The Paranormal as Inverted Reality

By Adrian Chan-Wyles

THE WESTERN media are currently awash with so-called paranormal television programmes that cost hundreds of thousands, if not millions of pounds to make, that run for endless series.  Sophistication can vary from high calibre productions such as Lost or Fringe, to bargain basement ghost hunting, and medium – the latter often involving Derek Acorah (and similar presenters) rolling around on the floor apparently “communicating” with the spirit world.

Episode after episode of ghost hunting specials features groups of men and women running around in the dark, scaring one another as they go, wearing special contact lenses that shine whilst exposed to infra-red light.  Despite the thousands of hours of footage taken during filming, absolutely no evidence is ever caught of an actual paranormal event.  What is happening here?  How can so much valuable financial and material resources be wasted in such a manner, with little or no criticism from the general public?

The general public, of course, are the consumers of this bourgeois nonsense.  The paranormal industry is fuelled by the very essence of the Marxist definition of a false consciousness; in fact, paranormal events are nothing more than the continuation of the Judeo-Christian tradition manifest in the secular age.  Logic dictates that if only one truly paranormal event was recorded, it would change the definition of science, but as there is so much research into its possibility, and given that no evidence has emerged, it is reasonable to assume that there are no paranormal events.

A paranormal event is an event that occurs outside of the laws of science.  Many, if not all so-called paranormal events are explainable by science, particularly in relation to mental illness and diseases of the brain.  Events in the environment that appear unusual to the experiencer, only appear so because the experiencer does not have the awareness or knowledge to see at that exact moment, a trail of logical events unfolding.  When a chain of logical events is either misread, or is not perceived, then religious imagination steps in and fills the gap in awareness. 

Applying Marx’s critique of idealism as conveyed in The German Ideology, religious perception of the world is the wrong way around.  God did not create the world in a mysterious manner, but rather it is the mind of humanity that has created (or imagined) god and his heaven.  Secularism in the West is often a manifestation of the Judeo-Christian tradition stripped of its surface religiosity, but which still functions in the mind of humanity in a religious fashion.

 Ghosts, or disembodied spirits, are directly taken from Christian tradition, but are in reality made in the mind only, or an actual person with a real body mistaken as a “ghost”.  Demonic possession is not an evil spirit that has entered a person’s mind and body from an external source, in other words god or heaven, but is rather generated entirely and solely within the mind of the experiencer.  The Christian church, with its rituals and spells, only serves to perpetuate the ignorance that this mental illness is something other than a dysfunctioning human mind. 

Groups of people reporting strange and bizarre happenings appear to be collectively affirming a real experience until the facts are closely scrutinised.  Chains of events appear illogical (and strange) when they are interpreted in an illogical (or inverted) manner.  Someone being pulled around the floor by their hair – with no one doing the pulling – is actually being pulled around the floor by some-one pulling their hair.  Objects flying around the room with no one making them move – are actually being moved by some-one making them move.  Individuals, for whatever reason, be it mental illness, misunderstanding, past conditioning, or ignorance, interpret events in the wrong order and assume the interpretation to be correct.

Despite the intense scrutiny of the modern media, nothing has been discovered to be unusual or out of place.  As paranormal phenomena are a set of inverted recordings of reality, all that has to happen to make the situation logically understandable is the reversing of the chain as mistakenly described.

 Feuerbach inverted the ideal that god created humanity, with the reality that it was human imagination that created god – Marx took this insight and developed it far beyond Feuerbach and applied it ruthlessly to everything in existence.  As the paranormal is essentially religious in nature, Marx’s critique can be easily applied to its jumbled manifestation, and out of the confusion, logic appears.     

The communist struggle against the European Union

By Dimitrios Kivotidis

COMMUNIST and workers’ parties from all over Europe, including the New Communist Party of Britain, met in Brussels last October to set up a new liaison committee specifically aimed at co-ordinating workers’ opposition to the European Union. On the 1^st October 2013 in a meeting room of the EU Parliament in Brussels the founding meeting was held of the “Initiative” of communist and workers’ parties in order to study and elaborate European issues and to coordinate their activity.

The Communist position towards the European Union starts with the elementary Marxist thesis that there is one fundamental division within society. One can either be with the working class or with the capitalist class. And there is only one position in relation to this non-negotiable either/or which entails struggle towards an indivisible, classless society. It is the communist position that answers this dilemma without hesitation: with the working class.

The necessary road to an indivisible society, without division into classes, without division into exploiters and exploited, goes through the leadership of the working class and the organisation around its vanguard party, through the dictatorship of the proletariat and socialist construction. The role of the communist party differs in each concrete socio-historical period, but is always necessary and leads the way for the movement.

