4.3 MLK’s “I have a dream” has no meaning in the Marxist characterless value of Labour.

“I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”

The great words of Martin Luther King were spoken in his fight for civil rights. The fight for the right to be recognised for your character and not to limit the value of individuals through ill conceived social labels.

Martin Luther King’s great uplifting words are directly opposed to the Marxist definition of the average price of wage labour.

Martin Luther King Memorial Washington D.C.

According to Marx “the average price of wage labour is the minimum wage.”   Marx defines minimum wage as “the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer“.

Marx makes a fundamental error in his characterisation of the price of labour. Marx’s definition of the minimum price of labour is based on the principles of slavery. That is, Marx’s price of labour is framed in the context of owning a slave or serf. In Marx’s flawed concept of production, an individuals’ personal characteristics, values, beliefs and traits, that is a person character that adds additional value to tasks are not considered, and don’t exist.  

MLK fought for the recognition that an individuals’ contribution to society is driven by their character, and for individuals to be justly recognised & rewarded for the “content of their character”. MLK directly opposed to the Marxist artificial view of the average price of wage labour, that is the value of a slave.

Marx defines the price of Labour from the perspective of the cost to the slave owner or feudal lord for the “requisite subsistence of bare existence of the labourer”.

Marx’s definition is consistent with his authoritarian ideology and his conveniently simplistic view of the productive world. A world where the individual proletarian has no distinction, has no say in their destiny, is not able to negotiate their value and are bound by a command and control society. A society where nobody does more than what is asked as there is no incentive or reward to speak up, advance their circumstance or enhance the task at hand. The commune society that is the void of individual character advocated by Karl Marx is the social structure MLK fought against.

Interestingly, the opposite circumstance was unfolding in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. The industrious “bourgeois” and their principles of free markets, free trade and open competition for capital was enabling the “freed serfs” to become wealthy and independent of their feudal lords. This change in the European social fabric was undermining Marx’s utopian ideal; the commune society of the controlled population, serving the unelected bureaucracy of your betters.

In the Marxist utopia of the authoritarian commune, there is no competition for providing products and services to advance all of society. The authoritarian commune has no reward mechanism to create value for the community. There is no distinction or difference in a person’s productive output based on individual effort, motivation, ingenuity, behaviour, values, beliefs, aspirations or responsibility to one’s family.

Ironically, the only reward system in a communist society is to serve and promote the communist party and the communist ideal. To monopolise a reward system to serve the authoritarian power of communism is inherently to service a corruptive power. The corruptive power where positions of authority are rewarded unequally, avoid transparency and where unequal access to private gain of “state” resources is the accepted norm.

The communist utopia is a mirage sold to the proletariat for the purposes of serving not the proletariat but the malevolent few who seek personal benefit from the privileged positions within the communist bureaucracy. Marx refers to the relationship between the proletariat and the malevolent few the bond of man to his “natural superiors”.

Conversely, an environment of free markets, freed people and open competition acts as a catalyst for creating value for the community. The market forces will determine the price of labour. Free citizens can choose not to participate when the price offered for their labour is valued at “bare existence”. In a free society, citizens can choose to participate in productive environments where the specific characteristics of their knowledge and labour is valued at a price that serves their specific household needs and aspirations.

A “free society” commits participants to educate themselves, to look after their health, to train, gain and maintain a tradable skill, to maintain a healthy social network, to be a ”valued” member of society and to participate in the maintenance of a healthy community.  

Most importantly, members of a “free society” must participate as custodians of the belief systems that maintains the “free society”.

Fundamental to the Marxist sales pitch is to advocate the benefits of outsourcing the “burden” of personal responsibility to your betters. Your betters being the lords and societies bureaucratic nobility. Marx refers to your relationship with the anointed overseers as the idyllic relations of “the motley feudal ties that bounds man to his natural superiors”

Marx with his manipulative techniques of persuasion, leverages the false claim that the entire proletariat population has no power to determine the value of their labour and that the average price of Labour is equal to the cost of bare existence. In effect, Marx contends that all proletariat are no better than salves and serfs of the feudal society and therefore will benefit from outsourcing all decisions on the price of your labour to a central bureaucracy.  

The key fact Marx avoids highlighting to his readers is the cost of outsourcing the value of your labour. That is, the personal cost of outsourcing the value of your labour is your freedom itself!

The implication of the communist ideal is the return of society to that resembles feudalism, a commune of serfs and that are governed by the appointed natural superiors.

The price of the wage labour of an individual is the function of the distinctive attributes the individual brings to their role, the competitive market for their skills, their ability to negotiate and the market value of the aggregate product or service they produce.

The average price of labour is not the minimum wage as it would be in slavery as Marx defines.

The average price of labour is the aggregate productive value of the distinctive competencies held by the collection of individuals in question. As Martin Luther King understood, the price of your labour is largely determined by the content of your character.

4.2 The Capitalist – Manipulate meaning for the purpose of persuasion.

Karl Marx diverts the meaning of the Capitalist to focus on the attainment of social power. Marx’s sleight of hand underlines the purpose of the communist manifesto. That is, to conceal the malevolent communist goal of authoritarian power by a few, and project the unpalatable self serving goal onto a plausible identity group. In this case, the Bourgeois.

The Capitalist as defined by the Macquarie dictionary is “someone who has capital, especially extensive capital employed in business enterprise”.

The oxford dictionary extends the meaning of capitalist to mean “a person who uses their wealth to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism”

However, Marx defines a Capitalist not as a person who employs capital for profit. Marx defines a capitalist as a person who aims to “have not only a purely personal, but social status in production”.

Marx’s addition to his definition of a capitalist is important.

Marx shifts the purpose of a capitalist away from being purely focused on the employment of capital for a return on capital.

In Marx’s definition, the primary purpose of the capitalist is to advance ones’ social status, climb the social hierarchy and manipulate the productive output of society for personal gain. In short, the purpose of a capitalist according to Marx is to gain Social Power.

Social Power is an important distinction.

The threat of the capitalist to Marx was not necessarily their accumulation of wealth. What was threating for Marx was the ability of the capitalist to challenge the “idyllic” social order which he sort. That is, the utopian commune governed by a committee of benevolent despots. The benevolent despots being the ruling politburo of the Communist Party.

For Marx, the Capitalist and all things associated with the accumulation of capital, whether it be private property, family, entrepreneurship or free trade has to end. All social mechanisms that enabled capital accumulation and had the potential to threaten the feudalistic authoritarian rule of a commune society has to be abolished.

