Marx, Karl and Frederick Engels. (1948). The Communist Manifesto. New York: International Publishers.
Marx, Karl. (1867). Selections from Capital, vol. 1. New York: International Publishers. (pp. 294-329, 336-343, 384-403, 419-438)
Gruneau, Richard. (1988). Modernization or Hegemony. Two Views on Sport and Social Development. In J. Harvey and H. Cantelon (Eds.), Not Just a Game: Essays in Canadian Sport Sociology. Ottawa: University of Ottawa Press.
This week’s readings on Marxism are thick and I will try to summarize them as clearly and succinctly as possible. In doing so, I will have to brush over some key concepts at times in order to satisfy the length requirements of the blog format. I will start with the oldest publication first, The Communist Manifesto. I love going back to this little book every once in awhile because of the tremendous impact it has had on the world since it was written. Has there been a more influential book published since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? I can’t think of one. Published in 1848, The Communist Manifesto was commissioned by the “Communist League,” because, as Marx and Engels state in the little introduction, it was about time that Communists published their views. The manifesto lays out a very basic view of the capitalist mode of production, the oppression inherent in the system, and how the proletariat will rise up against the bourgeoisie.
Marx and Engels begin by stating that “the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles,” and under capitalism the two “great hostile camps” facing each other in the current struggle are the Bourgeoisie and Proletariat. Focussing first on the bourgeoisie, the authors show how the capitalist class destroyed remnants of the feudal system by instituting their own system of production. However, in doing so the bourgeoisie-controlled system of capitalism that is based on the exploitation of labour “forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons – the modern working class – the proletarians.” Next, Marx and Engels discuss the nature of a post-capitalist world based on the abolition of private property among other things.
Reading the Communist Manifesto this time around I found myself thinking about the spatial relation between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. Historical materialism dictates that in order to survive from generation to generation people must reproduce the material requirements for life. To do this they must enter into an existing system of social relations, the relations of production, and within the capitalist relations of production the bourgeoisie exploits the labour power of the proletariat. When talking about social relations, it seems to me like Marx and Engels imagined the bourgeoisie and proletariat in the same space, next door to one another, looking at each within the same national state. However, today’s working classes, the people who manufacture our material goods, are almost entirely in other nations. How can the Chinese working class revolt against American capitalists? Has capitalism changed so much that Marx’s basic theories do not apply anymore? I don’t think we should hold Marx accountable for not accurately predicting the future. But it seems that Marxism is based on such scientific observations of capitalism, so can we use the nature of capitalism today as evidence that he didn’t exactly understand it?
In Capital, Volume One, Marx goes several levels of analysis further into understanding the actual inner workings of the system of capitalism and I will definitely not do his work any justice by summarizing it here. Capital, Volume One is not a political pamphlet like the Communist Manifesto; it’s an in-depth examination into the nature of capitalism, how it functions, and the laws that govern it. I have to admit, it is complicated stuff. He begins with the analysis of a commodity and its two factors: use-value and value (substance of value and magnitude of value). I think the most important thing to understand here is that something becomes a commodity when it is useful and any amount of useful labour has gone into it. There is a correlation between labour and value here and I think it’s that two different commodities have the same value if they have the same labour put into their construction. Every commodity is valued against all other commodities and one particular commodity, gold in our case, has taken the form of the money commodity.
I think section 4 on the fetishism of commodities is very important in understanding the contradictions inherent in capitalism. Under capitalism a commodity’s value is removed from the labour that goes into it, and is valued based on a value given to it in the past. Next, we read up on labour power and the selling of labour power, but also co-operation and how co-operation between workers actually works in favour of the capitalist. Next, he introduces us to accumulation, a very important concept that I’m becoming more familiarized with in my other class and my David Harvey readings. Does Marxist theory make sense when examining the production of non-material products like just about everything on the internet or watching professional sports? For me there’s a big leap that needs to be made between talking about producing a coat, or some linen, and producing a song or a movie.
