Even in the latter stages of Socialism, Lenin visualized a world without courts, lawyers, judges, rulers, elected representatives or even policemen. All these would be swept down into the limbo of forgotten and useless appendages which characterized the old order of decadent capitalism. Lenin said the spontaneous homogeneity of the socialized masses would make all the machinery of the old order superfluous. He felt that the new society would even change human nature until resistance to the communal society would become “a rare exception and will probably be accompanied by such swift and severe punishment (for the armed workers are men of practical life, not sentimental intellectuals, and they will scarcely allow anyone to trifle with them), and very soon the necessity of observing the simple, fundamental rules of everyday social life in common will have become a habit. The door will then be open for the transition from the first phase of communism to the higher phase (full Communism).”{46}
The Classless, Stateless Society Under Full Communism
All Marxists fervently hope that the new society will produce the changes in human nature which are necessary before full Communism can become a reality. Individuals must forget that there was ever a time when income could be secured from the mere ownership of property or from productive labor. In other words, wages will be abolished. They must forget that some people once received very large incomes while others received small ones. They must lose any hope of a graduated pay-scale for differences in productivity or service. They must forget all about differences in skill, training, and mental or physical abilities. They must come around to the notion that, if man does the best he can in the best type of work for which he is fitted, he is just as good and just as deserving of income as any other man regardless of differences in productivity and output.
This is the Communist promise that, “Each will produce according to his ability and each will receive according to his need.” He must give up his old profit-motive incentive and become socially minded so that he will work as hard as he can for the benefit of society as a whole and at the same time be content to receive, as a reward for his work, an amount of income based on his needs in consumption.
Marx and Engels presumed that under such a system the output of production would be so tremendous that they could dispense with markets, money and prices. Commodities would be stockpiled at various central places, and all individuals who worked would be entitled to help themselves on the basis of their needs. Marx and Engels felt there would be no particular incentive to take more than was needed at any one time because, due to the superabundance of commodities, the worker could replenish his desires at will. Services were likewise to be dispensed at convenient places and individuals could call for these services as they felt they were needed.
Under these pleasant circumstances, the Marxist writers explain, the government machinery of the State will no longer be necessary:
“Only Communism renders the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is no one to be suppressed—‘no one’ in the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic struggle with a definite section of the population. We are not Utopians (believing that society can function on a sublime level of perfection), and we do not in the least deny the possibility and inevitability of excesses on the part of individual persons, nor the need to suppress such excesses. But, in the first place, no special machinery, no special apparatus of repression is needed for this: this will be done by the armed people itself, as simply and as readily as any crowd of civilized people, even in modern society, parts a pair of combatants or does not allow a woman to be outraged. And, secondly, we know that the fundamental social cause of excesses… is the exploitation of the masses, their want and their poverty. With the removal of this chief cause, excesses will inevitably begin to ‘wither away.’ We do not know how quickly and in what succession, but we know that they will wither away. With their withering away, the state will also wither away.”{47}
It is significant that Communist theory treats the proletariat as though it were a unique branch of the human race. The proletariat is assumed to be a special breed which would almost automatically blossom into pleasant, efficient social-economic living if it could just be liberated from oppressive government. The government is presumed to be nothing more than the tool of an oppressive class of capitalists and consequently, if the capitalist class were destroyed, the need for any kind of government would be obliterated. The Communist leaders have always felt confident that when the proletariat takes over it will not want to oppress anyone and therefore the need for government will be nonexistent.
It is also worthy of note that Lenin wanted the proletariat to be an “armed people.” This prospect did not frighten Lenin at all. He had unmitigated confidence that the members of the proletariat would never abuse their power as the capitalists had done. Furthermore, Lenin assumed that the proletariat had the instinctive capacity to recognize justice on sight. Not only would they use their weapons to put down any nonsocial acts in the community by spontaneous “mass action,” but Lenin believed they would genuinely and heroically suppress any selfish, nonsocial tendencies in themselves. They would have acquired the “habit” of living in a communal social order and would have grown “accustomed to observing the elementary conditions of social existence without force and without subjection.”
Lenin then says that with the machinery of government gone and with the Communist pattern of a classless, stateless society established throughout the world, finally “it becomes possible to speak of freedom!”{48}
CHAPTER FOUR
A Brief Critique of the Communist Approach to World Problems
The modern student of history and economics will have little difficulty discovering for himself where Communist theory departs from the most elementary aspects of reality.
