[MB.]

Solar Cross is mainly interested in proving that Marx was unoriginal and stupid. For some reason he thinks this is an important and worthy goal. Of course he's never read Kapital and never will.

[skinster]

TIG

[SolarCross]

@The Immortal Goon

Your lack of self awareness and hypocrisy is as hilarious as ever. Some of your bloopers:

- Someone who calls himself the "The Immortal Goon" on the internet has the feeling that someone who calls himself "Star Destroyer" on the internet could not possibly have anything interesting to say because why indeed would anyone who uses a funny handle like "The Immortal Goon" say anything worthy of interest?

- The aforementioned Undead Mook in defence of his zombie cult decides once again that the best way to lambast a critique which compares Marx's fantasy with the actual factual world to see how it stands up is by using his feelings and complete disregard for factual reality to accuse, without any basis whatsoever, that the author of the critique is just doing what TIG does all the time.

- TIG demonstrates his psychic powers by setting up some strawman argument involving sex lives of spartans and inuit as proof that Star Destroyer clearly is completely wrong about an argument he never made.

- Oh but wait TIG has something to say in defence of Marx's dream of a totalitarian society where everything and everyone is reduced to property of the state, by mentioning two historical notable authoritarian governments associated with Napoleon and Bismark that he imagines falsely imposed a comparable level of totalitarianism on civilians whilst embroiled in situations of total war WHICH BOTH NATIONS LOST ANYWAY, blithely ignoring that neither were as remotely totalitarian as Marx is hoping for and then only in furtherance of winning a war rather than some deranged fantasy. Funny that TIG doesn't feel the USSR itself would make a better example than Napoleonic France of the effectiveness of totalitarianism.

- Of course TIG then has to pretend he doesn't understand Smith's METAPHOR of the invisible hand which is meant to describe succinctly the net effect of innumerable interactions of incentive pursuing agents and instead pretend that he thinks Smith meant his metaphor literally such that the real economies which routinely assemble and distribute trillions of desirable products in great abundance and quality all over the world just happens because MAGIC. Durrrr

The Immortal Goon wrote:
Look, must I go on? I think I've hammered the main point in enough. Do you really want me to constantly harp on his insistence that history doesn't exist, that he can't even define basic Marxist terms, and he starts every few paragraphs with a quick check on his current feelings?


Yes please do go on, I would be fascinated to see your defence of Marx's ten commandments as Star Destroyer calls them. It should be good for a laugh.

[B0ycey]

I do find it bizarre and hypocritical that TIG has just criticised 'Star Destroyer' for doing a piece on emotion and self opinion by doing a review on EMOTION AND SELF OPINION. Critiques don't usually rely on references like dissertations by the way (however Star destroyer did reference Marx).

Nonetheless Solarcross I don't think you understand Marx. He is no different than Smith but with a different opinion to a future ecomonic outcome. He was a philosopher and theorist. He wasn't really a radical however you could argue he was a revolutionist. To understand Marx you have to understand the time he lived in. Revolution was always around the corner. The French revolution was testament to this. Inequality was high. Fairness was low. And machines were taking jobs and changing productivity. To get a better sense of Marx (and Engels) thinking you have to read 'Das Kapital'. Everyone knows about 'The Communist Manifesto' but really it is no more than an idea and critique of Capitalism (what TIG has criticised Star Destroyer of doing with Communism). It has no foundation to it like the volumes of Kapital. And it wasn't suppose to either. It was a pamplet to distribute across Europe to promote an idea. No different than advertising in many ways. But with nearly two centuries gone, Marx has been proven wrong. Capitalism is still here and Socialism hasn't prevailed. And until Socialism prevails there can't be Communism.

So this is why I said to you earlier that historically Marx gets a raw deal. People identify him to historic events of Communism (in name not in reality). And this is injust. He was just stating an opinion in his manifesto to the future of historic events - not to give dictators an excuse to manipulate the working class with a false ideology. The manifesto was designed to appeal to the worker because if the 'Workers of the world, unite', as they were the numbers, change would be possible. And that change would include Marx's true purpose of the creation of the manifesto - a world without borders.

[One Degree]

Delete

[The Immortal Goon]

Your lack of self awareness and hypocrisy is as hilarious as ever. Some of your bloopers:

Not really bloopers if I'm well aware of them.

Someone who calls himself the "The Immortal Goon" on the internet has the feeling that someone who calls himself "Star Destroyer" on the internet could not possibly have anything interesting to say because why indeed would anyone who uses a funny handle like "The Immortal Goon" say anything worthy of interest?

I am an immortal and a goon though

Also, I don't know that I'd start something out so on the nose as to imply it was like arguing about Star Wars/Star Trek. If I found something that did that, I might say, "This was an amusing piece," or something.

