From the Fallen Republic of Plato: Antiquity's Dialectic Dalliance with Communism and Modernity's Will-to-Power Toward It (Pt. 1 of 2)

Contrary to what the arbiters of truth at Google and Wikipedia prioritize in our search [*1], the origin of communism (property held in common for the public, private ownership outlawed) lies not in the 19th century with Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. As noted in an article originally published by The Freeman in 1951 [*2], it lies around 380 B.C. in ancient Greece when Plato wrote his most famous dialogue (a book written as a dialectic conversation), the Republic [*3], probably the first literary work in antiquity to espouse banning private property. Plato abandoned the idea in his later dialogue the Laws [*4]. And his most famous student, Aristotle, in a treatise entitled Politics, around 350 B.C., lambasted him for even considering it [*5]. Thereafter, communism, as a serious political idea, lied nearly [*6] dormant for 2,200 years. Why the two-millennia gap?

Marx and Engel's communism was argued as an inevitable evolution in society [*7]. You get an impression that communism was some relatively new idea compared to any other political system of antiquity (including free market capitalism), as if nobody thought of and rejected the idea in the past. It's portrayed as a march of progress toward a revolution, albeit a violent one [*8], an often omitted detail by those espousing Marx's ideas. And what ambitious youth doesn't want to be the tip of the spear on that march (especially when you disguise the violence part)?

Communist ideas seem like they're on the vanguard of history. Yet they actually arose from dustbin. How do we know this? Why, despite empirical evidence showcasing its failures in horrific detail, does it live on? And how can we defeat it?

The First Dialectic with Communism
Plato established his Academy, arguably classical antiquity's first university, around 387 B.C. [*9], one of many structures that preserved works of the ancient Greeks. Some even survived the fall (and accompanied sacking and burning) of the Roman and Eastern Roman (Byzantine) empires, as translators of the East and West alike spread the philosophies, especially those of Plato and Aristotle, into many languages [*10]. Romans like Cicero to theologians like St. Augustine (who focused on Plato) [*11] and Thomas Aquinas (who focused on Aristotle) [*12] of the middle ages to the myriad of thinkers of the renaissance and beyond all extensively cited and discussed the works of these two. So, why was Plato's work so influential?

Plato's the Republic [*13], in particular, contains key insights into the nature of the just individual (why we should be good, even if there'll be no rewards for it) [*14], but revolved around how we determine the best form of government. It's written as a conversation between classical antiquity's most famous philosopher, Socrates, and others with an explicit goal not of championing any particular conclusion over another but to lay out a methodology for discovering what is true. A dialectic. But one concluding that communism governed by an aristocracy (rule by intellectual elite, not financial elite like an oligarchy) was the best system of government. This marks the first (and arguably last) time the case for communism was made with dialectic reasoning.

Because conflict between citizens involves disputes over ownership of things, Plato (using Socrates as his character conduit) reasoned that collective ownership of property would free up the aristocracy to make decisions benefiting the community as opposed to quarreling among themselves for material possessions and comforts. But this line of thought didn't stop at private property; it continued to families and spouses. Familial loyalty biases the citizenry, especially the ruling aristocrats, to favor certain citizens over others and causes jealousy and rivalry. Therefore, Plato argued sex be regulated so the breeding parties are left ignorant of familial identity (infanticide used to control for compliance). This would dissuade the formation of any special passions that would bias judgment. The system rings a little like popular culture's feminist book and TV show, The Handmaid's Tale, women held in common and used like breeding stock controlled by the rulers.

The linchpin of this whole system, Plato argued, was ensuring a true aristocracy were selected as the rulers. Or, if the best person could be ascertained, a philosopher king (or queen) [*15] to rule. Plato found similarity in producing the perfect rulers to creating a superior stock of animals (breeding "the best with the best," infanticide for the unfit). The aristocracy would remain a generally predictable class, unless individuals of a lower stock showed promise after passing certain tests of their virtue [*16].

To quell any jealousy among the lower classes, Plato advocated the "noble lie," telling citizens they were all born of metals under the ground of their city, blended of gold, silver, iron, and/or bronze, attributing them to rulers (aristocrats), soldiers, and artisans and/or farmers respectively. The aristocrats would know which class each birth came from, even if the respective mothers and fathers didn't, creating a specially bred pool of geniuses to select future rulers from.

The lie's aim was to instill a sense of community in the public via a literal bond to the land and their fellow citizens. It further served to quell any potential revolt by lower classes who'd consider the arrangement unfair, a common problem in oligarchical city-states like Sparta. The Greeks didn't believe in equality in the modern sense, that all men and women are born as blank slates with equal abilities in intellect. But, with Plato's proposal, even lower classes had an opportunity to become rulers if they could prove themselves. Breeding the best with best would generally result in a predictable class (gold) being the rulers, but sometimes a qualified citizen of lower stock would be born, and the aristocrats would tell the "noble lie" that he was born of gold. This instilled hope with the lower classes who might otherwise feel unmotivated and embittered about their social station. Hiding paternity further assisted in this endeavor, as lower classes would not form familial bonds and organize a revolt.

State control of the arts would be necessary as well. The arts manipulate the passions. On weaker minds, passions have a stronger influence than reason. And influence by passions would lead to less virtuous citizenry and an unjust community. Thus, the arts were to be checked by state control (outlawing many) to keep reason as the supreme social value, or at least to keep passions in check as to not produce unjust citizens.

Plato justified this deception and control in a section we commonly refer to as the "Simile (or Allegory) of the Cave." Prisoners are described living all their lives at the bottom of a cave, set on a descending angle, unable to move their necks away from shadows cast on a wall. The shadows are orchestrated like marionettes from a fire lit from above. They are the only reality the prisoners have ever known. Plato compares his aristocrats to people who have broken free and experienced real sunlight (philosophy). He argues the prisoners would not believe the escapee if he returned to describe reality to them, which'd cause irrational anger and perhaps even violence against him. In modern parlance, we might refer to these prisoners as "normies" [*17].

The simile's parallels with modern popular culture like the film The Matrix are obvious. But the moral strongly deviates. Plato argues that since the prisoners (Plato's normies) are an unruly bunch, incapable of philosophy (a sufficient ability to reason), the aristocrats have a duty to them. It's impossible to free most of the prisoners; they prefer their state of imprisonment. If we escaped the reality imposed in The Matrix and then released all our fellow prisoners at once, would they truly be liberated? Or would some (maybe most) prefer to live out their days in the old reality? A somewhat cliched analogy from the same film, red pill (philosophy) versus blue pill (living under the comfort of the noble lie), comes to mind.

Plato argues that aristocrats will rise to philosophy, mastering their craft of reason to understand the world in its higher forms, the reality we observe with our senses being akin to the shadows on the wall for the prisoners and what we reason in our minds being the true nature (or, stated differently, he means our ability to think conceptually as opposed to mere materially). But they won't want to rule the normies. They'll be reluctant rulers. Nonetheless, they'll understand their duty to rule.  Hence, they will descend back down to the cave and master sophistry and rhetoric to rule for the benefit of the normies.

By the ethic of modern Western democracies, Plato's ideas seem absurd. Most European and American nations are grounded in a philosophy of liberty (freedom from, as opposed to freedom to) and the sovereign individual, at least relative to other nations around the world (especially those in Asia and Africa).  The idea to frame politics in individual liberty (classical liberalism) didn't gain prominence until the 17th century with John Locke [*18]. But it stuck. Even modern leftists of European and American nations retain stock in this idea by way of civil liberties (the individual's sovereignty over social decisions), even if economic liberties (the individual's sovereignty over property decisions) are increasingly forgotten [*19]. So it's easy to dismiss at least parts of communism (like collective ownership of wives and abolishing families) with this modern cultural lens prioritizing happiness for the individual over that of the community. But Plato's ideas were refuted, well before this cultural shift, by Aristotle [*20], not only via the standard arguments (e.g., tragedy of the commons) it'd bore readers to repeat here, but from a broader perspective of social virtue.

The Greeks understood freedom not in Locke's sense of freedom from excessive government regulation (liberty) but as obligations citizens had to their community to benefit each other. Aristotle argued the community took precedence over the individual just as Plato did. He wrote an entire treatise on individual virtue, Nicomachean Ethics [*21], so that we'd be good citizens for the community. In his related follow-up treatise, the Politics, he argued that without private property, people cannot be virtuous. They need something of their own to earn and give to others to be charitable and act virtuously for the community. Virtue is a habit of moral excellence that people need to practice in their day-to-day lives to perfect. Without that practice, and without moral excellence, would a community not eventually turn corrupt? A community needs virtuous citizens to prosper, and citizens need their own property to voluntarily give in order for their virtue to develop and benefit the community.

Aristotle also found this notion of hiding the identities of families from one another to be impractical and destructive. People have a natural urge to determine and care for their offspring. Time makes attention and ability to care for others a finite resource. The wider the swath of citizenry we spread that attention across, the less care we can give to individuals. A community of families will take better care of each other, because, as each citizen naturally specializes attention on a few individuals, more care will be given to all citizens in the aggregate.

Rather than hide identities from people and control reproduction in order to create a false sense of equal love and care for one another, why not let people choose their loved ones (who'll naturally be their family) and educate them on virtue for the benefit of their community? Because habit is key to virtue (moral excellence), and habit involves choice, taking choice away (like who to marry and rear, who and what to buy, sell, and give to) takes individuals' virtue away, which harms the community as the citizenry then make choices of relative moral deficiency.

Aristotle also pointed to Phaleas of Chalcedon, the only ruler of a city-state in Greece that advocated communism of property (in the 300s BC), who experimented with this idea and later admitted its failure.

You get the sense Plato must have been convinced by some of these arguments, as he later argued in favor of private property and nuclear families (abandoning Socrates as his character conduit) in the Laws (albeit with strong oversight) [*22].

Aristotle's views focused on empirically observable reality, rejecting Plato's emphasis on understanding the world through its higher forms. Things like a "city," "government," or "community" don't exist. They're concepts, which will vary greatly from mind to mind. Only individual humans exist; their prior stated aggregate forms are concepts we use to simplify complex social interactions among those individuals. As Stefan Molyneux has argued [*23], the more we aggregate individuals into larger concepts, the more divorced the concept becomes from those individuals, along with any characteristics we can honestly attribute. How do you know if a community is happy versus sad? Or prosperous versus poor? How do you know the workers are oppressed? And which ones? In what capacity? To what degree? Compared to what?

If ten sick men in a community are happier because they needed organs and received them from society killing one healthy woman who wouldn't surrender her organs, isn't society better off from a bird's eye perspective (+10 saved / -1 dead)? Maybe the healthy woman's life is worth more to society than the ten sick men. But how do we know? Who decides?

If individuals are barred from making property decisions despite their needs and abilities being directly measurable, how can rulers make property decisions for need and abilities applied to concepts (i.e. "the community") increasingly divorced from empirical reality as we increase their scale? This is why Aristotle envisioned the ideal governments as separately sovereign city-states as opposed to a vast empire like Plato advocated (Greece of classical antiquity didn't exist as a State but a collection of sovereign city-states: Athens, Sparta, Crete, etc.).

We see, or, more accurately, saw the shaky ground communism lies upon. It was refuted by reason as well as observations in empirical reality via Aristotle's examples cited in his studies abroad of commonalities found in Greek and non-Greek political regimes.

Modern communists focus on the chattel and land aspect of communal ownership as opposed to the familial one. They'll attack the family [*24], but are shy of outlawing marriage contracts or mandating children and/or wives be held in common (instead, they advocate heavy regulation). But why should private property be outlawed but not also families? Conversely, once we agree that spouses should be allowed, why not also private property? If a man and a woman can engage in a contract to restrain their sexual relations with others in order to ensure knowledge of paternity and commit to raising their offspring together, why can't they also make agreements to exclude others from chattel and land for benefit of their offspring? If one set of agreements should be outlawed, why not the other? How did Marx and Engels handle this question?

The Second Dialectic with Communism
Dialectic, in the classical sense, is an open conversation to prove a hypothesis posited by a participant. Words like "dialectic," however, shift meaning between both translations in languages and through cultural understanding. Around the time of Marx and Engels in the 19th century, the philosophy of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel altered dialectic. Under Hegel, discussion of the truth behind objects and ideas included their proposed transformation down a swath of time (e.g., think of a banana turning green to yellow to brown). Thus began the second dialectic for communism.

This second dialectic by Marx and Engels never even mentions Plato. Instead of directly justifying the outlaw of private property like Plato did, they focus on showing a pattern of socio-political development toward communism. Just like, as an organism grows, we can predict what might happen in its growth based on patterns of prior growth, so to might we attempt with political systems.

Communism is framed not so much as a moral argument (albeit Marx's labor theory of value infers some moral arguments) [*25] but a theory as to how society would progress. First, humanity had slavery, then indentured servitude, then industrial capitalism, and, finally, we'll evolve to communism. The aristocrats (inferred as general rulers instead of the enlightened ones of Plato), who commonly ran slave societies throughout classical antiquity, compromise with the farmers to form feudalism. A class of merchants develops (bourgeoisie), as the aristocracy next succumbs to oligarchy [*26]. Finally, it's posited that as factories begin to replace traditional guilds and merchants, workers (the proletariat) are exploited (just as the slaves and indentured servants were), which will inevitably cause a violent revolution, resulting in rule by the workers holding property in common for the public.

But exactly who will rule (workers, but which workers will have power?) is never explained, nor how future rulers would be selected (a type of anarchy is inferred, but a geographic monopoly on the initiation of force, a government, is needed to enforce rules keeping property in the common; otherwise capitalism would be the natural state). The family is attacked as exploitative of children. But Marx and Engels do not advocate banning marriage contracts and families or hiding familial identity. They presume that infidelity already exists and is widespread enough where marriage contracts already don't effectively matter. The holding of wives in common is presumed will naturally occur. Children, however, are presumed to be taken care of by their nuclear families. Marx himself admits the same in the German Communist Party platform [*27]. Thus, rather than directly address these questions in dialectic fashion as Plato did, Marx and Engels side-step them. Arguably, side-stepping works here, since they're arguing from the perspective of an "is" (a future end based on prior events) instead of an "ought" (how the end result is superior).

While not a moral argument for communism, it is, nonetheless, an argument. The argument that a caterpillar will turn into a butterfly has no moral quality to it, but it is an argument we can test. We can falsify it by showing a sufficient number of caterpillars not turning into butterflies. And it's not the first time a hypothesis for a natural path of political systems ending in communism has been argued. Plato did something similar (even if Marx and Engels ignored it).

In the Republic, Plato argues a sort of inverse of Marx and Engels' hypothesis. He starts with his perfect system, a communist aristocracy (or a philosopher kingship), and argues how it's important to be vigilant in preserving this system by breeding the right rulers to govern with the highest skill in reason. Without quality rulers, sufficiently skilled in reason, aristocracy devolves to timarchy or rule by a class valuing honor as opposed to wisdom. We might compare timarchy to rule by the military. Discipline and honor are the prime virtues as opposed to reason.

But without sufficiently reasonable rulers, an oligarchy develops, as the wealthy buy their way into the ruling class. Wealth and material gain become the values of such a system. Then, with less focus on honor, let alone reason, when ruling, the oligarchs will not govern justly, and the lower classes will revolt. To prevent being ejected from the community, oligarchs will cede to the people as the State devolves to democracy [*28].

Democracy leads to a society valuing liberty (freedom from, as well as freedom to) above reason, honor, or wealth. Liberty leads to favoring hedonistic individual pleasures over the good of the community, which results in a diminished strength for justice. For example, the citizens will begin to argue aliens or immigrants should be treated the same as citizens (sound familiar?), a position Plato took no time pointing out the folly in, since without the ability to distinguish between aliens and citizens, a State by definition (a geographic area with a monopoly on the initiation of force, if good, for the sake of justice), cannot exist [*29].

From democracy, then, comes tyranny. As the community suffers negative effects brought about by citizens focusing on their own interests and pleasures (liberty), the citizens will demand a ruler to fix their problems. An individual will take advantage of this, a demagogue, and rise to power by manipulating the people, promising to fix their problems with a strong hand. This tyrant gains power through manipulation of the passions as opposed to the philosopher king who is chosen by his virtue or supreme reasoning skill. Once power is ceded to the tyrant, he will become increasingly corrupt and will escalate the oppression of his people. Eventually, the tyrant will be overthrown. And, arguably, if the people are wise, having learned their lessons from this regression in regimes, they will replace the tyrant with an aristocracy or philosopher king.

Plato hypothesizes what Aristotle tests in the Politics. This pattern is not seen in all the regime changes Aristotle points to [*30]. Regimes ebbed and flowed constantly into all the types Plato discussed without any clear pattern (which makes you wonder how long will the United States and the European states be around; what makes us think our current systems are immutable?).

Like Aristotle did with Plato, history has tested Marx and Engels' prediction of political regimes' evolution. The workers of the world did not unite. Bloody revolutions in Russia and China occurred. Russia annexed communist states (the now defunct Soviet Union) and set up satellites around the world like Cuba, Korea, and Vietnam. But, by confining our definition of communism to the holding of property in common for the public, outlawing private property, neither Russia and its states and satellites nor China have remained communist, sans North Korea and Cuba. Laos, and Vietnam may be argued [*31] as communist in name but less strictly in practice. But, if we want to judge communism by its practice as opposed to its stated purpose, Venezuela should qualify too. Its constitution explicitly allows private property, but, practically, the government decides all ownership [*32]. Yet, how long will these three (or five) last? Regardless, none represent the endgame paradise Marx and Engels envisioned over 150 years ago. Far from it.

Communist revolutions around the world have resulted in millions of deaths by their various governments' execution of political dissidents and deliberate starvation plans (e.g., an official study by Mao in 1948 estimated 10% of Chinese peasants, or 50 million, would have to be destroyed to facilitate agrarian reform, and at least 45 million later died during the "Great Leap Forward") [*33]. It's practically impossible to get an exact number of dead (e.g., The Black Book of Communism estimates 85 to 100 million) [*34]. The horrors have been well documented (e.g., the Soviet Union's atrocities detailed in The Gulag Archipelago) [*35]. But what about the rest of the world?

Republics like the United States and those throughout Europe failed to cede to communism (those few that did reverted back to capitalism). Surely the workers should have overthrown their governments by now and set up collective ownership of property. The nations that did cede to communism did so largely and ironically through military conquest or colonization via the former Soviet Union. Political scientists are hard-pressed to find an example of a successfully run communist state, let alone a pattern of capitalist nations turning to communism. No pattern emerges in the 20th century, and none appears in the 21st. Marx and Engels' dialectic was proven dead wrong.

