Marxism: In The Ash Heap
Karl Marx believed that class conflict is what drives history forward. He envisioned a more perfect society that could grow out of the eventually doomed capitalistic one. This communist society would be classless in its highest phase of development. As Karl Marx famously said in the "Critique of the Gotha Program," it would "inscribe on its banner: From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!"[1] Marx's mantra meant the end of incentive, the fabric of any successful society. His political philosophy would only lead to disaster and totalitarianism.
He completely ignores the fact that success requires incentive. Man is not some "social animal" who "must be measured not by the power of separate individuals, but by the power of society."[2] Every man has his own individual wants and desires and will work to attain them. Man will have no reason to improve his abilities if he knows that the benefits are the same regardless. A man must know that he will have the potential to improve his status in order to want to work "according to his ability" in the first place. A classless society built on the redistribution of wealth would only punish those who produce and reward those who do not. Analogically, this is tantamount to having a school grading system in which all the "A" students would have to give up points for the common good to all the "C" students so that everyone could receive a "B." Not only is this unfair to the student who studied for the "A," but no rational student will put effort into the class knowing he will do just as well as everyone else.
Marx has no conception of the economic disincentives that his system would induce. Marx writes in the Communist Manifesto that "the proletariat will use its political supremacy…to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state."[3] Central planning, the end of all competition, is a recipe for disaster. The inevitable result of such a scheme would be shortages, deterioration, and black markets. A market-based economy allows for individuals to keep track of the production and prices, and the competition allows for progress. Competing individuals are the engines of a successful economy, not control of all production in the hands of an unaccountable state.
To Marx the market does not only result in capitalist exploitation. He believes that the exploitative market insults the very dignity of man. He wrote in Capital of the communist society before the elimination of scarcity that "freedom in this field can consist only in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature."[4] The danger in what Marx is arguing is evident. He paradoxically claims that freedom would be the result of the "associated producers" having "common," but what essentially translates into total control. He incorrectly assumes that men can somehow reach this ultimate stage of being "socialized" and that they would rationally regulate. He left unexplained how millions of individuals could be expected to act with one will, how they could become a "socialized man."
According to Marx "the class dictatorship of the proletariat" is "the inevitable transit point to the abolition of class differences generally."[5] A dictatorship cannot be the transit point to the abolition of classes. Eventually the proletarian dictatorship is doomed to become just as elitist and corrupt as the bourgeoisie they sought to destroy. The proletarian dictatorship would succumb to the faults of every dictatorship, where the interest is in maintaining power. Even a proletarian dictatorship would fall prey to Lord Acton's famous idiom that "absolute power corrupts absolutely."[6] There can be no transition from a dictatorship to a classless utopia.
The Marxist "system" was greatly influential in the twentieth century with the Bolshevik revolution of 1917. Lenin was his ideological heir, building upon and attempting to actualize Marxist theories. Marx predicted that a united and successful working class would overthrow the capitalist system. The capitalist system has only continued to thrive and the entire global economy is based on international markets. There never was the growth in the strength of the proletariat as Marx predicted. As Ronald Reagan predicted in 1982, the march of freedom and democracy has left "Marxism-Leninism on the ash heap of history."[7]
[1] Princeton Readings in Political Thought, p. 465
[2] Politics and Vision, Sheldon S. Wolin, p. 425
[3] Princeton Readings in Political Thought, p. 462
[4] Ibid p. 465-466
[5] Politics and Vision, Sheldon S. Wolin, p. 444
[6] http://www.bartleby.com/59/13/powertendsto.html
[7] http://www.heritage.org/Research/Europe/WM106.cfm
