FAKE SCIENCE: Keywords: scientific method, scientificism, Marx-Engels, errors of Marxism, Manhattan Project, Cold War, American communism.
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| Alchemists made many discoveries over thousands of years. Most of them were to disprove their original ideas and errors. They also made a few useful discoveries. Still goes on, but now they all pretend to be backed by science. Beware of False Prophets. |
“Both
the man of science and the man of action live
always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by
it.”
J.
Robert Oppenheimer
X
THE MYSTERIES OF THE MARKET
A meditation about forgotten lessons of American Exceptionalism
By Xuan Quen Santos
THE TENTH MYSTERY
FAKE SCIENCE
In the old days before the XVIII
century, science meant knowledge which we associate with truth. After the
emergence of the ideas of Galileo, Descartes and Bacon on methodology, science
became a system of inquiry, what we know as “the scientific method”. It
starts by not taking anything for granted until it is proven. A common
definition states that science is “the systematic study of the structure and
behaviour of the physical and natural world through observation,
experimentation, and the testing of theories against the evidence obtained”.
Knowledge is expected to be advanced by truth. But the scientific method is
limited to what it can do. It finds it easier to disprove than to prove. This
conclusion is relatively recent after many costly errors of science.
* Scientificism: the pretense of scientific, masked by
“science base”, “data-driven”, and “research-based” labels for fake science.
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| Galileo made many experiments as tests of hypothesis. When a truth is found, it can be confirmed by repeating the same testing many times. After nearly 200 years of testing, and 75 countries in failure, "scientific socialism" can be trashed. |
BETWEEN SCIENCE AND SCIENTIFICISM
The XVIII and XIX centuries, the
first two centuries of scientific development, saw the label of “scientific” added
for credibility and prestige to any new proposition. It became a “brand” for
promoting snake oil. It is still around in the phrases currently used of data-driven,
fact-based, or research-base. Distinguishing between valid scientific
conclusions and snake oil -scientificism- is now a challenge. This is
particularly evident in what now are called the “social sciences”, the new name
given in this period to what had been called the “humanities”. They are the
many disciplines that focus on studying our human behavior. These include
sociology, political science, history, psychology, pedagogy (education), and
economics, among others. Are these not the areas of knowledge in disarray? Are
they not in constant disputes and radical disagreements? Politics? Economics? Education?
The paths of scientificism have muddled the search for truth. Failure in
politics leads to violence and war. Failure in economics leads to poverty and
conflict. Failure in education leads to the self-destruction of society, an
involution in our development as humanity.
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Rene Descartes, mathematician and philosopher. Required the proof to back any
belief. He used reason and logic, backed by testing when possible. He did not abandon reason and logic. |
It is undeniable that much of
the new knowledge unveiled by the scientific method has had a positive impact never
before seen on the quality of life. But scientists did not do that. The
application of new knowledge to solve the problems of everyday life did it.
That was done by tinkerers, inventors, technicians, engineers and enterprising
industrialists that operate in the market and are motivated by opportunity.
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| Francis Bacon published the first handbook to systematize the experimental method |
Progress is made possible by the technology developed to apply new knowledge. Only useful knowledge and the technology that turns it into goods and services increases the quality of life. In economics it receives the name of “capital” in two of its forms: human capital and capital goods. Consumers -the market- decided what was useful or not, what was worth having and keeping, and what to discard. With the successes of science came fame and influence for the scientists, but seldom fortune. Beware of scientists that are seeking fame and fortune. A real scientist is humble because he knows his results will be contested and may be flawed. He also knows that in due time, a better answer to his initial question may be found. He also knows that whatever door he may have opened will make new doors appear behind. Arrogance and the search for fame and fortune is a clear warning of scientificism.
The scale and speed of change caused
during the XIX century by the use of the new knowledge provoked panic and
uncertainty. The ancient artisan and trade guilds were disintegrating and
smokestacks from noisy machines were multiplying. Many old physical labor jobs
were substituted by mechanical inventions. Hand looms were changed for steam
powered textile mills. In 1942, the Austrian-American economist Joseph
Schumpeter called this a characteristic of the market economy with the
unfortunate phrase “creative destruction”. Change involves the
substitution of old for new, better, or cheaper, or for all three atributes. I
would have called it destructive innovation. Those forced to change make
way for progress and they don’t like it. The rest, the many, the consumers welcome
it. Chemistry changed agriculture with knowledge about soils and fertilizers,
the latter were soon produced in labs. Food production increased. The scare of
the famines caused by population growth never came. The positive changes did
not receive much attention. Only history in search of explanations have
uncovered the transformative processes that produced the modern era three
centuries ago.
