Romanticizing the past is fear of future irrelevance

In so many ways, we are all in deadly danger due to … romanticism. Especially idealized and flat-out wrong notions about history.

Elsewhere, I talk about how the romantic side of humans… imagining and fantasizing wishes or nightmares, envisioned in vivid, luscious subjectivity… is an essential human trait! We’d be a drab, impoverished species without that rich, inexhaustible realm of delusion. Indeed, I make my living catering to it, selling imaginary trips of high vividness...

...delusions that are openly and honestly sold as delusions.  

Nevertheless, I argue here – and in Vivid Tomorrows  -- that delusion can also wreak utter hell. Across 6000 years of horrific misrule that we call “history,” our romantic figments have justified an endless parade of horrors.

And hence, running an actual civilization calls for something better. 

Let me make clear: all strains of human life, including politics, are rife with delusions! And alhough I am about to dive into the way that many of our neighbors have  gone particularly loco… I also avow that there are crazy romantics infesting and doing great harm, on my own political 'side.' I inveigh about those preening idiots, from time to time.

 But still… well… we must prioritize. One thing at a time?

Take the Mad Right’s relentless incantation-fetish about the 1950s, an era when – for sure – middle class white guys felt they were on top.  Though – um – even they, in vast majority, voted Democrat! Back then, the Greatest Generation guys remembered how FDR et. al. rescued the nation from previous, monstrous stupidities -- like an earlier effort by rich lords and inheritance brats to re-establish feudalism.  Those veterans, bolstered by New Deal policies and the GI Bill, set in motion the greatest surge in productivity and prosperity any nation ever saw.

Still, that unparalleled growth and progress was incremental and comparative! It was a build toward better days, not a culmination or lost paradise. Indeed, YOU have a duty, in case any of you ever face romantics who actually actually claim that America was a better place in the 1950s!  

If you run into that utter garbage, here is your ammo for shooting down that bald-faced lie-travesty. And yes, I mention not only FDR and Ike, but also utter the words Jonas Salk!  

== The cult memes keep flowing ==

Want another madness of the gone-loopy U.S. right? It’s one that infests all forms of conservatism. (Though sure, some portions of the left have their own bad habits.) Yes, it is rife even among conservatives who (sanely) despise Donald Trump. 

You've seen me talk about it before. But I'm going to keep hammering this as a lonely Cassandra, until I see someone out there joining me in denouncing a dangerously infectious madness.

It’s called cyclical history, and it is noxiously rampant now across the American right. See where I shred that grotesque fantasy-twaddle here.  

== Originalism Sin ==

Here's another one. Rising to a higher – though still dismal – intellectual plain, there’s a fetish among the dopey shills at AEI, Heritage and Federalist Society called originalism. It is the core rationalized excuse offered by the John Roberts majority for easily half of the jibbering-awful Supreme Court judgements they have shoved down our throats, in recent years. 

“The Founders clearly intended…”

Seriously? That is the argument? 

My friend Joseph Carroll offers three items that may rattle originalist cages. One I have seen elsewhere, but two of them not.

1. "I recently read that through most of the 19th century, there was largely no control of immigration, and immigrants were allowed to vote as soon as they arrived. 

Hence, under originalism, should we go back to both of those policies, and discard any later court decisions that justified limits on immigration and immigrant voting? 

2. "George Washington hated political parties. And I think they have no status in the Constitution. 

Hence, should an originalist want to preclude political parties from imposing any constraints on congressional procedures?

3. "Thomas Jefferson was a key original, but an anti-originalist in many ways. He wrote an essay to Madison in 1789 on the theme: "Earth belongs in usufruct to the living."  He spells out various implications, including a constitution not remaining valid once the new generation outnumbers the old who were alive when it was established. And he saw no validity for debts lasting long enough to saddle later generations with them. Using new life expectancy data, he decided that 19 years was a reasonable limit. That may be partly why he wondered about whether one needed a revolution every 20 years (as Mao tried!), and the 17 year validity of patents. (I presume that might also have to be true for copyrights.)"

