Viejo Gringo Reports #4: Old Mountain, Old Reality

 A Wonder of the World

A visit to Machu Picchu is an event, a trip to one of the ‘7 Wonders of the World.’  However it is also mass tourism. Many tickets are required. Hordes wait on the train platforms.  Lines can be long. Timing is all important, and you only spend about 3 hours at the site, most with voluble guides.  The air is thin and some steps tricky.  Since we have all seen multiple pictures of the little city on the mountain, backed by its rounded, pointed peak, it seems unreal.  Am I really here?  Was I there?  Is this happening?  It is a bit disconcerting.  Tourists are snapping selfies and pictures of themselves endlessly, as if to prove the fact.  I would rather sit in one place for a time and absorb the thing. Do it if you go.

Temple of the Sun at Machu Picchu

What is funny is that these tourists are from all over Latin America and the world.  Many have some kind of religion other than that of the Quechua Inca.  Some have none.  Yet it is a pilgrimage to an important pagan religious site.  The architecture, agronomy, sun temples, holy rocks and mountains all play a role in that story. People flock to Notre Dame and the Siena basilica, the mosques in Casablanca and Mecca, the shores of the Ganges in India or temples in Ankor Wat.  Machu Picchu represents grounded paganism, though even paganism has its ridiculous side.  Nevertheless I’ll quote a funny Facebook meme of a native American replying to a European priest and explorer in the 1700s:  “But dude, the sun is real!”

In the little mountain town there are dug-out places for offerings to Pacha Mama – Mother Earth. Llamas and alpacas were sacrificed to her. There is a stone condor, perhaps as a nod to the air.  There is a semi-circular Temple of the Sun, designed like Stonehenge to catch the rays of sunrise on the summer solstice. There are terraced fields to grow food and also test varieties at height as a science experiment.  There is a grassy central plaza where flute music and ball games took place.  It is the terminus of the walkable Inca Trail from Cusco, so it was tightly connected to that city. About 500 lived there other than the royal family.  What is somewhat tragic is that when the conquistadors and Pizzaro arrived they were still building structures.  So Machu Picchu, like life, went unfinished.

PAGANISM & HISTORY

And now for something different, but not quite.  It is well known that Marx broke with the Young Hegelians and Hegel’s general idealist views while adopting his dialectic.  It is well known that Marx even broke with ‘philosophy’ as a practice.  It is also well known that Marx, in the “Gotha Programme” pointed out that labor ‘and nature’ create all wealth. There are also many quotes from Marx about the link between human biology and history.  Here is one I easily found by Engels:  "Thus at every step we are reminded that we by no means rule over nature like a conqueror over a foreign people, like someone standing outside nature - but that we, with flesh, blood and brain, belong to nature, and exist in its midst..."

This is not biological ‘essentialism’ or crude empiricism.  This is a crucial fact, as we are very conscious and hard-working animals.  Marx studied ‘production’ and ‘reproduction’ because they are the foundation of human life.  He determined that the capitalists would figure out the lowest amount they could pay for workers to survive, gain knowledge and reproduce more workers and consumers.  It was and still is an essential calculation for many capitalists.

These processes are the root of history since hunter-gatherer times. We are born into history, yes, but with a human body that still has ‘needs.’  Do a thought experiment about a ‘being’ that doesn’t need to eat, never gets hot or cold, never dies, is not bothered by rain, snow, sleet and the like, and can create others like him with the snap of a ‘finger.’  That would be a science fiction or religious ‘thing’ – it would not be human. It would be a product of Silicon Valley corporate ‘transhumanism.’  

And where would literature or film be without the gravitas of mortality?  Creativity, work, striving, building are all aspects of this 'human condition.'

Agricultural terraces at Machu Picchu

The ‘sacred valley’ of Peru leading to Machu Picchu provides clues as to this notion of human needs.  Why was the valley ‘sacred’ to the Inka?  Because of its agricultural productivity.  Terraces on the mountain sides, agricultural bottom-lands and a consistent rainy season made it a fertile place, along with rivers like the Urubamba and snow caps above. What pagan entities did the Inka worship?  The sun, moon, water and “pachamama” – or mother earth.  Why?  It seems obvious.  This was their grounded, material “Trinity” unlike the ridiculous and idealist Christian / Catholic one – Father, Son and Holy Ghost - which has no connection to nature.

Machu Picchu provided a summer refuge from Cusco for the royal family.  Note, every royal family has a ‘summer palace.’ Now the question arises, who got the agricultural surplus that funded the building of Machu Picchu as a center of learning, astronomy, shamanism, botany, stonemasonry, architecture and agronomy? The Inkan ruling class were the beneficiaries, along with their experts and shamans, while the peasant farmers and building laborers provided the labor, and the soldiers, protection. Which might remind one of the Egyptian pharaoh’s and their skilled layers too. Yet this grew out of the human drive to survive entailing food, clothing, shelter and community.  All these things are only made possible by the latter, community, which is key.  There is a centuries-long tradition of textiles in Peru, which needs no explanation. And why did they need children to know anything, as they had a very large school in that little mountain town erroneously called Machu Picchu?  Why did they need children, period?  That answer too is obvious. 

