So we are speaking here of the actions of a majority, not of a small bunch of rebels. Since socialism is about popular self-government, nobody can make a socialist revolution on your behalf, just as nobody can become an expert poker player on your behalf. As C.K. Chesterton writes, such popular self-determination is a "thing analogous to writing one's own love letters or blowing one's nose. These are things we want a man to do for himself, even if he does them badly." (p.188)
In this sense, Marx was more of an antiphilosopher than a philosopher. In fact, Etienne Balibar has called him 'perhaps...the greatest antiphilosopher of the modern age.' Antiphilosophers are those who are wary of philosophy--not just in the sense that Brad Pitt might be, but nervous of it for philosophically interesting reasons. They tend to come up with ideas that are suspicious of ideas; and though they are for the most part entirely rational, they tend not to believe that reason is what it all comes down to (pp.130-31)
Think of contemporary capitalism, in which the commodity form has left its grubby thumbprints on everything from sport to sexuality, from how best to swing oneself a front-row seat in heaven to the earth-shattering tones in which U.S. television reporters hope to seize the viewer's attention for the sake of the advertisers. The most compelling confirmation of Marx's theory of history is late capitalist society. There is a sense in which his case is becoming truer as time passes. It is capitalism, not Marxism, which is economically reductionist (pp. 115-16)
Tribal societies have their fair share of violence, rivalry and hunger for power, but these things cannot take the form of imperial warfare, free-market competition or mass unemployment, because such institutions do not exist among the Nuer or the Dinka. There are villains everywhere you look, but only some of these moral ruffians are so placed as to be able to steal pension funds or pump the media full of lying political propaganda. Most gangsters are not in a position to do so. Instead, they have to content themselves with hanging people from meat hooks. In a socialist society, nobody would be in a position to do so. This is not because they are too saintly, but because there would be no private pension funds or privately owned media. Shakespeare's villains had to find outlets for their wickedness other than firing missiles at Palestinian refugees. You cannot be a bullying industrial magnate if there isn't any industry around. You just have to settle for bullying slaves, courtiers or your Neolithic workmates instead. (pp. 89-90)
In a similar way, it does not matter if I regard my work as a biochemist emplyed by a private pharmaceutical company as a glorious contribution to the advance of science and the progress of humanity. The fact remains that the main point of my work is to create profit for a bunch of unscrupulous sharks who would probably charge their own toddlers ten dollars for an aspirin. What I feel is neither here nor there. The meaning of my work is determined by the institution. (p. 89)
Starting from where we are may not sound like the best recipe for political transformation. The present seems more an obstacle to such change than an occasion for it. As the stereotypically thick-headed Irishman remarked when asked the way to the railway station: 'Well, I wouldn't start from here.' The comment is not as illogical as some might think, which is also true of the Irish. It means 'You'd get there quicker and more directly if you weren't starting from this awkward, out-of-the-way spot.' Socialists today might well sympathise with this sentiment. One could imagine the proverbial Irishman surveying Russia after the Bolshevik revolution, about to embark on the task of building socialism in a beseiged, isolated, semidestitute country, and remarking: 'Well, I wouldn't start from here.' (pp. 70-71)
Marxists want nothing more than to stop being Marxists. In this respect, being a Marxist is nothing like being a Buddhist or a billionaire. It is more like being a medic. Medics are perverse, self-thwarting creatures who do themselves out of a job by curing patients who then no longer need them (p. 1)
The liberal state is neutral between capitalism and its critics until the critics look like they're winning. Then it moves in with its water hoses and paramilitary squads, and if these fail with its tanks. Nobody doubts that the state can be violent. It is just that Marx gives a new kind of answer to the question of who the violence ultimately serves. (pp. 197-98)
There are times when the possessing class directly runs the state. George Bush and his fellow oilmen were a case in point. One of Bush's most remarkable achievements, in other words, was to prove vulgar Marxism right. He also seems to have worked hard to make the capitalist system appear in the worst possible light, another fact which makes one wonder whether he was secretly working for the North Koreans. (p. 206)
Unlike a great many liberals, Marx was not allergic to power as such. It is scarcely in the interests of the powerless to be told that all power is distasteful, not least by those who already have enough of the stuff to spare. Those to whom the word 'power' always has a derogatory ring are fortunate indeed. Power in the cause of human emancipation is not to be confused with tyranny. The slogan 'Black Power!' is a lot less feeble than the cry 'Down with Power!' We would only know that such power was truly emancipatory, however, if it managed to trnasform not only the present political set-up, but the very meaning of power itself. (p.207)
