A huge forest of paper has been used for the writings of political philosophy, science and history, and how they interact to support analysis and understanding. Anything I could possibly aspire to would have already been articulated much better and in a hundred ways before.
But this essay serves me to understand and remind. It may serve you also in my choice of words and perspective.
Socialism is an ideology that man and woman have had to work through. Would we have been better if it was never conceived?
No, because surely, all the stones have to be turned?
In our small spit of a life it is difficult, if not impossible, to take in the suffering, misery and death that imposed ideologies have caused. But the ideals of the young, the human energy, vitality and well-meaning is there too. Was Karl Marx a bad person? Like religious ideologies, is it the subsequent implementation that leaves us open and vulnerable to the human condition?
This is an extract from an eight page pamphlet called ‘Have You Had Enough?’ produced by Trinity, a small group trying to ‘make a difference’:
The Labour Party’s formation in 1900 included the middle class Fabian Society and the Marxist Social Democrat Federation.
Lenin’s Bolsheviks founded Russian Communism explicitly on the Ideology of Marxism. Karl Marx made two fundamental mistakes. He didn’t account for the power and scope of free enterprise and the inherent human need for individual freedoms and liberty.
The Fabian Society represents a far more sinister ‘soft’ communism. Named after a Roman for his use of gradualism, wearing down the opposition. Their philosophy is the driver for the current Political Correctness. It is a campaign which demonises any opposition to their view of a Socialist world by way of intimidation through name calling and threats. They exert influence by taking gradual steps in social engineering.
Among the original concepts of Fabianism are nationalisation of land, the destruction of capitalism and competition, state intervention in family units, and gender confusion. These ideologies have ridden on the back of our struggle for emancipation which started long before the Labour party.
Although many good reforms have been introduced by Labour in the 20th century, socialist and communist influences doom the Labour Party to ultimate failure. Economic and cultural disasters prevail under the dead hand of Labour.
Freedom of Speech and Liberty will have no place in a Socialist or Communist Totalitarian State. Fabians would try to stop your individualism and right to self-determination. They confuse equality of outcome with equality of opportunity.
In hindsight, after writing and producing many hundreds of these pamphlets, there is some fine tuning and explaining needed.
It could be argued that there were three fundamental mistakes made by Marx. The third was his apparent ignorance of the inability of man to deal with personal power. Whereas it cannot be disputed that self-determination, trade and free enterprise has helped develop humankind and provide prosperity, the consequences of exerting control has had adverse effects. By striving for the myth of equality in outcome, the goose has been killed and the forces of the ‘inherent human need for individual freedoms and liberty’ have come into play. The conflict of these forces have undone any benefits. Is this what Blake meant when he wrote ‘the tigers of wrath are wiser than the horses of instruction’?
We are communal animals!
It is not surprising that terms like, ‘workers self-management’, ‘social ownership’, ‘collectivism’ and ‘communism’ (with a small c), sounded good when oppression was so rampant. What a trap Socialism became. ‘No need to worry’, the community will pull together and support all, and so ownership and independence was lost.
Terms such as ‘environmentalism’, ‘feminism’ and ‘progressivism’ clearly imply control and manipulation of social habits. This raises the old chestnut, the question of nurture or nature. Would we have secured freedoms, respect of each other and equality of opportunity, regardless?
Yes, definitely, unequivocally, and yes again! What a crying shame that so many were pulled through the mill to find that out.
‘We cannot blame Socialism for everything’, you may say. Mussolini, Hitler, Lenin, Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Kim Jong-il, Pol Pot to name a few socialist leaders. More locally, families with generations on welfare state, failing services, inner-city deprivation, and all the tragedies that go with these. Don’t even consider the ‘happiness indicator’!
Why has this happened?
One simple word will explain all. Power. Man and woman cannot deal with authority and power. The leaders above were authoritarian socialists, fascists by another name. Power is addictive, corruptive and impairs the decision making abilities of those who wield it. Lord Acton pointed out that ‘power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely’. He also believed that moral standards should be applied to all equally. That rule should also apply to political and religious leaders.
But what of collective power? Virtue signalling, political correctness, environmentalism, feminism, anti-fascism (sic), and victimhood.
Socialism, by taking away ownership and responsibility, has created a whole swathe of losers. Having lost that spark of life that is individuality, self-determination, responsibility and enterprise, the victims then tap into the power that socialism has created for itself. They are enslaved in a psychological maze of reliance.
