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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
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Author | Topic: Exploring (mostly Cultural) Marxism in today's Left | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined: |
Yet it has been the Marxist, Socialist, Progressive and Communist perspectives that have actually DONE anything.
Which is why ALL of the Goats will be Christians.
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JonF Member (Idle past 196 days) Posts: 6174 Joined:
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Based on what? Trump is known as a friend of workers, he prefers their company to that of rich people. You're kidding, right? Watch what he does. And remember his long-established pattern of screwing small-business contractors out of their rightful compensation.
Donald Trump Is Waging a War on Workers: On almost every measure, Trump is making life worse for the working class.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined: |
Faith writes:
You'll do anything to avoid reading the actual book that we're supposed to be discussing, won't you?
The book is interesting, a biographical study of Marx showing his turning from his Christian upbringing to hatred of God.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Who said we're "supposed" to be discussing anything in particular? I said in the OP that Marxism is so odious to me I really can't read the official documents (beyond what I managed years ago), but I invited others to describe it so that I might get the gist of it. Caffeine obliged with a summary, and I followed his link to the reading of The Communist Manifesto at You Tube which I found just as odious as I've always found Marxism. Nothing I can do about that. You're all still welcome to present Marxist ideas in your own words and try to defend them. That doesn't seem to be what anyone wants to do, though, you'd all rather throw accusations at me instead, or set traps to catch me in something politically incorrect enough to justify some real Leftist hate-slinging. Except caffeine, and I do appreciate his effort to give a summary of the CM. Since he did make the effort maybe I should go back and try to do more justice to it. But just those few minutes of the CM at You Tube was nauseating to me.
As for the book Marx and Satan, it's far more accessible and easy to read and it's certainly not off topic. Instead of your usual one-liner put-downs do you think you could manage to give your view of Marxism instead? Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Faith writes:
How can something be so "odious" to you when you don't know the first thing about it?
I said in the OP that Marxism is so odious to me I really can't read the official documents.... Faith writes:
"I'm sorry, teacher. I didn't have time to read the textbook beause I was searching all over town for the CliffsNotes."
As for the book Marx and Satan, it's far more accessible and easy to read and it's certainly not off topic. Faith writes:
I think Marx's analysis of history turned out to be a little off the mark. The working class has been seduced by capitalism to the point where the most lumpen of the lumpenproletariat think they're "capitalists". The Confederates who fought for slavery were mostly too poor to own slaves and the strongest proponents of capitalism are also the poor.
Instead of your usual one-liner put-downs do you think you could manage to give your view of Marxism instead?
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1052 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined:
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Hi Faith,
By the way I believe the reader pronounced "Friedrich" correctly, how do you think it should be pronounced?) I think the 'ch' at the end should not sound as in 'chase', but like in 'loch' - though a bit harder. I seem to remember that at least one of the regulars speaks German, so hopefully they can correct if I'm wrong.
As Solzhenitsyn said, in the quote I posted earlier (Message 11), ideology is the driving influence behind all such inhumane attitudes, always done in the name of goodness and often the name of humanity itself. It strikes me that much of your criticism here is not really aimed at Marxism, since it applies much more widely. You could say the same about any ideology - you gave the example of Islam; but remember that one Solzhenitsyn's own examples was Christianity. Of course, you will tell us that 'Christians' who justify inhumanity with Christianity are not True Christians. But, as you yourself just pointed out, anti-Stalin Marxists will tell us that Stalin and his ilk were not True Marxists. I'm not seeing a difference.
It doesn't necessarily have a fixed class of oppressors and oppressed since according to their "analysis" these change through history, leaving it open for each generation to define their own class conflict -- but it promotes the mistreatment in any given period, of the designated oppressor class by the oppressed just by their supposed "analysis" of history. It is a truly diabolical ideology, exploiting people's natural sympathies with the underdog. Well, based on what Marx and Engels wrote they clearly did not believe future generations would have different oppressors, since they saw the class struggle of their day as the culmination of it all - the class struggle to end all class struggles. Now clearly they were wrong, and later Marxists have tried to develop their ideas to explain this. But I kind of get the impression from your posts that you see Marxism as the source, if maybe indirect, of any thinking in terms of oppressed and oppressors, but that's clearly silly. These are pretty basic ideas that long predate Marxism. I found myself thinking of Thomas Stamford Raffles in his account of the history of Java. This may seems like an obscure reference, but it came to ind for two reasons - firstly because it was published a few years before Karl Marx was born, so you can't even blame indirect influence; and secondly because Raffles' thinking on economics and political rights seems to be a perfect example of the 'bourgeois ideology' Marx was criticising. In his history, Raffles talks about oppressed and oppressors all the time. He discusses the oppression of the Chinese by the Malays; and he discusses at great length the oppression of the Javans by the Dutch colonial administration.
