The Discourse on Economics

Based on the previous chapter’s demonstration of the links between Marxism and German bourgeois thought, Robinson argues in this chapter that Marxism represents neither the interests of the oppressed nor a radical break with contemporary philosophy. Chapter 4 provides an alternative history of oppositional discourse on poverty in European history that Robinson uses to emancipate socialism from the rigid ideological regime of bourgeois intellectuals imposed by Marxism. Robinson demonstrates the importance of Aristotle and Athenian philosophy for the empirical, conceptual, and moral precepts of modern economics. Robinson then traces the persistence of socialist impulses in Europe’s Middle Ages, particularly in the work of Marsilius and the Jesuits and its eventual transformation into the secular socialist utopianism of eighteenth century bourgeois Europeans. In both cases, he shows how radical gender relations are effaced by modern economics and by Marxism. Robinson thus shows how Marx and Engel’s scientific historical economics privileged a select group of bourgeois ideologists, insisting upon individualism and historical materialism and ignoring alternative oppositional discourses built in previous rebellions against oppression, inequality, racism, gender discrimination, and poverty.

The Social Origins of Materialism and Socialism

In this chapter, Robinson takes on what he sees as Marx’s fallacious assumption that socialism requires the existence of full-blown capitalism. Instead, Robinson explores the history of materialism and political economy in Europe in relation to late medieval Christianity and the Roman Church as a way to uncover other lineages of Western socialism. He traces the genealogy of materialism upon which Marx himself relied—drawing from German idealists and eighteenth century bourgeois ideas—and contrasts this with an alternative genealogy of modern materialist discourse (Aristotelianism, Dualism, Classical materialism, historical materialism). He shows how bourgeois resistance against the Church’s political order in the thirteenth century took the form of socialist communities. This socialist-oriented resistance was then repressed and co-opted by Church leaders before reappearing in the popular impulses of the French Revolution, eventually leading to Marx’s secular expression of socialism. Robinson argues that Marxism ignores this history of non-industrial socialism, accepting many assumptions of bourgeois historiography and leading him to assume that full industrial, bourgeois society is necessary to the establishment of socialism. This effaces the thirteenth century precedents to nineteenth century Western socialism.

Reality and Its Representation

In the final chapter, Robinson summarizes the implications of his anthropology of Marxist thought and his alternative history of Western socialism. He argues that the iconography of Marxism effaces the longer history of Western socialism, instead displacing all potential for radical change to the proletariat in the era of capitalism. The fetishization of industrial labor by Marx, Engels, and Lenin then has the effect, he argues, of excluding all socialist revolt that takes place outside of the urban proletariat—radical action in Algeria, Cuba, Iran, etc.—from the history of socialism, making socialism into an idea for the future rather than something that could also exist in the past. Mistakenly transfixing the origins of socialist theory to Marx or making his ideas into universals rather than contextually specific philosophy in fact restricts the theoretical and practical development of socialism. The history of Western socialism radiated from the desperation, rage, and anguish of the oppressed long before Marx identified it in the French Revolution and will survive Marxism’s conceits because, Robinson argues, socialist discourse is an irrepressible response to social injustice in world history.

German Critical Philosophy and Marx

In this chapter, Robinson explores the German intellectuals who form the basis of Marxism. He links the history of German pietism and the Church with the development of Kantian materialism, which advocated for a radical reformulation of the German social order. Robinson then demonstrates how Kantian German idealism set in motion in German thought a series of determinations essential for Marx’s philosophy. While Marx is applauded for positing a revolutionary theory from the less radical ideas of Hegel, Robinson instead suggests that Hegel in fact contributed far more directly to Marxism than Marx admitted. Indeed, Robinson demonstrates how Hegel’s conception of a universal class (to be Marx’s proletariat), secularization of history (making history happen), and privileging of Western civilization as the only society based on Reason (the secularization of social change) all made their way into Marxism, notwithstanding Marx’s dismissal of Hegel as a mystical idealist. Robinson historicizes Marxism by demonstrating how Kant’s formulation of the German bureaucracy as a class, followed by Hegel’s argument that this class’s consciousness came from its political work, were appropriated by Marx and Engels for their later work.

Coming to Terms with Marxian Taxonomy

In this chapter, Robinson explores the development of Western socialism—its roots in English political economy, French socialism, and German philosophy—in order to show the contextually specific origins of Marxism. Robinson argues that Marx conflates phenomena that are particular to Europe with a uniform global system—capitalism—derived through his supposedly objective mode of analysis. The chapter argues that the historical materialism and Western socialism that is often taken as a scientific discovery was instead the result of Engels’ and Lenin’s interpretations of Marx’s own contextually (and nationally) specific writings. Marxism’s profoundest mistake, Robinson argues, is the conflation of deep social critique with the work of the intelligentsia, therefore making the work of socialism that of a small group of elites. Moreover, Marx equates realizable socialism with the arrival of capitalism. Robinson argues that this effectively ties the future of socialism with the existence of capitalism, thus diminishing the paths open to effective social struggle.