08-01-2020, 02:49 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-01-2020, 03:34 PM by Bob Butler 54.)
In 1848 Marx helped write the Communist Manifesto. It was one of his central works in trying to extend the period of revolutions. It followed well the Industrial Age premise that to change a culture required violence, required a crisis war.
In 1949 Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay called Civil Disobedience. It proposed that a man did not have an obligation to right every wrong he encountered, but he did have a duty not to allow himself to be part of that wrong. The essay became the beginning of non violence.
Civil Disobedience did not have the immediate impact of Communist Manifesto and similar works. It sort of remained in intellectual circles while the Industrial Age played out, a time where crisis wars were common. But…. Eventually the Industrial Age came to an end after World War II. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King ran with it. The awakening that followed amplified it.
Two essays.
There is a saying in physics. ‘If I see far it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.’ Marx never saw what Gandhi and King could do. His claim that violence and revolution was necessary and inevitable was disproved. Neither did Thoreau see his ideas put into practice. But you wonder who was the greater giant, whose idea was further beyond his time.
In 1949 Henry David Thoreau wrote an essay called Civil Disobedience. It proposed that a man did not have an obligation to right every wrong he encountered, but he did have a duty not to allow himself to be part of that wrong. The essay became the beginning of non violence.
Civil Disobedience did not have the immediate impact of Communist Manifesto and similar works. It sort of remained in intellectual circles while the Industrial Age played out, a time where crisis wars were common. But…. Eventually the Industrial Age came to an end after World War II. Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King ran with it. The awakening that followed amplified it.
Two essays.
There is a saying in physics. ‘If I see far it is because I stand on the shoulders of giants.’ Marx never saw what Gandhi and King could do. His claim that violence and revolution was necessary and inevitable was disproved. Neither did Thoreau see his ideas put into practice. But you wonder who was the greater giant, whose idea was further beyond his time.
That this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.