In Defence of Marxism

From a recent exchange on Facebook.

A Facebook-friend of a friend made the following remark during a discussion about the Greek debt crisis:

Marxist theory is hopelessly shallow in its perception of how people see themselves. Very few identify as "working class" or "bourgeois" but many would escribe themselves as "Canadian" or "humanist" or "young," "Muslim" or "father." Class identity is important but not all-important.

My response:

Marxists explained a long time ago that there is no final crisis of capitalism - the bourgeoisie will always find a way out until the working class takes power into its own hands.

Please excuse the Marxian terminology (you might say jargon), but it's the most accurate way for describing the broad movements of the economy in terms of who actually produces the wealth (workers). Marxism is actually much more complex than the simple dichotomy of "bourgeoisie/proletariat". It allows for the petty bourgeoisie (small business owners and professionals), lumpen-proletariat (swindlers, criminals, beggars, those on the margins of society), peasants if there are any. And that's just in recent history - in earlier times there were different classes - freeman/slave, lord/serf, etc. As a way of sketching out the broad class formations in social relations, Marxist theory is indispensable.

But Marxism doesn't JUST talk about class. That's an understandable misconception. Like any good method of analysis, it takes into account as much information and facts as possible, including gender, race, nationality, and so on. At the same time, it realizes that class is ultimately the determining factor when it comes to actual change of the social order. What we think of as "the middle class" is actually the working class that is enjoying the benefits of past struggles - for the 8-hour work day, overtime pay, pensions, collective bargaining rights. All these are now being taken away from us. Why? Because capitalism is in crisis worldwide.

It's only a Greek problem? Wrong. (Just ask the Wall Street Journal.) When Greece defaults - and it will, no matter what austerity measures are put in place - we'll get defaults in Ireland and Portugal, followed by a financial crisis in Spain, dragging the whole of Europe and the United States into it. French and German banks have the most to lose from a Greek default, which is why their governments are pushing for bailouts of the debtor nation.

The problem is, these kinds of periodic crises are endemic to the capitalist system, and even its most ardent defenders will admit that. Duh - boom and bust, right? Everybody knows a capitalist economy will have recessions and depressions. BUT: It's only the people who win under capitalism that are cushioned from the effects. The working majority always lose out.

Why is there massive unemployment that just seems to get worse all the time? Why are people with jobs being forced to work longer hours for less pay and benefits? Why are governments cutting social services everywhere? I live in Toronto and our mayor wants to cut the budget of all departments by 10%, including the fire department. Why is all this happening? Because this kind of thing always happens when the capitalist party ends and the working class gets the hangover ("Wall Street got drunk" - George W. Bush). Bankers blew a hole in the global economy. They, along with other corporations and the wealthy, control our governments (the Golden Rule - "he who has the gold makes the rules"), and now they want to make the working class pay for a crisis they caused.

The media constantly chirp about a recovery. In truth, the long postwar economic boom has been pushed far past its shelf life through increased debt. A little fast history: capitalism was effectively pulled out of the Great Depression by World War II, which served as an artificial stimulus to a massive armaments boom. The technologies that emerged from the war and the new markets opened up to the United States led to a long economic boom that started to plateau in the late 60s and stagnated in the 70s. As a reaction, the deregulation of the 80s and development of ever more exotic financial securities led to the ever-increasing financialization of the economy and to a large extent de-coupled financial markets from the "real" economy. (Stocks numbers are great right now, employment figures not so much.)

Over the last 30 years of reaction, workers' wages stagnated while the bosses' have skyrocketed (this was partly masked by greater consumer debt). Income inequality is worse than ever, and there seems to be no real recovery in sight. This is not a matter of me reading a Marxist book and thinking about rrrrrevolution! It's about being sick of a system that's left our world a stinking impoverished mess. I'm sick of the wars, inequality, the hunger, the environmental degradation, the national rivalries and racism - and the system of private profit at the root of it all.

People react strangely to the term "dictatorship of the proletariat", because they associate the first word with individual tyrants. In fact, it just means power, and it makes a lot more sense if you consider that right now we live under the "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie". Ever get the feeling that your vote doesn't matter? In some ways, it doesn't - not when the game is rigged and the same people are pulling the strings no matter who gets elected to office. If you want to describe who those people are, bourgeoisie is as good a term as any.

One last point I want to make, and I congratulate anyone who's made it this far. I used to think that the idea of two classes, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, duking it out was an antiquated 19th century notion. I hope I've absolved you of any confusion there. When Marxists talks about the "working class", people tend to think about workers in factories. But it's really about producing surplus value (i.e. goods and services), and the tools and machines you use to make those (if any) don't really make a difference. So that includes service jobs, like working at Wal-Mart or being a waitress. It includes white collar office jobs and blue collar industrial jobs. Basically, it's anybody who earns a wage for a living.

Marxists don't back the working class because of some romantic idea of what it means to be a worker or because we think they're great people. We support them because they are the only class capable of transforming society - in the first place, by shutting it down.

If Richard Branson or Bill Gates goes on strike for a year...who cares? But if there's a general strike for just one day, everything stops. Nothing can get done, nothing can be produced. You'll notice that in Egypt, it was only when the Egyptian working class mobilized - when we saw strikes in factories, among unionized workers of all kinds - that Muburak was finally pressured to step down. Essentially, if you're sick of the world we live in right now, there's only one group in society that can change that: the international working class. Workers in Egypt have more in common with workers in Canada than either of us have with our elected national "leaders".