No, he's suggesting she should look him up and take lessons from a White, Christian male for a change. At least she would sound original and her world view would grow tremendously which would cure her disease of wishing to appear and sound intelligent by theiving the ideas and words of others exactly as Marx did...With pay.
Creativity is obviously the opposite of what all the current Totalitarians/Authoritarians promulgating division based in their PAGANISM of 'Racism' and 'Climate Change' believe important goals to prioritize in life.
About racism and discrimination, you are correct. That is bad, also when leftists do it. I trace this to monopoly capitalists who aim to create racism and division amongst the people, instead of creating low unemployment for all.
The monopoly capitalists use a few psychopaths in the media and in the political left parties to brainwash the rest of the left into discriminatory stupidity.
100% equality is not the goal for any democratic socialist, probably not for any communist as well. I believe they want a society where monopoly capitalism and inequality does not go bananas, as with s.c. "Democrats" and "Republicans" taking orders from monopoly capitalist oligarchs.
That is why progressive taxes are necessary. If you don't tax the rich, society will become unbalanced, and a high murder frequency is likely the result, according to scientific meta studies.
Think about it! If you were less productive, for some reason, and others stole all jobs from the less productive, taking all the money, not sharing workload, not sharing salary with you, then why should you not rob or kill them? At some point you would have to do that, if you had no food or shelter.
My idea of a society is that we all share workload and income in a way that is perceived as fair by the vast majority. To understand that does not take much enlightenment, only ability to think correctly in about three steps. Like IQ above 80.
And who is to determine what is fair? Who is the arbiter of this system that looks so much like a control economy? And democratic socialists most definitely want a system that takes what is mine (since apparently I got it because of my white privilege, power, and racism) and give it to anyone that is deemed by the group to be deserving until we have the same amount of stuff. That is what equity is. The left have never needed any capitalists to seduce them into thinking in the way of Marx or Gramsci. They are happy getting there all by themselves. I have a theory that young adults are easily seduced by platitudes that make the person saying them seem smart. Smart is good if it's political and young people, particularly those of average intelligence and a political viewopoint love love love feeling smarter and more righteous than their peers. Approaching them using logic is met with angst and pure emotion.
I'm curious what you mean in the point about the less productive becoming unemployed and ultimately homicidal. Is there a construction there related to your thinking on the other parts of your missive? I'm not making fun, just trying to understand where that thought goes.
So people who work are ultimately trying to kill people who don't work? Nonsense in one step - you could be a leftist! Have a look at how many millions of innocent people were murdered by leftists in the Soviet Union and China in the 20th century in the name of "social justice", comrade.
In terms of "taxing the rich" - as distinct from taxing people who work - leftists are doing a really bad job of that.
Did it ever occur to you that people who don't work might be exploiting people who do work, via your "progressive" taxation system? So much for your "social justice".
Yes. People taking all the jobs from the ones who get no jobs are in fact trying to raise the murder frequency.
Evidence:
”Crime rate has also been shown to be correlated with inequality in society. Most studies looking into the relationship have concentrated on homicides – since homicides are almost identically defined across all nations and jurisdictions. There have been over fifty studies showing tendencies for violence to be more common in societies where income differences are larger. Research has been conducted comparing developed countries with undeveloped countries, as well as studying areas within countries. Daly et al. 2001[80] found that among U.S States and Canadian Provinces there is a tenfold difference in homicide rates related to inequality” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Crime
Psychopathy seems to be able to infiltrate all kinds of systems, and that is why you have corrupt s.c. "Democrats" in bed with monopoly capitalists today, and that is why they order mass murder with poisonous injections. That has nothing to do with "socialism" or "communism". The common factor is probably psychopathy, in my opinion.
At the same time, people do not organize new parties and independents in election coalitions, but keep voting for the psychopaths. I am so surprised. It is bizarre, but I guess Carl Sagan made a good point here:
”One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
I would say that your studies looking at the murder rate are suffering from looking for a specific causality then applying a set of measurements that force the hypothesis to be true. It's what Iaonnidis has fought against for a large portion of his career - badly constructed studies in which no useful outcome can be concluded.
I'll bet you a quadrillion dollars that the murder rate in the poorest part of Baltimore near where I live has among the highest murder rate in the country. I'll further bet that the rate in, say rural Ohio in the coal belt is very low. Both places are homogeneous and they undoubtedly have disparate rates of violent crime. That is not to say that we shouldn't attempt to decrease poverty, on the contrary it's very important.
I'm all for vastly enhancing educational opportunities for poor kids and providing more welfare to intact families instead of single parent homes. That would do more than anything else to reduce the violence we see in our country every day. I want poor people to want to earn more, have a sense of community, have agency and enrich themselves. But there will always be poor. There will always be laziness. There will always be opportunism.
"Yes. People taking all the jobs from the ones who get no jobs are in fact trying to raise the murder frequency."
What a load of bullshit. People who EARN their jobs, through merit or suitability, are not trying to take from anyone or raise the murder frequency.
The leftist research you cite essentially shows that people with various issues - lazy, unreliable, parasitic, antisocial, violent, etc - don't tend to earn jobs, so they don't earn money. Then, if they're not given other people's money, they act out with violence. The solution that you and other leftists always propose is to take money from people who earn it, and transfer it to people who didn't earn it and don't deserve it. Essentially, you favor bad people holding good people to ransom, with the threat of violence if they don't get their unearned way. We saw this in spades with the "Black Lives Matter" riots, and looting, and arson. By contrast, hard-working, good people do not tend to resort to violence, even when leftists are thieving their hard-earned income.
There are other issues in your leftist worldview, including that you only measure "equality" in terms of what people get (money), never in what they give (time, work, energy); the false and tedious framing of issues into the leftist victim/aggressor model (here, lazy and violent people are the victims, and people who earn their jobs and work for their money are the aggressors); and your steady ignorance of the tens of millions of murders that leftists committed in the 20th century. Most of these murders were committed by street-level leftists, not by the elite psychopath leftists you refer to.
