Tag Archive for: Karl Marx

Venezuela: Amid socialist humanitarian crisis, no improvement in human rights

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The human rights situation in Venezuela has been dire for many years, with little indication of improvement. Since 2014, there have been 15,800 politically motivated arrests, and over 270 political prisoners continue to languish in Venezuelan jails.

The misguided economic policies implemented by successive socialist governments have led to 19 million people facing malnutrition and a severe lack of healthcare. Consequently, a staggering 7.7 million individuals, out of a population of just over 29 million, have fled the country since 2014.

The government has even taken the drastic step of closing the UN Human Rights Office, purportedly due to its alleged involvement in anti-government activities. Furthermore, new legislation threatens to criminalise and impede the work of civil society within the country.

Once considered one of the wealthiest nations in Latin America, Venezuela has descended into a socialist dystopia marred by authoritarianism, a dearth of human rights, insufficient government investment, hyperinflation, rampant corruption, economic mismanagement, the collapse of public services, economic hardship, shortages, and widespread hunger. Currently, fifty percent of the population lives in poverty.

Popular tyrant

Socialism was introduced in Venezuela by Hugo Chávez, a populist who held the presidency from 1999 until his death in 2013. Chávez implemented the nationalisation of industries and directed public funds towards social programs. As a result, schools saw improvement, the unemployment rate halved, and per capita incomes more than doubled. Moreover, both the poverty rate and infant mortality rates decreased by 50 percent.

Chávez was widely praised domestically for his stance against the United States, famously referring to President George W. Bush as “the devil”. Following Chávez’s death from cancer, Nicolás Maduro succeeded him as president.

While Chavez was a charismatic populist, one of the most notable distinctions lies in his ability to forge a coalition comprising leftists, military personnel, and the poor. Furthermore, Chavez was lucky. He capitalised on a surge in oil prices during his presidency. As a prime example of a petrostate, Venezuela’s fortunes are directly tied to the rise and fall of global oil prices. Chavez successfully directed a portion of the $1 trillion windfall in oil revenue towards appeasing the public and solidifying his grip on power.

Despite his widespread popularity, Chavez operated as a dictator and tyrant. He expanded state control over oil companies and suppressed journalists and critics, essentially outlawing government criticism. Consolidating nearly all power into his own hands, he eradicated checks and balances.

Nonetheless, he maintained the façade of democracy by holding elections. Winning 13 out of 14 elections lent an aura of legitimacy to his regime. He utilised state funds for his campaigns and exerted influence over journalists to portray him favourably, although he refrained from outright election fraud. Moreover, he survived a coup attempt, bolstering his image and authority.

Economic woes

Maduro lacks the charisma of Chavez. While Chavez had a military background, Maduro’s career path was rooted in communism. He pursued studies in Cuba, was affiliated with the Socialist League — an extreme left-wing organisation — and prior to entering government, he worked as a union negotiator.

He lost much of Chavez’s support base, securing election with a mere 50.6 percent of the vote. Consequently, he has governed the country as an autocrat. Besides lacking Chavez’s charisma and broad consensus, Maduro hasn’t enjoyed his predecessor’s luck: oil prices plummeted in 2014, leading to the complete collapse of the Venezuelan economy.

At times, annual inflation has soared to as high as 700 percent, reaching about 300 percent in 2022. Between 2015 and 2016, an estimated seventy-five percent of the country’s population experienced an average weight loss of 19 pounds. Diseases such as malaria have ravaged the nation due to the inability of people to afford imported medicines.

While Chavez allocated funds to improve citizens’ lives, he failed to diversify the economy away from oil dependency. Maduro has perpetuated this legacy by neglecting structural economic reforms and instead imposing stricter government controls. He restricted currency exchange systems, leaving ordinary citizens unable to afford medicine, basic household goods, and imported foods that must be purchased with dollars.

In the socialist utopia of the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela, everyone is purportedly equal, except for those with connections to the Maduro government. They have access to discounted dollars and can afford imported goods, which now encompass almost all but the most essential food items for survival. Necessities like toilet paper must be imported and purchased with dollars. Despite being a major oil producer, the country even grapples with fuel shortages.

Even individuals fortunate enough to possess dollars or receive remittances from friends and family abroad are not immune to the effects of inflation.

For instance, a woman who sells cigarettes and small items on the street disclosed that she earns approximately $20 a week. However, due to the relentless surge in prices, this income barely covers 15 eggs, 3 kilograms (6.6 lb) of corn flour, and a small portion of grain and cheese.

In Venezuela, the average monthly salary in the private sector stands at $139, while it’s a mere $14 in the public sector. Nevertheless, the grocery expenses for an average family amount to about $370 per month.

Deteriorating

Maduro has faced widespread protests and blocked a referendum because he understood that he wouldn’t secure victory, given his approval rating, which frequently dips to as low as 20 percent. Subsequently, he directed the Supreme Court to dissolve a portion of the legislature that opposed him. The state of democracy in Venezuela is deteriorating rapidly.

Recently, a new National Electoral Council (CNE) was formed, and several presidential candidates were disqualified. Additionally, opposition party members were detained prior to elections, indicating that the electoral process is likely to be more of a spectacle than a meaningful exercise in democracy.

Last year, a new National Electoral Council (CNE) was formed, and several presidential candidates were disqualified. Moreover, opposition party members were detained prior to elections, indicating that the electoral process is likely to be more of a spectacle than a substantive exercise in democracy.

Union workers, journalists, and human rights defenders have faced increasing restrictions on their access to civic spaces. Additionally, they’ve endured harassment and persecution orchestrated by the authorities. The rights of indigenous people, as well as those of LGBT individuals and women, have been egregiously disregarded. Notably, a YouTuber was recently charged with terrorism merely for challenging government policies.

The crackdown on dissenters has escalated, with critics subjected to surveillance, harassment, and criminalisation. In the most severe instances, they’ve become victims of torture and murder. In 2017, he secured victory in a rigged election. During this election cycle, he successfully postponed elections for an entire year, but they are anticipated to resume in October 2024. If these elections were fair and transparent, his defeat would be inevitable.

In what appears to be an effort to bolster the country’s revenues and alleviate the people’s suffering ahead of the next election, Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro enacted a law annexing the oil-rich region of Essequibo in neighbouring Guyana. A consultative referendum was conducted on this decision last December, garnering a staggering 96 percent approval from the populace.

As per a statement from the presidential palace, Guayana Esequiba will now be recognised as the 24th federal state of Venezuela. Moreover, the inhabitants of the newly annexed territory will be represented in the upcoming parliamentary session in 2025. However, Guyana has sought a ruling from the International Court of Justice (ICJ), although Venezuelan law asserts that the ICJ holds no jurisdiction within the country.

Change in Venezuela appears elusive until Maduro is ousted from power. However, considering his influence over the upcoming elections, it seems unlikely that he will relinquish control voluntarily. The prospect of international military intervention in Venezuela is highly improbable, given the likelihood of opposition from Security Council members China and Russia. As for the alternatives of assassination or coup, history has demonstrated that such actions typically do not lead to positive outcomes, often resulting in the replacement of one authoritarian leader with another.

Can Venezuela’s parlous condition be reversed? Sound off in the comments section below.

AUTHOR

Antonio Graceffo, PhD, China-MBA MBA, is a China economic analyst teaching economics at the American University in Mongolia. He has spent 20 years in Asia and is the author of six books about China. His writing has appeared in The Diplomat, South China Morning Post, Jamestown Foundation China Brief, Penthouse, Shanghai Institute of American Studies, Epoch Times, War on the Rocks, Just the News, and Black Belt Magazine.

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EDITORS NOTE: This Mercator column is republished with permission. All rights reserved.

Bribing Future Generations for Marx?

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Can anybody name one-square inch on the planet where Communism has done anyone any good? Anywhere? Not for the ruling elites, but for the people themselves?

It doesn’t exist. How, then, do they continue to manage to create new recruits? Well, a story out of California last week explains one strategy.

Writing for The Free Press for Free People, Francesca Block reports (3/7/24): “An activist group in California has paid nearly 100 public high schoolers $1,400 each to learn how to fight for racial and social justice.”

This is the brainchild of a group called Californians for Justice (CFJ), and they’re working in Long Beach to create a new breed of Communists, who are interested in learning “restorative justice practices.”

Here is an example of where CFJ stands on the issues. After the brutal October 7th Hamas attack against some 1200 Israeli men, women, and children in the Gaza area, Californians for Justice described Israel (the victim) as being guilty of “ethnic cleansing and apartheid orchestrated by white supremacist settler colonialism bent on the goal of wiping out the indigenous Palestinian population.”

Dividing the world into the supposed oppressors (Israelis) and the oppressed (Hamas) is Marxism at work.

The Free Press for Free People notes a recent social media video helping to recruit other students to join the movement for so-called “social justice.” One student was asked: “Why should students join CFJ?” The student replied, “You get paid good.”

But, all bad grammar aside, do these naïve students realize what they are defending?

Years ago, I read a fantastic book by a former socialist and idealist on the problem of socialism and Communism.

His name is Joshua Muravchik, and as a young man, he was the president of the Young Socialists. But as he matured intellectually, he came to be a major critic of that which he had earlier espoused.

He wrote the book called, Heaven on Earth. The basic thesis is that the Communists promised heaven on earth and instead delivered hell on earth.

And how could they not? It always begins with the premise that there is no God and that man is basically good. Thus, from the very outset, it is always doomed to fail.

As Muravchik noted in an interview I once did with him for Coral Ridge Ministries for our video expose on socialism: “In terms of the most terrible kinds of socialism, the kinds that engaged in mass killing, I think there’s, at the root of that, this idea that you can make a perfect society here in this world, that you can make a heaven on earth. And that’s just a false idea.”

Muravchik observed that when you start from that premise, and you refuse to learn from experience and reality, you’re in for trouble. And the Communist and socialist radicals didn’t learn. “They just kept insisting that their ideas were perfect, and it was only the human beings who were getting in the way of achieving it. Then it’s not such a big step to start killing these human beings until you get all the bad ones out of the way, to build your little utopia out of the ones who are left.”

And the result, per Muravchik? “The Communist countries did prove to be the greatest killers of all time.”

One of the remarkable books I have in my office was published by Harvard University Press in 1999. It’s The Black Book of Communism.

At the end of the 20th century, this bold book, written by many authors, dared to tell the truth that the vast killing fields of the 20th century were the fruit of communism in one form or another.

In a review of the book, Publishers Weekly notes: “Essentially a body count of communism’s victims in the 20th century, the book draws heavily from recently opened Soviet archives.”

America’s founders showed the world a better way to promote lasting good in the world. You begin with the foundational truth that our rights come from God, not the state. Our nation’s birth certificate, the Declaration of Independence, indeed mentions God four times.

And then, building on that clear structure, because of man’s inherent sinful nature, you divide power so that no one man or small group can seize all the power for themselves. As James Madison, a key architect of the Constitution, summed up well: “All men having power ought to be distrusted.”

Communism works the opposite way. It says man is good, but the system is bad. Let’s tear down the system and implement “social justice,” and we’ll usher in the long-awaited millennium. But as Muravchik notes: They promised heaven, but only delivered hell. If only more young people could learn the lessons of history and resist the temptation of intellectual bribery, before it’s too late.

©2024. All rights reserved.

Joseph Goebbels’ Own Words Show He Loved Socialism and Saw It as ‘the Future’

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Socialists will continue to argue that Nazism was not “real” socialism, but the Nazi propaganda despised capitalism and spoke like Karl Marx.

One of the comforts of growing older is knowing that some things will never change.

