Knowledge Without Wisdom by Paul Bond

   

     
 

Ch. 1:  Transition

   
 

 



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Knowledge Without Wisdom | Chapter 01 | Transition

Chapter 01 :

Transition

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Knowledge Without Wisdom

© 2001 by Paul Bond

01 | Transition

Man has much more to fear from the passions of his fellow creatures than from the convulsions of the elements. — Edward Gibbon

At midnight on December 31, 1899, London’s Big Ben quietly recorded the earth’s transition from the nineteenth century to the twentieth century. There were no excited crowds on hand to witness this event. There were no parades or fireworks. It may be difficult for us, who witnessed the dawn of the twenty-first century, to comprehend the lack of media coverage and fanfare on this event.

This passive transition is not so unusual given the lack of technology and communication during that time period. Apart from the telegraph system, crude newspapers, magazines, pamphlets, and mail by sea, mortals had to content themselves with one-on-one communication.

Life at the turn of the century was uncomplicated and blissful compared to the chaos of modern society. The city streets were astir with pedestrians and the horse and buggy. Commerce was conducted in a most primitive way. There were no computers, fax machines, or cellular phones; there was no Internet, instant power, running water, or jet travel. There were just people working, thinking, and living. And as the century clicked over rather noiselessly, who would have imagined the enormous changes and shifts in society we see in the modern technology-charged landscape of the twenty-first century?

There are two questions we must now ask ourselves: Have we benefited from the increase in technology? And if so, why? Let us survey the landscape of philosophy and politics to discover why the harvests of the twentieth century have been so fruitful, yet so unfulfilling.

A serious survey of the last century must first look at the characters who influenced thought in the nineteenth century. This is where we run headlong into Karl Marx (1818-1883), probably the most potent intellectual driving force to impact the twentieth century. Marx is the progenitor of the majority of all that is wrong with our present civilization. We will examine the profound influence this single human being has had over our lives all through the twentieth century and beyond. We will also seek to discover what powerful influence drove Marx to formulate his convoluted philosophy and godless doctrine of humanism. And we will try to understand his mindset and, more importantly, how it influenced society at the time and continues to do so every day in so many ways.

Of course, most so-called academic Marxists will scoff at any attempts to summarize Marx. They will insist comrade Karl is completely beyond the range of simple minds. However, we will use the wisdom derived from the last century’s experience of living under the twisted and perverted philosophies that evolved from his tract, The Communist Manifesto.

Before we begin, it is necessary to understand the following two terms:

secular revolt

secular (adjective): worldly, as opposed to sacred, not connected with religion or the church;

revolt (noun): uprising against authority; (verb): rise in rebellion, cause to feel disgust.

secularists (noun):

a person or persons who profess to be worldly and not sacred, nonreligious, non-church-going.

What these definitions, taken from several well-known English dictionaries, mean to our discussion is that secular revolt is a revolution against God, as well as against religion and the church. Secularists, then, are the exponents of the secular revolt. Is that not what modern communism and its sinister sidekick, socialism, espouse?

Karl Marx and Freidrich Engels

Marx was born in 1818, a Jewish German who was educated at the universities of Bonn, Berlin, and Jena. In 1842, shortly after contributing his first article to a Cologne newspaper Rheinische Zeitung, Marx became editor of that paper. He continued to write, criticizing contemporary political and social conditions, which enmeshed him in controversy with authorities. In 1843, he resigned from his position and moved to Paris. It was there that he adopted communist beliefs. He struggled to develop a philosophy of social and political expediency, which was designed to act as a bulwark and rallying point for the masses against the oncoming Industrial Revolution.

In 1844, Freidrich Engels (1829-1895) came to visit Marx in Paris where they discovered both had separately arrived at analogous views on the nature of revolutionary problems. The two began a partnership to explicate the beliefs of communism and to organize an international working-class movement dedicated to those beliefs. Their many-sided collaboration had two principal aspects: systematic exposition of the principles of communism and the organization of the Communist movement. Although the two men began with the field of philosophy, they moved in other directions. Marx dealt primarily with political thought, political economy, and economic history; Engels’s focus was on physical sciences, mathematics, anthropology, military science, and languages.

