The nice thing about having a blog?
The nice thing about having a blog?
You can write anything you want and be assured very few people will actually read it.
When I attended UC Santa Cruz back in the mid-1970s, there were more than a few professors who believed in Marxism-Leninism as a preferred political philosophy. That may still be the case. Being a politics major, I did considerable reading on Marx, Engels, and Lenin and wrote several papers regarding The Communist Manifesto, Das Kapital, and “Materialism and The State and Revolution.” All the lectures and readings were quite seductive, and I found myself not indoctrinated but certainly sympathetic to a communistic society. After all, living in a commune on a farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains with friends seemed quite appealing.
What I found most attractive was the Marxist notion of the withering away of the state, a concept coined by Friedrich Engels referring to the idea that, with the realization of socialism, the state will eventually become obsolete and cease to exist, as a society will be able to govern itself without the state and its coercive enforcement of the law. This would come after the proletariat revolution in which the workers seize the means of production from the capitalists and establish a new government. But the revolution needs the direction of a vanguard, a ruling intellectual elite that can guide the new society to its classless, utopian ideal.
Lenin’s Communist Party would serve as the instrument to achieve this ideal order.
It is a sad truth that the polities which embarked on this grand communist mission never achieved what the socialist philosophers set out to accomplish. In fact, it can be argued the communist societies that were created have produced the exact opposite of what was intended. In reality, the “ruling elite” never relinquished any of its power over the people. A classless community never materialized, and certainly the “withering away of the state” never came close to being a reality anywhere in the world. Authoritarianism is most prevalent in communist countries. The people are censored for dissenting opinions, they are fed propaganda, there is rampant corruption, and the majority of citizens have a low standard of living. The adage, “Power tends to corrupt; absolute power corrupts absolutely” is a paradigm for the modern communist state. All with good intentions, so the cynic would say.
The terms diversity, equity, and inclusion are all positive words in the English language and have been touted as idealistic objectives throughout our history. Lately, they have come to mean a fight against injustice, as exemplified in academia, media, government, and many large corporations, which offer programs and training to promote advancing people of color, people of non-heterosexual orientation, and generally people that have been marginalized in our society, the intention being that equity must champion over equality. A worthwhile endeavor, which I assume has a post-racial goal where all discrimination would cease to exist.
Likened to the failure of Marxism as a utopian classless society, DEI ideology is in danger of backfiring and ironically leading to more division, less equity, less diversity, and diminished inclusion. If Marx were alive today, he might very well see DEI as a disguised instrument of the ruling class—the nouveau bourgeoisie. Seemingly benign and most admirable but used as a way to suppress differing opinions and categorize individuals into identity groups, thereby lessening diversity. DEI also has the capacity to exclude certain people from academic positions, government appointments, and corporate employment. When job seekers have to take an oath of allegiance to DEI doctrines, one can only think of the suppression that existed in the McCarthy era of the 1950s.
DEI is in danger of promoting only selective diversity. Individual thought is a cornerstone of the United States and is implicit in our Constitution. We thrive on diverse opinions, and it is through the interaction of those opinions that we arrive at the best outcomes. But when we divide people into ironclad groups according to race, gender, etc., we create polarization and many times outcomes where there are just two main factions—the oppressors and the oppressed. This is helpful to no one.
Equity and equality need to co-exist. They are partners. To emphasize equity at the expense of equality can block individuals who have worked hard to achieve their goals, only to experience a denial of their efforts. A sense of fairness should always be at the forefront. Alternately, to emphasize equality over equity is to deny a long history of discrimination in this country, which must be righted by improving the educational opportunities missing in many communities as well as making those communities safe from crime.
Inclusion is not just the presence of certain groups of people—it is paramount that inclusion of ideas be present as well. The suppression of differing viewpoints, like what is seen on our campuses today, is more akin to a totalitarian state than a democracy. When only one set of beliefs is allowed to express itself, authoritarianism is the result, and we all fall under the yoke of a ruling elite, no better than the commissars lording over the peasants.
As we continue down the road in promoting DEI ideologies over classical liberal values such as merit, fairness, and equality we run the risk of a strong backlash that may lead to more divisiveness, culminating in great social upheaval. I fear the outcome may be the opposite of what are good intentions on all sides of the public debate. Marxism-Leninism was never intended to morph into the regimes that rule over nation-states like Russia, China, Cuba, North Korea, etc. The socialist philosophers would be rolling in their graves today if they could see what their grand ideologies wrought. We can’t let a similar fate happen to our Democracy.
