Marxism Kritik

1. Reforms entrench capitalism

Michael, Albert, 1994 (Stop the Killing Train)

Without pressure from below, politicians’ desires to preserve ruling hierarchies will keep them from
using the “peace dividend” to eradicate homelessness, reduce unemployment, or build better schools
and hospitals for those who now get the worst of each. Indeed, it will prohibit doing anything that will
make society’s worse-off: (1) Relatively wealthier compared with elites, and (2) relatively better
prepared to demand more of society’s output for themselves. It isn’t that innovative politicians will
promise to improve people’s lives with better budgets. They will. But unless they are forced, they
won’t stick to their constituency-rousing rhetoric. Changes they actually peruse will always be system
enforcing, not system threatening.

2. Capitalism will lead to fascism and war

Steve Clark, 1994 (Editor, New International, p. 27)

Only a few years ago, the authoritative representatives of the world’s bourgeois ruling classes were
hailing the dawn of a New World order, built on what they portray as the historic triumph of
democratic capitalism over communism. They pledged a future economist plenty, expanding
democratic rights, and growing world peace. As humanity heads toward the twenty-fist century, the
future in fact offered by international finance capital is one of deepening economic depression and an
accompanying march toward fascism and war. The political conclusions that best fit this reality—and
are thus the best guide to action—are communist conclusions.

3. Socialism leads to freedom

Harold Freeman, 1981 (The Political Spectrum: Opening Viewpoints, p. 106-107)

For individuals, socialism means an end to economic insecurity and exploitation. It means workers
cease to be commodities bought and sold on the labor market, and forced to work as appendages to
tools owned by someone else. It means a chance to develop all individual capacities and potentials
within a free community of free individuals. Since socialists assume that human nature emerges from
the kind of society in which we live, they argue that the highest freedom is not simply the ability to
take one’s place on the social ladder, but the opportunity to assume control over and constantly reshape
the basic institutions of society.

4. The first step to change is this debate

Michael, Albert, 1994 (Stop the Killing Train)

Debating these and related questions while consciousness-raising, demonstrating, and organizing isn’t
“utopian” but is instead the only comprehensive approach to social change. To win a New World, even
to significantly improve this one, we must know what we want. To journey from here to there, we need
to know where “there” is. What are participatory economy and what steps can attain it? What are a
feminist kinship sphere, and culturally intercommunal community sphere, and a participatory political
sphere? In each case, what steps can take us from what we have to what we want.” In face of the
horrors we all know so well, it does not evidence maturity, pragmatism, or wisdom to dismiss
revolutionary desires as strange. It evidences defeatism, or even lack of humanity. Don’t whisper the
R-word.