BOOK REVIEW

(Mis-) Reading/(Re-)Reading Marx

Andrew Gamble, David Marsh, and Tony Tant, Marxism and Social Science. Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, 1999. pp. 381.

The demise of "actually existing socialism" followed by the swift and relentless globalization of capitalism have compelled Marxist scholars and activists to re-examine the relevance of Marx's work and of the Marxist tradition. Is Marxism obsolete? Is it unthinkable to conceive of alternatives to capitalism? Have we arrived to the end of history? What will be the fate of the Marxist tradition? Is the "free market" the only workable foundation for democracy? Are class divisions ineradicable? Could Marxism survive, as an intellectual tradition and as the basis for progressive politics, if socialism is viewed as an undesirable alternative? The purpose of this collection of essays is to offer some answers to those and many other questions while exploring the weaknesses and strengths of the Marxist tradition, its response to the challenges from the new right, feminism, regulation theory and postmodernism, its scientific claims, and its usefulness to analyze substantive issues such as, for example, globalization, ecology, class, the state, culture, and many more.

The power of Marx's method and theory of capitalism, and the extraordinary richness of the Marxist tradition shine through this collection of mostly critical essays; together they amply demonstrate that any serious engagement with today's crucial theoretical and political issues necessitates a return to Marx and to Marxism. Today, as it was true one hundred years ago, there are no social science perspectives, and no political standpoints which haven't developed through an acknowledged or unacknowledged dialogue with Marx. Most of these essays, therefore, give the readers a fairly good sense of Marxist, neo-Marxist and non-Marxist analyses of substantive issues, identifying the strengths and perceived limitations of Marxism as well as the various ways through which contemporary scholars have sought to transcend those problems. Sometimes this critical reassessment leads to the rejection of Marx's basic theoretical and methodological assumptions, resulting in a version of Marxism unacceptable to knowledgeable Marxists, as exemplified in the chapter describing Marxism's encounter with postmodernism. This chapter is mainly an exegesis of Laclau and Mouffe's work which is presented as a needed corrective to the "economism" of classical Marxism. While there is reference to some critics of their work and of postmodernism in general (others just as important such as Wood (1986), Epstein (1995) and Zavarzadeh, Ebert and Morton (1995) are not mentioned), their arguments are not given the consideration they deserve. The postmodern alternative to "economism" is, however, discourse determinism (i.e., there is nothing outside discourse; everything is discursively constructed) and a politics of contingency, with no "privileged historical identities" (meaning the working class has no pivotal role in the struggles for human emancipation), with no preconceived political objectives (i.e., socialism) nor an end to political struggles, for "power and antagonisms can never be eliminated" (Daly, 1999: 80). Postmodern "Marxism," then, assumes the impossibility of qualitative social change leading to egalitarian social relations; having denied the "extra-discursive" reality or materiality of the mode of production and its causal efficacy, and the systemic nature of global capitalism, it reduces the political terrain to "a proliferation of the sites of antagonism that go way beyond traditional questions of how we produce or consume" (Daly, 1999:81).

The realities of the "extra-discursive" (e.g., the exploitation of labor, the exploitation of nature, male domination) however, necessitate the analysis of the material conditions that affect people's lives. The effects upon women of the organization of human reproduction and its articulation with the mode of production has resulted in a resurgence of materialist feminism, concerned with the material dimensions of the oppression of women as exploited workers, battered women, etc., a feminism that combines postmodern sensibilities about culture with the material realities of capitalism, patriarchy and other real or material structures of oppression (Jackson, 1999). Awareness of the exploitation of nature and its ecological and human negative effects has led to a re-examination of Marx's theory of capital accumulation and its contradictions, the conceptualization of the contradiction between capitalism and the material conditions of production, and a return to Marx's work in an effort to recover his ecologically relevant theoretical insights (Barry, 1999; see also Burkett, 1999; Foster, 2000). And, in the not so distant future, as the growing widespread criticism of the WTO, World Bank, IMF and neo-liberal economic policies suggest, the intensification of the exploitation of labor worldwide and drastic increase in economic inequality are likely to trigger a return to the now discredited theoretical and political insights of historical materialism. As Bromley (1999) points out, Marx can be rightfully considered "the first major theorist of globalization;" without denying the importance of recent theoretical developments and the new lines of inquiry they open up, "they all rest on an unacknowledged starting point: Marx's" (Bromley, 1999: 280).

I have entitled this review "(Mis-) Reading Marx" because, underlying most of the "corrections" and "improvements" on Marxism presented in these essays, there is an impoverished, functionalist, empiricist, undialectical reading of Marx according to which his work is flawed by an economism, structuralism and determinism which have to be rejected if Marxism is to retain credibility (Marsh, 1999). There is some recognition that those objectionable features can be found in the Marxism of the Second International and Soviet Marxism, but there is enough of a blurring of distinctions, so that in the end all of classical Marxism, including Marx, is tainted by these "isms." Taken in isolation, some of Marx's statements can be interpreted as instances of "economism;" but his work as a whole, if read in light of his theoretical and methodological assumptions, is far more subtle and complex than many critics today seem to be willing to acknowledge.

