THE TRUTH ABOUT CLASS STRUGGLE

It is astounding how one can become an unwitting enemy of the truth, when she comes to him in the form of propaganda. Yes, indeed! Propaganda does not always mean a lie; it is just a tainted messenger for any kind of message, good or bad, true or false…

Anyway, there is now in Russia a post-Soviet adage that Communist propaganda was an all-lie regarding us but an all-truth regarding them. Live and learn! But even more regrettably, it was the essential truth of Karl Marx’s political philosophy that got hurt as a result of “Marxist” agitprop. And here is the case in point:

Marx’s teaching about the class struggle pitches the haves against the have-nots, reducing human history to the conflict between the rich and the poor. Is it more complicated than that? Soviet propaganda used to say it was that simple, and now, at long last, I agree with this.

The Holocaust started as a revenge story of how the impoverished Germans of their post-Great War misery got back at the get-rich-quick Jews of Germany. Had the wealthy masters of the German servants been of a different race or ethnicity, they would have become the target of their rage just as easily.

By the same token, the current pan-Islamic rage against America and Israel, even though the establishment of the Jewish State on Palestinian land, in 1948, is certainly a major factor, has more to do with the struggle of the poor against the rich than with the so-called “clash of civilizations.” The disingenuous promoters of the latter theory are wrong to paint the picture in cultural-religious terms, unless, of course, they are using it as a euphemism for the struggle of the poor against the rich. As a matter of fact, there is no innate religious conflict in evidence between Islam and Christianity as evidenced by the existing warmth of the relationship between the Moslems and the Russian Christians, who are considered decidedly poorer than the West, and therefore suitable allies of all Islamic nations, despite the efforts of Russia’s enemies to represent the chronic problem of Chechen separatism as a religious conflict.

The purpose of this entry, which needs to be further developed, to attain the level of importance it merits, is to point to the existence of the core problem, in the current “war on terror,” which, so far, has not been adequately addressed, but rather obfuscated by the ongoing ideological and religious warmongering, waged for malevolent reasons to the detriment of a meaningful and peaceful resolution.