A PERIOD OF VIOLENCE
The same period of the XVIII and
XIX centuries that saw the Scientific Revolution and the Industrial Revolution,
also witnessed real destruction, wars and revolts. Violence was in many ways the
background noise of that period. The
endless mercantilist imperial wars were interfered by the American War for
Independence (American Revolution) and the French Revolts (French Revolution). The
Napoleonic Wars followed, inciting the many wars of independence in Latin
America (More revolts labeled revolutions). In Europe, the German wars of
unification changed the maps. By 1848, a new source of violence became
institutionalized and many old monarchies dissapeared, but stronger autocratic
states spread their power. The frequent wars saw the young generations conscripted
into new armies. The urban mobs affected by the frequent hyperinflations caused
by the financing of the wars were also facing crowding by the emigration from the rural areas. The
mobs spread from the communes of Paris like a disease to the capitals of
Europe. It was announced that the new wave of violence was justified and
explained by science.
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Marx and Engels, young agitators arrived from Paris, prepare the Manifesto for the
Communist League of labor unions in London, 1848. |
THE DISMAL SCIENCE
Economics is called by many “the
dismal science”. To better understand this label, let’s travel back in time
to England in the 1840’s when it first appeared. It was meant in derogatory
terms, it was an insult.
What was happening at the time? What
was the situation that led the eccentric Scottish philosopher Thomas Carlyle to
pronounce in 1849 his acusation against the science that had not even begun to
agree on the basics.
The high-pressure, piston steam
engines had made their impact and the Industrial Revolution had just
taken off. Think of all the bad things you have been taught about overcrowded
cities, carbon pollution, dislocation of rural populations, disease, railroads,
smokestacks, etc. Malthus had earlier predicted famine, death and the return of
the plagues because of “the population explosion ”. Most facts are true but
they don’t tell the whole story. It was just the beginning of one of the most
significant periods of human progress.
Innovations in technology were
displacing the craft guilds and threatening all the ancient arts and crafts
with mass products. The production of iron and steel transformed tools,
machinery and construction. Nails or pins no longer were made by hand. Manufacturing
(made by hand) gave up its place to fabricating (in factories). Workers were
rebelling against machines and throwing their “sabots” (wooden shoes, or
shoes with wooden soles) into the fragile machines of the textile mills. Sabotage
and Luddites are terms born out of the first organized opposition to progress
made by labor organizations. Boycott had its origins in the XIX century
Irish Land War originating in tenants’ protests. The slave trade from Africa
had become an embarrasment and slavery was abolished, leading to
disruptions in the wage structures of the colonies, revolts and great
capital losses to the absentee plantation owners.
A THREAT TO THE ESTABLISHMENT
Free trade was becoming a threat
to the royal charter monopolies and their wealthy investors. The ideas of an
open economy as proposed by the Physiocrats and Adam Smith, had received
support by some of the first philosophers called “economists”, such as Jean
Baptiste Say and John Stuart Mill. Free trade entrepreneurs like Josiah
Wedgwood, James Watt, Richard Cobden and John Bright, few belonging to the
landed upper classes, were getting rich “without lineage”.
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| One of the Steam Engines by James Watt, used to pump water from the coal mines |
The socialist ideas of many of the
French intellectuals and the violence produced by the French Revolts had given
birth to the organized urban mobs for political purposes. Paris became the
training grounds for anarchists and revolutionaries from all over Europe. The
first labor unions were organized, even across borders. They needed someone to
write their grievances and some phrases for the banners and posters.
Two
young German agitators from universities in Germany, but trained in the revolts
of France, Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels declared that “doom’s day” was coming
for the rich. Sponsored by the
English labor unions to write a “Manifesto” for their
convention, they announced the death of capitalism as predicted by their
newly minted “science” of history. With the infamous phrase “Workers
of the world unite” they called for the mobs to destroy capitalism.
