My favorite Marx quote - What a piece of shit liar

[Stormin Norman]

"‘The charges of communism made from a religious, a philosophical and generally, from a
ideological standpoint are not deserving a serious examination."-Marx

Would you commies agree with this quote? Should we take Marx's life work on blind faith, or should we shoot as many holes in his bastard brain child as we can. Of course the inventor of such a childish theory would not want it to be discussed in detail. He put his heart and soul into this erroneous garbage and hated to see it ripped to shreds before his eyes. The disturbed and simplistic view of history, culture, and economics presented in his writings represent Marx's greatest contribution to man. Look at the devastation caused by failing to accurately evaluate the implications of that theory. 100 million dead.

Should the charges have been explored in greater detail, or were people like Stalin and Lenin right in suppressing the dissent? Must Marxism be applied as a matter of fundamentalist dogma, or should it be discarded before today's communists, once again, find themselves counting coup on those they have destroyed?

The single most immoral act is to hold a belief without exhaustive examination of the principles behind it, no matter the intent or outcome of that theory. It just so happens that most of the time people have refused to explore what their religion or ideology entails, it results in a catastrophe. Communism is one of the greatest examples of this fact.

Your thoughts and comments are welcome on this subject.

(Edited by Stormin Norman at 1:45 am on Nov. 4, 2002)

[peaccenicked]

There you go again charging Marx with Stalinism. Marx
died before the revolution in Russia. Did none of your teachers tell you that.
The quote is historically specific to what is happenning at the time. Communism was being slandered by the establishment and the church because both were losing their ideological grip on the masses.
The key word is ''ideological'' because charges like Stalinism serve the monsters who exploit our class and planet.


You have not examined anything but merely repeated
your imperialist masters charges against Marx because
you ''love your country'' . Your 'I am America' stance proves that the only thing you love is yourself. You live in a purely ideological world unrelated to science.
You accuse Marx of being simplistic and only quote from his most popularising work.
You have never understood Marx. This is all you prove every post.
Marx insist on ''The ruthless criticism of everything that exists''. You cant even criticise one of the most anti democratic Presidents in the recent history of the USA.
The irony here is that a mental slave is criticising free thinkers with his own sins, that is projection.
And what cowardly slave he is.

[j]

I agree with peace. SN-you criticize what you do not find that fits your current ideology. Criticism of Marx is essential to truly understanding what it is that Marx theorized. You need to take this quote and put it into the context of the time (as peace so accuratley did). Your main problem seems to be that you are not willing to criticize your own ideology. Anyone who waves an American flag and blindly follows George W. has no right to say that other people need to critically analyze their own ideals.

j

[redstar2000]

I believe what Marx was getting at in that quote is that he was writing what he perceived to be a scientific theory of how societies evolve; consequently, the only criticism that he would deem acceptible would be criticism based on readily available EVIDENCE...and NOT philosophy, ideology, etc.

A modern physicist or biologist might say the same thing: don't criticize my new theory because you think it's philosophically wrong or tends to undermine religion or any of that crap; the ONLY criticism I'm interested in is criticism from the FACTS, from the EVIDENCE.

SN is perfectly free to argue FROM THE EVIDENCE (if he has any) that Marx sucks. But be careful! Counting up the "misdeeds" or "crimes" of Lenin, Stalin, Trotsky, Mao, et.al. is not evidence; it would be like naming Einstein as a war criminal because Harry Truman nuked Hiroshima and Nagasaki.

You must examine what Marx said about how capitalist societies would evolve towards revolution...and decide whether the EVIDENCE confirms or refutes his views.

The jury is still out, of course, but my view is that Marx looks better with every passing year!

[Solzhenitsyn]

I believe what Marx was getting at in that quote is that he was writing what he perceived to be a scientific theory of how societies evolve; consequently, the only criticism that he would deem acceptible would be criticism based on readily available EVIDENCE...and NOT philosophy, ideology, etc.

