The Untaught Syllabus. 29.
UNDERSTANDING THE HIDDEN NATURE OF CAPITALISM
(Or Marx For Beginners)
By Brian Mitchell.

Full version including Part 2. (Marx's exposure of the capitalist economic
system.)


I always make a promise - show me an intellectually mature and academically
honest person with human kindness and love for mankind of all races and nations
in his or her heart, and I can promise or guarantee that once it is explained,
they would not only accept a Marxist view of the political world, but
consequently agree that the world must eventually be a communist world if it is
to survive.

What Marxism isn't
First, it is necessary to negate a few ignorant myths - myths created and
maintained to make Marxism even more inaccessible.

Marxism is not communism or about communism. It is neither a plan nor a guide to
communism. Marx hardly mentions the word. Marxism is an explanation of
capitalism and therefore implies communism as its counterpart. Implementing
communism is left by Marx to the rest of mankind, and has been attempted or
practiced in various forms in various countries to varying degrees of success.
Hence Leninism, Trotskyism, and the different forms of socialism under such as
Fidel Castro in Cuba and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam; Mao's China, and the former
socialist world of the European CMEA (Comecon) countries such as the Soviet
Union, the GDR (East Germany), Czechoslovakia and so on.

Marxism is not about terrorism. Marxism is about mass action with the greatest
possible support. It is not about individual acts of terror. Acts of terror,
although carried out by some left wing groups, are not a Marxist concept; and
have only been called so by the media in order to alienate people from Marxism.
Individual acts of terror is anarchism, not Marxism. The Baader Meinhoff group
in Europe in the 1970s and Pol Pot were called left wing or communist by the
media in order to discredit the left or communism; but Pol Pot and the Baader
Meinhoff group and similar organisations and groups were fascists. Many if not
most such groups and actions are set up by the CIA for the very purpose of
obtaining anti-Marxist and anti-communist propaganda and disruption in countries
in a revolutionary situation.

Another misconception of Marxism is that it divides people into arbitrary
classes. This misconception is popularised by syllabus education and the media,
even so-called TV documentary discussions. It is capitalism, not Marxism, that
divides people into, not arbitrary, but actual economic classes. The capitalist
popular notion is of social classes, not economic ones. It stratifies society
officially according to the Registrar General in the UK into sociological
classes A, B, C and so on - manual workers, white collar workers, the "middle"
class, upper class and so on; then prints lorry loads of sociology books full of
useless discussion on this stratification and its effects. Marxism, however, is
an economic classification according to the socio-economic division of
capitalist society into only two classes: Capitalists - the owners of capital
which they invest in labour, and labour - Marx's proletariat, the working class,
those who have to sell their labour, by hand or by brain, for the profit of the
capitalist class in order to obtain the means of existence. In other words: you
and me.

This will be fully explained when we discuss Marxist economics under the title:
AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL ECONOMY FOR THE COMMON MAN.

And since I mention Marxist economics, and as will be explained forthwith,
Marxist economics is not, as is purported by capitalist ideology, a plan or
blueprint for communism. Marxist economics, or more correctly, Marxist economic
philosophy, which is a scientific philosophy, is a full exposé of capitalism,
explaining exactly how it works. Not in terms of business studies or accounting,
but unlike business and accounting, which is merely a rationalisation of the
capitalist system, but in terms of human socio-economic relations within society
and between societies.



What Marxism is
Marxism is a philosophy. A philosophy is a system of knowledge, how we validate
phenomena, how we understand our world and society.

Marxism applied to human society is primarily a philosophy of socio-economic
relations and their social and psycho-social effects. It answers the question -
why is human society like it is.

Marxist philosophy is also applied to examination and discussion of nature and
science. But we will deal here mainly with its application to human society.

For human society, Marx's most useful discovery and essential achievement was to
expose the workings of capitalism in its socio-economic relations between people
in society, especially between economic classes. For it is economic relations
that are the determinants that permeate all other aspects of society - education
and upbringing, the family, relationships, friendships, social norms, morals and
behaviour, culture, the hierarchy of social structure and class, social
psychology, the law, crime, foreign relations, wars, race, standard of living
and quality of life, health and welfare - everything in society that has an
effect on each of us as an individual. All these aspects of life have been
reduced by capitalist socio-economic relationships to what Marx termed the "cold
cash nexus" in all human relationships - not just business or trade
relationships.

In business or commercial relationships this nexus is more identifiable. It can
be identified in the motor trade in car sales or repairs, where a customer will
be persuaded that a certain repair is necessary. It can be identified in the
health service - whether private or public. Doctors are visited by sales reps of
pharmaceutical companies bearing gifts to persuade them to use their products to
cure a disease. Almost all medical research in capitalist countries is funded by
pharmaceutical companies, who prefer research results to show that profitable
drugs are needed and ignore results not in their favour.

The most profound aspect of Marxism is in his thorough analysis of economics
which exposes the predominant socio-economic relationships of capitalist society
as between two economic classes - the capitalist class, the bourgeoisie (French:
capital owning class), which owns as its own private capital, the land, raw
materials, the means of production and therefore the very means of subsistence,
the products of this means of production, and the capitalist appropriation of
the value of the product as capitalist private profit and further private
capital; and the working class - which Marx called proletarians or the
proletariat - those who own no capital but their ability to work - by hand or by
brain - for the capitalist class.

What the Marxist term class struggle reveals is that the interests of the two
classes are diametrically opposed and mutually contradictory. This is obvious
when you consider that the interest of a capitalist is to pay as little as
possible for land, raw materials and wages, and sell for as much profit as
possible. Whereas the interest of the working class is to be paid as much wages
as possible for their labour, and to buy the means of subsistence at as low
prices as possible.

It is important to note that the Marxist term working class means those who
labour by hand or by brain. This is not to be confused by the capitalist
Registrar General's meaningless and misleading delineation of class into several
social classes such as manual workers, office workers, middle class,
professionals, upper class, aristocracy and so on. It is this false and
misleading notion of social class that permeates capitalist social studies and
sociology syllabuses and the media and the predominant public view. Marxist
analysis of class relations in capitalist society reveals the only operating
class division as between only two economic classes - capital and labour.

The illusion of capitalist ideology is that all have equal freedom to become a
capitalist. This is theoretically true, but it is merely a nominal freedom,
since obviously all cannot be capitalists, only a relatively few can. The ratio
in the UK in the 1980s was 7-84. That is, seven percent of the population owned
84 percent of the wealth of the country; leaving the remaining pitiful 16
percent to be shared by the 93 percent majority - the rest of us; a gap which
has been continually widening since long before the 1980s.

It is therefore within economics that Marxist philosophy is perhaps most
attractive and popular to understand by working class people.

Another confusion is over the tenet that Marxist working class activity aims at
the long term benefit of the majority of the working class supersedes the short
term benefit of a small minority section of the working class. This determines
whether, for instance, strike action is supported or not; or even popular
uprisings, which historically have either been supported or not supported by for
instance the Soviet Union, which had immense reserves of economic resources of
working class solidarity and internationalism which has been decisive in
supporting socialist revolutions such as those of Cuba or Vietnam; and
post-revolutionary economic, technical, material, medical, educational, trading,
diplomatic, and military defence support. Whereas in some cases, where minority
working class interests rose up for short term aims against not only capital,
but more majority working class interests, and was therefore bound to fail, the
world socialist community could only offer sympathy and diplomacy.

Clarity is also necessary when it comes to the terms Communism and Socialism.
For Marx, socialism is an intermediate set of socio-economic relationships
leading to Communism. Also, Socialism has a very distinct definition for
Marxists. It does not mean capitalist notions of socialism - bourgeois socialism
such as that of the British Labour Party, and especially New Labour, which has
written the essential socialist clause out of its manifesto. Bourgeois or Labour
Party socialism - so-called public ownership or nationalisation, is a
meaningless social reformism. Capitalism cannot work in a socialist way any more
than petrol can put out a fire. Reformist socialism cannot ultimately survive in
a capitalist controlled state, where capitalists have full economic power and
therefore control of the legislative and executive arms of the state, the police
and armed forces. If there was overwhelming popular support for a majority
communist government in parliament, you would soon see the Queen not giving
consent to form a government, parliamentary democracy withdrawn and a state of
emergency declared and implemented by the armed forces. Remember that the UK
armed forces swear allegiance not to the public, not to parliament, but to the
Queen. If a socialist revolution cannot defend itself against an overthrown
capitalist state it is doomed to failure. Hence the first priority of the
Russian Revolution was the creation of a Red Army of armed workers. And look at
what the Russian Revolution had to defend itself against in the form of capital
- counter-revolution and the Wars of Intervention where the USSR was invaded by
15 capitalist nations including Britain, the US, Japan, France, Germany and
other neighbouring capitalists states; then diplomatic and trade isolation, and
finally the onslaught of Nazi Germany - financed and supported by British and US
capital. Look at what Vietnam had to defend itself against. With capitalist
control of these states and the military these socialist countries could not
have survived.



A Scientific Philosophy
Philosophers for centuries have argued about the nature of the world - how many
angels can dance on the head of a pin, or whether angels have navels, but the
point is, as Karl Marx remarked, to change it.

To understand anything in order to have some effect on it or change it, you have
to have a system of validating things - a philosophy.

One can interpret phenomena, for instance, historical events, in various ways -
by seeing them as the designs of great men, or a series of unconnected
accidents. One can be a spiritualist, a fatalist, an idealist, or a dialectical
materialist.

But sooner or later, one has got to find an effective method of understanding
phenomena. For this we need analytical tools, measurement, and a system of
validation. So we measure water temperature with a thermometer, we ask for a
spade when we want to dig, and a shovel when we want to move the dug earth out
of the way, otherwise digging holes to plant trees would be more difficult,
wasteful and time consuming.

Marxism is a scientific philosophy. It formulates its theories and answers
questions in a scientific way, using scientific methods and scientific argument.

One can nail all manner of paper and string together like Icarus or pre-Wright
brothers and try to build a flying machine. But unless one considers the laws of
gravity, aerodynamics and power to weight ratios, one will not get off the
ground.

Likewise one cannot understand economics, except from a narrow business
accounting point of view, without Marxism - a scientific way of looking at the
subject.

Otherwise one is left building flow machines with coloured water and various
vessels and ducts and pipes and regulatory valves - as government economists
have done, to see how the economy can be tinkered with, adjusting this and that
rate, to get a better result. And nobody can give us any vision of the future or
its prosperity for society. The only view they can thus provide us with is that
the economy is like the weather, something that has its own volition and over
which we have no control. Everything in the 50s and 60s was going fine, we had
fridges and washing machines and cars and full employment. Then suddenly: "Oh
look it's raining!" - along comes a downturn in the economy and arguments about
who caused it - usually the unions and the working man wanting too high a price
for his labour thus "pricing himself out of the market." The market - this
amorphous entity which has a volition and laws of its own.

In primitive times, man had little science with which to measure phenomena. And
there were many attempts to find a system of knowledge - a philosophy. However,
because there are many philosophies, though confusing at first, and deliberately
intended to be so by any ruling class, it doesn't mean it needs to be difficult
to understand.

Throughout history, the dominant philosophy in any society has always been the
philosophy of the ruling class in society.

The ruling class in a class society certainly does not want people to have
guidance or understanding. Hence the mass of ridiculous philosophical confusion
that is propagated and "studied".

Thus they will allow people, and indeed encourage them, to study the mass of
philosophers from Plato to Popper. These have included such things as Von
Daniken's theories that straight lines across the Nasca Desert in Peru could
only be associated with Martians having landed on earth before mankind. It
includes millions of philosophical books and hours and hours of debate and
discussion on such things as how many angels can dance on the head of a pin, or
whether angels have navels, and between Plato and Marx on one hand and Popper
and Nostradamus on the other.

But the world is not so difficult for mankind to understand if we have a
scientific way of understanding it - a scientific philosophy. It was Einstein
who said that "The most remarkable thing about the world is that you can
understand it." And the inscription on Marx's tombstone in Highgate Cemetery in
North London reads "The philosophers have hitherto interpreted the world in
different ways. The point is, however, to change it."

And that's the nature of Marxism.

It's a simple matter of learning to distinguish truth from an overwhelming mass
of baby talk. Einstein also said that the most abundant things on this earth are
oxygen and stupidity.


Learning Marxism and Overcoming the Barriers and Avoiding the Distortions
Marxism must be learned at its primary source - the reading of Marx himself, not
the academic pseudo Marxism which many academics who call themselves Marxist
produce in the lorry loads of volumes found on most academic bookshelves.

