Black Lives Matter and the Implications of Marxism
In late June, Patricia Cullors, co-founder of the Black Lives Matter organization, proclaimed herself and her fellow organizers “trained Marxists.” For some, this admittance comes as a worrisome shock. For others, Cullors’ words aren’t concerning. Because oppression against Black Americans is so pervasive and enduring, so the thought goes, the ideology of a movement’s leadership doesn’t really matter; the important thing is to end injustice.
There is, I think, some validity to both sides of this argument. The degree to which racial tensions have increased as of late should cause us to collectively reflect on the facts surrounding issues such as police brutality. Simultaneously, Marxism is an extremely dangerous, alluring, and potent ideology which has gripped many countries and caused them to commit terrible atrocities.
But how do we safely traverse such emotional minefields? How do we know when an ideology is virtuous, and when it carries potential for devastation? I contend that knowing the answer lies in understanding that ideology’s historical background, its premises, and its underlying beliefs. From there, we can conclude whether an idea carries merit, or whether it deserves rejection.
Let’s begin with a (very) brief history of Marxism. Karl Marx was born in 1818, during the height of the Industrial Revolution. As he grew, he surveyed the ever-innovating world around him, and noticed something disturbing: although factories were increasing the prosperity of their owners’ lives, they were making their workers miserable. Factory laborers – which consisted of men, women, and children – were exploited; they were overworked and underpaid. To make matters worse, in Marx’s eyes, workers were alienated from the fruits of their labor; they would never experience the positive impact of the products they made.
As he tried to understand the plight of the working class, Marx, along with his partner Friedrich Engels, articulated a theory of history. First, they believed that all people could be divided into two groups: proletariats and bourgeoisie. The proletariats were the working class; the bourgeoisie were the property-owning elites. Since the Middle Ages and the existence of feudalism, the bourgeoisie abused the proletariats by overworking and underpaying them: the bourgeoisie deceived the proletariat through institutional religion, which Marx famously termed “the opium of the masses”; the bourgeoisie also alienated the proletariat from the goods and products they made.
However, this disenfranchisement, which Marx called the “class struggle,” would not exist forever. Eventually, the wealth gap between the proletariats and bourgeoisie would grow too large; eventually, the workers would grow tired of the abuse handed to them; eventually, the laborers would rise up and revolt against their wealthy overlords. When this revolution occurred, society would evolve from capitalism to socialism and, finally, to its final form: communism – a society in which private property was unneeded because the community would own everything.
Marx’s revolution is entirely pragmatic: if violence is necessary to bring about communism, then so be it; such an egalitarian society is worth it.
And if there was one thing Marx correctly predicted, it was violence. Since 1917 and the beginning of the Russian Revolution, Marx’s ideas have motivated the deaths of almost 150 million people – an enormous number, even compared to the approximately 19 million killed by Nazi Germany. The People’s Republic of China killed 73 million; the Soviet Union killed 58.6 million; the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea killed 3 million; Cambodia killed 2.6 million. The list could continue ad nauseum.
Clearly, the results of Marxism aren’t pretty. But how, fundamentally, does Marxism interpret the world? What is Marx’s metaphysical motivation for this “class struggle?”
At its most basic, Marxism is a materialist (sometimes called “physicalist”) philosophy. That is, Marxism believes that “the nature of the actual world (i.e. the universe and everything in it) conforms to…the condition of being physical.” (See the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy’s entry on Physicalism for more.) Marx takes this theory of materialism and synthesizes it with economics: he believes that the primary arbiter and instigator of society and human nature is Capital (i.e. money, resources). Thus, it is goods and wealth that motivate people to do things; it prompts them to work, even to the point of enslavement.
Therefore, for Marx, a radical revolution is necessary for a truly equal society. Something radical – even violent – must jolt the oppressed working class to rise against their wealthy oppressors, to take back the goods that have been kept from them and redistribute them to all people. In this framework, justice is served not on a basis of restoration, but restitution; since the bourgeoisie have been selfish in the past, the proletariat deserves to take back whatever wealth it wants, regardless of the merit or virtue of its individual members.
What does this have to do, then, with the Black Lives Matter organization? Is Patricia Cullors’ profession of Marxism a relevant issue to the national discourse on race? I would argue that it is, and it should concern people considerably more than it currently seems to.
If we take Marx’s materialism and views on class and apply them to race relations in our country, where minorities are the proletariats, white heterosexuals are the bourgeoisie, and political power replaces the concept of Capital, we get a series of propositions that go something like this:
The physical world is all there is. Group identity and the variations between them are the primary motivating factors for how different categories of people interact.
The United States has, from its inception, disenfranchised, oppressed, and exploited Black Americans and other minorities. Unless a radical revolt or revolution takes place, this fact will remain unchanged.
Therefore, if society is to be reformed, Black Americans and other minorities should rise and revolt against their white oppressors. If violence is necessary, then so be it – the resulting utopia will justify any bloodshed.
Philosophical issues aside, this is undeniably bleak worldview. It assumes that individuals in the world are simply a product of their group, which results in ideas like collective guilt or “white privilege,” and denies people agency or the ability to decide for themselves what they truly believe.
Perhaps Patricia Cullors doesn’t realize the logical end of her Marxist beliefs. Perhaps she doesn’t know the number of deaths her preferred ideology has brought to the world. But, as a leader in the Black Lives Matter organization, which currently possesses incredibly high political currency, I would argue that she should. If history repeats itself (or imitates repetition), someone with that much power at their disposal should know better. And if Cullors herself doesn’t understand these facts, I’m willing to bet someone within the Black Lives Matter organization does.
As for the people who observe with keen interest the current cultural happenings, this doesn’t mean that they can’t – or shouldn’t – care about saving black lives. No doubt, they – and everyone – should concern themselves with the injustices that exist in the world. But who you support, what you believe, and the implications of those beliefs matter.
Should we, for example, give a Nazi soldier, who led thousands of Jews to be slaughtered in the 1940s, a moral pass because he didn’t understand Hitler’s Mein Kampf? Likewise, should we let a KGB agent, who tortured innocent men and women before sending them to workcamps, off the moral hook because he never comprehended Marx’s Communist Manifesto?
Clearly, I think, the answer is no. Every person holds individual responsibility for the actions they take, and the people and ideas they follow. So, if someone, regardless of the virtuousness of their cause, admits to believing in a murderous ideology, that person carries the onus to thoroughly investigate the implications, both historical and philosophical, of what they believe. And if one carries this responsibility, we all do.