As Tant (1999) points out, Marxism is incompatible with empiricist models of science, but congruent with the realist and practical materialist conceptions of science. For Marx, as for the realist philosophy of science, the goal of science is to go beyond the appearances and ascertain the underlying causal relations or mechanisms that produce those appearances or observable phenomena and our experience of those phenomena. And Marx's insistence on the dialectical nature of reality is congruent with modern chaos theories and theories of complexity (Tant, 1999). But Marx's stratified conception of social reality, which differentiates between the level of analysis of observable phenomena -- i.e., the level of analysis of social formations, social institutions, the "very Eden of the innate rights of man... Freedom, Equality, Property and Bentham" (Marx, 1967a: 170) -- and the level of analysis of the causal mechanisms that produce observable phenomena -- i.e., the level of the capitalist mode of production, its structures, processes, tendencies, and contradictions -- is ignored by most critics. Severing the dialectical connection between appearances and their conditions of possibility, structure and agency, the mode of production and its contradictions and the ideological forms in which people become aware of their conditions of existence (Marx, 1970:21), modern theorists tend to embrace abstract negations of whatever aspect of historical materialism they dislike the most, "privileging" agency over structure, "signifiers... over signified, ...form over content, appearance over essence, particular over universal and consumption over production" (Mc Mahon, 1999). To these critics applies Marx's answer to those who criticized the arguments in the Preface to the Critique of Political Economy (Marx, 1970: 19-23) by bringing up the importance of politics in Rome and Athens, and of Catholicism in the middle-ages:

     "This much, however, is clear, that the middle ages could not 
     live on Catholicism, nor the ancient world on politics.  On 
     the contrary, it is the mode in which they gained a livelihood
     that explains why here politics, and there Catholicism, played
     the chief part" (Marx, 1967a: 62).

And, while the theory of the mode of production and the specific forms in which surplus is extracted "reveals the innermost secret" of the entire social and political structures and relations,

     "this does not prevent the same economic basis -- the same
                                ^^^^
     from the standpoint of its main conditions -- due to
     innumerable different, empirical historical influences, etc.
     from showing infinite variations and gradations in appearance,
     which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically
     given circumstances" (Marx, 1967b: 791-793; emphasis added).

To a large extent, the alternatives to classical Marxism proposed in these essays take those "infinite variations and gradations in appearance" as evidence of the shortcomings of historical materialism and as the basis for alternative (and, by implication, "better," meaning non-economistic, etc.) theoretical constructs such as "historical blocs" (Daly, 1999: 69) or "regimes of accumulation" and "modes of social regulation" (Kenny, 1999) . Hence the theoretical polarity underlying these essays which, undialectically "privilege" agency, politics, contingency, and forms of structured inequality other than class (Marsh, 1999: 322). This is why this volume, while offering a spirited albeit critical defense of the Marxist tradition through a scholarly and interesting presentation of the manifold ways it has enriched and continues to energize the social sciences, it might also have the unintended effect of reinforcing stereotyped understandings of Marx and Marxism. In the last chapter, Marsh (1999) offers a balanced settling of accounts which highlights the need for a dialectical understanding of Marx's admittedly complex and contradictory work. It is interesting and very revealing that in the last pages of a book which in each chapter inveighs against "economism," we find the arguments put forth to defend the continued relevance of Marx and Marxism resting solidly upon their theoretical and political contributions to the analysis and critique of capitalism and its contradictions, leading to periodic crises and ever deepening levels of structured inequality, which are the "key feature of modern society at both the national and international level" (Marsh, 1999:340). This is a challenging volume, an important intervention at the level of ideological and political struggles, useful for research and teaching, a welcome addition to Marxist scholarship.

REFERENCES

Barry, John. 1999. "Marxism and Ecology" in Andrew Gamble et al,

op. cit. 259-279.
Burkett, Paul. 1999. Marx and Nature. A Red and Green Perspective.

New York: St Martin's Press.
Bromley, Simon. 1999. "Marxism and Globalization" in Andrew Gamble,

op. cit., pp. 280-301.
Daly, Glyn. 1999. "Marxism and Postmodernity" in Andrew Gamble,

     David Marsh and Tony Tant, eds., Marxism and Social Science.
     Urbana/Chicago: University of Illinois Press, pp. 61-84.
Epstein, Barbara. 1995. "Why Postructuralism is a Dead End for 
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Foster, John Bellamy. 2000. Marx's Ecology. Materialism and Nature.
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Jackson, Stevi. 1999. "Marxism and Feminism" in Andrew Gamble et
     al, op. cit, pp. 11-34.
Marx, Karl. 1970. A Contribution to the Critique of Political
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Marx, 1967a. Capital, Vol. I. New York: International
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Marx, Karl. 1967b. Capital, Vol. III. New York: International
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Marsh, David. 1999. "Resurrecting Marxism" in Andrew Gamble, op.
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Wood, Ellen Meiksins. 1986. The Retreat From Class. A New "True" 
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Zavarzadeh, Mas'ud, Teresa L. Ebert and Donald Morton, eds. 1995. 
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