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Our growing awareness of the inevitable collective extinction of all intelligent species on planet earth stems from Newton’s 1755 proof that the existence of every galaxy in the universe is subject to universal forces and laws that govern its physical creation from pre-existing incoherent material, its maturation as a coherent entity, and its disintegration into incoherent material at the end of its natural lifespan. However, our mature worldwide awareness of our common natural creation and inevitable collective extinction is still not being used in the manner necessary to ensure every current and future child is able to enjoy the natural birth-right of the progeny of the rest of animalkind — the right to enjoy its life until its unpreventable end without fear of being abused or exploited by its own kind.
Kepler had speculated about the mathematically predictable disintegration of earth’s solar system, but Kant was the first person to recognise the philosophical implications of Newton’s irrefutable proof of its inevitable unconditional ‘mechanical’ destruction in his 1755 thesis Universal Natural History and Theory of the Heavens or An Essay on the Constitution and the Mechanical Origin of the Entire Structure of the Universe Based on Newtonian Principles. In his 1781 Critique of Pure Reason and all his subsequent philosophical works, Kant used the new astronomical evidence made available by the latest development of manufacturing techniques to repudiate as irrational all wars over the natural resources available on earth to sustain humankind’s collaborative recreation until the predictable disintegration of earth’s solar system. Then as now, military hegemonies ignored the irrefutable scientific evidence of Newton and the rational reasoning of Kant, because all such evidence and reasoning deny military hegemonies the right to wage irrational wars over the means to sustain humankind’s existence on earth until its natural end.
In his 1783 Prolegomena to Any Future Metaphysics That Will Be Able to Present Itself as a Science addressed “teachers of metaphysics to whom the existence of this book might not yet be known” and predicted that Newton’s prescience of the inevitable destruction of all life on earth would only be accepted as a “scientific” prognosis when the natural processes which first created life on earth (and subsequently created Newton) had created enough teachers like himself with sufficient consciousness of that inevitable natural event to recognise the idiocy of war.
In his 1784 essay Answering the Question: What Is Enlightenment? Kant likened enlightenment to adolescence — the season in the life of every primate on earth when it outgrows its naïve understanding of its unending life, and realises that its enjoyment of its life until its inevitable end is conditional on helping cherish the lives of all members of its kind without fear or favour. In his 1785 Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals, Kant defined the “categorical imperative” as the natural human compulsion to “Act in such a way that you treat humanity, whether in your own person or in the person of any other, never merely as a means to an end, but always at the same time as an end.”
Long before Darwin published his racist 1859 On the Origin of Species by Means of Natural Selection, or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life, Kant published his 1784 anti-racist thesis Idea for a Universal History with a Cosmopolitan Purpose. In his introduction, Kant explained “Since the [scholar] cannot presuppose any [conscious] individual purpose among men in their great drama, there is no other expedient for him except to try to see if he can discover a natural purpose in this idiotic [sic] course of things human. In keeping with this purpose, it might be possible to have a history with a definite natural plan for creatures who have no plan of their own . . . . We wish to see if we can succeed in finding a clue to such a history; we leave it to Nature to produce the man capable of composing it. Thus Nature produced Kepler, who subjected, in an unexpected way, the eccentric paths of the planets to definite laws; and she produced Newton, who explained these laws by a universal natural cause.”
In his 1795 Perpetual Peace: A Philosophical Sketch, Kant repudiated war on any pretext:
- No treaty of peace shall be regarded as valid, if made with the secret reservation of material for a future war
- No state having an independent existence shall be acquired by another through inheritance, exchange, purchase or donation
- Standing armies shall in time be totally abolished
- No national debts shall be contracted in connection with the external affairs of the state
- No state shall use armed force to interfere with the constitution or government of another state
- No state shall, during war, permit such acts of hostility which would make mutual confidence in the subsequent peace impossible.
