Top Marx. Credit: Thomas Frey/ DPA/AFP/Getty
There are not many Marxist detective stories. But the clever and entertaining Verdict of Twelve (1940), by the writer, critic and historian Raymond Postgate, falls into that category, prefaced as it is with a quotation from the great man himself: “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.” That is to say, Marx thought that our values and feelings, our beliefs and prejudices and attitudes, are dictated by the conditions under which we live, rather than being, as we might hope, independently arrived at by a rigorous process of reflection.
While reading Sohrab Ahmari’s The Unbroken Thread, I kept thinking of the quotation — which I only know from Postgate’s novel; I confess to not being familiar with Marx’s doubtless very exciting A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.
Ahmari’s book is a collection of 12 chapter-length essays, each focused on a different aspect of traditional wisdom. Like me, he is an older millennial and an adult convert to Catholicism, although our journeys to the banks of the Tiber could hardly be more different. Mine was a comparatively gentle and unspectacular movement between Christian denominations, after an Anglican upbringing in quiet rural Kent. By contrast, Ahmari, now a New Yorker and a US citizen, grew up in post-revolutionary Iran, in a secular Muslim family, and became a Catholic in 2016 after moving to the US in the Nineties.
One thing we do have in common is that we are fathers to young sons, and worried about the kind of world in which our boys will grow up. Ahmari’s son Maximilian is named after the Polish priest-martyr Maximilian Kolbe, murdered in Auschwitz, and concern for his future animates the introduction to the book. Here Ahmari reveals his fear that Max will drift into the kind of disorderly, anodyne, atomised life in which so many modern Westerners find themselves, and goes on to frame The Unbroken Thread as a sort of guidebook. The great examples of the past can light our way through the gloomy swamp of liberal modernity.
Ahmari has made rather a name for himself in the USA as a determined critic of liberalism, by which he means a constellation of overlapping ideological commitments, united by the belief that whether in economic or social policy, the most important subject of political concern is the sovereign choice-making individual, determining what is best for himself by his own lights. As the American Supreme Court judge Anthony Kennedy phrased it, earning the ire of conservatives: “At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The Unbroken Thread is a critique of that idea.
Ahmari seeks to show that there are alternatives to the Kennedy view, and that these alternatives have enduring power and weight. The challenge for those who write about such matters is to find fresh ways to defend and illustrate the Great Tradition; he achieves this by blending references to conventional conservative heroes such as CS Lewis, Pope Benedict XVI and John Henry Newman with discussions of lesser-known or unexpected figures. I was fascinated to read about the husband-and-wife anthropologists Victor and Edith Turner, who spent many years studying the religious rituals of African tribespeople and later joined the Catholic Church, having left behind their youthful Communism.
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SubscribeThere is much to be said for a materialist reading of history. Certainly it is much closer to the truth, than that held by modern liberals: who seem to believe that egalitarian, human rights based democracies could have existed in the Middle Ages, had it not been for all the wicked and ignorant men in charge.
Marx’s error, having recognised the primacy of the material conditions of a society in determining its ideological basis, was to immediately declare that these conditions could be transcended; though it is not clear what precise form this emancipated society would take. Marxism ever since, has been stuck in this endless transcendental revolutionary moment, with its adherents still searching for the elusive key, by which our material constrains will somehow be cast off and society is raptured into a communist utopia.
A more sober reading of Marx can indeed a conservative one. Societies are shaped by their relations to the material and technological limitations of their time and must be balance against that. History is not as Marx believed, a struggle for liberation of the oppressed against the oppressors. A narrative which is reaching the point of absurdity, as prosperous groups and individuals deck themselves with faux chains to demand their freedom. It is the complex interaction of competing groups, whose power structures may lie in multiple different overlapping areas. Conservatism, when done correctly, seeks to balance the competing factions in society, often by segregating powers in institutions, who’s independence, act as a counter weight to the revolutionary desire to “abolish” power relations, by imploding them into a totalitarian centralisation.
The basis of these power relations can be found in the underlying material conditions of a society. Conservatism’s job is not to hold these conditions in a kind of homeostasis but to recognise which changes threaten to destabilise society but more importantly, when the right time to bring about change is. Democracy, brought about too early, would have resulted in a dictatorship of the proletariate, the poor voting to abolish the rich. Too late and it may have been still born. Failing to allocate the necessary representation to a growing middle class to bring about economic change. The House of Lords for example, though perhaps reaching the point of redundancy today, was a necessary check to prevent outright conflict between aristocratic elites and growing power of the commons.
