Understanding Marxism
Last January, I went out to Los Angeles to film three videos on Marxism for PragerU. The videos were based on an article that I had published several years ago titled “Why Marxism—Evil Laid Bare.” The PragerU people very much liked the article and asked if they could turn it into a series of three videos.
Obviously, a lot has been written about Marx and Marxism over the course of the last 150 years, but I wanted to do something slightly different than had been done before. Broadly speaking, I wanted to try and understand the power and appeal of Marxism by asking a different kind of question than is typically asked. I wanted to know how and why highly educated people could still become fanatical followers of a philosophy that is directly responsible for the murders of over 100 million people over the course of just 70 years.
How is it possible that, despite the one-party rule, secret police, arrests, propaganda, censorship, ethnic cleansing, purges, show trials, reeducation camps, gulags, firing squads, and man-made famine, men and women could still think that communism is a noble ideal?
I knew that young men and women in the twenty-first century did not become Marxists either because of Marx’s economic interpretation of history or because of his theory of dialectical materialism. “Scientific” socialism does not send men and women to the barricades. There had to be some other explanation. My conclusion was that Marx should be viewed first and foremost as a moral philosopher—as a moralist who appealed to man’s worst impulse: envy.
I’m presenting the three videos for your viewing pleasure. Each is based on three verses from what I call the holy book of Marxism.
1. “The enemy of being is having” (from The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844).[1]
2. “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” (from Critique of the Gotha Program, 1875).[2]
3. “The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it” (from Theses on Feuerbach, 1845).[3]
Given all this, what, then, do we say about Marxism?
I say this: There is nothing noble or attractive about Marxian socialism. Marxism is, by definition, totalitarian and genocidal by motive, design, practice, and result.
The political goal of communism is to annihilate freedom in all realms of life—economic, social, and intellectual. By philosophic design, Marxism in power must always use force to achieve its ends. Any government that expropriates and redistributes private property, any government that seeks to control an entire economy, any government that violates the rights of its citizens on a daily basis, any government that seeks to reconstitute human nature will and must use force as a matter of course. Thus, the theory of socialism necessitates the use of coercive force in practice.
The fact of the matter is that the Marxist ideal necessarily leads to censorship, secret police, reeducation camps, Gulags, and genocide in practice. Its violent and bloody history is evident for all to see. Marxian socialism begins and ends with violence and destruction.
Economically, Marxism seeks to destroy private property, the price system, the division of labor, the system of profit-and-loss, wage labor, competition, and material wealth. Politically, it seeks to destroy the rule of law, constitutionalism, separation of powers, and civil rights. Morally, it seeks to destroy individual rights, egoism, and all “bourgeois” virtues. Epistemologically, it seeks to destroy independent thought and free choice. Metaphysically, it seeks to change human nature itself. This is why the communist 1 percent (the true 1 percent) must use the terror apparatus of the State to force the 99 percent (the true 99 percent) to become something they are not and do not want to be. And if that does not work, the secular philosophy of brotherly love simply liquidates as much of the 99 percent as is necessary.
In the end, all decent people must see that Marxism is evil—absolutely evil. It is the wellspring of communist mass murder.
The Marxist regimes responsible for genocide are not aberrations from “true Marxism” but are in fact its fulfillment and living embodiment. They represent what Marxism is and must be. Violence and terror are necessary instruments of the communist ideal. History demonstrates—and I hope this series of video essays have proved philosophically—that Marxism is a philosophy of mass murder, which is precisely what it has done wherever it has held power.
Marxism necessarily leads to Stalinism, to Maoism, to Pol-Potism to Kim Il Sungism, to Castroism, to dictatorship, to the police state, to terror, to show trials, to the gulag, to genocide, and finally to the grave. In other words, the problem with Marxism is . . . Marxism.
And don’t ever forget it!
[1]. Karl Marx, “The Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, ed. Robert C. Tucker (New York: W. W. Norton, 1978), 95-96. This phrase—“The enemy of being is having”—is an essentialized distillation of Marx’s larger discussion about alienation found in the “Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts.” The distilled phrase was first used by Irving Kristol in his Two Cheers for Capitalism (New York: New American Library, 1978), 16. Kristol presumably adapted this phrase from Lionel Trilling’s discussion of Marx in Sincerity and Authenticity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972), 122.
[2]. Marx, “Critique of the Gotha Program,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 531.
[3]. Marx, “Theses on Feuerbach,” in The Marx-Engels Reader, 145.
These are excellent videos for Prager University. The introduction text is also solid and inspiring. Thank you.
There is one logical fallacy that torpedoes the case. A thing (good or bad) cannot be the cause of itself. The reason must be antecedent to the thing. Saying that the problem of Marxism is Marxism is ineffective. You pointed out that the goal of Marxism is to change human nature. Human nature is a given. Human nature is not going to change. We know that. The kids are taught otherwise today. They believe it. The videos don't address that.
Not to recognize all the ills of the mixed economy is to ignore that people know things are bad, but they have not been offered a strong case for disbelieving the "there's a light at the end of the tunnel" and "the state will wither away." Just because Marxism has consistently failed is not a hat on which to hook a principled opposition.
The answer must be in the nature of human nature itself and must be an implicit assumption made in 1776 -1789 by the Founders regarding the nature of rights. We are living through a proliferation of so-called "rights." It has gotten much worse in the last 20 years as if time is running out, or in the words of Atlas Shrugged, our "days are numbered." The implicit assumption has been replaced by explicit knowledge, but the concept of rights has not been updated.
I would look to something in the definition of rights that needs to be explicitly restricted and clarified based on human nature. It would have to be simple and exact to make Marxism obviously wrong in principle. Morality might trump economics, but ultimately the metaphysically given, man's conceptual consciousness forms the basis of human nature itself.
Philosophy must adjust to reality, and the longer it takes to adjust, the harder it becomes. Perhaps this is the idea that will move the cultural needle toward rationality. I doubt Prager will favor this notion because Christianity is basically Platonist. Objectivism is the only philosophy that could lead the way.
Great videos!
The problem with Marxism is collectivism, with those at the top deciding for the collective what their greatest good is (and then, as the videos point out, making sure that this greatest good is enforced.) Our real greatest good is that we're each free to pursue our own greatest good within the broad constraints of the law.