omegaflare
15th December 2005, 04:31
I am a communist, im just posting (reposting?) some cappie's comment.
If you wanna read this at the source its blog.myspace.com/information_theory
A Brief Refutation of Communism/Socialism
(It has many typo errors, and it's missing a few sections to be filled in later... you need not tell me what I already know.)
What proceeds in the following discussion is a brief refutation of the communist / socialist system. I intend herein to expose the weaknesses of this ideological doctrine in order to both illustrate and educate those who would otherwise believe communism and socialism is a well intentioned philosophy which is purportedly grounded in ethics and whos purpose is to enhance the lives of all citizens by synthesizing a utopian reality based on egalitarianism.
The weaknesses to which I refer are multifaceted. I shall expose the outright contradictions which exist in the basic axioms of this philosophy. I shall expose the hypocrisy of said system, and lastly, I may even touch upon some outright lies which have been craftily used as a tool by advocates of said system to persuade (read: trick) citizens into believing this is a just and moral system, when in reality many of the claims made by notables such as Marx and Engels are outright lies of immense magnitude.
Although there exists a large multitude of variants of communism and socialism, and some debate arises as to what the actual definition of said aforementioned words mean, I mainly deal with heretofor Marxist Communism as described in The Communist Manifesto. Marxists, like every other faction, claim to be the only "true" representation of Communist theory. Whether that be true or not, many of the arguments I make herein are equally applicable, or nearly so to all the other variants of communism or socialism.
Herein, I do not attempt in any way to tackle the moral underpinning of communism, nor do I wish to proclaim that the capitalist system is better or more "just". Rather, the purpose herein is simply to expose the general fact that virtually every rationale which communist sympathizers rely on to justify their beliefs is based on a contradiction and false logic.
I. Where Does Communism / Socialism Rest within The Political Spectrum
Before
II. Language of the Communist - How Common Words are Intentionally Perversed
III. What Requirements are Necessary to Constitute a Rational & Logical Philosophy?
IV. Outright Lies Told by Marx in The Communist Manifesto: Seducing Gullible Readers
V. Primary Axioms of [Marxian] Communism
The following are the primary axioms upon which virtually all forms of communism and socialism rest upon. Bear in mind that I use the word "axiom" lightly and in a very unmathematical manner. As will be shown herein, these common goals of communism really do not stand up to the logical rigor of being called a true axiom, so they can better be thought of as "pretexts" (the excuse, or justification) which rationalizes the theory which subsequently manifests itself into a practical economic, social and political
system which complies with these axioms.
Bear in mind, that when I say "pretext" or justification, that is not meant to elude to a negative connotation. All systems of ideology, capitalism included, rests upon certain core axioms. There are those supporters of communism who would feel the need to challenge these axioms and more than likely those who shall attack it will outright dismiss it with the wave of a hand, which is always an effective tactic of debate. However, I challenge the reader who wants to know where the truth may lie, to read as many books on communism, socialism and capitalism as one can, and if one does that, it will be clearly shown that the following axioms, pretexts, or justifications for communism and egalitarianism (and other ones I have not listed) are the primary core rationale used in just about every book on the subject. Those who seek to dismiss it with the wave of a hand are lying to you.
Axiom 1: Economic Coercion is Unethical.
Axiom 2: Egalitarianism is a "Just" and "Ethical" System.
Axiom 3: The Only Purpose of Profit (Labour-Surplus) is Self-Perpetuation
(i.e. the supposed purpose of money is to generate more money)
Axiom 4: "Class Warfare" and Egalitarianism Is the End-All Be of Creating the Utopian Society
Axiom 5: Using Man as a Commidity is Immoral. Man is Entitled to the "Fruits of His Labour.
Axiom 6: Egalitarianism is What Communism is Really About. It has nothing to do with Politics.
Fallacy of Axiom 1 - While there may be exist some division among the believers in communism whether economic "coercion" is equally as "unethical" as coercion achieved by physical force, the fact remains that all loyal followers of egalitarianism view economic coercion as an evil, or an injustice. Whether it be equally as unethical as physical coercion is a seperate matter and is unrelated to exposing this primary fallacy of egalitarianism.
Since it is a foregone conclusion acccording to communists that economic coercion is a grave injustice, which Marx claimed justified a worldwide rebellion to reappropriate (read: steal) all forms of private property from its
current owners, or to quote Marx directly and in proper context... "... the theory of Communists may be summed up in a single phrase: Abolition of private property."
One then must marvel in amazement at the hypocrisy of Marx and his egalitarian supporting followers and their plan to achieve the goals of Communism. The Communist Manifesto clearly lays out the plan for revolution which involves encouraging all the worlds workingmen to form combinations (labour unions), and to utilize those labour unions to full effect, as if it were a "tool" or a "weapon" of war, in order to apply as much "economic coercion" to property owners(business owners) so as to help bring the entire system of capitalism to its knees.
Labor unions are a supreme example of organizations whos very existence is predicated upon utilizing "economic leverage" or in the words of a communist, "economic coercion"; thus communism encourages workers
to utilize the same exact type of evil or unjust tactics which they espouse to be unjust! Thus they openly support violating one of their most important axioms.
The blatent hypocrisy is astounding. Labour unions are free to apply any amount of economic "coercion", but yet we are told by Marxist dogma (read: outright lies), that business are not free to utilize the same tactics which the proletariat may use.
Fallacy of Axiom 2 - The fundamental concept of egalitarianism is a moral one based upon Natutral Law which assumes that all people are inherently equal in the eyes of Nature or (God, or ones Creator).
Communists fail to realize, that true egalitarianism (and there are different kinds) can oftentimes conflict with one another. The Communist flavour of egalitarianism is a doctrine whch espouses equal material wealth. Communists thus conclude that the most logical (if being the only one) which can achieve this end, is to create a means predicated upon "co-ownership" in the capitalist system. Under such a system, there exists no such thing as a profit (surplus-labour). All capital which a "company" aquires is distributed in
a somehow equal manner among all workers. Likewise, this assumes that all workers must then justifiably "earn" their fair share by doing an equal amount of work which also entails sharing an equal amount of responsibility.
In an egalitarian system predictated upon equal material wealth, justice must mean that with equal rewards comes equal responsibility, and vice versa. This is said to be a "just" and "ethical" system. Unfortunately, the entire foundation of such a system is predicated upon a very obvious logical contradiction.
The contradiction to which I refer being that it is a violation of Natural Law itself, it is "immoral" or "unjust" and even "evil" (in the eyes of both communists as well as any capitalist) to force a worker to take on
more responsibility than they so desire. Perhaps a given workers has many family responsibilities which preclude them from fully sharing the burden of responsibility sucg as we would have under a system oc co-ownership. Perhaps a given worker is either physically incapable ("handicapped" or
suffering from disease or other affliction) ) or mentally incapable (mental retardation, mental disease, etc..) of sharing responsibility equally. Perhaps even, the worker is just plain lazy and does not want to share in equal responsibility, and maybe they don't even want to share in equal wealth.
This is what we witness everyday under the capitalist system. Not every workers wants to be forced to take work home with them, or come in on Saturdays and Sundays. Many workers simply desire the freedom to choose being a lower level employee who only is obligated to work from the hours of 9 - 5. Many workers do not want the responsibilities that many managers and upper level functionaries have to deal with.
