Sunday, August 07, 2005

The "C" Word

Dear Friends,

Most recently, I have been looking into the writings of Karl Marx and Fredrick Engels...The Communist Manifesto, first published in 1848. When I advise individuals of this activity, they look at me in horror. Why? Because they have been so brainwashed from the leftovers of the "red scare" and the Cold War, it appears traitorous to even consider studying such material. I was in the local Barnes & Noble bookstore, and they had these little nicely bound volumes of classic novels and other writings. A digest of Marx and Engels was among them. I picked it up and could not put it down. Why, again? I saw clearly ALL the upside-down issues we are dealing with on a day-to-day basis.
(A friend described communism as socialism with a gun. This friend also pointed out that what we are seeing is a form of Fabian Socialism...a mild mannered approach to similar ends.)

As far as I have delved into these writings, I see Marx as a brilliant dissector of our capitalist economic system. It is somewhat depressing to read through all the warts that capitalists try to manage from day-to-day. However, what he offered in its place is a system that resulted in governments killing 100+ million of their own people in the last century.

So why, you ask, is this of any consequence after we have seen the changes in the old Soviet Union and China? The march of Communism is alive and well and more ubiquitous than many of you realize and are willing to admit. It is fueled by ongoing class warfare of the have's and the have-nots fired up by special interest groups such as labor unions and corporate elite with little accountability built into their remuneration contracts. The smothering regulation of the nanny state WE have created frustrates people to take an irrational outlet for their anger, etc., etc.

These are the most visible manifestations that help to blind us to this reality and weaken our resolve to take action, individually or as a group.

EVEN MORE INSIDIOUS are specific strategies that have been diffused or distributed to PAC's, NGO's, or other blatantly subversive groups. I have extracted certain passages from the Communist Manifesto and tried to relate to current events or groups that support those actions. Primarily, these activities reside on the left. When taken individually, they are really in some sort of stealth social engineering mode. When taken as a whole and seriously thought about, you suddenly have in-your-face Communism as put forth by the Soviet Union, China, etc. Someone or some group has cleverly redone the strategy into its present form. Clearly, some of this resides in the "ruling elite"...the group that thinks they know what's better for us than we ourselves. I am sad to say that our government has a good-sized infection from these human parasites. I should add that this is not isolated just to the U.S. It IS a worldwide phenomena through social incrementalism.

Here we go, with my comments inserted...

"In one word, you reproach us with intending to do away with your property. Precisely so; that is just what we intend. From the moment when labour can no longer be converted into capital, money, or rent, into a social power capable of being monopolised, i.e., from the moment when individual property can no longer be transformed into bourgeois property, into capital, from that moment, you say, individuality vanishes. You must, therefore, confess that by “individual” you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible."

GEA Eminent domain issues recently before the Supreme Court. The left gave it a pass in a highly corrupted form allowing monied interests to roll over private property owners.


Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations. It has been objected that upon the abolition of private property, all work will cease, and universal laziness will overtake us.
According to this, bourgeois society ought long ago to have gone to the dogs through sheer idleness; for those of its members who work, acquire nothing, and those who acquire anything do not work. The whole of this objection is but another expression of the tautology: that there can no longer be any wage-labour when there is no longer any capital.

All objections urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating material products, have, in the same way, been urged against the Communistic mode of producing and appropriating intellectual products. Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.

GEA Driven in this direction by suffocating regulation and government's increasing involvement in business in an effort to take ALL personal initiative and self-determination and turn it over to the nanny-state. Culture is attacked through multiculturalism and open borders and undermining of the lingua franca.

That culture, the loss of which he laments, is, for the enormous majority, a mere training to act as a machine. But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law, &c. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class.

GEA Legislation from the bench based on a "Living Constitution" mentality...

The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature and of reason, the social forms springing from your present mode of production and form of property – historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production – this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.

"Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists."

GEA You are bloody blind if I have to list out the various aspects of this, however, for those still asleep, here are a few...

1. Redefinition of the word "marriage".
2. Redefining of family composition...two mommies, two daddies, etc.
3. Radical gay and lesbian predatory practices on our children via their own "manifesto" issued in the late '80's."
4. Removal of control of what our children are exposed to by the ACLU using first amendment rights.
5. Out of wedlock births
6. Eroding commitment to marriage...prior to and during.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.
The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital. Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty. But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

GEA The NEA and other educators believe their job is socialization and NOT education, as we commonly think. Certainly, socialization is important to a certain extent, but it presently is the only objective leaving readin', ritin', and rithmatic in the dust.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.?

The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

GEA Brainwashing of our children rather than teaching them how to study and think for themselves AND giving them the fundamentals necessary to survive in our "bourgeois" system. Hmmm.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

GEA Pretty cold, eh?

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus. The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women. He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production. For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.


GEA The rise of radical feminism and hatred of men.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public
and private.

GEA Again, marriage under attach by dogmatic zealots.

The Communists are further reproached with desiring to abolish countries and nationality. The working men have no country. We cannot take from them what they have not got. Since the proletariat must first of all acquire political supremacy, must rise to be the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation, it is so far, itself national, though not in the bourgeois sense of the word.

GEA Multiculturalism run amok. Open borders and no attempt to stem the flow of illegal aliens.

National differences and antagonism between peoples are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the mode of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish still faster.

GEA Odd statement. Will we have more soulless multinational corporations or one big communist glob with a few god-men pulling the strings?

United action, of the leading civilised countries at least, is one of the first conditions for the emancipation of the proletariat.

GEA Didn't Hillary say, "Power to the people!" in one of her more animated rallies? I may be mistaken."

In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another will also be put an end to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the hostility of one nation to another will come to an end.

GEA There you Commies go again, trying to change man...err woman's fallen nature.


The charges against Communism made from a religious, a philosophical and, generally, from an ideological standpoint, are not deserving of serious examination.

GEA Destroy religion in the public square using militant Islam and the running dogs of the ACLU. Hmmm... this could backfire.

Does it require deep intuition to comprehend that man’s ideas, views, and conception, in one word, man’s consciousness, changes with every change in the conditions of his material existence, in his social relations and in his social life? What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class. When people speak of the ideas that revolutionise society, they do but express that fact that within the old society the elements of a new one have been created, and that the dissolution of the old ideas keeps even pace with the dissolution of the old conditions of existence.

GEA Strong introduction of situational ethics, moral relativism, and the secular humanist trend or religion.

When the ancient world was in its last throes, the ancient religions were overcome by Christianity. When Christian ideas succumbed in the 18th century to rationalist ideas, feudal society fought its death battle with the then revolutionary bourgeoisie. The ideas of religious liberty and freedom of conscience merely gave expression to the sway of free competition within the domain of knowledge.

“Undoubtedly,” it will be said, “religious, moral, philosophical, and juridical ideas have been modified in the course of historical development. But religion, morality, philosophy, political science, and law, constantly survived this change.”

“There are, besides, eternal truths, such as Freedom, Justice, etc., that are common to all states of society. But Communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.”

GEA This is the key idea that justified the slaughter of 100+ million individuals in the last century. Goodness people, how many of you have confronted the popular thinking associated with situational ethics. Did you ever think that such an idiot scheme was actually part of the Communist Manifesto and those that have been espousing it have been brainwashed by this new religious dogma? This is one of the prime reasons that Michael Savage, an independent conservative says, "Liberalism is a mental disorder." Trying to logically discuss this matter is impossible with those caught in this cult's grip. So far, I've found this to be most evident in the U.S. and to a lesser extent, internationally. International liberals still have their brains connected to their mouth. From a Christian viewpoint, we believe in a higher power than man. The communist viewpoint allows man to rise to be a god with ALL the negative ramifications. This fundamental flaw in communism has been responsible for its undoing over and over again. Why does it keep rising from the ashes? ...Undermining of our culture and religious Judeo-Christian values.

What does this accusation reduce itself to? The history of all past society has consisted in the development of class antagonisms, antagonisms that assumed different forms at different epochs. But whatever form they may have taken, one fact is common to all past ages, viz., the exploitation of one part of society by the other. No wonder, then, that the social consciousness of past ages, despite all the multiplicity and variety it displays, moves within certain common
forms, or general ideas, which cannot completely vanish except with the total disappearance of class antagonisms.

GEA Perhaps the fact that the U.S. consumes nearly 50% of the drugs might be a leading indicator that if the puppeteers can just drug us down a bit more, they can really eliminate this human flaw, rather than teaching through our various institutions how to manage and control it.

The Communist revolution is the most radical rupture with traditional relations; no wonder that its development involved the most radical rupture with traditional ideas. But let us have done with the bourgeois objections to Communism.

GEA Current approach...yell down your opponents with profanities and call them idiots.

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible. Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures,
therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production. These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

GEA This plays to the left's equal outcomes approach to societal brainwashing. Social justice, inclusiveness, celebrate, etc. are the buzz words used to break down these restraints.

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

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the
soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

Wow! And you mean there are people that can intellectually handle all these centralized decisions and power and responsibility for over 6 billion people? What a bunch of lunatics!

GEA

Ref: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/