Karl Heinrich Marx was born in Trier, Germany on May 5, 1818 and died in London, England on March 14, 1883 at the age of 64. After studying Law and Philosophy at Universities in Bonn and Berlin, he would come to global renown and influence on the basis of his “critical theories” that sought to scientifically examine society, economics and politics, formulating theories and ideas that would come to be known as Marxism. This doctrine emphasised the role of class conflict in the development of human societies.
Marx was primarily influenced by the Dialectical Idealism of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, which was defined as “an attempt to explain the evolution of Western society through the use of dialectical forms, which rely upon the presumed, motive power of spiritual, mental, or ideal forces.” Marx rejected the idealism at the core of Hegel’s theory, and adapted it instead to formulate what might be termed Dialectical Materialism, a philosophy of science, history and nature that emphasises the importance of real-world conditions and the presence of contradictions within things, in relation to but not limited to class, labour and socio-economic interactions.
Marx met his lifelong collaborator and sometime patron, Friedrich Engels, in 1844 at the Café de la Régence in Paris, whereupon Engels showed him his recent publication entitled “The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844”, which convinced Marx that the working class would be the agent and instrument of the final revolution in history, leading Marx to launch into intensive study and critical appraisal of the foundational writings on political economy, theories formulated by such luminaries as Adam Smith, David Ricardo and James Mill.
Shortly thereafter, Marx came to an association with a secretive organisation of like-minded radicals, the League of the Just– a Christian communist international revolutionary organisation, founded in 1836 by branching off from its ancestor, the League of Outlaws.
From Wikipedia:
“Marx thought the League would be just the sort of radical organisation that was needed to spur the working class of Europe toward the mass movement that would bring about a working-class revolution. However, to organise the working class into a mass movement the League had to cease its “secret” or “underground” orientation and operate in the open as a political party.”
This party was renamed the Communist League, with a political pamphlet written by Engels and Marx (that came to be better known as “The Communist Manifesto“) as the foremost wellspring for its organisational protocols and principles- a detailed programme for action.
Having worn out his welcome in Belgium due to his political rabble rousing, Marx then moved to Cologne where he started the publication of a daily newspaper called the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung“, which he helped to finance through a recent inheritance from his father. The paper was designed to put forward news from across Europe with his own Marxist interpretation of events, and the newspaper featured Marx as its primary writer, and the dominant editorial influence.
Despite some contributions by fellow members of the Communist League, according to Friedrich Engels it remained, interestingly, “a simple dictatorship by Marx”. Reactionary counter-revolutions in both Germany and France led Marx to leave for England, where he would live in exile for the rest of his life. It was here that he would write his major, most influential works: “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy“, the 3 volume “Das Kapital” (his magnum opus), and “Theories of Surplus Value“.
Whilst a thorough critique of these undoubtedly influential works is somewhat beyond the scope of my article, the general ideological underpinnings of Marxist doctrine, its inherent contradictions and failings, and Karl Marx’s moral deficiencies as a human being will instead be where I intend to place most of my emphasis.
Criticisms of Marxist Theory:
These criticisms of Marxist doctrine fall into a number of broad categories:
Historial Materialism– Marx locates historical change in the rise of class societies and the way humans labour together to make their livelihoods. For Marx, and his collaborator Engels, the ultimate cause and moving power of historical events are to be found in the economic development of society, and the social and political upheavals wrought by changes to the mode of production. Marx tries to draw an oversimplified distinction between these changes in society in isolation (“the base”) from what he refers to as the “superstructure” of Law, Politics, the Arts and Literature, Morality and Religion, as though these important elements of any functioning society are not motive force in their own right.
Historical Determinism– Marxism, in its theoretical foundation, designates a rigid finalist and mechanist conception of historical unfolding that makes the future appear as an inevitable and predetermined result of the past. Yet, ironically this unfolding of history as predicted under Marx’s original theory has not even remotely come to pass. His much hoped for revolution of the masses failed to eventuate as the industrial revolution, and the capitalist free market economy he despised, promoted their financial opportunities and wellbeing to such an extent that the Marxist polemic could not gain any traction among its intended recipients, but instead became a much beloved curio in the bric-à-brac cabinet of the lofty academic classes, who continued to adhere to it even in the face of its many failings.
