Is Marxism a failure because human beings are inherently flawed, or is Marxism itself to blame? Read this article based on the author’s experiences in China: Partisan Review
Democracy is the institutionalization of the fact that disagreement is both inevitable and good. Marx didn%u2019t distinguish between democracy and other political systems. In the Manifesto, he wrote, “Political power, properly so called, is merely the organized power of one class for oppressing another.” He was wrong. A philosophy that looks forward to the end of conflict of interest leads logically and inevitably to a society where disagreement is viewed as the embodiment of evil. When individuality was outlawed, individuals themselves were considered worthless. Countries as different as Russia, Ethiopia, and China all developed the same architecture, the same “neighborhood committees,” the same fear of thought. What is even worse, they pursued policies that led to starvation on a catastrophic scale. Such a famine is currently taking place in North Korea. It is no accident, comrade.
Marxism is more a religion than a political philosophy, but we in the West can at least thank it for preventing the the capitalist spirit of China from dominating the world economy for the present.