This is how pre-colonial human ‘history’ functioned at this point, an archaic society rooted in the highly-conscious and hard-working human animal’s life-needs and life-force.  Then Pizzaro’s colonialist diseases, cavalry and troops arrived and killed or destroyed what they could.  Another system began to grow in Peru – extractive colonialism which turned the Inca into virtual slaves.  This was a defining moment of Peru’s history from my contact with the guides here.

History is determined by systems of production and reproduction, initially based on survival, that flower into class struggle over the surplus and issues of exploitation.  With better development in tools, technology and machinery based on surplus accumulation, capital has made it possible to move away from relative scarcity to plenty, much as Marx predicted, but only with a social revolution.  This would bring shortened labor hours and a happier life too.  The means of production and reproduction would become social property and valued, not private property for the enrichment of an upper class.  Simple stuff really, though perhaps too simple for the academic philosopher or the estranged intellectual.  Sorry!

A link to a Blogspot book review about how ‘human nature’ was fundamental to Marx and Engels approach to social life – “Marx and Human Nature – Refutation of a Legend” by Norman Geras:  https://maydaybookstore.blogspot.com/search?q=geras  

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to search our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Peru,” “human nature,” “paganism,” “Geras.” 

The Cultural Marxist / May 23, 2025

Viejo Gringo Reports #3: Endurance Contest

 Traffic in Peru

Traffic in Peru could be called orderly chaos.  I have seen no accidents, no pedestrian injuries, no arguments or road rage. Everyone tries to cooperate, yet also intimidate each other. A passive driver will not last long. Vehicles operate by inches. Stop signs are ignored.  Any parking restrictions are ignored. Speed limits are ignored.  Tuk Tuk’s and bicycles are edged off the roads.  Vehicles will pass coming up to a blind corner on a road.  Traffic lights are rare so intersections are traffic snarls.  Community dogs wander the streets in smaller towns, along with children and domestic animals like turkeys and bulls. Cars, trucks, buses, taxis, tuk tuks, scooters and motorcycles have the right of way over pedestrians.  For a pedestrian to cross a street in city traffic, they must use a vehicle as a shield.  Gringos on foot who expect to be ‘respected’ learn quickly.  You better run. 

Lima Peru traffic on a big road

Yet as the saying goes, live by the car, die by the car. The roads and streets are full of potholes so vehicles rock and roll, especially the frequent and brutal ‘speed bumps’ designed to slow traffic. These bumps are everywhere on the highway system. In smaller Inka towns, cobblestones still exist.  Tires, brakes, transmissions and shocks are in constant use, and will be the first to give out. Many city streets are packed with lines of stalled vehicles that you could pass walking.  The smart ones are buying motorcycles and scooters to slide by urban traffic on the side, weaving in and out of the stopped. Yet I saw only one electric bicycle, as electric cars, trucks, scooters and bikes have zero infrastructure, parts or repair knowledge so far. Diesel and gas fumes and emissions are the norm.  Lima seems to have some  small standing electric scooters.

The global south has fully adopted the car culture of parts of the north, even though the mostly narrow streets of their cities don’t permit it. Gridlock is sometimes the cost. Many have been turned into one-ways to compensate and that has not improved things, as cars are parked everywhere. In Arequipa and Cusco there are no street car lines, so the public bus systems have to carry the load, or the numerous taxies. Small private micro-bus lines serve rural areas and towns because there is no rail system either, partly due to the mountain ranges. Better-off commuters fly from city to city. At least rural areas have micro-buses, unlike the U.S.   

Like Hanoi or Phnom Penh, it’s a ‘zen process’ to get around.  In Peru it is a social activity where head-light flashes mean one thing, horn beeps another, head nods a third, hand gestures a fourth, vehicle positioning crucial and a precise physical understanding of speed, size and movement essential.  People will back up sometimes to let others through, but if you are there first, you usually rule.  It’s a game of inches.

The heroes in this situation are the drivers navigating big trucks and gigantic tourist buses that must maneuver in tiny streets, dirt roads and monstrous traffic.  Urban garbage truck drivers have a method whereby they enter a block and blare a tune like some ice-cream vendor in the States.  They try to find the one parking area they can fit their truck into along the block.  Then everyone from every business hears the music and comes running down the street with black bags of garbage and roller carts to deposit behind the truck while the sanitation workers sort and load it. A somewhat genius idea, but it shows how there is no room for spatial error.