Like Kant, German philosopher Hegel recognised that the physical recreation of intelligent species on planet earth until their natural collective physical extinction is predicated on eradicating the religiously perpetuated metaphysical misconception of mankind’s supernatural creation and eternal afterlife. Unlike Kant who famously distinguished himself from his peers by repudiating any intended abuse of anyone anywhere on any pretext, Hegel famously justified Napoleon’s use of military force against Christian institutions because they use physical force to perpetuate their self-serving metaphysical misconception.
Unlike Hegel, Feuerbach recognised that throughout the existence of German universities, professors of German history and philosophy justified wars in the collective self-interest of Germans. In his 1841 The Essence of Christianity, German professor of theology Feuerbach observed that, throughout the existence of Christianity, its multi-cultural moral authority was based on the shared belief that all men are created equal, and that men’s profitable exploitation of any of their common compassionate creator’s other intelligent creations is immoral. But he also observed how the man-made Christian misconception that God supernaturally created physical man in His eternal metaphysical image alienates mankind from all other physical creatures in the world (including women) because it institutionalises the self-righteous supremacy of men in the natural procreation of intelligent life during its finite existence on earth with a predictable unavoidable natural end.
In his 1843 Principles of Philosophy of the Future, Feuerbach predicted that so long as German philosophers uncritically justify German wars over the means to sustain human life, there will be no justice or peace anywhere until enough philosophers recognise the common physical mutuality and mortality of all species on earth, and consciously change the course of history by repudiating all man-made metaphysical misconceptions about mankind’s supernatural creation and eternal afterlife.
Agricultural labourers began forming trade unions in Britain long before the industrial revolution. The philosophical significance of landless labourers’ self-taught solidarity was first recognised by a German university student of Feuerbach Engels during his 1842–44 stay in Manchester. Engels wrote his first book Die Lage der arbeitenden Klasse in England as an academic treatise for a German university-educated audience. It was written and compiled from Engels’ own observations and his detailed analysis of contemporary reports, and only published in English in 1885.
After meeting Engels for the second time in 1844, fellow German university-educated ‘young Feuerbachian’ Marx was ‘profoundly impressed’ by Engels’ critique of the philosophical significance of English labourers’ spontaneous solidarity in their endless collectivised disputes with profiteering land and factory owners, within a legal framework designed and militarily enforced by state institutions that only university educated professional or propertied men were entitled to join.
In a collection of essays written in 1846 but not published until 1932 under the title The German Ideology, Marx and Engels generalised Feuerbach’s critique of Christianity and the German intelligentsia’s uncritical support for wars in the collective self-interest of Germans. Marx and Engels based their 1848 Communist Manifesto on Marx’s famous thesis on Feuerbach that philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it, and Engels’ recognition of the philosophical significance of the compassionate solidarity first engendered by the working class in England in its endless collective disputes with profiteering land and factory owners.
The 1848 revolutions replaced self-serving Christian institutions waging endless wars in their profitable self-interest with self-serving liberal institutions waging endless increasingly industrialised wars in the profitable self-interest of new European nation states ‘liberated’ from Christianity. Marx joined Engels in Britain, where he became history’s most trenchant critic of all nationalism, profiteering and tyranny, putting himself and his family at risk of legal abuse by agents of the British Empire determined to perpetuate its self-serving university-validated militarily enforced global hegemony by any means necessary, in self-aggrandising defiance of all rational philosophical and scientific reasoning.
Darwin published his colonialist thesis in 1859. In 1861, American liberals calling themselves ‘democrats’ declared war to defend the right of white people to own black slaves with the same self-aggrandising commercial self-righteousness that justified their profitable slaughter of 100 million indigenous Americans with impunity.
In 1864, Marx and Engels founded the International Workingmen’s Association (commonly called the First International) in London. Its purpose was to consciously teach trade unionists that humankind’s survival is conditional on them developing their unconsciously engendered ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ philosophy to repudiate any intended injury to anybody anywhere on any pretext.
