Civilization #56: What Marx Got Wrong

Karl Marx is one of the most influential thinkers in human history. His contribution to intellectual thought cannot be overstated. To begin, let's conduct a thought experiment.

Let's pretend there are two scenarios.

In scenario one, you get into a really good college and decide to become a lawyer. You go to law school, do extremely well, and make a lot of money. When you make a lot of money, you can buy a big house, go on vacations to Bali, and have a BMW. That's situation one: you're a super lawyer.

Situation two is different. You're on a plane with 100 strangers, and you crash on an island. This island is very poor with scarce resources, and you have to work together just to get by. You're not eating well, you're not living well, and every day is a struggle. You're not sure if you'll make it to the next day.

The question is: do you think you'll be a happier person in the first situation or the second? You would think the obvious answer is number one. But what I will show you is that's not necessarily true. Maybe for some of us, the answer is number one, but for many of us, the answer is actually number two. As humans, we want to feel as though we have a purpose in life and that we are part of a larger mission to change the world for the better. That is the underlying thesis of Karl Marx.

The Philosophical Roots: From Kant to Hegel

To understand Marx, we first need to review Immanuel Kant and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Immanuel Kant's theory of the world is this: we are all endowed with the capacity to reason. It's born in us; we don't learn it. It is just part of who we are. This reason interacts with reality—the "things in themselves"—and what we see is the appearance. The crucial argument Kant is making is that we imagine reality around us by bringing in space and time. We do not see reality objectively or as separate from us; we see reality as part of us. With our minds, we create our own universe. As we discussed previously, this has been confirmed by neuroscience, artificial intelligence, and quantum mechanics. It's really the dominant understanding of human psychology we have today.

However, there are three major issues with Immanuel Kant's philosophy.

1. The Problem of Reality: If we can never know reality, then how do we know what's real and what's fake? How do we know we don't live in a computer simulation? The answer is, we don't know. Kant does not give us proof of an objective reality.
2. The Source of Reason: If we are born with the capacity to imagine space and time and shape our reality, who gives it to us? Where does it come from? He doesn't really answer that question.
3. The Problem of Uniformity: How do I know that you and I and others see the world in the same way? Why aren't we seeing a different reality? Kant says, "Well, we don't know either."

Friedrich Hegel comes along and resolves all three issues. He says the underlying source of reality is called the Geist—the spirit of the world. Think of it as a god that's coming into being, that's growing. It's almost like the internet or a collective consciousness. The Geist is giving us the capacity to reason, to see itself, and then to imagine our own reality.

The idea of the Geist solves all three problems at once. It is an underlying reality that creates the material reality. Hegel is an idealist, meaning for him, what matters are ideas and spirit; the material world is created from these ideas and from spirit.

Karl Marx will build on Hegel to create something called dialectical materialism, which is the idea of class struggle. He will create this philosophy based on his reading of Hegel.

Marx's Reinterpretation of Hegel

Hegel has three major ideas that Marx will take and develop into his own theory of the world.

1. The Geist: The underlying superstructure of reality.
2. The Dialectic: How does this Geist become what it is? How does it learn and think? The answer is the dialectic: thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. The concept is a debate within itself. For the Geist to know itself, it must create its opposite. When it creates its opposite, it debates itself and creates a synthesis. It's the idea of a debate where you might have a viewpoint, engage with someone with an opposite viewpoint, and through this debate, create a synthesis of your different viewpoints. For Hegel, this is the underlying logic of history, of how we learn and progress.
3. The Master-Slave Dialectic: Hegel thinks that relationships can be broken down into a master and a slave. I command you, you do as I say, you obey me. But over time, this thesis and antithesis also become a synthesis. Why? Because as your master, I become dependent on you as my slave. In fact, you're the one doing all the work, so without you, I can't exist. In this way, the relationship inverts itself, and the master becomes a slave to the slave, because the master is now dependent on the slave for his livelihood.

Marx was from Prussia, as were many of these major philosophers, including Hegel himself. In university, Marx was part of a group called the Young Hegelians. These were individuals who worshipped Hegel but misinterpreted him. They thought of Hegel as an atheist because he said, "God is dead." But when Hegel said that, what he really meant is that he was reinterpreting God not as a separate entity from us, but as part of us in the form of the Geist.

