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Essays, Opinion, & Commentary |
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by Steve Farrell
If ever there was a person suffering under the delusion that there really was a nickel's difference between the Democratic Party and the Republican Party, Newt Gingrich's surfing in Alvin Toffler's Third Wave, and his application of the same as the launching pad of 21st century Republicanism, should have been the wake-up call to stack the sandbags, vacate the beachheads, and run for the hills. Mr. Gingrich told his fellow congressmen, in his Republican Revolution Victory Speech in November 1994, that "The Third Way [The Third Wave]" represented the key to figuring out where he and the new Republicans were coming from, and that this futurism-based book was "one of the seminal works of our time." (1, 2) It isn't! At best, the work represents a compilation of glaring contradictions, hasty generalizations, and shamefully shallow analysis of U.S. constitutional foundations, topped off with foolish, risky, naive solutions that discard the political past and leap blindly into a radically different political future, for no better reason than "we must!" That's the kind appraisal. At worst, the work is intentionally deceptive, possibly treasonous, and clearly Marxist, in its political, historical, and sociological philosophy. Either way, it is not seminal. It is one of the most embarrassing and revelatory documents on just how far the Republican Party has strayed since 1994 from the old hypothetical platform, and from the promise of the Contract With America to "return to the wisdom and brilliance of the Founding Fathers." The party simply did not then, and does not now, seek the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, but in its new gutless political outlook, grovels in the gutter of the gulags, in search of gracious, Information Age answers. So let's get right to alleviating any disbelief that this might be so, by beginning where this Republican Party leadership-endorsed book "The Third Wave" leaves off, in its call for the abolition of the U.S. Constitution. Goodbye to the U.S. Constitution Toffler explains in a letter he writes to our Founding Parents: "For what I now must write can all too easily be misunderstood by my contemporaries. Some will no doubt regard it as seditious. Yet it is a painful truth I believe you [the American Founders] would have quickly grasped. "For the system of government you fashioned, including the very principles on which you based it, is increasingly obsolete, and hence increasingly, if inadvertently, oppressive and dangerous to our welfare. It must be radically changed and a new system of government invented -- a democracy for the 21st Century." (3) And then, as if for special effect, Toffler adds: The America system of government "is a disease" that "must, in its turn, die and be replaced." (4) Why is that? Enter Karl Marx With a Futuristic Twist Power shifts, cultural and technological leaps, non-representation for minorities, and a deficient Bill of Rights is why. And what is Toffler's solution? An expanded Bill of Rights to include, notably, the right of gay couples to adopt children, and the right of poor people and poor nations to 'share' equally with the rich haves of America via the forced redistribution of the wealth. (5) The point is when the boldness, the progressiveness, the Information Age innovation that Mr. Toffler so ably presents has a bottom line that bids farewell to a dangerous and diseased U.S. Constitution and its Godly morality, and hello to a charity at gun point, morality at groin point, replacement. It doesn't take a J. Edgar Hoover to smell a rat. The book is, in fact, glossed-over communism from start to finish. Toffler Take on Marx's Three Waves First of all, Toffler's idea of the three waves of history came out of the textbook of communist founder Karl Marx. We've discussed Marx's version of this previously, but a brief refresher is in order. Marx outlined three private property phases of man -- waves, if you will: Slavery, Feudalism, and Capitalism. Capitalism was further subdivided into: 1. The Industrial Revolution 2. The Imperialist Period (when credit, corporations and government centralize internationally) 3. The Dictatorship of the Proletariat (the brutal and final transitional phase to full communism when the last remnants of capitalism, to include its religion, its property, and its conception of the family, are obliterated) Now mix in futurism and make a few adjustments for where Marx's paradigm falls apart, and presto! Alvin Toffler's Third Wave! Here's how he did it. Toffler lumped Marx's Slavery and Feudalism together and called it the Agricultural Age (Wave 1). Then he took the first stage of Marx's Capitalist period and called it, just as Marx did, the Industrial Revolution (Wave 2). Finally, he used Marx's Imperialist Phase of Capitalism and renamed it the Information Age (Wave 3). (6) Some will argue that Toffler's Wave 3 significantly departs, free-market-like, from Marx's centralized imperialistic model, because Toffler calls for decentralization. But Toffler's supposed decentralization, or what he and Mr. Gingrich called "decision division," shifts power not just downward to the states, but upward to the United Nations, to subsidiary international organizations like NAFTA, the WTO and NATO, and to totally unaccountable NGOs. (7) Nothing