Marxism in America: by Dean Gotcher

Marxism in America:
"group psychotherapy"

Dean Gotcher

   Philosophy is in essence the father-son conflict. It is engendered from the conflict (antithesis) between the father's/Father's authority system (doing right and not wrong according to the father's/Father's commands, rules, facts, and truth—righteousness, i.e., Hebrews 12:5-11) and the child's nature (approaching pleasure and avoiding pain, i.e., loving pleasure and hating restraint, i.e., desiring to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it, in the 'moment'—sensuousness, i.e., 1 John 2:15-18), resulting in the child, tempted by, i.e., draw to the things of pleasure around him (James 1:12-15), disobeying the father/Father (Genesis 3:1-6), and then either (having a guilty conscience for doing wrong, i.e., Romans 7:14-25) asking for forgiveness and repenting or 'justifying' himself (Luke 16:15, i.e., silencing his "guilty conscience" for doing wrong). Philosophy is the child thinking about how the world "is," subject to his father's/Father's authority, and how it "ought" to be, subject to his will, i.e., satisfying his desires of the 'moment,' and, with the aid ("help") of a facilitator of 'change,' i.e., a "group psychotherapist," i.e., a transformational Marxist, how it "can" be, once it (the child's nature and the world) is 'liberated' from the father's/Father's authority and restraint, with everyone thinking and acting according to "human nature" only. After all "Bloom's Taxonomies," which all teacher must learn to apply in the classroom (in order to be "certified") and all schools must insure all teachers are applying in the classroom (in order to be "accredited") states that they are a "psychological classification system" based upon the "Weltanschauung" (world view) of two Transformational Marxists, Theodor Adorno and Erick Fromm—making teachers "group psychotherapists," i.e., facilitators of 'change,' i.e., Marxists who advance Marxism through the use of group psychology, getting the students to dialogue their opinions regarding personal-social-ist issues, to a consensus, i.e., to a "feeling" of "oneness," rejecting the father's/Father's authority over them, thereby negating their having a guilty conscience for doing wrong, i.e., for disobeying the father/Father in the process.
   From here on the father's/Father's authority system will be referred to as the father's authority, with the understanding that, according to dialectic 'reasoning' God is created ("conceived") by the child as he submits himself to his father's authority in the home. "God is conceived more directly after a parental image and thus as a source of support and as a guiding and sometimes punishing authority." (Theodor Adorno, The Authoritarian Personality) "The life which he [the child] has given to the object [to the father, by submitting his will to the father's will] sets itself against him as an alien and hostile force." (Karl Marx, MEGA I/3 ) Philosophy is all about 'liberating' children from their father's authority, thus 'liberating' society from God's.
   Since "Self" (as in you talking to your "self") loves pleasure and hates restraint, the objective of philosophy is to replace the preaching and teaching of the father's commands, rules, facts, and truth, along with the threat of being chastened by him for doing wrong and being cast out for questioning and/or challenging (rejecting) his authority, with the dialoguing of opinions, i.e., with how the child is feeling and what he is thinking about (talking to himself about) in the 'moment,' making the outcome subject to the child's feelings (thoughts or reasoning) of the 'moment,' which are being stimulated by and respondent to the situation of the 'moment,' which is being manipulated by the facilitator of 'change.' By the facilitator manipulating the situation, i.e., removing "negativity," i.e., removing the father's authority from the environment (there is no father's authority in the dialoguing of opinions) he guarantees that the outcome will be unity (consensus or synthesis), since everyone's thoughts and actions have become subject to "human nature"—"feelings," i.e., love of pleasure and hate of restraint—only. Reasoning, from then on, comes from asking the question "Why?" in response to the father's commands and rules rather than accepting and obeying them because of his "Because I said so," i.e., His "I Am that I Am."
   According to dialectic 'reasoning'—where 'reasoning' is made subject to the child's "feelings" of the 'moment'—the only way the child can become "normal" again—responding to the situation, i.e., to the world around him, i.e., responding to that which stimulates him to either approach it or avoid it (by nature approaching pleasure and avoiding pain)—as he was before the father's first command, rule, fact, or truth came into his life (along with his threat of chastening for doing wrong and casting out, i.e., cutting him out of the will for questioning and/or challenging his authority), i.e., the only way the child can overcome "repression" (not being able to do what he wants to do, when he wants to do it) and "alienation" (having to hold fast to his father's commands, rules, facts, and truth, which conflict with, i.e., are in opposition to those who do not agree with them—who he likes and wants to initiate or sustain relationship with) is to overcome the effect the father's authority (doing right and not wrong) has upon him, i.e., the guilty conscience and the fear of judgment for doing wrong.
