as I have said before, I shall now engage with
the “myths” of Marx…
the basis we have for the “myths” of Marx is the Soviet Union
creation, during the 1920’s and 30’s, of the “myths” of Marx…
in other words, what we know of Marx was the creation of the mythmakers
during the time of soviet union…
we can better understand Marx in light of a comparison between Marx
and Lenin…
Marx was an economist whereas Lenin was a political theorist…
and this makes all the difference in the world…
Now was Lenin a good “Marxist”?
Lenin did take Marx’s idea of the economic basis of human beings
and make that the central basic core belief of his, but his leanings
were toward a political theory, not an economic theory…
Marx did engage with political theory early in his career, say before
1851 or so or just after the revolution of 1848-49 which help create
the modern world…but the failures of the various revolutions in various
countries led Marx to recast his thought from the political to the economic…
in other words, why did the various attempts at revolution fail in 1848-49?
the answer for Marx was not in the political but in the economic sphere…
Marx was very good at describing current events and his attempts to
create a final value which was the end game of a classless society…
but in going from point A, the current events to point B, the classless
society, he didn’t lay out a detailed map of how to get from our current
state to the final classless society………
we could achieve salvation by achieving the final destination of a classless
society, but what steps were needed to go from point A… to point B?
Marx never really says… and that is one of his major flaws…
we can’t see how we are supposed to get from point A to point B…
Marx’s answer was via a small, private ruling structure which was
the means of going from point A. to point B.
the Politburo was the head of the government…
which was elected by the central committee which came
from the party congress… so we have the overall party congress
which elected the central committee which then voted upon
the politburo…the head of government was the general secretary
of the politburo…
so the theory was democratic centralism… but the reality was
a dictatorship led by the general secretary…
what Marx would have supported was the politburo…he strongly believed
in central leadership to reach the ultimate goal, the establishment of
the classless society…
but it is important to understand that Marx didn’t create this system of
government, Lenin did…Lenin engagement was with the political,
not the economic…
so when we talk about “communism” we have to be clear if we are talking
about what Marx was talking about or what Lenin was talking about or what
Stalin was talking about… because Stalin took what Lenin set up and turned
it into a full dictatorship which was all about Stalin… the cult of Stalin…
not very different then the cult of Trump…and with the same idea…
so we can easily follow the path laid out from the soviet union to
the U.S…
we have the theorist who in communism is Marx… and then the economic
theory of Marx is stretch into a political theory by Lenin and that
political theory is stretch by Stalin into a dictatorship…
and how? by the failing of any current theory or ism/ideology which
could compete with communism…we are led to a dictatorship when
current ism/ideologies fail in and people are seeking a new core of values
in which to believe in and those core values are given by the dictatorship…
the dictatorship of either an individual or an party…
and we can follow this path in the west with the original beginnings of
the theory by the economic theorist Adam Smith… who “founded” the
economic theory of Capitalism… he gave capitalism its founding shape
and the language that capitalism uses……
then we have the next step which is to convert
the economic theory of capitalism into a political theory…
that was done over the 20th century but put into full form
in the Raygun administration…the next step came when
the ism’s and ideologies of America failed because they were
not able to work successfully in solving the problems that
America had…economic theories cannot solve political problems…
but we in America have been hoodwinked into thinking so…
going from Marx to Stalin is the same process as going from
Smith to IQ45… the failure of economic theories to solve
political theories lead us, in the failure of other ism’s and ideologies,
to embrace the dictatorship of IQ45 and the GOP…
the methods and the very language of IQ45 and the all-powerful
party, the GOP, which mirrors the politburo, also mirrors
the methods and language of other dictatorships like
Stalin and Hitler…….especially Hitler…
the history of the last 200 years is one of the failure of the ism’s
and ideologies which formed the basis core beliefs of both individuals
and us collectively, in which the ism’s and ideologies have failed…
among the failed systems/ism’s of the last 200 years is the religions…
