Marx Beyond His Limits: Towards a Renewal of Critical Theory
Within the collection of “Notebooks of Latin American Critical Thought”, CLACSO presents the research: “Marx Beyond His Limits: Towards a Renewal of Critical Theory"Of Jacinta Gorriti.
Marx Beyond His Limits: Towards a Renewal of Critical Theory
Jacinta Gorriti1
If there is one tradition of thought that has never ceased to have an impact, it is Marxism, so often declared dead, revived, and updated in the two centuries that separate us from the life of its author. The bicentenary of Karl Marx's birth was the pretext for Marx Forum 200Organized by the Latin American Council of Social Sciences (CLACSO) in Buenos Aires at the end of 2018, this conference brought together numerous leading figures in contemporary social theory to discuss the relevance, challenges, and transformations of Marxist theory. This book compiles their contributions and groups them into four main topics: 1) Marx, Latin America, and global development; 2) Marx and his theoretical revolution; 3) Marx and capitalist economic dynamics; and 4) Marx, politics, and democracy. Thus, the book's very structure highlights the most relevant issues to address from the perspective of Marxist thought in the 21st century. However, these topics have also been the most challenging and debated over the past two hundred years: to what extent can Marxism explain the different historical trajectories of social formations and their ways of relating within the global capitalist system? Where does the theoretical specificity of Marxism and its effectiveness lie, which has made it a foundation of contemporary thought (whether to revisit it or to discuss it); what can it contribute to understanding the current drifts and crises of capitalism; and how to reinterpret revolutionary theory when the horizon of radical transformation has moved away from a mass politics.
In this sense, the book succeeds in its composition: the heterogeneous set of articles that make it up accounts for the multiplicity of registers, inheritances, and perspectives in which the appropriation of Marx's theory is debated and, at the same time, the possibility of a Marxism beyond Marx (or, to invert the Althusserian formula, of a Marx beyond his limitsThere are contributions that discuss interpretations of Marx's texts among Marxists; that highlight little-studied aspects of Marx's theoretical production; that elaborate concepts and theoretical frameworks based on Marxist works; and that analyze the current situation through a review of certain Marxist categories and formulas. Some contributions are more academic and systematic, while others recapture the oral nature of the interventions at the CLACSO Forum. However, in one way or another, all of them link Marxist theory to an understanding of the present and a projection of the future—that elusive temporality of resistance that the future implies. If the near future that appears in the texts gathered here is marked by the economic, ecological, and social crisis that the world was already experiencing before the pandemic, now, at the time of its publication, the pandemic redefines the gesture of putting Marxist theory at the service of a struggle for how to understand the present and face the future. The question that titles Enrique Dussel's contribution to this volume, “Which Marx for the 21st century?”, is key. If, as Esteban Torres suggests in his article “The three driving forces of Marx's social theoryThe singularity of Marx's work lies in the intertwining of a rational-scientific drive, a critical drive, and a transformative drive. Replicating the gesture of Marx's thought becomes crucial in this century that began with wars, crises, and even a pandemic. Because we need, simultaneously, a scientific reason to explain (not just describe) the processes the world is going through and their unique impact on each social reality, a critical ethics of social inequalities and a transformative will that activates and allows the irruption of the new into history. Perhaps today more than ever, in light of the radical inequalities that shape the current world and the economic, ecological, and health crisis in which the entire planet is immersed, it is essential to return to Marx, not out of mere curiosity or academic or scholarly interest, but to reactivate that scientific, critical, and transformative power that characterizes him.