The Young Hegelians reinterpreted Hegel and basically misinterpreted him. First, they took the Geist and turned it into a material thing: economics. Hegel thinks it's ideas that come first, then material reality. But these guys, the Young Hegelians, inverted this and said it's material reality that creates ideas. It's economics, it's wealth, that creates culture, which gives rise to ideas. It's the complete opposite.

Second, if the dialectic and the master-slave relationship are true, then history is a history of oppression and a struggle for liberation against this oppression. The idea of the material world in struggle with itself creates the idea of dialectical materialism, which we call class struggle. The rich and the poor fight each other, and the poor are looking for liberation.

This is the main contribution that Marx will make. By creating this idea, he will lay the foundation for what we refer to as communism.

The Marxist Theory of History: An Inevitable Path to Communism

The other thing that Marx will take from Hegel is an understanding that all of history is teleological. This is a big word, but all it means is there is an inevitability to history. There's a purpose, a progress to history. Everything is being done for a reason.

Let's go over the teleology that Marx creates.

We were born as hunter-gatherers. We're out in the forest hunting food in small tribes, and we're happy, but there's not enough food to feed everyone. So we develop agriculture. Because of agriculture, we have something called surplus value; we're able to create more wealth, which allows a few of us to settle down and do other things, for example, create literacy. This gives rise to civilization. To justify this civilization and this hierarchy—the fact that you have a few people who are essentially parasites of society—we create the idea of religion, because the elite now are priests.

Then, as we develop more technology and societies become larger, we have to go to war against each other to fight for resources. This gives rise to the master-slave relationship, which then gives us feudalism. This then allows for the rise of industrial capitalism, which is the stage Marx finds himself at.

What Marx says is this is all a linear progress driven by technological advancement. Agriculture is an advancement, then you have tools, weapons, castles, knights, and now you have steamships. It's all part of a technological plan to liberate humanity.

He's writing in the year 1848, and he says industrial capitalism will naturally lead to communism. This is not something that we can hope for or work towards; it's something that's going to happen because of history. History is God. God is history. Our world has been developed through the mind of God.

He uses the Hegelian dialectic: feudalism is the thesis, industrial capitalism is the antithesis, and together they will create communism. Why? For Marx, embedded in capitalism are the seeds of its demise, for three reasons.

1. Imperialism and the Global Proletariat: Industrial capitalism is imperial. It's all-consuming. It expands, and as a result, it's going to create a global proletariat. Because they're all oppressed, they're going to come into consciousness together and recognize that only through collective action can they liberate themselves from the capitalist class. And because the proletariat is the majority of people—99%—then the 1% have no chance.
2. Technology and Surplus Labor: Capitalism gives rise to new technology, which creates surplus value and surplus labor. It basically makes our jobs easier, in which case we don't have to work as hard as before to create value.
3. The Inherent Crisis in Capitalism: For Marx, capitalism is fundamentally unsustainable. It will collapse at a certain point. Why? There are many reasons. For Marx, the main problem is overproduction. You're producing all these goods, but because you're impoverishing everyone, no one's going to buy these goods, in which case the economy is going to collapse.

Another possibility is presented by a man named Thomas Piketty, who wrote a famous book called Capital in the 21st Century. Working off Marx, he believes the fundamental paradox of capitalism is a problem of financialization. At first, we have to build a factory to generate wealth. But once we have enough wealth, we want to take this wealth and invest it somewhere because it's easier and we can make more money that way. Over time, as capitalism grows, everyone wants to invest; no one wants to manufacture. What happens then is the financial economy grows faster than the manufacturing economy. For Piketty, the financial economy will grow at 5%, whereas the manufacturing economy will grow at 2%. This means that if you put your money in the stock market, you'll make 5% a year. But if you open a restaurant, create a factory, or do something useful, you make 2% a year. So no one wants to work anymore. For Piketty, capitalism will have to end at some point.

Then you have a historian named Carroll Quigley, who wrote a famous book called Tragedy and Hope. He argues that capitalism goes in phases. The first phase is consumer capitalism, where companies are trying to create products that consumers want to buy. That leads to financial capitalism, where companies just want to invest their wealth. But over time, the final stage is monopoly capitalism, where a few companies control all the resources. In which case, we pay a lot of money for crappy stuff, and then we don't want to buy anything anymore.