In Arequipa city I only saw one lone youth on a bicycle and one man riding a tricycle. That was it.  In more rural towns bicycles were more common, along with tuk-tuks built in China that do a good job of replacing fat urban taxis.  They are far smaller, a motorcycle tricycle with covered seating area for two in back.  Some narrow truck beds are also attached to large motorized-tricycles, which are far easier to get through traffic. In a tiny village on the side of a mountain in the Sacred Valley I saw a young mountain biker blaring music shooting down a 45 degree dirt road full of rocks, following a trotting donkey.  I don’t know how he could get back up the mountain on that track. The merging of old and new.

On the peaks of the Andean range the snow caps and glaciers are shrinking and snow hides in crevices away from the most sunlight.  Tourism and mining have replaced a rural agricultural economy and tourism needs transport.  They are building an airport near the so-called ‘Sacred Valley” on the way to the pagan shrine of Machu Picchu, as even the Sacred Valley has traffic jams.  It is over-tourism with a vengeance, as monied visitors are coming from all over the world. 

The crowded freeways of Houston, LA, Atlanta and Chicago have been replicated in their own way in the urban areas of the ‘global South’ – an inheritance of capitalist development.  The Peruvian rail system is spotty at best, not interconnected and built for freight needs, extending into 3 surrounding countries.  According to Wiki: “Regular passenger traffic now operates over only a small proportion of the mileage.”  The short Perurail© line running from Ollantaytambo to Aquas Calientes / Machu Picchu Puebla is always late, with chaotic platforms full of tourists.  Lima has a train Metro system, given its giant and sprawling over-size, so that is an improvement.  Cusco's 'train station' is really a bus station, as they run Perurail buses to 'make connections.'

The upshot is that moving about in Peru is arduous.  Be it the local mini-airport, the pot-holed roads, the buses losing their shocks, the grinding of gears, the tiny roads and streets, the twisting highways, the few trains – you will be exhausted.  Driving your own car or motorcycle will be an endurance contest. Most of the motorcyclists are fully geared up, to protect from dust and accidents.  This is a legacy of poverty, colonial and imperial extraction and geography at this point. 

Prior blogspot reviews on this topic, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Traffic,”  “Peru,” "tourism."

The Cultural Marxist / May 20, 2025  

Viejo Gringo Reports #2: The Left Writes

 Casa Museo Mario Vargas-Llhosa - Arequipa, Peru

Mario Vargas-Llhosa is a contradictory figure.  His early life led him to the bohemian world of Paris, meeting leftists like Sartre, Picasso and others, posing at Marx’s grave in Highgate, meeting Trotskyist campesino leader Hugo Blanco.  The Cuban arrest of a poet in 1971 pushed him to the right, while prior to that he had been supportive of the Cuban revolution. At that time he made a public denunciation of Castro’s methods. At the museum, he is later depicted meeting vile representatives of the political class like Kissinger, Thatcher and others. He once ran for Peruvian president on a center-right ‘liberal’ ticket against Fujimori and lost big-time, giving up direct politics after that. 

Vargas-Llosa broke over the repression in Cuba of a poet, Padilla, and repression in other so-called state ‘socialist’ countries because, as a writer like him, freedom of the press was his central political concern. This follows a familiar pattern where bureaucratic repression pushes former leftists rightward or towards liberalism, not towards political revolution and revolutionary Marxism.  He went further to the right as he aged, endorsing people like Bolsonaro in Brazil and wailing about why leftist dictators weren’t being arrested along with Pinochet.  His hidden wealth came up in both the Pandora and Panama papers. 

My take on this is that his middle-class male up-bringing led him to finally embrace the comfortable life and accolades of the ruling class, along with its cash.  Yet as he once said, “I am a better writer than a politician.”  Yes he was.  The Nobel Committee gave him the award because of: "his cartography of structures of power and his trenchant images of the individual's resistance, revolt, and defeat."  Most of his famous writing was completely oppositional and deeply embedded in leftish social reality, not magical reality. It did not conform to his later politics.

This is a magnificent museum, even if you don’t speak much Spanish.  It is his former home in Arequipa, a 3 story work of mahogany, hallways and rooms. At the back a theater was built, with a viewpoint of the volcanoes that surround the city. He was born in Arequipa, then moved to Cochabamba, Bolivia with his mother where he grew up. Then he was moved to Lima where he enrolled in military school at 14, at the suggestion of his father.  He graduated and went to the National University of San Marcos in Lima where he became a member of a communist organization to the left of the popular left-nationalist APRA. As a student he studied communism deeply.  After graduation he worked as a reporter, then moved to Paris where he began writing books. 

Vargas-Llosa’s first major work was “A Time for a Hero,” about the repressive nature of the Peruvian military, probably from his time as a cadet - and was banned by the government.  The second was “Casa Verde.”  It was made into a film about a brothel which is attacked by angry Catholic women led by a priest.  In the film clip I saw the ‘green’ house is burned down, a woman prostitute beaten to death, a baby nearly incinerated.  It is a depiction of religious intolerance. This novel started his career with Gabriel Garcia Marquez and others as part of the Latin American writing ‘boom.’  

