Introduce Marxism with a Short Skit In World History or Economics Class

I have used this short skit successfully in World History (in the study of the industrial revolution), and American Government and Economics. Feel free to copy and use it, and please let me know how the lesson went. The teacher may wish to prepare a short presentation comparing laissez-faire capitalism to Marxism and examine the vocabulary words (below) before doing the skit. The teacher may do the skit alone or have students perform it. Enjoy!

- Mike

Mike Spinrad, San Marin High School, Novato, California

Karl Marx Encounters Capitalist

Scene:  London 1850

Marx:  My backside hurts from boils, probably because I’ve already sat and read in the public library for six hours today. Who’s coming to greet me?

William Pound: It’s me, William Pound.

Marx: Ah yes. Pound, I called you to discuss your ridiculous beliefs about factory owners. Why don’t you understand that every time a factory produces something, workers are exploited?

William Pound: The workers trade their labor for pay. It’s a free exchange where both owner and worker agree, without coercion, to engage in a contract. What could be wrong with that?

Marx: The workers are paid poorly and working conditions are bad. The workers are nothing more than slaves, wage slaves.

William Pound: Working conditions have been improving for years, thanks to recent laws passed by Parliament and the power of unions. Additionally, not all factory owners treat their employees poorly.  Don’t you think a worker has mastery over his own fate and can move, working wherever he pleases?

Marx: I am a determinist. I do not believe in free will. It’s an economic system, not individuals that determine history. As it has been said, the system makes people act the way they do.

William Pound: What nonsense are you saying? An economic system produced the ambition of Napoleon and genius of the Duke of Wellington? People, not systems make choices in their lives and create history.

Marx: You sound like my Jewish grandfather. He thought that people have choices too. I’m glad I was baptized as a young child and that you’re not Jewish.

William Pound: Karl, you’re a vicious anti-Semite as well as the originator of catchy but superficial ideas. Naturally, no one wants to be against workers earning a good living. Few common people care about liberty, however, until it’s gone. Just how do you propose the change to socialism will occur?

Marx: I believe that the capitalist system will destroy itself by producing enough disgruntled workers. These workers will take over and replace capitalism with a socialist paradise. We won’t need liberty in this socialist paradise.

________________________________________________________

Name ______________________

Define the following words and answer the questions:

Liberty

Determinist

Exploited

Anti-Semite

Coercion

_____________________________________________________________

What is more important to you, liberty or equality of outcome? Why?

Do you believe in determinism or free will?  Why?

The Left's View of Thanksgiving--A Rational Response

Robert Jensen's No Thanks for Thanksgiving (link here) twists and falsifies history. Let's look at what really happened.

Jensen: "But in the United States, this reluctance to acknowledge our original sin -- the genocide of indigenous people..."

Most Native American deaths in the Americas were due to disease. Smallpox killed biologically unprepared indigenous people much more efficiently than Spanish conquistadors, destroying 90 percent of those infected, and most of its victims never saw a white man.

Englishmen had less use for natives than the Spanish. The English were not interested in gaining gold from the Indians. Instead the English and Native Americans competed for land. Sometimes, as in the cases of the Pilgrims and the Quakers in Pennsylvania, both sides cooperated, but most of the time, the two sides descended into armed conflict.

Jensen: But it's also true that by 1637 Massachusetts Gov. John Winthrop was proclaiming a thanksgiving for the successful massacre of hundreds of Pequot Indian men, women and children, part of the long and bloody process of opening up additional land to the English invaders.

The Powhatan Indians started the war against the English in Massachusetts, massacring women and children. The English responded with "Irish tactics," using the same scorched earth policy that successfully broke the Irish resistance. What's more, infectious disease took a great toll on the tribes, and total war and disease was responsible for pretty much wiping them out. Disgraceful, terrible, but not genocide.

Jensen: The pattern would repeat itself across the continent until between 95 and 99 percent of American Indians had been exterminated and the rest were left to assimilate into white society or die off on reservations, out of the view of polite society.

Jensen fails to account for disease in his statistics, and the Indians of the Great Plains killed a fair share of white civilians as well, fighting bravely against the U.S. army with stone-age technology, and then later, with rifles (bye, bye, General Custer).

