Sophie's World: A Novel About the History of Philosophy

  “You can’t have a herring trade in the Sahara, or grow dates in northern Norway.”

  “You’ve got it. And the way people think in a nomadic culture is very different from the way they think in a fishing village in northern Norway The next level is the society’s means of production. By this Marx meant the various kinds of equipment, tools, and machinery, as well as the raw materials to be found there.”

  “In the old days people rowed out to the fishing grounds. Nowadays they use huge trawlers to catch the fish.”

  “Yes, and here you are talking about the next level in the base of society, namely, those who own the means of production. The division of labor, or the distribution of work and ownership, was what Marx called society’s ‘production relations.’ “

  “I see.”

  “So far we can conclude that it is the mode of production in a society which determines which political and ideological conditions are to be found there. It is not by chance that today we think somewhat differently—and have a somewhat different moral codex—from the old feudal society.”

  “So Marx didn’t believe in a natural right that was eternally valid.”

  “No, the question of what was morally right, according to Marx, is a product of the base of society. For example, it is not accidental that in the old peasant society, parents would decide whom their children married. It was a question of who was to inherit the farm. In a modern city, social relations are different. Nowadays you can meet your future spouse at a party or a disco, and if you are sufficiently in love, you’ll find somewhere to live.”

  “I could never have put up with my parents deciding who I was to marry.”

  “No, that’s because you are a child of your time. Marx emphasized moreover that it is mainly society’s ruling class that sets the norms for what is right or wrong. Because ‘the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles.’ In other words, history is principally a matter of who is to own the means of production.”

  “Don’t people’s thoughts and ideas help to change history?”

  “Yes and no. Marx understood that conditions in society’s superstructure could have an interactive effect on the base of society, but he denied that society’s superstructure had any independent history of its own. What has driven historical development from the slave society of antiquity to the industrial society of today has primarily been determined by changes in the base of society.”

  “So you said.”

  “Marx believed that in all phases of history there has been a conflict between two dominant classes of society. In antiquity’s slave society, the conflict was between free citizen and slave. In the feudal society of the Middle Ages, it was between feudal lord and serf; later on, between aristocrat and citizen. But in Marx’s own time, in what he called a bourgeois or capitalist society, the conflict was first and foremost between the capitalists and the workers, or the proletariat. So the conflict stood between those who own the means of production and those who do not. And since the ‘upper classes’ do not voluntarily relinquish their power, change can only come about through revolution.”

  “What about a communist society?”

  “Marx was especially interested in the transition from a capitalist to a communist society. He also carried out a detailed analysis of the capitalist mode of production. But before we look at that, we must say something about Marx’s view of man’s labor.”

  “Go ahead.”

  “Before he became a communist, the young Marx was preoccupied with what happens to man when he works. This was something Hegel had also analyzed. Hegel believed there was an interactive, or dialectic, relationship between man and nature. When man alters nature, he himself is altered. Or, to put it slightly differently, when man works, he interacts with nature and transforms it. But in the process nature also interacts with man and transforms his consciousness.”

  “Tell me what you do and I’ll tell you who you are.”

  “That, briefly, was Marx’s point. How we work affects our consciousness, but our consciousness also affects the way we work. You could say it is an interactive relationship between hand and consciousness. Thus the way you think is closely connected to the job you do.”

  “So it must be depressing to be unemployed.”

  “Yes. A person who is unemployed is, in a sense, empty. Hegel was aware of this early on. To both Hegel and Marx, work was a positive thing, and was closely connected with the essence of mankind.”

  “So it must also be positive to a worker?”

  “Yes, originally. But this is precisely where Marx aimed his criticism of the capitalist method of production.”

  “What was that?”

  “Under the capitalist system, the worker labors for someone else. His labor is thus something external to him—or something that does not belong to him. The worker becomes alien to his work—but at the same time also alien to himself. He loses touch with his own reality. Marx says, with a Hegelian expression, that the worker becomes alienated.”

  “I have an aunt who has worked in a factory, packaging candy for over twenty years, so I can easily understand what you mean. She says she hates going to work, every single morning.”

  “But if she hates her work, Sophie, she must hate herself, in a sense.”

  “She hates candy, that’s for sure.”

  “In a capitalist society, labor is organized in such a way that the worker in fact slaves for another social class. Thus the worker transfers his own labor—and with it, the whole of his life—to the bourgeoisie.”

  “Is it really that bad?”

