Friday, July 31, 2015

On the Absurdity of Leftist (Marx-based) Thought and Dangers of Taking Marx, Engels, Guevara, Lenin, etc. Seriously

Note: I DO NOT consider the American left as leftist, although there are fundamental disagreements I have with the American left. I mean leftist as it'd be used in most of the world.
Any time I refer to leftist, I mean ideas rooted in the basic ideas of Marx or Engels. Anyways, leftist thought is usually preached by leftists as a form of "equality" or something that is inherently just and morally correct, but there's virtually no wisdom in leftist thought. The ideas of leftist thought, rooted in Marx, surely enough are ideas contrary to any sort of liberty in speech or thought, are contrary to any sort of traditional philosophy, or common sense.

If you read actually read Marx, you'll notice that Marx was a materialistic, racist pig. Marx was a complete bigot who viewed any group of people that wasn't European "proletariat" as inherently evil. He derides and despises the bourgeois, other elites, and people of other races who weren't European. Marx, in a letter to Engels, wrote about what he called "Chinese rabble". Here's Marx in correspondence with Engels in 1869:
The brute believes in the future ‘state of democracy'! Secretly that means sometimes constitutional England, sometimes the bourgeois United States, sometimes wretched Switzerland. ‘It’ has no conception of revolutionary politics. Copying Schwabenmayer, he quotes as proof of democratic activity: the railway to California was built by the bourgeoisie awarding itself through Congress an enormous mass of ‘public land’, that is to say, expropriating it from the workers; by importing Chinese rabble to depress wages; and finally by instituting a new off-shoot, the ‘financial aristocracy’.
Marx was also explicitly anti-Semitic and called the "Jewish God" literally "money". In Marx's racist and anti-Semitic essay On the Jewish Question: Marx says:
Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew -- not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. Let us not look for the secret of the Jew in his religion, but let us look for the secret of his religion in the real Jew. What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest. What is the worldly religion of the Jew? Huckstering. What is his worldly God? Money. Very well then! Emancipation from huckstering and money, consequently from practical, real Jewry, would be the self-emancipation of our time.... We recognize in Jewry, therefore, a general present-time-oriented anti-social element, an element which through historical development -- to which in this harmful respect the Jews have zealously contributed -- has been brought to its present high level, at which it must necessarily dissolve itself. In the final analysis, the emancipation of the Jews is the emancipation of mankind from Jewry
Also note how in Marx's work, he references revolution so much and how "'[Constitutional England, the US, and Switzerland] has no conception of revolutionary politics". A typical leftist would respond that, "Marxist thought goes well beyond Marx" and this is certainly true. However, ALL Marxist narratives only go one way (I'd love to see someone show me a counter example and if they did, I will PUBLICLY retract my statement and admit my errors). They always assume what they're, in effect, trying to prove. But for the sake of this argument, I'll suppose that all of this wasn't the case.

Instead, I'll attack the leftist Che Guevara, who is still portrayed by leftist as a hero. In the view of revolution, this is a quote by the evil Che Guevara:
To send men to the firing squad, judicial proof is unnecessary. These procedures are an archaic bourgeois detail. This is a revolution! And a revolutionary must become a cold killing machine motivated by pure hate.
Guevara also said:
Youth must refrain from ungrateful questioning of governmental mandates. Instead, they must dedicate themselves to study, work and military service.
Youth should learn to think and act as a mass. It is criminal to think as individuals!
We must do away with all newspapers. A revolution cannot be accomplished with freedom of the press.
The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims!
Then, leftists, socialists, and statists argue that Hitler was not a socialist, without recognizing that Hitler's party was the national socialist party. They also ignore the kind of economic system that Hitler ran was a more tightly controlled version of China's current economic system wherein government inputs and outputs were tightly controlled, but suppose we ignore all of that. Here's Hitler on the topic in 1927:
We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.
If that's not convincing that Hitler was a socialist, here's more written in Time Magazine in 1939:
Most cruel joke of all, however, has been played by Hitler & Co. on those German capitalists and small businessmen who once backed National Socialism as a means of saving Germany's bourgeois economic structure from radicalism. The Nazi credo that the individual belongs to the state also applies to business. Some businesses have been confiscated outright, on other what amounts to a capital tax has been levied. Profits have been strictly controlled. Some idea of the increasing Governmental control and interference in business could be deduced from the fact that 80% of all building and 50% of all industrial orders in Germany originated last year with the Government. Hard-pressed for food- stuffs as well as funds, the Nazi regime has taken over large estates and in many instances collectivized agriculture, a procedure fundamentally similar to Russian Communism.
If even that isn't convincing, just look at the actual economic policies of fascism. The basic idea is for the centralized state to nationalize industries, let the old guys in charge operate according to rules set by the state, then control the inputs and outputs as necessary. Sure enough, this is exactly what Hitler did.

