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Auto Bailout and Class Conflict

December 10, 2008 in Government by Greg | 2 comments

Over the past number of weeks, Detroit’s auto bailout has been in the news. However, the media refuses to frame the debate as “class conflict” despite obvious parallels. Recently, The New York Times published an article about how some auto workers were approaching the bailout. Here’s an excerpt:

DETROIT — The Sunday service at Greater Grace Temple began with the Clark Sisters song “I’m Looking for a Miracle” and included a reading of this verse from the Book of Romans: “I consider that our present sufferings are not worth comparing with the glory that will be revealed in us.”

Praying for a Miracle at Greater Grace Temple in Detroit

Pentecostal Bishop Charles H. Ellis III, who shared the sanctuary’s wide altar with three gleaming sport utility vehicles, closed his sermon by leading the choir and congregants in a boisterous rendition of the gospel singer Myrna Summers’s “We’re Gonna Make It” as hundreds of worshipers who work in the automotive industry — union assemblers, executives, car salesmen — gathered six deep around the altar to have their foreheads anointed with consecrated oil.

While Congress debated aid to the foundering Detroit automakers Sunday, many here whose future hinges on the decision turned to prayer.1

Today I found an article on the World Socialist Web Site about the apparent class conflict involved in the bailout:

It is now clear that the central issue in the debate over whether to extend a bailout to the US auto industry is the destruction of the conditions of auto workers. Whether it takes the form of a government loan or the bankruptcy of one or more of Detroit’s Big Three carmakers, the aim is to create conditions which will rip up existing labor agreements and drive auto workers back to conditions of poverty and ruthless exploitation which existed prior to the industrial battles that built the United Auto Workers union in the 1930s.2

Unless I am mistaken, Mr. White’s concern that the auto bailout will drive auto workers “back to conditions of poverty and ruthless exploitation” comes right out of the Marxist playbook. Here’s how it works:

The only retort that Marx, Engels and all their followers down to the Russian Bolshevists and the European and American professorial admirers of Marx knew to advance against their critics was the notorious ideology doctrine. According to this makeshift a man’s intellectual horizon is fully determined by his class affiliation. The individual is constitutionally unfit to reach out and to grasp any other doctrine than one that furthers the interests of his own “class” at the expense of other “classes.” It is, therefore, unnecessary for a proletarian to pay any attention to whatever bourgeois authors may say and to waste time refuting their statements. All that is needed is to unmask their bourgeois background. That settles the matter.

This is the method to which Marx and Engels and later Marxians resorted in dealing with all dissenters. They never embarked upon the hopeless task of defending their self-contradictory system against devastating criticism. All they did was to call their opponents stupid bourgeois and to ascribe their opposition to their bourgeois class affiliation.3

Why should you care if the auto bailout is in fact mostly about class conflict? And why should you care if the media is not framing the story this way?

Simply because Communist China owns a significant portion of U.S. debt - some estimate approximately $1.4 trillion worth. If China precipitated the financial bailout (see China and the Bailout), the fact that the debate over Detroit’s auto bailout is being played out as class conflict between the auto workers and management/shareholders is significant. Perhaps this was just one part of the socialist agenda.4

After reviewing The $1.4 Trillion Question, I wonder if the citizens of the United States are being played for suckers. What’s your take?

 

Are United States citizens being played for suckers?

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Sources:

  1. Bunkley, Nick. “Detroit Churches Pray for ‘God’s Bailout’“. 7 December 2008. The New York Times. 10 December 2008.↩
  2. White, Jerry. “The US Auto Bailout and the Socialist Alternative to Concessions“. 17 November 2008. World Socialist Web Site. 10 December 2008.↩
  3. von Mises, Ludwig. “Bettina Bien Greaves, ed. “The Marxian Class Conflict Doctrine“. Economic Freedom and Interventionism: An Anthology of Articles and Essays. Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2007.↩
  4. For example, see Strachey on Keynesian Economics; Keynesian Economics and Savings; and, John Maynard Keynes and Communism.↩

Bacevich on Reinhold Niebuhr

November 23, 2008 in Government by Greg | 1 comment

In The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism, Andrew J. Bacevich speaks very highly of Reinhold Niebuhr:

Andrew J. Bacevich The United States today finds itself threatened by three interlocking crises. The first of these crises is economic and cultural, the second political, and the third military. All three share this characteristic: They are of our own making. In assessing the predicament that results from these crises, The Limits of Power employs what might be called a Niebuhrean perspective. Writing decades ago, Reinhold Niebuhr anticipated that predicament with uncanny accuracy and astonishing prescience. As such, perhaps more than any other figure in our recent history, he may help us discern a way out.

