IN AMERITOPIA, I WROTE of the philosophers who best describe what I term the utopian mind-set and its application to modern-day utopian thinking and conduct in America, which certainly includes progressivism. I explained that “Plato’s Republic, Thomas More’s Utopia, Thomas Hobbes’s Leviathan, and Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto are indispensable in understanding the nature of utopian statism. They are essential works that have in common soulless societies in which the individual is subsumed into a miasma of despotism—and each of them is a warning against utopian transformation in America and elsewhere.”1 But the progressives were also guided by the societal observations and formulations proffered by, among other philosophers, Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712–1778) and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831). Therefore, a partial but useful introduction to their writings is essential, as is another look at Karl Marx (1818–1883).
Jean-Jacques Rousseau was a Swiss-French theorist who had a dreadfully bleak view of the individual and humanity. For Rousseau, societies are built on existing conditions of inequality, competition among individuals breeds exploitation, and the individual is more inclined toward vice than virtue. Therefore, he dismisses natural law and its moral order as a useless jumble, much like his modern progressive descendants. In “Discourse on the Origin of Inequality” (1755), Rousseau asserted:
Knowing nature so little and agreeing so poorly on the meaning of the word “law,” it would be quite difficult to come to some common understanding regarding a good definition of natural law. Thus all those definitions that are found in books have, over and above a lack of uniformity, the added fault of being drawn from several branches of knowledge that men do not naturally have, and from advantages the idea of which they cannot conceive until after having left the state of nature. Writers begin by seeking the rules on which, for the common utility, it would be appropriate for men to agree among themselves; and then they give the name natural law to the collection of these rules, with no other proof than the good that presumably would result from their universal observance. Surely this is a very convenient way to compose definitions and explain the nature of virtually arbitrary views of what is seemly.2
Rousseau also believed that the civil society as constituted was corrupt, had no moral claim, and, in fact, enslaved the individual to existing law and other men. For the most part, the history of society and government was mainly a succession of unequal systems and arrangements, one built atop another, followed by revolution.
Rousseau pointed to two obvious kinds of inequality, the second of which becomes the focus of his academic progeny: “I conceive of two kinds of inequality in the human species: one that I call natural and physical, because it is established by nature and consists in the difference of age, health, bodily strength, and qualities of mind or soul. The other may be called moral or political inequality, because it depends on a kind of convention and is established, or at least authorized, by the consent of men. This latter type of inequality consists in the different privileges enjoyed by some at the expense of others, such as being richer, more honored, more powerful than they, or even causing themselves to be obeyed by them.”3
This goes to the heart of it. Rousseau’s objection was with the nature of humankind. Individuals are different in infinite ways. That has always been and always will be the case. But what binds individuals is exactly what Rousseau criticized. As John Locke put it: “The state of Nature has a law of Nature to govern it, which obliges everyone, and reason, which is that law, teaches all mankind who will but consult it, that being all equal and independent, no one ought to harm another in life, health, liberty or possessions. . . .”4
Rousseau elaborated further on life’s inequities:
[I]t is easy to see that, among the differences that distinguish men, several of them pass for natural ones that are exclusively the work of habit and of the various sorts of life that men adopt in society. Thus a robust or delicate temperament, and the strength or weakness that depend on it, frequently derive more from the harsh or effeminate way in which one has been raised than from the primitive constitution of one’s body. The same holds for mental powers; and not only does education make a difference between cultivated minds and those that are not, it also augments the difference among the former in proportion to their culture; for were a giant and a dwarf walking on the same road, each step they both took would give a fresh advantage to the giant. Now if one compares the prodigious diversity of educations and lifestyles to be found in the different orders of the civil state with the simplicity and uniformity of animal and savage life, where all nourish themselves from the same foods, live in the same manner, and do exactly the same things, it will be understood how much less the difference between one man and another must be in the state of nature than in that society, and how much natural inequality must increase in the human species through inequality occasioned by social institutions. . . .5
For Rousseau, where there was private property, economic progress, competition, and wealth creation, there was no escaping economic or social inequality, which he saw as a toxic injustice. It was endemic to the social condition that existed in increasingly complex economies and societies. He wrote: “As long as men were content with the rustic huts, as long as they were limited to making their clothing out of skins sewn together with thorns or fish bones, adorning themselves with feathers and shells, painting their bodies with various colors, perfecting or embellishing their bows and arrows, using sharp-edged stones to make some fishing canoes or some crude musical instruments; in a word, as long as they applied themselves exclusively to tasks that a single individual could do and to the arts that did not require the cooperation of several hands, they lived as free, healthy, good, and happy as they could in accordance with their nature; and they continued to enjoy among themselves the sweet rewards of independent intercourse. But as soon as one man needed the help of another, as soon as one man realized that it was useful for a single individual to have provisions for two, equality disappeared, property came into existence, labor became necessary. Vast forests were transformed into smiling fields that had to be watered with men’s sweat, and in which slavery and misery were soon seen to germinate and grow with the crops.”6
Of course, for America’s Founders, equality was not about material equity or social uniformity, truly absurd notions then as now for their impossibility, which should be self-evident, but the principle of unalienable rights for each individual and the impartial application of just laws. Rousseau wrote further: “If we follow the progress of inequality [in the history of governing systems], we will find that the first stage was the establishment of the law and of the right of property, the second stage was the institution of magistracy, and the third and final stage was the transformation of legitimate power into arbitrary power. Thus the condition of rich and poor was authorized by the first epoch, that of the strong and weak by the second, and that of master and slave by the third: the ultimate degree of inequality and the limit to which all the others finally lead, until new revolutions completely dissolve the government or bring it neater to a legitimate institution.”7
Rousseau then contended that the way around this desolation is for the individual not to focus on his own vanity, needs, wants, etc., but instead to identify with the general will, the public good, and the welfare of society—an egalitarian utopia. Thus individual rights and freedom are renounced and transferred to the collective, where the individual is forced to be free, forming a whole person through the collective. In Discourse on Political Economy (1755), Rousseau explained: “The body politic, taken individually, can be considered to be like a body that is organized, living, and similar to that of a man. The sovereign power represents the head; the laws and customs are the brain, source of the nerves, and seat of the understanding, the will, and the senses, of which the judges and magistrates are the organs; the commerce, industry, and agriculture are the mouth and stomach that prepare the common subsistence; the public finances are the blood that is discharged by a wise economy, performing the functions of the heart in order to distribute nourishment and life throughout the body; the citizens are the body and limbs that make the machine move, live, and work and that cannot be harmed in any part without a painful impression immediately being transmitted to the brain, if the animal is in a state of good health. The life of both [the human body and the state] is the self common to the whole, the reciprocal sensibility, and the internal coordination of all the parts. What if this communication were to cease, if the formal unity were to disappear, and if contiguous parts were to be related to one another solely by their juxtaposition? The man is dead or the state is dissolved.”8
Like the recurring theme with modern progressives, Rousseau compared the body politic to the human body, where in order to function as a perfect state, the state must be composed of all the parts of society. Furthermore, the best society is where the individual is at one with the state. Indeed, in his second essential rule of public economy, Rousseau expounded further on what becomes increasingly evident—his prescription for tyranny. “Do you want the general will to be accomplished? Make all private wills be in conformity with it. And since virtue is merely this conformity of the private to the general will, in a word, make virtue reign.”9 The duty of the citizen, then, is above all else to the collective good. And when governing officials are cultivating the collective good, they and the politics of governing are said to be less consequential. “[W]hen citizens love their duty, and when those entrusted with public authority sincerely apply themselves to nurturing this love through their example and efforts, all difficulties vanish and administration takes on an easiness that enables it to dispense with that shady art whose murkiness constitutes its entire mystery. . . . Public mores stand in for the genius of the leaders; and the more virtue reigns the less talents are needed. . . .”10 Moreover, Rousseau declared: “It is not enough to say to the citizens: be good. They must be taught to be so; and example itself, which is in this respect the first lesson, is not the only means to be used. Love of country is the most effective, for as I have already said, every man is virtuous when his private will is in conformity with the general will in all things, and we willingly want what is wanted by the people we love.”11
When it comes to government, Rousseau argued that the legislative power belongs to the people but the “supreme administration” or executive, which carries out government administration, does not belong to the people, for its task, albeit important, is nothing more than ministerial. In “Discourse on Social Contract” (1762), Rousseau wrote: “We have seen the legislative power belongs to the people and can belong to it alone. On the contrary . . . executive power cannot belong to the people at large in its role as legislator or sovereign, since this power consists solely of particular acts that are not within the province of the law, nor consequently of the sovereign, none of whose acts can avoid being laws.”12 Rousseau explained that there is a “public force” that “must have an agent of its own that unifies it and gets it working in accordance with the directions of the general will, that serves as a means of communication between the state and the sovereign, and that accomplishes in the public person just about what the union of soul and body accomplishes in man. This is the reason for having government in the state, something often badly confused with the sovereign, of which it is merely the servant.”13
