Quoting ARLO J BENSINGER JR <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>: > [Jos] > So you think Lenin's aim was tyranny? Why would anyone want tyranny? > > [Arlo] > 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.
A trajectory, Arlo fails to mention, also followed by Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il and Castro, among others. In fact I would like to know of any country that followed "the noble ideas of Marx" that didn't either 1)fail or 2) become a tyranny. Also, Arlo conveniently fails to mention in his biased abbreviated history any mention of the KGB and gulags. ------------------------------------------------- This mail sent through IMP: http://horde.org/imp/ 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/
