January 23, 2019
Dear Friends and Family,
As indicated in last week’s cover letter, we are now shifting away from Socialist policies to analyzing Socialistic Societies. This includes today’s segment, “The Founding Fathers of Socialism/Communism”. Segment 13 which will look at the socialist/communist regimes of Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela; segment 14 which will provide some insight into what life is like for an ordinary citizen in a communist country—Cuba; and segments 15 through 18 which will provide some in depth analysis of China—first as a fully communist nation and the changes the country experienced as they changed its economy to a capitalistic system while maintaining a communist government.
The founding fathers of Socialism/Communism were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1840s. Their backgrounds and philosophies are summarized in the excerpts.
My Takeaways:
My understanding of socialism/communism was enhanced when I learned about the lives of Marx and Engels. Marx fundamentally didn’t provide for his family. While they were on the verge of starvation he was in the library trying to run the world. The family lived in poverty in London. Marx seemingly never worked. He was always in debt and lived off the generosity of Engels who had a wealthy father. Engels considered it a privilege to be associated with Marx, as he considered him a genius, hence why he provided financial support.
So, from my and other perspective, socialism/communism is in reality the output of what its founder, Marx, wanted the world to be from himself. He resented political authority, so he wanted to abolish government throughout the world, as well as individual property ownership. He envisioned a classless society with no hierarchy or differentiation, with all property owned by the community. He refused to compete in a capitalistic economy, so he wanted to abolish capitalism. He did not choose to support his family, so he wanted to eliminate the family as a social unit and therefore envisioned a communal society. His morals were questionable and his arrogance overwhelming, so he wanted to abolish all religion and have everyone be an atheist.
He had a plan to achieve this classless, stateless, noncompetitive society wherein he assumed the collective would be so satisfied with life that they would produce very abundant crops and goods. These would be stored in communal storage facilities which everyone could frequent and take what they needed.
Further, he had a plan to achieve this vision. First, to have the masses wipe out the old order via revolution. Second, have representatives of the working class setup a Dictatorship and confiscate all property and wealth. Third, the final step is the transition from Socialism to full Communism – a classless state without courts, lawyers, judges, rulers, or even policemen.
The difference between socialism and communism: under socialism, the first step above is achieved by peaceful legislation and stops with the completion of the second step. Under communism, the first step is achieved by revolution and then proceeds through step three. Note: no country to my knowledge has ever achieved step three, albeit a few very small religious communes have.
The excerpts from “The Communist Manifesto” written by Marx and Engels in 1848 will help you to draw your own conclusions as to their philosophy.
Next:
The next segment in this series will be devoted to “Understanding Communism” It will analyze Communism/Socialism in four different countries: Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Happy Learning,
Harley
Dear Friends and Family,
As indicated in last week’s cover letter, we are now shifting away from Socialist policies to analyzing Socialistic Societies. This includes today’s segment, “The Founding Fathers of Socialism/Communism”. Segment 13 which will look at the socialist/communist regimes of Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela; segment 14 which will provide some insight into what life is like for an ordinary citizen in a communist country—Cuba; and segments 15 through 18 which will provide some in depth analysis of China—first as a fully communist nation and the changes the country experienced as they changed its economy to a capitalistic system while maintaining a communist government.
The founding fathers of Socialism/Communism were Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in the 1840s. Their backgrounds and philosophies are summarized in the excerpts.
My Takeaways:
My understanding of socialism/communism was enhanced when I learned about the lives of Marx and Engels. Marx fundamentally didn’t provide for his family. While they were on the verge of starvation he was in the library trying to run the world. The family lived in poverty in London. Marx seemingly never worked. He was always in debt and lived off the generosity of Engels who had a wealthy father. Engels considered it a privilege to be associated with Marx, as he considered him a genius, hence why he provided financial support.
So, from my and other perspective, socialism/communism is in reality the output of what its founder, Marx, wanted the world to be from himself. He resented political authority, so he wanted to abolish government throughout the world, as well as individual property ownership. He envisioned a classless society with no hierarchy or differentiation, with all property owned by the community. He refused to compete in a capitalistic economy, so he wanted to abolish capitalism. He did not choose to support his family, so he wanted to eliminate the family as a social unit and therefore envisioned a communal society. His morals were questionable and his arrogance overwhelming, so he wanted to abolish all religion and have everyone be an atheist.