could be more centralized and anti-free market than these. Toffler, apparently not one to miss throwing in a few hints of what he really means, a few caveats for his leftist readers, confirms this suspicion by his incessant insistence that national sovereignty is "a myth," (8) and that these regional and global arrangements need to assume nation-like powers, to include enforcement mechanisms. (9) Toffler Preaches the Communist Dialectic While it's sure as shootin' that Toffler's Three Waves are but a remake of Marx's, it is equally revelatory that the whole wave thesis is built around another communist principle, the dialectical view of history. On this point, a reviewer would have to be hell bent on looking the other way not to notice the all too frequent, cover-to-cover use of the communist dialectic words: clash, collision, convergence, inevitable, compelled, quantum leap, and transformation -- especially since Toffler applies those words precisely as Marx did. The dialectic, remember, is what Lenin called the key to unraveling everything communistic. So it would serve us well to review, in simple terms, just what the dialectic is and how it applies to the Third Way. The Dialectic Defined According to the communist perspective, there is only one constant in the universe, change. And change occurs because of the constant clash of opposing forces which exist everywhere, both within and without. Inevitably these opposites collide, either as a matter of natural course or by chance. These random collisions are termed "an unforeseen convergence of circumstance." There is no divine design in it, no free-will choice of men, for neither exist. Once the clash occurs, a crisis ensues -- there is no escaping this -- and a transformation occurs. The former state of being is totally negated, and replaced by another. The change is not gradual, as Darwin taught, but occurs in a quantum leap. If applied to macro-evolution, it means that the monkey did not gradually become a man over millions of years, but that some clash with an unforeseen change in circumstance caused him to leap from ape to man. Using the language of the dialectic, the monkey is the thesis, the change in circumstance that caused the leap (maybe the appearance of environmentally exploitive aliens -- galactic capitalists) is called the anti-thesis, a crisis occurs, and the result is a quantum leap (or transformation) to a totally new thesis, Man. Toffler's Application of the Dialectic to History Applying this to economic history, using Toffler's version of history, we have the following: Primitive (First Wave) man is a farmer; he uses basic tools, he is pretty much self-sufficient, and although he is exploitive of the environment, he does relatively little damage, compared to later capitalists (Second Wave people), like you and me. (10) This is the first thesis. Along comes an unforeseen change in circumstance, a clash -- the invention of the machine and mass production. Man is now compelled to change (he is driven by economic needs). This transformation is inevitable, Toffler says a hundred times over. The clash goes on for awhile, with those in power (the slave holders and feudal lords) resisting the crumbling of their exclusive monopoly on the wealth. Then, society leaps, from agriculturalism to industrialism, and there is no looking back. The new order inevitably must win (in this case the Second Wave, the wave instigated by the American Founders). Eventually, everything is transformed (worldwide): the government, the economy, the morals, the legal code and the family. Only remote villages are spared. Cynically, all of the changes are the inventions of the new ruling class of men. (11) Invented, Toffler with a cynic's eye says, to sustain their prominence in the new order. This is why, there is always a "mythological past." This being so, there is no inspiration, no basis in fixed truth, no government with enduring precepts, and thus, nothing of the past will endure beyond the next crisis and the coming of the next wave, nothing beyond the Third Wave -- the Toffler, Gingrich, Gore, Clinton Wave. Kiss the Founders and the old moral order goodbye, because for us, the next wave is already upon us. We began to feel its effects in 1954. It will inevitably and completely transform all of society, just as its predecessors did. We cannot resist, and we had better not resist, so Toffler would have us believe. Every single thread of this, without exception, is communist dogma. If you've fallen for it, wake up. The Dialectic's Convenient Conclusions Oversimplifying history and the conduct of man makes for some very strange, very convenient conclusions. Here are a few of Toffler's best. All the wars of the Industrial era were fought for no other reason than a clash between the backward-thinking forces of the Agricultural era (First Wave) protecting their interests, and the forward-thinking forces of the Industrial era (Second Wave) opening up new prospects for their interests. These Second Wave forces were compelled to fight these wars in the interest of the progress of man. And then the fun begins: "In Russia . . . the same collision between First and Second Wave forces erupted." The 1917 revolution was Russia's version of the American Civil War, he says. "It was fought not primarily, as it seemed, over communism" [and its reckless lust for power], "but once again over the issue of industrialization." "When the Bolsheviks wiped out