Abstract
Karl Marx is highly critical of idealist thought. Yet despite this, he often describes capital as a living, breathing thing with a mind of its own. This is just another form of idealism; he imagines that a construct (capital) is an external force which drives forward the processes of capitalism, and can itself be overthrown through the processes of revolution. In reality, man (not the construct capital) is responsible for capitalist atrocities. There is no external construct for us to overthrow. Any communist revolution that hopes to eliminate evil by overthrowing capital is really just trying to overthrow our own human nature, which is impossible. Evil and exploitation and alienation will likely persist, because they live within us.
Humans in the driver seat
Marx criticizes idealists for believing that big ideas and abstract concepts are the real drivers of history. To Marx this notion is completely backwards: it is human beings, shaped and driven by material forces, that make history. If we claim that “freedom” or “liberty” or “the government” or “religion” or “companies” are the prime movers of events, we empower these abstract constructs, sometimes even to the point that we forget our own role in the progression of history. This process mystifies the actual driving force behind every important event: human beings working together to satisfy their material needs.
This critique is part of Marx’s rejection of Hegelian idealism: “My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought.”1
Marx connects this materialist critique to his ideas about alienation. If we attribute humankind’s good works to nonexistent constructs, we alienate from humans the fruits of their labor. We must give humans the credit — we must celebrate ourselves — for the great things we accomplish when we all work together. Humans, working cooperatively, make history; humans build cities; humans advance science and develop new technologies; humans grow the food we eat. This unending collaboration comes naturally to humans; it is part of what makes humans human! As these projects progress over time, our minds tend to form big ideas and abstract concepts to help us make sense of our own history and development. We forget that humans build roads, and instead come to believe that “the state” builds them. We forget that humans design innovative new technologies, and instead claim that “companies” such as Apple or Tesla perform that service. We forget that humans, working together, make revolutions, and instead we teach our children that “freedom” and “liberty” are inevitable forces that will always triumph over “tyranny”. Over time it becomes easy to forget that such constructs are the products of man, not man’s masters. We steal from man that which defines him — the power to shape our world through collaborative effort — and worshipfully lay it at the feet of constructs which humans invented. Even easier to forget: if humans work together, we can control, shape, or even overthrow these constructs, regardless of how powerful they seem.
Marx and Engels defend this materialistic conception of history in The German Ideology:
This conception of history depends on our ability to expound the real process of production, starting out from the material production of life itself, and to comprehend the form of intercourse connected with this and created by this mode of production (i.e. civil society in its various stages), as the basis of all history; and to show it in its action as State, to explain all the different theoretical products and forms of consciousness, religion, philosophy, ethics, etc. etc. and trace their origins and growth from that basis; by which means, of course, the whole thing can be depicted in its totality (and therefore, too, the reciprocal action of these various sides on one another). It has not, like the idealistic view of history, in every period to look for a category, but remains constantly on the real ground of history; it does not explain practice from the idea but explains the formation of ideas from material practice; and accordingly it comes to the conclusion that all forms and products of consciousness cannot be dissolved by mental criticism, by resolution into “self-consciousness” or transformation into “apparitions,” “spectres,” “fancies,” etc. but only by the practical overthrow of the actual social relations which gave rise to this idealistic humbug; that not criticism but revolution is the driving force of history, also of religion, of philosophy and all other types of theory. It shows that history does not end by being resolved into “self-consciousness as spirit of the spirit,” but that in it at each stage there is found a material result: a sum of productive forces, an historically created relation of individuals to nature and to one another, which is handed down to each generation from its predecessor; a mass of productive forces, capital funds and conditions, which, on the one hand, is indeed modified by the new generation, but also on the other prescribes for it its conditions of life and gives it a definite development, a special character. It shows that circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.2
Humans are certainly shaped by the material forces in which they are steeped. We must eat, find shelter, procreate, survive. Meanwhile men shape the material forces that will in turn shape the next generation. As Marx puts it above, “circumstances make men just as much as men make circumstances.” Notice here that it is not ideas or states or companies or abstract concepts shaping history; it is men doing so. If we breathe life into these constructs, we deprive ourselves of something crucial that belongs to us: our power to change the world.
