Wonderful piece. But it's not just Marxists and silly academics who appear to believe all this. If you are or were Catholic, neither you nor I probably heard much of this from the pulpit at Mass when we were growing up (nowadays of course is very different), but it's been there for awhile (since Leo XII at least) and continuing, just for example, as Thomas E. Woods, Jr. points out, in Pope John Paul II's Laborem Exercens:

... It is not even that Laborem Exercens presents us with a trade-off between "free" health care on the one hand and increased unemployment and impoverishment on the other. No such difficulty is raised or even acknowledged. Employee compensation is simply assumed to be so arbitrary that we can actually make certain compensation packages morally obligatory without even taking into account any need to make provision for inevitable drawbacks. Apparently, there are none with which moral analysis need concern itself.

The clear implication of all of this is that will, desire, and good intention suffice to bring about high wages, vacation time, free health care, and the like. Indeed much of Catholic social thought suggests that the problem of economics and wealth is to a significant degree a matter of human manipulation and contrivance rather than a rational and sober reckoning with the constraints and scarcities with which man is naturally confronted.

"If you think your pasta grows on trees, you probably can imagine sauntering down to the local park and picking a bushel full."

Ah, so that explains the BBC mindset. ;-)

Brilliant!

Sarah, this is so concise and spot-on that I want to paper it all over downtown Iowa City! (Of course, once the students realized it is a critique of Marxist thought, they'd stop reading, but oh well.) Seriously, though, I'm going to direct as many people as I can to this post.

More like this, please!!

Lady, I bow down and kiss your feet. (Metaphorically, of course.) That was one PRIME RANT.

I'm just going to second a part of it here. "Yes, even in the sweat shops that have now moved to remote third world countries. "

That term "sweat shops" bugs me. I've been in a number of third world countries and seen what they are like. I lived for a few years in a, well, maybe 2.5th world country (Thailand). I've seen the options they have besides "sweat shops" and, believe you me, I'd MUCH rather be in a "sweat shop."

John K,

My religion is... complicated (also not something I talk about, partly because it's complicated. If the various caveats, begs and contamination of doctrine takes more than a page to explain, one shouldn't talk about it unless one is starting his own church. And er... L. Ron Hubbard. So not me.) but I'm totally with you on the church and its need to get through their heads the whole "render to Caesar." Honestly, most of the (and I understand mainline protestant in the US are the same or worse) theologians pronouncing on these things are about as qualified to talk about economics as I am to talk about quantum mechanics. No, less, because I -- at least -- understand that I don't understand them.

This insane confusion of Marx and the New Testament (possibly the old too!) seems to have created a breed that probably gives Simon nightmares (it doesn't give them to me, because I am still too in shock about their existence to even fall asleep): the far left evangelical. Yeh lords and fishies, they're a bizarre (and scary) mix.

P.S. to JohnK, the Episcopalians/Anglicans seem to be following the same "reasoning" - just pray harder and it will all work out. (Sigh) I'm neither, but my parents are Episcopal, so I was brought up in that church.

Brilliant. The turd polishing alone is so good that I'm using my prerogative to bump the post!

This is a truly magnificent rant.

There seems to be an infestation of magical thinking of the "if you wish for it/pray for it/want it enough, you'll get it" variety. Oddly enough I've usually found that working for it tends to get better results.

Just a note regarding grammatical analysis of music: Leonard Bernstein provides a rather fascinating discussion on such analysis in his Norton Lectures from the 1970s, The Unanswered Question. The DVDs on the six lectures are worthwhile, despite Bernstein's obvious self-indulgence. Very enlightening...

Excellent. For anyone who'd like more, I Just finished Ludwig von Mises's incredible "Socialism."

Published in 1922 when the whole world was headed in Marx's direction, Mises makes comprehensive economic arguments why Socialism is untenable.

Marxism hold a record in being the single worste idea, that has killed, impoverished, imprisoned, more people, and caused more misery than any other, while simultaneously doing nobody any good, other than the few at the top of marxist dictatorships. And even they often lived less well than middle class capitalists. yet large poetions of academia still beleives it has merit.

The only 2 compeditors are religious fanaticism, and fascism (which is actually a nationilist ofshot of Marxism).

BTW, practical experiments in turd polishing:

http://dsc.discovery.com/videos/mythbusters-polishing-a-turd.html

You are exactly right of course.
Here is another point worth noting.
Europe before the French Revolution and after it as well, was governed by Kings with most wealth concentrated in the 'nobility' or aristocracy. So who were these nobles and/or aristocrats?
They were actually the favorites of the crown at some point in the past; the high level government officials who did such things as ruling provinces and being judges, and owning estates, with such privileges usually granted by the sovereign for past or present services.
In other words they were the ancient equivalent of high level civil servants today, along with their descendants.

There is a natural tendency that we see in the present administration for granting exceptional privileges to its friends and supporters. It seems that high level Democrat supporting officials are immune to punishment for transgressions, and granted salaries and perquisites well beyond what is available to the the rest of us.

In Wisconsin today one sees attempts to elevate the Democrat-favoring government unions to status immune from the democratic process, which is exactly equivalent to elevating its leaders to the status of aristocrats, in thanks for their support of the present governing party in Washington.

The justification they claim for this is apparently their claim to superiority because of their pure Marxist persuasion!

A great piece. Alas, one of the hallmarks of the left is self-delusion. They subconsciously understand this, I think, so they can't believe anyone, no matter what you offer for proof.

Marxism hold a record in being the single worste idea, that has killed, impoverished, imprisoned, more people, and caused more misery than any other, while simultaneously doing nobody any good, other than the few at the top of marxist dictatorships. And even they often lived less well than middle class capitalists. yet large poetions of academia still beleives it has merit.

The only 2 compeditors are religious fanaticism, and fascism (which is actually a nationilist ofshot of Marxism).

Marxism holds a record in being the single worst idea, that has killed, impoverished, imprisoned, more people, and caused more misery than any other, while simultaneously doing nobody any good, other than the few at the top of marxist dictatorships. And even they often lived less well than middle class capitalists. Yet large portions of academia still beleives it has merit.

The only 2 competitors are religious fanaticism, and fascism (which is actually a nationilist ofshot of Marxism).

One of my favorite quotes:

Writing is not necessarily something to be ashamed of, but do it in private and wash your hands afterwards.

-Robert Heinlein

Are you trying to ruin the market for fair trade polished dog turds? I doubt the third world dog turd polishers could stand up to modern industrialized dog turd polishing technology. Unionized turd polishing would probably get export subsidies, from the Turd Polishing Administration. Recognizing the need for professional turd polishing management, university programs would set up MBA programs in turd polishing, and of course we would need the USDA to set up the Center for Turd Biomass Research to protect our domestic supply of raw turds. Green jobs! Eventually artisan turd polishing would arise in rebellion to the dehumanizing industrial system. Of course there would be plenty of affiliated economic activity ranging from polished turd display cases, plush collectible "Turd Babies" and "Turd Fancier" magazine. Obviously the polished turd industry is the solution to our economic problems. Full employment through Turd Stimulus!!!

Marxist theories have never worked in any of the numerous places they've been tried. The reason, as you've demonstrated so eloquently here, is simply because reality, unlike academics, politicians and intellectuals, simply cannot be fooled. But they keep trying...

Lazarus

One of my favorite quotes and I ALWAYS wash my hands. OTOH like Heinlein I write for several reasons, one of them being to (help, since I'm secondary earner) feed my family. And for that, one must be shameless.

What I like to call "Latent Marxism" is totally rife in American K-12 education. By that, I mean that lots of well-intentioned people, even those who think they have rejected communism, have passively absorbed the philosophical assumptions of classical Marxism, the class-warfare, the labor theory of value, etc. They haven't read deeply enough to recognize the origins of their own ideas.

This was an excellent overview of that phenomena.

Every once in a while, I actually try to explain all this to other teachers. They look at me like I'm totally paranoid. I'm glad to be reminded that I'm not the only one...

Great article! I came up with a variation of the dog turd thesis many years ago: You take a dog turd and chrome plate it but matter no matter how shiny it is or how much you polish it, in the end its still a dog turd.

