As George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.” There is an alarming trend among academics and younger generations to embrace Marxist ideas that have consistently resulted in abject failure. Recent YouGov data indicates that communism is viewed favorably by more than one out of every three Millennials, with even higher percentages for Gen-Z. According to academia.org, self-identifying Marxist professors in the United States outnumber their conservative counterparts four to one.
An idea is only as good as its results. The causes of fairness and equality espoused by youthful generations are noble in intent and should be pursued. Poverty and inequality are the natural enemies of any developed state, but the means by which Marxist groups have sought to achieve equity have never produced more equitable societies. Instead, these ideas have destroyed states and created a dismal quality of life. If ‘equality’ means equal misery for all, then the new wave of Marxism is correct in its advocacy. The responsibility for this resurgence of collectivist thought rests on the public and higher education systems for excluding Marxist failures from basic curricula.
There have been many iterations of Marxism and many different types of Marxists. This evaluation addresses overlapping, core principles, such as the abolition of private property, the forced redistribution of wealth, the centralization of state planning, and the censorship of dissident groups. The majority of the Marxist movement is fueled by an ignorance of Marxism’s failures, while a minority of its followers dismiss all criticisms with the excuse, “It hasn’t been implemented properly.” Evidently, it is somehow unreasonable to hold up any of the numerous Marxist failures to the same real-world scrutiny and analysis that other economic systems receive. To address the majority of American Marxists, one must undertake a basic review of Marxism’s murderous history. To address the ‘enlightened’ minority, one must examine the motivations of human behavior ‒ imperfection, greed, laziness, malign external influences ‒ that preclude the functioning of Marxism.
There is an additional sect of the left that mischaracterizes Scandinavian countries as models for ‘democratic socialism’. This faction, spearheaded by Senator Bernie Sanders, seeks to use the Scandinavian model as justification for the advancement of fundamentally Marxist principles. By examining these countries’ corporate tax systems and policies, it becomes clear that Denmark, Sweden, and others have rejected Marxism, and have prospered under capitalism.
A RECORD OF FAILURE
From the Soviet Union to Cuba, Marxist principles have caused mass starvation, violence, hyperinflation, and civil strife. This section will provide an overview of several Marxist experiments. The World Bank index of economic freedom ranks countries based on rule of law, government size, regulatory efficiency, and market openness. This and other indexes offer strong context for an examination of Marxism in practice.
Exhibit A - Venezuela
The Venezuelan downfall began as a socialist proclamation of ‘equality and fairness,’ and has resulted in an oppressive dictatorship at the hands of Nicolás Maduro. The regime is one of the least economically free countries in the world, coming in second to last on the Heritage Foundation’s Index of Economic Freedom. Venezuela was once a wealthy and prosperous country with a high average quality of life. But a series of ‘progressive’ steps have resulted in 90% of its citizens being unable to buy enough food. In 1992, it became the third richest country in the northern hemisphere. In 2001, it voted for a socialist president, Hugo Chavez, who promised to alleviate ‘income inequality.’ In 2004, private healthcare was completely socialized. By 2005, most private farmland, companies, and shops were seized and nationalized by Chavez. As Marx stated, “the theory of the communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property”. In 2009, the Venezuelan socialists banned all private ownership of firearms (because Hitler, Castro, Quaddafi, Stalin, Idi Amin, Mao, Pol Pot, and Kim Jong-Il all agree that gun control works). In 2012 Bernie Sanders praised Venezuelan ‘progress,’ calling it “The American Dream”. In 2014, the government imprisoned many opposition leaders because they were a threat to the socialists’ lust for power. By 2016, food and healthcare shortages had become widespread. In 2017, the country’s Constitution and elections were suspended. In 2018, Venezuela’s inflation increased by 65,000%. Citizens are massacred in extrajudicial killings by their own government and the Maduro regime looks to rule indefinitely. Venezuela’s government documented 5,300 killings in 2018 alone by security operations for cases of “resistance to authority”. It took less than twenty years for ‘equality and fairness’ policies to bring Venezuela from a global power to a humanitarian relief subject.