I found that reading Marxism at its source required a special kind of effort.
For one thing, having a working class "education" in a prefab between the gas
works and the pork pie factory, where we were taught only enough English to be
able to understand factory instructions ("start, stop, slow, fast, very fast, no
tea breaks allowed, you're fired") etc, and not being allowed anywhere near
Shakespeare, Chaucer or Milton, I found the English language of Marx's day
differed a little from modern English. However, this was not a real problem, as
it soon becomes apparent. It certainly should be no problem to those with a more
middle-class education and exposed to an understanding of English Literature and
poetry. I also had to overcome the narrow constraints of my bourgeois thinking.

I spent most of one summer college break getting it all together in my mind with
the help of the relevant few books and my own annotational scribblings, notes
and explanatory diagrams. It was a bit like bulldozing snow, it piles up
increasingly higher until one of those rewarding intellectual moments when you
break through to increased illumination and clarity. It was like having a filter
removed from my mind and I could see the world as it really is, and I have never
since, in science and technology, and especially in the humanities - economics,
history, sociology, anthropology, evolution and the natural sciences, found a
single incidence of illogicality or inconstancy in any Marxist notion. It is
always logical and consistent. To my early perseverance and determination to get
to the truth or essence of anything, and to the patient teacher and friend who
gently fanned the spark of my determination to search for credible and coherent
answers which were not present in mainstream British academia, I am eternally
grateful

If I had not found this so, I would now either be completely disillusioned,
washed out and politically burnt out - as many incomplete Marxists are, or be
working for television producing the fake tellytubby intellectual documentaries
now produced by those "academic" Marxists of the heady 1960s and 70s. One, and
an ex-Communist Party member to boot, even works for Camelot producing the
Lottery! Whenever television wants to wheel out a Marxist for an academic
opinion or comment on a news or historical event, especially when involving a
socialist country, the old USSR, or China, Vietnam or Cuba, it is always one of
these highly placed and highly paid academic magicians and smugglers. Some of
them own "Marxist" or "radical" publishing companies, spewing out volumes of
"Marxist studies" full of everything that Marx did not say or distortions of
Marx. Other pretend Marxists are in art and design, advertising and marketing,
or are staunch New Labourites. I remember many of Blair's babes and boys and
their conservative supporters from my college student union days and their petty
self-serving arguments and policies. Such is the power of non-Marxist Marxism
you will find abundant on many teachers' bookshelves and in colleges, libraries
and bookshops.

And don't fall into the trap of detractors of Marxism to suggest it's about
predictions. Marxism is about inherent laws - just like the laws of Newton and
Einstein inherent in physics - gravity, relativity, and later, aerodynamics,
Marx's labour theory of value is an inherent, immutable and irrefutable law of
capitalism discovered and explained by Marx after the circular and tangential
explanations of Ricardo and Adam Smith. Marxism is not about predictions. Marx
did not provide a blueprint for a future egalitarian society. That's just an
Aunt Sally set up by Marxism's detractors so that they could knock it down and
"prove" it false to the undiscerning.

Read any one of these pseudo-Marxist interpretations and I guarantee that you
will not be intellectually or factually elevated one little bit. Read original
Marx, perhaps alongside the very few true Marxist writers for guidance and
explanation - which helps because the English language has changed since Marx's
writings, and Engels' writing on Marx's economics is also a useful help; and I
promise you that you will find it an essential and consistent explanation of all
human historical, socio-economic, international and military interaction.

The words Marxist and communist have received meanings; these received meanings
are the opposite to the truth because that's what capitalist owned and
controlled education, educational publishers and all capitalist publishers and
media and entertainment wants them to believe. Nobody, certainly no Marxist or
communist, expects capitalists to have a reason to want people to know
otherwise, otherwise capitalism would completely collapse.

Marx or Marxism is not about something to preach or indoctrinate people with any
more than medicine or a blood transfusion can cure a broken leg. On top of that
the capitalist world loves to create millions of pseudo-Marxists so that they
can prove Marxism wrong. It's very effective and often the only ultimate mental
weapon defending capitalism.

With private capital owning and controlling education and the press and media,
films and publishing, and thus what people know and think, and circuses, Big
Brother TV programs and Tellytubbies to make babies stupid and dependent on mass
supplied manipulative entertainment, there will be an ignorant mass population
who will vote for the tyrant - especially as the tyrant can decide when to
produce Osamas or Saddams or invade the Falkland Islands. But fortunately, most
people, even the uneducated, are human and honest. And if they are given the
facts of their life conditions and understand where their true interests lay,
they will know what to do at the right time. Examples USSR in 1917, Vietnam,
Cuba, Nicaragua, and perhaps now Venezuela. In the end it's peoples who are
powerful, not blind capital.

History teachers and tutors have a crucial responsibility to humanity. It is the
knowledge they dispense which decides whether the future will be peaceful or
catastrophic for the human race on this incredibly rich and abundant planet.



Understanding Marxism
Understanding Marxism for most people who have had a British education can be a
little strange at first.

bit of a hurdle, depending somewhat on one's intellectual base. It needs to be
scientific in nature. This is best understood in terms of philosophy - how one
validates knowledge, how one understands a phenomena.

But it shouldn't be so difficult for the majority of us who have nothing to
lose.

As we have seen, the dominant philosophy in any society is that of the ruling
class. Modern capitalist society naturally creates barriers to any other sort of
understanding of any philosophy which threatens its existence. It does this
through its control over education, culture, publishing and the media.

This is done in several ways - by hiding, by distortion, by imposing
diversionary academic and media tactics, and by diverting attention to other
areas, other views, ultimately to trivia.

The ruling capitalist establishment hides Marxist or true socialist or communist
notions in various ways. But having claimed freedom of speech and freedom of
thought, it cannot hide it completely. It exists, but is not referred to.

For those in higher academic or journalistic positions in society it might be
problematic to present and sustain, this is because of fear of non-promotion or
even of losing one's post.

Progressive journalists either tow the editorial line or freelance out of
mainstream and only heard of once in a while. Very few well informed and honest
people make it to either mainstream or specialised media or political platforms
or outlets for their valuable hard work, usually done at considerable personal
sacrifice and difficulty. We have the likes of John Pilger, but we need more of
such people. It takes a lot of time and effort and considerable sacrifice to
gather truthful material and assemble it in into something meaningful, either as
a journalist or a teacher. It's less personal risk if you don't have a mortgage
and family depending on you. I have often witnessed the dichotomy of
progressively minded teachers and journalists who have the potential to educate
and inform, but are victims of financial fear used as a tool for suppressing
those who would reveal anything with any effect. You only have to look at a
television now to see the decay to which that media has sunk. Progressive
teachers were largely filtered out during the Tory years.

In the 1970s Duncan Cambell and others were tried for publishing information
about secret UK defence establishments, items which were publicly available from
individual sources; but too enlightening and thought provoking when put
together. The court case, however, did wonders for the peace movement, and it
taught an ignorant public a few valuable political lessons.

The result is that most people are not exposed to the truth of it. They are of
course exposed to mountains of capitalist denial of it and distortion of it, but
not the essence. Look for orthodox Marxism in any bookshop or public or school
library and you will most likely not find any.

Another capitalist establishment tactic is distortion. There are many so-called
Marxist books, published by "radical" book-sellers. But in the absence of
original Marx's works, there are volumes of distortions of Marxism, otherwise
known as neo-Marxism, Marxist revisionism, or the Frankfurt school of Marxism.
These either distort or complicate Marxism so that ordinary working people who
are undiscerning will either fail to attempt to read them or will take on the
distortions.

A predominant diversionary tactic is the imposition of an erroneous and
distorting notion of "balance" in academic study and journalism.

Other tactics are diversion of minds into other areas - note the various types
of television documentaries and book subjects; and into pure trivia - note the
rest of television and children's programs and toys.

The truth is there. But it is hidden among mountains of so called "balance." And
the more you look for it in this pile of "balance" the more you suspect is
missing. Early in my college days I compiled a massive bibliographic catalog
according to my wide field of interests. A few years later, when the Tories had
come to power after gradually infiltrating their people and ideas into the lower
realms, I found that many radical books had been removed by the librarian
"because there's not much call for these books these days." Gone were the full
works of Marx and Lenin, there having till then been a strong Marxist outlook in
the humanities; but Mein Kampf and the Bible remained. This is what they call
"balance." They couldn't pose a polarity between Marx and religion, that would
be too obvious and too enlightening. So they posed a "balance" between good
Christian ways and those of the Nazi Stormtroopers who had Got Mit Uns (God is
with us) embossed on their belt buckles. The science section's "balance"
comprised of Einstein and Newton on the one hand, and Von Daniken and
Nostradamus on the other. Regarding the issue of "balance" I wrote a handout for
my history students which you will see below when we discuss Marxism and
history. .

I have seen syllabuses where von Daniken's theory of the lines across the Nazca
Desert in Peru being proof of visitors from outer space before mankind is
actually taken seriously - in that no final conclusion is arrived at and the
thing is left in the balance for students! Worse than that, I have seen parts of
syllabuses where the predictions of Nostradamus were treated as a serious
contention in history!

All sorts of ridiculous notions have been applied to history. It is suggested
that Henry Ford said "All history is bunk", and that Cecil B de Mille said
"History is just one damn thing after another."



Marxism and Human Society
Through history there have been various stages in development of societies with
developing socio-economic relations through primitive society - which was a
primitive form of communism, slavery, feudalism, and now capitalism.

At all stages except primitive communism, societies have consisted in classes in
a hierarchy of socio-economic relationships. That is, one class owning the land
and the means of production and subsistence, and a class subservient to that
class.

Except for primitive communism, societies have always consisted of economic
classes: the one owning the means of production of wealth, the other, owning no
means of production themselves and are therefore entirely dependent on making
more profit for the owners of capital in order to live, producing that wealth:
owner and slave, patrician and plebian, feudal landowner and serf, guildmaster
and journeyman, and capitalist or bourgeoisie (French: capital owning class) and
proletarian (working class by hand or brain). In short: exploiter and exploited.

Throughout this book I shall be referring to the "working class" or "working
people". I do not want to be misunderstood as to mean by "working people" or the
"working class" only those who do manual labour. By working class or working
people I mean all those who are not capitalists - who use the private ownership
of bank or finance capital, or industrial capital, land, or the means of
production (factories, machines, or other facilities) in order to extract
private profit from the economic exploitation of the working class: whether
those workers use their hands or their brains; and whether they are at home or
in imperialist 'client' nations.

We now have capitalists: they own the land and its raw materials, the banks, the
means of production, the products produced by these means of production, and the
profits made in that productive process: and we have wage earning people:
workers - by hand or by brain, who own nothing but their power to labour - by
hand or by brain in order to produce the surplus value which the capitalist
appropriates as his profit, and who are completely dependent upon the will of
the capitalist - his production for private profit and not for human need - for
their entire means of subsistence, whether they are cooks, bottle washers,
factory workers, teachers, computer operators, salesmen, secretaries, bus
drivers, business executives or high court judges.

In Britain it was calculated in the late 1970s that the ratio of ownership of
wealth between rich and poor, roughly between capitalist and worker, was such
that 7 per cent of the British people owned 84 per cent of the country's wealth.
The majority of the British people, the other 93 per cent, owned between them
the remaining 16 per cent of the country's wealth.

I will elaborate later on the fundamentals of political economy. But suffice it
to say here that, like Darwin's theory proves evolution, Newton's theory proves
gravity, and Einstein's theory proves relativity, so Marx's equally scientific
labour theory of value proves that labour, and only labour, and not capital,
creates wealth; but the majority of that wealth is always appropriated by the
owner of capital as private profit.

So how do we find a philosophy that works for humanity, for the only class that
should exist - the working class?

First of all we have to answer the questions: "Who are the working class? Are
there really classes? Aren't we now a classless society?"

Well, let's look at it logically:

This is capitalist society. Therefore there are those who are capitalists, and
those who are not. What is the class difference or contradiction between the
two? A capitalist wants to make profits by selling at the highest price and
buying at the lowest and paying the lowest wages. The working class on the other
hand want the highest wages and to buy things at the lowest prices.

Capitalist ideology and values don't stand up to the simplest logical
examination when you think of the right questions.



Marxism and Philosophy
When I teach a history class or student, I may not teach much history for the
first few sessions. I will first of all establish a philosophical background to
verifying historical facts and events.

Before we study the history of anything we must first establish a philosophy, or
a method of validating phenomena, and apply this method of validation to the
study of history in order to form a useful interpretation of historical events.

I start by explaining that all the multitude of philosophies lie in one or two
schools of philosophical thought.

