American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
I made a brief note a few days ago about the rhetoric of class warfare duping people as easily today as it did when Marx first developed it. At Forbes, I've expanded the idea to show how chillingly the language of American activists in the Occupy and 99% Movement echoes that of The Communist Manifesto.
After tracing the similarities, which were uncomfortably easy to draw, I point out that what makes our mimicry of that ideology so dangerous is that the circumstances are entirely different.
Now, this is where something curious happens. This is where our particular modern majoritarian movement flounders and makes a fool of itself even compared to Marxism, which Solzhenitsyn already clarified is rationally unsupportable. This is also where our movement gets the most frightening because it continues to agitate for the same radical solution of democratization that communists did.
For Marx, 19th Century European capitalists turned men into slaves, starving, ignorant, and bound to “sell themselves piece-meal” as a commodity, “an appendage of the machine” of industry. With “nothing of their own to secure and to fortify; their mission is to destroy.” The last lines of The Communist Manifesto read: “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.” In other words, people are incited to a socialist revolution from a position of abject misery and strife. They have nothing to lose.
For our 99%, the stakes are supposedly just as high. 21st Century American corporations subjugate free people as unacceptably as their olden-day counterparts. Hundreds of thousands of activists have willingly abstained from the comforts of indoor living so that all may know how we suffer abysmally in bondage to corporations and the rich. According to Occupy Wall Street, those in the 1% are captors and masters who “have held students hostage.” The bourgeoisie made men slaves; the 1% holds us hostage. How do they do this? With what do they forge these vile chains? “With tens of thousands of dollars of debt on education, which is itself a human right.”
All people who have actually been oppressed and subjected to violations of their humanity have license to mock us mercilessly for a statement like that. Oblivious to the absurdity, our 99% employs the hyperbole of communism to make the point that naïve twenty-somethings voluntarily took out loans for optional higher learning and can’t figure out, despite the education they received, how to pay them back. Marx sought a rebellion of those who had nothing to lose. This situation is so far from that as to be comical, yet the American class struggle doesn’t give up his language.
In the end, I try to prove that reciting from this script is an unconscionable error and that the politicians who listen to it aren't worthy to lead our country.
Marx guaranteed the proletariat: “In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.” This sounds perfect and precisely what America needs—a good, fair, equal system based on mutual freedom—but our 99% should grow up, read a history book, and realize that it is utter deceit. This logic was flawed when Marx wrote it and it is flawed now. It will lead us nowhere we want to be.
I don't understand why communism hasn't been completely discredited by now. No one who adopts the rhetoric of Marx should be taken seriously in our society. My hope is that by laying out this comparison, some people will wake up.
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Comments:
Aug '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
In 2003, Frank Pierson quoted the Communist Manifesto in his speech to graduates of USC's School of Cinema Television. I can testify that this was indeed the speech given as I was in the audience.
Nov '11
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
Every time I bring up the fact that Marxism/Socialism/Communism has been tried it has ruined the lives of millions I get the same response: oh, it's never really been tried, not true socialism/Marxism. This is a frustrating response because people who believe this will not admit any socialist system is a true socialist system because it failed. To them, socialism works and it's only the corrupting factors that cause the ruin of a proclaimed socialist government.
As far as discrediting the idea ofMarxist government control, I think that a large step to overturning the smug insistence that the state knows what it is doing would be to eliminate the withholding tax: we'd see a large shift in what people thought about big government or wealth redistribution if everyone had to write a quarterly check to the IRS.
Jul '11
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
People will always come back to this line of thinking as long as our educators are mostly commies or whatever equivalent they choose to cloak themselves as. Our children are poisoned by the public school system and only the elimination of the Dept of Education will be enough to change things.
Sep '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
It is simple envy and it will never be repealed. I was on a plane from Phoenix to Detroit recently and the fellow seated across the aisle and back one row had to put his bag over my head since I had only a single briefcase. Gray-hair and beard, little nebish with Michigan T-shirt tucked into his blue jeans, pulled to mid-navel, might as well have worn a neon sign that said "college professor"...come to think of it he looked a bit like Karl Marx but as we waited to - ugh I hate the word - "deplane" they let the first class passengers go first. Someone said, "they're no different than me except I guess they paid twice as much" and Professor Marx shrugged and said, "the one percent". I was too tired and too rushed to make my connection to Richmond to turn around and throttle him although he deserved it.
