{"id":89756,"date":"2024-06-18T05:00:43","date_gmt":"2024-06-18T09:00:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=89756"},"modified":"2024-06-17T17:03:21","modified_gmt":"2024-06-17T21:03:21","slug":"if-you-convince-a-group-of-homo-sapiens-that-that-group-over-there-are-economic-parasites-then-you-have-primed-them-for-mass-murder","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2024\/06\/18\/if-you-convince-a-group-of-homo-sapiens-that-that-group-over-there-are-economic-parasites-then-you-have-primed-them-for-mass-murder\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;If you convince a group of <em>Homo sapiens<\/em> that that group over there are economic parasites &#8230; then you have primed them for mass murder&#8221;"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.lorenzofromoz.net\/p\/the-original-intellectual-sin-of\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Lorenzo Warby<\/a> on the malign influence of Karl Marx:<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Karl-Marx-1875.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" style=\"float:right; padding: 0px 0px 10px 25px\" src=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Karl-Marx-1875.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"473\" height=\"599\" class=\"alignright size-full wp-image-43997\" srcset=\"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Karl-Marx-1875.jpg 473w, https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/07\/Karl-Marx-1875-118x150.jpg 118w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 473px) 100vw, 473px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Despite \u2014 in some ways because of \u2014 all his Theorising about &#8220;capitalism&#8221;, Marx made no serious attempt to understand the actual dynamics of commerce, creating a (false) theory of economic parasitism (&#8220;surplus value&#8221;) that \u2014 both predictably, and in practice \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notonyourteam.co.uk\/p\/why-does-anyone-believe-marxism\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">motivated mass murder<\/a>. If you convince a group of <em>Homo sapiens<\/em> that that group over there are economic parasites \u2014 and you and your society is better off without them \u2014 then you have primed them for mass murder. Hence, Marx&#8217;s theory was used to justify actual Marxist mass-murders, starting with Lenin&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Lenin's_hanging_order\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">infamous hanging order<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Marx&#8217;s economistic systematising created a pretence of being social scientist \u2014 to himself and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1883\/death\/burial.htm\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">even more to Engels<\/a> \u2014 that many people have maintained ever since. Hence a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lorenzofromoz.net\/p\/marx-was-neither-an-economist-nor\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">pre-Darwinian metaphysician<\/a> is even now regularly treated as if he was a social scientist. This despite being wrong about <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notonyourteam.co.uk\/p\/class-and-the-state\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">more or less everything<\/a> \u2014 <a href=\"https:\/\/lorenzofromoz.substack.com\/p\/priests-and-warriors\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">class<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/helendale.substack.com\/p\/why-does-anyone-believe-marxism\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">commerce<\/a>, <a href=\"https:\/\/helendale.substack.com\/p\/class-and-the-state\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">surplus<\/a>, immiseration, <a href=\"https:\/\/helendale.substack.com\/p\/the-paradox-of-polities\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">the state<\/a>, patterns of history, commodification, division of labour, foraging societies &#8230;<\/p>\n<p>As I have <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lorenzofromoz.net\/p\/crook-and-flail\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">noted elsewhere<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>To have a state, farming niches have to be sustainable <strong>after<\/strong> taxes are extracted. That means resources are extracted <strong>before<\/strong> they turn into extra babies. This means that states <strong>create<\/strong> surplus (income above subsistence): indeed, they dominate the creation and extraction of surplus.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>The perennial dominance of the state in extraction of surplus \u2014 and hence the creation of class structures \u2014 is nowhere more obvious than in Marxist states.<\/p>\n<p>Philosopher Charles Taylor <a href=\"https:\/\/youtu.be\/_GFA9vWyPv8?si=unNek6I7GL1xG393\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">pointed out the tension<\/a> between the claim to being science \u2014 and the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1859\/critique-pol-economy\/preface.htm\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">causal determinism<\/a> that goes with that \u2014 and the messianic vision that motivates Marx&#8217;s and Marxist activism. In any tension between the two, the latter wins because it is so powerfully motivating. This includes with Marx himself, which is why his &#8220;science&#8221; is so profoundly wrong in fact. It exists to justify the messianic vision.<\/p>\n<p>No political (or religious) movement has killed and tyrannised more people than revolutionary Marxism. A Marxist is someone for whom no amount tyranny and mass murder will stop them worshipping the splendour in their head. This testifies to the power of the messianic vision.<\/p>\n<p>Marx was the original <a href=\"https:\/\/glossary.devilslane.com\/entries\/I\/idea_laundering.