Philosophy is the discipline of validating phenomena. There are only two basic
schools of thought within the discipline of philosophy; and all philosophies
fall under one or the other. Found in science, they are most apparent in the
humanities - economics, sociology, history, anthropology, evolution and natural
studies.

These schools of thought in the discipline of philosophy have names that have
slightly different meanings to the way they are use in ordinary language. The
two schools of thought that encompass all philosophies are called Idealists and
Materialists.

These two basic philosophical schools of thought are called the idealists and
the materialists. Within the discipline of philosophy these two words, idealist
and materialist, are used slightly differently from the way they are used in
ordinary language. In ordinary language, an idealist is a person who wants to do
good works for the world without regard for what other people call reality; and
a materialist is a person who cares less for the world but wants to accumulate
material possessions.

To explain the difference I tell a little story of two primitive or Stone Age
men standing outside their cave on the side of a mountain trying to explain a
thunderstorm over the mountain in the next valley.

To explain the meanings of these two words within philosophy we can consider a
story which I use early in courses, since they are applicable in history,
philosophy, or indeed any of the humanities. It is certainly valid and essential
in the study of in economics - true economics that is, not the accounting or
business studies which, even in the London School of Economics, passes for
economics; since economics is essentially about the study of socio-economic
relations, and is a science, often also called political economy. This true
subject of economics, a scientific economic philosophy, reveals the slight of
hand by which finance and business studies is palmed off as economics.

Two primitive men were standing on the side of a mountain discussing a thunder
storm in the next valley.

One said that whoever can make all that banging and flashing must be big and
powerful, therefore we'd better not annoy him or he might harm us; so we'd
better leave some food out for him to please him.

One says that: "whoever can make such banging and flashing must be mighty big
and powerful and might harm us, We'd better please him. Tonight we'll leave some
food on a rock for him." Of course, next morning the thunderstorm had died down
and the food was gone - as in the wild it was bound to be - and his ideas were
reinforced.

One said that whoever can make all that banging and flashing must be big and
powerful, therefore we'd better not annoy him or he might harm us; so we'd
better leave some food out for him to please him.

The other said "I think it's simply particles in the clouds crashing into each
other."

The other said he thought it was simply particles in the clouds crashing into
each other. A simplistic meteorological interpretation might be that lightning
burns out a corridor of the oxygen through the atmosphere, and the thunder is
the surrounding atmosphere rushing in to fill the vacuum. So both were wrong in
a way.

The man who thought it was some powerful being was the philosophically idealist.
He was attempting to explain a phenomena purely by the ideas he could imagine
inside his mind without reference to any outside reality. Herein lie the origins
of superstition, and on which much religion is based.

The man who talked of powerful demons or gods to whom we must pay homage was
trying to explain a phenomena purely by what he could imagine in his head, from
ideas only, without any fact or substance. He was the idealist.

I'm no meteorologist, but I understand that phenomena to be lightening as an
electrical discharge which burns out the oxygen or atmospheres in the corridor
through which it passes and the thunder to be the surrounding oxygen or
atmosphere rushing in the fill the vacuum.

The man who said it was particles in the clouds crashing into each other may
have been wrong in terms of the science of meteorology, but he was trying to
understand a phenomena by scientifically verifiable fact, by material means. He
was the materialist.

The other man was the philosophical materialist, attempting to explain a
phenomena by using his mind, but applied to real things existing outside his
mind, by material fact. Herein lies the origin of science. He was attempting to
interpret something scientifically. We attempt to interpret something by
studying it in a scientific way, by studying real material cause and effect.



Marxist Philosophy and Religion
Examples of idealistic thinking can be found in, for instance, von Daniken's
theory that the Nazca lines across the Peruvian desert are purported (by von
Daniken) to prove that the earth was visited by superior beings from outer space
before the existence of mankind. The fact that straight lines can be made across
vast extents of the most undulating terrain by the use of three sticks seems to
have escaped von Daniken.

The most obvious examples of idealistic thinking are to be found in superstition
and especially religious beliefs, such as:



"Since angels are men... therefore they have garments... but of course
infinitely more beautiful and perfect... The garments of the angels corresponds
to their intelligence. The garments of some glitter as with flame, and those of
others are resplendent as with light: others are of various colours, and some
white and opaque... The angels of the inmost heaven are naked... It is because
garments represent states of wisdom... in relation to the Church and good men...
To be able to discern that what is true is true, and that what is false is
false; this is the mark and character of intelligence."

(Emanuel Swedenborg - theologian.)



"The Popes, like Jesus, are conceived by their mothers through the overshadowing
of the Holy Ghost. All Popes are a certain species of man-gods, for the purpose
of being better able to conduct the functions of mediator between God and
mankind. All powers in Heaven, as well as on earth, are given to them."

(Pope Stephanus V.)



"We worship one God in Trinity, and Trinity in Unity, neither confounding the
Persons, nor dividing the substance, for there is one Person of the Father,
another of the Son, and another of the Holy Ghost; but the godhead of the
Father, of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost is one, the glory equal, the majesty
co-eternal..."

(Athanasian Creed.)



Complete illogicality can be found in statements like:



"Reason unaided by revelation can prove that God exists."

(Roman Catholic Baltimore Catechism.)



"I do not seek to understand in order that I may believe, but I believe in order
to understand."

(St.Anselm, Archbishop of Canterbury, 1033-1109.)



"All the truths of religion proceed from the innate strength of human reason;
hence reason is the ultimate standard by which man can and ought to arrive at
the knowledge of all truths of every kind."

(Pope Pius IX.)



The conflict between religion and science is illustrated in such statements as:



"Scientific education and religious education are incompatible. The clergy have
ceased to interfere with education at the advanced state, with which I am
directly concerned, but they have still got control of that of children. This
means that the children have to learn about Adam and Noah instead of about
Evolution; about David who killed Goliath, instead of Koch who killed cholera;
about Christ's ascent into heaven instead of Montgolfier's and Wright's. Worse
than that, they are taught that it is a virtue to accept statements without
adequate evidence, which leaves them a prey to quacks of every kind in later
life, and makes it very difficult for them to accept the methods of thought
which are successful in science."

(J.B.S.Haldane.)



"Where Church and State are habitually associated it is natural that minds, even
of a high order, should unconsciously come to regard religion as only a subtler
mode of police."

(Tolpuddle Martyr George Loveless.)



"Religion is one of the forms of spiritual oppression which everywhere weigh
upon the masses who are crushed by continuous toil for others, by poverty and
loneliness... Religion teaches those who toil in poverty all their lives to be
resigned and patient in this world, and consoles them with the hope of reward in
heaven. As for those who live upon the labour of others, religion teaches them
to be charitable in earthly life, thus providing a cheap justification for their
whole exploiting existence and selling them at a reasonable price tickets to
heavenly bliss. "Religion is the opium of the people." (Marx.) Religion is a
kind of spiritual intoxicant, in which the slaves of capital drown their
humanity and blunt their desires for some sort of decent human existence... The
helplessness of the exploited classes in their struggle against the exploiters
inevitably generates a belief in a better life after death, even as the
helplessness of the savage in his struggle with nature gives rise to a belief in
gods, devils, miracles, etc... The modern proletariat ranges itself on the side
of Socialism, which, with the help of science, is dispersing the fog of religion
and is liberating the workers from their faith in a life after death, by
rallying them to the present-day struggle for a better life here upon earth."

(Lenin.)



Religion's role in the state is expressed in such statements as:



"Let Catholic writers take care when defending the cause of the working class
and the poor not to use language calculated to inspire among the people aversion
to the upper class of society... Human society, as established by God, is
composed of unequal elements, just as parts of the human body are unequal; to
make them all equal is impossible, and would mean the destruction of human
society itself."

(Pope Pius X, letter to Bishops on Catholic Social Action, 1903.)



"The Church has condemned the various forms of Marxist Socialism... because it
is her permanent right and duty to safeguard men from currents of thought and
influence that jeopardise their eternal salvation."

(Pope Pius XII.)



"We demand that religion is a private matter as far as the State is concerned,
but under no circumstances can we regard it as a private matter with regard to
our own Party... Our programme necessarily includes the propaganda of atheism...
Of course, we say that we do not believe in god. We know perfectly well that the
clergy, the landlords, and the bourgeoisie all claimed to speak in the name of
god, in order to protect their own interests as exploiters... The old society
was based on the oppression of all the workers and peasants by the landlords and
capitalists. We had to destroy this society. We had to overthrow these landlords
and capitalists. But to do this, organisation was necessary. God could not
create such organisation."

(Lenin.)



"If we go back to the beginning we shall find that ignorance and fear created
the gods; that fancy, enthusiasm, or deceit adorned or disfigured them; that
weakness worships them; that credulity preserves them, and that custom, respect
and tyranny support them in order to make the blindness of men serve its own
interests...

(French philosopher Baron Paul Henry Thiry d'Holbach (1723-1789).)



"Thought is one of the manifestations of human energy, and among the earlier and
simpler phases of thought, two stand conspicuous - Fear and Greed. Fear, which,
by stimulating the imagination, creates a belief in an invisible world, and
ultimately develops a priesthood; and Greed, which dissipates energy in war and
trade".

(American historian Brooks Adams, 1848-1927.)



"Religion is excellent stuff for keeping common people quiet."

(Napoleon Bonaparte.)



"There can be no doubt of our dependence on forces beyond our control. Primitive
man was so impotent in the face of these forces that, especially in an
unfavourable natural environment, fear became a dominant attitude, and, as the
old saying goes, fear created gods."

(US educator John Dewey.)



All that religion can say in its defence is that, for example:



"It is easy to answer such an extravagant and boastful defence of atheism. We
point to the fact that belief in God is universal, held by all people of all
times. There has never been a race of atheists."

(Editor "The Sign.")



In ancient India it was universal belief that the world was flat and supported
by four elephants.



Marxism and Class
It is often said and believed that it is human nature for the rich and powerful
to dominate the rest of us. That's a cop out used by the rich and powerful to
make us think there's nothing we can do about it, and so we don't try, most
people don't even think about it.

As already mentioned, class division as pointed out by Marxism, is between an
property (as capital) owning class, and a class subservient to it by selling the
only commodity they have - the power of their labour. This will be fully
explained and discussed when we discuss the laws of capitalist economics as
discovered and explained by Marx under the title: AN INTRODUCTION TO POLITICAL
ECONOMY FOR THE COMMON MAN.

It's the nature of further evolution of historically previous socio-economic
systems. Primitive tribes were communistic in nature. Each member had a role to
play in the survival and economic needs of the group. Only when there was a
surplus of production did there become rulers who appropriated this surplus to
dominate trade with other tribes. Then evolved slavery, serfdom, feudalism, and
capitalism. All are based on a minority owning the means of production so that
private profit could be made from the ever growing surplus produced by
increasing technology and exploitation of the labour of an underclass. Then
comes colonialism and its direct rule and appropriation of the wealth of other
peoples' lands, then so-called independence, where local rulers were in nominal
power and supported by the old colonialists, but the economy still owned or
controlled by the imperial countries and the wealth of the exploited country
still going to those previously colonial, now imperialist countries. Now it is
global imperialism - the economic control of capital backed up by virtually
unopposed or prepondering military force.

Man, like successful animals whether ants or lions, is cooperative by nature;
achieving far more by cooperation than by competition. Otherwise we couldn't
grow bulk food or make aeroplanes. No one can survive on their own, we need the
division of labour our modern production has needed since primitive communalism
and especially since a surplus over needs could be produced.

Capitalism makes no sense logically, morally, or in terms of efficiency, that's
why it is so anarchistic and unorganised, with boom and slump, companies dying
and companies being born, massive purchasing power and the next minute massive
unemployment and poverty, where it is not only on the streets of Sao Paulo or
Calcutta where the poor sleep in cardboard boxes, but in warm rear of hotel
delivery doorways and under bridges on the banks of the Thames, Seine or
Potomac.



Marxist Philosophy of History
We now come to its application to the search for truth in the investigation of
either historical or what perhaps should be called historico-current events.

It is necessary to attempt to find a method of validation that we can usefully
apply to the study of history.



"Almost all Western non-Marxist historical treatment of world events since 1917
has tended to produce a mythology as a substitute for serious history.

It may be useful to examine how this conception of the supposed non-Marxist pure
pursuit of truth in the historical field works out in practice. For we come here
to the heart of the question of truth and history; the reason why we consider
that Marxist historical theory provides the key - not the ready-made answer -
but the key to the discovery of historical truth; while non-Marxist theory leads
to the distortion of truth. For this purpose we may examine a practical example
from one of the most famous Western universities, Oxford University...