Aug '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
So...capitalism finds a way to efficiently redistribute money to hard working pilots and attendants by offering meaningless "perks" associated with 1st class travel, and this guy complains about the system.
What a maroon.
Why you were flying to Detroit...well...
Sep '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
Had to make a connection. No other reason.
Apr '12
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
The first time I read Das Kapital, I couldn't believe it. I had to reread it another two times, three times in all, making notes, to believe that I had, indeed, correctly understood it the first time. I could see the point Marx was making, but it also showed he knew nothing about real life. Adam Smith was so correct when he said that humans are motivated by self-interest. People believe what it suits them to believe. In their belief systems, too, the question to ask is, "What is in it for them?". The Occupiers seem to be so bereft of brains they can't think of a new justification, other than that of Communism and Socialism, to lend approval to their destructive jealousy and greed.
Apr '12
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
Austin Murrey:
Brilliant, Austin! If people actually had to write a check to the revenue department, it might bring to their attention how much they actually pay in taxes.
Aug '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
Nathaniel Wright: So...capitalism finds a way to efficiently redistribute money to hard working pilots and attendants by offering meaningless "perks" associated with 1st class travel, and this guy complains about the system.
What a maroon.
Louis C.K.: Everything is amazing and nobody's happy.
Edited on April 23, 2012 at 9:07pmApr '12
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
Very good article, Maura!
It is so sad that some people don't learn from history. Having met many escapees from Communist countries, and listened to their stories, I find frightening even the idea that this might be inflicted on North America.
Sep '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
I don't understand why communism hasn't been completely discredited by now.
Marxist thought is the default manure that education theorists are composted in at education schools across North America. Children are marinated in it during their K-12 years and then further fluoridated with it during their extended adult day care years at the multiversity in between genital monologues and the thermodynamics of latex prophylactics, whereupon they can extend their adolescence into Greek souvlaki style bliss as part of the Occupy Going Over the Cliff like bison heading to extinction.
Simple, really.
Aug '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
If nothing else, Marx introduced the then-novel concept of uniting across national lines based on class ideology, instead of staying within national forms. Using the post-nationalist language of popular revolution is an intentional choice by the 99%, not accidental. At each Occupy slum you will see multiple signs acknowledging it, such as this one from a protest I visited last year:
But given their message, maybe it is necessary that the Occupy turn to communism. These are not mild socialists seeking to tweak a system to tune it; they want wholesale "reform" of the capitalist ideal. And what other major ideology has come along to challenge capitalism in such a complete manner?
Given a desire for bottom-up revolution, what major school of thought could they turn to?
Dec '11
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
I, too, have often wondered how this could be. Disproven in theory (Hayek), and everywhere by application, yet the supply of adherants (like pretty maidens) is constantly renewed. Except for the professoriate, it is part of the youth movement - rock & roll, Che, stamping one's foot and shouting, "thats not fair!". For the extremely unthoughtful, it allows a sort of moral superiority.
The reasons for this surely have to do with the subjects of history, literature, and especially economics being taught to very few students. The modern university is pretty much a wasteland, having failed in its mission by any criteria.
May '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
One reason communism hasn't been discredited is the fact that there was no "de-communization" at the end of the Cold War as there was de-nazification in Germany after WWII. I've seen t-shirts with the hammer and sickle. I consider that as awful as wearing a shirt with a swastika.
Dec '10
Re: American Activists Foolishly Take A Page From 'Communist Manifesto'
Communism/Marxism will never die entirely, because there will always exist those who seek to destroy and torture the good for no other reason than because it is good.
Because these kind of men will always exist, the ideology most perfectly suited to them will also persist, in the face of all rational thought.
It is evil for evil's sake. You can't reason with it, you can't even exterminate it, you can only hope to stomp on it when it pops up.
It's as if we are forced to play a giant evil game of cosmic whack-a-mole for all eternity.
Sisyphus ain't got nothing on those trying to preserve the American way of life.
Edited on April 24, 2012 at 12:35pm