I know Karl Marx was an idiot, but was he a... ?

[Archae]

Satanist? :wtf:

(Found on another message board, not FR)

By-the-by, too many people are unaware that Marxism is not an economic world-view, it is a Satan-inspired attack on the people of this earth, by Marx, an initiate of the "Church" of Satan, who boasted about the fact that he would destroy people, by giving them excrement, and proclaiming it edible.

http://theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/31JdXn/Christnty/SpWr/Marx&Satan.htm

[Bucky]

1. You're gonna have a lot of Marxist DUers pissed at you for your subject line.

I'll defend you, tho. If not an idiot, he was at least a bit naive about both the ability of liberal societies to evolve moderating compromises and the impact that emerging technologies would have on wealth redistribution.

For the record, he was also a kind of shitty husband.

[inthebrain]

6. I'd like to see you develop more on this thesis of yours

" he was at least a bit naive about both the ability of liberal societies to evolve moderating compromises and the impact that emerging technologies would have on wealth redistribution."

Marx actually got a lot correct. What I find interesting is that a lot of folks like to use the post WWII economy coupled with the rise of the middle class during this period as the basis for their argument that "Marx got it wrong". What's left out of this argument is that this period came about mainly because of a mistake. When you bomb out 80 % of the worlds manufacturing base and are the only country left in tact, there are going to be some "compromises". This is usually used as the justification for capitalism.

It's a false premise and needs to be corrected.

[DBoon]

22. and when the remaining capitalist power is terrified of the Soviet Union

you see lots of concessions made to organized labor in order to avoid the spectre of communism

Concessions that were taken back once it was realized that the Soviet Union was no longer a threat to the capitalist system

[Democracyinkind]

19. He believed that the social question would trump the national one.

So he was not able to incorporate the effects that two world wars would have on class warfare. Anyways, it is not correct to portrait Marx as someone who made rigid predictions about the future, a common misperception ever since Karl Popper started peddling it - although even he notes that it's not Marx that held that position but the people calling themselves Marxists long after the moor had died.

Then again; there's a strong argument to be made that the overall dialectic narrative of class warfare as the driving force of history is spot on once the effects of Western Imperialism and its culmination in the two great wars have worn off - a process that has gained a lot of traction in the last decade. It's true that doctrinal, pre-Leninist-post-Marx Marxism didn't incorporate a concept of a rising middle class in their historic narrative - but I beg anyone reading this to go back to their texts and tell me that it doesn't sound eerily of things to come.

Concisely: Some Marxist schools - especially in the period between Marx's death and the first World War, made the mistake of believing that the global (national) playing field was going to be leveled, they anticipated the rise of a postimperialist capitalist China, India, Russia etc. and therefore laid all their emphasis on inter-class warfare instead of inter-state warfare. If such a "mistake" qualifies for being an idiot, then I don't even want to know how I, you, or anyone reading this would be labeled: but I suspect it would be even less inviting than "idiot".

I'll never understand why Marx isn't considered what he was: a (in some ways even typical) continental social and economic philosopher of the 19th century. I never understood that Marx is practically banned from discussion in academia while Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin or the worst kind of proto-nazistic Taylorist "philosophy" is debated and quoted freely. The whole cold war circus is still virulent.

[nadinbrzezinski]

25. Because Marx is the great Satan, see OP headline

while Bakhunin, who did quite a bit more of damage, is celebrated.

You are right, in the US the Cold War is still ongoing in academe.

What he was, to be honest, apart of a Neo Hegelian. was the last of the Economists of the same Classical school started by Smith, and a lot of his writings are a clear argument with both Smith and Ricardo.

I know, way too much inside baseball here.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

33. they teach bakunin and kropotkin in college?

I guess I went to the wrong college. Where is this wonderful college you speak of?

Proudhon I think I've seen in sociology textbooks, but we never talked about it in class.

But I seriously have to question how a college class could even teach anything about Bakunin or Kropotkin without teaching Marx alongside. Bakunin means nothing without Marx, since Bakunin is fundamentally known in non-anarchist circles as being someone who disagreed with Marx over whether the existence of a socialist state would lead to authoritarianism.

