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Marx for a Post-Communist Era: On Poverty, Corruption and Banality (Ideas)

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Marx for a Post Communist Era relates central themes of Marx's work by exposing the reader to current issues of the capitalist system. Sullivan accurately introduces the historical works on Marx that would provide a good foundation for those unfamiliar with Marx as a philosopher. Sullivan addresses common misconceptions about Marx's relation to totalitarian regimes such as Russia and China. In doing so, he rediscovers Marx's relevant criticisms that can be leveled at our current economic system. Sullivan offers three barriers to Marx's conception of freedom that are linked to Capitalism.
Poverty illuminated capitalism's hand in perpetuating the disparity between capitalists and workers. It contains a lot of current, real world examples that help convey what Sullivan was trying to communicate.
Corruption showed how the conditions of poverty were perpetuated by corruption from leaders within bureaucracy. It also demonstrates the relative ineffectuality of mass protests on the grounds that it cannot bring about a change within the system and as a whole, only accomplishing the blocking of traffic.
Banality addressed the issue of what would happen if Marx's vision was actualized. It seems even if we get past the social restraints that poverty and corruption are, we are faced with this problem of banality. Our lives are still faced with inhibitors of true social value.

Few intellectual reckonings are more important than with Marxist thought in the post-Soviet era. Sullivan's work adds up to a solid contribution, but like many on the liberal-left, assumes that class negotiation can continue to forestall class war. Of course, decades of European social-democracy and American reformism lend tangible substance to that optimism. However, Sullivan's book was published in 2002, before the full effects of capital's counter-attack became so glaringly apparent.

It can now be argued that a renewed war on labor's living standards and international standing took shape with Reagan, accelerated with the Soviet demise, and has gone into overdrive with the Bush administration. The cumulative effects are apparent across the board, from declining real wages, to growing wealth disparities, to a disappearing middle-class. Moreover, how long European social democracy can resist these basically American trends is unclear. At the same time, France's Sarkoszy government looks to be the neo-liberal stalking horse on the continent.

Now, I'm not scholarly enough to know whether such trends refurbish classic Marxian themes like declining rate of profit or classic Leninist variants. What is apparent is that capital has been waging a one-sided war for several decades now, while working people cling to a social contract now in shreds, and that the only proposed alternative to capitalism's manifest failures is more capitalism.This historic rout would not have been possible without a corresponding decline of class consciouness and labor militancy traditionally supplied by Marxist agitation and socialist alternatives. And though Sullivan appears to have written off the Soviet experience as a complete failure, reassessment of their successes as well as failures is also in order.

It's telling that nowhere in his reconstruction does Sullivan mention a central Marxian contention, viz. Historical Materialism. That's understandable. Few would now believe that history is marching toward any inevitable future, given the complications of 20th century technology and environmental destruction. As a result, an unstoppable socialist triumph shapes up as a reflection of Marx's faith in Enlightenment ideals and a theoretical relic. Nonetheless, if class struggle fails to define history's course, it certainly lies at the heart of capitalist society. And Marxism's continuing relevance lies in the penetration beyond the nostrums of liberalism and democracy to the persistant realities of poverty and oppression at the heart of wage labor. The fact that such miseries are resurfacing in the metropole of Western capital implies the end of a reformist era and the necessity of renewed Marxist analysis. Sullivan should consider an updated new edition.