Why is “Marxist” an insult?
- Posted by Paul Gowder on July 25th, 2008 filed in philosophy, politics
- 13 Comments »
Often, people in public life are “accused” of being Marxists, as if that’s some kind of discreditable quality. But why would it be discreditable? Marxism is, after all, a series of beliefs, not a behavior, and it’s fairly rare to think that someone’s beliefs alone are discreditable.
There are several ways in which a set of beliefs might be discreditable. The beliefs might be inherently wicked, as in racism, they might lead to wicked behavior, they might be held dishonestly or hypocritically, or they might be so obviously false as to be outside the range of reasonable debate, such that someone is blamably ignorant for believing them.
Running down the list:
- There seems to be nothing inherently wicked in Marxism. If Marxists are right, their beliefs would lead to better and happier lives for everyone, and, unlike racists, Marxist beliefs attribute nothing bad to any ascrptive class of people.
- There is no reason to believe that Marxism leads to wicked behavior. There are many people who are Marxists and have not done any more wicked acts than anyone else, and there’s little reason to believe that Marxism in general is more correlated with wickedness. While some Marxists believe in revolutionary change, and violent revolution is arguably wicked, revolutions have been conducted in support of many non-wicked political ideologies (consider the American and French revolutions — the latter, in particular, was extraordinarily bloody, but it hardly means that liberty, equality, and fraternity are discreditable). Likewise, some versions of traditional Marxist doctrine specifically counsel revolution, but many Marxists don’t believe in revolution — and if we can discredit contemporary holders of a belief system for the things written in its early texts, then I can show you some passages in the Bible that make Christians look pretty bad.
- There’s no reason to believe that Marxists in general hold their beliefs dishonestly or hypocritically. Surely, some do: there are rich Marxists who see no problem with their place at the top of the capitalist hierarchy. But there are hypocrites within all belief systems (again, I point to Christians). There’s no reason to believe the problem is more pronounced with Marxists than with anyone else.
- The falsity of the beliefs is perhaps the best shot for anti-Marxists. But this notion is flawed too. First, note that for Marxism to be discreditable, in our current social context, it would have to be extremely, flagrantly false. That is, ordinarily, we believe that people can hold some false belief systems without thereby being a bad person. For example, anyone who holds a religion ordinarily believes that those who hold other religions have a false belief (“many ways up the mountain” sort of beliefs excluded). But they don’t ordinarily thereby say that the others are bad for holding that belief — a Christian believes a Muslim has false beliefs but need not believe that the Muslim is a bad person or that calling someone a Muslim constitutes an insult. As an atheist, I believe all religions are false, but I don’t use religious labels as insults.
Rather, Marxism must not only be false, but also unreasonable — not something about which anyone who has basic powers of reason could disagree. Orin Kerr seemed to suggest something like that in comments to a Concurring Opinions post:
Beling a Marxist is a lot like believing George W. Bush is the greatest President in American history. Most people will think you’re out of touch, because they think all the evidence is to the contrary. On the other hand, there are pockets of true believers who insist the doubters are the ones who just don’t get it. As a result, whether it’s discreditable depends on which crowd you have in mind.
Is this true? First, we should recognize that Marxism is a pretty big tent. While Marx himself had many beliefs which are arguably false (like the theory of history — although it’s impossible to prove claims like that false [cf. Popper], I think we have good reason to believe it’s the case), many Marxists hold modified versions of Marxism, ones that are not tied to such strong empirical claims. Indeed, I think there are many normative Marxists, who take things like Marx’s idea of alienation as normative critiques of capitalist institutions as unjust (regardless of whether or not Marx himself could take alienation for a form of injustice — a topic of some debate). On this, I strongly recommend reading Patrick O’Donnell’s comments to the above-linked Concurring Opinions post, and also Joseph Slater’s. If that’s false (that is, if there’s no alienation, or if alienation isn’t a form of injustice), it’s not obvious. (I personally happen to think it’s true, though I wouldn’t call myself a Marxist.)
Second, even those beliefs, like the theory of history and the labor theory of value, that are more likely false are probably not any more seriously false than many religions. If it’s not discreditable to believe that Christ came back from the dead, or that he’ll come back again with a bunch of angels to duke it out with the devil, it’s surely not discreditable to believe that history is driven by changes in the mode of production and that the end result is some form of communism!
