#marxism leninism is a meaningless political ideology

[listen-to-the-inner-walrus]

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[seewetter]

If we take a questionnaire like this one seriously it has all kinds of problems in the classification:

Communist: the use of this label as self-id originates with Karl Marx. But ironically, Marx wanted a socialist society. So the Communist Manifesto is a manifesto by self-proclaimed communists about how to build socialism. The idea that there's a future type of society called "communist society" originates with Marxism-Leninism, which confusingly is not an ideology championed by Lenin, but instead an ideology invented under Stalin's rule. So if people who champion Marx's economic analysis are Marxists and people who want to build the kind of society Marx championed are socialists, what on Earth distinguishes communists? After all, Marx used the term mainly to set himself apart, as a type of branding. The word had been around before Marx (especially as an accusation from conservative media) but it didn't mean much.

Socialist: what kind of socialist? A "state socialist" that wants the government to take over the entire economy? A liberal socialist that wants society to use elections to slowly morph into a better post-capitalist world? An advocate of direct democracy who wants socialism, but also wants to abolish the state? An advocate of democratizing the workplace with voting structures so you vote for your boss? Someone who wants to nationalize various industries and put them under democratic supervision, but leave some industries (luxury goods) to self-regulate? I would argue this label doesn't tell us where you are on the political spectrum. At all.

Left Wing is simply the umbrella term for either people who pro forma agree with universal freedom and universal rights (which includes liberals but also includes socialists and communists) or the umbrella term for the radical left (people who want capitalism to go away). And while some positions (like liberal socialism) are both liberal and radically left, usually the two don't come together.

Center-Left: technically, all social liberals are center-left and all center-leftists are socially liberal. The two terms mean the same thing.

Centrist: People who want liberal democracy to continue are centrists. It is one of the most broad and therefore meaningless labels you can imagine.

Center-Right: this one is confusing, because technically, the center-right distinguishes itself from (A) everyone left-of-center and (B) the far right. Meaning this is a synonym for conservative

Right-wing/conservative: These two terms do not at all mean the same thing. Conservatism is not filled with specific political stances. You can't know if someone is conservative based on their particular opinions of things. Instead, conservatism is when people express skepticism towards new developments and try to slow them as a matter of (conservative) principle.

Right-Wing on the other hand refers to a specific set of stances. And these stances are anti-universal human rights and anti-universal freedom. People who want to victimize specific sets of people either through killing or through restricting them. Whenever anyone expresses such an idea, no matter what their politics otherwise are, they are expressing a right-wing idea.

Reactionary is a weird one to include without including progressivism. Progressivism tries to advance social change that improves human wellbeing, social organizaton or civility. Reactionaries want to return to social conditions with less human wellbeing, they want hierarchies (even if that causes strife) and their idea of civility is purely based on appearances rather than earnest consideration for the freedoms and dignity of others.

Fascist is a term with about 19 conflicting definitions in academia alone. We live in a time of resurging demagoguery (populist leaders who use false information to malign minorities and undermine democracy) and tyranny (leaders that overturn democracy to install unreasonable, selfish, cruel forms of power). Within the 20th century context, fascism specifically added concepts like total war, mass mobilization, attempts at total control over all institutions of society, etc. We live in an age where fascism wants to make a comeback but plays coy in order to win hearts and minds. There's lots of self-identifed fascists that don't entirely fit the bill and they have plenty of identical friends who wouldn't call themselves fascist but pose the same danger. Although the main problem with these folks is not their numbers, which they don't really have -- it's their access to undemocratic political power.

I think part of the trouble with this poll is that it confuses large labels (Center-Left) with specific labels (Fascist). And adds in political concepts that are about personal approach (Reactionary) with concepts that are about societal goals (Socialist) or branding (Communist).

Like we could have a poll like

This would distinguish the people who are ok with liberal democracy (the Center) from the people who are not.

Or if you want to be more fine-grained, I think the Pew Research Center has an excellent political typology: Here.

Or you can get super-fine-grained and pick a specific topic (self-id label, political goal) and then ask people about that. But then it will get more and more fine-grained. You'll start with labels like "libertarian" or "mutualist" and end up getting so fine grained you'll be asking about positions on each political issue one-by-one. Maybe even asking which specific arguments someone buys into or uses. You can get super-lengthy that way, but not many people will want to answer the poll.

[argyrocratie]

It is hard to deny the progressivist dimension in Marx: he shared his time’s belief in today being ‘better’ than yesterday, and tomorrow surely better than today. He held a linear view of history, and built up a deterministic continuity from primitive community to communism. Basically, he reconstructed early history as if, when human groups had been able to produce more than was necessary for immediate survival, this surplus had created the possibility of exploitation, hence its historical necessity. A minority forced the majority to work and grabbed the riches. Thousands of years later, thanks to capitalism, the huge expansion of productivity creates another possibility: the end of exploitation. Goods of all kinds are so plentiful that it becomes absurd to have a minority monopolize them. And the organization of production is so socialized that it becomes pointless (and even counterproductive) to have it run by a handful of rulers each managing his own private business. The bourgeois were historically necessary: then their own achievement (the growth of the modern economy) turns them into parasites. Capitalism makes itself useless. History has thus moved from scarcity to abundance.

True, such an evolutionary pattern was never actually written down by Marx, but it is the underlying logic beneath a lot of his texts and (what’s more important) a lot of his political activity. It was no accident or mistake if he supported the German national bourgeoisie or clearly reformist union or party leaders: he regarded them as agents of the positive change that would eventually bring about communism. By contrast, he looked down on such insurrectionists as Bakunin whom he thought stood outside the real movement of history.

It’s interesting to note that major anarchist figures, like Kropotkin and Elisée Reclus (both renowned professional geographers) also supported deterministic views, with an emphasis more on social organisation than production. To them, the worldwide spread of industry and commerce created a potential universal human and open society where ethnic differences, borders and States were made meaningless.

In Marx’s case as in Kropotkin’s, ‘society’ ceased to be the result of relationships between beings and classes, and revolution was supposed to be bound to happen because of a universal drive towards a unified humankind. This was more a technological explanation of history than a social one.

The deterministic Marx, however, was not the whole Marx, who showed a long-standing deep interest in what did not fit within the linear succession of historical phases. He wrote at length about self-organizing peasant communes with collective ownership of land, and clearly envisaged the possibility of skipping the capitalist stage in Russia. Whatever Kropotkin thought of Marx, quite a few ideas of the Russian anarchist echo those of the famous London exile.

Yet, as we know, those insights were later discarded by reformist and revolutionary Marxists alike. Marxism became the ideology of economic development. According to it, since capitalism gets more and more socialized, there’s little need for revolution: the organized masses will eventually put a (mainly peaceful) end to bourgeois anarchy. To sum it up, socialism does not break with capitalism: it completes it. Radicals only differed from gradualists in that they included the necessity of violence in this process. Lenin made much of the fact that big German konzerns and cartels were already organized and centralized from the top: if bourgeois managers were replaced by working class ones, and this rational planning was extended from each private trust to the whole of industry, the general social fabric would be altered5 . This was no breakaway from the commodity and the economy.

