Red Diaper Babies

[Bourgeois] Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be affected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.

Bourgeois Socialism attains adequate expression when, and only when, it becomes a mere figure of speech.Free trade: for the benefit of the working class. 

Protective duties: for the benefit of the working class. Prison Reform: for the benefit of the working class. This is the last word and the only seriously meant word of bourgeois socialism.

It is summed up in the phrase: the bourgeois is a bourgeois — for the benefit of the working class.

-Marx, The Manifesto of the Communist Party

In her review for Jacobin of Thomas Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century, entitled Why We’re Marxists, Professor Nivedita Majumdar identifies two of the right’s pet dismissals when confronted with irrefutable evidence of the severe and growing inequality that Capitalism has wrought. The first, and the one that has historically done the most work for them, is that inequality is actually good because it's fair. “Greed is good."

When this is demonstrated to be undeniably false, as Piketty does in his book, reactionaries fall back to their second line of defense, a little nugget of wisdom we all learn in Kindergarten: money doesn’t make you happy. I mean, haven’t you seen A Christmas Carol? It’s a Wonderful Life?

To illustrate this second brush off, Majumdar references conservative columnist and perennial dullard Megan McArdle's claim that

,‘...the proportion of this unhappiness due to income inequality is actually relatively small.’ Instead, McArdle contends in her review of Piketty’s book — which she admits to not have read — that what is needed ‘is the sense that you can plan for a decent life filled with love and joy and friendship, then send your children on to a life at least as secure and well-provisioned as your own.’

This is on-brand for McArdle, who likes to beguile you with trite sentimentalities in order to obscure whatever obscenity she's justifying; Megan is the type to hang a “Laugh, Love, Live” sign on an Auschwitz guard tower. And let's face it, this is more than a little self-serving for millionaire Washington Post columnist who, last I checked, has not tossed out her vast fortune because it doesn’t “spark joy.” In other words, McArdle probably doesn’t believe this, but maybe we should, and Majumdar is correct to caution the Left against being too hastily dismissive:

“The reason arguments disavowing the connection between money and happiness have such a lasting appeal is because there is a kernel of truth to them. The realization of human potential and happiness is much more intricately connected with creativity, art, science, myriad cultural practices, and forms of solidarity and community rather than materiality.”

And, she points out, Marx would absolutely agree.

But then Majumdar does something odd; she tries to smuggle in the importance of “materiality” anyway. Her argument is that McArdle and her ilk are correct, not because happiness is derived from wealth in and of itself, but to the extent that “material well-being” brings about the conditions for human fulfillment (or is at least it’s minimum requirement). This is strikingly banal; I suspect that even McArdle is aware that we’re not seeking wealth redistribution because we like the smell of the dollar bills themselves. Majumdar goes on to say,

“The moral power of Marx’s work doesn’t just derive from its systematic demystification of capitalism; it also flows from his insistence that capitalism cannot generate the conditions for human flourishing. He never equated material well-being with happiness, but he knew that there can be no happiness without material well-being…. The crime of capitalism is that it forces the vast majority of the population to remain preoccupied with basic concerns of nutrition, housing, health, and skill acquisition. It leaves little time for fostering the community and creativity that humans crave.”

Did you catch that? Majumdar seems to be suggesting that Capitalism cannot generate the conditions for human flourishing because it can’t provide material well-being, which of course it can and does, just not for most workers. And those workers that are not provided with material well-being are therefore too preoccupied with survival to do any of the things which lead to genuine happiness.

This simply does not suffice as a complete explanation for why Capitalism causes widespread unhappiness (which it does). A preoccupation with survival is, to some extent or another, an immovable part of the human condition.

Marx identifies two primary dialectical relationships which propel human history forward: man vs man, and man vs nature. The temporary conflict of man vs man is understood to be a function of class relations to the means of production and is expressed through class struggle, but once this conflict is resolved (through a communist revolution), man vs nature will persist. The synthesis of that conflict (dialect) will continue to dictate humanity’s standard of living, probably for all time. This is why we can easily imagine that human beings, before the rise of classes and after their abolition, would still be spending a great deal of time and effort on survival, perhaps for short periods of time (famine, natural disaster) or perhaps for whole generations (ice age, infectious disease). Even so, I’m willing to bet that most people were a lot “happier” before the rise of agriculture and class-based society, the period Marxists often refer to as “primitive communism.”

