Brief Thoughts on the “Sorry, Not Sorry” Video

This video has been getting some attention recently. Somebody told me that the purpose of this video was to combat the psychological automatization women apparently have for apologizing for everything… I’ve been hearing it primarily from feminists, and they’ve been telling young ladies that “you’ve been taught to do this” due to a pro-male culture and system.

First of all, if you are interested in reading a detailed, clearly-written account for why the feminist movement is actually doing more harm than good, I suggest reading “Gender Tribalism” by Peter Schwartz. For some easy-access information, there are numerous websites you can check out, and I recommend two in particular: http://www.avoiceformen.com/activism/about/and http://womenagainstfeminism.tumblr.com/

Secondly, the premise for this whole video is completely arbitrary. Sometimes saying sorry is acceptable and respectable. In fact, in many of the situations shown in this video which I, being a man and all, have also done similar activities as, I will also apologize in that situation. But saying sorry is not inherently a sign of shame or guilt. Sometimes it is the most honorable thing a person can do. Furthermore, I rarely, if ever, hear my own female friends apologize even in situations like this. Maybe I have weird friends. Maybe I don’t listen carefully enough. But in any case, if ever they do apologize, I normally tell them not to feel sorry anyway (also done for the same reason they offer the apology — out of kindness and respect for each other).

Thirdly, and this is a rhetorical question, who the HELL is someone else to tell you that they know better than you do: what you do or do not know, what you have or have not been taught, how you think or act, your reasons for saying things you may say, your intentions for your actions, your motives for your choices, your thoughts along your life. When person A tells person B that they know person B’s mind better than person B knows his own mind, I get scared… from both people. I get scared of person A because of the fact that he would stoop to such a low level of manipulation, and I get scared of person B because of the fact that they BELIEVE these outrageous suggestions.

I can’t say anything to the kind of people who are like person A. You know who you are, and you know the evil you are committing. No amount of reason can help you.

But to anyone who has been in person B’s situation: as a dedicated researcher of both philosophy and psychology, I can offer you this short advice: become more aware of your mental activity. Keep track of your thoughts, judgments, and beliefs; organize your knowledge, moderate your emotions. Learn how to patrol your decisions, so that every time you make one, you know your conscious reason for doing it. If you have a stronger self-awareness of your mental activity, you will never believe anything by manipulators such as person A. Instead, you will know for a definite fact, with all certainty, that your life and your actions is entirely dictated and chosen by YOU; and not by some subconscious or unconscious mechanism unavailable to your reason.

The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

The Philosophy of Immanuel Kant

Overview

On page 154 of The Fundamentals of Ethics, the author introduces Kant’s way of ethical thinking by illustrating a scenario where a person refused to pay taxes, and is never caught. “Despite any good results” that resulted from this, “still, he has done something wrong.” The author writes that explanation of their immorality is “simple. What they did was unfair. They took advantage of the system. They broke the rules that work to everyone’s benefit. They violated the rights of others.”1 How were his actions unfair? What system did he take advantage of? What rules did he break? Who is “everyone,” and what are the so-called “rights” he violated? If the author even considers these questions, his answers evade a typical problem with the Kantian ethics: that they are irrational. Immanuel Kant felt threatened every time an immoral act went unpunished, every time someone “got away” with being unfair. His solution to this problem consisted of an elaborate “revolution” in how we look at the world, and how we should regard morality, but the tragic fact is that his ideas only created more problems. In this essay, I shall attempt to expose Kant’s fallacies for what they are, and move to destroy his philosophy as effectively as I can.

The Theoretical Prerequisites

Before Kant could even think about discussing ethics, he wrote the famous Critique of Pure Reason, where he gave his two cents on the traditional philosophic problem: Can we know reality? Throughout history, there have been philosophers who say that by reason we can know reality, and the mystics who say reason is useless. Immanuel Kant comes along and says, in effect, “What does it matter if we know reality or not? It’s out of date.” He seeks to take over philosophy and set up the terms, starting with certain modifications: the distinction between two radically different propositions: matters of ideas and matters of fact. He attempts to establish a view of objectivity by saying that reality is what it is regardless of what people think of it, but for Kant, the objective is merely collective subjectivism; what works for everybody, for society, for mankind.2 His matters of ideas are propositions whose predicate concept is contained in its subject concept; e.g., “All bachelors are unmarried,” or, “All bodies take up space.” His matters of fact are those whose predicate concept is not contained in its subject concept; e.g., “All bachelors are happy,” or, “All bodies have weight.”