Marx’s influence during his life was not great, but increased after his death as the labor movement grew. His ideas and theories came to be known as Marxism, or scientific socialism, which constitutes one of the principal currents of contemporary political thought. His analysis of capitalist economy and his theories of historical materialism, the class struggle, and surplus value have become the basis of modern socialist doctrine. Of decisive importance with respect to revolutionary action are his theories on the nature of the capitalist state, the road to power, and the dictatorship of the proletariat.

Marx and Engels tried to analyze contemporary society, which they described as capitalistic. They pointed out the discrepancies between ideals and reality in modern society: rights granted to all had not done away with injustices; constitutional self-government had not abolished mismanagement and corruption; science had provided mastery over nature but not over the fluctuations of the business cycle; and the efficiency of modern production methods had produced slums in the midst of abundance.

They described all human history as the attempt of people to develop and apply their creative potential for the purpose of controlling the forces of nature so as to improve the human condition. In this ongoing effort to develop its productive forces, humanity has been remarkably successful. History has been the march of progress. Yet in developing productivity, various social institutions have been created that have introduced exploitation, domination, and other evils; the price humanity pays for progress is an unjust society.

It was Marx’s argument that all social systems of the past had been a way for the few rich and powerful to live by the work and misery of the many powerless. Consequently, each system was fraught with conflict. Moreover, each method of exploitation had flaws that sooner or later destroyed it, either by slow disintegration or by revolution. Engels and Marx believed that the capitalist system was flawed, too, and therefore bound to destroy itself. They tried to show that the more productive the system became, the more difficult it would be to make it function. The more goods it accumulated, the less use it would have for these goods. The more people it trained, the less it could utilize their talents. In short, capitalism would eventually choke on its own wealth.

The collapse of the capitalist economy, it was thought, would culminate in a political revolution in which the poor masses would rebel against their oppressors. This proletarian revolution would do away with private ownership of the means of production. Run by and for the people (after a brief period of proletarian dictatorship), the economy would produce not what was profitable, but what the people needed. Abundance would reign. Inequalities and coercive government would disappear. All this, Marx and Engels expected, would happen in the most highly industrialized nations of Western Europe, the only part of the world where conditions were ripe for these developments.

Communists in all parts of the world proclaim that all their actions were derived from the teachings of Vladimir Ilich Lenin (1870-1924), who in turn built on the doctrines of Marx and Engels. Most socialists revised these doctrines after Marx’s death. In the twentieth century, Lenin revived, developed, and applied these doctrines. They became the core of the theory and practice of Bolshevism and the Third International. Marx’s ideas, as interpreted by Lenin, continued to have influence throughout most of the twentieth century. In much of the world, including Africa and South America, emerging nations were formed by leaders who claimed to represent the proletariat.

Communists insist that communism was born in the mind of Marx in the middle of the nineteenth century. They further believe it received its first explicit exposition in 1848 when Marx, with the help of Engels, published what has come to be the most infamous pamphlet in the history of the world, The Communist Manifesto. Communism, a concept or system of society in which major resources and means of production are owned by the community rather than the individuals in the community, theorizes that such societies provide for equal sharing of all work according to ability and all benefits according to need. Some conceptions of communist societies assume that coercive government ultimately would be unnecessary and such a society would be without rulers. Until the ultimate stages are reached, however, communism entails the abolition of private property by a revolutionary movement. Consequently, responsibility for meeting public needs is vested in the state.

Many theologians who studied Marx’s writings believe him to be the anti-Christ. Marx’s philosophy as presented in The Communist Manifesto has done its job of causing the blood-thirsty destruction of hundreds of millions of innocent men, women, and children in ensuing revolutions. It has also inaugurated a social mindset described either as socialism or social democracy. Regardless of how we look at these social sophistries, we see the evidence of their origins having been derived by corrupt minds of proponents of The Communist Manifesto. Is Marx the anti-Christ? The answer to this question is irrelevant, as Marx’s mission has been completed.

