Historians and Their Theories/Methodologies

Randall Stephens

Theories/methodologies come and go. Take a look at the history profession over the last half century to see how that works out. Where are the pyschohistorians? The social historians armed with computer punch cards and prosopographic reports? The consensus historians clutching well-worn copies of Adorno's Authoritarian Personality? The world systems historians of international affairs? And the Marxist historians? (I'm not pointing this out in some neanderthal effort to convince historians to ditch theory. Far from it. If anything, thinking about how things fade and move on might make us a little more humble.)

In this vein Terry Eagleton reviews Eric Hobsbawm's How to Change the World: Marx and Marxism 1840-2011 in the March 2011 LRB. Eagleton is, for me, always a pleasure to read. He begins:

In 1976, a good many people in the West thought that Marxism had a reasonable case to argue. By 1986, most of them no longer felt that way. What had happened in the meanwhile? Were these people now buried under a pile of toddlers? Had Marxism been unmasked as bogus by some world-shaking new research? Had someone stumbled on a lost manuscript by Marx confessing that it was all a joke?

We are speaking, note, about 1986, a few years before the Soviet bloc crumbled. As Eric Hobsbawm points out in this collection of essays, that wasn’t what caused so many erstwhile believers to bin their Guevara posters. Marxism was already in dire straits some years before the Berlin Wall came down. One reason given was that the traditional agent of Marxist revolution, the working class, had been wiped out by changes to the capitalist system – or at least was no longer in a majority. It is true that the industrial proletariat had dwindled, but Marx himself did not think that the working class was confined to this group.>>>

Shameful Che Shirts

Do you own, or have you owned and worn, or know someone who owns and has worn one of those allegedly 'cool' Che Guevara t-shirts? Do you know the reason that the shirt was being worn? Does the image on the shirt actually stand for something? Do you even know who Che Guevara really was?

The 'Che Guevara' t-shirt and image has become a symbol of sorts for all that is 'counter-cultural'. It is often meant as a protest symbol for those who feel that the 'little man' is being intentionally repressed in some way by government and/or business.

Wanting to help those who are less fortunate than we are is a noble sentiment. So is wanting to effect positive changes on a government or on a society that has become repressive or abusive to it's citizens. So what exactly does that have to do with America, the most free country in the history of the world? And why on earth would this man be an appropriate symbol for such protests anyway?

Ernesto 'Che' Gevara was born in 1928 in the South American country of Argentina to parents of mixed Spanish and Irish heritage. He was brought up in a very political and intellectual environment, and became a reader of the works and teachings of Karl Marx and Vladimir Lenin at an early age.

In 1951 he took a year off before entering medical school in order to travel around South America on a motorcycle. During this trip he experienced first-hand the poverty in much of the land, and as a result ultimately wrote 'The Motorcycle Diaries' in regards to the trip. The book was subsequently made into a major release film in 2004.

As Guevara matured into manhood his views became more and more radical, and he eventually established the stated viewpoint that Marxism achieved through armed struggle and defended by an armed populace was the only way to rectify what he believed had become 'American imperialism' in Latin America.

Of course the true facts were that in nearly the entirety of South America, poverty was endemic, and ruling regimes in nearly every country had for centuries failed to bring about positive change due to greed for power and controlled material wealth for the privileged few.

Any American efforts to change those conditions in order to ultimately help the people by establishing democracy and capitalism was seen as interference, or 'imperialism', trying to impose our ways on others. The motives of the American government and business were always painted as self-serving when the truth was that true capitalist democratic change would indeed be good for both North and South American peoples.

The fact is that Latin American people would indeed be freer and have a better chance at sustained economic growth under truly democratic forms of government that adopted capitalist economic systems. But the power-hungry South American rulers would not let that happen, in fact would consider such a statement as paternalistically insulting, and so used and still use propaganda to paint America as a big bully and themselves as poor peasants who just want to be left alone.

It was within this atmosphere that Guevara moved his family to Mexico City in 1954, and a year later he was introduced through some Cuban exile friends to a man by the name of Fidel Castro. He was immediately swayed by Castro's militant revolutionary ideas and began serious military training in guerrilla warfare tactics.

He went with Castro to participate in the violent overthrow of the Cuban government in the late 1950's, becoming an integral leader of the rebel army. He became feared for his brutality and ruthlessness, torturing or executing anyone whom he deemed a traitor, spy, or deserter. Finally the Castro forces were able to defeat and overthrow the Cuban government and took control of Havana in January of 1959.

On taking charge, Guevara was put in charge by Castro of sorting out and punishing all political enemies and 'war criminals'. In this role, Che Guevara oversaw and even participated in the killing of hundreds of people without due process. Guevara was then later put in charge of the economy, and began to install his beloved socialist values. As always happens with such socialist systems, his programs ended in the abject failure of decreased productivity and increased dependency on the government. The Cuban economy remains in shambles to this day.

During the 1960's he became the principle voice and actor in establishing and growing the Cuban-Soviet relationship that brought Soviet ballistic missiles to the island nation just a hundred miles from the Florida coast. As history tells us, this led to the single closest experience the world would ever come to all-out nuclear war.

When the Soviets finally backed down from the Kennedy administration and withdrew the missiles, Che became enraged at what he called their betrayal, and he turned against them. He stated that had the nuclear-armed missiles been under Cuban control, he would have fired them off against the Americans. During the course of his adult life, Guevara was possibly the most vocally anti-American individual in history.