   Immanuel Kant, in Critique of Pure Reason, 'liberated' reasoning from the father's authority by making "Reasoning" subject to the child's feelings of the 'moment'—which are stimulated by the world around him (which makes him common with all the children of the world). Reasoning from the father's commands, rules, facts, and truth requires faith and leads to obedience. Reasoning from "feelings" leads to living in the 'moment' i.e., thinking and acting according to (responding to) the world which stimulates them. Kant, in Critique of Judgment, made declarations (for a better world) such as: "lawfulness without law" ("Gesetzmäßigkeit ohne Gesetz")—where the law of the flesh, the law of sin, i.e., "human nature" is 'liberated' from the Law of God, 'liberating' the person from having a guilty conscience for doing wrong and the fear of judgment for sinning—and "purposiveness without purpose" ("Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck")—where the purpose of life is to augment pleasure and attenuate pain, without the father's do right and not wrong, according to his commands, rules, facts, and truth, intervening, i.e., getting in the way.
   Georg Hegel, like Kant, established "Reasoning" upon the child's natural/reasonable desire to be 'liberated' from the father's authority. He wrote: "The child, contrary to appearance, is the absolute, the rationality of the relationship; he is what is enduring and everlasting, the totality which produces itself once again as such [once he has learned, through dialectic 'reasoning, i.e., through "self" 'justification' to 'liberate' himself from the father and his commands and rules to be obeyed, as given, and facts and truth to be accepted as is, by faith, so that he can be himself, carnal, of the world only, again, as he was before the father's first command, rule, fact, or truth came into his life]." (George Hegel, System of Ethical Life) But Hegel went a step further, establishing "Reasoning" (the child's feelings of the 'moment,' in response to the world around him) over and therefore against the father's authority. In this way, the father's authority, which restrains the child, preventing him from becoming at one with the world, i.e., inhabiting or blocking him from becoming "normal," becomes the source of conflict and pain (antithesis), i.e., the enemy to those seeking "worldly peace" and "socialist harmony." By starting with the child's desires of the 'moment' instead of with the father's commands, rules, facts, and truth, philosophy circumvents the father's authority, 'liberating' the child to think and act according to his carnal nature only.
   While Kant and Hegel remained in the philosophical language, Karl Marx put it into social action or practice (called Praxis), removing the father's authority ("Mine, not yours") from society by killing the fathers outright—killing the King along with those who followed after his "right-wrong," "above-below," "Mine, not yours," traditional family way of thinking and acting. Marx wrote; "Once the earthly family is discovered to be the secret of the holy family, the former must itself be annihilated [vernichtet] theoretically and practically." (Karl Marx, Feuerbach Thesis #4)
   How did the Marxist know who to kill? i.e., whether to kill you or not. The answer is in your language, i.e., how you communicate with others. Your language reveals your paradigm (patriarch, matriarch, or heresiarch), whether you are an individualist (capitalist), i.e., under "top-down" authority (traditionalist), an anarchist, i.e., only living for yourself (a transitionalist), or a Marxists, i.e., a socialist or globalist (a transformationalist). By the language you spoke when they (the Marxists) barged into your home you revealed your paradigm. It you responded with "Get out of My house, This is my house, not yours"—reflecting the language of God, i.e., "My garden, not yours."—Boom! You're dead. Saying "My children, not yours," "My wife, not yours," "My business, not yours," "My property, not yours," etc., would result in the same outcome.
   While traditional communists followed after the teachings of Marx only, using outright violence (referred to as dialectical materialism), Transformational Marxists saw the similarity between Karl Marx's teachings and Sigmund Freud's (referred to as historical materialism). Freud wrote: "'It is not really a decisive matter whether one has killed one's father or abstained from the deed,' if the function of the conflict and its consequences are the same." (Sigmund Freud in Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) In Freud's rendition of history it is the children who killed the father (patricide), after his casting them out for having sensual (sexual) relationship with their mother and one another (incest), from which psychology is based, i.e., finds its purpose in life ('justifying' the children's killing of the father, negating the father's authority in their feelings, thoughts, and actions, and their relationship with themselves, others, and the world). The engenderer of "neurosis," according to Freud, was the father's authority (and the "guilty conscience" for doing wrong which ensued) which prevented the child from becoming normal, that is, carnal, of the world only. The only pathway to "normalcy" was either to kill the father (which produces a guilty conscience, which leads to "civil neurosis") or to get the father to embrace the language of the child, i.e., to become as he was before his father created "neurosis" in him.