As pastor, teacher, activist, theologian, and prolific author, Niebuhr was a towering presence in American intellectual life from the 1930s through the 1960s. Even today, he deserves recognition as the most clear-eyed of American prophets. Niebuhr speaks to us from the past, offering truths of enormous relevance to the present. As prophet, he warned that what he called “our dreams of managing history” - born of a peculiar combination of arrogance and narcissism - posed a potentially mortal threat to the United States. Today, we ignore that warning at our peril.1

A couple months ago, I noticed that Dr. Bacevich had written the introduction to the recently reissued The Irony of American History by Reinhold Niebuhr. He called the book, “The most important book ever written on US foreign policy.” So I immediately wondered who is this man - Reinhold Niebuhr - whom Dr. Bacevich called “the most clear-eyed of American prophets”?

Reinhold Niebuhr Background

The following is what I found:

Reinhold Niebuhr on Time Magazine Niebuhr was an American theologian. A Protestant, he is best known for his study of the task of relating the Christian faith to the realities of modern politics and diplomacy. He was an important contributor to modern “just war” thinking.2

Benedicta Cippola, writing for The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life, said this of Niebuhr:

Niebuhr is widely regarded as one of the most significant Christian intellectuals of the 20th century. Born in 1892 in Missouri to German parents, Niebuhr was ordained in the German Evangelical Church (later part of the United Church of Christ) and taught for more than three decades at Union Theological Seminary in New York. He was a founder of the liberal anticommunist lobbying group Americans for Democratic Action, and in 1948, he appeared on the cover of Time magazine.

Over the years, Niebuhr won the admiration of political figures on the left and the right, including the late historian and Kennedy aide Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and the late Jeane Kirkpatrick, who served as Ronald Reagan’s U.N. ambassador.3

Niebuhr’s Influence in the 21st Century

During this past election, Niebuhr apparently influenced the thinking of both McCain and Obama:

Reinhold Niebuhr Thirty-six years after his death, Protestant theologian Reinhold Niebuhr seems more alive than ever. Perhaps not since President Jimmy Carter acknowledged Niebuhr’s influence in his 1976 campaign has the name been on so many people’s lips.

Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama told New York Times columnist David Brooks that Niebuhr is “one of my favorite philosophers.” Brooks himself quotes Niebuhr consistently, describing him as a thinker we could use today “to police our excesses” in foreign policy.

Washington Post columnist E.J. Dionne’s forthcoming book takes note of the current longing for a new Niebuhr to inspire religious liberals, while GOP hopeful John McCain, in his volume, “Hard Call,” wonders what the critic of pacifism during World War II would say today about Iraq. As political theorist William Galston put it recently: “After a period of neglect, Reinhold Niebuhr is the man of the hour.”4

Niebuhr as a Socialist and Communist

I also learned that Dr. Niebuhr was:

. . . a prominent leader of the militant faction of the Socialist Party of America [and] promoted adoption of the United front agenda of the Communist Party USA.5

Given this startling fact, I wondered why both major political party candidates admired Niebuhr. As I continued searching, I learned that Dr. Niebuhr founded the Union for Democratic Action in 19416, which later changed its name to Americans for Democratic Action (ADA), purportedly to position itself as an anti-communist group.

Americans for Democratic Action However, I soon learned that the Union for Democratic Action / Americans for Democratic Action were actually outgrowths of the American Fabian Society’s Intercollegiate Socialistic Society and its forerunner The League for Industrial Democracy. This was the group who successfully sought to bring socialized medicine to American laborers.7

All this made sense because Dr. Niebuhr was very critical of the plight of Detroit’s auto workers where he was the minister of Bethel Evangelical Church.8

Niebuhr and Mike Wallace Interview

If you have time (~25 mins.), you may be interested in this 1958 video clip The Mike Wallace Interview: Reinhold Neibuhr. A transcript of the interview can be found at Reinhold Neibuhr: The Mike Wallace Interview at the Harry Ransom Center of The University of Texas at Austin.

Conclusion

The Limits of Power by Andrew J. Bacevich After doing this research, I now wonder why Andrew J. Bacevich, John McCain and Barack Obama all admire Reinhold Niebuhr. And I am especially dismayed with the idea that anyone could refer to Dr. Niebuhr as “a prophet” regardless of their religious persuasion. Unfortunately, there are wolves in sheep’s clothing among men and women of many religious persuasions.9

Why do you think Bacevich, McCain and Obama all find inspiration in Reinhold Niebuhr in solving today’s problems?