The Native Americans were doomed by European diseases and the sheer numbers of land-hungry English colonists and, later, American citizens. The cooperation between natives and whites during the Pilgrims' first winter shows how things could have been and should be celebrated in the holiday of Thanksgiving.

Times Puff Piece on New Chinese Dictator

The NYT (Never Yell Truth; Nikita, Yuriy, Trotsky; New Yankee Tragedy--you pick ), honoring their philosophy, "All the Leftist Propaganda News Fit to Print," found time in between working for the Obama reelection campaign to publish an obsequious piece analyzing the background of the new Chinese dictator. In the Times November 3, 2012 article, Close Army Ties of China’s New Leader Could Test the U.S (link here), reporter Jane Perlez catches the readers interest with new Communist Party leader's Xi Jinping's Mexico City criticism of American policy:

“There are a few foreigners, with full bellies, who have nothing better to do than try to point fingers at our country,” Mr. Xi said, according to a tape broadcast on Hong Kong television.  “China does not export revolution, hunger, poverty nor does China cause you any headaches. Just what else do you want?”

Oh, I can think of a few things: Quit supporting the murderous and terrorist regimes in North Korea and Iran. Stop building up your military and threatening U.S. allies. Let your currency float instead of violating trade regulations. But Perlez's article never challenges Xi's ludicrous statements. Instead, the article suggests that America is in decline and China is ascendant.

The Chinese military’s new buoyancy comes as America’s allies across Asia — Japan, South Korea, Australia and other friends, particularly Singapore and India — worry whether the United States has the money, and the will, to enhance its military presence in Asia, as President Obama has promised.  

The above may be true, but the Times' does not interview anyone critical of the Chinese regime. The last time I checked the New York Times was not affiliated with China's People's Daily. I'm having difficulty figuring out the difference between them.

China does not show the American public it's aggressive policy, the speech made in Mexico City and the leadership's real feelings. Instead, we are told to play with panda bears and enjoy inexpensive Chinese goods. The People's Daily editorializes, China’s Communist Paper Calls for Closer U.S. Ties Under Xi (link here). "China and the U.S. should deepen cooperation and become more interdependent, the Communist Party’s flagship newspaper said in a commentary today, signaling that new leader Xi Jinping may seek closer ties."

On whose terms?

25 Years Later: What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know?

Diane Ravitch/Picture from Stanford.edu

Diane Ravitch and Chester Finn assessed high school seniors' grasp of American history and literature in their classic book, What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know, released in 1987. The conclusions of What Do Our 17-Year-Olds Know may be more relevant today than they were 25 years ago. Ravitch and Finn write about the amount of information available to the average teenager. Today's students are even more bombarded with information--from computers and cell phones--nonexistent in 1987.

But can they make sense of what they see and hear? Do they have the perspective to separate what is important from what is trivial? What is durable from what is ephemeral? Can they interpret the significance of the day's news? Are they able to discern patterns of trends and events? Are they capable of introspection? Can they relate their experiences to universal themes that have been explored by great writers through the ages? These are only a few of the potential benefits of the study of history and literature (P.202).

Ravitch and Finn found that students scored poorly in their understanding of history and literature. Things are worse now. Students, especially boys, read less today than they did in the 1980s, and their corresponding amount of knowledge has shrunk further. (See my blog, How Boys Can Do Better in School.)

Thus the answer to all of Ravitch and Finn's questions above would be an emphatic "no!" Only the elite, perhaps the top 20 percent of graduating California high school seniors can separate the wheat from the chafe and put their experience in a larger context and make sense of the world around them. I find these kids in our Advanced Placement (college-level) program.

What to Do

Since students today come to class with less background knowledge and a smaller vocabulary than their cohort of 25 years ago, teachers must assume that they are less capable. Below are words used for one of my lessons on industrialization. These words and phrases are difficult for my average high school sophomores. They have trouble understanding what the words mean. When these words are mastered we can better place the terms into historical context.

• wages docked
• consent
• figuring out the number of hours on the job--6AM to 7PM
• the sick fund
• dismissal
• deference
• untrue allegations
• wage advances

Once we have mastered literacy concerns the history itself may be understood. So literacy becomes a part of most lessons. I ask the students to define vocabulary. "What does this mean?" and I put vocabulary words on tests. Secondly, most students need assistance understanding most high school World and U.S. History textbooks. They cannot decipher textbooks on their own, so teacher summaries and read-alouds, pair-share, and teacher-monitored jigsaws of reading materials are essential.