I see no other way to make Marxism discreditable. More often, “Marxist” seems to be nothing more than an insult meant to signify the object’s out-group status, an insult with no more content than “accusing” someone of being Mexican, or born out of wedlock, or Muslim. I conclude that when someone uses “Marxist” as an insult, the only person who is revealed as discreditable is the one uttering it.
July 25th, 2008 at 12:27 pm
There’s a form of political argument that consists entirely of trying to link your opponents to something bad. Ie, Obama knows Bill Ayers / Bill Ayers made bombs –> Obama is evil. Or: Fred is a Marxist / Marxists killed a lot of people –> Fred is evil. This is incredibly common, and sometimes it appears that our entire poltical discourse consists of games like this.
The reductio of this is Jonah Goldberg’s book Liberal Fascism, which actually tries to use the fact that Hitler was a vegetarian to somehow implicate people who shop at Whole Foods.
July 25th, 2008 at 5:37 pm
Hey Paul!
I found my way here from Leiter Reports, which is another way of saying — congrats on the new blog! Looks spiffy.
I’ve come at a good time, too, because this argument is near and dear to me (although it would be nearer and dearer if I were a straight-up Marxist, rather than a sympathetic reader).
Two questions immediately spring up in response to your title: what is the content of the “Marxism” in question and who is doing the insulting/who is being insulted? To take the second set of questions first: since you bring all this up in the context of a conversation with Orin Kerr at Concurring Opinions, I assume you don’t mean everyday sub-Marthyite conservative blog drivel about Obama being a “dirty Red” or something. Are you discounting these sorts of mundane uses out of hand? Do you mean only in an academic sense? If so, what other examples do you have? Which academics or otherwise “serious” thinkers (don’t want to be too elitist here) use “Marxist” as an insult?
As for the content issue, this is tricky, because if you throw historical materialism or the labor theory of value (this one is less important) out the window, you might have some sort of egalitarianism or “ideologiekritik” or something but it wouldn’t necessarily be Marxism. I say this because there very much still are people working in the historical materialist tradition, e.g. Chris Wickham (“Framing the Early Middle Ages”).
I am in complete agreement with you that it’s a shame that otherwise-thoughtful people summarily dismiss Marxism, presumably on grounds running something like, “Well, we know how THAT idea turned out.” It does a disservice to people who genuinely and, I would agree, reasonably advocated a certain form of analysis and who, let’s not forget, did a lot of really freaking great work with it. (Hobsbawm anyone? Is anyone really going to be so petty as to belittle his historiographic skill?)
(I should add that, of course, it doesn’t necessarily say anything in an idea’s favor that many people earnestly labored on behalf of it. Just because Thomas Aquinas was a genius it doesn’t make me any more receptive to Catholicism. However, this is because the very idea that a man might come back from the dead and judge all humanity is silly to me, probably irreversibly so, whereas the idea that ‘the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggle’ doesn’t contain the same element of patent falsity, i.e. it deserves in some degree my intellectual scrutiny.)
July 25th, 2008 at 5:43 pm
I might generously suggest that people who use Marxist as an epithet define that word in a more limited sense than you do. Rather than just broadly thinking that “Marx has some neat ideas” they would consider it to refer specifically to Marxist-Leninism or whatever, and to all the authoritarian unpleasantness thereof, which is easier to argue as being “flagrantly wrong.” Of course, there’s a problem of having their cake and eating it too, since by defining Marxism more narrowly, they limit their ability to legitimately claim that others are Marxists.
Alternatively, I think there’s a tendency of anti-Marxist thought which feels that belief in Marxism is inherently dangerous because of the whole idea of “useful idiots.” That is, the evil commies are out to get us, and even if you’re just a nice benign philosophical Marxist, you’re still a threat because when the commies roll in you won’t be on the right side. I wouldn’t agree with it, but it’s not the same thing as bigotry. Although there’s a really fine line between saying “If you like Marx, you’re helping the enemy” and saying the more xenophobic line of thinking you describe.
July 25th, 2008 at 6:31 pm
Hi Matt! Briefly (more later, I’m bit rushed at the moment), I’m thinking of something in between academics and the simian blogosphere. My sense is that one hears this sort of talk from “opinion-leaders” — the sort of folks who appear on the editorial pages, particularly of right-leaning publications.
