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The Marxian Virus in American Thought
Ludwig von Mises Institute ^ | December 31, 2009 | Towner Phelan

Posted on 12/31/2009 8:29:31 AM PST by all the best

Perhaps the greatest influence of communism in the United States is upon the political thinking of the American people. Many ideas that have achieved widespread acceptance in the United States on the part of people who have no sympathy with communism are derived directly from Marxist doctrine, but most people who hold those ideas are ignorant of their source.

Marxian communism, unlike traditional liberalism, is based on a materialistic concept of life. Liberalism looks upon life primarily in moral terms. The Marxian doctrine that "economics determines all human life" assumes that men act, not on a basis of principles or any standard of morality, but that their actions are determined solely by their material wants. It assumes that man is not interested in freedom but only in a full belly.

This Marxian doctrine is implicit in the New Deal view that in an industrial age government should control and regulate every phase of our economy and that the powers of government should be greatly expanded and the rights of the individual correspondingly limited.

This view has been reiterated again and again by New Dealers in statements of which the following are representative.

"It may be necessary to make a public utility out of agriculture … Every plowed field would have its permit sticking up on its post." (Henry Wallace)

"It has been a long fight to put the control of our economic system in the hands of the government."(Eleanor Roosevelt)

"The Constitution is used as a holy of holies within which the ugly practices of free competition can be hid from vulgar eyes." (Rexford Tugwell)

"The Government will have to enter into the direct financing of activities now supposed to be private; and … the Government ultimately will control and own these activities." (A.A. Berle, Jr.)

(Excerpt) Read more at mises.org ...


TOPICS: Culture/Society; Philosophy
KEYWORDS: marx; marxism
This article originally appeared in American Affairs, Vol. 9, No. 2 (1947), pp. 108–112.
1 posted on 12/31/2009 8:29:31 AM PST by all the best
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To: all the best

bump


2 posted on 12/31/2009 8:32:52 AM PST by tutstar (Baptist Ping list - freepmail me to get on or off.)
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To: all the best

The Marxist doctrine and communism needs to be totally deleted from out society, one way or another. If it is not, the country will be fighting it until the end of time and loosing our way of life for our children and grand children will always be threatened. It’s a fight that needs to end.


3 posted on 12/31/2009 8:35:53 AM PST by RC2
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To: all the best
1) The Marxian doctrine that "economics determines all human life" assumes that men act, not on a basis of principles or any standard of morality, but that their actions are determined solely by their material wants. It assumes that man is not interested in freedom but only in a full belly.

2) This Marxian doctrine is implicit in the New Deal view that in an industrial age government should control and regulate every phase of our economy and that the powers of government should be greatly expanded and the rights of the individual correspondingly limited.

The article seems to concede that (2) follows from (1). It does not. Freedom better serves even the interests of those who view life materially. Tyranny makes a few (the elite) wealthier than they would have been in a free society, but "the masses" become impoverished of goods too, not just of self-determination. The vast majority of those interested in a "full belly" will have a lot more to put in it in a free system.

4 posted on 12/31/2009 8:42:45 AM PST by Still Thinking (Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?)
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To: all the best

A would call it the Plato doctrine.


5 posted on 12/31/2009 8:44:01 AM PST by deadrock (Liberty is a bitch that needs to be bedded on a mattress of cadavers.)
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To: all the best

In the 1980’s, an ex-KGB officer and Russian defector, Yuri Bezmenov, did his absolute best to warn Americans about radicals from the 1960’s who were slowly converting America to a Marxist country using an overt process called “Ideological Subversion”.

It has nothing to do with a conspiracy theory or grand new world order. It is overt, out in the open, in your face.

There are 4 stages to Ideological Subversion:

1. Demoralization (infiltrating the education system was key to this stage)
2. Destabilization (example: encouraging an enormous amount of debt that leads to a financial crisis)
3. Crisis (we are at the beginning of this stage)
4. Normalization (which is anything but normal).

This progressive cancer has been growing over the last 40+ years and is close to destroying our country.

Please take time to watch this short interview. It features Yuri Bezmenov describing exactly how Ideological Subversion works (it should sound eerily familiar).

Video (Forward to 2:10 if limited on time):

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zeMZGGQ0ERk

There was also an excellent recent 2009 American Thinker article about Mr. Bezmenov and Ideological Subversion:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/08/from_russia_with_no_love.html

Please share the video with everyone you know. It has over 126,000 views, but it needs to have 100 million.

People need to realize that we got to this sorry point in our country’s history by design, not by accident.


6 posted on 12/31/2009 8:44:50 AM PST by Painesright
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To: all the best
Utopian ideas appeal to the masses of people.
Always has ... it is a dream.

The welfare state causes loss of action, individual rights, removing any incentives, and treats all (except the chosen few, of course), as non entities. Oppression, suppression, total control of all activities, and Horror follows.

God help us in our day, in Jesus name, amen.

7 posted on 12/31/2009 8:44:56 AM PST by geologist (The only answer to the troubles of this life is Jesus. A decision we all must make.)
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To: all the best
Actually, Marxism was introduced into American political thought during the Populist/Progressive era as much as forty years before the New Deal.

Again, we see the irony of the Left defining government as an "instrument of oppression" while in actual fact treating it as the great liberator to which all reactionaries are hostile.

8 posted on 12/31/2009 9:01:50 AM PST by Zionist Conspirator (Chazzaq! Chazzaq!! Venitchazzeq!!!)
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To: geologist

When you don’t have the Word as your basis of truth,
you believe that a utopian society can be developed in “this world”

if only the right (unfallen, perfectible, elite) people are given enough power to do so.


9 posted on 12/31/2009 9:04:33 AM PST by MrB (The difference between a humanist and a Satanist is that the latter knows who he's working for.)
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To: MrB
Man (with the seeds of rebellion in him) continues to fight God.

Satan is a subtle and shrewd liar.

Do not be deceived. Your future depends on it.

“Sinning causes praying to cease, praying causes sinning to cease”

... a quote from one of Spurgeon’s sermons...

I especially like it.

God help us in our day, in Jesus name, amen.

10 posted on 12/31/2009 9:18:12 AM PST by geologist (The only answer to the troubles of this life is Jesus. A decision we all must make.)
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To: RC2
The Marxist doctrine and communism reduces people to the status of cattle. But Orwel lgot it right in his classic 1984 when he used the character O'Brien to explain that adherence to one ideology or the other was basically a sham. And the real object was power - life-or-death power over all of humanity.

These are the truly evil ones, for they know exactly what they are doing, and there is no limit to their lust for dominion over every sphere of human existence and endeavor. What makes them so evil is that they are not merely content with the 'management' of our economic lives. They demand the submission of our innermost selves - and they also demand that we applaud them for enslaving us. And they despise us when we reject their ideas and the premises behind them.

Never for get that it is communism that has been responsible for the murder of hundred of milliosn millions and the impoverishment and slavery of millions more. It is the marriage of an absolutist ideology with absolute power.

11 posted on 12/31/2009 9:33:28 AM PST by Noumenon ("Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he has grown so great?")
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To: Painesright

I’d say that the American left has largely followed the path set out by the likes of Antonio Gramsci, and also the ‘Frankfurt School’ (Adorno, Marcuse et al.)

The basic idea is this notion of the ‘long march through the institutions’.

In other words, take control of the educational system, the media, the legal system and so on, in order to establish political hegemony.

This is what Political Correctness is all about.

It’s about propaganda, intimidating people into silence and making certain thoughts almost literally unthinkable.

And the results are there for all to see.


12 posted on 12/31/2009 9:45:45 AM PST by trofast
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The article missed out one fundamental; an area the communists saw as a far greater advantage then the West. Education.


13 posted on 12/31/2009 9:53:50 AM PST by Jakarta ex-pat
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To: Painesright
What Bezmenov described was identical to what Antonio Gramsci postulated at the beginning of he 20th century. Gramscui knwew that most people would not accept communist slavery if it were put right on the table in front of them.

Gramsci's three-phase assault on Western civilization tracks precisely what Bezmenov outlined in that video.

1. Demoralization - achieved via what Gramsci called "the long march through the institutions". Take a quick survey or our arts, our culture, our educational system, our media and even the messages coming to you from the pulpits of your very own churches. And message is one of degradation, mockery of al lthat is good and decent, the demonization fo anyonewho disagrees or who might be seen to be standign in the way. Sound familiar?

2. Destabilization - isn't that what Zero and his handlers are doing their best to accomplish here in America right now? And isn'tthat what hte Cloward-Piven strategy is precisely about?

3. "Normalization" - a pleasant and innocuous term for the gulag, and the mass graves that follow the completion of the first two phases. History is our witness here. Didn't Bill Ayers say back in the 70s that they would cheerfully kill off 25 million of us in order to achieve their communist utopia? And isn't that precisely what has happened in the old Soviet Union, China and SE Asia in the 20th century?

So if anyone thinks that 'it can't happen here' - think again. It IS happening here, and there are those who are cheering for it to happen here.

You all know that if you wish to avoid the gulag, the mass grave and servitude, there is only one way this can end.

14 posted on 12/31/2009 9:54:15 AM PST by Noumenon ("Upon what meat doth this our Caesar feed, that he has grown so great?")
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The article missed out one fundamental, an area the communists saw as a far greater advantage then the West. Education.


15 posted on 12/31/2009 9:59:40 AM PST by Jakarta ex-pat
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To: Noumenon

They can only accomplish this with money. Take their tax money away from them and they are, mostly, powerless.


16 posted on 12/31/2009 10:03:09 AM PST by RC2
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To: all the best
The Marxian doctrine that "economics determines all human life"

When the absurdities of Marx's ideas are fully understood, it is clear that never in all of human history has a greater bunch of pompous ignoramuses with pretensions to knowledge behaved more destructively and self-destructively-made themselves more a spectacle of downright fools meriting the utter contempt of all mankind-than have the "liberal intellectuals" of the last four or five generations. Their lack of genuine classical liberalism will be seen to be surpassed only by their lack of genuine intellect.

17 posted on 12/31/2009 10:26:52 AM PST by mjp (pro-{God, reality, reason, egoism, individualism, independence, limited government, capitalism})
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To: all the best

BM


18 posted on 12/31/2009 11:30:15 AM PST by Para-Ord.45
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