1 Jan, 2004

I never like to miss the opportunity to mention some of the history that you are never told in school so please have a glance at the short list of similar quotations below:

"The Congress therefore declares that it recognises the primary and fundamental task of our Party, of the entire vanguard of the class-conscious proletariat and of Soviet power, to be the adoption of the most energetic, ruthlessly determined and Draconian measures to improve the self-discipline and discipline of the workers and peasants of Russia, to explain the inevitability of Russia's historic advance towards a socialist, patriotic war of liberation, to create everywhere soundly co-ordinated mass organisations held together by a single iron will".

(A quotation from a speech that Lenin gave in the earliest days of Bolshevik power. No pussy-footing there: "Draconian measures" to discipline the workers and the need to bend them to "a single iron will". It is well in line with Hegel's vision of an antlike future for humanity but pitiless power is its its theme and respect for the individual is not even thought of).

Compare it with this famous political ideal:

"Tutto nello Stato, niente al di fuori dello Stato, nulla contro lo Stato" (Everything in the State, nothing outside the State, nothing against the State)

That, of course was Mussolini's definition of Fascism. And how about this?

"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Fuehrer" (One State, One People, One Leader).

That was of course the central Nazi slogan. There's not a dime's worth of difference between them all so far, is there? And how about this:

"If we are to go forward we must move as a trained and loyal army willing to sacrifice for the good of a common discipline, because, without such discipline, no progress is made, no leadership becomes effective. We are, I know, ready and willing to submit our lives and property to such discipline because it makes possible a leadership which aims at a larger good".

So who said that? It's mainstream Fascism/Marxism, isn't it? Totally submerging the individual into an army that works only for the common good rather than individual good. It is an excerpt from the First Inaugural Address of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, still probably the favourite President of American Leftists.

So where did they all get their ideas about converting humanity into a colony of ants? It came in part from this guy:

"The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State"

That was of course from Manifesto of the Communist Party by K. Marx and F. Engels but old Karl was not a very original thinker. The only thing that made his writing popular with certain people was his constant undertone of rage, hatred and contempt. The man both he and Engels looked to for the source of their ideas was this near-incomprehensible German philosopher:

"We have considered subjective volition where it has an object which is the truth and essence of a reality, viz. where it constitutes a great world-historical passion. As a subjective will, occupied with limited passions, it is dependent, and can gratify its desires only within the limits of this dependence. But the subjective will has also a substantial life -- a reality, -- in which it moves in the region of essential being, and has the essential itself as the object of its existence. This essential being is the union of the subjective with the rational will: it is the moral whole, the state, which is that form of reality in which the individual has and enjoys his freedom; but on the condition of his recognizing, believing in and willing that which is common to the whole. And this must not be understood as if the subjective will of the social unit attained its gratification and enjoyment through that common will; as if this were a means provided for its benefit; as if the individual, in his relations to other individuals, thus limited his freedom, in order that this universal limitation -- the mutual constraint of all -- might secure a small space of liberty for each. Rather, we affirm, are law, morality, government, and they alone, the positive reality and completion of freedom. Freedom of a low and limited order, is mere caprice; which finds its exercise in the sphere of particular and limited desires.

The excerpt is from an essay called "The Nature of Spirit" by G.W.F. Hegel (1770-1831). And I have highlighted in red what I think are the most significant phrases. Hegel's basic idea is to redefine "freedom" to mean its opposite. THE STATE is the essential reality and embodies all of human progress. And we are free only when we are all merged into a common will within the State. So the ultimate freedom is the freedom of the ant -- freedom to march happily and voluntarily in lockstep with everybody else. Any other freedom is "of a low and limited order" and "mere caprice".

So you see that the Leftist love of the State and contempt for the individual never changes. And you see that Communism, Fascism and "democratic" Leftism are at heart all the same.



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