The Poisonous Dart Frog, Politics And History
On Tuesday, 23 October 2012, the BBC broadcast its third and final ‘Masters Of Money’ programme which focused on the teachings of Karl Marx. During the broadcast, former Chancellor of the Exchequer, Nigel Lawson was interviewed. At one point, he suggested that Marxism must be wrong. After all he argued, Britain is suffering its worst economic recession for almost one hundred years yet people are not taking to the barricades in huge numbers to revolt as Marx had predicted. Similarly, this time in The Telegraph newspaper and more than 18 months earlier, Bank of England Governor Mervyn King, commenting on the economic crisis in Britain, said "I'm surprised the real anger [among ordinary people] hasn't been greater than it has." Perhaps then, Marx did get it wrong. Perhaps the belief that capitalism produces its own gravediggers, and that at some point a proletariat revolution will take place is simply pie-in-the-sky. Perhaps it is the case as Max Weber believed, that the exploited are doomed to toil forever in capitalism’s house of bondage. While we might reasonably expect as much from our political representatives, it is also undoubtedly true today that many ordinary working / unemployed / sick people in Britain and indeed elsewhere in the developed world, are politically paralysed at present, as if struck by a blowdart coated in the toxic secretion of that famous poisonous frog from South America. They conceptualise capitalism as being some kind of eternal economic model and hence, see no logic in revolting to any meaningful extent against the kind of economic and political austerity to which King and Lawson explicitly refer, or else allude. It is simply a matter of having to work within the system and as things currently stand, this means having to absorb much economic and political pain. However, and notwithstanding the above, it doesn’t necessarily follow that Marx was wrong. On the contrary, a sound Marxist theory of human evolution is arguably the only antidote available for those who are unable to think beyond the bounds of capitalism. It is obviously a mistake to think of one’s particular, dominant social pattern as something everlasting. There is no such thing as a permanent pattern of social organisation. Indeed, throughout human history, the general movement and development of ‘social matter’ has assumed several transient forms to-date, of which primitive communism, slavery, feudalism and capitalism are but four examples. Furthermore, the thoughts, feelings and actions of people in, say, ancient Greece or medieval England are very different in form and content to the thoughts, feelings and actions of people in contemporary capitalist Britain. Clearly then, particular social forms change over time as do the thoughts feelings and actions of those associated with them. What is the objective basis for this conception of on-going social evolution from the lower to the higher? The key process that all humans must engage in before any other, is the one which enables them to produce and reproduce their material means of existence. For as long as people exist, they must endlessly engage with their natural environment in order to produce their necessities of life and in so doing, must also establish definite, historically conditioned patterns of social relationships - property relations - with one another. The social pattern that people adopt is naturally that which is best suited to their productive techniques - their level of knowledge, skills, available tools, technology and so on. However, as people’s productive techniques dynamically evolve, the established property relations which were once well suited to their use and progressive development, eventually come to hamper their further use - at least in anything like a progressive manner. When this objective contradiction becomes sufficiently acute, the evolving social organism must produce a mutation if further, positive development is ever to be achieved. Form must be brought back into line with function in order to take advantage of the potentialities latent in the newly developed productive powers which people themselves have brought into being. In this context, the history of social evolution as a whole, has predominantly been one of progressive development. Thus, classless, primitive, communistic forms of human association many thousands of years ago necessarily gave way to higher forms of slave-based relations, the latter being more adequate to continue the development of people’s productive techniques. Slavery was also the first system in human history to be based on the private ownership of property and minority class rule of the majority. In time, slavery itself began to decay as the productive forces once again outgrew such relations of production. Slave relations were eventually supplanted by yet more advanced class-based relationships in the form of feudalism. Next, capitalist property relations began to assert their superiority over those of feudalism more than 300 years ago. Today, this latter form of property relations which is based on the interests of a minority capitalist class has developed to reign supreme over large areas of the globe. Each of these specific social formations, constitutes a particular pattern of social relations at a definite time