skeptic seems upset that people who have already paid taxes are willing to give to churches out of their own pocket. Secular organisations constantly feed on the public purse because most are not prepared to put their money where their mouth is. The cost would be much greater to society when secular people demand payment for what a huge number of Christians have done for free.

david f,

"Marx advocated getting rid of the bourgeois mechanisms which protect us from state tyranny. In his perceived Utopia they would not be needed."

If memory serves, only after a bourgeois had been created in accordance with the serial dialectic histories (extending Hegel) They had to be built-up to be put down. Next, Marx would have claimed the Revolution was necessary to supress opposition of the Capitalists to allow Socialism, thence Communism. The theory was alleged to be embedded in Utopianism and humanitarianism.

Yet, in 1917, did Russsia need Marxism? "No". Neither, Marx and nor Czar were of no service to the masses. A full constitutional monarchy (not desolvable on royal whim) and a the gradual development of a market economy would have been a better choice. Too rapid industrial development (and nationalism) would have risk the same militarist
outcome as occurred in Japan and Germany, I suspect. I think, Thorstein Veblen would have agreed on the last point.

Margarine Marxim as notionally implemented failed. The actual theories of Marx have not been confirmed in history. (I do see these separately)

Regards.

Dear david f,
All the authors you mention are also heroes of mine and I know their works very well (what do you make of Ladislaw in Middlemarch? An outcast Jew to mirror and outcast a proto-feminist in Dorothea, I suspect). It is heartening that some few can rise above the prejudices of their day, yet there are of course prejudices that aren’t deemed so and are circulated undetected in the loftiest discourses. Anti-Semitism is the classic and still enduring example; you would be hard pressed finding people in Marx’s day who were not infected, consciously or unconsciously. In any event you have not established that Marx carried the infection in more than the benign form I’ve already conceded as likely. Marx worshipped Shakespeare, the consummate everyman whose myriad virtues and vices cancel each other out. An extraordinary polymath, I would suggest Marx was made of similar stuff.
Anyway, for Marx, all representation under capitalism is essentially caricature, ultimately reflecting the socio-economic base, and this is key to understanding him. The Jew, as archetypal money-lender, was a “product” of the system rather than some self-conscious opportunist; he was, like the capitalist, as much a caricature of human potential as those who worked abjectly underground (just as Morlock culture reflects its material conditions). Marx does not revile types, he reviles “what produced them,” just as he would revile our system that has made us the grotesque distortions of what we might have been. Marx’s whole philosophy is above indulging in “symptomatic” hatreds of the day. If Marx did indulge the Jewish stereotype, he also held him as a “minion” of the system, more to be pitied than despised. You cannot condemn Marx unless you understand his philosophy, and I doubt you would if you did. I began to defend your comments on the Manifesto but abandoned the effort because you clearly lack an understanding of the context and the philosophy that underwrites it. You are not alone in that; I doubt one in one hundred thousand does, in the West, where Marx has been systematically and enforceably demonised.

Skeptic,

You put your finger on it ! Yes, whether it's the Catholic church or al-Qaida or the Taliban, the belief that the word of God or the Book must be put into practice on Earth, that temporal and mundane affairs must be subordinate to the Word, that all humans should be submitted to that Word, by conversion or by the sword - this is the extreme example of the evil power of religion.

The question, Squeers, that I have been asking myself is: has Marxism been applied in a similar way, either in pure or garbled form, to subordinate whole populations to yet another Word ? Have people been sacrificed - classes, ethnic groups, whole nations - and, yes, exterminated in huge numbers, to fulfil the demands of yet another religious creed, to honour the Word in yet another grotesque way ? Can some of the evils committed in Marx's name (in Russia, China, Cambodia, various tin-pot dictatorships in Africa) be attributed to the principles that he laid down ? Especially the 'dictatorship of the proletariat' - has this been abused by cliques as a short-cut on the path to socialism, by exterminating whole categories of people who didn't 'fit in' with one's notion of Utopia ? Do all Utopias inevitably turn fascist ?

I suspect, I hope, that Marx did not envisage such short-cuts and that, after the failure of the Paris Commune (perhaps earlier) he was prepared to modify downwards his aspirations: he certainly seems less hopeful of relatively blood-free revolutions in his very late writings. And I would suggest that the already-slim chances of a socialist revolution, led by some Holy Proletariat, have slipped away since then.

So the question for all extreme believers stands: is it permissible to exterminate whole categories of non-believers, for the Word of Christian, Muslim, or Hindu gods, OR Marx, to be fulfilled on Earth ?

Joe Lane

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Dear David,

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Your indictment of Karl Marx on the basis of the facts cited is perfectly admissible. I understand that the personal experience of your uncle Bill has weighed in the balance in formulating your opinion which also happens to be politically correct.

However, if that is what Oliver describes as your “helicopter view”, I believe we need to reach up to a satellite camera in order to obtain a still broader perspective.

Unfortunately, an historical judgment is not possible. Neither helicopters nor satellites can help us there. What we would need is a time machine that could project us forward a few millennia.

Karl Marx came from a Jewish family and I doubt that he was genuinely anti-Semite. The point is debateable. There is no general consensus among scholars.

His truly anti-Semite comrade and, nonetheless, rival, Mikhail Bakunin, actually accused Marxian communism of being part of the Jewish system of global exploitation:

“The point is that authoritarian socialism, Marxist communism, demands a strong centralisation of the state. And where there is centralisation of the state, there must necessarily be a central bank, and where such a bank exists, the parasitic Jewish nation, speculating with the Labour of the people, will be found”.

Karl Marx devoted the major part of his life to the emancipation of the modest masses of society of which he was not, personally, issue. He lived in poverty. One of his sons died of hunger. Unlike his two notable comrades, Engels and Bakunin, he never took an active part in any uprising or revolution. He died stateless, his Prussian nationality having been withdrawn in 1849.

Very few thinkers have ever had such an important impact on the social order of mankind as Karl Marx in the 20th century. His ideas affected half the world’s population.

Communism is as much a religion as capitalism, Christianism, Buddhism, Judaism, Islam, Hinduism, etc. As such, it is open to interpretation. Unfortunately, a certain number of fundamentalists and other converts made the tragic mistake of applying it to the letter.

Continued ...

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Continued ... Dear David, ...

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Naturally, I agree with your point by point criticism of the communist manifesto of Marx and Engels. However, there is a lot in there which many consider to be a brilliant analysis of the social (dis)order at the time and which, regrettably, continues to prevail today.

However, if I may hike a lift in your helicopter for a moment, I should add that, from a broader perspective, the authors’ global analysis of the social (dis)order is, unrealistically, far too Manichean. It totally ignores the existence of the middle class which was there for all to see and which has never ceased to grow in importance.

Needless to say, putting my feet on the ground once more, that whilst one may well admire the force and originality of the analysis and diagnosis of the authors, the cure they prescribe has so far proven to be a total disaster, at least in most, if not all, countries where it has been implemented to date.

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