VANGUARD: May Day (fwd)

Wed Apr 30 20:36:40 PDT 2003

Not sure why I got it....YMMV (mine certainly did).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Wed, 30 Apr 2003 19:18:49 -0700
From: Rod D. Martin <Rod.Martin at theVanguard.org>
To: TheVanguard.org <Vanguard at theVanguard.org>
Subject: VANGUARD: May Day

Vanguard of the Revolution
http://www.theVanguard.org

MAY DAY
by
Rod D. Martin, 1 May 2003

You would have never heard of Karl Marx had it not been for V.I. Lenin. Marx
was neither terribly successful nor terribly important in his own right, and
had it not been for a revolution carried out three decades after his death,
he would be a footnote at best.

But on this May Day, the high holy day of Communism and Socialism, it is
important that we remember.

As a student, both in England and America, I often heard the refrain -- even
from conservatives -- that "communism wouldn't have been so bad if it had
been carried out like Marx suggested, without all that junk from Lenin and
Stalin." It still amazes me the degree to which this leftist propaganda can
be passed off as true. It shows that the speaker has never read much (if
any) Marx or Lenin, and, usually, that he wants to sound "intellectual". It
also shows that socialists, whether of the national socialist (Nazi) or of
the international socialist (Communist/Socialist) stripe, have been very
successful in employing Herr Goebbels' doctrine of "the big lie."

In fact, Marx never produced a political program at all. The entirety of his
plan for his new world order was contained in ten short points -- nothing
more than slogans, really -- in his very first "book", the Communist
Manifesto. He never defined them further. He never saw a need. Marx had
grander work in mind.

He was producing a religion.

Marx, the anti-Semitic Jew, the hater of Christianity and all it stood for,
created an entire atheology. It was, in the words of James Billington, "fire
in the minds of men." Marx sought to turn the old order on its head, to
regenerate mankind through chaos. He preached a dialectical view of history
which seemed to derive from Fuerbach but really just represented ancient
dualism. He propounded a materialism which he said "turned Hegel right-side
up," and which said that no person was anything more than a mechanistically
determined automaton, "matter in motion." He wedded to this a naively
classical interpretation of the labor theory of value to produce his
economics, and a utopian view of the state that said man, who was morally
neutral and therefore perfectible, could be utterly re-made -- regenerated,
or "saved" -- by a state or party which completely controlled and molded his
environment.

To all of this he added an eschatology of victory, a certainty of success
which was raised to the level of first principle, of dogma, of prerequisite
faith. It is eternally worth noting that Whittaker Chambers, even when he
embraced freedom, believed without question that he was abandoning the
winning side. The contagiousness of the Communist faith was such that
virtually everyone at the time agreed.

The tenor of the "worker's paradise" to come was already apparent in Marx's
own leadership of the International Workingmen's Association, which was
nothing if not dictatorial. Once in the hands of a state, however, Communist
atheology became truly consistent with its presuppositions. Since the
individual man was just a biological machine, he could be discarded at will.
Since good and evil were entirely relative, they could be defined entirely
by the party and therefore by the state. Since the state/party could and
must regenerate man and build the paradise to come, it's power must be
absolute and unquestioned.

And since victory was inevitable, millions gave up their individuality,
their families, even their lives, without a fight.

Marx's atheology created the greatest idol of all, the idol of the
omnipotent state. This idol appealed to men more than any other in history,
because it made all morality relative and it gave ambitious men the means to
become gods themselves. But it also appealed precisely because it was not an
idol of stone or wood, but an idol of power: prayers to it could be
answered, needs and greeds fulfilled. And because it indulged all of man's
basest instincts while ever appealing to his noblest motives, it was exactly
the sort of god man wanted to create, a god in his own image.

Marx's work was nothing new -- it was the logical conclusion of left-wing
Enlightenment humanism, and had roots as old as Pharaoh -- and it was left
to others -- Lenin, Stalin, Mao -- to carry out his work. Yet Marx's idol
was and remains in many ways the most successful false god of human history.
In its heyday enslaving more than half the world (and nearly taking the
rest), its presuppositions still remain the dominant faith of the ruling
elites of most of the western world. That is itself a terrifying thought.
Marxism in this century killed a hundred million people, and sent probably
two billion to hell. It withered whatever it touched, and it frankly touched
us all.

If Lenin's minions were the "vanguard" of the old revolution, we must
be the vanguard of the new. Nothing has taught us better than Marxism the
danger of holding false theological presuppositions, even in the absence of
a clear political program.  Mankind may embrace the truth, or he may embrace
a lie. The difference between the American Revolution and the Russian is the
difference between worlds; and it is that better world -- indeed a better
world even still -- which we must build.

Copyright: Rod D. Martin, 1 May 2003.

This column first appeared (with minor differences) on 1 May 1998.

-- Rod D. Martin, Founder and Chairman of Vanguard PAC
(http://www.theVanguard.org), is an attorney and writer from
Little Rock, Arkansas. A former policy director to Arkansas Gov.
Mike Huckabee, he is the Center for Cultural Leadership's Senior
Fellow in Public Policy and Political Affairs, and Special Counsel
to PayPal.com Founder Peter Thiel.

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