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2019 | OriginalPaper | Chapter

11. Marx on Some Phases of Communism

Author : Robert X. Ware

Published in: Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals

Publisher: Springer International Publishing

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Abstract

Marx showed little interest in creating pictures of the future, but the exigencies of German politics prompted him to write his letter about the future to some leading activists critiquing the Gotha Program. This one letter gives perspectives on the future. Responding to its narrow focus on distribution, Marx wrote about slogans of contribution and distribution that would characterize justice in some phases of communism. His characterization of society in a higher phase of communism is wrongly interpreted as expecting the abolition of scarcity, while the nature of phases, according to him, is misconstrued. Some confusions are corrected, and the slogans are made more specific with attention to individual and collective distinctions.

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previous chapter Marx on State and Society in the Future

next chapter Two Projects of Socialism

This chapter updates and revises material that was originally published in Robert Ware, “Marx on Some Phases of Communism” in Rodger Beehler, David Copp, and Béla Szabados, editors, On the Track of Reason: Essays in Honor of Kai Nielsen (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992), pp. 135–153. The use here is gratefully acknowledged.

As Marx said (in 1875) in the Critique, “in present capitalist society the material, etc., conditions have at last been created [for] the workers to lift this historical curse” of capitalism (MECW 24, p. 83).

In German, it is: “Jeder nach seinen Fähigkeiten, jedem nach seinen Bedürfnissen!” (Marx 1962 [1875], p. 21). The idea of proportionality (discussed below) works here but would be even more natural in the quantitative notions of (the sum of one’s) “ability” and “need” rather than in terms of (many) “abilities” and “needs.”

His comments draw on the work of the Nells (1975), which is subject to the same criticism. Another part of the criticism of the principle of contribution is that it is too unspecific for the distribution according to needs, but this relies on an undesirable specificity of that part.

One might just as well call it “life’s prime need” because Marx’s German (Bedürfnis) does not distinguish needs and want, an issue discussed below.

See also Capital, on the “combined labour power of the community” (MECW 35, p. 89).

An important theme in the Critique is that the cooperative forms of production should not be under the control of the existing state, as Lassalle had proposed.

This issue is discussed in Cohen (2001, pp. 322–325) and Chap. 5.

There is an ambiguity of “social consumption” between what is socially provided and consumed individually (health care, clean air, etc.) and what is “distributed” to social groups from families, to neighbourhoods, and so on. This is a complexity that seems unnecessary to go into here.

In this interpretation, the distribution depends upon subjective interests (what people want) rather than objective requirements, as “needs” might be interpreted. See Braybrooke (1992) on Marx’s meaning having an ambiguity between primary (restrictive) needs and desire (generalized) needs. I will not try to resolve the complex issues here.

The misinterpretation of abundance conspires with another misinterpretation about the development of the productive forces being fettered by capitalist relations so that communism would bring an unprecedented development of productive forces. Marx’s point was that the productive forces would be freed for better use rather than for massive development. See Chap. 4 on this issue.

Sometimes the misconstrual of Marx’s discussion of abundance leads to speculation that communism can come only when there is (great) abundance, as, for example, in Levine (1987).

For an excellent discussion of abundance, and the only one I know, see Van Parijs (1993). Of course the issues combine with the important issues about the environment as well.

Nielsen writes otherwise, following the Nells, saying that the principle is “incomplete and defective” (Nielsen 1989a, pp. 86ff). The principle is incomplete in the sense that it is unspecific, but that is a virtue because Marx did not want to write prescriptions.

These may be like rules of regulation, as Cohen (2008) characterizes the “principles” in Rawls’ theory of justice (Rawls 1999), rather than principles of morality (see Chap. 8 on these questions and Marx’s moralism).

G. A. Cohen has made a similar point (personal communication to the author) that people’s needs, especially primary and basic needs, are similar if not equal. This raises a complex of issues about technology and the social satisfaction of social and individual needs.

Note: References to the work of Frederick Engels and Karl Marx are from Karl Marx, Frederick Engels, Collected Works. 50 Volumes, 1975–2004. New York, NY: International Publishers. (Referred to in text as “MECW” with volume and page).

Braybrooke, David. 1987. Meeting Needs. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.CrossRef

———. 1992. Two Conceptions of Needs in Marx’s Writings. In On the Track of Reason: Essays in Honor of Kai Nielsen, ed. Rodger Beehler, David Copp, and Béla Szabados, 119–133. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Buchanan, Allen E. 1982. Marx and Justice. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Littlefield.

Cohen, G.A. 1995. Self-ownership, Freedom, and Equality. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.CrossRef

———. 2001 [1978]. Karl Marx’s Theory of History: A Defence. Expanded ed. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. (Published in 1978 by Oxford University Press).

———. 2008. Rescuing Justice and Equality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.CrossRef

Elster, Jon. 1985. Making Sense of Marx. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press and Paris: Editions de la Maison des Sciences de l’Homme.

Geras, Norman. 1985. The Controversy about Marx on Justice. New Left Review 150: 47–85.

Lebowitz, Michael. 2015. The Socialist Imperative: From Gotha to Now. New York, NY: Monthly Review Press.

Lenin, V.I. 1964 [1917]. The State and Revolution. In Collected Works, ed. V.I. Lenin, vol. 25, 381–492. Moscow: Progress Publishers.

Levine, Andrew. 1987. The End of the State. London: Verso.

Marx, Karl. 1962 [1875]. Kritik des Gothaer Programs. In Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels Werke: Band 19, 15–32. Berlin: Dietz Verlag.

Nell, Edward, and Onora Nell. 1975. On Justice under Socialism. In Ethics in Perspective, ed. Karsten J. Struhl and Paula Rothenberg Struhl, 436–446. New York, NY: Random House.

Nielsen, Kai. 1985. Equality and Liberty: A Defence of Radical Egalitarianism. Totowa, NJ: Rowman & Allanheld.

———. 1989a. Marx, Engels and Lenin on Justice: The Critique of the Gotha Programme. In Marxism and the Moral Point of View, 61–97. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

———. 1989b. On Marx Not Being and Egalitarian. In Marxism and the Moral Point of View, 193–226. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

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Van Parijs, Philippe. 1993. In defence of abundance (Chapter 10). In Marxism Recycled. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

Ware, Robert. 1992. Marx on Some Phases of Communism. In On the Track of Reason: Essays in Honor of Kai Nielsen, ed. Rodger Beehler, David Copps, and Béla Szabados. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.

Wood, Allen W. 1981. Marx and Equality. In Issues in Marxist Philosophy, ed. J. Mepham and D.H. Ruben, vol. IV, 195–221. Hassocks: Harvester.

———. 2014. Marx on Equality. In The Free Development of Each: Studies on Freedom, Right, and Ethics in Classical German Philosophy. Oxford: Oxford University Press.CrossRef

Title: Marx on Some Phases of Communism
Author: Robert X. Ware
Publisher: Springer International Publishing
Book: Marx on Emancipation and Socialist Goals
Print ISBN: 978-3-319-97715-7

Electronic ISBN: 978-3-319-97716-4

Copyright Year: 2019
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-97716-4_11