   In other words, the father does not have to be killed outright if he is moved from using the language of the father's authority—preaching commands and rules to be obeyed without question and teaching facts and truth to be accepted as is, by faith, chastening those who do wrong or disobey and/or casting out those who question or challenge his authority—to the language of the child, dialoguing with himself privately as well as (with the help of the facilitator of 'change') publicly his desires and dissatisfaction of the 'moment,' i.e., his love of pleasure and hate of restraint in response to the world around him in the 'moment.' In any meeting open to dialogue, any authority figure insisting that his way is the only right way, will naturally be resented and silenced (providing he, i.e., his way of thinking does not take control over the meeting). Instead of killing him outright, "the group," i.e., the "community" will consider him, i.e., his way of thinking as being "irrational" and therefore his commands, rules, facts, and truth (him) as being "irrelevant" when it comes to decision making, i.e., when it comes to setting policy instead.
   What Marx and Freud both had in common was their use of dialectic 'reasoning,' i.e., "self" 'justification,' with one negating the father's authority in society, killing the father outright, and the other negating the father's authority in the individual, killing the father in his feelings and thoughts. By merging the two, by 'liberating' the child's feelings and thoughts from fearing the father's authority, by allowing him to share what he wants to do (in opposition to his father's commands, rules, facts, and truth) without fear of reprimand, he will automatically (naturally) manifest his hate of restraint, i.e., his hate of the father's authority when he gets home, putting his thoughts into action, that is, by perceiving the father as being irrational (unreasonable) he is 'justified' in treating him and his authority as being irrelevant (thereby 'justifying' "civil disobedience"), commonly referred to as "theory and practice"—bringing theory (the child's opinion, i.e., his love of pleasure and hate of restraint) closer to action or to practice (praxis). With the child no longer having a guilty conscience for doing wrong or for disobeying his father in his thoughts, i.e., his thoughts being justified by group approval or affirmation, he no longer has a guilty conscience in killing (questioning, disobeying, disregarding, challenging, defying, attacking) the father in his actions. It is what the 'change' process is all about. Marx wrote: "The philosophers have only interpreted the world in different ways; the point is to change it."—that is, "the point is to" put "theory" (the child's nature) into "practice." (Karl Marx, Feuerbach thesis #11)
   The 'change' process or Marxism, according to the Transformation Marxist, could be done in a more "kinder," "gentler" way i.e., a "velvet revolution" than how the Traditional Marxists (hard line Communists) were doing it—violently killing the fathers outright, i.e., a violent revolution. Since the father's authority is sustained in discussion and the child's nature is sustained through dialogue, when the child's feelings, i.e., his love of pleasure and hate of restraint is brought into discussion with the father, the father's structure of doing right and not wrong will always prevail. But when the father's doing right and not wrong is brought into (abdicated to) dialogue with the child, the child's love of pleasure and hate of restraint will always prevail instead. By drawing the father into dialogue, into participation in the "group psychotherapy" process, by getting the father to dialogue his opinion, i.e., to share his desires and dissatisfactions of the 'moment,' i.e., his "feelings" of the 'moment' with his wife and children, along with others, i.e., by using the soviet system, he will automatically become "equal" with his wife, his children, and others (and they will become "equal" with him), making it easier for all (the father, his wife and children, and others) to come to a consensus, to come to a "feeling" of "oneness," i.e., to achieve "common-ism."
   The Berlin wall did not come down because Communism was defeated, but because Communism (in the form of Transformational Marxism, i.e., the consensus process) had succeeded. Hard line Communists or Traditional Marxists were seen by Globalists or Transformational Marxists, as being the same as Nationalists, still subject to an authority (authoritarian) figure, therefore Transformational Marxists (facilitators of 'change') in America were able to use Americans and their money (conservatives) to overthrow Traditional Communism (and traditional American Nationalism at the same time) through the consensus process, i.e., through glasnost ("transparency"). Like in psychology, transparency is a one way window or rather a one way mirror, they are allowed to observe you, but you are not allowed to observe them. We lost the Vietnam war because we met in Paris to dialogue about the North Vietnamese needing a "Christmas break." Are we really this stupid—believing that the Communist North Vietnamese believed in Christ? In that break the North Vietnamese, who admitted after the war they were near defeat, were able to replenish their supplies to continue their war effort, defeating us.
   The so called "public-private partnership" is from the same dialectic system. Private is nobodies business. Public is everybody's business. When you merge public, i.e., nobodies business with public, i.e., everybody's business, that which is nobodies business becomes everybody's business. As I say, "Are we really this stupid?" It appears we are.
