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Back to the Forum Archives I have just finished reading Marx's Communist Manifesto for the second time. I read it many years ago when I was a knee jerk Republican and true blue American. At that time I wanted to debunk Communism for the sake of my belief system. I am still a true blue American, but I have come to consider knee jerk republicanism as a form of emotional illness. I suffered from it, but I outgrew it. In fairness, I feel the same way about knee jerk democrats. I was successful in my debunking of communism, at least to my own satisfaction, but I had forgotten much of the why of it. That is why I decided to give it another look. After a second, more objective, reading, I find my conclusions have not changed. Communism is a bunch of hooey and the Communist Manifesto is a sophomoric effort. I must begin with Carl Marx the writer. Although the manifesto is a very short document, reading it was a very difficult chore. The truth is, Carl Marx was a terrible writer, much like all philosophers and would be philosophers. Like most of the writers of his era, Marx was given to long ponderous sentences with galloping clauses and phrases within phrases. I had to reread many sentences, because they were almost incoherent due to their huge size and compound structure. The average words per sentence turns out to be 24 with one sentence topping out at a whopping 150 words. That has to be a prize winner for the run-on-sentence Olympics. This is a problem with many people that I first addressed in an essay in my book, The Gaffer's Shorts. the essay was entitled, English as it is Spoke and Writ. I called the problem a disease and named it verbosalitis. I identified it as a non-fatal infection of the mouth and mind characterized by swollen sentences with bizarre growths of extraneous, multi-syllable modifiers. Though not fatal, it is, like ugly, incurable. As I indicated, Marx is not the only victim of this disease. It has been historically common to philosophers and politicians in particular. Now, about communism and the manifesto. I find this entire philosophy to be based on two totally irrational assumptions. On examination, both assumptions prove to be demonstrably false. The first assumption is that most people will behave well without incentives or leadership. This is the notion that people given a choice will do their duty. We know this premise to be false. History shows quite the opposite. Most people are rabble and without strong leadership they will behave badly. They will be irrational, inane, selfish, inconsistent, and dishonest. Rabble are dysfunctional unless they have someone to tell them what to do and make it stick. Leadership is essential. I am not implying leadership needs to be nasty. It simply must be strong. The second assumption is the ridiculous idea that it is possible to have a power vacuum. Where human beings are concerned, it is not possible to have a power vacuum for any meaningful period of time. What Marx overlooked in all of his babbling and historical analysis about means of production is the undeniable existence of the dominant. The dominant is a fact of human history. He has always been with us and will always be with us. In any situation of missing leadership the dominant types will move and will compete to fill a power vacuum. This is, in fact, what happened in Russia. The communists/Bolsheviks acted against the Tzars, creating a power vacuum and its concomitant risk of anarchy. Lenin took power in 1917 and established the Central Committee and the party. The party and the state never withered away. It remained in power under various leaders until it was finally overthrown by an almost peaceful revolution. Lenin himself said workers could not develop a revolutionary conscience without the guidance of a vanguard party. The truth is, Russia was never a communist state except in name. It was an aristocracy and occasionally an autocracy. There was no equality, there was, as always, a ruler, a ruling class and a labor class. The ruling class occupied the Kremlin and had villas in the countryside, as always. The workers occupied the growing ghettos and took the crumbs they were offered, as always. I find it almost unbelievable that millions of rabble were taken in by this childish twaddle and wishful thinking of Marx and Engels. It's the kind of daydreaming I should think most people would outgrow after their teens. I must conclude the rabble of Russia must have been living under abominable conditions to have been taken in by this twaddle. By analyzing history in terms of the means of production Marx completely ignores the many other factors involved in the human adventure. He ignores the existence of the different kinds of people involved in history. He concentrates on a so called class struggle. In so doing, he overlooks individuals, the very good people and the very evil people. In particular he overlooks the dominant. You cannot discuss history without discussing dominants. Whatever you choose to call them they will be present. In fact, in all of history it was just a handful of people who determined the course of history. A few of them were well meaning if not good. Some were very evil, but all were dominants of one form or anther. One such was Lenin. These are the facts that come forth in any serious study of history. History is not controlled or determined by the means of production. The flow of history has always been decided by a few men in power. The means of production have indeed changed over time. For example, a modern auto plant would be incomprehensible to a first century Roman wheelwright. That is a result of human behavior, not a cause of it. The means of production simply determines what tools will be available to the dominant who decides the direction of history. I hope you will not take my word for this analysis. To that
end I have placed a copy of the Manifest in our Forum archives.
Please download it and read it.
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