February 9. Political Chart + Fascism & Marxism

Before I do anything with it, let me make it perfectly clear that the chart is simply a schematic, -- it's a diagram to help you understand. It is not absolute truth. The nice part about being a social scientist is if it's 51 percent true, it makes it true. So keep that in mind when you say, "Well, I don't fit there." Well, yeah. You don't probably, that's not the issue. You might -- you just don't want to admit it. That's another story, but not all groups have people in it that fit the concepts either. We'll talk about groups that don't fit the chart and some have individuals that join groups that don't fit the chart because they're what we're going to call true believers and distinguish between them and a true faith. So keep that in mind as I go through this because I think it aids us in understanding it. Philosophically it helps us understand terminology and it helps us place concepts to know what various groups are and what they support.

There are other charts. The libertarian party has it's own chart that works for them and I'll show them a little later. And then there is the concept that the chart really isn't a straight line, but a circle. The people who talk about it coming together and almost touching in a circle form usually are looking at it from a practical reality rather than philosophically and that doesn't help you understand. Which is my intent. It is very true that at times people on both extremes can hop back and forth, but that's not because of philosophy. It's usually because of actions, activities more so than not, because they're true believers and not people that have a true philosophy and I'll explain that hopefully as -- Left right and center. After doing the assignment and everything, although I think you understood the chart, you may not always understand the positions of various groups. But to review with you the concept of the chart again, the center wants things to pretty much stay the way they are. The center does not necessarily want change. If it does support any change, it's minor change. Minor. Either way. So the center wants to support the status quo, the way things are. The left and the right want change. The further the left you go, the faster the change, the greater the change. The further right you go, the greater the change, the faster the change.

One of the problems I found with students understanding this chart, especially discussing it on the Internet course the other night, is that for some reason there is the feeling that change can only go in one direction. Change can go in both directions. It's not that the left only wants change and the
right wants to stay the same. No, the center wants to stay the same. The right also wants change. Some of you understood -what is the difference between the change the left and the right want? The right wants to go back to the way things were. And the left, therefore, wants to go towards the future wants to go ahead. So something new. More hope? Open? No. Open means like open a door and it doesn't have meaning. Open-minded. They're more open-minded. Not necessarily. I think that's debatable.

A. Like, the right is more old-fashioned?

Well, it's a biased statement that the people on the left are open-minded and the right is closed-minded. I'm not sure that that is what we would call a prejudicial statement based on your own philosophy. I would object to the fact that they are not open-minded but from this perspective, just like the left is open-minded from its own perspective. We have to be very careful with our approaches, everybody, including myself. There's a certain value system that we have to -- we have to get out of us and understand this. The value system is not just you, it's basically America. In the sense that Americans tend to look to the future and into new things as good. We have had a history of looking to change in the future. And therefore, that change we see is good. And open minded is a good word in our mind. However, we're putting a value judgment on something rather than just saying the left wants to go to new, the right wants to go old. So the left wants change new. And of course being a person on the left, I would obviously argue that all right wingers are closed-minded. And I'll tell you they'd say the same thing about me. So we have to take your values and realize that we have to do our best to block it. So the left wants to go forward to the future. And the right wants to go back to the past. The left supports progress which is a key word in America. We've always pushed progress. Well, the right wants regress. Return. And so we run into a problem. The problem is that we have a bias in this country towards progress which explains something about Americans. Most have been somewhat left of center. Okay? Traditionally Americans have supported change. Evolutionary change, slow change, it happened basically liberal. It is true then in recent years we see more and more merges moving towards the right and some there have always been ultra conservatives. But the reality is that most Americans really are today in the center of the chart. And that center may have been wired at certain points, but we can communicate and go back and forth because we are people who basically see things pretty much the same. With minor differences.

In other countries, their system doesn't work often because there are such extremes. People are on the extreme left or right and they're fighting and disagreeing all the time. Americans have an ability to interact and compromise. Historically perhaps, because of groups, De Toqueville said because of that we move back and forth a little, people may get upset. Because they see it as a tremendous change, but in reality they're minor changes. People from other countries look and laugh at the difference between our parties, often referring to them as Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum, meaning what? What would -- they were from Alice In Wonderland. They were what? They were -- can you picture them from the cartoon? What did they look like? They were -- ugly. Short. and they were funny looking. What was the difference in their looks? They were identical twins. No difference. I think in their teeth one had a gap. They were identical twins. And so when we say Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum, republicans and democrats are the same, maybe little gap in their teeth. Yes.

