Marx was careful not to outline the ideal toward which he saw history marching.
Under communism or scientific socialism as espoused by Karl Marx and Fredrich Engels, the system maximizes the reach of the central planning bureaucracy to collect economic data and process it. As such, it is an ideal that prioritizes the informational dimension of governance. However, suppressing free market price signals and private initiatives would produce inefficient capital and resource allocations and thereby handicap growth. With the state owning all means of production and requiring all workers to work for the state,it quashes individual initiative and the human spirit of those workers. Communism is a societal ideal that prioritizes the information dimension of governance but handicaps the material and spiritual dimensions of the broader society.
The Polarity Between Capital and Spirit and the Role of Government
Capital and human spirit lie in polar opposition, with inherently conflicting agendas, each aiming to bend the other to their separate objectives. Government sits between spirit and capital, being answerable to the interests and spirit of those it represents, and having the responsibilities to regulate the economy and allocate government spending. To the extent it operates democratically and is not corruptly beholden to moneyed interests financing electoral campaigns, it ideally serves exclusively the broad voting citizenry it represents, i.e. the interests of human beings. At the same time, government is charged with overseeing the market economy, taxing and regulating, crimping capital’s natural gravitation toward profit. Operating ideally, government would thus serve the human spirit and assure that capital serves that interest, and prevent the opposite. Government also disperses government spending and custodies public resources, be they environmental or other, e.g. the electro-magntic spectrum or the judicial system for example. It thus is pressured by voters on the one hand and special and general financial interest on the other, serving two masters, people and money, which usually pull oppose each other. [1]
Capital, left unchecked, flows gravitationally toward greatest profit, indifferent to effects on employment, income distribution or human aspirations, seeking only to grow. Raw capital has a force, like water, and from capital’s perspective, those who manage or own it are merely channeling the downward flow or riding along passively as shareholders. Capital follows a benefit-cost calculus that draws it toward profit and if one business manager or owner does not sufficiently maximize profit, he or she is replaced by one that will. Left to its own, capital tends to accumulate in relatively few hands because the wealthier among us consume proportionally less of their income than the poorer and can save and reinvest more, thereby helping capital grow faster. Capital concentration then feeds on itself, and the added concentration leads to added accumulation and profit, furthering abstract capital’s agenda.
Capital requires inspired entrepreneurs to make it grow, but from capital’s perspective these can always be found and hired. From spirit’s perspective, capital is that which enables the individual to actualize their potential, for themselves and for the good of the greater society.
Many a human spirit is materialistic, and most of humanity struggles just to satisfy basic material needs with little left over, but at our core we are spiritual beings, valuing more than anything freedom and justice, among other non-material values. Humanity seeks progress, material and otherwise, and some of humanity’s collective aspirations and ambitions concern the kind of society we hope to establish in the future. Our collective aspirations and ambitions are taking society toward that future, and from the perspective of this collective spirit, capital is merely a vehicle needed to get us there.
Marx based his theory of dialectic materialism around the polarity between capital and spirit, but he defined it differently as between capitalist and labor social classes. At an abstracted level, capital and human spirit are the prime movers in this drama, and capitalists are simply capital’s agents to the extent they just lead capital to profit, and human beings are spirit’s agent to the extent there is oder and coherence to society’s development and it obeys a higher spiritual force, if you will. On the labor side, Marx assumed that workers are an oppressed and unified majority class with a common interest in opposition to capitalists, struggling for a bigger share of the “economic surplus” or profit. Focusing on social classes as history’s actors may have been appropriate in Marx’s times, but his analysis does not describe today’s relatively classless society. In today’s workplace employees have increased rights, supplanting what in times past was a lack of rights and an assumed and unquestioning loyalty to institutions and the hierarchies that ran them. And employees now usually own stock through profit sharing or pension plans. The more fundamental polarity between the disembodied forces of abstract capital and spirit still operates as ever in the background, however.
Of course capital and human spirit, while standing in opposition, are also entwined holistically in every big and small corner of society. There is essential work of a spiritual nature in leading a company or working meditatively on an assembly line, and there is work of a material nature in every spiritual endeavor. The entertainment industry and commercial scientific research, deeply imbedded in economic enterprise, center around creative and spiritual activities. Raising and managing capital are essential for cultural endeavors and charitable foundations. Most people of wealth charitably support cultural and spiritual causes to varying extents instead of single-mindedly accumulating capital. Especially in the US, philanthropy is widespread and deeply ingrained in social life. Conversely, leading entertainers, artists, inventors or athletes sometimes become wealthy capitalists.
To serve the greater society’s needs and progress, greed and the profit motive need to be regulated, controlled, and directed to constructive purpose. While profit seeking may lead to discovery of market clearing prices, matching supply with demand, a constructive purpose, it may also be directed through governance structures to serve additional constructive purposes beyond price discovery, for example environmental protection. The gravitation of financial capital toward profit seeking enterprise is a powerful force. It leads to capital accumulation and opens possibilities for investment. Checked or unchecked by governments, an accumulated store of financial capital is society’s potentiality for investment. opens up possibilities for society that an accumulation of capital may provide. , to be appreciated and valued but also made conscious, regulated, and directed toward constructive purpose greater than its own accumulation. may be a natural but base instinct in society, certainly nothing to disparage, but like food and sex for an adolescent, part of the job of growing up is learning how to regulate such urges. Governance also regulates the higher aspiration of a society, the boundaries in which the society’s highest cultural dimension operates, its free speech, science, and all that is most refined in society, promoting some aspects or regulating others. An adolescent comes to take control of their own education and cultural expression, be it in the arts, sciences, religion, civic life, or wherever self-expression manifests, for its own sake and motivated other than by profit and material urges. One might argue that for an adolescent, both material and cultural pursuits are directed toward procreation, in the sense that …, but the point is self-control, self-direction, and governance. Distinguishing the different types of self-regulation is the next level.
[1] Admittedly and conversely, government regulates some human behavior and answers to the money that finances political campaigns, but these are often misapplications of governmental authority or corruptions of democracy rather than appropriate characteristics of the ideal.