In a recent discussion it was once again asserted that "real Marxism" has never been attempted, thus making the boringly trite, grossly over-used, and embarrassingly hollow swag at justifying the continued pursuit and credit of Marxist-class thinking.
Here I shall destroy the Marxist/leftist claim in just a few sentences. To be clear, the subject here is a collectivist social order imposed upon a population, not voluntary associations whose members agree to share property and duties, though even in the latter case there are those arrangements that fail for the self-same reasons that the forced varieties end in grand face-planting with the resulting smoking holes in the ground.
Humans have not changed since time immemorial. We are at once wonderful creatures capable of such grand and honorable things, while simultaneously as a class are despicably weak and prone to every imaginable corruption. The class of "solution" that founds generally on Marxist patterns, in order to be "real", depends upon a human moral fabric that is wholly absent in the human animal as the reliably available practical standard. Therefore, "real" Marxism and its equivalents, depend upon a quality and character that cannot be made reliably manifest in a general population, most especially where there exist two classes of citizen: the administrators and the proletariate. In such a stratification, all material power of policy and statutory fiat lays with the former, the latter bound under threat of the sword to obey as ordered or face the pointy end. Not a single example of such Marxist-class implementations has managed to avoid this devolution into such an inherently tyrannical, lop-sided scheme. The self-interest of the administrators cannot be in any reasonable and practical sense trusted not to revert into effective whipmasters lording over the unwashed masses of those they almost universally come to regard as threats to the established political order, usually with monotonically increasing paranoia and the view of proles as "scum".
The "liberty" promised by Marxist-class schemes is always a lie, and must perforce be so in order to establish the scheme from the get-go. Otherwise, no minimally sane and rationally self-interested human being would accept the mere idea of Marxism as a desirable regime under which to find himself. There is no other possible way of establishing the scheme and maintain it as such, particularly on the mass national scale. Why? Humans, that's why.
Such compulsory arrangements have also been tried on smaller scales and have failed miserably. Why? Once again, human nature and its predisposition to corruption, not to mention the divergence of common interests due to the absence of sufficient incentives to maintain them primary before and above individual self-interest. That, in turn, arises because the common interests never sufficiently agreed with those of the individuals who inevitably strayed from the stipulations of the agreement to which they signed on. In enclaves where all is commonly owned and all duties ostensibly shared, there are those who will refuse or otherwise fail to pull their weight, feeding at the trough while giving little or nothing in return. From this, resentment and bandwagoning result, and it's all downhill from there until the effort disbands for lack of basic viability. The reasons for this decay in cohesion are manifold, from the rank corruption of malefactors in it for what they can get without giving anything in return, to those who thought the endeavor would be very different from its proof. Those reasons are irrelevant to the fact that the failure occurs and is due to the very nature of the architecture of Marxist-class collectivism.
An offered counterexample were the kibbutzim in Israel, citing how they have survived nearly a century. That example, however, fails noticeably when one considers the particulars with care above and beyond cursory inspection. Firstly, the kibbutzim were voluntary organizations, rather than forced upon its members at the ends of swords. That distinction is crucial and endlessly significant. Secondly, the kibbutzim that survived, and not all did, abandoned the fully-collectivized ownership rules when it became clear that they were failing under the Marxist-patterned stipulations of membership, moving toward private ownership and merit-based incentives. That, then, effectively dissolved the kibbutzim as founded, and gave rise to new organizations that carried the same labeling. Labels do not define an establishment, but rather its structure does. Alter the structure, and guess what? You have a new and different structure. Imagine that.
Analysis will readily reveal that it was the raw inertia of the initial and optimistic push of the founding that carried an attempt for as long as it lasted. Once that inertial moment is exhausted, the arrangement collapses under its own weight of structural non-viability. Such organizations operate at net losses, however slight. The more slightly so, the longer the establishment may persist, though that is no guarantee. But the failure is inevitable, given the loss to gain ratio remaining positive. That's the reality of the physics of such things, and it cannot be avoided so long as the imbalance remains, however tiny.
The key in all of these social endeavors is self-interest, and it is so because... well, once again, human beings. When all is owned by everyone, a little dab of Nash's game theory, suitably modified, comes into clear applicability. When the game presents the opportunity to get something for nothing, there will always be those who take maximum advantage of that "feature" (which is actually its fatal flaw), whereas in an actually free social order where property rights are recognized, guaranteed, respected, and actively protected, the rules of the game alter such that the greatest game-theoretic self-interest now becomes the defense of the individuals property rights over those of imposed collectivism.
The practical result of this is the incentive to valid, honest, intelligent, and morally sound free enterprise, over that of parasitic graft of one man over the labors of others, whereby the proprietor is motivated to provide goods and services to his fellows such that the manifold transactions that proceed agoristically between the pasties result in an expansion of his estate, which presumably leads to an expansion of his comforts and capabilities. Oddly, when properly conducted, those transactions stand also to expand and improve the estates of those with whom he transacts, though it is not guaranteed. It is, however, the optimal presentation of such opportunity as is humanly possible to offer. It is the most powerful arrangement possible in the context of human nature, and when respected by all, particularly when in accord with the Principles of Proper Human Relations, leads to the most stable and optimally prosperous state of living when measured across the relevant population. There will always be those who simply fail to make good for themselves, and that is an element of the inherent reality of true and properly maximized human civil freedom that must be accepted. That, however, does not mean that aid and charity cannot be made available to those who are down on their luck. But to force such aid from the hands of Free Men is nothing more than robbery masquerading as charity, for it is in no manner or measure any bit of the latter.
And so we see that Marxist-class non-solutions to the perceived ills† of the condition of civil humanity structurally doom all attempts at implementation, a priori, because they appeal to the lowest in a human being. Such implementations are the practical realizations of the manifold tyrannies of low expectations, not to mention the tacitly carried low opinion of the human animal, whereas those of properly structured free markets appeal to all that is the best in a man through the lens of self-interest and mutually beneficial market transactions. The latter is the win-win manifestation of civil life, whereas the former is, at the very best and for only a limited interval, the win-lose arrangement, which inevitably decays into the lose-lose result.
And so we close on the happy note that shows the tenets of Marxist-class arrangements to be flawed in their DNA, dependent on the moral purity and correctness of the constituents of the population, whereas those of free markets rely on no such unicorns, but rather structure the incentives of daily living skewed drastically toward motivations of industry, honesty, and equity in one's transactions with his fellows such that the resulting commerce produces, on the average, a win-win result for all parties. Freedom, scary and demanding as it can be at times, demonstrates itself on the whole to be gloriously positive, fruitful, and edifying for people. Marxism cannot begin to hold credit that amounts to a fart in a hurricane in comparison. Be well, be blessed with all that is good in life, and until next time, please accept my best wishes.
† The mean Marxist thinker operates on perceptions dictated by feelings, rather than objective fact. This is yet another of his fatal flaws.
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