Dear Poirot,

I don't think I have misread Marx at all. I just don't get the same impression from it that you do. I think the crimes were no accident but a direct consequence of putting his ideas into practice.

However, a basic philosophical question is, "How can we lead a good life." Probably, all of us want a good life for ourselves and others.

Marxism has not been put forth as an abstraction on this thread. It has been put forth as an alternative to capitalism. If we consider what has happened it has not been a good alternative to capitalism. For many people it has not brought a good life. In general people have fled from Cuba and other Marxist countries to the USA and other capitalist countries. There has been little flow the other way.

Squeers and grok have written of an eventual triumph of Marxism. In that case would the crimes be repeated?

There have surely been hundreds, if not thousands, of attempts to implement some form of socialist project, at city, commune, regional and national levels. There have been very large projects, China and the USSR, for example, and smaller projects, Congo (Brazzaville), Benin, Laos, and much smaller projects again - town and city communes, etc.

Empirical questions: Which ones have survived ? Which ones are flourishing ? Why not ? Have mass repression and brutality been associated with the decline of these failures ?

If one's hopes are dashed again and again, isn't it reasonable to question the bases of those hopes ?

I'm all for public transport but if the buses never, ever reached their destinations, I'd try some other way to get around.

>I don't think I have misread Marx at all.

Frankly, that is for marxists to decide. And I think that particular judgment on you will withstand the test of the Ages...

>If we consider what has happened it has not been
a good alternative to capitalism. For many people
it has not brought a good life. In general people
have fled from Cuba and other Marxist countries to
the USA and other capitalist countries. There has
been little flow the other way.

Besides the fact that you people shamelessly cherry-pick your facts, here and elsewhere -- for example: the fact that citizens of countries whose economies your masters have destroyed (or at least severely messed-with) do indeed flow out as *economic refugees* to 'follow the money' (their money) back to the imperial center/capitalist pirate central; a fact which you refuse to put in proper context (but we will) -- I will state again: 'stalinism !== marxism'. And capitalism certainly does drip from head to toe with blood and sh!te[sic], as Marx so famously said.

So David F.: You will NOT be allowed to continue with this misrepresentation of reality -- at least here -- without challenge. Of course, if you were a Murdochite intellectual thug, you would have your one-way organs of mass propaganda to play with -- and without our bothersome feedback, either. For the moment, anyway.

Jeezus H. Kee-rist, Loudmouth: it has been stated over and over and over again to you that trying to implement socialism in backwards countries which lack an industrial-scale infrastructure -- or even on a small scale in more advanced countries -- *especially* while World imperialism can and DOES target you with all the resources still at its disposal **is NOT a formula for building successful socialism in even its early stages**. You do NOT seem to want to get this BASIC point. But at least you do not drip with narrow-minded selfish maliciousness like some of the others here. Small comfort that, however.

You are clearly a victim of incessant capitalist propaganda -- and lost to the socialist cause. My condolences to you and yours. The rest of us will soldier on. And it IS a war, Loudmouth. So people die. For whatever reason.

Grok,

I've put my life into this. All I'm asking is: is it possible ?

And all the evidence so far amassed suggests that it isn't.

You can find all the reasons you like why something DOESN'T work: this doesn't go anywhere towards showing that it DOES. Marx said it should and it would, and it hasn't.

Why not ? Is capitalism too powerful, too influential ? Is human nature not amenable to socialism ? Is it inevitable that a revolutionary party degenerate into a power clique along, as you point out, Stalinist lines ?

After close to seventy years of hoping, my question is not so much: is socialism inevitable, but: is it possible ?

If not, then I am not willing to fight any sort of war for it. There must be better ways than relying on Leninist pusches, Mengistu regimentations and Pol Pot exterminations.

Joe

*You are clearly a victim of incessant capitalist propaganda*

Perhaps some of us just see what works in the real world, Groky.

Instead of blaming just about everything on the evils of capitalism,
we think beyond the tips of our noses.

Take land rights in the third world. Most don't have written title
to their land. So they can't invest, can't borrow against it,
can't do anything much but subsist. There have been some great
economic studies done to show that if you want the poor to get
ahead in the third world, give them written land title, provide them
with microcredit etc.

So what happens instead? Socialist govts like Ethiopia, whilst
denying their own citizens land title, flog off those rights for
huge chunks of land, to the Arabs and others, so that they can invest
and develop. The locals are kicked off and told to move on.

The flaw to your whole theory is that you think that once elected,
officials will work for the benefit of the people. They don't,
they invariably feather their own nests first, as we have seen
in virtually every case.

So I will stick with a system which lets me decide what is good for
me and my future, not you and your ideology, or people like you.

If you want to call that propaganda, so be it.