It is unsurprising to observe the difficulties and misapprehensions that emerged between my friends and me regarding topics of Marxism, Communism and Socialism. I would not consider myself a “fundamentalistic Marxist”, let alone a communist, but in conversations, I also found that I was often pushed into this position to defend those terms and the ideologies behind those terms from some extreme and unfair stigmatization. Paraphrasing from an (anonymous) professor: “for a generation who have grandparents that fought in Vietnam and Korea, it is hard to explain to them the difference between ‘communism,’ ‘Marxism’ and ‘evil.’” Perhaps the same is also true for the people living across the Pacific Ocean: it is hard for them to imagine there is anything left of capitalist democracy other than killing Indians, enslaving Africans and exploiting European nations financially from the US dollar hegemony. Those two are both extreme positions, but being fortunate enough to have a taste of both narratives when I am still young, I wish to give an attempt to maybe explain and reconcile some of the tensions in this rivalry.
A respectful mother of one of my friends once told me a story to illustrate the evil nature of communism: in a hypothetical world where John studied hard in school, but Joe did not study at all, John got an A, and Joe an F. The teacher gave both of them Cs to make John and Joe “equal.” This story might be familiar to many as a simple but powerful argument against communism. I entirely agree that what the professor did is unjust, and I believe even the most extreme “communist” would also. Here is a “communist” retelling of the story to illustrate why capitalist society is evil: John got an A, and Joe an F. Being supported by the teacher, Joe forced John to transfer 30 points on John’s grade to Joe because Joe owns the pen that John uses to write, and thus John got a D and Joe a B. In both stories, the professor is the government, and Joe is the person that takes advantage of the institution. In the capitalist version , the government is the violent apparatus that guarantees the workers (John) would not unite against the capitalist (Joe) in the name of “order” and “justice”; it is a perverted organization that only protects the rich but not the poor.
It appears that everyone deplores the behavior of Joe in both examples: it is unjust to take something that one didn’t work for it—the difference between the two stories is “what is the bad guy called?” While the capitalists claim that they are better since they deserve every penny they work for, communists would claim they have the upper hand since their labor supports their family and community.
Many would now look at the West and see a victory of “democratic” capitalism over “authoritarian” communism, but in order to give justice to the Marxist vocabulary of “capitalism” and “communism”, we need to go back to the time when Karl Marx was writing—a time where workers work 10-16 hours every day and 6-7 days every week, a time where child labor was used in mines and factories and a worker’s life was often shorter than 30 years, a time where labor unions were prohibited and strikes and protests encountered violent oppression from the police. Blood was shed in Chicago, Lawrence, London, and many other places when workers were striking and protesting for better living conditions. It was a time when capitalism was not “democratic” and communism was still an idea of paradise without the pollution of the notion of “authoritarianism.”
Karl Marx is radical indeed, but his radicality is understandable in a society where the upper class were taking most of the profit when workers sacrificed their health, time and family for better material life. The tantalizing material benefit becomes the carrot hanging in front of the horse that the horse would never reach. One may even argue that even if there is no Karl Marx, any Cale Marx, Kelvin Marx or Kelly Marx would bring up a similar observation and criticizes the unsatisfactoriness of the contemporary world.
I do not agree with the Marxist way of reaching a better society—anyone can see how the Soviet Union failed. But we should also acknowledge how much ordinary life has been improved and protected since the nineteenth century. Being Calvinists, we should agree with the total depravity of people and corruption of power and wealth more than the average person. Without the struggle and sacrifices of our ancestors, capitalists would not concede to a better life for ordinary people if they can make a better profit out of complacent laborers. What we now call capitalism is not what it had been in its worst form, but it has been repeatedly challenged and reformed by people that call for change and work for change. By challenging the justification between workers and wealthy people that own the means of production, Karl Marx has provided valuable insights in this movement.
If one is a hard-core Marx worshiper, you might hate what I say with a revisionist tone. “Any weak compromise with capitalism would be taken advantage of by capitalists,” one might shout out. Yet friends from the other side might find it unacceptable that I seem to be making an attempt to neutralize the regimes that starve to death millions of Ukrainians and millions of Chinese. (I myself am Chinese.) I, just like anyone who reads history critically and honestly, would agree that the communist parties did not achieve what they promised to the people. But Marxism, although it gave birth to communism as a political party, has its insights that contribute to the civilized life we have today. I would even argue that some cultural criticism in Christian worlds nowadays has similarities to the neo-Marxist critique of capitalism, which puts us more in line with the “evil Marxists” than we have ever assumed. Just as no one sinful human being is perfect, Karl Marx and Marxism are far from perfect, but as we are progressing to a new era where the Cold War has ended, we could re-approach this once taboo subject with more objective evaluation, and even, when the Marxists actually got something right, learn from them just as we learned from Aristotle and other pagan thinkers.