Mujamdar hastily adds that the injustice in all this is that we as a species actually do produce more than enough to “ensure basic material satisfaction for all,” and this is true, but what she’s not claiming that the injustice itself is what is making people unhappy, but it’s consequence: material deprivation, and the preoccupation on survival that it entails. 

This is all highly politically convenient for anyone straining to see salvation in the likes of the DSA and other reformist “socialist” organizations which pursue what Marx called Bourgeois Socialism, which seek to address the excesses of Capitalism without directly addressing Capitalist social relations. That’s what programs like single-payer healthcare and free college are to Bourgeois Socialists, methods of wielding class exploitation for the proletariat; not battles in the war to end society’s domination by the owning class, but an ends in and of themselves, a way of providing working with a lifestyle more akin to the Bourgeoisie, in particular the Petty Bourgeoisie, who generally have access to healthcare, education, housing, retirement, culture, science, etc.

Lenin: 

The petty-bourgeois democrats, those sham socialists who replaced the class struggle by dreams of class harmony, even pictured the socialist transformation in a dreamy fashion — not as the overthrow of the rule of the exploiting class, but as the peaceful submission of the minority to the majority which has become aware of its aims. This petty-bourgeois utopia, which is inseparable from the idea of the state being above classes, led in practice to the betrayal of the interests of the working classes, as was shown, for example, by the history of the French revolutions of 1848 and 1871, and by the experience of “socialist” participation in bourgeois Cabinets in Britain, France, Italy and other countries at the turn of the century.

-The State and Revolution

Just as “the bourgeoisie naturally conceives the world in which it is supreme to be the best,” (Marx), it also conceives of it’s way of being in the world, though mutable and dependent, to be an ideal to which every other class aspires. On the other hand, workers naturally conceive of different aspirations--especially collectivism--grounded in their own experience of reality, but are prevented from realizing those aspirations by that reality. The laundering of bourgeois values and lifestyles through it’s media, universities, political parties, etc., distorts our ideas about ourselves, what we want, and how to get it. Naturally, this can similarly distort our politics, particularly in the arena of reform struggles, where the revolutionary nature of the working class can become secondary to immediate, temporary gains. The political project of committed reformers can be summarized as an effort to make the proletariat more like the bourgeoisie, or, as Marx put it, “They wish for a bourgeoisie without a proletariat.” In America, the net result is a cultural obsession with the Petty Bourgeoisie, that class that Bourgeois politicians (usually) mean by “middle class,” people who must work but also meaningfully supplement their income through investments. We hate the Petty Bourgeoisie and we want to be the Petty Bourgeoisie, and this is no accident.

If our political project is primarily about transforming workers into the Petty Bourgeoisie through state intervention, it begs the questions, are the Petty Bourgeoisie actually happy? 

Now, it won’t do to get too ahead of ourselves. By and large, the Petty Bourgeoisie are happier, and much of that has to do with lower levels of stress and instability, higher career attainment, more free time, financial and employment security, etc. But this does not mean they flourish in the way Marx was talking about; it won't surprise anyone who has spent much time around the Petty Bourgeoisie that they are often miserable, self-conscious, restless, guilt ridden, petty, and desperate for purpose. Substance abuse and depression are common. This is not a case for pity, but a cautionary tale; ascension into the Petty Bourgeoisie, if it were possible for all workers--it's not--may not be all it's cracked up to be.

An overworked and under rewarded Proletariat is certainly a crime of Capitalism, but it is not the crime. The crime is wage slavery for the purposes of commodity production. The crime is that there is a Proletariat at all (and a Petty Bourgeoisie, and the Bourgeoisie above them). Once you grasp this, it becomes clear that Majumdar’s argument is akin to claiming that chattel slaves would have been "happy" with their social position if only they’d been given more free time, a college education, and enough food to eat. Such a thing would never happen, but if it did, it wouldn't even come close to redressing the wrong done. Astoundingly, it seems that Megan McArdle, who is very dumb, nonetheless grasps something that Majumdar, who is not dumb, does not: human happiness, or contentment, or fulfillment, or whatever, actually is compatible with struggle, even material deprivation. Human happiness may even be contingent on struggle, just not the sorts of struggles that Capitalism mires us in. The fact of the matter is, Capitalism cannot generate the conditions for human flourishing, whether or not it provides material well-being, because all material well-being under Capitalism is predicated on the exploitation of labor, drags all classes down with false consciousness, and torments us all with alienation.

