More Marxism from Peak Stupidity


Posted On: Wednesday - September 15th 2021 9:49AM MST
In Topics: 
  Commies  Immigration Stupidity  Music  The Dead  History  ctrl-left

In our over four y/o post written just after the Charlottesville, Virginia attacks, Who are these Antifa guys?, Peak Stupidity first pondered the question of who the ctrl-left in this country really are. We discussed the term "cultural marxist". We noted that that these antifa useful idiots would mostly know noting of Marx, at least the guy on the left here.

Pick your Marxism:



As of late we've had lots of posts (with the Commies topic key) in which we've argued that the ctrl-left are not much different from the Commies of old. Back to that 4 y/o post, from the ending, regarding the street battles between Nazis and Commies a century ago:
This is turning into a different post entirely, but just to wrap that thought up, we in America will not experience exactly the scenario of Nazi Germany of the 1930's for one reason only - the people have held onto their arms. History may rhyme, but it won't repeat, due to repeating arms.
We followed up the recent post None dare call them Commies with OK, Some (V)Dare Call it Communism

VDare is on the blogroll and a very favorite site, due to it's 20 year history of documenting Immigration Stupidity. There have been a number of their writers*, including the Founder and Chief Peter Brimelow, who have used the C-word lately for the domestic enemies of the American people. We agree, and here's another one.

One Carl Horowitz, with only an even dozen posts on the site since 20 years back, had this article published there yesterday: Marx Got It Right: Mass Immigration Wrecks Wages. Why Won’t America’s Resurgent Communists Admit It?

I'm glad to see the terminology. Mr. Horowitz didn't make a whole new point with this writing, as VDare has written many posts about the deleterious effect of large-scale immigration on the workingman's wages, sometimes with hard numbers from Mr. Brimelow. Mr. Horowitz did give a bit of history of the situation with Irish immigration to England in the mid-1800s. He brings up the point that Karl Marx, yeah, THE Karl Marx, wrote about the very subject that VDare and others have been bring up 150 years ago:
Consider a letter of 1870 to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, German friends in the United States. Citing the effects of large-scale Irish immigration upon England, Marx explained the destabilizing effect of cheap immigrant labor: “Owing to the constantly increasing concentration of leaseholds, Ireland constantly sends her own surplus to the English labor market, and thus forces down wages and lowers the material and moral position of the English working class,” the primordial Prussian Communist [LUV that terminology!] wrote [Marx to Sigfrid Meyer and August Vogt, Marxists.org, April 9, 1870].

That isn’t all he wrote on the subject, but that little gem suggests that Marx understood at least something about supply and demand, and wages, labor, and immigration. Mass immigration depressed 19th-century British wages just as it depresses American wages today.
Man, you'd think that if Karl Marx really understood supply & demand, he'd have never become a Communist. I blame his professors.

After the very interesting history lesson, Mr. Horowitz discusses parallels between the immigration problem/wage problem and that of the present time with the much bigger (even in relative terms**) numbers, of Hispanics, which is all he gets to. Here are his 4 parallel regarding the 2 situations:

* Open Borders;
* cheap foreign labor that lowers wages;
* Government support for employers of low-wage labor;
* and frustration among the host country’s low-paid workers.
Mr. Horowitz also comes up with 4 points to describe how it's different this time regarding the effect of immigration on wages. It's the 4th point that's interesting to me:
Unlike England 150 years ago, the United States has constructed a large welfare state that shifts the cost of labor from employers to taxpayers. The 19th-century Irish were not public charges, unlike a large portion of Hispanic immigrants here, as economists George Borjas of Harvard and Steve Camarota of the Center for Immigration Studies have shown. Ideally, employers would cover employee expenses through better wages and benefits. Yet with immigration at current levels, they have little incentive to do so.
That's all true, and a great point, but I don't think the writer goes far enough. He continues the article with wonderment on why the modern left just doesn't see this issue the way Karl Marx did, or VDare, or anyone who understands supply & demand.

The modern ctrl-left want to destroy traditional society, just as the Commies of old did, including Karl Marx himself. The difference is that the large Welfare State that Mr. Horowitz pointed out in his point 4 has been used to help (along with destructive immigration law) increase the number of non-white people - Socialism is dysgenic. The Welfare State helps mostly non-white people and the "non-traditional" of all sorts over the working class. At this point, the ctrl-left Communists want to destroy the working class too, because they hate them. That was not the case during Karl Marx's time.