Kropotkin is at least as wound up in theory with Marxism as Bakunin was, and much more so in the history having lived during the Russian Revolution.

But I'm just curious as to how a college could go about teaching about Bakunin and Kropotkin without teaching Marx? It doesn't even make any sense to me. So much of Bakunin's writing is a critique of Marxism, it doesn't make any sense. Kropotkin could stand on his own, though, I suppose. Still doesn't make a lot of sense to me, though.

At my college (a big 10 school) we read Marx in multiple classes. Sociology and Political Science. Not only that, they actually had a class called "Marxism" which unfortunately was a lot of Leninism and only a couple of Marx's works. It was taught by a Marxist. Not only that, but they have an entire department devoted to teaching Critical Theory. An entire department of Marxists.

Of course, if someone is getting their premed or mba, they're not going to be exposed to that. You can probably go through most degree programs without being exposed to it, except for sociology. And I get that all schools are different, and small private schools may be more focused on a mainstream education. I don't know. But there was certainly plenty of opportunity at my school for people interested in it to learn.

[nadinbrzezinski]

37. Political Science, especially Introduction to Political Systems

and comparative government will also go deeply into Marx...

And a few history classes will as well. In the upper div, history of Russia we went into Bakhunin without Marx, but we were doing Russian History, so in that sense it made sense since it was not philosophy, but a just the facts class...

[martymar64]

50. I read Marx and Kropotkin and Bakhunin for my Poli Sci degree.

I also read Plato, Hobbes, Rousseau, Locke, Spinoza, John Stuart Mill, Jeremy Bentham, Max Weber, Nietzsche, Domhoff, Chomsky , WEB DuBois, and many many more.

Political Theory really turned me on, as you can tell.

[nadinbrzezinski]

51. Well let's just say when you start comparing

The Laws (I am sure you know who I am talking with) with Bakunin, it can be really heady. The kind of ... ahem discussion for three in the morning...

I had to do all the classics of the Enlightenment for my Thesis, as well as a few people don't suspect (since I was doing it on one of the intellectual parents of the Mexican Independence)... nothing like readying heady political theory in the papers of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. Confession were really detailed, really detailed. He was lucky they were no longer the burning types.

Montesquieu, for those not up to this. He was one of the first people to really go into separation of powers.

[FamousBlueRaincoat]

77. interesting

I did Political Science with a focus on theory too. No Bakunin or Kropotkin, although I came across Chomsky in other departments.

[Democracyinkind]

68. I studied in Europe, but my comment was derived from my second-hand knowledge of American curricula.

Good to see that it ain't so on all colleges.... There's also a very fine American Professor cum Marxist called Nicholas DeGenova who gives wonderful courses on Marx. Although as a native German speaker, there's nothing more horrible to me than reading Marx in English. Surplus value just isn't as sexy as Mehrwert.

[nadinbrzezinski]

78. Trust me reading it in English or SPANISH

is just painful

[leftstreet]

20. Or....just pleased to see Marx being discussed on DU

:thumbsup:

:-)

[panzerfaust]

73. Go Karl

"From each according to his ability, to each according to his need"

Not a bad idea that.

Yes, I know Marx adopted that quote from earlier thinkers. That is the nature of history and civilization: Neither "Ask not what your country can do for you ..." nor "I have nothing to offer but blood, toil ..." was created de novo by those who made the quotations famous.

Marxism fails in its theoretical explanation for the wealth of nations - not in its observations of the misery and exploitation of the workers of the time.

"Workers of the world unite. You have nothing to lose but your chains."

[Warpy]

21. His description of capitalism was spot on

but many of his suggestions for what to do about it were naive, at best. Lenin recognized that and replaced "dictatorship of the proletariat" to "dictatorship of the party." It's why so many Marxist countries remained essentially feudal in structure, with the party insiders simply replacing an old oligarchy or aristocracy. Without sufficient bottom to top movement or input, those party insiders made massive mistakes in planning and cost many lives. They also succumbed to totalitarianism, since they had positions to protect in the face of massive and well deserved criticism.

