This follows on from 2 previous forum  threads:

all that is holy is profaned

all that is solid melts into air

I've been enjoying Berman's book All that is Solid Melts into Air  because he has done such a good job of capturing the experience of modernity.  One way he does this is by personifying the social forces while simultaneously drawing on powerful images from the natural world.   These he mixes with metaphors from the imagined supernatural world.  

Thus he talks of the bourgeoisie as being dimly aware of its own dark side and of keeping this a secret - even from ithemselves.  Society itself  is subject to  forces that are out of control  so that we are seized by shocks and convulsions that threaten at every instant to annihilate us . The modern world is at once both magical and demonic and Marx's description of the bourgeoisie as  "like the sorcerer who can no longer control the powers of the underworld",  descends not only from Goethe's Faust   but also from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein.

This results in a very vivid exposition of something that is fundamental to Marxism but quite hard to keep a grasp on. This is  the idea that the course of history  is in one sense the result of forces that are out of (anyone's) control yet in another important sense,  depends very much on human consciousness and choice.    (see the earlier forum threads on the relation between materialism and idealism  and  dialectics)

Innovative Self-destruction

Innovative Self Destruction  is the title of the   second section of Berman's chapter on Marx, Modernity and Modernization  (with a focus on the Communist Manifesto) .

In this section he is concerned with the destructive nature of capitalism and its impact on bourgeois ideology.  He opens the section with a question:

Now we must confront somethimg even more perplexing: next to the Communist Manifesto, the whole body of capitalist apologetics, from Adam Ferguson to Milton Friedman is remarkably pale and empty of life.

 

The celebrants of capitalism tell us surprisingly little of its infinite horozens, its revolutionary audacity, its dynamic creativity, its adventurousness and romance,
its capacity to make men not only more comfortable but more alive.

 

Contrary to Berman  I think there are many descriptions of capitalism that do give an enthusiastic account of capitalism's dynamism, capacity to extend human potential etc.  (Although perhaps they are not quite as eloquent as Marx !!)  For an example  see The Future and its Enemies by Virginia Postrel .

Nevertheless Berman's  discussion of this issue is an insightful one.

His suggestion is that the  bourgeoisie is so unforthcoming about its audacious, adventurous and revolutionary side because it is afraid of its own destructiveness. 

In discussing this  Berman personifies the bourgeoisie, presenting it as a living, thinking, feeling  protagonist in the drama of  modernity.  The bourgeoisie he says,  are faking it.

To the world at large it presents itself as "the Party of Order in modern politics and culture",  as "solid citizens" engaged in building permanent structures and institutions.  But yet "the truth of the matter , as Marx sees it, is that everything that bourgeois society builds is built to be torn down".  And this is something that  they dare not admit. 

..........

Their secret - a secret thay have managed to keep even from themselves - is that, behind their facades, they are the most violently destructive ruling class in history.

..........

If we look behind the sober scenes that the members of our bourgeoisie create, and see the way they really work and act , we see that these solid citizens  would tear down the world if it paid. Even as they frighten everyone with fantasies of proletarian rapacity and revenge, they themselves, through their inexhaustible dealing  and developing, hurtle masses of men, matetials and money up and down the earth, and erode or explode the foundations of everyone's lives as they go.

 

Whether or not Berman is correct in his claim that the bourgeoisie "is strangely  determined to hide much of their light under a bushel", I think  he's on to something when he points out that in order to survive they must embrace both stability and instability and that this does "frighten" them. 

There must be a sense in which they  live in fear of the very forces that they need to release in order to  survive.  A contemporary example of this can be seen in  the struggle  between the neo-cons and the  US foreign policy old guard.

I'll say more about this in a minute but  first I'd like to reurn to Berman and his characterisation of the bourgeoisie as fundamentally conflicted by their need to maintain order  and the reality that their survival depends upon destroying the old and embracing the new.  He illustrates this further by reminding us of Marx's vivid imagery of the bourgeoisie as "sorcerers" who have managed to call into being something that threatens to overwhelm them.

Modern bourgeois society.... has conjured up such mighty means of production and exchange,  (it) is like the sorcerer who can no longer control the powers of the underworld that he has called up by his spells. (Marx).

