Month: March 2019

More on Economic Inequality

Just in from Anthony Benvin:
 
In What's Wrong with Economic Inequality? you write: 
 
"The economy is not a zero-sum game. If I "mix my labour" (Locke) with the soil and grow tomatoes, I have caused new food to come into existence; I haven't taken from an existing stock . . . ."
 
You may find interesting a short essay I wrote several years ago at American Thinker.  It was intended as an economic primer of sorts to distinguish between the workings of government economic interference and less fettered economies.
 
At the risk of self-promotion I just wanted to bring it to your attention because it dovetails with the points you make here today. 
 
Thanks for your continuing blog.  Along with Neonecon you are one of my of my daily cyber visits.
 

More on the Left’s Toleration of Militant Islam

Just over the transom from Kai Frederik Lorentzen:

The French writer Pascal Bruckner, adding a historical dimension, traces the issue back not only to the Iranian revolution of 1979 but even to early Bolshevism:

" … And here is where the strangest factor in the whole Islamophobia controversy emerges: the enlistment of a part of the American and European Left in the defense of the most radical form of Islam—what one might call the neo-Bolshevik bigotry of the lost believers of Marxism. Having lost everything—the working class, the Third World—the Left clings to this illusion: Islam, rebaptized as the religion of the poor, becomes the last utopia, replacing those of Communism and decolonization for disenchanted militants. The Muslim takes the place of the proletarian.

The baton seems to have been passed at about the time of the fall of the Shah of Iran in 1979, with the resulting rise to power of Islamist revolutionaries, which was the occasion for enthusiastic commentary by Michel Foucault, among others on the left. God’s return on history’s stage had finally rendered Marxist and anticolonialist programs obsolete. The faith moved the masses better than the socialist hope. Now, it was the believer in the Koran who embodied the global hope for justice, who refused to conform to the order of things, who transcended borders and created a new international order, under the aegis of the Prophet: a green Comintern. Too bad for feminism, women’s equality, salvific doubt, the critical spirit; in short, too bad for everything traditionally associated with a progressive position.

This political attitude is manifest in progressives’ scrupulous idolatry of Muslim practices and rites, especially the Islamic veil: “modest fashion” is praised to the skies, so much so that, for certain leftist commentators, an unveiled Muslim woman who claims this right can only be a traitor, a turncoat, a woman for sale. The irony of this neocolonial solicitude for bearded men and veiled women—and for everything that suggests an oriental bazaar—is that Morocco itself, whose king is the “Commander of the Faithful,” recently forbade the wearing, sale, and manufacture of the burka in his country. Shall we call the Cherifian monarchy “Islamophobic”? Shall we be more royalist than the king?

It’s worth considering this Islamo-leftism more closely, this hope nourished by a revolutionary fringe that Islam might spearhead a new uprising, a “holy war” against global capitalism, exactly as in Baku in 1920, when Bolshevik leaders, including Zinoviev, published a joint appeal with the pan-Islamists to unleash jihad against Western imperialism. It was an English Trotskyite, Chris Harman, leader of the Socialist Workers Party, who, in 1994, provided a theory for this alliance between militant revolutionaries and radical Muslim associations, arguing for their unity, in certain circumstances, against the common enemy of capitalism and the bourgeoisie. Generations of leftists saw the working class as the messianic leaven of a radiant humanity; now, willing to flirt with the most obscurantist bigotry and to betray their own principles, they transferred their hopes to the Islamists … "

In autumn, Bruckner published a book where he elaborates the theses of his essay. I haven't read it yet, but the table of contents looks promising. While I have doubts that the political fight against the Sharia can still be won in Western Europe, things may take a turn for the better on your side of the big water. At least I hope so.

Mit besten Wünschen!

Kai
 
https://www.city-journal.org/html/theres-no-such-thing-islamophobia-15324.html
https://www.wiley.com/en-ax/An+Imaginary+Racism%3A+Islamophobia+and+Guilt-p-9781509530663
https://maverickphilosopher.typepad.com/maverick_philosopher/2019/03/what-explains-the-lefts-toleration-of-militant-islam.html

David Horowitz on the War Against Christianity

David Horowitz argues in his new book "Dark Agenda: The War to Destroy Christian America," that secularists and leftists want to turn the nation into a godless, heathen society where religion has absolutely no role.

