Marxism has been supported by the rich to mislead workers into believing it can replace capitalism. It also prevents new left ideas capable of building socialism and a much better future for humankind.
Karl Marx made significant contributions to the scientific understanding of capitalism. He stated that capitalists profit from the production, while their workers only receive a fraction of the capitalists’ profit as wages. Capitalists exploit workers by paying them low earnings. Marx was right about this.
Karl Marx believed that the exploitation of workers could be eliminated only through the socialist revolution. He was wrong about it because a violent revolution cannot better society. Although a revolution may replace a particular social injustice, it has always been replaced with a new kind. To ensure the lasting effect of revolutions, new leadership is generally autocratic and therefore spreads alienation throughout society, accompanied by all the unfavourable dictatorial phenomena well-known throughout history. Revolutions have never contributed to the improvement of society as people desired. Marx did not have enough data to build his vision of socialism scientifically. As a result, his idea of socialism failed.
Thanks to social scientists, it is still unclear what exactly causes the exploitation of workers, even though the answer is simple: unemployment creates exploitation. Unemployed workers are pressured to accept poorly paid jobs to feed their families. When we eliminate unemployment, we will create a fair market for work. The lack of workers will increase their demand on the market, so that employers will have to pay them more. This will create a chain reaction in which workers’ salaries will increase while employers continue to make profits. We may say this would eliminate exploitation. No formula would determine what exploitation is. Only workers dissatisfied with their earnings may present it. A fair market of work will remove this dissatisfaction.
The rise in workers’ salaries in the fair market can be proved. In the 14th Century, the Black Death killed one-third of the European population, which suddenly increased demand for workers. The shortage of workers led to increased wages for workers. At Cuxham (Oxfordshire, England), a plowman demanded from his Lord a payment three times greater in 1350 than in the previous year (The Economic Impact of the Black Death, Economic History Association).
In Parliament, in 1351, the Commons petitioned Edward III for a more resolute and effective response. They complained that “servants completely disregard the said ordinance in the interests of their ease and greed, and that they withhold their services to great men and others unless they have liveries and wages twice or three times as great as [prior to the plague] to the serious damage of the great men and impoverishment of all members of the said commons. “(Michael Bennett, Australian Journal of Law and Society, 1995, The Impact of the Black Death on English Legal History, Page 197)
According to this, if a political party wins an election by offering a reduction in work to 5 hours per day, the lack of workers would result in a 2-3 times increase in workers' salaries per hour in one year. The daily wages would rise 30-90% for just a 5-hour shift. Workers would work shorter hours and earn more. It has already happened, and it is much easier to accomplish than raising a revolution.
So who is going to pay for such a salary increase? The wealthy employers, of course! Right now, they collect this money as a profit for themselves. Can employers refuse to increase worker salaries? They can, but then their workers would likely find a new employer who would pay more, which would mean they would lose the opportunity to maintain their businesses.
When workers earn more, they will purchase more, which will, in turn, increase the employers’ profits. So, why have we not yet created a thriving economy? Because the more workers earn, the less they depend on the rich. The rich maintain their power in society by instilling fear of unemployment. More about it is presented in my article: Full Employment is a Turning Point for Capitalism.
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Karl Marx believed that the market economy led to the exploitation of workers, so he proposed replacing the market economy with a centrally planned economy. Marx recognized that removing the market economy would eliminate the indicators of economic productivity, so he advocated for worker consciousness to replace it. It revealed a consistency problem in Marx’s philosophy. Human conscience is rooted in idealism, and it has never been able to improve society significantly. It never worked on a social level. The economy based on the conscience of workers could not work as well.
To replace the market value of work, Karl Marx created a labour theory of value. According to this value, the cost of a commodity can be objectively measured by the average number of labour hours required to produce that commodity. That means that if a fisherman catches an average of 100 fish in one month, he creates the same value as a worker in the auto industry who produces an average of one car per month. The fisherman and carmaker are supposed to exchange their products at equal value. It does not matter that people may need the car much more than fish. The car may be worth on the market a hundred times more than the fish. It makes Marx’s labour value unnatural.
This example may be exaggerated, but this is what Marx proposed, and socialists accepted. It prevented the incentives of workers and the development of the socialist economy. Socialism distributed more balanced salaries to workers than capitalism did, which helped build a more harmonious society than capitalism could establish. However, such wages were not stimulative enough to motivate work. The authoritative bureaucracy of socialism took freedom from workers, which additionally demotivated their work effort. And finally, the humanist ideology of socialism overprotected workers, which lulled them into a lack of effort in their work. The final result of the socialist economy was poor.
The centrally planned economy was intended to produce goods and services in sufficient quality and quantity to meet people’s needs. The leaders have never learned how to gather people’s needs because the revolutions replaced experienced entrepreneurs with inexperienced theorists. Such an economy became authoritarian and alienated from the people. The planned economy was unable to strike a successful balance between production and consumption, leaving people dissatisfied. As a result, the Marxist economy failed to satisfy people’s needs adequately.
The USSR and China have experimented with centrally planned economies. It has significantly reduced the material exploitation of workers, which is prevalent in capitalist countries, but also decreased the economy's overall efficiency. By abandoning the market economy, the authorities had to base their plan on the quantity of essential goods needed, such as tons of wheat produced. Other production was barely considered. People were no longer hungry, but their needs were often less satisfied than under capitalism.
