Capitalism is extremely
friendly to individual happiness and societal wealth. Both rose
significantly as the Industrial Revolution and capitalism changed the
world radically in the late 1700s and early 1800s. Individual
fulfillment, personal greatness, cultural richness, and social
harmony also surged. Such was life under social and economic liberty.
Far fewer country farmers
lived in isolation, desperation, poverty, and misery. Businesses
blossomed in size and profitability, with former peasants eager for
factory and assembly-line work. Whole armies of previously poor
people moved to the city to get better jobs and live the good life.
Karl Marx (1818-83), Friedrich Engels (1820-95), and many others
noticed this – along with certain flaws in the new system – and tried
to understand it all.
The 1689 English, 1776
American, and 1789 French Revolutions created an immense increase in
individual rights or human liberty. This included political,
personal, social, and economic freedom. Marx and Engels’ 1848
Communist Manifesto focused on examining the new economic
liberty and emerging Big Businesses, especially as they impacted
average workers in large companies. But their treatise smeared
economic liberty, and confused the concept, with the term
“capitalism”.
And yet the Communist
Manifesto did fairly observe that the new capitalist era allowed
the individual to dedicate himself far more to his own needs and
wants – his own pleasures and delights. Such was the inevitable
result of the breaking of human shackles and the rise in overall
individual liberty.
Marx and Engels also observed
that the new capitalist era created business enterprise, energy,
ambition, creativity, variety, productivity, efficiency, change,
progress, and wealth previously unknown in human history. But at best
they considered these two new revolutions in human life – the
dramatic surge in personal happiness and collective wealth – a
mixed blessing.
In ironic language, the
Communist Manifesto notes that the radical growth in the protection
of the rights of man and the freedom of business activity “has put
an end to all feudal, patriarchal, and idyllic relations”. This new
liberty “has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious
fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism”.
The capitalist era “has stripped of its halo every occupation
hitherto honored and looked upon with reverential awe”. Finally,
the expansion of the government defense of individual liberty has
even “torn away from the family its sentimental veil”. Marx and
Engels are certainly right about one thing: the rise of political
liberalism in the late 1700s and early 1800s changed overall human
life, and individual lifestyles, a great deal.
According to the Communist
Manifesto, the ascent of political, social, and economic
liberalism “left remaining no other nexus between man and man than
naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’”. It plunged
all of human life into “the icy waters of egotistical calculation”.
The political pamphlet vaguely but ominously charged that the new
liberty “has resolved personal worth into exchange value”. Marx
and Engels even obscurely defend “the numberless, indefeasible,
chartered freedoms” of traditional, pre-capitalist life. These, it
seems, are far superior to what liberalism has substituted: “that
single, unconscionable freedom – Free Trade”.
Why do Marx and Engels hate
liberalism so much? Because it has reduced all of human life to
“naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation”. Economic
liberation “has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest,
the poet, the man of science into its paid wage-laborers”. Economic
capitalism has even “reduced the family relation to a mere money
relation”.
* * *
But is any of this really
true? Is liberty really such a terrible thing? Is its impact upon the
individual, society, and business really so dreadful? Is political,
social, and economic liberalism such a horror story, and so
universally destructive to man, that one can only wish for its
immediate and absolute termination?
Marx and Engels don’t seem
to understand the nature of freedom. They don’t seem to realize its
positive effects upon all aspects of life. They don’t
comprehend how it enhances life, rationality, morality, thinking,
feelings, ambition, hope, dreams, visions, health, wealth, work,
play, family, friends, marriage, love, sex, philosophy, science, art,
entertainment, recreation, conversation, vacation, relaxation,
meditation, and more. There seems to be not a single area of human
life which individual liberty doesn’t improve and uplift.
The idea that a free person
and free society is reduced to caring only about economic activity
and money is absurd. Under political, social, and economic
liberalism, there’s more to life than just business.
Marx and Engels’ idea that free
enterprise and free trade necessarily entails “naked, shameless,
direct, brutal exploitation” is part of their crude,
anti-capitalist bias, but this claim is baseless. Free enterprise
enriches culture and productivity for every member of society. Free
trade benefits both parties involved and exploits neither. There’s
not a hint of oppression or brutality involved in either activity.
Marx and Engels’ claim that free trade is
“unconscionable” is bizarre. Human beings have been finding,
making, swapping, and bartering goods since time immemorial. They
willingly, happily engage in such behaviors because because they tend
to benefit and profit everyone involved.
Ultimately, Marx
and Engels make many errors in their freedom-hating,
freedom-destroying manifesto. But their attacks upon “self-interest”
and “egoism” are especially monstrous. A proper man, and noble soul,
lives for his own sake. The Enlightenment teaches us that every man
is an end in himself – not a means to some other end. He and his
life are sacred, priceless jewels not to be exchanged or sacrificed
for anything or anyone. To say that individualism, self-interest, and
egoism are morally wrong, as the Communist Manifesto claims,
is a gigantic, intellectual error. Attacks upon the Holy Individual
and his irreplaceable life are destructive to every person on earth
and constitute evil incarnate.