That's interesting considering his historic determinism (the hinge upon which all marxism turns) lacks any physical evidence whatsoever.

[peaccenicked]

What are you talking about Solzy. Expand! Assuming your argument makes sense to you and maybe you could find a quote that sort of goes against the grain of
"Philosophers have interpretated the world, the point, however is to change it"
Your ignorance might prove amusing.

[Solzhenitsyn]

peaccenicked,

Your ignorance is already proven itself amusing. I was refering to Marx's idiotic theory that societies develop along these lines:

primative communism ---> feudalism --> capitalism --> socialism --> (true) communism

That is as historically determative as Hitler's theory of the 1000 year reich. About as accurate too. You'd get a more accurate prediction of the future by talking to astrologists.

[redstar2000]

Actually, if you want to crudely summarize it in that fashion it would go something like this:

primitive communism/savagry
evolved into
barbarism/nomadry
evolved into
oriental despotism/agriculture
evolved into
feudalism/landed aristocracy
evolved into
capitalism/modern despotism/industrialization
which will evolve into
socialism/communism

That's a crude way of putting it but adequate for the purposes here. The last item of the series is, as I indicated, still up for grabs. If it comforts you, I have
no objection if you want to think that history has come to an end with capitalism.

You should be wary of such assumptions however; Clio, like most women, is full of surprises.

[peaccenicked]

solzy. Marx was not that unsophisticated. He saw general guidelines and thought societies could skip stages or develop different forms. The main idea he tried to get accross was that society moved away from personal dependency on nature to relative independence from nature to control over nature.
I dont see how Marx was that idiotic. I can see your idiocy and lack of understanding of something you quite obviously know nothing about.
Socialism is about human control over nature and society, as a step away from dependency on class society for work and provision,where control is in the hands of a tiny few.

Nor is it inevitable but the most likely course for human evolution.
Either that or we are stuck with the idiocy of capitalism till humanity dies out.
I dont think human beings in general will maintain levels
of idiocy approaching yours. You are one of the worst idiots I have ever came accross.
Why dont you try studying your sources before you lash out with your inane drivel?

[Solzhenitsyn]

If it comforts you, I have
no objection if you want to think that history has come to an end with capitalism.

I harbor no delusion that the modern "democratic" capitalist state is the final end of civilization ala that dimwit Fukyama. I'm not a fucking neocon. When our current elites off themselves through decadence or decide that capitalism is not the way to go then we'll have some other system.

[Solzhenitsyn]

I should also say that there will always be elites. That's the nature of things. Anarchists can't grasp that central fact of human organization thus they are forever consigned to being political curio.

[peaccenicked]

It seems to me that you have a miserable view on the potential of humanity. Even the ancient Greeks used a lottery system to rotate administrators.You are profoundly undemocratic in your nature.

[Solzhenitsyn]

Even the ancient Greeks used a lottery system to rotate administrators.

There's a good idea - government by random selection.


It seems to me that you have a miserable view on the potential of humanity.

Rule #32 of Debating with Communists: Sooner or later commies with make an appeal to the perfectability of human nature.

I'm a realist, peaccenicked.
Some people act in ways that further their own self interest, morality or other people be damned. That's why these people become elites. There ruthless and immoral enough to walk all over everybody in pursuit of their own interests. That's the truth whether you want to believe it or not.

Yes, my worldview seems decidedly bleak. But has Hank Williams, Sr. put it in song: "I'm not gonna worry wrinkles in my brow, 'cause nothing's ever goin' to be right no how."

[vox]

The dogmatic "end of history" presented above has no foundation in Marx. Marx knew full well that authoritarianism (which is, by it's very nature, anti-socialist) could be the result of capitalist social relations, hence for the need of a communist party, or, if you prefer, a vanguard, though not in the style of Lenin but of Debs.

"Rule #32 of Debating with Communists: Sooner or later commies with make an appeal to the perfectability of human nature."

