Dear Joe,
these are important questions of course, that I would need much time to research and space to decant, if I were to attempt to answer them. As I've said, I don't defend what's happened in Marx's name, and certainly I'd say that no text should be taken as doctrine. I do think that Marxism, as it's been enacted, has failed partly because of the global conditions in which it had to find its way; and also, clearly, because every model has proved itself prone to one form of vicious dictatorship or another.
Marx of course deemed eventual communism as dialectically inevitable, and I think he got that wrong. He also got capitalism right, however; but rather than it ending in a transition to communism (and he admitted that revolution always proceeds "by its bad side"), I think it will end in devastation, a perfect storm of economic, ecological and organic (human and other life-forms) collapse. Whether the survivors choose another system after that, who knows? I think, logically, that once capitalism implodes, there's nothing to stop the whole thing starting off again.

As noted by several OLO friends, the historical dialectic was very important to Marx. As a result, he said (1872) that in England and Americia, the workers revolution might not be necessary. THose countries had worked past political autocracies and established democracies. Recall, Marx wanted a workers' democracy. A key moral issue, for Marx, was the Surplus Value was not equally shared. The people higher upper in society tended have a bigger share of the pie, based on the efforts of the working class. Religion/Theism was essentially irrelevant to Marx, except that the Faiths distracted people from recognising, they were puppets (organic capital) to our peoples' agenda.

Dear Banjo,
I'm glad you and I appear to be in agreement.

I think just about anyone who's tolerably well read and over a certain age must have come across one of Erich Fromm's classic texts, such as "The Art of Loving" and "To Have or to Be". I strongly recommend another book of his called "Marx's Concept of Man", which also contains the first English translation of Marx's "Philosophical Manuscripts" to be published in the US (which give a condensed insight into his thought). How brave was Fromm to publish such a thing in the US in 1961! The book can probably be obtained for nicks online.
The book also contains several glowing contemporary accounts of Marx the man, whose thought came directly from the Enlightenment philosophical tradition. He was an extraordinary polymath, humanist, loving father and husband. When his wife got sick and eventually died, the only consolation he could find was in mathematics.
You might also want to have a look at Marx's short "confession":
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/04/01.htm

Unnnnfortunately, while we have done this argument to death privately (David and I)

It needs to be re-stated regularly. (our memories are like Random Access Memory..needs constant refreshing :)

David Says
"Secularism holds that a person’s religious belief or lack of same is no business of the government."

But David, being Jewish, and knowing many who suffered at the hands of the perpetuators of certain "ideas" also knows full well that you cannot tolerate that which would extinguish you as a race, or impose a set of laws on you which are anathema to your conscience.

If any religion held that "Jews must be fought and killed" or.. if any political philosophy held the same idea.. then we cannot tolerate it.

So.. secularism must also ensure that it does not tolerate anything which would hunt down people for no other reason than their race or religion. What must especially not be tolerated of course, on the religious side, is any set of ideas with values which are genocidal, racist and includes doctrinally justified sexual exploitation of children or women

Dear All who are discussing Marx,

I wrote the article we are commenting on because I would like to see a secular society with separation of religion and state. Whether like me you consider Marx a brilliant system maker whose system inspired the Marxist tyrannies according to his prescription or you consider them inconsistent with his original vision the fact is they interfered with religious belief, and therefore were not secular. I would like to continue discussion of Marx on another string.

My father lived in an anarchist commune in northern Manchuria, and I am an admirer of Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin and others of that ilk. I have been active in anarchist groups in Brisbane so I assume that makes me a leftist. I think Marx has been an evil influence on the left in that the Marxist statist tyrannies are quite consistent with his vision which saw the bourgeois protections against state tyranny as unnecessary since he apparently thought they would not be needed in a collective society. To make a decent society we have have to consider both social justice and individual rights. We are both members of society and individuals.

I am quite aware of Bakhunin's antisemitic propensities. He even supported the South in the US Civil War as he saw the slaveholders in the light of an agrarian romanticism. However, I think he got it completely right when he broke with Marx. I would like to continue this discussion on another string as it is a diversion from the discussion of secularism.

Dear David f and all,
I intended to start that new thread myself, but responded here as seemed necessary. I still will start another thread myself down the track a little (whether or not anyone else does in the meantime). Unfortunately, I have no more time to devote to OLO for a little while (except perhaps superficially); so shall thank you for your indulgence, wish you happy debating, and look forward to more interaction in the not too distant.