There comes into play another equally important issue. That of equal rewards means equal risk! This is a concept no less important than the equal rewards means equal responsibility concept. I will not deal with this topic at great length, but suffice it to say, no employee should be forced to make a co-equal investment in the "company" (worker-owned-association) for which they work. They may neither have the money to begin with, nor may they desire to risk their personal savings even if they do have the money.
Furthermore, every worker must assumably invest their own money everytime a new piece of equipment is needed. Who decides these matters under a communist co-ownership utopian fantasy? Perhaps that is irrelevant because moral theory does not have to justify itself by explaining how such a system can exist in reality, it is merely "right" or "wrong" and how we achieve that utopian system is a seperate unrelated matter. In any regards Marx never bothers to answer such details because it clearly undercuts the reality of the communist utopia, but from other communist literature, we can assume that direct democracy is the system which is favored as eluded to by Marx. If each employee is an equal co-owner, then we assume each workingman has an equal vote in regards to what equipment needs to be purchased and how much to pay for said equipment. What then of business decisions that need to made by the worker-owned-association? This is another question which begs to be answered. There exists two or more possibilities. First, either each worker can equally vote on each and every decision the company makes... that is... the purest form of direct democracy, or perhaps you can
have a representative democracy where workers vote for the most able people to make smart business decisions on their behalf if they dont understand the issues, or do not have time to understand them. One might wonder then, is such a system then slowly devolving into the very system which the communist workers hated to begin with... a system in which the bosses made the decisions for them?
We can clearly see that the primary axiom of communism in and of itself is being violated here, because the whole system is predicated upon economic "coercion"... the same type of coercion which communism espouses is grabely immoral and deleterious to the proletariat. The argument can legitimately be made that most workingmen will "adapt" to such a system, even though such an ideological system may appear foreign and unknown to them at this point due to their experiences with the capitalist system... it is claimed that workers will eventuall embrace this system While that may very well be true, the argument holds no logical merit. If so much as one man among millions disagrees with this system... then his rights are being violated and he is being economically coerced.
Finally, to digress back to the original topic. It was previously hypothesized, "What if a workingman does not want to co-equally share either the (1) responsibility or (2) financial risk of being in such a system? Several legitimate reasons why such a worker would not want to do that were mentioned in detail and such examples mesh well with what we see in the capitalist system today so we know these are not just hypothetical scenarios. What do we do with such a worker? Do we allow that workingman to not carry his responsibility and let others take on his share willingly? Do we force that worker out of a job? If the answer is the latter, is that not a form of economic coercion?
Does the worker really have a "choice"? Can he really just work elsewhere? What if all the other jobs require this worker to share the same amount of responsibility and financial risk as his last job? Does he still have a choice then? Likely the communist will sa, "Yes", because he does not know what else to say because the key flaw in the communist system has been exposed for all to see. If the answer bey "yes" and if forcing a worker out of his job because he does not like the terms of employment is not "coercion" then a large portion of the pretext which the communists, socialist and modern-liberals [liberals in the New American sense, not "classic liberalism]
base their system upon is blatently false. They often claim its unethical for workers to be subject to the whims of the employer in a capitalist system (i.e. if the employer offers a substandard wage which a person cannot
legitimately live on, the communists decries this as immoral and economically coercive) yet the communists fail to realize is that this same exact shortcoming of capitalism where a company is owned and controlled by
the few exists just as equally under a worker-owned-association ("company") which is controlled by the many. In other words, "economic tyranny/coercion" of the few is just as evil as "economic tyranny/ecoercion" of the many, where by many we mean where a company is co-owned by all empoyees who act as a democracy. The majority democracy can tyrannize the minority just the same as in an oligarchic capitalist company!
Fallacy of Axiom 3 - The claim that capital exists merely to perpetuate itself, or to use the more commonly heard phrase "... the purpose of money is to make more money [or "wealth"]'", can be shown to be false prima facie
by both by following two seperate lines of logic, one based on praxeology and understanding human behavior, and the second based on mathematics.
First, in regards to human behavior in making economic decisions and praxeology. There are many reasons why humans may whorde money such that they accumulate more wealth than is necessary than a basic level
of subsistence, the minimum amount they need to live a decent life on. Likewise, entrepreneurs have numerous reasons for accumulating surplus labor also, only one of the many reasons of which is to perpetuate a money
surplus for the corporate entity. Workingmen accumulate excess wealth for many of the same reasons that corporate entities do. One of which is to have a "nest egg" in order to protect themselves from possible impending disasters of a various nature which may be unforseen. Protecting oneself from physical or finacial harm is nor more an evil if a "corporate entity" does it than if a workingmans protects his personal assets to protect his family. Failure
to accumulate some amount of surplus is grossly irresponsible and if a company were to fail due to fluctuations of the market and no "nest egg" were available as per the desires of communists, then the company as a whole may indeed fail catostrophically, and all workers may lose their jobs simultaneously. How is that communist ideal helping the workers? All entities, be they personal or corporate, need a surplus to survive in life.
Furthermore, in Section VII, it will be shown from a pragmatic standpoint, the futility of such a system. The very system which the communist proposes, will be very difficult to achieve without further defining the rules of the communist utopia. If profit cannot exist for business, where does business get the initial start-up money to develop products, to do research and development, or creat the initial products themselves, to pay the workers salaries until the business becomes self-sustaining, and furthermore and from a larger social implication, how does society advance of business are not allowed to research new technologies (such as enviromental-friendly technologies) if business does not have any profit or surplus to speak of with which to conduct the research which will subsequently not only benefit the workers through new products but society as well!
Secondly, although I perhaps take the intention of the statement out of proper context, nevertheless from a mathematical perspective we can show the statement to be false prima facie. If we create a hypothetical model of a primitive State which starts out with a finite money supply, we realize that new "wealth" cannot be created. The wealth merely gets redistributed from one owner to the next, however the net wealth of society remains the same. Hence, even though this takes the basic idea which communists claim out of context slightly... it still proves it false.
Even if the money supply, such as in more advanced societies continues to ever-exapand via the printing of new moneies due to policies of the central bank, this does not undercut the legitimacy of the argument either since the
value of money merely decreases in proportion (along with some other technicalities) to the amount of money that gets printed (i.e. if everyone had a million dollars, then everyone is not rich, because a million dollars does not then have the value that it used to have when the money supply was less).
Fallacy of Axiom 4 - Marx and indeed his communist legion of followers predicate their utopia upon yet another grossly distopic worldview. The entire philospphy is predicated upon the concept that "class warfare"
between the proletarian and burgeoise, or in less abstract terms, the wage-laborer and employer is the ultimate end of a just society. I hardly can posit a retort to this line of idiocy and I scarecly believe that even most communists believe such absurdity. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to attack this thesis as it is happens to be one of the most prevalent pretexts which justify the whole of communism morality.
There exists so many types of "class-ism" in society, that one can hardly explain them all and delve into any detail in regards to each, to explore their socialogical and economic shortcomings and the effect on society. Rather, I shall briefly discuss them here, and trust that the reader understands all these issues without further explanation. These are all issues which are well known in society and need little explanation as we witness these injustices or sociological phenomenoms on a regular basis, in addition to having studied them in some detail in our formal schooling.
So what other types of "-isms" or other injustices dominate the rule of society and interfere with the notion of egalitarianism which the communists seek as the ultimate utopia? Here is a short list with brief explanation.