Why was Marx and Engels' communism such an unmitigated disaster by any empirically objective standard? Unlike Plato, who contemplated a specially-bred aristocracy checked by rigorous testing to determine rulers [*36], Marx and Engels were silent on methodology. The old bourgeoisie ways were heavily criticized, inferring a proposal to ignore the moral and political insights of the enlightenment and industrial era philosophers (and it would seem, they either never read or flat-out ignored Plato and Aristotle). Neither how the workers should rule nor how future workers among those workers should be chosen to rule were discussed.

At least under Plato's proposal in the Republic you could argue the specially-bred aristocracy would have moral reasoning sufficient to preclude any notion of mass executions. Plato advocated the "noble lie" to control those who wouldn't accept the rulers' ways. He cautioned to avoid bloodshed, even anticipating a potential for violence in his "Simile of the Cave" (even in The Matrix, the machines instilled their control through a principle of minimizing bloodshed). Where Marx and Engels wouldn't advocate direct communism of the family via state control over children, wives, and breeding (to ensure the best citizens, especially rulers, are posterity), at least Plato, in the Republic, recognized a necessity for consistency in controlling both families and property (outlawing private agreements on the same) to ensure a citizenry of the best reasoning skills is bred as a check against the corruption of rulers that supreme power over private property would risk.

Perhaps Marx and Engels were silent on these matters in order to ensure the rulers (envisioning themselves) would have sufficient flexibility in making decisions, unbound by bourgeoisie notions of morality and prudence. Under Plato's system, the supreme power that complete control over persons and property gives was tapered by appeal to reason, having, at least in theory, a limiting effect on the decisions rulers could make with such power. Since, under Marx and Engels' communism, it'd be difficult to justify rulers raising their own children (and having direct knowledge of paternity) while outlawing others from doing the same, private families were discouraged but allowed.

Power is flexibility in decision-making. And measurably more with the ability to do so on whims as opposed to through reason. Hence, communism, especially Marx and Engels' version (focusing on chattel and property control yet not family control) has a strong appeal to those who enjoy power. Scientifically so, as political power has the same addictive and euphoric effects of cocaine [*37]. Plato's dialectic for communism via reason failed. Marx and Engels' dialectic for communism via evolution also failed. But the addict still needs his fix. If dialectic won't give him what he wants, perhaps dialectic is the enemy.

The Pivot from Dialectic to the Will-to-Power
Parallel with Marx and Engels came the German philosophers of the industrial age, pivoting from the likes of Rene Descartes, John Locke, Immanuel Kant [*38] and others who made secular cases (albeit all men were deists or theists) for reason and evidence to be humanity's guide. Of which, Arthur Schopenhauer, among the first outspoken atheists of the Western philosophers, instilling a comical sense of pessimism and general skepticism [*39], had a key insight that sparked a chain of events, breaking the future Left free from the shackles of dialectic.

That is: humanity's driving force is not God or reason but a will to life [*40]. Schopenhauer thought man's ability to reason made him miserable compared to that of the brute. Contemplation brings comparative annoyance with the world and general dissatisfaction (albeit solace and serenity as well). Why not end your life? Why seek female companionship and have children? Because, we have an innate drive to live and reproduce that supersedes our ability to reason. While Schopenhauer wasn't as miserable as his works let on (much of it is darkly humorous) and his politics were more libertarian than communist, he inspired another philosopher to push the concept of will to life to its natural end.

Enter Friedrich Nietzsche, born around the time Marx and Engels published their manifesto. Also an atheist, Nietzsche rejected the classical notion of reason being humanity's apex trait. Why do we do what we do? Nietzsche, quite taken with Schopenhauer's ideas, took the concept of will to life one step further. Thus, the answer was the Will to Power [*41]. It's not the pleasure of reason or bodily desires that drives us but a need to feel dominant relative to others.

Maybe dialectic and arriving at our conclusions through reason is a pretext for power (in which case, all dialectic is merely cleverly disguised sophistry). Nietzsche argued that even if we give to charity or help a friend in need, we are not acting altruistically but asserting our dominance over another, hence proving we are of a superior nature. Even those engaging in asceticism (e.g., fasting or restraining from sexual relations) are exercising power over their biological urges. People will even take actions causing them physical or emotional pain in order to gain power. Think of the anger swelling in your mind as you're unable to complete a task and, in an outburst of frustration, irrationally break a tool you're working with (like a gamer breaking his controller). You might hurt your hand smashing it. The destruction of the object causes delay and further annoyance. But, perhaps, a sense of satisfaction is gained. Power. Dominance over the event dominating you.

Nietzsche didn't argue this in the form of logical proofs. He instead dispelled prior philosophers' reliance on pure reason by pointing out errors via his snarky aphorisms. Of course, the path to reason can be riddled with errors. But does that mean reason itself is the error? Or just that the knowledge (i.e. the empirical data on aggregate human behavior) and/or logic contains errors? If an experiment doesn't result in the creation of a cure for cancer, it's not the scientific method that is faulty. The logical flaw in the hypothesis may not have even been foreseeable before the empirical data came in to alter the experimenter's understanding.

Nietzsche may not have meant to critique reason as far as some might interpret, but, instead, to defend against reason's inherent critique of our passions, the passions he celebrated. Nonetheless, reason itself was the victim. Before he died, he appeared to be working on a philosophical system of ethics to temper socially destructive behaviors and promote virtuous ones [*42]. Lack of an ethical system to guide humanity was concerning to him, famously proclaimed when he wrote "God is dead." As an atheist, Nietzsche wasn't concerned with a lack of a deity so much as with what ethical system (or lack thereof) humanity might put in his place.

This was prophetically tragic. Twenty years after his death, Nietzsche's ideas were taken up by the National Socialist Worker's Party of Germany [*43] ("National Socialists" or communists with a narrower geographic scope) in 1920. Outside of the proclamations by his National Socialist-supporting sister, who controlled his estate, no direct evidence exists that Nietzsche would have supported this. But a pivot from Christian faith and reason and evidence, going so far as to admit human beings' primary drive is power, would seem quite compatible with the National Socialist ideology.

Natural law, ironically developed through the reliance on reason and/or God, both of which Nietzsche lambasted, was used to convict the National Socialist's leaders for their complicity in the holocaust. Law, under a positivist notion, is a set of rules applying to a geographic area. Just like the U.S. Department of Justice can't extradite a Frenchman for killing another Frenchman on French soil governed by French law, how could the allied powers, post World War II, try German officers for using German laws to harm German citizens on German soil? Because laws of human nature transcend jurisdiction (as the Founding Fathers of America proudly demonstrated against Great Britain). Justice for victims of the holocaust was won by application of this principle [*44].

In modern parlance, the National Socialists are called Nazis and attributed to the political Right (including by Google and Wikipedia). This conveniently allows the modern Left to side-step the horrors a rejection of the Right's classical notions of natural law (and, in lieu, promotion of Will to Power) brought, dishonestly shifting blame to their political opponents. Referring to one component of your opponent's ideology (i.e. nationalism) and claiming it as subsuming all other parts of an otherwise communist system (i.e. fascism) as to invert its classification, is chicanery of the the most libelous order.

First, Nietzsche was used as a sword to slay reason and natural law. But the Left then needed a shield to defend communism. Power is an intoxicating party. Truth is a sobering buzzkill. Bourgeoisie. If it's subjective, the party can continue.

The State of Post-Modern Academia: A Sovereign Immunity from Dialectic
We know power can, in a literal sense, be an addictive drug [*45]. But, conversely, facts contrary to your ideology (cognitive dissonance) are a literal buzzkill. A key part of the brain that activates during cognitive dissonance, causing discomfort when processing conflicting information, is the anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) [*46]. A 2011 study comparing the brains of young adults via MRI scans found liberals had a larger ACC [*47]. Conservatives had a smaller ACC but a larger amygdala (part of brain regulating threat perception and reaction), conversely found smaller in liberals.

The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics [*48], at chapter 14, explains the consequences of these differences in great detail. For example, a 2009 study found the ACC to be integral to the sensation of envy [*49]. The leftist's larger ACC correlates with an ideology focused on relieving discomfort for the poor and viewing those with grossly more property as in unjust possession. This focus is filtered through the amygdala. A smaller amygdala with a larger ACC reacts to the plight of others by demanding action by proxy (e.g., using taxation of the rich to benefit others). A strong amygdala processes the suffering of others by personal action (e.g., giving to charity) as opposed to passing the buck through taxation (using fellow citizens as proxies), which correlates respectively with the relative conservatism of Americans (who give 1.67% of GNP to charity) to the British (0.73%) and French (0.14%) [*50]. To the extent envy allows for rationalizations of Plato's original idea of banning private property as opposed to Aristotle's notion of private property being a foundation for individual virtue, larger ACCs correlate with the former.

But does the ACC correlate with a stronger or weaker ability to process cognitive dissonance? The 2011 study speculates that liberals have a "higher capacity to tolerate uncertainty and conflicts," but provides no causal justification and admits it's "not possible to unambiguously infer from involvement of a particular brain area that a particular psychological process must be involved [*51]." An ironic cognitive dissonance is noted. The study suggests the larger amygdala in the conservative makes him more sensitive to fear [*52] while assuming a larger ACC in the liberal makes him less sensitive to uncertainty.

Why would the researchers assume this inverse relationship? Democrats are three times more likely than Republicans to remove people from their social media circle over disagreement on political beliefs [*53]. Considering the higher activation in the ACC when processing cognitive dissonance, the larger ACC (inferring a stronger discomfort sensation) of the leftist likely means more discomfort is experienced. Since avoiding discomfort is a behavior intrinsic to human nature, we can sympathize with leftists removing us from their social circles, as carefully contemplated arguments against their often emotional ones are, literally, painful to bear.

