Commentator Charles Murray recently warned readers of The Wall Street Journal that capitalism—the economic philosophy responsible for America’s greatness—has image problems. People, he said, have been disgusted by the banking and finance scandals said to be responsible for the current severe recession.
Capitalism’s image has been so badly tarnished, he claimed, that some of our most successful capitalists, especially in the high technology field, are ashamed to admit that they are capitalists because many of them are political liberals.
Actually, the surprising thing about this is that someone might be surprised by it. After the best part of half a century of trashing capitalism in our schools, universities, news media and Hollywood, it is nothing short of amazing that apparently there are folks out there who still have something good to say about it.
It is, however, a sad sign of the times that a majority of the folks responsible for publicly trashing capitalism—educators, journalists and editorial writers (interchangeable terms these days), and Hollywood scriptwriters and the like—appear to have no genuine understanding of that which they affect to despise.
Worse, perhaps, they are just as ignorant about the political, social, and economic philosophy they appear to favor as a substitute for capitalism: Socialism.
Trouble is, most of America’s self–anointed “cognitive elite” seem to have abandoned analytical thinking in favor of emoting. No longer do they think. They feel. And this renders constructive debate pointless—for there is no arguing with “feelings.”
Thus, Socialism—contrary to all available evidence—is seen by many of our intelligentsia as a more equitable, kindly, caring and efficient way of ordering society than the system that has served America for more than 200 years. For them, Socialism engenders all sorts of warm and fuzzy feelings.
Actually, there is nothing in the least bit warm and fuzzy about Socialism. Indeed, Karl Marx, the chap who dreamed it up, would be appalled to imagine anybody could be so naively mistaken.
Marx dubbed his system “Scientific Socialism” because he believed he had—by painstaking historical, economic, political, and social analysis—demonstrated that its advent would be inevitable in all industrially advanced countries.
Just as Charles Darwin postulated the physical evolution of the species, so Marx postulated the political, social, and economic evolution of the human race. That’s why he called Socialism “scientific.”
According to Marx, in the first evolutionary stage, the highly skilled industrial “proletariat”—the “mechanics” of the 19th Century, “technocrats” in modern parlance—would seize power from the owners of capital. They would then institute a “dictatorship of the proletariat,” Marx’s term for a society presided over and ordered by a technocratic elite.
Subsequent evolutionary stages, according to Marx’s thesis, involve the “building of Socialism” and the eventual emergence of “Communism”—a system under which all human beings live, totally selflessly, for one another. (If you can buy that notion, I’ve got a bridge in Brooklyn going cheap.) But, be that as it may, so convinced was Marx of the inevitability of Scientific Socialism, he had little time for folks who wanted to force the pace. After all, evolution, in theory at least, moves at its own rate.
Thus when informed by the Communards, who briefly seized power in Paris in the wake of the 1870 Franco–Prussian War, that they had launched the first “Marxist revolution,” Marx brusquely dismissed the notion. “But we are all Marxists,” read their explanatory telegram. “I’m not a Marxist,” was Marx’s terse reply, “I’m Marx.”
Marx judged France insufficiently advanced industrially to be considered ripe for Scientific Socialism. And he felt the same way, for that matter, about Germany and the largely agrarian United States. He anticipated Britain, his adopted home, would be the venue of the first Marxist revolution.
What Marx would have made of the revolutionaries who, during the course of the 20th Century wrapped themselves in the Marxist banner, is a matter for conjecture. But by his own definition, Russia, China, Vietnam, and Cambodia—neither at the time of their “revolutions” nor even now—could be considered ripe for genuinely “Marxist” revolutions.
I personally discovered that the thugs who ruled the Soviet Union were especially touchy about this uncomfortable fact at a dinner in Moscow with a group of senior Soviet apparatchiks, during the period known here as “détente”.
It was a convivial seven–course meal, and, inevitably towards the end of it, I was asked the perennial question: What do you think about the [Bolsheviks’] October Revolution?
Perhaps inspired by the vodka, I puckishly replied: “I’m sure it was a very nice revolution, but I don’t think you can really call it a ‘Marxist’ revolution. It looks more like absolutism, preceding the rise of the bourgeoisie.”
A stony silence descended on the table. Feet shuffled uncomfortably. “Are you trying to tell us there has never been a Marxist revolution?” asked the most senior apparatchik.
“Oh no,” I countered, “There most certainly has been a Marxist revolution. Just not here.”
“Are you suggesting China …?” he asked frostily. (At that time the Soviets were fighting an undeclared shooting war with the Chinese on the Siberian border.)
“No! No!” I said, warming to my subject, “They are even more backward industrially speaking than you people are. I was actually thinking of the United States …”
“You can’t be serious,” he said.
“Oh, yes I am,” I replied, “Just look at the Forbes 1000 and the Fortune 500. Very few of those companies are in fact controlled by the folks who own them. They are actually run by professional executives—the very people Marx would call the highly educated industrial proletariat.”
“That is enough,” declared the apparatchik, pushing hack his chair. “The dinner is over!”
They rose as one and walked out, leaving my Soviet official “minder” ashen–faced.
“Promise me, Hawtin,” he begged, “never do this again. I know you British have a sense of humor, but this wasn’t funny. It was very dangerous.”
He was right. My argument struck far too close to the bone. To the Russians, it betrayed a disconcerting familiarity with Das Kapital, Marx’s seminal work—a massive tome that should be must reading for all Soviet analysts …
At least they didn’t stiff me with the bill. But it’s a point to ponder: If Marx were alive today he might well embrace modern American capitalism as the first step on his road to political/economic Nirvana. May be it’s time for America’s ivory tower Socialists to face up to the fact that Marxism and Marx are beasts of quite a different color. GPH✠
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