But concepts are not separated between the “noumenal” or “phenomenal” world; they are not ever-changing objects with properties that exist at one time and do not exist at another. A concept consists of all of the existents it subsumes. The mistake Kant has made is in his meaning of a concept, which by his dichotomy, represents a world where certain chosen aspects of concepts are allowed to be unconsidered. The only distinction that can be made in terms of a concept and its existents is whether or not the knowledge of these things is true or false. As per concepts, they are ideas which man must discover and define to every object and characteristic of that object by means of observation and logical thinking. Language is our means of communicating concepts to each other—words, themselves, are the symbols for concepts. When determining whether or not the concept itself is true or false in reality, one must observe the nature of the language created. People apply false concepts to the world every day, such as unicorns, magic, Santa Clause, each with an expansive detail of supposed existents the concept would subsume—it’s called “fiction.” Are these concepts lacking in value, of course not! The imagination of a child or any human being is a wonderful mode of not only recreation, but of rearranging reality in ways that satisfies their curiosity, and helps them to discover what reality is and what concepts do exist. Imagination cannot replace cognition, but it can be used as a faculty for achieving human values.

Summarily, Kant insists that our most important concepts—truthiness and falseness—do not matter to us; it is not the issue. The concepts “true” and “false” are words that are restricted to meeting reality, and Kant says reality, the noumenal world, is one that is beyond human comprehension. Reality holds things-in-themselves, and humans can only know the features of things after a process of synthetic thinking, and these are a mind’s network of knowledge of the phenomenal world. His argument for the “failures” of reason, as described in the preface of his Critique of Pure Reason, is correctly identified by Ayn Rand as a “straw man.”3 We might assert that the faculty of reason is as potent as its user, but Kant argues that since reason is “limited” to what exists in reality—and since we as human beings cannot know reality—that reason has embarrassingly failed him, and has led him to “make room for faith.” The seen is false because we see it; the unseen is true because we believe it. Kant has misrepresented the underlying meaning of reason and existence, and has used that libel as propaganda to sell his deontological ethical system to his readers.

The Kantian Ethics

I addressed in the overview that there are many questions that must be answered in order to make a clear moral judgment of any situation. Actions must be defined as good or bad by reference to their context, not to their typical definition or description. Whether we believe in any noumenal world or not, we are aware of events that happen every day, and we are aware of our actions and responses to our environment. If one fails to learn what environment he is in before he acts, by justifying this ignorance with the idea that “reality is unknowable,” then he has no right to make any moral judgment. I look up at the sky, I see no clouds or sign of rain—I ought not to tell my friends to go outside with an umbrella today, that is, if I wanted to be a good friend to them. Perhaps I would be flippant with them and do tell them to take an umbrella, as long as they know that I am lying for the purpose of giving a good laugh (despite how bad the joke is). Whether or not the sky that I see is a part of the “phenomenal” or “noumenal” world, it is still the only reality that life participates in.

