# Did Marx or Lenin Really Believe in Any of That Crap? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 30, 2011, 3:19am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463 "2011-03-30T03:19:59Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 11\ **Page:** 4
**Author:** ![smiling\_bandit](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9a140/32.png) [@smiling\_bandit](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/smiling_bandit)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 9:16pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/61 "2011-03-31T21:16:37Z")
> [@jinty](#): > > Communism was basically an attempt to cure the problems of “social misery” present in 19th-century industrialised society. It was an ill-fated attempt to be sure (and a perfect case of the cure being worse than the disease), but the problem it was trying to cure was real enough. Engels has been mentioned upthread - he was one of the first to document the plight of the urban poor in his book. Yet, Marx failed to realize (ever) that these conditions represented an improvement for the workers themselves, a critical failing which alone destroyed his theory. Like many Romantic thinkers (and he was nothing if not heavily infected by that scourge of clear minds), he was all-too-willing to confuse the look of the thing with the nature of the thing. ---
**Author:** ![Der\_Trihs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/der_trihs/32/233_2.png) [@Der\_Trihs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Der_Trihs)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 9:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/62 "2011-03-31T21:40:45Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Yet, Marx failed to realize (ever) that these conditions represented an improvement for the workers themselves, a critical failing which alone destroyed his theory. The “workers themselves” seemed to find those conditions quite hellish (as well as often crippling or fatal), and were often coerced into “accepting” them at gunpoint. The solution wasn’t communism, but lets not pretend that conditions were anything other than brutal and exploitative. And still are, many places. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/63 "2011-03-31T21:51:45Z")
> [@smiling\_bandit](#): > > Yet, Marx failed to realize (ever) that these conditions represented an improvement for the workers themselves, a critical failing which alone destroyed his theory. Like many Romantic thinkers (and he was nothing if not heavily infected by that scourge of clear minds), he was all-too-willing to confuse the look of the thing with the nature of the thing. An improvement over what? In the nineteenth century the life of most peasants was probably preferable to the life of most factory workers. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/64 "2011-03-31T21:57:09Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > An improvement over what? In the nineteenth century the life of most peasants was probably preferable to the life of most factory workers. And yet people flocked to the slums of the cities rather than stay in the country. ---
**Author:** ![New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/9d8465/32.png) [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/New_Deal_Democrat)\ **Post date:** [March 31, 2011, 10:00pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/65 "2011-03-31T22:00:00Z")
> [@Lumpy](#): > > And yet people flocked to the slums of the cities rather than stay in the country. Many of them were forced to move because of enclosure. ---
**Author:** ![pdunderhill](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/4bbf92/32.png) [@pdunderhill](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pdunderhill)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2011, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/66 "2011-04-01T17:41:55Z")
As a curious aside did you know that both Marx and Engels had bought train tickets that would have taken them across the Tay Bridge in Scotland at the end of December in 1879 when it collapsed. Fate is a ficcle mistress! Peter ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2011, 6:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/67 "2011-04-01T18:19:52Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > An improvement over what? In the nineteenth century the life of most peasants was probably preferable to the life of most factory workers. This is not true at all. The reason there was a labor surplus available for factory work was because the population was growing faster than the feudal system could accommodate, leaving large numbers of people without means to support themselves. They existed at starvation levels, living off of handouts or casual labor during harvest. The increased pressure on the food system reduced people to subsistence farming, working 16 hours a day at hard manual labor in all weather just to make enough to eat to survive until the next day. This pool of dispossessed workers and starving peasants also provided the military with hordes of cannon fodder and the Royal Navy with a ready supply of sailors. And if you think factory life was hard, you should check out what the conditions were like for a soldier or sailor in the 17th century. The fact that huge numbers of people volunteered for these services is a good indication of just how miserable the lives of the peasantry were. The belief in an idyllic existence of the peasantry is a Luddite myth that only exists because it’s a convenient fiction for people opposed to capitalism. The fact is, people flooded into the cities and factories for the same reason they flooded into sweatshops in China and South Korea and Thailand and Malaysia and India in the 20th century: because, wretched as the conditions and pay may have been by 1st world standards, they beat the hell out of the alternatives for those people in those countries. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2011, 6:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/68 "2011-04-01T18:55:19Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > Many of them were forced to move because of enclosure. Which happened because new farming techniques made larger farms much more profitable than smaller ones. Bill Bryson, in the latter chapters of “At Home” has some interesting numbers on disease in the slum, the number of people per room, the rampant prostitution, etc. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2011, 6:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/69 "2011-04-01T18:58:14Z")
Feudal system in the 19th century? Sam, Ivanhoe was not a novel of current events. (Oh, I got it. Good April Fools joke there Sam.) ---
