Gav, Platt and all Pirsigers:
Platt said:
No, I'm not confusing Marx with Lenin. The "Communist Manifesto" by
Marx and Engels clearly elucidates Marx's belief in the supremacy of
the state which liberals like DMB tend to approve of. It was that basic
concept which gave Lenin the authority to commit Russia to an era of
unspeakable horrors.
DMB:
Actually, what Marx hoped for was a complete withering away of the state.
The goal of Marxism was the total dissolution of the state. I know a little
something about Marxism, but I'm no Marxist. But we'll get back to that. And
I'd add that revolution is always a bloody affair. And 51,000 men were
killed at Gettysburg in a single battle, in a war that was waged in order to
preserve a nation "dedicated to the proposition that all men are created
equal". I suppose Platt thinks Lincoln was a Commie too.
Gavin said:
being anti-capitalist doesn't mean that you are pro-socialist
(ofwhateverflavour). indeed it could simply mean that you could be
'anti-ideology'. which is another way of saying 'viewing things from an moq
perspective'.
and i don't ever remember david waxing lyrical about the 'supremacy of the
state'. maybe i am wrong, but it seems like you have a grudge platt.
DMB says:
Thanks for trying to stick up for me, Gav. And your memory if fine. As I've
said many times, I am extremely anti-authoritarian. I think the government
needs to be strong enough to protect rights and that's about it. As Pirsig
says, if the cops and armies can't protect your rights, you might as well
not have any rights. In anycase, its totally unnecessary to guess at what I
think. I've expressed my political views here many times and I'm still here
if anyone cares to ask.
We all had to read the Communist Manifesto in political science 101, but
mostly what I remember is what I learned in the History department. (At one
of the most conservative colleges in the USA, Hillsdale College.) He is less
well known as a historian, but his contribution there is far more important.
He developed a historical theory called dialectical materialism. (Just one
of the many reasons I'm not a Marxist is his profoundly materialistic view
of humanity.) When you hear somebody say "stone age" or "bronze age" or even
"information age" you're hearing a Marxist idea. Briefly, its the idea that
Man's evolutonary stages are defined and determined by technology.
Humanity's evolutionary phases are a matter of increasing mastery over the
material world. How SOM is that? Very! Of course, his original ideas were
far more subtle that this crude interpretation, but this is how he's been
handed down.
His political views proceed form his historical theory. He thought that the
industrial age was the end of the road, so to speak. He imagined that
industrial capitalism would inevitably end as wealth and power was
increasingly concentrated into fewer and fewer hands. These ages would
finally end when Bill Gates aquired ownership of virtually everything in the
world, or at least of everything that mattered. (Just kidding about Bill
Gates, of course.) Aside from the fact that the world just doesn't work that
way and aside from the fact that such extreme materialism is horribly
inadequate, there is not now nor has there ever been a communist nation.
I know. I know. People and nations call themselves communists. They wave red
flags and shout the slogans. Or at least they used to. But to understand
what really happened in Russia, which is the prime example, we have to look
at Russsian history and culture. Briefly, we're talking about a culture that
had endured serfdom, a kind of medieval slavery, until the 1860's. The
suffered from one Czar after another for nearly a thousand years. In effect
the Russians tried to have a Western democractic revolution with virtually
no democratic traditions in their culture. They tried to transform a
medieval culture into a modern industrial nation over night. The tried to
force a industrial phase into the space of about 20 minutes. They tried to
manufacture an intelligentsia from mythic minds. It failed. Their
revolution failed. They went back to the same old ways, but changed the
names. Stalin was a Czar. The Soviet Russian people were NOT citizens of a
Republic, they were industrial serfs, they were medieval factory workers.
The authoritarian structures that dominated their culture simply could not
be transformed by sheer will. Evolution doesn't work like that, especially
when you consider the MOQ's descriptions. The Russian Revolution occured at
exactly the same historical moment when the West was trying to move from
social level dominance to an intellectually guided society. The difference
is that the West had been slowly building democratic traditions for about
700 years. (Magna Carta) And so when the Russians tried to have a
revolution, what you see is an almost immediate reaction. And NOT
co-incidentally, Stalin's murderous rampage was virtually identical to
Hitler's. Among the first to die in both dictatorships, were the
intellectuals and the liberals. (As well as Jews and other ethnic
minorities) Hitler and Stalin were two peas in a pod. The difference was
that genocide is not a contradiction of fascist ideas, but is the extreme
logical conclusion of them. Stalin, on the other hand, contradicted
virtually every ideal Marx ever penned.
Thanks for your time, comrades.
DMB
MOQ.ORG - http://www.moq.org
Mail Archive - http://alt.venus.co.uk/hypermail/moq_discuss/
MD Queries - horse@darkstar.uk.net
To unsubscribe from moq_discuss follow the instructions at:
http://www.moq.org/md/subscribe.html
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b30 : Sat Aug 17 2002 - 16:02:19 BST