What Is Marxism? (Steven Plaut Debunks The False Science Behind Marxism Alert

Marxists claim that Marxism is a science. It is not. It is a sort of pagan religious cult. It is a theology. It is a form of superstition.

Marxists claim that Karl Marx understood capitalism and economics. He did not. They also claim that the entire validity of Marx's set of theories on all subjects rests ultimately on how valid Marxist economic thought is. Marxist economic thought was completely wrong.

Marx claimed that all products contain value that is directly proportional to the amount of labor embodied within them. He was wrong. All the rest of Marxism is based entirely on this mistaken and falsifiable premise.

Marxists claim that the operations of markets have a natural tendency to spawn monopolies. They call this "monopoly capitalism." In reality, markets have a natural tendency to break up and undermine monopolies. Almost all monopolies under capitalism are those set up by governments stifling and interfering in the operations of markets.

Marxists claim that corporate monopolies are growing in importance and in power. In fact, monopolies have been losing power and strength under capitalism for well over a century.

Marxists think that large corporations collaborate and operate power-sharing arrangements among themselves. They do not and cannot. Large corporations compete, undercut, and threaten one another's market shares every day. As one of many proofs, just look at the number of inter-corporate law suits.

Marxism is based on conflict between "social classes." But social classes do not exist at all. This is not to say that there are not richer folk and poorer folk all about. It only means that all the richer folk share no collective common interests, and the same is true for all the poorer folk.

Marxists claim that people's ideas and ideals are dictated by property relations. They are wrong.

Marxists and socialists in general care a lot about the distribution of material wealth. But they have no idea how to bring about the creation of the material wealth that they wish to redistribute. They just assume it all gets produced all by itself. That is why people in communist regimes starve.

Marxists claim that workers are oppressed in capitalist societies. Workers in communist societies always try to sneak out into capitalist societies. No one in South Korea is trying to sneak into North Korea. The Berlin Wall was not built to keep West Germans from sneaking into East Germany's collective farms. Cubans in Florida do not steal boats to seek asylum in Cuban collective farms.

Marxists claim that lower-income people support the Left and that higher-income people support the Right. Generally the opposite is the case. Let's not forget the Hollywood Left.

Marxists claim that capitalism creates "crises of surplus," where materials build up that cannot be sold. They are wrong. Surpluses just cause prices to drop.

Marxists claim that capitalists do not work and that workers do not own capital. That is why they comprise "social classes." But nearly all capitalists work, often in work days with very long hours. Meanwhile, a huge portion of capital is held by workers themselves through their pension funds and other institutional investment intermediaries.

Marxists claim that businesses are owned by a small closed clique of capitalists. Actually, most businesses are "public," meaning they are owned by shareholders and anyone at all can be a shareholder in them.

Marxists claim that capitalism cannot be democratic. But every single democratic society on earth is predominantly capitalist. Not a single communist regime was ever democratic. Communists take power via military coups and military conquest, not via elections.

Marxists claim that capitalists use violence to protect their perquisites and privileges. In truth, Marxists in power use violence to protect their perquisites and privileges. They use violence to suppress opposition wherever they manage to seize power, including violence against opposition groups of workers. It is conservatively estimated that 100 million people were killed by Marxism and by Marxists in the twentieth century.

Marxists claim that people are prisoners of their material circumstances and of their classes of birth. Tell that to the limousine Marxists, the endowment-fund Trotskyists, and the tenured socialists.

Marxists claim that all workers share common interests and shared goals, making them into a "class." In reality, they share nothing in common and have no common interests.

Marxists think that all capitalists share common interests and get together in large stadiums every few weeks to plan out a program to achieve those. In reality, if capitalists were ever to congregate in such a stadium, they could agree on absolutely nothing, not even on the price of the beer. There is no single issue in economic policy over which all capitalists have the same position or share the same interest.

Marxists claim that workers in capitalist societies feel "alienated." In reality, pampered children in capitalist society feel alienated because capitalism produces wealth, makes material comfort possible, and so creates the opportunities for idleness and leisure that lead to recreational feelings of alienation.

Marxists think that if you earn more money than me, it means you are exploiting me. In reality, it means you are more talented, harder working, better skilled, and luckier than me.

Marxists think that if one person has more wealth than a second person, it can only be because the first one stole the wealth of the second. Ditto for richer and poorer countries.

Marxists think that only things matter in economics, meaning tangible products, and so services do not. They believe that big products are more important than small products, big industries being more important than small industries. They also believe that consumer goods are superfluous and should not be produced much. All those ideas are why the quality of life and the standard of living are so miserable under communist regimes. In wealthy countries, small- and medium-size enterprises are the main engines for producing wealth.

