2008-08-23 The Capitalist Manifesto

"The Communist Manifesto" was first published in 1848 by the so-called founders of scientific socialism, Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. It was the political manifesto of a small revolutionary group known as the Communist League. The Manifesto is still being re-issued today, since its considered to be a foundational text of Marxism.

Today, its also much easier to see the absurdities of the Manifesto. The program proposed by Marx and Engels was implemented in the socialist nations. It "worked" temporarily, as these nations created an industrial base and an infrastructure by the use of a planned economy, but only at the cost of enormous sacrifices. In effect, Stalin "built socialism" by plundering the peasantry, super-exploiting the working class and de facto re-introducing slavery (labor camps, the White Sea canal etc). In others words, Stalin carried out a primitive capital accumulation of the same kind Marxists accuse capitalism of having carried out during its formative centuries! After a few decades, it became apparent that the planned economy was less efficient than capitalism. It stalled and eventually collapsed. Some Communist regimes proved to be quite insane, like those of Mao, Pol Pot or Kim Il Sung. Socialism did not lead to an enormous development of the productive forces, as predicted by Marx and Engels. Capitalism still develops them better. Nor was socialism more democratic than capitalism. In fact, a planned economy is incompatible with any kind of democracy, including "workers democracy". Even more damning, many of the socialist revolutions weren't even carried out by the working class, but by peasant guerrillas or military cadre. Even the working class character of the Russian revolution can be questioned, since the Bolsheviks had lost most working-class support by 1921 and were always led by professional revolutionaries, rather than real workers.

The most insane aspect of the Manifesto, often overlooked by its critics, is its strong support for capitalism (you heard me). In the opinion of Marx and Engels, global capitalism is a necessary, transitional stage between pre-modern societies and socialism. Capitalism may be bad, but this doesn't really matter, since its destruction of every non-capitalist system or nation clears the way for Socialism. In many ways, the Manifesto reads like a paean to capitalism. Marx and Engels seem fascinated by its wanton destruction of older societies, its disregard of everything parochial, patriarchal and idyllic. They even condemn "bourgeois" and "petty-bourgeois" socialists (similar to modern Social Democrats) for wanting to protect the peasants and artisans from capitalist free market immiseration.

If the principles of "The Communist Manifesto" were to be applied consistently today, Marxists would have to support capitalist globalization. After all, globalization is doing to the world exactly what Marx and Engels describes in the Manifesto. Indeed, the globalization of the 21st century is more thorough-going than anything experienced by Marx and Engels in 1848. Unfortunately for Messrs. Marx and Engels, globalization doesn't just destroy semi-feudal or primitive economic forms, it also destroys the welfare states, the labor unions and protectionism, i.e. gains of the working class. The "petty-bourgeois" socialists were quite succesful in protecting not only the peasants and artisans, but also the workers from the worst aspects of the free market hailed by the Communist League. Today, these parochial, patriarchal and idyllic conditions are being destroyed by globalism, alongside self-sufficient rural communities and other presumably terrible left-overs from times past. For what is a labor union if not a parochial, patriarchal trades guild? And rather than being the first stage in a transition to socialism, globalization destroys socialism.

And even if socialism had conquered the world and developed the productive forces further, so what? The worlds resources are finite. Presumably, socialism wants to use them up even faster than capitalism already does.

Today, its easy to see that "The Communist Manifesto" is actually a Mad Manifesto of Modernity. Marx and Engels prided themselves of having a scientific, materialist understanding of the world. They criticize both German idealist philosophers and utopian socialists in their text. But their own version of socialism also ended as a utopia. Marxism was simply another purely subjective philosophy, another child of its times. And it has been found to be wanting.

A real alternative to capitalism still awaits its Manifesto.