At the age of eighteen years I came to Oxford University... Knowing my own
ignorance I came in all humility to learn from those wiser.

Then the first imperialist world war broke out. What happened to the search for
historical truth at Oxford in this hour of testing? At once all the most
distinguished Professors of the Oxford Faculty of History published a
collectively signed Manifesto declaring that, having examined all the evidence
as trained historians accustomed to weighing impartially historical evidence,
they had reached the unanimous conclusion that Britain was in the right in the
war and Germany in the wrong. Immediately came a Counter-Manifesto from all the
most famous names of German historical learning, names one had equally learned
to revere and respect as masters of knowledge - German learning at that time
stood very high in the academic world - proclaiming that, in the light of their
no less authoritative and scrupulous weighing of historical evidence, they had
reached the unanimous conclusion that Germany was in the right and Britain in
the wrong...

But truth is truth, and must be faced. This is what happened to Western
supposedly impartial historical science when brought to the test of the
imperialist war. Just as the test of the imperialist war laid bare the
rottenness of the old social democracy, so the same test laid bare the
rottenness of the claim of Western capitalist scholarship to represent objective
historical science.

In face of this conflict of the learned, what was the innocent searcher after
truth to do? The conclusion was reluctantly forced upon me, that if the greatest
and most honoured exponents of academic historical wisdom reached diametrically
opposed conclusions according to whether they resided in this or that degree of
longitude by a few degrees of difference, there must be something defective in
this academic historical science, and that the humble searcher after truth could
rely on no authority, however dazzling, but must endeavour, however
ill-equipped, to reach his own judgement...

Whilst the most famous Professors of History were thus enrolled in the uniform
of their imperialist masters, I found that among the small groups of socialist
workers with whom I was in contact, who had no such benefits of higher
education, there was an entirely different type of discussion of the war as a
war between rival masters and exploiters for the spoils of the world. Let us ask
the question in the light of contemporary knowledge: who was closer to the truth
of history? The great and famous bourgeois professors of history? Or the handful
of socialist workers with limited advantages of education? At the present day
the essential analysis of Great Power rivalry leading to the first world war is
the commonplace theme of conventional history text-books even in schools. But
the litter of Oxford War Pamphlets, as they were called, which poured out in a
flood from the University Professors of history at this time, today crumble in
oblivion and contempt.

How was this possible? Why were these workers, deprived of educational
facilities, closer to what is today universally recognised as historical truth
(even by present day Oxford historians who remain as wildly astray as their
predecessors in relation to the modern contemporary world of the cold war) than
all these professors of history? Was it superior mental capacity? The professors
had on the contrary been chosen by a rigorous selective process, even though
from a narrow stratum of the population, for mental capacity. But their
basically false theory rendered them incapable of reaching a correct historical
judgement, although they were supposed to be trained historical experts.
Socialist theory enabled these class-conscious workers to reach, however
crudely, the essential kernel of historical truth...

Academic service to imperialism had collapsed completely when faced with open
argument...

It was indeed these and many similar experiences and deepening disillusionment
with the hollowness of official bourgeois academic claims and theories during my
apprenticeship at Oxford which led me from the very generalised socialist
outlook I had already drawn from earlier years, to the serious and systematic
study of Marxism since 1915. Here I began to find the answers to the insistent
questions which the world situation raised and which all the professors and
tutors, when I in all innocence pressed them on these questions, avoided and
refused to discuss. Before I was twenty years of age I had some experience of
various prisons. At twenty-one years, in the last week of October 1917, that is,
ten days before November 7 1917, I had the honour to be expelled from Oxford
University for the offence of propagating Marxism...

In the last week of October I addressed a meeting of students on the subject of
"Socialism and the War". There was the usual attempt of some hooligan jingo
students to create a disturbance... the rowdies... broke some windows and
shouted jingo slogans outside. Next morning the wrath of the University
authorities was visited, not on the rowdies who had created the disturbance, but
on me for organising the meeting; and I was ordered to leave Oxford permanently
within twenty-four hours. When a year later I was allowed to take the final
examination... it was only under the explicit condition that I had to undertake
to arrive only the night before the examination, to leave the day the
examination ended, and to address no public meetings...

It may be worth adding that A.D.Lindsay, later Lord Lindsay, who as my tutor
held official responsibility with the other governing authorities for the
decision to expel me for socialist propaganda, was himself a member of the
Fabian Society and in this sense claimed to be a socialist. When he was
subsequently appointed Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh University, in his inaugural
address he dwelt on the tradition of academic freedom of opinion, including
political opinions, as the treasured characteristic of the university tradition
in Britain. As an example of this freedom he called attention to the fact that
he himself was a Socialist and yet was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Edinburgh
University... illustrating once again the familiar truth that there are two
kinds of Socialists... those acceptable to the capitalist authorities and those
not acceptable.

The next stage of education in the pursuit of pure truth at Oxford University
followed... I discovered that every avenue of employment appeared closed. No
professor or tutor was prepared to give me the necessary testimonial... The
professors and tutors, when written to by prospective employers... invariably
replied that I had such and such academic qualifications, but that whether the
extreme political views I held were suitable for any responsible position... was
a matter entirely for their governing authority to decide. This invariably
finished the approach.

From this experience I learned a useful political lesson."

(Rajani Palme Dutt "Problems of Contemporary History." London 1963.)



In my early teaching days I compiled a handout for students, which has been
added to over the years. Its current form is as follows:



HISTORY: BALANCED? UNBIASED? OBJECTIVE?
There is no such thing as "unbiased" or "balanced" history; nor is there any
such thing as an unbiased or balanced historian or history teacher. It has been
said by some historians that so-called balanced or unbiased history is dishonest
because it reduces to history for history's sake and devoid of any historical
meaning. To apply meaning to history is immediately biased.

Bias can hardly be "balanced"; nor does it need or claim to be. But can bias be
objective? How is it possible for bias to be objective?

There is a certain way in which it is possible for historical bias to be
objective. What you must do; what is essential for you to do; and what any truly
objective historian would uncompromisingly insist that you do, is to look at all
points of view, no matter how "extreme". Views of history coincide with
political poles of, to use the various terms often used to describe these poles
of points of view: on the one extreme, the point of view of the "left wing",
"Marxist", "materialist", "scientific", "socialist", "communist", "working
class", "progressive" historians, and on the other extreme we have the views of
the "capitalist", "bourgeois", "non-Marxist", "idealist", "right wing",
"fascist", "western", "reactionary" historians.

It is essential that you look at both poles of points of view. Look at them in
their "extremity" or polarity; and thus - and only thus - qualify yourself to
come to a fully informed conclusion and develop a reasoned opinion. This is as
close as we can get to objectivity in history, formed with the full information
from both sides in any historical argument, and not just from one or a
combination of one side and a so-called "middle ground."

There is no such thing as any middle ground. What is the middle ground when
investigating an event? Is this so-called "balance" or "objectivity" in history
some "middle ground", somehow midway between two extremes?

A lot of history can, and has, been called a crime. But crime is not history.
Nevertheless some methods of investigating crime are useful in investigating
history.

Events do not happen in a vacuum. If a robber steals from an old lady; or if the
drunken driver of the red car hits the parked blue car; what is a "balanced" or
"middle ground" point of view when apportioning blame? Is the old lady somehow
part of the blame? Did the thief half rob her? Is the blue car somehow half to
blame? Any scientific investigation will show that the thief and the driver of
the red car is to blame and is the cause in both cases.

Can any middle ground be useful when investigating crime, accidents, or indeed
history?

The old lady says the thief robbed her. There we have a starting point which is
already biased. The thief says he did not rob her. There we have another biased
starting point for our investigation. We have already said that crime is not the
same as history. But philosophically, can objective historical truth lie somehow
equidistant between two extremes, not for one moment imagining that objective
truth could lay at one of those extremes? Can a court somehow arrive at a
"balanced" or "objective" truth between the thief and the old lady or between
the red and the blue car that is somehow not biased, not at an extreme, not the
point of view of either the old lady or the thief? Of course not. Either the
thief robbed the old lady or he did not. Either the red car hit the blue car or
it did not. Whatever were the causes of the crime or accident and where blame or
cause can be apportioned can be scientifically established. There is no middle
ground view about it. Indeed; some historians assert that it is a fruitless
waste of time to try to find a "middle ground" in history, whether this is
called "balanced", "unbiased" or "objective".

Balance excludes bias, but bias does not necessarily exclude objectivity.
Historical meaning is always biased and therefore cannot be "balanced", but it
can still be objective. To say that history cannot be objective because of the
subjective role of the historian is philosophically idealist and denies history
having any material meaning.

Let's look at a practical example of how this supposed "balanced" pursuit of
truth in history works out in practice, and whether any idealist "balanced" view
of history leads to a distortion of truth or whether a biased or objective view
of history is more useful in bringing us closer to material truth. Let's look at
an example from that most hallowed seat of learning - Oxford University: an
example recounted by British historian Rajani Palme Dutt in a lecture he gave:

"At the age of eighteen years I came to Oxford University... Knowing my own
ignorance I came in all humility to learn from those wiser. Then the first...
world war broke out. What happened to the search for historical truth at Oxford
in this hour of testing? At once all the most distinguished Professors of the
Oxford Faculty of History published a collectively signed Manifesto declaring
that, having examined all the evidence as trained historians accustomed to
weighing impartially historical evidence, they had reached the unanimous
conclusion that Britain was in the right in the war and Germany in the wrong.
Immediately came a Counter-Manifesto from all the most famous names of German
historical learning, names one had equally learned to revere and respect as
masters of knowledge - German learning at that time stood very high in the
academic world - proclaiming that, in the light of their no less authoritative
and scrupulous weighing of historical evidence, they had reached the unanimous
conclusion that Germany was in the right and Britain in the wrong...

(Rajani Palme Dutt, in his book "Problems of Contemporary History.")

But surely truth is truth? What happens to this idealistic notion of "balance"
in historical science when faced with the practicalities of a real event? What
is the innocent searcher after historical truth to do when the greatest and most
honoured exponents of academic historical wisdom reach diametrically opposed
conclusions according to whether they resided in this or that country? Is there
something wrong with this philosophically idealist notion of "balance" in
history? If the most venerable historians of Britain and Germany have different
views on causation then surely truth is anybody's and any notion of "balance" is
questionable?

The question of "balance", bias and objectivity in any history agenda should
never be assumed to be a closed assumption.

As already said, history does not happen in a vacuum and is not merely a series
of unexplainable chance events. The study of history is the study of causes.

"The historian, as I said at the end of my last lecture, continuously asks the
question 'Why?'"

(E.H.Carr.)

The past is meaningless to the historian unless he can understand the thought
that went behind it. The role of the historian must be investigative, and
requires objective interpretation in accordance with the historian's stated
ideological set of rules and stated bias. A truly objective and honest historian
gives sources for everything he writes and explains his bias.

"History requires the selection and ordering of facts about the past in the
light of some principle or norm of objectivity accepted by the historian, which
necessarily includes elements of interpretation. Without this, the past
dissolves into a jumble of innumerable isolated and insignificant incidents, and
history cannot be written at all."

(E.H.Carr.)

History affects, is effected by all of us in society. Therefore we cannot expect
to have history explained "impartially" by anyone standing outside society.

"The historian, before he begins to write history, is the product of history."

(E.H.Carr.)

If anyone claims impartiality, then we must suspect his honesty or competence. A
historian who claims "balance" and omits sources and does not explain his
interpretative bias, or denies causation, is usually trying to hide something
and is guilty of distortion and dishonesty. And to see history as a series of
chance events or the character of individuals is to render history impotent and
the historian unintelligent or devious.

"To describe something as a mischance is a favorite way of exempting oneself
from the tiresome obligation to investigate its cause; and, when somebody tells
me that history is a chapter of accidents, I tend to suspect him of intellectual
laziness or low intellectual vitality."

(E.H.Carr.)

History is past politics. Politics is present history. Those who want to make
history impotent are afraid that people who learn from the past will understand
the present and might want to effect the future. No past equals cannot influence
the present equals no future.

In history we need to understand the past causally as a key to understanding the
present.

History does not teach us the way to the future; but it helps teach us the art
of navigation.

"History is to the community what memory is to the individual."

(Arthur Marwick.)

Otherwise, such an empty reconstruction of the past is meaningless and
purposeless, except to hide and distort causes. If history is a meaningless and
purposeless series of accidents then one must deny any causal relationships in
history. If one denies any causal relationships in history then one must
fatalistically deny anything can be done about the present or the future.

