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Dear david f,

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« Banjo Paterson quotes Marx. Marx was good at making witty aphorisms. Quite often they were completely wrong. »
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I couldn’t agree with you more, david.

It reminds me of the famous 80%/20% rule that people used to come up with when speaking of their professional activities, a few years ago, no matter how passionate and enthralling they appeared to be.

I recall, for example, a famous professor of medicine declaring during an interview on French television, I guess it must have been sometime during the late 1970s :

« 80% of my work is dull, tedious and uninteresting and only 20% is innovative and exciting. »

So I imagine the same 80%/20% rule applying to the activities of people such as the Scottish moral philosopher and political economist, Adam Smith and the German philosopher, economist, and revolutionary socialist, Karl Marx, i.e., :

« 80% of their ideas were nothing but hogwash and 20% changed the course of history of mankind. »

I suppose that same basic principle applies even to geniuses such as Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein, George and david f.

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Dear Banjo Paterson,

Thank you putting me in the illustrious company of Leonardo da Vinci, Einstein and George.

However, I question an aphorism you quoted in reference to Marx and Smith:

« 80% of their ideas were nothing but hogwash and 20% changed the course of history of mankind. »

Marx’s ideas did change the world. However, my opinion is that his ideas that changed the world belong in the 80% of hogwash. Some of his ideas that changed the world are expressed in the Communist Manifesto. In my opinion that document is largely hogwash.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12693 is my article which tells why I think it is hogwash.

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Dear david f,

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« Marx’s ideas did change the world. However, my opinion is that his ideas that changed the world belong in the 80% of hogwash. »
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I know you detest Marx and Marxism and I am sure you have good reason to do so.

Allow me simply to observe that Marx’s ideas were revolutionary at the time but he, personally, never put them into practice nor did he ever incite anybody to harm or kill anybody.

His intentions were motivated by the highly laudable humanist desire to emancipate the working class from the domination and exploitation of capitalism.

The standard common law test of criminal liability in democratic regimes is expressed in the Latin phrase, “actus reus non facit reum nisi mens sit rea”, which means "the act is not culpable unless the mind is guilty". Thus, in jurisdictions with due process, there must be an “actus reus”, or "guilty act", accompanied by some level of “mens rea” to constitute the crime with which the defendant is charged.

It seems to me that a clear distinction should be made between the analysis of the mechanisms that allowed a small elite to dominate and exploit the majority, indicating what they should do to emancipate themselves (“Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains”), and the brutal methods of the political dictators who implemented those ideas.

Under no stretch of the imagination could this be interpreted as an incitation to slaughter tens of millions of innocent people.

Having said that, paradoxically, I could only imagine the citizens of theocracies such as the Islamaic State, Iran or the Vatican and, perhaps, some other fanatical religious communities voluntarily adopting Marxism – despite (or, precisely, because of) Marx’s opinion of religion as “the opium of the people”.

In my view, anybody would have to be a religious fanatic to voluntarily accept to live the life of a colony of ants, or a swarm of bees or wasps, renouncing his individuality (and accepting another form of enslavement) in exchange for the security of the community.

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Dear Banjo,

One is guiltless if one's intentions were noble is one moral rule. Another is that your acts are good or bad depending on the results. What happened in the Marxist states seem a direct consequence of the Marxist ethos.

A person is guilty of homicide even if he or she did not intend to kill anybody if the logical consequence of the act results in someone else’s death. Marx is guilty of negligent homicide.

However, Marx's intentions were not completely noble the way I see them. For one thing he was a bigot. Like other people who come from a heritage that some despise he tried to distance himself from his Jewish heritage. He wrote “On the Jewish question”. It is on the net. As far as I can see it was a vile attack on Jews which could have been written by a Nazi.

He thought of nations as in different stages of progress. That is an idea which he apparently took from Hegel. Thus he supported the Polish attempt to free themselves from Russian domination and also supported the Turkish domination over the Greeks. He saw the Poles as more advanced than the Russians and the Turks as more advanced than the Greeks.

In seeing people as defined by their class, nationality, religion or ethnicity and disregarding their individuality it is not a great leap as far as I can see to justify slaughtering them according to their class, nationality, religion or ethnicity.

One should treat an employee with dignity and consideration. Marx impregnated the family maid. An upper class man took advantage of a lower class woman.

You wrote: “Marx’s ideas were revolutionary at the time.”

The idea that people oppressed for one reason or another should be free is a very old idea. It is at the heart of messianism. Abolition of private property is recommended in Plato’s Republic and the Bible. Marx made an excellent study of the capitalism of his time and was an eloquent writer, but his ideas were neither new nor original. Babeuf, Saint-Simon, Proudhon et al had similar ideas.

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Dear david f,

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I understand the reasons for your indignation toward Karl Marx despite his noble intentions.

However, I note that you condemn his “acts”:

« One is guiltless if one's intentions were noble is one moral rule. Another is that your acts are good or bad depending on the results. »

« A person is guilty of homicide even if he or she did not intend to kill anybody if the logical consequence of the act results in someone else’s death. »

Marx was a theoretician, a thinker, a philosopher. He elaborated and promoted a particular political and socio-economical ideology, rightly or wrongly considered original and revolutionary at the time. But he never, personally, put his ideas into practice. Nor did he ever harm or kill anyone or incite anybody to do so.

The Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the UN, in 1948, 65 years after his death, clearly establishes in its Article 18 freedom of thought, conscience and religion and in its Article 19 freedom of opinion and expression. These latter rights include “freedom to hold opinions without interference and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and regardless of frontiers”.

Marx may well have been a bigot, as demonstrated by his “vile attack on Jews which could have been written by a Nazi” as you rightly point out. The fact that he abused of his position as an “upper class man” in taking advantage of his “lower class” housemaid by impregnating her is both morally condemnable and contrary to his proclaimed philosophy.

Nevertheless, if I were a member of a jury assigned to judging him, based on the evidence, I honestly cannot see any good reason to find him guilty of the mass murder of which you accuse him.

On the other hand, I should have little hesitation in condemning the brutal “acts” of political dictators who were responsible for the manner in which Marx’s ideas were imposed on their countries’ citizens, just as I should the brutal “acts” of non-communist dictators, by virtue of some other ideology.

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Dear Banjo Paterson,

Marx was not only an political thinker and philosopher but was also a political figure. We condemn Hitler for his acts although he may never have personally killed anyone. However, he was a political figure who led others who committed vile acts under his guidance. Analogously I condemn Marx.

Marx in 1864 founded the First International which was designed to carry out the Marxist program. In 1872 it split up partly because Bakunin saw that the Marxist program would result in tyranny. Bakunin led his followers out of the First International, and it was dissolved.

The Second International was founded in 1889 after the death of Marx in 1883. It broke up in 1914 due to the conflict between socialist and nationalist loyalties occasioned by WW1.

The Third International was founded in Moscow in 1919 and controlled the USSR as well as a number of communist parties throughout the world. They carried out the program specified by Marx.

However, had the times been ripe in the nineteenth century for Marx to take over a country or countries it is reasonable to expect that he would have done during the First International roughly what Lenin did in the Third International. His language in the Communist Manifesto suggests that.

From the Manifesto: "In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat."