Karl Marx: The Labor Theory of Value and the Geist of Violent Revolution

In this episode of Fascinating!, Rik from Planet Vulcan dissects the life and legacy of Karl Marx, one of Earth’s most influential yet controversial figures. Marx’s ideas, which sparked revolutions and shaped the 20th century, were rooted in his belief that all of history is a history of class struggles. With characteristic wit, Rik explores Marx’s fixation on the labor theory of value, which posits that workers create all value, and the curious absence of evolutionary thinking in his worldview—despite being a contemporary of Darwin.

Rik also takes us through the influence of Hegel’s dialectic on Marx, tracing how the dream of a classless society led to misguided attempts at social engineering and economic planning. Was Marxism a revolutionary new idea or just another form of religious dogma? Tune in as Rik unpacks Marx’s vision, the unintended consequences of his legacy, and why the Vulcan mission remains focused on advocating evolutionary thinking over centralized control.

Transcript

Good day to you, and welcome to Fascinating!  I am your host Rik, from Planet Vulcan.  My continuing mission on Planet Earth:  to search for signs of intelligence and to encourage its spread.

Today we take a look at a particularly fascinating Earthling from the 19th century, Karl Marx.  Marx’s work became enormously influential after his death, particularly in the early part of the 20th century, when it was seized upon with enthusiasm by the Bolshevik party in Russia.  

And although the Fascist party in Italy and the Nazi party in Germany both positioned themselves in opposition to the Communists, particularly its international character, they too accepted many basic tenets of socialism, such as state ownership and/or control of the means of production.

A short bio:

Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Prussia, now part of the Federal Republic of Germany, into a comparatively wealthy middle-class family.  His father was a prominent lawyer whose income provided a life of comfort to his family, and the opportunity to go to university for young Karl. 

Karl’s father was urging him to prepare himself for a productive life, where he would be able to support a family.  His father’s hopes were in vain.

I must read to you an excerpt of a letter Heinrich Marx wrote to his son in 1837 that I ran across while doing research for this essay.

Alas, your conduct has consisted merely in disorder, meandering in all the fields of knowledge, musty traditions by sombre lamplight; degeneration in a learned dressing gown with uncombed hair has replaced degeneration with a beer glass. And a shirking unsociability and a refusal of all conventions and even all respect for your father. Your intercourse with the world is limited to your sordid room, where perhaps lie abandoned in the classical disorder the love letters of a Jenny [Karl’s fiancée] and the tear-stained counsels of your father. ... And do you think that here in this workshop of senseless and aimless learning you can ripen the fruits to bring you and your loved one happiness? ...

Karl initially studied law at the University of Bonn and later at the University of Berlin, but soon abandoned that pursuit for economics and philosophy, and he was introduced to the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, whose work was very fashionable and influential at that time. 

Hegel’s philosophy had a profound impact on young Karl’s thinking, particularly his ideas about the dialectic. Marx’s thoughts on materialism were derived from ancient Greek philosophers, particularly Democritus and Epicurus, who were the subjects of his doctoral thesis in philosophy.  If you will recall, it was Democritus who first introduced the idea that absolutely everything can be explained in terms of material particles, stating that all that truly exists are “atoms and the void”.

Marx went to work as a journalist after graduation, soon becoming a writer and then the editor of the "Rheinische Zeitung," a newspaper in the city of Koln, also known as Cologne. He was evidently considered a troublemaker by the authorities, who in short order shut down the newspaper and exiled him to France. 

The French authorities didn’t appreciate his work either, and soon exiled him to Belgium.  He briefly returned to Prussia during a time of upheaval there, but it wasn’t long until the Prussian authorities exiled him again, this time to England, where he lived and worked until his death in 1883.

Marx was understandably incensed, to put it mildly, by the injustice that was repeatedly inflicted on him for exercising his right to free speech, and saw it as confirmation of his idea that everything in society was rigged to protect the interests of the ruling classes. 

