many men out of work that they would compete for jobs until wages would become more and more meager. Technological development has actually created more jobs than it has destroyed and, except during intervals of depression, the long-range trend in capitalism has been to get closer and closer to the economic dream of “full- employment.”
Fallacy 13—Since Marx believed that wages would become smaller and smaller he assumed that the only possible way to attain an adequate living would be by owning property. That is why he said the possession of property was the one thing which distinguished the proletariat from the exploiting class. This conclusion was another major error. Today some individuals may readily receive $10,000 a year for the sale of their labor services while others live on incomes of $2,500 derived from the ownership of property. In such cases it would certainly seem ludicrous to call the first group proletariat and the second group exploiting bourgeoisie. Under capitalism the ownership of property is certainly not the only means of gaining adequate economic independence.
Fallacy 14—Marx and Engels also failed in trying to predict what would happen to the middle class under capitalism. They said the middle class would be forced to follow the dismal process of sinking back into the propertyless class so that ultimately there would be just two violently antagonistic classes— the capitalists and the propertyless proletariat. The very opposite happened. Economists have made studies which show that the middle class (consisting of people who are neither extremely prosperous nor exceptionally poor) has been rapidly growing. As a group the members of the middle class have increased in number, in wealth and in proportion to the rest of the population.{61}
Fallacy 15—Another fallacy in Communism is the theory that class struggle leads to “necessary progress.” In this theory Marx and Engels attempted to apply the dialectics of their philosophy which say that out of struggle between two opposing forces an inescapable new evolutionary advancement is made. This fails to explain the unprogressiveness which has characterized many nations for centuries—nations such as India, China, Egypt, Arabia and the populations in East Asia.
It also fails to explain one of the most obvious facts of history, namely, the retrogression of civilizations. The whole pattern of human experience shows that nations rise to a summit of power and then pass through moral and intellectual decay to lose their cultural standing and economic predominance. This is vastly easier to demonstrate in history than the theory that class struggle has lifted man through an ever-ascending series of stages called “necessary progress.”
Fallacy 16—Finally, the failure of class struggle to explain the past also failed Marx and Engels when they tried to predict what would happen in their own lifetime. They said that Communism would come first in those countries which were most highly capitalistic because the class struggle would become more sharply defined as capitalism increased. On this basis they thought Communism would come first in Germany.{62} A few years later Marx shifted his prediction to England.{63}
It was ironical that Communism (at least the Dictatorship of the proletariat) should first come to Russia—a nation which in economic matters was one of the least developed among all the countries in Europe. Furthermore, Communism came as a coup in Russia, not through any class struggle on the part of the workers. It came through the conspiratorial intrigue of V. I. Lenin, who was encouraged by the German High Command to go into Russia during the closing months of World War I and use a small, hard core of revolutionaries to seize the provisional government which had but recently forced the Tzar to abdicate and was at the moment representing the working class, as much as anyone else, in setting up a democratic constitution.
Communism therefore did not come to Russia as the natural outcome of class struggle but like any other dictatorship—by the military might of a small minority. This brings us to the fallacy of the “Dictatorship of the Proletariat.”
The Dictatorship of the Proletariat
Fallacy 17—This proposed monopoly of political and economic power was designed to do many things for the good of humanity, but experience has proven them to be false dreams. For example, the Dictatorship of the Proletariat was designed to spread the enjoyment of wealth among the people by abolishing private property and putting all means of production in the hands of the government. Why did they want to do this? They said it was to prevent all property and wealth from falling into the hands of private capitalists.
But what happened when the Communists attempted to do this in Russia? It destroyed what little division of wealth there was and sent the economy hurtling back in the direction of feudalism—an economic system under which a few privileged persons dispense the necessities of life by arbitrary determination while at the same time dictating the way in which all important phases of life shall be lived by the citizens.
The folly of Marx and Engels was in failing to distinguish the difference between the right of private property and the abuse of private property. They were going to get rid of the abuse by abolishing the right. The problem of humanity has not been the right to own private property but how to provide an equitable distribution of property rights so that many people could enjoy them. Therefore, Communist theory does not solve the problem because of the simple fact that putting all property back under the supervision of the hirelings of a dictatorship launches a trend toward monopoly of property rather than toward a wider distribution of its enjoyment.
Fallacy 18—The Dictatorship of the Proletariat was also designed to compensate each man for work performed rather than for wages earned. But by abolishing wages in favor of labor certificates, Communist leaders were simply abandoning the prevailing medium of exchange. After the Communist revolution in Russia it was found that this idea forced that nation to resort to a primitive barter system. The whole idea was so disastrous that it had to be abandoned after a few months. The Communists learned that the problem of equalizing wages is not solved by abolishing wages per se.
Fallacy 19—The Dictatorship of the Proletariat was also intended to permit the creation of a huge “defense” army which would help “liberate” the proletariat in other nations until finally the Dictatorship would cover the entire earth.
This veiled attempt to obscure the imperialistic ambitions of Communist leaders for world conquest is still employed. Their armies are always described as being for “defense” and the victims of their aggression as being “liberated.” Recent world history has provided a tragic commentary on the role of Communist liberation.
Fallacy 20—The Dictatorship of the Proletariat was further expected to give the Communist leaders time to demonstrate to the masses the effectiveness of their plan so as to insure a unity of support for “full communism” which was soon to follow. The Communist Dictatorship in Russia has had no such power to persuade. In fact, the violence which, was authorized for use against the capitalist class has had to be turned loose with equal fury on the proletariat or working class so that today the masses have been reduced to a state of numb and fearful acquiescence rather than a “unity of support” for the Communist cause.
The Stateless, Classless Society Under Full Communism
Fallacy 21—The Communist dream of a great new “one world” of the future is based on the belief that a regime of violence and coercion under the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would permit the establishment of a society which would produce a new order of men who would acquire the habit of observing what Lenin called the “simple fundamental rules of every-day social life in common.”
The fallacy of this hope lies in Communism’s perverted interpretation of human behavior. It assumes, on the basis of Dialectical Materialism, that if you change things outside of a man this automatically compels a change on the inside of the man. The inter-relation between environment on the outside and the internal make-up of man is not to be disputed, but environment only conditions man, it does not change his very nature. For
