Marxism: Philosophy and Economics (1985) Thomas Sowell

Marxism & Its Impact Explained By Former Marxist Thomas Sowell

“Much of the intellectual legacy of Marx is an anti-intellectual legacy. It has been said that you cannot refute a sneer. Marxism has taught many — inside and outside its ranks — to sneer at capitalism, at inconvenient facts or contrary interpretations, and thus ultimately to sneer at the intellectual process itself.” Marxism holds at its basis the idea that there is exploitation of labor. All capital is purported to be an output of past labor — it does not consider the roles played by entrepreneurs or innovators in any way in the system. Marx supposed that the revolution of the proletariat was unable to be avoided, due to 1. increasing misery of the proletariat via increasing efficiency created by the process of competition and innovation, requiring to get more out of workers and 2. economic crises “inherent” in capitalism (as Sowell says is inherent in any economic system), leading to the social revolt of the oppressed proletariat (not underconsumption by the masses ruining markets). Marxian “dialectics” looks at the interacting processes, an ever chicken-and-egg scenario, and the “tensions” of these processes that led to transformation (I.e. from Feudalism to Capitalism). Marx read Epicurus, a Greek philosopher who rejected thing-worship. “It is better for you to be free of fear lying on a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.” -Epicurus Marx and Engels even denounced tricking other people for moral motives, devotion to a cause, in The Holy Family. “Whilst in ordinary life every shopkeeper is very well able to distinguish between what someone professes to be and what he really is, our historians have not yet won even this trivial insight. They take every epoch at its word and believe that everything it says and imagines about itself is true.” -Marx/Engels. Thus, the Marxian approach did emphasize, in theory, analyzing “what emerges” instead of just what someone professes something to be, analyzing the factors beyond. The changes of societal progress can produce new problems with solutions not previously available, “The conflict — -the problem — has emerged precisely from the prospect of a new solution more socially beneficial than the options available before.” Marx liked to speak of “appearance” vs. “essence”, in exposing the exploitative nature of labor, and how exchange values were simply surface appearances of the essence of labor. Economics failed to understand how “value becomes exchange-value.”-Marx. Marx saw capitalism as dynamic, constant revolution of the means of production in the pursuit of more profits, forcing non-industrial countries to catch up “on pain of extinction” (Marx). Marx thought it was the logical role of the proletariat to destroy the class system that oppressed them so. It was morally desirable to change the economic system because the basis of capitalism was perceived to be one funneling benefits of many to a few. “Produce with consciousness as human beings — not as dispersed atoms without consciousness of your species — and you are beyond all these artificial and untenable antitheses. But as long as you continue to produce in the present unconscious, thoughtless manner, at the mercy of chance — for just so long trade crises will remain, and each successive crisis is bound to become more universal and therefore worse than the preceding one…” -Marx/Engels. Thus is born the desire for a planned “conscious” economy, to try to control crises, and produce those things which are “socially necessary,” but Marx did not leave a blueprint of how to accomplish this — though they did reject labor value as prices as being unable to work. “Only when production will be under the conscious and prearranged control of society, will society establish a direct relation between the quantity of social labor time employed in the production of definite articles and the quantity of the demand of society for them.”-Marx “Men err in their productions, there is no deficiency of demand.” -Ricardo. Adam Smith had enough inconsistencies, says Sowell, to provide a basis for both Ricardo’s laissez faire and Marx’s communism. Overproduction leads to financial panic, and people selling to get money to pay bills. “Modern industry never looks upon and treats the existing form of a process as final. The technical basis of that industry is therefore revolutionary, while all earlier modes of production were essentially conservative…” Marx. “If capital is growing rapidly, wages may rise: the profit of capital rises incomparably more rapidly. The material position of the worker has improved, but at the cost of his social position. The social gulf that divides him from the capitalist has widened.” Thus, the concern of many wanting to quelch modern day inequality. Over time, Engels recognized the increasing opportunity for political revolution via the ballot box, as opposed to taking to guns in the streets. “Marxism envisioned a mass workers’ movement, taking decades to develop and to acquire the political and economic sophistication necessary to become an effective dominant class.” Thus, this would be a long evolutionary, though revolutionary, process, not something that would happen at the behest of a Lenin or a Mao. People need to see work as a desire (even cleaning toilets out of love for their fellow man), and in this manner, can communist doctrine come into being, leading to “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Early drafts of the Manifesto by Engels called for compulsory labor, eradication of families to release wives and children from dependence on husbands. Thus, the totalitarian and authoritarian leanings of Marx and Engels betrayed some of their writings. “…the apparently miraculous rise of the German and Japanese economies from the rubble after World War II demonstrated that physical capital is only a product of mental capital — organizational and scientific skills, discipline, experience, and habits of mutual cooperation.” -Sowell. Engels and Lenin thought that the skills to manage a business were trivial. Marx thought goods were “really” produced by those who physically handled the production, discounting the role of the enterprises put in place to make that happen. Lenin had to restore the “hated capitalistic practices” under his New Economic Policy so that people wouldn’t starve. Managerial ability, entrepreneurship, and worker skills are all forms of important human capital. “For what is not so easily taught are cultural habits and orientations toward work and toward life — punctuality, perseverance, attentiveness to detail, cooperation among workers and with supervisors…” Sowell point out the term “capitalism” is a “verbal coup” by Marx, when the majority of the money under “capitalism” goes to pay labor, yet it is not called “laborism.” Planned economies are not dynamic, there is no risking the farm on an enormous risk that might pay off big, or might be a huge failure. The Marxian concept of “alienation” exposes the intellectual imposition of what other people “should” feel on the lower classes. “…what observers would like to see — at no cost to themselves — need not coincide with optimality for the actual participants.” “Revolutionary zeal for ‘progress’ can mean ignoring the inherent limitations of a given set of circumstances — or of man himself.” -Sowell. “That freedom was conceived in Marxian terms as ‘freedom to’ rather than ‘freedom from’ provided the moral and political impetus to impose these traumatic experiments on masses of human guinea pigs, trampling their ‘freedom from’ authorities in hopes of promoting their ‘freedom to’ achieve various anticipated social and economic benefits. But the much-despised bourgeois ‘freedom from’ authorities owed its evolution precisely to an awareness of the need to protect people from their ‘betters’ or their saviors.” Sowell. Marxism thought one man could envision from the ground up over the experience of all humanity over the course of time. “…anyone was foredoomed to be unequal to such a task.” The insulation from responsibility of youth and of intellectuals has spawned their love affair with Marxism. “The disjuncture between vision and experience was nowhere better illustrated than in the traumatic post-revolutionary experience of Lenin, as he applied the Marxist vision and watched a whole nation sink into economic chaos and starvation by the millions.”