The Two Greatest Lies in Politics of the Last Two Centuries

(and the Net of Lesser Concrete Lies Used to Cover them)

The two greatest lies of the last two centuries are most surely socalled United States democracy and Marxist so-called socialism. Both of
them began to surge by the mid-nineteenth century, but flourished very
especially during most of the twentieth century. In this informal discussion
we will examine them on the light of what they pretend to be and show that
they do not have anything to do with what they say they are, namely,
democracy, in the first case, socialism, in the second case.
(I) Democracy and so-called North American Democracy
Since the end of the XIXth century United States Governments time
after time have used the banner of their presumed democracy to try to
expand their influence and control over the world. After having robbed
Mexico of most of their territory in the preceding decades, they turned to
countries with no common frontier with the United States. Thus, from the
1898 invasion of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines to the invasion of
Iraq and Afghanistan at the beginning of the XXIst century, as well as all
sorts of indirect interventions in the affairs of other countries, especially
Latin American, but also of countries around the whole world as presently
in Ukraine-, they have hoisted the banner of so-called democracy to
justify their thirst of power and control over the world. Thus, it seems
pertinent here to ask what democracy really is.
The word democracy comes from the Ancient Greek language and
means power of the people or power by the people, where the word
people in Ancient Greek: - means the common people, the plebs;
and the remaining part of the word comes from the root of the verb
, which means to be powerful, to be mighty: thus, the translation:
power of the people. Democracy in this sense is contrasted to the
oligarchy, that is, the power of the rich. One can now ask whether the
political system existing in the United States has anything to do with that
government or power of the people.
The United States of America is the foremost capitalist country in the
world. That means that it is based on private property in all aspects of

economic life, from the industries that try to satisfy the basic needs of
society to the production of all sorts of military equipment and all sorts of
sophisticated technologies. And it is in the nature of capitalism that those
who privately control the means to produce richness need to continue to
get richer constantly, since if they were to make a pause in that continuous
effort, then their competitors would most surely surpass them. But the
continuous process of enrichment of the richest results in augmenting the
socio-economic breach between the richest and the rest of society, that is,
the common people who are supposed to control power in democracy.
Thus, at least economically, the wild capitalism of the United States of
America resembles much more an oligarchy than a democracy.
Politically, the situation is even worse. In other less radical forms of
capitalism, prevailing, for example, in some European countries, not only
is there much more socio-economic protection of common people, but the
richest are not allowed to donate great amounts of money to the campaigns
of political parties, as happens in the United States of America, in order to
buy politicians. That is most surely one of the main reasons why in other
capitalist countries there are many different political parties with
essentially different ideologies, whereas in the United States of America
there are only two relevant parties, which differ only in nuances, but
represent the same economic interests and propound the same national and
international politics. But besides the donations of big amounts of money
to the political campaigns, which are seen as a sort of investment of the
richest, in the United States of America exists the so-called institution of
lobbyists, that is, companies of lawyers and other professionals that serve
as constant mediators between private interests and elected politicians
during the four years between two elections.
Moreover, there is another reason why the genuine participation of
the common people in controlling the government is also much lower in
the United States of America than in other capitalist countries in Europe
and the maligned Latin America. Contrary to what happens in many
countries in those two continents, in the United States of America there
does not exist the possibility of revocation of the government in the middle
of its term. In other countries a considerable amount of people can force a
petition for new elections before a president concludes his (or her) term.
(In the United States of America revocation exists only in a few states and

