why marxism is inherently flawed

upon revisiting a previous blog entry the other day, i reread my summary of marx's epistemology, largely quoted from a marx reader. what struck me was how philosophically naive it was. so, rather than regurgitating common arguments against marxism (mostly from the capitalist perspective of why marxism cannot function as an optimal economy), i'm going to dissect his epistemology and its implications.

marx's epistemology: "perception (is) an interaction between us, the subject, and the material object. this object (the world around us) becomes transformed in the process of being known. our perception does not discover the truth of the world, just its appearance. thus our knowledge too cannot be the truth. instead, our knowledge consists of practical methods by which we can manipulate and gain control over the natural world. our knowledge of the world is not passive, it is purposive. it is a two-way process -- active and reactive -- in line with the dialectic. the synthesis of scientific knowledge we thus gain enables us to impose patterns of order and to manipulate or anticipate the workings of nature. this process does not arrive at the truth, as it is usually conceived. 'the question of whether objective truth can be attributed to human thought has nothing to do with theory, it is a purely practical question. the truth is the reality and power of thought, which can only be demonstrated in practice.' this leads marx to his famous conclusion: 'philosophers have previously only interpreted the world, but the real task is to change it.'"

the problem with marx is that he assumed 1) science and technology could eventually control nature and that we could approach this goal uniformly and incrementally without any setbacks, and 2) that this desire people have to control nature is compatible or even complementary to a communal existence. what happened is 1) science and technology eventually backfired by drastically -- possibly permanently -- altering our environment and resources, and 2) people only have the incentive to control nature as part of capitalist modes of operation. here is the implausibility of the utopia: the utopia is only plausible when man has convinced himself that he has a) reached a technological ceiling, and b) has fulfilled his pursuit of happiness. B is completely arbitrary and can never be fulfilled because people will long for different eras and cultures corresponding to different phases of technology. A is only a theoretical idea, as technology will never hit a true ceiling. so, that leaves us with a utopia wherein everyone is content at a limited level of technology (living like communist or socialist existentialists, basically) -- this scenario cannot exist even in theory according to marx's own epistemology. however, if it were to exist, it would soon collapse because 1) there are still problems that need to be solved, like diseases, and 2) there is the incentive to innovate (if not to solve problems, then to improve on what we already have that is currently considered acceptable but not optimal), and everyone (or at least, a decent number of people) innovating creates an economic system of competition and thus markets, turning the supposed utopia into a form of capitalism. i suppose marx could conceive of something with equal growth across the board, so society could more forward together as equals or "each to his own", but since the plausibility of have the utopia wherein everyone is content with the current level of technology existing at even one point in time, let alone in continuing stagnancy, is non-existent, so having it unilaterally move forward without a significant change of people's worth with respect to each other is utterly insane. furthermore, this is assuming to begin with that the economic system of the supposed utopia would have to be worldwide to be successful, for the existence, outside of utopian countries, of any society in which innovation and growth occurred would be seen as gaining power, both for pleasure and political/economic purposes, over the utopian societies, and these societies would have to respond, if not out of desire for better material goods, then for their own survival, which would mean discarding the utopia in favor of a more competitive economic system. also, even if a utopia could exist with A being fulfilled, non-technological innovation would create markets, at least in part, to fulfill the problem of B, thus causing a form of capitalism to emerge.

#1 -- the growth of science and technology and the accompanying alteration of our planet -- even though it was done mostly through capitalism instead of communism, still debunks marx's epistemology and proves it to be, in essence, a form a species self-annihilation rather than exultation. the ideas of sustainable living and a symbiotic relationship with nature are inherently anti-marxist both in conflicting with both marx's epistemology in controlling nature via science and marx's idea of a utopia, since having a symbiotic relationship with nature means allowing nature to do some destructive and detrimental acts towards humans, e.g., natural cyclical wildfires. now, i am aware that marxism has been amended via various forms of eco-socialism, but these movements seem to be in conflict with marx's epistemology. one of the justifications i have heard regarding marx's supposed eco-friendly ways is that marx mentioned each generation passing down the planet in better condition to the next. but this doesn't mean marx was an environmentalist, all it means is #1: science and technology could eventually control nature and that we could approach this goal uniformly and incrementally without any setbacks. so, reconciling marx's ideas with 21st century movements like the green party cannot occur without fundamentally altering the foundations of marxism; the greatest threat to humanity right now is the ongoing environmental change, and conventional marxism does not carry the sentiment of cooperating with environmental movements. now, i understand that marxism, particularly in recent decades, has come to be a sort of wastebasket of "anti-capitalism" so that everything wrong with capitalism can be corrected by amending marxism in response. so i ask, why can't capitalism be made "right" or "responsible" similarly? people then point to examples both in theory and in practice to refute this, but then anyone can do the same with marxism, so who knows which side is right (probably neither)? it seems that since there is no real alternative to capitalism (it doesn't seem like it can be done "responsibly" either) and that environmental parties don't inspire revolutions or monumental movements, that the intellectual is forced by default to embrace some form of amended or revised marxism, which i think is a knee-jerk, reactionary way to respond to humanity's problems.

