Rembrandt Clancy has translated another essay by Wolfgang Ockenfels (previously: June 8, 2016, Oct. 10 2017, April 30, 2018). He includes and introduction as well as endnotes to provide context.
Marxist Monument Preservation
Introduction
by Rembrandt Clancy
On 5 May 2018 an eighteen-foot-high bronze statue of a book-toting, forward-striding Karl Marx, donated by the Communist Chinese government, was erected in Marx’s birthplace of Trier in honour of his 200th birthday. Gates of Vienna has already posted a video on this subject, a speech by Václav Klaus, former President of the Czech Republic.
The present translation is of an editorial opinion called Marxist Monument Preservation by Prof. Wolfgang Ockenfels, who likens the Marx statue in Trier to Brutalism in architecture. Prof Ockenfels’ most recent contribution at Gates of Vienna was The Yearning for and the Right to a Homeland wherein he dealt with the threat to German “cosmo-politicians” of an increasingly urgent “longing for one’s ‘homeland’“ in the face of rising “identity movements” and “alternative parties” which “can no longer be suppressed”.
Forming the background to Prof. Ockenfels’ remarks are speeches by two European politicians who use disclaimers to sanitise Marx and distance him from “these colossal crimes against humanity” which “Karl Marx himself had already announced” (Ockenfels). The two main speakers were the Minister-President of Rhineland-Palatinate, Frau Malu Dreyer (SPD), and Jean-Claude Juncker, President of the European Commission.
Frau Dreyer made this disclaimer:
The crimes against millions of people, which were committed in the 20th century in his [Marx’s] name, cannot be blamed on him. (Phoenix, 0:58)
The following excerpts from Jean-Claude Juncker’s speech were taken from two separate videos, which were themselves excerpts. The speaker shows his consciousness of a continuity with post-war socialism going back to socialist Chancellor Willy Brandt, who was in office from 1964 to 1987 (see also endnote 3). Noteworthy also is Mr. Juncker’s choice of quotation from Karl Marx, as well as his comment on Marx’s works, which together emphasise social engineering as the matter-of-fact vehicle of social change as opposed to an unconscious, organic cultural unfolding.
Marx is not responsible for all the horror for which his alleged heirs are responsible (applause). Willy Brandt recognised that very well, because Willy Brandt said: Whatever one has made of Marx, striving for freedom, the liberation of men from servitude and ignoble dependence constituted the motive for his actions”… One must understand Marx from the standpoint of his times… (0:36 min.)… Marx, a politically active philosopher, once wrote: “The philosophers have only interpreted the world in various ways; the point, however, is to change it.” That which he left behind by way of interpretation and demonstration, Das Kapital and The Communist Manifesto, has contributed to the changing of the world… Karl Marx cannot be held responsible for the fact that some of his later disciples used the values he formulated, and the words he used to describe these values, as a weapon against others (2:02 min.). (cf. RT video in German)
[…]
Karl Marx was a philosopher who thought into the future with a claim to creativity, and today he represents things for which he is neither responsible nor culpable, because much of what he formulated was virtually reformulated into its opposite. But I would nevertheless like to draw attention to the fact that the state of Rhineland-Palatinate and the city [of Trier] are correct to remember Marx, because remembering and understanding has to do with securing the future… (cf. Phoenix video, 2:29 min.)
There are some referenced endnotes available which provide some literary or historical context.
About the Author
Rev. Prof. Wolfgang Ockenfels OP was born in Bad Honnef am Rhein in 1947. Having entered the Dominican Order in 1967, he studied Philosophy and Theology and was ordained in 1973. From 1974 to 1978 he read Social Ethics and Economics in Freiburg, Switzerland. His doctoral thesis was on the theme of Unions and the State. In 1984 he completed his habilitation in the field of Christian Social Doctrine at the University of Augsburg on the subject of faith and politics. Since 1985 Prof. Ockenfels has been a (full) professor for Christian Social Science in the theological faculty in Trier. He has published a very long list of monographs, articles and contributions. Since 1985 he has been Chief Editor of Die Neue Ordnung, a Christian journal founded in 1946 by opponents of National Socialism.
The original source appeared in Die Neue Ordnung, Nr. 3/2018 June
by Wolfgang Ockenfels
June 2018
Marxist Monument Preservation
Translation by Rembrandt Clancy
A spectre is moving about the world, and on its 200th birthday it alights in the centre of Trier as a monstrous bronze Brocken, as a rocher de bronze belonging to the antiquated Left-progressives from an eternal yesterday,[1] all to the sheer delight of the home-tourist-industry and the Chinese guests, who are able to feel at home now that they are in the homeland of the homeless[2] Karl Marx. On aesthetic grounds alone, out of revulsion at this Chinese state-art, the more sensitive contemporaries avoid looking at the monument, which is nothing but grotesque supremacy-art, monumental and imperial. This Brutalism characterises, sure enough, the entire Marxist-Leninist art style, which was not much better than the propaganda art of the Third Reich. Hence now as then, the politico-ideological client is to be taken into account: Marx is still regarded in the political dictatorship of China as the great prophet. And China can easily afford such gifts.
