A
P HILOSOP HICAL INSIGHT INTO INTEGRITY AS A MISSING LINK IN CHILD'S UP BRINGING.
THE (MARXISM-LENINISM) COMMUNIST EXPERIENCE.
MICHAEL CHUKWUEMEKA OZUMBA
Department of Philosophy, UNIZIK, Awka.
PREAMBLE
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We shall do justice to this topic by following a four way attack,
We shall x-ray the communist doctrine and then prove that it has no basic metaphysical foundation.
We shall show that communism is not and cannot mean the same thing as capitalism
We shall prove that the materialistic foundation of communism was caused by an apparent or even abs olute lack
of integrity of a father cum business man (the story of Marx's early childhood will suffice)
We shall conclude by proving that little display of lack of integrity by parents as done by Karl Marx's father is the
bane of Nigeria's well being.
WHAT COMMUNISM IS?
Communism is a mature form of socialism and a socio-political cum economic system which
upholds state ownership of property and means of production in which the "state-owner" collects
from each individual according to his ability and gives to each according to his needs. It is an entirely
atheistic-materialistic philosophy which is thoroughly and completely antithetical to Christianity
such that all the dialectics of logicians and calculations of mathematicians cannot reconcile both for
the simple reason that the former is anchored on materialism and humanism. According to its
doctrine which is essentially Democritean/Epicurean, matter is the prime reality in the universe and
economy is the sub structure upon which every other thing simply perches so to say as
superstructure. "Such a philosophy is avowedly secularistic and atheistic. Under it God is merely a
figment of imagination, religion is a product of fear and ignorance, and the church is an invention of
the rulers to control the masses"' Communism agrees with Ludwig Feuerbach's position that
religion itself, not indeed on the surface, but fundamentally, not in intention or according to its own
suppositions, but in its heart, in its essence, believes in nothing else than the truth and divinity of
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human nature " . (emphasis mine)
Next, communism is predicated upon ethical relativism devoid of stable- moral absolutes. It
views right and wrong with the spinozean spectacle of relativism that "we must bear in mind-that the
terms good and evil are only applied relatively, so that the same thing may be called good and bad
according to the relations in view, in the same way as it may be called perfect or imperfect. Nothi ng
regarded in its own nature can be called perfect or imperfect" 3.
THE MACHIAVELLIAN UNDERTONE
Communism applies to the fullest the Machiavellian principle of the end justifying the means
and so a movement from capitalism to socialism and finally communism could be wrought using
deceits, violence, trickery or conflict in the manner of Heraclitean theory of change or in the
language of Lenin "we must be ready to employ trickery, deceit, lawbreaking, withholding and
concealing truths"4. But the question is can good come out of evil means or is robbing Peter to pay
Paul a justifiable ethical principle? Can we not decipher the same mindset between Lenin and Adolf
Hitler who also said "/ use emotions for the many and reserve reason for the few" 5. In the Mein Kampf
Hitler says "By means of shrewd lies, unremittingly repeated it is possible to make people believe
that heaven is hell and hell, heaven... the greater the lie, the more readily will it be believed"6.
COMMUNISM DENIES THE SPIRITUAL NATURE OF MAN
Communism simply reduces man to mere statistical number in the state devoid of the inalienable rights
and subject to the state in thought, Word and action. Something that is very much akin to the
totalitarianism of Hobbes which removes all rights from every man and rather subjects man to the
whims and caprices of the monarch/sovereign. Hear him out when he says
"to the sovereign belongeth the making of good laws and by good laws
I do not mean just laws for no laws can be unjust. (Reason) justice consists
in obeying the law and thus comes after it has been made and not before
it. When the sovereign makes laws, it is as though the individuals make
them and what they decide upon cannot be unjust7.
COMMUNISM ROBS MAN OF THAT QUALITY THAT MAKES HIM MAN
With, Hobbes, Marx's communism renders' man thoroughly and completely subservient to the state
and" robs man of that quality which makes him man. This quality says Paul Tillich which makes man, man
cannot be anything but freedom, the right to deliberate and make a choice freely and Without cohesion
of the will. By this singular act, he has simply taken chauvinistically "Hegel's view of history as
teleological and dialectical, but he rejects Hegel's Absolute spirit and replaces it with productive
forces or economic factors"8. In fact the individual in a communist society is nothing short of or added
to a robot, a depersonalized cog in the wheel of the state.
Theoretically, communism emphasizes a classless society but practically we all notice that with
every successive supercession of the bourgeois society by the proletarian society, the former constitutes
itself into a new bourgeoisie. Thus Marx's definition of a capitalist state as "a committee for managing
the affairs of the whole bourgeoisie "9. Also applies to the communist state of the proletariats (now
turned bourgeoisie class). It defines capitalism as a "refined form of slavery" but communism ushers in a
new formof slavery that does not allow of freedom. The dethroned bourgeois (nowproletariats) bear grudges
and animousity and conflict becomes more tense and rife. Considering this point Robert F. Kennedy writes
"it is communism ' not free society, which has become the favoured
twentieth-century means of disciplining the masses, repressing
consumption and denying the workers the full produce of their
labour"10 simply because the former proletariats (now bourgeoisie) have failed
to imbibe integrity which is "the quality of being honest and upright in character
or the state of being complete"11.
