real machines, whose use in production does not in and of itself add to value, labor stands in a unique position. The difference between labor and labor power enables whoever controls labor to produce new value. Lest one be inclined to dismiss this theory out of hand, it should be noted that Marx does not deny the importance of machines. Far from it: Capital is not only the title but the principal subject of his magnum opus. But without labor, machines are sterile.

Whoever, then, controls labor occupies a fortunate position: he can secure for himself new value (Marx’s technical term for this is surplus value). And this concept is more than a part of a recondite economic theory, of interest only to specialists in the history of economic thought. Quite the contrary: it is the key to Marx’s entire approach to history.

After the beginning stage of history, that of “primitive communism” (the Marxist doctrine of which is found in its most elaborate form in Engels’s The Origin of the Family, Private Property, and the State), laborers no longer control their own labor power. Instead, it has been extracted from them by a ruling class, which controls the society as far as it can to the advantage of its own members. The class that extracts the surplus, together with its manner of doing so, characterizes the various types of systems which have succeeded one another in history. These include ancient slavery, feudalism, and capitalism—the last of which, of course, occupies Marx’s principal attention. The extent, if any, to which Marx thought these stages must succeed each other in a fixed order is a question much in dispute among Marxist exe- getes.²

Much less in dispute than the order of the stages, however, is Marx’s view of the underlying reason capitalism replaced feudalism. (Speaking of “capitalism” involves a slight if convenient anachronism, since Marx rarely refers to the system by this name.) Marx believed that there is a near constant tendency in history for the forces of production—very roughly, the technology—in a given society to expand to the greatest extent that its economic system permits. The ruling class constantly strives to extract maximum surplus value. For each level of technology, a particular social system will best promote the extraction of surplus value; it will thus tend to be established. As technology continues to develop, however, the system best fitted to the creation of surplus value changes. In Marx’s vivid words, “the integument of the old order bursts,” and the extant regime is replaced by a new, more productive system. For Marx, the development of capitalism out of feudalism provides the prime example of this type of transition. In the opinion of some contemporary Marxist writers—for example, Robert Brenner and Jon Elster—this case is the only one for which Marx offers anything approaching a fully worked-out scenario.

Whatever the truth of this argument, there is no denying two points about Marx’s doctrine of capitalism: he believed that its productivity vastly exceeded that of any earlier system, and he believed that its method of surplus extraction differed in a crucial way from that of any previous society.³ The two differences, further, are not coincidental.

Slavery and feudalism extract surplus value through the use of force. Slaves and serfs who refuse to work for their masters generally suffer a dire fate: for example, in the Roman Empire, as Edward Gibbon notes, roads were sometimes lined with the crucified bodies of rebellious slaves. According to Marx, capitalism (like earlier systems) arose through violent measures; in the famous “Primitive Accumulation” chapter of the first volume of Capital, Marx details the many horrors that, in his opinion, led to and accompanied the rise of the new system. He places great emphasis on the causal responsibility of the slave trade and production by colonial slaves for the growth of the fortunes by which capitalism got started. His lurid descriptions of the long hours men, women, and children worked during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in Britain are well known.

Though, in origin, capitalism did not escape the violence characteristic of its predecessors, once it was established matters were quite different. The members of the working class in a capitalist system are generally not forced to work for any particular employers: indeed, they are free, should they so desire and can secure the means, to join the ranks of businessmen themselves. Further, contracts between workers and employers are on exactly the same basis as any other exchange.⁴ Commodities exchange, roughly speaking, in proportion to their value, as determined by the labor that would be required for their production in the most socially efficient way. (Here I am using a persuasive though controversial interpretation of the labor theory by G. A. Cohen.)

On the surface, then, freedom has replaced slavery. Nevertheless, Marx insistently describes the capitalist system as one involving the exploitation of workers. At first glance, his reason for doing so is obvious. In the new system, surplus value still flows from the workers to the ruling class, in spite of the judicial principle of freedom of contract. The transfer is enabled to take place because of the fact mentioned before: labor power differs from labor. The capitalist buys the use of labor, paying what is required to produce it. So, at any rate, says the labor theory. By its purchase, the capitalist, not the worker, secures control of the instrument by which, in the phrase of the New Testament, stones are turned into bread. It is the ruling class, not the workers, that gains for its use the benefits of surplus value.

This, once more, admits of no dispute, given the truth of the premises of Marx’s system. “Exploitation” just means, in Marxist terms, the surrender of surplus value—by the laborers who produce it—to the members of another class. But a deeper question now arises: given that, according to the legal system of capitalism, no one forces laborers to sell their labor to capitalists, why does Marx use the pejorative term “exploitation”? Considerable controversy has arisen in recent years over whether Marx thought that capitalism was unjust. Marx, it seems clear to me, had little use for “rights” and “justice.” To him, these concepts served only to paper over the realities of capitalist production. But some scholars reject this view.⁵ Whatever he thought about justice, however, he clearly disliked capitalism and eagerly looked forward to what his theory told him was inevitable: the extirpation of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. Our questions remain. Why did Marx condemn capitalism? Why is the relation between capitalists and workers best described as one of exploitation?

Two easy answers present themselves at once, only to be speedily rejected. First, Marx (as just mentioned) thought that a much better system—socialism—stood ready to replace a capitalist system that, though vastly productive, was senescent in reality. Certainly, he thought this; it does not follow, though, that a social system is exploitative because a better system will replace it. Otherwise, anyone holding that socialism will be replaced by a “higher stage” of communism would be compelled to condemn the former regime as exploitative.