Our return to Marx around 1970 probably failed to realize how much Marxism owed to Marx.

Any economic definition of communism remains within the scope of the economy, i.e. the separation of the production moments from the rest of life. Communism is not a society that would properly feed the hungry, nurse the sick, house the homeless, etc. It can’t be based on the fulfillment of needs as they exist now or even as we might imagine them in future. Communism does not produce enough for everyone and distributes it fairly among all. It is a world where people get into relationships and into acts that (among other things) result in them being able to feed, nurse, house... themselves. Communism is not a social organization. It is an activity. It is a human community.

- Re-visiting the east ... and popping in at Marx's - Gilles Dauvé

[therewasabrowncrow]

Today’s visual notes from Dichotomisation of Caste and Class by Anand Teltumbde: Villainy of Marx’s Metaphor

This critique of upper caste trade unionists in India by Teldumbde sir reminded me of Sundari Anitha’s piece about British trade union bosses refusing to address matters of race and gender for pretty much the same reasons during the Grunwick strikes 

I hope I have been able to visualise these concepts --tbh they’re still fuzzy in my head.��

TRANSCRIPT!

The main factor that created the dichotomy of caste and class is the Marxian metaphor of base and superstructure, which, as understood by the so-called Marxists, valorised economic struggles proxied by classes and relegated the rest to superstructure. This concept, evolved in a small number of writings of Marx and Engels, came into existence as a template for historical materialist analysis. The early communists in India typically were from the educated middle class Brahmin (upper caste) youth, inspired by the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. They were fed on a diet of literature and other resources smuggled from Britain and Russia. They naturally began their activities with trade unions, which, in fact, had cropped up much before the communist party was formally founded in 1925. Their confrontation with castes was limited to organisational contradiction within trade unions through a small minority of Dalit workers, which they wanted to avoid. The lack of appreciation of the gravity of caste oppression, the fear of organisational break-up, and the absence of reference to the issue in communist theory pushed them to cling to a Marxist metaphor of base–superstructure, assuming that castes belonged to the superstructural realm, which was taken as “determined” by the determinant “base” of economic structure. The entire behaviour of the communist parties vis-à-vis castes is explained by the mechanical reading of this metaphor. It is only lately, notably after the eruption of the Naxalite movement, which, with its rural roots, had to face castes in a big way, that the patch-up in the interpretation of this metaphor began. Most Naxal factions have refined their stand towards the caste question and some of them have veered around to see caste as part of both, base as well as superstructure. None have, however, really discarded it as useless. This metaphor of Marx has a controversial history. In his early writings, Marx did not separate base from superstructure. It is in 1852, in The Eighteenth Brumaire of Napoleon Bonaparte, that Marx first introduced the term “superstructure.” It is only in 1859 that he presented his clearest account of the base– superstructure concept in the Preface to a Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy. There is no need to separately stress that Marx wrote it in a dialectical sense, but his followers enthusiastically picked it up as the simplistic explanation of historical materialism. Neither the base nor the superstructure is an object, nor are they static. The superstructure, to some extent, is conditioned by the base, but it is not rigidly determined by it, and rather it could autonomously exert reverse influence on the base itself. By 1890, the incorrect usage of this metaphor became so rampant that Engels had to intervene. In his letter to Starkenburg, he wrote (on 25 January 1894),

Political, juridical, philosophical, religious, literary, artistic, etc, development is based on economic development. But … [I]t is not that the economic situation is cause, solely active, while everything else is only passive effect. There is rather interaction on the basis of economic necessity which ultimately always asserts itself.

Again in a letter to a German student Joseph Bloch (21–22 September 1890), he stressed his point saying,

Marx and I are ourselves to blame for the fact that young writers sometime lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. According to the materialist view of history, the determining factor in history is, in the final analysis, the production and reproduction of actual life … Now if someone distorts this by declaring the economic moment to be the only determining factor, he changes that proposition into a meaningless abstract, ridiculous piece of jargon.

Ellen Meiksins Wood perceptively observed,

‘The base/superstructure metaphor has always been more trouble than it is worth. Although Marx himself used it very rarely and only in the most aphoristic and allusive formulations, it has been made to bear a theoretical weight far beyond its limited capacities’ …

the real problems began with the establishment of Stalinist orthodoxies which elevated—or reduced—the metaphor to the first principle of Marxist–Leninist dogma, asserting the supremacy of a self contained economic sphere over other passively reflexive subordinate spheres.

This metaphor underwent subsequent transmutation at the hands of the Russian Marxists for worse, which happened to be major ideological sources of the Indian communists. Georgi Plekhanov (1856–1918), often referred to as the father of Russian Marxism, remodelled and rigidified the base–superstructure concept and then schematised it. In one of his early and important book (The Development of the Monist View of History, Chapter V, “Modern Materialism”), Plekhanov stated that

“the very direction of intellectual work in a given society is determined by the production relations” of that society.

In Fundamental Problems of Marxism (1907), he provided a schema to describe the development of the base–superstructure concept, wherein he stated that a superstructure composed of a sociopolitical regime, “the psychology of man in society,” and various ideologies reflecting this psychology is erected upon a particular economic foundation. While neither Lenin nor Leon Trotsky made much use of the base–superstructure concept, Nikolai Bukharin  had devoted a full chapter to it in his book Historical Materialism (1925). In his hands, Marx’s superstructure became more elaborate, hovering over a society’s economic base. Such erroneous interpretations reinforced the notions of Indian communists that castes were to be excluded from classes.

[stonewallsposts]

Marxism, Fascism, and Totalitarianism- A James Gregor. Conclusions

Chapter 12- Conclusions 

The 1930's saw the full emergence of one-party state systems run by charismatic leaders ruling over populations called to redemptive purposes. Both Lenin's communism and Mussolini's fascism were the intellectual children of Marx and Engel.  

The problems turned on the relationship between the economic base of society and the corresponding ideological superstructure. This mechanistic view denied freedom and rendered moral responsibility meaningless.  

Lenin and Mussolini both addressed these concerns, took different paths, and yet still arrived at very similar outcomes. Lenin insisted his Marxism was the Marxism of its founders. Mussolini acknowledged there was room for different interpretations. 

Mussolini and the Italians could not reduce the moral and ethical struggles to simple class struggle. While socialists had been anti-state, considering it a tool of the bourgeois, they were forced in time to deal with how revolutionary governments would administer their duties before the people. They were also forced to deal with the undeniable nationalist sentiments in their respective working classes. 

Giovanni Gentile took Marx seriously and argued that he could not have been a true materialist, because materialism committed one to individualism, which Marx was clearly against. Gentile understood this to mean that individuals could only be conceived in relationship with society.  

Sergio Panunzio saw the state as lawgiver and law keeper, as well as being responsible to administer, foster, and oversee production. The state should promote culture, development, and generally oversee the well-being of the people. He also spoke of specific times when special individuals would express the will of revolutionary people. It was this seamless identification of citizens with the state, and its leadership, that was central to the concept of totalitarianism.  

Lenin inherited nothing in classical Marxism that would apply to Russia, an economic backwater. He had never seriously treated moral and ethical questions. His morals were driven purely by his political goals. "Morality is what serves to destroy the old exploiting society and unite working people around the proletariat." Ethics and morality were dictated by class struggle. The end was communism, and the means, violent revolution. Lenin used the law and the party to motivate workers to revolution, and in his view, the party spoke for the proletariat, whether the proletariat agreed or not. It was expected, per Marxism, that eventually the state would wither away as unneeded in the communist utopia. But Stalin said that the state, in its totalitarian form, was essential during the transition from capitalism to communism. Anyone who had hinted otherwise had, by the time of Stalin's Great Terror, been eliminated. Stalin rejected Marx's materialist claims that law was a simple reflection of modes of production, and insisted that it was the party and its leaders who were the paramount driver of this historic development. Stalin explicitly saw the state as the formulator of the law, not the law as the reflection of economics. 

Lenin too understood that the state would need to allocate resources, distribute goods, and govern with discipline and law, and that law would need an instrument capable of enforcing it. He understood the state as being a control apparatus, always wielded by one class to suppress another. 

[yngwrthr]

“The Minority Right-wing Leadership goes on the Offensive

The opposition between the KPD’s tendencies would revolve around the basic problem which was not resolved by the first congress: the position to be taken on the trade union question—but the battle lines would not be firmly drawn until the struggles were over. In effect, in early May of 1919 the Rote Fahne (organ of the Berlin central committee) was still directing the members of the KPD to participate in the reconstruction of the General Union of Miners. The central committee also helped form an Agricultural Workers Union and a Railroad Workers Union. Both would collapse after the failure of the strike called by the central committee. Despite its unfortunate experiences, the central committee, into whose leadership Levi was reluctantly co-opted in April, supported working with “what already exists”: the trade unions dominated by the SPD. The failure of the proletarian movement irremediably blocked any possibility that the former Spartacists would move towards the left, although some of them were open to the ideas of the left.

[...]

Levi, a lawyer by profession, had met Lenin in Switzerland during the war and had collaborated with the Zimmerwald left, moving closer to bolshevism, particularly in regard to the need for another party besides social democracy. He contributed to bringing about closer relations between Spartacus and the IKD. He situated himself at the point where bolshevism and Spartacism intersected. Once he was co-opted into the KPD leadership, he announced a new “centralist” line which was soon destined to lead to the exclusion of the leftist currents. From his contacts with the Bolsheviks he would retain only the idea of a strong party: what basically attracted him to Leninism was what the latter preserved of social democracy, and not those aspects which went beyond social democracy. He considered the left to be responsible for the defeats and denounced “verbal radicalism”: “to be a communist does not mean using the most radical phrases, but having the clearest vision of social reality at every moment”—precisely the kind of false opposition in whose name the Bolsheviks extirpated the leftist tendencies in Russia. The left responded immediately: the Hamburg Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung published an article on The Roots of Dictatorship.[1] The new centralizing measures were due to the fact that many KPD members came from the USPD (the Spartacists). The party must be “the means provided to the masses for their own intervention”. Levi had applied, to the KPD, principles imported from the USPD, “an organization where the leaders rule the masses”.

[...]

The Heidelberg Congress

Availing itself of the method employed by the SPD right wing and center against the left prior to the war, the central committee lumped the members of the opposition together with the syndicalists: it would prove, however, that it knew perfectly well how to distinguish between them.[2] The central committee wanted to transform the debate into a struggle between Marxism and anarchosyndicalism. With this purpose in mind it quoted articles which had appeared in the leftist press. Since the left allowed all the currents of the real movement to express themselves in its press, it was hardly difficult to find articles which confused syndicalism with unionism in its columns: in the series entitled “A Contribution to the Debate on the Trade Union Question”, for example, which appeared in the Hamburg Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung. Attending just to its texts and even to the minutiae of its texts, the central committee’s position might seem more rigorous and more Marxist than that of its opponents: this, at least, was how the Italian Left chose to assess the German Left. Reducing the German Left tendencies to a variety of revolutionary syndicalism post festum (cf. Chapter 17) contributes nothing new. The Italian Left’s study of the debates within the KPD provides endless proofs of textual fetishism, and shows a preference for Levi’s “principles” instead of the sometimes confused revolutionary positions of the opposition.[3]

During the summer the left factions of northern Germany had reached a clear conception of the new organizational form and had explained it with sufficient clarity to cause unionism to be attacked by The Syndicalist, the organ of the revolutionary syndicalists. The left was able to direct its counterattack at the root of the question. But Levi precipitated a split by unexpectedly distributing a text at the congress entitled “Principle Theses on the Fundamentals of Communist Tactics”.[4] The central committee claimed that the conditions of clandestinity justified the fact that this document had not previously been published and distributed for discussion within the party. But the text ended as follows: “Those members of the KPD who do not share these views concerning the nature, the organization and the activity of the party, or those who have opposed them orally or in writing, must be excluded from the party.” This text was, in addition, quite clever in that its first consequence was a split within the left, between the majority (Hamburg) and a minority (Bremen, with Frölich and Becker). The weight of the decentralizing tendencies within the left led Bremen to remain within the KPD,[5] all the more so as it seemed to find leftist aspects in the KPD. Within the KPD, it would be “the only communist current within the German section of the Third International. With its 8,000 members in Bremen and its daily newspaper, Der Kommunist, the Bremerlinke ... would only have a limited influence”.[6]

Indeed, that portion of Levi’s theses dedicated to electoral and trade union tactics was ambiguous in the highest degree and could be used to justify rightist and leftist methods at the same time, depending upon the situation. This will contribute to a better understanding of Bremen’s break with the left.

“The KPD cannot reject, in principle, any political means which contribute to the preparation for these great struggles. But these elections, considered merely as a preparatory means, must be subordinated to the revolutionary struggle, and the application of such means can be abandoned in utterly extraordinary political situations; when revolutionary actions have begun and move towards the decisive phase, then the application of parliamentary methods becomes obsolete or provisionally superfluous.”

Ultimately, the KPD program would not go beyond this expression of the problem. Among German communist theoreticians, only Rühle would analyze the issue by maintaining that the phase of the proletariat’s participation in parliamentary activity had utterly come to an end, and justified abstentionism in both the revolutionary period as well as the period of reaction.

The central committee’s “Theses” defined the trade union question in the following manner: “The task of the political party consists in assuring to the proletariat the free utilization of economic means, even, should it be necessary, at the cost of the destruction of the trade union form and the creation of new forms of organization.” The text’s tone was decidedly revolutionary and anti-unionist, and articulated an ideology of the “vanguard”.

“The idea that the party should abandon its leadership role in revolutionary actions, in favor of factory organizations [a meaningless sort of discussion, since the German party, while it was revolutionary, never “led” anything—N.B.] and that the party should limit itself to propaganda, is counterrevolutionary because it seeks to replace the clear vision of the workers vanguard with the chaotic power of the masses in a state of flux.”

