From: ibshambat@gmail.com   
      
   Many people have written both in favor of Marxism and against Marxism. As a   
   child in the former Soviet Union, I adopted it as gospel. At this point I seek   
   to refute Marxism once and for all.   
      
   Marx used the concept of the dialectic, which he got from German philosopher   
   Hegel. According to Hegel, a force – a thesis – is met with its opposite   
   – an antithesis. The two forces struggle among one another to create a   
   synthesis: A mix of the two.   
    This synthesis is then met with another antithesis. According to Hegel, this   
   process lead human history to spiritual betterment of humanity.   
      
   Marx took the dialectic and “inverted” it. He said instead that this   
   process lead to material betterment of humanity, and that communism was going   
   to be an inevitable result.   
      
   Dialectic is a useful concept, and one that has applications in all sorts of   
   pursuits. However there is absolutely nothing inevitable about it working for   
   any kind of betterment. Sometimes one force conquers the other. Sometimes   
   there is an ongoing    
   conflict with no resolution. Sometimes the forces combine to give one another   
   their worst traits.   
      
   Marx was a historian, and he should have studied his history better. No   
   dialectic was accomplished when Vandals sacked Rome. No dialectic was   
   accomplished when the Spanish conquered the Incans, whose agriculture,   
   architecture and infrastructure was    
   vastly superior to their own. No dialectic is being accomplished now in the   
   ongoing conflict between Israel and Palestine. And in the contemporary   
   dialectic between America and Islam, so far the results have been mostly   
   destructive. Muslim men have been    
   coming to places like Oslo and Sydney and gang-raping Western girls and   
   teaching young men in disadvantaged communities to be even worse to women than   
   they had been before. Marxist scholars in academia do not get the results of   
   this. The people who fund    
   them do.   
      
   To believe in such a thing as historical inevitability is ridiculous. We have   
   seen all sorts of orders rising, falling and changing for all sorts of   
   reasons. In a world of 7 billion people, each possessing capacity for choice,   
   nothing at all is    
   inevitable. World changes, all the time, in all sorts of directions and for   
   all sorts of reasons. That has always been the case; that will always be the   
   case.   
      
   Nor is it in any way correct that history is driven by class struggles.   
   History is not driven by any such thing. History is driven by choices that   
   people make. That always has been the case. It always will be the case.  Not   
   every place had classes or    
   anything like classes. There were no classes among Australian aborigines. As   
   for America, it is intended to be a classless society in which anyone can rise   
   - or fall - as far as their efforts would take them. Such ideas may have been   
   credible in 19th    
   century Europe, where bosses and their employers rarely mixed. It is not at   
   all the case in places where there are no rigid class lines, where there is   
   social mobility, or where employers and workers are working closely with one   
   another.   
      
   Marx also claimed that religion was "opium for the masses." This is completely   
   untrue. The Christian and Muslim religions started from "the masses" and then   
   converted  both the rulers and the ruled. Maybe some of the rulers were using   
   some claims of St.    
   Paul - such as that slaves should be obedient to the masters - to justify   
   exploitative conduct; but that was never the intent or the founding of the   
   religion.   
   He also claimed that people, if freed from their chains, would start a   
   revolution and overthrow capitalism. The behavior of American people   
   completely refutes the claim. Not only did they not agitate for a Communist   
   revolution, but they lead the charge    
   against Communism even when many among the elites were warming toward it.   
   These people did not see Communism as a way toward liberation; they saw   
   Communism as a way toward having to give away their liberty and follow the   
   state. What some people in the "   
   elites" believe people to be, and what people actually are, can differ greatly.   
   What Marx was right about was affirming the interests of the worker. At that   
   time workers were treated like trash, and Marx's idea of propertied classes   
   exploiting the working classes was credible. In much of the world –   
   particularly in the Western    
   countries - business has since then learned its lesson. When I worked in the   
   corporate world, I did not feel exploited. I was being paid right, and I was   
   being treated right. I have maintained good relations with a number of my   
   former managers and    
   employers, and none of them have been treating me as someone lower than   
   themselves.   
      
   I do not reject Marxism, as did for example Ayn Rand, because it is not   
   capitalism or democracy. I reject it because of its own glaring intellectual   
   errors. Not everything in history is dialectical; and even in situations of   
   dialectic there is nothing    
   inevitable about it working for any kind of good.   
      
   Just that something has been a part of Marxism does not necessarily make it   
   wrong. Similarly, “anything that Hitler or Nazis did” is not a workable   
   definition of evil. Hitler was a fitness buff and a vegetarian, but that does   
   not mean that every    
   fitness buff and a vegetarian is going to kill 50 million people. Nazis built   
   the Autobahn, but that does not mean that Eisenhower was a Hitler for building   
   the Interstate. That Marx used the dialectic wrongfully does not mean that the   
   idea of the    
   dialectic is useless. The idea of it leading inevitably toward the betterment   
   of humanity, however, is completely useless, and very obviously wrong.   
      
   Now I have heard it said by some people that the dialectic is a superior form   
   of cognition to logic. I no more believe that than do I believe the people who   
   think that logic is the higher function or that emotions are a lower function   
   or that religion    
   and spirituality is a delusion. It is a form of cognition. It is a useful form   
   of cognition. But it is just that: A form of cognition – one that can go   
   right, wrong, or in any number of ways.   
      
      
   [continued in next message]   
      
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