Exhibit B - Cuba
In the 1950s Cuba had Latin America’s third-highest per capita income, third-longest life expectancy, and lowest mortality rate. But like many other Marxist experiments, it was only a matter of time before ‘equality and fairness’ ruined the entire state. Fidel Castro was 31 years old when he seized power in 1959 and was instantly revered by the young leftists of the 1960s. Socialist Cuba was meant to be a model of ‘revolutionization’ by Marxist intrigue and utopianism. Today, empty shelves are a common sight for most Cubans. The private sector accounts for no more than 7% of GDP, while Cuba is one of the lowest-ranked countries on the Economic Freedom Index. Poor centralized management sees citizens using depressingly low state issued salaries, sometimes less than a dollar a day, to pay exorbitant sums for food on the black market. The Communist Party of Cuba suppresses many types of speech and opposition through raids, beatings, and imprisonment, namely of Unión Patriótica de Cuba (the main dissent group in Cuba) members. The Cuban Regime cracks down on artistic expression as well. Decree 349 requires Cuban musicians, dancers, artists, and writers to seek government permission for their work. For the young Marxists today who proclaim their love for diverse culture and art, it is notable that this very ‘diversity’ and ‘rebellion’ is nonexistent in Cuba and every other place where communism has been implemented. Many millennials and Gen-Z-ers adore Instagram, Snapchat, and other social media platforms. But in Cuba, independent media exists only online, and is made prohibitively expensive by the Communist Party. Instead, Cubans may purchase the state-sanctioned internet and media at a ‘discounted’ price. The Cuban government does not offer Snapchat, unfortunately.
Exhibit C - North Korea
According to the Economist and the World Bank, North Korea is among the most authoritarian and least free states in the world. Most North Koreans, malnourished and without access to the internet, live on rations provided by the government. Marketplace lists the obscure state’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) per capita at $665 (by comparison, the United States’ is about $63,000). The North Korean state runs the economy, employs people, and decides prices and wages. While North Korea officially replaced communism with Juche, or ‘for the state’ ideology, Marxist principles remain central. There is a command economy, with total state control of industry and agriculture, collectivized farms, and state-run education and healthcare. Similar to the Soviet Union, North Korea launched various five-year plans for industry and agriculture with centralized state planning. Aside from the economic mismanagement that plagued these efforts, a series of natural disasters exacerbated the situation. The centrally-planned system was too inflexible to manage floods and droughts. According to the Vienna University of Economics and Business, 60% of North Koreans live in absolute poverty today. One might ponder why the North Koreans have not switched to a new type of economy. The truth is that the North Korean power structure, like many other Marxist models, cements a certain group at the top. Once in control of the state resources and police, this regime can retain its absolute power by oppressing the general populace and silencing dissidents. Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch, commented “Kim Jong-Un has picked up where his father and grandfather left off, by overseeing a system of public executions, extensive political camps, and brutal forced labor.” A system as terrifying as this would seem a far cry from the ‘equitable’ paradise that modern collectivists believe they can achieve with state control.
Exhibit D - Cambodia
The Khmer Rouge communist regime, in power from 1975-1979, ruled brutally and killed nearly two million people. Pol Pot, the head of state, forced millions of people from the cities to work on communal farms in the countryside, with entire families dying from starvation, disease, overwork, and execution. The Khmer Rouge was known as the Communist Party of Kampuchea, the name used by the communists for Cambodia. The supporters of this movement detested capital, and believed that they had no need for money. Pol Pot, upon seizing power, abolished money, private property, and religion. Anyone believed to be intelligent, or an intellectual, was executed. Swaths of the educated middle class were killed, along with others deemed to be threats to the Marxist agenda. The attempted genocide of the Cham and Vietnamese minorities was merely the Khmer Rouge’s means of promoting peace, equality, and equity.