Racism - Yet another issue which existed in the time of Marx, as it continues today. Did Marx and Engels speak one word on behalf of slavery in the Communist Manifesto? Are we to believe that slaves, blacks or other people of "undesirable color" were included in Marx's plan for the proletariat to rise up? Hell, Marx did not even like Jews and made repeated outright offensive remarks against them all throoughout his life, especially in his earlier years.... and he was Jewish! A self-loathing Jew!
Nationalism - Nationalism is a persistant problem that not only plagues the world in general, but can actually plague the social order of an individual country whereas people are discriminated against economically, socially or politically based on family heritage.
Tribalism - Indeed tribalism is alive and well in many parts of the world including Africa. When we speak of tribes, we are not merely talking of the primitive kind of centuries past, but the type that still exerts a verypowerful political, social, and economic influence in some African countries. The concept of tribalism is foreign to americans, we envion "tribes" as being either American-Indians or savage Africans. The truth is, in modern Africa, tribalism has very real social consequences for the way people. Modern african tribalism can somewhat be explained to americans by drawing a parallel to the strong sense of national pride that americans have about their family heritage. Just as some americans take alot of pride in being Irish-American, or Italian-American, German-American, so too do many modern tribes of Africa have a similar societal structure, only with a slightly different twist and slightly different problems than those which we may face here in America. Just as being a certain nationality was once considered a problem in the early part of the twentieth century (and in fact, being a certain nationality can still lead to discrimination in America today, although thats less likely), so too do the tribes have their own unique social problems. Certain tribes are often favoered by African politicians and the favoured tribes often receive special priveledges by the government in many regards. Not only
do the preferred tribes receive economic favouratism, the athletes in Africa are often discriminated against based on the tribe they are in. One might wonder why I mention athletics into the conversation. The reason is that athletics happens to be one of the very few lucrative professions in that part of the world, especially in countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia (i.e. Kenyan and Ethiopian runners are the most dominate in the entire world!!!). Thus discrimination against athletes based on tribalism is very much a powerful economic issue in an otherwise destitute country.
Sexism - Women continue to receive less pay than men. One can legitimately claim that in some cases women cannot perform the same tasks as men or they may not have the same level of productivity in jobs which require heavy physical labour, however this is a stistical fact. Do the communists cry about
the plight of women? At least Marx did not. In any case, even modern Marxists would do little for the plight of women because the rigid structure of Marxist philosophy simply does not address the needs of feminism at all. How many women Presidents have we in the United States in comparison to other countries?
Ageism - Indeed, this is an actual term, and occasionally, the term Elder-ism is used although that term seems not to be preferred because of its connotation, in addition to the fact that the phrase elderism (or adult-ism) only applies to discrmination one way, whereas Age-ism can implys to discrimination in both directions, of either young or old.
If you force a group of people together, such as on a proverbial desert Island, but just as well it can be shown to be true in mainstream society, a clear hierarchy will emerge in terms of leaders and followers. We've all been taught about "respect for ones elders" and indeed that is the way it is in most of society. The majority of people who are in any position of influece, be it political, or economic are indeed, if not to say they are "old", we shall say then at least they are not young. The median age for the leaders of industry
and politics in ths country is what we might refer to as middle age, with a strong portion spreading out into the 50 and 60 year old range, statistically speaking. Of course, the reasons for this age dominance are not necessarily "respect for ones elders", the issue is much more complicated than that. It has to do with educational experience, job experience, as well as life experience as well. Not all cases in life prove that the elder will be the natural leader. Other factors have to do with a persons personal characteristics. The
proverbial dominant "alpha-male" may rise to the top regardless of age, but more often than not it is an elder that leads society and industry.
The US Constitution in fact, as we were all taught, actively discriminates against the young from seeking high public office. Obviously, the reasons arefairly clear and the arbitrary age limit which our Founders chose was probably just as valid then as it is now, because it illustrates that the age of sufficient maturity was roughly the same in the 18th Century as it is nowadays which is an interesting sociological phenomenon.
Do the communists cry about Age-ism and call for a new order where the young shall rise up and everyone will be given equal opportunity? I think not. Once again their dystopic viewpoint is fixated irrationally on perceived economic injustices.
Honour Systems (i.e. British system) Knights, earles, dukes, barons, etc... as well as the Feudal system of ages past, etc...
Religion - Descrimination against religion continues in the United States just as it does in many other countries. The "injustices" can either be in the form of economic, social, or political discrimination. How many openly Jewish politicians have we had in this country?
Fallacy of Axiom 5 - Marx, Engels and his modern day followers of communism/socialism likely ground the legitimacy of their philosophy based on the [intentionally] warped view of Lockean philosophy and their unique
interpretation of the Labor Theory of Value (LTV) (a discredited economic fallacy in every regard).
The kernel of truth in the Marxian philosophy rests upon the basic ideas of John Lockes proviso that man is entitled to the fruits of his labour. However, that all-important proviso which grounds both capitalism as well as communism is intentionally warped by Marx's ideology because he removes the all-important moral side-constraint of the Lockean proviso. The side consraint to which I refer is the well known requirement that any natural resource which one appropriates for themselves must be obtained in a "State of Nature" or otherwise subsequently obtained legitimately via commerce with the legitimate previous owner (i.e. you must buy it, rent it, lease it, or trade something, or the owner must otherwise willingly give it to you for free).
Communists on the otherhand, want to claim that anything they have made via their labor is theirs, even if they have stolen the materials with which to make it. Communists will argue to their death bed that this is not the case... However, if you examine their philosophy and the tricky way in which they phrase everything, they phrase things very carefully so as to lend an air of legitimacy, you will see this to be true. Sometimes a communist will outright deny that he wants the "fruit of his labor" in order to counter your argument and to say the argument of the anti-communist is invalid. However, the lie still exists because the entire premise of the argument that it is immoral for an employer to "exploit" labor by making a profit is still based on their warped interpretation of the "fruits of labor" Lockean philosophy... whether they admit it or not.
Restating, the fallacy is thus. Workingmen do not build products for their employers out of material which was obtained from the State of Nature, nor out of materials which the employee owned himself. The material rightfully belongs to the employer in most cases, who in turn legitimately payed the previous owner for the natural resources which were at some point or another extracted from the State of Nature. A second question to ask is.... when Marx's "communist revolution" comes and employees wrestle (read: steal) the means of production back from the employers... will the employees rightfully pay back in full compensation all of the material which has been stolen from the employer? If not, the communist principle is base on lies, hypocrisy, violence and theft. The communist claim that he is "exploited" largely because the employer is making a profit.... yet... how does that justify the communist stealing everything on the planet as per the rules of the 10 Planks of Communism? If indeed the communist was entitled to "just compensation" for profits which the employer never gave to them, but rather kept for the company, then that profit is all they are justifiably entitled to since that is indeed the primary claim of the communist. The communist have no moral claim to steal the factory buildings, to steal the equipment, to steal the inventory, and perhaps also no claim to steal the research and technology.
The aforementioned arguments against the hypocritical communist system illustrates their morally depraved false lines of reasoning and the logical inconsistencies upon which communism is predicated.
The reader may not fully understand the concept of the "State of Nature" or of the Lockean proviso, in general, so a hypothetical example shall be given:
If a tradesman, an artist, were charged with crafting a sculpture made out of iron or marble, is that tradesman entitled to all of the fruits of his labour?