History of The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto has become known as the first systematic statement of modern socialist doctrine. Written by Marx and in part based on a draft prepared by Engels, this work was derived from the melancholy ramblings of Das Kapital, which was a detailed analysis of the laws governing the economics of capitalism as well as an immense historical and philosophical treatise. Das Kapital, considered to be Marx’s greatest work, was a systematic and historical analysis of capitalist economics. In it, he developed the theory that the capitalist class exploits the working class by appropriating the “surplus value” produced by the working class. In Das Kapital, the theory of historical materialism was fundamentally developed, so it could impinge on the twentieth century.

The Communist Manifesto was the introduction to Marx’s and Engels’s program for social change. It has influenced and reshaped the course of history, not only erupting in such cataclysmic events as the Russian Revolution, but also lurking beneath the subversive antagonism toward democracy and the hostility of many developing nations. It slinks by, unobserved by many, in the sophistry of evolved socialism. It eloquently camouflages itself in so-called social democracy — our latest and rapidly failing populist social experiment.

The Communist Manifesto was written as an inflammatory outcry against capitalist exploitation of the working classes, in preparation for the emerging and oncoming Industrial Revolution and the industrialization of the twentieth century. The Manifesto calls upon workers of the world to unite and revolt against their oppressors: the capitalist system. It calls for the complete abolition of private property and free enterprise through a creeping and tyrannical taxation regime that, when imposed, renders all citizens helpless and in economic slavery and bondage to the ever-powerful totalitarian state.

It further calls for all workers to form into worker communities, or unions, by which a slow and methodical destruction of capitalism and free enterprise would take place, resulting in a utopian civilization where everyone would have an equal share.

In 1848, The Manifesto was published as the platform of the Communist League, a working man’s association. A congress of the Communist League was held in London in November 1847. Marx and Engels were commissioned by this congress to prepare for publication a complete theoretical and practical party program. It was drawn up in German. Then, the manuscript was sent to the printer in London, just a few weeks before the French Revolution of February 1848. A French translation was delivered to the French revolutionaries in Paris shortly before the insurrection of June 1848. Danish and Polish editions had also been published by 1850. The Communist Manifesto had a profound effect in spawning the French Revolution, which was really the first great battle between the proletariat (working class) and bourgeoisie (wealthy elite).

When The Communist Manifesto pamphlet was distributed, all the powers of eighteenth-century Europe entered into “holy alliance” to hunt down and exorcise this haunting specter. The Pope and the Tsar, Metterniesh and Guizot, French radicals, and German police spies — all of these individuals and groups rallied together to rid the world of the principles behind The Manifesto.

They were unsuccessful. The seed of The Communist Manifesto was planted into the academia of world society. This seed has now found the fertile soil so necessary for the slow cancerous growth of the weed, which was destined to engulf and choke the modern civilization of the twentieth century.

The Meaning of The Communist Manifesto

The Communist Manifesto is divided into four sections, preceded by an introduction that begins with the provocative words, “A specter is haunting Europe — the specter of communism.

In the first section, Marx outlines his theory of history and prophesies an end to exploitation. Identifying class struggle as the primary dynamic in history, he characterizes the modern world as the stage for a dramatic confrontation between the ruling bourgeoisie (the capitalists) and the downtrodden proletariat (the working class). Driven by capitalism to seek ever greater profit, the bourgeoisie constantly revolutionizes the means of economic production, the fulcrum of history. In so doing, it unwittingly sets in motion socio-historical forces it can no longer control, thus ironically calling into existence the class destined to end its rule — the proletariat. As the proletariat increases in number and political awareness, heightened class antagonism will, according to The Manifesto, generate a revolution and the inevitable defeat of the bourgeoisie.

In the second section, Marx identifies the Communists as the allies and theoretical vanguard of the proletariat. He emphasizes the necessity of abolishing private property, a fundamental change in material existence that will unmask bourgeois culture, the ideological expression of capitalism. After the revolution, economic production will be in the hands of the state, that is, the proletariat, organized as the ruling class. Because ownership will be in common, class distinctions will begin to disappear.

