The indoctrination of our children continues.
It should be at least as shameful to declare oneself a Marxist as it is to declare oneself a Nazi. But they’ve taken over the educational system.
74 thoughts on “Communism On Parade”
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The indoctrination of our children continues.
It should be at least as shameful to declare oneself a Marxist as it is to declare oneself a Nazi. But they’ve taken over the educational system.
Comments are closed.
“It should be at least as shameful to declare oneself a Marxist as it is to declare oneself a Nazi”
If someone reads The Communist Manifesto and then decides “I’m a Marxist”, or if someone studies the history of Feudalism and then decides that Marxism has a interesting way of looking at the economic alternatives and declares “I’m a Marxist sort of historian”, or if someone in the 1960s lived on a Kibbutz that was explicitly Marxist (and democratic, and liberty-loving), well, I don’t see why any of things are, per se, bad at all, let alone as bad as reading Nazi literature and then declaring “I’m a Nazi”.
What I really don’t know, due to my lack of education: would Karl Marx have been appalled by the 20th Century’s communist atrocities?
It doesn’t really matter. Given what we now know is the history, modern people should be appalled, if they’re educated, rather than indoctrinated.
Oh, you must mean something other than Marxism.
Sorry, no.
would Karl Marx have been appalled by the 20th Century’s communist atrocities?
I’m sure he would have been “appalled” to the point of suicide. So he’s a good guy after all. Just a little misguided. It’s all clear now. Thanks BOB.
By the way, do you think Rachel Carson would be appalled at the depth of human suffering and death that followed Silent Spring?
Me thinks me smells the “no true Scotsman” fallacy.
Yes, thank you for making my point, Bob.
Well, I’ve read some Marx , and from what little I’ve read, I didn’t see any reason to think he’d approve of the atrocities of the 20th century. Can you point to any evidence to the contrary?
Are we just quibbling over what to call the appalling sort of government that existed in the USSR, China, and other “people’s republics”? If you had said “communist”, I wouldn’t have quibbled, but your use of the word Marxist made me think you were either talking about Marx, or you were talking about the *entire* range of movements that his writings inspired. Most of those movements were (or are) horrid, but some were (or are) pretty benign. Maybe this is like your comments about broad generalizations Islam… ..you would paint with greater precision if you used a narrower brush.
Well, I’ve read some Marx , and from what little I’ve read, I didn’t see any reason to think he’d approve of the atrocities of the 20th century. Can you point to any evidence to the contrary?
There is no need for me to do so. It is irrelevant.
So what you’re saying Bob is that a little bit of poison is okay.
This is typical of the Left, that nothing matters except intentions.
Rand, you know that if only “the right people” were in charge of all those countries that tried Marxism/Communism, things would’ve been different. The fact that “the right people” were never found in all those countries is irrelevant to the purity of Marx’s theories. The facts of what happened in every single one of those countries matters for nothing, it’s the theory that counts.
One more comment and then I’ll shut up and listen (if anyone has anything to tell me): the author of the linked article said that people were aghast when he quoted from the Communist Manifesto.
What are the worst sentiments in the Communist Manifesto? I read it a long time ago, but I don’t recall it as worse than the sort of thing Jesus might say.
“I read it [the Communist Manifesto] a long time ago, but I don’t recall it as worse than the sort of thing Jesus might say.”
Except, as far as we know, Jesus didn’t go around weilding, or trying to wield, the Mailed Fist to coerce submission to his ideas. Big difference, Aristotle.
Neither did Marx. He went around writing books, not using his fists. Is “Mailed Fist” supposed to be a reference to something Marx wrote? If so, could you cite it, because a quick google search didn’t reveal it to me. Thanks.
Bob, I guess you skipped all his writings about revolution and overthrowing the ruling class, and then eliminating private property, seizing the means of production, etc. Hitler picked up the idea of racial purges from Marx, who thought that some ethnic groups were too primitive for true socialism. Chief among these was, of course, the Jews.
He went on about emancipating mankind from Jewry.
Marx’s close collaborator Engels was just as bad, if not worse.
Anyway, we’ve been over this before George. I’ll try to say something different this time.
My limited understanding is that Marx’s article on Jews is totally misunderstood by today’s readers — it is the same as quoting someone speaking ironically or sarcastically and claiming that the quote reflects his beliefs.
For example: David McLellan, however, has argued that “On the Jewish Question” must be understood in terms of Marx’s debates with Bruno Bauer over the nature of political emancipation in Germany. According to McLellan, Marx used the word “Judentum” in its colloquial sense of “commerce” to argue that Germans suffer, and must be emancipated from, capitalism. The second half of Marx’s essay, McLellan concludes, should be read as “an extended pun at Bauer’s expense.”
I’m not really familiar with Bauer, but he sounds like a nut.
Look at the incredibly diverse and divergent number of interpretations here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/On_the_Jewish_Question#Interpretations (including the one I quoted above).
Please ignore “Anyway”, the first word of my comment.
How about Engels?
He also said
In fact, he and Marx said a lot of things, about the racial superiority of Germans, the inferiority of the slavs, Jews, Ni**ers (Engels term), etc. Heck, even the Irish
And you argue that these hate-filled bloodthirsty idiots were misunderstood?
I don’t know anything about Engels. Your quotes are noteworthy and suggest that I should read up on Engels. I’m saying this because I want to learn something, and because I’m trying to not simply cop out and say “I was only talking about Marx”. However, it is also true: I really was only talking about Marx. Thank you for implicitly suggesting that I learn about Engels.
Marx was the more hateful one of the pair.
Hitler and Stalin were just the implementation of the genocidal racial and class rantings of Marx and Engels.
If you had said “communist”, I wouldn’t have quibbled
OK, so you would agree that it should be as shameful to be a communist as a Nazi?
Like I said, I wouldn’t have quibbled. But now we’re quibbling…
I would agree that it is as shameful to be Castro as it is to be a Nazi. I would agree that Stalin and Hitler were equally shameful, and so forth — we can compare lowly communist prison guards to lowly Nazi prison guards, or we can compare KGB agents to Gestapo agents, and I’ll agree that each is equally shameful.
But lets compare two “ordinary Joes”. First, lets find a true believer of communism in 1950 on the streets of Moscow, just some ordinary Ivan, not a big wig, a guy who read the communist manifesto, a guy who really does have certain beliefs about who should own the means of production and buys into claims about class struggle. And lets go to the streets of Berlin in 1939, and find an “ordinary Hans”, not a big wig, just a guy who follows Hitler, a guy who really does have certain beliefs about the racial superiority of the Aryan master race, and inferiority and threat from the Jews. Well, I think Ordinary Hans has a lot more to be ashamed about than Ordinary Ivan.
And what happens to those two guys? Both starve to death. But here’s the difference: Ordinary Ivan gets sent off to a Siberian prison camp (because he is literate) and as he dies from starvation,he’ll feel that Stalin betrayed the Marxist dream. Ordinary Hans gets hungrier and hungrier as the end of the war as food gets scarce, and he gives what little he has to his wife and children. His starvation level leaves him susceptible to a fierce lung infection, and as he dies, he curses the Jews and remains a true believer in Adolf Hitler.
I would agree that it is as shameful to be Castro as it is to be a Nazi.
But they’re not. Not on campus and not at Obama’s dinner parties. Which was my point.
Rand isn’t quibbling, bob is. It’s amazing that bob can find a distinction between Marxist and Communist, while bob is unable to comprehend a difference between a Republic and Constitutional Monarchy. Again, bob quibbles.
If you had said “communist”, I wouldn’t have quibbled
At the risk of quibbling with a quibbler, there’s a difference between communism and Communism.
Did you really mean communism — the common ownership of consumer goods, as practiced in hippy communes, the Amana Colonies, Israeli Kibbutzim, etc.? Or did you mean Communism — aka Marxist socialism — which is based on common ownership of producer goods? Or do you simply not understand the difference?
Assuming you do understand what you’re saying, why do you find an Amana Colonist to be worse than, say, Joseph Stalin?
Edward, I wasn’t making that distinction at all. I was curious about this idea that capitalization can be shorthand for some useful political ideas, so I googed “small c communism”. The very first link was this one:
http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/10/on_bill_ayers_and_small_c_comm.html
It is a rightwing article, and it ridicules the idea of small c communism.