Sources:

  1. Bacevich, Andrew J. The Limits of Power: The End of American Exceptionalism. New York: Metropolitan Books, 2008. 6-7.↩
  2. “Reinhold Niebuhr“. Wikipedia. 24 November 2008.↩
  3. Cippola, Benedicta. “Reinhold Niebuhr is Unseen Force in 2008 Election.” 27 September 2007. The Pew Forum on Religion and Public Life. 24 November 2008.↩
  4. Ibid.↩
  5. “Reinhold Niebuhr“. Wikipedia. 24 November 2008.↩
  6. Niebuhr, Reinhold. Larry L. Rasmussen, ed. Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life. Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1991. 11. See also Reinhold Niebuhr: Theologian of Public Life. Google Book Search 24 November 2008.↩
  7. Annis, Edward, M.D. “Towards Socialized Medicine: A Historic Chronology“. 2002. Hacienda Publishing. 24 November 2008. Dr. Annis is past president of the American Medical Association, an Association of American Physicians and Surgeons member, and the author of Code Blue: Health Care in Crisis (1993).↩
  8. “Reinhold Niebuhr“. Wikipedia. 24 November 2008. See also, Moon, Yun Jung. “Reinhold Niebuhr (1892-1971)“. 1999. Boston University People. 24 November 2008.↩
  9. For an example of the disparity between Christianity and communism/socialism see, Mason, Leslie. “The Conflict Between Communism and Religion: A Reply to Baldwin“. 1924. Marxists International. 24 November 2008.↩

Hegelian Dialectic

November 23, 2008 in Government by Greg | No comments

Last month, I mentioned that the debate over Proposition 8 in California reminded me of Hegelian dialectic.1 But what is this strange sounding concept?

Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel by Jakob SchlesingerHegelian dialectic is named after Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, a German idealist who lived between 1770 and 1831. Dialectic is a method of persuasive argument and a form of logic.

Hegel believed that the “State is absolutely rational . . . . and has supreme right against the individual, whose supreme duty is to be a member of the State.”2 In other words, Hegel was a statist who believed the individual existed for the state - a view contrary to the vision of the Founding Fathers of the United States.

According to Wikipedia:

Hegelian dialectic, usually presented a threefold manner, was stated by Heinrich Moritz Chalybäus as comprising three dialectical stages of development: a thesis, giving rise to its reaction, an antithesis which contradicts or negates the thesis, and the tension between the two being resolved by means of a synthesis. This model is named after Hegel but he himself never used such a formulation and denounced such ways of thinking.3

A visual diagram of this process can be seen at The Calverton School’s The Hegelian Dialectic. Basically, Hegel believed that history unfolds as a thesis is countered by an antithesis. Through persuasive argument, a synthesis is created which becomes a new thesis, countered by - you guessed it - an antithesis. This process continues until an “absolute idea” is created for which an antithesis cannot be formulated. Thus, society continues to progress toward’s Hegel’s ideal state.

Karl Marx

Hegel’s Dialectic Appropriated by Marx and Engels

What’s the big deal you say?

In the mid-19th century, the concept of “dialectic” was appropriated by Marx (see, for example, Das Kapital, published in 1867) and Engels and retooled in a non-idealist manner, becoming a crucial notion in their philosophy of dialectical materialism. Thus this concept has played a prominent role on the world stage and in world history.4

Karl Marx essentially joined Hegelian dialectic to materialism to create a process used for revolutionary social change in order to develop the ideal “classless and stateless” society called communism.

Dialectical Materialism is the philosophy of Karl Marx which he formulated by taking the dialectic of Hegel and joining it to the Materialism of Feuerback, extracting from it a concept of progress in terms of the contradictory, interacting forces called the thesis and antithesis, culminating at a critical nodal point where one overthrows the other, giving rise to the synthesis, and applying it to the history of social development and deriving therefrom an essentially revolutionary concept of social change.5

Hegelian Dialectic and Proposition 8

When Proposition 8 was originally submitted for ballot by petitioners, it was titled “The California Marriage Protection Act.” In November 2007, California’s Attorney General Jerry Brown changed the title  to “Limit on Marriage. Constitutional Amendment.” After the measure qualified for the general election, Brown changed the title again - this time to “Eliminates Rights of Same-Sex Couples to Marry. Initiative Constitutional Amendment.” Later, the Superior Court of California rejected a challenge to change the title back to the original because the California Supreme Court had already given gays the right to marry.

Throughout this whole ordeal - and even after the ballot was passed when Attorney General Jerry Brown urged the high court to let Prop. 8 take effect - it should not be too difficult to see Hegelian dialectic at work. By seemingly pitting one group against another and apparently changing his position on this issue, Mr. Brown is really just working towards creating an antithesis/synthesis to create revolutionary social change ala Marx and Engels.