Friedrich Engels, Marx’s lifelong collaborator, whom he met shortly after going into exile, was the son of a wealthy Prussian textile manufacturer.  Friedrich never went to university, but he did find a way to hang out with the young radicals in the City of Bremen who were meeting for discussions, mostly about Hegel, in cafes, bookshops and private homes, while he was working at one of his father’s textile factories.  

Together, Marx and Engels, at ages 30 and 28 respectively, collaborated on writing "The Communist Manifesto", a work that attracted a lot of attention, which outlined the principles of what would later be known as Marxism. The manifesto posits that all of human history is the history of class struggles, and calls for the violent overthrow of the capitalist class, referred to as the bourgeoisie, by the working class, referred to as the proletariat.  

It seems that one plausible way to view the Manifesto is that it was Marx’s revenge fantasy, inspired by his ill treatment at the hands of European authorities. 

The tapestry of extreme violence he wove is reminiscent of the hellfire that medieval Christian writers routinely called down upon sinners and heretics.  Thomas Aquinas in particular seems to have spent an inordinate amount of time imagining the specifics of the torture these evil people would eventually have to endure.

Marx settled in London and began work on the first of three volumes of “Das Kapital”, which was eventually published in 1867.  He would go day after day to the Reading Room at the British Museum to do his research and writing.

Das Kapital attempted to demonstrate what Marx saw as flaws in the capitalist system, and to make it fit within the framework of the Hegelian dialectic, where bourgeois capitalism was seen as the thesis and the class consciousness of the proletariat was seen as the antithesis, which under the dialectic was expected to be resolved under a new synthesis characterized as a classless communist society.

Central to the work was his attempt to demonstrate that all value is created by labor.  Neither he nor his followers, however, have ever been able to concoct a cogent and convincing exposition of the labor theory of value, and the labor theory of value was soon displaced by the more sophisticated subjective theory of value, as part of the marginal revolution pioneered in the latter part of the 19th century by William Stanley Jevons in England, Carl Menger in Austria and Leon Walras in Switzerland.  

For a more detailed discussion of value, I invite you to listen to the Season 2 Fascinating! episode titled “Value”; or watch the video on the Fascinating YouTube Channel, Fascinating@pregodenada.

In addition to his work on the labor theory of value, Marx made a more modest but more lasting contribution to economic theory when he pointed out the booms and busts of the business cycle.  Other economists of the time were portraying business activity in theory as much more stable than it was in the real world, as Marx pointed out and everyone has now been obliged to acknowledge.

Marx’s explanation of the phenomenon didn’t cast much light, bound up as it was in his haste to condemn the capitalist system – he claimed to see a chronic tendency towards overproduction.  

His argument was not convincing, but to this day no one has yet created a really good explanation for booms and busts.  All anyone knows for sure is that the phenomenon is very complex, and it could be that the complexity of all the dynamical relationships might very well make it forever intractable.  And prediction has proven to be even more problematic than explanation.

Let’s now take a quick look at the ideas of Hegel, the philosopher who was so influential on the thinking of Marx and Engels and so many of their contemporaries.

Hegel’s noteworthy contribution was the idea of the dialectic, which he combined with the notion of “Geist”, or spirit.  Hegel’s Geist is a fairly ineffable notion, with his exposition couched in language that is frequently impenetrable, but it boils down to being some sort of force that is taking humanity to a specific goal.  

The Nazi party in Germany adopted the Geist idea, and believed in a specific goal of Deutschland Uber Alles.  The Bolshevik party in Russia believed in a specific goal of creating a perfect world as the inevitable end to the dialectical process, as people were to be conditioned to become the perfect “socialist man”.  They conceived of human nature as a tabula rasa.

What then is a Vulcan’s-eye view of Karl Marx and the influence he has had on Planet Earth?

First of all, the good things:

There are times in the course of history when simply shaking things up has value; and it doesn’t matter too much if the thinking of the shakers is not entirely sensible, as long as the shaking collapses outdated but persistent societal structures.

