What’s Wrong With Idealist

I was reading The Long Tail by and I ran across a quote he uses when discussing the Pro-Am movement (professional and amateur).

Karl Marx was perhaps the original prophet of the Pro-Am economy. As Demos notes, “In The German Ideology, written between 1845 and 1847, Marx maintained that labor-forced, unspontaneous and waged work-would be superseded by self-activity.” Eventually he hoped, there would be a time when “material production leaves every person surplus time for other activities.” Marx evoked a communist society in which “…nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes…toto hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.

I find it hard not to be very sympathetic to such a compelling vision of how it could be. What I find distressing is that many of the ideologies take such a small window of human nature into view that when implemented on a society they fail. I think that goes for both communism and Friedman-like capitalism.

The main part of human nature that is usually neglected to be inspected carefully enough is greed and human ambition. In the case of both capitalism and communism there are certain members of the society that were able to keep the money from circulating and were able to help it to pool at their doorstep, which brings the whole ideology to a stop.

But how great it would be if everyone could work a few hours a day at something to contribute to society and then be free to work on your own interest and see where you can take it. Unfortunately, for those in poverty they may be working two or three jobs, which means no time for personal interest. Those in the middle class often work ten hours a day or more and with the kind of lifestyle we have you end up to tired to pursue your own interests.

In the end there are some good theories, but when brought to life they are found to be incomplete.