Does Germany need a new party of the left?

The German SPD has made an initial agreement in exploratory talks for a new coalition government with Angela Merkel's CDU and the CSU. Such a new coalition would continue the current one, which resulted from the 2013 elections. The 2017 parliamentary elections were in October, but a new government has not yet been formed.

A continuation of the Grand Coalition (GroKo, as it's called for short) has been very controversial within the SPD. A party convention on Sunday approved the concept by a substantial but not overwhelming vote, 56% of the delegates supporting it. Although the convention also demanded further negotiations on the coalition pact. According to the analysis of Max Ferstl und Jasmin Siebert in the Süddeutsche Zeitung (Wie es nach dem Ja der Genossen weitergeht 21.01.2018), negotiating the new agreement will take at least another four weeks. And it has to be approved by an SPD convention again.

The party base has very good reasons to worry about the future of the SPD in a new edition of the GroKo. After the 2013 election, the three parties SPD, the Greens and the Left Party had enough parliamentary seats to form a majority for a red-red-green coalition. Merekel's CDU/CSU had the largest vote, so they got the first shot at trying to form a government. The SPD didn't even make a weak attempt to hold out for red-red-green. They were almost pathetically eager to become a junior partner in another GroKo headed by Merkel.

In 2017, the three parties didn't win enough seats together to even have a possibility of forming a red-red-green government. Merkel tried but failed to reach an agreement for a "Jamaica" coalition (CDU-CSU-Greens-FDP). So even after party leader and Chancellor candidate Martin Schultz initial rejection of any consideration of a new GroKo, he soon came around and reached an agreement which he and his supporters attempt to sell to the party base as including big improvements in the social-democratic direction. But the claim isn't entirely credible to voters. As ORF reports (Klare Haltung von Schulz 21.01.2018)

In den Umfragen rutschen die Sozialdemokraten unterdessen ab. So sieht etwa die überwiegende Mehrheit der Deutschen die SPD als Verliererin der Sondierungsgespräche mit der Union. Eine Umfrage des Meinungsforschungsinstituts YouGov im Auftrag der dpa ergab, dass nur neun Prozent der Auffassung sind, die SPD hätte sich durchgesetzt. 29 Prozent meinen dagegen: die CDU.

[Meanwhile, the Social Democrats have been slumping in the polls. So, for example, the overwhelming majority of the Germans see the SPD as the loser in the exploratory talks with the Union {CDU and CSU}. A poll by the opinion research institute YouGov for the dpa {news agency} showed that only 9% were of the opinion that the SPD had succeeded. 29% thought the opposite: the CDU.]

The low numbers on both sides in that poll are probably a reflection of that fact that the details of the initial agreement are "inside baseball," as American political commentators say. More seriously, the poll also found that in a new election, which would be the most likely result of a new failure to form a coalition over the next month, the SPD would get 3% less than they did in October.

The SPD is experiencing its own version of the crisis of social-democracy in Europe. The center-left was at a high point at the end of the 1990s. But at the same time, the European social-democrats started embracing the neoliberal gospel of reduction of government, deregulation, weaker unions and lower wages, and support for corporate-deregulation treaties staged as "trade" treaties. Once the center-left parties took major economic questions off the table for the neoliberal TINA (There Is No Alternative) position and the 2008 economic crisis hit, followed by the malfunction of the eurozone in the subsequent debt crises, a political crisis followed for social-democratic parties from Greece to Italy to France to Britain to elsewhere and, increasingly so now, in Germany.

Currently, that crisis for the SPD is manifesting itself in the low poll numbers, the deep divisions in the party over a new GroKo, and a new proposal from Left Party leaders Sahra Wagenknecht and Oskar Lafontaine for a Sammlungsbewegung (collective movement) on the left aimed at a new kind of unity movement or party for the left factions of the SPD and the Greens and (most of) the Left Party. ("Links Unten" Der Spiegel 4/2018 20.01.2018)

Albrecht von Lucke makes the case for the SPD agreeing to new GroKo in Die gärige Republik Blätter 1/2018. Essentially, he argues that being in government would give an SPD that was focused on building its image a chance to prove itself as a center-left party again by fighting for left ideas, programs, and positions. It's telling, though, that even in an article advocating for SPD participation in a GroKo, Von Lucke displays some pragmatic doubts about whether the SPD can actually pull that off. For instance, he notes that Martin Schultz has been blaming their participation in the current GroKo for the decline in the SPD's vote since 2013. Which raises the obvious question: what can voters expect different from the SPD in a new one?

