The Continuing Allure of Marx and Lenin

By Richard Girard

 "If Karl Marx and V. I. Lenin were alive today, they would be leading contenders for the Nobel Prize in economics." --Paul Craig Roberts, Assistant Treasury Secretary under Ronald Reagan; "Marx and Lenin Revisited," OpEdNews.com; 6 October 2009.

Why are Marx and Lenin considered to still have relevance everywhere in the world but the United States--including the democracies of Western Europe--while the darling of America's hard core right-wing, Ayn Rand, is considered a joke everywhere outside of the U.S. and a few extremist circles in the English-speaking democracies. I believe that the answer is very simple: agree or disagree with the conclusions of Marx and Lenin, they were still superb scholars who backed their basic assumptions for the faults of the capitalist system with extensive research and real world examples of the problems inherent in the system; Ayn Rand was a writer of fiction who never let the problem of the truth get in the way of the story she was telling, let alone the elitist propaganda that she was attempting to sell to the world.

Libertarianism is the "Marxism of the Right," as Robert Locke stated in his eponymous article in the 14 March 2005 issue of the The American Conservative, an inverse more than an opposite of Karl Marx's philosophy. Objectivism is libertarianism taken to the status of a cult, in the same way Maoist, Stalinist, and--most recently--North Korean Communism under Kim Jong Udon, his father and his grandfather, is Marxism taken to cult status. We may all count ourselves fortunate that Ayn Rand never achieved any real political power. In my opinion, her intolerance of opposition of any sort to her ideas would have ended in millions of imprisoned or executed Americans.

To quote Bob Burnett's 10 June 2011 OpEdNews article, "Roll Over, Karl Marx," "A 1999 BBC poll judged Marx 'the thinker of the millennium,' but for the last 60 years he's been infamous in America, where being called a Marxist is equivalent to being labeled a terrorist or pedophile. Despite the controversy, Marx's analysis was correct on many issues and his insights help explain America's growing economic and political divide." This infamy has led to intellectual laziness on the part of the American public, who might have read Marx and Engel's The Communist Manifesto, and actually believe they understand Karl Marx. This is the equivalent of reading Albert Einstein's Special Theory of Relativity and believing you understand all of modern Physics.

The right-wing must concentrate all of its considerable invective on the failure of Marx and Lenin's solutions to the problems with the capitalist political/economic system, in order to obscure the two men's clear and prescient exposure of unfettered capitalism's faults with regards to the exploitation and dehumanization of humanity in general, and workers in particular. This is especially true when we speak of the capitalist economic syndicates, trusts, cartels, and monopolies, who use their nation-state's political and military might to develop an imperialist program against the world's less developed nations, a program that establishes and maintains their control at home, as well as their hegemony abroad.

I am not the first to say this. Bruce Allen Morris in his 29 June 2007 OpEdNews article "Marx Helps Explain Cheney;" points out the ongoing slander of Karl Marx by the Right for all of his observations of the inherent evils of capitalism, and the eventual dangers represented by our modern, managed democracy. This managed democracy is "democracy" in name only, whose every organ of information, representation, and election is controlled by the capitalist elite for their own benefit, not that of the nation as a whole, whose People form the legal and moral basis for the nation's sovereign power and authority. (See my 28 February 2009 OpEdNews article "The Tao of Government," for the relationship of power, authority, and sovereignty. Author's note: I borrowed the term 'managed democracy," from the Dean of Science Fiction, Robert A. Heinlein.) To quote Mr. Morris' article:

"Marx Was Right!"

"He was right in his diagnosis of the ills of capitalism and his prognosis for nations clinging slavishly to it; he was right about the international exploitation of workers; he was right about wars for markets and resources; right about growing inequality between the rich and the rest; about the destruction of the natural world, decay of the human mind and on and on. More to the point of this particular article, he was right that the wealthy in society create the form of government that most suits their interests and conform it as needed to serve their wealth and power. Sadly and uncomfortably, Marx was right that capitalists, his bourgeoisie, saw the representative form of government as the best way to control society. They were confident their money would buy representatives to do their bidding, even if against the pubic interest. Hard to argue against that result today, isn't it?"

