[karl marx] great man or humbug

In April I ran a post, a rant really, on humanism and humanitarianism but in the comments section, it seemed to become an argument over Communism, for example Winfred Mann's comment:

It is obvious that socialism/communism has failed to provide for the masses as promised. Capitalism has a great deal of inequality but provides a lower bottom rung, so to speak.

That was in April. Now a dear reader who claims to be Someone Who Actually Reads Things, has added a comment:

Not content with quoting what the manifesto says will be SAID by BOURGEOIS CRITICS as if it were the OPINION OF THE MANIFESTO, not content with yanking it out of the middle of a paragraph, not content with adding about as much COMPLETELY FAKE CRAP PULLED OUT OF YOUR ASS* to the one sentence, you are building a "case" against all humanists as the eternal Atheist/Masonic/Satanic/Communist enemy and attempting to create a moral panic. I bet you HATE being compared to Birchers and Nazis, dontcha. Well, guess what. It totally, totally sticks. Idiot.

Leaving aside the misspelling of "ass" [the word he requires has four letters to it], he/she concludes his/her critique with:

If Satan is the "Father of Lies" you are one of his beloved children.

If you were to follow my friend's link, it leads to a children's reading site in which he/she is clearly involved. I wonder if any parents who deal with this site are aware of the type of language my friend indulges in.

However, now this rare opportunity has presented itself, I suppose the onus is on me to address his/her concern:

My dear anonymous friend,

1] On your criticism that the remarks were taken out of context and that criticisms were falsely quoted as those of the authors themselves:

|Manifesto 478| You share a specific concept with all foundered ruling classes, whereby you transform your production- and property circumstances from historical -- in the course of production transitional -- circumstances into eternal natural laws and laws of reason. What you conceive as the traditional concept of property, as feudal property rights, you must no longer consider for the rules governing the property of citizens.

Abolition of the family! Even the most radical get riled up about this shameful intention of the communists.

What is the present family based on? On capitalism, the acquisition of private property. It exists in all of its meaning only for the bourgeoisie, but it finds its complement in the enforced lack of families of the proletarians and public prostitution.

The family of the bourgeois naturally falls by the way-side with this, its complement, and both will vanish when capitalism vanishes.

This was MML's sleight of hand. Quoting his critics in his own terms, then failing to directly answer the criticism he himself has paraphrased! Instead, speaking in utter simplication that the family is based on capitalism, failing to consider that the family existed long before usury became the norm and the guilds gave way to the bourgeoisie.

Then, feeling he's established the capitalist connection to the family, he proposes, four pages later:

|Manifesto 482| 10. Public and publicly funded education of all children. Abolition of children's factory labour in its present form. Unification of education with material production etc.

Which looks wonderful on paper until one realizes that this means enforced state education of children [mentioned later if one reads through] and for what purpose? To overcome the influence of the capitalist, connected to the family [p 478]

This was the logic of Karl Marx in context and not paraphrased. The man was a total humbug in his scholastic methodology. Then we get onto other things:

"We must war against all prevailing ideas of religion, of the state, of country, of patriotism. The idea of God is the keynote of a perverted civilization. It must be destroyed." [1848]

In his poem 'The Pale Maiden" Karl writes:

Thus heaven I've forfeited,

I know it full well,

My soul, once true to God,

Is chosen for Hell.

[Karl Marx, "Des Verzweiflenden Gebet" ("Invocations of One in Despair"), p.30.]

Or from The Player:

The hellish vapors rise and fill the brain,

Till I go mad and my heart is utterly changed.

See the sword?

The prince of darkness

Sold it to me.

For me he beats the time and gives the signs.

Ever more boldly I play the dance of death.

Or Lenin on Marx:

"Atheism is an integral part of Marxism. Marxism is materialism. We must combat religion. This is the ABC of all materialism and consequently Marxism."

And what was the nature of this man who wished to overthrow the building blocks of a society?

Franz Mehring; "Although Karl Marx's father died a few days after his son's twentieth birthday, he seems to have observed with secret apprehension the demon in his favorite son.... Henry Marx did not think and could not have thought that the rich store of bourgeois culture which he handed on to his son Karl as a valuable heritage for life would only help to deliver the demon he feared." [Henry Marx, Mehring p.32.]

"He parted from me as an overzealous Communist. This is how I produce ravages....." [A. Melskii, Evangelist Nenavisti (The Evanelist of Hate, Life of Karl Marx) (Berlin; Za Pravdu Publishing House, 1933, in Russian) p.48]

And what of those inspired by either the Marxist ideal or the possibilities afforded by it?

"A silent, unavoidable revolution is taking place in society, a revolution that cares as little about the human lives it destroys as an earthquake cares about the houses it ravages. Classes and races that are too weak to dominate the new condition of existence will be defeated."

Milovan Djilas: "Was it not so that the demonic power and energy of Stalin consisted in this, that he made the (Communist) movement and every person in it pass to a state of confusion and stupefaction, thus creating and ensuring his reign of fear...." [Milovan Djilas, Strange Times, "Kontinent," 33, p. 25]

2] You object to the grouping of the eternal Atheist/Masonic/Satanic/Communist enemy and attempting to create a moral panic.

There is nothing in Marx's writings, when taken in context, not out of context, as you accuse me of doing shortly before doing so yourself, to lead one to come to any other conclusion than those which we already have.

This is the typical Marxist - blurring truths and applying pseudo logical syllogisms to establish that which is unsustainable. It was not Lenin or the failure of Russia to be "ready". It was the sheer lack of understanding of human nature underlying the communist's mindset which will eternally condemn it to eventual oblivion.

Churchill's quote, referring to the goal of Marxist inspired agitators, becomes more and more apt with every reading of Moses Mordecai Levy. These people are consumed by:

...the overthrow of civilization and for the reconstitution of society on the basis of arrested development, of envious malevolence and impossible equality...

I remain, your humble and obedient, James Higham