is, of course, revocation of the local government, not of the government of

the whole country.)
Furthermore, one of the most antidemocratic components of the
United States political system, which does not have anything comparable
in other so-called democratic countries, is the fact that the president is not
elected directly by the votes of the people, but by the electoral votes
obtained in the so-called electoral colleges. The votes of the common
people of the different communities are grouped in different electoral
colleges, and what counts is the majority not of votes but of electoral
colleges. In fact, as recently as in the 2000 elections the candidate of the
so-called Democratic Party, Al Gore, obtained the majority of the votes,
but was not elected, because his rival, George W. Bush obtained a majority
in the electoral colleges. In order to make perfectly clear the injustice of
the system of electoral colleges, let us consider the following fictional
though possible situation. Let us suppose that Mr. F for failed- and Mr.
D for deficient- are the two candidates for the presidency of the United
States of America in a given election. Let us also suppose that there are
1,000 electoral colleges, and, moreover, that Mr. D wins in 49% of the
electoral colleges by a margin of ninety-nine to one, while Mr. F wins in
51% of the electoral colleges by a margin of fifty-one to forty-nine. Since
Mr. F has won in 51% of the electoral colleges, in virtue of the United
States electoral system, Mr. F is declared the new president of the United
States of America, notwithstanding the fact that Mr. D could have obtained
more than 25 million more votes from citizens than Mr. F.
All the aforementioned arguments serve us to conclude that in the
United States of America does not exist any political democracy. Thus,
there is neither a political nor a socio-economic democracy in the country
that uses the name democracy as an excuse to invade other countries,
destroy their social structure and control their economy or, at least, to try to
influence their political and economic systems. What there exists in the
United States of America is precisely what the ancient Greeks considered
as the antithesis of democracy, namely, oligarchy. The richest control both
ideologically very similar parties, make donations to them as a political
investment both directly during campaigns and indirectly through lobbysts
at any time, while even the most essential notion of one person-one vote is
completely distorted by the system of electoral colleges, which serves as a

sort of protective filter of the privileges of the richest. Hence, the use of the
word democracy when referring to the system existing in the United
States of America is completely unfounded. In fact, wild capitalism makes
democracy impossible. There is no such thing as a United States of
Americas democracy that is one of the greatest lies in the history of
mankind-, but only an oligarchic system built on greed and military force.
Nonetheless, someone would ask How is it possible that the citizens
of the United States of America have not noticed that they do not live in a
democracy? First of all, for the wealthy in the United States the word
democracy either lacks meaning or is assigned the meaning of one of its
antipodes: Capitalism. For them to bring democracy to other countries is
synonymous of expanding United States capitalism to other countries. On
the other hand, the common people in the United States of America is
handicapped by the by far worst educational public system of any
developed country in the world and even much worse than in many
underdeveloped countries. The three disciplines that serve the most to
develop human intellectual capabilities of children are either not taught in
the school system of the United States of America or very badly taught. By
the latter I mean Mathematics, which is taught but by no means
emphasized, and United States children can certainly not fare even
decently against children in the public school systems of even the poorest
European countries be it in Mathematics or in any other discipline.
Moreover, whereas Philosophy, which is probably the discipline that most
develops intellectual capabilities, is taught in schools in European
countries, it is non-existent for the United States of Americas public
school system. (In fact, there is presently the tendency to try to eradicate it
even from non-privileged that is: non-elite- universities.) Finally, Foreign
Languages, which serve so much to open the minds of people to
understand other cultures and liberate them from racist and, generally,
xenophobic prejudices, are not taught in most public schools in the United
States of America, even though the Spanish speaking minority in that
country is already the biggest minority and growing much faster than any
other ethnic group in that country. But leaving aside the graveness of
racism and xenophobia in North American society, the lack of capacity of
most United States Americans to learn foreign languages is already
ludicrous and anecdotic. They can live forty years in a foreign country and

