Introduction
Marx and Marxisms
Many people consider Marx to be a totalitarian and Soviet Marxism the realization of his thought.1 If one shows them the texts, proves to them that Marx was a radical democrat, they often flip and think him utopian. Totalitarian or utopian—for many those seem to be the alternatives. How might one combat this completely mistaken conception?
What if one could show that European social democracy exemplified Marx’s thought far better than did Soviet Marxism?2 If social democracy is closer to being the true heir of Marx, then all claims of totalitarianism evaporate. There is nothing remotely totalitarian about social democracy. It is as democratic as what we have in the United States—and arguably more so. Nor is there anything remotely utopian about social democracy. It exists. It exists all over Western Europe and Britain—as well as elsewhere.
Nevertheless, when a lot of people think of Marxism, they think of the USSR. And Western capitalists have certainly worked to reinforce this notion. The USSR was obviously anti-democratic and totalitarian. Marx must be also. No need to slog through all those difficult texts—just look at the Soviets if you want to understand what Marx leads to.
Moreover, the Soviets themselves reinforced this capitalist propaganda. They claimed they were the real Marxists, the ones that put into practice the thought of Marx. They were the ones that actually succeeded in making a Marxist revolution. They claimed to be the
Marx, Revolution, and Social Democracy. Philip J. Kain, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197667187.003.0001
true Marxists—which served to legitimate them, reinforce their authority, and justify their leadership.
Capitalists and communists, the United States and the USSR, find themselves in agreement here. Both think the true realization of Marx’s thought is to be found in Soviet Marxism—and both are wrong. From early on there had been serious ideological disagreement between European social democracy and Soviet Marxism. The SPD, the Social Democratic Party of Germany (Sozialdemokratishe Partei Deutschlands), the party of Liebknecht, Bebel, Kautsky, and Bernstein, had been critical of Lenin and the Bolsheviks from the start. They opposed their undemocratic and extra-parliamentary tactics, their refusal to allow other parties, and certainly the claim that they ought to be the model for Western Europe.3
On the other hand, Lenin and the Bolsheviks painted the SPD as renegades, reformers, revisionists, all terms of abuse suggesting the abandonment of real Marxism—and all of this when Marx and Engels for years had worked closely with Liebknecht, Bebel, Kautsky, Bernstein, and the SPD. Despite all that, it was supposed to be Lenin and the Bolsheviks that were the true Marxists.
As for Western capitalists, it was very much in their interest to tie Marx, Marxism, and social democracy to the Soviets, to emphasize the Soviet absence of democracy, and to paint this as the telos of Western European social democracy, all while the SPD was gaining strength through parliamentary democracy actually winning elections in Germany and gaining seats in parliament.4 Indeed, just before the First World War, the SPD became not only the largest party in Germany with the largest number of seats in the Reichstag, 5 but the largest socialist party in the world.6
Someone like Hayek pushes this sort of tactic to extremes. He claims that Soviet Marxism is the true telos of all Western European socialist parties, and then faults those same parties for being “inhibited by their democratic ideals; they did not possess the ruthlessness required for the performance of their chosen task.”7 The actual parliamentary activity of social democrats, their actual
commitment to democracy, their actual democratic success, is dismissed as irrelevant. On what grounds? Because Hayek can discern the true essence of socialism behind its surface appearance. Either it moves toward Soviet totalitarianism, or it fails to realize its essence. Metaphysics of the very worst sort.8
It is the SPD that represented orthodox Marxism, which was quite different from and hostile to Soviet Marxism. But social democracy is caught in a dilemma. For a social democratic party to show insufficient opposition to Soviet tactics would lose them votes, and thus seats in parliament, and thus the ability to move society toward socialism, which then would lose them even more votes. A social democratic party must insist, and wants to insist, that it rejects the Soviet model. But then the Soviets will say it is rejecting real Marxism and real socialism. So, what should social democrats do? Well, they can swear off Marxism altogether so as not to be lumped with the Soviets, as some social democratic parties in fact did. Or they can defend Marx, the Marxism of Marx himself, and real democracy. And they can argue against Soviet Marxism and its lack of democracy. But this will get them into complex philosophical arguments about Marxism that few will be able to follow—and few voters would care about. The capitalists, of course, will ignore all such arguments, which they do not understand anyway, and simply insist that social democrats are just socialists that, if allowed to proceed, will eventually be seen to be no different than the Soviets.9
One of the major stumbling blocks to the development of a socialist consciousness in the United States has been the unacceptable and undemocratic character of the Soviet Union. Fetscher, for example, even thinks “the ‘victory’ of socialism in backward Russia did more harm than good to the chances of a socialist revolution in the industrial Western countries.”10 For any contemporary Marxian, one of the biggest issues, if not the biggest, is that of democracy. What went wrong? Why were the Soviets so undemocratic? Not because Marx was undemocratic. Certainly not because it is the essence of Marxism to be undemocratic. Not because
if Marxism actualizes itself in the world it will necessarily be undemocratic. That is all capitalist propaganda, enabled by the undemocratic character of one of the first countries to try to establish socialism.
So why did Russia fail to develop democratically? One of the major reasons was that it was hardly a capitalist society and barely had a proletariat. The proletariat amounted to a small percentage of the population. The vast majority were peasants. If Russia had stuck to democracy, it could not have developed socialism. Even if it had succeeded in winning over the proletariat democratically, it would only have had the vote of a small minority. A peasant majority could not have been expected to vote for socialism. Peasants wanted their own piece of land. If Russia was going to become socialist, it could not proceed democratically. To move toward socialism, it had to use non-democratic means. And that is the course it chose. And socialists in the West have suffered from it since.11
In this book, I hope to untangle the distorted relationship that has developed between Marx and Marxism—between Marx and the Soviets and between Marx and social democracy. I should be clear from the outset, though, that this will be a book on Marx. It will be concerned with social democracy and with Soviet Marxism only so far as will help us understand Marx. I must also add that to make the case that Marx is best understood as a social democrat, I will have to quote more textual evidence than would normally be tolerated. I ask the reader’s indulgence ahead of time.
It is my view that there is little in common between Marx and Soviet Marxism. To a considerable extent, I have addressed this matter in a series of earlier books and will not spend too much time on it here.12 Here I will mainly explore the relationship between Marx and social democracy, their conceptual compatibility, and the way Marx interacted with social democracy. Doing so, I think, will illuminate the democratic as well as the realistic (non-utopian) character of Marx’s thought. Aristotle thought that if you want to understand the nature, say, of an acorn, you look at a full-grown
and healthy oak tree, not at some stunted specimen that did not have the right soil, adequate water, or sufficient sunlight. I do not want to lapse into Hayekean metaphysics here, but I do think that social democracy can tell us a great deal more about Marx than can Soviet Marxism. I hope to show that Marx and social democracy have a great deal in common—indeed, that it is legitimate to call Marx a social democrat.
Several things must be done to demonstrate this relationship between Marx and social democracy. First, it will be necessary to show that for Marx proletarian society, socialist society, the society he is after, is compatible with a market economy—as long, that is, as markets are controlled to eliminate alienation or fetishism. That will be the task of Chapter 1.
Second, it will also be necessary to show that markets can be controlled without a political state that stands over and dominates society; that is, that markets can be controlled democratically and that Marx was very much a democrat. That will be the task of Chapter 2.
Third, it will also be necessary to show that Marx had a theory of revolution (a theory of social transformation) compatible with a democratic electoral movement engaged in by a social democratic party. This, a more complicated issue, will be the task of Chapters 3, 4, and 5.
Finally, we must show that Marx actually worked with— supported, advised, and criticized—an actual social democratic party, the German Social Democratic Party (the SPD) of Liebknecht, Bebel, Bernstein, and Kautsky. That will be the task of Chapter 6, although the topic will be introduced in Chapter 5.