To be "balanced" is to have no opinion. You cannot argue with someone who has no
opinion. To be "balanced" is to have the luxury of remaining in a comfortable
but fatalistic position. It means that you don't have to defend anything and can
reject everything. Such "balanced" notions of causation in say the Second World
War or the Cold War are full of obvious contradictions. It means for instance
that wars are natural fate and cannot be avoided because they are not planned
and have no identifiable cause.

Enough is objectively known about traffic accidents to identify causes in
general and causes of specific accidents that it is therefore possible to build
preventative factors into cars and traffic systems and rules. It would be
useless to take a "balanced" notion of no objective causes and say that you
cannot do anything to prevent accidents; it would make insurance claims
impossible and safety measures impotent. It is equally useless and destructive
to take such notions of history.

If you assume that all versions of history are doubtful - a "balanced" view -
means that you accept no objective historical truth. But because history can be
seen in different ways does not mean that objective historical facts cannot be
established:

"It does not follow that, because a mountain appears to take on different shapes
from different angles of vision, it has objectively either no shape at all or an
infinity of shapes. It does not follow that, because interpretation plays a
necessary part in establishing the facts of history, and because no existing
interpretation is wholly objective, one interpretation is as good as another,
and the facts of history are in principle not amenable to objective
interpretation."

(E.H.Carr "What Is History.")

Just as the objective facts of a mountain can be established by looking from all
angles and a conclusion objectively explained from these facts, so it is
possible to establish the objective facts of history and explain a conclusion.

"We comprehend the formation of mountain ranges by tectonic activities of the
earth's crust, but we cannot explain why Mount Blanc has the specific shape that
we see today, nor can we predict which side of Mount Saint Helens will cave in
at the next eruption. The occurrence of unpredictable events does not mean that
the laws of nature are violated."

(E.H.Carr.)

An examination candidate who answered a question on, say, the origins of the
Second World War with only one cause would get less than a "C", and no
responsible examiner would give marks for suggesting there was no particular
cause at all. A candidate who merely listed a multitude of causes might get a
second. But a first would more likely be awarded to a candidate who arranged all
these causes and interpretations into some order of priority with reasons
explained.

So, in studying history, look at both points of view, and show that you are able
to come to a qualified and a reasoned conclusion: Qualified because you can show
that you have considered both ideological points of view properly and
extensively, and reasoned so that you can show the reasoning behind your
selection and priority of causes.

When you show that you come to your conclusion through a well reasoned process,
then you will become a good historian - as biased as the best of us.

end of handout



What Is history?


"Until the lions have their historians, tales of hunting will always favour the
hunter."

(African proverb.)



"People make history; but not in circumstances of their own choosing."

(Karl Marx.)



"Men make their own history, whatever its outcome may be, in that each person
follows his own consciously desired end; and it is precisely the resultant of
these many wills operating in different directions and of their mindful effects
upon the outer world that constitutes history."

(Frederich Engels.)



Marxism and Economics
I claim to be able to convince any intellectually honest person of the validity
and correctness of the Marxist explanation of how capitalism works.

Studying economics confused me for a long time at first. I couldn't see the
logic in the often circular or contradictory arguments and parameters. I
discovered that some 95 percent of the books on the shelves of the London School
of Economics library should have been under the label of business studies or
accounting, because economics they certainly were not. They only had their own
circular, self determining logic. There was no science to it; nothing running
off at a tangent.

But there is a well hidden subject that most students don't come across unless
they are unsatisfied with circular logic, determined, adventurous, courageous
and perhaps a little foolhardy like me. It can be called Political Economy, if
only after the main textbook of the time: Political Economy by John Eaton. Leads
in this book, absent in mainstream economics except to pooh-pooh it, referred to
two small pamphlets written by Kark Marx, which, read in conjunction with John
Eaton, and in the right order - Wage Labour and Capital (1891) and Wages Price
and Profit (1898), explained the workings of the socio-economic relations of
capitalism.

But not all working men are fools. We know, and can convince the intellectually
honest, that Marx's analysis of the working of capital is correct, that there
are immutable and irrefutable laws of economics as a science, and accepting them
will get you off the ground instead of paper and string or coloured water flow
machines.

Applying this to mankind; one can say that all people want the same thing - to
live, happily, healthily, comfortably, and with advancing ways of living and
providing the means of life. This, they do far better cooperatively that
competitively.

Capitalists like to put competition and entrepreneurial notions as a driving
force.

Let's reduce the world to easier understandable dimensions and say that there
was only one land mass - a small island, and one family - father, mother, son,
daughter; and all the resources they need to build a house and eat and live.

Would we say the best way is entrepreneurial competition? That the father (the
capitalist) owns the island, the land and all its resources, the others work for
him for a wage, and that the products - the house and food - produced by the
others were owned by him, and they could buy some of it back with the wages that
he pays them?

Or would it be better to have cooperation and public or popular ownership, with
divisions of labour according to suitability in terms of physical stature and
special knowledge and aptitude?

Apply this to notions of centralism, or government, or rich vs poor, or the two
classes, or polarity, and it becomes a little clearer.

Let's do a test. If we reduce the world to a single island with all the raw
materials needed, and the population to a single family - father, mother, and
son and daughter of workable age; would we arrange them in a capitalist way of
producing their needs? EG: Father is the capitalist, owning the land, raw
materials, means of production (tools/factories), the products produced, and the
profits made by selling those products to the other family members, to whom he
gives over a little of the product as wages? It could not be sustainable. Or
would we effect a socialist socio-economic relationship and division of labour
according to capability and body structure - father and son dig the foundations,
build the house, the timber floors, windows, plumbing and so on, and mother and
daughter fetching bricks, painting, curtains (not to be sexist about it), share
the growing of food and ownership of the land, its raw materials, the means of
production and the products produced. Now add some more family members,
totalling first 5, then 6, 7, and so on. Where is the number we get to where
this socio-economic system disappears up its own haemorrhoids as capitalism
always does - only sustained by continually advancing technology and effective
purchasing power, ultimately only by military force? There is no magic number.
It is sustainable whatever the population, as we see in embryonic socialist
countries so far. (To refer to the USSR and say "See, it doesn't work" is to
observe man's attempts at manned flight - from Icarus to just before Wright
Brothers and say "see, it doesn't work." It does work, it's just a matter of
getting the right relationship between the laws of gravity, aerodynamics and the
power-to-weight ratio, then the thing will fly. The history of attempts at
socialism so far is only as far as somewhere between the Wright Brothers and
Louis Bleriot. But the potential is Boeing 707s and Concorde and beyond.)

To put it another way - I can't recall the exact details - but a British Labour
official or Trade Unionist was being shown round a pressed steel plant in
Detroit which made steel pressings for car body parts and cases of fridges and
washing machines. His American hosts tried to intimidate their guest saying:
"See this automated robot production line, the robots just keep working. They
are not very good at going on strike, taking smoking breaks, going off sick,
they work day and night and don't even need the lights turned on." The British
labour official then asked: "Yes but how good are they at buying cars, fridges
and washing machines?" That is, capitalistically you can produce cassette tape
recorders by the million, but sooner or later you've got to sell them all or go
broke; since the workers of the world's only source of purchasing power is the
wages capitalist companies an their shareholders pay them, which has got to be
less than the selling price of their product - otherwise no profit.

Capitalism has to be imperialistic, ever finding new and cheaper labour to
exploit, and a market for the goods where there is only a very limited
purchasing power among the home country's working and thus viable market. As
soon as this breaks down, especially when technology cannot keep up with cheap
labour to exploit and limited and declining purchasing power and therefore
markets, the economy slows down and slumps, sometimes with catastrophic results
like the 1929 Wall Street crash. It makes no sense or socio-economic logic. It
will be ultimately unsustainable with global consequences - whatever that might
be. The only way global capitalism. ie: imperialism, has survived such crashes
in the past is with a world war, where the economy relies on armaments
production and rebuilding all the destruction after a war. Now it is nuclear.
And there is no Soviet Union to balance the forces and prevent the US from going
ahead. The loss of the USSR and its restraining military force and the power of
its economic force to help the poorer socialist countries and increase the
socialist economic relations in the world is profound in meaning - possibly to
the detriment of all of us. OK the Soviet Union is disintegrated right now. But
each former Soviet republic still has a powerful and influential Communist
Party. When I was last in Uzbekistan in Soviet Central Asia, we saw on the wall
of a block of flats opposite out favourite restaurant, a two feet square
portrait of Gorbachev, beside a painting of Stalin three stories tall. Beside
the Kremlin walls where are buried previous Soviet leaders, you will find the
biggest bunches of flowers on Stalin's grave. OK some of his methods might not
have been necessary to our way of thinking. But it was under Stalin's leadership
that Soviet production was such that it was able to defeat the Nazi armies where
Britain and the US could not have done. And who put the first satellite and the
first man in space? And all this achievement started only 20 years after the
Russian Revolution, where 90 percent of the population were illiterate peasants.

The first steps of every socialist revolution is to educate the masses to the
truth of their situation. The crucial stage is when the masses become literate
and can receive printed information. And it is often at this stage that the US
tries to smash such revolutions - eg: Chile's Allende government and the US
imposition of Pinochet, likewise its attempt at smashing Cuba in the 1960s Bay
of Pigs invasion and the so-called Cuban missile crisis, and later Nicaragua, El
Salvador, Vietnam, Grenada and so on. It's a powerful, educated set of socialist
socio-economic relations in an individual socialist country and between the
world socialist economy that the US cannot let happen, hence its role in the
economic relations between the socialist community and the capitalist world and
between the socialist countries through its control of international hard
currency and other devices and an impoverishing arms race that crippled the
former massively economically powerful socialist world. Plus of course mistaken
faith of the socialist countries in the honesty of capitalist encroachment in
their economies and internal mistakes. Capitalism had only private profit as its
driving force. But socialism has no history nor book of instructions.

Capitalism is ultimately unsustainable as a socio-economic system. It only
survives as dependent on continually expanding markets for its output and
continually expanding exploration and devouring of ever cheaper labour and raw
materials from the poor and the 40,000 children who will die tonight in this
overwhelmingly rich and abundant world. Ultimately it is only sustainable by
military invasion and occupation and the planting of local stooges to run the
show.

I remember when I was unemployed in the 1980s and bought a tin of beans in a
supermarket marked "Country of origin: Ethiopia" during global news coverage of
the first televised mass famine in Ethiopia. I had not done a stroke of work to
get those beans. I had been given the money to buy them by my country's
government - a capitalist state. Then ironically, outside the supermarket at the
time was an Oxfam table with volunteers collecting for Ethiopia. After I gave
them my tin of Ethiopian beans and they dropped it into a bag I offered a
Marxist lesson without in any way affronting or intimidating them. I first asked
them where they thought my tin of beans had come from. Their wild guesses
included every rich and poor country except Ethiopia. When I asked them to look
they were absolutely astounded. When I had explained how the world works in
terms of socio-economic relationships, they not only accepted the revelation as
they might have the scriptural one, but invited me to speak at their local and
regional meetings for several months afterwards as my name was passed from local
branch to branch and upwards to region - which I gladly did. None of them ripped
off crucifixes and grabbed a red flag, which I wouldn't have wanted them to do
as it would mean the kiss of death for Oxfam and perhaps Christianity in this
country, and I'm not accepting responsibility but over the next couple of years
there was a distinct rise in the knowledge based effectiveness of Oxfam
nationally - so something spread rapidly through Oxfam in those years; because I
began to meet Oxfam officials and representatives at embassy receptions of
communist countries, initially countries like Vietnam and Cuba, then the USSR
and other countries of the European advanced socialist community.

Imagine the danger of preaching pure Marxism directly to them. First none of
them would have listened, and I certainly would not have been invited to preach
at their meetings. And then nobody would ever listen or contribute to Oxfam.

The argument of mainstream economics is circular, with nothing running off at a
tangent. Most of the books on the library shelves of the halloed centre of
economic study in the UK - the London School of Economics, should have been
under the label of business studies or accounting - not economics. I only
finally understood economics, or more correctly, economic philosophy, as a
science of socio-economic relations, after reading Ricardo, Adam Smith and Marx.

Except for primitive communism, societies have always consisted of economic
classes: the one owning the means of production of wealth, the other, owning no
means of production themselves and are therefore entirely dependent on making
more profit for the owners of capital in order to live, producing that wealth:
owner and slave, patrician and plebian, feudal landowner and serf, guildmaster
and journeyman, and capitalist or bourgeoisie (French: capital owning class) and
proletarian (working class by hand or brain). In short: exploiter and exploited.

