Praxis Part 2: Historical Materialism

I wrote in the first post about praxis concerning misunderstandings of historical materialism. The entirety of this post is directed towards giving an explanation that will hopefully clarify some details and mistakes that are possible.

Determinism

Some people dislike Marxism because, so they claim, it is a determinist theory. And determinism deters a lot of people. Others, in their attempts to misunderstand and miscredit Marx are firmly economist in their anti-Marxism and believe that socialists believe that things happen automatically, by the grace of god - or by the forces of production in this case.

First of all, let us remember that history makes man, but that man also makes history. Human beings face situations in their everyday life, they are faced with economical, social, moral and political choices. They do not always make the best of choices, as I detailed further in my previous post, as they are influenced by ideology that remains a necessary factor in understanding reality. But they do make choices, and the thing with Marxism is that economy is really what goes bump in the night - so to speak. A tribe without means of subsisting themselves would die. A farmers family would flourish given a better way to plow, one that failed would fall apart. In this sense, we must realize historical materialism as an evolutionary theory.

Human beings make choices, and sometimes they do not make the best or worst choices. That Peruvian medieval economy did not follow the exact pattern detailed in it's so rudimentary forms in the Communist Manifesty or The German Ideology is no deadly blow to Marxism. People make their choices from the actual realities of their situation as interpreted through ideology. We stand with our legs on the material ground and can see no further than the next hill, but we may go whichever way to get there - driven ahead by our past choices and the powers that influence our lives.

To answer our question: is Marxism a determinist theory? Only in the sense that saying that a child will become an adult is determinist. There is no steady rhythm heading towards one place or the other, merely choices that crop up sooner or later - driven onwards by what we must do to survive. Marxism, then, is neither rational choice nor 'hard' determinism.

Socialism is inevitable

While refuting determinism the argument is not difficult to make that socialism is an inevitability. Merely consider the national liberation groups, the Soviet Union or other failed emancipatory movements. While the October revolution, the Algerian war for independence and the Vietnam war were all victories for the good guys they fell apart after being unable to create socialism proper. And this is not the 'revisionism' that some Maoists charge us with. Rather, it is simply the case that the underlying conflicts in capitalism resurfaces time and time again even if some of them have been resolved. That is, for example, the case of South Africa. The economical structure will reproduce the same conflicts and actions time and time again until they are finally resolved. To believe that capitalism is inevitable and eternal is the most ideological and metaphysical claims that can be made. The opposite is the sober realization of material conflict and the actual change that real people make in the real world.

The last instance

Althusser's claim that the material decides in the last instance with cultural, ideological and other factors ranking above it but being structured by it is in many ways a proper way to understand Marxism, but it is also affected by a troublesome illusion hailing from the idea of the superstructure. Rather, while economy is the main structuring force that gives way to ideology and shapes the basic cultural pattern that we move in it is as much a governing force in clearly understood conflicts as an inbedded, structured one. That is to say that there are authentic understandings of the class struggle through actual class relations rather than through any direct, obfuscating ideological filters. Also, while the superstructure model is quite handy it is better for us to think of historical materialism and the individual as Mayakovsky's printing press, carried aloft by a thousand feet rather than the building that Marx provides us with, at least from time to time.

Ethnicity and Gender

Some claim that Marxism is gender or colourblind. While this might be true with some Marxists, it is hardly so for the entire school. With the importance of ideology as a factor in Marx's theory and the later developments of it, it is easy to see the divisions and the structures that are created through the hard work of so many burgeoise philosophers. Of course, it is not merely a trick of the upper classes that men dominate women or that europeans dominate the periphery. However, as I have argued before we cannot quite comprehend racism previously to capitalism with it appearing to serve a powerful role in colonialism.

Praxis as the dialectal movement between the theory of racism or power over one gender or the other gives us the opportunity to solve a few of the antinomies raised by the idea of racism/capitalism/sexism as categories. They are all consisting of a theoretical, half-understood foundation and a kneejerk practical reaction that serves everyday life and that feeds or destroys the ideology in question. Or rather, it typically bends it one way or the other. Complete destruction of either one is the rupture of reification that in turn can cause a political chainreaction of a sorts - that is to say, the anti-racist has an easier time understanding the practical implications of wage-labour than someone without that practical-critical experience.

The sad thing about Marx and Engels failed prophecies are that they were both wrong about the positive things that they said. Engels who believed that there was more or less no oppression of women in the proletariat, Marx who believed that capitalism would emancipate women. Racism and sexism are not foreign concepts to capitalism, they are actually an integral part created through different, but similar mechanisms. Racism is heavily connected to imperialism and colonialism while sexism in some ways have an older heritage, tied in with the ideology of the Church and in western Europe with the class and gender struggles of the 19th century's labour market.

Both of these unequal power relations are produced by burgeoise ideologists and reproduced in various ways by all layers of society. That human beings live, act, think and change is far more true than that they are implemented with a ready-set kit of ideas and beliefs at birth. The fog of reality causes unclarity and uncertainty for the sharpest of minds. In the masses there are various groups that struggle through their praxis against one another, this is simply the way of capitalism. Pure capitalism as envisioned by naked, history-less groups of proletarians and the upper class is an impossibility in a reality that changes, produces and reproduces ideology and struggles.