The critical potential of Marx today

After the death of György Márkus (hereafter George) on 5 October this year and, in response to a short obituary I had written, I was inundated with messages of condolence and eulogy from many different parts of the world. Amongst these was one from Julio Boltvinik, Professor at the College de México, Mexico City, who had been inspired by Márkus’s writings and corresponded with him during the period between 2006 and 2010. This primarily concerned an envisaged Spanish translation of some of Márkus’s work, which to that time had not yet appeared in Spanish. During this time Boltvinik attempted to initiate a philosophical dialogue between Márkus and the highly regarded Mexican philosopher and cultural critic Bolívar Echeverría, who died in 2010 before the exchange could be completed. Fortunately for us, both were able to make a beginning through the mediation of Boltvinik, through whom Desacatos was able to publish a brief summary of the four other chapters and the translations that made the exchange possible. This exchange is of interest to the contemporary reader, not just because it demonstrates the initial reaction of a learned Mexican scholar to a key chapter in Márkus’s Language and Production: A Critique of Paradigms (1982), but because it also provides Márkus’s most recent short exposition of his views on a range of central questions concerning contemporary philosophy and critical theory: their possibilities and limitations.

As mentioned, Echeverría confines his comments on Language and Production to Chapter 5, ‘On the Possibility of a Critical Theory’. He explains to the readers of Desacatos something of the history of the Budapest School and the role of Márkus within it. For him the key point here is that these followers of Georg Lukács strove to ‘maintain the possibility of a critical Marxism, including a Marxism capable of self-criticism and capable of developing and getting into discussions with other theoretical positions in the 20th century within the orbit of the Soviet Empire’. ¹ For Echeverría, the crux of the Márkus chapter is the quest for the foundations of ‘critical theory attitude’ and this amounts to the very possibility of a ‘critical science’ (Echeverría, 2010: 2).

Given the problematic and charged character of the idea of a ‘science’ of society within Western Marxism, of the tension between the ideas of science and that of critique, it is strange that Echeverría characterizes Márkus’s key ideas in these terms, but this prefigures other problems that quickly emerge in his reading of this central chapter. Echeverría immediately proceeds to locate the central notion in Márkus’s interpretation of Marx. This is his contestation of Jürgen Habermas’s influential view that the Marxian paradigm of production needs to be supplemented by another paradigm: that of communication. Márkus contests this now well established idea, arguing that these two paradigms (language and production) presuppose such different models of social existence that they cannot be ultimately reconciled. While no single paradigm is able to comprehend all aspects of social existence, Márkus counsels that the best theoretical strategy is to implement Marx’s own productionist model, as far as it will go.

On Echeverría’s reading, Márkus’s radicalized model of the Marxian paradigm of production turns out to be a theory of progress on the model of the natural sciences. The productive forces constitutes the human essence, which throughout history assumes a series of different forms that initially promote its growth and development, but ultimately become fetters that must be set aside (Echeverría, 2010: 3). Echeverria immediately problematizes this reading. It turns out that the Marxian theory of historical progress is not modeled on a positive science of history referring to empirical facts at all but stems from the evaluative standpoint of the theorist and the historical efforts to provide history with a progressive meaning (Echeverría, 2010: 3). There can be no historical guarantees of this progress, which is simply a projection of the critical perspective.

While Echeverría accepts and endorses Márkus’s reading of the Marxian theory, he finds fault in his interpretation of Das Kapital. Márkus contends that in his mature work Marx sometimes reverts to positivist formulations, which assumes progress to be a verifiable fact and therefore departs from his earlier purely evaluative reading. To avert this retreat, according to Echeverría, Márkus maintains that the critical discourse must be grounded in the radical needs of individuals (Echeverría, 2010: 5). While this is all very well and correct, Echeverría believes that Márkus’s account of Das Kapital ‘does not acknowledge the potentiality of the concept of alienation which is present in the discourse of Marx in Das Kapital’ (2010: 5). For Echeverría, Marx’s allusions to Darwin in the latter are nothing but an appearance. To his mind, Benjamin expressed the essence of Marx’s position most lucidly. His midget chess master represents the scientifically problematic theory of alienation. Thus the core of Marx’s analysis in Das Kapital lies not where Márkus would have it: in the contradiction between modern productive forces and the antiquated relations of production, but in the prevailing tension between use value and exchange value. Echeverría asserts that the whole argumentation of Das Kapital relies on viewing capitalist production as a contradictory unity of the ‘natural’ and the ‘valorized’ within the labour process. However, this contradictory unity is ‘not the one posited by Márkus’ (2010: 6). This is vital because ‘exchange value’ as a process of valorization permanently defeats the aspirations of ‘use value’. The concept of alienation expresses precisely this subsumption of the human subject under the logic of capitalism. The human becomes a spectator and capital itself assumes its position as the real God of capitalist modernity (2010: 7). On this basis, Echeverría concludes that ‘it is not necessary’, as Márkus would have it, ‘to search for those peculiar individual experiences’ encapsulated in the idea of radical needs (2010: 7). However, this assertion that Márkus’s account of Das Kapital is bereft of an account of alienation is a profound misinterpretation of his position. The latter’s detailed reply to this critique seeks to clarify this key point.