“What then is government?” asked Rousseau. “An intermediate body established between the subjects and the sovereign for their mutual communication and charged with the execution of the laws and the preservation of liberty, both civil and political.”14 “The government receives from the sovereign the orders it gives the people, and for the state to be in good equilibrium, there must, all things considered, be an equality between the output or the power of the government, taken by itself, and the output or power of the citizens, who are sovereigns on the one hand and subjects on the other.”15
Rousseau contended that the democratically elected sovereign (the legislature) represents the will of the people, which the unelected executive is compelled to follow. “[T]he trustees of the executive power are not the masters of the populace but its officers; that it can establish and remove them when it pleases. . . .” The trustees simply obey and implement the general will. “[T]hey merely fulfill their duty as citizens, without in any way having the right to dispute over the conditions.”16 However, how is the “general will” discerned? After all, Rousseau asserted that “[t]here is often a great deal of difference between the will of all and the general will. The latter considers only the general interest, whereas the former considers private interest and is merely the sum of private wills. But remove from these same wills the pluses and minuses that cancel each other out, and what remains as the sum of the differences is the general will.”17
Of course, Rousseau’s formulation is incongruous. If the legislature (the sovereign) represents the will of the people, but the will of the people is not necessarily the same as the general will, and if the sole job of the executive (the government) is to institute the decisions of the legislature (the will of the people), then who discerns what the general will is and institutes it? Hence much governing discretion exists in the ambiguity of Rousseau’s construct, particularly respecting the executive, even though Rousseau clearly opposed the tyranny of the government. However, he would not reject the totalitarianism of the collective, for it is the manifestation of the general will, which is infallible. In fact, among the adherents to Rousseau’s teachings was Maximilien François Marie Isidore de Robespierre (1758–1794), a bloodthirsty leader of the radical Jacobins during the French Revolution’s Reign of Terror.
Consequently, Rousseau simultaneously preaches the individual’s subordination to society and the illegitimacy of social restraint on the individual. Indeed, because Rousseau rejected precepts of natural law and actual individualism for a socialist mysticism, it follows that he must also reject the governing construct that secures individual free will, ordered liberty, and the moral order—namely, constitutional republicanism. This helps explain the Progressive Era mind-set and approach that followed one hundred years later—that is, arguing for more direct democracy (in the name of “the will of the people”) while championing centralized, autocratic rule (in the name of the “general will”), an impossible notion that plagues American society and others to this day.
We are next compelled to turn to German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), whose writings held great sway over not only Marx and Friedrich Engels (1820–1895), but also American progressives, including Croly, Wilson, Dewey, and Weyl. Hegel provided the most detailed exposition of what was known as the period of German idealism. Hegel’s influence reaches deep into modern American society. He was a prolific author on many subjects beyond political philosophy; therefore, it will be necessary to limit our scrutiny.
As a starting point, Hegel is legendary for, among other things, developing the philosophy of historical progress like no other before him. In brief, Hegel argued that he is not inventing a new philosophy but describing the existing reality. The history of the world is said to be progress toward conscious freedom and a state of harmony. Conscious freedom is based on reason and spiritual principles (meaning self-realization), as opposed to social customs, rituals, and habits, which subordinate the individual’s intellect, reasoning, and reflection. Hegel argued that human development, or the lack thereof, changes from one historical period to the next. Some societies are stuck in their own history, and others progress over time, but the trajectory of history generally is toward the ideal state. The method of individual and societal progress involves a dialectic process—some reasoned, some unconscious—in which opposites are in a constant state of conflict, synthesizing into ever-higher truths, which eventually lead to a fully developed state—the “final end.” That which appears irrational in a state will eventually be brought into harmony. And this, contended Hegel, is the fact of human history and evolution.
Furthermore, the state is ultimately the external force (as opposed to eternal force) through which the individual finds his actualization—liberty, happiness, and fulfillment. As such, the individual is not consumed with his own existence and private affairs (“subjective thought”). Rather, by way of the state, the individual sees beyond self and becomes a citizen of the state, whose reality is part of a universalized whole and collective life, through which the individual learns what is reasonable (“objective thought”). This is the final end sought by the individual and the state—the consciousness of mind and freedom. In this way, the individual serves and benefits from the state and vice versa. That which came before effectively vanishes. Therefore, man progressively moves away from the state of nature to the final end through reason.
