Imagining
Other.
Marxism, Religion, and Modern Society.
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A few thoughts, sparked off by an article: “Thank God for time off”, by
Giles Fraser. Jan/Feb 2008.
2,197 words
Giles Fraser, vicar of Putney and lecturer in philosophy at
Fraser’s points arose from a speech by the Archbishop of Canterbury, in
which the Archbishop attacked US foreign policy (this aspect grabbed the
headlines!) but in which he also attacked “modernity” for “eating away at the
soul.”
How then do we counter this “eating away of the soul”? Fraser argues
that this is where religion, art, even holidays come in – provided we indulge
in them for their own sake, not to make us better workers! In particular he
believes that “religion resists the oppressive efficiency of time management because
there is nothing to measure.” Contrary to those who argue that God cannot exist
because He cannot be empirically verified, Fraser says that “a world where
everything is measurable and testable is a world in which competition can find
its way into every nook and cranny of life.”
He acknowledges Marx’s comment that capitalism turns everything into
commodities, and therefore everyone into objects – but he says that Marxism’s
“uncompromising materialism” is part of the problem: it fails to prevent - even
contributes to - the processes that it condemns.
There is a certain amount in this that I would agree with (especially
the criticism of how we are subjected to constant dehumanising pressure to work
and to produce). However I have two major problems concerning: (a) Fraser’s
narrow and incomplete view of Marxism, and (b) his view that the answer to the
problem is religion.
(a) I would want to point out, first, that the same sort of critique of
those Marxists who have a narrow, materialistic, deterministic point of view
has been made by many on the left, and especially by anarchists. Some thinkers
who were originally Marxists, such as Cornelius Castoriadis, gave up Marxism
altogether because they believed that Marx could only be interpreted in this
deterministic (“materialist”) way. See footnote (*) below.
Second, whilst it is true that there are Marxists who are obsessed with
“measurable” phenomena such as the tendency of the rate of profit to decline,
it is important to remember that the “hard” “material” basis of Marx’s theory
was developed as a critique of capitalism. If we take Marxism as a “closed”
theory, and take everything he describes as being permanently in existence,
then of course we cannot escape from the materialism. Yet in his portrayal of “communist”
society Marx seems to say that we will be no longer be controlled by material
forces, and that we will no longer base social arrangements on what is
measurable. Perhaps Marx and Engels’ most well-known phrase describing
communism is: “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his
needs” (from the Communist Manifesto) – this surely must mean that in communism
we will have give up trying to measure the value of one’s labour or one’s
production (since there will be no question of taking from society only the
amount that you have earned)?
A similar point can be made with regard to “defining people by what they
do” – which some (including Fraser, it seems!) attribute to Marx. Marx’s view
that under communism we would do what we want – hunt, fish, etc – without ever
being a hunter or a fisherman, has often been ridiculed. (I return to this
quote more fully below…) Aside from whether this condition could ever be
reached, Marx’s statement surely indicates that it is in capitalism that we are
turned into beings defined by what we do. Taking another portrayal of communism
- in “The German Ideology” - we find Marx trying to understand the origins of
the division of labour and the excessive specialisation (which contributes to
but does not alone explain our becoming what we do) that comes from the way the
division of labour has been developed under capitalism.
He argues that originally (in distant history) the distribution (or
division) of labour arose out of “natural” differences between individuals,
especially in the family (“where wife and children are slaves of the husband”);
this relationship therefore was a manifestation of the first form of property.
In a startling phrase, Marx says that “Division of labour and private property
are identical expressions.” Engels examined this further in his writing on the
origins of private property and the family – and later writers (especially
feminists such as Simone de Beauvoir) have argued that Marx and Engels’
explanation is not thorough enough; it is a short but significant step, and one
that requires further explanation, from saying “this job is mine and that is
yours” to saying “my job is more important than yours, and therefore you are
subordinate to me.” And it is taking yet another step to say “you therefore
belong to me”. I shall comment further
on this shortly.
In his discussion of the relationship between “what we are” and “what we
do” Marx (again, in The German Ideology) identifies the problem as: “man’s own
deed became an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being
controlled by him. For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being,
each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon
him and from which he cannot escape.” Why “forced upon him”? For Marx it is
clear that some people have more power than others, which then enables them to
own and control the work (the “labour power”) of others. To my mind Marx’s
argument is inadequate to explain how this unequal distribution of power came
about - though it is clearly a result of social inequality. The problem is: how
did society come to accept that some had the right to control others’
labour? Personally, I like Simone de
Beauvoir’s existentialist explanation, which is roughly that some activities
(“projects”) enable people to define their existence – to develop and to grow
as human beings; and other activities are routine, boring and unfulfilling. The
extra power that men had acquired came partly from their physical strength, but
more importantly because the biological nature of women meant that they were
restricted in their activities (i.e. to breast-feed children); thus men came to
control property, but also what de Beauvoir calls “projects” - activities that
enabled them to develop and grow - whilst making sure that other less
fulfilling activities were allocated to women. To help explain how a certain
distribution of power came to be so rigidly and deeply instituted, I would add
an explanation that actually arises from Marx’s dictum about class, and class
power over ideas and meanings: “the ruling ideas of any epoch are the ideas of
the ruling class.” It seems to me that it is social arrangements (not facts of
nature) that lead to a society regarding one kind of activity as more valuable
than another, and if one group has control over ideas – as feminists argue men
did, and as Marxists argue property-owners did, – it is easy for them to
enforce their social position through control over ideas.