However, to “replicate the Marxist gesture,” it is essential first and foremost to understand how Marx himself thought: what materials he used, how his ideas were transformed, how he combined his thinking with that of others, what questions challenged him, etc. Of course, this is not to find an “authentic” Marx there, but to understand his method within the very knowledge in which it is realized. One of the most interesting aspects of the book is precisely the way in which it delineates, sometimes explicitly (as in the articles by Álvaro García Linera, “Marx and the multilateral vision of history”; by Marcello Musto, “Marx's later research on non-European countries”; and from Bob Jessop, “The influence of the natural sciences on the development of Marx's critique of political economy: the cell biology argument”) and sometimes subtly, the movements of Marx’s thought: the conceptual, historical, and political layers, networks, and fabrics that compose it. But it is not simply an “archaeology” of Marx’s thought that emerges. Rather, it is a know how to use of Marxism, which, while grasping its development, inscribes itself in its wake and thinks within that orbit. Or, an exercise of that same immanent critique that Marx practiced (as Guilherme Leite Gonçalves points out in “Social theory in MarxThus, Marx's thought opens up to multiple encounters that refract it in different directions: there are Latin American, European, scientific, democratic, sociological, revolutionary, critical, current and outdated Marxisms.
The discussion regarding how to define Marx's work is not insignificant: it is at the heart of its contemporary appropriations and legacies. For example, the debates concerning the Eurocentric or non-Eurocentric nature of Marx's work, which have permeated the history of "disagreements" between Marx and Marxism with Latin America, are revisited here from new perspectives and based on the publication of his unpublished manuscripts. This is not done with a scholastic aim, but rather to understand the scope and limitations of his contributions for understanding our region today. Something similar occurs with the disciplinary discussions surrounding Marx's work, which seek in one or another of his fields of thought his most relevant contributions for the present. Some emphasize the economic analyses of Marxist theory, others stress his social and sociological theory, and still others highlight his political interventions. In any case, what is sought in Marx is not a repository of settled arguments, nor answers to questions about our own historical conditions, but rather an open space or a method for thinking about what Marx did not think about but which current readings allow us to highlight. This point is central to the book, which has in the problem of Marxist method one of the common threads that weave together the series of interventions.
More than a single Marxism, what the book demonstrates, then, is that there is no homogeneous and logically consistent Marxist theory, but rather a plural constellation of ideas that take Marx's work as their point of reference. A work whose unfinished nature and theoretical density are precisely what give it that open character, open to constant reinterpretation. While this book is almost exclusively an academic appropriation of Marx's work and legacy, the inherent political dimension of the Marxist tradition is nonetheless evident in its contributions. This same tradition has allowed Marx to be declared dead and revived throughout contemporary history, as Elvira Concheiro Borquez argues in “200 years of Marx: politics facing today's challengesMarx's work appears not only as a theoretical battleground, but also a political one. In other words, the modes of theoretical appropriation of Marx and the political positions they underpin are deeply intertwined, and it is interesting to note how these different perspectives are brought into tension in the book, at a time when the post-capitalist horizon (as Marx envisioned it) has become distant. How do we read Marx in the 21st century? How do we resignify our vision of the future without abandoning "a perspective of emancipation," as Göran Therborn suggests in "Thinking about the current world from Marx's perspective“One of the questions that the book leaves open, then, is whether it is possible to extract Marxism from its academic refuge and reconnect it with one or, rather, multiple political projects with a real capacity to challenge the existing social order.
Similarly, it is worth asking how to reformulate the critique of Marxist political economy today, based on the contributions of environmental activism to the debate on the sustainability of our modes of social organization. While the ethos While the book is largely defined by environmentalism, references to ecological issues rarely extend beyond denouncing the destructive nature of capitalist expansion. But is it possible to move beyond the necessary and urgent diagnosis of the looming environmental disaster and advance toward a theoretical reformulation of Marxism from an ecological perspective? That is, not simply adding the ecological question to the classic Marxist tropes in its critique of the capitalist mode of production, but rather developing new theoretical concepts that allow us to understand the present and intervene in it. Reactivating the ecological awareness inherent in Marxism is a first step, but today, more than ever, it is urgent to understand the complex and unequal conditions in which the environmental question is situated in order to propose realistic alternatives at all levels. In short, taking seriously the kind of transformative critique that Marx encourages with simplicity and precision in the much-talked-about eleventh thesis means proposing new rigorous frameworks from which to read the present and promote other futures that are not an inertial repetition of current conditions – from which “it is easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism,” as the saying goes.
