The Communists. All socialist thought centers around the idea that private property is somehow an unacceptable social anachronism and should be abolished in whole or in part.
When we think of modern socialism and the work done originally by anarchists, we are unavoidably moved in the direction of the communists who took over from the anarchists and actually became, both in purpose and in formula, the leading movers of the entire socialist movement during the 19th century.
and of course we cannot think of the communists without thinking of the founder of modern socialism or communism, Karl Marx.
There have been many biographies written about Marx and it is not my purpose to go into that phase of his background.
What I'm concerned with here is the development of socialist thought and the development of the communist movement
as a means for promoting and expanding socialism.
The first thing that we should keep in mind is that the idea of modern socialism was originally
set forth by anarchists who saw, as they looked at the world, it at least seemed to them that
the greatest evil that we had was the evil of private ownership of property.
And they saw in the way that they looked at things that private property was only possible
because governments existed and therefore governments created a privileged class of
people that had property.
Ergo, the proper procedure would be to get rid of the government at which point you would
automatically get rid of private property.
Karl Marx began as an anarchist.
He was first influenced by the writings of Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, one of the foremost
anarchists of the first part of the nineteenth century. However, Marx soon broke with Proudhon
because he saw the inescapable flaw of anarchy. In fact, I can sum up Marx's position very
Well, by simply quoting from him, he made a statement that pretty well abolished the
rationale for the anarchist movement when he said, the owners of property will never
give it up without a struggle. What he was drawing attention to was the fact that if
the anarchists were successful in their endeavors to get rid of the state, this would make no
No difference whatever insofar as property is concerned. Marx detected that private ownership
of property precedes the state and would exist if there were no state at all, and therefore
it was not the state that caused private property even though the state had become an instrument
of the private property owners. Instead, Marx counseled a revolution, not one aimed at abolishing
To understand Marxism, and that means to understand communism, you have to recognize that there
are essentially four major points in the doctrine. And none of these points were original with
Marx. Marx simply picked up these ideas from various people that he had read, and he wove
them together into a new fabric, or what appeared to be new, in at least a strange and unique
way. Marx is not original when it comes to either economic or social theory. However,
he does have a degree of originality when it comes to political action. Politically
Economically speaking, Marx is very shrewd. Economically speaking, Marx leaves a great
deal to be desired. Although he has been hailed as a great economist, in point of fact his
economic theories will not hang together. He is very faulty here, although many people
as yet do not see that. Anyway, the four points within Marxism would be these. One, the abolition
of Private Property. This is a major objective. That is to say, the abolition of the private
ownership of property. And Marx got that idea, of course, fundamentally from Proudhon, an
anarchist, but he also has a debt of gratitude to be paid here to such men as Plato and others
who predate Proudhon and who had also argued that private property is the source of so
so much mischief and discord and inharmony.
The next point in the Marxian catalog of desirable goals would be the abolition of the family.
Marx viewed children as, properly speaking, the products of society rather than the products
of individual, particularly individual bourgeois families, where he thought the children were
raised very, very badly, and he thought that there should be professionals raising the
and the Children. This is an idea that he actually took from an early anthropologist
who had done some remarkable studies in anthropology and who had concluded that as long as you
have families, the children will be raised in a climate where private ownership of property
is important. I am referring to Lewis Morgan, who Marx mentions in his note and in his writing,
and to Morgan's pioneer study called Ancient Society. In here, Morgan fairly well demonstrated
that the family itself is sort of the matrix of the idea of private property. And therefore,
as Marx saw it, if you intend to abolish private ownership of property, you're going to have
to abolish the family. There must be nothing that comes between the individual, the family,
and the State Ideal. The third point within the Marxian lexicon
would be the labor theory of value. This is the idea that all value and indeed ownership
itself is a derivative of labor, and Marx sees this as a necessary moral justification
for the kind of thing that he proposes. Believing as he did that all value springs from labor,
It seemed to him that individuals such as capitalists or employers or the management team as such
really wasn't doing any work. They were simply engaged in profiting as a result of the labor
expended by others. And consequently, since he saw value as a derivative only of labor,
it seemed to him that exploitation was the common rule of the worker and therefore all
All of the earnings should go to the worker and he has no place for the capitalist or
the businessman. Actually, he is a little bit ambivalent here because what he says in
Volume 1 of Das Kapital, he contradicts later in Volume 3 where he will allow the businessman
some justification and possibly even a wage, but it would be a minor one because although
he will now confess that businessmen also do a little labor, their labor is really unimportant,
but he's willing to pay them for whatever it is that they do of value.