You seem to think this is a holy grail, so I addressed it. It seems that I hurt your feelings in doing so.

- The aforementioned Undead Mook in defence of his zombie cult decides once again that the best way to lambast a critique which compares Marx's fantasy with the actual factual world to see how it stands up is by using his feelings and complete disregard for factual reality to accuse, without any basis whatsoever, that the author of the critique is just doing what TIG does all the time.

1. I am not in a zombie cult. I gave up Christianity a long time ago.

2. Please explain what was fantastic without Marx instead of trying to find the first word that you think might stir feelings that comes to mind.

3. Please cite where I have dismissed the concept of change occurring from history in order to invalidate a pamphlet in hopes that it would apply to a general theory that I clearly don't understand. I would like to correct such a mistake as it would be embarrassing.

- TIG demonstrates his psychic powers by setting up some strawman argument involving sex lives of spartans and inuit as proof that Star Destroyer clearly is completely wrong about an argument he never made.

1. I demonstrate my psychic powers on the Psychic Goon 900 number network. I'm not exactly sure what you thought I wrote here that was so amazing that you feel it was borderline magic.

2. Bringing up the sex and family lives of Inuit and Spartans was valid as Star Destroyer specifically used the family as an example of an institution that had never changed. By comparing a 21st century Inuit in Alaska and an Ancient Spartan, I underlined that the premise Star Destroyer was using was incorrect.

This is to say, change does occur. All Marxism claims to be is a way to measure and explain change in history.

The essence of Marxism consists in this, that it approaches society concretely, as a subject for objective research, and analyzes human history as one would a colossal laboratory record. Marxism appraises ideology as a subordinate integral element of the material social structure. Marxism examines the class structure of society as a historically conditioned form of the development of the productive forces; Marxism deduces from the productive forces of society the inter-relations between human society and surrounding nature, and these, in turn are determined at each historical stage by man’s technology, his instruments and weapons, his capacities and methods for struggle with nature. Precisely this objective approach arms Marxism with the insuperable power of historical foresight.

- Oh but wait TIG has something to say in defence of Marx's dream of a totalitarian society

Marx didn't have a dream of a totalitarian society. Quite the opposite.

where everything and everyone is reduced to property of the state,

This was not Marx's goal.

by mentioning two historical notable authoritarian governments associated with Napoleon and Bismark that he imagines falsely imposed a comparable level of totalitarianism on civilians whilst embroiled in situations of total war WHICH BOTH NATIONS LOST ANYWAY,

These were examples of the state largely running a capitalist economy. The World Wars were brought up first thing.

This was, as you see, a reference to Star Destroyer's claim that it was impossible to manage an industrial economy.

blithely ignoring that neither were as remotely totalitarian as Marx is hoping for

Marx was not hoping for anything totalitarian as an end goal.

and then only in furtherance of winning a war rather than some deranged fantasy.

This wasn't Marx's end goal.

Funny that TIG doesn't feel the USSR itself would make a better example than Napoleonic France of the effectiveness of totalitarianism.

Since we were discussing the control of the economy, I thought that it would be easier to find middle ground in the World Wars or the French Revolution being examples of a state successfully running an industrial[izing] economy from top to bottom to complete a goal.

If you think the Soviet Union was a more successful example, then my point is made before it starts.

- Of course TIG then has to pretend he doesn't understand Smith's METAPHOR of the invisible hand which is meant to describe succinctly the net effect of innumerable interactions of incentive pursuing agents and instead pretend that he thinks Smith meant his metaphor literally such that the real economies which routinely assemble and distribute trillions of desirable products in great abundance and quality all over the world just happens because MAGIC. Durrrr

Oh, I don't pretend that I don't know what it means. I mock the reverence we're supposed to have for it.

But more to the point, this gets down to exactly the problem Star Destroy has in his analysis and you have in your insistence that Marx is totalitarian. This is to say, it is important to understand that (and how) conditions in history change, "invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men," and that Marx is an attempt to understand, contexutalize, and free us from these things:

How otherwise could, for instance, property have had a history at all, have taken on different forms, and landed property, for example, according to the different premises given, have proceeded in France from parcellation to centralisation in the hands of a few, in England from centralisation in the hands of a few to parcellation, as is actually the case today? Or how does it happen that trade, which after all is nothing more than the exchange of products of various individuals and countries, rules the whole world through the relation of supply and demand – a relation which, as an English economist says, hovers over the earth like the fate of the ancients, and with invisible hand allots fortune and misfortune to men, sets up empires and overthrows empires, causes nations to rise and to disappear – while with the abolition of the basis of private property, with the communistic regulation of production (and, implicit in this, the destruction of the alien relation between men and what they themselves produce), the power of the relation of supply and demand is dissolved into nothing, and men get exchange, production, the mode of their mutual relation, under their own control again?

