Marx: A Very Short Introduction (Very Short Introductions)

by Peter Singer

This conclusion has far-reaching consequences for Marx’s positive proposals. If changing the economic basis of society will not bring individuals to see their own interests and the interests of society as the same, then communism as Marx conceived it must be abandoned. Marx never intended a communist society to force the individual to work against his or her own interests for the collective good—at least not for longer than the brief period in which the economic structure of the society was in the process of transitioning to social ownership, and human nature was adjusting to this change, as Marx assumed it would. The need to use coercion would signify not the overcoming of alienation, but the continuing alienation of man from man; a coercive society would not be the riddle of history solved, but merely the riddle restated in a new form; it would not end class rule, but would substitute a new ruling class for the old one.