New Voice

I must begin with a quick qualification: I’m not a socialist by any interesting stretch of the word, though I would espouse an interest in socialistic matters – in that I would like to be helpful to my fellow citizen, if I can. But further than this, I have always been deeply curious of economic history and read so accordingly, which is (certainly for the twentieth century) heavily inundated with multitudinous words of a Marxist flavor. Incorporating all of this, I have been reading the auto-biography of Mr. Fidel Castro for the last few days. It is defined as an auto-biography but is essentially a printed interview. The interviewer, the French thinker Ignacio Ramonet, is somewhat left-leaning (though it would be unfair to call him a socialist or entirely a follower of the Cuban socialist project), which makes for a central theme that follows the movement of Castro’s Marxist ideas from their beginnings right through their revolutionary achievements. And at what rate these ideas are delivered! I could get bogged down at suffocating length in an attempt to tackle just a few of the plethora of interesting ways the socialist subject is delved into throughout the interview; but there is not the time or space (our website is terribly finite) to do so. But more importantly, I was immediately struck by the subject of Marxism itself, and how in the twenty first century it still remains such an antagonist to a capitalist view point.

Marxism seems to exist almost entirely in its opposition to capitalism: the central point of embracing the socialist ideal is that a capitalist system cannot last indefinitely as, over time, capitalism will drive the working class to a period of revolt – thought most likely to occur when chronic low-wage decreases below the level of subsistence and the worker has no choice but the rise up. This, to my mind, makes Marxism a shockingly pessimistic ideal as it can only function following the failure of genuine industrial ingenuity and, theoretically, in the absence of a commercial middle class. But yet Marxism managed to hold a tremendous political cognizance. Lenin only added to its popularity and, again, to its bleakness. Following his own publications of Marist thought, Lenin formed a theory supposing that the capitalist system was too dependent on economic imperialism (forcing imperial societies to embrace capitalism) and predicted its downfall in a global revolt of colonial peoples. Even more shockingly pessimistic: which is where the move to a socialist new world order was recommended and whole-heartedly taken up by Marxist supporters. The revolutionary nature of the beast seems to explain the reason why all socialist experiments have been driven by militaristic elements.

What struck me during Castro’s biography was his consistent implication of the United States as a driver of economic imperialism. You read so much of the United States as an imperialist oppressor enforcing geopolitical policies designed to further its energy, commercial or other interests. But to focus on US imperialism in the context of its almost unconscious role at the heart of the Marxist theory of economic imperialism is novel to my own reading. And damned interesting too. There are significant points that can be made to support the notion that economic imperialism is a major cause of the dissolution of Empire – and conversely, the rise of the Asian powers.  Max Weber (in the late nineteenth century) writes something desperately at odds with the Marxist theory which sought a reasoning that the European style of capitalism was the only one that could ever work in the future (his future of the twentieth century) as the European Protestant psychology of rational and methodical control would allow (in time) a capitalist break through. His view seems to be the nearest to the reality, though it did not allow for the economic resurgence of the exotic Far East.

All of which brings me back to Castro – in a somewhat disorganized fashion.  In his mind it seems that the socialist experiment worked to the conclusion that Marx foresaw – banishing capitalist elements from the Cuban state and reorganizing the structure of society to allow the experiment to continue. What Marx does not argue, is ensuring that the experiment remains intact by way of a totalitarian police state. Marx, and indeed even Lenin, seem to suggest that the natural order of economic reality would ensure that a socialist triumph would occur (and remain) on the basis of the inadequacies of capitalism. But then, running a state by militaristic command is the only way to guarantee anything, I suppose.