WEBVTT NOTE 12. The Marxian System, I: Historical Materialism and the Class Struggle 1 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:08.000 Chapter 12. The Marxian System 1. Historical Materialism and the Class Struggle 2 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:12.000 1. The Marxian Strategy 3 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:26.000 Marx desperately sought a materialistic dialectic of history, a dialectic that would account for all basic historical change and would lead inevitably to communist revolution. 4 00:00:26.000 --> 00:00:33.000 Lacking a Burmian nissus or mystical inner drive to serve as motor of the dialectic, 5 00:00:33.000 --> 00:00:39.000 Marx had to fall back on class conflict embedded in historical materialism. 6 00:00:39.000 --> 00:00:47.000 But it was characteristic of Marx that this crucial area of the Marxian system, along with other important discussions, 7 00:00:47.000 --> 00:00:54.000 was presented not systematically, but in the course of fugitive paragraphs or even passages, 8 00:00:54.000 --> 00:00:59.880 Here and there throughout the writings of Marx and Engels, the system has to be constructed 9 00:00:59.880 --> 00:01:03.320 out of these widely separated passages. 10 00:01:03.320 --> 00:01:09.840 As a result, or perhaps from the inherently grave weakness of the argument, Marx's terminology 11 00:01:09.840 --> 00:01:17.480 is invariably vague and fuzzy, and his allegedly law-like linkages of the dialectic virtually 12 00:01:17.480 --> 00:01:19.080 non-existent. 13 00:01:19.080 --> 00:01:21.900 And they are mere unsupported assertion. 14 00:01:21.900 --> 00:01:28.020 As a result, the Marxian system is not only a tissue of fallacies, but of flimsy fallacies 15 00:01:28.020 --> 00:01:30.720 and linkages as well. 16 00:01:30.720 --> 00:01:36.320 No economic or social theory is obliged to come up with correct predictions in the sense 17 00:01:36.320 --> 00:01:39.080 of forecasts of the future. 18 00:01:39.080 --> 00:01:41.600 But the Marxian doctrine is different. 19 00:01:41.600 --> 00:01:48.000 Like pre-millennial pietists who are forever predicting an imminent Armageddon, Marx claims 20 00:01:48.000 --> 00:01:56.000 Marx seems to come up with laws of history, which according to him are scientific rather than mystical. 21 00:01:56.000 --> 00:02:04.000 Well, if he knows the laws of history, then Marx had better come up with correct predictions of such allegedly determined laws. 22 00:02:04.000 --> 00:02:08.000 Yet all his predictions have proved utterly wrong. 23 00:02:08.000 --> 00:02:16.000 At this point, Marxists invariably fall back on changing the prediction or pointing to some offsetting factor, 24 00:02:16.000 --> 00:02:22.400 are seen only in hindsight that temporarily delayed the prediction from coming true. 25 00:02:22.400 --> 00:02:28.480 Thus, as we shall see further below, one of Marx's predictions, crucial to the inevitable 26 00:02:28.480 --> 00:02:34.340 workings of the road to socialism, was that the working class would suffer increasing 27 00:02:34.340 --> 00:02:37.000 poverty and immiseration. 28 00:02:37.000 --> 00:02:43.240 When the working classes, in contrast, obviously continued to gain spectacularly in living 29 00:02:43.240 --> 00:02:54.240 in the Western World, Marxian apologists fell back on the assertion that Marx meant only poverty relative to the capitalist class. 30 00:02:54.240 --> 00:03:05.240 It is doubtful, however, whether bloody revolution will be waged by a proletariat for having only one yacht, while capitalists have a dozen each. 31 00:03:05.240 --> 00:03:09.240 Relative misery is a very different kettle of fish. 32 00:03:09.240 --> 00:03:15.240 Marxists then came up with the view that Western workers' standards of living were rising because 33 00:03:15.240 --> 00:03:21.880 of a temporary delay brought about by Western imperialism, enabling Western workers to be 34 00:03:21.880 --> 00:03:26.240 capitalists relative to the exploited third world. 35 00:03:26.240 --> 00:03:33.200 The fact that Marx and Engels were themselves in favor of Western, particularly German imperialism 36 00:03:33.200 --> 00:03:39.720 as a progressive force is usually passed over in silence by Marxian writers. 37 00:03:39.720 --> 00:03:44.120 On theoretical matters, the strategy of Marxists is similar. 38 00:03:44.120 --> 00:03:51.080 Increasingly, as crucial Marxian doctrines become evidently too absurd to be held seriously, 39 00:03:51.080 --> 00:03:57.580 for example, technological determinism of all life or the labor theory of value, they 40 00:03:57.580 --> 00:04:03.120 They are abandoned by the Marxists, who then proceed to maintain stubbornly that they are 41 00:04:03.120 --> 00:04:08.400 still Marxists and that Marxism essentially still holds true. 42 00:04:08.400 --> 00:04:14.440 But this is the attitude of a mystical religious adept, rather than of a scientific or even 43 00:04:14.440 --> 00:04:16.540 a rational thinker. 44 00:04:16.540 --> 00:04:23.940 One crucial weapon wielded often by Marxists and by Marx himself was the dialectic. 45 00:04:23.940 --> 00:04:29.940 Since the dialectic allegedly means that the world and human society consist of conflicting 46 00:04:29.940 --> 00:04:37.820 or contradictory tendencies, side by side, or even within the same set of circumstances, 47 00:04:37.820 --> 00:04:43.820 any prediction can then be justified as the result of one's deep insight into whichever 48 00:04:43.820 --> 00:04:50.220 part of the contradictory dialectic might be prevailing at any given time. 49 00:04:50.220 --> 00:04:57.660 In short, since either A or non-A can occur, Marxians can safely hedge their bets so that 50 00:04:57.660 --> 00:05:01.420 no prediction of theirs can ever be falsified. 51 00:05:01.420 --> 00:05:07.060 It has been said that Jerry Healy, the absolute leader of the left-wing British Trotskyite 52 00:05:07.060 --> 00:05:13.100 movement until scandal brought him down in recent years, was able to maintain his power 53 00:05:13.100 --> 00:05:20.580 or by claiming the power of exclusive insight into the mysterious workings of the dialectic. 54 00:05:20.580 --> 00:05:26.660 And an outstanding example of hedging one's bets by Marx himself was described in a letter 55 00:05:26.660 --> 00:05:28.220 to Engels. 56 00:05:28.220 --> 00:05:34.020 Marx writes to Engels that he has just forecast something in his column for the New York Tribune. 57 00:05:34.020 --> 00:05:36.860 He adds cynically and revealingly, 58 00:05:36.860 --> 00:05:41.940 It is possible that I may be discredited, but in that case it will still be possible 59 00:05:41.940 --> 00:05:59.540 2. Historical Materialism 60 00:05:59.540 --> 00:06:05.660 There is no place in his system where Marx is fuzzier or shakier than at its base. The 61 00:06:05.660 --> 00:06:12.900 The Concept of Historical Materialism, The Key to the Inevitable Dialectic of History 62 00:06:12.900 --> 00:06:18.380 At the base of historical materialism and of Marx's view of history is the concept 63 00:06:18.380 --> 00:06:22.060 of the material productive forces. 64 00:06:22.060 --> 00:06:28.500 These forces are the driving power that creates all historical events and changes. 65 00:06:28.500 --> 00:06:32.260 So what are these material productive forces? 66 00:06:32.260 --> 00:06:33.940 This is never made clear. 67 00:06:33.940 --> 00:06:40.900 The best that can be said is that material productive forces mean technological methods. 68 00:06:40.900 --> 00:06:46.260 On the other hand, we are also faced with the term mode of production, which seems to 69 00:06:46.260 --> 00:06:53.420 be the same thing as material productive forces, or the sum of, or systems of, technological 70 00:06:53.420 --> 00:06:54.900 methods. 71 00:06:54.900 --> 00:07:01.740 At any rate, these material productive forces, these technologies and modes of production, 72 00:07:01.740 --> 00:07:10.140 Uniquely and monocausally create all relations of production, or social relations of production, 73 00:07:10.140 --> 00:07:12.840 independently of people's wills. 74 00:07:12.840 --> 00:07:19.620 These relations of production, also extremely vaguely defined, seem to be essentially legal 75 00:07:19.620 --> 00:07:22.160 and property relations. 76 00:07:22.160 --> 00:07:29.400 The sum of these relations of production somehow make up the economic structure of society. 77 00:07:29.400 --> 00:07:35.060 This economic structure is the base which causally determines the superstructure, which 78 00:07:35.060 --> 00:07:41.580 includes natural science, legal doctrines, religion, philosophies, and all other forms 79 00:07:41.580 --> 00:07:44.000 of consciousness. 80 00:07:44.000 --> 00:07:50.980 In short, at the bottom of the base is technology, which in turn constitutes or determines modes 81 00:07:50.980 --> 00:07:59.260 of production, which in turn determines relations of production, or institutions of law or property, 82 00:07:59.260 --> 00:08:06.540 and which finally in turn determine ideas, religious values, art, etc. 83 00:08:06.540 --> 00:08:11.780 How then do historical changes take place in the Marxian schema? 84 00:08:11.780 --> 00:08:17.840 They can only take place in technological methods, since everything else in society 85 00:08:17.840 --> 00:08:23.380 is determined by the state of technology at any one time. 86 00:08:23.380 --> 00:08:28.760 As Marx put it in the clearest and starkest statement of his technological determinist 87 00:08:28.760 --> 00:08:32.760 In his first view of history, in his Poverty of Philosophy, 88 00:08:32.760 --> 00:08:38.760 in acquiring new productive forces, men change their mode of production, 89 00:08:38.760 --> 00:08:42.760 and in changing their mode of production, their means of gaining a living, 90 00:08:42.760 --> 00:08:46.760 they change all their social relations. 91 00:08:46.760 --> 00:08:50.760 The hand mill gives you society with the feudal lord, 92 00:08:50.760 --> 00:08:54.760 the steam mill, society with the industrial capitalist. 93 00:08:54.760 --> 00:08:59.760 The first grave fallacy in this farrago is right at the beginning. 94 00:08:59.760 --> 00:09:05.760 Where does this technology come from, and how do technologies change or improve? 95 00:09:05.760 --> 00:09:07.760 Who puts them into effect? 96 00:09:07.760 --> 00:09:15.760 A key to the tissue of fallacies that constitute the Marxian system is that Marx never attempts to provide an answer. 97 00:09:15.760 --> 00:09:16.760 Answer. 98 00:09:16.760 --> 00:09:23.500 Indeed, he cannot, since if he attributes the state of technology or technological change 99 00:09:23.500 --> 00:09:31.220 to the actions of man, of individual men, his whole system falls apart, for human consciousness 100 00:09:31.220 --> 00:09:38.140 and individual consciousness at that would then be determining material productive forces 101 00:09:38.140 --> 00:09:40.580 rather than the other way round. 102 00:09:40.580 --> 00:09:46.260 As von Mises points out, we may summarize the Marxian doctrine in this way. 103 00:09:46.260 --> 00:09:52.680 In the beginning there are the material productive forces, that is, the technological equipment 104 00:09:52.680 --> 00:09:57.500 of human productive efforts, the tools and machines. 105 00:09:57.500 --> 00:10:01.260 No question concerning their origin is permitted. 106 00:10:01.260 --> 00:10:03.400 They are, that is all. 107 00:10:03.400 --> 00:10:06.980 We must assume that they are dropped from heaven. 108 00:10:06.980 --> 00:10:14.100 And we may add, any changes in that technology must therefore be dropped from heaven as well. 109 00:10:14.100 --> 00:10:20.940 Furthermore, as von Mises also demonstrated, consciousness, rather than matter, is predominant 110 00:10:20.940 --> 00:10:22.660 in technology. 111 00:10:22.660 --> 00:10:26.700 A technological invention is not something material. 112 00:10:26.700 --> 00:10:33.020 It is the product of a mental process, of reasoning and conceiving new ideas. 113 00:10:33.020 --> 00:10:39.260 The tools and machines may be called material, but the operation of the mind which created 114 00:10:39.260 --> 00:10:42.820 them is entirely spiritual. 115 00:10:42.820 --> 00:10:51.100 Marxian materialism does not trace back superstructural and ideological phenomena to material roots. 116 00:10:51.100 --> 00:10:59.900 It explains these phenomena as caused by an essentially mental process, namely invention. 117 00:10:59.900 --> 00:11:02.340 Machines are embodied ideas. 118 00:11:02.340 --> 00:11:07.860 In addition, technological processes do not only require inventions. 119 00:11:07.860 --> 00:11:13.760 They must be brought forth from the invention stage and be embodied in concrete machines 120 00:11:13.760 --> 00:11:15.500 and processes. 121 00:11:15.500 --> 00:11:21.180 But that requires savings and capital investment, as well as invention. 122 00:11:21.180 --> 00:11:27.180 But granting this fact, then the relations of production, the legal and property rights 123 00:11:27.180 --> 00:11:33.980 System in a Society, help determine whether or not saving and investment will be encouraged 124 00:11:33.980 --> 00:11:42.660 and discouraged. Once again, the proper causal path is from ideas, principles, and the legal 125 00:11:42.660 --> 00:11:50.420 and property rights superstructure, to the alleged base. Similarly, machines will not 126 00:11:50.420 --> 00:11:57.460 be invested in, unless there is a division of labor of sufficient extent in a society. 127 00:11:57.460 --> 00:12:04.580 Once again, the social relations, the cooperative division of labor and exchange in society, 128 00:12:04.580 --> 00:12:10.860 determine the extent and development of technology, and not the other way around. 129 00:12:10.860 --> 00:12:16.660 In addition to these logical flaws, the materialist doctrine is factually absurd. 130 00:12:16.660 --> 00:12:25.360 Obviously, the hand mill which ruled in ancient Sumer did not give you a feudal society there. 131 00:12:25.360 --> 00:12:30.480 Furthermore, there were capitalist relations long before the steam mill. 132 00:12:30.480 --> 00:12:37.960 His technological determinism led Marx to hail each important new invention as the magical 133 00:12:37.960 --> 00:12:44.680 material productive force that would inevitably bring about the socialist revolution. 134 00:12:44.680 --> 00:12:50.600 Wilhelm Liebknecht, a leading German Marxist and friend of Marx, reported that Marx once 135 00:12:50.600 --> 00:12:56.500 attended an exhibition of electric locomotives in London, and delightedly concluded that 136 00:12:56.500 --> 00:13:01.920 electricity would give rise to the inevitable communist revolution. 137 00:13:01.920 --> 00:13:07.520 Engels carried technological determinism so far as to declare that it was the invention 138 00:13:07.520 --> 00:13:11.880 of fire that separated man from the animals. 139 00:13:11.880 --> 00:13:17.940 Presumably the group of animals to whom fire somehow arrived were thereupon determined 140 00:13:17.940 --> 00:13:19.840 to evolve upward. 141 00:13:19.840 --> 00:13:25.680 The emergence of man himself was simply a part of the superstructure. 