Picture Tatiana, a middle-aged pharmacologist who, 15 years ago, pursued her advanced degree in the hopes of making good money, sure, but also because she wanted to make a contribution to society; namely, the eradication of some terrible disease. Unfortunately she discovered that getting adequately paid to pursue her deeply motivating and personal goal was a lot more difficult than she expected. After some valiant attempts to keep the dream alive, she now finds herself resigned to a Big Pharma firm, researching boner pills for a six figure salary that supports the kind of lifestyle that is unburdened from the material deprivations of her youth. Between the salaries commanded by herself and her handsomely paid lawyer husband, the family has more than enough income and paid time off to travel, paint, attend ballets, read poetry, etc. Tatiana tries to remain up on the scientific literature in her field, teaches classical singing to her children, and volunteers on the weekends at her church. 

And yet, Tatianna is deeply depressed all the same.

She finds her relationships with friends superficial and competitive; her relatively modest wealth embarrassing and gaudy; her marriage contentious and unsatisfactory, punctuated by shouting matches about domestic labor and anxieties about childrearing and the future; even in her volunteer work she can’t seem to wash off the stink of social division as she, the giver, provides the meals, and the receivers, the desperate people who file through the soup kitchen, wordlessly accept what she gives. She craves a more intimate connection but cannot see any way of achieving it. 

And the job. Most of all, there’s the job; the lonely, soul crushing, purposeless job, with it’s needy subordinates, backstabbing peers, soulless and sleazy corporate execs, and the hours upon hours--easily over fifty a week--of tedium and wasted potential, all to produce a cheaper version of a largely pointless drug in order to pad the profit margins of the company’s shareholders. Tatianna doesn't choose what she's working on or why. She doesn't produce for the good of society, or because it fulfills her desire for a creative, productive outlet, or because her community thrives from her contribution. She's at the mercy of the market, even at her privileged position. Despite some fruitful mutual fund investments, she is, like nearly everyone, forced to participate in commodity production in order to survive. Single-payer healthcare, a higher minimum wage, free college, guaranteed housing, UBI; these things would solve a lot of problems for a lot of people, but it won’t fix the ills that haunt Tatiana.

Now imagine Tatiana in an entirely different context, where wage slavery has not been "perfected" but abolished, and, freed from the shackles of commodity production, she is no longer alienated from the fruits of her labor or from the members of her community. Her family lives modestly, but is secure in their interdependence on the rest of society; they will be taken care of if the need arises, just as they take care of those that require it now. She has no need to concern herself with retirement investments, college admissions, keeping her Linkedin up to date, etc. Sometimes she spends the day pursuing pharmacological research at a co-op, engaged in the difficult task of mutual accountability and democratic decision making. Sometimes, when the need arises, she agrees to work long nursing shifts at the hospital, returning home tired and drained but confident that her labor saved lives. Sometimes she spends the whole day teaching music to her children, and maybe the neighbors' children, too, with no concern that she will be fired for taking the day off, or become unable to make her mortgage payments due to lost income, or that she will miss out on a promotion for lack of dedication to the company. She has many friends who have diverse interests and passions, none of whom are any better off or worse off than she; none of whom are any more or less essential, more or less valued, none of whom have social/cultural/racial/economic power over her, or vice versa. And the husband? Maybe the lack of stress and the equitable expectations of domestic labor prevented the deterioration of their relationship. Maybe they were good friends who had children together but never felt compelled--socially or financially--to embark on a relational form that was a bad fit for both of them. And maybe she ditched him a while back because, after all, her life is not dependent on their shared finances, and now she finds that they're both much happier co-parenting and casually dating other people.