Suppose Karl Marx and Sigmund Freud took a short respite from wherever they’ve been in the past 100+ years and meet at a Parisien cafe in 2024.
KM – Well Herr Freud, it’s not so bad here considering where we’ve been the past century or so; how long do you think we’ll stick around these environs?
SF – I’m not sure but it’s stifling still. Give me Vienna any day?
KM – Honestly, I think we did a good job for ourselves considering all those who followed in our footsteps. Why look at Herbert Marcuse, he was even referred to as the ‘guru of the hippies’ in the 60s. Have you run into him? Another Jew like us you know, but he saw the light – a Jew in name only.
SF – Yavol Herr Marx; he caught on to that repression thing and the need to free our souls. Was a feminist too, and supported Israel to boot; rather a smart Jew like me. But unlike you, he still made a lot of money, I myself always lived well. No haven’t seen him yet. He was a good family man, not sure he is among us now.
KM – It wasn’t my fault, it was those Lutherans. They forced my father to convert, created chaos as far as I could see. I guess I became a little rebellious because of it and it ended up restricting my abilities toward financial success.
SF – Aah, rebellion seems to have been our achilles heel in the long run. They have this Black Lives Matter thing going now. They call themselves Marxists, but I don’t know, you were never against the family structure like they are, were you? And not only that, they support all these aberrant sexualities going on; hardly liberating. More on the side of arrested development at the least.
KM – It’s not my area. It’s the material world we have to focus on. Once that is taken care of, then our liberation can begin. Look, even the rich have these so called aberrant sexual practices and disorders. I probably could support them [BLM] if they contributed to the breakdown of capitalist society in some way. Then the emerging administrative state could straighten out the mess afterwards.
SF – Break down the capitalist society? I’m not so sure. How could I have made so much money? Look, it’s that God thing that is really in the way. If we eliminated such fantasy and illusion our chains would truly be broken.
KM – You are partially right. But getting back to the material, capitalist world, repression could be eased with a more equitable super structure. Not so much disparity between the classes; maybe even a single class for all.
SF – No, I’m not partially right. I’m completely right. Don’t get on my nerves now like my psychoanalyst colleagues. Really Karl, you hit it right on the head with this God thing. It’s this Catholic Church in particular. I tell you the specter of that Church haunts me. I never met my professional colleagues in Rome because of it. It is everywhere.
KM – A menace. These people who call themselves Christians can never be controlled. A socialist state to lead us to communism cannot tolerate this. There can be no loyalty to our cause on their part. You would think my slogan ‘from each according to his ability to each according to his needs’ would attract their attention. I got it from them anyway. Plus have you ever read Matthew 25 in the New Testament. It supports Capitalism.
SF – There you go again with this anti-capitalism thing. Are you opposed to private property? Wealth of any kind? What about the values from which to live by? At least Christianity and Judaism gave us that. As much as I oppose religion, you have to admit they do a good deed in society opposing immorality, helping the poor, indigent and sick. But these beliefs can be limiting on a person, stifling sexual freedom. They really don’t fit into our society – Paris, Vienna, any major city today.
KM – All they do is pray. It is like a drug as far as I can see. The proletariat can never really be free until they get more control of their lives or at least let a state run bureaucracy take over for at least 20 years. Then when they conform to socialist morality, the reins of government control can wither away. Maybe an alternate religion, a socialist religion can see to that.
SF – Yes, I think there needs to be some kind of control; sexual urges at least can be troublesome. Life is so troublesome. We need some super ego in place. I hear in America in 2024 they have developed something called the sexual state. That is, promoting and encouraging sexual deviancy and then creating laws to protect that deviance. It helps increase the bureaucracy leading to a socialist state. But you see, I’m not so sure because as our secular world progresses, so does an anti-religious, anti-morality impulse. Kind of seeds of its own destruction. We just cannot have deviancy run amok, administrative state and all.
KM – Hmmm. Seems the only ones left standing would be Christians as they owe an allegiance to God who they say is really in control and not the state. Oh, well, we’ll talk about this again. Now for a nice glass of cognac. Maybe some golf before we return. I really was a bourgeois at heart back in the day.
SF – Is that so? It reminds me of Soviet Prime Minister Brezhnhev and all those Mercedes Benz gifts he so valued from President Nixon. I’d say you’re repressed, not to mention a hypocrite; that is, cognitively conflicted.
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Adapted from: Baglino, Michael J. From Gramsci to Freud: 7 Anti-Christian Philosophers Who Ruined America. New York: LT Publishers. 2023.
