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Marxism Destroyed the Dialectic : Comments
By Gilbert Holmes, published 27/9/2010Marx poisoned modern political philosophy because he didn't understand the dialectic
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Posted by david f, Wednesday, 27 October 2010 3:46:29 PM
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>David f: You know what reality is? You slander me
by connecting me with Murdoch. However, I can connect you with Lenin and the other Marxist criminals because you think they are heroes. Slander? All that you people have been doing here is slandering and libeling socialism and socialists from square one. The truth of the matter is highly irrelevant for you, in fact. You simply can't pick and choose -- i.e. cherry-pick -- whatever 'facts' you want to dwell on, buddy. People like me are not here to endlessly react to your reactionary blather. Matters have quickly come to the point where we will simply point to your slanted and skewed worldview, and leave it at that -- because 'dialog' with such wanton ideologs like yourself is essentially useless. See you and your friends in the streets. Posted by grok, Thursday, 28 October 2010 4:19:32 AM
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grok wrote: See you and your friends in the streets.
I would rather not see you in the streets. I will be 85 on Sunday and would probably get beat up. However, even if I were young violence is not my way. I would rather talk, write, argue or ignore. If the facts are not with me I will admit I am wrong. We live in a democratic society where there are avenues other than violence. The threat of violence or actual violence is the totalitarian Marxist, Nazi or fascist reaction to criticism. The brutes have neither facts, logic nor compassion on their side. Your ideological buddies have murdered millions, and you seem to want to add to the score. How can one slander movements such as Marxism or Nazism that have murdered millions because they were of the wrong race or class? It is impossible. However, even if I had the power to harm you I would rather leave you in peace. I would rather you leave me in peace also, but you would rather meet me in the streets. I won’t be there. Posted by david f, Thursday, 28 October 2010 8:39:00 AM
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Dear little Grok,
Oh, for the days of 1848, ay ? Oh, for the heroism of the barricades, the thrill of the tumbrils, the poses, the stances ! It's a pity that the world has moved on so much since then, isn't it ? You wrote of 'cherry-picking': your constant apologetic reference to Stalinism might fit that description, but the reality is: where has it been an exception ? One doesn't have to cherry-pick to find defects in every example of the socialist project, everywhere and from the Paris Commune onwards. And that is not easy to write: it's as if one's life efforts have been pissed down the drain. How can we build better societies in the future ? That is the big question. Marxist-Leninist socialism had its chances, over and over and over, and blew the lot of them. Or do you know of any exceptions ? So where do we go from here ? Jo Posted by Loudmouth, Thursday, 28 October 2010 9:30:13 AM
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" In spite of an amazing shallowness being and an unconcealed anti-intellectualism among most people, a restless, rebellious spirit is at work. Discrepencies between appearance and reality are glaring and the trends thinking people discover are scary: approaching collective suicide of humanity; mindlessness of waste of precious human and natural resources; accelerated destruction of the only natural environment we have; reduction of all senses and all interests to the one of consumption; growing gaps between levels of consumption and production; reversal of all trends toward greater fairness and justice; growing misery of people excluded from work, from social space, from socially recognised life.
Official society doesn't want to hear the truth about itself. It fills the atmosphere with false optimism, shallow patriotism, medieval fundamentalism, and arrogant self-righteousness. Critical voices risk being treated as subversive voices. But the hypocrisy of the situation is that they would not be judged by the harshness of their criticism or even for its allegedly unacceptable political implications. Of course it would be a poor style in a free society to dismiss free thought for the freedom it takes. They would be dismissed for being over-educated, over-intellectual, abstract, utopian, unintelligible..." (about a Virginian; Ronald Schindler--another Schindler!) Dear DavidF, here's another countryman you should listen to, Joe Bageant: http://www.abc.net.au/rn/bigideas/ I couldn't have said it better myself! Posted by Squeers, Thursday, 28 October 2010 8:15:58 PM
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I think that you could look at the push to live in communes, most especially through the 60's and 70's, as part of the broader interest in and push toward communism and collectivism more generally.
Unfortunately the idealism of many of these attempts led to their downfall. The idea that people should share everything that they own, be able to decide as a group on everything that should be done etc, simply fails to allow individuals the personal space, self-determinism etc that are a part of a healthy life. Nowadays the intentional community movement is much more healthy with consideration being given to people being allowed to manage their own lives, own their own assets etc while still living within the community structure. Yet another example of collectivism being an extreme, and balance between the private and the collective resulting in a positive outcome! I don't agree with David f that Marxism is necessarily bad, just idealistic. I don't think that it is possible to rescue it from it's doomed position as extreme collectivism. Posted by GilbertHolmes, Thursday, 28 October 2010 9:07:28 PM
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grok: Frankly, that is for marxists to decide. And I think that particular judgment on you will withstand the test of the Ages...
David f: We do not restrict interpretation of Mein Kampf to Nazis.
grok: 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)
David f: You're distorting history. In 1917 the Marxists took over an immense country with great resources. People did not leave because the
capitalists destroyed the economy. People left because the Marxists could not provide for people's needs or give them security from an oppressive state apparatus. One sixth of the Cuban population fled. Castro's ideological nuttery went so far as shut down bicycle shops and corner groceries as 'cockroach capitalism'. People fled the Marxist tyrannies mainly because life there was not good. Some braved the oceans. Some braved armed guards who would shoot them. They fled tyranny and poverty. Chinese have combined a capitalist economy with Marxist tyranny. That works at a cost to the human spirit. The Marxists were simply not able to create free, decent, prosperous societies. That is context.
grok: So David F.: You will NOT be allowed to continue with this misrepresentation of reality -- at least here -- without challenge.
David f: You know what reality is? You slander me by connecting me with Murdoch. However, I can connect you with Lenin and the other Marxist criminals because you think they are heroes.
If I were in a Leninist tyranny I would have to keep quiet or speak out at the risk of a bullet or a concentration camp. I could be added to the large number of corpses.
Fortunately I live in a capitalist democracy and can freely respond to your crap. You’re better at invective than logic or facts. Take off your ideological blinders.