grok: "most of the Reichwing commentators"

Dear grok,

Interesting choice of words. One does not have to choose between one party dictatorships with secret police and concentration camps - Nazism or Marxism. Apparently your ideological blinders are on tight. There is no essential difference between mass murder of race enemies by Nazis and mass murder of class enemies by Marxists. Take off your ideological blinders and realise they are similar crap.

Poirot:

My so-called "Marxism in practice"? Why so-called? I thought I was referring to actual Marxism in practice. Morris never had to face the reality. He was a romantic who worshipped the medieval.

E. A. Robinson wrote a poem about such a person. Here's part of it:

Miniver mourned the ripe renown
That made so many a name so fragrant;
He mourned Romance, now on the town,
And Art, a vagrant.

Miniver loved the Medici,
Albeit he had never seen one;
He would have sinned incessantly
Could he have been one.

Miniver cursed the commonplace
And eyed a khaki suit with loathing;
He missed the mediæval grace
Of iron clothing.

'Miniver Cheevy" is a poem I enjoy. I hope you look it up & like it also.

I know that you and other apologists for Marx have been saying on this thread that 'the Soviet example was not a true representation of Marx's ideas.' I think it was. I have read enough Marx to make the judgment that Lenin was a Marxist and did his best to carry out what Marx advocated. I assume it is fair to make the judgment that the Manifesto was an exposition of the thought of Marx and Engels. It advocates tyranny. In "On the Jewish Question" he showed himself to be a Jew hater.

Anyhow, what difference is it to you that I am not a true believer? I have no reason to admire any bigot or advocate of tyranny even if he is Karl Marx. If you choose to disregard the bigotry and authoritarianism of Marx do so.

I prefer to talk about the present-day mass murderers of U.S and NATO imperialism, David F. Not only is it more apropos and to-the-moment; it's also to-the-point, period: unlike your propaganda drivel -- which only serves these imperialist interests. And very conveniently too for you, I will add (and not for the first time).

You watch Fox "News" a lot, do you, D.F.? Read the Murdoch "Press" much, wot..?

grok:

I know you prefer to ignore the Marxist crimes. I ignore no crimes. I think the Vietnamese War was a crime and as an American I protested against it. Bush lied us into the Iraq War. The US is not pure. However, I can speak and write about such things without being sent to a camp or shot. That was not true under the criminals Lenin and Stalin.

I want something better. However, the USSR was not something better. You have not pointed out one thing that I said that was false. You merely call names and defend the indefensible.

I do not want dictatorship of any kind whether it is fascist, Marxist or under another label. I do not want racism or antisemitism whether it is Marx or Stalin who was the Jew hater.

I don't watch Fox news. I don't have pay TV. Marxism did not start being criminal recently. It has been a criminal enterprise from the beginning.

The first martyrs to Communist tyranny were the anarchists shot by Lenin’s Cheka. Kronstadt was where Trotsky and Zinoviev slaughtered the sailors who wanted Lenin to keep his revolutionary promises. My Uncle Bill who was a Bolshevik before Lenin's takeover and fled the Soviet in 1921 after Lenin took over. Emma Goldman was departed to the Soviet Union by the Palmer Raids in the US. She saw Leninism for the tyranny it was in 1921. BTW I opposed McCarthyism and the Red Scares. I oppose smearing people who want social justice. I favor labor unions and know how Lenin destroyed their independence.

There were the show trials in the thirties where Stalin executed the old Bolsheviks. There was the Spanish Civil War where Stalin had the POUM and all forces on the Loyalist side who did not want Soviet domination executed. There was the Popular Front before WW2 which Stalin betrayed by the Nazi-Soviet Pact and sent German communists back to Hitler to be murdered.

If the Marxist crimes are ignored they are more likely to be repeated. You are pushing a failed alternative.

Dear DavidF,
in referring to your "bankrupt convictions" I was partly alluding to your use of the term to describe Marxism, directly above, and partly to such convictions of yours that see capitalism as defensible, in itself or by default.
Otherwise, we've been over all the points you've made before. I still maintain that Marx's critique of capitalism is not only valid but vital; that he is not responsible for the horrors of the 20th century (any more than Morris was); that Marx was not an anti-Semite beyond the common or garden variety; and that "On the Jewish Question" is not an anti-Semitic text (I offered you an excellent refutation of this claim in a previous thread that you did not and/or could not refute).
Marx does, however, make a wonderful scapegoat!
"Dependency Theory" is not my theory nor a "denial of reality", but a large body of multi-authored work that reveals the vampiric relationship that exists between rich and poor nations, thus making a nonsense of your claim for "good" capitalisms.
Capitalism is a global disease that depreciates and plunders human and all other life, to the point where it's really not worth living unless one has a strong stomach or buys into the whole tacky business. That's why the constitutionally-challenged find diversion and solace in religion(and other delusions), gluttony, drugs, mass-entertainment and mental illness.
Oh dear, how cynical of me... get me a drink!

Dear Squeers,

Same kneejerk response. When the Marxist crimes are mentioned don't admit them. Don't question how they happened. Just tell how bad capitalism is.

I'm not defending capitalism. It has many flaws. I just want Marxists to consider their own flaws rather than make the kneejerk response. How come all the corpses?

David f.

I must admit that it is difficult to argue with someone who's made an erroneous judgment in the first instance concerning Marx's ideas - and who repeatedly drags corpses into the theatre of debate to act as props to support his intentional misreadings.