A larger point is that Marx can hardly be interpreted as an enemy of capitalism. In fact, he saw many benfits being brought about by capitalist development - yes, liberation from feudal oppression and freedom including - his main criticism was, at least as i understant it, that those benefits were limited to bourgeoisie but denied to workers. Marxist revolution is not about destroying capitalism, but about making its benefits available to the working class. wojtek Hi Wojtek, Sometimes the means necessary to deal with an ugly enemy intent on your total extermination are dictated by the nature, viciousness, intent, means employed and determination of your enemy and cannot be determined a priori; in other words whatever is necessary. Of course there is a real danger here: in employing ugly and violent means, one can oneself become corrupted, violent and even like the enemy. But what is the alternative? The British didn't leave India because Ghandi Ji was operating on a higher and therefore more effective plane; they left only because they could no longer afford the costs of empire relative to perceived benefits and Ghandi Ji's "pacifism" played right into their hands. Suppose this was Germany 1943 and there was one chance to blow up Hitler and his key cronies as they were visiting an orphanage. But taking Hitler and his cronies out meant taking out some innocent orphans. On the other hand, not taking Hitler out means many many more orphans and victims being created or killed. I say take out the orphanage and the moral responsibility for that act rests with the nazis and their ugly nature that makes ugly and limited options inevitable and imperative. Look at China today. Has US and foreign commercial/political/military cultural penetration and influence and widening spheres of capitalism brought more or less AIDS?; more or less homelessness?; more or less unemployment?; more or less commodification of people?; more or less destruction of social and family life?; more or less independence from foreign influences and vicissitudes. Marx was an honest scientist and analyst of capitalism. He understood that you can not control or eliminate that which you do not understand concretely--that which you caricature. That is why he wrote his famous passage about "the rulthless criticism of everything that exists..." Marx understood that capitalism is like Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. One the one hand, and at a certain stage or at certain stages, the imperatives of capitalism (profits for power; power for profits; maximizing profits as a necessary but not sufficient condition for accumulation of capital, a necessary but not sufficient condiiton for maximizing productivity, a necessary but not sufficient condition for effective competition, a necessary but not sufficient condition for total profit maximization...) do produce new innovations, jobs, incomes, investment, new technologies, new products and product diversity, labor-saving inventions/innovations etc. He gave credit where credit was due. But Marx also understood that the unfolding logic and derivative dynamics of capitalism increasingly produce anti-innovation, job destruction, falling real incomes for the masses, destructive and alienating forms of work and commodification, increasing state represssion in the interest of fewer and fewer becoming richer and richer, etc... Marx also understood that the capitalists having acquired so much and having so much to lose would become increasingly vicious to preserve their system, or, if overthrown, would constitute weeds in the garden of socialism seeking to choke off and destroy socialism in order to return to the old order with even more ruthlessness. That is why socialism is a transitional and protracted system. The old weeds of capitalism assume many forms and have deep roots (ideological, education, politics, culture, economics, family structure, religion etc) and that is why preventing return to the old order and all of the forms of misery that it produces for the masses, is no small war; this is especially so when surrounded by hostile imperialist forces bent on restoring the ancien regime. As ugly and ruthless as capitalism is, as horrible as its consequences on the many innocents, as horrible as the means employed by the capitalists to rule, so as horrible the means may be necessary to stop it. But the Jew of the Warsaw Ghetto who uses violence to attempt to stop genocide and defend his/her People can never be on the same moral plane as the nazi who uses violence to put the Jew into the gas chambers; only in the abstract "morality" of the detached from the actual struggles and their consequences. Jim C
