Karl Heinrich Marx was a German philosopher born in 1818. He is best known for two of his works The Communist Manifesto, and the three volume Das Kapital. These main works as well as others that he produced in his lifetime later sparked a world changing revolution of thought. However many who attempted to bring Marx's ideals to life failed to accomplish the precise nature of the world Marx envisioned.
To understand why Marx's ideal society is so hard to implement I would first like to present this video that does an excellent job of describing how Marx's ideal society might function. In addition it will also provide some insight into the political theory of Marx's work:
This video also ,all be it very subtilty, outlines the critical issue that has plagued any attempt to enact Marx's way of life, the tendency for people to act selfishly. In a ideal Marxist society all members would have an equal amount of wealth, commodities and anything else one would deem necessary to have, however not everyone has to work the same. Marx envisioned a world where leisure could be celebrated and enjoyed to the fullest because production had reached a point where a few could provide for all. The purpose of this was to allow people explore and find things that fulfilled them without being shackled by a system that required most of their time and effort just to shift most of the profit to the rich.
Unfortunately, Marx's vision in every case it has been used has been adapted in such a way that the very people that it was meant to assist the proletariat, or working class, have been deprived by their governments in a similar way that the bourgeoisie , or ruling class, has done in capitalist societies. Several countries like china have seen some success by mixing Marx's centralized government with capitalist economic ideals, however few would argue with you if you said that this development would have disappointed Marx himself...
In conclusion, currently there has yet to be an implementation of Marx's ideals that did not borrow in some way from capitalism or some other system. Some of these systems hold water and are still thriving countries to this day, others have fallen do to complications within their own political systems however, none have achieved the utopia that Karl Marx originally envisioned.
"Marx's vision in every case it has been used has been adapted in such a way that the very people that it was meant to assist the proletariat, or working class, have been deprived..." In every case? You might take a look at the Nordic countries, which have certainly applied Marx's redistributionist vision to create equal access to education, health care, and other social goods and services. Their taxes are quite high, by American standards, and yet those countries also consistently rank atop the "happiest" lists. Of course it's also true that those societies are capitalist-socialist hybrids, and thus don't match Marx's total vision. But there aren't any societies that totally fulfill (say) Adam Smith's free market vision either. Maybe the message is that the most just and happiest societies are those that mix-and-match different social and political visions?
ReplyDeleteI really loved your paper and all of the Youtube videos you had included. It gave further insight into your topic. Although I do not agree with most of Marx's vision, it was an interest read.
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