Yea. It’s true. Whoda thunk it? And I didn’t even realize it until last week.
I know this seems kind of strange for someone who identifies their approach to economics with the Austrian School and their political analysis with the Virginia School, but I’ve been reading a whole lot of orthodox and Neo-Marxist literature over the last year.
It first hit me last year when I was working on my MA thesis and stumbled upon Edna Bonacich’s idea that split labor markets can lead to racial antagonisms. Unlike more orthodox Marxists, she drops the presumption of a single dominant class interest and allows for the idea that there can be competing interests within a class. In this case, higher priced (usually white) labor and lower priced (usually black) labor can be at odds in certain situations. This leads the former to lobby for exclusionary legislation or laws that protect their “caste” in the labor hierarchy.
Then over the summer, I finally got around to reading some of Gabriel Kolko’s work on the Progressive Era. He argues that the era wasn’t really progressive at all. In fact, agitation for the regulation of corporate actions was led by none other than the corporations themselves.
This semester we read several perspectives on the enactment of Social Security including Jill Quadagno. According to her theory, social security was actually something desired by certain parts of the capitalist class. The “welfare capitalists” who were already paying for employer pensions (in part as a way to “control” the labor force), were in favor of social security while the smaller, more competitive industries opposed it because it meant higher costs for them. Monopoly industries could absorb the higher costs or pass them on to consumers while the others could not do so. The legislation would give the former industries a competitive advantage (or rather put the latter at a disadvantage), so it was in their interests to see it passed.
In all three cases, I absolutely loved the analysis being done by Bonacich, Kolko, and Quadagno. This made me wonder though: I thought Marxists were all about class interests, but if Neo-Marxists allow for competing interests within classes, what’s left exactly that makes it Marxist? I asked my professor. His response was “Well, there are Neo-Marxists and then there are Neo-Marxists.” It looks like Neo-Marxism is a label with a very wide applicability. Thus my conclusion that I’m a Neo-Marxist too.
And why not? I’d prefer to call myself a liberal, but that term was co-opted a long time ago. Dammit, why can’t we ever co-opt popular labels and make them mean the opposite of what their adherents mean? George Stigler once quipped, “If I am a Marxian, I am a better Marxian than Marx.”
I’m here to say “Me too!”
- Josh McCabe
Good post Josh! Hats off to Kolko, Quadagno, and Bonacich. They realize that appearances and feelings are constitutive of class interests.
My beef with marxists or neo-marxists is this–they put too much faith in people’s ability to perceive their class interests and act accordingly.
They deny people any moral agency. In their view, people are relentlylessly driven by their interests. I think this is a overly cynical, and misleading picture of human nature.
Brian, I wouldn’t go that far. They’re still pretty much strict materialists. Nimish is correct to point out that, for many, ideology is a cover for material interests. I’m working on a paper now trying to find an independent role for ideology in political action (using South African and the American South).
Nimish: I’m reading Monica Prasad’s “The Politics of Free Markets” right now and I just think it’s absolutely wonderful. Have you read it? She argues that while ideology plays an important role for opening political opportunities, state structure is more important for actual policies outcomes. I am pretty much in agreement with her.
Josh: Good to know that your next project is on the role of ideas. I would be eager to read your paper. Nobel Laureate Robert Fogel is one economic historian who stresses the role of ideas in history. His book “The Fourth Great Awakening” is about how various interpretation of the egalitarianism ideal has shaped American policies.
I’ll check out Monica Prasad’s book. If you come across any work that deals with materialist/ideational debate, please send it my way. I am very interested.
It’s useful to make the distinction between neo-Marxists and Weberians. A neo-Marxists roots analysis in some sort of historial materialism. Class position defines possibly conflicting interests.
In contrast, a Weberian would acknowledge that status groups may exist independently of the mode of production. You can have interests that don’t boil down to property or whatnot.
So: if you believe Progressives were just capitalist tools in disguise (as Kolko did), then you are a neo-Marxist. If you believe that Progressive developed their own interests that just happened to overlap with those of certain business classes, then you are probably more of a Weberian.
You might be interested in my http://www.politicalcapitalism.org website and my trilogy on political capitalism described therein.
Book 1 was endorsed by Kolko.
- Rob Bradley
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