“So what is left of Marxism? It is still about expanding democracy, which is
still so fragile in much of the world. The utopian aspect of thinking beyond the
present – for all of the dangers associated with attempting to impose utopias -
at least arms us with a way to think critically about what needs to be changed.
… Without vision though, politics circles endlessly around its present conceptions. In the absence at the moment of a material force to assist us in a progressive direction, change happens, perhaps not in determined, predictable ways as he might have thought. But it happens,
and humans still make their own history even if not under circumstances chosen
by themselves.”
The original post is from the University of Michigan’s Ronald Suny (pointer via Mark Thoma).
For Marx, the working class or proletariat was the “material force” for change brought together firstly by its common labor and second by its tough working conditions. The creative class in reality is a far more universalizing force. Every single human being is creative – what everyone of us truly shares is not our physical labor but our innate creativity. The failure is not one of “material conditions” but of a left – and of so-called “progressive” politics that is bereft of vision and cannot see the reality right before their very eyes.
What would Marx say about that?
