Tasks facing Marxists in the current conjuncture

By Raju J Das
Published
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Ideas are never produced in a vacuum. They are always shaped by objective economic and political conditions. Marxist ideas are no exception. This article reflects on how Marxists should respond to the current conjuncture, marked by a series of profound economic, political and ecological crises. 

We are witnessing a sustained assault on social gains and democratic rights won by the masses through hard-fought struggles. At this critical juncture, humanity stands at a fork in the road: one path leads toward socialist democracy; the other, toward social and ecological barbarism. The tasks facing Marxists have never been more urgent.

Let me begin with the idea of Marxism itself. Marxism is a body of ideas armed with: a philosophy (materialist dialectics); a social theory (materialist conception of history and human agency); a method of analysis of economic life (political economy, especially, of capitalist societies, including in relation to nature and human body, and people’s social-ecological needs); and a political theory (which covers the theory of the state, class struggle, revolution and a vision of socialist democracy1). 

Marxism:

  1. treats class as the most important social relation and cleavage, which is reproduced at a concrete level through relations of special oppression; 

  2. considers the capitalist social order as a form of class society and the most important cause of social-ecological problems facing humankind; 

  3. insists that capitalism and its state, whose fundamental job is to protect capitalism2, cannot meet the needs of the people, so the capitalist political-economic order must be replaced by socialism in the only way possible — through revolution; and

  4. views the working class, when class-conscious and organised, as the most consistent fighter for democratic rights and socialism because of its role in the social economy, although it will need to form an alliance with the non-exploiting petty producer class. 

Another name for Marxism is scientific socialism. Marxism explains the exploitative social-ecological world and points to what is to be done — and how — on the basis of its scientific analysis. Marxism is a guide to thinking. 

It is also a guide to action. Indeed, Marxism itself is one of the three forms of class struggle. Marxism represents ideological class struggle. The other two forms are the struggle for reforms and the struggle for socialism, which Marxism itself informs. Marxism is essential for the development of the capacity of the common people in their struggles. Because of its intellectual and political ambition, Marxism has always been marginalised in academia, media and wider society.3

What follows is a brief and condensed reflection on the current conjuncture (which includes the nature of capitalism and the state), as well as the tasks facing Marxists today. These are themes I have written about before, so I have included references to many of my works for readers who wish to explore them in greater depth. Those interested will find more detailed bibliographies in my articles and books.

The current conjuncture: Multiple crises and contradictions

Ideas are always influenced by objective economic and political conditions, as well as people’s struggles to improve and transcend these conditions. This principle applies to Marxism.

Marxists today — including individual Marxists, Marxists in academia, Marxists in labour, farmers’ and petty producers’ organisations, Marxists in social justice movements, Marxists involved in publishing Marxist journals or radical journals with strong linkages to Marxism4, etc — must respond to the current conjuncture. 

The current conjuncture is constituted by at least ten inter-related crises, which require urgent resolution. These crises are: 

Crisis of the capitalist economy: Manifested at national and global scales and pointing to a capitalism-in-decay, this is fundamentally the crisis of profitability and accumulation. This produces many consequences such as: economic slowdown, un-and under-employment, speculative parasitism on the part of financial sections of the capitalist class, and sovereign debt traps (a reason for IMF-imposed austerity).

Crisis of reproduction/subsistence: Because of the capitalist exploitation of wage workers, the exploitation of petty producers and (forced) dispossession from their property, and austerity, the vast majority of humanity has limited access to means of subsistence: food, housing, water, healthcare (both physical and mental), energy, education, transportation, etc. All of these exist in their commodity form. As a result, most people are unable to adequately reproduce themselves socially and biologically; they struggle to sustain a normal life and secure freedom from hunger, illness, ignorance, and other basic deprivations.

Crisis of inequality: There is extreme and deepening inequality in terms of income, wealth and access to essential means of subsistence between the top 1-10% and the bottom 90% of the population. This crisis is also reflected in persistent disparities across social groups, regions within countries and between nations. We face both social and geographical forms of inequality.