Characteristically for Márkus the respondent, he opens his reply by pointing to the assumptions shared between these two thinkers. Critical theory is a ‘value orientated theory based on practical value choices…deeply rooted in the actual conflicts and contradictions of the present…irreducible to any facts’. ² However, he quickly moves on to correct the misunderstanding that could only have arisen from the fact that Echeverría’s interpretation was based on such a small fragment of the Márkus oeuvre. For Márkus, the distinction drawn by Echeverría between the dialectic of the productive forces and relations of production and one forged out of the concept of alienation is ‘invalid’ (Márkus, 2010: 1). One of the cornerstones of Márkus’s interpretation of Marx was his adherence to the essentially continuous place of the concept of alienation through all phases of Marx’s thinking. He always reiterated in his lectures on Marx’s development that even when he briefly abandoned the term due to its associations with the thinking of the Young Hegelians he, nevertheless, continued to employ it as an operative concept.

Beyond this misunderstanding, the fundamental disagreement between the two lies in their interpretations of Das Kapital. For Márkus, Marx’s major work succumbs to a paradoxical combination of determinism and historical finalism that lies deeper than a mere positivistic appearance. This goes to the very heart of critical theory as a theory deeply engaged with practical value choices. When Marx posited socialism as the culmination of the social struggles that define the meaning of his contemporary world, he confounds the truly emancipatory, practical and value-orientated understanding of critical theory that was such an explicit emphasis in its earlier formulation. Thus, nowhere is the difference between him and Echeverría more evident that in the latter’s easy dismissal of the theoretical role to be played by ‘radical needs’ (Márkus, 2010: 3). Márkus goes on to explain that individual experience need not be narrowly particular. Similar social positions and situations produce shared social experience. Whether this remains mute suffering or is transformed into collective experience depends on strategic and organizational factors. However, for Márkus, the collective experience of the exploited majority as the ultimate addressee of Marx’s theory is the key to understanding both its ultimate end and its emancipatory meaning (Márkus, 2010: 3–4). This is why the question of ‘radical needs’ cannot be as easily passed over as Echeverría supposes.

For Márkus this question is a decisive one for the future prospects of contemporary critical theory. If the working class and their ‘radical needs’ stands at the very centre of Marx’s view of his own project, then the subsequent historical questions that have been raised about the political potential of the working class also call into question the very possibility of a critical theory, at least as understood by Marx (Márkus, 2010: 4). As important as the theory of alienation is to Marx’s account of bourgeois modernity, the core of the theory is its practical orientation as an intervention that can challenge and transform existing self-understandings. In this sense, the self-consciousness of historical agents as the greatest productive force remains paramount (Márkus, 2010: 5). Márkus goes on to reveal the historical role of the self-activity of the subjects of history. But the point of this exposition is to expose the very unity of the theory of alienation and the ever-transformed needs and consciousness of this productive force that Echeverría has not fully comprehended (Márkus, 2010: 7).

In rendering Marx our contemporary, Márkus begins by endorsing a fundamental Marxian proposition; ‘We still live in a world dominated by capital, a world of universal alienation’ (Márkus, 2010: 7). However, despite the sustained enlightening power and the critical practical relevance of his theory, Márkus underscores that Marx was not a prophet; his thought remains embedded in its time. The ecological crisis of our time cannot be solved by utopian repudiations of instrumentalism and exploitation of nature (Márkus, 2010: 7). Yet, precisely this historical distance allows us to see some ambiguities and conceptual strains in Marx that were not so evident in his time.

For Márkus, the clearest of these conceptual strains concerns the Marxian concept of ‘use value’. Along with Janos Kis and György Bence, he devoted a decade in the late ‘60s and early ‘70s to precisely this question in their joint authored How Is Critical Economics Possible? (1970). ³ The Marx of Das Kapital defines ‘use value’ in naturalistic terms as ‘an external object, a thing that by its properties, satisfies human needs of some kind’ (Marx, 1954: 43). Thus Marx defines ‘use values’ by ‘the concrete natural existence of the thing in question, in complete indifference to and independence of all social relations and determinations’ (MEW 13: 15–16). This is despite the fact that he elsewhere clearly appreciates the interpenetration or fusion of use values and exchange values, as with money. Furthermore, Márkus insists that from a Marxian perspective the very idea that human social relations possess a natural immediacy is nonsensical (Márkus, 2010: 9). Such a conceptual strain becomes even more evident as the analysis in Das Kapital becomes ever more concrete. In Marx’s discussion of collective utility it becomes clear that ‘social use value’ ‘is not all indifferent to, but is co-determined by, the relations of production’ (Márkus, 2010: 10).

Márkus’s response to Echeverría concludes with the acknowledgement that the above conceptual strains remained unsolved by Marx. However, the task of contemporary critical theory cannot be to regard the Marxian oeuvre as sacred. To take up this task of conceptual renovation he is convinced that the dialectic of forces and relations of production, dismissed by Echeverría, remains the core of the Marxian paradigm of production (Márkus, 2010: 10). This conclusion reveals a distinctive aspect of Márkus’s stance within the spectrum of positions in contemporary critical theory. Without minimizing the deficiencies and problems that beset the Marxian legacy, he is not inclined to follow the most popular contemporary strategy of supplementing the paradigm of production with more recent philosophical paradigms drawn from language or, as with Habermas, communication. Acknowledging that no theoretical paradigm can resolve all problems, he maintains the best strategy is to exhaust the possibilities already provided by the core Marxian framework.