Horowitz, who heads the David Horowitz Freedom Center in Los Angeles, is used to taking controversial positions. He is the New York Times best-selling author of "Radical Son and Big Agenda: President Trump’s Plan to Save America."

“The war on Christianity is real, and it’s right on our doorstep,” Horowitz says.

In an exclusive interview with Newsmax magazine, Horowitz details the perils facing our nation’s religious freedoms and the efforts by conservatives of all faiths to save them.

Newsmax: Many people think of the persecution of Christians as being limited to the Mideast, Far East, and Africa, far away from the United States. But that’s not true?

David Horowitz: No, it’s very bad in the U.S. This war against Christianity is a war of the left, which is the Democratic Party, because Christian values are incompatible with the social justice delusions of the left. Everything about Christianity — the sanctity of the individual, the individual soul, individual accountability and equality — all these things are anathema to the left. Efforts to keep religion out of daily life continue to grow, such as school prayers and public displays of faith.

But you argue that’s not what our founding fathers intended.

Horowitz: That’s right. The First Amendment prevents the government from prohibiting the free exercise of religion, but the left has attacked that clause. Jefferson acknowledged a wall of church-state separation, but all that meant was the state won’t make one religion like Anglicanism the official religion and persecute the other religions. The American Civil Liberties Union stood that reassurance on its head with “wall of separation between church and state” becoming a bumper-sticker slogan for leftists and secularists who want to silence religious people and marginalize their beliefs. You describe yourself as an atheist Jew.

Why would a Jewish skeptic write a book coming to the defense of Christians in America?

Horowitz: It was prompted by the murder in 1974 of a friend of mine, Betty Van Patter, a dedicated leftist and mother of three who was a bookkeeper at the New Left magazine Ramparts, which I edited. I had raised money to buy a Baptist church and turn it into a school for the Black Panthers; after Betty discovered the Panthers had doctored their books, she was raped, tortured, and beaten to death. I investigated and found the Panther Party was a criminal gang engaging in extortion, arson, drug trafficking, and murder. Still, their leaders received the support of the American left which defended the killers because they were the voices of the oppressed and champions of the progressive clause.

How does President Donald Trump fit into the fabric of American Christianity today?

Horowitz: He’s terrific for America. He’s a great patriot, and I think that’s what inspired the Evangelicals to support him. He wouldn’t have been elected without them.

What is your view of the Democratic Party?

Horowitz: It no longer respects equality. It’s a racist party. White people, males, and straight males are guilty before the fact, and people of color, women, and gays are innocent, even if the facts show they’re guilty.

Will the persecution of Christians be a big issue in the upcoming 2020 presidential election?

Horowitz: Oh, totally! It’s going to be a huge issue. Once either [Supreme Court Justices] Ruth Bader Ginsberg or Clarence Thomas retire, and Trump nominates this Catholic woman [believed to be U.S. Circuit Judge Amy Coney Barrett] there’s going to be a battle.

Do you believe Roe v. Wade will be overturned?
Horowitz: I hope so. This is a war. The left wants to kill babies outside the womb; they’re baby killers. Their slogan “pro-choice” is completely fraudulent, because they make choices. You have to choose to have sex, you have to choose who to have sex with, you have to choose whether to use contraception or not . . . or if something goes awry you have to choose not to use the morning-after pill, or to give birth to the baby and find it an adoptive mother, or kill it. It’s not about choice or reproductive freedom B.S.

You say the catalyst for writing the book was the intolerance of the left. Can you explain?

Horowitz: Before I began writing the book and was becoming acquainted with all of the issues, I thought the persecution of Christians was a somewhat parochial issue. I [began having] sympathy for this community because the left is being so intolerant . . . Now I see it as a central battle. The country is at stake. The left wants a one-party state, you can see that. How can you have a resistance to a dually elected president? It’s sedition. It’s treason, in the normal sense of the word, to obstruct a president. Everything that’s running the Democratic Party today is obstructionism. You can’t have a democracy if you don’t accept the legitimacy of an election. I mean, that is fundamental.

What Explains the Left’s Toleration of Militant Islam?

From 1789 on, a defining characteristic of the Left has been hostility to religion, especially in its institutionalized forms. This goes together with a commitment to such Enlightenment values as individual liberty, belief in reason, and equality, including equality among the races and between the sexes. Thus the last thing one would expect from the Left is an alignment with militant Islam given the latter’s philosophically unsophisticated religiosity bordering on rank superstition, its totalitarian moralism, its voluntaristic suppression of reason, and its opposition to gender equality.