Suppression of human rights– In the absence of a free market composed of individual choices being formulated by all the components of the system, and in a constant state of flux due to that freedom of choice that produces limitless possibilities, a communist state would, by its very nature, tend to erode the rights of its citizens and become increasingly authoritarian. Marx postulated the necessity of a violent revolution, and a dictatorship of the proletariat, which by its very nature would promote significant social upheaval and endanger (or worse) large numbers of innocent lives. Being collectivist by nature, and reliant on “the masses” rather than seeing the working class as unique individuals, Marx’s doctrine must necessarily infringe on the rights of the individual to self determination, as all must be subservient to an often nebulous “greater good”.
Economic criticisms–
a) Labour theory of value– British economist Alfred Marshall was quoted as saying: “It is not true that the spinning of yarn in a factory … is the product of the labour of the operatives. It is the product of their labour, together with that of the employer and subordinate managers, and of the capital employed“.
Marshall similarly criticised the Marxian theory of value through the law of supply and demand. According to Marshall, price or value is determined not just by supply, but by the demand of the consumer. Labour does contribute to cost, but so do the wants and needs of consumers. The shift from labour being the source of all value to subjective individual evaluations creating all value undermines Marx’s economic conclusions and some of his social theories.
Marxism also fails to account for the “value” added to businesses through employers reinvesting some or all of their profits back into their business in order to grow and expand those businesses or to make them more efficient, and with that increased profitability that investment entails can then feed back to better wages and other rewards for their employees.
b) Reduced incentives– The notion that an absolute equality of reward for one’s toil across the board in complex societies where working roles, responsibilities, dangers and skill levels vary so widely completely underestimates the degree to which varied remuneration acts as a motive force to performing intellectually difficult, taxing, physically dangerous or unpleasant tasks that would simply be avoided should all labour, regardless of these factors, be rewarded equally. Whilst primitive hunter-gatherer societies may have been able to function in some rudimentary way (at the point of a spear almost certainly), the relative similarities in the duties required of the various members of the tribe makes such a comparison to a complex, multilayered modern society a moot point at best.
“It is the common error of Socialists to overlook the natural indolence of mankind; their tendency to be passive, to be the slaves of habit, to persist indefinitely in a course once chosen. Let them once attain any state of existence which they consider tolerable, and the danger to be apprehended is that they will thenceforth stagnate; will not exert themselves to improve, and by letting their faculties rust, will lose even the energy required to preserve them from deterioration. Competition may not be the best conceivable stimulus, but it is at present a necessary one, and no one can foresee the time when it will not be indispensable to progress.” John Stuart Mill
“This hope [that egalitarian reward would lead to a higher level of motivation], one that spread far beyond Marx, has been shown by both history and human experience to be irrelevant. For better or worse, human beings do not rise to such heights. Generations of socialists and socially oriented leaders have learned this to their disappointment and more often to their sorrow. The basic fact is clear: the good society must accept men and women as they are.” John Kenneth Galbraith
c) Having distorted or absent price signals–
Both Ludwig von Mises and Freidrich Hayek have argued that the free market solution is the only possible solution to resolve the economic calculation problem and, without the information provided by market prices, Marxist socialism inherently lacks a method to rationally allocate resources. In practice, as though to prove this point, centrally planned Communist states (like the Soviet Union for example), have attempted and used mathematical techniques to determine and set prices, with generally discouraging to catastrophic results.
d) Showing internal inconsistency–
“Karl Marx’s value theory and law of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall are internally inconsistent. In other words, the critics allege that Marx drew conclusions that actually do not follow from his theoretical premises. Once those errors are corrected, Marx’s conclusion that aggregate price and profit are determined by—and equal to—aggregate value and surplus value no longer holds true. This result calls into question his theory that the exploitation of workers is the sole source of profit.” (Wikipedia)
e) Lack of relevance to the modern world- John Maynard Keynes opined that “Das Kapital” was:
“an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world.”
