The Emotional Influence of Marxism on Franz Boas
1.Introduction
Franz Boas was a professional anthropologist who recruited, organized, and managed the efforts of many other scientists.
It is not controversial to state that Franz Boas was a Marxist, that Boas published untrue findings (e.g. his cranial plasticity work), that Boas led the group which perpetrated Mead’s fraud, and that Boas suppressed Turney-High’s book “Primitive Warfare.”
However, it is controversial to make allegations such as “Boas was consumed by hatred,” or “Boas was criminally insane,” or “Boas knew he was lying but did it anyway.”
It is possible, in principle, to establish a standard of ethical conduct and to do extensive research on past persons, such as Boas, to establish that their wrongdoing was (beyond a reasonable doubt) criminal. However, the present work only offers an introduction to Boas’ malfeasance, suitable to frame the theory that Boas’ Marxism was the key factor in his deceptions.
2. Cranial Plasticity
In the 12 November 2002 Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, “A reassessment of human cranial plasticity: Boas revisited,” Corey Sparks and Richard Jantz wrote that Boas’ cranial plasticity claims were untrue. Their conclusion is as follows:
Finally, we address the issue of why Boas published such
seemingly erroneous conclusions. Although it might seem an
insurmountable task to dissect Boas’ motives or convictions for
pursuing such a study, we can examine Boas’ mindset as revealed
in his publications from the time period. Some 10 years before
the immigrant study, Boas was one of the most (if not the most)
statistical and quantitatively oriented anthropologists, as seen in
publications from the period predating the immigrant study
(41–44). In the final report presented to congress, Boas’ statistical
fluency tends to disappear, perhaps in the face of such a
large data set and the lack of proper statistical tests. For the
period in which this study was published, the results were
presented in a manner making the data look as convincing as
possible. We also must consider the attitude of Boas toward the
scientific racism of the day. Evidence of Boas’ disdain for the
often typological and racist ideas in anthropology have been
reviewed previously (45) and are evident also in his later
publications (46–48). Boas’ motives for the immigrant study
could have been entwined in his view that the racist and
typological nature of early anthropology should end, and his
argument for dramatic changes in head form would provide
evidence sufficient to cull the typological thinking. We make no
claim that Boas made deceptive or ill-contrived conclusions. In
Fig. 1 it is evident that there are differences between Americanand
European-born samples. What we do claim is that when his
data are subjected to a modern analysis, they do not support his
statements about environmental influence on cranial form.
Sparks and Jantz carefully avoid claiming that Boas knew the truth and intentionally lied, or that Boas was deranged with hatred, or that Boas was delusional due to criminal insanity. They do mention that Boas’ thinking was colored by “disdain.” They suggest that his conclusions are not supported by modern statistics, but that they were not ill-contrived at the time, thus leaving open the possibility that perhaps Boas was competent for his era, but that the data was mangled by his crude statistical methods — which was no fault, because he was using the best methods available at the time.
By means of his cranial plasticity finding, Boas claimed to have shown that race did not exist. I think the most probable explanation is that Boas felt that Marxism would be advanced if everyone believed that race did not exist, and Marxism was Boas’ only moral principle.
3. Mead’s fraudulent “Coming of Age in Samoa”
Margaret Mead was supported in her famous fraud, “Coming of Age in Somoa,” by Boas’ community of professional anthropologists. According to Derek Freeman, Boas advised Mead to resolve issues of nature versus nurture; unquestionably, Boas was in a position to mislead Mead, or to recruit Mead to knowingly mislead others. To prove that Boas had a direct role in designing the deception would require evidence beyond the scope of this article, but it would be very difficult to argue that the activities of Boas’ anthropology community did not constitute organized Marxist propaganda.
Mead was tactfully and privately challenged by Derek Freeman, who was promptly excluded by the professional anthropology community. This is a notable example of a Marxist community avowing dedication to truth but attempting to suppress truths believed to be potentially damaging to Marxism. Nonetheless, Freeman published his debunking of Mead,”Margaret Mead and Samoa: The Making and Unmaking of an Anthropological Myth,” in 1983.