The first display in the museum is of Vargas-Llosa’s ‘escritorio’ – his study with books, a radio and his desk, where his ghostly presence welcomes the visitor.  The museum itself is full of a film or two in each display room.  One depicts the sounds of his birth in his bedroom.  Others are a train car that depicts his romances, a nightclub, a street in Barcelona where he lived and wrote for a time, a Parisian café where he hob-nobbed with the literati, a military barracks, a newspaper office, a bar, a movie set and finally, his acceptance of the Nobel in 2010.  It suddenly dawned on me that some of his books were turned into pulpy movies, so a Latin America public would see him not just as a writer or failed politician, but like leftie B. Traven’s “Treasure of the Sierra Madre,” a movie person.  3 families with children were on the tour with me and that might have been part of the draw.    

Vargas-Llosa’s third major novel, “Conversations in the Cathedral” is about a Peruvian dictatorship.  “War at the End of the World” is about an massive anarchist insurrection in northern Brazil, one of his best.  Another is “The Real Life of Alejandro Mayta,” about an insurrection in Peru. “Death in the Andes” followed about a slaughter of journalists in the mountains; “Feast of the Goat” about the Dominican dictatorship of Trujillo; “Dream of the Celt” about colonialism in Brazil and the Congo and “Harsh Times” about the  Guatemalan coup against Arbenz.

The museum popularizes Vargas-Llosa for a general public.  He wrote between 60-75 stories, critiques, non-fiction works, plays and books overall by my crude count of those in the museum’s final glass case.  Some of them were pulpy or humorous, like the Peruvian army hiring prostitutes for its soldiers in “Captain Pantoja and the Special Service.”  The films and ‘sets’ make the museum alive, along with the guide, not just plaques, text and pictures stuck to walls - although there are plenty of those too in the last segment.  The museum makes clear he was inspired by writers like Faulkner, Proust, Hemingway, Joyce, Flaubert and Borges.  In one poster, he is announced as giving a lecture on Joyce, so his life extended into the academy as a working writer.

Vargas-Llosa died only a month ago, April 13, 2025, at the age of 89.   

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Llosa,” “Peru,” “Harsh Times,” “Dream of the Celt.”

Kultur Kommissar / May 17, 2025

Viejo Gringo Reports #1: Grisly Museum

 Andean Sanctuaries Museum (Museo Santuarios Andinos) – Arequipa, Peru

This odd museum at the center of Arequipa, Peru near the Plaza de Armas is run by the Catholic Church.  It is odd because it focuses on the archeological remains of a 12-14 year old girl – now kept in a cooled glass case - sacrificed by the Incas to appease their gods.  The girls’ creepy mummified body is in the final room of the museum. Other rooms contain other mummies of sacrificed children as young as 6. Why would the Catholic Church do this?

She's smiling!

The Catholics admit what they cannot hide, that they built a cathedral or church over Incan religious sites or destroyed them, especially around Arequipa and Cuzco, in their conquest of Peru.  This was their attempt to destroy or replace local paganism.  Yet they have also practiced a form of ‘syncretism’ for years – adapting to local religious or pagan customs by trying to incorporate them into Catholicism.  How does human sacrifice fit in? 

Droughts, floods, failing harvests, lost battles – all had to be atoned for or warded off by sacrifices carried out by Incan priests.  This one took place, along with two other children, on the high, frozen slopes of the Ampato Volcano. It is the only one located anywhere in Peru by archeologists. In their religion, the mountains were gods and the higher you went, the holier the ground became.  For hundreds of years the body lay frozen until the volcano began to erupt.  The name this girl was given was “Juanita’ – perhaps a reference to one of the archeologists who dug her up, Juan in Spanish.  She was a high-born girl, perhaps connected to royalty, buried with exquisite pottery, high-end textiles and clothing, metal artifacts and dressed in an elaborate headdress, clothing and jewelry.  It’s a bit like the burial of an Egyptian pharaoh.   

There are reasons why the Catholic University of Santa Maria latched onto this.  One, it shows their pure interest in the science of archeology.  Catholicism has always tried to incorporate scientific ideas they could live with, like the false Big Bang theory of the origin of the universe.  They even made nods to versions of evolution.  This gives their wholly imaginative religion some scientific props, hiding its archaic theoretical nature.  

Two.  This event both denigrates and incorporates the idea of human sacrifice by the Quechua Incans.  Most visitors will be appalled by the idea of human sacrifice as a really primitive form of magical thinking.  Yet the video shown before the tour celebrates and justifies this sacrifice to the Incan gods as a form of holy commitment by this young girl.  It was an honor we are to believe.  By the way, the audience for this one was a group of young college-age women.  

