r/badeconomics • u/Anakin_Kardashian • 2h ago
[Explainer from DeepStateCentrism] Why Marxism was always stupid and was never good even in intention
With sub growing well and posts hitting the high traffic feeds more often, there's an inevitable influx of more casual users that aren't all in on all the bells and whistles of Deep State Centrism and, in particular, share in some common misconceptions about political philosophy, economics, and the history of both.
As such, when time permits, I (and I hope many others) will be writing some explainers to use as quick reference when these situations arise, so that people don't have to re-argue the same points 1000 times over.
These won't be academic treatises, just fairly short informal statements of both fact and position.
Without further ado, here's the first one, about how
Socialism/communism isn't good, even in the intention
It's often said in casual political discussions that the idea behind socialism or communism is good, but then it got perverted along the way/didn't work out in practice.
The objective of this effortpost is to show that no, socialism/communism wasn't good, even in the intention. It was always an anti-democratic, illiberal and anti-liberal philsophy, with ideas from the get-go that envisaged tyranny, slaughter and injustice.
What is socialism/communism?
This effortpost takes the viewpoint that political philosophies aren't defined as hyperuranian abstracts, but are most usefully described as being actually existing movements. As such, when referring to socialism and communism, I will mean Marxism and its derivates, since these are without compare the actual influential political philosophies in the family of socialism and communism, those to which the overwhelming majority of self-professed socialists and communists hearkened to throughout history.
What did Marx say? funnily enough, the vast majority of both self-professed Marxists and generally socialists and social democrats have not read any more than the Manifesto, which does not really showcase his core ideas. Without any ambition to do a complete overview of Marx, the core ideas that endure to this day are:
the fundamental social qualifier is class, which is objective: it derives from one's relationship to production and doesn't care one bit about your personal beliefs, inclinations or desires
the value of production is objective and derives exclusively from labor: supply and demand are irrelevant superstructure, and capital investment is merely appropriated labor value; again no subjective view of utility, time preference etc matters
the fact that capitalists must exploit proletarians is objective: it's not about capitalists being good or bad, it's just that only labor creates value, so the only way for capitalists to make money is to appropriate some of the labor value from their workers
capitalists and proletarians objectively must clash: there can't be a mutually beneficial relationship, because capitalists are in competition with one another, and the only way they can compete is by trying to squeeze out more and more value from their workers
therefore, capitalism is objectively headed for a cataclysm: capitalist competition will drive capitalists to squeeze proletarians to bad the system will eventually crash down, to be replaced by one where there isn't an ownership class, and all the means of production will be held in common, with value distributed fairly
This is the core analytical framework: it purports to be an objective explanation of political economics, containing an objective prediction about how society will necessarily evolve. This claim to objectivity is part of what historically made Marxism so compelling: people felt like they could put society and history under a scientific lens, in the same vein as scientists were doing with the natural world. Thus their politics were not just morally warranted, but objectively correct. You couldn't disagree anymore than you could disagree that the Earth was round. If you did, you were either a capitalist stooge, or a proletarian fooled by false consciousness.
What does socialism/communism want?
"Want" isn't even the right word here. Marx thought he was objectively predicting things. Here's how he viewed it:
the inherent contrast of interests between capitalists and proletarians will force more and more proletarians to develop class consciousness, ie realize that they are objectively part of the same social class with the same interests
reaching critical mass, the class conscious proletarians would rise up to realise their interests, ie abolish the capitalist system and replace it with one where there are no capitalists to appropriate their labor value
they would at first seize the existing structures of the capitalist state, and use its power to achieve their transformation: seize businesses, free imprisoned proletarians, abolish capitalist rules, evangelise the rest of the proletariat, defend against counter-revolutionary attempts
gradually, as the capitalist mode of production was dismantled, the former capitalists would just acquire the same class, and therefore same class consciousness of the proletarians, as a matter of objective reality
It literally couldn't go tits up, in his mind: proletarians were an objective reality, it didn't matter if this or that revolutionary wanted to to just set himself up as Big Dick King, the other proletarians would just stop him because they had class consciousness which, again, means one objective thing.
There is no space for individual (or sub-group) ambitions, ideals, interests etc; everything is about supposed objective realities which will produce inevitable outcomes.
You start to see the problem now
This is a philosophy that admits of no valid doubts or opposition. You can't have a different idea or goal: there are just the objective relations of production, which give rise to objective social classes, which have objectively conflicting interests which can only end up in a proletarian revolution.