Ermmm... isn't turd polishing where politicians come from? Look! They glisten! They demand rich settings! But, inside.... ewwww!

Brilliant, Sarah! So well done!

There are causes besides old Karl for the minimum wage, at least here in the U.S. of A. The historical reason was a crafty way to price itinerant black sharecroppers (well, they weren't "black," they were "colored" then) out of the local markets. Somehow or other, making it difficult or impossible for the new post-Civil War "freedmen" to work at a price point farmers were willing to pay has since been adopted as a liberal value.

One of the most disturbing things about socialism/communism is that otherwise apparently intelligent people keep thinking that it works. No matter how many times and how catastrophically it fails, the idea keeps coming back.

What is it about us that wants so badly to have Marx work? I mean, people know that there are problems with capitalism. But those problems are nowhere near those of socialism or communism, proven over and over again everywhere, every time.

I've been doing some light reading on what happened in Japan after WW I and before WW II. In Japan during 1931-32 period, the US stock market crash had killed the demand for luxury silk products this in turn put Japanese peasants who did silk production in addition to farming in a bind, then there was a year of good rice harvest all through Asia and the price dropped. The farmers did what they always did when times got hard. They sold their daughters. It was "new times" and this wasn't supposed to happen. Time and time again in history you'll see an elite contempt for merchants. In feudal Japan pre-Meji period the classes were the Nobility, the Samurai, the Farmer, then the merchant. Below that the merchants there where those that handled dead things, actors, and others.

The thing that occurs to me the most about Marx is the number of people who quote him is way out of proportion with those who have actually read his work.

If Marx was born 100 years later, he would have been forced to fight for shelf space at the bookstore with L. Ron Hubbard.

Not only was Marx wrong in almost every regard, he was a terrible writer. At least it can be said that Mr. Hubbard was ntertaining, Das Kapital was "Chloroform in print".

Dog turds? I have my own two favorite examples of the Marxist theory of value:

1. Differences in production time being negligible, all cups of coffee are created equal.

2. A house on the beach in Carmel is an even trade for a house next to a sewage plant in Jersey City, if they both took the same amount of labor hour to build.

Read the whole thing. Loved it. Thanks for sharing this with us.

Fine article, although I have a peripheral, non-Marxism bone to pick: anti-Marxist and pro-market does not mean that I have to love supermarkets. I speak as one who has lived in Italy (at the mercy of some really weird shopping laws) and in NYC now (many small shops, few supermarkets), with a stint in Orange County CA in between (mostly supermarkets and big box stores, gentled by the grace of farmer markets).

My own take on the matter of time (quality aside) is that, by the time I get in the car, drive to the supermarket, find a parking space in Outer Slobdovia, wait in line for the cashier, followed by the bagging and the shlepping to the car and the trip back home, followed by putting it all away--because who would want to to this more than once a week?--taking all that into consideration, I'll happily go to my butcher, baker and candlestick maker one at a time, in little more time than the pseudo-efficient Great Shopping Expedition. IMO, the efficiencies of the supermarket are more for the benefit of the grocer. And they contribute very little to quality (quite the opposite, I'd say).

The big flaw in Marx's labor theory of value is that he didn't understand time preference. In simple terms, a dollar today has more (present) value than a dollar in a year.

Sarah, nice article. I can support the statement you made: "In Portugal, villages have emptied. I understand the same things are happening in China and India and places now undergoing the process."

When China first opened up their economic zone in ShenZhen province (a few hours from Hong Kong), multinational businesses rushed in and set up shop for the cheap labor. The company I worked for at the time sent me to China in the early 1990's to see the facilities. I recall walking through a factory there, and stopped in the break room. There were a few workers on break, and a very large map of China on the wall. I spoke to one of their workers (via an interpreter) with the following exchange:

Me (pointing to southeastern corner of the map) "We're here, where do you come from?"

Worker (points to the upper left corner of China) "I come from a small village here."

Me: "How long was the train ride to get here?"

Worker: "No train. I walked. About two months."

Me: "Why did you walk so long and so far?"

Worker: "Wages in my village are (US equivalent $0.50/hour). Here in this factory I make (USD $2.12).