Karl Marx, upon whose “shoulders we stand” — as Oswald von Nell-Breuning SJ[3] all too naively expressed it — can “not be blamed”, of course, for the millions of crimes which were committed in his name, as Malu Dreyer or Jean-Claude Juncker credulously maintained at the ceremony in Trier.
In fact, Karl Marx himself had already announced these colossal crimes against humanity. In Marx, many extremist justifications for revolutionary violence are to be found. Marx legitimised the bloody “anti-capitalist class warfare”, to which more than a hundred million people fell victim. Of course one cannot attribute every single one of these crimes committed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro to Marx. Unfortunately, however, most of these mass murderers, their accomplices and the leftist armchair perpetrators have to this day not been brought before a court of law. And the Marxist intellectuals, journalists and politicians have continued to be spared a Vergangenheitsbewältigung [an overcoming of a (holocaust) past].[4] The victims’ associations, who have now also made themselves known in Trier, are unfortunately not heard.
According to Frau Sahra Wagenknecht, [high-profile member of parliament in the Bundestag for the die Linke or Left Party], “democracy” was Marx’s noble aim, which is why he is to be counted as a model for “young people”. However, “democracy”, as we understand it also in the Church today, plays no role at all in Marx. It is bound neither to the principle of majority rule nor to a constitutional state, which guarantees inalienable human rights according to natural law which is antecedent to the state. Issues of rights in Marx are purely issues of power. And the “dictatorship of the proletariat” for which he strove did not lead to a “kingdom of freedom”, but to a collective servitude such as the world had not seen up to that time. For that reason alone his ideas should be placed under surveillance in line with constitutional law. And as far as his conduct of life and character are concerned, he is rather a cynical model for “young people”: he contracted debts, speculated on the stock exchange, defamed political opponents and agitated against the Jews. At the same time he lived as a parasite off of his capitalist friend Friedrich Engels — a quite up-to-date behavioural model incidentally.
As far as his historical influence is concerned, Marx drew from his own historical-metaphysical premises, according to which his sociological theory of evolution, by necessity, leads to a “kingdom of freedom” — without private property and without state domination. Indeed, world history is open to the possibility of unprognosticated errors, sure enough. Admittedly, Marxist ideology was certainly politically successful — at least for a certain period of time. Precisely therein lies the problem, above all, for the class of opportunistic intellectuals who willingly submit to the prevailing power. And after their failure, only rarely show remorse and come to their senses. Playing the role of the “critical intellectual” in the last century has proved to be a painfully embarrassing disgrace. And it extends right up to the present, if one considers the ideological affinity of the Zeitgeist, resistance to experience and the historical amnesia of supposedly critical spirits.
In addition, surplus value theory and the immiseration theory, [that proletarian working conditions worsen by the nature of capitalist production], as well as other assumptions made by Marx, have long since been empirically invalidated. These problems do not preclude that many of his prognoses have retained an astounding topicality. Some passages of his “Communist Manifesto”, for example, are suited to elucidating the current “globalization” of unfettered capitalism; although far from solving the problems, his solutions have simply made them worse. His analyses, prognoses and treatments are not value-free, but succumb to Weltanschauung-like implications and dogmas, which materially call into question his scientific pretensions. Inseparable from his “scientific” theory is the ideological dogma with its atheistic view negating the precepts of God, faith and reason — and therefore also property rights. Marx never came to terms with Thomas Aquinas;[5] he simply ignored him. The Hegel-student was in any case not historically and philosophically educated. He simply did not understand the world — as society and history — which he wished to change, and therefore he also interpreted it falsely.
The 68er movement culminated in the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang, the RAF or “Red Army Faction”. It was on this subject that Bettina Röhl,[6] the daughter of Ulrike Meinhof, recently wrote a harrowing book based on her own experience. In it she describes with clarity the connection between Marxism and terrorism, from which the neo-Marxists of the “Frankfurt School” have distanced themselves ever so little. And there are still many who collaborate with the emergence of this violence, for instance with the street terrorism of the “Antifa” Forms of this misanthropic revolution aimed at the production of the “new man” are to be found today in feminism, the gender movement and in multiculturalism; new social experiments, which easily fit in with Marxist preservation of monuments and generate ever new victims.
Translator’s Endnotes
1. “A spectre is moving about the world and on its 200th birthday alights in the centre of Trier as a monstrous bronze Brocken, as a rocher de bronze belonging to the antiquated Left-progressives of an eternal yesterday [ewiggestriger Linksprogressiver]…”
“A spectre is moving about the world”: This phrase differs by only one word from the first sentence of Marx and Engels’ Communist Manifesto whose publication coincided with the mostly failed liberal revolutions of 1848 in Europe. The original sentence reads in full: “A spectre is moving about Europe — the spectre of communism” (Ein Gespenst geht um in Europa — das Gespenst des Kommunismus.).