So why is the radical Left soft on militant Islam?  The values of the progressive creed are antithetic to those of the Islamists, and it is quite clear that if the Islamists got everything they wanted, namely, the imposition of Islamic law on the entire world, our dear progressives would soon find themselves headless. I don’t imagine that they long to live under Sharia, where ‘getting stoned’ would have more than metaphorical meaning. So what explains this bizarre alignment?

1. One point of similarity between radical leftists and Islamists is that both are totalitarians. As David Horowitz writes in Unholy Alliance: Radical Islam and the American Left (Regnery, 2004) , "Both movements are totalitarian in their desire to extend the revolutionary law into the sphere of private life, and both are exacting in the justice they administer and the loyalty they demand." (p. 124)

2. Horowitz points to another similarity when he writes, "The radical Islamist believes that by conquering nations and instituting sharia, he can redeem the world for Allah. The socialist’s faith is in using state power and violent means to eliminate private property and thereby usher in the millenium." (129)

Perhaps we could say that the utopianism of the Left is a quasi-religion with a sort of secular eschatology. The leftist dreams of an eschaton ushered in by human effort alone, a millenial state that could be described as pie-in-the-future as opposed to pie-in-the-sky. When this millenial state is achieved, religion in its traditional form will disappear. Its narcotic satisfactions will no longer be in demand. Religion is the "sigh of the oppressed creature," (Marx) a sigh that arises within a contingent socioeconomic arrangement that can be overturned. When it is overturned, religion will disappear.

3. This allows us to explain why the secular radical does not take seriously the religious pathology of radical Islam. "The secular radical believes that religion itself is merely an expression of real-world misery, for which capitalist property is ultimately responsible." (129) The overthrow of capitalist America will eliminate the need for religion. This "will liberate Islamic fanatics from the need to be Islamic and fanatic." (130)

Building on Horowitz’s point, I would say the leftist in his naïveté  fails to grasp that religion, however we finally resolve the question of its validity or lack thereof, is deeply rooted in human nature. As Schopenhauer points out, man is a metaphysical animal, and religion is one expression of the metaphysical urge.  Every temple, church, and mosque is evidence of man's being an animal metaphysicum.   As such, religion is not a merely contingent expression of a contingent misery produced by a contingent state of society. On the contrary, as grounded in human nature, religion answers to a misery, sense of abandonment, and need for meaning essential to the human predicament as such, a predicament the amelioration of which cannot be brought about by any merely human effort, whether individual or collective. Whether or not religion can deliver what it promises, it answers to real and ineradicable human needs for meaning and purpose, needs that only a utopian could imagine being satisfied in a state of society brought about by human effort alone.

In their dangerous naïveté, leftists thinks that they can use radical Islam to help destroy the capitalist USA, and, once that is accomplished, radical Islam will ‘wither away.’ But they will ‘wither away’ before Islamo-fanaticism does. They think they can use genuine fascist theocracy to defeat the ‘fascist theocracy’ of the USA. They are deluding themselves.

Residing in their utopian Wolkenskukuheim — a wonderful word I found in Schopenhauer translatable as 'Cloud Cuckoo Land' — radical leftists are wrong about religion, wrong about human nature, wrong about the terrorist threat, wrong about the ‘fascist theocracy’ of conservatives, wrong about economics; in short, they are wrong about reality.

Leftists  are delusional reality-deniers.  Now that they are in our government, we are in grave danger.  I sincerely hope that people do not need a 'nuclear event' to wake them up.  Political Correctness can get you killed.

Prandial and Post-Prandial Pleasures

With Brian B. and Mike V. at Los Locos Gringos, my favorite local Mexican eatery. There is nothing better than a good meal and good conversation with like-minded friends. After Mike sped away on his iron horse, Brian and I spent the rest of the afternoon playing chess at Gecko Espresso. Mike, on the right, is one sharp-dressed man these days. Me? I am still of the '60s sartorially speaking. 

Image may contain: 2 people, including Michael Valle, people smiling, people sitting, people eating, table, food and indoor
 
 
 
 

 

What’s Wrong with Economic Inequality?

We are naturally unequal with respect to empirical attributes, both as individuals and as groups, and this inequality results in economic inequality. Is this inequality evil? Why should it be?  Is economic inequality as such morally wrong? I have a right to what I have acquired by my honest hard work, deferral of gratification, and practice of the ancient virtues. It is therefore to be expected that I will end up with a higher net worth than that of people who lack my abilities and virtues.  It seems to follow that there is nothing morally wrong with economic inequality as such.

