interesting theory..

[sagedil]

He never claimed to be one of them.

Look, I long ago learned to completely depoliticize Marx. There are may disciplines where *some* of the ways, and tools he introduced are simply too valuable to ignore.

All I was saying is that he had some interesting ideas, and perhaps his predictions that Capitalism could simply not sustain itself forever, that it intrinsically held the very forces that would lead to it's eventual destruction are interesting, and perhaps he may be proven right one day.

And please, this is NOT some sort of defense of communism, especially as it has been implemented by folks in the 20th century. Lenin was a pig who did more then anyone to destroy the hopes that Marx once unleashed.

[Harry]

Do you know what he did for a living?

[sagedil]

I know at one time he was an editor for Rheinische Zeitung, a Cologne newspaper, I know he then wrote weekly articles as a foreign correspondent for the New York Daily Tribune. But from my memory, most of his money came from Engels, whose family owned the textile firm of Ermen and Engels.

But your point??

[Harry]

He never worked a proletariat day in his life.

He took money from his mother till he was 30. Then from his uncle till he was married to a member of the bourgeois he so despised. He then took money to support his lifestyle from his comrade. (Engles - who was making a fine living for himself, albeit begrudgingly)

All that writing Marx did made him literal pennies.

It's just so hypocritical.

I dove into all sorts of counter culture stuff for shits in college and found this to be simply laughable.

It's like he was nothing but a utopian bull hornist. His ideas are so far from human nature, let alone the entire mammalian kingdom. Animals have a desire (sentient or not) to succeed.

I think Marx' entire life's work was nothing but an excuse for his lack of work.

[sagedil]

None of that has ANYTHING to do with Marx's structural criticisms of Capitalism.. All I really care about with Marx is if his lens helps provide some clarity as to what is happening in the world. If it does, great, if it doesn't, fine.

Your points would be better if you were talking about Lenin. But as I already posted, I think Lenin was garbage who did far more damage than good.

[chainsnuser]

..and my belief on extinction..some animals are beatiful creatures but they become extinct for a reason...they arent fit to survive

What a nonsense! The useless extinction of animals and plants, which are useful for our own survival is more a sign that we as human beings aren't fit to survive.

I shed a few tears each day never having laid my eyes on a real live dinosaur.

The dinosaurs ruled the earth for 170 million years. Homo sapiens is just 100.000 years old and we are very close to extinguish ourselves ... for no reason. The dinosaurs died because of an inevitable natural catastrophe - we are our own catastrophe.

All I really care about with Marx is if his lens helps provide some clarity as to what is happening in the world.

Marx indeed is brilliant in that regard and the same shit that happened in the 1840's is still responsible for the current economic crisis: the lack of control because of too much liberalism.

Marx as a whole is too difficult to discuss here and communism just cannot work, regardless of what went wrong in the Soviet Union and the associated countries. I think they even did a rather good job to maintain an economic system, that is disfunctional in itself.

What I find most doubtable about Marx is his theory that the human society constantly develops from the worse to the better, from a slaveholder-society to a (what he called "communist") paradise, where everybody lives free and in prosperity. I think that was rather optimistic thinking even in Marx' own time. And today, I find it much more likely that we get another slaveholder-society or maybe some kind of eco-dictatorship as a result of capitalism. The signs are already showing.

Cheers!

[Jason]

Bottom line is that some things just look better on paper than they do when implemented in real life. People just can't be trusted to have absolute power over anything for any period of time.

[sychodelix]

Power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely.