November 25, 2017

Karl Marx had his Donald Trump

In my monograph on the subject, I claimed that Leftism versus Conservatism is largely a product of genetic influences that manifest themselves as differences in personality.  Conservatives are born as generally contented people where Leftists are heavily discontented people.  It follows from that that there will be a recognizable polarity between Left and Right throughout history.  And in my monograph I did a quick tour of history to show that that was so. So there is in one way a tendency for history to repeat itself

I am in a very small way a student of Karl Marx.  I even have a blog devoted to his words.  He was in no way a great thinker but his unrelenting hate for just about everyone -- including his own mother -- has always made him very attractive to the Left and that has made him very influential in world affairs.

And perhaps Marx's most famous saying is that "history repeats itself, the first as tragedy, then as farce" (Exact quote here).

The quote is from Marx's book "The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte". and he was comparing the original Napoleon with  his nephew, Napoleon III (Napoleon II was the son of Napoleon I and ruled as the King of the Netherlands).  Napoleon III started out as a popular democratic politician but later made himself a popular emperor with a big message of French patriotism.

And Napoleon III was very frustrating to Marx.  Marx was hoping for some sort of revolution of the workers -- given the many discontents of the workers at that time.  But along came Napoleon III as a very popular ruler who took advantage of worker discontents by making big promises.  So in the preface to the second edition of "The Eighteenth Brumaire", Marx stated that the purpose of his essay was to "demonstrate how the class struggle in France created circumstances and relationships that made it possible for a grotesque mediocrity to play a hero's part."

It amused me that Marx saw Napoleon III in exactly the same way as contemporary American Leftists see Donald Trump.  I would not be surprised to find that some Leftist has described Trump too as a "grotesque mediocrity".  It may be no consolation to the Left  that Napoleon III ended up ruling for 18 years.

Aside from his popularity with the workers and his aim to make France great again, there are few other parallels between Napoleon III and Trump, though Napoleon did carry out extensive public works. Trump has similar aspirations but has been thwarted by RINO traitors in the GOP.

It is interesting to see, however, that the Leftist response to patriotic leaders has remained the same for over 150 years -- and  got the facts completely wrong on both occasions.



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