The leftist model is divorced from reality, so in the long term it cannot work. Indeed, it generated spectacular failures in the 20th century, as above. Leftist countries and cities degrade until they take a dose of reality.
There are many others like me who are tired of this leftist bullshit.
I do not believe the scientific meta studies lies. I want to kill people and politicians every day. Only Jesus and God keeps my lion calm. I am sure they will deal with it, and I see them doing it every day too.
I do not get angry at all when people tell me the communists killed a lot of bourgeoisie. I just feel they did not torture them enough and did not kill enough of them, but I guess God is more merciful and loving than me.
I believe my hate is the result of being unemployed and pushed down by the bourgeoisie society, and because 80% vote for it. I hate them all and want them all tortured and dead. Take your boosters! Take your boosters! God is working in fantastic ways.
I had no such hateful feelings when I was part of society in a socialist Sweden with very low unemployment. I even volunteered in the defense of the country.
So, I am not egocentric. I will not abandon the unemployed if I get a job, but will continue to organize, cooperate and vote for reformation, giving all a job and a decent life.
... but it seems God will have to kill off a lot of egocentric bastards in the process ... since 80% still vote for the repression of 7% ... May God's will become law!
I do not agree. They are essential for a functioning society. However, the taxes must be progressive, in order to balance society, and must go to the things the majority of the people want. Otherwise that is a kind of theft. The problem is people voted for it. It is however not "slavery". Unfortunately, the people often vote for warmongering politicians who are in the pocket of oligarchs, creating war crimes and bad health.
Disagree about taxes. Agree on voting systems. Democracy is not through digital systems by companies, crackers or administrators. Democracy is by the people, of the people, through the people, and must therefore be manual, local and in the control of the people themselves, preferably anonymous, and preferably verifiable for the individual voter with a personal code, in my opinion.
Sure, it's envy, and not poverty, misery, exploitation, war, mass murder, environmental devastation and suffering that drives us to oppose the otherwise so wonderful capitalist system. Do tell!
Seriously, there is the possibility that these shots are introducing self assembling nano particle systems into the bodies of the "vaccinated", and that Netanyahu forced almost all of the Israeli population to take the shots. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that only a tiny percentage of the population now believes too much force is being used against the Palestinians, and the willingness of the IDF to carry out mass murder, even the murder of two Christian women going to the bathroom, medics, journalilsts, etc. etc.?
Once again, like Leake himself, you are confusing the woke, with the Marxists. Finkelstein, whom I sure the Zionists on this thread hate with a passion, does not make that mistake in his book I'll Burn That Bridge When I Cross IT. Woke is anti-Marxist. Petite bourgeois consciousness is a tendency for ALL middle class intellectuals. The right wingers on this thread, including Leake, are deplorable examples of letting their privileges under capitalism dictate their conscience, and their politics. No wonder some here want to silence Claudine Gay, as well as the young Jewish students on campus! Just so inconvenient for you! You have my sympathies! NOT!
Gay and the other presidents under attack are complicit in woke, and I thought the SNL satire did a good job on that. But Stefanik is a real creep, and those who back her against Gay are just philistines. You say you're for freedom?! Then FIGHT FOR IT, NOT AGAINST IT!
But the mission of Marxism is to shake off this temptation, build a vanguard party that recruits the masses of working people into its ranks, on an egalitarian, "democratic centralist" basis. The Bolsheviks accomplished this, in September 1917, and this enabled them to wage the October Revolution successfully. What they did with that organic connection after that, is a matter of controversy. Wohlforth and Farber believe that under the pressure of imperialism, and Lenin's Blanquism--in other words, his petite bourgeois AUTHORITARIANISM--they fumbled the ball. They lost the connection. The revolution devolved into Stalinism. But it didn't, and it doesn't, have to be that way..
The Bolshevik revolution was heroic. The country was being destroyed, by the liberals, and the social democratic Compromisers. But did they have to create a one party state? Was it necessary to suppress, in other words, the Left SRs? There are facts which indicate that the answer was no. At the time, Trotsky made a gangster like statement, akin Eli Wallach's saying about Michael Corleone, "I wish someone would get rid of this stone in my shoe." The stone in Trotsky's shoe, was the Left SRs. Then there's the fact that the chief assassin of Count Mirbach was just a few years later welcomed into the Bolshevik Party, with open arms. As Lt. Columbo might say, "that was mighty peculiar".
Reverence for (fear of) the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. When you build your initial thoughts on the false premise that there is no God then you end up foolish or brain dead, so to speak. You don't even begin to have wisdom or knowledge. You rule it out at the beginning.
The universal truth is that God created everything from nothing that we can see. Natural man is at enmity with our Creator. Natural man willfully violates God’s laws that were made for him to have life and peace.
Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning” explains that that those selected to be Kapos in the Nazi concentration camps were selected precisely because they were sadists.
Those selected to serve as Presidents of (formerly) elite institutions, are selected precisely because they are hate filled, untethered and power hungry.
It would seem that many of the people making noise in our country today suffer from a state of narcosis. Might this be due to the hypnotic effect of poor teaching in our schools or from the chemicals in the fast food diets or some other agent in their zombie world.
What a nice strawman you have constructed there! Now go actually read some Marxist texts, Losurdo's take on classical liberalism is an excellent one, and come back when you are less ignorant.
Holy shit... No, excuse me, wholly... Pseudo-medicine really doesn't need pseudo-post mcCarthyite pseudo philosophical dross Mr. Leake... Utter nonsense from start to finish, 2/10, must try harder. Probably detrimental to Dr. McCulloch nonsense like that...
@Thomas Gerard Smith It’s amazing to see a communist like you acting up here. What’s the matter with you? Have you taken the 9th COVID shots as prescribed by Dr Tony Fauci? Make sure you triple mask yourself while reading this post.