No, not at all, in any way whatsoever. Marx denied any sort of "human nature" that supercedes the society in which a person lives. Rather, it is capitalist apologists who rely upon the "human nature" argument, as Solz himself does: "I should also say that there will always be elites. That's the nature of things." The "nature of things" is, of course, determined by human beings, so Solz regards the "nature of things" as "human nature." Certainly that's a preposterous notion, but that's what the right-wingers offer as explanation. Only a true idiot, a fool's fool, would believe it.

What's amusing is that right-wingers insist that Marx was an idiot, but they never, not ever, back it up, for once it's explained by those wiser than they, the right-wingers give up the ghost and post a new topic (for example, when SN was made a fool of in the "dialectics" thread, he started this one).

vox

[redstar2000]

"There will always be elites."

For thousands of years, EVERYONE agreed that there would "ALWAYS" be SLAVES. Until they finally decided that slavery was a really shitty idea and should be utterly destroyed. As it was (though there are still a few spots left, even they are under attack).

If something like slavery--once thought to be INTRINSIC to human nature--can be destroyed, why not capitalism? Why not the whole idea of permanent and fixed elites?

Saying it and doing it are two very different things, of course. But "it can't be done" is clearly one of the most mindless and spineless of all human reactions to social realities.

[Mazdak]

There will always be slaves under capitalistic systems. The peasants of the Feudal ages, the workers of the Industrial revolution, the slaves that existed from the beginning of civilization to the end of the Civil War in the US. But slavery still exists... in a far more subtle form. Farm workers who can't survive on their rations, people living under oppressive regimes today still suffer slavery.

And Solz, i agree with you on one point. Humans are far from perfect, and this is something they never will be. They are generally greedy and ignorant. People are generally wicked.


100 million people? LOL!! What's the next big sounding number we can use? Ideologies don't kill people. Using your logic, capitalism is responsible for more deaths on the planet than plague.
First, lets subtract the number of people stalin "supposedly" kill from that to the true number. Now you only have around 51 million deaths. And that is still a huge exaggeration. Stalinism is not the only form of marxism. It is just the only form of marxism THAT WORKS. Stalin, like anyone not naive, knew too well how ignorant and greedy people were. They would do anything for wealth and power. Therefore, authoritarianism was necessary.

[Solzhenitsyn]

For thousands of years, EVERYONE agreed that there would "ALWAYS" be SLAVES. Until they finally decided that slavery was a really shitty idea and should be utterly destroyed. As it was (though there are still a few spots left, even they are under attack).

LOL. The average American doesn't take home a dime of his rightful pay until sometime around May. What is working without pay called? Slavery. More to the point, chattel slavery was far from a universal institution in the way that elites are. It disappeared entirely from Western Europe from the fall of Rome in the West until the colonial period. Nor did serfdom exist in pre-Petrine Russia. It never existed in a multitude of places.


If something like slavery--once thought to be INTRINSIC to human nature--can be destroyed, why not capitalism? Why not the whole idea of permanent and fixed elites?

Because not everyone can be in the business of distributing resources and people who distribute resources tend to do so in a manner the benefits themselves personally and their membership groups. A good illustration is the Bolshevik revolution in which the new distributors (which were nothing more than intellectual elites) seized all the nice dachas for their own personal use and began a black market in looted goods for their own profit.


Saying it and doing it are two very different things, of course. But "it can't be done" is clearly one of the most mindless and spineless of all human reactions to social realities.

The proof is in the pudding. Historically, all groups that have claimed to be acting in the best interests of the whole have done nothing except act in their own best interests. Name one society without elites.

[redstar2000]

"Name one society without elites." Actually, there have been several...though not being an anthropologist, I don't have the names on the tip of my tongue. (One of them existed in rural Malaysia up to the 1950's!)

"Not everyone can be in the business of distributing resources"--that's just circular reasoning. It's saying there have to be elites because not everybody can be part of the elite.