Marx in his typical manipulative form claimed that the everyday proletarian has no opportunity to be a capitalist. Marx claims in his Communist Manifesto that wage labour, the most fundamental form of capital accumulation does “not a bit” create any property for the labourer. Marx claims that all wage labour only creates “the kind of property that exploits wage labour”. Marx avoids addressing the simple concept that personal savings provides a foundation for wealth creation and escaping poverty for all individuals. From personal saving, every individual has the opportunity to accumulate capital that overtime can be invested to generate additional income or to accumulate additional assets. In a free market, citizens are empowered to incrementally advance their personal financial position through choices on resource allocation and consumption.

In Marx’s deceitful world of the Proletarian and Bourgeois duality, the opportunity for the “freed serf” to accumulate wealth no longer exists.

As it has come to pass, the Marxist lie that wage labour does not create any property for the labourer is still a lie today. The opportunity for the everyday citizen to accumulate capital wealth and to be a “capitalist” existed at the time of writing (1848) and still exists, nearly 200 years later.

Do these tactics of Marxist manipulation sound familiar?

You need to look no further than critical race theory.

Critical race theory borrows from the Marxist techniques of Epicurus manipulation. The truth of history, culture, and the principles behind knowledge accumulation are misrepresented. The proponents of critical race theory seek the malevolence of centralized authoritarianism to unjustly discriminate against those they see as rivals for social power.

4.1 Nationalism: Failing Nations enable communism and globalism.

The second chapter of the Communist Manifesto begins with Marx making a case for globalism. Marx states that an aim of the communist movement is to “bring to the front the common interest of the entire proletariat, independently of all nations”.

In true Marxist manipulative fashion, Marx ignores the changing social structure of progressive nations versus regressive nations at the time of writing. In Western Europe and the United States of America, advances in living standards for the ordinary citizen were accelerating at a rate not seen in human history. Old “class” boundaries had been redrawn. Free markets and competitive industry had provided the opportunity for wealth and influence to be accumulated by those outside of traditional social hierarchies.  

Ironically, both Russia and China who together become the principle proponents of Communism in the 20th century, are both poverty stricken nations’ in the early 19th century. Both were experiencing societal decline. In the 19th century, neither Russia nor China had experienced the social change required to free their society from the various forms of feudal hierarchies they inherited. The feudal hierarchies Marx describes as “idyllic”.

Western Societies in the same period had advanced in leaps and bounds largely by embracing the concept of free markets, free thinking, and the principle of mutual benefit from voluntary exchange that was further enhanced through the competition of nation states.

In contrast, the absence free trade and the social mechanisms that enabled capital accumulation by all, stalled the advancement of living standards in both Russia and China. The backward state of Russia and China in the early 20th century provided fertile ground for revolution and turmoil. In the early 20th century, unlike their “Western” counter parts that were enjoying the relative benefit of embracing “free” societies. The Russian and Chinese society flipped from their feudal hierarchical power structures to the power structure of the communist politburo in a relatively short period of time via unprecedented death and social turmoil. Perhaps the gravest example of a Communist revolution tragedy was Pol Pot’s Cambodia in the 1970’s. It is estimated that one quarter the entire population of Cambodia was murdered in the name of advancing the communist utopia.     

Nevertheless, for the sake of promoting his argument built on emotion, Marx simplifies all society’s challenges into an identity the battle between the Proletarian and the Bourgeois.

In respect to Nations, Marx predicted that an outcome of free trade and free markets advocated by the bourgeoisie would lead to globalism where “national differences and antagonisms between peoples are vanishing”. As a result Marx concludes that “The workingmen have no country” and the proletariat “must acquire political supremacy, must raise to the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation”. In effect Marx advocates for one nation, a globalisation of all classes into one Proletariat governed by the communist ideology. Karl Marx was an early advocate for Globalism.

4.0 Chapter II Proletarians and Communists: Accuse your enemy of the malevolence you seek to achieve.

In the second chapter of the Communist Manifesto, Marx shifts up a gear to reinforce his unfounded claims of bourgeoisie social malevolence. For the purpose of advocating his communist utopia, Marx employs a manipulation technique that simplifies, misrepresent and anchor social ills with divisive emotional claims. As was underlined in the opening chapter, Karl Marx is not interested in facts or logic. Marx’s primary interest is in deflecting the malevolent goals of Marxist ideology on to those he identifies as his competitors for political power, the bourgeoisie. Marx then positions plausible statements as a matter of fact for the purpose of persuading the reader of their helplessness in order to recruit their support for his social agenda.

Marx baits the reader with the selfish promise of a Utopian society. The selfish promise of Marx’s communist utopia is freedom from responsibility and accountability to yourself, your family and your community. In Marx’s Utopian mirage, the proletariat can benefit from the productivity of others at no personal cost.  In reality, Marx’s commune utopia comes at the high personal cost of your freedom, independence, right to self-expression and right to self-determination.  

In Marx’s commune society, the avenue for advancing yourself and your community retracts from the two-way street where individuals and organisations create value for society by offering continuously advancing products and services, to the one way road whereby the only street to advancing oneself is by serving the communist party bureaucracy.

In the communist bureaucracy, all are equal except those who serve the bureaucratic hierarchy, who are more equal than others.   

In the chapter “Proletarians and Communist”, Marx touches a wide range of social concepts. Marx meanders from nationalism to his definition of the capitalist, individualism, the value of labour, private property, family, education, religion, morality and history.  

Importantly, Marx closes the second chapter by defining the 10 communist ideals.

In this blog we consider the validity of Marx’s position on 4 concepts;

  • Nationalism,
  • the Capitalist,
  • the Value of labour and
  • Private property.

It is important to underline the impact of Marx’s writings. The idea of the communist state had the impact of advancing horrific social revolutions in the 20th century.  Moreover, it is the tactics and methods Marx weaves in formulating his persuasive words that are arguably more important to understand. Marx’s tactics in formulating the words of the Communist Manifesto are leveraged today in the political battle field for social influence. The concepts and methods that Karl Marx used to promote his communist Utopian mirage are employed today by post-modernist along with the historical revisionist, the peddlers of divisive identity politics, the science deniers, the self-appointed fact checkers and the Neo-Marxist of the 21st  century.

4.1 Nationalism

The second chapter begins with Marx making a case for globalism. Marx states that an aim of the communist movement is to “bring to the front the common interest of the entire proletariat, independently of all nations”.

In true Marxist manipulative fashion, Marx ignores the changing social structure of progressive nations versus regressive nations at the time of writing. In Western Europe and the United States of America, advances in living standards for the ordinary citizen were accelerating at a rate not seen in human history. Old “class” boundaries had been redrawn. Free markets and competitive industry had provided the opportunity for wealth and influence to be accumulated by those outside of traditional social hierarchies.  

Ironically, both Russia and China who together become the principle proponents of Communism in the 20th century, are both poverty stricken nations’ in the early 19th century. Both were experiencing societal decline. In the 19th century, neither Russia nor China had experienced the social change required to free their society from the various forms of feudal hierarchies they inherited. The feudal hierarchies Marx describes as “idyllic”.

