The Fallacy of Karl Marx

Around the world, adolescents have taken up picket signs in order to protest against corporate greed and inequality. These individuals feel disregarded by a system that does not take into consideration their basic needs and intrinsic human dignity. This of course is in reference to the Occupy Movement.  For many misinformed denizens the world over, the Occupy movement has become the new vehicle with which the clamour the downfall of capitalism. It has been rather difficult to criticize the Occupy Movement as a whole because of the ambiguous agenda of all its individual constituents, however many Occupy protestors have cited Karl Marx, among others, as their main political influence. Considering the left-leaning inclinations of many of the demonstrators, it is easy to see how his philosophy could have inspired the swollen aggregate of human flesh that is the Occupy movement. As influential as he may have been throughout the years, many disregard the fact that Marx was a racist, degenerate, anti-Semitic, envious piece of trash and that his ideas represented the epitome of human evil.

Karl Marx, a racist? Indeed, from observing his private correspondence with friends and family members, one could conclude that Marx was an ardent racist and anti-Semite (although Marx himself was an ethnic Jew). Marx’s racist views have been brilliantly summarized in Nathaniel Weyl’s 1979 book Karl Marx, Racist. Concerning the adherents of the Jewish faith, Marx had once said “What is the object of the Jew's worship in this world? Usury. What is his worldly god? Money”. In regard to one of his contemporaries, Marx wrote "it is now completely clear to me that he, as is proved by his cranial formation and his hair, descends from the Negroes from Egypt, assuming that his mother or grandmother had not interbred with a nigger”. Although by no means does this ad hominem attack discredit his philosophy, Marx’s bigotry paints him in a different light than the ardent lover of the people as he is so often portrayed.

His diverse opinions on human nature set aside; his philosophy itself is the greatest testament to Marx’s lunacy. Essentially, he conjectured that one day in the unspecified future, the proletariat would be fed up with the unequal wealth distribution and topple the establishment of the evil bourgeoisie. From this point forward, the proletariat would be free to recreate a presumably more wholesome means of existence, free of their greedy brethren. Marx’s ideal state would function on the principle that everyone would work according to their ability and the wealth would be pooled and then distributed according to everyone’s needs. However, Marx’s idea of from each according to his ability to each according to his need contains some of the most destructive undertones to human development. It is fundamentally irrational to reward individuals on a basis of need instead of what they contribute. Nobody would be willing to put forth their maximum ability into their work if they did not expect to be adequately compensated for that effort. A society which would be allowed to persist on such a principle would end up with a disproportionately high amount of people with needs versus those with abilities and would eventually become unsustainable. Karl Marx was envious of those who possessed genuine talents, and this twisted political philosophy was a manifestation of his hatred of successful men.

It is somewhat ironic that the term capitalism was defined by Marx and Engels—the very people who sought to destroy it. Capitalism never ceases to be misrepresented by those eager to point out all its glaring flaws and supposed moral bankruptcies. Socialists (like those of the Occupy Movement) revel in the romanticised notion of fat corporate tycoons sitting around the board room, conniving and elaborating new plots to undermine the core of human innocence. This is not an honest representation of capitalism. Capitalism has nothing to do with keeping down the proletariat, slavery, repression, or waging class warfare. The subsidies and bailouts given by the government to prolong the inevitable disintegration of big banks do not represent the ideals of capitalism either. Private ownership of means of production and a free market with minimal regulations are the two aspects that make Capitalism the most ethical and successful social-economic policy ever implemented in human society. Private institutions owning the means of production (for example, factories or textile mills) are forced to compete with each other for consumers and are thus forced to accommodate the interests of the public, increasing the standards of living for all. Those institutions that become successful do so by discovering new technologies, finding more efficient ways to do things, and providing cutting-edge medical developments. A socialist “utopia” like the one that Marx’s philosophy alludes to provides the public none of these things and would likely lead to gross technological stagnation if ever implemented.

 Capitalism has produced higher standards of living across the board ever since its inception. During the industrial revolution, those individuals previously destined to lives of peasantry and destitute were given menial jobs in the industrial sector. Those already enjoying middle-class employment were provided with luxuries and amenities for which no prior generation could have ever dreamt. Sure, some kids died in some coal mines, but that stuff happened in communist countries too. Any man is better off working at the assembly line in an auto factory than he would have been dragging his knuckles across the forest floor in search of berries and kindling.

