Marxism

Author(s): Joshua Muravchik

Source: Foreign Policy , Nov. - Dec., 2002, No. 133 (Nov. - Dec., 2002), pp. 36-38
Published by: Slate Group, LLC

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/3183551

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 The Dustbin of History

MARXISM
By Joshua Muravchik

o other idea so enchanted the 20th century as and Engels turned the idea of science on
If Marx
Marxism. To this day, one often comesitsacross
head, the bold breadth of their prophecy (or theo-
assertions that Marxism retains value as an ry,
"analytic
if you wish) was still dazzling. "The history of all
tool"- the use of which does not necessarily make
hitherto existing societies is the history of class strug-
one a Marxist. The first person to make gles,"
this they
dis- said. They claimed that the immutable
tinction was, of course, Karl Marx himself, who
workings of "capitalism" (a term largely, if not whol-
famously forswore "Marxism," an appellation
ly, of their invention) would lead to the reduction of
coined by his detractors. Marx's collaborator,
society to two classes, an ever growing and increasingly
Friedrich Engels, however, embraced the term, build-
impoverished proletariat and an ever shrinking and
ing a powerful cult around it, in which heincreasingly
was the wealthy bourgeoisie. This dynamic would
high priest and Marx the oracle. make revolution morally necessary and politically
possible.
The first of the many ironies surrounding this cultIt would also assure that the socialist revo-
lution would be the final revolution. Previous tri-
was its claim to being scientific. In Manchester, where
he was sent by his father umphant classes had them-
to be isolated from radical selves become the new

"The
influences, the young crowning irony is that a
exploiters, but since the
Engels searched out the proletariat would consist
followers of Welsh indus-
movement proclaiming that
of almost everybody,
trialist and social reformer whom could it exploit?
Robert Owen. The Owen- material motives determined Ergo, its rule would inau-
ites had hit upon the idea gurate the golden era of
of "socialism," a term human behavior gave rise to classlessness.
they coined, and set out From the moment
to demonstrate its efficacy an era in which ideology Marx and Engels penned
by means of experimental this theory, it proved false
communities. Scores of
dominated world politics on every front. Over the
such experiments yielded course of the second half
uniform results: the settle- as never before."- of the 19th century, the
ments collapsed, usually standard of living of
within the span of two workers in Europe, far
years. Engels was well aware of this recordfrom
but falling, roughly doubled-a trend that contin-
brushed it aside. He and Marx, a pair of 20-some- ued apace until the outbreak of World War I. Con-
thing children of privilege, believed they had comitantly,
dis- the middle classes did not disappear but
covered a pattern to history that would produce grew many times larger, and the wealth of the capi-
socialism regardless of human will or ingenuity.talists,
("It although it certainly multiplied, became more
dispersed, not more concentrated.
is not a matter of what this or that proletarian or even
the proletariat as a whole pictures at present as its A still more deadly blow struck the doctrine in
goal," wrote Marx in their first collaborative work, 1914, as the outbreak of war put to test Marx and
The Holy Family. "It is a matter of what the prole- Engels' claim that "the working men have no country."
tariat . . . will historically be compelled to do.") AtInonce, working men displayed their patriotism on all o
0

short, they substituted prophecy for experimentation

sides. Moreover, most of the socialist leaders, either as
C)
o

C)

and thereby claimed to have elevated socialism from

a result of similar stirrings within their own breasts or o

the plane of utopia to that of science. in response to the mood of their constituents, also ral-
O
Q--
>-

cr-

lied to their respective fatherlands. Georgy Valenti- CID

V)

Joshua Muravchik, a resident scholar at the American Enter- novich Plekhanov, the dean of Russian Marxism, cap- z
0

prise Institute, is the author of Heaven on Earth: The Rise and tured the spirit of the moment: "If I were not old and
Fall of Socialism (San Francisco: Encounter Books, 2002). sick I would join the army. To bayonet [the] German
__a

36 FOREIGN POLICY

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comrades would give me great pleasure." This efflo- socialism and that responded
rescence of nationalist feeling made nonsense of the umph with a wave of anti-Re
postulate that class is the decisive historical variable. However, there were always
Yet just at the moment that the theory had thus denied that Russia was truly soc
been rendered nugatory, it gained a cachet far beyond of these aspects of the Bolshe
any it had previously enjoyed. The Bolshevik seizure against the validity of the th
of power rescued Marxism from the wreckage of its raised new problems. If the Sov
economic and social predictions by seeming to vali- ist, then it assuredly was not ac
date its most seductive claim-namely, that history ist theory and could not be exp
had a foreseeable end. However far trends and events struggle between communism
had strayed from the forecasts, this much was certain: a time, the triangular struggl
socialism of some kind had risen in Europe's largest nomenon that Marxism could
country. The Russian Revolution seemed a powerful was not a class struggle, as the
vindication of the prophecy that humankind was what remained of the Marxia
striding from the capi- The crowning iro
talist past to the social- that a movement
ist future. Even such claiming that ma
profound anti-Marx- motives determined
ists as Austrian econo- human behavior gave
mist Joseph Schum- rise to an era in which
peter and U.S. rac
ideology dominated
journalist Whittaker world politics as never
Chambers conceded FKIUMO.
ma
d
Ow w *
I . before.
boawtunm 4
this directionality, What, then, is left
uc,:h !
much to their despair. of this once mighty the-

