Thesis On Marx: A Critical Criticism Of The Idealism of Marx

The following document was written sometime in 1995-96. It is a counter to or a development upon Marx’s original – Thesis on Feurbach. This document was reproduced in two books of Udayan Ghosh – Ami Ekhon Undergrounde (1995) and Swapaner Magic Reality (1997). It has not been published anywhere else as a stand-alone separate document.

In the first book above this document was produced only as a document with no or little comment by the author – just as a document which represents one type of thinking that is subsequent to the fall of the Berlin Wall. It was reproduced together with a document by Pankaj which showed the other extreme of thinking, something on which I do not wish to comment but instead request the reader to Udayan Ghosh’s book and the documentation there. Just buy the book and read it, if you care.

The second book which again includes this document includes comments by the author, Udayan Ghosh, against some of the clauses of this document and ends with a general endorsement of the views presented in the document.

Udayan Ghosh was my Guru who taught me communism. In Swapaner Magic Reality he accepts that something written by Arjun, his student, is important and worth thinking about. This gives me the courage to publish this document here.

THESIS ON MARX: A CRITICAL CRITICISM OF THE IDEALISM OF MARX AND THE MARXISTS

• The chief defect of all hitherto existing materialism — that of Karl Marx and the Marxists included — is that they have conceived of “revolutionary”, “practical-critical” activity as only political/ideological activity without grasping the significance of “revolutionary”, “practical-critical” activity directly in the realm of the processes of human material existence. Truly revolutionary political thought and action can arise, become possible, real and material only when it arises from truly revolutionary attempts to change the conditions of material existence — the relations of “production and reproduction of immediate life”. The tragic irony of Marx and the Marxists is that: although they realized that the production and reproduction of immediate life constituted the “determining moments of history” or the structural aspect of social orders, yet, in practice, they attempted only political or superstructural change without directly trying to change the structural social relations.
• The relations of production and reproduction of immediate life do not exist in society in a generalized, vague, society-wide way but appear concretely and materially in the relations that obtain in specific social organizations for carrying out the tasks of production and reproduction of immediate life. While Marx and the Marxists recognize the social organizations which carry out the task of reproduction of life — the family (or in the light of modern social reality, more accurately, the household) — they failed to realize that even production is carried out by specific social organizations based on social cooperation among specific individuals to carry out production which, for convenience, we may call firms. This failure to recognize the concrete, material social organizations which give concrete material shape to relations of production and reproduction hid from them a clear conception of how relations of production (ROP) and reproduction (RORP) change in history, how first new firms and households based on new ROP and RORP respectively appear on the historical proscenium and how as these new firms and households proliferate, they create new social and political forces. It is only then that political changes begin to take place.
• Never ever in history has political changes succeeded in bringing about firms and households with new structural ROP and RORP but it has always been the other way around. The tragedy of the Marxists is that they have tried to first bring about political change in the hope that later they may be able to create firms and house-holds with new structural ROP and RORP. A hope which they should have known was sure to be belied as they were already aware that structural change precedes superstructural (political) change. In practice they contradicted their own theory.
• Political activity which is confined to making attacks against only the political superstructure of any social status quo (the state machinery) and irrespective of whether these attacks are armed or unarmed, parliamentary or extra-parliamentary, overground or underground or a combination of all these, remains essentially non-revolutionary and even when it appears to have achieved success (as in all previous socialist revolutions) in reality fails to break the structural status quo. It is then only a matter of time before the essentially intact status quo explodes the myth of apparent political change and returns with great vengeance (as has happened in all so-called socialist countries, Soviet Russia and China included). Truly revolutionary activity aims at breaking the status quo right from the very beginning by creating new collectively owned communist firms based on direct consumption of production rather than a wage system (thus changing the ROP) and new collective/communist households based on group/pairing marriage (thus changing the RORP). It is only in the process of bringing about these structural changes that truly revolutionary political and other superstructural needs arise and truly revolutionary political activity becomes possible. As a result of failing to understand this, the ironic tragedy of Marx and the Marxists have been that the more revolutionary they have tried to be politically, the less revolutionary they have actually been in practice in terms of bringing about structural change in society.
• The tragic irony of all hitherto Marxists including Marx himself, is that they have all along realized that the break-down of all class-ridden exploitative social orders and their transition to class-less, egalitarian, non-exploitative social orders implies the withering away and final abolition of the state machinery and yet in practice they have contradicted their own theory and have all along advocated state ownership of the means of production — something which if established would make it practically impossible for the state to wither away and get abolished. On the contrary, state ownership can survive only so long as it intervenes in an extremely pervasive and fascist way. For the people, the fascism of state ownership is worse than the fascism inherent in bourgeoisie democracy. Genuine class-less, egalitarian, non-exploitative social orders can be hoped to be created only when collective households based on group/pairing marriage collectively own and operate production units (firms). Each such collective firm-household combination can then become a self-governing, truly democratic state in itself.
• The main task of any social superstructure (the state machinery, legal framework, cultural and ideological patterns) is to maintain the social structural status quo. Hence, the weaker the structure of any social order becomes as a result of inner contradictions, the stronger that society tries to make its superstructure. Thus we find today that world capitalism is weak and is increasingly becoming weaker everyday structurally — its old economy (or firms based on capitalist/pre-capitalist ROPs) is constantly facing the threat of recession or depression in their existing lines of business while in the realm of the family the more developed a capitalist country is the higher is the rate of divorce (or the rate of breakdown of the family) in that country. But superstructurally, the world capitalist state is the strongest ever and is increasingly becoming stronger under the leadership of the American military machine and not only does it threaten to wipe out any political activity aimed at breaking the status quo but it also has the strength to do so. The tragedy of all hitherto Marxists has been their total failure to understand this primary military issue — the true dispensation of the enemy’s forces – so they have hitherto attacked the enemy where he is strong (the state machinery) without attacking where he is weak (the economy and the family). The attempt to change the status quo by setting up collective household-firm combines which are collectively organized internally but which operate as capitalist business units externally, is not only the only scientific way to change the status quo but is also bound to succeed in changing this status quo because it adopts the correct military strategy of attacking the enemy where the concentration of forces is weak while by-passing the enemy where its concentration of forces is strong. Collective household-firm combinations which are organized on the basis of direct consumption of their products by their members rather than a wage system and which consciously produce a marketable surplus aimed at giving tough competition to capitalist enterprises in the capitalist market place have the inherent strength to drive more and more capitalist enterprises out of business in the market place while at the same time bring more and more means of production under the direct control of the people. If skilfully managed, these units can operate within the capitalist state machinery without the state being able to do anything to stop their proliferation until these household-firm combines proliferate enough and become strong enough to directly take on the capitalist state machinery and destroy it completely.
• The Marxists have tried to change the world only politically, in various ways: the point, however, is to change it structurally by changing the relations of production and reproduction, i.e. by creating collective/communist firms owned and operated by collective/communist households.