Where I've seen applied Marxism at its most successful, it's been as a transitional structure that broke a colonialist oligarchy and eventually morphed into a more or less democratically elected government presiding over a mixed economy.

Marx was no idiot, in other words, and his ideas have not been universally destructive. He supplied us with a rich and detailed snapshot of capitalism that remains valid today and a vocabulary to go along with it. His idea that a worker's state would somehow magically transform itself over time to no state, at all, was beyond naive for his world and ours.

[socialist_n_TN]

28. Yeah, all that wealth redistribution..........

happening right now ALL across the globe! :sarcasm:

Without a healthy dose of Marx in the form of socialism AND the USSR, we wind up with what we've got today.

[JVS]

59. It's no accident that in the 20 years since ICBMs were driven past Marx's picture thrice a year...

the wages of workers have gone to shit.

[socialist_n_TN]

76. I'm glad I'm not the only one to notice that.......

:)

[bluestate10]

36. Typical Marxist. :-)

Seriously. Marx failed to see that in a collectivist society, someone would have to take leadership roles and that the people doing the leading would fall to the temptation of taking more from the society than their status as a member of the collective assigned them. The tendency in marxist societies is for a few to accumulate the wealth of the state and a mass to struggle through a bland daily existence. Capitalism is better than Marxism because it forces more distribution of the wealth of a society down to the working class. The famous trickle down theory. While not close to perfect in actual fact, trickle down wealth does make existence in a capitalist society more bearable than that in a marxist society. Now, true Socialism, when practiced well, as in Scandinavia, is superior to marxism and capitalism in terms of it's distribution of the wealth of the combined society.

[nadinbrzezinski]

38. I am sure Marx would tell you that the USSR was NOT

a Marxist country. There are many reasons for that both in theory and reality.

A closer example of his model, and they are doing fine thank you, are Nordic countries like Norway. Of course they are also much smaller societies.

Oh and I will argue that Smith would also look at the modern US and after the good chuckle tell you how many ways from here to Sunday why this is NOT a capitalist country either. They have to do with theory as well.

In some ways both are utopias, and like any utopia they cannot be achieved. But the US is not capitalist, it is something else...

[bluestate10]

42. While there is limited distribution of wealth, Norway is NOT collectivist,

or even really socialist. There is some large personal wealth held by a few Norwegians, that would not happen in a true socialist society, or even in one envisioned by Marx. Like any theorists, Marx could only interpret the reality of his time and then try to project that reality into the future. Like all theorists, Marx got a lot wrong.

[nadinbrzezinski]

43. Yep, utopias do

but Norway is not collectivist, and neither is Marxism.

We can argue until we are blue in the face, and the US is NOT a capitalist country either.

After all we have monopolies, a no-no under Capitalist Theory

We do NOT have a living wage, a requirement

I could go on.

I recommend the Wealth fo Nations and DAS KAPITAL. BOTH are Classical Economists by the way.

[bluestate10]

44. The United States has a system that allows any individual to

build a company that neutralizes the power of monopolies. Is the process hard? Is the process hard on workers? Yes and yes, absolutely, but if managed right, the process improves that state of americans. In the USA, new companies not imagined a mere year before they launch rise and grow, obsoleting companies that build outdated products, this is the very essence of capitalism, constant forming and reforming, survival of well run companies at the expense of poorly run ones, a field where a new product can arrive and change how work is done and life is lived. If you say that our capitalist system is mismanaged, I will grant you that point without contest. If your point is that mismanagement also makes our system into something other than a capitalist system, I have to contest your conclusion. The issue is not the system as much as it is a lack of will by everyone, including workers and bosses to force adherence to the capitalist principle of providing goods and services at a profit, then taking that profit and grow the enterprise while at the same time providing livelihoods to owners and workers and life to their community.

[nadinbrzezinski]

45. No we don't

why we have laws in the books that have not been used since Carter.

But we don't.

Now if you want to believe all of that, go for it, but we don't.

The American Dream is but part of the myth, and far from reality. So is pulling by bootstraps crap.

