----- Original Message ----- From: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, November 02, 2003 11:42 AM Subject: Re: Dogmatism
> > And neither of us would call Marxism a religion. I would call > > Marxism-Leninism/Stalinism the official state (pseudo) religion of the > > former USSR though... and it was evil, EVIL I say! > > > > Please leave Marx out of it. He died in 1883 (34 years before the Russian > Revolution), he never expected (nor would he have approved) Communism to come > first to an agrarian, largely pre-industrial country like Russia, The teacher that taught my Marxism course made some mention of writings of Marx just before he died that seemed to indicate that he was at least looking at the possibility that steps could be skipped. But, what is really crucial in Marxism is the total lack of the importance of the individual. Its all historical forces; akin to the forces of nature. Individuals exist only as part of a class; the class conflict is inevitable. Marx wrote late enough to be aware of democratic/republican government, which was grounded in the Enlightenment. One of the faults of Marxism is that it fails to take into account how flexible and durable such a government can be. I would argue that Marx should have known better, after the US government survived its extreem test in the early 1860s. Dan M. and he would > have been appalled, infuriated, outraged, disgusted, shocked and in every other > possible way rejected everything Lenin and Stalin and their successors did in > the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, and elsewhere. Everything, including collectivism, the proletariat seizing the assets of the bourgeois? Look at one of the Marxism pages, such as http://www-formal.stanford.edu/jmc/progress/marxism.html It is clear that the proletariat rules by force. Dan M. _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