Gruneau believes that a good analysis of the social development of sport in western societies should go beyond investigating the impact of industrialization and urbanization in order to be more broadly theorized. Taken for granted theories of industrial society have influenced sociological and historical writing on the social development of sport and, according to Gruneau, should be critically examined. And he does just that. According to the general theory of industrial society, an older pre-industrial, agrarian society based on collective ideas of community gave way to a more modern society that championed new individualist philosophies and the free market, and freed up leisure time. This theory of the change from one type of society to the other has gave many sport scholars a way of viewing the social development of western sport as a change from pre-industrial to modern forms of sport. Accordingly, sport is seen as being institutionalized and rationalized in the modern period. But Gruneau warns us that this theory is only an analytic model that “tends to be taken at face value as an essentially ’known’ set of conditions.” This thinking also makes us believe that our modern form of sport is “complete.”
Gruneau switches over to a discussion on Marxism, stating that while a great contribution of the Marxist tradition of writing on sport lies in its emphasis on power and ideology in cultural analysis, Marxist writing on sport has been one-dimensional and limiting. He states that “Marxist writing on sport employs one-sided and overly deterministic understandings of power and cultural practice.” After reading Marx’s work, can we begin to see what Gruneau means when he says that Marxism is deterministic? I really agree with Gruneau, which completely throws my own personal thoughts about Marxism out the window. He illustrates quite effectively those one-dimensional theories that over-determine our experiences are flawed. I think for class on Tuesday morning we should discuss the usefulness of Marxist theories of history and development in general. Do structural theories have a place anymore or have we moved beyond them?
7 comments:
I feel like I still haven’t absorbed a lot of this week’s readings. I found Capital to be incredibly dense and overwhelming, having had no previous experience with it. The Communist Manifesto was a lot more accessible for me and I hadn’t expected to go from that to such an incredibly in-depth piece in his next writing.
I may be interpreting this wrong, but I found the leap a little easier to make between the non-material and material products. I think Marx would agree that we’re still just talking about commodities that require labour and have a value and a market and that change as society changes. I think the non-material products could almost been thought of as the new-material or the post-material. Does that idea make sense to anyone else, or have I completely interpreted this in the wrong way?
I really liked Gruneau’s examination of the idea, which Marty mentioned, that our ‘modern’ form of sport is ‘complete’. My thought about post-materialism really related, for me, to this idea of nothing ever being complete. Labelling something as ‘modern’ seems to fix it to a very specific time period, and to lock it into a fixed identity that has no potential to evolve.
We have these ‘superstars’ in sports – elite athletes who get paid tens (or hundreds?!) of millions of dollars to endorse products like Nike/ Coke/ Sony/ Ford/ etc and who often make more money per endorsement than the entire factory of workers would make in their careers producing the product. But then without the athlete endorsing the product people might argue that the factory of workers wouldn’t even exist as the product might not be selling. It seems like there’s this incredibly complicated relationship between consumerism and labour exploitation and capitalism – and I think that’s something Marx couldn’t have forseen. I mean it would have been incomprehensible to imagine the massive impacts that capitalism has had on ‘modern’ society, and the implications of these impacts for us here in North America, as well as the labourers who are often in other countries.
I don’t know. I don’t really feel that I understand the depth of Capital enough to perform any sort of critical analysis… but it raised a lot of questions that I hope we will be able to examine as we move through this semester.
I was going to exercise my right as a student auditing the class and refrain from posting this week; I really only want to comment on Marty’s thoughts about the place and value of structural based theories like that of Marx. Social structures naturally change with time and context. I keep thinking about how Marx’s work could explain the old ‘pet rock’. Also we now have virtually functioning economies that are independent of material value like ‘second life’ or ‘world of war craft’. As Marty pointed out, the relationship between labourer and consumer is much more blurred. Full of middle men, these transactions are less direct than in Marx’s day. So I am asking the same question, with the evolution of capitalism is Marx’s theory of capitalism still useful? They must be, because we are still talking him!
I found an answer to my question while reading Richard Gruneau’s summary of how Marxism is applied to the study of sport. I found the connections between sport, capitalism, class domination and culture to illuminate how principles of Marxism can be extended beyond a straight economic analysis.
I found myself rethinking these reading in the context of Ingham’s article from last week, because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about the distinctions play, game and sport. Something in my brain snapped last night while reading Gruneau’s discussion of leisure time. Ingham’s article brought up the issue of the commoditization of sport and the use of sport to shape/create men who were better suited for labour/war or whatever the state may need them for. The idea that sport structures our leisure time.
I know that this is a pretty weak tie in to Capital but when he brought Mr Moneybags I kept having Monopoly in my head. Now it is no way an epiphany to me that Monopoly (much like The Game of Life) is used to indoctrinate children into capitalism, however, I think this is the first time that I really fleshed out the way that we literally ‘buy into’ consumerism in order to find things that occupy our leisure time. At the same time we are further indoctrinated in the system by the values behind those purchases represent, so as part of a capitalist structure have come to pay for happiness that manifests in leisure time through replicating the values of working, which in theory our leisure time is supposed to be getting us away from. I think this all goes back to Karima’s point.
If we just hang on to the distinction between Monopoly and The Game of Life, I wanted to return to Marty’s question about whether or not it is all-reducible to money. I think it was hard for me to swallow Marx’s statement in the Manifesto universalizing the turmoil of the working class, however, it was also very clear that the end goal being sought had many feminist values at heart, such as the emancipation of children from their parents. Though I was off put by a part of Capital on page 396 where he discusses the way ancient Indian communities utilized “the law of Nature” and “the simplicity of supplies” to be Orientalist. I am by no means saying that nothing Marx’s says is of value because of this passage, simply just that there is more going on that just economy.
Lastly I wanted to juxtapose The Game of Life and Monopoly in the context of Marty’s comments from last week. You win Monopoly by having the most money at the end, this is mastered by purchasing as much private property as possible. On the other hand, The Game of Life has other value systems laid into the objectives of the game, you must pass the heterosexual test: marry and make babies (do parents playing with game with their children get a perverse sense of validation from it?). The win is tied not just to how much money you have accumulated but who does it the fastest, and how that wealth has manifested, who gets the bigger house, produced the most offspring, etc.
This leaves me with two directed questions but anyone can tackle them:
Marty 1) – Is it still all about money? I think both these examples can be used to say yes and that it is even more perverse that we spend money to use them *shudders*
Andrew 2) – Is everything, not just the Olympics, all about winning? Harder, faster, stronger (if I remember the catch phrase correctly)?
Marty raises an interesting point. Does Marxist theory still make sense when examining immaterial goods in the same way it did with the production of cold, hard, physical things? I think it does. I am by no means a Marxist; as far as theories go, it’s a good one, but its just another lens to me. In this case the production of post-materialist goods could still be looked at through the same lens that material goods were viewed under capitalism.
Lets think about a song or a movie through a Marxist/capitalist lens. A song is written by a proletarian, but the song has no use-value until it is able to get the creator some capital by having it produced and distributed. Today this means getting an agent to book you shows, or getting a record label to sign you. Yet even when this happens, the song writer or movie writer is still the proletariat to the bourgeoisie producers who control the production and distribution channels.
The amount of money or profit that someone like Harvey Weinstein is going to make by producing a movie is going to be far greater than the creator/writer of the movie is ever going to make in the same sense that the owner of the factory and the machinery is going to make far more money from the labour of the workers producing the good. I agree with Nat that we can just think of this as a “new-material” kind of good through the same Marxist framework, but I’m not sure it can be a post-material good. Is it just me or would post-material not imply more of an idea or movement rather than a kind of good? Something that you can’t buy or sell; like a social attitude?
I like this idea presented by Gruneau about contemporary sport being tied to modernity and capitalism. This would explain a lot of the individualistic, winning driven attitudes in sport that might not always have been this way. As much as I love those attitudes, I think it is an interesting parallel to think about in a Marxist sense in that Capitalism thinks it is complete, an end system whose only future is to fine tune itself. Yet if sport is tied to modernity and capitalism in this way, what comes beyond it if Marxism is correct in its post-capitalistic, communist utopia? What would a post-modern sport look like?
I'm going to throw in another quick comment. I really liked Kat's Game of Life vs. Monopoly comparison. You're right, in the Game of Life there are other ways to value your "life" at the end of the game that are largely based on heterosexual norms. I never thought of that before.