For Marx, and for Carroll Quigley, capitalism can only lead to crisis. Because of the crisis, the proletariat will organize, rebel, and create a workers' paradise, which leads to communism. That is the logic of Marx. That is Marx's understanding of history.

The Human Cost of Capitalism: A Diagnosis of Misery

Why would this history be so popular? Because communism was one of the most popular movements throughout the 20th century. The problem that Marx diagnoses is that capitalism makes people miserable for three reasons.

1. It is All-Consuming

Capitalism just grows and grows, and because it has to grow to create value, it starts wars. You have imperialism. As a factory owner, you want to create new markets, access cheaper goods, and access cheaper labor. Therefore, you force your government to go invade other countries like China, India, and Africa. Capitalism creates wars and human misery all around the world. It's always expanding.

2. It is Consolidating

Capitalism can only lead to extreme inequality. Why? Because the point of capitalism is to generate as much wealth as possible. To do that, we want to consolidate our wealth. So maybe there are 10 of us with a million dollars each. We're better off just putting our money together and investing it together, which creates massive inequality. Over time, Marx believes that because capitalism is all-consuming and consolidating, it will destroy the middle class. Unless you're super wealthy, you won't have any money. If you are just a small factory owner, you'll be bought out by a large factory owner. And quite honestly, this is what's happening in the world today. That's why Marx is seeing a massive resurgence.

3. It is Alienating

Here, Marx explains that there are four types of alienation.

• Alienation from Labor: As humans, we want to create stuff. We are fundamentally creative. We want to create art, products; we want to cook, to teach, to express our individuality. When we express our individuality and create things, we support the community. So when I teach, you learn, and when you learn, you feel good, you thank me, and that confirms my humanity and my individuality. Society is a mechanism for each of us to exchange our creativity in a way that affirms our own individuality. The problem with capitalism is it takes use value (what this thing is used for) and replaces it with exchange value (how much this thing is worth). These are two different concepts. Use value is: I cook an apple pie, I give it to you, you eat it, and you say, "Wow, this is a really awesome apple pie. Thank you so much." You feel good, I feel good. Exchange value is: I cook this apple pie and I give it to someone who then goes and sells it to someone else. I never meet that person, and I don't know what happens to the pie, but I'm paid $5 for it. Marx says this exchange of goods does not affirm our individuality. Therefore, it makes us miserable because we don't know why we're doing anything anymore. Before, we were doing things to support our community, to please other people, to affirm our humanity. Now, we're just making stuff because of wage labor.
• Alienation from Ourselves: As human beings, we are very complex, multifaceted, and always evolving. But for capitalism, what matters is the division of labor and specialization because that's what allows for the most rapid industrial growth. In other words, you cease to be you and you become a hand, or maybe a finger, or an eye, or an ear. You cease to be complete. You're just a cog in the machine, a piece of the puzzle, and that alienates you from who you really are. It prevents you from achieving your full potential as a creative, vibrant human being.
• Alienation from Nature: Capitalism grows by exploiting humans and by exploiting nature. It cuts down trees, destroys the environment, and creates air pollution. We can no longer drink clean water. It destroys nature and makes us feel like we must destroy nature if we are to feed our families. It alienates us from our nature, whereas historically, we have been in a symbiotic relationship with nature, where we thank nature for feeding us but are always replenishing and protecting it.
• Alienation from Humanity: For most of history, we were cooperating with each other, helping each other out, because that's the only way you could survive. But capitalism forces us to compete against each other. The example, of course, is school, where because of grades, you see your classmates as competitors. But if there were no grades, then you might help each other learn, tutor each other, and help each other with homework and tests. Let's just say that five people have to carry some goods to a store. That's your job. One person falls down, breaks his leg, and cries out for help. We should go help that person. But the logic of capitalism is you can't. The logic of capitalism is you can't do that because the manager will fine you for being late. That's why Marx thinks this will alienate us from our humanity.

This part of Marx, where he diagnoses the problems of capitalism, is considered brilliant. It is a perfect encapsulation of all the issues with capitalism that was true in the 19th century, but it's also true today. If you analyze Marx's diagnosis of capitalism, it helps explain why the world is the way it is. Because of these pressing issues, because people are suffering so much, they see Marxism and communism as salvation and redemption. That's the appeal.