So, I’m not sure how many people use your distinction, and whether it is in vogue among the rightwing (which matters since we’re here on Rand’s rightwing blog.)
If nothing else, you should be open to the idea that well-meaning people reject your spelling convention. I’m indifferent – I’ll use whatever convention people want to agree upon.
Edward, I wasn’t making that distinction at all.
Alrighty, then. In that case, could you please answer my other question and tell me why find Amana Colonists (communists) to be more objectionable than Joe Stalin (a Marxist socialist)?
Also, are you familiar with a technology called nuclear subterrene boring? It might help with your digging project.
http://www.detailshere.com/tunnelmachine.htm
Rand’s rightwing blog
My blog is “rightwing”?
Who knew?
From Critique of the Gotha Program:
In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly—only then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners:
Totally benign. As well as what’s on those banners. Right Bob?
I think Rand’s brush is quite precise as it is. In fact, it’s the precision that drives you bonkers.
You lost me. What is wrong the quote? Walking through the text you cited: He wants a certain kind of slavery to vanish. He wants people to want to work, not just have to do their work, he wants people to be productive as they develop as individuals, he wants people to be wealthy and cooperative, and then, something, which you left out, gets written on some banners.
I know full well why the USSR was not a benign environment, but what’s wrong with what Marx wrote in 1875?
He wants people to want to work, not just have to do their work
Which you get from:
after labor has become not only a means of life but life’s prime want
he wants people to be productive as they develop as individuals
Which you get from:
with the all-around development of the individual
It’s no wonder you can’t imagine what’s on those banners:
From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.
Curt, what is your point? I understand that you think I’m wrong about the text, but could you please bother to give me your interpretation? Stop being a lazybutt.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs.”
There is nothing intrinsically coercive (or otherwise sinister) about that slogan. Communism is often equated to theft, as well as dictatorship, and I do understand why, but the Marxist slogan about “to each…, from each…” is a nice sentiment, if it is viewed as aspirational rather than coercive.
I’m not lazy Bob, I’m just a little particular about what I spend my time on. You read that quote and saw nothing wrong with it. I read it and get so many red flags I loose count. The biggest one is probably what’s left out; what happens to all the people who don’t want their property taken away from them. So be it. As Titus once said, you have to bridge the gulf yourself, I can only toss some dirt your way. Unlike him though, my aim isn’t very good.
Communism is often equated to theft, as well as dictatorship, and I do understand why, but the Marxist slogan about “to each…, from each…” is a nice sentiment, if it is viewed as aspirational rather than coercive.
It is evil and always comes to tears because it assumes that there is an objective standard of “need.”
“what happens to all the people who don’t want their property taken away from them.”
Well, that’s a good question. What was Marx’s answer? If you don’t know, it is ok to admit that you don’t know. I certainly don’t know, since I’m not well-read when it comes to Marx.
I know that armed robbery and murder was the answer for most communists in the 20th century, after Marx died. But in some cases, for some 20th century Marxists, the answer was “well, you don’t have to live on our Marxist kibbutz or farm or commune if you don’t want to”, and those people were Marxists too.
And, that gets back to my original question: is there any reason to think Marx wouldn’t be appalled by the armed robbery and murder that the so-called Communists committed. I would think he’d be disappointed that Kibbutzim stopped being the vanguard in Israeli society, but I doubt he’d find them appalling.
====
Also, one more thing: Marxism can be a view of history rather than a plan for political action. I knew a Marxist history professor who was always explaining things in terms of Marxism, but never wanted to get involved in politics, nor did he want the USA to suddenly become Marxist. He was pretty apolitical – he just liked to talk about this stuff a lot:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Historical_materialism
Rand, I don’t think my history professor had to be ashamed of being a Marxist, although perhaps he should be ashamed of being a bad historian. (In other words, he might have been an idiot, but he wasn’t evil.)
Rand said “It is evil and always comes to tears because it assumes that there is an objective standard of “need.”
I think that’s a good answer. But if there is no coercion, then there is no need for an objective standard.
Marxism as a religion: people can just ask themselves if they really “need” it, and people often become more ascetic as they question the need for the things they own.
