Page 224 - DPOL201_WESTERN_POLITICAL_THOUGHT_ENGLISH

Western Political Thought

Notes 12.3 Assessment of Marx’s Predictions

Marx’s analysis of capitalism led him to predict the following :
1. The income gap between the capitalists and the workers would increase. More and more
independent producers would be forced down into the proletariat, leaving a few rich capitalists
and a mass of poor workers.
2. Workers’ wages, with short-lived expectations, would remain at a subsistence level.
3. The rate of profit would fall.
4. Capitalism would collapse because of its internal contradictions.
5. Proletarian revolutions would occur in the most industrially advanced countries.
Many (nearly all) of these predictions, did not come true as Marx failed to take into account the
changes within capitalism. He did not anticipate or comprehend its tremendous resilience. By the
late nineteenth century, capitalism stabilized itself. Historical developments did not validate many
of Marx’s observations, which became increasingly obsolete in the twentieth century. Besides
these, there was a basic error in the model which was that he failed to take cognizance of the fact
that “a hatred of capitalism need not lead to socialism” (as it could) “take other political directions”.
The operationalization of democracy, extensive social security cover and labour welfare laws had
improved the working conditions and the position of the working class. “The proletarian class no
longer exists in its previous stage. Workers have rights in developed countries, they are proprietors”.
In the 1890s, Bernstein rightly perceived that many of the Marxist predictions became obsolete. He
pointed out that the peasantry and the middle classes were not disappearing. Small business
organizations did not get eliminated, and the industrial working class was not becoming the
overwhelming majority of the population. Instead, the substantial portion of the population was
neither bourgeois nor proletarian. Rather, the middle class was on the increase. Among the members
of the working class, the rapid growth in membership and votes for social democratic parties did
not necessarily indicate any desire for Socialism. The workers voted and joined social democrats
for many reasons other than purely a commitment for Socialism. Bernstein also questioned the
capacity of the working class to assume control of the means of production.
Taking a cue from Webb, who had pointed out that the poor performance of the cooperative was
because of its democratic character on the one hand, and the need for functional differentiation
and hierarchy of authority on the other hand, Bernstein asserted the impossibility of the idea of
the manager being “the employee of those he manages, that he should be dependent for his
position on their favour and their bad temper”. Based on these observations, Bernstein pointed to
the lack of revolutionary ardour among the workers. Instead of analyzing the economic and
political implications of Revisionism, Vladimir Illyich Ulyanov Lenin (1870-1924) reiterated and
supported the Marxist critique of capitalism, which had lost its relevance by the end of the nineteenth
century, and more so by the beginning of the twentieth.
It would be tempting to denigrate the degeneration of the Marxist doctrine because the revolution
that Marx predicted occurred in a relatively backward country in Europe, with no prior tradition
of democracy. But it was equally true that there were no possibilities of a real Marxist revolution
in any of the advanced industrial democratic regions of Europe. “Marx’s economics has been
characterized as a reaction to the specific evils of the nineteenth century of capitalism”.
12.4 Analysis of the State

Marx critically dissected the Hegelian theory of the modern state and its institutions in his Critique
of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843). Hegel’s separation o f civil society and the state was only
relevant in his perception of a particular historical context. The state was not eternal. It would
eventually disappear. Marx was also critical of Hegel’s analysis of the state. The state was not, as

218 LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY