Solneman
(Kurt H. Zube)

An Anarchist Manifesto
The Manifesto of Peace and Freedom
The Alternative to the Communist Manifesto

(1977)

 



4. THE IDEOLOGY OF MARXISM AND ITS CONTRADICTIONS TO REALITY

 

Refuted Predictions and False Contentions

The Process of Production, Realistically Seen and How Exploitation Can Be Avoided

The End of an Illusion

 


 

Marx mocked himself, though did not realize to what extent, when he coined the expression of the "ghost" of Communism that was haunting Europe. Indeed, in the meantime, communism has gained enormously in actual power, merely through the belief in its effectiveness. It has even had offspring in Fascism and the Welfare State. But three years before his manifesto another manifesto had already appeared - although not designated as such - in which this Communism propagandized by Marx, as well as the ideology upon which it rests, was described as a "ghost." Stirner opposed it with the incontestable reality of the "Unique One" (the individual).

Marx wanted to replace the phantom with a clear program and with what he supposed to be irrefutable and scientifically founded truths. Stirner, whose work Marx knew but completely misunderstood, applied an axe to the root of all ideologies by pointing out the difference between demonstrable reality and mere mental concepts and suppositions. These also exist, in more or less numerous heads - but in a manner other than external, objectively provable reality. These purely mental concepts and suppositions which exist only in minds, can indeed have a powerful effect upon external reality, but they attain this effect regardless of whether they are true or false, whether they are pure imagination, contrary to reality, erroneous assumptions and beliefs, or simply mad ideas. Indeed, these notions tend to be the more effective the more an individual is possessed by them. They achieve effect especially when they incite those possessed by them to use aggressive force. In his thorough analysis, Stirner showed that most of those ideas held to be incontestable truths, not only by his and Marx's contemporaries but even today, are fixed ideas, i.e. ideas which have become inflexible and rigid. Either they cannot be proven to correspond to reality or it can be shown that a proof for their agreement with objective reality is impossible.

Stirner thus used the words "ghost" and "spook" for mental images and concepts which, according to normal logic and experience and particularly according to scientific principles, were and are completely untenable. Nevertheless, as fixed ideas, they control their originators, as well as all those, who believe in them - and by their effect upon all existing institutions they also control the totality of our living conditions, since they are expressed in almost all relations between human beings.

Although especially Marx, quite meritoriously and in some respects not without success, also endeavored to replace unfounded speculations with a sense of reality and scientific insight, he was so deeply caught in the basic modes of thinking of his day that in his starting point as well as in his aim he achieved merely variations of these modes rather than turnabouts in thinking. Nevertheless, we are obliged to him for some worthwhile thoughts. The path which he laid out towards his rather vaguely perceived goal, however, is derived from a whole sequence of weighty errors and fallacies and is, in its method, downright reactionary. This has exerted a disastrous influence on the development of socialism and has led it to a dead end.

 

REFUTED PREDICTIONS AND FALSE CONTENTIONS (^)

Some of the predictions that followed from Marx's presumably strict scientific observations have been unequivocally disproven by developments that have occurred in the meantime. The theory of pauperization, according to which the proletariat in a capitalistic society is continuously kept at subsistence level, is wrong. Although a changed Capitalism has not brought general affluence, it is quite obvious that in capitalistic countries a much higher standard of living has been achieved, especially for the mass of the workers, than under the State socialism of the peoples' republics - in which the realization of the Communist paradise has not occurred even after thirty years and, in the Soviet Union, not even after sixty years.

Nor has the middle class disappeared anywhere in the capitalistic States. The pauperization of particular groups in the middle classes, which has been caused more by the policies of the State than by Capitalism, is balanced by the elevation of others. The giant corporations are almost spoiling a multitude of smaller suppliers. The earlier "proletariat" is rapidly moving into the position of the earlier middle classes and, predominantly, no longer considers itself a proletariat. Most have come to such an arrangement with capitalism that they have practically become its mainstay, as a part of the earlier proletariat always was.

Since the number of manual labourers is even continuously decreasing, as a result of the rationalization and automation of production, the prospects of a majority made up of proletarians is disappearing, and with it the main and central thesis of Marxist theory.

If, incidentally, the Marxist contention that there is an inevitable decimation of capitalists by each other had been true ("every capitalist kills many others," he wrote), then Marx should have addressed himself also to the capitalists, not only to the proletarians, for the great majority of capitalists would have had the greatest interest in the elimination of a system that was so ruinous for them.

If the central point of Marx's theory had been correct (i.e. that the collapse of capitalism conforms to economic laws and is inevitable), then no need could be seen for a dictatorship of the proletariat, seeing that he also predicted the complete proletarization of society. Against whom should the dictatorship be directed? Against the few remaining capitalists? Generally speaking if the laws of capital carry humanity surely and necessarily towards Communism (and the more capitalistic the society the more rapid its demise) why did Marx struggle against what he desired?

What Marx wrote about the reduction of working hours and the improvement of working conditions in a future communistic society has, curiously, been achieved in capitalistic society to a much greater extent than in the peoples' republics.

The followers of Marx and the developers of his theory have frequently acquired a terminology which often hides a lack of precision, unclear thinking and empty word games. In these partly newly created concepts there is so much that is only approximate and that can be randomly interpreted that what is actually meant can be endlessly argued over and hopelessly misunderstood. There are not, especially at the centre of Stalinist philosophy, specific human beings, but rather, abstract concepts such as matter, spirit, nature, society and productive forces. Conclusions concerning reality are drawn from these ideas. Particularly collective concepts like "society" and the like are turned into omniscience and a deity in the manner of a new mysticism, while really, behind their alleged interests and commandments, always only very real persons and groups are hiding. Even in Marx himself, apart from inconsistent and even contradictory viewpoints (at first he held the idea of a dictatorship of a minority, then that of a revolution of a majority), there are ambiguous formulations to be found, and in particular, the most important of his basic concepts were either not defined by him at all or were defined differently in different places.

Thus there are, for example, no exact definitions in his writings of the concepts of "proletariat" and "class." He contends, among other things, that the proletariat is the genuinely productive class, the one which sets in motion all the means of production. If this were true, then all scientists, engineers, technicians and inventors must be included in the proletariat. For it is indisputable that a single scientific discovery or a mechanical invention is able to increase production a hundred-fold, even a thousand-fold. Consequently, the intellectual achievement of an individual in increasing productivity may be greater than that of a thousand labourers.

Consequently, the reward for the originators of these achievements is usually in accordance with their way of life and self-appreciation, and this also holds in the peoples' republics. To count such people among the proletariat, or to blame them for the lack of a proletarian class consciousness, would be in any case absurd. Consequently, Marx's above contention is simply false.

The examples which Marx gives for class differences also compare things that are incomparable, e.g. the relationship between a baron and a serf was something quite different from that between a guild-citizen and a journeyman. Above all, it is quite untrue that all previous history consisted only of class struggles and that these struggles effected all historical changes. Genuine class struggles represent comparatively few exceptions among the multitude of wars of conquest and subjugation, plundering raids, race wars, religious wars and wars between nations. In all these wars and civil wars, the subjugated did not fight in a united front against their oppressors, but rather fought bravely at the side of their masters against other oppressed people who, for their part, helped their oppressors. These struggles have been much more effective in changing history than the so-called class wars. Other struggles, too, must be mentioned, e.g. those of central State authority against feudal lords, as well as those of lords (and later capitalists) among themselves.

Whenever what Marx meant by class struggle happened, it did not take place between distinct groups which differed through their possessions or positions in the process of production and who fought each other only because of this. Instead, they were always only small minorities attempting to protect themselves against disadvantage and subjugation. They were normally only supported by a small percentage of those for whose interests they fought - while the majority of the disadvantaged and subjugated remained passive or even fought on the other side.

Inversely, it was a similar tiny minority which became aggressive because of rapacity and thirst for power or greed for material possessions. They found followers and support in wider circles - who were differentially rewarded by them and who came predominantly from the group that was particularly subjugated, while the large majority of this last group remained silent and passive.

Then there was, as a rule, among the privileged, still a majority who did not have the express purpose of exploitation or subjugation. They considered the existing circumstances (which were not of their own making but into which they had simply been born) as God-given or the result of fate. They viewed their actions as in no way aggressive but, rather, as normal and reasonable, and thus sometimes acted benevolently towards the underprivileged. Within what Marx called classes, as he himself admitted, no uniformity can be discerned. These, rather, divided into groups or new classes which fought among themselves just as the alleged two classes did in the "terrible simplification" of Marxist tendentious representation.

On the other hand, feudal lords and today's capitalists dealt with and deal with each other in no way differently than with their supposed opposites. On the other hand, although the employee possesses no means of production (we will see later that he certainly could possess them), as a saver he is a participant in the capitalistic interest economy. Union enterprises, with their assets amounting to thousands of millions, are also participants, even to a considerable degree. There are also rivalries between skilled and unskilled workers, between wage earners of different types and technical specialists, between rural and urban workers, and last but not least (in spite of all solemn affirmations of solidarity) between native born and foreign workers.

Class struggles presuppose class consciousness and the knowledge of the class struggle - on both sides. Any unprejudiced consideration of historical as well as present events, however, shows that actual events are determined incomparably less through "class consciousness" than through the most varied concepts (i.e. thought structures), e.g. through the consciousness of having to obey a divine, moral, or national command. Although Being is involved in determining consciousness, Being is incomparably more influenced by consciousness; especially since consciousness is indeed a component part of Being - although it exists only in minds and is something that impairs self interest.

A clear enough example is the following: German workers, better drilled in Marxism than any others in the world, plunged with patriotic fervor into the First World War, while their leaders voted for war loans. After the revolt of 1918, they let what they had gained be taken out of their hands by reactionaries. Only very little resistance was offered, and only by a small section of them.

And even more so, this same work force, organized into the "Reichsbanner" (Republican Association of Ex-Servicemen) and the "Rotfrontkaempferbund" (Red League of Frontline Soldiers), allowed Hitler to come to power without resistance and in spite of their "class consciousness," and then quickly succumbed to the Pied Piper's song of "national unity." Most of them met again in the SA and the SS and soon afterwards marched obediently into the Second World War.

