Marx and his modern disciples hold others in contempt. Both have a long history of implying that individuals cannot make their own decisions but must be molded by wise and enlightened leaders. Marx wrote in an essay that peasants could not understand what was in their interest. He said they were “incapable of enforcing their class interest in their own names, whether through a parliament or through a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented." This idea drove the actions of those who would be the first to put Marx’s ideas into practice on a wide scale in Russia.
Lenin was more practical about the peasants and thought that they could be part of the revolutionary movement. However, there was a significant caveat, he too said that, “not all peasants fighting for land and freedom are fully aware of what their struggle implies.” He argued that peasant workers did not understand how to fight capitalism and would have to be taught by more progressive revolutionaries and workers. It should not be forgotten that at the time many revolutionaries considered Marxism to be the only rational and scientific way of planning the economy, an early version of “follow the science”. Lenin recognized that many of the peasants did not join the fight “for socialism”, and he suspected that this was due in part to their ownership of small farms, modest though they may have been, which made them think like capitalists. Thus, even people who were not wealthy were still viewed as capitalist enemies. This view would have dire consequences in the following decades as prison camps and confiscation of land grew, for the recalcitrant peasants own good of course.
The French Revolutionaries, Hitler, Mussolini and the Communists all used the same argument. They all said that men do not know what they really want. When the wise leader or the party on the right side of history tells them what they want and bends them to their will, the wise leadership of the party says:
I am not merely doing something which is good for them … I am doing that which they truly want, though they may deny it … Therefore I speak for them, on their behalf … They do not know what their true self is, whereas I, who am wise, who am rational, who am the great benevolent legislator—I know this.
The Democrats say the same thing today when they peddle unpopular positions as if those noxious ideas are broadly popular. It is only the media that allows them to hide the fact that their positions are as extreme as they are. Only, the bitter clingers, deplorables, and neanderthals stand in their way.
For more information see:
Red Famine: Stalin’s war on Ukraine by Anne Applebaum
From Benito Mussolini to Hugo Chavez Intellectuals and a Century of Political Hero Worship by Paul Hollander
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