142 00:13:25.680 --> 00:13:31.720 Even granting Marx's thesis momentarily for the sake of argument, his theory of historical 143 00:13:31.720 --> 00:13:35.600 change still faces insuperable difficulties. 144 00:13:35.600 --> 00:13:42.720 Or why can't technology, which somehow develops as an automatic given, simply and smoothly 145 00:13:42.720 --> 00:13:47.840 change the relations of production and the superstructure above it? 146 00:13:47.840 --> 00:13:54.480 Indeed, if the base at each moment of time determines the rest of the superstructure, 147 00:13:54.480 --> 00:14:00.580 how can a change in the base not smoothly determine an appropriate change in the rest 148 00:14:00.580 --> 00:14:02.220 of the structure? 149 00:14:02.220 --> 00:14:06.700 But again, a mysterious element enters the Marxian system. 150 00:14:06.700 --> 00:14:13.700 Periodically, as technology and the modes of production advance, they come into conflict, 151 00:14:13.700 --> 00:14:20.820 or in the peculiar Hegelian-Marxian jargon, in contradiction to the relations of production, 152 00:14:20.820 --> 00:14:28.100 which continue in the conditions appropriate to the past time period and past technology. 153 00:14:28.100 --> 00:14:34.340 These relations therefore become fetters, blocking technological development. 154 00:14:34.340 --> 00:14:39.900 Since they become fetters on growth, the new technology gives rise to an inevitable social 155 00:14:39.900 --> 00:14:46.580 revolution that overthrows the old production relations and the superstructure and creates 156 00:14:46.580 --> 00:14:49.820 new ones that have been blocked or fettered. 157 00:14:49.820 --> 00:14:57.060 In this way, feudalism gives rise to capitalism, which in turn will give way to socialism. 158 00:14:57.060 --> 00:15:03.300 But if technology determines social production relations, what is the mysterious force that 159 00:15:03.300 --> 00:15:07.020 delays the change in those relations? 160 00:15:07.020 --> 00:15:12.620 It couldn't be human stubbornness or habit or culture, since we have already been informed 161 00:15:12.620 --> 00:15:19.860 by Marx that modes of production impel men to enter into social relations apart from 162 00:15:19.860 --> 00:15:22.040 their mere wills. 163 00:15:22.040 --> 00:15:27.960 As Professor Plamenats points out, we are merely told that the relations of production 164 00:15:27.960 --> 00:15:31.680 become fetters on the productive forces. 165 00:15:31.680 --> 00:15:39.080 Marx merely asserts this point and never even attempts to offer a cause, material or otherwise. 166 00:15:39.080 --> 00:15:45.560 As Plamenats puts the entire problem, then, all of a sudden, without warning and without 167 00:15:45.560 --> 00:16:03.560 In his explanation, he, Marx, tells us that there nevertheless arises inevitably from time to time an incompatibility between them, the productive forces and the relations of production, which only social revolution can resolve. 168 00:16:03.560 --> 00:16:10.620 This incompatibility apparently arises because the dependent variable, the relations, begins 169 00:16:10.620 --> 00:16:17.240 to impede the free operation of the variable on which it depends, the material productive 170 00:16:17.240 --> 00:16:18.980 forces. 171 00:16:18.980 --> 00:16:24.640 This is an astounding statement, and yet Marx can make it without even being aware that 172 00:16:24.640 --> 00:16:27.740 it requires explanation. 173 00:16:27.740 --> 00:16:34.620 Professor Plaminatz has shown that part of the deep confusion is both generated and camouflaged 174 00:16:34.620 --> 00:16:40.460 by Marx's failure to define relations of production adequately. 175 00:16:40.460 --> 00:16:45.240 This concept apparently includes legal property relations. 176 00:16:45.240 --> 00:16:51.500 But if legal property relations were at fault in this dialectical delay in adjustment, thus 177 00:16:51.500 --> 00:16:53.860 and the setting up the fetters. 178 00:16:53.860 --> 00:17:01.060 Then Marx would be conceding that the problem is really legal or political rather than economic. 179 00:17:01.060 --> 00:17:05.840 But he wanted the determining base to be purely economic. 180 00:17:05.840 --> 00:17:12.420 The political and the ideological had to be merely part of the determined superstructure. 181 00:17:12.420 --> 00:17:18.860 So social relations of production, allegedly economic, were the fetters. 182 00:17:18.860 --> 00:17:24.740 But this can only make sense if this means the property rights or legal system. 183 00:17:24.740 --> 00:17:30.880 And so, Marx got out of his dilemma by being so fuzzy and ambivalent about the relations 184 00:17:30.880 --> 00:17:37.980 of production that these relations could be taken either as including the property structure, 185 00:17:37.980 --> 00:17:45.520 as identical with that structure, or else the two might be totally separate entities. 186 00:17:45.520 --> 00:17:51.640 In particular, Marx accomplished his obscurantist purpose by asserting that the property rights 187 00:17:51.640 --> 00:17:58.320 system was part of the legal expression of the relations of production, thus somehow 188 00:17:58.320 --> 00:18:05.400 being able to be part of the superstructure and yet of the economic relations of production 189 00:18:05.400 --> 00:18:08.200 at the same time. 190 00:18:08.200 --> 00:18:12.480 Legal expression, needless to say, was not defined either. 191 00:18:12.480 --> 00:18:19.200 As Plamenats summed up, the entire concept of relations of production, so necessary to 192 00:18:19.200 --> 00:18:26.400 the Marxian thesis of material or economic determinism, serves Marx as a ghost battalion 193 00:18:26.400 --> 00:18:30.760 closing a vital gap in the front of Marxian theory. 194 00:18:30.760 --> 00:18:36.740 Yet in all this, there is no way that the concept of relations of production can make 195 00:18:36.740 --> 00:18:42.800 economic determinism intelligible, and there is no way by which these relations can either 196 00:18:42.800 --> 00:18:49.160 be determined by the modes of production, or can in themselves determine the property 197 00:18:49.160 --> 00:18:50.920 rights system. 198 00:18:50.920 --> 00:18:57.920 The only possible coherent chain of causation, in contrast, is the other way round. 199 00:18:57.920 --> 00:19:03.660 From ideas, to property rights systems, to the fostering or crippling the growth of saving 200 00:19:03.660 --> 00:19:07.700 Banking and Investment, and of Technological Development. 201 00:19:07.700 --> 00:19:14.540 20th century Marxists from Lucas to Genovese have often tried to save the day from the 202 00:19:14.540 --> 00:19:20.500 embarrassment of the technological determinism of Marx and his immediate followers. 203 00:19:20.500 --> 00:19:27.060 They maintain that all sophisticated Marxists know that the causation is not unilinear, 204 00:19:27.060 --> 00:19:32.100 that the base and the superstructure really influence each other. 205 00:19:32.100 --> 00:19:39.380 Sometimes they try to torture the data to claim that Marx himself took such a sophisticated position. 206 00:19:39.380 --> 00:19:47.840 Either way, they are characteristically obfuscating the fact that they have, in reality, abandoned Marxism. 207 00:19:47.840 --> 00:19:57.640 Marxism is mono-causal technological determinism, along with all the rest of the fallacies we have depicted, or it is nothing. 208 00:19:57.640 --> 00:20:04.680 And it has demonstrated no inevitable, or even likely, dialectic mechanism. 209 00:20:04.680 --> 00:20:06.680 3. 