Marx's Last Laugh and the Limits of Nationalism

Marx’s Last Laugh and the Limits of Nationalism

Let it not be said that history doesn’t have a sense of humor. Years after his demise, some of Karl Marx’s deepest held desires have been fulfilled – thanks largely to those who regard themselves as stalwart anti-Marxists. I refer to Marx’s contempt for civil society: the cultural, religious and social institutions that exist apart of the state. In Marx’s view of utopia (and, to a lesser extent, the ‘totalitarian democracy’ of Jean-Jacques Rosseau and the French Revolution), civil society is transformed into political society. There is little-to-no room for institutions to exist apart from the state. Likewise, the same is true of people: the state and the masses are identified as one.

Not surprisingly, this contemptuous attitude toward civil society has had more than its share of detractors. And yet, it continues to find its takers. The fascist and hardline nationalist movements that have arisen over the years seem to be quite taken with it, despite their ostensibly anti-Marxist, pro-tradition orientations. In Hitler’s Third Reich, to use an extreme example, civil society as it existed was essentially abolished and reconstructed to suit the Nazi regime. You could not simply be a person living and working in Germany, you were (often via coercion) linked with the state. If you weren’t pro-Nazi you weren’t, for intents and purposes of the ruling elite, German…even if you could trace your lineage to Otto the Great.

Softer forms of this kind of mentality have persisted to the present day. It is not without its advantages, either as a political maneuver or an earnest societal goal. In the former, linking the identity of the people with the government that rules over them places critics of that government in a precarious “us versus them” predicament. In the latter, attempting to link people via a common denominator (race, religion, cultural heritage, etc.) seems the perfect pathway to peace. In theory at least, a homogeneous society will be subject to less civil strife, the enormous cost of making that society homogenous notwithstanding.

Whatever the motivations of these ‘transformationists,’ they have proven miraculously inept in keeping civil society down. Civil society, after all, is more a force of human nature than a simple switch that can be flipped. It grows, changes, adapts and evolves. Thus, attempts to exercise excessive control over it will almost always backfire. You can use force to compel human action, but no government can expect to permanently change the thoughts and attitudes of its subjects en masse.

As evident as this lesson seems, it has yet to be taken to heart by the leaders of this nation, both past and present. Consider the current warping of the term ‘anti-Americanism.’ In the truest sense, this should refer to unfettered hatred of the American people and their institutions. Instead, it’s been cheapened to equate to criticism of the government and its policies. Playing directly into Marx’s hands, administration apologists have steadfastly decimated the once-important distinction between political and civil society.

Why is this distinction important, you ask? Well, in the run up to the War in Iraq and at numerous times thereafter, a great amount of hostility was shown by Americans to Saddam Hussein and his Baathist regime. Does this make us guilty of flagrant ‘anti-Iraqism’? Not hardly. After all, our mission over there was undertaken, at least in part, to benefit the Iraqi people by ridding them of a genocidal tyrant. Our contempt was for the political, rather than the civil, infrastructure that existed at the time.

Similarly, while we may denounce the stifling, belligerent theocracy in Iran, we are quick to come to the aid of the Persian people when a massive earthquake strikes. Being that we are capable of drawing the distinction between civil and political society abroad, we should be equally capable of drawing it at home.

That capability begins with admitting that even the most caustic critics of the current administration are NOT, prima facie, America-haters. Bush critics, war critics, political dissidents et al tend to be aware of the fact they are living in a country that affords them the ability to express and advance their views and are often grateful for it. Rejecting Bushism doesn’t equate to rejecting America as a whole, just as spewing venom at Bill Clinton a decade earlier did not make one the embodiment of all things un-American.

So then the question remains: who DOES hate America? The true culprits come in several flavors. There are those, such as Fred Phelps, Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, who legitimately hate American civil society, deeming it hedonistic, sinful and overindulgent, if not downright Satanic. Ironically, these types tend to enjoy a certain degree of coziness with political society as it exists today.

There are also those, exemplified by Ward Churchill and ignorant foreign critics, who not only conflate civil and political society, but insist on castigating the former for the latter’s transgressions. To attempt to hold individual Americans responsible for action undertaken by the CIA 30 years ago is to cruelly deny those Americans their right to an identity apart from that of their government.

Reclaiming civil society also realizes accepting that there are, will be, and should be things that are beyond the state and its control. You have the right to find your neighbor’s purple house tacky. You don’t have the right to make the city repaint it for him. The day that the tolerances, preferences and prejudices of civil and political society are made to be one and the same is the day Marx’s cold dead hand can raise its fist in victory.