The delusional Karl Marx

The delusional Karl Marx

by Jon Rappoport

October 2, 2017

Prepare yourself for a fantastical Karl Marx quote.

It’s the sort of statement a young person in college might find inspiring, if he had the ability to read it and understand it.

An increasing number of young college students want to believe in a better, more attractive future, in which little or no work will be required of them.

They’ll be provided a “free life.” Housing, food, clothing, an array of consumer items.

They want something resembling college life forever.

Here is the Karl Marx quote:

“For as soon as the distribution of labour comes into being, each man has a particular exclusive sphere of activity, which is forced upon him and from which he cannot escape. He is a hunter, a fisherman, a shepherd, or a critical critic and must remain so if he does not wish to lose his means of livelihood; while in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes, society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.” (The German Ideology, 1845-46)

I’ll break down Marx’s stunning assertion, section by section.

First, he claims the “division of labor” brings on unwanted consequences. What does that “division” phrase mean? Does it mean someone somewhere, once upon a time, came up with the weird notion that, if you wanted to build a temple, you would have different people work on different aspects of the overall job? Is that what division means?

You could have built the temple with “all the workers doing all the jobs,” but some evil wizard imposed the idea, arbitrarily, that different workers with different skills ought to shape the stones, put them in place, design the overall support structure, execute sculptures, and so on?

This was the cardinal first sin?

Apparently so.

Marx then claims that the division of labor specifically leads to people having certain jobs forced on them, from which they can’t escape. Is that a sound inference? Had he never heard of or encountered people who started their own businesses, their own farms? Had he never heard of people who decided to change one type of work for another?

Moving right along—Marx utters this astonishing phrase: “…in communist society, where nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity but each can become accomplished in any branch he wishes…”

Which Communist society will that be? Under a Dictatorship of the Proletariat, the people will be able to choose the direction of their lives? Pick their professions, one after another? A farmer can sell his land to a buyer and move to the city and publish a newspaper?

No, that is what can happen in a free market society.

Next, Marx states that “society regulates the general production.” He’s talking about production of goods and services under Communism. But who is this “society?” Everybody? It appears so. Everybody gathers in a great field and intelligently debates how the economy will operate and what and how much it will produce…and then the miracle will come to pass? None of the population will actually go to work making those production quotas come true? It will just happen?

Well, you would think so, from what Marx describes next: “…society regulates the general production and thus makes it possible for me to do one thing today and another tomorrow, to hunt in the morning, to fish in the afternoon, rear cattle in the evening, criticize after dinner, just as I have in mind, without ever becoming hunter, fisherman, shepherd or critic.”

In other words, Marx would live for free, unemployed, and do whatever he wants when he wants. And so could everyone else—but somehow the national production of goods and services gets done.

Magic. The magic of the Communist State.

I recommend Marx’s passage to teachers of logic. Have your students chew on it for a week, take it apart, analyze it. It’s a masterpiece of fallacies, taken to the extreme.

And by the way, there is no indication Marx was anticipating a society in which machines and AI would do all the work. If this were his ace in the hole, he would have to re-think his famous “workers of the world unite,” because there would be no human workers, aside from those who monitored and repaired the machines…


The Matrix Revealed

(To read about Jon’s mega-collection, The Matrix Revealed, click here.)


Jon Rappoport

The author of three explosive collections, THE MATRIX REVEALED, EXIT FROM THE MATRIX, and POWER OUTSIDE THE MATRIX, Jon was a candidate for a US Congressional seat in the 29th District of California. He maintains a consulting practice for private clients, the purpose of which is the expansion of personal creative power. Nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, he has worked as an investigative reporter for 30 years, writing articles on politics, medicine, and health for CBS Healthwatch, LA Weekly, Spin Magazine, Stern, and other newspapers and magazines in the US and Europe. Jon has delivered lectures and seminars on global politics, health, logic, and creative power to audiences around the world. You can sign up for his free NoMoreFakeNews emails here or his free OutsideTheRealityMachine emails here.

36 comments on “The delusional Karl Marx

  1. Wefelnerber says:

    Marx believed that society is dominated by conflicts between the powerful and the subjugated. The Marxists theorized that throughout history the government, the ruling classes, and the capitalists have oppressed the everyday working people, and that it is only through revolution against these rulers that everyone will enjoy true freedom and equality in a classless society.

