Newsgroup: it.politica
Titolo: L’ECONOMIST: Karl Marx batte Adam Smith dieci a uno

SORPRESE. L’ECONOMIST: IL PROFETA HA FALLITO, MA LA CHIESA È ANCORA
VIVA
Karl Marx batte Adam Smith dieci a uno
A sorpresa, l'autore del Manifesto del partito comunista gode ancora
oggi di un'enorme fortuna editoriale. Nonostante il crollo dell'Urss e
il trionfo del capitalismo, Karl Marx batte Adam Smith 10 a 1: tale è
infatti, secondo l'Economist, il rapporto tra i titoli in via di
pubblicazione dedicati al padre del comunismo e quelli dedicati al
padre dell'economia di mercato. Ironia della storia che non fa
sorridere affatto la Bibbia del giornalismo liberal anglosassone: si
tratti di testi di economia, scienze sociali o umanistiche, la
proporzione rimane schiacciante. Eppure, si annota tristemente, in
Adam Smith c'è molto di più della sola analisi economica, ma nessuno
lo sa; mentre da Marx, dai suoi interpreti e discepoli, non c'è modo
di fuggire. Come spiegare un simile successo?
Per l'Economist, dato il fallimento del comunismo e la dimostrata
infondatezza di tutte le sue previsioni, sembrerebbe trattarsi di un
vero mistero. E dopo un sommario riepilogo delle consuete
argomentazioni della vulgata marxista, confutate con le consuete
argomentazioni dei liberali, la conclusione è netta: Marx non era uno
scienziato, ma il fondatore di una religione. E se il sistema politico
ed economico da lui ispirato è morto, la sua chiesa è ancora viva.
Resterebbe però ancora da capire per quale ragione la chiesa di un
profeta così duramente smentito dai fatti continui ad avere tanto
seguito. E soprattutto per quale motivo, a centocinquant'anni dalla
pubblicazione del suo Manifesto, l'Economist debba dedicare tre pagine
alle previsioni di un simile ciarlatano. Probabilmente la vera ragione
del perdurante successo editoriale di Marx sta nel nesso tra quelle
previsioni e l'attuale processo di globalizzazione. Forse l'articolo
dell'Economist, ma anche saggi ben più ponderosi dedicati
all'influenza del marxismo sugli intellettuali come quello di François
Furet, dovrebbero approfondire questo aspetto. Ne troverebbero una
conferma nel lavoro di Antonio Gramsci, un marxista che né l'Economist
né Furet citano. E in particolare nella sua tesi sulle origini della
crisi europea degli anni trenta: il conflitto tra il cosmopolitismo
dell'economia e il nazionalismo della politica. Una analisi che il
processo di globalizzazione ha confermato. Non deve essere solo un
caso se Marx è ancora il primo nella classifica dei pensatori più
commentati e discussi nel mondo, e se anche Antonio Gramsci negli
ultimi anni non sembra essere messo molto male in quanto a riscoperte.
Da il Riformista
Mi toccherà leggerlo?
-- 
l'infinito attuale è la radice assoluta 
dell'infinito potenziale. Leftorium ©

 VIVA
Ecco l'articolo completo.
Saluti
^^SpAwN^^
+++
http://www.economist.com/PrinterFriendly.cfm?Story_ID=1489165
Marx's intellectual legacy
Marx after communism
Dec 19th 2002
From The Economist print edition
As a system of government, communism is dead or dying. As a system of ideas,
its future looks secure
WHEN Soviet communism fell apart towards the end of the 20th century, nobody
could say that it had failed on a technicality. A more comprehensive or
ignominious collapse-moral, material and intellectual-would be difficult to
imagine. Communism had tyrannised and impoverished its subjects, and
slaughtered them in the tens of millions. For decades past, in the Soviet
Union and its satellite countries, any allusion to the avowed aims of
communist doctrine-equality, freedom from exploitation, true justice-had
provoked only bitter laughter. Finally, when the monuments were torn down,
statues of Karl Marx were defaced as contemptuously as those of Lenin and
Stalin. Communism was repudiated as theory and as practice; its champions
were cast aside, intellectual founders and sociopathic rulers alike.
People in the West, their judgment not impaired by having lived in the
system Marx inspired, mostly came to a more dispassionate view. Marx had
been misunderstood, they tended to feel. The communism of Eastern Europe and
the Soviet Union was a perversion of his thought. What happened in those
benighted lands would have appalled Marx as much as it appals us. It has no
bearing on the validity of his ideas.