There is no justice with these ideas. Leftists always claim that they know the best and claim to be non-violent and want peace. However, all of their ideas NECESSARILY require someone holding a gun to someone else's head if others don't comply. If others don't comply, the idea is to ostracize them and effectively wipe them out. Even today, the violent aspects of their perspective is limited, so leftists use any sort of claim to attack and suppress opposition including "political correctness", "equality", and even "democracy" (when naively used by the mass imposing their will on the minority. Note that Guevara, Mussolini, Hitler, Marx, and Engels all supported the masses imposing their will on the minority).

The leftist ideas of revolution, radical change, and the willingness to throw all sense of logic away for some emotional call to "revolution" while supporting the worst acts possible is EXTREMELY dangerous. These people honestly want to take the most extreme ideas and implement them forcefully while ruthlessly wiping out all forms of opposition.

While I can't prove this, even today when I read Marxist thinkers, I recognize these same principles and tendencies in their works. They still seem to sympathize with something like the Soviet Union or principles like Guevara suggested. I consider legitimate sympathies to ideas illustrated my Marx, Engels, or Guevara to be PURE EVIL!

4 comments:

  1. What happened to our interesting discussion on INET YSI Commons?

    Well anyway, I had read your post on what you called leftist thoughts a long time ago. And it is basically insults or historical errors:

    - Hitler being a socialist: with the german bourgeoisie at his back? This is true that there were two strands within the NSDAP, but saying he got inspiration from Marx, or even that when ruling the "socialist" part was something else than political posture is a classical conservative way of dismissing Marx and socialism, without grasping even a little bit of understanding of it. Capitalism was not destroyed by the nazis, the capital accumulation continued to go on, only a certain form of capitalism was replaced by another. Laissez-faire capitalism left the room to State-regulated capitalism. But it was the case in most of the world's countries at the time. Think to Roosevelt and his New Deal, Mainstream Keynesianism in West Europe, and also the catch-up industrialization and the accelerated consequent processus of capital accumulation in the so-called socialist countries. The economists of the RĂ©gulation would say that it was the transition to a regime of accumulation to a new one, the Fordist regime. Capital was not destroyed in socialist countries. The State only stepped in and accelerated the catch-up processus, no wonder why that version of "marxism" was popular in poorly industrialized countries (China, Russia, East Europe, Vietnam, Cambodge, Mozambique, Latine America, Indonesia...)
    And really, man, I could look for some references for you on that topic, but to me it seemed before reading you that it was common knowledge, just like the fact that earth was not created two hundreds years ago.

    Well the rest will come after that, I have some classes.

    But I would do only one little concluding remark: you supposedly want to expose the absurdity of leftist thought. But where is the thought, where are the concept, where are the rationals etc? I would really like you to make an attempt of recalling the basic concepts developed by Marx, and those developped by his followers, and then try to oppose them on a theoretical ground. Because, man, come on, your argumentation goes like that: Marx is a materialist, racist pig, a complete bigot, and by the way also antisemite (even if he was from jewish descent...), and his followers are brutal individuals, without justice, and even Hitler was a socialist. Period.