History, read in a materialist light, does not reveal a teleological basis for revolution and communism but reaffirms the rational necessity of our historical institutions and their preservation and reinvention through time.
+1 Thanks, you say it better than I could.
Excellent comment:
I really think that the great impact of new technologies and the resultant changes of the material world is completely overlooked when people try to explain social changes.
It was only when the printing press became available that ideas could be exchanged more easily between more and more people. It was the availability of printed pamphlets and books that gave people an incentive to learn to read, and allowed them to exchange, debate and test political ideas. It was printing that took away the power of the established church – that up until that point had a monopoly on interpreting the bible on behalf of the people. This resulted in the Catholic church losing power to the protestants and then other denominations, and the growth of atheism. It also allowed people to explore the idea of the rights of the individual, and this directly led to the revolutions in America and France.
It was the numerous technological improvements that led to the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution resulted in people living and working together in large numbers. This enabled them to communicate and organise themselves into unions. This enabled them to push for the vote to be extended to the working class.
In modern times we always credit contraception, the availability of education and the push for women’s rights as the main drivers for the advancement of women – but surely the coming of electricity, the appliances that then became available in the home to automate tasks in the home – cookers, washing machines, central heating, vacuum cleaners, hot water on tap – meant women were tied less and less to the home. The advancements in the availability of information through radio and tv, and also more freedom to travel – combustion engines and cars/buses etc. These were technological improvements were the foundations from which equality for women could be fought for.
Ok, there are lot’s of feedback loops that make the path of social change complex, but without the initial technological changes, there would be no change. If we still lived in caves as hunters and gatherers, we would still have societies, structures and beliefs that were very similar to thousands of years ago.
I think that when you look at history and see any significant change in social conditions and attitudes that there must be a material/technological change that proceeds it that sets the stage that makes it possible for the change to happen.
Women’s rights are tied to the Industrial Revolution and women becoming increasingly more valuable outside the home for their labour in the factories and mills rather than in the home.
The ‘professions’ were growing at the same time throughout the 19th c and new openings emerged for middleclass women as teachers, nurses and typists.
So it was technology that caused the change but it was industrial technology that did it, not the domestic appliances, they came later, invented by men, so that women could both work for wages and run a home more easily.
It’s interesting I think that one of the most iconic and important first machines of the industrial age was the Spinning Jenny, invented by James Hargreaves in 1764/5, and then A Vindication of the Rights of Women by Mary Wollstonecraft was written a generation later in 1792.
Which doesn’t suggest that altering house prices would affect the birthrate of the indigenous population , as those who have the most children are the pre-industrial newcomers. Eventually as their families want more ‘luxury’ probably their birth rate will go down. What I never understood about those who think marxism is such a great idea is they must think everyone is kind and would like to re-distribute some of their wealth to those less fortunate. However even in a personal situation ie your neighbour loses their job-would you go into debt to pay their mortgage-, most people prefer to remain ‘greedy’.
Re altering house prices – perhaps, but the uk birth rate did shoot up after both world wars and in the 1960s, so we seem respond to both catastrophe and security.
I would have thought the security of having a home that is affordable must make creating a family more feasible and more likely to be happy and lasting. It’ll be interesting to see if the birth rate goes up significantly after (if there is an after) the pandemic.
I take your point about marxism and kindness, I don’t tend to think of the two together.
There are lots of affordable houses in Britain, just not in the expensive areas- cheap houses in dear areas will just be bought up bu speculators or am I a cynic?
You’re probably right, unless something was put in place to prevent that.
The social engineering they need is in some of these villages in Cornwall where people have bought second homes , so ordinary young people can’t afford to live there.
I would be interested in what the definition of “power” is in this thoughtful comment.
Tell me then, which materialist permutations brought about the truth that each human individual life is sacred and equally beloved of God?
That’s a good question! And can you, or anyone, explain why I think each human life is massively important and yet have no belief in God.
The best I’ve come up with is that it’s something to do with the way social co-operation is beneficial to the species so it just feels better. Pretty rubbish in philosophical terms.
