Modern socialism originally appears…as a more logical extension of the principles laid down by the great French philosophers of the eighteenth century… The great men, who in France prepared men’s minds for the coming revolution... Recognised no external authority of any kind whatever. Religion, natural science, society, political institutions —everything was subjected to the most unsparing criticism; everything must justify its existence before the judgment-seat of reason or give up existence.

Friedrich Engels

Materialism, the philosophic base for Marxist-Leninism, gives no basis for the dignity or rights of man. Where Marxist-Leninism is not in power it attracts and converts by talking much of dignity and rights, but its materialistic base gives no basis for the dignity or rights of man. Yet it attracts by its constant talk of idealism.

Francis Schaefer

The subtle change in meaning to which the word “freedom” was subjected in order that this argument should sound plausible is important. To the great apostles of political freedom the word had meant freedom from coercion, freedom from the arbitrary power of other men ... The new freedom promised … release from the compulsion of the circumstances which inevitably limit the range of choice of all of us ... Before man could be truly free, the “despotism of physical want” had to be broken, the “restraints of the economic system” relaxed. Freedom in this sense is, of course, merely another name for power or wealth ... The promises of this new freedom were often coupled with irresponsible promises of a great increase in material wealth in a socialist society.

F.A. Hayek

The Wrong Kind of Freedom

Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels carried on much of the underlying thinking of the French Revolution and the Social Utopians. They added certain elements that were distinctly their own, but the mistaken assumptions of the French writers were the foundation on which Marx built his communist theory, making economics the central concern. Remember as we delve into these thoughts how assumptions affect every step of our thinking, “when studied with any degree of thoroughness, the economic problem will be found to run into the political problem, the political problem into the philosophical problem, and the philosophical problem itself to be almost indissolubly bound up at last with the religious problem.”[1] It is important to realize that part of the reason Marx and Engels’ impact has remained so prominent is because of what they were trying to create. They promised a new form of freedom,[2] by providing absolute prosperity and ending all conflict. They argued this would be brought about through their scientific understanding of history and economic development which had its roots in atheism, materialism, relativism, and science. These tools enabled them to create a new human nature and a more fully developed person. The two rarely described the specifics of what would happen when their ideas were put into practice, but they promised “In place of the old … society, with its… antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”[3]

When we examine their many writings, we see that their arguments often focus on the need for individuals to obtain freedom from the oppressive capitalist system. They focused on how workers were denied freedom so that the workers would awaken to their oppression. It is fascinating how many modern criticisms of capitalism echo their thinking. Their writings discussed how people were suffering from exploitation[4] at the hands of selfish business owners. They describe how people around the world were being conquered[5] so that capitalists could expand their markets in the name of greed. They railed against the boredom of work in which individuals were forced to do repetitious tasks[6] rather than things they love. They expressed sorrow over the loss of local jobs.[7] They were critical of how cheap goods[8] led to a loss of cultural heritage. To them, workers living under the uncertainties of the market[9] and having to sell their labor daily was an injustice. They railed against the many having their property stolen by the few.[10] They believed that paychecks would never be more than what was needed to barely keep the worker alive.[11] In short, Marx and Engels paint the picture that a worker’s pay was no better than a new form of slavery.[12] We must pause briefly to say that there must be something wrong with these criticisms given the economic disaster that occurred in countless communist countries, but this will be discussed in further detail later. As C.S. Lewis says, it should “be remembered that human reasoners often make mistakes, either by arguing from false data or by inadvertence in the argument itself. We may thus come to think things possible which are really impossible, and vice versa.”[13]

Marx and Engels summarize their criticisms by saying that, under capitalism, there is no relationship between human beings except cash. This is what has led to the loss of freedom. As the pair said, “In place of the numberless … freedoms,” capitalism “has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions.”[14] Note that it is religion and existing rules, moral and political, that are the camouflage for the evils which Marx and Engels blame for all human ills.

Under the new communist order, Marx promised that human beings would live fuller and freer lives without the alleged mind-numbing monotony of work or the exploitation that capitalism promotes. “Freedom … can only consist in socialized man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by blind forces of Nature.”[15] They stated that in the future they were promising the blind forces of nature would be easily overcome. C. S. Lewis once pointed out that the greatest good of the ancient world was to conform humans to reality and nature, but Marx and Engels project, and in many ways our own project, was the exact opposite. Instead humanity would conform nature and reality to its desires. Human beings would be fulfilled by “hunting in the morning, fishing in the afternoon, tending cattle in the evening and engaging in literary criticism after dinner.”[16] Marx was offering up freedom from natural and economic limitations, but his promised future mischaracterized basic aspects of economics. As one author, has written about this passage, it is:

the only attempt he [Marx] makes to describe what life will be like without private property—and if you ask who gives you the gun or the fishing rod, who organizes the pack of hounds … who disposes of the milk and the calves and who publishes the literary criticism such questions will be dismissed as ‘beside the point’... And as to whether the immense amount of organization required for these leisure activities of the … upper class will be possible, in a condition in which there is no law, no property, and therefore no chain of command, such questions are too trivial to be noticed.[17]

The Marxist problem, and one common to many people’s economic thinking even today, is in promising a future where economic constraints no longer exist without explaining how these restraints will be overcome. For example, specializing in a skill is one way of dealing with economic and environmental limitations. This is what often leads to monotony in our daily work, the ability to do one small thing well, which may limit the development of other skills. To be an expert hunter, rancher, or writer takes a good deal of training, practice, and skill. Anyone who attempted farm after having worked in an office job for many years would quickly recognize there is a learning curve that they have not invested in mastering. They would find that they may be able to learn the skills if they get extensive coaching but even then, it may take a long period of trial and error. While trying to develop these skills, they may find the environment they thought could be so easily overcome exacts a heavy price for mistakes in the form of bankruptcy.

