[Chris] I'll say this one last time. It is not communism that is anti-intellectual and sent people to Gulag etc. Communism is an idea that grew out of the intellectual level, formulating a theory for how economy should be built, that's the main thing. Real communism have never been realized, and the things that happened under for example the reign of Stalin and Pol Pot etc has got no more to do with communism then the crusades has to do with Jesus.
[Arlo] Exactly. Indeed, I've traced the historical progression from Marxism to Leninism to Stalinism to be one where the optimism of Marx is replaced with (what would become) the neoconservative ideology of The Myth of the Nation. From an old posting of mine. "Lenin is a good example here, because he combines the overestimation of man of Marx, with the neoconservative notion that man is too stupid to act in his best interests (with strong politically-leveraged myths to control him). Whereas Marx saw a temporary communist body to replace the old capitalist, he saw this transitory body as lacking real power, existing only for unavoidable bureaucratic business during the communist transition. The real goal was the abolishment of government ipso facto. "Eventually the state will "wither away" and become obsolete, as people administer their own lives without the need for governments." (Wikipedia, Marxism) Lenin, however, came to deny this and using the neoconservative idea of a benevolent state that rules by strong orienting myths, set up as a final stage the Communist State, which would be promoted through propaganda and used to align patriotism and nationalism to hold the state together. Lenin did not think, in good neoconservative fashion, that man's individual liberty would lead to the altruistic state Marx envisioned, but to the nihilism and debauchery Strauss predicted. When Stalin took power, the strong nationalist ideology was set firmly in place, and this was all he saw. Gone by now where the noble ideas of Marx. All that remained was patriotism and glorification of the state. Human liberty, all that Marx wanted, was replaced with a dictatorship resting on propaganda to support nationalism, which defined itself by virtue of its opposition to "the other", and where individual liberty was suspended entirely "for the good of the state". This is, admittedly, abbreviated and simplistic, but I think it captures the basic themes of the Marx/Lenin/Stalin trajectory." (Arlo back in 2006) [Chris] I am not convinced this could work in practice, but I feel I have to take the role of Advocatus Diaboli here, because this debate becomes quite one-sided otherwise. [Arlo] Marxism has been discussed here often, and while I consider myself a sympathetic Marxist and yet disagree with him on several points (see the thread "Quality Decline" in the archives for a good overview of this), you'll find that most voices here are voices of reason, even those that disagree wholeheartedly with Marx. Platt stands as a unique example of the talk-radio blowhard interested only in ideological pontification typically through evasion, distortion and distraction. When I first joined the list, several warned me upfront to consider Platt "the comic book villain of the list", and to more or less ignore him. I wish I had that restraint, but I find myself tacking too personally the embarrassment that type of rhetoric brings to us all. My Zen-Goal has been to work on that, and I have been more or less succeeding, despite my recent lapse. Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org.uk/pipermail/moq_discuss_archive/
