AmericanThinker | Steven Plaut | March 16, 2009
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.
The most harmful monopolies in modern economies are the labor unions.
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 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.
[…]
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.
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