Norman Geras and Marxism

Professor Norman Geras's blog has moved to a smart new Typepad site in pale blue. Its location is here. It is an excellent read, comprising observations on whatever interests him alongside heavyweight but lucid material (sometimes from occasional contributors) on matters of political theory. As my musical preferences do not extend chronologically far beyond the death of Schubert in 1828, I cannot follow all of Norman's enthusiasms, but I have found much else in his writings to sympathise with and learn from.

I spoke recently with a reader of Norman's blog who expressed incredulity that Norman is a Marxist. Well, he certainly is, even though he was predictably denounced by others of less heterodox views when he launched his blog last July with a powerful argument in defence of the overthrow of Saddam Hussein by force. One of the more polite correspondents to a Marxist discussion list affected a 'More In Sorrow Than Anger' tone:

Another victim of whatever got Hitchens. Very sad. I have learned a lot from Geras over the years. Unlike Hitchens, he was a real scholar.

I particularly like the tense in the statement 'he was a real scholar': evidently a type of reasoning that cannot separate the quality of a scholar's work from the character of his political opinions. And bear in mind, as I say, that this was one of the polite comments in such circles. Another contributor to the forum ventured that Norman merited 'a slug of lead between the eyes', while a third triumphantly pointed to half a dozen racist and chauvinist sites (including this one) that Norman had linked to. (Pointlessly, I wrote to the contributor of the third comment asking for an instance of anything I have said that is racist or chauvinist, but he has better things to do than respond.) But oddly enough a fourth contributor was possibly on to something:

So, again, it's sad. Geras will be a greater and more lasting asset to the other side because he is a serious and thoughtful writer, and a greater loss to us. --he's sort of [a] Si[d]ney Hook figure, unlike Hitchen's Whittaker Chambers. It is very regrettable.

The comparison of Christopher Hitchens to Whittaker Chambers, whose testimony ensured the conviction of the Soviet agent Alger Hiss for perjury, is silly (Chambers was an eloquent exponent of Christian convictions) but that of Norman to Sidney Hook is not. Hook was one of the most influential American interpreters of Marx. As a young man he became known first for an important if idiosyncratic attempt at a synthesis of Marxism and pragmatism entitled The Metaphysics of Pragmatism (1927), before expounding his interpretation of Marx at greater length in Towards the Understanding of Karl Marx (1933) and From Hegel to Marx (1936). Politically he became active in The Workers' Party in the 1930s, contending that "the only valid criticism of the Communist Party is that it is not communist enough". But his break with the Communist Party was more than rhetorical. He persuaded his philosophical mentor John Dewey to lend his weight to a Commission of Inquiry into the Moscow Trials, and after the war was an uncompromising advocate of the defence of western democracy against Soviet expansionism. It was from this time that he became reviled on the Left for his supposed embrace of political reaction. Yet he never wavered in his hostility to totalitarianism and its apologists, and lived just long enough to witness the collapse of the Communism in Eastern Europe. The stereotype of his political views was moreover far from the truth, as a recent revival of interest in his philosophical writings has demonstrated. A highly illuminating article by a recent interpreter, Robert Talisse, states:

Sidney Hook is arguably the most controversial figure in the tradition of American philosophy. Coming to prominence in the late 1920s as both the star pupil of John Dewey and an eminent Marx scholar, Hook devoted his early career to political action which placed him firmly among the fellow travelers of the Communist Party. Hook’s political disposition began shifting towards the Right just prior to World War II. Around 1940, Hook adopted a vehement anti-Communism which led him to defend the reactionary political views for which he is now notorious. The coup de grace of Hook’s career for those who would demonize him as the quintessential turncoat came in 1985 when he was awarded the Medal of Freedom by President Reagan. What happened?

Despite seemingly incontrovertible evidence of a shift from radical Marxist to neo-conservative cold warrior, Hook maintains in his autobiography that he is "not aware of having undergone any serious conversions from the days of [his] youth, or of having abandoned [his] basic ideals. . ." (Hook, Out of Step, 1987, 596). This surprising claim so begs for philosophical elucidation that it is a wonder that no philosopher has undertaken an earnest study of Hook’s political thought in the decade since his death. Judging from current scholarly literature, Hook has been entirely forsaken by the philosophical community at large. Here I take the first steps towards a reexamination of Hook’s political philosophy.

Talisse slightly overdoes the paradox, because the memoir he quotes makes clear that Hook's views - Social Democratic in economics, pro-abortion and secular humanist - were far from President Reagan's. But the issue remains, and Talisse does a good job of demonstrating the essential consistency of Hook's political philosophy.

What I find of particular interest in this light, though, is the nature of Hook's Marxism. Norman may not like the comparison, but the parallel seems obvious to me. One of the principal areas of Norman's interpretation of Marx has been in the notion of justice. There is a longstanding dispute among interpreters of Marx about whether Marx believed that exploitation - the essence of capitalism, so he maintained - involved injustice. I won't attempt to summarise this controversy, but Norman's own contribution to it is expounded here. He maintains, with some important qualifications:

In the absence, therefore, of any convincing answer to the question, why Marx should have called exploitation ‘robbery’ if not because he considered it unjust, one must accept the most natural reading of the passages where he so characterizes it, which is that he did consider it unjust.

