Marxist Analysis of the Lego Movie - A New Response

Note: After reading writer #2’s analysis of this movie, I was shocked and sickened at his bastardisation of Marxism. That is what drove me to write this.

The Lego movie is mainly a fantasy children’s movie that one should not think too hardly about. However, as I will be looking at it from a Marxist perspective, I think the main current of the movie is looking back at the dissolution of feudal relations from the point of view of the capitalists to search for solutions for capitalism's current crises. Capitalists are generally aware of the problems of contemporary moribund capitalist society to some degree, but they tend to look backwards for solutions rather than forwards.

The previous magic, wonder and fantasy of the world is lost, as now that we have more collective knowledge, all corners of the globe are fully explored and labour is social, man is forced to face the world and his own kind with sober senses. That's what the destruction of the master builders represented in the movie in favour of there being standardised instructions that anyone could use. Modern production is the undertaking of all of society, not just a few skilled independent master craftsmen. The “renaissance man” is no longer possible, as the tapestry of human knowledge has become so vast that the previous grand designs of a Da Vinci or a Newton could only appear as a few stitches nowadays. Even the labour of the intellectual now is mostly proletarianised.

And the capitalists generally know this. They know that modern large-scale capitalist production is a hundred times better than feudal production, but it is also dying and in crisis and has flaws that weren't present in feudal production (or at least their idealised memory of it). They know modern capitalism as it is now cannot stand still but are just as incapable of truly seeing beyond capitalism.

They are also incapable of seeing that their ideal future does not lie with and cannot come about with individual heroics (like that of a romantic samurai/knight or master craftsmen of a bygone age) or people that “just believe they are special” (as stated by the movie), but instead it will be brought about by the workers (as a class) that they look down upon as wretched and stupid (Emmett being this exact caricature of a worker) as they actually are the sole creative force of contemporary society.

As such, Lucy's (or Wyldside’s or whatever her name was’s) speech at the end was not “involving the masses” (at least not to act in their own class interest) as writer #2 postulated. All it did was delude the workers (and apparently writer #2 as well) to resist in a petty bourgeois manner by each building their own individual stuff; to mimic the example set by the “heroes” of the story. It's reminiscent of capitalists telling workers to just “start a business” or “learn to code”. All previous bourgeois revolutions were won because it was in the interests of all classes except the aristocracy to end the suffocating feudal bonds, and especially in the interests of the broad masses of the peasantry (who composed the main body of footsoldiers for the revolutionary bourgeoisie) to strengthen private property rights, and so was done with extensive involvement from the masses. Just the same, bourgeois coups or “resistance movements” nowadays use not just the lumpenproletariat and petty-bourgeoisie, but often many workers who they have bribed or fooled. Just the same, fascism cannot be effectively opposed by capitalists or liberals as their capitalist system is what inevitably gives rise to fascism in one form or another. Anti-fascism is meaningless without anti-capitalism.

Consequently, it is the task of communists to assess the class character of a movement and act accordingly, not to blindly tail the workers. That is the essence of what vanguardism is. By consistently identifying and advocating for the real interests of the working class and fighting for them to the full extent, we hope to win the workers over to the side of Communist revolution. Therefore, workers don't resist effectively by “believing in themselves” (as the movie suggests), they do so by recognising their real place in production and society and the interests that stem from there and then acting in these interests in a coordinated, collective, organised and disciplined manner. It is not about “belief” in a vacuum; social being determines social consciousness.

The most ridiculous manifestation of this delusion is when Emmett appeals to President Business himself, as if capitalists can, through proper argumentation, be persuaded to give up their ownership of the means of production, or to otherwise act against their fundamental interests. This is what happens when one believes in the primacy of thought divorced from man's real social being - idealism. It's also a class conciliatory message, symbolically (just like capitalist propaganda) making the capitalists the parents and the worker the child, as it was revealed in that scene that the dialogue between Emett and President Business reflected the dialogue between the real father who owned the Lego set and his child. It presents the labour-capital relation as one big family within which all disputes should be resolved in a friendly manner (i.e., without strikes, or revolts), while the capitalists should remain the firm master of the house, and maybe if the workers work hard enough and are loyal they might see an “inheritance” in the form of some crumbs trickling down.

In the real world the class of proletarians which the “most progressive” and well-meaning of bourgeois heroes seeks to comfort and set free from its vile poverty and misery, on the contrary has the task of comforting and setting free the “heroes” (and all mankind), by destroying the social order that enslaves us. The world of the hero's youth whose ruins he sees come about every day, tumbling in on itself, is to be rebuilt and more largely planned by the workers alone. This knowledge is humiliating for a capitalist, and can only be won against his instincts, by an insight into the structure of the social relations in which he lives. It is the most difficult of all wisdoms for the bourgeoisie to attain.

So instead, capitalists tend to look backwards, to previous social formations where the acute problems of modern capitalism were not yet there. And they attempt to bring about this idealised past as the solution - whether it's pre-monopoly capitalism and free competition as the solution to “crony capitalism” or feudal morality and religion in response to the market commodifying all that is “holy and sacred” to them or whatever else. And it is impossible to bring the past crystallised as it is in their memory, forwards to the present.

And as we can see, this would not be the world of the future - socialism, but one of reaction - one of fascism. And that is the world that the “heroes” of the Lego movie would bring about when they succeeded (if it was the real world and not a nonsense fantasy one). They act as if it is possible or desirable to move capitalism backwards from its imperialist (monopoly) stage. They forget that it was precisely free competition that led to winners and the formation of monopolies.

In contrast, President Business (as representative of monopoly-capitalism) deep within his black and rotten heart also cannot see anywhere forward for society to develop, and sees that it is rife with unresolvable antagonistic contradictions - so he seeks to freeze it in place (literally with super glue) and enforce this through open fascist terror.

The lesson we as Marxists could take from this movie isn't the intended “believe in yourself and you can do anything” drivel. It also isn’t the utter nonsense that writer #2 came up with, or his projections of ignorance about dialectics and vanguardism and Marxism in general into this movie. It is that capitalism is historically progressive compared to feudalism. Not because capitalists are nicer than feudal lords or guild masters (some are a good deal crueller) but because the total forces of production are greater and our social relations have conformed as such. It unites the wholly dispossessed class in social labour, erodes boundaries between them, and forces them to not only resist their impoverishment and exploitation collectively, but destines them to one day end it once and for all. Monopoly-capitalism centralises and concentrates all production to an ever-greater degree and all the workers have to do is seize control of it. However, it has outlived its historic mission, and has long become a brake on all human progress – a rotting carcass carried forwards only by the weight of its own immensity. The solution is to look forward to communism, not backwards which will end up leading to fascism.