The Left After Communism - Marxism failed because it had been inserted into a hostile environment

Front Page Magazine ^ | October 15, 2012 | David Horowitz

[Buckeye McFrog]

I am expecting this shoe to drop....

Communism failed because we did not have the proper tools to allow us to centrally manage an economy.

BUT....with MODERN COMPUTER TECHNOLOGY it is eminently doable, and worth a shot!

Just waiting for SAP to come out with that Five Year Plan Management module....

[nathanbedford]

You are perfectly right, we are not dealing with an honest intellectual process such as the employment of the scientific method, rather we are dealing with a pathology. Sometimes we describe it as a religion and there are elements of religion in this commitment to communism and socialism. I prefer to think of it as a cult in which the acolyte is psychically transformed by his submission to the ethos of the cult.

The acolyte is not drawn into the cult by an intellectual process but by a psychological, I almost said an emotional, process. When there is submission to the cult one is wonderfully transformed and usually empowered. When one considers the greatest transformation in history, the apostle Paul, one begins to understand the dimension of the empowerment which results. One also begins to understand the importance of virtue or the lack of virtue in the thing to which one surrenders. The Christian in clinging to the cross submits himself to a virtuous reality. A beaten and humiliated nation such as Germany which surrenders itself to evil incarnate, Adolf Hitler, is destroyed.

But consider the depths of the commitment of the German people to their Fuehrer. They died in their millions until the very end sacrificing themselves to is will. Similarly, when Stalin died, millions mourned.

What I am describing here is a process beyond rationality and one which cannot be undone by appeals to reason or experience. David Horowitz is describing an intellectual who is impervious to historical experience. In Germany's case, the nation had to be literally bludgeoned into submission because it would not surrender. Ex-communists are not to be brought to enlightenment by reason.

As Mae West said when complimented on her diamond ring, "goodness, what a beautiful ring!" Ms. West replied, "goodness had nothing to do with it." And reason has nothing to do with this.

The human mind is an endlessly fascinating and facile organ with almost infinite capacity for rationalization. For these cultists it does not matter what history tells us of the tens of millions murdered by communism, it does not matter.

If you do not think this has application to modern American politics go to the comments in The New York Times one after the other of which mindlessly rationalize the fiasco and cover up in Benghazi to begin to see how facile liberals are asked spinning, projecting, deflecting, excusing and rationalizing.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

..........If you do not think this has application to modern American politics go to the comments in The New York Times one after the other of which mindlessly rationalize the fiasco and cover up in Benghazi to begin to see how facile liberals are asked spinning, projecting, deflecting, excusing and rationalizing.

It's tribal.

Thanks again for a great post.

[ETL]

I’ve read that for communism to actually work (for better or for worse), it would have to be global in nature. And America has been THE obstacle to that dream ever being fulfilled. But what IF the obamunists DID ultimately succeed in transforming the US into a Marxist nation? The hibernating Russian Bear and the Red Chinese would seize upon that opportunity in a heartbeat. All three now/again Communist superpowers would join together and wipe out any nation that resisted them, and they would have the global communist domination they’ve sought for nearly 100 years.

[elcid1970]

Before the Obamanists & their communist allies attempt to turn America into a Marxist state, they will have to deal with Yamamoto’s Rule:

“There will be a rifle behind every blade of grass.”

[headsonpikes]

I favor the Romanian response to impudent socialists:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8YiIBER9zw

This event helped restore my faith in human nature. :^)

[13Sisters76]

Is not Horowitz one of the heroes of this generation?

[tet68]

Marxism fails because it is a virus that kills it’s host
and only survives by finding new victims to infect.

Many have called communism the “Cult of personality”
because of Stalin but in actuality it is a “Cult of
hypocrisy” whose reality is not as described by it’s
acolytes.

[M Kehoe]

Good evening.

Marxism failed because it had been inserted into a hostile environment

Marxism failed because it IS a hostile environment. Hostile to the human soul.

5.56mm

[trappedincanuckistan]

Is not Horowitz one of the heroes of this generation?

He is a giant.

[Billthedrill]

Bump for later.

[Billthedrill]

A wonderful article, and thank you very much for posting it. To reply in full would be beyond the limitations of a web forum, or at least to attempt to do so in an evening. Here, however, are a few random thoughts.

Marxism is, essentially, a model built around premises that are held not for evidential but for emotional reasons: the fundamental resentment of the uneven distribution of wealth; the conviction that it is the result of injustice rather than ability; the notion that redistribution - sanctioned theft - will allow the suppressed creative potential of the impoverished to flower; the notion that untapped human actualization depends on material possession; the notion, entirely contradicted by historical evidence, that collectivism could lead to a classless society instead of the return to the feudal class structure from which capitalism represented an escape in Marx's own model.

The flaw in the application of this body of theory is not that it needs to be overlaid on a properly advanced society, but that it carries within itself the internal contradictions of which Marx was certain were the characteristics of, and would be the downfall of, capitalism. A model that promises a classless society that results instead in Djilas' New Class is a model that is fundamentally flawed, and the response on the part of Hobsbawm and others of his outlook that the whole thing would still turn out the right way given enough time is the response of a cultist denying reality. It didn't.

The evidence is there in the cold facts. This political model was, in fact, overlaid by force on capitalist societies throughout the Soviet bloc with one uniform result: police states from which people would die to escape. To dismiss these martyrs to human freedom as traitors, agents, or deluded fools is the last fatal act of an intellect that stubbornly clings to a dream world that bears increasingly little relation to the real one. This is not the response of a fantasist, it is the response of a paranoid schizophrenic. Simply put, at this point ideology has proceeded from mental candy to mental disease.

The illusion continues. The end of the Cold War was not brought about by a saintly Gorbachev and a poor, simple Reagan somehow magically defying the basic nature of their respective systems. That narrative wouldn't work in a comic book. It was, on the contrary, brought about by a systematic rejection of the squalor that permeated socialist societies and the desire on the part of their prisoners for something better for their children. It was not effected by coddled academics bleating from their podia but by families in smoking jalopies crashing the borders in Hungary, by Germans shot for tunneling into Berlin, by Poles rallying around a stubborn labor leader and an even more stubborn Pope. These have no place in the lofty environs of Marxist academia, and it is the final, resounding failure of Marxism that it consigns these people to irrelevancy while their governments were toppling into the ash heap of history.

The real failure of Marxist academics and radicals lies in the stubborn denial that the common people on whose behalf they strove, categorically rejected the hell they'd created. It led those who consider themselves the keepers of historical inevitability into a desperate rejection of historical events. The model has failed, it's gone, it's over, and repeating the same mistakes in the hope of a different outcome is truly an act of insanity.

[Cincinatus' Wife]

Thanks “Bill.”

Well said.

Bump!

[Revolting cat!]

Not to worry, after the election (whatever the result) Barack Obama will have more flexibility.