Are all human beings 'sinners'?

[Tannin]

Thankyou for demonstrating exactly my point. Dream up a Book of Right Things with a firm Higher Purpose, and use it to justify any horror you wish to commit. Inquisition or gulag, it makes no difference.

Do try to get your history right though: none of those things you mention - none - have anything to do with Marx. You need to look at political figures, Stalin in particular for them, and the Holy Texts used to justify those particular horrors weren't Marx either, in the main, they included a fair bit of Lenin and the various others who took over after Lenin's death, but were mostly justified by ad-hoc pronouncements from on high by committees of leaders.

It is as fair to blame Marx for a Stalin purge as it is to blame Saint Peter for a Papal bull on contraception. Once you have a Holy Text, it doesn't really matter what it says, still less does it matter what the writer meant or what he stood for. What matters is that other men can and do use the memory of whoever wrote the Holy Text (whether they existed or not) to justify acts for which no justification is possible.

It is evil to justify your acts by blaming them on a book or a belief. It's not just a cop-out, it's not just a cowardly abrogation of responsibility, it is a well-tried and very powerful way to justify the worst of evils. YOU and YOU ALONE are responsible for what you do.


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Footnote for historical accuracy:

Actually, The Communist Manifesto is a short, lively, and throughly entertaining book, with clarity of vision which is quite extraordinary. Not what you expect from Marx. But, of course, Marx didn't write it, Engels did, and Engles, for all that he lacked Marx's stupendous intellect, was a gifted communicator.

The Communist Manifesto, by the way, has nothing to do with your catalogue of evils. It has practically nothing to say about how society should be run (stand aside some vague and impractical, starry-eyed dreaming) and a very great deal to say about how things had got to where they were in 1848. (Or 2016 for that matter.) A very great deal of what is contained in the Communist Manifesto (or indeed in much else that Marx wrote) had either already been expressed (albeit less clearly) in the works of those great heroes of the right, Adam Smith and Ricardo, or soon would be by other modern free-market heroes such as Marshal, Mill, and Keynes.

You were no doubt thinking of the works of Lenin, which are a very different thing.

[Tannin]

Or, to put the whole screed above more succinctly ....

Who has not done at least 1 Wrong Thing.
I am not Religious so I don't really pay attention to what they think

[stui magpie]

I don't believe there is a God, but if there is no derivation of law above human will, on what basis does one "work it out for oneself"

Well, there are lots of ways. How about we start by thinking of a really, really bad way as an example not to follow. Having done that, and considered it, perhaps we will be a little wiser and thus better able to think about more useful ways.

So let's dream up some really evil and stupid example. I'll go first.

How about we all pretend that there is an imaginary counter-factual being who just happens to share some of worst and most anti-social neuroses of the most powerful and greedy individuals within a society? We could endow this imaginary ogre with a mania for blind obedience to his own authority (and by extension, to all other claimed authorities), a deeply ingrained hatred of "inferior" not-quite-human beings (women, gay people, black people too if you like) but disguise it as "compassion" or "paternal guidance".

Not bad enough? OK, we also make sure that the wishes and wisdom (if any) of this entirely imaginary being are authoritatively expressed only by some ancient, primitive tome written in a foreign language - no, make that a dead foreign language - and are utterly devoid of any knowledge or understanding of modern times or the natural world we live in. Make it a nice long tome with plenty of contradictions - lots and lots of contradictions!. Now we can conveniently find a handy justification for just about any evil we take it into our heads to commit. "It's in the book!" And it will be in the book, 'coz the book is so long and rambling and so vague in translation that we can find examples to "prove" whatever we feel like "proving" today.

Want to find a justification for stretching unbelievers out on a wooden rack and slowly tearing their bones apart? No problem, it's in the book. Want to find a justification for blowing up 22 young strangers at a concert? Easy, the book said to do it. Want to find a justification for hacking off children's genitals? That's in the book too. How about hard ones though, like starting a war that kills thousands, even millions? Or denying birth control to the overpopulated billions even though you know that many of the babies will slowly starve to death? Even easier. It's always in the book.

Better yet, although we are making our morality up as we go along, and selecting whichever passage of this made-up book about a made-up myth happens to suit our purpose at the time, we cannot be challenged and criticised! This is brilliant! What a masterstroke! Why didn't I think of it myself? Make up an imaginary person, then do whatever you like and pretend that you are above criticism because the imaginary person said it was OK! And you can stop other people doing what they want because the imaginary person you made up said that they were bad people!

To hell with this being moral caper. Hand me that pencil. I'm going to write a book.

While all the principles you outline apply, writing a book won't cut it nowdays. Social media is the way to suck in the followers,

Write it, by all means, or even better get someone else to do it, call them an acolyte or disciple, and make it a compilation of the wisdom you share on twitter, Snapchat, Instagram and facebook.

I'll happily come on board and pledge obeisance for 10% of the takings.

[Mugwump]

It's many years since I read the CM but the prose of it is indeed stirring, vigorous and excellent, even if the logic is poor. However, I think there is a line of succession between the things that are in the CM - dictatorship of the proletariat, the vesting of power in the state rather than in individuals, abolition of private property - and the totalitarianism which followed. It is a tract based on political absolutism, on abstractions about people, and on historical necessity. It's hard to see it ending other than it always has.

In contrast, there seems to me little line of succession - indeed, only rank contradiction - between the very personal morality of JC, and much that was subsequently done in his name by rapacious humans.

The works of the warlord of Medina are a different matter again. Read the texts and compare.

Finally, of course you alone are responsible for what you do. But we humans are almost incapable of separating our egotism - our interests and desires - from our ideas and beliefs about right and wrong (one of Marx's truly great insights). Anyone who is not overly troubled by that thought will find humanism enough, I suppose.