The KAPD would also have a vanguardist perspective. But in its case the vanguard was not the group of people who were thought to have the most advanced consciousness, of those who possessed the clearest “perspective” on the issues, but all of those people who dedicated themselves to initiating, before anyone else did, the fight against society: they would thus set an example for the rest of the working class.

The “Theses” contained an idea which was seldom expressed during this era: “The conception according to which one can create mass movements by means of a particular form of organization, and consequently that the revolution is a matter of the form of organization, is rejected as a relapse into bourgeois utopia.”[7]

Only those who understood the true social and political nature of the authors could reject this text: they would consequently also know what the Levist leadership had done (and would yet do) (return to parliamentarism, work in the trade unions, fusion with the USPD) independently of what it first stated in accordance with the circumstances. It was this fraction of the left which rejected the “Theses” with 18 votes against 31 votes. On the fourth day of the congress, 25 delegates (the 18 plus 7 others with consultative votes) were excluded. These delegates represented the regions of Berlin (including, at that time, the Rote Fahne, the party’s mouthpiece), Hamburg (which would not join the Frölich-Becker tendency), Hanover, Essen, Dresden and Magdeburg.

After this first purge, there was still an internal opposition, since the abstentionist tendencies had remained in the party, believing that their position was justified by the theses they had just adopted. In regard to the trade union question, the central committee was forced to reach an accommodation with the representatives from Rhineland-Westphalia who did not want to hear anything about a return to the trade unions. In November 1919, the Ruhr sections of the KPD were still in favor of collaboration with the AAU, which might have prevented the infiltration of syndicalists into the region’s unions. But the KPD leadership opposed this proposal.[8]

Many have argued that the preparations for the First Congress of the KPD were rushed in order to deny its “representative” character. In any case, Heidelberg could barely achieve a slim majority in favor of parliamentary and trade union action: the last thesis on exclusion was adopted with 29 votes against 20. The opposition was still strong at that time. At the Third Congress (February 1920), “the majority of the districts of Northern Germany, including Berlin, had joined the opposition; the total number of party members was officially registered as 106,000 at Heidelberg, even though it could not have been so many, having been reduced by almost one-half”.[9] The theses approved at Heidelberg, according to Eberlein, generated strong opposition when they were publicized in the various party locals. In the summer of 1919, the KPD dissolved its organization in the army, the League of Red Soldiers, which had become a focal point of the opposition. But many combat organizations (KO) continued their activities after they were officially dissolved. Eberlein states that the majority of the operatives of the armed groups were later incorporated into the KAPD. Other exclusions would be necessary and the Third Congress would implement them.

The KPD and KPD (Opposition)

Between October 1919 and March 1920, the proletariat was still reeling from the effects of its defeat. The left honed its perspective, as did the right, represented by Levi, and above all by Radek. Radek had played an important role in Russia in the struggle against the left Socialist Revolutionaries and anarchists, which had caused him to lose his radical ideas and metamorphose into a convinced “anti-spontaneist”. Commissioned by the Bolshevik government, he returned to Germany at the end of 1918, and intervened in favor of the Spartacus-IKD fusion. After February 12, 1919, he spent one year in prison: however, while in prison he carried out a considerable amount of activity on two levels. On the one hand, he was the first to re-establish diplomatic relations between Russia and Germany, receiving numerous visits while in prison from various political and military figures.[10] He then became convinced that the German revolution was provisionally terminated and that the Soviet Union had to be consolidated through traditional diplomatic means. In addition, and this aspect of his activities was obviously connected to his diplomatic efforts, he supported Levi’s positions and pressed for the exclusion of the leftists. His work A Contribution to Communist Tactics, published by the central committee, was the ideological expression of the KPD’s tactics. The role of the party was analyzed in this pamphlet in totally Bolshevik terms: dictatorship of the so-called “conscious” elements over the rest of the class, which was conceived as a mass of labor power incapable of raising itself to a level of consciousness sufficient to carry out the revolution. To assume this role, the party must purge itself of all impure elements, and first of all, of all those who deny the revolutionary validity of the Leninist concept. Without explicitly saying so, Levi and Radek were equally guided by the idea of fusion with the USPD, which had several hundred thousand members, while the KPD had approximately 50,000 after its split: this was one more reason to exclude the left. The party had to return to “revolutionary parliamentarism” and to “entrism” in the trade unions, particularly since the membership of the latter had grown by 600% from November 1918 to December 1920: trade union membership had almost become compulsory with the institutionalization of the Arbeitsgemeinschaft (cf. the KAPD program).

Criticism came from many different leftist publications: Die Aktion, the Hamburg Kommunistische Arbeiter-Zeitung, the Bremen and Dresden Der Kommunist, etc... It was a very diverse movement. Some subversive artists (generally expressionists) contributed to Die Aktion: this was the source for the accusations of dilletantism and estheticism directed by the CI’s polemicists against the German Left. Some of these artists had a long history of opposition to the conservatism of the official workers movement. C. Einstein (a close associate of Pfempfert, the editor of Die Aktion), an enemy of rationalism and, in art, “classicism”, wrote in 1914: “A union of rationalists will never change anything; it would do nothing but bring about a little more order. The social democracy, the military academies and the public schools are perfectly identical.”[11] The revolutionary reflux would cause them to return to art, in one form or another.

In the meantime, they became acquainted with the texts of Pannekoek, especially World Revolution and Communist Tactics, published in Der Kommunist of Bremen in December 1919.[12] Another one of Pannekoek’s articles, published in the same journal, was entitled The New Blanquism.[13] This is how Pannekoek characterized the ultra-centralizing conceptions established as principles by the KPD central committee, for whom a political minority “gathering together the conscious proletarians” seizes and holds political power, identifying this process with the conquest of power by the proletariat. This is what happened in Russia: the party was justified there by the enormous mass of the peasantry, a significant part of which aspired to private property, to capitalism rather than to socialism. The preservation of a proletarian dictatorship therefore requires, in Russia, an enormous effort, and hence the appearance of a dictatorship of one part of the class over the class itself. In the conditions prevailing in the highly-developed capitalism of Western Europe, however, the revolution can only be the spontaneous uprising of the working masses. This is why the proletariat must overcome its bourgeois “culture”: this task cannot be accomplished by a leadership clique, however conscious it may be, but only through the maturation of social contradictions (for which theoretical works comprise a precondition and a basic element).

[cactusnotes]

Reaction and Revolutionaries 

Spec: Opposition: ideas and ideologies; individuals; liberals and radical groups and the Tsarist reaction.

Alexander II had an unusual upbringing: autocratic, but revolutionary, educated in being a tsar, spending time in government committees (including the peasant reform), but also languages, sciences, history, and was much more sensitive. He even went on a successful tour of Russia, visiting people and even prisoners, to build a tsar-people bond. He later went on a european tour, where he got himself Western ideas and a German wife. Though conservative, his liberal family guided a reformation (brother Grand Duke Constantine, for example). The first thing he did as tsar was sign the Paris agreement to stop the Crimean war. He then introduced multiple reforms through his rule. 