In Elements of the Philosophy of Right (1820), Hegel wrote of the ideal state thus: “The state is the realized ethical idea or ethical spirit. It is the will which manifests itself, makes itself clear and visible, substantiates itself. It is the will which thinks and knows. The state finds in ethical custom its direct and unreflected existence, and its indirect and reflected existence in the self-consciousness of the individual and in his knowledge and activity. Self-consciousness in the form of social disposition has its substantive freedom in the state, as the essence, purpose, and product of its activity. . . . The state, which is the realized substantive will, having its reality in the particular self-consciousness raised to the plane of the universal, is absolutely rational. This substantive unity is its own motive and absolute end. In this end freedom attains its highest right. This end has the highest right over the individual, whose highest duty in turn is to be a member of the state.”18
Therefore, the individual is again subservient to the state, for the state can never attain the lofty utopian heights devised by Hegel, and the individual will never be adequate to the cause. Meanwhile, the individual’s independence and free will are absorbed by the state in the name of community and general welfare. Indeed, the unity of the “actualized” individual with the ideal state requires the abandonment of the past. Hegel found no relevance at all in the origin and founding principles of a nation, except to understand the next step in the historical process and the synthesizing that comes from dialecticism. In fact, Hegel took a direct shot at the notion of eternal natural law and rights, as well as the social contract, which, of course, are the bases of America’s founding and the Declaration of Independence. He insisted that the only legitimate form of thought involves the application of “the science of the state.” Sound familiar? This is a constant theme among American progressives—the diminution of the individual and the rejection of America’s heritage. Hegel went on: “Rationality, viewed abstractly, consists in the thorough unity of universality and individuality. Taken concretely, and from the standpoint of the content, it is the unity of objective freedom with the subjective freedom, of the general substantive will with the individual consciousness and the individual will seeking particular ends. From the standpoint of the form it consists in action determined by thought-out or universal laws and principles.—This idea of the state is not concerned with the historical origin of either the state in general or of any particular state with its special rights and characters. Hence, it is indifferent whether the state arose out of the patriarchal condition, out of fear or confidence, or out of the corporation. It does not care whether the basis of state rights is declared to be in the divine, or in a positive right, or contract, or custom. When we are dealing simply with the science of the state, these things are mere appearances, and belong to history. The causes or grounds of the authority of an actual state, in so far as they are required at all, must be derived from the forms of right, which have validity in the state.”19
Of course, Hegel found no perfect state, for none has ever existed, not then or before. But there are positives that exist in every state, and it is these positives that are the building blocks to the next level and, eventually, to the final end. Hegel explained: “The state as a completed reality is the ethical whole and the actualization of freedom. It is the absolute purpose of reason that freedom should be actualized. The state is the spirit, which abides in the world and there realizes itself consciously; while in nature it is realized only as the other of itself or the sleeping spirit. Only when it is present in consciousness, knowing itself as an existing object, is it the state. In thinking of freedom we must not take our departure from individuality or the individual’s self-consciousness, but from the essence of self-consciousness. Let man be aware of it or not, this essence realizes itself as an independent power, in which particular persons are only phases. The state is the march of God in the world; its ground or cause is the power of reason realizing itself as will. When thinking of the idea of the state, we must not have in mind any particular state, or particular institution, but must rather contemplate the idea, this actual God, by itself. Although the state may be declared to violate right principles and to be defective in various ways, it always contains the essential elements of its existence, if, that is to say, it belongs to the full formed state of our own time. But as it is more easy to detect short-comings than to grasp the positive meaning, one easily falls into the mistake of dwelling so much upon special aspects of the state as to overlook its inner organic being. The state is not a work of art. It is in the world, in the sphere of caprice, accident, and error. Evil behavior can doubtless disfigure it in many ways, but the ugliest man, the criminal, the invalid, the cripple, are living men. The positive thing, the life, is present in spite of defects, and it is with this affirmative that we have here to deal.”20
