Why Intellectuals Love Marx
Let's review the curious case of Marxism. Various manifestations of this economic and social prescription have been attempted, with uniformly calamitous results. In the very few examples where permanent massive poverty was averted, it was solely due to components of Capitalism which remained or were added: China, via Deng's Capitalist reforms and Europe by the remaining installed Capitalist base funding the tomfoolery. The historical norm is human rights violations, famines, mass murder and mass poverty.
There is no serious case to be made to the contrary, yet Marx remains evergreen - particularly amongst the most well educated.
Why? To explain this conundrum, we must start with the psychology of those who are attracted to this product of 1840's Parisian coffee culture.
Engineers vs Professors of Engineering
We'll start with my college experience where I earned a BS and MS in Engineering. I looked around at my fellow students and noted that most were like me: we wanted the tools with which to build things. Calculus, physics, and the rest were tools, nothing more. I wanted to invent stuff, but there were classes and homework and tests in the way. I'll state it again: the activities of school were inconvenient necessities on the road to invention.
Not so for the one or two students in 100 who would go on to be PhD professors. Those guys would see "the derivation/proof is left to the student" or a list of extra study problems deriving some trigonometric identity and eagerly dive in. For the rest of us, we wanted the straightest path to a GPA, Diploma and a job. Rather than wrestle with theory and equations made of variables and not concrete numbers, we worked on our cars or built radios.
We wanted to make Products and test them in the real world. The math was a tool, nothing more. But to the budding PhD, the tool itself is beautiful. An elegant proof is a product of merit. This is not a dig on those guys - their work is important, necessary and challenging. The point is that there is a distinction in attraction and thought.
So What?
Being a bit of an oddball, I minored in Philosophy. During a course on Modern Philosophy, we had a class on the 18th Century thinker George Berkeley, who immersed himself in the question of whether to world actually exists outside of human perception.
This line of argument can neither be confirmed nor denied, allowing for the industrious philosopher to write and publish endlessly without facing the possibility of being proven wrong by hard facts in the real world. Seeing the uselessness of the enterprise, I raised my hand and I asked the Professor "So what?"
The Professor did not like me or my question.
Stoicism has arisen as the darling of today's entrepreneurial class. It is no coincidence that the action and result oriented nature of our nation's Founding Fathers led them to be attracted to this ancient Greek school of philosophy. Most teachings break down to a formula like this:
Human nature works this way: ____________.
Therefore, think and act like this: ____________.
Observe the results dispassionately and adjust strategy accordingly.
It could have been written by an engineer iterating on the design of a rocket engine.
Practical Philosophy
Stoicism was not taught at Northeastern University in the 1980's and is generally looked down upon by serious philosophy professors. Why? Because Stoicism is Practical Philosophy - relentlessly focused on actionable insights to be used by everyone on a daily basis. There are no exhaustive proofs, no linguistically complex and ornate expositions, no baroque palace of language to decipher.
They look down upon Stoicism because it is practical and concise and makes pronouncements whose argument is efficacy in the real world, rather than a beautiful house of cards that cannot withstand the removal of any one.
Philosophy professors, engineering professors, political science PhDs, et al - they all love the tools. A closed form, complete proof, a unified field theory, these are the objects of art and praise.
Application of all this in solving the problem of fixing a defect in a product so that it ships on time, despite your best person being on vacation this week is not their area of interest. Such questions are "blue collar."
This does not make the theoretical physicist unimportant or wrong. It is just important to understand that the Professorial class is naturally attracted to things that are different than the practical engineer or entrepreneur.
Well, It’s Complicated…..
Let's bring it back to Marx. I'm currently reading an interesting book by Kevin Rudd, the former Prime Minister of Australia, who happens to be a serious scholar of China and the CCP. The current chapter deals with the definition of Marxism-Leninism and its understanding and application by the CCP from Mao to Xi. In parsing out the evolution from Deng to Xi, his language is as concise as it can be, but the subject is quite complex.
It then hit me: Marx and all his descendants are always complex. The language is always rife with ornate definitions and long winded exposition. Communism cannot be explained without sounding like a legal textbook.
In comparison, laissez faire Capitalism can be communicated in a few very understandable sentences:
The Value of a product or idea can be measured by whether other people, acting on their own perception and free will, will spend their hard earned money on it.
The person or entity who can consistently produce the most Value earns the most money.
Each person's Agency to pursue what they believe to be a valuable good or service and present it to their fellow free humans is the core Human Right that must be preserved.
The primary responsibility of Government is to preserve and protect this Right.
That's about it. Perfect for those who prefer putting ideas to the test by taking action, and anathema to those who prefer sitting in a cafe talking about ideas.
That is why the intelligentsia love Marx so much. Marxism is an attempt to turn human society into an infinitely complex, deterministic Newtonian machine. It satisfies the Intellectual Elite's desire to endlessly work on a magnificent edifice of logic and erudition, whilst never having to face definitive proof of failure, safe behind the excuse: "Marxism hasn't been done correctly yet."
A more honest explanation is: "Human society is so complex, we haven't yet gotten all the components of this program in place, so you can't judge the outcome yet. In fact, the problem is incomputably large and can never be solved via this approach. But we are erudite and can keep the grift going on forever."
This does beg the question: "OK, then why do normal people also fall for Marxist lunacy?" Marxism is the cousin of the ads you see on your feeds: "The big companies don't want you to know about this home AC unit that can cool a room in minutes for just pennies!" This is similar to the "Who really killed JFK" nonsense.
I'll leave all that to marketing and advertising professionals to explain.