He mentions that in the context of what even the Spiegel "Links Unten" piece flags as a critical turning point, the decision of Gerhard Schröder's red-green coalition to adopt his "Agenda 2010" program which included the now-infamous Hartz IV reforms, which have become a synonym for low wages, loss of union protection, and precious employment ("McJobs"). The Spiegel article gives it the obligatory praise for neoliberal dogma, saying that the "economic data" increased and "the number of unemployed sank." But:

... zugleich führten die Reformen zu einer massiven Ausweitung der Leiharbeit und erhöhten die Zahl der prekären Beschäftigungsverhältnisse.
Für Millionen Menschen, die sich einst von der Arbeiterpartei SPD beschützt gefühlt hatten, waren die Sozialdemokraten zu Verrätern geworden.

[... at the same time, the reforms led to a massive spread of temporary work and boosted the number of precarious employment situations. For millions of people who had once felt protected by the workers' party SPD, the Social Democrats had become traitors.]

This has been a widespread pattern for the center-left parties in Europe and in the United States, as well. Their traditional base was working class and "middle class," although that term is defining in various ways. When the center-left parties started adapting economic policies fundamentally similar to those of conservatives that resulted in increasing hardship and decreasing security for their traditional base voters. And they got hurt badly.

Nelson Lichtenstein gives an insightful description of how that process played out during the Clinton Administration in the US (A Fabulous Failure: Clinton's 1990s and the Origins of Our Times The American Prospect Winter 2018, currently behind subscription):

Many recall the 1990s as a moment of economic triumph with increasingly low unemployment, 4 percent annual economic growth, a booming stock market, even a balanced federal budget by the end of the millennium. Economists Alan Blinder and Janet Yellen called those years the "Fabulous Decade" in 2001, while a 2015 opinion piece in The New York Times bore the title "The Best Decade Ever? The 1990s, Obviously." Although the Republicans had seized control of Congress in 1994, it is worth remembering that Ronald Reagan's vice president, George H.W. Bush, took only 37 percent of the vote in 1992 while that stalwart Republican, Robert Dole, won just 40 percent in 1996. Politics were clearly in flux. The Clintons therefore had the historical moment to recast not just trade, investment, and health-care policies, but the regulations, norms, and expectations that would govern a post-Cold War version of U.S. capitalism.

Their failure to take advantage of these fortuitous circumstances doomed any effort to build a more equitable economy or a political order powerful enough to sustain a dominant liberalism, a failure Donald Trump would one day seize. [my emphasis]

The SPD currently faces a dilemma in which their previous base voters and many of the current ones was lost confidence in the party's willing to fight for their interests.

So, on the one hand, participating in another GroKo would give the SPD a chance to have direct effect on government policy and give them public prominence in the form of ministerial positions. On the other, in this political moment, the election results and opinion polls seem to indicate that the SPD needs reframe its image. Not only in terms of policy but in showing their willingness to fight. The latter didn't happen very much when the SPD headed the opposition to Merkel's government of 2009-2013. They had served as the junior partner in a Merkel-headed GroKo 2005-2009. During the interim, their leadership was apparently focused on a new opportunity to become Merkel's junior partner in government again. Thus, the lack of any pretense in 2013 that they were even interested in a possible red-red-green government.

Albrecht Müller discusses both the current GroKo dilemma and the idea of a left Sammlungsbewegung in Linke Sammlungsbewegung – eine Schnapsidee oder die richtige Konsequenz aus der erkennbaren Ausweglosigkeit? Nachdenkseiten 15.01.2018. He argues that in the former case, it would be a bad idea. But he thinks the latter is a good idea. Because, in his judgment, all three of the left parties look to have poor political prospects for the near future.