By 1866 revolutionaries were increasing in number. Former student Karakazof blamed the Tsar for the suffering of Russian people, and narrowly missed killing the Tsar, who was honestly so tired of all the criticism, backfiring reforms and death attempts that he tried to reverse what he had done. His family life was in chaos, with sons dying, an openly acknowledged mistress and issues on succession, along with the liberal members of his family being pushed away from the Government. 

They were replaced with conservative members, such as Count Peter Shuvalov, who made sure conservatives gained good posts, tightened censorship, placed more control over education, made military courts more used in important cases, increased rule by decree and was generally terrifying. His mate, Count Tolstoy, was Minister for Education, and believing it was the sciences causing revolutionary thought, he re-reformed the system. There was greater control of primary schools, with inspections to check the moral values enforced, classic subjects were put in more importance, science was banned in some places, universities were restricted to classics, and immediate expulsion was the sanction for those associated with revolutionary activities. 

It appears Alexander’s rule at this time was confused and disorganised- for this didn’t occur after the reforms, but during them- local government reforms and military reforms continued on, and in 1872 the first women were allowed in universities. Women in Russia were some of the most active people in the discussion of social and political issues of the time. Many professionals believed educating women were good, so secondary school started accepting girls, and women even monopolised universities to get the courses they wanted. Some women even went to foreign universities. Many rejected the customary roles of women; women wanted to study and be independent. They thus felt compelled to join revolutionised groups to ensure a self-emancipation, for example the 1960s women circle (discussing sexual equality, education and radicalisation) and the 1870s ‘going to the people’ movement. 

The emancipation is ironically considered the trigger to revolution- for it was seen as a massive trick of the peasants- Ogarev says “the old serfdom has been replaced by a new. In general, serfdom has not been abolished. The people have been deceived by the tsar!” Students, nihilists (people who rejected the norms of society), the poor and women all grouped together, fed by flows of books, in to mutual aid groups which also discussed revolutionary ideas- one example being Land and Liberty. 

One student commented on how society was split in two- the oppressed, and oppressors, and those oppressors “cannot exist without him”- so “there is only way out of this terrible situation which is destroying contemporary men”, or destroying the tsar through “bloody and merciless revolution”. These people formed an intelligentsia. But with each restriction of education and censorship came more resentment and revolutionaries. 

Russian intelligentsia were attracted to the science-based socialism and egalitarianism, after seeing how peasants lived. Herzen believed following a peasant commune would be a stable base for socialism, and after seeing this not happen after emancipation, he expressed his radical views in the newspaper The Bell. Chernyshevsky published ‘What is to be Done?’ in 62, based around the inspiring stories of those preparing for revolution (no sex, little food, constant bodybuilding) inspiring others in to the same life, including Lenin. 

Nechaev published ‘Catechism of the Revolutionary’, which stated that revolution should be dedicated and ruthless, and his groups should split in to small, detached groups, highly disciplined. This likely inspired Lenin’s organisation of a revolutionary party. Lavrov wrote ‘Historical Letters’ which said that the educated were only so from the work of masses, who should be repaid by having their education put back to them in raising their social awareness of their own oppression. 

The Populists or narodniks was a group of revolutionaries in the 1870s, inspired by Peter Lavrov, focused around socialism based around peasant communes. This way would avoid the evils of capitalisation and industrialisation (bad factory conditions). They gave up their current lives- often intellectual persons, or people with family- to ‘go to the people’ to spread their message to people who looked at the world differently at a fundamental level. Thousands were involved, presenting themselves as peasants, went and did such, some even learning skills like medical treatment, for this. 

Some were rejected by suspicious peasants, but Hosking believes there is some evidence that some peasants shared their views of egalitarianism, or enjoyed help from people like Vera Figner, who worked in a zemstvo hospital and even set up a school for kids and adults. On the other hand, several were arrested and two massive trials were held (most got let off lightly, but some faced long sentences). The Court sympathised with the passionate individuals, but the Government was intent on giving them the Siberia treatment. 

So it looked like peace was not the route for the overly conservative peasants- so a different route should be followed clearly. Plekhanov suggested  a different kind of reform: reform clearly didn’t lie with the peasants. Capitalism was not an utter failure- it was going through a stage of investment, with better railways and factories, a stage that should not be stopped. So, it’s the working last who lead this stage that should also lead the revolution, in to Marxism rather than capitalism. 

Others believed violent revolution was the answer to the peaceful failure. Thus Land and Liberty came to life- secret, disciplined and committed, they formed small groups in towns to support anti-autocracy action, from violent killings to helping escaped prisoners, that caused a huge response from the government, who moved trials to military courts to ensure their aim of destruction of such groups were fulfilled. 

The movement split between the Black Partition, led by Plekhanov to promote peaceful revolution, and The People’s Will...who employed violence. Set on destruction of the state, land redistribution and the assassination of the Tsar. Two years later, in March 1881, they finally succeeded with two bombs. Five members of the organise paid for this with a public execution wearing placards saying ‘TSARICIDE’. 

The time before his death was not very stable- officials killed, attempts to blow up royal palaces, 31,000 people put under Government surveillance in 1880 alone, as Alexander III said, ‘most terrible and abominable years Russia has ever experienced.’, the thousands turning out to celebrate the 25th anniversary of Alexander’s succession seeming meaningless. Too late, Minister of the Interior Loris-Melikov suggested abolishing the ‘third section’, only focusing on actual dangerous people, more peasant civil rights, and the zemstva forming a consulting body. Approved, but Alexander was assassinated before it could be implemented. 

[giftofshewbread]

Subtle Social Justice Serpents

Subtle Social Justice Serpents :: By Patrick Wyett Published on:

September 7, 2017

One of the more heartbreaking markers of these last days is the onset of the great apostasy. While true Christians understand our times as prophecy foretold, some may not understand how deep and subtle false teaching in the church has become.

“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:1)

In this context “subtle” means crafty, clever, cunning and devious. The serpent in Genesis was a form for the Devil.  While Eve didn’t recognize who she was dealing with, Jesus describes Satan for us in John 10:10 as a thief who comes “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy“. He is the Father of Lies who has many adopted children.

Yet many Christians, including pastors, act as if biblical warnings against false teachers are meant for others, not them. They have not been vigilant or sought God’s counsel through prayer, instead relying on their own understanding and that of likewise deceived friends and authority figures.

“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)

In recent years, minds have been corrupted by a subtle lie that’s gained traction in the body of Christ. It’s called “social justice”, and it’s not just for communists anymore.

Social justice is a facet of Cultural Marxism, which as the name implies, wages cultural war against the foundations of Western Civilization, including and specifically Christianity.

Oh Laodicean Church, where is the spiritual discernment? This is nothing more than leftist political ideology wrapped in Christian-sounding rhetoric targeted for church consumption.

“Social justice” distorts scripture to emphasize “good works” in an effort to change political society to pacify aggrieved factions, deemphasizing the greater need to reach out to lost souls in need of salvation.

Jesus didn’t come to change the political order, He came to save the world. When He comes again, that’s when the political order will be finally and perfectly changed to His ideal, not that of fallen man. That’s when the enemies of God will get their justice.

Christian compassion and charity (love is another word for charity) are important teachings and proper actions as the Holy Spirit leads us. Needed sermons can and have been preached on these fruits of our faith without mingling it with the lie of social justice.

Social justice isn’t the Gospel of Christ or even part of that gospel. The word “gospel” simply means “good news.” The bad news is we’re all sinners, wretched before a Holy God because of our rebellion. His perfect justice dictates that all of us deserve Hell. We’re incapable by and of our works to achieve anything but God’s judgment. The “Good News” is:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

The sinless Son of God, Jesus, came into the world to suffer and die in our place, having the wrath of God that we deserve instead placed on Him, that by His shed blood, His willing sacrifice for us, that we might be “saved” if we would but repent of our sins and believe on Him. He died, was resurrected on the third day, and is coming again for those obedient faithful who love Him.

To stray from this simple message is to adulterate the gospel, exchanging truth for what the apostle Paul calls “another gospel.”

“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:6-8)

So repugnant is such a twisting of the Gospel of Christ, that Paul repeats himself in the next verse.

“As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:9)

Pastor, if you’re preaching “social justice” you’re reinforcing what congregants in your church hear from openly Marxist teachers, professors and other deceived influences. Satan is the author of confusion and that’s exactly what you’re contributing to.

Many such pastors are well-intentioned and sincere. I assure you, they’re sincerely wrong.

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that those of us who teach will be judged by a stricter standard.” (James 3:1)

All who labor for the faith need to have solemn understanding here. Liberalism and Marxism are the same side of a satanically-minted coin. They are diametrically opposed to Christianity.

So what, exactly, is social justice? It’s an umbrella term for a variety of leftist political ideas, having at its core the forced redistribution of wealth.  This foundational concept is culled from “The Communist Manifesto” written by Karl Marx with an assist from Friedrich Engels in 1848.

“My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” —Karl Marx

Thus, all Marxist theories are aggressively atheistic, and at least in the revolutionary phase, rely heavily on coveting what others have earned.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” (Exodus 20:17)

As Thomas Sowell has stated, “Envy plus rhetoric equals “social justice.”

A point to remember; Communism, Socialism, Fascism, and Nazism (aka National Socialism) are all derivatives of Marxist theory. It’s not Communists on the left and Nazis on the right, it’s all left, which is completely godless, totalitarian government. If Marxist methodology sounds eerily like Islam, it’s because the two share the same architect; Lucifer.

When Black Lives Matter loots and riots, they’re pressing their concept of social justice. Antifa attacking whomever they disagree with? They’re fighting for social justice. It’s about the “oppressed” demanding their “rights”, as in their right to coerce others to concede to their demands.

To a Muslim, not being allowed to live under Sharia Law is oppression. Homosexual oppression can mean a society not fully and forcibly embracing their agenda.

Look for key words like: justice, privilege, vulnerable and oppression.

All Marxist revolutions are “sold” as being on behalf of the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden.  As we know from the 20th century, when Marxism went from political theory to bloody application, it’s really about the acquisition of total power for the leaders of the revolution. The “oppressed” who are duped into fighting for the cause, once successful, are either slaughtered or enslaved.

For perspective, acclaimed communist organizer Saul Alinsky was a champion of social justice. Two of his more famous acolytes are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Yes, “social justice” has a purpose.

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher who witnessed the fall of Czarist Russia to the communist forces of Vladimir Lenin. Gramsci surmised that Lenin’s tactics of stirring up the masses of poor into a communist revolution, successful in that predominately low tech, agrarian nation, would not work in an industrialized, prosperous, and predominately Christian country like the United States due to its opportunity and willingness to address actual injustices.

Therefore Gramsci postulated a more subtle route of conquest, one of infiltrating a nation’s culture and destroying it from within. Said Gramsci:

“The civilized world has been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years, and a regime grounded in Christian beliefs and values could not be overthrown until these roots were cut.”

A quote attributed to Joseph Stalin embodies this same thought:

“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”

Former FBI Agent, Cleon Skousen, in his seminal 1958 book, The Naked Communist outlines specific communist plans for the destruction and takeover of our society and nation. He lists 45 goals toward those ends. Here’s a handful for your perusal. I urge you to look up the rest.

Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books,  magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it  violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

Other stated goals, over time, have been modified:

Use technical activist decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions and laws by claiming their activities existence violate civil rights and/or the Constitution.

Continue discrediting American culture, history and Christian heritage, by degrading all  forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all    good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless  forms.”

Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and leftist special-interest groups (BLM, Antifa, Muslim organizations  like CAIR,, anarchists, Marxists, and the LGBTQ crowd) should rise up and use “united   force“  to solve economic, political or social problems.

And lastly:

Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

Many Christian colleges and seminaries have been infiltrated with this same “social” religion, known in its current incarnation under the benign label of “social justice.”

We should know better, “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices [tactics]” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

Satan has gotten an advantage because far too many are ignorant of his devices.

When a sermon on social justice was preached at my church several months back, it raised some concerns. Three of us took those concerns to the church elders.

“Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses.” (1 Timothy 5:19)

We interpreted no sinister motives, surmising that the pastoral staff merely didn’t understand the history and true objectives of “social justice.” We wished to share our understanding and knowledge to help our elder team in an area, which by their admission, they were unfamiliar with.

To their credit, they took us seriously. To our dismay, they rejected our counsel, ultimately questioning our motives for “confronting” them. Pride is a destructive thing for anyone to harbor, especially those in a position of church authority. Couple this with a complete lack of discernment even after being presented with the truth.

I still love those guys but such revelations are very disconcerting.

Thereafter I listened to a wonderful sermon on calling out false teachers and teachings from Second Timothy. One of the best I’ve ever heard on the topic.

It certainly had the feeling of being aimed at all of us who questioned social justice.

It’s a difficult proposition to attempt to take Satan’s blinders off of the eyes of those whose admiration and loyalty are to “celebrity Christians”—big names who write self-aggrandizing books and speak at packed conferences to push their enlightened “modern” ideas on what Christianity means.

“This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matthew 15:8-9)

Our discussion degenerated into the elder team defending a “celebrity Christian” messenger of social justice who had enthralled some of the church leadership rather than focusing on social justice itself. It came down to the chief elder putting his faith in the opinions of those other elders whom he loves and trusts, those who follow the teachings of Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Moore is touted as an evangelical theologian. A theologian is one who studies and is an expert in theology. Not to disparage the reputation of godly theologians, but Satan is the world’s foremost theologian. The relevant issue here is what directs the theologian, biblical truth or satanic deceit?

A disclaimer here, I’ve been told that I hold a harsh view of Dr. Moore. In my defense it’s not just Russell Moore, but any subtle social justice serpent (or other false teacher) who does Satan’s bidding in the church. Tim Keller, Jim Wallis and John Piper also come to immediate mind.

As a dear Brother in Christ reminds me, even the best of men are still just men.

These aren’t the best of men.

Yes, they look and play the part of respected Christian teachers. Is that surprising?

