Tract Title: “The Poor Revolutionist”Alternate Tract Title: Jack Chick Fails Marxism Forever!
Jack Chick. Communism. A recipe for fail. As Marxism is one interest of mine, (I’m no expert, but I
have studied political theory, which is more than can be said for Chick), I’m going to point out the stupidity. May contain some quotes from Marx, Engels etc. Bear in mind that this fail was written in 2010.
Cos all communists look like people who haven’t left the 1960’s. What, no posters of actual communists on the wall? Fidel Castro or Che Guevara or something? Karl Marx? Vladimir Lenin? No? That said, I don’t think I want to see Chick’s attempts at drawing these people. He didn’t even put a hammer and sickle i.e. generic sign for communism 101 on there. Communists are not necessarily the same as hippies, Jack.
Why a peace sign if they are planning a violent revolution…I’m confused.
These guys’ security isn’t exactly very good if they have random fundies bursting in on cell meetings.
And apparently commies also have anger management issues.
And, play acoustic guitar and sing about revolution a lot. Again, I get Hippie vibe rather than Communist Revolutionary vibe. While I can see hippies setting up communes and the like, that’s
slightly different from the idea of forcibly overthrowing the government.
Woman with a guitar doesn't exactly scream "hard nosed terrorist" to me, Jack, that's all I'm saying.
People change their beliefs sometimes?
How does this work then? Being “Born Again” isn’t enough to save you if some random fundie decides you aren’t holy enough?
“Christianity has failed”. If by that you mean “fundamentalist Christianity has dragged society back through the ages” than I 100% agree.
Why doesn’t the brother in this scenario just
go to the authorities and have these lot arrested? There are plenty of grounds to do so. He could have just spied on the meeting, recorded it and took it to the police and he wouldn’t have this problem. As I said, these guys’ security isn’t exactly up to scratch.
Yay, obligatory Karl Marx quote! I was wondering when we’d get to that! Chick, if you are going to quote Marx, you should cite your sources; you have enough room for that humongous Bible quote after all. It’s from the introduction to
A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right, by the way. 5 points says Chick doesn’t know the context and hasn’t actually
read it. Hell, even looking the quote up on Wikipedia would be an improvement; it has a page you know.
Anyway, point is that ideas (for Marx) arise out of historical conditions of production; this theory is known as “Historical Materialism”. Henceforth, religions are just another idea that arose out of the historical conditions.
“Man makes religion, religion does not make man.” Henceforth, religion needs to be critiqued as an illusion, a shadow of reality. Religion is transcended by communism. When you have Communism there is simply no need for religion. Here’s Engels on the topic:
All religions which have existed hitherto were expressions of historical stages of development of individual peoples or groups of peoples. But communism is that stage of historical development which makes all existing religions superfluous and supersedes them.
(My Emphasis – Taken from
A Communist Confession of Faith, 1847. If Jack had have looked this up, he could have had so much fun with that title as well.)
Chick, do you know about anything else that Marx wrote…? No? *slaps Chick round the head with copy of
Das Kapital, Vol I.*
In a related issue I have with this tract, here’s Friedrich Engels on revolution.
We are convinced not only of the uselessness but even of the harmfulness of all conspiracies. We are also aware that revolutions are not made deliberately and arbitrarily but that everywhere and at all times they are the necessary consequence of circumstances which are not in any way whatever dependent either on the will or on the leadership of individual parties or of whole classes. But we also see that the development of the proletariat in almost all countries of the world is forcibly repressed by the possessing classes and that thus a revolution is being forcibly worked for by the opponents of communism. If, in the end, the oppressed proletariat is thus driven into a revolution, then we will defend the cause of the proletariat just as well by our deeds as now by our words.
(My emphasis; ibid.)
In classical Marxist theory, revolution comes from
class not
party. You have written a tract about communist revolution without even mentioning the
proletariat Jack. Do you know how
badly that
fails? Do you know how important the proletariat as the universal class (i.e. the representative of humanity) is in Marxist theory? Oh, of course you don’t, because
you’re an idiot. Even if these guys just want control and power, they would at least pay
lip service to the idea of the proletariat if they are acting in the name of Marx.