To answer this question we need to trace the Lockean proviso through to its logical conclusion, tracing the path of the raw material from extraction from the State of Nature to the culmination with the finishing of the product (or we shall trace that path backwards for purposes of this example). Let us ask the following questions:
(1) Did the sculpter (tradesman) extract the iron or marble from the ground himself?
No. Not likely. Hence the fruits of labor provision a la Locke does not apply. This particular laborer is entitled to nothing more than what he agreed to work for because the material is not his to claim,
nor is it his to legitimately generate a profit from.
(2) Did the scuplter (tradesman) purchase the raw iron or marble block with his own money?
No. Not likely as employees do not usually buy their own material. Again, the Lockean proviso does not apply.
Any claim that the sculpter is "entitled" to the raw materials, and subsequently to the profits is no more valid than if he had stole the iron or marble himself and then claimed it as his own. Simply putting labour unto a natural resource does not make the fruit of labor argument valid, unless that raw material was legitimately under your ownership to begin with, excluding the case where you make a contract with the employer to provide the material yourself and to produce it for the employer for a certain price, which is not usually the case in wage-labor situations. If a thief steals a radio and then spends many hours modifying it, thus putting his labor into it, does that then make the stolen radio the property of the thief? Is the thief entitled to sell the modified
radio for a profit? Absurd! ... and hence, so are the very arguments upon which communism is predicated.
Let us explore the issue further. Let us trace the path of the raw material as it made its way from one owner to the next so as to better understand exactly who has legitimate claim to such material and the subsequent fruits of labor to said material.
We find that the marble or iron was mined or quarried by the workingman, the miner. Now the follow-up question is, does the raw materials legitimately belong to the miners? If indeed any workigman can lay legitimate claim to ownership, one might perhaps think that the miners, who certainly toiled in hardship to extract those natural resources from the ground may have some kind of claim to ownership. These hard working men certainly have legal and moral priority because their hands were layed upon the material long before the sculpter ever received it at his art workshop
However, does the Lockean proviso apply?
Once again, if we properly apply the Lockean proviso with the moral side constraint, the answer is NO! The raw material was NOT found in a "State of Nature".
"State of Nature" specifically refers to land or other natural resources which are not currently owned by another. We quickly realize that the marble or iron mine is owned by whomever holds the deed to the land, or perhaps
legitimately rents or leases that land from the deed holder.
Now, even if we were to capitualte for the sake of acquiescence on this matter, and even if we assumed that the miners have a first-claim right to the "fruits of their labour" which includes any profits on the sold product,
for extracting that iron and marble from the earth... then any "injustice" which was done unto the miners should the mine owner refuse to give mine workers "just compensation" (i.e. back profits from sales) as dictated by the
communist version of fairness, the result of that scenario is that only one party (the miners) were wronged. The miners may indeed have been wronged, but the justice does not "transfer", it does not "propagate", and so the wage-labor artisan who creates a marble sculpture for his employer but only receives a wage and no subsequent profits cannot in any way have been "wronged". The miners had "first-claim" priority to injustice, only they can be wronged and noone else.
Thus we find, that even if we liberally bend the rules of logic and the Lockean proviso to suit the warped philosophical viewpoint of communists as was done in the latter example, many of the aspects of their philosophy still do not hold true. They claim that all wage-workers workers (or proletariat in Marx-speak) have a right to rise up in violent and bloody revolution to "right" the injustices. However, it was just demonstrated by absolute logic that their claim simply does not apply and their whole philosophy is predicated upon a lie. To reiterate, if an injustice was committed upon one party, that being the workingman who has first-priority claim, which is the worker who actually
extracted the raw material from the ground, that does not justify the entire of society rising up in revolution because the entire society has no claim whatsoever save the very insignificant amount of workers who have first-claim rights to be compensated for injustice.
Fallacy of Axiom 6 - This shall be the shortest refutation contained herein. The notion is often put forth by communists that their only goal is to implement an egalitarian society. Some may choose to phrase it differently
by utilizing different keywords unique to communist doctrine, they may talk of "class warfare", or setting up a system of "co-ownership" for workers, or many other variations thereof. In an attempt to obfuscate the truth, many of the modern supporters (except perhaps Marx himself who one might say is one of the few people who possessed enough moral fortitude to tell the truth about his proposed system, unlike his followers) will try to convice you that they have no political agenda. Thheir arguments are based on truth via ommision of key facts about their philosophy. They tell you only of the parts of communist which you may want to hear, or that they believe might morally sway you to their side. What they don't tell you, for fear of losing your support to their cause, is the truly radical and even violent nature of communism as describe quite honestly and bluntly by Marx and Engels.
Such lies espoused by most communists can be exposed prima facie by simply examining the sacred documents upon which most communists rely for their philisophical justifications. While there do exist a small segment of communists who may rightfully be exluded from this group such as certain types of libertarian-socialists, I might even question their claim given the fact that most libertarian-socialists are not what they claim to be, because they too rely on the forceful restructuring of a political system.
We need only examine "The Communist Manifesto", the core document upon which most Marxian type communists rely as their justification. All through the Manifesto, does Marx and Engels refer to revolution. By revolution, it should be clear in no uncertain terms that Marx was referring to violence and overthrowing of the government and one might say of society as it currently exists and replacing it with something radical and unknown. Now, it has been proposed by some historians that Marx's use of the term "recolution" was merely a figure of speech or a vague notion which is not to be taken literally, it is merely an abstraction based on influence brought upon the two authors by the age of Romantacism. This hypothesis, while perhaps grounded in some degree of truth, after all many important figures throughout history have spoken of revolution, but whether they meant it literally, or whether they would regret their use of words if revolution were to really happen, can perhaps be swallowed with a grain of salt. It is nevertheless clear that Marx possessed the type of fervor in his beliefs that illustrate he was dedicated enough in his beliefs to justify real revolution, and was not merely relying upon an abstract written proclamation of impending war to sway his readers.
In any case, even if it is to be accepted that Marx's notion of violent and bloody revolution were merely romantacist notions not to be taken literally, as espoused all throughout The Communist Manifesto, what is certainly true is that Marx and Engles most definately had goals beyond merely creating a utopian egalitarian society through voluntary compliance. The 10 planks of communism as described towards the end of the book, and described in a later section of this essay illustrates that Marx's goal was not to create a voluntary utopia as todays followers will have you believe (they lie), but to
radically alter the existing government. He sough to nationalize and heavily regulate major sectors of industry, particularly industries relating to the key infrastructure of society, such as utilities, transportation and communications. The other radical changes Marx proposed will be discussed in this next section and will serve as more detailed proof that the supporers of
communism/socialism have more than egalitarianism and noble goals in mind.
VI. The 10 Planks of Communism from "The Communist Manifesto"
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduate income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization(*) of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization(*) of the means of communications and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc.
(*) Centralization herein refers to what is now more commonly called "Nationalization." Some have tried to claim that the heavy interventionist-economic regulation constitutes Marx's idea of centralization, but I dont think that holds much merit. Example of Centralized government agencies in the United States are recently created Transportation Security Administration and the countries oldest nationalized agency, the US Postal Service, which maintains a legal monopoly on certain types of mail services
which are codified under federal law. You could also legitimately throw the Federal Communications Commission into that list without exxagerating the point. There is also the Department of Transportation, and other transportation related agencies at the different levels of government, although thats not full nationalization in my opinion, only part nationalization. In many cities throughout the United States however, governments have a monopoly lock on the local bus transportation, which thus legitimatizes the claim that many industries in the U.S. are indeed already nationalized under a communist scheme.