   "One for all and all for one" is from the same bolt of cloth, i.e., of the same system. You, the individual, i.e., the private is for everybody, i.e., the public (giving everything you own, including your self to socialism, i.e., to the socialist cause, i.e., globalism) and everybody, i.e., the public (the socialist) is for you, i.e., the private (providing you are supporting them and their socialist cause, i.e., the propagation of globalism). "In our democratic society, any enterprise—any individual—has its obligations to the whole." "Tax credits would be given to the company that helps to improve the whole society, and helps to improve the democracy by helping to create democratic individuals." "Any company that restricts its goals purely to its own profits, its own production, and its own sales is getting a kind of a free ride from me and other taxpayers [who are getting paid with the private businessman's tax dollars, i.e., who are living the good life while teaching students, i.e., their children how to take the private businessman's private rights, i.e., his inalienable rights away]." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)
   The same process is going on in your own town hall, school board, business, and church board meetings today, with facilitators of 'change,' i.e., psychotherapist's, i.e., Transformational Marxists coming between the citizens and their elected officials, the parents and their school system, the employers and the employees, the believers and their pastors, elders, and deacons, facilitating 'change,' 'creating' a new world order void of the citizen's, parent's, employer's, believers restraints. The "group grade" in the classroom, as well as the "youth group" and the "cell group" in the "church," is based upon it as well, coming between the parent's and their children, the Lord and the fellowship. But we would not want to interfere with anyone having "fun" and "building relationship" with others based upon their common carnal desires, i.e., upon their natural love of pleasure and hate of restraint, as God does, i.e., "interferes" with us, would we?
   Ervin Laszlo, who instigated the environmentalist movement, wrote: "Bypassing the traditional channels of top-down decision making, our objective centers upon transform public opinion into an effective instrument of global politics." "Individual values must be measured by their contribution to common interests and ultimately to world interests.... transforming public consensus into one favorable to the emergence of a stable and humanistic world order." "Consensus is both a personal and a political step. It is a precondition of all future steps." (Ervin Laszlo, A Strategy for the Future: The Systems Approach to World Order)
   By the father consenting to letting his children's' "feelings" of the 'moment' determine right from wrong behavior, i.e., by abdicating his authority to the children's "feelings" of the 'moment,' he automatically negates his authority not only over his own children, but over his wife, his property, his business as well. Hegel, sounding more like Karl Marx than Karl Marx himself, could therefore write: "On account of the absolute and natural oneness of the husband, the wife, and the child, ... the surplus is not the property of one of them ... all contracts regarding property or service and the like fall away ... the surplus, labour, and property are absolutely common to all, inherently and explicitly." (George Hegel, System of Ethical Life)
   It is only through dialogue that society and the individual become "one" in "theory and practice," otherwise individualism, under the father's authority, will prevail, dividing the child from his nature, i.e., that which he has in common with all children, individuals from individuals, families from families, neighborhoods from neighborhoods, cities from cities, and nations from nations. Marx wrote: "It is not individualism [under the parent's, teacher's, boss's, ... God's authority, i.e., "human nature" restrained by authority] that fulfills the individual, on the contrary it destroys him. Society ['compromise,' i.e., setting aside the father's commands, rules, facts, and truth for the sake of unity and peace, i.e., "feelings"] is the necessary framework through which freedom [freedom from the father's authority] and individuality [freedom to do what one desires, thinking and acting according to his carnal nature and the world which stimulates it] are made realities." (Karl Marx, in John Lewis, The Life and Teachings of Karl Marx) A class of twenty students is a room full of twenty individuals, each under (restrained by) their parent's authority. Only through dialogue, i.e., sharing their desires and dissatisfactions, i.e., their opinions with one another can they find "common ground," basing live upon "human nature" alone, 'liberating' themselves from their parent's authority. "In the dialogic relation of recognizing oneself in the other, they experience the common ground of their existence." (Jürgen Habermas, Knowledge & Human Interest)
   By merging Marx with Freud and Freud with Marx, i.e., by using "group psychotherapy," i.e., by creating an environment based upon the affective domain, where everyone's "feelings" of the 'moment' engender 'change' (circumvent the father and his authority) in order for everyone to "get along," i.e., to "build relationship," Marxist ideology became the 'drive' and 'purpose' of education from the 50's on (via. "Bloom's Taxonomies"). It moved quickly into government, business, and even the "church," with little, if any, opposition. Who today would dare question the use of psychology (Marxism) in resolving conflicts in the home, in the workplace, in the neighborhood, and even in the "church."