Western Societies in the same period had advanced in leaps and bounds largely by embracing the concept of free markets, free thinking, and the principle of mutual benefit from voluntary exchange. The outcome of the principles were further enhanced through the competition of nation states.

In contrast, the absence free trade and the social mechanisms that enabled capital accumulation by all, stalled the advancement of ordinary living standards in both Russia and China. The backward state of Russia and China in the early 20th century provided fertile ground for revolution and turmoil. In the early 20th century, unlike their “Western” counter parts that were enjoying the relative benefit of embracing “free” societies. The Russian and Chinese society flipped from their feudal hierarchical power structures to the power structure of the communist politburo in a relatively short period of time, experiencing unprecedented death and social turmoil. Perhaps the gravest example of a Communist revolution tragedy was Pol Pot’s Cambodia in the 1970’s where it is estimated one quarter the entire population was murdered in the name of advancing the communist utopia.     

Nevertheless, for the sake of promoting his argument built on emotion, Marx simplifies all society’s challenges into an identity battle between the Proletarian and the Bourgeois.

In respect to Nations, Marx predicted that an outcome of free trade and free markets advocated by the bourgeoisie would lead to globalism where “national differences and antagonisms between peoples are vanishing”. As a result Marx concludes that “The workingmen have no country” and the proletariat “must acquire political supremacy, must raise to the leading class of the nation, must constitute itself the nation”. In effect Marx advocates for one nation, a globalisation of all classes into one Proletariat governed by the communist ideology. Karl Marx was an early advocate for Globalism.

4.2 The Capitalist

Capitalist as defined by the Macquarie dictionary is “someone who has capital, especially extensive capital employed in business enterprise”.

The Oxford dictionary extends the meaning of capitalist to mean “a person who uses their wealth to invest in trade and industry for profit in accordance with the principles of capitalism”

However, Marx defines a Capitalist not as a person who employs capital for profit. Marx defines a capitalist as a person who aims to “have not only a purely personal, but social status in production”.

Marx’s addition to his definition of a capitalist is important.

Marx shifts the purpose of a capitalist away from being purely focused on the employment of capital for capital return.

In Marx’s definition, the primary purpose of the capitalist is to advance ones’ social status, climb the social hierarchy and manipulate the productive output of society for personal gain. In short, the definition of a capitalist according to Marx is one who seeks Social Power.

The addition of Social Power to Karl Marx’s definition is an important distinction.

The threat of the capitalist to Marx was not necessarily their accumulation of wealth. What was threatening for Marx was the ability of the capitalist to challenge the “idyllic” social order which he sort. That is, the utopian commune governed by a committee of benevolent despots. The benevolent despots being the ruling politburo of the Communist Party.

For Marx, the Capitalist and all things associated with the accumulation of capital, whether it be private property, family, entrepreneurship or free trade has to end. All mechanisms that enabled capital accumulation to an individual had the potential to threaten the authoritarian rule of a commune society and therefore had to be abolished.

Marx in his typical manipulative form claimed that the everyday proletarian has no opportunity to be a capitalist. Marx claims in his Communist Manifesto that wage labour, the most fundamental form of capital accumulation does “not a bit” create any property for the labourer. Marx claims that all wage labour only creates “the kind of property that exploits wage labour”. Marx avoids addressing the simple concept that personal savings provides a foundation for wealth creation and escaping poverty for all individuals. From personal saving, every individual has the opportunity to accumulate capital that overtime can be invested to generate additional income or to accumulate additional assets. In a free market, citizens are empowered to incrementally advance their personal financial position through choices on resource allocation and consumption.

In Marx’s deceitful world of the Proletarian and Bourgeois identity duality, the opportunity for the “freed serf” to accumulate wealth no longer exists.

As it has come to pass, the Marxist lie that wage labour does not create any property for the labourer is still a lie today. The opportunity for the everyday citizen to accumulate capital wealth and to be a “capitalist” existed at the time of writing (1848) and still exists today, nearly 200 years later.

4.3 Value of Labour

According to Marx “the average price of wage labour is the minimum wage.”   Marx defines minimum wage as “the means of subsistence which is absolutely requisite to keep the labourer in bare existence as a labourer“.

Marx makes a fundamental error in his characterisation of the price of labour. Marx’s definition of the minimum price of labour is based on the principles of slavery. That is, Marx’s price of labour is framed in the context of owning a slave or serf. In Marx’s flawed concept of production, an individuals’ personal characteristics, values, beliefs and traits that add additional value to the tasks assigned to the labourer are not considered, and don’t exist.  

Marx defines the price of Labour from the perspective of the cost to the slave owner or feudal lord for the “requisite subsistence of bare existence of the labourer”.

Marx’s definition is consistent with his authoritarian ideology and his conveniently simplistic view of the productive world. A world where the individual proletarian has no distinction, has no say in their destiny, is not able to negotiate their value and are bound by a command and control society. A society where nobody does more than what is asked as there is no incentive or reward to speak up, advance their circumstance or enhance the task at hand.

Interestingly, the opposite circumstance was unfolding in Europe in the 18th and 19th century. The industrious “bourgeois” and their principles of free markets, free trade and open competition for capital was enabling the “freed serfs” to become wealthy and independent of their feudal lords. This change in the European social fabric was undermining Marx’s utopian ideal; the commune society of the controlled population, serving the unelected bureaucracy of your betters.

In the Marxist utopia of the authoritarian commune, there is no competition for providing products and services to advance all of society. The authoritarian commune has no reward mechanism to create value for the community. There is no distinction or difference in a person’s productive output based on individual effort, motivation, ingenuity, behaviour, values, beliefs, aspirations or responsibility to one’s family.

Ironically, the only reward system in a communist society is to serve and promote the communist party and the communist ideal. To monopolise a reward system to serve the authoritarian power of communism is inherently to service a corruptive power. The corruptive power where positions of authority are rewarded unequally, avoid transparency and where unequal access to private gain of “state” resources is the accepted norm.

The communist utopia is a mirage sold to the proletariat for the purposes of serving not the proletariat but the malevolent few who seek personal benefit from the privileged positions within the communist bureaucracy. Marx refers to the relationship between the proletariat and the malevolent few the bond of man to his “natural superiors”.

Conversely, an environment of free markets and open competition acts as a catalyst for creating value for the community. The market forces will determine the price of labour. Free citizens can choose not to participate when the price offered for their labour is valued at “bare existence”. In a free society, citizens can choose to participate in productive environments where the specific characteristics of their knowledge and labour is valued at a price that serves their specific household needs and aspirations.

A “free society” commits participants to educate themselves, to look after their health, to train, gain and maintain a tradable skill, to maintain a healthy social network, to be a ”valued” member of society and to participate in the maintenance of a healthy community.  