On a final thought, a government has no obligation whatsoever to supply its citizens with employment. It is an expectation of many Occupy protestors that the government ought to magically ensure the employment status of all its citizens. However, it is the personal responsibility of the individual to develop the skills that are in demand by the job market and will thus result in a sufficient living. Those who choose to attend college in order to study obscure topics and pursue useless degrees are ultimately the ones who ought to stand accountable for their own lack of employability in the end. It is not viable to give somebody a job if they have no skills or abilities worth paying them for (women’s studies is not a skill). The individual must develop the respective skill-sets appropriate for the line of work to which they aspire to pursue. It is thrust upon the individual to achieve his/her maximum potential through their own respective efforts and values. A job is not a right. Instead of adhering to Marx’s idea that it is society’s responsibility to accommodate people’s needs, the individual must accept that only he ought to provide for his own needs. This is just common sense.

A Treatise On Alcohol

In nearly every high school wood-shop class, there are always one or two delinquents who cannot, despite their best efforts, refrain from fooling around and subsequently injuring themselves on the machinery. In a state of nature, these individuals would conveniently be removed from the gene pool by a process of natural selection. Whether they are obnoxiously filing their fingernails on a disc sander, or placing their digits within close proximity to a band-saw blade, the end result of such incidents usually involves a lost appendage and the teacher having to wipe the arterial spray off the classroom equipment.

The reason why some individuals injure themselves on otherwise benign machinery is because they lack a fundamental respect for the function and power of the tools they are using. Just like disc sanders, band saws, needles, matchsticks, assault rifles, and plutonium-core implosion type nuclear weapons, alcohol is a tool. One who lacks the respect for an alcoholic beverage and the effects it has upon them will likely abuse the function of alcohol at a detrimental impact to themselves. Someone must have a clear understanding for the function of alcohol in order to enjoy it safely. Those who lack this understanding will never cease to injure themselves as well as others when they consume it. They are no greater than those demented cretins who slice off their pinkie fingers in tenth grade with a table saw.

Modern Art and Diabetes

The first great triumph in the history of visual arts was when it monumentally dragged itself out of the degenerate pit of despair known as the dark ages. From that point on, artistic talent would no longer be squandered on producing Byzantine depictions of Aramaic folklore. During the Renaissance, portrayals of the Madonna and Child were largely replaced by three dimensional figures, secular subject matter, and a more accurate perspective of human existence. With the Baroque movement in Italy during the Seventeenth Century, artists finally mastered the depiction of motion in their art. During the Romantic Period, art reached a new height of beauty.

Depicted Below are some examples of the Baroque Movement. Notice the strong impression of movement in the figures.

The Hippopotamus Hunt, by Peter Paul Rubens, 1616

Judith Slaying Holofernes, by Artemisia Gentileschi, 1612

The Shooting Company of Frans Banning Cocq, by Rembrandt van Rijn, 1642

The Revolt of Cairo by Girodet, 1798

With his technically superlative depiction of the human form, French painter William-Adolphe Bouguereau was considered for a brief time to have been one of the greatest artists to have ever lived.  Theodore Gericault and Ivan Aivazovsky were also products of the Romantic Movement, and painted the Raft of the Medusa and the Ninth Wave, Respectively. 

However, at the dawn of the Twentieth Century, there was a paradigm shift in terms of what art was revered and what was brushed aside. Tragically, those artists who possessed genuine technical ability such as Bouguereau were dismissed by critics, who suddenly favoured the work of talentless charlatans such as Marcel Duchamp, Piet Mondrian, and Jackson Pollock. While Bouguereau and Gericault were looked down upon as exemplifying elitist and Bourgeoisie taste, Pollock, Duchamp, and their ilk were praised for their daring ingenuity and abstract ideas. While the artists mentioned above went to great lengths to express beauty and might in their artwork, modern artists went to great lengths to express nothing at all. A notable attribute possessed by many of these modern artists is the disregard for the subject and content in their crafts.

This disregard for subject in modern artwork is epitomized in the movement known as abstract expressionism. This putrid ideology conjectures that one paints using their subconscious. Wherever you feel like flicking paint, etching chalk, smearing ink or splashing glue is entirely contingent upon one’s mood or arbitrary postulate of the given moment. The blind praise of this filth among the art community is responsible for the destruction of contemporary art and the decline in its technical proficiency over the last century or so. Just like writing a book, contriving a piece of music, or building a house, the creation of a piece of artwork demands a process of forethought, deliberation, and precise execution. Art is a discipline that requires more than one’s irrational whims and urges of the given moment. The artist must have a clear image of what he intends to portray (the subject), and how he is to go about portraying it (the medium). Nobody sane would want to live in a house that was created by the same process that Jackson Pollock produced one of his paintings. No one would ever want to read a book written by some unreasonable fool who insisted upon scribbling down whichever disconnected words sprung into his psyche as he was writing. Then why would anyone regard the likes of Jackson Pollock to be anything more than the deep, yawning chasm devoid of artistic talent that his paintings would suggest him to be?