To add

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_System_divestiture

[LooseWilly]

65. Uhh, allows individuals to build companies that neutralize the power of monopolies?? Wha'??

Unless you're talking about crack dealers neutralizing the monopoly on oxycontin... well, I ... find your assertion to be completely without merit. The reason monopolies are called that is that they eliminate competition... the notion that any random citizen can create a business and compete with the monopolies is... frankly... insulting to the monopolies.

Try to create your own financial website to compete with Pay Pal. Try to build a department store to compete with Wal-Mart, or even Walgreen's. Try to neutralize a monopoly and you will quickly understand the true meaning of monopoly capitalism.

The best that any company can hope for, in this day and age, is to catch the attention of a monopoly and sell it's soul/ass for a tidy sum (YouTube, PayPal, Yahoo!, etc. ... success takes the form of a buyout by a monopoly... not competition, that's friggin' suicide.)

The capitalist "principles" you fail to name inevitably lead to monopoly capitalism, Marx predicted it, and that leads to a class war...

The system in the US leads to it. You argue in defense of an inevitable class war. Every bit of theory you extoll is taken into Marx's considerations and calculations. You may think your regurgitations are more insightful than Marx's theories... but I can guarantee you that many would disagree.

[xor]

66. Individuals and small entities can knock out large powers when they have innovative ideas

like opening a walmart like store that has jetpacks instead of carts... That's a total winner, in my opinion.

[LooseWilly]

85. Hehe... I like the way you're thinking—but,

you'd never get a jetpack past regulators (who regulates them anyway?... FAA?)... what you'd get is just shy of getting past the regulators, then some corporation that the regulators are on the payroll of would get the word... and you'd be made an offer you can't refuse.

"Sell us the jetpack technology, or it'll never go anywhere with regulators and you'll never get any financing to continue and you'll go bankrupt and we'll just buy the schematics through bankruptcy probate."

If you're unfortunate enough to have a rich aunt who decides to fund you, when all the banks turn you down (for fear of losing the business of XYZ corporation)... then you'll become depressed and commit suicide, or you'll have a single vehicle fatal accident on a clear night. No one will have seen it coming, but the case will be closed quickly. Buh bye.

Sell your idea, the way the YouTube founders did, or Elon Musk (who was in the latest Iron Man movie, playing himself) did... and you'll have lots of money to gamble trying to come up with another idea that you can hope to sell to the big boys... good luck with that.

[nadinbrzezinski]

79. Add Smith who also said that this had to be

REGULATED and Monopolies had to be broken up.

Most "capitalists" these days have all prayze you Adam Smith, without ever cracking the covers of that bible open, kind off like Fundies.

[bluestate10]

46. If the books are so great, why aren't you using the principles laid out

within them to change the world into the image that you want?

[nadinbrzezinski]

47. I want a living wage in the US

that is not a marxist principle, that is a Capitalism principle,

I would love for anti trust legislation (in the books) to be used.

I could go on.

[Democracyinkind]

67. Another one pretending that Marx's writings are some kind of manual.

Man. It's so easy to spot who read his shit and who hasn't.

[DireStrike]

71. You sure have it backwards.

First of all, to quote the trickle down "theory" as if it were correct should always raise an eyebrow or two. Are you blind to what's happening in our own country today?

Secondly, your omniscient-seeming historical analysis is based on, probably, knowledge of two countries - the US and the USSR. 50 or 100 years is definitely not enough time to tell whether the conflict between two global economic systems has been decisively won, especially when that time period contains an anomaly as amazingly large as WWII.

It's amazing how something as complex as an economic system can be considered to have "failed" because of one derailed state, in a world hostile to its very existence.

[nadinbrzezinski]

81. Read the rest of the exchange

but to say that the USSR was a Socialist Paradise is just propaganda, and does not even fit the theory.

Just saying.

In my mind Socialism has succeeded, in MUCH SMALLER societies that were already quite on their way to industrialization when the policies were mostly adopted

[martymar64]

48. He accurately described the failures of capitalism

He just did not get it right on the answer. He predicted revolutions would start in industrial nations. They didn't, they mainly took hold in agrarian nations (Russia, China, Cuba, Vietnam).
He also discounted human failings, such as lust for power, as factors that would destroy a revolution (Stalin, Mao).
His ideas are still worth discussion and refinement as a means to help people arrive at a more just and equitable society.