Most importantly, members of a “free society” must participate as custodians of the belief systems that maintains the “free society”.

Fundamental to the Marxist sales pitch is to advocate the benefits of outsourcing the “burden” of personal responsibility to your betters. Your betters being the lords and societies bureaucratic nobility. Marx refers to your relationship with the anointed overseers as the idyllic relations of “the motely feudal ties that bounds man to his natural superiors”

Marx with his manipulative techniques of influence, leverages the false claim that the entire proletariat population has no power to determine the value of their labour and that the average price of Labour is equal to the cost of bare existence. In effect, Marx contends that all proletariat are no better than salves and serfs of the feudal society and therefore will benefit from outsourcing all decisions on the price of your labour to a central bureaucracy.  

The key fact Marx avoids highlighting to his readers is the cost of outsourcing the value of your labour. That is, the personal cost of outsourcing the value of your labour is your freedom itself!

The implication of the communist ideal is the return of society to that resembles feudalism, a commune of serfs and that are governed by the appointed natural superiors.

The price of the wage labour of an individual is the function of the distinctive attributes the individual brings to their role, the competitive market for their skills, their ability to negotiate and the market value of the aggregate product or service they produce.

The average price of labour is not the minimum wage as it would be in slavery as Marx defines.

The average price of labour is the aggregate productive value of the distinctive competencies held by the collection of individuals in question.

4.4 Private Property

“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society; all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriation”

The paragraph above is perhaps amongst the most forked tongued, duplicitous and hypocritical of all paragraphs in the Manifesto of the Communist Party.  

Communism in itself is a means of appropriating the labour of productive individuals. Communism appropriates the productive labour of the proletariat to your “natural superiors”. In a communist society, the politburo, the Communist Party leaders are your “natural superiors”. The politburo in turn decides the distribution of fruits of your production.

In a Communist society the grand assumption is made that the Politburo is a collection of benevolent despots.

The trouble is, as the transfer of productive output represents the transfer of property;

  • Who appoints the despots?
  • Who decides the definition of benevolent activity?
  • Who determines what is benevolent appropriation or distribution of production?

For the purposes of manipulating the proletariat, there is an undeniable nature of human productivity that Marx along with the ideas of the Communist utopia ignores.  

That is, each individual has varying capacity of production. The key elements that contribute to individual productivity include and is not limited to motivation, values, beliefs, cognitive skills, acquired knowledge, personal circumstance and family support.

None of the variables of human productivity occur in a vacuum, can be controlled independently or remain static over time. An individuals’ capacity for production changes with the passage of time.   

Communism aims to subjugate and appropriate the labour of the most productive citizens of every community at every point in time.

For the purpose of manipulating the proletariat, Marx makes a number of baseless and duplicitous claims in the attempt to define “bourgeois property” and the notion of “bourgeois freedom”.

Marx attempts to define private property in terms of what it is, what it is not and what private property can be used for.

“We communists have been reproached with the desire of abolishing the right of personally acquiring property as the fruit of a man’s own labour” Marx writes. To address the communist position on private property and the concerns that arise, Marx states that communism does not intend to abolish property of the “petty artisan and of the small peasant” instead the aim of the communist movement is to abolish “bourgeois property”.

A key manipulative tactic of Marx reveals itself in his words on private property. The steps of Marx’s manipulative tactic is as follows;

  1. Accuse your ideological enemy of the malevolence you are trying to achieve

The communist movement seeks to forcibly appropriate, monopolise and control all property that is required for the means of production, communication and financial transactions to the “State”.

The goal of the communist manifesto is to re-establish static social power structures that resemble a feudal society. The feudal society that had been “torn asunder” by the capital accumulating peasants (freed serfs) through the practice of individual freedom, free trade and competitive markets.

Marx’s sleight of hand is that he avoids informing the proletariat that the productive output of any asset is not static.

The productive utility of an asset is determined by the energy, ingenuity and applied knowledge of the asset owner.

i.e. the State cannot generate the level productive output of an asset for the benefit of society as a private owner or a collective of private owners in a competitive environment. For the state to achieve a similar level of productive output the conditions that allow for individual initiative, motivation, reward, certainty of ownership, the freedom to unilaterally coordinate applied knowledge and the presence of external competition are all required.

The communist movement is not about the emancipation of the proletariat, it is purely a document for the manipulation of the masses for control by the authoritarian few.

The aim of the communist manifesto; the authoritarian control of the masses, is precisely what Marx accuses the Capitalist of in Marx’s bourgeoisie conspiracy.          

2. Fabricating a scenario that does not exist but appeals to the sense of helplessness and victimisation of the masses

To persuade proletariat, Marx claims that “in your existing society private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population”.

The purpose of the sentence is to feed the emotional claim of helplessness and position the everyday citizen as the victim of the bourgeois conspiracy. In Marx’s manipulative techniques, actual facts are not required. Simply present plausible statements as a matter of fact for the purposes of emotionally assigning blame, arousing the sense of helplessness to recruit followers of your cause.

That is you, the ordinary individual, has no hope in furthering or improving your circumstance. As a result when individuals have no civil avenue for advancing their circumstance, one option remains; upend society through revolution in the name of the communist ideals. 

3. Present a fabricated scenario as fact for the purpose of manipulation and persuasion.

Marx contend the foundations of capital accumulation do not exist for the proletariat. Marx wrties “But does wage labour create any property for the labourer? Not a bit.”

The foundations of freedom are established on personal savings. That is, the value derived from the productive output of your labour less the cost of living.

Marx doubles down on his erroneous claim by tethering the average price of labour to equal the means of subsistence, hence claiming there is no ability for the proletariat to save.

What Marx is doing is describing the environment he actually advocates. That is, a society where the value of your labour is no more that the cost of your bare existence. In a communist society you only receive what a bureaucrat determines is what you need.

However, Marx twists his meaning of the average price of labour to reflect the circumstance as the making of the bourgeoisie in an attempt to assign emotional discontent and contempt for the bourgeois “class” identity.  

The circumstance Marx describes in the second chapter is not represented by facts. It is a manipulative use of words to assign the troublesome world that Communism advocates as the product of his adversaries.

The purpose of projecting communist goals on his adversaries is to conceal the purpose of communism, that is;

  • the authoritarian control of the masses by a select few;
  • to keep at bay the any potential challengers for the control and influence of societies, in particular “the Capitalist”.

Why the Capitalist? The successful capitalist has the means to assign human effort (productive capacity) for the purposes of challenging social power and influence.

