SYSTEMS MATTER Part 3: From Theory into History

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

In this intriguing saga of cultural economics and social systems one more player needs to be introduced. Vladimir Lenin was the founder of the Russian Communist Party, the Leader of the Bolshevik Revolution, and architect of the first ever Soviet state. Had it not been for Vladimir Lenin, it is very probable that the theoretical writings of Marx and Engles would have remained as interesting conjecture and late night reading material. But it must also be said that without the systemized writings of Marx and Engles, Lenin would not have had the articulated basis for his brash and flawed experiment of organized communism.

The name Lenin was an alias. He was born Vladimir Llyich Ulyanov in 1870, three years after Marx had written Das Kapital. The oppression of the Russian culture had radicalized the entire Ulyanov family, and all eventually became involved in acts of revolution. Vladimir’s oldest brother Alexander was hanged for participation in a terrorist bomb attack in an attempt to assassinate the Czar, Alexander III. His brother’s execution is considered the tipping point for Vladimir’s overwhelming determination to succeed in his lifelong revolutionary exploits.

A picture entitled We Will Follow a Different Path portrays Lenin and his mother grieving over Alexander’s hanging, and for Vladimir that meant absolutely embracing the Marxist approach for total revolution and communism. It was Lenin who translated the writings of Marx and Engles into the Russian language. In 1889 Lenin declared himself a Marxist communist and said, “Give us an organization of revolutionaries and we will overthrow Russia.”(1)

Marx and Engles, as well as Lenin, saw the wealth and opulence of the Czars and the bourgeoisie class in Russia and Europe as an “object” or a thing. They truly believed that if the proletariat would finally become poor enough and hungry enough they would rise up en masse against the wealthy, plunder the riches, grab the golden egg of the Czars, and once and for all eliminate the upper class. Then they would be free to take their newly acquired goods, redistribute them amongst the proletariat, and they would all live happily ever after.

In order to see the plan successfully accomplished, it was absolutely imperative that there be a total revolution, a dismantling of all systems, a declaration of new ownership of all wealth, and the announcement of a fair and equitable plan for redistribution.

In 1905, the Czar Emperor Nicholas II became embroiled in a bitter war with Japan. The Russian rag-tag army lost nearly every battle and suffered debilitating casualties. The Russian people were sick of the war and sick of the costs of the conflict that left the economy in shambles. The famine and starvation that followed drove the people to the streets in protest of the Czar’s failures and a representation formally gathered to submit petitions of protest to the Emperor. The Emperor’s soldiers summarily shot and killed the bearers of the petitions. The stage was set for a rebellion and revolution.

But the Emperor moved quickly and agreed to concessions including the creation of a people’s elected legislation assembly called the Duma. Was it possible that could have been the turning point in history as much as King John of England agreeing to the signing of the Magna Carta at Runnymede?

The Magna Carta had been in place in England and had proven to be the cornerstone of liberty, and a viable defense against arbitrary and unjust treatment of the citizens, and the framework of liberty and enterprise. Was Czar Nicholas II not moving in the same direction? Would that model not have become Russia’s correction burn and opened the door to the free world and prosperity?

We will never know. Lenin returned to Russia from self-imposed exile. He was driven by the fear that an absolutely good revolution could go to waste. He was consumed by the memory of his hanging brother and his vow of total revolution and the crushing of all existing systems by the Marxist creed.

There might never be another prime opportunity for the violent overthrow of the Russian government to take place and the Marxist/Leninist experiment of communism instituted. What a shame it would be if the Menshevik Party could settle the dispute and receive from the Czar not only a sign of willingness to a movement toward reconciliation and representative government, but openness to ideas of democracy and free market.

There was too much historic potential to lose. Marx had propounded that the total overthrow of the Czar and the confiscation and control of everything would set communism in a position to also seize full control of the world by surrounding and isolating the capitalist nations of the west and also bring them to their knees. Resistance to Lenin was from the Menshevik Party. They feared that Lenin’s plans would lead to a one man dictatorship. In response, Lenin organized a separate entity with uncompromising mandates of total revolution and control. He now appealed not only to the peasants and the workers, but especially reached out to Russia’s discouraged and disenfranchised soldiers of the Czar.

Lenin was determined to win at any cost. He implemented tactics of terror and genocide to secure his power base. He initiated Red Terror to violently wipe out all opposition within the civilian population. The unchecked war between the revolutionary Red Army and the loyalist White Army raged for another three years.

The Czar and his family were deposed in 1917. They were whisked away and assassinated without hearing or trial. Lenin then proclaimed that Russia was a Soviet government ruled directly by soldiers, peasants, and workers. The people rejoiced. Lenin had won the revolution and had established the first ever Soviet Communist State.

