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It is astonishing
the degree to which intelligent people, especially intellectuals
and academics, seem willing to accept theories in place of reality.
We have seen in the case of Machiavelli that his theories have never
worked in practice, except temporarily. Of the test cases we examined,
all of them eventually lost their power. Napoleon Bonaparte spent
the last part of his life in exile on the island of St. Helena.
Hitler committed suicide. Mussolini was killed by an angry mob and
hung head downward in Piazzale Loreto in Milan. The question doesn't
merit an in-depth study: Further proofs are not needed, surely,
to convince any sensible person that ruthless cruelty can only attract
retribution in kind. The astonishing thing, as we've said, is that
people with a fondness for theories can be satisfied if a theory
is merely expressed cleverly, even when it has been shown not to
work. Sometimes a theory is actually abhorrent to human nature:
It doesn't seem to matter. Indeed, the more it defies common sense,
the more eagerly people seem to embrace it as a challenge to their
"scientific objectivity." How to explain this curious
phenomenon? Are people's egos flattered by the cleverness of those
moves they see on their intellectual chessboards? Machiavelli basically
a republican at heart? I ask you! As well stress that a Mafia capo
can't really be considered criminal, since he's the loving grandfather
of the handful of brats who bear his proud name.
Jean
Paul Sartre was an excellent case in point. I submitted his writings
to lengthy analysis in a book of mine, Out of the Labyrinth,
4 so I won't repeat myself here except to say
that, as an intellectual and a philosopher, the man was a fraud.
One example should suffice: He based one of his most important arguments
on the declared, but untested, premise, "Man is radically free."
After pages of intellectual dust thrown into the reader's eyes,
he concluded, "Therefore, man is radically free." This
is logic?
Yet Sartre has
been the darling of intellectuals for decades—not because what
he writes rings true to anyone's experience of life, but because
he states it so cleverly and audaciously. He tries to persuade the
reader by trickery that his case is plausible, until finally the
reader finds himself questioning his own powers of reasoning. This
is mental sleight-of-hand, in which the "magician" begins
his spiel by announcing, "Let's say—just for the sake
of argument, mind you—that such-and-such is the case. Assuming
that this is a possibility—a mere possibility—here
is what follows logically from that premise." The reader, having
continued along these lines for paragraphs, pages, or an entire
book, finds himself stumbling through dark corridors by candlelight,
marveling at the man's cleverness, and forgetting at last altogether
that the whole structure was founded on the simple question, "What
if?" To accept illogic "tentatively" is almost to
be committed already to error. It is a path from which few ever
find their way back.
Some people
are reluctant to abandon a beautifully reasoned argument, even if
they know, or once knew, that it is built on sand. Sartre enjoys
less of a vogue today than he once did, but his theories are still
propounded vigorously by others who "bought" them and
then made them their own.
Plato proposed
several unattractive prospects in The Republic for what he
considered the ideal political state. Because his ideas were elaborately
thought out—and because he was, after all, Plato—his
notions have been debated solemnly for more than two thousand years,
especially in university classrooms. His was the first attempt I
know of to present a detailed plan for the "perfect" society.
Plato, like
many utopists since, formulated a system that might just conceivably
work. He then proposed that everyone be squeezed into it, as Procrustes
forced his "guests" onto the bed where he'd said they
could sleep. The most common mistake in utopian theory has always
been the supposition that people's behavior can be determined radically
by systems. The individual's willingness is not even considered.
This was B. F. Skinner's philosophy in his novel, Walden Two.
Will it work? Well, it never has.
I really cannot
believe that behaviorist psychologists like Skinner, most of whom
presumably have had children of their own, will be able to continue
forever in the delusion—for them it is a dogma—that environmental
conditioning is the whole explanation for the diversity of human
nature. Environment is important, yes, but it is only one factor.
The most obvious disproof of this modern folly is that children
are so widely varied from birth. Some of them show a tendency from
the beginning to be positive; others, to be negative. Some are cheerful
and courageous by nature; others are naturally dour, timid,
or fearful of being dealt the worst cards by others and by life.
Siblings are often surprisingly unlike one another, and again
very different from their parents and from anyone among whom they've
been raised. The behaviorist theory not only contradicts common
sense: It has never been verified in action. It all stems from that
old question, "What if?"
"Let's
just suppose," the theorist says. To his "suppose"
I must reply, "Play your own games. I'm busy with ideas that
at least hold promise of leading somewhere."
Perhaps the
greatest mistake utopian writers have made is to presume that people's
behavior can be known in advance, or else made to fit that prediction.
Vance Packard
described psychological tests that had been given soldiers during
World War II as a means of ascertaining which of them would make
good commandos. In most cases, the results were no more accurate
than if the selection had been made by blowing the test papers onto
a staircase with a fan, after assigning a different value to each
step. Men whose written tests gave an impression of resource and
courage showed themselves, under combat conditions, to be deflated
balloons, whereas some of those who had raised suspicions that they
were too timid, showed themselves in the field to be courageous,
resourceful, and, in some cases, heroic.