I have neither the space nor the competence to judge whether Norman's interpretation of Marx is more accurate than that of the principal opponent of the 'exploitation-as-injustice' interpretation, Allen Wood, but I certainly find it a more congenial one as a statement of political principle. It is, moreover, quite similar to Sidney Hook's interpretation of Marx. Hook argued in a paper entitled Marxism: A Synoptic Exposition (collected in Marxism and Beyond, 1983):

The very word Ausbeutung, or 'exploitation', which is central to Marx's economic analysis, is implicitly ethical although Marx seeks to disavow its ethical connotations. Even critics of Marx's economic theories and historicism, like Karl Popper, who reject his contentions recognize the ethical motivation of Marx's thought. Capitalism is condemned not only because it is unstable and generates suffering, but because uncontrolled power over the social instruments of production goves arbitrary power over the lives of those who must live by their use.

I'm not a Marxist, but a militant liberal. I believe that capitalism may be cyclically unstable, but capitalism with the operation of automatic stabilisers (fiscal and monetary policy) and a welfare state (at least of the type that provides benefits in cash rather than in kind, that discourages dependency and that promotes autonomy) is a powerful vehicle of social advance and an essential part of a free society. But there is no more important political question than the defence of the values of an open society against those in every age - secular totalitarians, theocratic terrorists, Baathist tyrants - who subvert and threaten them. An ethically grounded Marxism ought to be a natural part of the coalition that mounts that campaign, and that's why I'm less surprised than others that Norman Geras stands where he does.

A little while ago I answered a questionnaire that Norman sent out to other bloggers, in which one question was to state my principal intellectual influences. I named Sidney Hook as one, for having exemplified in his philosophy and his life a deceptively simple but wise political dictum that has become still more applicable since his death (from an address entitled A Critique of Conservatism, delivered to the National Convention of Social Democrats USA, 1978):

The differences between conservatives and liberals, when the terms are reasonably construed, are family differences among adherents of a free society, defined as one whose institutions ultimately rest on the consent of those affected by their operations. When the security of a free society is threatened by aggressive totalitarianism, these differences must be temporarily subordinated to the common interest in its survival.

Amen to that, and to the Marxist exponents of that principle.

UPDATE: Please see comments section. Chris Brooke, an Oxford Politics don, has pointed out that I have mistakenly conflated two separate discussion lists that dealt with Norman's argument about the Iraq war. He is right, and my apologies to both lists for the error.

Comments

[Chris Brooke]

It might be a good idea to distinguish your "Marxist discussion lists" here, Oliver.

The first quotation you report, and describe as a "more in sorrow than in anger" remark, was posted to Doug Henwood's lbo-talk discussion list. There are several Marxists who do post to this list, but there are also an awful lot of non-Marxists who post there, too, making "Marxist discussion list" a misleading label for the forum.

The two posts you then mention -- the "slug of lead" remark and the post which links to your own blog -- were posted to a completely different online forum, Lou Proyect's marxmail discussion list, which is obviously and aggressively Marxist-Leninist.

The "fourth contributor" to whom you refer and quote at length was, in fact, the original contributor who supplied the "more in sorrow than in anger" remark in the first place, posting once again at lbo-talk.

It seems to me, then, that you've found some interesting political discussion over at lbo-talk and some crude and offensive remarks over at marxmail, and you've written a post conflating these two very different online fora and tarring them and their various participants with the same brush.

Perhaps a correction is in order?

[Oliver Kamm]

Fair comment, and thank you for the correction. I was doing it from memory and had erroneously conflated the two lists in my mind. I don't, however, consider that the discussion on LBO-talk was either interesting or intelligent, but merely non-obscene. Even a stopped clock is right twice a day, and the contributor who likened Norman to Sidney Hook plainly intended it to be a slighting remark, whereas it is in fact a complimentary one. The list is as you say not an exclusively Marxist forum, but you omit mention of its dreary and intellectually otiose quality. I once, some years ago, had an online argument with Henwood (not on that list but on the Post-Keynesian Theory list) in which he giggled a lot because I had denied that equity returns are driven by shifts in demand for equities. The joke, of course, was on him, as is often the case when non-specialists imagine they're dispensing common sense on technical subjects.

[David Duff]

On the whole I am not given to soppiness but I found that last quote from Sidney Hook rather moving.

Reading you and Norman Geras during this tumultuous year left me puzzled. It was obvious to me that we approached politics from opposite directions and that the war had, so to speak, camouflaged some fundamental differences and yet I felt an underlying sympathy or perhaps 'empathy' is better. Hook's wise words above explains all.
David Duff

[hans ze beeman]

Oliver, I'm quite sure you already know this excellent analysis by Lee Harris in Policy Review, "The Intellectual Origins Of America-Bashing". As the Marxian immiserization hypothesis has failed (ironically, it hit so-called "Marxist", i.e. socialist countries), he says, some Marxists are so desperate to see some signs of totalitarianism that they support Islamofascism, with whom they share a common enemy. Quite an interesting read.