Assuming the larger ACC causes more discomfort when processing cognitive dissonance, the sensation must be unbearable for an academic leftist sympathetic to communism. How do you ignore 85-100 million killed by various communist regimes over the past century if you want to assert that the system is just? How do you ignore the dissonance between the global revolution Marx and Engels claimed would happen and the regional bloody revolutions that failed over the past 150 years?

First, the political philosophers surround themselves with like-minded people to avoid serious disagreement. In the modern era, thought in political philosophy is dominated by academia (e.g., a 54% increase in humanities faculties from 1999 to 2013) [*54], resulting from ever-escalating government funding and student loans [*55]. A sample of scholars and academics in social psychology were asked whether they would choose a liberal over a conservative between two equally qualified candidates for a job opening. Over one-third responded that they'd discriminate against the conservative [*56]. This discrimination in hiring is likely understated. Among social scientists of academia, self-identified Marxists outnumber conservatives nearly four to one (18% to 5%) [*57].

We're all well aware that American academia is a bubble of leftist thought. But how bad is it? A 2016 study in Econ Journal Watch [*58] of party registration for a sample of 7,243 social science professors in five departments across 30 states found 3,623 Democrats and 314 Republicans, a ratio of 11.5:1. Broken down, 33.5:1 in history, 20:1 in journalism, 17.4:1 in psychology, 8.6:1 in law, and 4.5:1 in economics. In 42% of the departments, there were more leftist third-party registrants (e.g., the Working Families Party and Greens) than Republicans. Many departments had zero Republicans, including 60% in Journalism/Communications and History, and 45% in Psychology.

And the imbalance has been escalating. The study notes prior surveys of humanities and social sciences professors with the Democrat to Republican ratio circa 1970 at 3.5:1 and 2004 at 8:1. The imbalance will grow as the old guard retire and the new hires move up in rank. Parsing the prior mentioned 2016 data for only professors aged 35 or younger, the Democrat to Republican ratio rises to 22.7:1. Democrats are favored in assistant professors 19.3:1, associates at 13:1, full-time at 11.7:1, and emeritus (essentially retired) at 8.6:1. Women will naturally be favored in hiring as Democrats are favored 24.8:1 by female professors but merely 9:1 in the males. So, what type of philosophy has this escalating environment been producing?

Enter the Critical Theory and post-modernism approaches to communism. Dialectic is abandoned. Reason is a social construct of no objective relevance. There is no empirical truth, only its interpretations and struggles for power between groups using the illusion of truth as a bludgeon to assert their dominance. So the empirical evidence on the death tolls of communism's past and current economic statistics (e.g., capitalist South Korea being 18 times richer than communist North Korea in 2008), [*59], once discovered, could be ignored.

A complete rejection of empiricism wasn't always necessary, because death tolls and agrarian failures (e.g., China's 45 million dead from "The Great Leap Forward" can hardly be viewed as success) of communism weren't always widely known. Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist (and Satanist) [*60] for the New York Times, Walter Duranty, the most esteemed correspondent on the Soviet Union, famously covered up, among other events, Stalin's policy to starve millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s, calling journalists who reported on it liars, while conceding in a private conversation with British diplomats that as many as ten million may have starved to death [*61]. In a famous 1984 interview, Soviet defector Yuri Brezmenov revealed the KGB's common techniques to manipulate Western intellectuals and journalists, referring to them as "useful idiots," specially-selected communist-sympathizers from the West, made drunk and happy while being fed lies and propaganda (e.g., he discusses how they convinced journalists that a holding facility for children of parents in a gulag was really a kindergarten) [*62]. Thus, early ignorance of communism's empirical failure can perhaps be forgiven.

In the early 20th century, an important question for the Marxists needed to be answered. Marx predicted communism would evolve from the most advanced capitalist nations. The bourgeoisie would keep reducing wages of the workers until a time they'd be laid off in a recession (Marx acknowledged boom-bust cycles of economies), and they'd murder (a word for anyone with a sensible basis for ethics, but perhaps "kill" can be substituted as Marx would deem this a justified ending of lives akin to death in war) the bourgeoisie and take over the factories. Word of this would spread around the globe as the workers of the world'd unite, murdering their respective bourgeoisie and assuming control. But communist revolutions arose in less industrialized nations of Russia and China, instead, while the most advanced capitalist nations of the West failed to join in. Why?

Thus began the Critical Theory approach to communism, originating at the Institute for Social Research (or the "Frankfurt School") in Germany, 1923. Sigmund Freud's theory of the unconscious mind (similar to "subconscious" in modern parlance) was the flavor of the era, the notion that we may engage in socially deviant behaviors for reasons we are not conscious of (usually, creepily and purportedly, because we longed for sexual intimacy with our opposite-sex parent as children). Critical Theorists like Theodor Adorno and Max Horkheimer took this idea one step further, explaining that Western nations' workers' failed to join the bloody Marxist revolution due to a false consciousness [*63] (apparently the notion that people'd think killing others over wages not high enough is immoral never crossed their minds). In modern Critical Theory, you see this in feminists (or, more accurately, gynocentric communists) dismissing a happy conservative-voting housewife not as an opponent to be dialectically reasoned with but as a victim of a false consciousness to be liberated (and the same for ethnic-minority or gay conservatives as well).

Psychology, manipulated through the arts as a substrate endowed with socialist politics, would be the tool to liberate minds from false consciousness, so the people would unite under the banner of communism, presumably with brain trusts like the Institute for Social Research pulling the reigns of power (as neo-aristocrats). Critical Theory ideas would spread across Europe and into America; the narrative of the victimized and marginalized proletariat would be replaced by that of the same for women (especially the unmarried kind, emphasizing single moms) and ethnic minorities, championed through various arts (e.g., music, books, and, in the modern era, advertising and visual media).

A key theme of the Critical Theorist is the "negation of the negation" (i.e. rejection of the process of elimination to establish truth through dialectic) and the promotion of subjectivity (i.e. recognition of individuals' unique experiences, "truth" being in the eye of the beholder). Dialectic is, thus, an oppressive bourgeoisie tool to alienate (i.e. to separate an individual from his unique identity, conflating him with a culture-conforming commercial one). As such, the arts and culture were to be redirected to combat alienation and promote subjectivity.

The role of the Critical Theorist is akin to Plato's aristocrats in the Simile of the Cave: to descend the cave and manipulate the shadows on the wall, directing the common folk, if not toward true consciousness, at least toward acting for what's purportedly good for them (i.e. communism). Whereas, in the Republic, Plato advocated state control of the arts to keep society governed by reason (recognizing passions have more persuasive authority over the public), Critical Theorists advocated activists use the arts to wet the public appetite to desire more state control. This was ironically argued as "liberation," because the endgame of state control would supposedly free people from the alienation of capitalism, allowing them to focus on individual passions without the need to work menial jobs to pay their way through life.

And to be fair, most Critical Theorists weren't keen on the violence aspect of Marx's revolution. Many instead wanted to assume control through democratic means (i.e. democratic socialists). But once a communist party was voted in and private property was outlawed, could a new batch of voters elect representatives to re-privatize property?

In the United States, the Left appoint activist judges to transform their legislative prescriptions into immutable rights (e.g., inventing "procedural due process" rights as a prerequisite to removing entitlement recipients from the government dole) or using other means to achieve the same kind of ends (e.g., America's State of Illinois enshrining pension rights in its constitution as unalterable by legislative change through any newly-voted representatives). If such is the pattern with non-communist leftists, would a future-elected Communist party cede power to newly-elected representatives who would undo their implemented core tenet of public control of private property? The general silence of communists on this important question speaks for itself, which is why Americans once fought so hard to keep communists (like ex-CIA Director John Brennan, who voted for the Communist party in 1976) [*64] out of government positions.

The Post-Modern Fogging of Reason and Evidence
As the death tolls in China and the Soviet Union and its colonies or satellites became more well-known, communism became more difficult to defend empirically. Coincidentally, a new school of philosophy began to dominate academia around the 1960s that more plainly rejected empiricism and dialectic: post-structuralism or post-modernism. You'll find many commentators on the Right disparage these ideas in amusing rants. But I'll endeavor to give them a fair hearing here. Prepare yourself for a wild ride exploring the nature of being (ontology), truth (epistemology), and reality (metaphysics).

The origins of post-structural or post-modern thinking lie with Edmund Husserl and renowned philosopher of Hitler's National Socialists, Martin Heidegger, [*65] in phenomenology, the philosophy that reality and events are perceived through human consciousness, ignoring the question of whether reality exists independent of that as unanswerable [*66]. Philosophers have long grappled with the question of whether reality exists outside the mind and, assuming it does, if we can ever know anything about it in concrete foundational terms. We know human minds interact, but can they communicate any ideas or perceptions of reality with absolute certainty? An offset of phenomenology, structuralism, boils human interaction down to communication through a network of signs (i.e. words, albeit utterances and body signals could be considered as well). Through using signs (as the core components of all human communication), can meaning be precisely communicated?

To the post-structuralists and post-modernists, the answer is a firm no. The most recent intellectuals of prominence on these matters were the late French philosophers (and communists) Jacques Derridas, known for "deconstruction" (albeit, like most all intellectuals, didn't like the label) and Michel Foucault.

