The ghost of Karl Marx hovers over yet another summit prospect, waiting to decry pretensions of communism.

Soviet President Chernenko surprised President Reagan, and the world, by proposing a conference in Vienna Sept. 15 to discuss limitation of space weapons.

Mr. Reagan was somewhat taken aback, the Russians having walked out on arms talks a year ago.  The U.S. president maintains there can be no useful dialogue with the Soviets until they get out of Afghanistan, stop giving guns to terrorists in Central America and ease up on the citizens of Poland.

No one was more surprised, therefore, than the Kremlin when Reagan agreed to talk.  Chernenko then slammed the door, saying negotiations were impossible because of Reagan's "negative attitude.''  British foreign secretary Sir Geoffrey Howe put the matter in perspective, "The communists won't take 'yes' for an answer."

The late Soviet president, Leonid Brezhnev, declared just before his death that his nation will withdraw from Afghanistan only "with agreement of that government."  He also said, "We will not abandon fraternal socialist Poland in its hour of need."

As for aiding leftist terrorism, Brezhnev was emphatic, "No one should have any doubts that the Communist Party will continue the policy of consolidating the alliance of world socialism and the national liberation movement."

Karl Marx would be amazed.

Originally, he believed that workers of the world should unite, by revolution if necessary, to abolish private property.  All planning and management would be turned over to a wise and benevolent bureaucracy.

Collaborating with Marx was Frederick Engels, son of a wealthy German textile manufacturer.  They feared that the feudal exploitation of peasants was being extended to the newly forming industrial society.

The "Communist Manifesto," authored by Marx and Engels in 1848, outlined their plan to rectify perceived injustices:

"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

"These measures will of course be different in different countries.

"Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

"1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

"2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

"3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

"4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

"5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.

"6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.

"7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

"8. Equal liability of all to labor.  Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

"9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

"10. Free education for all children in public schools.  Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form.  Combination of education with industrial production, &c., &c."

It is startling to note how much Marxist socialism has made its way into the democratic, capitalist society of America.

We have graduated income taxes, high inheritance taxes, mammoth public land tracts, the Federal Reserve Bank, government monopoly of money and postal service, licensing of broadcast communication, government regulation of utilities and transportation, environmental protection, industrialization of agriculture, farm subsidies and planting quotas, suburbs, public schools, welfare, Medicare and Social Security.

The significant thing is that the United States improved society through representational systems, liberty of choice and private enterprise.

The notion that only terrorism and totalitarian government could upgrade living standards was disproved long before Marx and Engels died.

Twenty-five years after the first publication of "Manifesto," Engels recanted in a reprint preface:

"In view of the gigantic strides of modern industry, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class...this program has in some details become antiquated.  One thing especially proved by the Commune (brief communist revolution in Paris) was that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes."

It is ironic that Russia cannot make the same social gains as the free, capitalist countries.

As President Reagan considers detente with the Soviet Union he need not be intimidated by communist threats or pacifist propaganda.  As Marx and Engels learned, free people solve their problems peacefully.

SECOND THOUGHTS

• PRESIDENT Reagan is annoyed at being asked so often if he will raise taxes in a second term.  He replies, absolutely maybe and that's final!
  
• The Senate is working on a "fundamental overhaul" of taxes but warns us not to expect a reduction.  Maybe taxation without representation wouldn't be so bad after all.
  
  

Marx Conservative For Today

Karl Marx, the revered oracle of Communism, would be greatly mystified by the political systems founded in his name were he to return to life today.

Russia and China are engaged in a propaganda battle over which is the best Marxist.  Unless one of them backs down, the dispute may erupt into a shooting war between the former "comrades."

Ironically, neither country is communist as Marx envisioned it.  Great Britain, France and the United States come closer to his ideal; and, in fact, were the nations Marx believed would first achieve his brand of Utopia.

Lenin, father of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, was the first to corrupt Marx as a veil for purely nationalistic purposes.  It worked so well that Joseph Stalin and Mao Tse-tung used the same gambit to cover up their own power struggles.