In history up to the present it is certainly an empirical fact that separate individuals have, with the broadening of their activity into world-historical activity, become more and more enslaved under a power alien to them (a pressure which they have conceived of as a dirty trick on the part of the so-called universal spirit, etc.), a power which has become more and more enormous and, in the last instance, turns out to be the world market. But it is just as empirically established that, by the overthrow of the existing state of society by the communist revolution (of which more below) and the abolition of private property which is identical with it, this power, which so baffles the German theoreticians, will be dissolved; and that then the liberation of each single individual will be accomplished in the measure in which history becomes transformed into world history. From the above it is clear that the real intellectual wealth of the individual depends entirely on the wealth of his real connections. Only then will the separate individuals be liberated from the various national and local barriers, be brought into practical connection with the material and intellectual production of the whole world and be put in a position to acquire the capacity to enjoy this all-sided production of the whole earth (the creations of man). All-round dependence, this natural form of the world-historical co-operation of individuals, will be transformed by this communist revolution into the control and conscious mastery of these powers, which, born of the action of men on one another, have till now overawed and governed men as powers completely alien to them. Now this view can be expressed again in speculative-idealistic, i.e. fantastic, terms as “self-generation of the species” (“society as the subject”), and thereby the consecutive series of interrelated individuals connected with each other can be conceived as a single individual, which accomplishes the mystery of generating itself. It is clear here that individuals certainly make one another, physically and mentally, but do not make themselves.

Yes please do go on, I would be fascinated to see your defence of Marx's ten commandments as Star Destroyer calls them. It should be good for a laugh.

I would be happy to do so, but I'd rather you address my point.

I charge that Star Destroyer's conception of history is flawed, and the fact that he can't define basic Marxist terms is problematic. Please explain where these are wrong.

[SolarCross]

Bringing up the sex and family lives of Inuit and Spartans was valid as Star Destroyer specifically used the family as an example of an institution that had never changed. By comparing a 21st century Inuit in Alaska and an Ancient Spartan, I underlined that the premise Star Destroyer was using was incorrect.

This is to say, change does occur. All Marxism claims to be is a way to measure and explain change in history.

No one, including Star Destroyer, has asserted that change does not occur, surely everyone knows that. Star Destroyer brief summary of Marx's historical context pretty specifically mentions the great changes taking place at that time and place.

Karl Marx wrote his Communist Manifesto in the middle of the 19th century, which was a heady time in human history. The Industrial Revolution was radically and rapidly changing society. New technologies were coming out all the time, and many spoke of huge, sweeping changes to come. The idea of "social engineering" became popular; people believed that, armed with advancing technology and an enlightened world view, they would be able to tear down the rotten and dysfunctional society that thousands of years of human civilization had slowly constructed, and replace it with a new, improved version.

That you claim Star Destroyer is in denial of change occurring is bizarre, a strawman I guess.

You bring up the sex lives of Spartans and Inuit in the context of Star Destroyer's disapproval of Marx's schemes for the abolition of the family. So let's look at that.

The original text:

Abolition [Aufhebung] of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists.

On what foundation is the present family, the bourgeois family, based? On capital, on private gain. In its completely developed form, this family exists only among the bourgeoisie. But this state of things finds its complement in the practical absence of the family among the proletarians, and in public prostitution.

The bourgeois family will vanish as a matter of course when its complement vanishes, and both will vanish with the vanishing of capital.

Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.

But, you say, we destroy the most hallowed of relations, when we replace home education by social.

And your education! Is not that also social, and determined by the social conditions under which you educate, by the intervention direct or indirect, of society, by means of schools, &c.? The Communists have not invented the intervention of society in education; they do but seek to alter the character of that intervention, and to rescue education from the influence of the ruling class.

The bourgeois clap-trap about the family and education, about the hallowed co-relation of parents and child, becomes all the more disgusting, the more, by the action of Modern Industry, all the family ties among the proletarians are torn asunder, and their children transformed into simple articles of commerce and instruments of labour.

But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.

Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalised community of women. For the rest, it is self-evident that the abolition of the present system of production must bring with it the abolition of the community of women springing from that system, i.e., of prostitution both public and private.

Star Destroyer's comment on this passage:

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists." As well they should. It is a disgusting concept! Karl Marx believed that the family structure was inherently exploitative, with capitalists treating their wives and children as property and bequeathing their accumulated assets to their children (he saw the concept of inheritance as a horrible evil). His solution? Children should be raised by the state, marriage and inheritance should be eliminated, and noncommital sex should be the only form of relationship. The man was a lunatic, and most people don't even have any idea how extreme and unrealistic some of his views were, because they've never bothered to read his Manifesto.

"Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free love." Just like all of his other arguments, he starts with an incredible lie about capitalist society and then uses it to excuse himself for the obscenities of communism. In this case, he defends his attack on monogamous marriage by claiming that capitalists are incapable of being monogamous anyway! Now, this may be true in Hollywood, but there are lots of capitalists in the rest of the world who are monogamous. In any case, after selling the fantastic lie that monogamy doesn't exist, he argues that we should forget about achieving this supposedly impossible goal and simply embrace "free love", a euphemistic term for unbridled hedonism and sexual promiscuity. As an aside, this idea resurfaced in the 1960's, with no more success: it produced a generation with a soaring divorce rate and disaffected children.

To this you think the merest mention of spartans and inuit and the false claim by yourself that Star Destroyer is unaware that change occurs will be a huge distraction.

My take is this:
The biology of human mating is fairly variable, humans bear some of the characteristics of harem keeping mammals such as gorillas and lions because the males of the species are larger and more aggressive than females. True monogamous species like very many species of bird tend to have males and females of the same size. Humans however only are very slightly prone to harem keeping because males are only 15% larger than females whereas for true harem keeping species the male is much larger than the female than this, so monogamy is the general trend for most of our species and always has been.

Thus mating laws and customs all across the world generally reflect this by coming down around the monogamous pattern though exceptions are possible sometimes to allow a limited kind of harem keeping for those males with conspiciously strong resources. The Muslims overtly allow for up to four wives while Christians, Buddhists, Hindus do not but may, somewhat extra legally, have a mistress on the side all the same.

Other animals don't make stuff and so tend to have exceedingly few possessions so consequently their mating does not tend to have much implication for property transfers. The more legal aspect of human mating which is generally called marriage evolved very particularly to provide a structure for managing property between the mating pair and their offspring. This much is probably the substance of Marx's objection to marriage as he does not want humans owning property. If humans contrary to their nature are not legally allowed to own property they will have a reduced need for for the legal institution of marriage, same as with animals. However "free love" will not be the consequence of reducing human status to that of an animal, for people will still be jealous of sexual rivals just as animals are.

[The Immortal Goon]

That you claim Star Destroyer is in denial of change occurring is bizarre, a strawman I guess.

I suppose it was too much to assume that you would have read Marx, or Trotsky explaining Marx. And why would you when Star Destroyer can tell you what to think about something you are determined to remain ignorant about?

You bring up the sex lives of Spartans and Inuit in the context of Star Destroyer's disapproval of Marx's schemes for the abolition of the family. So let's look at that.

Fine, I guess. Though, as virtually everyone has stated, the Manifesto is basically a little blurb that isn't going to get you very far without having read Marx before. But let's pretend that your reading of STAR DESTROYER makes up for your ignorance of the work of Marx and the work of Marxists.

"Abolition of the family! Even the most radical flare up at this infamous proposal of the Communists." As well they should. It is a disgusting concept! Karl Marx believed that the family structure was inherently exploitative, with capitalists treating their wives and children as property and bequeathing their accumulated assets to their children (he saw the concept of inheritance as a horrible evil).

Star Destroyer, and I guess I can't underline this enough, seems to think that the family has never changed as an institution. Marx goes so far as to specify that he means the, "bourgeois family," as an institution.

Let's go back to my original example.

In ancient Sparta, the condition of the family was for the father to live in the barracks with his fellow soldiers--more than likely having sex with them--while his wife kept the land and stayed at home. The father was expected to show his cunning by leaving the barracks now and then and having coitus with his wife.

A child would then be produced. Were it to be found defective, it would be killed. If it were a girl, it would be brought up to be taken; a boy raised as a soldier. One of the lessons that the boy learns is service to the state, the more prominent story is a Spartan boy learning to be cunning by stealing his food. He does this at a market where he steals a fox. When he is caught, he keeps the fox under his cloak and argues about how he is not a thief as the fox chews through him and he dies. This is a valiant way to die.

The boy grows up, goes to the barracks, and the cycle continues.

Compare this with our 21st century Inuit in a fishing boat off of Juno. More than likely he lived in a Christinized household with a Western mentality. In grade school his buddies and him probably joked about how lame it would be to be gay. He made out with some girls, had sex with a few of them, and then needed to find a job. He started fishing in a boat where he doesn't have sex with the other fishermen for a few months out of the year so he can spend his time in the house he owns with the woman that he knocked up his first year of college.

The Spartan and the Inuit are not the same person here. They are not the same form of family.

