>The last issue of the Brecht Forum's "Schedule of Events" has an article
>by Doug Henwood titled "Marx Lives (They Thought He Was a Goner)." It's
>a pretty good piece. Perhaps Doug might post it on his list.
They Thought He Was a Goner by Doug Henwood
by Doug Henwood Suddenly, Marx is all over. Well maybe not so suddenly. Among high-end intellectuals he made a dramatic reappearance with the publication of Jacques Derrida's book Specters of Marx, which appeared in French in 1993, and in English a year later. Derrida's book is interesting not so much for what it says, which isn't much (and I don't mean that at all in the spirit of postmodernist-bashing, the favorite indoor sport of many Marxists), but for several other reasons. First is for the image of Marx as a "specter" that Derrida uses throughout the book: despite all the attempts of the bourgeoisie to bury his influence in the 117 years since his death, he just keeps coming back to haunt them. And second, as a friend of mine said when news of Derrida's new interest was circulating among intellectuals' gossip networks, the man certainly knows how to sniff out a trend, so if he was turning "back to Marx," then others were certain to follow. That's certainly turned out to be the case.
The next milestone in the Marx revival was an October 1997 article in The New Yorker by the magazine's economics correspondent, John Cassidy. Though no revolutionary socialist, Cassidy is a sharp reporter (who trained in London under the arch-reactionary Rupert Murdoch), and his argument basically was that, whatever the political fate of "Marxism," no thinker can rival Marx in understanding capitalism, and it would behoove the magazine's comfortable subscribers to discomfit themselves by reading a bit of the Old Man. As with Derrida's book, Cassidy's article was less interesting for what it said than for what it signified: the specter was breaking out of intellectual circles and into popular culture, escorted by one of the best trend-sniffers in the consciousness industry, Tina Brown, who was then editor of The New Yorker. The next year, 1998, brought the Brecht Forum' s " Manifestivity," a celebration of the 150th Anniversary of the Communist Manifesto that packed Cooper Union' s Great Hall and garnered a feature story inThe New York Times. Verso's publication of what Alexander Cockburn scornfully referred to as a latte-table edition of The Communist Manifesto, an object beautiful enough to appeal to commodity fetishists everywhere, sold like hotcakes and resulted in hundreds of news stories about a text most journalists and scholars would have consigned to the dustbin only a few years earlier. And then late last year, Kurt Andersen, founding editor of the 1980s satirical magazine Spy and guiding light behind a mysterious new web venture called Powerfulmedia.com, had a piece on the op-page of the New York Times in December arguing not so much for a Marx revival, but for an acknowledgment of Marx's prescient analysis of capitalism, and that the 21st century will have its Marx: a non-Luddite avatar of global revolution.
Hadn't Communism died for its last time in 1989? Evidently not; there's life in the specter yet. Obviously all the pop culture references to Marx won't do much if they're not tied to or symptomatic of some real political agitation. As any reader of The Baffler magazine knows, modern capitalism is capable of appropriating any image, even that of revolution itself, to sell both specific products and the consumer lifestyle in general. Every dot.com company positions itself as overturning hierarchies and every web broker claims to be empowering the masses. Marx(ism) is a bit less adaptable to a commercial agenda than, say, the Beatles' song "Revolution," but there are a couple of exceptions. Swatch once made a Che watch, and a model in the fashion magazine Marie Claire was once seen holding a copy of Che's Motorcycle Diaries. But neither Marx nor Marxism have the celebrity sex appeal of Che Guevara.
So is there anything to these signs of a Marx revival beyond intellectual or pop culture faddishness? Yes, I think there is. In the first place, I don't think popular audiences were ever as hostile to the substance of Marxism as many of us feared. They were well-trained to recoil from the name and some of the codewords, but working class audiences have all along been receptive to the fundamentals of class politics. They know that the rich get rich through the uncompensated labor of the many, even if intellectuals can't always figure this out. Of course, getting people to believe that they can band together and do something about this state of affairs is a bit harder sell.
But now even the name and the codewords are losing some of their poisonous sting. I've been at meetings where young radicals-a demographic group that seems a lot larger today than it did five or ten years ago, though I have no formal proof of this-quote Marx approvingly and by name. That would never have happened in 1990 or 1995.
There's also a broader skepticism about, even hostility towards, capitalism floating around today than five or ten years ago-surprising, given the economic boom we're allegedly experiencing. The most stunning display of this was the scores of thousands who descended on Seattle late last year to protest the World Trade Organization (WTO). The WTO served as a very convenient focal point for anger at the normally vague, almost unnameable thing called capitalism. The event brought together all sorts of people who, in the past, had had little to say or do with each other-unionists, environmentalists, young anarchists, old activists. It looked and felt like the birth pangs of the 21st century revolutionary movement that Andersen wrote about.
But it's just a newborn. The links among its variants participants are still weak, and its analysis and program are still undeveloped. There's a role for Marxists (and admirers of Marx who don't want to go whole hog and call themselves Marxists) to play in it: to offer what we think is the best analysis of capitalism yet developed-not in the style of missionaries trying to thrust our version of revealed truth on others (an attitude that has discredited Marxism in the past), but with enthusiasm, modesty, and a willingness to listen and talk. We've got some work to do. We still have to figure out how our concerns fit with those of what used to be called the new social movements (now not so new). But a lot of the antagonisms that used to exist between those movements and an older left are dissolving, as it becomes clearer to people on both sides of that unfortunate divide how race and class form each other and how labor and nature are often despoiled together. That too was one of the great aspects of the week in Seattle, as ancient disunities were overcome in practice.
None of this is easy, in theory or in practice. Marxists have to drop their lingering suspicions that greens and feminists are petit bourgeois reactionaries, and members of the NSMs have to get over their suspicions that anyone who talks about political economy is an economic determinist or would-be Gulag commandant. We have to figure out how to speak in a fresh language to a population that's politically demobilized and skeptical of the possibilities of collective action. But it has to be done if we want to make Marx more than a specter.