Crisis of the environment: This encompasses climate change, the depletion of natural resources, and the erosion of biodiversity — developments that have unfolded alongside the failure of so-called “green capitalism”. At the root of this crisis lies capital’s inherent tendency to extract far more from nature (just as it does from labour) than it ever returns. The exploitation of labour, the dumping of wastes into the atmosphere and the uncompensated extraction of natural resources (particularly from the Global South) constitute a “metabolic rift” — a process of “negative giving”. As such, the environmental crisis is deeply intertwined with the crisis of subsistence, including widespread threats to health. Crucially, the impacts of ecological degradation are disproportionately borne by the Global South, which continues to be subjected to extractivist practices with devastating social-ecological consequences.

Crisis of peace: This crisis is evident in ongoing wars, relentless warmongering and pervasive militarisation. It unfolds within a globally integrated system of capitalist accumulation, where economic development and natural resources are unevenly distributed across a world that is divided into competing nation-states: some imperialist, along with their proxies and outposts; the vast majority subjected to imperialist domination.5 Economic conflicts in the form of competition for markets, land, natural resources and investment opportunities are causing enduring geo-“political” conflicts (and even economic wars in the form of sanctions and tariffs) between the imperialist blocs and the imperialised bloc, and within each bloc. War has itself become a means of accumulation.

Crisis of democracy: This is indicated by growing right-wing authoritarianism (including fascistic tendencies) and increasing violence against common people by the capitalist state and right-wing majoritarian mobs, often with state backing. Fundamental democratic freedoms, such as freedom of speech, criticism, assembly, trade union activity and political protest, are under sustained assault. Increasingly, public expression is constrained to what the economic elite and the state are willing to tolerate or endorse. Unlike in Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin’s time, when authoritarianism was often rooted in pre-capitalist social relations, today the erosion of democratic rights stems from capitalism itself. A deeply unequal, crisis-ridden capitalism in decline can no longer afford even modest concessions. As a result, when people mobilise to demand their rights, the state emerges not as a protector of democracy but as one of its principal threats, just as it is an obstacle to addressing the broader crises confronting humanity.

Crisis of dignity: This crisis is reflected in the systemic and persistent violations of the rights and freedoms of oppressed groups, including women and those marginalised on the basis of race, religion, ethnicity, caste, nationality, immigration status or sexual orientation. These groups are subjected to dehumanisation and inferiorisation, often at the hands of dominant identity-based majorities.6 This process of marginalisation is increasingly accompanied by an artificial sense of victimhood among these majorities, further entrenching exclusion and legitimising oppression.

Crisis of culture: Although digital technologies have expanded access to knowledge and culture, the freedom to critically pursue them, including in the realms of the natural and social sciences, is increasingly under threat. This erosion of cultural freedom is accompanied by the deliberate dissemination of falsehoods and politically-motivated misinformation, often amplified through modern communication tools such as AI and social media. We are confronted with a kind of “post-truth” reality.7 The crisis of culture also includes the loss of indigenous and traditional ecological knowledge, and the ideological elevation of dominant ancient religious mythologies (especially those rooted in majoritarian identity politics) to the status of historical fact or scientific truth.

Crisis of the state: Any earlier pretensions that the state represented the common interests of society — whether since decolonisation in the Global South or the rise of the welfare state in the Global North — are rapidly eroding. The state is increasingly exposed as an instrument under the control of the economic elite. As public services and social protections are systematically hollowed out, the state largely disregards the social and ecological needs of the vast majority, while actively serving the interests of the wealthiest 1-5% of the population.