Disciples of Marx look upon the theories of Communism as the most penetrating analysis of history ever made by man, but many scholars look upon the whole Communist framework as more or less the product of the times in which Marx and Engels lived. The writings of these men clearly reflect a studied attempt to reconcile the five great influences of their generation, which they tried to bring together in one single pattern of thought. The influences which left their mark on the minds of Marx and Engels were:
First, the violent economic upheaval of their day. This is believed to have made Marx and Engels over-sensitive to the place of economics in history.
Second, the widespread popularity of the German philosopher, Georg Wilhelm Hegel. His theory of “Dialectics” was adopted by Marx and Engels with slight modification to explain all phenomena of nature, the class struggle and the inevitable triumph of a future proletariat society.
Third, the anti-religious cynicism of Nineteenth Century Materialism. This led them to try to explain everything in existence in terms of one single factor—matter. They denied intelligent design in the universe, the existence of God, the divinity of religion and the moral precepts of Judaic-Christian teachings.
Fourth, the social and economic ideals of Utopian Communism. Marx and Engels decided they wanted a communal society, but they felt it had to be a controlled society; they therefore abandoned the brotherhood principle of the Utopians and declared that Communism could only be initiated under a powerful dictatorship.
Fifth, the revolutionary spirit of the Anarchists. Marx and Engels promised two things which appealed to the Anarchists—the use of violent revolution to overthrow existing powers, and eventually the creation of a classless, stateless society.
It is because of these five important influences that the student of Communism will find it to be a vast conglomerate, designed; it would seem, to be all things to all people.
Communism as a By-Product of the Industrial Revolution
Marx and Engels were born in the midst of the Industrial Revolution. Before this revolution four out of every five citizens were farmers, but by the time Marx and Engels were ready for college the mass migration of farmers to the industrial centers was reaching the proportions o
f a flood tide. The resulting concentration of the population created slum-ridden cities which, in turn, contributed to disease, violence and vice. It was a chain-reaction which grew out of the amazing new machine-age. Pioneers of the Industrial Revolution looked upon machines as the pounding, pumping, inanimate monsters that would eventually liberate mankind from the slavery of “bare-subsistence” economics, but the negative critics saw in them only the problems they created—dislocation of the population, maladjustment for the individual, the family and the community, and finally, the inhuman treatment of the men, women and children who served industry.
Thus, Marx and Engels, like many others, felt a violent reaction to the times in which they lived. Because it was a period of economic upheaval, perhaps it is understandable that they should have reached the conclusion that economic forces constitute the cruel and ruthless iron hand which has guided the course of all human history. It is at this point that we begin our critique of Communist theory.
The Communist Interpretation of History
Fallacy 1—The first fallacy of Communism is its attempt to over-simplify history. Marx and Engels attempted to change history from a fluid stream, fed by human activities from millions of tributaries, into a fixed, undeviating, pre-determined course of progress which could be charted in the past and predicted for the future on the basis of a single, simple criterion—economics. Obviously economics have played a vital and powerful role in human history but so have climate, topography, access to oceans and inland waterways, mechanical inventions, scientific discoveries, national and racial affinities, filial affection, religion, desire for explanatory adventure, sentiments of loyalty, patriotism and a multitude of other factors.
A number of modern Communists have admitted that history is molded by all of these different influences, but they have insisted that Marx and Engels intended to include all of them in their Economic Determinism; because all of these things directly or indirectly affect the economic life of humanity. However, the writings of Marx and Engels fail to reflect any such interpretation. Even if they did, the modern Marxist would still be in difficulty because if Economic Determinism is intended to include every influence in life then the Communist formula for interpreting history would be: “Everything determines everything.” As a basis for interpreting history this would be absurd.
Another group of modern Communists has tried to extricate Marx and Engels from the narrow confines of Economic Determinism by suggesting that economic circumstances do not absolutely determine the course of human history but merely condition men to follow after a particular trend in social development.{49} But this, of course, while coming closer to the truth, presumes a variable element of free will in the making of history which Marx and Engels emphatically denied. In fact, Economic Determinism in the absolute, fixed and undeviating sense is the very foundation for the prediction of Marx and Engels that society must follow an inevitable course of development from capitalism to socialism and from socialism to Communism. This is what they meant when they said of capitalism: “Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.”{50}
Furthermore, when any modern Marxist attempts to argue that the course of human progress is not fixed and inevitable he destroys the entire justification for the Communist Revolution—that violent upheaval which Marx said was the “one way of simplifying, shortening, concentrating the death agony of the old society.”{51} There is no excuse for the use of lethal violence to concentrate and simplify the death of the old society unless the death of that society is, in fact, inevitable. That was the heart of Marx’s argument. His excuse for revolution falters if it is admitted that the death of the old society is merely one of several possibilities and not necessarily inevitable. Likewise, his excuse is exploded if it is shown that the present society is not dying at all but is actually more robust than ever before and seems to be contributing more to the welfare of mankind with each passing generation.
