Marx was Wrong…But not how I Believed

As an American, my first exposure to the ideas of socialism and communism came through the reflection of the Cold War. I was six when the Berlin Wall fell, but after decades of spy games and proxy conflicts related to the “age old” fight of Capitalism vs Communism (note the capitals here), my exposure to these economic forces and their related governments had been crystalized. At least, they had inasmuch as any idea can when you only hear about it being bad and know of a single aspect - dictatorship. These were ideas of our enemies, of those who hated the vaunted Democracy that came with the American way of life.

Since I’m not six any longer, I have had the time to look into these ideas and I realize that most of what I knew was propaganda. I’ve lived in a country ran by a Communist government - Vietnam - and studied the theories of Karl Marx under the tutelage of professors , even reading Das Kapital. Karl Marx was wrong about the inevitability of the communist utopia.

Experiencing the healthcare system of a Communist country.

Marx in a Nutshell

Before I can explain why Marx was wrong, let’s establish what he thought.

Marx believed that a society’s economic system was the foundation of the society and all other aspects of its culture and life were driven by their economics. Atavistic humans lived in a with a form of primitive communism, where there was no private property and no surplus of commodities (goods or services that could be traded). The invention of agriculture change this, allowing our progenitors to settle into place. From this sprung ideas of personal property, the practice of slavery, and the first real class - those who rule, and those who are ruled. This ancient mode of production gave way the feudal mode of production, giving us the aristocracy and serfs. Antagonism between the serfs and their feudal lords would lead to capitalism, where Marx says we get the classes of Capitalist and Worker.

In Marx’s view, the capitalist class (the bourgeoisie) exploit the worker class (the proletariat). The workers sell their labor to the owners in order to make money to survive, but because the owners need to make profit, they get the workers to sell more labor than is necessary; it is this last bit of work that counts as exploitation. He believed that as the Capitalists made profit, they would invest this profit into more work, generating more profit and so on and so forth in a growing cycle.

From this, Marx predicted that as capitalist re-invested their profits, they would need to more workers for the work. As more workers were needed, the available labor pool shrinks and so wages rise as availability is low. Higher wages means less profit and eventually unemployment increases as workers cannot be maintained at the labor rates required. An economic crisis occurs, forcing a change.

Alternatively, capitalists invest in improvements to efficiency (new technology comes along, for instance) which leads to a surplus of goods, a drop in prices, and the inability to maintain the labor pool. An economic crisis occurs.

Through all of this, the most successful capitalists are buying up more and more resources. They buy out their competitors, they buy the property of the workers who can no longer afford to maintain ownership. They spread from local to regional, regional to national, national to transnational. This cycle is sometimes called Boom and Bust.

Now, so far, Marx seems to be right. We have historical knowledge that what he predicts of capitalism has actually happened. Capitalism has spread globally. We have seen boom and bust cycles. All of this has led to a growing amount of inequality where the wealth and capital are concentrated at the higher end of the socio-economic spectrum while the bottom portion holds negative wealth.

According to Marxist theory, this growing inequality will eventually lead to a revolution where the workers seize the means of production - socialism - and implement a form of government related to their interests. Eventually, as lives improve, those same people will push for a world in which there is no class, no ownership, we all just share and live in happiness.

Wrong!

This is where I think Marx is wrong.

His outlined path, from Capitalism to Communism, is an option and it represents a form of logic. However, he didn’t account for all of the possibilities. Marx took one possible path and assumed it was the only one. He didn’t account for the depths of human greed, nor the impressionability of the uncurious.

For example, what happens when the mega-capitalists don’t just want to increase their profits, but grow their power? What happens if the people don’t revolt in time, and are left with no ability or power to seize the means of production? What happens if a natural disaster of great magnitude puts its hands on the scale and causes a different form of economic crisis? These questions were never answered by our esteemed 19th century philosopher.

In the modern day, we hear the term technofeudalism, a modernized version of the old feudal cycle. In this we can find a new idea: what if Marx’s continuum of economic systems doesn’t travel in only one direction?

There’s nothing to say that we cannot backslide, that we cannot go back and revisit previous stages of development. In developmental psychology this is a common theme: growth in life is constant and elastic. We might stretch forth to the next stage, the progressive stage, but that doesn’t mean we can’t revert to a previous one with the right forces in our life.

After all, our ancestors lived in a classless, stateless society and they developed both classes and states. We can’t ignore our history while planning for our future.