He had a plan to achieve this classless, stateless, noncompetitive society wherein he assumed the collective would be so satisfied with life that they would produce very abundant crops and goods. These would be stored in communal storage facilities which everyone could frequent and take what they needed.
Further, he had a plan to achieve this vision. First, to have the masses wipe out the old order via revolution. Second, have representatives of the working class setup a Dictatorship and confiscate all property and wealth. Third, the final step is the transition from Socialism to full Communism – a classless state without courts, lawyers, judges, rulers, or even policemen.
The difference between socialism and communism: under socialism, the first step above is achieved by peaceful legislation and stops with the completion of the second step. Under communism, the first step is achieved by revolution and then proceeds through step three. Note: no country to my knowledge has ever achieved step three, albeit a few very small religious communes have.
The excerpts from “The Communist Manifesto” written by Marx and Engels in 1848 will help you to draw your own conclusions as to their philosophy.
Next:
The next segment in this series will be devoted to “Understanding Communism” It will analyze Communism/Socialism in four different countries: Russia, Cuba, North Korea, and Venezuela.
Happy Learning,
Harley
SOCIALISM – SEGMENT 12
THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM – EXCERPTS
KARL MARX: Karl Marx was one of the most dramatic personalities to cross the pages of history during the nineteenth century – one who would have a greater impact dead than alive. Biographers would grapple with the enigma of Marx’s life. At one moment Marx would be called “the greatest genius of this age,” and a moment later even his disciples would feel forced to call him “a violent, quarrelsome, contentious man, and dictator, one at feud with all the world and continually alarmed lest he should be unable to assert his superiority.”
In June 1843, a wedding took place. At the time the bridegroom was unemployed, and Jenny von Westphalen soon discovered that this was to be a permanent characteristic of their entire married life. Marx never acquired the slightest comprehension of the responsibilities which a husband assumes as the head of a family. This was to be the pattern of his whole life. In later years while his family was starving, he could be found at the library devoting himself to the interesting but, for him, completely unremunerative study of higher mathematics. Voltaire referred derisively to the breed of men who cannot run their own families and therefore retreat to their attics so that from there they can run the whole world. Marx seemed to fit this pattern. He was ridiculously ineffectual in his endeavors to cope with the economic needs of his household and family; and his incapacity in monetary matters involved him in an endless series of struggles and catastrophes. He was always in debt; was incessantly being dunned by creditors. Half his household goods were always at the pawnshop. His bankruptcy was chronic. The thousands upon thousands which Engels handed over to him melted away in his fingers like snow. The only close friend Karl Marx ever had – Friedrich Engels.
The Marx family lived in London in the most extreme poverty. A peculiar combination of emotions was expressed by Marx in his correspondence during this period. On the one hand he expressed soulful concern for the welfare of his wife and children. Then, in the same letter he blithely went about explaining how he was spending his whole time, studying history, politics, economics and social problems so as to figure out the answers for the problems of the world. By 1875 Marx had little satisfaction to draw from his life of struggle. The closing years for Marx were sterile lonely ones. By 1878 Marx had abandoned practically every aspect of his work. He did continue to write two volumes of Das Kapital, but the flame was going out in him. On March 14, 1993 he died at age 64. After Marx’s death, it would remain the task of Engels to publish the second volume in 1885 and the third in 1894.
Thus, ended the dynamic, turbulent and restless career of Karl Marx. By all standards it was a pathetic life, filled with burning ambition, constant frustration, and continuous failure. Karl Marx projected into Communism the very essence of his own nature. His resentment of political authority expressed itself in a ringing cry for universal revolution. His refusal of inability to compete in a capitalistic economy. His personal attitude towards religion, morals and competition in everyday existence. He wanted to live in a classless, stateless, noncompetitive society where there would be such lavish production of everything that men, by simply producing according to their apparent ability, would automatically receive a superabundant all material needs.
Carl Schurz says, “What Marx said was unquestionably weighty, logical and clear. But never have I seen anyone whose manner was more insufferably arrogant. He would not give me a moment’s consideration on any opinion that differed from his own. He treated with open contempt everyone who contradicted him.”
FRIEDRICH ENGELS: The strange relationship which rapidly developed between Marx and Engels can be understood only when it is realized that Engels considered it a privilege to be associated with such a genius as Marx. Among other things, he counted it and honor to be allowed to assume responsibility for Marx’s financial support.
