History of Marxism (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
What do the revolutions associated with Stalin, Hitler, Mao, and even the French in the late 18th Century have in common? More than you’d think. One could even say that they were various incarnations of the same sentiments, refined from populism against a royal elite, to targeting Classism (a huge theme for Nazi Germany, and ironically also of their nemesis ideology, Communism), and under the guise of worker’s rights with the proliferation of the industrial revolution, anti-Capitalism.
Statism has become the touted magic cure for the ills of a Free Market, with governments’ purported role of curbing the power of corporations. Even today, as seen in the Occupy Movement, the Marxists and other far leftists have come out of the closet, practically raised from the dead after being buried in the end of the Cold War. They want revolution.
But it’s a specific kind of revolution, one that’s all so familiar.
I’m not arguing against the reality that corporate evils exist. But the model of the people rising up and fixing it in some grand revolt was proven a failure many times. What Marxist or Communist or Socialist revolution — the oppressed workers supplanting the oppressive owners — ever, EVER worked? I must make some reference at this time to Orwell’s Animal Farm, the ending of the book in particular, where you can’t tell the pigs from the humans. Why is this lesson never learned?
The idea that the rich and powerful must be raided and/or jailed is more often not a real attempt to right a wrong, so much as a rationalized jealous bigotry against a whole so-called class of people, with many of the them not part of the problem and working toward solutions themselves. The so-called 1% includes our dentist, the lawyer down the street, perhaps even the head of a large school district. Certainly every man in Congress is on that list. And the men and women at the very top? Some of them are the largest philanthropists in history. We even owe the American library system to the likes of Carnegie.
It’s about dehumanizing based on income and wealth. High social status is seen as an unnatural abomination, or an assumption of self-superiority and greed at the least. A prejudicial caricature is drawn of epicurean, uncaring enemies of labor, the environment, and even democracy simply because our broken system allows for the purchase of policy and “justice”. They are guilty in the same way a gun owner must be a criminal and a male must be a chauvinist.
But back to point: How many innocent people died in the purgings in the name of eliminating classism? Ever hear of the [[Great Purge]]? The [[Holocaust]]? The [[Cultrual Revolution]]? Anti-classism was at the heart of every last one, but no one dares look at it. The Jews represented banking control. Anyone owning a factory or too much land gets sent to Siberia. Any non-physical labor worker in China got sent to farms or simply disappeared. And what is left? A new ruling class, more oppressive than before, and the near elimination of a middle class with almost everyone shifting to the bottom. Good job, guys.
In the end, such a notion of revolution against the “haves” is a temporary (if not contrived) idealism, and will, as always, be forgotten once the new cronies replace the old in the name of representing the rest of us. Basically, those who want revolution the most just want their chance at holding the whip.
So such people can talk revolution if they want, but it has been proven time and again supplanting the rich by the poor is a game of musical chairs that only perpetuates the problems that are never being recognized or addressed. When people can address poverty without over-simplistic money solutions like welfare and aid, and provide the conditions corproations can thrive better without doing bad things instead of slapping them on the hand when they do, THEN we will have a real change in the status quo.
