This paper will attempt to assess whether MarxÆs arguments for a dictatorship of the proletariat in the Communist Manifesto were faulty or not. In attempting for some historical balance, the paper will consider his arguments in light of what was known in his time, not just in terms of modern ô20-20 hindsight.ö
Now that the Soviet Union has collapsed, and the specter of Communism is no longer haunting Europe and the world, it is possible to have a more sober look at socialism in general and at MarxÆs ideas. One could hardly have known, or said out loud, during the worst of the Cold War, that Marx was one of the great founders of modern social science, but that is the almost universal opinion of modern scholars, e.g., the cultural historian Leslie White. This had to do not with his particular historical conclusions, but with his methods for analyzing the causes of social phenomena.
Marx was arguing against ôidealism,ö as exemplified in the work of Hegel. At the risk of great oversimplification, one could say that Hegel apparently epitomized a viewpoint which assumed that progress and evolution were driven from the top down, that is, that people would get a new idea, create some sort of social organization to carry it out, and then attempt to do so. Of course, one can observe people behaving in just this way, but Marx felt that this analysis did not go deep enough to explain the overall patterns of history. He wanted to know why people would come up with this idea, and not that one. He also pointed out that every social organization is almost invariably opposed by another devoted to a different idea, and they each attempt to prevent the other from succeeding.
Hegel proposed that ideas go through a ôdialecticalö evolution. That is, an idea, a ôthesis,ö will call up an opposing idea, an ôantithesis;ö the argument between these two will lead to a compromise or conclusion, a ôsynthesis.ö This last then function...