5 Things Marx Wanted to Abolish (Besides Private Property)
by Jon Miltimore , Oct. 31, 2017, fee dot org
One of the remarkable things about The Communist Manifesto
is its honesty. Karl Marx might not have been a very good guy,
but he was refreshingly candid about the aims of Communism.
This brazenness, one could argue, is baked into the Communist psyche.
“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims,” Marx
declared in his famous manifesto. “They openly declare that
their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of
all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble
at a Communistic revolution.”
Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, readers are presented with a pure,
undiluted vision of the author’s ideology (dark as it may be).
Marx’s manifesto is famous for summing up his theory of Communism
with a single sentence: “Abolition of private property.” But this
was hardly the only thing the philosopher believed must be abolished
from bourgeois society in the proletariat's march to utopia. In his
manifesto, Marx highlighted five additional ideas and institutions
for eradication.
1. The Family
----------
Marx admits that destroying the family is a thorny topic, even
for revolutionaries. “Abolition of the family! Even the most
radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists,”
he writes. But he said opponents of this idea fail to understand
a key fact about the family. “On what foundation is the present
family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain.
In its completely developed form, this family exists only among
the bourgeoisie,” he writes. Best of all, abolishing the family
would be relatively easy once bourgeois property was abolished.
“The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
complement vanishes, & both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
2. Individuality
---------------
Marx believed individuality was antithetical to the egalitarianism
he envisioned. Therefore, the “individual” must “be swept out of
the way, and made impossible.” Individuality was a social construction
of a capitalist society and was deeply intertwined with capital itself. “In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality,
while the living person is dependent and has no individuality,” he wrote. “And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois, abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition
of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois
freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.”
3. Eternal Truths
-----------------
Marx did not appear to believe that any truth existed beyond
class struggle. “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the
ideas of its ruling class,” he argued. “When the ancient world was
in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity.
When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th c. to rationalist ideas,
feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie.” He recognized how radical this idea would sound to
his readers, particularly since Communism does not seek to modify
truth, but to overthrow it. But he argued these people were missing
the larger picture. “‘Undoubtedly,’ it will be said, ‘religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the
course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.
There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc.,
that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes
eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead
of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction
to all past historical experience.’ What does this accusation reduce
itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the
development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different
forms at different epochs.”
4. Nations
------------
Communists, Marx said, are reproached for seeking to abolish countries.
These people fail to understand the nature of the proletariat, he wrote.
“The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they
have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the
bourgeois sense of the word.” Furthermore, largely because of capitalism, he saw hostilities between people of different backgrounds receding. As
the proletariat grew in power, there soon would be no need for nations,
he wrote. “National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.”
5. The Past
------------
Marx saw tradition as a tool of the bourgeoisie. Adherence to the past
served as a mere distraction in proletariat’s quest for emancipation
and supremacy. “In bourgeois society,” Marx wrote, “the past dominates the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”
https://fee.org/articles/5-things-marx-wanted-to-abolish-besides-private-property/
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