Marxism as a practical guide for society: free but communist societies (like kibbutzim) used voting, had an understood set of rights, and people were free to join or leave as they wanted. I don’t know if they used formal contracts, but I think spelling everything out and agreeing to it is a pretty good idea in a free society.
To those willing to overlook the history of what actually happened to countries that went the Socialist/Marxist/Communist route, Marxism sounds good in theory. What’s a 100 million deaths (give or take) compared to the wonderful theory that, while it completely goes against human nature, sounds so wonderful. Why, if only the “right people” were in charge, it’d be a workers’ paradise. And if they don’t like it, you can send them to a reeducation camp.
You can’t divorce Marx from what happened any more than you can say that Nazism is a good idea but Hitler’s implementation was wrong.
“You can’t divorce Marx from what happened any more than you can say that Nazism is a good idea but Hitler’s implementation was wrong.”
Except for the one minor distinction that what Marx wrote and what happened after his death was totally different and wasn’t foreseen by him, whereas from 1925 (or at least, from 1933) what Hitler did was, by definition, Nazism.
Bullshit. The French Reign of Terror was history by then. You’re saying Marx gets a pass for being an ignoramus.
No, what Marx and Engels wrote both predicted and advocated for the horrors that were to come. Lenin, Stalin, and Hitler were convinced of the need for massive purges because they read Marx’s well-argued reasoning on why such atrocities would be necessary.
Bob, you’re trying argument from ignorance on the Internet.
Please enlighten me. Could you provide some quotes and citations? Thanks!
I left a few up-thread. 🙂
There are tons of quotes available, as they were prolific writers who had no compunction about detailing the need for the elimination of races and classes of people. Marx also explained the need to watch everyone even suspected of harboring non-socialist thoughts (the paranoid surveillance state), and the need to ruthlessly terrorise and kill those with counter-revolutionary sympathies (the brutally repressive police state).
Well there are interesting things to learn by reading the Communist Manifesto or Das Kapital. Assuming you can read that turgid mess that is Das Kapital there are some interesting insights you can get. IMO Marx does several accurate observations from the boom and bust cycles of capitalism, to capital flight, the tendency for manufacturing to require ever increasing capital costs for machine tools (especially pertinent in semiconductor manufacturing where this can be easily observed) and increased automation leading to a loss of jobs. He also mentions some things perceived as rare (emeralds, diamonds) can actually be synthesized for cheap so he seems to have a minimum grasp of how technology can lead to the substitution of materials and increased wealth.
So in short IMO Das Kapital is utter trash compared to Adam Smith’s the Wealth of Nations for someone wanting to learn the dysmal science of economics but Das Kapital includes some pertinent observations from a time where industrialization and manufacturing were much more pronounced than Adam Smith’s much earlier book.
Marx also argues from a lot of false premises including his categorization of the evolution of society and attempt to pigeonhole things into clear cut categories which often make little sense. He oversimplifies history to the point where is extrapolations are irrelevant and this leads him to a lot of erroneous conclusions as a result.
As for communism being inherently as evil as nazism that is simply not true because communism at least does not have a racial theory component. When we are discussing the deaths of communism people are usually talking about proponents of War Communism like Lenin, Stalin or Mao which lived and acted in environments totally different from later communist leaders which had totally different policies. For someone like Stalin which was once jailed by the Tzarist secret police and sent to Siberia what he was doing was just business as usual. Stalin was indeed evil however he was a rational evil person. After he started losing the war during Operation Barbarossa he started relying on his generals more instead of trying to run the army by himself. Hitler did the opposite. Try comparing how many countries Hitler invaded in foreign wars of aggression compared to Stalin and you will also see the difference. Mao has little redeeming qualities besides fighting against the Japanese invasion and liberating China from their occupation during WWII.
As for communism being inherently as evil as nazism that is simply not true because communism at least does not have a racial theory component.
So it’s OK, or at least less evil, to slaughter tens of millions of people, as long as it’s an equal opportunity process, racially speaking? Is this the same kind of bizarre thinking that goes into making “hate” crimes for exactly the same act worse? I’ve never understood that.
