What Is Marxism?

An explanation of classical Marxism, followed by an explanation of the general term 'Marxism.'

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0:00 Intro
0:38 Private Property
10:18 Historical Materialism
19:49 Communism
25:51 Totalitarianism
29:00 Adaptations of Marxism
30:00 What Is Marxism?

Sources:

Two Treatises Of Government: John Locke
Economic And Philosophical Manuscripts Of 1844: Karl Marx
Capital: Karl Marx
The Communist Manifesto: Karl Marx & Frederick Engels
Socialism: Utopian and Scientific - Frederick Engels
The Principles Of Communism: Frederick Engels
The German Ideology: Karl Marx
Karl Marx's Funeral - Frederick Engels
The Poverty Of Philosophy: Karl Marx
Anti-Duhring: Frederick Engels
Critique Of The Gotha Program - Karl Marx
Karl Marx: Isaiah Berlin
Karl Marx: A Nineteenth Century Life: Jonathan Spencer
A History Of Western Philosophy: Bertrand Russell
Letter From Engels To August Bebel 1884 - Frederick Engels
The Open Society And Its Enemies: Karl Popper

[realryanchapman]

I thought I'd return with some follow-up thoughts. One thing that needs to be said is that Marx & Engels wrote a lot. Their writing was consistent, but not perfectly consistent. Stances on violence, war, and the preconditions for revolution fluctuated. Marx also wasn't the clearest writer, favoring emotional language over technical precision. On top of that, there were holes in their theory, or at least spotty parts, sometimes on important points (ex. what exactly does the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' mean? How can the dictatorship of the proletariat rule 'democratically?' What did Engels mean when he said the State would 'wither away?'). As a result, there is no universally agreed upon understanding of what classical Marxism actually is. Circles tend to form around different interpretations of it, each circle believing they hold the correct understanding of Marxism. That has led to a long history of disagreement on Marx and fighting among Marxists.

Within that, I tried to stick with the closest we have to a standard understanding, using both primary and secondary sources. I tried to put as little of my own opinion into it as possible and to flag where I did, like my interpretation of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his means'. I think the part that rubbed the most people the wrong way was the claim that Marx's communism is essentially totalitarian. In my experience that's the standard explanation, and I did flag that some disagree with it. But I think it squares quite fully with his writing. There's no one sentence you can point to where he says 'this is a totalitarian society' (the word didn't exist yet), so you have to analyze what he said to get there.

The communist society he described was one where communism was forced on the whole population. Just reading the Manifesto makes that clear, and the passages I cite in this video flesh that out more. They describe a society entirely permeated by communism, with no opposition, with communist politics heavily encroaching into the lives of all. Communists and Marx called that a 'free' society.

That conception of a free society seems to have come from Rousseau's idea that society should be ruled by the 'general will, ' which he laid out in his Social Contract. Once the general will of the people is determined (Rousseau did not say how that process should work, something he shares with Marx), then that general will needs to be forced upon the rest of the public. The general will is a monolithic guiding power that rules all, and that allows nothing to conflict with it. Everyone is 'forced to be free' as Rousseau put it. It's a peculiar conception of freedom. Rousseau acknowledged that, and quickly gave up trying to articulate what actually makes it a form of freedom. But that's the 'free' 'democratic' society Marx was describing that the dictatorship of the proletariat would create.

Marx named the ruling idea that would guide the general will: communism. I'm describing totalitarianism. A society where communism shapes everything political. Communism is forced upon everyone to the extent deemed necessary by those in power (again, communists), in order to create a society free of class conflict/oppression.

You could think about it this way: in a liberal/capitalist society, if you want to live your life as a communist, you're relatively free to do it. If you want to form a business with communist/socialist principles, go for it. If you want to form a commune, have at it. If you want to participate in politics as a communist, feel free to try it. You can really do pretty much whatever you want with your life, and participate in politics however you want (as long as you don't threaten violence). If you don't want to be political, that's fine too. Liberal societies do not have a vision, an end goal, that they try to push everyone toward. There's no utopia at the end of the tunnel. It's more or less a sandbox design for a society, and the people within them get to decide how they want to live their lives.

