Requiem for Marx and the Social and Economic Systems Created in His Name
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REQUIEM for RX Edited with an introduction by Yuri N. Maltsev ~~G Ludwig von Mises Institute l'VIISes Auburn University, Alabama 36849-5301 INSTITUTE Copyright © 1993 by the Ludwig von Mises Institute All rights reserved. Written permission must be secured from the publisher to use or reproduce any part of this book, except for brief quotations in critical review or articles. Published by Praxeology Press of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama 36849. Printed in the United States ofAmerica. Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 93-083763 ISBN 0-945466-13-7 Contents Introduction Yuri N. Maltsev ........................... 7 1. The Marxist Case for Socialism David Gordon .......................... .. 33 2. Marxist and Austrian Class Analysis Hans-Hermann Hoppe. .................. .. 51 3. The Marx Nobody Knows Gary North. ........................... .. 75 4. Marxism, Method, and Mercantilism David Osterfeld ........................ .. 125 5. Classical Liberal Roots ofthe Marxist Doctrine of Classes Ralph Raico ........................... .. 189 6. Karl Marx: Communist as Religious Eschatologist Murray N. Rothbard 221 Index 295 Contributors 303 5 The Ludwig von Mises Institute gratefully acknowledges the generosity ofits Members, who made the publication of this book possible. In particular, it wishes to thank the following Patrons: Mark M. Adamo James R. Merrell O. P. Alford, III Dr. Matthew T. Monroe Anonymous (2) Lawrence A. Myers Everett Berg Dr. Richard W. Pooley EBCO Enterprises Dr. Francis Powers Burton S. Blumert Mr. and Mrs. Harold Ranstad John Hamilton Bolstad James M. Rodney Franklin M. Buchta Catherine Dixon Roland Christopher P. Condon Leslie Rose Charles G. Dannelly Gary G. Schlarbaum Mr. and Mrs. William C. Daywitt Edward Schoppe, Jr. Tad Dekko Kendall, USA Raleigh L. Shaklee Robert T. Doffiemyer Raymond Shamie Mrs. Card G. Elliott, Jr. E.D.Shaw Shaw Oxygen Company Dr. James W. Esler, Jr. Richard J. Stephenson Willard Fischer Donald R. Stewart, Jr. James W. Frevert Twin Oil Company Thomas E. Gee David F. Swain, Jr. Franklin Lee Johnson Loronzo H. Thomson L. H. Thomson Company Andrew P. Jones top dog Dr. Richard J. Kossmann Edgar J. Uihlein Helen H. Lea Joe Vierra Hugh E. Ledbetter Paul Vlahos Charles H. Mason Robert S. Young William W. Massey, Jr. Young Electric Company Introduction enin's slogan, "Marxism is Almighty Because It Is True," was displayed practically everywhere in the former L Soviet Union. My first encounter with Karl Marx came in the first grade of elementary school in the city of Kazan on the bank of the great Volga River. His picture was printed on the first page of the first textbook I opened. "Dedushka Marx" (Grandfather Marx), said the teacher pointing to the picture. I was thrilled, for both of my grandfathers died during Stalin's purges in the 1930s. I ran home to my grandma to tell her she was wrong. "I have a grandpa," I said, and with his huge beard and smiling eyes, "he looks like Father Frost" (the Soviet/athe ist version ofSanta Claus or Saint Nicholas, the patron saint of Russia). Growing up in the Soviet Union, such early confusions are soon cleared up, for studies in Marxism were an unavoidable experience for everyone irrespective of age, class, social posi tion, or nationality. Even the convicts in prison, including those on death row, studied the "Shining Heights" ofthe "great liber ating teacher." The works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin were published in the USSR in 173 languages with a total output of 480 million copies. Many of them were exported. I once met an Indian translator hired by the Political Publishing House to translate 50 volumes ofthe Collected Works ofMarx and Engels into Malaylam. He complained the project was stalled because the Soviet propaganda officers could not find another Malay lam translator to cross check his work. In the Soviet Union, Marxism was not thought to be just an economic theory. It pretended to be the universal explanation of 7 8 Yuri N. Maltsev nature, life, and society.1 It was also a deadly weapon to be wielded against personal enemies. As in the case of Sergei Vavilov who was starved to death for violating Marxism be cause he adhered to the science of genetics, "a false science invented by the Catholic monk. Mendel." In the name ofMarxism, the death toll reached 100 million, the rivers ofblood flowed from Russia to Kampuchea, from China to Czechoslovakia. Hatred was the chief motivator of the socialist revolution aries and their followers. Lenin regarded politics as a branch of pest control; the aim ofhis operations was the extermination of cockroaches and bloodsucking spiders, the myriad persons who stood in the way ofhis political ambitions. Yet Western hagiog raphers have varnished over this atrocious callousness of Marxists, as historian Richard Pipes has documented. One of the common denominators between Leninists and government interventionists in the West is the belief that the problems of