Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
Communism, Anarchism, and Virtue: Concepts Applied to Reality Communism, anarchism, and the theoretical revolutions of history books – they are not practically inducible over our modern day American community. However, the underlying doctrines of such theories are necessarily relevant to the end American aim – community progress, grown from the people by the people, their interconnectivity, and their virtue. Bakunin agrees with this end game goal; society is “inspired only by the purest love of truth, it frames laws in absolute harmony with the latest discoveries of science.”1 However, such revolutions are not practical over our modern community: revolution is only good in the time of action. Afterwards reality seems to grab people by the ears and pulls them back up or a dictator seems to push them back down while reality sinks in. When the emotion of revolution is done and gone, worry sets in. Worry about tomorrow, about security, about quality of life, and about private interests regarding self and family. The ideas of communist and anarchist revolutions are great, but they are only ideas; ideas that would require a great deal of sacrifice from the people. However, we should never neglect the purpose behind the ideas of communism and anarchism; they should be a building block for our every thought in progressing communities. The only end social goal we should ever try and achieve in our community is virtue. With virtue comes excellence, and it must be taught and practiced over a long period of time, as Aristotle says, in order to truly exist. Once virtue has been applied to our daily life, taught in schools or however, a community such as the United States can change because the majority’s train of thought has changed.
1 Michael Bakunin, God and the State, page 130
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Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
Marx claims that “Industry and commerce seem to be destroyed; and why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce…”2 Marx proposes that society has become too big for its own good it would seem. You can’t reverse progress, especially by means of a revolution; doing so would make the progress of those who died before you in vain. The problem isn’t the size of our nation, it is how we deal with it and adapt to it. Legislative changes that require an elaborate amount of time and planning require patience and competence; virtues the general population will never see or understand with their current mentality. Guided nationalist virtues as seen in North Korea based on Confucian ideologies force people into virtuous ways of life; and as a result people tend to turn against it, because it is oppression under the disguise of goodness. It’s hard to follow the rule of a hypocritical government. As Locke says, “God and nature never allowing a man so to abandon himself, as to neglect his own preservation: and since he cannot take away his own life, neither can he give another power to take it.”3 People must voluntarily follow the rule of the nation, which people have done so in the United States. However, people are becoming unhappy with the current system because the corruption is becoming apparent here now too; the gap is widening one could say. One can’t force people to be good; it must be taught and dealt with naturally. Immediate changes of pure goodness can inspire change. The here and now is what interests the masses; immediate, positive changes. If it is a gradual change it must not be known so that a change can take place naturally without people scrutinizing every step of the plan. When looking at America, let’s follow recent events. For example, take a look at President Obama. He promised a world of change, but his reforms would take quite some time. 2 Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, page 164 3 John Locke, Second Treatise of Government, page 277
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Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
Because of this people lost sight of the end goal and focused on the here and now. What did this result in? None other than people beginning to lose faith in his administration; this can be seen in his recent approval ratings, which have taken quite the plunder. Change is a concept that requires the majority to have a virtue non-existent in them currently: patience. No revolution can add this virtue to the soul; if anything revolution detracts from it. If you are revolting it means you are impatient with the current system; this is particularly bad in our American society because things tend to be working for the most part. Immediate changes or revolutionary movements can be seen when looking at Stalin’s Russia or any other application of trying to get society to change drastically in a “planned” set of time. Human nature it would seem is the stem of all our problems, not our growth into the civilization we live in today. And the revolutionaries and Rousseau’s who want us to destroy our current, misguided life are wrong. Our nature is to desire the good life, but the good life comes with a price. Where the private individual succeeds, the community suffers. A gap becomes apparent between those with power and those who think they should have power. The problem isn’t in our policies, it’s in our nature. Our nature, however, can change. It’s what needs to change so the policies and legislation can do exactly what they’re meant to: be good for people as a whole. A world without legislation isn’t a world for today. Capitalism has shown its corruption, like communism with the creation of a gap; a gap between classes of people. The problem isn’t the gap though; it’s our sense of entitlement on either side of this gap. Such things such as “the abolition of bourgeois property” because 9/10th of us do not “own” our property will only lead to strife.4 I say strife because it’s creating justice for the majority, the sheep or whatever you want to call them, that want to live their life as sheep. 4 Karl Marx, The Communist Manifesto, pages 170-172
