Dear Friends,
It seems to me… we are living in times that are very much like the 1960s. Socialism is all the rage, students are becoming activists rather than professionals, there is another generational schism in our society, we are in another protracted war with a hydra, and another great leap forward is proposed by the progressive faction. Alternatively, today, we have a President apparently dedicated to preserving our Constitution rather than subverting it, the media that calls itself unbiased has competition with a media that honestly admits it’s bias, the cultural elite however are trying to destroy the nuclear family and established cultural norms. While in the 1960s there were still shows like The Beverly Hillbillies, where good common rural people were lionized, while connivers and liars got their comeuppance.
As the intellectuals of the 1940’s created the conditions for the 1960’s, the intellectuals disaffected by the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990’s, created the conditions for the late 2010’s and early 2020’s. If you asked the German soldier in 1940, why he was fighting and why the Soviets, French and British were fighting, he would say, “I fight for socialism, the Soviet fights for communism and the British and French fight for capitalism…” and he would have been right. Ostensibly, that is why the Second World War was fought. It was a global struggle between those three economic systems. The racial superiority angle, as well as the eugenics movement, Hitler borrowed from American progressives like Sanger and Shaw. The real thrust of the Second World War was between Marxism, Socialism and Capitalism.
We all know which side won that war… right? It was the Allies, the side that fought for Capitalism and Marxism, Socialism lost. The intellectuals who had favored socialism over outright Marxism, were forced to become Capitalists or Marxist, and so most chose Marxist, since they so despised capitalism. They infiltrated the Universities and spread their pernicious memes into the minds of young intellectuals, from all over the world, some of whom went on to start bloody Marxist uprisings in South America and elsewhere. The generation most effected by the progressive innovations in the public schools, came of age during the 1960s, kicking off the societal upheaval that were supposed to usher the Marxists to power, even in the US… but it didn’t work. There were no peasants in the US.
Because as Gouldner said, all socialist revolutions are started by unemployed(able) intellectuals and are manned by peasants. There has never to date been a Marxist revolution that was not… Therefore, if you take away the unemployed intellectuals, or the peasants, a communist revolution is impossible. Meanwhile, Reagan’s economic reforms, deregulation, flatter and lower taxes, reversed Carter’s economic malaise and began an economic renaissance in the US, while Thatcher did the same in Britain. At the same time the years of socialist friction had brought the USSR’s economy to a standstill. In many industries, instead of adding value, factories were so inefficient they subtracted value! The upshot is, the entire Soviet bloc collapsed and was integrated into the Capitalist West.
Like the WWII defeat of socialism forced intellectuals to choose between capitalism and Marxism, the fall of Marxism forced the intellectuals to admit, capitalism had won the economic wars. That indeed was the quintessential lesson of the 20th century. Yet, they so loathed capitalism, they embraced post modernism, a philosophy that justifies socialism on grounds other than economic. They set themselves to change the world and today we are seeing the fruits of their labor. As the elite import peasants to man the revolution, and control the distribution of culture, they have an advantage they didn’t in the 1960’s. The Internet in no small way counters much of their advantage, in that information is now freely available to the people, so the next few years will be interesting, and historic… no doubt.
Sincerely,
John Pepin