The fourth point is the one that has confused many people. It is called dialectic materialism,
and whereas Marx borrowed the labor theory of value from the classical economists, notably
from Jeremy Bentham and David Ricardo, when he came to dialectical materialism, he borrowed
This is from Hegel. Hegel, of course, was a Platonist, a man who was profoundly influenced
by the early Greek philosopher, and the manner in which he came to his position respecting
dialectic materialism is somewhat oblique. Marx was trying to figure out how to justify
his theories relating to the future of the world in a commune, a world commune, and Hegel
explained in something that he wrote, which he called the dialectics, how ideas are fashioned
from both what was called—the word escapes me for a moment, but I'll think of it. Anyway,
there is a kind of an evolutionary process by means of which there is first a body of
of Thought, which is then met by a second body of thought, and the two collide creating
a third body of thought, and this process apparently goes on indefinitely according
to Hegelian theory. Marx picked it up and thought he saw within it the concept of the
There is justification that there is such a thing as historic determinism. And as he saw it, the entire explanation of economics would fall into this idea of historical predeterminism, and therefore he was able to say, as a result of his theories relating to dialectic materialism, that it is historically inevitable that communism is the wave of the future, and that one day we will all be communists.
Now, these are essentially the four points, the abolition of private ownership of property,
the abolition of the family, the labor theory of value, and dialectic materialism. None
of these, as I pointed out, were original with Marx. He borrowed heavily from others
and he wove them together and that became the fabric of new world socialism or communism.
Now the place where Marx was original related to his political theories. He saw the world
divided between two dominant classes, the bourgeoisie, who were the property owners,
and the proletariat, who had nothing but the shirts on their back. And there is a parallel
line stretching around the earth between the upper and the lower class. As he viewed it,
the government was the instrument of the bourgeoisie. And his idea, rather than abolishing the government,
The government was first to organize the proletariat and have the proletariat execute a kind of
end run in which it comes around above the line or breaks through the line, takes over
the government, and then the government becomes the instrument of a new ruling class, the
proletariat.
Once the proletariat is in a position of power, it will use its power to extract from the
The Property Owners, all of their property, notably what he calls bourgeois property,
and then once all of the property is gathered in the hands of the government, then you could
turn around and the government would simply redistribute to the proletariat and to everybody
because at this time you would have a classless society because everybody, excepting the people
in government of course who are excluded, everybody in society generally would be a
a member of the proletariat, it would be a working class society in total, and then they
would receive according to their need. You remember the famous Marxist idea, from each
according to ability to each according to his need.
Now Marx is paired in his career by the works of Friedrich Engels, who worked with him fairly
Firstly, Engels was a mill owner and a man who had resources and he assisted Marx decidedly
in his efforts to write and develop his theories and to see that they were promoted.
Marx also became a very active organizer of labor unions.
He felt that the whole future of communism related to the labor movement.
In fact, if you are familiar with his writings, you will note that he is constantly exhorting
everyone that is the workers of the world to unite.
This is exactly the idea that he wanted to bring about, and it was the union movement
that he saw as the organization that would help to make this happen.
He was disappointed here because the labor unions that he assisted in organizing, he
was particularly active in setting up one of the early unions in Germany. These various
labor unions, although they were theoretically a part of an international classless movement,
nonetheless took on national characteristics whenever pressures arose. And Marx became
increasingly disgusted and discouraged with the working class because they would not put
aside their racial and their nationalistic prejudices and join in one great movement
to overthrow the hated capitalist.
He became increasingly disgruntled here.
His dialectic materialism didn't seem to be working out, and incidentally, the words that
escaped me a moment ago relate to the terms thesis and antithesis and synthesis.