in human history. A part of the organic evolutionary whole, but only a transient part. Each is therefore at one and the same time, both progressive yet also limited. Like all other past forms of property relations, capitalism expresses the general laws of social development in its own unique, yet one-sided and limited way. This is why it once played a progressive role in the development of human history but now performs a regressive function. During the 18th and 19th centuries great advances were made in spheres like science, medicine, technology, general knowledge and philosophy. However, capitalism’s unique limited character is now obvious to anyone wishing to see it. Above all, highly developed social production now stands in stark contradiction to that of private appropriation. Thus, just as feudalism began to grow in the womb of advanced slave relations, gradually transforming itself from a subordinate economic form into a dominant one, and just as capitalism necessarily began its embryonic existence in the womb of advanced feudal relations before supplanting the latter, so too today, the more progressive socialist model is everywhere visible in the decaying capitalist order. Such in brief is the historical outlook of Marxist science. However, it is important to realise that the process of social evolution to-date, has not been anything like a socially consensual, and consciously-driven process. On the contrary, and as Marx himself argued long ago, the fundamental characteristic of people’s social relations thus far in human history, is that they are both indispensable and independent of their will. They are indispensable of course, because without them, people would perish. More importantly, they are independent of their will, because such economic relationships were not deliberately and consciously instituted. This is not simply because successive generations have failed to understand the law-governed development of social evolution. Primarily it is because no society based on the private ownership of the instruments and material means of production, can ever hope to rationally, deliberately and collectively decide before hand, what form of social organisation to adopt. Antagonistic economic interests preclude such a state of affairs, thus necessitating a quite natural and spontaneous development of human history thus far. For instance, did Oliver Cromwell or his Parliamentarians during their clash of interests with Charles I ever cry out at any point ‘let’s establish capitalism’? Did William of Orange? Of course not! Similarly, did the revolutionary French bourgeoisie in the 18th century consciously and systematically set about supplanting feudalism with relationships of capitalism? No they did not. But just like Cromwell and the Parliamentarians more than a century earlier, those involved in the French Revolution quite naturally and spontaneously challenged anything serving to thwart their particular interests such as guild restrictions, the privileges of the nobility, the peasant’s tie to the land and so forth. They merely sought to pursue their immediate economic interests yet in so doing, such political actions in both England and France, quite naturally and unconsciously opened the historical floodgates, enabling capitalism to flourish. Developing in this natural and spontaneous manner throughout human history, one exploiting class after another (slave owners, feudal lords, capitalists) has in turn, quite uncritically conceptualised and expressed its particular class interest as being in the very nature of things - as something everlasting. Moreover, simply in order to carry out its given programme, each successive ruling class has necessarily conceptualised its minority class interest as being in the interest of the majority. Deception and self-deception thus walk hand-in-hand. As Dr. Lewis puts it when writing of capitalist property relations; "the dominant ideology becomes the unquestionable assumption of the time, uncritically accepted by writers, broadcasters, reviewers and leading journalists, so that the public mind cannot but see things in this pattern. It is the pattern of course, that fully supports the economic principles of individual enterprise, economic competition and the survival of the fittest." Thus we are now better able to understand why most people in Britain (and indeed in other capitalist polities) are politically paralysed at present, as if struck by a blow dart coated in the toxic secretion of the poisonous dart frog. For the reasons set out in the previous paragraph, people do not consciously and critically think of their given social relationships as transitory social relations. At one and the same time, they cannot do without them. Thus do they - and subsequent generations - come to think of their given dominant economic pattern as being in the very nature of things. This sense of inevitability, coupled with the endless dissemination of ruling class ideology in all its forms, limits the consciousness and subsequent actions of the people concerned. In this context, the particular socio-economic model we know as capitalism does not reveal its true qualities; namely that of an historically transient, social form which arose quite naturally and spontaneously from the ashes of feudalism, and which is now itself, necessarily ripe