Banning dancing and partying? Oh, the lockdowns...took me awhile. Didn't apply universally though did it? Like Boris J in the UK and no doubt many such hypocrisies around the Western trail.
This reeks of economism. The soviet system was very democratic...the soviets themselves were a system of workplace democracy. To be sure sacrifices had to be made to defeat hitler and to begin to build socialism, and then Kruschev betrayed the revolution.
No, there were no workers committees controlling anything in the Soviet Union by 1920. The Bolsheviks thought they needed hierarchy and permanent authority to save the Revolution, and they never let go of that authority. See the Kronstadt Rebellion.
Interesting how Trotskyists say Stalin betrayed the revolution, and Stalinists say Khrushchev did. As far as I'm concerned, Lenin did early on. Oh, for seemingly necessary and compelling reasons that he wrote about a lot, but he did. That's why Emma Goldman dumped the Bolsheviks.
Yep see Emma Goldman Disillusionment in Russia for more details, I think the massacre of the Kronstadt sailors was the Soviet's crossing the Rubicon moment.
You got me I'm certainly more of a Stalinist than a Trotskyist. Emma Goldman had the luxury of remaining an activist and intellectual and never had to run a country or a major economy. In fact she was an anarchist not a Marxist -- why are you referring to her? I would think that a more relevant thinker who supports your position but with more nuance would be Rosa Luxemburg. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/questions-rsd/ch01.htm. You're welcome for giving you better arguments on your side. If you're relying on the arguments of anarchists, I'd ask that for clarity of discourse you stop calling yourself a socialist or Marxist
You are making the mistake of confusing vanguardism with authoritarianism; just because there was a necessity for democratic centralist action in order to rapidly industrialize in time to stop Hitler does not mean that the people who were placed in charge of the Party did not represent the will of the people. Although it is uncommon today, it is possible for a centralized party apparatus to make decisions in the interest of the proletariat without submitting to a horizontalism that leads to permanent deadlock and inability to take action.
I am a Leninist based on the hard experience of the last decade. If you read Vincent Bevins' most recent book, which shows how the mass horizontalist, leaderless movements of the 2010s resulted in many (most) cases in a hard swing towards fascism. Because without an organized party to structure and articulate the demands of the People, reactionary forces swoop into the void.
I don't think anybody feels that the actual events of the Russian revolution and the administrations of Lenin and Stalin after it were flawless. That said, I feel like the Kronstadt sailors had had such a good time in the 1917 revolution that they sort of kept doing what they knew how to do: to revolt, and had they been allowed to continue their challenge to Party power, they would indeed have undermined the Soviet experiment.
We again find ourselves in a moment in history when we need real change, quickly, and to achieve that we need the structure of a Party that is able to mobilize during these spontaneous moments of mass action to turn discontent into a real political force, and that is what we are currently missing. We need to return to what works, and Lenin showed us what works.
Oh yes. Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union and really did improve the living conditions for a lot of Soviet citizens. I'll grant the astonishing feat, but I cannot help but wonder if there was a better way to accomplish that.
Done is done, and Stalin's industrialization really was essential to stopping Hitler, but that doesn't mean I have to endorse everything he did.
Thank you for the detailed and civil reply. It’s refreshing. I’m glad a Stalinist, or almost Stalinist, who knows his stuff responded so that others can get an idea of how you think from YOU, and not anyone else, including from me.
I am anti-authoritarian. I am still a Marxist in the sense that I use Marxism to analyze capitalism because it is the most objective, and therefore best, way to do that.
Vanguardism is another matter. Marx saw what happened to the Paris Commune in 1871; I think he was there at the time. He saw what happened when a popular revolution threw the authorities out, but then couldn’t get their shit together.
Lenin saw the need for an organized revolutionary party to be ready to step in and seize the levers of power, ie the government, after the ancien regime was overthrown.
I can see the need for a hierarchical, authoritarian organization to make sure that the revolution doesn’t collapse, especially when there’s civil war and foreign invasion thrown into the mix. I don’t see how anything else could possibly succeed.
