You’ve done your homework and you’ve achieved a rarified level of insight and understanding. Your bookshelf is full of works by Chomsky, Zinn, Marx, Gramsci, Zizek and the like. You’ve protested, occupied, and possibly even contributed some cash. You see clearly that the root of the problem is the system of capitalism itself — it is beyond reform and must be replaced. The questions engaging you now involve how to go about overthrowing the capitalist system (evolution or revolution), and what to replace it with?
I urge you to take a moment to consider Marx’s proposition of historical materialism in the light of these questions. If you do, I think that you will find at least three distinct insights of great value.
1. There is no need to foment an overthrow of the capitalist system.
Sorry, but it’s a misguided notion anyway. You’ll never defeat the modern surveillance state or its heavily militarized forces. And aren’t you tired of trying to rally the dull and apathetic masses? What a waste of talent and energy. Even Marx, himself, never imagined a proletarian revolution occurring in America. But this should be good news — so much of the heavy lifting will be done for you. The capitalist system is revolutionizing itself. All we need to do is to stand ready with concrete answers when the time comes. The mass disruption of employment caused by the adoption of radical technologies will create a society of “ready ears.” There will be a public demand for new solutions. Will we be ready with a well-formed, articulate response?
Key Quote: At a certain stage of their development, the material productive forces of society come in conflict with the existing relations of production…Then begins an epoch of social revolution.
2. The way forward is clear.
Historical materialism advises that what is to come is already taking shape in the womb of the old society. Thus the answer to the question of what we should replace capitalism with emerges from, and is found in, real-world, concrete situses, as opposed to abstract imaginaries. Any romanticism lost is more than made up for in practicality. The new world is built from bricks and lumber already at hand. It is born bearing all the birthmarks of the old.
Key Quote: [N]ew, higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself. Therefore mankind always sets itself only such tasks as it can solve; since, looking at the matter more closely, it will always be found that the task itself arises only when the material conditions for its solution already exist or are at least in the process of formation.
Of course, this is not to say that progress forward is automatic, or that we can sit back and let the process sort itself out. As “men become conscious of this conflict” they “fight it out.” Various new ideas will be in competition with one another and all in opposition to reactionary forces which will try desperately to preserve the old order. This is specifically where energies should be directed.
3. The essential goal is clarified.
So which of these new competing ideas should triumph? This is for us to work out, but one minimum requirement is set forth in historical materialism. Capitalism is the end of the line for social structures built on class antagonisms. The new social relations must be classless. This is not so simplistic as to imply social or even economic equality. It simply means we should not allow there to be an elite class of übermensch who own all the means of production and guide the economy according to their own best interests, while we, the new lumpenproletariat, subsist like dogs on the crumbs which fall from these master’s tables. Instead, the productive apparatus must be owned, and controlled, universally, and operate in the best interests of all mankind. Marx saw this era as the end of “the prehistory of human society” and the beginning of truly human history. We must not fail to achieve this. This is our time come round at last.
Key Quote: The bourgeois relations of production are the last antagonistic form of the social process of production… the productive forces developing in the womb of bourgeois society create the material conditions for the solution of that antagonism. This [new] social formation, therefore, brings the prehistory of human society to a close.
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