While Robert Solow wrote:
“Marx was an important and influential thinker, and Marxism has been a doctrine with intellectual and practical influence. The fact is, however, that most serious English-speaking economists regard Marxist economics as an irrelevant dead end.“
Marxism claims to be founded in the real world, but that is precisely where it founders: in its implementation, and also in its inability in accurately representing real world economic application.
Marxism: The Many Headed Hydra
The Hydra in Greek Mythology, was a gigantic water-snake-like monster with nine heads, one of which was immortal. Anyone who attempted to behead the Hydra found that as soon as one head was cut off, two more heads would emerge from the fresh wound. The destruction of the Hydra became one of the 12 Labours of Hercules.
Orthodox Marxism is, in many ways precisely akin to that mythical beast, in that no matter how many times it is refuted, or shown to be in error, it simply morphs into another manifestation of itself, whether it be Marxist-Leninism, Trotskyism, Libertarian Marxism, Stalinism, Maoism, Western Marxism, Marxist Humanism or Austromarxism. Ultimately, it has transformed in the current era into “Cultural Marxism”, a doctrine that has insinuated itself into every corner of the social fabric that had previously bound people in Western democracies together.
Many notable academics such as Karl Popper, David Prychitko, Robert.C.Allen, and Francis Fukuyama have argued that the majority of Karl Marx’s predictions have failed. Marx predicted that wages would tend to depreciate and that capitalist economies would suffer worsening economic crises leading to the ultimate overthrow of the capitalist system. The socialist revolution would allegedly occur first in the most advanced capitalist nations and once collective ownership had been established then all sources of class conflict would disappear. Instead of Marx’s predictions, communist revolutions took place in undeveloped regions in Latin America and Asia, instead of industrialized countries like the United States or the United Kingdom.
Popper has also argued that both the concept of Marx’s historical method as well as its application are fundamentally unfalsifiable and thus it is a pseudoscience that cannot be proven true or false:
“The Marxist theory of history, in spite of the serious efforts of some of its founders and followers, ultimately adopted this soothsaying practice. In some of its earlier formulations (for example in Marx’s analysis of the character of the ‘coming social revolution’) their predictions were testable, and in fact falsified. Yet, instead of accepting the refutations the followers of Marx re-interpreted both the theory and the evidence in order to make them agree. In this way they rescued the theory from refutation; but they did so at the price of adopting a device which made it irrefutable. They thus gave a ‘conventionalist twist’ to the theory; and by this stratagem they destroyed its much advertised claim to scientific status.”
Popper believed that Marxism may have been initially scientific, in that Marx had postulated a theory which was genuinely predictive. When Marx’s predictions were not in fact borne out, Popper argues that the theory was saved from falsification by the addition of ad hoc hypotheses which attempted to make it compatible with the facts. By this means, a theory which was initially genuinely scientific then degenerated into pseudoscientific dogma.
Popper also devoted much attention to dissecting the practice of using the dialectic in defence of Marxist thought, which was the very strategy employed by V.A. Lektorsky in his defence of Marxism against Popper’s criticisms. Among Popper’s conclusions was that Marxists used dialectic of side-stepping and evading criticisms, rather than actually answering or addressing them.
“Hegel thought that philosophy develops; yet his own system was to remain the last and highest stage of this development, and could not be superseded. The Marxists adopted the same attitude towards the Marxian system. Hence, Marx’s anti-dogmatic attitude exists only in the theory and not in the practice of orthodox Marxism, and dialectic is used by Marxists, following the example of Engels’ Anti-Dühring, mainly for the purposes of apologetics – to defend the Marxist system against criticism. As a rule critics are denounced for their failure to understand the dialectic, or proletarian science, or for being traitors. Thanks to dialectic the anti-dogmatic attitude has disappeared, and Marxism has established itself as a dogmatism which is elastic enough, by using its dialectic method, to evade any further attack. It has thus become what I have called reinforced dogmatism.”