Let me emphasize, again, that this will be a book on Marx, not a book on the history of social democracy. It will be necessary, certainly, to say enough about social democracy to allow us to understand the social democratic dimension of Marx’s thought. A discussion of nineteenth-century social democracy during the lives of Marx and Engels, the German Social Democratic Party of
Liebknecht, Bebel, Kautsky, and Bernstein, all of whom interacted with Marx and Engels, will be necessary to make this connection. Moreover, the Meidner Plan of the 1970s will be important for the argument. But this will not be a book about contemporary social democracy. It will certainly not be a book about the current problems of social democracy or the waning of social democracy since the 1970s—if it is waning.13 The point is to understand Marx by understanding the social democratic dimension of his thought.
Terminology
Before we go any further we need to get some terminology straight. In the first place, the term “revolution” is ambiguous. It can mean a violent insurrection, and Marx certainly uses the term in this sense, but that is very definitely not the only sense, let alone the most important sense, in which he uses the term. By “revolution,” one can also mean a long-term, fundamental social transformation—like, say, the industrial revolution. When Marx speaks of a proletarian or a socialist revolution, it is this sort of revolution he has in mind— which may or may not involve a violent insurrection. And a violent insurrection that does not lead to a fundamental social transformation is certainly not what Marx is interested in.14 Thus, when Fletcher says, “It is an indisputable fact that no socialist revolution has yet taken place in a single advanced capitalist country,”15 we must admit that this claim is correct if by “revolution” is meant a violent insurrection that installs a socialist regime. But it is false if by “revolution” we mean a fundamental social transformation in a socialist direction. Such transformation has occurred through democratic processes in several Western European social democratic countries.
Whenever I use the term “revolution,” I will make clear whether I mean a violent insurrection or a fundamental social transformation. Social democracy would certainly prefer the latter without the
former. Moreover, it should be clear that it is at least possible that a democratic parliament over time could facilitate more and better social transformation than could a violent insurrection alone.16
Secondly, I will whenever possible avoid using terms like “revisionist” or “reformist.” I think it confusing to oppose real revolutionary socialism to revisionist or reformist socialism. Such concepts have been worked up, developed, and weaponized in a long struggle between Soviet Marxists and social democrats. Such concepts need to be untangled and dissolved, rather than employed and reinforced. I have no interest in discussing whether or not the SPD, or Kautsky, or Bernstein were revisionists. Such questions begin by assuming that revisionism is some sort of divergence from orthodoxy, and then may proceed to trace back such divergence to earlier thinkers. It has been claimed, for example, that Engels was the first revisionist.17 My earlier books argued that there are fundamental shifts in Marx’s thought—that is, that he revised his views.18 I guess, if we were to take the concept of revisionism seriously, we would have to say that Marx was the first revisionist.
Kolakowski argues that it is pointless to ask who is the “true” Marxist. All Marxists are entitled to invoke the name of Marx.19
What I will try to show is that social democracy, far more than Soviet Marxism, captures, expresses, and realizes elements of Marx and Engels’ thought that are really there in Marx and Engels’ thought. I want to show that there is no straight developmental line from Marx to Bolshevism, as there very definitely is from Marx to social democracy. If we were to use the term “revisionist,” we would have to hold that the Soviets were the real revisionists—much more so than the SPD. But this would make for serious confusion—as if there were not enough already.
Lastly, “socialism” is a loose and sloppy term that can be used in very different ways. It can refer to a third or middle way between capitalism and communism. It can be used to refer to the first and lower stage of communist society—full communism being the second and higher stage. For some, it is virtually identical to
communism. Soviet communists often referred to themselves as socialists, or as working to achieve socialism. Others simply use the term “socialism” rather than “communism” so as not to appear so left-wing. Social democracy is thought by some, including opponents on the left, to be virtually capitalist,20 whereas social democrats often refer to themselves as socialists.21 And, again, “socialism” is very often taken to refer to a society that, while retaining markets, has common, collective, or state ownership of all at least major means of production.22
To explain how I will use the term, let us envision a spectrum. At one end of the spectrum, imagine a capitalist laissez-faire economy—one with all means of production privately owned, with unregulated markets, and with no governmental planning. Such an ideal type exists nowhere in the actual world. Even capitalism in the United States contains a lot of publicly owned freeways, schools, forests, libraries, transportation systems, a postal service, and so forth. Moreover, a great deal of governmental planning goes on in conjunction with large corporations.