The conservatives--in reality reactionaries--of today tell us, just as they did when Ayn Rand was writing The Fountainhead and Atlas Shrugged, that our only alternative to the socialist or Communist state (they have a difficult time differentiating between European social democracy and the Marxist state), are those systems' theoretical opposite: unfettered, laissez-faire capitalism, based upon the theories of the Austrian or Chicago Schools of Economics. This type of capitalism is often combined with the political system of libertarianism--which broadly includes the Utilitarianism of John Stuart Mill, Ayn Rand's Objectivism, as well as Murray Rothbard's and Robert Nozick's more cerebral modern systems.

But politics are intrinsically interconnected with economics, as demonstrated by the original term that was used for economics, "political economy." Before John Maynard Keynes's mentor, Alfred Marshall, created the word "economics" in 1888, Marx and other scholars wrote of "political economy" when describing the dismal science. Marshall created the term in part to differentiate the study of wealth and its affect on nations from what he thought was the more mundane considerations of diplomacy, war, and other political machinations.

The Divine Right of Thugs

Later in the article, Mr. Morris adds the following concerning the increasing arrogance of men such as then Vice President Cheney, his adviser David Addison, and Republican power broker Karl Rove:

"Remember that Marx said the wealthy create the form of government that best suits their needs and that they can best control. While those criteria may have indeed pointed to representative government in Marx's time, the wealthy got a taste of empowered representative government that truly worked for the people in the Mid-Twentieth Century and they did not like it one bit.

"But Cheney's naked and brash written assertion that he is tethered to no law strikes me as telegraphic and intentionally provocative. Traditionally, the only person not subject to his polity's [nation-state's--RJG] laws is the King."

Cheney's assertion was the traditional argument of monarchs claiming "divine right," including Louis XIV, Charles I of England, and Peter the Great of Russia: they were above the law and answerable to no one except God. It was an argument that I thought had been settled under the guillotine in Paris, and in the basement of Ekaterinaberg in Russia. But it seems that what was old is new once again, especially if you are as lacking in creativity as America's reactionaries are proving themselves to be.

This nation was blessed by Franklin Delano Roosevelt. FDR saw a need to not only re-establish the American economy during the Great Depression, but to recreate American society based on a growing and literate middle class holding constitutionally-limited power, which the great Greek philosopher Aristotle had stated was the best sort of government his book Politics (Book 4, Chapter XI) more than two millennia before.

Beginning with the Taft-Hartley Act in 1947, and accelerating since the election of Ronald Reagan in 1980, we have seen the steady erosion of power by the plutocratic oligarchs against the middle-classes' rights and powers that had been so carefully established by FDR with his New Deal, and expanded by JFK's and LBJ's Civil Rights, New Frontier, and Great Society programs. Taft-Hartley was the necessary first blow by the oligarchs, because without a strong and vibrant labor movement to counter the overweening power of the conglomerates, any gain of rights for the workers could only be temporary. As Karl Marx wrote in his Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts in 1844, ("Human Requirements and the Division of Labor;" p.48):

"We have started out from the premises of political economy. We have accepted its language and its laws. We presupposed private property; the separation of labor, capital, and land, and likewise of wages, profit, and capital; the division of labor; competition; the conception of exchange value, etc. From political economy itself, using its own words, we have shown that the worker sinks to the level of a commodity, and moreover the most wretched commodity of all; that the misery of the worker is in inverse proportion to the power and volume of his production; that the necessary consequence of competition is the accumulation of capital in a few hands and hence the restoration of monopoly in a more terrible form; and that, finally, the distinction between capitalist and landlord, between agricultural worker and industrial worker, disappears and the whole of society must split into the two classes of property owners and propertyless workers."