Throughout this book I shall be referring to the "working class" or "working
people". I do not want to be misunderstood as to mean by "working people" or the
"working class" only those who do manual labour. By working class or working
people I mean all those who are not capitalists - who use the private ownership
of bank or finance capital, or industrial capital, land, or the means of
production (factories, machines, or other facilities) in order to extract
private profit from the economic exploitation of the working class: whether
those workers use their hands or their brains; and whether they are at home or
in imperialist 'client' nations.

We now have capitalists: they own the land and its raw materials, the banks, the
means of production, the products produced by these means of production, and the
profits made in that productive process: and we have wage earning people:
workers - by hand or by brain, who own nothing but their power to labour - by
hand or by brain in order to produce the surplus value which the capitalist
appropriates as his profit, and who are completely dependent upon the will of
the capitalist - his production for private profit and not for human need - for
their entire means of subsistence, whether they are cooks, bottle washers,
factory workers, teachers, computer operators, salesmen, secretaries, bus
drivers, business executives or high court judges.

In Britain it was calculated in the late 1970s that the ratio of ownership of
wealth between rich and poor, roughly between capitalist and worker, was such
that 7 per cent of the British people owned 84 per cent of the country's wealth.
The majority of the British people, the other 93 per cent, owned between them
the remaining 16 per cent of the country's wealth.

It is not my place to elaborate yet on the fundamentals of political economy. I
will explain this later. But suffice it to say that, like Darwin's theory proves
evolution, Newton's theory proves gravity, and Einstein's theory proves
relativity, so Marx's equally scientific labour theory of value proves that only
labour, and not capital, creates wealth; but the majority of that wealth is
always appropriated by the owner of capital as private profit.

Indeed, capitalism could not have developed until the accumulation of two
important political economic necessities for its development was in a well
advanced and polarised form. This already highly polarised form was in the
existence of the accumulation of wealth as private capital; and men who were
"free" from serfdom and at the same time "free" from the means of production -
land, raw materials, machinery; i.e: "free" from any other means of getting a
living for themselves except to sell their labour power for wages, or starve.



"This primitive accumulation plays in political economy about the same part as
original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, thereupon sin fell on the human
race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of
the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the
diligent, the intelligent, and above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals,
spending their subsistence, and more, in riotous living. The legend of
theological sin tells us certainly how man came to eat his bread in the sweat of
his brow, but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are
people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass
that the former sort accumulated wealth and the latter sort had at last nothing
to sell but their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the
great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but
itself; and the wealth of the few that increases constantly - although they have
long ceased to work. Such widespread childishness is every day preached to us in
defence of property."

(Karl Marx.)



Thus, the justification of capitalism is explained by theology rather than by
mathematics or any explanation of the scientific laws of political economy and
economic development.

The feudal system broke down economically and socially, and the whole
socio-economic system then became more and more subordinated to the rise in the
political power of capital and the corresponding comparative impoverishment of
the workers, and the rise in the wealth they produced for the new class of
capitalists; since the more the worker produces for private capital, the less he
owns himself by comparison. It is the workers themselves which actually produce
the wealth which becomes the political power of capital over labour; instead of
owning that power themselves, as in socialism. The working class do not want to
be ruled over by capital. People should control capital; not the other way
round.

Just briefly here, a couple of simple experiments disprove all bourgeois
(capitalist) political economic theories that their whole economic philosophy is
based on. (Which, incidentally, is why they are always in a total contradictory
muddle.):

If, as capitalist political economists say, that capital produces wealth, by
investing it in the means of production - factories, machinery, fuel, raw
materials, and wages, and adding a percentage as profit; then the question to
ask is: where does the worker - the purchaser - get this extra percentage which
the capitalist says is his profit; seeing as the worker's wages is what the
capitalist pays him? Is the worker printing extra money somewhere to make that
extra percentage that is profit - remembering that the worker's only source of
income is his wages from the capitalist?

And if, as capitalist ideology says, that under capitalism, equal opportunities
lead to universal prosperity for all; then another simple experiment proves that
this could never be. Everybody cannot be capitalists. Capitalism, by its very
nature, because of its inherent laws, because of what it is, because it is
capitalism, can only survive as the exploitation of the majority by a minority.
The simple experiment that points out the impossibility of capitalism being
otherwise is simply to print and donate to the world's population a million
dollars each, which they could then 'invest' and live off the interest and
profits, and no one need go to work!

No. A capitalist creates wealth no more than a person who milks a cow creates
milk.

As Marx proved, only labour produces the values of the wealth of society that is
embodied in the sum of that society's commodities. But the worker doesn't
receive the value of his labour - the value of the commodity he creates. This is
appropriated by the capitalist.

Under socialism there are no longer classes with conflicting economic interests.
One class produces - by hand or by brain - what it owns, and owns what it
produces.

Applying this to mankind; one can say that all people want the same thing - to
live, happily, healthily, comfortably, and with advancing ways of living and
providing the means of life. This, they do far better cooperatively that
competitively.

Capitalists like to put competition and entrepreneurial notions as a driving
force.

Let's reduce the world to easier understandable dimensions and say that there
was only one land mass - a small island, and one family - father, mother, son,
daughter; and all the resources they need to build a house and eat and live.

Would we say the best way is entrepreneurial competition? That the father (the
capitalist) owns the island, the land and all its resources, the others work for
him for a wage, and that the products - the house and food - produced by the
others were owned by him, and they could but some of it back with the wages that
he pays them?

Or would it be better to have cooperation and public or popular ownership, with
divisions of labour according to suitability in terms of physical stature and
special knowledge and aptitude?



Marxism and Class and Democracy
If you have abolished capitalism, there is then only one class, the working
class, with its own party, the communist or socialist party, to govern and be
governed by. (Our island family but bigger.) That is socialist democracy; not
parties. What other class would these other parties represent? A socialist
democracy votes for policies and the representatives to carry them out; not
parties. Of course, these representatives can be corrupt and self serving if the
electors do not or cannot keep track of what they are doing. Nobody is saying
that the USSR for instance was perfect, or the GDR. The problem is that a
socialist society with socialist ideals and the socialist man has not had the
chance to be fully developed, and as the East Germans said, we have to build our
society with the people we've got; there us no other German people.

In 1917 Russia had a revolution and the working class took power out of the
hands of capital. They have one party representing one class, the working class.
To the objectors of this situation, it is necessary to ask: Who should this
"opposition" party represent in the Soviets? What will be the policy of this
"opposition"?

Democracy from the ground upwards, this is how democracy works in the socialist
countries.

The absence of two parties does not mean the absence of democracy.

The "freedom" to vote for a choice of capitalist parties while the capitalist
mass media suppresses knowledge and understanding of any socialist alternative
is nothing more than a nominal freedom. The freedom to vote for a choice of
capitalist parties while the means of subsistence is in the hands of private
capital is nothing more than the freedom of a prisoner to choose his jailer.
Freedom of speech and freedom to travel anywhere in the world for a starving
child is nothing but a worthless, hollow freedom. Freedom and democracy under
such conditions are meaningless words empty of any substance. Freedom to vote
without freedom to be without poverty, unemployment and wars is less than the
freedom of the slave. Freedom to vote without the guaranteed freedom of food,
clothing, housing and warmth, health and hygiene, education, culture and the
full riches of the earth and the means of utilising them, i.e. the means of
subsistence, is a complete denial of freedom and a despicable plunder of the
meaning of the word.

In short; capitalist "freedom" and "democracy" is a lie.

Soviet people all participate in government; they are the state. British people
just vote; they have absolutely no control of the state.



Marxist notions of Freedom and Democracy
What is this "freedom" they talk about in every speech; that they must arm
themselves to the teeth for? What are these "vital American interests" which
they say they must "defend" in every corner of the globe?

When the capitalists talk of peace they mean only the continuation of a peace
that will never be, and never has been; a "peace" which belongs in the museum of
man's social and economic history - the "peaceful" exploitation of man by man;
the "peaceful" economic plunder of nation by nation.

Why do the richest people on earth use their most advanced billion dollar
science and technology to destroy the poorest and most backward peoples of the
world who refuse to accept US plans for their happiness? Why are some of the
world's poorest and most friendly and gentle people also the world's most bombed
people?

The "free" world the US defends is the unhindered freedom of capital to exploit
labour. It includes fascism - to keep rebellious workers under control - the
world of Pinochet and Pol Pot; a "free" world of several million children who
will starve to death this year; of five hundred millions with no medicine or
health care; hundreds of millions of illiterates; all this in a very rich and
abundant world; the millions of unemployed and homeless - millions of these in
the United States itself, and in Europe and other 'advanced' industrialised
nations of the capitalist world.

When capitalists can justify their murderous social-economic system to the poor
and hungry children; and their murderous wars against humanity in all the small
and weak nations of the world; then they can talk of peace. When they can
justify their denial of the most basic human rights to the majority of people of
the world; then they can talk of human rights.

How dare they talk of human rights and "freedom" when they have sucked the
wealth out of all the small nations for hundreds of years and then say that
these nations are in "debt" to the West - to Western shareholders, large and
small? How dare they scream so loudly about 'human rights' in the socialist
countries when they support and retain the most horrific regimes all over the
world? How dare capitalists and small investors talk of human rights and freedom
when they are 'owed' millions of dollars by every hungry child in the world?

What hypocritical human rights do they talk of - the big finance capitalists and
bankers and those unwitting unknowing "I'm not a capitalist" small investors
whose collective billions of pounds and dollars are invested in the cheap
labour, raw materials and markets of the Third World - in South East Asia, Latin
America; or in Africa where the majority of black people have no rights, no home
other than a tin shed, and a plank or an old door for a bed, no right to a job,
own no land, own no workplaces, can't stand for parliament or elect one, are not
allowed to form trade unions, have no access to medical treatment or suitable
education, and no access to press, radio or television to tell the world their
plight; where the vast majority are deprived and silenced?

Capitalist notions of "freedom" and "human rights" are totally useless to the
majority of the world's population who are living and dying under starvation,
poverty, unemployment, and lack of basic hygiene and medical care. What use is
"freedom of speech" to this majority of people who nobody hears? What use is it
to speak when nobody listens? What use is "freedom of travel" to the world's
hungry people who can't go anywhere and nobody wants them? What good are
capitalist freedoms to them when nobody will listen, transport, feed them, or
give them land or the means of production of wealth? What is the practical or
effective use of this fake notion of freedom to the children who sleep in
cardboard boxes on the streets of Calcutta or Sao Paulo?

When capital ruled in what are now new and emerging socialist countries no one
said a word about human rights in those countries. Capitalists have never
throughout history been concerned with human rights. They never called for "free
and fair" elections in these countries while they were under the direct
domination of transnational capital and protected by fascist military
dictatorships. They did nor call for the release of Nelson Mandela and free
elections in South Africa; they are not calling for freedom and human rights in
El Salvador; nor are they calling for the freedom of Palestinians, Grenadans or
Chileans. They are only calling for the freedom of the re-imposition of the rule
of capital in socialist countries which have already eliminated the poverty and
hunger and illiteracy imposed by their previous domination by capital.

We hypocritically scream about "human rights" in socialist countries but it is
our own imperialist way of life which murders thousands every day. Children's
flesh is turned into flame in order that we might have cheap tin. Hospitals,
schools, nursery schools, kindergartens, polyclinics, pioneer camps and miners'
clubs are all blown away in order that we might have cheap tungsten. Chile is
drenched in blood in order that ITT can have cheap copper for the US
military-industrial complex and the we can have cheap aluminium windows, coke
cans, cooking foil, electric carving knives. Central America is raped in order
that we can have cheap bananas, sugar, coffee and tobacco. Thai and Filipino
children starve so that we can have cheap rice, cocoa, rubber, sugar and palm
oil. Black people in Apartheid South Africa were oppressed and murdered in order
that we could have cheap uranium, diamonds, gold, copper, phosphates and other
minerals.

It is time to know the connection between our way of life and poverty, debt and
wars. Everything we do under our economic system based on production for profit
rather than production for human needs is somehow connected with a hungry child
or a war somewhere in the world.

Economic warfare is what you and I conduct every day, when we buy a banana or a
tin of fruit; when we pay a penny to the poor peasant who produced it, and the
rest to the shareholders of the transnational company and its marketing,
distributing and retailing subsidiaries of the product. This is called trade -
free trade. It is unequal trade.

Democracy must involve thinking, learning, and political responsibility and
honesty. Merely voting for a government is not democracy; it is just accepting
the benefits of an imperialist foreign policy while abrogating our
responsibility for its consequences. We cannot absolve ourselves from
responsibility or rationalise any guilt by saying "It's not my fault, I'm not a
capitalist, what can I do about it?" We must learn and understand our world -
its socio-economic relationships.