Thanks for a really interesting post. I think I’m agreeing with you when I say Marx was a great analyst but a pretty hopeless prophet. Material determinism – great analysis – but things have moved on in the last 150 years on the left and marxist or marxian thinking is only a part of the spectrum.
‘It is the complex interaction of competing groups, whose power structures may lie in multiple different overlapping areas.’ Agree, and this is what I think people on the left mean by intersectionalism and the overlapping areas of culture.
‘Conservatism’s job is not to hold these conditions in a kind of homeostasis but to recognise which changes threaten to destabilise society but more importantly, when the right time to bring about change is.’
This is the clearest definition of conservatism I think I’ve ever come across. Thank you. Been asking Unherd commenters for a year to come up with one!
The belief that destabilisation is necessarily a threat and change should be considered only when the alternative is destabilisation is probably the main disagreement between conservatives and progressives/leftists (or whatever terms fit). Some win through stability and some lose – getting the balance right is politics.
If we accept a worldwide socialist proletarian revolution isn’t feasible and unfettered capitalist/feudalism has some unwelcome outcomes in terms of human suffering the things to argue about are much more real – much more materialist – much more human.
Why o why do clever people fall for fashionable but silly ideas? Evolution has driven humanity to social structures not simply to control and regulate MALE sex drive but to control and regulate both male and female sex drives. The procreation impulse and the investment in the offspring is widely different between the sexes and the monogamous marriage system one way of meeting sexual needs with domestic ones that makes a healthy compromise and protects the offspring.
it is not one gender against the other.
Marxism is a useful historical frame for history, to be used alongside other views, but pretty lousy in terms of political organisation or prediction – it becomes a wish list that magically makes its own key driver of historical change disappear in a puff of communist Eden where, when socialism takes over, everyone suddenly becomes virtuous and power relationships no longer exist and class conflict ends.
It’s better understood that class structures will always emerge from economic and political activity, and the challenge is how to manage and control these structures to prevent them dominating over wider public interests – the same insight that America’s founding fathers had. Their answer was in balance of powers, independent institutions, democracy and individual liberty. Pragmatic rather than theoretical politics.
“class structures will always emerge from economic and political activity, and the challenge is how to manage and control these structures”
Didn’t Marx point to the Paris Commune as a hint of how class conflict might be managed?
Not really. He praised the use of democracy, secularism and constitution – which wouldn’t have been too dissimilar in form to the US system. He lauded that the working class were ruling. But he didn’t address the issue the American Founders understood – that conflict doesn’t simply disappear because a different group is in charge. As C21st history shows one ruling class gets swapped for another one and injustice can end up much much worse as a result.
I don’t think Marx thought conflict would simply disappear. Didn’t he see the dictatorship of the proletariat as a stage toward a classless society, but a prolonged and protracted stage with class conflict at its core?
A few centuries ago anyone could get a ‘fever’ and die. Life was precarious and there was no future to talk about. The average citizen turned to religion to create an artificial future. But this was when people were semi-literate and they had to be led by the much cleverer priests.
We all know what Marx said about religion but, in a weird way, Marxism became a religion and it has its own priests. Reading Marx is not easy but the cleverer priests have tried to show the plebs what the new religion means. The difficulty has always been turning the religious theory into practice so that the priests could take their true places as leaders of the new society.
A revolution was needed – those in Russia and China are the ones we discuss today. But now there has been a quiet revolution – as the essay says, the internet has changed our lives. Now the old ideas – national pride, superiority of intellect, the quoting of history, literature, the idea of the family, reading and writing – are going fast. Society is breaking down into a ‘survival of the fittest’ type of life. All of our national heroes have become villains. Industry (our old driver) is disappearing. We are becoming poorer, even though we don’t see it clearly. The future is becoming cloudy. We need a religion to give us hope. The Marxist leaders are waiting in the wings to guide us to safety.
The Russian revolution was more of a coup d’etat which took advantage of the war. It is often said that Russia needed a revolution to modernize it , yet in reality the new leaders bought in technology-there was even a millionaires row of Americans who created the modern Russia. Actually the Tsar was creating a middle-class , communism set Russia back. Don’t know anything about China’s history but I don’t see how the death of millions & destruction of culture can be helpful Whether Marx expected anyone to act on his theory & whether it would create a practical society we can’t know as nowhere has ever been communist , every society still has its elite.