Ultimately Guevara would travel all around the world trying to educate himself on Marxist, communist, socialist, and terrorist ideals and tactics. His trips would take him to places as disparate as China, Egypt, and Ireland. He would lend his hand to Marxist revolutionary efforts in the Congo in Africa and back in South America in Bolivia. It was there that he was finally captured and executed in October of 1967.

During his lifetime, Che Guevara was closely involved with or directly responsible for violent government overthrow, torture, execution and overall destruction to humanity on a massive scale. None of his efforts were ever successful at helping any group of citizens lead a safer, happier, more secure life. In fact, his policies and actions in Cuba and other parts of the world led to death and disillusionment for millions. In the end, like Mao and Lenin and numerous others, he was a failed socialist murderer.

So this is the man whose image the 'counter-culture' has deemed as 'cool' to wear on a t-shirt. At least in South America they are beginning to get it. A recent popular t-shirt worn by youth in Argentina mocked "I have a Che tshirt and I don't know why", capturing perfectly the question for any young American who would ever display his image. Why are you wearing that shameful Che shirt?

American Capitalism Gone Without a Whimper

It must be said, that like the breaking of a great dam, the American decent into Marxism is happening with breath taking speed, against the back drop of a passive, hapless sheeple, excuse me dear reader, I meant people.

True, the situation has been well prepared on and off for the past century, especially the past twenty years. The initial testing grounds was conducted upon our Holy Russia and a bloody test it was. But we Russians would not just roll over and give up our freedoms and our souls, no matter how much money Wall Street poured into the fists of the Marxists.

Those lessons were taken and used to properly prepare the American populace for the surrender of their freedoms and souls, to the whims of their elites and betters.

First, the population was dumbed down through a politicized and substandard education system based on pop culture, rather then the classics. Americans know more about their favorite TV dramas then the drama in DC that directly affects their lives. They care more for their "right" to choke down a McDonalds burger or a BurgerKing burger than for their constitutional rights. Then they turn around and lecture us about our rights and about our "democracy". Pride blind the foolish.

Then their faith in God was destroyed, until their churches, all tens of thousands of different "branches and denominations" were for the most part little more then Sunday circuses and their televangelists and top protestant mega preachers were more then happy to sell out their souls and flocks to be on the "winning" side of one pseudo Marxist politician or another. Their flocks may complain, but when explained that they would be on the "winning" side, their flocks were ever so quick to reject Christ in hopes for earthly power. Even our Holy Orthodox churches are scandalously liberalized in America.

The final collapse has come with the election of Barack Obama. His speed in the past three months has been truly impressive. His spending and money printing has been a record setting, not just in America's short history but in the world. If this keeps up for more then another year, and there is no sign that it will not, America at best will resemble the Wiemar Republic and at worst Zimbabwe.

These past two weeks have been the most breath taking of all. First came the announcement of a planned redesign of the American Byzantine tax system, by the very thieves who used it to bankroll their thefts, loses and swindles of hundreds of billions of dollars. These make our Russian oligarchs look little more then ordinary street thugs, in comparison. Yes, the Americans have beat our own thieves in the shear volumes. Should we congratulate them?

These men, of course, are not an elected panel but made up of appointees picked from the very financial oligarchs and their henchmen who are now gorging themselves on trillions of American dollars, in one bailout after another. They are also usurping the rights, duties and powers of the American congress (parliament). Again, congress has put up little more then a whimper to their masters.

Then came Barack Obama's command that GM's (General Motor) president step down from leadership of his company. That is correct, dear reader, in the land of "pure" free markets, the American president now has the power, the self given power, to fire CEOs and we can assume other employees of private companies, at will. Come hither, go dither, the centurion commands his minions.

So it should be no surprise, that the American president has followed this up with a "bold" move of declaring that he and another group of unelected, chosen stooges will now redesign the entire automotive industry and will even be the guarantee of automobile policies. I am sure that if given the chance, they would happily try and redesign it for the whole of the world, too. Prime Minister Putin, less then two months ago, warned Obama and UK's Blair, not to follow the path to Marxism, it only leads to disaster. Apparently, even though we suffered 70 years of this Western sponsored horror show, we know nothing, as foolish, drunken Russians, so let our "wise" Anglo-Saxon fools find out the folly of their own pride.

Again, the American public has taken this with barely a whimper...but a "freeman" whimper.

So, should it be any surprise to discover that the Democratically controlled Congress of America is working on passing a new regulation that would give the American Treasury department the power to set "fair" maximum salaries, evaluate performance and control how private companies give out pay raises and bonuses? Senator Barney Franks, a social pervert basking in his homosexuality (of course, amongst the modern, enlightened American societal norm, as well as that of the general West, homosexuality is not only not a looked down upon life choice, but is often praised as a virtue) and his Marxist enlightenment, has led this effort. He stresses that this only affects companies that receive government monies, but it is retroactive and taken to a logical extreme, this would include any company or industry that has ever received a tax break or incentive.

The Russian owners of American companies and industries should look thoughtfully at this and the option of closing their facilities down and fleeing the land of the Red as fast as possible. In other words, divest while there is still value left.

The proud American will go down into his slavery with out a fight, beating his chest and proclaiming to the world, how free he really is. The world will only snicker.

WRITTEN by Stanislav Mishin, printed by Pravda on April 27th, 2009 and highlighted by Glenn Beck in his June 1st, 2009 newsletter