Sports fans will always argue over the designated hitter rule and over who was the best heavyweight boxer of all-time (Muhammad Ali). Movie fans will never agree which Godfather movie was better, the first or the second (the first.) And the trumpets will sound at the Second Coming before capitalists and socialists agree on whether the Nazis were “really socialists.”

The last item has always puzzled me, I confess, and not just because the word is right there in the name: National Socialism. If you read the speeches and private conversations of the Nazi hierarchy, it’s clear they loved socialism and despised individualism and capitalism.

In his new book Hitler’s National Socialism, the historian Rainer Zitelmann gives a penetrating look into the ideas that shaped men like Hitler and Goebbels. While it’s clear they saw their own brand of socialism as distinct from Marxism (more on that later), there is no question they saw socialism as the future and despised bourgeoisie capitalism.

Consider, for example, these quotes from Joseph Goebbels, the chief propagandist for the Nazi Party:

  1. “Socialism is the ideology of the future.” – Letter to Ernst Graf zu Reventlow as quoted in Goebbels: A Biography
  2. “The bourgeoisie has to yield to the working class … Whatever is about to fall should be pushed. We are all soldiers of the revolution. We want the workers’ victory over filthy lucre. That is socialism.” -quoted in Doctor Goebbels: His Life and Death
  3. “We are socialists, because we see in socialism, that means, in the fateful dependence of all folk comrades upon each other, the sole possibility for the preservation of our racial genetics and thus the re-conquest of our political freedom and for the rejuvenation of the German state. – “Why We Are Socialists?” Der Angriff (The Attack ), July 16, 1928
  4. “We are not a charitable institution but a Party of revolutionary socialists.” -Der Angriff editorial, May 27, 1929
  5. “Capitalism assumes unbearable forms at the moment when the personal purposes that it serves run contrary to the interest of the overall folk. It then proceeds from things and not from people. Money is then the axis around which everything revolves. It is the reverse with socialism. The socialist worldview begins with the folk and then goes over to things. Things are made subservient to the folk; the socialist puts the folk above everything, and things are only means to an end.” -”Capitalism,” Der Angriff, July 15, 1929
  6. “In 1918 there was only one task for the German socialist: to keep the weapons and defend German socialism.” -”Capitalism,” Der Angriff, July 15, 1929
  7. “To be a socialist means to let the ego serve the neighbour, to sacrifice the self for the whole. In its deepest sense socialism equals service.” – diary notes (1926)
  8. “The lines of German socialism are sharp, and our path is clear. We are against the political bourgeoisie, and for genuine nationalism! We are against Marxism, but for true socialism!” – Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists? (1932)
  9. “We are socialists because we see the social question as a matter of necessity and justice for the very existence of a state for our people, not a question of cheap pity or insulting sentimentality. The worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces.” – Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists? (1932)
  10. “England is a capitalist democracy. Germany is a socialist people’s state.” – “Englands Schuld” (the speech is not dated, but likely was given in 1939)
  11. “Because we are socialists we have felt the deepest blessings of the nation, and because we are nationalists we want to promote socialist justice in a new Germany.” – Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
  12. “The sin of liberal thinking was to overlook socialism’s nation-building strengths, thereby allowing its energies to go in anti-national directions.” – Die verfluchten Hakenkreuzler. Etwas zum Nachdenken (1932)
  13. “To be a socialist is to submit the I to the thou; socialism is sacrificing the individual to the whole. Socialism is in its deepest sense service.” – as quoted in Escape from Freedom, Erich Fromm
  14. “We are a workers’ party because we see in the coming battle between finance and labor the beginning and the end of the structure of the twentieth century. We are on the side of labor and against finance. . . The value of labor under socialism will be determined by its value to the state, to the whole community.”-Those Damn Nazis: Why Are We Socialists? (1932)

These quotes represent just a smattering of Goebbels’ views on and conception of socialism. One can see that in many ways the Nazi spoke much like Karl Marx.

Phrases like “we are a workers’ party,” “the worker has a claim to a living standard that corresponds to what he produces,” “money…is the reverse with socialism,” and “we are against the political bourgeoisie” could easily be plucked from Marx’s own speeches and writings—yet it’s clear Goebbels despised Marx and saw his brand of “national socialism” as distinct from Marxism.

So what sets National Socialism apart from Marxism? There are two primary differences.

The first is that Hitler and Goebbels fused their socialism with race and German nationalism, rejecting the international ethos of Marxism—workers of the world unite!—for a more practical one that emphasized Germany’s Völkischen movement.

This was a clever tactic by the Nazis. As the Nobel Prize-winning economist F.A. Hayek pointed out, it made socialism more palatable to many Germans who were unable to see Nazism for what it truly was.

“The supreme tragedy is still not seen that in Germany it was largely people of good will who, by their socialist policies, prepared the way for the forces which stand for everything they detest,” Hayek wrote in The Road to Serfdom (1944). “Few recognize that the rise of fascism…was not a reaction against the socialist trends of the preceding period but a necessary outcome of those tendencies.”

The second difference is that National Socialists were less concerned with directly controlling the means of production.

In his 1940 book German Economy, 1870-1940, Gustav Stolper, an Austrian-German economist and journalist, explained that though National Socialism was anti-capitalist from the beginning, it was also in direct competition with Marxism following World War I. Because of this, National Socialists determined to “woo the masses” from three distinct angles.

“The first angle was the moral principle, the second the financial system, the third the issue of ownership. The moral principle was ‘the commonwealth before self-interest.’ The financial promise was ‘breaking the bondage of interest slavery’. The industrial program was ‘nationalization of all big incorporated business [trusts]’. By accepting the principle ‘the commonwealth before self-interest,’ National Socialism simply emphasizes its antagonism to the spirit of a competitive society as represented supposedly by democratic capitalism . . . But to the Nazis this principle means also the complete subordination of the individual to the exigencies of the state. And in this sense National Socialism is unquestionably a Socialist system . . .”

Stolper, who fled from Germany to the United States after Hitler’s rise to power, noted that the Nazis never initiated a widespread nationalization of industry, but he explained that in some ways this was a distinction without a difference.

“The socialization of the entire German productive machinery, both agricultural and industrial, was achieved by methods other than expropriation, to a much larger extent and on an immeasurably more comprehensive scale than the authors of the party program in 1920 probably ever imagined. In fact, not only the big trusts were gradually but rapidly subjected to government control in Germany, but so was every sort of economic activity, leaving not much more than the title of private ownership.”

In his 1939 book The Vampire Economy: Doing Business Under Fascism, Guenter Reimann reached a similar conclusion, the economic historian Richard Ebeling notes.

“…while most of the means of production had not been nationalized, they had nonetheless been politicized and collectivized under an intricate web of Nazi planning targets, price and wage regulations, production rules and quotas, and strict limits and restraints on the action and decisions of those who remained; nominally, the owners of private enterprises throughout the country. Every German businessman knew that his conduct was prescribed and positioned within the wider planning goals of the National Socialist regime.”

The historical record is clear: European fascism was simply a different shade of socialism, which helps explain, as Hayek noted, why so many fascists were “former” socialists—”from Mussolini down (and including Laval and Quisling).”

Like Marx, the Nazis loathed capitalism and saw the individual will and individual rights as subordinate to the interests of the state. It should come as little surprise that these different shades of socialism achieved such similar results: poverty and misery.

Socialists will continue to argue that Nazism was not “real” socialism, but the words of the infamous Nazi propaganda minister suggest otherwise.

AUTHOR

Jon Miltimore

Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. (Follow him on Substack.) His writing/reporting has been the subject of articles in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox News, and the Star Tribune. Bylines: Newsweek, The Washington Times, MSN.com, The Washington Examiner, The Daily Caller, The Federalist, the Epoch Times.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

No, Slavery Did Not Make America Rich

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The historical record of the post-war economy demonstrates slavery was neither a central driving force of, or economically necessary for, American economic dominance. 

In 1847, Karl Marx wrote that

Without slavery you have no cotton; without cotton you have no modern industry…cause slavery to disappear and you will have wiped America off the map of nations.

As with most of his postulations concerning economics, Marx was proven wrong.

Following the Civil War and the abolition of slavery in 1865, historical data show there was a recession, but after that, post-war economic growth rates rivaled or surpassed the pre-war growth rates, and America continued on its path to becoming the number one political and economic superpower, ultimately superseding Great Britain (see Appendix Figure 1).

The historical record of the post-war economy, one would think, obviously demonstrated slavery was neither a central driving force of, or economically necessary for, American economic dominance, as Marx thought it was. And yet, somehow, even with the benefit of hindsight, there are many academics and media pundits still echoing Marx today.

For instance, in his essay published by The New York Times’ 1619 Project, Princeton sociologist Matthew Desmond claims the institution of slavery “helped turn a poor, fledgling nation into a financial colossus.”

“The industrial revolution was based on cotton, produced primarily in the slave labor camps of the United States,” Noam Chomsky similarly stated in an interview with the Times. Both claims give the impression that slavery was essential for industrialization and/or American economic hegemony, which is untrue.

The Industrial Revolution paved the way for modern economic development and is widely regarded to have occurred between 1760 and 1830, starting in Great Britain and subsequently spreading to Europe and the US.

As depicted in Figure 1., raw cotton produced by African-American slaves did not become a significant import in the British economy until 1800, decades after the Industrial Revolution had already begun.

Although the British later imported large quantities of American cotton, economic historians Alan L. Olmstead and Paul W. Rhode note that “the American South was a late-comer to world cotton markets,” and  “US cotton played no role in kick-starting the Industrial Revolution.”

Nor was the revolution sparked by Britain’s involvement with slavery more broadly, as David Eltis and Stanley L. Engerman assessed that the contribution of British 18th-century slave systems to industrial growth was “not particularly large.”

There is also the theory that the cotton industry, dependent on slavery, triggered industrialization in the northern United States by facilitating the growth of textile industries. But as demonstrated by Kenneth L. Sokoloff, the Northern manufacturing sector was incredibly dynamic, and productivity growth was broad-based and in no way exclusive to cotton textiles.

Eric Holt has further elaborated, pointing out that

the vast literature on the industrial revolution that economic historians have produced shows that it originated in the creation and adoption of a wide range of technologies, such as the steam engine and coke blast furnace, which were not directly connected to textile trading networks.

The bodies of the enslaved served as America’s largest financial asset, and they were forced to maintain America’s most exported commodity… the profits from cotton propelled the US into a position as one of the leading economies in the world and made the South its most prosperous region.

This is the argument made by P.R. Lockhart of Vox.

While slavery was an important part of the antebellum economy, claims about its central role in the Industrial Revolution and in America’s rise to power via export-led growth are exaggerated.

Olmstead and Rhode have observed that although cotton exports comprised a tremendous share of total exports prior to the Civil War, they accounted for only around 5 percent of the nation’s overall gross domestic product, an important contribution but not the backbone of American economic development (see Appendix Figure 2).

One can certainly argue that slavery made the slaveholders and those connected to the cotton trade extremely wealthy in the short run, but the long-run impact of slavery on overall American economic development, particularly in the South, is undeniably and unequivocally negative.

As David Meyer of Brown University explains, in the pre-war South, “investments were heavily concentrated in slaves,” resulting in the failure “to build a deep and broad industrial infrastructure,” such as railroads, public education, and a centralized financial system.

Economic historians have repeatedly emphasized that slavery delayed Southern industrialization, giving the North a tremendous advantage in the Civil War.

Harvard economist Nathan Nunn has shown that across the Americas, the more dependent on slavery a nation was in 1750, the poorer it was in 2000 (see Appendix Figure 3.). He found the same relationship in the US. In 2000, states with more slaves in 1860 were poorer than states with fewer slaves and much poorer than the free Northern states (see Appendix Figure 4.)