    They believed capitalists (those who owned the farms, factories, and shops) made their fortunes by exploiting the people, whom they called the proletariat. In Marx’s ideal world, everyone would work hard to better themselves and would cheerfully provide assistance to those who were unable to work. The Marxists believed that all farms and factories should be owned commonly. This belief in common ownership gave birth to the term “communism” to describe this economic structure. Marx called the idea “economic determinism”, because the economic conditions of the people would determine the political and social structures of such a society.

    The Marxists also believed that organized religion was one of the tools that governments and the ruling classes (also called the bourgeoisie) used to keep the people, or the proletariat, from thinking for themselves and from being aware, or conscious, that they were being exploited.

  2. Erik says:

    In Episode 1, The Engineers’ Plot, of Adam Curtis’s documentary Pandora’s Box he uses actual Soviet-produced historical films to lay out how planned production worked. You can start here if you want to get 2 minutes of brief context of the engineering takeover of life in the Soviet Union:

    youtube /h3gwyHNo7MI?t=22m50s

    “It was a vision of a planned utopia….”

    Or 2 minutes later directly to the incredible sequence on central planning.

    youtube /h3gwyHNo7MI?t=24m49s

    “Everything in the new Russia was to be designed and controlled in the center of Moscow. As the women sing of the future they march past the giant headquarters of this organized society, Gosplan, State Plan.” and then comes the incredible sequence as the Senior Manager of USSR Gosplan and others explain how centralized production works. The next 13 minutes are worth the viewing time.

  3. Donald Lee Buresh says:

    When I plant a seed in the ground, I do not just get back one seed back, but I get thousands of seeds. Every individual who has ever planted a garden knows this as a fact. This is not the scarcity of economics theory at work, but the abundance of nature. We live in a world of abundance, but we are taught that scarcity is a fundamental assumption of economics.

    Karl Marx was stating as an example that people’s perception would change as society progressed. I suggest that you review the work of Peter Joseph and Jacques Fresco to see that in the future Karl Marx was correct, we will have greater freedom of choice if we abandon the assumption of scarcity and embrace a resource economy. Scarcity pits one human being against another, On the other hand, organizations exist because individuals cooperate. Without cooperation, we are left with the law of the jungle, and no one will survive. This is the state of the world under capitalism.

    Capitalism is not sustainable. Capitalism is based on consumption. We live on a finite planet. We cannot keep consuming and then discarding and expecting that everyone on the planet will live the good life. We must manage the resources for the betterment of all. Please remember billions of people are barely existing. If we do not change the very nature of our economic system, we will all suffer. Five people on Earth than the bottom 3.5 billion. This is not sustainable.

    Please comprehend that Marx spent most of his life in the British Museum collecting data because it was British law at the time that every newspaper had to provide one copy to the British Museum. Mark was the world’s first empirical economist. His theories were based on the data available at the time.

    Marx died in poverty. He was a critic of capitalism. In fact, Frederick Engels completed the last two volumes of Kapital. To say that Marx was a “school boy” mischaracterizes him. He was trained legal scholar.

    So here is my question to you Jon. Did you ever read Kapital? I think that you should state your knowledge of Marx, and then comment on his words, and not automatically criticize him. It is only fair.

    • Roger Chavez says:

      “Capitalism is not sustainable. Capitalism is based on consumption.”

      Well said, well live on a finite planet.

    • Ya Okay Sherlock says:

      Donald, Jon’s knowledge of Marx’s writings is obviously limited as evidenced in this article dealing with one of Marx’s paragraph.

      You’re knowledge of liberal economics is likewise limited. Scarcity is not “a fundamental assumption of economics”. Rather, scarcity is merely a big determinant of the “price” of a commodity.

      Yes, it would be ideal that that people write articles and comments on what they actually know.

    • Sovereign says:

      Scarcity is not a characteristic of capitalism, its a scare tactic to cause people to think communism could work(it never does), to drive up prices, and cultivate the false competitive mind.
      .
      Who is “we” when you refer to a group of individuals who will decide for everyone? This is also something that fails every time.

      Please share with everyone all of you who claim Marx is a genius, how you are following in his footsteps and dedicating all his principles to your lives as living example of his success? Until you do so, your word is just speculation.

      You contradict yourself, in saying nature is abundant yet somehow capitalism is scarcity and the world is limited. You cant have it both ways. Hint; nature always prevails, there is more than enough for everyone to be prosperous.