We all kill the hungry child, not with guns and napalm, but with our pounds and
dollars in the supermarket, the bank and the building society. When we open a
tin of beans we open the stomach of an already hungry child and remove the
contents.



"No longer could I resist the conclusion that capitalism was doomed. No longer
must the livelihood of the community rest in irresponsible hands; blast furnaces
remaining cold, mines undug and houses unbuilt, unless somebody's private profit
set forward the lighting, the digging and the building. Shivering miners could
not dig the coal they needed, naked men could not weave their shirts and coats,
nor could the man who lived seven in a single room enter a brickyard and build
himself a house; though he kicked his heels for a dozen years in idleness, he
must remain in misery if no one could make a profit from his labour. The public
that needed these things and could produce them had no access to the land and
machinery of production. Private profit took precedence of human life. Christian
morality, if it was to be true to its mission, must find these things
intolerable and demand reform."

(Dr. Hewlett Johnson, Dean of Canterbury 1931-1963.)



The Simple Thing - So Hard to Achieve - The Battle of Ideas and the Communist
notion of Peaceful Coexistence.


"In the Russian revolution are implanted ideas which will immensely influence
the future development of mankind."

(Lord Lothian, 1931.)



"Anyone who doesn't realise that the great struggle of our time is an
ideological one, is not looking the question squarely in the face."

(US President Eisenhower.)



"Today, as never before, we are engaged in a fierce battle of ideas, our
adversary is the Soviet Union... This competition is not new... it has been
going on since the end of World War II. Our strategy, however, has remained
virtually unchanged... The time has come to take the initiative, to make our
case boldly and well. It is time to reorganise USIA [United States Information
Agency B.M.] as an important component of the American foreign affairs
community. Indeed, USIA is on the cutting edge of the struggle for men's minds."

(USIA Director Charles Wick, before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee,
March 1983, requesting $711.4 million for ISIA's 1984 "Project Democracy.")



"I have not come here as a prophet of the revolution; nor have I come here to
ask or wish that the world be violently convulsed. I have come to speak of peace
and co-operation among the peoples, and I have come to warn that, if we do not
eliminate our present injustices and inequalities peacefully and wisely, the
future will be apocalyptic. The sound of weapons, threatening language and
arrogance, in the international scene must cease. Enough of the illusion that
the world's problems can be solved by means of nuclear weapons. Bombs may kill
the hungry, the sick and the ignorant, but they cannot kill hunger, disease and
ignorance. Nor can they kill the righteous rebellion of the peoples"

(Fidel Castro, at United Nations General Assembly, Oct 12 1979.)



"A major criticism... of our programme in the field of information and
propaganda is the failure to formulate a definite, conscious purpose... In
contrast, the communist bloc appears to know just where it is going... Slogans
like the 'Four Freedoms' are not enough unless they are completed by slogans
that point to the operating rules of a society that puts freedom into practice.
We are in a war of ideas, but we have not found our ideas... Our policy has
been too negative, its programmes and slogans almost always a mere response, or
reaction, to the more imaginative ideas of the Soviets... ...the rich and
powerful United States has offered no inspirational idea or positive social
programme."

(Princeton University Professor John B. Whitton (Ed) in "Propaganda and the Cold
War.")



"The greatest threat to the security of the United States within the forseeable
future stems from the hostile designs and formidable power of the USSR, and from
the nature of the Soviet system... Never before have the intentions and
strategic objectives of an aggressor nation been so clearly defined. For a
hundred years, victory in the class struggle of the proletariat versus the
bourgeoisie has been identified as the means by which Communism would dominate
the world."

(From US secret document NSC 20/4. Report by the National Security Council on US
Objectives With Respect to the USSR to Counter Soviet Threats to US Security.)



"A real danger of Soviet domination of Western Europe does not lie in an
invasion of Western Germany by Russian armoured divisions... A much more
probable contingency is that the Soviet Union might achieve its aims without
firing a single shot. And that will almost certainly happen if the West has
abandoned the will, the military resources, the collective deterrent and the
defensive system with which it can resist threats and blackmail. It is for this
reason that unilateral disarmament by the West poses such appalling dangers."

(Lord Chalfont, in The Great Unilateral Illusion "Ignorance is Strength.")



"It is the imperialists who need weapons, since they are completely devoid of
ideas. They need weapons and they must stockpile them against everybody's will
in order to maintain their opprobrious system... But when there are ideas, these
ideas can be defended and they can be made to prevail. Ideas don't need weapons,
if they can win the masses over to their cause. No one can think that the
contradiction between capitalism and socialism can be settled by force. You'd
have to be out of your mind to think that way, and that's the way the
imperialists think. That's why they have military bases all over the world,
threaten everybody and intervene everywhere. Where are the socialist countries'
military bases?"

(Fidel Castro.)



"Civilisation will rid itself of communism as a sad, bizarre chapter in human
history whose last pages are being written just at this moment... The Western
world won't contain communism, it will survive it. We shall not be content to
condemn it, we shall get rid of it."

(Ronald Reagan, at Notre Dame University, May 15 1982.)



"A persistent trend in American thought - the belief that there can be no peace
and security for the American states until every Communist government has been
rooted out in Asia and in Europe. This is a policy of unlimited liability."

(The Times May 22 1951.)



"Three-fourths (one may say nine-tenths) of the people of the world are poor...
but the miserably poor want to turn the world upside down - today. They regard
the United States as basically in favour of the status quo. All rich people are
supposed to be that way. More significant, perhaps, is the fact that Moscow is
regarded by most of the poor people around the world as the friend of the poor
and of the rebel... In a nation motivated by revolutionary fervour, including
countries which have recently become independent and those undergoing rapid
social change, there is great enthusiasm for planning for the future. Five,
seven, and even ten-year plans are popular. People are told to sacrifice present
living for future benefits to the nation and to their children. Emphasis on
consumer goods for the present generation seems disloyal, unpatriotic, and even
immoral... Russians, who are pictured as sacrificing themselves today for the
benefit of their children of tomorrow, are somehow regarded as more admirable
than profligate Americans."

(US Information Agency Director George Allen.)



"A research report of the United States Information Agency has ruefully
discovered that the more our propaganda advertises the virtues of 'capitalism'
and attacks 'socialism', the less the world likes us... Having analysed
conclusions of its poll - taken in both hemispheres, the USIA study observes:
'Capitalism is evil. The United States is the leading capitalist country,
therefore the United States is evil.' It would be difficult to exaggerate the
harm that this line of thinking has done... Capitalism is a dirty word to
millions of non-Marxists... Most foreigners apparently don't regard 'capitalism'
as descriptive of an efficient economy or a safeguard of individual rights...
'Capitalism', abroad, is frequently a pejorative word. Efforts to purge it of
negative connotations by phrases like 'people's capitalism' have failed."

("Should the Old Labels be Changed?" New York Times, July 6 1964.)



"The central fact of today's life is the existence in the world of two great
philosophies of man and of government. They are in contest... Hundreds of
millions make up the jury which must decide the case... The system... which most
effectively musters its strength in support of peace and demonstrates its
ability to advance the well-being, the happiness of the individual, will win
their verdict."

(US President Dwight D. Eisenhower, August 1955.)



"The community of arms is there to defend the community of ideas."

(Ronald Reagan, speaking on NATO, on the visit of Helmut Kohl, Washington, Nov
15 1982.)



"A democracy cannot effect, as the totalitarian state sometimes does, a complete
identification of its peacetime and wartime objectives."

(Introduction to US secret document NSC 20/1.)



"The proclaimed political aim here is the elimination of the Soviet regime. This
has never before in the atomic age been pronounced as openly as this. And what's
more, the spokesman of this school of thought is joining the 'insiders' among
Reagan's advisers."

(Suddeutsche Zeitung, FRG, Aug 26 1982.)



"Detente does not exist, nothing is left of detente. The Soviet leaders would
have to choose between changing their system in the direction followed by the
West or WAR."

(Reagan's Soviet Affairs Advisor and National Security member Richard Pipes,
Harvard University, March 1981.)



"The adoption of these concepts... would be equivalent to saying that it was our
objective to overthrow Soviet power. Proceeding from that point, it could be
argued that this is in turn an objective unrealisable by means short of war, and
that we are therefore admitting that our objective with respect to the Soviet
Union is eventual war and the violent overthrow of Soviet power."

(US security document NSC 20/1. Declassified 1975.)



"It's sensible Anyone can understand it. It's easy You're not an exploiter -
so you can grasp it Find out more about it The stupid call it stupid, the
squalid call it squalid It is against squalor and against stupidity. The
exploiters call it a crime But we know it is the end of crime It's not madness
but the end of madness It's not the riddle but the solution. It is the simple
thing so hard to achieve."

(In Praise of Communism. Berthold Brecht.)



"We are not presenting the world with a new principle, saying iin a doctrinaire
fashion: "Here is the truth - fall on your knees before it!" We are deriving new
principles for the world, and deriving them from principles already inherent in
the world. We are showing the world what it is in fact fighting for; and
consciousness is something the world must acquire, even if it does not want to."

(Heinrich Heine, on Marxism.)



"The means of production are not private property any more. They belong to the
entire society. Every member of society, when he fulfils a certain socially
necessary part of work, receives a certificate from the society that he has
completed this or that quantity of work. On the basis of such a certificate he
obtains from public storages the corresponding quantity of products... The state
withers away; since the capitalists have disappeared, classes no longer exist."

(Lenin.)



"What has destroyed every previous civilisation has been the tendency to the
unequal distribution of wealth and power."

(Henry George.)



"The people came to realise that wealth is not the fruit of labour but the
result of organised protected robbery.)

(Frantz Fanon.)



"We can have democracy in this country or we can have great wealth concentrated
in the hands of a few, but we can't have both."

(Justice Louis Brandeis.)



"Socialism: 'From each according to his ability; to each according to his work'.
Communism: 'From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs'.
Both definitions had one thing in common - 'from each according to his ability'.
All must work, and work according to his ability. Some as artists, some as
artisans, others as organisers, teachers, as engineers and so forth - all must
work. It is interesting to note that the Soviet Union was the first state to put
duties into its constitution. ["He who does not work; neither shall he eat" is a
popular communist saying. B.M.] It followed, of course, that if all must work,
all must be provided for the opportunity for work. And that brought us to the
second clause of the definition of socialism - 'To each according to his work'.
It ensured the right to an adequate reward for work. Furthermore, as work varied
in value or quality, reward in a socialist state would also vary in amount.
Socialist society was not an egalitarian society. Socialist society was the
stage of society [reached B.M.] in Russia. The corollary that each must receive
an adequate reward for work, together with provision for opportunity for work,
postulated a planned economy. It also postulated control by the whole community
of land, power and all natural resources and productive processes... I then
passed to Marx's definition of communism. Like socialism, communism demanded
work from all, in a planned economy: 'From each according to his ability'. But
there the likeness ended, the second half of the definition ran thus: 'To each
according to his need'. Not, observe, according to his work, but 'according to
his need'. Socialism came first; communism followed. You could not spring
straight into communism at once, the ground had to be prepared for 2 reasons:
only a rich state could provide enough consumable goods to give 'each according
to his need' and only a disciplined people dare try it. It would break down in a
work-shy society... It was the contention of socialists and communists alike
that the socialist state would provide in time the quantity of goods and the
quality of character - a rich state and an advancing morality - to build
communism."

(Dean of Canterbury Hewlett Johnson "Searching For Light.")



"They failed to grasp the historical import of the October Revolution, and had
neither the moral strength nor the desire to protest against the bloody and
piratical intervention of the capitalists in 1918-1921. When the authorities in
the USSR arrest a professor, a monarchist or a conspirator, they protest; but
when their capitalists violently coerce the people of Indo-China, India or
Africa, they are indifferent. If a score or two arrant criminals are shot in the
Soviet Union, they cry "Atrocity!" but if thousands of innocent people are
exterminated by guns and machine guns in India or Annam [Vietnam B.M.], the
humane intellectuals preserve a discreet silence."

(Maxim Gorky "Reply to an Intellectual." 1932.)



"When socialism has triumphed, when conditions of peace have succeeded
conditions of combat, when all men have their share of property in the immense
human capital, and their share of initiative and of the exercise of free-will in
the immense human activity, then all men will know the fullness of pride and
joy; and they will feel that they are co-operators in the universal
civilisation."

(French socialist leader Jean Jaures (1859-assassinated 1914).)



"The ultimate aim of the Communist International is to replace the world economy
by a world system of Communism. Communist Society, the basis for which has been
prepared by the whole course of historical development, is mankind's only way
out, for it alone can abolish the contradictions of the capitalist system which
threaten to degrade and destroy the human race."