If you wanna read this at the source its blog.myspace.com/information_theory
A Brief Refutation of Communism/Socialism
(It has many typo errors, and it's missing a few sections to be filled in later... you need not tell me what I already know.)
What proceeds in the following discussion is a brief refutation of the communist / socialist system. I intend herein to expose the weaknesses of this ideological doctrine in order to both illustrate and educate those who would otherwise believe communism and socialism is a well intentioned philosophy which is purportedly grounded in ethics and whos purpose is to enhance the lives of all citizens by synthesizing a utopian reality based on egalitarianism.
The weaknesses to which I refer are multifaceted. I shall expose the outright contradictions which exist in the basic axioms of this philosophy. I shall expose the hypocrisy of said system, and lastly, I may even touch upon some outright lies which have been craftily used as a tool by advocates of said system to persuade (read: trick) citizens into believing this is a just and moral system, when in reality many of the claims made by notables such as Marx and Engels are outright lies of immense magnitude.
Although there exists a large multitude of variants of communism and socialism, and some debate arises as to what the actual definition of said aforementioned words mean, I mainly deal with heretofor Marxist Communism as described in The Communist Manifesto. Marxists, like every other faction, claim to be the only "true" representation of Communist theory. Whether that be true or not, many of the arguments I make herein are equally applicable, or nearly so to all the other variants of communism or socialism.
Herein, I do not attempt in any way to tackle the moral underpinning of communism, nor do I wish to proclaim that the capitalist system is better or more "just". Rather, the purpose herein is simply to expose the general fact that virtually every rationale which communist sympathizers rely on to justify their beliefs is based on a contradiction and false logic.
I. Where Does Communism / Socialism Rest within The Political Spectrum
Before
II. Language of the Communist - How Common Words are Intentionally Perversed
III. What Requirements are Necessary to Constitute a Rational & Logical Philosophy?
IV. Outright Lies Told by Marx in The Communist Manifesto: Seducing Gullible Readers
V. Primary Axioms of [Marxian] Communism
The following are the primary axioms upon which virtually all forms of communism and socialism rest upon. Bear in mind that I use the word "axiom" lightly and in a very unmathematical manner. As will be shown herein, these common goals of communism really do not stand up to the logical rigor of being called a true axiom, so they can better be thought of as "pretexts" (the excuse, or justification) which rationalizes the theory which subsequently manifests itself into a practical economic, social and political
system which complies with these axioms.
Bear in mind, that when I say "pretext" or justification, that is not meant to elude to a negative connotation. All systems of ideology, capitalism included, rests upon certain core axioms. There are those supporters of communism who would feel the need to challenge these axioms and more than likely those who shall attack it will outright dismiss it with the wave of a hand, which is always an effective tactic of debate. However, I challenge the reader who wants to know where the truth may lie, to read as many books on communism, socialism and capitalism as one can, and if one does that, it will be clearly shown that the following axioms, pretexts, or justifications for communism and egalitarianism (and other ones I have not listed) are the primary core rationale used in just about every book on the subject. Those who seek to dismiss it with the wave of a hand are lying to you.
Axiom 1: Economic Coercion is Unethical.
Axiom 2: Egalitarianism is a "Just" and "Ethical" System.
Axiom 3: The Only Purpose of Profit (Labour-Surplus) is Self-Perpetuation
(i.e. the supposed purpose of money is to generate more money)
Axiom 4: "Class Warfare" and Egalitarianism Is the End-All Be of Creating the Utopian Society
Axiom 5: Using Man as a Commidity is Immoral. Man is Entitled to the "Fruits of His Labour.
Axiom 6: Egalitarianism is What Communism is Really About. It has nothing to do with Politics.
Fallacy of Axiom 1 - While there may be exist some division among the believers in communism whether economic "coercion" is equally as "unethical" as coercion achieved by physical force, the fact remains that all loyal followers of egalitarianism view economic coercion as an evil, or an injustice. Whether it be equally as unethical as physical coercion is a seperate matter and is unrelated to exposing this primary fallacy of egalitarianism.
Since it is a foregone conclusion acccording to communists that economic coercion is a grave injustice, which Marx claimed justified a worldwide rebellion to reappropriate (read: steal) all forms of private property from its
current owners, or to quote Marx directly and in proper context... "... the theory of Communists may be summed up in a single phrase: Abolition of private property."
One then must marvel in amazement at the hypocrisy of Marx and his egalitarian supporting followers and their plan to achieve the goals of Communism. The Communist Manifesto clearly lays out the plan for revolution which involves encouraging all the worlds workingmen to form combinations (labour unions), and to utilize those labour unions to full effect, as if it were a "tool" or a "weapon" of war, in order to apply as much "economic coercion" to property owners(business owners) so as to help bring the entire system of capitalism to its knees.
Labor unions are a supreme example of organizations whos very existence is predicated upon utilizing "economic leverage" or in the words of a communist, "economic coercion"; thus communism encourages workers
to utilize the same exact type of evil or unjust tactics which they espouse to be unjust! Thus they openly support violating one of their most important axioms.
The blatent hypocrisy is astounding. Labour unions are free to apply any amount of economic "coercion", but yet we are told by Marxist dogma (read: outright lies), that business are not free to utilize the same tactics which the proletariat may use.
Fallacy of Axiom 2 - The fundamental concept of egalitarianism is a moral one based upon Natutral Law which assumes that all people are inherently equal in the eyes of Nature or (God, or ones Creator).
Communists fail to realize, that true egalitarianism (and there are different kinds) can oftentimes conflict with one another. The Communist flavour of egalitarianism is a doctrine whch espouses equal material wealth. Communists thus conclude that the most logical (if being the only one) which can achieve this end, is to create a means predicated upon "co-ownership" in the capitalist system. Under such a system, there exists no such thing as a profit (surplus-labour). All capital which a "company" aquires is distributed in
a somehow equal manner among all workers. Likewise, this assumes that all workers must then justifiably "earn" their fair share by doing an equal amount of work which also entails sharing an equal amount of responsibility.
In an egalitarian system predictated upon equal material wealth, justice must mean that with equal rewards comes equal responsibility, and vice versa. This is said to be a "just" and "ethical" system. Unfortunately, the entire foundation of such a system is predicated upon a very obvious logical contradiction.
The contradiction to which I refer being that it is a violation of Natural Law itself, it is "immoral" or "unjust" and even "evil" (in the eyes of both communists as well as any capitalist) to force a worker to take on
more responsibility than they so desire. Perhaps a given workers has many family responsibilities which preclude them from fully sharing the burden of responsibility sucg as we would have under a system oc co-ownership. Perhaps a given worker is either physically incapable ("handicapped" or
suffering from disease or other affliction) ) or mentally incapable (mental retardation, mental disease, etc..) of sharing responsibility equally. Perhaps even, the worker is just plain lazy and does not want to share in equal responsibility, and maybe they don't even want to share in equal wealth.
This is what we witness everyday under the capitalist system. Not every workers wants to be forced to take work home with them, or come in on Saturdays and Sundays. Many workers simply desire the freedom to choose being a lower level employee who only is obligated to work from the hours of 9 - 5. Many workers do not want the responsibilities that many managers and upper level functionaries have to deal with.
There comes into play another equally important issue. That of equal rewards means equal risk! This is a concept no less important than the equal rewards means equal responsibility concept. I will not deal with this topic at great length, but suffice it to say, no employee should be forced to make a co-equal investment in the "company" (worker-owned-association) for which they work. They may neither have the money to begin with, nor may they desire to risk their personal savings even if they do have the money.