So the Communist interpretation of history on the basis of Economic Determinism turns out to be a weak and brittle reed even in the hands of its defenders. The disciples of Marx have recognized its weaknesses and tried to patch it up but the patches have only created new splinters in the already frail, dry straws of Communist logic.
Fallacy 2—Marx and Engels not only over-simplified history, but they relied on a second fallacy in order to justify the first. They said that the human mind is incapable of moral free will in the sense that it makes a choice in directing the course of history. Marx and Engels believed that material circumstances force the human mind to move in a certain direction and that man does not have the free will to resist it.
This sounds like the teachings of the Nineteenth Century Mechanistic Materialists who claimed that the brain is somewhat like a passive wax tablet which receives impressions from the outside world and then responds automatically to them; but Marx and Engels did not want to be identified with this school of thought. They therefore said the run-of-the-mill materialists had made a mistake. The brain is not passive like a wax tablet but is an active embodiment which not only receives impressions from the outside world but has the ability to digest those impressions through a process of analysis and synthesis. Then came the joker.
They declared that after the brain has digested its impressions of the outside world it always decides to do whatever is necessary for the preservation of the individual in the light of material circumstances. In their own subtle way they were simply saying that man is the victim of his material environment. By a slightly different line of thinking they had reached exactly the same conclusions as the mechanistic materialists whom they had repudiated.
It will be recalled from the previous chapter that Marx and Engels identified the thing we call “free will” as being nothing more nor less than a conscious awareness of the materialistic forces which impel the individual to act. This conscious awareness of “natural necessity” makes men think they are choosing a course of action, when, as matter of fact, they are simply watching themselves follow the dictates of material circumstances.
Once again it will be seen that Marx and Engels over-simplified. The complexities of human behavior cannot be explained simply in terms of “necessary” responses to material circumstances. Often men defy material circumstances to satisfy numerous other motivations such as the desire for self-expression, the moving power of a religious conviction, the drive of a moral sense of duty, the satisfying of personal pride or the realizing of a personal ambition.
This fallacy—the refusal to recognize man’s moral agency and the power to make a choice is fatal to Marxism. It is the initial error on which a multitude of other fallacies are built. When Communism says the human mind is the absolute victim of material circumstances and that human history is merely the unavoidable response of human beings to physical conditions, it must demonstrate these claims with examples. Note how this fallacy compounds itself as Marx and Engels attempt to use it in explaining the structure of society.
The Communist Explanation of Society
Fallacy 3—First of all, Marx and Engels said the form of society is automatically determined by the economic conditions which motivate the dominant class in any particular age. As Marx put it: “Are men free to choose this or that form of society for themselves? By no means. Assume a particular state of development in the productive forces of man and you will get a particular form of commerce and consumption. Assume a particular stage of development in production, commerce and consumption and you will have a corresponding social structure, a corresponding organization of the family, of orders or of classes, in a word, a corresponding civil society. Presuppose a particular civil society and you will get particular political conditions which are only the official expression of civil society.”{52}
It seems inconceivable that Marx and Engels could have allowed wishful thinking to so completely obscure the facts of history that they would have convinced themselves that when a certain type of production exists a certain type of society
must exist also. In ancient times the mode of production remained the same for centuries while society ran the gamut of almost continuous change. Historians and economists have pointed out that if history demonstrates anything at all it is the fact that there is no direct relation between mode of production and the form society will take. Let us see why.
The Origin of the State
Fallacy 4—Marx and Engels believed that the State (any form of sovereign government) is an unnecessary appendage to society which the dominant class creates to forcibly preserve its interests and suppress the uprising of the exploited class. Marx and Engels did not believe any government in any age represented the interests of all of the people or even the welfare of a majority of the people. In the Communist Manifesto they said: “The executive (branch) of the modern State is but a Committee for managing the common affair of the whole bourgeoisie (property class).”{53}
Sociologists, psychologists, historians and political scientists point out that not by any stretch of imagination can government be called an appendage to society because it is the very heart of group living. This is true because society cannot exist unless it is governed by some degree of authority, and the presence of authority in society constitutes “government.” Man is by nature a social and political being, and therefore the creation of governments to direct the members of the community toward their common welfare is simply an inherent expression of the very nature of man. Therefore a stateless society (a civilization without a government) which Marx and Engels vigorously advocated would be an unorganized mob. It would be no society at all.
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