(Not) reading Marx

How well-read should we expect politicians to be? This is the question posed by Rachel Reeves’ recent boast (33'50" in) that she hasn’t read Marx’s Capital*.

She, of course, is by no means the worst offender. It’s become fashionable on the right to betray a complete ignorance of Marxism – as for example when they decry taking the knee as Marxist: some Tories think it’s impossible to be a decent person without being a Marxist, which is further than I would go. As the great John Spiers tweeted:

The number of people on this platform using the word Marxist without even having a rudimentary understanding of what it means is hilarious. Like teaching a dog to say sausages and claiming the dog knows what it means!

Such ignorance is in one sense inevitable. It is impossible to have read everything. And one can be a perfectly good economist without having opened the pages of Capital. We are all ill-read and ill-informed about many things: much of poetry, science and ancient history and culture for example are closed books to me. But you know what? I keep quiet about such matters. Similarly, for most people there is nothing wrong with not having read Marx and keeping quiet about Marxism. What is wrong is spouting off on things you know nothing about.

There are however some things that some people should have read. For me, it is regrettable that politicians – especially Labour ones – have not read the greatest book of left-wing economics, for three reasons.

First, it betokens a lack of curiosity. Ms Reeves will have spent long hours (and it would have felt even longer) listening to gobby fellow PPEists and Labour activists talking about Marx. Not to have asked: “what did this fellow actually say?” is a sign of a lack of inquisitiveness and of interest in the intellectual history that shaped our world. And if you are incurious about Marx, what other things – maybe more important things – might you be incurious about?

It’s also a sign of a lack of interest in the issues that Marx explored such as unfreedom, stagnation, exploitation and capitalism’s proneness to crisis. Whilst I’d expect Tories to have no interest in these, it is surely deplorable in a Labour politician. A potential Chancellor must be concerned with more than merely balancing the books and shifting a few crumbs from rich to poor.

Thirdly, not having read Capital disqualifies you – or at least should disqualify you - from entering important debates. If you don’t know what Marx said, you cannot claim that his ideas have nothing to tell us today. You cannot be an intelligent anti-Marxist without having read the man. As Sun Tzu said:

If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.

On this point, American generals are more clued up than British politicians.

Here, you might object that you don’t need to have read Capital to be well-informed about Marx, any more than one need have read Newton’s Principia to be a physicist. True, Marx has inspired a fine secondary literature such as Paul Sweezy, David Harvey, Jon Elster, Ben Fine (pdf), Michael Heinrich and William Clare Roberts to name but a few. If Ms Reeves and Tories have done such reading – though I doubt it – then my charge loses some of its force.

But not all. These commentators would, I suspect, urge you to also read the original. To not do so is to take on trust their readings. Such credulousness is not a property I look for in politicians who are faced with biased and partial advice from all corners.

Also, in not reading the original Capital, you risk missing some important features of Marx – several of which would surprise his critics. One – stressed by Roberts – is just how literate Marx was. Which is reflected in the fact that much of volume one of Capital is a good read – especially once you get past the early chapters: you should start Capital with chapter 10. Yes, volumes two and three are less so, but that’s because Marx never finished them in his lifetime.

A second is that Marx was highly empirical. Much of volume one especially describes prices, wages, working and living conditions in some detail.

A third is that Marx wasn’t much concerned with income inequality – and why should he be as this had long pre-dated capitalism and so was not a distinctive feature of it? His beefs with capitalism were about exploitation, alienation and its proneness to crisis.

Yet another is that Marx was pretty much silent in Capital about what he thought a post-capitalist society should be. He was much more an analyst of capitalism than an advocate for socialism.

Also – though this is evident in most commentaries – is that Marx attacked capitalism at its strong points. Joe Biden recently tweeted:

Let me be clear: capitalism without competition isn’t capitalism. It’s exploitation.

This, though, is emphatically not the Marxian view. Although he saw that capitalism tended to generate monopoly, his analysis assumed competitive markets and that “all commodities, including labour-power, are bought and sold at their full value.” It was competitive forces, he thought, that drove exploitation:  

Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society…But looking at things as a whole, all this does not, indeed, depend on the good or ill will of the individual capitalist. Free competition brings out the inherent laws of capitalist production, in the shape of external coercive laws having power over every individual capitalist.

The notion of greedy or evil capitalists is not a Marxist one. For Marx capitalists, like workers, are victims of the forces of competition. One of his beefs with capitalism is that it strips us all of agency: in many ways, Marx as a libertarian. And the flaws of capitalism aren’t accidental ameliorable things like monopoly or rent-seeking but are inherent in the system. That’s a critique which is in danger of being lost.

So, if you are interested in capitalism you should at least acquaint yourself with Capital. I don’t mean you should take it as gospel, obvs, nor that you must pore over every sentence: much of volume two repays skimming. And, of course, I don’t confine this advice to Marx. I would urge all leftists to read Smith’s Wealth of Nations** and at least some of Hayek, such as his essay “The use of knowledge in society”. Some things are essential reading.

There’s one other thing. Some people have suggested that Ms Reeves was lying when she denied having read Marx. I have no problem with lying: the truth is a precious thing, and precious things shouldn’t be wasted on idiots. If this is true, however, it poses the question of why she felt the need to do so. Of course, our political culture is degraded, anti-intellectual and philistine. But I would hope that the Labour party would challenge this fact rather than kow-tow to it.

Don’t call it “Das Kapital”, unless you are in the habit of referring to every foreign-language book by its original name.