On chattel slavery, I think you'll find there were at least some pockets of it in England after the Roman garrisons withdrew. And I recall quite clearly that the first black slaves were imported into places like Venice and Florence prior to the discovery of the new world. In any event, the point is that slavery was IDEOLOGICALLY universal even when for various reasons it wasn't practiced. There are few, if ANY, direct attacks on slavery as a man-made institution that could be and should be un-made prior to 1600.

Wage-slavery (your average American) is something new under the sun. It existed in antiquity, but was a very tiny part of the whole picture. Its predominance dates from the 19th century. How long will it last is up to all of us who ARE wage-slaves.

Of course if Mazdek the Impaler and you both really agree that humans are greedy, ignorant, and wicked (from Thomas Hobbes by way of James Madison, right?), then our discussion is at an end; the greedy, the ignorant, and the wicked will always consent only to be ruled by those who achieve special distinction in those qualities. I trust neither of you are actually VOLUNTEERING for that "honor"???

[Solzhenitsyn]

"Not everyone can be in the business of distributing resources"--that's just circular reasoning. It's saying there have to be elites because not everybody can be part of the elite.

??? You seem to agree that distibutors of goods are also elites but have trouble accepting the notion that distributors can only be a small subset of the population. Please clarify.

[peaccenicked]

It is not for nothing that Marx writes that "All hitherto existing history is the history of class struggle. However, in primitive times of human scarcity it is hard to imagine the existence of a tangible elite as there was no excess to immediate needs that an elite could appropiate.

To say elites will always exist is to give human nature a fixed position. The way I think is that elitism assumes superiority. Class society shows that this is not rational.
Ford said ''He did not need brains he could buy them''
The evolution of human inteligence will be one of recognising how stupid class society has become. True democracy will win. Democracy when practised without the rule of property and its deadening ideology will bring about an equality of political status for all humans.

Socialism itself is the stuggle against stupidity. It is merely stupid stalinist and capitalist ideology that keeps elitism alive.

Part of that ideology is the denial that elitism can be defeated. Humans can do it and it becomes evermore necessary to do so as elites mess up the planet and distance themselves from the needs of ordinary people who make up the majority.

Socialism is a huge leap forward in the political culture of the majority. It is the belief that the majority can rule in its own interests and without the pretences of all forms of elitists.
It is both desirable and necessary. Defeatism is stupid.

[redstar2000]

Solz, I think the word you really want here is "allocation", not distribution. The power to allocate resources, according to your view, is the power to create an elite even if none existed before.

I would agree that thus far in history that has certainly been the case (by a very wide margin). I simply dispute it as an "eternal truth", "law of nature", "inevitable product of biological evolution", etc., etc.--all the rationales thus far put forward.

The allocation of resources in a just and equitable fashion seems to me to be subject to the same power of human reason that any other MATERIAL question is. Communism is ONE possible and reasonable answer to that question (it's certainly possible there may be others). The details are, admittedly, quite fuzzy at the present time (did the merchant princes of Venice and Florence and Antwerp have a clear picture of the future of capitalism, the multi-national corporation, the World Bank, etc.?).

I don't "know" nor do I think it can be "known" at the present time precisely what steps MUST be taken to PREVENT the power of allocating resources from creating a new elite of some kind. But we have a few ideas and we'll have more and better ideas as time goes on.

The alternative, Solz, is pretty grim. More and more of what we have now...where life becomes increasingly "nasty, brutish, and short".

[Solzhenitsyn]

Redstar,
You're quite correct about my poor word choice. Allocation is determining what resources go where. Distribution is physically transfering those allocated goods to the recipients.

The phrase "who will guard us from the guardians" comes to mind. I think we can all agree that it's human nature to strive to be popular within membership groups. The easiest way to become popular is bring home the bacon in a manner of speaking. The communist advocate the reduction of humanity to one single allegiance. The problem is that reducing humanity to one single group is impossible. Besides the self-identified nature of memberships in such things as religion, politics and profession, you also have to deal with cohesions that arise from natural sources such as locality and familiarity.