Even in 1848, Marx understood that many of the successful capitalist had become the growing middle class of Western Society. The middle class themselves had the potential to assign capital savings to challenge an authoritarian government, hence a stated goal of the commune state is to eliminate the middle class. Marx writes, “the middle class owner of property….must indeed be swept out of the way and made impossible”

In the Marxist society, the owners of private property including the middle class owners must be controlled.

The means for challenging the established authoritarian power by a successful capitalist or any middle class collective must be eliminated.

Private property provides the control of resources that can be employed to threaten the authoritarian power of the communist politburo, the power of the senior members of a state bureaucracy.

As a result, the proclivity for the private use of property in western society as an accepted social norm serves as a constant threat to the Marxist authoritarian state.        

3.0 The Marxist “Children of the Left”

3.01 Chapter 1 The Manipulation so far.

In the opening paragraphs of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, Karl Marx leverages the persuasive techniques he adopted from Epicurus philosophy. Marx skillfully position plausible emotional statements of victimisation and helplessness to influence his readers. In particular, Marx proposes as an unchallenged truth, the dual between the “Oppressed and the Oppressors” is the one constant historical battle of mankind.  

Marx’s goal is to establish a neo-feudal society of the “natural superiors” and the proletarian. Marx’s method is to divide society into antagonistic groups and leverage emotional statements that have “abstract possibility” to persuade the proletariat to support his cause and by extension, commit to self imprisonment.

Marx’s cause is to stop the progress and influence of the Bourgeois class. Free trade and competitive markets had created wealth and political influence for the Bourgeois. The newly gained status of the bourgeois eroded the “idyllic” stable social structure of feudal society. Marx seeks to establish a neo-feudal governance system of communes where individuals have no rights to property, are unbounded by family ties and have no religious foundations.  

Marx’s words conveniently omit that each individual proletarian has the opportunity them self to gain wealth and influence through their own industrious efforts. The opportunity for wealth and influence was not possible for the serf of a feudal society and is not possible for the proletarian of the commune society he advocates.

In effect, through his writings, Marx tempts the proletarian to forego their freedom and autonomy in return for the promise of a Utopian commune society where individuals are free from personal responsibility and accountability.

3.02 The Battle of the Monopolist.

In the final third of the first Chapter: Bourgeois and Proletarians, Marx emboldens the proletariat with the prediction of “the fall” of the bourgeois.

Marx reaches his conclusion by predicting the bourgeois will turn on themselves by the “enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces”. Marx writes, “the weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against bourgeoisie itself”.

Marx postulates that the greatest benefactors of the bourgeois class will themselves leave the principles of free markets from which they advanced and seek the monopolistic powers previously held by the aristocracy.

In competing for monopolistic powers, the bourgeois class will split. The monopolist will betray the principles of free competition. The betrayal will lead to the self destruction of the bourgeois Marx predicts.  

Marx writes that the non-industrious and petty bourgeois will desert the monopolistic bourgeoisie, “The lower strata of the middle class – the small trades people, shopkeepers, and retired tradesmen generally and peasants – all these sink gradually into the proletarian”

However, Marx omits to define that the bourgeois who seeks monopolistic powers and political influence are no longer members of the bourgeois class. They have in effect become the neo-aristocracy, the monopolistic forces who work against the principle of free markets and free competition, the very principles that enabled their wealth and influence.  The neo-aristocracy, born from the bourgeoisie become competitors of the old feudal powers.  

The target of Marx’s writings is:

  1. The system that enables non-establishment individuals to gain power and influence namely: Free markets.
  2. Those who seek to depose the established feudal social power structures and assert themselves as the new aristocracy.

3.03 Marx’s Appeal to Your Inner Child.

To convince the proletarian to become a child of the commune society, free from personal responsibility, Marx reduces the value of human effort to that of a commodity. Marx makes the baseless economic claim that the price of labour “is equal to it’s cost of production”.

Marx strips the individual human of all natural character. All elements of human performance are ignored. Individual motivation, talent, aspirations, inherent cognitive skills, lived principles, personal goals and the conditions of home & family are ignored by Marx as irrelevant.

However, the undeniable axiomatic truth provides that each individual has different capacities, capability, skills and natural strengths. The productivity of an individual varies with each given circumstance.

Furthermore, Marx reinforces his claims of “class battle” by stating that the modern labourer “instead of raising with the progress of industry, sinks deeper and deeper below the conditions of his own class”.   By making emotional claims with abstract possibility wrapped in blame towards an identified group ( bourgeois ), Marx provides an escape from responsibility and temps the proletarian to be entrapped by his Utopian commune.      

Consistent with Marx manipulative techniques, the first chapter ends with a “plausible” emotional statement that motivate and emboldens his readers. Marx makes the triumphant claim of unstoppable victory stating that the bourgeoisie are “its own grave diggers” and “the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable”.

Marx’s goal is to persuade the proletarians to volunteer for their commune prisons. To achieve this end, Marx leverages persuasive techniques by combining subjectivity, denial and emotions. Marx appeals to the lowest animal instincts of the proletarian, the childhood comfort of safety and the promise of freedom from personal responsibility and accountability.  

2.0 The Aim of the Communist Manifesto and the birth of Post-Modernist Manipulative techniques.

The communist manifesto seeks to manipulate the context of observed axiomatic “truths” of the 18th century.

The life of everyday citizens in 18th and 19th century Europe was changing fast. The uplifting power of Adam Smith’s “Invisible hand” of free markets and market competition was the catalyst for advancements in all aspects of European society, including social and political change. The comforts that we take for granted in life today are built on the foundations of the productive advancements experienced in the 18th and 19th century.

Of great concern for Marx was the change to social structures, in particular the end to feudal means of production and feudal societal hierarchies. 

As you read further into the first chapter and unpeel the sentences of the Bourgeois and Proletarians, it becomes apparent the aim of the communist manifesto is for the reconstitution of monopolistic political structures that resemble a feudal society. That is, the centralised power of Lords and vassals who dominate the serfs. The serfs in Marx’s case is the proletarian themselves.

Cunningly, Marx seeks to use the very people he pretends to help. Marx appeals to the proletarian by making emotional claims of insurmountable victimisation and helplessness to motivate the proletarian to unwittingly create their own regressive prisons. Marx leverages plausible abstract claims such as the “battle between the oppressed and the oppressors” to wrapped his audience in an emotive manner. Marx’s goal is to persuade the proletarian to give up their rights to their “natural superiors”.  The natural superiors being an unelected bureaucracy of the communist party who themselves are the masters of distribution and them self profit from the surplus production of the proletarians.

2.01 Who was Karl Marx?

Marx himself was the son of an affluent lawyer and bureaucrat who held an official post in the Prussian Service. Marx grew up in a family of relative wealth and influence in the town of Trier in Rhineland, Germany.

