A Spectre, Haunting (2022)
China Miéville (1972)
291 pages
In A Spectre, Haunting: On the Communist Manifesto, China Miéville provides an accessible and thought-provoking introduction to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s famous pamphlet. Although best known as a writer of novels, Miéville certainly has the bona fides for undertaking this work, having earned a master’s degree and PhD from the London School of Economics and published several nonfiction books and essays; his writing here reflects these various aspects of his background: from his work as a novelist, engaging prose in which he makes his points clearly and effectively; from his economics scholarship, a well-researched and thoroughly documented study of the text’s content.
After opening with a reminder of how the style of communication assumed by a manifesto differs from, say, a scholarly paper or book, Miéville methodically works through his analysis of Marx and Engels’s publication. In successive chapters, he places the work into the context of the time in which it was written, provides an overview summarizing its content, evaluates Marx and Engels’s intent as expressed in the text and their other work, addresses criticisms that have been leveled against it, and explores its present-day relevance. Having included the text of the Manifesto as an appendix, he frequently references it in his analysis, tying his comments concretely to the words of Marx and Engels; throughout, he also references a wide variety of other sources, both critical and supportive of the Manifesto.
His intent with this work, for himself and his readers, is perhaps best summarized as that the effort he put into researching and writing it represents his answer to a question he poses late in the book:
What does it mean to find motivation in – to have fidelity to – the Manifesto today? To read generously enough to gain what we can from its pages, critically enough to see its blind spots and failures, to criticize it rigorously and sensitively? (136)
In his analysis, Miéville consistently manages to achieve this delicate balance of providing both a generous and critical examination of the Manifesto, ultimately making a convincing case for its continued relevance.
Particularly striking about Miéville’s analysis of the Manifesto is his convincing review of how Marx and Engels’s mid-19th century observations and criticisms of capitalism have been borne out by events of the 20th, and now 21st, centuries. Noting that some of the specific claims in the Manifesto about the capitalist system may now appear dated, Miéville argues that a present-day reader should not become distracted by those who nit-pick over such details. Instead, one’s focus should remain on
the fundamental dynamics with which the Manifesto is concerned. Those are of profit-extraction by a minority, though the exploitation of the labor of a majority, in the context of competitive accumulation. (82)
For Miéville, Marx and Engels’s trenchant description of the devastating consequences and ineluctable unsustainability that arise from these fundamental dynamics forms the core message of their work.
And, despite the rosy predictions of those arguing that capitalism can be tamed, bourgeois society – as constituted by and for the owners of the means of production – remains, as Miéville notes (and an even cursory glance around our present-day world makes clear), “resistant to any change that might put profit maximization in jeopardy or threaten the stability on which profit and power relies.” (18) In Marx and Engels’s presentation in the Manifesto, he detects, in fact,
a certain bleak admiration in their vision of modern capitalism as so voracious, total, and totalizing a system that it cannot be made liveable with. This doesn’t imply impregnability or seamlessness – communist political strategy is predicated on working at the cracks. But it understands capitalism’s logic as predicated on exploitation and oppression, such that it can never exist without them, such that whatever reforms can be effected will always be inadequate, opposed ferociously by the bourgeoisie, always embattled. This is why capitalism cannot be accommodated. (84)
The fundamental reason for this inability to successfully reform capitalism, to make it liveable with, comes down to what economist Martin Wolf observes, in his sobering book The Crisis of Democratic Capitalism, as
“the rise of rentier capitalism, in which a relatively small proportion of the population has successfully captured rents from the economy and uses the resources it has acquired to control the political and even legal systems, especially in the US, the world’s most important standard bearer of democracy. (173, Wolf, my review linked to at right)
After a “quick dismissal of a few exhausted anti-communist bromides” (98), Miéville delves into what he finds to be some of the more thought-provoking critiques of the text, including the accusation of it having “systemic blind spots on race.” (116) He argues that the discussion of race is unavoidably connected to that of class, and, citing the work of W.E.B. Du Bois, notes that racism has been
a project of generating cross-class solidarity among whites to the overwhelming benefit of the (white) ruling class, and for the downgrading of class itself as a perceived social schism, and its replacement with [what Du Bois referred to as] “the color line.” (124-5)
A century and a half after the Manifesto, such use of racism against class solidarity remains a fundamental part of the capitalist playbook, as described in comprehensive and enlightening detail by Heather McGhee, an expert in economic and social policy. In her book The Sum of Us, which explores the many ways that racism impacts not only Blacks but also society at large, she includes a chapter on corporate anti-union efforts that continue to focus on replacing class consciousness with race consciousness. Exploring in detail a specific case, she notes that
Nissan plant workers [in Mississippi] were getting a bad deal compared to unionized autoworkers …. But the white workers … were still getting … a better deal than someone. The company was able to redraw the lines of allegiance [by making clear for] a white worker … that he could get promoted to a ‘cushier’ job [by] not signing a union card. … They could be satisfied with a slightly better job that set them just above the Black guys on the line, more satisfied by a taste of status than they were hungry for a real pension, better healthcare or better wages for everyone. (120, McGhee)
(Interestingly, although McGhee never references Marx or the Manifesto or communism in her critique of US race relations and class, she has a quote from Du Bois that overlaps with one Miéville also uses; again, though the details and methods of capitalism may vary, the fundamental concerns endure.)