And it's fascism obviously... Corporate/state amalgam. I take it you did read Mussolini 1934 speech on Rome on the corporate state where he disavows Marxism, in your masters in history?
Dear John Leake, your assessment of the situation of Leftist thinking as 'brain death' is accurate. We could add that they are also action-wise soul death. But this has nothing to do with the works of Marx and other socialists of the past. Rather it has to do a lot with what happened following the end of WWII and the way the West organized itself against the 'dangers of socialism' through the creation of transnational and intergovernmental organizations such as the NATO, the UN, World Bank, IMF, and numerous other organizations as an umbrella network to protect and advance Western capitalism. On the one hand, they dealt with emerging socialist movements and governments brutally (Chile, Argentina, Turkey in the 70s) and, more importantly and unintentionally, they gave birth to new economic formations by opening public institutions to expansion and privatization such as the media, the academies, health care, policing, security, the military, prisons (hence jurisdiction), education, and others. The initial strong position of Marxists in the academy was overridden by new academic endeavors such as environmentalism, feminism, anti-racism, queer studies, sexuality and gender studies, and many other grievances-based discourses, as well as by mushrooming MBA schools with their graduates taking over public institutions and transforming them into state-privileged corporations. What we refer to as 'brain death' or 'soul death' is the result of diminishing support for society- and community-conscious research and scholarship, which also paralleled the weaking of workers' unions. Nature and society abhors vacuum; the places and positions abandoned by Leftist oriented people were occupied by opportunists and ethically uninhibited people. They are the woke crowd of today - the likes of Claudine Gay. There is nothing Leftist about them. In the US context, for political usage, they are referred to as Leftists. That is okay because many of their associates claim to be Leftists such as Bernie Sanders. In actuality there is no Left Right opposition in the US at the moment, there is an opposition between people involved in criminal activities in varying degrees and people wanting to restore law and order.
True. The Claudine Gays of the world are opportunists. Presiding over Harvard pays a lot more than flipping burgers and certainly doesn’t require any real work!
There is a point to numbing, unreadable prose. It is an assertion of power. Stalin knew this. His lengthy analytic articles about Marxist-Leninist theory were intellectual sadism, compelled assent to wearying prose, with a death threat hanging behind each numbing paragraph. On a less bloodthirsty level, a similar point was made about Warren Christopher by someone forced to endure a speech composed entirely of woodenly delivered monotone platitudes, who concluded that being boring, being obvious, being stale, is a privilege and a symbol of power. Everyone had to listen, and clap politely, and pretend to be interested and enlightened, as a professional obligation. Gay's work is similar. She pretends to be a scholar, and everyone else has to pretend that she is one, at risk of professional annihilation.
What she is doing, and what people do in response, is an exercise in naked, brainless power.
So you are right, but it is worse than you say here. Much worse.
John, it appears that several of the radical left have noticed you. Thank you for what you have written! May the Truth prevail in a time of great darkness.
“It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society.
In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of overproduction.
Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence, industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why?
Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence: too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become to powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered, and as soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.”
“The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsman and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.”
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I don’t know about you, but these quotes from The Communist Manifesto made by Marx some 150 years ago paint a pretty accurate vista on the predicament of modern society today.
Many, like to attribute Marxism to democratic and liberal values today, and more so, to the globalist agenda. But I believe that it’s merely a projection based on lack of knowledge on the work of Marx, the precipitating causes that led to his work and an incessant demagoguery propaganda for decades, demonizing anything to do with communism and socialism, starting in McCarthy’s 1950’s.
The reality is that Capitalism and Socialism were never meant to be isolated. They symbolize the outer and inner (material) arms of the ‘tribe’, respectively. The former deals with TRANSFORMATION of talent and skills into resources for the improvement of conditions, whereas the latter is about SUPPORT.
In other words, the two arms are supposed to work as a self-propelling pump. One complements the other. The capitalistic arm is about generating capital for improvement and innovation, whereas the socialistic/communal arm is about redistribution of resources as support mechanisms: roads, education, facilities, protection (Police, Fire department, etc.), healthcare and so on. Each balances one another. No business can exist and thrive without a marketing department on one side and HR on the other.
The moment, however, they’re separated from one another and formed into isolated systems, distortion ensues. A distortion the world is now facing its collateral damage.
And so what appears to be “Marxism” - is merely a projection on reactionary policies by those who, - in their vanity - have taken upon themselves the role of caretakers of the world. A neuvoriche bourgeois class who try to contain the disarray for fear of an imbalanced system imploding on itself. None of them see themselves a “Marxists”. It’s all reactionary.
In other words, the globalists have no way but to recourse to exactly what Marx predicted it would go to. It’s “Marxism” through the back door; being pushed to a corner by foolishly and stubbornly insisting that communism / socialism are the enemy of freedom and individuality over the years.
Marx had foreseen the progression of such a pattern. Hence, his solution to cut it short by imposing a new system, rather than wait for it to collapse on its own. I disagree with his solution because you can never drape a formula on society from the top down, and expect results in the field. History proves so time and time again.
The only way is from the bottom up; the individual laborer / worker has to wake up to themselves, understanding that they are the only true commodity and that money is merely a medium that measures that, not the other way around.
So it’s important to put things in perspective and understand that people nowadays shout Marxism to something they don’t really understand about. They either can’t or don’t want to confront that an overly capitalistic society creates the same predicament nonetheless, in which “The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further [its] development…, [and this] endanger[s] the existence of bourgeois property.”
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The Left nowadays represents the reflection of the sterilization occurring within the human species in which these values of support, morality, empathy - reflecting the socialist arm of the tribe - are vanishing from the human race.
In turn, a vacuum ensues; an abyss between past and future values (which are still unknown).