I went back to my hotel and looked up the distance between the two locations - and determined he walked the equivalent distance of Cheyenne, Wyoming to Los Angeles, CA in order to quadruple his salary.

So yes, this one individual definitely voted for industrialization with his feet.

Marx attracts people because the whole thing appeals to the primitive tribal instincts - and everyone who wants it assumes that they're going to be one of the elite few, not one of the proletariat many.

It's always a hidden-elitism thing: "All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."

When I was in South America in the 1990s, I found a dictionary that redefined everything in Marxist terms. As a result of perusing that serious lexicographical work deeply, I have no doubt that even biology can be taught as a Marxist subject.

Thanks for the great post.

I was once accused of being pro-business and I explained that I write technical manuals for an electronics manufacturer. Our customers are exclusively airplane manufacturers and airlines. Every time that they buy a ticket to go protest the establishment in a far away city, they pay a portion of my salary. I said thank you. They said nothing.

Funny how logic works.

Dave

"Seven times eight times twenty, I should be able to charge $560 for my polished dog turd. And cheap at the price, mind, since I'm not charging the residual value of the raw materials and I'm giving you a discount on my labor. Come on! What are you waiting for?"

There's residue from your dog turd? Ewwwww!

Have you ever done (or considered doing)an alternate history where Marx is killed as a young man in an accident ?

In 1957 for April 1, the BBC aired the "biggest hoax by a reputable news organization".

The Italian spaghetti harvest.

I just saved this page as a favorite as I want to be able to send others to it whenever they start espousing masked Marxist values. I was a masked Marxist in the past until I saw that it was a form or robbery. Too bad so many Christians and Jews think this is what God wants, to rob the creators to support the noncreative, entitled, consumers.

Karl Marx revealed that business owners are leeches on society, draining away the wealth that rightfully belongs to the workers.

At least, the ones who have jobs.

I was watching "The treasure of the Sierra Madre"(1948) when I heard this lovely dialog:

Howard: Say, answer me this one, will you? Why is gold worth some twenty bucks an ounce?

Flophouse Bum: I don't know. Because it's scarce.

Howard: A thousand men, say, go searchin' for gold. After six months, one of them's lucky: one out of a thousand. His find represents not only his own labor, but that of nine hundred and ninety-nine others to boot. That's six thousand months, five hundred years, scramblin' over a mountain, goin' hungry and thirsty. An ounce of gold, mister, is worth what it is because of the human labor that went into the findin' and the gettin' of it.

Flophouse Bum: I never thought of it just like that.

Howard: Well, there's no other explanation, mister. Gold itself ain't good for nothing except making jewelry with and gold teeth.

That's when I turned off that movie...

Brilliant Essay. Touches so many of the cogent facts of growing up surrounded by Marx. I've heard so many references to Marx now, my ears have bled in the 30 years since I first attended college. Marx is omnipresent...forgive me if I think of him not "dead", but Sauron "the Eye" who watches everything.

Amazing. I have often used the Labor Theory of Value to illustrate to people how Marx's theory of capitalism was all built on fallacy. (As far as Communism is concerned, Marx never wrote much about it -- it was just the divine state that would come when the workers overthrew capital).

When you think about it, illustrations of the labor theory of value's error are everywhere. But I'm going to steal your polished turd for future illustrations because my examples tend to lean the other way: a Rembrandt is worth rather more today than it was in 1961, but not much work has been done on it in these fifty years. The work that was done on it was complete centuries ago, but the value of the artwork continues to rise (ahead of inflation? Hmmm... depends on your discount rate).

A 1965 Mustang is worth more in real dollars (inflation-adjusted) than it was in 1965 when it was new. IF you get one in very bad condition, and spend a year restoring it to as-new condition, you may make a nice profit if it was a v-8 four-speed convertible, and you'll be in the hole if it was a six-cylinder coupe. Yet you will have put in just as much labour either way! By Gadfrey, it's not fair.