The conditions of production remained the same while all this happened. Not they determined how men acted, but rather the changing ideologies did, or even more so, the deeply rooted ideologies did.

This was also shown on the other side after a quarter of a century of Soviet domination: in spite of changed conditions of production, the new Marxist- Leninist class consciousness was too weak to resist strongly the onslaught of the German proletarians against the Russian proletarians. Then, without hesitation and successfully, Stalin reverted to the time-tested ideology of "the people" and "the Fatherland" and propagandized the "great patriotic war." One can, therefore, assert with much authority that consciousness determines Being rather than the reverse. In Marx, the passionate propagandist constantly overcame the cool scientist and then falsified reality in self-deception. The reality was and is that there is not just one front between classes, nor just one class which desires to subjugate and exploit, while the other protects itself against this. Instead, domination, oppression and exploitation can exist only by means of the fact that the large majority of subjugated, oppressed and exploited people accept this condition passively or even preserve it through their active help in the suppression of clear-sighted members of their own class. Thus they put themselves on the side of the rulers, oppressors and exploiters against their own well-understood interests. This is due partly to the fact that they consciously value the security which is offered or at least promised by their rulers, more than they value freedom, and partly to their unconscious surrender to the captivity of a religious or ideological belief, or that, having grown up in such a belief, they cannot liberate themselves from it.

Certainly manipulation by the rulers is very often the cause of such an attitude. But one most not overlook the fact that not all is due to manipulation, that there is not only an urge to dominate but also an urge to submit, which accommodates the wishes of the rulers and is exploited by them.

Nor must one overlook that domination by no means always aims at subjugation and exploitation but often also at "happiness" (against the will of the people thus patronized). Sometimes domination is considered a purpose in itself and exploitation is only an incidental side effect, which is not always realized.

Finally, conditions have existed - and still persist today - in which what is generally described as "domination" is at least partly not domination proper but rather was and is voluntarily recognized leadership.

Consequently, "struggles" between "classes," as Marx wanted them to be understood, are an exceptional phenomenon, and long periods of more or less peaceful co-operation between the classes are the rule. During these long periods, the classes, as previously mentioned, often campaign militarily against similarly co-operating classes in other peoples.

Although wage struggles can be class struggles, they usually are not - if they leave the genuine root of exploitation, land rent and interest, untouched. They are usually not distinguishable from the rivalries fought within the classes for higher incomes. Trade unions in the USA also conduct wage struggles without having a class consciousness. Incidentally, this also disproves the Marxist thesis of the supreme power of the conditions of production and their role in determining consciousness. In the U.S.A., as is well known, productivity is most highly developed and capitalistic contrasts are most marked. Nevertheless, this has not led to any change in consciousness in the Marxist sense there.

The Marxist theory of class struggle is thus not an unprejudiced scientific analysis of history, but rather pure propaganda unconcerned with opposing facts. If Marx had investigated the caste system in India, for example, he would have found out that this had, indeed, arisen out of military victories and subjugation, and is in no way forcefully kept but, rather, maintained through the passive submission and servility of the disadvantaged towards what is customary.

Often the master produces the servant when he subjugates him by means of aggressive force. But at least as often the servant produces the master - when he tolerates the master above him, although he could completely escape him. Indeed, the servile person often even searches for something, a person or an idea, to which he can and wants to submit.

The pecking order of chickens, and the hierarchy in e.g. ape groups and wolf packs, is not so very different from the common forms of relationships in the human world. Castes exist still unchanged in India today, many years after the legal abolition of castes. They are all the more respected, the lower those concerned stand in the caste hierarchy; and even below the lowest caste, i.e. among the pariahs, this system is voluntarily respected.

Such a condition can be described as oppression and domination only through conceptual confusion, since these concepts presuppose that an opposed will is forcefully bent. From this, one must clearly distinguish voluntary subordination, which approaches domination in its effects but is clearly a different type of subordination under persons or institutions. Sometimes, it rests upon some advantage seen in the relationship by the subordinate. Usually, though, the subordination rests upon a religious or ideological idea that has become fixed. They have allowed this idea to gain power over them. Thus, voluntarily, they have given themselves over into servitude towards certain ideas. The property relationships which are considerably, even decisively regulated by such voluntary submission, are thus the result and not the cause of what goes on in the people's minds.

Certainly, Marx was correct and deserves credit for pointing out that thinking is also stimulated by changes in the conditions of production (though such stimuli for thinking always come from certain heads, for it is not things that act but human beings!). These stimuli to thought - like all things that are effected through changes in the environment - fortunately, although only gradually, move the thinking of the broad masses again (which had been ponderous and frozen into ideologies). But it would be an exaggeration and a disregard for apparent facts to think that the only source of stimuli to thought are changes in the conditions of production and that, in general, all consciousness, all social, legal and political institutions occur only as the superstructure of the conditions of production and, especially, of the property relationships that are caused by these.

It is an unprecedented absurdity to try to derive the new ideas that came into the world through Buddhism and Christianity from conditions of production. Whatever has occurred as a result of these ideas, they have very materially influenced world events.

It is equally absurd to want to interpret Greek philosophy, art, democracy and the republic of antiquity as having been determined by the conditions of production then prevailing in ancient Greece. Why then did completely different circumstances arise in ancient Rome, and quite different social, political and intellectual relationships, at exactly the same stage of production?

In England and Germany the conditions of production were quite similar; England, though, had already been a democracy for centuries, while Germany remained a monarchy. The first Marxist State began in hardly-industrialized Russia, the second in agrarian China while in the industrially most highly developed U.S.A. the influence of Marxism has remained quite insignificant.

Surely, it was a very human trait in Marx to put himself on the side of the disadvantaged and the exploited, instead of simply enjoying his life as a member of the privileged group into which he was born. This decision, however, had nothing to do with science. Marxism, in contradiction of its own theory, is not a conceptual system that arose from a sober analysis of reality or, as one might say, directly from the conditions of production. Instead, it is a conceptual construction coined by the personal peculiarities of its author. It used available religious and philosophical modes of thought with a particular feeling for propagandist efficacy, in order to proclaim a new doctrine of salvation draped as science. Since everyone gladly believes what he wishes, one cannot reproach Marx for either overlooking facts that opposed his theories or for interpreting them in such a way that they became halfway applicable, for he himself believed that the half-truth he discovered was the whole truth.

Later on not only Engels but Marx himself (although not through public recantation, but only an obscure passage) so limited the original assertion that it became practically ineffective. This, however, remained ignored, especially by the vulgar Marxism which drew its whole strength from the contention that a supposed law of natural development guaranteed irresistible victory.

Among all the arguments for a doctrine, the most effective is the belief that its victory is close and unstoppable. To this was added the belief in the "scientific" establishment of the doctrine, at a time when the old religious ideas were becoming more and more shaky and the natural sciences of the day presumed to have found a firm basis for the solution of all of the world's mysteries (while the modern natural sciences have completely overthrown the knowledge of that time).

For Marx's contemporaries, most of whom (like most people today) had no idea what presuppositions genuine science is based upon and how relative even the most carefully worked out results can be, the label "science" meant as much as the guaranty of a stamp for the genuine gold content of a bar of gold. They did not suspect that, actually, only ancient religious and philosophical ideas were being presented to them in new clothing - especially since the spreading success of Marxism seemed to confirm the validity of the doctrine. But, then, is the much greater and longer success of religious doctrines a valid proof of their validity?

Marx himself probably never realized that, with his doctrine of an alleged original communism, he was merely repeating the Christian doctrine of paradise. He assigned the role of original sin to Capitalism, and the proletariat, acting for all of mankind, was at the same time burdened with the role of suffering and salvation. Within this scheme, after judgment over the sinners by the dictatorship of the proletariat, the classless society remains as indistinct as the idea of the Christian Heaven.

But even more than in Christianity, Marx was entrapped in the philosophical modes of thought of his time, which still exert an influence today. He and also Engels were proud to have their intellectual roots in the philosophy of German Idealism and especially to have been influenced by Hegel. Hegel had proclaimed spirit to be absolute truth and had dreamed up a world spirit as a new concept of God which goes through world history in all forms of separation from itself, from renunciation to a return to itself to reconciliation; finally, it is to attain conscious unity with itself - compared to its previous unconscious one. This completely untenable word game had the very real purpose of justifying everything in existence as being "reasonable" and "necessary" and of draping a philosophical cloak, instead of a religious one which had become shabby, over all the triumphant authority of the time. Marx replaces the world spirit only with an abstraction of man and with his doctrine of "alienation." In the notes of the young Marx there is a significant sentence: "Whoever is not more pleased by building the world out of his own means, being its creator, than to roam about endlessly in his own skin, is already condemned by the spirit." His whole life long he dreamt of complete, total, "correct" men, i.e. of an ideal which real men must emulate, and a task which they had to fulfill. This fixed idea, i.e. an idea which has become petrified, is an ancient mode of thought which reappears in ever-new disguises, first as the will of the Gods, then as morality, as moral law, and finally as "scientific" insight into the "natural destiny" determined by the laws of nature. This is always given as the "reason" why a proclaimer has the "right" forcefully to curb all non-believers and opponents and to punish them. In short, it is always used as the justification of a claim for domination, for the "right," indeed the mission, to extend one's own freedom at the expense of the freedom of others.

Indeed, Marx saw through Hegel's conceptual construction as a mere chimera, as a mere product of fantasy, for which there neither is nor could possibly be a trace of proof. But with all the more enthusiasm he went for his supposed discovery of a "law of nature" which he believed he had recognized in the actual development of historical events, whereby he declared material things to be the essential factor in the historical process of human and social development. In so doing, he believed that he had reversed Hegelian metaphysics and turned it upside down. But a reversed metaphysics still remains a metaphysics, i.e. any "Ought" exceeds the bounds of our knowledge of Being and is necessarily condemned to be equated with chimeras and products of the imagination, since it lacks an objective standard, even when in reality it is more than a fantasy. Marx did not notice that the derivation of an "Ought" from Being is a logical short circuit. He saw even less that he had stepped away from science to agitation, from investigation to influencing, from comprehension to propaganda.