the last lingering vestiges of serfdom and feudal monarchy, they pushed agriculture in the background and consciously accelerated industrialization. They, the Communists, like our Founders, became the Party of the Second Wave." (12) Butchery, then, is no longer butchery, but the inevitable path of progress. Likewise, mass-murdering communist Ho Chi Minh became then, in this Wave game, an "anti-colonialist," resisting the heartless, exploitive Imperialism of the Capitalist version of the Second Wave. (13) Soviet Imperialism became not a conspiracy to spread tyranny, but a reasonable desire to feed the urban populations of their Second Wave industrial complex. (14) While on the other hand -- Toffler apparently couldn't resist -- American imperialism was true imperialism, and as such, was nothing more than a model for the old Marxist paradigm that the factory owners needed new markets to exploit in order to maintain their lofty status in the Second Wave. (15) Christian missionaries, in Toffler's view, were part of the conspiracy, having no higher purpose in mind than to impose Second Wave civilization on what they viewed as "backward . . . underdeveloped . . . childlike . . . tricky and dishonest . . . shiftless [people who] did not value life." (16) The brazen thing about all this is not only does Toffler make excuses for the tyrannical bloodbaths of the Communists, even while he throws mud at the free-choice achievements of the Capitalists, but he uses the same economic determinism paradigm to justify his repeated threats that future bloodbaths are on the way as a predictable outcome of progressive Third Wavers clashing with backward Second Wavers. Self-righteously, he proclaims, if the blood flows, the guilt won't lie at the door of the progressives of the Third Wave, but on the regressives of the Second Wave -- that is, upon people like constitutionalists and Christians who rigidly refuse to let go of old horse and buggy governments and morals. (17) Plenty More There is more. Yet this is enough for today, enough to raise a few more eyebrows and cast yet a longer shadow of suspicion over a progressive Republican revolution that was, and is, low on progress and high on revolution.
Footnotes: 1. Gingrich, Newt and Army, Dick. "Contract With America." New York: Times Books, Random House, 1994, pp. 186-187. 2. Toffler, Alvin and Heidi. "Creating a New Civilization: The Politics of the Third Wave." Atlanta: Turner Publishing Inc., 1994, pp. 8-9. (Foreword written by Newt Gingrich). 3. Toffler, Alvin. "The Third Wave." New York: Bantam Books, p. 417. Ibid. 418. See also "Creating a New Civilization" p. 91. 4. Toffler, Alvin. "The Third Wave," pp. 418, 417, 404. Toffler refers to representative government as a "terminal crisis." 5. Ibid. pp. 9-11, 16, 211-218, 224, 416-417, 431-432. He wants divorce, hot affairs, bisexuality & immorality without guilt; he hopes that schools, churches and other institutions will cooperate in promoting this message to avoid the bloodbath. He calls socialistic wealth redistribution "progressive" and opposition to feminism, regionalism (i.e., regional governments under the U.N.), non-nuclear-anything goes families and unlimited immigration, etc., "reactionary." 6. See also "Creating a New Civilization," pp. 19-26. 7. Ibid. pp. 356, 431-433. From page 432, we read about the real agenda. He says we need transnational and global enforcement mechanisms, to create "codes of corporate conduct . . . transnational food stockpiles and 'hot spot' disaster organizations . . . [and] global agencies to provide early warnings of impending crop failures, to level out swings in the price of key resources, and to control the wildfire spread of arms trade . . . nongovernmental organizations [NGOs] to attack various global problems . . . [world] agencies to regulate out of control currencies. . . . We shall have to invent new agencies to spread the advantage and limit the side affects of technology. We must speed the construction of strong transnational agencies for governing outer space and the oceans. We shall have to overhaul the . . . United Nations from the ground up." This of course, is not a dangerous step toward new world order centralization, and is worth the risk, so long as we go into it with our eyes open, call it democratic decentralization, move some power downward &endash; and are as politically naive as they come! 8. Ibid. p. 405. 9. Ibid. p. 432. 10. Ibid. p. 25. 11. Ibid. p. 42. 12. Ibid. p. 24. 13. Ibid. p. 91. 14. Ibid. pp. 93-97. 15. Ibid. pp. 84-93. Capitalists, in their colonial drive for cheap resources (another Marxist paradigm), "systematically" kill natives, thinking this "to be more like a hunt than a war," he says. 16. Ibid. p. 86. 17. Ibid. pp. 381-391, 440-441. Toffler claims that the only way for a nation to hold on to the moral and political values of the past is through "totalitarian means." Previous -- Next NewsMax contributing columnist Steve Farrell is the former managing editor of Right magazine, a widely published research writer, a former Air Force Communications Security manager, and a graduate student in constitutional law. Have a comment? Contact Steve at Cyours76@yahoo.com Feel free to respond to this article in The Radical Academy Forum. Enrich your life with a book about politics and current events... Enrich your political & social life with a politics or news magazine... |
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