Derridas' work is needlessly and perhaps purposefully vague and obtuse [*67], but his theme is simple. Our ability to retain any sense of correct knowledge from communication is hopelessly flawed. Any absolute precision in translation of signs from mind to mind is impossible. Why? Because all signs are composed of other signs; you can't define a word without using other words, making all communication an endless tautology (e.g., you can't define the word tree without using words like, perhaps, "leaves" or the color "green," and what words can define green?). Language is merely relative context, and its components (signs or words) cannot be further broken down. Perhaps we communicate more from an endless evolving myriad of social customs than by design of language itself (e.g., if I ask a client, using certain vocal inflections, "No credit card debt?" and they answer "No," I might know they really mean yes based on the context, eye contact and vocal inflections, but an answer solely in writing would reverse the meaning).

Derridas demonstrates this through his process of "deconstruction." That is to show how an infinite number of meanings can be derived from a text, including that of the subject of the text itself. The very work you're reading is subject to such a critique (as is any writing). For example, when I open with a barb to Wikipedia and Google as the "arbiters" of truth, was I being serious or sarcastic? If the reader infers I am being serious, is that the correct meaning?

Inevitably, I'll also be contacted by people claiming Plato was being ironic (in the modern, not classical, sense) about communism to show its ills; thus, they'll claim, my thesis is null. Of course, from Aristotle's scathing critique in the Politics, we induce Plato was, at one point, dead serious about communism (unless we want to presume modern academics know Plato better than Aristotle did). Are these future critics (who will probably contact me before even reading this part) correct? Or is my interpretation the right one?

Derridas would say there is no exact meaning, and the meanings of my writing are independently determined by countless readers who will all interpret what I write differently. If asked, of course, I may defend the meaning of my words. But what happens after I die and new interpretations bubble up while I'm not alive to defend them?

When the writer dies and is no longer able to defend or clarify his words, the readers fully take on that mantle. Can we know with any certainty what Plato or Aristotle really thought over two millennia ago (e.g., Derridas "deconstructs" Plato's dialogue the Phaedrus by showing multiple interpretations of the word "pharmakon," as to splinter his work into countless perceivable iterations) [*68]? Mortality relegates all writers to exist as ghosts, living on in the minds of ever-new beings, ever-expanding in scope, as time marches forward, into countless further interpretations by new people.

If texts have no one underlying meaning, how do we decide which texts to elevate to prominence in our culture? Derridas believed we "privilege" certain forms of communication over others. Reliance on reason and evidence (empiricism) to persuade an audience is "logocentrism," unjustly relying on logic (logos), a "privileged" form of communication, as opposed to appeal to emotion (pathos) or tarnishing (or bolstering) character (ethos). And since men tend to use logic more than women, so infers Derrida, it's one step worse: "phallologocentrism" (men, crudely referred to by their penises, logocentric). The rhetoric evokes imagery of men using logic in argument as raping their audience (in modern parlance, perhaps "mansplaining"), especially oppressing female voices in the arena of public discourse (you wonder if firefighters are phallo-fire-centric if they opt to carry victims out of burning buildings using upper-body strength as opposed to dragging them down the stairs).

The presumption by Derridas that men prefer "logos" more than women (i.e. men are more logical, or at least prefer logic more, than women) would result in the label "misogynist" in a career-ending tar-and-feathering by his academic colleagues were he not a leftist. But being a champion philosopher of the Left like Derridas (or being a political champion like ex-President Bill Clinton, e.g., gynocentric communists. or feminists, excusing Clinton for sexually harassing his intern in perhaps history's most egregious sexual power disparity) [*69] perhaps affords a more honest outlook on the sexes.

If there is a grain of truth to Schopenhauer's "will to life" being our driving force, our mental faculties would've evolved as tools to achieve ideal reproductive success. The ideal mates for men are identified by their physical features, those that signal fertility (e.g., thinner and younger, since fatter and older decline that scale), which are more readily determined with sense data through the eyes and nose.

For women, higher status is the critical trait to find in men (i.e. taller, stronger, and smarter means more likely to provide resources while his mate is disabled by pregnancy), since gestation periods for pregnancy and eventual menopause limit a woman's reproductive opportunity window. Men can reproduce with multiple women all their lives, whereas women generally must act between age 18-40 with 9-month gestation periods further limiting their reproductive opportunities. Thus, the standards for finding the right man must be proportionally far greater (i.e. they have less shots, thus they'd better count). And what women glean from immediate sense data may not reveal enough information to make a good choice since traits like intelligence and earning potential are judgments existing as concepts in a woman's mind more-so than the empirically observable physical features of a woman through a man's eyes. This makes a woman generally more attracted to an ideal of the man in her mind projected onto the man before her than the empirically existing man himself (which may explain why American divorces are initiated more-so by women, 69% to 31% for men [*70] and a Norwegian study found "female relationship dissatisfaction appeared to be the most important factor" in relationship dissolution) [*71].

Thus, we might infer empiricism evolving as a trait preferred more in men than women in an aggregate sense. Regardless, can't logos be argued as the superior tool for most human inquiries? Using logos, it can, but that'd be cheating in Derridas' eyes. Or phallologocentric.

All Western legal systems (and perhaps most all around the world) are thus "phallologocentric." Would it be better for a judge or jury to decide a case on emotions (pathos) or the character (ethos) of the parties (albeit courts allow use of ethos in limited circumstances to weigh relative witness credibility)? Such a term is ironic sophistry for the post-modernist to disarm reason and evidence from his opponents, using a play on humanity's innate appeal to protect women (considering society's favoring of women over men for leniency in justice, e.g., "men receive 62% longer sentences on average" under comparable circumstances than women who are also "twice as likely to avoid incarceration if convicted" [*72] with law professors arguing in prominent news publications that jail shouldn't even be an option for women) [*73] in order to silence the "logocentric" opponent to the communist policy prescriptions (how often do you read an academic argue to cut programs or taxes?) of elite academia.

Certainly there is potential for misunderstanding between the writer and reader in any text, but that doesn't mean we can't garner substantial meaning out of the writer's ideas that is generally consistent from mind to mind. And without an ability to hold a writer accountable to his words, human progress can't be made. A writer's words come to form arguments through his faculties of reason. His ideas can then be tested in empirical reality. We use logic to check for internal consistencies, assuming the premises are true. We test those premises in empirical reality, falsify findings, and whittle down what is claimed to a truth that is close enough for practical use.

This inferably means findings of fact will sometimes be incorrect. For example, my relatives express shock and horror when I explain that the justice system presupposes innocent people being jailed. If findings of fact had to be 100% true as opposed to "beyond a reasonable doubt" in American criminal matters (or in most civil cases "by preponderance of the evidence") no determinations could ever be made by a judge or jury, as exact empirical knowledge of an event (i.e. a God's eye view of the matter) is impossible.

Some criminals thus walk free, and some innocent people are punished. We err on the side of criminals walking free (by the standard "beyond a reasonable doubt") to mitigate the number of innocents we know would be punished if we lowered the evidentiary standard to that of civil claims. Better to have a man pay an unjust amount in a civil claim due to factual error than him be imprisoned or executed in a criminal case over the same.

To the degree we want to hold criminals accountable for their behavior lies the degree to which we must accept some number of innocent people being punished (and we work to free people when we find errors). To the degree we want less innocent people unjustly punished for crimes they didn't commit lies the degree we must accept some number of criminals unjustly going unpunished. This reality horrifies leftists. Considering their support for growing society's administrative law apparatus, enforcing an ever-growing body of rules often at a lower civil law evidentiary standard [*74], they must induce that citizens being unjustly punished grows relative to the rate they want their beloved administrative state to grow. Yet the non-anarchists of the Right and Left generally agree that, despite creating more injustice for some being the price of enforcing justice for all, we nonetheless must have a justice system. And to apply justice, we must first try to identify truth. But truth is elusive.

Our ideas are constructed in our minds upon objects and events we observe in the material world. Just because it's not possible to produce a mirror image (albeit, even a mirror distorts an image) between the true underlying nature of these objects/events and our mental impressions of the same doesn't mean there is no true nature behind them (or that they don't exist outside of impressions in our minds). It may simply mean that grasping the exact nature behind an object or event isn't feasible due to the limitations of the human body as a sensory organ. Or, as Otto Neurath once put it, the search for underlying truth is akin to "sailors who must rebuild their ship on the open sea, never able to dismantle it at dry-dock and to reconstruct it there out of the best materials." [*75].

There's a grain of truth to Derrida's arguments on epistemology (even if the statement that there is no truth contradicts itself since it presupposes a "truth" that there is no truth, the same problem determinists arguing with believers in free-will face). But what does it amount to? Do we need absolute precision when studying empirical reality? Do we merely observe the shadows cast from reality on Plato's cave wall? Are we akin to Rene Descartes' brains in a vat thought experiment, our realities experienced through stimulation by electrical impulses? Or, as Nick Bostrum hypothesized in 2003 [*76], will it be possible to simulate consciousness in a computer at some point in the vast timeline of humanity's future (perhaps the year 10,000 A.D.)? If so, wouldn't at least one person among all future individuals across all future societies opt to construct computerized simulations of human ancestry, incorporating billions of simulated conscious minds? If simulations are constructed, how many would be run? And what would the odds be that we experience empirical reality as we think it is, instead of as independent minds unaware of our existence in a computer simulation, when we measure the infinite possible number of minds that could be simulated in the future swath of humanity's existence (perhaps millions of years into the future) against the mere 108 billion human minds that have existed through 2018 A.D. [*77]?

Would the answers to any of these questions change the way you lived? Even viewing Derridas or post-structuralist/post-modernist and deconstructionist critiques in their most favorable light, what is proposed that dethrones reason and empiricism as our supreme tools for discerning truth? Without reason and empiricism to analyze claims by others, how can we determine the better approaches to societal organization?