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These ten crises (I acknowledge the list may not be exhaustive) presuppose and are ultimately caused by a series of contradictions that are more or less eternal within capitalism and that will not be resolved as long as there is capitalism. Those contradictions are: 

  • between socialised production of wealth by workers, and petty producers and its private control and appropriation by capitalists; 

  • between a highly globalised accumulation process, and a nation-state-based political system, within which such accumulation occurs;

  • between capitalist social relations of production and private accumulation, and the necessity to further develop productive forces; 

  • between the fact that workers and petty producers are the majority, and the reality that the state is controlled by a minority (the economic elite); 

  • between capitalism’s need for a healthy environment and healthy human body, and its ongoing destruction of both; 

  • between capitalism’s need for science and creativity, and its growing constraints on scientific and cultural freedoms; and 

  • between human beings’ natural tendency towards universal love, care and solidarity, and the widespread presence of hatred in politics, daily life and civil society.

What is to be done (and not done) by Marxists?

If the current conjuncture is defined by the crises and contradictions outlined above, the pressing question becomes: what should Marxists do in response? Today, Marxists face a wide range of tasks at a critical moment in history.

There is always a tendency to assimilate Marxism “in an extremely one-sided and mutilated fashion.” Marxists must ideologically combat this.9 No one has the (moral) right “to extend the term Marxists to people who obviously do not accept the most elementary and fundamental tenets of Marxism.”10 A Marxist journal must not publish material that is anti-Marxist. A Marxist must reject any eclectic combination of Marxist and anti-Marxist ideas (more on this below). 

In a class society, ideas more or less reflect and represent fundamental class interests that are mutually antagonistic. In a capitalist class society: “the only choice is — either bourgeois or socialist ideology. There is no middle course (for humankind has not created a ‘third’ ideology)... To belittle the socialist ideology in any way, to turn aside from it in the slightest degree means to strengthen bourgeois ideology.”11 

Individual Marxists and Marxist journals must respond to unsound criticisms of Marxism. Marxists must defend the philosophy of materialist dialectics and sound arguments in political economy and political theory, including the historical materialist idea that political matters must ultimately have a basis in economic relations/processes, although the latter also reacts back on political matters. Marxists must reject idealism, politicism and voluntarism. 

Classical Marxists (such as Marx, Friedrich Engels, Lenin, Leon Trotsky and Rosa Luxemburg) were thinkers and activists. This is partly why their words continue to have so much force.12 Individual Marxists must engage with key classical Marxist texts and critically analyse them in terms of their contemporary theoretical and practical relevance, situating them in relation to more recent Marxist ideas. Marxist journals can play a crucial role by organising symposia on specific texts. There is an absolutely urgent need to defend and deepen the classical Marxist tradition.13

Marxists must never compromise on or dilute the idea that capitalism and its state can never resolve the fundamental crises and contradictions facing humanity. Marxists must make clear that capitalism is, above all else, a class-divided society and the state is the state of capitalist class. Marxist must explain that capitalism and its state need to be replaced by socialist democracy — and that this can only happen only through people’s struggles for social-economic-political and ecological concessions as part of the fight for socialist democracy.14 

The task of Marxists is to help common people realise that under capitalism, “reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching,” so they must “fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery.”15 The task of Marxists is to make common people conscious of the need to make use of partial demands (for example, a rise in wages) but — more importantly and where possible — raise more radical or “transitional” demands (for example, inflation adjusted wages; employment, housing and healthcare for all; workers’ control over large-scale enterprises; and nationalisation of banks).16 These can help link immediate demands to the task of seizing power and establish a transitional workers’ state. They reflect the true needs of the people, irrespective of whether the system says it can deliver. Raising such demands is therefore a step towards socialist democracy. Marxism must strengthen the intellectual justification for making transitional demands.

To go beyond wage-slavery and reach socialism, the battle for democracy must be won. Marx and Engels wrote in the Communist Manifesto:

the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.17

As a part of the battle of democracy, ongoing ruling class attacks on democratic rights must be opposed by the masses. The intellectual basis for such opposition must be strengthened by Marxists. The purpose of opposing these attacks is not to maintain capitalism, but to create more favourable conditions for the struggle against it.