Third, Ravitch and Finn write about the need to include chronology in history lessons, giving the curriculum more meaning by putting it into context with other historical facts they may (we hope) know. This is even more important today. I enjoy creating parallel timelines that show world and American history in sequence. Most male students are interested in transportation, Stephenson's Rocket to the Model T, weaponry, the musket to the M-16, and technology, the typewriter to the PC, so add those categories on your timelines.

Adults Acting Like Adults

Ravitch and Finn are squarely against "romantic" practices such as letting adolescents learn what they want to learn--the view that naturalness is good and schools should provide freedom where children can develop naturally. (See my blog Educational Ideologies and Applications here.) Instead, Ravitch and Finn concede that children do not

...naturally gravitate to academic subjects or spontaneously immerse themselves in the lore of their civilization. Children are often not the best judges of what they need to do and know. In general, we believe that children learn pretty much what the important adults in their lives make a point in seeing that they learn: in school, at home, and through a myriad of other means (P. 203).

A lot is at stake. "Failure to make this cultural knowledge part of every child's inheritance serves to reinforce invidious social class distinctions (P. 235)." In other words, those who favor social justice and equality should demand that all children learn America's historical canon.

Age and Happiness

Sonja Lyubomirsky, Ph.D.

Psychology professor Sonya Lyubmirsky, in an interview, states that older people generally tend to be happier. She says:

The relationship between age and happiness is complex. Studies have found that older people generally tend to be happier than younger ones. A 22-year study of healthy veterans revealed that well-being increased over the course of these men’s lives, peaked at age 65, and did not start significantly declining until age 75. People tend to move toward more positive trait profiles as they age, becoming lower in neuroticism [negative emotions such as hate, anger, and jealousy--MS], for example, as they approach middle age. This may be because older people are better able to resist social pressures and pursue goals for more self-endorsed reasons, the result of a normative maturational process. Older people have also been found to be emotionally wiser.

The Economist looks at the data differently, showing that well-being (a slightly different descriptor and dependent variable than happiness) follows a U-shape pattern.

The U-Bend

 The Economist notes the U-bend's

effect on happiness is significant—about half as much, from the nadir of middle age to the elderly peak, as that of unemployment. It appears all over the world. David Blanchflower, professor of economics at Dartmouth College, and Mr Oswald looked at the figures for 72 countries. The nadir varies among countries—Ukrainians, at the top of the range, are at their most miserable at 62, and Swiss, at the bottom, at 35—but in the great majority of countries people are at their unhappiest in their 40s and early 50s. The global average is 46. The U-bend shows up in studies not just of global well-being but also of hedonic or emotional well-being. One paper, published this year by Arthur Stone, Joseph Schwartz and Joan Broderick of Stony Brook University, and Angus Deaton of Princeton, breaks well-being down into positive and negative feelings and looks at how the experience of those emotions varies through life. Enjoyment and happiness dip in middle age, then pick up; stress rises during the early 20s, then falls sharply; worry peaks in middle age, and falls sharply thereafter; anger declines throughout life; sadness rises slightly in middle age, and falls thereafter. Turn the question upside down, and the pattern still appears. When the British Labour Force Survey asks people whether they are depressed, the U-bend becomes an arc, peaking at 46.

Speculations

So why do we see the U-bend? The Economist rules out external factors such as caring for teenage children and wealth effects and argues that internal factors must be at work. Aware of their own approaching death and more accepting of their failings, older people are more emotionally stable and less prone to quarreling, but I find this explanation wanting. It should lead to an upward curve from youth and not the U-bend.

Perhaps a psychological mechanism is at work. Those in the prime of life, childbearing years, are blessed with the most energy, ambition, and libido, all of which wane by the late 40s and early 50s. At this age one is at the peak of his career, the last hurrah, but can see his powers starting to wane. It's too early to accept one's lot without resentment and sadness about what might have been and since it's all downhill from here, one worries about the future. Ironically, ten years later one sees less to fret about, and well-being rises.

Alternatively, a biological and Darwinian mechanism may increase feel-good neurotransmitters such as dopamine by the early 50s and beyond, perhaps to ensure better grand-parenting and tribal leadership.