At the other end of our spectrum, imagine a full communist society—a society with no markets at all and no private ownership of means of production. All means of production would be publicly, collectively, or state owned. The entire economy would be centrally planned. And there would be no buying or selling of commodities—indeed, there would be no money. Such a society, as Marx puts it, would distribute to each according to need.23 This, too, is an ideal type that nowhere exists in the actual world. The Soviets certainly had not achieved anything approaching this.24
Capitalism and communism, however, must not be imagined as neat, fixed, binary poles—as if they were distinct natural kinds. They are stages along a spectrum. Between them we have various forms of socializing or socialist societies; that is, societies that to varying degrees transform capitalism. They do so by replacing private ownership of the means of production to one degree or another with common, collective, or public ownership. On the other
hand, all these societies keep a market, but to varying degrees regulate, guide, or control it to prevent poverty and other social ills. It is a mistake to think that if you have markets, you have capitalism. Markets existed long before capitalism and will exist long after capitalism. Moreover, to varying degrees these societies engage in planning, which can be centralized to a greater or lesser extent.
At one end of the socializing/socialist spectrum we have social democratic societies, like those of the Scandinavian countries, with relatively little public ownership of means of production,25 some regulation of markets, and some centralized planning. The development of such societies is democratically guided by strong labor parties (backed by powerful labor unions) that decide in parliamentary fashion how far and how fast to move along toward full socialism; that is, full public ownership of the major means of production. As we will see in Chapter 6, this is what social democratic Sweden actually did in taking up and then rejecting the Meidner Plan, a plan that over time would have, by completely legal and parliamentary means, transferred majority ownership of the large scale means of production to workers. While Swedish society finally decided against the Meidner Plan and thus against moving toward public ownership, it is quite clear that they could have decided for, and were even on the way toward, public ownership—that is, toward full socialism.
The important point here is that social democratic societies actually decide how far away from capitalism and how far along toward full socialism they want to move. They not only decide how far but also how fast they want to go—and they do so in a democratic way. Western European social democracies have not voted to go all the way, I think, because they have believed they can achieve what they need to achieve within social democracy; that is, that they can control the means of production without needing to own them.
On the other hand, there have been societies, further along our spectrum of socializing/socialist societies, that actually have had state ownership of the means of production, along with strong
centralized planning, and who also wanted to have markets. These were all Soviet societies that started with long established state ownership of the means of production together with bureaucratized central planning, and, to overcome economic problems, decided to marketize, or to create markets that had not existed. Such market socialism, at least in theory, is something social democratic states might democratically decide to move toward, as with Sweden’s Meidner Plan, but, in fact, they have not (or have not gone very far in this direction). Rather, market socialism arose from Soviet states attempting to marketize, and this attempt did not succeed.26 We will have to discuss in Chapter 1, at least a bit, difficulties that confront full socialist societies, that is, the argument of Weber, Mises, and Hayek that socialism is unable to carry out rational calculation and thereby achieve efficiency.
The Mondragon community of northern Spain, on the other hand, would be an exception in that it is not a Soviet state trying to marketize; it is market socialism developing on its own democratically—although only as part of a state.27 There are also theorists that argue for the democratic development of a market socialist society.28
It must also be noted that besides degrees of public versus private ownership, there are different types of public ownership. Means of production could be owned directly by the state as in Soviet states. Exclusive state control could be relaxed such that firms operate independently with their own boards of directors representing workers and/or banks.29 Firms could be self-managed by workers as in Yugoslavia. They could be majority owned by workers through their labor unions as projected by the Meidner Plan of Sweden. They could be owned by workers through voluntary cooperatives as with the Mondragon community.
