[Ian] You distort the picture (as usual) by ignoring that the passage you re-quote starts with Marx words "Of course, in the beginning ..."
[Arlo] What Platt also ignores is that there is a body of work by Marx that, when read, shows clearly that he never envisioned any transitional government as "despotic". And, as he's ignored since I pointed it out, his quote goes as such "by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production". It's clear Marx is making a very pointed statement, which has nothing to do with establishing a tyranny, but describing the very specifically directed violence Marx felt would be necessary to wrest man's freedom from his captors. [Ian] He is pointing out that there is dirty work to be done, dirty work that would be despotic by any standards (yes, even Merriam-Webster), to break down establishment barriers to freedoms, BEFORE freedoms can be available to all. [Arlo] Exactly. [Ian] Personally I'm not prepared to support that line, but it doesn't change Marx clear liberal intentions. [Arlo] Nor do I, as I said in my last post. To the opposite, we are IN a transitional state now, a slower moving but inevitable transition from the evils of early Industrialization (and let's not forget that it was during those despicable times that Marx wrote) and towards something better. We have all the gains of Marxist-inspired response, including workplace safety, labor laws and protections, wage protections, etc. And while Marx would likely say we've "sold out the revolution", and lament that we are moving too slow, I'd say that we are going about the revolution the only way possible, through the non-violent steady enlightenment of the population. I was talking to someone about this the other day, and had to agree that one of the best future projections of a Marxist world is "Star Trek". [Ian] Part of the reason the word "liberal" is deliberately confused with "left" in US neo-con eyes. As if the only freedoms that matter are "the free market" and any other conception of liberal is a dirty word. [Arlo] In other words, one of the worst neocon dupes is that everything should be reduced to a market commodity. By the way, the other is what started this distort-response-distort-response discussion on Marx. And that is the myth of state nationalism, the unyielding and unwavering patriotic masturbation and allegiance that Lenin applying to Marxism, just as the neocons apply to capitalism. 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/
