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But there was a fallacy in Marx's version of egalitarianism. He thought it could be imposed on all men, for their own good, and that they would come to like it and thrive under it. In his revulsion against the inequities of his own time and his quest for a just society, he mistook individualism, free enterprise and private property for root evils and thought he would be doing mankind a favor if he rationalized their destruction. Quite simply, Marx misread human nature.
Unlike Benedictines in a monastery, most citizens do not voluntarily join their societies; they are born into them. Once there, they seek to get ahead and they are very likely to be motivated by a desire to improve their personal condition through personal gain. The instinct to acquire, to own, to protect and ultimately to pass on what one has built in life is neither alien nor sinful. On the contrary, it comes naturally, dies hard and can serve man well. That instinct needs sometimes to be sublimated, often regulated, but never, as Marx would have had it, obliterated.
Just and successful societies have been those that have reconciled the individual's irrepressible drive to improve his own lot with his obligation to contribute to the general welfare. But a system of governing that pits the commonwealth against the individual establishes, from the very start, an adversarial relationship between the rulers and the ruled.
Such a system cannot help suppressing man's inherent and noble inclinations to question his condition, strive for improvement, aspire to personal distinction and respect and, most of all, exercise his free will. Since true equality throughout an entire society is unattainable, the doctrine of all-encompassing equality can be maintained only by illusion and pretense. The discipline and abnegation necessary to keep up the pretense can be imposed only by force.
Thus, even while Marxism was still a dream, it had the makings of a nightmare; even as it was still taking shape in the minds of its founders, it was beginning to have less and less to do with economic justice and more and more to do with political coercion and deception. Marxism, in short, was already undergoing a transformation from egalitarianism to totalitarianism.
Marxism Becomes Leninism
What Marx and Engels conceived in the 19th century as a What Marx and Engels conceived in the 19th century as a solution for the problems of the rapidly advancing West came home to roost early in the 20th century in the near feudal East.
Communism became a Russian phenomenon, and as such, it has remained a problem for the rest of the world ever since.
Russia was one country in Europe where Marx and Engels would have least expected their call to arms to find receptive ears. They were counting on their revolution to flow directly from the Industrial Revolution, which had scarcely touched the empire of the tsars. Yet Russia, with its huge population of rural poor and an economy that was both bankrupt and semi-industrialized, turned out to be ripe for upheaval in a way that Marx's German homeland and his adopted England would never be.
In this respect, an important precedent was established that contradicted some fundamental tenets of Marx's prescriptions and forecasts: instead of taking root in developed societies, Marxism has tended