"All history is the history of class struggle."
So begins Karl Marx's "Communist Manifesto," written in 1848 as Europe was experiencing something like a continent-wide revolution. In most circles (left and right), Karl Marx's words and ideas are at best loosely understood. To what can we attribute this misunderstanding? Taking the time to read Karl Marx's work is much like reading Mein Kampf: it is historically important, but is exhaustively dense and long-winded (as much German writing is), and will almost certainly get you in trouble if you read it in public. Regardless of how or why, Marx polarizes us in ways that have unfortunately prevented a nuanced and objective assessment of what he had to say and whether it is still relevant. My own research into Marx has pointed me in directions I did not expect, and hopefully my own assessment will encourage you to make your own when you get a chance. But beware: while reading The Communist Manifesto in a mechanic's waiting room, I was told by a concerned older gentleman that I shouldn't read "trash."
Marx
The man, his work, and the reputation can easily be separated with little work. In spite of his well-to-do upbringing and elite education, Marx professed to be first and foremost an admirer of the common worker. In spite of being the fuel that turned the engine of the Industrial Revolution, Marx felt that commoners were being slowly and covertly destroyed, body and soul, by capitalism, and more specifically by capitalists. Marx believed that a capitalist ruling class ("bourgeoisie") gains and keeps power through the deception and exploitation of the working masses ("proletariat"), effectively blinding them to the unequal and unrepresentative nature of their political, social, and most importantly their economic system. The brave souls who are able to see through this deception, of course, must violently overthrow the prevailing elites and institute a new, more responsive form of government based on rule by the commoners, not rule by elites.
The Revolution
America's class struggle is as old as the country itself, and is interwoven into the fabric of the history of the common working American. For most original patriots, our Revolution represented a rebuke not of the monarchical system, but of the institutional elitism that permeated the old world. Most commoners were not so much angry about the king as they were unhappy with rule by professional elites who did not know or care about Americans' suffering and lack of economic prospects. The farming proletariat who made up the vast bulk of our Revolutionary fighters were fighting mostly against elitism and economic subjugation, not the crown.
The Civil War
Sometimes without realizing it, our Civil War has been described by apologists for the causes of both sides as a class struggle. Most Southerners had little interest in what they considered corrosive ideas being hocked by over-educated elitist Northerners, so they decided to break away. Andrew Johnson, though he deserves little credit for his time as president, accurately described the anger poor white Southerners felt towards elitist plantation owners. He and much of the Southern proletariat felt the planter class had duped the South into the war because they were unwilling to give up their slaves and the prosperity that came with them. The New York City Draft Riots, which nearly saw our largest city secede from the Union in 1863, were largely the product of a draft law that allowed for the paying of "substitutes" to fight in the place of the North's bourgeoisie sons. Both North and South, a cry of "Rich man's war, Poor man's fight" rose up from the working class of both armies. Marx himself wrote a book about the war in which he proposed slavery economics as the only real cause of the war.
The Cold War
Our long, convoluted and anticlimactic showdown with actual, avowed Marxists was a far greater test of our ability to win a military staring contest than to actually pit capitalist principles against communist ones. Harry Truman's doctrine of communist containment was more or less accepted American policy throughout the Cold War, but subsequent administrations put their own spin on it. Eisenhower chose the covert route, opting for clandestine (and ethically questionable) operations to undermine global communism. This was inexpensive, but it was also unethical, and more importantly, unsexy.
Kennedy, Johnson and even Nixon can be viewed as liberal domestic presidents, because for all of his conservative credentials, Nixon created conservatives' least favorite government agency: the Environmental Protection Agency. Perhaps as a means of compensation, these administrations opted for a sexier Cold War, scattering a greater overall tonnage of weapons than all of the bombs dropped during WWII over various parts of Southeast Asia, most of which has not fully recovered. Vietnam was a fig leaf extended from what were essentially socialist administrations to conservatives: how could we be Marxist wackos if we are bombing the hell out of real Marxists?
Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan, the greatest of our Cold Warriors and the arch-nemesis of all things Marxist, ultimately elected to defeat Socialism with...government spending. Ronald Reagan's legacy was built on two of America's most popular political ideas: overwhelming military force and tax cuts. The current spending deficit that caused such great alarm in the Conservative movement before the Trump Era can mostly be traced back to Reaganomics: big tax cuts and big increases in military spending, while doing comparatively little to dismantle welfare. The Gipper's greatest communication coup was giving voice to conservative principles while adhering to them only partially: The over seven hundred billion dollars spent annually on defense can be traced directly to Mr. Reagan's determination to spend the Soviets out of existence with money we did not have.
The Commies?
Communist countries themselves have an inconsistent record of being Marxist. Soviet Marxism died with Vladimir Lenin, and was clumsily trotted out as the national ideology when Josef Stalin needed to make a speech or two. Regardless of its effectiveness, Stalin's government-sponsored terrorism proved too hard to dismantle, too beneficial for Soviet elites, and too obvious to be hidden from twentieth century eyes, so it bumbled on (perhaps to today?). And in spite of Chairman Mao's best efforts to kill or "reeducate" them, China has drifted into the hands of the bourgeoisie. Its free market "zones" have made modern China a national sweatshop that is designed to undercut global prices for the benefit of a tiny upper crust of Chinese capitalists, while workers are told to be grateful to share the leftover crumbs. This is only a partial vision of Marxism, and as a result the plight of the modern Chinese proletariat is such that it would make Adam Smith blush. It is a cheap charade that is fooling fewer and fewer people.