The economies in the USSR and China had significantly lower productivity than those of capitalist economies. The USSR collapsed due to the inefficiency of the centrally planned economy. Thus, Marxism failed. China has learned from its own mistakes, abandoned the Marxist planned economy in 1978, and accepted the regulated market economy. From that moment, it has become the fastest-growing economy in the world, threatening to take the number one place soon. This explains everything about the Marxist economy.
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Considering the failures of Marxism, why does it deserve such a significant presence in science, media, and in the hearts of Marxists? It would not be possible without the approval of the owners of big corporations. Without it, Marxists would not be able to participate in political elections. Neither would they be able to teach Marxism at universities and get media support.
Why do the rich help the Marxist ideology, which promotes the violent confiscation of their property? The rich knew Marxism could not be a threat to capitalism. Otherwise, it would be banned. They knew that Marxism was on the wrong track and supported it because Marxism prevents the progress of society. If Marx proposed reducing work hours instead of revolution, his philosophy would not be supported, and hardly anybody would know he had ever existed.
But Marxism was strongly supported. If one searches for the “theory of alienation” on Google, Karl Marx’s theory predominately comes up because other alienation theories on a political and economic level do not exist. The question is, why? What is so incredible in Marx’s statement that workers get alienated from the products of their labour, which alienates them from themselves? Why do other theories of alienation not exist?
Marx’s theory does not hold much weight because everyone who produces something becomes alienated from the product when they sell or exchange it. The rich like useless theories because they stop the development of society. They do not allow a genuine theory of alienation to emerge because such a theory might change the world and take power away from them.
By supporting Marx, the wealthy have successfully prevented the establishment of a better society for a century. Now, capitalists know they cannot cheat people by supporting revolutions and a planned economy anymore. However, they do not abandon Marxism because a large number of people are romantically and emotionally still connected to Marx.
Most Marxists accepted Marx’s ideology when they were young. Youthful rebellion, driven by dissatisfaction and injustice in the world, made them easy prey for the manipulation of the wealthy. The rich hid the cause of the exploitation and promoted Marx’s philosophy as an escape from the problem. Marx made revolution scientifically acceptable, and people acknowledged it through the study of his extensive work.
Marxists recognize the failures of Marxism, but they still believe they need to find the correct method to implement Marx’s philosophy correctly. By accepting Marxism, they cannot change their opinion significantly anymore, especially if a simple idea like shorter work hours tries to break it. The rich are masters of deception, and Marxists cannot admit they have been deceived. Helped by the rich, Marxists exerted a strong influence on the political Left, and by promoting an ideology that does not work, they ultimately aid the rich. They are also helping the rich by preventing new left ideas from coming.
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This is what has happened to me. I have presented how to create a good society in the book Humanism - A Philosophic-Ethical-Political-Economic Study of the Development of the Society. The book is available for free by clicking this link. Marxists do not support my philosophy, and it helps the rich keep their power in society. The wealthy have leveraged their influence in policy, science, and media to hinder the emergence of progressive ideas. They have also blocked my philosophy from reaching people.
The book is based on an original theory of alienation. It states that subjectivity alienates us from objective reality. Subjectivity leads us down the wrong path, one that prevents us from satisfying our needs. The escape from humanity's problems lies in building an objective vision of reality. Democratic acceptance of equal human rights will do it. The implementation of equal human rights will solve social problems. Nothing more is needed for building a good social life, and nothing less can make it.
Marx was right when he called for equal human rights among people, but he did not foresee the full scope of their development. The ultimate stage of equal human rights will create an equal opportunity for every worker to be employed at any public work post at any time. It will be necessary to open a permanent competition for every public work post. The best worker would get the right to work at any time. I know it sounds impossible because such a division of labour never existed. But the realization of it is just a technical problem.
The system I have developed will effectively evaluate the productivity of work offers, define the job responsibilities of workers, and harmonize rewards for work. In short, the workers who offer the highest productivity and accountability, and demand the lowest salary, will get the job. No economy can be more productive than one where each job post gets the best available worker. Public companies will become more productive than private ones, so that the latter will go down in history. Only this should be called socialism. I wrote more about it in the article "The Failures of Marxism and the Right Path to Socialism and Communism."
The market is the best choice for the economy. The market of goods allocates every good to the most capable purchaser who needs and loves it the most. The further development of the market economy will significantly improve the economy. The labour market will eliminate work privileges, making each job equally desirable. Such a market will allocate every job to the most productive worker who needs and loves it the most. Shorter work hours will eliminate unemployment, while less desirable jobs will be compensated with higher incomes. The market will help society to reach the best life possible. I have also presented the bright future of humankind through stories in three screenplays: Good Capitalism, Good Socialism, and Good Communism.
Even if my ideas are flawed, which they are not, my effort deserves to be recognized. However, my writings often face rejection from the media, science, politics, and the film industry. The people who hear me offering higher salaries for shorter work time, which is the first step in developing the economy and society, think it is too good to be true, no matter what arguments I give. Public discussion may help, but it is prevented. One reason for this is that Marxists do not like my work.
However, the rich cannot hide the truth forever. It will break through one day. Then people will accept the benefits of full employment and request shorter work hours. The rich will resist it, of course, but they cannot win against the united people. Still, shorter work hours will be the most challenging part of creating a good society.