learn just to say Hello and Good Night in the language of the people of
that country, and what is even worse, they do not shame themselves, but
feel comfortable with having learnt two or three phrases in forty years. In
other disciplines their ignorance is similarly astounding. They learn very
little of world history, even of the history of their neighbors, the Latin
American countries, and their ignorance in Geography is also anecdotic. At
the beginning of the 1980s some university students in the state of Atlanta,
when asked where in the world map lies the biggest country in the world,
Russia, answered that it lies at the side of Panama. And the vice-president
of the United States of America during the presidency of the first of the
Bush presidents believed that in Latin America people speak Latin.
That terrible ignorance or combination of ignorance and stupidityis common among politicians in the United States of America and, in fact,
it is not even an obstacle to become president of their country. Such a
monstrous ignorance of the people serve the purposes of the wealthiest to
propagate any possible lie in the political arena. As an example of a terrible
political lie still believed as true more than a century after its propagation is
that of the origin of the so-called Hispano-American war, and the ensuing
invasion of Cuba, Puerto Rico and the Philippines. According to the United
States of Americas mythology the Spaniards set on fire a ship called
Maine of the United States that was at Cubas harbor, being the invasion a
retaliation on the side of the United States of America. That myth is so
unbelievable for a person not intoxicated with the propaganda of the
government of the United States of America and not intellectually
handicapped by its school system as the story that a five feet, one-hundred
pounds sixty years old man were to meet in the streets a half his age six
feet six inches two hundred eighty pounder professional wrestler and
would attack him with his fists, provoking a severe retaliation in selfdefense of the latter. The lies about Saddam Husseins alliance with Osama
bin Laden and Iraqs nuclear weapons are of a similar nature, and much
more than the Hispano-American war- have served to destroy that country
causing incredible sufferings and deaths to Iraq in the name of North
American so-called democracy, but really with the political objective of
controlling a neighbor of Iran and the most important economic objective
of controlling Iraqs oil resources.

But the most glaring of all concrete lies of the United States of
America is the myth of the causes for the terrorist acts of the 11 th of
September, which have served to curtail civil liberties in the United States
and to subject common citizens of all ages to humiliations at the airports
around the world. I am not going to examine here the weight of the several
arguments about the explosions and fall of the twin towers or about the
lack of victims in the presumed explosion at the Pentagon. I simply cannot
believe that it was something casual that nineteen Arabs with weapons
three groups of five and one of four- could board on that morning four
airplanes in airports in the Northeast of the United States of America
without being searched. Moreover, when the first so-called terrorist attack
occurred, the other three airplanes were still probably at the airports, and
the authorities could have ordered a detailed search of passengers and
airplanes to be sure that everything was in order. But they did not, and
allowed the airplanes to fly. Maybe common North Americans can believe
the authorities without blinking, but not a person who flies regularly and
looks like an Arab, even if he does not have any noticeable Arab origin.
That is the case of the present author, a result of a mixture of races whose
combination looks like an Arab. (From my mothers side I have EnglishIrish, French and African blood, and from my fathers side Spanish, most
surely some Jewish and probably also some Indian blood. It is not
excluded that via my Spanish heritage I also have some drops of Arabic
blood, but in any case very little.) Since after the 1972 Olympic Games in
Munich I have been frequently either explicitly searched or at least looked
with suspicion at different airports. Precisely at the airport in New York, I
think it was in the year 2000, I was especially searched by an official of
Oriental origin. Thus, I cannot believe that it was a matter of chance of
very good luck for the Arab terrorists and very bad luck for the other
passengers and those (many of them Arabs) working at the World Trade
Center that tragic day- that those nineteen Arabs were not searched at the
airports the morning of the 11th of September 2001. Other suspicious things
about those so-called terrorist acts, but which I will only mention, not
discuss, are: (i) that the second airplane that hit the second of the world
trade center towers could very well have been destroyed by North
American aircraft before it hit the tower in fact, I, as many others, saw in
television the airplane coming towards the tower; (ii) that Israels prime

minister at that moment had cancelled a visit to the United Nations because
the Mozad had warned him that there were going to occur such terrorist
acts as I heard in radio the day after the attacks; (iii) I was informed by a
banker working in England that, according to some information in an
English journal, Osama bin Laden was visited in a hospital in Dubai two
weeks before the so-called terrorist acts by some CIA agents, which did not
detain the most sought of terrorist in the world, but simply visited him
maybe to ask him about his health!; and (iv) it is very suspicious that even
though when the North American specialized forces entered Osama bin
Ladens house in Pakistan, he did not offer any resistance, he was,
nonetheless, unnecessarily killed, though if things had been as the United
States governments lie said, it would have been much better to let him live
and bring him to the courts to obtain first-hand information about the socalled terrorist acts. However, it was clear that the United States
government feared that he could speak the truth.
In order to understand the, to say it lightly, candor of the North
American common people, it should be pointed out that instead of a good
formal education, the North American youth, which usually cannot even
write correctly their own especially simple language the English language
is considered as the simplest of all important languages in the world-, does
receive a great dose of deformation and manipulation by means of the
regular brain-damaging propaganda of warfare and violence of all sorts.
Both in movies and video games, as elsewhere in the North American
society there is an exaltation of violence, sophisticated weapons, physical
muscle building and violent sports. In fact, it is the only major country in
the world where you can buy even assault weapons something outlawed
in any civilized country in the world- as easy as you buy food and much
easier than prescribed medicaments. It should be no surprise that the
United States of America is the most violent developed country in the
world, and one in which some 150 years after the abolition of slavery,
Black Americans and other minorities are constantly discriminated and
sometimes even murdered, especially by police and other government
officials, in almost any of the fifty federate states. Furthermore, contrary to
almost any civilized country, in the United States of America there still
exists the death penalty, a troglodyte and savage punishment mostly
applied in that country to racial minorities -and once in a while to innocent

