Richard Wagner (1813-1883)

I believe in God, Mozart and Beethoven, and likewise their disciples and apostles; - I believe in the Holy Spirit and the truth of the one, indivisible Art; - I believe that this Art proceeds from God, and lives within the hearts of all illumined men; - I believe that he who once has bathed in the sublime delights of this high Art, is consecrate to Her for ever, and never can deny Her; - I believe that through Art all men are saved.

Sheet music: Richard Wagner

Mark Twain (Samuel L. Clemens) (1835-1910)

There are two kinds of Christian morals, one private and the other public. These two are so distinct, so unrelated, that they are no more akin to each other than are archangles and politicans. During three hundred and sixty-three days in the year the American citizen is true to his Christian private morals, and keeps undefiled the nation's character at its best and highest; then in the other two days of the year he leaves his Christian private morals at home and carries his Christian public morals to the tax office and the polls, and does the best he can to damage and undo his whole year's faithful and righteous work.

Books from Alibris: Mark Twain

Sojourner Truth (1797-1883)

Ain't I a Woman?

Well, children, where there is so much racket there must be something out of kilter. I think that 'twixt the negroes of the South and the women at the North, all talking about rights, the white men will be in a fix pretty soon. But what's all this here talking about?

That man over there says that women need to be helped into carriages, and lifted over ditches, and to have the best place everywhere. Nobody ever helps me into carriages, or over mud-puddles, or gives me any best place! And ain't I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have ploughed and planted, and gathered into barns, and no man could head me! And ain't I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man - when I could get it - and bear the lash as well! And ain't I a woman? I have borne thirteen children, and seen most all sold off to slavery, and when I cried out with my mother's grief, none but Jesus heard me! And ain't I a woman?

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? (member of audience whispers, "intellect") That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.

Obliged to you for hearing me, and now old Sojourner ain't got nothing more to say. - A speech by Sojourner Truth, delivered 1851 at the Women's Convention in Akron, Ohio.

Books from Alibris: Sojourner Truth

Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)

If there existed no external means for dimming their consciences, one-half of the men would at once shoot themselves, because to live contrary to one's reason is a most intolerable state, and all men of our time are in such a state.

Books from Alibris: Leo Tolstoy

Henry David Thoreau (1817-1862)

For what are the classics but the noblest thoughts of man? They are the only oracles which are not decayed, and there are such answers to the most modern inquiry in them as Delphi and Dodona never gave. We might as well omit to study Nature because she is old.

Books from Alibris: Henry David Thoreau

William Makepeace Thackeray (1811-1863)

If a secret history of books could be written, and the author's private thoughts and meanings noted down alongside of his story, how many insipid volumes would become interesting, and dull tales excite the reader!

Books from Alibris: William Makepeace Thackeray

Harriet Elizabeth Beecher Stowe (1811-1896)

Let us all resolve, first, to attain the grace of silence; second, to deem all fault-finding that does no good a sin, and to resolve, when we are ourselves happy, not to poison the atmosphere for our neighbors by calling upon them to remark every painful and disagreeable feature in their daily life, third, to practice the grace and virtue of praise.

Books from Alibris: Harriet Beecher Stowe

Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle) (1783-1842)

Politics in a literary work, is like a gun shot in the middle of a concert, something vulgar, and however, something which is impossible to ignore.

Books from Alibris: Stendhal

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797-1851)

I do not wish them to have power over men, but over themselves.

Books from Alibris: Mary Shelley

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

It is only a man's own fundamental thoughts that have truth and life in them. For it is these that he really and completely understands. To read the thoughts of others is like taking the remains of someone else's meal, like putting on the discarded clothes of a stranger.

Books from Alibris: Schopenhauer

Dante Gabriel Rossetti (1828-1882)

My Sister's Sleep (1848)

For my part, I but hid my face, / And held my breath, and spoke no word: / There was none spoken; but I heard / The silence for a little space. / Our mother bowed herself and wept: / And both my arms fell, and I said, / 'God knows I knew that she was dead.' / And there, all white, my sister slept.

Books from Alibris: Dante Gabriel Rossetti

Christina Rossetti (1830-1894)

Who has seen the wind? Neither you nor I but when the trees bow down their heads, the wind is passing by.

Books from Alibris: Christina Rossetti

Jules Henri Poincare (1854-1912)

The scientist does not study nature because it is useful. He studies it because he delights in it, and he delights in it because it is beautiful.

Books from Alibris: Poincare

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)

Wherever there are walls I shall inscribe this eternal accusation against Christianity upon them- I can write in letters which make even the blind see . . . I call Christianity the one great curse, the one great intrinsic depravity, the one great instinct for revenge for which no expedient is sufficiently poisonous, secret, subterranean, petty- I call it the one immortal blemish of mankind.

Books from Alibris: Nietzsche

John Henry Newman (1801-1890)

Virtue is its own reward, and brings with it the truest and highest pleasure; but if we cultivate it only for pleasure's sake, we are selfish, not religious, and will never gain the pleasure, because we can never have the virtue.

Books from Alibris: John Henry Newman

Susanna Moodie (1803-1885)

I have no wish for a second husband. I had enough of the first. I like to have my own way to lie down mistress, and get up master.

Books from Alibris: Susanna Moodie

John Stuart Mill (1806-1873)

Quotation

A person may cause evil to others not only by his actions but by his inaction, and in either case he is justly accountable to them for the injury.

Books

Please browse our Amazon list of titles about John Stuart Mill. For rare and hard to find works we recommend our Alibris list of titles about John Stuart Mill.

Research

Lecture: Liberty and Political Correctness
Lecture: The Subjection of Women
COPAC UK: John Stuart Mill
Library of Canada Search Form
Library of Congress: John Stuart Mill
Other Library Catalogs: John Stuart Mill

Biographical

As an important liberal thinker of the 19th Century, John Stuart Mill focused on the conflict between liberal democracy and democratic political equality by looking at capitalism with a human face and positing that the political process can subdue the excesses of capitalism. His vision was one of progress through capitalism controlled by democratic politics - and a critical response to the taxation and labor focused political economy of David Ricardo. Mill argued that achieving a capitalist consensus takes time and that four things are needed for this consensus. First, we must develop improvements in the standard of living overall; there should be no huge gaps between classes. Second there must be a perception of upward mobility for enough people so as not to develop a caste system. Third, liberal democratic nation-states should grant a minimum amount of reforms to be legitimate and not be considered elitist. Finally, the old goals must be destroyed and replaced with a vision of a different and future life that provides betterment for everyone.

These old goals he wanted replaced was the utilitarian notion of happiness through the accumulation of stuff. Mill opposed this notion and began to reject the utilitarian rational thinking after his nervous breakdown that was brought about when Mill asked himself, "What would happen when all my goals are realized?"

From this, Mill plunged himself into the writings of the German Idealists and the French political thinkers. He began to reject egoism and then looked at the lower class' plight, the problem of democracy and the question of socialism. From this he began to see the human face of capitalism, which he thought to be the most productive and, thus, best and inevitable, system of economy. However, he saw that the distribution of the product was the problem. He countered this problem by positing that an interventionist popular democracy can control hardships through programs such as social security pensions, equal opportunity, public education, and better roads and housing all made possible by taxation of the wealthy which would also bring political stability. This almost utopian vision held that the free contract system of the time was unfair and that it was not so much "free contract" as it was slavery. The worker's remuneration was simply not proportional to their exertion thus he thought the system needed alterations to provide equitable proportions.

Mill was also interested in such life betterment reforms as profit sharing and producer owned cooperatives. However, he did not think of socialism as a viable solution because of the egoism inherent in mankind. Mill proved insensitive to the inequalities of capitalism in that he thought the lower classes could be made smaller through population control. His theory of "trickle down" economics did prove to a higher standard of living for all, but as it pushed the GNP outward, it widened the gap between the working class and the elite. Furthermore, while an idea of upward mobility may have been perceived, the actual problem of inequality never actually went away. This view continues to inspire capitalist parties, who are less sensitive to outcome inequality than socialist parties, and emphasize instead equal opportunity. The basic conflict between views of Mill and David Ricardo is still considered to have begun the modern debates on political economy.

The life of John Stuart Mill

John Stuart Mill was born on the 20th of May 1806 in his fathers house in Pentonville, London. He was given an extremely rigorous upbringing by his father, James Mill, a strict disciplinarian. His feats as a child were exceptional; at the age of three was taught the Greek alphabet and long lists of Greek words with their English equivalents. By age 8 he had read Aesop's Fables, Xenophon's Anabasis, and the whole of Herodotus, and was acquainted with Lucian, Diogenes Laërtius, Isocrates and six dialogues of Plato (see his Autobiography). He had also read a great deal of history in English. A contemporary record of Mill's studies from eight to thirteen is published in Bain's sketch of his life. It suggests that his autobiography rather understates the amount of work done! At the age of eight he began Latin, Euclid, and algebra, and was appointed schoolmaster to the younger children of the family. His main reading was still history, but he went through all the Latin and Greek authors commonly read in the schools and universities at the time. He was not taught to compose either in Latin or in Greek, and he was never an exact scholar; it was for the subject matter that he was required to read, and by the age of ten he could read Plato and Demosthenes with ease. His father's History of India was published in 1818; immediately thereafter, about the age of twelve, John began a thorough study of the scholastic logic, at the same time reading Aristotle's logical treatises in the original. In the following year he was introduced to political economy and studied Adam Smith and Ricardo with his father - ultimately completing their classical economic view of factors of production. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on John Stuart Mill.]


Liberty and Political Correctness
Russell McNeil, PhD (Copyright 2005)
[Logos Exclusive]

In this lecture I plan to offers an analysis the institutional Human Rights protections that are accorded to minorities from what has come to be known as harassment by the use of policies that are clearly designed under specific circumstances to restrict free and unlimited expression of opinion. How would Mill respond to those policies? Would he agree?

Malaspina Policy and the Human Rights Code

Such policies refer at times to zero toleration for certain opinions which because of their nature have the effect of silencing some while restricting human liberty to a privileged majority.

There are several ways of tackling this: Call discriminatory remarks malicious and thus harmful -- as something analogous to libel: If I call you a murderer and know you are not, you could sue me for libel: a malicious act. Or, I could still classify discriminatory remarks as opinion, but harmful opinion -- analogous to yelling fire in a crowded theater. I will maintain that Mill offers sufficient justification for restrictions in the latter case for two reasons:

1) Permitting the expression of discriminatory opinion can seriously limit the sovereign exercise of the individual liberties targeted minorities. 2) Minority protections contribute to the liberty of a society as a whole by enabling a freer expression of more points of view, more opportunities for the expression of genius in Mill's sense, and more opportunities for the reconciliation of discordant opinions.

Such restrictions are often cynically characterized as political correctness. However, the phrase political correctness is itself a reactionary and undermining term coined by those for whom such measures have been designed. It suggests in its usage that the measures designed to extend to minorities protections enjoyed by the majority are somehow offensive and restrictive to those who must practice them.

Mill's essay is guided by two maxims:

First, the individual is not accountable to society for his actions in so far as these concern the interests of no person but himself ...

Second, the individual is accountable for such actions as are prejudicial to the interests of others, and may be subjected either to social or to legal punishments, if society is of opinion that the one or the other is requisite for its protection.

These maxims afford a great deal of social discretion. What actions are prejudicial to the interests of others? What does Mill mean by prejudicial?

He guides us in his opening remarks:

The object of this Essay is to assert one very simple 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. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others.

Mill also says:

Over himself, over his own body and mind (emphasis added), the individual is sovereign.

So, we are sovereign and free as individuals, insofar as no harm is done to others. The greatest threat to this individual sovereignty according to Mill is the despotism of opinion or the tyranny of the majority. Mill's discussion hinges on where to place the limit between social controls and individual independence.

Is this clear? You are accountable to no one except yourself for actions that concern only yourself. However you may be held accountable for actions that harm others physically, psychologically or morally. While it seems clear that Mill would mean harm as physical harm but would he be disposed to also include what we now call psychological or even moral harm?

Now, Mill says if any one does an act hurtful to others, there is a prima facie case for punishing him, by law, or, where legal penalties are not safely applicable, by general disapprobation. But that does not mean that sanctions are always necessary -- or prudent. The harm must be unduly damaging and it must -- as I will touch on later -- be clearly without justifiable cause, in other words clearly malicious.

Obviously this whole program must then hang on the nature of harm. What constitutes harm? When does harm unduly restrict someone's right to sovereignty?

Harm to body is fairly easy to deal with. The state has a right to protect us from being murdered and to punish those who do. The state may also have a right to protect all of us from actions that threaten our general health through environmental legislation or pollution controls or product labeling.

On the other hand, in Mill's analysis, society has no right to prevent us from snorting cocaine, bungy jumping, or practicing unsafe sex, although it may have a duty to inform us of the risks. Becoming a coke addict, breaking our necks, or acquiring AIDS, would indeed restrict our personal sovereignty; but these are free choices available to us all. Yes, there are social costs involved for all of us caused by the free choices some make in entering into these risks, but these are ways and means available to society offset or minimize those costs through taxation and education, for example.

But what about psychological harm, i.e. the harm done to the mind? What social or legal restrictions should we consider limit this? Well, Mill does say we have sovereignty there too. Clearly then if we can show that others can unduly do harm to our mind -- again without justifiable cause -- then a prima facie can be made for restrictions here as well! I will now attempt to do that.

To what extent is the sovereignty of a woman, a member of a visible minority, an old person, a gay person, a disabled person, or a member of a disadvantaged economic class, affected or threatened by living, and working within a social climate in which the language of racism, ageism, homophobia or classism is unrestricted? These are a few of the areas afforded workplace protections under University College and Provincial statutes.

All of us are free to hold and develop any opinion we choose -- no matter how immoral. But we are not free to act on all of our opinions, particularly in a milieu where we have undertaken a distinct and assignable obligation to prevent physical or psychological mischief to others.