Marxism, indeed, obsesses about fairness. Readung Capital, I was at once impressed with Marx's very real righteous indignation at the sorry state of British industrial workers of the 19th Century, and astounded that it never occurred to him that the vast amount of information he found to support his thesis -- and he was rather good about footnoting his sources -- indicated not only the woes of capitalism, but the normal functioning of its mechanisms of correction. It should have been a clue that his child-labour information was coming from things like The Royal Commission to Investigate Child Labour. Why the devil did he think they were investigating it?

In the end, Marx was a narcissist, who believed that no one cared about the lot of the worker, apart from him. It is a trait you often see in Marxists... like Ché. He loved the workers, and the peasants, but from a respectful distance. When he interacted with them on his guerilla campaigns, they usually turned him in to the so-called "oppressors."

Fortunately Marxism is dying. Its last adherents are college faculties, the Maryknolls and other "liberation theology" catholics, and the Norks. Bad cess to them all.

Actually, Marx talked about "socially necessary" labor. That caveat eliminates a lot of the ridiculous problems with the theory.

Economists talk about price. Value is a philosophical concept.

When I was in South America in the 1990s, I found a dictionary that redefined everything in Marxist terms. As a result of perusing that serious lexicographical work deeply, I have no doubt that even biology can be taught as a Marxist subject.

Sarah, one could wish that Christian theologians actually read the Bible.

I wrote this years ago:

We have at least one clear description of the failure of Communism under optimal conditions. I refer, of course, to the Book of Acts, 4:32 - 5:11, Ananias and Sephira. NewLiving translation.

1. There is no doubt that they are practicing the economic system of communism:"All the believers were of one heart and mind, and they felt that what they owned was not their own; they shared everything they had...There was no poverty among them, because people who owned land or houses sold them, and brought the money to the apostles to give to others in need." From each according to his means, to each according to his need --- Marx would have been proud to call them brother.

2. They had as close to an incorruptible body of rulers as possible, who were proving their uprightness with miracles every day.

3. And they had pretty close to the ultimate Auditor; when Ananais and Sephira try to cheat the system, Peter knows about it instantly, and the punishment is swift and sure: the cheaters are struck dead on the spot.

And yet there were still cheaters, the apostles couldn't hold it together for very long, and none of the other churches outside Jerusalem seem to have even tried it. If the 12 Apostles backed up by God couldn't make communism work, how in the h*ll would any lesser mortals have a shot??

In case you hadn't guessed:

'lanched

http://pajamasmedia.com/instapundit/115503/

Bucky Fuller came up with Bronze Plated Baby's First Turd as a critique of market based economies. He hated industrial processes that were put to frivolous use. Of course he was imbued with Marxist thought and was of the opinion that the "rational" Soviets would win the Cold War.

"Labor Theory of Value": Ditch-diggers don't build cathedrals. Architects design 'em, free-mason Master Builders engineer 'em to Knights Templar specs, North Italian bankers finance 'em. Granting the medieval Church its Mariolatric due, what price the Rose Window of Chartres?

Marxists' absolute, utter philistinism aka "dialectical materialism" has no place for "knowledge workers" such as accountants, doctors, lawyers, artists of any stripe-- only for State Planning satrapies overrun with parasitic scribblers. Where coal-heaving trumps political economics, how does wee Karl justify his own existence?

Finally, just who benefits from Marx's "classless society," his socialist cesspool
designed explicitly to foster a Dictatorship of the Proletariat that feeds off productive private sectors? The answer is, an exploitative New Class of communo-fascist apparatchiks driven by ill will, tyrannizing in bad faith under false pretenses at downtrodden taxpayers' expense.

Sounds rather like the Smudge Administration with its commissars and gauleiters, corrupt and incompetent wreckers, the very antithesis of Jeffersonian and Madisonian ideals. Fortunately, the benighted American polity seems finally to have read the Tea-leaves.

Very good.

I've often had an analogous thought.

You can divide people into two camps.
One believes that paying money for something is necessarily a sincere action, and
Two: those that regard paying is representative of some lower form of culture.

E.g. think of the opprobrium that Thatcher recived for being a duaghter of a 'mere' shopkeeper.