I do NOT see the need for the same people who were successful in accomplishing that wonderful thing to stay in power forever, or even for another year.
I think I can think that and still be a Marxist. But I’m not a Leninist, or a Stalinist or Maoist. Does that make me an anarchist? I don’t think so, but it does make me their ally sometimes.
That's a quandary, isn't it? I don't have the answer. I just think the temptation to hang onto power is too great for most, and they always either say the emergency never way or that a new one has come up.
The dualism of Marx reminds me of Buddhism. Problem articulation and solution hypothesis are different things. Personally I don't think it matters. Brass on the titanic. Either it's about to switch into hover/space mode and declare it doesn't need water, or it's about to sink. https://innomen.substack.com/p/the-end-and-ends-of-history
Sure. I was referring to the pandemic restrictions in many of the US states in 2020 and 2021. Our freedom of movement, of association, and of determining what to put in our own bodies was trampled for the sake of a Big Pharma grifting scheme and authoritarian jollies.
It was kind of hard to party back then. That really pissed me off.
I of course do not speak for OB, but as far as I am concerned, about 99.9% of what the $MSM fed us about Covid was complete and utter bovine fecal matter. I decided early on I would not get jabbed; still thrilled with that decision. I also think the chicanery and damage is going to be trickling out for a long long time. THAT was the disinformation. IMO, etc.
Covid was a thing. With a mortality rate of (a nasty) seasonal flu. People died, just as they do of a flu. Many more died because doctors were literally FORBIDDEN to treat early symptoms the way they would treat any other serious respiratory illness. In Italy, some doctors disobeyed those orders. Their patients lived. The doctors who obeyed the orders to delay treatment until their patients were seriously ill and send them to the hospital saw their patients die.
I think it was a common cold, and that was about it. I think more people died of the prescribed treatments, such as being put on ventilators, than of the disease itself.
I KNOW the death stats of Covid were greatly exaggerated. The CDC required that the cause of death be listed as Covid if the diseased tested positive for it. That's been all over the place for years now.
It was a bit more serious than a cold in these parts. My kid, out of boredom, was working on the ambulance services here. People were restricted from seeing their doctors if they had symptoms of or tested positive for covid, and were told to wait until they were very very sick ( allegedly to not overwhelm the hospitals ) - by that point these people were drowning in their own snot with aggressive bronchial pneumonia. Usually they had comorbidities as well. As far as viruses go, the first round was pretty awful, but it was lack of early treatment or access to treatment that was deadly.
Just as a side note, our biggest death counts were in the regions of Italy where health care had been privatized.
Well, it was never considered good medical practice to let a cough develop into pneumonia until people like Fauci came along. The authoritarian prescriptions for treatment did far more harm than good, and went against all previous practice for containing epidemics.
I will bring up Steve, the owner of the lamented discussion forum JPR, who literally died because he couldn't get necessary surgery because Covid.
What happened to bed rest and plenty of fluids? What happened to allopathic medicine to treat symptoms? Ventilators were sheer murder.
I think I got really lucky - because my lungs are pretty fucked up due to chronic bronchitis when I was a kid. A couple of years back, I pressed my doctor into giving me a jab for bronchial pneumonia (because every head cold ends up with me having to do inhalation therapy for weeks.) When I got COVID, it was honestly less bad than my usual head cold, with mild flu like symptoms... but had it gotten worse, I was already well equipped to fight anything that got into my lungs. I can't prove it, but I suspect that the pneumonia jab and my multiple encounters with bronchitis (and what to do about it) actually gave me immunity.
I knew the entire fucking vaccine regimen was an utter hoax the moment they decided not to make the drugs or patents available in the global south. Clearly, our 'leaders' weren't scared that this was truly a deadly global virus - else wise they wouldn't have been prioritizing profit over their own skins.
Sadly, here in Italy, we were not really given a choice to take the shot or not.
If by "a thing" you mean "some ppl got a novel sort of flu", then yes, "Covid" was a thing. But it was never contagious; it was caused by 5G rollout, possibly exacerbated by severe air pollution, not by any new virus, either manmade or naturally-occurring, simply bcuz there are no pathogenic viruses that anyone has been able to prove YET.