Not the Theory of Moral Sentiments, though, as it would merely reinforce their prejudices.  

Comments

[MJW]

I made an attempt at Capital and found it tediously verbose, Marx comes across like a journalist trying to max out their word count with superfluous verbiage. I gave up after a few chapters, which is highly unusual for me. Perhaps if someone could ruthlessly edit out all the purple prose, mindless tangents and waffle to produce a critical edition it would be read more?

[Paulc156]

@MJW. "I gave up after a few chapters" The author suggest one starts reading at chapter 10.

[JRA]

Gareth Steadman Jones in his recent biography of Marx is very good on his primary literary influences and early attempts at poetry.

[rsm]

Was Schumpeter right in being as impatient with those who could not get as far as Marx, as he was with those who could not get beyond Marx?

[Blissex]

«his analysis assumed competitive markets and that “all commodities, including labour-power, are bought and sold at their full value.” It was competitive forces, he thought, that drove exploitation»

Oh please please:

* Exploitation is defined as the difference between the "value as labor of free people" of the commodities that workers can buy with their "money-wages", and the "labor of free people" implied by the "labor-power" that the workers have sold to the capitalists for those "money-wages".

* The workers sell their "labor-power" for "money-wages" that can buy commodities with a "value as labor of free people" lower than that of the "labour power" because they are *price takers", because “[The possessor of labour-power follows [...] timid and holding back, like one who is bringing his own hide to market and has nothing to expect but — a hiding” (because of "reserve army" etc. etc. etc.).

* That can only happen in conditions of imperfect competition, because if competition is perfect, all employers and employees are price takers.

* Indeed in a marxian analysis it is quite possible (and quite rare) for workers to exploit capitalists, if capital is so abundant relative to workers that capitalists pay workers "money-wages" that can purchase commodities with a "value as the labor of free people" greater than the "labor of free people" implied by the "labor-power" they have purchased with those "money-wages".

* In the case that workers exploit capitalists, the surplus that workers extract from the capitalists amounts necessarily to capital liquidation, so eventually capital stops being relatively abundant relative to labor.

Part of the "obscurity" of marxian works is that it uses its own terminology, and that terminology obscures that marxian analysis is actually cost accounting in terms of "value" *defined as* "labor of free people".

[Blissex]

«The notion of greedy or evil capitalists is not a Marxist one. For Marx capitalists, like workers, are victims of the forces of competition.»

That is was oversold, because the “forces of competition“ by rewarding the greediest capitalist effectively ensure that capitalists be as greedy as possible.

[Blissex]

«So, if you are interested in capitalism you should at least acquaint yourself with Capital.»

That is also because capitalists as a rule, as demonstrated by the teaching in business schools are marxists to a fault: that apart from fleeting advantages from "innovation", sustainable profit comes from exploiting workers, and businesspeople should constantly think of ways to exploit their workers more to boost profits and gain competitive advantage over less exploitative businesses. The "buy low" part of "buy low sell high" in business school teachings applies first and foremost to labor. Even if that logic is nicely wrapped in euphemisms.

[Blissex]

«The "buy low" part of "buy low sell high" in business school teachings applies first and foremost to labor.»

And the marxian analysis is to *illustrate* how that works by doing cost accounting based on "labor of free people" unit. Using concepts and methods not too different from what any busines school MBA would use.

[Blissex]

«In the case that workers exploit capitalists, the surplus that workers extract from the capitalists amounts necessarily to capital liquidation, so eventually capital stops being relatively abundant relative to labor.»

There is a subtle asymmetry here between the two cases, which illustrates a fundamental problem with economicism:

* If capital is relatively too abundant relative to labor, it will be liquidated until the relation is more balanced, because the only reason to have "capital" is to used in the process for production.

* If labor is relatively too abundant relative to labor, labor will be liquidated (by the starving of workers and their children) only if wages are at subsistence level already, because people live and have children not merely to be used in the process of production (even if some capitalists may well think so). That is also the reason why in general there is a persistent "reserve army of labour".

[ltr]

Through a time when the British media is overwhelmingly conservative or Conservative, I cannot imagine a Labour official admitting to having read Marx. Remember Jeremy Corbyn being destroyed by the BBC in an illustration, wearing a Russian hat posed before the reddened Kremlin.

[rsm]

Doesn't "getting beyond Marx" mean that even a lowly worker can open a Robinhood account and sell calls high to buy them back lower? What do options markets have to do with exploitation of labor?

> If capital is relatively too abundant relative to labor, it will be liquidated until the relation is more balanced, because the only reason to have "capital" is to used in the process for production.

Why does stock market capitalization remain stubbornly above GDP?

How did Marx fail to understand that money easily becomes a good in and of itself, desirable not because it buys labor but because you can boast about your bank balance?

[Blissex]

«How did Marx fail to understand that money easily becomes a good in and of itself, desirable not because it buys labor but because you can boast about your bank balance?»

While K Marx insights are not revealed truth to me, at least I know that he mentioned "fetishism" as a central concept, of commodities and money too, for example a random web search returns:

https://marxandphilosophy.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/schulz2011.pdf

But there is an important point about "boast the bank balance": classical political economists made a distinction between "economic goods" and other commodities, such as "collectibles", with a different character, and since K Marx was mostly interesting in examining the production process of economic goods and its social implications, his works do not demonstrate a great interest in "collectibles", such as money hoarded purely for status, or equivalently works of art or rare stamps or vintage cards.

[rsm]

In a world where 90% of assets are virtual, producing only money, is Marx even relevant?

Also, why did Marx ignore free speech?