INTRODUCTION

THE MELTING VISION AND ITS DIALECTIC

Why there are undertones of modernism in Marx’s writing

1. “All that is solid melts into air”- imagery, cosmic scope and visionary grandeur,
apocalyptic, ambiguity, drama
2. The idea that destruction of everything is holy- a materialist normally simply denies the
existence of God. Marx plays around with this idea of holiness being missing. He invokes
a historical drama and trauma.
3. Men must confront the perplexing reality- this makes men both the subject as well as
object

“The manifesto expresses some of the modernist culture’s deepest insights and at the same
time, dramatizes some of its deepest inner contradictions.”

Why to study Marx from modernism POV?

Relationship between modernist culture and the bourgeois economy

Modern bourgeoisie: must demand change, delight in mobility, renewable, development

“To say that our society is falling apart is only to say that it is alive and well”

SOLID INSTITUTIONAL CORE OF MODERNITY

1. Emergence of world market
2. Legal, fiscal and administrative centralization
3. Bourgeoisie contribution

ACHIEVEMENTS OF BOURGEOIS
1. The first to show what man’s activity can bring about
2. To líbrate the human capacity and drive for development, change and innovation i.e.
Marx embraces the personality structure that this economy has produced
3.
Marx celebrates bourgeois, not for their output, but for their processes and expressions of
human life and energy i.e. the means not the end. Despite the fact that he’s a materialist; hence
this shows layers of modernism in his approach.
Bourgeois don’t realize their power, it can be realized only by those who overthrow it (break its
power).

If a good life is full of action, why should the range of human activities be limited to those that
are profitable?

It will be the virtues for which he praised the bourgeoise that will bury it in the end. Why?
 - if organized action of men can change the world in so many ways, why not change it
more
- It set free activitsic energies which will be adopted by the revolutionary activity that will
overthrow it
- Capitalism will be melted by the heat of its own incandescent energies

FREE MARKET ETHOS

Capitalism destroys the human possibilities in creates. On the one hand, it forces self dev; on
the other hand, this development takes place in restrictive ways - only marketable development.
The experience of self dev should be a source of joy, free from the demands of market.

“Only in community with others has each individual the means of cultivating his grifts in all
directions; only in community, therefore, is personal freedom possible.”
Instead of partially developed individual/ labor, we must have fully developed labour.

HOW IS THIS VISION OF COMMUNISM MODERN?

1. Individualistic
2. Development is the form of a good life

Essentially, Marx hopes to heal the wounds of modernity through a fuller and deeper modernity.

INNOVATIVE SELF DESTRUCTION

Concept of “Party of Order” in modern politics and culture

Everything the bourgeoise builds is to tear down, repeat the processes in more profitable terms
over and over again (architectural construction)
They are the most violently destructive ruling class in history - would do anything for money

Every modern man has both human possibilities of- desires, drive, Revolution, dev, creation,
recreation; but also Nihilism, destruction, the heart of darkness, horror etc.
Most creative modernist artists will depict visions of the most radiant joy and bleakest despair
(apocalyptic). This inner dynamism expresses inward rhythms by which modern capitalism lives.
(Again, manifestó acts as an archetype of modernism- Imaginative power. Berman desicribes it
as the first great modernist work of art).

But there are contradictions within these visions. For ex:

1. He says crises will weaken bourgeois capitalist society, but elsewhere he describes that
this society thrives on crisis and catastrophe.
2. Bourgeois ideology lays the foundation for a revolutionary community. How? Because
large scale productive units force workers to be together, cooperation thru community,
collective thinking and eventually form militant political institutions. BUT isn’t everything
in capitalist societies built for obsolescence? Hence this idea may well be transient with
 different situation and interests. Further, can true human bonds be built in wage labour,
exploitation, surplus value, competition, only marketable development.
3. How will the revolution succeed in making a communist society? What will prevent social
forces that melt capitalism from melting communism as well?

NAKEDNESS: THE UNACCOMMODATED MAN

- distinction between real and illusionary world. The false world is the historical past, the
true world is the physical world that exists now
- Symbolism of clothes as belonging to the old, while nakedness is a newly discovered
truth (act of spiritual liberation)
- Uses the example of King Lear: at the end, man is no more than what he is when he is
stripped of everything but his life. He resorts to naked authenticity. This is the first step
towards full humanity because he recognizes connection between him and other human
beings
- “The dreadful naked reality of the unaccommodated man is the point from which
accommodation must be made, the only ground on which real community can
grow”

In the 18th century, the metaphors of nakedness as truth and stripping as self discovery take on
a new political resonance
- naked man is freer, happier and better (Rousseau)
- Veil is repressive, comparison of Persia and Paris (Montesquieu)

Philosophers saw nakedness as idyllic, but Burke during the French Revolution said that it’s
counter idyllic. Instead people must construct mythic draperies heavy enough to stifle the
dreadful knowledge of who they are

Marx: the bourgeois Revolution tore away veils of religious and political illusion and hence have
left naked power and exploitation, cruelty and misery, exposed like open wounds. It also
exposes new hopes
- modern men are free from masters
- Common yearning for communal warmth
- Communism is a kind of transparent garment, at once keeping its wearers warm and
setting off their naked beauty, so that they can recogiese themselves and each other in
all their radiance

Individualism that scorns and connections with others

Collectivism that seeks to submerge itself in a social role
Marx attempts to compile the best of both worlds, but that is intellectually and emotionally
unattainable to a large extent