The zombie of Merkel-nomics lurches on

In their 2011 book Modern Political Economics: Making Sense of the Post-2008 World, Yanis Varoufakis et al describe the basic macroeconomics of pulling the economy out of a depression with counter-cyclical stimulus:

When a complex capitalist economy enters a downward spiral like the one described in the previous paragraph, thrift makes things far, far worse. Then, the only glimmer of hope is the state. Uniquely able to step in and pump money into the economy, it is our only chance of ending the 'beggar they neighbour' logic during a recession. This is exactly what the Second World War did ... and how the post-war economic golden age came about. (pp. 211-212)

Even left-leaning economists now speak of the period of 1945-1973 as a Golden Age of capitalism. And in historical perspective, that seems to be justified.

This doesn't mean that there weren't still substantial destructive and self-undermining features of how the economic system was working. But the system in the advanced countries enjoying a substantial amount of stability and was spared severe, protracted crises on the scale and intensity of those of the Great Depression and whatever the historians eventually call the one that began in 2007-8.

The eurozone is the poster child for the disastrous consequences of doing just the opposite of what basic macroeconomics indicates. Bill Black talks about the eurozone's situation in Germany’s Passive-Aggressive “Stimulus” Program New Economic Perspectives 11/08/2014:

Kilkenomics [in Ireland], being a festival of economists and comedians, has long reflected the economic consensus that austerity in response to a Great Recession is economic malpractice akin to bleeding a patient to make him healthy. One of the great changes in Europe in the last month is that the number of economic voices willing to make this same point have grown rapidly. Germany’s “there is no alternative” (TINA) to austerity claims were always absurd, but now many more European voices are willing to point out that there are superb alternatives – in Germany. ...

There a one trillion euro shortfall on German spending on infrastructure even though such spending (1) improves life, (2) saves lives and reduces injuries, (3) increases productivity, and (4) spurs economic recovery from the self-inflicted disaster of the second, gratuitous Great Depression that Germany inflicted on the eurozone by demanding austerity. Germany is actually running a substantial budget surplus even though this is crippling the German economy’s growth and impairing growth throughout the eurozone. The obvious win-win is for Germany to substantially increase spending on its infrastructure. Naturally, invoking TINA, Germany refused.

He explains that criticism from other eurozone members is now strong and persistent enough that Angela Merkel's government has seen the need to produce what Black calls "a faux stimulus program."

As he explains, the €3.3 billion per year "stimulus" program that Merkel is promoting actually represents a continuation of severe austerity economics. "The surprising fact is that Germany felt the need to gin up even an oxymoronic 'stimulus' plan given her constant invocation of TINA," he writes.

Wolfgang Münchau in The wacky economics of Germany’s parallel universe Financial Times 11/16/2014 describes the hold that austerity economics has on the Sehr Ernste Leute (Very Serious People):

German economists roughly fall into two groups: those that have not read Keynes, and those that have not understood Keynes. To describe the economic mainstream in Germany as conservative misses the point. There are some overlaps with the various neoclassical or neoconservative schools in the US and elsewhere. But as compelling as a comparison between the German mainstream and the Tea Party may appear, it does not survive scrutiny. German orthodoxy straddles the centre-left and the centre-right. The only party with some Keynesian leanings are the former communists [the Left Party]. [my emphasis]

This is his summary of the ordoliberalism that Merkel practices, a definition that in my mind understates how stone conservative (in American political terms) the notion is:

The Germans have a name for their unique economic framework: ordoliberalism. Its origins are perfectly legitimate – a response of Germany’s liberal elites to the breakdown of liberal democracy in 1933. It was born out of the observation that unfettered liberal systems are inherently unstable, and require rules and government intervention to sustain themselves. The job of the government was not to correct market failures but to set and enforce rules.

After 1945, ordoliberalism became the dominant economic doctrine of the centre-right. In the 1990s, the Social Democrats started to embrace it, culminating in Gerhard Schröder’s labour and welfare reforms in 2003. Today the government is ordoliberal. The opposition is ordoliberal. The universities teach ordoliberal economics. In the meantime, macroeconomics in Germany and elsewhere are tantamount to parallel universes.