Exhibit E - The Soviet Union
Ludwig Von Mises theorized three years after the Russian Revolution that communism would fail because the government had no market prices to guide the planning of production. Mises’ prediction, unsurprisingly, came true. The central planning of the USSR was meant to ensure ‘plenty’ for everyone. Instead, millions of Russians starved in the 1920s and 1930s. All materials, labor, tools, and machines used by the Soviet Government were owned and controlled exclusively by government planners, and the resultant unexchangeable nature of goods and services prevented the development of market prices. In making decisions, planners must understand the relative or market values of numerous factors of production along with a myriad of other factors of the market, and doing so is effectively impossible. Without market prices, the coordination of production activities can never meet consumer needs. As Mises wrote in 1920, “Every step that takes us away from private ownership of the means of production and from the use of money also takes us away from rational economics.” Of course, if a Soviet citizen merely suggested an alternative to the failing central planning, he would be reported by his neighbors, blacklisted, captured by the KGB (secret Soviet police force), and hauled off to the Gulag to labor endlessly to death in abhorrent conditions. It would demonstrate tunnel vision to claim that a single economic factor was wholly responsible for the collapse of the Soviet Union. There were many dimensions and pressures behind its fall, but the central planning model was the prime catalyst for mass starvation and chaos.
THE MISCHARACTERIZED ‘SOCIALISM’ OF SCANDINAVIA
Politicians like Bernie Sanders regularly assure their supporters that they want the ‘friendly Swedish model’ of ‘democratic socialism,’ rather than the hard boot of Soviet-style communism. There is, however, a glaring flaw with this contention: Scandinavian countries are not socialist. Instead, they are generous welfare states paired with capitalism. Sweden, Norway, and Denmark are all within the top echelon of the World Bank and Heritage Foundation Economic Freedom Index. The trio is on par with the United States’ index ranking. In Sweden and Norway, some surprising absences are a federal insurance contributions tax (FICA, the Social Security tax), minimum wage, and estate and inheritance taxes.
It is true that these three countries all have government-sponsored college education, paid parental leave, and state-subsidized healthcare. But the means by which funding is raised for these programs differs from Sanders’ propositions of highly progressive taxation for corporations. To pay for more social programs, the Scandinavian countries extract a very high, optimized tax from a large portion of the population (the middle class pays about the same rate as the top 1% in taxes, which is exactly what Sanders and his ilk claim not to want, but would clearly have to implement to pay for their policies), while mostly leaving businesses to do business. By providing a friendly and transparent regulatory and tax environment for businesses, Scandinavian countries are able to tax individuals at a higher rate.
Scandinavian entrepreneurs thrive. These countries are regularly ranked among the world’s best places to start a business. Forbes even ranks Sweden as the second best country in this area. The corporate tax rates in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, are 22 percent, 24 percent, and 21.4 percent, respectively. These figures are competitive with the EU average of 21.3 percent and the current U.S. rate of 21 percent (which most on the left want to raise substantially). The economic environment in Scandinavia is also attractive because of regulatory efficiency and transparency. Denmark, for example, allows employers to adjust their workforces rapidly in response to changing market conditions. The corporate legal systems in all three countries process cases transparently and efficiently.
Finally, Scandinavian economies are open and encouraging to foreign investment. With lower tariff rates than the EU average of 2.8 percent for non-agricultural products, Denmark and Sweden facilitate large flows of investment. Norway’s rate is slightly higher, at 3.1 percent, but the country’s investment code is efficiently administered.
HUMAN MOTIVATION AND BEHAVIORAL AVERSION TO MARXISM
Human nature constitutes a core aversion to Marxism in practice. The inherently human characteristics of imperfection, greed, and laziness are significant parts, although not the entirety, of this picture. To define human nature is virtually impossible —and is equally unverifiable. However, it is argued that the majority of people operate more towards the polar of self-interest than that of pure altruism (the desire to help others). This concept is well established in the theory of psychological egoism, which states that behind every action is a selfish motive. The theory especially holds that ‘altruistic’ actions, or ones performed for the good of others, are actually performed for the benefit of the performer. This benefit could be in the form of a will to go to heaven, a desire for public recognition, or even for the simple pleasure of emotional gratitude that comes in helping others. Psychological egoism is not entirely accurate, because there are select instances when people act more for the good of others than for themselves. But the vast majority of people, in most of their actions, act foremost for some personal gain.