Indeed, it is suggested, Marx was right about a good many things-about a lot
of what is wrong with capitalism, for instance, about globalisation and
international markets, about the business cycle, about the way economics
shapes ideas. Marx was prescient; that word keeps coming up. By all means
discard communism as practised in the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe (and
China, North Korea, Cuba and in fact wherever it has been practised). But
please don't discard Marx.
Give the man his due
There seems little risk of it. In 1999 the BBC conducted a series of polls,
asking people to name the greatest men and women of the millennium. In
October of that year, within a few weeks of the tenth anniversary of the
dismantling of the Berlin Wall, the BBC declared the people's choice for
"greatest thinker". It was Karl Marx. Einstein was runner-up, Newton and
Darwin third and fourth, respectively. "Although dictatorships throughout
the 20th century have distorted [Marx's] original ideas," the state-financed
broadcaster noted, "his work as a philosopher, social scientist, historian
and a revolutionary is respected by academics today." Concerning the second
point, at least, the BBC was correct: Marx is still accorded respect.
As a field of scholarship in its own right, admittedly, Marxist political
and economic theory is past its peak. By now, presumably, most of the things
that Marx meant, or really meant, or probably meant, or might conceivably
have meant, have been posited and adequately (though far from conclusively)
debated. But a slackening of activity amid the staggeringly voluminous
primary sources is not the best measure of Marx's enduring intellectual
influence.
Books on Marx aimed at undergraduates and non-specialists continue to sell
steadily in Western Europe and the United States. And new ones keep coming.
For instance, Verso has just published, to warm reviews, "Marx's Revenge" by
Meghnad Desai, a professor of economics at the London School of Economics.
Mr Desai argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right
about far more than he is given credit for. In August, Oxford University
Press published "Why Read Marx Today?" by Jonathan Wolff. It too is an
engaging read. The author, a professor at University College London, is a
particularly skilful elucidator of political philosophy. In his book, he
argues that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about
far more than he is given credit for.
The newly released memoirs of Eric Hobsbawm, the celebrated historian,
lifelong Marxist and unrepentant member of the Communist Party for as long
as it survived, also deserve mention. The reviews were mixed, in fact, but
rarely less than respectful, finding much to admire in the author's
unwavering intellectual commitment. Mr Hobsbawm argues...well, he argues
that Marx was misunderstood and that the great man was right about far more
than he is given credit for.
Adam Smith, one might say, stands in relation to liberal capitalism, a
comparatively successful economic order, roughly where Marx stands in
relation to socialism. Searches on Amazon.com and other booksellers indicate
that titles in print about Marx outnumber books about Adam Smith by a factor
of between five and ten. A hard day's browsing of undergraduate
reading-lists suggests that, in economics faculties, Smith is way out in
front-interesting, given that Marx saw himself as an economist first and
foremost. Elsewhere in the social sciences and humanities, the reverse is
true. Smith is rarely seen, as you might expect, though in fact there is far
more in Smith than just economics; whereas from Marx and his expositors and
disciples it seems there is no escape. It is the breadth of Marx's
continuing influence, especially as contrasted with his strange irrelevance
to modern economics, that is so arresting.
How is one to explain this? What, if anything, remains valuable in Marx's
writings? This is not a straightforward question, given that he evidently
had such difficulty making himself understood.
Yes, Marx was a Marxist
When he wanted to be, Marx was a compelling writer, punching out first-rate
epigrams at a reckless pace. The closing sentences of "The Communist
Manifesto" (1848) are rightly celebrated: "The workers have nothing to lose
but their chains. They have a world to gain. Workers of the world, unite."
He also had an enviable flair for hysterical invective. At one point in
"Capital" (1867-94), he famously defines the subject of his enquiry as "dead
labour, that, vampire-like, only lives by sucking living labour, and lives
the more, the more labour it sucks." That is not only unforgettable but
actually very apt, if you believe Marx's theory of value. He could express
himself brilliantly when he chose to.
In his "scientific" work, he minted jargon at a befuddling rate
Yet he was also capable of stupefying dullness and impenetrable complexity.
Try the opening pages of "Capital" (it picks up later). In his scientific
work, as he called it, he minted jargon at a befuddling rate, underlining
terms to emphasise their opacity, then changing their meaning at will.
Adding to the fog, what Marx believed in 1844 was probably not what he
believed in 1874: the only constant was his conviction that what he said at
any time was both the absolute truth and fully consistent with what he had
said before. And most of the published Marx, including the "Manifesto" and
volumes two and three of "Capital", was edited, co-written or ghost written
by Friedrich Engels. For many years, therefore, separating Marx from Engels
in what the world understands as "Marx" was an academic industry in itself.
Still, four things seem crucial, and most of the rest follows from these.
First, Marx believed that societies follow laws of motion simple and
all-encompassing enough to make long-range prediction fruitful. Second, he
believed that these laws are exclusively economic in character: what shapes
society, the only thing that shapes society, is the "material forces of
production". Third, he believed that these laws must invariably express
themselves, until the end of history, as a bitter struggle of class against
class. Fourth, he believed that at the end of history, classes and the state
(whose sole purpose is to represent the interests of the ruling class) must
dissolve to yield a heaven on earth.
Titles in print about Marx outnumber books about Adam Smith by a factor of
between five and ten. From Marx and his expositors, there is no escape
In what ways, then, was Soviet-style communism a deviation from these
beliefs, as modern western commentators like to argue? Chiefly, it is said
that Russia jumped the gun (forgive the expression). According to Marx's
laws of motion, society is supposed to progress from feudalism to capitalism
at just that point when feudalism fetters the forces of production, rather
than serving them, as it has up to that moment. Later, capitalism gives way
in turn to socialism, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and in much the
same way-once its productive potential has been fully achieved, so that
henceforth its continued existence is an obstacle to material sufficiency
rather than a means to it. But Russia went straight from feudalism to
socialism. This was too quick. Marx could have told Lenin that it would
never work.
Is this really what he would have said? There is no doubt that Lenin saw
himself as a true follower of Marx-and he had every reason to. By the end of
the 19th century, socialist thought was dividing. Marx's laws of motion were
failing. Capitalism still flourished: no sign of the falling rate of profit
that would signal its end. The working class was getting the vote. The
welfare state was taking shape. Factory conditions were improving and wages
were rising well above the floor of subsistence. All this was contrary to
Marx's laws.
In response, the left was splitting. On one side were reformers and social
democrats who saw that capitalism could be given a human face. On the other
were those who believed that Marx's system could be developed and restated,
always true to its underlying logic-and, crucially, with its revolutionary
as opposed to evolutionary character brought to the fore.
Marx's incapacity for compromise was pathological
Whose side in this would Marx have been on? Revolution or reform? Would he
have continued to insist that the vampire be destroyed? Or would he have
turned reformer, asking it nicely to suck a bit less blood? The latter seems
unlikely. Marx was a scholar, but he was also a fanatic and a revolutionary.
His incapacity for compromise (with comrades, let alone opponents) was
pathological. And in the preface to the 1882 Russian edition of the
"Manifesto", his last published writing, Marx hoped that a revolution in
Russia might become "the signal for a proletarian revolution in the West, so
that both complement each other"; if so, Russia, despite its pre-capitalist
characteristics, "may serve as the starting-point for a communist
development." Lenin was surely right to believe that he, not those
soft-headed bourgeois accommodationists, was true to the master's thought.
Apart from the gulag
Even if Soviet communism was true to Marx's ideas, or tried to be, that
would not condemn all of Marx's thinking. He might still have been right
about some things, possibly even the main things.
Aspects of his thought do impress. However, his assorted sayings about the
reach of the global market-a favourite proof that "Marx was prescient"-are
not in fact the best examples. The 19th century was an era of globalisation,
and Marx was only one of very many who noticed. The accelerating global
integration of the past 30 years merely resumes a trend that was vigorously
in place during Marx's lifetime, and which was subsequently interrupted in
1914.
Marx was much more original in envisaging the awesome productive power of
capitalism. He saw that capitalism would spur innovation to a
hitherto-unimagined degree. He was right that giant corporations would come
to dominate the world's industries (though not quite in the way he meant).
He rightly underlined the importance of economic cycles (though his accounts
of their causes and consequences were wrong).
The central paradox that Marx emphasised-namely, that its own colossal
productivity would bring capitalism to its knees, by making socialism
followed by communism both materially possible and logically
necessary-turned out to be false. Still, Marx could fairly lay claim to
having sensed more clearly than others how far capitalism would change the
material conditions of the world. And this in turn reflects something else
that demands at least a grudging respect: the amazing reach and ambition of
his thinking.