That's a surprisingly generous description, especially since he goes on to note that the ordoliberals have "no obvious explanations" for that little matter known as the Great Depression.

He also gives some sense of what a basically nationalistic policy it is. And, less clearly, how much it comes down to dogmatic insistence on austerity policies no matter what.

But his conclusions is certainly appropriately pessimistic: "It is hard to think of a doctrine that is more ill suited to a monetary union with such diverse legal traditions, political system[s] and economic conditions than this one. And it is equally hard to see Germany ever giving up on this. As a result the economic costs of crisis resolution will be extremely large."

Eurozone depression politics in Germany

"Europe suffers from fatal politics." - Joseph Stiglitz, August 2014

Paul Krugman in Replaying the 30s in Slow Motion 09/15/2014 provided a grim thought last Monday: "One European nation [Hungary] has already reached the point where its leader [Viktor Orban] openly declares his intention to end liberal democracy; thanks to austerity, extremist parties are gaining ground in elections, with Sweden (which squandered its early success) the latest shocker; and of course separatist movements are scaring everyone."

The EU should actually be doing something about that business in Hungary. But they're too busy enforcing Angela Merkel's Herbert Hoover economics on the eurozone. More Krugman: "We’re still nowhere like the 30s politically. But you do start to wonder whether self-congratulation over the political handling of Depression 2.0 will eventually look as foolish as the economic optimism of a few years ago."

A depression can cause political upheavals; gosh, who could have known?

You can't exactly see an upheaval in German politics yet, constrained as it is by the toxic consensus on Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economic policies for the eurozone.

The national Social Democratic Party (SPD) at a recent party convention happily affirmed their support for the neoliberal-nightmare treaty TTIP/TAFTA to undermine democratic regulations on business and, perhaps most catastrophically, to deregulate international banking and capital flows even further. And the national leadership semms especially upset that some of its members and activists don't like it. (Veit Medick, TTIP-Zoff in der SPD: Gabriel haut auf die Pauke Spiegel Online 20.09.2014)

The European Greens (Greens EFA) has created this brief video spot on the TTIP's menace to democracy and well-being, TTIP: A race to the bottom (new version) 07/28/2014:

The Genossen (the traditional German term used for SPD "comrades") have reason to be worried about their own party's present and future. AS Veit Medick explains:

Gabriels Abrechnung ist auch ein Zeichen für die wachsende Unruhe in der SPD. Nach dem bitteren Wahlergebnis in Thüringen hatte es erste Kritik am Parteivorsitzenden und dessen öffentlicher Einmischung in die Belange des Landesverbands gegeben. Zwar ist die Arbeit Gabriels in der Großen Koalition innerparteilich weitgehend unumstritten, immer mehr Sozialdemokraten sind jedoch angesichts der unverändert schlechten Lage in den Umfragen beunruhigt.

[Party Chair and Federal Economics Minister Sigmar "Sigi Pop"] Gabriel's settling of accounts [with TTIP/TAFTA opponents in the SPD] is also a sign of the growing unrest in the SPD. After the bitter election experience in [the state of] Thuringia [where the SPD showed poorly last weekend], there had first been criticism of the Party Chairman and his public intervention in the matters of the state party. Even the Gabriel's work in the Grand Coalition in widely disputed inside the party. However, more and more Social Democrats are disturbed disturbed by the unchanged bad situation [of the SPD] in the polls.]

Let's see, after last year's national parliamentary election, the SPD had enough seats together with the Greens and the Left Party to form the national government. But Sigi Pop and the other SPD leaders fell all over themselves to again become the junior partner to Angela Merkel's CDU in a Grand Coalition government committed to Merkel's Herbert Hoover/Heinrich Brüning economic policies.

Why, why would that affect the electoral support for a center-left party? Why would their labor constituency not embrace the idea that their own incomes should be slammed down, their job security undermined and social services rolled back in the name of a free-market fantasy about national "competitiveness"? Why, I just don't understand it, what could be going wrong for the SPD?