Most of the people slaughtered by communism in the Soviet Union died due to famine caused by destruction of fields by both sides during the Russian civil war, bad harvests, and expropriation of resources from the farmers to fund rapid industrialization near the cities. Of these only the last can be directly attributed to actual government policy. There were plenty of deaths caused by purges but those were minor in comparison to the famines. In Stalin’s view either the Soviet Union industrialized quickly or it would cease to be, as he perceived their regime was essentially isolated. This was true given the foreign support to the White Russians during the civil war and the pandering by western powers to Hitler afterwards. Had the Soviet Union not industrialized to the degree it did they quite likely would have lost WWII to Nazi Germany. Given that Hitler had wrote in Mein Kampf that Slavic people in Russia were to be eliminated or enslaved for the benefit of Aryans and what the Gestapo did in Russia after Barbarossa started I doubt the number of dead would be lower or that liberties would be greater had that happened.
How do you justify Sherman’s march on the South during your own civil war?
Yanno, I think President Barry would that conclusion perfectly reasonable. Social justice, equality of outcome and all that. Seeing as how you’re killing them for a good cause…
“If someone reads The Communist Manifesto and then decides ‘I’m a Marxist’, or if someone studies the history of Feudalism and then decides that Marxism has a interesting way of looking at the economic alternatives . . .”
Bob-1 apparently studied the history of Feudalism and decided, “Hey, you know, that serfdom business doesn’t sound half-bad.” I based that on his apparent willingness to be a serf, and to make the rest of us accept the coming serfdom cheerfully. As Nathaniel Branden once wrote, “Scratch a collectivist and you usually find a Mediaeavlaist.” None of that individualistic libertarian malarkey in the reign of Henry II, by the rood!
Getting back to the original point, it reminds me of a discussion that was held on the Ann Althouse blog about a year ago, and has even more relevance now with Paul Ryan running for Veep. When it was discovered that Ryan had been influenced by Ayn Rand, the Hive had a great big collective diaper-soiling. Yet they have no problem with Obama being a Red Diaper Baby, using Marxist redistributionist rhetoric, or being a long-time member of Rev. Wrisht’s church, which combined Black Nationalism with Marxism-for-Dummies. Especially on campus, it is much more infra dig to admit even guarded admiration for Rand than to declare oneself a Marxist. But as was pointed out in the Althouse discussion, just look at the body count. Marxists: Untold millions, if not billions; Objectivists (including even the most obnoxious lockstep Randroids): 0.
I don’t know what Marxists Bob is thinking of, but Marx and Marxists on this planet viewed the “dictatorship of the proletariat” as a necessary step to destroying the middle class and creating a new classless society. That’s what they were doing: destroying the middle class with weapons and prisons. Look where it got their people. I thought this was settled twenty years ago: the “end of history.” History has ended, alright — everyone’s forgotten about it!
“Dictatorship of the proletariat” refers to governance, not what we think of as an authoritarian or totalitarian “dictatorship”. The governance in question can be benign and, by definition, is democratic.
Only in your world, Bob. Here we measure people at their word. What he is describing is statist autocracy, the devaluation of the individual, and the morphing of said individuals into insect worker drones. And the important addendum to that last point is, “whether the individual likes it or not.”
Whether the individual is stripped of his or her property & humanity by a single dictator or a mob is irrelevant. It’s authoritarian statism. That Marx believed that, after the individuals were turned into drones, that an all powerful state would no longer be needed, and wither away is besides the point. If the course you suggest requires that individuals be devalued, then it becomes easy to kill them.
That is why it’s wrong. The fact that this needs to be explained to you makes me sad.
The governance in question can be benign and, by definition, is democratic.
You say that as though it’s a good thing. As in two wolves and a sheep voting on what’s for dinner.
Yes, I do think adult workers in this country should have the vote, and no, I don’t think they’ll vote our country into poverty. I understand that you disagree with the latter, but if you really disagree with the former, it will amuse me.
So, adult non-workers can’t vote? What about adult workers who aren’t US citizens? Should they be allowed to vote?
― Alexis de Tocqueville
The founding fathers were aware of this problem as well; try reading the Federalist Papers. This is why they created a Republic, with a strictly limited Federal government, including election of senators via state legislatures as opposed to popular vote.