Under capitalism, the powerful elites and those who serve them use culture and ideology to convince us that we humans are not the drivers of history. They would prefer we forget that all that is needed to accomplish great things is lots of human beings working side by side on a common goal. If we believe that only the state, elites, large corporations, and big ideas create change in the world, we remain docile and ineffectual. We go about our business, do as we are told, surrender to the higher powers the important work of shaping our world, and forget our collective power. This state of affairs is, of course, in the best interest of career politicians, CEOs, and the select few who directly benefit from a marginalized, isolated, passive, deferential work-force quietly accepting the terms they are handed from above and going about their work. Not only have we now alienated from ourselves the fruits of our labor, but we also alienate ourselves from other humans. Through this process we lose our “species-essence”.3 Marx wants to return this species-essence to us, to remind us that we make history, we accomplish great things together. All these constructs that seem to have lives of their own, that appear to have autonomy and power over us, are actually just dead things that we have temporarily animated by lending them our species-essence.
Capital as a living, breathing thing
It is ironic then that Marx, while condemning this idealism that animates dead things and gives them power over human beings, at the same time breathes life into capital throughout his writings. He speaks of capital as if it is a living, breathing thing, a monster, a blood-sucking vampire, a creature with an insatiable desire to grow itself. For example:
What is a working-day? What is the length of time during which capital may consume the labour-power whose daily value it buys? How far may the working-day be extended beyond the working-time necessary for the reproduction of labour-power itself? It has been seen that to these questions capital replies: the working-day contains the full 24 hours, with the deduction of the few hours of repose without which labour-power absolutely refuses its services again. Hence it is self-evident that the labourer is nothing else, his whole life through, than labour-power, that therefore all his disposable time is by nature and law labour-time, to be devoted to the self-expansion of capital. Time for education, for intellectual development, for the fulfilling of social functions and for social intercourse, for the free-play of his bodily and mental activity, even the rest time of Sunday (and that in a country of Sabbatarians!) — moonshine! But in its blind unrestrainable passion, its were-wolf hunger for surplus-labour, capital oversteps not only the moral, but even the merely physical maximum bounds of the working-day. It usurps the time for growth, development, and healthy maintenance of the body. It steals the time required for the consumption of fresh air and sunlight. It higgles over a meal-time, incorporating it where possible with the process of production itself, so that food is given to the labourer as to a mere means of production, as coal is supplied to the boiler, grease and oil to the machinery. It reduces the sound sleep needed for the restoration, reparation, refreshment of the bodily powers to just so many hours of torpor as the revival of an organism, absolutely exhausted, renders essential. It is not the normal maintenance of the labour-power which is to determine the limits of the working-day; it is the greatest possible daily expenditure of labour-power, no matter how diseased, compulsory, and painful it may be, which is to determine the limits of the labourers’ period of repose. Capital cares nothing for the length of life of labour-power. All that concerns it is simply and solely the maximum of labour-power, that can be rendered fluent in a working-day. It attains this end by shortening the extent of the labourer’s life, as a greedy farmer snatches increased produce from the soil by robbing it of its fertility.4
Marx is not wrong about the various ways workers are exploited, depleted, and degraded under capitalism. But for now let’s focus on who is to blame for this treatment: capital. Capital is man’s master, our oppressor, our enemy. Capital has a bottomless thirst for profit, and desires nothing more than to convert man into a robot, a production machine, a surplus value generator. Capital has a personality and a reason for existing; it has goals and a mind of its own, and we are helpless under its power. Marx sees this as an empowering message because he argues that if we can just remember our power and work together, then we can throw off our chains, destroy our oppressor (capital), and finally realize our potential.
But Marx’s portrayal of capital as a living monster seems to contradict his own materialist critique. How can we claim that it is wrong to give credit to abstract constructs for moving human events forward, while arguing that capital (itself an abstract construct) has a mind of its own, that we are slaves to our creation, that capital possesses an insatiable desire to expand itself? We must recall that the ideal of capital itself mystifies the processes of history: humans are the real movers. Therefore it isn’t capital that demands to expand itself, but human beings exploiting others for profit. It isn’t capital that forces children into factories and lowers wages in order to extract more surplus value; it is humans who do these things, men who make these decisions. Capitalism is not wrecking the environment: humans are doing so through their collective effort. Capitalism doesn’t alienate us from the fruits of our labor; human bosses, CEOs, managers, stockholders, consultants, consumers, marketers, etc. alienate their fellow human beings. Therefore it isn’t capital we need to overthrow if we wish to create communism, but human action, human behavior, perhaps our own nature.