And with the slow but steady dispossession of America's middle class over the last forty years, we have reached the point that--as the New York Times trumpeted in its 22 April 2014 edition, "The American Middle Class Is No Longer the World's Richest"--we can see Marx's 170 year old prediction becoming prophesy here in the United States.

Guzzling the Kool-Aid

One of the most egregious lies sold to the American people over the last forty years, is the lie of why they have become unemployed, and can find no comparable job.

David Sirota, in his 17 December 2010 article for Truthdig titled "3 Reasons Right-Wing Lies About Joblessness Stick" (later reprinted at AlterNet.org), wrote of the right-wing's pervasive myth that has developed--although existing since the time of John Calvin--over the last thirty years that one's inability to find or hold a job being solely the responsibility of the worker. Mr. Sirota (who I very much miss on Denver Talk Radio AM 760 weekday mornings), wrote the following:

"First, there's what psychologists call the Just-World Fallacy--the tendency to believe the world is inherently fair. This delusion is embedded in our pervasive up-by-the-bootstraps, everyone-can-be-a-millionaire catechism. The myth of the lazy unemployed can seem to make sense because it connects those ancient fables to current news, effectively alleging that today's jobless deserve their plight." These are the spiritual descendants of the Calvinist-Puritans who believe in predestination, and the existence of an "elect." I would also note that these are the same people who, if you complain to them about life not being fair, will laugh at you for ever thinking it was.

"Narcissism is also a factor. In a nation that typically dehumanizes the destitute Other with epithets like 'welfare queen' and 'white trash,' our self-centered culture leads the slightly less destitute to ascribe their own relative success exclusively to superhuman greatness. The myth of the lazy unemployed plays to that conceit, helping the still-employed experience potentially scary unemployment news as a booster shot of self-aggrandizement. You remain in a job, says the myth, because you are better than the jobless.

"Finally, there's raw fear--arguably more powerful than even arrogance. With the labor-market news downright frightening, the still-employed are understandably pining for a defense mechanism to cope with persistent layoff anxieties. The myth of the lazy unemployed provides exactly that--a calming sensation of control. If, as the myth suggests, the jobless are really out of work because they 'are generally people with poor work habits and poor personalities,' then it stands to reason that the employed can avoid catastrophe by simply choosing better behavior."

This is unfortunately the same mindset that a slave develops in an attempt to avoid beatings from his master. If I work hard enough, and do the master's bidding, he won't have an excuse to beat me like a dumb animal. What the slave doesn't seem to realize is that without some system of checks and balances to prevent abuse, no matter how proper and obsequious he or she acts, one day the master, or one of the master's representatives or guests, will abuse him; it is the nature of the institution. Any belief to the contrary is at best wishful thinking, and at worst, willful denial of reality.

"There is nothing new under the Sun." -- Ecclesiastes 3:1

Marx wrote of the need for imperialist expansion by the capitalist states in his writings to establish and maintain their power, but it was Vladimir Illyich Lenin who had the last word on the subject in his book Imperialism--The Last Stage of Capitalism (1917). In Chapter VII of that book, "Imperialism as a Special Stage of Capitalism," pp. 93-4; Lenin writes the following:

"[Katusky states in Die Neue Zeit, (1914, 2 (B. 32), S. 909, Sept. 11, 1914; cf. 1915, 2, S. 107 et seq) that i]mperialism is a striving for annexations" [This interpretation] is correct, but very incomplete, for politically, imperialism is, in general, a striving towards violence and reaction. For the moment, however, we are interested in the economic aspect of the question, which Kautsky himself introduced into his definition. The inaccuracies in [his] definition are glaring. The characteristic feature of imperialism is not industrial but finance capital [emphasis added--RJG]. It is not an accident that in France it was precisely the extraordinarily rapid development of finance capital, and the weakening of industrial capital, that, from the [18]80s onwards, gave rise to the extreme intensification of annexationist (colonial) policy. The characteristic feature of imperialism is precisely that it strives to annex not only agrarian territories, but even most highly industrialised regions (German appetite for Belgium; French appetite for Lorraine), because (1) the fact that the world is already partitioned obliges those contemplating a redivision to reach out for every kind of territory, and (2) an essential feature of imperialism is the rivalry between several great powers in the striving for hegemony, i.e., for the conquest of territory, not so much directly for themselves as to weaken the adversary and undermine his hegemony. (Belgium is particularly important for Germany as a base for operations against Britain; Britain needs Baghdad as a base for operations against Germany, etc.)"

Replace Germany, Belgium, and Britain with Russia. Ukraine and the American-dominated NATO; and Baghdad, Britain, and Germany with Afghanistan, NATO, and Russia; and it describes today's geopolitical situation every bit as well as Lenin's words describe the geopolitical machinations of a century ago.

"We Cannot All Work at McDonald's." -- Me, 1987

Lenin also describes the expansion of the rentier class in Great Britain, and its negative effect on the rest of the economy:

"In 1893", writes [J.A.] Hobson [Imperialism, London, 1902, p.324], "the British capital invested abroad represented about 15% of the total wealth of the United Kingdom." Let me remind the reader that by 1915 this capital had increased about two and a half times. "Aggressive imperialism," says Hobson further on, "which costs the taxpayer so dear, which is of so little value to the manufacturer and trader is a source of great gain to the investor. The annual income Great Britain derives from commissions in her whole foreign and colonial trade, import and export, is estimated by Sir R. Giffen at 18 million [nearly 170 million rubles] for 1899, taken at 2%, upon a turnover of 800 million. Great as this sum is, it cannot explain the aggressive imperialism of Great Britain, which is explained by the income of 90 million to 100 million from 'invested' capital, the income of the rentiers.

"The income of the rentiers is five times greater than the income obtained from the foreign trade of the biggest "trading" country in the world! This is the essence of imperialism and imperialist parasitism."

"The rentier state is a state of parasitic, decaying capitalism, and this circumstance cannot fail to influence all the socio-political conditions of the countries concerned in general, and the two fundamental trends in the working-class movement, in particular. To demonstrate this in the clearest possible manner let me quote Hobson, who is a most "reliable" witness, since he cannot be suspected of leaning towards Marxist orthodoxy; on the other hand, he is an Englishman who is very well acquainted with the situation in the country which is richest in colonies, in finance capital, and in imperialist experience""

"With the Anglo-Boer War fresh in his mind, Hobson describes the connection between imperialism and the interests of the "financiers", their growing profits from contracts, supplies, etc., and writes:

"While the directors of this definitely parasitic policy are capitalists, the same motives appeal to special classes of the workers. In many towns, most important trades are dependent upon government employment or contracts; the imperialism of the metal and ship-building centers is attributable in no small degree to this fact.

(1) 'economic parasitism', and (2) the formation of armies recruited from subject peoples. 'There is first the habit of economic parasitism, by which the ruling state has used its provinces, colonies, and dependencies in order to enrich its ruling class and to bribe its lower classes into acquiescence.' And I shall add that the economic possibility of such bribery, whatever its form may be, requires high monopolist profits." (V.I. Lenin, Imperialism--The Last Stage of Capitalism; pp. 101-2.)

Hobson, through Lenin, is describing in Great Britain an almost identical situation to what we have here in the United States today. Thirty years after Lenin wrote these words, the British Empire began its inevitable disintegration. I do not think this nation's Empire will last that long.