So despite the fact that Islam is one of the most murderous evil ideologies ever invented by the Evil One, geared to dominating the world for the demon god Allah, once the idea is concocted that Muslims are the Oppressed class, focusing on the plight of individuals who often don't really know a lot about their own religion, making it a matter of people instead of ideology, then anyone who knows how evil and dangerous the ideology is gets angrily labeled a hateful Islamophobe and Islam gets a free pass to destroy western civilization and kill as many of the "oppressor" class as they can. When you get to this point it becomes a bit hard to communicate; since you no longer seem to be using words in the same way as I do or, for that matter, living in the same reality. Marxism has nothing to do with people getting annoyed when you declare that Islam is a murderous, evil ideology dedicated to a demon god.
maybe I'll want to see your Chapter Two, but for now as I knew I would, I hate Marxism with such a passion for its undermining of all human values, civility, fairness, all things good, I can't stand any more of it at the moment. Let me know, since funnily enough most of Chapter Two is written in the form of a response to 'bourgeois 'criticisms that communism is all about undermining human values, fairness and goodness.
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caffeine Member (Idle past 1052 days) Posts: 1800 From: Prague, Czech Republic Joined:
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Marxism did not become the powerful ideology guiding so many nations. They claimed it did but what they did was nothing like Marxism. That's like saying Christianity did not become a major world religion. They claimed it did, but what they did was nothing like Christianity. Now you might be right that the behaviour of most Christian churches and self-professed Christians differs from your favoured interpretation of Christ's teachings. We tend to demur when people say that therefore the Catholic Church is not Christian, though,
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Not being able to get through the official documents certainly doesn't mean I don't know the basics of Marxism. What kind of silliness is that? I was up to my ears in Marxist politics during the sixties, read all kinds of Marxist screeds and Cultural Marxism, Marxist feminism, went to Marxism -based lectures, and have followed a lot of the ex-Marxists too. I haven't said anything false about it either. So you really have no cause for making such an issue of this. I certainly wouldn't try to critique Critical Theory because it's another Marxist body of thought I can't stand to read and I gather at least Genomicus has studied it. However, it's sometimes equated with Postmodernism and I have certainly read a lot of discussion about all of that over the years.
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ringo Member (Idle past 440 days) Posts: 20940 From: frozen wasteland Joined:
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Faith writes:
You're attacking a strawman of Marxism, so yeah, it kinda does.
Not being able to get through the official documents certainly doesn't mean I don't know the basics of Marxism. Faith writes:
I'm not making an issue. I'm just pointing out the obvious.
So you really have no cause for making such an issue of this.
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Phat Member Posts: 18348 From: Denver,Colorado USA Joined: Member Rating: 1.0 |
Do you think workers deserve a secure retirement? Yes, I do. With health care costs the way they are, after 14 years at one store and 13 years so far at the other, I have a pension that will barely pay me $600.00 a month--most of which will likely go all towards my health care. The corporations want to do away with the pensions. So far the Republicans have given me little comfort that they have my interests at heart.Chance as a real force is a myth. It has no basis in reality and no place in scientific inquiry. For science and philosophy to continue to advance in knowledge, chance must be demythologized once and for all. —RC Sproul "A lie can travel half way around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes." —Mark Twain " ~"If that's not sufficient for you go soak your head."~Faith "as long as chance rules, God is an anachronism."~Arthur Koestler
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jar Member (Idle past 422 days) Posts: 34026 From: Texas!! Joined:
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So so far it seems that the principles of Marxism are all things you want and support.