The workplace and the university are just such places where we explicitly offer employment and opportunity for learning to all people irrespective of race, religion or gender. When we talk that talk we must be prepared to walk that walk. It is NOT self-regarding to act in all of my opinions in an environment where such guarantees are maintained. But should it be subject to more that social approbation. Should it be subject to legal prohibition?

Is it in other words harmful in the sense Mill means? And hamful enough to be subject to legal prohibition and not simply social prohibition? There is clear evidence that minorities subjected to psychological harassment -- subtle and sophisticated as it can be - when it is exercised by an advantaged elite with the power to hire or fire, pass or fail -- are genuinely disadvantaged in the exercise of their personal freedoms.

Consequently, a number of initiatives have been designed to extend to minorities the psychological safety from harassment that white males, in particular and for historical reasons, have long enjoyed. This how those who frame these protections argue. It is therefore appropriate to develop local workplace rules and standards applicable to behavior in the workplace that minimize workers and clients exposure to potential harm. Women, and minorities, in particular face psychological risks in the performance of their jobs that place them at a decided disadvantage in the performance of their jobs - if exposed to social biases that might be tolerated within the society at large.

I certainly may be a racist or misogynist at home, but my employer has every right to restrict the free expression of my opinions in this regard in the workplace in order to provide a safer working or learning environment for all employees. It is also incidentally in the interest of the employer to do this to maximize the productivity of his work force by creating conditions that allow both physical and psychological safety.

How then can such restrictionsl be consistent with Mill's idea of liberty? And where do we draw the line between opinion and harassment.

Mill clearly has high regard for the sanctity of opinion:

There ought to exist the fullest liberty of professing and discussing, as a matter of ethical conviction, any doctrine, however immoral it may be considered.

Unless such opinions cause harm and harm sufficient to justify their prohibition. Now, is it possible to see that opinionated isms (racism, classism, ageism, homophobia, etc.) when acted upon in the workplace as no longer in the domain of opinion but in the category of mischief? Let's draw again on Mill:

Acts of whatever kind, which, without justifiable cause, do harm to others, may be, and in the more important cases absolutely require to be, controlled by the unfavorable sentiments, and, when needful, by the active interference of mankind.

Can blatant homophobia and other isms be regarded in this light? Can they be viewed as forms of systematic oppression undertaken by privileged classes to maintain social power by silencing those they perceive might in some way undermine that power? If seen in that light, such isms might be regarded as opinions in name only. In reality then these isms would be regarded as clever disguises for a continuation of the persecution and tyranny that Mill in his opening statements offers as the single greatest threat to individual sovereignty.

Persecution in the guise of opinion deprives individuals of their liberty because of its effect. It works. It silences and thereby removes from discourse individuals who by agreement -- workplace guarantees -- have an equal right to practice their livelihood or in the case of the College to develop their learning.

But what if this interpretation is wrong? Perhaps persecution is too strong a term. What if these isms are nothing more than immoral opinions? What does Mill say here?

Even opinions lose their immunity, when the circumstances in which they are expressed are such as to constitute their expression a positive instigation to some mischievous act.

Yelling fire in a crowded theatre is a mischievous act -- an opinion which loses its immunity because of the potential physical harm that that opinion could cause.

There was no fire. Yet, people are crushed in the panic to get out of the theatre.

Is the systematic silencing of a powerless minority equivalent to yelling fire in a crowded theatre? Some would argue that the 600 to 700 yearly homicides in a city like Detroit - the majority of which occur in the inner city and amongst minorities -- is a direct consequence of the systematic oppression and silencing of entire classes of people by a tyrannical majority.

Minority protection policies are designed to restrict the proclamations of opinions designed to silence. But is silencing -- in this sense -- really the psychological equivalent of yelling fire in a crowed theatre.

Mill does not in any place in On Liberty say that the form of systematic psychological harm from mass silencing I am talking about in this lecture constitutes persecution. But Mill does speak about freedom of expression. And silenced minorities so affected do lose this freedom:

Mill again,

Unless opinions are expressed with equal freedom, and enforced and defended with equal talent and energy, there is no chance of both elements obtaining their due; one scale is sure to go up, and the other down.

The psychological harm is generally directed towards the devaluing of individuals who are targeted. Their opinions are not important. They need not be listened to. Political correctness - properly understood - is designed to protect those who might otherwise be removed from the process. Racism, homophobia, misogyny, economic classism and ageism (against both young and old) is intended to silence. Shut up! Go away! Get lost! You don't have the credentials. You don't have the intellectual skills, the economic status, the racial qualities, physical equipment or the sexual chromosomes to enter into the debate.

In this post Mill era we have learned more about how individuals respond to oppressive atmospheres and attitudes. Individuals subjected to systemic oppression begin to believe it is true. The external message that you are not worth much is internalized as a form of self measure. I must be worthless bad, incomplete, less human. My opinion really isn't worth very much is it? Silence is my best defense ... until frustrations are eventually acted out on the streets of Detroit -- and usually against those who are in the same boat.

This silencing has produced terrible social losses. Through this silencing, we have effectively excluded tens of millions of people from the process and project Mill envisages.

What can we do to ensure that opinions are not silenced and that all opinions are expressed with equal freedom? Provide social and if needed legal measures to restrict systematic oppression. Mill again:

When there are persons to be found, who form an exception to the apparent unanimity of the world on any subject, even if the world is in the right, it is always probable that dissidents have something worth hearing to say for themselves, and that truth would lose something by their silence.

Here is one example of one dissident who decided to speak.

Her name was Sojourner Truth. She was an illiterate black slave familiar with silencing and systematic persecution. Sadly, she was one of the few from her era who decided to speak. This short speech was delivered to a mainly white audience in Akron Ohio in 1851 and in response to a presentation by a minister who has just proffered the opinion that men were inherently superior to women -- because Christ was a man.

Then they talk about this thing in the head; what's this they call it? (member of audience whispers, "intellect") That's it, honey. What's that got to do with women's rights or negroes' rights? If my cup won't hold but a pint, and yours holds a quart, wouldn't you be mean not to let me have my little half measure full?

Then that little man in black there, he says women can't have as much rights as men, 'cause Christ wasn't a woman! Where did your Christ come from? Where did your Christ come from? From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with Him.

If the first woman God ever made was strong enough to turn the world upside down all alone, these women together ought to be able to turn it back , and get it right side up again! And now they is asking to do it, the men better let them.



- end -


The Subjection of Women
Russell McNeil, PhD (Copyright 2005)
[Logos Exclusive]

Framework of Argument

...the principle which regulates the existing social relations between the two sexes -- the legal subordination of one sex to the other -- is wrong itself, and now one of the chief hindrances to human improvement; and that it ought to be replaced by a principle of perfect equality, admitting no power or privilege on the one side, nor disability on the other...

Mill says then that the current situation is rooted in custom, and feeling -- Instinct rather than reason based on argument or experience. We might think that whenever opinions are based on such a shaky foundation that a solid reasoned argument against that opinion would be the best approach. Not so, says Mill. Those arguments are the toughest, because they are so ingrained in the psyche as prejudice.

