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1. Expressive: What is my immediate reaction to my topic? How do I feel about Marx? Am I impressed, confused, excited?
The first time I heard of Marx was in an obligatory sociology course that I took during my first year of university. I was 18. We did not read Marx directly then, except for some paragraphs of the Communist Manifest but we were excited about his proposals. Among all those XIX century’ men who were introduced to us through the mediation of the professor and Mc Graw Hill books to us, we were sure that Marx was “right”. He had to be “right”.
I didn’t read much of Marx until the next year, when in a more advanced course on sociological theory, we were asked to read several chapters of “The Capital”, “German Ideology”, “Communist Manifesto” and “The Economic and Philosophic manuscripts of 1844”. It was no longer the story of whether Marx was “right” or “wrong”, but a matter of spending some nights awake trying to understand the texts, getting a decent grade on finals, and preparing the theoretical grounds for our “thesis”. It wasn’t a matter of what our position on Marx was, but rather how useful he was to explain whatever we wanted to explain. Once we could actually understand Marx, or at least pretend to, we were fascinated. I will always like his particular interpretation of society, the way he connects all the dots, the concepts. To track more recent theories back to Marx, even those where the influence is not so obvious; has always been a fun exercise to me.
But Marx’ political side, is a completely different story^1. I know that is pretentious and probably wrong to “separate” Marx. But it was an exercise I found useful in order to also separate my political views and inclinations while continue to value Marx as a funding father of my discipline. This is why you will see this separation in the “required” text.
By 2003-2004, Venezuelan’ political climate was getting more radical than ever. Opposition accused the president over and over of being a “communist” but our society was far from being a communist one, at least as defined by Marx. We kept on wondering if he had ever actually read Marx until he delivered a speech where he said the words: “proletariat” and “bourgeoise” to a crowd, who had no clue of the meaning of those words. It didn’t make any sense to use them. The other proof we receive that he
was actually reading Marx – or some of his advisors- was the constant attacks on private property.
Politically speaking, my inner conflict with Marx began just there, and reached its peak with the most dramatic case related to private property that we have heard of in Venezuela: Franklin Brito. Long story short: he was a lower middle class land owner, and a fierce government’ supporter until in 2003, when his lands were seized by the government with no trial, no compensation and no explanation. He used all resources in his hands to recover the land, and seven years later, when everything else failed, he started a hunger strike. He installed a tiny mattress next to the OAS (Organization of American States) in Venezuela. This office is located in the same street where my office was located, so I saw him at least twice a day, when I got to the office and when I was walking to the bus stop for going home. The government failed to negotiate with him. At the end, fearing of the damage this case could do to the government, they decided to take Franklin Brito to the military hospital against his will, in order to keep him alive. But he died there. He looked a skeleton in his final days^2.
His pictures impacted public opinion. They were simply everywhere. Looking at those pictures and reviewing his story on how a man can fight to his dead for his property, I wondered if Private Property is really as evil as Marx posed it. Maybe there are even greater evils, like an arbitrary government. Of course, Marx would claim that if Private Property didn’t exist, I wouldn’t be telling this story.
Later on, I ended up working for an organization who actually works –among other things- for private property rights- quite ironic. I was in a different project, but my co-workers had to make an extensive database of government’ confiscations, nationalizations and expropriations. I started noticing that as the project continued, they were emotionally charged. Every time they came back from the field, they had a different and even more frightening story to tell. A town desolate by a nationalization of the factory this town depended on; only to be closed later. A woman screaming in front of a tractor that was demolishing her zinc and cardboard-made home.
The cases documented by my co-workers include extensive documentation of those major and famous confiscations the government’ has made on big land owners, big companies, factories and so all. But they also include smaller land owners – such as Brito – and people who barely had a few meters of land – like the woman whose house^3 were brought down by a tractor. It seemed like to people of all classes property was
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example, a concept that has strengthened Marxism as a “valid” sociological theory is “class consciousness”, and his theory on social classes.
To Marx, the “consciousness of men” is not “what determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness”^5 Therefore, he attaches human conscience to social circumstances: the social production of men’ life. As an extension of his “class conscience” theory, he points out the antagonism present between a leading class and an oppressed one: “For one class to be the liberating class par excellence, it is necessary that another class should be openly the oppressing class ”^6. In the case of the modern, industrial society, the leading class is the bourgeoisie and the oppressed one, the proletariat. He even distinguishes differences inside those classes such as the existent between big bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie^7
This theory is precisely what Pierre Bourdieu^8 , a French Sociologist, had in mind when he conduct his famous research systematized in a book called “Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste“ (1979)^9. He classifies French society according to each class tastes and inclinations for art, music, food etc. He makes distinctions between the big and the petty bourgeoisie, claiming that the petty bourgeoise is always bond to follow the class above them, with less material means and just when the big bourgeoise has already moved to another set of material things. Thus, the big bourgeoise determines the fashion of a time, and the other classes only try, often without success, to follow. In that sense, he confirms what Marx said:
“The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling class ideas: i.e., the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force”^10
b. Marxist theory as a political ideology
When it comes to bring up the project inscribed in the extensive Marx-Engels’ work, no one doubts its political nature. It was Marx himself who wanted his work to be political as he claims on his famous XI’ Theses of Feuerbach: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways. The point, however, is to change it ”^11. To Marx, German philosophers so far have been only “theoretical”, “idealistic”; when it is in need to be “real”, “practical”, “critical”, and “objective”.
Marxism’ political project has a clear name: “Communism”, a theoretical basis: the “materialistic conception of history”, a protagonist: the proletariat in its antagonist position with the bourgeoisie, and a method (of action): “Revolution”, first and “the dictatorship of the proletariat” as the last phase prior to Communism.
To Marx:
“Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality (will) have to adjust itself. We call Communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things”^12
When Marx speaks of abolition he refers first, to abolition of private property as private property is the condition for social classes in industrial societies to exist in an antagonist position. The abolition of private property^13 – by the proletariat – carries, as an obvious consequence, the abolition of class structures attached to it. Communism transcends class structure, private property and thus labour, even family and religion; liberating the worker completely, making him a truly free man. The ideal of Communism is equality:
“Equality as the groundwork of communism is its political justification”^14
Also, it suppresses division of labour:
“Communist society (…) regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow…”^15
To make Communism happen there is no other possible method besides revolution: “…not criticism but revolution is the force of history…” says on The German