If we blame the construct called “capital” for doing all these horrible things, we rob humans of important aspects of our species-essence: the need to compete, to exploit, to hoard, to form factions, to seek profit, to serve the self over the many. Marx wants us all to understand that when humans work together we can accomplish great things, but he appears unwilling to acknowledge with the same openness that we are equally capable of committing ongoing atrocities through that same spirit of cooperation. CEOs, stockholders, managers, and all varieties of corporate agents combine their collective forces to extract profit from employees and manipulate the public, while the general population of humans, driven by their desires (and largely indifferent to the consequences), consume beyond is necessary and leave behind mountains of waste. These harmful forms of cooperative human action shape our world just as powerfully as do the positive examples (such as scientific and technological innovation). Just as idealism alienates from man something which is fundamental to his nature, Marx’s depiction of capital as the enemy does the very same. Marx extracts mankind’s nastiest qualities and attributes them to an abstract, leaving man as a shell of his former self (in this case, it leaves in man only that which is good, and alienates all that is exploitative). Of course mankind is also bursting with lovely attributes: our innate desires to love, to grow things, to cooperate, to help others, to build, to create, to innovate, to nurture. But if we wish to create a truly better world, we have to acknowledge that those rosy parts of our nature are not the only parts. To pretend otherwise is to ignore man as he really is, to take something from him that belongs to him by nature.
This is not a petty, semantic gripe against Marx, but a more profound question about the feasibility of communism. Marx would like us to imagine that capital is the enemy, the monster responsible for all these crimes and atrocities, because in that light capital appears to be an external entity that can be overthrown. Once we destroy capital and free ourselves from its grasp, we can finally realize our species-essence and build a world free of exploitation, environmental degradation, and alienated labor. When we come together to throw off our shackles and slay the monster, the end result will be a better world. But if capital is not an external force but instead just a construct that we employ to help us understand forces which exist naturally within us, which are part of our species-essence, it becomes much harder to see how we can ever escape such behaviors. When we overthrow capital, what are we really overthrowing but the behavior of humans with human brains? How can we throw off shackles that exist within our DNA? How can humankind escape the grasp of human weakness? Marx’s vision of communism depends on the notion that capital can be overthrown. He removes our demons and dresses them as something external to ourselves, a force which enslaves us but is not part of out nature. If, however, we point out that Marx’s behavior here is just another example of the very idealism he detests, and acknowledge sadly that there is no external entity, that (as Marx argues) we are the drivers of history, it becomes clear that if we ever do transition to communism we will still be the same humans, capable of the same greatness and horror. No matter where we go, there we are.
Marx would rather not admit that human nature has a dark side, or that profit motive and the desire to compete might be hard-wired into us, because that casts doubt on the likelihood of us ever achieving communism. If greed is actually part of our nature, and we will exploit each other whether capital is abolished or not, it makes the revolution (and the violent action required to kickstart it) seem much less worthwhile, perhaps even pointless. In this light communism appears a pale, utopian dream. As long as the utopia has humans in it, there will be a mixture of misery and joy, great deeds and lowly ones, kindness and greed, but never communism.
Marx is a materialist. But mustn’t a materialist reject Marx’s perspective on capital? If we can blame a construct like capital for the woes of mankind, then why not breathe life as well into the other big ideas of history like freedom and liberty, and hand them the credit for driving forward all the progress mankind has made in the past 500 years? Of course a materialist cannot accept this premise. Humans did those things, and that makes humans great. And so then we must admit that humans also did all the evil things we accuse capital of doing, and that makes humans shitty. Materialism does not allow us to have one but not the other.
Notes
- From the Afterword to the second German edition of Karl Marx, Capital: A Critique of Political Economy, Vol. 1, trans. Edward Aveling and Samuel Moore, ed. Friedrich Engels [1887]. The entire work is available online at the Marxists Internet Archive: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ ↩︎
- Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology [1846], Ch. 1, Part B. Available online at the Marxists Internet Archive: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1845/german-ideology/ ↩︎
- Marx, especially when he was young, wrote about man’s species-essence, species-being, and species-character throughout his writings, including his Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts [1844] and The German Ideology [1846]. Marx argued that our “species-being” is the very essence of what makes us human: we humans, driven by instinct, passion, sensuality, restlessness, and innate creativity, endlessly collaboratively with other humans not only to satisfy our animal needs, but to reshape our world through our efforts, to see our plans, goals, and dreams realized, to build something worthy of being handed to the next generation of builders. When we forget this species-essence, or when it is perpetually frustrated, we lose our humanness and transform into dissatisfied cogs in a machine, pack animals, slaves. ↩︎
- Marx, Capital, Vol. 1, Ch. 10, Sec. 5. Another, more succinct, example can be found in the same chapter, Sec. 1: “Capital is dead labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives the more, the more labour it sucks.” ↩︎