Marxism, Socialism And The Left

Apologies for the rambling nature of this essay, I believe it is necessary to examine history if we are to understand the present and plan for the future. Let's start at the beginning. The beginning, that is, of socialism. 19th century Europe. The class system was at a height of incredible inequality. Liberal intellectuals sat around tables discussing radical politics in hushed tones. All the while a teething mass of oppressed peoples, unaware of life outside their home and the factories they worked in, toiled with no thought other than earning enough for another meal. In these circumstances, the intellectuals, members of the bourgeoisie, the uppermiddle class, the second sons, discussed life. Without the work to focus on, or the wealth to entertain themselves, they took to interpreting the world around them. Some of the more politically inclined among them saw great potential in the members of the working class. These weak, downtrodden workers had one great advantage in their favour; numbers. If the poor got it into their heads to overthrow the established order, it would be very easy for them to do so. Many different socialist theories emerged during these times, and many died away. Out of these theories, two of the most radical survive today; Marxism and Anarchism. Anarchism survived because, at heart it was a very simple idea; life is better without bosses. It never succeeded in coming to fruition because of a simple part of memetic theory; the ability for a meme to reproduce does not make it the most efficient, the most logical or the most successful. The problem with political memes is that when they're merely discussed, the ones most successful at reproducing will do so, no matter what their effect when put into practice. Imagine a world without predation, where food is plentiful and the only danger is that of overcrowding. The animals that cover this landscape will lose their adaptations, their skills which enable to cling to life in a hostile environment. They will become, quite simply, dodos. The dodo does exceedingly well in its isolated, safe, pure environment. When introduced to reality, it dies in short order. In theoretical terms, in the minds of the uneducated, the idealistic and the desperate, Anarchism thrives like a dodo on an island. When dodo-meme infected individuals come about trying to implement their ideas, suddenly the wolves of reality tear them up. In this way, one should be wary of popular ideas; popularity itself is not a sign that an idea is good, merely a sign that the idea is an infectious one. Marxism is a different breed of political meme. Descended from Anarchist thought, it is actually quite a complex framework. There is no central principle to the theory, because it is not one idea. It is a collection of the thoughts of Karl Marx, Freiderich Engels and often many other theorists. In much the same way as a religious ideals go far beyond 'God exists', Marxism goes far beyond 'the workers/the Communist party are the driving force of the revolution'. It is therefore more than just a single meme. When analysing Marxism, its impact on the world, and its effects in practice, one must bear this in mind. Commonly, an individual will take the body of theories as a lump. It is quite easy to hear 'Marxism is the cause of a great many wrongs' or conversely, 'Marxism is the only way for the working class to emancipate itself'. It is quite foolish to throw out the baby with the bathwater, or to take the bathwater with the baby. If one is to defend or criticise Marxism as a whole, then, one must consider every single part of Marxist theory and evaluate whether that idea is valuable or not. Anyone who proclaims the entirety of Marxism to be either valid or invalid based on a single

part of the whole is committing a grave logical fallacy that cannot be condemned even with the strongest terms available. I have no intention here of going through Marxist theory point by point. Instead I will highlight those that I find relevant to this discussion. The first question then, must be, why did Marxism survive where many other theories failed. Even the most stubborn of anti-Marxists must admit that there must be something in Marxist theory which allowed it to survive. I believe the propagation of Marxism is down to three memes which are intertwines. The first meme, naturally, is that of the emancipation of the workers. Marxism appealed to the massive body of powerless poor and promised to deliver them justice. However, this was true of many other theories. So what differentiated it from its competitors? Marxism proclaimed that the workers must be lead by a communist party. An organisation dedicated to the revolution, capable of turning the many dissatisfied individuals into an capable, organised whole. Many others suggested similar organisations, though, so what third meme did Marxism use? The idea that these workers would be led by intellectuals. Not explicit, perhaps, but implied within the theory. Workers had no time to organise movements, and no money to fund activities. The task of leadership would naturally fall upon the shoulders of the