The third section, criticizing various alternative socialist visions of the time, is now largely of historical interest but displays the author’s formidable polemical skills. The final section, which compares Communist tactics to those of other opposition parties in Europe, ends with a clarion call for unity: “Workers of All Countries, Unite!

The Manifesto is the most concise and intelligible statement of Marx’s materialist view of history. Hence, although it produced little immediate effect, it has since become the most widely read of his works and the single most influential document in the socialist canon.

With the benefit of history and the wisdom of experiencing this choking weed, we may now discover not only the progenitor of our twentieth-century woes, but also the powerful evil mind that nurtured this philosophy for more than a century and a half. It is obvious that Karl Marx and his associates — together with the innocent, gullible, unwise, weak and indolent minds of the twentieth century — became unknowingly and unwittingly the agents of rebellious and fallen sons of God. We will call their tract The Luciferian Manifesto.

As the close of the nineteenth century drew near, we can use history as our guide to see that the scaffolding of civilization, having survived the dark ages of Christian domination, was ripe for a new philosophy. The individual, science, and secularism were propelled into a wild melee of social revolution by the thirst for equality by four-fifths of the population — the working class. Driven by envy, greed, and hatred of the wealthy elite, the fertile soil of the early twentieth century was perfect for the emergence of communism, socialism, and social democracy. All that was needed were the radical minds of future mortals in the twentieth century to propel this empire of destruction from generation to generation.

As The Communist Manifesto began to infiltrate European and American society, there appeared many branches of like-minded thinking that espoused this twisted way of looking at humanity and the world. In England, the Fabian Society took root and attracted to it many of the latter nineteenth-century intelligentsia. Counted among these bright, yet weak and indolent minds were many of the members of the arts as well as the physical sciences and the social sciences. Why was this so? They were looking for a euphoric, utopian life — an easy way out.

Put simply, the Marxist manifesto provided and still does provide a declaration of liberty that absolves personal responsibility by transferring all authority to the state. The individual mortal, through an abdication of personal responsibility and self-will decision- making, is simply let off the hook from the rigors of daily living. The cruel deception of a utopian world is not only mythical but also fraught with danger. The progenitor of The Manifesto and the twentieth-century devastation through social and political retrogression — Karl Marx — was the unwitting recipient and mortal agent of this evil and short-sighted work.

As the nineteenth century drew to a close, the ground was well prepared. It had been worked and fertilized by almost half a century of indoctrination by the words of The Communist Manifesto. All that was needed were men and women of sufficiently weak minds to carry this manifesto into the wider world and spread its evil intent among all humankind, particularly the oppressed and weak of society.

As history records, there have been a plethora of such individuals to carry out the bidding of this plan for the final destruction of our civilization. We shall see during this odyssey of discovery, using recorded history as our guide, the many mutations of the original Communist Manifesto. Future generations succumbed to the sophistry of a declaration of liberty, fueled by envy, enmity, hatred, and greed — all negative and prevalent in the mindset of the workers and the underprivileged. We see how this promises ease of living and, thus, a powerful tool to destroy the “enemy” — capitalism and the free enterprise system.

Now that we have a firm grip on the social and political cauldron of Marxist thinking that globally permeated the latter part of the nineteenth century (particularly in academia), we may proceed with our investigation. We will see how hundreds of millions of unsuspecting and ignorant workers could so easily be seduced into the unions’ and workers’ communities, as the call to revolution was heeded and executed. We will also see that hundreds of millions of innocent lives would be sacrificed — as the slaughter that logically follows this twisted and evil manifesto was ordered by cosmically insane mortal minds. Throughout the twentieth century new fascists arose, spawned from the same hatred, envy, and greed provoked by The Communist Manifesto mindset. These negative human emotions are inherent in our evolutionary genes from primeval beginnings, and simply require provocation.

But in the closing of the nineteenth century, the global population was totally unprepared and ignorant of the evil seeds that had been cast onto fertile soil — awaiting the moment for their new life and the prolific and cancerous spread over humanity and the world.

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