anyway, because of the absence of true environmentalism, conventional marxism (and by conventional, i mean amended versions that still maintain marx's original epistemology) will not prevail at any point in the 21st century. so in short, marxism failed in the 20th century because it misjudged human behavior (people are inherently greedy and relatively stupid and prejudiced (hence preventing social movements on a global scale due to the inability for people of different backgrounds/regions to unite for one cause) -- they are not made greedy by the system, contrary to what marxists want to believe about people, although the system can certainly exacerbate undesirable tendencies, sometimes to quite extreme extents -- and it will fail in the 21st century because it overestimated mankind's ability to control nature without damaging it in the process; mankind's greed (desired technology implemented through capitalism) outweighed mankind's intellect (his ability to make technologically-enhanced lifestyles sustainable and symbiotic with the environment). this sets up a devastating paradox for marxism: if mankind were truly marxist at heart, then they would have the collective intellect (meaning worldwide cooperation) necessary to subdue their inherent greedy desires for developing and using technology for short-term benefit at long-term cost (as well as for establishing one society in a position of power over other societies due to accelerated technological benefit with increased short-term reward at long-term cost, but ultimately a cost that relative to what that country gained would not outweigh the benefits of gaining power; collectively, the world's nations would lose more than they would gain long-term if one country accelerated technology for short-term benefit at long-term cost, but long-term that country would still reap more benefits than costs due to having gained power), and technology would only make incremental steps forward as no new technology would be introduced that would present a risk for long-term detriment. however, in doing so, mankind is not being materialist, but idealist (as in idealism as a philosophy of mind, not "idealistic"), as controlling one's own psychology (controlling one's greed, in this case) is not something that is naturally the result of interactions with the world (the objects of study) and our knowledge gained from those interactions. how can we fix the paradox? well, quite easily: all that would have to happen is for mankind to naturally have the optimal equilibrium between greed and intellect, because in doing so, mankind would not have to control his own psychology because his interactions with the world and the knowledge gained from that would naturally and appropriately regulate it. since this has failed to occur at any point since marx's theories were introduced to the world up to the present day, in my opinion, this is the most damning evidence against the viability of true marxism ever succeeding. marxists could counter with the following excuse: it was a lack of communication to blame, not greed. however, this was disproven as marxist revolutions occurred across a multitude of culture and countries, as enough communication existed to persuade people in these countries to buy into marxism. so what's to blame for marxism's failure within those countries? well, perhaps communication still was not optimal (which i think is a really lame excuse at this point) or there were just a few bad apples in each country who seized power and then forced an unjust system on the masses. and of course, incompetence and/or dishonesty/corruption/greed, etc. among those bad apples didn't represent how people operate in general, it *only* pertained to those political parties in power, or at most, to some sort of systemic dynamic that compels people in certain situations to display authoritarian tendencies -- marxists might say that conditions at the time of those revolutions were not conducive to true marxism, but that future conditions will be. or as zizek said when confronted with the topic during a tv interview about past horrors of marxist revolutions, he defensively replied in a look of disbelief, "something went terribly wrong." yes indeed, something did go terribly wrong in marxism's first go-round (not to mention i just saw an article on the internet a few days ago in which the cuban leader admitted that his country's economy is in extremely poor shape, as in exponentially worse than the american economy, so i guess marxism just can't succeed until capitalism is completely eliminated, hence perhaps one of the reasons why marxists are so vehement about their ideology...). or of course, you could just claim that soon after the revolutions took place, that orthodox marxism instead of true marxism became implemented, resulting in communist totalitarian regimes which were not really marxist. so, of course, the next time marxists seize power, they will have learned from this mistake and will successfully implement either true marxism or some sort of improved, amended version of it.