“Bronze Brocken”: By this simile, which likens the gigantism of the Marx statue to Brocken or Blocksberg, the highest point of the Harz mountains in Northern Germany, Prof. Ockenfels alludes to Marx as a Mephistophelian spirit which is now worldwide. Brocken is the locale for the Walpurgis Night or the Witches’ Sabbath (April 30), where in Goethe’s Faust Part I, Mephistopheles leads Faust into a chorus of dancing and singing demons.
“Rocher de bronze” is a synonym for eherner Fels or ‘rock of bronze’. French is used here to emphasise unshakeable steadfastness, for it evokes King Frederick William I of Prussia (1688-1740): “I attain to my purpose and stabilise sovereignty and plant the crown firmly like a rocher de bronze and leave the wind of the Landtag to the Messers Junker”. Hence the French phrase, together with the idea that progressives live steadfastly in an eternal yesterday, creates an extended oxymoron exposing liberalism as a surface progression mired in a substantial regression.
The above quotation is translated from: Radbruch, Gustav. Rechtsphilosophie I. Heidelberg: C.F Müller Juristischer Verlag, 1987, p. 248.
“Left progressives from an eternal yesterday [ewiggestriger Linksprogressiver]”: Progressives in Germany routinely use ewiggestrig, eternal yesterday, to describe their opponents as ‘living in the past’, backward, antiquated, outmoded or retrogressive. Here Prof. Ockenfels points the phrase toward the liberals to expose their latent regression (cf. endnote 1, rocher de bronze).
An Ewiggestriger (ewig-Gestriger) is best translated, at least in this context, literally as “eternal yesterday”. Prof. Ockenfels uses it adjectivally, a form which is extremely awkward to render in English.
The expression may originate with Schiller. Samual Coleridge translated “ewig Gestrige“ as “eternal yesterday” in his rendering of these famous lines in Schiller’s “The Death of Wallenstein”, Act 1 scene IV (1799):
‘Tis a foe invisible
The which I fear—a fearful enemy,
Which in the human heart opposes me,
By its coward fear alone made fearful to me.
Not that, which full of life, instinct with power,
Makes known its present being; that is not
The true, the perilously formidable.
O no! it is the common, the quite common,
The thing of an eternal yesterday [ewig Gestrige].
Whatever was, and evermore returns,
Sterling to-morrow, for to-day ‘twas sterling!
(Project Gutenberg)
Ironically, and perhaps unwittingly, the German Wikipedia implies that the National Socialists thought of themselves as progressive. Their entry for “Ewiggestriger“ attributes usage of the term, by way of an example, to NS students’ organisations (Kameradschaften), who in the 1930’s denounced traditional students as Ewiggestriger.
2. “…all to the sheer delight of the home- [heimischen] tourist-industry and the Chinese guests, who are able to feel at home [zu Hause] now that they are in the homeland [Heimat] of the homeless [heimatlos] Karl Marx”:
The obvious play on the concept of “home”, and the word Heimat itself, alludes to the connection between globalism, communism and wandering homelessness without identity. This relationship becomes apparent after reading Prof. Ockenfels’ recent contribution, “The Yearning for and the Right to a Homeland”, at Gates of Vienna (30 April 2018).
3. “A Karl Marx upon whose ‘shoulders we stand’, as Oswald von Nell-Breuning SJ all too naïvely expressed it”.
Some might say that the word “naïve” is an understatement, for mention of Oswald Nell-Breuning (1890-1991) hints at an increasingly unofficial, but nevertheless politically effective Marxist tendency in the Catholic Church after 1965. Like Marx, Nell-Breuning was born in Trier. He was a Jesuit priest with an aristocratic background and was highly respected in the field of Catholic social teaching. For example, Nell-Breuning is well-known for his part in drafting the social encyclical Quadragesimo Anno (Pius XI, 1931), which was opposed to socialism and liberalism. He was a prolific writer, and there is even an Oswald von Nell-Breuning-Institut in Frankfurt.
But after the Second Vatican Council (1962-1965), Nell-Breuning may have undergone a transition from Catholic Social teaching to “social justice”. At the age of 75 (about 1965) he appears to have it both ways in an interview with the TV personality by the name of Gunter Gäus:
Karl Marx — we came out of the same Gymnasium [high school] — certainly realised an impressive intellectual accomplishment. We all stand on Marx’s shoulders, whether we know it or not. And today we call the errors of Karl Marx, Marxism. (Konrad Löw. Wir alle stehen auf den Schultern von Karl Marx, Theologisches. 1990, 147-8).
Nell-Breuning was also sufficiently well-known in German socialist circles to have been “quoted with much praise on a solemn occasion” by Willy Brandt; it was a speech which is now in book form: “Friedrich Engels and Social Democracy: Speech on the 150th birthday of Friedrich Engels “(Löw, ibid. p. 148).
