Chapter XIV, Excerpt 2 of 2
The Virgin and the Dynamo

The theory of Marxist Communism is precisely that of the Perpetual Motion Machine, for it stipulates that the productive system created by free enterprise is a prerequisite, to be taken over by the Communist machine. This is the evil interpretation of the dream of power, its perversion into the lust for power over other men, instead of mastery of nature. This naïve self-glorification turns to positive hatred of any suggestion of persons helping themselves by their own efforts, by non-political means.

The three most famous schemes of this type are Plato’s ideal state, More’s Utopia, and Marx’s Promised Land. Plato was a literary man; he sought a rigorous design. More was an intelligent man; he labeled his creation Utopia means Nowhere. Marx was a fool; he offered his scheme as a prediction. It is through this imposed model for clockwork that Europe has observed the United States. The principle of social harmony is liberty, the rights of the individual. That is the natural law of man.

Henry Adams, who witnessed the Energy Age after it was well under way, spent his life endeavoring to trace the connection between the Middle Ages and the modern outburst of energy. He recognized that the Virgin represented an unconstrained element which implies free will in man. But at this point Adams failed to realize that it is by freedom of personal volition that man is capable of intellectual inquiries. This is the genesis of the dynamo. If it is to run, it must be by the will and intelligence of man.