poor people that did not have the money and could not pay the right
lawyers.
(II) Marxist Socialism
With the development of capitalism and its clear socio-economic
injustices, different so-called socialist or communist theories began to
flourish, many of them in the first half of the XIXth century. Of all those
theories only two have been able to survive and have had influence on the
common people during the last two centuries, namely, Marxism and
libertarian communism, also imprecisely and unjustly called anarchism
which in Ancient Greek means lack of order. We are not going to say
much here about libertarian communism, which though certainly much less
influential than Marxism in world politics, and considered by many as a
form of utopian socialism, is certainly not built on a network of lies, as
Marxism is. In fact, Marxists were the first to qualify all rival socialist
theories as utopian, while naming themselves scientific socialists,
because they presumably applied the dialectic method of Hegel to study
capitalist society.
The word dialectics also comes from Ancient Greek, and though
used by Plato and Aristotle, they do not use that word in the same sense in
which Karl Marx and his followers used it. In fact, in Aristotle a so-called
dialectical argument is contrasted with genuine scientific arguments,
because contrary to the latter, so-called dialectical arguments are based
only on accepted beliefs. Thus, when you cannot obtain scientific
knowledge, you can still argue informally dialectically- on the basis of
some beliefs, in order to reach some conclusions probable on the basis of
those beliefs. But Marxs and the Marxists use of the term dialectic
originates in Hegel, most probably in his Science of Logic in the
original German: Wissenschaft der Logik-, a work that is neither scientific
nor about logic, but a metaphysical treatise totally antipodal to science.
According to that method, there is a thesis, which has an antithesis, and as
a sort of combination of both of them we obtain a synthesis. The scientific
value of such Hegelian dialectics is Zero. Hence, the first thing that we
conclude is that there is not the least justification for Karl Marxs -and his
followers- use of the word scientific when referring to his so-called
dialectical method and to his particular conception of socialism. (The

adjective scientific was certainly very popular in those days of the midnineteenth century, inspired by the success of classical mechanics and used
by the most diverse lines of thought, from the failed reduction of all
physical phenomena to classical mechanics, to Darwins revolution in
biology, to Comtes positivism and its conception of the evolution of
mankind, to Kardecs so-called scientific spiritualism. But only Marxism
used the adjective scientific to refer to its Hegelian really antiscientific
origin.)
Now let us consider Marxs concrete assertions. According to Marxs
conception, the development of capitalism, especially in the countries
where it is more developed, will produce a pauperization of the common
people to the extent that they will not bear the system anymore, and a few
men coming from the so-called intelligentsia mostly of bourgeois
origin-, immersed in the doctrine of so-called scientific socialism, will
organize and direct them in a revolutionary process that would culminate in
a so-called dictatorship of the proletariat in reality of the intelligentsia.
From the dictatorship of the proletariat the transit to a socialist society
each one receives according to his (or her) work and capacities- and then to
communism each one receives according to his (or her) needs- would be a
swift pacific transit. Theoretically, the proletariat would need only to
finally master the method of so-called scientific socialism, the Hegelian
dialectics applied to society. But since Hegelian dialectics is certainly not a
scientific method, the poor proletarians would have as little success with it
as when trying to count all natural numbers! On the other hand, Marx
believed as pointed out, for example, in the Preface to the second edition
of Das Kapital- that less developed societies, which either had not arrived
at capitalism or were making their first steps in it, would have to wait until
capitalism is sufficiently ripe in their society, in order for their
corresponding proletarian revolution to materialize.
It is unnecessary to stress here that Marxs predictions about the
development of capitalism and the revolutions in developed capitalist
economies were all shown false by history whose presumed science he
pretended to have mastered. With the possible exceptions of the Paris
commune and the failed German revolution in the pauperized Germany
immediately after the end of the First World War, in no other developed
capitalist society did a so-called socialist revolution occur. On the contrary,