I call it Rich People's Leftism. It's leftism by and primarily for guilty rich people. It doesn't do a lot for the poor, but it helps those rich people who feel guilty about their wealth deal with their feelings by letting them think that they are actually doing something for the poor.

But if one looks at what actual poor people do, one sees that they don't really care about Marxism. If they did, there would be a flood of poor people in Latin America going to Cuba. Instead, they come here to America.

I changed my mind about all this from watching how academia worked. Despite the fact that nearly everyone in academia is liberal or leftist, the people from rich backgrounds dominate, while those of us who come from more modest backgrounds get stomped on. There's lots of unemployment and exploitation of adjuncts, and there was even an incident when leftist professors stomped on a TA's union.

It's not pretty.

"Which is why though Marxist revolutions often recruit intellectuals they're the sort of intellectuals who never had an original idea in their life."

Oh I don't know... exploiting/capitalizing on Che Guevara's image was pretty original. But then, that probably wasn't an intellectual, though probably a Marxist.

Really excellent post. Sadly, the ones who most need to learn from it won't read it.

"One of the most disturbing things about socialism/communism is that otherwise apparently intelligent people keep thinking that it works. No matter how many times and how catastrophically it fails, the idea keeps coming back. "

My theory about this, and why I think socialism may always be with us, is that socialism appeals to three groups that, together, make up a significant part of the population: Group 1 - the young/naive idealist - "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need" sounds good to them, and they are sincere about it; Group 2: the envious - who dislike anyone who has more than they do - subscribe to class warfare and forced redistribution of the wealth the evil capitalists "stole" from the proletariat; Group 3 - those who are arrogant enough to think they are smarter than the masses, and want to centrally control things (and of course, assume they will be in charge). And, perhaps most importantly, a subset of Group 3 - these are the truly evil ones - who know it is all a sham, but who correctly see it as a way to obtain power for power's sake, and are able to manipulate the other believers. These are the kind of people who see the novel 1984 not as a cautionary tale but as an instruction manual.

Wonderful article! I've bookmarked it for future reference. And congratulations on the Instalanche!

Please forgive me for correcting a small arithmetic error:

Out of a class of twelve girls in elementary school, four of us went on to the prep-school (fifth and sixth grade) which allowed us to enter highschool (seventh through twelfth.) ... those other ten eight girls all got doctors (Hello Wisconsin!) to certify they were mentally retarded, so they could work in the textile mills. At the age of ten. ...

Sigh... tag fail.

Out of a class of twelve girls in elementary school, four of us went on to the prep-school (fifth and sixth grade) which allowed us to enter highschool (seventh through twelfth.) ... those other ten eight girls all got doctors (Hello Wisconsin!) to certify they were mentally retarded, so they could work in the textile mills. At the age of ten. ...

Fixing. This is not an excuse, of course, but I was running a temperature yesterday and it seems to have played havoc with my number sense. :)

But wait: pasta DOES grow on trees.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GXmaS1ZzpA8

Well written; but you're trounching the rat that carries the flea that has in it the microbe that is the Black Death.

The rat is Marx.
The flea is Hegel.
The microbe is Kant.

As bad as the publishing world is - and it is, mostly because it is by and large run by people who (often without being aware of it) view the world through a Marxist prism, and therefore think they are supposed to be exploiting others (because it's what everyone in a position of power would do.)

You've just explained Hollywood.

The answer is, an exploitative New Class of communo-fascist apparatchiks driven by ill will, tyrannizing in bad faith under false pretenses at downtrodden taxpayers' expense.
Sounds like Public Sector Employees Unions to me!

Heinlein wrote essentially the same critique of Marxism in "Starship Troopers". I am assuming you are aware of it, being a Heinlein reader.

Marx is as influential as he has been since the fall of the wall. He will never die, because he never wrote or told us anything about Communism, he wrote about Capitalism. Communism may be dead alright, Marx is alive and kicking.

He will always be the starting point of the debate about change, and will be referenced at every crisis, of which it appears we have many ahead. Every dissatisfied teenager, adult and those who dismissed Marx previously will always get drawn back to read him.

The lack of imagination on the left is the problem, you cannot expect revolution to yield anything other than failure if you can't tell us even the basic structure of how to proceed after.