According to Nunn,

looking either across countries within the Americas, or across states and counties within the U.S., one finds a strong significant negative relationship between past slave use and current income.

Slavery was an important part of the American economy for some time, but the reality is that it was completely unnecessary and stunted economic development, and it made Americans poorer even over 150 years later.

The historical and empirical evidence is in accordance with the conclusion of Olmstead and Rhode—that slavery was

a national tragedy that…inhibited economic growth over the long run and created social and racial divisions that still haunt the nation.

Figure 1. US share of British Cotton Imports over time

Figure 2. Cotton Exports and Gross Domestic Product

Figure 3. Partial correlation plot between the slave population as a share of the total population in 1750 and national income per capita in 2000 of countries of the Americas

Figure 4. Bivariate plot showing the relationship between the slave population as a share of the total population in 1860 and state incomes per capita in 2000

AUTHOR

Corey Iacono

Corey Iacono is a Master of Business graduate student at the University of Rhode Island with a bachelor’s degree in Pharmaceutical Science and a minor in Economics.

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

Marxists Spoke! Sadly, We Listened.

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Marxists spoke: Never talk about politics and religion.  Don’t trust your parents. Be the silent majority.  Sadly, we listened.

A newly released report from Steve Moore, states that there is no one, NOT ONE, ZERO person in the OBiden regime that knows anything about business. think about this: These people are pushing their untried, untested, complete failure policies on We the People because they don’t care about people or results. They only care about power.

It seems as though our SCOTUS believes in the US Constitution. We won great decisions in the Supreme Court but got screwed by the Gutless Outrageous Prostitutes = GOP. (Thank you Sally Baptiste for that great new name for the GOP.)   Are you still going to vote for the same traitors again? Chaney is out begging democrats to vote for her. I hope that even Wyoming Democrats are not that stupid.

To understand what’s going on today we really have to go back and look at the 60s-70s. Most Americans pushing abortion are Boomers from that era. The boomers, myself included were the hippies, the flower children, the rock n  rollers, anti-G-d, Anti-family and Anti-America.  Morality was tossed out the window when G-d was removed from public buildings, due to 1person complaining in Engel v. Vitale . Then we accepted perversion, drugs, liquor,  sex as the new lifestyle. We would do anything our parents didn’t do. We hated the establishment.

In the 60s-70s we were so despondent and in such despair at seeing our great American heroes being assassinated in front of our very eyes. We strongly believed that the assassinations were part of a government coup. Of course we were told we were conspiracy nuts. HA! John F Kennedy, Martin Luther King JR, Robert Kennedy, our hope for a bright future was slowly fading.  We were forced into a war by draft in Vietnam that no one wanted. We were forced to fight a war in Vietnam against communism while promoting communism at home in school. How sick was that?  We were taught to lay our hatred on the heroes that were forced to fight. While those who avoided the draft became teachers in this new education called Social Studies/sustainability aka communism.

And so like all other peoples of the world when we were abused we responded. We were angry .We demonstrated, we marched and we rioted. We destroyed statues, burned buildings and listened to the emotional news about the war even though we knew they were lying.

We were taught to divert our attention into sex and drugs which we learned in school through a variety of “new” SEX Ed courses and we learned fast. After all we learned in school so it had to be OK. We had multiple outlets to express our new found “free love” like Studio 54, Plato’s Retreat and Playboy Club.  We often took out our hostility in our music and art. Bill Ayers (Obama’s mentor and leader of the Weather Underground responsible for multiple bombings of federal buildings, now a professor) asked John Lennon to write a song for the revolution. John wrote “Revolution”. Bill was pissed. (Read the lyrics)

We took massive quantities of drugs and had Love Ins with sex, drugs and  lots of liquor hooking up at any time with anyone. Nothing has changed. Those teens, grew up and are now running America using their never tried utopian/Marxist theories that they write when under the influence of something. If they wanted the drug war over, they would end it instead of participating in it. These insane illogical theories don’t work, can’t work, will never work. They are instead designed to take forever and be way over budget.  If their programs worked, they couldn’t bleed us dry.

What did we learn? Well my group of teenagers were told never talk about politics and religion.  Don’t trust your parents after all anyone over 30 doesn’t know what is going on. Be the silent majority.  Never talk about the war. We were told the government knows best.  We grew up to being so anti-establishment that it didn’t matter what the establishment did or said we figured they were just lying. The GOP and DNC are filled with these globalists who vow to take down America’s greatness and steal everything they can’t get legally. . Check out the “GOP-Gutless Outrageous Prostitutes”  who just voted to take away the only protection we have with our guns while they bring terrorists into America. They hate Americans. They want us to suffer so we will be happy with their government crumbs. We will do more for less while they take everything and we will be happy with drugs and video games. Yuval Noah Harari from World Economic Forum describes their intent:

War makes their problem of too many useless eaters, easy to dispose of. These globalists will protect the border of Ukraine and provide Ukraine guns while disarming Americans. All they want is for us to DIE (Diversity, Inclusion, Equity) so they can steal our property and keep power.

Where did we turn to vent our frustration and agree to transform America? Our educators took care of that. In 1989, Shirley Mc Cune from the McRel Foundation told the Governors Association:

We will change education from fact based to value based (on emotion) learning.

(Emotional people are easier to control using emotional triggers.)

We will stop focusing on the individual, and focus on the collective (we can conform everyone to the group mentality.)

We will train for work, not educate for life. (We need workers not thinkers or experts).

Communists learned that uneducated people are easier to control.

While all eyes looked at colleges, they infiltrated K-12 while convincing the family to “keep up with the Jones” by overspending so both mom and dad had to work ensuring the breakup of the family. The evolution of the family went from Father Knows Best to All in the Family to Married with Children showing how dysfunctional families are really the norm.

Today we suffer the results of those teachings as our government officials and experts are only capable of reading their talking points. I am just following directions, you will hear as their excuse for their third world actions of government against the people. Our police, after being emasculated (the goal of the feminist movement), will stand and watch as children are being slaughtered because they are just following directions.  The hell with the Americans.  They are just useless eaters. Less people is better they have been taught. According to Stalin, “Less people, less problems.”

We turned to a new type of government called socialism. It sounded so social, fun and inviting. It sounded so nice. All people will look after each other. Everyone would share. It will be wonderful. Everyone will all have the same stuff. And so the confused children turned to the communists who were so ready to open their arms for their new flock. The commies changed all the words and definitions to reflect Peace and Love. We followed Saul Alinsky’s Rules for Radicals and they offered the people exactly what Khrushchev said. I will feed you little bits of socialism and one day you will be a communist.

Now we have America’s new normal. How does that work?

Kevin Sorbo on  Twitter:

“Can I drive your car? No, you’re 5

Can I have a beer?  No, you’re 5

Can I have a cigarette? No, you’re 5

Can I have a gun? No, you’re 5

Can I take hormones and change my gender? Of Course, you know what’s best.”

My conversation (Italics) with a Greenie:   

Greenie: I am getting an EV. I will save tons of money on fossil fuel since it will soon be outlawed. I can depend on clean green energy from wind or sun. No dirty fuel for me.

That is great but what do you do if there is no wind or sun. 

It won’t matter because I will plug my car in the wall socket.

Where does the electricity in the socket come from?

It comes from the wires.

Where does the electricity in the wires come from?

It comes from the power company.

Where does the electricity in the power company come from? From the grid.  Where does the electricity from the grid come from? 

DUH! OOPS Ok Where?

Fossil fuel.

NO FOSSIL FUEL = NO ELECTRICITY.

We are assisting in our own failure.

CO2 is necessary to produce food not climate change.

America is having a food shortage crisis. CO2 helps plants aka food to grow.

CO2 is about .03% of the atmosphere and is a result of warming, NOT the cause.

Joe said he doesn’t know why or what to do about the food shortages but Joe has a plan. He increased ethanol aka corn aka soy in gas which burns our food for fuel resulting in less food at a higher cost for Americans and more expensive gas.

“Growing ethanol not food wastes: 5Billion tons of N Fertilizer; 68 Trillion BTU of natural gas; 57000sq MILES (not acres) of farmland.” Dr. Sarah Taber.

Joe has opened border for illegals to eat our food giving Americans less food; higher cost.

Then Joe wrote an EO forcing new furnaces to eliminate CO2. No CO2 = No Food.  Since over 20 processing plants were attacked, Joe signed an EO to give $1Billion to farmers to build new plants. Only the EPA regulations make it cost prohibitive.  Is it Joe’s intent to starve Americans so he can trade food for guns?

American government schools teach their students to be mediocre.  Multiple educators, myself included know that Common Core insures America’s children will be 2 years below average. Now we are surprised that they are.

Based on their IQ test results, the woman from the U.S. scored 16 points lower than that of her sibling in Korea.

This is a recent article regarding the low numbers of 3rd Graders who can read at proficiency level of 4 or 5 on the scale of 1-5

These programs DON’T WORK!

We just had LGBTQ month. Where is the Hetero Month? Or the Cisgender Month.  After all we are the majority and in a “Democracy” the majority wins. So why are we not recognized?  These labels are just used to divide the people. Really who cares what anyone does in their bedroom?

My question is: Can you do the job?

It is obvious in this failed regime the answer is No, but not to worry their departments met their DIE quota.

Now the big question:  Is America worth saving? What will you do about it?

©Karen Schoen. All rights reserved.

RELATED ARTICLE: San Francisco School Returns to Merit-Based Admissions

PODCAST: Far Left Similar to Communist Movement, Former Student Radical Says

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Disconcerting similarities exist between the modern progressive left and the communist movement. Take it from someone who knows.

Tony Salinski, once a student radical and now an expert on communist ideology, identified as a communist for several years during the Vietnam War era. Salinski joins the podcast to explain why he was drawn to communism as a youth and to identify similarities between communism and socialism.

Also on today’s show, we read your letters to the editor and share a good news story about a school principal who is using his skill as a barber to mentor his students.

Listen to the podcast below or read the lightly edited transcript.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? Learn more now >>

“The Daily Signal Podcast” is available on Ricochet, Apple Podcasts, Pippa, Google Play, and Stitcher. All of our podcasts can be found at DailySignal.com/podcasts. If you like what you hear, please leave a review. You can also leave us a message at 202-608-6205 or write us at letters@dailysignal.com. Enjoy the show!

Virginia Allen: I am joined by professor Tony Salinski, a former student radical in the communist movement. Tony, thank you so much for being here today.

Tony Salinski: You’re welcome. Thank you for having me.

Allen: The topic of communism and socialism is certainly getting a lot of attention in the current political and social climate. And when you were a student, you were a part of the communist movement. Can you just begin by telling us a little bit of your story? How did you come to identify with the communist movement?

Salinski: Well, I was actually for the war. This was back at the time of the Vietnam War. And I started out for the war and, like everybody, debating whether they wanted to enlist or wait until they got they got called, drafted.

And during that time, [President] Lyndon Johnson did a TV special. They call it a special, but he was on TV. He was arguing against the Republicans, who had wanted to get in and get it over with, and get out.

One of the things he said was, “We’re going to stay in there. We’re not going to invade the North. We’re just going to stay in there until we stop them. And it could take 50 years.” I thought to myself, “Fifty years? Fifty years of guys just getting killed to finally just out-kill these guys.” And that started me to think, “This is not for me. I don’t want to do this.”

Push comes to shove later. I was looking into means of getting out legally of the draft and went to a meeting house, where a number of different groups were present. And one of them was a communist group.

I was interviewed briefly by the people sponsoring the event. And they asked me if I would have fought in World War II, and I said, “Well, yeah. Absolutely.” And they said, “OK, that’s not what we’re looking for. We’re looking for people who wouldn’t fight at all.” And they motioned me over to the communists, and I went over and gathered some information.