There’s no more tribal hierarchy. There are no more social classes. There’s no more definition of roles within society. There is no longer a defining factor of proper emotional principles and corresponding types of behavior; There are no more delimiting borders. Everything becomes one giant hodgepodge.
This brings enormous confusion and disarray in which a clash between past and future.
The past is about a reactionary impulse to the loss of values, reflected as a backlash attempt to return things to their old ways. These are called by the present consciousness as the "extreme right" / "fascism" etc. which are not really fascist or extreme right, but in relation to the sterility that’s ongoing, they appear to be so.
On the other hand, the culture of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) - what is expressed as the progressive doctrine - expresses the future: the sterilization of tribal values when what remains is merely a theory being draped on everyone from top down, which only compounds the distortion. They only confuse and distort everything further down the line until everything crumbles.
And that's where we get all the double standards and the hypocrisy in which nowadays, racist motifs are used to eradicate racism and so on. Everything becomes a contrived, indication show - exhibitionism mixed with narcissism while the underlying values are simply not there.
Dear Mr. Roy, this is John Leake, replying to your comment. Thanks for reading my post, and thanks for your thoughtful reply. Your reflections are what I meant when I wrote: "However, as much as we may fairly criticize Marx’s ideas, at least he had ideas that we can talk about and debate." Marx made some interesting observations about what was happening in the 19th century, though he never seriously addressed the parliamentary reforms or other measures that were taken during his lifetime to improve the conditions of the working class. For my part, I have long been interested in the plight of working men. It seems to me that representing working men and women was once the legitimate mandate of socialists, social democrats, and the Democratic Party in the United States. Who represents the interests of working men and women today? Certainly not the Democratic Party, and certainly not college professors and administrators like Harvard President Gay. Viewing the matter through the Marxist lens of class consciousness and class struggle, what is today's iteration of the proletariat in Marx's day? Can you name a serious Marxist intellectual at any American university who has attempted to define today's proletariat and its interests? All I hear about is the oppression of the black race, even though a recent U.S. President and the current President of Harvard are people with black skin. Thanks again for reading and commenting. I greatly appreciate your calm and civil mode of discourse. John Leake
I don’t disagree with any of the things in your response, Mr. Leake.
All I was saying is that Marxism is wrongly attributed to those on the Left, either because the word has become defiled over the years, or due the incessant fear-mongering propaganda by western capitalism, or both.
As a result, we’ve got a reality nowadays in which very few people can actually separate between the ideas and between the label. ‘Marxism’ has become a curse word.
Marx foresaw the inevitable capitulation of capitalistic society and as a result believed that a reactionary recourse is the panacea. That a formula from which an entire social system could be draped over society, from the top down, will seize the day.
However, as I wrote in the first part of my initial response:
1. This is a false premise because true change can only work from the bottom up; from the individual to the community level, and all the way to the collective. The individual has to regain and own their power within: The recognition that the only true commodity is the energy Man naturally creates within, designated towards activity. And that what we call money is merely a formula that measures that. (in other words, Gold doesn't build you a house)
2. Implementation can never work in either direction - a purely capitalistic or socialistic society - simply because they were never intended to be isolated.
In reality, all countries have to face their own capitulation precisely due to the above. The Garden hasn’t been pruned for years, and as a result has become a giant, overcomplex jungle, sending branches and tentacles to every nook and cranny of the house: human life.
If you scratch the surface, you’ll find that so-called “free societies”, like the U.S., are structured in such a way that Freedom and Privatization are but illusions. We’ve been borrowing and creating currency out of thin air against the future work of future generations (i.e. enslavement of our future for the illusion of freedom in the present).
When push comes to shove, the central and larger banks have all the right to confiscate everything we owe, even that which is free of debt. This is not a conspiracy theory, I’m just stating the law.
And so, as mentioned, we’re getting to Marxism/Communism just through the back door. Through the inevitable consequences of the abuse of the system without accountability, over the years.
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Lastly, in my second part of my reply, I’ve expressed that what we have today as the Left, is no longer true left, but a reflection of the sterilization of socialistic / humanness values from the human race.
Since I don't want to repeat it word by word, I can only suggest rereading my first comment again to better understand what I've been trying to convey in regards to this subject matter.
Wokeness has revealed pretty clearly how much of a percentage of the population are automaton conformists.
Aka NPCs
So you’re saying Gay should have plagiarized some more interesting and deeper-think authors? 🤣😂
It's a measure of HER intellectual nullity that she couldn't tell the difference...!
No, he's suggesting she should look him up and take lessons from a White, Christian male for a change. At least she would sound original and her world view would grow tremendously which would cure her disease of wishing to appear and sound intelligent by theiving the ideas and words of others exactly as Marx did...With pay.
Creativity is obviously the opposite of what all the current Totalitarians/Authoritarians promulgating division based in their PAGANISM of 'Racism' and 'Climate Change' believe important goals to prioritize in life.
Leftist stupidity, in one easy step:
Everyone is equal / we, the leftists, are the enlightened ones.
Everyone is equal / we, the leftists, should rule over others.
Racism is bad / let's divide people by race (affirmative action, diversity).
Discrimination is bad / let's discriminate against Whites (affirmative action, diversity).
Everone is equal / let's take from productive people and give to unproductive people.
This is a formula for societal degeneration and destruction.
When I was a uni. student back in the mid-60's, a prof. said : there is nothing as unequal as the equal treatment of unequals.
About racism and discrimination, you are correct. That is bad, also when leftists do it. I trace this to monopoly capitalists who aim to create racism and division amongst the people, instead of creating low unemployment for all.
The monopoly capitalists use a few psychopaths in the media and in the political left parties to brainwash the rest of the left into discriminatory stupidity.
100% equality is not the goal for any democratic socialist, probably not for any communist as well. I believe they want a society where monopoly capitalism and inequality does not go bananas, as with s.c. "Democrats" and "Republicans" taking orders from monopoly capitalist oligarchs.
