david f,

Again, one is left with the suspicion though that if the thread was about the flaws of Christianity you would be direct to that point and wouldn't be rushing in to lead discussion off up a dry gully with endless criticisms of Islam.

"Others are equally bad" is a beaut way of burying the truth.

Thanks David,

I guess you know where I'm coming from. My grandad was a Wobbly: he distrusted the Bolsheviks much more than his daughter did later, and his idiot grandson much later again. We seemed never to have had much contact with other similar-minded people - I suppose, by the fifties, there were barely a few thousand communists in the whole of Australia, so we were an endangered species even then. I hit Maoism in about 1962, abandoned Stalinism around 1976 after reading Solzhenitsyn, and then Maoism around 1985, after reading Simon Leys' account of the murder of Lin Piao: that account made too much sense. And I came to realise the absurdities of Marxism, its inherently totalitarian nature, as a whole probably only in the last twenty years. Bu8t I still have soft spot for Marx :)

But as for a 'Left': no, I don't think there is anyone actually thinking (since they would abandon Marxism a damn lot quicker than me if they did), except to use Marxism as a handy bludgeon to beat mainly the US with, in other words, purely opportunistic. Which, I suppose, is why mobs like the Socialist Alliance for Islamist Fascism come across as so incredibly shallow: sluts for hire.

Popper and Berlin and Hayek were socialists in their youth, so I'm interested in what they learnt, no doubt painfully, that changed their philosophies. Popper wrote that he wanted to synthesise the best of both socialism and liberalism.

Both Popper and Berlin were extremely mindful of the totalitarianism inherent in any 'Utopian' theory, like Marx's: that a readymade blueprint demanded single-minded obedience, even when it - inevitably - had to be modified: whoever questioned, or didn't obey quick enough, was an enemy. That's how all Utopias seem to go.

Cheers,

Joe

Hi AJ

I find it amusing that two atheists are arguing theology.

The context of the first quote simply uses the "sword" as a metaphor. Jesus goes on to babble about turning sons against father, daughters against mothers, etc. etc. But he was not talking about war or violence.

The context of the second quote is hard to discern, because it looks like Jesus was smoking some pretty good shiit. It rambles on about how to be a good Christian using all sorts of bizarre examples. No mention of war, except he encourages masters" to "stripe" lazy and disobedient servants. I suppose that could be classed as promoting violence, but I think giving the giving a slack servant a good thrashing was considered fair enough in those days, even for a pacifist.

The third quote has already been explained.

The last is from "Revelations" I could say that we need to say no more. It has been seriously considered by many people that "Revelations: was written by a pothead on LSD. It is a chapter so bizarre that even Christians regard it with mirth. I would not take anything seriously from Revelations.

I repeat the premise that Jesus was a pacifist. He carried no sword, threatened no one with any sword, and did not use a sword on anyone. He did not tell anyone to "Kill the non Christians wherever you find them". "Lay ambushes for them." "Strike terror in their hearts". 'Cut off their fingertips". "Cut off a limb from opposite sides of the body." 'Make them see harshness in you."

We both know who said that.

Now, the reason I think you are a socialist, is because you oppose everything I write. I am a right wing racist, and you therefore, must be my diametric opposite. Unless you are simply a professional naysayer, or a part time devil's advocate?

And on the subject of stereotyping making a "goose of myself", everybody stereotypes AJ. They do it because that is how people think. People think by forming concepts based upon stereotypes of what they want to think about.

LEGO ". I am a right wing racist.."
Good on you LEGO for finally speaking the truth.

I don't like to label myself, as I think that just limits what you actually stand for.
But you go right ahead, and take your comrade Onthebeach along for the ride too...
I don't think there is anything left to say on this recurring subject that hasn't already been said.

Dear Loudmouth,

I regard Marx as a noxious bigot. Some converts try to get in good with the new milieu by denigrating their previous connections. Marx was one of those. His father was a yuppy lawyer who was freed from the restraint suffered by the Jewish population when Napoleonic forces occupied the Rhineland and removed those restrictions. Napoleon was always looking for cannon fodder to swell his ranks, and Jews thankful for their liberation fought ferociously for him. To keep his position after the Rhineland was reoccupied Heinrich Marx converted from Judaism to Lutheranism and converted Karl when Karl was six. Karl knew very little about Judaism and accepted the prejudices of the Lutheran milieu. Marx’s “On the Jewish Question” could have been written by a Nazi. An extract from that document:

“Money is the jealous god of Israel, in face of which no other god may exist. Money degrades all the gods of man – and turns them into commodities. Money is the universal self-established value of all things. It has, therefore, robbed the whole world – both the world of men and nature – of its specific value. Money is the estranged essence of man’s work and man’s existence, and this alien essence dominates him, and he worships it.

The god of the Jews has become secularized and has become the god of the world. The bill of exchange is the real god of the Jew. His god is only an illusory bill of exchange.

The view of nature attained under the domination of private property and money is a real contempt for, and practical debasement of, nature; in the Jewish religion, nature exists, it is true, but it exists only in imagination.

It is in this sense that [in a 1524 pamphlet] Thomas Münzer declares it intolerable

“that all creatures have been turned into property, the fishes in the water, the birds in the air, the plants on the earth; the creatures, too, must become free.”

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Contempt for theory, art, history, and for man as an end in himself, which is contained in an abstract form in the Jewish religion, is the real, conscious standpoint, the virtue of the man of money. The species-relation itself, the relation between man and woman, etc., becomes an object of trade! The woman is bought and sold.

The chimerical nationality of the Jew is the nationality of the merchant, of the man of money in general.

The groundless law of the Jew is only a religious caricature of groundless morality and right in general, of the purely formal rites with which the world of self-interest surrounds itself.”

The above could be appreciated by a Nazi. Marx had been removed from the culture of his ancestors and knew little about Jews. However, he knew the attitudes toward Jews held by many Germans. The first pogrom inspired by the czarist regime to divert attention from the government’s own failings was in Kishinev in 1881. Although Marx was still writing prolifically at that time he had nothing to say on that subject. Apparently he was still a Jew hater.

Marx saw nations in various states of development. This was a Hegelian concept, and Marx was a Hegelian. Thus he could favour the Polish desire for freedom from Russia as he thought Poland was in a higher state of development than Russia. He could by the same token oppose Greek freedom from Turkey as he thought Turkey was in a higher state of development than Greece.

Marx was a terrific writer and creator of aphorisms. His writings inspired many. I regard it as a tragedy that such a bigot had so great an influence. His Manifesto was well written and encapsulates his philosophy in a vivid manner.

I believe the Manifesto was a recipe for the Marxist terrors that followed.

http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=12693 points you to “Why so many Corpses” which I wrote. It’s an analysis of the tyranny manifested in the Communist Manifesto.

In my opinion Marx was a nasty piece of work.

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