Here's a case where Peak Stupidity agrees with Karl Marx - large-scale immigration depresses wages for the workingman. Hey a stopped clock can be right once a century, if it's got only 2 digits for the year. I refer to Karl Marx here, not Peak Stupidity.

Since we're on the same page here regarding the workingman, Karl, let me share with you some music from some of the hardest workingmen there ever were in the rock music business:



There are definitely lots of live versions that are much better, but I wanted the album cover to appear, Mr. G.



* Some may not be working for VDare but are published there.

** Per the article, 1.52 million Irish immigrated to England, Scotland, and Wales during the period 1850 - 1888. (I assume that was the high period.) From a quick look at this Wiki page, the population of England alone went from ~ 17 million to ~ 27 million. Lets just take the average, even though obviously more immigrants would have piled up by the end. That'd be a total of 7% foreigners, though, honestly, not nearly as foreign, as we have. America had DOUBLE that percentage of foreigners in 1910 and now again (this is 5 years back) in 2016. See our post Foreigners in America for a line graph and bar chart.

Comments:
Adam Smith
Friday - September 17th 2021 11:20AM MST
PS: Good afternoon Mr. Moderator,

Thanks for your thoughtful response. I guess using “free speech” as an excuse to destroy history is no different than using “social justice” as an excuse to burn down buildings in Minneapolis. Destroyers gonna destroy.

It would be nice if people valued principles over convenience and social interaction.
(Dare I say social conformity?)

It would have been easier to right the ship years ago.
I hope it's not too late.

Dieter Kief
Friday - September 17th 2021 6:52AM MST
PS

Ok, thanks - so we know, how  the Grateful Dead's name was found.But I still would want to think about the why - why did this name appeal to them - nd their listeners?

Steve Sailer thougth about this kind of questions too lately and said this:

"People like to imagine the end of the world has to happen real soon now. Many people find too mentally burdensome the alternative possibility: that history will just go on and on, one damn thing after another, and our existences will be forgotten by those who come after us.

It’s especially hard for young people, whose lives seem so compellingly crucial to them, to imagine that humanity won’t end, but instead will just carry on and forget that they ever lived. In contrast, the apocalypse seems like a fitting climax to the unique drama of their lives."

So - the Greatful Dead coudl be seen as a proto- religious thing. With a Cult-following and all that.Telling their audience not to fear death. There is a certain closeness to death in the minds of teenagers the young. German writer Ernst Jünger comes to my mind, who fought (and was eight times or so severly wounded) in WW I and II (s. his ultra-cool book In Stahlgewittern (In Steel-Thunderstorms).Enrnst Jünger, who died with 102, preferred as a young man death on the battleground to a - dull (=regular) - middle-class life. Greil Marcus made a list of Rock-Deaths. The band topping this list I don't remember, but the Allman Brothers were close to the top. There is a connection between death, being young - and art, not least. And bing young and art, sex and war.
Maybe after 27 (the year in life Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, Jimi Hendrix...died) , you are not (really) young any more.
Moderator
Thursday - September 16th 2021 4:43PM MST
PS: Adam, here's my take on what Miss Coulter was saying with that crack. There was an agreement made for perpetual care (or at least not destruction) of that statue by the people that built/installed it and the State of Virginia. The people that destroyed it used "free speech" as an excuse to destroy it. That "argument" or excuse was totally specious and has squat all to do with the contract. I take it you got her banana delivery crack, but just to re-iterate, she means if you can just pull "free speech" out of your ass for anything, then next time you don't have your last couple of months' car payments, it's just "hey, free speech. I can skip my payments, cause free speech."

Thank you for the rest of that comment. My answer to the "why" is that people value convenience and social interaction over principles. (The latter is a feminine trait, but look at society now...) I think that's how bad political things happen on a large scale. By the time people are deprived enough to give a damn, it's just too late.
Adam Smith
Thursday - September 16th 2021 12:50PM MST
PS: Good afternoon Mr. Moderator,

Miss Coulter's following sentence is a bit witty, but I'm missing her point. We all have free speech rights to say all sorts of things, even in situations where it is inadvisable to do so, but it does not negate our obligations under the contracts that we have entered into knowingly, willingly and voluntarily.