almost all revolutions or revolts that have been later baptized as socialist
in the last century occurred in countries where capitalism was, in the best
of cases, in its infancy, and the societies were still predominantly agrarian
ones. In fact, besides the 1870 Paris commune and the failed German
revolution of 1918-19, probably only the also failed 1905 Russian
revolution had from the beginning some predominant genuinely socialist
tonalities.
Let us look for a moment at the historical development. The Paris
commune by no means followed the Marxist schemes. It had much more in
common with the objectives of libertarian communism than with Marxism,
and seemed to have been a surprise to the somewhat rigid schemes of Marx
and his friend Friedrich Engels. In fact, Marx and Engels had a very small
role in the development of socialist ideas in France and even in England,
who was the most developed capitalist country in those days and the
adopted home of Marx. They, and especially Engels, who lived longer, had,
however, some success in playing the role of external theoreticians of the
German Socialdemocratic Party under the political leadership of August
Bebel and the internal theoretical guidance first of Wilhelm Liebknecht and
later in Engels last years and beyond- of Karl Kautsky. In some sense, the
development and conflicts in that German party can be seen as a mirror of
the whole development of Marxism. The central dominant group in the
party followed most faithfully the centralization of power in the so-called
intelligentsia, though as a typical party took part regularly in elections
and had representatives in parliament, while dreaming with revolution. A
more pragmatic tendency, under the leadership of Eduard Bernstein, which
appeared at the beginning of the XXth century, sought to obtain political
power and arrive to socialism via elections. (This tendency evolved away
from Marxism and is the forefather of present social democracy.) On the
other hand, a leftist conglomerate of at the beginning not so well
articulated tendencies emerged firstly around Rosa Luxemburg and Anton
Pannekoek, and then also of Karl Liebknecht Wilhelm Liebknechts son-,
Otto Rhle, the poet Hermann Gorter and others. They began questioning
the centralized control of the proletarian party by the so-called
intelligentsia, but all of the above except Luxemburg finally rejected the
necessity even of a proletarian mass party, and those who lived longer
Rhle, Pannekoek and Gorter-, though considering themselves still

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Marxists, converged towards a view of society very near to the views of

libertarian communism. (By the way, it seems here appropriate to point out
that by intelligentsia the Marxists are not meaning those with the highest
formal education, but those that presumably possess the knowledge of their
scientific socialism. Precisely those in the German social democracy
who rejected the control of the party by the intelligentsia were, in fact,
the ones with the better formal education: Liebknecht (Doctor in Law),
Pannekoek (Doctor in Physics and renowned astrophysicist), Gorter
(Doctor in Classical Philology and renowned poet), Rhle (Doctor in
Education), and Luxemburg, judging by her dissertation on the industrial
development of Poland, seems to have been Doctor in Political Economy,
while also her nearest collaborators Leo Jogiches and Paul Levi also had
Doctor degrees.)
In Russia at the turn of the century occurred something partially
parallel to what occurred in the German Marxist movement, although with
less intensity and certainly less theoretical sophistication. The group of
Marxists led by Plehanov considered that one should first develop
capitalism before thinking in a socialist revolution. In this sense they were
truer to Marx and Engels than the remaining factions. The majority faction,
led by Lenin believed in a revolution of the nascent proletariat and the
ruralty, and conceived the party as one completely controlled by the
leaders, thus, in the tradition of centralization initiated by Marx, though
even more rigidly centralized than what Marx, Engels and Kautsky had
envisioned. In 1903-1904 the young Trotsky leveled against Lenins
conception of the party similar critiques to those of Luxemburg and
Pannekoek to the Bebel-Kautsky party and also to Lenins views, thus,
favoring a party controlled by the masses instead of a centralized one,
while, on the other hand, conceiving of the forthcoming revolution as one
led by the proletariat with help of the ruralty. But Trotsky not only did not
evolve to a view nearer to libertarian communism, but in 1917 regressed
basically to accept Lenins authoritarian conception of a party. By the way,
the much later feud between Trotsky and Stalin is a superficial power
struggle between two factions of Leninism or, more precisely, between the
bureaucratism with remorse and guilty complex of the old Trotsky and the
unfaltering and unashamed bureaucratism of Stalin. In fact, in the few
years in which Trotsky and Lenin controlled power after the so-called