Later, I just sort of drifted into them. The resistance was going because there was no other resistance. There was no resistance to what the communists were saying anywhere on the media. There was no Rush Limbaugh. And I was a blue-collar kid and didn’t know anything about “Firing Line” or William F. Buckley or anything like that.

So there was no counter to what the communists were putting out about the war in Vietnam. And I got convinced that it was illegal and that it was immoral. And … one thing led to another. …

I was in a rock band at that time. And that was the big draw that drew the communists to me. We were doing pretty well and getting good audience responses around the city of Pittsburgh. And eventually we started doing some shows for them. And one thing led to another and I was involved.

They asked me, probably on three separate occasions, to join the party. And I told him the same thing every time, I said, “Nixon’s got a list, an enemies list, and I don’t want to be on that list. But I can work with you and help you out, as we go here, without being a member of the party itself.”

And we came to that agreement and they stayed with that. And from then on, it was just a matter of just going to the events that they put on and helping them with this and that, and the other thing, and bringing the band.

Allen: I find that interesting. You didn’t join the party, but you were in the movement for a number of years, in the communist movement. What was so appealing about the communist movement to you, that kept you in it, that kept you saying, “I’ll support you all. And I’ll be a part of what you’re doing”?

Salinski: Basically the idea that they were doing something. They were active. They knew what their motives were. They knew that they wanted out of the war. And I agreed with that, at first.

They were organized. They could bring out a crowd like nobody’s business. It was amazing to see how they were able to put a lot of people together, to come out and make their point.

But I was never fully into the idea of destroying the United States of America. That was a problem for me from Day One. And they got around that by saying, “We don’t want to destroy the United States. We simply want to improve it.” And I bought it. I was 19 years old, 18 years old, at the time, and I bought it.

But that was it. Ideologically, I didn’t get really aware ideologically until near the end. And things started to become clearer and clearer and clearer. And I realized that from the very beginning, everything they had said was in one way or another a lie. And I just finally couldn’t stand that.

I kept confronting them, asking them, “What about this? What about that?” And I kept getting variations on the same answer. “You’re just not ready for the whole story yet.” And I, being 19 years old, I knew everything, anyway. I thought, “Well, yeah, I am ready for the whole story. Why don’t you just tell me?” But it just kept going on and on and on like that. And finally, I just dropped away.

Allen: They were almost kind of teasing you along, giving you little bits of information, but never totally upfront and candid, it sounds like, about, really, what ultimately their mission was.

Salinski: Right. And they did that to everyone, except the people who walked up and said, “I want to join the Communist Party USA.” Those people got moved to the head of the line, so to speak, but the rest of us were just drifting in varying degrees of commitment, varying degrees of understanding. And yeah, they sort of reeled us in gradually.

Allen: So fast-forward to today. And what do you know of the communist movement’s activity today? I mean, some of the unrest that we’re seeing in the streets, can we directly link that back to communism?

Salinski: Well, when I got out of the movement, … I didn’t want any parts of any of it. My wife at the time said, “If you’re drafted, are you going to go to Canada?” I said, “No, if I’m drafted, I’m going to go to Vietnam.” OK? I had just gotten sick of the whole thing. And after getting away from it for a little while, … I got into the Democratic Party.

I was … semi-active as a Democrat and paid attention to all the news and everything like that. And I realized, “Wait a minute, these people are the communists on slow motion. They’re active. It’s the same thing. What they want is the same thing. They just don’t want to do it as fast.”

The communists, they were in the process at that time of switching from Leninist tactics in the street, in-your-face revolution, to Gramsci. And the idea of a gradual movement into a revolutionary pattern that wasn’t in your face wasn’t on the street.

… That really put me off because I just wanted to get it over with and get things straightened out, as they said.

But yeah, from the Democratic Party then, I’m moving on and watching these people. And what happened was, … it took a very short time, a year or so, before I just started watching them, watching everything they were doing.

I felt strange because my dad used to always say, “Oh, that’s communist.” I’d say, “Oh, dad, yeah. I know there’s a communist under your bed.” Well, there was, they were everywhere. And whether they call themselves communists or not, they were, in my estimation, communists because the goals were the same. The tactics were a little different, but the goals were the same.

One of the last things that they did that really pushed me away was they come up to us one day on the street. And this had come down from, not an activist, an agent, actually, a KGB agent, who had been identified to me on the streets several times. He was, I guess, code named Andre.

Andre had passed on this information that we were going to completely change our tactics. And I said, “What are we going to do?” “Well, you’re going to stop calling yourselves communists.” I said, “Really? Well, what are we going to call ourselves?” “We’re going to call ourselves liberals, progressives, socialists, anything but communists.”

Allen: Wow.

Salinski: So from that point on, if you identified yourself as a liberal, I just said, “Okay, check one communist. Progressive, check another as communist.” And what I’m seeing today, in my mind, validates that.

Allen: Wow.

Salinski: Well, Antifa is and Black Lives Matter is more a return to Leninist tactics. They’re out in the street, obviously burning things down, and pushing people around, and so on and so forth.

But the main communist movement is behind them and is still chugging along with their idea of … moving the country gradually over the past, what is now 50 years since this all happened. I’m watching it. Never, never stop moving to the left. It’s always moving left.

Allen: So walk us through how exactly the Communist Party does go about enticing people. I mean, how have they essentially infiltrated the left to where we are seeing this kind of radical takeover and this radical progressivism push forward, that is very different from what I think the left used to look like?

Salinski: Well, their motive has been all along to identify areas that certain groups, certain constituencies, and when it gets down to it, certain individuals, like myself, are interested in.

They had a gold mine there during Vietnam because they had a war that nobody wanted to get into. And they used that to pull people in. But whatever it is, housing, jobs, anything that they can name that a group is interested in, they will use, even if they’re counter to each other. …

They’re promising one group this, promising the other group that, and this and that cancel each other out. But as long as those two groups don’t figure that out, they’re drawing people in.

Allen: In your own experience, how open and honest are communists actually about their goals?

Salinski: Depends on where you are in the program. Up at the top, yeah, they’re free and easy with talking about what they want to do, destroying the United States, as we know it. And then ultimately destroying all nations, and all boundaries and borders. But below the top level, it’s just what you’re given to know, what you’re supposed to know, and you move on from there.

But the word “honest” and the word “communist” should never be used together in a sentence because they’re not honest.

Allen: Interesting. You have explained, during previous presentations, that the Communist Party really sees themselves as being at war when they’re spreading their ideology. Can you just explain that a little bit more, what you mean by that?

Salinski: Well, yeah. And this was early on too, I didn’t get this late in the program, this was upfront. “We are at war.” Now, I didn’t tumble to all that that meant, but the phraseology was, “We’re at war. And that means anything goes.”

Marx said that the definition of morality is that which advances the revolution. And I found that to be true with them. That’s what morality is. …

One of the things that really frustrates me, when I’m dealing with people who are not real knowledgeable about this stuff, is that idea that they think we’re playing by the same rules that we’ve always played by.

There’s a Democratic Party, there’s a Republican Party, everybody’s agreed on the fundamental principles of right and wrong, but that’s not where the communists are.

They are at war. They are going to do anything, anything it takes to win. There’s no ground for agreement or crossing the aisle or any of that stuff. It’s just, they’re going to take advantage of every situation that offers itself. And they’re going to use that situation to win. It’s the end justifies the means, in every case.

Allen: Well, I find it fascinating that you say that because I think increasingly in the nation, that’s what we’re seeing. You’ve been through things like cancel culture, that there’s no room for disagreement or difference.

Salinski: Right.

Allen: And we’ve seen, sadly, this real interest among young people in socialism. In your opinion, what separates socialism and communism? Does one naturally kind of deteriorate into the other?

Salinski: Well, I agree with Lenin, the end, the result of all socialism is communism. There are arbitrary demarcations drawn along the historical line, but they’re arbitrary and … the moment they can be pushed aside, the moment they can be disposed with, they’re going to be disposed with.

This is an argument I have with so many people in our own movement, “Oh, well, he’s not really a communist.” No, not yet, but he’s headed there.

There’s a difference between their conception of economics, and communism is an economic system in the end. They believe in what’s called a closed economic system. There’s X amount of dollars, or whatever we want to refer to the resources as, and that’s it. You have to move that around to people in the fairest possible way, ideally, absolute equality.

But capitalism is based on an open economic system. You don’t have enough wealth? Well, go create some. And that’s what we do. … I learned that in college, that was long, long, past the communist phase of my life.

But when I learned that, it became crystal clear to me why some people are drawn to communism or socialism or any ism that says it’s going to share the money. Well, yeah, because there’s only so much, and if you have too much, then I have too little. But that’s not reality. I mean, wealth is always being created.

Allen: You mentioned in college, that was where your capitalist views kind of were cemented. And that’s wonderful, that for you that was your experience. But I do find that sad, that today, we see the exact opposite, that young people go to college and they are somewhat radicalized. They are introduced to socialist and communist ideas. And maybe that capitalist background that they grew up with is kind of lost to the wayside.

What do you think is the responsibility of educators, parents, mentors, to actually be speaking to the younger generation, honestly, about the realities of socialism and communism?

Salinski: Well, I think that their responsibility is to go there and do that and open up that conversation. But at this point, you’re going to lose … Well, even back then, it was the case. But now, it’s even more the case. You’re going to risk losing your sons and daughters because they’re bought into it.

And I should add that I was not educated in capitalism in college. I drew that from the opposite of … Everything they said was bad, I thought, “Well, that sounds pretty good to me. That actually doesn’t sound bad at all.”

So it was not that they were out there promoting capitalism at that time. I just drew that from what they were promoting. Because I had already been there, I had seen the whole communist thing up close, and thought, “Yeah, yeah, yeah. That’s not true. What you’re saying there won’t work out.”

And certain times you could speak that out and say, “Well, my experience is this,” and you’d get support. And other times, you just learn to keep your mouth shut, if you want to get that grade and get out, where you can do some real damage, which I did.

Allen: Yeah.

Salinski: I ended up teaching college, and in my classroom they got the truth. You know when I say they got the truth, they got both sides, they got a fair treatment of communism and a fair treatment of capitalism.

I have to tell you, once it’s laid out like that, I used to finish the course with just a little … Well, other things that they had to do. But one of their tasks at the end of the course was to write me a two-page paper on what they thought of the material in the course, regarding communism and capitalism, and 90% of them plus went for capitalism when they realized what the difference was.

Allen: Well, I think, unfortunately, few college students today have a professor like you that will clearly lay out both sides.

So are there any resources that you would recommend for young people who, they’re in college, they’re facing, essentially, being indoctrinated with these ideas and they just want to hear both sides of the argument. Are there certain books that you would recommend or individuals, maybe, to look up on YouTube?

Salinski: … First of all, the Constitution, including the Bill of Rights, the Declaration of Independence, they should become familiar with that. And the history behind it, that in itself is quite a task, but they need to do that. But writing’s more directly concerned with it.

What started me off was W. Graham Sumner. I don’t know if you ever heard of Sumner, but he was an anti-socialist back in, I think he died in 1910 or something like that, in 1912. So he was in the Progressive Era and he was noted as an anti-progressive, but he frequently got onto outing socialism and just laid out the differences.

Salinski: Let’s see, [Antonio] Gramsci, or not Gramsci. Well, they should read Gramsci. They should read something of Gramsci because that tells them what they’re hooked up in now. They should read “Rules for Radicals,” if they haven’t already. Which is, again, a Marxist source, but it lays out what they’re being asked to do and why.