The Incan religion is exposed as partly barbaric in this museum.  Yet Catholicism has a replacement for this holy example – Jesus.  Jesus also ‘sacrificed’ himself as a martyr for the good of humanity, not just the Incas.  This time instead of an Incan priest drugging a ‘holy’ girl with fermented corn liquor – chicha – then bashing her skull in with a club, we have a young man being crucified on a cross by a Roman judge.  Christ purportedly didn’t want to be killed, but martyrdom is a goal of religious types and even non-religious ones, as we know.

The Catholic love of ‘relics’ – bits of saints' bones and spatterings of blood, the cross symbol as a form of holy torture, is here transformed into a similar format – a mummy with all the relics buried with her in her volcanic tomb, which was a hole in the ground. What this museum does is both sanctify and abjure her death, then replace her with Jesus for the Peruvians.  Though that second part you are not supposed to guess.  Syncretism, you see.  It's kind of like Incan paganism and Christian Catholic thinking share something key in common.  

Prior blogspot posts on this subject, use blog search box,  upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Religion,” “Peru.”

Kultur Kommissar / May 14, 2025 - Please celebrate and read books by B. Traven, a German Marxist who wrote about class struggle in Mexico.  He IS the viejo gringo.  

You Might Even Think The 'International' Right is Working Together...

 A Political Snapshot of Peru

In 2022-2023 Peruvian indigenous, peasants, trade unions and leftists protested against the ultra-conservative government of Dina Boluarte, which had overthrown the prior, somewhat ‘progressive’ government led by Pedro Castillo.  Castillo’s government lasted for 1 year, 4 and a half months, a short period common to presidencies in Peru. The battles on the streets of Lima went on for days between government forces and protesters.  In June 2023 the Peruvian Supreme Court said that the Constitution did not give legal protection to protests.  Right.

Lima - founded by conquistadores

As you can see, ‘voting’ and bourgeois democracy are just a smoke-screen in Peru, as in so many other countries.  In 2024 Human Rights Watch said: “In 2024, the Peruvian Congress passed laws and adopted other decisions that undermined judicial independence, weakened democratic institutions and hindered investigations into organized crime, corruption, and human rights violations.”  Sound familiar?  

Severe corruption in Peru is ongoing.  President Boluarte is under investigation along with 67 of 130 members of Congress.  “Corruption is a major factor driving the deterioration of public institutions, deficient public services, and environmental destruction in Peru” according to HRW.  It’s all about the money for these ‘dedicated public servants’ and their wealthy puppet-masters.

The National Board of Justice, like our Supreme Court, is the highest legal body.  2 members were removed in March 2024 by the Congress for political reasons.  A committee of the Congress advocated eliminating the National Board of Justice entirely, but this proposal is on hold.  The Peruvian Attorney General was barred from investigating crimes, and replaced by the national police in October 2024. So ‘justice’ is being politicized.    

Peru had an increasing homicide rate in 2024 by a third, with extortion becoming another increasing crime.  Boluarte has instituted a State of Emergency in parts of Peru and some neighborhoods in Lima. This has not worked.  Boluarte blamed Venezuelan immigrants and asylum seekers for the increase, without proof.  She specifically names Tren de Aragua. Sound familiar?

Investigations of atrocities committed by the government during the Sendro Luminoso period, 1980-2000, have slowed to zero.  At least 600 cases could be voided, as the Congress ruled for a new ‘statute of limitations’ of 2003 and up.   Nor have the 49 deaths of protesters in 2022-2023 been investigated, which would involve Boluarte and her cabinet, as their military forces were responsible.  Would there be pardons?

Journalists have been investigated for exposing corruption by being accused of corruption. Journalists and prosecutors have also been threatened by a right-wing, fascistic group called Resistencia.  A bill to control and sanction any NGO that receives funds from outside the country has been advanced in the Congress.  Other countries, like Russia, do this.

1/2023 protest in Lima

28% of Peruvians live under the poverty line.  Lack of electricity and health facilities are most common among indigenous communities in the highlands, mountains and Amazon.  A national strike was called in October 2024 over high levels of crime affecting citizens.  In April 2025 transport workers in Lima went on strike too, also over crime against transport workers.  The Congress had softened laws against organized crime previously, so the protests were also against the Congress.    

A new Forestry Law passed by this self-same Congress will allow large-scale deforestation.  This primarily affects the Amazonian environment, where illegal logging, illegal gold mining using mercury, cattle ranching and some coca growing are already butchering the jungle and water for profit. Indigenous water and forest defenders have been killed. Recently ‘artisanal’ miners in the northern mountains have been attacked by corporate-linked goons and criminals who don’t want competition. 

Boluarte’s administration promulgated a decree declaring trans-sexuality a ‘mental health’ problem, but they have put that on hold.  Abortion is only legal if child-birth will result in the death of the mother.  A fetus that was the product of a rape of a 13 year old girl was forced to term.  Sexual violence is common in schools against young students.  No one has been convicted of these many sexual assaults, though a some teachers were suspended. 

