How to change the world
Saturday 22 January 2011
By Stefan Collini
“HITHERTO, philosophers have sought to understand the world; the point, however, is to change it.” Marx’s celebrated over-statement attempted to build what might now be called an “impact requirement” into the valuation of abstract [summary of a document or speech etc.] thought : the test of the validity of ideas was to be found in their capacity to transform the world.
This hubristic [excessive pride or self confidence, arrogance] declaration may in retrospect be seen as expressing a tension which ran through all of Marx’s own work and was at the root of the recurring identity crisis which plagued that diverse body of thinking and doing subsequently referred to as “Marxism”.
A quite extraordinarily rich and sophisticated body of ideas developed, and continues to develop, under this label, yet both adepts [very skilled, proficient, expert] and critics have been prone to insist that the standing and importance of these ideas is to be assessed in terms of their record in transforming the world.
The adepts often like to suggest that the jury is still out, but they have, sorrowfully, to acknowledge that the case is not looking good; the critics gleefully point to the millions of Stalin’s victims and to the unparalleled prosperity brought (to some) by capitalism, and then consider the case closed.
This dual character of Marxism imposes special burdens on anyone attempting to chart its history. The ideas themselves are complex and demanding: the historian should, ideally, be able to move confidently through the thickets of Hegelian metaphysics [a treatise (4th century BC) by Aristotle dealing with first principles, the relation of universals to particulars and teleological (in vitalist philosophy, the doctrine that phenomena are guided not only by mechanical forces but they also move towards certain goals of self realization) doctrine of causation] as well as the intricacies [complexities] of the labour theory of value. But, in addition, an adequate history has to embrace the achievements of labour movements and the posturing of party factions, the building of planned economies and the repression of dissident opinion, and much else besides. The ideal historian of Marxism has to be part theoretician, part polymath; part believer, part sceptic [a person who maintains a doubting attitude as toward values, plans, statement or the character of others]; polylingual but not Pollyanna.
Eric Hobsbawm is often referred to as a “Marxist historian”, even though he might more accurately be seen as a historian of remarkable range and analytical power who has drawn more intellectual inspiration from Marx than from any other single source. But he is less often seen as a historian of Marxism. His major works have, after all, been focused on the analysis of the development of European society since the twin upheavals of the French and industrial revolutions at the end of the 18th century. If his contributions to the history of Marxism have been accorded less recognition that may partly be because they have taken the form of scattered essays and chapters, and partly because, true to his cosmopolitan leanings, they have often been published in languages other than English.
The publication of How To Change the World may help to set the record straight – and not before time: it is his 16th book and appears, impressively, in his 94th year. Although the book is largely made up of previously published material, much of it has never appeared in English and some of it has been revised and updated.
In the course of the past century or more, the status of Marx’s writings may be said to have oscillated [to swing or to move to and fro as a pendulum does, vibrate] between two poles. On the one hand, there is the once-orthodox communist position that Marx was the all-but-infallible [absolutely trustworthy, sure, certain] guide to political action and to the creation, via revolution, of the form of society that would succeed capitalism. And on the other, there is what we might call the “western” view, where Marx is treated, along with figures such as Nietzsche and Freud, as the author of an endlessly fascinating body of writing, writing that may be studied or simply enjoyed but that does not issue in action any more than does Mann’s The Magic Mountain or Eliot’s The Waste Land.
Hobsbawm, typically, avoids both these extremes: his attitude is more distanced than the first, but considerably more engaged than the second. He commends the history of Marxism to our attention because “for the past 130 years it has been a major theme in the intellectual music of the modern world, and, through its capacity to mobilise social forces, a crucial, at some periods a decisive, presence in the history of the twentieth century.”
But what of the 21st century? From its beginnings in the 1840s, Marxism has been subject to fits of premature speculation. Marx and Engels repeatedly persuaded themselves (and some others) that the end of bourgeois society was nigh [near in space, time or relation], and since Marx’s death there have been regular announcements of the “crisis of capitalism”. But each time the patient has somehow recovered and may even have grown stronger.
Perhaps even Hobsbawm, coolest and most judicious [wise, sensible or well-advised judgement] of analysts, is not wholly immune to [exempted from] this fever when he speculates that the financial collapse of 2008 may
signal the beginning of the end of capitalism as we have known it. — The Guardian, London , and www.guardian.co.uk
Communism has never come to power in a country that was not disrupted by war or corruption, or both. - John F. Kennedy (1917-1963). Speech before the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), Naples, 3 July 1963
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