So does the author answer any of my questions? He says that when people are getting away with actions, they are “making exceptions of themselves. Their success depends on violating rules that most other people are following.” It is obvious that when defining a moral, that is ought to be absolute, universal, applicable to everyone. Fairness concedes consistency. This is not new from Kant—the most widely-known concept of this idea of morality is the golden rule, which springs from Christianity. Kant revised this rule into his principle of universalizability. Effectively planting the roots of what would become utilitarianism, neither of these ideas is inherently wrong, but what is immoral is how these rules are applied. The Fundamentals of Ethics reads that “Kant thought that an action’s rightness depends on its maxim,” and a maxim ought to be a universal principle underlying the action. Therefore, actions like refusing to pay taxes is defined as immoral because it is a concept whose existents have been restricted to those that benefit the judgment of the advocate, and be detrimental to the opponent. In this case, the advocates of this judgment are people who receive taxes, and perhaps people who do pay taxes, while the opponents are people who use tax shelters to avoid paying. Using Kantian epistemology, the existents of the concept of the action “avoid paying taxes” has been torn apart into matters of facts and ideas; in other words: out of context. Who are these people? Should there be some people who can be exempt from paying taxes? What is the standard for this? Given the answers, given these existents to the concept of the action, the judgment might change, and the tables may be turned. Neglecting consideration of these questions result in unfair, inconsistent moral judgment. But when there is debate, the explanation for such conflicts and “differences of opinion” between men is not due to this intentional disregard of the facts of reality. No, they say that the reason for these conflicts is that reality is out of date, no one can be certain of anything, so you might as well not even try answering these crucial questions. These fallacious arguments are defined by those who seek power over others in order to advance their own personal desires while escaping the moral judgment that would have otherwise halted their irrational and immoral actions. By these rationalizations, morality becomes completely arbitrary, and is ultimately destroyed.

Friesian philosopher Kelly L. Ross writes in an essay that Kant identified two types of moral duties and gave an example for each: “A duty of commission (“honor thy father and thy mother”) requires a positive action, the failure of which results in a wrong of omission. A duty of omission (“thou shalt not kill”) requires inaction, a negative action, the failure of which results in a wrong of commission (i.e. a murder).4 These actions, too, are taken out of context, but what is more disastrous, concerning the science of ethics, is how these actions are said to be carried out: by a sense of duty. In the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, Kant wrote “The concept of a good will is present in the concept of duty,” and that some examples of duties we hold are the duty to preserve one’s life and the duty to be “charitably helpful where we can.”5 But the concept of “duty” destroys the ability of will, life, and kindness entirely! The Fundamentals of Ethics provides us with a process of determining whether or not a maxim is universalizable, as drawn by Kant himself. Let us take up this process in regards to the maxim of duty, since Kant failed to do so. First: we must formulate the maxim clearly; so let us define “duty” as “necessity to perform certain actions for no reason other than obedience to some higher authority, without regard to any personal goal, motive, desire or interest.”6 Second, we must “imagine a world in which everyone supports and acts on your maxim.” So let us say I have a choice to make: there is a situation where I am given a gun and a prisoner, and I am told to pull the trigger. One man tells me my duty is to shoot him. Another man tells me my duty is to hold back. Both men hold equal authority over me. Who do I follow? This is the situation I am stuck in, and I cannot get myself out just by thinking about it, because any action I make will be violating the duty of either authority. So now we go to the third step in Kant’s process, we ask ourselves: can the goal of my action be achieved in such a world? Or: can the goal of life, charity, and good morality, be achieved in a world where all actions are done out of duty? The answer, outstandingly obvious, is no.

Conclusion

I fear I have made this essay much lengthier than it was meant to be, but I think my reader shall agree with me when I say that every detail was necessary to convey my thesis and argument. Immanuel Kant’s philosophy is a plague on humanity that is worse even than the Black Death; it destroys knowledge, it destroys morality, and it will ultimately destroy man’s spirit. His ethics must be challenged and obliterated if we are ever to discover what it truly means to be human.

References

1. Shafer-Landau, Russ. “The Kantian Perspective: Fairness and Justice.” Trans. Array The Fundamentals of Ethics. . Second. New York: Oxford University Press, 2010. 154. Print.

2. Peikoff, Leonard. “History of Philosophy: Modern Philosophy; Lecture Two.” Aristotelian Logic Banished From Philosophy. Ayn Rand Institute. California, Irving. 1970. Lecture.

3. Rand, Ayn. “Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” Trans. Array Philosophy: Who Needs It. Centennial Edition. New York: Signet, 19822. 64. Print.

4. Ross, Kelly L. “Kant’s Foundations of the Metaphysics of Morals.” The Proceedings of the Friesian School, Fourth Series. GoDaddy.com, n.d. Web. 24 Sep 2013. <http://www.friesian.com/moral-1.htm>

5. Kant, Immanuel. Groundwork for the Metaphysic of Morals. 2nd. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2012. Print. <http://www.earlymoderntexts.com/pdf/kantgrou.pdf>.