During November 1847 word came from London that the “Federation of the Just” (later known as the Communist League) wanted Marx and Engels to participate in their second congress as representatives of the Communist organizations in Brussels. Marx and Engels not only attended the congress but practically took it over. They were commissioned to write a declaration of principles – a “Manifesto to the World.” This program of International Communism stood for:
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.
The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history. The bourgeoisie has pitilessly torn asunder the motely feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.
The work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increase, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working house, by increase of the work extracted in a given time, or by increased speed of the machinery, etc. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The immediate aim of Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. The theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence. Abolition of private property. We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity, and independence.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the world Communism abolished eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. 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.
The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Source: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
As Marx and Engels analyzed modern civilization, they concluded that capitalistic society is rapidly reaching that point where a revolution is inevitable. This is the way they reasoned: after the overthrow of feudalism the capitalistic society came into being. At first it consisted primarily of individuals who owned their own land or their own workshops. Each man did his own work and reaped the economic benefits to which he was entitled. Then the Industrial Revolution came along, and the private workshop was supplanted by the factory. Engels said manufacturing thereby became social production rather than private production. It was therefore wrong for private individuals to continue owning the factory because the factory had become a social institution. He argued that no private individual should get the profits from something which many people were required to produce. Marx and Engels did not believe that wages were adequate compensation for labor performed unless the workers received all the commodity was worth. They believed that the management and operation of a factory were only “clerical in nature” and that in the near future the working class should rise up and seize the factories or means of production and operate them as their own.
They further predicted that the revolutionary explosion between these two classes would be sparked by the inevitable advancement of technological improvements in capitalistic industry. The rapid invention of more and more efficient machines was bound to throw more and more workers out of employment and leave their families to starve or perhaps survive on a bare subsistence level. In due time there would be sufficient hatred, resentment and class antagonism to motivate the worker in forming militant battalions to overthrow their oppressors by violence.
It is at this point that Communists and Socialists take different forks of the road. The Socialists have maintained from the beginning that centralized control of all land and industry can be achieved by peaceful legislation. Marx denounced this as a pipe dream. He held out for revolution. He did not look upon such minor “victories of the Socialists” as anything more than a psychological softening up for the revolution which was to come. Marx was particularly emphatic that this revolution must be completely ruthless to be successful.
Since they now believed a revolution was inevitable, the next question Marx and Engels asked was this: Should they wait for it to come in the normal course of events or should they take steps to promote the revolution and speed up the evolution of society toward Communism? They decided that it had become their manifest duty to see that the revolution was vigorously promoted. Why, prolong the suffering? The old society was doomed.
They felt it could be done in three steps: First, by wiping out the old order. Second, the representatives of the working class must then set a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Third, the final step is the transition from Socialism to full Communism. Socialism is characterized by state ownership of land and all means of production. Marx and Engels believed that after a while when class consciousness has disappeared and there is not further resistance to be overcome, the state will gradually wither away and then property will automatically belong to all mankind “in common.” Even in the latter stages of Socialism, Lenin visualized a world without courts, lawyers, judges, rulers, elected representatives or even policemen.
All Marxists fervently hope that the new society will produce the changes in human nature which are necessary before full Communism can become a reality. They must lose any hope of a graduated pay-scale for differences in productivity or service. They must forget all about differences in skill, training, and mental or physical abilities. Wages will be abolished. They must come around to the notion that, if man does the best he can, in the best type of work for which he is fitted, he is just a good and just as deserving of income as any other man regardless of differences in productivity and output. This is the Communist promise, “Each will produce according to his ability and each will receive according to his need.” He must give up his old profit-motive incentive and become socially minded so that he will work as hard as he can for the benefit of society as a whole and at the same time be content to receive, as a reward for his work, and amount of income based on his need in consumption. Marx and Engels presume that under such a system the output of production would be so tremendous that they could dispense with markets, money and prices. Commodities would be stockpiled at various central places, and all individuals who worked would be entitled to help themselves on the basis of their needs. Under these pleasant circumstances, the government machinery of the State will no longer be necessary. “Only Communism renders the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is no one to be suppressed – ‘no one’ in the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic struggle with a definite section of the population.”
