A cartoon that appeared in The Industrial Worker in 1911 outlined the Pyramid of the Capitalist System. The pyramid consists of money at the top, with the rulers next (we rule you), then the priests (we fool you), then the military (we shoot at you), then the rich or the bourgeoisie (we eat for you).
Holding the entire pyramid aloft are the many workers who could bring the whole system down if they only refused to provide their labour.
Public domain: Wiki https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pyramid_of_Capitalist_System#/media/File:Anti-capitalism_color%E2%80%94_Restored.png
The Pyramid of the Capitalist System captures most of the ideas of Karl Marx.
Marx regarded religion as ‘the opiate of the masses’ – it fooled the workers into submission despite their superior numbers. If only the workers could let go, the system would fall.
Marx refused to write ‘recipes for the cook shops of the future’, but he thought any revolution would begin in a highly industrialised nation like the United States or Britain. The revolution would commence with a dictatorship of the proletariat (or the working class) to seize control of the government and the means of production until the proletariat were capable of living as communists.
Marx popularised the idea that talent was a fluke of birth and therefore wealth should be distributed ‘from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’. Equality of outcome and a focus on society as a whole would replace Mill’s equality of opportunity where the individual is sovereign.
However, every attempt at a communist society has failed and communism never materialised in an industrialised nation.
In Soviet Russia, Lenin used the vanguard of the dictatorship of the proletariat to seize power. But this vanguard did not lead to the dictatorship of the proletariat, only to a left-wing version of totalitarianism. By 1991, the experiment in communism was over, the Berlin Wall had fallen, and the rest is history.
While we may have dictatorships on the rise today, communism Soviet-style is a relic that can be viewed at the DDR Museum in Berlin. By 1989, East Germany was backwards, innovation and incentives to be productive were non-existent, and in a dike-bursting display of institutional exhaustion, the Eastern Bloc retreated back from whence it came. Key to communism was a return to anarchy, to overthrowing government as we know it, and to overthrow an economic system that has brought more prosperity, sense of community, and individual longevity than any other in human history.
At the end of the 20th Century, American political scientist Francis Fukuyama claimed it was the end of history – that liberal democracy and capitalism had won the contest of ideas, and we had achieved the highest aims of the Enlightenment. Reason had won. Individual rights had won. We were free.
But in the 21st Century, something strange happened. Samuel Huntington forewarned there would be a clash of civilisations between the East and the West, between Christendom and Islam. The events of September 11, 2001, seemed to confirm his predictions. But there was something else, something more sinister that began after the War on Terror had been won (or at least conveniently ended). Western Civilisation started to attack itself.
Chinese Communist leader Mao Tse Tung wrote extensively about contradiction. It is a worldview where contradiction is a permanent metaphysical state of affairs. Capitalism will end because it will contradict itself, and as the cycle of contradiction intensifies, the system eats into itself until a new system replaces it.
Acknowledging that his end of history thesis was short-lived, Francis Fukuyama had a second crack at prediction. He warned that identity politics was the greatest challenge to liberal democracy. This may well be closer to the truth.
In Australia, all aspects of our laws have been usurped by identity politics. Our courts, in my opinion, actively support it. This is not identity politics like Farmer’s Pride or the oldest bloke who feels like he’s losing his identity because he is no longer medically fit to hold a heavy licence. It’s the politics of grievance.
People can now declare themselves neurodiverse. It gives them an excuse for being an unreflective arsehole.
Albo can gaslight you because it’s the new normal, you bigot.
The reality is that identity politics helps the communist cause. Marx didn’t write recipes for tomorrow’s kitchens. But make no mistake, Albo is his executive chef in Australia.
Dr Michael de Percy @FlaneurPolitiq is the Spectator Australia’s Canberra Press Gallery Correspondent. If you would like to support his writing, or read more of Michael, please visit his website.
