TL;DR
Marxism as an academic framework is limited, dismal, and unhelpful but largely benign. Marxism as an ideology is largely based on a quantification fallacy with very accessible counterexamples, and thus simply demonstrably false. Marxism as an actual political and economic system produces some of the most profound evil in the recent history of mankind. It is incompatible with the USA version 1 Constitution and must remain incompatible with any USA version 2 Constitution worthy of the name.
The Details:
What’s wrong with Marxism anyway? Isn’t that just the lower classes organizing their power so as to counterbalance the power of the upper classes? Isn’t communism just people sharing possessions, like a family? Imagine no possessions – nothing to kill or die for? Isn’t that a beautiful thought?
Let’s define what we mean by Marxism before proceeding to warn against it in the strongest possible terms: like most ideas, Marxism exists in a number of forms, and one of the standard defenses that its adherents use in defending it is to defend some benign aspect of it when a malign aspect of it is attacked. We will see this shifting of definitions over and over as we discuss various doctrines of the political left*. Forewarned is forearmed.
Marxism, as an academic exercise, is principally the use of historical materialism to analyze the history and nature of class relations. As such, it focuses not on the history of ideas, but on the history of the mode of production of societies, which it sees largely as the history of class oppression in societies. Marxism in this form is not particularly wrong or evil, just extremely limited in the scope of insights it is capable of producing: by focusing exclusively on one aspect of civilization, it inherently loses the ability to see many other facets. To be sure, for much of human history, ideas were of limited day-to-day importance to the vast majority of humanity, struggling as they were for survival. It would also be naïve to deny that (again, for much of human history), the greatest impediment to widespread human flourishing has often been oppression by other humans. If one wishes to study in detail the history and variety of human misery, as caused by other humans, Marxism is highly recommended as an academic framework (though not, interestingly enough, if one wishes to reduce this misery). Where Marxism begins to go seriously off the rails is the point where its adherents begin to believe that because these things have happened, that they are the only things that have happened. In mathematical terms, they get their logical quantifiers wrong: instead of “some humans are oppressed by other humans,” we get “all humans are oppressed by other humans.” At this point, Marxism moves from an academic framework to a dogmatic ideology (this will be discussed further under the rubric of Critical Theory).
At this point, it is demonstrably wrong (it sees the world purely in zero-sum terms, a notion which is easily debunked), but not yet truly evil. It only turns evil when it moves from the world of overly-enthusiastic academics to the world of politics and economics. Marx himself was a harmless old crank with extremely poor health, puttering about the reading room of the British Museum, and sponging off the wealth of Engels’ father – at that time, arguably only his own family was harmed by his ideas. It was not until his ideas were taken up by others – Lenin, Stalin, Mao – who had the leadership abilities to move those ideas into political and economic reality, not until then did Marxism truly become evil. Ironically, while it was only an idea and not a material reality (and thus not a subject of interest to itself), it was fairly benign (though benighted).
Let’s now begin to answer the questions with which we started – isn’t Marxism just the organizing of the lower classes to counterbalance the oppressive power of the upper classes? Isn’t communism just people sharing possessions, like a family? No – it is none of those things: when Marxism is an academic framework, it certainly leads people to think in those terms; when Marxism becomes a dogmatic ideology, it leads people to work for a revolution (whether fast or slow) to usher in such a regime. Where it becomes evil is where it becomes real – Marxist governments cannot exist without a massive projection of power in which those deemed to be oppressors by the Marxists become in turn the oppressed. A Marxist regime cannot exist without a severe loss of freedom. Lenin, Stalin, Mao – they all knew this and said so explicitly. Consider the Lenin, “Who? Whom?” doctrine (also echoed by Trotsky and Stalin): he regarded oppression as inevitable. The “improvement” that Marxism made was not to remove or even reduce oppression, only that “our tribe” is now on top, and “their tribe” is on bottom.
I am aware of no one who objects to voluntary sharing of possessions. The evil occurs when it is no longer voluntary: the objection to Marxist governments is not the sharing itself, but the tyranny required to enforce it! And, John Lennon notwithstanding, “nothing to die for” probably also means “nothing to live for.”
I should mention also that I am quite aware that the actual writings of Marx have faded in importance to the left, compared to the writings of more current Marxists or neo-Marxists. This makes little difference in what follows, as the truly objectionable aspects of Marxism have not faded with the impact of Marx himself.
* See here for what I mean by the political “left.”
Postscript: after I wrote these essays, this highly recommended article by Mike Gonzalez (sounding many of the same themes) was published. I am choosing to point to it separately in a few places rather than reworking my essays to incorporate more detailed references to his work because, well, it’s a lot easier this way!