t-I&,"o
am"lut-n

Communism's rise .r : ,, . ory? It remains the offi-

i'rC1ki
endowed Marxism cial orthodoxy of a few
with a brilliant new minor police states and
allure, even while it nominally even of
ct ~ dd`1
demolished anything China. But the adoption
that remained of of President Jiang
Marxism's theoretical Zemin's "three repre-
structure. The in- sents" (making the
dustrial proletariat party the official repre-
assuredly had not sentative of all "pro-
brought socialism to ductive classes," includ-
Russia. The country ing entrepreneurs)
was still mostly agri- aligns theory as well as
cultural. The Bolshevik practice in antithesis to
Marxian
militia that seized power consisted of disaffected sol- precepts. And social democratic parties
diers, Lettish peasants yearning for national have one after another renounced both Marxism
inde-
pendence, student revolutionaries, and no doubtand socialism, although a few retain the word "social-
some
ist" in their names.
workers, but it had no distinct proletarian coloration.
Nor were the men guiding it workers (certainlyMoreover,
not despite dubbing themselves the new
Lenin, who had a title of nobility that he was
vanguard
not of the proletariat, the antiglobalization
protesters have twisted the doctrine beyond recog-
ashamed to invoke when it served his purpose).
In addition, socialism was supposed to come to Their complaint about capitalism is the oppo-
nition.
the most advanced capitalist countries, whereas
site of the Marxist critique, which held that capital-
Russia was among the most backward. Adding ism must develop to its utmost degree in order to
insult to injury, the most advanced capitalism was its historic mission of becoming the chrysalis
complete
to be found in the United States, the country
from that
which a new society could emerge. Those who
more than any other proved stubbornly resistant to
would stand in the way of this evolution, though they

NOVEMBER I DECEMBER 2002 37

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 The Dustbin of History
might espouse socialism, are, in the words of Marx
and Engels, "both reactionary and utopian."
Finally, what of those who forswear the doctrine
but claim to employ Marxism as an analytic tool?
Many of those who make this claim write with
Hegelian obscurity. Perhaps the analytic tool is the
"dialectic," the Marxian claim to a distinctive form
of reasoning more penetrating than conventional
logic, and a term one still sees bandied about. Engels
gave this idea its fullest explication (in Socialism:
Utopian and Scientific), pointing out that by con-
ventional logic "a thing either exists or does not exist;
a thing cannot at the same time be itself and something
else." As an example, he cited the conventional view
that a creature is either alive or dead. This premise is
wrong, he said, because the precise moment of death
is hard to determine. Dialectic allows us to see that a
thing can simultaneously exist and not exist, be both
dead and alive, he explained. But does the difficulty
ASIAN VALUES
By Fareed Zakaria
A bout
were a"Asian
decade ago,
values." In EastEastAsia
explaining Asia's was hot and so
extraordinary economic development-what the
World Bank termed a "miracle"-many believed
that culture played a pivotal role. After all, so many
Third World countries had tried to climb their way
out of poverty, and only those of East Asia had fully
succeeded. Singapore's brilliant patriarch Lee Kuan
Yew became a world-class pundit, explaining how the
unique culture of Confucianism permeated Asian
societies. Many scholars agreed, perhaps none more
forcefully than Joel Kotkin, who in his fascinating
1993 book, Tribes, essentially argued that if you
want to succeed economically in the modern world,
be Jewish, be Indian, but above all, be Chinese.
I have to confess that I found this theory appeal-
ing at first, since I am of Indian origin. But then I won-
dered, if being Indian is a key to economic success,
what explained the dismal performance of the Indi-
an economy over the four decades since its inde-
pendence in 1947 or, for that matter, for hundreds of
Fareed Zakaria is the editor of Newsweek International
and author of the forthcoming book The Future of Free-
dom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad (New
York: W. W. Norton, 2003).
38 FOREIGN POLICY
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of determining a precise moment of death really imply
that at some point a creature is both dead and alive?
What could that possibly mean? This entire rhetori-
cal sand castle was demolished in a single sentence by
philosopher Sydney Hook: "State a proposition that
would be false according to conventional logic, but
true according to dialectic."
Others who invoke this analytic tool seek to con-
vey sympathy for the poor, but Marxism adds noth-
ing on this score to what is found in the Torah or the
Sermon on the Mount. For others, it means a materi-
alistic interpretation of human motives, but the history
of Marxism itself refutes this claim. For still others, it
signifies a fascination with revolution. But after a cen-
tury of Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot, surely we have
learned that far from constituting a leap "from the
kingdom of necessity to the kingdom of freedom," as
Marx put it, revolution has more often been a leap into
a bottomless abyss of human suffering.
years before that? One might ask the same question
of China, another country with an economy that
performed miserably for hundreds of years until two
decades ago. After all, if all you need are the Chinese,
China has had hundreds of millions of them for cen-
turies. As for Jews, they have thrived in many places,
but the one country where they compose a majority,
Israel, was also an economic mess until only recent-
ly. All three countries' economic fortunes improved
markedly in the last three decades. But this turn-
around did not occur because they got themselves new
cultures. Rather, their governments changed specific
policies and created more market-friendly systems.
Today, China is growing faster than India, but that
has more to do with the pace of China's economic
reform than with the superiority of the Confucian
ethic over the Hindu mind-set.
It is odd that Lee Kuan Yew is such a fierce pro-
ponent of cultural arguments. Singapore is not so cul-
turally different from its neighbor, Malaysia. Singa-
pore is more Chinese and less Malaysian, but
compared with the rest of the world, the two are quite
similar societies. But more so than its neighbors, Sin-
gapore has had an effective government that has pur-
sued wise economic policies. It's not Confucius but
Lee Kuan Yew that explains Singapore's success. The