The economy is not a zero-sum game. If I "mix my labour" (Locke) with the soil and grow tomatoes, I have caused new food to come into existence; I haven't taken from an existing stock of tomatoes with the result that others must get fewer.  If my lazy neighbor demands some of my tomatoes, I will tell him to go to hell; but if he asks me in a nice way, then I will give him some. In this way, he benefits from my labor without doing anything. Some of my tomatoes 'trickle down' to him.  To mix some metaphors, a rising tide lifts all boats. Lefties hate this conservative boilerplate which is why I repeat it. It's true and it works. When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a job? When was the last time a poor man gave anyone a loan?  When was the last time a poor man made a contribution to a charity?  Who pays taxes? 

I deserve what I acquire by the virtuous exercise of my abilities. But do I deserve my abilities? No, but I  have a right to them. I have a right to things I don't deserve. Nature gave me binocular vision but only monaural hearing. Do I deserve my two good eyes? No, but I have a right to them. Therefore, I am under no moral obligation to give one of my eyes to a sightless person. (If memory serves, R. Nozick makes a similar point in Anarchy, State, and Utopia.)

At this point someone might object that it is just not fair that some of us are better placed and better endowed than others, and that therefore it is a legitimate function of government to redistribute wealth to offset the resultant economic inequality. But never forget that government is coercive by its very nature and run by people who are intellectually and morally no better, and often worse, than the rest of us. Their power corrupts them and you can be sure they will do all they can to preserve their power, pelf, and privileges all the while professing to be democrats and egalitarians.

The levellers are not on the same level as us, and they are often 'not on the level.' You catch my drift, no doubt.

The equalizers have vastly unequal power compared to us.  So there is a bit of a paradox here, to put it mildly. One would have to be quite the utopian to imagine  that the socialist-communist  Leviathan will "wither away" in the fullness of time, as Lenin and Lennon 'imagined.'

And surely it is the silly liberal who imagines that we are the government or that the government is us. That is mendacity that approximates unto the Orwellian.

The evil of massive, omni-intrusive government is far worse than economic equality is good. Besides, lack of money is rooted in lack of virtue, and government cannot teach people to be virtuous. If Bill Gates' billions were stripped from him and given to the the bums of San Francisco, in ten year's time Gates would be back on top and the bums would be back in the gutters.

Perhaps we can say that economic inequality, though axiologically suboptimal, is nonetheless not morally evil given the way the world actually works with people having the sorts of incentives that they actually have, etc.  There is nothing wrong with economic inequality as long as every citizen has the bare minimum.  But illegal aliens have no right to any government handouts.

Why Would Anyone Consider Islam a Race?

Islam is obviously not a race, but a religion.  If you hesitate to call Islam a religion, then it is either a political ideology masquerading as a religion, or a hybrid ideology that blends features of religion and political ideology, or a Christian heresy.  On any of these interpretations it is not a race.  That should be perfectly clear.

No race has apostates. Islam has apostates. Ergo, etc.

With respect to religions and political ideologies, there are conversions and de-conversions. One cannot convert to, or de-convert from, one's race. Ergo, etc.

Why then do some want to call Islam a race?  Here is a very plausible answer. I know of no better:

Criticizing Islam is not racism.  There is no such thing as "anti-Muslim racism" any more than there is "anti-Christian racism," "anti-Republican racism," or "anti-Capitalist racism." 

So why would anyone claim differently?

It is because the battle over Islam is being fought in the West, the only arena in which it can still be critically debated.  It is also here that repugnance toward racism is strong and nearly universal.  From politics to high-risk mortgages and illegal immigration, fear of the race card is one of the strongest influences on public policy.

At the same time, it is nearly impossible to defend Islam on its own merits in the West in free and open debate.  According to its own texts, the religion was founded in terror.  Its political and social code is deeply incompatible with liberal values.

Muslims societies usually rely on threat of violence to suppress intellectual critique of Islam and the freedom of other religion to fairly compete, which, if allowed, would be the slow death of Islam.  Their counterparts in the West have learned to rely on the race card.  If they can paint any criticism of their religion as "racism," then the massive evidence against Islam can be dismissed out of hand without having to contend with it.

