Communism is at once a complete system of proletarian ideology and a new social system. It is different from any other ideological and social system, and is the most complete, progressive, revolutionary and rational system in human history. The ideological and social system of feudalism has a place only in the museum of history. The ideological and social system of capitalism has also become a museum piece in one part of the world (in the Soviet Union), while in other countries it resembles “a dying person who is sinking fast, like the sun setting beyond the western hills”, and will soon be relegated to the museum. The communist ideological and social system alone is full of youth and vitality, sweeping the world with the momentum of an avalanche and the force of a thunderbolt.
Chairman Mao Tse-Tung
Little Red Book
“On New Democracy” (January 1940), Selected Works, Vol. II, pp. 360-61.
[I ran across this book in the Paper Source store in Bellevue, Washington yesterday. A very weird place to find it. I was interested in reading it but didn’t want to spend money that would benefit some communist so I found the book on-line. I need to read the Communist Manifesto sometime too. So much of Marx and other communist philosophy infiltrates our politics and even everyday thinking it would help to be able to identify it and point out the errors more readily. As you can see from the quote above their predictions and proclamations have less that stellar accuracy.–Joe]
There is no rational solution to controlling human behavior, because mankind as a whole behaves irrationally.
It’s interesting that Mao — some on hundred years after Marx — mentions “feudalism”. My pet theory is that the English system of law was the most sophisticated in the world up through the American Revolution. Feudalism continued to thrive in Eastern Europe until well after Marx’s time; abandoning the republic and returning to the previous system was considered even during the tumult in Germany in the 20s and 30s.
Marxism is a solution for a flavor of aristocracy that had long been extinct in England. In practice it creates a new aristocracy that presupposes that all men have identical aspirations, wants and faults, which is a special kind of arrogance, and the root of all its problems. That socialism was supposed to create super-production and provide for everyone’s needs for eternity displays a naiveté. We have to look no further for proof than the example of failure of the War Communists’ government (despite the warnings of some brilliant Austrian economists.)
Public education provides an example to which everyone can relate. The solution seems simple on paper: we collect money from everyone, and every child is given an identical, basic education. In practice, however, no two parents agree exactly on the how much homework is enough, what the curriculum should or shouldn’t contain, what amount of discipline is the responsibility of the school employees, what punishments are appropriate, or how many teachers and staff are required to get the job done. Matters are made worse by the fact that no one can agree on what it should cost because a) wages are adjusted every couple of years, b) parents with more children use more government services without a proportional adjustment in their taxes, and c) people who have no stake in the system are also paying the costs. (In regard to to ‘c’, why would you want to give a dollar vote to someone who has no use for the service, and would rather hold on to his money? That’s a recipe for disaster.)
Mao was right, the communist system is full of youth and vitality. But youth is generally lacking in wisdom and full of foolishness, just like Communism. Ever wonder why the most zealous adherents to communism/socialism are young impressionable college students or the ivory tower academics that indoctrinate them?