General Marxism by Production Dimension Model, Production Evolution, and Individualism-Collectivism Duality

Abstract

In this paper, classical Marxism as special Marxism for the mid-nineteenth century is broadened and updated into general Marxism for the twenty-first century. General Marxism includes the 5W1H production analysis for all aspects of production and the individualism-collectivism duality for the individualistic Western civilization originated from the Middle East and Greece and the collectivistic Eastern civilization originated from India and China. The 5W1H production analysis consists of when (stages) to produce for the production evolution and what (types), how much (energies), why (purposes), who (people), and where (places) to produce for the production dimension model based on the Hofstede cultural dimension model. In the statistical analysis, the indexes in the production dimension model derived from the indexes in the Hofstede model correlate well with the observed Democracy Index (R2 = 0.4) and the GDP Growth Rate (R2 = 0.8). The production evolution has the interdependent individualism-collectivism at the beginning (hunter-gatherer) and the end (eusocial democracy) and the split individualism-collectivism in between (pastoral-agrarian and West-East). The first five stages of the production evolution match the five modes in special Marxism. In the twentieth century, class conflict in the mid-nineteenth century (Marx’s time) turned into class mobility in the true democratic governments (individualistic individual liberal democracy for individual liberty in the West and collectivistic common professional democracy for common wellbeing in the East) working for all people. In the twenty-first century, through increasing globalization in trade and investment, the individualistic West depends on the collectivistic East for consolidative production type from low-profit development, supply chain, economy of scale, and ration, while the East depends on the West for adventurous production type from high-profit invention, productivity, efficiency, and marketing. The result is the interdependent individualism-collectivism to bring about eusocial democracy based on interdependent division of labor between individual liberal democracy and common professional democracy in the stable interconnected world.