**Author:** ![Sam\_Stone](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/ecccb3/32.png) [@Sam\_Stone](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sam_Stone)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2011, 7:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/70 "2011-04-01T19:23:56Z")
> [@New\_Deal\_Democrat](#): > > To the best of my knowledge Karl Marx was the first economist to study the business cycle. Adam Smith makes no mention of it in his Wealth of Nations. Marx argued that capitalism was fated to experience increasingly serious economic down turns. Except that there haven’t been ‘increasingly serious’ downturns. Even the current one hasn’t been close to the one that happened in the Great Depression. In addition, the growth experienced between downturns has still resulted in a massive increase in the standard of living overall in Capitalist countries. > [@](#): > > One can argue that when he wrote The Communist Manifesto in 1848 he predicted the Great Depression, which began in 1929. Really? He predicted a depression eighty years in the future? He’s like Nostradamus! Actually, he is in the sense that his believers are willing to stretch definitions and make assumptions about vague statements so they can fit them into future events and proclaim his genius. > [@](#): > > He also said that the natural tendency of capitalism was to build wealth while spreading poverty: per capita gross domestic product (GDP) goes up; median income adjusted for inflation goes down. And he was also wrong about that, wasn’t he? The mean income adjusted for inflation has gone up dramatically in capitalist countries. For example, in the U.S. in 1953 the mean family income in 2009 dollars was $33089. In 2009, even after several years of stagnation and two years of decline due to a big recession, it was $78,538. And of course, that leaves out the huge growth years between 1880 and 1950, when Capitalism in the U.S. was even more pure. In 1900, the median family income was something like $5,000 in constant dollars. The poverty line in the U.S. today is over three times higher than the median income in 1900. > [@](#): > > He did not predict Keynesian economic policies, which regulated capitalism in ways that achieved a more equitable distribution of economic growth, and reduced the severity of recessions. In what way have Keynesian policies redistributed income in ‘more equitable ways’? The biggest round of Keynesian spending since the great depression wound up in the pockets of bankers, CEOs, and workers making twice the median income. The money borrowed to pay for this will almost certainly fall on the middle class as a whole. > [@](#): > > Because of de regulation and tax cuts for the rich, Marx’s predictions are coming true again. Regulation has increased every year. The last major round of deregulation happened under Carter, when trucking, rail, and the airlines were deregulated. All of those changes have turned out to be highly beneficial. Under Bush the regulatory state grew dramatically. Under Obama, the growth has accelerated. The U.S. government is larger now than it has ever been, and the Federal Register is the biggest it’s ever been. > [@](#): > > We are experiencing the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. The standard of living for most Americans has declined since 2000 even as corporations are more profitable than ever before. Of course, that could have a lot to do with the fact that government has exploded in size, government debt is out of control, and the government is increasingly sheltering corporations with bailouts, low interest rates, and Keynesian stimulus to keep their markets going on borrowed money. > [@](#): > > Although Marx was a good economist of laissez faire capitalism No, he wasn’t. His labor theory of value was whacked, and he had no grasp of the difficulty of the coordination problem - the main thing that capitalism solves and that Communism couldn’t hope to deal with. > [@](#): > > Consequently, Marx did not predict the First World War. According to his theories the workers of various European countries would have refused to fight in it. He also did not predict the rise of fascism that followed the war. According to his theories economically stressed members of the middle class would move to the left, not to the totalitarian right. They did move to the left. The origins of Fascism were in National Socialism. The Nazis were originally the German National Socialist Worker’s Party. It was from the start a nationalist alternative to international socialism. It was really a combination of socialist principles along with rigid nationalism and racism. The Nazis promised an end to ‘wage-slavery’, the nationalization of industry, an end to ‘rent-slavery’ through the abolition of ‘unearned income’ (adopting the Marxian notion of labor value), universal public health and education, an explicit duty of the state to look after all the people, and a job for everyone. > [@](#): > > His theories cannot explain why in the American South lower income whites preferred the Klu Klux Klan to labor unions from the end of the Civil War to the civil rights movement. Huh? That was the choice? It was either labor unions or the Klan? You are making a whole lot of sweeping conclusions and conflating a lot of stuff to fit your ideology. In the statement above you seem to think that labor unions are intimately tied to civil rights for blacks or something, or that racists tend to oppose labor unions. You have conflated cultural and social attitudes with economic policy, apparently for the purpose of smearing people who don’t subscribe to your point of view. > [@](#): > > He cannot explain why most white blue collar workers in the U.S. vote Republican. Probably because not everything comes down to socialism vs capitalism, and contrary to what Marxists believe, not every division in society is a class struggle. > [@](#): > > I am confident that Marx, Lenin, and Stalin believed in their theories. I personally think that Marx had good insights, but that his oversights prevent his political philosophy from being an adequate guide to action. Most of the time most people do not behave the way Marx said that they do. What they all lacked, and what causes Communist countries to under-perform and become tyrannical, is that the chief problem in a complex economy is managing the division of labor, specialization, comparative advantage, and then being able to coordinate it all efficiently. It’s a problem of information transmission and incentives, and central planning utterly fails at this. And as they fail, they must become increasingly thuggish in order to compel people to do what they believe needs to be done, and they become increasingly intrusive as they attempt to correct all the unintended consequences created by their actions. This is an inherent flaw in any system of economic central planning. The information necessary to make good decisions simply can’t get to central planners, because it is locked up in the heads of the population and isn’t transmitted between them. There is no coordination of activity other than through state edict, and the state is necessarily incompetent at determining optimal allocation of resources. In Capitalism, the price system and self-interest acts as a very efficient coordinating mechanism. A capitalist economy is like a massively parallel computing system with prices acting as an information bus transmitting information to everyone who needs it. A centrally planned economy is like a single-processor system trying to control a complex system that responds chaotically to imposed changes. Marx never had the mathematical understanding or the conceptual breakthroughs necessary to understand this. ---
**Author:** ![Dissonance](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/85f322/32.png) [@Dissonance](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dissonance)\ **Post date:** [April 1, 2011, 8:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463/71 "2011-04-01T20:32:55Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > Feudal system in the 19th century? Sam, Ivanhoe was not a novel of current events. > (Oh, I got it. Good April Fools joke there Sam.) Oh come now, the industrial revolution was just around the corner for all of those 17th century soldiers and sailors, right? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/did-marx-or-lenin-really-believe-in-any-of-that-crap/576463.md?page=3)