Economist Thomas Sowell wrote in 1985:
“What Marx accomplished was to produce such a comprehensive, dramatic, and fascinating vision that it could withstand innumerable empirical contradictions, logical refutations, and moral revulsions at its effects. The Marxian vision took the overwhelming complexity of the real world and made the parts fall into place, in a way that was intellectually exhilarating and conferred such a sense of moral superiority that opponents could be simply labelled and dismissed as moral lepers or blind reactionaries. Marxism was – and remains – a mighty instrument for the acquisition and maintenance of political power.”
Karl Marx, the Man:
Paul Johnson, in his book “Intellectuals” has this to say about Karl Marx as a man:
“….It must be said that he developed traits characteristic of a certain type of scholar, especially Talmudic ones: a tendency to accumulate immense masses of half-assimilated materials and to plan encyclopedic works which were never completed; a withering contempt for all non-scholars; and extreme assertiveness and irascibility in dealing with other scholars. Virtually all his work, indeed, has the hallmark of Talmudic study: it is essentially a commentary on, a critique of the work of others in his field.”
He continues: “The truth is, even the most superficial inquiry into Marx’s use of evidence forces one to treat with skepticism everything he wrote which relies on factual data”. For example, Johnson stated: “The whole of the key Chapter Eight of Capital is a deliberate and systematic falsification to prove a thesis, which an objective examination of the facts showed was untenable.”
Marx was born into the early decades of capitalism, and the Industrial Revolution that fuelled it, which began to create a burgeoning middle class (“the bourgeoisie”), and even worse a thriving nouveau riche, which the elite old guard, and even intellectuals like Marx despised equally, and with a passion. They all despised the very existence of a middle class of aspirational people, and it was this hatred, not love nor even sympathy for the proletariat, that drove the formulation his Marxist theory.
Marxism becomes, in my view, merely a secular and collaborative form of feudalism, inevitably devolving into a kleptocracy, where the apex of a cleverly conceived pyramid scheme bleeds all the other levels white, dragging them down to a base marked by equal shares of misery and privation.
It is also unlikely that Karl Marx ever stepped foot in a factory in his whole life, in fact he rebuffed Engels’ invitations on many occasions, and many of the facts he utilised in Das Kapital were from decades old government reports that didn’t reflect on what present working conditions were like, and he was loose with the truth about improving wage conditions of factory workers by asserting the exact opposite. Perhaps the only truly exploited labourer that he knew personally was his maid, whom he impregnated, forcing the resultant child into an orphanage and to whom he never paid a “red cent” for the domestic chores she performed in the Marx’s home.
Since intellectuals like Marx understanding of the world of politics and of the behaviours and motivations of real people are fatally inadequate, they tend to succumb to the temptation to ignore real people and the real world, before putting their ideas before the people. When people fail to react in the desired manner, these intellectuals become embittered and increasingly extreme in their behaviours and attitudes. In this respect, Marx was the quintessential exemplar of this truism.
Believing that they have all the answers, intellectuals of Marx’s ilk convince themselves that they do not need to bother with troublesome distractions like hard facts, and that they are justified in lying in the service of the higher truths that only they, in their enlightened wisdom, have glimpsed.
Johnson summarizes four aspects of Marx’s character: “his taste for violence, his appetite for power, his inability to handle money and, above all, his tendency to exploit those around him.“
and further,
“Marx lived his life in an atmosphere of extreme verbal violence, periodically exploding into violent rows and sometimes physical assault.”
Another perspective worthy of consideration:
“This article argues that Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels’s theory of history contained racist components. In Marx and Engels’s understanding, racial disparities emerged under the influence of shared natural and social conditions hardening into heredity and of the mixing of blood. They racialized skin-colour groups, ethnicities, nations and social classes, while endowing them with innate superior and inferior character traits. They regarded race as part of humanity’s natural conditions, upon which the production system rested. ‘Races’ endowed with superior qualities would boost economic development and productivity, while the less endowed ones would hold humanity back. Marxist race thinking reflected common Lamarckian and Romantic-Nationalist assumptions of the era.