His acceptance of the Hegelian dialectic had the most ominous consequences. This is a thought game that does not originate in reality but, rather, in mere thought. In nature nothing proceeds from a type different from itself, and a thing cannot transform itself into its opposite. Dialectical Materialism knows no such collection of facts - such a collection would have immediately unmasked Dialectical Materialism as being a half-truth. Instead, it derives its contentions by means of a sham logic from assumed abstract propositions. Premises are accepted whose validity would first of all have to be demonstrated. It is an arbitrary construct that is scientific neither in its methods nor in its findings.

Scholastic theology operated in a quite similar fashion. It started with unproven suppositions and arbitrary assumptions and, by means of exemplary acuity and strict logic, reached results such as how many choirs of angels there are, how they sit, and what kind of instruments they play, or what goes on in hell, and how hot hell could become. Kant called the dialectical method "a sophistic art to give one's ignorance and even one's intentional snares the veneer of truth since it does not teach us anything concerning the content of knowledge."

Heraclitus's perception that "everything flows," i.e. is constantly changing, was perverted by Hegel to include the arbitrary contention that this change was, at the same time, a development or a progression. Against this, Oscar Kiss Maerth in Der Anfang war das Ende (The Beginning Was The End) Düsseldorf, 1971, offered grounds for the contention that man is in no way the "crown of creation" but, rather, an evolutionary mistake suffering from serious brain damage.

In any case, Marx took over Hegel's idea and merely replaced the pantheistic world soul, the world spirit of Hegel, with a supposed law of development determined by the conditions of production.

It makes no difference whether one starts from the volition of a personal God or from the impersonal natural law of a development. In either case a goal is determined by something "higher", and the present is justified as being inevitable. In either case the "task" is set for each individual to accommodate himself to this supposed development. In either case it is a question of theology and ideology, of theoretical constructs, as opposed to natural laws demonstrable through experiments. Moreover, the contrast between spirit and matter is only apparent. Matter that out of itself develops spirit, thought and consciousness, is no less mysterious to human comprehension than spirit which creates matter or transforms itself into it.

Against that, Stirner starts from the demonstrable reality of his own ego, and then, after rejecting all claims on his ego which are not provable by means of the criteria of experienced reality and would set him a goal and prescribe tasks for him, he establishes his relationship to other human beings - precisely because the existence of "higher" purposes is not provable - exclusively on the basis of free association with others, while declaring himself willing, on the basis of mutuality, to make no unfair demands against others. Thus, while Stirner keeps both feet on the ground of reality, Marx offers a theory that is basically not only ideological (and thus rooted in thought images) but even a theological doctrine of the sinful fall of man into self-alienation and of a "higher" fate presiding over him which will lead him to social justice. This is - as ideology - not traceable in experienced reality but is merely derived from the idea of an equalizing divine justice.

It is also indicative of the theological character of Marxist dogmatism that immediate attempts to realize Socialism in practice are declared useless since this depends upon certain stages in the development of production that are outside of the individual and which could not arise out of the reasoning and volition of man.

Socialism was not discovered by Marx, but arose long before him. It came into being not as ideology, not as the mental construct of a predestination for mankind, but rather as the result of an initially still inadequate analysis and critique of the conditions of domination under feudalism. It was a child of the Enlightenment and gave the first inkling of the individual's feeling of self-esteem, of the individual who no longer wanted to remain under a thousand-fold obligations but merely wanted to be able to conduct his own life under free choice, together with others. The "bourgeois" revolutions of 1648, 1776, 1789 etc. had, of all the social differences caused by feudal institutions, only eradicated those of status; they allowed the closure of land and the land oligarchy to continue and replaced the old masters with a new one: "the sovereignty of the people." In any case although freedom as such, the equal freedom of all, had not been achieved, at least particular liberties for the individual had. Compared to this, it was not a revolutionary but rather a reactionary development, a step backwards, when Marx overwhelmed the freedom loving, socialistic ideas of Saint Simon, Proudhon and their pupils with the movement unleashed by him. Marx recognized the enormous latent energy which lay in the dissatisfaction of the exploited masses of the whole world. In him a sympathy for the suffering masses was united with a distinct will to power which led him to deal quite unfairly with all those whom he perceived as competitors. He used this latent and accumulated energy for an imperialistic campaign that was more comprehensive than all national wars were. Much like the founder of a religion, he became the prophet of the new "scientific" ersatz religion, whose main article of faith is the predestined course of history which he put in place of the planning individual.

Ironically, he was successful precisely because the opposite happened to what he actually taught. For it was the faith of the masses that made history, a faith that had been awakened by him and which was especially supported by the faith of his disciples who managed to establish themselves as a dogmatic church that would suppress every "heretical" criticism.

The lack of precision often to be found in his thinking was, likewise, exemplified in the picture he painted of the superstructure of intellectual life on the foundation of the conditions of production. According to physical laws, a foundation cannot be changed without first removing the heavy overburden of the superstructure resting on it. A revolution in the mind - and this as the decisive impulse - must precede any change in property relationships, just as every change in the degree of productivity must first occur in a mind -for men are present before their tools and must first produce them.

Whatever thoughts are formed in the mind may correspond to reality just as well as they may be pure products of the imagination. Likewise, they might partly correspond to reality or might even stand in total opposition to it. Marxism was victorious, as far as it was victorious at all, neither through the inevitable suicide of Capitalism, which it had predicted, nor under the presuppositions which it had asserted, but always only through mobilizing a will for action by means of the unrealistic doctrine that there is a fated course of history guaranteeing victory. Exactly like the world religions Christianity and Islam, Marxism carried out its plans, wherever it could carry them out, by means of organized force. And just as we find in these religions an authoritarian caste of priests, there appears in Marxism an authoritarian party clique which watches over the holiness and inviolability of the articles of faith and declares the individual to be just a word, as all previous autocrats have always done.

Marx's endeavor to implant "class consciousness" in those who have none becomes quite clear when he speaks of smallholders. He admits: "class is born only in the class struggle." In other words, a struggle arises without a consciousness of its meaning and aim, not because of the "conditions of production" but rather because of the propaganda of a non-existing class consciousness, and the belief in a given destiny manipulates the contestants into it.

Marx considered and dealt with the proletarians not as independent individuals but, rather, as objects and minors and stated quite bluntly:

"... they are unable to assert their class interest in their own name, be it through a parliament or be it through a convention. They cannot represent themselves; they must be represented. Their representative must appear as master and authority over them, as an absolute ruling power which protects them from the other classes and provides them from above with sun and rain." (Karl Marx, The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte).

Fascism also argues in exactly the same manner, and so did many absolute monarchs (as well as priests). They also felt called by their "higher" insight and their historical task - with the difference only that it was one supposedly set "by divine grace" instead of by destiny.

Thus, as a program, the Communist Manifesto took over Absolutism's complete code of aggressive force and even surpassed it by concentrating the supreme command over all means of production in the hands of the greatest and most violent monopolist. This monopolist (the State) forces himself upon society and devours its entire productive activity through an absolute monopoly over the public supply of goods, through an absolute monopoly over the demand for labour, and through a monopoly over production planning. This was the most sinister reaction and fateful falsification of the concept of Socialism, which had aimed at the elimination of all domination and exploitation through privileges and monopolies and at autonomous individuals and groups with equal rights.

The "bourgeoisie" had used the abstraction "the people" to break the power of feudalism and absolutism; they had equated "the people" with the still wider abstraction "the State," behind which really only the bureaucracy stands, with government and parliament, while "the State" appears as an almost absolute master over every individual member of the people - far more extensive in its powers, indeed, than all the autocrats of earlier times were. It accomplishes this especially by means of hidden and usually unnoticed instruments of domination, such as the money monopoly and land oligopoly, which the State uses not only for its own interests but also for those of the privileged groups (power elites) that rule it. Marxism declared to the proletariat that it (Marxism) itself is "the State organized as the ruling class," while it merely delivers all the power of the State to its leaders and puts the old yoke of domination, now further strengthened, into new hands. Not the proletariat but only some professional revolutionaries became the new ruling class. The proletariat is only one of those abstractions behind which specific persons always hide as "representatives"; for the whole of the proletariat can neither exercise the functions of the State nor personify it. It is always only a minority, or at best a majority, that can really "rule" over the remainder, but never can a group rule over itself.

Lenin, who by his actions simply disregarded the Marxist theory concerning the presuppositions for revolution, did, on the other hand, systematically extend Marx's above-mentioned conviction that the proletariat was immature and that it was "necessary" to usurp mastery over it. He explained that revolutionary consciousness did not arise spontaneously within the working force but had to be introduced to it from the outside. He made his revolution with the help of a group of largely intellectual professional revolutionaries, i.e. with a disciplined organization which declared itself the party elite under a leadership similar to a General Staff. He placed himself in opposition to that Marxist doctrine according to which the leading role in history goes to the proletariat, due to a supposedly natural law of development. He did this with his thesis that the masses are in need of intellectual and political direction (and here the concept of domination was smuggled in to replace the concept of leadership) through the party organization. In this process, terror was accepted as an instrument of domination and the development towards Stalinism was already traced out.

As a matter of fact, at no time in its history has the proletariat ever taken over the role of the leading class. Not only its intellectual armor, but its organization as well, comes from intellectuals who were, overwhelmingly, members of other social groups. They suggested to the proletariat an ideology according to which they claimed absolute authority for themselves and brutally suppressed every other opinion: "The party, the party is always right." The proletariat is not and never was a leading class but rather a led one. Moreover, since not only those of its leaders (mostly self-proclaimed) who followed their own desire for power and the satisfaction of their own personal ambition, but also those who had quite honest intentions, were often subject to disastrous errors, it is an appallingly duped class.

Many among their own ranks expressed warnings about these errors. Even Trotsky had reproached Lenin for replacing the proletariat with the party, and the party with its leaders. Simone Weil had recognized that Marxism falsely identified the liberation of the productive forces with human liberation.