In his early adult life, Marx lived off his parents who provided regular allowances. Marx appeared never to grasp basic concepts of money, not paying debts and later getting involved with a string of failed journals and publications including Vorwarts, Brusseler Deutsche Zeitung and the Neue Rheinische Zeitung. Later in life Marx was a contributor to the New York Tribune as a political correspondent for sometime.

In Marx’s personal life, his relationship with his mother was strained when she decided to cut off his allowance due to her discontent with his idle life. It is documented that later in life Marx showed no emotion at the news of his mother’s death, which underlined their animosity.

Marx married a daughter of an aristocrat and childhood friend, Jenny von Westphalen. Jenny’s family provided further sources of inheritances and funding to bail him out of self-inflicted financial difficulties from time to time.

Friedrich Engels his co-author, was from a family many times wealthier than Marx’s. Engels in effect funded Marx’s life with regular allowances while he worked on Das Capital his other famous work. Although, Das Capital was left unfinished at the time of Marx’s death.    

Perhaps the single biggest irony in the life of Karl Marx was that he spent his life writing about a capital when his only real practical experience of capital was in wasting the capital of others.

Some sympathetic historians write about the poverty Marx experienced while living in London. However, the writers seem to omit that Marx had enough money for a servant, Helene Demuth, from which he fathered an illegitimate son, Frederick Demuth.

A redeeming characteristic of Karl Marx was his role as father. His close relationship with his daughters was documented.         

2.02 How did Karl Marx formulate his manipulative writing methods?

(Birth of post-modernist manipulation techniques)

As a University student Marx was a journey-man, starting at the University of Bonn. At his parent dissatisfaction with Marx’s progress, he was transferred to the University of Berlin where he associated with a group of ‘young Hegelians’. The young Hegelians discussed Hegel’s philosophic views and were in particular critical of religious orthodoxy which Marx adopted.   

Perhaps the most insightful fact in Marx’s development of thought and his persuasive writing technique was his doctoral thesis. His paper “On the Differences between the Natural Philosophies of Democritus and the Epicureans” submitted to the University of Jena explored the concepts of “truth” and the construct of objective thinking.

Marx’s doctoral paper provides a window into how he formulated his persuasive methods of manipulation.

On Epicurus philosophy of objective thinking, Marx writes “Real possibility seeks to explain the necessity and reality of its object; abstract possibility is not interested in the object which is explained, but in the subject which does the explaining. The object need only be possible, conceivable.”

On explaining the separate physical phenomena Marx writes on Epicurus “there is no interest in investigating the real cause of objects”. “The only rule which Epicurus prescribes, namely, that ”the explanation should not contradict sensation””. Epicurus confesses finally that his method of explanation aims only at the “ataraxy of self-consciousness, not at knowledge of nature in and for itself”  

Marx’s doctoral paper provides a window on the construct of his methods of influence. Objectivity and truth are not required in Epicurus philosophy. The only requirement is “abstract possibility” and the “sensation” of the object.

In other words, the emotions of the subject are placed at the forefront ideological causes. There is no requirement for objective truth when persuading the audience of your chosen cause. The same techniques are used today by the activist causes of the post-modernist. The Epicurus methods are used to divert the search for objective truth, stifle and limit debate and to manipulate the masses to submit to causes advocated by post modernist. Namely, post-modernist causes limit the freedom of speech, objective thought, and the independent action of individuals while promoting the division of society into antagonistic identity groups that enable authoritarian control.

Stable emotions and feelings, in other words the “ataraxy of self-consciousness” are placed ahead of facts and the objective truth. Not only is the truth is not welcomed where the truth does not enable the ideological goal of Marxist, the truth is ignored and denied from consideration or discussion for the benefit of Marxist ideological goals. 

2.03 What is the aim of the Communist Manifesto?

As you read objectively further into the first chapter of the communist manifesto, the duplicity of Marx’s writing becomes more apparent. The objective goal of the communist manifesto is to re-establish “stable” power structures that resemble the feudal society that had been “burst asunder” by the bourgeois.   

To achieve his goal, Marx positions the proletarians as the victims of the bourgeois. The utility of the communist manifesto is to subvert the good intentions of the proletarians and manipulate the intentions to re-establish a neo-feudal society in the guise of a commune state.

To fulfil Marx’s cause, Marx leverages the manipulation techniques of Epicurus to place emotions and feeling ahead of truth and facts as a sleight of hand. This sleight of hand is used to influence, persuade and recruit the proletarian masses. The proletarian masses who are ignorant of his hidden goals, are used as the foot soldiers for their own reinstatement in serfdom, servitude.     

Vladimir Lenin, the founder of the Communist Soviet Union, famously referred to the communist activist proletarian as his “useful idiots”.

The communist manifesto begins by stating that the “class struggle” is the one constant battle throughout the history of mankind as an undisputed truth. However Marx is not interested in the truth, his interest is in leveraging the proletarian via the assignment blame for the emotional stresses of everyday life and the extinguishment of simple dreams on those Marx identifies as the bourgeois.

Marx’s writes about the impact of free market competition in his era. Marx describes the natural change in modes of production driven by technological progress as a negative force for mankind. However, free markets as a negative force is a distraction, Marx is more concerned with the natural changes in wealth and influence that come with free market competition that puts an end to all feudal “idyllic relations“.

To serve Marx purpose, Marx totally ignores that advancements in production improves the life of everyday citizens. The advancements in technology and production have had an overall positive impact for society as a whole and still does today. Instead of acknowledging the contribution to society of the engineering feats, Marx ignores these facts and instead paints a picture of organised malevolence never experienced in human history.

“The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production” Marx writes. “And thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society……… Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones”

According to Marx the continuous change driven by new products, better services and new modes of production was as detriment to society. The detriment included breaking down prejudice between nation’s and providing the masses with cheaper products. 

 “The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations, even the most barbarian, into civilisation. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which batters down all Chinese walls, with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate.”

Marx’s underlying concern is not the plight of the proletarian, it is the end of “stable” power structures and the introduction of constant dynamic change to societal wealth and influence. The encroachment of the bourgeois, the original freed serfs.    

 “The feudal relations of property became no longer compatible with the already developed productive forces; they become so many fetters. They had to be burst asunder; they were burst asunder.” 

Marx writes that “It has agglomerated population, centralized the means of production, and has concentrated property in a few hands” and that the proletarian must be concerned.

However, Marx conveniently fails to highlight that any proletarian them self can become the owners of means of production via new skills, products and services and right to property. In the “new” society of the bourgeois, each proletarian can create for themselves a level of influence over society and politics that once was impossible for the feudal serf.

Marx’s purpose and method in conclusion.

Marx is not concerned with the potential of each individual proletarian to raise to power. Marx is focused on re-establishing a “stable” power structure that had been “burst asunder” by the bourgeois.

