Karl Marx and the Future of the Human

The Raya Dunayevskaya Series in Marxism and Humanism

by Cyril Smith

In this excellent study of Karl Marx's thought, Cyril Smith takes a long and winding route that starts with classical world thought. When he arrives at the door to Marx's pantheon we see that, with the significant yet largely overlooked example of Spinoza, most thinkers―and especially Western ones―are opposed to essential aspects of democracy. In Marx and the Future of the Human Cyril Smith explains that Karl Marx, more than any other thinker, is misrepresented by what has come to be understood as 'Marxism.' Marxism has developed into, among other things, a method for analyzing capitalism, a way of looking at history, and a way to theorize the role of the working class in a future society. Marx, however, speaks about a conception of human life that was absent during his lifetime and remains absent today. Marx sought 'the alteration of humans on a mass scale:' economics, politics, daily lived-life, and spiritual life. In discussing Marx and spirituality, Cyril Smith relates Marx to the thought of William Blake. Someone coming to Marx for the first time as well as the seasoned scholar can read this book. Marx and the Future of the Human is a book rife with thoughtful and creative connections written by someone who has spent most of his life close to the spirit of Karl Marx's thought.

Genres: Politics

244 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2005

About the author

Cyril attended meetings of the Communist Party while a student at University College London in 1947, but was repelled what he saw as double-talk, lies and sectarianism. He then joined the Revolutionary Communist Party, and was a Trotskyist up until supporting the expulsion of Gerry Healy from the WRP in 1985. Cyril subsequently embarked on a thoroughgoing re-examination of his understanding of Marxism, culminating in “Marx at the Millennium,” published by Pluto Press in 1996. This work sought to strip the layers of interpretation and distortion covering the work of Karl Marx, and highlighted the need for a fresh study of Marx's writing. “Karl Marx and the Future of the Human,” was published by Lexington in 2004. Cyril taught statistics at the London School of Economics for many years until his retirement in the early 1990s and has given talks and written numerous magazine articles on themes relating to science, philosophy, economics and communism.

Reviews

[G J · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cyril Smith spent the end years of his life going back to Marx's original conception of humanity and communism in order to resuscitate it from the dogma and distortion it has faced in the last 150 years.

Smith attempts to bring to fore the important questions that have plagued philosophy for years. How is society to be organized? Why does this apparent antagonism between the individual and society at large manifest? These questions lead Smith to go through a brief history of philosphy asking these questions and how it had come to settle upon out current society that sees the spheres of social, political, and economics as separate categories.

In this fashion Smith drawing upon Marx attempts to show that this division is a result from a particular historical development to make society something almost alien to us as it exists separately from us. The antagonism between the individual and community is illusory as humans are social beings and thw history of humanity is one of constant changing our means of social reproduction through our own and collective self activity.

While the structure of society seems fixed and immutable it is ultimately a result of our combined social activity. There is no inherent reason for this particular historical epoch to be anything but temporary. The realisation of humanity as a social being brings forth untold prospects for it to be organized more actively and consciously through recognition of this social nature.

[Twilight O. ☭ · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's undoubtedly cliche to start a review of a work on Marxism this way, in fact it may be cliche to bring attention to the fact that this is a cliche even, but it's simply true: the interpretation of Marx's thought has suffered an accumulation of error so great that to read Marx is, above all else, an exercise in unlearning what one believes Marx to have thought. Cyril Smith became keenly aware of the severity of these errors after the English language publication of the Grundrisse, Marx's first sustained attempt at the critique of political economy.

As a result of this awareness, Smith published two books, of which this is the latter, in an attempt to save Marx from his followers. Unlike its predecessor, Marx at the Millennium, Karl Marx and the Future of the Human takes a rather scattershot approach to things. It's hard to say what the actual thesis of the book is because Smith doesn't have one; rather, he has many. Among the more provocative and interesting of these is that the Marxist political party is an invention of Marxists rather than Marx himself and violates the core principles of Marx's philosophy. Elsewhere, Smith takes aim at historical materialism and the disregard with which Marxists treat the mystics.

Some have accused Smith of being an idealist attempting to undermine Marx's materialist doctrine and substitute it with his own woolly nonsense. There may be a grain of truth in this, as Smith often overplays his hand and fails to qualify his remarks consistently, but nothing more than a grain. In many senses, Hegel's philosophy involved the systematization of mystic thought and Marx was famously deeply influenced by Hegel; Marx need not be a mystic to see the truth it expresses. Smith's goal, on the whole, is to return revolutionary subjectivity and self-creation to the center of Marxist philosophy over orthodox Marxism's emphasis on historical determination. If in this process Smith slips into idealism at points, it's only because, to borrow a phrase from Lenin, the stick must be bent away from those who've substituted in Locke in place of Marx.

Ultimately, Smith's greatest failure is that he simply does not arrive at any particular place. Smith poses a powerful challenge to those who'd see humanity hemmed in by seemingly external material conditions, but his version of revolutionary subjectivity is undeniably vague. In placing self-creation at the center of the Marxist project, Smith does much to return Marxism to its rightful place as a philosophy of liberation, but a philosophy of liberation must take seriously the matter of how liberation will emerge from that which humanity must liberate itself from. Phrased philosophically, Smith finds himself leaping to second negativity, downplaying the extent to which second negativity must emerge from the distinct characteristics of the process of first negation. This is almost a refreshing error given how widespread it is for socialists to be stuck on first negation, but it's an error nonetheless.

To Smith's credit, I think he was aware of this fact. As Smith himself notes in the very first lines of the book, Karl Marx and the Future of the Human covers much of the same ground as his earlier book Marx at the Millennium, only here in expanded and further developed form. Both of Smith's books were produced as a result of his dissatisfaction with Trotskyism and both works are deeply reflective of this fact. If, in demolishing the tenets of traditional Trotskyist Marxism, Smith did not also work out a comprehensive alternative to it, this is hardly a meaningful blotch on his record. Coherent traditions don't fall from the sky or come out of brilliant men's heads, they're born out of movements; Smith, sadly, wrote his mature work in a period of almost unparalleled retreat in the working-class movement.

Raya Dunayevskaya, who herself became a Marxist of similar stripe after becoming dissatisfied with the Trotskyist tradition, perhaps worked out political answers to Smith's brand of Marxism that are worth paying attention to. In working to embody a philosophy of self-creation and praxis in organization, Dunayevskaya worked a way past the confines vanguardism without abandoning organization outright. Smith, for his part, was never satisfied with Dunayevskaya's organizational theorires, nor am I. For that matter, Dunayevskaya was not satisfied with her own theories, as she spent her final weeks working through to new answers to the question. Sadly, she passed away before this work could come to fruition, and the Marxist-Humanist tradition has not taken up the reigns to address their own marginal status to any meaningful degree.

The truth of the matter is this, however. For answers to these questions to be answered, we first must come to a point where we can pose them. The vast majority of Marxists simply are not there yet. Insofar as this is the case, Smith's work is brilliant. It may only be a stepping stone to satisfactory answers, but a stepping stone is crucial when one is attempting to cross rapids. I can't answer the questions I fault Smith for not being able to answer, and I know that Smith's work will be invaluable as I continue to attempt to find an answer I can be satisfied with. If more people read Smith, my work wouldn't be so lonely! Work always goes so much faster with friends, and, considering the state of the world, I could use all the friends I can get.