Perspective
The Hidden Beauty Of Communism
Exploring the finer points of Marxist thought
Class struggle is the first thing that comes to mind when one thinks of communism. The idea that workers (the proletariat) will overthrow ownership (the bourgeoisie), banish private property, and redistribute the wealth tends to dominate public perception of what communism is and what it stands for.
With this view, the pushback against communism is understandable. The threat of toppling over the capitalist institutions that have accounted for the tremendous prosperity of the Western world incites great anxiety and fear in those who believe in the free market.
Pair that with the failure of communist experiments in the Soviet Union, Cuba, and arguably China, and the rejection of communism seems a logical conclusion. Unfortunately, the demonization and tarnished reputation of communism during the Cold War has left many with a perverted view of what is really an enlightening perspective on human nature.
Erich Fromm’s 1961 publication, Marx’s Concept of Man, paints a much more complete image that brings the beauty of communism’s philosophical underpinnings into view. At the heart of it, Fromm maintains that “Marx’s central criticism of capitalism is not the injustice in the distribution of wealth; it is the perversion of labor into forced, alienated, meaningless labor.” Where capitalism sees labor as a means to an end, Marx saw it as “the meaningful expression of human energy” in which “man develops himself, becomes himself.”
Under capitalism, the human experience is appropriated by money and wealth. Everything from education to our personal freedom comes with a price tag. That price tag determines our relationship with work, leisure, and even basic necessities.
As Marx astutely observed, “The less you are, the less you express your life, the more you have, the greater is your alienated life and the greater is the saving of your alienated being.” Oftentimes, people will turn down opportunities to go on vacations, hang out with friends, or have another child because they claim they can’t afford to.
Instead, many stay inside, commit to rigid budgets and fall into the lifeless cycle of work-eat-sleep-repeat. Communism at its core seeks to free humanity from this lifeless labor and reinject meaning and purpose into our work. To this end, the redistribution of wealth is not enough.
Marx argues that “an enforced increase of wages would be nothing more than a better remuneration of slaves, and would not restore, either to the worker or the work, their human significance and worth.” It comes as no surprise then that the majority of private-sector employees in the U.S. see their jobs as just what they do for a living compared to nonprofit, government, and self-employed workers who more often derive a sense of identity from their job.
Ultimately, communism aims to satisfy the meaning of its root word: community. On the surface, this would imply the pursuit of humans living together in harmony, but it also extends to man’s ability to live in communion with himself and with nature. Marx states, “[Communism] is, therefore, the return of man himself as a social, i.e., really human being…it is the definitive resolution of the antagonism between man and nature and between man and man.
It is the true solution to the conflict between existence and essence, between objectification and self-affirmation, between freedom and necessity, and between individual and species.” Through what Marx refers to as “productive” labor, humans are able to express themselves through their work, and by using our innate powers and abilities in meaningful ways, we grow and develop towards our actualized selves.
In the case of nature, the pursuit of meaningful, purposeful work is conducive to a more harmonious relationship with the natural world. Just as a beaver’s purposeful labor is the creation of a damn seamlessly nestled in its immediate environment, human labor based on self-expression and meaning seeks not to dominate nature by appropriating it as a mere economic unit, but rather manipulating it in ways that align in a mutually beneficial partnership. Marx explains that “labor is, in the first place, a process in which both man and nature participate.”
Contrary to popular belief, Marx’s conception of communism promotes independence and freedom. According to Marx, “A being does not regard himself as independent unless he is his own master, and he is only his own master when he owes his existence to himself.” Here in the U.S., we tout our freedom as if it is sacred, but that could not be further from the truth.
Our so-called freedom is solely the façade of a society beholden to the will of money and power. Some statistics show that as many as 78 percent of workers in the U.S. live paycheck to paycheck and around 8 in 10 Americans have some form of debt. Again, money appropriates our human experience and restricts us from leading lives centered around our unique purpose and being.
Not to be mistaken, Marx also sees the contemporary manifestations of communism as crude and corrupt. At the time of his writing, Fromm argued that Marx would criticize Soviet Russia for not really abolishing private property, but instead reducing everything to a common level where poor individuals are paid the same wages while still working meaningless jobs.
As Fromm clarifies, “What Marx would have thought of a system such as Soviet communism he expressed very clearly in a statement of what he called ‘crude communism’… The truth is that for Marx the situation of a worker in a Russian ‘socialist’ factory, a British state-owned factory, or an American factory such as General Motors, would appear essentially the same.”
The situation is similar in China where the Communist Party governs with exacting top-down control in a fashion where the state controls much of the capital while relying on its immense workforce to drive its growth. Unsurprisingly, the work culture in China, especially in the tech industry, is referred to as 9–9–6: 9 a.m. to 9 p.m. six days a week.
As enticing as it is to criticize China, the downfall of America has been the inability to look inward and redress our own shortcomings. A greater percentage of working-age Americans live in poverty compared to all other developed countries. Moreover, the U.S. has worse worker protection, less paid time off, is the only developed country to not have mandated family leave, and has the highest level of income inequality among G7 countries.
The fallacy of American capitalism has been the exaltation of the word “growth.” Politicians tend to champion the promises of job creation, low unemployment, and economic prosperity. Yet, prior to Covid-19, despite four percent unemployment, the Brookings Institution found that 44 percent of Americans are employed in low-wage jobs that pay median annual wages of $18,000. According to Fromm,
“The principle which underlies all capitalist systems [is] that maximum production and consumption are the unquestionable goals of society.”
More is not always better, and the insatiable pursuit of growth begs the question: what is it all for? Herein lies the underlying beauty of communism that has been historically obscured by liberal ideologues and the myth of American exceptionalism. At its zenith, society should function to serve its people in a way that best aligns each individual’s purpose with the goals and aspirations of the collective.
If all we do is work unfulfilling jobs our whole lives at the expense of our passions, families, and experiences, then the society in which we live failed to value our humanity. I am not advocating we take up arms and seize the means of production, but it is time we stop seeing communism as a threat to our livelihoods and begin appreciating the value its humanistic approach can bring to our work, our relationships, and ourselves.
At the end of the day, the U.S. is long overdue for a major shift in the way we work, live, and move forward as a society. Despite the binary between capitalism and communism, it doesn’t have to be a zero-sum game where one is glorified at the expense of the other.
Regardless of ideology, the finer points of Marxist thought — humanity over cupidity, meaningful work rooted in self-expression, harmony with nature, and greater solidarity with our fellow men and women — are ideals we can all support in advancing toward a more equitable, fulfilling and prosperous future.