The Conservative Problem
It is at best a bit confusing that a political party (and the movement to which it is attached) claims to represent the will of the ill-defined "Average American" proletariat when it has lost seven of the last eight national popular votes for the white house. Are we to believe that the majority of Americans gather en masse every four years and pull the wrong lever? Or has Conservatism ceased to be an ideology that truly represents the will of a majority of America?
There are two possibilities to explain conservatism's current predicament, and both of them are essentially Marxist. The first is the belief that widespread voter fraud has become so rampant that our election results can no longer be trusted. This is both not based in fact and is the justification for military coups in countries that we love to belittle (see: Myanmar). It is also one which Mr. Marx would approve of, because he asserted the bourgeoisie ruling culture must sometimes be violently upended in order for representative "patriots" of the true interests of the working class to be empowered. If that is the tack that Conservatism has chosen to take, it can avoid the uncomfortable reality of its increasingly shrill and unappealing arguments for as long as Mr. Trump and his coattail-riders choose to keep beating the drum.
The other is less silly but equally Marxist. If a majority of voting Americans have been unable to see the welfare state for what it is, i.e. a thinly veiled conspiracy to keep elites in power, then the bourgeoisie have ascended to heights Marx could scarcely have imagined in 1848. If this is the case, a small but determined group of true representatives of the commoners not only should, but must affect a revolution in order to topple the ruling class and open the eyes of their fellow commoners to the elites' deception. In Russia's 1917 Revolution, The Marxist Bolsheviks successfully achieved this because they saw where the true power of their county was concentrated: they took over key infrastructure, particularly railway and telegraph terminals instead of the Duma, where the Russian legislature met. Our June 6th Marxist revolutionaries were not so clever, and as such their coup failed.
Barry Goldwater
The last (and perhaps only) time a true, non-Marxist Conservative was nominated for a major party to run for president was in 1964. That year, liberal darling Lyndon Johnson was catapulted into his first full term as president with an astonishing four hundred eighty-six electoral college votes. The man who lost was Arizona's Barry Goldwater, who throughout his campaign knew that the election result was a foregone conclusion. Liberated from the need to appeal to a majority of voters, Barry did what he did best: he stuck to his principles. He got clobbered, but no one can deny his commitment to anti-Marxism: he refused to endorse any scheme that looked, felt or tasted Marxist, be it centralization, class-related programs or populism. Goldwater had the fortitude to look America voters in the face and say what Conservative politicians have been taught to think, but never to say: your problems are a result of your choices, and to blame others is to prove your laziness. I assume he would not approve of the executive orders, disregard for budget deficits and class-related vitriol his "conservative" Republican party has used to combat the modern Democratic Party, which itself has become more stridently Marxist while retaining its own brand of elitism.
Is Marx Bad?
Of course, true conservative ideology, like all true ideologies, is not designed to be popular. Indeed, true Marxism is unforgiving and in many ways cruel, particularly in the hands of clever elitists like Stalin and Mao. Those who take the time to learn about Marx's ideas generally agree that he very effectively diagnosed symptoms of capitalism's weaknesses. Even conservative commentators and politicians have come to the conclusion that our economic system is almost irrevocably dominated by a small, elite group of like-minded people who jealously guard their power. "They" are going to raise taxes, "they" are spying on your internet activity, "they" are taking prayer out of schools, "they" are crowding out mom-and-pop stores: these are all class-based, Marxist arguments, and it is perfectly acceptable for a freedom-loving, gun-toting, conservative American to admit that.
Where Marx went off the rails, however, was his treatment for the disease that he so accurately described. He believed that when enough of the masses awaken to their unfair plight, a violent coup is needed to restore the balance of power and for the right people with the right ideas to be in charge. That piece of Marx's puzzle will always leave us one violent coup away from perfection, and is rightfully interpreted as unsustainable, self-defeating, and anti-democratic. This repression of dissent inherent in Marxism is what Mao's China and Stalin's Russia have clung to, while the continued suffering of the Chinese and Russian proletariat is blamed on the Imperialist West.
The Problem, and the Solution(s)
Alexis de Tocqueville, a French writer visiting America in its early days as an independent republic, couldn't help but remark at America's love for conflicting principles: freedom and equality (as well as what he believed was the overarching obsession of all Americans: money). Indeed, the great conservative commentator William F. Buckley famously said that "freedom breeds inequality." He may well be right, but he does not have to be. Like most of us, Marx hated pomposity and elitism, and felt that the result of this elitism was exploitative and unjust business practices. He believed that these practices were an evil, but not a necessary one. America has always had two answers to combating this evil: the free market and regulations. The balance between them is elusive (as our various economic crises can attest), but few can now deny that both are necessary. It is in trying to find this balance that our efforts are best directed, instead of the zero-sum game of modern political economics. In short, we're all a little Marxist, and that's ok.
