[Platt] A trajectory, Arlo fails to mention, also followed by Mao, Pol Pot, Kim Jong-il and Castro, among others.
[Arlo] Once again, my entire post was about the errant trajectory that led from Marxism, through Leninism, to Stalinism. That other regimes followed the lead of brutal nationalism has nothing to do with original Marxist thinking, but everything to do with the odd combination of utopic Marxist ideology and Straussian-esque "man is stupid" neoconservatism. As for Castro, well, I expect you to squalk the Party Mantra. I hardly see him as an example of Marxist failure. If anything, it evidences the idiotic foreign policy debacle of the US. [Platt] 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. [Arlo] Like I said, you can criticize Marx for being naively optimistic, and from a Straussian man-is-inherently-selfish perspective it would seem history has born Marx out to be too gracious towards man's inner nature. As such, anything that attempted Marxism on larger nationalistic levels failed precisely for this reason, the reason that led Lenin to failure. Namely, a disbelief that man would work towards his own best interests, and the need for a coercive, propagandistic nationalist state to control him and orient his actions. We've had this conversation several times before, so I will take these comments as being just more deceptive rhetoric on your part, but Marxism in practice can be seen among the Amish, and was seen among some of the earlier Native populations, also Kabitzs in Israel afford an example. [Platt] Also, Arlo conveniently fails to mention in his biased abbreviated history any mention of the KGB and gulags. [Arlo] Ah yes, I failed to squalk your talking points, sorry. I think I was quite clear about the ends of the trajectory, that began with human liberty and ended with a brutal dictator bent on propping up the nationalistic state above all else. So ignore everything that was said and focus instead on an contextually irrelevant ommisson. Yes, the trajectory led to a state that abused and discard human life. Yes, it led to gulags and secret police. But this says nothing to anything that I have said. Namely that Marx began as a (perhaps overly) optimistic treatise on ending human suffering, and soon adopted everywhere a Straussian "myth" of Nationalism, and that this Nationalism soon led to tyranny (were we only so quick to learn). Now I expect the typical distortive rhetoric to kick in. If you want to have an honest, open dialogue, I am game. If you want to engage in your typical embarrassing crap, then either (1) don't bother or (2) expect me to call it for what it is. 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/
