As a result of corruption on Wall Street and elsewhere, there has been a resurgence of interest in the Marxist ideology. Being mostly-left in my political views, I would be expected to welcome this trend. I do not.
I spent my first 12 years in the former Soviet Union, with a grandmother who was a card-carrying member of the Communist Party. She was a strong, kind and intelligent woman who worked hard, was extremely responsible, and being a teacher made my education a priority, resulting in me becoming a star student. She is the proof that not all Communists are evil. So why again am I against Marxism?
Where do I start. First, Marxism believes in historical inevitability. I judge it irrational to believe in historical inevitability. People have choice, they can change history at any time and in any direction. In history we've seen all sorts of orders rise and fall. To claim that the world is inevitably progressing toward a Communist future is ridiculous.
Marxism sees the capitalist as a thief. The businessman is not a thief; he is someone who gets things done. Without the businessman taking on the risk and doing things, nothing would get done. And while there are other ways of getting things done, the businessman deserves credit for getting things done and for the resulting prosperity.
Nor do I believe in the class struggle. In America at least, there are many people from humble upbringings who become successful, rising as high as to become the President of the United States. And while in some rigid societies the people are forced to remain in the class situation in which they were born, social mobility in places such as America makes it possible for people from anywhere to wind up anywhere. In America, the classes mix; and far more useful concept than class struggle is the concept of social mobility.
Because of the gutting of the academia, the concept of class struggle becomes believable to many people. With people from lower end backgrounds having no funding to get education, it is hard for them to rise. The solution is not to embrace the idea of class struggles but to realize that education works in the benefit of freedom and prosperity. It creates opportunity for people to rise as far as their efforts and their abilities would take them; and it also makes less appealing the Marxist ideology that militates against capitalism.
Marx also compared the relationship between employer and employee to that of a master and a slave. I've worked for any number of companies in any number of positions, but I never felt like I was anyone's slave. The problem here is not the employer-employee relationship, but wrong choices that some employers make in treating their workers badly or rubbing it in who's the boss. When the employers behave more wisely, this does not take place.
Regarding his claim that religion is opiate to the masses, recent events have proven them wrong. There are all sorts of religious movements that are grass-roots phenomena and come from nowhere near the “establishment” or the “elites.” In fact religion comes from all sorts of places, such as king (Buddha); humble upbringing (Jesus); or an autonomous seeker (Mohammad). And in recent religious movements, we see everything from Christian Right to New Age to Falun Gong – neither of which were imposed by “elites” as an opiate for anyone, and which have appeal to all sorts of people all across the board, who willingly choose to follow them.
Probably the main thing that Marx was right about was in asserting women's rights and women's social status. That was a positive contribution, and it deserves respect. But clearly there are many major errors in Marxism, and I am surprised that it became as big as it became. We however do not have to repeat these errors.