Furthermore, every worker must assumably invest their own money everytime a new piece of equipment is needed. Who decides these matters under a communist co-ownership utopian fantasy? Perhaps that is irrelevant because moral theory does not have to justify itself by explaining how such a system can exist in reality, it is merely "right" or "wrong" and how we achieve that utopian system is a seperate unrelated matter. In any regards Marx never bothers to answer such details because it clearly undercuts the reality of the communist utopia, but from other communist literature, we can assume that direct democracy is the system which is favored as eluded to by Marx. If each employee is an equal co-owner, then we assume each workingman has an equal vote in regards to what equipment needs to be purchased and how much to pay for said equipment. What then of business decisions that need to made by the worker-owned-association? This is another question which begs to be answered. There exists two or more possibilities. First, either each worker can equally vote on each and every decision the company makes... that is... the purest form of direct democracy, or perhaps you can
have a representative democracy where workers vote for the most able people to make smart business decisions on their behalf if they dont understand the issues, or do not have time to understand them. One might wonder then, is such a system then slowly devolving into the very system which the communist workers hated to begin with... a system in which the bosses made the decisions for them?
We can clearly see that the primary axiom of communism in and of itself is being violated here, because the whole system is predicated upon economic "coercion"... the same type of coercion which communism espouses is grabely immoral and deleterious to the proletariat. The argument can legitimately be made that most workingmen will "adapt" to such a system, even though such an ideological system may appear foreign and unknown to them at this point due to their experiences with the capitalist system... it is claimed that workers will eventuall embrace this system While that may very well be true, the argument holds no logical merit. If so much as one man among millions disagrees with this system... then his rights are being violated and he is being economically coerced.
Finally, to digress back to the original topic. It was previously hypothesized, "What if a workingman does not want to co-equally share either the (1) responsibility or (2) financial risk of being in such a system? Several legitimate reasons why such a worker would not want to do that were mentioned in detail and such examples mesh well with what we see in the capitalist system today so we know these are not just hypothetical scenarios. What do we do with such a worker? Do we allow that workingman to not carry his responsibility and let others take on his share willingly? Do we force that worker out of a job? If the answer is the latter, is that not a form of economic coercion?
Does the worker really have a "choice"? Can he really just work elsewhere? What if all the other jobs require this worker to share the same amount of responsibility and financial risk as his last job? Does he still have a choice then? Likely the communist will sa, "Yes", because he does not know what else to say because the key flaw in the communist system has been exposed for all to see. If the answer bey "yes" and if forcing a worker out of his job because he does not like the terms of employment is not "coercion" then a large portion of the pretext which the communists, socialist and modern-liberals [liberals in the New American sense, not "classic liberalism]
base their system upon is blatently false. They often claim its unethical for workers to be subject to the whims of the employer in a capitalist system (i.e. if the employer offers a substandard wage which a person cannot
legitimately live on, the communists decries this as immoral and economically coercive) yet the communists fail to realize is that this same exact shortcoming of capitalism where a company is owned and controlled by
the few exists just as equally under a worker-owned-association ("company") which is controlled by the many. In other words, "economic tyranny/coercion" of the few is just as evil as "economic tyranny/ecoercion" of the many, where by many we mean where a company is co-owned by all empoyees who act as a democracy. The majority democracy can tyrannize the minority just the same as in an oligarchic capitalist company!
Fallacy of Axiom 3 - The claim that capital exists merely to perpetuate itself, or to use the more commonly heard phrase "... the purpose of money is to make more money [or "wealth"]'", can be shown to be false prima facie
by both by following two seperate lines of logic, one based on praxeology and understanding human behavior, and the second based on mathematics.
First, in regards to human behavior in making economic decisions and praxeology. There are many reasons why humans may whorde money such that they accumulate more wealth than is necessary than a basic level
of subsistence, the minimum amount they need to live a decent life on. Likewise, entrepreneurs have numerous reasons for accumulating surplus labor also, only one of the many reasons of which is to perpetuate a money
surplus for the corporate entity. Workingmen accumulate excess wealth for many of the same reasons that corporate entities do. One of which is to have a "nest egg" in order to protect themselves from possible impending disasters of a various nature which may be unforseen. Protecting oneself from physical or finacial harm is nor more an evil if a "corporate entity" does it than if a workingmans protects his personal assets to protect his family. Failure
to accumulate some amount of surplus is grossly irresponsible and if a company were to fail due to fluctuations of the market and no "nest egg" were available as per the desires of communists, then the company as a whole may indeed fail catostrophically, and all workers may lose their jobs simultaneously. How is that communist ideal helping the workers? All entities, be they personal or corporate, need a surplus to survive in life.
Furthermore, in Section VII, it will be shown from a pragmatic standpoint, the futility of such a system. The very system which the communist proposes, will be very difficult to achieve without further defining the rules of the communist utopia. If profit cannot exist for business, where does business get the initial start-up money to develop products, to do research and development, or creat the initial products themselves, to pay the workers salaries until the business becomes self-sustaining, and furthermore and from a larger social implication, how does society advance of business are not allowed to research new technologies (such as enviromental-friendly technologies) if business does not have any profit or surplus to speak of with which to conduct the research which will subsequently not only benefit the workers through new products but society as well!
Secondly, although I perhaps take the intention of the statement out of proper context, nevertheless from a mathematical perspective we can show the statement to be false prima facie. If we create a hypothetical model of a primitive State which starts out with a finite money supply, we realize that new "wealth" cannot be created. The wealth merely gets redistributed from one owner to the next, however the net wealth of society remains the same. Hence, even though this takes the basic idea which communists claim out of context slightly... it still proves it false.
Even if the money supply, such as in more advanced societies continues to ever-exapand via the printing of new moneies due to policies of the central bank, this does not undercut the legitimacy of the argument either since the
value of money merely decreases in proportion (along with some other technicalities) to the amount of money that gets printed (i.e. if everyone had a million dollars, then everyone is not rich, because a million dollars does not then have the value that it used to have when the money supply was less).
Fallacy of Axiom 4 - Marx and indeed his communist legion of followers predicate their utopia upon yet another grossly distopic worldview. The entire philospphy is predicated upon the concept that "class warfare"
between the proletarian and burgeoise, or in less abstract terms, the wage-laborer and employer is the ultimate end of a just society. I hardly can posit a retort to this line of idiocy and I scarecly believe that even most communists believe such absurdity. Nevertheless, I feel obliged to attack this thesis as it is happens to be one of the most prevalent pretexts which justify the whole of communism morality.
There exists so many types of "class-ism" in society, that one can hardly explain them all and delve into any detail in regards to each, to explore their socialogical and economic shortcomings and the effect on society. Rather, I shall briefly discuss them here, and trust that the reader understands all these issues without further explanation. These are all issues which are well known in society and need little explanation as we witness these injustices or sociological phenomenoms on a regular basis, in addition to having studied them in some detail in our formal schooling.
So what other types of "-isms" or other injustices dominate the rule of society and interfere with the notion of egalitarianism which the communists seek as the ultimate utopia? Here is a short list with brief explanation.
