Rothbard: Communism Will Create a World of Autistic Dilettantes

Particularly important for Marx is that communism does away with the division of labour. By being free of specialization, the division of labour, and working for others (including the consumers) man as labourer is freed from all limits.... as Engels put it in his Anti-Dühring, the disappearance of the division of labour will mean that productive labour will give 'each individual the opportunity to develop all his faculties, physical and mental, in all directions and exercise them to the full'.

The idea of everyone developing all of their faculties 'in all directions' is mind-boggling, and conjures up the absurd picture of a world of autistic dilettantes, each heedless of social demand for their services or products, and each dabbling whimsically and sporadically in every activity. This image is confirmed by Marx's most famous passage describing the communist system in Part I of his 'The German Ideology', an unpublished essay written in 1845-46. There he writes that communism 'corresponds to the development of individuals into complete individuals and the casting off of all natural limitations'. How are 'all natural limitations' cast off? - a tall order indeed.

--Murray N. Rothbard, Classical Economics, vol. 2 of An Austrian Perspective on the History of Economic Thought (Auburn, AL: Ludwig von Mises Institute, 2006), 325.