Ping Pong 36: Resistance in the Major Key
The true genius of Marx always lay in his ability to define and never away shy from complexity. This genius is seen in two great ideas. Firstly, he was the thinker who first really realized that the modern world was and still is, likely to be composed of two very distinct complexities: namely those of society and technology. These two elements needed to be considered very separately, and yet this very separation leads to the second great idea. Marx realized that the history of humanity was very likely to be contained within the manner in which these two otherwise distinct complexities were forced to interrelate with one another. It was therefore never enough to merely understand the power and effect of society or technology, but one also needed to understand the power of history, machines, and capital, to breed complex junction points as very distinctive elements of modernity. Any reading of Marx will therefore need to tackle first, the twin independent complexities of society and technology, before then assessing the quality of the bridge and junction points between these two elements. The first of these two topics will be examined in this rant, and the second reserved for the subsequent one.
It is arguably Marx who first codified the idea of a society. That is, the idea that a large body of people, when they come together, and communicate with each other, will create by their very communication and interaction a whole series of different beliefs and customs. These customs then define and refine both the notion of a society, but also the subgroups within that society. That is, a society is far from homogenous. On the contrary there were, for Marx, certain classes, or interest groups, whose particular beliefs and manners of being could be understood. Moreover these groups were not to be located within a certain country or even culture. But rather Marx argues, certain classes or subgroups needed to be understood as trans-cultural phenomena, and this non-cultural specificity will add to the power and importance of the classes so defined. Marx in his wonderful pieces of journalism was fascinated to define the middle classes as a separate group of people, which was found in varying different forms in a variety of countries. He likewise codified what it was to be working class or even upper class. These codes, or ‘series of indicators’ passed into folk legend. We effortlessly understand or look to understand ourselves in terms of class. Class becomes then (again following Marx) as much a matter of culture and status as it does earnings. Sarah Palin with her endless trite little phrases (‘hockey Moms’, ‘Jo the Plumber’ etc.) was then to this degree at least the good Marxist.
But the real power of the middle class (and Marx was bitterly aware of this fact) lies not in its commercial clout, or its cultural hegemony, but rather in its monopoly of aspiration. The Idea of being middle class (whatever that might be) has become the dominant dream of much of the world. That is, the dream of those who would want to have enough money not just not to worry about poverty, but also to arrange a nice little life for themselves. A life characterized by the ability to spend when they want to, and the freedom which that spending is then thought to convey. All that needs to be done to attain this goal is that we pay the necessary price. This price is set upon education, understood in its more vapid sense. That is, one gains the right to be middle class by sitting out a university course, and gaining a piece of paper that makes one too ‘qualified’ to be working in a factory any more. The ‘dream’ of this licence not to work (at certain jobs) has become over the last eleven years, one of the dominant elements in British society. No matter we are all in debt, no matter the university system is not adept at mass education, nor that what is learnt is relatively useless (how many historians does a country need?) or even that this goal can only be reached by distorting the entire education system. For what do such grumbles as these matter in the face of the dream of being middle class? A dream that has the effect that we never have faced up to the very real problem that our university education system is not appropriate to the current world. That system was originally created in the Middle Ages, with the purpose of educating clergymen, and refined in the seventeenth century to educate the sons of gentry; it was therefore also about conveying status and privilege as much as it was ever about learning. Nothing has then challenged this last fact. All that the New Labour Government did was to insist that everyone was a member of the gentry now. That is, that the entire system allowed that a far larger group could be educated into being middle class. This move was made then in the name of class prejudice (that we all ought to be middle class) and not in the value of the education given.
The Dream of being middle class, which Marx ruthlessly catalogue and defines, was just that, a delusion. The problem for Marx being, that it was, given the capitalist system simply impossible for everyone to share this great collective dream. We might all want to be middle class. We might all aspire to it. And yet only very few could, given the logic of the system, be selected to participate in that dream. The economy (and possibly the resources of the world) would never allow for more than this. India might be shining and might have a new middle class, but it has also a new poor as well; while the West can only fund a mass home-owning middle class by recourse to debt, and sub-prime loans…
Even more importantly, Marx insists, the dream of being middle class, is founded on a myth. One desires to be middle class as a thing in itself. The hard logic of ‘being middle class’ really ought to concern those deep problems of social structure and the value or use of various occupations. But of course it does not. People when they dream of being Middle Class or at least being wealthy, do not look to how they make the money, beyond that is, ruling out a certain selection of dirty and unpleasant jobs. The rubric of being middle class has then become associated with the hope that one can make money relatively easily. That is one can make money through dealing with other humans (sales or finance or the law etc.) rather than dealing with that messy business of production.
To be middle class thereby becomes a dream of being wealthy without much labour, and handing down that wealth to others (heirs). What is more, Marx realized that there are three aspects to such a dream. Firstly it is by nature collective. One of those interesting elements of modernity is that certain countries feel that they have a right to be middle class. America and Britain are two classic examples. In spite of the fact that we do relatively little in the way of production, we feel we have a right to that wealth. We are the civilized middle class countries. The shock of the current financial crisis, is as much about the sudden horrid worry that this might not actually be the case, as it is about anything else. That is the worry that actually others might be about to be the middle class power now, leaving us with nothing. ‘We are all middle class now’, has then become the dominant belief of Western nations. A belief the country holds and which holds the country together, and does so in spite of evidence that might suggest that other realities are actually more true.