One only has to look at the inner workings of Obama’s OWS, their power struggles, how they treat internal dissidents, and how they treat external dissidents to see that if their desired revolution was successful, history would repeat itself.
Whew! What a thread. Bob-1 just keeps digging harder.
Let’s give you the benefit of the doubt, Bob.
I didn’t see any reason to think he’d approve of the atrocities of the 20th century.
This is a very revealing comment. You would like to divorce the historical reality of communism with its philosophical base. This is impossible, but let’s pretend. What’s wrong with the communist manifesto (considered in isolation.)
First he defines artificial classes (proletariat/bourgeois):(workers/owners) moving us away from reality in the process. If you don’t understand how this removes us from reality, that is your first problem.
The manifesto promotes the ‘proletariat alone’, the middle class is to be done away with as not being revolutionary. Even the proletariat must be organized into a union (political party) that eliminates any competition from other worker elements. Finally, once we’ve reduced everybody to just two artificial classes (that do not and never will exist in reality) the owners must fall to the workers who are ruled by the communists (communists are not considered part of any class, they are just the leaders.)
So what we see here is a flim-flam artist presuming they have the right to lead. What must they do to those that oppose that leadership?
From the manifesto: the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.
So not only do the communists want to lead the workers after eliminating all opposition. They want to own all property. What happens to those that disagree?
You could go on through the manifesto, but the point has been made. Did you get the point Bob? It doesn’t matter whether or not Karl was a nice guy or even what he meant to say (if different from what he actually wrote.) What he said directly leads to the atrosities of the 20th century for the same reason Islam would. It allows no competition.
Individual liberty and the pursuit of happiness is an entirely different philosophy.
Marx and Engels were hardly different in intent from Hitler and Stalin, though Hitler and Stalin certainly had a better sense of humor. I’m not sure Marx liked anybody. They would both certainly agree far more with Hitler than Stalin, viewing the conquest of the lesser races of Europe as Germany’s destiny, along with crushing all the little postage-stamp states and rolling back and destroying the Slavs. As Hitler said, to be a good Nazi you have to read Marx, which is its foundation.
I suspect Bob is digesting on it, since like most left-leaning people he probably got the watered-down version of Marx, which is something about sharing – and free hugs or something, as opposed to what Marx actually wrote, which was about the necessity of genocide, dictatorship, the police state, terrorism, and mass murder.
It’s worth pointing out -why- the small scale pseudo-Marxist/Communist communes sometimes -do- almost work without bloodbaths.
When there are fewer than 3,000 people or so involved, everyone knows everyone. The slackers, the hard-workers, the power-mad – they have names. It isn’t filtered through a bureaucracy. When there’s a meeting about “Free phones for the poor”, everyone’s perfectly well aware that we’re talking about Larry, Curly, and Moe.
So the entire society is fundamentally small enough that each individual has a reasonable grasp and viewpoint on the needs of ‘the underclass’. So they’re able to directly decide if they’re being screwed. If voting is still allowed, it’s tough to ramp “Free Cheese for Everyone!” up high enough – because you know exactly where it will end up, and how much it will hurt -you-. If voting isn’t allowed, but the balance is almost ok, the society can coast for awhile as resentments grow. If voting isn’t allowed and things suck for enough people, you get a reorganization in a night of the long knives.
The “3,000 people” number is a fairly well established size in sociology as a threshold for problems for a variety of organizational arrangements. A key component is having a homogenous group to start with.
The part that was new with Marx wasn’t the ‘communal outlook’. That part had been attempted before. It was the willingness to make a homogeneous group by killing The Other.
With 3000 people, all information is local and informed decisions are possible.
This is a more profound statement than many might realize. In Control theory, it is well known that stabilization of a distributed parameter system with reasonable bandwidth is generally, in practical terms, impossible without co-located sensors and actuators. This is why centralized control of large nations never works. It’s a mathematical imperative.
In a lot of cases smaller communes almost work because those who don’t want to get with the program are allowed, or even encouraged, to leave. They still work poorly because they remove much of the incentive to work beyond a minimal level.
When it as shameful to wear a t-shirt of Che as it is one of Himmler, my work will be done.
I would love somebody to make a T-Shirt of the two of them side by side. Titled: “Same shit, different day!”