6. Rand, Ayn. “Causality Versus Duty,” Trans. Array Philosophy: Who Needs It. Centennial Edition. New York: Signet, 19822. 95. Print.

The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill

The Philosophy of John Stuart Mill

Overview

John Stuart Mill is regarded as the most influential philosopher in British history, and particularly among American conservatives. He developed a position in each of the major branches of philosophy: he wrote the System of Logic to establish his view on metaphysics epistemology, Utilitarianism for his morality, and On Liberty to discuss his politics. Mill comes from the school of empiricism, which studies philosophy according to pragmatism or directly from experience, and it contrasts to rationalism that studies philosophy according to idealism or directly from logical thinking. In this essay, I shall repeat his positions and identify his errors.

On System of Logic

Observe how man has a three-step process in obtaining knowledge: the sensory stage, the perceptual, and the conceptual. Let he who does not choose to accept the validity of sensory perception, try to prove it without using the data he obtained by sensory perception, and may the man who retains his percepts as concepts try to prove his obtained them in reverse order–from his own imagination, not from reality. As an Empiricist, Mill rejects the rationalist’s idea that the world we conceive is separate from the world we perceive, and yet he claims that there is no metaphysical necessity. He evades the fact that metaphysical is the necessary. Sir Francis Bacon prescribed to his fellow empiricists in the 16th century: “Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.” When Mill argues that all necessity is verbal, he neglects the fact that verbal communication requires conceptualization. Words are concepts, and a language is a systematic network of concepts which man uses to retain them. But in Mill’s fiction, “matters-of-fact” are “imports” of propositions; merely symbolizing, not identifying, as is the proper function of concepts. His theory, in short, destroys any chance for clarity in communication between men, since nature does not have to be obeyed and symbols can mean whatever men interpret them to mean.

Mill’s account of no metaphysical necessity is probably what causes him to establish such an unacceptable and chaotic description of induction. “The judgments at which we arrive are all fallible, and the Cartesian, proposing the cognitive goal of infallibility, would therefore have us reject them all.”1 This method of logic, Mill says, occurs spontaneously, randomly, unscientifically, which is a perfectly reasonable premise for the accusation that induction is a fallible way of solving problems. But Mill gives no evidence to suggest why human induction is spontaneous–but in fact, he claims that human judgment can only be fallible! Yet, it is acceptable to be so: “Since we must continue the practice [of induction], it is unreasonable to propose a cognitive goal that requires us to stop. It is therefore reasonable to continue the search after matter-of-fact truth, fallible though it is: that is what we ought to do: must implies ought.”1

Such a philosophy places a scientist in a world where he cannot be certain of anything he thinks, senses, perceives, or conceptualizes. Not only does it subject man to thinking he cannot escape from the prison of uncertainty and randomness, but that it is his duty to live in such a world! Nothing could be more evil than plaguing man with this state of mind.

On Utilitarianism

The principle of utility holds that “actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness; wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness. By happiness is intended pleasure and the absence of pain; by unhappiness, pain and the privation of pleasure.”2 When John Stuart Mill attempts to clear up some misconceptions about this principle in Chapter Two of Utilitarianism, it makes no difference in what his purpose is: put yourself second; others come first. When Chapter three addresses the topic of motivation, it calls the pursuit to create the greatest goodness a “moral obligation” or “duty,” which destroys the very concept of motivation altogether; motivation must be voluntary. But then again, in Mill’s world, there are no metaphysical necessities. There is no justice in utilitarianism. “There were seventy million Germans in Germany and six hundred thousand Jews. The greatest number (the Germans) supported the Nazi government which told them that their greatest good would be served by exterminating the smaller number (the Jews) and grabbing their property. But, you might say, the majority in all these examples did not achieve any real good for itself either? No. It didn’t. Because “the good” is not determined by counting numbers and is not achieved by the sacrifice of anyone to anyone.”3

On Liberty

It is only logical for Mill, after developing utilitarianism, that he should support a political system which he referred to as a “tyranny of the majority.” In the first chapter of On Liberty, Mill writes that the purpose of the essay is to assert the following principle: “that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection.”4 Who is mankind? Who is going to interfere, and how shall they do it? What is classified as “self-protection? Such questions are open to discussion, but are focused on the end of accomplishing “the greater good.”

Observe that in a purely laissez-faire, rationally egoistic society, that everyone is granted the opportunity to pursue happiness; no one is forced to not look for work, no one is forced to sacrifice any money, no one is forced to leave their families, or education, or whatever responsibilities that presume to take. All the prosperity that the people get to bask in is only a secondary consequence of the producers’ egoistic efforts. Consequentialism seeks to make that prosperity for the people the primary goal for producers, and this cannot succeed.

Conclusion

John Stuart Mill, one of the most prominent advocates for consequentialist ethics, succeeds in creating some of the most vile and unjust acts in the history of politics. The consequentialist theory is grounded in many fundamental philosophical fallacies: the idea that egoism is synonymous with evil; it holds the primacy of consciousness, which views logic as a man-made invention that can progress and be changed to benefit the user; and it also holds that things or events have intrinsic value. The evil of the world is made possible only by the sanction you give it. When you choose to abandon existence, logic becomes inapplicable, and morality is no longer possible. Value is created by life for a reason. Do not squeal “you can’t please everybody!” Such a statement is just another result of consequentialist thinking. No “moral leaders” want to please everybody. No one can. Rational egoism is the only ethical system to practice in order for every individual to make his happiness his own responsibility, and attainment.

References

1. Wilson, Fred, “John Stuart Mill”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2012 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2012/entries/mill/>.

2. Heydt, Colin, ed. Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Tampa: University of South Florida, 2006. s.v. “John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).” Heydt, Colin. “John Stuart Mill (1806-1873).” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy. University of South Florida, 24 Oct. 2006. Web. 17 Sep 2013. . (accessed September 17, 2013).

3. Rand, Ayn. Ayn Rand Lexicon, “Utilitarianism.” Last modified 2013. Accessed September 17, 2013. http://aynrandlexicon.com/lexicon/utilitarianism.html.

The Philosophy of Karl Marx

Karl Marx

Introduction to Marxist Philosophy

Karl Marx lived from 1818 to 1883; he was a German philosopher, sociologist, economist, and most importantly, a revolutionary socialist. His most notable books are The Communist Manifesto and Das Kapital. In his early studies with the Young Hegelians, Marx concluded that ownership of capital—not religion—served as the basis of an establishment’s power. When he moved to Paris in 1843, he began writing for radical newspapers and met Friedrich Engels, who would become his lifelong collaborator.

Marx was a dialectic materialist. He thought that everything could be explained by one substance: matter. Matter was the total existence for every concept knowable in the universe. He identifies science as the best means of acquiring knowledge, and sets forth to answer three questions: What is the origin of energy or motion in nature? What causes galaxies, solar system, planets, animals, and all kingdoms of nature to constantly increase their numerical quantity? What is the origin of life, the origin of species, and the origin of consciousness and mind? Marx and Engels answer all of these questions with three laws. The law of opposites, the law of negation, and the law of transformation.

Marx started with the idea inherited from Hegel that everything in existence is a combination or unity of opposites. Electricity is characterized by positive and negative charges; humans can have both masculine and feminine sides of them, selfishness and altruism, humbleness and pride. He borrows from Hegel’s quote: “Contradiction in nature is the root of all motion and of all life.” But Hegel’s and Marx’s idea of the law of opposites is no law, it’s not even logical. Things do not exist merely because they have a counterpart that also exists. Humans, for example, may have the choice to be consistently selfish. The fact that they are potential of being altruistic does not being that altruism is factual characteristic of that person, much less a rational choice to make. Take, for another example, silence, and sound: if we can hypothetically say that the universe started silently as a collection of dust and energy, then sound could not have existed until the first atmosphere formed in the first planet in universe. The word “opposite” is a relative term; it denotes the way two objects may be related to each other, but it cannot be treated as a substance by itself. Marx’s law of opposites is false. Contradictions cannot exist in reality.