[ChairmanAgnostic]

89. agreed. He researched, studied, and wrote a lot

and came up with several brilliant insights, especially as to the value of labor.

[Hannah Bell]

56. read his family letters. he may have been a shitty family man in many

ways, but his family loved him, & vice-versa.

[existentialist]

2. I believe that that is made up, but Marx was clearly

also an atheist. One of his better known quotes it that "religion is the opium of the masses."


(I am aware that religion is not the same as theology or spirituality.)


Actually Marx' economic ideas have a far better basis than his political ideas.

[Ramulux]

3. You can disagree with Karl Marx

but I dont think anyone with a functioning brain can call him an idiot. He basically predicted the situation that unchecked capitalism would cause over 100 years ago.

[alcibiades_mystery]

5. It was not his predictions, but his analyses that make him a genius

Also, his critique of all the political economists who came before him remain cogent and devastating.

[JVS]

8. Marx's predictions on capitalism are almost not predictions.

He seems to just take the maxim of "the rich get richer" to its logical conclusion, namely that there will be a few extremely rich people and a bunch of people who have no place in the economy and become paupers or work for shit wages if they're "lucky".

[alcibiades_mystery]

15. Indeed, Marx did not make "predictions"

What is often taken as a "prediction" is Marx's analysis of the tendential fall in the rate of profit. While the tendency has been much poo-poo'ed by capitalist economists, who pretend that it has been refuted by capitalism's survival, Marx's analysis of the tendential fall remains quite accurate, in my view. What Marx couldn't see was those counter-tendencies that would emerge historically as a response to this tendency (the consumerist capture of subjective space analyzed by the Frankfurt School, and similar attempts to compensate for the falling rate of profit).

On what Marx COULD analyze, he was correct. It's hardly fair to critique him for *not* predicting events and systemic shifts within capitalism that happened after his death (nobody would, for example, call Descartes an idiot because he didn't understand 20th century brain studies!). This is especially the case since Marx was the one who told us: you have to do material analyses of your own historical moment! I'd say some 80% of Marx's writing remain accurate, especially on the structure of industrial capitalism and profit.

[Odin2005]

13. I agree. His predictions were shit but his socioecomic analysis is still amazing.

I disagree with a few of his ideas (mainly his assertion that ALL culture and history of ideas can be reduced to a society's material aspects), but otherwise his stuff is very good.

[Odin2005]

11. His ideas on the business cycle are still used by mainstream economists today.

He is widely considered the last of the Great Classical Economists, the end of a train of thought that started with Adam Smith and David Ricardo. After Marx the PTB could no longer use the original assumptions of Smith and Ricardo (such as the Labor Theory of Value) and so created "Neo-Classical" Economics.

[Edweird]

4. Karl Marx died in 1883 and the Church Of Satan started in 1969.

Somebody needs a calender.

[rainy]

7. He was not an idiot.

His economic ideas were superior to what we have now.

[Odin2005]

9. The stupid, it BURNS!!!

[Archae]

10. I puttered around that web site a little.

It's for those who have been hit in the head by a big family Bible too often. :crazy:

[inna]

29. amazing, isn't it.

[David__77]

12. How on earth was the foremost capitalist revolutionary an "idiot?"

Karl Marx did more for both capitalism and for socialism than anyone else. He was a brilliant economist and revolutionary. If you read the Communist Manifesto, it is a systematic program for progressive economic development, capitalist or socialist. Marx only said that once capitalism had outlived its usefulness and stopped growing the productive forces, it will be transcended. That has not yet occurred.

[BOG PERSON]

40. unfortunately...

it looks as though the longer capitalism prevails the less likely our species will even be around to "transcend" it.

[DefenseLawyer]

14. Considering that most of the concentrated wealth in the world

has come from the few being able to pay less than full value for the labor of the many they employ, I'd say Mr. Marx may have been on to something. Of course I'll bet my house that you've never read a single word he ever wrote, so I might suggest you do that before you start calling someone else an idiot.

[ngant17]

16. Arguments are weak, simplistic and easily dismissed

As one example, the author states that the Yezidi, from northern Iraq, are devil worshipers.