I couldn't remember that for a moment, but these were the three steps in the creating
of dialectical materialism.
But they didn't seem to work out for Marx.
didn't seem to go the way he wanted it to, and he finally died a very discouraged and
a very bitter man. He was followed in the communist hierarchy by two other people named
Lenin and Trotsky, and they struggled for a long time to get themselves in a position
of prominence where they would be the major leaders of the entire socialist front. They
They failed again and again. In process, they sought repeatedly to bring off revolutions
in Russia to overthrow the Tsar. They had any number of abortive efforts in Russia to
topple the government, and every one of them failed. Finally, Lenin was exiled from Russia
and fled to Switzerland, where he took refuge. So his actions there were not successful at
at first, and his actions also in organizing all of the socialists were not successful
either. In fact, Lenin was having a very difficult time of it. The anarchists during this period
were throwing bombs and getting most of the attention.
But finally, shortly after the turn of the century into the twentieth century, Lenin
and Trotsky cooperated in holding a major conference in London and in that same year
And here another one at Brussels, and on these occasions they did bring together a great
many people of the socialist persuasion, and the result was the forming of a new international
with Lenin at the head of it. It is here that Lenin got the name the Bolshevik because
he won majority support, and that is what the word means. Some people suppose that it's
It's a special type of communism. It merely indicates the majority leader of the communist
movement and Trotsky became known as the Menshevik because he had the minority support. However,
the Russian Revolution was still a long way off and to everyone's surprise, and I presume
to the surprise of some of you who are listening to me now, the first of the communist type
Revolutions did not occur in Russia, although that is where most of the publicity has been
centered. It actually occurred in the Western Hemisphere in Mexico. It began really in 1910
with the overthrow of the Diaz government by a politician named Madero. Madero and Diaz
was clashed and in the ensuing discord and inharmony and confusion that developed a trio
of communists, well at least two of them were communists and one was something of an opportunist,
put the pieces together to organize the party of the revolution in Mexico. The three to
whom I refer were a man named Zapata and then a politician named Carranza and Pancho Villa,
These three put together the party of the revolution, which I might advise is still the only political party in Mexico, and Mexico is still following the ideas that they set down, excepting, of course, since that time they have had to modify their position.
An interesting point which should be brought forward here is this, while Marx was to see
the failure of the anarchist movement from a practical point of view.
In other words, he saw that if the anarchists were to be successful and government would
cease to exist, nothing would happen as far as property is concerned because human beings
will never give up their property without a struggle and therefore your property situation
would remain the same. And since the socialist revolution is to be a disruption of the property
relationship, the destruction of the government would not bring that about. Therefore, Marx
recognized the government as the tool that could be used to bring about this type of
reorientation of the property. But the interesting thing is that the anarchists were able to
detect the flaw in Marxism. And Marx couldn't see his flaw, but he could see theirs, and
The anarchists pointed out to many communists, and to Marx himself on at least one occasion,
And even if Marx were successful and he got the proletariat organized and the proletariat
went in and took over and extracted the property from the then owners, it would only be a matter
of time before those people in power having the property now under their control would
be acting just like the previous owners.
And therefore you would not have a change at all in the management of property.
You would simply take it out of the hands of certain property owners, transfer it into
the hands of other property owners, and the exact situation would be the same.
A point, incidentally, which has been borne out with all of the communist revolutions
beginning with the ones in Mexico.
Although Marx's ideas have often been politically and even militarily successful, they have
never attained his economic objective.
And since the entire movement of socialism is fundamentally geared to an economic objective,
in that sense, Marxism has been a failure from the beginning, a point which many modern
Marxists now recognize and they pay scant lip service anymore even to Marx. So this
was what happened in Mexico when the Carranza government took over. Carranza became the
and the First President under the Revolutionary Party.
He instituted a kind of agrarian reform and the very ideas that Marx had recommended only
to find the economy coming apart.
