The Super Summary of World History - Alan Dale Daniel [140]
In literature the same theme emerged. Nietzsche’s Thus Spake Zarathustra, 1883, and Marx’s Das Kapital, 1867, predicted the coming of new worlds. Nietzsche foretold of a world without a god, a world ruled by the supermen of the epoch who were without mercy or rationality. In 1848 Karl Marx (1818 to 1883), in his Communist Manifesto, wrote of a utopian world without government, ruled by workers who overthrew their capitalist masters and replaced them with workers (without a government) who gave and received as needed.
Figure 45 Munch, The Scream, 1893
Marx wrote as a revolutionary. He lived in a class-conscious England and wrote of a revolt by the oppressed working poor. Workers were cheated out of the increased value they added to raw materials, which the capitalist turned into profits; thus, the workers must seize the factories (means of production) and obtain the increased value for themselves. He called his system communism, and envisioned a utopia where governments evaporated as men lived honestly with one another without hostility because everyone was equal in his classless society. Marx thought the new world was inevitable, and close. Marx said the communist revolution was the last stage in history, and the workers’ revolution was already upon the industrial societies of the West. As a predictor of the future he was perfectly wrong. Communism did arise in Russia, China, and elsewhere; but it was not through a revolution of the workers. Rather, it was through the leadership of radicals who were often intellectuals leading peasants fired by the thought of creating a new social order by changing the economic and political system. After these revolutions the government, rather than melting away, became stronger and more oppressive than ever. By totally controlling everything in society through an increase in autocratic oversight, the radicals were the opposite of anything envisioned by Marx. Karl Marx fundamentally misunderstood economics and human nature. Ruthless men twisted his noble thoughts and words to gain the support of peasants and workers who could never dream what they were really supporting. Only after the dictators took power and began killing on a scale unheard of in human history did their true nature become known to the mostly illiterates they had duped. Marx viewed the poor of modern urban societies as a product of the capitalist system; however, they were actually the product of human nature and not the capitalist system. The urban poor had been around since cities began, and communism would not solve their problems.
If Marx was a fool dreaming of a world that could never be, then Nietzsche (1844 to 1900) was a clairvoyant foretelling of a world no one in their right mind would want—but received anyway. Nietzsche was predicting the world of the future would be harsh, but that is the way of the world (he might say), so get used to it. He was right. The world to come would be very harsh, and his ideas predicted super dictators doing as they willed with millions and caring not one whit for the lives of those they controlled. Just as the “overman” or superman in Nietzsche’s philosophy, the dictators did what they willed because they were superior to others; thus, others meant nothing. Only the overman ruled by right, and only the overman decided good and evil. In fact, good or evil did not exist; there was only the will of the overman.[162]
Nietzsche’s world recognizes no god; thus, the overman becomes a god on earth, and his will alone decides good or evil. This was the ultimate world without a god. Unfortunately, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao fit Nietzsche’s overman idea all too well. Complete dictators in control of the apparatus of state which could, and did, watch and order nearly every aspect of human existence.
George Orwell, in his book 1984, published in 1949, wrote of a fictional society watched over by the seemingly benevolent “Big Brother” which was in fact part of a ruthless dictatorial society in which