Marcello Musto

http://www.khukuritheory.net/a-de-dogmatized-marx/#more-1195


Which of Marx’s ideas do you think were especially distorted or not understood by his followers? For example in the foreword to the volume Sulle tracce di un fantasma (Roma, Manifestolibri 2005) that you edited, you criticised Plekhanov’s idea that Marxism should be “a complete worldview.”--

Plekhanov, like many other Marxists after him, was guilty of building a rigid conception of society and history. And his ideas became very influential among Russian revolutionaries – and not only Russian, due to his international reputation at the time. In my opinion, this conception, based on a simplistic monism in which economic developments are decisive for other transformations of society, had very little to do with Marx’s own conception. It is much more related to the cultural climate of the time, in which positivism and determinism played a big role.

In the preparatory manuscripts for the third volume of Capital, Marx wrote that he was trying to present the “organisation of the capitalist mode of production, in its ideal average,” and hence in its most complete and general form. So, I am not saying that Marx was not interested in reaching “a complete worldview” or that he did not want to be a systematic thinker, if we want to use this expression. I have tried to argue that his generalisation was very different from the one made by Plekhanov and, even worse, later by the fathers of that inflexible monism called Dialekticeskij materialism.

Anyway, the list of Marx’s ideas that have been misunderstood or completely distorted by some of his “followers” or by the self-professed custodians of his thought is very long. Distorted by different perspectives into being a function of contingent political necessities, he was assimilated to these and defamed in their name. From being critical, his theory was utilised as bible-like verses. Far from heeding his warning against “writing recipes for the cook-shops of the future”, these custodians transformed him, instead, into the illegitimate father of a new social system. A very rigorous critic and never complacent with his conclusions, he became instead the source of the most obstinate doctrinarianism. A firm believer in a materialist conception of history, he was removed from his historical context more than any other author. From being certain that “the emancipation of the working class has to be the work of the workers themselves,” he was entrapped, on the contrary, in an ideology that saw the primacy of political vanguards and the party prevail in their role as proponents of class consciousness and leaders of the revolution. An advocate of the idea that the fundamental condition for the maturation of human capacities was the reduction of the working day, he was assimilated to the productivist creed of Stakhanovism. Convinced of the need for the abolition of the state, he found himself identified with it as its bulwark.

I do not think I have enough room here to answer this question as it would deserve. Therefore, I will focus on only one topic — perhaps the most important aspect, after all, of what happened to Socialism in the 20th century: the conception that in communist society there is no place for the individual; that the post-capitalistic association among workers conceived by Marx was a liberticidal society, a regime of oppression without civil rights or political guarantees. This is the biggest paradox that could have happened to Marx. And it is scandalous for those who know his oeuvre. I have read many philosophers and classics of political thought and have encountered only a few thinkers who were interested (and politically engaged!) in the free development of the individuality of all women and men (not only of a privileged class). And I believe that this point is fundamental for the political parties and the social movements that still look at Marx as a source of inspiration. They should be able to challenge the right-wing parties and ideologies to regain possession of the flag of freedom, which is in the hands of the right today. Just to give you an example, the name of the new populistic political party of Berlusconi in Italy is The People of Freedom: a blasphemy!