Read Online Three Cities: Seeking Hope in the Anthropocene (BWB Texts Book 46) Kindle
In 1848 Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels published The Communist Manifesto. During the twentieth century strenuous efforts were made to implement the vision of a classless society that was expressed in that book. The results of these efforts were uniformly disastrous. As the century drew to an end Communist rule collapsed in the Soviet Union and in eastern Europe. Although still governed by a nominally Communist party, China had in fact repudiated the Marxist vision long before the Soviet Union disintegrated. At the end of the century only a few very small countries like Cuba were governed by people who still professed a commitment to Communism.Although Marxists criticized capitalism, the demise of their vision for replacing it does not imply that "capitalist" countries are beyond criticism. It is easy to compile long lists of outrageous problems afflicting countries that never were governed by Communists.In the following pages Professor deLespinasse maintains that, mixed in with all the nonsense, Marxists did get two things right:First: To achieve an ideal society we must indeed move beyond capitalism. (Historical experience since Marx wrote, and a principled, systematic analysis of his ideas, however, indicate that the direction in which he proposed to move away from capitalism was profoundly incorrect.)Second: An ideal society will indeed be a classless one. (However it will not be achieved by liquidating the bourgeoisie by a revolutionary process, as most Marxists thought. Instead, it will be reached by elevating the proletariat into the bourgeoisie by a process of reform.)
