Of Marx and His Side of History

January 27, 2022 Leave a comment

Photo by Maximilian Scheffler on Unsplash

Karl Marx was a bad prophet.  His record is abysmal.  Reality paved a road moving opposite to the predictions of Marx.  That is a serious problem for someone whose theories of economics, life, and the future boastfully rest upon assertions of inevitable fulfillment clothed in scientific jargon.

My friend, Alex Pollock, has frequently said to me that predicting the future is easy; having the predictions come true is the hard part.  Richard M. Ebeling, a professor at The Citadel, has done what many have not.  He has studied what Karl Marx foretold in comparison with what happened.  The differences are stark.  Ebeling reports, “Being blunt, every one of Marx’s ‘predictions’ has failed to come true.” (See Richard M. Ebeling, “How Marx Got on the Wrong Side of History,” June 16, 2017, Foundation for Economic Education.) To begin, Marx’s forecast of the progressive immiseration of the general population was exploded by the greatest increase in standard of living in the shortest period of time for the largest number of people in history. 

His prediction that mass production would render labor skills ever simpler and homogenous, rewarded with mere subsistence wages, compares poorly with the dramatic expansion of the complexity, variety, sophistication, and compensation of employment and employees in the nearly two centuries since.  I admit that I am not comparing Marx’s predictions with the reality in Marxist societies, where Marx’s predictions of employee drudgery and subsistence living have come too painfully close to fulfillment.

Indeed, perhaps only in such a view, where Marxist experiments have been tried, can one find any relevance of the Marxist concept of being on the “wrong side of history.”  The once oppressed residents of the former Soviet bloc are still trying to get caught up with their neighbors who did not spend decades living Karl Marx’s utopian nightmare.  That is to say, the idea that the Marxist conception of history having “sides” has only been demonstrated in the negative by regimes who have imposed Marxist prescriptions on what they call their “masses,” often within walls to keep them on the inside.

What history has shown is that no one controls it, other than God.  From time to time God provides His prophets visions of future history, usually with invitations and cautions, invitations to actions that will bring progress and happiness, and cautions that if ignored yield destruction and sorrow.  Those prophecies have always come true.  In that sense, and that sense alone, to be “on the right side of history” is to be on the right side of God and His encouragements and warnings.

God our Father loves us and our freedom so much that He gives us room for our exercise of choice in creating our own history, disinclined to force what He wants or to prevent what He hates, ever offering counsel and eager to help when asked in faith.  History is littered with the ruins of societies that acted otherwise, when they reached a point described in scripture as being “fully ripe in iniquity.”

Filed under communism, economic growth, freedom, future, God, Heavenly Father, history, Marxism, prophecy, prophets Tagged with , , , , , , , , ,

Of Models and Living

April 30, 2020 Leave a comment

Photo by John Matychuck on Unsplash

My sons and I are modelers.  We love to build models.  We have spent many a pleasant time, creating very pleasant memories, building models together.  I prefer constructing models of buildings, houses, and bridges.  My sons make those, too, but their preference is for vehicles, especially airplanes.

Building models is beautiful and satisfying.  Models and making them stimulate creativity.  Modeling is a bridge between fantasy and reality.  With enough abstraction, you can model just about anything, real or imagined.

Models are not reality, though.  They are a thin representation of elements of reality, on a scale reduced from reality.

Modeling, by intent and purpose, is always a tremendous simplification from actual things, a focus on certain characteristics.  If we want the fullness of reality, we go to reality itself.  You cannot model life, for example, only aspects of it.  Doing so can help with our understanding of a particular aspect, which new idea we can take back to life to see how it fits.

The model itself, though, is not reality.  You cannot live there.  I am reminded of a story from The Twilight Zone.  As I recall, it goes something like this.  A man finds himself trapped inside of a child’s model village.  At first it looks quite real, until examined more closely.  He looks about him, and with increasing anxiety finds that things do not work, discovering an artificiality in all about him.  In despair he discovers how thin a replication of reality the model village is.  He struggles to make sense of it all, until he hears above him the laughing voice of the child who built the model.  He abandons hope as he finds no way out.

Sometimes we build model environments for fish or other pets or creatures to live in.  They never seem to be quite convinced, always trying to get out.  Even the ants in the ant farm work to get beyond the limits of the glass.

In recent months we have all been placed by our governments—especially by our state and local governments—in a model and forced to live there.  We are assured that, according to the models guiding them and us, this will all be for our own good, or at least for the good of someone even when we can see that it is for our direct harm (such as farmers and business owners and their employees, all put out of work).

With each day we see how far from reality these models are.  They are growing increasingly thin in meeting our social, economic, and health needs.  In this model we are separated from family, friends, and neighbors.  Virtual reality turns out to be very little reality at all, highly artificial and daily less satisfying, the virtue going out of it.  Economic buffers like savings erode.  Government relief plans, based on economic models, do not seem to work anywhere near as well as the real economy did.  Educational substitutes are a joke to the students and frustration to their teachers.  Many valuable healthcare treatments are put aside, postponed to some indefinitely promised day, governed by those who control the model in which we are living.

Back to reality, as a cause for rejoicing, which should be embraced and celebrated by all, the horrific models of the future used as justifications for the models imposed upon us by our governors, are turning out to be very thin, indeed wrong.  That is great!  That means that fewer than predicted are dying, fewer are getting sick.  We are thankfully learning each day that the actual numbers used to measure the extent and effect of the flu disease have been and remain a small portion of the overall population.

Policymakers need to make policy based on facts, with a view of and concern for the whole population.  The gap between the models and reality yawns wide.  Time to let us out.

Filed under civilization, freedom, future, Great Cessation, knowledge, life, quarantine, statism Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Of Warming Planets and Cooling Economies

May 31, 2015 Leave a comment

Did you notice when the Obama Administration paused in its ballyhooing about global warming? President Obama and his officials had been busily hustling the warming of the planet and its attendant disasters—which they insist can only be fixed by increasing government control of our lives, from birthing to breathing. The President was in Florida, blaming the future hurricane season—which has not yet happened—on global warming. “The best climate scientists in the world are telling us that extreme weather events like hurricanes are likely to become more powerful.” What President Obama did not mention—anywhere in his speech at the National Hurricane Center in Miami—was that the scientists predicted a “below-normal” hurricane season for 2015. Was that mercy because of or in spite of global warming?

Perhaps we should not blame the President for leaving that little item of information out, since for each of the last several years the cited “best climate scientists” (whoever they are) had predicted extraordinarily active and destructive hurricane seasons. Since each season turned out to be unusually mild, the official forecasters have now changed their tune, putting themselves solidly in-sync with recent trends. Do not put yourself at risk with a long investment on it either way.

As for global warming, however, the President and those who say they agree with him insist that the debate is over (in either science or a free nation can the debate ever really be over?), meaning that it is unacceptable to disagree with them. If you can’t say something calamitous, then don’t say anything at all.

Then, suddenly and quite unexpectedly, the global warming talk stopped. There was a mercifully, if brief, moratorium on warming warnings. Instead of predicted calamity, a real calamity was at hand that required some ‘splaining. The most recent report on the nation’s economic growth was announced. Not only had growth slowed, as measured by government number crunchers, the economy had actually declined in the first 3 months of 2015. That seemed to come as a surprise to no one who is either without a job or working in a job that is something less than the job held before 2009. But it was unwelcome news to the Administration that has been working on economic revival for going on seven years.

Instead of global warming, the Administration needed cold weather to blame for the decline in economic activity during January, February, and March. The lead official White House explanative was, “harsh winter weather”. I did not make this up, and you are not supposed to notice how convenient White House excuses are. It was better that global warming talk was cooled for a moment lest people recognize the contradictions in the official propaganda and begin to wonder whether White House policies were working.

Winter weather is not a novel excuse for failed government programs. The old Soviet Union blamed repeated crop failures on harsh winters (in Russia? Who knew?). The similarity in excuses used by the Obama White House and the Soviet Politburo is not accidental. Central planners can survive only if they have at the ready a list of excuses of things beyond their control. The list could be a long one, since in the end there is not very much about the economy that central planners can control, if control means making things go they way intended. To quote the character Jayne Cobb, in Serenity, “what you plan and what takes place ain’t ever been exactly similar.”