So, his job, is to produce invincible positive arguments to prove a negative. It also has to be a reasoned argument -- tougher still because Mill lives in a period -- Romantic period - where the the apotheosis of Reason [has been] substituted with Instinct. He's clearly unhappy with this -- false worship of feelings. It makes his task that much more impossible. But, it does it anyway. Cleverly. Not by going for the opinion directly, but by providing evidence that those who hold the opinion [the judge] have been tampered with!

Perhaps, he starts off, the current master-slave power relation between men and women was the result of careful experimentation and reasoned deliberation. But, no! It's never been otherwise. It is simply the last vestige of what he calls the law of force or the law of the strongest! The stronger [physically] enslave the weaker [physically] in every way imaginable, because, and only because, they are stronger and they get away with it.

It is the last vestige of an old manner of behaviour: it was done to Greek slaves, the American black slaves, and conquered peoples in antiquity. But, although 2000 years of progressive thinking had demonstrated that those arrangements produced negative social consequences, we persist in this area to enslave, oppress, and subjugate women.

The idea that men actually had moral obligation to their slaves was first introduced by the Stoics, and reinforced by 2 millennia of Christian teaching: that the law of force was morally reprehensible. Still it persisted -- even after Plato, inspired by Spartan example, argued invincibly in the Republic that the social and political inequality of women was unjust.

Big deal? Perhaps the law of force is not so wrong? Mill looks at that. Perhaps it's based, as Aristotle may have suggested, in the nature of the relationships. Men and women have different natures and the master-slave dynamic is thus natural. It's an old horse. The KKK uses that one even now; it's been used to justify black-white, lord-serf, Greek-barbarian, wealthy-poor, North-South, oppressions since the beginning of time.

Mill offers some excellent psychological analysis of how the master-slave relationship works. The slave internalizes the perception -- believes it is true -- and acts the part.

If the Master-Slave relationship is so bad, why have women accepted this? Mill's answer is that the particular nature of this master-slave mitigates against rebellion: Men have conditioned women not to rebel: Men do not want solely the obedience of women, they want their sentiments. All men, except the most brutish, desire to have, in the woman most nearly connected with them, not a forced slave but a willing one, not a slave merely, but a favourite. They have therefore put everything in practice to enslave their minds. The social subordination of women thus stands out an isolated fact in modern social institutions; a solitary breach of what has become their fundamental law; a single relic of an old world of thought and practice exploded in everything else. It is in short a prejudice supported by nothing but existing arrangements and opinion.

Mill of course is appalled by all of this. Even if - a big if - women were all that different in nature from men -- some women would/could contribute it the ways men do -- and that alone would invalidate the forced arrangement then in place. But he goes further.

Is there a natural difference between men and women? We don't know. There is no good evidence. If there is a difference it isn't likely to be radical. The differences we seem to see are wholly artificial. They arise from unspeakable ignorance and inattention of mankind in respect to the influences which form human character. We are pretty goddamned stupid. History teaches us that. But Mill -- the cynic here -- says people are abysmally stupid in that regard too: in history, as in traveling, men usually see only what they already had in their own minds; and few learn much from history, who do not bring much with them to its study. I agree.

If there are differences between men and women, it is circumstance, culture, and education -- conditioning -- that determine differences -- if any. One thing we may be certain of -- that what is contrary to women's nature to do, they never will be made to do by simply giving their nature free play. The anxiety of mankind to interfere in behalf of nature, for fear lest nature should not succeed in effecting its purpose, is an altogether unnecessary solicitude. What women by nature cannot do, it is quite superfluous to forbid them from doing. What they can do, but not so well as the men who are their competitors, competition suffices to exclude them from.

Chapter II

In Chapter 2 Mill turns to marriage. It is in this institution Mill sees the more pernicious effects of the Master-Slave relationship. Women, Mill observes, suffer a worse fate than even a female slave. ...a female slave has (in Christian countries) an admitted right, and is considered under a moral obligation, to refuse to her master the last familiarity. Not so the wife: ... However brutal the husband might be, the current marriage contract allows ...him [to] claim from her and enforce the lowest degradation of a human being, that of being made the instrument of an animal function contrary to her inclinations. ... and the children of marriage are by law his children!

What could justify this? Very few people (by analogy) are really fit to rule in any context, let alone to rule like this over a partner in marriage. Natural justice agues in favor of the elimination of such rights of rule. For a model for marriage Mill offers the example of the business partnership, in which the divisions of responsibilities and duties is agreed to in advance. The benefits in marriage of an equitable contract based on equality include: that a good woman would not be more self-sacrificing than the best man ... [and] men would be much more unselfish and self-sacrificing than at present, because they would no longer be taught to worship their own will as such a grand thing that it is actually the law for another rational being. What is needed is, that it should be a school of sympathy in equality, of living together in love, without power on one side or obedience on the other.

Mill certainly does not blame Christianity, or the Epistles of Paul for the current love, honor and obey based marriage paradigm. It is true that Paul did say, as Mill reports: 'Wives, obey your husbands': but Paul also said, 'Slaves, obey your masters.' It was not [as Mill goes on] St. Paul's business, nor was it consistent with his object, the propagation of Christianity, to incite anyone to rebellion against existing laws. The injunction to obey the husband was Paul's interpretation of the Gospel injunction to render unto Caesar, the things that are Caesar's. How many generations of fundamentalists have misread these passages? The Christian paradigm is rooted in love, not power or earthly rebellion against power. It is precisely because Christianity has not done this, that it has been the religion of the progressive portion of mankind.

Other Jobs

In Chapter three Mill address the concept of harm or injury vis-a-vis the master-slave relationship. To deny women the equal moral right of all human beings to choose their occupation is not only harmful to those excluded, but harmful to society at large. As long therefore as it is acknowledged that even a few women may be fit for these duties, the laws which shut the door on those exceptions cannot be justified by any opinion which can be held respecting the capacities of women in general.

Mill offers several interesting example of women in history who excel: Catherine II, Catherine Medici, Aspasia (a teacher of Socrates), the poet Sappho, Myrtis (a teacher of Pindar), Mary Somerville (a self taught woman mathematician who Mill had known). Later he argues -- successfully I feel -- that where women in sufficient numbers -- are active -- professionally -- in any activity -- they excel as well as men.

Mill then offers something more, with respect to the idea of harm. By excluding women from active participation in the choice of occupation, society is deprived of what Mill refers to as the practical wisdom women have acquired -- not by nature -- but through their education and conditioning. It's sometimes called intuition but Mill does not suggest that what we call intuition is innate. It is a rapid and correct insight into present fact. It has nothing to do with general principles... Still, this skill would be an invaluable aid to those who engage in speculation and generalities. Men and women working in concert might achieve much more.

Women, Mill also argues are quicker at apprehension, a skill that allows us to draw the best possible conclusion from insufficient data. These skills together might suggest that these principles would make women more apt at engineering, medicine, law, and police work -- especially detective work.

