While reading Gordon Wright’s France in Modern Times,
I found his views largely balanced and rational. Wright, not a Marxist himself,
recognized that some of his Marxist colleagues had valid points to make. In his
chapter entitled “The Republican Experiment, 1848-1852,” the author
acknowledged that “some of Karl Marx’s original analysis” of class conflict, and
the later analysis of “the modernized Marxist version are undoubtedly sound”
(Wright, p. 135). It was an important, open-minded assertion from a
temperamentally conservative historian who viewed revolution with suspicion.
The flaw with Marxism is not in its interpretation of class
strata, but in its application in the realm of power politics. A Marxist view
on history has an ability to accurately portray the rise of a working class and
a bourgeoisie, along with the relationship of these newer classes to ones
ranked above them in society and politics.
The mistake that some Marxist historians make is to see in
this version a logical progression towards a Marxist Communist State that would
liberate workers. Marx fundamentally misunderstood human nature, and the nature
of governments, which caused Europeans to arrive at the systems of inequality
he saw in his lifetime.
Marx argued that the workers should revolt, forcefully take
power, then establish a Dictatorship of the Proletariat. The Proletarian
Dictatorship would then, over time, give away decision-making power and
economic power to soviets and collectives. This would gradually disintegrate
the central authority and result in equality among all the people within the
system. It is a grand idea, both optimistic and fair, but it cannot work.
Human nature is the obstacle. People become political
leaders because they want power and influence. This is particularly true in a
dictatorship, but I don’t see any current working system where this principle
does not apply. For whatever good or ill motives, politicians wish to shape the
direction of their nations. Politicians recognize that they can more easily
attain their goals atop a central system that does not disintegrate. Naturally,
individuals who seek power would rise to the top of a dictatorship. Likewise the bureaucrats, who are necessary to keep a
system maintained, would be unlikely to undermine it through tactics that would
result in decay. Thence, there has never been a Communist dictatorship which
determined that the time was ripe to give away power and disappear.
On the contrary, governments, over a period of time, tend to
become more organized and controlling around resources and people within their
realms of influence. Unchecked governments get larger, not smaller. They
develop more laws and protocols as it becomes apparent to the individuals
managing such governments, that these measures are necessary to make a nation
function according to their plans. Instead of providing increased freedom and
flexibility to their citizens, state systems usually ask more of their
populations in terms of forbearance: Higher taxes are levied to pay for
centralized programs (i.e. education, infrastructure, military defense). Additional
laws are created to control restive populations yearning to “lose their
chains.” Various agencies are created to manage crises and fill needs. This results in complex systems of greater centralized control.
So a Marxist historian may have a reasonable interpretation
of power relationships. But it’s an irrational leap from that understanding to
the idea that a Marxist political leader has an effective model for a future
society. Additionally, the mechanism for attaining this future society is a
violent revolution which would cause immense suffering and death among the
workers. To propose that workers violently smash an existing system, and
replace it with one whose most recent experiments have shown anything but successful
decentralization, is neither responsible nor humane.
Wright, Gordon. France in Modern Times. New York: W.W. Norton Company, Inc., 1981.
For a book review of France in Modern Times, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2013/09/france-in-modern-times-by-gordon-wright.html
Wright, Gordon. France in Modern Times. New York: W.W. Norton Company, Inc., 1981.
For a book review of France in Modern Times, see:
http://greatnonfictionbooks.blogspot.com/2013/09/france-in-modern-times-by-gordon-wright.html
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