That is why progressive taxes are necessary. If you don't tax the rich, society will become unbalanced, and a high murder frequency is likely the result, according to scientific meta studies.
Think about it! If you were less productive, for some reason, and others stole all jobs from the less productive, taking all the money, not sharing workload, not sharing salary with you, then why should you not rob or kill them? At some point you would have to do that, if you had no food or shelter.
My idea of a society is that we all share workload and income in a way that is perceived as fair by the vast majority. To understand that does not take much enlightenment, only ability to think correctly in about three steps. Like IQ above 80.
And who is to determine what is fair? Who is the arbiter of this system that looks so much like a control economy? And democratic socialists most definitely want a system that takes what is mine (since apparently I got it because of my white privilege, power, and racism) and give it to anyone that is deemed by the group to be deserving until we have the same amount of stuff. That is what equity is. The left have never needed any capitalists to seduce them into thinking in the way of Marx or Gramsci. They are happy getting there all by themselves. I have a theory that young adults are easily seduced by platitudes that make the person saying them seem smart. Smart is good if it's political and young people, particularly those of average intelligence and a political viewopoint love love love feeling smarter and more righteous than their peers. Approaching them using logic is met with angst and pure emotion.
I'm curious what you mean in the point about the less productive becoming unemployed and ultimately homicidal. Is there a construction there related to your thinking on the other parts of your missive? I'm not making fun, just trying to understand where that thought goes.
So people who work are ultimately trying to kill people who don't work? Nonsense in one step - you could be a leftist! Have a look at how many millions of innocent people were murdered by leftists in the Soviet Union and China in the 20th century in the name of "social justice", comrade.
In terms of "taxing the rich" - as distinct from taxing people who work - leftists are doing a really bad job of that.
Did it ever occur to you that people who don't work might be exploiting people who do work, via your "progressive" taxation system? So much for your "social justice".
Yes. People taking all the jobs from the ones who get no jobs are in fact trying to raise the murder frequency.
Evidence:
”Crime rate has also been shown to be correlated with inequality in society. Most studies looking into the relationship have concentrated on homicides – since homicides are almost identically defined across all nations and jurisdictions. There have been over fifty studies showing tendencies for violence to be more common in societies where income differences are larger. Research has been conducted comparing developed countries with undeveloped countries, as well as studying areas within countries. Daly et al. 2001[80] found that among U.S States and Canadian Provinces there is a tenfold difference in homicide rates related to inequality” http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economic_inequality#Crime
Psychopathy seems to be able to infiltrate all kinds of systems, and that is why you have corrupt s.c. "Democrats" in bed with monopoly capitalists today, and that is why they order mass murder with poisonous injections. That has nothing to do with "socialism" or "communism". The common factor is probably psychopathy, in my opinion.
At the same time, people do not organize new parties and independents in election coalitions, but keep voting for the psychopaths. I am so surprised. It is bizarre, but I guess Carl Sagan made a good point here:
”One of the saddest lessons of history is this: If we’ve been bamboozled long enough, we tend to reject any evidence of the bamboozle. The bamboozle has captured us. Once you give a charlatan power over you, you almost never get it back.”
/Carl Sagan
I would say that your studies looking at the murder rate are suffering from looking for a specific causality then applying a set of measurements that force the hypothesis to be true. It's what Iaonnidis has fought against for a large portion of his career - badly constructed studies in which no useful outcome can be concluded.
I'll bet you a quadrillion dollars that the murder rate in the poorest part of Baltimore near where I live has among the highest murder rate in the country. I'll further bet that the rate in, say rural Ohio in the coal belt is very low. Both places are homogeneous and they undoubtedly have disparate rates of violent crime. That is not to say that we shouldn't attempt to decrease poverty, on the contrary it's very important.
I'm all for vastly enhancing educational opportunities for poor kids and providing more welfare to intact families instead of single parent homes. That would do more than anything else to reduce the violence we see in our country every day. I want poor people to want to earn more, have a sense of community, have agency and enrich themselves. But there will always be poor. There will always be laziness. There will always be opportunism.
"Yes. People taking all the jobs from the ones who get no jobs are in fact trying to raise the murder frequency."
What a load of bullshit. People who EARN their jobs, through merit or suitability, are not trying to take from anyone or raise the murder frequency.
The leftist research you cite essentially shows that people with various issues - lazy, unreliable, parasitic, antisocial, violent, etc - don't tend to earn jobs, so they don't earn money. Then, if they're not given other people's money, they act out with violence. The solution that you and other leftists always propose is to take money from people who earn it, and transfer it to people who didn't earn it and don't deserve it. Essentially, you favor bad people holding good people to ransom, with the threat of violence if they don't get their unearned way. We saw this in spades with the "Black Lives Matter" riots, and looting, and arson. By contrast, hard-working, good people do not tend to resort to violence, even when leftists are thieving their hard-earned income.
There are other issues in your leftist worldview, including that you only measure "equality" in terms of what people get (money), never in what they give (time, work, energy); the false and tedious framing of issues into the leftist victim/aggressor model (here, lazy and violent people are the victims, and people who earn their jobs and work for their money are the aggressors); and your steady ignorance of the tens of millions of murders that leftists committed in the 20th century. Most of these murders were committed by street-level leftists, not by the elite psychopath leftists you refer to.
The leftist model is divorced from reality, so in the long term it cannot work. Indeed, it generated spectacular failures in the 20th century, as above. Leftist countries and cities degrade until they take a dose of reality.
There are many others like me who are tired of this leftist bullshit.
I do not believe the scientific meta studies lies. I want to kill people and politicians every day. Only Jesus and God keeps my lion calm. I am sure they will deal with it, and I see them doing it every day too.
I do not get angry at all when people tell me the communists killed a lot of bourgeoisie. I just feel they did not torture them enough and did not kill enough of them, but I guess God is more merciful and loving than me.