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Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
What about the lions? Those leaders of the pack, what do they get? Oh they get to join the sheep and frolic together happily once they realize that the community is the way to go. How does Bakunin and Marx realize this ideal? By revolution! We destroy everything with people not ready to change their selfish way of life for a life that requires selflessness. What about progress then? How do you appropriate anyone, especially in a mass of equal individuals, to progress things to the extent that we have? Marx even states that, “we only know one science, the science of history.”5 Why is it then that he tries to make such a huge claim like the abolition of private property in this day and age? Does he want us to devolve into a less advanced culture? I don’t believe so. I believe what Marx and Bakunin are trying to do is good, but as I said earlier we must either evolve or change our train of thought in order to have this go smoothly. People are not ready to change as a whole, especially to throw away our mostly comfortable way of life. What communism is, in my humble opinion, is nothing more than an answer to the past. I say the past because it isn’t an answer for any large, advanced society we live in today. Maybe in small communities today or in large cultures of the past such as ancient Greece or other cultures such as the Americas before conquest communism could exist. A small community where everyone prospered based on each other’s hard work that each person owned. It is still possible for people to own their own property but the world has become too complex. Loans need to be taken out to buy things and the bank owns your property until you pay the loan off. That is up to the individual to accept that pay off. It’s a payoff for our desires to be realized. Sure you could buy everything you want when you have the money, buy the coffee that the coffee maker makes, which isn’t his property to sell yet he did the labor in making it. It is the price of convenience that we have settled for. Something people seem to be perfectly unhappily 5 Karl Marx, The German Ideology, page 107
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Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
content about. The same can be said about anarchism. Anarchy is something I could foresee in the distant past or post-apocalyptic future, where everything we have today is gone. No more space ships, big buildings, etc. But even when that time comes, how are people naturally going to do what Bakunin wants them to do? Be good and realize it’s in our best interest to help one another because we just see it as being best? Not everyone sees things that way. The problem with our society today and the societies proposed by Marx and Bakunin involve a different type of person to truly succeed; a man governed by a good soul, a virtuous soul. According to Aristotle, life is combined in two parts, “action and leisure, war and peace.”6 So if action is the revolution, the leisure must surely be the peace. However, action could also mean other things besides war; for example, an act of change. Aristotle believes that the polis begins at the house as well as well as moral goodness. Marx also shares this important view of family in his view on communism. The family is always first. If we follow these claims on family it is easy to see that the family is the easiest place to influence a population as a whole, not through legislative changes or revolutions. Plato shares a similar view, coincidentally he advocates education in youth as shown in the quote, “these are the kinds of things suitable for our young people to see and hear.”7 If children do not grow up good they will have twisted morals and beliefs instilled in them. Only courage, temperance, reverence, and freedom should govern the people.8 When goodness is instilled at a young age it is hard to break it in someone; this begins with a good education. What should this education consist of? As of now it is mainly acts of learning and acts of inquiring knowledge; we save the virtue and moral part for religion. 6 Aristotle, The Politics, page 317 7 Plato, The Republic, page 87 8 Plato, The Republic, page 91
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Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
The problem with religion though, as Bakunin believes, is it dumbs us down and makes God a mirage that we can never achieve. What religion does is it places human qualities or virtues into a non-human and then makes those qualities foreign to our own species; particularly in Christianity. “Our Christ, then, will remain eternally unfinished, which must considerably take down the pride of his licensed representatives among us.�9 Religion is a detriment to society overall. How can true virtues be achieved through false beliefs? There is no right or wrong answer in religion, but virtues must be instilled upon us voluntarily, not through the use or fear of religion and getting into heaven because we are virtuous. A man should be virtuous because it is in him to be so. It is also in the community’s best interest if men were as such. If everyone was virtuous, agreement based on logic would become much easier. People would see acts as being detriments to man and the community easily and not be tempted towards corruption. This must be instilled in children at a very young age. We cannot achieve this in a non-state led government. The state needs to be run by the people and for their best interest, but in order for the people to grow up and do so, the people need to change. The change I propose is then that we reevaluate our education system and address its core flaw. We are able to teach children to read, do math, write, and other basic skills but what we do not teach them are deep morals and values of virtue. People in this day and age like to have their leisure, their freedom. We cannot force people to do this, but what we can do is set up a system which helps educate the children better. It would be no more forceful than the current system that we have. Several things must change in order to reevaluate the system, however. From a young age, children must be in school. They must go to school in the United States starting at a very young age with mandatory pre-school. In this they would be taught basic virtues on how to 9 Michael Bakunin, God and the State, page 134