Ignoring the Unpalatable

The reason that both Marx and Lenin have continued to be of interest to most of the world is simple: Their predictions concerning the inhumane system of treatment and exploitation of human beings, together with their predictions of the imperialist, semi-feudal state of haves and have nots, with its increasingly large portion of the haves living off of investments and inheritances, has come true. The syndicates, cartels, and monopolies controlling every basic industry in the Western Democracies, without possible realistic intervention by a so-called representative government that has been for the most part been bought and paid for, has also become a reality. Marx and Lenin's solution to the problem may be impossibly Utopian, overly dependent on James Madison's angels (The Federalist Papers, Number 51) to have even the slightest chance of working, but they are proving to be prophets in this era of unfettered, free-market capitalism. 

I am not alone in my observations: Nobel Laureate Paul Krugman wrote an editorial for the 9 June 2011 edition of the New York Times titled "Rule by Rentiers," that echoes Hobson's and Lenin's statements with an almost stunning exactitude. Paul Craig Roberts pointed out in his OpEdNews article "Marx and Lenin Revisited," that if they were alive the two men would be in the running for Nobel Prize in Economics, as their writings have done a far better job predicting the world as it is currently than all of the cobbled together mathematical models of the Austrian and Chicago Schools of Economics combined.

The American people are also starting to note that the "class struggle" that the Right denies exists, exemplified by the increasing chasm between the rich and the rest of us, is a reality. In a Pew Research Center poll in 2012, two out of three Americans believed that our nation suffered from "strong" or "very strong" conflict between rich and poor. This is an increase of nineteen percent from 2009, so that it now ranks as the number one division within our society.

The reality of Karl Marx and his philosophy is not about having a world where workers do the minimum amount of work they need to, and to hell with everyone else. To believe this is to misunderstand the entire underlying ideal of Marxist socialism. To quote Marx (The German Ideology; 1845. New York: International, 2001. p. 53,) "For, as soon as the division of labor comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic." Or to put it simply, human beings should work to live; they should not live to work. We should all have time to do other things than bring home a paycheck, and I don't mean get high, get drunk, or get laid as our sole interests outside of work. We should be able to: garden; fish; write and play music; write  poetry or prose; read for both pleasure and self-improvement; exercise; play with our children; help with their education; paint, sculpt, and draw; argue politics, sports, or trivia at the local coffee house or pub; and work for political causes that we believe in. Or to quote Terry Eagleton in the London Review of Books (from Chris Floyd's 1 March 2011 OpEdNews article, "Revealed! The Ancient Mystery at the Heart of the Worldwide Communist Conspiracy"):

"Marx, too, was an artist of sorts. It is often forgotten how staggeringly well read he was, and what painstaking labour he invested in the literary style of his works. He was eager, he remarked, to get shot of the 'economic crap' of Capital and get down to his big book on Balzac. Marxism is about leisure, not labour. It is a project that should be eagerly supported by all those who dislike having to work. It holds that the most precious activities are those done simply for the hell of it, and that art is in this sense the paradigm of authentic human activity. It also holds that the material resources that would make such a society possible already exist in principle, but are generated in a way that compels the great majority to work as hard as our Neolithic ancestors did. We have thus made astounding progress, and no progress at all."

Communism as we have seen it does not work. Neither does unfettered capitalism. The answer lies somewhere in the middle, in a democratic system where the interests of shareholders, management, workers, and the public at large are all represented, and the greatest good in the long tern is the primary interest of all businesses, not next quarter's bottom line. I will end this with a quote from my friend Mark Sashine:

"Capitalism is not society. It is a component of society. It exists within society, society does not exist within capitalism."

"Only the effect of ideology on small minds can explain the attempt to argue otherwise."

I do not believe that this nation's future is contained in the ideologies of small minds, or the creation of a semi-feudal oligarchy. We cannot allow large portions of this nation's wealth to be derived from parasitic investments in paper instruments. A nation must have a solid base of up-to-date infrastructure and manufactured goods on which to build its economy and its future. We must rescue ourselves from the dead end of the imperialist monopoly state while there is still time.

And that time is rapidly running out.