While it may be true that Western authors such as Paul Carus and H.P. Lovecraft have described the Yezidi as devil worshipers, and Satanist Anton LaVey might have borrowed some passages from their bible, it is simply a matter of guilt by association.

"The actual religion of the Yezidis is a syncretism, to which Moslem, Christian (heretical, rather than orthodox), pagan, and perhaps also Persian religions have contributed." The Sacred Books and Traditions of the Yezidiz, by Isya Joseph (1919)

If the guy is so far off the mark on this one trivial fact, you can only imagine his wholesale incompetence on such fields as economics, history, philosophy and especially his pet peeve, Marxism.

[chaska]

17. Well, that's a first. Only an idiot would call Karl Marx an idiot.

[dimbear]

52. Alternate possibility: a person who really really really hates

Jews. That's the way I would bet.

[Puregonzo1188]

18. Well, I don't think Karl Marx was an idiot so I suppose I'm not the person to ask if he was a

Satanist

[edbermac]

23. I don't know if he was a Satanist, but I loved him in Duck Soup.

:silly:

[nadinbrzezinski]

24. He was not a satanist

nor was he an idiot...

Some of the people who followed him might have been, but he was a Neo-Hegelian, sorry for the big words, and his analysis of 19th century economics was spot on.

Of course that means actually stoping at the propaganda and actually readying the work.

Don't worry, so-called modern day Capitalists are not Capitalist either, nor have they read Adam Smith either.

[Exilednight]

26. Even many pro-business economists will tell you that Marx was not an idiot. and neither was he a

Satanist.

Marx got a lot of things right, and many things wrong. But then again, all political theorists do. If there were a single perfect political philosophy that made everyone happy, then every country would adopt it.

[regnaD kciN]

27. Kinda hard for an atheist to be a member of the "Church of Satan," I'd say...

:crazy:

[rucky]

30. Is the writer a satirist?

[inna]

31. this is one of the most idiotic posts i've ever read, that's for sure.

[Scruffy1]

32. Yep, been seeing a lot of these lately from non-readers

Just goes to show the depths that sp0on fed assumptions can sink too. In my sixty plus years I have never seen anyone who actually read Das Kapital disagree with it, including Alan Greenspan. The real argument has always been about how to improve capitalism to make it work better for more people.

[killbotfactory]

34. You might find this show amsuing and informative:

The Mark Steel Lectures - Karl Marx
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ByOKZmQ72m4
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=98z1kfOcur0
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I8yFmzN0cRQ

It's less than a half hour long. Seriously, it's pretty good.

Karl Marx may have been many things, but an idiot and/or satanist he was not.

[marmar]

35. You're just pissed 'cause you don't understand Das Kapital, aren't you?

nt

[underpants]

39. Biblical reference - you did know that right?

Matthew 25:15 And to one he gave five talents, to another two, and to another one; to each according to his ability. And he went abroad at once.

Acts 2:45 And they sold their possessions and goods and distributed them to all, according as anyone had need.

Acts 4:32-35 And the multitude of them that believed were of one heart and of one soul: neither said any of them that ought of the things which he possessed was his own; but they had all things common. And with great power gave the apostles witness of the resurrection of the Lord Jesus: and great grace was upon them all. Neither was there any among them that lacked: for as many as were possessors of lands or houses sold them, and brought the prices of the things that were sold, and laid them down at the apostles' feet: and distribution was made unto every man according as he had need.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_need

[Starry Messenger]

41. Idiot?

So much profound ignorance, so little time.

[liam_laddie]

49. Marx the historian

He wrote about the US' Civil War and apparently (I've not read it...) it's a very good analysis and examination
of the causes and results. Anybody read it?

[leftstreet]

54. Marx: 'The North American Civil War' 25 October 1861

London, October 20, 1861.

For months the leading weekly and daily papers of the London press have been reiterating the same litany on the American Civil War. While they insult the free states of the North, they anxiously defend themselves against the suspicion of sympathizing with the slave states of the South. In fact, they continually write two articles: one article, in which they attack the North, and another article, in which they excuse their attacks on the North. Qui s'excuse s'accuse.

