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Wong's Essay
My goodness, Archaic, the next time you choose someone to "refute" the Manifesto, choose someone who actually understands it. Your advocacy of this rather pedestrian essay only goes to demonstrate the maxim that the best writing is the writing we already agree with.
While the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a small little pamphlet, only 48 pages, twenty five quotes, ten of them being the "commandments of communism,"
are wholly inadequate to understanding the ideas contained within. When reading Wong's essay, I get the impression that he had a preconceived idea as to what it was about, then selectively culled quotes to demonstrate his lack of understanding.
Before I get into shredding this silliness, let's discuss what the Manifesto actually is. The Manifesto, contrary to the hopes of the lazy, is not the Bible of Communism. It is not a set of "commandments," nor a proclaimation for all Communists for all time. You cannot read the Manifesto hoping to understand the whole of the movement, what it thinks, what it does, any more than you can hope to understand what American literature by reading Johnny Tremain.
In the first section of the Manifesto Marx lays out, in short form, the materialist view of history. Marx shows how the organization of labor drives the organization of society and how each society contains within it the seeds of the next society. In the second section Marx discusses the goal of communism, "the abolition of private property." These are really the only two important sections for us, the third and fourth relating to political movements of the 19th Century that no longer exist.
Of the Manifesto Marx wrote four years later,
On to Wong!
This is a broad declaration against millions of people. While it's true that some people might react in a knee jerk fashion, as my response here demonstrates, that isn't true.
What nature? The only two things that can be truthfully said about human nature are the humans are social and that they create themselves. First, all humans everywhere are dependent upon the labor of other humans for their existence. We are not animals that go our own way upon birth. We are taught, protected, fed, clothed, housed, and entertained from birth by other human beings. We take this with us whereever we go. There is no self-made man. Hermits take their education with them. This is the mode of existence for our species. This is our nature.
The second aspect of our nature derives from this, as we are dependent upon others for everything, we are made by each other. Humans, therefore, create themselves. If human nature couldn't be shaped, the entire advertising industry would never have existed. Our parents shape us, our friends, our teachers, our communities shape us. And so it should be no coincidence that capitalist society creates humans that find capitalist society fits them. Just as it should be no coincidence that I happen to cook food that I like to eat. Sandwiches don't come out natureally the way I want them to be, and neither do humans "naturally" fit capitalism. We make them fit our needs.
I'm sure it would surprise Wong to know that Marx and Engels were the first people to describe what is today termed Chaos Theory. Although he is often not given credit for it, Engels was the first person to descibe the complexity and chaos of nature in his work The Dialectics of Nature. Ilya Prigogene, the famous Chaos scientist, does credit Marx and Engles in his work, Order Out of Chaos. However, he had the benefit of a socialist education before moving to the West, and thus was aware of these contributions.
There's nothing about this in the Manifesto. Wong needs to stick to his topic.
And yet, humans do work very hard without self-interest to motivate them. What inspires military men to charge into the face of death? Self-interest? On a micro level, they don't want to let their comrades down. On a macro-level, they don't want to let their nation or country or King down. Millions of people in the USSR threw themselves into their work in the 1930s because they believed they were building a better tomorrow (Stalinist terror not withstanding). People volunteer to fight forest fires and floods who aren't threatened. Parents sacrifice for their children. Sacrifice is just as much a part of human nature as self-interest.
And who says that communism and socialism aren't about self-interest? I'm not a commie because I think everyone else should have a better world. I'm a commie cuz I want to live in a better world, where I don't have to worry about work or shelter or crime, where I have a say in my society as an average person.
I'll get to the rest of Wong's essay later. Right now I have some errands to run.
edit: fixed typos.
My goodness, Archaic, the next time you choose someone to "refute" the Manifesto, choose someone who actually understands it. Your advocacy of this rather pedestrian essay only goes to demonstrate the maxim that the best writing is the writing we already agree with.
While the Manifesto of the Communist Party, is a small little pamphlet, only 48 pages, twenty five quotes, ten of them being the "commandments of communism,"
are wholly inadequate to understanding the ideas contained within. When reading Wong's essay, I get the impression that he had a preconceived idea as to what it was about, then selectively culled quotes to demonstrate his lack of understanding.Before I get into shredding this silliness, let's discuss what the Manifesto actually is. The Manifesto, contrary to the hopes of the lazy, is not the Bible of Communism. It is not a set of "commandments," nor a proclaimation for all Communists for all time. You cannot read the Manifesto hoping to understand the whole of the movement, what it thinks, what it does, any more than you can hope to understand what American literature by reading Johnny Tremain.
In the first section of the Manifesto Marx lays out, in short form, the materialist view of history. Marx shows how the organization of labor drives the organization of society and how each society contains within it the seeds of the next society. In the second section Marx discusses the goal of communism, "the abolition of private property." These are really the only two important sections for us, the third and fourth relating to political movements of the 19th Century that no longer exist.
Of the Manifesto Marx wrote four years later,
Now as for myself, I do not claim to have discovered either the existence of classes in modern society or the struggle between them. Long before me, bourgeois historians had described the historical development of this struggle between the classes, as had bourgeois economists their economic anatomy. My own contribution was 1. to show that the existence of classes is merely bound up with certain historical phases in the development of production; 2. that the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat; 3. that this dictatorship itself constitutes no more than a transition to the abolition of all classes and to a classless society.
On to Wong!
And in spite of the utter failure of communism in the twentieth century, its defenders attack any criticism as "capitalist dogma".[sic]
The problem with Marx's grandiose vision of social engineering is that it assumes humans will play by rules which are against their nature,
The second aspect of our nature derives from this, as we are dependent upon others for everything, we are made by each other. Humans, therefore, create themselves. If human nature couldn't be shaped, the entire advertising industry would never have existed. Our parents shape us, our friends, our teachers, our communities shape us. And so it should be no coincidence that capitalist society creates humans that find capitalist society fits them. Just as it should be no coincidence that I happen to cook food that I like to eat. Sandwiches don't come out natureally the way I want them to be, and neither do humans "naturally" fit capitalism. We make them fit our needs.
Complex systems such as societies and economies tend to obey the laws of chaos theory;
I'm sure it would surprise Wong to know that Marx and Engels were the first people to describe what is today termed Chaos Theory. Although he is often not given credit for it, Engels was the first person to descibe the complexity and chaos of nature in his work The Dialectics of Nature. Ilya Prigogene, the famous Chaos scientist, does credit Marx and Engles in his work, Order Out of Chaos. However, he had the benefit of a socialist education before moving to the West, and thus was aware of these contributions.
It is a laudable goal to improve society, but it should be done through gradual change, not "revolution".
Humans won't work as hard without self-interest to motivate them,
And who says that communism and socialism aren't about self-interest? I'm not a commie because I think everyone else should have a better world. I'm a commie cuz I want to live in a better world, where I don't have to worry about work or shelter or crime, where I have a say in my society as an average person.
I'll get to the rest of Wong's essay later. Right now I have some errands to run.
edit: fixed typos.
the second section of Marx's Manifesto.
Comrade Azazel is head of our Iraeli cell, while Frankychan is head of our Hawaiian cell. 
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