Vladimir Lenin suffered two strokes in 1922, thought to be the result of the doctors not being able to remove bullets that were lodged in his body following a failed assassination attempt. He died in 1924 following another stroke at the age of 53. Joseph Stalin assumed the leadership of the communist Soviet State. He proved to be even more despotic and violent in his leadership than was Lenin. But he cleverly was able to solidify the population of Russia by encouraging a cult-like atmosphere that glorified the theories and teachings of Lenin that had been based on the writings of Karl Marx and Friedrick Engles.

Next week: SYSTEMS MATTER Part 4: Marx, Communism, and Cultural Economics 

 

(Research ideas from Dr. Jackson's new writing project on Cultural Economics)

© Dr. James W. Jackson  

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

www.drjameswjackson.com

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SYSTEMS MATTER Part 2: Poles Apart

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

What is the most efficient method possible to successfully utilize the resources of planet earth in order to meet the needs of the planet’s inhabitants? Each answer will reflect the varied respondent’s world view. Two diametrically opposed views are represented by two different men who lived almost exactly a hundred years apart.

Adam Smith was a well trained and intuitive economist and teacher. He was raised in Scotland and influenced by an agrarian and mercantile culture that operated under the British monarchy. The country also operated under the significant prominence of the Magna Carta.

Until 1215, kings and queens had ruled England with an iron hand. But then, King John’s rebellious barons won from the monarchy a series of concessions that established for the first time a paradigm- shaking, constitutional principle. The signing of the Magna Carta established for the first time that the power of the king could be limited by a written document. It is historically considered the first nationwide emancipation document that became the cornerstone of liberty and the mainline defense against arbitrary and unjust treatment of the citizens.

In his studies, Smith became intrigued with the question “why are some countries rich and other countries poor?” It appeared that some countries experienced relative wealth and others knew only misery and poverty. Why did that difference exist?

Adam Smith’s intellectual curiosity compelled him to travel the world and conduct his research. Perhaps he could discover the reason why some countries were rich and others poor. Currently, most people just abbreviate the title of his book and refer to it as Wealth of Nations. But the true title of his book is An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. His work explains what he found to be successful components of economic systems that were producing wealth for their nations and satisfaction for their constituents.

A hundred years later, on the other side of the world, another intellectual was writing. He, too, was writing within the context of his world view. Karl Marx was born in 1818 in Prussian Rhineland. The Marx family was Jewish, but disconnected from their Jewish faith. Karl’s father was appointed a local magistrate a year after his formal conversion to the Evangelical Lutheran Church. Karl Marx received no formal Jewish education, but his Jewish self- consciousness was unavoidable.

Marx’s educational background was eclectic and scattered. The doctoral dissertation that he presented to the University in Jena in 1841 was entitled The Difference between Democritean and Epicurean Philosophies. Young Karl Marx felt his task of philosophical reason was to

“Criticize whatever exists, whether in social institutions, religious doctrines, or the realm of ideas, for what exists is limited, always incompletely rational, and politically open, illusions, self deceptions, group delusions, plain factual errors were to be exposed, the incompletely rational, the spurious, and the idolatrous would be recognized, and partly by being known, righted .”

Philosophy, for Marx “turns itself against the world that it finds.” In 1842 he became first a contributor, then the editor of a politically extreme newspaper in Cologne, where he met Friedrick Engles, the son of a wealthy fabric manufacturer and merchant. A year later they moved to Paris and aligned themselves with French radicals and communists. In 1849 he was deported from France and moved to London.

Except for the brief time with the radical newspaper, Marx was unemployed and earned no money to support his family. For the rest of his life, Friedrick Engles had to give Karl Marx money to keep him in housing, clothes, food, and necessities for his family. In 1848, they together wrote Manifesto of the Communist Party, and in 1867 Marx wrote Das Kapital. The following is an example of Marx’s views regarding free market capitalism: 

''The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his ‘natural superiors’, and has left remaining no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment.’ It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervour, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single, unconscionable freedom — Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation.''

Karl Marx spent his lifetime fully expecting that the masses of the world were going to suddenly and violently rise up at any time and completely abolish all elements of freedom, capitalism, and free trade in exchange for the redistribution of the wealth that they had not earned but could now suddenly possess by murder and brute force.

Even though the rhetoric continually emphasized that the governance of the proletariat would be carried out by the masses of the workers themselves, at the top there was never any question that a small group of elite thinkers and philosophers, the politburo, would be in total control of determining just how equal all the “equals” would be. Marx’s claim was that “the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.”

The most important principle of communism is that everyone is one and no private ownership of property or production is allowed. Previously accumulated wealth, property, and all means of production, as well as all wealth flowing from future production, is to be held by everyone and distributed to everyone equally, “from each according to his abilities, and to each according to his need.”

