ON KNOWING YOUR MARX…AND TAYLOR!

My inspiration for this project was in the works for some time, but hit a creative inspiration in light of the most recent Superbowl and consequent discussions about the game. For the first time in my life, discussions around the singular moment in football every year was no longer centered around the quality of the quarterback, and one team’s defensive line versus the other’s passing game. This year, no matter how much we tried to avoid it, the discussion always lay under one all-encompassing shadow–the curvy silhouette of Taylor Swift.

I’ve not conducted any surveys. I’m just speaking from my own experience. This year, it was impossible to have a simple sports conversation with a conservative, (and really…who has sports conversations with liberals?) without finding myself talking about Taylor Swift. Furthermore, these weren’t even good conversations about Taylor Swift. They were batshit crazy rants. Conservatives really hate Taylor Swift. They don’t know why they hate her. They just hate her with a passion.

A generic conversation more or less followed a predictable script.

“All they do is show Taylor Swift every fifteen seconds!” Um…no they don’t. She’s very famous and pretty and dating one of the star players, so it makes sense that the cameramen focus on her every once in a while. It’s no big deal. They do that whenever there are famous people in the crowd.

“Yeah, well…She doesn’t even have any talent!” Oh…do tell!

“All she does is write songs whining about her ex-boyfriends!”

“Really? Have you ever listened to a Taylor Swift song?”

The response, “Well, of course not! I wouldn’t be caught dead listening to one of her songs!”

And there it is. It’s not so much that they hate Taylor Swift’s music. They don’t know anything about her music. It’s that they hate what she represents to them.

Look, I’m not a Taylor Swift fan, myself, but I have a teenage daughter and I’ve heard plenty of her songs. The truth is…she’s pretty good. In fact, she’s really good! She is very talented and intuitive. She has a strong business sense in that she knows how to market herself, and she is able to balance that with her creative acumen. Also, her songs cover a wide array of real-life experiences, often from multiple points of view. These are songs that her vast audience relates to. She has something worthwhile to say to those suffering the pangs of the contemporary life, and a lot of people are interested in listening.

So, what does this have to do with Karl Marx?

Frankly, I don’t spend a lot of time talking about football. I’m a sociologist and a political activist with left-wing views. Consequently, I find myself engaged in lot of conversations about politics and current events. Talking about politics today often means talking about Karl Marx. Not because I’m a Marxist, mind you. I’m not. I find myself talking about Marx because he drives conservatives batshit crazy.

They hate Marx. Again, like Taylor, they don’t know why they hate Marx. They wouldn’t be caught dead actually reading a single word he had ever written. They just hate what he represents to them.

I try to avoid these conversations as much as I can. I really don’t want to do an introductory level class on social theory while I’m getting my hair cut or waiting for my order at the deli. Sometimes, however, my interlocuter is more thoughtful and open to conversation and it’s been a while since I did my Marx lecture so…what the hell.

In such a scene, the script invariably lands on the following line…

“Yeah, look, Marx’s program looks good on paper, but when you actually try to make it work…”

Ugh…Okay. What “program” are you talking about?

“Well, the whole idea that all you have to do is lay back and let the state provide for you…”

“Wait! You think that looks good on paper?”

“Well…um…no, not me…um…but…”

“Because that would be a really shitty program, wouldn’t it? I mean…work has to be done…the state can’t just make stuff appear out of nowhere…Would anyone with any sense at all write something like that?”

“Um…”

“So why do you think Karl Marx, one of the most influential thinkers in history, wrote that?”

The fact is, they have no idea what Marx wrote because they were more likely to have listened to a Taylor Swift song (perhaps unknowingly) than they were to actually read anything written by Karl Marx.

If they had bothered to read Marx they would have discovered that he was good. When he collaborated with his friend Freddy¹, a much better writer in my opinion, he was very good. He had something to say that was relevant to the majority of people suffering the pangs of the modern, industrializing world. True, he did not have Taylor Swift’s business sense. However, the fact that he still inspires venomous hatred as well as inspiration over a hundred forty years after his death is testament to the staying power of his ideas.

To understand Karl Marx, his philosophical contributions and his politics, it is important analyze him on two levels. First and foremost, as a scholar and a philosopher. His contributions to what was then understood as the field of political economy were powerful, deeply thought out, and remain relevant today.

Secondly, Marx was an idealist and a political activist. Marx started out studying law at the University of Bonn. While at university he fell in with a group of social critics called the Young Hegelians, who based their critiques of Prussian society on the principles of philosopher Georg Hegel. In essence, they saw history as a contest between powerful ideas. In other words, they were idealists.

Like his Young Hegelian friends, Marx was disenchanted with the so-called great progress in Prussian society since the eighteenth century and the advent of industrialization. On one hand, he was witness to undeniable advancements in wealth and wellbeing in modern Prussia. On the other hand, most Prussians didn’t benefit from these advancements. Not only were they left behind by the wealthy elites, but they were actively exploited. Marx realized that this was not a matter of different ideas existing in conflict. Rather, the real, everyday lived experience of elite Prussians was in conflict the with real, everyday lived experience of everyone else.

Marx broke away from an idealistic analysis of history. His most important contribution to philosophy and the social sciences is his inversion of Hegel’s theories. History, according to Marx, was shaped by the material conditions under which people lived. In other words, history was driven by a society’s economic structures because it is through the market that people have access to the material resources they need. This is called Historical Materialism. It is, arguably, Marx’s most important contribution to scholarship.

Because he based his analysis on economic realities, Marx is an important, critical voice in economics. Also, because he was interested in real, lived experience, his theories are also foundational for sociologists and anthropologists and other fields in the social sciences and humanities.

In modern Europe, the economy was increasingly shaped by capitalism. In other words, the means of production² were private property owned by individuals. These individuals were free to use the means of production that they owned to benefit themselves. In doing so, they would find the most efficient, effective, rational way to produce these goods and services and make them available to as many people as possible. The founding fathers of modern Economics, Adam Smith, and David Ricardo believed that this was the best system so far toward that end.

Contrary to what most people think, Marx actually agreed with Adam Smith and David Ricardo. Marx recognized that capitalism was a significant improvement over past economic systems like ancient slavery, and feudalism. In the Communist Manifesto, Karl and his friend Freddy flat out state that “…[capitalism] has been the first to show what man’s activity can bring about. It has accomplished wonders far surpassing Egyptian pyramids, Roman aqueducts, and Gothic cathedrals; it has conducted expeditions that put in the shade all former migrations of nations and crusades.”³ Indeed, for Marx, capitalism was a necessary stage in social development. However, to say that capitalism was the best system to date was, for Marx, a very low bar. Capitalism, like the systems that came before it, was an intrinsically exploitative system.

The bulk of Marx’s work focused on the relations involved in enforcing and perpetuating this exploitation. This scholarly work provided an invaluable foundation for analyzing economic and social inequality. Marxist theory gives sociologists, economists, and other social scientists a framework for understanding society from the point of view of its victims. These contributions still resonate today. Furthermore, they continue to scare the hell out of the beneficiaries of our system, the wealthy and the near wealthy. Consequently, a great deal of effort is put into making sure that nobody actually reads his work.

Makes you wonder why Taylor Swift is so scary…but that’s another post.

Because exploitation was intrinsic to capitalism, it cannot be reformed. At best, perhaps, with a lot of hard work, capitalism could be made less exploitative, but the exploitation will remain. The only option was to overthrow capitalism and to replace it with a system that was not exploitative. This is where we see the second layer of Marx, the political activist. Marx may have been a materialist in his theoretical work, but he was an idealist in his political life…and yes, this did create tensions.

Again, contrary to what most people are led to believe, Marx did not envision a society in which an authoritarian state owned everything and provided for everyone regardless of whether they contributed or not. Indeed, one of Marx’s most famous mottos for his ideal society was,”from each according to his ability to each according to his needs.”⁴ His vision was exactly the opposite of the totalitarian state we attribute to him.

Marx was a socialist, which means he believed that the means of production should be democratically controlled rather than owned and monopolized by a wealthy elite. He also believed in “communism.” In the 19th century, communism was not distorted by what it became in the 20th century.⁵ Communists believed, and mostly still believe, in collective, or communal ownership of the means of production, and the abolition of private property. Communists believe in a classless society governed through direct democracy. Communists also believe in the abolition of the state.⁶

The question is in how all of this could come about. For Marx, his theoretical work was part of the praxis necessary to replace capitalism with communism. For any scholar, this is a precarious balancing act. To what extent does one’s political goals influence their academic work? A reading of Marx’s theoretical work, in conjunction with his political goals does cause some problems. In many ways, Marx’s concept of the Revolution of the Proletariat, and the Dictatorship of the Proletariat are some of his weakest arguments.

When it comes right down to it, Taylor Swift is a very talented entertainer. Like any entertainer, she has made some mistakes, some of her songs are better than others. Regardless, she has had a significant impact on contemporary culture. Will she be considered a transformative cultural icon? Time will tell, but she’s off to a good start.

Karl Marx, however, has been a transformative cultural icon…largely misunderstood. To be fair, he’s often misunderstood by his fans as well as his detractors. So, what I figured I would do is offer a variation of my college Introduction to Sociology lecture on Karl Marx. A Karl Marx playlist of his greatest hits, if you will.

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Notes

1. Friedrich Engels ↩︎
2. Factors of production include land, labor, and capital. The means of production were the technologies necessary to transform land, labor, and capital, into finished goods and services. For the most part this includes farms, factories, hospitals, schools, and other institutions. ↩︎
3. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. ↩︎
4. Marx, Karl. Critique of the Gotha Program. ↩︎
5. Though there were some folks who predicted the authoritarian turn that ultimately destroyed communism. Most notably, the anarchist philosopher Mikail Bakunin. ↩︎
6. For communists, the state only exists to enforce and perpetuate class exploitation. Once class exploitation is eliminated, the state becomes irrelevant. ↩︎

Correction: Georg Hegel was originally referred to as Friedrich Hegel…obviously conflated with Engels. I have made the appropriate change.