There are some alternatives that I can think off the top of my head.

1) Periodic relocation in terms of jobs and living space to prevent group attachments from forming. The military does this a lot. (ie You spend two years at as a bread baker in Los Angeles then spend two years as a tractor driver in Dalhart, TX.)

- Very distruptive
- Not well liked
- Large overhead
- Room for abuse.

2) Okay, groups will always form so let's distribute the population out across the land so that inordinate power can't fall to certain groups.

- Physically unfeasible for obvious reasons

3) Let's brutally crush group identities by prison time and executions. (the Mazdak method).

- Already tried and failed in Soviet Russia.

4) Let's let computers decide everything.

- Everyone on this board (commie or cappie) finds technocracy repulsive.
- People who actually implement and maintain these systems would be the elites.

I can't think of any other alternatives but technocracy seems to be the road down which we are all travelling. I'm predicting that technocracy will replace capitalism as the new economic and human organization method in the next 200 years. It'll be cold inhuman world our children will be recieving from their ancestors.

[Non-Sectarian Bastard!]

To the moron who started this topic

You are so funny!!Like marx predicted first primitif communism(we have had that) and then after a few other phases true communism will come. In that phase i expect that the (few) advantages of captalism will be combined in communism. So that hard work pays of but still the weaker ppl will not suffer under this system cause they will receive government money for self support and if that even doesnt work they could have a worker orso at home. so you will take care selfishness and the "weaker ones".

[redstar2000]

"It's human nature to want to be popular with membership groups"--well, that's ONE of the MANY things that motivate human behavior. Clearly it isn't the predominate one; indeed, we have some very uncomplimentary words in our language for those who seek popularity at all costs. (I don't know, but I strongly suspect words like that can be found in every human language.)

Also, there are many roads to "popularity"--paying off somebody to "like" you has not necessarily proven to be the most reliable one. Sometimes it works; a lot of times it doesn't. (From what I hear, Enron's Ken Lay has been dropped from ALL the really important A-lists and none of his "friends" will return his calls.)

"Who will guard the guardians" is always a relevent question, provided you're organizing a social order with "guardians". If the function of "guardianship" is sufficiently dispersed, then the question is, it seems to me, moot. If power to allocate resources is sufficiently dispersed to the entire working class--the only definition of communism that makes any sense to me--then it seems likely that although proto-elites might try to emerge from time to time, they will (or should!) be strangled at birth. (No, I don't mean shot; I mean just prevented from getting greedy and arrogant by ordinary legal measures.)

I don't doubt for a second that there will be many, many struggles between various groups over the allocation of resources under communism. I see vehement arguments, loud and unruly public assemblies, close votes, etc., etc. along with many mistakes, inefficiencies, and, sorry to say, occasional injustices. It's a real world we speak of, not "heaven".

But I remain convinced that if we could see it from our vantage point in the here and now, we'd THINK it was heaven. Because now we most certainly live in hell...and, I don't deny your prediction of how things would go if present trends continue: more hellish!

[redstar2000]

I've been giving some thought to one of your options, Solz: "let computers decide everything"--that is, program some real large 10th generation computers to allocate resources in a fair and equitable fashion.

It's irrelevant whether "everyone" on this board finds technology "repulsive"...it's also not true (I don't!). I don't WORSHIP technology, but where it's useful, I'm comfortable with it. The point is that we as humans DEFINE the ends and technology supplies the means. We should never let technology define what we want; which is what some technocrats seem to imply.

If computer technology COULD be used to allocate resources in a fair and equitable manner, what dangers could result from that use?

The minor danger is that someone would hack into the system and divert resources to themselves or their special interest group. It would take an extremely talented hacker to do this; but it's always POSSIBLE.