As for throwing out historical materialism — I feel like there’s a sort of Marxism, or perhaps neo-Marxism, that’s different from simple egalitarianism, but doesn’t have the baggage of the theory of history. Or, that is, without the specifically teleological or predictive bits of the theory of history — for, as you rightly note, there’s a lot worth serious consideration in the class struggle analysis. Apart from that, I’d think that a sanitized kind of Marxism could definitely include alienation, as I mentioned, commodity fetishism, false consciousness/the analysis of ideology…
July 25th, 2008 at 7:23 pm
Hey Paul, good to hear from you. So, when you’ve got the time, you might ponder this one too: I can’t see how this —
“There seems to be nothing inherently wicked in Marxism. If Marxists are right, their beliefs would lead to better and happier lives for everyone”
doesn’t beg the question. Granted, you’ll find a few people who say Marxism sounds “good in theory, terrible in practice,” but many actually do have prima facie reasons for thinking Marxism wicked, e.g. godlessness, and, um, the abolition of private property . This really honestly sticks for some people, and not just libertarians.
Also, your choice of the word “wicked” is interesting, because in Federalist 10 Madison explicitly calls “a rage for paper money, for an abolition of debts, for an equal division of property” a “wicked project.”
July 25th, 2008 at 7:24 pm
God, I cannot do html italics right.
July 26th, 2008 at 12:07 am
Wicked on the scale of racism though? I can imagine that thinking the abolition of private property somewhat wicked is within the range of good-old “reasonable pluralism.” But not that wicked — one would have to be insane to think so.
And that’s the level of wickedness one needs, I think, to have one’s beliefs legitimately constitute an insult. Example: I think the death penalty is wicked. But “supporter of the death penalty” is no insult. “Racist” is.
July 26th, 2008 at 10:22 am
GOOD DAY, THIS IS KENDAL GOWDER. IF THIS IS PAUL FROM CHICAGO, HIT UP YOUR COUSIN gowder24@yahoo.com
February 5th, 2009 at 10:50 am
When the melting pot finally boils over, when the reckoning is at hand, you Marxists will be among the first to be lined up against a wall to receive your just desserts. Congratulations on your presidential victory, enjoy it while it lasts.
February 5th, 2009 at 10:54 am
Well Adam, we know why “idiot” is an insult.
February 12th, 2009 at 12:04 pm
[...] they don’t wish to speak to me. I’m pleased that so far this blog has only suffered one truly moronic comment, though a couple of others have come close, and never yet suffered any racism, etc. Dear [...]
October 15th, 2009 at 8:31 pm
It’s the communist and murders part. Marxist are by their very nature communist although not in the same way that Soviet Russia or China is. The classic Marxist believe is of Political Economics. That the class system and disproportionate wealth will lead individual’s to breaking down any system that does not evenly spread that wealth out.
The problem with communism at large though, is that it is also a stateless anarchic place, which is impossible. Anarchy only results in small warring city state. Humans can’t control themselves so well as to prevent war among bodies that will otherwise band together. Therefore it is also looked down upon for its notions of anarchy (which is different from soviet russia which still had a czar meaning it wasn’t anarchist in nature)
The next problem is allocation of wealth and resources. Communism can not work unless you are producing medicine, food, resources, tools, and comforts in excess of the entire worlds population. Meaning that unless you have enough resources to make enough of what everyone on the planet would want you still end up with a class and a necessary means of deciding how to allocate those resources so that people get what they want but will never need again. That would mean it would lead to its own form of disproportionate materialism.
Communism ‘is’ the most ideal state of existence in a ‘perfect’ world. We can get very close. We can supply necessary goods to people but will we completely make trade obsolete through the allocation of all the resources necessary to make it so? I highly doubt it. Even with total automation of every business and industry to produce 24 hours a day till the end of time it would still be difficult given the infinite scope of human wants, needs, times total number of the population.
Is it wrong to be marxist though? Is it wrong to be hopeful for a world where currency is obsolete and every one can get what they want without effort? Sure. I think that way. I think that would be a great world. A world where we’re free of labor. Free to explore the universe through science and imagination. Is it possible? No. And until that excess of resources is available in ten fold requirement of the population I will never be in support of actually implementing marxist theory.
August 7th, 2010 at 9:02 pm
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