Everything fell into a terrible depression, and it is only in the last, oh, possibly twenty
years that Mexico has been moving away from the economic disaster that was imposed upon
by the communist theory that was imposed on them from the top. Meanwhile, after Mexico went communist, which it still is today, although we have no real problem with them because they are moving more and more towards a free market and more and more towards private ownership of property, the second major communist revolution occurred in China. I say the second. I'm speaking in terms of chronology and not in importance.
of the Manchu Dynasty. However, the new Republic of China founded by Sun Yat-sen lasted only
two years. The Manchus were engaged in a little conspiracy with one of the leading figures
of the Sun Yat-sen regime to be reestablished, and Sun Yat-sen made the discovery that this
was happening, and the result was an internecine war that broke out in China between the forces
of the World, The Theory of Money and Credit of the World, The Theory of Money and Credit
to Japan for Refuge. While there in Japan, he selected the two men who were to carry
on communist ideology in China after him, and they were Chiang Kai-shek and Mao Zedong.
And for your information, in case you have forgotten it, Chiang was later to be sent
up to Moscow to study under Lenin, and this is Chiang Kai-shek, the man that we have backed
in his opposition to Mao, who is supposed to be the communist—actually, they both were
communists, and it's of interest, I think, that Chang married the daughter of Sun Yat-sen
and Mao married the cousin, so that actually, in a sense, it was just one big family.
There isn't time in so brief a discussion to get into the details. The major communist
This revolution that we all think of, of course, is the one that occurred in Russia in 1917.
What happened was that there was a palace revolt right after Christmas in the early
part of 1917, and a small band of radicals seized important offices in the palace in
St. Petersburg and then sent a telegram to the Tsar who was visiting with the troops
on the Russian Western Front suggesting to the Tsar that he abdicate.
And the interesting thing is that he did so.
Many people have felt that the Tsar was overthrown by force.
Actually he resigned.
He resigned his post, which is probably something he didn't have to do.
And as a matter of fact, the group of radicals that had taken over these key posts were not
at all prepared for this.
They hadn't imagined that the Tsar would abdicate, although they had demanded it in
a spirit of bravado, and so they found themselves in a position where they were trying to reorganize
a new government, and it was at this time that Lenin returned from Switzerland and offered
his services in helping to establish Marxism from the top, but the new people there, a
Prince Levov, spelled L-V-O-V, and a man named Kerensky, did not want to try to put in Marx
from the Top. They wanted to have a democratic type of government, such as we have in the
United States. And this caused Lenin a great deal of anguish, and he broke with them and
went out and organized the faithful into a second revolution. And this is the so-called
October Revolution, the ones that the Russians commemorate each year, which is the one that
Put Lenin in Power. Lenin overthrew the Kerensky regime and not the Tsar, and chased Kerensky
from the country. Kerensky fled to the United States and lived here, primarily in New York,
although he did travel around and lecture in various places, including Stanford, on
the glories of socialism and the evil of communism. He died, I believe, in 1970, in the first
in the first part of the year. Meantime, of course, under Lenin, the communists gained
ultimate control of Russia, and then when Lenin died, although Trotsky was slated to
be the next in command, Stalin seized power. As Secretary of the Communist Party, he knew
where the bodies were buried, and there is some evidence that he kept his own spade and
Pitchfork Andy for just such occasions. Anyway, he sent an execution squad to get Trotsky
out of the way. Trotsky's friends found out about it and intervened and managed to ship
Trotsky to the United States. He came into New York, but they sent for him from Mexico
where some of his friends were having difficulty with Marxian economic theory, and so he went
down to Mexico to assist them there, and as I'm sure you remember, he was given protective
custody.
He was put in jail, as a matter of fact, to safeguard his life, but the execution squad
found him even there, and he was executed in Mexico where he was trying to help establish
the communist regime there.
There have been, of course, other communist takeovers, the one in Cuba being perhaps one
One of the last or one of the latest that we are very familiar with, although there
has now been a rather a unique breakthrough in that a communist regime has arisen in Chile,
in South America, by means of an election. So far as I know, that's the first time that's
happened that a communist would come to full power without anything at his disposal but
and Electioneering Process.
Anyway, the communists are very interesting people.
In a presentation as brief as this, I have only touched very quickly on a number of points.
I suggest that you read more about it.
It makes fascinating reading.