The Peace FAQ:
Socialism, Communism, Marxism
Frequently Asked Questions:
What is Socialism?
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The "socialist left" expects that with a better distribution of goods and services, where people matter, NOT profits, there will be a fair utilization of resources for the benefit of everyone and NOT just a few. The benefits of a developed society would then accrue to the masses, rather than a privileged few as is the case in a systemically flawed capitalist system.
[...]
Those who create wealth are workers and workers collectively manage society for the benefit of workers on a planned basis for human need and not for profit and greed. Without the profit motive and without the capitalist class, there is no need for low wages, racism, sexism, class tensions and war. there is more than enough to provide everyone with a decent life, to restore the environment which is currently being destroyed by capitalist greed and to abolish the vile culture of commercialism and use all the modern means of production to reduce the burden of laboring for surplus labor value for the benefit of the ruling class.
- Hank Roth http://pnews.org
Is Socialism a religion?
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The religious instinct, being a sub-conscious sentiment, naturally
survives the disappearance of the belief which first maintained
it. The apostles of Socialism, who anathematise or deny the old dogmas
of Christianity, are none the less eminently religious persons. The
nature of their faith has changed, but they are still under the sway
of all the ancestral instincts of their race. The paradisial society
of their dreams is very like the celestial paradise of our fathers. In
these ingenuous minds, entirely at the mercy of atavism, the old deism
is objectified under the earthly form of a providential State,
repairing all injustice, and possessing the illimitable power of the
ancient gods. Man does sometimes change his idols, but how shall he
shatter the hereditary matrices of thought that give them birth ?
The apostle, then, is always a religious person, desirous of propagating his faith ; but he is also, and above all, a simplician, totally refractory to the influences of reason. His logic is rudimentary. Necessities and the relations of things are quite beyond his understanding. We may form a very clear idea of his perceptions by perusing the interesting extracts from one hundred and seventy autobiographies of militant Socialists which were recently published by M. Hamon, a writer of their persuasion. Among this number are many who profess very different doctrines ; for Anarchism is really only an exaggeration of Individualism, since it wishes to suppress all government and leave the individual to himself, while Collectivism implies a rigid subjection of the individual to the State. But in practice these differences, which are scarcely perceived by the apostles, entirely disappear.
- from The Psychology of Socialism by Gustave Le Bon, New York: The Macmillan Company (1899): 86-103
What do Marxism, Christianity and Islam have in common?
- See Edenism
How can socialists be antisemitic if socialism respects individuals?
- One should also never forget that Communism has affected whole
generations of ardent youth, who saw in Marxism a new ideology [for
the world and] ...were all groomed in sympathising with the good Arabs
and the bad Jews. And similarly in India, two or three young
generations since the early twenties, were tutored on negating Muslim
genocide on the Hindus.
- from Negationism and the Muslim Conquests by Francois Gautier
- Although Stalin said that anti-Semitism was the most dangerous
sequel of cannibalism, his name will remain associated with an absurd
variety of anti-Semitism born in certain socialist countries under the
new name of anti-Zionism ...a sad, ridiculous, reactionary, and very
dangerous phenomenon.
- Reporter, Prague, March 1969. Note the date; this publication, the official organ of the Union of Czechoslovak Journalists, was still (to its cost) faithful to the milder line inaugurated in January 1968, before the Soviet invasion. (from Jacques Givet, "The Anti-Zionist Complex")
- ANTI-SEMITISM, SOCIALISM AND THE UN
BY PROF. PAUL EIDELBERG
Foundation for Constitutional Democracy in the Middle EastSince socialists are democrats and Arabs are autocrats, why does the Socialist International, of which Israel's Labor Party is a member, support the Arab cause against Israel? Can it be that socialism is intrinsically anti-Semitic? To answer this question, we shall have to grasp the unique character of the first Jew, Abraham.
As the Father of a Multitude of Nations, Abraham is the first universalist, the first to teach ethical monotheism to nations steeped in paganism and ethnocentric egoism. Jews therefore constitute a unique nation, one that unites nationalism and internationalism. In other words, Judaism represents a synthesis of particularism and universalism.
Judaism maintains that nations, like individuals, are creations of G-d. Each nation has its own unique character, its own excellence, its own historical function. Nevertheless, the behaviors of nations, like those of individuals, are not morally equal judged from the standard of ethical monotheism or what are known as the Seven Noahide Laws of Universal Morality. The latter prohibit, murder, robbery, idolatry, blasphemy, adultery, and cruelty on the one hand, while requiring the establishment of courts of justice on the other.
Judaism rejects moral and cultural relativism along with the notion that human nature is simply altruistic. Self-preference, ambition, avarice, envy, and hatred are natural inclinations. They prompt individuals and nations to impose their will or way of life on others. War -- more than 1000 in the last 2500 years -- has ever been the norm of international relations.