The Subject is that which the artist seeks to depict through their artwork. As their subject, many great artists have chosen to depict heroic figures, enthralling landscapes, or scenes of glory, strength, and triumph (see the artwork above). However, when it comes to most modern art, including abstract expressionism, artists now see fit to depict the ugly, the sickening, deformed, weak, twisted, and the bland; producing what Ayn Rand called crawling specimens of depravity.  For instance, Willem de Kooning’s disfigured portraits of women epitomize this degenerate regard for the human form. The subject of Marcel Duchamp’s critically acclaimed work The Fountain is just a urinal placed on a pedestal. One would have to be functioning at the lowest base operations of their cerebral capacity in order to consider Duchamp or de Kooning artists who are comparable to those truly committed to the discipline.

During the Renaissance, the ability to accurately depict the form of the human body in a piece of artwork was a highly valued skill. Artists such as Michelangelo and Leonardo de Vinci trained strenuously for decades in order to produce the awe-inspiring artwork for which today they are renowned. The decisive coordination necessary to perfectly depict the proportions of the human body has been ameliorated for millennia. Nowadays, because this technical ability is no longer regarded as essential for creating art, the standards of talent set by critics have significantly dropped. Extensive dedication and self-discipline are no longer traits possessed by modern society’s artists. Any mentally-deficient individual with a writing implement and a canvas may contrive a widely-praised piece of artwork, just as long as the subject he conveys is ambiguous or mediocre enough not to offend modern sensitivities.

Some crawling specimens of Depravity/modern art

A Painting by Jackson Pollock

A Painting by Willem de Kooning

Marcel Duchamp’s urinal 

Modern art by Pablo Picasso

Another facet of modern art that deserves some final consideration is graffiti. Just like the Duchamp exhibition of his urinal, graffiti relies in its abuse of medium at the expense of substance in order to provoke a reaction from its audience. Some may argue this point by attempting to prove deep substantial content in the work produced by a graffiti artist like Banksy. Although Banksy’s paintings do exhibit some minimal artistic content, the message they allude to is largely political or ideological in nature. Art that is created for the sake of conveying any kind of political or moral agenda is at its essence little more than propaganda. While the work of Banksy may not be as aesthetically revolting as that of the abstract expressionists, the concept of graffiti and the means in which it is presented to its audience is less than honest. Banksy would never be as popular as he is now if he had presented his work on paper or canvas instead of defacing private property. The full analysis of the ethical implications of Banksy’s vandalism has been discussed in a previous post.

The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel once spoke of the death of art. Hegel believed that once art had passed through several crucial stages in its history, its evolution would become stagnant and it could not develop any further. If one considers the progression of contemporary art from the dark ages towards the present day, it is not difficult to make such a conclusion. Indeed, there has been an acute regression of talent, beauty, and overall composition in most art since the mid nineteenth century. Hegel lived at the height of the Romantic period in art, and it is remarkable that he could have had such accurate foresight into the fate of the artistic discipline.

The Aesthetic height of art was arguably during the Romantic Movement, and then declined sharply in the mid twentieth century. The world is not without some competent artists today, however they have generally been disregarded by mainstream tastes. Today, the fashion in art is to exploit the medium of artistic presentation at the expense of its content and substance. This is particularly true in abstract, minimalist, postmodern, and most avant-garde art. Technical ability and forethought are not traits that are revered in the production of these so-called art forms. However, humans require a certain aesthetic standard when appreciating art. One is not fulfilled at the sight of a Jackson Pollock painting as they would to behold a piece of artwork created by a logical process of creativity and self discipline. Abstract art may be appreciated but never truly respected. In this sense it is like artistic sugar. One who over consumes sugar will be rewarded with type 2 Diabetes. Likewise, one who claims to enjoy abstract or minimalist art will never truly be aesthetically fulfilled. It is as though they have given themselves diabetes by consuming saccharine, pseudo-artistic trash. This condition has blinded flatterers of modern art from ever appreciating true beauty. Art should never be gruesome, provocative, or minimalist for its own sake. There must be content and purpose in artwork in order to truly appreciate it.

