On Marxism and Anti-Colonialism, and Everything in Between
Roger Berkowitz
11-02-2024 Fiona Miller and Zoe Laris-Djokovic founded the new journal Clocked Out. In Issue 1, they interviewed me about Bard (they both are former students) and the political world. We spoke about the shift in academic interests amongst the faculty and the students from Marxism to anti-colonialism. Much of the interview is about the nature of ideology and its power or lack of power in politics. We also speak about decolonizing the curriculum and Native American ideals of freedom. Artificial Intelligence and the use of ChatGPT in the classroom as well as the danger of AI hallucinations. They even force me to recommend three books, none of which are by Hannah Arendt. Below, read our conversation about the shift from Marxist to anti-colonialist ideology. And you can read the whole interview here.
Marxism has advantages and disadvantages, as all theories do. Marxism seeks to subordinate the real world into scientific theories, and thus has the advantage of offering a clear vision of the world. But in simplifying and clarifying the world, Marxist ideology also cuts off nuances, differences, the messiness of reality. Saying, you know, the proletariat is good and the bourgeoisie is bad and the world is moving in the direction of the proletariat and our job is to help move it along faster—that is to take for granted a simplified version of reality. And that simplification was the fundamental Marxist view. But for most Marxists, the subject of politics was the proletariat. And at least they had an idea of making life better for the working class. I mean, I certainly don’t agree with Marxism in the sense that there’s a dialectic, materialist movement in which the proletariat will take power and the bourgeoisie will be subordinated. But I believe that Marxism has had a salutary effect on liberal capitalist politics in the sense that it’s led to a more human capitalism and a more human liberalism.
But the failure of communism and Marxism has led to a crisis in which a new ideology, that most people learn to believe or even to inhabit in grad school and come to incorporate in their professorial personae, is something like an “anti-colonialist” ideology. Anti-colonialist ideology shares the same weaknesses and strengths of Marxism in that it’s an ideology and it believes in simplifying the world and offers a path towards a utopia, but there’s a big difference, which is that the subject of politics is no longer the proletariat. It’s now “the colonized.”
CO: So you would say that the “new mandarins” of the 21st century are anti-colonialist?
Roger: Yeah, I mean I think that anti-colonialist theory and anti-colonialist movements are the pseudo-intellectual movements of our time. And the problem with this is that whereas, despite all its problems, at least Marxism helps the people it’s designed to help. The proletariat benefits at least to some degree. We can make an argument about whether welfare hurts or helps the working class. And there are people who think it hurts in the sense that it takes away their agency, and things like that. But for the most part I think the welfare state has helped people. Whereas I don’t think anti-colonial ideology helps anyone.
First of all, it’s not clear who the colonized are. There’s no one who is pure “colonized,” and there’s no one who’s a pure “colonizer.” But even so, if your view is that the evil in the world comes from whiteness or white privilege or white supremacy, how do you resolve that? I mean, the civil rights movement in the classical era sought to change the law. But the anti-colonialist movement doesn’t try to change the law. There are no laws that they actually care about. What do they want to change? They want people to feel guilty. And making people feel guilty doesn’t actually make anyone else’s lives any better. You can have people saying “Mea culpa, I’m guilty, I’m privileged…” it doesn’t actually make anyone’s lives any better.
Simon Critchley, who wrote a wonderful book called Infinitely Demanding, argues that with the rise of this new ideology where a kind of identity politics, anti-colonialist ideology replaces Marxism, politics moves from politics to ethics. And so we now have ethical movements instead of political movements. In this new ethical politics, the whole point is to say “I’m moral,” and “You’re immoral,” but to not actually change anything. And that’s what I think has taken over much of the pseudo-intellectual left, unfortunately, in the country. And it certainly has an out of proportion influence on college campuses as well. Now, I’ll say there’s also a pseudo-intellectual right that somehow largely, as far as I can tell, embraces the same anti-colonialist ideology but from the other side. Someone says, “Well, if the whole point of power in our society is to be a victim, whites are a victim,” and the right embraces identity politics and just turns it around.
But the failure of communism and Marxism has led to a crisis in which a new ideology, that most people learn to believe or even to inhabit in grad school and come to incorporate in their professorial personae, is something like an “anti-colonialist” ideology. Anti-colonialist ideology shares the same weaknesses and strengths of Marxism in that it’s an ideology and it believes in simplifying the world and offers a path towards a utopia, but there’s a big difference, which is that the subject of politics is no longer the proletariat. It’s now “the colonized.”
CO: So you would say that the “new mandarins” of the 21st century are anti-colonialist?
Roger: Yeah, I mean I think that anti-colonialist theory and anti-colonialist movements are the pseudo-intellectual movements of our time. And the problem with this is that whereas, despite all its problems, at least Marxism helps the people it’s designed to help. The proletariat benefits at least to some degree. We can make an argument about whether welfare hurts or helps the working class. And there are people who think it hurts in the sense that it takes away their agency, and things like that. But for the most part I think the welfare state has helped people. Whereas I don’t think anti-colonial ideology helps anyone.
First of all, it’s not clear who the colonized are. There’s no one who is pure “colonized,” and there’s no one who’s a pure “colonizer.” But even so, if your view is that the evil in the world comes from whiteness or white privilege or white supremacy, how do you resolve that? I mean, the civil rights movement in the classical era sought to change the law. But the anti-colonialist movement doesn’t try to change the law. There are no laws that they actually care about. What do they want to change? They want people to feel guilty. And making people feel guilty doesn’t actually make anyone else’s lives any better. You can have people saying “Mea culpa, I’m guilty, I’m privileged…” it doesn’t actually make anyone’s lives any better.
Simon Critchley, who wrote a wonderful book called Infinitely Demanding, argues that with the rise of this new ideology where a kind of identity politics, anti-colonialist ideology replaces Marxism, politics moves from politics to ethics. And so we now have ethical movements instead of political movements. In this new ethical politics, the whole point is to say “I’m moral,” and “You’re immoral,” but to not actually change anything. And that’s what I think has taken over much of the pseudo-intellectual left, unfortunately, in the country. And it certainly has an out of proportion influence on college campuses as well. Now, I’ll say there’s also a pseudo-intellectual right that somehow largely, as far as I can tell, embraces the same anti-colonialist ideology but from the other side. Someone says, “Well, if the whole point of power in our society is to be a victim, whites are a victim,” and the right embraces identity politics and just turns it around.