WEBVTT NOTE 10. Marx's Vision of Communism (continued) 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:07.720 3. Higher Communism and the Eradication of the Division of Labor 2 00:00:07.720 --> 00:00:14.760 The hell of the first or lower stage of Communism has been vividly expressed by Marx. What of 3 00:00:14.760 --> 00:00:22.040 the heaven of the higher stage, of the positive humanism of ultimate Communism? Unfortunately, 4 00:00:22.040 --> 00:00:28.820 heaven's features are vague and murky indeed, perhaps too insubstantial. If Marx had published 5 00:00:28.820 --> 00:00:58.020 Man is freed from the division of labor, from specialization, which prevents him from developing 6 00:00:58.020 --> 00:01:21.660 Without the division of labor, and with the evil of exchange of goods and services at 7 00:01:21.660 --> 00:01:29.140 Last Eliminated, Man is now free from the alienation of not consuming his own product. 8 00:01:29.140 --> 00:01:35.500 This alienation is not, as many Marxists seem to believe, the result of the capitalists' 9 00:01:35.500 --> 00:01:40.280 alleged extraction of the surplus produced by the workers. 10 00:01:40.280 --> 00:01:46.480 More deeply, this alienation is the product of the division of labor and of specialization 11 00:01:46.480 --> 00:01:47.540 itself. 12 00:01:47.540 --> 00:01:55.380 That division eliminated, man, in the neo-Hegalian mystique of Marx, will return to himself, 13 00:01:55.380 --> 00:02:00.940 will be united with himself, and alienation will then be ended. 14 00:02:00.940 --> 00:02:08.100 All this makes a kind of sense only if one realizes that, for Marx as for Hegel, man 15 00:02:08.100 --> 00:02:12.780 is a collective and not an individual organic entity. 16 00:02:12.780 --> 00:02:19.100 For Hegel and for Marx, the history of man is the history, the ups and downs, of what 17 00:02:19.100 --> 00:02:22.900 amounts to a single collective organism. 18 00:02:22.900 --> 00:02:29.220 If for Marx there is a division of labor, specialization and exchange, this means that 19 00:02:29.220 --> 00:02:36.560 man is tragically split within himself, so that the process of achieving the higher stage 20 00:02:36.560 --> 00:02:42.920 of Communism, the end of human history in the same way that the kingdom of God on earth 21 00:02:42.920 --> 00:02:49.400 had been an end, is a process by which man is no longer alienated from his collective 22 00:02:49.400 --> 00:02:53.600 self and achieves unity with himself. 23 00:02:53.600 --> 00:03:01.000 At the same time, he also achieves unity with nature, for in the Marxian system the only 24 00:03:01.000 --> 00:03:07.520 Only nature is that which has been created by centuries of man's labor and activity. 25 00:03:07.520 --> 00:03:13.120 Thus, as Robert Tucker points out, Friedrich Engels' famous statement about communism 26 00:03:13.120 --> 00:03:19.380 has been misinterpreted widely, not least by Marxists unfamiliar with the philosophical 27 00:03:19.380 --> 00:03:21.880 nature of their own system. 28 00:03:21.880 --> 00:03:28.440 Friedrich Engels, 1820-1895, wrote in his Auntie Düring, 29 00:03:28.440 --> 00:03:34.420 The whole sphere of the conditions of life which environ man, and which have hitherto 30 00:03:34.420 --> 00:03:41.940 ruled man, now comes under the dominion and control of man, who for the first time becomes 31 00:03:41.940 --> 00:03:48.360 the real, conscious lord of nature, because he has now become master of his own social 32 00:03:48.360 --> 00:03:56.200 Social Organization, Man's Own Social Organization, hitherto confronting him as a necessity imposed 33 00:03:56.200 --> 00:04:03.720 by nature and history, now becomes the result of his own free action, the extraneous objective 34 00:04:03.720 --> 00:04:10.620 forces that have hitherto governed history pass under the control of man himself. 35 00:04:10.620 --> 00:04:17.360 It is the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom. 36 00:04:17.360 --> 00:04:23.400 As Tucker points out, to the reader unfamiliar with Marxian philosophy, this passage might 37 00:04:23.400 --> 00:04:29.680 well be construed as referring to man's mastery of nature via technology. 38 00:04:29.680 --> 00:04:37.680 However, in actuality it refers to the mastery of technology as man's own nature outside 39 00:04:37.680 --> 00:04:38.880 himself. 40 00:04:38.880 --> 00:04:45.760 The kingdom of necessity is the alienated world of history, the realm of object bondage, 41 00:04:45.760 --> 00:04:52.160 The extraneous objective forces over which man is to become lord in the kingdom of freedom 42 00:04:52.160 --> 00:04:57.160 are understood as the externalized forces of the species self. 43 00:04:57.160 --> 00:05:04.040 The nature to which man will no longer be subservient is his own nature. 44 00:05:04.040 --> 00:05:10.240 In short, as in many other places in Marx, a passage which at least superficially seems 45 00:05:10.240 --> 00:05:16.600 is to contain at least a modicum of sense, although fallacious, turns out on deeper study 46 00:05:16.600 --> 00:05:23.000 to be but a part of the mumbo jumbo of Marx's neo-hegelian philosophy. 47 00:05:23.000 --> 00:05:29.380 Particularly important for Marx is that communism does away with the division of labor. 48 00:05:29.380 --> 00:05:35.160 By being free of specialization, the division of labor, and working for others, including 49 00:05:35.160 --> 00:05:54.160 Man as laborer is freed from all limits. Thus liberated, man produces in order to realize his nature as a being with manifold creative capacities requiring free outlet in a totality of human life activities. 50 00:05:54.160 --> 00:05:58.160 Or, as Engels put it in his Anti-During, 51 00:05:58.160 --> 00:06:08.160 the disappearance of the division of labor will mean that productive labor will give each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, 52 00:06:08.160 --> 00:06:14.160 physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full. 53 00:06:14.160 --> 00:06:21.160 The idea of everyone developing all of their faculties in all directions is mind-boggling, 54 00:06:21.160 --> 00:06:26.920 and conjures up the absurd picture of a world of autistic dilettantes each 55 00:06:26.920 --> 00:06:32.520 heedless of social demand for their services or products and each dabbling 56 00:06:32.520 --> 00:06:38.360 whimsically and sporadically in every activity. This image is confirmed by 57 00:06:38.360 --> 00:06:44.000 Marx's most famous passage describing the communist system in part one of his 58 00:06:44.000 --> 00:06:51.760 This is The German Ideology, an unpublished essay written in 1845 and 1846. 59 00:06:51.760 --> 00:06:57.840 There he writes that communism corresponds to the development of individuals into complete 60 00:06:57.840 --> 00:07:03.240 individuals and the casting off of all natural limitations. 61 00:07:03.240 --> 00:07:07.040 How are all natural limitations cast off? 62 00:07:07.040 --> 00:07:09.260 A tall order indeed. 63 00:07:09.260 --> 00:07:11.260 Let Marx explain, 64 00:07:39.260 --> 00:08:06.600 One of the most apt comments 65 00:08:06.600 --> 00:08:16.320 A short weekend on a farm might have convinced Marx that the cattle themselves might have 66 00:08:16.320 --> 00:08:21.720 some objection to being reared in this casual manner in the evening. 67 00:08:21.720 --> 00:08:27.560 More broadly, Gray remarks that each individual should have the opportunity of developing 68 00:08:27.560 --> 00:08:35.200 all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions, is a dream which will cheer 69 00:08:35.200 --> 00:08:40.840 Here the vision only of the simple-minded, oblivious of the restrictions imposed by the 70 00:08:40.840 --> 00:08:43.640 narrow limits of human life. 71 00:08:43.640 --> 00:08:50.400 For life, Gray points out, is a series of acts of choice, and each choice is at the 72 00:08:50.400 --> 00:08:53.240 same time a renunciation. 73 00:08:53.240 --> 00:09:00.620 The necessity of choice, Gray perceptively reminds us, will exist even under Communism. 74 00:09:00.620 --> 00:09:06.820 Even the inhabitant of Engel's future fairyland will have to decide, sooner or later, whether 75 00:09:06.820 --> 00:09:12.580 he wishes to be Archbishop of Canterbury or First Sea Lord, whether he should seek to 76 00:09:12.580 --> 00:09:18.700 excel as a violinist or as a pugilist, whether he should elect to know all about Chinese 77 00:09:18.700 --> 00:09:23.980 literature or about the hidden pages in the life of the mackerel. 