However, in their denunciation of Utopian Socialism and Communism as “violently oppos[ing] all political action on the part of the working class,” Marx and Engels demonstrate the fanaticism of their utopianism (57, 58). After all, the half measures expose communism as not inevitable but impracticable and impossible. It is one thing to espouse views about man’s historic class and economic struggles and predict the future—the inevitable workers’ revolution leading to an ultimate egalitarian nirvana. It is another to make the fantasy tangible and develop the institutions and mechanics to institute it. As Karl Popper noted, Vladmir “Lenin was quick to realize [that] Marxism was unable to help in matters of practical economics. ‘I do not know of any socialist who has dealt with these problems … there was nothing written about such matters in the Bolshevik textbooks, or in those of the Mensheviks.’… As Lenin admits, ‘there is hardly a word on the economics of socialism to be found in Marx’s work.…’”2
Man’s nature and history are not neatly defined through economic classes, whose members are easily categorized. To say that man exists in essentially one of two conditions—a bourgeois or capitalist/landlord class or a proletariat or working class, with the former perpetually exploiting the latter and the latter perpetually exploited by the former—is simply erroneous. French philosopher Raymond Aron observed half a century ago, “To declare flatly that a worker in a capitalist factory in France or the United States is by definition exploited and that a worker in a Soviet factory is not, is not an example of synthetic thought, it is pure nonsense. It is merely a convenient way of substituting verbal gymnastics for a painstaking investigation of reality.”3 Moreover, as I discussed in Liberty and Tyranny, applying this notion to American society makes obvious its incoherence. “[W]ho populates this [working class]? Is the twenty-five-year-old female paralegal who graduated from college, works at a large law firm, earns $85,000 a year, is unmarried and without children, lives in an apartment in Manhattan, and rarely attends church in the same [working class] as the fifty-seven-year-old male auto mechanic who did not graduate from high school, works at Pep Boys, earns $55,000 a year, lives in a row home in northeast Philadelphia, is married with four children, and attends church every Sunday?”4
In an absurd attempt to address the obvious fallacy of their post-feudalism, two-class construct, Marx and Engels describe bourgeois and proletariat subclasses, such as the petty bourgeois and weaker capitalists, who may even become wage earners, as well as the lower strata of the so-called middle class, including shopkeepers and tradesmen, etc. They are said to ultimately transition into the proletariat. As the subclasses increase the number of proletarians, bourgeois wealth increases and capital becomes more concentrated in fewer individuals. The proletarians work harder and become poorer.
Meanwhile, the never-ending capitalist pursuit of new technologies further impoverishes the proletariat. Eventually the middle class disappears, the proletariat rises up, and the bourgeois is vanquished—violently if necessary. Afterward, society is ruled by a dictatorship of the proletariat, which creates the conditions for the classless society. At some point, Marx and Engels predict, the state withers away. What is left is “an association in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all” (43).
The likelihood that the ruling proletariat might break into factions and internal power struggles, with would-be masterminds competing for control over the society; or that it might spawn additional subclasses; or that once in a position to exercise absolute power a dictator or supreme party would voluntarily surrender their power and wither away, are not even addressed in The Communist Manifesto. To have done so, however, would have required Marx and Engels to once again acknowledge the hopelessness of their utopia. But this is the history and nature of communist governments. In the end, they are totalitarian regimes. What withers away are individual liberties and rights.
The impact of Marx and Engels on mankind has been enormous and devastating. Notwithstanding one hundred years of communist tyranny and mass genocide, the fanatics cling to their utopia. Any failure is in man and the men who bastardize communism—Joseph Stalin, Mao Zedong, Fidel Castro, et al.—not in the dogma. True communism, they argue, has never been faithfully executed. After all, as Marx and Engels preached, the workers’ paradise is inevitable.
The two-class economic construct, with one class of people perpetually victimizing another class of people, is both crude and defective. The history of man and the nature of individuals are more complex than the simplistic materialist construct of communism and its radical egalitarianism. Yet Marx and Engels invented them and assigned them more value than the individual, ensuring communism’s inhumanity. There is infinite diversity among the individuals within the so-called bourgeois and proletariat—not only economic but religious, social, geographical, political, etc. There are also differences in character traits among individuals—psychological, emotional, intellectual, moral, etc. Moreover, some degree of disunity among individuals within the classes would be natural, as would some degree of harmony and cooperation between individuals in the two classes. In the end, however, when and how are we to know when material equality has been achieved? How is it actually defined and measured and by whom?
As for Marx and Engels’s condemnation of capitalism, industrialization through capitalism would lead to economic progress that improved the lifestyles of tens of millions in Europe and North America. Advances were made in manufacturing, transportation, agriculture, technology, etc. New products and services improved upon existing ones. New skills were learned as new job opportunities became available. For most, their standard of living improved as they earned more and their material needs and wants became more affordable. In America, automobiles, homes or apartments, running water, flush toilets, electricity, refrigerators, freezers, ovens, stoves, microwaves, air-conditioning, washing machines, dryers, televisions, telephones, etc. are commonplace. More wealth and opportunity have been created by and for more people than under any other economic model. In fact, rather than emancipate themselves from the system, the so-called proletariat helped shape it, benefit from it, contribute to it, and fight wars to defend it. The market system is imperfect, but it is the most perfect of economic systems.