War and Conflict

According to the late Dr. Antony C. Sutton, Hegelian dialectic has also been used as a tactic to create war and revolution - “managed conflict” - throughout the world.6 Dr. Sutton suggested that this Marxist philosophy was at work in 1917’s Bolshevik Revolution, the rise of Hitler in pre-WWII Germany, and WWII.

Additional Sources

For additional information about the pervasive use of Hegelian dialectic see What is the Hegelian Dialectic? by Nikki Raapana and Nordica Friedrich, Glasnost-Perestroika: A Model Potemkin Village by Steve Montgomery, and L.A. Detective Phil Worts’ Communist (Community) Oriented Policing. You may be shocked at how prevalent this tactic has become in American society and politics.

From a religious perspective, since prophecy is fulfilled by natural means, perhaps this is one of the means whereby the following statement by the Lord has been and will continued to be fulfilled:

And the time will come that war will be poured out upon all nations, beginning at this place. (D&C 87:2).

Sources:

  1. See Proposition 8 - The Best Gift Video. See also Nibley on the Redistribution of Wealth as another, albeit limited, example.↩
  2. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. Philosophy of Right. Trans. S. W. Dyde. Kitchener, Ontario: Batoche Books, 2001. For a PDF of this book, see Philosophy of Right at McMaster University. 22 November 2008.↩
  3. “Hegelian Dialectic“. Wikipedia. 22 November 2008.↩
  4. “Dialectic“. Wikipedia. 22 November 2008.↩
  5. “Dialectical Materialism“. Wikipedia. 22 November 2008.↩
  6. See Skull and Bones.↩

John Maynard Keynes and Communism

November 21, 2008 in Government by Greg | 2 comments

John Maynard Keynes held communism in high regard. In June 1936, on a BBC radio program entitled “Books and Authors”, Keynes commented on Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s Soviet Communism: A New Civilization. Here is what he said:

John Maynard Keynes by Robert Skidelsky Until recently events in Russia were moving too fast and the gap between paper professions and actual achievements was too wide for a proper account to be possible. But the new system is now sufficiently crystallized to be reviewed. The result is impressive. The Russian innovators have passed, not only from the revolutionary stage, but also from the doctrinaire stage.

There is little or nothing left which bears any special relation to Marx and Marxism as distinguished from other systems of socialism. They are engaged in the vast administrative task of making a completely new set of social and economic institutions work smoothly and successfully over a territory so extensive that it covers one-sixth of the land surface of the world. Methods are still changing rapidly in response to experience. The largest scale empiricism and experimentalism which has ever been attempted by disinterested administrators is in operation. Meanwhile the Webbs have enabled us to see the direction in which things appear to be moving and how far they have got.1

Keynes also hoped for the same social experiment to be conducted in Britain:

It leaves me with a strong desire and hope that we in this country may discover how to combine an unlimited readiness to experiment with changes in political and economic methods and institutions, whilst preserving traditionalism and a sort of careful conservatism, thrifty of everything which has human experience behind it, in every branch of feeling and of action.2

By 1936, it was clear that these Soviet “administrators” had achieved something spectacular. According to Ralph Raico:

Join the Communist Party Poster By 1936 no one had to depend on the Webbs’ deceitful propaganda for information on the Stalinist system. Eugene Lyons, William Henry Chamberlin, Malcolm Muggeridge himself, and others had revealed the grim truth about the charnel-house presided over by Keynes’s “disinterested administrators.”

Anyone willing to listen could learn the facts regarding the terror-famine of the early 1930s, the vast system of slave-labor camps, and the near-universal misery that followed on the abolition of private property. For those not blinded by “love,” it was not hard to discern that Stalin was erecting the model killer-state of the twentieth century.3

As I’ve studied John Maynard Keynes, I think it interesting that he was promoted as an independent thinker and a believer in “free society” even though it is more than evident that he was clearly a “wolf in sheep’s clothing.”

Perhaps I should have titled this post - “What I Wasn’t Taught in Business School”! What’s your take on Keynes’ apparent political leanings towards socialism and communism?