Slinging the worst of all slurs to compensate for deficiency of fact and logic is weak enough, but it is ironic given that what is being defended in such cheap fashion is an ideology that is overtly supremacist in nature. 

That's right. Islam is supremacist in nature. Not racially supremacist, but ideologically supremacist. Leftists try to hide this fact by calling critics of Islam racists, from which they then slide to the vicious slur that these critics are white supremacists, which brings them back to the 'race card,' the only card in their deck and the one they never leave home without.

Et in Arcadia Ego

 

Et in arcadia egoDeath says, "I too am in Arcadia."

The contemplation of death, one's own in particular, cures one of the conceit that this life has a meaning absolute and self-contained.  Only those who live naively in this world, hiding from themselves the fact of death, flirting with transhumanist arcadian and other utopian fantasies, can accord to this life the ultimate in reality and importance.

If you deny a life beyond the grave, I won't consider you foolish or even unreasonable.  But if you anticipate a paradise on earth, I will consider you both.  And if you work to attain such a state in defiance of morality, then I will consider you evil, as evil as the Communists of the 20th century who murdered 100 million to realize their impossible fantasies. 

Guercino – Et in Arcadia Ego – 1618-22 – Roma, Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini

The Seductive Sophistry of Alan Watts

 

Alan wattsHere. (An entertaining video clip, not too long, that sums up his main doctrine.)

Alan Watts was a significant contributor to the Zeitgeist of the 1960s.  Just as many in those days were 'turned on' to philosophy by Ayn Rand, others such as myself were pushed toward philosophy by, among other things,  Alan Watts and his writings.  But early on I realized that there was much of the pied piper and sophist about him.  He once aptly described himself as a "philosophical entertainer" as opposed to an academic philosopher.  Entertaining he was indeed.

I heard him speak on 17 January 1973 in the last year of his life .  He appeared to be well into his cups that evening, though in control.  Alcohol may have been a major contributor to his early death at age 58 on 16 November 1973. (See Wikipedia)  What follows is a journal entry of mine written 18 January 1973.

………………..

I attended a lecture by Alan Watts last night at El Camino Junior College. Extremely provocative and entertaining.  A good comparing and contrasting of Jewish, Christian, Islamic, Hindu and Chinese views. 

At random:  One must give up the desire to be secure, the desire to control.  Ego as totally illusory entity which is really nothing but a composite of one's image of oneself and certain muscular tensions which arise with attempts to achieve, grasp, and hold on.  The self as opposed to the ego is God, God who forgot who he was.  The world (cosmos) as God's dream.  Thus the self-same Godhead reposes in each individual.  There is no spiritual individuality.  And therefore, it seems, no possibility of personal relations. 

Consider the I-Thou relation.  It presupposes two distinct but relatable entities.  If there is only one homogeneous substance, how can there be relation?  But perhaps I'm misinterpreting the Wattsian-Hindu view by thinking of the Hindu deity as substance rather than as function, process.  Watts himself denies the existence of substance.  Last night he made the well-known point  as to the linguistic origin of the notion of substance.  [This is of course not a "well-known point."]

Denial of the ego — i.e. its relegation to the sphere of illusion — would seem to go hand in hand with denial of substance.  [Good point, young man!] Watts seems very close to a pseudo-scientific metaphysics.  He posits a continuum of vibrations  with the frequency of the vibrations  determining tangible, physical qualities.  Yet he also says that "We will always find smaller particles"; that "We're doing it"; that the fundamental reality science supposedly  uncovers is a mental, a theoretical, construct.

Thus, simultaneously, a reliance on a scientific pseudo-metaphysics AND the discrediting of the scientific view of reality.

Jerking Toward Social Collapse

Thanks to 'progressives,' our 'progress' toward social and cultural collapse seems not be proceeding at a constant speed, but to be accelerating.  But perhaps a better metaphor from the lexicon of physics is jerking.  After all, our 'progress' is jerkwad-driven.  No need to name names.  You know who they are.

From your college physics you may recall that the first derivative of position with respect to time is velocity, while the second derivative is acceleration.  Lesser known is the third derivative: jerk.  (I am not joking; look it up.)  If acceleration is the rate of change of velocity, jerk, also known as jolt, is the rate of change of acceleration.

If you were studying something in college, and not majoring in, say, Grievance Studies, then you probably know that all three, velocity, acceleration, and jerk are vectors, not scalars.  Each has a magnitude and a direction.  This is why a satellite orbiting the earth is constantly changing its velocity despite its constant speed.