Plato proposed
that people be selected early in childhood for their role in life.
Future rulers, he said, should be chosen for their natural wisdom,
intellectual superiority, strength of character, unselfishness,
disdain for luxury, and eagerness to serve the public good. (Can
you imagine all those traits revealing themselves in crib or nursery?)
Those who served the rulers as "Guardians" must, again,
be chosen while they were still very young, since their education
must be determined well in advance. Both groups of children would
be submitted to rigorous, well-rounded mental, moral, and physical
training. Their reading material was to be carefully screened. The
reading excluded even Homer, who too often represented the gods
as weak and imperfect, and who overdramatized the human emotions,
besides. The music the children were allowed to listen to must not
be frivolous, and must be carefully censored.
The governing
elite would live under a communistic system, sharing property, homes,
and meals. People were to be allowed free entry into one another's
homes. They would live together, eat together, and eschew as distracting
to their public spirit any semblance of a family life. The leading
classes of society were not permitted personal mates, and any children
they produced would not be known to them as their own, nor would
the children know their own parents. All must be considered children
of the state.
The more one
ponders this mathematically exact but grotesque system, the more
one feels repelled by it. Interestingly, Plato's ideas suggest some
of the least attractive features of modern communism.
To keep our
focus on Plato, however, the decisive question remains: Is his system
workable? An interesting feature of his life, to which few seem
to have paid much attention, is that he actually tested his ideas.
In the year 367 B.C. he was invited by Dionysius the Younger, ruler
of Syracuse, to come and turn his kingdom into a utopia along the
lines described in The Republic. Plato accepted. The experiment
was a fiasco.
Enough said?
Surely, yes!
At least Plato's
experiment was conducted on a limited scale, and not inflicted on
reluctant millions. Communism, on the other hand, though supposed
to come about by a spontaneous uprising of "the people,"
is one of the cruelest jokes ever endorsed by theory-addled intellectuals.
Karl Marx's theories looked good to the intellectuals—on paper.
Perhaps they still look good to a few of their philosophical descendants.
Expounded theoretically, the ideas could be made to look as though
they ought to work, and therefore must work! If they didn't
it could only be because people hadn't developed true appreciation
for them. Who, then, could blame the Bolsheviks and others for wiping
out those misfits like faulty sentences on a page? As Ninotchka
says in the movie of that name, after the recent purges there would
be "fewer but better Russians."
Countless millions
had to die in order to produce those "better Russians"—and,
later on, those "better" Chinese, Cubans, Cambodians,
and all the rest. The "intellectuals," however, have never
lived to see the triumph of their theories. With every revolution,
they've been the first to be eliminated. Their very intelligence
has posed a threat to the New Order. The educated and intelligent,
more than anyone else, would soon realize what a monstrosity they
had spawned, and would expose it.
Karl Marx said
his theories were for the upliftment of "the masses."
His so-called "dictatorship of the proletariat" was ushered
in by a mere handful of revolutionaries, relatively speaking: five
thousand, in a country of many millions. Few of those revolutionaries
were idealists. Most of them were motivated not by noble sentiments,
but by envy, hatred, rage, and greed. Those who rose to the top,
like scum on a pond, were the most ruthless of the lot: Machiavellian
in practice even if few or none of them had ever read The Prince.
Stalin—a veritable Genghis Khan—butchered everyone who
stood in his way. His ambition was power. He feared for his own
physical safety; certainly he was not devoted to fulfilling the
"communist dream," discussed by intellectuals in the fashionable
clubs and universities of England and America. Stalin trampled the
idealists underfoot along with the failed Machiavellians in his
own ranks whose only "failing" was that they were less
ruthlessly criminal than himself.
Marx was motivated
more by social bitterness than by concern for his fellowman. His
entire system may be compared to an upturned wine glass from which
the red liquid—blood, not wine—pours out and stains the
tablecloth and the carpet underneath. Since Marx's day, the very
definition of many words has been so distorted as to give new meaning
to concepts mankind has long cherished. "Progressive,"
for the modern communist, means what normal terminology defines
as regressive. The "progressive" communist opposes true
progress, and enslaves people by making them dependent on the government
for every major decision in their lives. "Truth" is anything
that affirms communist doctrine (even if it is manifestly a lie);
"untruth" is whatever contradicts that doctrine. And "freedom"
is government-mandated security, not the liberty to live and direct
one's life as one chooses.
Among concepts
that have been twisted out of all recognition by communists are
two more: conservative, and political sophistication.
"Conservative" doesn't refer to preserving hallowed traditions:
It means reaction against the policies of the supposedly "enlightened"
regime as it imposes a minority will on the whole populace. "Political
sophistication" means to be naive enough to believe in a theory
that defies universal experience.