This de-humanising and enslaving of people - and this alienation - can
(for Marx) only be ended in communist society, with the abolition of the
division of labour: “where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each
can become accomplished in any branch he wishes… [and where it is 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, criticize after dinner, just as I
have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, cowherd, or critic.”
Marx adds that: “this fixation of social activity, this consolidation of
what we ourselves produce into an objective power above us, growing out of our
control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is
one of the chief factors in historical development up till now” [my emphasis].
Again, I take this to mean that we can reach a kind of society where we
are no longer subject to material forces. (Extracts from Karl Marx: Selected
Writings, ed. David McLellan, 1977, p 169).
In short, Marx did not say that “we are what we do” – but that it is
capitalist society that convinces us of this. Not a million miles from Giles
Fraser’s point of view!
(b) How does religion help in all this?
For Fraser, it involves doing things (such as prayer) that don’t seem to
be “for anything at all” – it “resists the oppressive efficiency of time
management because there is nothing to measure.” But as I have argued, it is
capitalism that makes us measure things – and the abolition of wages and
private property would entail ending the necessity for such measurement.
Moreover, there are other activities – the arts especially – that do things for
us that cannot be measured, “nourishing the soul”, if you like. I agree with
Fraser that this kind of activity is essential – but why should I choose
religion to do this for me?
In fact, what exactly does a religious outlook suggest is the
alternative to “I am what I do?” Is it
“I am what I believe”?
Surely if we take “doing” in a broad sense, and not just relating to our
“jobs” there is value in saying that we are what we do? After all, Jesus’
words: “By their fruits ye shall know them” surely mean that a Christian should
work in such a way as to contribute to a more “Christian” world? And the – to
me – central notion of “love” is after all an activity. To say: “I am what I
believe” cannot be enough: we are not isolated individuals, believing whatever
we each believe to be true. The strength of Marxism was that it tried to
formulate the interdependence of the individual and the community – an
interdependence that works on all levels: biology, language, thought and
belief, production… Yes, this is a (kind of )“materialist” approach – but
Marxists who have treated his ideas in a humanist way recognise the value of
culture, the arts etc (E.P. Thompson, Raymond Williams – and earlier William
Morris). After all, we are material as well as spiritual beings; but the
problem with religion, for me, is that it splits off the spiritual, thereby
enabling too many of its followers to ignore altogether (or even to despise)
the material (political, economic etc) reality around them; and for some
Christians (too many by far!) the spirit represents what is “good” in us, and
the body is “bad”... Christianity’s record on the equal treatment of women is
surely connected to this despising of the flesh!
Finally, a few quick points:
I am pleased that the Archbishop and presumably Giles Fraser
nevertheless do care about American foreign policy!
What about the problem that religious ideas can be part of the
controlling set of beliefs, used by whoever has power to strengthen their
position? Granted, Marxism has served the same nefarious purpose – and I
personally would not call myself a Marxist for this very reason. Yet I do
believe that there were valuable insights in Marx, and I believe that the ideal
society he was working for, without the evils of individual alienation,
inequality, class distinction, the exploitation of man by man (or woman!), the
nation-state and war, is worth pursuing. Though I would have to add
“sustainability” and care for the natural environment, of course…
I do not find the label “modernism” helpful: the characteristics that
the Archbishop criticised are not exclusive to the modern period – rather, as I
have argued, they can be seen as endemic to capitalism; the need to time a
labourer’s work came in with the abandonment of agricultural for
industrial/factory work. Of course, religious thinkers prefer not to use such a
politically-loaded word!
It follows from some of what I have written above that we do not need
religious explanations to show the limitations of some aspects of Marx’s
thought: to me existentialism is helpful, as is feminism. I am certainly not
suggesting that those on the left, let alone Marxists, have the only good ideas
about individual fulfilment. I also very much like Satish Kumar’s saying “You
are, therefore I am.” But that’s another story!
*********
(*) Note: I owe a debt to the late Cornelius Castoriadis for “sparking off” some
of the above ideas – see:
- my essay on Castoriadis: Recommencing
Revolution
- and the informative website: www.agorainternational.org