Interesting conversation: a comment, my reply and Thomas Wilkinson’s rejoinder to a reader of his essay

Note before starting: if you have not read Thomas Wilkinson’s fine essay, here is the link,

Purity and power: missionary strategy for social engineering. By: Thomas Wilkinson.

One of my fave writers contributes an exclusive essay to Seek Truth From Facts.

https://seektruthfromfacts.org/guess-submissions/purity-and-power-missionary-strategy-for-social-engineering-by-thomas-wilkinson/

Whether you agree with him or not, Thomas is always thought-provoking, as is shown in this conversation below.

Comment from a reader steeped in historical study,

Jeff,

I am amazed at how a Marxist-Leninist can bridge so many worlds as this article does;   The  problem I have with M-L thought is its assumptions.    For example, colonialism is seen as bad—exploitation of people who have sat put for centuries are conquered and these colonist capitalist devils have come and interrupted the paradise, if not completely destroyed it.  In fact the movement of people is one of the characteristics of humankind, from Africa it spread across the planet, acc to anthropological theory.    The local Chumash Indians where I live had the Spanish invaders come and destroy their paradise that had evolved over 10,000 years plus.    This is a romanticized view of the world, and the reality is  that the Chumash were not a peaceful people living in paradise, but in fact went around burning down each other’s villages.    I am reading about  Father Serra these days and his evangelization of CA, and while I  like in some ways this article making Jesus into a tool of exploitation, ultimately it does little justice to the rather complicated theology of Christianity.   Serra was a Scotian-trained professor who gave it up to come to the New World to evangelize—it is not possible to understand his motives without at least some knowledge of Dun Scotus, one of the great Middle Ages thinkers, a Franciscan to boot.

Cutting to the chase, the rest of the article that talks about  Big Bad America destroying the ideal states of Russia and China under communism is articulated in an outmoded historical perspective and economic terms.  You know, in the world of physics,  scientists have moved beyond the Classical World of Newton, even to a degree beyond Einstein and his General Theory,  but economic theorists are still stuck in the world of Classical economics.  Reading this article, I find this so outdated, and am wondering if there is any hope for us if we can’t think are way out of the current state of the world.  A first step might be for the M-L thinker to admit that Marx was not a perfect thinker, and on other side  neither was Adam Smith nor Keynes.  It might be good if someone tried to come up with a String Theory of economics.

JJ

My reply,

JJ,

Thanks for commenting.

China is communist-socialist and that makes all the difference between it and the West. It is the first country in history to be so rich and powerful that the latter’s 365/24/7 open war on every nation to the left of Attila the Hun, is like a gnat on a big, red elephant’s Sino-Marxist-Leninist ass.

I will be traveling across China September-October and publishing a lot of vignettes about daily life there, through the eyes of the people,

Daily news: https://twitter.com/44_Days

Russia/USSR was subverted and then sold out to the West by Khrushchev and Gorbachev. Both are reviled by Russians. For the next decade, the people were raped and plundered by the West and reduced to extreme poverty and humiliation. Putin has righted the ship, getting back much (Marxist-Leninist) state control over the economy. In poll after poll, Russians rank Stalin as their greatest leader ever, for a reason.

The West, at its peril, is ignoring that Russia doesn’t usually start wars, but always ends them on its own terms.

Best,

Jeff

I then asked Thomas his thoughts,

Well, maybe he tried to read, but his dog(ma) got in the way.

I do not consider myself a M-L and never say I am in this piece. I merely say what Lenin (and by implication Mao) had to say. He did not address the central argument – which did not depend on whether one likes social engineering or not. It also did not depend on spurious beliefs in paradisical man.

He typically presents straw man assertions- platitudes on their own – to dispute instead of the actual argument.