The goal of all these socializing or socialist societies would be to harness the positive aspects of markets while offsetting their negative features, and to do this through coordination, guidance, and control. For social democracy, this requires a balancing act. It
wants to regulate away the ills of the market, but within those limits it wants to encourage the market. It needs to keep entrepreneurs engaged, but not let them dominate. It needs to empower labor unions, eliminate poverty, and benefit all workers, but without impairing the market. As Meyer puts it, social democracies want social justice as well as economic efficiency and growth.30 Within this spectrum, the lines between capitalism, social democracy, and market (or full) socialism will be fuzzy, rather than sharp and clear. At this point, one might want to ask: why all this emphasis on social democracy? It is quite clear that Marx’s ideal is full socialism as a step toward full communism.31 Why talk about social democracy? The first reason is that there is nothing whatsoever utopian about social democracy.32 It has existed all over Western Europe and elsewhere, whereas attempts to achieve communism, full socialism, or market socialism are utopian—at least in the sense that until now attempts to realize them at the national level have failed. Secondly, social democracy has been able to avoid totalitarianism, as Soviet societies that had not even successfully reached full socialism were not. Social democracies have been democratic—even paradigms of democracy. And thirdly, Marx actually became a social democrat. Social democracy, we must not forget, is a process of democratically deciding whether and how far to move beyond capitalism toward full socialism. And even if full socialism is not reached, as this book will try to argue, social democracy can get Marx what he is after. The aim of this book is to show that Marx and social democracy are much closer to each other than is usually thought.
Social democracy attempts to keep the benefits of a market (diversity, entrepreneurial energy, technological dynamism) while avoiding its problems (poverty, alienation, misdirection of investment). Moreover, it is necessary to see that a social democratic society can, while remaining a social democracy, even move toward realization of the communist ideal of “to each according to need.” How is this possible? We can think of social democratic society as
having different sectors. Call one of these the communist sector. Here there would be no buying or selling. Goods and services would be free.33 Even in capitalist society, freeways, parks, libraries, and grade school are free. A social democratic society could add education through graduate school as in several Western European societies. Healthcare could be included. So could childcare. So also, transportation and communication. The principle in this sector would be “to each according to need.” By increasing or decreasing this sector, a social democratic society could, to varying degrees, incorporate a communist dimension.
Besides the communist or free sector, a social democratic society would also have a socialist, or regulated market, sector. Here goods and services would be bought on a market but kept affordable. In this sector, a social democratic society could put housing, basic food stuffs, and power. Or, if it were to find it unaffordable, it could decide to move, say, healthcare, childcare, higher education, or transportation out of the free communist sector and into the regulated socialist sector. The aim of the socialist sector would be to see to it that no one is priced out of necessities. Again, a social democratic society could vote to increase or decrease this sector, and also shift things back and forth between the communist and the socialist sector.
The third sector would be a free market sector—a capitalist sector, if you like—where non-essential goods and services would be regulated only by supply and demand. Our social democratic society would decide over time what to put in which sector. It would decide what it could afford to put in the communist free sector, what it could only afford to put in the socialist regulated sector, and what should be left in the capitalist sector. It would also decide what would create the best balance between stimulating the economy and avoiding poverty. Moreover, and most importantly, it must control investment. Otherwise, as Mandel puts it, production would develop:
not in the sectors where the most urgent real needs are to be found, but rather in those where the highest profits can be achieved. The production of alcoholic drinks, of “comic books,” and of drugs takes precedence over the struggle against air-pollution . . . and even the building of schools and hospitals. In Britain today, more money is spent on gambling than on the fight against cancer.34
Social democratic society would make all of these sorts of decisions democratically through representatives elected to parliament, and it could make changes over time. I am assuming that all societies along our spectrum from capitalism to communism are democratic, although to varying degrees. At the capitalist end of the spectrum, democracy, at least in the United States, is confined for the most part to choosing between the candidates of two political parties, most of whom will serve in legislatures that generally restrict themselves to political matters. There is no democracy inside the capitalist corporation. There the principle is, as Engels paraphrasing Dante puts it, “Lasciate ogni autonomia, voi che entrate!”35 Moreover, capitalist political parties confine themselves to a non- (possibly even an anti-) working class agenda and generally will not interfere with decisions customarily left to capitalists.