There can be no revolutionary movement against capitalism, and there can be no successful battle for democracy, without critical and radical scholarship that goes to the root of people’s urgent problems with the help of materialist dialectics and robust political economy. Marxists and Marxist journals must prioritise production and dissemination of research on the ongoing attacks on democracy and the right to a dignified livelihood, sustainable environment and healthy life, in the Global North and Global South. They must also highlight how common people are fighting, however inadequately, to defend their rights and needs, and the obstacles they face, including their own false or limited consciousness and their deception and unreasoning trust in the state or fraction of the ruling class (so-called lesser evilism). 

Marxists must produce rigorous ideas about capitalist crises and structural contradictions. Marxist journals must do everything possible to promote the production and dissemination of Marxist ideas. Marxists’ individual research and teaching agenda, and the publication agenda Marxist journals, must cover as many of the problems and contradictions as possible, subject to the usual constraints. After all, individual journals specialise in certain topics, as do individual or specific groups of Marxists. There are financial constraints, too.

Many editors say what a journal publishes depends on the submissions it receives. This is only partly true. Journals must not entirely rely on spontaneous submission. Editorial board members must actively solicit articles, which then undergo review. Journals must plan regular special issues on humanity’s fundamental crises and contradictions, including how they manifest in specific times and places and how people can fight against them. Marxist journals must be present at Marxist events/conferences in and outside academia. 

Every act of production must involve reproduction (or, continuous production). Marxist journals and established Marxist scholars must help and encourage younger scholars (including those in graduate school) to conduct and publish Marxist work. Steps must be taken to help relatively under-represented groups conduct Marxist work and publish Marxist articles. Where possible Marxists should set up arrangements for funding, including via journals, which may use a part of their revenue for this purpose.

Exploitation of workers in the workplace and in the markets, along with exploitation of petty producers in the markets for commodities and credit, are mediated/reinforced by social oppression/exclusion. Marxist scholars from working class and petty producer backgrounds must be assisted, as must scholars from oppressed and unwaged or under-employed groups. Marxists from non-English speaking countries of the Global North must be encouraged to engage in Marxism and submit articles. 

Marxism is nothing if it is not international. The research agenda of Marxist scholars and the publication agenda of Marxist journals, especially those based in the West, must reflect the economic, political, ecological and cultural conditions of the Global South, both empirically and theoretically, and relate these conditions to those in the North, and to imperialism as such.18 Special effort must be made to solicit articles about the Global South from both the Global South and the Global North. 

“Marxist theory is a great aggregator of human experience” as it allows us to sum up human experience from different times and places and draw general lessons. In doing so, and in summing up the common experience of people living in different countries and in different regions of a country, Marxism ideologically also unites the objectively disunited proletariat.19 A journal that publishes articles from different parts of the world fulfills this summing up role of Marxism. 

Marxism, generally speaking, is arguably superior to non-Marxist ideas in terms of its rigour, explanatory power and emancipatory potential.20 “[T]he Marxist world outlook is the only true expression of the interests, the viewpoint, and the culture of the revolutionary proletariat.”21 Yet, Marxism is never to be treated as inviolable or complete. Marxists must engage with non-Marxist ideas just as Marx, Engels, Lenin, etc did. Whether it is economic development or democracy, visions of socialism or populism, Marxists should carefully study what non-Marxists say and reflect on where, and to what extent, they agree with non-Marxists. They must then develop rigorous criticisms of non-Marxist ideas and their alternative views on that basis. 

Development of alternative views on a topic might require selective incorporation of what are hitherto non-Marxist ideas. The power of Marxist thought, with its materialist dialectical philosophy and robust political economy and political theory, along with its proletarian-revolutionary outlook, is such that non-Marxist ideas, when incorporated within an overall Marxist framework, may lose their original identity. 

Marxism is above all else a critique. It is a critique of an unjust, unsustainable world. It is a critique of the ideas that help maintain such a world. Marxism is critical not only of right-wing thought but also of liberalism, postmodernism, anarchism and social democracy. Marxism is and must be critical of any framework that advocates a two-stage revolution (first a democratic revolution, and only after a socialist revolution, with a hiatus between the two) and that justifies the idea of socialism in one country. 