Any questions? Now there are a couple of other things in that chart you did in the first interface that in a sense could be put on this. I had distrust/trust. Where would you put distrust/trust on this? Distrust would be in the left and trust would be on the right. I'd reverse it the other way. Trust on the left, distrust on the right, why? When you want to move forward and you don't know what comes in the future, so you're more trusting of everybody else. I think you have to be trusting. If you want to have change now you have to trust. It's going to work. People who want to go back don't feel the future is good. They don't feel things are working. They want to go back to things that did work and so there's a certain distrust. Remember, this is a generalization, okay? Please, I don't say that applies to you or everyone, but I think you can understand where that will logically make sense. I think. And on the same level, if you're on the left and you tend to trust, then you tend to think that people are basically good or will be good. They can be made good if they were born with a blank slate because then you're going to something new. However, on the extreme right, the idea is well, you know, probably you can't trust the people. And probably a good
percentage are evil and they're not going to change. It's human nature, you know, look out for the other guy, or something of that nature. You've got to feel that they're a little more to the right of the chart. And just things people say politically gives you an idea if they're looking forward to the past things that worked, you know, they're going to be from the center towards the right if they're coming up with new ideas, new approaches, things that have never been. Then, you know, they're probably introducing concepts towards the left- And other kinds of approaches.

I'm a historian- And if I could enter a time machine, what period of history would I want to go to? Yeah, I'd love to see the Greeks and the Romans and all those things, but if I had my choice, the first place I would go would be the future. I would like to go meet Captain Piccard. Okay, Captain Kirk. Mr. Spock. That tells you that I lean towards the left. It doesn't tell you how far left. But it tells you I'm more interested in the future than I am in going into the past and that, in a sense, I
think gives you an indication of how a person might vote, too, politically and what the political position of the candidate would be based upon questions of that nature.
The first word on the chart that I asked you to place here was conservative. Where did you put it? Center. In the center because my book said so? Why did you put it in the center? Well, conservative usually means you have a tendency to keep things the same. You may want to change back or ahead because mainly the word is there. Conservative has within it the word that it comes from which is conserve. It wants to conserve, maintain the system. Today, because Americans have tended to be more liberal/conservative, in reality many conservatives are ultra conservative and it was Gore Vidal, a writer, an author who recently said that Americans are no longer liberal/conservative we're conservative and ultra -- and we'll explain as we go along.

So conservatives want to basically conserve the system. We have changed the words for conservatives. The true conservative is often referred to today as a moderate. So in our country, we tend to look at conservatives as somewhat right of the center. Probably where I put ultra conservative on the chart. I don't think that is a valid commentary. Wants little change. The main philosopher of conservatism is a man named Edmond Burke. Edmond Burke. A British philosopher 1700s and 1800s who set forth the underlying principles of rational, reasonable, considerate, change. In contrast of the course to what was happening at the time, France, the French revolution, he saw that as destructive to people and society and therefore talked about what would be more productive and that was making change. In relationship to your own society and analyzing it and taking your time rather than jumping into things head first. Questions on conservatism?

Q What did you say about him?
A. He was the main philosopher of conservatism. Spelling out the real underlying concepts of it.
I don't know if I mentioned, but the chart comes from the French revolution as to the way people were seated in the national assembly. On the right were the monarchist. More to the left are the Jirondists and the Mountain and finally the extreme right we had the supporters of the -- what do you call it? The word slipped my mind. The upper class wore nickers and so that is the -- the pants, full pants were really so it was really -- three quarter pants that you people I don't think kids wear that very much today.

