Understanding Marxism: Series | 5 Minute Video

Why does anyone still care about Marxism? Karl Marx has been dead for well over a century. Everywhere Marxism has been tried, it has left death and destruction in its wake. In fact, nothing in the last thousand years comes close to the amount of tyranny, terror, and mass murder brought about by Marxist regimes. Yet Marxism lives. It may present itself today as postmodernism, multiculturalism, feminism, environmentalism, or critical race theory. But it's still Marxism. So, there must be good reasons why it has endured, even flourished, in the face of unremitting failure. Say what you will about Marx the economist. He was a master psychologist. He recognized that there are many people in every society who are motivated by envy and resentment. Marx speaks directly to them. He tells them that their responsibility for the misery in their lives belongs to the capitalist system. If we can just get rid of that, he promises, we can eliminate poverty, inequality, exploitation, class conflict, war, and alienation. Not a bad list if you're looking to start a revolution. But there's more. Marxism assures us that this socialist utopia is close at hand, available to all, not in some distant future or in the next life, but here and now. All we have to do is overcome one little obstacle—human nature. Marx expressed his deepest views on this subject in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. They can be summed up in one phrase—the enemy of being is having. In other words, the desire to own things makes you a bad person. However, you're not to blame. The blame belongs to capitalism. The most common interpretation of Marx's philosophy suggests that he opposed capitalism because it creates an unjust world of inequality, exploitation, and class conflict. Marxism, according to this view, is all about equalizing income and social status. This is true, but it doesn't go far enough. Marx saw the accumulation of material wealth as dehumanizing. The more money and material possessions one acquires, the more estranged one is from his true humanity. And what was that? In the philosopher's socialist paradise, one gets to eat, drink, and go to the theater free of charge and without having to earn a living. Best of all, you get to do it without the guilt of being a moocher. All you have to do is enjoy yourself. Or, as Marx put it, you can do one thing today and another tomorrow—hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, and rear cattle in the evening. Yes, rear cattle in the evening. That's how in touch Marx was with reality. But who cleans out the sewers? Does the dirty jobs that keep a society functioning? Ironically, in the evil capitalist society, the sewer cleaner freely chooses to take on his job. In the socialist paradise, coercion is almost always required. Marx never bothered with such messy details. He left that to others. Unfortunately, those others always turn out to be megalomaniacs, like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, and Hugo Chavez. They were the ones who brought Marx to life and in the process caused tens of millions to suffer and die. Contrary to Marx's claims, work freely chosen brings both money and dignity. Furthermore, most people work best when they pursue their own self-interest, an idea Marx despised. To him, self-interest turns everyone into Ebenezer Scrooge—greedy, grasping, and unfeeling. Not only is money—that is, capital—inherently corrupting, but the acquisition of it can't be done honestly or fairly. The rich got rich by exploiting the worker. For Marx, there's no other possible explanation. For many today, there is no other possible explanation. For these people, Marx offers a philosophical justification for their anger—even their rage. From generation to generation, the formula never varies. Only by bringing the privileged down can the underprivileged be brought up. The venom that pours out of Marx's pen stems ultimately from the fact that reality wouldn't conform to his worldview. It never seems to have occurred to him that people are complex beings with different talents, ambitions, and desires. It may be more accurate to say he didn't care. If people wouldn't conform to his worldview voluntarily, then the state would just have to use other methods of persuasion, like murder and terror. It all made sense to the philosopher as he toiled away in a corner of the British Museum or in a squalid London apartment. What is astonishing is that millions came to believe him. What is tragic is that millions more suffered and died because they did. What is scary is that millions continue to believe. I'm Brad Thompson, professor of political science at Clemson University, for Prager University. In a remarkably short period of time, the philosophy of Karl Marx changed the course of history. At the height of its power, half the world fell under its dominion, kept there by a combination of fear, terror, and brute force. Then suddenly, in the late 1980s, it imploded. By all rights, this should have been the end of Marxism. But it hasn't turned out that way. From environmentalism with its rejection of free markets to critical race theory, which sees white patriarchy as the source of all evil, you'll find Marxism at its root. The leaders of Black Lives Matter, for example, openly acknowledge their devotion to Marxist ideology. How do we explain this fascination for something that has so utterly failed everywhere it's been put into practice? We can find answers in one of Marx's most enduring epigrams. From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. Marx was a poor economist, but a talented journalist, the only actual job he ever had. He knew how to turn a phrase. But what does this slogan even mean? According to what ability? According to what need? And who determines anyone's ability or anyone's need? Marx never bothered to answer these obvious questions. He had much bigger things on his mind, nothing less than the creation of an entirely new kind of world for an entirely new kind of human being. Marx believed that by altering man's economic and political institutions, he could alter, or even better, rewire the human brain. He could conjure a new consciousness that would replace the old, false one. This new man would In short, he would be a superior type of man. Of course, this new man could only reach this goal if he wasn't preoccupied with having to earn money. According to Marx, money and the pursuit of it ruined everything. Marx hated money, maybe because he never found a way to make it. Getting rid of it was central to his worldview. Once a person's subsistence, one's daily bread, was distributed on the basis of need rather than greed, man's natural communal affections, long suppressed by his capitalist overlords, would be renewed. This is Marx channeling the 18th century French social thinker Jean-Jacques Rousseau, one of the few people Marx admired. According to Rousseau, this is what you must do if you want to create a new society. He who dares to undertake the making of a people's institutions must feel himself capable of changing human nature, of transforming each