    Anyone could understand that it is a bit short. So, for instance, I would really like you to recall us what is :
    - the double nature of the marchandise
    - the distinction between value, exchange value, and use value
    - the root of the labour theory of value, and the innovations with respect to Smith's and Ricardo's versions
    - the distinction between wealth and value, and the consequent contradiction of capitalism
    - the scheme of basic reproduction of capital, and the expanded one (so much for the assumed linearity and non circularity of Marx thought you mentioned in our discussions earlier...)
    - the nature of money in a capitalst economy of production
    - the distinction between historical time and logical time, that Keynes had two
    - his criticism of Say's law, and of generally speaking free-markets' naivity
    This would already be a start. Because even if you claim having read extensively Marx and the Marxists, as I would not accuse you to be a lier, the only logical explanation is that you never understood them

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    Replies
    1. "The State only stepped in and accelerated the catch-up processus, no wonder why that version of "marxism" was popular in poorly industrialized countries"

      Yea, this is total nonsense. I was born in one of those countries (India) and I can personally tell you how much damage central planning did to India. In 1945, the entire population of the entire Indian subcontinent was ~300 million. By 1990 (India pre-liberalization), the population of India was >1 billion. The problem with centrally planned industrialization is that you increase food production instantaneously while not having the market linking mechanisms to make trade more available. What you ended up doing is creating an explosion in the fertility rate that could be sustained while preventing market networks from developing more naturally in a decentralized manner. Go and take a look at the water reserve levels from India in 1950 to today and then get back to me. Before, you'd have to dig 4-8 feet for water and now, you have to dig 50 feet (not a joke BTW). Secondly, you took a very diverse country and imposed a one size fits all policy. India was a NET CREDITOR when it got independence. It was an opportunity to open India up to foreign capital, develop infrastructure, and basic market mechanisms. None of that happened and when populations started to explode and the government even came close to realizing what was going on, it was already too late.

      You're using the USSR as an example of something good?! The USSR committed the worst environmental degradation in world history.

      "This is true that there were two strands within the NSDAP, but saying he got inspiration from Marx, or even that when ruling the "socialist" part was something else than political posture is a classical conservative way of dismissing Marx and socialism, without grasping even a little bit of understanding of it."

      Hitler was inspired by Marx and says so in the first chapter of Mein Kampf. Hitler wasn't against Marx; he was against Lenin's interpretation of Marx. See the link below, here's an excerpt from the link below.
      "He further elaborated by claiming that out of ten thousand politicians only one Bismarck emerged, subtly implying that he too had been born with this gift; continuing, he declared that it was not Karl Marx who stirred the masses and ignited the Russian Revolution but Lenin, not making his appeal to the mind but to the senses."
      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_views_of_Adolf_Hitler

      "Think to Roosevelt and his New Deal, Mainstream Keynesianism in West Europe, and also the catch-up industrialization and the accelerated consequent processus of capital accumulation in the so-called socialist countries."

      Yea, these progressivist stories are all nonsense. The person most responsible for the interwar period and World War II was the racist, social Darwinist dumbass Woodrow Wilson. Actually, the Republicans and Wall Street wanted a cancellation of interwar debts accumulated in World War I, but the Democrats (who were supported by the people) were against it because the Republicans were rich. There were Republicans who were LITERALLY citing Keynes' The Economic Consequences of the Peace in Congress AD VERBATIM, but they were ignored by the people at large who supported the Democrats.

      The person who led the US to the greatness it had in the 20th century was John Pierpont Morgan in the late 19th BTW, not FDR as is claimed by the progressivist narrative.

      Who cares about what Ricardo says? He's a dumb economist like anyone else. In Ricardo's comparative advantage, he assumes prices to be stable and assumes away financial factors, so how are any of Ricardo's ideas applicable to developing countries? It wasn't Marx that was even close to the first to make this argument. Alexander Hamilton made this argument well BEFORE MARX WAS BORN!

