University of Chicago Press
Review by Brian Tanguay
As a very young man I attempted to read Capital by Karl Marx. Because I lacked the intellectual tools and experience of the world, the effort wasn’t fruitful. But over the following decades I would come across analysis and discussions of Marx hundreds of times. We are seven years removed from Marx’s two hundredth birthday and, as Andrew Hartman notes in his superb book, Karl Marx In America, the work of the German philosopher is undergoing a rebirth. Hartman refers to it as the fourth Marx boom.
Hartman writes clearly and makes Marx accessible by linking him with our history. If Americans are taught about Marx at all, it’s usually Marx as the philosopher whose theories underpinned the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, and totalitarianism rather than Marx who wrote the following in Capital: “People are only free if they have autonomy, over their lives, over their time, over their bodies.” Hartman effectively traces the reasons we associate Marx with tyranny rather than freedom. In the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, Marx enjoyed relative popularity, particularly among European immigrants who were more familiar with his ideas. Germans who settled in the upper midwest brought Marx with them. One of the most popular writers of that era, Jack London, traveled the country making speeches about Marx in front of large crowds. This was the Gilded Age, when ostentatious wealth was juxtaposed against abject poverty, and when the titans of capital deployed private security forces, like those from the Pinkerton Agency, to break labor strikes. If the Pinkertons failed to quell disruptions, state governors were quick to call in the national guard on behalf of capital interests.
I wasn’t aware that Marx wrote hundreds of articles about the Civil War for American periodicals, using his economic theories to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of the industrial north and the agrarian south, of free labor and slave labor. By the time America entered World War I, socialism had made political inroads in Minnesota and Wisconsin, as well as Oklahoma, where in 1914 socialist candidates won 175 state and local offices. Though the public was open to alternatives to capitalism, the socialist movement was slowed by war patriotism and anti-German sentiment. When the Socialist Party of America, led by Eugene V. Debs, refused to support the war in Europe, socialists were persecuted and Debs landed back in prison.
The political and labor unrest of the 1920s gave way to the Great Depression. As Hartman writes, “In the early years of the Great Depression, when capitalism crashed down on itself, more Americans than ever turned to Marx.” Well into the 1930s, Marx was hailed as a prophet and his theories informed parts of the New Deal recovery launched by Franklin D. Roosevelt. Hartman makes clear, however, that Roosevelt acted in the name of liberalism, not Marxism. Liberals sought to reform the economic system, to make it less unequal, while Marxists wanted to bring an end to capitalism itself.
Marx’s ideas, theories, and reputation suffered as the national security state grew after World War II; the Red Scare, the Cold War, and a general impression that Marx was no longer necessary. At this time, American labor unions were strong, manufacturing jobs were plentiful and wages were high, and capitalism seemed to be lifting the mass of Americans. As long as the economy continued growing, the working-class was generally satisfied. But even in a period marked by wide prosperity, cracks were beginning to show, economically and socially. Prosperity didn’t reign for all citizens, particularly black Americans. During the Civil Rights era Marx returned to the stage, this time as a humanist and liberator. Scholars, writers, and editors had kept Marx’s ideas alive, including a trio composed of Raya Dunayevskaya, C. L. R. James, and Grace Lee. About this period Hartman notes, “A line can be drawn connecting the civil rights movement to the emergence of a New Left, and even to the reemergence of American Marxism.” The nucleus of the New Left was found on college campuses, in the civil rights and anti-war movements.
According to Hartman, the most important lesson to take from Karl Marx’s long history in America is that power in a capitalist society flows from control over people who work at the point of production. This presents an unavoidable class conflict. He also notes that capitalism is not only hostile to individual freedom, but against reason as well. Capitalism’s relentless devotion to profit, to shareholder value, to the rights of owners, subordinates what society needs and wants, making it impossible to provide any social improvement that isn’t in lockstep with the profit motive. So, as Hartman argues, “We cannot universalize healthcare, we cannot wipe out homelessness, and we cannot ensure the planet remains inhabitable.”
The theories Marx promulgated during his consequential life have proved remarkably durable, providing people all over the globe an alternative way of understanding their place in the world. After all this time, Marx continues to give us a glimpse of a different future.
