"All that mankind has done, thought, gained or been: it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books."
-Thomas Carlyle

by Paul Lytle

Owing to the extensive use of machinery and to division of labour,
the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character,
and consequently, all charm for the workman.
-The Communist Manifesto

In the first part of Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, Mr. Jarvis Lorry of Tellson's Bank in London is sent to France for a peculiar duty. He is going there to recover a long time prisoner of the Bastille and deliver him into the care of his daughter.

I worked in a bank for some time, and I, of course, was never sent on such a mission, and nor was anyone else who worked at my branch. Perhaps this was the duty of a special department out of corporate headquarters to do this sort of thing, but I do not think I am being overly cynical if I guessed that no such department exists.

In fact, if I wanted to go help release some political prisoner in some other country, and was perfectly willing to do it on my own time, I would have had to go through a rather long and arduous process to change my vacation to an appropriate time, and would not be able to at all if someone else had already claimed that week.

I am not making this comparison between myself and Mr. Lorry to complain about my former position at the bank, for in my current employment, and nearly everywhere I could work at this time, would the situation be the same. If Mr. Lorry is our example of what a businessman was two hundred years ago, then the working world has certainly changed.

Again, I am not seeking to complain. I only give this example to point out something that few would have ever thought that I would say:

Karl Marx was dead-on right.

Marx claimed that work was growing increasingly meaningless for the worker. We've always had bosses and employees, no matter what you called them in whatever era, but a worker could (generally), look at what he had done at the end of the day and think, "I built this. I made something."

Most of us cannot do this. If we are building anything, we build one small part in a larger machine. We cannot then look at the machine and have satisfaction that we made it.

Most of us cannot even do that. Most of us push papers around, reorganizing them for someone else. Adding paper to the pile or taking a little bit away. Very rarely do we actually finish something, so that we can look at it and think, "It's done. I finished something."

So far Marx and I are in general agreement. But then (and you all knew this was coming when you saw the premise of the article) he took a strange turn that speaks to the very heart of Communism.

When one part of life has less meaning (in this case, work), we have two choices to regain that meaning. Either make a change in that part of our lives (that is, find a job that has meaning), or replace it with meaning from other areas of life. Here is where Mr. Marx and I part company, since his solution does not fall into either of these categories. His solution seems to be to tear down everything else in our lives that has meaning.

The first place I find meaning that Marx would destroy is family. He advocates the abolishment of marriage, while I find great comfort (well, most of the time) in my own. No matter what work is like, I can always come home and feel like I'm doing something important by simply being with my wife. This may seem strange, since our relationship doesn't mean much in the social and economic development of the world, but if everyone took marriage seriously, this world would lose a great many of its problems – teenage pregnancy, sexually transmitted diseases, and the divorce rate.

I'm not trying to put artificial worth on marriage here. I am not likely to be part of any of these problems, even if I had not married someone I love dearly, or even if I had not married at all. The point is that I, and many others, find meaning in marriage. It is perhaps an illogical one, but so is that meaning we once found in work. Building a car on your own does not really have more meaning than building a small part for a thousand cars. In fact, under the assembly line system, you are probably producing more by building that one part. The meaning there is an illogical one too – being able to look at something with the pride of a maker.

Next we have religion. Of course, we all know that Marx thinks religion to be "the opiate of the people." Most of my readers will know that I disagree with him greatly on this point.

The thing about God is that he gives meaning to other things. Without God, we are left without a touchstone, adrift in the universe. What I mean is this: our lives have significantly more meaning if they are the loving creation of God rather than a cosmic accident.

It is easy to find meaning in marriage, for example, when you believe that God created marriage to have meaning rather than marriage being a creation of society. It is easy to believe our lives are meaningful when we believe that God can use them rather than thinking that it was pure happenstance that we were born at this time and at this place (or even evolved into humans at all).

With God, we are working toward a goal. Without God, we are working toward oblivion. The response of atheists here might be that theists might have the perception of meaning, but that isn't the Truth. That is a debate for another time, but the point is that even if there is not a God, what good is that knowledge? Even Truth here becomes meaningless because it is without a purpose. If there is a God, then there is a reason to know him. If there is not a God, then there is no harm in thinking that there is.

That is what is important here. Marx is reacting toward an increasing meaninglessness in the workplace, but his solution is to strip meaning from religion. He cannot replace it, since even if he is right, that knowledge adds nothing to the meaningfulness of our lives. We would perhaps possess the smug knowledge that we are the pinnacle of evolution, but we can only really say that for a couple of million years or so. Given the history of evolution, the human race itself is rather meaningless, much less the individual lives.

Again, we are dealing with what is, perhaps, an artificial meaning. Perhaps there is no God, in which case our belief in God is meaningless. Perhaps there is a God, but he cares nothing for our lives, so that me believing that my life is important to God is meaningless. If either of these are true (and I do not believe either), then the meaning that God brings to our lives is a lie.

But again, what Marx is complaining about is an illogical and lying meaning also. We are not doing less work now, only different work. In fact, technology has made us more productive than ever, so we are actually building more than ever before. There is more that we can call our own. The perception of work is what is the matter here. I agree with Marx here, but he cannot then say that the meaning I find in religion or marriage is illogical when the meaning he desires in work is perhaps more so.

So we are now, under Marx's vision, without family or religion, and so we turn back to work. I would like a job that brings great meaning to my life, but that is hardly why I work. I work for the benefits of the work. Being self-sufficient is meaningful, as is bettering myself through my labor. I do not necessarily mean financial here, but certainly that is a part of it. When I work in the garden, I get the benefit of a more attractive lawn and perhaps produce to eat. When I fix the stairs, I gain the benefit of a home in good repair. If I were to build a bookcase, I could use it as I please.

Given the choice of being able to simply point to something and say, "I built that," and making my life better through what I build, I would choose the latter every time. Pride is generally considered a vice (though I would argue that it has its place). Pride of an accomplishment is not worth as much as the accomplishment itself, so when Marx is concerned that we no longer have pride in what we do, he should perhaps be trying to figure out a way for better accomplishments.

If I can have it, I would like both the accomplishment and the pride in the accomplishment. I said above that pride has its place, and pride does drive us to better our world. We want to make cars more efficient, or write a better novel, if only to prove that we can. But again, real pride comes with real accomplishment.

We cannot feel that our lives are genuinely meaningful unless something is there to give us hope that our lives are meaningful. Marx seems to want to take that away. He wants to force everyone to feel equal. This is the final way that Marx makes a wrong turn. He wants us to feel special because we are exactly the same as everyone else? It doesn't make a lot of sense.

I give Karl Marx credit for seeing a real problem developing. But his ideas are obviously a case of making matters worse. When seeking meaning, we should not tear down those things that provide meaning. There are many things that Communism sought to accomplish, but like much of Marx's philosophy, it falls short when seeking fulfillment.

Have a comment about this article or one of the others in this month's issue? Use our Respondere page to write to our editors.