Star Destroyer loses his shit at the thought of the bourgouis family being abolished because he does not understand that the Spartan family has been abolished. The Inuit traditional family has been abolished. The initial Christian communal family has been abolished.

Virtually only the bourgouis family remains.

Marx dares to say that a different economic system would produce a different family and laughs at his contemporaries clutching their pearls at such a revelation. Star Destroyer responds by clutching his pearls.

Keep in mind some of the specifics Marx was talking about. To his West, Marx saw families being broken up by slavery. In his midst, the wife and daughters were often reduced to prostitutes on the streets of London, Paris, or Berlin while the male children were sent to factories; and in the East they were under what remained of the feudal yolk.

One may say, rightly, that things have changed in the first world. True enough! And Marx goes so far as to expand on this point further in the manifesto, something that almost the entire chapter is spent on that Star Destroyer neglects to mention. My guess would be because he set out to right a totally-rad tract about how Marxism was mean and didn't read the entire piece first.

The point is that the institution of the family changes for a reason. This reason needs to be explored, understood, and then discussed. Star Destroyer refuses to acknowledge this. So we're left with him writing about a history without any notion of history.

His [Marx's] solution? Children should be raised by the state, marriage and inheritance should be eliminated, and noncommital sex should be the only form of relationship. The man was a lunatic, and most people don't even have any idea how extreme and unrealistic some of his views were, because they've never bothered to read his Manifesto.

Marx does not propose any of these things. One wonders of Star Destroyer bothered to read his Manifesto.

Just like all of his other arguments, he starts with an incredible lie about capitalist society and then uses it to excuse himself for the obscenities of communism. In this case, he defends his attack on monogamous marriage by claiming that capitalists are incapable of being monogamous anyway! Now, this may be true in Hollywood, but there are lots of capitalists in the rest of the world who are monogamous.

To underline this point again and again--Star Destroyer is assuming that history does not exist and clearly does not understand Marxism.

He is writing about the bourgouis (which he is improperly defined before) using women as objects that they are alienated from. That is to say, as being objectified.

Let us just dispense with pointing out how all of Star Destroyer's rational is dependent upon his belief that nothing has ever changed in all of the history of mankind.

In Marx's time, it was common to have prostitutes. It was not uncommon for women of a certain (majority) class to be prostitutes. Some of the best sources for Asquith, for instance, are the memoirs of his mistresses. This is well enough known as to not really bare mentioning, but I suppose that since there is a firm delusion by Solar Cross and Star Destroyer that nothing has changed it must be acknowledged.

The idea was that a gentleman procreated with his wife, and fucked prostitutes for fun. These gentlemen were, more than likely, bourgeois. Hence, "Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes..."

"Oh!" You may declare, destroying your own premise and destroying Star Destryoer's entire article, "But that's not how things are today!"

True enough. But let us remember the Inuit fisherman having sex with multiple women throughout his life before knocking one up. And let us assume, as I know having grown up in a Northwest fishing town, that he has porn on the boat and at home. The woman in each of these cases has become an alienated object from both our 19th century gentleman and our Inuit fisherman.

As Marx notes:

Prostitution is only a specific expression of the general prostitution of the labourer, and since it is a relationship in which falls not the prostitute alone, but also the one who prostitutes – and the latter’s abomination is still greater – the capitalist, etc., also comes under this head...I might ask the political economist: am I obeying economic laws if I make money by prostituting my body to the lust of another (in France, the factory workers call the prostitution of their wives and daughters the nth working hour, which is literally true), or if I sell my friend to the Moroccans [where they still had Christian slaves] (and the direct sale of men in the form of trade in conscripts, etc., occurs in all civilized countries)? His answer will be: your acts do not contravene my laws, but you find out what Cousin Morality and Cousin Religion have to say about it; the morality and religion of my political economy have no objection to make, but... But who should I believe, then? Political economy or morality? The morality of political economy is gain, labor and thrift, sobriety – and yet political economy promises to satisfy my needs. The political economy of morality is the wealth of a good conscience, of virtue, etc. But how can I be virtuous if I do not exist? And how can I have a good conscience if I am not conscious of anything? It is inherent in the very nature of estrangement that each sphere imposes upon me a different and contrary standard; one standard for morality, one for political economy, and so on. This is because each of them is a particular estrangement of man and each is centred upon one particular area of estranged essential activity: each is related in an estranged way to the other.

This is to say that the bourgeois relationship with sex and family still persists. And why should it not? The problem that Star Destroyer finds is that he has a sick feeling to the idea that people use prostitutes and alienate women (and men) from themselves and their means of production. And yet it was true, and remains true. A Marxist goes further than his feelings about it and attempts to explain it.