1848 was the year of violent riots and revolts throughout the main cities of
western Europe. Since then, they re-appear as a well oiled political tool of
the undercurrents of communism.
The fact it was proposed as “scientific
socialism”, a political model, and justified by the advances of economic
science -scientificism- when it was just a hypothesis of how the
basic material needs of the masses are what moves history , should have been
a warning. It was not history and not a new political model, just a re-branded idea
of socialism masked with bad philosophy and scientificism. At that moment, economic
science was not advanced enough to be credible and the predictions resulting
from the hypothesis about history were not confirmed by events; quite the
contrary, after nearly 200 years, not one came true.
EMERGENT SCIENCE
Economics did not bear good news
then! No wonder Carlyle was incredulous and dismissive. Carlyle thought the
pronouncements by economists of the time were pessimistic and he preferred the
beauty of poetry!
The turn of the century into the
XIX century marks the emergence of economic science as a discipline with its
own identity, but with ill defined object of study and method.
Rather than producing an
abstract general theory of economic behavior, the focus of the early economists
was “normative economics” and “political economy”, meaning
what governments should do to manage the economy. They were looking in the
wrong direction and asking the wrong questions. The ongoing mercantilism was a
series of competing national economies centrally managed by autocratic
governments.
The term “political economy”
was first introduced in 1615 in France by Antoine de Montchrétien in his work "Traité
de l'economie politique", greatly defending mercantilist
ideas. He supported his view with the arguments of the famous Medieval scholar
Jean Bodin over the errors introduced by Aristotle. He stressed the importance
of the use of productive labor and the acquisition of land and minerals to
promote wealth, added to the confusion about the nature of prices. He was not a
scholar, but a mixture of soldier of fortune, dramatist and public official. He
got involved in the first wars of religion, was ambushed, and killed. Still, the
judges put his cadaver on trial, sentenced his bones to be smashed with iron,
his corpse burnt and his ashes scattered. His now forgotten contribution is the
phrase “political economy” that was initially used to identify the new
focus on the human activity of commerce (production and exchange).
THE CLASSIC ECONOMISTS
The term political economy was
later popularized by Adam Smith, David Ricardo, John Stuart Mill, François
Quesnay and Jean Baptiste Say. These, and others, are called “classic
economists”, not exactly in praise. The “political” adjective began to
reflect its Greek root “polis” in reference to the city, a large market with an
active commerce, and not in reference to the city-state type of government.
This introduced the distinction between the original oikonomia that referred to
household management (home economics), and the broader term of economic
science or just economics referring to how human communities create wealth by
producing and exchanging in the market.
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| Jean Baptiste Say, author of the first school/college textbook on the new science of Economics |
Jean-Baptiste Say (1767–1832) represents
the state of the science of economics at the time Marx and Engels were students,
not of economics, but of philosophy and history. He is recognized as an advocate
of free trade and competition. He is best known for Say's Law, also called “The
Fundamental Law of Markets” which simply states that to participate in the
market and receive its benefits, one only has to offer others something they
are willing to trade for. Say translated Adam Smith’s writings to French and
founded the first business school. He later taught political economy at the
Collège de France for which he wrote the first textbooks.
Adam Smith was the trailblazer
and his many insights remain as the structure upon which all others have built.
But, he was unable to advance beyond
Aristotle’s idea of use-value and exchange-value. Exchange-value had
already been identified as prices, and prices were a matter of the market in
competition, not a government function. The agenda for the basics was open
for further inquiry.
The nature of prices was still
confused with costs and there was no explanation as to how they emerge in the
market. Costs were thought of as originating in the chains of the cost of labor
as illustrated by the Economic Table of Quesnay. Others, included costs related
to possessing land for the soil and its minerals. Additionally, the erroneous
idea of the “zero-sum” caused also by accountants identifying money-profit was
still mysterious. Use-value was set aside and forgotten.
Perhaps the most important
original contribution by Say was identifying the “entrepreneur”. The
English language could not find an existing word for it and the French word
became the term used since then. The term used at the time was “capitalist”,
really defining the owner of the business. This distinction allowed Say to
break the error of “costs” as price, and also invited further inquiry into the
role of the entrepreneur, as different from the owner or the manager or
administrator of a business. The entrepreneurial function as a specific role in
economics was a key to understanding the economic process.
