But if all contradictions are once and for all disposed of, we shall have arrived at so-called absolute truth — world history will be at an end. And yet it has to continue, although there is nothing left for it to do — hence, a new, insoluble contradiction.
Friedrich Engels, Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy
II
Here Engels makes short work of the old objection, resuscitated by Croce shortly before his death (see the refutation in the fourth issue of the second series of Prometeo), that avers that Marxist materialism will also bring an end to history, because it claims that the struggle between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie will be the last of the class struggles. In his inveterate anthropomorphism every idealist confuses the end of the struggles between economic classes with the end of all struggles and of all development in the world, in nature and in history; and he cannot see, within the limits, that are for him the light and for us are clouds, of an individual skull, that communism will in turn be an intense and unpredictable struggle for life on the part of the species, which no one has yet brought to a conclusion, since the sterile and pathological solitude of the Ego does not deserve the name of life, just as the treasure of the miser is not wealth, not even personal wealth.
Amadeo Bordiga
III
Mao Zedong: I am a very lazy person. I have never read the Bible. It does not attract me, and I do not know what is said there. Occasionally I will pick it up, but simply do not want to read it.
Hill: I fully understand what you mean as I often have the same feeling. I cannot read through it. But when I was a small boy, I was forced to read the Bible.
Mao Zedong: That is good. When you are forced to read something, that probably is good for you.
IV
Petty regards himself as the founder of a new science. He says that his method “is not yet very usual,” “for instead of using only comparative and superlative Words, and intellectual Arguments,” he proposes to speak “in Terms of Number, Weight or Measure; to use only Arguments of Sense, and to consider only such Causes, as have visible Foundations in Nature; leaving those that depend upon the mutable Minds, Opinions, Appetites, and Passions of particular Men, to the Consideration of others” (Political Arithmetick, etc., London, 1699, Preface). His audacious genius becomes evident for instance in his proposal to transport “all the movables and People of Ireland, and of the Highlands of Scotland … into the rest of Great Britain.” This would result in the saving of labour-time, in increasing productivity of labour, and “the King and his Subjects would thereby become more Rich and Strong” (Political Aritlmetick, Chapter 4 [p. 225]). Also in the chapter of his Political Arithmetick in which – at a time when Holland was still the predominant trading nation and France seemed to be on the way to becoming the principal trading power – he proves that England is destined to conquer the world market: “That the King of England’s Subjects, have Stock competent and convenient, to drive the Trade of the whole Commercial World” (op. cit., Chapter 10 [p. 272]). ‘That the Impediments of England’s greatness, are but contingent and removable” (p. 247 et seq.). A highly original sense of humour pervades all his writings. Thus he shows for example that the conquest of the world market by Holland, which was then regarded as the model country by English economists just as Britain is now regarded as the model country by continental economists, was brought about by perfectly natural causes “without such Angelical Wits and Judgments, as some attribute to the Hollanders” (op. cit., pp. 175-16). He champions freedom of conscience as a condition of trade, because the poor are diligent and “believe that Labour and Industry is their Duty towards God” so long as they are permitted “to think they have the more Wit and Understanding, especially of the things of God, which they think chiefly belong to the Poor.” “From whence it follows that Trade is not fixt to any Species of Religion as such; but rather … to the Heterodox part of the whole” (op. cit., pp. 183-86). He recommends special public contribution for rogues, since it would be better for the general public to impose a tax on themselves for the benefit of the rogues than to be taxed by them (op. cit., p. 199). On the other hand, he rejects taxes which transfer wealth from industrious people to those who “do nothing at all, but Eat and Drink, Sing, Play, and Dance: nay such as Study the Metaphysicks” [op. cit., p. 198]. Petty’s writings have almost become bibliographical curiosities and are only available in old inferior editions. ‘This is the more surprising since William Petty is not only the father of English political economy but also an ancestor of Henry Petty, alias Marquis of Lansdowne, the Nestor of the English Whigs. But the Lansdowne family could hardly prepare a complete edition of Petty’s works without prefacing it with his biography, and what is true with regard to the origin of most of the big Whig families, applies also in this case – the less said of it the better. The army surgeon, who was a bold thinker but quite unscrupulous and just as apt to plunder in Ireland under the aegis of Cromwell as to fawn upon Charles II to obtain the title of baronet to embellish his trash, is not a suitable image of an ancestor for public display. In most of the writings published during his lifetime, moreover, Petty seeks to prove that England’s golden age was the reign of Charles II, a rather heterodox view for hereditary exploiters of the “glorious revolution”.
Karl Marx, Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy
V
Racked by all the contradictions of Church dogma, Luther broke away towards the paradoxy of the early Christian myth buried deep under dogma. He was, as Calvin later was, in a way bewitched by this paradoxy and by the opportunity he found in the early Christian myth to get rid of the dogma and the spiritual domination of the Church. The paradoxical character of the early Christian myth gives him the strength to set himself up against the entire Church. Just as God of immeasurable greatness was able to hold all human values in contempt and die on the cross precisely on the strength of this greatness, which means that all human values and concepts are of no significance to Him, that they are not essential, so now He could speak not through the Pope, or the Sorbonne, but through Luther. The Pope was no higher than Luther before His greatness. “If God spoke by an ass against a prophet, why should He not speak by a pious man against the Pope?” (137; 284-85). “Now God is the sort of person who likes to do what is foolish and useless in the eyes of the world,” writes Luther (137; 336). This break towards the paradoxy of the early Christian myth not only provided the foundation for the Reformist carried out by Luther and Calvin. It also had significantly wider consequences: the revitalized non-formalistic potential latent in this myth, objectively and in many respects against the will of the Reformers themselves, prevented the creation of a new rigid system of dogma and organization and led to the appearance of a basically new form of religious ideology and organization open to secularization, which all conforms to the new bourgeois society.
Dimitri Furman, Religion and Social Conflicts in the U.S.A.
VI
We can easily imagine that a historian living in a totalitarian country, a generally respected and unsuspected member of the only party in existence, might be led by his investigations to doubt the soundness of the government-sponsored interpretation of the history of religion. Nobody would prevent him from publishing a passionate attack on what he would call the liberal view. He would of course have to state the liberal view before attacking it; he would make that statement in the quiet, unspectacular and somewhat boring manner which would seem to be but natural; he would use many technical terms, give many quotations and attach undue importance to insignificant details; he would seem to forget the holy war of mankind in the petty squabbles of pedants. Only when he reached the core of the argument would he write three or four sentences in that terse and lively style which is apt to arrest the attention of young men who love to think. That central passage would state the case of the adversaries more clearly, compellingly and mercilessly than it had ever been stated in the heyday of liberalism, for he would silently drop all the foolish excrescences of the liberal creed which were allowed to grow up during the time when liberalism had succeeded and therefore was approaching dormancy. His reasonable young reader would for the first time catch a glimpse of the forbidden fruit. The attack, the bulk of the work, would consist of virulent expansions of the most virulent utterances in the holy book or books of the ruling party. The intelligent young man who, being young, had until then been somehow attracted by those immoderate utterances, would now be merely disgusted and, after having tasted the forbidden fruit, even bored by them.
Leo Strauss, Persecution and the Art of Writing