The 'Communist Manifesto' on Individualism, Individual Liberty, and Economic Liberty

 

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”.

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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.