It was Marx's idea that workers of the world should unite, by revolution if necessary, to abolish private property.  All planning and direction would be turned over to a wise and dedicated bureaucracy.  At this point, he said, the state would "wither away".  Society would operate harmoniously on the rule, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs."

The latter day prophets of Marx have made so much of his theories that we tend to forget he died in 1883 long before the Russian communist revolutions of 1917.  Even in his own day Marx had come to realize that his "Communist Manifesto" of 1848 was outdated.  By the time the Twentieth Century had rolled around the original communist complaints had been rectified by the capitalist countries through free elective processes.

Collaborating with Marx in the socialist ferment of the mid-nineteenth century was Frederick Engels, son of a wealthy German textile manufacturer, and a successful businessman in his own right.

They were in close agreement about the evils of the newly forming industrial society.  The feudal exploitation of the peasants apparently was being extended to urban sweatshops.  Long hours of hard and sometimes dangerous work for low pay were common.  It was an historical pattern imposed by property owners, said Marx and Engels.

The "Communist Manifesto," authored by Marx and Engels, was summarized by the latter in a preface to the 1872 reprint:

"The fundamental proposition of the Manifesto is (1) that in every historical epoch, the prevailing mode of economic production and exchange, and the social organization necessarily following from it, form the basis upon which is built up, and from which alone can be explained, the political and intellectual history of the epoch; (2) that consequently the whole history of mankind (since the dissolution of primitive tribal society, holding land in common ownership) has been a history of class struggles, contests between exploiting and exploited, ruling and oppressed classes; (3) that the history of these class struggles form a series of evolutions in which, nowadays, a stage has been reached where the exploited and oppressed class - the proletariat -cannot attain its emancipation from the sway of the exploiting and ruling class - the bourgeoisie - without at the same time, and once and for all, emancipating society at large from all exploitation oppression, class distinctions and class struggles."

"The first step in the revolution by the working class," says the Manifesto, "is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy.

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the state; and to increase the total of productive forces as rapidly as possible.

"Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which ...  necessitate further inroads upon the old social order."

"These measures will of course be different in different countries.  Nevertheless in the most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

"1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

"2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

"3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.

"4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

"5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

"6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

"7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

"8. Equal obligation of all to work.  Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

"9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the population over the country.

"10. Free education for all children in public schools.  Abolition of child factory labor in its present from.  Combination of education with industrial production, etc."

It is a hair-raising exercise by those who inaccurately equate Russian and Chinese state imperialism with Marxist communism to point out how far down the socialist road we are today.

Certainly income taxes, inheritance taxes, industrialization of agriculture, governmental control of utility monopoly, regulation of railroads and highways, the Federal Reserve bank system, farm planting quotas and many other instruments of federal power have accomplished peacefully a great deal of Marx revolutionary program.

The significant thing is that we have been able to upgrade society through the ballot and union representation.  Marx' belief that the capitalist system was incapable of changing economic principles was a false one.  We have made some mistakes in shaping our economic system, but we have had many more successes.

Russia and China were backward, underdeveloped nations which took from Marx the one idea of revolution to justify an upheaval of the old social order.  The aim was, and is, to make a better Russia and a better China for Russians and Chinese.  They are today where we were a hundred years ago.  Their practical guide for progress is the American enterprise system.  Real Marxism is too conservative by today's standards.

Twenty-five years after the first publication of the Manifesto, Engels wrote:

"The practical application of the (communist) principles will depend everywhere and at all times on the historical conditions for the time being existing, and, for that reason, no special stress is laid on the revolutionary measures proposed.

"In view of the gigantic strides of modern industry since 1848, and of the accompanying improved and extended organization of the working class ....  this program has in some details become antiquated.  One thing especially was proved by the Commune (brief communist revolution in Paris),  viz., that the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery and wield it for its own purposes."

Time, history and human intelligence long ago caught up with and surpassed communism.

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