The part of my book that Harvey most appreciates is my discussion of “Marx’s
relation to Proudhon, Fourier, Saint-Simon and Robert Owen.” Harvey is
convinced by my argument against G.A. Cohen, who (along with many others)
stressed the continuity between this socialist tradition, with its emphasis on “equality
and social justice.” My challenge to Cohen insists that Marx was decisively
opposed to much of this tradition, which he regarded as moralistic and mistaken
about the operations of the capitalist economy. Although Harvey is appreciative
of this aspect of my argument, I am left a bit puzzled by his response to it,
for three reasons.
First, Harvey seems to skip right over the point of my argument. In his
words, I argue that Marx “reached back into an older aristocratic tradition of
republican governance as non-domination,” which “transformed by the experience
of capitalist industrialism, produced a unique Marxist political vision.”
Harvey asks, “If inequality and social justice are insufficient to the task of
defining a socialist alternative then what might replace it?” He then goes on
to talk about Owen and Saint-Simon on industrial administration, without even
pausing to consider the answer my book proposes (and that I think Marx
proposed): freedom. The “older
aristocratic tradition of republican governance” was not just older and not
just aristocratic. The republican concern with freedom from servitude and
domination ran through much of the radical, popular, and plebian politics of
the nineteenth century. It ran alongside the Rousseauvian concern with popular
sovereignty and the utilitarian concern with rational administration, even as
it clashed with these. It preached resistance to concentrations of power, and cooperative
and deliberative association. My book argues that Marx’s entire argument in Capital is oriented by this republican desire
for freedom from domination. And so I find it disconcerting that Harvey only
mentions freedom once in his entire review, and then only to ask why I don’t
talk more about the Jacobin tradition of republicanism, “which is very
different.” I will return to the Jacobins below. For now, let me just indicate
that my reconstruction of Marx’s republicanism resonates with some analyses on
the contemporary Left. Alex Gourevitch has argued – in Jacobin and elsewhere –
both for the historical credentials and the contemporary salience of “a vision of a society of equal freedom.” Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor has made a powerful argument for reviving the movement for Black liberation. Corey Robin has, for
several years now, called on the American Left to re-appropriate the politics of freedom from the Right. On my reading, Marx would agree with these calls.
Given that this is the orientation of my book, I am, therefore, also
puzzled by Harvey’s apparent attempt to rehabilitate the Saint-Simonians. Harvey
rightly claims that “Marx was reluctant to let go of the obvious enhancements
in labor productivity achieved under industrial capitalism.” He also rightly
notes that this reluctance was part of the basis for Marx’s appreciation of
Robert Owen. However, he then uses one of Engels’s footnotes in Volume Three to
bring in Saint-Simon, whom he reads as a harbinger of the joint-stock company,
which has the potential – “when democratized to include the ouvriers as well” – to provide “modes of
collective governance and administration” for the socialist future. I am
extremely skeptical that there is anything of value for the Left in the thought
of Saint-Simon. And, Engels’s footnote notwithstanding, there is no credible
evidence that Marx thought much of Saint-Simon’s schemes either. Engels always
had a soft spot for Saint-Simon, as I point out in my book, but Marx left no
record of sharing his friend’s high estimation. That Engels assures us, after
Marx’s death, that his friend had come around to Engels’s opinion is not very
credible evidence that Marx was “attracted” to Saint-Simon’s “mode of thought.”
For one thing, Saint-Simon was an authoritarian rationalist who dreamed only of
benevolent hierarchy and orderly improvement. Therefore, he was utterly allergic
to anything so disorderly as popular political movements or majoritarian
democracy or government from below. When Harvey seemingly identifies the
question of the socialist alternative with the question of how “to devise a
form of governance that will be consistent with the objective of the principle
of association [and] with the need to organize the macro-economy in productive
and constructive ways,” he frames the issue is a way that is very congenial to
Saint-Simon. I don’t see how it is congenial to a project of building a
political movement for universal emancipation, though.
Finally, there is the matter of the Jacobins. Harvey notes that my book “ignores
the Jacobin element” in the socialism of Marx’s day. This is basically right.
(The only caveat I will offer is that the British Jacobinism of Bronterre O’Brien
does appear in my story, if rather on the margins.) It is certainly right that
Auguste Blanqui and his followers play no role in my account of the argument of
Capital. On the one hand, Blanqui
produced almost nothing by way of theory, and what he did produce was not very
distinctive. Marx was concerned to close down Proudhonism and Saint-Simoneanism
within the socialist movement, since these were the two substantial bodies of
theory. Second, Blanquism was not a force to be reckoned with in the International
Working Men’s Association, which – I argue in the book – is the most relevant
context for situating Capital. There
was a migration of Blanquists into the IWMA after the Commune, but Marx hated
their conspiratorial methods and worked with his allies to shut them out. Third,
Marx’s relation to Blanquism has been exhaustively and authoritatively treated
in Richard N. Hunt's The Political Ideas
of Marx and Engels (an underappreciated and hard-to-find classic,
unfortunately); I saw no value in retreading that ground. Most importantly,
however, the French republican tradition, of which Blanqui is one offshoot, is,
as Harvey realizes, “very different” from the republican tradition that I think
influenced Marx. Rousseau had a massive influence on the French tradition, but
almost none on Marx (as David Leopold has shown). I simply see no signs of
Jacobin or Blanquist influence in Capital,
and Harvey does not point to any, either. If anyone else does, I would, of
course, be happy to revisit the question. But, in the absence of any such
indication, I am a bit baffled by the suggestion that I cannot pursue the
evidence that is in the text “without
first opening up the question of Jacobin republicanism.”
And so, to conclude, we seem to have come full circle. Harvey’s
overwhelming objection to my book is that it is a reading of Volume One. He
does not think that I can establish my interpretation of Volume One on the
basis of Volume One. And he argues against my interpretation, but not, for the
most part, on the basis of Volume One. This result suggests to me that I am onto
something. As I write in the introduction to Marx’s Inferno,
Marx undoubtedly thought of Capital as his chef d’oeuvre. Throughout the twentieth century it was relatively neglected, for it was supposed to be the seat of the Marx we already knew from the proclamations of the Marxist parties. Hence, people who were attracted to Marx but repelled by the parties went looking for one “unknown Marx” or another, as new manuscripts became available. This process has certainly enriched our knowledge of Marx’s thought, but it has also produced the rather perverse situation in which Marx is better known for his unpublished jottings than for his major public intervention. Ironically, we never actually knew the Marx of Capital very well. It is a long and difficult book, lacking the programmatic clarity and generality of Engels’s late works. … Volume one of Capital—Marx’s only fully elaborated and published work of theory—ended up being largely neglected. And, so, I think it is important to go back to it, to read it carefully from beginning to end, and to do so without presuming that we know what we will find. (pp. 15-16)My hope is that my book might provoke exactly this sort of reading. If it does, then I am sure that people will encounter things that push against my interpretations, that suggest other interpretations, that open up onto other interlocutors. Until then, I am grateful to Professor Harvey for taking the time to read and respond to my book, but I remain unmoved by his objections.