Additionally, under communism there is an abolition of all rights of inheritance; emigrants and rebels lose all property rights; all procedures of banking and credit are centralized and owned by the state, as well as are all means of transportation, communication, and education. Each person voluntarily submits to the state to determine occupation, education, residence, and lifestyle. Religion is outlawed and resistance to the state is punishable by death.

But there was always the enduring confidence promoted that through communism’s economic and political system of equality, protection, fatherly care, and provision for everyone, there would be lasting personal peace and sufficiency forever.

Next Week: Investigating Free Enterprise

              (Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics)

© Dr. James W. Jackson  

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing House

www.drjameswjackson.com 

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com

SYSTEMS MATTER

by Dr. James W. Jackson

Founder, Project C.U.R.E.
Author, The Happiest Man in the World: Life Lessons from a Cultural Economist

While traveling and working in most of the countries of the world, I am continually amazed by the fact that most of the people living within those particular countries understand very little about how their political and economic systems work, or why they, the citizens, are expected to perform and behave in certain ways. They just do it!

In North Korea or Cuba, the people simply get up, put on a shirt, and climb into the back of a waiting truck and are hauled off to tend rice paddies or fields of pineapples. In Taiwan, it is necessary for the people to find their own way to work in order to sit all day long next to a conveyor belt and assemble very small parts for very big television sets. In America, a lot of people don’t even go to work at all. Why is that?

It all has to do with the economic and political systems that have been chosen and implemented in the different countries. As my graduate school major economics professor, Dr. Paul Ballantyne, used to insist, “It is abundantly clear that economic and political systems matter!”

National polls indicate that most American students neither understand how a market economy functions, nor grasp the most fundamental concepts underlying all economic systems(1) Perhaps the most influential economic work of the 18th century was a book entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations, a book written by the Scottish economist Adam Smith (1723-90), explaining the principles of capitalism and free enterprise. He believed that governments should not interfere with economic competition and free trade, which is necessary for strong economic growth.

Adam Smith used to say, “Little else is requisite to carry a state to the highest degree of opulence from the lowest barbarism but peace, easy taxes, and a tolerable administration of justice: all the rest being brought about by the natural course of things. Adam Smith had a tremendous influence on the Revolutionary fathers of young America.

One hundred years later, German philosopher Karl Marx (1818-83) wrote perhaps the most influential economic work of the 19th century, Das Kapital. He disagreed with Adam Smith and wrote his work to explain the principles of collective communism. He argued that the only solution to the class struggle between worker and employer was for the government to own everything and totally control distribution. Marx believed “the class struggle necessarily leads to the dictatorship of the proletariat.” He also declared that the redistribution must be determined by an elite few, called the politburo, and they would make their decisions based on the idea, “from each according to his abilities, and to each according to his needs.” Socialism automatically becomes a by-product of this system.

Without being too simplistic at this point, let it be stated that all economic/political experiments being carried out by nations today are divided at the point of

                                          Income Growth vs. Income Redistribution.

The tensions between those two camps of economic systems are the fundamental reasons for the political experiments of the past 200 years. Free enterprise economies as seen at work in the United States and Canada have been primarily concerned with economic growth and expansion with a heavy emphasis on the freedoms of the individual.

The early communists believed that poverty, income inequity, and interpersonal oppression came because of free enterprise economies. In an endeavor to save the world they outlawed all market forces. As a result, some notable consequences can still be sited in places like the old Soviet Union and North Korea: millions of people starved, valuable resources were wasted and the economies damaged, sectarian violence quelled by brute force, basic lifestyles reduced to meager existence. And when the voluntary incentive to participate in the grand social experiment begins to fade away, pogroms of punishment and genocide have been relied upon to continue the desired political or economic results.

It will be well worth our time to discover and review for our own knowledge and security some fundamentals of the idea of free enterprise, the elements of free enterprise, the effectiveness of free enterprise, and perhaps even look at some alternatives to free enterprise.

Next Week: Systems Matter Part 2

(Research ideas from Dr. Jackson’s new writing project on Cultural Economics)

Permissions granted by Winston-Crown Publishing HOuse

www.jameswjackson.com

Dr. James W. Jackson often describes himself as "The Happiest Man in the World." A successful businessman, award-winning author and humanitarian, Jackson is also a renowned Cultural Economist and international consultant, helping organizations and governments to apply sound economic principals to the transformation of culture so that everyone is "better off."

As the founder of Project C.U.R.E., Dr. Jackson traveled to more than one hundred fifty countries assessing healthcare facilities, meeting with government leaders and "delivering health and hope" in the form of medical supplies and equipment to the world's most needy people. Literally thousands of people are alive today as a direct result of the tireless efforts of Project C.U.R.E.'s staff, volunteers and Dr. Jackson. 

To contact Dr. Jackson, or to book him for an interview or speaking engagement: press@winstoncrown.com