True Purpose Of Marxism
From The Criticisms Of Marxism
Introduction
In my last piece, I had praised the first half of ‘The Communist Manifesto’ by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels and I still hold onto that view.
There are some positive aspects of Marxism like the concept of worker exploitation which most of us have suffered or continue to suffer.
We must use these parts of Marxism to solve such genuine issues, but Marxism in its entirety can’t be a solution.
From puzzling over how to implement Marxism, after going through the criticism of Marxism and giving it some thought, I have realised that Marxism is not meant to be implemented like I will outline below.
Criticism Of Marxism
Suppression Of Rights
Marxism pretends to be a response to worker exploitation by bourgeois (capitalists), who try to get maximum work done by paying minimum salaries.
To clarify, bourgeois doesn’t include only business owners, but anybody else, who enables bourgeois to exploit workers, like supervisors and managers.
However, we can see through the pretence, because even under Marxism, there’s exploitation of people including workers by way of seizing their children, women, partners, even prostitutes.
So, emancipation of workers from exploitation can’t be the real purpose of Marxism, because it replaces one form of exploitation with a more scary one.
So, then, what’s the true purpose of Marxism. Let’s keep digging to figure that out.
Problems With Implementation
Even after going through the entire Communist Manifesto, it’s difficult to visualise how exactly things will work. This lack of clarity leads to the suspicion that Marxism was never meant to work in the first place.
Marx says Capitalism will inevitably fall due to it being an unsustainable system. When that happens, it will be replaced by a transitory system: ‘the dictatorship of the proletariat (workers)’.
This dictatorship will seize the property of the bourgeois and distribute it to the workers.
Now, in addition to lack of clarity, lack of a guarantee of its implementation rears its head.
Just like a democracy can’t be practicably run by all the people, even this dictatorship will need to be representative in nature.
A concrete example of this is Xi Jinping’s dictatorship in China. Does he not have the power to seize all bourgeois wealth in his country and distribute it to the workers?
He does. Then, why doesn’t he use it? Because Communism that is supposed to succeed this dictatorship is not the true goal.
The true goal is the establishment of the dictatorship, supposedly of the proletariat.
But, according to Marx, who’s a bourgeois and who belongs to the proletariat is subject to change. If a bourgeois loses all his wealth, he becomes part of the proletariat. Similarly, if a worker saves money, starts a business and becomes rich, he becomes bourgeois.
So, when a dictator takes over, ostensibly on behalf of the proletariat, seizes all the wealth of the bourgeois but decides not to distribute the wealth, he becomes the new bourgeois.
Is there a reason why the dictator might not distribute the wealth? We have seen that the goal of Marxism is not Communism but the dictatorship.
Nobody becomes a dictator just for the sake of it. There has to be some other reason and that reason is the seizure of bourgeois wealth.
So, Marxism is a means for a dictator to topple the existing bourgeois and place himself in their stead.
Unrealistic Assumptions
Marxism makes assumptions that are too naive to be honest:
A dictatorship of the proletariat will be established. The dictator will honestly seize bourgeois wealth and distribute it amongst the workers without getting tempted to retain it himself.
After this distribution and anything else the dictatorship needs to do to establish Communism, it will do those things and then disband.
Once established, Communism will be perpetual without needing the dictatorship that preceded it.
Potential Solutions
Democratic socialists and social democrats don’t think a class conflict or revolution is necessary. In other words, violence is not necessary. Capitalism can be converted to Communism by peaceful means.
Anarchists don’t think the transitory dictatorship is necessary. They are honest, but their version of anarchic Communism can’t be desirable.
Conclusion
The criticism of Capitalism seen in Marxist views are correct but the solution of Communism is worse and hence must be rejected.
Like we have seen in the section above, we need a middle ground to solve the problems of Capitalism without visiting the nightmares of Communism.
How would that work in practice? The problem with Capitalism is worker exploitation through overwork and underpay.
The solution in Marxism to seize all bourgeois wealth is extreme and unworkable. All of this wealth can’t be distributed amongst the workers.
Whatever capital was employed in paying for jobs needs to remain in place. Only its control shifts from the bourgeois to the State.
But is the State capable of running those businesses as ably as the bourgeois and their agents?
The State can always hire those bourgeois and their agents as workers to run the industries, but will they have the same motivation to perform as well as before?
A better way would be to increase worker wages to the maximum, while ensuring that the bourgeois make the minimum profit that will motivate them enough to continue their businesses.
As a real world example, consider that I learnt in my Civil Engineering degree in college that an ethical profit of only 10% must be included in estimates for projects.
However, the builder who built the house we live in now had given an estimate of 2 million rupees, which he later escalated to 4 million rupees.
Estimates don’t change so drastically unless the objective is to increase the profit.
This makes his profit in excess of 50%. It’s such exploitation of workers and customers that the bourgeois must not be allowed to do by way of strict laws and such.
Then, we can minimise the evils of Capitalism by using a watered-down version of Communism, where, instead of redistributing all bourgeois wealth, we redistribute only some of it, so the worker is better off, without eliminating the bourgeois who gives him the work. I hope to see this in action sometime.
Reference
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Marxism
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