More recently, Nell-Breuning received favourable mention from Cardinal Marx, the current head of the German Bishops’ Conference, who quotes the phrase “We all stand on the shoulders of Karl Marx” in an interview with Rheinische Post Online (20 April 2018) in anticipation of the bicentennial of the birth of Karl Marx:
Catholic social teaching has put an intensive effort into Marx, hence the words of Oswald von Nell-Breuning: “We all stand on the shoulders of Karl Marx”. This does not mean that he [Marx] is a “church father”. But his position has always been a point of discussion for Catholic social teaching, mostly by way of critical dismissal, but also in posing the question: What does he actually mean, what is preoccupying him? Is his analysis of capitalism correct? [Emphasis added.]
There is a more complete context for this quotation in English at Crisis Magazine.
4. “And the Marxist intellectuals, journalists and politicians have continued to be spared a “Vergangenheitsbewältigung” [overcoming of the past]”:
The point here is that German Marxists are spared the obligation of overcoming their own past atrocities.
Vergangenheitsbewältigung, or overcoming the past, is an unspoken reference to the 12-year period of National Socialism, which in this usage stands more precisely for the Holocaust: Vergangenheitbewältigung refers to “a nation’s confrontation with a problematical period of its recent past, in particular with National Socialism in Germany” (Duden). It has the effect of creating a negative national identity founded on collective guilt stemming from an atrocity, being that their history is limited in public consciousness to the 12-year period of National Socialism.
In his book Finis Germania, in the chapter entitled “The Mythos of Overcoming the Past”, Rolf Peter Sieferle indentifies Vergangenheitsbewältigung as having the features of a state religion. He treats it as a broad ideological container for what he calls the “Auschwitz-mythos”, by which he means a “unique and irredeemable guilt”, the source of which is the historical event of “Auschwitz”. As such, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, is the negative founding principle of Germany, which maintains the German people in a perpetual state of collective guilt. (cf. Gates of Vienna, December 2017).
5. “Inseparable from his “scientific” theory is the ideological dogma with its atheistic view negating the precepts of God, faith and reason — and therefore also property rights. Marx never came to terms with Thomas Aquinas; he simply ignored him.”
In this passage, Thomas Aquinas, as the main philosopher in the springtime of Western culture, is a metonym for the tradition which applies and modifies Aristotelian reasoning in the light of Christian revelation. There is no faith without reason:
For, if we do not demonstrate that God exists, all consideration of divine things is necessarily suppressed. (Aquinas, Thomas. Summa Contra Gentiles, trans. Anton C. Pegis. IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1975, I.9)
Ockenfels presents Thomas Aquinas (reason) and Marx as mutually exclusive sets in this passage. Marx’s dialectical materialism, as historical and environmental determinism, determines thinking itself. It is also an evolutionist theory (Hegel), with the blind mechanism of natural selection as its biologistic prototype. For Marx, Darwin’s Origin of the Species (1859) is the very “basis” of dialectical materialism (cf. Darwin’s metaphor: Nature’s Place in Victorian Culture by Robert M. Young). By the starkness of this contrast between dialectical materialism and reason, Ockenfels implicitly understands Marx as a rebel against Logos and also against Western culture.
Marxism surfaced unofficially in the Church after 1965 along with the gradual rehabilitation of the pantheistic evolutionist, Teilhard de Chardin (The Phenomenon of Man). This tendency was identified, for example, as early as 1968 in a now obscure, but well-referenced pamphlet published by Twin Circle:
St. Thomas Aquinas has been toppled from his throne as the universal doctor of the Catholic Church and supplanted by a new champion, Teilhard de Chardin. (Monsignor Leo S., Schumacher. The Truth About Teilhard, p. 37)
6. “It was on this subject that Bettina Röhl, the daughter of Ulrike-Meinhof, recently wrote a harrowing book based on her own experience.”:
The Baader-Meinhof Gang, as if by a kind of synchronicity, can be compared in their activities with other violent, left-wing “68er” groups in the 1970s, such as the Weathermen in the United States and the Red Brigades in Italy. Bettina Röhl’s book is about a life caught up in history, for it was lived during events which, because of the political murders, shook the prosperous, pre-unified Bundesrepublik to her foundations.
Bettina Röhl’s six hundred-page book is entitled “Die RAF hat euch lieb“ (2018) or “The RAF loves you”. The author writes in the forward to her book that its title is a quotation from a letter which Ulrike Meinhof wrote to her twin daughters, Bettina and Regina, during the early period of her imprisonment around 1972 or 73. The girls were born in 1962.
Bettina Röhl is a journalist and prolific writer, having had experience in a number of Germany’s well-known magazines and journals. She currently writes for a conservative German opinion magazine called Tichys Einblick.
In 2001, when Joschka Fischer (Greens) was Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Gerhard Schroeder (SPD), she exposed his violent street-fighting past during the 1970s. A contemporary article in The Guardian has its own way of framing the event.
Great appreciation and respect for Rembrandt Clancy and of course the writings of the Rev. Prof. Ockenfels, who I hope we hear from a great deal more in future. A comment from RonaldB, regarding the nature and source of universal or ‘natural’ rights, dated 2nd May, was, I think, an important comment and it would be interesting to have more discussion on this issue from both the above gentlemen. Many of us, who are not practicing Christians, yet instinctively support the idea of universal rights, might argue that such rights are intrinsic to the theory of a ‘social contract’ between people and their governments.