You’re the one who brought Marx into the discussion, so I am fully justified in fucking owning you with Marxist quotes.
I love the Comrade thing. This is written in 2010, so Jack doesn’t even have the excuse of the Cold War any more. Hint: Not all Marxists/Communists supported the USSR. Which brings me to a related point: where are these guys getting their funding from? I mean, to carry out a revolution you need cold, hard, bourgeois cash. I doubt that big business is going to be funding their little Commie escapade. Marxism as an ideology does not have enough support in, presumably America, for the funding to come from the masses. And as there’s no USSR, they can’t even take their begging bowl to the Soviets any more. Wait, what am I doing trying to apply logic to a Chick Tract?
Yay the scare words “New World Order”. Wasn’t that what H.W. Bush said the world would be like after the Cold War with ideas such as human rights and humanitarian intervention coming to the fore and replacing US v USSR
realpolitik?
Socialism does not work that way. It’s about, economically, putting the means of production back in the hands of the workers; no-one has power over the workers as the capitalists do not exist.* It’s true however that Marxists would generally consider the free market oppressive and unfair.
BUT, as a related point though, Marx never actually condemned the free market as unjust, in fact he says the opposite in Das Kapital, despite the whole thing being a critique of capitalism. It’s more interesting to speculate why that is rather than read this crap.*depends on how broadly we want to define “socialism”; I’m taking a hard-left definition here, as it makes sense in context.
Besides Jack, what you got against fairness and tolerance? Oh no wait this is
Jack Chick I’m talking about…
11:25 p.m. is a bit of an arbitrary time.
Police officers aren’t even bourgeois.
Again: Marxists =/= Hippies.
Where are the revolutionists hiding these camps? If they are doing terrorism/guerrilla warfare style-tactics, I highly doubt that they could create and hold detention camps unless they have conquered some area of the country. How did what looks like a tiny band of revolutionaries achieve this aim? Terrorism does not work this way Jack.
“I knew those 250 guns would come in useful for something!” – Second Amendment obsessed paranoid fundie.
Do people actually say “I’m Hit” when they get shot?
Is this Chick saying Christianity is a delusion? I’m confused.
Love how we get a bit of paranoid “they’re going to take our
guns!” thing in here as well.
Hang on, if “The people” are fighting against the revolutionists…who are the revolutionists? I mean, I find it unbelievable that this really powerful group relating to a broadly believed-to-be-discredited ideology can come out of nowhere and exist without at least
some support from
some of the people
somewhere.
Again, no mention of the
proletariat, Jack. You fail.
Terrorism does not work this way. Terrorism is a tactic of the weak that attempts to get government to give into its demands by violence, true. But terrorists alone don’t really have enough power to overthrow a government; they create fear, which is supposed to lead to the government giving into its demands. I doubt a government would give in to a terrorist demand to utterly dissolve itself.
Jack, please tell us which nation this is meant to be, thanks.
Foreign mercenaries, okay. But where did they get the cash to pay the mercenaries? Yes I know crime funds terrorist groups. I just have a really hard time believing that a fringe ideology could have enough support to have a terrorist group based around it in modern day America, which I’m presuming that’s where this is set, let alone one that could overthrow the American government with its ridiculous military spending. I’d say this isn’t 1960’s Italy, but I really don’t know as Chick doesn’t tell us.
We’ve had a communist revolution and this is the
first fucking mention of class.
Finally. Socialism does not work this way Jack. Private property is
private ownership of the means of production i.e. Factories, etc. It’s not that hard.
He’s a bit more than “by” the gallows.
Who exactly are these guys going to rule if they’ve killed everyone?
Why don’t these guys at least try to fight back if they’re going to die anyway?
If Chick was going to have the socialist group stab each other in the back, he could have at least had them get in a bitch fight over differences of interpretation of socialism. Marx and Bakunin, Mensheviks and Bolsheviks, Stalin and Trotsky…oh no wait that might require a bit of knowledge of history, but if he’d had done it that way I’d have given him half a point as socialists are well-known for internal bickering.
They die. Hell punt. The End.
What, no message telling me that communism is a religion;
Das Kapital is its Bible, etc?
