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Capitalism and Marxism are still pitted against each other ideologically, politically, culturally. The Marxians form a revolutionary front. Capitalists retort with counter-revolution. Nation by nation the third world is taking sides.
In this movement it is generally conceded by Socialists that the workingmen of industry play the central part. But they are neither its sole origin nor is their welfare its sole aim. The best known of the Socialist critics of Marxism, Edward Bernstein, shares with some of Marx's most loyal disciples in this excessive idealization of the industrial working class.
Its objective has been not private profit but a higher standard of economic and social life for exploited masses of the business community and of the Third World. Capitalism has had as its slogan "Every man for himself". The slogan of Marxism is "Serve the whole people". Until 1917 Marxism was a body of social theory and a program of specific political demands.
In company with her comrade Dayev she vigorously attacks the convictions of the men of Kisselev, who see sufficient safety in the workingmen's associations; she rises up, in the name of Marxism, against the "narodnikis," whom she considers ingenuous idealists; she refuses to endorse the theories of the "intellectuals," who oppose the thought of any great work, since they believe that smaller deeds are more immediately realizable.
The intellectual optimism of a bygone age is no longer possible to the modern student of human nature. Yet it lingers in Marxism, making Marxians rigid and Procrustean in their treatment of the life of instinct. Of this rigidity the materialistic conception of history is a prominent instance.
China's transition, by comparison, is spectacular inflated figures notwithstanding because it chose a gradual approach to liberalization: first economic, then political. Last but not least, pure, "American", capitalism and pure Marxism have more in common than either would care to admit. Both are utopian. Both are materialistic. Both are doctrinaire.
The historic decree issued by the Moscow government on the nationalization of industry after the opening experiment had broken down contains data enough to enable one to affirm that Lenin himself judged Marxism inapplicable even to Russia, and left it where he had found it among the ideals of a millennial future.
Marxian socialism-communism, organized and developed largely since 1848, has grown up as a rebellion against monopoly capitalism. At it matured, after revolutions in Mexico, China, Tsarist Russia and East Europe, it became an alternative and even a competitive life style. Marxism has been, at least in theory, cooperative rather than competitive.
Yes, he was a Red, and knew his Kropotkin, but he was no anarchist. On the other hand, political action was a blind-alley leading to reformism and quietism. Political socialism had gone to pot, while industrial unionism was the logical culmination of Marxism. He was a direct actionist. The mass strike was the thing.
In truth, the battle raged for seven decades between two strands of socialism. Social democracy was conceived in the 19th century as a benign alternative to the revolutionary belligerence of Marx and Engels. It sparred with communism the virulent and authoritarian species of socialism that Marxism has mutated into.
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