“For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” (2 Corinthians 11:11-13)

Allow me to make a distinction here. The deceived believe the lie, the deceiver believes in the lie. That is to say, those deceived fall for the lie, believing it to be true. The deceivers, like those mentioned by name above, know better. They understand what they’re doing.

When one runs into unbiblical teaching in their churches, one of three things needs to happen. Either the pastor needs a change of mind and heart, the church needs a new pastor or the attendee needs a new church. This is where we pray for the pastor and elders, the church, and what we as individuals should do. Be patient but be persistent. God’s will, not mine or yours, be done.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.” (Romans 16:17-18)

My wife and I both got the same answer to our prayers independent of each other, about three hours apart.

Don’t concern yourself if there’s a better church option out there. God’s already considered this. Trust Him that He knows what He’s doing, especially when you don’t. Be obedient, not doubting. Pray earnestly.

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” (Ephesians 5:11)

It’s a hard thing to leave our church but that’s what God’s told us to do. Under these circumstances, it would be a harder thing to stay. We’re at peace.

“Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear.” (1 Timothy 5:19-20)

Let these words serve as my public rebuke here, and to all who preach social justice.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

To take a stand against unsound doctrine is to invite criticism and even ostracism. Been there, done that. Steel your mind to this possibility. I may lose friends over what’s been written;

“…but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)

Patrick

patrickwyett@excite.com

[giftofshewbread]

Subtle Social Justice Serpents

Subtle Social Justice Serpents :: By Patrick Wyett Published on:

September 7, 2017

One of the more heartbreaking markers of these last days is the onset of the great apostasy. While true Christians understand our times as prophecy foretold, some may not understand how deep and subtle false teaching in the church has become.

“Now the serpent was more subtle than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman, Yea, hath God said, ye shall not eat of every tree of the garden?” (Genesis 3:1)

In this context “subtle” means crafty, clever, cunning and devious. The serpent in Genesis was a form for the Devil.  While Eve didn’t recognize who she was dealing with, Jesus describes Satan for us in John 10:10 as a thief who comes “to steal, and to kill, and to destroy“. He is the Father of Lies who has many adopted children.

Yet many Christians, including pastors, act as if biblical warnings against false teachers are meant for others, not them. They have not been vigilant or sought God’s counsel through prayer, instead relying on their own understanding and that of likewise deceived friends and authority figures.

“But I fear, lest by any means, as the serpent beguiled Eve through his subtlety, so your minds should be corrupted from the simplicity that is in Christ.” (2 Corinthians 11:3)

In recent years, minds have been corrupted by a subtle lie that’s gained traction in the body of Christ. It’s called “social justice”, and it’s not just for communists anymore.

Social justice is a facet of Cultural Marxism, which as the name implies, wages cultural war against the foundations of Western Civilization, including and specifically Christianity.

Oh Laodicean Church, where is the spiritual discernment? This is nothing more than leftist political ideology wrapped in Christian-sounding rhetoric targeted for church consumption.

“Social justice” distorts scripture to emphasize “good works” in an effort to change political society to pacify aggrieved factions, deemphasizing the greater need to reach out to lost souls in need of salvation.

Jesus didn’t come to change the political order, He came to save the world. When He comes again, that’s when the political order will be finally and perfectly changed to His ideal, not that of fallen man. That’s when the enemies of God will get their justice.

Christian compassion and charity (love is another word for charity) are important teachings and proper actions as the Holy Spirit leads us. Needed sermons can and have been preached on these fruits of our faith without mingling it with the lie of social justice.

Social justice isn’t the Gospel of Christ or even part of that gospel. The word “gospel” simply means “good news.” The bad news is we’re all sinners, wretched before a Holy God because of our rebellion. His perfect justice dictates that all of us deserve Hell. We’re incapable by and of our works to achieve anything but God’s judgment. The “Good News” is:

“For God so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.” (John 3:16)

The sinless Son of God, Jesus, came into the world to suffer and die in our place, having the wrath of God that we deserve instead placed on Him, that by His shed blood, His willing sacrifice for us, that we might be “saved” if we would but repent of our sins and believe on Him. He died, was resurrected on the third day, and is coming again for those obedient faithful who love Him.

To stray from this simple message is to adulterate the gospel, exchanging truth for what the apostle Paul calls “another gospel.”

“I marvel that ye are so soon removed from him that called you into the grace of Christ unto another gospel: Which is not another; but there be some that trouble you, and would pervert the gospel of Christ. But though we, or an angel from heaven, preach any other gospel unto you than that which we have preached unto you, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:6-8)

So repugnant is such a twisting of the Gospel of Christ, that Paul repeats himself in the next verse.

“As we said before, so say I now again, if any man preach any other gospel unto you than that ye have received, let him be accursed.” (Galatians 1:9)

Pastor, if you’re preaching “social justice” you’re reinforcing what congregants in your church hear from openly Marxist teachers, professors and other deceived influences. Satan is the author of confusion and that’s exactly what you’re contributing to.

Many such pastors are well-intentioned and sincere. I assure you, they’re sincerely wrong.

“Not many of you should become teachers, my brothers, for you know that those of us who teach will be judged by a stricter standard.” (James 3:1)

All who labor for the faith need to have solemn understanding here. Liberalism and Marxism are the same side of a satanically-minted coin. They are diametrically opposed to Christianity.

So what, exactly, is social justice? It’s an umbrella term for a variety of leftist political ideas, having at its core the forced redistribution of wealth.  This foundational concept is culled from “The Communist Manifesto” written by Karl Marx with an assist from Friedrich Engels in 1848.

“My object in life is to dethrone God and destroy capitalism.” —Karl Marx

Thus, all Marxist theories are aggressively atheistic, and at least in the revolutionary phase, rely heavily on coveting what others have earned.

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that is thy neighbour’s.” (Exodus 20:17)

As Thomas Sowell has stated, “Envy plus rhetoric equals “social justice.”

A point to remember; Communism, Socialism, Fascism, and Nazism (aka National Socialism) are all derivatives of Marxist theory. It’s not Communists on the left and Nazis on the right, it’s all left, which is completely godless, totalitarian government. If Marxist methodology sounds eerily like Islam, it’s because the two share the same architect; Lucifer.

When Black Lives Matter loots and riots, they’re pressing their concept of social justice. Antifa attacking whomever they disagree with? They’re fighting for social justice. It’s about the “oppressed” demanding their “rights”, as in their right to coerce others to concede to their demands.

To a Muslim, not being allowed to live under Sharia Law is oppression. Homosexual oppression can mean a society not fully and forcibly embracing their agenda.

Look for key words like: justice, privilege, vulnerable and oppression.

All Marxist revolutions are “sold” as being on behalf of the poor, the oppressed and the downtrodden.  As we know from the 20th century, when Marxism went from political theory to bloody application, it’s really about the acquisition of total power for the leaders of the revolution. The “oppressed” who are duped into fighting for the cause, once successful, are either slaughtered or enslaved.

For perspective, acclaimed communist organizer Saul Alinsky was a champion of social justice. Two of his more famous acolytes are Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Yes, “social justice” has a purpose.