The Paris Commune in 1871 was the only attempt to form a government guided by Marx. It failed to win enough support and was brutally crushed — 20,000 men, women and children were slaughtered by the French National Guard with impunity. In its bitter aftermath, Bakunin persuaded most First International members to support workers’ use of armed force against state militias. Marx argued that the Commune failed to win support because too few people trusted its leaders to govern without using armed force. Marx disbanded the First International in 1876 rather than leave it to Bakunin and his philosophically misguided followers.
By the time of Marx’s death in 1883, the leaders of the 1880 Socialist International (commonly called the Second International) had capitulated to liberal democrats’ demands for profiteering colonial wars ‘in the national interest’ whilst calling themselves Marxists. By then, Engels had already published his 1880 Socialism: Utopian and Scientific repudiating Second International leaders’ nationalist abandonment of the universal ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ philosophy spontaneously upheld by principled landless labourers in all industrialised parts of the world and consciously championed by him and Marx as the human condition necessary for the convivial recreation of intelligent species to continue on earth until their natural collective extinction. In his scientific critique of the finite nature of humankind’s existence on earth, Engels observed “As Kant introduced into natural science the idea of the ultimate destruction of the Earth, Fourier introduced into historical science that of the ultimate destruction of the human race.”
The racist Scramble for Africa culminated in the 1884 Berlin conference. As Feuerbach, Marx and Engels had anticipated, the pretentious ‘right’ of ‘enlightened’ ‘democratic’ governments to wage increasingly industrialised profitable ‘natural survival of the richest’ wars over the means necessary to sustain all human populations on earth until their inevitable collective natural destruction was unrepudiated by any coherent body of university professors or their protégés or people calling themselves Marxists.
Later that year, using unpublished manuscripts left by Marx, Engels explained in The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State that institutionalised patriarchy, poverty and profitable wars persist because state institutions staffed by self-serving protégés of the world’s oldest universities perpetuate sexism, racism the accumulation of private wealth and increasingly industrialised wars ‘in the national interest’, in defiance of all moral philosophy and scientific reason.
In his 1886 Ludwig Feuerbach and the End of Classical German Philosophy, Engels reiterated his repudiation of Second International leaders’ self-serving capitulation to liberal democrats’ demands for colonial wars ‘in the national interest’ whilst calling themselves Marxists.
Engels did not join the Second International. After Marx’s death, he collaborated with Eleanor Marx on editing and translating the four-volume Das Kapital and founding the 1885 internationalist Socialist League with William Morris. Engels criticised Morris for failing to understand that what Engels called ‘scientific socialism’ is not an idealist aspiration or an inevitable unconditional evolutionary development of human history, but is conditional on trade unionists recognising the need to consciously prevent all organised misuse of their collective labour waging wars ‘in the national interest’.
By 1914, most university-educated people accepted the need for ‘a war to end all wars’ including most people who called themselves Marxists. With cynical hypocrisy, most leaders who called themselves Christians or Marxists claimed that since ‘right’ was on ‘their’ side, the planned slaughter of millions of people on the ‘other’ side was righteous and necessary.
“The total number of military and civilian casualties in World War I was more than 38 million: there were over 17 million deaths and 20 million wounded, ranking it among the deadliest conflicts in human history.“
In 1917 the Bolsheviks ended the Tsar’s feudal oppression of a tenth of the world’s mainly pastoral populations. Liebknecht and Luxemburg were the leading European supporters of Lenin; they helped organise the 1919 revolt against the war victors’ economic punishment of German men, women and children, but were assassinated in the chaos. Lenin formed the 1919 Communist International (commonly called the Third International) to rally support from workers throughout the world but because of the unresolved disputes between ‘Marxist’ leaders, most workers carried on working ‘in the national interest’.
The League of Nations was formed in 1920 to oppose the Third International. Lenin denounced it as a “thieves’ kitchen” because it supported British, French, Japanese and US military incursions into the USSR, and its entrenchment of racism by reassigning the colonies assigned in Berlin in 1884 to the victor nations with the support of all university educated people including all Second International leaders.
