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Summary: A superb introduction to Marx's thought
Comment: This is a remarkably clear introduction to the thought of Karl Marx. I was a little dubious when I picked it up (I read 3 or 4 of the Very Short Introduction books each year), since most of my knowledge of Singer is through his work either on Animal Ethics, Utilitarianism, or his critique of George W. Bush. In fact, I became a vegetarian 25 years ago after reading Singer and Gandhi at the same time. Marx, though, is a horse of a different color. I was simply not confident that he would write as well on the founder of Marxism as well as he did on practical ethics. If anything, he turned out to write even more clearly on Marx than anything else I've read.
The problem with Marx is that he wrote so much, much of it in advanced draft form, that one can extract several different Marx's from his pages. It isn't that he is inconsistent that his thinking is constantly in flux as he considers one or another aspect of the issues surrounding capitalism. There truly is no final version of Marx's thought, but rather interim versions. The various books and manuscripts almost serve as commentaries on the other books and manuscripts. The trick is to extract the core of what Marx thought without unduly distorting his work as a whole and without reducing him to a caricature. Singer does a great job of highlighting major themes and trends in Marx's thought while not losing the sense of the difficult of determining with finality precisely what Marx wrote.
The importance of a book like this cannot be overstressed. Anyone who knows anything at all about Marx knows that he would have been appalled at the Communist revolutions of the twentieth century. As Singer rightly points out, Marx would unquestionably have been a victim of one of the purges. Whatever complicity Marx had with the excesses of Lenin, Stalin, and Mao is tenuous and debatable (though given that all three cited Marx as their inspiration means that Marx's responsibility for what followed can be legitimately discussed, even if he is exonerated). Not everything he wrote about Capitalism (a term he invented) has proven to be true (though a great deal that he wrote remains shockingly relevant). Those who in 1989 delightedly proclaimed that history had refuted Marx got it all wrong. The fact is that all of us today, even political and economic conservatives, have had our consciousness completely altered by Marx. Nearly all history is done today with unexamined assumptions that we took from Marx. No one would undertake a study of any historical topic without a consideration of the socio-economic factors involved. Sociology, philosophy, political science, economics, and virtually every subject one can consider has been deeply informed by Marxist ideas. Those proclaiming Marx the loser in 1989 got it all wrong: he had won way before then. He has shaped the modern mind as fully as Freud, Martin Luther, Newton, or Darwin. We think through Marxist categories, even when we oppose him.
This is just one reason why it is so important to understand what he was about. There are many other very good elementary intros to Marx's thought. Robert Heilbroner's book on Marx is a great one. Ernest Mandel has an excellent short introduction to Marx's economic theory. But I would put Singer's book up there with those. If you are looking for a clear first introduction to Marx, you can do far worse than this.
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Summary: The Last Prophet?
Comment: Because I like short books, I have tried several of the "Very Short Introduction..." series. I have been unable to finish any of them.
But Peter Singer is a world famous thinker. He is probably best known for writing Animal Liberation, a book that jump started the animal rights movement (which I haven't read). I have read Singer's critique of George W Bush (The President of Good and Evil) and liked it well enough. So I felt Singer's study of Marx was worth giving the series another shot.
A discussion of as controversial a figure as Karl Marx should come with some forewarning to the reader about the pre-conceptions of the author. I came to Singer's book with a low opinion of the relevance of Marx's philosophy to our time, but with the understanding that Marx may have seemed more relevant to an earlier age. I have never read any Marx directly (and have no immediate intention of rectifying that gap in my education - one has only so much time but an endless supply of reading material), although I have probably encountered at least his major ideas in various forms.
Reading Singer's book, I came out even less impressed with Marxist thought than I was when I started. I always knew the Marxist project depended on the philosophy of G.W.F Hegel (1770--1831), but I was ignorant of the gory details. As it turns out, gory they are.
Hegel's philosophy was based on a quest by a metaphysical entity, Mind, to discover itself. This quest was the history of humankind, which Hegel, somewhat immodestly, thought culminated in himself. "When Mind, manifested in the mind of Hegel, grasps its own nature, the last stage of history has been reached." (p. 39)
Because this was absurd, some of Hegel's disciples tried to transform the Hegelian concept into something more palatable. History was still a quest, but not *that* kind of quest. For Marx "labor in the sense of free productive activity is the essence of human life." (pp. 35-36). In a capitalistic society, laborers produce what they are paid to produce, not what they want to produce. Consequentially, they are "alienated from the product of their own labor". Being alienated from the "essence of human life" is self evidently wrong, and so history is a quest of overcoming this alienation.
