The Hot Air Machine

  The following article is taken from the Mises Institute article “Marx as Utopian” , itself taken from Rothbard (2006), pp. 364-366. The republication of this article on this site is in accordance with the Mises Institute’s CC BY-NC-ND 4.0 copyright as I have given attribution, do not make any money from this site, and have not altered the original material.   DESPITE Marx’s claim to be a “scientific socialist”, scorning all other socialists whom he dismissed as moralistic and “utopian”, it should be clear that Marx himself was even more in the messianic utopian tradition than were the competing “utopians”. For Marx not only sought a future society that would put an end to history: he claimed to have found the path towards that utopia inevitably determined by the “laws of history”. But a utopian, and a fierce one, Marx certainly was. A hallmark of every utopia is a militant desire to put an end to history, to freeze mankind in a static state, to put an end to diversity...

            SOCIALISTS  have a very high view of themselves because they have a very low view of capitalism. Capitalism, for them, is an exploitative, aristocratic, and chaotic ideology that promotes might-makes-right morals and feudalistic tyranny. That socialism promotes the fulfillment and humanity of the worker, that capitalism commodifies and alienates people , these ideas are represented in the posters, logos, quotes, and articles of socialism (just browse the Jacobin or WSWS). Socialists are the moral Übermenschen of human civilization/philosophy, while anyone who does not endorse their noble, egalitarian, collectivist ways are evil greedy bourgeois ; yes, even if you are a poor proletarian yourself .           Yet, despite the very confident and endearing self-image they possess, socialists seem to have time and time again contradicted basic morality. Many socialist regimes launched pogroms and pu...