Speaking of Thuringia, it was one of two eastern German states that had Landtag (state legislature) elections last Sunday, September 14, along with Brandenburg.

But just as in last year's national Bundestag election, non-CDU left parties have the possibility to form the governments. In Thuringia, it would take the Left Party, the SPD and the Greens to form a government with a one-seat Landtag majority. If normal conventions were followed, the largest vote-getter among the three parties would head the government, that being the Left in this case. A Grand Coalition headed by the CDU with the SPD as a junior partner would also have a one-vote majority.

Brandenburg could have a government headed by the SPD with the Left Party as junior partner, or an SPD-headed government with the CDU as junior partner.

In German politics, both the Left Party and SPD are considered "red" parties, the CDU "black" and the Greens, well, "green." A Left/SPD/Green coalition would also be called a red-red-green coalition. A coalition of the SPD and the CDU is known as a Grand Coalition.

It will be especially interesting to see how the SPD conducts itself in Thuringia and Brandenburg. That is, how willing they are to form coalition governments with the Left Party. In Thuringia, the SPD is working on both the coalition possibilities. The Left Party gets the first shot at trying to form a government. (Erster Test für Rot-Rot-Grün in Thüringen Thüringer Allgemeine 19.09.2014)

The interference by Sigi Pop in Thuringia involved (Tilman Steffen, Gabriel bringt Landesverband gegen sich auf Die Zeit 15.09.2014)

Another eastern state, Saxony, had a Landtag election two weeks before those in Thuringia and Brandenburg. (Another little piece of Europe shifts right The Economist 09/01/2014) There, the only feasible government coalitions are a Grand Coalition or a black-green coalition. The CDU could also form a majority with the far-right anti-Europe Alternative for Germany (AfD), but they rejected that alternative. A Grand Coalition looks likely there. (Tillich will mit SPD über Koalition verhandeln Die Zeit 19.09.2014) There aren't enough seats for a red-red-green coalition there.

This Deutsche Welle English report, CDU rules out euroskeptic AfD for Saxony partner 01.09.2014, notes of the situation in Saxony, "Although the socialist Left party actually came in second place with 18.9 percent, both the CDU and SPD view the party as too radical to be a viable coalition partner."

Tom Strohschneider, a commentator at the website of the Left Party newspaper Neues Deutschland quotes historian Jürgen Kocka saying, »Wenn die Sozialdemokratie nach einem utopischen Überschuss sucht, dann findet sie ihn in dem großen Ziel, den Kapitalismus zu zivilisieren« ("If Social Democracy is looking for Utopian overshoot, then they will find it in the great goal of civilizing capitalism"). (Ohne Überschuss dated 22.09.2014; accessed 21.09.2014)

Strohschneider frames the left/center-left political situation in Germany this way:

Die Frage nach dem künftigen Kurs der Sozialdemokraten ist aber auch eine nach der Zukunft der Idee, für die sie einst stand: als jener Teil der gesellschaftlichen Linken, die trotz Bemühungen zur Zivilisierung des Kapitalismus durch Reformen nicht den Anspruch hat fallen gelassen, über ihn hinauszugehen.

Schafft die SPD eine Rückbesinnung? Skepsis fällt hier leicht. Häme sollte man sich aber sparen - nicht nur, weil andere linke Parteien vom Stillstand der Sozialdemokraten kaum profitieren. Es ist eine Frage praktizierbarer Alternativen überhaupt. Ohne die SPD wird es auf absehbare Zeit keine Antworten geben. Mit dieser aber auch nicht.

[But the question of the future course of Social Democracy is also one of the future of the idea, for which it once stood: as part of the social Left, which despite efforts to civilize capitalism through reforms, had not given up the demand to go beyond it.

Will the SPD achieve this reversion? Skepticism comes easily here. But one should refrain from mockery - not only because other left parties {the Left Party and the Greens} hardly benefit from the standstill of the Social Democrats. It's above all a question of practical alternatives. Without the SPD, there will be no answer in the foreseeable future. But also not with this one {i.e., not with the SPD in its current state}.