Democratic party. Where'd you put it? Towards the left. A little to the left. I wouldn't put it far left, certainly. I would say that there are people that are in the liberal area today and a little further left than liberal, like Jessie Jackson, like at Ted Kennedy and the Kennedy during John F, the party was probably liberal. The New Deal of Franklin Roosevelt. They came up with all kinds of changes with American politics in society. As did the new frontier of John F. Kennedy and the great
society of Lyndon Johnson. Yet the democrats today are trying to hold onto change. They're fighting to maintain what was done during the Roosevelt years and the Johnson years of the
'60s. And so they've come more to the center. Already some desires for change. Democratic party still advocates more rights for women, if you will. Rights for gays. And of course, the big policy that was new that was pushed by Clinton, but went no where, was the program for a National Health Care program. Medicaid, Medicare are for senior citizens basically or into social security. But this would be for anybody that does not have coverage and even might include people with children, but they never spelled out the details and somehow it got lost.

Where'd you put the republicans? How far right? Not too far, maybe halfway between center and right. Well I would think that the republican party was at that ultra conservative position. I think it moved further towards the center today, but it doesn't say you're wrong. But that could be and I would perhaps debate it, not to say that they're not there. The Christian coalition. So, I wouldn't put it necessarily here more. Here the republican party. The democratic party here. But that's my putting it there, doesn't make it right. Putting it here is just as accurate if your reasons are right. That's why you asked for reason as to why you put something where you did. That shows you that we have that sort of closeness that might justify the term Tweedle Dee Tweedle Dum.
KKK? Extreme right? The KKK, I would put on the extreme right in this country, yes. Why? Because the KKK hates that ethnic -- they want to go with white power, other groups, the ethnic groups they're totally against. They want a white dominant. Why is that right? The fact is it's true, but why does it make it right to the right of the chart? I was going to say they wanted to return to the 1950s toward the term when there was segregation. Well they want to return to -- many of them want slavery. They want to go back to a period of time when those minorities were put in their place and control if not eliminate them. Even if it wasn't real and what we had an all white America. Their desire is to return to their all white America or at least white power. So it's the return that makes them right. Not sure it's just 1950. I'm not sure if they want to return to 1750. Maybe I'm giving them too much credit.

Neo-Nazi or just Nazis? Where would you put them? on the right. Yeah. Same, on the right. Why? They're the same as the KKK. They are very much today in the new neo-Nazis in some way however they'd still be in other right in the sense of wanting an all white power America. Returning to white America getting rid of the minorities, ethnic groups, and religious groups that are not Protestant. What's the difference between a neo-Nazi and the old Nazi? Well I was just going to say I thought the old Nazi were just oh, Hitler wanted to eliminate any, well Slavs are a good example, but gypsy were evil, Jehovah's Witness and one of the big -- Christians. Hitler didn't want the twisted because he wanted to rush to the old Germanic Aryan gods, the gods of the true Teutonics, the true Germans: Thor, Arnold Schwartzenegger. And many priests and nuns wound up in prison camps. They weren't exterminated as the Jews were or the gypsies or some other groups because if you recall in the 1936 Olympics, some of the shows on -obviously, you don't recall. Even I wasn't alive in 1936, close, but not quite on the ball. Jessie Owens upset the Nazi establishment by winning four gold medals and stood out and it really upset the Nazi establishment. At least that's the way it appears in all of the newspapers and pictures. Hitler was out to show Aryan supremacy and the superiority of the white. Blond, blue eyed.

The difference, I just stated. The neo-Nazi have adopted Christianity. They have created churches and rejected the attempt to return to the Teutonic. Even if they still use it as a symbol. They've created therefore an alliance with the KKK who used to hate them because they saw them as anti-American, German, anti-Christian. Burning of the cross, purifying of America. Symbolic of the purifying of America. Both the Nazis and the KKK believe in a superior race and leader. Who knows what's best for the race over many other races who were evil who should either be eliminated or enslaved. And from the German's, we have the word slave which comes from the Slavs. Of course we're not talking about Nazi Germany because the tribes moving into that area in the 14th century. So there was something in the tradition of Germany and the German racism
that exist, which by the way, was established for a short period of time before the Muslims came into Spain and opened up the door to racial acceptance in Spain. The first group to take
over was a group called the Bisagots and they set up a philosophy and oppression in the 500 and 600 A.D. Period of time. So there was definitely something in the nature that will -- well, not nature in the sense of nature, but something in the history of the Germanic people that Hitler was able to build on. And you can see why the KKK say it has an Aryan philosophy.

