The Brilliance of the Sun and of Marx
Well. It is a sunny day outside, warm, clear, with hint of a cool breeze to drive away any threats of humidity. The masses have affected an ungainly waddle, which an expert on the ground judged to be the result of the return of the flip-flop. Student elections are in session, and students only vote if there is free food to go with the vote. The classroom atmosphere has changed, the eager beginnings and smooth mid-semester stride are long since passed. Attitudes range between those who have taken on an almost inhuman intensity, and those who just seem glazed over and sleepy.
It is in this intellectual climate that we began on Marx. By the end of the lesson, Bartky actually had some of the students nodding along, agreeing with the precepts. To those of us who had a few minutes to linger, he confided that sections on Marx always end up with him getting some newly converted Marxists coming to his office, and that it is always necessary to correct them.
If you are someone for whom the Metaphysical has always appeared to be gobbledygook, then Marx may seem like your balm and tonic. He understands the problems that you see manifest in liberal ideals and capitalism. He even has answers to finally stop the madness, bring about full conscious knowledge of the "species being," and promote the universal love and brotherhood of all mankind. His theories make such sense; they make no appeal to God or higher nature, only that which is physically demonstrable.
The final step of false sophistication. A system that claims itself scientific, posited with no regard to anything so abstract as morals or higher ideals, only equality and sustenance.
In every case this political system has failed and met with disaster, genocide, and tyranny.
Marx, for all of his supposed realism, fails to understand human nature. He actually thinks that human desire would be content with pleasant subsistence. He fails to understand that human desires are infinite, and that the anarchy he dreams of would be chaos. He is just another sort of idealist and refuses to deal with the ugliness that is everywhere apparent. He wants to believe that men would be just and good, if only all these human machinations got out of their way.
He makes a disastrous mistake that Machiavelli, the Greeks, the Romans, or any other philosophers could have told him would lead to ruin and bloodshed. He sweeps away all the religion, morals, and conventions that bind the monster and tyrant that sleeps in every human breast. All the higher authorities that direct man to a higher good--a good which Marx would not acknowledge--are swept away, and man sets out to satisfy his ambitions and appetites, free of all restraint.
Nonetheless, the picture of a world free from division and struggle that Marx paints is so tempting, and the methodical, scientific, process by which he goes through the creation of such a world lends such confidence. But it is like staring at the sun. It is beautiful, but it is not obtainable on earth, and by staring after it you only damage your own sight, so that you cannot even see the good that surrounds you.
It is in this intellectual climate that we began on Marx. By the end of the lesson, Bartky actually had some of the students nodding along, agreeing with the precepts. To those of us who had a few minutes to linger, he confided that sections on Marx always end up with him getting some newly converted Marxists coming to his office, and that it is always necessary to correct them.
If you are someone for whom the Metaphysical has always appeared to be gobbledygook, then Marx may seem like your balm and tonic. He understands the problems that you see manifest in liberal ideals and capitalism. He even has answers to finally stop the madness, bring about full conscious knowledge of the "species being," and promote the universal love and brotherhood of all mankind. His theories make such sense; they make no appeal to God or higher nature, only that which is physically demonstrable.
The final step of false sophistication. A system that claims itself scientific, posited with no regard to anything so abstract as morals or higher ideals, only equality and sustenance.
In every case this political system has failed and met with disaster, genocide, and tyranny.
Marx, for all of his supposed realism, fails to understand human nature. He actually thinks that human desire would be content with pleasant subsistence. He fails to understand that human desires are infinite, and that the anarchy he dreams of would be chaos. He is just another sort of idealist and refuses to deal with the ugliness that is everywhere apparent. He wants to believe that men would be just and good, if only all these human machinations got out of their way.
He makes a disastrous mistake that Machiavelli, the Greeks, the Romans, or any other philosophers could have told him would lead to ruin and bloodshed. He sweeps away all the religion, morals, and conventions that bind the monster and tyrant that sleeps in every human breast. All the higher authorities that direct man to a higher good--a good which Marx would not acknowledge--are swept away, and man sets out to satisfy his ambitions and appetites, free of all restraint.
Nonetheless, the picture of a world free from division and struggle that Marx paints is so tempting, and the methodical, scientific, process by which he goes through the creation of such a world lends such confidence. But it is like staring at the sun. It is beautiful, but it is not obtainable on earth, and by staring after it you only damage your own sight, so that you cannot even see the good that surrounds you.
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