While I’m digesting, it would be really impressive if someone wanted to tackle a hard question instead of just preaching the anti-communist gospel: what about the Gospel? That is, what are the similarities and differences between Marxism and Christianity? Did Jesus say something that sounds like a good idea, but only works for 3,000 people or less?
There is a body of thought that holds that Marxism is a fundamental revision of Christianity that says heaven will be attained on Earth, in the material world. Unfortunately, the Bible is also pretty emphatic about which peoples (OT) please God and which don’t, and which kinds of people will get to heaven and which won’t (NT), so perhaps it’s not surprising that Marxism was equally picky about who gets to live under socialism and who gets erased from the planet.
In many regards Marx and Jesus are polar opposites. Jesus said to love one another as you love yourself. Marx said owners were engaged in a vast conspiracy and had to be violently overthrown. Jesus said to give to Caesar what is Caesars, and Marx said Caesar should own overthing. Jesus said don’t worry about material possessions. Marx said seize control of the means of production. Jesus said love yoru neighbor, don’t covet your neighbor’s possessions, and do not steal. Marx said your neighbor is an evil capitalist Jew and you should kill him and take his stuff.
Some of what Jesus said fails in other climates. For instance, not to worry about material needs or the future, which is a recipe for mass death in harsh northern climates, as is washing each other’s feet when it’s 40 below.
Jesus’ teachings don’t depend on group size because he didn’t address how to rule even a small group. Unlike Islam or Marxism, the Judeo-Christian tradition offers little advice about governance. Interestingly, the Persians had to teach early Muslims about ruling nation-states and empires (the Advice to Kings literature), since they found themselves conquered by a largely nomadic tribal society that didn’t have a clue about how to scale up the tribal power structures that are embedded in the Koran’s teachings.
Did Jesus say something that sounds like a good idea, but only works for 3,000 people or less?
Amusingly enough, he probably hasn’t read the 19th and 20th century articles espousing that idea. And I don’t think he was omniscient either.
just preaching the anti-communist gospel
Had enough have you? But you’re not buying any of it, regardless of evidence? Are ya?
Marxism vs. Christianity
For twenty years, Obama sat in a pew where they taught there is no difference because that’s what ‘Liberation Theology’ is. Wisdom and understanding first require a sincere desire to acquire. There are plenty of people that would provide you with a free bible study in your home. Try praying about it and see what happens. Don’t expect miracles.
It’s stupid to debate Bob-1. He3’s either extremely dense, or he likes to appear dense and offer not-quite-to-the-point quibbles to divert attention from the basic point, which is that Communism and Nazism are equally evil. If Hitler didn’t surpass Stalin and Mao in body count, it’s probably because they had more people under their heels and therefore more people to kill.
In his own doofus way, however, Bob-1 had touched upon an important point. Small c-communism or socialism isn’t intrinsically coercive, although Marxism certainly is. (There was an old, politically-incorrect biography of Marx called THE RED PRUSSIAN, and its replete with examples of Marx’s inherent totalitarianism. Tyranny wasn’t just grafter onto Marxism by Lenin; it was already there, in the germ, so to speak.) I did an article once on 19th Century socialism, and it was interesting to see that of the big socialist names of the 19th Century, only Marx was a statist. If you read Bakunin, Kropotkin or Proudhon, they often sound like modern libertarians in their disavowal of coercion.
Of course, by now, except for maybe some hippie communes in the outback, the “voluntary socialists” are pretty much gone with the way of the dodo. But it’s coercion that’s the main evil, not socialism or communism, irrational as such philosophies are. To borrow a phrase from Thomas Jefferson, a bunch of hippies agreeing to pool their worldly goods and give up private property “neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg.” Too bad modern Communists and socialists aren’t as pacifistic.
One point I note in many leftist quotes is a dismissal of certain traits of unalterable human nature as a cultural accident or applying to only certain groups, thus purge-able. The reality is that such traits as self interest are with us regardless of what we do. So the challenge becomes aligning self interest with the greater good. The free market, where getting something from someone is based on giving them something they value, has done as well as any other organization in that, and better than most.
“From each according to his ability, to each according to his need” is, I believe, a Marx-ism. And it is the most reprehensible, irredeemably evil statement I can imagine.