To which I answer... hmmmm!

== Romanticizing the father of liberal enlightenment… as an apologist for oligarchy! ==

I know and like many libertarians - such as those who help run the Freedom Fest gathering, at which I used to speak occasionally... before the movement was entirely bought and suborned by Steve Forbes and other inheritance caste oligarchs, whose top priority is to prevent self-styled libertarian folks from ever waking up from the lord-worshipping trance.

... along with many others who cling to old loyalties, despite being nauseated by Trump, they repeat these magic words.... 

“I know that Republicans have gone insane… but … but democrats are worse!  

"THAT’S the ticket!  Despite all the proof to the contrary, democrats are even worse!” 

It's a koolaid incantation that gets repeated over and over, again and again, to excuse being complicit with the forces of restored feudalism.

Back to Adam Smith...

The ‘libertarian philosopher’ about whom I keep reminding folks - Adam Smith - pushed the one viable alternative to 6000 years of feudal lordship-stupidity. The alternative of fecund-flat-fair-open-transparent market competition by the widest range of healthy, educated, confident and unafraid competitors. 

Smith made clear that the chief enemy of such creatively competitive markets has almost never been ‘socialists!' Especially not the Rooseveltean or Scandinavian styles of limited socialism – e.g. efforts to uplift poor children, turning them into healthy, educated and confident competitors. The part that creates fecund market competition with the maxim “stop wasting talent!”

Indeed, the trait that has made today’s Mad Right -- and a majority of self-styled ‘libertarians’ – turn their backs on Smith is his savage indictments of oligarchic-aristocratic cheating by inheritance brats, the bane on both freedom and markets across 99% of the last 6000 years. 

… a malediction that now has surpassed French Revolution levels of wealth disparity and competition-suppression and cheating. 

Smith’s caustic denunciations of rentier-caste corruption – and the American Founders’ revolution against precisely that caste – plus later history’s hugely successful liberal rebellions against feudal slave-holders and then Gilded Age titans – led to today’s ironic desperation by shill orgs like Heritage and AEI and the GOP  to avoid ever mentioning that name.

Adam Smith.

A 'questionnaire on ideology'... The Great 'Libertarian' Hypocrisy... and Strategic Reserves of Oil etc.

First a blast about old older piece of mine that still may be (I've been told) a fast-track to at least some kinds of wisdom. 

My “Questionnaire on Ideology” is even more pertinent now than ever, allowing you to probe some assumptions and drivers that may underlie a lot of your own beliefs. Certainly, you'll come away with better understanding of what drives others, including both foes and allies!  

I promise at least one "Huh!' insight. More likely three or four!

Possibly as many as ten.

Okay, we're doing several riffs in the political realm, this time. Starting with a quick question: 

Why, oh why, has Pres. Biden's Attorney General not yet primly and judiciously, but firmly, UN-redacted Bill Barr's bowdlerized version of the Mueller report? ... And changed the insane 'advisement' of the Office of Legal Counsel that a sitting President cannot face legal action? (Replace it with 'slow' accountability, where a sitting President may not be distracted by legal troubles more than ten hours a week. But no one is above the law!)

On to this weekend's posting. Further down, I'll offer some observations about dry matters like strategic reserves of things like oil and Helium and metals... and why that one sub-topic, alone, illustrates the total and irreversible corruption of one of the U.S. political parties.  

But first... 

== Ah those libertarians ==

Lately - as it does - the Question of libertarianism has come up again.

I used to speak now and then at Freedom Fest, back before the Libertarian Movement became a wholly-owned subsidiary of Steve Forbes, AEI, Cato, Heritage, United Russia, the House of Saud, the Kochs and the world aristocratic cabal. Their latest catch-phrase? 

"The world is turning increasingly authoritarian. One thing that can keep us free? Creative destruction." 

I agree! Till they go on to scream that the only threat is government bureaucrats. Riiiiight. Shall we look to who is subverting us right now, and with what goals? 