Many women are saddled with a reputation for being highly strung, nervous, emotional, or hysterical. So be it. But, Mill of course argues that such traits are also conditioned, even encouraged. Much of the so-called neurotic character can be accounted for as the influence of bad food and lack of exercise. But even so, he argues that those characteristics are indeed an asset in many duties of life -- especially in positions of power, in teaching, in preaching, and in rhetoric. Plato called it spirit -- one of the divisions of both the soul and of the Republic! Strong feeling is the instrument and element of strong self-control: but it requires to be cultivated in that direction. When it is, it forms not the heroes of impulse only, but those also of self-conquest. Direct the spirit and society can only gain as a result.

Mill's follow-up analysis of the strongly and passionate spirited character traits seen in the Italians, the French, versus the blunted passions of the Germans, the English and the Swiss, ought not to be read as racist characterizations. They are offered as an analogy to the differences in spirit between men and women. The differing racial manifestations of spirit can be accounted for in careful comparisons of the cultural, educational and social traditions of these different countries. He offers Rome as a counter-example. The ancient Romans were less spirited than the Italians of today -- precisely because of the social conditioning built into the Roman republic. Touche!

Mill puts the lie to comparative anatomical differences in brain sizes between men and women by offering us the elephant and whale -- animals that by this argument ought to rule the earth.

The old saw that women are imitators -- not originators -- Mill counters by again offering the example of Rome. Were Greeks smarter than Romans? No! The Greeks came first. Rome followed. All intellectual history worked that way. The present is built on the past. Period. Why have there been so few women composers? Mill answers by reminding us that -- yes, many women do compose -- and play music -- but most are amateurs. And the genius in any field is indeed rare. He offers the Doctrine of averages as a response. If there is but woman professionally trained in composition for every 50 men (a reasonable ratio in 1869) then we might expect one great woman composer for every 50 men. But, there had been fewer than 50 truly great male composers in the three centuries prior to his writing this essay -- and indeed there were in fact at least two women who might fit the category: Fanny Mendolsshon and Clara Schumann during that period -- both contemporaries of Mill.

One awfully important point Mill offers -- and one I had never really thought too much about before -- is what he calls desire of celebrity. Something he says women rarely seek -- again because of differences in conditioning. The love of fame in men is encouraged by education and opinion: to "scorn delights and live laborious days" for its sake, is accounted the part of "noble minds," even if spoken of as their "last infirmity," and is stimulated by the access which fame gives to all objects of ambition, including even the favour of women. Hmmmmm!

Mill is funny in his critique of moral differences. It's one area where women are traditionally given the lead! Women are morally better. He sacks this one right away! [This is], he says, an empty compliment, which must provoke a bitter smile from every woman of spirit, since there is no other situation in life in which it is the established order, and considered quite natural and suitable, that the better should obey the worse.

In any event, It's easy for slaves to be moral. So let's put that nonsense to rest.

Chapter Four

The benefits of losing the Master-Slave relationship by substitution the Law of Force with equality and justice are outlined in Chapter 4. The first and obvious benefit is the elimination of the terrible suffering and abuse experienced by women.

The next benefit is a doubling of intellectual resources.

The third benefit is what Mill calls the softening influence of women. Those who were not taught to fight, have naturally inclined in favour of any other mode of settling differences rather than that of fighting. He offers an example. Women were powerfully instrumental in inducing the northern conquerors to adopt the creed of Christianity, a creed so much more favourable to women than any that preceded it.

Another benefit relates to men. A man who is married to a woman his inferior in intelligence, finds her a perpetual dead weight, or, worse than a dead weight, a drag, upon every aspiration of his to be better than public opinion requires him to be. It is hardly possible for one who is in these bonds, to attain exalted virtue. This injury would disappear if women were in equal relationships to men.

A final benefit is in the domain of relations generally. Unlikeness attracts, but likeness retains. Likeness draws out the latent capacities of each for being interested in the things which were at first interesting only to the other; and works a gradual assimilation of the tastes and characters to one another, partly by the insensible modification of each, but more by a real enriching of the two natures, each acquiring the tastes and capacities of the other in addition to its own. This often happens between two friends of the same sex, who are much associated in their daily life: and it would be a common, if not the commonest, case in marriage, did not the totally different bringing up of the two sexes make it next to an impossibility to form a really well-assorted union. Were this remedied, whatever differences there might still be in individual tastes, there would at least be, as a general rule, complete unity and unanimity as to the great objects of life. When the two persons both care for great objects, and are a help and encouragement to each other in whatever regards these, the minor matters on which their tastes may differ are not all-important to them; and there is a foundation for solid friendship, of an enduring character, more likely than anything else to make it, through the whole of life, a greater pleasure to each to give pleasure to the other, than to receive it.

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Herman Melville (1819-1891)

Quotation

We cannot live only for ourselves. A thousand fibers connect us with our fellow men.

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Biographical

American author, was born in New York City on the 1st of August 1819. He shipped as a cabin-boy at the age of eighteen, thus being enabled to make his first visit to England, and at twenty-two sailed for a whaling cruise in the Pacific. After a year and a half he deserted his ship at the Marquesas Islands, on account of the cruelty of the captain; he was captured by cannibals on the island of Nukahiva, and detained, without hardship for four months; was rescued by the crew of an Australian vessel, which he joined, and two years later reached New York. Thereafter, with the exception of a passenger voyage around the world in I860, Melville remained in the United States, devoting himself to literature - though for a considerable period (1866-I885) he held a post in the New York custom-house - and being perhaps Hawthorne's most intimate friend among the literary men of America. His writings are numerous, and of varying merit; his verse, patriotic and other, is forgotten; and his works of fiction and of travel are of irregular execution. Nevertheless, few authors have been enabled so freely to introduce romantic personal experiences into their books: in his first work, Typee: A Peep at Polynesian Life, or Four Months Residence in a Valley of the Marquesas (1846), he described his escape from the cannibals; while in Omoo, a Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas (1847), White Jacket, or The World in a Man-of-War (1850), and especially Moby Dick, or The Whale (1851), he portrayed seafaring life and character with vigour and originality, and from a personal knowledge equal to that of Cooper, Marryat or Clark Russell. In spite of being poorly received when first published, Melville's Moby Dick is one of the canonical novels in the English language; that novel's Captain Ahab is a Quaker sea captain obsessed with killing the mighty whale who has cost him one of his legs. But these records of adventure were followed by other tales so turgid, eccentric, opinionative, and loosely written as to seem the work of another author. Melville was the product of a period in American literature when the fiction written by writers below Irving, Poe and Hawthorne was measured by humble artistic standards. He died in New York on the 28th of September 1891. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Herman Melville. and Encyclopedia Britannica (1911)]

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Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Quotation

Natural science will in time incorporate into itself the science of man, just as the science of man will incorporate into itself natural science: there will be one science.