The law of negation accounts for nature’s tendency to increase the quantity of all things, and each entity tends to negate itself in order to reproduce itself in the highest quantity. As evidence, Engels offered the barley seed, which would produce a plant after its own death. The barley seed is, of course, one of only a few examples that Engels probably found to make this claim. A law ought to be based on inductive reasoning, and inductive reasoning is a method of generalizing. Let us be more general than Engels was. Must humans sacrifice their life in order to reproduce? What about dogs and cats—what about mammals in general? What about the birds who lay eggs? Do they negate themselves in order to reproduce? What of the reptiles, and sea creatures? Turns out, this so-called “law” is exempt to over half of the world’s population of organisms. Not a very reliable idea for any right-minded scientist.

Finally, the law of transformation states that a continuous quantitative development by a particular class often results in a “leap” in nature whereby a completely new form or entity is produced. If evolution is correct, it may be the best evidence for such “leaps,” but it does not deny the existence of a cause and origin of the new form or entity that is produced. Since nothing can be created in metaphysical terms, everything must come from something else.

Marx and Engels saw that life itself was the product of an evolutionary “leap,” and the most important change was the existence of a consciousness, a mind. The mind evolved as an intelligent, self-knowing, self-determining quality in matter. However, matter is primary and mind is secondary. Therefore, there can be no soul and no God. Marx and Engels believe that everything in existence came as a result of objective tendencies inherent in nature. There is no law, design, or God. Only matter and force in nature. As for man, he is an accident like all other forms of life except he had the good fortune to possess the highest intelligence in existence. This is said to make man the real god of himself and the universe.

Whether or not the creation of Man was an “accident” on nature’s part, it is not true that man is automatically blessed with the highest intelligence. Man is born with a blank mind, tabula rasa, and so his intelligence must be gained by conscious focus and effort, not by randomly observing the universe without thinking, conceptualizing, and integrating.

In answer to the question: What is the origin of energy or motion in nature? There is no origin. Whatever amount of energy that exists has always existed for infinite time. What causes galaxies, solar system, planets, animals, and all kingdoms of nature to constantly increase their numerical quantity? We turn to physicists, not philosophers for this answer. The cause is a continuous movement and growth of cosmic dust, if this is the fundamental answer one might be looking for. What is the origin of life, the origin of species, and the origin of consciousness and mind? We turn to biologists, not philosophers for this answer. Essentially, life originated from the realistic causality of evolution.

Marx on Human Nature and Civilization

Marx, like Hegel, believed that human beings have an actual self and a potential self. Marx was interested in maximizing Mankind’s potential. But Mankind is a species of individuals, of Man—there is no collective “kind” by automation; Man has free will and the ability to choose, and even choices do not occur to Man’s mind until such situations occur to him where a choice is needed in order to proceed in action. In his sixth Thesis on Feuerbach¸ Marx states that: “the essence of man is no abstraction inherent in each single individual. In reality, it is the ensemble of the social relations.” Earlier philosophers like Hobbes and Kant claimed that human beings were naturally selfish, and we must constrain our natural self in order to produce a good society. Kant thought we should use rationality, Hobbes thought we should use the force of the state. Marx said that the good society was one which allows our human nature its full expression. In the Grundisse, Marx says that Man’s needs are consequently Man’s nature. Kant, Hobbes, and Marx all accuse Man of being “selfish,” using the term to mean “hated” and “contemptuous.” But selfishness is a requirement for human survival—because Man has free will, he must choose whether or not he wants to survive, and the ability to make a choice at all must derive from selfishness, because a choice is a conscious function designed to affect the chooser’s life or environment.

But humans are naturally meant to be left at the stage of primitive communism. Throughout history, however, this has evolved into slavery, and further into feudalism, and even further into capitalism—the ultimate villain of Mankind. “The enemy of being is having,” says Marx in The Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844.

“The more a man acquires in the form of material possessions, according to Marx, the more estranged and alienated he is from his true humanity. Marx elaborates:

[The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour. . . . The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life—the greater is the store of your estranged being.]