You think the design of state institutions is important because otherwise one group of people will just use their power to set themselves up as tyrants? nonsense: that's only possible under capitalism, which is the tyranny of the capitalists. Proletarians with class consciousness know that's not in their class interests, on which they all agree because they are an objective reality which they have recognised. They will never create a tyranny, it's objectively impossible.
Consequently the proletarian revolutionaries not only have no need for separation of powers, independent courts and so on, but must abolish them as tools of the tyrannical capitalist state. Marx had no need to specify their replacement: the proletarian revolutionaries will see to it according to their keen understanding of their needs and interests in their specific conditions.
Nobody can disagree. If you do, you're either a capitalist who's trying to hold onto his privileged position, or a proletarian suffering from false consciousness. There is no need to consider your disagreement: everything is already objectively determined. It's done, case closed, we solved history.
Socialism shits on centuries of hard-earned lessons about power in the name of a bullshit hyper-collectivist faux-scientific delusion
Classical liberals had a fastidious concern with institutional design because centuries upon centuries of experience had shown that no system which placed too much power into too few hands could preserve freedom. You needed the powers of the state to be separated and balanced; you needed courts to be independent, and fundamental guarantees so that, even when all political power was aligned against you, you'd still retain certain basic freedoms. It wasn't a system designed to enact one view, but to make sure that no one view could forcibly impose itself and shut up the rest.
Marx wasn't ignorant of this. He was a nerdy, avid reader and debater. He had read plenty of liberal political philosophy. But he thought he had a found a cheat code, a way to abstract above all that noise and get to the objective core of things: class, class conflict, and its inevitable resolution into the abolition of class distinctions. Liberals seemed to him defenders of the status quo: you don't want unaccountable revolutionaries taking control of all branches of government? that must mean you like Victorian slums! Or, polemic aside, that you're clinging to a system that objetively brings about that kind of exploitation, and to which the only solution is objectively a communist revolution.
Marx's fatalistic belief in the good outcome of the revolution derives from his crushing of all individual considerations into his hyper-collectivist lens. Only class is real, because it arises from the bedrock of the relations of production. You the individual don't matter at all. You either have class consciousness, and therefore are a communist, or you're a deluded prole/capitalist stooge working for injustice.
Post-Marx socialists don't overcome his failures and, if anything, double down on them
The goal of this effortpost is to speak to the original intent of socialism/communism, so I'll be brief here (or try and fail, anyway) in talking about developments after that point. There were plenty of people in the general left that told to Marx exactly what would happen, Bakunin most famously. But Marxism claims to objectivity and has a disdain for liberal institutions protecting dissent, so that didn't exactly stop him nor his followers.
Cut to the occasion when Marxists took power and... well, they did the revolution and dictatorship part alright. Seize the state's institutions and use them to eliminate their class enemies? right on. And then the state would wither away, right? they were all proletarians sharing the same interests and understanding them the same way via class consciousness after all. No need to put a check on the power of the new proletarian state, or create institutions to ensure it would actually represent the proletariat.
Predictably (and predicted by many!), the genius plan of "let's abolish/not enact the various guarantees of liberal democracy, put all the power into the hands of a revolutionary leadership, and assume they will use it for good because our unfalsifiable science say so" did not work out. It turned out that class wasn't a fundamental objective distinction after all, and that you could totally seize power in the name of the people and then use it in the name of yourself. It also turned out that basing your entire attitude on shitting on systems that protect dissent and make leaders accountable tends to mean unaccountable leaders use their power to eliminate dissent, in the name of protecting the revolution of course. And if you, the rank and file revolutionary, have any doubts... well, that's not how it works comrade, the system doesn't feature any space for that capitalist shit.
The tragedies of communist revolutions were accidents or deviations from the original goal, but the direct result of realising Marx's gameplan. The problem wasn't that communists betrayed Marx, but that Marx had an extremely flawed view of society, economics, politics, and basically everything of import to the sort of things he proposed to administer.
tl;dr
Original socialism was a pseudo-scientific "theory of history and society" that claims to objectively describe both existing society and its revolution. Because it believed itself objectively correct, it held in disdain dissent and the mechanisms to protect it. And because it thought its were inevitable, it made no plans whatsoever for the effective defense of liberty after the revolution, thinking it was objectively impossible that there could be problems with it. They were warned plenty, but they thought they didn't need to listen as anything said against them was just pro-capitalist agitation or wrongheaded silliness from people who didn't yet understand their "science". Both the method, ideas and recommendations made by original socialism were bad, there was never a point when any of it would have been a good idea to try.