Objectives against Marxism - Essay Example

Marxism is an economic worldview that is based on the assumption that a few people control all themeans of production and that they reap all the benefits at the expense of those who work for them. According to Marxists, the workers, or the proletariat, will at one time in the future come to overthrow the bourgeoisie, who own the means of production. Marxists often cite the French Revolution as an example of what happens when the proletariat rises up against the bourgeoisie. While this is the case that is stated by the Marxists, it has come to be challenged repeatedly mainly because of the fact that what it suggests is not a way of life that is feasible. The majority of those who claim to believe in this philosophy have yet to prove that it can actually work. The Marxist philosophy has come to be applied in many fields including politics, and in the latter, it has been manifested through communism and socialism. For several decades in the twentieth century, Marxism was a powerful force on the world scene but because of its unsustainable nature, it has come to be relegated to the background in the recent years. While there are powerful arguments for the Marxist philosophy, there are also more potent arguments against it and most of the latter arguments are because it is unsustainable. Marxism became a powerful force in the early twentieth century because its philosophy came to attract those people who had long been oppressed by their rulers. The early Marxists were men who had been raised in poverty and when they found this new philosophy, they felt that they could use it to improve their lot in life (Evans 762). What these people failed to realize is that Marxism is an utopian, which cannot be realistically implemented. This can be seen through the utter failure of the political systems based on Marxism that have so far failed to survive. Marxist governments, for example, have made the life of their people far worse than they were previously. A current case to note is the ongoing one in North Korea where despite the fact that the government still officially declares itself to be communist; the behavior of its ruling elite is a far cry from the Marxist philosophy upon which it was founded. While the people of this country continue to suffer, the elite live a life of luxury that the former can only dream of. In fact, it can be said that the North Korean elite has turned its back on the ordinary people, many of whom not only live in poverty, but are also suffer from malnutrition. This is an absolute failure of Marxism in the modern world and perhaps this country and its people would do much better if it had a government that had a free market philosophy as well as being democratic. An obvious example is South Korea, which took an opposite direction compared to its northern neighbor and is now one of the most respected economies in the world. The failure of Marxism as a political philosophy can be said to have been revealed during the Cold War when the Soviet Union had to work far harder than the United States in order to be able to compete with the latter. The communist system of government practiced in the Soviet Union was based on Marxist philosophy, where the state controlled every aspect of its economy (Skousen 500). The people who worked in the Soviet economy were given very little incentive to be more productive. Everybody was given a quota to meet and once that was done, then no more was required of them. Workers were treated more like machinery than as people who were essential for the development of the economy. There were certain instances where people did not even bother to work because they had no incentive to do so. They were not given any opportunity to be innovative in their work places, and even though they worked extraordinarily hard, under extreme conditions, they were given very little pay. The soviet economy therefore, did not have enough opportunity to ensure that it was diversified enough to stay competitive on the global scene. This is the reason why it eventually came to collapse in 1991 and its collapse proved that Marxism is a utopian philosophy that has no place in the reality of the modern world. Furthermore, many of the constituent states that formed the Soviet Union had to abandon quickly the Marxist policies they previously had in order to save themselves from economic disaster. Marxism is a philosophy which when put into practice ends up denying the people it is supposed to serve a majority of the freedoms, which they previously used to enjoy. Marxism in practice is so fragile that whenever any attempts to reform a Marxist system of government are made, there is a high possibility that the system will collapse. The inevitability of the collapse of the Marxist political system was so great that even the soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, came to recognize it. This realization made him adopt the path of reform within the Soviet Union as well as its satellite states because without the much-needed reforms, both political and economic, the entire system would have ended up collapsing. Gorbachev’s reform policies had a large impact on the Soviet satellite states in because they led the way for the ending of communist rule within them. Gorbachev’s stand was that each of these states was to determine its own future, and that the Soviet Union would no longer interfere in their domestic affairs. This had previously not been the case, as seen when there was civil unrest in Hungary in 1956 and in Poland in 1968. In both of these instances, the Soviet Union had intervened militarily to protect the communist regimes that ruled these countries (Mastny 189). The reforms that were instituted by Gorbachev eventually gave the people in these satellite states the resolve to take part in the revolutions, which swept the communist party out of power. The immediate trigger to these revolutions, however, was the fall of the Berlin Wall, which had for a long time been a symbol of the division between East and West. Revolutions also occurred within the Soviet republics as one by one; they declared their independence from the Soviet government in Moscow and rejected the Marxist political system that it stood for. In Marxist, political system the public interest in media is subordinated to the private interests of the ruling elite of the Marxist party because opposition and alternative voices are marginalized in its favor (Cody). Furthermore, the news about the Marxist party is given more time on air than that of the other parties, if they are allowed to exist, and this shows the unconscious attitudes that are predominant in such societies as well as the power of the ruling elite to manipulate the media in its favor. The dominance of the state over media in a Marxist system of government makes people to become dependent in that one type of media because there are no alternatives to the ones that the ruling party allows them to have. Since most of the media in such systems are state owned, the Marxist propaganda, which is spread through it, becomes prominent in the lives of those audiences dependent on this media, and those who eventually take these ideas at face value and continue to perpetuate it within their societies. Marxism is therefore based on absolute control of the state rather than the freedom of the people to choose their own destinies. In conclusion, it can be said that the Marxist theory in general and the philosophy that accompany it are a complete failure. This is because of the fact that despite being tried and tested on the political and economic stage in many countries for many decades in the twentieth century, it has failed to prove that it is the best alternative to the free market system. The Marxist political systems that developed all over the world failed to serve the best interests of their people and they instead turned them into nothing more than machines whose purpose was to serve the state. In essence, the state and the Marxist parties in power came to replace the bourgeoisie who the Marxist theory states dominated the means of production in society. There instead developed new elites to dominate the society, because no society can be ruled by its people alone. Al societies require leaders in order to thrive and this is one of the things that Marxism does not discuss. It is obvious that the bourgeoisie are the natural leaders of society because it is they who have the resources to be able to govern the societies effectively. Without elite in society, then its very fabric would disintegrate, resulting in chaos. Marxism is, therefore, wrong in its insistence that revolutions to overthrow the ruling class are the best option for forging equality in society. Works Cited Cody, Edward. "For China's Journalism Students, Censorship is a Core Concept." The Washington Post: 0. Dec 31 2007. Print. Evans, Alfred B. "Time and Revolution: Marxism and the Design of Soviet Institutions." The American Political Science Review 91.3 (1997): 762-3. Print. Mastny, V. "The Soviet non-invasion of Poland in 1980-1981 and the end of the Cold War," Europe - Asia Studies, vol. 51, no. 2, (1999): 189-211. Print Skousen, Mark. "What's Left of Marxism?" The Freeman 1998: 500-1. Print. Read More