“Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution.” –Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
As you can see, according to Karl Marx, Communism, true and proper, is the self-conscious solution to “the riddle of history.” Of course, in reality, where things have to work, there is no riddle of history. The “riddle of history” Marx referred to is, in fact, dialectical anthroposophy (which is a really fancy word for man-centered heretical nonsense), thus any claim upon a solution to that riddle is pure pretense and dangerous hubris. The true solution to the riddle of history, if we should even allow such a phrase, must begin with the outright rejection of Communism and the dialectical framing in which the riddle is posed in the first place, including the underlying assumption that History has a purpose and is thus a riddle to be solved.
Karl Marx did not reject that assumption, however; he began with it. What, to Marx, was the riddle of history, solved, other than just to say “Communism,” as described above? It’s socialism that can produce, that can “deliver the goods,” one might say. Productive socialism that allows Man to escape toil, exploitation, suffering, and work, which arrives when Man is freed from the existence of private property and thus the division of labor, which was his Fall, is the pathway to the “transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement,” as Marx had it. The problem is that “productive socialism” is a functional oxymoron.
Join the conversation as a VIP Member