The 'progressive' jerk too has its direction:  the end of civilization as we know it.

Capitalism, Competition, and Cooperation

One reason capitalism is superior to socialism is because competition is good and breeds excellence.  It also fits with human nature.  People are justifiably concerned with their own well-being first of all and will strive mightily to enhance it.  They are much less motivated to work for 'the common good,' especially if what that is is decided by an omni-intrusive state apparatus vastly unequal in power to the people, an apparatus that violates their liberty and removes their incentives to work.

But my main point is that competition is good.

Liberals tend to oppose cooperation to competition, and vice versa, as if they excluded each other. "We need more cooperation and less competition." One frequently hears that from liberals. But competition is a form of cooperation. As such, it cannot be opposed to cooperation. One cannot oppose a species to its genus.

Consider competitive games and sports. The chess player aims to beat his opponent, and he expects his opponent to share this aim: No serious player enjoys beating someone who is not doing his best to   beat him. But the competition is predicated upon cooperation and is impossible without it. There are the rules of the game and the various protocols governing behavior at the board. These are agreed upon and respected by the players and they form the cooperative context in which the competition unfolds. We must work together (co-operate) for one of us to emerge the victor. And in this competitive cooperation both of us are benefited.

Is there any competitive game or sport for which this does not hold? At the Boston Marathon in 1980, a meshuggeneh lady by the name of Rosie Ruiz jumped into the race ahead of the female leaders and before the finish line. She seemed to many to have won the race in the female category.  But she was soon disqualified. She wasn't competing because she wasn't cooperating.  Cooperation is a necessary condition of competition.

In the business world, competition is fierce indeed. But even here it presupposes cooperation. Fed Ex aims to cut into UPS'  business – but not by assassinating their drivers. If Fed Ex did this, it would be out of business. It would lose favor with the public, and the police and regulatory agencies would be on its case. The refusal to cooperate would make it uncompetitive. 'Cut throat' competition does not pay in the long run and makes the 'cut throat' uncompetitive.

If you and I are competing for the same job, are we cooperating with each other? Yes, in the sense that our behavior is rule-governed. We agree to accept the rules and we work together so that the better of us gets the appointment. The prosecution and the defense, though in opposition to each other, must cooperate if the trial is to proceed. And similarly in other cases.

Competition, then, contrary to liberal dogma, is not opposed to cooperation. Moreover, competition is good in that it breeds excellence, a point unappreciated, or insufficiently appreciated, by liberals. This marvellous technology we bloggers use every day — how do our liberal friends think it arose? Do they have any idea why it is so inexpensive?  Competition!

Not only does competition make you better than you would have been without it, it humbles you.  It puts you in your place.  It assigns you your rightful position in life's hierarchy.  And life is hierarchical.  The levellers may not like it but hierarchies have a way of reestablishing themselves. 

Stalin on Philology

For insight into the depredations suffered by science and scholarship in Stalin's USSR, I recommend Chapter 4 of Volume III of Leszek Kolakowski's magisterial Main Currents of Marxism (Oxford, 1978). It is astonishing what happened to literature, philosophy, economics, physics, cosmology, and genetics in the Workers' Paradise. Not even philology was spared. Kolakowski, pp. 141-142:

In the first few days of the Korean War, when international tension was at its height, Stalin added to his existing titles as the leader of progressive humanity, the supreme philosopher, scientist, strategist, etc., the further distinction of being the world's greatest philologist. (As far as is known, his linguistic attainments were confined to Russian and his native Georgian.) In May 1950 Pravda had published a symposium on the theoretical problems of linguistics and especially the theories of Nikolay Y. Marr (1864-1934). Marr, a specialist in the Caucasian languages, had endeavoured towards the end of his life to construct a system of Marxist linguistics and was regarded in the Soviet Union as the supreme authority in this field: linguists who rejected his fantasies were harassed and persecuted. His theory was that language was a form of 'ideology' and, as such, belonged to the superstructure and was part of the class system. . . .

Stalin intervened in the debate with an article published in Pravda on 29 June, followed by four explanatory answers to readers' letters. He roundly condemned Marr's theory, declaring that language was not part of the superstructure and was not ideological in character. . . .

The Marrists were ousted from the domain of linguistics. . . .

Don't say it can't happen here.  It is happening here as witness the ideological tainting of climatology by the gasbags of global warming.