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October Revolution they taught Stalin how to annihilate the dissidents, as

happened with the libertarian communists under Makhno in Ukraine and
the sailors in Kronstadt.
The pattern of persecution of dissidents established by the LeninTrotsky government, consolidated and expanded without them by Stalin,
has been followed basically by all governments founded on the MarxistLeninist authoritarian view, from all the governments of the so-called
socialist block around the defunct Soviet Union, to China and Vietnam,
Cuba and elsewhere. The so-called Central Committee of the MarxistLeninist parties has had total control over the political, economic and
cultural life of the so-called socialist countries, and the dictatorship has
been especially hard precisely on the workers and leftists who challenged
the hegemony of the party, as happened in 1953 in the so-called German
Democratic Republic, in 1956 in Hungary and Poland, and in 1970 in
Poland, to mention only a few cases. The dictatorship of the proletariat has
really been the dictatorship of the all-mighty leaders of the proletarian
party, whereas the so-called proletarians and, in general, the masses remain
as disconnected as ever from the political and economic power. A new
privileged social class has taken power, and although they are not the
owners of the means of production, as happens in capitalism, their relation
to the mode of production is completely different from that of the masses
building, thus, a new socio-economic class-, having similar social and
economic benefits in their so-called socialist societies as the capitalists in
capitalist countries. Precisely, Marx himself, in the last chapter of the third
volume of Das Kapital, when discussing the origins of capitalism, briefly
examined pre-capitalist economically stratified societies of the past.
Capitalism was not the first and has not been the last sort of society
stratified in classes. Marxs idea of arriving at an unstratified society by
means of a social revolution against capitalism directed by the Marxist
intelligentsia belongs to mythology, not to reality. The luxurious lives of
the privileged members of the higher echelons of the so-called communist
parties in those countries in which they have or had the political power has
nothing to do with socialism or communism, not even with the so-called
dictatorship of the proletariat. To finally reach socialism in those countries
a successful revolution against Marxism would most surely have to occur.
Marxist socialism is the second great lie of the last two centuries.

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Appendix
As a footnote to what was said above, let us just mention that in the
last few decades, especially in China but also in Vietnam, an attempt has
been made to combine a Marxist authoritarian class regime, governed by
the higher echelons of the so-called communist party, with a capitalist
economy. The Marxist bureaucracy still controls power and takes all the
most important decisions in the country, but their families and friends are
allowed to invest and create financial empires and havens in the style of
wild capitalist countries. This is not the first time that representatives of the
state govern in the interests of the capitalists but mostly without them,
since it was already attempted during the short surge of fascism, though the
Chinese Marxists have been by far more successful, helping to build
capitalist international enterprises as successful as the best in North
American wild capitalism. The name state capitalism incorrectly used by
the Chinese Mao regime to describe the system in the former Soviet Union
which, by the way, was exactly the same as in Maos China- could have
been somewhat more adequately used to describe fascist regimes. And the
inadequate denomination bureaucratic capitalism used by the foremost
theoretician of libertarian communism, Cornelius Castoriadis, to correctly
describe the class structure of bureaucratic (non-capitalist!) so-called
socialist countries, could now be adequately used to describe the present
Chinese system, since it combines the rigid authoritarian power of the
bureaucracy of the Communist Party with the economic amorality of wild
capitalism.
Guillermo E. Rosado Haddock
Retired Professor
University of Puerto Rico at Ro Piedras
May 2015

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