[KhanMahGretsch]

The following is just my opinion: Marx certainly used logic to reach his conclusions about the sunset of capitalism in advanced societies, and the dawn of a communal society in which abundant resources remove incentive for competition. He was very explicit about this being a "natural" progression, far removed from the ideological regimes past-and-present which impose the system by force.

My problem with Marx isn't the conclusions he draws, it's more about the factors which he excludes that lead him to those very conclusions. That's another way of saying that it's not his answers that I have a problem with (like I said, he's being logical), it's a matter of the question itself being fundamentally flawed.

My interpretation is that he did not fully account for the nature of humankind: the will to power; the drive to improve your position in life; the need to nurture and manifest one's unique abilities in this world, which leads to massive satisfaction (and a nice dopamine hit!).

I think that those properties exist within us all, to a degree, and can lead us towards doing good and bad, depending on how they are integrated into our personality and value-systems. One employee might earn a well-deserved promotion after toiling hard for his boss and colleagues, and enjoy the swell of pride in his work and himself. Another may scheme and politick his way to the same promotion, feeling a similar sense of satisfaction that could be described as the "ugly twin" of the other aforementioned employee.

The question I ask myself is this: which of the two hypothetical persons mentioned above does a centrally-planned communist system facilitate and reward, in a society without massive abundance of resources? The first employee's innovation and superior work, his "ability", would have no effect on his "need", so there is no justification for rewarding him, and his family, monetarily under the value system. The second person would have more options to improve their station, wether by artificially increasing their perceived "need", or climbing the power-structure of a government which has exclusive control over distribution. In fact, I believe the system itself would force the former to behave like the latter out of sheer necessity, or risk perishing.