TIME TO WAKE UP
friend of many years standing has sent me an essay written by his
21-year-old grandson, now entering his final post-graduate year. It
purports to establish that Capitalism and human survival on Planet
Earth are utterly and totally incompatible
It is replete with bibliographical references and citations from
learned texts and papers, all of which support the essay's assertions
together constituting cast-iron proof of their seemingly irrefutable
truth.
To my shame, I sent my friend an angry refutation of the essay's
thesis as a whole, and of every contentious idea it incorporated
When my ire settled, however, I reflected on what had passed, and
recognised that this young man (i) had written clearly and expressed
his points coherently; (ii) had uncritically reproduced the malignant
assertions planted in his mind by course lecturers (for which he had
been awarded A-pluses); and (ii) needed guidance - not castigation
on how to exercise reason.
Exercising reason - not easy!
However, the transition from swallowing fashionable beliefs to a
reasoned position is not smooth, and in many cases never achieved
As a youngster in South Africa I had no idea that both my parents
were dyed-in-the-wool communists. Indeed I didn't know the
meaning of that word. My parents, to their eternal credit, were also
committed anti-apartheid activists, but on both counts their beliefs
held much danger under the prevailing Nationalist regime.
Understandably, therefore, they shielded my sisters and me from
politically-charged disclosures.
Only much later, when living in England, was I able to debate such
matters openly with my parents. But by then I had taken the trouble
to read Marx's "Communist Manifesto" - and confessed to a genuine
puzzlement. How could two such intelligent people (and the coterie
of fellow travellers that formed their inner circle of friends) swallow
the palpably mad features that purported to describe an ideal state?
According to the Manifesto (and if you find this incredible, please
read it for yourself) the "dangerous classes" who, for example, have become tainted by running even small family businesses, are to be
swept asunder by the only class that counts, the proletariat; the
notion of "family is to be abolished in favour ofa "community
women" cocooned for the purpose of reproduction; private property
is to be confiscated and the very concept abolished; the notion of
inheritance is to be expunged; steeply progressive income taxes must
be levied on anything that might be left; the distinction between town
and country must be abolished and replaced by a "more equable
distribution" of the population; and the means of production to be
taken over by the state in its entirety, without compensation.
And that's just for starters. I concluded that all this represented the
rabid rants of an unhinged brain, over-ripe for the asylum. Rational
criticism is quite impossible when the very premises are riddled with
contradiction.
My father never explained, still less sought to justify, his personal
migration from being a "proletarian" employee in Pretoria; then
founder of a successful commercial business; and finally a property
owner with a large house in Hampstead - all the while never
demurring from his core communist beliefs.
Blindness of disbelief
On one occasion, a close Israeli friend, a professor of Soviet military
studies at Jerusalem University, was visiting shortly after Nikita
Kruschev's 1956 address to the 20th Congress of the Communist
Party, when - shock, horror! - he denounced Joseph Stalin and laid
bare the most gruesome features of his rule, including the deaths of
innocent millions under his ruthless collectivisation programme of
enforced labour. When our professor friend pointed out, with some
authority, that Stalin had been responsible for the murder of far
greater numbers than Hitler, my parents stormed out of the room in
disgust. Stalin had always been their idol, and their disbelief was
total.
This, of course, was all part of my own education. It showed me that
when an idea takes root, and exercises a sufficiently powerful hold on
the human psyche, it will not easily be shifted, even in the face of
overwhelming contradictory evidence. [For another example, just
look at David Irving's lifelong denial that the holocaust ever took
place!] Even when ideas are revealed, in the light of reason, to be utterly ill-
conceived, later generations are not spared the necessity of seeing
this for themselves. In the UK's present tussle for political coherence,
the Labour Party, the nation's official opposition in Parliament, is
afflicted with a malaise so debilitating that the party has been
rendered dysfunctional for any useful purpose.
The Corbyn syndrome
Leader Jeremy Corbyn repeats inane platitudes such as "This
demonstration shows just how determined all of us are to achieve a
better world. " That was shouted at last weeks' anti-Trump London
demonstration, but he might just as easily have blurted it out when
attending a Hamas or Hezbollah memorial for terminated terrorists
or when speaking in honour of Madura or Chavez of Venezuela, or the
late lamented Fidel Castro, or in honouring Chairman Mao's "Great
Leap Forward"
Corbyn has surrounded himself with like-minded satraps such as
Andrew Murray (an avowed communist who worked for the Soviet
news agency) and his "director of communications and strategy"
Seumas Milne, who succeeds only in communicating confused
messages, and whose strategy is to instruct every office-holder to
mouth: "We are a democratic party and our policies will be decided in
Conference in September".
The German WWIl outcome
No doubt these stooges were delighted by the comment of the
Russian foreign affairs ministry a few days ago: "The Normandy
landings were not a game-changer for the outcome of WWII. The
outcome was determined by the Red Army's victories.
Well, maybe - but why don't they reflect on what actually followed?
In West Germany, democracy, industry and civil freedom helped it to
become an economic powerhouse; while East Germany, under Soviet
military control, endured nearly 50 years of dictatorship and
depression.
nd oanks now ruling
No doubt many of the superannuated cranks now ruling Her
Majesty's Opposition even today yearn for the East German hell-hole
that, in their addled brains, was a workers' paradise - despite the
certainty that any of those workers attempting to cross to the West
were shot by the Stasi on the Berlin Wall. Persistent Soviet allegiance
As I say, even these most obvious lessons have to be learnt afresh by
every generation. I had to overcome a fair amount of parental
baggage by applying some individual reasoning. As highlighted by
Dominic Lawson in the Sunday Times, Corbyn had a communist
father too, a donor to the Stalinist "Daily Worker", the Communist
Party's official organ - now called the "Morning Star", and Jeremy's
favourite daily paper
Back in 1939, in the wake of the Nazi-Soviet pact, the Daily Worker
parroted Stalin's line in the carve-up of Poland, effectively siding with
Berlin. In 1941 Herbert Morrison closed down the paper when it held
that WWII was a British imperialist conspiracy against a blameless
Berlin.
I don't know whether Jeremy Corbyn ever read the Communist
Manifesto - it is rumoured that he has never been known to read a
book in his life - but neither he nor any of his purblind acolytes has
ever explained why China succeeded in escaping from mass poverty
only when it embraced so many key elements of a capitalist society
and abandoned the economics of socialism.
When confronted on this very point by Andrew Marr, Corbyn again
demonstrated his real colours by responding, predictably, that the
more impressive achievement was Mao Tse-tung's "Great Leap
Forward" - the verbal travesty that actually connoted the forced
collectivisation of agriculture that led to starvation and death of over
40 million Chinese.
If this is the moron who rises from the Westminster swamp to lead
this country you will not be able to say you didn't know. Treat it, as I
did, as an important part of your education.