Rosa Luxemburg had correctly observed that freedom always means freedom for those who think differently. Hundreds of thousands of communists who, in general, had remained quite doctrinaire but had taken offence at particular communist practices, were murdered, imprisoned, banished to concentration camps, or at least removed from their positions and reduced to silence, and this not only under Stalinism but also in the "Democratic Peoples' Republics." Almost the whole original leadership elite was "unmasked as traitors" or otherwise eliminated by their own comrades. Everything that once was fought against - such as church dogma and inquisition, brutal worldly tyranny and usurped authority, suppression of individuals and of whole peoples - all this returned in still more severe and comprehensive form under the old guise of benevolent intentions, indeed of "liberation," and with the claim that acts of violence were "justified."

The main errors of Marxism are clearly evident:

(1) A logical fallacy. If the reason for exploitation is that the means of production are in the monopolistic possession of a minority, then the only conclusion from this is certainly not that they should be transferred into the possession of the State, i.e. of a single monopolist. Instead, as an alternative, there would be the elimination of all monopolies and privileges. That is very evidently the more logical solution, for the evil lies precisely in monopoly as such, and not in the fact that a group of privileged persons draws benefit from monopolies.

(2) Closely connected with this is the confusion of socialization (which, as a special form of the elimination of monopoly, will be discussed in Chapter 7) with nationalization. That nationalization is not a remedy against capitalistic exploitation, was already seen by the People's Commissar of Finance, Sokolnikoff, when he declared at the 14th Congress of the Russian Communist Party (quoted in Pravda on January 12th, 1926):

"Is it true that at the moment when railways, which under the Czars were State enterprises, come into the hands of the new government power, of the workers' government, they thereby actually become socialistically organized economic enterprises? No ... Our foreign trade is managed in the form of a State capitalistic enterprise. Our inland trading societies are likewise State capitalistic enterprises. The State Bank is also a State capitalistic enterprise. Our money system is built on the assumption that within the Soviet economy ... a money system is established which is permeated with the principles of a capitalistic economy."

While under Communism the "exploitation of men by men" is replaced by the exploitation of all by the State, one must not indulge in the illusion that what the State plunders in this way will later on equally benefit the individual. The considerable difference in wealth and income in the Peoples' Republics, in which numerous hidden privileges provide advantages for members of the ruling classes (these privileges provide what can be obtained, under capitalism, only with a great deal of money) are evidence to the contrary.

In a State economy one must, moreover, take into consideration everything that is not produced, or produced only with faults, due to its bureaucracy: effects of this are then shown by the difference in workers' standards of living in the Peoples' Republics and in capitalistic countries, in spite of exploitation in the latter. By experience, so far, a State economy is not efficient and is characterized by shortages.

(3) In a preface to his Critique of Political Economy, Marx explains his "historical materialism":

"The manner of production of the material life determines the social, political and intellectual process of life in general. It is not men's consciousness which determines their Being, but, on the contrary, their social Being which determines their consciousness." He extends this into a supposed natural law of unavoidable historical development which must end with the victory of Communism. However, in another place in his Theorien über den Mehrwert (Theories Concerning Surplus Value), he asserted almost the opposite: "Man himself is the basis of his material production, as of anything else that he performs ... In this regard, it can in fact be shown that all human functions and conditions, however and whenever they present themselves, influence material production and effect them more or less decisively."

Engels, who in his treatise The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State had already characterized "the division of society based on sexual ties" as the ruling factor in the development of social life, completely abandoned the materialistic interpretation of history in two letters dated 1890 and 1894. In these he declared:

"The different components of the superstructure - political forms of the class struggle and its results - constitutions established after the battle has been won by the victorious class etc. - forms of law, and especially the impressions of all these real struggles in the minds of those involved - political, legal, philosophical theories - religious viewpoints and their further development into dogmatic systems - all of these also exercise an influence on the course of historical struggles and predominantly determine their form in many cases. It is an inter-relationship of all these factors."

That is to say: no more foundations and superstructure!

Engels continued:

"We make our history ourselves . . . Secondarily, history makes itself in such a way that the end result constantly emerges from the conflicts between many individual wills, of which each one, again, is made into what it is through a multitude of particular conditions of life. There are thus innumerable forces interwoven with each other, an unlimited group or parallelograms of forces from which a resultant - the historical event - emerges." (Letter dated September 21, 1890, which, together with the second letter dated January 25, 1894, was published initially in the Sozialistischer Akademiker - Socialist Academic, Berlin, 1894).

Engels, in his second letter added:

"The political, legal, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic etc. development rests on economic development, but they often effect each other and also the economic basis. It is not true that the economic situation is the only cause, the only active factor, and that everything else is only the passive result. Instead, it is the mutual relationship that is decisive."

This means the admission of the collapse of the materialistic interpretation of history, however much Engels, partly with sophistic arguments, attempted to rescue it. With this the central core of "scientific" Marxism collapses.

It was already unscientific to want to derive "laws" which supposedly determine the complete course of history from very short (in comparison with pre-history) periods of preserved, written history - which was, moreover, wrongly interpreted. This attempt was based on the completely false assumption that prehistoric and so-called primitive men, who didn't really produce anything but rather lived on what nature offered them as hunters, fishermen and food-gatherers, either had the same social institutions or none whatsoever. Research has shown that the social, cultural, religious and even economic concepts, notions and institutions of so-called primitive people can really be equated, with regard to complexity and diversity, with the most modern of our technological civilization. Max Gluckman, the English professor of social anthropology, and likewise his colleague Raymond William Firth, emphasized that, for example, the organization that is required to keep 1,000 people together on a Pacific island was almost as complicated as the rules regulating life in a city like London. Even in societies which possessed no government, order and even justice were maintained through various social processes and customs. These customs and social institutions in individual societies were quite different from those in other societies which had, however, the same economic basis. (Institutionen in primitiven Gesellschaften - Institutions in Primitive Societies - lectures by various authors, Frankfurt/Main, 1967).

One observes how most people are certainly glad to accept material advantages but are only rarely prepared to make great sacrifices to achieve them, while the same people are ready even to throw away their lives for an idea (Lichtenberg correctly noted: "provided that the idea is not quite clear to them"). So one can hardly doubt that it was not material conditions but rather the notions in people's heads (usually nebulous representations and, consequently, predominantly false notions among a few correct ones) and in particular those ideas which had become fixed which were the prime moving forces in world history.

The world-shaking effect of the Marxist theses - which in all their decisive points are untenable and at best half-truths - demonstrates most strongly the power of ideas (even unrealistic ones) in history.

The illusion of being the only person possessing the "truth," and of being in league with the future, easily turns one into a fanatic who feels himself called to force the recognition of this "truth" upon others. Such people are much more dangerous than the mentally ill because they place all their logic in the service of their fixed idea. Especially when the fixed idea lies in an "ideal," such as the Marxist notion of the final aim of history, those concerned not only have a good conscience for their aggression but also an almost religious commitment to a mission, one which enables them to attack others as a rabid dog would. The religious zealots of all times have shown just how infectious these missionary ideas can be, especially the Inquisition of the medieval Church, which burned heretics lovingly - in order to save their souls. Think too of the fanatics of "virtue" and "reason" in the French Revolution, as well as of the Cheka and the NKVD in the Russian Revolution, who reduced faithful communists (who were unfortunate enough to find themselves in contradiction to the party line of the day) to confessions and self-incriminations, making them "sacrifices" in the great cause. Last but not least, there was also the ideology of National Socialism, which, in its delusions concerning race, praised the "decency" of those who suppressed their humane sympathy in order to exterminate, as a "bitter necessity," those whose existence they could not reconcile with their "ideal." An idealism that has become a fixed idea - "a type of marching order" and "good will gone mad," as someone recently said who recovered consciousness too late - is not only raging in the totalitarian regimes of the world but is also hovering constantly, ready to break out in excess, in the so-called democracies of the West - although usually in milder forms. It exists wherever someone has the governmental power of domination over other men in the name of something "higher," a collective, the State or any customary institution.

(4) Marx failed to recognize the causal role of the great land holdings, which gave rise to the industrial bourgeoisie. The urban proletariat arose through land rent and the oligopoly of land, i.e. the social pressure upon the country which caused the flow of country people into the cities. It was the large landed properties in the cities as well as in the countryside that drove the numerous objects of exploitation to the bourgeoisie. Without large land ownership and the enclosure of land there are no masses of proletarians, as Marx himself had to admit in the example of a capitalist in Australia, mentioned above. He cursed the "idiocy of country life" - but is there a greater idiocy than that of the factory slaves in the cities?

(5) Marx, who always thought only about production and, moreover, was possessed by his unrealistic ideal of consumption according to need, neglected the investigation of the exchange of goods and services, and especially of the role of a monopolized means of exchange and so also of interest, which, along with land rent, constitutes the most important accumulator of capital. Thus also he overlooked the role of inflation and deflation (which are not natural phenomena but are brought about consciously) in the accumulation of capital on one hand and the expropriation of large groups on the other.

Without the devastating inflation of World War I and the deflation of 1931-32 in Germany neither National Socialism nor World War II would have happened. In spite of the destruction of the war and the burden upon the remaining capital through the "Lastenausgleich" (legislative equalization of burdens), the increase of real capital and capital concentration in general grew afterwards unusually fast and to an ever greater extent. This happened because the owners of real capital were quickly and abundantly supplied with the means of exchange, monopolized by the State, and were, furthermore, allowed to "finance themselves" through overly high prices. This occurred, naturally, at the expense of those dependent upon wages - who were allotted ridiculously small sums for their savings which were destroyed by the "currency reform." Moreover, the owners of real capital were helped as much as possible by the State through tax exemptions and especially through large depreciation allowances. This strengthened their monopoly position and the opportunities for exploitation. Marx, however, stared, as if spellbound, exclusively at the private monopolists and completely overlooked the role played by the super-monopolistic State, the founder and protector of all privileges and monopolies, which makes private exploitation possible and also exploits in its own name. Wars conducted by the State for various motives have also always led to impoverishment on the one side and to war profiteering on the other side. An essential push towards capital concentration also always came from the armaments industry, which was particularly spoiled by the State.

(6) It is not economic exploitation but rather the contrast between the rulers and those ruled that causes the struggles which Marx called class struggles.

