MOST BLOGGERS THINK COMMUNISM IS DEAD. THINK AGAIN.
Bill Quick's blog thread got me going on this one and Glenn Reynolds also got me thinking.
Communism, the kind that was going on from 1900 to 1980 IS dead, but there is a new game in town and this new game explains the Hate America Left, the Hate America Hollywood Left and why they like dictators and sympathize with Radical Islam. I'll try to make it short. References for very heavy reading are at the end.
The nexus of the original Marxist Theory was that Marx had a "scientific" method for achieving socialism. He called it "Scientific Socialism" (Das Kapital is a dam math book); all other methods people were trying to bring forth at that time were "fantasy" conceptions (no math). It's very important to know that Marx had contempt for fantasy. It's well to keep in mind that fantasy is the nexus of the New Communism.
Why Communism Failed to Catch On.
Real simple. Capitalism was supposed to make people totally and completely miserable, eventually. The script went that once profits started to fall the workers would become completely miserable (the term used is "immismerized"; im-misery-ized), they would respond to the misery by revolting against capitalism; not out of some intellectual conception of Communism, but because they were pissed off. A Dictatorship of the Proletariat would take over. Cutting to the chase: when the Great Depression hit, the script looked right out of Hollywood. And for a few years it actually looked like it was going to work. A very few years, after that things started to get better and by 1939 workers were owning homes and cars. After WWII it got better still; workers added pools, golf club memberships and stock to their homes and cars. You ain't overthrowing capitalism from the third hole overlooking your hotel in Hawaii.
One thing here, and it is very important: the Communists of the 1930's were POSITIVE they were on the "right side of history". They knew that Communism was inevitable. KNEW! The hate the Left possesses now is largely a result of the failure of that "knowing". Their God failed them. Not that they didn't try to keep the flame burning for the misery story. The Left even invented something called "The Misery Index" to try to prove to the workers that even though life seemed pretty good for them, they were actually miserable when COMPARED to Bill Gates, Madonna, and the President. The Left Press stayed with the "Misery Index" for decades. Zilch!
So it's the mid-fifties. Anybody with a real brain knows Communism ain't gunna happen, at least not in the way Karl Baby figured it. So in 1957 a book comes out by a guy named Baran and he blew the walls down for Marx. He said that the poverty in the Third World was caused by capitalism. He further said that the workers in the U.S. and the owners had become one and the same. Workers and capitalists together were responsible for the poverty all over the world and had to be killed along with the capitalists. Now this book didn't exactly fly off the shelves, but it was read by the usual suspects who KNEW THEY WERE RIGHT, who knew they were "on the right side of history", and Communism quietly began to shift. Nobody had ever thought before that Capitalism caused Third World poverty. Especially not Marx, Groucho maybe, but not Karl.
Now, remember fantasy. When you want to believe, you find reasons to believe. This is where Communism veered into fantasy. Entire populations being "immiserized" by the U.S. is the fantasy. Fantasies beget fantasies. Hollywood Lefties, who like all artists just must be loved by everyone, created movies showing the downtrodden striking back at their oppressors; the Broadway Lefties created plays, the arty novelists and columnists filled their pages with bile about the horrible country that is causing misery throughout the world. Now this new theory grew in (where else) academia (Berkeley, Yale, Stanford) until the mid-seventies when another huge book came out by a guy named Wallerstein that really galvanized the Communists. This huge book not only backed up what Baran had said but "proved" that America became rich by making other countries poor. Think about this for a second: our success as a country is based upon making others poor, period. Think about that for a second and you realize fantasy.
But to the Left? Oh wow! That book was a gift from the Gods themselves. Just what every old Lefty, every whacked out Viet Nam protestor, college teacher, guilty actor, and Red Diaper baby wanted to hear. It's all America's fault. Everything bad in the world is our fault. All the Chomsky bullshit, the Hollywood Left (the old line Communist propagandists), the Castros, Saudi Princes, up and coming Terrorists, slave Traders in the Sudan, in short every bad guy in the world could blame the U.S.A for everything. This stuff grew like Jack's Beanstalk. Communism was baaaaaakkk. And in a new twist, all the sensitive artist types could get sensitive about truly miserable people who had an added benefit of being 10,000 miles away.