Yes – these universal rights are self-evident and not necessarily based on any religious teaching, doctrine, revelation etc. I am close to your position on this theme.
On the other hand – if these rights are endangered and claiming that they are given us by God, not any Government (because then they can be discarded by another government) is the way of protecting them, I have no problem with that – even though as a secular person I do not see God’s hand in devising such rights.
Thank you for the mention. The specific comment to which you referred is https://gatesofvienna.net/2018/04/the-yearning-for-and-the-right-to-a-homeland/#comment-508717
I actually want to ask the question of why Marxism is so attractive to people like Junker, a bureaucrat with power and empire equaled by few rulers in history. Junker makes rules and sets the legal rights for people in 28 countries, and an empire equaled in area by only a few empires in history. Why is Junker a proponent of a philosophy that purports to promote equality, when Junker is actually one of the most powerful, influential, and probably wealthy, men in history?
Also, there is the question of whether Marxism actually caused Junker and others to be what he is. But, I’ll take the other question first.
The fact is, Marxism is a philosophy that justifies the seizure of power by men who otherwise would have no claim to it. The typical bureaucrat is a Mandarin functionary: higher in education and verbal skills than most, but deficient in skills needed to produce anything or lead anyone. The head bureaucrats gain their power by clawing their way to the top in a chain of people who don’t actually produce anything, but generally live off the money taken from productive people. Bureaucrats are usually low people skills, low testosterone, low drive, and low in character. Take a look at Junker and his public interactions. Does he avoid direct confrontations, or does he engage with ideas and opposition?
So, without a bureaucratic position, it is hard to imagine Junker in any type of productive place. He can’t lead, he can’t create, he can’t inspire. He couldn’t be a chief of staff; he might be an assistant researcher. So, a man of rather low general skills becomes one of the most powerful men in Europe through the dynamics of bureaucracy. And this is exactly what Marxism advocates: bypass the mazes of actual productivity and usefulness, to allocate power to people solely on whether they are willing to promote…what communism promotes.
So communism is the working philosophy, rationale, and justification of the bureaucrat cum tyrant. Is it any wonder that bureaucracy is top-heavy with communists? That communists, generally rather low in productive skills themselves, gravitate to bureaucracies.
Trotsky is the perfect communist; a vicious, murderous, unprincipled sociopath who thought his high verbal abilities and debate skills would lead him to power. Trotsky was outgunned by Stalin, who was the better bureaucrat, though immensely less skilled in expression or debate. But what justified Stalin as ruler, who bungled the beginning of World War II to the cost of millions of Russian soldiers and who couldn’t understand basic science like genetics? Well, Marxism did. Stalin might have been Stalin without Marxism, but it sure gave him a convenient hook to hang his coat.
Would Junker be Junker without Marx? A vanilla, mediocre functionary who believes his superior memo-writing and paper-pushing skills justify his sitting at the top of a gigantic, all-powerful empire, dictating the details of life to the smallest detail. Probably. But Marxism completes the circle for him, giving him ideological cover. It is the common language for him and his minions, just as Islam is the common language for gaggles of low-skill, low-IQ murderous tribesmen.
So, the statue of Marx in Trier is probably not going to change anyone, but is simply a cultural landmark for the tyranny of the mediocre.
Mr Clancy A TERRIBLE DISSERVICE TO TOMMY ROBINSON AND JULIAN ASSANGE
It took me a little while to appreciate that there are really two essays here, one by Ockenfels, and another which is the Translators Notes by Clancy. The picture illustrating the essays is not of Marxism but of Stalinism. East Germany was a Stalinist state.
I do not believe that either Ockenfels or Clancy mentions Leon Trotsky once!
It is hard to come to terms with these essays because there are so many mistruths. It is like a different universe to me. I simply do not have the time to go through this kind of material misleading little avenue by misleading little avenue. I think of poor old Sisyphus of Corinth!
According to Frau Sahra Wagenknecht, [high-profile member of parliament in the Bundestag for the die Linke or Left Party], “democracy” was Marx’s noble aim, which is why he is to be counted as a model for “young people”. However, “democracy”, as we understand it also in the Church today, plays no role at all in Marx. It is bound neither to the principle of majority rule nor to a constitutional state, which guarantees inalienable human rights according to natural law which is antecedent to the state. Issues of rights in Marx are purely issues of power. And the “dictatorship of the proletariat” for which he strove did not lead to a “kingdom of freedom”, but to a collective servitude such as the world had not seen up to that time. For that reason alone his ideas should be placed under surveillance in line with constitutional law. And as far as his conduct of life and character are concerned, he is rather a cynical model for “young people”: he contracted debts, speculated on the stock exchange, defamed political opponents and agitated against the Jews. At the same time, he lived as a parasite off of his capitalist friend Friedrich Engels — a quite up-to-date behavioural model incidentally.