Why the Prophecy Failed: Deconstructing Marx's History

The problem is, we know that this prophecy of Marx—that we will naturally evolve into communism—has not panned out. In fact, communism has caused a lot of human misery as well. So, why is that the case? Even though Marx has this beautiful theory, it's also wrong for a variety of reasons.

Let's analyze his understanding of history and show how it's wrong.

First, let's go back to the hunter-gatherer to agriculture transition. The transition from hunter-gatherer culture didn't make any sense from an economic perspective. As a hunter-gatherer, you didn't have a scarcity problem. In fact, you ate really well. You worked less, you ate more. We know this because if you dig up skeletons of hunter-gatherers, they're taller than farmers. In fact, they're a lot taller. Hunter-gatherers were on average about six feet tall, which is really tall, and farmers were on average maybe five feet. That's a huge difference. Using the economic argument of Marx, this makes no sense.

It's not economics that drives human history; it's religion that drives human history. We settled down to practice a cult, to practice a religion, because maybe one place was considered divine for whatever reason. As a result, we developed our culture, which led to civilization. So the Marx formulation that religion comes last is wrong. It's religion that comes first. It's religion that leads to agriculture, which leads to civilization.

Also, the transition from feudalism to capitalism was not driven by technology. It was driven by religion. In feudalism, the dominant religion was the Catholic religion. When we go into industrial capitalism, the dominant religion is Protestantism.

The Catholic religion was an imperial bureaucracy led by the Pope, and there were many religious reformers who thought this was abhorrent and went against the will of God. So they proposed a religion which was democratic, in which everyone had access to God. Before, you had to listen to the priests; you couldn't read the Bible by yourself. Now, you had to read the Bible yourself to access God by yourself.

There were two major transitions. First, before, to get to heaven, you had to use justification by works. All this means is you do good things, primarily give money to the church. But because the Protestants wanted to reduce the power of the Catholic church, they said, "No, what matters is justification by faith. It doesn't matter how much money you give to the church. What matters is, do you truly believe in God?"

To further reduce the power of the church, which said only they could guarantee you access to heaven, the Protestants said access to heaven is predestined. In other words, at the beginning of time, God has already decided who will go to heaven and who will go to hell. It doesn't matter what the church tells you; you're all going to hell if you don't truly believe in God.

Now, this creates a new problem: How do you know you truly believe in God? How do you know that you are one of the elect, chosen by God to go to heaven? This creates anxiety. Anxiety, as we know, leads to OCD—obsessive-compulsive disorder. How do you compensate for OCD? You make a lot of money. But not only do you make a lot of money, you don't spend it. Because that wealth now is an indicator to you and to others that you are truly one of the elect, that you are saved by God. And that's the birth of capitalism.

You're generating this wealth not to appease God, but to appease your anxiety. Having this money is confirmation to yourself that you will go to heaven because this money can only be made because of your faith in God. How do you know you believe in God? Because you worked hard and God made you wealthy. That's the logic driving capitalism. Marx missed this.

The Three Fundamental Mistakes of Marx

Marx made three fundamental mistakes.

1. People care about religion, not economics. It's religion that drives human history, not economics.
2. People care about God, not heaven. We're going to heaven not because we think it's a five-star hotel with lots of lobsters and steaks. We're going to heaven to be with God because God represents eternal truth and salvation. We want to be with God.
3. People care about status, not class. Throughout most of human history, we didn't have a concept of money. For example, the Vikings, when they went off to steal, stole lots of gold. But when they got back to the village, they would hold a big feast for everyone and waste all this money. There was absolutely no point in having money. You couldn't spend it. If you died, you couldn't keep it. You generated wealth to raise your status within the community. That's why you wore gold—because the gold signified that you were of high status. Throughout most of human history, and still even today, we seek status, not class. The concept of class was created because of industrial capitalism and the free market, because now people were mobile. But before, it was about status.

Because Marx interpreted history incorrectly and didn't really understand human psychology, he could not predict that when we did achieve communism, it would become bureaucratic hierarchies with cults of personality. In the Soviet Union, you had Stalin in charge of a bureaucracy. In China, you had Mao in charge of a bureaucracy. North Korea, the same situation. Why? Because of these three factors. Mao and Stalin all understood that people want a religion. They want to feel close to God. So they made themselves God. And people want status, which is why it's important to have a bureaucracy. That's why communism became the way it did in the 20th century.