The basic cause of war, however, is not nationalism or the nation-state system but the failure of human beings to observe a few universal laws of morality. Is it not strange that Europe, the home of Christianity and of secular humanism, has been repeatedly drenched in rivers of blood? Clearly, these divergent universalisms have failed to transform the beast in man. Perhaps because the former is too otherworldly, while the latter is simply mundane. Contrast Judaism, which sanctifies this world by the laws and teachings of the Torah.
It has been said that universalism came to Europe only on loan from Judaism, but as any foreign implant, it could not be absorbed by nations whose spirit is basically pagan. Witness the European Holocaust. Mankind needs authentic universalism, which is expressed only through the medium of Israel's nationhood. Awaited is nothing less than Israel's COMPLETE physical and spiritual restoration. We are touching on a basic cause of anti-Semitism and of socialist antipathy toward Israel.
Socialists, on principle, scorn nationalism. They deem the nation-state an artificial entity. Although this may be said of liberals who disdain patriotism, the Marxist influence on socialism renders the latter more prone to a vacuous internationalism or cosmopolitanism. Marx hated Judaism if only because Judaism justifies nationalism while offering, in the Torah, the only rational and ethical basis for internationalism. I am alluding to these words of Genesis: G-d created man in His own image. That lapidary sentence of holy writ provides the only solid foundation for the moral unity of the human race and international peace.
Against all human experience, socialism bases its faith on science and the redistribution of wealth. The socialist agenda is also tainted by egalitarian envy or hatred of greatness. Antipathy toward the Chosen People follow.
Now we can better understand why the United Nations so often condemns Israel. The concept of the Chosen People contradicts the equality of all nations represented in the UN General Assembly. This is not all. Although the UN Charter explicitly acknowledges the sovereignty of each nation, the UN increasingly interferes in the purely internal affairs of nations, and on matters having nothing to do with international peace. THE AIM OF THE UN IS TO PROMOTE INDISCRIMINATE MORAL EQUALITY WITHIN AND BETWEEN ALL NATIONS. This requires the end of ideology and the worldwide recognition of moral and cultural relativism. Once nations see there are no moral or religious absolutes, then, given the alleviation of human suffering by scientific technology, national borders and war will be a thing of the past.
This is the agenda of international socialism, manifested in the UN. The UN is attempting to create a New World Order devoid of absolute ethics and sovereign states. It is in this light that we are to understand UN hostility toward Israel.
Of course antipathy toward Israel may also be understood in economic terms. The essence of the nations is economic. The ultimate purpose of social as well as liberal democracies is commodious living, which today depends to no small extent on Persian Gulf oil and arms sales to Arab states. But rather than succumb to vulgar Marxism by explaining human behavior simply in terms of material interests, a deeper truth must be emphasized. Advocates of a New World Order -- international socialists above all -- cannot endure a strong and independent Jewish State. Such a state presages a world that acknowledges the sovereignty of G-d rather than a world-leveling organization.
Now we can also better understand the American State Department's 50-year antipathy toward Israel. Of all departments of the Federal Government, the State Department has the most highly educated personnel. It so happens, however, that higher education in the United States, as elsewhere in the West, is cosmopolitan on the one hand, and dominated by left-leaning cultural relativists on the other. This is one reason why the PLO, an organization committed to Israel's destruction, is well-represented on major American campuses. These campuses are breeding grounds for anti-Semitism, by which I now mean hatred of Jewish particularism-cum-universalism, the alternative to a leveling socialist internationalism.
This anti-Semitism will be found in a clique of left-wing Jews in Israel, Jews aligned with Israel's enemies. This was foretold by the Sages. All the more reason for optimism, since the Sages saw that this treachery is but a passing phase of Israel's restoration.
- RELATED SECTIONS:
Leftism, Edenism, Antisemitism, Anti-Zionism, Arabists, Moral Relativism
- WWW RESOURCES:
- BOOKS & PRINTED MATERIAL:
- The Psychology of Socialism, by Gustave LeBon
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Socialism: An Economic and Sociological Analysis, by Ludwig von Mises
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Egalitarianism as a Revolt Against Nature and Other Essays, by Murray Newton Rothbard
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - In Denial: Historians, Communism, & Espionage, by John Earl Haynes, Harvey Klehr
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Heaven on Earth: The Rise and Fall of Socialism, by Joshua Muravchik
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, by Stephane Courtois, et al.
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - A Concise History of the Russian Revolution, by Richard Pipes
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Hungry Ghosts: Mao's Secret Famine, by Jasper Becker
[VIEW BOOK HERE] - Tears of Blood: A Cry for Tibet, by Mary Craig
[VIEW BOOK HERE]
- The Psychology of Socialism, by Gustave LeBon
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