Karl Marx and his beliefs - Essay Example

Karl Marx was the intellectual inventor of the ideology of communism: the belief that society ought to be less in the sense that there is a common ownership of the means of production. In addition to being an economist, Marx was also a historian who had a unique, materialistic view of history. Namely, Marx believed that human history was the product of a class struggle between the upper classes and the lower classes. Marx traced this progress through time and theorized that the current state of humankind is only one period in the historical development of civilization.

Communism, as he thought, would be a specific stage beyond the current one and it would emerge from a superabundance of material wealth that is inequitably shared between all people. He ascribed this to the economic system of capitalism and the Industrial Revolution, which revealed the ugly side of markets. In the face of this capitalist excess, governments seemed to be powerless to stop its expansion. Although Marx conceived of a Communist world as a real possibility, the existence of governments did not fit into this view.

Marx advocated workers’ revolution in order to bring about the state of Communism. This revolution would end the economic system of capitalism and instead usher in a new system of common ownership over the means of production. On Marx’s theory, once the workers seized control of the means of production and the assets of the world (created under the capitalist system), they would establish a temporary government in order to continue creating the products to sustain society. However, the need for this temporary government would soon fade such that the world would no longer require the services of a central planning body, given the pure system of sharing that is necessitated under the Communist concept.

Although in common discourse we tend to think of the totalitarian Soviet government as the epitome of a Communist government, Marx’s ideal theory led to the dissolution of government and a kind of radical individualism that one expects to see justifying a capitalist worldview instead. Marx was very much an advocate of revolution, radicalism, and eventual individualist anarchism under the correct conditions. As opposed to a central planning government, Marx believed in a “self-government” of sorts, which acknowledges the power of individuals and the growing irrelevance of statism as the world moves closer to the Communist ideal.

“Self-government” would emerge in small communes ruled by democracy, or with “the dictatorship of the proletariat” (Kautsky). The government that Marx believed in was an administrative state instead of a state as an instrument of coercion. However, the practicality of these changes in the way governments function is lacking, in the accounts that Marx provides of the Communist state. Looking first at history, one sees allegedly Communist governments in the 20th century, like those of China and Russia, turn into behemoth governments that operated based on violence in order to remain in power.

Clearly, there is a disconnect between the theory and the practice, and having emerged in two isolated cases, it seems as though Communist theory leads first (and only) to the opposite of what Marx actually intended. Thus, instead of the eventual dissolution of the central government, the state established under Communist ideologies tends to grow in the reversed direction, away from small communes and individualist anarchism. Looking second at theory, it is unlikely that a workers’ revolution will lead to a temporary government because this temporary government will, like the previous stages in history, depend on a capitalist system to sustain the material needs of society.

Even though Marx believes society can wean itself off capitalism, he does not give a reason why society would wish to do this. In addition, he gives no reason to believe that a Communist product of the revolution would plausible provide for society in such a way as to fulfill the basic needs of individuals. Thus, a Communist state with a massive government, where control is centralized, is a more reasonable scenario than an anarchist society of purely selfless workers. Bibliography Kautsky, Karl.

The Dictatorship of the Proletariat. 1918. Marx, Karl and Friedrich Engels. The Communist Manifesto. 1848.