Prince Philip & the communist ideal

One unintended and unremarked effect of the eulogies to Prince Philip is that they have reminded us of Marx’s vision of communism.

What I mean is that several of his admirers describe him as a “renaissance man” on account of his wide range of interests.

This, however, is an example of a common error – of ascribing to agency what is in fact the result of economic forces.

Prince Philip could afford to pursue so many different passions because the day he married the Queen he was freed from what Marx called “the dull compulsion of economic relations.” For most of the rest of us, however, this compulsion forces us to specialize, to develop just one skill to the detriment of other interests. Capitalism rests upon the division of labour. But as Adam Smith saw, this can destroy us:

The man whose whole life is spent in performing a few simple operations, of which the effects are perhaps always the same, or very nearly the same, has no occasion to exert his understanding or to exercise his invention in finding out expedients for removing difficulties which never occur. He naturally loses, therefore, the habit of such exertion, and generally becomes as stupid and ignorant as it is possible for a human creature to become. The torpor of his mind renders him not only incapable of relishing or bearing a part in any rational conversation, but of conceiving any generous, noble, or tender sentiment, and consequently of forming any just judgment concerning many even of the ordinary duties of private life. Of the great and extensive interests of his country he is altogether incapable of judging.

A man’s mastery of one skill, said Smith is “acquired at the expense of his intellectual, social, and martial virtues.” And there’s plenty of evidence for this. Think of William Shockley, Bobby Fischer, James Watson, Larry Summers, Morrissey, Richard Dawkins….

In fact, the early history of capitalism was marked by workers’ fierce reluctance to devote long hours to doing just the one thing. Sidney Pollard (pdf) and E.P. Thompson (pdf) have documented how capitalists strove to instil an unnatural work discipline into their employees. As Pollard put it:

Men who were nonaccumulative, non-acquisitive, accustomed to work for subsistence, not for maximization of income, had to be made obedient to the cash stimulus, and obedient in such a way as to react precisely to the stimuli provided.

Of course, working conditions and hours have improved since Smith’s day and many people have internalized the capitalist work ethic. But not all of us. Research by Alex Bryson and George MacKerron has found that even people in good jobs are more miserable whilst at work than they are in any other activity bar being ill in bed. Which is why thousands of those who can afford to do so opt out of the rat race to do what Prince Philip could do – pursue a variety of interests. One reason why I’m looking forward to retiring (next year, I hope) is that I want to spend more time reading, gardening, learning music and learning Italian.

Which is where Marx comes in. His vision of communism was one in which the division of labour no longer suppressed our development as Smith thought it did. (Marx, of course, had read Smith much better than have today’s admirers of him):

As soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a herdsman, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.

You might object that Marx’s vision was one of a society of (surprisingly bucolic) dilettantes. That misses the point – that in communist society you will be able to pursue just one activity if you want: you’ll be free to choose.

Yes, free. Marx’s main beef with capitalism was not so much that it was unfair but that it generated unfreedom by alienating us from our nature. As William Clare Roberts puts it, capital “bends labour power to an alien and unnatural end.” Marx, says Clare Roberts, was a theorist of freedom.

Those of us who are rich enough can step away from the alienating and repressive division of labour by retiring early – although of course not without damage. But is what’s possible for a privileged few possible for all?

Only in a sufficiently developed economy. Marx thought that a particular level of affluence was necessary for communism, and that whilst capitalism could provide the potential for this affluence, it would not fully realize that potential and that there would come a time when capitalism ceased to develop productive forces but instead held them back. It would, he thought, require communism to allow that potential to be realized for everybody. Aaron Bastani’s “fully automated luxury communism” is in this tradition.

Whether this is feasible is of course another matter. The answer lies in the outcome of the race between technical change and diminishing returns and rising rents, and personally I think forecasting the former is a mug’s game.

For my purposes, though, this isn’t the point. I merely want to point to a nice irony – that Prince Philip’s eulogists have, perhaps inadvertently, made the case for Marx’s vision of communism.

Comments

[Ralph Musgrave]

Marx lived in la-la land. Are we seriously supposed to believe that in wicked evil capitalist coal mines and tractor factories workers’ souls are destroyed by the monotonous nature of their work, whereas in the nirvana like communist coal mines and tractor factories in the USSR prior to the collapse of communism, workers souls were not destroyed?

Plus why would people have any more freedom under communism to choose a variety of different forms of work than under capitalism? In the relatively free market that is capitalism, people can do two part time jobs instead of one full time job, and many do.

[David Brown]

When you retire from IC I hope you don't retire from this column!

[NeilW]

As ever with Marxists, because they tend to see people as cookie cutter copies of each other, they forget that you still need those skilled people to work a full week to produce a surplus. And they ain't going to do that for nothing material in return.

It's always amusing to dig down with Libertarianism, Anarchy, Marxism even four-day-week'ers and see how all of them ultimately rely on altruism and/or near total fungibility of labour at the root.

"Who's going to do the Brain Surgery and why?" is a great question.

Why we need the Job Guarantee..

[Anarcho]

As an anarchist, I'm not one to defend Marx but these comments are staggeringly stupid.

"Marx lived in la-la land."

It is true that Marx wrote very little (i.e., next to nothing) about workers' management of production. For that you need to turn to anarchists like Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin and so on.