Great article and one for my files. This explanation certainly rivals Richard Wolff.....I think lots of things are ongoing challenges to Marxism - ignorance across the political-economic/historic spectrum being chief among them.....The libertarians are the classic mischaracterizations of Marxism and capitalism - I hear too often that capitalism = free market and that communists never accomplished any degree of success......But I think also that a large element of mischaracterization is related to Russophobia (or other cultural phobias) and one has to ask - whether or not attacks on Marxists have ethnic motives.. The influx of Eastern European emigres post WWI-II had anti-Bolshevik/Soviet/Russian had revenge impulses at least equal to their economic incentives ..I think that Cuban/+ exiles make similar contributions... Cultural ignorance contributes/d to the myth of American exceptionalism through the 'Russia is a gas station parading as a country' syndrome...Or in other words, in every other country (but the US, of course) there are countless 'Joe Six-packs' that can't wait to be part of American consumerism and conversely, of course the talent escapes and the rest are left to await liberation...But getting back to your original argument - I don't think the economic ignorance occurs in a vacuum.
Thank you. As for free markets, we don't have them, except maybe at flea markets. If we had a truly free market housing wouldn't be nearly as expensive, to name just one thing.
Thanx man! As a Greek anarchist, who knows the difference as do the majority of Europeans regardless of political affiliation, I've always found it amusing and enraging in equal measure, how Americans throw the word "Marxism" around without any context or idea of what it means, unwittingly supporting those who undermine their interests. Richard Wolff is brilliant, if he can't convince you that untethered capitalism is evil, and make you think again about Marxism, nobody can. Well done!
Thank you; yes: Bolsheviks saving the revolution by driving an authoritarian stake through its heart, priceless. The precise impulse that led their scummy offspring to betray the Spanish Republic to the fascists. Same problem with all the isms; all you got to carry ‘em out is a mob of hooting primates.
Amazing, though, how much effort and expense goes into preventing us from learning to think in class terms, huh?
If we start thinking in class terms the Empire will fall and all those profits for our rulers will stop. Of course they try to get us to think of something, ANYTHING, else.
Thank you for the explanation. I too have been puzzled by the reflexive use of Marx and Marxism to demonize others of varying political stripes (never quite sure which stripes). For a chatty, readable further explanation I recommend “Adventures in Marxism” (Marshal Berman).
I have some objections at the margins, but overall this is well said sir.
A few remarks:
- I am anti-authoritarian, as you put it, *because* the household in which I was raised was suffused with old-style class-consciousness Marxism, with a distinctly nationalist colouring. I am certainly not a Marxist now, but I'm grateful for having been exposed to it early.
- I agree that liberals = communists is low-IQ and historically illiterate.
- In Romania, those old enough to remember know that they were freer under communism than they are now. 'Liberalism' is not necessarily freedom. Ideology is not really important; what counts in securing freedom is the degree to which virtue is distributed throughout the citizen body, especially but not only among those in charge. Ultimately, a society run by cripples and dwarves, whatever it calls itself, is not going to be a free society. I am not an historical materialist.
- Communist governments never brought the money supply under control. Had they done so as the West remained in the bondage of interest, things might have turned out very differently in the last hundred or so years. The 'abolition of private property' (which I do not support) is nothing of the sort without financial sovereignty. For example: Romania was impoverished by its (successful) attempt to pay off loans to the IMF; revolution, resulting only in enslavement to 'liberalism', followed.
Thank you. I'd love to dive into philosophical materialism v. idealism sometime, but this isn't the time or place.
I still believe in individual liberties and political rights, and see no conflict between those and the basic Marxism I described. I'm also American, and know anyone advocating abolishing all "private property" here will be figuratively if not literally tarred-and-feathered, so that's a nonstarter for me.
Interesting note on the money supply in Communist countries. That's something I should learn more about.
'I'd love to dive into philosophical materialism v. idealism sometime, but this isn't the time or place.'
Do it sometime. You've got a talent for summary.
