[Social_Critic]

When I was young I was taught about Marx, Lenin and Engels in school. I had been trained by my parents to keep my face straight and watch my body language to stay out of trouble, because they were giving me books by George Orwell and other authors to read at the same time. But these classes were really hard to take, I kept trying to burst out laughing when they discussed Marxist ideology.

[Social_Critic]

When I was young I was taught about Marx, Lenin and Engels in school. They held these classes on Saturday, and called them "Plenos Revolucionarios". You guys translate it if you can.

I had been trained by my parents to keep my face straight and watch my body language to stay out of trouble, because they were giving me books by George Orwell and other authors to read at the same time. But these classes were really hard to take, I kept trying to burst out laughing when they discussed Marxist ideology, and I had to cross my legs and bend over so they wouldn't see my face.

One day I came out of class and heard a young girl, whose dad was in the secret police make glowing comments about dialectic marxism and what a wonderful discovery we had made. I must have smiled or something because she turned towards me and snarled " and you, do you have something to say about it"?

I mumbled something and started looking for a rock to cave her head in, but lucky for me I didn't find one and calmed down. I don't know what happened to that chick, but that instant changed my life, because I realized that I just couldn't keep on faking being an impassive drone and i was going to go postal and start killing those mother fuckers in large numbers. So I decided I had better leave, which I managed to do the next year.

[mikema63]

A fascinating life story indeed, which country was this?

[Soulflytribe]

that instant changed my life, because I realized that I just couldn't keep on faking being an impassive drone and i was going to go postal and start killing those mother fuckers in large numbers. So I decided I had better leave, which I managed to do the next year.

This is what is fascinating about human beings: how can we be so different from one another.

I remember a story similar to that. One day the teachers at my school organized bogus elections to approve or not ALCA in the country.
It didn't matter if the child were 7-year-old or 16-year-old. We all had to vote. The (marxists) teachers previously lectured us about how evil the US and ALCA were and how that free-trade agreement would destroy our economy forever, of course. But I couldn't accept everything that was being said in the room. The more they spoke, the more questions I had. And I ended up voting for ALCA because what they were saying didn't make any sense at all. But all the other students just accepted the teachers' words as the absolute gospel and voted against ALCA.
I believe most people are like that young girl you mentioned in the OP, S_C.. People just want to conform and be part of the herd. To swim against the tide is not very comfortable or easy.

[Conscript]

Cool story, looks like you need a blog.

I see nothing in here explaining why capitalists shouldn't be expropriated and/or workers shouldn't rule.

[ingliz]

When I was young ...

When I was young I was taught about Smith, Hume and Say in school. They held these classes on a Wednesday, and called them "History". You guys translate it if you can.

I had been trained by my parents to keep my face straight and watch my body language to stay out of trouble, because I had been taking books out of the library by Upton Sinclair and other authors to read at the same time. But these classes were really hard to take, I kept trying to burst out laughing when they discussed Capitalist ideology, and I had to cross my legs and bend over so they wouldn't see my face......

[Eran]

I see nothing in here explaining why capitalists shouldn't be expropriated and/or workers shouldn't rule.

When "workers rule", people like young Social_Critic find it necessary to conform with Marxist orthodoxy to stay out of trouble.

Contrast with capitalist societies in which Marxists continue to occupy prestigious academic careers, and are often celebrated intellectuals.

[Monte]

When "workers rule", people like young Social_Critic find it necessary to conform with Marxist orthodoxy to stay out of trouble.

Contrast with capitalist societies in which Marxists continue to occupy prestigious academic careers, and are often celebrated intellectuals.

That's simply not true, have you heard of McCarthyism? Perhaps the more aggressive attacks are over today, but there is still a deep-rooted hostility to leftists, let alone communists.

[Social_Critic]

Mikema, I was in Cuba at the time. It was sheer hell to live in such a repressive regime. Later in life I lived in many others also very repressive, but I was sheltered by my us passport and had the ability to move on. And in one case I convinced the company to leave the country. This was made easier because business was mediocre.

[anticlimacus]

That's simply not true, have you heard of McCarthyism? Perhaps the more aggressive attacks are over today, but there is still a deep-rooted hostility to leftists, let alone communists.

But wait...I thought capitalists countries did nothing except spread peace and prosperity...not do things like imprison a quarter of its socially marginalized population and attack other countries for oil...

[Eran]

All governments can be occasionally oppressive.

Historic record, however, shows a much greater propensity for oppression by socialist vs. capitalist (or mixed) governments.

Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" is dedicated to explaining that this isn't a coincidence.

[neopagan]

"Marxism is not the answer."

Marx was a 19th century theorist who took refuge in the most powerful capitalist country then in the world. He never actually did anything other than to goad other people into trying out his theory. It didn't work in Russia, Eastern Europe, or China for the simple reason that it was utopian, yet maintained a heirarchy with priviledge.

Also, people don't like being pushed around by policemen and soldiers, so they tend to gravitate towards countries where there is less of that sort of thing.

Ideologues of all stripes are like religious fanatics, they think one can take ideas out of a book and have it solve humanities challenges.

This is a convenient approach to crowd control because a lot of people don't think very deeply.

[The Clockwork Rat]

Indeed. Marxism is the question.

[anticlimacus]

Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" is dedicated to explaining that this isn't a coincidence.

Hayek's road to serfdom is about making the hyperbolic and ideologically informed assertion that that the modern liberal bourgeoise is the essence of humanity and that everything else, not conditioned by the free market, is slavery. Hayek's entire argument is largely dependent on black and white reasoning which creates a false dichotomy between the state and free market capitalism which only makes sense if one assumes his dubious assertion that political liberty naturally gave birth to free markets, thus combining the two for eternity.