monopoly are the problems of ownership: only private monopolies acting out ofgreed are harmful. These insti tutions are suppressing scientific and technical progress, pol luting the environment, and engaging in other conspiracies against public well being. Government monopolies, however, were believed to be ethical and upright; they substituted the "greed" ofthe profit motive with a "societal interest." Yet group bureaucrats who manage and operate the public sector are no less selfinterested than those who manage and operate private business. One important difference exists, though: unlike pri vate entrepreneurs, they are not financially responsible for their actions and they operate without institutional constraints of cost control that private property and competition induces. The enlightened minds of planners and technocrats cannot IFor more on the comprehensive system see Alexander SolzhenitsYn, Mikhail Agursky, etal., From Under theRubble(Boston: Little, Brown, andCompany, 1974); Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn, Leftism: From de Sade and Marx to Hitler and Marcuse (New Rochelle, N.Y:: Arlington House: 1974; 2nd edition, Regnery; 1990); Paul Hollander, The Many Faces ofSocialism (New Brunswick, N.J.: Transaction, 1983); David Conway,A Farewell to Marx: An Outline andAppraisal ofHis Theories (New York: Viking Penguin, 1987). Introduction 9 overcome the problem of economic calculation without market signals. The failure ofsocialism in Russia, and the enormous suffer ing and hardship of people in all socialist countries, is a power ful warning against socialism, statism, and interventionism in the West. "We should all be thankful to the Soviets," says Paul Craig Roberts, "because they have proved conclusively that socialism doesn't work. No one can say they didn't have enough power or enough bureaucracy or enough planners or they didn't go far enough."2 In contrast to the West, where Marxist tenets were doc trines of a counter religion, few in the Soviet Union truly believed in the official ideology: not the state managers, not the professors, not the journalists.3 It was not necessary that they do so, for Marxism was a means of political rent seeking and of coercive control, not a body ofideas held to by honest men. The Soviet Union is now gone, as are the huge statues of Marx and Lenin that littered the East, and the good reputation of their systems of thought. This collection of articles is the Requiem for Marx and the social and economic systems created in his name. As with any funeral service, we look back on the life of Marxian ideas. But unlike the ordinary funeral, we are not looking back fondly, for Marxism is as good an example of the maxim that "ideas have consequences" as can be found. It does not speak well of the intellectual class that no body of ideas attracted a greater following in this century.4 It is beyond the capacity of economic analysis to calculate the opportunity costs of the socialist experiment in Russia. But the human toll from Stalin's collectivization, purges, and Gulags is estimated by Russian historian Roy Medvedev at forty-one 2Paul Craig Roberts, in the Wall Street Journal, June 28, 1989. 3See Marlin Malia, "From Under the Rubble, What?", in Problems ofCommu nism, January-April 1992; PeterRutland, The Myth ofthe Plan (La Salle, TIL: Open Court, 1985). 4A striking example of Western infatuation with Soviet socialism is Sidney and Beatrice Webb, Soviet Communism: A New Civilization? (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1936). 10 Yuri N. Maltsev million people. A popular Russian aphorism says: "The only lesson ofhistory is that it does not teach us anything." "Despite the recent collapse of socialism and communism in Soviet Rus sia and Eastern Europe, socialism is alive and growing,',5 Gary Becker has said. It presents a mortal danger to economic free dom and the quality oflife and will for generations to come. The scholars contributing to this volume write in the eco nomic and historical tradition of the Austrian school, founded by Carl Menger with his book Principles ofEconomics (1875). The tradition emphasizes a deductive method, role of choice and uncertaintyin economic affairs, the power ofmarket prices to coordinate economic activity, and the essential nature of private property for forming the basis of rational calculation. The Aus trian school is also the historical bete' noire ofthe Marxian school. Long before any other school came around to understanding the deep flaws in the Marxian approach, the Austrians had devoted an enormous amount ofintellectual power to exposing its fallacies ~nd dangers. Carl Menger refuted the labor theory ofvalue, his student Eugen von Bohm-Bawerk demolished Marx's views of capital, F. A. Hayek showed the incompatibility between social ism and political freedom, and Ludwig von Mises attacked the core ofsocialist economic theory.6 5 Gary Becker, "The President's Address," The Mont Pelerin Society Newslet ter, vol. 46, no. 1, February 1993. 6Austriancontributions tothis debateinclude: Eugenvon Bohm-Bawerk,Karl Marx and the Close ofHis System (New York: Augustus M.