Another issue related to the political nature of Marx's modes of reading concerns the link between Marxism, the State, and democracy; a discussion that underlies several texts in the book. Can we maintain today Marx's classic critique of the capitalist State, almost without mediation? To identify in every State the “dictatorial substance” that constitutes it, to borrow the term Atilio Borón uses in his article,Marx, 200 yearsDoes it serve to explain the forms, dynamics, orientations, and modes of government that states adopt today? Since the theme of the state is linked in Marx to the theory of revolution, as Beatriz Rajland reminds us in “Marx and politics“The revision of one implies, at the same time, the revision of the other. Thus, if it is essential to rethink the transformative character of Marx's work, it is undoubtedly fundamental to reconceptualize the State from his perspective. Because the discussion is no longer about justifying whether or not we need a State, but about what forms of State we want to maintain. The critique of the capitalist State as guarantor of exploitation and class domination is necessary, but completely insufficient. Especially now, in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic, when States have once again assumed a central place in global society as the only social entities with the capacity for coordination, centralization, and allocation of resources indispensable for saving lives in this situation.”
States, understood as interstate systems because they are interconnected, are also places where popular struggles are concentrated and where certain forms of social justice become possible in the face of the drifts of global capitalism. Massively rejecting the state does not contribute to the formation of other state structures, just as the radical rejection of technologies and the call for “disconnection” are ineffective in challenging dominant technological forms and the new modes of accumulation by dispossession characteristic of contemporary capitalism. Like technology, the state is neither good nor bad, nor neutral; rather, it is defined and limited by social relations. Conversely, this is not about romanticizing or overvaluing the role of the state, but about understanding its place in the long and arduous processes of social transformation. In other words, if the tradition founded by Marx teaches us anything, it is that the question of the state is not posed in the abstract, nor to defend existing state forms, but rather stems from the desire to transform it in light of the struggles that involve us.
However, rethinking the state also implies rethinking democracy. It is undeniable that in recent decades a process of de-democratization of societies, both at the national level (with the rise of far-right parties and movements that use democratic procedures to advance towards the suppression of democratic institutions and rights) and at the global level (with the intensive increase in income and wealth inequalities). In “Marx, democracy and the new BonapartismKlaus Dörre offers us some insights into this paradoxical process in which democracy is manipulated against itself to support not economic growth, but the financialization of social relations and public goods. Although the tensions between democracy and capitalism are not new to Marxist thought, it is essential to consider them in light of the material conditions of our contemporary societies. Thus, the class nature of the state and the ambivalences of democracy within capitalism should not be a beforehand or an ossified principle on which to build a theoretical apparatus, but rather that which is to be explained each time, in the singularity of each juncture.
In this regard, if one of the main questions that has permeated Marx's thought has been the question of the effective social forces that are in dispute in a given situation, it is not enough to consider the power that states hold today because these are also overdetermined by dominant social forces, simultaneously on a local, national, regional, and global scale. In a world configured around immense inequalities, a scientific, critical, and transformative thought cannot ignore the giant actors that pull the strings of global wealth, such as large investment funds and transnational corporations, especially technology companies. Can Marx's theory contribute to a rigorous analysis of the new modalities of capitalism and its main actors? From different perspectives, in their respective contributions to the volume, Orlando Caputo (“Marx and the current world economy”), Robert Boyer (“Regulation theory and Marx's legacy”), Anwar Shaikh (“Marx, capital and competition”) and Enrique de la Garza Toledo (“The Relevance of Marxism in the 21st CenturyThey argue that Marxist theory still allows us to explain the movements and crises of capitalism, both in their novel aspects and their recurring patterns. Therefore, it is striking that those major actors who, in recent decades, have been key to transforming the processes and forms of labor organization, value creation, capital accumulation, legal systems, and class relations of contemporary capitalism are barely mentioned in the book.
