Marx, The Individualist

There is a lot of misunderstanding about Marx, Marxism and Marxists. A lot of that can be explained through the massive anti-socialist and anti-communist propaganda that has been characteristic of the public sphere in the west after the Second World War, and got a boost after the end of the Eastern Block's demise in 1991.

_{source: Wikimedia Commons}

For many modern westerners the words "Marx", "socialism" and "communism" immediately conjure up images of gulags, despotic dictators and a bland grey world where every individual has the exact same shade of grey; it's the meme of forced egalitarianism that's been successfully implanted in the collective western consciousness, and is expressed in western culture and political discourse. It's always amazing to me how hundreds of millions of people can be made to believe things that are exactly opposite to factual truth. The fact that some fascists took Marx's ideas and cleverly used them in their rise to power, or that some socialists tried to form a socialist state amidst a hostile capitalist environment and failed, has strongly contributed to this false image of Marxism, socialism and communism. And if your only introduction to Marxist ideas was through the works of, let's say Jordan Peterson, I think it's safe to say you know nothing about what Marx really envisioned. I'm sure he's a great psychiatrist, but I wish he would stop talking about things he clearly doesn't know all that much about.

The title of this post will have surprised you, if you're indeed sold on the idea that Marx was an egalitarian. Well, he wasn't; both he and Friedrich Engels avoided talking about "equality" and were opposed to the idea of egalitarianism. The whole contemporary discussion about equality of opportunity opposed to equality of outcome is a smoke-screen, as both are equally ridiculous, and Marx was very much aware of that. He also made a distinction between "freedom", which is what the worker class wants, and "liberty", which is what the capitalist class can afford. For the worker class to become free, the class struggle has to end. Marx never advocated for equality or egalitarianism, all he said was that capitalism would eventually end, when the end of the distinction between the classes was brought about by capitalism itself.

_{source: Wikipedia}

Marx was a great admirer of capitalism; he grew up in the golden age of industrial capitalism and praised it for it's ability to produce so much wealth. But he also recognized that the liberties of the capitalists were payed for by the proletariat's lack of freedom. But he was confident that this would only be a temporary phase, a necessary one, but temporary. His idea wasn't far-fetched or Utopian at all, but very scientific and his arguments were sound. His end goal, which is still best summarized as "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs", could only be realized when society had reached a phase of material abundance. It's a state in which we finally get to sit on top of Maslow's pyramid of needs. This is the simple idea that for an individual to become all that he or she can become, to become truly happy, free and fulfilled, there's a hierarchy of needs that need to be satisfied. At the bottom of the pyramid we have the purely physiological needs, like food and drink; you need to be alive to be happy and free. Then there's safety on the next level, love and a sense of belonging on the next, followed by self-esteem through recognition and respect, and on the very top of the pyramid resides "self-actualization", the state in which an individual has reached the maximum of their potential. This is why "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs" is highly individualistic in nature.

Marx's view of classlessness was not the subordination of society to a universal interest (such as a universal notion of equality), but it was about the creation of the conditions that would enable individuals to pursue their true interests and desires, making Marx's notion of communist society radically individualistic.
_{source: Wikipedia}

The mental jump that has to be made to understand Marx's view is this: individuals can only be free inside the collective and by the grace of the collective. Look at Maslow's pyramid again: everything mentioned there is found in the collective, in society, and none of it can be achieved by one's self. It's, when you strip it from all obscuring terminology, the simple admission of the old adage "many hands make light work" that will enable us all to sit on top of Maslow's pyramid, where true individual freedom resides. We're clearly not ready for that jump yet, and therefore the best we can do now is try to restrict the gap between the classes, and stop talking about some undefined nebulous "equality"; we'll never be the same, and that's a GOOD thing ;-)

_{Why equality is unhelpful as a political goal}

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