  “We’re talking about Marx, and we must therefore take our point of departure in the social conditions during the middle of the last century. So the answer must be a resounding yes. The worker could have a 12-hour working day in a freezing cold production hall. The pay was often so poor that children and expectant mothers also had to work. This led to unspeakable social conditions. In many places, part of the wages was paid out in the form of cheap liquor, and women were obliged to supplement their earnings by prostitution. Their customers were the respected citizenry of the town. In short, in the precise situation that should have been the honorable hallmark of mankind, namely work, the worker was turned into a beast of burden.”

  “That infuriates me!”

  “It infuriated Marx too. And while it was happening, the children of the bourgeoisie played the violin in warm, spacious living rooms after a refreshing bath. Or they sat at the piano while waiting for their four-course dinner. The violin and the piano could have served just as well as a diversion after a long horseback ride.”

  “Ugh! How unjust!”

  “Marx would have agreed. Together with Engels, he published a Communist Manifesto in 1848. The first sentence in this manifesto says: A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism.”

  “That sounds frightening.”

  “It frightened the bourgeoisie too. Because now the proletariat was beginning to revolt. Would you like to hear how the Manifesto ends?”

  “Yes, please.”

  “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communist revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Workingmen of all countries, unite!”

  “If conditions were as bad as you say, I think I would have signed that Manifesto. But conditions are surely a lot different today?”

  “In Norway they are, but they aren’t everywhere. Many people still live under inhuman conditions while they continue to produce commodities that make capitalists richer and richer. Marx called this exploitation.”

  “Could you explain that word, please?”

  “If a worker produces a commodity, this commodity has a certain exchange-value.”

  “Yes.”

  “If you now deduct the workers’ wages
and the other production costs from the exchange-value, there will always be a certain sum left over. This sum was what Marx called profit. In other words, the capitalist pockets a value that was actually created by the worker. That is what is meant by exploitation.”

  “I see.”

  “So now the capitalist invests some of his profit in new capital—for instance, in modernizing the production plant in the hope of producing his commodity even more cheaply, and thereby increasing his profit in the future.”

  “That sounds logical.”

  “Yes, it can seem logical. But both in this and in other areas, in the long term it will not go the way the capitalist has imagined.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “Marx believed there were a number of inherent contradictions in the capitalist method of production. Capitalism is an economic system which is self-destructive because it lacks rational control.”

  “That’s good, isn’t it, for the oppressed?”

  “Yes; it is inherent in the capitalist system that it is marching toward its own destruction. In that sense, capitalism is ‘progressive’ because it is a stage on the way to communism.”

  “Can you give an example of capitalism being self-destructive?”

  “We said that the capitalist had a good surplus of money, and he uses part of this surplus to modernize the factory. But he also spends money on violin lessons. Moreover, his wife has become accustomed to a luxurious way of life.”

  “No doubt.”

  “He buys new machinery and so no longer needs so many employees. He does this to increase his competitive power.”

  “I get it.”

  “But he is not the only one thinking in this way, which means that production as a whole is continually being made more effective. Factories become bigger and bigger, and are gradually concentrated in fewer and fewer hands. What happens then, Sophie?”

  “Er. . .”

  “Fewer and fewer workers are required, which means there are more and more unemployed. There are therefore increasing social problems, and crises such as these are a signal that capitalism is marching toward its own destruction. But capitalism has a number of other self-destructive elements. Whenever profit has to be tied up in the means of production without leaving a big enough surplus to keep production going at competitive prices . . .”

  “Yes?”

  “, . . what does the capitalist do then? Can you tell me?”

  “No, I’m afraid I can’t.”

  “Imagine if you were a factory owner. You cannot make ends meet. You cannot buy the raw materials you need to keep producing. You are facing bankruptcy. So now my question is, what can you do to economize?”

  “Maybe I could cut down on wages?”

  “Smart! Yes, that really is the smartest thing you could do. But if all capitalists were as smart as you—and they are—the workers would be so poor that they couldn’t afford to buy goods any more. We would say that purchasing power is falling. And now we really are in a vicious circle. The knell has sounded for capitalist private property, Marx would say. We are rapidly approaching a revolutionary situation.”

  “Yes, I see.”

  “To make a long story short, in the end the proletariat rises and takes over the means of production.”

  “And then what?”

  “For a period, we get a new ‘class society’ in which the proletarians suppress the bourgeoisie by force. Marx called this the dictatorship of the proletariat. But after a transition period, the dictatorship of the proletariat is replaced by a ‘classless society,’ in which the means of production are owned ‘by all’—that is, by the people themselves. In this kind of society, the policy is ‘from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.’ Moreover, labor now belongs to the workers themselves and capitalism’s alienation ceases.”

  “It all sounds wonderful, but what actually happened? Was there a revolution?”