Any of the writings from [The Heritage Foundation]. OK? Any of the writings from people like Pat Buchanan, back in the ’90s, especially. There’s a lot of material out there. They have to look it up though.

Allen: Absolutely. How can our listeners follow your work?

Salinski: Through ACAT, mostly. And I do some things around here. I’m doing a speech on the 29th about communism. Well, it was originally in a library, but then this coronavirus came along and shut the library thing down. So they’ve moved it across the alleyway to a church over there.

You could look me up online. I’m trying to think of whether most of my talks are still up there. I know we took a lot of them down, but they have a way of getting back up there. So you could just look up my name and see what comes out in that, but always through ACAT, Anticommunist Action Team. That’s where I’ll be.

Allen: Great. Thank you. So that’s the Anticommunist Action Team.

Salinski: Yeah.

Allen: We’ll be sure to link that in the show notes today. Tony, thank you. We just really appreciate your time and you coming on and talking about your own personal experience, really fascinating.

Salinski: Well, thank you very much for having me.

COLUMN BY

Virginia Allen

Virginia Allen is a news producer for The Daily Signal. She is the co-host of The Daily Signal Podcast and Problematic Women. Send an email to Virginia. Twitter: @Virginia_Allen5

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A Note for our Readers:

Democratic Socialists say, “America should be more like socialist countries such as Sweden and Denmark.” And millions of young people believe them…

For years, “Democratic Socialists” have been growing a crop of followers that include students and young professionals. America’s future will be in their hands.

How are socialists deluding a whole generation? One of their most effective arguments is that “democratic socialism” is working in Scandinavian countries like Sweden and Norway. They claim these countries are “proof” that socialism will work for America. But they’re wrong. And it’s easy to explain why.

Our friends at The Heritage Foundation just published a new guide that provides three irrefutable facts that debunks these myths. For a limited time, they’re offering it to readers of The Daily Signal for free.

Get your free copy of “Why Democratic Socialists Can’t Legitimately Claim Sweden and Denmark as Success Stories” today and equip yourself with the facts you need to debunk these myths once and for all.

GET YOUR FREE COPY NOW »

EDITORS NOTE: This Daily Signal column is republished with permission. ©All rights reserved.

“The Devil and Karl Marx”: A Review

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Robert Orlando: In his new book, Paul Kengor plunges a stake into the heart of the devil and Karl Marx. But as we know, such vampires are not so easily killed.

Paul Kengor is a teacher and writer who has always had an eye for the spiritual dimension in history, politics, and economics. (He was the perfect partner for me in our book and documentary film, The Divine Plan: John Paul II, Ronald Reagan, and the Dramatic End of the Cold War.)

Prof. Kengor’s new book, The Devil and Karl Marx: Communism’s Long March of Death, Deception, and Infiltration, is a hammer and sickle dismantling of the diabolical character of Karl Marx (1818-1883). As Michael Knowles writes in the book’s foreword, “Kengor knows, like few others writing today, that terms such as collectivism and individualism only take the debate so far. . . .Ultimately the fight comes down to spiritual warfare: good versus evil.”

Indeed, Kengor’s book is all about the clash of the modern, devilish forces of socialism and communism – the key Marxist systems – against the eternally divine force of faith.

The book opens with a portrait of Marx’s formative early years, an approach similar to Paul Johnson’s in Intellectuals: From Marx and Tolstoy to Sartre and Chomsky (1988). Johnson was accused of being moralistic for judging Marx’s ideas through the lens of his character. Of Marx’s writings, Johnson says their “actual content can be related to four aspects of his character: his taste for violence, his appetite for power, his inability to handle money and, above all, his tendency to exploit those around him.”

Professor Kengor goes even further, depicting Marx as possibly under the Devil’s spell. The young Marx wrote some very dark poems filled with the sort of anti-religious sentiments that would inspire his Communist Manifesto. “It is in part, a tragic portrait of a man,” Kengor writes, “but still more broadly so, an ideology, a chilling retrospective on an unclean spirit that should have never been let out of its pit.”

Here’s an example from Marx’s poem, “The Pale Maiden” (1837):

Thus Heaven I’ve forfeited,
I know it full well.
My soul, once true to God,
Is chosen for Hell.

Kengor (like Johnson) makes the case that Marx, a self-absorbed intellectual, never lived out his own convictions when it came either to money or the redistribution thereof, evidenced by his dismissive attitude towards providing for those under his care. For instance, Marx exhausted the resources and goodwill of his parents, and instead of becoming remorseful or apologetic, he defiantly disowned them once they were no longer of value to him.

When it came to money, everything Marx touched turned to straw. His combustible life was filled with tragedy, debts, and, with the exception of the death of his wife Jenny, an apparent lack of regret in the face of his greatest losses. Family suicides, sexual exploits (including the possible abuse of a family maid) enflamed his life with bloody anger and fueled his revolutionary spirit. In this troubled background are the origins of his communist worldview – a complete rebellion against anything traditional or sacred. Thus the title of Kengor’s book.

Although I agree with the inescapable connection Kengor makes between Marx’s life and his philosophy, I might not place so much emphasis on the man’s early life. Many historical figures were wayward in youth, even some of our saints. Paul the Apostle aided and abetted murder as he tried to violently eradicate the Early Church. We don’t define Augustine by the reckless years prior to his conversion. In fact, these men are saints precisely because they changed.

In Marx’s case, of course, he never changed. He drank the nectar of the devil (my words), and it poisoned him – just as communism poisoned so much of the world.

The middle sections of the book track the rise and fall of the Left’s great messiah and his closest apostle, Friedrich Engels. It continues with a history of Marx’s disciples, from Vladimir Lenin in Russia to Saul Alinsky in the United States.

Kengor also explains how these and other henchmen have assaulted the Catholic faith. Although vigorously opposed by Catholic leadership, Marxism would nonetheless gain a foothold in parts of the Church. Kengor highlights Pope John Paul II’s success in his confrontation with Marxism and communism. Having lived much of his life in a communist regime, St. John Paul knew well Marxist ideas, which enabled him to deal effectively with the liberation theologians in South America.

I think of Kengor as plunging a stake into the heart of the devil and Karl Marx. But as we know, vampires are not so easily killed. Marxism in the 20th century used class warfare, and that was mostly a failure. In the 21st century, Marxists are employing identity politics, lately with some success. But the aim is the same: to sow cultural destruction. If this doesn’t make you angry, you’re not breathing.

Bizarrely romantic revolutions – from Mao’s China to Seattle’s Capitol Hill Organized Protest zone – Marx’s ill-conceived utopias aren’t just destructive, they’re murderous. The death toll of communism worldwide exceeds 100-million! Kengor calls it “nothing short of diabolical – truly a satanic scourge, a killing machine.”

Without question, America has had its share of betrayals and unrealized ideals, but what other country has made such progress with the rule of law, individual freedom, and shared prosperity?

Marx believed religion was a drug (the opium of the people) used by the wealthy to maintain disproportionate power. In retrospect, of course, communism peddles its own drug: an idealized global world, in which inequality disappears in the obliteration of all human distinctions. Kengor sees the seeds of our current flirtation with Marxism in the promotion of sexual freedom, “that plagues us to this today.”

Scripture teaches that, after the Resurrection, Lucifer was left only with the power to accuse, with rhetoric his only weapon. This is why Satan and Marxists prey on the most vulnerable: those least sure of their own identity. Satan comes as “an angel of light” (2 Corinthians 11:1), but he and his disciples, Marxist groups such as Antifa and the founders of the Black Lives Matter organization, bring only darkness.

Paul Kengor shows us the light.

COLUMN BY

Robert Orlando

Robert Orlando is a filmmaker, author, and entrepreneur. He’s the founder Nexus Media, and his latest films include The Divine Plan, and Citizen Trump. He also has a new book, The Tragedy of Patton: A Soldier’s Date with Destiny, forthcoming in November. His work has been published in HuffPost, Patheos, Newsmax, and Daily Caller. As a scholar, he specializes in biography, religion, and military history.

EDITORS NOTE: This The Catholic Thing column is republished with permission. © 2020 The Catholic Thing. All rights reserved. For reprint rights, write to: info@frinstitute.org. The Catholic Thing is a forum for intelligent Catholic commentary. Opinions expressed by writers are solely their own.

PODCAST: Marxism Matters — The Real Agenda of BLM

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What’s really driving the chaos on the streets of America? It’s not Black Lives Matter, Larry Taunton insists. At its core, it’s Marxism, a dangerous plot that could destroy society as we know it. Don’t miss Larry and Tony Perkins as they take a deep dive into the philosophy that could send our country down the oppressive path of the failed revolutionaries across eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. It’s an eye-opening conversation you won’t want to miss.

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De Blasio Quotes Karl Marx’s Communist Manifesto in Discussion on Relationship with NYC Business Community

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No pretense anymore. None. The Mayor of the capital of capitalism is imposing governance based on the most brutal, anti-human ideology in human history.

The Communists’ chief purpose is to destroy every form of independence—independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or an independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state. Ayn Rand

[…]

It is the Communists’ intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. It is the Communists’ aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State. Ayn Rand

Who will he quote next? Hitler?

De Blasio Quotes Marx’s Communist Manifesto in Discussion on Relationship with NYC Business Community

By: Zachary Evans,National Review, July 24, 2020

New York mayor Bill de Blasio quoted Karl Marx when outlining the relationship he wanted his office to have with the city’s business community, in an appearance on The Brian Lehrer Show on WNYC.

Host Brian Lehrer asked de Blasio how the mayor was approaching businesses for help with recovery from the coronavirus pandemic. Lehrer said that the mayor was not known for extensive outreach to the business community given his focus on issues of wealth inequality.

“There’s an underlying truth in the fact that my focus has not been on the business community and the elite,” de Blasio said. “I am tempted to borrow a quote from Karl Marx here…”

“They’ll love that on Wall Street,” Lehrer interjects.

“Yes they will,” de Blasio laughs. “There’s a famous quote that ‘the state is the executive committee of the bourgeoisie,’ and I use that openly to say no, I read that as a young person and thought, well, that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.”

The quote comes from the first chapter of Marx’s Communist Manifesto, in which Marx outlines his theory of the progressive advancement of the class of the bourgeoisie at the expense of the proletariat.

The mayor continued in the interview, “We need to work with the business community, we will work with the business community, but the city government represents the people, represents working people….A lot of folks have just sort of hit a wall when I say guys, you’re gonna have to pay more taxes, and we’re gonna have policies that favor working people more.”

De Blasio ended by saying he knows that many businesses want to help with a “comeback” for the city, and that his administration “really appreciate[s] that.”

The interview was not the first time de Blasio has quoted a communist figure. In 2019, the mayor apologized after quoting communist revolutionary Che Guevara at a rally of striking airport workers in Miami.

“I did not know the phrase I used in Miami today was associated with Che Guevara & I did not mean to offend anyone who heard it that way. I certainly apologize for not understanding that history,” de Blasio wrote on Twitter after backlash from Miami’s Latino community, many of whom are Cuban exiles.

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The Left and the Rise of Marxism

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Is it a case of ordained fate we cannot escape or is it that We the People are too dense to learn from our own mistakes? Paging through humanity’s history, time and again we find numerous instances of costly mistakes where people ignore facts and reason by entrusting their lives to a “savior.” And time and again, we have ended up paying the price for our folly. If we are not genetically doomed to make these ruinous mistakes—which I am certain we are not—then do we commit them out of wishful thinking, laziness, desperation, or some combination of the three?

To illustrate how mistake-prone we are, a few examples will suffice. In order to address economic disparity, a pivotal concern of humanity, Karl Marx showed up trumpeting his battle cry, “from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.” Marx announced that the proletariat is the producer of wealth and that capitalists are leeches robbing them of the fruits of their labor.