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Biographical

The Communist Manifesto is a proclamation. It's an in-your-face declaration of a new found awareness about human destiny. It invalidates and rejects any idea or argument that opposes it as a product of the evil that it purports to eradicate. It takes no prisoners. It hears no objections. It comes from the clouds - a juggernaut destined to lead enslaved humanity to the promised-land by breaking its chains and steamrolling into a glorious future. The Manifesto is a turn on for power junkies and young minds. It's graffiti - for graffiti's sake. It sits alone, blood red, forever youthful, and strangely - dangerously - beautiful. Russell McNeil, (Nov 28, 2002)

Education

Karl Marx enrolled in the University of Bonn in 1835 to study Law, but transferred to the University of Berlin the following year. There his interests turned to philosophy and he joined the circle of the "Young Hegelians" led by Bruno Bauer. Some members of this circle drew an analogy between post-Aristotelian philosophy and post-Hegelian philosophy, and Marx defended his doctoral dissertation comparing the atomic theories of Democritus and Epicurus in 1841.

Career

When his mentor Bauer was dismissed from the philosophy faculty in 1842, Marx abandoned philosophy for journalism and went on to edit the Rheinische Zeitung, a radical German newspaper. After the newspaper was later shut in 1843, in part due to Marx's conflicts with government censors, Marx returned to philosophy, turned to political activism, and worked as a free-lance journalist. Marx first moved to France, where he re-evaluated his relationship withe Bauer and the Young Hegelians, and wrote On the Jewish Question, mostly a critique of current notions of civil-rights and political emancipation. It was in Paris that he met and began working with his life-long collaborator Friedrich Engels, who called Marx's attention to the situation of the working-classes, and guided Marx's interest in economics. After he was forced to leave Paris for his writings, he and Engels moved to Brussels. There they co-wrote The German Ideology, a critique of Hegelian and Young Hegelian philosophy, and then Marx wrote The Poverty of Philosophy, a critique of French socialist thought. These works lay the foundation for Marx and Engels' most famous work, The Communist Manifesto, written in 1848, which was commissioned by the Communist League (formerly, the League of the Just), an organization of German emigrés whom Marx had met in London. That year Europe experienced revolutionary upheaval; a working-class movement seized power from king Louis Philippe in France and invited Marx to return to Paris. When this government collapsed in 1849, Marx moved to London. In 1864 Marx organized the International Workingmen's Association, later called the First International, as a base for continued political activism. This organization collapsed in 1872 in part because of the fall of the Paris Commune, and in part because many members turned to Mikhail Bakunin's anarchism. In London Marx also dedicated himself to historical and theoretical works, the most famous of which is the multivolume Das Kapital, the first volume of which was published in 1867.

Influences on Marx's Philosophy

In general, Marx's thought has been influenced by two often contradictory elements: determinism and activism. On the one hand, Marx believed that he could study history and society scientifically, and derive laws the explain and predict the course of history and the outcome of social conflicts. Consequently, some followers of Marx conclude that a communist revolution is inevitable. On the other hand, Marx famously asserted that "philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it," and dedicated himself to trying to change the world. Consequently, some followers of Marx conclude that dedicated revolutionaries must organize social change. Marx's theory, sometimes called "scientific socialism" or "dialectical materialism" or "historical materialism" is based on Hegel's claim that history occurs through a dialectic, or clash, of opposing forces. Hegel was a philosophical idealist who believed that we live in a world of appearances, and true reality is an ideal. Marx accepted this notion of the dialectic, but rejected Hegel's idealism. In this he was influenced by Ludwig Feuerbach. In The Essence of Christianity, Feuerbach argued that God is really a creation of man, and that the qualities people attribute to God are really qualities of humanity. Accordingly, Marx argued that it is the material world that is real, and that our ideas of it are consequences, not causes, of the world. Thus, like Hegel and other philosophers, Marx distinguished between appearances and reality. But he did not believe that the material world hides from us the "real" world of the ideal; on the contrary, he thought that historically and socially specific ideologies prevented people from seeing the material conditions of their lives clearly. The other important contribution to Marx's revision of Hegelianism was Engel's book, The Condition of the English Working Class, which led Marx to conceive of the historical dialectic in terms of class conflict, and to see the modern working class as the most progressive force for revolution.

Marx's Philosophy

The notion of labor is fundamental in Marx's thought. Basically, Marx argued that it is human nature to transform nature, and he calls this process of transformation "labor" and the capacity to transform nature labor power. For Marx, this is a natural capacity for a physical activity, but it is intimately tied to the human mind and human imagination: A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. Beyond his claim about the human capacity to transform nature, Marx makes no other claims about "human nature." Although "labor power" for Marx is human nature, he did not believe that all people worked the same way, or that how one works is entirely personal and individual. Instead, he argued that works is a social activity, and that the conditions and forms under and through which people work are socially determined and change over time. Marx's analysis of history is based on his distinction between the means of production, literally those things, like land and natural resources, labor, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods, and the social relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these comprise the mode of production; Marx observed that within any given society the mode of production changes, and that European societies had progressed from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode of production. In general, Marx believed that the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production (for example, we develop a new technology, and only later do we develop laws to regulate that technology). For Marx this lag is a major source of conflict. Marx understood the "social relations of production" to comprise not only relations among individuals, but between or among groups of people, or classes. As a scientist and materialist, Marx did not understand classes purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources.

Marx was especially concerned with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labor-power. Marx wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor -- one's capacity to transform the world -- is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in tems of commodity fetishism, in which people come to believe that it is the very things that they produce that are powerful, and the sources of power and creativity, rather than people themselves. He argued that when this happens, people begin to mediate all their relationships among themselves and with others through commodities.

Marx's Critique of Capitalism

Marx argues that this alienation of labor power (and resulting commodity fetishism) is precisely the defining feature of capitalism. Prior to capitalism, markets existed in Europe where producers and merchants bought and sold commodities. According to Marx, a capitalist mode of production developed in Europe when labor itself became a commodity -- when peasants became free to sell their own labor-power, and needed to sell their own labor because they no longer possessed their own land or tools necessary to produce. A person sells their labor-power when they accept compensation in return for whatever work they do in a given period of time (in other words, they are not selling the product of their labor, but their capacity to work). In return for selling their labor power they receive money which allows them to survive. The person who must sell their labor power to live is a "proletarian." The person who buys the labor power, generally someone who does own the land and technology to produce, is a "capitalist" or "bourgeois." (NOTE: Marx considered this an objective description of capitalism, distinct from any one of a variety of ideological claims of or about capitalism). Marx distinguished capitalists from merchants. Merchants buy goods in one place and sell it in another; more precisely, they buy things in one market and sell it in another. Since the laws of supply and demand operate within given markets, there is often a difference between the price of a commodity in one market and another. Merchants hope to capture the difference between these two markets. According to Marx, capitalists, on the other hand, take advantage of the difference between the labor market and the market for whatever commodity is produced by the capitalist. Marx observed that in practically every successful industry the price for labor was lower than the price of the manufactured good. Marx called this difference "surplus value" and argued that this surplus value was in fact the source of a capitalist's profit. The capitalist mode of production is capable of tremendous growth because the capitalist can, and has an incentive to, reinvest profits in new technologies. Marx considered the capitalist class to be the most revolutionary in history, because it constantly revolutionized the means of production. But Marx believed that capitalism was prone to periodic crises. He suggested that over time, capitalists would invest more and more in new technologies, and less and less in labor. Since Marx believed that surplus value appropriated from labor is the source of profits, he concluded that the rate of profit would fall even as the economy grew. When the rate of profit falls below a certain point, the result would be a recesion or depression in which certain sectors of the economy would collapse. Marx understood that during such a crisis the price of labor would also fall, and eventually make possible the investment in new technologies and the growth of new sectors of the economy. Marx believed that this cycle of growth, collapse, and growth would be punctuated by increasingly severe crises. Moreover, he believed that the long-term consequence of this process was necessarily the empowerment of the capitalist class and the impoverishment of the proletariate. Finally, he believed that were the proletariate to seize the means of production, they would encourage social relations that would benefit everyone equally, and a system of production less vulnerable to periodic crises.