'I still believe in individual liberties and political rights, and see no conflict between those and the basic Marxism I described. I'm also American, and know anyone advocating abolishing all "private property" here will be figuratively if not literally tarred-and-feathered, so that's a nonstarter for me.'
Damn right
'Interesting note on the money supply in Communist countries. That's something I should learn more about.'
Try to find a copy (easy online) of Kerry Bolton's 'The Banking Swindle'. It's a good (not perfect) account of Social Credit.
And there's the "No True Scotsman" defense. I will not make it for Marxism. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, all those guys called themselves Marxists and did apply the aspects of Marxist theory that they found useful.
They were Marxists, but they never did away with the employer-employee relationship(I guess one can argue they weren't "real" Marxists because they didn't do that if one wants), and they all clung to power once they had it.
Thanks for this "Cliff's Notes" of Marxism. As a self-taught socialist, I enjoy having the concepts put in layperson's terms rather than in hard to understand, esoteric academic jargon. (Believe me, I've tried to plow through those kinds of writings and they put me to sleep.) Viva la revolucion!
I would inflict Capital on someone like Biden or Trump, but it might violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
That sucker's LONG, and most of it is eaten up by literally hundreds of examples of how capitalism works, and More Profit Soonest wins out every time, which is Marx's point. Well, Marx was a German, and 19th Century Germans tended to be....wordy, shall we say?
Marxism for dumbies...
Thanks. I needed that
And
I'm with you 100%
F "the Republic of America"
Give me majority rule...please.
Thanks for this simplified refresher course of Marx theory.
Banning dancing and partying? Oh, the lockdowns...took me awhile. Didn't apply universally though did it? Like Boris J in the UK and no doubt many such hypocrisies around the Western trail.
This reeks of economism. The soviet system was very democratic...the soviets themselves were a system of workplace democracy. To be sure sacrifices had to be made to defeat hitler and to begin to build socialism, and then Kruschev betrayed the revolution.
No, there were no workers committees controlling anything in the Soviet Union by 1920. The Bolsheviks thought they needed hierarchy and permanent authority to save the Revolution, and they never let go of that authority. See the Kronstadt Rebellion.
Interesting how Trotskyists say Stalin betrayed the revolution, and Stalinists say Khrushchev did. As far as I'm concerned, Lenin did early on. Oh, for seemingly necessary and compelling reasons that he wrote about a lot, but he did. That's why Emma Goldman dumped the Bolsheviks.
Yep see Emma Goldman Disillusionment in Russia for more details, I think the massacre of the Kronstadt sailors was the Soviet's crossing the Rubicon moment.
You got me I'm certainly more of a Stalinist than a Trotskyist. Emma Goldman had the luxury of remaining an activist and intellectual and never had to run a country or a major economy. In fact she was an anarchist not a Marxist -- why are you referring to her? I would think that a more relevant thinker who supports your position but with more nuance would be Rosa Luxemburg. https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1904/questions-rsd/ch01.htm. You're welcome for giving you better arguments on your side. If you're relying on the arguments of anarchists, I'd ask that for clarity of discourse you stop calling yourself a socialist or Marxist
You are making the mistake of confusing vanguardism with authoritarianism; just because there was a necessity for democratic centralist action in order to rapidly industrialize in time to stop Hitler does not mean that the people who were placed in charge of the Party did not represent the will of the people. Although it is uncommon today, it is possible for a centralized party apparatus to make decisions in the interest of the proletariat without submitting to a horizontalism that leads to permanent deadlock and inability to take action.
I am a Leninist based on the hard experience of the last decade. If you read Vincent Bevins' most recent book, which shows how the mass horizontalist, leaderless movements of the 2010s resulted in many (most) cases in a hard swing towards fascism. Because without an organized party to structure and articulate the demands of the People, reactionary forces swoop into the void.
I don't think anybody feels that the actual events of the Russian revolution and the administrations of Lenin and Stalin after it were flawless. That said, I feel like the Kronstadt sailors had had such a good time in the 1917 revolution that they sort of kept doing what they knew how to do: to revolt, and had they been allowed to continue their challenge to Party power, they would indeed have undermined the Soviet experiment.
