Free Time Will Run Back by Henry Hazlitt Page A

irrecoverable—were loaded almost from the beginning of time with bourgeois and capitalistic connotations, implications, emotions, sentiments, attitudes. We had already seen how much could be done to change all these by describing everything in a new vocabulary. This was the great discovery and the great triumph of our Prophet and Redeemer, Karl Marx. When he had finally maneuvered his opponents into talking in his vocabulary they were already in the linguistic trap. For everyone who used the Marxist terms— capitalism, finance capitalism, bourgeoisie, petty bourgeoisie, proletariat, the masses, the class struggle, class antagonism, capitalist imperialism, historical determinism, dialectic materialism, utopianism, capitalist exploitation —whoever used these terms accepted along with them the concepts that must inevitably lead him to the Marxist conclusions. Why not, then, complete and nail down the intellectual triumph by eradicating every word embodying a bourgeois concept and substituting for it words embodying the Marxist concepts?
    “That is what our revolutionary ancestors did. They called together an assembly of their greatest Marxist dialecticians, linguists, lexicographers, semanticists and propagandists, and ordered them to create an entirely new language. They made a new dictionary, consisting not only of new words, but of new, precise Marxist definitions of each of those words. They replaced the bourgeois grammar of the old languages with a new proletarian grammar for the new language!”
    “But how did they get people to learn the new language and to forget their own?”
    “Ah! They were forced to issue new bilingual dictionaries in each of the scores of existing national languages. The new equivalents were given with the new definitions. Each of these dictionaries was numbered and allowed to be held for only three years. Henceforth only Marxanto was allowed to be taught in the schools. Children and adults both were given three years to learn and use the new language. Then they were forced to turn in all bilingual dictionaries, and all of these were burned. Meanwhile everything that was worth preserving was rewritten and translated into the new language. And thereafter no one could use anything but Marxanto on penalty of death!
    “Now look at all that was accomplished at a single stroke! The old bourgeois languages, words, meanings and connotations were totally destroyed. People were prohibited, on penalty of death, from speaking any poetry or phrase that they remembered from the old languages—and their grandchildren wouldn’t have been able to understand them anyway. Wonworld was cemented together by a single international language! And this language itself was so constructed, and its words so defined, that nobody could henceforth arrive at any but Marxist conclusions!
    “We constructed a new poetry, a new science, a new logic! It meant at last a clean slate, a fresh start, a new dawn in the history of man!”
    An exalted light came into Bolshekov’s eyes.
    “Well, I have talked too long. You are so ignorant, there is so much to tell you, and the excitement of having for the first time a grown man to whom all this wonderful history can be communicated, has carried me far beyond the hour I had set aside. Here: I must give you a list of books.”
    He wrote down some names rapidly on a pad and handed a slip to Peter. “Here are the three best histories—though if you begin with the three volumes of Ordanov you won’t need the other two small volumes: they are merely popular condensations.
    Get these from a State bookstore today. Be here again at ten tomorrow.” “Have you time now, Your Highness, to answer one question?” Peter asked, getting up.
    “What is it?”
    “If all the old histories of the ancient world and the Dark Ages were destroyed, in order to wipe out the very memory of these so-called civilizations, how is it that you yourself know so much about them?”
    “You don’t seem to