In
his recent book The
Late Marx’s Revo-lutionary Roads (Verso, 2025), Kevin B. Anderson
reveals Marx as a flexible, inquisitive thinker, who is constantly striving to
analyse new avenues of revolutionary possi-bilities, unafraid to revise earlier
held, firm believes. He thus builds on his previous work Marx
at the Margins, in which he had established Marx’s rejection of a
unilinear understanding of historical development. In this blog post, I will
highlight some of the key contributions of Anderson’s latest volume.
In
his analysis of Marx’s Ethnological Notebooks and related writings on Russia,
India Ireland, Algeria, Latin America, and ancient Rome, Anderson reveals several
key intellectual developments of the late Marx. First, there is a clear
understanding that past social relations of production are still present within
an emerging global capitalism. ‘Marx stresses that modes of production are large-scale developments that
are not sharp breaks but rather overlap with their successors and predecessors’
(P.120). These
past social relations may well be the breeding ground of revolutionary
dynamics.
Second,
Marx no longer believed that the revolution would necessarily start in the
capitalist heartland (P.233). Rather, it could equally come from the periphery,
be it Ireland and local resistance against British landowners (PP.147-8), be it
Irish migrant workers importing the revolution to England (P.239), be it
Russian village communes. Thus, ‘Marx’s main purpose in this 1881 letter and its drafts
is to defend the possibility of a Russian revolution based upon the village
communes’ (P.67; see also P.244). In this process, Marx also revised his
earlier understanding that Russian people would lack the necessary
revolutionary consciousness (P.221). ‘It is only in his very last publication
that Marx finally combines these two elements, Russia as a starting point for a
new round of revolution in Europe and the Russian village commune as source of
resistance to capital, of revolution, and of communism’ (P.255).
According to Anderson, Marx’s late writings also included
a re-thinking of the potential role of women by Marx, based on women’s role in
earlier, different social relations of production. ‘It seems more than possible
that Marx saw some type of renewal or rediscovery of women’s ancient powers and
freedoms – developed as they were in so many pre-modern communistic societies –
as connected, at least as a potentiality, to the struggle for a modern
communism that emerged in Paris in 1871’ (P.115).
Moreover, Marx was also clear about the role of the state in his late writings, understanding the state not as a neutral power structure which could be used for different purposes, but as intimately tied up with capitalist class interests. For example, he ‘highlights [in The Civil War in France] the intertwining of capital and the state, and the need to destroy both the state and the capital relation, an issue not expressed explicitly in Capital’ (P.250).
Finally,
Marx’s late writings affirm Anderson’s earlier findings that Marx had moved
away from a unilinear understanding of history as reflected in the Communist
Manifesto, for example, towards multilinearity, in which he acknowledged that
different societies will not have to go through specific historical stages but
have their own developmental lines. Most importantly, this also included are
revision of his earlier assessment that British colonialism of India had been a
factor of economic development and progress (P.155).
What
are the implications of Marx’s late writings for his earlier work and here
especially his work on the political economy of capitalism, as it is explored
most importantly in Capital, Volumes 1 to 3? Did Marx re-consider his analysis
of the dynamics underpinning the capitalist mode of production, asking us today
to move away from these insights? As I see it, Marx’s late writings do not
undermine his key insights about the functioning of the capitalist mode of
production. Rather, Marx asks us to be conscious of how the interaction of this
capitalist mode of production with different production modes plays out
differently in different locations. He asks us to pay attention to the
historical specificities of how capitalism has become established in different
places around the world. The fundamental capitalist structuring conditions
including the relentless, outward expansionary dynamics remain unchallenged.
Moreover,
what these late writings illustrate is Marx’s enormous capacity of expanding
his research into ever new avenues. Rather than abandoning his political
economy, Marx challenges us to remain constantly open to new research and
findings in related areas and disciplines. Of course, these late writings are
only notes, not fully developed lines of analysis. They are a challenge to us
today to build on them and develop them further in line with ever changing circumstances.
Finally,
Marx’s late writings demonstrate that his writings first and foremost
constitute a methodology for research rather than ‘objective’ findings about capitalism.
This reminds us to stay open-minded when applying his method to today’s
developments. This teaches us, perhaps most importantly, that we need to look
for potential resistance to capitalist exploitation beyond the workplace and
the capitalist mode of production, assessing the full capitalist social
formation including resistance in the spheres of social reproduction, and
resistance to racist and patriarchal forms of oppression as well as intensified
expropriation of nature.
In
short, we need to work with and through Marx, rather than against him. Credit
is clearly due to Anderson for outlining to us so well the changes and yet also
continuities in Marx’s thinking.
Andreas Bieler
22 October 2025
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