In a communist society, everyone needs to be communist. That includes Marx's communism, which again forces itself onto the public with the goal of entirely shaping politics in order to eliminate class conflict. People are not cattle, so repression would be needed in order to accomplish that. It's possible that if a communist society existed for a long time, and communism was widely accepted by the public, communists would feel secure enough in their position to give political freedom and control over affairs back to the whole people, but as Bertrand Russell put it: 'this is a distant ideal, like the Second Coming; in the meantime, there is war and dictatorship, and insistence upon ideological orthodoxy.' (History of West. Phil. 790)

If I'm wrong about what I just said, I've never seen anyone successfully articulate why - in the comments or anywhere in anything I've read. I think it's the closest we have to a standard explanation for good reason. Marx did endorse democratic practices by the Paris Commune, but that was when democracy brought about a result that he liked (voting was restricted to Paris and held at an especially radical time). I'm not aware of any examples of him endorsing democracy that brought about a result that went against his views. If you only endorse democracy that moves society towards socialism, and you condemn all other examples as 'bourgeois democracy, ' it's hard to conclude you're in favor of democracy. I've never seen anyone deal with these things and still claim that he was democratic and not totalitarian. Also when socialists in Marx's time said they should spend their time pushing for gradual reforms, like expanding voting rights to the working class, Marx condemned it. He didn't want workers to have more of a say in a pluralistic, democratic society. He wanted class tensions to build until they exploded, ending with communists taking control of everything. I covered that in my in-depth socialism vid.

Last point: I offended some by skipping Marx's economics. Some even say his claims entirely depend on his economics. I think that's an oversimplification. Some of his beliefs aren't verifiable or falsifiable by economics, like the claim that capitalism is the last form of society featuring class conflict, and that the next society will be communist. Also his core beliefs existed before his economics developed. He believed that capitalism was exploitative/alienating, that communism will be the next, preferable society, and he believed in historical materialism early in life (his 20s). He then spent the rest of his life developing his economic theory predicting the end of capitalism that we see in Capital. So his own beliefs did not depend on his economics in order to form. His economic theory came second, appearing to affirm beliefs he already had. That said, if you're interested in his economics, you can find explanations all over the internet. He's less politicized there.

I may as well quickly lay out his theory and explain what I mean about it having mistakes. First, he thought that the amount of labor put into a product determines its value. Now imagine someone works for 10 hours. The worker creates product worth 10 hours of labor. But the worker isn't paid that amount. Let's say the worker created $100 worth of products in that 10 hours, but is only paid $50 in wages. The other $50 then is 'surplus value' i.e. profit for whoever owns the business. Crucially, the worker is only paid subsistence wages (from Ricardo's 'iron law of wages'), so the worker struggles and has no path to better their position in society through work. Others will take their job, so the worker can't bargain for more. The business owner then uses the $50 profit 'appropriated' (basically stolen) from the worker to expand their business. If that keeps up, the power dynamics in society will become more exaggerated. Workers stay poor, business owners get richer. They compete with each other, buying more machines, which means they need less human labor. Since labor (according to Marx) creates profit, profit rates fall. Businesses push down wages and lengthen hours to stay competitive. People can't buy what's being produced. A series of increasingly severe economic crises occur. Misery increases, a vast underclass forms, revolts, takes power. The two biggest places it goes wrong, afaik, are 1) Labor doesn't determine the value of a product. More goes into it, like supply, demand, marginal utility, factors relating to competition (or lack of) between firms. 2) He underestimates (really vilifies) the role of leaders (like CEOs) and managers. He doesn't appreciate how much work it takes to start and maintain a successful business, and in his theory the workers get credited with doing almost all the valuable work. There were also political assumptions in Marx's thinking, like the belief that 'capitalists' have a monopoly on political power (impeding reforms) which seems to be wrong. It also didn't make much sense at the time (& makes even less sense now) to define class by your relationship to the means of production, something Schumpeter pointed out ~80 years ago. Marx's theory was built on classical models and was to some extent out-of-date even in his lifetime, which is partially why it was slow to get attention (his writing style didn't help). In Marx's defense, he made many think about capitalism in a new way. Most academics that I've seen point out mistakes simultaneously acknowledge it as a work of genius. And some of his mistakes were also made by the best economists until then, like labor determining value. If you wonder why I didn't say this in the video, it's because to do it right I'd have to introduce Marx's terms (like labor theory of value) and thought it would be burdensome on the video, especially since I wasn't sure if the audience really cared about this stuff.

- Ryan
@realryanchapman

[AbuDurum]

You made a mistake. Marx did not say that the working class will become poorer if capital grows (in terms of their material position). He said that it will actually grow but at the cost of their social position. Meaning that the minority at the top will control greater wealth and thus global inequality will increase. You can read it in Wage-Labour and Capital.

[VivekHaldar]

I love what you're doing by going back to primary sources, rather than repeat copies of copies of interpretations. We need more of this!