Call me prejudiced but I am suspicious of conversion cases in all religions. It would appear converts are more zealous, more puritanical and more dogmatic in an effort to demonstrate to their new co-religionists, they are the ‘real thing’, to be trusted.
Yes, a ‘Marx – for dummies’, The Communist Manifesto is compelling because he describes a kind of ‘common sense’ acceptance of how society in the industrial west became what it was, with a vivid schema -historical materialism. (Yes, read in the ‘right spirit’, The Communist Manifesto could no doubt be the arch-capitalist’s ‘handbook’ too.)
The writer asserts ‘Many on the contemporary Right, for example, are coming round to the idea that if we reduce house prices by relaxing supply constraints, we will incentivise earlier and larger family formation.’
Why is this not from a consideration of economic distribution and survival alone, rather than a moralistic assumption that forming a large family, early, is praise-worthy in itself?
I’d rather not live in any kind of theocracy, Revolutionary-Marxist or otherwise, thank you.
I am not fundamentally opposed to religion. I am opposed to public piousness, the roots of which rarely come from a place of genuine humility.
“He is closely associated with integralism, a political ideology in which the Catholic religion is privileged and protected by the powers of the government and in which Catholic teaching forms the basis for law-making. The recognition that political power can be used to reshape and adjust social norms and the basis of social relations is central to this worldview”
I don’t know about anyone else, but totalitarian rubbish like this makes me very worried indeed.
*WWFFD* = what would Fred Flintstone do?
We are descendants of cave dwellers – and regardless of intelligence and technology, our motives continue unchanged since those days…
All flavors of Religion, Government, Marxism, Fascism, any-ism you want – have the same basic human core motivation:
*What is best for me first, then my family, and then those that are very similar to me.*
We are selfish, self-serving creatures ~ period.
I would aver that Marx overlooked one overriding factor: human nature.
The fact that we are dividing into hostile camps is really the story of mankind. That we are more “wired” just gives us more grievances to complain about and try to fix. Moreover, quite often the bonds that hold a group together have little to do with economic factors. The Highland Scots who fought for Bonnie Prince Charlie were not at Culloden because of his social program.
Indeed, it’s good that Ahmari looks at societies outside of our tradition. It is there that we can find out what is specific to our culture–and what we share with all mankind.
“At the heart of liberty is the right to define one’s own concept of existence, of meaning of the universe, and of the mystery of human life.” The Unbroken Thread is a critique of that idea.
One could argue that Ahmari and Gooch, by converting to Catholicism from their birth religions, have done precisely what Kennedy describes. Strange that they seem to want to use the power of the state to impose their religous beliefs on others.
Essentially Marx is driven by the dogma of Hegel in which human species consciousness will eventually align with God’s Will. In ecological idealism terms, human adaptation will become ecocentric in order to stabilise the human population which in religious terms is the nirvanic or heavenly gateway to the Kingdom of God whereby God’s Creation is revered not subdued for human interest.
Thus, to achieve Hegelian Idealism, material changes would need to be aligned to the goal of ecocentrism, not egocentrism. Therefore whatever policy choice best achieves ecocentrism is progress.
In this respect, the danger of traditionalism as a belief towards enlightenment and progress is that its policy choices are geared towards humancentrism and not ecocentrism. For example, encouraging population growth within an ecologically indebted country in order to facilitate population led economic growth in order to protect middle class pensions and financial assets is not ecocentrism.
In this respect, traditionalism is in danger of promoting human growth not for ecocentric considerations but niche/regime humancentric considerations, which makes it a politically motivated ideology, not philosophically motivated one. The same might be said of other human political goals such as trying to create Hegelian idealism via the dogmatic application of equality, diversity and inclusion.
Thus, perhaps Marx was very wrong when he said that “philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it”.
The point is not to change the world to fit a humancentric conception of idealism but to understand it as a divinely manifested ecological system which needs to be understood, especially in terms of the positive and negative feedback mechanisms as we modify it, so we can better adapt ourselves towards the richness of ecocentrism and align ourselves with divinity rather than align ourselves with the hubris of humancentrism.
As such, “It is not the consciousness of men that determines their ecological being, but, on the contrary, their ecological being that determines their consciousness.”
Abusing Nature creates an abusive consciousness.
Revering Nature creates a revering consciousness.
It sounds an interesting book.