210 00:20:06.680 --> 00:20:12.300 The Class Struggle Even assuming that the unexplained incompatibility 211 00:20:12.300 --> 00:20:18.340 between the productive forces and the relations of production exists, why shouldn't this 212 00:20:18.340 --> 00:20:21.680 incompatibility continue forever? 213 00:20:21.680 --> 00:20:28.880 Why doesn't the economy simply lapse into permanent stagnation of the technological forces? 214 00:20:28.880 --> 00:20:35.080 This contradiction, so to speak, was scarcely enough to generate Marx's goal of the inevitable 215 00:20:35.080 --> 00:20:38.480 proletarian communist revolution. 216 00:20:38.480 --> 00:20:44.200 The answer that Marx supplies, the motor of the inevitable revolutions in history, is 217 00:20:44.200 --> 00:20:50.640 inherent class conflict, inherent struggles between economic classes. 218 00:20:50.640 --> 00:20:55.640 For in addition to the property rights system, one of the consequences of the relations of 219 00:20:55.640 --> 00:21:02.500 production, as determined by the productive forces, is the class structure of society. 220 00:21:02.500 --> 00:21:08.840 For Marx, the fetters are invariably applied by the privileged ruling classes, who somehow 221 00:21:08.840 --> 00:21:15.920 serve as surrogates for, or living embodiments of, the social relations of production and 222 00:21:15.920 --> 00:21:18.260 the legal property system. 223 00:21:18.260 --> 00:21:26.380 In contrast, another, inevitably rising, economic class somehow embodies the oppressed or fettered 224 00:21:26.380 --> 00:21:29.780 technologies and modes of production. 225 00:21:29.780 --> 00:21:35.580 The contradiction between the fettered material productive forces and the fettering social 226 00:21:35.580 --> 00:21:42.180 relations of production thus becomes embodied in a determined class struggle between the 227 00:21:42.180 --> 00:21:48.580 The Rising and the Ruling Classes, which are bound by the inevitable material dialectic 228 00:21:48.580 --> 00:21:54.560 of history to result in a triumphant revolution by the rising class. 229 00:21:54.560 --> 00:22:00.540 The successful revolution at last brings the relations of production and the material productive 230 00:22:00.540 --> 00:22:04.980 forces or technological system into harmony. 231 00:22:04.980 --> 00:22:10.940 All is then peaceful and harmonious until later, when further technological development 232 00:22:10.940 --> 00:22:17.700 gives rise to new contradictions, new fetters, and a new class struggle to be won by the 233 00:22:17.700 --> 00:22:20.180 rising economic class. 234 00:22:20.180 --> 00:22:26.320 In that way, feudalism, determined by the hand mill, gives rise to middle classes when 235 00:22:26.320 --> 00:22:32.280 the steam mill develops, and the rising middle classes, the living surrogates of the steam 236 00:22:32.280 --> 00:22:37.540 mill, overthrow fetters imposed by the feudal landlord class. 237 00:22:37.540 --> 00:22:45.420 Thus, the material dialectic takes one socio-economic system, say feudalism, and claims that it 238 00:22:45.420 --> 00:22:53.220 gives rise to its opposite, or negation, and its inevitable replacement by capitalism, 239 00:22:53.220 --> 00:22:57.620 which thus negates and transcends feudalism. 240 00:22:57.620 --> 00:23:03.940 And in the same way, electricity, or whatever, will inevitably give rise to a proletarian 241 00:23:03.940 --> 00:23:09.860 and Revolution, which will permit electricity to triumph over the fetters that capitalists 242 00:23:09.860 --> 00:23:11.980 place upon it. 243 00:23:11.980 --> 00:23:17.660 It is difficult to state this position without rejecting it immediately as drivel. 244 00:23:17.660 --> 00:23:23.660 In addition to all the flaws in historical materialism we have seen above, there is no 245 00:23:23.660 --> 00:23:30.380 causal chain that links a technology to a class, or that permits economic classes to 246 00:23:30.380 --> 00:23:36.100 to embody either technology or its production relations fetters. 247 00:23:36.100 --> 00:23:42.940 There is no proffered reason why such classes must or even plausibly might act as determined 248 00:23:42.940 --> 00:23:46.500 puppets for or against new technologies. 249 00:23:46.500 --> 00:23:51.080 Why must feudal landlords try to suppress the steam mill? 250 00:23:51.080 --> 00:23:55.180 Why can't feudal landlords invest in steam mills? 251 00:23:55.180 --> 00:24:01.620 And why can't capitalists cheerfully invest in electricity as they already have in steam? 252 00:24:01.620 --> 00:24:08.220 Indeed, they have in fact happily invested in electricity and in all other successful 253 00:24:08.220 --> 00:24:14.320 and economical technologies, as well as bringing them about in the first place. 254 00:24:14.320 --> 00:24:21.240 Why are capitalists inevitably oppressed under feudalism, and why are the proletariat equally 255 00:24:21.240 --> 00:24:24.680 inevitably oppressed under capitalism? 256 00:24:24.680 --> 00:24:29.720 In Marx's attempt to answer the latter question, see below. 257 00:24:29.720 --> 00:24:36.200 If finally class struggle and the material dialectic bring about an inevitable proletarian 258 00:24:36.200 --> 00:24:42.960 revolution, why does the dialectic, as Marx of course maintains, at that point come to 259 00:24:42.960 --> 00:24:44.600 an end? 260 00:24:44.600 --> 00:24:50.920 For crucial to Marxism, as to other millennial and apocalyptic creeds, is that the dialectic 261 00:24:50.920 --> 00:24:55.040 can by no means roll on forever. 262 00:24:55.040 --> 00:25:01.720 On the contrary, the Kiliast, whether pre or post-millennial, invariably sees the end 263 00:25:01.720 --> 00:25:06.680 of the dialectic, or the end of history, as imminent. 264 00:25:06.680 --> 00:25:12.600 Very soon, imminently, the Third Age, or the return of Jesus, or the Kingdom of God 265 00:25:12.600 --> 00:25:20.840 on earth, or the total self-knowledge of the Man God, will effectively put an end to history. 266 00:25:20.840 --> 00:25:27.240 Marx's atheist dialectic too envisioned the eminent proletarian revolution, which would, 267 00:25:27.240 --> 00:25:34.600 after the raw communist stage, bring about a higher communism, or perhaps a beyond-communist 268 00:25:34.600 --> 00:25:41.800 stage, which would be a classless society, a society of total equality, of no division 269 00:25:41.800 --> 00:25:45.800 of labor, a society without rulers. 270 00:25:45.800 --> 00:25:52.880 But since history is a history of class struggles for Marx, the ultimate communist stage would 271 00:25:52.880 --> 00:25:59.360 be the final one, so that, in effect, history would then come to an end. 272 00:25:59.360 --> 00:26:06.040 Critics of Marx, from Bakunin to Majajski to Milovanjilas, have of course pointed out, 273 00:26:06.040 --> 00:26:11.880 both prophetically and in retrospect, that the proletarian revolution, whichever its 274 00:26:11.880 --> 00:26:19.040 stage would not eliminate classes, but on the contrary would set up a new ruling class 275 00:26:19.040 --> 00:26:21.360 and a new ruled. 276 00:26:21.360 --> 00:26:28.240 There would be no equality but another inequality of power and inevitably of wealth. 277 00:26:28.240 --> 00:26:35.700 The oligarchic elite, the vanguard as rulers and the rest of society as the ruled. 278 00:26:35.700 --> 00:26:40.960 In order to round out his system, Marx was interested in the dialectical workings of 279 00:26:40.960 --> 00:26:48.480 the past, the passages from Oriental despotism or the Asiatic mode of production to the ancient 280 00:26:48.480 --> 00:26:54.160 world, thence to feudalism, and from feudalism to capitalism. 