Marxists do not see why workers should need to be allowed to vote. The interest of workers is always defined as whatever those claiming to speak in the name of the working class happen to support and desire.

Marxists think that socialism works. It does not. The only form of "socialism" that has not produced mass impoverishment and starvation is Scandinavian capitalism merged with a bloated "socialist" welfare state.

Marxists claim that most Marxists come from the working class. In reality almost all Marxists are the pampered children of middle class and wealthy parents. There are more Marxists today on the campuses of some American universities than in all of eastern Europe.

Marxists claim that under Marxism everyone receives according to his needs and contributes according to his capabilities. In reality, under Marxism everyone receives according to whatever the entrenched party apparatchiks decide their needs are, usually sub-sustenance levels of consumption, and the same people decide what are your abilities, generally assumed to be your ability to work endlessly at whatever you are told to do without getting paid much. To put this differently, in the absence of positive incentives, no one is capable of doing anything and everyone's needs are infinite.

Marxists think that "experts" can tell what needs to be produced. They cannot. That is why Marxist experts produce starvation. In some cases Marxist starvation has produced cannibalism. There is not a single Marxist scholar or expert on earth who could produce a pencil by himself.

Marxists think that efficiency in production can be achieved by terrorizing factory workers and communal farm members. While terrorizing them, it has never successfully achieved efficiency that way. People are always smarter than the terrorizing officials and manage to thwart them.

Marxists believe that economic incentives do not matter. That is why they think there is no need to pay people more for working hard or exerting effort. It is enough to appeal to their "class interests." That is why people starve under communism.

When a Marxist speaks of "dictatorship of the proletariat," he means he thinks he has the right to use violence to impose his own arbitrary dictatorship upon members of the working class and upon everyone else, without asking for their approval or votes.

Marxists claim that Marxism is fundamentally democratic. In reality it is always fundamentally anti-democratic.

Marxists pretend to be in favor of the working class collectively owning all property. In reality Marxists always steal the property of members of the working class and turn it over to well-paid party apparatchiks.

Marxists think that Marx understood economics. In fact, virtually all Marxist "theories" were completed debunked 160 years ago. Marx was wrong about virtually everything he wrote on economics. It is more difficult to say whether he was correct about anything in sociology, but that is more a commentary on the nebulous and muddled nature of sociological thinking.

Marxists see no need at all for "finance capital." That is why they always steal everyone's savings in communist societies. It is also why workers in communist societies hide their savings in banks in capitalist societies.

Marx did not have the slightest inkling about what determines wages of workers in markets. He had even less understanding of what determines prices.

Marxists use the term "concrete" whenever they do not know how to finish a sentence, or whenever they have no idea of what is being discussed.

Marxists think that women live better lives under Marxism. That is because they never speak with any women who grew up under communism.

There is not a Marxist on earth who has actually read and understood Karl Marx's tedious book "Das Kapital." You can read a summary of the book on Wikipedia, written by people who did not read it either. In reality, Marx had no idea at all even what capital is.

Marxists often want to abolish the family, but that is because they became Marxists in the first place as a way to antagonize and irritate mommy and daddy.

Marxists believe that people living under Marxism lose interest in religion. They do not.

Marxists believe that in every voluntary transaction, one side wins and the other loses, and so it is impossible for two sides to profit from it. That is why they think you should be told what to buy and how much you should pay for it.

Marxists claim that capitalist countries engage in imperialism. But since World War II the largest empires of imperialist conquest were those headed by Marxist regimes.

Marxists believe that there are no real conflicts of interest between the workers living in different countries and speaking different languages or coming from different cultures. That is without a doubt the very stupidest idea of all coming from Marxism. In any case, that is why Marxism is generally spread only via military conquest.

Marxists think that capitalism makes people greedy. Actually people living under communism become much greedier because they are poor and desperate.

Marxists claim that Marxism is a science. It is not. It is today little more than a form of mental illness.

Its amazing that people listen to Marx not realizing the man was a welfare case living off the money donated to him and generated from industrialization.

So, while he was sleazing off the working people, you know, the ones he says he was there to help, his wife and numerous children were starving.

Here's a man totally out of touch with the self-industrial, moraly-responsible, self-sufficient people, which he was the totally opposite.

