[cont.]

There is nothing inevitable about the thesis - antithesis - synthesis process [an endless process, as Marx points out]. Nothing is predetermined. Nothing is 'necessary', in that sense. Meanwhile, the ground shifts under our feet all the time. The capitalist T may be superseded, but it may prevail for a hell of a long time, simply by virtue of the weaknesses or deficiencies - or reactionary nature - of alternative ATs.

Has socialism been one of those alternative ATs ? Well, has it succeeded anywhere ? Finding reasons why it hasn't is not quite the same thing as showing that it has, or could.

So to show courtesy to grok for the term, what might 'emerge' to take its place ? Marx would, I'm sure, have been quite comfortable with the notion of 'emergence', of new forms arising which nobody could have anticipated - including himself.

Joe

Dear Squeers,

Apparently you lack an appreciation for the human right of free expression. That means allowing the free expression of ideas one might find loathsome, obnoxious or even evil. That is necessary for a free society since I want to be allowed to express my own ideas which others may find loathsome, obnoxious or even evil.

For your information I lived in the United States during the McCarthy period where people were being persecuted for the expression of ideas favouring socialism or Marxism. I belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union at that time and opposed McCarthyism. I opposed firing people for opinions which had nothing to do with their jobs. I opposed equating loyalty to the United States with seeing Reds under the beds.

I support democracy. That means giving full right to the expression of all opinions even those opinions which oppose democracy such as Marxism. The Marxists have a terrible record in that regard. Many intellectuals and artists left the USSR during Lenin’s rule when he instituted censorship and suppressed the other parties. Leftists such as Emma Goldman and Debs saw the evil of Leninism and condemned it for its suppression of expression.

The moderator of a discussion list I was a member of expelled a Marxist for her opinions. I posted material opposing that expulsion on the grounds that she had not attacked anybody personally or used expressions in bad taste but merely expressed opinions that most people disagreed with. I was approached by a member of a Marxist group to join them. He apparently had difficulty in seeing that one could support the expression of ideas one disagreed with so I must be favourable to Marxism. You apparently have the same difficulty.

However, Marxists and Nazis do not appreciate free expression when they take power although they both are willing to accept the freedom of a democratic society to promote their evil crap. I support their right to promote their evil crap although I recognise it for what it is.

Things seem to be hotting up here...sorry to interrupt....but I just want to reply to Yabby's last post referring to my perceived penchant for arrogantly knowing what's best.

Yabby,
This is a debate...I'm simply putting forward my opinion, which I might add, is no less arrogant than your own.
From a personal standpoint, I couldn't give a hoot what other people do. I know full well that they can't resist all the stuff. They either don't realise or don't care that they are lashed to the system.
It might surprise you, Yabby, that I don't go around spouting this stuff to all and sundry - unless I'm having a discussion somewhere like here. I try and live my own own life as much as I can on the periphery of all the bells and whistles of capitalism, just a simple life, that's all. I'm not a revolutionary, but I do have an opinion.
Most dwellers in our society don't bother, or don't have the time to think (let alone "decide for themselves") where they are going, how to relieve the stress or how best to live their lives.
They are recumbent on the conveyor belt....and they just keep gliding along.

>However, Marxists and Nazis do not appreciate free expression
when they take power although they both are willing to accept
the freedom of a democratic society to promote their evil crap.

Nazism IS capitalism -- just w/o the "democratic" pretense. So what pretentious, diversionary bull-dada.

Thus spoken by a true believer in 'our' fraudulent and ersatz bourgeois "Democracy": that only 'works' so long as no one is paying close attention to how it actually operates... mafia-like, in many respects, when its not just an infantile 'dog-and-pony show'. Iraq, Afghanistan -- and a LONG string of other tributary states which weren't paying their tribute on time to the American Empire -- are examples of where much of the moolah comes from to maintain this system and its very loud parasitic classes.

I mean, you work so HARD for 'your' money...(pfft): but Third World wage slaves work FAR HARDER than you, mate, I am sure: and yet don't get more than a fraction of what you pull in. And why is that, eh..?

>no philosophy or ideology has meaning as an abstraction.
It takes shape according to what humans do with it.

About the only intelligent and true thing you've said here.

>Marx's opposition to human rights as an excresence of
capitalism made his system fatally flawed whatever virtues
were in the rest of it.

This isn't even just wrong: it's simply a flat-out LIE.
Stop repeating it.

>It justified the actions of Lenin and the other criminals
in making great mounds of corpses.

Slanderous and libelous lies against heroic revolutionaries aside: AFAIC one of the main reasons you bourgeois types constantly scream this stuff is because your intent is actually to misdirect people's attention away from the FAR larger "mounds of corpses" produced by capitalism.

This is one area where 'mine is bigger' is definitely NOT something to be aiming for.

And 'stalinism STILL !== socialism' -- as you people dishonestly and obsessively continue to bleat.

Dear Poirot,
Beautifully put. I feel much the same way.

Dear davidf,
I have suffered your scathing slanders, and distortions (admittedly born of prejudice and ignorance rather malice) quite enough, here and elsewhere, so I thought, in my last post, you ought to experience the same indignity.
I have nothing more to say to you on the subject. I feel utterly vindicated (as is Marx) in Allen Wood’s forward which, ironically, Yabby led me to. Having read through it I can hold my head up that I’ve never said a word on the subject on OLO that isn’t ringingly endorsed by Wood. Here is a sample that applies peculiarly to your position:

“Those hostile to Marx have not hesitated to practice … abuses regarding Marx that they would not practice on any other thinker.
Thus Marx is often read mainly to discover in his texts the supposed source of the misdeeds of his self-appointed followers in the Soviet Union or elsewhere. (I have heard it suggested, for instance, that the excessively harsh derisive polemical tone of Marx’s writings makes him a fit target of blame for the atrocities committed in the Stalinist purges and the Cultural Revolution; it seems to me that the authors of these suggestions ought to listen more closely to themselves before asking us to credit their judgments about when someone is being excessively harsh.) Such readers are uninterested in the questions Marx was addressing, still less in the historical context in which he addressed them. Their more or less open intent is to terrify us into accepting the message: “You must not think this way” (lest you become a monster). But this is no different from telling us: “You must not think at all” -- at least, not about whether capitalism is a justifiable social system”.

And Dear GH, for you:
“The capitalist market system, as a historical reality,
cannot exist without class oppression. Fantasies about a possible egalitarian market
system may certainly exist in the minds of apologetic theorists and would-be reformers, but they have no existence in reality”.

Amen