281 00:26:54.160 --> 00:26:59.560 But his main interest, understandably, was in demonstrating the precise mechanism by 282 00:26:59.560 --> 00:27:06.240 which capitalism was supposed to give way, imminently, to the proletarian revolution. 283 00:27:06.240 --> 00:27:12.880 After working out this broad system, the rest of Marx's life was largely devoted to demonstrating 284 00:27:12.880 --> 00:27:17.440 and developing these alleged mechanisms. 285 00:27:17.440 --> 00:27:19.880 4. 286 00:27:19.880 --> 00:27:24.480 The Marxian Doctrine of Ideology 287 00:27:24.480 --> 00:27:32.760 Even Marx must dimly recognize that not material productive forces, not even classes, act in 288 00:27:32.760 --> 00:27:39.280 in the Real World, but only individual consciousness and individual choice. 289 00:27:39.280 --> 00:27:45.060 Even in the Marxian analysis, each class, or the individuals within it, must become 290 00:27:45.060 --> 00:27:52.420 conscious of its true class interests in order to act upon pursuing or achieving them. 291 00:27:52.420 --> 00:27:59.300 To Marx, each individual's thinking, his values and theories are all determined, not 292 00:27:59.300 --> 00:28:06.220 by his personal self-interest but by the interest of the class to which he supposedly belongs. 293 00:28:06.220 --> 00:28:09.700 This is the first fatal flaw in the argument. 294 00:28:09.700 --> 00:28:16.180 Why in the world should each individual ever hold his class higher than himself? 295 00:28:16.180 --> 00:28:23.140 Second, according to Marx, this class interest determines his thoughts and viewpoints and 296 00:28:23.140 --> 00:28:31.540 must do so because each person is only capable of ideology or false consciousness in the 297 00:28:31.540 --> 00:28:33.480 interest of his class. 298 00:28:33.480 --> 00:28:40.220 He is not capable of a disinterested, objective search for truth, nor of pursuit of his own 299 00:28:40.220 --> 00:28:47.780 interest or that of all mankind, but as von Mises has pointed out, Marx's doctrine pretends 300 00:28:47.780 --> 00:28:57.780 is to be pure, non-ideological science, and yet written expressly to advance the class interest of the proletariat. 301 00:28:57.780 --> 00:29:06.780 But while all bourgeois economics and all other disciplines of thought were interpreted by Marx as false by definition, 302 00:29:06.780 --> 00:29:11.780 as ideological rationalizations of bourgeois class interest, 303 00:29:11.780 --> 00:29:19.780 The Marxists were not consistent enough to assign to their own doctrines merely ideological character. 304 00:29:19.780 --> 00:29:24.780 The Marxian tenets, they implied, are not ideologies. 305 00:29:24.780 --> 00:29:29.780 They are a foretaste of the knowledge of the future classless society, 306 00:29:29.780 --> 00:29:40.780 which, freed from the fetters of class conflicts, will be in a position to conceive pure knowledge, untainted by ideological blemishes. 307 00:29:40.780 --> 00:29:45.820 Dr. David Gordon has aptly summed up this point. 308 00:29:45.820 --> 00:29:52.180 If all thought about social and economic matters is determined by class position, what about 309 00:29:52.180 --> 00:29:54.420 the Marxist system itself? 310 00:29:54.420 --> 00:30:01.980 If, as Marx proudly proclaimed, he aimed at providing a science for the working class, 311 00:30:01.980 --> 00:30:05.660 why should any of his views be accepted as true? 312 00:30:05.660 --> 00:30:10.420 Mises rightly notes that Marx's view is self-refuting. 313 00:30:10.420 --> 00:30:17.980 If all social thought is ideological, then this proposition is itself ideological, and 314 00:30:17.980 --> 00:30:21.540 the grounds for believing it have been undercut. 315 00:30:21.540 --> 00:30:28.700 In his theories of surplus value, Marx cannot contain his sneering at the apologetics of 316 00:30:28.700 --> 00:30:31.700 various bourgeois economists. 317 00:30:31.700 --> 00:30:38.800 He did not realize that in his constant jibes at the class bias of his fellow economists, 318 00:30:38.800 --> 00:30:46.720 He was but digging the grave of his own giant work of propaganda on behalf of the proletariat. 319 00:30:46.720 --> 00:30:52.200 Von Mises also raises the point that it is absurd to believe that the interests of any 320 00:30:52.200 --> 00:30:58.960 class, including the capitalists, could ever be served better by a false than by a correct 321 00:30:58.960 --> 00:31:00.160 doctrine. 322 00:31:00.160 --> 00:31:06.580 To Marx, the point of philosophy was only the achievement of some practical goal. 323 00:31:06.580 --> 00:31:13.880 But if, as in pragmatism, truth is only what works, then surely the interests of the bourgeoisie 324 00:31:13.880 --> 00:31:19.700 would not be served by clinging to a false theory of society. 325 00:31:19.700 --> 00:31:26.620 If the Marxian answer holds, as it has, that false theory is necessary to justify the existence 326 00:31:26.620 --> 00:31:33.740 of capitalist rule, then, as von Mises points out, from the Marxian point of view itself, 327 00:31:33.740 --> 00:31:36.400 The Theory should not be necessary. 328 00:31:36.400 --> 00:31:42.360 Since each class ruthlessly pursues its own interest, there is no need for the capitalists 329 00:31:42.360 --> 00:31:48.120 to justify their rule and their alleged exploitation to themselves. 330 00:31:48.120 --> 00:31:54.720 There is also no need to use these false doctrines to keep the proletariat subservient. 331 00:31:54.720 --> 00:32:01.200 Since to Marxists, the rule or the overthrow of a given social system depends on the material 332 00:32:01.200 --> 00:32:28.640 It is a well-known irony, and another deep flaw in the Marxian system, that for all the 333 00:32:28.640 --> 00:32:34.120 The Marxian exaltation of the proletariat and the proletarian mind. 334 00:32:34.120 --> 00:32:41.920 All leading Marxists beginning with Marx and Engels were emphatically bourgeois themselves. 335 00:32:41.920 --> 00:32:44.360 Marx was the son of a wealthy lawyer. 336 00:32:44.360 --> 00:32:49.600 His wife was a member of the Prussian nobility and his brother-in-law Prussian Minister of 337 00:32:49.600 --> 00:32:50.960 the Interior. 338 00:32:50.960 --> 00:32:56.080 Friedrich Engels, his lifelong benefactor and collaborator, was the son of a wealthy 339 00:32:56.080 --> 00:33:07.240 Why were not their views and doctrines also determined by bourgeois class interests? 340 00:33:07.240 --> 00:33:13.300 What permitted their consciousness to rise above a system so powerful that it determines 341 00:33:13.300 --> 00:33:15.880 the views of everyone else? 342 00:33:15.880 --> 00:33:22.800 In this way, every determinist system attempts to provide an escape hatch for its own believers, 343 00:33:22.800 --> 00:33:29.320 who are somehow able to escape the determinist laws that afflict everyone else. 344 00:33:29.320 --> 00:33:36.200 Unwittingly these systems become in that way self-contradictory and self-refuting. 345 00:33:36.200 --> 00:33:42.240 In the 20th century, Marxists such as the German sociologist Karl Mannheim attempted 346 00:33:42.240 --> 00:33:50.040 to elevate this escape hatch into high theory, that somehow intellectuals are able to float 347 00:33:50.040 --> 00:34:03.840 5. THE INNER CONTRADICTION IN THE CONCEPT OF CLASS 348 00:34:03.840 --> 00:34:09.280 A class is a set of entities with one identifiable thing in common. 349 00:34:09.280 --> 00:34:15.920 Thus, there is a class of bald eagles or of geraniums, and such a class can be widened 350 00:34:15.920 --> 00:34:17.380 or narrowed. 351 00:34:17.380 --> 00:34:21.580 For example, the class of geraniums growing in New Jersey. 