On Saturday, May 7, 2022 at 8:02:19 AM UTC-7, David P. wrote:
> 5 Things Marx Wanted to Abolish (Besides Private Property)
> by Jon Miltimore , Oct. 31, 2017, fee dot org
>
> One of the remarkable things about The Communist Manifesto
> is its honesty. Karl Marx might not have been a very good guy,
> but he was refreshingly candid about the aims of Communism.
> This brazenness, one could argue, is baked into the Communist psyche.
> “The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims,” Marx
> declared in his famous manifesto. “They openly declare that
> their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of
> all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble
> at a Communistic revolution.”
>
> Like Hitler’s Mein Kampf, readers are presented with a pure,
> undiluted vision of the author’s ideology (dark as it may be).
> Marx’s manifesto is famous for summing up his theory of Communism
> with a single sentence: “Abolition of private property.” But this
> was hardly the only thing the philosopher believed must be abolished
> from bourgeois society in the proletariat's march to utopia. In his
> manifesto, Marx highlighted five additional ideas and institutions
> for eradication.
>
> 1. The Family
> ----------
> Marx admits that destroying the family is a thorny topic, even
> for revolutionaries. “Abolition of the family! Even the most
> radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists,”
> he writes. But he said opponents of this idea fail to understand
> a key fact about the family. “On what foundation is the present
> family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain.
> In its completely developed form, this family exists only among
> the bourgeoisie,” he writes. Best of all, abolishing the family
> would be relatively easy once bourgeois property was abolished.
> “The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its
> complement vanishes, & both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.”
>
> 2. Individuality
> ---------------
> Marx believed individuality was antithetical to the egalitarianism
> he envisioned. Therefore, the “individual” must “be swept out of
> the way, and made impossible.” Individuality was a social construction
> of a capitalist society and was deeply intertwined with capital itself.
> “In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality,
> while the living person is dependent and has no individuality,” he wrote.
> “And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois,
> abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so. The abolition
> of bourgeois individuality, bourgeois independence, and bourgeois
> freedom is undoubtedly aimed at.”
>
> 3. Eternal Truths
> -----------------
> Marx did not appear to believe that any truth existed beyond
> class struggle. “The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the
> ideas of its ruling class,” he argued. “When the ancient world was
> in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity.
> When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th c. to rationalist ideas,
> feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary
> bourgeoisie.” He recognized how radical this idea would sound to
> his readers, particularly since Communism does not seek to modify
> truth, but to overthrow it. But he argued these people were missing
> the larger picture. “‘Undoubtedly,’ it will be said, ‘religious,
> moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the
> course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy,
> political science, and law, constantly survived this change.
>
> There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc.,
> that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes
> eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead
> of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction
> to all past historical experience.’ What does this accusation reduce
> itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the
> development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different
> forms at different epochs.”
>
> 4. Nations
> ------------
> Communists, Marx said, are reproached for seeking to abolish countries.
> These people fail to understand the nature of the proletariat, he wrote.
> “The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they
> have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political
> supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute
> itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the
> bourgeois sense of the word.” Furthermore, largely because of capitalism,
> he saw hostilities between people of different backgrounds receding. As
> the proletariat grew in power, there soon would be no need for nations,
> he wrote. “National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily
> more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to
> freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of
> production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto.”
>
> 5. The Past
> ------------
> Marx saw tradition as a tool of the bourgeoisie. Adherence to the past
> served as a mere distraction in proletariat’s quest for emancipation
> and supremacy. “In bourgeois society,” Marx wrote, “the past dominates
> the present; in Communist society, the present dominates the past.”
>
> https://fee.org/articles/5-things-marx-wanted-to-abolish-besides-private-property/

Marx got 3 out of 5 right. Not enough.