The new neo-Nazi do something else that is frightening, compared to the old Nazi maybe. Although they're both frightening in some ways from my perspective. They do a lot of their recruitment from the prisons, which the old ones may have recruited from the bums on the street. The reason for the
prison recruitment which is very valid, is that the prisons are divided dramatically by race. And to survive, you need to belong to one of the racial gangs and the Aryan Brotherhood is one of the most powerful white gangs in the prisons and many of them join the brotherhood and when they get out, they maintain their alliance which is a Nazi kind of organization.

Groups on the right are often grouped together with a couple of words. One word that is used to group the groups is reactionary. Another term inaccurately used, but certainly used, making this therefore usable, is fascist. We tend to refer to all of the groups on the right as fascists. What does that mean? I'm going to talk a little bit about it because fascist, as I say, groups everyone on the right. So if you want to know what it means basically all those groups that support one race, superior to others, want to go back in time like the right wing wants to do, wants a leader, okay? And therefore wants an authoritarian government to control evil. But any group on the right does that. Now what it means, and I think what I was referring to in my question to you, is that it is different than what it really means. Fascism was the philosophy of what world leader? Mussolini. From Italy. And what it means is the Italian philosophy that ran the country of Italy. It's not used that way anymore because Mussolini is dead and fascism still exists, but doesn't rule Italy. It was often identified as similar to Nazism which it is, why? Because fascism has the same philosophy of that extreme right. Which we identified and mentioned a couple of minutes ago.

However, there are some differences between the Nazis and the fascists The nature difference is that while both want inferior and weak people to be enslaved, the Nazis, went a step further. They advocated the Genocide of certain evil inferior groups. Mussolini never advocated genocide. In fact, he resisted sending Jews and others to the death camps until he was captured by the allies. And then Hitler rescued him, set him back up in northern Italy as the ruler, at this point he had no choice. He went and began the exportation of Jews and gypsies and others to the death camps in Hungary and Holland. So that's a major difference. I think all those, not the only ones, there was an economic difference in the sense of the structure. Fascism was structured around the factories and the leadership in the factories. Sort of the working class leadership under the dictatorship of Mussolini. Very interesting. So it had the support of the what we might call unions. Nazism finally went out creating monopoly control through some of the Nazi leaders. Did not really emphasize as it expanded the working class, and I think this was the reason for that, Hitler knew that his ability to come to power very much rested on the money interest. Today's paper indicated that new studies are showing that some of the major German banks lent the Nazis money to build the death camps, the gas chambers and those kinds of cities are coming out now that they're going into the research papers the papers are being opened and they're finding the loans, they're finding what kind of payment so that the industries and the banking industry were very much Hitler in the involvement of the society itself. The government started many industries there and turns it over to other Nazis is Volkswagen. And the money and funding from it came from the government itself. I apologize to you that I can't answer a question very simply. I know people would want one little definition, makes it easy for memorization, but I'd rather you understood it than tried to memorize what fascism is -- and give you five words. Okay?

Communist workers party? Where did you put them? Yeah. The extreme left in our country for sure. Although, you don't know the worker's party, you know, the term communism. It doesn't
matter. There may be little difference between the numerous communist parties in this country and maybe we may mention some in class, but it's not a major element in the course to talk about the communist party in this country, however, it is on the extreme left. Why? Because they tend to have workers and everybody else is equal and they don't worry about who's rich and poor. Everybody's equal. Because of that, I put them in the middle actually. Again, you're missing the one element.
Everything you said is valid except maybe the middle about the communist talking about the people being equal and everybody sharing, but why is that left? You've got to get that word in there. If you don't get that word, it's going to impact your exam grade. What is missing from the argument?
That everybody being equal and everybody sharing is something that hadn't been and therefore it's something new. CHANGE.

Okay now you've got to keep in mind the chart when we explain it on the exam, people. New/old. Change/no change. moving forward/future. Communism sees it as a future. Not as it exists now. If you put them in the middle, you will be arguing that we all exist equally today. And that we all share equally, but I'm not sure many of us would accept that. As a philosophy, okay? So you've got to get your patterns of understanding in line with why they fit where they do on the chart. Is everybody -- ask so it shouldn't be that hard. Key words that you need to throw in an exam or in your answers on the interfaces. It's new. It's old. They want to go ahead to it. They want to go
back to it. At that point, you got your A. Everything else you say, becomes irrelevant if you don't put in the other concepts. Any questions on that?