The proletarians never rose up to overthrow their capitalist systems. Nor did they join together across national boundaries in a global revolution. They clearly rejected Marx’s rallying cry—“Workers of the world, unite!” (64) In fact, in 1989 in Poland, the communist regime was driven from power by popular strikes and protests led by Lech Walesa, leader of the anti-Soviet Solidarity union, among others. Soon Hungary, East Germany, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, and Romania would follow. In 1991, the Soviet Union itself collapsed, resulting in more countries throwing off communism. A form of autocratic pseudo-capitalism has been adopted in China, lest its people starve as in neighboring North Korea. Marx was also wrong when he predicted that larger and larger industrial enterprises would consume so much available capital that they would crowd out smaller businesses. In America, small businesses are vital to the economy. In 2010, 98.2 percent of businesses had fewer than 100 employees, 89.3 percent had fewer than 20 employees, 78.6 percent had fewer than 10 employees, and 60.8 percent had fewer than 5 employees.5
Having dealt briefly but adequately with Marx-Engels’s “prophecy,” what of historic materialism—that is, the proposition, generally stated, that history can only or primarily be viewed through the lens of material class struggle? Of course, economics and materialism have played a significant role in the course of history, but so have religion, war, nationalism, law, and politics. In some societies, they have been and are inextricably linked; in others, less so. The demarcations are not always evident or uncomplicated. Missing from The Communist Manifesto’s flawed arguments are the inalienable rights of the individual. Man is dehumanized and his actual identity is lost in the communist utopia. If he is “wealthy,” such as a landowner, business owner, or landlord, he is par
t of an evil group, whether he is evil or not. If he does not divest himself of his wealth, it will be confiscated from him, by force if necessary. If he is “not wealthy” or a laborer, he is part of a good group, whether he is good or not. Only the latter group survives. The individual’s fate is sealed by a fiction based largely on an economic classification assigned to him by political philosophers and, in the end, a workers’ paradise that is said to be inevitable.
This approach of predestined pigeonholing of the individual is closer to the utopias in the Republic, Utopia, and Leviathan than may appear on the surface. First, some of the distinctions: The Republic, Utopia, and Leviathan are top-down tyrannies, with wisdom concentrated among a handful of rulers—the omnipotent philosopher-king, the Prince, and the Sovereign, respectively; Marx and Engels describe their communist utopia as a bottom-up economic liberation movement in which “the people” become the rulers as a requisite to the state withering away. The Republic, Utopia, and Leviathan are not only grandiose ideals, but their authors also describe in mind-numbing detail the mechanics of their societies; Marx and Engels avoid the mechanics almost completely and condemn those who try to develop them, concentrating almost exclusively on the supposed historical, material, and political case for their dogma and its inescapability.
In all four utopias, the individual and his family are subservient to the state. Society, however, would be a far better place if only man would change his nature to accommodate the utopian ideal. Since, left to his own devices, man will not oblige, he must be made to do so. Yet out of this same riffraff, the masterminds are born—both the revolutionaries and the rulers. They rise above “the masses” for, unlike the rest, they are self-evidently altruistic, prudent, virtuous, and wise. Whether or not they know how to run their own lives, they know how to run the lives of others. Of course, the entire enterprise is immoral if not deranged.
The Communist Manifesto seethes with hate for the so-called bourgeoisie. Their freedom, families, and of course, property, must all be abolished. “This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way and made impossible” (38). “Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists” (39). “In this sense the theory of Communism may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property” (36). “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie.…” (42) “[I]n the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of bourgeois production.…” (42) However, the whole of society suffers at the masterminds’ hands, for in its purest form, communism demands a radical egalitarianism best described as an absolute equality of social conditions and an exactness of burdens and benefits. The entire society must be brought down to its lowest level. Individual sovereignty must be wrung from the human character; everyone becomes a slave to the state and there is no escape for anyone, including the vaunted and fabled proletarian. In every instance, communism requires the establishment of a police state, some more violent than others, because this utopia, like the others described earlier, is not only undesirable but impossible—and its pursuit is merciless and relentless.
Despite this record, communism’s utopian underpinnings and characteristics attract sympathetic attention, including in America and especially among the intelligentsia and malcontented, as it is romanticized as “social justice” and a “liberation” movement. Writing of these sympathizers, Aron observed, “Not only are they sacrificing the best part of the legacy of the Enlightenment—respect for reason, liberalism—but they are sacrificing it in an age when there is no reason for the sacrifice, at least in the West…”6
PART II
ON AMERICANISM
CHAPTER SIX
JOHN LOCKE AND THE NATURE OF MAN
JOHN LOCKE, WHO LIVED from 1632 to 1704, had an enormous influence on the American founding and, consequently, American society. As will become clear, he did not seek ways to destroy the sovereignty of the individual; he sought to understand and cultivate it. Unlike the utopians, who build insensate societies based on their own prejudices and fantasies, Locke explored the true nature of man, including his acquisition of knowledge and use of intuition, reason, and sensation. It is not necessary to agree with all of Locke’s conclusions to celebrate his extraordinary insight.