A fully human life is not concerned with acquisition and accumulation, which have the ultimate effect of shriveling man’s soul. This is precisely why money is the embodiment, if not the root, of all evil for Marx. Money is the ultimate expression of having; it represents and facilitates the trading of goods; it permits, indeed inspires, men to accumulate for the sake of accumulation; it turns everything, including a man’s time and effort, into a commodity to be bought and sold. Money, particularly money in a capitalist economy, Marx claims, replaces true virtue, authenticity, and genuine human relationships with avarice. It is the physical embodiment of the moral principle that Marx most despises—the virtue of selfishness. Marxism thus suffers from one fatal flaw: It violates the basic laws of reality.

Contrary to Marx’s claims, one must work and save in order to live a materially and spiritually satisfying life. Marx envisions a world where men are able to eat, drink, read, love, theorize, sing, paint, fence, and go to the theater, the dance hall, and the pub free of charge and without having to earn a living and save. In other words, he wants to live in the world of the Big Rock Candy Mountain where chickens lay boiled eggs, or in a society where every person has his own personal Friedrich Engels—as Marx himself did—a sugar daddy to personally bankroll one’s profligate lifestyle, but without the guilt associated with being a moocher. The visceral anger that pours out of Marx’s writings stems ultimately from the fact that he could not bend reality to his wishes.” – C. Bradley Thompson, “Why Marxism? Evil Laid Bare.”

Further study of Marx’s theory of alienation exposes even more fallacies. According to Marx, there are four forms of alienation: from the product he produces, from his impersonality, from the human race, and from other human beings.

Marx implicitly calls out the capitalists for being the ones to decide what products are produced, how they are produced, and how they are designed. The workers who make the product or the consumers who buy the product have no say in any of these matters. First, “creation” is a critical concept to understand. The capitalist, the creative mind who leads his business to create his product, first had to create his product in his mind through logical thinking and a rational understanding of reality. He discovered its possibility to exist out of research and tests all on the selfish quest to make money. His workers who make the product by hand can only make it according to his instruction because without the leader’s mind, they could not make the product at all. The consumers, Marx implies, need or want something that the capitalist class is not supplying, and forbids the lower-class from obtaining by holding all the money. This is based on the idea that there is a finite amount of money in circulation, but money is made when someone—like a capitalist—creates a product of value. Whatever consumers lack in values that do not exist on the market have as much freedom to create their product as the capitalist did to create his.

Marx is responsible for the idea the capitalists exploit their workers. Today’s philosophers and economists define “exploitation” as “taking unfair advantage of others’ vulnerability” in order to maximize their profit. The fact of the matter is that exploitation exists in a way, but is also a factor in a competitive society. Where one business may be able to profit by paying its workers $7.00 an hour, another business in the same industry may be able to profit by paying its workers $8.00 an hour, and people have the chance to try for the higher-paying job. It is only logical that a capitalist would pay its labor for the lowest price for the highest return—not just because they want to, but because they have to. A business cannot survive if they are paying more for what they get in return. If the alternative is political intervention, the results are still even more undesirable than exploitation. State officials, lobbyists, bureaucrats and elected officials gain the most from taxing the people on whatever they can seize control over. In a capitalist society, people are still free to make voluntary exchanges, but under big government, freedom is lost. This isn’t due to there just being bad and corrupted people in government, its solely because of the structure of the system.

Marxism asserts that conscious thinking is determined collectively, not individually, because Man is a social animal. Throughout history, he defends, achievement has been made possible by groups of people, and basic relationships are the means of production. Since capitalism rewards men for their abilities, not their relationship, capitalism has alienated Mankind by its typical mode of production. Marx is famous for his standard: “From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs” as he wrote in his Critique of the Gotha Program.

“According to the new Marxist morality, every man in society will be inspired—or forced—to work according to his ability and then share the unequal fruits of his labor with everyone else according to the unequal needs of all others. In other words, ability is penalized and needs are rewarded. The harder a man works, the more is demanded from him. This is the true nature of socialist exploitation. Socialism transforms and corrupts man’s moral motives, incentives, and virtues so that needs become demands, and demands become rights. In such a society, the best men hide their virtues and abilities and the worst men flaunt their vices and weaknesses. Eventually, the productive become slaves to the unproductive, followed by the productive joining the ranks of the unproductive—at which point all become slaves.” – C. Bradley Thompson, “Why Marxism? Evil Laid Bare.”