[alessandromarchiori]

Probably the first American channel who explain Marxism without starting with “he caused millions of deaths, communists are like evil etc” or starting to enforce it with low quality communist propaganda.

Thanks from Italy, great content

[stonesofvenice]

I absolutely love this channel. The detailed footnotes, the painstaking references, yet the brevity and lucidity. It gives me hope in humanity!

[hannesknofel]

I would absolutely love to see a video on feudalism. It seems like an important topic for understanding the new emerging market forms of the 19 hundrets

[elifarnsworth]

Many people don't realize how amazing these videos are. I have read a few of these primary sources, but really condensing it all down, and decoding it into laymens terms. So much work here.

[georgesdelatour]

Here is Michael Bakunin, the revolutionary anarchist and contemporary of Marx in the International Workingmen’s Association, explaining in 1869 how Marx’s ten-point program in the Communist Manifesto has a built-in tendency to create a totalitarian state. His descriptions feel eerily prescient of the USSR in the 1930s. Marx was fully aware of Bakunin’s criticisms and wilfully chose to ignore them. Instead he had Bakunin expelled:

“The reasoning of Marx ends in absolute contradiction…. To appropriate all the landed property and capital, and to carry out its extensive economic and political programs, the revolutionary State will have to be very powerful and highly centralised. The State will administer and direct the cultivation of the land, by means of its salaried officials commanding armies of rural workers organised and disciplined for this purpose. At the same time, on the ruins of the existing banks, it will establish a single state bank which will finance all labour and national commerce.”

“It is readily apparent how such a seemingly simple plan of organisation can excite the imagination of the workers, who are as eager for justice as they are for freedom; and who foolishly imagine that the one can exist without the other; as if, in order to conquer and consolidate justice and equality, one could depend on the efforts of others, particularly on governments, regardless of how they may be elected or controlled, to speak and act for the people! For the proletariat this will, in reality, be nothing but a barracks: a regime, where regimented working men and women will sleep, wake, work, and live to the beat of a drum; where the shrewd and educated will be granted government privileges; and where the mercenary-minded, attracted by the immensity of the international speculations of the state bank, will find a vast field for lucrative, underhanded dealings.”

[ernestoantonio]

You forgot to talk about the "withering away of the state" in Marxism. "The society which organizes production anew on the basis of free and equal association of the producers will put the whole state machinery where it will then belong — into the museum of antiquities, next to the spinning wheel and the bronze ax." - Friedrich Engels, in "The Origins of The Family, Private Property, and The State."

[AANasseh]

When Ryan drops a video, I stop everything for the following half hour. His breakdowns can’t wait!

[VladVexler]

Vlad here, philosopher. Just want to congratulate Ryan on the video as a step into the subject. Marx of course said that ''philosophy stands to the study of the real world in the same relationship as masturbation stands to real sexual love', and it's not clear what positive role he saw for philosophy. For him it was secondary to empirical inquiry into the logic of capitalism & the sociology of supersession. I highly recommend a tiny taste here on YouTube of Raymond Geuss's lectures on Marx. Raymond is more sympathetic to Marx than I, but his passion for avoiding bullshit & placing us in history is infectious. Congratulations again!

[donny_doyle]

I am a recent Ryan convert/ fan/ homie... such well presented info, and so calm... no yelling and raging and name calling. So refreshing, y'all agree?

[donnytv]

Ryan, you are a champion of credibility because of your humble and honest approach. I appreciate these videos a ton! Please keep up the good work :)

[Gigachild]

When I want to learn a topic, I start by taking notes on one of your videos. Very well done content!

[gregorykavivya]

Great work, I love that you actually present quotations from original texts

[eorobinson]

Hell yea Ryan! Been waiting for a new one to drop!

[mikealexander]

But Marx's economics is a key part of his ideology because that is where the empirical facts and analysis that underlie his scientific, materialist conceptualizations, Marx's argument lives or dies on the strength of his economics. This is why the man spent so much time on it. His early philosophical writings in 1844 provide the motivation for his life's work and his political stance and theoretical paradigm, but they have little to say on the validity of his arguments that supposed to be *scientific* not philosophical.

[inovakovsky]

The best characterization of private property is that is property used for capital, in contrast to personal property that has no capital value, such as toothbrushes. Marx was ambiguous of the form of governance, aside from needing to be pro-revolutionary working class.

[ohar]

This is a fantastic channel. Keep at it!

[turnipslop]

I've learned so much from this channel in the short time since I discovered it. Truly incredible videos filled with a calm unbiased professional explanation on complex subjects. Looking forward to more!