while Michael Huemer is right that Communism is based largely on the labor theory of value it also has an implicit foundation in the state of nature of Rousseau that man in the state of nature is good. All theft and murder and all other human evils come from society. But if you would put back man in the state of nature everyone would be loving and kind and cooperative. (It is just the exploiters that extra value from the workers that would have to be gone.) No need for government or rules. But Marx admitted the tremendous abundance that capitalism creates. So he postulates next stage of evolution where the means of production will stay put, but the exploiting class will disappear, and people will revert to their natural loving kind state --but along with that there will be no government nor society and no inequality so no reason for theft or violence.
[Marx did not usually say from where his ideas came from, but in one comment he acknowledged he was influenced by Rousseau. But it is more than that. He claimed his ideas were scientific. The idea was to create a science of man that would be on the same level as Newtons science of gravity and motion.]
So Allan Bloom [The Closing of the American Mind] is right for tracing the crisis of Western World as being rooted in the question about what is man in the state of nature.]
[Marx did not usually say from where his ideas came from, but in one comment he acknowledged he was influenced by Rousseau. But it is more than that. He claimed his ideas were scientific. The idea was to create a science of man that would be on the same level as Newtons science of gravity and motion.]
So Allan Bloom [The Closing of the American Mind] is right for tracing the crisis of Western World as being rooted in the question about what is man in the state of nature.]