Second, although Marx contended that workers were legally free, his actual portrait of British capitalism in the historical sections of Capital stresses entirely different features of that system. Workers, free in theory, faced death or starvation in practice were they to decline the offers of an employer. Acceptance of the “free” bargain, furthermore, often meant that workers had “voluntarily” committed themselves, their wives, and their children to working interminable hours at backbreaking labor for a mere pittance. If workers revolted, they would be brutally suppressed. (As our purpose here is a brief introductory presentation of the Marxist system, rather than an analysis, no point would be served by a discussion of whether Marx’s history was accurate. It is worth mentioning, however, that many economic historians—for example, T. S. Ashton and R. M. Hartwell—present a much more sympathetic account of early capitalism than did Marx.⁶)

Even if Marx’s picture of early capitalism is right, our questions remain unanswered. Although Marx not only thought the lot of the worker a sorry one but believed that, until socialism arrived, it would worsen, these facts do not cut to the essence of the issue of exploitation. Marx thought the workers’ sale of their labor to capitalists inherently involved exploitation, even if the conditions under which the laborer worked were not bad ones. What is the justification for such an idea?

This question introduces the principal topic of this book: the response of the analytical Marxists to the question of exploitation. Are their contentions correct? Our answer to this question will occupy much of the present work.

But before we can advance to this topic, we must complete our preliminary sketch of Marxism in its pristine form. As mentioned, Marx believed that the lot of the workers would worsen as capitalism grew to maturity: this is his well-known “immiseration” thesis. The precise details of this thesis—whether, for example, immiseration consists of a decline in absolute terms or only in an increase in inequality—are matters of controversy among interpreters.

The lot of most members of the ruling class was also an unenviable one. As technology developed, machines would force out laborers and assume an ever-greater role in the process of production. The basis for the extraction of surplus value would therefore shrink, which would bring about a tendency for the rate of profit to fall. The increasingly severe conditions necessary for the extraction of surplus value would pose a challenge to smaller capitalists that they would not be able to meet successfully. The final result would be the domination of the economy by a few great monopolistic combines.

But the group of monopolies will be no more stable than the congeries of smaller-scale firms that preceded it. Ever more severe depressions, caused by overproduction as capitalists seek by expansion to increase their profits and to destroy their rivals, will prove the rule of the day, and the proletariat—its ranks increased by those forced from the capitalist class—will of necessity be driven to revolt.

This grim account has a happy ending. When “the death-knell” of the old system sounds, a new system, vastly more productive and humane, will arise. Under it, workers will cease being exploited: they will now control their own labor and, in the form of the “dictatorship of the proletariat,” rule society.

Even better things are due to arrive. The first stage of socialism will in turn be transcended, though not by violence, with a “higher stage” of socialism, in which “the free development of each will be the condition for the free development of all.” (Later Marxists of strict observance—for example, Lenin and his many followers— usually use the term “communism” for this higher stage. But Marx himself does not.) Marx discusses this consummation of history at greatest length in his Critique of the Gotha Program; even here, though, his tone is oracular, and the reader of the tract will find little or no description of the higher stage apart from brief allusions to its desirable properties. Such is Marxism, or at any rate enough of it so that the reader can get a rough idea of what subsequent Marxists, including the group this work will endeavor to appraise, both developed and reacted against.

Some later Marxists, principally those infelicitously (though accurately) termed “Marxist-Leninists,” who look to Soviet Communism with admiration, dismiss the need for any fundamental changes in the theory we have briefly presented above. V. I. Lenin, the father of the Russian Revolution, added to Marxism an influential picture of imperialism. Otherwise, he continued to regard the scientific status of Marx’s and Engels’s main works as unimpeachable.⁷

More important from the standpoint of theory, G. V. Plekha- nov, a Russian Marxist of strict views who strongly opposed the Bolsheviks, interpreted in The Development of the Monist View of History Marx’s theory of history in a way that many found compelling. Further, several twentieth-century economists—for example, Ladislaus von Bortkiewicz and Maurice Dobb—refined particular phases of Marxist economics while remaining quite strictly within Marx’s Ricardian tradition. (The American economist Paul Sweezy, incidentally, is not a case of this sort. His influential Theory of Capitalist Development (1942) mixes Marxist and Keynesian economics.)⁸

Even today, some writers believe that Marxism, as codified and simplified by Lenin, offers a compelling explanation of the development of capitalism. In their view, classical Marxism requires little or no change, and attacks on it invariably result from mistakes or class bias. The influential Belgian Trotskyite Ernest Mandel, in his long and learned two-volume Marxist Economic Theory, adds a great deal of illustration and anecdote but almost nothing of theoretical elaboration to the simplified model of Marxism presented above. Nor is Mandel’s attitude based on ignorance of Marx’s critics: he has recently edited a volume of essays rejecting analytical Marxist economics in favor of a view very close to that of Marx himself. And though interpretations of this kind are aberrant in the contemporary non-Communist world, they dominate the work of Marxist writers in the Soviet sphere.

In contrast to the analytical Marxists, the purists reject the criticisms which have been advanced against every major part of Marx’s theory out o...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter 1. An Introduction to Analytical Marxism
• Chapter 2. The Classical Marxist Assault on Capitalism
• Chapter 3. The Analytical Marxist Rejection of Classical Marxism
• Chapter 4. Analytical Marxism versus Libertarian Rights
• Chapter 5. Cohen on Proletarian Unfreedom
• Chapter 6. The Socialist Alternative
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Index