In our war for the ideas that'll govern society, Marxist philosophers are pointing to a minute flaw in your rifle, say a chance of jamming per some number of rounds fired, in order to get you to put the gun down. They don't care that your gun will jam after a number of rounds fired (best for them if it jammed every round); they care that you're using the most effective weapon in an intellectual battle against their ideal society. Empiricism and reason destroy their Marxist power fantasy. They're using sophistry to get you to shut up so they can push communist-style policies unopposed.

Dawn of the Will-to-Power Age
Unlike the general political Right, the political Left generally have an endgame. Communism. If not, what is the defined end point? They seek gradual increases in government control over private property, but to what end? At what point do increases in state control over property versus state ownership of the same become a distinction without a difference? At what point do increases in state control over how parents must raise their children and Plato's notion of communism subsuming the family become a distinction without a difference?

The Left seek gradual increases in scope and power of global agreements (e.g., climate accords standardizing industrial practices, and trade regulations controlling both the method for and end product of goods and services), but to what end? The Left purport to be "anti-fascist," but what is fascism but communism limited to a geographic region of people (i.e. with a nationalist component)?

If it's nationalism the Left opposes, where does that opposition end? At what point do supranational entities controlling what nations of receding sovereignty must do compared to Marx's endgame of the workers of the world uniting (via some undefined power structure) and globally controlling the same become a distinction without a difference?

If we flash forward in progress toward these ends, does the leftist become a future conservative at some point? If so, where does that point end? Once sufficient property control is attained, will there be continuous competing schools of thought on its administration? Will this tinkering with public policy be perpetual? And who decides that tinkering?

The state already pays the perpetual tinkerers, academics in public universities, via salaries and grants as our vanguard of public policy. If a humanities professor spends a few hours a week teaching students, what does he spend the rest of his time doing? Getting articles published, often inferring proposals for bureaucrats to enact some kind of policy (which always entails more government control, never less).

At least public policy can be voted on indirectly through electing representatives or parties with ideological orientations toward selecting or rejecting these proposals. But in American (and all common law nations), judges interpret law when challenged, and can effectively create new law while skirting the democratic process. Usually these interpretations are in-line with what prior judges have decided (stare decisis), but judges can make new interpretations and need to cite some authority to justify their change.

What does the American law professor do when he's not spending his few hours per week teaching students? Getting articles published in law review journals for judges to find and justify directing the law in a purportedly more socially just direction (e.g., giving American bureaucrats challenged in court on their made-up laws Congress never wrote, "deference," allowing Congress to outsource communist-style "rulemaking" by parsing the word "rule" from "law" as if there were a material difference between the two).

To this end, the academic has tremendous power, that of an intoxicating and addictive nature. Why would he ever advocate policies promoting less of it? And is power really such a bad thing? If desire for it is inseparable from what makes us human, the primary element in all human activity (as Nietzsche argued), maybe we should be open with our desire to exercise it. If society has been oppressed by powerful people (e.g., perceived oligarchs of industry or religious moralizers) using the illusion of truth as a bludgeon to assert dominance, and there is no empirical truth or logic that can move society toward a common end, akin to sliding up bicycle spokes on a tire toward a common center, isn't power applied in the opposite direction of the abusers for the benefit of under-privileged groups justified?

Enter Michele Foucault, the Left's darling (and history's highest paid) political philosopher. Foucault had some fascinating ideas about the nature of knowledge and power in societies [*78], holding the beliefs that knowledge is established through the context of the power dynamics within a society (e.g., pharmaceutical companies influencing results through research funding) and power, like Nietzsche argued, is humanity's explanatory force. Academics loved his ideas, as his position on knowledge shielded communist ideas from the scathing assault of empirical reality. And his position on power removed any pretense of restraint the vestiges of classical liberalism might place on state power, broadening the academics' canvas, giving them maximum freedom to tinker with society.

... To be continued in Part 2.