Is it half a million mostly-sincere (sometimes a bit cloying) civil servants? A 'threat' that was never once mentioned by Adam Smith or by the U.S. Founders?

Or might freedom and competition be endangered by the same force that subverted or crushed those fine things for 6000 years? A recurring flaw in human nature that was denounced by Adam Smith and the Founders? I refer to the ever-returning pestilence of oligarchic cheating by inheritance brats who owned nearly everything already, but pushed oppressive schemes to own the rest? From 'divine' kings and lords to plutocrats conniving to give their lazy sons ownership over everyone else.

Right now....RIGHT NOW(!!) ... I ask you to name one exception across 60 centuries, other than the Enlightenment Experiment that you owe everything.

In fact, Adam Smith recommended civil servants as a counterweight to owner-rentier oligarchy! Hence that is one (of many) reasons why 'libertarians' almost never mention the words "Adam Smith" or "competition," anymore.

How much respect should we give a 'movement' that claims to love human freedom and competition... while letting itself be suborned to do the bidding of the ancient enemies of both?

A "Freedom Fest" that ignores the age-old enemy of freedom is - at best - a stunning irony. At worst, it is among the greatest, sell-out hypocrisies in all the world.

I'll come back, at the end, with a checklist of challenges for anyone using the word 'libertarian,' to see if they, he or she or wei are the real thing.

== Strategic reserves ==

Another lie judged false by PolitiFact: "Biden's war on American energy caused this crisis (in oil prices) and his only response has been to drain our strategic petroleum reserve." 

Oh, it's true that JoBee 'drained' the US strategic petroleum reserve to lower levels. But... well... all right... let's parse this out.

When oil/gasoline prices skyrocketed, Biden sold oil from the reserve, it's true. An action which: 

  (1) helped reverse the price climb for consumers (it worked) and 

  (2) made the US Treasury a lot of money, selling at high prices! 

Profit which he thereafter used to buy oil when the panic ended, to refill the reserve at LOW prices. 

It's called "Buy low and sell high." Adam Smith would approve. But today's Mad Right hates Adam Smith! (And he would certainly reciprocate, despising their feudalism-loving butts.) 

Democrats always do this during oil price swings. Obama and Clinton did the buy low and sell high thing too. Using the strategic reserve to both soften swings and to make the taxpayer billions in profits.

What do Republicans always do? They sell from our reserves at LOW-bottom prices to pals. The Bushes did it several times. Under Trump, the world's only large Helium reserve was sold off to pals for almost nothing. And now there's almost none to be had! Those who need Helium (e.g. for science or medical equipment) must pay those insider GOP pals an arm and a leg. And Party City blames this in part for going out of business.

In other words, anyone who believes 'conservative' pretensions at actually believing what they preach is a fool. And I have a standard wager on offer that Democrats are always more fiscally responsible than Republicans on matters of deficits and public debt. Always.

Please, oh please, step up with escrowed wager stakes on that.

== A final note on libertarians ==

I know these folks... in part because I have a reflexive dread of too much power accumulating in the hands of ANY power center! A reflex called Suspicion of Authority (Soa) that pervades nearly all American mythology!  

As I describe in VIVID TOMORROWS: Science Fiction and Hollywood, a baseline worry about oppression by elites is reasonable. And yes, SoA toward bureaucrats is worth discussing! 

In better times, when we aren't in an incited phase 8 of the US Civil War, Americans of left or right share the same passionate SoA worry, only aimed at different elites they suspect of grabbing power. And at some level, they all are right.

Alasm this reflex can tumble into cultism. Indeed, I have decrypted the cult of Ayn Rand, in ways that (I believe) no one else has. Those followers of a mad Neo-Marxist heretic used to be a side fringe of libertarianism, but it suits the world cabal of plutocrat looters to promote this pack of dogmatic loons.

It seems there's little to salvage. Still, let me conclude this longer-blog with yet another attempt to make things crystal clear.

I believe a 'libertarian' might be a non-hypocrite if they:

 

1. acknowledge that flat-fair-open COMPETITION - by the largest number and variety of knowing and unafraid participants - is the soul of productive creativity and the justifying practical outcome of freedom. That word, seldom mentioned anymore by 'libertarians', should be the heartbeat of the movement.

 

2. avow that freedom's worst enemies across 6000 years - the destroyers of markets and freedom denounced by Adam Smith - were principally armed bullies, owner-rentier lords, kings and inheritance brats, who used wealth and power to cheat. And that cabals of such oligarchs are a principal threat, to this day! And that Smith recommended calibrated use of civil servants and cheat-reducing law - even wealth levelling - as partial remedies. 

 

3. set a high priority to eliminating poverty, abuse or rights-limitations of any child on Earth - since those crimes waste talent! Talent that might otherwise deliver that child to market-participation, competition-ready.

 

Hence, feeding all poor kids NOW, while providing basic rights and education, must be a high priority for any libertarion who actually belives in market competition. And if the mass-bulk solutions to child poverty include tax supported interventions by 'government,' then libertarians should support that, while looking inventively for other viable solutions to replace or improve state interventions, What no sincere libertarian would do is whine or bitch about those near-term fixes - especially because of item #6, below - until alternative ways to rescue talent are ready.

 

4. that there is such a thing as a 'commons' meriting protection and preservation, including the natural world and the needs of future generations, and these are legitimate matters for negotiation between libertarians offering market solutions and liberals demanding state-organized approaches.

 

5. that there is plenty to discuss amid further negotiation among people of goodwill, over how to further our unique historical experiment in freedom and creative cooperation/competition and mutual respect. But there are forces in the world - hostile powers, cheaters, criminals, oligarchs and predators, who would act to destroy our enlightenment experiment. And hence some degree of united effort to thwart such forces is justified. 

 

6. and finally that no other human civilization ever produced so many libertarians! Especially including those millions - even graduates of public schools - who declare their own rambunctious independent mindedness and hostility to oppressive authority. Even if many of those folks aim their SoA ire at different authority figures than the libertarians happen to choose.

 

None of the above is meant to imply that libertarians should cease their reflex of skepticism toward statist 'meddling'! That reflex has many justifications. It merits a place at the table for discussion and argumentation and negotiation. 

However, it does call for libertarians who actually want a world of creative-competitive markets etc. to note those state endeavors that preserve talent, enhance flat-fairness and preserve essential commons and public safety... and distinguish those justifiable activities from other statist meddlings that seem less well justified by #1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.

 

Those who claim to be pro-freedom and pro-creative-competition, who do not avow to the blatantly obvious facts of #1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 are shrug-dismissible as tools of oligarchy, whatever masturbatory ‘freedom-incantations they recite into a mirror.

Ideologies of betrayal - several cogent essay/articles you might not want to miss. Oh, and a distilled "Marx for dummies!"

A decade ago, I joined a small mélange of folks trying to revive interest in Adam Smith the enlightenment thinker and fierce opponent of feudalism and aristocratism, whose best-known work in 1776 accompanied the US Revolution. This should not have been necessary, as Smith made repeatedly clear that the truest enemies of fair markets were always cheaters at the top, always (across 6000 years and all continents) conniving to rob hardworking competitors in the middle, in order to favor their own inheritance-brat sons. 

(Soviet nomenklatura ‘commissars’ and their unmasked Putin versions were no exceptions.) 

By that light – as even F. Hayek said – maximizing the number of skilled, confident competitors absolutely requires mass education/health/nutrition and rights for poor children, lest their diverse talent be wasted, instead of surging happily into creative markets.  In other words, today Smith would be a 'liberal' in both the old and the new senses of the label.

Lately, Smith has won a bit of a revival, as seen here: The Betrayal of Adam Smith by K. Phillips-Fein: 

“Smith had a deep and abiding dislike for nobility, aristocracy, and the leisured rich. In his view, these groups influenced state policy in ways that betrayed the larger interest. As historian Robert Heilbroner has proposed, material productivity was important to Smith because it could occasion “that universal opulence which extends itself to the lowest ranks of the people.” For Smith, the “butcher, the brewer” and “the baker” were the people who mattered.”

Well worth reading!  Though my own insights into Smith still have some freshness. ‘Adam Smith - Liberals, you must reclaim him!’ 

== Roots of autocratic lying ==

Let me start this section with some paragraphs from 'Arresting Our ‘Flight From Reality’ by Bard College Prof. Roger Berkowitz. “Because an ideology “looks upon all factuality as fabricated, it no longer knows any reliable criterion for distinguishing truth from falsehood.”

“In 1949, when Hannah Arendt (1906–1975) went to Germany as part of the New York-based Jewish Cultural Reconstruction Commission, she was struck by the way the Germans showed an “at times vicious refusal to face and come to terms with what really happened.” This “escape from reality,” as Arendt named it, meant that the reality of the Holocaust and the death factories was spoken of as a hypothetical. And when the truth of the Holocaust was admitted, it was diminished: “The Germans did only what others are capable of doing.”

“The Germans, at times, simply denied the facts of what had happened. One woman told Arendt that the “Russians had begun the war with an attack on Danzig.” What Arendt encountered was a “kind of gentleman’s agreement by which everyone has a right to his ignorance under the pretext that everyone has a right to his opinion.” The underlying assumption for such a right is the “tacit assumption that opinions really do not matter.” Opinions are just that, mere opinions. And facts, once they are reduced to opinions, also don’t matter. Taken together, this led to a “flight from reality.”

“The focus of Arendt’s lifelong engagement with the human flight from reality was her encounter with ideologies, specifically Nazism and Bolshevism. In The Origins of Totalitarianism and other texts (especially her essay, On the Nature of Totalitarianism), Arendt defines an ideology as a system that seeks to explain “all the mysteries of life and the world” according to one idea.”

Of course these passages are redolent today, as some on the far-left and nearly the entire American right strenuously denounce any recourse to factual validation or falsification. Their narratives - or ideologies - are paramount, over-ruling mere objective reality. Indeed, to that fringe left and entirely-mad right, the most-hated common foe are the nerds of fact professions, especially science.

… "As ideologies, both Nazism and Bolshevism insist on explaining the events of the world according to theories “without further concurrence with actual experience.” The result, Arendt argues, is that such ideologies bring about an “arrogant emancipation from reality.” … 

...“The modern lie is ideological in that it rejects all contrary evidence and all inconvenient facts. It involves, as Arendt writes, the “mass manipulation of fact and opinion” toward the totalizing end of rewriting history and the present to fit one idea.”

The first half of this article is so perfectly on target and diagnostic of the same flaw in human nature that I often point-to - our propensity for self-satisfying delusion, (a flaw that is also a taproot to our greatest gifts, like art and love).  Ideologies, especially, can be ecstatically masturbatory, simplifying all of those who disagree into mistakes, to be corrected with erasure.

I concur, while adding that another (or overlapping) common element is romanticism. Nazism, Stalinism, the American Confederacy (in all of its manifestations) were all romantic movements (Mark Twain blamed the Civil War on the novels of Sir Walter Scott.) We see many common features in the works of Tolkien and George Lucas, as innately superior beings are elegantly admirable (and pretty) while opposing orcs or robots or clone soldiers or masked storm troopers can be mowed down without qualm, as none of them have faces or mothers.

== We are experimental exceptions to the rule ==

I go into this in Vivid Tomorrows. And oh sure, I have earned most of my income by penning tales that have strong romantic elements! I write such passages mostly at night, when the wind rustles tree branches and I feel thrumming echoes of the caves. 

Still, I know what kind of civilization made me and gave me everything I have. I have always tried to push the notion that romanticism has no business - after 6000 years of calamities - getting involved in the daytime pursuits of politics, policy, science, justice and negotiation based on pragmatically verifiable facts.

Alas, the second half of Berkowitz's essay dives into Arendt’s dyspeptic growl at modernity and science accusing them of the same ideology-driven delusion as Marxism! An assertion that I deem easily refuted.  If any of you do read the Arendt essay - it was not ‘reconciliation’ that defeated Nazis or Leninist romantics or the many phases of confederatism. It was a spirit of courage to face the ‘loneliness’ that she describes as the cost of escaping romanticism. Courage in alliance with different and varied others, whose very differences contribute to a healthy and wholesome tribe/nation/humanity.

A courage that westerners don't like to gather, unless hard-pressed! But that they showed at Cowpens and Kings Mountain and Gettysburg and Midway and in alliances that stabilized the recent 80 years of the American pax into the least violent and most prosperous of the last 60 centuries. A courage and unity - in the face of blatant resurgence by neo-feudalist neo-Nazis attacking Ukraine and the entire Enlightenment Experiment, as we speak.

So no, Hannah. We are not all so terrified, all the time, that we must clutch demonizing ideologies. There are other emotions, like courage, patience and humor. And curiosity, God's second greatest gift, just after love. 

And yes, an appreciation of facts and willingness to change our contingent models of the world (despite Plato’s yammers about the hopelessness of that wondrous pursuit.)

Putting aside the fact that - despite my respect for Hannah Arendt - I feel no need to heed desperately nasty and insane "insights" by either Nietzsche or Hegel - where I chiefly disagree with Arendt is over her outright dismissal of human provability.

Sure, I do not take seriously today's pathetic immortality fetishists... or nutters who think they can promote themselves - via miraculous technology - to godhood. On the other hand, I do recognize that we stand on the shoulders of generations who struggled to make us better than them…

… and we are!  Better than them. Each generation of Americans - for example - has struggled over demands that we expand our horizons of inclusion. And slowly - (far too grindingly slowly) - we have done so, in too-small increments, but still ratcheting forward, each generation. And science, disproving ten thousand folk assumptions, played a major role in that.

== Guy who gets it ==

Swinging to another article you might want to look at...

In Defense of Democratic Capitalism: From the Financial Times (possible paywall), Martin Wolf offered a cogent essay that makes my own point - that our struggles today are not about ‘socialism’ or ‘capitalism’ per se, but about rediscovering the careful navigation achieved by the Rooseveltean Compact, which led to the greatest era of hope and progress and (relative) peace in all of human history. A compact whose spectacular successes – greater than ALL feudal or Marxist regimes put together, put an onus - a burden of proof - on all those now raging against it, whether ‘left’ or ‘right.’

In “Defence of democratic capitalism,” Wolf’s interesting "thesis is that it is impossible to sustain a universal suffrage democracy with a market economy if the former does not appear open to the influence — and the latter does not serve the interests — of the people at large. This, in turn, demands a political response rooted not in the destructive politics of identity, but of welfare for all citizens — that is, a commitment to economic opportunity and basic security for all."

Or as I put it - paraphrasing Adam Smith and even Hayek - we need our competitive institutions of democracy, markets and so-on to be positive-sum across an effectively level playing field.

Martin Wolf continues: "Building on FDR himself, domestic policy goals should be rising, widely shared and sustainable standards of living, good jobs for those who can work, equality of opportunity, security for those who need it and ending “special privileges” for the few."

Amen, Though it's hard to achieve, given that so much power has, the last few decades, flowed into the hands of a world oligarchy of what the author calls "rentier" lords (after Adam Smith). Especially since that caste has proved - relentlessly and consistently - to be far less intelligent - or even sapient - than their sycophant flatterers keep telling them they are.  

(Inability to perceive the dangerous poison of sycophancy is clear in fools who yowl stuff like: "I no longer believe democracy is compatible with freedom." Whatever, Gilgamesh.)

Even a scintilla of understanding would awaken them to the savvy shown in the 1930s by old Joe Kennedy, who backed the Rooseveltean reforms, saying that he'd rather half his wealth were taken to uplift a contented middle class, 'than lose it all to revolution.'

"Growth remains essential. So does the welfare state, which makes economic as well as social sense. It can insure risks the private sector will not insure. Properly designed, it can offer everybody a leg up and so promote equality of opportunity."

What the author doesn't mention is that the most fundamental ethos and logic of market competition - as propounded by Smith and even by conservative doyens like Friedrich Hayek - is that markets work best with the largest number of skilled, knowledgeable, empowered and confident competitors. And hence, any liberal 'program' that helps convert poor children into skilled, knowledgeable, empowered and confident competitors is utterly justified and even required, in purely Smithian market terms. 

Those who oppose even that kind of social intervention are not pushing for creative markets. 

They are reaching desperately for the same tired pattern of 6000 years. Good luck with those harems, guys. Only get to know the word "tumbrel."

== More on (not moron) Karl Marx ==

Final essay to appraise here, I promise.

My earlier riff comparing Isaac Asimov’s Hari Seldon to Isaac’s influences – Gibbon, Toynbee, Marx, Spengler and so on, led to a lot of discussion. See “Isaac Asimov, Karl Marx & the Hari Seldon Paradox.”

And as always happens nowadays, folks popped up some of the most-wrongheaded and just plain wrong popular notions. Especially about Marx. Let me therefor try to encapsulate a hugely simplified distillation re Marx:

1) First, any citing of Hegelian 'dialectic' automatically knocks anyone down five pegs. Hegel was a flaming horror, detestable and disprovable on any level. Fortunately for Marx, his lip service to Hegel was just a sop to German philosophy-mystics. It was aside from his chief focus on the historic evolution of power and capital.

2) Marx was a Historiographer. And by far his greatest contributions regarded advancing from Smith and Ricardo the notions of capital formation that he saw going on the the previous 300 years. 

At some level his description of human advancement through phases dependent upon technological level and society's capital (roads, factories, etc) was simply and obviously true. From tribal societies to feudal to monarchy allied with tradesmen, to bourgeois revolution, to industrial capitalism, it was clear to even his opponents that Karl was onto something with his models of past development. 

As was his notion that capitalists played an important role by retaining much of what workers created, in order to invest it into new capital. Hence the word capitalist.

And so the first surprise. True Marxists believe capitalists have a big historical role to play and are not inherently evil! That is, until their final phase, when wealth hierarchy peaks under a narrow clade of uber lords, á la Ayn Rand. Marx and his fans thought they saw that phase rapidly approaching, just ahead, in the giant steel mills and smoking railroads of the last 19th Century. But - like predictions of the Second Coming - that forecast proved to be a mug's game! It turned out a lot more 'capital' needed to be built... or 'formed'... than just steel mills and railroads.

3) Alas, Marx also tried to systematize that insight (capitalists steal some from workers in order to use profits to make capital) with an insanely dumb notion called the Labor Theory of Value. Still, in the most general sense, his appraisals of historical patterns were pretty on-target...
... that is, up until his actual present.

At which point...

4) ...at which point we see (for the millionth time) that explaining the past does not make you a prophet of things to come. In fact, there were almost zero Marxian predictions that came true! Leaving Lenin, Mao and others utterly puzzled. Till they concocted rationalizations to make themselves czars /emperors, with Marx serving as their validating prophet.

No, Marx's greatest effects were in the WEST! Where he was read as a gifted Science Fiction author spinning plausible tales of a near future that terrified enough powerful men that they decided to try staving it off with reform. And that was where, by being canceled by reform, Marx actually changed the world.

And I will eat a bug if more than a couple of you knew any of that. I say that with no rancor or smugness. No one seems to know shit, nowadays.

Anyway, if you actually read all the way here, maybe you actually are an exception. Sorry about that. Tired from a recent airplane trip....

And finally...

"It's easy to be right about what's wrong, while being wrong about what would be right." - attributed (aprocyphally?) to Karl Popper.  

Popper was talking specifically about Marx, but also more generally about those who denounce bad things (e.g. repression or prejudice or poverty), only to loudly prescribe tactics and methods that are at-best futile or counterproductive ...

...and all-too often replicate the denounced crimes! It's one of Santayana's 'repeated mistakes of history' ...

...only, again alas, hardly anyone knows any history, anymore.