78 00:09:23.980 --> 00:09:30.420 The abolition of the division of labor meant also that all differences, and hence opposition 79 00:09:30.420 --> 00:09:37.920 between Town and Country had to be eliminated, with industry somehow equally diffused throughout 80 00:09:37.920 --> 00:09:40.580 the country, the world. 81 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:45.400 As a result, all large cities would have to be destroyed. 82 00:09:45.400 --> 00:09:52.420 As Engels said in Auntie During, it is true that in the huge towns civilization has bequeathed 83 00:09:52.420 --> 00:09:58.520 to us a heritage which it will take much time and trouble to get rid of, but it must and 84 00:09:58.520 --> 00:10:04.440 will be got rid of, however protracted a process it may be. 85 00:10:04.440 --> 00:10:10.200 It is not surprising that the Soviet authorities did not take a very favorable view of Marxian 86 00:10:10.200 --> 00:10:12.040 communism. 87 00:10:12.040 --> 00:10:14.720 Marxian pieties can go just so far. 88 00:10:14.720 --> 00:10:21.160 Thus, the Soviet Communist Party's theoretical journal, Communist, referred favorably to 89 00:10:21.160 --> 00:10:27.060 The Unpublished Work of a Soviet Economist, V. M. Kriukov, who wrote that 90 00:10:27.060 --> 00:10:35.060 An unintelligent person and Philistine might form his own picture of Communism approximately as follows. 91 00:10:35.060 --> 00:10:38.060 You rise in the morning and ask yourself, 92 00:10:38.060 --> 00:10:40.060 Where shall I go to work today? 93 00:10:40.060 --> 00:10:45.060 Shall I be chief engineer at the factory, or go and head the fishing brigade? 94 00:10:45.060 --> 00:10:51.560 Or shall I run down to Moscow and hold an urgent meeting of the Presidium of the Academy of Science? 95 00:10:52.560 --> 00:10:56.060 Communist adds the warning, it will not be so. 96 00:10:56.560 --> 00:10:59.060 No doubt, and quite sensibly. 97 00:10:59.560 --> 00:11:07.060 But of course the Soviet authorities did not acknowledge the fact that by repudiating this unintelligent notion, 98 00:11:07.560 --> 00:11:14.560 they were renouncing the key to the whole Marxian system, the point and goal of the entire struggle. 99 00:11:15.060 --> 00:11:26.060 More importantly, the Soviet authorities jettisoned the basic goal of Marxism by abandoning the idea that communism will eliminate the division of labor. 100 00:11:26.060 --> 00:11:36.060 The revision began with Stalin's last work in 1952, shortly before his death, and intensified after that. 101 00:11:36.060 --> 00:11:41.060 Evading and sometimes falsifying the writings of the founders, 102 00:11:41.060 --> 00:11:47.300 The Soviet revisionists were relatively sound in realism and economics, but weak on the 103 00:11:47.300 --> 00:11:50.140 Marxian heritage. 104 00:11:50.140 --> 00:11:54.540 Sometimes the Soviet experts simply and sharply stated the facts. 105 00:11:54.540 --> 00:11:58.780 A man cannot do literally everything. 106 00:11:58.780 --> 00:12:04.600 In the system of communist production relations, the division and specialization of labor will 107 00:12:04.600 --> 00:12:07.040 remain essential. 108 00:12:07.040 --> 00:12:13.780 And it is absolutely obvious that communist society would be unthinkable without a constantly 109 00:12:13.780 --> 00:12:17.840 developing and intensifying division of labor. 110 00:12:17.840 --> 00:12:24.540 Substitute the words modern or industrial for communist, and the Soviet economists were 111 00:12:24.540 --> 00:12:26.300 right on the mark. 112 00:12:26.300 --> 00:12:31.580 But in what sense is this communism any longer? 113 00:12:31.580 --> 00:12:38.060 Six years before Antiduring, moreover, Engels betrayed the entire Marxian vision in the 114 00:12:38.060 --> 00:12:42.180 course of a bitter polemic against the anarchists. 115 00:12:42.180 --> 00:12:48.660 In defending the idea of authoritarianism under communism, Engels reminded the self-styled 116 00:12:48.660 --> 00:12:55.460 anti-authoritarian anarchists that a revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing 117 00:12:55.460 --> 00:12:56.900 there is. 118 00:12:56.900 --> 00:13:04.180 It is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means 119 00:13:04.180 --> 00:13:09.380 of rifles, bayonets and cannon, authoritarian means. 120 00:13:09.380 --> 00:13:15.660 But more importantly, Engels jeered at the idea that there will be no authoritarianism 121 00:13:15.660 --> 00:13:20.200 and hence no division of labor in a communist factory. 122 00:13:20.200 --> 00:13:26.180 Engels pointed out that factory production requires both, and also demands that the workers 123 00:13:26.180 --> 00:13:33.260 Subordinate Themselves to Technological Necessity Thus, keeping the machines going requires 124 00:13:33.260 --> 00:13:39.220 an engineer to look after the steam engine, mechanics to make the current repairs, and 125 00:13:39.220 --> 00:13:44.020 many other laborers whose business it is to transfer the products. 126 00:13:44.020 --> 00:13:50.460 Moreover, he pointed out, technology and the forces of nature subject man to a veritable 127 00:13:50.460 --> 00:13:55.420 despotism independent of all social organization. 128 00:13:55.420 --> 00:14:01.160 Wanting to abolish authority in large-scale industry, Engels warned, is tantamount to 129 00:14:01.160 --> 00:14:07.920 wanting to abolish industry itself, to destroy the power loom in order to return to the spinning 130 00:14:07.920 --> 00:14:09.660 wheel. 131 00:14:09.660 --> 00:14:16.700 Refreshingly sober words, no doubt, but totally alien to the spirit of Marxism, and certainly 132 00:14:16.700 --> 00:14:23.240 to all that Marx said or wrote on the topic, as well as most other writings of Engels. 133 00:14:23.240 --> 00:14:30.680 To Marx, all labor in future communism is not economic, but artistic—the free and 134 00:14:30.680 --> 00:14:36.080 spontaneous creativity allegedly typical of the artist. 135 00:14:36.080 --> 00:14:43.480 For Marx, in his economic magnum opus, Capital, communist man has been transformed from an 136 00:14:43.480 --> 00:14:50.240 alienated man into an aesthetic man who regards everything in artistic terms. 137 00:14:50.240 --> 00:15:04.240 Thus on the factory, industrial production under communism will have no authoritarian direction, but rather, unity will be achieved as with musicians in a symphony orchestra. 138 00:15:04.240 --> 00:15:07.240 Engels, however, was an interesting case. 139 00:15:07.240 --> 00:15:15.240 A bit more of an economist than Marx and the man who introduced his friend and partner to British classical economics, 140 00:15:15.240 --> 00:15:26.240 Engels was capable of alternating the wildest utopian fantasies of communism with a suddenly perceptive insight into its economic difficulties. 141 00:15:26.240 --> 00:15:38.240 Thus, even in Antiduring, Engels at one point admits that the task of economic science, as capitalism moves forward rapidly and inexorably to its collapse, 142 00:15:38.240 --> 00:15:53.240 is to uncover, amid the changes of the economic transition, the elements of the future new organization of production and exchange, which will remove the previous malfunctioning of the capitalist economy. 143 00:15:53.240 --> 00:16:00.240 It was never a task, however, that either Engels or Marx would ever bother to take up. 144 00:16:00.240 --> 00:16:07.140 Furthermore, in The Principles of Communism, an essay written in late 1847 that became 145 00:16:07.140 --> 00:16:13.960 the first draft for the Communist Manifesto, Engels laid bare one of the crucial, usually 146 00:16:13.960 --> 00:16:20.880 implicit, assumptions of the Communist society, that superabundance will have eliminated the 147 00:16:20.880 --> 00:16:23.840 problem of scarcity. 148 00:16:23.840 --> 00:16:29.700 Private property can be abolished only when the economy is capable of producing the volume 149 00:16:29.700 --> 00:16:58.700 This super-abundant production somehow will have been achieved by a wondrous technological progress that would eliminate the need for any division of labor. 150 00:16:58.700 --> 00:17:05.600 Engels, however, in the midst of this bold assumption, felt compelled to waffle and to 151 00:17:05.600 --> 00:17:12.860 admit that this Communist millennium could not be achieved immediately or at one blow, 152 00:17:12.860 --> 00:17:18.720 for it would not be possible immediately to expand the existing forces of production to 153 00:17:18.720 --> 00:17:26.560 such an extent that enough goods could be made to satisfy all the needs of the community. 154 00:17:26.560 --> 00:17:32.840 During the transition period, at least, says Engels, industry will have to be run by society 155 00:17:32.840 --> 00:17:35.980 as a whole for everybody's benefit. 156 00:17:35.980 --> 00:17:42.240 It must be operated by all members of society in accordance with a common plan. 157 00:17:42.240 --> 00:17:47.800 Private property will also have to be abolished, and it must be replaced by the sharing of 158 00:17:47.800 --> 00:17:52.320 all products in accordance with an agreed plan. 159 00:17:52.320 --> 00:17:58.000 Any believer in the labor theory of value who tried to set forth a scheme of economic 160 00:17:58.000 --> 00:18:05.680 calculation under socialism would likely fasten on the idea of setting prices and paying wages 161 00:18:05.680 --> 00:18:10.160 in accordance with the labor time expended on production. 162 00:18:10.160 --> 00:18:17.520 The issue of labor time tickets was precisely the plan proposed by Robert Owen, by the Ricardian 163 00:18:17.520 --> 00:18:29.520 by the German individualist anarchist Josiah Warren and by the German Ricardian socialist Johann Carl Rodbertus, 1805-1875. 164 00:18:29.520 --> 00:18:43.520 One of Friedrich Engels' most penetrating economic insights came in the course of demolishing the labor-ticket money-utopian socialism of Rodbertus, a beloved figure in Germany at that time. 165 00:18:43.520 --> 00:18:55.520 Engels denounced the Roadbertus Doctrine in a preface to the first German edition of Marx's The Poverty of Philosophy, the year after Marx's death, 1884. 166 00:18:55.520 --> 00:19:11.520 Here, Engels had the impudence to condemn Roadbertus's labor money as childishly naive, and to press on to scorn Roadbertus for overlooking economic law and the competitive market process. 167 00:19:11.520 --> 00:19:40.520 To desire in a society of producers who exchange their commodities to establish the determination of value by labor time, by forbidding competition to establish this determination of value through pressure on prices in the only way in which it can be established, is therefore merely to prove that one has adopted the usual utopian disdain of economic laws. 168 00:19:40.520 --> 00:19:59.520 Engels goes on to assert that competition, by bringing into operation the laws of value of commodity production in a society of producers who exchange their commodities, creates the only possible organization of social production in the circumstances. 169 00:19:59.520 --> 00:20:06.120 Angles goes on to engage in a scornful and perceptive critique of socialist attempts at 170 00:20:06.120 --> 00:20:11.680 calculation, at the very least of the Robertus variety. 171 00:20:11.680 --> 00:20:18.720 Only through the undervaluation and overvaluation of products is it forcibly brought home to 172 00:20:18.720 --> 00:20:26.280 the individual commodity producers what things and what quantity of them society requires 173 00:20:26.280 --> 00:20:28.920 or does not require. 174 00:20:28.920 --> 00:20:35.680 But it is just this sole regulator that the utopia in which Robertus also shares would 175 00:20:35.680 --> 00:20:36.920 abolish. 176 00:20:36.920 --> 00:20:43.000 And if we have to ask what guarantee we have that the necessary quantity and not more of 177 00:20:43.000 --> 00:20:49.720 each product will be produced, that we shall not go hungry in regard to corn and meat while 178 00:20:49.720 --> 00:20:56.340 we are choked in beet-sugar and drowned in potato-spirit, that we shall not lack trousers 179 00:20:56.340 --> 00:21:08.100 Roadbertus triumphantly shows us his famous calculation, according to which the correct 180 00:21:08.100 --> 00:21:14.840 certificate has been handed out for every superfluous pound of sugar, for every unsold 181 00:21:14.840 --> 00:21:22.560 barrel of spirit, for every unusable trouser button, a calculation which works out exactly 182 00:21:22.560 --> 00:21:29.760 and according to which all claims will be satisfied and the liquidation correctly brought about. 183 00:21:30.800 --> 00:21:37.920 Engels adds that if now competition is to be forbidden to make the individual producers aware 184 00:21:37.920 --> 00:21:45.360 by the rise or fall of prices how the world market stands then their eyes are completely blinded. 185 00:21:46.560 --> 00:21:51.920 Professor Hutchison's comment on this performance by Engels is all too apropos. 186 00:21:52.560 --> 00:21:58.200 Mises and Hayek could hardly have made the point more forcefully. 187 00:21:58.200 --> 00:22:03.920 What is most extraordinary is the combination of penetrating critical insight regarding 188 00:22:03.920 --> 00:22:10.220 the vital function of the competitive price mechanism, as applied to the utopian notions 189 00:22:10.220 --> 00:22:18.760 of Rodbertus, together with the totally uncritical, purblind complacency regarding his own and 190 00:22:18.760 --> 00:22:25.200 and Marx's Utopian Assumptions, as he himself had earlier revealed them in his Principles 191 00:22:25.200 --> 00:22:32.600 of Communism in such irresponsible vacuities as the joint and planned exploitation of the 192 00:22:32.600 --> 00:22:37.080 forces of production by society as a whole. 193 00:22:37.080 --> 00:22:43.020 The hordes of infallible Prussian officials and the Prussian state socialism for relying 194 00:22:43.020 --> 00:22:50.380 on which Engels so castigates Robertus, would inevitably be required, and of course have 195 00:22:50.380 --> 00:22:58.340 been deployed many times over, for Engels and Marx's own utopian planning. 196 00:22:58.340 --> 00:23:04.220 But such few perceptions on the part of Engels come under the category of what he himself 197 00:23:04.220 --> 00:23:07.460 once called howlers. 198 00:23:07.460 --> 00:23:13.900 Apart from them, ultimate communism was naively to achieve the transcendence of both work 199 00:23:13.900 --> 00:23:16.380 and the division of labor. 200 00:23:16.380 --> 00:23:18.620 But that is not all. 201 00:23:18.620 --> 00:23:23.660 Along with the transcendence and negation of private property will come the negation 202 00:23:23.660 --> 00:23:30.860 of virtually all aspects of modern civilization, which Marx also considered subsidiary modes 203 00:23:30.860 --> 00:23:57.940 The Positive Transcendence of Private Property as the Appropriation of Human Living is therefore 204 00:23:57.940 --> 00:24:05.240 or the positive transcendence of all alienation and thus the return of man from religion, 205 00:24:05.240 --> 00:24:13.440 the family, the state, etc. to his human, that is, social existence. 206 00:24:13.440 --> 00:24:20.200 But if all these cherished institutions are to be rudely stripped from man, what then remains 207 00:24:20.200 --> 00:24:23.580 to this poor liberated creature? 208 00:24:23.580 --> 00:24:30.660 For make no mistake, these post-Marxian creatures would be deprived of all human interrelations 209 00:24:30.660 --> 00:24:33.020 that make up a society. 210 00:24:33.020 --> 00:24:40.780 These complete individuals would be deprived of law, family, custom, religion and, of course, 211 00:24:40.780 --> 00:24:44.540 of all exchange of goods and services. 212 00:24:44.540 --> 00:24:51.300 That is, they would be complete, hermetically sealed creatures, each isolated from everyone 213 00:24:51.300 --> 00:24:52.300 else. 214 00:24:52.300 --> 00:24:58.740 Ironically then, leftists who habitually, though falsely, denounce individualist thinkers 215 00:24:58.740 --> 00:25:06.060 for advocating a world of isolated, atomistic, hermetically sealed individuals, themselves 216 00:25:06.060 --> 00:25:13.740 worship a theorist whose vision of the ideal future is precisely of such a monstrous world. 217 00:25:13.740 --> 00:25:18.900 At the same time, of course, each will have the consolation of knowing that they are all 218 00:25:18.900 --> 00:25:48.880 What will allegedly be left to man under Communism is a new and bizarre form of art, or aesthetics. 219 00:25:48.880 --> 00:25:55.520 Man will be stripped of wealth and possessions, but he will be far richer in another sense, 220 00:25:55.520 --> 00:26:00.120 unalienated and fulfilling himself in all directions. 221 00:26:00.120 --> 00:26:05.440 He will approach his own creations rich in the appreciation of beauty. 222 00:26:05.440 --> 00:26:12.360 He will be, in the words of Marx in Private Property and Communism, a rich man profoundly 223 00:26:12.360 --> 00:26:15.280 endowed with all the senses. 224 00:26:15.280 --> 00:26:22.220 He will realize his natural tendency to arrange all things according to the laws of beauty. 225 00:26:22.220 --> 00:26:29.200 Until communism, man's appreciation of beauty had been sullied by greed and possession. 226 00:26:29.200 --> 00:26:36.140 But for Marx, having, possessing, implies the simple alienation of all the physical 227 00:26:36.140 --> 00:26:39.520 and spiritual human senses. 228 00:26:39.520 --> 00:26:45.760 Professor Tucker, who has done much to explicate Marx's vision of communism, concludes that 229 00:26:45.760 --> 00:26:52.240 economic activity will turn into artistic activity, and the planet itself will become 230 00:26:52.240 --> 00:26:54.680 the new man's work of art. 231 00:26:54.680 --> 00:26:59.240 The alienated world will give way to the aesthetic world. 232 00:26:59.240 --> 00:27:06.160 But if ultimate communism abandons and eliminates all sense of having, of ownership, in order 233 00:27:06.160 --> 00:27:22.160 If we are to liberate man for purely aesthetic creation and contemplation, then communism itself must be transcended, since even communism implies some form of having or possessing. 234 00:27:22.160 --> 00:27:35.160 As Tucker points out, consequently the final condition of man will be beyond all ownership, beyond the property principle, and in this sense, beyond communism. 235 00:27:35.160 --> 00:27:45.160 Marx ends his fullest discussion of Communism in Private Property and Communism with these faintly ominous sentences. 236 00:27:45.160 --> 00:28:00.160 Communism is the position as the negation of the negation and hence the actual phase necessary for the next stage of historical development in the process of human emancipation and recovery. 237 00:28:00.160 --> 00:28:06.800 Communism is the necessary pattern and the dynamic principle of the immediate future, 238 00:28:06.800 --> 00:28:15.240 but Communism as such is not the goal of human development, the structure of human society. 239 00:28:15.240 --> 00:28:20.600 So what is the final stage, even beyond Communism? 240 00:28:20.600 --> 00:28:27.720 The final, final Aufhebung, the great transcendence, the ultimate negation? 241 00:28:27.720 --> 00:28:34.040 It is a world beyond all ownership and all possession, a world fully liberated for the 242 00:28:34.040 --> 00:28:41.240 spontaneous flowering of all faculties in all directions, and for the unsullied, totally 243 00:28:41.240 --> 00:28:44.780 sensate appreciation of pure beauty. 244 00:28:44.780 --> 00:28:51.300 We may be pardoned for concluding that, wittingly or unwittingly, and with Marx it is difficult 245 00:28:51.300 --> 00:28:53.080 to know which. 246 00:28:53.080 --> 00:28:59.040 The final final stage is the stage of the graveyard for the human race. 247 00:28:59.040 --> 00:29:06.880 After the turmoil and upheaval of all the Aufhebungs will come the peace of a universal cemetery. 248 00:29:06.880 --> 00:29:13.800 For no possession, no use of resources means rapid and universal starvation. 249 00:29:13.800 --> 00:29:20.100 Deprived of all labor, for productive goals, and of all possessions, mankind will have 250 00:29:20.100 --> 00:29:25.540 have precious little time left for the appreciation of pure beauty. 251 00:29:25.540 --> 00:29:31.700 Whether or not they saw the full horror of Marx's ultimate positive humanism, there is 252 00:29:31.700 --> 00:29:37.460 no doubt that the Soviets were always uneasy at the thought of this abyss. 253 00:29:37.460 --> 00:29:44.260 The Soviet editor of a Russian translation of Marx's manuscripts published in 1956 on 254 00:29:44.260 --> 00:29:52.460 and Analyzing the Above Passage asserts that by communism as such, Marx meant raw communism 255 00:29:52.460 --> 00:29:55.060 of the initial stage. 256 00:29:55.060 --> 00:30:01.980 But this is almost a willful misinterpretation of Marx's final words on beyond the ultimate 257 00:30:01.980 --> 00:30:03.320 stage. 258 00:30:03.320 --> 00:30:09.060 The Soviets had trouble enough with the withering away of the state in the highest stage of 259 00:30:09.060 --> 00:30:16.440 Communism, which to them meant at most a shift from official state ownership of all resources 260 00:30:16.440 --> 00:30:24.280 to ownership by social or administrative organizations, officially proclaimed as non-states. 261 00:30:24.280 --> 00:30:30.180 The reason that Marx suppressed the publication of this essay in his lifetime seems similar 262 00:30:30.180 --> 00:30:35.760 to the Soviets burying of their allegedly final, final goal. 263 00:30:35.760 --> 00:30:42.280 To say that even the Marxist public is not yet ready for it is a rich understatement. 264 00:30:42.280 --> 00:30:45.640 One trusts that they never will be. 265 00:30:45.640 --> 00:30:52.340 In socialist practice, of course, while communist countries never got to the highest stage, 266 00:30:52.340 --> 00:30:58.080 there seemed to be little evidence of either a notable appreciation of beauty or of great 267 00:30:58.080 --> 00:31:05.440 spontaneous or artistic creativity, perhaps even the relative physical deprivation rather 268 00:31:05.440 --> 00:31:27.360 But of course all these problems are neatly buried by the pervasive but implicit premise 269 00:31:27.360 --> 00:31:34.960 underlying all of Marx's discussions of communism, the unsupported, unquestioned assumption that 270 00:31:34.960 --> 00:31:42.680 But throughout all these changes, production remains happily abundant, if not superabundant. 271 00:31:42.680 --> 00:31:49.040 Hence the economic problem is simply and quietly assumed away. 272 00:31:49.040 --> 00:31:54.560 Some might protest that in our discussion of communism we have not mentioned the feature 273 00:31:54.560 --> 00:32:00.680 that is generally considered the hallmark of that system, the slogan, from each according 274 00:32:00.680 --> 00:32:05.320 According to his ability, to each according to his needs. 275 00:32:05.320 --> 00:32:11.300 This phrase seems to contradict our view that the essence of the communist society is a 276 00:32:11.300 --> 00:32:15.420 secularized religion rather than economics. 277 00:32:15.420 --> 00:32:22.440 The locus classicus, however, of Marx's proclamation of this well-known slogan of French socialism 278 00:32:22.440 --> 00:32:29.900 was in the course of his vitriolic Critique of the Gotha program in 1875, in which Marx 279 00:32:29.900 --> 00:32:36.080 Marx denounced the LaSallian Deviationists who were forming the new German Social Democratic 280 00:32:36.080 --> 00:32:42.240 Party, and it is clear from the context of his discussion that this slogan is of minor 281 00:32:42.240 --> 00:32:45.960 and peripheral importance to Marx. 282 00:32:45.960 --> 00:32:52.840 In point three of his critique, Marx is denouncing the clause of the program calling for communization 283 00:32:52.840 --> 00:32:58.180 of property and equitable distribution of the proceeds of labor. 284 00:32:58.180 --> 00:33:04.420 In the course of his discussion, Marx states that inequality of labor income is inevitable 285 00:33:04.420 --> 00:33:10.820 in the first stage of communist society when it has just emerged after prolonged birth 286 00:33:10.820 --> 00:33:14.540 pangs from capitalist society. 287 00:33:14.540 --> 00:33:20.980 Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and the cultural development 288 00:33:20.980 --> 00:33:23.680 thereby determined. 289 00:33:23.680 --> 00:33:30.360 On the other hand, Marx goes on, in a higher phase of Communist society, after the enslaving 290 00:33:30.360 --> 00:33:37.040 subordination of individuals under division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis 291 00:33:37.040 --> 00:33:44.600 between mental and physical labor has vanished, after the productive forces have also increased 292 00:33:44.600 --> 00:33:50.600 with the all-round development of the individual and all the springs of cooperative wealth 293 00:33:50.600 --> 00:34:19.600 It should be evident from this passage and its context that Marx's final sentence, far from being the point and the culmination of his discussion, 294 00:34:19.600 --> 00:34:23.440 was stated briefly only to be dismissed. 295 00:34:23.440 --> 00:34:29.120 What Marx is saying is that the key to the Communist world is not any such principle 296 00:34:29.120 --> 00:34:36.680 of the distribution of goods, but the eradication of the division of labor, the all-round development 297 00:34:36.680 --> 00:34:42.520 of individual faculties, and the resulting flow of superabundance. 298 00:34:42.520 --> 00:34:47.400 In such a world, the famous slogan becomes of only trivial importance. 299 00:34:47.400 --> 00:34:54.440 Indeed, Marx proceeds immediately after this passage to denounce talk among socialists 300 00:34:54.440 --> 00:35:01.940 of equal right and equitable distribution as ideological nonsense about right and other 301 00:35:01.940 --> 00:35:06.920 trash common among the Democrats and French socialists. 302 00:35:06.920 --> 00:35:14.680 He then quickly adds that it was in general incorrect to make a fuss about so-called distribution 303 00:35:14.680 --> 00:35:18.640 and put the principal stress on it. 304 00:35:18.640 --> 00:35:26.040 The absolute misery and horror of the ultimate stage and a fortiori of the beyond ultimate 305 00:35:26.040 --> 00:35:30.980 stage of communism should now be all too apparent. 306 00:35:30.980 --> 00:35:36.880 The eradication of the division of labor would quickly bring starvation and economic misery 307 00:35:36.880 --> 00:35:38.440 to all. 308 00:35:38.440 --> 00:35:44.640 The abolition of all structures of human interrelation would bring enormous social and spiritual 309 00:35:44.640 --> 00:36:00.640 and even the alleged artistic, intellectual and creative development of all man's faculties in all directions would be totally crippled by the ban on all specialization. 310 00:36:00.640 --> 00:36:08.640 How can true intellectual development or creation come without concentrated effort? 311 00:36:08.640 --> 00:36:20.080 In short, the terrible economic suffering of mankind under communism would be fully matched by its intellectual and spiritual deprivation. 312 00:36:20.080 --> 00:36:35.280 Considering the nature and consequences of communism, to call this horrific dystopia a noble and humanist ideal can at best be considered a grisly joke in questionable taste. 313 00:36:35.280 --> 00:36:49.280 The prevalent notion, for example, that Marxian Communism is a glorious ideal for man, perverted by the later Engels or by Lenin or Stalin, can now be put into proper perspective. 314 00:36:49.280 --> 00:37:00.280 None of the horrors committed by Lenin, Stalin or other Marxist-Leninist regimes can match the monstrousness of Marx's Communist ideal. 315 00:37:00.280 --> 00:37:06.040 Perhaps the closest approximation was the short-lived communist regime of Paul Pott 316 00:37:06.040 --> 00:37:12.280 in Cambodia, which, in attempting to abolish the division of labor, managed to enforce 317 00:37:12.280 --> 00:37:19.360 the outlawry of money, so that for their tiny rations the populace was totally dependent 318 00:37:19.360 --> 00:37:23.480 upon the niggardly largesse of the communist cadre. 319 00:37:23.480 --> 00:37:40.280 Moreover, they attempted to eliminate the contradictions between town and country by following the Engels' goal of destroying large cities and by coercively depopulating the capital, Phnom Penh, overnight. 320 00:37:40.280 --> 00:37:51.480 In a few short years, the Pol Pot group managed to exterminate one-third of the Cambodian population, perhaps a record in genocide. 321 00:37:51.480 --> 00:38:04.180 Since under ideal communism everyone could and would have to do everything, it is clear that even before universal starvation set in, very little could get done. 322 00:38:04.180 --> 00:38:18.680 To Marx himself, all differences among individuals were contradictions to be eliminated under communism, so that presumably the mass of individuals would have to be uniform and interchangeable. 323 00:38:18.680 --> 00:38:26.040 Whereas Marx apparently postulated normal intellectual capabilities even under communism, 324 00:38:26.040 --> 00:38:34.040 to later Marxists it seems that difficulties could be alleviated by the emergence of superhuman beings. 325 00:38:34.040 --> 00:38:44.040 To Karl Kautsky, 1854-1938, the German Marxist who assumed the mantle of the top leadership of Marxism 326 00:38:44.040 --> 00:38:53.000 Upon the Death of Engels in 1895, Under communism, a new type of man will arise, a superman, 327 00:38:53.000 --> 00:38:54.960 an exalted man. 328 00:38:54.960 --> 00:38:58.640 Leon Trotsky waxed even more lyrical. 329 00:38:58.640 --> 00:39:05.760 Man will become incomparably stronger, wiser, finer, his body more harmonious, his movements 330 00:39:05.760 --> 00:39:09.040 more rhythmical, his voice more musical. 331 00:39:09.040 --> 00:39:15.060 The human average will rise to the level of an Aristotle, a Goethe, a Marx. 332 00:39:15.060 --> 00:39:18.860 Above these other heights, new peaks will rise. 333 00:39:18.860 --> 00:39:24.900 If the beyond ultimate stage of communism ever lasts long enough to breed a new super 334 00:39:24.900 --> 00:39:31.300 race, we may safely leave it to the communist theoreticians of that future day to resolve 335 00:39:31.300 --> 00:39:37.860 the problem of whether the contradiction of permitting a super Aristotle to tower over 336 00:39:37.860 --> 00:39:42.180 or an Aristotle may be allowed to exist. 337 00:39:42.180 --> 00:39:47.460 Neither should libertarians be taken in by the Marxian goal of the withering away of 338 00:39:47.460 --> 00:39:53.380 the state under communism, or in the use of the phrase borrowed from the cherished aim 339 00:39:53.380 --> 00:40:00.300 of the French free market libertarians Charles Comte and Charles de Noyer, a world where 340 00:40:00.300 --> 00:40:05.820 the government of persons is replaced by the administration of things. 341 00:40:05.820 --> 00:40:11.820 There are two major flaws in this formulation from the laissez-faire libertarian viewpoint. 342 00:40:11.820 --> 00:40:21.380 First, of course, as the Russian anarcho-communist Mikhail Bakunin, 1814 to 1876, insistently 343 00:40:21.380 --> 00:40:28.780 pointed out, it is absurd to try to reach statelessness via the absolute maximization 344 00:40:28.780 --> 00:40:36.380 of State Power in a Totalitarian Dictatorship of the Proletariat, or more realistically, 345 00:40:36.380 --> 00:40:40.120 a select vanguard of the said proletariat. 346 00:40:40.120 --> 00:40:46.340 The result can only be maximum statism, and hence maximum slavery. 347 00:40:46.340 --> 00:40:53.120 As perhaps the first of the new class theorists, and anticipating the iron law of oligarchy 348 00:40:53.120 --> 00:41:00.740 of Michel and Mosca, Bakunin prophetically warned that a minority ruling class will once 349 00:41:00.740 --> 00:41:05.820 again after the Marxian revolution rule the majority. 350 00:41:05.820 --> 00:41:10.360 But the Marxists say this minority will consist of the workers. 351 00:41:10.360 --> 00:41:16.880 Yes, no doubt, of former workers who as soon as they become governors or representatives 352 00:41:16.880 --> 00:41:22.840 of the people cease to be workers and start looking down on the working masses from the 353 00:41:22.840 --> 00:41:28.520 of the Heights of State Authority, so that they represent not the people but themselves 354 00:41:28.520 --> 00:41:32.240 and their own claim to rule over others. 355 00:41:32.240 --> 00:41:35.940 Anyone who can doubt this knows nothing of human nature. 356 00:41:35.940 --> 00:41:42.380 The terms scientific socialist and scientific socialism, which we meet incessantly in the 357 00:41:42.380 --> 00:41:49.040 works and speeches of the Marxists, are sufficient to prove that the so-called people-state will 358 00:41:49.040 --> 00:41:56.600 will be nothing but a despotism over the masses, exercised by a new and quite small aristocracy 359 00:41:56.600 --> 00:41:59.200 of real or bogus scientists. 360 00:41:59.200 --> 00:42:06.880 They, the Marxists, claim that only dictatorship, their own, of course, can bring the people 361 00:42:06.880 --> 00:42:08.180 freedom. 362 00:42:08.180 --> 00:42:14.840 We reply that a dictatorship can have no other aim than to perpetuate itself, and that it 363 00:42:14.840 --> 00:42:21.440 It can engender and foster nothing but slavery in the people subjected to it. 364 00:42:21.440 --> 00:42:25.920 Freedom can be created only by freedom. 365 00:42:25.920 --> 00:42:33.040 Indeed, only a believer in the preposterous necromancy of the dialectic could believe 366 00:42:33.040 --> 00:42:34.280 otherwise. 367 00:42:34.280 --> 00:42:41.160 That is, could believe that a totalitarian state can inevitably and virtually instantly 368 00:42:41.160 --> 00:42:47.240 be transformed into its opposite, and that therefore the way to get rid of the state 369 00:42:47.240 --> 00:42:52.280 is to work as hard as possible to maximize its power. 370 00:42:52.280 --> 00:42:58.000 But the problem of the dialectic is not the only, indeed not even the main problem with 371 00:42:58.000 --> 00:43:04.840 Marxian communism, for Marxism shares with the anarchists a grave problem of the higher 372 00:43:04.840 --> 00:43:11.280 and the Higher Stage of Pure Communism, assuming for a moment that it could ever be reached. 373 00:43:11.280 --> 00:43:18.480 The crucial point is that both for anarchists and for Marxists, ideal communism is a world 374 00:43:18.480 --> 00:43:25.200 without private property, and that all property and resources will be owned and controlled 375 00:43:25.200 --> 00:43:26.760 in common. 376 00:43:26.760 --> 00:43:33.440 Indeed, the anarcho-communists' major complaint against the state is that it is allegedly 377 00:43:33.440 --> 00:43:48.080 The Truth, of course, is precisely the opposite. 378 00:43:48.080 --> 00:43:54.880 The state, through history, has been the main despoiler and plunderer of private property. 379 00:43:54.880 --> 00:44:01.400 With private property mysteriously abolished, then, the elimination of the state under communism 380 00:44:01.400 --> 00:44:07.920 of either the Marxian or anarchist variety would necessarily be a mere camouflage for 381 00:44:07.920 --> 00:44:15.400 a new state that would emerge to control and make decisions for community-owned resources, 382 00:44:15.400 --> 00:44:22.120 except that the state would not be called such but rather renamed something like a People's 383 00:44:22.120 --> 00:44:29.020 Statistical Bureau, as has already been done in Gaddafi's Libya, and armed with precisely 384 00:44:29.020 --> 00:44:31.160 the same powers. 385 00:44:31.160 --> 00:44:38.280 It will be a small consolation to future victims incarcerated or shot for committing capitalist 386 00:44:38.280 --> 00:44:44.680 acts between consenting adults, to cite a phrase made popular by Robert Nozick, that 387 00:44:44.680 --> 00:44:51.340 their oppressors will no longer be the state, but only a people's statistical bureau. 388 00:44:51.340 --> 00:44:55.120 The state under any other name will smell as acrid. 389 00:44:55.120 --> 00:45:01.440 Furthermore, it will be inevitable under the iron law of oligarchy that world communal 390 00:45:01.440 --> 00:45:08.400 decisions will have to be undertaken by a specialized elite, so that the ruling class 391 00:45:08.400 --> 00:45:15.900 will inevitably reappear under Bakuninite as well as any other form of communism. 392 00:45:15.900 --> 00:45:23.140 And as we have indicated in the Beyond Communism stage, the stage of universal no ownership 393 00:45:23.140 --> 00:45:31.140 and therefore of no action and no use of resources, death for the entire human race would swiftly 394 00:45:31.140 --> 00:45:32.940 ensue. 395 00:45:32.940 --> 00:45:38.700 Marx and his followers have never demonstrated any awareness of the vital importance of the 396 00:45:38.700 --> 00:45:42.980 problem of allocation of scarce resources. 397 00:45:42.980 --> 00:45:49.620 Their vision of communism is that all such economic problems are trivial, requiring neither 398 00:45:49.620 --> 00:46:19.620 The classic absurdity on this matter was laid down by Lenin, who accurately expressed Marx's view in declaring that the functions of entrepreneurship, and of allocation of resources, have been simplified by capitalism to the utmost, to mere matters of capital, and to mere matters of capital, and to mere matters of capital, and to mere matters of capital, and to mere matters of capital, and to mere matters of capital. 399 00:46:19.620 --> 00:46:40.880 Ludwig von Mises wryly and justly comments that Marxists and other socialists have had 400 00:46:40.880 --> 00:46:47.060 no greater perception of the essentials of economic life than the errand boy, whose only 401 00:46:47.060 --> 00:46:52.740 The only idea of the work of the entrepreneur is that he covers pieces of paper with letters 402 00:46:52.740 --> 00:46:54.460 and figures. 403 00:46:54.460 --> 00:47:00.100 It is perhaps all too fitting that we now find that the idea of communism as a simple 404 00:47:00.100 --> 00:47:06.620 problem of bookkeeping and registration was perhaps originated by the French apocalyptic 405 00:47:06.620 --> 00:47:15.540 Fantastic Fantast and Inspirer of Marx, Theodore Des Amis 406 00:47:15.540 --> 00:47:16.540 4. 407 00:47:16.540 --> 00:47:19.740 Arriving at Communism 408 00:47:19.740 --> 00:47:22.360 Karl Marx had a crucial problem. 409 00:47:22.360 --> 00:47:28.860 He was not interested, as were the scorned utopian socialists, in merely exhorting everyone 410 00:47:28.860 --> 00:47:33.260 to adopt the communist path to a perfect society. 411 00:47:33.260 --> 00:47:39.380 He did not propose to leave the attainment of Communism to the imperfect free wills of 412 00:47:39.380 --> 00:47:40.580 mankind. 413 00:47:40.580 --> 00:47:47.960 He demanded a certain inevitable path, a law of history that would demonstrate the absolute 414 00:47:47.960 --> 00:47:54.500 inevitability of history's reaching its final glory in a Communist society. 415 00:47:54.500 --> 00:47:59.900 But here he was at a disadvantage relative to the various Christian wings of Messianic 416 00:47:59.900 --> 00:48:01.580 Communism. 417 00:48:01.580 --> 00:48:08.460 For unlike them, there was here no inevitable messiah to arrive and usher in a kingdom of 418 00:48:08.460 --> 00:48:10.320 God on earth. 419 00:48:10.320 --> 00:48:16.460 As in the case of the Post Mills, however, it was up to mankind, rather than the messiah, 420 00:48:16.460 --> 00:48:18.820 to establish the kingdom. 421 00:48:18.820 --> 00:48:24.780 Even without a messiah, a vigilant and growing vanguard could establish the kingdom, and 422 00:48:24.780 --> 00:48:31.500 The Vanguard could even help in various pre-mill versions of millennialism, so that leadership 423 00:48:31.500 --> 00:48:37.740 by a dedicated Vanguard was very much in the messianic tradition. 424 00:48:37.740 --> 00:48:43.040 As Professor Tucker points out, Marx was not lacking a moral theory. 425 00:48:43.040 --> 00:48:47.660 He was definitely a moralist, but a highly curious one. 426 00:48:47.660 --> 00:48:53.980 In his mythic vision, the good, the moral, consists of participating in the inevitable 427 00:48:53.980 --> 00:49:08.660 The answer to the question as to what should be done is given in the mythic vision itself, 428 00:49:08.660 --> 00:49:13.540 and can be summed up in a single word, participate. 429 00:49:13.540 --> 00:49:20.780 So Marx says that it is not a matter of bringing some utopian system or other into being, that 430 00:49:20.780 --> 00:49:28.900 is of defining a social goal and purposefully endeavoring to realize it, but simply of consciously 431 00:49:28.900 --> 00:49:35.840 participating in the historical revolutionary process of society, which is taking place 432 00:49:35.840 --> 00:49:38.860 before our very eyes. 433 00:49:38.860 --> 00:49:45.900 Thus to be moral means to be progressive, to be in tune with the inevitable future workings 434 00:49:45.900 --> 00:49:52.220 as of the laws of history, whereas the harshest condemnation is reserved for those who are 435 00:49:52.220 --> 00:49:59.700 reactionary, who dare to obstruct, even with partial success, such alleged predestined 436 00:49:59.700 --> 00:50:01.780 turns of events. 437 00:50:01.780 --> 00:50:07.380 Thus Marxists are particularly vehement in denouncing revolutionary moments in which 438 00:50:07.380 --> 00:50:15.640 the existing rule of progressives is replaced by reactionaries, and the clock is, miraculously, 439 00:50:15.640 --> 00:50:22.680 and the metaphor of historicist inevitability turned back, for example, the Franco Revolution 440 00:50:22.680 --> 00:50:29.580 against the Spanish Republic and Pinochet's overthrow of Allende in Chile. 441 00:50:29.580 --> 00:50:36.420 But if a certain change is truly inevitable, why is it important for human agency to lend 442 00:50:36.420 --> 00:50:41.300 a hand, indeed to struggle mightily on its behalf? 443 00:50:41.300 --> 00:50:45.340 Here we turn to the critical matter of timing. 444 00:50:45.340 --> 00:50:52.920 While a change may be inevitable, the intervention of man can and will speed up this most desired 445 00:50:52.920 --> 00:50:54.860 of happenings. 446 00:50:54.860 --> 00:51:02.700 Man can function, in one of Marx's favorite obstetrical metaphors, as a midwife of history. 447 00:51:02.700 --> 00:51:07.620 Man's intervention could give the inevitable a helpful push. 448 00:51:07.620 --> 00:51:14.460 Yet Marx's obstetrical analogies are only a feeble attempt to evade the self-contradiction 449 00:51:14.460 --> 00:51:20.780 between the idea of inevitability and action to achieve the inevitable. 450 00:51:20.780 --> 00:51:26.900 For according to Marx, the timing as well as the nature of events is determined by the 451 00:51:26.900 --> 00:51:29.700 material dialectic of history. 452 00:51:29.700 --> 00:51:35.460 Socialism is brought about, wrote Marx in Capital, by the operation of the imminent 453 00:51:35.460 --> 00:51:39.580 laws of capitalistic production itself. 454 00:51:39.580 --> 00:51:47.260 As von Mises points out, to Marx, ideas, political parties and revolutionary actions are merely 455 00:51:47.260 --> 00:51:49.140 superstructural. 456 00:51:49.140 --> 00:51:54.240 They can neither delay nor accelerate the march of history. 457 00:51:54.240 --> 00:51:59.900 Socialism will come when the material conditions for its appearance will have matured in the 458 00:51:59.900 --> 00:52:06.900 womb, obstetrics again, of capitalist society, neither sooner or later. 459 00:52:06.900 --> 00:52:12.660 If Marx had been consistent, he would not have embarked upon any political activity. 460 00:52:12.660 --> 00:52:20.660 He would have waited quietly for the day on which the knell of private capitalist property sounds. 461 00:52:20.660 --> 00:52:28.800 Marx might not have been logical or consistent, but his attitude was squarely in the millennialist tradition. 462 00:52:28.800 --> 00:52:34.860 As Professor Tuvesson points out, several characteristics of historical communist movements 463 00:52:34.860 --> 00:52:37.940 Let's recall millenarian agitations. 464 00:52:37.940 --> 00:52:43.020 There is, for one, the well-known fanaticism of millenarian believers. 465 00:52:43.020 --> 00:52:49.860 The firm conviction that a sequence of events leading to universal redemption is ordained 466 00:52:49.860 --> 00:52:55.720 or determined would seem to lead to passivity on the part of an individual. 467 00:52:55.720 --> 00:53:00.700 But characteristically, there is a vitally important qualification. 468 00:53:00.700 --> 00:53:06.860 Although the series of events is prophesied, their timing may be retarded by the failure 469 00:53:06.860 --> 00:53:08.660 of mankind. 470 00:53:08.660 --> 00:53:14.760 To delay the coming of redemption, then, is a great sin, against one's fellow beings, 471 00:53:14.760 --> 00:53:19.420 against posterity, against the power that has ordained events. 472 00:53:19.420 --> 00:53:25.580 But wholehearted, zealous participation in the historically determined duties, doing 473 00:53:25.580 --> 00:53:32.600 what the old millenarians would call, doing God's will, gives special eclat. 474 00:53:32.600 --> 00:53:38.180 In most millenarian groups, there is something corresponding to the Communist Party. 475 00:53:38.180 --> 00:53:45.600 In Revelation itself, there are the 144,000, the first fruits unto God and to the Lamb, 476 00:53:45.600 --> 00:53:51.180 who are without guile, for they are without fault before the throne of God. 477 00:53:51.180 --> 00:53:55.680 Revelation 14, verses 4 through 5. 478 00:53:55.680 --> 00:54:02.420 Thus the whole proletariat, like the whole body of the saved, is without damning fault, 479 00:54:02.420 --> 00:54:08.100 but the specially distinguished group are chosen from the chosen. 480 00:54:08.100 --> 00:54:11.100 But there was still a remaining problem. 481 00:54:11.100 --> 00:54:15.680 Whence comes the inevitability in the Marxian schema? 482 00:54:15.680 --> 00:54:22.140 The proof that his cherished communist ideal would inevitably, scientifically arrive would 483 00:54:22.140 --> 00:54:25.060 occupy Marx for the rest of his life. 484 00:54:25.060 --> 00:54:30.460 Certainly, he found the outlines of such proof in the mysterious workings of the Hegelian 485 00:54:30.460 --> 00:54:35.020 dialectic, which he bent to his use. 486 00:54:35.020 --> 00:54:38.020 5. 487 00:54:38.020 --> 00:54:42.620 Marx's Character and His Path to Communism 488 00:54:42.620 --> 00:54:49.180 Carl Marx, as the world knows, was born in Trier, a venerable city in Rhineland, Prussia, 489 00:54:49.180 --> 00:54:55.060 in 1818, son of a distinguished jurist and grandson of a rabbi. 490 00:54:55.060 --> 00:54:59.620 Indeed, both of Marx's parents were descended from rabbis. 491 00:54:59.620 --> 00:55:05.900 Marx's father, Heinrich, was a liberal rationalist who felt no great qualms about his forced 492 00:55:05.900 --> 00:55:10.220 conversion to official Lutheranism in 1816. 493 00:55:10.220 --> 00:55:17.000 What is little known is that in his early years, the baptized Carl was a dedicated Christian. 494 00:55:17.000 --> 00:55:24.520 In his graduation essays from the Trier Gymnasium in 1835, the very young Marx prefigured his 495 00:55:24.520 --> 00:55:26.300 later development. 496 00:55:26.300 --> 00:55:32.620 His essay on an assigned topic, on the union of the faithful with Christ, was orthodox 497 00:55:32.620 --> 00:55:34.780 evangelical Christian. 498 00:55:34.780 --> 00:55:40.620 But it also contained hints of the fundamental alienation theme that he would later find 499 00:55:40.620 --> 00:55:42.140 in Hegel. 500 00:55:42.140 --> 00:55:47.620 Marx's discussion of the necessity for union with Christ stressed that this union would 501 00:55:47.620 --> 00:55:53.160 put an end to the tragedy of God's alleged rejection of man. 502 00:55:53.160 --> 00:55:59.540 In a companion essay, Reflections of a Young Man on the Choice of a Profession, Marx expressed 503 00:55:59.540 --> 00:56:06.620 a worry about his own demon of ambition, of the great temptation he felt to invade against 504 00:56:06.620 --> 00:56:10.400 the deity and curse mankind. 505 00:56:10.400 --> 00:56:15.600 Going first to the University of Bonn, and then off to the prestigious new University 506 00:56:15.600 --> 00:56:23.980 of Berlin to study law, Marx soon converted to militant atheism, shifted his major to philosophy, 507 00:56:23.980 --> 00:56:30.500 and joined a Doctor Club of young or left Hegelians, of which he soon became a leader 508 00:56:30.500 --> 00:56:33.580 and general secretary. 509 00:56:33.580 --> 00:56:39.100 The shift to atheism quickly gave Marx's Demon of Ambition full reign. 510 00:56:39.100 --> 00:56:46.340 Particularly revelatory of Marx's adult as well as youthful character are volumes of poems, 511 00:56:46.340 --> 00:56:51.020 most of them lost until a few were recovered in recent years. 512 00:56:51.020 --> 00:56:56.660 Historians, when they discuss these poems, tend to dismiss them as inchoate romantic 513 00:56:56.660 --> 00:57:02.380 yearnings, but they are too congruent with the adult Marx's social and revolutionary 514 00:57:02.380 --> 00:57:06.300 doctrines to be casually dismissed. 515 00:57:06.300 --> 00:57:13.820 Surely here seems to be a case where a unified, early-plus-late Marx is vividly revealed, 516 00:57:13.820 --> 00:57:28.320 Thus, in his poem, Feelings, dedicated to his childhood sweetheart and later wife, Jenny von Westfallen, Marx expressed both his megalomania and his enormous thirst for destruction, 517 00:57:28.320 --> 00:57:38.320 Heaven, I would comprehend, I would draw the world to me. Living, hating, I intend that my stars shine brilliantly. 518 00:57:38.320 --> 00:57:45.800 And, Worlds I would destroy forever, since I can create no world, since my call they 519 00:57:45.800 --> 00:57:48.160 notice never. 520 00:57:48.160 --> 00:57:53.920 Here is a classical expression of Satan's supposed reason for hating and rebelling against 521 00:57:53.920 --> 00:57:55.520 God. 522 00:57:55.520 --> 00:58:01.920 In another poem, Marx writes of his triumph after he shall have destroyed God's created 523 00:58:01.920 --> 00:58:02.920 world. 524 00:58:02.920 --> 00:58:09.340 Then I will be able to walk triumphantly like a god through the ruins of their kingdom. 525 00:58:09.340 --> 00:58:12.460 Every word of mine is fire and action. 526 00:58:12.460 --> 00:58:16.340 My breast is equal to that of the Creator. 527 00:58:16.340 --> 00:58:23.260 And in his poem Invocation of One in Despair, Marx writes, I shall build my throne high 528 00:58:23.260 --> 00:58:30.900 overhead, cold, tremendous shall its summit be, for its bulwark, superstitious dread, 529 00:58:30.900 --> 00:58:34.740 for its martial, blackest agony. 530 00:58:34.740 --> 00:58:42.260 The Satan theme is most explicitly set forth in Marx's The Fiddler, dedicated to his father. 531 00:58:42.260 --> 00:58:43.500 See this sword? 532 00:58:43.500 --> 00:58:47.020 The Prince of Darkness sold it to me. 533 00:58:47.020 --> 00:58:50.180 And with Satan I have struck my deal. 534 00:58:50.180 --> 00:58:53.180 He chalks the signs, beats time for me. 535 00:58:53.180 --> 00:58:57.580 I play the Death March, fast and free. 536 00:58:57.580 --> 00:59:04.500 Particularly instructive is Marx's lengthy, unfinished poetic drama of this youthful period, 537 00:59:04.500 --> 00:59:07.260 Ulanum, A Tragedy. 538 00:59:07.260 --> 00:59:13.680 In the course of this drama, his hero, Ulanum, delivers a remarkable soliloquy, pouring out 539 00:59:13.680 --> 00:59:20.580 sustained invective, a hatred of the world and of mankind, a hatred of creation, and 540 00:59:20.580 --> 00:59:23.980 a threat and vision of total world destruction. 541 00:59:23.980 --> 00:59:27.980 Thus, Ulanum pours out his vials of wrath. 542 00:59:27.980 --> 00:59:32.460 I shall howl gigantic curses on mankind. 543 00:59:32.460 --> 00:59:33.460 Ha! 544 00:59:33.460 --> 00:59:34.460 Eternity! 545 00:59:34.460 --> 00:59:36.460 She is an eternal grief! 546 00:59:36.460 --> 00:59:43.420 Ourselves being clockwork, blindly mechanical, made to be the foul calendars of time and 547 00:59:43.420 --> 00:59:48.980 space, having no purpose save to happen, to be ruined, so that there shall be something 548 00:59:48.980 --> 00:59:50.820 to ruin. 549 00:59:50.820 --> 00:59:56.340 If there is a something which devours, I'll leap within it, though I bring the world to 550 00:59:56.340 --> 00:59:57.620 ruins. 551 00:59:57.620 --> 01:00:04.580 The world which bulks between me and the abyss, I will smash to pieces with my enduring curses. 552 01:00:04.580 --> 01:00:12.060 I'll throw my arms around its harsh reality, embracing me, the world will dumbly pass away, 553 01:00:12.060 --> 01:00:17.660 and then sink down to utter nothingness, perished, with no existence. 554 01:00:17.660 --> 01:00:37.660 The Leaden World holds us fast, and we are chained, shattered, empty, frightened, eternally chained to this marble block of being, and we, we are the apes of a cold god. 555 01:00:37.660 --> 01:00:43.660 All this reveals a spirit that often seems to animate militant atheism. 556 01:00:43.660 --> 01:00:51.220 In contrast to the non-militant variety, which expresses a simple disbelief in God's existence, 557 01:00:51.220 --> 01:00:57.680 militant atheism seems to believe implicitly in God's existence, but to hate him and to 558 01:00:57.680 --> 01:01:00.620 wage war for his destruction. 559 01:01:00.620 --> 01:01:06.220 Such a spirit was all too clearly revealed in the retort of the militant atheist Bakunin 560 01:01:06.220 --> 01:01:11.100 to the famous pro-theist remark of the deist Voltaire. 561 01:01:11.100 --> 01:01:15.220 If God did not exist, it would be necessary to create him. 562 01:01:15.220 --> 01:01:22.300 To which the demented Bakunin retorted, if God did exist, it would be necessary to destroy him. 563 01:01:22.300 --> 01:01:30.700 It was this hatred of God as a creator greater than himself that apparently inspired Karl Marx. 564 01:01:30.700 --> 01:01:35.920 Also prefiguring the man was a trait that Marx developed early in his youth and never 565 01:01:35.920 --> 01:01:41.860 were relinquished, a shameless sponging on friends and relatives. 566 01:01:41.860 --> 01:01:49.100 Already in early 1837, Heinrich Marx, castigating his son Carl's wanton spending of the money 567 01:01:49.100 --> 01:01:56.480 of others, wrote to him that, on one point you have wisely found fit to observe an aristocratic 568 01:01:56.480 --> 01:02:01.040 silence, I am referring to the paltry matter of money. 569 01:02:01.040 --> 01:02:17.840 Indeed, Marx took money from any source available, his father, mother, and throughout his adult life, his long-suffering friend and abject disciple, Friedrich Engels, all of whom fueled Marx's capacity for spending money like water. 570 01:02:17.840 --> 01:02:25.640 An insatiable spender of other people's money, Marx continually complained about a shortage of financial means. 571 01:02:25.640 --> 01:02:32.840 While sponging on Engels, Marx perpetually complained to his friend that his largesse was never enough. 572 01:02:32.840 --> 01:02:42.840 Thus, in 1868, Marx insisted that he could not make due on an annual income of less than 400 to 500 pounds, 573 01:02:42.840 --> 01:02:53.840 a phenomenal sum, considering that the upper tenth of Englishmen in that period were earning an average income of only 72 pounds a year. 574 01:02:53.840 --> 01:03:01.280 Indeed, so profligate was Marx that he quickly ran through an inheritance from a German follower 575 01:03:01.280 --> 01:03:10.920 of 824 pounds in 1864, as well as a gift of 350 pounds from Engels in the same year. 576 01:03:10.920 --> 01:03:18.440 In short, Marx was able to run through the munificent sum of almost 1200 pounds in two 577 01:03:18.440 --> 01:03:28.440 and two years later accept another gift of 210 pounds from Engels to pay off his newly accumulated debts. 578 01:03:28.440 --> 01:03:41.440 Finally, in 1868, Engels sold his share of the family cotton mill and settled upon Marx an annual pension of 350 pounds from then on. 579 01:03:41.440 --> 01:03:46.440 Yet Marx's continual complaints about money did not abate. 580 01:03:46.440 --> 01:03:53.400 As in the case of many other spongers and cadgers throughout history, Carl Marx affected a hatred 581 01:03:53.400 --> 01:04:01.160 and contempt for the very material resource he was so anxious to catch and use so recklessly. 582 01:04:01.160 --> 01:04:07.720 The difference is that Marx created an entire philosophy around his own corrupt attitudes 583 01:04:07.720 --> 01:04:15.560 toward money. Man, he thundered, was in the grip of the fetishism of money. The problem was the 584 01:04:15.560 --> 01:04:23.000 The existence of this evil thing, not the voluntarily adopted attitudes of some people toward it. 585 01:04:23.000 --> 01:04:31.400 Money Marx reviled as the pander between human life and the means of sustenance, the universal horror. 586 01:04:31.400 --> 01:04:38.760 The utopia of communism was a society where this scourge, money, would be abolished. 587 01:04:38.760 --> 01:04:46.040 Carl Marx, the self-proclaimed enemy of the exploitation of man by man, not only exploited 588 01:04:46.040 --> 01:04:51.240 his devoted friend, Friedrich Engels, financially, but also psychologically. 589 01:04:51.240 --> 01:04:58.040 Thus, only three months after Marx's wife Jenny von Vestfallen gave birth to his daughter 590 01:04:58.040 --> 01:05:07.200 Franziska in March 1851, their live-in maid, Helena Lenkin de Moot, whom Marx had inherited 591 01:05:07.200 --> 01:05:13.640 from Jenny's aristocratic family, also gave birth to Marx's illegitimate son, Henry 592 01:05:13.640 --> 01:05:15.120 Frederick. 593 01:05:15.120 --> 01:05:22.240 Desperately anxious to keep up haute bourgeois conventions and to hold his marriage together, 594 01:05:22.240 --> 01:05:28.960 Carl never acknowledged his son, and instead persuaded Engels, a notorious womanizer, to 595 01:05:28.960 --> 01:05:31.760 proclaim the baby as his own. 596 01:05:31.760 --> 01:05:37.160 Both Marx and Engels treated the hapless Freddy extremely badly. 597 01:05:37.160 --> 01:05:43.720 Marx's presumed resentment at being so used providing him a rather better excuse. 598 01:05:43.720 --> 01:05:49.260 Marx boarded Freddie out continually and never allowed him to visit his mother. 599 01:05:49.260 --> 01:05:56.680 As Fritz Radatz, a biographer of Marx, declared, if Henry Frederick de Moot was Karl Marx's 600 01:05:56.680 --> 01:06:03.840 son, the new mankind's preacher lived an almost lifelong lie and scorned, humiliated, 601 01:06:03.840 --> 01:06:06.840 and disowned his only surviving son. 602 01:06:06.840 --> 01:06:11.660 Engels, of course, picked up the tab for Freddie's education. 603 01:06:11.660 --> 01:06:17.320 Freddie was trained, however, to take his place in the working class, far from the lifestyle 604 01:06:17.320 --> 01:06:24.360 of his natural father, the quasi-aristocratic leader of the world's downtrodden revolutionary 605 01:06:24.360 --> 01:06:26.600 proletariat. 606 01:06:26.600 --> 01:06:30.920 Marx's personal taste for the aristocracy was lifelong. 607 01:06:30.920 --> 01:06:36.500 As a young man, he attached himself to his neighbor, Jenny's father, Baron Ludwig von 608 01:06:36.500 --> 01:06:41.200 Westphalen, and dedicated his doctoral thesis to the Baron. 609 01:06:41.200 --> 01:06:48.080 Indeed, the snobbish proletarian communist always insisted that Jenny imprint, ne von 610 01:06:48.080 --> 01:06:50.640 and Vistfalen on her calling card.