      Another clue; Marx died in poverty, so he had no idea how to create in a positive manner, and thought very little of himself, so did not choose a rich fulfilling life. Poverty consciousness is a disease. It is a sin to be poor in a blessed, abundant world given to us to be enjoyed and cherished..

      Poverty or wealth are a choice, taught to us by our parents and culture around us. Its a choice that can be changed, but takes much inner work, which victim conscious people never do.

      “Socialism is a philosophy of failure, the creed of ignorance, and the gospel of envy, its inherent virtue is the equal sharing of misery.”

      Winston Churchill

    • Your beautiful analogy about the seeds in the garden reinforces the idea that scarcity is imposed upon us as a fact but is not a true reflection of reality.There exists a world of abundance through co-operation. Money is the BIG problem.Don’t people in communist countries need money and have central banks ? So who is Karl Marx ? Is he one of us ? Or is he on the inside ? Because Commuism is great in theory, but how has it been used ? Who are the powers that direct the pantomime ?

    • al says:

      “Marx died in poverty. He was a critic of capitalism”

      I guess he wasnt too bright after all then. ……………….

    • missjanenc says:

      Don, I see you’re still an asshole. That is definitely not finite.

  4. Harrison Bergeron says:

    The glorious world of next Tuesday where every comrade is equal. Some are a little more equal and they will have a higher standard of living.
    Party apparatchiks will have a Dacha while comrades of the proletariat will have a shit shack.
    People who are more attractive than others will have to be surgically altered so they are no longer aesthetically pleasing to the eye.
    Comrades who run fast or jump higher will have to wear weights so they are equal to the proles who cannot.
    Those who are smart will have to be dumbed down with a lobotomy or psychiatric drugs.
    Tasty foods will have to altered and ingredients will have to be the same in every Potemkin village. The glorious world where everything is the same. Forward!

    • Kind of incredible to think this is what Progressives are clamoring for, and will gladly destroy America to get it…

      • Roger Chavez says:

        Most Progressives are not Marxists, they know as little about Marxism as you do.

        • Sovereign says:

          Kommies dont belong in America, Roger, why not spend some time in Venezuela or Cuba and see what your hero Marx has created?
          Progs are Marxists; you are all the same. Propagandists who have caused the deaths of millions. The goal is ultimate control to go to a small group of people who think they have the right to make decisions for everyone else.

          You have no right to speak if you are not practicing in your own life the lies you preach. You are not allowed to benefit from the innovation that true free market provides, so leave America now and take the rest of the antifa idiots with you.

  5. bdoyen says:

    People are completely unable to choose their work in Russia, according to someone I know from there. Instead, the government tells you what you will do and there is no deviation. This is why people were fleeing, if they could, to pursue their own dream. It’s slavery and anyone who thinks otherwise is deluded, believing in “magic.”

    • Roger Chavez says:

      Not true. People in Russia are able to choose their work. You must be buying 1950’s style anti-Soviet propaganda. I’m not thinking otherwise, I know other wise. It is your thinking that is deluded, believing in “magic”.

  6. Gordon says:

    Are you expecting logic from a deadbeat dad that never worked a day in his life?

  7. Terri says:

    Here is another Marxist ideology cloaked in racism. A hard work ethic is now considered white privilege and white ideology. Imagine that, equating dedication and hard work to prospering is now considered racist.
    This also explains why all these millenials still live at home and dont work. Everyone I talk to says they are looking for people to fill really good paying jobs, but no one will take them.
    This is a must watch to see what children are learning today. These idiots are insane, but explains the rhetoric people spew that has no basis in logic or common sense.
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bkZqBXmgQxw

  8. Roger Chavez says:

    Capitalism has been THE economic player on the world stage for 175 years? A very brief period of time. It is coming to an end even as I type this out. […] The US economy is failing, and who will it take down with it? The rest of the Western World.

    Paul Craig Roberts on the failing US economy:

    http://www.paulcraigroberts.org/2017/09/29/us-economy-failing-paul-craig-roberts/

    • night of the trust fund poseurs says:

      PCR didn’t mind capitalism when he worked in Ronald Reagan’s cabinet Comrade.

    • Sovereign says:

      The economy has failed due to unlawful and unconstitutional conspiring of the government and greedy businesses. It has nothing to do with capitalism. Fiat currency is the culprit.

      The federal reserve, an obamanation which steals from the people must be abolished immediately if we are to ever be able to free ourselves from debt peonage.