As Wolfgang Münchau noted before last year's elections, the Left Party and the Greens were offering pragmatic Keynesian solutions to the eurozone crisis, although the Greens have voted in the Bundestag to support Merkel's Hoover/Brüning policies.

Without a left coalition, more specifically without a left coalition that includes the Left Party and the SPD, there is no practical alternative to changing Merkel's destructive economic course from within German politics. So in the next few years, the impetus for such a change is far more likely to come from resistance from the "peripheral" countries within the eurozone.

Tags: angela merkel, austerity economics, eu, euro, european union, left party, spd

The continuing return of "Marx"

Sean McElwee in Believe it or not: Karl Marx is making a comeback Salon 06/22/2014 jumps on the bandwagon of using the image of Karl Marx as a symbol of a recognition that neoliberal capitalism isn't the End of History or a democratic utopia.

McElwee's piece also shares the weaknesses of much of the recent popular commentary on the subject. He talks about "the left" without any clear point of reference for the reader of just who that might be. Especially for American readers, it's an awfully vague term. And he toggles back and forth in a short column between Grand Theory and political tactics. For example:

Increasingly, the left is dominated by what the German Marxist Rosa Luxemburg might call Kathedersozialisten – or "professorial socialists." These thinkers, frequently drenched in academese, talk and debate in a way almost entirely designed to alienate anyone who does not already accept their conclusions. The professorial left seems to have innumerable answers for those wondering what Lacanian psychoanalysis has to offer us, but can give us little guidance as to whether the Working Families Party should support Cuomo or run its own candidate. ...

Marx failed to account for the adaptability of capitalism and left little in the way of alternatives. In the end, this void was filled by murderers and fools. Marx, a deeply humanistic thinker, would certainly have abhorred the violence in his name some half a century after his death. But rational people do not blame Christ for the Crusades, nor Muhammad for 9/11 nor Nietzsche for the Holocaust. The taboo of Marx has prevented the left from learning his most important lesson; in the words of Gil Scott-Heron, "the revolution will not be televised." [my emphasis]

Is this hipster Marxism? Hipster commentary on Marxism?

If "the left" is defined to be whatever group out there recognizes the leadership of "professional socialists" (?!), it's a tiny group for sure!

Okay, there's only so much you can say in a few paragraphs, so you have to use some shortcuts to describes the contours of what a symbol like "Karl Marx" can mean.

Here are a few guidelines I use in thinking about the image of Marx functions in political imagery in the US right now.

Karl Marx's political economy presented the classical criticism of capitalism, just as Adam Smith presented the classical advocacy for capitalism.

Both Smith and Marx are relevant to the capitalism of 2014 - as well as David Ricardo, Alfred Marshall, John Maynard Keynes and any number of other important economists, including living contemporaries like Paul Krugman and Joseph Stiglitz. I recently read Smith's An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations (1776) for the first time. Being something of a finance geek, I actually found it interesting to learn something about 18th-century markets in corn and wool. I made a point of first reading his earlier book, The Theory of Moral Sentiments (1759). Because I wanted to understand something about his broader perspective as a moral philosopher and an important figure in what is known as the Scottish Enlightenment.

I was surprised to see that the entry for Adam Smith in the ever-respectable Encyclopædia Britannica Ultimate Reference Suite 2012 is by the late left-leaning economist Robert Heilbroner, who writes:

Smith saw humans as creatures driven by passions and at the same time self-regulated by their ability to reason and — no less important — by their capacity for sympathy. This duality serves both to pit individuals against one another and to provide them with the rational and moral faculties to create institutions by which the internecine struggle can be mitigated and even turned to the common good. He wrote in his Moral Sentiments the famous observation that he was to repeat later in The Wealth of Nations: that self-seeking men are often "led by an invisible hand ... without knowing it, without intending it, [to] advance the interest of the society."

It should be noted that scholars have long debated whether Moral Sentiments complemented or was in conflict with The Wealth of Nations. At one level there is a seeming clash between the theme of social morality contained in the first and the largely amoral explication of the economic system in the second. On the other hand, the first book can also be seen as an explanation of the manner in which individuals are socialized to become the market-oriented and class-bound actors that set the economic system into motion.