Secondly Marx is very clear that the middle class delusion is an opiate that people take to make their world feel better, or at least make it make sense. That is, collective aspiration and belief take the place of thought. Or to put it otherwise, one of the problems of modernity is that the world becomes so much more complex and integrated. Understanding becomes then genuinely hard, and beyond most people’s patience, if not beyond their intellect. Into this gap of understanding, various explanations then jump. Firstly there is of course religion, which remains a powerful opiate. But the myth of the middle class is perhaps an even more powerful drug. We all really do believe, that we have a right to being middle class now. That aspiration ensures then, that we do not ask too many questions or worry over much. Keep one’s head down, become middle class, is the dominant message we are endlessly fed.
Thirdly, Marx was bitterly aware that the middle class is necessarily a self reflexive class. Or better, a class in which status was linked to concern. The wealthier people then felt themselves to be, the more they wanted to ‘do good’ in the world. Marx was however very suspicious of this doing good, which he felt tended to be typified by three separate features. Firstly the good done was symbolic. One helped a community in Africa or elected an ‘African President’. Symbol became then identical to action or even better than it. The middle class then becomes adept at reading the rubric of history and calling certain events ‘sea changes’ or defining moments, and does so as if that calling made the change itself. Secondly Marx was very suspicious of the fact that much of the good doing of the middle class was really designed to make the good doer feel better, and not really about challenging the entire system. In particular the ‘good doer’ will focus on those projects than makes them feel good about themselves: Helping children or named communities rather than actually tackling the fundamental problems which created poverty in the first place. Moreover running through this good doing was the demand that the recipient feel grateful in some way, of the bounty. Charity is always a complex and very harshly nuanced phrase… Thirdly Marx was always delightfully suspicious of the idea that the ‘middle classes doing good’ was free from self interest. This inability to be free from one’s own interest is not necessarily deliberate hypocrisy, so much as the fact that one’s own greedy policies create needs elsewhere, needs which one hears about and wants to alleviate. One alleviates problems therefore in countries where one has been caught up in the creation of the problem in the first place (Congo is a modern example; we want gems, and so is Iraq, where we want oil…). We solve problems that we in part caused therefore. In doing so, we will of course bind a country even tighter to ourselves, and our fate (and our continued ability to subsidise/subdue it).
The middle class therefore become caught up in effortless hypocrisy as they make a ‘B’ movie of their own lives and the world which they create. This hypocrisy for Marx is absolutely necessary, as there is something very much missing from the middle class account of things. Marx’s other big force for modernity was technology. A certain epoch, he suggests, is characterized by a whole series of inventions. These inventions define what a society or a group of societies can do. That is, they define how many workers there need to be in that society, and how many rulers. I.e., for Marx the parameter of any society ultimately must be defined within the way that that society organizes its natural world, and is able to pull out resources from that world.
To be a feudal society is therefore to have a certain series of technological innovations (the heavy plough, stirrup, water mill) and not to have others (gun powder, steam mill). There will then be very considerable freedom within each stage of technological development. There are many different forms of feudalism from the feudalism of the American South to that of China or Europe or Africa. And yet each share a very certain set of criteria. Therefore each will need to be organized around the fact that the vast majority of the people are going to be peasants. But also one must allow for the fact that communication is difficult, so that regional power will need to be strong. While also allowing for the fact that countries shouldn’t be too small, as there is safety in being able to pull a fair number of regents together to form large armies… The technological base therefore sets countries an algebraic problem. One needs to balance off various different elements, one against the other, and so create a culture within them.
However Marx is very clear that capitalism is a little different. The capitalist system is one that uses machines. This fact has two further effects. Firstly these machine’s power lies in the fact that they convert human desire and labour into a veritable force of nature. Hence production processes running by steam or electricity become automatic and predetermined, akin to a volcano or electric storm. Production becomes then bottomless, or at least it becomes as bottomless as society’s ability to absorb the products and the world’s ability to provide raw resources allows. We all theoretically could become wealthy (and so communist or middle class depending on one’s viewpoint). Secondly Marx is very aware that societies change by the rhythm of their technological development. This change is then quicker in capitalism, where new machines are frequently invented; machines that challenge the existing order of things. A capitalist society is therefore Marx suggests, rather unstable. New machines will bring new challenges and great social change.
Marx’s great power then lies in the complexity and independence which he allows these two dimensions of modernity. On the one hand, one has the ‘commercial’ world of the middle class. This is the world which we endlessly aspire to be a part of, and talk of. A world of constant ‘revolution’. That is, of significant movements and apparent major change (that really challenges very little). Underpinning this world and partially separate from it, is the world of technology. It is this world that defines the parameters within which that other world can be, and can function. Changes in technology are then real and genuine challenges to society (even if they might be initially secret, and devoid of immediate significant moments). However the real problem is going to be, how these rather different rhythms for society and for technology interrelate. Can one understand that relationship? And can one fit it into a narrative (call it a history), or is it always going to be harder than that? Marx’s fate as a thinker was in a sense defined at this point. He identified the complexities of the agencies involved within modernity, and yet wanted everything to be ultimately resolvable, so that he then tended (and it is only a political tendency) to understand the connection between these agencies too simplistically. I.e. he wanted their stories to come together and form one great history, the history for which he was the prophet. It is to the problem of this approach, and yet the richness of Marx’s methodology, that the next Rant will turn.