The creeping corruption in the beleaguered embryonic democratic egalitarian cosmopolitan USSR was dwarfed by the state-enforced economic and racial discrimination and Hollywood-glorified armed racketeering and sexism in the USA. The 1929 Wall Street banking collapse plunged all industrialised countries into crisis. Hitler, Mussolini, Franco and Stalin began ordering the assassination of their sharpest critics with impunity. Regimes which had slaughtered millions of an earlier generation in a ‘war to end all wars’ began planning the industrialised annihilation of millions and millions of their children with the overwhelming approval of the world’s university-educated people, including those who called themselves ‘Marxists’.
“Over 60 million people were killed in World War II, which was about 3% of the 1940 world population.”
Trotsky his supporters risked their lives and the lives of those they loved by their criticism of the geopolitical consequences of the corruption of the self-serving Soviet bureaucracy. He founded the Fourth International in 1938 with a few dozen others under the most difficult circumstances imaginable, since Stalin was by then organising show trials and executions of his opponents and the assassination of Trotsky’s supporters anywhere in the world whilst calling himself a ‘Marxist’. Trotsky’s son was poisoned in Paris in 1938, after many previous attempts Trotsky was assassinated in Mexico in 1940, and outspoken socialist critics of the USSR continued to risk physical abuse by people calling themselves ‘Marxists’ long after Stalin’s 1943 dissolution of the Third International and his death in 1953.
Although all white people won the right to vote in the US in 1920, some black people were denied it by professional governors calling themselves ‘democrats’ until 1964. After the 2 million deaths in the racist Biafran oil war and a further 2 million deaths preceding the previously-inconceivable defeat of US forces in the racist Vietnam war, oil-exporting states began challenging US hegemony. In 1972 Nixon was forced to cancel the Bretton Woods system of global financial management, depriving the US of its UN-approved militarily-enforced debt collection revenues, and depriving all banks and other financial institutions in the world of any rational basis for evaluating the equity of their investments and inter-currency transactions.
In 1973, the previously-inconceivable military overthrow of a democratically-elected white government opposed to US hegemony was contrived in Chile, paving the way to the previously-inconceivable publicly funded US efforts to undermine any democratically elected government opposed to its profiteering military hegemony unrepudiated by any coherent body of university professors or their political protégés, in defiance of all moral and scientific reason.
Unlike the anti-communist racist League of Nations, the UN and the World Health Organisation represent the collective interests of all nations without prejudice, but — just as Feuerbach, Engels and Marx warned they would — imperialist governments and profiteering corporations continue to find enough university educated people to justify their continued profiteering exploitation of people, animals and the environment, and it is beyond rational dispute that the viability of all intelligent life on earth is becoming increasingly precarious as a consequence.
Having failed to develop a coherent analysis of the concurrent disintegration of the USSR and the unsustainable industrialisation of nuclear-armed China governed by people who call themselves ‘Marxists’, the Fourth International has disintegrated. Trotsky’s fragmented followers have failed to offer a transitional programme to counter the previously inconceivable resurgence of religious military militias, ethnic and gender strife, and the concomitant increasing precariarity of all intelligent species on earth. Whether a coherent campaign to change the world will be developed before it’s too late is unclear.
Students and teachers of history and philosophy who don’t know their Kant from their Hegel need to brush up their Feuerbach. It was Feuerbach’s critique of the German intelligentsia’s uncritical support for wars in Germans’ collective profitable self-interest, and his critique of men’s religiously institutionalised unnatural patriarchal self-righteousness that led his young followers Engels and Marx to conclude that unless organised landless labourers throughout the world consciously develop their unconsciously engendered ‘an injury to one is an injury to all’ non-violent inclusive philosophy to collectively and conscientiously prevent any intended injury of anyone anywhere on any pretext, the human condition necessary for the convivial recreation of intelligent species to continue on earth would cease to exist.
Professional pedagogues, judges and politicians including those who call themselves ‘Marxists’ who don’t know the difference between an authoritarian ideology, a utopian aspiration, and an innate instinctive compassionate human compulsion to cherish every human life until its inevitable end need to brush up their natural history, justice and philosophy.