So we're saying communism never existed? Yeah, I'm saying it never existed. Then what the hell was the Soviet Union? An attempt? Okay, was it an attempt? Yes, perhaps it was. The first stage or not necessarily first stage, but the stage right before communism, and what did we call that stage? Socialism? Yeah, it was the union of the Soviet socialist republics. You have just learned something about Marxism philosophy. That socialism is the stage before communism. And that you have, according to Marx, have to go through socialism first before you're going to enter communism. So Russia never got to communism, right? Because what is communism? She said it's all people equal. It's all people sharing. No main government.

When you have no government, what is it called? Anarchy. In socialism do you have government? Yes. You have absolute government in many ways, don't you? So somehow we go from absolute to government and this is where Marx becomes involved in trying to explain how it's supposed to happen without giving details. But to Marx, the socialist government is going to lead no government or anarchy. But communism is the way to get to anarchy. There are anarchists and they want to create it immediately & there are socialists who were not Marxist who will have the end. To Marx, socialism is a means to the end, and the end is communism. Any questions on that so far?

By the way, Marxism and communism are synonymous. It means they're the same. Why are Marxism and communism synonymous? Marx was the modern philosophy? Yeah, Marx certainly was the author, at least maybe not the first, but certainly the individual who set the philosophy, the underlying philosophy of what we call communism. He wrote in the 19th century. Most people never read his works because they're unreadable. Except for the communist Manifesto. The communist Manifesto to incite the working class, to repress against. The Manifesto was written not only by Marx, which explains maybe why it's better written, he put the hope of a man called Frederick Engels who was a factory owner and helped Marx survive by giving him some money for the rest of his life, basically. Marx was a scholar. He was an agitator, too. But most of the time he spent in the British museums, which is a library. researching to prove that his theory - bad to come to being. It was valid. In many ways Marx was the first social scientist because he tried to make politics, government, history, society, a science by finding the facts of course different in scientists. He fit the facts into a theory that he found. So some ways he was not much different than Machiavellian. Marx argued following the principles of a German or oppression by the . Engel that history changes through conflict. It's not a gradual change, they're sudden changes. And
there is no missing link. We jump from one era to another and that process is call a dialectic.

Marx's dialectical changes conflict in Engel, the conflict was ideas. Marx took Engels over material goods, economics, and so it's known as dialectical material. According to Marx, as Engel, as the conflict expanded, society improved. History kept getting better. Life improved and people's lives improved. According to Marx, we were in a good stage now, but not the best because there was still exploitation. The conflict was over the resources. According to Marx, resources are scarce. Economic resources are scarce. So you have haves, they have the haves and the have nots. They don't have the resources that kept changing. And as time unfolded, more people were haves.. And there were less have nots. Finally, all of this conflict would end in communism because in communism, everybody would be a have. We would all have. And we would all share. In an
altruistic unselfish. We would be unselfish. Therefore history would be because conflict would end and we would be happily living happily ever after. Instead of pie in the sky when you die, as most religions point out, Marx said you got pie in the sky and pie on earth. Now, or in the immediate future. It was going to happen. It had to happen. Sooner or later, we would enter Utopia, Marx wanted to make it sooner than later.

So according to Marx, or Engel, basically you had a thesis or idea & once you had those haves that generated an opposite idea called an antithesis or have not, or a counter culture. You had a culture and a counter culture, and they will fight it out. This fight would be a new thesis. It will come to go and a new synthesis would create a new thesis. Once you have class you create a new have not class, a counter culture, a new synthesis, which creates a new thesis, which creates a new antithesis.

He said that most recent in history, the have class were the feudal lords. Who were the have not class? The surfs. And that emerged the battle and came the capitalists. The businessmen. The entrepreneur or the bigger word that we have trouble spelling, the bourgeoisie -- and of course who were the have nots now that you have the capitalists? The workers, and of course there was a big word used for workers and that was proletariat. The proletariat would sooner or later rebel against the capitalists. The idea of communism, however, was to make the proletariat understand that they were being committed that they were being used and the capitalists were making profit from their labor. The so-called surplus value of labor that Marx. So it was going to happen anyway. There was going to be a rebellion actually happening first in the industrial countries and the communist should push it along and once the rebellion took place, a new system would emerge - socialists. Which in a sense was the dictatorship of the dictatorship of the proletarian, from the bourgeoisie and the conflict would emerge socialism of which is a dictatorship or leadership, if you will, stronger of the proletariat. All right. Let's take a break here to define these economically because what we're doing with terms. Not really government terms. Economic terms. Terms: Capitalism -- the system that was going to be rebelled against. Who owns the means of production?