individual, who by himself is a complete and solitary whole, into part of a larger whole, from which the individual receives his life and his being. Understand this, and you understand not only a key feature of Marx's thought, but the dark history of the 20th century. Marx took Rousseau literally. Human nature had to be returned to its allegedly pure, selfless state before capitalism, with its Enlightenment and Judeo-Christian values corrupted him. But creating this new man would be a formidable task. Marx anticipated that many would object, especially the owners and managers that had a large stake in the capitalist system. Friendly persuasion wasn't going to get the job done. Only the ruthless application of state power would be up to the task. Marx was all for it. Private property, wage labor, competition in profits, these would have to go. The state, now run by the workers themselves, the dictatorship of the proletariat, as Marx called it, would control production and pricing. It would wisely manage the economy, from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs. And imagine how wonderful it would be. No more ego, no more self-interest. Instead, everybody working for the benefit of everybody else. Peace, love, and harmony. For many, it's a very seductive idea. Who wouldn't aspire to live in such a world? Look around, a Marxist might say. The powerful exploit the weak, crushing the majority's noble aspirations, your aspirations, just so they can have more. It's unfair and unjust. How much better if we just start over, start clean? That's the Marxist socialist dream. In real life, it's a nightmare. Needs become demands, and demands become rights. The best are mocked, and the worst exalted. Innovation withers, while the government grows ever larger. Eventually, the productive become virtual slaves to the unproductive, and the society collapses economically, intellectually, and morally. And then, the real horror starts. If you think I'm exaggerating, just ask someone who fled the For all its risk and inequities, they prefer freedom. And we should, too. I'm Brad Thompson, professor of political science at Clemson University, for Prager University. Engraved on Karl Marx's tombstone in Highgate Cemetery in North London are the following words. The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways. The point, however, is to change it. Substitute the word professor for the word philosopher. We really don't have philosophers anymore, and you get right to the core of Marx's enduring attraction to the contemporary world. Marx demands that the intellectual class—the professors of law, sociology, history, women's studies, anthropology, journalism, and so on—come out of the ivory tower and join the barricades, to see themselves not as the preservers of the dusty past, but the creators of a new and glorious future. The lure has proven to be very strong, and it's not hard to understand why. How much more meaningful, exciting, and romantic to see yourself as an agent of change rather than a mere academic? How much more meaningful, exciting, and romantic to see the young people who fill up your classroom as potential soldiers in the cause? Send them into the world with the same revolutionary spirit, the same disgust toward bourgeois middle-class values that you feel, and you've done your job. And we must give these lecture hall revolutionaries their due. Look around. For the most part, they've succeeded. Drill into any current leftist movement—environmentalism, critical race theory, the massive expansion of the welfare state, not to mention diversity, equity, and inclusion offices at every university and major corporation—and you will find Marxism at its core, a contempt of the Enlightenment and the Judeo-Christian value system from which capitalism springs. Marx's most famous call to action—workers of the world, unite!—was not, of course, to the professoriate, but to the laboring class. That didn't work out so well. Workers, especially in the United States, turned out to be more interested in refrigerators than revolutions. The only barricade they were passionate about was a white picket fence in front of a green suburban lawn. Poor, benighted souls, the appeal of Marxism was somehow lost on them—maybe because they didn't go to college. But the intellectual class never lost faith. Even after Stalin, even after Mao, even after Castro wrecked Cuba, even after Pol Pot murdered millions of his fellow Cambodians, even after Hugo Chavez destroyed the strongest economy in South America, the academic elite remained true believers. Indeed, in a world without faith, where God is dead, Marxism has become, in effect, a substitute religion. One of the major strengths of Marxism, in contrast to both modern liberalism and conservatism, is the unyielding commitment of its followers to this faith—to bear witness to it and to act on it. It summons these followers to join a crusade to destroy the evil that is capitalism and to create the good that is communism. In our secular world, the Marxist ideal gives the Marxist true believer a reason to live, a reason to die, and a reason to kill. Monsters like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Kim Il-sung, Ho Chi Minh, and Pol Pot took this to the nth degree and murdered millions. For the record, the latter two were politically educated in France. Pol Pot studied at the Sorbonne. If you think I'm exaggerating the evils of Marxism, if you think Stalin and those other guys got communism wrong, but your new democratic socialism will get it right, think again. Marxism leads a society toward a fixed goal, a utopian vision of pure freedom in which the individual is liberated from the false consciousness of capitalism. Unfortunately, by Marx's own definition, the path to this utopia requires the destruction—economically, politically, and morally—of every vestige of civilization as we know it. Economically, Marxism seeks to destroy free enterprise, the division of labor, profit and loss, competition, and material wealth. Politically, it seeks to destroy the rule of law, separation of powers, and freedom of speech. Morally, it seeks to destroy individualism, religious liberty, and independent thought. And on top of this rubble, it builds the all-powerful state ruled by an all-powerful elite. This is why the communist 1%, the true 1%, must use the full power of the state to force the 99%, the true 99%, to become something they are not and do not want to be. And if that doesn't work, the secular philosophy of brotherly love simply intimidates into silence and ultimately liquidates as much of the 99% as is necessary to keep everybody in line. Censorship, secret police, and re-education camps—these are not bugs in an imperfect system. They are features, critical parts of its design. In short, the problem with Marxism has been and always will be Marxism. Too bad the academic establishment has yet to figure this out. Or even worse, maybe they have. I'm Brad Thompson, professor of political science at Clemson University for Prager University. Thank you for watching this video. To keep PragerU videos free, please consider making a tax-deductible donation.