"My Marxist father was wrong too"

[zarus tathra]

//http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/10356298/Memo-to-Ed-Miliband-My-Marxist-father-was-wrong-too.html

I saw that his concern for the fate of humanity in general was inconsistent with his contempt for the actual people by whom he was surrounded, and his inability to support relations of equality with others. I concluded that the humanitarian protestations of Marxists were a mask for an urge to domination.

[Solitary]

I concluded that the humanitarian protestations of Marxists were a mask for an urge to domination.

Sounds like the Tea Party and Eve for the same reason.  :roll:  Solitary

[zarus tathra]

I think he should just extend that criticism to include 95% of political movements everywhere.

[mykcob4]

//http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/politics/ed-miliband/10356298/Memo-to-Ed-Miliband-My-Marxist-father-was-wrong-too.html

I saw that his concern for the fate of humanity in general was inconsistent with his contempt for the actual people by whom he was surrounded, and his inability to support relations of equality with others. I concluded that the humanitarian protestations of Marxists were a mask for an urge to domination.

I don't think for a moment that Karl Marx's intent was domination. By and large the whole idea of the philosophy was to ensure that everyone got what they needed and make the society as a whole responsible to ensure that end. Marx concluded that individual goals were selfserving and a detriment to others, not directly but indirectly. He surmized that wealth is accumilated into the hands of the very few and denied even sustainable existence for the masses, even though the wealth accumilated was obtained by the efforts of the masses.
Emotion was of no consequence as it did not produce anything and actually reduced production and therefore should be excluded from the equation.
Now I have no idea about your father or your real world existance but Marxism is a philosophy that has never ever been practiced and is probably impossible to do so.

[zarus tathra]

Marxism was explicitly about increasing the centralization of control of the economy, on that central point it was quite faithfully executed.

[Jmpty]

Marxism was explicitly about increasing the centralization of control of the economy, on that central point it was quite faithfully executed.

Source please.

[mykcob4]

Marxism was explicitly about increasing the centralization of control of the economy, on that central point it was quite faithfully executed.

Not exactly.
It wasn't about centralizing control of the economy. The ideal was to make sure that all benefitted from the efforts of all. A key componate was centralize control. The centralized control was achieved but the ideal of benefiting the masses was vacated.

[Solitary]

My dad was a car carrying communist.  Marx wanted a democratic (the word means "rule of the people" in Greek) society run by ordinary people and where everything is shared equally. He wanted workers to unite across national and religious boundaries in order to bring this about ("Workers of the World Unite"). The only way he saw of bringing a socialist society into being would be to overthrow capitalism.

 The working class is the force in society which can do this, as we make all the money for the bosses - therefore we have to be organized into political parties and trade unions so that we can fight back. As you can see now how the wealth is distributed Marx was correct in theory. Solitary

[zarus tathra]

From the 2nd fucking chapter of the Manifesto:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

The problem is, if "the state" could turn against the Bourgeoisie and the monarchs, then obviously it could just as easily turn against the proletariat. Which it ended up doing.

[mykcob4]

From the 2nd fucking chapter of the Manifesto:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

The problem is, if "the state" could turn against the Bourgeoisie and the monarchs, then obviously it could just as easily turn against the proletariat. Which it ended up doing.

Nice cherry picking. You didn't include why they would centralize control and or how and to whom they would distribute the wealth. So you left out the most important part of the philosophy.
And the moment they turned against the proletariat they left marxism and communism.

[_Xenu_]

Workers of the world unite!

[zarus tathra]

From the 2nd fucking chapter of the Manifesto:

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

The problem is, if "the state" could turn against the Bourgeoisie and the monarchs, then obviously it could just as easily turn against the proletariat. Which it ended up doing.

Nice cherry picking. You didn't include why they would centralize control and or how and to whom they would distribute the wealth. So you left out the most important part of the philosophy.
And the moment they turned against the proletariat they left marxism and communism.

I'm pretty sure that Marx was never really that clear on what the state would do, either. And if the workers were that good at keeping the Communists in line, I doubt that Stalin would have been able to ban worker democracy the way he did.

[Atheon]

Marxism means "Anything that right-wingnuts don't like".

[zarus tathra]

Marxism and "everything that right-wingers don't like" are a lot more connected than your glibness would imply.

[sab]

I nver got to discuss these things with my father because Marxists murdered him.