I am apprehensive to comment on Marxist theory as a lengthy discourse on that
topic might stray from the Minneapolis Forum "Manifesto" and I would hate to
irritate the dictator, benevolent as he appears to be. I can't control myself
however from at least one random thought.
That is the wonderful juxtaposition provided by the heartfelt letter of
Shefget Meko with his thoughts on freedom, democracy and his experience under
the "Communism time" to Robert Wood's post extolling what he labels an
"anti-authoriatarian" marxism. I hate to summarize but I read Shefget to say
although we have "the best democracy but it is not perfect." We battle each
other for our beliefs and positions but afterwards we "accept the result."
That is a democracy. That is the system that we have collectively used to
protect the rights we have established and enforce the rules we have set. To
act on Wood's belief that the need for a place to live comes above the rights
(privilege to Wood) of property owners, one has to acknowledge that an
authoritarian (not democratic) government would be the only way to proceed. I
say this because as liberal as Minneapolis might seem, if you tried to
implement Marx's goal of eliminating all private property, you would probably
find the boundaries of Minnesota nice very quickly. Lets work on affordable
housing, but lets not do so by taking away other peoples rights.
I close my political ramblings with the main reason for this post. That is
the idea of how wonderful it is to have a recovering Communist citizen
sharing his thoughts on the same forum as a new age Marxist. Is life great or
what?
Bob Gustafson
13th