We again find ourselves in a moment in history when we need real change, quickly, and to achieve that we need the structure of a Party that is able to mobilize during these spontaneous moments of mass action to turn discontent into a real political force, and that is what we are currently missing. We need to return to what works, and Lenin showed us what works.
So is what China has accomplished. They eliminated poverty in less than a generation. No other large country in history has ever managed that.
Oh yes. Stalin industrialized the Soviet Union and really did improve the living conditions for a lot of Soviet citizens. I'll grant the astonishing feat, but I cannot help but wonder if there was a better way to accomplish that.
Done is done, and Stalin's industrialization really was essential to stopping Hitler, but that doesn't mean I have to endorse everything he did.
Thank you for the detailed and civil reply. It’s refreshing. I’m glad a Stalinist, or almost Stalinist, who knows his stuff responded so that others can get an idea of how you think from YOU, and not anyone else, including from me.
I am anti-authoritarian. I am still a Marxist in the sense that I use Marxism to analyze capitalism because it is the most objective, and therefore best, way to do that.
Vanguardism is another matter. Marx saw what happened to the Paris Commune in 1871; I think he was there at the time. He saw what happened when a popular revolution threw the authorities out, but then couldn’t get their shit together.
Lenin saw the need for an organized revolutionary party to be ready to step in and seize the levers of power, ie the government, after the ancien regime was overthrown.
I can see the need for a hierarchical, authoritarian organization to make sure that the revolution doesn’t collapse, especially when there’s civil war and foreign invasion thrown into the mix. I don’t see how anything else could possibly succeed.
I do NOT see the need for the same people who were successful in accomplishing that wonderful thing to stay in power forever, or even for another year.
I think I can think that and still be a Marxist. But I’m not a Leninist, or a Stalinist or Maoist. Does that make me an anarchist? I don’t think so, but it does make me their ally sometimes.
Well, how do you know when the emergency is over? Could a reactionary force not take advantage of the Party's gracious retreat from power?
That's a quandary, isn't it? I don't have the answer. I just think the temptation to hang onto power is too great for most, and they always either say the emergency never way or that a new one has come up.
There have been few historical exceptions.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vZjSXS2NdS0 Sowell is full of it. Some citation for anyone.
The dualism of Marx reminds me of Buddhism. Problem articulation and solution hypothesis are different things. Personally I don't think it matters. Brass on the titanic. Either it's about to switch into hover/space mode and declare it doesn't need water, or it's about to sink. https://innomen.substack.com/p/the-end-and-ends-of-history
I’m confused with the partying statement. Can you elaborate?
It was something Emma Goldman said to the effect of "I don't want your revolution if there is no dancing."
Sure. I was referring to the pandemic restrictions in many of the US states in 2020 and 2021. Our freedom of movement, of association, and of determining what to put in our own bodies was trampled for the sake of a Big Pharma grifting scheme and authoritarian jollies.
It was kind of hard to party back then. That really pissed me off.
So do you think Covid wasn’t a thing?
I of course do not speak for OB, but as far as I am concerned, about 99.9% of what the $MSM fed us about Covid was complete and utter bovine fecal matter. I decided early on I would not get jabbed; still thrilled with that decision. I also think the chicanery and damage is going to be trickling out for a long long time. THAT was the disinformation. IMO, etc.
Covid was a thing. With a mortality rate of (a nasty) seasonal flu. People died, just as they do of a flu. Many more died because doctors were literally FORBIDDEN to treat early symptoms the way they would treat any other serious respiratory illness. In Italy, some doctors disobeyed those orders. Their patients lived. The doctors who obeyed the orders to delay treatment until their patients were seriously ill and send them to the hospital saw their patients die.
Bingo. Well said.
I think it was a common cold, and that was about it. I think more people died of the prescribed treatments, such as being put on ventilators, than of the disease itself.
I KNOW the death stats of Covid were greatly exaggerated. The CDC required that the cause of death be listed as Covid if the diseased tested positive for it. That's been all over the place for years now.