Well the first thing to grasp is that the political writings of Marx and his friend Engels were a set of ideas. They were ideas. Got that.
And I would have thought that we are on the side today of people who value ideas.
There is the idea of the “dictatorship of the proletariat”. I actually agree with this “concept” “idea” very, very strongly and the more I see of the deceit of capitalism today and the violence of capitalism today (I think of Tommy, Anne Marie, and Julian specifically) then the more I see the need for the working class to take power and IMPOSE its rule against these barbarians of the august British House of Commons, and the august Churches Catholic and Anglican who jail Tommy, and the revered BBC etcetera.
All of these HAVE a dictatorship. Do these people Ockenfels and Clancy not see that and why do they not allude to that?
If you take the jailing of Tommy Robinson by the British capitalist but not hunter-gatherer (sarcasm) state and if you take the episode of hounding and silence around the Anne Marie Waters in the Lewisham bye-election as examples of what? Democracy?
So is the writer saying that capitalism today is “democracy”?
[redacted for incivility]
MARX HAS NO RESPONSIBILITY FOR MAO
Well I do not think that the Chinese Government leaders are “Marxists”. Rather they believe as did Stalin in “socialism in a single country” whereas Marx saw that capitalism had created a world economy, and that this stood in contradiction to the nation state. That is just a description of reality. Nationalism and I AM an Irish nationalist cannot just evade this reality. So about the bronze statue of Marx made by the Chinese Stalinists. They are opposed to Marx so they have no right to pretend they are “Marxists” anyway.
This is a key paragraph…
“The 68er movement culminated in the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang, the RAF or “Red Army Faction”. It was on this subject that Bettina Röhl,[6] the daughter of Ulrike Meinhof, recently wrote a harrowing book based on her own experience. In it she describes with clarity the connection between Marxism and terrorism, from which the neo-Marxists of the “Frankfurt School” have distanced themselves ever so little. And there are still many who collaborate with the emergence of this violence, for instance with the street terrorism of the “Antifa” Forms of this misanthropic revolution aimed at the production of the “new man” are to be found today in feminism, the gender movement and in multiculturalism; new social experiments, which easily fit in with Marxist preservation of monuments and generate ever new victims.”
“The 68er movement culminated in the terrorist Baader-Meinhof Gang, the RAF or “Red Army Faction”.
Well I do not think that it did culminate in Baader Meinhof. That is far too narrow. In 1968 in France the students were never fully joined by the French working class although most workers probably were sympathetic, and De Gaulle I believe did flee for some weeks. (This is the big problem with replying to these kinds of attacks on an idea…I need to write a book on this 1968 issue to answer fully, you know the saying a lie can travel around the world before truth gets his trousers on)
The key to understanding 68 in France, also in North of Ireland and probably America too…There was no revolutionary socialist party there to lead. What happened was a result of that.
Baader Meinhof well they were right on a number of things about Germany. But they were NOT Marxist and had no perspective at all towards the working class. In fact they were motivated by despair in that regard. That happened with the Provisionals also. Despair always seems to lead to terror, I emphasize individual terrorism, which is always defeated by the state.
So please do not try to pin terrorism of Baader Meinhof also onto Marx and Engels. They were opposed.
The Translators Notes says
“In 2001, when Joschka Fischer (Greens) was Foreign Minister in the cabinet of Gerhard Schroeder (SPD), she exposed his violent street-fighting past during the 1970s. A contemporary article in The Guardian has its own way of framing the event.”
This falls apart when you consider that the “Greens” have nothing to do with Marx! The Translator is on shaky ground. Why not just translate!!!
But there is worse…
“And there are still many who collaborate with the emergence of this violence, for instance with the street terrorism of the “Antifa” Forms of this misanthropic revolution aimed at the production of the “new man” are to be found today in feminism, the gender movement and in multiculturalism; new social experiments, which easily fit in with Marxist preservation of monuments and generate ever new victims.”
In this strange language of the “translator” we have Marx as the originator of the “Me Too” movement as well and other such disgraces and our present afflictions!
Is there no evil in the world that Karl and Friedrich do not lay behind!
The whole essay and the Translators Notes is an exercise in futility. It is an exercise in distorting texts, historical texts, leaving out important material of Marx and Engels, and simply is the very opposite direction to educate the new layer of youth that we need int he face of the coming Fascism (jailing of Tommy, incarceration of Julian).
He does a great disservice actually to Tommy Robinson, Julian Assange and to Anne Marie Waters.
It is old stuff. These assertions by these two people are really old and stale. If the life of Tommy Robinson and of Julian Assange is to be saved we need to read the original.
You cut the Wikipedia quote on St Matthew. That must be the weirdest cut of all time.
My sense of it was that the British State is talking endlessly about democracy at the same time that they prevent the Hustings in Lewisham, at the same time that they are calling Anne Marie a Fascist. Who is moving towards Fascism? The British state. It is the hypocrisy of that situation that made me turn to the Matthew quote. May go down as one of the most peculiar experiences in my life.