   As Abraham Maslow wrote: "Third-Force psychology is also epi-Marxian in these senses, i.e., including the most basic scheme as true-good social conditions are necessary for personal growth, bad social conditions stunt human nature,... This is to say, one could reinterpret Marx into a self-actualization-fostering Third- and Fourth-Force psychology-philosophy. And my impression is anyway that this is the direction in which they are going now." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow) "Self-actualizing people have to a large extent transcended the values of their culture. They are not so much merely Americans as they are world citizens, members of the human species first and foremost." (Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature) Maslow reflected the mindset of socialists (Marxists and Psychologists) and their love of pleasure and hate of restraint. "So it looks as if nudism is the first step toward ultimate free-animality-humanness. It's the easiest to take. Must encourage it. Yet nakedness is absolutely right. So is the attack on antieroticism, the Christian & Jewish foundations." (Abraham Maslow, The Journals of Abraham Maslow) "I have found whenever I ran across authoritarian students that the best thing for me to do was to break their backs immediately." "The correct thing to do with authoritarians is to take them realistically for the bastards they are and then behave toward them as if they were bastards." (Abraham Maslow, Maslow on Management)
   All councelors who move the counselees (the students, workers, parishioners, etc.,) into dialogue—with "How do (or did) you feel ...?" and "What do (or did) you think ....?" type questions—propagate the Marxist agenda of negating the father's authority. Carl Rogers wrote: "Prior to therapy the person is prone to ask himself, 'What would my parents want me to do?' During the process of therapy the individual come to ask himself, 'What does it mean to me?'" "'Have you merely released the beast, the id, in man?' There is no beast in man. There is only man in man, and this we have been able to release." (Carl Rogers, on becoming a person: A Therapist View of Psychotherapy)
   By gaining access (through dialogue) to a persons "feelings" of the 'moment,' the person becomes subject to the manipulation and control of the facilitator of 'change,' making him, as "natural resource," "human resource," so that he (his soul) can be "bought and sold" for the facilitator's (psychotherapist's) own pleasure and gain. Rogers wrote: "We know how to change the opinions of an individual in a selected direction, without his ever becoming aware of the stimuli which changed his opinion." "We know how to influence the ... behavior of individuals by setting up conditions which provide satisfaction for needs of which they are unconscious, but which we have been able to determine." "If we have the power or authority to establish the necessary conditions, the predicted behaviors [our potential ability to influence or control the behavior of groups] will follow." "We can choose to use our growing knowledge to enslave people in ways never dreamed of before, depersonalizing them, controlling them by means so carefully selected that they will perhaps never be aware of their loss of personhood." (ibid.)
   Marxism is not new. It is the same method, pattern, or system that was first put into praxis in a garden called Eden. As the Transformational Marxist, Erick Fromm explained it: "In the process of history man gives birth to himself. He becomes what he potentially is, and he attains what the serpent—the symbol of wisdom and rebellion—promised, and what the patriarchal, jealous God of Adam did not wish: that man would become like God himself ." (Erick Fromm, You shall be as gods: A Radical Interpretation of the Old Testament and its Tradition) Others Transformational Marxists echoed the same thoughts (and agenda). "Human consciousness can be liberated from the parental (Oedipal) complex only be being liberated from its cultural derivatives, the paternalistic state and the patriarchal God." "Freud speaks of religion as a 'substitute-gratification'—the Freudian analogue to the Marxian formula, 'opiate of the people.'" (Norman O. Brown Life Against Death: The Psychoanalytical Meaning of History) "If the guilt accumulated in the civilized domination of man by man can ever be redeemed by freedom, then the ‘original sin' must be committed again: ‘We must again eat from the tree of knowledge in order to fall back into the state of innocence." (Herbart Marcuse, Eros and Civilization: A philosophical inquiry into Freud) "To experience Freud is to partake a second time of the forbidden fruit; and this book cannot without sinning communicate that experience to the reader." (Brown) "But Brown (the author of Life Against Death) believed that the payoff was worth the price of sin—namely, that alienation would be overcome, and the return of the repressed completed, rendering problems of sin permanently moot." (Mike Connor. From the March 23-30, 2005 issue of Metro Santa Cruz)
   In counseling, i.e., in the praxis of Marxism, history is not about those who lived before us, teaching us how to live our lives according to established standards, but about how our parents treated us when we were young and/or are treating us now. Its agenda is the 'changing' of history by 'liberating' us from the father's authority, so that we can be carnal, i.e., at one with ourselves, others, and the world, i.e., "of and for" ourselves, others, and the world only, i.e., more concerned about our relationship with ourselves, others, and the world, i.e., more concerned about our "social life" than doing right and not wrong according to our parent's or God's commands, rules, facts, and truth.
   The question therefore is: Are you a Marxist?