another thing to consider on this point of greed vs intellect. for one, it assumes that the lack of cooperation is due to greed alone. a new problem is introduced when one realizes that intellect also presents a problem in terms of distrust. in order for communication to completely work, one must assume that what is communicated is completely honest. for example, consider a situation in which there are 5 people in the world -- all scientists and engineers, working on improving technology -- and that one of them discovers something he believes to be controversial -- say something with severe bioethical implications --and thus decides not to share it with his peers, resulting in that person gaining a technological advantage over his peers and thus more power to exert over them than they can on him. so, this lack of communication is not due to greed, but due to intellect; we have to remember that each person's intellect is not just used for intellectual purposes, but also for analyzing and anticipating human behavior. as such, there is the infinite regress of "i think that you'll think that i'll think that you'll think...ad infinitum", thus accounting for a permanent instability in our notions of trust regarding other people, and hence preventing true honest communication from ever taking place. as such, the alternative to the greed vs intellect model -- communication -- is also, even in theory, deeply flawed; it cannot be a legitimate excuse for marxism's previous failures, nor can it be reason for marxism to possibly succeed in the future. also, since we can never have completely accurate translations of other languages, that presents another obstacle in hindering true communication from taking place. the only way for marxism to truly work would be for the collective unconscious and consciousness of all of humanity to be one -- we would have to be of one mind. in my view, having one mind would also entail communism, or "each to his own" as defined by a common agreement (e.g., a football lineman would be entitled to a larger daily quota of food than an average person). the inequalities that occur to do distrust and thus lack of completely honest communication, in my estimation, are more than trivial (perhaps language translation barriers are pretty trivial), and result in more inequality than a commonly agreed upon "each to his own" would allow, thus creating a system wherein a power imbalance would occur, preventing marxism from succeeding.

ok, now that i've exhausted that path, since marxism did not spread over the entire world, that sets up my theory wherein if even one country is not marxist, that it will eventually cause the downfall of marxism in all other marxist countries. so technically, marxists can wiggle out of my trap using their intellectualism to justify marxism's prior failings as a result of a lack of proper communication of intellectual material ("proper" meaning every country in the world must subscribe to marxism). this is what i call the "marxist loophole": it is a self-perpetuating propaganda machine which, via intellectualism, is able to justify its past failures and sets up a blank check for its future, so if it fails hundreds or thousands of years from now it will be able to explain its failures, and if it succeeds, it will be because its intellectual content was so powerfully convincing and due to its truthfulness and appeal that it was able to spread like wildfire across the globe until the entire world became united in the name of marxism. this gives its adherents a blank check too: the more you espouse marxism, the more likely it will come true, and if it doesn't come true in your lifetime, it was because there weren't enough people like you who advocated marxism, and if it does come true, then it was thanks to your efforts in edifying the masses about marxism. interestingly enough, the only way one could truly scientifically disprove marxism is if the mind-body problem and free will issues were resolved philosophically (marxism is supposed to be deterministic, but this is still compatible with both scenarios of free will being true or false) and then supported with universal empirical evidence disproving the ability of marxism to succeed. but come to think of it, when was the last time you heard a marxist dwell on the topics of philosophy of mind or philosophy of action? the answer is *none* (well, except maybe zizek who dabbles in cognitive science every now and then, but never to my knowledge has intertwined any of it with supporting his belief in marxism), because discussing them would effectively neutralize their loophole (although not disprove it) by basically saying, "until we solve these problems, we can't verify whether marxism is actually a viable economic theory." so marxists would reply, "well, since you've been stuck on these problems for hundreds of years and don't appear to be making much progress or have a solution ready in the near future, we're going to stick to our paradigm for explaining how the world works." and off the two parties will go, one departing to philosophy classes, and the other to social science/humanities theory classes (except for the lone philosophy class on marx or general 19th century philosophy ;-)).

as a consolation of sorts, ultimately, imo marx's epistemology and utopia will be realized one day in a limited and amended form in that man will be able to control nature enough so that it can keep everyone somewhat content with pleasure and cover all their human rights and basic human needs so that humans will not have to work to survive: work will be completely voluntary, and voluntary work will operate via some form of capitalism. so, there will be a basic welfare state of sorts established. however, the failure of united incremental steps in advancing technology to occur, which before was attributed to greed (marxists would say it was a communication failure), in this futuristic world can no longer be attributed to a lack of communication: it will become evident that greed is the primary culprit. until then, the idea of the capitalist bubble bursting sort of parallels the pending environmental crisis: at worst and most probable, capitalism will continue to exploit, causing the bubble to burst and the environment to collapse, which will cause a sort of dark age before technology allows humans to repair the damage enough to continue "growing", albeit this time in a more tempered form so as to prevent a future environmental crisis or a "responsible" capitalism will slowly transition us to a more progressive world and the environmental damage, though ostensibly bad, will not be enough to induce a dark age as limited "growth" will occur before we reach a stage where "normal growth" can be reimplemented, albeit in a more tempered form. those are 2 of the possible 4 scenarios -- you can switch the last parts of each to create the other 2 scenarios. but no, no worldwide revolutionary movement overthrowing capitalism is going to occur in the 21st century.