THE FALLACY OF COMMUNISM
This error in the reasoning of the communist propounders/proponents is based on their shaky
assumption that capitalism contains within it the seed of its own destruction. They also assume though
fatally that communism will usher a classless society devoid of all or any form of homo
hominis lupus. This error in reasoning predicated upon shaky assumptions cannot but lead man as it
has done into very grave and disastrous consequences. How can man whom Shakespeare describes as
he observes his multiple activities thus "what a piece of work is man; how noble in reason; how
infinite in faculty: inform and moving how express and admirable; in action how like an angel: In
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apprehension how like a god: the beauty of the world: the paragon of animals" who is man,
BattistaMondin asks and eventually sees as the "interrogative of all interrogatives-the most
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interesting and piercing of all. It is an old interrogative yet it is always new"' . For Carl Jung "the
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greatest cosmic secrete as well as the very closest to us, always remains man" yet communism views
man simply from the exterior and makes no reckoning of his spiritual/metaphysical character as a
composite of body and soul in Aristotelian term and as another side of the one great substance (nat ura
naturata) of Spinoza which could be properly understood through an in-depth analysis of the
attributes of thought and extension. Marx's humanism is based on materialism and immanent
anthropology devoid of transcendence and thus cannot escape the traps of reification. His "attempt to
express the dignity of man and his spiritual needs without ever resorting to metaphysics or ethics' or
religion not even philosophy present his views as parochial. It is based on the immanent than the
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transcendent: rejects God, trapped in subjectivism" .
Moreover, on the theoretical plain, Lenin's matter is one sided, very deterministic, and on the
practical side "communism lacks the animating force which is the anxiety for human dignity and the
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need for freedom" . Is it not contrary to human nature to think of a classless state? Unity does not
mean uniformity and justice and fair play cannot mean the same thing as equality. Is it not Aristotl e
who says by "nature some have been marked out for subjection, others for rule?" How can one ever
think of collecting from every person according to his ability and giving to each according to his need
without breeding indolence, inefficiency, dissatisfaction and death of initiatives? "Man's deepest
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yeaning are for in the infinite and nothing short of the infinite can satisfy them" .
COMMUNISM VS COMMUNALISM
The emphasis here is to make it as succinctly clear as possible that like two parallel lines
communism and capitalism cannot and have not met. Reasons! while the former springs up as a
protest economic cum political movement against capitalism, the later is a system that gradually
evolved on its own through the ages as man interacted and socialized with fellows.
Next, communism which is an end product of the supercession of the bourgeoisie society by the
proletarian society is not possible without violence, strife, class struggles and conflict, whereas
communalism naturally springs of its own having been ingrained in the nature of man and does not
think of a classless society rather of a society where every man is his brothers keeper and everything is
done for the benefit of all. This is exactly what Leopold Sedar Senghor's Negritude, Julius Nyerere 's
Ujamaa or familyhood and Nnamdi Azikiwe's eclectic harmonization of opposites, dovetailing into
Neo-welfarism are all about. Reflecting on these one easily finds out that "Marxist communism with
its suppression of the individual under the collectivity, the person under the class and reality under
ideology is against African socialism"13 . Rather Africa socialism (communalism) could be
understood from the stand point of the CULTURAL - which emphasizes emotion as dominating the
entire African cultural systems. Cultural structures are activated and sustained by emotion which i s
based on the understanding that both the natural and social factors are not objects but are potent with
cosmic life, involving the natural and the supernatural in a kind of communion leading to religion.
THE SOCIAL
For the above reasons the family is central here and man as a being realizes his being & meaning in
the family structure of the society. It is the microcosm. All social forms, are offshoots of extended
family as the extended brotherhood. Julius Nyerere underscoring this point writes
"the foundation and the objective of African socialism is the extended
family. The true African socialist does not look on one class of men as
his natural brethren and another as his natural enemies. He rather
regards all men as his brethren, as members of his ever extending
family"19. With this brief stop, we shall now look at the
THE SOCIAL
"The power of the African tradition to exercise a formative influence over the further breeding of
African and European culture and civilization can be understood better by considering Nyerere's....
Africa theory, which he entitled "Ujamaa-The Basis of African social"20. Steve Biko says
"We regard our living together not as an unfortunate mishap warranting
endless competition among us but as a deliberate act of God to make
us a community of brothers and sisters jointly involved in the quest for
a composite answer to the question of varied problems of life. Hence,
in all we do, we always place man first and hence all our actions are
usually joint community oriented actions rather than the
individualism "21
COMMUNALISM & HUMANISM
Notwithstanding the fact that communalism is sometimes viewed as fraternalism, they do not
mean the same thing
"while fraternalism is basic to the concept of communalism it is not
synonymous with it due to its restricted meaning. In other words, if
"fraternalism" is like communalism in that both are welfare-oriented; it is
different from it in almost every other respect. In the first place,
fraternalism aims at meeting the Welfare of blood relatives and people of
some parental Link "22.
