(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Since the fall of the wall in 1989, Marxism has lain dormant as a theoretical approach to society and as a practical policy formulation. Instead, neoliberalism has established itself as the prevailing ideology and guideline in economic policy – with global reach. Other traditions, such as social democracy, have been significantly weakened since the 1980s, although we have witnessed an offensive with the idea of the "third way" in England, and the Social Democrats have also been in government on the continent. Nevertheless, this has not led to a fundamental settlement with neoliberalism, it is rather the case that social democracy has had to adapt to neoliberalism.
One question I raise in this article is whether the thoughts and theories of Karl Marx can nevertheless have significant relevance in today's global situation. I am not concentrating here on Marxism as a theoretical tradition, there are still a number of directions that are alive. Let us rather return to the originator, Marx himself, and take a closer look at his thoughts on the capitalist system. My contention is that this is far from outdated thinking. I believe that an undogmatic relationship with Marx's works can provide important perspectives on today
capitalism.
Alienation
Marx's first writings were about alienation, in what is called the early Marx's political-philosophical writings or the Paris manuscripts. Here Marx focuses on man's need to fully realize himself through work as a business. Work is what shapes man. Later, Marx also focused on the alienation in the work Capital. It is when the work activity is distorted through the factory work, when the worker
only becomes a part-worker in a larger whole and gets no relation to its own product, that the alienation occurs. Later, others have taken up Marx's concept of materialization, including the Hungarian Georg Luckacs, who sees capitalism as an economic system that creates materialized relationships between people also outside the sphere of production.
I think the idea of alienation and realization is also of great relevance in relation to today's modern (or postmodern) Western society. More than ever, the labor force today has become a commodity, and people are going out and entering jobs more often than before, and do not have the same affiliation with the business. Some have admittedly had greater opportunities for self-expression through their work, for example many academics, but many still struggle with relatively uninteresting, monotonous or one-sided work.
Consumer Society
We could also focus on today's consumer society and, for example, look at the social activity in our many shopping malls. These are increasingly dominating the social life of many towns and cities, they are based only on consumption, and have displaced past meeting places, where there was room for public exchange of views and dialogues. If you take a walk on a Saturday in such a mall, you are drawn into a myriad of people, sound, light and impression, and I can hardly imagine a concept that describes this better than that of alienation. Marx was concerned about the alienation associated with the business of capital. He was naturally concerned about industrial capital and not consumer capital, but it is clear that the link between capital and alienation is also relevant today.
Added value and dividends
We could go further in Marx's studies in Capital and his masterful descriptions of the relationship between the use value of the commodity and the exchange value in the first book. A main point of Marx's is that labor is a special commodity that produces a greater (exchange value) than is needed to restore (reproduce) it. Thus a surplus value is produced which accrues to the capitalist and on which the whole capitalist system is based. Marx called this the exploitation of capital by the workers. If we broaden the perspective of global capitalism, there is little doubt that large-scale economic exploitation of workers is taking place today, through the use of cheap labor by multinational corporations in developing countries. This exploitation does not lag behind what was the situation in the emerging capitalism of Marx's own time.
Intrinsic to capitalism, there is also an accumulation pressure, Marx describes in Capital, how the system must constantly generate new added value in order to survive. This creates a strong competitive pressure and cyclical ups and downs, with recurring economic crises. It is clear that this system has a strong dynamic, and one aspect of capitalism is that it can generate increased economic prosperity. Marx was also aware of these aspects of capitalism and saw it as important to further develop this in a communist society.
Sprawling capitalism
Today, however, it is more than clear that competitive pressure creates major problems. It has given us a harder working life with massive expulsion of those who do not cope with the pressure, it has caused great social inequalities globally, and over time major ecological problems (which Marx was not concerned with at the time). The system works without any overall plan or goal, the driving force is the profit maximization of the individual business, although one might say that the welfare states have set a goal for the system; economic growth provides higher material prosperity for more and more people. Yet there is cause for concern, the neoliberal variant of capitalism is "wild-growing", without direction, and unless significant regulations are put in place on a global scale, it is not certain that Marx's claim of capitalism's inherent movement towards collapse is so ueffen.
This claim or thesis was based on the European capitalism of the 1800 century, and many have overlooked Marx on this point. They have shown that capitalism has just mastered its crises and secured the working class a great growth in prosperity. And, this is right, here Marx was wrong, but, as I said, looking at today's global situation, the picture may be different. Many here also believe that capitalism, with its great innovative potential, will avoid such a fate; it remains to be seen.
Historical materialism
Finally, I would like to highlight Marx's famous theory of history, about historical materialism. In short, it is that the material, technological and economic conditions are the innermost driving forces in the development of history, while political, religious and ideological conditions (the superstructure) play a secondary role. This has been interpreted by many as a form of reductionism, that everything boils down to the movements of the economy. This was not Marx's point of view, for him it was an interplay, although the economy was ultimately crucial.
It is asked whether historical materialism can still prove viable. There are hardly any factors that provide greater dynamism than the link between an expansive technological development and an aggressive neoliberal variant of the market economy. We see, for example, how the nation states have to report passports in attempts to control the market economy, how consumer capitalism produces new lifestyles, ways of life, ways of thinking, and so on.
The last plug
All in all, this should indicate that Marx is not without significance today. As the neoliberal hallelujah mood gradually subsides, and the major problem complexes such as the global class divide, poverty, health problems, ecological crises, and alienation become serious, it may be possible for Marx to take the final step anyway.