My colleague Prego de Nada speaks with admiration for one Professor Katz, his history professor at the University of Washington, who believed that one admirable feature of Western civilization was its unusual ability to renew itself.  And the renewal was frequently due to shake-ups such as the Protestant Reformation.

And much of 19th century Europe was badly in need of some renewal, particularly the parts that were under ossified authoritarian rule.

Marx also had a clear and effective writing style, unlike his friend Engels, whose works are unreadable.  Of the two, it’s pretty clear that it was Marx who was the deep thinker, and Engels was the rich man’s child who was trying to be one of the cool kids.

The diagnoses Marx made of the world he lived in occasionally hit a nail on the head quite squarely, for example his statement about religion being the opiate of the people, lulling them into looking to the afterlife for their reward in heaven.

How ironic that Marxism has become a religious faith itself, lulling people into looking forward to the time their grandchildren’s grandchildren will most certainly live in a heaven on Earth, currently under construction.  Pardon our mess.

The Vulcan mission on Planet Earth is to encourage the spread of evolutionary thinking.  Evolutionary thinking is based on the idea that order emerges spontaneously in social systems, and in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways, as a result of the behavior of the basic components of the system, whether the system is composed of humans, or other social vertebrates, or social insects.  The path of evolution is not and cannot be guided and there is no inherent goal – it just happens.

The evolutionary way of thinking is very much at odds with ways of thinking based on intelligent design, as manifested not only in theistic religions, but also in such things as economic planning and social engineering, conducted by people who imagine themselves observing the rest of humanity in a place apart and from a lofty perch, and who believe without question that they have both the standing and the wisdom to intervene in human affairs and to force good outcomes into being; and that they always know what constitutes a good outcome and what needs to be done to realize it.  And it was Marxism that originated the ongoing series of attempts in the modern world to impose intelligent design schemes.

Fascinating!

The ideas of Hegel and then Marx had most of their influence among the educated elite (and not on the class consciousness of the proletariat as had been predicted in their narrative).  

And you may rest assured that this predictive failure causes the true believers no more concern than the idea that their monotheistic religion has three gods (or possibly four) causes concern to a Catholic.

And even though members of this elite have always flattered themselves with the idea that they are the vanguard of the revolution and the wave of the future, a dispassionate evaluation of what they are actually proposing reveals that they are more properly viewed as the last gasp of the feudal aristocracy, because the only facet of their ideas that involves any sort of “revolution” is that they are replacing old rulers with new rulers, and the new rulers are doing all the same stuff as the old rulers, but presumably with better intentions.  Nothing truly fundamental in this scheme of things has really changed from medieval times.  

Same shit, different flies.

If you examine Marx’s take on the society of 19th century Europe in which he lived from the perspective of evolutionary thinking, it becomes clear that there were systematic errors in his thinking.  Error #1 was that he consistently attributed the order he observed emerging around him to a designer. 

For example, he believed that the systems of production and commerce that were evolving during the early years of the industrial revolution had instead been designed and constructed, and were being controlled by a ruling class.

There’s more, but it’s more of the same.

Error #2 was the adoption of the zero-sum fallacy.

He laid out a vision of a coordinated conspiracy, weaving a fantastic web with this imaginary “ruling class” not just running people’s day-to-day lives, but also ideologically manipulating the working class through control of the published word and control of the education of children.

In his failure to understand what a challenge it would actually be to design and operate an economy from the top down, he attributed superhuman powers to the ruling class.  And he and his devotees have consistently operated on the assumption that once they were the rulers, they too would be able to exercise these same powers to create the outcomes they desired. 

Charles Darwin was a contemporary of Karl Marx.  Darwin’s Origin of Species was published in 1859, just eight years before Marx’s Das Kapital.

And yet there is no hint of recognition in Marx’s writings of the phenomenon of the spontaneous emergence of order that Darwin’s writing reveals.  There is no historical evidence that the two men ever met in person, and they never exchanged correspondence.

It seems likely then that, although he must have heard of Darwin, he never studied Darwin’s writings.  Perhaps he was disinclined to delve into anything that might disconfirm his bias towards intelligent design explanations.

