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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