Time and again, Hegel described the dialectic of opposites posed against one another as a productive process that leads to the actualized person and state. He further illustrated this point by also comparing the state to a living organism. “Political disposition is given definite content by the different phases of the organism of the state. This organism is the development of the idea into its differences, which are objectively actualized. These differences are the different functions, affairs, and activities of state. By means of them the universal uninterruptedly produces itself, by a process which is a necessary one, since these various offices proceed from the nature of conception.”21 “The state is an organism or the development of the idea into its differences. These different sides are the different functions, affairs and activities of state by means of which the universal unceasingly produces itself by a necessary process. At the same time it is self-contained, since it is presupposed in its own productive activity. This organism is the political constitution. It proceeds eternally out of the state, just as the state in turn is self-contained by means of the constitution. If these two things fall apart, and make the different aspects independent, the unity produced by the constitution is no longer established. The true relation is illustrated by the fable of the belly and the limbs. Although the parts of an organism do not constitute an identity, yet it is of such a nature that, if one of its parts makes itself independent, all must be harmed. . . .”22 “The idealism, which constitutes sovereignty, is that point of view in accordance with which the so-called parts of an animal organism are not parts but members of organic elements. Their isolation or independent subsistence would be a disease. . . .”23
Given Hegel’s philosophy of history and historical progress, and the incompleteness of one historical period to the next, clearly no state has reached such a status and, in reality, no state ever will. Therefore, while preaching that his thinking is not about creating a philosophy but understanding reality, is not Hegel doing both, including inventing the ultimate abstraction—the “final end”? Indeed, up to this point his argument leads to fundamental ambiguities, which raise several questions. For example, how is the individual or the citizenry to know when society has reached the final end? How is this decided? Who decides? And if the final end has been reached, then what? Heaven on earth? Furthermore, is the individual to abandon his “subjective thought” and, therefore, his actual individuality, for the “objective thought” of a flawed or imperfect state that has not reached the final end? Yet how is the final end to be achieved if the individual does not submit to the collective subjective thought in advance of the final end—that is, must he submit to a pre–final end state? And if he does, how does becoming at one with such a flawed or imperfect state contribute to productive historical synthesizing and lead to harmony when it will likely lead to the opposite—the perpetuation of a flawed or imperfect state?
In his book The Open Society and Its Enemies (1945), Karl Popper (1902–1994), an Austrian-British philosopher and strong Hegel critic, exposed Hegel’s illogic: “Hegel’s intention is to operate freely with all contradictions. ‘All things are contradictory in themselves,’ he insists, in order to defend a position which means the end not only of all science, but of all rational argument. And the reason why he wishes to admit contradictions is that he wants to stop rational argument, and with it scientific and intellectual progress. By making argument and criticism impossible, he intends to make his own philosophy proof against all criticism, so that it may establish itself as a reinforced dogmatism, secure from every attack, and the insurmountable summit of all philosophical development.”24
Hegel proved Popper’s position when he, among other things, disparaged natural law, external truths, divine rights, etc., as fundamentally mythological and superficial. “Concerning [a] constitution, as concerning reason itself, there has in modern times been an endless babble, which has in Germany been more insipid than anywhere else. With us there are those who have persuaded themselves that it is best even at the very threshold of government to understand before all other things what a constitution is. And they think that they have furnished invincible proof that religion and piety should be the basis of all their shallowness. It is small wonder if this prating has made for reasonable mortals the words reason, illumination, right, constitution, liberty, mere empty sounds, and men should have become ashamed to talk about political constitution. At least as one effect of this superfluity, we may hope to see the conviction becoming general, that a philosophic acquaintance with such topics cannot proceed from mere reasons, ends, grounds, and utilities, much less from feeling, love, and inspiration, but only out of the conception. It will be a fortunate thing, too, if those who maintain the divine to be inconceivable and an acquaintance with the truth to be wasted effort, were henceforth to refrain from breaking in upon the argument. What of undigested rhetoric and edification they manufacture out of these feelings can at least lay no claim to philosophic notice.”25