Because no matter how much you are being paid for your labor, you are still alienated from your essence by working for pay, the only solution, the inevitable solution, is the abolition of the Capitalistic order. History has "unconscious tool[s]... bringing about that revolution" (quotes on p. 56). "Communism . . . is the genuine resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man; it is the true resolution of the conflict between existence and essence, objectification and self affirmation, freedom and necessity, individual and species. It is the riddle of history solved and knows itself as this solution" (quoted on p. 37).
Why anyone who is not a thrall to Hegel's philosophy should think that history is a quest and that human life has an essence is a mystery to me. Once you remove the metaphysics, all Marx seems to be saying is that he does not approve of waged labor. Well, so what? Why should anyone care about the preferences of one nineteenth century German intellectual?
Singer's account attributes to Marx so problematic a view that I suspect Singer ma7y have missed something. According to Singer, Marx claimed that the gains of productivity are all accumulated to the Capitalist. When productivity rises (as with the invention of new labor saving technology), the same amount of inputs (and specifically labor) can produce higher outputs. Consequentially, there is a profit. According to Singer, Marx believed that competition between workers would drive down the wage they would receive to subsistence level - meaning that they gain nothing from the increase in productivity (because they would be paid the same wage - subsistence wage - whether there was a productivity increase or not).
But this clearly is not the end of the story. Just as competition between workers would reduce the gains from productivity increase to the laborer, so would competition between capitalists reduce their gains. The gains would pass on to the consumer. And as most consumers are workers, rather than Capitalists, the end benefactor is the proletariat.
The evidence is all around us. A century ago, a car was a luxury reserved for the richest of the rich. Today, a low wage worker in a middle income country can own a car that the millionaires of yesteryear could only dream of.
In the end, Singer tries to salvage Marx by emphasizing the parts of Marx's thought that are still worthwhile. There's not much. Marx argues that because in a capitalistic society everyone makes their own choices individually, the end result is a society that no one person would have chosen. Singer calls this a "penetrating insight" (p. 92). It is nothing of the sort. No society could ever be to everyone's tastes. Were it run by a dictator, society would be chosen by one person but not by everyone else; even a democratic society is chosen by a coalition of sections of the people - so it does not correspond exactly to anyone's tastes. And this is before we've mentioned the law of unintended consequences...
Marx's other "lasting contribution to modern thought" was "shatter[ing] the assumption that our intellectual and spiritual lives are entirely independent of our economic existence". I doubt such assumption was ever widely held, and anyway "his own view of human nature is false. Human nature is not as pliable as he believed." (pp. 93-94).
I suspect Marx's main achievements were rhetorical rather than intellectual. Again and again, Marx managed to shape public discourse not with his ideas, but with his rhetoric. Phrases like "religion is opium for the masses" and "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" are still quoted widely today. And of course, "workers of the world, unite" is a soaring call to arms.
In The Problematics of Moral and Legal Theory Judge Richard Posner distinguishes between academic philosophers and moral entrepreneurs. The latter influence not by tight reasoning and meeting academic standards, but by carrying out their message to the people. They agitate the masses, inflame emotion, rekindle the spirit. Perhaps Marx was not a philosopher, but a Prophet.
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Summary: Cute.
Comment: Cute little gem. Easy enough. A bit boring, but maybe that's Marx's fault and not Singer's. The last chapter is the best: a great overview of what Marx got right and what he got wrong.
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Summary: Recycled but good
Comment: The first thing that ought to be noted is that Peter Singer's contribution to the Very Short Introduction series is really a recycling of a volume he wrote way back in 1980 for the old Past Master's series. So far as I can tell, the only revision in the book is a few changes in tense to bring this edition beyond the collapse of the Soviet Union. It was something of a shock--or at least a surprise--to realize that what I thought was a new book was in fact an old one.
Notwithstanding, Singer's Marx is a very good introduction. After a brief biographical sketch of Marx--which dispels the myth of his living and dying in penury, by the way--Singer examines his early flirtation with Hegelianism, his reflections on alienation and history, and his political economy. It's in his discussion of the last two topics that Singer excels. I've found no better text for introducing concepts such as "species being" and "labor theory of value" to my undergraduate students. Singer returns to Marx's understanding of human nature and it's relationship to alienating modes of production in his final chapter, "Assessment," and concludes that human nature probably isn't as pliable as Marx supposed. But it's also clear that Singer is sympathetic with Marx's critique of capitalism.
A good introduction for absolute newcomers to Marx--which, these days, is probably everyone under 30.
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Summary: Publisher Notes:
Comment: The Past Masters Series is a concise, lucid , aythoritative introduction to the thought of leading intellectual figures of the past whose ideas still influence the way we think today. ... sees Marx as a philosopher, rather than as an economist or social scientis. ' an admirably balanced portrait of the man and his achievement' says Philip Toynbee, Observer.
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