--- [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Actually, there wasn't all that much evidence. He > did not foresee the rise of > the labor union movement. He honestly believed that > capitalism could NOT > reform even if it wanted to, that the logic of the > market would lead capitalism to > destroy itself.
In 1883 Germany, after (I believe) Bismarck had begun the welfare state, there wasn't evidence? The rise of the United States wasn't evidence? British wealth and social reform? If he didn't think that capitalism couldn't reform, it wasn't for lack of evidence. It's not as if he had never been to England. > Bullshit. Sorry, but that's what it is to blame the > horrors of the 20th > century on a man who died in 1883 and who NEVER > countenanced violence (The > Communist Manifesto was a tract written in the > throes of a convulsive year and bears > about as much relation to his real work as Woody > Allen's "Bananas" does to "The > Battle for Algiers"). In all the time I've read your stuff on the list, Tom, it occurs to me that I've never seen you anything but absolutely certain about anything. More on point, that's a big except. "On the Jewish Question" would be another pretty big except. And I don't think that the Communist Manifesto is that different from what else of his work I've read, to be honest. Fundamentally it's Marx's rejection of _liberalism_ that is the root of his problems, and that traces back to Rousseau, of course (sorry Stanley). But that is what I mean by the inevitable outgrowth of his work. Philosophers who embraced liberal ideals of limits on government (not necessarily whom you might think - Hobbes, for example, was arguably the single most important figure in the development of the difference between private and public spheres) are clearly different from those who do not. Marx was probably the most immediate (although not the most important - again, Rousseau) of the modern political philosophers who rejected the tenets of liberalism - and the rejection of liberalism is what brought the horrors of the Soviet Union about, in the end. > would later liberate). Just because Lenin was bad > does not make Nicholas II good. > Just because Castro is bad does not make Batista > good. No, but they were both better than the people who replaced them, and the constant apologizing for Lenin (in his time) and Castro (right _now_) and excusing of every tyranny and atrocity they perpetrate is the greatest shame of the Left, and the reason its claims being some sort of moral conscience for the world are fairly laughable. ===== Gautam Mukunda [EMAIL PROTECTED] "Freedom is not free" http://www.mukunda.blogspot.com __________________________________ Do you Yahoo!? Yahoo! Finance: Get your refund fast by filing online. http://taxes.yahoo.com/filing.html _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