In social democratic societies, on the other hand, democracy is extended to the economic sphere, and possibly even to the inside of the corporation, but certainly to the empowerment of workers through strong labor unions. In the political sphere, to varying degrees, a range of diverse interests is represented by multiple political parties. So also, just as social democratic societies can be more or less democratic, they can be more or less Marxist.36 Full socialism, for Marx, ought to be democratic, but Soviet states obviously have failed miserably at this.
Envisioning the spectrum I have set out, we can begin to argue where along the continuum we think our preferred society should be located. We can also advocate for historical development from
one point to another. We can also adopt a pragmatic and experimental approach that moves back and forth along this spectrum, tries things out, sees what works and what does not, makes corrections, and adjusts.37 Parties would have members disagreeing democratically about how far to go in which direction. Some will consider this democratic character of social democracy to be a form of instability,38 but social democratic societies have remained social democratic even despite occasional victories of bourgeois parties.39 It should be noticed that social democracy is a very broad concept. It can stretch, at one end, from a transformation toward postcapitalist society beginning well within capitalism itself, up to, at the other end, a Meidner-like plan in the process of realizing full socialism. To say that Marx would endorse and support social democracy, then, is to say that he would support what it takes to move from capitalism toward full socialism. That should hardly be surprising or controversial. The task of the present book is to explore these matters in depth and detail, and to ask whether it would be possible (non-utopian) to move beyond social democracy into full socialism, whether that could be done democratically, and what would be gained by doing so? That is, what would be gained beyond what social democracy, moving up to full socialism, could give us? Social democracy, in my opinion, should not be opposed to socialism, certainly not in the sense that it must give up on socialism, reject it, and want social democracy instead of socialism. Social democracy is a process of democratic transformation of capitalism into a better society. It is a process of discovering what is necessary to produce justice together with efficiency through democratic means. If that requires full socialism, then social democracy would require full socialism. If full socialism is not necessary, not more efficient, not democratically appealing, or not democratically achievable, then social democracy would continue improving things as social democracy. Social democracy is not committed a priori to a specific point along this spectrum, but to a continuous process of improving social, political, and economic conditions for
the working class. This, I think, is the meaning of Bernstein’s infamous statement, “that what is usually termed the final goal of socialism is nothing to me, the movement is everything.”40 Moreover, Bernstein’s slogan certainly sounds like a rephrasing of Marx and Engels’, “Communism is for us not . . . an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things.”41
1 Marx and Markets
To make the case that Marx accepts social democracy, it must be shown that he accepts markets. But that presents something of a problem because markets produce fetishism.
Markets and Fetishism
In the first chapter of Volume I of Capital (hereafter Capital Ch1), Marx discusses alienation in exchange—or what he now calls fetishism. He claims that in any developed market economy, for any product to be realized as a use value (reach the consumer and satisfy a human need), it must first appear as an exchange value. The only way individuals can get the products they need is to buy them on the market. In such an economy, things are produced by producers as exchange values—produced to be sold to bring a profit. The producer is not interested in wearing the shoes (using them as use values); the producer wants to sell the shoes (and realize exchange value). This makes the realm of exchange value the realm of primary importance and it leads to alienation or fetishism.1
What is fetishism? In Capital Ch1, Marx says that what are actually relations between persons (relations between workers producing their products) come to appear as relations between things (relations between commodities on a market). Individual producers working independently first come into social contact only when they get to market.2 They put their products on the market, and independent, autonomous market laws (relations
Marx, Revolution, and Social Democracy. Philip J. Kain, Oxford University Press. © Oxford University Press 2023. DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780197667187.003.0002
between products) set in. These market laws are neither understood nor controlled by the individuals. And these individuals come to be dominated by these impersonal, independent market laws—these relations between things. As Marx puts it, “their own social action takes the form of the action of objects, which rule the producers instead of being ruled by them.”3
Later, in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, Engels describes it as follows:
every society, based upon the production of commodities, has this peculiarity: that the producers have lost control over their own social inter-relations . . . . Anarchy reigns in socialized production.