It's the labor theory of value that holds all of Marxism together.  The idea that it is the workers who create all the value is the unifying idea behind the rest of the theory.

From the Vulcan’s-eye view it is quite clear that the labor theory of value has achieved the status of “undead”.  It’s been impossible so far for anyone to flesh out the labor theory of value in a way that makes sense, for the simple reason that it doesn’t make sense.  It’s a form of mysticism to believe that manual labor creates all value, and to ignore what is so obvious, that the true source of most value is the thinking brain.

Belief in the idea nonetheless persists for the time being, and politicians who promote easy answers and half-baked solutions are frequently able to build successful careers using these superficially plausible, but ultimately nonsensical ideas, as a foundation.

And there also still exists a “true believer” motivation, particularly within the educated classes, as well as a lot of social pressure and moral blackmail to keep everyone in line.  It’s not just that it’s wrong to question Marxist dogma, it’s even worse that that!  It’s bad manners!

What do Vulcans think of Marx’s attempt to attach the term “materialism” to his ideas? 

We look at it as an attempt to cleanse his philosophy of any taint of religious influence.  The problem we perceive, though, is that the “dialectical” part of dialectical materialism is mysticism through and through, especially the “Geist” element in the way that Hegel defined the term.

Interestingly, there is a way to view what might be referred to as Geist from a naturalist viewpoint.  As the brilliant physicist Richard Feynman explained it, paraphrased:  if we consider the fact that each and every atom within the human body is replaced at least once during the typical human’s lifetime, how do we reconcile that idea that the older person is the same person in some essential way as the younger person?  If it’s not the atoms that provide continuity, then what does?

Feynman used the metaphor of “vibrations” to explain the continuity.  The vibrations that animate a human being are energy flows that serve to organize the systems, and these energy flows continue to organize the systems even when the physical components of the system have been gradually replaced.

It's like the proud young man displaying the axe which has just been passed down to him by his father, explaining, “This was my great-grandfather’s axe.  My grandfather replaced the handle, and my father replaced the head”.

So it is perfectly rational to conceive of spirit as a metaphor for energy, as in the Jewish Torah where the spirit of god moves upon the face of the waters, if we conceive of the sun as god and the sun’s energy as spirit.

Such an interpretation of Geist, however, is incompatible with the Hegelian interpretation. 

Vulcans thus view the Marxism meme as it has developed on Planet Earth, not as an alternative to religiously inspired thought, but instead as merely another religion.  

And its religious nature explains a lot about why evolutionary thinking has not only failed to take root among the devotees of Marxism, but is fiercely resisted, just as evolutionary thinking is resisted by followers of theistic religions because it contradicts revealed truth.  

In the world of science, challenges to old ideas are welcomed as an opportunity to learn, to refine one’s thinking and even now and then to develop an entirely new paradigm.  

In the world of religion, new ideas are regarded as a threat, and people who espouse new ideas are regarded as heretics, and betrayers of a presumed pledge of solidarity. 

Eventually Marxism can be expected to lose its influence on Planet Earth, simply because it is based on science that is tainted by mysticism.  

And even though reason has very little force with true believers, the evidence from consistent failures and unintended consequences stemming from economic planning and social engineering is gradually building up and making its influence felt.

We would like to take this opportunity to note the recent passing of Daniel Dennett at the age of 92.  Professor Dennett was a philosopher at Tufts University, and an Earthling much esteemed by Vulcans for his contributions to evolutionary thinking on Planet Earth, particularly in his book “Darwin’s Dangerous Idea”, a must-read for serious intellectuals who wish to maintain a world view rooted in the scientific observation of nature.

I invite you to listen to the next essay on the Fascinating! podcast, and to have a look at the videos posted on the YouTube Channel, Fascinating@pregodenada.

If you find these essays personally valuable, please recommend them to your friens.

Theme music, Helium, with thanks to TrackTribe.

Live long and prosper.  

Savor your experiences.  Treasure your memories.  Anticipate a happy and rewarding future.  

And respect nature’s wisdom.