Do I really need to say that an 18th-century Scottish writer doesn't offer any immediate insights into tactical considerations for New York State politics in 2014?

Like Smith's laissez faire economics, Marx's economics were part of a larger philosophy which had a major influence in the world.

It's fun for modern economists to pick out quotes from Smith's political economy, which was based on a larger psychology and moral philosophy, to make a point against some aspect of present-day capitalism driven by amoral profit considerations that are sometimes blatantly damaging to the public good.

But Marx had the fortune - whether more good or bad fortune is a matter for debate - of seeing his own doctrine enshrined as dogma by the Communist political movements of the 20th century, which included numerous governing parties. This contributed greatly to a proliferation of Marxisms that was already going on before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution. To name a few: revolutionary Social Democracy, Revisionist Social Democracy, Marxism-Leninism, Stalinism (a variety of Marxism-Leninism), Maoism (aka, Marxism-Leninism-Mao Zedong Thought), Titoism, Trotskyism, Eurocommunism, Castroism, Guevarism.

John Kenneth Galbraith wrote in The Age of Uncertainty (1977):

The massive dissent [against capitalism] originated with Karl Marx. In considerable measure he used the ideas of Ricardo to assail the economic system which Ricardo interpreted and described. I've used the word massive to describe his onslaught. If we agree that the Bible is a work of collective authorship, only Mohammed rivals Marx in the number of professed and devoted followers recruited by a single author. And the competition is not really very close. The followers of Marx now far outnumber the sons of the Prophet.

(I'm not sure the numerical comparison with followers of the Prophet still holds in 2014.)

Not only are there many Marxisms, each of them has their own "Karl Marx."

As the study of any famous philosopher, scientist or historical figure shows, getting to the "real" perspective of the individual is a matter of interpreting the available data. And serious researchers can come up with notably different interpretations of what the person "really" meant by this or that.

When a person becomes a symbol incorporated into official dogma, that problem is magnified. In the case of Karl Marx, by several orders of magnitude. When the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China split in the late 1950s, to take just one example, they carried out an extensive polemic over the history of the socialist movement, both sides taking Karl Marx as something like an authoritative guide on all questions involved. Pick pretty much any party or sect that defined itself as Marxist and was large and long-lasting enough to have splits and factions, and you'll find that they frequently justified their differences with highfalutin Marxist theoretical justifications.

So, when we're talking about Marxism, not only are there many varieties we could be talking about. All of them had some effect on how the life  and thought of the real existing Karl Marx of 1818-1883 was viewed.

Marx himself was a materialist philosopher and Marxist politics took place - and continue to do so - in the material world.

Marx had a philosophy of history that held social development to be driven by class struggle. If we accept the reading of his close collaborator Friedrich Engels in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State (1884) as part of the original Marxist perspective, it also assumed that the dynamic of sex roles played an equally important part.

Marx had a theory of political economy that he described in the three volumes of Capital (the last two edited by Engels and published after Marx' death), and in other shorter works. It describes the development and function of capitalism, including the system's tendency to periodic crises, which we know today as recessions and depressions.

Marx was also a key political leader in the social democratic movement in Europe. Part of that leadership role came in the form of extensive commentary on political issues of the day, in which he looked carefully at the role of particular players and the contingencies of the moment.

Each of those aspects of Marx' thought and heritage need to be evaluated differently. That's why it's a little silly to dismiss the handful of academics consciously working in a Marxist tradition in the Western world that are well-known enough to be considered public intellectuals on the grounds that their most theoretical formulations don't tell you exactly what's best to do in a particular political decision in this year, this state, and this week. Knowing the science of internal combustion engines doesn't tell you how to tune up the engine on a '57 Chevy. Nor does it give you the skills to be a champion drag racer. But obviously without the science behind it, there wouldn't be Chevy engines to tune or drag races to be run. At least not with automobiles using internal combustion engines.