The party is one, but it is also multiple. The communist parties form concrete universalities functioning under the principle of proletarian internationalism. The party leads the struggle of the conscious working class but it also turns to the other communist parties and creates lines of communication and coordination of activity. This practice is an authentic communist practice which acquires special importance in the context of the imperialist construction of the European Union.

The crucial role of the initiative of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of Europe is to show to the working peoples of Europe the way out of the European Union through working class government;

 The “Initiative” coordinates the action of the communist parties that regard the EU as the choice of European capitalism which, it says: “Promotes measures in favour of the monopolies, the concentration and centralisation of capital; it is strengthening its characteristics as an imperialist economic, political and military bloc opposed to the interests of the working class, the popular strata; it intensifies armaments, authoritarianism, state repression and the limitation of sovereign rights.”

The member parties of the Initiative are united in the vision of a society without exploitation, without poverty, without social injustice, without imperialistic wars. The 30 communist and workers’ parties of Europe are struggling towards this strategic goal, towards a different Europe, not only in form but in substance as well. They are struggling for the dissolution of the imperialist construction that is the European Union; for the overthrow of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie and the establishment of working class governments in the European states; for the socialist construction; for an indivisible society, a communist society.

But why is the Initiative of Communist Parties a necessity in our current predicament? One can begin to answer that question by looking at the reactionary nature of the European Union under capitalism. But this is not a new observation. As Lenin wrote in On the Slogan for a United States of Europe almost a century ago:

“From the standpoint of the economic conditions of imperialism — ie the export of capital arid the division of the world by the ‘advanced’ and ‘civilised’ colonial powers — a United States of Europe, under capitalism, is either impossible or reactionary…

“A United States of Europe under capitalism is tantamount to an agreement on the partition of colonies. Under capitalism, however, no other basis and no other principle of division are possible except force… A United States of Europe is possible as an agreement between the European capitalists ... but to what end? Only for the purpose of jointly suppressing socialism in Europe.”

The current socio-economic conditions are barely different than the period when Lenin wrote these words. One cannot overlook the fact that the European Union is an inter-state, imperialist union of the monopolies. In the words of the Greek comrade Giorgos Marinos: “The EU has a specific economic base; it is supported by the cooperation and merging of the strength of the major business monopoly groups. Despite the contradictions that manifest themselves in its ranks their basic criterion is their own interests, and the control of the markets, and, consequently, they are against the peoples and their rights.”

As a result, the reactionary nature of the EU is manifested in a relentless manner during the current capitalist crisis. The devastating effects of the capitalist crisis are felt all over the globe and – especially in the context of the imperialist EU —the communist movement is obliged to acquire a unified revolutionary strategy so as to overthrow the outdated capitalist system, which is becoming continually more reactionary and dangerous. This obligation is intrinsically linked to the struggle against opportunism and Euro-communism.

As is well known, the bogus ideology of Euro-communism, along with the counter-revolution in the Soviet Union and the other socialist countries of Europe, has in the last decades inflicted great harm on the communist movement. In their programmatic declarations Euro-communist and other opportunist currents refer to socialism in a perverted manner, since their political line negates the revolutionary path. The term “socialism” is deprived of its essence: without the working class power, the dictatorship of the proletariat, without the socialisation of the means of production and central planning.

It is in this manner that the so called European Left Party, “which is forming networks all over the world with EU funds, is trying to sabotage the communist movement; it is a vehicle that promotes the strategy of the EU within the labour movement, it is inextricably linked with social democracy and it must be dealt with in a strict ideological and political way. Its core consists of forces which celebrated the overthrow of socialism, forces which in the framework of anti-communism identify themselves with various bourgeois and other reactionary forces in the name of ‘anti-Stalinism’.”

Its reactionary character is evident by its ideological position towards the current capitalist crisis. Euro-communist parties approach the capitalist crisis as a “crisis of neo-liberalism” or a “financial crisis”. These approaches are limited to incriminating a form of capitalism’s management, exonerating the social-democratic, neo-Keynesian management, the capitalist system itself. These are opportunist positions that disorient the labour and people’s movement.

 It is the historical task of the Communist Party in this predicament to struggle towards the regroupment of the labour movement. The working class and its vanguard party have to be in the front of the formation of the People’s Alliance. The People’s Alliance expresses the interests of the working class, the semi-proletarians, the self-employed and the poor farmers, the young people and the women of the poor popular strata in the struggle against the monopolies and capitalist ownership, against the assimilation of the country into the imperialist unions.