In the final section of his work, Miéville explores the relevance of the Manifesto in our present-day world. While its critique of capitalism continues to ring true, he notes that the text’s tone of inevitability regarding the downfall of the capitalist system has proven false, at least up to now. Miéville argues that this is a consequence of the fact that, as has been repeatedly demonstrated over the past two centuries:
Capitalism can be awesomely elastic and adaptable … includ[ing] metabolizing aspects of society that were there before capitalism and even seem to stand against it, as well as those newly thrown up, even seemingly in opposition to it. … Mild reforms and radical moments are purposed and contested and opposed and co-opted and deployed, sometimes simultaneously, by those committed to capitalism’s maintenance, as well as by its enemies. (141)
One can gain an understanding of how this adaptability has played out in the US from historian Howard Zinn’s brilliant book A People’s History of the United States. Focusing, as the title indicates, at the level of life for the masses in the US – as opposed to only the leaders – he documents a pattern over the past couple of centuries of significant riots and uprisings among the US population leading to business and political leaders grudgingly giving in on a minimal subset of demands sufficient to just quell the violence, only for the process repeat itself again some few years later. (Compared to the sanitized version of US history presented in American schools, I found it eye-opening, as I read Zinn’s book, how frequently in American history uprisings and riots have occurred.)
Miéville, too, gives examples of these pressure points, such as the fight against child labor and for reduced work hours. This latter question, he notes, made evident to Marx a critical element of capitalism’s adaptability, and the challenge it presents those looking to replace it:
In Capital, [Marx noted] the [British Factory] Acts’ limitations on the working day as simultaneously against the inclinations and immediate profits of individual capitalist concerns, while also being in capital’s collective interest. (142, italics in original)
Thus, at critical moments, as Zinn also described, politicians have overcome the lobbying of business owners focused on their short-term bottom line, to act in the longer-term interest of maintaining the capitalist system.
Of course, as Martin Wolf points out in his book referenced above, the fundamental challenge of democratic capitalism is that this regulatory activity by a political class focused on the long-term can too easily be undermined. This happens when those with economic power use their wealth to gain political power and so push through laws that support their immediate profits – even if, as happened during the Gilded Age of the late 1800’s and again over the past decades in the US, it leads to a significant rise in inequality, one that begins to destabilize the system and so put capital’s longer-term interests at risk.
Whatever the level of corruption of the political class, however, Miéville notes the challenge that the reform-of-capitalism path also represents for groups intent on initiating a transition away from the system. If such groups support reforms that ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalism, the result is to tend to prolong capitalism’s hold and so leave in place the fundamental system and the problems it creates. But, to not support such reforms leaves swaths of the working class worse off than they could be. Marx came to recognize this also, in the years after writing the Manifesto, but came to recognize that such reforms would not only benefit the working class in a day-to-day sense, but also “can be understood as increasing working class power and room for maneuvers overall.” (144) Not surprisingly, as Marx realized, people struggling just to survive will have little social or economic space within which to work for broader reform of the system.
Long-term movement toward equality [since the end of the 18th century] … is a consequence of conflicts and revolts against injustice that have made it possible to transform power relationships and overthrow institutions supported by dominant classes, which seek to structure social inequality in a way that benefits them, and to replace them with new institutions and new social, economic, and political rules that are more equitable and emancipatory for the majority. Generally speaking, the most fundamental transformations seen in the history of inegalitarian regimes involve social conflicts and large-scale political crises. (10)
Thus, it seems, the cycle of uprising and reform that Zinn documented as being a central part of US history will likely have to recur in the future as efforts continue to overcome the economic and social injustices that arise out of the fundamental dynamics of capitalism.
Nevertheless, as Miéville seeks to convince us in A Spectre, Haunting, we must carry-on this pursuit of justice, and not be held back by the seeming entrenchment of the capitalist system, for: “how many times has the utter impossibility of change been proved, only for change to rock the world and throw up everything we thought we knew?” (171) In clear and effective prose, he argues that the Manifesto – over a century and a half after its publication – continues to have much to tell us about the damaging shortcomings of capitalism, providing a compelling analysis that fairly demands of us a response, implicating us in the need to work to find a better path forward.
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