It was a bit more serious than a cold in these parts. My kid, out of boredom, was working on the ambulance services here. People were restricted from seeing their doctors if they had symptoms of or tested positive for covid, and were told to wait until they were very very sick ( allegedly to not overwhelm the hospitals ) - by that point these people were drowning in their own snot with aggressive bronchial pneumonia. Usually they had comorbidities as well. As far as viruses go, the first round was pretty awful, but it was lack of early treatment or access to treatment that was deadly.
Just as a side note, our biggest death counts were in the regions of Italy where health care had been privatized.
Well, it was never considered good medical practice to let a cough develop into pneumonia until people like Fauci came along. The authoritarian prescriptions for treatment did far more harm than good, and went against all previous practice for containing epidemics.
I will bring up Steve, the owner of the lamented discussion forum JPR, who literally died because he couldn't get necessary surgery because Covid.
What happened to bed rest and plenty of fluids? What happened to allopathic medicine to treat symptoms? Ventilators were sheer murder.
I think I got really lucky - because my lungs are pretty fucked up due to chronic bronchitis when I was a kid. A couple of years back, I pressed my doctor into giving me a jab for bronchial pneumonia (because every head cold ends up with me having to do inhalation therapy for weeks.) When I got COVID, it was honestly less bad than my usual head cold, with mild flu like symptoms... but had it gotten worse, I was already well equipped to fight anything that got into my lungs. I can't prove it, but I suspect that the pneumonia jab and my multiple encounters with bronchitis (and what to do about it) actually gave me immunity.
I knew the entire fucking vaccine regimen was an utter hoax the moment they decided not to make the drugs or patents available in the global south. Clearly, our 'leaders' weren't scared that this was truly a deadly global virus - else wise they wouldn't have been prioritizing profit over their own skins.
Sadly, here in Italy, we were not really given a choice to take the shot or not.
If by "a thing" you mean "some ppl got a novel sort of flu", then yes, "Covid" was a thing. But it was never contagious; it was caused by 5G rollout, possibly exacerbated by severe air pollution, not by any new virus, either manmade or naturally-occurring, simply bcuz there are no pathogenic viruses that anyone has been able to prove YET.
Great article and one for my files. This explanation certainly rivals Richard Wolff.....I think lots of things are ongoing challenges to Marxism - ignorance across the political-economic/historic spectrum being chief among them.....The libertarians are the classic mischaracterizations of Marxism and capitalism - I hear too often that capitalism = free market and that communists never accomplished any degree of success......But I think also that a large element of mischaracterization is related to Russophobia (or other cultural phobias) and one has to ask - whether or not attacks on Marxists have ethnic motives.. The influx of Eastern European emigres post WWI-II had anti-Bolshevik/Soviet/Russian had revenge impulses at least equal to their economic incentives ..I think that Cuban/+ exiles make similar contributions... Cultural ignorance contributes/d to the myth of American exceptionalism through the 'Russia is a gas station parading as a country' syndrome...Or in other words, in every other country (but the US, of course) there are countless 'Joe Six-packs' that can't wait to be part of American consumerism and conversely, of course the talent escapes and the rest are left to await liberation...But getting back to your original argument - I don't think the economic ignorance occurs in a vacuum.
Thank you. As for free markets, we don't have them, except maybe at flea markets. If we had a truly free market housing wouldn't be nearly as expensive, to name just one thing.
Thanx man! As a Greek anarchist, who knows the difference as do the majority of Europeans regardless of political affiliation, I've always found it amusing and enraging in equal measure, how Americans throw the word "Marxism" around without any context or idea of what it means, unwittingly supporting those who undermine their interests. Richard Wolff is brilliant, if he can't convince you that untethered capitalism is evil, and make you think again about Marxism, nobody can. Well done!
Oh, hey, most Americans still think of Russians as "Commies" - although the Russians are kicking our ass using capitalism.
Thank you; yes: Bolsheviks saving the revolution by driving an authoritarian stake through its heart, priceless. The precise impulse that led their scummy offspring to betray the Spanish Republic to the fascists. Same problem with all the isms; all you got to carry ‘em out is a mob of hooting primates.