Hegel then denounced the doctrine of separation of powers, the purpose of which is to contain the power of the state and protect the individual from the tyranny that typically arises from the centralization of power. “Amongst current ideas must be mentioned . . . that regarding the necessary division of the functions of the state. This is a most important feature, which, when taken in its true sense, is rightly regarded as the guarantee of public freedom. But of this those, who think to speak out of inspiration and love, neither know nor will know anything, for in it lies the element of determination through the way of reason. The principle of the separation of functions contains the essential element of difference, that is to say, of rationality. But as apprehended by the abstract understanding it is false when it leads to the view that these several functions are absolutely independent, and it is one-sided when it considers the relation of these functions to one another as negative and mutually limiting. In such a view each function in hostility to or fear of the others acts towards them as towards an evil. Each resolves to oppose the others, effecting by this opposition of forces a general balance, it may be, but not a living unity. . . . To take the negative as the point of departure, and set up as primary the willing of evil and consequent mistrust, and then on this supposition cunningly to devise breakwaters, which in turn require other breakwaters to check their activity, any such contrivance is the mark of a thought, which is at the level of the negative understanding, and of a feeling, which is characteristic of the rabble. . . .”26
Consequently, despite his extensive argument about conscious freedom (reason and spirituality), a community of the whole (egalitarianism), the ambiguity of the practical form of the final end (the eventual perfect state), and the condemnation of constitutional republicanism (as disparate parts of the same organ devouring itself), Hegel finally revealed himself as a monarchist. “The legislative corresponds to universality, and the executive to particularity; but the judicial is not the third element of the conception. The individuality uniting the other two lies beyond these spheres. . . . The function of the prince, as the subjectivity with which rests the final decision. In this function the other two are brought into an individual unity. It is at once the culmination and beginning of the whole. This is constitutional monarchy.”27 Hence Hegel’s final end is an all-knowing, all-powerful monarchy. “The perfecting of the state into a constitutional monarchy is the work of the modern world, in which the substantive idea has attained the infinite form. This is the descent of the spirit of the world into itself, the free perfection by virtue of which the idea sets loose from itself its own elements, and nothing but its own elements, and makes them totalities . . .”28
To the critics of monarchy, Hegel wrote: “The conception of monarch offers great difficulty to abstract reasoning and to the reflective methods of the understanding. The understanding never gets beyond isolated determinations, and ascribes merit to mere reasons, or finite points of view and what can be derived from them. Thus the dignity of the monarch is represented as something derivative not only in its form but also in its essential character. . . . If by the phrase ‘sovereignty of the people’ is to be understood a republic, or more precisely a democracy, all that is necessary has already been said.” Hegel is talking about his previous denunciation of separation of powers, etc. In defense of monarchy Hegel added: “When a people is not a patriarchal tribe, having passed from the primitive condition, which made the forms of aristocracy and democracy possible, and is represented not as in a willful and unorganized condition, but as a self-developed truly organic totality, in such a people sovereignty is the personality of the whole, and exists, too, in a reality, which is proportionate to the conception, the person of the monarch.”29
Popper saw the danger inherent in Hegel’s historic dialectic: “I have tried to show the identity of Hegelian historicism with the philosophy of modern totalitarianism. This identity is seldom clearly enough realized. Hegelian historicism has become the language of wide circles of intellectuals, even of the candid ‘anti-fascists’ and ‘leftist.’ It is so much a part of their intellectual atmosphere that, for many, it is no more noticeable, and its appalling dishonesty no more remarkable, than the air they breathe.” Popper went on: “The Hegelian farce has done enough harm. We must stop it.” Condemning the intellectuals and teachers who ignore the warnings about Hegel’s thinking, Popper declared that “they neglected them not so much at their own peril (they did not fare badly) as at the peril of those whom they taught, and at the peril of mankind.”30
This brings us unavoidably to a concise examination of Karl Marx, since his effect on American progressivism, among other intellectual and political movements in other societies, is undeniable. Marx, who was also a German philosopher, carefully studied Hegel’s writings, as did his frequent partner, Friedrich Engels. “Marxism’s” intellectual starting point is nearly indistinguishable from Hegel’s. Marx also saw history as the past and the present washed away through the perfecting of society. However, Marx argued that Hegel’s idealistic historicism, and its emphasis on legal and political conditions, failed to account sufficiently for the most important characteristic of historical progress—economics. Marx insisted that economics is the key to society and life, or what would be defined as material historicism or dialectical materialism. Mankind starts with needs, which evolve into conscious production; Marx contended that man is not about the natural individual, the rational individual, or the political life but rather man as he exists, thereby attempting to distinguish his own philosophy from, say, Rousseau, Hegel, and others. Marx asserted that man’s life revolves around labor and production, and conditions external to himself, to which he must adapt. Thus the conditions of production determine economic relations, and history shows that these economic relations have been about class struggle.
