I'm not interested in revolutionaries, be them of the far left, or far right, nor in their papers, nor in their nuances, feelings, intellect, taste for art or whatever. Class warfare, the world in black and white, the fist raised to the sky and the fiery look towards invisible ideals, how was that expression, mene, mene, tekel, peres. Outing such ideas no better than justifying the "ideology" leading to fascist rule and nazi camps. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
First you just can't read, far from "avoiding scoial conflict" I cited Marx as saying:
"In France a hundred laws of repression and a mortal antagonism between classes seem to necessitate the violent solution of social war" (K Marx and F Engels CW Vol 22, Moscow 1986, p602). ... Marx refused to be prescriptive. He conceded that the bourgeoisie in Britain "has always shown itself willing enough to accept the verdict of the majority so long as it enjoyed the monopoly of political power" But he warned: "As soon as it finds itself outvoted on what it considers vital questions we shall see here a new slave-owners' war" (ibid p606).
Secondly you don't present any arguments to justify calling oppressive dictatorships communist, other than that the dictator kept using the word. Right-wing people use the same stupid argument to claim that Hitler was a socialist. By the same argument one might, if one had as little regard for rational argument as you, claim that the Khmer Rouge were an example of the evils if democracy, given what they called themselves:
Khmer Rouge seized power in 1975, and in 1976 Khmer Rouge established a new constitution with the new flag under offical name, Democratic Kampuchea ... As one of the most violent regimes of the 20th century, the Khmer Rouge regime was responsible for the deaths of approximately 1.7 million people by execution, starvation and forced labor. http://www.cambodia.org/khmer_rouge/
http://www.cambodia.org/khmer_rouge/
Yes, I know, they were really communists, but of a kind so unlike anything Marx advocated that Marx would have been amongst the first to be killed:
Anyone believed to be an intellectual, such as someone who spoke a foreign language, was immediately killed.
They and Stalin were as communist as Hitler was socialist, or the Contras of Nicaragua were the freedom-loving democrats of Reagan's lies. Now do try to come up with something resembling a serious argument. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
Oh really - just as an example, do remind me of where in Marx and Engels they advocate a huge and repressive police force - in a communist society. This is pretty fundamental - so your first-hand experience was of a regime which was no more communist than Kampuchea was democratic under the Khmer Rouge.
Also yet again you use the phrase "communist dictatorship" - if YOU had really read and remembered anything from Marx you'd know that he would see this as a contradiction in terms - as already pointed out. Just try to take on board that simple fact and stop repeating yourself. Maybe it's because I'm a Londoner - that I moved to Nice.
"justified the necessity to overturn order violently , to literally terminate the opposite "class".
when I have now TWICE quoted Marx as saying that there is no necessity about violent revolution, it depends on the context and that in Britain peaceful change was a possibility. But history showed that it was the ruling class who usually used violence to defend their privileges.
Read before ranting.
"but marxism/communism in its accepted meaning has little to do with humanism or classical liberalim "
Which meaning is that - accepted by whom ? Those who write similar uninformed rants ?
Not that it will penetrate your dogmatism, but some evidence of what Marx actually said on the subject:
Rather than thinking of a being with simple needs and simple productive powers, Marx looked to the `development of the rich individuality which is as all-sided in its production as in its consumption' (Marx, 1973: 325). This is what Marx's conception of communism was all about - the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop his full potential--- i.e., the `absolute working- out of his creative potentialities,' the `complete working out of the human content,' the `development of all human powers as such the end in itself' (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In communist society, the productive forces would have `increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly' (Marx, 1875: 24). The result, in short, would be the production of rich human beings. `What is the aim of the Communists,' Frederick Engels asked in a draft for the Communist Manifesto? He answered, `To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.' In the final draft of the Manifesto, Marx presented this goal as necessarily indivisible - as an `association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.' http://www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/research_report%203_2004%20Lebowitz.pdf
This is what Marx's conception of communism was all about - the creation of a society which removes all obstacles to the full development of human beings. He looked ahead to that society of associated producers, where each individual is able to develop his full potential--- i.e., the `absolute working- out of his creative potentialities,' the `complete working out of the human content,' the `development of all human powers as such the end in itself' (Marx, 1973: 488, 541, 708). In communist society, the productive forces would have `increased with the all-round development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly' (Marx, 1875: 24). The result, in short, would be the production of rich human beings. `What is the aim of the Communists,' Frederick Engels asked in a draft for the Communist Manifesto? He answered, `To organise society in such a way that every member of it can develop and use all his capabilities and powers in complete freedom and without thereby infringing the basic conditions of this society.' In the final draft of the Manifesto, Marx presented this goal as necessarily indivisible - as an `association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.'
http://www.ruc.dk/upload/application/pdf/f51d6748/research_report%203_2004%20Lebowitz.pdf
But history showed that it was the ruling class who usually used violence to defend their privileges.
What should be done with the ruling class who want to keep their privileges and money, defending them violently -
I feel "marginalized"!!
How can I convert to the right wing of this screen??
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
In many cases it will be possible to dispose of them through perfectly democratic elections resulting in a government that enforces confiscatory taxation of excessive wealth.
In other cases, where democracy has been sufficiently undermined that the ballot box cannot be trusted - the USA springs immediately to mind - a series of general strikes can serve to force the powers that be to hold honest elections.
Where a general strike has been made impossible by violent repression - think Pinochet's Chile or South Africa during Apartheid - one can agitate for various kinds and degrees of international pressure to be applied by countries in which the above methods still work.
When a country proves unresponsive to international pressure - or when there is no such international pressure to be found - one can take direct action in reasonable proportion to the kind and degree of repression faced, from civil disobedience through sabotage, through armed resistance to arrest to actual violent uprising in the most extreme cases.
To give a practical example, the liberation movement in British India employed many of the above tactics. There were strikes, and smuggling activity, to deprive the colonial overlords of revenues. Attempts were made to gather support from the international community. There was civil disobedience. There were attacks on British military targets by militant liberation groups.
All of these activities contributed - with different degrees of impact - to the liberation of India from British colonial rule. And given the nature of the repression faced and the weak support from the international community, I certainly don't fault the insurrectionists who attacked legitimate military targets.
Attacking civilians is, in my view, out of bounds, although there are borderline cases, such as paramilitary groups (think Israeli settlers on the West Bank, armed gangs of skinheads in Croatia during the dissolution of Yugoslavia, etc.) where it is unclear whether they are civilian or military targets.
to dispose of them
lol
Actually, I think that all these measures help to control or reduce the power of the money or military "elite". Communism requires that the elite become integral part of society, without their privileges.
I wouldn't want to miss my freedoms to the extent as is required in a communist society (I think of positive examples like Christians choosing communitarian life; I know examples, not only Amish people). This doesn't mean that I'm egotistical and selfish to the bone. It only means that I like to choose when I want to be selfish and when I want to be generous (which appears selfish, too, I guess). I approve of social democracy where there is a balance of sacrifice for and benefit from the common good and we still have freedom to pursue our own happiness.
I don't count myself to above elites but do not buy into Marx's writings, have read some of them. His ideals are simply not fit for human nature, as is. Sorry, the right wing has nailed this and uses this fact for their own ends. I don't condemn all his ideas but we are selfish, the world is run by money and corruption, ... and no matter how peaceful Marx's ideas were, we - are - not.
"We", that's not all of us, but if there are 97 % selfless, citizens, there would still be a rest of 3 % rebellious, selfish, greedy, violent people left who could spoil the whole enterprise. But, I doubt that there would ever be only 3 %.
True. But then again, I'm not a communist :-P
OTOH, in a reasonably democratic society, depriving "the elite" of its disproportionate wealth would also deprive it of most of its privilege - certainly of most of its ability to distort the political process - and force it to live as an integral part of society. That's why I'm in favour of banning billionaires.
Also the link you provide, from Lebowitz, is more about exploring Marx's unfinished work, from a sentiment that the Capital was excessively deterministic, reductionist and lacking a humanist touch. This kind of research work will not replace the fact that the fundamentals of marxism are just that. Also you may post a thousand links like that, actually saying nothing, I won't bother analyzing them more. This is not a discussion about marxism and its application. I gave the general ideas, justified them with the ideology (which you could accept or not, comment, but not demand quotations as if we cannot use our own mind and say that seeing the society in a dialectical and historical materialism is blatantly reductionist, and led to revolutions and dictatorships.
If you really want more hairsplitting, do start a diary. My original remark was about the press freedom in communist dictatorship (term generally accepted today) and you dragging it astray is pointless. Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
It is not such peripherical phrase, but the antagonism (dialectic) and the materialism along with the whole idea of taking over power that led to the bloodbaths.
It is said that a good description of chutzpah is to murder your parents and then plead for clemency on account of being an orphan.
I wonder whether we have found an even better one: To lambast a political theorist for being excessively deterministic, on account of historical determinism deterministically leading to genocide.
Do look up the history of the left wing of the Perónists. When you can place them in the correct country (and perhaps the correct decades), we can argue the merits of calling them communists, the merits of calling them totalitarian oppressors, and then the implications of the conclusions from the above points to your claim that Marxism leads inevitably and deterministically to repression and totalitarianism.
And then we can continue on to the Sandinistas, the Argentine social democrats, the Paris Commune, the left wing of the PLO, Nasserite pan-Arabism and so on and so forth.
Now, if it turns out that even one of these groups can rightly be called communists but cannot be said to be violent oppressors, your claim of deterministic causality between Marxism and totalitarian repression goes the way of the dodos, and you'll have to backpedal to a much looser Bayesian claim.
Should it turn out, then, that not even the majority of these groups imposed totalitarian dictatorships (or attempted to do so), your position will become decidedly precarious.
But you'll have to do a little reading first, I think, because I'm willing to bet dollars to doughnuts that you don't know half those groups even by reputation. And I'm done doing your homework for you.
Those who were in a position to, and did not, were not real marxists :) I know all of those groups, I'm just not in the mood / not the time to discuss such a huge topic here and now - for instance, the Sandinistas can hardly be called marxist or communist, they looked like that, but their actual ideology never followed, and their policies when in power were hardly looking up to the Communist Society.
If you look a bit around, you'll see those who say those dictatorships were not true communists, are the latest surviving communist faithful. Fortunately in France we're almost done with both extremes, and I can't tell you how much more quiet and peaceful everything is :) Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
Interesting. So, in your mind, had the 1956 Hungarian Revolution prevailed in Hungary or the Prague Spring in the Czech Republic; Imre Nagy, the Workers' Councils or Dubček would have progressed to exterminating the enemy class? *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
Neither the 1956 Revolution, nor the Prague Spring was an ideologically homogenous movement. However, Nagy, a large part of the Workers' Councils (which in fact survived the Revolution, were at first recognised by the new regime, and were dismantled only over the next two months) and Dubček were all card-carrying communists. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
"Those"? You are trying to change the subject for a second time. I asked you about Nagy, the 1956 Workers Councils, and Dubček.
Gorbatchev was a card-carrying communist too, even the best of them, right. And look where he brought them :)
Not into the extermination of the enemy class. QED. *Lunatic*, n. One whose delusions are out of fashion.
I said that a man with a card doesn't make him communist. You don't agree that the USSR was a communist dictatorship ? Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last! (Martin Luther King)