Economic exploitation is just one aspect. In these struggles, men who belong to the group of the masters or, at least, to those privileged by them, have again and again taken the side of the subjugated group and have, indeed, occupied leading positions, while the majority of those subjugated have remained inactive or even taken the side of the masters.

Economic exploitation is just one aim of domination, certainly its most frequent aim, but in no way its only one or even the decisive one for historical events. Domination too is by no means mostly supported by material means of power, especially economic ones, but, rather, primarily by psychological influences. Dogmas and certain ideas are so imprinted in men's minds, (partly through external suggestion and partly through self-suggestion) that they no longer hold them as mere opinions, assumptions and hypotheses, but rather as self-evident ideas and even as untouchable holy truths that are placed under a taboo. Often the rulers or their helpers succumb to such fixed ideas themselves and then convey them, with the best of intentions, to those subjugated. More often, though, they use these only in order to make a numerical majority submissive in this way.

Often, however, a desire to be subordinated yields to the will for domination. Voluntarily submission, a character defect arising out of some inferiority complex, not out of fear of the master, but rather out of inner insecurity and unwillingness to accept responsibility, may cause a person to flee another's authority.

Domination over men's minds by means of fixed ideas has become such a purpose in itself, apart from economic exploitation, that frequently, rulers are satisfied with this power as such and hardly use it, or use it not at all for their personal material enrichment. At least they consider the material advantage of their dominion over men's minds as only an unimportant side effect.

Monasticism's strict self-discipline and willingness to make sacrifices - especially among the Jesuits - with poverty, chastity and obedience, or the official correctness of the old type of Prussian public servant or the pride of military officers, (especially among the communists) - all of these provide examples for this, as do also many revolutionaries.

(7) The most momentous error of Marxism is that it confuses cause and effect regarding domination and exploitation and consequently applies a false method of eliminating both evils.

That part of Capital which concerns so-called original accumulation shows how industrial capital arose and what forceful means and political authority created those prerequisites which initially made a capitalistic economy possible. He showed how the accumulation of capital arose not only through saving, industry and proficiency, but also through "conquest, subjugation, robbery and murder - in short through violence."

When Marx outlined the production process, he should not have lost sight of the fact that the basis of this exposition was "capital in an embryonic condition, when it first develops, and thus secures its right to absorb a sufficient quantity of extra labour with the help of the power of the State, not merely through the power of economic relationships." Apparently, he had forgotten his original insight due to the discovery which fascinated him, i.e. that once capital is established, it is also able to exploit by itself, without direct participation by the State. At the same time, he seems to have overlooked that such exploitation is possible only on the basis of its establishment by the State and of the continuous protection of this power by the State.

Land ownership on a large scale (and the enclosure of land that is connected with it) is rooted in the State. For it not only arose through conquest and force, but it cannot even exist without the protection of the law, the police and the military power of the State, whose main purpose is the maintenance of its supreme authority and its frontiers. Industrial capital arose partly out of the profits from large land holdings and partly out of further privileges and monopolies that were established and protected by the State, in particular and indirectly through the interest derived from the money monopoly. No type of capital can exist without the continuous legal and political protection of the State.

In particular, it cannot exercise an exploitation function without the State's protection.

In a final analysis, the means of production become exploiting capital only through the privileges and protection granted by the State. It is first and foremost privilege - which produced slavery in antiquity, serfdom in the Middle Ages, and dependence upon wages in modern times - that turns the owners of the means of production into the owners of the means of exploitation.

Marx failed to realize that the core of capitalism does not lie in the process of production, or even in the fact that the means of production are private property - but rather, in this: that not everyone has access to the means of production - i.e. not everyone is in the privileged position of minorities. (A privileged majority would not be fundamentally different). With monopoly properties, especially so- called natural monopolies (in particular land), but also with all institutions that possess an extensive factual monopoly although no legal and total monopoly, the decisive point is that all should enjoy equal access to them. It is the blocking of this equal access to all monopoly properties and institutions and the creation and protection of privileges and monopolies through the political authority of the State, which turn the private possession of means of production into a monopoly property. Only through its monopolistic character does something become exploiting capital.

From this follows that the State is neither merely a reflex nor a superstructure, but the creator, shaper and guardian of capitalism - if one regards as characteristic for it the exploitation of the labour of others.

The conditions of production have so far been decisively determined by the State.

Thus, whoever wishes to abolish exploitative capitalism must, first of all, abolish what created it and continuously guarantees its exploitative character: the State. And we must abolish the whole State, which, by its very essence rests upon aggressive force, upon the violation of the principle of equal freedom for all. Those part functions of the State through which even today - although only to a very limited extent - the individual is protected against the arbitrariness and aggression of others, will not cease but will, rather, be carried out by voluntary and purely defensive associations. The aggressive and compulsory organization of the State is, by its nature, inappropriate for such protection.

Only through a total misunderstanding of the nature and main function of the State could Marx come to the idea that he could use the State as the means in order to arrive "in the land of freedom out of the land of necessity."

Let it be noted here that a purely protective and defensive organization (even quite a few of these, all on a voluntary basis) is, naturally, quite necessary for and after the liquidation of the State - in order to escape domination by existing and possible future monopolies. But Marx did not even consider transforming the coercive State into such an organization. He did not think about transforming the State through genuine socialization into its opposite (i.e. Society), as John Henry Mackay defined it. He did not even give the slightest indication of how he envisioned socialistic economic management. Lenin lamented this at the 11th Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union on March 27th, 1922: "Not once did it occur to Marx to write even a single word on this, and he died without leaving behind a single exact quotation or irrefutable reference. Therefore, we must pull ourselves out of this dilemma." According to this statement, the revolution thus was carried out without any clear concept, but only with the aim of "seizing power." When power had been gained, those who had aimed not only at power but at domination (and who had established themselves as an elite which held all others in tutelage) continued, indeed, to talk about socialism and communism (while, however, postponing the latter ever farther into the future) but did not know of anything better to do than replace private capitalism with State capitalism. Not socialistic but, rather, State monopolistic conditions of production were established. Not the working class took over the apparatus of production, but the bureaucracy and the party machine did: a new ruling class.

Because Marx neither understood the dependence of exploitation upon domination nor domination itself in its essence, but regarded it merely as an appendage of exploitation (whose true mechanism he failed to recognize), he came to the false conclusion that with the elimination of private property the domination of man over man, and exploitation in general, would be eliminated. In fact, those who appeared with the claim that they expressed the only correct doctrines and were thus authorized to treat all others as minors and to direct them according to their own discretion, were human beings, like everyone else, with all their mistakes. Indeed, with regard to the power urge which brought them into their positions, they represented a quite negative selection of humanity. How modest indeed, were the earlier autocrats with their claim to domination and their taxes ("tithe"), while the modern autocrats confiscate more than 50% and go up to 90%, not counting whatever is "redistributed" through land rent, interest and other privileges and monopolies.

Through the totalitarian State, domination became total for the first time: Not only was supply monopolized through the central direction of production and investment, as was the demand for labour by the only employer, the State, but consumers were also deprived of their free choice, as consumption priorities and prices were set by the State. Since newspapers, printing presses and publishing houses are owned by the State, and since, furthermore, the secret police and the Party itself watch for every deviation from the current doctrine, intellectual life is totally gagged and with it any criticism of those in power. Any correction of their errors and usurpations becomes impossible.

"Democratic control" of domination (n. b. of genuine or even totalitarian domination) cannot function because of the subordination urge of the many. This urge is further strengthened by the breaking-in of people by the State (e.g. in the schools) and by their manipulation (e.g. through the mass media) so that, instead of controls, acclamation results - with 99% "consent" at the polls.

Every unprejudiced examination of economies in which the State (also when it is called "society") or the Party or the bureaucracy directs the economy, shows not only the consequences of continuous planning mistakes, unwieldiness, and failure, but also the total dependence of all those who are subject to official commands and must suffer their consequences. These commanders determine wages arbitrarily and also see to it that only their creatures or those acceptable to them are promoted to commanding positions. Lenin, shortly before his death in January 1924, called the typical Russian bureaucrat (i.e. the bureaucrat of the Soviet Union!) "basically a scoundrel and a violator."

Besides, no particular villainy is involved: rather, it is part of human nature that domination - unequal freedom, i.e. freedom of the one at the expense of the others and against their will - will always be used to exploit and subjugate weaker people as well as to procure for oneself advantages of the most varied types. Even when private property is abolished, there are plenty of opportunities to secure privileges and special advantages for oneself: One privilege already is the function of domination, even when it rests upon the fiction that it is only carried out representatively "for everyone," for their own good. Its essence, however, remains: the few give out orders, and the many must obey; certain people have more freedom than others at the expense and against the will of the others; and the power emanating from these few is aggressive, i.e. not merely a defence of the equal freedom of all!

The wrong track of State socialism turns the individual into a meek recipient of commands from the planning and administering bureaucracy, which demands absolute obedience, under the pretence of representing him, and against which there is not even that resistance possible which can still be applied against the private wielder of power. What occurs here is not a mere shifting of power from the individual to the State, but rather the creation of a completely new, unprecedented, and infinitely increased power and domination. This arises from an ideology, supports itself with unproven and unprovable assertions, and at its core and denuded of all its covers, is nothing other than the proclamation of aggressive force.

(8) The Marxist theory of value still passes today as genuinely scientific. It does indeed contain some truth, but even in genuine science there are errors and incomplete insights.

Because, in accordance with traditional modes of thought, Marx searched for an absolute value, he believed that he had found such a value in work that was socially necessary. However, this is only an abstraction and is completely useless as a practical standard of value. For measured with it, the pyramids, for instance, must have a surprising value.

This standard breaks down not only in the context of intellectual labour but also in agriculture - because of the law of diminishing returns which applies there.

"Value" for Marx exists only as something imagined, abstract, not concrete and really existing. It is, therefore, something ideological. "Value" results from "valuation," i.e. estimation, and is shown concretely in the price alone, presuming that this has been influenced by no factors other than those of genuine free competition and that, therefore, all privileges and monopolies have been excluded.

So-called "surplus value" arises, according to Marx, only during the process of production. Up to that point he expressly characterizes worker and capital owner as being of equal rank and as persons equal before the law, and repeatedly asserts that the seller of labour power contracts with the buyer as a free person of equal legal status. The actual cause of exploitation lies, however, in the fact that previously there has already existed a situation, conditioned by the legal order of the State, which forced the worker to sell himself to the capitalist - for not the worker but the capitalist is in possession of the means of production, while the worker has no access to them. This is not a legal equality from birth, but rather a condition dictated by the aggressive force of the State, through its jurisdiction and police. For example, the State monopolizes the land for a small group of landed proprietors, while it closes access to the land for all others who cannot pay the price that results from the capitalized land rent - as far as land is for sale at all. It protects privileges and grants them to the owners of other means of production (both direct and indirect) and keeps those without privileges away from the means of production.

There is no free production today but only one limited by capital yields, which, in their turn, are determined by the money monopoly. This limitation not only brings about low wages but also limits the purchasing power of wage earners and, at the same time, restricts the production of real capital. The cause of all this is the State, which created these conditions and maintains them, one of the more significant being the tribute which everyone must pay who wants to work when he himself does not have the necessary capital at his disposal. Even when such capital is at his disposal through loans, he does not escape paying his tribute.

While Marx believed that he had discovered the true secret of capitalist exploitation in so-called "surplus value" and in the manner in which he described its origin, it is also evident that he only described half, or merely a third, of the truth here.

According to Marx, surplus value arises when the capitalist does not pay the worker the full value of his work product but, rather, appropriates a portion of if for himself. It was also asserted that the worker's wage was reduced through this to the minimum necessary for the prolongation of his existence. Marx believed that the capitalist paid the worker only for the "socially necessary" working time needed for producing goods (which e.g. would require five hours) but then forced him to work beyond this time (e.g. for an extra five hours). The profit from this extra work was then pocketed by the capitalist. The worker was robbed of this surplus value by the entrepreneur.

There are several mistakes in the thinking of this description. First of all Marx here confuses the entrepreneur with the capitalist. While the entrepreneur is, as a rule, indeed also a capitalist (today he is often only an employed manager) his own capital usually comprises only a small part of the necessary business capital. To the extent that he must borrow this, he himself is obliged to pay tribute to other capitalists and is thus in no way an exploiter with this part of the proceeds of his product. The financial balance sheet for Neckermann for 1971 showed how this works: the expenditures for interest payments were 28 million DM, i.e. three times as high as the distributed dividend!

Secondly, Marx fails to recognize the role of the (genuine) entrepreneur and does not value in the least the initiative, willingness to take risks, and organizational performance upon whose results all participants very much depend. After changes in management, in the private sector as well as in municipal or nationalized enterprises, one often experiences a previously achieved "surplus value" suddenly changing into a continuous deficit.

Thirdly, there is also a difference between the technical production of a commodity and its distribution and sale. The latter are essentially dependent upon the ability of the entrepreneur concerned. (Those who play only the purely capitalist role of proprietor and let all the work be done by employees, especially by managers, are not considered here).

Fourthly and finally, Marx overvalues manual labour in the process of production. The final product is the result of the combined function of six factors: land, capital (in the narrower sense of buildings, machines, too, but also of money as business capital for the purchase of raw materials, for general business expenditures and the payment of the work force, long before the first income is received from the products of the business), manual labour, initiative in employing the previously mentioned factors, acceptance of the risk that is involved, and, finally, planning and organizational effort. Up to now, land (as land rent), capital (as interest) and the entrepreneur (as monopoly profit over and above his recompense for being an entrepreneur) have always claimed a considerable amount from the proceeds of the total product. It will be later explained how this portion of the product can be raised for the pure labour service itself. Here the hint may suffice that Marx's surplus value embraces three different factors without his making distinctions.

These profits in no way go only into the pockets of the entrepreneur exclusively, or into the pockets of the large capitalists, but rather, as interest, they go partly (eventually) even into the pockets of the workers (who were supposedly robbed of the surplus value by the entrepreneurs) when the savings of the workers are deposited with banks and savings associations at about 4 per cent and then loaned by the banks as business capital to the enterprises concerned, at 8 percent and 9 per cent.

It also has a bearing on "surplus" value that the introduction of capital increases the productivity of manual labour considerably (without extra labour) and that capital is used up on the process and must be replaced from the proceeds of production (out of the "surplus value"). Today, moreover, much more than manual labourers, the intellectual and creative energies of science and technology are exploited, although scientists and technologists are really responsible for increase in the production of real capital.

 

THE PROCESS OF PRODUCTION, REALISTICALLY SEEN - AND HOW EXPLOITATION CAN BE AVOIDED! (^)

The entrepreneur himself must pay the interest and land rent contained in the cost of his plant and raw materials, and especially the interest also for his operating capital, which he needs partly for the procurement of his plant and raw materials and partly for wages and salaries and various business expenses such as electricity, advertising etc. His own capital fulfills mostly only a small portion of his requirements. All of these costs must be covered by proceeds from the product; the necessary capital must be present and already invested before the product can be produced or any income can be achieved. The entrepreneur must even give priority to paying for the necessary outside capital, because otherwise he cannot produce at all and, in particular, he cannot pay for labour. Raw materials also - and for their procurement capital is necessary, too - do not become simply through "work" a marketable product that corresponds to a need.

To turn them into this, much more is necessary.

The capital investment necessary depends on the type of production and the degree of its automation. This investment is sometimes so high that in comparison with it the portion that manual labour forms in the final product is quite minor. There are enterprises where the costs of manual labour amount only to a fraction of one per cent. From this it follows that the so-called surplus value flows not only to the entrepreneur but also, according to the proportion of outside capital, into quite different channels. Moreover, one must realize that the effect of labour is quite varied according to the type and extent of the capital investment, so that the final product cannot be considered the exclusive result of the employment of manual labour. The investment of capital and the other essential factors of production must not be considered to have fallen gratis from heaven.

Even if there existed neither today's land rent nor today's interest nor the monopoly profits of entrepreneurs (i.e. even if the workers and employees of today had access to the necessary capital - after collecting it themselves through savings or by means of credit, and without the interest that is determined by the money monopoly), even then the workers could still not divide up the proceeds from the finished product among themselves. This is not possible because in the sales proceeds are also contained the cost of raw materials and other continuous costs. Even if these were set aside, there would still remain two further conditions that must be noticed and calculated in. Today's employer must pay attention to them, and they must be heeded by the workers in a world where all privileges and monopolies have been eliminated and where those today dependent on wages have themselves become entrepreneurs through free access to all means of production:

Firstly, when capital is obtained by raising loans, it must be repaid, and this out of that portion of the product which was due to the investment of capital compared with the mere employment of labour. To this must be added a small charge, which is no longer interest but just a fee and is composed of the creditor's costs and also a small profit for him as well as a credit risk premium, altogether approximately 1%, or at the most 2%.

But even when capital is raised through one's own savings, it must still be paid back (even though into one's own pocket) as so-called amortization out of the production proceeds, for invested capital is gradually used up and finally becomes almost or completely worthless.

Moreover, with today's rapid technological development and in order always to remain ahead and competitive, additional capital must be constantly invested and amortized, also from the proceeds of production.

Secondly, anyone who invests capital for production incurs the risk of losing his investment completely or partly. Again, a small premium to insure against this risk has to be taken out of the proceeds of production and does not represent exploitation of the workers either, especially since they would have to include it once they themselves worked with capital.

Furthermore, when those previously dependent on wages gain access to the means of production after the abolition of the money monopoly and the land oligopoly (through a particular institution that must still be explained), and once they themselves, in place of today's capital owners, receive the results of the extra productivity achieved by means of capital investment beyond the mere use of human labour, then they either must already have someone with the qualities of an entrepreneur or they must engage someone with such qualities (i.e. a manager), whose performance must be correspondingly rewarded. While there are already substantial differences between unskilled and skilled labour (also in their compensation), genuine entrepreneurial performance is one of the most complicated activities in existence. Not merely the random summation of human labour services but also their rational organization brings labour to its highest productivity. The rational investment of capital for this requires not only organizational ability but capabilities in numerous other areas. Above all, the finished product has no value until it is sold and until the sales proceeds have been collected. This, again, requires quite different abilities. A broad horizon and foresight must be on hand in order to recognize incipient favorable developments and to avoid dangers and difficulties. Every aspect of the genuine service of an entrepreneur is not only indispensable for well run management but also substantially influences business results and also the working incomes of all employees in an enterprise. An appropriately high entrepreneur salary (manager salary) has, therefore, nothing to do with the exploitation of the other employees in a concern but belongs under performance, i.e. payment for labour.

It was a crude mistake on Marx's part to underestimate the genuine performance of an entrepreneur and to presume that mere possession of capital is always sufficient to derive unearned income from it. The cases of Borgward, Stinnes, Schlieker and Krupp have shown sufficiently that even the possession of an enormous quantity of means of production is no protection against slipping unexpectedly into bankruptcy or, at least, to the verge of it. These cases also prove that it is by no means only the small capitalists who are ruined by competition with larger ones. Rather, quite large concerns also go bankrupt or suffer losses which may even run into hundreds of millions of DM, as a look into the economic and financial section of the press shows almost daily. The risk factor in every capital investment is, therefore, considerable and cannot be completely eliminated, not even by great entrepreneurial qualities. This risk factor was also overlooked by Marx when he described things in such a manner that it appeared as if employing a worker meant nothing other than appropriating the unpaid labour of a fellow human being. It still remains to be seen whether after the abolition of monopolies and privileges all those today dependent upon wages will prefer to share, in free association, profits and losses, or whether they will prefer to remain regular wage earners and pass on the risk to others. The wage earner can also exploit the entrepreneur or the members of a voluntary co-operative that employs him - whenever business results show a loss instead of a profit. This then becomes a burden on the members of the association, while those who are merely employed in it, with a set wage, can laugh up their sleeves.

Marx also left unexamined the fact that different taxes - e.g. company tax and value added tax - do not burden the entrepreneur, but instead (as general running costs of a firm, in particular payroll tax) go at the expense of the labour yield of those dependent on wages.

