Marx's revenge: the resurgence of capitalism and the death of statist socialism, by Meghnad Desai (London: Verso, 2002, pp. 372 + xi)

✍ Scribed by Indraneel Dasgupta

• Book ID: 102351614
• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2005
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 26 KB
• Volume: 17
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0954-1748
• DOI: 10.1002/jid.1108

✦ Synopsis

In this book, Desai sets out to argue that, 'in the triumphant resurgence of capitalism . . . the one thinker who is vindicated is Karl Marx . . . Indeed, if it came to a choice between whether the market or the state should rule the economy, modern libertarians would be as shocked as modern socialists . . . to find Marx on the side of the market' (p.3). Marx believed that capitalism would not be supplanted till it had exhausted its dynamic, progressive potential. Recent global events prove that capitalism retains its dynamism. Hence, Marx would have been opposed to attempts to establish socialism. He would therefore have rejoiced at the destruction of the Soviet Union. Q.E.D.

The argument is neither new nor unfashionable. Intelligent undergraduates who read Marx's gushing tribute to capitalism in the Communist Manifesto often talk along similar lines, and, indeed, have done so for generations. Marx's ill-informed and Eurocentric musings on British rule in India remain a perennial favourite of the more literate-and more mischievous-among market-friendly development economists. Given the rather trite nature of his central thesis, one wonders why Desai hopes to 'annoy and provoke' (p.vii) with this book. As it happens, he would appear merely to disappoint (at least any reader who is somewhat familiar with Marxist theory or practice). This book's quite considerable girth is largely due to the author's ambition 'also to explain how we come to be where we are in what is now called this globalized world of ours ' (p.vii). This takes the form of short, snappy, guided tours of Smith, Hegel, Marx, of political and economic developments over the last two centuries, and a crash course in the history of economic thought. As one expects, Desai makes a good travel guide for budget tourists. He is hip, overarching, informative, occasionally entertaining, usually articulate, mostly tendentious. As with budget tourism the second time around, at the end of it all, one may wish one had stayed home. As an introduction to initiates, this commentary recommends itself for its reader-friendly slickness, though not for its balance. As an attempt to address those already familiar with debates about economic justice, globalization and political praxis on the Left, it falls flat. Desai's summary, yet selective, retelling of well-known tales adds little to our extant knowledge or understanding of the present as history.

One looks in vain for a serious, detailed assessment of the recent track record of capitalism, and its medium-term prospects, in the former socialist countries. Developmental dilemmas of poor countries in the current context are hardly engaged with. Anglo-American bullying and warmongering appear to be non-issues. Post-Walrasian insights into the functioning of markets thrown up by information economics, developments in theories of distributive justice and of technological innovations, their relation to key Marxian notions, and their implications for practical politics on the Left, are all left unmentioned. Yet these would appear to be the key issues for an engaged economist on the Left today, not whether Young Marx disapproved of tariffs in Prussia. Factions on the anti-globalization bandwagon may well remind Desai of Narodniks, and Young Lenin did certainly chide the latter for their alleged romanticism. Does it really matter?