House of Eratosthenes

Neal Boortz is in a state of alarm, and I myself in one of extreme discomfort, to see an unelected Obama administration sub-czar using Marxist rhetoric to justify the current policies on his personal blog. That isn’t hyperbole, the bureaucrat really is quoting Karl Marx from Das Kapital, and in a laudatory way, to show us what direction we need to go.

But what really floored me, was this sign-off in which he critiques the use of the term “class warfare.” How dare you peons notice what we’re doing and start describing it in accurate terms! Stop it!

To warn against class warfare only makes sense if there are classes, and more than that, if there might be a reason to be answered for one of the classes to do battle. There is only so much to go around, and the efforts of one group or the other to assert a claim to a larger share can be called class warfare. It can be a war waged through changes in the taxes, in a restructuring of incentives and pay scales, an increase in the benefits given to the poor, or revolt. The first three are legitimate means in our society, and it is really taking a good joke to [sic] far to suggest it is damaging to the body politic for members of society to look at the differences in income and take action to redistribute in their direction. [bold emphasis mine]

So I guess we’re all done arguing over whether these people are followers of Marx or not. There’s no disagreement.

Now, if you’re tasked to maintain or build something that is actually supposed to work, interestingly, you’re going to be seeing the entire situation differently than a Marxist. Think about a pressure plate absorbing pressure inequitably, so that a force is dispersed throughout four square inches rather than a hundred and forty-four square inches. Think about one bearing out of six absorbing a disproportionate share of the stress, load and heat as the shaft spins. There, too, out in the real world will be a problem of inequality that must be solved…and soon, for a mechanical breakdown is imminent. What’s the first step? Anybody? Bueller…?

You aren’t going to think like a Marxist, because the first question you’ll need to have settled is why? Specifically…what is it that is special about these four square inches, or about this one bearing, that divides up the load in this way. Look into that, and you’ll find something crooked. Maybe the part that is absorbing all the stress, is the part that has to be replaced. Or maybe it’s something else. Maybe the shaft is out of alignment. Maybe there is a rule of adjacency going on here, like, one generator picks up a load because the generator next to it on the circuit, isn’t putting out the way it should, and you’re dealing with a rolling blackout.

In either case, the first step is to get inquisitive. Right here. Things should be uniform and they’re not — why? What’s special about this one thing?

Marxists, I’ve noticed, never seem to do that…ever. Of course, we know why. It’s obvious. They cannot afford to.

A has far more money than B, and this causes all of these problems that need to be fixed toot-sweet…”there is only so much to go around”…”take action to redistribute”…to take the mechanic’s attitude and start asking, why is there more loot in the orbital space of A, than around B, is to take the conversation in a place where the Marxist cannot afford for it to go.

After all, when you’re the guy who doesn’t have very much, it doesn’t matter what you need to do to get hold of more. Some poor people do have their principles of course, and can see the pitch coming from a mile away; they say, no, I’m not going to vote myself someone else’s property, I’m going to see what I can do about my own situation. Such a feeling can dissipate as one’s plight becomes more desperate. The thing of it is, though, by then you’re willing to do anything else, just as well. Like — put some serious thought into the possibility you’ve been raised the wrong way, maybe consider that hard work and dedication might be the keys to prosperity, find yourself an internship, become an old-fashioned apprentice-type, go to a night school, bust your ass…maybe that’ll lead somewhere just as well?

The constituents of the Marxist are not dedicated to Marxism. They just want their circumstances to get better…or, to not get any worse. That’s all. Point is, the Marxist cannot spend too much rhetoric examining causes of things. None at all, really.

He wants to reach not just any ol’ poor-person, but a special kind of poor-person. The kind who is poor, and destined to remain poor, because he or she can’t or won’t accept the idea that circumstances might have causes, that maybe what’s being endured is nothing more than a consequence to a prior action…or lack of action. Of course, middle-class types are just as suitable, provided they don’t know they’re middle-class, and think they’re being oppressed just because they’re missing something someone else has.

Because hey, who’s going to join up with a “redistribution” effort if he expects to be on the wrong end of the redistribution? I know I know, Warren Buffett and Stephen King talk about it a lot, but I still don’t see them taking the time to sit down and write “extra tax” checks to the U.S. Treasury. No, people support property redistribution schemes when they expect to profit from them. Period.

And most people who support such schemes, simply haven’t thought on it enough to see it another way. Either they’re unskilled, or old, or both, or else they’re concerned about someone else in whom they see little or no potential for achievement. That’s what Marxism is; it is the nemesis of human achievement, in all available aspects. Meaning, it doesn’t see human achievement as a possibility, has already invested its entire existence against it, and it will not permit it to happen.

So that’s it then. So to be clear, we can at the very least call them Marxists (which I’ve started doing more lately than “Socialist” or “Communist”) then, and we’re all good.

When you’re quoting Marx to justify your policies (and not quoting him in a negative way, to say “we’re NOT doing this”) you are a Marxist.
- philmon | 05/08/2012 @ 08:39
I was watching a documentary on TV last night on The Military Channel. (As the name suggests, it’s exclusively about wars, combat technology, and the people who are involved.)

The documentary was part of a mini-series about the First World War, specifically during 1917 on the Eastern front. It showed grainy old footage of the czar’s troops doing terrible things in Russia in order to try and pacify the increasingly angry population. Among all this, of course, were red flags waving and Lenin doing all he could to keep people stirred-up against Czar Nicholas II.

When the czar finally abdicated, there was a big sense of relief among the population, who’d completely and totally bought into all of the Bolshevik bull about equal distribution of property, equal pay for equal work, and all the rest of the noble-sounding Communist ideals. Russian peasants were shown cheering and hugging one another.

I just sat in my chair and thought, “Did it occur to ANY of these people what might be headed their direction? That the new government would proceed to slaughter them by the tens of millions and commit atrocities that would dwarf those of the czars, and be exceeded only by the Nazis in terms of sheer brutality (and then, not even by numbers)? Did it occur to any of them that taking money and property from the productive and forcibly redistributing it among people who didn’t earn it (and thus are in no position to appreciate the sacrifices it took to obtain it)…might not work out so well?

I could almost forgive the Russian people for being naive back in 1917. Question is…what’s the excuse of the American people in 2012?

Oh, right. The “right people weren’t in charge” in revolutionary Russia. My mistake.
- cylarz | 05/08/2012 @ 12:26
cylarz,

The excuse is that many of the people in the USA today have been enstupidated by the public education system. Deliberately so.

It’s easier to sell bull crap to uneducated people who have been taught that crap is really gold.
- pdwalker | 05/09/2012 @ 06:14

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“Taking a Good Joke To[o] Far”Tuesday, May 8th, 2012

“Taking a Good Joke To[o] Far”
Tuesday, May 8th, 2012