Here is another extract from the pamphlet:
‘Two lessons were learnt from the breakup of the USSR: the failure of Communism and the need for devolvement of power to smaller states. People want freedom, self-determination, and ownership of their lives. These are natural demands which express themselves all over the world and will continue to do so. When the Governance of a country is moved to a supra-national level then Democracy is moved away from ordinary people, and fails.’
This is, of course, is why socialists abhor the nation state. Like desperate vampires, their need for power can no longer be satiated in the nation state, it has become too risky. Socialism must be exposed.
“Man is the only real enemy we have.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945)
Good article. Karl Marx was not a good person. He was a jealous, envious, workshy parasite. The archetype of his later followers.
Great article which reinforces the point that only UKIP offers the nation a strong leader, Gerard Batten, who is committed to vanquishing socialism and dealing with the immigrant problem.
Now is time for UKIP to prepare for government in 2019 with Gerard Batten as Prime Minister of an independent sovereign nation fully unshackled from the communist inspired EuSSR.
I think our biggest problem is the way we choose our government, at election time we enter the polling booth and are given a slip with the name of two to four strangers to pick from. The names are all of professional politicians who have no loyalty to the area and they are moved about to “stand for the xxxx party”. As most politicians went straight from university to political party without ever having a job they are not in a good position to know how the population feel about things. It wouldn`t be too difficult to pick the candidates from the ground up – each street (or bunch of streets according to size) proposes a resident to speak for them at the “area” committee, each Area Committee chooses one man to speak for them at the district committee and each District Committee puts forward one man to speak at the town committee. Each town or city (according to size) sends one or more men to join the county committee and each County Committee sends one .man to the Houses of Parliament. Every man has been chosen at every level by his compatriots and the number in the HofC would be a more manageable number than the present 650 – and we all know that the bigger the committee the less work gets done ! By this method a few lawyers would be elected of course but not exclusively. No system can be certain of not choosing a dud PM but the present system does just that a bit too often so maybe we should have a President instead of a PM and he would be chosen by the whole country, not just picked from a dozen lawyers.
Enjoyed the article and the follow up comments made.
However, I feel that “left” and “right” are false banners set up by the global corporatists to divide us and to keep them in power.
We also have to remember that many “socialists” have been fighting for Brexit, and we should all stand firm together with a united purpose of leaving the EU, preferably with No deal..
People don’t realise how big socialism is in the UK. With the state taking up 42% of GDP, most working people have to work until May – July each year before they get to keep what they earn. You can’t defeat socialism in the UK without taking on the NHS (9% of the 42%), education (the teaching unions), the Labour party charity mafia (the £19bn foreign aid budget plus much, much more) and housing benefit.
On the other hand, socialism did pretty well fighting islam in Africa and the Middle East, until it gradually ran out of money. E.g. Syria and Iraq had the socialist Ba’ath Party which at least did away with radical islam.
We have a mountain to climb to get government spend of GDP to less than 30% but it is essential if we are to take on the socialists that are so firmly embeded in every area of our daily lives. Aiding and abetting the big state are the corporations who seek to externalise as much of the social costs of their business onto the state as they possibly can.
A government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it all away. Barry Goldwater
A very telling article. Thankyou Kim.
However as an engineer, I tend to take a more prosaic view of things.
To me there are those in the world that seek to live in, and maintain, a truly democratic state where leaders are chosen in free and fair elections, laws regulate behaviour and where treason is a high crime.
Then there are those in the world that we call criminals that seek to gain wealth and power by any means necessary.
The bad ones, i.e. those that are not very bright, are the ones we’re all aware of. The bank robbers, the bag and phone snatchers and others of their ilk that don’t generally steal very much, get caught, court and go to gaol.
But then there are the ‘good’ ones. These are the ones that one could imagine asking:
“Why rob a bank when one can steal the whole country and have all the banks?”
These are the thieves that, though standing before us in plain sight, are invisible. All the while mocking and laughing at us because we cannot see them for what they are.
They need no camouflage, no fancy invisibility cloak to hide behind. Instead they use words. Some of the most cunningly crafted words ever written, by people like Karl Marx.
Of course, what I’m here calling crime is, being at a national level, actually nothing more remarkable than regression from democracy to feudalism. I call it the return of the ancient order.
Evidence that communism, Marxism etc. is, at its core, feudalism? Kim Il-sung, Kim Jong-il, Kim Jong-un.
And the idea of a thief having political aspirations? We can’t blame Marx for that.
Yet another British invention. Robin Hood.
Kim has apparently been unaware of the relationship between Capital and Socialism and the myth that the two are opposed.