The catch is that he can't take VERY MUCH; it's one thing to change a line of code or a few entries to divert resources to yourself & your friends...but the actual physical resources themselves leave "footprints". A truckload of building supplies, for example, may come to the attention of any number of human beings...any one of whom may be puzzled by its unexpected appearance and initiate inquiries.

"Who the hell ordered a truckload of Italian marble shipped to Aspen, Colorado???"

The same problem faces the people who de-bug and maintain the computers. Of course, they can fiddle the code to grab an extra share of goodies...but what about the "footprints"? Maybe you could rig a way to allocate yourself a 50,000 acre ranch in Montana (nobody lives in that part of Montana anyway, so who cares?). But as soon as you start trying to build on it, people will NOTICE.

Unless you're really careful and thorough, the computers will also notice...I can conceive of lots of redundant sub-routines inserted to catch just such fiddling. Bells will ring, whistles will blow...and the proto-elite will find themselves in deep excrement.

I'm not arguing that we MUST go that way--that we must have 10th generation computers before communism becomes practical. But, the idea DOES have a certain appeal.

[Stormin Norman]

The problem with that is no intelligent computer has yet been created. People still have to program computers and tell them what functions to perform. If computers can be made to think, that too poses a problem. Would you really want to be dependent on a competitive system for distribution of resources? If computer intelligence is achieved, would they not be able to recognize when they are in a position to terminate their competitors for earth's valuable resources? Wouldn't they understand when a optimal time for independence presented itself.

[Lefty]

Ok, so SN's main arguements against Marx are:
1) The guy was an idiot
2) You have to go mostly on blind faith, or at least he wants you to
3) the guy was an idiot


Man, sounds like good old George Bush, doesn't it? And if I'm correct, SN supports George Bush.

[Stormin Norman]

Lefty,

If you are interested in my critique of Marxist theory, I suggest you go to a thread called "My odd description of Capitalism'. No one has given me an intelligible argument refuting my criticism. Be my guest. Perhaps you could be the first. The reason I don't lay it out again here is because it is 13 pages in length. Put your money where your mouth is. Read the post that introduced me to this forum and defend your beloved creed. Somehow I doubt you have enough wits about you to even attempt to engage my criticism of Marx. Prove me wrong, Gandi.

[redstar2000]

SN, I'm frankly NOT qualified to talk about "intelligent" computers.

The point I was speculating on simply involved computers much larger and faster than the ones we have now...and if a proto-elite could successfully manipulate them to recreate class society. My guess is no, because the use of material goods leaves "footprints" that sooner or later are discovered.

But it's speculation...not a PLAN.

[Stormin Norman]

Yeah, but didn't we learn anything about the dangers of too much dependence upon computers during the Y2K scenario. What would have happened if networks had gone down for extend periods of time? Allocation and distribution would have suffered, probably resulting in catastrophic results. If these question were left up to the computers all together, would we not be in a compromising postition. Fact is, no human has completely solve distribution and allocation problems. These questions are better answered by the workings of a free-market, and everytime a central power has tried to solve these problems they have failed. How then would a computer program address the question without the direction of humans who can not manipulate the complex input-output equations that relate all the components of an economy. There are simply too many variables. Besides, I would trust a computer to watch out for humanities best interest less than I would trust a communist to do it.

[redstar2000]

"the workings of a free market" -- what a wonderfully Victorian phrase; can't you just see the reflections of the gas lights on the cobbled London streets and smell the pungent fog roll in off the Thames?

Because, SN, that's about how far back you'd have to go to find a "free market". "Big Government" (to use a conservative cliche) and "Big Corporations" (to use a lefty cliche) have not only been in bed with each other for the last century but they've been doing the nasty with considerable enthusiasm. In fact, when they get together, the earth ALWAYS moves!

Y2K, as I understand it, turned out to be just another marketing scam.

And I repeat, SN, what I said above in response to Solz. was SPECULATION!!! I think it MIGHT work...ask me in 50 or 100 years.