[the bourgouis husbands] take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other's wives. Bourgeois marriage is, in reality, a system of wives in common and thus, at the most, what the Communists might possibly be reproached with is that they desire to introduce, in substitution for a hypocritically concealed, an openly legalized system of free love.

Star Destroyer takes exception to this in the following way:

Now, this may be true in Hollywood, but there are lots of capitalists in the rest of the world who are monogamous. In any case, after selling the fantastic lie that monogamy doesn't exist, he argues that we should forget about achieving this supposedly impossible goal and simply embrace "free love", a euphemistic term for unbridled hedonism and sexual promiscuity. As an aside, this idea resurfaced in the 1960's, with no more success: it produced a generation with a soaring divorce rate and disaffected children.

1. Let us assume that it is only true in Hollywood (it isn't). Certainly there is a reason for this. Star Destroyer, by saying nothing, now finds himself stuck in acknowledging a universal family morality as well as something that goes against it.

2. That fact that there are capitalists that are monogamous in no way addresses anything that Marx was attempting to say. Marx himself was monogamous, so far as we know. He hates the institution of prostitution, and he endlessly mocks utopians that didn't want to be monogamous:

(1) in its initial form only a generalization and completion of that relation (of private property). As such, it appears in a dual form: on the one hand, the domination of material property bulks so large that it threatens to destroy everything which is not capable of being possessed by everyone as private property; it wants to abstract from talent, etc., by force. Physical, immediate possession is the only purpose of life nd existence as far as this communism is concerned; the category of worker is not abolished but extended to all men; the relation of private property remains the relation of the community to the world of things; ultimately, this movement to oppose universal private property to private property is expressed in bestial form – marriage (which is admittedly a form of exclusive private property) is counterposed to the community of women, where women become communal and common property. One might say that this idea of a community of women is the revealed secret of this as yet wholly crude and unthinking communism. Just as women are to go from marriage into general prostitution, so the whole world of wealth – i.e., the objective essence of man – is to make the transition from the relation of exclusive marriage with the private owner to the relation of universal prostitution with the community. This communism, inasmuch as it negates the personality of man in every sphere, is simply the logical expression of the private property which is this negation. Universal envy constituting itself as a power is the hidden form in which greed reasserts itself and satisfies itself, but in another way. The thoughts of every piece of private property as such are at least turned against richer private property in the form of envy and the desire to level everything down; hence these feelings in fact constitute the essence of competition. The crude communist is merely the culmination of this envy and desire to level down on the basis of a preconceived minimum. It has a definite, limited measure. How little this abolition of private property is a true appropriation is shown by the abstract negation of the entire world of culture and civilization, and the return to the unnatural simplicity of the poor, unrefined man who has no needs and who has not yet even reached the stage of private property, let along gone beyond it.

(For crude communism) the community is simply a community of labor and equality of wages, which are paid out by the communal capital, the community as universal capitalist. Both sides of the relation are raised to an unimaginary universality – labor as the condition in which everyone is placed and capital as the acknowledged universality and power of the community.

Let me be clear here in addressing that Marx is not addressing his own morals about this, nor the morals he might think exist within his "scientific socialism," but the economic issues and how they affect morality.

Something Star Destroyer is having difficulty grasping, though it is expected of ten year olds.

3. Star Destroyer is completely incorrect in pointing out that Marx wants some kind of "free love." It never mentions that at all in the manifesto, this is something he is making up.

4. Star Destroyer seems to think that the Marxists took over in the 1960s. That your perverbial Don Draper was a Marxist, and that it somehow stopped or something. This is incorrect.

5. Tacitly, Star Destroyer assumes that it is no longer common to have multiple sexual partners. This is incorrect.

To this you think the merest mention of spartans and inuit and the false claim by yourself that Star Destroyer is unaware that change occurs will be a huge distraction.

I had hoped that by underlining the fact that Spartans and the Inuit had different conceptions of the family I wouldn't need to spell this all out. I clearly overestimated by audience, though this should have been clear the moment someone brought up the great philosopher Star Destroyer.

My take is this:
The biology of human mating is fairly variable, humans bear some of the characteristics of harem keeping mammals such as gorillas and lions because the males of the species are larger and more aggressive than females. True monogamous species like very many species of bird tend to have males and females of the same size. Humans however only are very slightly prone to harem keeping because males are only 15% larger than females whereas for true harem keeping species the male is much larger than the female than this, so monogamy is the general trend for most of our species and always has been.

Thus mating laws and customs all across the world generally reflect this by coming down around the monogamous pattern though exceptions are possible sometimes to allow a limited kind of harem keeping for those males with conspiciously strong resources. The Muslims overtly allow for up to four wives while Christians, Buddhists, Hindus do not but may, somewhat extra legally, have a mistress on the side all the same.