Their numerous horrendous comments on Slavs, ‘Negroes’, Bedouins, Jews, Chinese and many others are well known, but the logic behind these comments has not been sufficiently examined.
Marx and Engels applied the term “Rasse”, or the English “race”, to a wide variety of human collectives – from skin-colour groups to ethnicities, nations and even to social classes. It is tempting to assume that they were applying the term loosely and that they were only unthinkingly repeating the stereotypes and prejudices of the day. On the contrary, I will argue that this common interpretation means to miss the serious points they were making. Whereas formal definitions and theories of race indeed cannot be found in their writings, their scattered comments add up to quite a coherent position on the question.
Nathaniel Weyl stands alone in having offered a solution for this problem. This author suggested that ‘historical materialism might be superimposed on certain more fundamental conditions which shaped man’s fate’. If Marx assumed that people of different races differed in ‘ability and hence in civilization-potential’, then ‘The more capable peoples would be expected to move more swiftly through the dialectically determined phases of the historical process and this would in turn stimulate their civilizational level’. Weyl suggests, in other words, that Marx regarded race as an element underlying the economic basis of society.”
In Conclusion:
Originally, the Marxist Left built its political program on the theory of class conflict. Karl Marx believed that the primary characteristic of industrial societies was the imbalance of power between capitalists and workers. The solution to that imbalance, according to Marx, was revolution: The workers would eventually gain consciousness of their plight, seize the means of production, overthrow the capitalist class and then usher in a new, ideal socialist society.
During the 20th century, a number of regimes underwent Marxist-style revolutions, and each ended in disaster. Socialist governments in the Soviet Union, China, Cambodia, Cuba and elsewhere racked up a body count of well north of 100 million people. They are remembered for gulags, show trials, executions and mass starvations. In practice, Marx’s ideas unleashed man’s darkest brutalities.
Marxist intellectuals in the West eventually came to realize that workers’ revolutions would never occur in Western Europe or the United States, which had large middle classes and rapidly improving standards of living. Marxist scholars in the West simply adapted their revolutionary theory to the social and racial unrest of the 1960s. Abandoning Marx’s economic dialectic of capitalists and workers, they substituted race for class and sought to create a revolutionary coalition of the dispossessed based on racial and ethnic categories.
In contrast to equality, “equity” as defined and promoted by critical race theorists, is little more than reformulated Marxism. In the name of “equity”, a UCLA law professor and critical race theorist Cheryl Harris has recently proposed suspending private property rights, seizing land and wealth and redistributing them along racial lines. This is allegedly proposed to promote equality of outcomes, based on quotas and affirmative action preferentially to various groups based on their victimhood status, rather than in proportion to an individual’s personal merit, their intellect or capacity to learn, their level of tenacity and effort, or their work ethic.
The achievements and rewards of those who sacrifice their time and energy in toiling to attain the realisation of long term goals, those who show intelligence and application in their approach to managing their lives, those who demonstrate thrift and are wise in investing and/or saving their hard earned dollar toward a delayed (and often enhanced) reward, and those who unselfishly donate their energies and skills to achieving higher order aspirations that would otherwise be deemed too difficult or laborious to contemplate, are instead sacrificed to those who merely feel entitled to the achievements and rewards of others, but are in reality too ignorant, indolent, indignant, or too envious to be bothered to tread such a difficult path to success, but rather expect it to be appropriated, seized or redistributed to be “shared” with their less than worthy selves.
Thus it can be readily seen from all I have written above, that Marxism is indeed the blueprint for the political exploitation of envy, and a society that becomes toxic with envy is one that inevitably destroys (by degrees) the individual, the family unit and then the broader society in turn. A society that has the misfortune to become victim to this culture of covetousness to which Marxism (in its various guises and forms) so deliberately aspires, is one that is doomed to failure, as the litany of those exemplar nations who have embraced Marxist theory throughout the 20th Century readily attest.