Source: The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
THE FOUNDING FATHERS OF SOCIALISM/COMMUNISM – EXCERPTS
KARL MARX: Karl Marx was one of the most dramatic personalities to cross the pages of history during the nineteenth century – one who would have a greater impact dead than alive. Biographers would grapple with the enigma of Marx’s life. At one moment Marx would be called “the greatest genius of this age,” and a moment later even his disciples would feel forced to call him “a violent, quarrelsome, contentious man, and dictator, one at feud with all the world and continually alarmed lest he should be unable to assert his superiority.”
In June 1843, a wedding took place. At the time the bridegroom was unemployed, and Jenny von Westphalen soon discovered that this was to be a permanent characteristic of their entire married life. Marx never acquired the slightest comprehension of the responsibilities which a husband assumes as the head of a family. This was to be the pattern of his whole life. In later years while his family was starving, he could be found at the library devoting himself to the interesting but, for him, completely unremunerative study of higher mathematics. Voltaire referred derisively to the breed of men who cannot run their own families and therefore retreat to their attics so that from there they can run the whole world. Marx seemed to fit this pattern. He was ridiculously ineffectual in his endeavors to cope with the economic needs of his household and family; and his incapacity in monetary matters involved him in an endless series of struggles and catastrophes. He was always in debt; was incessantly being dunned by creditors. Half his household goods were always at the pawnshop. His bankruptcy was chronic. The thousands upon thousands which Engels handed over to him melted away in his fingers like snow. The only close friend Karl Marx ever had – Friedrich Engels.
The Marx family lived in London in the most extreme poverty. A peculiar combination of emotions was expressed by Marx in his correspondence during this period. On the one hand he expressed soulful concern for the welfare of his wife and children. Then, in the same letter he blithely went about explaining how he was spending his whole time, studying history, politics, economics and social problems so as to figure out the answers for the problems of the world. By 1875 Marx had little satisfaction to draw from his life of struggle. The closing years for Marx were sterile lonely ones. By 1878 Marx had abandoned practically every aspect of his work. He did continue to write two volumes of Das Kapital, but the flame was going out in him. On March 14, 1993 he died at age 64. After Marx’s death, it would remain the task of Engels to publish the second volume in 1885 and the third in 1894.
Thus, ended the dynamic, turbulent and restless career of Karl Marx. By all standards it was a pathetic life, filled with burning ambition, constant frustration, and continuous failure. Karl Marx projected into Communism the very essence of his own nature. His resentment of political authority expressed itself in a ringing cry for universal revolution. His refusal of inability to compete in a capitalistic economy. His personal attitude towards religion, morals and competition in everyday existence. He wanted to live in a classless, stateless, noncompetitive society where there would be such lavish production of everything that men, by simply producing according to their apparent ability, would automatically receive a superabundant all material needs.
Carl Schurz says, “What Marx said was unquestionably weighty, logical and clear. But never have I seen anyone whose manner was more insufferably arrogant. He would not give me a moment’s consideration on any opinion that differed from his own. He treated with open contempt everyone who contradicted him.”
FRIEDRICH ENGELS: The strange relationship which rapidly developed between Marx and Engels can be understood only when it is realized that Engels considered it a privilege to be associated with such a genius as Marx. Among other things, he counted it and honor to be allowed to assume responsibility for Marx’s financial support.
During November 1847 word came from London that the “Federation of the Just” (later known as the Communist League) wanted Marx and Engels to participate in their second congress as representatives of the Communist organizations in Brussels. Marx and Engels not only attended the congress but practically took it over. They were commissioned to write a declaration of principles – a “Manifesto to the World.” This program of International Communism stood for:
- The overthrow of capitalism
- The abolition of private property
- The elimination of the family as a social unit
- The abolition of all classes
- The overthrow of all governments, and
- The establishment of a communist order with communal ownership of property in a classless, stateless society.
THE COMMUNIST MANIFESTO: Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.
The bourgeoisie has played a most revolutionary role in history. The bourgeoisie has pitilessly torn asunder the motely feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest than callous “cash payment.” It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation. The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed.
The work of the proletarians has lost all individual character and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. But the price of a commodity, and therefore also of labor, is equal to its cost of production. In proportion, therefore, as the repulsiveness of the work increase, the wage decreases. Nay more, in proportion as the use of machinery and division of labor increases, in the same proportion the burden of toil also increases, whether by prolongation of the working house, by increase of the work extracted in a given time, or by increased speed of the machinery, etc. Law, morality, religion, are to him so many bourgeois prejudices, behind which lurk in ambush just as many bourgeois interests. Society can no longer live under this bourgeoisie; its existence is no longer compatible with society.