for change. However, it is critical to note that people's level of consciousness is conditioned, but not determined by the prevailing social conditions. Human beings made capitalist society and it is their intelligence which will hopefully take them beyond it one day. To bring an end to this on-going natural and spontaneous social development with its inevitable crippled forms of thinking is precisely the role of all exploited people today. Like no other previous social transition before it however, a majority of those required to carry through significant political change in today’s capitalist world must first of all possess true knowledge of social evolution. Above all, they require an historical dimension to their thinking, coupled with an understanding of the scientific, law-governed manner in which human evolution takes place. In short, they require an understanding of Marxist social science in order to free up their own, and other people's critical thinking, for the supplanting of capitalism presupposes scientifically conscious, planned activity rather than anything natural and spontaneous. Then they will understand not only the natural origins and transient nature of capitalism, but also the circumstances necessitating its inevitable downfall and replacement with social property relations based on common ownership. No human concept and no economic pattern whether past, present or future, is ever absolute or eternal. Human history is a process not a thing with fixed properties. Moreover, and having internalised the essence of Marxist science, this same exploited majority must engage in all forms of practical, political struggle, aimed at freeing their socially-functioning productive capacities from serving the minority interests of private capital. In other words, theoretical criticism and practical transformation of social relationships go hand-in-hand. Such a level of conscious, scientific awareness can never arise in the minds of the minority, ruling capitalist class. Unlike the proletariat, no ruling class throughout history has ever actively struggled to do away with itself. On the contrary, such ruling classes quite naturally and unconsciously engage in acts of deception and self-deception on a daily basis. For their part, what capitalists are quite naturally and instinctively concerned with above all else, is the preservation of the present order so that their privileges and profit-seeking conditions can be maintained. At different periods in human history, leading intellectuals associated with one or other dominant economic form have naturally sought to defend the world as it is and for precisely these kinds of privileged, class-based reasons. In ancient Greece for example, Plato taught that slave-based aristocracy was the highest possible form of society attainable. To reinforce his unfailing beliefs, he advocated the propagation of his now infamous noble lie. Similarly, in mediaeval times, the Catholic Church relentlessly taught for many centuries that the world was necessarily ordered hierarchically, with God at its head, the lowly peasant class necessarily occupying the opposite extremity and the nobility and gentry sandwiched in-between. Moving into the era of established capitalism, the British philosopher Francis Bradley, in his Ethical Studies, argued in one chapter that "...it is a false conscience that wants you to be better than the world as it is". Barely 30 years later, German sociologist Max Weber published The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this work, Weber clearly sets forth his beliefs as to the origins and endearing permanence of the capitalist model. In his view, all the evils of capitalism are merely logical consequences of this kind of rational and permanent form of existence. And of course, who can forget Desmond Morris’s book The Naked Ape? First published in the late 1960s, zoologist Morris argued that humans were naturally aggressive and territorial. Thus, the often brutal, competitive scramble so evident among and between human beings in capitalist society is perfectly natural. These authors, and others of like-mind, are best thought of as poisonous dart frog thinkers. This is because their respective paralysed minds are unwilling, or else unable to transcend the confines of capitalist property relations. Plato and the Catholic Church of course, have since been proven wrong. And Francis Bradley, Max Weber, Desmond Morris and others of similar persuasion will I believe, also be proven wrong at some point in the future, that is if a majority of working people come to consciously realise their necessary role in human history. Then and only then can the common will of society as a whole be consciously brought to bear on the pressing problems so evident in today’s capitalist world. The last word goes to George Bernard Shaw, who, in the latter part of the 19th century, wrote of Marx's enthusiasm for the future of humankind as expressed in his Das Kapital ; "He never condescends to cast a glance of useless longing at the past: his cry to the present is always 'Pass by: we are waiting for the future'. Nor is the future at all mysterious, uncertain, or dreadful to him...He has discovered the law of social development, and knows what must come". Colin Baker BSc (Hons) BA (Hons) Soc Sci
Copyright © 2012 Colin Baker |