Born on 5 May 1818, Karl Marx became arguably one of the most important intellectual figures of the past 150 years. Loved and reviled in equal measure, the reactions that he provoked continue to influence the world. The ideology of Marxism has been used as a cloak of legitimacy by repressive and dictatorial regimes in China, the Soviet Union and pre-Cold War Eastern Europe. Meanwhile, anti-Marxism has served as a negative ideology for many reactionary intellectuals, who are far more certain about what they dislike than what they are actually for. Others, bereft of ideas that might have real relevance in the 21st century, dig out old Marxist texts in search of quotes that they might hurl at capitalist society. That so much political passion is still communicated through the image and words of Marx – by both the so-called left and the right – speaks to the singular influence of this radical intellectual.
Yet it is precisely because Marx has been turned into an ideological industry that it is difficult to assess his true intellectual legacy. Moreover, the linking of Marx with the ideology and movements that acted in the name of ‘Marxism’ confuses matters further. Far too many commentators cannot resist the temptation to read history backwards, and to attribute to Marx everything that has been said and done in his name. Just as a fatalistic, original-sin style teleology is used to blame the idea of the nation for the rise of people like Hitler, so Marx becomes the godfather of Stalin and Mao. Yet, as I have discussed in numerous essay over the years, what passes for Marxism is really a caricature of Marxism. Was it not Marx himself who said, ‘All that I know is that I am not a Marxist’?
It is still difficult to discuss the real role and contribution of Marx because so much of what is attributed to him actually comes from ‘Marxists’. I have always been struck by how much nonsense is attributed to Marx, and the casual manner in which people discuss his ideas without having studied or even read his theoretical works. Recently, I heard a Marxist academic hold forth on Marx’s theory of the false consciousness of the proletariat. When I told him that Marx never used this term, and that, moreover, this elitist notion is entirely alien to Marx’s work, he looked like a rabbit caught in the headlights. He, like thousands of so-called Marxist intellectuals, had never bothered to discover what Marx actually said on this and other matters.
It is very easy to misinterpret Marx’s philosophy if one simply relies on his interpreters. Some of the most widely discussed ‘Marxist’ concepts do not actually have their origins in Marx’s intellectual work. For example, there is this idea that Marx represents ‘the social’, whereas other thinkers are more interested in the individual. Yet such a counterposition between the individual and social is alien to Marx’s own thinking. Marx regarded the development of the self and the realisation of individual potential as the standard against which a society ought to be judged. Rightly or wrongly, Marx took the view that real individuality could not be realised within capitalist society. Indeed, his criticism of capitalism was in large part motivated by the importance he attached to the realisation of the individual self.