352 00:34:21.580 --> 00:34:26.780 A social class is a class of human beings with one thing in common. 353 00:34:26.780 --> 00:34:31.020 The number of identifiable social classes is virtually infinite. 354 00:34:31.020 --> 00:34:36.760 Thus, there is the class of people over 6 feet 4 inches in height, the class of people 355 00:34:36.760 --> 00:34:44.640 named Smith, the class of people weighing under 160 pounds, etc. ad infinitum. 356 00:34:44.640 --> 00:34:49.560 Some of these classes will be useful for certain types of social analysis. 357 00:34:49.560 --> 00:34:55.280 For example, the class of people over 65 years of age with diabetes. 358 00:34:55.280 --> 00:34:59.180 For medical or insurance or demographic purposes. 359 00:34:59.180 --> 00:35:04.280 But from our point of view, in a study of the Marxian theory of class, these classes 360 00:35:04.280 --> 00:35:09.840 are all worthless because there is no inherent conflict between them. 361 00:35:09.840 --> 00:35:15.740 In the market economy, in the international division of labor and exchange of products, 362 00:35:15.740 --> 00:35:21.740 there is no inherent conflict between short and tall people, people of various weights 363 00:35:21.740 --> 00:35:23.960 and names, etc. 364 00:35:23.960 --> 00:35:30.200 All classes live in harmony through the voluntary exchange of goods and services that mutually 365 00:35:30.200 --> 00:35:32.120 benefits them all. 366 00:35:32.120 --> 00:35:38.480 Furthermore, there is no reason for an individual in a free society or in a market economy to 367 00:35:38.480 --> 00:35:46.040 to act on behalf of the interests of his class rather than or even as a surrogate for his 368 00:35:46.040 --> 00:35:48.440 own individual interest. 369 00:35:48.440 --> 00:35:54.600 Will a person, when deciding at what job to work or what investment to make, first and 370 00:35:54.600 --> 00:36:01.480 foremost consult his class interest as a member of a class over six feet tall? 371 00:36:01.480 --> 00:36:04.640 The very idea is absurd. 372 00:36:04.640 --> 00:36:09.720 Is there no time then when social classes are in inherent conflict? 373 00:36:09.720 --> 00:36:12.500 Yes, there are such times. 374 00:36:12.500 --> 00:36:18.480 But only when some classes are privileged by state coercion, while other classes are 375 00:36:18.480 --> 00:36:22.120 restricted or burdened by state coercion. 376 00:36:22.120 --> 00:36:28.840 Ludwig von Mises perceptively used the term caste to identify groups either privileged 377 00:36:28.840 --> 00:36:39.840 The Caste System in India was a classic case. The privileged or ruling castes acquired power, income and status by state coercion. 378 00:36:39.840 --> 00:36:48.840 The submerged or ruled castes, for example, were prevented by coercion from leaving the lowly occupancy of the state. 379 00:36:48.840 --> 00:36:51.680 and Status by State Coercion. 380 00:36:51.680 --> 00:36:58.000 The submerged or ruled castes, for example, were prevented by coercion from leaving the 381 00:36:58.000 --> 00:37:01.480 lowly occupations of their ancestors. 382 00:37:01.480 --> 00:37:08.340 Other ruling and ruled castes or classes are not as rigid as the Indian caste system, but 383 00:37:08.340 --> 00:37:12.920 still they partake of the same coercively determined status. 384 00:37:12.920 --> 00:37:23.920 Thus the Brahman caste, privileged by the state, was in inherent conflict with the untouchables, who were submerged as a class by the state. 385 00:37:23.920 --> 00:37:37.920 These castes then have conflicting class or caste interest, the Brahmans to maintain their privileges, the untouchable or other submerged castes to break out of their burdens. 386 00:37:37.920 --> 00:37:48.420 The point is that by the use of state power, each individual Brahman has a common or class interest in maintaining his privileges, 387 00:37:48.420 --> 00:37:55.420 while each untouchable has a common class interest in freeing himself from oppression. 388 00:37:55.420 --> 00:38:06.420 Thus, even in less rigid cases than in an absolute caste system, the class of short and tall people, or the class of people named Smith, 389 00:38:06.420 --> 00:38:13.420 Normally living in peace and harmony could become classes in inherent conflict. 390 00:38:13.420 --> 00:38:20.300 Suppose for example the state decrees a large subsidy for all people over 6 feet tall, or 391 00:38:20.300 --> 00:38:25.540 a special heavy tax on all those under 5 feet 5 inches. 392 00:38:25.540 --> 00:38:31.220 If special privileges were heaped on people named Smith, then this would be a privileged 393 00:39:01.220 --> 00:39:08.500 the demands of justice, that is, ideas or principles, higher than their class interest. 394 00:39:08.500 --> 00:39:15.660 Or untouchables, who, for personal interest, willingly submit to the existing order. 395 00:39:15.660 --> 00:39:21.580 There is a grave inner contradiction at the heart of the Marxian system in Marx's crucial 396 00:39:21.580 --> 00:39:24.100 concept of class. 397 00:39:24.100 --> 00:39:31.280 In the Marxian dialectic, two mighty social classes face each other in inherent conflict, 398 00:39:31.280 --> 00:39:33.520 the ruling and the ruled. 399 00:39:33.520 --> 00:39:40.380 In the first two of history's major conflicts, oriental despotism and feudalism, the social 400 00:39:40.380 --> 00:39:47.960 classes are defined by Marx in what we have seen to be the libertarian or Misesian manner, 401 00:39:47.960 --> 00:39:51.540 as classes privileged or burdened by the state. 402 00:39:51.540 --> 00:39:59.420 Thus, in Oriental despotism or the Asiatic mode of production, the emperor and his technocratic 403 00:39:59.420 --> 00:40:04.660 bureaucracy run the state and constitute its ruling class. 404 00:40:04.660 --> 00:40:11.620 This class acquires privileges from the state and taxes and controls the ruled classes, 405 00:40:11.620 --> 00:40:18.260 that is, everyone else, largely the peasantry but also craftsmen and merchants. 406 00:40:18.260 --> 00:40:24.620 Here Marx adopts the libertarian, as we have seen advanced by James Mill's definition of 407 00:40:24.620 --> 00:40:31.620 a two-class system, the ruling few who have gained control of the state, who are governing 408 00:40:31.620 --> 00:40:34.900 and exploiting the ruled many. 409 00:40:34.900 --> 00:40:38.240 Under feudalism a similar concept applies. 410 00:40:38.240 --> 00:40:44.100 The landlord class has acquired territory through war and conquest, and has settled 411 00:40:44.100 --> 00:41:11.900 All well and good. 412 00:41:11.900 --> 00:41:19.500 But then suddenly when Marx gets to capitalism, the class categories change without acknowledgement. 413 00:41:19.500 --> 00:41:25.900 Now the ruling class is not simply defined as the class that runs the state apparatus. 414 00:41:25.900 --> 00:41:35.020 Now suddenly the original act of rule or exploitation is the voluntary market wage contract, the 415 00:41:35.020 --> 00:41:41.760 very act of a capitalist hiring a worker, and a worker agreeing to be hired. 416 00:41:41.760 --> 00:41:49.260 This in itself, to Marx, establishes a common class interest among capitalists, exploiting 417 00:41:49.260 --> 00:41:52.000 a common class of workers. 418 00:41:52.000 --> 00:41:58.280 It is true that Marx also believed that this capitalist class runs the state, but only 419 00:41:58.280 --> 00:42:03.020 as the executive committee of the ruling class. 420 00:42:03.020 --> 00:42:09.700 That is, of a ruling class that previously existed on the free market because of the 421 00:42:09.700 --> 00:42:11.460 wage system. 