Karl Marx’s Final Fantasy
The heaven on earth he promises after decades of worldwide conflict, the destruction of all religions, and hundreds of millions of dead, centers on one promise:
Perfect equality, and no more division of labor.
Somehow, by History’s magic, once no one owns anything and the state distributes all wealth, that all-powerful state will magically wither away. (You know, the way immensely powerful institutions just naturally do. That happens, right?)
And mankind will no longer need to specialize in things. Everyone will be a dilettante. We’ll happily dabble in things, but still be amazingly good at them.
Your neighbor who farms and writes novels, but also tinkers in dentistry, will fix up your lower right molar.
You will switch back and forth between designing airplane engines, and translating books from Portuguese into Swahili.
Does that sound Made up ?
Read Marx himself:
In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.
So perfect equality, true freedom, the super-power to specialize in nothing but be good enough at everything - all these things will rain from the skies like manna from heaven.
All you have to do to get it is … turn over absolute power over every aspect of life and culture to a tiny elite of ideologues.
They will run the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” They’ll manage everything for you.
They’ll decide when you’re ready to waltz down the yellow brick road into the Communist Land of Oz.