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">launderer of ideas<\/a>. Over decades of wrestling with the economics of Smith and Ricardo, he laundered \u2014 via economic reasoning \u2014 the metaphysical conclusions he reached in the 1840s to create a system that would &#8220;scientifically&#8221; generate and justify those conclusions. That those conclusions went mostly unpublished in his lifetime \u2014 with the most dramatic exception being <em>The Communist Manifesto<\/em> (1848) \u2014 does not belie this. <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1859\/critique-pol-economy\/preface.htm\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Marx himself insisted on<\/a> the centrality of this period of &#8220;self-clarification&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Nothing he published later significantly contradicted those conclusions. Marx is the archetypal activist scholar, whose activism drives, and so degrades, his scholarship and analysis. He is the key formulator of the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notonyourteam.co.uk\/p\/the-progressive-revolt-against-equality\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Dialectical Faith<\/a>, that has generated various disastrous spin-offs, from his own economism to Lenin&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/lenin\/works\/1917\/jul\/07a.htm\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Jacobinising<\/a> of Marxism to the Cultural Marxism of Lukacs and Gramsci, <a href=\"https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/critical-theory\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Critical Theory<\/a>, and all forms of Critical Social Justice.<\/p>\n<p>No form or derivative of the Dialectical Faith have ever generated a net positive contribution to human flourishing, or understanding, compared to available alternatives.<\/p>\n<p>Ibn Khaldun was a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.notonyourteam.co.uk\/p\/the-paradox-of-polities\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">far more acute analyst<\/a> of the role of the state in the economy, and patterns within history, than Marx. Ibn Khaldun sought systematically to understand what he observed, <a href=\"https:\/\/www.lorenzofromoz.net\/p\/who-was-ibn-khaldun\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">participated in and read about<\/a>. He was not <a href=\"https:\/\/glossary.devilslane.com\/entries\/I\/idea_laundering.html\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">laundering ideas<\/a>, not justifying pre-set conclusions, nor judging evidence by his Theory.<\/p>\n<p>Ibn Khaldun was a social scientist (arguably the first). Marx was not, he was pretending to be one (including to himself).<\/p>\n<p>The Dialectical Faith holds that history is driven by dialectical process that transforms society from an oppressive past to a future <a href=\"https:\/\/newdiscourses.com\/2024\/05\/woke-marxism-rejects-prosperity\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">liberated from constraints<\/a>, if the oppressive elements of society are suppressed or abolished. As Marx tells us, our productive capacity will be so great, that we will so humanise the world, that division of labour <a href=\"https:\/\/www.marxists.org\/archive\/marx\/works\/1845\/german-ideology\/ch01a.htm#a4\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">will end for<\/a>:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<p><em>In communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticise after dinner, just as I have a mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, herdsman or critic.<\/em><\/p>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Marx was not engaged in scientific enquiry but pseudo-scientific, or <em>scientistic<\/em> \u2014 the form of science without the substance \u2014 justification of already reached conclusions. He regularly judges and chooses evidence based on Theory, a pattern that has become endemic within all forms of Marxism and its spinoffs (such as <a href=\"https:\/\/plato.stanford.edu\/entries\/critical-theory\/\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Critical Theory<\/a>). Marx exemplifies the activist principle that &#8220;what I can imagine \u2014 however self-contradictory \u2014 is so much better than what others have struggled to achieve&#8221;.<\/p>\n<p>Marx&#8217;s picture of the evils of division of labour is metaphysical twaddle flatly contradicted by any serious study of the role of division of labour \u2014 and, for that matter, commodification \u2014 in production at scale. How can division of labour be such an alienating evil when it is built into sexual reproduction, into every <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Eusociality\" rel=\"noopener\" target=\"_blank\">eusocial<\/a> species, even into the cells of every single complex organism?<\/p>\n<p>The answer is via a ludicrous quasi-theological metaphysical inflation of human consciousness and creativity. Marx collectivises \u2014 through his notion of species-being \u2014 the Romantic notion of human fulfilment through self-expression.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Lorenzo Warby on the malign influence of Karl Marx: Despite \u2014 in some ways because of \u2014 all his Theorising about &#8220;capitalism&#8221;, Marx made no serious attempt to understand the actual dynamics of commerce, creating a (false) theory of economic parasitism (&#8220;surplus value&#8221;) that \u2014 both predictably, and in practice \u2014 motivated mass murder. If [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[25,79,7,28,53],"tags":[780,1380,86,622,1076,1108,997],"class_list":["post-89756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-education","category-history","category-media","category-politics","tag-communism","tag-criticaltheory","tag-criticism","tag-ideology","tag-karlmarx","tag-lenin","tag-socialjustice"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-nlG","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=89756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":89757,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/89756\/revisions\/89757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=89756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=89756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=89756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}