By being critical of non-Marxist ideas, which are generally explanatorily weak and political reformist, and by advancing reasoned claims, Marxists play the role of educators of the masses and their organic intellectuals. Marxism represents the highest form of class consciousness. Common people’s life teaches them a lot about their own conditions. Yet, more than living one’s daily life is necessary to become fully aware of life. 

Marxism not only unites common people. It emphasises the need for unity among Marxists too. “Nothing is more important than to rally all Marxists who have realised the profundity of the crisis and the necessity of combating it, for defence of the theoretical basis of Marxism and its fundamental propositions.”22 Marxist journals and conferences can play a key role in facilitating unity. Such unity can be produced on the basis of debates with more reformist tendencies within Marxism. To increase the power of Marxist thought, Marxists and Marxist journals must collaborate. Marxist journals can be a vehicle for this. 

Marxism unites theory and practice, including political practice.23 Research must be both theoretical and involve empirical practice. Activist-scholars or scholar-activists must be encouraged to submit articles. A Marxist journal can routinely publish fieldnotes on the struggles of common people and intellectual reflections on these struggles. 

Marxists must draw out practical implications of their writings for the movement for socialist democracy. A Marxist journal must encourage its contributors to do this consistently. More abstract ideas lead to less abstract ideas, and less abstract ideas lead to ideas that masses can directly use for their movement for socialist democracy — the movement by the majority of humanity for the rule of the majority of humanity. A socialist movement is truly a democratic movement. As Marx and Engels said: 

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority.24

When ideas that go to the root of the matter grip the minds of the masses, they become tools for radical transformation and self-emancipation.

Conclusion

There is a limit on the extent to which schools, colleges and universities can impart genuine education to common people — an education that serves and reflects their class interests. The true education of the working class is a deeply political process. Hence the need for intellectual organs of the masses, such as Marxist journals, magazines and blogs. The task of Marxists today is to make common people aware of capitalism’s fundamental crises and contradictions, and of the need to transcend both.

Marxists are armed with the power of Marxist thought, which is derived from its abilities to: a) examine reality from a materialist and a dialectical perspective, which emphasises the objective and contradictory character of reality; b) truthfully go to the root of the matter to reflect reality as it is, more or less, even if the scientific study of society is always a work-in-progress, and c) provide a guide to socialist action. 

Marxism’s power comes from its ability to unite theoretical, empirical and political practice (economic struggle and struggle over state power). Marxism’s power is also derived from its ability to recuperatively build on existing knowledge that Marxism is critical of, including that produced by non-Marxisms. Marxism’s power is also derived from its scientific approach, as well as its scientific-ethical commitment to its responsibility toward the masses. The task of Marxist today is to defend and deepen the power of Marxist thought.

Socialism requires Marxist theory, propaganda, agitation and organisation.25 A scholarly journal (as well as the scholarship of individual Marxists and Marxist collectives) is to Marxist theory what newspapers and workers’ magazines are to socialist propaganda and agitation. That is how important Marxist journals are. The classroom is a site of class struggle26; so are Marxist fora and the pages of Marxist scholarly journals.

Raju J Das is Professor at York University, Canada. His recent books include: Marxist class theory for a skeptical world; Marx’s Capital, Capitalism, and Limits to the State; Contradictions of capitalist society and culture; The challenges of the new social democracy; and Theories for Radical Change. His edited book The Power of Marxist Thought (with Robert Latham and David Fasenfest) will be published in Fall, 2025. Das serves on the editorial board and on the manuscript review committee of Science & Society: A Journal of Marxist Thought and Analysis. He edits (with Salvatore Engel-Dimauro) the Contentions section of Human Geography. He edits (with Robert Latham) the Theory and class struggle section of the journal, Class, Race and Corporate Power. He is also associated with Dialectical Anthropology and Critical Sociology. More information about his work is available at rajudas.info.yorku.ca

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