One Thing I Would Really Like To See Socialists Abandon Is The Line On Capitalism (the System Of Social

One thing I would really like to see socialists abandon is the line on capitalism (the system of social production) | the bourgeoisie (the class) | liberalism (the ideological structure) being a “progressive” force, in a positive sense of that term. I recall a pretty irritating conversation with a right-libertarian who asked me “how can capitalism be exploitation, according to Marx, when it’s raised living standards around the globe?” 

Now, I think there’s a lot of ways to respond to that:

1) calling the claim itself into doubt statistically [most of the recent trend in poverty downturn is just China urbanizing; many other places are stagnating if not getting worse]. 2) calling the claim into doubt historically [does the boost in living standards for China and the Soviet Union, from urbanization and industrialization, mean that “actually existing socialism” is immune to critique? I would hope not.] 3) noting that exploitation as Marx used it was primarily a technical and non-moral term [his fundamental ethical worry, as I have argued elsewhere, was domination]. 4) digging into the weeds of the theory of exploitation to show that an increased standard of living and increased exploitation (as Marx understood that term) are not mutually exclusive, on his exact terms.

But the most common one is to concede that yes, capitalist mechanisms have massively expanded the powers of the human body. This is, after all, part of Marx’s interest in capitalism in the first place, its “revolutionizing” powers and ability to break down barriers to expansion or absorb preexisting practices and patterns into its mechanisms. So there’s this sense in which ground is ceded to the liberal view of history as progress, in which capitalism is superior by some metric(s) when compared to other modes of production. Communists are therefore in the position of having to assert that in spite of this, capitalism should still be abolished.

But I think that’s not actually ground that it’s necessary to concede, at least not in any meaningful sense.

I think there are a few good reasons for giving up this claim. One is that it’s in many ways not true, and we should throw out the Whig historiography and stagist theorizing that has seeped into socialist thought and action by way of The German Ideology and other underdeveloped sources. For instance, the bourgeoisie as a class had to be dragged kicking and screaming into revolution by subaltern forces. Although many of the “bourgeois revolutions” unfolded or “resolved” in accordance with bourgeois desires and interests, they were not motivated by them. The bourgeoisie, no matter where they are, are pretty reliably conservative in their general disposition.

Another is that “progress” should not be a communist virtue or metric by which to judge the world; it is rooted in a thoroughly liberal philosophy of history. As Marx says - and didn’t always express adequately - “it is far too easy to be liberal at the expense of the Middle Ages.” I imagine that I would not like to live in a feudal, despotic, or tributary society - this much should be obvious. But the notion that capitalism is therefore superior, more tolerable, because its central form of domination is impersonal (setting aside, for the moment, all the forms of unfreedom and interpersonal domination that capitalism relies upon, which fall particularly hard upon certain demographics and geographical areas), doesn’t follow from that. There’s nothing noble about the fact that capitalists seized upon destruction and dispossession unleashed by the feudal state. Primitive accumulation - whether viewed as a historical juncture or an ongoing process vital to capitalism to this day - is not a redemptive force. Yes, capitalism managed to expand the powers of the body - at the expense of many.

For me the question is not “is capitalism better than the social forms it replaced?”, because I don’t think that question is either particularly helpful or terribly interesting. It’s as silly as asking if feudalism is better than a slave society - partly because it presumes this linear, stagist narrative of history that is false, and partly because it asks us to pick between horrors. Rather, the question is, “was all the suffering worth it?” And for me the answer is no. 

Could we have gotten something better? Can we still?