Other animals don't make stuff and so tend to have exceedingly few possessions so consequently their mating does not tend to have much implication for property transfers. The more legal aspect of human mating which is generally called marriage evolved very particularly to provide a structure for managing property between the mating pair and their offspring. This much is probably the substance of Marx's objection to marriage as he does not want humans owning property. If humans contrary to their nature are not legally allowed to own property they will have a reduced need for for the legal institution of marriage. However "free love" will not be the consequence of reducing human status to that of an animal, for people will still be jealous of sexual rivals just as animals are.

I wish I could say that was as interesting as it was irrelevant.

Anyway, here you go.

The main issue remains that both Star Destroyer and yourself refuse to acknowledge that history moves, can't define Marxist terms, and seem intent in throwing in a bunch of stuff Marx never said.

[SolarCross]

Star Destroyer, and I guess I can't underline this enough, seems to think that the family has never changed as an institution. Marx goes so far as to specify that he means the, "bourgeois family," as an institution.

Let's go back to my original example.

In ancient Sparta, the condition of the family was for the father to live in the barracks with his fellow soldiers--more than likely having sex with them--while his wife kept the land and stayed at home. The father was expected to show his cunning by leaving the barracks now and then and having coitus with his wife.

A child would then be produced. Were it to be found defective, it would be killed. If it were a girl, it would be brought up to be taken; a boy raised as a soldier. One of the lessons that the boy learns is service to the state, the more prominent story is a Spartan boy learning to be cunning by stealing his food. He does this at a market where he steals a fox. When he is caught, he keeps the fox under his cloak and argues about how he is not a thief as the fox chews through him and he dies. This is a valiant way to die.

The boy grows up, goes to the barracks, and the cycle continues.

Compare this with our 21st century Inuit in a fishing boat off of Juno. More than likely he lived in a Christinized household with a Western mentality. In grade school his buddies and him probably joked about how lame it would be to be gay. He made out with some girls, had sex with a few of them, and then needed to find a job. He started fishing in a boat where he doesn't have sex with the other fishermen for a few months out of the year so he can spend his time in the house he owns with the woman that he knocked up his first year of college.

The Spartan and the Inuit are not the same person here. They are not the same form of family.

Star Destroyer loses his shit at the thought of the bourgouis family being abolished because he does not understand that the Spartan family has been abolished. The Inuit traditional family has been abolished. The initial Christian communal family has been abolished.

Virtually only the bourgouis family remains.

Star Destroyer here is not seeing a distinction between "family" and "bourgeois family", which I think is understandable given that "bourgeois" only exists today as propaganda term for marxists, no one else uses it any more and even when it was a common word it wasn't used the same way marxists use it.

That being the case when SD sees marx expect the "abolition of family" he is not excluding in his mind the Spartan husband and wife or the Inuit fisherman with his mate and seeing only the 19th century English engineering entrepreneur and his wife whom he formally married in a Christian Church, which is not unreasonable. There are plenty of trivial and superficial differences between the 19th century English middle class husband and the 21st century Inuit fisherman but the substance of their mating relations follow the same broad pattern: man + woman (not closely related by blood) producing and together parenting their own related by blood children. Even the Spartan soldier with the extremely perverse pressures placed on him isn't diverging all that far from that. That much comes from our biological nature.

When you put that together with marx's call to abolish inheritance, have the state confiscate all property and all this talk about "communities of women" and talk about replacing home education with "social" education, it is not unreasonable to pick up a fairly repugnant vision of what Marx's intends to happen in which this general formula of man + woman (not closely related by blood) producing and together parenting their own related by blood children which any normal person will recognise as the "family" (or the core of it) is to be prohibited.

If that isn't Marx's aim then Marx is not without fault for not being sufficiently articulate to make himself more clearly understood.

[The Immortal Goon]

So you continue to skirt 90% of what I brought up. Fine, I'll go with whatever you see fit to take slim exception to.

Star Destroyer here is not seeing a distinction between "family" and "bourgeois family", which I think is understandable given that "bourgeois" only exists today as propaganda term for marxists, no one else uses it any more and even when it was a common word it wasn't used the same way marxists use it.

That's simply not true. It's a common word with a common definition used in a variety of literary and historical contexts.

Of course, since you and STAR DESTROYER refuse to recognize historical context, I suppose this might be problematic to understand.

That being the case

It is not. Just because you don't read anything historical does not mean it does not exist.

Even the Spartan soldier with the extremely perverse pressures placed on him isn't diverging all that far from that. That much comes from our biological nature.

This is nonsense. You're pretending that there were some kind of magical pressure to a society that wanted to live like some lame white people in your house. The truth is that people have different expectations. I'm sorry that this is difficult for you and Star Destroyer to conceptualize, but your pity party is not the center of the universe.