___________________
[*1] Google search: "the origins of communism."
[*2] https://mises.org/library/it-started-plato
[*3] Free version here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm / my copy translated by Desmond Lee, Penguin Classics (2007 reissue). Free audio version translated by Tom Griffith, narrated by Bruce Alexander here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CqGsg01ycpk A copy of the same can be purchased here:  https://www.kobo.com/us/en/audiobook/the-republic-120
[*4] Free version here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1750/1750-h/1750-h.htm
[*5] Argument primarily in Books I and II. Free version here: http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/politics.html / my copy by Benjamin Jowett, Dover Publications (2000). I further recommend a course by Robert C. Bartlett, Masters of Greek Thought: Plato Socrates and Aristotle, parts 32-35 on Aristotle's political views, https://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/Masters-of-Greek-Thought-Plato-Socrates-and-Aristotle-Audiobook/B00DDTGJ5A Some modern scholars may argue Plato wasn't being serious in his advocacy of communism, that the dialogue was merely an exercise in determining the truth. If so, these 21st century scholars must know Plato's intent better than Aristotle did, considering Aristotle directly calls Plato out for his error in the Politics, summary by Aristotle (from my copy), Book II. cc. 1-8 Ideal Commonwealths--Plato, Phaleas, Hippodamus, "... Plato in the Republic raises the most fundamental questions. He desires to abolish private property and the family (c. 1). But the end which he has in view is wrong. He wishes  to make all his citizens absolutely alike; but the differentiation of function is a law of nature. There can be too much unity in a state (c. 2). And the means by which he would promote unity are wrong. The abolition of property will produce, not remove, dissension. Communism of wives and children will destroy natural affection (c. 3.) ... The good sense of mankind has always been against Plato, and experiment would show that his idea is impracticable (c. 5)."
[*6] Gratian, Italian natural law theologian, circa the 12th century, argued that common ownership of the land was the starting point of humanity, since God originally created the Earth for Adam and Eve. Thereafter, the division of property to private ownership is permitted under natural law. However, in a state of emergency, private property reverts to the common. Thus, a man hording crops in a famine would be violating natural law. While not "communist" by most definitions, this idea is the closest to the same by prominent Western thinkers between Plato and Marx/Engels. Natural Law and Human Nature, course by Father Joseph Koterski, S.J., part 11: https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/Natural-Law-and-Human-Nature-Audiobook/B00DDY6CSY / more details on Gratian, http://www.hetwebsite.net/het/profiles/gratian.htm / Another example regarding 17th Century pilgrims to America, "The colony's leaders identified the source of their problem [starvation] as a particularly vile form of what Bradford [a colony leader] called 'communism.' Property in Plymouth Colony, he observed, was communally owned and cultivated. This system ('taking away of property and bringing [it] into a commonwealth') bred 'confusion and discontent' and "retarded much employment that would have been to [the settlers'] benefit and comfort.'" https://www.heritage.org/markets-and-finance/commentary/pilgrims-beat-communism-free-market
[*7] Published in 1848. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
[*8] See FN 7, pg. 32, Marx and Engels criticizing those unwilling to deploy violence: "Hence, they reject all political, and especially all revolutionary action; they wish to attain their ends by peaceful means, necessarily doomed to failure, and by the force of example, to pave the way for the new social Gospel."
[*9] https://infogalactic.com/info/Platonic_Academy
[*10] See FN 6.
[*11] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/arabic-islamic-greek / see also FN 6 Chapter 12 : https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/Natural-Law-and-Human-Nature-Audiobook/B00DDY6CSY
[*12] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aquinas/
[*13] https://www.gutenberg.org/files/1497/1497-h/1497-h.htm
[*14] This question is what the Republic is perhaps most known for answering and where Lord of the Rings likely gets its inspiration. An allegory is spoken about Gyges' ring, which turns the wearer invisible. Consequently, he's able to gain influence through espionage, as well as stealing and raping, whenever he wants. With such power, a man can have nearly anything he wants. And assuming there are no Gods to judge to him, why should he be just? Socrates responds. Our sense of justice as an individual comes from our ability to reason. Reason is a craft like any other trade (e.g., captaining a ship or making shoes) and brings balance to our passions (as overindulgence brings us unhappiness). It's argued that reason can be perfected and conclusions on justice will inevitably flow from this. Most pleasures in life are mere relinquishment from discomfort (we eat for relief from hunger; we have sex for relief from arousal, etc.), but reason brings knowledge, a pleasure derived outside a state of remedying bodily deficiency or biological urge, and is, therefore, superior in bringing us eudaimonia (happiness and human flourishing). Reason demands you view the world with a sense of order and consistency. Why can I steal from a person but the person cannot steal back from me? The thief that has mastered reason will feel unhappy, because he knows he is not living to the standards he knows are true. And since reason brings the greatest happiness, it will bring the thief the greatest sadness to know he is not living in accordance with reason. Therefore, even in a world where your reputation will forever be that of an unjust man and there is no God to reward you, it's still better to be just than unjust.
[*15] "'It's a fine picture you have drawn of our rulers, Socrates.' 'And some of them will be women', [Socrates responds], 'All I have said about men applies equally to women, if they have the requisite natural abilities [translation from my copy, see FN 2].'" Plato was one of the few prominent thinkers in antiquity to believe that women could be chosen to rule. He believed women qualifying to be rulers would be rare but possible. This differs from queens in antiquity, which usually got power via divine right as opposed to being specially selected.
[*16] For example, the young will be taught of what is true with reason. Later, they'll be told falsehood. If they refuse to push back using their reason, accepting the falsehood as truth, they'll be disqualified. Other tests for qualities like temperance and ability to control emotions are argued as important as well.
[*17] https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Normie
[*18] Bodily sovereignty is part of natural law and key to American and European political thought. How could you criminalize individual conduct if it were not? The air transmitting the sound of language is in the common, but the words I speak are mine and, thus, my responsibility (i.e. justice means I pay consequence for slander or inciting a riot). Our labor from our actions improving unclaimed land and chattel in its transformation, then, entitles us to initial ownership (i.e. homesteading) just like speech entitles us to the words we utter as our vocal cords alter the air to produce sound. We then, generally, have the natural right to exchange this property under natural law via application of those same principles. https://mises.org/library/what-classical-liberalism / See also the course cited in FN 6, explained further by Father Joseph Koterski, S.J.
[*19] This dichotomy of liberty, arguing civil relates more to our social choices and is separate from economic liberties (property choices), is a necessary distinction in modern legal parlance. For example, the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) generally doesn't take cases involving property rights but social rights (i.e. freedom from regulation of speech and moral choices), whereas the Institute for Justice and Pacific Legal Foundation (both American legal rights groups akin to the ACLU) take cases involving rights like free speech, but especially those involving property rights (or economic liberties). Hence, you sometimes see someone referred to as a "civil libertarian" (often associated with the Left) as opposed to a libertarian (often associated with Right). While "civil" libertarian technically would encompass those defending property rights, we see a distinction in practice.
[*20] https://www.intellectualtakeout.org/article/aristotle-4-reasons-private-property-better-communal-property
[*21] http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/nicomachaen.html See also The Ethics of Aristotle, a course by Father Joseph Koterski, S.J. https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/The-Ethics-of-Aristotle-Audiobook/B00D92NK3K
[*22] See FN 4. Communism (of property and family) is still seen as the ideal, albeit not realistic. Wealth caps in lieu of communism are advocated:
"It might be well if every man could come to the colony having equal property; but equality is impossible, and therefore we must avoid causes of offence by having property valued and by equalizing taxation. To this end, let us make four classes in which the citizens may be placed according to the measure of their original property, and the changes of their fortune. The greatest of evils is revolution; and this, as the law will say, is caused by extremes of poverty or wealth. The limit of poverty shall be the lot, which must not be diminished, and may be increased fivefold, but not more. He who exceeds the limit must give up the excess to the state; but if he does not, and is informed against, the surplus shall be divided between the informer and the Gods, and he shall pay a sum equal to the surplus out of his own property. All property other than the lot must be inscribed in a register, so that any disputes which arise may be easily determined." The nuclear family will be the norm, but a council of matrons will have regulatory power over them: "Now a man only succeeds when he takes pains; wherefore the bridegroom ought to take special care of the bride, and the bride of the bridegroom, at the time when their children are about to be born. And let there be a committee of matrons who shall meet every day at the temple of Eilithyia at a time fixed by the magistrates, and inform against any man or woman who does not observe the laws of married life."
[*23] link to 34:18 https://youtu.be/NirpXeuXlbU?t=34m18s
[*24] https://destroycapitalismnow.wordpress.com/2017/03/26/abolish-the-family/
[*25] See Karl Marx's Das Kapital: http://political-economy.com/capital-karl-marx/. To Marx, it's not the production of ideas and level of risk one takes that represents the measure of work in a good or service but, instead, the labor to create the good or service. If I trade shoes for chairs (using money as a conduit medium), the value in the total units of shoes will be enough to match the value of the units of chairs to make a roughly equal trade (e.g., 25 pairs of shoes may equal 1 chair in value). But the labor costs to produce the same are a controllable factor, because the owner can't (usually) exploit the buyer/seller on price but can underpay workers relative to these costs to generate a profit, which Marx argues the owner generally does. So, what is the just wage for each person involved in the business? To argue the laborers are exploited, we must ignore the entrepreneur (bourgeoisie) risking his money in an investment and/or spending hours of mental energy setting up or organizing the work-flow, distribution chain, and buyers, entitling him to a greater share (perhaps even grossly greater) of the profits. Marx doesn't address why the aforementioned doesn't count as disproportionately more work entitling the investor or owner to more of the reward. Or why someone who risks more (and will accept the consequences for failure that the paid laborers don't) ought not to receive more. Aristotle argued in Nicomachean Ethics that just earnings are relative to effort, skill, and value of what one produces. Someone that went to school for years to develop a craft and/or has a natural ability to produce more ought to receive more for his work. Movie, pop, and sport stars (an ironically leftist bunch) making millions of dollars per film, tour, or season perfectly understand this, as perhaps tens of thousands would gladly take the star's place and put in the same hours for perhaps 1/10,000th the pay. Labor theory of value provides no real counter-argument to Aristotle's classic explanation of this ethic. Instead, Marx assumes the owner is exploiting the laborer. See the sources in FN 20 for a more thorough explanation of just earnings according to Aristotle.
[*26] The word "oligarchy" (rule by financial/propertied elite) is never used in The Communist Manifesto, but I find it a helpful shortcut in explanation. More precisely stated, however, "bourgeoisie" are not in direct political control, but their social power is argued sufficient enough where they effectively rule society.
[*27] Demands of the Communist Party in Germany (1849): "12. All civil servants shall receive the same salary, the only exception being that civil servants who have a family to support and who therefore have greater requirements, shall receive a higher salary." https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
[*28] Greek democracy could mean a variety of systems, but generally it meant rule by the citizens (as opposed to their representatives) voting for legislation and by either appointing citizens through a random lottery ("by lot") or voting for them as executive representatives (e.g., for the Greek equivalent of a Secretary of Defense). This is unlike the American and European systems of democracy today where the voters pick the representatives and those representatives, in turn, choose the legislation and the executive staff.