I believe my hate is the result of being unemployed and pushed down by the bourgeoisie society, and because 80% vote for it. I hate them all and want them all tortured and dead. Take your boosters! Take your boosters! God is working in fantastic ways.
I had no such hateful feelings when I was part of society in a socialist Sweden with very low unemployment. I even volunteered in the defense of the country.
So, I am not egocentric. I will not abandon the unemployed if I get a job, but will continue to organize, cooperate and vote for reformation, giving all a job and a decent life.
... but it seems God will have to kill off a lot of egocentric bastards in the process ... since 80% still vote for the repression of 7% ... May God's will become law!
Taxes are true slavery, which has been used and exploited for a reason. “They” have made people believe that taxes are normal. Taxes are theft.
I do not agree. They are essential for a functioning society. However, the taxes must be progressive, in order to balance society, and must go to the things the majority of the people want. Otherwise that is a kind of theft. The problem is people voted for it. It is however not "slavery". Unfortunately, the people often vote for warmongering politicians who are in the pocket of oligarchs, creating war crimes and bad health.
There are many things necessary for a “functioning” society. Taxes is DEFINITELY not one of them. Taxes are a Ponzi scheme.
And, if you haven’t noticed, the voting system is illegitimate…they are not fair or free. My vote does not matter.
Disagree about taxes. Agree on voting systems. Democracy is not through digital systems by companies, crackers or administrators. Democracy is by the people, of the people, through the people, and must therefore be manual, local and in the control of the people themselves, preferably anonymous, and preferably verifiable for the individual voter with a personal code, in my opinion.
Aren’t you a “cracker”???? Good luck with the “color revolution”…cracker! 😉🤣😂🤣😂
Also, the USA is SUPPOSE to be a Constitutional Republic. Unfortunately, the Marxists have the power now.
There are plenty of sociopaths and psychopaths, white collar types, running the show. They did a grand job of it in France 1790s.
The (Left's) Politics of Envy shall always have avid proponents; after all, they market to the Demographics.
Sure, it's envy, and not poverty, misery, exploitation, war, mass murder, environmental devastation and suffering that drives us to oppose the otherwise so wonderful capitalist system. Do tell!
Their problem is that they got vaccinated too young, and it messed up their cognitive development. Whose fault is that ?
Seriously, there is the possibility that these shots are introducing self assembling nano particle systems into the bodies of the "vaccinated", and that Netanyahu forced almost all of the Israeli population to take the shots. I wonder if this has to do with the fact that only a tiny percentage of the population now believes too much force is being used against the Palestinians, and the willingness of the IDF to carry out mass murder, even the murder of two Christian women going to the bathroom, medics, journalilsts, etc. etc.?
What did you think of Claudine Gay's thesis?
I dont think Claudine Gay is my type, but there wasnt enough detail to be sure.
Once again, like Leake himself, you are confusing the woke, with the Marxists. Finkelstein, whom I sure the Zionists on this thread hate with a passion, does not make that mistake in his book I'll Burn That Bridge When I Cross IT. Woke is anti-Marxist. Petite bourgeois consciousness is a tendency for ALL middle class intellectuals. The right wingers on this thread, including Leake, are deplorable examples of letting their privileges under capitalism dictate their conscience, and their politics. No wonder some here want to silence Claudine Gay, as well as the young Jewish students on campus! Just so inconvenient for you! You have my sympathies! NOT!
Gay and the other presidents under attack are complicit in woke, and I thought the SNL satire did a good job on that. But Stefanik is a real creep, and those who back her against Gay are just philistines. You say you're for freedom?! Then FIGHT FOR IT, NOT AGAINST IT!
But the mission of Marxism is to shake off this temptation, build a vanguard party that recruits the masses of working people into its ranks, on an egalitarian, "democratic centralist" basis. The Bolsheviks accomplished this, in September 1917, and this enabled them to wage the October Revolution successfully. What they did with that organic connection after that, is a matter of controversy. Wohlforth and Farber believe that under the pressure of imperialism, and Lenin's Blanquism--in other words, his petite bourgeois AUTHORITARIANISM--they fumbled the ball. They lost the connection. The revolution devolved into Stalinism. But it didn't, and it doesn't, have to be that way..
The Bolshevik revolution was heroic. The country was being destroyed, by the liberals, and the social democratic Compromisers. But did they have to create a one party state? Was it necessary to suppress, in other words, the Left SRs? There are facts which indicate that the answer was no. At the time, Trotsky made a gangster like statement, akin Eli Wallach's saying about Michael Corleone, "I wish someone would get rid of this stone in my shoe." The stone in Trotsky's shoe, was the Left SRs. Then there's the fact that the chief assassin of Count Mirbach was just a few years later welcomed into the Bolshevik Party, with open arms. As Lt. Columbo might say, "that was mighty peculiar".
Reverence for (fear of) the Lord is the beginning of wisdom and knowledge. When you build your initial thoughts on the false premise that there is no God then you end up foolish or brain dead, so to speak. You don't even begin to have wisdom or knowledge. You rule it out at the beginning.
Amen to you John.
The universal truth is that God created everything from nothing that we can see. Natural man is at enmity with our Creator. Natural man willfully violates God’s laws that were made for him to have life and peace.
Viktor Frankl, “Man’s Search for Meaning” explains that that those selected to be Kapos in the Nazi concentration camps were selected precisely because they were sadists.
Those selected to serve as Presidents of (formerly) elite institutions, are selected precisely because they are hate filled, untethered and power hungry.
It would seem that many of the people making noise in our country today suffer from a state of narcosis. Might this be due to the hypnotic effect of poor teaching in our schools or from the chemicals in the fast food diets or some other agent in their zombie world.
All of the above.
I'm not understanding the animus toward this post. College professors perhaps?
John Leake is right. When you understand two of the foundation stones of the Left:
1) there is no absolute truth
2) man is inherently good...
...it's a lot easier to spot "The Intellectual Nullity of Today's Left."