Marx’s vehicle for achieving his goal is through leveraging the manipulative philosophy of Epicurus on the benefits of subjective reasoning. Marx employs the techniques of subverting the objective truth and rational reasoning by asserting “objects” of blame that need only “abstract possibility” but encapsulates negative emotional senses.

Marx’s assertion that the “class struggle” defined as the one constant battle throughout the history of mankind between the “oppressed and the oppressors”, is in itself an example of an “object of abstract possibility”. This abstract possibility becomes Marx’s vehicles for diverting the focus of the proletarian to submit to his cause. This technique of diversion and submission born from Epicurus philosophy is very much a foundational tool used by the post-modernist political activists of today.

By deconstructing the opening pages of the Manifesto of the Communist Party, the purpose of the pamphlet becomes apparent.

The purpose of the communist manifesto is not about the emancipation of the proletarian, the document is written for the manipulation of the proletarian.

The purpose of the document is for the re-establishment of a neo-feudal society of communes, where it is an accepted norm that stable control of society is governed by the unelected Aristocrats, your “natural superiors”.

Reflect on Marx’s Epicurus model of political manipulation and compare the tactics of politically left leaning causes that advocate authoritarian control today. The finger prints of Marx’s Epicurus tactics lay bare for all to see.

It is worth noting that, the aristocrat society is the social circle that Karl Marx himself originates.  

VEC Electoral Boundaries Redistribution: Spot Light on Wyndham City Council

 

Paul Sakkal from the The Age writes in his article from January this year that “Libs face election rout as seats scrapped”.

“Election experts and political pundits say the Liberals face a long spell in the political wilderness unless they broaden their voter base to include migrant communities in the outer suburbs.”

Antony Green comments “Labor holds all but three of the 13 seats that have populations of 10 per cent more than the state average of about 48,500, and the 15 fastest growing suburban areas are located in Labor seats. Almost 40 of the 45 electorates with the greatest number of children, many of whom will soon be of voting age, are Labor-held.”

In this video, we shine the spotlight on the Wyndham City Council, one of the fastest growing councils in Australia. The Census Data show that since 2006, there has been an influx of Indian ancestry migrants in the Tarneit and Truganina areas. The second largest migrant group is the Chinese community residing predominately in Point Cook and Sanctuary Lakes. Recent State election results show that the voting pattern in Tarneit and Truganina strongly favour the Labor Party. The Labor Party has traditionally picked up the migrant vote.

The electoral prospects for the Liberal Party would increase where a new district is created with the boundaries surrounding Point Cook and Werribee South. An analysis of the 2019 federal election booths suggest that a district with the combination of Point Cook, Seabrook and Werribee South, has the potential to be a future marginal seat. A cross section of the booths may only require a 5% swing for the Liberal Party to lead the primary vote. However many factors need to go right for the Victorian Liberal Party. The lead up and the course of a campaign would require strong engaging leadership, appealing policy plan and a return to the Liberal Party’s root cause; Representing the unrepresented: The Forgotten People. The foundational message has been lost in recent decades.

The last time the Liberal Party came close to winning in the Western suburbs was when Trish Vejby missed out on winning the Werribee District by approximately 500 votes in 1996. At that time Jeff Kennett was at the peak of his influence. Trish was a great local campaigner and may have won if the issue of a proposed Toxic waste dump had not damaged her campaign late in the election.

 

The link to the Power BI data is below. I’m happy to take suggestions on the City Council you’d like to see next? If there is any particular visualization you’d like to see, please let me know by either commenting on this page or commenting on the YouTube page. I’ll see what I can do.

Onwards and Upwards!

 

Link to the Power BI Data below

https://app.powerbi.com/view?r=eyJrIjoiNzNkN2Y3MjEtMDRhMC00YTE4LWI0MjQtNWEzNDI4MGI2MTVmIiwidCI6ImQ4NWRjZmI0LWE4MTYtNDFkZi1iNDlhLTYzM2ZmYThiY2I1NSJ9

Reference Article: https://www.theage.com.au/national/victoria/the-future-is-not-in-toorak-and-portsea-libs-face-election-rout-as-seats-scrapped-20210102-p56rbj.html

Data Sources

2016 Federal Election – AEC Tally Room

2019 Federal Election – AEC Tally Room

Home | City of Wyndham | Community profile (id.com.au)

The 5 steps of the Marxist Sales Pitch

The writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels laid the foundations for revolutionary socialist and communist movements. Early in the 20th century Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov (Lenin), catapulted the political theory into the mainstream with the creation of the Soviet Union governed by the Soviet Communist Party.  Mao Zedong, Pol Pot and Fidel Castro are perhaps the most well-known communist revolutionaries that followed.

The turmoil, death and social upheaval experienced with Communist revolutions and the destructive force of the wars fought to resist the “red tide” are well documented. Importantly, influential democratic societies withstood the efforts of Marxist sympathisers in the 20th century.

However the threat of Marxist ideology has never been eliminated from western academic, political or government bureaucracies. The political activist of today that promote equality of outcome, representational quotas, the undermining of religious faith, the abolishment of nationality and nationalism and the undermining of the family unit can all find their roots in Marxist philosophy.

Given the undeniable destructive power of Marxist ideology as experienced in the 20th century, the question begs; how did that 1847 pamphlet become so persuasive and compelling as to influence the direction of society and to still have relevance in the 21st century?    

It begins with a lie.

The False Dichotomy – Bourgeois and Proletarians

The communist manifesto ends with the words “workingmen of all the countries, unite!” but how does the pamphlet begin?

Karl Marx’s Manifesto of the Communist Party positions and sell the ideology of a utopian society where “the theory of the communist may be summed up in the single sentence: abolishment of private property.”

Any influential sales copy begins with a statement of an agreeable problem. From the agreeable problem is the cascade of the emotional toll manifested by the problem that in turn emphasises the requirement of action.  The solution is then proposed and positioned as the only natural course of action.

In the first chapter Bourgeois and Proletarians, Karl Marx’s communist sales pitch begins by positioning the class struggle. The class struggle as defined by Marx is the battle between the oppressor and the oppressed. The struggle is positioned as the one constant battle throughout the history of mankind.

Marx seeks to appeal to the everyday person he describes as the Proletarians, by splitting society into definable groups. Marx positions the proletariat as the victim of a broad conspiracy of oppression.

Marx names the oppressors as the Bourgeois.

Interestingly, Marx defines the roots of Bourgeois as the chartered burghers that sprang from the “serfs of the middle ages”. That’s right, the Bourgeois themselves originate from the slaves of feudal lords.    The outcome of the raise of the Bourgeois class according to Marx is that it “has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations” and “pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his “natural superiors””.

Let’s stop for a minute and take stock of the political and social climate of 1847 Europe.