Hegel was entirely correct in his prediction that art would die after the Romantic Era. Where a society can praise the antics of Jackson Pollock at the expense of those who produce real substantive art-- that society has failed to uphold any kind of aesthetic standard. A civilization that glorifies the mediocre will inevitably become mediocre itself.

Hang Banksy

The world-renowned criminal and street artist known only as Banksy has been active painting the streets of London and elsewhere with his nauseating brand of stencil-craft for more than two decades now. One would be hard-pressed to determine the precise monetary toll that this charlatan’s vandalism has inflicted upon London’s graffiti removal budget as of present. For those unacquainted with Banksy, some commonly-flaunted examples of his work include the painting of the protestor throwing a bouquet of flowers (depicted below), the image showing a young girl frisking down a soldier, and a large nude man hanging onto a windowsill. His work exemplifies the kind of post-modernist pseudo-art that would have William Bouguereau convulsing in his tomb. Banksy’s paintings can barely be considered art, but merely a sad agglomeration of provocative symbolism and vaguely correlated political and corporate imagery. His civil-disobedience has earned him the admiration of many leftist goons and liberal arts students. Fortunately, there are some who still regard Banksy as the criminal he is. Political inclinations aside, there is no ethical justification for what he does. The deliberate destruction or defacement of someone’s stuff is a crime and his actions convey no regard whatsoever for the institution of private property. His craft is an eyesore upon the city. His message provokes neither thought, nor consideration—just vomit. When this miscreant is finally unmasked (and he will be), he shall be subject to the most swift and unmerciful of judicial procedures.

From his defacement of the West Bank wall, to his desecration of a sexual health clinic in Bristol, the most glaring injustice perpetrated by this individual is his disregard and vandalism of private and government property. The institution of private property is not merely some kind of capitalist plot to undermine human innocence. Its purpose is to ensure that one’s material assets are not at the mercy of the first thug who wishes to destroy them or take them away. Every human being has an obligation to respect the physical property of others and no circumstance or condition may override this obligation. A burglar who breaks into your house and smashes you crystal chandelier is not justified in doing so as an act of free expression. Likewise, it could hardly be argued that a bigot who paints a swastika in blood on one’s front door is just exercising his right to free speech. Then why is a common vandal with a few stencils and some spray paint so revered for defacing the property of business owners and governments? Why is this nonsense allowed to persist? One could not conceivably propose an ethical justification for Banksy’s graffiti without disregarding the universal right to personal property.

The overwhelming support for the actions of this criminal come from Banksy’s fellow miscreants and angsty revolutionaries who identify with his ambiguous, yet anti-capitalist inclinations. It is evident from observing his graffiti, that Banksy is a fervent adherent to the  leftist agenda. The man has a stick up his ass when it comes to issues such as globalization, profit motive, rich people, industrialization, factory farming, and fast food, among other things. Not only is Banksy a hypocrite for demonstrating against such things as industrialization and capitalism, but he is disregarding some fundamental facts about reality and the world in which man inhabits. Take his two paintings depicted below for example. Both contain strong implications that industrialization is undesirable as it has replaced a landscape of trees, meadows, and parks with highways, parking lots, and factories. However, this is just impractical idealism, as urbanity is merely the most convenient and efficient means for large densely populated communities to survive. The paint Banksy uses, the clothes he presumably wears, and the affluent dwelling in which he inhabits were all created by a process made possible by industrialization.

Fast food may be disgusting, but many people would be unwilling to give up the convenience of cheap/fast service at the expense of some loosely defined moral ideologies such as those that Banksy’s paintings allude to. Likewise, most people (likely including Banksy himself) would also be unwilling to forfeit all the luxuries and amenities that globalization has brought them at the expense of an environmental or subjective moral initiative. Thus, Banksy is not merely an undesirable for his destruction of property, but also for his dissemination of irrational views of existence.

Considering the immense public support for his lowly incursions, Banksy’s actions will most likely encourage copycats if he is not made an example of. It ought to be communicated to his ilk that defacement of private property and distasteful displays of art are not to be tolerated by a society that already allows free speech and an open marketplace of ideas. It goes without saying that Banksy’s art would not be as popular, nor would it have sold for thousands of dollars if it was not presented in such a dishonest, shameless fashion. In order that we rid society of its lowest contingents—so-called graffiti-artists, Banksy ought to be hung by his neck in Trafalgar Square. This method of deterrent has already proven successful throughout the course of history by reducing the conviction rate of witchcraft and piracy. Perhaps Banksy’s bloated and rotting corpse will send a duly-needed message to any further aspiring vandals.