On Fri, May 7, 2010 at 1:14 PM, Shane Hathaway <[email protected]> wrote:
> On 05/07/2010 10:52 AM, Levi Pearson wrote:
>>
>> The endgame of Marxism and anarchism are essentially the same. Marxism,
>> however, defines a transitional period including a powerful, though
>> democratic, state that is required to reach the goal. The fact that no
>> transitional government inspired by Marx's ideas ever actually
>> transitioned is a strong empircal criticism of Marxism, but that
>> transitional phase is not really a fair description of how Marx believed
>> a society should ultimately be governed.
>
> So you're saying Marx said:
>
> 1. Acknowledge existing social problems.
> 2. ???
> 3. Utopia!
That's clearly not what I'm saying. Generally, Anarchists advocate
revolution followed directly by anarchism. Marx advocated revolution
followed by a temporary 'dictatorship of the proletariat' followed by
anarchism. I've only explained that 3 or 4 times now, including once
in the paragraph you quoted. This was all supported by a theory of
history and economics that explained how this transition was necessary
and inevitable.
Don't get me wrong, I think Marx was pretty wrong about a lot of
things, but he was highly influential and I think it's worth knowing
what he actually thought and advocated rather than just knowing 'Marx'
and 'Marxism' as evil taboo labels vaguely associated with other evil
taboo labels like 'socialism' and 'communism'. At the very least,
people ought to know how to apply the labels correctly if they want to
use them.
--Levi
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