Catholicism and other religious based ism’s and ideologies have failed…
as has failed other religious based ism’s like Islam and Hinduism
and Buddhism and Confucianism and Protestantism…
the modern world no longer need a religious base belief system,
but we need something to believe in, we are hardwire to have a belief
system, so we substitute one religion for another… we substitute
a political/economic system for a religious system…
the best way to understand this is in thinking about the years after
the birth of Christ when the Roman empire was in the process of failing,
economically and politically… those 400 years of slow, painful collapse,
where the people of the Roman empire lost their belief in the Roman values
that were their core beliefs…the Mos maiorum of the Roman empire…
the custom of the Roman empire to hold to “ancestral authority” as their
core belief was undermined by the events on the ground… but they still
held to this outdated belief into the 4th century as a matter of course but
they acted upon other values instead of the “ancestral authority” beliefs
that drove their ancestors……. in other words, they gave lip service to the
values that their ancestors held as to being the core beliefs of both individual
and of a society…
among the core values that were sacred to the ancient Romans were
values like “fides” which is trust/trustworthiness, reliability, confidence,
and credibility…
Pietas: which was the Roman attitude of dutiful respect toward the gods,
homeland, parents and family… the maintenance of a relationship in a moral
and dutiful manner…
religio and cultus: religio is the bind between gods and mortals
and cultus is the active observance and the correct performance of rituals…
disciplina: which is the military character of Roman society as related o
education, training, discipline and self-control…
Gravitas: was a dignified self-control…
a steadiness or perseverance…regardless of the event or situation…
virtus: constitutes the ideal of the true Roman male… it is virtus
for a man to know what is good, evil, useless, shameful or dishonorable…
dignitas and auctoritas: were the end result of displaying the values of
the ideal Roman and the service of the state, in the forms of priesthood,
military positions and magistracies…
these were Roman values and they were at the heart of what it meant
to be Roman… the core values of a Roman citizen…
but what happens if the core values which define a Roman citizen
become damaged or destroyed by events on the ground…
what if the Roman citizens see the autocracy hold to other values
besides these basic values… what if the values that were meant
to signify what it meant to be Roman became useless or unwanted
or destroyed? the population becomes disconnected, alienated from
the society and themselves…
if these values which we hold dear, that these values which
by which we know ourselves to be Roman are gone, then
what values shall we hold?.. that is the question which
dominated the entire last 200 years of the Roman empire…
what does it mean to be Roman?
if the traditional values no longer hold, then now what?
it makes it easy to the “people” to fall into a personal quest
to find salvation, which is the basis of Christianity…
if the traditional values no longer hold, then what values shall we hold?
that is not just an ancient problem, but a very modern problem…
if our leaders no longer hold to the values of what it means to be an
American, “truth, justice and the American way of life”, then what
values should we hold onto?
we face the exact same crisis that the Roman found themselves in
and I hope we answer it far better then the Romans did…
the Roman failure lies in their turning inward…
the correct answer lies not in going inward,
attempting to find personal salvation but to
find a collective salvation…
the answer is not an economic one or a political answer,
but the answer is to understand where we are and what
is at stake…
the old faiths have died… faith in capitalism and communism
and Catholicism and other such “religions”…
we need new beliefs and a new faith…
a new religion perhaps…
or perhaps we could become adults
and learn to stand on own feet and reject
the need for any type of religion, be it political or
religious or economic…….
we can begin by the creation of new values which
represent who we are and by the search for the values
which we are… and when we discover the new values,
we can begin to become who we are…
incorporate the new values into a new belief system which
answers the question, “who am I”…
what is my personal understanding of who I am and what is my
collective understanding of “who we are”……
what values truly represent what it means to be human
and what values truly represent what it means to be an
American?
we can replace the old failed values with new, vibrant values that
declare to the world who we are as human beings and as Americans….
Kropotkin