That is the sorry reality behind the tourist veil of Peru.  Machu Picchu, llamas and alpacas, colorful Quechua dress, condors, mountains, cerviche, Incan art, Lake Titicaca, cathedrals, plazas and centuries of impressive pre-colonial architecture all are marketed to gringos, but the reality for the people is not quite that.  What is obvious is that all of the reactionary ideas and tactics pushed by the Peruvian ruling class are being used or tried by other reactionary governments throughout the world, even in the U.S. It is a sign of the decay of world capitalism, which more and more can no longer promise wealth, democracy, safety or freedom except in words.

***The author will be visiting Peru, including the Casa Museo Mario Vargas Llosa in Arequipa and the Museo Jóse Carlos Mariategui in Lima.  He will also visit Cuzco, which has links to deceased Trotskyist peasant leader Hugo Blanco and the Confederación Campesina del Perú. Blanco was a representative of the Partido Unificado Mariateguista in the Peruvian Congress for a time. Blanco recently died in July, 2023 in Uppsala, Sweden.

Prior blogspot reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Peru,” “Mariategui, “Llosa,” “Blanco,” "Latin America."  

May Day books has many volumes about struggles in other countries than the U.S., including a Latin American section. 

Kultur Kommissar / May 11, 2025    

College Library Browsing #21b: The Politician

 “Marx”by Terrell Carver, 2018 (Classic Thinkers) – Part 2

Carver’s interpretation of Marx is primarily as a political agitator, and so he denigrates any scent of economic, historical or philosophic ‘theory’ from Marx.  However in this section he discusses 1867’s Das Kapital, Vol 1, and puts no diminishment quotes around Marx’s economic concepts of surplus value, commodity, use value and exchange value, falling rate of profit, labor power, exploitation and so on.  Evidently he appreciates this theory.  He points out that Marx partly wrote Capital as a political ‘performative’ polemic against classical economists like Ricardo, Smith, Mill, Say and Malthus to undermine their support of early capitalism, exposing its ugly and hidden heart instead. 

Carver mentions that this ‘political economy’ approach was soon overtaken by bourgeois (neo-classical) economics, which he calls ‘marginalism.’ It treats economics as an automatic and ‘natural’ process, not a human-created and class-based political construct. Carver points out that because of long years of propagation, it is very hard for people to understand anything other than the myth of ‘free markets,’ prices as the only source of value, the supposed equality of selling and buying and the goal of working for a ‘fair’ wage for a ‘good’ boss. Trade and exchange creates wealth in this scenario, not labor and nature.   

However Marx-influenced concepts like class, progress, historical contingency, direct democracy, periodic economic crises and socialism are all now common in realms beyond Marxism. Carver’s repetition of the quote “It’s the economy, stupid!” also hints at the political impact of this materialism.  Yet in marginalist economics the current focus is on micro-economic issues and sub-capitalist thinking so as to obscure the larger context.  Right now it is inflation and billionaires, and how they impact individuals. These take our continual attention. 

Carver avoids the complications of explaining ‘out of date’ Capital, Vols. 1, 2 or 3 by looking at Marx’s journalism around the 1857-’58 economic crash.  Marx writes about that crisis, saying it was not caused by speculation, as his rivals thought, but speculation as a symptom of a deeper problem… a falling rate of profit due to the introduction of machinery. He emphasizes Marx’s constant use of satire and sarcasm to undermine his capitalist opponents, unlike a dry theorist.   

Carver thinks Marx didn’t focus much on current issues like colonialism, which is untrue.   He points out that Marx did not want to make things worse so as to hasten the revolution, which is why he supported reforms, including transitional ones.  He writes about the constant use of ‘the Red Scare’ as a capitalist political tactic.  Marx himself was indicted in absentia in 1852 in Cologne, Germany over an alleged plot by the Communist League in the 1848 rising.  This led to his move to Paris.  The ‘red scare’ is still with us, used by both U.S. Republicans and Democrats continually.

A simple description of surplus value & profit

The key concept of exploitation is handled by most people as a moral or justice issue, a method that Marx avoided in spite of its popularity, which is true even today.  For Marx exploitation was a specific economic practice applied to workers and rural proletarians and later in a more general way, poorer nations and nature.  For ‘justice warriors’ exploitation is a general harm inflicted on the vulnerable, almost like a religious invocation.  His approach was rationalist, not emotional, which made it less appealing to many.  Terms like ‘just prices,’ ‘fair exchange’ or 'fair' treatment, power dynamics and a ‘living’ wage are far more current and cuddly.  In this version, instead of production, the moralistic focus is on exchange.  Yet the clear inequality of outcomes in ‘exchanges’ – where supposedly equal parties trade money or labor for goods or a job – is becoming even more obvious and hints at a deeper flaw in the production system itself. 

Moral or justice approaches can lead to reformism, as they do not indicate the heart of exploitation – the profit motive by private parties who own the means of production and attendant banking institutions. Amelioration becomes the goal, not system change.  That is the story of business unionism, Democratic Party politics, community activism and environmental ‘justice’ so far.  Carver reveals his own tendency in this discussion by framing battles against exploitation as “linked to concepts of social democracy, not unlike … coalitional politics.”   He seems to be a social democrat then, especially in view of his few, totally negative comments about the Soviet Union and the PRC. 

Carver turns to the recent interest in Marx’s comments about alienation and commodity fetishism arising from the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844.”  Alienation was mentioned in these notes by Marx, then taken up by the Frankfurt School in various ways, providing some relief from the supposed dourness of Capital.  It infused Marxism with ‘humanism’ and youth and inspired self-management in Yugoslavia according to Carver.  He also ties it to liberation theology, though I have doubts.  As if Tito or some Catholics couldn’t have come up with these policies via some other avenue.  In fact Mariategui, the Peruvian Marxist, is credited with inspiring liberation theology.  Marx was not pushing in a backwards and romantic direction even during these early days, so pleas to return to the soil or the cloister would fall on his deaf ears. 

Carver addresses the issue of whether Marx had a concept of human nature, and reluctantly admits he did.  This has been made clear in the book “Marx and Human Nature – Refutation of a Legend.” (Reviewed below.)  It is basic bodily needs for food, water, shelter, warmth, health, community and children that lead to systems of production and reproduction.  Human nature is truly ‘embodied,’ as we are not ethereal beings without material survival and animalistic needs, as religious ideology or idealism would have it.  Marx and Engels did not ‘historicize’ everything about humans, unlike what Carver wants to believe, but certainly bodily death is included.

This book is about Marx’s attitude to the ‘social question’ as Carver puts it, relying mostly on the propagandist and journalistic side of a younger Marx.  Carver thinks that Engels played the initial role of ‘canonizing’ Marx, turning his writings and comments into theoretical systems.  He considers the result to be an ‘avatar’ – embodied in the massive head of Marx, with hair, beard and all, made into an imposing statue in Highgate Cemetery and a meme on social media.  Perhaps Carver objects to himself not also becoming a meme?  I don’t know but I suspect every erudite academic who is well-acquainted with Marx like Carver wants to ‘carve’ out his own niche.  And he’s got something of a point in seeing Marx as a highly political character, not an abstract theorist. 

(Second of two reviews.)

Prior blogspot posts on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Marx,” “Engels” “Communist Manifesto,” “Das Kapital.”

May Day carries many books on Marxism.  This I got at a library.

Red Frog / May 8, 2025

College Library Browsing #21a: The Agitator

 “Marx”by Terrell Carver, 2018 (Classic Thinkers) – Part 1

In the unending series of books about Marx and Marxism, Carver tries to carve out a different approach by connecting all of Marx’s economics, sociology, philosophy, history and politics to … activism.  I.E. the reason why Marx studied, wrote, said and acted the way he did was for political reasons – ultimately, the socialist revolution.  He was not doing the work in the abstract, for profit or as an academic or loner.  Carver seeks to link Marx’s ideas to present political practice.  Carver is an English academic from the U.S.  He specializes in gender analyses and Engel’s relation to Marx.  Unlike Marx, his Wiki page mentions no political affiliations. 

Carver makes the post-modern point that Marx was busy creating a legend of sorts, like some kind of influencer.  He brings up two scant ‘selfies’ in which Marx explains himself a bit. Carver names Engels his ‘publicity manager’ and ‘second fiddle’ and Babel / Leibnecht his experts in ‘branding.’  He calls Marx a ‘gadfly’ and Marx’s supporters a ‘cabal’ and ‘fans.’  The Communist Manifesto, the document Marx became famous for, is called ‘outre’ and outdated.  Yet it is the main starting point for many beginning Marxists to this day.  This stupid trendiness made me want to stop reading.

THEORIES?

Anyway, onward.  Carver points out that Marx never developed a ‘theory of class.’ In truth, class changes as an economy and geography changes, so it’s a moving target. Some aspects of class remain in nearly all societies, such as a laboring class and a class that lives off the surplus.  Marx’s first discussion of class issues occurred in his 1840s German journalism articles about the right to fire wood for peasants and the trials of immiserated grape-vine growers.  Carver’s emphasis is on his political activism, so he stresses Marx’s ‘rhetoric of action’ in everything he wrote.  This is why he highlights Marx’s voluminous journalism.  Carver includes the seemingly ‘outdated’ Manifesto as part of this rhetoric of action, which broadcast the role of class struggle as a programmatic document, not an academic analysis.  Carver compares Marx’s early concerns with equality and class as similar to 2011’s Occupy Wall Street.  I guess this is an attempt to ring another recent bell.