Further, such thinkers tend to see many items needed for life as already existing somehow without explaining how they were produced. As the one critic points out, “who gives you the gun or the fishing rod?” This is not a flawed thought limited to Marx and Engels. One famous British philosopher revealed this mistaken thinking when he said, “The things once there, mankind, individually or collectively, can do with them as they like. They can place them at the disposal of whomsoever they please, and on whatever terms … the distribution of wealth, therefore, depends on the laws and customs of society.”[18] This assumption, “the things once there,” ignores a long, complicated process which requires examining how material goods come to be made in the first place. The implication ignores the complicated and difficult aspects of production requiring separate skill and knowledge that no one individual possesses. One famous example illustrates this:

No given human being knows enough to make even a simple lead pencil. No single person knows how to mine the graphite, process the wood, produce the rubber, manufacture the paint, and make all the investment, marketing, inventory, and distribution decisions required to put a pencil in the hands of the ultimate consumer. This is clearly even more true of the manufacture of an automobile or a computer, much less the enormously more complex social processes which enable a civilization to function.[19]

Finally, but perhaps most elementary of all, individual labor must create the product through effort. Without initiative by individuals, the item would never come into existence in the first place. In the end, Marx and others who share this thinking, are promoting economic and moral freedom without understanding that it is the lack of knowledge, the natural environment and human idleness that must be overcome, not oppression and exploitation by a single group of people. Marx and many of the thinkers have misconceived economics, and the realities that economics represents, from the outset. The problem he sees and criticizes in capitalism would exist under any economic system—communist, capitalist, socialist, or feudal—because economics reflects the need for productive effort in a harsh world. Yet it is productive effort, and how one motivates people to produce, which is left out of the picture entirely. Instead the emphasis is put on manipulation of the people by society, the capitalist system, or the greedy owners. Once these are removed economic productivity will rise to new levels.

We will see how their economics completely failed when put into practice in the Soviet Union and around the world, but it must be emphasized again that their economic failure was the result of their misconceived beliefs about reality and human nature. Because individuals are unaware of this history, the same ideas have powerfully begun to shape our own times. Their ideas, shared with the French Revolution, were behind all subsequent economic mistakes. Each of these radical movements denied God as creator, saw man as a machine who behaves as external forces move him, and saw themselves as being the only human machines to transcend the prejudiced thinking of their society. They believed current conditions corrupted man, not sin. And they believed they could attain unlimited knowledge. These thinkers desired not only destruction of economic conditions but also the moral and religious traditions.[20] As Marx and Engels said, “The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.[21] “Once the church, traditional government, and the business owners have been rendered powerless, all of humanity’s productive forces will increase. This will unleash ‘the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can… society inscribe on its banner: ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!’” Engels called this “the ascent of man from the kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom.”[22] Marx said it would all lead to a virtuous circle in which “the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.”[23]. Here we are dealing with a system whose aim was freedom but ended in oppression. As one author has said, such fanciful thinking “becomes evil when it is turned into a create-your-own-reality philosophy.”[24] We will see why this is so, for their ideas are still powerfully at work today.

[1] Russell Kirk, The Conservative Mind: From Burke to Eliot (Washington DC, Regnery publishing, 2001). Locations 5316-5317, Kindle Edition. [2] Thomas Sowell, Marxism (New York: Quill, 1985), pg 28. [3] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (A Public Domain Book), location 330, Kindle Edition. Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 87, Kindle Edition. [4] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (A Public Domain Book), location 305, Kindle Edition. [5] Ibid, location 34. [6] Ibid, location 102. [7] Ibid, location 57. [8] Ibid, location 65. [9] Ibid, location 102. [10] Ibid, location 189. [11] Ibid, location 102. [12] Ibid, location 189. [13] CS Lewis, The Problem of Pain. [14] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (A Public Domain Book), location 44, Kindle Edition. [15] Karl Marx, Capital, Volume 3, p.820. [16] Roger Scruton, Fools, Frauds, and Firebrands (London: Bloomsbury, 2015), loc 270, Kindle edition. [17] Ibid, loc 276. [18] Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions [19] Thomas Sowell, The Vision of the Anointed (New York: Basic Books, 1995), pg 254, Kindle Edition. [20] Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The Communist Manifesto (A Public Domain Book), loc 489, Kindle Edition. [21] Ibid, loc 305. [22] Thomas Sowell, A Conflict of Visions (New York: Basic Books, 2007), pg 115, Kindle Edition. For discussion of this idea of freedom in Marx and its consequences see: Vladimir Tismaneanu, The Devil in History (Los Angeles: University of California Press, 2012), pg 158, 227, 228, Kindle Edition. [23] Peter Kreeft, Socrates Meets Marx (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 2004), Kindle Loc 215-216, Kindle Edition. [24] Kreeft, Peter. The Philosophy of Tolkien . Ignatius Press. Kindle Edition.