Sayers Sean
http://doi.org/10.17506/ryipl.2016.17.1.720
Abstract: The modern Marxist approach toward the analysis of the Communist alternative to global capitalism is not utopian, but at the same time goes beyond the tradition of “scientific communism”. From the point of view of Marx, communism is a historical stage of the future, which does not arise ex nihil; it is a natural product of evolutionary (quantitative) and revolutionary (qualitative) transformations of capitalism due to the social and economic contradictions. In contrast, modern Marxists (A. Badiou, L. Althusser, D. Bensaid) believe that communism is the absolute “break” (“rupture”), a sudden “event” which has no causes in the past. Moreover, for them the future of communism is not a natural result of the immanent development of capitalism representing just a “Communist horizon”. The author of the atricle shows that the qualitative – revolutionary – changes are not absolute, total, sudden, and spontaneous ruptures, as they are represented by Badiou, Althusser, and others. They do not arise out of nowhere. On the contrary, there is an essential connection between consistent, quantitative phase of the revolutionary, high-quality breakthrough, which is its outcome. There is continuity, as well as discontinuity. A revolutionary break may well seem to be sudden and unexpected, but it is never entirely unheralded. Although capitalism is in crisis, there is no sign of the forces, which as Marx believed would bring about its overthrow, and create a new society. The capitalist world is still riven by the contradictions that Marx describes, and it will eventually lead to the emergence of forces that will abolish it, and create a more socialist form of society. The author cannot prove or demonstrate it, because today is not the time to point out the forces that are necessary if the alternative is created. Therefore, it is ultimately a matter of faith: faith in communism. But, this is not the mere blind faith implied by Badiou’s notion of a sudden revolutionary “event”, and his dematerialised “idea of communism”. The faith involved in Marxism is very different. It is the belief that communism is not a mere “idea” but an actual tendency of history itself. This belief is grounded in the Marxist theory of history and its analysis of the forces at work in capitalism.
Keywords: Marxism, communism, capitalism, history, rupture, event, determination, faith, A. Badiou.