July 17th, 2008

Marx Realty

In another online discussion, someone said they’d like a picture of Marx Realty. Since I live nearby, and was having a late lunch right near it, I snapped a picture:

I assume the plethora of American flags (three, counting the tiny, faded sticker below the big flag) is to disclaim any connection to that Marx. In most places, that wouldn’t be necessary—they’d think Groucho, not Karl—but in San Francisco, you wouldn’t be too sure about that. A bakery a few blocks away advertises itself as a “workers’ collective,” after all. Somehow, I have a feeling a “workers’ collective” is a more oppressive place to work than a Wal-Mart in Honduras.

While my political views used to be considerably more liberal than they are today, I never succumbed to a flirtation with real leftism. For this, I think I have two things to thank. First, I traveled a lot in my youth, and saw up close that leftist regimes produced pretty miserable results. Second, while at UC Berkeley, I took a class from a political science professor named A. James Gregor.

Gregor is a Strangelovian character, and while I didn’t necessarily agree with everything he had to say, he was relentless, in that political theory class, about drawing the line between certain political theories and their catastrophic outcomes. Many of my fellow students hadn’t even heard of the mass killings of the Khmer Rouge, or that the Cultural Revolution in China had produced anything more insidious than a lot of people marching around in gray tunics. I never quite bought into his defense of right-wing dictators, but his argument about bad statist theory causing human disaster on unimaginable scales persuaded me.

I can’t vouch for the accuracy of everything on Gregor’s Wikipedia page. It notes accusations that he silenced alternate views, in the class, I can tell you from firsthand experience that this was not true. Some students made contrary points and he argued back. It was the sort of exchange of ideas universities are for. He often made a point of inviting students to his office hours to continue discussing or debating a point.

I supported the anti-Apartheid movement at Berkeley, and I think history has rendered a clear verdict on who was right about that. But I couldn’t exactly join up and march, since the whole thing was led by serious Fellow Travelers, who ranged from the earnest—a woman who wanted to emigrate to Cuba—to the ridiculous—a guy who got to the front of every anti-Apartheid march through Sproul Plaza and Dwinelle Plaza chanting:

Marx and Lenin!

Mao and Trotsky!

We’ve got the team that’s really hotsky!

I am not making this up. I’m sure it got old, even for the commies. I sure did for me, as I tried to study early 19th century European history from my hard-won shady spot on the grass near the Life Sciences Building. It got especially old after the first few hundred times I heard it.

You say you want a revolution. Well, you know.

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Thoughts, en passant:

"No one can be a great thinker who does not recognize that as a thinker it is his first duty to follow his intellect to whatever conclusions it may lead. Truth gains more even by the errors of one who, with due study, and preparation, thinks for himself, than by the true opinions of those who only hold them because they do not suffer themselves to think." —John Stuart Mill

"Earnestness is stupidity sent to college." —P.J. O'Rourke

"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it will also make better soup." —H.L. Mencken

"This was the first thing Mark had been asked to do which he himself, before he did it, clearly knew to be criminal. But the moment of his consent almost escaped his notice; certainly, there as no struggle, no sense of turning a corner. There may have been a time in the world's history when such moments fully revealed their gravity, with witches prophesying on a blasted heath or visible Rubicons to be crossed. But, for him, it all slipped past in a chatter of laughter, of that intimate laughter between fellow professionals, which of all earthly powers is strongest to make men do very bad things before they are yet, individually, very bad men." —C.S. Lewis

"Politicians taking credit from what they’ve done for the economy are like little kids working the controls of video games without putting any money in. There’s all kinds of stuff happening on the screen of the video game and they think that it’s all due to the frantic work of their fingers." —Tom Foreman

"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order." —Ed Howdershelt

"Make no little plans. They have no magic to stir men’s blood and probably themselves will not be realized. Make big plans; aim high in hope and work, remembering that a noble, logical diagram once recorded will never die, but long after we are gone will be a living thing, asserting itself with ever-growing insistency. Remember that our sons and grandsons are going to do things that would stagger us. Let your watchword be order and your beacon beauty. Think big." —Daniel Burnham

"Careless exaggerations are a million times worse than the Nazis." —Merlin Mann

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