Windmills for Giants: Upaya in Confronting Willing Capitalists.

Windmills for Giants: Upaya in Confronting Willing Capitalists.

The premises for Communism are so morally ubiquitous that one is startled to find an other adult who has not arrived at the same conclusion. Often the basic facts of Life (including, of course, Moral Life) that philosophers painstakingly attempt to arrive at are muddled by the masses, whose realism has simply been fabricated by other and more dated minds whose relevance has stood the test of time not by self-evidence but by collective ignorance and that force of habit that physicists describe as “inertia”.

A student of philosophy delights in the opportunity to puzzle over the brilliance of Great Minds, such as those of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels (to say nothing of Sartre and Deleuze, etc.). But from time to time the Life of the Bodhisattva obligates one to encounter the Demon of Ignorance.

And at that point the Hero enters into a strange and foreign realm where sages are confused for tyrants just as readily as windmills are confused for Giants. The very principle of Intelligence is divorced from morality by those who lack both by the same token, regarding the former as some sort of threat to the latter (hence the prevalence of Evil Geniuses in pop culture, a great deal of whom, the writer included, hail from countries with Communistic Regimes.).

It is not uncommon to ask students of ‘Political Science’ and Rhetoric this seemingly pressing question: is Vladimir Putin trying to recreate the Soviet Union?

The answer is: No. Because Putin is not a Communist by a damn sight.

Vladimir Putin came to consolidate his power by a series of shady negotiations with criminals. An opportunist at Heart, he rose to rule by stealing funds whose principal purpose was to FEED THE MASSES, taking the liberty to give it to those of lesser need but greater power, and by so doing earning the support of a divided Nation’s Greatest and most Foreboding Bullies.

Sounds like a CAPITALIST, if you ask me!

Admittedly, Joseph Stalin, and even, to some extent, Vladimir Lenin, were all so markedly Machiavellian in their acquisition and handling of Power. Be that as it may, it was not the Ideals that they espoused so much as the degree by which they fell from them – Stalin by hypocrisy and Lenin by mistakes in planning – that was the true measure of the evils of their regimes, and that could be described as the Cause for Evil under the first failed attempts at Communism.

Stalin failed to feed the Russian people, and instead he chose to aggrandize himself. But his ability to do so under the Banner of good will does not exempt him from the failures of either his predecessors (including the Tsars who produced not only the demand for Communism but the seeds for its destruction) nor his successors, up through Putin.

And Vladimir Putin is hardly worse of character than Donald Trump, all though the latter has proven less potent so far. People forgive dictators and other tyrants in post-modern, contemporary society because post-structural thought, alongside the Neo-liberal Corporate State that has adopted it, dispossesses the Individual of any personal responsibility by blaming social trends. Narcissists exploit this by blaming Altruism for the foibles of hypocrites. But it is not Marx, nor is it Marxism, that is to blame for Stalinism; it is Stalin! Evil and corruption, when given power, can assume any mask, be it Capitalistic or Communistic.

The only true question of import is: which set of ideals, when enacted systematically, lends Evil the greatest degree of power?

And that question has a sister:

Ought we to allow our fears of an enabling system* interfere with our Human Goodness coming to fruition?

*this may be read to mean ‘enabling to evil’, though it is just to say that people fear, perhaps as much, a system that ‘enables’ Goodness.

Consider Putin again:

1. He fails to feed the People.

Marx would argue that ANY government that fails to do this is a mistake.

2. He steals funds intended to feed the People.

Marx insists that property is theft. By extension: all capitalists are thieves. But are all thieves capitalists?

3. By stealing the funds, he takes wealth from those in need, and he gives it to those in power.

Marx posits a distribution of wealth that is from each according to his ability and to each in accordance with his need. Any thing short of that ideal is a criminal corruption of power and a Crime Against Humanity.

This third point is crucial, because it is the principal distinction betwixt empaths and sociopaths, and as such it constitutes the battlefield for Good and Evil.

Suppose that we wish to transcend post-modernity. A man (by which I mean a Human Being) wants to Know:

What was Life like before I was de-constructed? What would it be like to take full responsibility for not only one’s own Good and Evil, but for that of the Entire World?

Fortunately, Nature has all ready provided us with a Solution. A tree sustains Human Life by breathing out, and it is sustained BY Human Life when it breathes in. It has no legs, outside of Lore, so it never ‘goes out and gets’ what it needs.

Its status in its Natural Environment is nourishing, austere, and non-competitive. It gives and it receives, but it does not TAKE. Conversely, most parasites travel in search of a host, infiltrate it, and use it to reproduce, often killing the Host. In Human Life, the parasite is the narcissist, whereas his host is the empath.

Unfortunately, the empath is made to RESEMBLE a parasite to the extent that he accommodates one.

Deprived of Life, the host has no choice but to seek its own compensation for the parasite’s share. Taught by example to tolerate the narcissist’s abuse, the empath might resort to such tactics when Society fails to provide for him.

You might believe that the parasite is the Communist, and vice versa. Yet not all thieves are Capitalists. The main reason that I identified Vladimir Putin as a capitalist is that he interrupted the Natural Order of Reciprocity. An eco-system does not survive by enforcement;

Taoists have known this for thousands of years, and Biology has corroborated them. Trees do not DEMAND that Human Beings breathe, nor do they withhold oxygen from those who have little carbon dioxide to spare. Admittedly, the latter is unlikely ever to be the case. Yet the metaphor holds water in other aspects. The soil that sustains the Mighty Redwood at its humble roots does not require that same recipient to provide it with water. Both serve the entire Biosphere in whatever manner befits each, and in turn the Biosphere provides for all.