      Wilson and his cronies on Jekyll Island are responsible for the demise of the whole world. Have you read the book?

      This should be everyone who cares about themselves and life, first priority. If Americans had any sense they would have elected Ron Paul who sought to get rid of the fed. The people stupidly rejected him. No one since Jackson has been courageous enough to do so.

  9. night of the trust fund poseurs says:

    For example, your leftists in [the] United States: all these professors and all these beautiful civil rights defenders. They are instrumental in the process of the subversion only to destabilize a nation. When their job is completed, they are not needed any more. They know too much. Some of them, when they get disillusioned, when they see that Marxist-Leninists come to power – obviously they get offended – they think that they will come to power. That will never happen, of course. They will be lined up against the wall and shot.

    KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov aka Thomas Schuman

  10. Skid Marx says:

    Twas the night before Marxmas, and all through the grad,
    Not a worker was working; the market’s too bad.
    The stockings were empty and that’s how they’d stay,
    Because presents were rationed and coal went away.

    The children were thinking of the people’s school,
    Where they praise Comrade Chairman because that was the rule.
    Momma was trying for kid number six,
    To bump up her check and pay for her fix.

    When out in the Square there arose such a clatter,
    Was another spy caught? What could be the matter?
    I expected to see another traitor denounced,
    But instead, a man, his beard quite pronounced.

    The moon shone bright on the snow on each home,
    Global warming had chilled us, right down to the bone.
    When, what my wandering eyes did see,
    Was a detachment of men from the NKVD!

    With a full bearded leader, his face not quite dark,
    I knew in a moment it was Comrade Marx!
    More rapid than eagles his enforcers came,
    They knocked on my door and demanded my name.

    They yelled “Open up, Comrade!” in their angry tone,
    Suspicious that Bibles might be in my home.
    They kicked in the door and what did they see,
    But a computer, its browser on Moonbattery!

    I said, “My neighbor, he did that, if you want to know.
    “Me, myself, I love Barry O!
    “For him? I cast ballots at least counting eight.
    “My neighbor? Likes Limbaugh, and thinks he is great.”

    His Tok, how it twinkled, his men, how they stared,
    Looking at nothing, the whole flat was bare.
    He said, “Well done, comrade!” with a pleasing tone,
    “We go roust that bagger right out of his home.

    “Your word is enough, all charges will hold.
    “Traitor be shipped down Siberian road.
    “For praying to Jesus and clinging to guns.
    “And keeping money he makes from a business that runs.

    “For voting for Mitt and LTC West.
    “We shall give this traitor his much needed rest!”
    With a snap of his fingers he beckoned his guard,
    But not before filling my EBT card.

    They spoke not a word as they went to work,
    As they kicked in the door and arrested the jerk.
    Handcuffed and bleeding, and dragged out in fright,
    And thrown into a trunk in the middle of the night.

    He sprang to his ZIL, and put it in gear,
    Taking my neighbor away to just disappear.
    But I heard him exclaim, just as off he drove,
    “Merry Marxmas to all, and stay poor, dear tov!”

  11. Theodora says:

    Marx was a satanist. His ultimate dream was to destroy God´s Creation. He wrote a poem called Oulanem in which he spew all his hatred against God, Mankind and Christianity.

    The very evil of Marx was that he stole all the best things from Christianity and repackaged them in ´his´ theory, of course under auspices of his Rothschild masters.

  12. Billyjack says:

    Das Capital is 800 pages of mindless prattle and mind numbing statistics from the industrial revolution in Britain. Marx makes a conjecture then spends 40 pages describing how brilliant he is. His entire premise concerning exploitation of workers in the industrial revolution can be dismissed by one simple fact. The workers in a shoe factory were making shoes for workers, not the aristocracy.