REQUIEM FOR THE LEFT

Excerpt:

The Cerberean Conception

Since it's almost become a cliché to observe that Marxism is dead in practice -- that is, if you overlook its authoritarian half-life in China, Cuba, North Korea, Vietnam -- but thriving in theory, we can at least ask exactly what that theory is, a question that returns three very different answers:

Some should get all of the pie. This is classic manual-labor theory of value Marx: Since the manual laborers produce all wealth (somehow), anyone else who has any wealth must be leeching off that labor. Every slice of the pie belongs to "the workers" who baked it, i.e., all wealth must be redistributed to the proletariat. This is why Communism eventually adopted the hammer-and-sickle as its emblem. (An embarrassing choice, by the way, for what those tools really represent is the investment of capital. A truer symbol of the manual-labor theory would have been simply a pair of dirty hands, a fact ironically reflected in the Bolshevik workers' term of derision for the Party's nonworker majority: beloruchki -- "white hands.")

All should get some of the pie. This is Critique of the Gotha Program Marx: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Now those slices belong, not to the bakers, but to the hungry, i.e., wealth must be redistributed from the proletariat to the poor -- and other cases of "economic necessity." (An earlier variant of this was the proposal that each should get an equal slice of the pie, with everyone working equally and compensated so.)

None should get any of the pie. This is the Marx of The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844. "[W]e don't want a communist society," paraphrases a Green disciple, "where people greedily redistribute the wealth of capitalism; we want a society where the craving for wealth has been overcome by a more fully realized state of human being." The pie belongs to no one, and all slices must be redistributed away from anyone and everyone. The people will no longer want (or even need?) pie either here on earth or in the sky, for their "obsession with Having" will be superseded "by a fulfilled condition of Being."

The upshot of all this should have been obvious from the start: Marx sired a monster whose three heads each pull in a different direction. What was going to tear itself apart with "contradictions" was not market capitalism but this tripolar concept of "socialism." We are to believe -- what? That each one of these incompatible theses is an example of how "[j]ust as Darwin discovered the law of evolution in organic matter, so Marx discovered the law of evolution in human history"? That the assembler of this pile of inconsistencies -- who obscurantly dismissed critical analysis as "not a scalpel but a weapon. Its object is the enemy, [whom] it wishes not to refute but to destroy" -- was a scientific theorist? That Je ne suis pas marxiste! was ever anything other than the cry of a schizophrenic zealot?

We cannot let it go without note that while Darwin never falsified data, Marx did -- chronically. As early as the 1880s, Cambridge scholars demonstrated that Marx manipulated source materials "with a recklessness which is appalling ... to prove just the contrary of what they really establish." One example will suffice. He prophesied: "In proportion as capital accumulates, the lot of the laborer must grow worse. Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery ... at the opposite pole." But did the statistics for wages actually show workers growing poorer as their employers grew richer? Not at all, so in 1867's Das Kapital he jettisoned the contemporary figures and passed off as contemporary those from 1850.

We behold in Marx a man who evidently could accept being contradicted by himself, but not by reality. So war dieser Mann der Wissenschaft. An epitaph appropriate for those who exalted him, in contrast, remains elusive...

PIE? DID I HEAR SOMEONE SAY PIE?

When I say that Obama is a Racist, Marxist and Socialist, it is usually easier to provide understandable proof for his racism and socialism, but making his Marxism understandable to people who don’t know what it is is more challenging.

To that end, I took statements out of this excellent article, and with apologies to the talented author, put Obama’s name in, just to see if the shoe fits:

WHY OBAMA IS A MARXIST
***************************
Obama thinks that all products contain value that is directly proportional to the amount of labor embodied within them. He was wrong. All the rest of Marxism is based entirely on this mistaken and falsifiable premise.

Obama thinks the problems in the USA are based on conflict between “social classes.”

Obama claims that people’s ideas and ideals are dictated by property relations.

Obama cares a lot about the distribution of material wealth. But he has no idea how to bring about the creation of the material wealth that they wish to redistribute. He just assumes it all gets produced all by itself.

Obama claims that workers are oppressed in capitalist societies.

Obama claims that lower-income people support the Left and that higher-income people support the Right. Generally the opposite is the case. Let’s not forget the Hollywood Left.

Obama claims that capitalists do not work and that workers do not own capital.

Obama claims that businesses are owned by a small closed clique of capitalists.

Obama claims that people are prisoners of their material circumstances and of their classes of birth.

Obama claims that all workers share common interests and shared goals, making them into a “class.” In reality, they share nothing in common and have no common interests.

Obama thinks that if you earn more money than me, it means you are exploiting me.

Obama thinks that if one person has more wealth than a second person, it can only be because the first one stole the wealth of the second. Ditto for richer and poorer countries.

Obama thinks that only things matter in economics, meaning tangible products, and so services do not.