I guess my question is, why are so many Americans comfortable being deceived by the corporation(s) masquerading as "government"? If the state can violate a deed, (that no doubt included forever language) based solely on it's assertion of a right to free speech, then the state could nullify any deed or contract on the same principal.

I have a deeply held religious belief that the state is evil and run by vicious, murderous psychopaths. Such people have no interest in my wellbeing. They look at me a source of revenue to be exploited for their advantage. I cannot in good conscience do any business with such an entity. I somehow doubt the agents of the state would allow me to void any contracts I might have with it (even the ones that were fraudulently applied to me without my consent) based on my deeply held religious beliefs, which should, by the same logic, be protected by the same first amendment.

When the state violates contracts and treaties there is often no remedy or recourse. I understand the powerful can get away with things that others cannot, I just don't understand why so many people sheepishly accept it.

Why are so many Americans comfortable with this state of affairs? Is it a matter of conditioning? Hopelessness? Why would anyone do business with anyone who constantly lies to them and steals from them? Why would anyone contract with any entity that is well known to not honor their agreements?

I guess I just don't understand what Miss Coulter is trying to say here.

As always, I hope you have a great evening, Achmed.

Adam Smith
Thursday - September 16th 2021 12:40PM MST
PS: Good afternoon everyone...

Mr. Ganderson, that's a fun story about the sunshine arriving as the Dead hit the chorus in May 1973 at the Iowa State Fairgrounds. Like you say, it's both a great moment and excellent. Too bad you weren't at least a little under the influence. (I imagine I would have been.)

I hope you have a great evening.

Moderator
Thursday - September 16th 2021 7:02AM MST
PS: Yep, I was thinking it was a train, Mr. G,, but yeah, the lyrics go "there goes *the* Robert E. Lee."

Mr. Horowitz gives some numbers on the Irish immigration (though not to the US) and starvation in his article. When I went there 30 years ago, people told me there were 3 million people - this was before wokeness and massive immigration. I don't see a reason to go visit there now.
Ganderson
Thursday - September 16th 2021 6:17AM MST
PS

And with reference to the Irish, Ireland lost half its population during the 19th century
Ganderson
Thursday - September 16th 2021 6:14AM MST
PS

The Jerry Garcia Band used to do The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down, too. Not a bad song for a bunch of Canadians, Levon Helm notwithstanding.. Just to be pedantic the Robert E Lee referred to in the song is the steamboat, not the general. You’alls other points are rock solid.

Oh, and as a sort of “turnabout is fair play” sort of a deal, Levon Helm’s band used to do “Tennessee Jed”.
Moderator
Thursday - September 16th 2021 4:50AM MST
PS: I forgot to add, Dieter, that "The Night They Drove Ol' Dixie Down" is a favorite of mine too. Funny thing is, even a hard-lefty like Joan Baez sung this song with no irony, back in the 1960s. I'd heard her version well before I heard The Band's version, but it's the latter, with lyrics, that I put in a post long ago:

https://www.peakstupidity.com/index.php?post=388
Moderator
Thursday - September 16th 2021 4:41AM MST
PS: Adam, Miss Coulter had a sentence with her usual biting wit right after that:

"But Virginia’s supreme court ruled that the state had a “free speech” right to violate the deed. On that theory, no contract can ever be enforced. I have a free speech right to say that I will NOT deliver 20 pounds of bananas!"

Dieter, whether Miss Coulter knows a lot of history of the War between the States or not, what she was referring to included the ideas of Nathan Bedford Forrest (see https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nathan_Bedford_Forrest) who wanted to continue a guerrilla war against the occupying Union Army. This guy started as a private and ended up a Lieutenant General by the end of the war. Most of his fighting was in the West, which, at this time in American history, included Mississippi and west Tennessee where his campaigns were.
Dieter Kief
Thursday - September 16th 2021 1:04AM MST
PS

PS
Öh - what's she mean - Trump should keep quiet about the fraudulent election?

Ann Coulter about her (and The Band's - and Joan Baez' common man hero Vigil Caine and - his hero Robert E. Lee:

"He could easily have pulled a Trump and told his supporters, We got screwed! Take to the hills! They would have followed. Hundreds of thousands more lives would have been lost. The country might never have recovered.

But Lee said no, it ends now."

https://americansongwriter.com/band-night-drove-old-dixie/

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iNrAFImPcJs
Ganderson
Wednesday - September 15th 2021 11:03PM MST
PS

You have the origin story about right . Saw Dead and Co three times this summer- they did Uncle John’s Band at each show, most recently in Cincinnati.. They did a wonderful version of “Here Comes Sunshine” in Cincy as well; a fine show that I took my youngest to.