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Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
share, moderate, love, etc. Planned out events or readings by the teaching faculty would need to be coordinated well. This education based on virtue would progress into deeper virtues and their meanings as life goes on for the children. By high school they should be learning stories of selfsacrifice and other deep virtues. A class on such could be created or it could be implemented into everything that currently exists. But what would not exist is us pawning something such as virtue off to a religion. After doing so, a real world with real values begins to emerge. The communism and anarchy of the dreams suddenly could become a reality for the future. A social revolution if you will, but a gradual one without people ever knowing it. The problem that has always been neglected, ever since ancient times, is education. It seems only Plato and Aristotle went into such detail on how and what we should teach our children; the importance of material we teach them and why Virtues are good from a non-religious standpoint. Our children are our future, our tomorrow, and our earthly salvation. Religion, though it does teach and preach virtues, does so from a non-human stand point. Like Bakunin says is we should work from the ground up and not backwards from religion. We must work from our children upwards by giving them a truthful, good education. To be human is to accept ourselves and what we are. Religion gives too many reasons to separate ourselves from humanity and the problems of here and now. Though it cannot just be abolished, it must be slowly weeded out of our children’s lives. Logic and reason would then govern the state and enact virtue into our children as its first step. Hand and hand with science and logical education, virtue would complement the meaning behind learning the material. The purpose of things would become clear as to why we learn and do them: because it is good for our knowledge as a species to progress. The highest levels of progression do not come from a single, selfish unit; they come with unification, with community. 7
Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
Once the community has an education and belief system based on logic and virtuous reason, the mindset of people will change. A revolution could very well happen, but I think it would be much different than the proletarians taking up arms and fighting the current leaders of capitalism. Things aren’t that bad currently. Most of all, we accept it because we accept our leisure that has been granted to us in this state. We live in a comfortable society where private freedoms and interest flourish. Corruption stems from our weak education system and our heavy reliance of religion to instill virtue into children. Church and state should be separated, but when you have a Church, which is a state in the world already, placed in our world of the United States it becomes hard to not have the two overlap sometimes. The choice on how religion is not up for me to decide, but it must go in order to get everyone on the same mental level. Doing so should not cause corruption, which is why I feel it should be gradual without the people ever knowing; where popular belief is crushed gradually with the shift of including values into our education. Time and planning separate from public knowledge will cause change in society. Taking everything that has been said, it should be easy to see that it is not in our best interest to start a needless war of revolution simply because the majority is unhappy with the current way of things. We must take what we have currently and work with it to make our community prosper. Starting from the ground up or from revolution onwards would only set our current progress backwards. We have it within our society and within ourselves to change the way we see the world and live in it. The system that needs to change is not our government, our legislation, or anything of that nature; it is us and our lives. However, we cannot achieve this overnight, it must be gradual and in education. Education is the root of what we are; it is the culmination of knowledge of our history, our achievements, and the best of us. The main theory that must be included in our education to compliment science and knowledge is self-knowledge: 8
Chris Gandy CEP 301B
Essay
December 11, 2010
Virtue, the purest human capacity and most just truth to who we can become. Once virtue has been instilled in every member of our community, societies led for the people, by the people, communist, freedom of everyone, whatever you want to believe the outcome will be can be achieved. It is because we will be united, like our country is supposed to be. Our unification comes hand in hand with the salvation of our species for the good life, for eudaimonia, happiness, arĂŞte, or whatever one prefers to call it. It is our telos, if you will, to unite for the common good of the people; we can do so only together. Once this has been achieved in the here and now, then we can theorize about how forms of government and people will rule.
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