No Marx Again!

by Richard Layton 

I note with some disappointment but no real surprise that Edward Martin and Mateo Pimentel, the authors of “Revisiting Marx and Liberalism” have not responded to my article, “No Marx!” which challenged their contention that for Marx, Socialism was the first stage of Communism.

Given that Mr Pimentel is a long-term member of S.P.U.S.A., the Socialist Party U.S.A., it’s no wonder that confusion reigns when it comes to his and his co-author’s view of Marx in respect of a future post-capitalist society.

Mr Pimentel’s Party favours, “a classless socialist society that places people’s lives under their own control… where working people own and control the means of production and can form unions and strike.”

But if workers in this classless society own and control the means of production/distribution; who can they go on strike against? Themselves?

And what if they refuse themselves better pay and conditions?!

Marx advocated a stateless, wageless, moneyless, and classless society and interchangeably referred to it as Socialism or Communism. In the S.P.U.S.A. ‘classless’ parody of the same, the workers lives are clearly not ‘under their own control.’ There’s an employer class paying money wages and determining working conditions.

It doesn’t take much imagination to figure out that the ‘bosses’ in this so-called ‘classless’ society would be the ‘People’s Commissars’ of the S.P.U.S.A. — who no doubt see themselves as the ’intellectual vanguard’ leading the dumb workers to a Leninist paradise.

What Martin and Pimentel are promoting is not Marxist Socialism/Communism but State-Capitalism masquerading as the same–as characterised by the Leninist/Stalinist regime of post-1917 Russia. In reality, the working class fighting against a privileged Party elite who control the State and who claim to be the representatives of the working class.

Lenin’s pretence that his State-Capitalist society with its secret police, labour camps, purges and Communist Party elite was ‘Marxist’ has blackened the name of genuine Socialism/ Communism forever — a bonus that the apologists for Capitalism will be forever grateful for.

But it doesn’t end there. In their latest article, “Marxist and Catholic Tradition Rejects the Inadequacies of Liberalism,” Messrs Martin and Pimentel appear to be conflating Catholicism with Marxism by claiming that the former is a force for ‘the common good’ and ‘the dignity of the human person.’

Tell that to the many children raped by Catholic Priests and mistreated by nuns. The thousands of people who’ve caught AIDS and/or become pregnant for the umpteenth time after being banned from using contraception; and those who paid Indulgences for their ‘sins.’

Tell that to the victims of the Inquisition, scientists like Galileo persecuted for telling the truth and the Jews who’ve been slandered for 2000 years. Tell that to all the people who’ve been told that Catholicism is ‘God’s love’ and if you don’t believe it, ‘you’ll go to hell’!

The Catholic Church is a monolithic organisation that has been corrupt ever since its inception. Like most religions, its supernatural myths about the world that have proved to be useful tools for social elites to maintain their privileged position and to justify to the poor, acceptance of their station in life in this world on the basis that jam will follow in the next.

Its doctrines stem from the Gentile Christianity of St Paul, who never met Jesus but who hijacked his name and invented his god status. The original Jewish sect of Jesus, who knew him as a mortal man, was an anti-Roman cult that wanted to reinforce ancient Mosaic law– and had no intention of establishing a new religion for Jews — let alone one for non-Jews. 

To further emphasise the point, there’s no evidence at all that the Disciple Peter was ever in Rome or founded the Catholic Church and became its first Pope. In the 20th-Century, bones discovered inside the Vatican were arbitrarily declared by the then Pope to be St Peter’s bones — without the slightest evidence. Similarly, the Turin Shroud was found by radiocarbon dating to be a Medieval fake. On such ‘traditions’ are its religious doctrines based!

For working people to progress to a genuine alternative to present day society, we need to get up off our knees to both gods and leaders and stand on our own two feet. We also need to reject pseudo-Marxism and fantasy-Catholicism and similar political and religious flim-flam.