The Many Problems with Marxism

“I recently met up with an old friend, a staunch Marxist, at a traditional Viennese café to catch up and talk about our political differences. After hours of discussion, he admitted, ‘Well, ultimately, it’s a question of faith.'”

The ultimate test for any theory is whether it works in practice. Wherever implemented, Marxism has led to unfreedom, inhumanity, and economic devastation. Modern-day Marxists blame human failure for these shortcomings. According to them, true Marxism has yet to be implemented, as followers past have invariably corrupted the doctrine by adopting quasi-capitalist policies. Rather than reevaluate their position, they refuse to learn the painful lesson that “a key assumption of Marxian economics is false,” as the economist and social theorist Thomas Sowell puts it in his analysis.

What did Marx get wrong? In his book More from Less, the MIT scientist Andrew McAfee offers a useful starting point: “[W]hen Marx wrote in 1867’s Das Kapital that ‘as capital accumulates, the situation of the worker, be his payment high or low, must grow worse,’ events were showing just how durably wrong that statement was.” McAfee elaborates:

“Perhaps the single most unfair, inaccurate, and ignorant critique of capitalism is that it is bad for the workers who help create it. Karl Marx was confident that workers under capitalism would be trampled and impoverished until they threw off their shackles and embraced communism, but…this is not what happened. Despite its many flaws, the Industrial Era increased the prosperity and quality of life for average people more quickly than ever before.”

This trend has continued into the present—“progress in many important areas has sped up in recent decades as capitalism and tech progress have both spread around the world,” writes McAfee. In short, one of Marx’s key predictions, the increasing immiseration of the proletariat under capitalism, has not come true, suggesting a fundamental flaw in his theory.