Well, land labor and capital they are even and controlled in capitalism by the capitalists. Or the bigger word bourgeois. The entrepreneur. The businessman controls or owns the means of production, lands, labor, capital, goods and services are distributed through supply and
demand. Most of you have had economics. Supply and demand. Translation? The capitalist is selfish. He's out for his own profit. He's not going to sell something unless he can make a profit. He's not going to make it unless he can make a profit, and if he can make it, he will sell it for whatever he gets. It doesn't matter. If people are willing to buy it, fine. Contact lenses is a good example. They cost about ten cents a piece to make and people pay up to $400 for a pair of contact lenses. Why? because you're willing to. It's as simple as that. People in the Bay Area seem to be willing to pay higher gas prices than the rest of the country. I couldn't believe it. I told you already. Gas was 90 cents a gallon and it was still $1.29 here for regular. So we'll pay it. They'll sell it. It doesn't matter what the real cost is. They may argue this of course. That's capitalism. In socialism, the government controls or owns the means of production. And goods and services are distributed by the government. Government determines who gets what, when, and how. So the government determines the goods and services because the government controls the means of production.

Socialism -- exists as we indicated in the Soviet Union. It exists in China and Cuba, although they're breaking down. However -- Sweden broke down theirs. India has been, but it has
some very strong socialist institution which means the government controls the private industries. But in the United States we have socialism too. What's socialistic in this country? Social? Postal service is more than it is now. Twenty years ago there could be no competition for mail. There was no federal express. They weren't allowed legally. Today at least while there's government ownership of the postal service, they have a lot of private express carriers, but that is different,
but it's still a socialistic right. What is socialistic? Would you say all our regulatory departments like FDA? Well, I wouldn't say they're socialistic if the government is determining who - distribution and service there - it's controlling, protecting you. It could be called socialist, but I'm talking where it really does make control, distribution such as what you say, social security? Yeah. Your health education. You're in a socialist institution. The school. Okay? Your social security. Your unemployment insurance. Those are controlled not just regulated by the government. So regulations are one thing.. Actually control in ownership is socialism. Tennessee Valley authority sells electricity. Owned by the government. Am Track basically is a socialistic institution because the private railroad companies had stopped carrying passengers. BART is socialist in this area. Palo Alto owns its electric companies and buys its electricity from -sells it cheaper to the people in Palo Alto. But they sell it privately -- or P.G.& E. Rather.

Also, therefore, socialism in this country. Not to the extent of some countries where they own the railroads, they own the train, Israel. There is some competition now with Virgin Airlines. They didn't allow competition. There was only one radio station, the BBC and sometimes they had three all owned by the government. Now there are private stations emerging, but those were more socialistic and especially right after Word War II. So socialism can exist in a democracy. It doesn't necessarily mean it has to be a dictatorship if the people determine what the government is.

In communism, the means of production are owned by no one or by everyone in communism. In communism, the means of production are owned by no one or by everyone in common. Goods and services are distributed by altruism. If you have three shirts and you need two -- you give it away to somebody who needs it. Now, how do we get from total government to no government? Well once you enter socialism according to Marx, the dictatorship will begin to reward those people better than they reward selfish people. So school teachers would make more money than stockbrokers. Of course stockbrokers wouldn't exist in a socialist country in reality, but that's used as an example because school teachers are doing something productive for other people, stockbrokers are making money. Therefore, according to this philosophy, more and more people would find that it benefits them selfishly to be unselfish. And as you act on things and you condition yourselves to something, I think that when you do things you become that way. Okay? Your personality changes.