Thank you for this nuanced article. It’s very important, in such intellectual debates to keep the discussion grounded to the material world. As a younger millennial I too fear that in the not too distant future I’ll have to bring up children in this ideologically confused environment.
With little foreknowledge. of your sources above, except for Marx’s infamous manifesto which I have read, I nevertheless gleaned some helpful knowledge from your presentation here, Niall. Thank you for posting it.
What I see as generally true, but not clearly understood is: conservatives are generally unaware of to what extent their conservatism is based in the comforts of their middle or upperclass conditions.
It could be that the general course of modern nations, empires and cultures is determined by–not so much the proles v capitalists conflict–but rather: who is comfortable and who is not; who is well-cared-for and who is not.
On another tangent, your mention of Omar Khayyam’s moving finger brought to mind the mysterious handwriting on an ancient Babylon palace wall, 2500 years ago. The message therein, preserved in the biblical book of Daniel, warned its readers of the immanent assault by Persian armies to conquer the faltering Babylonian kingdom.
In today’s scenario, that would perhaps portend to an Iranian attack on Iraq, which which was a persistent threat to the citizens of both nations, about forty years ago.
The “handwriting on the wall”, writ large, could perhaps be represented as “the wisdom of the ages” or “the lessons of history”, in which Karl Marx certainly had a major role. His materialist analysis and projection of economics did certainly divert the ancient stream of philosophy and religion away from pure thought . . . to reality, or to state it more plainly, the real world.
In that real world, those who have assets certainly are in better position than those who are tossed out on their asses when they do not pay the rent. Marx and Engels noticed this while the philosophers and clerics of post-18th-century were still seated comfortably in their manors, minding their manners.
At that time, Marx was the new kid on the block. But he definitely did bring forth some credible observations and ideas, even though Lenin, Stalin et al later made a huge bloody mess of their “communist” legacy.
Thanks, Niall, for sharing your thoughts and work here on unHerd.
Is it not the time to stop for a moment and think of previous generations achievements? And they were indeed numerous and serious, I am afraid we could only compared to chickens.. we could never be here without them.. Is it not those people who had much more freedom than us and were ready to die and they did, for more freedom? And for our freedom, working for the future whereas we uselessly can do neither.. Is it not them have created unparalleled artefacts out of genuine spirituality and creativity –sculpture, songs and dance, etc-, and were independent making their own –material- food, clothes etc, instilling in them unique aesthetics? enjoying much more in this life than what we could ever imagine? Can you not see our false and fake assumptions that somehow.. we are better off whereas today’s sons and daughters have failed dramatically to protect their elders from all sort of scams such as politicians, scientists, journalists, corporations etc.. turning heroes into victims snatching freedom in the exchange of less than nothing? Even more today’s adults will be remembered as the worse kind reaching a new low.. as they have both failed to protect their parents and masking their children for going to school to learn what? Become what?.. Caricatures? Can you not see that, up and down have no limit. One can go as high as they wish, and the low is bottomless ..If we do not start right now, looking High and higher..we will hit soon another new low.. If you take a minute and realize that all is being named as very scientific or high tech is in fact the other way around, then there would be no doubt of why we are in a very bad shape. The real high tech is our physical bodies, genome and the physical world. What we are experiencing recently is an attempt to stop and reverse the natural evolution of human beings.
As for Ahmari, is it only me I suspect, that him convert to a catholic perhaps is not that honest after all. He tries to connect religion with politics? Although not entirely new with Christianity, but is this not what mainly happens with islam as an undercover political ideology? Is his an attempt of Islamic ideas to penetrate Christianity, confuse Christians and engulf them in guilt of trying to turn their religion into an ideology.. instead of accepting that, that is exactly the problem with islam..! This is an excellent example of how Marxism twists mind and presents deceit as true. For me, we have here an example of islam and Marxism joined efforts against Christianity and the west… yes they will go as far as it goes..
“Many on the contemporary Right, for example, are coming round to the idea that if we reduce house prices by relaxing supply constraints, we will incentivise earlier and larger family formation.” Well, yes, easier said than done. It would also be a good idea for the Bank of England to end its addiction to quantitative easing. The House of Lords Economic Affairs Committee just ended a valuable set of hearings on QE. The statements of the critics more persuasive than those of the advocates.
“… larger family formation” — probably not what the planet needs right now.