The facts explained above are basically quite simple and can easily be surveyed. They show where the true sources of exploitation lie, contrary to the all too primitive Marxist theory of surplus value. They lie in the "legal" or, more correctly, the coercive order of the State, which says to one group: "You may deal with rural and city land as with goods that you have produced, since it is your property; you may exclude others from using the land, even the land which you personally cannot or do not want to use, or you may dictate the conditions of its use to others." To the others this legal, or rather coercive, order says: "You must respect the prerogatives that I have bestowed upon others and pay tribute to them if you want to exist at all." Without the authority of the State standing behind him, the landowner would not be in the position to realize his claim for land rent, which, when capitalized, turns into the price of the land. He could not confiscate more land than he himself is able to cultivate or actually cultivates and otherwise uses, while excluding others from it who could raise the same claim for this gift of nature.

The State's authority proceeds similarly with the money monopoly and credit oligopoly, using various, harmless-sounding laws whose direct and indirect effect is that, to an ever greater extent, an enormous amount of capital is accumulated by a few, whose use or misuse of it and whose extortionist acquisition of it are protected. The others, however, at whose expense these have become rich, are, because of this, usually unable to accumulate enough capital to compete with them.

Land rent and interest are thus deductions from the possible return for labour which could be achieved without the privileges, monopolies and oligopolies which bring about these cuts. To this must be added that these reduced labour earnings must pay for land rent and interest again - in the prices of all products necessary for daily living.

To these one must also add other privileges, monopolies, and oligopolies having smaller but cumulative effects and, to an increasing extent, the direct and indirect robbery of all productive individuals by and for the State.

Moreover, there is often yet another special monopoly profit for the entrepreneur (in addition to the appropriate entrepreneur salary). It results from his ability to pocket a special profit by means of a special monopoly (e.g. in natural resources), or through cartel agreements, or by means of any special privileges granted by the State. This profit often arises only through the circumstance that the entrepreneur can place himself in possession of the necessary extensive means of production, even if only through credit, while the great majority remain dependent upon wages and are not regarded as "creditworthy."

It is not the case, however, that on one side there are only the evil oppressors and exploiters while on the other side there are only the poor and helpless oppressed and exploited. For the latter are often themselves to blame for their condition, at least to a great extent. There is, for example, the not inconsiderable number of those who are nothing short of addicted to subordination, who, when they do not already have a master, search for one through various means, and who, born into the existing conditions of domination, feel quite comfortable within them and never feel the least impulse to escape. Then there is a second group, the largest, which has only a slight wish for more freedom and a change in circumstances and is rarely prepared to do anything in this direction and then only when carried along by others.

Only the third and smallest group is active. But since it lacks knowledge of the correct path to its goal and of the most efficient methods, it is often split in many ways and so only rarely successful. The second and third groups in numbers alone constitute a clear majority over the minority of oppressors and exploiters and could, without any use of force, use this majority at least where freedom of speech and press and majority decision-making offer opportunities for this approach. Yet in no way is this the only or even the most successful way. For the manner in which economic power can be used for subjugation can it also be used for liberation.

If Marxism were correct in asserting that exploitation arises only in the sphere of production and especially through the employer, then the exploited workers and employees could very easily bring an end to that by buying up, with their savings alone, the total stock capital e.g. of German industry, whose market value on the exchanges is estimated at 130,000 million DM, of which actually only 51% would need to be purchased. That would be more logical and also easier and faster to effect than any form of socialization by the State. The savings deposits in banks and savings associations amount at the moment to 390,000 million DM. Among these funds there is only little from a few self-employed persons, as these do not, as a rule, invest their liquid assets in this form.

According to 1973 figures, the average money assets in a worker's family amount to 5,000 DM, in addition to approximately 10,000 DM in land assets. These figures have probably risen considerably in the meantime. All of that would be capital, and so means of production only if it were invested as such.

Even a worker without such capital assets can today receive loans of 5,000 DM and more - simply upon proof of employment - indeed he almost has them thrown at him by the banks, though, to be sure, at high interest rates. When one considers that with such loans he could redeem himself once and for all from exploitation (as condemned by Marxism) and that he would not need to sacrifice this investment at all but would receive the equivalent value to dispose of as he likes!

In a corporation with e.g. 100,000 employees these workers could either with their own savings or through individual loans, averaging 5,000 DM, gather together 500 million DM in cash! That is far more than an enterprise of that size normally has as its own capital and is thus quite sufficient for a takeover. Also, when an entrepreneur does not want to sell out - though today quite a few would like to - by means of an organized transfer of purchasing power to a competing enterprise, financed by an association of the workers concerned, this new or alternative firm could grow into a superior competitor and the workers of the original corporation could then gradually move over to this, their own enterprise. The trade unions with their assets of approximately 2,000 million DM could support them in this.

In all cases in which those previously dependent upon wages become the owners of enterprises, the employer's monopoly profit (arising apart from the justified entrepreneur's earnings) will flow into the pockets of the new owners. They can, moreover, claim the estimated risk premium (to the extent that it is not actually required) and also a portion of the amortization installments and of the depreciation allowance and the retained profits for new investments - as their own increase in assets. Previously, the risk premium and especially the new investments out of retained profits had increased the assets only of the entrepreneur and of the financiers. Moreover, the interest calculated on the internal capital will then accrue to the former wage earners, while the exploitation caused by the interest charges and land rent of external capital (and of all expenditures in which interest and land rent is contained in prices) remains, naturally, until the abolition of these two main monopolies.

Marx's failure to understand with his theory of surplus value the main sources of exploitation, has resulted in the elimination of exploitation so far being attempted only in inappropriate ways and thus ineffectively. Since only entrepreneurs were regarded as exploiters, efforts thus for have been confined to taking from the entrepreneur, by means of wage struggles, what Marx called surplus value over what is, as we have seen, a very complicated structure. This wage struggle could, in practice, effect only the employer's monopoly profit (which goes beyond the employer's remuneration) but not the much greater impairment of the worker's wage through interest and land rent. The employer cannot allow increases in wages at the expense of land rent and interest for external capital, and it would be unfair to demand that he should place his own capital freely at the disposal of his workers when he himself must pay land rent and interest for external capital. Confronted with such demands, he can only either shut down the enterprise or offer it for sale, e.g. to the employees (which should be the main aim of the trades unions). The third possibility, the shift of the wage increase onto prices, only leads to an endless spiral and accelerating inflation. This amounts to self-deception on the part of those dependent upon wages, who in this manner only bleed one another and not the entrepreneur and also depreciate their own savings and finally bring about unemployment.

As previously mentioned, an immediate increase in wages can be achieved neither at the expense of amortization through depreciation allowances, nor at the expense of necessary new investments from retained profits, nor at the expense of necessary risk premiums, because all three items would have to be calculated by the workers association of a workers' co-operative in the same manner as an independent employer (and incidentally, also within nationalized industries). In this respect, whatever previously increased the silent assets of the owners of the enterprise now increases the assets of all those working in the firm, provided only that all employees, if they so desire, become owners of the firm and share in the profits as well as in the losses.

Thus workers must aim at full (not only half) co-determination and must also be prepared to assume the risks. For one must consider that even a comparatively small loss of private capital or business loss may suffice to lead to loss of liquidity or a loss of credit-worthiness - which can then bring about the loss of the whole capital. A shut-down concern, and machines that are idle have only a fraction of their previous value, as anyone can perceive, e.g. from the difference in the price of new and used goods, if one tries to sell something secondhand.

The entrepreneur's monopoly profit on its own, however, is not always of great importance, especially when it is achieved under intense competition. This is illustrated by co-operative enterprises, such as consumer co-operatives, which offer neither higher salaries for its employees, nor lower prices for the consumers than competitive private firms offer. Where, then, is the "surplus value" in either case?

The trade unions are making a mistake when they fail to recognize the role of monopoly in interest and land rent and attempt to retrieve the thus extorted tribute from the entrepreneur alone. Such attempts must necessarily fail when applied to external capital and will shut down an enterprise even against the will of the entrepreneur. The same applies also, for the reasons mentioned above, to an employer's own capital. Apart from the monopoly profit of the employer, which is not always present and is often not very substantial, wage increases can thus only be achieved at the expense of interest and land rent (as well as of other privileges and monopolies) and thus their elimination must be the primary aim, especially since both these factors also appreciably reduce the purchasing power of the wages that are paid out.

Whoever desires to achieve the greatest possible yield for his labour must make himself independent of the circumstance that he is forced to take jobs which are offered to him by "employers," be they private firms or the State. He could do this through the rational use of capital that is no longer burdened by the land rent and interest (the latter at least no longer at today's high rates). He must, therefore, become an entrepreneur himself, alone or in association with others, and the possibility of doing that must be made so easy and it must be so often used that today's entrepreneur monopoly profit will also be eliminated through competition. Then the individual need no longer work under relentless coercion, as if no other choice were open to him. Then he will hire himself out at a set and appropriate wage only if he himself lacks entrepreneurial abilities and cannot engage a suitable manager either, or if he shies away from the risks of enterprise and prefers to have the security of a set remuneration.

Those who desire to achieve an economic system - even a moneyless one - that primarily aims to satisfy needs, should realize that, in a social order which has been freed from all privileges and monopolies, they will have numerous opportunities to realize this for themselves and for those who are likeminded. However, they would not have the chance to force dissenters to participate. Even then, individuals as well as groups could not, in the long run, demand more from others than they themselves were able to give in genuine equivalents. In production, all of the previously mentioned cost factors must be considered, in a moneyless economy as well as in a economy with non-monopolistic money.

 

THE END OF AN ILLUSION (^)

A fateful error also lies in the assumption that Marx or Lenin would, in the end, have achieved a condition without domination, particularly seeing that this final aim remained completely nebulous in their concepts. Both strove, quite concretely, to achieve a dictatorship and a condition of domination that was compulsorily to train people in such a manner that finally and out of habit, in consequence of this manipulation, they would "voluntarily" see their "ideal" in communism. Afterwards, coercion and the State would be unnecessary. Communism, however, is already a Utopian ideal because its thesis is that everyone should produce according to his abilities and consume according to his needs is illusory, since needs always grow with their growing satisfaction, while limits are drawn for production by limited land surface compared with a growing population, and also by existing natural resources and other factors. Last, but not least, there are also psychological limits, since in such a system those who are capable and willing to serve will finally, and quite rightly, feel themselves exploited by the less capable and by those who are lazy. A communistic form of economy is indeed possible in volunteer groups that are easily recognizable and not too large, and consist of like-minded people. Universal communism, however, is possible only in a dictatorship which denies the individual the right to the product of his own labour and, as a typical ideology, assigns claims and "rights" for the product of the work of others.