But the production of commodities, like every other form of production, has its peculiar, inherent laws inseparable from it; and these laws work, despite anarchy, in and through anarchy. They reveal themselves in the only persistent form of social interchange, i.e., in exchange, and here they affect the individual producers as compulsory laws of competition. They are, at first, unknown to these producers themselves, and have to be discovered by them gradually and as the result of experience. They work themselves out, therefore, independently of the producers, and in antagonism to them, as inexorable natural laws of their particular form of production. The product governs the producers.4
In other words, interaction between individuals gives rise to a realm of things that takes on an independent life of its own and comes to dominate those individuals. Such domination is especially obvious in economic crises but is also going on less visibly at all times. Capitalists argue that markets are a realm of freedom, where you choose to buy what you want, and where consumer demand will cause producers to compete to produce what you want. For Marx, markets are not free. They are highly coercive, but they hide that coerciveness.
For example, education and medical care are goods available on the market—goods freely available to all. Just put down your money and they are yours. And you are free to choose between this or that school and this or that hospital. But if market forces that you do not understand drive the costs of this college or that hospital, or of all colleges and all hospitals, up, or if market forces drive the income of certain groups down, which the market can do drastically and visibly in crises, but which it is doing less drastically and less visibly at all times, well, what can you do? No one can control the market, you say. You just accept it and think you are still free. But you are not free in Marx’s opinion. Certainly not if it is possible to control the market so these things do not occur. And Marx thinks that is possible—as do socialists and social democrats.5
At any rate, the point here is that the market looks perfectly free. It is not easy to see how it coerces you. It is not easy to see that fetishism is present. But it very definitely does coerce you and fetishism is very definitely present. Moreover, fetishism occurs not merely for the worker, but also for the capitalist. The individual capitalist does not control the market any more than anyone else, although the capitalist is not likely to suffer from it as much as the worker.
Thus, the argument of Capital Ch1, so far, has been that if there is market exchange, there will be fetishism. And in earlier writings, as far back as 1844, although he did not use the term “fetishism,” Marx held the same sort of view—that market exchange produces alienation or estrangement.6 In the “Comments on James Mill” of 1844, Marx wrote that market exchange:
is the abstract relationship of private property to private property . . . . Since men engaged in exchange do not relate to each other as men, things lose the significance of human, personal property. The social relationship of private property to private property is already a relationship in which private property is estranged from itself . . . . [M]en create, produce, the human community, the
social entity . . . but as long as man does not recognize himself as man, and therefore has not organized the world in a human way, this community appears in the form of estrangement . . . his activity therefore appears to him as a torment, his own creation as an alien power, . . . his power over an object as the power of the object over him, and he himself, the lord of his creation, as the servant of this creation . . . . That is to say, our own product has risen up against us; it seemed to be our property, but in fact we are its property.7
In the German Ideology of 1845–1846, similarly, Marx wrote that:
man’s own deed becomes an alien power opposed to him, which enslaves him instead of being controlled by him . . . . This fixation of social activity, this consolidation of what we ourselves produce into a material power above us, growing out of our control, thwarting our expectations, bringing to naught our calculations, is one of the chief factors in historical development up till now. The social power, i.e., the multiplied productive force, which arises through the co-operation of different individuals . . . appears to these individuals, since their co-operation is not voluntary but has come about naturally, not as their own united power, but as an alien force existing outside them, of the origin and goal of which they are ignorant, which they thus are no longer able to control, which on the contrary passes through a particular series of phases and stages independent of the will and action of man, nay even being the prime governor of these.8
In 1859, Marx sums this up succinctly in A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy:
A social relation of production appears as something existing apart from individual human beings, and the distinctive relations into which they enter in the course of production in society