(Programme of the Third (Communist) International, 1928.)



"A Communist has no right to be a mere onlooker."

(Nikita Kruschov, Report to Central Committee, Feb 14 1956.)



"Is there such a thing as Communist ethics? Is there such a thing as Communist
morality?... In what sense do we deny ethics, morals? In the sense in which they
are preached by the bourgeoisie, a sense which deduces these morals from god's
commandments."

(Lenin.)



"The Jewish bourgeoisie are our enemies, not as Jews but as bourgeoisie. The
Jewish worker is our brother."

(Lenin, August 9 1918.)



"Capitalism did not arise because capitalists stole the land or the workmen's
tools, but because it was more efficient than feudalism. It will perish because
it is not merely less efficient than socialism, but actually self-destructive."

(J.B.S.Haldane.)



"Marx's great achievement was to place the system of capitalism on the
defensive."

(US writer Charles Madison.)



"Philosophy stands in the same relation to the study of the actual world as
onanism to sexual love."

(Karl Marx.)



"The philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world. The thing is,
however, to change it."

(Karl Marx.)



"We should have had socialism already, but for the socialists."

(George Bernard Shaw.)



"A capitalist creates wealth no more than a person who milks a cow creates
milk."

(Kark Marx.)



"When Marx spoke of private property he was not referring to personal property.
Private property meant the means of production of the capitalist who hires
property-less individuals."

(Erich Fromm.)



"In the end, one or the other will triumph - a funeral dirge will be sung over
the Soviet Republic or over world capitalism."

(Lenin.)



"The Proletarian who is conscious of this task (overthrowal of capitalism) is a
slave who has revolted against slavery. The Proletarian who is not conscious of
the idea, is a slave who does not realize his position as a slave; at best he is
a slave who fights to improve his conditions as a slave, but not one who fights
to overthrow slavery."

(Lenin.)



"If terror is directed against us, we'll respond with terror."

(Lenin.)



"If Socialism can only be realised when the intellectual development of all the
people permits it, then we shall not see Socialism for at least five hundred
years."

(Lenin, November 27, 1917.)



"One of the chief arguments used in support of the policy of an open shop is
that every man has an inalienable and constitutional right to work. I never
found that in the Constitution. If a man has the constitutional right to work,
he ought to have a constitutional right to a job... A man has the right to work
only if he can get a job, and he has also a right not to work."

(US criminal lawyer Clarence Darrow.)



"The strictest loyalty to the ideas of communism must be combined with the
ability to make all the necessary practical compromises, to tack, to make
agreements, zig-zags, retreats, and so on, in order to accelerate coming into
power... If you are not able to adapt yourself, if you are not inclined to crawl
in the mud on your belly, you are not a revolutionary but a chatterbox."

(Lenin.)



"This primitive accumulation plays in political economy about the same part as
original sin in theology. Adam bit the apple, thereupon sin fell on the human
race. Its origin is supposed to be explained when it is told as an anecdote of
the past. In times long gone by there were two sorts of people; one, the
diligent, the intelligent, and above all, frugal elite; the other, lazy rascals,
spending their subsistence, and more, in riotous living. The legend of
theological sin tells us certainly how man came to eat his bread in the sweat of
his brow, but the history of economic original sin reveals to us that there are
people to whom this is by no means essential. Never mind! Thus it came to pass
that the former sort accumulated wealth and the latter sort had at last nothing
to sell but their own skins. And from this original sin dates the poverty of the
great majority that, despite all its labour, has up to now nothing to sell but
itself; and the wealth of the few that increases constantly - although they have
long ceased to work. Such widespread childishness is every day preached to us in
defence of property."

(Karl Marx.)



PEACEFUL COEXISTENCE


"The Government of the USSR considers that, despite the differences in the
economic systems and ideologies, the co-existence of these systems and a
peaceful settlement of differences between the USSR and the United States are
not only possible, but also doubtless necessary in the interests of general
peace."

(Stalin.)



"A war with the Soviet Union appears to me to be unavoidable. The idea of
peaceful coexistence is simply humbug."

(US General Kenny, Sept 1954.)



"We must not allow... our well-planned and steady rebuilding of America's
defences to be overcome by a child-like hope for detente with a country whose
sole aim is and always has been world domination."

(Caspar Weinberger, Detroit, Jan 30 1986.)



"We are being told that we can sit down and negotiate with this enemy of ours,
and that there's a little right and a little wrong on both sides. How do you
compromise between good and evil? How do you say to this enemy that we can
compromise our belief in God and his dialectical determinism (sic)?"

(President Reagan in the 1960s.)



"The history of a social system will be decided not by rockets, not by atomic
and hydrogen bombs, but by the fact of which social system ensures greater
material and spiritual benefits to man."

(Nikita Kruschov.)



"We tell them: sit down and stop trying to impose your political system on the
whole world by force. Stop dreaming that you are going to change the world; stop
dreaming that you are going to halt the course of history; ...solve your
problems through negotiation. If they want to maintain capitalism in their own
countries, let them maintain it for as long as they want. That is their own
business. We are not going to go to the United States to make a revolution there
or to impose socialism on them. In an academic discussion we can prove to them
that socialism is better, more humane, more rational and fairer than capitalism,
but we cannot go there and tell them: change your social system. Roast
yourselves on that fire for as long as you want. It will not be forever, but
that is not our business. Nobody will ever want to change the capitalist system
by force, to impose socialism in Europe, in Japan, in the United States, in
Canada, in Australia; nobody will ever want to do that... Sit down and discuss,
and save a third of what you are spending on the madness of war and give us back
what you are stealing from us."

(Fidel Castro, speaking on the Third World Debt, Havana 1985.)



"The export of revolution is nonsense. Every country makes its own revolution if
it wants to, and if it does not want to, there will be no revolution."

(Stalin, interview with US newspaper boss Roy Howard, 1936.)



"If you feed the people just with revolutionary slogans they will listen today,
they will listen tomorrow, they will listen the day after tomorrow, but on the
fourth day they will say: "To hell with you!"

(Nikita Kruschev.)



"In proportion as the exploitation of one individual by another is put an end
to, the exploitation of one nation by another will also be put an end to. In
proportion as the antagonism between classes within the nation vanishes, the
hostility of one nation to another will come to an end."

(Karl Marx and Frederick Engels "The Communist Manifesto.")



"We Marxists believe that revolution will occur in other countries as well...
Export of revolution is nonsense... to assert that we desire to bring about
revolution in other countries by interfering with their way of life is to speak
of something that does not exist, and which we have never preached."

(J.Stalin, March 1 1939.



"The times of that superstition which attributed revolution to the ill will of a
few agitators have long passed away. Everyone knows nowadays that whenever there
is a revolutionary convulsion, there must be some social want in the background,
which is prevented, by outworn institutions, from satisfying itself."

(Frederich Engels, 1851.)



"Our enemies like to depict us Leninists as advocates of violence, always and
everywhere. True, we recognise the need for the revolutionary transformation of
capitalist society into socialist society. It is this which distinguishes the
revolutionary Marxist from the reformist, the opportunist. There is no doubt
that in a number of capitalist countries the violent overthrow of the
dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the sharp aggravation of class struggle are
inevitable... Leninism teaches us that the ruling classes will not surrender
their power voluntarily...

(Nikita Kruschov, Report to Central Committee, Feb 14 1956.)



"It is not true that we regard violence and civil war as the only way to remake
society... The Communist system must be based on the will of the people, and if
the people should not want that system, then that people should establish a
different system."

(Nikita Kruschov.)



"Without the support of millions, the best minority is impotent."

(Stalin.)



"The Communist system must be based on the will of the people, and if the people
should not want that system, then that people should establish a different
system."

(Nikita Kruschev.)



"The victorious proletariat cannot impose on any other country its own idea of a
happy life without doing damage to its own victory."

(Marx.)



"We're not advocating subversive ideas. We're not advocating, as I have said, a
social revolution... We cannot suggest socialism as a prerequisite. We're not
recommending socialism, but of course neither are we advising against it."

(Fidel Castro, at Meeting on the Foreign Debt of Latin America and the
Caribbean. Havana, Aug 3 1985.)



WORKING CLASS REACTION TO THE RUSSIAN REVOLUTION.


"When the news of the Russian Revolution on November 7, 1917, came through... I
had been victimised from big factories and shipyards... I had read a little of
Marx, but never anything of Lenin. I had never heard of Stalin, But I feel now
what I felt then: "The workers have done it at last". It wouldn't have
mattered... to me where this revolution had taken place... The thing that
mattered to me was that lads like me had whacked the bosses and the landlords,
had taken their factories, their lands and their banks. I had never heard of the
Dictatorship of the Proletariat or the expression Soviet Power. All I knew was
the workers had conquered, were the top dogs somewhere in the world. That was
enough for me. These were the lads and lasses I must support through thick and
thin... for me these same people could never do, nor ever can do, any wrong
against the working class... I wasn't concerned as to whether or not the Russian
Revolution had caused bloodshed, been violent, and all the rest of it. I had
lived my life in Lancashire. I had read and seen what the kind-hearted British
bosses had done to the Lancashire working class. I knew about Peterloo. I had
seen too often on the promenade at Blackpool, when on holiday in our Sunday
best, what a stunted deformed bunch we were. I hated everything that the
violence of the British Industrial Revolution had done to my class and my
people...

...All I was concerned about was that power was in the hands of lads like me,
and whatever conception of politics had made that possible was the correct one
for me... that still has to remain the conviction and guiding line in our
attitude towards the Soviet Union and its people, for it is only the Soviet
Union and its people who can say that the whole of the means of production,
distribution and exchange are in their hands. It is only in the Soviet Union
that there can be a complete planning in which each aspect of the economy of the
nation fits one into the other; only there where there is no competition for
markets, no class against class, no race against race, and a political and moral
unity which amazed the world during the war and thwarted the hopes of
reactionaries, whether capitalist or Social Democrat.

...whatever the policy of the Soviet Union it is always in the interests of its
people and the working people of every other country in the world.

This is what gives rise to such deadly hatred in the minds of the capitalist
class and their Social Democratic allies. This is why they slander the Soviet
Union...

The campaign of slander against the Soviet Union is the cunning attempt of
reaction to split the international Labour movement, to weaken it, to create
doubts in its mind, and to enable the capitalist class to strengthen its
political hold on the working class. I say openly, you cannot be a real
Socialist and enemy of reaction, and at the same time assist in any way to carry
on a struggle against the Soviet Union and its people, however cunningly you try
to pretend that it is "only the tactics of certain Soviet leaders" that you are
protesting against. The attitude towards the Soviet Union and its people is the
real test of the devotion towards Socialism on the part of all who call
themselves Socialists.

Since November 8, 1917, when Lenin sent out his historic call for an immediate
armistice to the imperialist war then raging - a call the Governments of that
time deliberately kept from the knowledge of their peoples - right down to the
present time, the Soviet Union has never once formulated a policy that was not
in the interests of the common peoples of the world.

A real Socialist Government, such as the Soviet Government, which represents a
nation where the exploitation of man by man has ceased to exist, cannot have any
other kind of policy."

(British Communist leader Harry Pollitt "Looking Ahead.")



Anti Marxism


"A collective action to eradicate international communism is not an act of
intervention in the internal affairs of another State but is an act to uproot
intervention."

(US Secretary of State John Foster Dulles, Chicago, New York Times, Nov 30
1954.)



"The vision that stands before my eyes was of far higher value to me from the
very beginning. I wished to be the destroyer of Marxism. I will achieve this
task."

(Adolf Hitler, at his trial, 1923.)



"The roots of the Hitlerite movement is the struggle against socialism, in other
words against Marxism."

(Karl Friederick von Siemens, in a lecture to General Electric bosses, Oct 27
1931.)



"Yes, we have taken the unalterable decision to tear Marxism out by its roots."

(Adolf Hitler, addressing the Dusseldorf Industrialist's Club, Jan 27 1932.)



"We shall not only extirpate this plague. We shall tear the word "Marxism" out
of every book. In fifty years time no one in Germany is to know what that word
means."

(Goering, March 19 1933.)



"It is one of the foremost aims of the NSDAP [Hitler's National Socialist German
Workers' Party B.M.] to overcome and destroy the Marxist world outlook, and to
liquidate its chief exponents."

(Hitler's chief Nazi ideologist Alfred Rosenberg.)



"Our aim is to drive socialism - Marxist socialism - from our land."

(Margaret Thatcher, Tory Party 1983 General Election campaign.)



"...a massive propaganda campaign such as we have never yet mounted before
against the spread of communism."

(Margaret Thatcher, M

(Message over 64k, truncated.)