Bertrand Russell Explains Why Karl Marx’s Philosophy Produced the Disaster of Communism

In 1927, Bertrand Rus­sell deliv­ered a lec­ture titled “Why I Am Not a Chris­t­ian.” At the time, such a dec­la­ra­tion was still fair­ly bold, as was the rea­son­ing he pro­vid­ed for it. Near­ly three decades there­after, he includ­ed in his col­lec­tion Por­traits from Mem­o­ry anoth­er, short­er piece, “Why I Am Not a Com­mu­nist.” That descrip­tion was safe to apply to one­self in 1954, at least in the main­stream of the Eng­lish-speak­ing world. It would have been riski­er for those who moved in intel­lec­tu­al cir­cles, as a cel­e­brat­ed philoso­pher like Rus­sell most cer­tain­ly did. What’s more, his crit­i­cism extend­ed not just to com­mu­nism as then instan­ti­at­ed by cer­tain soci­eties in the world, but to the thought of Karl Marx him­self.

Rus­sell makes two charges against Marx: “one, that he was mud­dle-head­ed; and the oth­er, that his think­ing was almost entire­ly inspired by hatred.” In his view, the author of Cap­i­tal com­mits intel­lec­tu­al fraud by oppor­tunis­ti­cal­ly accept­ing Thomas Malthus’ dire pre­dic­tion of pop­u­la­tion growth (while reject­ing it at oth­er times), as well as apply­ing David Ricar­do’s the­o­ry of val­ue, which describes it as a kind of embod­ied labor, to wages but not the prices of man­u­fac­tured goods.

“He is entire­ly sat­is­fied with the result, not because it is in accor­dance with the facts or because it is log­i­cal­ly coher­ent, but because it is cal­cu­lat­ed to rouse fury in wage-earn­ers.” Marx sees their upris­ing against cap­i­tal­ists as inevitable due to his “exten­sion to world his­to­ry of cer­tain fea­tures promi­nent in Eng­land and France a hun­dred years ago” and belief in “a cos­mic force called Dialec­ti­cal Mate­ri­al­ism which gov­erns human his­to­ry inde­pen­dent­ly of human voli­tions.”

This dis­missal of Marx’s world­view as “mere mythol­o­gy” has some­thing in com­mon with Rus­sel­l’s cri­tique of Chris­tian­i­ty, and not coin­ci­den­tal­ly so. “I think one of the trou­bles of the world has been the habit of dog­mat­i­cal­ly believ­ing some­thing or oth­er,” he says in the clip above. “I think we ought always to enter­tain our opin­ions with some mea­sure of doubt.” And “if a phi­los­o­phy is to bring hap­pi­ness, it should be inspired by kind­ly feel­ing. Now, Marx is not inspired by kind­ly feel­ing. Marx pre­tend­ed that he want­ed the hap­pi­ness of the pro­le­tari­at, but he real­ly want­ed is the unhap­pi­ness of the bour­geois. And it was because of that neg­a­tive ele­ment, because of that hate ele­ment that his phi­los­o­phy pro­duced dis­as­ter.” There are, per­haps, argu­ments to be made that com­mu­nism, as prac­ticed in, for exam­ple, the Sovi­et Union, took the form it did pre­cise­ly because it depart­ed from Marx­ist lines. Whether that was bet­ter or worse than the alter­na­tive is a mat­ter no philoso­pher can set­tle.

The clip above comes from the 1952 TV episode A Con­ver­sa­tion with Bertrand Rus­sell. Watch it in full here.

Relat­ed con­tent:

A Short Ani­mat­ed Intro­duc­tion to Karl Marx

Bertrand Russell’s 10 Com­mand­ments for Liv­ing in a Healthy Democ­ra­cy

How to Spot a Com­mu­nist by Using Lit­er­ary Crit­i­cism: A 1955 Man­u­al from the U.S. Mil­i­tary

Karl Marx & the Flaws of Cap­i­tal­ism: Lex Frid­man Talks with Pro­fes­sor Richard Wolff

A Free Course on Karl Marx’s Cap­i­tal, Vol­ume 1 from Yale Uni­ver­si­ty

Bertrand Russell’s Advice to Peo­ple Liv­ing 1,000 Years in the Future: “Love is Wise, Hatred is Fool­ish”

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. He’s the author of the newslet­ter Books on Cities as well as the books 한국 요약 금지 (No Sum­ma­riz­ing Korea) and Kore­an Newtro. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.