Antonio Gramsci was an Italian Marxist philosopher who witnessed the fall of Czarist Russia to the communist forces of Vladimir Lenin. Gramsci surmised that Lenin’s tactics of stirring up the masses of poor into a communist revolution, successful in that predominately low tech, agrarian nation, would not work in an industrialized, prosperous, and predominately Christian country like the United States due to its opportunity and willingness to address actual injustices.

Therefore Gramsci postulated a more subtle route of conquest, one of infiltrating a nation’s culture and destroying it from within. Said Gramsci:

“The civilized world has been saturated with Christianity for 2000 years, and a regime grounded in Christian beliefs and values could not be overthrown until these roots were cut.”

A quote attributed to Joseph Stalin embodies this same thought:

“America is like a healthy body and its resistance is threefold: its patriotism, its morality and its spiritual life. If we can undermine these three areas, America will collapse from within.”

Former FBI Agent, Cleon Skousen, in his seminal 1958 book, The Naked Communist outlines specific communist plans for the destruction and takeover of our society and nation. He lists 45 goals toward those ends. Here’s a handful for your perusal. I urge you to look up the rest.

Break down cultural standards of morality by promoting pornography and obscenity in books,  magazines, motion pictures, radio, and TV.

Present homosexuality, degeneracy and promiscuity as “normal, natural, healthy.”

Eliminate prayer or any phase of religious expression in the schools on the ground that it  violates the principle of “separation of church and state.”

Other stated goals, over time, have been modified:

Use technical activist decisions of the courts to weaken basic American institutions and laws by claiming their activities existence violate civil rights and/or the Constitution.

Continue discrediting American culture, history and Christian heritage, by degrading all  forms of artistic expression. An American Communist cell was told to “eliminate all    good sculpture from parks and buildings, substitute shapeless, awkward and meaningless  forms.”

Create the impression that violence and insurrection are legitimate aspects of the American tradition; that students and leftist special-interest groups (BLM, Antifa, Muslim organizations  like CAIR,, anarchists, Marxists, and the LGBTQ crowd) should rise up and use “united   force“  to solve economic, political or social problems.

And lastly:

Infiltrate the churches and replace revealed religion with “social” religion. Discredit the Bible and emphasize the need for intellectual maturity which does not need a “religious crutch.”

Many Christian colleges and seminaries have been infiltrated with this same “social” religion, known in its current incarnation under the benign label of “social justice.”

We should know better, “Lest Satan should get an advantage of us: for we are not ignorant of his devices [tactics]” (2 Corinthians 2:11).

Satan has gotten an advantage because far too many are ignorant of his devices.

When a sermon on social justice was preached at my church several months back, it raised some concerns. Three of us took those concerns to the church elders.

“Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses.” (1 Timothy 5:19)

We interpreted no sinister motives, surmising that the pastoral staff merely didn’t understand the history and true objectives of “social justice.” We wished to share our understanding and knowledge to help our elder team in an area, which by their admission, they were unfamiliar with.

To their credit, they took us seriously. To our dismay, they rejected our counsel, ultimately questioning our motives for “confronting” them. Pride is a destructive thing for anyone to harbor, especially those in a position of church authority. Couple this with a complete lack of discernment even after being presented with the truth.

I still love those guys but such revelations are very disconcerting.

Thereafter I listened to a wonderful sermon on calling out false teachers and teachings from Second Timothy. One of the best I’ve ever heard on the topic.

It certainly had the feeling of being aimed at all of us who questioned social justice.

It’s a difficult proposition to attempt to take Satan’s blinders off of the eyes of those whose admiration and loyalty are to “celebrity Christians”—big names who write self-aggrandizing books and speak at packed conferences to push their enlightened “modern” ideas on what Christianity means.

“This people draweth nigh unto me with their mouth, and honoureth me with their lips; but their heart is far from me. But in vain they do worship me, teaching for doctrines the commandments of men.” (Matthew 15:8-9)

Our discussion degenerated into the elder team defending a “celebrity Christian” messenger of social justice who had enthralled some of the church leadership rather than focusing on social justice itself. It came down to the chief elder putting his faith in the opinions of those other elders whom he loves and trusts, those who follow the teachings of Russell D. Moore, president of the Ethics & Religious Liberty Commission, which is the public-policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Moore is touted as an evangelical theologian. A theologian is one who studies and is an expert in theology. Not to disparage the reputation of godly theologians, but Satan is the world’s foremost theologian. The relevant issue here is what directs the theologian, biblical truth or satanic deceit?

A disclaimer here, I’ve been told that I hold a harsh view of Dr. Moore. In my defense it’s not just Russell Moore, but any subtle social justice serpent (or other false teacher) who does Satan’s bidding in the church. Tim Keller, Jim Wallis and John Piper also come to immediate mind.

As a dear Brother in Christ reminds me, even the best of men are still just men.

These aren’t the best of men.

Yes, they look and play the part of respected Christian teachers. Is that surprising?

“For such are false apostles, deceitful workers, transforming themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no marvel; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel of light. Therefore it is no great thing if his ministers also be transformed as the ministers of righteousness; whose end shall be according to their works.” (2 Corinthians 11:11-13)

Allow me to make a distinction here. The deceived believe the lie, the deceiver believes in the lie. That is to say, those deceived fall for the lie, believing it to be true. The deceivers, like those mentioned by name above, know better. They understand what they’re doing.

When one runs into unbiblical teaching in their churches, one of three things needs to happen. Either the pastor needs a change of mind and heart, the church needs a new pastor or the attendee needs a new church. This is where we pray for the pastor and elders, the church, and what we as individuals should do. Be patient but be persistent. God’s will, not mine or yours, be done.

“Now I beseech you, brethren, mark them which cause divisions and offences contrary to the doctrine which ye have learned; and avoid them. For they that are such serve not our Lord Jesus Christ, but their own belly; and by good words and fair speeches deceive the hearts of the simple.” (Romans 16:17-18)

My wife and I both got the same answer to our prayers independent of each other, about three hours apart.

Don’t concern yourself if there’s a better church option out there. God’s already considered this. Trust Him that He knows what He’s doing, especially when you don’t. Be obedient, not doubting. Pray earnestly.

“And have no fellowship with the unfruitful works of darkness, but rather reprove them.” (Ephesians 5:11)

It’s a hard thing to leave our church but that’s what God’s told us to do. Under these circumstances, it would be a harder thing to stay. We’re at peace.

“Against an elder receive not an accusation, but before two or three witnesses. Them that sin rebuke before all, that others also may fear.” (1 Timothy 5:19-20)

Let these words serve as my public rebuke here, and to all who preach social justice.

“For the time will come when they will not endure sound doctrine; but after their own lusts shall they heap to themselves teachers, having itching ears; And they shall turn away their ears from the truth, and shall be turned unto fables.” (2 Timothy 4:3-4)

To take a stand against unsound doctrine is to invite criticism and even ostracism. Been there, done that. Steel your mind to this possibility. I may lose friends over what’s been written;

“…but as for me and my house, we will serve the Lord.” (Joshua 24:15)

Patrick

patrickwyett@excite.com