Marxism is a subject which a great many people think they understand far better than they actually do. This is largely because opponents have psychological blocks to understanding it and are motivated to misinterpret it.
Weinstein refers to "attempts to create a Marxist Utopia," and this only demonstrates that he hasn't actually acquainted himself with basic Marxist texts. If he had, he'd know that Marxism rejects the idea of using the State to try and instantiate a Utopia, holding instead that that endpoint will come about only at the same stage of history when the State no longer exists -- an entire historical period after the overthrow of capitalism by a proletarian revolution. And "equality of outcome," another phrase he uses in this context, isn't even an objective of Marxism. The same text that places Utopia at the end, not the beginning of a post-revolutionary period -- Critique of the Gotha Programme -- describes that Utopia as having "inscribed on its banner the watchword: 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need!'" Since, as this statement implicitly recognizes, people don't have equal abilities or needs, this clearly does not mean equal outcomes.
He says we want a system in which people are "economically rewarded for doing a good thing" -- that is, performing socially useful labor. But this is exactly how Marx defines "bourgeois right" as it would operate in the first stage of socialist society, with people being compensated according to their labor (with the obvious exceptions that we see even in civilized capitalist countries, i.e., children, the elderly, and invalids).
The kernel of truth in what he's saying about unequal outcomes is that we want people to be motivated to be more rather than less productive, which is absolutely true. Where he errs is in assuming that this has to take the form of differences in economic wealth or even in income, and it's rather ironic that he makes this error, given his academic background. As a Darwinian, he ought to understand that what matters ultimately is only the higher status that results in more and better reproductive opportunities. Society can be arranged so that this status is independent of economic wealth. In particular, common ownership of productive wealth would greatly facilitate the transparency that would allow people to see directly how big a contribution someone has made, instead of having to infer it from conspicuous consumption which, aside from its purported motivational function, represents by definition a non-optimal allocation of resources as it means to some extent the prioritizing of (relative) luxuries over necessities.
And when Peterson talks about "forcing equality," he sounds as if he's describing the dystopia in Ayn Rand's Anthem. As the editor who rejected her manuscript observed, "The author does not understand socialism."
He says we want a system in which people are "economically rewarded for doing a good thing" -- that is, performing socially useful labor. But this is exactly how Marx defines "bourgeois right" as it would operate in the first stage of socialist society, with people being compensated according to their labor (with the obvious exceptions that we see even in civilized capitalist countries, i.e., children, the elderly, and invalids).
The kernel of truth in what he's saying about unequal outcomes is that we want people to be motivated to be more rather than less productive, which is absolutely true. Where he errs is in assuming that this has to take the form of differences in economic wealth or even in income, and it's rather ironic that he makes this error, given his academic background. As a Darwinian, he ought to understand that what matters ultimately is only the higher status that results in more and better reproductive opportunities. Society can be arranged so that this status is independent of economic wealth. In particular, common ownership of productive wealth would greatly facilitate the transparency that would allow people to see directly how big a contribution someone has made, instead of having to infer it from conspicuous consumption which, aside from its purported motivational function, represents by definition a non-optimal allocation of resources as it means to some extent the prioritizing of (relative) luxuries over necessities.
And when Peterson talks about "forcing equality," he sounds as if he's describing the dystopia in Ayn Rand's Anthem. As the editor who rejected her manuscript observed, "The author does not understand socialism."
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