Filed under Barack Obama, communism, demagoguery, economic growth, economics, environmentalism, free speech, freedom, future, global warming, government, jobs, recession, Russia, science, socialism, Soviet Union, statism Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Of Wars and Rumors of Wars

September 7, 2014 Leave a comment

The Lord Jesus Christ declared the hearing of wars and rumors of wars to be significant among the signs of the latter days preceding His personal return to the earth in glory, to rule and reign. This from Matthew, in the New Testament:

And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars . . . For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be famines, and pestilences, and earthquakes, in divers places. (Matthew 24:6, 7)

This from Mark:

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled . . . For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles . . . (Mark 13:7, 8)

And this from the Lord through a modern prophet:

And in that day shall be heard of wars and rumors of wars, and the whole earth shall be in commotion . . . (Doctrine and Covenants 45:26)

As well as I can recall, I have always thought—from my young childhood—that I was living in the latter days, shortly before the return of the Savior to the earth. I cannot remember a time when I did not suspect that to be true. Perhaps many in many ages have had similar thoughts.

My study of the scriptures, ancient and modern, and the words of the prophets, dead and living, matched against what I have witnessed in my life have confirmed my belief that the day of the return of Jesus Christ, to live and dwell among men as the resurrected Lord, is near. I do not predict precisely how near. It may not happen in my lifetime. The Lord said that the Father has not confided the precise day even to the angels of heaven (Matthew 24:36). But if I do not live to see that day, I do not expect that the Savior’s return will occur long after I die, in which case I hope to come with Him together with many who lived and died faithful to the testimony of Christ.

Until recently I had considered these prophecies of wars and disasters to be a sign of something new. Yet wars of men and convulsions of the earth are found throughout the annals of history. Perhaps the prophecies refer to an increase in frequency and intensity. Maybe that is so. Looking back on the recent twentieth century it is hard to find a year without war raging one place or another, and I cannot identify another century in which so many tens of millions were destroyed at the hands of their brothers and sisters. The Middle Ages and on into the Renaissance, if not many other ages, were also racked with constant conflict and mayhem. Their numerous wars seemed interminable, including a Thirty Years War and even a Hundred Years War.

I have come to suspect that in reading these prophecies I misdirected my focus. For something to be a sign, it must be new or different. What was the Lord saying here that would be different, different enough so that we might notice? Perhaps it was not the wars and physical upheavals themselves, as those have been with us since man and woman left Eden. What is very much new and different about today is our ability to hear of the wars, rumors of wars, and the natural disasters. The evils of men and the destruction of nature may be increasing in frequency—and the case for intensity of human mayhem is not tough to make—but what really is new is our ability to hear of them.

Nothing in the entire history of the world can compare with the very recent ability of mankind, anywhere and everywhere, to hear of what is happening anywhere at any time on the planet. That is especially true of “rumors.” Internet communications, and the many evolving formats of social media, make the spreading of rumor—always known to travel on wings—electrifyingly quick and amazingly ubiquitous. Every day we do hear of wars and rumors of wars and the whole world in commotion. It is hard to avoid.

As the dashed expectations held by many at the time of the Savior’s mortal ministry blinded them to the reality of the fulfillment of prophecy, holding too tightly to one’s opinion of how prophecy might be fulfilled is a risky business. The Lord expects us, however, to think about it, else why would He make the prophecies and repeat them? I offer these thoughts for pondering, even while we observe the mighty work of God unfold in our own lifetime, as He told the prophets it would.

What have you heard today?

Filed under Adam, future, Heavenly Father, Internet, Jesus Christ, media, millennium, prophecy, prophets, scripture, Second coming of Christ, The Restoration, war Tagged with , , , , , , , , , , , ,

Of Naked Ladies and the House of Israel

August 17, 2014 Leave a comment

Some call them Naked Ladies. Others invoke the adjectives Resurrection, Surprise, or Magic. A more formal name seems to be Amaryllis Belladonna. They are lily-like flowers (but distantly related to lilies), with large, trumpet-like blossoms. They certainly look like lilies to me, no offense intended to the botanists.