Thus we're left with a choice: economic freedom (for Hayek the conditions of individual freedom) and everything else (from capitalist welfare state to Communist Russia to Nazi Germany--to Hayek they're all basically the same...) which simply leads to enslavement. We could describe this as the totaletarian irony of Hayek's argument: an either/or that does not open thought up to new possibilities, but restricts it to what Hayek understands to be the fundamental nature to individual liberty: negative liberty and the liberal economy and nothing shy of it. It's a great book for the libertarian choir--but nothing more.

[Monte]

"Marxism is not the answer."

Marx was a 19th century theorist who took refuge in the most powerful capitalist country then in the world. He never actually did anything other than to goad other people into trying out his theory. It didn't work in Russia, Eastern Europe, or China for the simple reason that it was utopian, yet maintained a heirarchy with priviledge.

Also, people don't like being pushed around by policemen and soldiers, so they tend to gravitate towards countries where there is less of that sort of thing.

Ideologues of all stripes are like religious fanatics, they think one can take ideas out of a book and have it solve humanities challenges.

This is a convenient approach to crowd control because a lot of people don't think very deeply.

Marx was a social historian and economist who developed theories explaining that human society advances through class struggles while living in the only European state that would not persecute him for his ideas.

Marxism is an economic theory not and ideology, Marxism predicts that the final stage of social development will be communism. No socialist nation has ever reached this stage, nor has claimed to, so the argument that Marxism did not work in Russia, Eastern Europe, and China does not really make sense.

What better ideology to brainwash the masses than the nationalism and bible-thumping of the US?

[omegaword]

All governments can be occasionally oppressive.

Historic record, however, shows a much greater propensity for oppression by socialist vs. capitalist (or mixed) governments.

Hayek's "Road to Serfdom" is dedicated to explaining that this isn't a coincidence.

This is partially true, but not necessarily law. For example, immediately following the revolution, the ussr was arguably the most culturally and socially free place on the planet. Politically it may not have been, and it's economic crappyness kept many people from being truly liberated, but the point still stands. In my mind, the difference between capitalist and communist systems is that socialism has been done incorrectly many times and resulted in repression, but capitalism has been done how it is surpossed to be and is still repressive.

Also S critic, I feel for you, but if you aren't a fan of repression, you may want to get ready to leave America to, because our great free, capitalist country is becoming more repressive by the day. The can even indefinitely imprison citizens without a trial. Sound like anything you might have seen before? But you don't have to worry, your an advocate of the system so like that Chica, you'll be just fine under the regime. It's a relative system man.

You almost threw up when the girl talked about socialism? Well try the church of American exceptional ism. Aren't we awesome? Why yes we are. Every news station, every teacher. Now were the places you've been worse ? Sure. But we'll get there. Because you can't think of the political spectrum as a line, it's a circle, and it's preatty much the same once you go far enough around. Theres another way, some path off to the left no ones stayed on long enough to see to the end, but god only knows when someone will figure it out enough to implement it.

[ralfy]

Marxism explains the problem.

[Eran]

In my mind, the difference between capitalist and communist systems is that socialism has been done incorrectly many times and resulted in repression, but capitalism has been done how it is supposed to be and is still repressive.

I agree that a single example of the implementation of socialism could be an aberration.

Socialism has been tried so many times, over a period of a century, in different countries all over the world, from small Latin American countries to the Russian Empire, from various African nations to China.

In each and every case, without a single exception, socialism went hand-in-hand with political repression.

Don't you think this observation is telling? I can see how socialism can, in theory, be implemented without political repression. But in practice, the two seem inseparable.

capitalism has been done how it is supposed to be and is still repressive.

Wrong and wrong.

Capitalism is supposed to be about free markets. While some people may argue that perfectly free markets are impossible, nobody can seriously claim that current implementations of capitalism are as free as they could be.

Secondly, capitalism isn't repressive. For a system to be "repressive", it isn't enough to show that some people aren't as well off as others, or even as well off as they might be. You would have to show how capitalism is actively causing people to be more repressed than they would have been without it.

Admittedly, there have been historic cases of societies generally considered both capitalist and repressive (mainly in Latin America). But viewing the field of "capitalist implementations" generally, there is no pattern of repression.

They can even indefinitely imprison citizens without a trial.

I am far from being a fan of America. But in a country of 300,000,000 people, how many are actually being imprisoned without trial? A handful at most. Let's keep our proportion. A much worse problem is the number of citizens imprisoned with a trial. Here I would point out that America is an outlier amongst capitalist countries. In most, the problem isn't nearly as great.

[omegaword]

Ah but capitalism has been systematically repressive, all through our the history of America we have repressed some groups, and currently freedoms are being done away with. And there are different types of capitalism just as there is socialism. All of them have repressed someone, and the poor are always one of the groups. Now we live in corporatist capitalism, where they who have money reign supreme. This is something which consistently occurs in capitalism. And they repress just as harshly as everyone else when threatened. Look how they responded to occupy, police aggression and fear mongering, and it wasn't even a real threat. Finally, it is true that socialism has been tried, but it was post Stalinist socialism. Not true Leninism, not true Marxism, let alone Trotskyism. And I think of the relationship between Stalinism and other types of communism as the relationship between republicans and nazis, same side of the spectrum, some similar ideas, but very different.

[Quercus Robur]

I'm certainly glad I didn't have to contend with classes on ideology/patriotism like they do in Chinese schools

But what specifically was the issue that made you find Marxism so contemptible? Don't you agree that, for all its faults, Marxism has been behind some very positive changes? Weren't society's resources more fairly distributed in that country?