Marx’s fourth form of alienation accuses capitalism as a higher form of slavery, evading the fact that human beings voluntarily choose to work for companies. For Marx, alienation exists mainly because of the tyranny of money.

Marx’s Conflict Theory

“It is not the consciousness of men that determines their existence, but their social existence that determines their consciousness.” Karl Marx wrote this in his Critique of Political Economy, and this began the foundation of The Communist Manifesto, which started the idea of a class struggle between the ownership class and the laboring class. He called capitalism the “dictatorship of the bourgeoisie,” a middle- or high-class civilian who owned capital and means of production, and held a materialistic world view. (Marx, himself, was a dialectic materialist.) Marx condemned the bourgeoisie for working for their own self-interests, and claimed that capitalism produced internal tensions that would lead to its self-destruction and replacement by a new system: socialism, or, a “dictatorship of the proletariat.” This class would eventually establish a society government by the “free association of producers,” Therefore, he was responsible for fighting towards inevitable communism, and was highly influential on Trotskyism, Leninism, Stalinism, and Maoism.

It is important to note, however, two things: first, that in Marx’s time, Germany was not even a capitalist nation. In the German Confederation, the economic system and industrialization was operated and commanded by presidential decree. Even in the surrounding nations, Marx had little to work with concerning the results of a purely capitalist system. The First French Republic was a revolutionary empire dictated by Napoleon Bonaparte, the Russian Empire was an absolute monarchy by divine right, the Kingdom of Great Britain was a unitary parliamentary, and so on and so forth. Second, the “bourgeois,” as Marx himself defined, were responsible for much prosperity in the world. They are also described as bringing innovation to industries through the process of Creative Destruction. This term describes the practice of taking immoral measures to distribute and even steal money, goods, services, and businesses. Corporate raiders such and greenmailers are such examples in today’s world. The “bourgeois,” whoever they are, are not capitalists. They are cronies, bureaucrats, and looters.

What Marx wanted to see as Mankind’s full potential started by the dictatorship of the proletariat, which he saw would be the only way society could achieve free association. Both Marx and Engels described the Paris Commune as an example of such a dictatorship. Let’s see what’s so appealing about the Paris Commune, and what the proletariat actually achieved. The Paris Commune:

• Adopted the ridiculous French Republican Calendar
• Decreed the separation between church and state (with little enforcement)
• Abolished night work
• Introduced pension programs
• Postponed commercial debt obligations
• And gave employees the right to take over and run an enterprise.

Free association, additionally, was the concept that described a relationship among individuals where there is no state, social class, or authority, private property as means of production. Once private property is abolished, individuals are no longer deprived of access to means of production enabling them to freely associate to produce and reproduce their own conditions of existence and fulfill their individual and creative needs and desires. The only difference between Socialists and Communists is how far they’re willing to go.

During his philosophical studies, Marx wrote eleven Theses on Feuerbach, where he criticized the history of philosophers for merely “interpreting the world in various ways. The point is to change it.” He also criticized earlier philosophies for “putting abstract reality about the physical world.” Thus, his philosophy sought to put the primacy of matter over idea. Where Hegel saw the “spirit” as driving history, Marx saw this as an unnecessary mystification, obscuring the reality of humanity and its physical actions shaping the world. Mao Tse-tung, one of Marx’s best students, once said:

“Every Communist must grasp the truth, “Political power grows out of the barrel of a gun.” Our principle is that the Party commands the gun . . . [Having] guns, we can create Party organizations . . . We can also create cadres, create schools, create culture, create mass movements . . . All things grow out of the barrel of a gun.” –“Problems of War and Strategy.”

To his list of things that communist revolutionaries with guns might do, Mao neglected to mention his ultimate creation—namely, mass genocide.

To conclude, Marx’s deliberate evasion from the truth and violence-inducing speeches are responsible for more misconceptions of capitalism than any other philosophy, and is also responsible for more wars and deaths than even religion has caused—and yet, Marxism has only existed for one-tenth as long as religion has. Marxism is a powerful and potent threat to civilization, and must be combated at every instance.