Marxism

Monosystemic, devoid of variant possibilities, and accordingly autocratic, Marxism is the most extreme, reactionary form of such dogma because it rests upon Hegel’s monarchist, deeply misconceived attempt to revive and perpetuate the ‘dialectical’ practices of scholasticism, at best through ignorance, at worst through willful denial of modern scientific method and its integral relation to common sense. As Schopenhauer made clear, Hegel ruined the minds of an entire generation of the German intelligentsia and it is this catastrophe, perpetrated in the wake of the French revolutionary defeat, that best explains why what G.D.H. Cole correctly termed the ‘mumbo jumbo’ of Marxist dialectics still has so much political currency even to this day. The claim of Marx that he had turned Hegelian dialectics on their head is an unwitting admission that his theory is wildly speculative and devoid of understanding regarding the practical orientation of American revolutionary radicalism, and so also of science. The point of departure for Marxism was its metanarrative, abstract theory of historical determinism. The point of departure of American revolutionary radicalism was the self evident truths of common sense. The former approach leads to totalitarian tyranny. The latter to democratic progress.

The excesses and failures of left totalitarian tyranny have now run their course with sufficient bloodshed and mayhem to render futile any attempt to pedal the old dogmas of Marxist ideology in the hope of gaining some sort of viable credibility in the developed world. The successful establishment of a network of left totalitarian states has however enabled Marxist elites to modify their tactics to evade responsibility for past crimes, disguise their strategy for world domination and prevent any effective means of accountability for their present policies. Totalitarian state power allows the left to pursue much more purely Machiavellian tactics such as those advocated by Sergei Nechaev based on terrorism, deception and infiltration. To such purposes totalitarianism can exploit a servile core of mercenaries and dependent ‘volunteers’ with families implicitly under threat in its home territories, a fairly large following of ‘useful idiots’ and shallow minded careerists in the west, and an effectively and continually misinformed public through ever increasing control of what Gramsci’s follower and ‘Third Way’ inventor Anthony Giddens termed the ‘authoritative resources of power.’ The need for genuinely voluntary organizations and movements which consciously debate policy, elect and remove leaders, and support publicly stated communist strategy has been superceded by totalitarian requirements of deception and stealth in implementing tactics based more exclusively on sheer force (and deception is force) which, happily for the left elite, preclude any form of accountability.

In this sense contemporary totalitarian policy is less, not more democratic than were communist tactics in the Leninist era. The problematic schism always present in Bolshevik strategy between the Machiavellian tactics of Sergei Nechaev and Leninism have been resolved at least for now, in favour of Nechaev. Those who fail to make this clear are misinforming the public: Lenin actually believed in the existence of ‘truth’ and by the standards of modern leftism was a ‘vulgar materialist’ who disapproved of Hegel’s ‘disdain for common sense.’ Assuming Lenin can be taken at his word (which of course is not a simple question) his principles of party organization are highly democratic in character, since they include transparent, polemical debate of strategy at serious levels of complexity among activists along with full disclosure of the decision making records of party leaders. Modern leftist policy by comparison is secretively formulated and presented in the shallowest possible detail to what Lenin termed the ‘backward strata’ of the public at large by a cabal of leaders who have full discretion to plagiarise ideas, and chop, change or ‘spin’ tactics so long as some sort of electoral or other advantage can be gained. The traits which Lenin condemned as opportunist treachery - vagueness, amorphousness, the tendency to ‘blend in with the prevailing trend among the workers like a hare’s coat turns white in winter’- are now the stock in trade of radical leadership.

The underlying condition which has made this change necessary is, as stated, the economic and human rights failings of the socialist states. It has become clear that the left invested the socialist macroeconomic option with a status of certainty which was not warranted by its practical results. A further consideration is that the demise of Leninist standards of party democracy may be attributed in great part to the self selecting opportunist inclinations of Lenin’s heirs. When Trotsky, Stalin and Bukharin jointly conspired to suppress discussion of Lenin’s ‘last testament’ they did so in the knowledge that their personal standing would be greatly diminished by the unflattering commentary on their characters which it contained. The state of ignorance which prevailed in the workers movement in regard to American radicalism was therefore made deeper and more prolonged by the abolition of Leninist standards of party debate and discussion. This helps explain why the left opportunist elite have sought to remedy the failings of Marxism not by realigning policy on the basis of a realist understanding of the relation between common sense, self evident certainty and the merely speculative, but by the elimination of all possibility of certainty.

Neither the servile careerism of totalitarian power nor the vanities of western Marxist opportunism nor even plagiarism has so far been able to provide or substitute for the polemical talent Lenin had tried to develop within the workers movement in order to resolve problems of strategy. In the postmodern era relativism has been promoted by the left to such overbearingly dogmatic levels throughout the thoroughly infiltrated western social science establishment that the Catholic church has launched an academic initiative aimed at challenging ‘the dictatorship of relativism.’ The tyranny underlying such extreme skepticism has however little to do with relativism: rather it is a function of Machiavellian communist policies aimed to deconstruct public sentiment and in coordination with the tactics of terrorism and infiltration bring about a global balance of forces more favourable to the ambitions of Left hegemony.

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