The Manifesto of the Communist Party was written in 1847.  What were the living conditions in respects to 1847 City of London where Marx resided? Sanitation standards were poor, raw sewage poured onto streets and into the Thames. The busy thoroughfares were covered in horse excrement, cholera outbreaks were common and childhood mortality rates were high. The unrepresented were still being convicted and transported to the penal colony of Australia for petty crimes. 

Not until the 1867 Representations of the People Act did the right to vote increase in significant numbers. Even after the 1867 Act, less than 20% of the population were eligible to vote. To qualify for the rights to vote, a citizen had to own property to the value of £10 or paid rent to the value of £10 per year.

France had experienced revolutions followed by authoritarian regimes and Germany was in effect a Confederation of Principalities.

The social and political fabric of Europe was evolving. Europe was slowing freeing itself from the backward societal hierarchies of the middle ages consisting of Feudal Lords, Vassals, Guild masters, Journey-man and Serfs.

While Europe was in the process of breaking the shackles of feudal society, Marx in his Communist Manifesto is romanticising the restrictive social structures of the middle-ages. Marx points the blame of the 19th century social challenges at the feet of the industrious freed serfs, otherwise known as the bourgeois. In Marx’s own words, “the bourgeois has played a most revolutionary role in history”

Marx viewed the bourgeois as the instigators of social change that had to be stopped.

Marx seeks to solve the challenges faced in everyday society and the social change driven by technology and industrious individuals with the “stability” of organised mass communes.

The question begs, who is Marx writing for? Who benefits from a commune society that resembles a feudal system? Who benefits from the abolishment of the bourgeois class, the freed serfs?

The Marxist Sales Pitch

Marx’s persuasive introduction of the Communist utopian ideology is based on the plausible affirmation of his ideas. The Marxist sales pitch can be unpacked into five steps.

  1. Manage the focus of the target audience by promoting and positioning favourable statements of plausible affirmation.

Define the emotive problem and context.

The initial paragraphs of the Communist manifesto establish the highly emotive issue of class struggle. The class struggle is positioned as the one societal ill that gives birth to all the troubles of the proletarian. This issue and context as defined by Marx did not need be factually correct, the narrative only requires plausible affirmation.

2. Divide the masses into competing groups

Create as sense of divide in society by defining antagonistic groups, in Marx’s case it’s the proletarians and the bourgeois. These groups need not have any actual tension and they may even be historical kinsmen. ( The bourgeois originate as freed serfs, the original freed workers of servitude.) The division of society again does not require actual facts. Marx ignores any benefit to society from the positive relations between the groups. Only the plausible existence of the competing antagonistic groups is required to underline the social proof of an actionable problem.  

3. Identify the target as the victim of a conspiracy

You, the proletariat masses are the victim of the oppressors. Position the oppressors as an organised collective, working together in secret against your interests. Again, facts and truth is not required by Marx, only the emotional hook of plausible affirmation. 

4. Identify the enemy and define their immorality

Define the immorality of the oppressor and provide no avenue for redemption, positive attributes and philosophy or mindset of the enemy for society. The oppressor must be viewed with contempt. The oppressor in the case of Marx’s manifesto is the Bourgeois. According to Marx, the Bourgeois have diminished all human relations to naked self-interest and callous “cash payments”.

5. Propose a solution referencing and romanticising a by gone era of stability and eliminate all things represented by the “Enemy”

Romanticise a by gone era, ignore all negative attributes associated with the by gone era, and give no credit or acknowledgement of any positive aspects of competing ideas.

Actively undermine and erase any positive contribution of the named “oppressor” to the development of society.

Propose a solution of “idyllic relations” that resemble the “proven” structures of the by gone era. Replace the current era with new era where society is freed from the responsibility of private property, family bonds and the constraints of nationality or positive cultural norms.

In Marx’s case, it is the natural feudal ties that bound man to his superiors that requires reinstatement along with the elimination of the bourgeois and the abolishment of private property. The proletarian will be in utopia being governed by their unaccountable and unelected feudal lords. Freedom, responsibility and private property was never required in the idyllic world of feudal serfdom.

Marxist ideas and methods are still very useful for political activist of today.  The five steps of the Marxist sales pitch can be mapped to 21st century Neo Marxist causes, that promote equality of outcome, representational quotas, the undermining of religious faith, the abolishment of nationality and nationalism and the undermining of the family unit to name a few. Truth and critical examination of facts is not required in Marxist methods, it begins with framing an emotive problem in a false dichotomy, underpinned by plausible affirmation of a narrative to drive society towards an authoritative “utopia”.

The next blog will explore Karl Marx the man. Who was he?  What did he do with his life? How may have he arrived with his views?

Australia Day: A Triumph of the Human Spirit and The Australian Way

In recent times January 26th , 1788 has been portrayed as tragic day in Australian history. In some respects it is.

The date is a chronological bookmark on the inception of the Australian Spirit, the triumph of the Australian character in the face of tragedies, adversities and hardships to come.

In the days prior to the January 26th 1788, eleven ships of prisoners arrived in a foreign country. The convicts on board were to commence their harsh sentence for petty crimes.

By today’s standards to suggest their sentence of transportation was unfairly disproportionate is a simplistic understatement.

Most of the prisoners were condemned never to see their place of birth, family or loved ones ever again. Many did not survive the journey or the brutality of 18th and 19th century penal settlements. Over the next 80 years, 150,000 unfortunate souls were forcibly transported to serve sentences for minor crimes in the inhospitable penal settlement of Australia.

As humans we can learn from our shared history, the brutality of world we live and as of that time, the tragedies yet to be experienced.

The guillotine of the French revolution were about to fall. Emperors and eunuchs were the norm in some cultures. The horror of Marxist and fascist ideologies that include mass murder, summary executions, mass starvation and gulags for political dissidents were yet to occur.

Tragedies of misguided human action check marked the lived experience of the 18th, 19th and 20th century. 

Australia was not immune. Australia also suffered in the name of misguided understanding of the human condition and relationships.

However through the loveless marriage of a penal colony and the Aboriginals and Torres straight islanders was the inception of new culture. The Australian culture.

The easy going, but direct, the “she’ll be right” because we’ll do it right, the ingenuity born of “have a go”, the trusting, friendly and open culture of Australia today is not in itself predominately European or Asian. It is a great Australian culture that was born of the arranged marriage of the penal settlement, native people and the immigrants who followed.

Much like ANZAC day, where Australian’s remember the sacrifice and triumph of the Australian spirit; the strength of the Australian personality forged in the adversity of a battle lost on the shores of Gallipoli.

Australia Day is a celebration of triumph of the human character.

Australia Day is the celebration of the Australian Spirit in the face of adversities, tragedies and hardships we’ve overcome.

Australia Day is a celebration of strength in the Australian character: The Australian Way.