“…the political writings of Marx and his friend Engels were a set of ideas. They were ideas. Got that.
And I would have thought that we are on the side today of people who value ideas.”
Hey Quigley, thanks a heap for letting us know that Marx is A-Okay because he had ideas. Gott In Himmel!
I don’t see the fixation with the “working class”. Kalergi-Cudenhov (yes, the prophet of race-mixing) distinguished between the urban population, where a city in one country is pretty much indistinguishable from a city in another country, and the rural, non-urban population that actually distinguished the culture and values of a civilization. This is roughly equivalent to the liberal coasts and cities of the Democrats, versus fly-over country. The “working class”, roughly identifiable as the union rank-and-file as opposed to the union leader-bureaucrats, certainly was in support of Trump also, but there is no reason they should be idealized and given unique influence over, say, the productive non-urban population of townspeople, farmers, merchants, ranch owners and their support networks.
The British government and financial system has as much relationship to capitalism as a clipped dog has to a raccoon. It’s true that individual bankers and financiers are free collude with the British government and the EU to manipulate markets, float tax-backed loans, and generally use the public treasure as their banking account, but this has no relationship to capitalism whatsoever. You seem to equate capitalism with any system at all that gives an individual the opportunity to achieve massive fortunes. Do you think George Soros could last five minutes in any financial milieu where government-controlled central banks did not have a monopoly on currency?
Marx is, in fact, the poisoned apple. He used published material to buttress his theories (such as they are) but explicitly ignored material counter to his thesis, and explicitly misquoted material to support his thesis. These errors were pointed out during his lifetime, and he totally ignored the corrections. Thus, Marxian theory is, at best, a flawed system based on systematically distorted data. At worst, Marxian theory is based on little at all except Marx’s Hypocratic humors. This possibility is buttressed by the fact that Marx frequently took opposite sides of the same question at different times.
I’ll treat the question of the relationship between Marxism and totalitarian governments elsewhere on this thread.
You have to ask if Marx isn’t to blame for victims of Communism, then what did he do that was worthy of such a huge statue and a statue that was provided by the world’s biggest Communist state.
It’s like saying that all these moslems killing non-moslems while screaming Admiral Ackbar or whatever they say have nothing to do with Islam.
Perhaps statues to van den Bruck, Plenge, Spengler could be next.
What victims of “Communism”? Please be specific.
Did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn make it all up?
My question was to DanielK and surely with one person me, against about a dozen, that DanielK can speak for himself…I am still waiting for DanielK
OMG, I’m so glad I left it all behind. Way back in 1969, when Willie Brandt became the first socialist chancellor of postwar Germany, from where it all went straight downhill. Socialism all the way, ever since… despite American “occupation”, which was a blessing, but didn’t stop it. The Germans didn’t like a free market economy, the insatiable LUST to regulate everything took over, not only in Germany, but in most of the European nations except Switzerland. And when the wall came down, 1989, Germany inherited another 20 million losers, heavily indoctrinated with Marxist sludge, and many of them managed to wangle themselves into positions of power, like the former Stasi apparatchik “Erika” Merkel. Funny how it all went. Then came the EU, the EUSSR rather, where all the top kadres were hardcore commies, from Xavier Solana to Barroso, from Cohn Bendit to Rumpoy, that “wet rag”, and all these other Kaputniks that are now running the show, unelected, unaccountable Marxist Mandarins making laws for the oldest continent, wiping out 2000 years of culture and civilisation by importing unassimilable Mohammedan & African savages. Seeing it from a distance, you’d hope we were immune, but we’re not. The virus has infected us too.
Great comment and excellent summary of the last 30+ years of “stealth” infiltration of Marxism into the Western world. I, too, left the post-iron-Curtain world some decades ago for the Land of the Free just to witness all the downhill development in Europe and ascent and fortification of Neo-Marxism in American intellectual milieu.
What a sad spectacle to watch and witness, what memories of the communist past it brings, what dim prospects it heralds.
Pity you forgot Tony Blair and Peter Mandelson…Noted Communists both!
Yes indeed. Excellent precis. c
Sad and disgusting trend.
President Reagan knew exactly what should be done with these statues:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCO9BYCGNeY
raspailwasright on June 16, 2018 at 12:37 pm said:
Sad and disgusting trend.
President Reagan knew exactly what should be done with these statues:
Yes indeed I also find that it is a sad and disgusting trend especially when it is promoted by Chinese Stalinists who have totally sold out socialism to be capitalist imperialists.
Marx would not have wanted a statue of portrait
Engels would not have wanted a statue of portrait
Lenin would not have wanted a statue of portrait
Above all Trotsky would not have wanted a statue of portrait
What Marx wanted was for the working class as a class to become conscious of itself as a class and eventually to take the power of the state to lead society forward
[Mass of verbiage redacted.