intellectuals. The perfect people to organise a revolution, combined with the perfect footsoldiers; those with nothing to lose and everything to gain. Why then did all attempts at revolution prior to 1917? Is it another simple case of memes replicating without the ability to cope with reality? I believe the answer is not quite so simple. Certainly, by themselves, the ideas discussed above seem the perfect combination. Unfortunately, these ideas did not come in isolation. Marx and Engels considered their theories to be singular and indivisible. Divisions over other parts of the theory, and conflicts with other ideas, meant that the left was incapable of acting whilst the capitalist class implemented safety measures to prevent revolution from occurring. Liberalising reforms, combined with Marxism's very structured approach to history, prevented the workers, and the intellectuals, from seizing power. Many turned to a gradual, reformist Marxism, against the original spirit, but compatible with the letter of the theory. The socialist parties, allowed to drift away from revolutionary ideals, pressured by the increasingly open society to become 'reasonable', eventually broke away from Marxism, although the slide was so gradual as to be unnoticeable. Certainly, the difference between the reformist Marxism of the time, and liberal social democracy, was negligible in practice. Elements of Marxism, primarily the rigid structure of historical materialism, enabled a slide from radicalism to moderation. It became easy to argue that capitalism had not run its full course yet and therefore socialist revolution was unwise. In fact, a strict interpretation of Marx's writings indicate that a full socialist revolution could only come about when society had reached the stage where machines were capable of replacing most or virtually all of the human labour. What was it that enabled Lenin and his Bolsheviks to succeed in Russia? Lenin was perhaps one of the earliest thinkers to re-interpret Marxist theories. Lenin rejected the idea of a large, open communist party and believed in a small, strong, disciplined cadre. In Russia, the situation was not nearly as advanced as elsewhere in Europe. Socialists were heavily repressed and this no doubt affected the mindset of the revolutionaries. A small organised centre seemed favourable to Lenin, preventing infiltration and organising secretly, waiting for the time to strike, rather than attempting to slide towards the revolution. However, most of the Marxists did not share his views, and stuck to the orthodox ideas common elsewhere.

Ultimately, the Bolsheviks succeeded because they were prepared to do whatever it took. They were the most radical, the most determined and the most ruthless. They embodied the very ideal of the revolutionary, a meme inherited not from Marxism but from a novel written decades earlier. The Bolsheviks were the only ones prepared to promise and grant peace to the Russian soldiers. In any revolution, the soldiers are determinant. No uprising can ever succeed without military forces on their side. It just so happens that after years of pointless war and rule by ignorant nobles, the soldiers had no loyalty left for bourgeois government. Coming almost exclusively from the poorest sectors of society, they embraced the movement which promised them 'land, bread and peace'. The Russian revolution inspired movements throughout the world. This was the first time in history that a movement centred around liberating the oppressed and elevating the downtrodden had ever succeeded, at least in living history. The failure of every other Communist revolution before WW2 is therefore notable. The Communists in countries like Italy and Germany took the Russian, Leninist memes and imported them without any alteration or consideration for the local circumstances. In Italy, Mussolini proved how successful a movement can be when it allows memetic ideas to come and go as the circumstances dictate. If the left had only been willing to think for themselves, to examine the situation as it stood rather than looking to Marxist theory and foreign example, imagine what gains might have been made. Alas, when presented with two great authorities, Marx and Lenin, far too many chose to follow instead of lead. Instead of adapting Marxism to the situation in each country, as Lenin had done, Marxists chose to imitate Lenin's adaptations even though Russia's situation was entirely different to that of western Europe. Crucially, Marxists failed to gain support within the military, and they failed to organise their own paramilitaries efficiently enough to challenge the state or the movements that were encouraged to fight against them. The only country in the world where a Marxist organisation had any success before the Second World War was the Communist Party of China. And if we look at the history of its organisation, what do we find? They began to succeed after rejecting the now orthodox Marxist-Leninist approach and adapting the memes for their vastly different situation. After the growth in power and prestige that WW2 brought the Soviet Union, revolutionaries everywhere looked to