Another Round on the Marx Carousel

In the LA Review of Books, an argument that Marx is newly important to America. It begins with the argument that he has already been good for America, even great for it, by rooting opposition to slavery.

Slavery in the United States had a clarifying effect on Marx’s thought concerning where value comes from. Marx famously declared that “labor in the white skin can never free itself as long as labor in the black skin is branded,” because they are the same. Labor is labor, and this remains one of the most important philosophical observations of the last couple centuries....

He disagreed with all impositions on free labor, especially literal shackles. Marx’s abolitionist zeal was a moral position, consistent with his hatred of most forms of hierarchy.... [an] important fact about the early history of Marx in America is that he was known as a popular rabble-rouser among immigrants—the first wave of Marxism in the United States consisted of German “forty-eighter” revolutionaries, who wanted to tear down the European monarchies and dethrone the medieval archbishops but ended up exiled to the New World after the 1848 revolutions, arriving just in time to help decapitate the Slave Power.

It used to be that everyone knew that the core of the abolitionist movement in America was evangelical Christianity's Great Awakening, bolstering an extant Christian abolitionism that was rooted in Quakers like Betsy Ross. Marx may also have been opposed to slavery; good for him, for although more people have been enslaved in his name than freed by it, the actions of subsequent Communists are not his fault. Still, the effect of Marxism on American abolitionism was surely trivial by comparison to the effect of Christian principles.

The author isn't bothered by that, but instead looks forward to an exciting future of youthful Marxism. 

And yet, there is hope in the fourth boom. Hartman, a professor of history at Illinois State University, is one of the rare Gen X Marxists, pilled by the revolutionary politics of rock band Rage Against the Machine.... According to him, “Marx has remained relevant in the United States across more than 150 years because he suggested an alternative perspective on freedom. In a nation long obsessed with the concept, why were so many Americans relatively unfree?”

Young Americans are only being pushed harder by these entrenched historical pressures. Accelerationists argue that worsening material conditions will force people to confront these questions no matter what, and the Right has a clear and bloody answer: it’s also a hapless and stupid one that just so happens to protect power and wealth. The left has a better response, with a liberatory future to win, and it’s rooted in the work of a guy named Karl.

First of all, Rage Against the Machine are quite complete hypocrites, having ridden their vocal Marxism to tremendous capitalistic success and luxury. This seems to be fairly common among Marxists, a fact that ought to cause more thoughtful introspection among them. 

Second, it's remarkable to hear that "the Right has a clear and bloody answer" when the Marxist answer is literally violent revolution. C'mon. 

Finally, I do know some youthful Marxists. Their ideas seem to be inspired as much by Star Trek as by Das Capital. And I agree with them that far: if we can work out how to build the replicators, maybe we don't need money any more and everyone can just ask for what they want for free. Maybe; but show me a replicator first. Until then, it's just another Marxist fantasy: like Cuba was, like China was, like the once-glorious Soviet Union.