Debate: - The 1 word essence of the political right?

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Thread: The 1 word essence of the political right?

Rhyfelwyr 22:19 03-06-2013

Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube:
Militant Communism... would certainly serve third world countries who are under the yoke of western corporations and puppet governments supported by western interests and governments.

I don't think militant communism would help those countries much. By Marx's own words, they lack the developments that would, in theory, allow a socialist system to work in the first place. In the end they would probably go down a Mugabe-style road.

Originally Posted by Seamus Fermanagh:
With his emphasis on the dialectic as the sweeping tool for explaining history, however, Marx falls into a classic trap of academic thinking -- failing to account for change and/or the impact of his own critique. Capitalism, for Marx, had to continue to act as some great ogre and be felled by violence to yield the radiant future. He never really accounted for reasonable people thinking, "yes, there is some abuse and it needs to stop. Now how do we improve things without tossing out the child along with the dirty water." Its a variation on the "either-or" fallacy to assume that things will either change the way/direction you think they should or they will never change. Marx is FAR from alone in this flaw to his thinking. It is a hallmark of academe.

I think these things are true of certain Marxists, but not Marx himself. He was well aware of (and had plenty of dialogue with) a whole host of people and movements that attempted to address the abuses of capitalism without resorting to violent revolution. In his writings, he frequently addresses the likes of the Saint-Simonians, Owenites, Chartists etc. In fact, the latter example there is particularly significant, since Marx himself said that unlike in Europe, Britain's suffrage laws would allow for the working-classes to achieve real political representation through a democratic system. Marx wasn't the blinkered radical many of hs followers became.

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