Politics is politics, as Joe Stalin famously said, not long before he signed a Non-Aggression Pact with Hitler Germany.

Politics is about grand visions. It's also about transient issues of the day. And about constituent service. And about "bringing home the bacon," however much the Tea Party may claim to reject "pork barrel" politics.

The parties in the West today that most directly draw from a Marxist tradition would be those like the Left Party in Germany, which is in part the direct organizational heir of the East German ruling Communist Party. But you don't see them promoting themselves with banners like this one from the German SDS youth group of the 1960s:

"Everyone talks about the weather. Not us."

Those faces would be Marx, Engels and Lenin.

The Left Party in Germany engages with the issues of the day. And, like all parties, they have to be able to show enough success in elections and enough ability to satisfy their constituents in terms of immediate representation and service to keep winning votes. Whether they represent some true Marxist tradition is a matter of judgment. And of polemics, of course, since their opponents are happy to stigmatize them with the old and not-much-lamented East German Communist state. The old symbols that were intensely evocative in the 1910s or 1920s are, not surprisingly, no longer so.

Except in a limited nostalgic role. I'm kind of fond of the Rote Riese (Red Giant) myself:

But like most brands, whether it's the Rote Riese or the Jolly Green Giant, his appeal wasn't forever. Whether some of the strategic perspectives or historical and economic assumptions of the Social Democratic and Communist parties that made use of the Rote Riese's image still have something useful to say to people today is another question.

As William Faulkner didn't quite say: The Cold War is never dead. It's not even past.

The actual quote is from a Faulkner character, Gavin Stevens, "The past is never dead. It's not even past." (Requiem for a Nun [1951], Act 1, Scene 3.)

Cold War polemics spawned a whole set of stigmas and taboos attached to Marxism. Marxism still has the virtue and defect of being on the margins of respectability. Those intellectuals McElwee mocks still find themselves these days tippie-toeing around anything to do with Marx or Marxism. And, as often as not, they seem to be stuck in the Western Cold War role of highlighting the (real and alleged) failures of Marxism. (See "Žižek, Slavoj," although he's so over-the-top in trying to sound counter-intuitive that it's hard to tell how serious he actually is.)

There's always a market for trashing Marx and Marxism. Hipster-wise, or not. Most of what is produced in that vein is pretty boring. And usually lazy.

Why do I say it's also a virtue for Marxism to be on the margins of respectability? Because it still has the transgressive appeal that the German SDS poster above invokes. And if you're trying to shake up tired ideas about conventional wisdom, a little transgressive appeal is usually required. Žižek is one who tries to combine the "transgressive" thing with Cold War respectability, which makes for an awkward mix.

Karl Marx was a man of the 19th century.

Like Adam Smith, his work can still inform us about enduring aspect of our own current situation. But if we're looking at Marx as a philosopher, economist and politician, he does need to be understood in reference to the concrete historical situation in which he lived. (Does saying that make me an "essentialist"? I wouldn't say so, but opinions may differ.)

Sam Gindin, who apparently comes out of the Canadian social-democratic tradition, makes a similar point in Unmaking Global Capitalism Jacobin June 2014:

In terms of the impact of historical defeats, it's worth noting that in the wake of the 1848 revolutions Marx's emphasis on changing the world and not just interpreting it underwent a reversal. Marx was too optimistic about the potential of 1848, and those disappointments led him to return to the importance of understanding the world as a condition for changing it. This search for a historical materialist understanding dominated the rest of his life. In light of our own defeats, it is likewise crucial for us to learn more deeply about the nature of the world we confront.

While Gindin is right about Marx giving high priority to understanding the world realistically, it's misleading to assume that he didn't prioritize changing the world in the direction he thought it needed to go. He was very much politically engaged to the end of his life and highly focused on the actual movements, parties and events that were actually pushing for the kinds of changes he wanted.

For a more substantive current look at Marx's own theoretical heritage, see Nancy Fraser's Behind Marx's Hidden Abode New Left Review 86/March-April 2014. Warning: it does not discuss Andrew Cuomo's current political situation!

Tags: karl marx, left party, marxism