Felix, you’ve GOT to control your logorrhea — this comment (one of several lengthy ones) was 745 words long, longer than many essays or articles posted here. I don’t have time to read it, and neither does Dymphna. If you must hold forth at length, do so at your own blog, and leave a link here. That’s perfectly acceptable. — BB]
[…]
PS I notice that I have no apology from the editors for their charge against me of “incivility”. In fact what you cut from my piece was an entire quotation from Wikipedia and I even gave the source, which was in origin from St Matthew no less, with a correct addition of a couple of words by Wikipedia, I did not write one letter of one word of what you wrote, and the end result is I am the only person on this thread charged with “incivility” which is something I do not really want, especially as I have kept my cool in a situation of one against up to a dozen. Very unfair indeed.
[That was Dymphna’s doing; she may be willing to explain why. Or not.
My advice is to moderate your tone towards us if you hope for our cooperation. Remember: it’s far, far easier to delete comments than it is to redact them. —BB]
“Did Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn make it all up?”
I would be very loath if I was editor of Gates of Vienna to hang your coat on that particular hook
Solzhenitsyn has a very big thing about Jews you know!!!
An objective assessment of all that went on in Russia may not be what you get from Mr Solzhenitsyn
“Yet others failed to see the need for Solzhenitsyn’s pursuit of this particular subject at present. Vassili Berezhkov, a retired KGB colonel and historian of the secret services and the NKVD (the precursor of the KGB), said: “The question of ethnicity did not have any importance either in the revolution or the story of the NKVD. This was a social revolution and those who served in the NKVD and cheka were serving ideas of social change.
“If Solzhenitsyn writes that there were many Jews in the NKVD, it will increase the passions of anti-semitism, which has deep roots in Russian history. I think it is better not to discuss such a question now.” ”
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2003/jan/25/russia.books
I have not read Berezhkov but he is certainly correct when he says that Antisemitism in Russia has deep roots.
Even in this article you can see the wisdom of Trotsky. His position that if there were many Jews in the bureaucracy then better to get them to join the army because in Russia antisemitism was always in the air.
The point though is that the party of Lenin and Trotsky was always fighting antisemitism and the hated figure of Stalin began to use it to fight against Trotsky.
But in this in contrast to these principled men Solzhenitsyn like a nasty little weed is encouraging and stirring it up.
“In fact, Karl Marx himself had already announced these colossal crimes against humanity. In Marx, many extremist justifications for revolutionary violence are to be found. Marx legitimised the bloody “anti-capitalist class warfare”, to which more than a hundred million people fell victim. Of course one cannot attribute every single one of these crimes committed by Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro to Marx. Unfortunately, however, most of these mass murderers, their accomplices and the leftist armchair perpetrators have to this day not been brought before a court of law. And the Marxist intellectuals, journalists and politicians have continued to be spared a Vergangenheitsbewältigung [an overcoming of a (holocaust) past].[4] The victims’ associations, who have now also made themselves known in Trier, are unfortunately not heard.”
He calls Lenin here a mass murderer. He places Lenin alongside of Stalin. He omits totally Trotsky. He includes Ho Chi Min which raises the American and other Imperialist countries involvement in that poor country far away from their own.
He is saying that Marxism is a theory and practice of murder.
There are all kinds of LIES contained in all of this including in the comments.
And you expect me to be moderate and that I am writing too much.
Yes I do make a mistake. I become incensed by these lies.
But I thought that was the reason for you starting your blog to answer the non stop lying to whitewash Islam.
Baron here, using Dymphna’s computer.
Lenin signed orders for the mass execution of “counter-revolutionary” prisoners, thousands of them. This was during the early days of the Bolshevik regime, but not during the civil war. There is a documentary evidence of this. It is an historical FACT.
Lenin was indeed a mass murderer. Not on the scale of Stalin, mind you — but then, he only lived until 1924.
Right. Got it. Baron and his wife are going to defeat the Jihad and a billion and a half Muslims by means of what precisely? Words?
Lenin signed orders for the mass execution of “counter-revolutionary” prisoners, thousands of them. This was during the early days of the Bolshevik regime, but not during the civil war. There is a documentary evidence of this. It is an historical FACT.
Well that is so helpful. So precise.
What a great help. But so quick to make Lenin a mass executioner’
I would hazard a guess you are bluffing here unless you can come up with a few precise points…such as when did the Revolution happen, when did the co called Civil War begin and when these executions of thousands you reference happened.
Just typical.
And I thought lies was what you were fighting against on this site!!!
Your problem is that for the first time you have met a communist revolutionary who is also, and I believe by the very nature of me being a communist revolutionary, who wants to destroy totally, every dammed bit of it, Islam.
And I take no statement or assertion about anything for granted.
The biography of Lenin that gave those details was written by a communist. It’s been almost fifty years since I read it; so I can’t remember the author’s name. But I remember that particular incident, because it was striking in the way it foreshadowed the actions of Stalin.
I’m not concerned with what you might or might not take for granted.
What do you think Felix Dzherzhinsky was supervising in the basement of the Lubyanka under Lenin’s orders? Games of table tennis?