I think the most probable explanation of Mead’s fraud is that Boas’ Marxist group needed a propaganda attack on Western sexual ethics. If Mead had failed, I suspect Boas’ group would have continued to publish hoaxes until something worked.
4. Turney-High’s “Primitive Warfare”
Traditional Western wisdom has long held that humans have an inherent propensity for violence; traditional Western culture makes a virtue of this by teaching that humans 08have a duty to defend themselves. Boas professed that non-Western humans are not naturally violent, and that the history of Western violence was uniquely evil.
Harry Turney-High published Primitive Warfare in 1949, detailing the fact that all human groups have engaged in violence. Since this contradicted Boas’ claim that Westerners are more violent than normal humans, Boas and his community suppressed discussion of the book in academia.
I think the most probable explanation is that Boas wanted Westerners to despise their ancestors, to feel undeserved guilt, and to reject traditional morality. To this end, I think Boas was willing to suppress any unpleasant truths.
5. Boas’ One-Sided Pseudoscholarship
A scholar is expected to value truth more highly than personal feelings, and to weigh all relevant evidence. Boas pursued the opposite strategy. He ignored any disputes with opposing viewpoints, except when he cited rivals in order to insult them and to dismiss their ideas. However, he warmly promoted the work of anthropologists within his clique. While some amount of ego-fuelled ranting is common in academia, Boas’ discourse was remarkably slanted. Anyone inside the clique could do no wrong; anyone outside the clique could do nothing right.
I think the most probable explanation was that Boas felt that his Marxist agenda would be best advanced by suppressing competing points of view.
6. The Most Economical Explanation of Boas’ Deceptions
In 1843, Karl Marx began a wide-scale cultural war against traditional Western ethics and religion by writing the essay “On the Jewish Question.” If I had a skilled German translator, I might be able to illuminate some of the more obscure idioms and truly read Marx in context.
The essay presents some major ambiguities in translation. For example, Marx was ethnically Jewish, but raised to be Christian. In the context of Bauer, who wrote of Jews as having only relgious identity, Marx writes:
The critique of the Jewish question is the answer to the Jewish question. The summary, therefore, is as follows:
We must emancipate ourselves before we can emancipate others.
The most rigid form of the opposition between the Jew and the Christian is the religious opposition. How is an opposition resolved? By making it impossible. How is religious opposition made impossible? By abolishing religion. As soon as Jew and Christian recognize that their respective religions are no more than different stages in the development of the human mind,… the relation of Jew and Christian is no longer religious but is only a critical, scientific, and human relation.
…
Bauer considers that the ideal, abstract nature of the Jew, his religion, is his entire nature. …
Let us consider the actual, worldly Jew – not the Sabbath Jew, as Bauer does, but the everyday Jew. … What is the secular basis of Judaism? Practical need, self-interest.
I can easily construct several mutually exclusive interpretations as to what Marx might have meant. When he wrote that “secular” Judaism was merely self-interest, was he leaving room to say that the old religion of the prophets was pure, but that modern Jews have gone astray? Did Marx regard himself as ethnically Jewish? When Marx refers to “the chimerical nationality of the Jew,” does he imply that there is no real Jewish ethnicity, or that Jews have a real ethnicity that is concealed by a mistaken idea? When he wrote “we must emancipate ourselves” he might mean “we as Jews must emancipate Jews from Christian repression,” or “we must emancipate secularized Jews” or he might mean, “we as humans must emancipate all humans from all religions.”
One line is clear. Marx desired to abolish traditional religion. He seems to portray himself as a latter-day Jewish prophet not unlike Isaiah or Jeremiah, castigating the Jews for their flaws but guiding them to amend their lives.
Some critics claim that Marx was illogical and incoherent; they might be right. However, Marx was clever enough to persuade himself of anything, and once Marx had persuaded himself, Marx was more than willing to persuade others. For decades, Marx’s thoughts inspired Westerners to attack their own civilization. Some attackers, such as Freud and Boas, used fraudulent science.
Marx’s war to abolish traditional religion continues today in the form of cultural Marxism. As far as I can tell, Boas’ untrue statements and biased pseudo-scholarship were entirely motivated by a Marxist hatred of Western civilization.