  13. The big three, methods of rule, with a couple of examples, each: Banking, the US and Europe, Military, Africa, North Korea, Religious, Saudi Arabia, Iran, actually all three kinds are dictatorships, of one sort or the other. It is no different when the Church starves people to death for its own advantage, rather the advantage is a matter of gaining wealth or power over the people. No different than when a Military dictatorship does it or a Banker dictatorship does it. We have examples of all three today, tearing the people apart, in fact, we have no other examples, of any other kind of leadership, at all, in all the world. These three, often called Communism, Democracy, Theocracy, rule.
    Why is this? Ruling over people requires that the one or several intending to do the ruling have a force to back them up, something of the past to help them formulate their plan and people willing to accept their Kingship. Beat’em, scare’em, scam’em, the big three, with nothing in between. Each kind has a one man show somewhere hidden in it, Banking, Rothschild, Theocracy, Ali Khamenei (for example, could easily be the Pope), Military, Kim jong-un (Korea), or Xi Jinping (China).
    Today, the cream has risen to the top and it is Banking, the Rothschild Family, Kings of the world, the richest family that has ever lived on Earth, the power behind every decision made, even, the decisions made in North Korea, believe it or not. Whichever way the King of the world, ie, the eldest son of the Rothschild Family goes, the world follows, rather it wants to or not. It is not up to Trump rather we have a war with North Korea, or not, it is up to the Rothschild King. The Banker King decides how many, what kind, and when countries under his Banking dictates take in or expel immigrants (for example), the laws of the nation and which laws, by the control of Judges, the nation’s follow.
    The Press, the Entertainment industries, the Religions and the Leadership today all do as decided by the Rothschild Banker King, actually everything that is, is under the Banker King’s authority in one way or the other. The whole world still talks like three, but, in all truth there is only one, kind of, leadership, any form of education that resist this truth is rather intentionally or not –in on it.
    The problem, from the ruler-ship’s stand point, the problem of having one decision maker is in the fact that one person can die or be killed thereby upsetting the applecart, the Rothschild’s have taken care of this by having a whole family, as did the Kings of old, involved in the role of leadership, with a method of ascendancy tried and true, a methodology that has maintained the ruling elite for a thousand years and more. The Rothschild Family is the prime family in all the world and it is accepted as such by all the world’s leadership.
    People have been forgiving the murderer for their murder for thousands of years, doesn’t make it right, just as people have accepted ‘Royalty’ leading them for thousands of years doesn’t make that work, for, the people. Murderer’s should suffer death for their having taken another person’s life from them, another person’s life, life, which is all we really have. The murderer takes from his or her victim all the victim has, this is not forgivable. Neither is it right for a person to be royalty and just because of the vagina they came out of.
    Our goal should be to find for all of us better ways, better people, to lead us. This can be done, when people decide to devote at least as much time to selecting their leadership as they do to designing a car or a phone, then we will find a better design and live better lives. Starting with no more war, ie, the murderer is responsible for their doing murder.

    • Sovereign says:

      This can not be changed, Sam, until and unless the people develop some self esteem and respect and stop acting and thinking like peasants. Children are indoctrinated into this slave system by their own parents, who had the same done to them, by theirs.

      The Constitution was given as a chance for the peasants to develop self rule and to remove the notion that some are above the law. Alas, 200 years has not been long enough for the peasants to change their mentality. Choosing to be a victim and demanding an authority figure,outside of themselves, due to self doubt, creates all manner of suffering. We would have no “elite” perpetrating evil upon the masses, if there were no willing victims.

      We can see how political parties have taken advantage of this impulse and we now have a huge class of people dependent on welfare to the detriment of those who have honor, a work ethic and autonomous thinking. We must stop pandering to the lowest common denominator. They have now become a threat to everyone with their ever greater absurd demands and tantrums. They are useful idiots who are moving us closer to the danger of communism, collectivism, globalism and the singularity.

      Until this cycle of abuse is broken and punitiveness and authoritarianism are replaced by self respect, self discipline and self love, cultivated and encouraged lovingly by parents, this shall continue.
      The education system, engineered by Carnegie, and others before him reinforce this by design to create a whole population of “workers” who will not question anything.

      Home schooling and teaching of logic, as Jon does, are a must to a better world and better class of people who can think for themselves and therefore create something of real value.

      The education system is just one of the planks of the communist manifesto, all of which which must be eradicated, if humans hope to survive as a species. When Americans, due to their ignorance and apathy, opened the door to communism, they began their demise as a free people.

    • bdoyen says:

      Brilliant analysis, Sam, thank you.

  14. TheSociologicalMail says:

    Marx was writing a different time where the majority of people really did just end up forced into one kind of labour for the majority of their lives.

  15. Friend says:

    Jon, with the release of supressed energy and manufacturing tech (where are the 3d printers, i even saw a demo a few years ago, now we hear nothing, same with nano, let alone tesla coils)…it is quite possible for everyone to only need work 10 to 40 hours a month….more if you want to.

    The whole ‘get a job’ mindset is very in the box.

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