In terms of the point of the blog-post, Alec Nove discussed the weakness of Marx's arguments on the suppression of "the division of labour" in a complex industrial economy (note that Marx's examples are all pre-industrial n natur). However, the idea that the extreme division of labour associated with capitalism harms the individuals subject to them is valid as when Smith raised them -- and the aim to overcome it has been part of socialismfor some time (Proudhon argued for it i 1846, for example).

Prince Philip could do all these things because he did not have a real job. And the things he took an interest in are not "real jobs" either. So while the point is valid (on trying to enrich people's working lives by getting rid of the extreme division of labour associated with Capital), the example is less so.

"Are we seriously supposed to believe that in wicked evil capitalist coal mines and tractor factories workers’ souls are destroyed by the monotonous nature of their work, whereas in the nirvana like communist coal mines and tractor factories in the USSR prior to the collapse of communism, workers souls were not destroyed?"

If you knew anything about the USSR you would know that Lenin and the Bolsheviks systematically destroyed workers' management of proeduction and replaced it with capitalist-style "one-man management." So the factories of the USSR operated in exactly the same way as in the capitalist world. This is why anarchists (and a few Marxists) called the regime state-capitalism.

"Plus why would people have any more freedom under communism to choose a variety of different forms of work than under capitalism? In the relatively free market that is capitalism, people can do two part time jobs instead of one full time job, and many do."

You may be able to have two jobs but you will still have two bossses. And, as Proudhon noted long ago, repeated changing tasks or jobs does not get to the heart of the matter in terms of the evil effects of the division of labour.

In terms of the "free market", as suggested by the blog-post have a read of Adam Smith on the negative impact of the division of labour. He was aware of the issues -- unlike those who defend capitalism today.

[Anarcho]

In terms of this:

"As ever with Marxists, because they tend to see people as cookie cutter copies of each other, they forget that you still need those skilled people to work a full week to produce a surplus."

Almost all jobs involve skills and practical knowledge. This is, indeed, an issue with Marx's vision of communism -- his examples are pre-industrial and solitary. Once you try and map it to a complex economy, its weakness starts to show.

Kropotkin's comments on this (in "Fields, Factories and Workshops" and elsewhere) show a better grasp of the issue.

"And they ain't going to do that for nothing material in return."

As if a person's income reflected skill, hard-work and so forth under capitalism. And no communist (libertarian or authoritarian) ever suggested that no one would get "nothing material in return" -- it was always about "to each according to their needs", plus a working experience which you as the worker controlled (for libertarian communists, at least)

"It's always amusing to dig down with Libertarianism, Anarchy, Marxism even four-day-week'ers and see how all of them ultimately rely on altruism and/or near total fungibility of labour at the root."

Why is the desire not to toil for a boss who keeps the product of your labour "altruism"? Surely it is altruistic to work to make someone else rich? The Amazon worker must be one of the world's greatest altruists given how their labour as enriched the owners!

Likewise, wanting to control your own labour and working environment, reducing your working hours so you have more free time for yourself and not being ordered about by bosses, does not sound like "altruism" to me. Sounds very much like being in my self-interest as a worker.

Ultimately, it is capitalism -- like all hierachical systems -- which require altruism to work. Capitalism will continue as long as workers altruistically labour for others, under the orders of others. As soon as they consider their own self-interest, then the system will be in trouble -- which explains why the Tories in the UK regulate the unions (and so the labour market) so much: cannot have workers striking to retain more of the value they produce, can you?

[Paulc156]

@RM.
Anarcho makes some valid rebuttals so wont duplicate but I can't help but see some irony in your defence of capitalism's enablement of workers taking on numerous jobs. Often what Greaber referred to as bullshit jobs in desperation to make ends meet. Not,(I'd hazard a guess)what the author here had in mind at all.

[Jan Wiklund]

I believe there was quite a lot of division of labour even before capitalism. A peasant, a smith or a tailor were quite different people, each with his own occupational distortion.

It is true that the division of labour has multiplied. There are many more professions nowadays than two hundred years ago. I believe that this is nothing to deplore. Without it we would be much poorer. Professional proficiency and the productivity that goes with it can not be achieved without division of labour, capitalism or not.

On the other hand, it seems that when workers struggle for another society, they overcome the limitations themselves. Jonathan Rose's The intellectual life of the English working class relates about the self-educational movement in the early 20th century, and among other things tells about the 24/7 scientific academy that was going on in a particular Welsh coal-mine. The whole culture of self-education went aground, however, when the utopian tinge of labour movement disappeared in the 50s and 60s. Apparently, there was no meaning in being renaissance if you lost the expectation of power.

[Alex]

On the other hand, a crucially important contradiction is that Marxism deeply values work and the social role of workers, apparently right up through socialism until....Communism!, and even then Marx's critic/cattleman does get a lot of stuff done.

A very common observation about the prince was that the requirement to give up his profession and exit that role - his personal transition to communism, if you like - seemed to trouble him rather a lot, especially as his job involved highly specialised skills, quite a lot of autonomy, and much more responsibility and social status.

[Mercury]

"Pa" on 'Little House On The Prairie" was a Renaissance man and he wasn't free of “the dull compulsion of economic relations.”