Thus fraternalism in our view is more closely related to communism than communalism.
Communism involves much more than feeling of love and care towards people who have some
remarkable degree of consanguinity nor is it anchored on mere sympathy which can fade away once
its object is gone but a feeling of being-with others no matter their creed and colour in a kind of
communion. Thus the feeling is enduring, dynamic and forceful.
This is built on the philosophy of "/ am because we are" and it is the essential distinction
between it and communism in that this element of involvement
"distinguishes cominunalism-as-justice from social contract theory. The
traditional theorists conceive their task as mainly an attempt to justify the
existence of authority and the shape it should take in any society. But the
implicit care, and concern arising from the fact of being-with is not generated
by coercive tendencies of the authority or the sovereign"23.
COMMUNISM-REMOTELY CAUSED BY MARX'S FATHER'S LACK
INTERGRITY
It was David C. Nwizu who says
surely the direction was. one way, and the destination well known and
irrevocable. Posterity would pass this way and would only remember and
identify an insignificant few among the mummies of the
predecessors24.
OF
It is this posterity that has made a giant stride and one out of the few predecessors remembered is a man
born into a Jewish family and who grew up in London. He had a profound sense of admiration for his
father who was a "strict" member of Judaism and. who always dutifully led them to the synagogue. Later,
in his teens, the family relocated to another town in Germany that had no synagogue but only a Lutheran
church. The community worshipped in this shop and all the town's best people were there. To the chagrin
of all, the father announced -that they would switch-over to. Lutheranism because it would be good for his
business. The young son became bewildered and Later anger and deep-bitterness took hold of him.
Later he left Germany and went to England to study. Each day found him
at the British Museum formulating his ideas and composing a book. In that
book he introduced a whole new world view and conceived a movement
which was designed to change the world. He described religion as the
'opiate of the masses'. He committed the people who followed him to a life
without God. His ideas became the norm for the government of almost half
the world's people. His name? Karl Marx, founder of the communist
movement. The history of the twentieth Century, and perhaps beyond,
was significantly affected because one father let his values become
distorted"25 .
Commenting yet on this Luther king Jnr writes the widespread influence of
communism has, like a mighty tidal wave spread through Russia, China,
Eastern Europe.... Nearly a thousand million of the people of the world
believe in its teachings, many of them embracing it as a new religion to
which they have surrendered complete26.
This is a significant but sorry story in the life and times of a man who allowed himself to be sway ed by
instinct for money making. And as he is the pillar of the family, communism and belief in religion as
the opium of the masses became the dogma of at least some members of his family and with them
"almost half of the world's people", after all Martin Luther king Jnr says
all men are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied to a single
garment of destiny what ever affects one directly affects others indirectly. I
can never be what I ought to be until you become what you ought to be, and
you can never be what you ought to be until I become what I ought to be.
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This is the inter related structure of reality .
The very crucial punish we have arrived at now is that there is an "interrelation structure of real ity",
whatever a father d oes or omits to do has an impact on his children. Thuswithout integrity, we cannot
evolve a more progressive and happy civilization. Summing the aforementioned up, Robert F.
Kennedy says
every generation inherits a world it never made. And as it does so, it
becomes a trustee of that particular world to generations that come after
it. In the final analysis', each generation makes its accounting to its
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children .
What then is integrity? It is simple "the quality of being honest and upright in character" or the state
of being complete. (Oxford Advanced learners Dictionary).
This is the one essential quality that is lacking in our upbringing of our youngsters. This is the
very great undoing of any nation because it amounts to establishing "a building with rickety walls,
leaking roof and sinking foundation".
LACK OF INTERGRITY-THE BANE OF NIGERIANS WELL BEING.
As a already seen in the little story told of Karl Marx, the reality of lack of intergrity in our
homes are overwhelming. The family which is the first and most vital cell of the society is the very
area where the germ of intergrity should be injected because it is exactly where socialization starts. It
is the family that first administers education on the young and education in this sense is the conscious
moulding of man by man in which the person moulded acquires knowledge to tackle the inherited
problems of life according to his age, ability and aptitude and consequently to lead a good and useful
life in and for his community. It is this society that brings each person out of his anonymity and makes
him conscious of his personal dignity enriching him with good human, experiences and actively
placing him in his uniqueness within the deep fabrics of his society. A man of integrity says Gilbe rt'
Beer "is a man who has established a system, of values against which all of life is judged"29 . He is a
stable man, as firm as the rock of Gibraltar. He is a man who recognizing the parmenidean principle
of non-contradiction that a thing cannot both be and not be at the same time and in the same respec t
has become identical and inseparable from his words in the, manner of Spinozean thought and
extension and or in the manner of Aristotelian impossibility of having either a formless matter or a
matterless form (hyposthetic Union). But can anyone offer what he does not have? It is an absolute
impossibility for anyone to give what he does not have but it must be borne in mind that all of us have