[*29] My copy (see FN 2) states, "And there's no distinction between citizen, alien, and foreigner" in the context of the negatives of a democracy. The linked version states, "the metic is equal to the citizen and the citizen with the metic, and the stranger is quite as good as either." Metic is a foreigner with limited citizenship rights. For example, Aristotle was a metic of Athens. He wasn't born there and did not have the right to own property in Athens (he rented), despite being welcome in the city and having some rights. The audio version translated by Tom Griffith states at 3:50:20, "Immigrants are put on a par with citizens and citizens with immigrants. And the same with visiting foreigners." Regardless of the translation you go with, it's clear Plato finds the democratic citizens' relaxed attitude (brought about by focus on liberty as opposed to duty), allowing for aliens, immigrants, or foreigners and citizens to be treated the same, as a sign of decay within the regime.
[*30] My copy (see FN 5), Aristotle states, "[A] tyranny often changes into a tyranny, as that at Sicyon changed from the tyranny of Myron to that of Cleisthenes; into oligarchy, as the tyranny of Antileon did at Chalcis; into democracy, as that of Gelo did in Syracuse; into aristocracy, as that of Carthage, and the tyranny of Charilaus at Lacedaemon. Often an oligarchy changes into a tyranny, like most of the ancient oligarchies of Sicily; for example, the oligarchy Leontini changed into the tyranny of Panaetius; that at Gela into the tyranny at Cleander; that at Rhegium into the tyranny of Anaxilaus; the same thing has happened in many other states."
[*31] https://www.pri.org/stories/2013-12-10/can-you-name-five-remaining-communist-countries-world
[*32] http://www.propertyrightsalliance.org/news/how-weak-property-rights-contribute-to-venezuelas-crisis/
[*33] https://infogalactic.com/info/Mass_killings_under_Communist_regimes / Regarding North Korea, Infogalactic cites Pierre Rigoulot's estimates of "100,000 executions, 1.5 million deaths through concentration camps and slave labor, 500,000 deaths from famine." Regarding, Cuba, see also https://pjmedia.com/spengler/2016/11/28/fidel-castros-mass-murder-by-the-numbers / citing estimates between 4,000 and 33,000 political executions in a country of only 7 million.
[*34] https://archive.org/stream/TheBlackBookofCommunism10/the-black-book-of-communism-jean-louis-margolin-1999-communism_djvu.txt
[*35] https://archive.org/stream/AleksandrSolzhenitsynTheGulagArchipelago/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn_The_Gulag_Archipelago_djvu.txt
[*36] See FN 16.
[*37] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/9228257/Like-baboons-our-elected-leaders-are-literally-addicted-to-power.html
[*38] Course by Lawrence Cahoon, The Modern Intellectual Tradition: From Decartes to Derrida Lawrence Cahoon. https://www.audible.com/pd/Classics/The-Modern-Intellectual-Tradition-From-Descartes-to-Derrida-Audiobook/B00DL9TI9G Immanuel Kant's most famous work, arguing in favor of this principle, The Critique of Pure Reason, published in 1787, can be read for free here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/4280/4280-h/4280-h.htm See also course by Father Koterski, S.J. in FN 6.
[*39] An overview of Schopenhauer's work:  https://infogalactic.com/info/Arthur_Schopenhauer A free audio version of Studies in Pessimism is available here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8t9HaH7Iiic
[*40] A brief summary of this idea can be viewed here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q0zmfNx7OM4 / I further recommend Kathleen M. Higgins and the late Robert C. Solomon's course, The Will to Power, the Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche https://www.audible.com/pd/Nonfiction/The-Will-to-Power-The-Philosophy-of-Friedrich-Nietzsche-Audiobook/B00DJ7H7FC The primary work in question can be read here: https://www.gutenberg.org/files/38427/38427-pdf.pdf Schopenhauer's indirect influence on the Left is quite ironic, considering his notorious views on women. And considering the receding goalposts and persuasive redefinition for what constitutes misogyny by 21st century feminists (or gynocentric communists), for his essay, "On Women," found in Studies in Pessimism (FN 38), a new word would have to be invented to put his views in relative context.
[*41] A free copy: http://www.inp.uw.edu.pl/mdsie/Political_Thought/GeneologyofMorals.pdf See Higgins and Solomon's course in FN 38 with 28 fantastic 30-minute lectures on Nietzsche's works. Because the two admitted to being fans of his work, much of his criticism is addressed in these lectures early-on (wading into "she doth protest too much, me thinks" territory).
[*42] See lecture in FN 39.
[*43] https://www.activehistory.co.uk/ib-history/extended-essay-history-samples/nietzsche.pdf See also lectures in FN 39.
[*44] See FN 6, part 1. Lecture Outline: "[P]ostwar courts in the Federal Republic of Germany recognized the need for consideration of the higher law in cases about the restoration of property: 'These laws of confiscation, though clothed in the formal rules … of a law, … [are] an extremely grave violation of the supra-positive principle of equality before the law as well as of the suprapositive guarantee of any legal order and must remain inviolable … [These provisions] were and are by reason of their unjust content and their violation of the basic demands of any legal order null and void; this law could not, even at and during the time of the Nazi regime, produce any legitimate legal effect.' (Judgment rendered on February 28, 1955, quoted in Rommen, pp. 14–15.)." Suprapositive is another word for natural law. What law could be supra to that posited (made) by man but God's law or natural law?
[*45] See FN 36, https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/science/9228257/Like-baboons-our-elected-leaders-are-literally-addicted-to-power.html
[*46] https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268800545_Cognitive_dissonance_induction_in_everyday_life_An_fMRI_study
[*47] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/#bib4
[*48] http://www.castaliahouse.com/downloads/the-evolutionary-psychology-behind-politics/ Conservative, Anonymous. The Evolutionary Psychology Behind Politics: How Conservatism and Liberalism Evolved Within Humans (Kindle Locations 4682-4683). Federalist Publications. Kindle Edition.
[*49] See link in FN 47, Chapter 14 at its footnote 52, citing Takahashi, H., Kato, M., Matsuura, M., Mobbs, D., Suhara, T., Okubo, Y. (2009). When your gain is my pain and your pain is my gain: neural correlates of envy and schadenfreude. Science, 323 (5916), 937-939. Link to study here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/24004972_When_Your_Gain_Is_My_Pain_and_Your_Pain_Is_My_Gain_Neural_Correlates_of_Envy_and_Schadenfreude The study notes a different part of the brain, the ventral striatum, activates a rewarding reaction when hearing about misfortune to one envied (schadenfreude).
[*50] NY Times Article https://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/21/opinion/21kristof.html quotes the book Philanthrocapitalism, published in '08. Note how Wikipedia, the internet's purported arbiter of truth, devotes half of its write-up to amusingly "criticisms" of the book: "There are also concerns [by whom?] that private philanthropy erodes support for governmental spending on public services. The main worry with this practice is that collectively, it can lead to tax revenue problems for the government. Donations are still going towards philanthropy, but some public services may not be able to utilize these funds because they may never receive them [how?]. Because of this, there is concern [from whom?] that the wealth of a few may be able to determine what organizations receive the most funding." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philanthrocapitalism
[*51] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3092984/#bib4
[*52] https://stratagemsoftheright.blogspot.com/2017/05/hollywood-narrative-entertainment.html
[*53] http://thehill.com/homenews/311047-poll-dems-more-likely-to-unfriend-people-due-to-political-posts
[*54] https://www.humanitiesindicators.org/content/indicatorDoc.aspx?i=71
[*55] http://college.usatoday.com/2015/08/20/report-federal-aid-rising-tuition/
[*56] https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2012/aug/1/liberal-majority-on-campus-yes-were-biased/
[*57] https://www.academia.org/self-identifying-marxist-professors-outnumber-conservatives-as-college-professors/
[*58] https://econjwatch.org/file_download/944/LangbertQuainKleinSept2016.pdf?mimetype=pdf
The data likely paints a grimmer picture than what appears. A survey of professors in the 2004 election found, of the "moderates," 68% for Kerry and 27% for Bush. And 1% of Democrats voted for Bush and 13% of Republicans for Kerry. Also notable for relatively low D:R ratios are Ohio State and Case Western; particularly noteworthy are their Psychology departments, which, with their combined 14 Republicans, alone account for 28 percent (14 divided by 49) of all Republicans found at all 40 Psychology departments.
[*59] https://www.cato.org/publications/commentary/100-years-communism-death-deprivation
[*60] Duranty's relationship with renowned Satanist Alister Crowley (the kind that worships evil and ancient Gods, as opposed to pomp atheists like Anton LaVey) was perhaps foreshadowing to his willingness to cover-up Stalin's evil. "Crowley believed himself to be the Anti-Christ and called himself 'Beast 666.' He devoted himself to studying the occult and practicing Satanic magic, but, by the end of the first decade of the 20th century, had fallen into a funk. No longer sure of himself, he was on the verge of giving up his life-long quest for evil. It was then that Crowley met Duranty. The new relationship invigorated Crowley, who recovered from his depression and rededicated himself to a life of depravity. ... The two men became friends and partners, sharing an interest in the occult, in drugs, and in the affections of Jane 'the Scarlet Woman' Cheron. It was now 1913, and by the end of the year Crowley, assisted by Duranty and another partner named Victor Neuberg, began the elaborate Satanic rituals Crowley dubbed 'the Paris workings.' These rituals were designed to evoke the Roman gods Mercury and Jupiter, whose analogues in the Greek Pantheon are Hermes and Zeus. The first of 23 ceremonies, composed of pagan, Satanic rituals and chants mixed with homosexual encounters between the participants, took place on December 31, 1913. Duranty, serving as 'priest,' administered what Crowley termed a 'sacrament,' the key component of which was a homosexual act." https://www.thenewamerican.com/culture/history/item/4652-durantys-lethal-lies
[*61]  How could someone be so evil? Why does the NY Times not more rigorously disavow him? https://www.nytco.com/new-york-times-statement-about-1932-pulitzer-prize-awarded-to-walter-duranty/. Why does the Pulitzer Prize board refuse to revoke his award? Even if his defense could be that he was misled by Stalin's regime, and we want to ignore evidence of his knowing complicity revealed through the British diplomats as hearsay, why doesn't a revelation that he parroted false propaganda as opposed to doing on-the-ground journalism for the story, in and itself, warrant a revocation?
[*62] link to 31:51 https://youtu.be/y3qkf3bajd4?t=31m51s
[*63] See the excellent course by Lawrence Cahoon at FN 37.
[*64] https://www.strategic-culture.org/news/2018/03/28/john-brennan-entered-cia-1980-though-voted-communist-1976.html
[*65] https://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/books/10739165/Martin-Heidegger-the-philosopher-who-fell-for-Hitler.html
[*66] Again, see FN 37.
[*67] From Jacque Derrida's 1993 book, Spectres of Marx (translated from French to English),
"If it—learning to live—remains to be done, it can happen only between life and death. Neither in life nor in death alone. What happens between two, and between all the 'two’s' one likes, such as between life and death, can only maintain itself with some ghost, can only talk with or about some ghost (s’entretenir de quelque fantôme). So it would be necessary to learn spirits. Even and especially if this, the spectral, is not. Even and especially if this, which is neither substance, nor essence, nor existence, is never present as such. The time of the 'learning to live,' a time without tutelary present, would amount to this, to which the exordium is leading us: to learn to live with ghosts, in the upkeep, the conversation, the company, or the companionship, in the commerce without commerce of ghosts. To live otherwise, and better. No, not better, but more justly. But with them. No being-with the other, no socius without this with that makes being-with in general more enigmatic than ever for us. And this being-with specters would also be, not only but also, a politics of memory, of inheritance, and of generations."
I can write like Derridas too: If a sandwich is to be made, it can only happen between the top and bottom slices of bread. Neither the top nor the bottom slice alone. What happens between the two, and between all the sandwiches one likes, such as between one slice and the other, can only maintain itself with the forgotten image of a sandwich we aspired to. So it would be necessary to learn baking. Even, and especially if this, concept of a sandwich, is not baked. Even and especially if this is, which sandwich is neither in the material nor conceptual realms, and never exists....
[*68] http://aeconomics.blogspot.com/2007/02/derrida-deconstructing-phaedrus.html
[*69] https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/how-bill-clinton-neutered-the-feminist-movement-1154350.html
[*70] https://www.divorcemag.com/articles/women-more-likely-to-initiate-divorce-study/
[*71] Women's proportionally higher citing of dissatisfaction (compared to men) infers their sense data of the men in their lives is incongruent with their expectations, otherwise women would know what they were getting into and not opt to enter the relationship to begin with (especially considering the old adage that men propose, women dispose). https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3889678/
[*72] https://www.law.umich.edu/newsandinfo/features/Pages/starr_gender_disparities.aspx
[*73] https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/we-should-stop-putting-women-in-jail-for-anything/
[*74] https://fedsoc.org/commentary/blog-posts/liberty-month-revisited-defining-a-legitimate-scope-for-the-federalization-of-business-crime
[*75] https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neurath/
[*76] https://www.simulation-argument.com/simulation.pdf
[*77] https://www.prb.org/howmanypeoplehaveeverlivedonearth/
[*78] https://monoskop.org/images/5/5d/Foucault_Michel_Power_Knowledge_Selected_Interviews_and_Other_Writings_1972-1977.pdf