This has its own drawbacks- as bourgeois society is volatile in the eyes of Marx, what is to say
they will discover their true self through nakedness?
THE METAMORPHOSIS OF VALUES
In place of all the freedoms that men have fought for, the bourgeois places one unprincipled
freedom- FREE TRADE

Any imaginable mode of human conduct becomes morally permissible the moment it becomes
economically possible and valuable. Anything goes if it pays. This is what modern nihilism is all
about

CONCLUSION

Multiple perspectives by Marshall:

1. Reading Marx as a modernist writer: vividness and richness of his language and
vocabulary, depth and complexity of imagery used (wrt “all that is solid melts into air”).
Developing and questioning various themes such that in the end there is an uncertainty
about what is basic, valuable and even real.
2. Reading modernism in a Marxist way: the characteristic features of modernity including
its energies and anxieties are due to modern economic life, relentless and insatiable
pressure for growth. Human beings exploit not just others but also themselves.

Orthodox Modernists see themselves as creating a pure art form, free from history and society.
But a fusion would allow them to
- Express the complex relationships between them and modern bourgeois society.
- A fusion of Marx with modernism should melt the too-solid body of Marxism- or at least
warm it up and thaw it out -and, at the same time, give modernist art and thought a new
solidity and invest its creations with an unsuspected resonance and depth. It would
reveal modernism as the realism of our time.

Daniel Bell, an anti-modernist, claims that “modernism is a seducer” due to which people move
away from moral, political and economic duties. He used what was considered the artists’
superiority over the rules binding men, against modernism itself. In the process, he deemed
capitalism to be innocent.

But what is masked here, by modernists and anti-modernists alike, is the fact that these spiritual
and cultural movements, have been bubbles on the surface of a social and economic cauldron
that has been teeming and boiling for more than a hundred years. I.e. they are all simply results
of the current economic circumstances.
It is modern capitalism, not modern art and culture, which has kept the pot boiling.
Marx took up Gauthe’s idea of an emerging world literature i.e. universal interdependence,
broad mindedness, But this world literature has actually not emerged. In fact, it is more of a
western affair, as justified in the following lines:

This possibility was first proposed in the middle of the nineteenth century by various Russian
populists. They argued that the explosive atmosphere of modernization in the West-the
breakdown of communities and the psychic isola- tion of the individual, mass impoverishment
and class polarization, a cultural creativity that sprang from desperate moral and spiritual
anarchy-might be a cultural peculiarity rather than an iron necessity inexorably awaiting the
whole of mankind. Why should not other nations and civilizations achieve more harmonious
fusions of traditional ways of life with modern potentialities and needs? In short-sometimes this
belief was expressed as a complacent dogma, sometimes as a desperate hope-it was only in
the West that "all that is solid melts into air."

Many emerging populist leaders, especially in developing countries, want to wipe modernist
culture off their maps i.e. to promote a nation's interest over seeking one’s own. They wish to
attain the heights of modern community without ever going through the depths of modern
fragmentation and disunity.

But, why are they having to repress it so much if it's not the will of the people? It's not
completely alien and only western. They simply put a lid on people and once they are free, they
will pursue modernist ideology. “It is modernist culture that keeps critical thought and free
imagination alive in much of the non-Western world today.”

INDICTMENTS OF MARX:
He celebrates value of labour and production but fails in moral imagination

1. Herbert Marcuse:
- Marx idolized prometheus whereas marcuse suggests better idols such as Orpheus,
Narcissus, Dionysus etc.
- Hence he emphasises joys of peace and one-ness with nature, not mastery over it
❖ BUT Marx does talk about free development of physical and spiritual
energies
❖ “the universality of individual needs, capacities, pleasures, productive
force” Grundrisse
❖ It would take promethean striving (toil, productivity, progress through
repression) to create the oneness of man and nature

2. Hannah Arndt:
- “the real problem in his thought is not a draconic authoritarianism but its radical opposite,
the lack of a basis for any authority at all”
 - There is a depth on individualism which underlines Marx’s communism, hence fulfillment
of needs of one might not suffice for others
- In a communist society the condition of free development for each is the condition of free
development for all, how will all be held together?
- Would create a futile society

“She is right to say that Marx never developed a theory of political community, and right that this
is a serious problem. But the problem is that, given the nihilistic thrust of modern personal and
social development, it is not at all clear what political bonds modern men can create. Thus the
trouble in Marx's thought turns out to be a trouble that runs through the whole structure of
modern life itself.”

AUTHOR’S PURPOSE:

I have been arguing that those of us who are most critical of modern life need modernism most,
to show us where we are and where we can begin to change our circumstances and ourselves.
In search of a place to begin, I have gone back to one of the first and greatest of modernists,
Karl Marx. I have gone to him not so much for his answers as for his questions. The great gift he
can give us today, it seems to me, is not a way out of the contradictions of modern life but a
surer and deeper way into these contradictions. He knew that the way beyond the contradictions
would have to lead through modernity, not out of it. He knew we must start where we are:
psychically naked, stripped of all religious, aesthetic, moral haloes and sentimental veils, thrown
back on our individual will and energy, forced to exploit each other and ourselves in order to
survive; and yet, in spite of all, thrown together by the same forces that pull us apart, dimly
aware of all we might be together, ready to stretch ourselves to grasp new human possibili- ties,
to develop identities and mutual bonds that can help us hold together as the fierce modern air
blows hot and cold through us all.