In An Essay Concerning Human Understanding1 (published in 1690), which is an extensive examination of the capacity of the human mind, including its limits—Locke dramatically distinguished his philosophical approach from the utopians. He explained: “Since it is the Understanding that sets Man above the rest of sensible Beings, and gives him all the Advantage and Dominion, which he has over them; it is certainly a Subject, even for its Nobleness, worth our Labour to enquire into. The Understanding, like the Eye, whilst it makes us see, and perceive all other Things, takes not notice of it self: And it requires Art and Pains to set it at a distance, and make it its own Object. But whatever be the Difficulties, that lie in the way of this Enquiry; whatever it be, that keeps us so much in the Dark to our selves; sure I am, that all the Light we can let in upon our own Minds; all the Acquaintance we can make with our own Understandings, will not only be very pleasant; but bring us great Advantage, in directing our Thoughts in search of other Things” (I, 1, 1).
For Locke, the individual has value, dignity, and significance. Rather than advance a dogma in search of a fantasy, Locke believed that the individual’s mind was worth exploring. As if lecturing the utopians, Locke wrote, “When we know our own Strength, we shall the better know what to undertake with hopes of Success: And when we have well survey’d the Powers of our own Minds, and made some Estimate what we may expect from them, we shall not be inclined either to sit still, and not set our Thoughts on work at all, in Despair of knowing any thing; nor on the other side question every thing, and disclaim all Knowledge, because some Things are not to be understood.…” (I, 1, 6)
“I thought that the first Step towards satisfying the several Enquiries, the Mind of Man was apt to run into, was, to take a Survey of our own Understandings, examine our own Powers, and see to what Things they were adapted. Till that was done, I suspected that we began at the wrong end, and in vain sought for Satisfaction in a quiet and secure Possession of Truths, that most concern’d us whilst we let loose our Thoughts into the vast Ocean of Being, as if all the boundless Extent, were the natural and undoubted Possessions of our Understandings, wherein there was nothing that escaped its Decisions, or that escaped its Comprehension. Thus Men, extending their Enquiries beyond their Capacities, and letting their Thoughts wander into the depths where they can find no sure Footing; ’tis no Wonder, that they raise Questions and multiply Disputes, which never coming to any clear Resolution, are proper to only continue and increase their Doubts, and to confirm them at last in a perfect Skepticism. Whereas were the Capacities of our Understanding well considered, the Extent of our Knowledge once discovered, and the Horizon found, which sets the boundary between the enlightened and the dark Parts of things; between what is and what is not comprehensible by us, Men would perhaps with less scruple acquiesce in the avow’d Ignorance of the one; and employ their Thoughts and Discourse, with more Advantage and Satisfaction in the other” (I, 1, 7).
Locke found that experience, uncovered through observation and right reason, is decisive to comprehending man. “Let us then suppose the Mind to be, as we say, white Paper, void of all Characters, without any Ideas. How comes it to be furnished? Whence comes it by that vast store, which the busy and boundless Fancy of Man has painted on it, with an almost endless variety? Whence has it all the materials of Reason and Knowledge? To this I answer, in one word, From Experience. In that, all our Knowledge is founded; and from that it ultimately derives it self. Our Observation employ’d either about external, sensible Objects; or about the internal Operations of our Minds, perceived and reflected on by our selves, is that, which supplies our Understandings with all the mat
erials of thinking. These two are the Fountains of Knowledge, from whence all the Ideas we have, or can naturally have do spring” (II, 1, 2).
Locke carried forward his scrutiny of man’s understanding with an anti-authoritarian approach to the civil society and governance. As if explicitly rejecting Thomas Hobbes’s view of human nature, where in the state of nature man is in perpetual fear and society must rely on an all-powerful sovereign for security, in The Second Treatise of Government2 (composed between 1685 and 1688), Locke asserts, “so that he that will not give just occasion to think that all government in the world is the product only of force and violence, and that men live together by no other rules but that of beasts, where the strongest carries it, and so lay a foundation for perpetual disorder and mischief, tumult, sedition, and rebellion (things that the followers of that hypothesis so loudly cry out against), must of necessity find out another rise of government, another original of political power.…” (1, 1)
Indeed, Locke took the view opposite of Hobbes’s. He argued, “To understand political power right, and derive it from its original, we must consider, what state all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons, as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of nature, without asking leave, or depending upon the will of any other man. A state also of equality, wherein all the power and jurisdiction is reciprocal, no one having more than another; there being nothing more evident, than that creatures of the same species and rank, promiscuously born to all the same advantages of nature, and the use of the same faculties, should also be equal one amongst another without subordination or subjection, unless the lord and master of them all should, by any manifest declaration of his will, set one above another, and confer on him, by an evident and clear appointment, an undoubted right to dominion and sovereignty” (2, 4). “This equality of men by nature … makes it the foundation of that obligation to mutual love amongst men, on which he builds the duties they owe one another, and from whence he derives the great maxims of justice and charity” (2, 5).
Ameritopia: The Unmaking of America Page 8