In effect, Karl Marx originated the concept of class warfare, the poor against the rich. He urged the workers to rise, rid themselves of the rich and take full possession of their own self-produced goods. Humanity’s poor masses found their messiah in this ideologue, rallied behind him, and got to experience a Marxist paradise. While Marx’s summons was aimed at the laboring class of industrial Europe, the peasantry in both Russia and later in China enthusiastically answered his call. The results: many of the rich went to early graves, only to be replaced by a new class of overlord apparatchiks, and the poor continued to be poor. In the process, the disciples of Marx and Lenin such as Stalin and Mao subjected over 100 million to death, and untold millions suffered for many decades while the promised workers paradise never materialized.

Democrats and Incentive

Dis-incentive was the “Achilles Heel” of Marxism. Except for the ruling class, whether you worked hard or loafed, you basically got the same incentive under Marxism. The Democrats and Biden basically want to transform America to cultural-Marxism: a failed economic philosophy, in a poorly disguised form that this Party has been relentlessly pushing throughout the ages. Democrats’ redistribution of wealth does nothing but dis-incentivize an individual’s prime motive force “self-exertion” for “self-reward.” Democrats feel the rich have too much and the poor should simply get a much bigger share of what the rich have. If that is not the exact Marxist failed philosophy, then what is it?

While Marx’s workers’ paradise ideal continued to struggle, and kept failing miserably to deliver its promises, its offshoots such as European Socialism and now American Redistributionism under Democratic leadership are still aims to create a society where those who succeed in generating wealth turn over the major share of their earnings to those who do not.

Dis-incentivizing individual exertion through confiscatory taxes is the surest way to reduce the overall wealth of any society. The rich resort to strategies that shelter their wealth, become discouraged in investing their funds, and then the overall wealth of the society declines. It is investment by those who have funds that creates wealth and jobs. And it is jobs that are the best way to help the have-nots, not government handouts.

In order to address economic issues effectively, government policies should facilitate all individuals and companies to create more wealth, not penalize those who have managed to create and acquire wealth by over-regulation and excessive taxation. The last thing any government should do is to use the ineffective deadly weapon of classism, pitting the poor against the rich.

Hitlerian ‘Salvation’

Not long after the launch of Marxism, another “savior,” by the name of Adolph Hitler, rose to power on the promise of fixing humanity’s economic and other problems at its very foundation based on nationalism. Specifically, he proposed ridding the world of its burden of undesirables and unfit, with Jews on top of his list. Marx’s trump “card” was class warfare. Hitler flashed the ethnic-race card. He claimed that the Aryan race was the cream of humanity’s crop that brought nothing but good to the table, while Semitic, black and yellow people represented exploiters and aberrations to be eliminated. For good measure, he lumped in the mentally challenged, homosexuals and the physically handicapped as humanity’s misfits as well to be rid of.

Picking a scapegoat has always worked magic over the millennia, and even Hitler’s syphilitic brain recognized its value for his campaign of mass genocide. The results: Millions died, among them some of mankind’s best-educated and productive Jews. Hitlerism and Communism, for all intents and purposes, either died or went on life support, providing ample opportunities for other saviors.

Islam to the Rescue

In no time at all Islam, long fractured, lethargic and dormant, found a new vitality under the leadership of the Ayatollah Khomeini of Iran, who raised the Black Standard and promised Allah’s paradise to the totality of mankind for the simple price of accepting his Shiite brand of Islam. A naïve dreamer of an American President, Jimmy Carter, hailed Khomeini as a saint-savior, an answer to a prayer, so to speak. Not to be left out, shortly after the Shiite Khomeini’s lightning success in Iran that deposed the Shah and established the Islamic Republic, a Sunni Muslim “Osama Bin Laden” launched his campaign of bringing about a worldwide Caliphate, as the sure cure for humanity’s ills.

In contrast to Marx’s class warfare and Hitler’s ethnic-race rallying cries, Khomeini and Bin Laden hoisted the ever-effective battle call of religion. The very concept of religion that stands for uniting people has been subverted, time and again, by clever and devious opportunists as means of pitting people against each other.

America at a Critical Point

The great nation of all nations, America, is at a critical point and crossroads. The current uprising under the direction of George Soros/Obama and the DNC has been abysmal in all areas vital to our nation. Islamist jihadists are on the march and democracy is in retreat. The Islamic Republic of Iran is rapidly moving toward acquiring nuclear weapon capability.

Domestically, our house is in shambles. The national debt is staggering. If Biden is elected, the nation’s debt will exceed that of our obligation under all other previous administrations combined. Our children and grandchildren will have to service this debt at economically soaring rates. Even today, forty cents of the Federal tax dollar go to servicing the loans—much of it to China and foreign entities.

It is imperative that we, as a nation, live within our means, just like families do. In like manner that families should cut back on everything they can, in order to live within their means, the Federal Government needs do the same. It must reduce the size of government and eliminate hundreds of bureaucracies that are redundant or completely useless as President Trump has done. We, as responsible citizens, must make sure that President Trump is reelected.

If the Democrats take over the White House, America, as we know it, will not be recognizable.

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What the Nazis Borrowed from Marx

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Polylogism is the replacement of reasoning and science by superstitions. It is the characteristic mentality of an age of chaos. – Ludwig von Mises

The Nazis did not invent polylogism. They only developed their own brand.


Image credit: Flicker-Recuerdos de Pandora | CC BY 2.0

Until the middle of the 19th century no one ventured to dispute the fact that the logical structure of mind is unchangeable and common to all human beings. All human interrelations are based on this assumption of a uniform logical structure. We can speak to each other only because we can appeal to something common to all of us, namely, the logical structure of reason. Some men can think deeper and more refined thoughts than others. There are men who unfortunately cannot grasp a process of inference in long chains of deductive reasoning. But as far as a man is able to think and to follow a process of discursive thought, he always clings to the same ultimate principles of reasoning that are applied by all other men. There are people who cannot count further than three; but their counting, as far as it goes, does not differ from that of Gauss or Laplace. No historian or traveler has ever brought us any knowledge of people for whom a and non-a were identical, or who could not grasp the difference between affirmation and negation. Daily, it is true, people violate logical principles in reasoning. But whoever examines their inferences competently can uncover their errors.

Because everyone takes these facts to be unquestionable, men enter into discussions; they speak to each other; they write letters and books; they try to prove or to disprove. Social and intellectual cooperation between men would be impossible if this were not so. Our minds cannot even consistently imagine a world peopled by men of different logical structures or a logical structure different from our own.

Yet, in the course of the 19th century this undeniable fact has been contested. Marx and the Marxians, foremost among them the “proletarian philosopher” Dietzgen, taught that thought is determined by the thinker’s class position. What thinking produces is not truth but “ideologies.” This word means, in the context of Marxian philosophy, a disguise of the selfish interest of the social class to which the thinking individual is attached. It is therefore useless to discuss anything with people of another social class. Ideologies do not need to be refuted by discursive reasoning; they must be unmasked by denouncing the class position, the social background, of their authors. Thus Marxians do not discuss the merits of physical theories; they merely uncover the “bourgeois” origin of the physicists.

The Marxians have resorted to polylogism because they could not refute by logical methods the theories developed by “bourgeois” economics, or the inferences drawn from these theories demonstrating the impracticability of socialism. As they could not rationally demonstrate the soundness of their own ideas or the unsoundness of their adversaries’ ideas, they have denounced the accepted logical methods. The success of this Marxian stratagem was unprecedented. It has rendered proof against any reasonable criticism all the absurdities of Marxian would-be economics and would-be sociology. Only by the logical tricks of polylogism could etatism gain a hold on the modern mind.

Polylogism is so inherently nonsensical that it cannot be carried consistently to its ultimate logical consequences. No Marxian was bold enough to draw all the conclusions that his own epistemological viewpoint would require. The principle of polylogism would lead to the inference that Marxian teachings also are not objectively true but are only “ideological” statements. But the Marxians deny it. They claim for their own doctrines the character of absolute truth. Thus Dietzgen teaches that “the ideas of proletarian logic are not party ideas but the outcome of logic pure and simple.” The proletarian logic is not “ideology” but absolute logic. Present-day Marxians, who label their teachings the sociology of knowledge, give proof of the same inconsistency. One of their champions, Professor Mannheim, tries to demonstrate that there exists a group of men, the “unattached intellectuals,” who are equipped with the gift of grasping truth without falling prey to ideological errors. Of course, Professor Mannheim is convinced that he is the foremost of these “unattached intellectuals.” You simply cannot refute him. If you disagree with him, you only prove thereby that you yourself are not one of this elite of “unattached intellectuals” and that your utterances are ideological nonsense.

The German nationalists had to face precisely the same problem as the Marxians. They also could neither demonstrate the correctness of their own statements nor disprove the theories of economics and praxeology. Thus they took shelter under the roof of polylogism, prepared for them by the Marxians. Of course, they concocted their own brand of polylogism. The logical structure of mind, they say, is different with different nations and races. Every race or nation has its own logic and therefore its own economics, mathematics, physics, and so on. But, no less inconsistently than Professor Mannheim, Professor Tirala, his counterpart as champion of Aryan epistemology, declares that the only true, correct, and perennial logic and science are those of the Aryans. In the eyes of the Marxians Ricardo, Freud, Bergson, and Einstein are wrong because they are bourgeois; in the eyes of the Nazis they are wrong because they are Jews. One of the foremost goals of the Nazis is to free the Aryan soul from the pollution of the Western philosophies of Descartes, Hume, and John Stuart Mill. They are in search of arteigen German science, that is, of a science adequate to the racial character of the Germans.

We may reasonably assume as hypothesis that man’s mental abilities are the outcome of his bodily features. Of course, we cannot demonstrate the correctness of this hypothesis, but neither is it possible to demonstrate the correctness of the opposite view as expressed in the theological hypothesis. We are forced to recognize that we do not know how out of physiological processes thoughts result. We have some vague notions of the detrimental effects produced by traumatic or other damage inflicted on certain bodily organs; we know that such damage may restrict or completely destroy the mental abilities and functions of men. But that is all. It would be no less than insolent humbug to assert that the natural sciences provide us with any information concerning the alleged diversity of the logical structure of mind. Polylogism cannot be derived from physiology or anatomy or any other of the natural sciences.

Neither Marxian nor Nazi polylogism ever went further than to declare that the logical structure of mind is different with various classes or races. They never ventured to demonstrate precisely in what the logic of the proletarians differs from the logic of the bourgeois, or in what the logic of the Aryans differs from the logic of the Jews or the British. It is not enough to reject wholesale the Ricardian theory of comparative cost or the Einstein theory of relativity by unmasking the alleged racial background of their authors. What is wanted is first to develop a system of Aryan logic different from non-Aryan logic. Then it would be necessary to examine point by point these two contested theories and to show where in their reasoning inferences are made which—although correct from the viewpoint of non-Aryan logic—are invalid from the viewpoint of Aryan logic. And, finally, it should be explained what kind of conclusions the replacement of the non-Aryan inferences by the correct Aryan inferences must lead to. But all this never has been and never can be ventured by anybody. The garrulous champion of racism and Aryan polylogism, Professor Tirala, does not say a word about the difference between Aryan and non-Aryan logic. Polylogism, whether Marxian or Aryan, or whatever, has never entered into details.

Polylogism has a peculiar method of dealing with dissenting views. If its supporters fail to unmask the background of an opponent, they simply brand him a traitor. Both Marxians and Nazis know only two categories of adversaries. The aliens—whether members of a nonproletarian class or of a non-Aryan race—are wrong because they are aliens; the opponents of proletarian or Aryan origin are wrong because they are traitors. Thus they lightly dispose of the unpleasant fact that there is dissension among the members of what they call their own class or race.