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Faith  Suspended Member (Idle past 1472 days) Posts: 35298 From: Nevada, USA Joined: |
Thanks for your post. At the moment I just want to respond to this:
It strikes me that much of your criticism here is not really aimed at Marxism, since it applies much more widely. You could say the same about any ideology - you gave the example of Islam; but remember that one Solzhenitsyn's own examples was Christianity. Of course, you will tell us that 'Christians' who justify inhumanity with Christianity are not True Christians. But, as you yourself just pointed out, anti-Stalin Marxists will tell us that Stalin and his ilk were not True Marxists. I'm not seeing a difference. I posted Solzhenitsyn's quote because I keep saying the problem with Islam is the ideology, not the people: it's the ideology that tells them to kill infidels, they aren't any more naturally murderous as people than anybody else, but Islam certainly is murderous. Solzhenitsyn generalized the concept of ideology and I'm not sure I agree with all of what he said but it's interesting as a general framework for discussion. Yes I'm going to object to the point about Christianity because the Inquisition was Roman Catholic and it persecuted tens of millions of proto0-Protestant Christians. The Protestant Reformation was first of all the recovery of the Bible, which the RCC had abandoned and even forbade, which is how they were free to pursue such a murderous course. Eventually the Reformers came to repudiate Roman Catholicism altogether as not Christian but based on pagan superstition (although of course there are individuals who are Christians within the RCC) and identified the papacy particularly as the Antichrist. So there's no way I'm going to consider it Christian, although Solzhenitsyn is right that THEY justified it as Christian. There is nothing about Bible-based Christian ideology that justifies killing heretics; as an ideology it should be a solid recipe for basic love of neighbor whoever the neighbor is, and in fact its track record is definitely in the direction of humanitarian mercies and tolerance and liberality to all, and that does include the period under Romanism thanks to the genuine Christians within it. (Yes I know the objections, exceptions and side trips, but please let's not get into all that here. I think Christianity is the main reason for the success of Western Civilization because of its basic love of humanity, is it possible to leave it there?) Solzhenitsyn seems to have had in mind a self-centered self-justifying ideology which may of course impose a narrow rule on others, but I think I might want to restrict the concept to the kind of ideology that has a strong us-versus-them mentality in which the "them" are regarded as deserving of mistreatment, persecution and death. That describes the RCC's nonbiblical traditions and it describes the jihadi part of Islam. I thinki the dichotomy of oppressor-versus-oppressed which is at the heart of Marxism, and elaborated in so many ways in less orthodox versions of Marxism, has that same tendency and is the reason Communist regimes always murder their dissidents and why American politics today is so extremely polarized. But I note your discussion of that dichotomy and hope to get back to it later. Yes, I think I will want to see Chapter Two because of what you say about it, but not yet. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given. Edited by Faith, : No reason given.
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LamarkNewAge Member Posts: 2423 Joined: Member Rating: 1.2 |
I failed to make my point that Marxism is little more than wallpaper in so much of what Faith talks about ( even when she isn't going well out of the sphere of Marxist influence )
Let me ask about the White Revolution of the anti communist Shah Muhammad Reza Palevi in the early 1960s. He took land from the rich to give to peasants. Khomeini, in exile, attacked him for going against the God ordained order of rich verses poor. Was the Shah influenced by Marxist theory? What about his support for the oil embargo? Marxist? The Islamic fighters in 1980s Afghanistan loudly stated that God decides who is rich or poor and rose against the Communist government. How does all of this fit into this world view of Marxist influence Faith? (your view is the world view )
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Dr Adequate Member (Idle past 312 days) Posts: 16113 Joined:
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Nobody can say anything about the true evil teachings of Islam without being called an "Islamophobe" which is a pejorative that labels the person as morally deficient to such a degree that you can shut down their ability to give an opinion. Freedom of speech is ALWAYS denied by Marxist/Leftist thought. Hi. Quick request. Would everyone who claims to have been silenced by evil leftists please kindly shut the fuck up. A little consistency is all I ask.
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LamarkNewAge Member Posts: 2423 Joined: Member Rating: 1.2 |
Nope? Then I will add:
It was 100% intolerant after 380 AD. Can we leave it there? No? Then I will add: You might want to have a little accuracy in your history. I'm just sayin.
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