How to study the communist future inside the capitalist present: why dialectics? Why now?

• Author: Ollman, Bertell
• Position: Thinking Economically - Essay

Part I

The law locks up the man or woman Who steals a goose from off the common, But leaves the greater villain loose Who steals the common from under the goose. --15th century, English, Anonymous The commons, of course, was the land owned by everyone in the village. By the late middle ages, feudal lords were claiming this land as their own private property. In universities today, we can discern two opposing kinds of scholarship, that which studies the people who steal a goose from off the commons ("Goose From Off the Commons Studies," or G.F.O.C. for short) and that which studies those who steal the commons from under the goose ("Commons From Under the Goose Studies," or C.F.U.G. for short). If the "mainstream" in practically every discipline consists almost entirely of the former, Marxism is our leading example of the latter.

But whereas seeing someone steal a goose from off the commons is a relatively simple matter--you only have to be there, to open your eyes, and to look--seeing someone steal the commons from under the goose is not, neither then nor now (Russia today is a possible exception). Here, the theft is accomplished only gradually; the person acting is often an agent for someone else; force is used, but so are laws and ideology. In short, to recognize a case of C.F.U.G., one has to grasp the bigger picture and the longer time that it takes for it to come together. It's not easy, but there is nothing that we study that is more important. Hence--and no matter what happened in the Soviet Union and in China--Marxism will continue to be relevant until we reclaim the commons from those who stole it from us and who go on helping themselves to it with impunity right up to this moment.

Just how difficult it is to grasp the bigger picture was recently brought home to us when a group of astronomers announced that they had discovered what they called "The Great Attractor." This is a huge structure composed of many galaxies that is exerting a strong attraction on our galaxy and therefore on our solar system and on the planet on which we live. When questioned as to why something so big was not discovered earlier, one of the astronomers replied that its very size was responsible for the delay. These scientists had focused so intently on its parts that they couldn't see what they were parts of.

Capitalism is a huge structure very similar to the Great Attractor. It, too, has a major effect on everything going on inside it, but it is so big and so omnipresent that few see it. In capitalism, the system consists of a complex set of relations between all people, their activities (particularly material production) and products. But this interaction is also evolving, so the system includes the development of this interaction over time, stretching back to its origins and forward to whatever it is becoming. The problem people have in seeing capitalism, then--and recognizing instances of G.F.O.C. Studies when they occur--comes from the difficulty of grasping such a complex set of relations that are developing in this way and on this scale.

No one will deny, of course, that everything in society is related in some way and that the whole of this is changing, again in some way and at some pace. Yet, most people try to make sense of what is going on by viewing one part of society at a time, isolating and separating it from the rest, and treating it as static. The connections between such parts, like their real history and potential for further development, are considered external to what each one really is, and therefore not essential to a full or even adequate understanding of any of them. As a result, looking for these connections and their history becomes more difficult than it has to be. They are left for last or left out completely, and important aspects of them are missed, distorted, or trivialized. It's what might be called the Humpty Dumpty problem. After the fall, it was not only extremely hard to put the pieces of poor Humpty together again, but even to...