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    2. "the nature of money in a capitalst economy of production"
      The nature and creation of money is straightforward. It's just a balance sheet creation: loans create deposits (from the invention of double entry bookkeeping by Florence ~1500).

      "- the distinction between value, exchange value, and use value "

      These distinctions are total crap. There's no way to measure value, so anything that uses value as a distinction needs to be thrown out the window. Why would you use something as a measurement that can't be measured? You don't. If you do use something like that, I just assume you're an idiot.

      The problem with your reasoning is the same as that of Marx. You're not questioning you're assumptions. The classic example is when you talk of "value" like "exchange value" or "use value" without even having the ability to measure value. The problem in economics is the use of such abstractions like "utility" or "value", which are useless and cannot be measured.

      "the scheme of basic reproduction of capital, and the expanded one (so much for the assumed linearity and non circularity of Marx thought you mentioned in our discussions earlier...)"

      So what is capital? I actually wrote an entire post on capital formation, but it's a mistake to assume capital is money in a bank. Capital, as I define it, is any input in production that's not land or labor. In other words, the definition of capital itself is very broad and encompasses a whole host of things. The ability to extract and refine oil instead of wood is a form of capital. Institutions to protect property rights are a form of capital. Flexible social, political, and financial institutions are a form of capital.
      http://suvysthoughts.blogspot.com/2014/12/economy-basics-and-real-wealth-creation.html

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    3. I don't think you fully understand my critique on Marx. My critique on Marx is that he doesn't question his assumptions. He's attacking ideas like comparative advantage by Ricardo, but Alexander Hamilton wrote an extensive critique of comparative advantage in 1790. Comparative advantage forces developing countries to specialize in commodity production and commodity exports, which prevents capital formation. So protection is necessary. We don't need Marx to critique this. Hell, Marx attacking Ricardo in this regard is akin to beating a dead horse. Marx didn't come up with any new ideas. He's just an idiot who thought he was smart and new and innovative. Of course, he was only the latter two, but his ideas were incredibly stupid. This guy envisioned a utopian society with a classless state as even possible and a sign of "progress". He attacked other societies with very sophisticated institutions as primitive because he didn't understand them (ex. the Asiatic Mode of Production, which is also historically wrong BTW). The guy just assumes that because he doesn't understand it, it shouldn't exist. In other words, if you take him seriously, it'll blow up your society.

      BTW, in most of the world, industrialization has caused far more harm than good. It's happened and there's nothing we can do about it, but centrally planned industrialization hasn't been good. I don't know why you simply assume it has. The kind of environmental degradation it's created, especially in places like India or China or the old USSR has been so damaging and most of it hasn't even been productive. In fact, most of that industrialization has led to disastrous consequences.

      Some of these countries took explicit policies to turbocharge GDP growth via central planning and industrialization, including the USSR, India, other countries, and even Nazi Germany (Nazi Germany generated massive GDP growth by rearmament, but it was basically the same process). Most of these consequences haven't been good. Have you been to these places that've been industrialized via central planning? In many of these places in the 3rd world, all you've done is allow larger populations to be sustained, fertility and population growth rates to explode, and many of these cases (ex. most places in India, Nigeria, etc.) have led to more people with no commensurate increase in the standard of living.

      In the case of India, living standards only saw a real increase AFTER liberalization reforms in 1991, which was forced on the government from a crisis. I don't know why you assume forcible industrialization policies to be good everywhere, especially if they're done by central planning. Some places, like far inland India, have no business having large scale industry. It actually hurts economic production in the longer term.

      Don't get me wrong, some parts of India are doing great now, but to say that's because of centrally planned industrialization is a complete and utter joke. It's in spite of centrally planned methods. I can't emphasize how much central planning fucked up India. I can spend hours on this.

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