Epicurus, a famous Greek philosopher, once commented, “Pleasure is the first good. It is the beginning of every choice and every aversion. It is the absence of pain in the body and of troubles in the soul.” Since Epicurus’ arguments in the first century BCE, modern science has provided strong evidence that humans prioritize pleasure. Serotonin is the chemical in our brains that is associated with feelings of happiness. When a person moves up in any hierarchy, their brain makes more serotonin available. Hierarchy means the natural social systems and corresponding competition that are established in any environment, by any given group of people: the tribe, the firm, the high school class rankings, the NASCAR race, or even the TikTok views. In each of these structures, people are moving up or down in terms of position relative to the top and bottom of a hierarchy.
As psychologist Jordan Peterson explains, most hierarchies are natural, because most people need to organize themselves into groups to solve complex problems. However, some hierarchies are good, and some are bad. A blood drive is a good hierarchy with competition because it benefits the health of society. A well-functioning company that provides a valuable and affordable product while allowing meritable employees to advance in rank is a good hierarchy. A country that allows free and open elections and has a constitution for individual rights while actually ensuring those rights equally is a good hierarchy. The common component in each of these examples is consent. People, on their own initiative, voluntarily give something up ‒ a good, service, time, effort ‒in exchange for an advancement in the situational hierarchy, and in turn, for a spike in serotonin (again, chemical happiness).
Given that consent is the common denominator in positive scenarios, the opposite, coercion, must serve as the underpinning for negative hierarchies. Here is where bad, unnatural hierarchies form. These can be labeled as ‘bad’ and ‘unnatural’ because they are built upon coercion, such as fear, violence, or threats. A drug lord extorting money and possessions from the residents in his domain constitutes an unhealthy power structure for two main reasons. First, the top position, the drug kingpin, is occupied through coercion. Second, the other movers in the hierarchy, the regular residents, have no options to improve their position without either furthering coercion or being coerced. They can either join the kingpin’s gang in committing crimes, or they can defend themselves and their property, in turn risking punishment from the druglord. A racist and coercive system such as the Jim Crow South represents another negative, unnatural hierarchy with the same criteria. George C. Wallace, the racist governor of Alabama in 1972, occupied that top position by enforcing and promoting racist coercions. During Jim Crow, African Americans in Alabama and other states were severely limited in hierarchical mobility, and were at constant risk of being coerced or murdered. Finally, the overall system itself was clearly not beneficial to anything besides racism and oppression, and so it was rightly toppled. Coercive hierarchies tend to crumble after a period of evident failure and injustice.
In this distinction between consensual and coercive hierarchies lies the difference between capitalism and communism. In a consensual system, the people are incentivized, and able, to move up and down the power structure because this movement corresponds to their pleasure and happiness. In a coercive system, the people are rarely able to move up and down the power structure, and are therefore less incentivized to do anything (and, it is worth noting, coercion is often required if one is to move up or down). A consensual system is active while a coercive system is static, and stagnation accurately describes Marxist structures. A Soviet citizen once said, “They pretend to pay us and we pretend to work.” People in the USSR had little reason to work if they could not receive the true benefits of that work and the ensuing opportunity for social mobility. Russian economist Grigory Yavlinsky, who eventually became an important advisor to Gorbachev, once commented, “The Soviet System is not working because the workers are not working.” In chapter II of the Manifesto, Marx attempted to quell worries about laziness in a communist system, “It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.” These objections mostly became true, not only in the USSR, but in numerous other communist countries where production dropped significantly. In each Marxist example, an individual or group occupies the top of the hierarchy by coercion or force, prevents individuals from moving up and down freely, and does not create positive results for a majority of the unit. Along these lines, humans, with their desire for pleasure and mobility, do not, and can not, function well within a Marxist system.
CONCLUSION
Marxism has always resulted in a rigid power structure built on coercion, with suffering and poverty for the citizens and power for the ruling regime. The two major flaws in Marxist thinking are the belief that equality of outcome is possible, and the notion that people are not hungry for power. Once schools begin teaching about the dire history of Marxism, perhaps more students will come to understand the flaws of the doctrine. Unfortunately, many curricula now paint Marxism in a positive light. For students in California, capitalism is defined as “a form of power and oppression” and is used to “dehumanize” people. California school committees would not be pleased to find the ethnic cleansing or oppression that have occurred in numerous nations influenced by Marxism. Capitalism is not a perfect economic system, but it is undoubtedly superior to a model that has failed one-hundred percent of the time it has been implemented.