When I was in school, I could never talk in a classroom. Now I don't shut up. Personality change. And therefore the argument is that future generations will inherit, through nurture, the altruism, and sooner or later nobody will be selfish. Marxist biologists in the 1930's even went further. They argued an approach that you inherit characteristics. That, for example, if you cut off a finger, your child would have a finger a millimeter shorter and the argument went on to argue that if you change people's consciousness to be altruistic, their children would be born unselfish. Well that was pushing it, but it was fitting Marxist and that in a sense was what Marx was saying. That as soon as socialism finally created an unselfish word, because if you -- it will be very difficult to create an unselfish country unless you could put up a wall and nothing came in because the other country's selfishness pass off that according to Marx, the state or government would wither away; it will disappear. He doesn't say how or when we would enter communism. Anarchy. I think for the system was pretty obvious to me before it fell apart in the Soviet Union at least from my perspective. I like the outcome. I just don't think it could be arrived at in this way. I do not see people in power acting unselfishly. Translation: What happened in the Soviet Union, the managers, the proletariat dictators decided that they were the most unselfish. Some animals are more equal than others, and pigs are the most equal, or something to that effect. Remember that from Animal Farm? A very beautiful description. 25 years before it fell apart. The managerial class gave themselves better cars, better homes, because they were the most unselfish. And who else were the most unselfish? Anyone who made society look good. The strangest unselfish people were probably the athletes. Because somehow, athletes were consider unselfish because they were making communism look good. The famous weight lifter is probably before most of your time, a guy name Alexia who was one of the more famous weight lifters, broke numerous world records. In the Russian system, every time you made it, you made communism look good. You get a new TV, a new car, a bigger apartment. So every time he broke a record, which was the minimum you need to do to break the record, he could have probably broken some by five or ten kilograms, but he wouldn't get as many rewards. So he kept breaking by one kilogram. Makes sense. Unselfish.

And so, what we have then was really a new class developing a managerial class, before communism fell and explains to me why it did. Power tends to corrupt. Absolute power corrupts absolutely. The people who were in power are not going to generally function. Most have them unselfishly. Does that mean that people are naturally selfish? I don't believe that. I also could believe that people can be made, educated, nurtured to be unselfish. I just don't think that it's going to be done by selfish people. Those who were the proletariat in power. But, can't prove that. So I am not a Marxist. Despite the fact, that the outcome of an equal society and living together on this, either sounds great to me. So I am, a Utopian, and I am an anarchist, but you get there, well that becomes the practicality.

Questions on Marxism? Communism? Soviet Union? None? So once again, communism is on the left because it wants to move ahead to something that's never been. It wants a society where people are equal. It wants a world society where people share altruistically and live together without government. Fascism in generic terms, is on the right because they want to go back to controlling the people, to controlling them through a strong government, and eliminate the really vicious evil people. With one race that's superior and one who can interpret the will and embodied that race.

What was next on the chart? Was it the John Birch society or --? All right. Christian coalition: We had society, it may take a little more time. Do I have Green Peace on the chart? Yeah. Where did you put Green Peace? I put more towards the left. Put it on the left. Why? It -- it seems like the democratic party's always been more concerned with -- I don't know. I connected it with democratic.

Actually, if you talk about the environmental group, the first person we identify as a politician with was the republican Teddy Roosevelt. It is valid today that the democratic Al Gore seems to be allies with the environmentalists, but just because the democratic party is on the left why would you put environmentalists on the left? Put them in the left because they want to protect the rights of animals and people as well. Well, if you want to continue and maintain because you're trying to conserve, so logically you have to put them in the center by the words you've used and the word conservative. Conservation is in there, so why aren't they in the center? But the word conservative is in there. Conservation. So why is it on the left? I was going to say they want to establish new laws and basically change society to be more environmental. Yes. Americans have not been conscious. We have not concerned ourselves with the environment. It has been basically there for us to use for making money, for basically exploitation and so traditionally then, any change to preserve the environment which we can call conservation would legitimately politically be on the left because it's new. Green Peace might be a little more left of liberal.

The most radical of the conservationist groups of this country is which one? Earth First. A guy got killed by a tree that fell. They put the spikes in the tree. They've been accused of blowing up power lines and they've been in the press this last week, but ten years ago a couple of Earth First people -their car blew up in Oakland, but they began to blame it on the FBI. The people felt that they were carrying bombs to blow up, what do you call it, electrical lines? okay.