In The Communist Manifesto (1848), Marx wrote about material historicism accordingly: “All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change, consequent upon the change of historical conditions.”31 More specifically, “[t]he history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, open fight, that each time ended, either in the revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes. In earlier epochs of history we find almost everywhere a complicated arrangement of society into various orders, manifold gradation of social rank. In ancient Rome we have patricians, knights, plebeians, slaves; in the middle ages, feudal lords, vassals, guild masters, journeymen, apprentices, serfs; in almost all these classes, again, subordinate gradations.”32 Thus Marx’s focus on the “division of labor,” the “fragmentation of productive forces,” and the “mode of production” of the “species-being” known as human beings. Along with private property rights, he claimed that they create alienation and the artificial sense of individual purpose and private existence.
Let me suggest, however, that the history of man and his struggles is diverse and mixed, well beyond materialism and economics. Struggles within societies, struggles between societies, struggles among and between groups of individuals in societies, and struggles between individuals in societies may be based on race, religion, tribalism, mysticism, geography, or wealth, or some combination of factors, including those that may not be known to or understood by contemporary man. They are rational and irrational, intentional and accidental, historic and modern. Furthermore, all of life is not about struggles among and between people or forced associations, economic or otherwise. Individuals can choose their own fate; they can choose to associate with whom they wish and in a variety of ways, unrelated to production, materialism, or satisfying their own economic needs.
Nonetheless, Marx wrote, “The modern bourgeois society that has sprouted from the ruins of feudal society has not done away with class antagonism. It has but established new classes, new conditions of oppression, new forms of struggle in place of the old ones. Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeois, possesses, however, this distinctive feature; it has simplified the class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other: Bourgeoisie [the capitalists, the owners of property and the means of production] and Proletariat [the laborer, the industrial working class] . . . Modern industry has established the world’s market, for which the discovery of America paved the way. The market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to communication by land. This development has, in its turn, reacted on the extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation and railways extended, in the same proportion the bourgeoisie developed, increased its capital, and pushed into the background every class handed down from the Middle Ages. We see, therefore, how the modern bourgeoisie is itself the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.”33
Marx asserted that it is the bourgeoisie that benefits greatly from the status quo, and the proletariat that suffers from it. “The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors,’ and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, callous ‘cash payment.’ It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom—Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, brutal exploitation. The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers. The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.”34
Moreover, wrote Marx, the bourgeoisie must continually expand its holdings and reach, all the time exploiting the labor of the proletariat to enrich itself. “The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. . . . Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation, distinguish the bourgeoisie epoch from all earlier ones. . . . The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.”35 Consequently, capitalism replaces feudalism, the former even more reprehensible in Marx’s eyes than the latter. Feudalism’s productive forces were “burst asunder” and “[i]nto their place stepped free competition, accompanied by a social and political constitution adapted to it, and by the economical and political sway of the bourgeois class. A similar movement is going on before our own eyes. Modern bourgeois society with its relations of production, of exchange, and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.”36
For the proletariat, there is no escaping the bourgeois state as it covers and controls all corners of the society. “In proportion as the bourgeoisie, i.e., capital, is developed, in the same proportion is the proletariat, the modern working class, developed; a class of laborers, who live only so long as they find work, and who find work only so long as their labor increases capital. These laborers, who must sell themselves piecemeal, are a commodity, like every other article of commerce, and are consequently exposed to all the vicissitudes of competition, to all the fluctuations of the market. . . . Modern industry has converted the little workshop of the patriarchal master into the great factory of the industrial capitalist. Masses of laborers, crowded into the factory, are organized like soldiers. As privates of the industrial army they are placed under the command of a perfect hierarchy of officers and sergeants. Not only are they slaves of the bourgeois class, and of the bourgeois State, they are daily and hourly enslaved by the machine, by the over-seer, and, above all, by the individual bourgeois manufacturer himself. The more openly this despotism proclaims gain to be its end and aim, the more petty, the more hateful and the more embittering it is. . . . No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer so far at an end that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portions of the bourgeoisie; the landlord, the shopkeeper, the pawnbroker, etc.”37
Consequently, the property owner, businessman, landlord, etc., are cast as the evil, cold-blooded, plundering taskmasters, and the employee and laborer are portrayed as noble, compassionate, powerless, abused, etc. Of course, human beings are not so easily assigned to such ranks and classes by such preconceived and stereotypical characteristics. In fact, most “proletariats” do not feel terrorized by the “bourgeoisie” and therefore do not spontaneously rise to the revolutionary cause; also, most bourgeoisies are not terrorizing their employees or tenants. On the contrary; industrial society is not inherently wicked. It has improved the standard of living for most of the population in a complex society—“bourgeoisie” and “proletariat” alike—where the comforts of a developed economy are available to virtually all who participate in it.