Although it is a formal fallacy to try to turn natural fact into an ethic, as the Far Right does by abuse of Force, it remains wise to take cues from Nature in questions of Human Nature. Putin’s thievery is capitalistic because he disrupts the Natural Flow of Generosity, from each according to his need, for his own personal gain and aggrandizement. In place of the Universal Value of Human Life he forces us to settle for the Quid pro Quo; while the former rests at the top of Kohlberg’s Moral Hierarchy, the latter is only one step above the bottom. When the Tao loses, force and coercion take its place. Conversely, a guerilla warrior such as Ché Guevara does not steal because he desires power, but rather because he requires decency. A just society models itself after the Biosphere. It does not misrepresent coercion and pre-conventional morality as Just, nor does it represent the condition of Birth into Debt as freedom. It does not reward narcissism and condemn powerlessness. It simply receives what Man has to offer in proportion to his ability, and it returns to him what is in accordance with Man’s Need. ‘Man’ signifies the entirety of the Human Population, which like any other body prospers by the nurture of each of its constituent parts. The Capitalist thief chokes parts of the Human Body, not unlike a cancerous growth. The Communist thief simply rebels against a society that fails all ready to provide for him. The former subverts the whole to the part.

The latter reacts to the subversion, liberating the whole by re-asserting his own part. Either the system works for every one, or it works for no one. It is not the Communist that is the parasite, but the Capitalist.

The Communist is simply the aforementioned host, who must resort to thievery only to compensate for what the parasite stole from him, and who holds others to those standards that society would follow were it just.

He is not forcing man away from Nature, but rather redeeming him. His semblance to a parasite is only by force of necessity in dealing WITH a parasite. His thievery is just, even if it must come to Force*. His identity as a Host is corroborated and evidenced by his self-identification with Society, Humanity, and the Biosphere that contains and informs them. The parasite knows only ego and persona, wearing ideology and character as masks and so enthroning those same masks as Gods that when his ruse is undone by the Force of Nature the people rage at the Gods and he makes his escape.

*As a last resort, and only in some cases.

Now that we have reconstructed the Individual, (to be specific: I did. But I say that only to be consistent.) each of us has to decide: Good or Evil. The Capitalist begins to resemble Stalin in every respect, whereas the Communist is something closer to Jesus:

Superhuman, but worthy of imitation.

So why are we still in question?

The fact is that the ego abounds in excuses, before, during, and after deconstruction.

The virtues of Communism can be summed up in three critiques of Capitalism:

1. That the very institution of Currency Itself violates the Categorical Imperative, that Universal Golden Rule that preserves the value of Human Life as something that transcends mere ‘market value’.

2. That Capitalism rewards Narcissism.

3. That Communism is the logical and natural* consequence of Empathy.

*Given Knowledge of the Fallacy of Naturalism, for something to attain both logical AND natural virtue registers as a miracle.

But the Devil is cunning.

Kohlberg proved that most people only ever manage to attain the first stage of conventional morality:

Conformity to Social Norm. Theoretically, this would be sufficient towards the end of building a Humane Society; one would simply have to employ peer pressure.

But it is for this same reason that Americans are so typically averse to Communism: they like to conform, but they do not care to be told how TO conform.

Left to their own devices, they form ‘social groups’ that are customarily led by a de facto ringleader who is in regrettably many instances a sociopath.

(Hence the alpha male idea still prevails even in twenty-first Century human culture.) It was said that democracy has a bug built into it: that the People can elect to have democracy abolished. I countered that the bug is democracy itself, which must transcend itself before it inevitably burns down to Fascism.

One of the many bugs intrinsic to the Grand Beetle that is democracy is this: that the People can elect ANY thing, even if it harms the Person.

Society itself can thereby become anti-social if enough of its constituents form a majority comprised of anti-socialites. The Herd begets the Mob. As Alan Watts said: we do not have a society, but a Mob; instead of conversing amidst one an other, we converge around a leader. In Watts’ day, the chief instrument of propaganda was the television set. The plague of MY generation is the Internet. As part of an elite minority operating at Kohlberg’s Sixth Level of Moral Development, I can adopt Watts’ philosophy of Judo and use the system to beat the system.

(After all: I owe my direct knowledge of Watts himself to YouTube.)

Unfortunately, most of my most brilliant and passionate peers will allow their Reality to be dictated by only a few readily available and intrusive ‘News’ Sources that are becoming exceedingly prioritized as Net Neutrality dies. And their epistemology will not be informed by scholastic discernment but by banal memes.

Who would have thought that the Fate of the World would rest with the sort of nonsense that my friends in high school found in 4chan?!?

Of course: selfishness and ignorance do not cease to be so by becoming prevalent.

Any rational man Knows that an appeal ad populum is a fallacy of dire proportions.

People can get together and decide that they don’t give a damn about people. But all it takes is for one person to affirm the value of an other person in order to infer his OWN value. And ‘people’ will never be able to take that inalienable freedom away.

Dm.A.A.