Loughner and the Violent Rhetoric in the "Communist Manifesto"

Loughner and the Violent Rhetoric in the "Communist Manifesto"
By Philip Klein on 1.8.11 @ 8:39PM

Liberals who have attempted to exploit the tragedy in Arizona for political gain by trying to connect Sarah Palin to the shooting should be ashamed of themselves. At this point, we have more reason to blame the revolutionary writings of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels for what happened today. To clarify my intentions in making this point, I'm not trying to blame Marx and Engles. As I noted in an earlier post, it's far too early to speculate on the shooters' motives, and it's hard to make out any coherent set of ideological beliefs from his ramblings. But that hasn't stopped the left from pointing fingers at Palin. In the absence of any evidence, many liberals have settled on the nebulous arguement that Palin helped to contribute to a generalized climate of inflamatory political rhetoric, which made somebody who was insane turn to violence. From a pure journalistic perspective, there is absolutely no evidence that alleged shooter Loughner had ever seen Palin's famed target map, let alone that he was motivated by it. Yet in a YouTube page believed to be created by Loughner -- and widely cited in the media as such -- the alleged shooter actually names the Communist Manifesto as one of his favorite books and, unlike the subliminal message liberals attribute to Palin's map, Marx and Engles explicitly advocated political violence. Below, I've compiled some examples from the Manifesto (my emphasis in bold).

CHAPTER I

The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself.

But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons — the modern working class — the proletarians....

Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie.

In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable.

CHAPTER II

“The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat.”

“If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.”

CHAPTER III

(The context of the following is a criticism of the approach of socialists --PK)

“Hence, They reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel.

Such fantastic pictures of future society, painted at a time when the proletariat is still in a very undeveloped state and has but a fantastic conception of its own position, correspond with the first instinctive yearnings of that class for a general reconstruction of society.

Chapter IV

“The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Working Men of All Countries, Unite”