Blame America for everything. That is Communism today. The poverty in Muslim countries is not only our fault, but we caused it so we could get rich. We literally strongarm the people in Africa to be poor, SO we can get rich. Mugabe can blame us. The Communists will back him to the hilt. American Black Congressmen have totally bought into this concept, so much so that not a one of them will lift a finger while their "victim" starves a million of his own people to death----"because it's our fault." In their party line view an intervention by the U.S. can only be to cause further poverty in the country so the "Mult-Nationals" run by Americans can make money. Further proof that the greatest enemy of black people is the leadership they choose.
Even cooler for the New Commies: since modern Communism blames capitalist workers (oh, this is beautiful), today's Communists don't have to pretend they like workers. Remember how many Lefties outside of this country said the 3,000 in the Towers deserved to die? (as well as plenty of Lefties inside this country). They deserved to die because they are joined with the Capitalists. That's why today's Communists are elitists. Academia, Hollywood, Media, all the right people don't have to feel bad because they find workers too stupid to talk to; the workers are criminals too. There is a whole world of misery out there that those workers, together with their corporate pals, created. But those people "over there", who live in the poverty we created so we could get rich, must now be saved (big sound track music with all the big stars). And just like in every Hollywood Movie, the criminal workers and business types will oppose saving them. Only the Left will be brave enough to try. The Abraham Lincoln Brigade with credit cards, BMWs, and Lear Jets.
But "Me go to war?" War? Like in shooting at the victims we created SO we could get rich? This concept is tailor made for the Draft Dodgers of the 60's and their babies. They get to be anti-War, or at least anti any war the U.S. becomes engaged in. There is no excuse for it because they know the real reasons people hate us. The reason why the Hollywood Left, and the Left in general, opposed our Military actions is that they know, absolutely KNOW, that every military action we take is against a country WE deliberately impoverished so we could get rich. Get it? The opposition to the war in Afghanistan was all about "we created the Taliban and the poverty". And Iraq? Terrorism is what the victim is entitled to do to the oppressor. Saddam is capitalism's fault, we created him. He is our mirror image. Our tool. The capitalist/worker alliance made money on his oil. Hollywood knows "the truth", we just wouldn't listen to them this time. We created the misery in Cuba, not Castro. Danny Glover is a Communist, the new kind.
This explains all the phony writing about "quagmires", huge casualties, and impossible battles. Anything the Left can do to keep the fantasy of the brave victim and the evil capitalist/worker alliance alive they do. That fantasy is the title of their latest movie effort called "The Third World Will Rise up and Smite their Oppressors", the victim will turn on the predator, a movie all the actors have done in one form or another.
This is light years away from classic Marx who saw a class struggle within a country. This new Communism sees it between two worlds.
9/11? It was the inevitable striking out of the impoverished Third World victims against the people who caused their poverty and profit from it. I'll add to this in another post regarding the new fantasy of the Communists being similar to the old fantasy of Islam, but suffice to say that these two fantastical movements are real tight in an unconscious way. Both movements believe in something that cannot be. They seek to restore a "vision" that failed; one born a hundred years ago, the other more than a thousand years ago. It's crazy. America is not going to be destroyed by a bunch of Third World farmers, subsistence workers, and dictators. Terror will not beat us. It's not going to happen. At least two hundred million of us won't let it happen, no matter what. Iraq is just a taste of what we will do to countries who harbor terrorists. Movie stars running off at the mouth and buying expensive ads in the New York Times aren't America. And ads and speeches won't end poverty in the Third World.
I hope this little piece gets you hip to what is happening.
I urge you to read the very long essay on this subject which I liberally plagiarized throughout. This terrific, and very long piece, appeared in the Policy Review and was written by Lee Harris if you want to get a much deeper feel. He is brilliant. You can also read the volumes below and the Wallerstein essay which I also stole from. Or you can smoke a joint and watch the game.
1. The Political Economy of Growth, Paul Baran plus reams of papers written about this book. Important to note that entire courses are taught at all the best places (Yale, Illinois) based on his "work"
2. Immanuel Wallerstein, The Modern World-System, The Eagle has Crash Landed, America and the World; The Twin Towers as Metaphor (a long essay HERE) also teaches at Yale. In fact Yale seems to be the New Communist factory.
3. Important to note that this New Communism is actually taught as truth in all the best places. College students are taught to believe that all this stuff is true and has basis in fact
4. I am sort of a junkie on this subject so I left out the usual suspects like Fritz Fanon and the rest.
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