Such a condition can only be realized through aggressive force and can only be maintained through continued acts of violence, i.e. it cannot be "inculcated," not even in the long run. Those States preaching communism have so far, quite cunningly, renounced every attempt at realizing their Utopia and have, instead, created a State-capitalistic class society which they have falsely named "socialistic " and "a transitional stage to communism."

Anarchism, by comparison, does not strive to achieve a new society which will arise only in the far future by means of coercive re-education but, rather, one that is possible in the present and that does not require a dictatorship or the subjugation of others. Instead, it requires only the elimination of all privileges and monopolies (especially those of the arch monopolist, the State), as well as a few organizations based upon voluntarism for the guaranty and defence of the equal freedom of all (which, as previously mentioned, includes protection against murder, manslaughter, bodily injury, rape, robbery, theft, extortion, etc.).

All historical experience - and in particular the continuous struggle among the communistic dictators - contradicts the contention that one day the rulers will declare that they are superfluous and voluntarily renounce their power.

Even what was to follow the dictatorship and what was only hinted at by Marx and Lenin, is described by them, quite arbitrarily, as no longer a State - although it possesses all the essential characteristics of one. For command over the production of goods is already an over-all command over human life.

It is as much a fraud to present at State dictatorship as a means of achieving non-statehood as to provide the condition of supposed non-statehood with all the authoritarian elements of domination by the majority over the citizens and the assets of society and then simply to assert that this is not a State.

A modern Marxist, the Polish professor Adam Schaff , has let the cat out of the bag. In Marxismus und das menschliche Individuum (Marxism and the Human Individual), Vienna, 1965 and Hamburg, 1970, he has pronounced with all the clarity desired that the "true man" is no longer alienated from his "essence," is only an ideal, i.e. has nothing to do with science. An ideal or illusion is, therefore, placed as the supposedly inevitable result of a development under the laws of nature.

Schaff then says: "It cannot be denied that the State exists in socialistic society. Not only do we not deny this, but we daily praise its power." He justifies this with the threat posed by capitalistic powers, but then frankly admits: "The State as an apparatus of power appears not only as a power directed against the outside but also as a power directed against the interior." He begins to stutter somewhat when he comes to speak about the consequences of this situation, which he calls "the period of so-called personality cults, and this in all socialistic countries." Concerning this, he again admits honestly: "This question awaits a sociological analysis and as yet no Marxist has more than scratched its surface!"

He then continues: "Let us assume the best possible case, that this alienation is eliminated, together with the hostile environment and Classes within society. Then there still remains the problem of the alienation of the State, and this in a sphere which appeared innocuous to the founders of Marxism. It concerns the State as an administrative apparatus, i.e. as the machinery for the management of things. According to the view of classical Marxists, the State as an organ of force dies under Socialism, but it keeps its function as an administrator of things.

On this the founders of Marxism did not entertain any doubts, although, at that time while they were fighting the anarchists, they could not know the multitude of functions and the extent of the power which this State would one day have. The State has transformed itself from its function as an administrator into a giant machine which, through the progress of technology, increasingly embraces more of the totality, to an extent which could not have been envisioned a hundred years ago. It began with the function of planning the whole life of society and its development, passed through control over the whole of the nationalized economy and moved on in the direction of the institutions of science, culture, art, social security, health and so on and so forth. Even presuming a maximum democracy and the greatest approximation to the ideal type of free producers' association about which the founders of Marxism spoke, under today's conditions and for purely technical reasons, the need for central direction and administration of the different spheres of social life follows. The State thus remains an apparatus like a Moloch, a machine which must necessarily be a professional one, due to today's specialization. The bureaucracy remains, despite all the democratic correctives which submit the State's machinery to social control. It remains necessary under today's conditions. One should not delude oneself that more can be achieved than to make this bureaucracy competent and reasonable. The state as an administrative apparatus will not die out. That is an illusion which the founders of Marxism in their maturity (especially Lenin) no longer shared."

Thus an illusion of the still immature founders of Marxism is so far its proclaimed final aim, and the continuing propaganda for this supposedly so "humane" and "liberal" final aim is, therefore, a conscious swindle! For the total administration of all "things" is, naturally, identical with the total subjugation of all men by a "competent" bureaucracy which rejects even the humblest criticism as "incompetent" and either liquidates its critics or deports them to forced labour camps or isolates them in insane asylums.

The supposed "necessity" in no way results from technological progress but, rather, from the illusion that man has the task of developing his "true destiny" as a "social being," through which he is subjected to domination by an abstraction and the interpreters of that abstraction. Every domination has the tendency to extend itself totally, and the "competence" of Marxist bureaucracy is only the "competence" of "enlightened Absolutism" driven to extremes, and absolutism which did everything for the "well-being" of incompetent and injudicious subjects.

To declare the State to be "necessary" means nothing less than declaring aggressive force to be necessary, the domination of one group over the others, a condition of unequal freedom in which the freedom of some is extended at the expense of the equal freedom of others and this against their will.

There is no real problem and no actually necessary (i.e. truly indispensable) task (outside of imagined, illusory or ideological ones) which could not be solved within the framework of the equal freedom of all, without aggressive force, through purely defensive organizations - as they are described in Chapters Seven and Eight.

Precisely the development of technology facilitates libertarian solutions to at least the same extent as it can promote the extension of existing domination. That technology itself, however, might make domination (and its incarnation, the State) necessary instead of freedom, is a fixed idea. Only those share it who, in order to eliminate the privileges and monopolies of a minority of private persons, do not strive for this logically, simply through the abolition of all privileges and monopolies, but who quite illogically and irrationally insist that this could only be done by transferring those privileges and monopolies to the State, thus turning the State into a super-privileged and super-monopolistic body.

As genuine society emerges as the result of non-aggressive actions and the voluntary association of individuals, the most varied planning of social life and its development will emerge quite by themselves. However Schaff meant by the "planning of the total social existence,", its central control by State functionaries. A denationalized economy, without any privileges and monopolies, requires no "direction" other than by individual people acting economically or by voluntary associations, both under the general rule of the equal freedom of all. The institutions of science, culture and art were not originally created by the State; the State has merely increasingly taken possession of them. Health care and security are matters for those who are interested in such things. As was proven in the chapter concerning the State, its "social welfare" is either a deficient and incomplete restitution of what was previously stolen by the State itself or under its patronage, or it ensues on the basis of special enormous embezzlements under which those "who are cared for" receive back only part of what was previously forcefully taken from them. Private insurance companies can work more soundly and cheaply. The administration of traffic is the concern of those who participate in or are interested in transport. In all this, it should be noted, it is not private arbitrariness that is decisive but rather the principle of the exclusion of all aggressive force, guaranteed by suitable organizations. This is identical with the principle of equal freedom of all. Competence follows from free competition among these organizations, whose users will automatically sort out those who are incompetent.

Schaff emphasizes, once again, that according to the plan of Marxism, an extensive power apparatus ought to remain in existence, one which stands above the individual, i.e. as a pronounced dominator. The method of Marxism is full of trickery and rests upon arbitrary definitions by which it manages to deny the violent character of unequivocal acts of aggressive force. Schaff admits e.g. that the abolition of the social classes "is, of course, by definition, connected with the abolition of private property," from which he concludes that the criticisms of Burnham and Djilas concerning the class character of the Peoples' Republics are "stupidities." And so not the analysis of reality, but, rather arbitrary appellations which contradict reality, are what Marxism rests upon.

Schaff then also admits that there are in communist society groups - he calls them groups and not classes! - which, regarding prestige and position in the social hierarchy, "constitute a certain division." He continues: "among the different possible divisions and criteria (considering that the absolute equality of men is a fiction in every respect) that particular division stands in the foreground whose basis is the exercise of power even though only an administrative power (in the sense of the word explained above). If the State must remain in existence as such an extensive and complicated machinery for the administration of social life, then it is clear that there must also be a group or class of men who exercise this function of administration. The more extensive this apparatus becomes, because of technological requirements, the bigger becomes the class of administrators. The more complicated and the more strictly hierarchically ordered this apparatus becomes (likewise because of technical requirements) the larger is the part which hierarchy plays in the structure of this class."

Schaff admits that the apparatus of "the administration of things" can become an apparatus "to rule over men." He does not want to admit that this apparatus, which he himself called Moloch-like, already unambiguously holds sway over men, i.e. that it rules to a greater extent than any ruler in the age of Absolutism did, for then his entire ideology would collapse. Thus we have here an instance of "credo quia absurdum" (I believe because it is absurd) or schizophrenia masquerading as science, since he expressly admitted above that the apparatus and the functionaries standing behind it should stand over the individual.

After all, he declares that the full satisfaction of all human needs (postulated by Marx to be achieved under Communism) is, if not altogether a relic of Utopianism, at most an aim that can be achieved only in the far future. Until then "it is clear that men who give more to society should also receive more from it." Without that, as he says, the alienation of a certain group in socialist society (annotation: that is to say, the new class which cannot exist because according to the ideology it must not) is made attractive.

And finally, Schaff says, "there is no doubt that even now, as before, there exists what Marx called alienation of work." Concerning the Marxist dream of the "elimination of work" and its replacement by "free activity," he says: "I believe that it is best to ascribe these ideas to the youthful imagination and naivety of their author!" Seeing this scornful de-ideologization of their idol, there is still some hope that the Marxists will also realize one day the full extent of the naivety of their premises, presuppositions and methods and, likewise, the frightening reality of the attempts to realize their theories.

It is unnecessary to go into the multitude of neo-Marxist corrections and re-interpretations which partly confirm the above critique. For they all have in common naive faith in the necessity of the State, complete failure to recognize its essence, and the essence of the alternative to it, and, finally, failure to recognize the actual sources of exploitation.

 


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