The basic difference
between Plato and Marx was that Plato at least envisioned leaders
sincerely concerned for the public well-being: men who were intelligent,
wise, and competent for their job. Plato assumed the existence of
a potential toward which all can aspire. His "utopia"
was a folly, of course, but at least it showed aspiration. Marx,
on the other hand, considered the manual laborer the worthiest definition
of the human race. To him, conditioned as he was by Darwin's theory
of evolution, our animal essence is our entire reality.
Much modern
literature praises this "basic human being," and sneers
at people who aspire to selfless love, spirituality, kindness, and
noble character as victims of false sentimentality, while suggesting
that such persons are being merely dishonest with themselves.
"Dream
Girl," a Broadway play that was popular several decades ago,
made fun of a young woman who spurned basic animalism. A young man,
lusting for her body though he had little use for her soul, awakened
her to life's so-called "realities." This fellow, the
audience was to believe, was a realist, whereas the girl—high-minded
and idealistic prior to her "awakening"—lived in
a dream world. Of course, the playwright was on the side of the
young man, and therefore had to make the girl look just as foolish
and impractical as his dramatic art allowed.
One simple example,
minor in itself, speaks volumes for the lack of integrity in Marx's
philosophy. The value of a commodity, he said, should be determined
by the amount of labor that went into its production. Others—notably
Adam Smith—had proposed this concept before him. No one, however,
had infused into that idea so much emotional fervor.
Viewing the
theory with simple common sense, and leaving aside such complicating
matters as the cost of the machinery and its maintenance, one must
ask: If an untrained carpenter takes longer to build a house than
someone who has had more experience, and if he makes the house less
suitable to live in, will it be worth more simply because he devoted
more days or weeks to its construction? Marx and others like him,
exponents of the "labor theory of value," sought to address
this problem, and wrote of an "abstract labor" that took
differences of skill into account. A person's training, artistry,
and intelligence, however, are at least as crucial to the
value of any contribution a person makes to society. These factors
are discounted when man is defined in merely animalistic terms.
Friedrich Engels,
who eulogized Karl Marx at his funeral, declared, "He discovered
the simple fact, heretofore hidden beneath ideological overgrowths,
that human beings must have food and drink, clothing and shelter,
first of all." These needs, Marx said, determine everything
else a man does. Do they also, then, determine the heights to which
humanity can aspire? Aspiration itself, according to the "basic
animal" theory, is only a mask for man's lower impulses.
Even in the
animal world, however, intelligence is often more highly regarded
than brute force. The stupid "hulk," whether possessing
two legs or four, is never considered the best one to guide others
in their affairs. Marx's appeal to the lowest denominator of consciousness
as the "cream" of humanity was a cruel hoax. All he did
was appeal to men's envy. In deriding high aspirations as pretentious,
he drove society into a downward spiral toward brutishness. The
system he proposed implies that genius should be penalized (unless
it is harnessed in service to the state), and stupidity, exalted.
The fact is, of course, that rulers in every communist state have
always been people guileful enough to fool the rest into accepting
slogans in place of the truth.
A friend of
mine once wanted to bake a cake for a wedding. She was an excellent
cook. Still, thinking the occasion warranted something outstanding,
she tested her recipe first on a few friends, with only a small
cake. Receiving their approval, she was confident enough to bake
a large cake for the festive event. Isn't it obvious that new social
ideas, similarly, ought to be tested first on a few people, before
being inflicted on many?
If a social
philosophy works on a limited scale, it may, possibly, work for
the many. Even so, however, it would be simple common sense to test
it further before urging its adoption by everyone. Murdering everyone
who opposes it is, among other things, counterproductive: It constitutes
a frank admission that the theory is not valid for everyone. Of
course, people theorize further that a perfect society, once it
has been created, will produce perfect people. The theory
crumbles, however, for two reasons: First, people are not mindless
"products" of anything: To varying degrees they are intelligent
and can think for themselves. Only the dullest minds think as they
are told. Second, a society built on murder will necessarily carry
that murderous tendency forward into the future. No society whose
"comrades" cannot know who will be murdered next can have
that security which one associates with "social perfection."
No mere system
can ever be acceptable to everyone, for human nature is infinitely
varied. A social experiment, then, that is imposed wholesale on
large and heterogeneous groups of people cannot succeed in serving
all of them. The best that may be hoped for, realistically, is that
a few people will succeed in creating a better society, and that
a few others, seeing the idea in action, will then be inspired to
try it.
"Example
speaks louder than words." No idea can be imposed widely by
force. If, however, a few people are inspired to embrace it, others
may be moved by their example. Only thus, like an expanding light,
can a great change take place that will eventually affect the very
course of history.
4
Crystal Clarity Publishers, Nevada City, California; third edition,
revised and renamed, 2001.
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Hope
for a Better World!