The immediate aim of Communists is the same as that of all the other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat. The theory of the Communists may be summed up in a single sentence. Abolition of private property. We Communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labor, which property is alleged to be the groundwork of all personal freedom, activity, and independence.
The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is, so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the world Communism abolished eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience. 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.
The first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy. The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production.
When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class; if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class. In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.
Source: The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels
As Marx and Engels analyzed modern civilization, they concluded that capitalistic society is rapidly reaching that point where a revolution is inevitable. This is the way they reasoned: after the overthrow of feudalism the capitalistic society came into being. At first it consisted primarily of individuals who owned their own land or their own workshops. Each man did his own work and reaped the economic benefits to which he was entitled. Then the Industrial Revolution came along, and the private workshop was supplanted by the factory. Engels said manufacturing thereby became social production rather than private production. It was therefore wrong for private individuals to continue owning the factory because the factory had become a social institution. He argued that no private individual should get the profits from something which many people were required to produce. Marx and Engels did not believe that wages were adequate compensation for labor performed unless the workers received all the commodity was worth. They believed that the management and operation of a factory were only “clerical in nature” and that in the near future the working class should rise up and seize the factories or means of production and operate them as their own.
They further predicted that the revolutionary explosion between these two classes would be sparked by the inevitable advancement of technological improvements in capitalistic industry. The rapid invention of more and more efficient machines was bound to throw more and more workers out of employment and leave their families to starve or perhaps survive on a bare subsistence level. In due time there would be sufficient hatred, resentment and class antagonism to motivate the worker in forming militant battalions to overthrow their oppressors by violence.
It is at this point that Communists and Socialists take different forks of the road. The Socialists have maintained from the beginning that centralized control of all land and industry can be achieved by peaceful legislation. Marx denounced this as a pipe dream. He held out for revolution. He did not look upon such minor “victories of the Socialists” as anything more than a psychological softening up for the revolution which was to come. Marx was particularly emphatic that this revolution must be completely ruthless to be successful.
Since they now believed a revolution was inevitable, the next question Marx and Engels asked was this: Should they wait for it to come in the normal course of events or should they take steps to promote the revolution and speed up the evolution of society toward Communism? They decided that it had become their manifest duty to see that the revolution was vigorously promoted. Why, prolong the suffering? The old society was doomed.
They felt it could be done in three steps: First, by wiping out the old order. Second, the representatives of the working class must then set a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. Third, the final step is the transition from Socialism to full Communism. Socialism is characterized by state ownership of land and all means of production. Marx and Engels believed that after a while when class consciousness has disappeared and there is not further resistance to be overcome, the state will gradually wither away and then property will automatically belong to all mankind “in common.” Even in the latter stages of Socialism, Lenin visualized a world without courts, lawyers, judges, rulers, elected representatives or even policemen.
All Marxists fervently hope that the new society will produce the changes in human nature which are necessary before full Communism can become a reality. They must lose any hope of a graduated pay-scale for differences in productivity or service. They must forget all about differences in skill, training, and mental or physical abilities. Wages will be abolished. They must come around to the notion that, if man does the best he can, in the best type of work for which he is fitted, he is just a good and just as deserving of income as any other man regardless of differences in productivity and output. This is the Communist promise, “Each will produce according to his ability and each will receive according to his need.” He must give up his old profit-motive incentive and become socially minded so that he will work as hard as he can for the benefit of society as a whole and at the same time be content to receive, as a reward for his work, and amount of income based on his need in consumption. Marx and Engels presume that under such a system the output of production would be so tremendous that they could dispense with markets, money and prices. Commodities would be stockpiled at various central places, and all individuals who worked would be entitled to help themselves on the basis of their needs. Under these pleasant circumstances, the government machinery of the State will no longer be necessary. “Only Communism renders the state absolutely unnecessary, for there is no one to be suppressed – ‘no one’ in the sense of a class, in the sense of a systematic struggle with a definite section of the population.”
Source: The Naked Communist by W. Cleon Skousen
The unabbreviated version of the above can be found in the pdf document below.
| 12_soc_ff_of_socialism_-_communism.pdf |