The entrepreneur that deals with
prices for everything he decides knows that defining prices as the sum of costs
is a reasoning error. It is called circular logic that basically starts with
what you want to define, and your conclusion brings you back to your
definition. In our case it goes like this. Prices are the sum of costs, but
costs are also the prices of previous transactions, so it follows that prices
are the sum of prices. Thus, prices have not been defined. The accountant
thinks that the price is determined by the businessperson by adding his costs
and topping it with his profit. The entrepreneur knows that the prices are
already there in the market and he has to find them; to make a profit, he has
to produce at costs lower than the price. If all businesspeople had to do was
add a profit to his costs, there would never be losses. A theory of profits
must also be the same theory of losses.
BLINDED BY OBSESSION
The following fragments written
in 1848 about the transformation that was taking place is one of the most vivid
descriptions and amazing historical notes.
“The feudal system of industry, under which
industrial production was monopolized by closed guilds, now no longer sufficed
for the growing wants of the new markets. The industrial system took its
place. The guild-masters, craftsmen and artisans were pushed on one side by the
manufacturing middle class; the limited division of labor between the different
corporate guilds vanished in the face of an extensive division of labor in each
single workshop and factory.”
“Meantime the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever
rising. Hand labor and tools no longer sufficed. Thereupon, steam and
machinery revolutionized industrial production. The place of workshops was
taken by the giant, modern factory; the place of the laboring working
merchant class was taken by industrial
millionaires, leaders of whole industrial armies: the modern urban businessmen
and entrepreneurs.”
“Modern industry has
established the world-market, for which the discovery of America paved the way.
This market has given an immense development to commerce, to navigation, to
communication by land. This development has, in its time, reacted on the
extension of industry; and in proportion as industry, commerce, navigation,
railways extended, in the same proportion the business class developed,
increased its capital, and pushed into the background every social and economic
rigid class handed down from the Middle Ages.”
The author had studied history
and was witnessing the transformation that free trade, and new technologies
were making on the ancient Medieval system of rigid class structures. The
political systems of the times were in
question and under attack. New ideas for the organization of future
governments were spreading. But one thing is clear. The author was in awe of
the transformation he was witnessing.
Unfortunately, he did not stop
to explain one extraordinary phenomenon he mentions several times: “…growing
wants of the new markets…” “…the markets kept ever growing, the demand ever
rising…” “…industry has established the world-market”.
Had the author stopped to
think about what was causing the extraordinary growth of the markets, he would
have changed the course of his life. But he did not. He was already fixated
on his own ideas and predictions about what would be the calamitous end of the
process of transformation he was witnessing.
The markets were new and
growing; this can only mean that more people had more purchasing power to buy
more. It also means there were more people employed and making better wages
than their previous options. It also means prices were dropping and products
were new. The consumer class, which is the same as the working class, was
improving their lot; it was growing, not starving to death. Most people were
improving their lot. The extraordinary improvements in the quality of life
in the world connected to a freer market economy in the last two centuries are
the indubitable evidence of what actually happened. It was not doom’s day nor
the death of capitalism.
This passage is part of the
introduction of Karl Marx’s “The Communist Manifesto” (1848). The rest of
the document can be divided into three topics. A few more paragraphs about the
marvels he was witnessing, gradually they turn into his dark visions of the
future led into by his ignorance of economics, and finally, his proposals
to destroy what he called capitalism.
He never understood the nature
of voluntary free exchanges, of entrepreneurship, the formation of capital, or
the productivity of labor. For his dark forecast he combined the errors or
deficiencies of the Classic Economists at that moment with the flaws of his own
philosophic vision he labeled “Dialectic Materialism”. In plain words, the big
changes of history are the result of violent confrontations between the
oppressed (the many) and the oppressors (the elite).
Marx was a self-absorbed,
frustrated and obsessed college agitator that had closed his intellect and
failed to understand what was really happening all around him. I devoted my
previous book “Illusions, Half Truths and Masks” (2025) to the
new rise of communism in America with a full explanation.