422 00:42:11.460 --> 00:42:18.140 So that what Marx, as analyst of Oriental despotism or feudalism, would consider ruling 423 00:42:18.140 --> 00:42:26.680 class exploitation, still exists under capitalism, but only as an addendum to the pre-existing 424 00:42:26.680 --> 00:42:32.120 capitalist exploitation of the workers through the wage system. 425 00:42:32.120 --> 00:42:39.120 Ruling class exploitation under capitalism is unique in exercising a double exploitation. 426 00:42:39.120 --> 00:42:46.620 First, on the market as part of the wage contract and, second, the alleged exploitation by 427 00:42:46.620 --> 00:42:51.540 the state as executive committee of the ruling class. 428 00:42:51.540 --> 00:42:57.340 It should be evident that Marx's analysis of class is, by this point, a mishmash, in 429 00:42:57.340 --> 00:42:59.460 total disarray. 430 00:42:59.460 --> 00:43:07.200 Two contradictory definitions of class are jammed together, unfused and unacknowledged. 431 00:43:07.200 --> 00:43:14.340 Why should capitalism of all systems be able to levy a double exploitation that no other 432 00:43:14.340 --> 00:43:20.200 ruling class in Marx's historical schema can ever enjoy? 433 00:43:20.200 --> 00:43:26.920 But the crucial point is that Marx's definition of class and class conflict under capitalism 434 00:43:26.920 --> 00:43:30.960 is hopelessly muddled and totally wrong. 435 00:43:30.960 --> 00:43:37.920 How can capitalists, even in the same industry, let alone in the entire social system, have 436 00:43:37.920 --> 00:43:41.040 anything crucial in common? 437 00:43:41.040 --> 00:43:48.120 Brahmins and slaves in a caste system certainly enjoy a common class interest in conflict 438 00:43:48.120 --> 00:43:50.240 with other castes. 439 00:43:50.240 --> 00:43:55.620 But what is the common class interest of the capitalist class? 440 00:43:55.620 --> 00:44:02.500 On the contrary, capitalist firms are in continual competition and rivalry with each other. 441 00:44:02.500 --> 00:44:08.120 They compete for raw material, for labor, for sales and customers. 442 00:44:08.120 --> 00:44:14.380 They compete in price and quality and in seeking new products and new ways to get ahead of 443 00:44:14.380 --> 00:44:16.380 their competitors. 444 00:44:16.380 --> 00:44:20.860 Marx of course did not deny the reality of this competition. 445 00:44:20.860 --> 00:44:28.100 So how can all capitalists or even the steel industry be considered a class with common 446 00:44:28.100 --> 00:44:29.100 interests? 447 00:44:29.100 --> 00:44:32.600 Again, in only one way. 448 00:44:32.600 --> 00:44:39.940 The steel industry only enjoys common interests if it can induce the state to create such 449 00:44:39.940 --> 00:44:43.160 interests through special privilege. 450 00:44:43.160 --> 00:44:50.100 State intervention to impose a steel tariff or a steel cartel with restricted output and 451 00:44:50.100 --> 00:44:57.700 and Higher Price would indeed create a privileged ruling class of steel industrialists. 452 00:44:57.700 --> 00:45:04.940 But no such class having common interests pre-exists on the market before such intervention 453 00:45:04.940 --> 00:45:06.800 comes about. 454 00:45:06.800 --> 00:45:14.140 Only the state can create a privileged class, or a subordinate and burdened class, by acts 455 00:45:14.140 --> 00:45:18.220 of intervention into the economy or society. 456 00:45:18.220 --> 00:45:23.580 There can be no capitalist ruling class on the free market. 457 00:45:23.580 --> 00:45:31.060 Similarly, there can be no working class with common class interests on the free market. 458 00:45:31.060 --> 00:45:37.260 Workers compete with each other just as capitalists or entrepreneurs compete with each other. 459 00:45:37.260 --> 00:45:44.620 Once again, if groups of workers can use the state to exclude other groups, they can become 460 00:45:44.620 --> 00:45:51.120 A Ruling Class as Against the Excluded Groups Thus, if government immigration restrictions 461 00:45:51.120 --> 00:45:57.180 keep out new workers, the native workers can benefit, at least in the short run, at the 462 00:45:57.180 --> 00:46:00.340 expense of incomes of immigrants. 463 00:46:00.340 --> 00:46:06.300 Or if white workers can keep black workers out of skilled jobs by state coercion, as 464 00:46:06.300 --> 00:46:12.760 was done in South Africa, the former becomes a privileged or ruling class at the expense 465 00:46:12.760 --> 00:46:14.540 of the latter. 466 00:46:14.540 --> 00:46:20.580 An important point here is that any group that can manage to control or gain privileges 467 00:46:20.580 --> 00:46:26.000 from the state can take its place among the exploiters. 468 00:46:26.000 --> 00:46:32.040 This can be specific groups of workers or businessmen or communist party members or 469 00:46:32.040 --> 00:46:33.040 whatever. 470 00:46:33.040 --> 00:46:39.840 There is no reason to assume that only capitalists can acquire such privileges. 471 00:46:39.840 --> 00:46:46.060 In his class analysis, Marx constantly had to struggle with the fact that neither capitalists 472 00:46:46.060 --> 00:46:54.440 nor workers act in practice as if they are each members of monolithic, conflicting classes. 473 00:46:54.440 --> 00:47:01.660 On the contrary, capitalists persist in competing with each other, and workers likewise. 474 00:47:01.660 --> 00:47:07.960 Even in their rousing communist manifesto, Marx and Engels had to admit that the organization 475 00:47:07.960 --> 00:47:14.700 One of the proletarians into a class, and consequently into a political party, is continually 476 00:47:14.700 --> 00:47:20.680 being upset again by the competition among the workers themselves. 477 00:47:20.680 --> 00:47:22.280 Indeed. 478 00:47:22.280 --> 00:47:25.040 But there are more grave problems. 479 00:47:25.040 --> 00:47:28.200 For Marx had his two-class analysis. 480 00:47:28.200 --> 00:47:35.960 The essence of each titanic struggle in history is between two great social classes, the ruling 481 00:47:35.960 --> 00:47:43.560 versus the Ruled, the rising class in tune with the new material productive forces, the 482 00:47:43.560 --> 00:47:46.200 declining one out of tune. 483 00:47:46.200 --> 00:47:52.600 But it is one thing to employ a two-class ruler versus ruled analysis, according to 484 00:47:52.600 --> 00:47:56.000 libertarian or million definitions. 485 00:47:56.000 --> 00:48:03.660 Since there are, indeed, common caste interests and conflicts, this concept is here a simplification, 486 00:48:03.660 --> 00:48:06.300 are not an important and workable one. 487 00:48:06.300 --> 00:48:13.140 But what are we to do in the complex multi-class world of the capitalist market economy? 488 00:48:13.140 --> 00:48:20.340 How can we employ a two-class model there, either for market or political action? 489 00:48:20.340 --> 00:48:26.540 And there is no question that Marx is committed to the two-class model, capitalists versus 490 00:48:26.540 --> 00:48:33.220 Proletarians, all other classes fade away, so that the mighty, exploited, immiserated 491 00:48:33.220 --> 00:48:40.420 class can and will rise up as a monolith to overthrow the capitalist class. 492 00:48:40.420 --> 00:48:47.980 As Marx and Engels say in the Communist Manifesto, our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses 493 00:48:47.980 --> 00:48:51.000 however this distinctive feature. 494 00:48:51.000 --> 00:48:55.120 It has simplified the class antagonisms. 495 00:48:55.120 --> 00:49:02.180 Policy as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two 496 00:49:02.180 --> 00:49:10.260 great classes directly facing each other, bourgeoisie and proletariat. 497 00:49:10.260 --> 00:49:16.980 But in practice, in analyzing recent history or current events, Marx and Engels were forced 498 00:49:16.980 --> 00:49:24.020 to talk about many classes and groups, and their interactions, thereby implicitly but 499 00:49:24.020 --> 00:49:29.260 definitely betraying their own absurd two-class model. 500 00:49:29.260 --> 00:49:35.100 And so we have the problem that Marx's two classes are far from monoliths, that their 501 00:49:35.100 --> 00:49:41.440 members compete with each other constantly and collaborate very rarely, and also that 502 00:49:41.440 --> 00:49:48.180 in capitalist society in particular it is impossible to analyze historical action by 503 00:49:48.180 --> 00:49:53.280 squeezing all human actors into two classes. 504 00:49:53.280 --> 00:50:00.180 In practice, however, Marx and other Marxists happily use a multi-class model in analyzing 505 00:50:00.180 --> 00:50:08.080 historical events—steel capital, textile capital, armament capital, finance capital, 506 00:50:08.080 --> 00:50:14.320 etc.—but they do not seem to realize that while they are being far more realistic than 507 00:50:14.320 --> 00:50:22.380 when prating about capitalists versus workers as two-class monoliths, they are totally betraying 508 00:50:22.380 --> 00:50:25.280 and the Marxian dialectic itself. 509 00:50:25.280 --> 00:50:32.320 No inevitable revolution, for example, will ever follow from multi-class squabbling, certainly 510 00:50:32.320 --> 00:50:36.580 not Marx's cherished proletarian one. 511 00:50:36.580 --> 00:50:42.600 Marx himself and Marxists generally have devoted many millions of words to the concept and 512 00:50:42.600 --> 00:50:50.400 use of the term class, yet in all his writings Marx never once defined it. 513 00:50:50.400 --> 00:50:57.120 Or if he had attempted a definition, the stark inner contradiction in the concept, the slippage 514 00:50:57.120 --> 00:51:04.320 between state creation and mere market action, would have become starkly clear, and something 515 00:51:04.320 --> 00:51:06.240 would have had to give. 516 00:51:06.240 --> 00:51:12.920 Thus, in Marx's theoretical magnum opus, Capital, there is no attempt at a definition 517 00:51:12.920 --> 00:51:14.680 of class. 518 00:51:14.680 --> 00:51:21.680 Only an incomplete Volume 1 was published in Marx's lifetime, 1867, at which point 519 00:51:21.680 --> 00:51:25.400 he had substantially finished working on the book. 520 00:51:25.400 --> 00:51:32.600 After Marx's death in 1883, Engels worked up, edited and published the remaining manuscript 521 00:51:32.600 --> 00:51:38.360 in two further volumes, 1885 and 1894. 522 00:51:38.360 --> 00:51:44.160 Only in the famous very last chapter of the third volume does Marx finally arrive at an 523 00:51:44.160 --> 00:51:51.980 An attempt to define what he and Engels had been talking and writing about for four decades. 524 00:51:51.980 --> 00:51:58.280 It is an unfinished chapter of startling brevity, five short paragraphs. 525 00:51:58.280 --> 00:52:05.440 In this chapter, Classes, Marx begins with the classical Ricardian triad, that the sources 526 00:52:05.440 --> 00:52:11.880 of income in the market economy are wages, profits and rents, and that the receivers 527 00:52:11.880 --> 00:52:19.960 Marks of such income constitute the three big classes of modern society, laborers, capitalists 528 00:52:19.960 --> 00:52:21.620 and landlords. 529 00:52:21.620 --> 00:52:23.260 So far so good. 530 00:52:23.260 --> 00:52:29.440 But then Marks adds that even England, the most highly and classically developed capitalist 531 00:52:29.440 --> 00:52:36.560 country, contains middle and intermediate strata, which even here obliterate lines of 532 00:52:36.560 --> 00:52:39.400 demarcation everywhere. 533 00:52:39.400 --> 00:52:56.780 Marx then begins the third paragraph of this seemingly climactic chapter. 534 00:52:56.780 --> 00:53:02.640 The first question to be answered is this, what constitutes a class? 535 00:53:02.640 --> 00:53:08.580 Indeed, he then adds that the reply to this question follows naturally from the reply 536 00:53:08.580 --> 00:53:31.580 On the second question, Marx states that, at first glance, the identity of incomes with their source of income is the same as that of the social class, and that the social class is the same as that of the social class, and that the social class is the same as that of the social class. 537 00:53:31.580 --> 00:53:41.080 On the second question, Marx states that at first glance the identity of incomes with their sources constitutes the answer. 538 00:53:41.080 --> 00:53:52.580 After all, workers earn wages from their labor, capitalists make profits from their capital, and landlords obtain rent from their land. 539 00:53:52.580 --> 00:53:57.580 But Marx quickly warns us that this simple answer will not do. 540 00:53:57.580 --> 00:54:04.860 For, however, from that standpoint, physicians and officials, for example, would also constitute 541 00:54:04.860 --> 00:54:11.580 two classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these 542 00:54:11.580 --> 00:54:16.940 groups receiving their revenues from one and the same source. 543 00:54:16.940 --> 00:54:22.700 The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which 544 00:54:22.700 --> 00:54:29.900 Which the division of social labor splits laborers, as well as capitalists and landlords. 545 00:54:29.900 --> 00:54:37.420 The latter, for example, into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners, 546 00:54:37.420 --> 00:54:39.540 and owners of fisheries. 547 00:54:39.540 --> 00:54:41.340 Precisely. 548 00:54:41.340 --> 00:54:43.540 Marx has said it very well. 549 00:54:43.540 --> 00:54:49.740 His cherished two-class monolith model, or three-class, if we throw in the allegedly 550 00:54:49.740 --> 00:54:56.940 and the largely declining feudal remnant, the landlord class, lies totally in ruins. 551 00:54:56.940 --> 00:55:05.180 Thus Marxian class theory, and therefore Marxism, lay destroyed by its creator's own hand. 552 00:55:05.180 --> 00:55:10.780 But if it is always darkest before the dawn, if the suffering of the oppressed class is 553 00:55:10.780 --> 00:55:17.420 greatest just before the apocalyptic revolutionary moment, we would expect Karl Marx to step 554 00:55:17.420 --> 00:55:25.100 in and triumphantly save the day. How does he do it? How does the drama unfold? In one 555 00:55:25.100 --> 00:55:30.960 of the great anti-climactic moments in the history of social thought, the manuscript 556 00:55:30.960 --> 00:55:38.720 ends with the lines we have just quoted. There is just a cryptic footnote from Engels. Here, 557 00:55:38.720 --> 00:55:41.840 the manuscript breaks off. 558 00:55:41.840 --> 00:55:47.740 The way Engels puts it implies that the master was struck down just as his pen was ready 559 00:55:47.740 --> 00:55:56.520 to wield the answer that would rescue the crumbling Marxian theory of class and placech it on solid foundations. 560 00:55:56.520 --> 00:56:05.240 But we know this was not true, for the breaking off occurred 16 years before Marx's death. 561 00:56:05.240 --> 00:56:09.520 Marx had ample time for his dramatic and conclusive answer. 562 00:56:09.520 --> 00:56:11.760 Why didn't he pursue it? 563 00:56:11.760 --> 00:56:18.080 We can only conclude that he couldn't, that he was stopped, that he realized that there 564 00:56:18.080 --> 00:56:26.280 was no answer, and that Marxism would henceforth have to rely on repetition and bluster to 565 00:56:26.280 --> 00:56:27.440 carry it through.