Russia to assist them, regardless of any actual ideological similarity, and in doing so took on the ideas of their 'mothercountry'. Marxism-Leninism came to be seen as the only sensible doctrine to adopt for any serious revolutionary. The exceptions was Trotskyism, of course, although that remained a minor movement and still upheld a form of Marxism-Leninism. The biggest changes occurred in the 60s, when for a time other ideas began to emerge. Anarchism came back, along with other ideas that struck more of a chord with the newly radicalised students. With no real new doctrine replacing Marxism, however, the political landscape was barely affected. As the 70s rolled in, the old memes of socialism, simple nationalisation of 'the commanding heights', combined with radical unionism and the capitalist framework that even the Soviet Union still operated within, began to crumble. Conflicts within societies between the left and right played out throughout the world, in the west and the east, and new memes emerged. In the west, the conservatives decided to abandon any support for socialistic concepts and moved to crush the old, ideologically stagnated left. In China, the old left was crushed by a new, softer but also more pragmatic left. The failures of the old memes, held together by dogmatic obedience to ideology, were crushed by newer memes introduced by those

less sympathetic to socialism. In the Soviet Union, the conflict continued for another decade until some of the pressure was lifted by Gorbachev's attempt to modernise Soviet memes. However, in lifting the pressure, in allowing ideas to be examined objectively, he caused the situation to explode. As people increasingly rejected the concepts that were considered holy by the left, such as Marxism, they turned to the only other popular idea at the time; brutal free market capitalism. When the Soviet Union fell apart, so did the aspiration and inspiration for millions of socialists throughout the world. This should have been the final death-blow for Marxism. The 'dictatorship of the proletariat' had come and gone. However, this left an ideological vacuum. There were and are no other serious contenders for the throne of revolutionary ideology. Whilst many parties abandoned Marxist ideals in favour of social democratic memes, those on the left who still dreamed of a fundamentally different world had no real choice but to continue to look towards Marx and Lenin. Trotskyism became more important to the left. It was the one strand of Marxism-Leninism that did not rely on the existence of sympathetic governments for its existence. Trotskyist theories have become commonly accepted among the radical left. However, Trotskyism merely modifies the old memes set in stone by Marx, Lenin and Trotsky himself. The ground has shifted so incredibly far since the planting of the Marxist seed, that Trotskyists have been forced to bend the tree of memes further and further as time goes by. I'm afraid, my friends, that in order for the tree to be level with the ground, it must be pulled down entirely. If the left wants to succeed in the 21st century, its ideas must be 21st century ideas, its methods must be 21st century methods and its goals must be 21st century goals. I have heard it said, for example, by some on the left, that the vast majority of people are 'working class'. This claim is entirely based on a Marxist meme. According to the theory, the 'working class', the revolutionary class, must be educated in Marxism, and then they will start the revolution. Marxists must spend their time convincing people that they are members of the working class before they can convince them of anything else. The problem is that only Marxists still think in terms of workers and capitalists. If Marxists abandoned the worker/capitalist meme, they would not have to attempt to spread this meme to an unwilling public. The problem is, Marxism still contains the essential memes that any political movement is based upon - the targeted demographic, the party, and the economic and social goals. The left will always be drawn to the downtrodden, they will always wish to organise themselves and others, and they will always wish to implement progressive policies. Unlike most other political movements, radical leftism comes wrapped in a package of thousands of extra, unnecessary and irrelevant memes. Not only do these cause numerous problems, but they often pervert the core so much as to make it unrecognisable, and they put off countless numbers of people. My advice to those who desire to build a new, united socialist party is simple; focus on your core! No matter how much anyone claims that Marxism is the pillar on which socialism is built, this is simply untrue. The pillars of socialism are; the oppressed, the party, and the ideal of a better world. Abandon anything else that distracts from these pillars. If the left can focus on this, they will succeed. If they cannot, they will fail. Once everything but the pillars has been stripped away, then maybe the left can begin to find memes relevant to our century and our situation, but that is a task for the new party after it has been created.