The Nazis contrast German economics with Jewish and Anglo-Saxon economics. But what they call German economics differs not at all from some trends in foreign economics. It developed out of the teachings of the Genevese Sismondi and of the French and British socialists. Some of the older representatives of this alleged German economics merely imported foreign thought into Germany. Frederick List brought the ideas of Alexander Hamilton to Germany, Hildebrand and Brentano brought the ideas of early British socialism. Arteigen German economics is almost identical with contemporary trends in other countries, e.g., with American Institutionalism.

On the other hand, what the Nazis call Western economics and therefore artfremd is to a great extent an achievement of men to whom even the Nazis cannot deny the term German. Nazi economists wasted much time in searching the genealogical tree of Carl Menger for Jewish ancestors; they did not succeed. It is nonsensical to explain the conflict between economic theory, on the one hand, and Institutionalism and historical empiricism, on the other hand, as a racial or national conflict.

Polylogism is not a philosophy or an epistemological theory. It is an attitude of narrow-minded fanatics, who cannot imagine that anybody could be more reasonable or more clever than they themselves. Nor is polylogism scientific. It is rather the replacement of reasoning and science by superstitions. It is the characteristic mentality of an age of chaos.

This article was reprinted from the Mises Institute.

COLUMN BY

Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises

Ludwig von Mises (1881-1973) taught in Vienna and New York and served as a close adviser to the Foundation for Economic Education. He is considered the leading theorist of the Austrian School of the 20th century. 

EDITORS NOTE: This FEE column with images is republished with permission.

Karl Marx’s Flight from Reality by Richard M. Ebeling

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Though it may seem strange, Karl Marx was not always a communist. As late as 1842, when Marx was in his mid-20s, he actually said he opposed any attempt to establish a communist system. In October 1842, he became editor of the Rheinische Zeitung [the Rhineland Times], and wrote in an editorial:

The Rheinische Zeitung … does not admit that communist ideas in their present form possess even theoretical reality, and therefore can still less desire their practical realization, or even consider it possible.

In 1843, Marx was forced to resign his editorship because of political pressure from the Prussian government and ended up moving to Paris. It was in Paris that he met his future lifelong collaborator, Friedrich Engels (who already was a socialist), and began his deeper study of socialism and communism, leading to his full “conversion” to the collectivist ideal.

Feuerbach and the Worship of Man Perfected

From his student days in Berlin, two German philosophers left their imprint upon Marx: George Hegel (1770-1831) and Ludwig Feuerbach (1804-1872). From Hegel, Marx learned the theory of “dialectics” and the idea of historical progress to universal improvement. From Feuerbach, Marx accepted the idea of man “perfected.” Feuerbach had argued that rather than worshiping a non-existing supernatural being – God – man should worship himself.

The “true” religion of the future should, therefore, be the Worship of Mankind, and that man “perfected” would be changed from a being focused on and guided by his own self-interest to one who was totally altruistic, that is, concerned only with the betterment of and service to Mankind as a whole, rather than only himself.

Marx took Feuerbach’s notion of man “perfected” and developed what he considered to be the essential characteristics of such a developed human nature. There were three elements to such a perfected human being, Marx argued:First, the Potential for “Autonomous Action.” This is action undertaken by a man only out of desire or enjoyment, not out of necessity. If a man works at a blacksmith’s forge out of a desire to creatively exercise his faculties in molding metal into some artistic form, this is free or “autonomous action.” If a man works at the forge because he will starve unless he makes a plow to plant a crop, he is acting under a “compulsion” or a “constraint.”

Second, the Potential for “Societal Orientation.” Only man, Marx argued, can reflect on and direct his conscious actions to the improvement the “community” of which he is a part, and which nourishes his own capacity for personal development. When man associates with others only out of self-interest, he denies his true “social” self. Thus, egoism is “unworthy” of a developed human being.

And, third, the Potential for “Aesthetic Appreciation.” This is when man values things only for themselves; for example, “nature for nature’s sake,” or “art for art’s sake.” To view things, Marx claimed, only from the perspective of how something might be used to improve an individual’s personal circumstance is a debasement of the “truly” aesthetic value in things.

Capitalism Keeps Man from Perfection

Feuerbach believed man was “alienated” from himself when he was not “other-oriented.” To change from self-interest to altruism was mostly a state of mind that man could change within himself, Feuerbach argued. Marx insisted that the problem of “alienation” was not due to a person’s “state of mind,” but was conditioned by the “objective” institutional circumstances under which men lived. That is, the political, social, and economic institutions made man what he is. Change the social order, and man would be changed. “Capitalism,” Marx declared, was the source of man’s alienation from his “true” self and his human potential.

How did this “alienation” manifest itself?

Capitalism, Marx declared, was the source of man’s alienation from his “true” self and his human potential.

First, there is the Stifling of Autonomous Action. In the marketplace, forces “outside” the control of the individual determine what is produced and how it is produced. The individual “reacts” to the market, he does not control it. Thus, market forces are external constraints on man. He responds to the market out of “necessity,” not out of free desire.Furthermore, to enhance production and productivity, man is “forced” to participate in a division of labor to earn a living that makes him an “appendage” to a machine, a “slave” to the machines owned by the “capitalists” for whom he is “compelled” to work.

Second, there is Diminished Other-Orientedness. In the market, the individual sees others only as a means to his material ends; he trades with others to get what he wants from others, merely in pursuit of his own self-interest. Work is not considered a communal “cooperative” process, but an antagonistic relationship between what the individual wants and what is wanted by the one with whom he trades.

Third, there is Limited Aesthetic Appreciation. In the market, people see nature, resources, and the creations of man not as things to be intrinsically valued in themselves, but as marketable objects – as means – to personal ends. Acquisition of things – possessiveness – becomes the primary goal of economic activity for making a living.

Communism’s Liberation of Constrained Man

Communism, through collective planning, would make work an “autonomous” act, rather than “constrained action.” When democratically regulated by the workers as a whole, Marx asserted, collective planning would emerge from the desires of all the members of society as their communal choice and consent. It would be consciously planned and directed through the participation of all the members of society, thus generating an “other-oriented” sense of a “common good” for which all worked.

No one would be forced and constrained to do what another made them do in the division of labor anymore. Indeed, communism would free men from the “tyranny” of specialization. In Marx’s words, from The German Ideology (1845),

In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow; to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have a mind.

In this new communist world, no one will have to work at anything he did not like or want to do. In addition, under communal planning, production would rise to such a height of productivity that the work day would be shortened to the point that each person’s time would be free to do only the things he enjoyed doing.

Selfishness would be eliminated as a human trait, and altruism would become the dominant trait.

Communism would also enhance social consciousness and other-orientedness. All that was communally produced would be distributed on the basis of “need” or “want.” No longer would scarcity impose constraints on man’s desires. As a result, the urge for “possessiveness” and acquisition of “things” would diminish and finally disappear. Selfishness would be eliminated as a human trait.Others would no longer be viewed as “competitors” for scarce things, but as social collaborators for attaining “higher” ends of social importance. Altruism would become the dominant trait in man.

In addition, communism would result in the flowering of aesthetic appreciation.

Man would not create so he could earn a living, but for the pleasure of the activity itself. Work would not be a source of “alienation” but an activity reflecting the free – the “autonomous” – desires of man for the “beautiful.”

Communism would liberate man in all ways and all things, said Marx:

With a communist organization of society, there disappears the subordination … of the individual to some definite art, making him exclusively a painter, a sculptor, etc. … In a communist society, there are no longer painters, but only people who engage in painting among other activities.

With the end of capitalism and the arrival of communism, there would come a heaven on earth. There would be enough of everything for all. Man would be freed from working for survival, he would be unchained from the division of labor, he would be liberated to follow whatever gave his heart pleasure. With Communism, man becomes like God – free and powerful to do whatever he wants.

Marx’s Denial of Self-Oriented Human Nature

Let me suggest that what Marx was objecting to – revolting against – was human nature and the existence of scarcity. Man can never escape from or get outside of being an individual “ego.” We exist as individual human beings; we think, remember, imagine, choose, and act as distinct and unique individual men and women.

Our experiences are our experiences; our thoughts and beliefs are our reflections and ideas; our judgments and valuations are our estimates and rankings of things of importance to us. Even when we try to put ourselves in another person’s shoes, to try to sympathize, empathize, and understand the meanings, experiences, and actions of others, it is from our perspective and state of mind that we do so.It is the individuality of the person in these and other facets of our distinct nature and character as conscious, conceptualizing creatures that make for the unique differences and diversities of our minds as self-oriented human beings. This is the source of the creativity and plethora of possibilities that can and have emerged from seeing the world in the distinct and different ways of self-oriented and self-experiencing people when pursuing their own improvement. As they consider what is most advantageous for themselves and others they “selfishly” care about, they support and encourage an institutional setting of peaceful and voluntary market association.

Marx’s Denial of the Reality of Scarcity

Marx also objects to the reality of the necessity to have to produce in order to consume and to have to view one’s own labor as a means to various ends, rather than simply being somehow provided with all that we want and our labor being “free” to be used as a pleasurable end in itself.

Likewise, he revolts against men viewing each other as a means to their respective desired ends rather than as purely human relationships, a “club” in which all get together and freely associate for “good times” with no concern for how or who provides the things without which good times cannot occur.

Nor can he abide men looking upon nature and man-made objects as the means or tools of producing the necessities, amenities, and luxuries of life, with the assignment of a “money value” to a house, a work of art, a waterfall, or a sculpture being “dehumanizing” for Marx.

However, the only reason such things are given values by people in society is that they are wanted but also scarce and because the means to achieve them are scarce as well. As a consequence, we must decide what we consider to be more or less valuable and important to us since all that we would like to have cannot be simultaneously fulfilled at the same time.

Marx’s hatred for the division of labor is an outgrowth of this worldview. Man is seen as somehow less than whole by specializing in a task and selling both his labor and his fraction of the total output to achieve the ends and goals he considers more important than what he has to give up in return.

Marx’s Misconception of Action and Choice

The entire Marxian conception of man, society, and happiness can be conceived, therefore, as a flight from reality. It can be seen in Marx’s distinction between “autonomous action” and capitalist “choices.”

“Action” is, in fact, nothing more than choice manifested: we undertake courses of action only after we have decided what it is we wish to do. That is, we decide which among the alternatives available to us we shall try to bring about, and which shall be set aside for a day or forever because not everything we desire can be had, due to the constraints of nature and the existence of other human beings.

Marx talks of people fishing in the morning and hunting in the afternoon – does that not mean that the person’s time is scarce? Is he not “frustrated” that he cannot do both at the same time, or be in two places at once?

“Action” is, in fact, nothing more than choice manifested.

If every man is to be “autonomously free” to hunt and fish whenever and to whatever extent he desires, what happens when the various members of the community wish to kill the forest animals or catch the fish at such a rate that they are threatened with extinction? Or what if several people all want to fish from the same place along the river or lake bank at the same time, or from the same “cover” position while out hunting?Marx might say that a “societal orientation” on the part of everyone would result in some form of “comradely” compromise. But is that not just other language for “mutual agreements,” “trade-offs,” and “exchanges” concerning the use and disposal of scarce resources – the disposition of the communal property rights among the members of society?

There is no certainty that all of the members of such a society will always like the communally agreed-upon outcomes, with some of them considering themselves “exploited” for the benefit of others who have out-voted them. And, therefore, they may be “alienated” from their fellow men and from nature even in the communist paradise to come.

