Brilliant ideas flowed from this effort, including his analysis of class inequality, the concepts of "base" and "superstructure", and the liberating theory of "alienated labor." Marx also showed that the inner workings of capital live off economic growth, and if this growth is limited, crisis will ensue and throw the entire social order into jeopardy. For all these reasons, Marxist politics the Marxist story remains popular and relevant today.
But due to serious errors and ambiguities in Marx's analysis, Marxism has failed to provide an accessible, coherent, and accurate theoretical framework to free the world of capitalist tyranny.
I believe Marx's foremost error was his propagation of the older philosopher Hegel's linear march of history. This theory characterizes human society as constantly evolving to higher stages of development, such that each successive epoch is supposedly more "ideal" or "rational" than what came before. Marx's carrying forward this deterministic narrative into the anti-capitalist struggle created the confusion that capitalism, although terrible, is a necessary "advance" that will create the conditions for a free society by the "development of productive forces." This mistaken conception often put Marx, and his uncritical descendants, on the wrong side of history arguing that in order to achieve the ideal of socialism or communism, countries first had to follow the Western European model of becoming capitalist first.
Hegel's framework of linear progression blinded Marx to non-European, feminist, and ecological critiques of capital's violent conquest of the world. Without this knowledge, Marx charted a flawed strategy for radical social change that missed the core of what human freedom is all about. Instead of vocally, unambiguously opposing European colonialism and the displacement of small farmers from their land, Marx construed the proletarianization of the world as a matter of capitalism "producing its own grave-diggers." Focusing narrowly on the economic "misery" of capitalism and upholding the proletariat as the agent of history, Marx simplified the aims of the anti-capitalist project to a matter of the working class seizing state power to "increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible" (Marx-Engels Reader 490).
This mechanical focus on the hardships of workers led Marx to overlook the many other ways that capitalism threatens life on this planet, and therefore also the resistance coming from those outside his framework: peasants, indigenous cultures, women, youth, queer and trans people, students and intellectuals, immigrants, people of color, artists, and more.
Perhaps most urgently for our moment of climate meltdown, Marx's view of capitalism as an "advance" blinded him to the ecological destruction that capitalism reaps on our planet, from deforestation to the extinction of species and so much more. Preoccupied with the "development of productive forces," Marx predicted that communism would come about due to capitalism placing "fetters" on economic growth. Growth itself was perceived as inherently good, and the rational proletariat would advance it further than capital ever could. Following this logic to its conclusion, Marx praised industrialization as creating the material conditions for the "scientific domination of natural agencies."
Afflicted with these blindspots, the Marxist narrative was defenseless against repeated manipulations, and mutated into ideological cover for "Socialist" and "Communist" tyrants who have been chief enemies of human liberation. Where Marx's doctrine didn't fit the reality of social struggle, as in Russia, China, and every other country that has experienced a "Marxist" revolution, his disciples attempted to transcend reality in order to fit Marx's doctrine, instead of transcending Marx's ideas in order to explain reality. The results have been nothing short of nightmarish.
A zombie idea is an idea that has been demonstrably proven false by reality, which has expired in its usefulness, but which continues to reproduce itself by preying on real-live hopes and fears. A zombie idea cannot adapt to new conditions, it only decays. It lacks moral purpose, but will continue to lumber on, propelled by an insatiable hunger for as long as it can find unfortunate victims.
Sadly, disturbingly, much of Marxist thought today finds itself in such a state. With the collapse of the Soviet Union, the monstrosity of "actually existing" Marxism spectacularly failed to bury capitalism. Quite the contrary, it was shocked to find itself swept into the "dustbin of history." Proven wrong, this dogma hasn't stayed dead. Now a mockery of the living philosophy Marxism once was (and for some still is), Zombie-Marxism has continued to weigh heavy on the collective mind of the Left, for the simple reason that we haven't turned a critical eye to Karl Marx's body of work itself.
This essay is not meant to be an attack on any particular Marxist, or even on sectarian groups as a species of organization, but rather on a mindset, which uncritically carries forward Marx's ideas into present circumstances where they no longer fit. Too often, Marx is invoked as an authority on subjects of which he was totally silent on. When Marx did make a statement related to a current issue, it is viewed as confirmation of his wisdom, rather than evaluated for the relative clarity or obscurity which it throws on our understanding of capitalism and revolutionary practice today.
We need to carry out an autopsy on the old man. There is much to be gained by reading Marx. But when we look to him for all the answers we transform him into a prophet and transform ourselves into a mindless herd. One hundred and fifty years after Marx's major writings, it is beyond time to ask ourselves: What did Marx get right?, What did he get wrong?, and Why has Marxism failed in practice? Finally, how can we integrate Marx's brilliance alongside the insights of many other necessary thinkers, to create a common-sense radical analysis, based not on ideological blueprints of the past, but on our lived conditions in 21st century late capitalism?
I was once infected with Zombie-Marxist ideas myself. I overcame this infection and freed my mind of such undead ideas, so I know it can be done. Of course, I am not the first, nor will I be the last, to raise these questions and attempt a critique of Marx. For example, in this essay I will draw from the feminist critique of Silvia Federici, the anti-Eurocentric critiques of Russell Means and Kwame Tur????, the democratic critique of Murray Bookchin, the anti-statist critiques of Mikhail Bakunin and Emma Goldman, the anti-dogmatic critique of Cornelius Castoriadis, and others. I offer my own perspective on the Marxist tradition in the hope that others find it useful, and to spark conversation on the need to constantly re-examine our assumptions. Marx himself wrote:
"The social revolution of the nineteenth century cannot draw its poetry from the past, but only from the future. It cannot begin with itself before it has stripped off all superstition in regard to the past" (M-ER 597).
In this era of capitalist crisis, when the entire system threatens to implode, new challenges, and new opportunities, are springing to life. To be relevant to our own century requires shedding the dead superstitions of the past, and facing the future with critical consciousness.
In this essay, I will first recount how I became a follower of "Grampa Karl", and why I was eventually disillusioned. In the two following sections I will lay out my critique of Marx, limited to what I see as Marx's five most enduring contributions and his five most debilitating mistakes. In the remaining parts of the essay I will explain how these theoretical failures led to "actually existing" Marxism a monstrous dogma which dominated the revolutionary left for a century, and still perpetuates itself as an undead ideology even after mortifying two decades ago. Finally I will attempt to rescue Marx from the zombies haunting his legacy and situate him in what I call a common-sense radical perspective of living anti-capitalist politics, incorporating newer theoretical developments such as "de-growth," "reproductive labor" and "transformative justice."
My Encounter with Grampa KarlWhen I was 18, I read the book Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser. The book famously declares "there's sh*t in the meat." Fast Food Nation exposes how factory farms, which produce the vast majority of meat for US consumption, are hell-holes where unsanitary and unsafe practices not only carry out unspeakable animal cruelty, not only endanger and exploit their workers (who are mostly undocumented immigrants), but also pump out enormous quantities of excrement-laden and potentially dangerous meat, which has even killed children with E.coli. And this is to say nothing about the "normal" health effects of ingesting fast food. The fast food industry is also directly responsible for the clear-cutting of the Amazon rainforest, as huge areas of the world's most diverse ecosystem are burned down and replaced with ranches raising cattle for Americans' burgers.
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