Perhaps this is another point where we need to move beyond Marx's own theory. Because the development of a theory of world society, one of the most relevant and urgent legacies of Marxist theory, cannot do without an understanding of the major actors that shape global reality and its extreme inequalities. Often, Marxist critique is limited to the level of the state or to identifying the modes of political domination concentrated within it. However, we need to exercise a type of critique that targets not only states, but also the new organizations, corporations, businesses, and so on, that have decisive structural effects on the world today. This is especially true now, when, due to the pandemic, all our daily interactions and activities (from work and education to social gatherings and leisure) are mediated by digital technologies concentrated in the hands of a few global players. From Latin America, we cannot avoid asking about global economic elites, nor about how these global economic movements are specifically inscribed in each social formation, in their complex intertwining with the specific social practices of each. This is not merely to denounce new and more sophisticated modes of economic, political, and ideological domination and dependence, but to understand and explain the changes and repetitions that these movements entail, and the real possibilities and capacities of states in this global arena.
In this regard, the revitalization of Marx's thought that this volume attempts goes hand in hand with the impetus of a materialist perspective, in a broad sense, for the social sciences. Precisely from this materialism that the book invites us to recover, it is possible to suggest that the critique Marx bequeathed to us consists of an exercise that simultaneously involves creative theoretical practice, a specific political engagement, and a realist orientation, always in light of historical variability. The challenge lies in sustaining all three elements simultaneously without prioritizing or reducing one to the other: that political engagement does not negate the creation of theory or confuse personal desires with reality; that theoretical production does not disregard ongoing historical processes or its involvement in them; and that the realist disposition does not become a demobilizing or demotivating element but rather fosters the capacity to explain and transform social phenomena. Now, this same perspective is what enables and impels us to traverse the spectrum of Marxism and of Marx himself in order to produce new theoretical tools commensurate with the transformative programs of our time.
Once again, what this book exemplifies is the indispensable nature of Marx's theory for critical thinking about the present, in all its opacity and complexity, while simultaneously highlighting the limitations of this theoretical framework. These limitations have more to do with our own difficulties in developing theoretical frameworks that guide us and allow us to intervene in current events from a theoretical perspective than with any deficiency in Marxist theory itself. In other words, we cannot demand that Marx provide answers to our historical challenges, but we can use his conceptual framework to construct our own theoretical fields. As this edited volume demonstrates, Marx's theory continues to shape the path of the contemporary left and challenge those who critically examine current social conditions. Furthermore, by outlining the potential of a substantive theory of society, it invites us to replicate this approach and take the exercise of theoretical creation into unforeseen territory. Perhaps the starting point for generating new theoretical revolutions, like Marx's own, lies in changing the questions we ask rather than the answers we seek. And in this exercise, the encounter with other traditions, disciplines, authors, and spaces of activism is fundamental.
In other words, it is by acknowledging the incomplete and unfinished nature of Marxist theory that it becomes possible to find unique points of intervention from within the theoretical framework it has bequeathed to us. Only when we recognize that Marx cannot (nor should he) give us all the answers does the interweaving of present, past, and future that gives this volume its title become viable: situating the contemporaneity of Marxism also involves reading in the past what is in motion and scrutinizing in the present the constellations that link us to what has been and to what could become. Taken together, Marx 200 years. Present, past and future This book offers a powerful demonstration of the enduring vitality of Marxist theory in a chaotic present, one that is both distant from and yet close to Marx's predictions about a capitalism that is constantly transforming and accelerating, producing novelty while simultaneously reactivating old forms of domination, including and excluding in a single movement. This volume allows readers to trace the trajectories of contemporary Marxisms and their most renowned representatives, with all their strengths and weaknesses. It may be of interest to those who wish to delve deeper into one or another aspect of Marxist theory, discuss certain appropriations of Marx's work, or analyze its multiple legacies, but also to those approaching this tradition for the first time, who will find it heterogeneous and rich in theoretical contributions.
1-Center for Research and Studies on Culture and Society (CONICET – UNC). Member of the CLACSO Working Group “Social Theory and Latin American Reality”
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