Carver mentions that Marx had to compromise with some middle-class radicals, as the oppressive European police governments of the day treated them just like the communists. This is still relevant across the world.  Carver contends that Marx was a ‘skillful compromiser’ with those who had not crossed the class line or become sub-reformists.  The First International (IWMA) of the 1860s was a coalition of trade union reformists, utopians, democrats, cooperators and religious liberals, with Marx a distinct minority. And yet they communicated.  Most of the later focus of lefties has been on Marx’s polemics with opponents, but Carver cites examples of his ability to work with some of them.  Marx's 1864 “Inaugural Address of the IWMA” celebrates the passage of the English 1847 10-Hours Bill, the progress of Union forces in the U.S. civil war and developments in the cooperative movement.   Of note, Marx promotes English labor action against cotton imports from the Confederacy, even if it materially hurts English labor. Note the present indirect reference to U.S. unions like the UAW that support Trump’s severe tariffs.

Carver constantly references Engels as the systematizer of a supposedly non-existent theory – Marxism.  He uses hash marks around everything like this related to Marx as a ‘thinker,’ blaming later Marxists like Plekhanov for elucidating this imaginary theory or method.  He prefers his Marxist history to be exploratory and contingent, as if Marx is some kind of post-modernist.  Capital, Vols. 1, 2, 3 are not mentioned, as they seem too theoretical for Carver.  It is to the Manifesto of 1848 & 1872 (notated), polemical works of current history and references to Marx’s journalism that he concentrates on.

Louis Napoleon - the Original Bonapartist 

HISTORY

For Carver, Marx and Engels only ask the question ‘what is history?’ and answer it as the story of how normal human life is produced in various places, using struggle and tools, traveling in a linear and unrepeatable way through time. As time has passed, this formerly ‘radical’ explanation has become a common-sense way to look at history. This mainstreaming of Marxist insights is one of his themes.  In a work of what is now history, Marx’s passionate 1851 work ‘The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon’ was a response to the dictatorship that followed the 1848 revolution in France.  Carver thinks of Marx as a ‘historicist,’ seemingly with no overarching position, just sarcasm, details and political intent.  Carter’s Marx is like an old-timey podcaster with 'hot takes' on revolution, denouncing an 1800s Trumpist like Louis Napoleon in breeches, mustache and epaulets.  He is not someone with an ‘overarching theory,’ so don't be afraid!    

Carver brings up the ‘determinist’ slant of dogmatic Marxists, who believe history automatically leads to communism.  This position has been refuted enough at this point to not need further comment.  However historical materialism, a shorthand for the class struggle through time over economics, is out as a method for Carver. The productivity or ownership of a certain economic system seems to have no relevance, only the political agency of an oppressed class based on good ‘values.’  Carver calls his approach ‘anti-foundational’ thinking, which smacks of post-modernist relativity about everything and seems to be the hidden rationale of the book.  This ignores the actual development of world economic history, as capital has now conquered most of the world, just as Marx’s ‘theory’ predicted.

Of current interest, Carver looks at Marx’s 1847 speech on ‘free trade’ versus protectionism, which was already a debate in the 1800s.  Marx opposed both as versions of capital exploitation – either of workers in other nations, (free trade) or in the ‘home’ country (nationalist protectionism).  Marx concluded that ‘free trade’ would actually hasten revolution more than tariffs, which is why he was ‘for’ it.      

DEMOCRACY

Carver wants to explain how Marx’s support of democracy is channeled through a phrase like the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat.’ He first explains why Marx critiqued a philosopher like Hegel, who backed the Prussian monarchy and severe anti-democratic thinking.  This criticism of Hegel was a political work undermining the dictatorial German ruling class, not an exercise in abstract philosophy. 

Marx’s 1871 “The Civil War In France” follows that up by explaining the proletarian ‘dictatorship.’ The book embraced the 1871 Paris Commune as the distinct form of workers’ rule, the rule of the majority.  Working-class communes, assemblies, soviets and councils in history that have followed are all expressions of direct rule of the proletarian masses.  At bottom every form of a flawed bourgeois democracy is still an expression of the domination of the capitalist class. In the U.S. it is easy to see this due to corporate money, gerrymandering, the Electoral College, the two-party system, voting barriers, media manipulation and more.  Bourgeois claims of popular sovereignty have failed. In Marx’s time Louis Napoleon was elected by manipulated universal male suffrage, then declared himself Emperor.  Sound familiar?

At this point in the book, Carver respects Marx but rejects almost any theoretical conclusions.  He claims that Marx, in his analysis of the Commune and Louis Napoleon, was more interested in democratic rights for the majority, which was being impeded by the property interests of various upper and middle-class strata in France.  To Carver Marx is really a programmatic, value-based and agitational activist. In this he's trying to make him a bit 'modern' in the present situation and more understandable. Many current reformist leftists are indeed like this, so Carver could resonate with them too.   

(First part review of two.)   Happy May 5, Karl's birthday, 207 years ago.

Prior blogspot posts on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 19 year archive, using these terms:  “Marx,” ‘post-modernism,’ “Engels” “Communist Manifesto.”

May Day carries many books on Marxism.  This I got at a library.

Red Frog / May 5, 2025