Marx’s “Retvrn to Tradition”

A Case for a New Marxist Humanism, and the Archaeofuturism of Communism

Our world is upside down. Besides this, it is messy, ugly, and full of conflict—but the main thing is that it is upside down. The utopian wants to give the world a perfect outline, a pleasant shape—even if it remains upside down. His priorities are mixed up. Above all, he hates friction. He wants a frictionless, streamlined world, an immaculately “harmonious” world. Utopianism is ultimately an extension of the worldview of the monarchist, for whom monarchical rule represents the providential order of God, or the attempt to harmonize with it. The utopian, too, only seeks to harmonize with something, with something which is already available in the current climate—he does not seek to bring about anything fundamentally new, but to make the old seem a little nicer. To the credit of the monarchist, his view is much more realistic than that of the utopian. He knows that man’s attempt to mirror God’s providential designs is a messy business. Only the Kingdom of Heaven is frictionless. The utopian wants a streamlined monarchy without a monarch, a monarchy in which all men obey a king invisibly present. He copies the outline of the medieval-providential order, but does not fill in all the same details. And, how could he fill in those same details? Even if he wanted to, it would be futile. Our material conditions are not the same. The methods of production have effected fundamental changes in our world—revolutionary changes. The industrial-capitalist mode of production is revolutionary. Therefore, Marxism is a revolution on top of a revolution. The utopian is not equal to a real confrontation with the revolution of capitalism. His whole action essentially consists in pretending it never happened, in utilizing pre-capitalist ideas as a band-aid over capitalism. The Marxist plants his feet firmly on this first great revolution. Only from there can he effect the second revolution.

Revolution has two senses. Firstly, it has the sense of a radical and fundamental change, with the suggestion that something truly novel is in the offing. On the other hand, etymologically, it means to “roll back”. It is a a “retvrn to tradition”. Marxism not only bears the first sense, but also the second. Marxism, basing itself on the already accomplished revolution of capitalism, on the radical and novel changes effected by it in our social sphere, seeks to roll itself back to the middle ages—“What? Is such a thing possible? Is this not something absurd?”. If you find yourself asking such questions then you can be assured of your sanity. It does sound like the height of absurdity, but the matter is actually quite simple. In contrast to capitalism, feudal society was not characterized by an alienation of the public and private spheres. Political sovereignty was exercised quite openly by the same lot who exercised economic sovereignty—the feudal lords, who were also the lords of the manors, of the centers of agricultural production. One’s position on the economic hierarchy and one’s position in the political hierarchy were one and the same. Nothing, here, was concealed. Under capitalism a concealment occurs. One sphere is alienated from the other. As worker, politically, I am a citizen. I have some measure of political sovereignty—or, so I am constantly told. Economically, I am under subjection, but this, too, I am told, is “liberty”. “Economic freedom” they call it, and it is our political sphere that guarantees us these precious freedoms. This purely formal account of our social structure is in reality a reversal of its actual structure. The economic sphere is the sphere of the strictest hierarchical rule, the sphere which is least free, and the political is the instrument with which it enforces and regulates its rule. These spheres are treated as if they were separate. Which is to say, they are alienated one from the other.

What Marx was trying to “roll back” our society to was the state of affairs prevailing in the Middle Ages in which there was no alienation of the private from the public spheres. This “rolling back” is not a copying of the details of life present in the middle ages, but the establishing of a similar state of affairs, albeit in a manner consonant with industrial society. To roll our society back to the Middle Ages, when our society is premised on modern modes of production, is to necessarily produce a society very different from that of the Middle Ages.

However, we must recall that Marxism is revolutionary in both senses. To merely “roll back” without effecting certain fundamental changes, is to produce something very different from what Marxism seeks. To merely “roll back” is only to roll back the veil, the veil that conceals the capitalist’s political power. That veil is the government, the bureaucratic state. To merely “roll back”, then, is to inaugurate an unconcealed corporate feudalism. This is already the de facto state of affairs in our society. Nothing fundamentally new is effected in this rolling back. It is, as was said, merely to roll back a veil, to cut out the middle man.

Marxism is always revolutionary in two senses. A revolution in the sense of radical change can be any old revolution, any old radical change. Not all radical things are also Marxist simply by virtue of being radical. A “retvrn”, under our conditions, is only to roll back a veil on that which already prevails. To really “retvrn”, as some romantic spirits desire, that is, to return to a world of lords and ladies, and knights and castles, would also require the abolition of contemporary modes of production. Otherwise, without such an abolition, it can only mean to lay bare that which we already are. Combine both sorts of revolution, and you set a new sort of chemical reaction in motion. Combine the old and the new and you find yourself confronted by the paradox of Marxism—the rolling back of society to something entirely new. Marxism is “archaeofuturistic”. It is the only real “archaeofuturism”, an archaeofuturism not of style but of substance. Marxism raises up a new-old world, and raises it up on a fundamental level, on an organizational level, not merely in its “aesthetics”.

This “new-old world” of Marxism is not perfect. The goal of Marxism is not a perfect world, but a world which is right-side-up. A world which is right-side-up will still be plagued by the whole host of problems that are attendant on being human, but at least it will be a right-side-up world.

In what sense is our world upside-down? In the sense that the class of people on which society most depends, that is, the productive class, the working class, is also the class most under subjection. As a class, the polity is most dependent on them, and yet they have no real polit-ical sovereignty. This is on the level of “material analysis”, and we need this sort of grounded assessment in order not to lose ourselves in base-less speculations, but I think there is also another way in which this situation expresses itself which is relevant to all classes, or, rather, a way which is relevant to “man-as-such”. Under capitalism, man as “homo faber”, as creator, as the fashioner of himself and his world, as an actor, as active participant in nature, is under subjection. Man as homo faber lacks political sovereignty. Political sovereignty is today in the hands of man as a passive and receptive being, of man as accumulator of wealth, as mere receptacle of thoughts and sensations. In this sense, Marxism as the turning of the world right-side-up is a type of humanism. It aims to restore political sovereignty to man, and it can only do this by granting political sovereignty to the working classes who, under capitalism, represent “man-as-such”. That is, they represent man as worker, as producer. The working classes represent, politically, the subjection of homo faber. Man, as a creative being, cannot be free unless the working classes are free. Man cannot be sovereign unless the working classes are sovereign. Marxism, then, is not only a humanism, it is the first real humanism, the first concrete actualization of humanism, no longer humanism as mere idea, but humanism realized politically. This is Marxism’s radical and new “retvrn to tradition”.