Influence

The body of work of Marx and of Marx and Engels covers a wide range of topics and presents a complex analysis of history and society in terms of class relations. Followers of Marx and Engels have drawn on this work to propose a political and economic philosophy dubbed Marxism (although before he died Marx declared that he was not a "Marxist"). Nevertheless, there have been numerous debates among Marxists over how to interpret Marx's writings and how to apply his concepts to current events and conditions. Essentially, people use the word "Marxist" to describe those who rely on Marx's conceptual language (e.g. mode of production, class, commodity fetishism) to undertand capitalist and other societies, or to describe those who believe that a worker's revolution is the only means to a communist society. Six years after Marx's death, Engels and others founded the "Second International" as a base for continued political activism. This organization collapsed in 1914, in part because some members turned to Edward Bernstein's "evolutionary" socialism, and in part because of divisions precipitated by World War I. World War I also led to the Russian Revolution and the consequent ascendence of Vladimir Lenin's leadership of the communist movement, embodied in the "Third International." Lenin claimed to be both the philosophical and political heir to Marx, and developed a political program, called Leninism or Bolshevism, which called for revolution organized and led by a centrally organized Communist Party. After Lenin's death, the Secretary-General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Joseph Stalin, seized power of the Party and State apparatus. He argued that before a world-wide communist revolution would be possible, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union had to dedicate itself to building socialism in their own country.

At this time, Leon Trotsky left the Soviet Union and in 1934 founded the competing "Fourth International." Some followers of Trotsky argued that Stalin had created a bureaucratic state rather than a socialist state. In China Mao Zedong also claimed to be an heir to Marx, but argued that peasants and not just workers could play a leading role in a communist revolution. In the 1920s and '30s, a group of dissident Marxists at the Frankfurt School in Germany, among them Max Horkheimer and Theodor Adorno, espoused critical theory (unrelated to Critical philosophy), which offered a non- Bolshevist critique of contemporary capitalism. Other influential non-Bolshevik Marxists at that time include Walter Benjamin?, Antonio Gramsci, and Rosa Luxemburg. In 1949 Paul Sweezy and Leo Huberman founded The Monthly Review, a journal and press, to provide a outlet for Marxist thought in the United States independent of the Communist Party.

Contemporary Criticisms

Marxian theory has been criticized from numerous points of view. Many proponents of capitalism have argued that capitalism in fact is ultimately a more effective means of generating and redistributing wealth than socialism or communism, and that the gulf between rich and poor that concerned Marx and Engels was a temporary phenomenon. Some suggest that greed and the need to acquire material wealth is an inherent component of human behavior, and is not caused by the adoption of capitalism or any other specific economic system (although economic anthropologists have questioned this assertion), and that different economic systems reflect different social responses to this fact. Economists generally reject his use of the "labor theory of value," although such critics generally overlook Marx's distinction between value and price. Marx has also been criticized from the left. Evolutionary Socialists reject his claim that socialism can be accomplished only through class conflict and violent revolution. Others argue that class is not the most fundamental inequality in history, and call attention to patriarchy or race. Some today question the theoretical and historical validity of "class" as an analytic construct or as a political actor. In this line, some question Marx's reliance on 19th century notions that linked science with the idea of "progress" (see social evolution). Many observe that capitalism has changed much since Marx's time, and that class differences and relationships are much more complex -- citing as one example the fact that much corporate stock in the United States is owned by workers through pension funds. (see post-structuralism and post-modernism for discussions of two movements generally aligned with the left that are critical of Marx and Marxism.) Outside of Europe and the United States, communism has generally been superseded by anti-colonialist and nationalist struggles (although they sometimes appeal to Marx for theoretical support). Contemporary supporters of Marx argue most generally that Marx was correct that human behavior reflects determinate historical and social conditions (and is therefore changing and cannot be understood in terms of some universal "human nature"). More specifically, they argue his analysis of commodities is still useful and that alienation is still a problem. Some argue that capitalism does not exist as an independent system in any one country, and that one must analyze it as a global system. They further argue that when examined as a global system, capitalism is still organizing and exacerbating the gulf between rich and poor that first caught Marx's attention when he read Engels' book on England. [This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License and uses material adapted in whole or in part from the Wikipedia article on Karl Marx.]


The Communist Manifesto
Russell McNeil, PhD (Copyright 2005)
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Why Read?

One knee jerk reaction to the manifesto is to reject it. The political system it advocates failed. Communism is as dead as Nietzsche's God. Here is one Utopian vision we can toss to the vultures. Of course we might say the same thing about a Utopian vision much older than this -- one with a no better political track record -- but one we still read -- 2,500 years after it was written: Plato's Republic! I'll not make the case for equivalency. The Communist Manifesto is a proclamation. It's an in-your-face declaration of a new found awareness about human destiny. It invalidates and rejects any idea or argument that opposes it as a product of the evil that it purports to eradicate. It takes no prisoners. It hears no objections. It comes from the clouds -- a juggernaut destined to lead enslaved humanity to the promised-land by breaking its chains and steamrolling into a glorious future. The manifesto is a turn on for power junkies and young minds. It's graffiti -- for graffiti's sake. It sits alone, blood red, forever youthful, and strangely -- dangerously -- beautiful.

We cannot ignore Marx because it's romantic passion demands that we pay attention. Suppose I was a slave who wanted freedom. I would loathe my master. I would reject everything he represents. I would falsify everything that he has ever done. I would crush him. I would dishonour him. I will bury him. What such a master produces, above all, is his own grave--diggers...and as slave I will bury him in the rubble of his own machinery and with his own machinery. We read Marx still because we can read the events of our current crises, of 9--11, or of the threatened war on Iraq through the filter of this manifesto. But Master slave dichotomies can be found (or imposed) everywhere. We can bring the historical elements of Marxist theory to analyse -- or to re--analyse -- any of the ideas we have encountered to date. And we do, and you will, and the 20th century has pretty much been preoccupied with this sort of thing. Marx does not stand alone. He shares the stage with Nietzsche, and Freud, and Socrates, and Christ. Marx lives -- so we read him still.

This is a political tract -- a manifesto that offers? proclaims? imposes! a program for radical (root), revolutionary, and violent social change. The softer parts of the argument, those justifying the necessity for change had its roots in a long history of western thinking from Plato to Rousseau. But the more immediate influences were German -- and specifically the philosopher Hegel. Marx came from a well--off, cultured and nominally Protestant family. His father was a lawyer. Marx himself studied law, history and philosophy at the University of Berlin. He did his doctoral thesis on Epicurus.