Obama does not see why workers should need to be allowed to vote. The interest of workers is always defined as whatever those claiming to speak in the name of the working class happen to support and desire.

Obama thinks that socialism works.

Obama claims that he and people like him come from the working class. In reality almost all people like Obama are the pampered children of middle class and wealthy parents. There are more people like Obama today on the campuses of some American universities than in all of eastern Europe.

Obama claims that under his plans everyone receives according to his needs and contributes according to his capabilities. In reality, under his plan everyone receives according to whatever the entrenched party apparatchiks decide their needs are, usually sub-sustenance levels of consumption, and the same people decide what are your abilities, generally assumed to be your ability to work endlessly at whatever you are told to do without getting paid much. To put this differently, in the absence of positive incentives, no one is capable of doing anything and everyone’s needs are infinite.

Obama thinks that “experts” can tell what needs to be produced. There is not a single “expert” in Obama’s administration who could produce a pencil by himself.

Obama think that efficiency in production can be achieved by intimidating citizens.

Obama believes that economic incentives do not matter.

Obama claims that his ideas are fundamentally democratic. In reality they are fundamentally anti-democratic.

Obama pretends to be in favor of the working class collectively owning all property. In reality, Obama and people like him always steal the property of members of the working class and turn it over to well-paid party apparatchiks.

Obama thinks that he understands economics. In fact, virtually all Obama’s “theories” were completed debunked 160 years ago. Obama is wrong about virtually everything he believes on economics.

Obama sees no need at all for “finance capital.” That is why he is going to try to steal everyone’s savings. That is why he had to admonish us recently about taking our money out of banks.

Obama does not have the slightest inkling about what determines wages of workers in markets. He has even less understanding of what determines prices.

Obama uses the term “...um....er...ahhh...” whenever he does not know how to finish a sentence, or whenever he has no idea of what is being discussed.

Obama thinks that women live better lives under his system. That is because he doesn’t know any women who grew up under his system.

There is not a Marxist on earth who has actually read and understood Karl Marx’s tedious book “Das Kapital.” Obama was one of them.

Obama wants to abolish the family, but that is because they became a radical in the first place as a way to antagonize and irritate mommy and daddy, even though he was just like daddy, the alcoholic, socialist one who was a bigamist.

Obama does not believe in God. He believes in Black Liberation Theology and “Reverend” Wright.

Obama believes that in every voluntary transaction, one side wins and the other loses, and so it is impossible for two sides to profit from it. That is why he thinks you should be told what to buy and how much you should pay for it.

Obama claims that capitalist countries engage in imperialism.

Obama believes that there are no real conflicts of interest between the workers living in different countries and speaking different languages or coming from different cultures.

Obama thinks that capitalism makes people greedy. Actually people living under his economic system will become much greedier because they will be poor and desperate.

Obama claims that his economics are a science. They are not. They are little more than a form of mental illness.

Just a few notes on this article... One thing that he left out is a core tenet of Marxism is dialectical materialism, which can be a useful tool in analyzing certain situations, but completely falls apart when trying to understand dynamic systems. It causes one to believe that there aren't consequences to actions.

First off, let me start by saying that back in college, I needed a "300 level" economics class as a part of my computer science core requirements. The only one I could fit into my schedule was "Marxist Economics." If there's a book written that's a sure fire cure for insomnia, it's Sinclair Lewis' "Babbit," but I have to say that "Das Kapital" certainly gives it a run for its money! I never did get more than about 30 pages through that book. However, I did read a lot of other stuff about what Marx wrote, and it seemed to me that those other authors understood the topics much better than Marx ever did. It finally occurred to me that "Marxist Economic Theory" was pretty much what people who didn't understand the simplest concepts of economics hoped that economics was all about. Not only were those people ignorant in economics, they tended to be jealous, and often self hating. BTW, one of my roommates was also in the class, and he was an Economics major. We both learned that the best way to pass the class was to parrot back what the professor said, along with a few quotes by Marx. He got a solid "B." I got a "B+!" As college students we went into that course with open minds about the validity of Marxism and Socialism, but we came out of the class as rabid capitalists. And we had a terrific professor, who happened to be a committed Marxist himself, but he wasn't an "evangelist."

This is true. One of the beliefs in Marxism is that there's a finite value in a product, and once that value has been realized, there's no more value in that product to "go around." Of course, this flies in the face of the other idea that Marxists have that value comes from work by the laborers to make that very same product. As with many concepts within Marxism, they are contradictory.