What a nice strawman you have constructed there! Now go actually read some Marxist texts, Losurdo's take on classical liberalism is an excellent one, and come back when you are less ignorant.
Exceptions don't make the rule, and Losurdo's not much of an exception.
You sure hit that nail square on the head John. Using nothing but obvious truth!
Holy shit... No, excuse me, wholly... Pseudo-medicine really doesn't need pseudo-post mcCarthyite pseudo philosophical dross Mr. Leake... Utter nonsense from start to finish, 2/10, must try harder. Probably detrimental to Dr. McCulloch nonsense like that...
Dump this guy, Peter. He's bad news. Completely unworthy of you.
@Thomas Gerard Smith It’s amazing to see a communist like you acting up here. What’s the matter with you? Have you taken the 9th COVID shots as prescribed by Dr Tony Fauci? Make sure you triple mask yourself while reading this post.
And it's fascism obviously... Corporate/state amalgam. I take it you did read Mussolini 1934 speech on Rome on the corporate state where he disavows Marxism, in your masters in history?
Dear John Leake, your assessment of the situation of Leftist thinking as 'brain death' is accurate. We could add that they are also action-wise soul death. But this has nothing to do with the works of Marx and other socialists of the past. Rather it has to do a lot with what happened following the end of WWII and the way the West organized itself against the 'dangers of socialism' through the creation of transnational and intergovernmental organizations such as the NATO, the UN, World Bank, IMF, and numerous other organizations as an umbrella network to protect and advance Western capitalism. On the one hand, they dealt with emerging socialist movements and governments brutally (Chile, Argentina, Turkey in the 70s) and, more importantly and unintentionally, they gave birth to new economic formations by opening public institutions to expansion and privatization such as the media, the academies, health care, policing, security, the military, prisons (hence jurisdiction), education, and others. The initial strong position of Marxists in the academy was overridden by new academic endeavors such as environmentalism, feminism, anti-racism, queer studies, sexuality and gender studies, and many other grievances-based discourses, as well as by mushrooming MBA schools with their graduates taking over public institutions and transforming them into state-privileged corporations. What we refer to as 'brain death' or 'soul death' is the result of diminishing support for society- and community-conscious research and scholarship, which also paralleled the weaking of workers' unions. Nature and society abhors vacuum; the places and positions abandoned by Leftist oriented people were occupied by opportunists and ethically uninhibited people. They are the woke crowd of today - the likes of Claudine Gay. There is nothing Leftist about them. In the US context, for political usage, they are referred to as Leftists. That is okay because many of their associates claim to be Leftists such as Bernie Sanders. In actuality there is no Left Right opposition in the US at the moment, there is an opposition between people involved in criminal activities in varying degrees and people wanting to restore law and order.
True. The Claudine Gays of the world are opportunists. Presiding over Harvard pays a lot more than flipping burgers and certainly doesn’t require any real work!
And, most importantly, no one will DARE say a disparaging word to her. Gay has free rein to do and say as she chooses (I mean, did..).
Brilliant comment. You my friend have intellect superior to the carnival barkers in leadership roles across academia and more.
But ...
There is a point to numbing, unreadable prose. It is an assertion of power. Stalin knew this. His lengthy analytic articles about Marxist-Leninist theory were intellectual sadism, compelled assent to wearying prose, with a death threat hanging behind each numbing paragraph. On a less bloodthirsty level, a similar point was made about Warren Christopher by someone forced to endure a speech composed entirely of woodenly delivered monotone platitudes, who concluded that being boring, being obvious, being stale, is a privilege and a symbol of power. Everyone had to listen, and clap politely, and pretend to be interested and enlightened, as a professional obligation. Gay's work is similar. She pretends to be a scholar, and everyone else has to pretend that she is one, at risk of professional annihilation.
What she is doing, and what people do in response, is an exercise in naked, brainless power.
So you are right, but it is worse than you say here. Much worse.
John, it appears that several of the radical left have noticed you. Thank you for what you have written! May the Truth prevail in a time of great darkness.
They may be Obiden bots
Affirmative Action in action! Most contemporary Leftists get to the top by lying, cheating, s--king, f--king and ideological incest.
“It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put on its trial, each time more threateningly, the existence of the entire bourgeois society.
In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of overproduction.
Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence, industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why?
Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence: too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become to powerful for these conditions by which they are fettered, and as soon as they overcome these fetters, they bring disorder into the whole bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property.”
“The lower strata of the middle class—the small tradespeople, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally, the handicraftsman and peasants—all these sink gradually into the proletariat, partly because their diminutive capital does not suffice for the scale on which Modern Industry is carried on, and is swamped in the competition with the large capitalists, partly because their specialized skill is rendered worthless by new methods of production. Thus the proletariat is recruited from all classes of the population.”
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I don’t know about you, but these quotes from The Communist Manifesto made by Marx some 150 years ago paint a pretty accurate vista on the predicament of modern society today.
Many, like to attribute Marxism to democratic and liberal values today, and more so, to the globalist agenda. But I believe that it’s merely a projection based on lack of knowledge on the work of Marx, the precipitating causes that led to his work and an incessant demagoguery propaganda for decades, demonizing anything to do with communism and socialism, starting in McCarthy’s 1950’s.
The reality is that Capitalism and Socialism were never meant to be isolated. They symbolize the outer and inner (material) arms of the ‘tribe’, respectively. The former deals with TRANSFORMATION of talent and skills into resources for the improvement of conditions, whereas the latter is about SUPPORT.
In other words, the two arms are supposed to work as a self-propelling pump. One complements the other. The capitalistic arm is about generating capital for improvement and innovation, whereas the socialistic/communal arm is about redistribution of resources as support mechanisms: roads, education, facilities, protection (Police, Fire department, etc.), healthcare and so on. Each balances one another. No business can exist and thrive without a marketing department on one side and HR on the other.