Sources:

  1. Keynes, John Maynard. Elizabeth Johnson and Donald Moggridge, eds. The Collected Writings of John Maynard Keynes. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1982. 28:333-334.↩
  2. Ibid.↩
  3. Raico, Ralph. “Keynes and the Reds“. 13 February 2002. Ludwig von Mises Institute. 21 November 2008.↩

Karl Marx and Phrenology

September 6, 2008 in Government by Greg | No comments

Karl Marx used phrenology to examine the bumps and fissures of a newcomers’ head to determine whether to accept them into his group of followers. Phrenology was considered a “science” for part of the 19th century and was used to determine the personality traits and moral character of a person. Two such followers of Marx later recounted their own experience. According to Harold J. Laski, a Marxist and Fabian Society member:

Karl MarxA chosen band of helpers, all fellow-exiles, used to accompany him and aid in the researches he conducted; though it should perhaps be added that they were not admitted as assistants until they had shown their agreement with Marx and passed certain craniological tests. Phrenology was not typical merely of the Utopian period of Socialism.1

Another follower of Karl Marx who was subjected to a phrenological examination was Wilhelm Liebknecht, who wrote:

Wilhelm LiebknechtI found the family of Marx at a summer picnic of the Communist Laborers’ Educational Club, somewhere near London, I don’t remember whether in Green­wich or in Hampton Court. ‘ Pere Marx,’ whom I saw for the first time, began at once to subject me to a rigid examination, looked straight into my eyes and Inspected my head rather minutely–an operation to which I was accustomed through my friend Gustav Struve, who, obstinately doubting my “moral hold,” had made me the specially favored victim of his phrenological studies. However, I safely passed the examination, sustaining the look of that lion-head, with the coal-black lion’s mane. . . . Marx endeavored to make sure of his men and to secure them for himself. He was not such a zealous devotee of phrenology as Gustav Struve, but he believed in it to some extent, and when I first met him–I have already mentioned it–he not only examined me with questions, but also with his fingers, making them dance over my skull in a connoisseur’s style. Later on he arranged for a regular investigation by the phrenologist of the party, the good old painter, Karl Pfaender, one of the “oldest,” who helped to found the Communist Alliance, and was present in that memorable council to whom the Communist Manifesto was submitted, and by whom it was discussed and accepted in due form. . . . Well, my skull was officially inspected by Karl Pfaender and nothing was found that would have prevented my admission into the Holiest of Holies of the Communist Alliance.2

Sources:

  1. Laski, Harold J. Karl Marx - An Essay. League for Industrial Democracy, 1933 (originally published by the Fabian Society, 1925). 21.↩
  2. Liebknecht, Wilhelm. Karl Marx - Biographical Memoirs. Trans. Ernest Untermann. Chicago: Charles H. Kerr & Company, 1901. 52, 64-65. Google Book Search. Retrieved September 6, 2008.↩

Socialism a Transition Stage for Communism

September 3, 2008 in Government by Greg | No comments

“Communists work for the establishment of socialism as a necessary transition stage on the road to communism,” said John Strachey. A British Labour politician, Strachey wrote in The Theory and Practice of Socialism:

The Theory and Practice of Socialism - John StracheyIt is impossible to establish communism as the immediate successor to capitalism. It is accordingly proposed to establish socialism as something which we can put in the place of our present decaying capitalism. Hence, communists work for the establishment of socialism as a necessary transition stage on the road to communism.1

Sources:

  1. Strachey, John. The Theory and Practice of Socialism. London: Gollancz, 1936. 21. For a contemporary review of Strachey’s book - albeit from a Marxist point of view - see Mattick, Paul. “Strachey Confesses“. 1937. Marxists Internet Archive. 18 November 2008.↩

The Glory of Zion Shall Return

September 3, 2008 in Government by Greg | No comments

“The Glory of Zion Shall Return” is the title of a dream given to Charles D. Evans of Springville, Utah that appeared in The Contributor magazine in 1893. Charles D. Evans served as a patriarch in The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints when he received this vision. He recorded:

Wasatch MountainsWhile I lay pondering in deep solitude on the events of the present, my mind was drawn into a reverie such as I had never felt before,–a strong solicitude for my imperiled country utterly excluded every other thought, and raised my feelings to a point of intensity which I did not think it possible to endure.

While in this solemn, profound, and painful reverie of mind, to my infinite surprise, a light appeared in my room, which seemed to be soft and silvery as that diffused from a northern star. At the moment of its appearance, the acute feeling I had experienced instantly yielded to one of calm tranquility.

Although it may have been at the hour of midnight, and the side of the globe whereon I was situated, was excluded from the sunlight, yet all was light and bright and warm as an Italian landscape at noon, but the heat was softer or more subdued.

As I gazed upward, I saw descending through my bedroom roof, with a gently gliding movement, a personage clothed in white apparel, whose countenance was smoothly serene, his features regular, and the flashes of his eye seemed to shoot forth scintillations, to use an earthly comparison, strongly resembling those reflected from a diamond under an intensely illumined electric light, which dazzled but did not bewilder.

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