I'm not 100% that this is so much a "Marxist" belief as a communist belief, which of course, the political ideology to which Marx subscribed. Something to remember is that Marxism is an economic theory, while communism is a political theory. Marx did subscribe to the belief that all "workers" have things in common, which led to communism, which is sometimes known as "world socialism." Meaning that workers (the Proletariat) all over the world have common needs, and the government (of course, the one world, communist government) should take care of all those needs. This differs from other forms of socialism, like the one espoused by NAZI Germany, which was national socialism, which pretty much came up with the same ideas, however, it was based on the superiority of a certain nation, and the "natural rights" of that nation state to rule over the rest of the world.

Mark

But why do the workers keep voting for it?

Because it "sounds" more fair. The concept of giving everyone all they need sounds great when you feel that you've always gotten the short end of the stick, or if you don't want to work to try to improve your lot in life. Put simply, it plays well to victimhood.

I've got a friend who's actually a committed socialist (so she says) and she's a member of the Iowa socialist party, or somesuch nonsense. Who knew there were socialists in Iowa? Anyway, time after time throughout her life, she's made all these bad decisions. So, her life pretty much sucks. The thought that she would get what she needs is very attractive to her, since she's had to struggle for so many years.

But even with all that, she was very upset when she was going through massage therapy certification classes (what was I saying about bad choices?) and learned that while she had attended every class, and taken on additional work to become the best CMT that she should be, her class scores would be no better than "Passing." They didn't actually give a "real" grade, only "Pass" or "Fail." She was angry that while she had put in all this additional work, there were people in the class who missed classes and done the bare minimum to get by, but there was no distinction between her grades and theirs. She was quite upset about this, and I told her that it was completely fair, given the rest of her political beliefs. Well, that didn't go over so well, so I dropped it. I love her dearly as a friend, but she's mixed up, and I didn't want to make her feel any worse than she did.

Mark

They keep voting for it because it sounds good to them. Why should a guy in a white shirt and tie make more than I do, who has callouses on his hands and a bent back?

People like Obama and other socialists and Marxists are all to happy to foster this sentiment

Class warfare is based on jealousy.

At a place I used to work, I'll never forget an email from a guy who worked in the warehouse (this company was a computer and network "Value Added Reseller") who was let go. Management was fair with the guy, and actually gave him a severance package, though it wasn't what he wanted, or felt was fair. One of the partners in the company was an auto collector who would buy old and classic cars and then restore them as a hobby. He (the partner) had just bought a 1911 Stutz for a bunch of money, and this guy sent out a rather hateful email to the company about how he was being paid an hourly wage (around $12/hr, as I recall), but was expected to do things like sweep up and mow the lawn for that paltry sum, while "the bosses" lived the high life, buying expensive cars, while raking in all the money.

It occurred to me (and I mentioned this to the guy) that this partner had a financial stake in the company, and had put his own home and family's future into the company 12 years earlier, and time after time, he had risked his family's future on this company, so why shouldn't he finally be able to "reap some of the profits." I noted that he was being paid far better and had benefits that he probably wouldn't have gotten doing the same job elsewhere, and that he should appreciate what he had.

I also mentioned that he had wasted the opportunity to improve his lot in life - that had he wanted to do so, he could have spent his "down time" at the tech bench, learning how to become a computer tech. But he preferred to just surf the Internet in his spare time.

Mark

Fully agreed with almost everything regarding that analysis on Marxism, and definitely a lot of very good points to counter the Marxist arguments.

Probably the only bit I might disagree with is the claim that Marxists are fundamentally anti-democratic. Even that’s only because when I think of “democracy”, I think of the French Revolution and the horrors that were occurring there, such as the Vendee Massacre, the September Massacres, the Reign of Terror, and plenty others, and the masses were clearly enjoying the slaughterfest by a significant degree. And I am certain of this because that’s EXACTLY why our founding fathers (well, most of them, anyways. Thomas Jefferson and Tom Paine might beg to differ) were against democracy or being democratic, why we were founded as a republic, and more importantly, since we’re dealing with Marxism, this was EXACTLY what Marx wanted to not only reenact, but actually make even gorier, something he himself said (he said, and I quote, “Once we are at the helm, we shall be obliged to reenact the year 1793…When our time comes, we shall not conceal terrorism with hypocritical phrases. . . The vengeance of the people will break forth with such ferocity that not even the year 1793 enables us to envisage it.” And the source for that was this: Marx-Engels Gesamt-Ausgabe, vol. vi pp 503-505, final issue of Neue Rheinische Zeitung, May 18, 1849. Quoted in Thomas G. West, Marx and Lenin, The Claremont Institute.). So far as I can tell, democracy fundamentally requires people commit sickening massacres for a sheer laugh and have people engage in complete lawlessness.

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