Socialism’s Beginnings as a Movement of Love
Many young people are attracted to socialism because socialists are known for their strong advocacy for social equality and for the elimination of poverty. That’s how socialism got started as a social movement a couple centuries back. The first socialists with a political platform were moved in part by the secular absorption of the teachings of Jesus Christ in the New Testament, pleading with people not to forget the downtrodden and the poor. These socialists were known as “Utopian Socialists” because they envisioned a perfect society which would be set up by the voluntary action of those motivated by their love for their fellow man. They advocated the formation of small, communitarian societies, which later became very popular in the United States.
My book Socialism has a long chapter devoted to the various kinds of communal groups which organized privately in the United States. They called on those who wished to be a part of such an organization to join them and live with “all things common” as Christians did in the New Testament (See Acts, chapter 4). The beauty of this approach was that it only involved those who wished to be involved, whereas the socialist system as a national economy constrains all citizens to live under its tyranny whether they want to or not.
The Movement Changed Completely when Marx Appeared on the Scene.
But Karl Marx was appalled by the lack of efficiency and by the lack of power of these socialists who wanted to form a movement of love. Marx advocated violent overthrow of those whom he blamed for poverty and inequality. He insisted on a society which constrained all citizens, whether they liked sharing or not, to live in a socialistic order. He hated capitalists and waited anxiously for the workers to make the whole social class of property owners, the bourgeoisie, extinct. It was Marx who turned the movement of socialism into a movement of hatred. To keep the property owners from trying to regain power after the Marxian revolution, he advocated the formation of a “dictatorship of the proletariat (working class)”. This vanguard of the communist party would organize the government, plan the economy, and rule with an iron fist.
To understand why Marxian socialism is bitter and negative, one should understand Marx’s life. Somewhat surprisingly, it was founded upon a secure childhood. Since he never held a job, Marx was never an exploited worker. As a student he studied philosophy and religion, but thought very little of religion. He married Jenny von Westphalen, the daughter of Baron von Westphalen, but there was little class struggle in the marriage.
Because of his radical views, he was not able to become a professor, so he went into journalism. Because of the opposition he tended to provoke, he spent time moving to and living in various places in Germany, France and England. For quite some time, Marx’s unwilling parents supported him and his family. As a library researcher, writing radical tracts and tomes on economic theory, he usually had no income at all, but he in addition to help from his parents, he received help from his friend and colleague, Friedrich Engels. Engels’s father was a textile capitalist and his textile factory and its exploited workers provided some financial help. From them Marx received a pittance; unfortunately, however, it was insufficient for all his family to survive.
His most famous writings were The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital, the latter being a three-volume critique of capitalism. The first volume of Kapital took him ten years to complete and the next two volumes were published posthumously by Friedrich Engels. Critics tend to believe the postponement of the publication of Das Kapital beyond Marx’s death was a result of the author’s dissatisfaction with his own attempt to resolve the incongruities in his theory of value. He never could free the theory of contradiction. To understand Marx’s theoretical problem requires a few moments of concentration. The interested reader is invited to consult my book, Socialism: Origins, Expansion, Decline and the Attempted Revival in the United States, which treats the problem at length and in detail. The book also addresses Marx’s economic theory in general and the supporting philosophical/political theories. It also elaborates on the abject failings of the Marxian theory of exploitation which condemns capitalism without understanding the basic theory of markets.
Marxism never got over Marx’s personal hatred. When Lenin, a great admirer and teacher of Marxism, took over Russia’s Bolshevik government after the revolution of 1917, he immediately set out to establish Marxian institutions to manage the economy. After Lenin’s early death, Stalin completely took over the Soviet economy, which cost millions of the peasants and workers their lives as he forced them into agricultural communes and state farms. He ruthlessly eliminated all opposition to his confiscation of their private property, their lands and their animals. Opponents were killed or sent off to Siberia into forced labor camps.
Post-Marxian Hatred That Lingered.
Marxists today still loath those who advocate private property and personal liberty. The Marxian influence has been around so long that many people on
the left uniformly hate those who are affluent, those whom they perceive as political enemies, business corporations, managers, laborers who don’t vote for union policies, and on and on. It’s the kind of loathing that one sees today in many who had planned on the electoral victory of Hillary Clinton. They made it clear how they hated those who refused to get on board with the radicalization of the Democratic Party. The Party had enthusiastically supported the protests of the ‘Occupy Wall Street” movement, the ideology of which was strongly socialistic. Nor was the “Black Lives Matter” a movement of love. (I address such activity in my book Socialism so I can keep the story brief here.) Later, the party accused President Trump of holding political rallies that encouraged violence. In actual fact, the Clinton emails later revealed that Clinton campaign funds had paid for hooligans to attack Trump rallies.
The massive Democratic protests of the election results demonstrated the love of the contemporary left. There were also incidents of violence and lawlessness, which were supported not very subtly by Democratic leaders who mandated resistance on the streets and demonstrated irrational opposition to everything the Trump administration did. Trump voters were the “half” of the American society labeled by Presidential candidate Hillary Clinton as a “basket of deplorables.” A primary Democratic campaign strategy is simply name-calling. They do it so long and so loudly that many come to believe the slurs. Billions were spent by the Clinton campaign and by the media who volunteered their manpower and resources to smear President Trump during the campaign and after his election.
The book Socialism shows that even the expression of love is aided by wise policy. There are ways by which, conceptually, we could take care of the poor, for example. Anti-poverty policies would put greater emphasis on voluntarism. Social welfare policies would put emphasis on helping low-income families and reducing subsidies for the middle class and others with higher incomes. It takes some time to explain and justify such policy suggestions, however, so I recommend you acquire the book at the very nominal prices for which copies are available. Check out the “Order a Copy” page.