  “Yes and no. Today, economists can establish that Marx was mistaken on a number of vital issues, not least his analysis of the crises of capitalism. And he paid insufficient attention to the plundering of the natural environment—the serious consequences of which we are experiencing today. Nevertheless . . .”

  “Nevertheless?”

  “Marxism led to great upheavals. There is no doubt that socialism has largely succeeded in combating an inhumane society. In Europe, at any rate, we live in a society with more justice—and more solidarity—than Marx did. This is not least due to Marx himself and the entire socialist movement.”

  “What happened?”

  “After Marx, the socialist movement split into two main streams, Social Democracy and Leninism. Social Democracy, which has stood for a gradual and peaceful path in the direction of socialism, was Western Europe’s way. We might call this the slow revolution. Leninism, which retained Marx’s belief that revolution was the only way to combat the old class society, had great influence in Eastern Europe, Asia, and Africa. Each in their own way, both movements have fought against hardship and oppression.”

  “But didn’t it create a new form of oppression? For example in Russia and Eastern Europe?”

  “No doubt of that, and here again we see that everything man touches becomes a mixture of good and evil. On the other hand, it would be unreasonable to blame Marx for the negative factors in the so-called socialist countries fifty or a hundred years after his death. But maybe he had given too little thought to the people who would be the administrators of communist society. There will probably never be a ‘promised land.’ Mankind will always create new problems to fight about.”

  “I’m sure it will.”

  “And there we bring down the curtain on Marx, Sophie.”

  “Hey, wait a minute! Didn’t you say something about justice only existing among equals?”

  “No, it was Scrooge who said that.”

  “How do you know what he said?”

  “Oh well—you and I have the same author. In actual fact we are more closely linked to each other than we would appear to the casual observer.”

  “Your wretched irony again!”

  “Double, Sophie, that was double irony.”

  “But back to justice. You said that Marx thought capitalism was an unjust form of society. How would you define a just society?”

  “A moral philosopher called John Rawls attempted to say something about it with the following example: Imagine you were a member of a distinguished council whose task it was to make all the laws for a future society.”

  “I wouldn’t mind at all being on that council.”

  “They are obliged to consider absolutely every detail, because as soon as they reach an agreement—and everybody has signed the laws—they will all drop dead.”

  “Oh . . .”

  “But they will immediately come to life again in the society they have legislated for. The point is that they have no idea which position they will have in society.”

  “Ah, I see.”

  “That society would be a just society. It would have arisen among equals.”

  “Men and women!”

  “That goes without saying. None of them knew whether they would wake up as men or women. Since the odds are fifty-fifty, society would be just as attractive for women as for men.”

  “It sounds promising.”

  “So tell me, was the Europe of Karl Marx a society like that?”

  “Absolutely not!”

  “But do you by any chance know of such a society today?”

  “Hm ... that’s a good question.”

  “Think about it. But for now there will be no more about Marx.”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Next chapter!”

  Darwin

  …a ship sailing through life with a cargo of genes…

  Hilde was awakened on Sunday morning by a loud bump. It was the ring binder falling on the floor. She had been lying in bed reading about Sophie and Alber-to’s conversation on Marx and had fallen asleep. The re
ading lamp by the bed had been on all night.

  The green glowing digits on her desk alarm clock showed 8:59.

  She had been dreaming about huge factories and polluted cities; a little girl sitting at a street corner selling matches—well-dressed people in long coats passing by without as much as a glance.

  When Hilde sat up in bed she remembered the legislators who were to wake up in a society they themselves had created. Hilde was glad she had woken up in Bjer-kely, at any rate.

  Would she have dared to wake up in Norway without knowing whereabouts in Norway she would wake up?

  But it was not only a question of where she would wake up. Could she not just as easily have woken up in a different age? In the Middle Ages, for instance—or in the Stone Age ten or twenty thousand years ago? Hilde tried to imagine herself sitting at the entrance to a cave, scraping an animal hide, perhaps.

  What could it have been like to be a fifteen-year-old girl before there was anything called a culture? How would she have thought? Could she have had thoughts at all?

  Hilde pulled on a sweater, heaved the ring binder onto the bed and settled down to read the next chapter.

  Alberto had just said “Next chapter!” when somebody knocked on the door of the major’s cabin.

  “We don’t have any choice, do we?” said Sophie.

  “No, I suppose we don’t,” said Alberto.

  On the step outside stood a very old man with long white hair and a beard. He held a staff in one hand, and in the other a board on which was painted a picture of a boat The boat was crowded with all kinds of animals. “And who is this elderly gentleman?” asked Alberto.

  “My name is Noah.”

  “I guessed as much.”

  “Your oldest ancestor, my son. But it is probably no longer fashionable to recognize one’s ancestors.”