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Marx For A Day
In 1848, the German philosopher Karl Marx described a “spectre” haunting Europe in his Communist Manifesto; he also saw himself as an economist of sorts, and contemporary socialists take a good chunk of their policy prescriptions from Marx. Given Marx’s rising popularity in both academia and among anyone under 40 (run through the alphabet: AOC, CRT, and, er, Bernie Sanders…) I do think it’s important for young people to have a thorough understanding of his ideas.
So, close to Halloween, I became a somewhat frightening Karl Marx for a day, since my juniors in microeconomics were learning about the problems of government intervention in market economies.
Not to create and destroy a straw man, mind you. That typically doesn’t work. I took off my jacket and tie, and ripped open my dress shirt (a triple thank you, Goodwill, since I did this three times), showering the students closest to me with flying buttons. That revealed my red Karl Marx t-shirt, purchased on eBay, undoubtedly and ironically from a capitalist. With a decidedly serious, angry, and impassioned revolutionary tone, I proceeded to give a half hour monologue explaining, and yes, propagating, the very best defense of Marxism I could muster. In explaining his views of class struggle, the labor theory of value, surplus value, and dialectical materialism, I told my juniors that Marx’s views of history and the internal contradictions of capitalism were absolutely correct. His utopian vision of “from each according to his ability, and to each according to his need” was both plausible and just.
And I wouldn’t let the students object or question me until I had my say.
Then, I answered a trickle, and then a flood, of raised hands.
In the past, I’ve heard anecdotes of college freshmen who, when introduced to this Marxist creed (it really is a religion) respond with something like, “Wow. That sounds like a really great idea!”
What did I hear from Brookfield Academy students?
First, what I didn’t hear. I didn’t hear emotive or pejorative sound bites, like, “That’s stupid,” or “Who’d believe that?” What I wanted to hear were probing questions that reflected a solid educational preparation.
Second, I told the students they couldn’t assert that socialism is a dandy idea, except that it doesn’t work. That’s a bit like saying jumping from a skyscraper is a great idea, except it doesn’t work. Since ideas have consequences, ideas that hurt human flourishing are not good ideas. Period.
So, after doing my very best to corral the juniors into the Karl Marx club, did they ask to sign up?
In a word, no. One student questioned whether people were noble enough to give their all, working “according to their ability.” Another wondered how (and who!) would distribute goods “according to their need,” and how would those in charge even know people’s abilities and their needs.
And, of course, when one junior questioned whether those in charge might, just might, abuse their power, I have to confess that when I explained the supposed emergent “new, selfless Communist man” after the socialization of private property…I couldn’t help crack a very un-Marxist smile. With one particular group, I had to resort to the adage, “Well, you can’t make an omelete without breaking some eggs.”
The problem with Marxism’s reality is that there are no omeletes; only broken eggs.
In the end, I gave students seven (it being a complete number…) reasons why Marxism is dead wrong. Of those seven, three stand out:
- Marx’s idea of the “immiseration of the proletariat” is flat out wrong: markets have dramatically improved the life of the poor; countries which resist markets lag behind those with clear property rights and rule of law. Our living standards (not merely income) have dramatically improved, as we all implicitly acknowledge when we joke about our slow downloads or limited Netflix options as being “First World problems.”
- Marx’s notion that people are basically good, with evil emerging from human-made institutions, is both nonsensical and misguided. Anyone who introduces a coveted new toy to two children, expecting them to happily share it, knows this. Our inclination is to see the world from our perspective. We can, and should, try to escape that, but that doesn’t negate our self-centered inclinations.
- Most importantly, Marx assumed neither prices nor money were necessary for economic calculation; economists like Frederick Hayek have shown how central planning assumes knowledge that the planners simply cannot know, since those trillions of bits of information, always changing, cannot be known by any one individual. No one even knows how to make a pencil, let alone how to make a smart phone; we need to cooperate with millions of strangers, each with a bit of information, to complete every simple task, with accurate prices directing the flow of resources. Even if each of us was an angel, a centrally planned economy would collapse.
I trust my partial faux Marx persona (I didn’t spring for a $20 eBay beard…) didn’t frighten juniors too much. Best of all, I discovered that Academy students are ably prepared to fend off this Spector that really is haunting today’s world.