I have to confess that the text
I presented is not the usual translation. I have made minor changes in
punctuation as per modern usage, I omitted and substituted the toxic term
“bourgeoisie” that Marx used as an insult to businesspeople and entrepreneurs,
and I modified his references to class. If you are not familiar with “The
Communist Manifesto” and its ten points of how to destroy capitalism, I
suggest you search for it. It is available everywhere, to my dismay. It is in
the classrooms and most college syllabi on any of the social studies programs,
not in China or Russia, but right here, near your home.
Several decades went by between
the call to revolution and any attempt to explain how the new system they
proposed would work. It was Friedrich Engels who edited with great input the
first three manuscript volumes of “Das Kapital”. He may have
actually written the last volume from notes and incomplete drafts left by Marx,
with a lot of personal input. The final volume appeared in 1867. By then, the
revolts starting at university campuses had become a regular event. The lack
of substance did not matter. Only the narrative of oppressed against oppressors
did. By 1894, Eugen Bohm-Bawerk, of the Austrian School of Economics, a
major exponent then of what now is the essence of mainstream economic science, had
completely debunked Marxism-Engelism as economics, much less as “scientific”.
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Bohm-Bawerk, one the founders of the Austrian School of
Economics demolished the intellectual construct of Marx-Engels since 1894 |
IT NEVER HAPPENED! Young Marx’s
awesome description of the changes he was witnessing originated in what he
called the new era of the businessmen and entrepreneurs (Which he called the bourgeoisie).
He expressed his admiration for the new markets and products that were driving
the reorganization of industry and labor. But his limited understanding of
the economic process, his mental condition, his conflicted religious background
and personal hatreds were a blind that prevented him to see the whole truth:
wages and salaries were increasing; standards of living were improving. Life
was better, particularly for the underclasses. As times have gone by, the truth
is evident.
It is unquestionable that the Marx-Engels intellectual
construct stated categorically that spontaneously: 1) Capitalism was
collapsing by its own internal contradictions. 2) Because of the inevitable and
constantly increasing exploitation of the proletariat with ever lowering wages,
a violent revolt would take place. 3) The change would take the form of a new
socio-political order called socialism. And 4) A new classless, egalitarian
society called communism would eventually be established to guarantee
everyone what they needed, from the
cradle to the grave. None of the
predictions ever happened. A quality of any scientific theory is its
predictability. Marxism does not have any.
Just two decades after Marx’s call for the workers
uprising, he was confronted with factual information about higher wages,
salaries and productivity. His answer: The
capitalists are conspiring to stop the revolution by paying the workers more.
I have actually heard the same from union leaders in more recent times. In the
words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, “Socialism is defended with a passionate
lack of reason” (1975).
DEFECTIVE
DATA
The
data that supports the conclusion of any real theory must be sufficient,
accurate, representative, and valid. The social sciences face the problem that experimenting
with humanity (society),particularly over long periods of time (history), is
not possible. This means that turning history into a science attempting to use
“the method” becomes an interpretive narrative of previously collected unreliable
information and described out of any control by the current interpreter. The conditions
described and analyzed by Marx and Engels were mostly from what was happening
in Great Britain, France and Germany. The first decades of the XIX were the
period during which the failures of mercantilism had merged with the conditions
of war, inflation and revolts described in previous pages. Two errors are
evident. The first was ignoring the changes in a different direction taking
place in the United States of America. The second was a common error that plagues
the sciences: linear projections into the future. This can be illustrated by someone
recording the changes of temperature from midnight to noon, and considering it
sufficient data, making the projection that at the same pace, the planet will
be in flames in a few hours.
The
difference between studying human behavior, such as what is recorded in history
or what happens in the market, and studying the planets or the ants is that
humans can modify their behavior in search for better conditions. Unforeseen
change, innovation, taking high risks when facing the unknown, out of the box…human
behavior is never totally predictable. Again, something to do with
entrepreneurship.
The
projections about the young country developing across the ocean were not based
on following the same patterns of the past, but on developing a new pattern of
behavior. Adam Smith was right in his forecast, not based on projecting the
past based on erroneous ideas, but simply trusting the ability of Americans to follow
their natural liberty and common sense.
