Marx was wrong, get over it already.

tao: Try applying the same analysis to capitalism.

You insist capitalism is a certain way, yet if you actually read the strongest advocates of capitalism, you'd find they're nothing like what you claim is capitalism.

You keep harping on about the invasion of Iraq, yet hardcore libertarians are just as opposed to that as you are. Go and really read some Friedman or Heinlein, or even look up modern libertarians such as Claire Wolfe, Lew Rockwell or L. Neil Smith. Go and look up the Free State Project, or the Free State Wyoming. These guys don't believe in the state either, much less all the nonsense you're attributing to them. Clearly, you haven't done an in depth study of capitalism and its adherents.

Show me a country that's truly capitalistic, has free markets and non-state intervention. The U.S.? Wrong. Australia? Wrong. So, I'll see your "the U.S.S.R wasn't Marxist" with "well, the U.S.A. doesn't have a free market economy".

You want to characterise capitalism and capitalists as a bunch of neo-con, Project for the New American Century sorts (whom libertarians often rail against), yet you get all uppity if someone dares suggest Stalin was a Marxist. Which way is it? Do we judge an ideology by its idealists or its practical implementation; by what it could or should be, or by what it is or was?

In a sense, it's not so much that I do or don't hate people. I believe in the old maxim: the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Maybe you do want to save the world (personally, I think you thrive off drama and turning life into one big fairy tale of "good" vs "evil"). Maybe it's just that people don't want to be saved. It seems to me there's something quite condescending, and thus, ultimately misanthropic, about any ideology that assumes people are stupid (lack class consciousness) and need to be saved (via a workers' uprising) from themselves and others.

Shorbe,

“there's something quite condescending, and thus, ultimately misanthropic, about any ideology that assumes people are stupid (lack class consciousness) and need to be saved (via a workers' uprising) from themselves and others.”

Where have I said that people are stupid? Where do Marxists call people stupid?

You are the one that goes around calling people stupid - “if those clowns were too stupid or lazy to get rid of a dictator and are stupid enough to fight a civil war”. Presumably, by your own criteria, your assumption that Iraqis are stupid makes you condescending and misanthropic.

You misrepresent what is meant by the term class consciousness. People can have consciousness, or lack of consciousness, about many things, but it doesn’t mean they are stupid, or that Marxists judge them as stupid.

For example, I was once in an emotionally abusive relationship which I kind of knew, but not really (for a number of reasons which I won’t go into). It wasn’t until the pain became almost unbearable that I started to really question what was going on (really to try to stop the pain) and gradually, and at times in a flood, I became conscious of this or that piece of the puzzle and put it together in some sort of cohesive framework i.e. I became fully conscious (or at least more conscious than I was). Once conscious of such things I could then decide what I would and would not accept in a relationship, and take control over how I would behave rather than just react. (And I lived happily ever after! ;-) )

Now you might call me stupid, and after it all I must have said 100 times “I can’t believe I was so stupid”, but it wasn’t really stupidity, it was more a lack emotional and psychological coping skills (or good relationship education so to speak), a lack of awareness of my own emotional state and personal power, and a lack of understanding of the dynamics of relationships.

cont...

And no-one could have “saved me” from it or myself, it was up to me to want to improve my situation, and then the resources and information that was always available from those more conscious than me could be of some use.

Similarly no Marxist can “save” anyone, or wants to. Far from thinking people are stupid, Marxists believe that the individual members of the working class, for a number of reasons, are not aware of the dynamics of capitalist society, or that they collectively constitute the most powerful class in capitalism, or of their own fundamentally essential and most valuable role in human economics. As you said your “ideology” (i.e. capitalist ideology) is omnipresent – it pervades everything. Just as in my relationship I was told “you are nothing” and treated accordingly, in capitalism the working class is constantly told “you are nothing” and particularly “you are a powerless individual” and treated accordingly.

Marxists don’t create the pain which will cause working class consciousness to awaken – capitalism does that, however they, having the benefit (or curse) of consciousness, come to the conclusion that it is their task consciously prepare for when it does.

"Just as in my relationship I was told “you are nothing” and treated accordingly, in capitalism the working class is constantly told “you are nothing” and particularly “you are a powerless individual” and treated accordingly."

Tao, you should read Daniel Goleman's "Emotional Intelligence".
What you were, was emotionally engulfed, which is pretty common.

What you don't understand, is the powerfull potential of capitalism
for anyone who chooses. That fact that you and others are badly
informed, is the real problem, rather then the system.

For people to achieve at their potential, whatever it is, they
need freedom. Capitalism, for all its faults, is the only system
to provide those freedoms. You have the potential to do whatever
you like, once you understand the system. Do you really think that
the 2 students who created say google, could have done it under
any other system? I doubt it. Yet Google, or Youtube, are all hits,
created by small people with a dream. Consumers have decided.

Marxism will always fail, for one reason. Those bureaucrats who
run the show, will feather their nests, bugger the rest.
So the system bogs down, eveyone loses.

It seems to me that the problem is you, not the system

Yabby,

Yes...I was always told, in my relationship, and within my family that “The problem is you” and that I should just accept the situation, and what they told me as the truth...as are most abused people.

You seem to be implying that my problems were purely the result of my on personal emotional “unintelligence” – I was “engulfed” by my own emotions – the rest wasn’t real. I acknowledge that I was partly responsible for the situation. However, in the end I was physically abused (once). Do you blame me for that too?

I have read Emotional Intelligence and many other things. Of particular assistance to me at one point was the Tibetan Book of Living and Dying – very good for learning that a lot of emotional suffering is caused by our perceptions of how things should be. I have since gotten myself on track emotionally, and with a lot of help from others, however what came out of that period was a recognition that much of what I had been told all of my life about the way the world is, and particularly about me being “the problem” and “selfish”, was not true.

It is typical of an abuser to tell those they abuse that they are “the problem”.

The working-class are always being told that they must be more productive, that they don’t work hard enough, that they must be more flexible, that their demands for pay-rises and better working-conditions are unreasonable, or selfish, that we just can’t afford proper education or medical-care for their children, that they should just be happy with their lot. The working-class, and their needs and demands, are always “the problem”.

It’s all a pack of lies. Workers do ALL of the work and create ALL of the wealth. There is no rational reason why they shouldn’t enjoy the ALL of benefits of their work – good housing, medical care, education etc. There is no reason why they can’t run it ALL themselves.

Give me one rational reason why one person should profit from another person’s, or many other peoples’, labour.