The People’s Alliance is a social alliance and struggles in terms of the movement, following a line of rupture and overthrow. It adopts the socialisation of the concentrated means of production, the central planning, and the workers’ social control. The formation of the People’s Alliance under the leadership of the working class is a necessity because the struggle for the disengagement from the EU is linked with the struggle against the power of the monopolies and the struggle of the working class and its allies, for working class- people’s power.

For all the above reasons, the existence of the Communist Party, the existence of a party that applies in its practice the principles of Marxism-Leninism is necessitated. It is necessitated primarily by the main contradiction on which capitalist society is based. The existence of the Party is necessitated by the class struggle, by the historical task of the proletariat that depends on the concrete socio-historical condition.

What is more, this necessity is universal, since the class struggle has its own laws which are founded on the fundamental and universal contradiction between capital and labour. For this reason the Communist Party in each country has the obligation to study the specific situation, the development of capitalism, the course of the sectors and the branches of economy, the changes in the superstructure, the class and social structure in order to chart a revolutionary strategy.

The Initiative of the Communist and Workers’ Parties of Europe is necessary in order to enhance the struggle against the imperialist EU and, simultaneously, through the struggle of workers, to promote the only alternative solution: of a Europe of peace, progress, and socialism.

 Europe’s working classes and the other exploited strata of the continent need a powerful Communist Party; they need a Party founded on and guiding its actions according to the principles of Marxism-Leninism; a Party to be in the vanguard of the organisation of the struggle of the working class, to provide guidance and inspiration with the vision for the new socialist society. A Party that treats socialism not as a goal for the distant future, but as an issue of the daily activity as its timeliness is highlighted by the torments of the peoples.

As Lenin said:

The abolition of classes is impossible without a dictatorship of the oppressed class, of the proletariat. A free union of nations in socialism is impossible without a more or less prolonged and stubborn struggle of the socialist republics against the backward states.

The European peoples will only be liberated from the bonds of capitalist exploitation and the imperialist unions when the working classes together with their allies carry out the socialist revolution and move forwards to construct socialism-communism.

The Pointlessness of C S Lewis

 By Adrian Chan-Wyles

C S LEWIS is famous for his fantasy stories regarding the magical land of Narnia accessed by children through a wardrobe.  Although this content probably represents a deep and profound set of inherited psychological issues, nevertheless, these books have made C S Lewis a household name. 

What many do not realise is that C S Lewis spent his life up until 39 as a staunch atheist, and after this time as a Christian zealot.  During the Second World War he was even hired by the British government to broadcast over the radio a constant stream of pro-Christian propaganda. 

Lewis, like Isaac Newton before him, appears to have suffered a mid-life crisis that saw the re-emergence of a theistic faith, no doubt the product of a childhood in Northern Ireland.  Although his Narnia books have sold millions, and have been made into cinema films, nevertheless, it is his book entitled Mere Christianity that has been by far the most popular of his works.

            In his teens CS Lewis received an excellent education in the western classics and dialectics.  This rationalism, probably influenced by the work of Karl Marx, created a level-headed young man who fought as an officer in the First World War, and despite witnessing extreme death and destruction, and being wounded himself, did not resort to the usual bourgeois sentimentality in expressing his memories.  But despite living with a woman over twice his age, and ignoring his own father until the time of his death, C S Lewis slowly gravitated back toward the theistic thinking of his youth. 

Whilst studying at Oxford, and later working as a professor there, Lewis lived what might be called a progressive lifestyle.  However whilst talking to J R Tolkien he mentioned that the world was full of myths that involved a young man dying to redeem the world, and asked where this left Christianity.  Tolkien, himself a fantasy writer famous for his Lord of the Rings, stated that Christianity was of course a myth, like all other religions in the world, with the only difference being that Christianity was real. 

This type of nonsense underlies the bourgeois educational establishment, and serves to demonstrate the danger of thought regression from the progressive state back into the reactionary.  The middle-aged, middle-classed C S Lewis suffered what might be described as a psychological counter-revolution that turned the cognitive clock backward.  Religious myth-making passed on throughout the ages is a very potent and difficult to dislodge form of psychological conditioning.  Its resurgence renders a progressive lifestyle dormant, and reduces creativity to a standstill.  Good ideas cease as the reality becomes limited to the confines of the pages of the Bible, which are haphazardly assembled collections of muddled thinking held together by theistic fantasy. 

It is ironic that CS Lewis created Narnia – a heaven on earth that could be accessed if only belief in it was strong enough.  In CS Lewis’ imagination at least, heaven has been found on Earth, although one hidden by a veneer of pagan spirituality, as if the strictures of Christianity prevent a Christian heaven from being directly referenced on Earth – which is logical as it does not exist.