The moment, however, they’re separated from one another and formed into isolated systems, distortion ensues. A distortion the world is now facing its collateral damage.
And so what appears to be “Marxism” - is merely a projection on reactionary policies by those who, - in their vanity - have taken upon themselves the role of caretakers of the world. A neuvoriche bourgeois class who try to contain the disarray for fear of an imbalanced system imploding on itself. None of them see themselves a “Marxists”. It’s all reactionary.
In other words, the globalists have no way but to recourse to exactly what Marx predicted it would go to. It’s “Marxism” through the back door; being pushed to a corner by foolishly and stubbornly insisting that communism / socialism are the enemy of freedom and individuality over the years.
Marx had foreseen the progression of such a pattern. Hence, his solution to cut it short by imposing a new system, rather than wait for it to collapse on its own. I disagree with his solution because you can never drape a formula on society from the top down, and expect results in the field. History proves so time and time again.
The only way is from the bottom up; the individual laborer / worker has to wake up to themselves, understanding that they are the only true commodity and that money is merely a medium that measures that, not the other way around.
So it’s important to put things in perspective and understand that people nowadays shout Marxism to something they don’t really understand about. They either can’t or don’t want to confront that an overly capitalistic society creates the same predicament nonetheless, in which “The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further [its] development…, [and this] endanger[s] the existence of bourgeois property.”
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The Left nowadays represents the reflection of the sterilization occurring within the human species in which these values of support, morality, empathy - reflecting the socialist arm of the tribe - are vanishing from the human race.
In turn, a vacuum ensues; an abyss between past and future values (which are still unknown).
There’s no more tribal hierarchy. There are no more social classes. There’s no more definition of roles within society. There is no longer a defining factor of proper emotional principles and corresponding types of behavior; There are no more delimiting borders. Everything becomes one giant hodgepodge.
This brings enormous confusion and disarray in which a clash between past and future.
The past is about a reactionary impulse to the loss of values, reflected as a backlash attempt to return things to their old ways. These are called by the present consciousness as the "extreme right" / "fascism" etc. which are not really fascist or extreme right, but in relation to the sterility that’s ongoing, they appear to be so.
On the other hand, the culture of Diversity, Equality and Inclusion (DEI) - what is expressed as the progressive doctrine - expresses the future: the sterilization of tribal values when what remains is merely a theory being draped on everyone from top down, which only compounds the distortion. They only confuse and distort everything further down the line until everything crumbles.
And that's where we get all the double standards and the hypocrisy in which nowadays, racist motifs are used to eradicate racism and so on. Everything becomes a contrived, indication show - exhibitionism mixed with narcissism while the underlying values are simply not there.
Dear Mr. Roy, this is John Leake, replying to your comment. Thanks for reading my post, and thanks for your thoughtful reply. Your reflections are what I meant when I wrote: "However, as much as we may fairly criticize Marx’s ideas, at least he had ideas that we can talk about and debate." Marx made some interesting observations about what was happening in the 19th century, though he never seriously addressed the parliamentary reforms or other measures that were taken during his lifetime to improve the conditions of the working class. For my part, I have long been interested in the plight of working men. It seems to me that representing working men and women was once the legitimate mandate of socialists, social democrats, and the Democratic Party in the United States. Who represents the interests of working men and women today? Certainly not the Democratic Party, and certainly not college professors and administrators like Harvard President Gay. Viewing the matter through the Marxist lens of class consciousness and class struggle, what is today's iteration of the proletariat in Marx's day? Can you name a serious Marxist intellectual at any American university who has attempted to define today's proletariat and its interests? All I hear about is the oppression of the black race, even though a recent U.S. President and the current President of Harvard are people with black skin. Thanks again for reading and commenting. I greatly appreciate your calm and civil mode of discourse. John Leake
I don’t disagree with any of the things in your response, Mr. Leake.
All I was saying is that Marxism is wrongly attributed to those on the Left, either because the word has become defiled over the years, or due the incessant fear-mongering propaganda by western capitalism, or both.
As a result, we’ve got a reality nowadays in which very few people can actually separate between the ideas and between the label. ‘Marxism’ has become a curse word.
Marx foresaw the inevitable capitulation of capitalistic society and as a result believed that a reactionary recourse is the panacea. That a formula from which an entire social system could be draped over society, from the top down, will seize the day.
However, as I wrote in the first part of my initial response:
1. This is a false premise because true change can only work from the bottom up; from the individual to the community level, and all the way to the collective. The individual has to regain and own their power within: The recognition that the only true commodity is the energy Man naturally creates within, designated towards activity. And that what we call money is merely a formula that measures that. (in other words, Gold doesn't build you a house)
2. Implementation can never work in either direction - a purely capitalistic or socialistic society - simply because they were never intended to be isolated.
In reality, all countries have to face their own capitulation precisely due to the above. The Garden hasn’t been pruned for years, and as a result has become a giant, overcomplex jungle, sending branches and tentacles to every nook and cranny of the house: human life.
If you scratch the surface, you’ll find that so-called “free societies”, like the U.S., are structured in such a way that Freedom and Privatization are but illusions. We’ve been borrowing and creating currency out of thin air against the future work of future generations (i.e. enslavement of our future for the illusion of freedom in the present).
When push comes to shove, the central and larger banks have all the right to confiscate everything we owe, even that which is free of debt. This is not a conspiracy theory, I’m just stating the law.
And so, as mentioned, we’re getting to Marxism/Communism just through the back door. Through the inevitable consequences of the abuse of the system without accountability, over the years.
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Lastly, in my second part of my reply, I’ve expressed that what we have today as the Left, is no longer true left, but a reflection of the sterilization of socialistic / humanness values from the human race.
Since I don't want to repeat it word by word, I can only suggest rereading my first comment again to better understand what I've been trying to convey in regards to this subject matter.
Thank you, I greatly appreciate your response.