I first noticed these mystery flowers when they appeared one summer in my backyard. I do not know how they got there. This summer there are several of them, each summer a few more. They are beautiful. But even more, I find them a wonder. Unless you were careful to notice their abundant but brief and non-flowering leaves at the beginning of the growing season, you would have little expectation that in the hottest and driest time of the summer you were to be blessed by an eruption of beauty in your yard.

These flowers bloom on tall stalks that break through the dry ground without any leaves or other trace of the plant at all. It took me a season or two to connect their abundant leafy growth in early spring with the blossoms of later summer. From that spring verdure the plants gather and store in their bulbs the strength that lies dormant for many weeks after the leaves have all died away.

The tall, slender stems of late July and August, with their lovely pink blossoms but no foliage of any kind, I must suppose give the flowers their name, Naked Ladies. The variety of other names testify that these flowering bulbs suggest many things to many people. If you did not know that they were there, hiding in the ground, you would have a surprise when the stalks rocket up in a matter of days to bloom in abundance. From a plant that seemed to have died off with the spring, the resurrection of blossoms arises at a time when the most intense heat of the summer dries out many other flora. From barren ground, with no apparent preparation or support, the blossoms appear like magic.

I can embrace all of these images and their accompanying names, to which I would add another—at least another metaphor if not another name. They remind me of the house of Israel.

Long ago Israel thrived in the land called Canaan. Twelve Tribes, descendants of the twelve sons of Jacob, named Israel by the Lord Jehovah, put down deep roots and flourished between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea and into surrounding territories. As the people stayed faithful to God, kept His commandments and ordinances, Israel grew and prospered.

As with the plant I have in mind, Israel’s time of flourishing was relatively brief. Before the end of the eighth century, B.C., Ten of the Twelve Tribes had fallen away from the faith of God into the paganism of their neighbors. Their lands were conquered and the people carried away captive and out of the further knowledge of history. The tribes of Judah and Benjamin alone remained, the Jews of today. In time they, too, were driven from their homeland and scattered all over the world.

For thousands of years the house of Israel has remained in captivity and Diaspora. All but the Jews have remained unnoticed, and the Jews have been subjected to waves of persecution that has risen and ebbed but not wholly ceased.

Yet Israel has lived, strength acquired long ago awaiting the season of sprouting and blossoming, as foretold by numerous prophets, ancient and modern. Through Moses, the Lord declared to Israel,

That then the Lord thy God will turn thy captivity, and have compassion upon thee, and will return and gather thee from all nations, whither the Lord thy God has scattered thee. (Deuteronomy 30:3)

Through the prophet Ezekiel,

For in mine holy mountain, in the mountain of the height of Israel, saith the Lord God, there shall all the house of Israel, all of them in the land, serve me: there will I accept them, and there will I require your offerings, and the firstfruits of your oblations, with all your holy things. I will accept you with your sweet savour, when I bring you out of the countries wherein ye have been scattered; and I will be sanctified in you before the heathen. (Ezekiel 20:40, 41)

When Jesus Christ visited His believers in America, shortly following His resurrection, teaching them about the house of Israel He promised, “I will gather them in from the four quarters of the earth; and then will I fulfill the covenant which the Father made unto all the people of the house of Israel.” (3 Nephi 16)

In our day, modern prophets of Jesus Christ have declared the approaching fulfillment of the covenant:

We believe in the literal gathering of Israel and in the restoration of the Ten Tribes . . . (Articles of Faith 10)

Those surprise flowers each year remind me of the Lord’s promises to the house of Israel, as today we are witnessing those slender stalks arise unexpectedly from barren lands, just beginning to bloom. It is wondrous and beautiful. A work of God.

Filed under covenants, future, God, Israel, Jesus Christ, Moses, prophecy, The Restoration Tagged with , , , , , , ,

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