In essence the extenuating arguments read: The war between the North and South is a tariff war. The war is, further, not for any principle, does not touch the question of slavery and in fact turns on Northern lust for sovereignty. Finally, even if justice is on the side of the North , does it not remain a vain endeavor to want to subjugate eight million Anglo-Saxons by force! Would not the separation of the South release the North from all connection with Negro slavery and assure to it, with its twenty million inhabitants and its vast territory, a higher, hitherto scarcely dreamt of, development? Accordingly must not the North welcome secession as a happy event, instead of wanting to put it down by a bloody and futile civil war?

Point by point we will probe the plaidoyer of the English press.


http://www.tenc.net/a/18611025.htm

More at the link

[DeSwiss]

53. This so-called "Judeo-Christian Apologetics" website you posted is total BS.....

...which only serves to wonder why you posted it all with your obviously unenlightened comment about Marx.

- Must have been a really, really slow news day in Sheboygan, eh??? Boredom will do that I suppose.....

[immoderate]

58. Anything titled "Judeo-Christian" should set of alarms.

Anything following that label is guaranteed to be bullshit.

--imm

[DeSwiss]

60. No kidding....

...but it was the section on http://www.theroadtoemmaus.org/RdLb/21PbAr/Pl/Cnst/00Const.htm#Biblical%20Government">Biblical Government (See also Church/State/Theocracy, Limited Govt., and Oaths & Religion) that really set off my alarm bells.

- Just as the http://www.splcenter.org/get-informed/news/splc-adds-family-research-council-to-hate-groups-list">SPLC refers to the FRC as a Christian hate group, I'd say the same for this site's garbage......

[immoderate]

62. Ach! I took a look.

Everything leads to "our rights come from God" so, in essence, Jesus owns us. These lunatics don't give up.

--imm

[DeSwiss]

64. These lunatics don't give up......

...because the central argument is a perpetual feedback loop of illogic. It seems to behave like some kind of a "social flu" where some have worse symptoms than others. Only we're talking about a mental flu. Just as a virus commandeers one's own blood cells and re-program's them to turn against you, the central justification for religious belief boils down to the argument that "it's true because god said so." Such illogic will predictably lead to ideas like this one -- where it tells us that we can only have liberty and freedom in America by not exercising our liberties and freedoms.

We're to do just exactly as they say. Think of it as a sort of Reverse Golden Rule.

- And that even though they'll admit that everyone was granted free will -- they'd rather if we didn't use that either.

[backscatter712]

55. Marx was no satanist, and no idiot.

For one thing, he was an atheist.

Granted, my opinion is that Marx was a pioneering economist and sociologist of his day, and made some sharp observations about wealth, inequality and class warfare, but when he moved from observations to solutions, he ran off the rails. The talk about dictatorships of the proletariat and the eventual Communist utopia where everybody sings Kumbaya and shares like we were all taught in kindergarten is nonsense.

My other critique of Marxism is that it's turned into a religion. It's got its prophets and saints - Marx himself, Lenin, Stalin, Mao... It's got its fervent followers, proselytizers and crusaders, it's got its rituals, its priests (they're called party members and party chairmen), and its defense mechanisms which can sometimes come in the form of men with guns who'll shoot you if you don't profess allegiance to the faith.

Look at China today. They've ditched the economics, they've ditched the socialist politics, but they've kept the religion. Pictures of Mao are all over the place, you go to a Communist Party meeting, and you'll still get the rituals around the revolution of the proletariat overthrowing the bourgeoisie, and you'll still read from Mao's Little Red Book. But economically, China's becoming laissez-faire capitalist.

[Name removed]

57. Deleted message

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[Lucian]

61. How is Marx an idiot?

And anyone who goes against Christianity is always labeled a Satanist (or another stupid term).

Looking at the source, any intelligent person would've dismissed that argument before even posting it here.

[OnyxCollie]

63. Um...

No.