True the Socialist hates the Capitlist but not the other way around. As Oswald Spengler wrote in his great tome “The Decline of the West”. “Every outbreak of socialism only blazes new paths for capitalism”. The Capitalist knows that every Socialist needs money for his schemes, whether for destructive revolution or what ever. The Capitalist knows if he can use the regulation promoted by the Socialist to target his competitor he can win the prize and does so.
Excellent point, Martin. However, I would substitute “Corporatist” for “Capitalist” in this context. The competitor targeted by the Corporatist is often the true Capitalist earning a living by risking his capital to conduct his business. It is these people who are stifled by Socialist regulation leaving the field open for their broader shouldered Corporate competitors.
Great article, thank you.
I just had a set-to on Facebook with an “antifascist” sporting a Che Guevara avatar, who, because I equated PC -marxist MSM driven ideology and the anti-democratic stance of the EU and of Remainers generally, to fascism and reminded him that all fascists were socialists, called my detailed proof “warped premises”, and me a “f***ing fascist” but had no historical arguments, no evidence, no counter-evidence, no argument at all in fact, apart from the marxist jargon that has poisoned everything via our useless school national curriculum and the evil of Common Purpose and other Fabian/Fascist “slow revolution towards the perfect society” rubbish.
As i reminded him – before reporting him for harassment – all Fascists believed and believe in a global revolution of social values, by whatever means.. (As you so rightly explain, this is the opposite of democratic self-determination, free trade, freedom of expression and national sovereignty)
When rational discussion fail, these extreme socialist variants take to military methods, and never ever repudiate their socialist goals and philosophy. They want to impose a social/cultural programme to suit their little “utopia”. There is not one fascist thinker that has not called for revolutionary change whether by gradual progressive “re-education” or led by a charismatic leader in the mould of Hitler, Franco or Mussolini (or the British aristocratic fascist and pro-EU Mosley), who has not declared themselves to be “true socialists” and not one writer who has not called for the complete overthrow of society (by any means at all, including lying and cheating) in order to reach their personal ideological preference, often and where possible with the backing of big business and by advancing the strategic interests of small vanguards of privileged thinkers or groups.
Our schools need to teach about the cheating aristocratic fabians and fascists that included Mosley and the Mitfords, HGWells, Bertrand Russell or today Blair or other future leaders groomed by these establishment sets, and that they have the same aims as the 3rd-way fascists they pretend to dislike. Socialism is always going to morph into Fascism, it’s the same thing.
The trouble is, many of our Millennial generation are now actually incapable of thinking.
Good article Kim. But if we remove the -ists and -isms of life and boil out the fat it seems to me that we are left with
“The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?” (Jeremiah 17:9. Which seems to me to correspond with – or get very close to – “Man is the only real enemy we have.” – George Orwell, Animal Farm (1945).
That’s such a shockingly direct quote.
Communism, communalism, et al work only when the enemy is at the gates. I think this situation in Kurdistan, ‘Rojava’, is fascinating, a highly egalitarian anarchist socialist or some kind of hybrid, which some Western youth (the antifa and Occupy protestors) are finding very fascinating. It’s a last ditch anti-Caliphate for the Kurds themselves but an AnCap fantasyland for the foreigners. But without Turkey behind and ISIS in front it just wouldn’t happen and would go sour straight away should peace break out.
How to harness these emotions at home and turn them at the right target?
Our imagination and emotions make it difficult to see the wood for the trees sometimes. But we must understand Socialism. Not text book stuff, but what it really means. Why it happens, what the thought processes are, the detail, the consequences the mind-set. We have to be objective then be imaginative in how we then explain to others of what we understand.
Once we can do that we can arm ourselves with arrows of meaning and may be able to stop this thing and free some of the minds that have been taken in. I have some more ideas on the subject. So more to come. Then we can all join up the dots.
If this sounds corny, then why are we discussing it? Because as far as I know this whole phenomena is in full flow, morphing, and it is not being effectively dealt with. For the time it must be firmly established that Fascism and Socialism go hand in hand. Yes, I know you already knew that but so many don’t.
Incidentally, I believe if it hadn’t been Marx, it would have been someone else, the scene was set. He was able to articulate the theory, and the rest is history. All the comments are very helpful to me.
By reading and comprehending ‘The Gulag Archipelago’ by Alexandr Solzhenitsyn, which is required reading by every student in Russia, you will understand the absolute evil involved in the Socialist doctrine.
The abridged version is re-released with a J.B. Peterson Forward. Even if you only read this Forward, you will be convinced not to go down the road of Socialism.
Thank you have just ordered the book.