AMERICAN EXCEPTIONALISM
The young American free enterprise system was not the
decaying European capitalism in 1848, but neither Marx nor Engels saw the
differences. Between 1776 and 1789, a
new model of political organization in America stumbled upon the matching
principles of a free market economy based on the rights of all individuals to
exercise their personal choices respecting the laws applicable to all, whether
it was by selecting a candidate for public office, or by selecting a type of
tea or rum. The American mega-market began by erasing the economic effects of
the barriers to free trade implied by the colonial (state) borders. It
protected for a limited time the rights of inventors and innovators to profit
by benefiting others. Multiple UK, French and German expatriate entrepreneurs
succeeded in America, not in the old country. America expanded and protected
the ownership of property to the common European immigrant, a right denied to
most of them in the old continent.
As a result, America
became a world power at the same time as the old countries continued to
decline. Contrary to the Marxist model, an unpredicted American middle class
emerged elevating the standard of living of vast numbers of people. Since
then, American ingenuity and innovation have improved the living conditions of
the world. Continuing to use the word capitalism instead of a free market
economy reinforces the errors of Marx-Engels by using their language which
referred to Old England.
On the parallel side of the new
ideas on how communities organize themselves, the United States created a “novus
ordo seclorum”, in plain words meaning a new system for the future.
Although its system was not linked to any names of the past, its political
organization was designed to disperse the power to the people, thus its
being confused with a democracy, when it is not. During the Enlightenment,
democracy was considered to be the alternative to monarchy. The Founding
Fathers clearly rejected the concept as it inevitably leads to the tyranny of
the majority, where the rights of any one person can be obliterated, as could the
rights of any group smaller than the majority minus one.
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The unfinished pyramid in the Great Seal of the United States of America, a project
for all future generations to add an improvement to the New Order for the Ages |
AMERICA – A WORK IN PROGRESS
Although it has not been
formally recognized in framework
legislation, for the American system it follows that to have harmony between
its political system and its economic system, its institutions need to
recognize the path of “natural liberty” in economics. Americans should
ignore the errors that came from the European failed ideas about the economic
system. The economics of the free market, the free enterprise system are the
theory that explains human progress and the creation of wealth in peace.
Remember, wealth used to mean happiness. Isn’t the free market the clearest
manifestation of how the people use their economic power in the most dispersed
system? Every dollar is a vote as an expression of the freedom of choice. The
best definition of “The American Dream” is the right to pursue happiness.
Americans are still
mostly free to choose, while Europeans are still governed by “decorative
socialist-monarchies”, communists disguised by several labels, or socialists with
masks of moderate scientificism, including English Keynesian or “modern
economics”. They all have in common the same essential idea: a small elite
in power centrally manages the lives of the many, the very opposite of the
dispersed power of the market. The economic system is the lives of the people.
If the economic system is not free – the people are not free to choose- there
will always be costly frictions between the political system and the economic
system.
As a bloc, the European Union is
still trapped in the mercantilist idea of balancing the economies of its
state members as it is flooded by the back-flow of immigrants from their
underdeveloped colonies they recently “freed”, but only to reduce their losses.
The last colony freed from Britain was Brunei in 1984, two hundred years after
the United States won its freedom. Algeria won its freedom after an eight year
war with France in 1962. Barbados gained it from Holland in 2021. England,
France and Holland still control several islands each in the Caribbean.
THE TUNNEL VIEW OF SCIENCE
Not all the ideas of “The
Enlightenment” survive the scrutiny of time. The search for a better system of
government led to violent revolts, wars, and a return to tribalism under the
label of self-determination of the fragmented empires. Among the many failed
ideas are the sects of disguised socialism that came out of The Enlightenment
and The Reign of Terror of the French revolts. They both claimed to be
“science-based”. One proclaimed itself as “scientific socialism”, the other one
called itself “positivism”. It has to do with how university education changed.
The code words of democracy and social became the masks that
conceal the nature of many other proposals that seek the same result.
The
rise of science disrupted the old centers of knowledge. A new type of
university was promoted as “science-based”. Theology was expelled, philosophy
was sent to the basements, and the humanities dissapeared into the new social
sciences. Research universities began to take over academia, most under the
control of the modern state bureaucracies and organized following the model of
instruction of the military academy promoted by Napoleon and established during
the middle of the first French revolts.