I saw the Dead play this tune in May 1973 at the Iowa State Fairgrounds- it had been a rainy Sunday morning, but when the band got to the chorus (…here comes sunshine…) the sun came out to stay. And, I hasten to add, I was not under the influence. A great moment. Or, as our friend Dieter might say, Ausgezeichnet!
Adam Smith
Wednesday - September 15th 2021 8:09PM MST
PS: Good evening everyone...

Thanks for the Coulter link Cloudbuster. From her article...

“Last week, with self-satisfied glee, savages tore down the 14-foot statue of Robert E. Lee designed by the French sculptor Antonin Mercie and installed in 1890 on land deeded to the state—in return for a promise that the Commonwealth of Virginia “will hold said Statue and pedestal and Circle of ground perpetually sacred to the Monumental purpose to which they have been devoted and that she will faithfully guard it and affectionately protect it.”

But Virginia’s supreme court ruled that the state had a “free speech” right to violate the deed. On that theory, no contract can ever be enforced.”

I'm a little surprised that Miss Coulter hadn't noticed, but the state (not just Virginia) is notoriously bad at honoring it's contracts. Just sayin'.

Moderator
Wednesday - September 15th 2021 7:14PM MST
PS: Adam, thanks for filling Dieter in with the origin of the "Grateful Dead" name. I wouldn't have been able to tell him right off the bat, but I'd bet $100 Mr. Ganderson would have.

CB, been there (on VDare), done that! But, thank you anyway.
Cloudbuster
Wednesday - September 15th 2021 4:52PM MST
PS OT I know you're a fan of Coulter, but I think you have been disappointed by some of her recent columns. I know I have. But today she knocks it out of the park:

https://vdare.com/articles/ann-coulter-on-the-anti-confederate-jihad-gray-lives-matter?scroll_to_paragraph=7
Adam Smith
Wednesday - September 15th 2021 2:44PM MST
PS: Good evening gentlemen,

Mr. Kief, this may not be correct, and Mr. Ganderson might be able to help here, but according to...

https://www.sfgate.com/music/article/History-of-the-Grateful-Dead-6330348.php

“December: Grateful Dead born: The band changes its name after learning of another group called Warlocks. Garcia spotted the phrase “grateful dead,” which the band later discovered to be from an Egyptian prayer, in a dictionary, and it stuck.”

https://www.britannica.com/topic/grateful-dead-folklore

Maybe there are other reasons they settled on the name.(?)

Mr. Alarmist, I'm under the impression that the talmud promised faceless brown slaves à la Coudenhove-Kalergi.

From Kalergi’s book Praktischer Idealismus...

“The European man of the future will be of mixed race. Today’s races and classes will disappear owing to the disappearing of nations, time, and prejudice. The Eurasian-Negroid race of the future, similar in its outward appearance to the Ancient Egyptians, will replace the diversity of peoples with a diversity of individuals”.

Some say that by mixing those of European and Asian heritiage with the Negroids they will try to breed a new slave class that is smart enough to get the work done (smarter and more docile than blacks) but not smart enough to be a threat to those in power.(?)

http://i.4pcdn.org/pol/1507480815948.jpg

[/conspiracy theorizing]

Dieter Kief
Wednesday - September 15th 2021 11:21AM MST
PS
What does Greatful Dead mean - how is this name meant? - In the sense of Karl Marx and - as I learned lately from some generous anonymous on iSteve - Thomas Jefferson: That there has to be some sort of bloody fight happening every once on a while in oder to fertilize the tree of freedom? - Or what? - Death as the ultimate taboo - and embracing it thus the ultimate form of a rebellious anti-establishment spirit ("epater le bourgois" as the french anarchists had it?).
The Alarmist
Wednesday - September 15th 2021 11:17AM MST
PS

The difference is that our present-day commies have little to nothing to do with work and labor, and they don’t need the support of laborers to get their way. In fact, they need to appeal to the snobbery of the educated, indoctrinated elite, for most of whom common labor is beneath their dignity, so importing cheaper labor seemingly only accrues to their benefit.

Never mind the externalities presented to our urban elites represented by growing no-go zones in American cities and towns from idiotic immigration ideology. Self-boiling Frogs, so to say.
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