Racism - Yet another issue which existed in the time of Marx, as it continues today. Did Marx and Engels speak one word on behalf of slavery in the Communist Manifesto? Are we to believe that slaves, blacks or other people of "undesirable color" were included in Marx's plan for the proletariat to rise up? Hell, Marx did not even like Jews and made repeated outright offensive remarks against them all throoughout his life, especially in his earlier years.... and he was Jewish! A self-loathing Jew!
Nationalism - Nationalism is a persistant problem that not only plagues the world in general, but can actually plague the social order of an individual country whereas people are discriminated against economically, socially or politically based on family heritage.
Tribalism - Indeed tribalism is alive and well in many parts of the world including Africa. When we speak of tribes, we are not merely talking of the primitive kind of centuries past, but the type that still exerts a verypowerful political, social, and economic influence in some African countries. The concept of tribalism is foreign to americans, we envion "tribes" as being either American-Indians or savage Africans. The truth is, in modern Africa, tribalism has very real social consequences for the way people. Modern african tribalism can somewhat be explained to americans by drawing a parallel to the strong sense of national pride that americans have about their family heritage. Just as some americans take alot of pride in being Irish-American, or Italian-American, German-American, so too do many modern tribes of Africa have a similar societal structure, only with a slightly different twist and slightly different problems than those which we may face here in America. Just as being a certain nationality was once considered a problem in the early part of the twentieth century (and in fact, being a certain nationality can still lead to discrimination in America today, although thats less likely), so too do the tribes have their own unique social problems. Certain tribes are often favoered by African politicians and the favoured tribes often receive special priveledges by the government in many regards. Not only
do the preferred tribes receive economic favouratism, the athletes in Africa are often discriminated against based on the tribe they are in. One might wonder why I mention athletics into the conversation. The reason is that athletics happens to be one of the very few lucrative professions in that part of the world, especially in countries such as Kenya and Ethiopia (i.e. Kenyan and Ethiopian runners are the most dominate in the entire world!!!). Thus discrimination against athletes based on tribalism is very much a powerful economic issue in an otherwise destitute country.
Sexism - Women continue to receive less pay than men. One can legitimately claim that in some cases women cannot perform the same tasks as men or they may not have the same level of productivity in jobs which require heavy physical labour, however this is a stistical fact. Do the communists cry about
the plight of women? At least Marx did not. In any case, even modern Marxists would do little for the plight of women because the rigid structure of Marxist philosophy simply does not address the needs of feminism at all. How many women Presidents have we in the United States in comparison to other countries?
Ageism - Indeed, this is an actual term, and occasionally, the term Elder-ism is used although that term seems not to be preferred because of its connotation, in addition to the fact that the phrase elderism (or adult-ism) only applies to discrmination one way, whereas Age-ism can implys to discrimination in both directions, of either young or old.
If you force a group of people together, such as on a proverbial desert Island, but just as well it can be shown to be true in mainstream society, a clear hierarchy will emerge in terms of leaders and followers. We've all been taught about "respect for ones elders" and indeed that is the way it is in most of society. The majority of people who are in any position of influece, be it political, or economic are indeed, if not to say they are "old", we shall say then at least they are not young. The median age for the leaders of industry
and politics in ths country is what we might refer to as middle age, with a strong portion spreading out into the 50 and 60 year old range, statistically speaking. Of course, the reasons for this age dominance are not necessarily "respect for ones elders", the issue is much more complicated than that. It has to do with educational experience, job experience, as well as life experience as well. Not all cases in life prove that the elder will be the natural leader. Other factors have to do with a persons personal characteristics. The
proverbial dominant "alpha-male" may rise to the top regardless of age, but more often than not it is an elder that leads society and industry.
The US Constitution in fact, as we were all taught, actively discriminates against the young from seeking high public office. Obviously, the reasons arefairly clear and the arbitrary age limit which our Founders chose was probably just as valid then as it is now, because it illustrates that the age of sufficient maturity was roughly the same in the 18th Century as it is nowadays which is an interesting sociological phenomenon.
Do the communists cry about Age-ism and call for a new order where the young shall rise up and everyone will be given equal opportunity? I think not. Once again their dystopic viewpoint is fixated irrationally on perceived economic injustices.
Honour Systems (i.e. British system) Knights, earles, dukes, barons, etc... as well as the Feudal system of ages past, etc...
Religion - Descrimination against religion continues in the United States just as it does in many other countries. The "injustices" can either be in the form of economic, social, or political discrimination. How many openly Jewish politicians have we had in this country?
Fallacy of Axiom 5 - Marx, Engels and his modern day followers of communism/socialism likely ground the legitimacy of their philosophy based on the [intentionally] warped view of Lockean philosophy and their unique
interpretation of the Labor Theory of Value (LTV) (a discredited economic fallacy in every regard).
The kernel of truth in the Marxian philosophy rests upon the basic ideas of John Lockes proviso that man is entitled to the fruits of his labour. However, that all-important proviso which grounds both capitalism as well as communism is intentionally warped by Marx's ideology because he removes the all-important moral side-constraint of the Lockean proviso. The side consraint to which I refer is the well known requirement that any natural resource which one appropriates for themselves must be obtained in a "State of Nature" or otherwise subsequently obtained legitimately via commerce with the legitimate previous owner (i.e. you must buy it, rent it, lease it, or trade something, or the owner must otherwise willingly give it to you for free).
Communists on the otherhand, want to claim that anything they have made via their labor is theirs, even if they have stolen the materials with which to make it. Communists will argue to their death bed that this is not the case... However, if you examine their philosophy and the tricky way in which they phrase everything, they phrase things very carefully so as to lend an air of legitimacy, you will see this to be true. Sometimes a communist will outright deny that he wants the "fruit of his labor" in order to counter your argument and to say the argument of the anti-communist is invalid. However, the lie still exists because the entire premise of the argument that it is immoral for an employer to "exploit" labor by making a profit is still based on their warped interpretation of the "fruits of labor" Lockean philosophy... whether they admit it or not.
Restating, the fallacy is thus. Workingmen do not build products for their employers out of material which was obtained from the State of Nature, nor out of materials which the employee owned himself. The material rightfully belongs to the employer in most cases, who in turn legitimately payed the previous owner for the natural resources which were at some point or another extracted from the State of Nature. A second question to ask is.... when Marx's "communist revolution" comes and employees wrestle (read: steal) the means of production back from the employers... will the employees rightfully pay back in full compensation all of the material which has been stolen from the employer? If not, the communist principle is base on lies, hypocrisy, violence and theft. The communist claim that he is "exploited" largely because the employer is making a profit.... yet... how does that justify the communist stealing everything on the planet as per the rules of the 10 Planks of Communism? If indeed the communist was entitled to "just compensation" for profits which the employer never gave to them, but rather kept for the company, then that profit is all they are justifiably entitled to since that is indeed the primary claim of the communist. The communist have no moral claim to steal the factory buildings, to steal the equipment, to steal the inventory, and perhaps also no claim to steal the research and technology.
The aforementioned arguments against the hypocritical communist system illustrates their morally depraved false lines of reasoning and the logical inconsistencies upon which communism is predicated.
The reader may not fully understand the concept of the "State of Nature" or of the Lockean proviso, in general, so a hypothetical example shall be given:
If a tradesman, an artist, were charged with crafting a sculpture made out of iron or marble, is that tradesman entitled to all of the fruits of his labour?
To answer this question we need to trace the Lockean proviso through to its logical conclusion, tracing the path of the raw material from extraction from the State of Nature to the culmination with the finishing of the product (or we shall trace that path backwards for purposes of this example). Let us ask the following questions:
(1) Did the sculpter (tradesman) extract the iron or marble from the ground himself?