King Louis XVI was guillotined
in 1793, and the Ecole Polytechnique was established shortly after. No
longer a military school, but a factory
of fancy bureaucrats, its current promotional materials state that “The
School was founded on March 11, 1794 with the mission of providing its students
with a solid scientific education rooted in mathematics, physics and chemistry,
and training them for entry into specialized schools of the French state public
services.” The first rank (degree) of engineer came out of EP. The
resulting “modern” Napoleonic military might came close to conquering most of
Europe. The post-Napoleonic Europe learned many lessons. Berlin University
(1810), now Humboldt University, followed EP.
The trend came to the United States: the modernization of West Point
(1817), the founding of MIT (1861) and shortly after the many
A&M-Agricultural and Mechanical, only male and militarized engineering
schools that began in 1862.
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Student riots in Paris, a national pastime and training grounds for international
urban terrorism since the French revolts that started in 1789 |
Why have I inserted this note
about the transformation of the medieval scholastic university into the
science-based research university that prevails today? Because it not only
explains much of humanity’s material
progress since then but also explains the failure of Europe and the rise of
the United States at a particular time. It also explains the errors made in
the developing science of economics that have had lasting negative effects.
Marx and his generation of agitator intellectuals were the product of the new
university. The universities reorganized not just their systems, but also their
purpose. The search for knowledge and truth was substituted by relevance to
society led by the state. Universities now take pride in producing men and
women of “service and action”.
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| One of the early entrances to Los Alamos, high security secret laboratory in 1944 |
I began this meditation with a
quote from the “Father of the Atomic Bomb” J. Robert Oppenheimer: “Both the
man of science and the man of action live always at the edge of mystery, surrounded by
it.” Although recognized as a scientist, he was really an engineer highly
educated in the new area of nuclear physics. The real scientists that had
opened the road were people like Dalton, Marie Curie, Max Planck, Nils Bohr,
and Albert Einstein, among a few others. Oppenheimer was part of the team of
experimental engineers known as The Manhattan Project that developed the
technology to build the first Atomic Bombs used to destroy the cities of
Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August of 1945. That was their service to the state
that ended the last European-centered mercantilist war that had spread to Asia. The
United States had managed to stay in the periphery until it was attacked
directly. That was the science part at the service of the state.
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| The 1949 first soviet atomic explosion that started the Cold War |
Action followed. Somehow, the
secrets of the Manhattan Project ended up in soviet labs. The first soviet bomb
was exploded in 1949. Several members of the team were investigated, including
Oppenheimer. It became known that in the 1930s, and until 1943, he was a
Communist sympathizer, and his wife Katherine, his brother Frank and his
girlfriend Jean Tatlock were members of the Communist Party of the United
States. U.S. Army security officers identified other project members as communists.
Klaus Fuchs had passed secrets to the Soviets. A KGB agent, Harry Gold was his
courier. David Greenglass, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg had also passed atomic
secrets to the Soviets. In 1995, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the
secret archives of the KGB revealed a larger extent of espionage involving
additional British and American collaborators in the Manhattan Project.
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| During the 1950s and 60s, children, older students and office workers did periodic drills in preparation of the atomic bombs. Now they are lockdowns because of terrorist threats. |
Their explanations of their betrayal
differ. Some were hardline communist operators; others believed the soviet
power was the only one capable of defeating Hitler; a third idea was to save humanity from a nuclear holocaust. By having the soviets attain the
same power, a “balance of power” would prevent further use of their creation by the mutually assured destruction. You
can be the judge of their reasons and what has taken place since they empowered
America’s enemies.
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| One of several teams working on the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos. Two university professors and several advanced graduate students in science disciplines |
The paradox is that this group
of highly educated scientific engineers and technicians, product of the
scientific method, fell for the most un-scientific and primitive form of
political-economic social organization ever proposed.
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Since the 1949 first soviet Atomic Bomb test, the equilibrium caused by the betrayal of the US scientists has made the world live in a hot crisis under the threat of an atomic holocaust. The secret was passed on to China, North Korea, Pakistan and India. At one time Cuba and Lybia were in the same path. Iran is still working towards that goal. With the exception of Israel that may also be an atomic power, the others are client states of the former Soviet Union, now disguised as the Russian Republic.
Ironically, the hot crisis was labeled "The Cold War" in doublespeak English |