Why did communism take hold in China and Russia, not Germany?

Marx himself believed the revolution would happen in Germany first because Germany had the most advanced proletariat. But it never happened in Germany, France, or Britain. It happened in China and Russia. If Marx were alive today, he would be appalled by this fact because it wasn't supposed to happen there. You needed a proletariat for the revolution to happen, but Russia and China were peasant nations.

The main reason is this: the communist revolution was not a communist revolution. It was a peasant revolution with the veneer of communism. Communism was the ideology, the religion that they practiced, but it was essentially a peasant rebellion that's no different from previous peasant rebellions in Chinese history.

The Communist Manifesto: A Prophecy of a New World

Industrial capitalism came to Europe and made everyone miserable. It was destroying society by taking people from villages and transporting them into cities without adequate housing, healthcare, or work safety. They were in slums, without access to clean water, and many were dying. Their children were being forced to work from age five or six. It was all polluted. People were living in absolute misery.

What really set things off was a massive potato famine in the 1840s across Europe. In the 16th century, the Spanish discovered the New World and brought back the potato, which allowed Europe to grow its population very fast to feed its economic needs. The problem is, when you rely on a single crop, it's prone to disease. The potato famine killed tens of millions of people. Many immigrated to America. The worst-hit part of Europe was Ireland.

This was a massive, traumatic event that led to uprisings throughout Europe in 1848. This is what inspired Marx and Friedrich Engels to write The Communist Manifesto, because they believed a new order was coming and we had to prepare for it. The 1848 revolutions were calling for three things: nationalism (nation-states based on France), liberalism (more political rights), and socialism (more worker rights). Marx and Engels were convinced paradise was coming, but ultimately the authorities cracked down. Still, they remained convinced.

The Communist Manifesto was published in 1848 in anticipation of this proletarian victory over the capitalist class. It is an amazing document, beautifully written.

A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism. All the Powers of old Europe have entered into a holy alliance to exorcise this spectre: Pope and Czar, Metternich and Guizot, French Radicals and German police-spies.

The spectre is important because remember, it's the Geist. Hegel said the underlying force of the world is the Geist, and what they're saying is the Geist is communism. Communism is the future.

The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors,” and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous “cash payment.”

Capitalism is an all-expanding, all-consuming, alienating force, and it's destroying the world. But for Marx and Engels, this is good because it will lead to the rise of communism. This is part of the thesis-antithesis-synthesis of history. The bourgeoisie are engaged in imperialism, destroying all that we've known before to create a new man, an economic man based only on self-interest. It's even destroying the family. You no longer see yourself as a son or a father or a husband; you see yourself as a man who makes $50,000 a year and is able to buy a car. That's the power of capitalism. But again, for Marx and Engels, this is good because this new consciousness will transform into class solidarity.

In an early letter, Marx beautifully captured his ideal of human production, free from the alienation of capitalism:

Supposing that we had produced in a human manner; in that case each of us would have doubly affirmed himself and his fellow men. I would have: (1) objectified in my production my individuality and its peculiarity and thus both in my activity enjoyed an individual expression of my life and also in looking at the object have had the individual pleasure of realizing that my personality was objective, visible to the senses and thus a power beyond all doubt. (2) In your enjoyment or use of my product I would have had the direct enjoyment of realizing that I had both satisfied a human need by my work and also objectified the human essence and therefore fashioned for another human being the object that met his need. (3) I would have been for you the mediator between you and the species and thus been felt by you and acknowledged as a completion of your own essence and a necessary part of yourself and I would then have realized that I was confirmed both in your thought and in your love.

This is complicated, but all he's saying is this: I cook you a meal. I spent days preparing this meal. It's a labor of love. I cook the best food in the world. I give it to you, and you are blown away. You're in love with this food. And then you're like, "Here's $1,000." That's disgusting. All you have to do is say thank you. The moment you put money into the equation, it destroys all human relations. He's talking about extrinsic motivation versus intrinsic motivation. Intrinsic motivation is what makes us fundamentally human. Extrinsic motivation is what makes us slaves. Capitalism makes us slaves because it deprives us of our humanity. That's what money does.

The Unforeseen Consequences: Bureaucracy and the Vanguard Problem

Marx believed that history is a linear progress, but that's not true; history repeats itself. He believed in the inevitability of history, but there's always randomness built in. He believed class struggle was everything, but people care a lot more about religion than they care about economics.