No. Not likely. Hence the fruits of labor provision a la Locke does not apply. This particular laborer is entitled to nothing more than what he agreed to work for because the material is not his to claim,
nor is it his to legitimately generate a profit from.
(2) Did the scuplter (tradesman) purchase the raw iron or marble block with his own money?
No. Not likely as employees do not usually buy their own material. Again, the Lockean proviso does not apply.
Any claim that the sculpter is "entitled" to the raw materials, and subsequently to the profits is no more valid than if he had stole the iron or marble himself and then claimed it as his own. Simply putting labour unto a natural resource does not make the fruit of labor argument valid, unless that raw material was legitimately under your ownership to begin with, excluding the case where you make a contract with the employer to provide the material yourself and to produce it for the employer for a certain price, which is not usually the case in wage-labor situations. If a thief steals a radio and then spends many hours modifying it, thus putting his labor into it, does that then make the stolen radio the property of the thief? Is the thief entitled to sell the modified
radio for a profit? Absurd! ... and hence, so are the very arguments upon which communism is predicated.
Let us explore the issue further. Let us trace the path of the raw material as it made its way from one owner to the next so as to better understand exactly who has legitimate claim to such material and the subsequent fruits of labor to said material.
We find that the marble or iron was mined or quarried by the workingman, the miner. Now the follow-up question is, does the raw materials legitimately belong to the miners? If indeed any workigman can lay legitimate claim to ownership, one might perhaps think that the miners, who certainly toiled in hardship to extract those natural resources from the ground may have some kind of claim to ownership. These hard working men certainly have legal and moral priority because their hands were layed upon the material long before the sculpter ever received it at his art workshop
However, does the Lockean proviso apply?
Once again, if we properly apply the Lockean proviso with the moral side constraint, the answer is NO! The raw material was NOT found in a "State of Nature".
"State of Nature" specifically refers to land or other natural resources which are not currently owned by another. We quickly realize that the marble or iron mine is owned by whomever holds the deed to the land, or perhaps
legitimately rents or leases that land from the deed holder.
Now, even if we were to capitualte for the sake of acquiescence on this matter, and even if we assumed that the miners have a first-claim right to the "fruits of their labour" which includes any profits on the sold product,
for extracting that iron and marble from the earth... then any "injustice" which was done unto the miners should the mine owner refuse to give mine workers "just compensation" (i.e. back profits from sales) as dictated by the
communist version of fairness, the result of that scenario is that only one party (the miners) were wronged. The miners may indeed have been wronged, but the justice does not "transfer", it does not "propagate", and so the wage-labor artisan who creates a marble sculpture for his employer but only receives a wage and no subsequent profits cannot in any way have been "wronged". The miners had "first-claim" priority to injustice, only they can be wronged and noone else.
Thus we find, that even if we liberally bend the rules of logic and the Lockean proviso to suit the warped philosophical viewpoint of communists as was done in the latter example, many of the aspects of their philosophy still do not hold true. They claim that all wage-workers workers (or proletariat in Marx-speak) have a right to rise up in violent and bloody revolution to "right" the injustices. However, it was just demonstrated by absolute logic that their claim simply does not apply and their whole philosophy is predicated upon a lie. To reiterate, if an injustice was committed upon one party, that being the workingman who has first-priority claim, which is the worker who actually
extracted the raw material from the ground, that does not justify the entire of society rising up in revolution because the entire society has no claim whatsoever save the very insignificant amount of workers who have first-claim rights to be compensated for injustice.
Fallacy of Axiom 6 - This shall be the shortest refutation contained herein. The notion is often put forth by communists that their only goal is to implement an egalitarian society. Some may choose to phrase it differently
by utilizing different keywords unique to communist doctrine, they may talk of "class warfare", or setting up a system of "co-ownership" for workers, or many other variations thereof. In an attempt to obfuscate the truth, many of the modern supporters (except perhaps Marx himself who one might say is one of the few people who possessed enough moral fortitude to tell the truth about his proposed system, unlike his followers) will try to convice you that they have no political agenda. Thheir arguments are based on truth via ommision of key facts about their philosophy. They tell you only of the parts of communist which you may want to hear, or that they believe might morally sway you to their side. What they don't tell you, for fear of losing your support to their cause, is the truly radical and even violent nature of communism as describe quite honestly and bluntly by Marx and Engels.
Such lies espoused by most communists can be exposed prima facie by simply examining the sacred documents upon which most communists rely for their philisophical justifications. While there do exist a small segment of communists who may rightfully be exluded from this group such as certain types of libertarian-socialists, I might even question their claim given the fact that most libertarian-socialists are not what they claim to be, because they too rely on the forceful restructuring of a political system.
We need only examine "The Communist Manifesto", the core document upon which most Marxian type communists rely as their justification. All through the Manifesto, does Marx and Engels refer to revolution. By revolution, it should be clear in no uncertain terms that Marx was referring to violence and overthrowing of the government and one might say of society as it currently exists and replacing it with something radical and unknown. Now, it has been proposed by some historians that Marx's use of the term "recolution" was merely a figure of speech or a vague notion which is not to be taken literally, it is merely an abstraction based on influence brought upon the two authors by the age of Romantacism. This hypothesis, while perhaps grounded in some degree of truth, after all many important figures throughout history have spoken of revolution, but whether they meant it literally, or whether they would regret their use of words if revolution were to really happen, can perhaps be swallowed with a grain of salt. It is nevertheless clear that Marx possessed the type of fervor in his beliefs that illustrate he was dedicated enough in his beliefs to justify real revolution, and was not merely relying upon an abstract written proclamation of impending war to sway his readers.
In any case, even if it is to be accepted that Marx's notion of violent and bloody revolution were merely romantacist notions not to be taken literally, as espoused all throughout The Communist Manifesto, what is certainly true is that Marx and Engles most definately had goals beyond merely creating a utopian egalitarian society through voluntary compliance. The 10 planks of communism as described towards the end of the book, and described in a later section of this essay illustrates that Marx's goal was not to create a voluntary utopia as todays followers will have you believe (they lie), but to
radically alter the existing government. He sough to nationalize and heavily regulate major sectors of industry, particularly industries relating to the key infrastructure of society, such as utilities, transportation and communications. The other radical changes Marx proposed will be discussed in this next section and will serve as more detailed proof that the supporers of
communism/socialism have more than egalitarianism and noble goals in mind.
VI. The 10 Planks of Communism from "The Communist Manifesto"
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduate income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization(*) of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization(*) of the means of communications and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of wastelands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc., etc.
(*) Centralization herein refers to what is now more commonly called "Nationalization." Some have tried to claim that the heavy interventionist-economic regulation constitutes Marx's idea of centralization, but I dont think that holds much merit. Example of Centralized government agencies in the United States are recently created Transportation Security Administration and the countries oldest nationalized agency, the US Postal Service, which maintains a legal monopoly on certain types of mail services
which are codified under federal law. You could also legitimately throw the Federal Communications Commission into that list without exxagerating the point. There is also the Department of Transportation, and other transportation related agencies at the different levels of government, although thats not full nationalization in my opinion, only part nationalization. In many cities throughout the United States however, governments have a monopoly lock on the local bus transportation, which thus legitimatizes the claim that many industries in the U.S. are indeed already nationalized under a communist scheme.