Amazing, though, how much effort and expense goes into preventing us from learning to think in class terms, huh?
If we start thinking in class terms the Empire will fall and all those profits for our rulers will stop. Of course they try to get us to think of something, ANYTHING, else.
good thing you don't have to run a country
Amen to that, though I dare say I could do a better job than the vampires we have now. Admittedly, that's a very low bar.
Thank you for the explanation. I too have been puzzled by the reflexive use of Marx and Marxism to demonize others of varying political stripes (never quite sure which stripes). For a chatty, readable further explanation I recommend “Adventures in Marxism” (Marshal Berman).
I have some objections at the margins, but overall this is well said sir.
A few remarks:
- I am anti-authoritarian, as you put it, *because* the household in which I was raised was suffused with old-style class-consciousness Marxism, with a distinctly nationalist colouring. I am certainly not a Marxist now, but I'm grateful for having been exposed to it early.
- I agree that liberals = communists is low-IQ and historically illiterate.
- In Romania, those old enough to remember know that they were freer under communism than they are now. 'Liberalism' is not necessarily freedom. Ideology is not really important; what counts in securing freedom is the degree to which virtue is distributed throughout the citizen body, especially but not only among those in charge. Ultimately, a society run by cripples and dwarves, whatever it calls itself, is not going to be a free society. I am not an historical materialist.
- Communist governments never brought the money supply under control. Had they done so as the West remained in the bondage of interest, things might have turned out very differently in the last hundred or so years. The 'abolition of private property' (which I do not support) is nothing of the sort without financial sovereignty. For example: Romania was impoverished by its (successful) attempt to pay off loans to the IMF; revolution, resulting only in enslavement to 'liberalism', followed.
Thank you. I'd love to dive into philosophical materialism v. idealism sometime, but this isn't the time or place.
I still believe in individual liberties and political rights, and see no conflict between those and the basic Marxism I described. I'm also American, and know anyone advocating abolishing all "private property" here will be figuratively if not literally tarred-and-feathered, so that's a nonstarter for me.
Interesting note on the money supply in Communist countries. That's something I should learn more about.
'I'd love to dive into philosophical materialism v. idealism sometime, but this isn't the time or place.'
Do it sometime. You've got a talent for summary.
'I still believe in individual liberties and political rights, and see no conflict between those and the basic Marxism I described. I'm also American, and know anyone advocating abolishing all "private property" here will be figuratively if not literally tarred-and-feathered, so that's a nonstarter for me.'
Damn right
'Interesting note on the money supply in Communist countries. That's something I should learn more about.'
Try to find a copy (easy online) of Kerry Bolton's 'The Banking Swindle'. It's a good (not perfect) account of Social Credit.
OK, I will dive into the idealism/materialism thing some time. Lol. My wife told me not to do it because I'd bore everyone to death.
Social Credit...the very term prods my berserker gene. Thanks, I'll check out Bolton.
Real Marxism hasn't been tried yet. All those oppressive governments weren't real Marxism.
And there's the "No True Scotsman" defense. I will not make it for Marxism. Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao, all those guys called themselves Marxists and did apply the aspects of Marxist theory that they found useful.
They were Marxists, but they never did away with the employer-employee relationship(I guess one can argue they weren't "real" Marxists because they didn't do that if one wants), and they all clung to power once they had it.
Excellent analysis as always!
Thanks for this "Cliff's Notes" of Marxism. As a self-taught socialist, I enjoy having the concepts put in layperson's terms rather than in hard to understand, esoteric academic jargon. (Believe me, I've tried to plow through those kinds of writings and they put me to sleep.) Viva la revolucion!
I would inflict Capital on someone like Biden or Trump, but it might violate the 8th Amendment's prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment.
That sucker's LONG, and most of it is eaten up by literally hundreds of examples of how capitalism works, and More Profit Soonest wins out every time, which is Marx's point. Well, Marx was a German, and 19th Century Germans tended to be....wordy, shall we say?
https://vimeo.com/320315812
This an interesting q&a. Based on your piece here, you might enjoy it. I thought it was quite good