 

 When Marx depicts the bourgeois as sorcerers -- remember too, their enterprise has "conjured whole populations out of the ground,"  not to mention "the specter of communism" -- he is pointing to depths they deny. (Berman)

 

This  suggestion that the bourgeoisie is in a sort of 'denial' about the true state of affairs is quite a powerful one.  I think Berman's use of modern psychological categories to characterise  the bourgeois dilemma  is actually quite effective (provided  there's no added idealist baggage - eg that the bourgeoisie could benefit from some sort of transformational insight therapy!). 

 If Marx is right, then the bourgeoisie is not only doomed - but doomed to play a role in its own destruction.  This is obviously something they cannot afford to see.  There's a very real sense in which they do not have Marx's freedom to tell it like it is. 

The bourgeoisie of course is not a single, monolithic  entity with a conscious 'self ' -  as the use of psychological  terms such as 'denial' and 'repress' would seem to imply.  However we do sensibly  talk of  social groups, organisations, nations (etc) as  "expressing a viewpoint", "having an interest" , "believing it is under threat" and so on,  in much the the same way that we talk about single  individuals.   Berman's  use of  more emotionally loaded psychological terms is clearly in the same vein.

However I think his description of the bourgoisie as being 'in denial'  fails to capture how this is played out in practice.  It's a sweeping view that ignores the details (which is fair enough I guess, in a short discussion of the Communist Manifesto).

It's very interesting however to think about current world events in the light of all this.  For here we have a situation is which there's a very clear schism in the "bourgeois psyche".   It's being pulled in two directions.  One part of it embracing stability and refusing to face up to the consequences of this (stagnation and swamps),  and  the other part  going for instability and even dropping part of its "party of order" facade. 

This is a real struggle and the outcome is important. 

On the one hand we have George W. Bush wanting to lift the lid  on the Middle East and allow  genuine (bourgeois) democracy to take root . He knows that it is no longer possible to "engineer" pro-US governments. The only safe policy is the risky  one of letting the democratic forces win - and living with the instability that is an inevitable part of the process. 

"By now it should be clear that decades of excusing and accomodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability, have led only to injustice, instability and tragedy ....for the sake of our long term security, all free nations must stand with the forces of democracy and justice that have begun to transform the Middle East"

 

 

On the other hand we have the old guard of the US foreign policy  establishment who appear to not even understand what GWB is on about.  For example,  Flynt Leverett ( part of the US foreign policy old guard)   who wrote in his article Don't Rush on the Road to Damascus  (March 2, 2005) :

The turmoil unleashed in Lebanon by the Hariri assassination - which reached a high point this week with the resignation of the Syrian-backedprime minister, Omar Karami - may indeed represent a strategic opening, but not for the risky maximalist course that some in the administration seem intent on pursuing.

 

For starters, any effort to engineer a pro-Western Lebanese government would be resisted by Hezbollah, the largest party in Lebanon's Parliament, which because of its record of fighting Israel is at least as legitimate in Lebanese eyes as the anti-Syrian opposition. In the face of such resistance, efforts to establish a pro-Western government would fail, creating more instability in the region when the United States can ill afford it.

 

Does the Bush administration understand that for the foreseeable future, any political order in Lebanon that reflects, as the White House put it, the "country's diversity," will include an important role for Hezbollah? Does the administration feel confident about containing Hezbollah without on-the-ground Syrian management and with the group's sole external guide an increasingly hard-line Iran? Even Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's national security adviser recently said that an overly precipitous Syrian withdrawal from Lebanon could pose a threat to Israel.

 

Moreover, the sudden end of the regime headed by Bashar al-Assad would not necessarily advance American interests. Syrian society is at least as fractious as Iraq's or Lebanon's. The most likely near-term consequence of Mr. Assad's departure would be chaos; the most likely political order to emerge from that chaos would be heavily Islamist. In the end, the most promising (if gradual) course for promoting reform in Syria is to engage and empower Mr. Assad, not to isolate and overthrow him.

 

( Leverett is  former senior director for Middle Eastern affairs at the National Security Council)

 

The Machiavellian manner in which the neo cons  launched their new strategy  was necessary  in order for them to maintain the  facade  of being "the party of order".  Their admission that they were in fact no longer able to maintain order in the old way was a gradual one.  Although Bush now says quite clearly that  the previous policy of "excusing and accomodating tyranny, in the pursuit of stability"  has backfired badly,  there is still  strong support (eg in  Flynt's article above) for the traditional idea that the US should micro- manage the situation in places like Lebanon in the hope of engineering a pro-Western government.

In general I think, the bourgeoisie is terrified of unleashing instability - and especially of doing so openly.