Defending Marx 1: The Greatest Deception of the Masses Is the Clamor About Capitalism's Eternity!

2006/8/31 21:26:46

Marx's theory is the most thorough critique of reality. In Marx, every category of reality is historical and ultimately destined to perish. And what is the greatest category of reality? It is capitalist society itself! All historical categories, under the historical category of capitalist society, manifest in concrete forms, and all apologists for capitalism will clamor that these categories are eternal.

A category is not a fabrication of consciousness but a theoretical reflection of real relations. Categories are real, they are alive. The categories of capitalist society correspond to the totality of real capitalist social relations. And the greatest deception of the masses is the clamor of capitalism's apologists about capitalism's eternity! But real categories cannot be maintained by clamoring alone—the death of real categories is as inevitable as the death of human beings!

Just as people seek religion to escape the reality of death, all apologists for capitalism must manufacture a religion of capitalism's eternity to attempt to escape the inevitability of capitalism's death. For all apologists of capitalism to keep the myth of capitalism's eternity going, the only path is to turn everyone into faithful believers of the capitalist religion. Like those brainwashed by the doctrines of cults, they can devote themselves entirely to a phantasmal myth—and this is exactly what all apologists for capitalism hope for.

Not only does Marx point out that the concrete forms of real relations corresponding to the categories of capitalist society have always been in flux, but more importantly he reveals this: the web of real logic woven by the real categories corresponding to these various real relations is also not eternally immutable; this web of real capitalist logic is not a priori, but the result of historical development, and will ultimately perish in the course of historical development. The demise of capitalism does not arise from changes in any specific real category of capitalism, but is a total, real-historical process. The demise of capitalism and the establishment of socialism are both global events—this is determined by the totality of the web of real logic corresponding to the category of capitalist society.

If Marx's theory could be summarized in one sentence, it would be: using historical materialism as a weapon to carry out the most thorough total dissection, critique, practice, and transformation of the web of logic constituted by real relations! A Marx without critical spirit is not Marx; a Marx without reality is not Marx; a Marx without totality is not Marx; a Marx without historicity is not Marx; a Marx without thoroughness is not Marx; a Marx without praxis is not Marx; a Marx without transformative power is not Marx!

Marx is the sharp sword, slicing through the masks of all religious charlatans; Marx is the wild stallion, galloping across all history forged in blood and iron; Marx is the thunderbolt, destroying all myths of reality's eternity; Marx is the volcano, erupting with the most fiery magma of human thought. Those who wantonly distort and falsify Marx, who attempt to domesticate Marx—their lies of distortion and falsification may be woven into history, but lies can only be a part of history. A religion that exists on lies is like sowing withered seeds on a field: in the end, one can only harvest disappointment and farce!