Indeed, the entire nomenclature and class identification devised by Marx is terribly flawed. For example, is there a monolithic, alienated class of workers, or proletariat? French philosopher and journalist Raymond Aron (1905–1983), in his book The Opium of the Intellectuals (1955), wrote of the myth of the proletariat: “Why is it so often considered difficult to define the working class? No definition can trace precisely the limits of a category. At what stage in the hierarchy does the skilled worker cease to belong to the proletariat? Is the manual worker in the public services a proletarian even though he receives his wages from the State and not from a private employer? Do the wage-earners in commerce, whose hands manipulate the objects manufactured by others, belong to the same groups as the wage-earners in industry? There can be no dogmatic answer to such queries: they have no common criterion. According to whether one considered the nature of the work, the method and the amount of the remuneration, the style of life, one will or will not include certain workers in the category of proletarians. The garage mechanic, a wage-earning manual worker, is in a different position and has a different outlook on society from the worker employed on an assembly-line in a motor-car factory. . . .”38
Aron illuminated further: “The contempt with which the intellectuals are inclined to regard everything connected with commerce and industry has always seemed to me itself contemptible. That the same people who look down on engineers or industrialists profess to recognize universal man in the worker at his lathe or on the assembly line, seems to me endearing but somewhat surprising. Neither the division of labor nor the raising of the standard of living contributes towards this universalism. . . . Philosophers have the right to hope that the proletarian will not become integrated with the existing order but that he will preserve himself for revolutionary action; but they cannot [in modern times] represent as fact the universality of the industrial worker.”39 “Not all proletarians have the feeling of being exploited or oppressed.”40 “In countries where the economy continues to expand, where the standard of living has risen, why should the real liberties of the proletariat, however partial, be sacrificed to a total liberation which turns out to be indistinguishable from the omnipotence of the State?”41
For Marx, the existing institutions have been set up by the ruling class. Therefore, society exists not as a matter of just law, but at the will of the bourgeoisie. The law is nothing more than the means by which the bourgeoisie satisfies its own interests and happiness—that is, the control of production, economic domination, and private property. “All property relations in the past have continually been subject to historical change, consequent upon the change in historical conditions. . . . In this sense the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.”42 Then, like Rousseau and Hegel before him, and the progressives decades later, Marx attacked natural law and the principles of individual liberty: “The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property—historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production—the misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.”43
Marx also targeted education, for it promotes the status quo; it is only useful if applied as a tool for social justice, a view largely adopted by American intellectuals and educators during the Progressive Era. “And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention, direct or indirect, of society by means of schools, etc.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.”44
Marx’s goal was not to build on the past or the present, but to break absolutely from them. “The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages . . . the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms. The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional property relations; no wonder that its development involves the most radical rupture with traditional ideas.”45 And the manner in which this revolution and thorough transformation will occur? “The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie; to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organized as the ruling class; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property and on the conditions of the bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.”46
Therefore, by violence and force, at least at the start, economics, party, politics, and law will all become centralized within the state, until the perfect egalitarian society is established and the individual is emancipated from the productive process, at which point the state itself will wither away. “When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared and all production has been concentrated in the hands of the vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so-called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organize itself as a class, if, by means of revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms, and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.”47
Popper rightly condemned Marx as a false prophet. “He was a prophet of the course of history, and his prophecies did not come true; but this is not my main accusation. It is much more important that he misled scores of intelligent people into believing that historical prophecy is the scientific way of approaching social problems. . . . Socialism was to be developed from its Utopian stage to its scientific stage; it was to be based upon the scientific method of analyzing cause and effect, and upon scientific prediction. And since he assumed prediction in the field of society to be the same as historical prophecy, scientific socialism was to be based upon a study of the historical causes and historical effect, and finally upon the prophecy of its own advent.”48 “There is no reason why we should believe that, of all sciences, social science is capable of realizing the age-old dream of revealing what the future has in store for us. . . .”49 This is a spectacular understatement. Between 85 million and 100 million deaths are attributed to communism’s workers’ paradise. And there are the infinite horror stories in places like the People’s Republic of China, the former Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba, Venezuela, and Zimbabwe.50
Nonetheless, out of these monumentally flawed theories of human behavior and political organization, and the misinterpretation and misapplication of human history, was born the American progressive movement, the modern forms of which plague the civil society and imperil its existence.