On everything that mattered most to Marx himself, he was wrong
But the fact remains that on everything that mattered most to Marx himself,
he was wrong. The real power he claimed for his system was predictive, and
his main predictions are hopeless failures. Concerning the outlook for
capitalism, one can always argue that he was wrong only in his timing: in
the end, when capitalism has run its course, he will be proved right. Put in
such a form, this argument, like many other apologies for Marx, has the
advantage of being impossible to falsify. But that does not make it
plausible. The trouble is, it leaves out class. This is a wise omission,
because class is an idea which has become blurred to the point of
meaninglessness. Class antagonism, though, is indispensable to the Marxist
world-view. Without it, even if capitalism succumbs to stagnation or
decline, the mechanism for its overthrow is missing.
Class war is the sine qua non of Marx. But the class war, if it ever
existed, is over. In western democracies today, who chooses who rules, and
for how long? Who tells governments how companies will be regulated? Who in
the end owns the companies? Workers for hire-the proletariat. And this is
because of, not despite, the things Marx most deplored: private property,
liberal political rights and the market. Where it mattered most, Marx could
not have been more wrong.
Right in principle
Yet Marxist thinking retains great influence far beyond the dwindling number
who proclaim themselves to be Marxists. The labour theory of value and the
rest of Marx's economic apparatus may be so much intellectual scrap, but
many of his assumptions, analytical traits and habits of thought are
widespread in western academia and beyond.
The core idea that economic structure determines everything has been
especially pernicious. According to this view, the right to private
property, for instance, exists only because it serves bourgeois relations of
production. The same can be said for every other right or civil liberty one
finds in society. The idea that such rights have a deeper moral underpinning
is an illusion. Morality itself is an illusion, just another weapon of the
ruling class. (As Gyorgy Lukacs put it, "Communist ethics makes it the
highest duty to act wickedly...This is the greatest sacrifice revolution
asks from us.") Human agency is null: we are mere dupes of "the system",
until we repudiate it outright.
What goes for ethics also goes for history, literature, the rest of the
humanities and the social sciences. The "late Marxist" sees them all, as
traditionally understood, not as subjects for disinterested intellectual
inquiry but as forms of social control. Never ask what a painter,
playwright, architect or philosopher thought he was doing. You know before
you even glance at his work what he was really doing: shoring up the ruling
class. This mindset has made deep inroads-most notoriously in literary
studies, but not just there-in university departments and on campuses across
Western Europe and especially in the United States. The result is a
withering away not of the state but of opportunities for intelligent
conversation and of confidence that young people might receive a decent
liberal education.
Marxist thinking is also deeply Utopian-another influential trait. The
"Communist Manifesto", despite the title, was not a programme for
government: it was a programme for gaining power, or rather for watching
knowledgeably as power fell into one's hands. That is, it was a commentary
on the defects and dynamics of capitalism. Nowhere in the "Manifesto", or
anywhere else in his writings, did Marx take the trouble to describe how the
communism he predicted and advocated would actually work.
Marx's theory of cattle
He did once say this much: "In communist society, where nobody has one
exclusive sphere of activity...society regulates the general production and
thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to
hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening,
criticise after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming
hunter, herdsman or critic." Whether cattle would be content to be reared
only in the evening, or just as people had in mind, is one of many questions
one would wish to see treated at greater length. But this cartoon is almost
all Marx ever said about communism in practice. The rest has to be deduced,
as an absence of things he deplored about capitalism: inequality,
exploitation, alienation, private property and so forth.
It is striking that today's militant critics of globalisation, whether
declared Marxists or otherwise, proceed in much the same way. They present
no worked-out alternative to the present economic order. Instead, they
invoke a Utopia free of environmental stress, social injustice and branded
sportswear, harking back to a pre-industrial golden age that did not
actually exist. Never is this alternative future given clear shape or
offered up for examination.
Anti-globalists have inherited plenty from Marx
And anti-globalists have inherited more from Marx besides this. Note the
self-righteous anger, the violent rhetoric, the willing resort to actual
violence (in response to the "violence" of the other side), the demonisation
of big business, the division of the world into exploiters and victims, the
contempt for piecemeal reform, the zeal for activism, the impatience with
democracy, the disdain for liberal "rights" and "freedoms", the suspicion of
compromise, the presumption of hypocrisy (or childish naivety) in arguments
that defend the market order.
Anti-globalism has been aptly described as a secular religion. So is
Marxism: a creed complete with prophet, sacred texts and the promise of a
heaven shrouded in mystery. Marx was not a scientist, as he claimed. He
founded a faith. The economic and political systems he inspired are dead or
dying. But his religion is a broad church, and lives on.
Copyright © 2002 The Economist Newspaper and The Economist Group. All rights
reserved.