Epicurian Influence

One famous idea attributed to Epicurus reads thus: it is not impious to deny the gods of the masses, but it is impious to think of the gods as the masses do; a sound principle, but one which Epicurus wrongly applied, since he got rid of what was true as well as of what was corrupt in the vulgar religion. Bear this thought in mind as you read the Manifesto.

Hegel's Influence

While at Berlin Marx hung around with a group of so--called left Hegelians. Their goals seem to have been to draw revolutionary and atheistic conclusions from Hegel's philosophy. Hegel's influence on Marx may have been Hegel's method of inquiry -- something called his Doctrine of Development. For instance, the truth about this lectern, for Aristotle, is that it is a lectern. For Hegel, the equally important truth is that it was a tree, and it will be ashes. The whole truth, for Hegel, is that the tree became a table and will become ashes. Thus, becoming, not being, is the highest expression of reality. Hegel's notion of development was applied to a whole range of investigations: science, literature, theology, and for us here through Marx to political economy and political science.

A World Picture

Let's paint a contemporary world picture. And think about Marxist response. In the US the richest 20% earn 50% of all income -- that's been increasing for decades. The poorest 20% earn 3.5% of all income -- and that's been dropping for decades. The ratio of wealth in the top 20% to the wealth in the bottom 20% is 14 to 1. During this same period (1973--1996) the average real wage of all Americans fell by 11% while corporate profit rates rose to an all time high. The rich do get richer -- the poor poorer. In other parts of the world, economies have fared much worse. The situation in Russia is most severe where economic chaos has led to an actual decrease in life expectancy for males from 66 to 57 years in just five years. The east asian Tiger economies have declined rapidly over the past few years. Stock market performances -- one measure of total Capital -- have been bleak: The indicies for the major markets in Hong Kong, Indonesia, South Korea and Thailand have dropped from 60--90%. What most East Asians gained from those boom years of apparent prosperity were low wage jobs in modern factories or sweat shops. In Indonesia infant mortality has increased by 30% and school enrollment decreased from 78% to 54%. Many of the children dropping out of school are working in the $3.3 Billion dollar Indonesian child prostitution industry. Marx would nod sagely at these data. It is, he might say a continuation of a process he described 150 years ago but extended now to global dimensions. He might even proclaim that the final death throes of capitalism began on September 11 in graves radical terrorists from distant lands.

The Class Struggle

The Class Struggle Marx describes in his mid nineteenth century Manifesto is still alive and well throughout much of the world. The capital hungry capitalist machine Marx described and admired is still alive. It may be in crisis now, but it will rebound as it always has, and as Marx described, by expanding to the last world frontiers under its last guise: globalization. Marx theory as a political description of a set of warring relationships between classes is still meaningful. Here is how Marx says it works: In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes ... The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization ... No sooner is the exploitation of the laborer by the manufacturer, so far at an end, that he receives his wages in cash, than he is set upon by the other portion of the bourgeoisie, the landlord, the pawnbroker. As the song goes: You load 16 tons and what do you get? Another day older and deeper in depth. St. Peter don't call me cuz I can't go ... I owe my soul to the company store.

Evolution or Unfolding?

Marx's model of class struggle is dynamic, attractive, organic, colorful. It is filled with passionate rhetoric, redemptive promise, and fiery polemic. But there is also a cool compelling logic: man has a story -- and man is becoming. That is Hegel's influence. In social terms all of this is part of a human progression: we progress from forced slavery, to feudal subservience, to bourgeoise oppression. This is evolution but on a social scale. Some try to compare Darwin and Marx. But Natural selection proceeds from adaption to an environment. Marx changes the environment to allow for the emergence of and flourishing of mind: -- a new human consciousness -- a consciousness hitherto stifled by human enslavement to wage labour. In plain nglish ... it's impossible to think good thoughts when you load 16 tons of coal. Our collective minds have been alienated to work -- and useless work it is. Virtually nothing we produce serves real human purpose -- the emergence of new consciousness. Our lives are wasted, our bodies dissipated and and our minds hijacked by the forces of Capital.

The consciousness is nothing spooky. Engels described it in these words: thought and consciousness are products of the human brain which is a product of Nature and which has developed in and along with its environment; hence it is self--evident that the products of the human brain, being in the last analysis also products of Nature, do not contradict the rest of Nature's interconnections but are in correspondence with them ...

Inevitability

The communist revolution for Marx is an historical inevitability. It is to see man in history as a natural and material social being with unbridled potential. It is to see man as becoming or evolving towards his real purpose in life. And it is to see all these things at once as an unfolding story: wood lecturn, ashes. For Marx, everything is seen through the filter of class warfare: a warfare in which the vast majority of humans are oppressed by a small minority. In mimicking the Epicurian doctrine not to think of the gods as the masses do Marx discards the so called eternal truths embodied in our religions, our philosophies, and our institutions were nothing but the creations of an oppressor and designed to preserve the master slave dichotomy! So, Marx removes these insidious ideas from the intellectual landscape. It abolishes private property -- meaning Bourgeois Capital. It abolishes family -- bourgeois family. It abolishes religion -- bourgeois religion -- and all of its trappings: And so we see most of what we value in our long intellectual tradition discarded: our philosophy (perhaps not Hegel), our institutions (legal, educational), and

What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class ...

… communism abolishes eternal truths, it abolishes all religion, and all morality, instead of constituting them on a new basis; it therefore acts in contradiction to all past historical experience.

You really got to love this guy! Somehow we suspect this as more than fascist book burning with a human face. Marx would keep the books -- but reject the ideas -- because they were developed by or the agents of the bourgouise to serve the interests of that same class. It's illogical. But our rebellious romantic nature is attracted to this.

Practical Benefits

There are two aspects to this set of ideas. In part one Marx address the historical and contemporary social warfare amongst the classes. What strikes me in reading this today is how strongly Marx's analysis seems to ring true. My seminar seemed to be in perfect agreement with everything Marx says. That's strange. Do we not live in a social democracy in which all of us is created equal? Is it not true that the social adjustments of the past century have remedied the worst aspects of the so--called class struggle? If our world is really as exploitative as Marx portrays, why are we not in revolution? Is it not because the descriptions of warfare offered by Marx have been seen as real warnings and that we have today addressed by offering decent wages, pension benefits, comprehensive education, health, and child care benefits? Yet, as the world picture I drew for you earlier shows -- these gains are an illusion.

Perhaps Marx would laugh at us. Your happiness is illusion. Your addictions prove this. You are narcotized by the very productions of your labour: intellectual and material. Your intellectual rationalizations justify your material excesses. Your false needs have dehumanized you: your music, literature, newspapers, internet, reflect your decadence , ... Your bourgeois machine is as cunning, powerful, and dangerous as I foretold ... you are alienated from your real humanity and ripe now for revolution -- one that has already begun at the margins of your exploitative global economy. Look deeply into the eyes of what your bourgeois media call terrorists and you will see your proletariat comrade, the revolutionary hero of today and tomorrow.

Books from Alibris: Karl Marx