The Dignity of Labor and Marxist Utopianism

This old man busted his hump for a solid three hours this morning shoveling a ton and a half of 3/4" Madison gold landscaping rock onto his property.  I paid $91 for the rock and $45 to have it delivered.  Here in the Sonoran desert water-wasting lawns are frowned upon; xeriscapes are de rigueur.  The existing rock was wearing thin.  Since I keep myself in shape with weight-lifting and such, I was up for the job, though by 10 AM with Old Sol  beating done mercilessly I  was righteously fagged out and ready for the old man nap.  Since I arise at two ante meridian, by ten I have already put in an eight hour day.

Physical work is good for the soul  if you are working for yourself and have time for other things.  So I have long felt a certain sympathy for a famous passage from Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels, The German Ideology (ed. C. J. Arthur, New York: International Publishers, 1970, p. 53):

. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.  

With all due respect to Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling.  If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perform a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx.  But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recognition of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above. 

First of all, it is is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes."  Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chauffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished?  PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope?  Einstein a general?  Patton a physicist?  Woody Allen a bronco-buster?  Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon?  And if Marx had actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.

So despite my sympathy, I judge that what we have above is utopian, reality-denying nonsense.  Dangerous, murderous, leftist nonsense.  Incoherence: dictatorship of the proletariat, classless society, worker's paradise.  Cuba?  North Korea?  Communist China?  Dictatorship of the dictator (Stalin, Mao, Fidel . . .).  Classlessness by reduction of the people to one class, that of the impoverished and oppressed, lorded over by apparatchiks vastly UNEQUAL in power, perquisites, and pelf to those they lord over.  So in the end two classes: oppressed and oppressors.

The incoherence of socialism in a nutshell:  The achievement of the desired-for equality requires the suppression of dissidents and the the inequality of the revolutionary vanguard who, once enjoying a taste of their unequal power, will never give it up, until the whole house of cards collapses as did the USSR.

But this leaves us with the problem of the millions of Americans who work repetitive, boring jobs for lousy pay.  One thing that could be done that would drive up the pay scale is something that RINOs and liberals refuse to do, namely, stop the influx of illegal aliens.  RINOs want cheap labor while the liberal scum want to alter the demographics of the nation in such a way as to assure the permanent ascendancy of the Left.  These two unsavory groups  are in tacit cahoots.  To hell with them both.

So here you may have a reason to support Trump, as awful as he is.

. . . as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular, exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic, and must remain so if he does not want to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.  

With all due respect to Dennis Prager, Marx did not envisage a society in which people do no work, but one in which their work was non-alienating and fulfilling.  If you have ever worked a factory job where you are required to perform a mindless repetitive task for low wages for eight or more hours per day, then you should be able to sympathize somewhat with Marx.  But the sympathy is not likely to survive a clear recognition of the absurdity of what Marx is proposing above. 

First of all, it is is silly to say that "each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes."  Could Saul Kripke have become a diplomat or a chauffeur or an auto mechanic if he wished?  PeeWee Herman a furniture mover or Pope?  Einstein a general?  Patton a physicist?  Woody Allen a bronco-buster?  Evel Knievel a neurosurgeon?  And if Marx had actually done any 'cattle rearing,' he would have soon discovered that he couldn't be successful at it if he did it once in a while when he wasn't in the mood for hunting, fishing, or writing Das Kapital.

So despite my sympathy, I judge that what we have above is utopian, reality-denying nonsense.  Dangerous, murderous, leftist nonsense.  Incoherence: dictatorship of the proletariat, classless society, worker's paradise.  Cuba?  North Korea?  Communist China?  Dictatorship of the dictator (Stalin, Mao, Fidel . . .).  Classlessness by reduction of the people to one class, that of the impoverished and oppressed, lorded over by apparatchiks vastly UNEQUAL in power, perquisites, and pelf to those they lord over.  So in the end two classes: oppressed and oppressors.

The incoherence of socialism in a nutshell:  The achievement of the desired-for equality requires the suppression of dissidents and the the inequality of the revolutionary vanguard who, once enjoying a taste of their unequal power, will never give it up, until the whole house of cards collapses as did the USSR.

But this leaves us with the problem of the millions of Americans who work repetitive, boring jobs for lousy pay.  One thing that could be done that would drive up the pay scale is something that RINOs and liberals refuse to do, namely, stop the influx of illegal aliens.  RINOs want cheap labor while the liberal scum want to alter the demographics of the nation in such a way as to assure the permanent ascendancy of the Left.  These two unsavory groups  are in tacit cahoots.  To hell with them both.

So here you may have a reason to support Trump, as awful as he is.