*Industrialism usurped his autonomy in this respect by taking the means out of individual hands and placing it with those who possessed the capital*

Only to a point, Poirot, because of course in small business, which
is a huge part of the economy, workers still own the means of
production. But with industrialisation came technical complexity.
A spinning wheel and financing it, cannot be compared to an oil
refinery. Thus we invented the shareholder.

*We are not "motivated by enlightened self-interest", we are psychically-constructed by our culture and motivated according to that culture's dictates*

Of course we are motivated by enlightened self interest. We are
also social beings so need to belong. If culture dictates what goes
against our self interest, we may pretend to accept the rules, that
does not mean that we mean it. Its the old question of nature versus
nurture and nurture is only going to change so much, try as we may.

They soon realised all this in the Soviet Union, when it came to
agriculture. Much as culture tried to impregnate them with producing
for the good of the nation, it was a hopeless situation and it was
the tiny owner plots which produced more and more of the food.

At the end of the day Squeers, even you act out of enlightened self
interest. You love your partner for how she makes YOU feel, you
love your children because they carry your dna. So even you are
tribal by nature

Joe,

I can't for the life of me see how you arrive at such an interpretation; Marx was fundamentally for the individual. If you want me to offer a counter-argument you'll have to substantiate your position citing passages from the text. If you put in the work to make your case, I'll put in the work to refute it, presuming it is refutable.
I might also suggest, since you've read On The Jewish Question, that you read "The Communist Manifesto" (more carefully than David). It gives a good account of Marx's individualism.

David,
though it seems a pointless exercise, since you are inflexible on the subject, I make you the same offer; if you can lay out your argument in detail and support it with references to the text, I'll respond in kind.
Marx did not advocate tyranny!

You may both want to look at this and some of the links:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Critique_of_the_Gotha_Program

Yabby,
these are deep waters. As for myself, I don't pretend to be above my cultural conditioning.

in case it is missed, here is the primary text, which I recommend everyone read carefully if they want to discuss these matters in an informed manner:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm

david..i dislike going personal
on these complicated global issues

you lived your life as i lived mine
i hesitate to say we are both well off

my youngest life memory
is being tied to a tree
while my parents milked the cows

not a dirt floor
and im guessing..you personally
didnt live..with a dirt floor neither

its just..your own words confuse me

""My father and the family
lived in a hut..with a dirt floor.""

so the fathers family
lived on dirt floors
not you

""I attended courses..at the University of Queensland
while the USSR..was still operating.""

ok 60's...70's..?

""One of my uncle
was a Bolshevik""

so uncle means
your fathers brother?

""IN 1921 he got out
no longer a Bolshevik
and lived a much better life..in the US.""

so as only 'he' got out
we may assume...your father..got out too

so what..
both in their twenties...[in 1921]?

and you in your 20;s in 1971

so you were born
to a 60 year old..father in 1950's?

""As Keating said
the soufflee doesn't rise twice.""

yep same age
as keating

""Under the USSR..it didn't rise once."'

yet the capitalists need the ruskie elite space program
just to visit the capitalist..slush cow..[space station]

built concieved and designed
by natzie rocket engeneers
now destinctly fathers...
of capitalts..

and other capitalist
slush cows

we both..came a long way
yet why am i still..confused at your words

you got the best mind..really
but sometimes come across as a traditional blochovic party supremistie..a [capitalist]

noting that the bolchovics..in the main
killed 25 million xtians
on the 'death marches'

and the natzies
worked to death
6 million..

one third were jew

jews
chosen by capoes..[fellow jews]

""Most*..Jews in Russia..were desperately poor
and had no wealth to take with them.""

but not all jews.

it much depends on what type of jew
the blue eyed blochovic kind..or the brown eyed semite jew

i will not ask about you

only about mark'z
the bolchivic das-capital..[ist]

Dear All,

We go round and round. I'm leaving. Goodbye.

Squeers,

Thank you, but this train of logic in Marx's paper is instructive:

" ... we note the fact that the so-called rights of man, the droits de l’homme as distinct from the droits du citoyen, are nothing but the rights of a member of civil society – i.e., the rights of egoistic man, of man separated from other men and from the community."

" ... Liberty, therefore, is the right to do everything that harms no one else. The limits within which anyone can act without harming someone else are defined by law, just as the boundary between two fields is determined by a boundary post. It is a question of the liberty of man as an isolated monad, withdrawn into himself.... "

" .... But, the right of man to liberty is based not on the association of man with man, but on the separation of man from man. It is the right of this separation, the right of the restricted individual, withdrawn into himself.

"The practical application of man’s right to liberty is man’s right to private property.... "

"... The right of man to private property is, therefore, the right to enjoy one’s property and to dispose of it at one’s discretion (à son gré), without regard to other men, independently of society, the right of self-interest. This individual liberty and its application form the basis of civil society. It makes every man see in other men not the realization of his own freedom, but the barrier to it.... "

Not exactly a ringing endorsement of individuality, only of its limitations, as if they were the be-all and end-all ?

"... There remain the other rights of man: égalité and sûreté.

"Equality, used here in its non-political sense, is nothing but the equality of the liberté described above – namely: each man is to the same extent regarded as such a self-sufficient monad."

[TBC]