Nor can there simply be the idea of art for art’s sake or nature for nature’s sake.

Resources for art and gifts of nature (unless cultivated to expand them) are always limited. The use of forests for primitive contemplation versus industrial use versus residential housing would still have to be made in Marx’s magical communist society. And, certainly, not everyone in the bright, beautiful communist society may agree or like the decisions that a majority of others in the blissful societal commune make about such things.

The paint for the artist’s pallet is not in infinite supply, so some art would have to be forgone so other art might be pursued; similarly with the ingredients going into the manufacture of paints versus being used for other things. To assume that men would never conflict over how to dispose of these things is to escape into a complete fantasyland.

Also, it is a physical and psychological fact that men differ in their relative capacities and inclinations in terms of various tasks needing to be performed. It is a physical and psychological fact that men tend to be more productive when they specialize in a small range of tasks as opposed to trying to be a “jack-of-all-trades.”

The Reality of Communism Versus the Reality of Capitalism

As a result, the division of labor raises both the productivity and the total production of a community of men, standards of living rise, leisure time can be expanded, and more variety and quality of goods can be produced.

Indeed, it has been free market capitalism that has provided humanity over the last 200 years with that actual relative horn-of-plenty wherever a fairly free rein has existed for self-interested individual action in pursuit of profit in associative relationships of specialization based on the peaceful use of private property.

Capitalism has been the great liberator of ever more of mankind from poverty, want, and worry. It has freed people from the hardship and drudgery of often life-threatening forms of work. The free market has shortened the hours of work needed to generate levels of material and cultural comfort for a growing number of people and provided the longer, healthier lives and increased leisure time for people to enjoy the wealth that economic freedom has made possible.The “de-alienation” of man from his everyday existence, in the sense that Marx talked about it, has also, in fact, been brought about through the achievements of capitalism. It has relieved more and more of mankind from the concerns of mere survival and subsistence through the capital accumulation and profit-oriented production that has raised the productivity of all those who work and expanded the available supply of useful goods and services. The free market has enabled people to have the means to fulfill more of the enjoyments and meanings of life as ends in themselves.

Furthermore, as Austrian economist F. A. Hayek and others have pointed out, the advantage of the free market system is precisely that it does not require all of the members of the society to agree upon and share the same hierarchy of goals, ends, and values. Each individual, under competitive capitalism, is at liberty to select and follow their own purposes and pursue happiness in their own way. Using each other as the voluntary means to their respective ends in the arena of peaceful market exchange allows a much larger diversity of outcomes reflecting differences among people than if one central plan needs to imposed on all in the name of the interests of a collectivist community as a whole.

Marx’s flight from reality, on the other hand, was the wish to have everything capitalism, the division of labor, and competitive exchange can produce, but without the cost of work, discipline, specialization, and selecting among alternatives. It is like the cry of the child who refuses to accept the fact that he cannot have everything he wants, right there and then and, instead, expects someone or something to provide it to him and everyone else in a blissful fairyland of material plentitude.

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling

Richard M. Ebeling is BB&T Distinguished Professor of Ethics and Free Enterprise Leadership at The Citadel in Charleston, South Carolina. He was president of the Foundation for Economic Education (FEE) from 2003 to 2008.

Progressivism’s Dark Side by George J. Marlin

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George J. Marlin writes about the shadows that envelope Progressivism: a legacy of elitist eugenics and racism.

In early March, I had the privilege of attending the oral arguments in Whole Woman’s Health v. Cole at the U.S. Supreme Court. It was both an extraordinary and eerie experience.

The eight justices questioned Texas Solicitor General Scott Keller and pro-abortion advocate Stephanie Toti about a 2013 Texas law – passed in response to the gruesome Gosnell revelations and trial in Philadelphia – which requires abortion doctors to have admitting privileges at hospitals within a thirty mile radius of the place at which the abortion is being performed.

I was seated in one of the seven guest rows, where most attendees were pro-abortion. To my left: Planned Parenthood C.E.O. Cecile Richards. Fives minutes before the justices took their seats, President Obama’s top aide, Valerie Jarrett, came in and sat down in front of me.

President Woodrow Wilson

The issue before the Court was whether the Texas law imposes “undue burden” on women seeking abortions. The progressive justices’ cross-examinations were very clinical. In fact, I have never heard the word “abortion” used so often in such a detached manner.

For instance, when Solicitor General Keller pointed out that the law would save the lives of victims of botched abortions, Justice Stephen Breyer dismissed the argument as immaterial because there were only 200 such instances out of Texas’ 70,000 abortions per year.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor snapped at Keller, asking sarcastically, “The slightest benefit is enough to burden the lives of a million women. That’s your point?” In other words, all lives don’t matter.

By the end of this morbid session, I thought I was in a eugenics court. Then it dawned on me, I shouldn’t be surprised. After all, the modern Progressive movement has been dominated by a self-anointed elite, like several of the justices, who had contempt for the common people. In the early 20th century, they even promoted social and economic policies driven by anti-Catholic and anti-Semitic impulses.

Click here to read the rest of Mr. Marlin’s column . . .

What Marx Got Right about Redistribution – That John Stuart Mill Got Wrong by Alan Reynolds

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The idea that government could redistribute income willy-nilly with impunity did not originate with Senator Bernie Sanders. On the contrary, it may have begun with two of the most famous 19th century economists, David Ricardo and John Stuart Mill. Karl Marx, on the other side, found the idea preposterous, calling it “vulgar socialism.”

Mill wrote,

The laws and conditions of the production of wealth partake of the character of physical truths. There is nothing optional or arbitrary about them. … It is not so with the Distribution of Wealth. That is a matter of human institution only. The things once there, mankind, individually, can do with them as they like.

Mill’s distinction between production and distribution appears to encourage the view that any sort of government intervention in distribution is utterly harmless — a free lunch. But redistribution aims to take money from people who earned it and give it to those who did not. And that, of course, has adverse effects on the incentives of those who receive the government’s benefits and on taxpayers who finance those benefits.

David Ricardo had earlier made the identical mistake. In his 1936 book The Good Society (p. 196), Walter Lippmann criticized Ricardo as being “not concerned with the increase of wealth, for wealth was increasing and the economists did not need to worry about that.”

But Ricardo saw income distribution as an interesting issue of political economy and “set out to ascertain ‘the laws which determine the division of the produce of industry among the classes who concur in its formation.’

Lippmann wisely argued that, “separating the production of wealth from the distribution of wealth” was “almost certainly an error. For the amount of wealth which is available for distribution cannot in fact be separated from the proportions in which it is distributed. … Moreover, the proportion in which wealth is distributed must have an effect on the amount produced.”

The third classical economist to address this issue was Karl Marx. There were many fatal flaws in Marxism, including the whole notion that a society is divided into two armies — workers and capitalists. Late in his career, however, Marx wrote a fascinating 1875 letter to his allies in the German Social Democratic movement criticizing a redistributionist scheme he found unworkable.

In this famous “Critique of the Gotha Program,” Marx was highly critical of “vulgar socialism” and considered the whole notion of “fair distribution” to be “obsolete verbal rubbish.” In response to the Gotha’s program claim that society’s production should be equally distributed to all, Marx asked,

To those who do not work as well? … But one man is superior to another physically or mentally and so supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time. … This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor… It is, therefore, a right to inequality.

Yet Marx offered a glimmer of utopian hope about the future in which things would become so abundant that distribution would no longer be a matter of concern:

In a higher phase of communist society … after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flow more abundantly — only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banner: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!

That was not a prescription but a warning: For the foreseeable future Marx knew nothing would work without work incentives. If income were equally distributed to “those who do not work,” why would anyone work?

Contemporary public economics — “optimal tax theory” and the newest of the “new welfare economics” — also teaches that to tax a man “according to his abilities” would give able men a very strong incentive to use their skills to hide their earnings (and therefore their abilities) from tax collectors. This predictable response to tax penalties on high earnings is confirmed by economic research on the elasticity of taxable income.

Distributing government spending “to each according to his needs” must likewise give potential recipients a strong incentive to exaggerate their needs. People who got caught doing that used to be called “welfare cheats” and considerable cheating still goes on in food stamps, Medicaid, etc. The Earned Income Tax Credit, for example, gives low-income working people an extra incentive to not report cash income from tips, casual labor or illicit activities.

In The Undercover Economist, Tim Harford rightly notes that “when economists say the economy is inefficient, they mean there’s a way to make somebody better off without harming anybody else” (called “Pareto optimality”). But argues that Nobel Laureate Kenneth Arrow figured out a way to efficiently redistribute income with “appropriate lump-sum taxes and subsidies that puts everyone on equal footing.” As Harford says, “a lump-sum tax doesn’t affect anybody’s behavior because there’s nothing you can do to avoid it.”

Unfortunately, Harford says “an example of a lump-sum redistribution would be to give eight hundred dollars to everybody whose name starts with H.” That simply shows that if the subsidies were not ridiculously random then the subsidies will affect behavior and will not be lump-sum. The government could collect a lump-sum tax of $800 from every adult and then send a lump-sum subsidy of $800 to every adult with no net effect, for example, but why do that? If the government tried to tax people on the basis of abilities or to subsidize on the basis of needs, even Marx knew that would have a terrible effect on incentives.

The whole idea was curtly dismissed by another Nobel Laureate, Joseph Stiglitz, in his 1994 book Whither Socialism? (p. 46): “The ‘old new welfare economics’ assumed that lump-sum redistributions were possible,” wrote Stiglitz; “The ‘new new welfare economics’ recognizes the limitations on the government’s information.”

The reason governments cannot simply take money from some people according to how able they are, and give it to others according to how needy they are, is because people who were aware of that plan would not be foolish enough to accurately reveal their abilities and needs.

Actual taxes and transfer payment distort behavior in ways that undermine economic progress and commonly produce results (such as trapping people in poverty) that are the opposite of their stated intent.

This post first appeared at Cato.org.

Alan ReynoldsAlan Reynolds

Alan Reynolds is one of the original supply-side economists. He is Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute and was formerly Director of Economic Research at the Hudson Institute.

VIDEO: INFILTRATION — Thousands of young Communists have infiltrated Catholic seminaries

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TRANSCRIPT:

During the early years of Communism in the 1920s and 30s, the evil was being spread worldwide as the Blessed Mother had predicted at Fatima in 1917. Communist parties were being formed in various European countries and in American cities as well. They were already attempting to upset the political and cultural order.

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Alice von Hildebrand

But what only a very small number of people knew was that the top dogs of Communism had already released the hounds on the Church. The carefully organized plan was to recruit young men who were loyal Communists and get them placed in seminaries. This was carried out by various agents during the 1920s and 30s.

Fast forward 30 years to the 1960s, and the fruits were beginning to be seen. Learned, dedicated, faithful men and women in the Church were looking around and fretting, not sure from what framework they should understand the demolition of the Faith they were witnessing. At one point, Pope Paul VI even said that it appeared the Church was in auto-demolition.

One of those deeply distressed was a refugee from Hitler’s Germany, the brilliant theologian Dietrich von Hildebrand. He and his wife Alice were sitting down one day with a friend, a woman by the name of Bella Dodd. Bella Dodd had been received back into the Catholic Church by Abp. Fulton Sheen in April of 1952.

This particular day, von Hildebrand was lamenting the state of affairs in the Church and said “It seems like the Church has been infiltrated.” To the shock of both Dietrich and Alice, Bella Dodd, former Communist agent, confessed that it had been infiltrated — and she had been one of the Communists ordered to organize it.

Read more.

Please watch this excerpt of the interview with Dr. Alice von Hildebrand:

RELATED ARTICLE: Politics and Pope Francis: What is the role of the Catholic Church and the State?

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