Marxism Is Not Communism
Marxism isn’t what happened in Soviet Russia. Or China. Or Cuba. And definitely not North Korea. It’s what happened in the mind of Karl Marx. And not many have taken a careful look at what really went on inside there. It’s fascinating, especially when read from the middle of our modern consumeristic age that scorns utopic thinking and praises only materialism and meritocracy. Karl Marx has offered one of the few scholarly critiques of the economic and political force that is capitalism, even though it’s existed for centuries.
We live in an uber-capitalistic society. We have the veneer of social security, food stamps, and public schools. But in reality, we live in an age of consumerism turned up to 11. Ads everywhere. Free services nowhere. Big corporations. Mind-bogglingly rich oligarchs. Blindingly fast-paced investment transactions. Almost all consumer products mass produced by a few extremely powerful and wealthy Big Corporations.
The only reason we don’t notice this is because living standards and access to consumer goods has steadily (though marginally) improved over the last few decades. But at the exact same time, the wealth and capital of capitalists — yes, that’s the technical term for corporate CEOs (for whom the whole system of capitalism is designed to benefit) — has exploded. It’s gone off the charts. Multiplied thousands of times over.
And don’t try to argue that money is the only thing that motivates men to make amazing scientific discoveries, devise ingenious engineering solutions, or craft a product that succinctly meets human needs. That nonsense has been debunked by every psychologist who ever lived. Let that misogynistic fairytale die so we can finally free ourselves from a devious legend designed to imprison the poor in relatively abject poverty. Everyone knows that people want to achieve things more than own things. To be enriched and inspired instead of alienated and embittered.
Of course, there are some psychopathic sociopaths who are solely driven by hubris, power, and a sickening lust for wealth (looking at you, Carl Icahn). But these few twisted individuals shouldn’t be the ones determining the fate of millions of employees, neighbors, and communities. Even though capitalism says they should be able to do that. But I propose the apparently outlandish idea that you shouldn’t have your work life, your personal life, what you eat, what activities you can enjoy, how much you have to struggle to save up enough money to live on, all dictated by these aberrant humans. You should have some hand in deciding your own fate, no matter what you’ve been dealt at birth and in life.
Marx’s problem — if you could call it that — was that he was vague on solutions. This allowed Lenin to reinterpret Marxist Communism to allow for a small group of revolutionaries-turned-autocrats to rule. And this allowed Stalin — a thug, thief, and criminal who started out as an enforcer and ended up as a god — to morph that into a brutal dictatorship. And every Communist state since has been modeled after Stalin’s Russia. By a ruling elite who merely swapped out one type of moral posturing for another.
What we need is more than a faux democracy (a real one is actually designed to benefit the people, the citizens, everyone) or a return to feudalism disguised as social revolution (like what Lenin and a couple dozen other comrades pulled off on a snowy Russian night in 1917). We need an economy where the government doesn’t abet, cultivate, and dote upon a rich, parasitic aristocracy who get all the money while at the same time making all the mistakes. If they would just stop that, things would be a lot better. A higher tax rate is actually the least of our needs right now (though that definitely wouldn’t hurt the situation since basically all Big Corporations pay a 0% tax rate right now). What we need is a reorientation of our society away from the moneybags of Wall Street. And this can only be done by rooting out their proxy’s and henchmen from positions of political power. Then we can take the first few baby steps towards life, freedom, and social progress.
