The Communist Manifesto (and other writings)-Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels

From the outset of 2024, I aimed to remove myself from the comfort zone of what I enjoyed and flood my literary palate with ideological movements (both political and spiritual) I was unfamiliar with in order to generate an organic opinion.

When I gave serious thought to becoming a writer, during my studies, I came to find that I actually enjoyed the abrupt deviations from books or movies that were made outside of my preferred realms. I found that there is an extra flavor of excitement added to the first page or scene which unfolds from unknown frontiers.

Sometimes your outlook changes, other times it enhances. Either way, it sharpens your perspective on subjects that most people know very little about but feel as if they are authority figures on the matter because they regurgitate manufactured opinions from some pod-caster, online influencer, or talk show host.

As society continues to drift further away from real life into the abundant maze of digital avenues—where convenient outlets for jaded takes (oftentimes layered with harmful ulterior motives) are a plenty, it is no wonder that widespread mental health issues develop that require tranquilizing pills and therapy. Make no mistake about it, there is a toll to be charged for spending the bulk of your time wandering the lanes of altered reality and it comes in the form of self-esteem. When the opinions of others hijack your intuition, the world can grow to become extremely complex. I.e. your gut tells you one thing, but so and so says otherwise. Do I remain loyal to the tribe or stay true to the heart? This ping pong game can become very dangerous if one loses control and allows false herders to guide malleable sheep over the cliff.

One nasty little thorn inside of this disoriented mixture is a habit I see in others that I wish to expel from myself: Judgement without basis of first-hand knowledge.

Addled proclamations.

A few examples: Atheists denounce Christians as delusional children suffering from a poor man's opiate addiction…but have never read the bible. Uppity Christians denounce the religion of Islam as blasphemous heresy despite not knowing that the Qu'ran champions both scriptures of The Bible and The Torah. Left wing radicals equate conservatives universally to Nazis despite Scarlett O Hara espousing the democratic party. Conspiracy theorists throw Animal Farm and 1984 in the face of mask wearing liberals bereft of the knowledge that George Orwell was an ardent socialist.

The cycle of ignorance knows no boundary lines and perpetuates itself over and over.

I do not profess immunity of such repugnant habits myself.

Until I read The Bible, I was under the assumption that everyone of the saints and Old Testament figures were squeaky clean characters without a blemish…then I read it from cover to cover and discovered that they were ordinary people with extraordinary flaws.

I assumed Catch-22 to be an excellent critique of modern warfare that was going to be rich in literary epiphanies that would catapult me to the front lines of war protests. Instead, I found an extremely confusing tale of a man named Yossarian trying to navigate a comical world of conflict where nothing made sense and any attempt to find logic was futile (the authors intention).

In short, to expel assumptions.

Reject the narrative spoon.

***

Thus the journey begins with The Communist Manifesto.

I had read a great deal about communism and seen people both decry and revere Karl Marx, but I had never actually read Marx for myself.

After having finished the manifesto and then trudging through the extremely arduous Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, I did not become enlightened to anything eye-opening or surprising that drastically tilted my original perception of communism/Marxism to one side of the scale vs. the other.

What the Marxist subscriber fails to realize is the absolute absurdity that results from the implementation of a Communist regime, which acts as a proverbial magnet for power-hungry psychopaths (Pol Pot, Fidel Castro, Joseph Stalin, Idi Amin) to freely trample the poor from the comfort of their established throne with total immunity.

*Amin actually instituted a military government, but it was basically an extreme form of communism*

The pawn-serving proletariat is only knocked further down the totem pole of hierarchy to serve the dictators up top. Human rights become completely abolished as the system they raged against only becomes amplified. But by the point of realization it becomes too late. Arms are stripped completely, homes are raided, and everyone's wealth disintegrates into nothing as every comrade marches off to the killing fields—all for the betterment of the party. And any voices of descent that enjoyed the freedom to be heard in an open society are extinguished through torture methods in the Gulag as war criminals.

In William Bramley's book, The God's of Eden, he equates Karl Marx's concept of communism as a plagiarized version of The Holy Bible.

"The Communist vision of utopia is a curious, but significant one. In it, everyone is a worker equal to every other worker. No one owns anything and everyone together owns everything; everyone gets everything they need but not necessarily everything they want; but before this utopia occurs, everyone must first live in a dictatorship. Whew! This bizarre vision of utopia seems clearly designed to maintain mankind as a work race and to encourage humans to accept conditions of social repression (I.e. dictatorship.)"

Sound familiar?

No material wealth, war as birthing pains before the second coming of Christ, liberation of the persecuted after 1000 years of Satan's reign, eternal conflict because man is born into sin etc.

The cherry picks are fairly blatant and the contortion of semantics are even worse, which is the Hallmark of communism.

As an admittedly biased Christian, it is no surprise to me that God's wrath inevitably follows in massive numbers when his word is twisted and perverted with such egregious arrogance and that in its wake, communism produces a harrowing ripple effect of death and famine that costs hundreds of millions of people their lives.

In the sense of Socialism and what I consider to be its offspring—unions, I haven't had the most pleasant of experiences. At its original conception, unions were actually a good thing. With no defense against the fist of oppression that blue collar workers labored under, something had to be done.

But that was then and this is now.

I dealt first hand with union's in three different theatre's throughout my adult life, and the results were generally very similar.

In my time as a dispatcher to truck drivers from 2005-2007, I dealt constantly with the headaches of UAW protected dockworkers that refused to load the trucks of poor drivers who didn't have the means of which to grease the palms of a lazy bunch of jerk offs who didn't give a shit if the driver sat for 4-5 hours waiting to be loaded, and preferred to play cards and smoke instead of actually doing any work.

In 2007, I myself became forced to join the union in Detroit when I got a job dealing blackjack at MGM Grand. And, much like the distant cousin dock-working loafers, those that leaned heaviest upon the crutch of union protection, were generally the laziest and shitiest dealers who were persistent jackpots. And as time wore on, the protective measures negotiated by the union were exploited and poor work ethic spread like a disease. I myself remember utilizing those measures to the extreme when I started to grow disillusioned with the job and called off constantly without a care about the strain it put on my fellow workers. They held no compunction in the past when I was loyal and the crunch would hit me, so why give a shit?

The same disease took hold at Horseshoe Casino Cleveland (The Jack), when the union was voted in early after doors had opened. To the shock of no one, the bad dealers continued to take longer breaks than everyone else, pushed every measurable parameter of FMLA to it's limit, and ran to the protective umbrella of the union whenever punishment was merited.

These are just small pinpricks though. In certain circumstances, such as the SAG-Afta strikes, they can accomplish great feats. But largely speaking from first hand experience, I find them to be nothing more than a shelter for the lazy.

And that, in its essence, is what communism is. On the outside, a battle cry for the oppressed proletariats. A voice for the afflicted. At it's core, a shield for the lazy and incompetent who want everything in life without putting forth anything to deserve it.

The loafers anthem

It's no wonder that those who espouse such ridiculous concepts and cling to fraudulent social justice movements as an inferior substitute for their lack of inner resource are always the ones who go out to the bar with no money and mooch off of anyone who does for free drinks and then get salty about it when the answer is no.

A coagulation of lazy elements which contribute nothing to society and then point the finger at those who actually earn their opulent station as the individuals—the true culprits—responsible for the lot in their life.

Boohoo.

Hack it up and get a job you bums.

Grade: D

Verdict: Pass