I would also like to note that after reading Marx again, and doing a little thinking, my head is a lot clearer on Marxism and structural theories of identity construction and whatnot. At the start of last week's class I said that I'm starting to think that everything is reducible to material and property....that studying history has made me think that patriarchy and racism and all these terrible things exist only because they are a way for those in power (typically white, heterosexual, and male) to hold on to their property and access to wealth.
But after reading Marx I started to understand that he is simply critiquing the current system of production. Patriarchy, sexism, racism existed before capitalism (although very different at different times and in different places) and they will most likely all exist in some form after (hopefully not). But anyways, I'll probably think twice before claiming that I'm a "Marxist." Marx's critique of the capitalist system of production is so valuable, but I'm starting to realize that there are so many other "lenses" that we need to look through in order to see all the ways our world functions.
Thanks again to Marty for summarizing and responding to such a huge amount of material, and to everyone else for elaborating upon his opening comments in provocative ways.
I have identified the following themes in the exchange; feel free to add to my list:
1) An attempt to theorize the spatial dimensions of capitalism particularly in the context of what gets called, variously, "globalization," "late capitalism," or "neoliberalism." In contrast to Marty, I was quite struck by Marx and Engels' description, on p. 12-13 of the way that a "constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe" (p. 12). This section seems very prescient. Or is it? In other words, to what extent are the contemporary spatial configurations of neoliberal capitalism similar to, or different from, the spatial configurations of nineteenth century, colonial era, capitalism? In order to answer this question, we will need to understand why the need to expand, to create greater surplus value, is inherent within capitalism and how the particular strategies used to create surplus value vary over time and across space. Another entry point might be to ask: what is neo about neoliberalism? We’ve been trying to get to that question for the last few weeks, so let’s make it a priority on Tuesday.
To consider the specific example Marty raised—the Chinese worker and the American capitalist—we can also start by looking to Marx. He was in fact very concerned with the international character of capitalism and thus of the need for international resistance to it. His work with the International Workingmen’s Association, also known as the First International, is an example of that. There’s even a way to think about the place of sport in all of this. The worker sport movement emerged in the late nineteenth century, but was at a peak in the 1930s, 1940s, and 1950s. The movement had a complex genealogy and sought to accomplish a range of different and often contradictory ends based on a range of different and often contradictory philosophies of sport (worker access to public spaces and recreational activities; a pure, unmechanistic, nonrationalized relationship to the body; a mechanistic, rationalized relationship to the body that would assist in the class struggle; abandonment of competition vs. the embrace of competition etc.). In addition to contemplating models of international worker organization and resistance, thinking about the worker sport movement might help us understand the relationship between competition and capitalism and whether these phenomenon enjoy an essential relationship or not. Andrew’s question about post-modern sport could be expanded to a discussion of post-capitalist sport: what would be the difference between postmodern and postcapitalist sport?
2) The relationship between capitalism, industrialization, and leisure time. One dominant strain of leisure theory argues that the very notion of leisure time is a product of, and dependent on, the capitalist mode of production. Let’s try and break down this claim in class.
3) I was struck by Kat’s claims about the indoctrinating function of Monopoly. I had not heard of the Game of Life and had to look it up (guess where?). One of those moments where I was made aware of the limited reach of globalized, culture-cannibalizaing, consumer capitalism! In any case, I know of lefty professors who use Monopoly to teach how capitalism depends on exploitation and inevitably promotes social inequalities; some conventional economists apparently agree. I suggest we listen to one of them talk, on NPR, about why he Monopoly is actually bad preparation for the business world.
4) Marty’s, Nat’s, and Andrew’s questions about the production of material goods versus the production of cultural, intellectual, or service goods is timely and also provides a vehicle for us to “try out” some of Marx’s ideas in the contemporary context. Theories are always written in particular historical contexts as you all acknowledge, so our task is to figure out what we can and can’t use from those theories when exploring contemporary social formations.
Take a look at this timely piece by Barbara Ehrenreich on the Communist Manifesto in the context of the current economic meltdown: http://www.zmag.org/znet/viewArticle/19038
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