THE BOOK OF SATAN II

12. Whatever alleged "truth" is proven by results to be but an empty fiction, let it be unceremoniously flung into the outer darkness, among the dead gods, dead empires, dead philosophies, and other useless lumber and wreckage!
13. The most dangerous of all enthroned lies is the holy, the sanctified, the privileged lie - the lie everyone believes to be a model truth. It is the fruitful mother of all other popular errors and delusions. It is a hydra-headed tree of unreason with a thousand roots. It is a social cancer!
14. The lie that is known to be a lie is half eradicated, but the lie that even intelligent persons accept as fact - the lie that has been inculcated in a little child at its mother's knee - is more dangerous to contend against than a creeping pestilence!
15. Popular lies have ever been the most potent enemies of personal liberty. There is only one way to deal with them: Cut them out, to the very core, just as cancers. Exterminate them root and branch. Annihilate them, or they will us!

Anton LaVey, The Satanic Bible, p. 17.

Satanism is libertarianism without the dickishness.

[DireStrike]

70. Ha!

I knew there would be a lot of angry, correcting responses about the Marx quip. I really didn't see an objection on Satanist grounds forthcoming! :evilgrin:

[Democracyinkind]

69. Blaming Karl Marx for the the misdeeds of the USSR is like blaming John Locke for My Lai.

No one in his right mind would do it.

But, as this thread proves, "Marx" - for most americans - is not some historical figure that you can read and learn about; "Marx" is a pop-cultural reference to the suppose root of all evil that none dare touch. The silliness. Neither Lenin nor Stalin still believed in Marx's original ideas by the time they spent their millions to buy the Revolution; the name Communist was attached to the USSR because of the suggestion of an American millionaire, and Bakunin correctly predicted the clash of a socialist and capitalist superpower that were the same in their political and philosophical essence - expansionist and imperialist.


But whatever. Some of the comments in this thread were readily heart-warming. Knowing stuff trumps all else :-)

[social_critic]

83. Are you Marxist?

I wonder, are you Marxist?

[Democracyinkind]

86. Nah. I wouldn't even know what "Marxist" means nowadays...

I consider Marx one philosopher among many, albeit his writings did have a profound influence on me. I wouldn't want to live in the dark ages of pre-dialectic materialism :-)

[TheKentuckian]

72. What I want know is why are you on Pat Robertson's personal email list to get this crap?

and why you are comfortable calling Marx an idiot when the nut job that wrote that propaganda can at least acknowledge that the man was "intellectually gifted"?

[myrna minx]

84. The OP has long abandoned the thread, but an interesting

discussion has come about in spite of the OP's silly assertion. :D

[retread]

74. Again I am astounded by what has slithered in under the flaps of DU's "big tent"!! n/t

[TBF]

75. Perhaps we should talk about why red-baiting is so prevalent amongst democrats?

We can start with a discussion of the Palmer Raids. With the way this country is going I can see why you're scared though, the capitalism isn't working so great is it?

[nadinbrzezinski]

82. Go further back

to the Socialist experiments of the 1820s and 1830s, well before Marx.

Our fear of socialism is really well ingrained.

[DailyGrind51]

80. Marx could not have been a "Satanist", because he did not believe in the spiritual!

For Marx, only the class struggle for material resources existed, nothing more.

[pitohui]

87. an idiot?

you may not agree w. his ideas but to call him an idiot is ridiculous, he has had far more influence over the course of human ideas and human history than any of us on DU ever will

[ChairmanAgnostic]

88. Marx was hardly an idiot. To the contrary, because

of his writings, several active movements among the working class sprang up around the world. In the US, Marx' writings led directly to Illinois being the first state to pass the 8 hour workday. Unfortunately, the Republicans took over again in the 1870s and ignored the law. They even cut wages pressuring the already downtrodden even more. This led to greater marches and civil protests, which led to companies hiring armed militias to beat on them. Which led to Labor training its own armed militia. This led to litigation, and eventually, the Illinois supreme court ruled that labor organized militias were illegal, while corporate ones were just fine. All of this ended up in the Haymarket Riots, which left many people dead.

In Europe and especially in the UK, where Marx wrote and studied, the landed rich were so worried about Marx' ideas and civil disobedience, that eventually, shorter word days, workers compensation, worker safety, child labor laws, and more were passed.

Marx? an idiot? May we have more idiots like him.