December 2011 Philadelphia Chapter of Pax Christi U.S.A.
The Power
On email today I received a brilliant essay quoted below.
In his groundbreaking book “The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State,” Frederick Engels explained the evolution of the state this way: “The state is, therefore, by no means a power forced on society from without; rather, it is a product of society at a certain stage of development; it is the admission that this society has become entangled in an insoluble contradiction with itself, that it has split into irreconcilable antagonisms which it is powerless to dispel. But in order that these antagonisms, these classes with conflicting economic interests, might not consume themselves and society in fruitless struggle, it became necessary to have a power, seemingly standing above society, that would alleviate the conflict and keep it within the bounds of ‘order’; and this power, arisen out of society but placing itself above it, and alienating itself more and more from it, is the state.”
The role of the state as a repressive apparatus that includes the police, the prisons, the courts, the big business media and more should be studied and understood by every activist and revolutionary not only theoretically but practically.
Think about how many years I would not ever consider reading anything by Engels, or even worse, his buddy Marx. Communists, Marxists. My brain was washed to firmly believe that we were the goodies and they the baddies. I guess it was a gradual change. For one thing it was more hip to be liberal, but eventually it was the glaring inequity of our system and my forced-by-my-addiction return to God and then to a very progressive church, that really changed my thinking.
I look at Engels quoted paragraph above and realize how devastatingly accurate it is in his description of a power that is necessary as well as necessarily abusive; I think of another quote.
“Lack of power that was our dilemma. We had to find a power by which we could live and it had to be a power greater than ourselves.”
The quote is from the textbook of Alcoholics Anonymous known as the “Big Book.” And the power the alcoholics would eventually find and that would deliver them from the oppression of their addiction to alcohol; was a Higher one - that would usually end up being God.
Even now as the protests are going on all over the world against the repressive and unfair system and state, I wonder exactly what they are asking for just as I always wondered what the solution was for Engels and Marx and Marxism. The end of the so-illuminating essay regarding the whole breakdown of our system provides it.
“Besides deepening this solidarity, the next important lessons are that the capitalist state stands above the people, cannot be reformed, and must ultimately be smashed and replaced with a state that represents the interests of the majority of humanity based on the socialist reorganization of society.”
Smashed. There’s going to be a revolution hey, hey.
Below is an excerpt from a poem I wrote about a brilliant Marxist author and playwright, Bertolt Brecht:
But if you had lived you would have seen
your dreams go up in smoke
For folk whether Red, White, Green or Blue will always horde their own
You rightly scoffed at righteous lords who used God as their tool
But with the filthy bathwater of their man-made faiths you also tossed the Babe
And perhaps it is right there where you erred For such brotherhood as you espoused
is perhaps beyond the grasp of mere flesh
To take only what's needed and nothing more is something the soul-less simply won't do.
The socialist reorganization of society will not hold up if it is a function of purely secular altruism. My brother, who must not starve so that another can join an even-better county club next year, is bound to me via a soul that will last forever. His and mine are parts of this Higher Power that is the only force strong enough to guide us to truly, and beatifically, even things out.
Inside the walls on Wall Street, the god of greed remains supreme. On the streets outside; God waits patiently and longingly to guide us in the non-violent charge that must be coming soon.
Jim McGovern
Jim is a member of CPF His latest book is: “Twelve Steps to Change Your World”