Finally, Marx believed a vanguard needed to lead the proletariat into paradise. He believed you need an elite of intellectuals, scientists, and technocrats to create the perfect society. But then the question is, why would they give up power? Once they have this power, why do they give it up? The answer is, they wouldn't. And that's why communism ultimately fails in the Soviet Union and in China.

A man named Mikhail Bakunin, an anarchist, believed in many of the same things as Marx, but he argued that a vanguard would destroy everything. The revolution had to be spontaneous, from the people. Marx and Bakunin were colleagues, but they hated each other. Bakunin understood that for freedom to be fully achieved, everyone must be free and equal.

He also foresaw the danger of a technocratic elite, which he described in a chillingly prescient passage:

It would be a sad thing for mankind if, at any time, theoretical speculation became the only source of guidance for society; if science alone were in charge of all social administration. Life would wither, and human society would turn into a voiceless and servile herd. The domination of life by science can have no other result than the brutalization of mankind.

Before, we were intellectuals, curious about the world. Now, we are technocrats, engineers. We're taught a very specific skill and taught to see the world in a very specific way. We're run by technocrats, and this has led to the brutalization of mankind because it has led to the alienation of mankind. We are now just parts of a machine. An example, of course, is AI. The people in charge now want to make AI the dominant religion of the world. They want to make humans slaves to AI. That's what Bakunin was warning against. Anytime you let a bureaucratic elite take over, they will think of ways to reinforce their power through technology.

The Unholy Alliance: How Capitalism and Communism Conquered the World

The question we're looking at today is, why is China so similar to America? America is a capitalist nation; China is a communist nation. But if you talk to Chinese people today, they all want to go to America to study and possibly even to live. Chinese want to become American. In many ways, America has conquered China. Why is that the case?

The answer is that communism and capitalism reinforce each other. They share a similar ideology, a similar background. They're all actually a branch of Christianity, really, if you think about it. They have a similar worldview: a belief in progress, a belief in class struggle, a belief that you need a technocratic elite to run the world.

In other words, communism in China paved the way for American capitalism.

Capitalism and communism are the same religion. As capitalism grows, it reinforces communism. As communism grows, it reinforces capitalism. Why? Because both believe that economics and materialism are the underlying reality. Religion doesn't matter. Capitalism spreads by making everyone uniform, by turning everyone into an economic animal. Today, we don't ask you to believe in God; we ask you to go buy things. Communism is the same way. Communism believes that as long as there's equality and no property, everyone will be happy. It's ironic that these two ideas, even though they were mortal enemies in the 20th century, share the same underlying basis.

We instantly understand that religion is more important than economics. But because capitalism and communism were able to spread so fast, we've been brainwashed into thinking that only economics matters. When you read the newspaper, it's always: What's the GDP this year? What's the employment rate? What's the inflation rate? It's never: How do people feel spiritually? How are people religiously? It's never about your psychology or your spirituality. It's always about how much money do you have.

Communism and capitalism together conquered the world. And in China, we've combined them to create the worst possible society. What China is doing to children is unconscionable. We make kids sit in school for 10 hours a day. They have no childhood, no freedom, no happiness. Most of these kids will develop depression by age 14. This has become an evil religion: the belief that through education you can make more money, and even though everyone else will probably develop suicidal depression in the process, you won't.

If Marx were to jump forward to today and see the world created by communism and capitalism, he would be utterly disgusted. He wouldn't be like, "Oh, wow, I'm famous." He'd be like, "What have we done to humanity? This is far worse than the industrial revolution." Everyone now is a slave as a consumer. In your mind, all that matters is you go to school, make a lot of money, and buy a lot of things. That's it. This would have been unimaginable to Marx and anyone 100 years ago. Humanity has chosen to enslave themselves for no particular good reason.

The question then is, why did this happen? Psychology had a lot to do with this. Before, we were focused on the collective consciousness, the community. But with the coming of psychology, we now shift our focus to ourselves. We come to believe that through our own internal struggle, we can be happy. Others don't matter. If we ourselves are happy, we're good. But what Bakunin and Marx taught us is that if everyone is unhappy, you must be unhappy as well. It's only if people are free and happy together that they can be free and happy by themselves. That's the thing that we've forgotten, and that's what's led to the world we live in today.