It's ignorant and arrogant to pretend that the way you feel about something is the way every single person in all of history has always felt.

If that isn't Marx's aim then Marx is not without fault for not being sufficiently articulate to make himself more clearly understood.

Not reading Marx was Marx's fault, not yours. Do you need to be coddled?

[SolarCross]

That's simply not true. It's a common word with a common definition used in a variety of literary and historical contexts.

Of course, since you and STAR DESTROYER refuse to recognize historical context, I suppose this might be problematic to understand.

I can't speak for SD but I am well aware of the historical origins of the word, originally it meant without any hint of pejorative "town dweller", later became associated with those town dwellers professionally engaged in commerce ie: shop keepers and merchants and as a synonym for middle class, then later still obsessively picked up by Marx and fellow travelers to be transformed into a pejorative and synonym for evil, like the word heretic or heathen is for a Catholic.

It isn't used much today except by commies and probably because commies have polluted its meaning with their weird obsessions.

The point is SD is not seeing that the "bourgeois family" is substantially different from any breeding pair like your inuit and spartan. Yes the inuit maybe didn't get married in a church, he just settled down with the girl that gave him a baby, yes maybe the spartan spends a lot of time getting sodomised in the course of his work but still he has a wife who is a woman and who will mother any children that they produce together.

The biological formula of man + woman (not closely related by blood) producing and parenting their own related by blood children as the mainstream way is universal, it's biological. Why indeed should the middle class european of the 19th century get separated out and treated as some weird and unnatural deviation in need of abolition? It's a bit nuts.

This is nonsense. You're pretending that there were some kind of magical pressure to a society that wanted to live like some lame white people in your house. The truth is that people have different expectations. I'm sorry that this is difficult for you and Star Destroyer to conceptualize, but your pity party is not the center of the universe.

It's ignorant and arrogant to pretend that the way you feel about something is the way every single person in all of history has always felt.

There is a biological pressure to mate, and a biological pressure to look after the resulting offspring which is usually felt more strongly by the female than the male. Are you completely unaware of biology?

[The Immortal Goon]

Alright, so your tactic is to completely ignore the perpetual fail, and simplify until you get to, "boys have penises and girls have vaginas."

I think your fail is obvious enough to not bother commenting further upon. You have had to give up even pretending to talk about the Manifesto at all.

[SolarCross]

@The Immortal Goon
Ah so you are not completely unaware of biology.

Since I don't need to school you on the birds and the bees perhaps you will be able to answer the question:

Why indeed should the middle class european of the 19th century get separated out and treated as some weird and unnatural deviation in need of abolition?

[The Immortal Goon]

@The Immortal Goon
Ah so you are not completely unaware of biology.

I'm merely pointed out that of the many points that I, and many others, in this thread brought up: that Star Destroyer can't define a Marxist term, that the Manifesto is dependent upon other work; that the 19th century has contextual issues; that the dialectic is important to understand; that an understanding of the move of history is important; that human interconnections change and the change is relevant; you have decided to say, "Oh yeah? Penis."

Which I guess is suppose is supposed to make you look like something other than a sixth grader.

But sure. It's true. Men have penises and girls have vaginas. Even though you won't concede to history having occurred, I can concede to that.

Since I don't need to school you on the birds and the bees perhaps you will be able to answer the question:

Why indeed should the middle class european of the 19th century get separated out and treated as some weird and unnatural deviation in need of abolition?

It shouldn't.

But I'm dealing with someone that presumably giggles at the word "penis," and ignores anything that has more than two syllables, so I won't waste my time in trying to understand why you think that's a relevant thing to say.

[MB.]

By the way, Mike Wong, who is Star Destroyer.net, now supports universal basic income. But he still hates Star Trek, and hippies. And a bunch of other random shit.

[SolarCross]

By the way, Mike Wong, who is Star Destroyer.net, now supports universal basic income. But he still hates Star Trek, and hippies. And a bunch of other random shit.

Indeed Trek is far more RACIST than Star Wars.

Racism in Star Wars and Star Trek

[MB.]

Oh boy, this conversation is going off the deep end.

We are NOT, I repeat, NOT, EVER going to do star trek vs star wars on this forum again. Not going to happen.

[The Immortal Goon]

Indeed Trek is far more RACIST than Star Wars.

Racism in Star Wars and Star Trek

Let's concentrate on what's important here.

Both Gene Roddenberry and George Lucas had penises. Thus, there is no difference between Star Wars and Star Trek.

/SolarCrossLogic

[SolarCross]

[MB edit: there is no way come heaven or high water we are debating star trek vs star wars]

[SolarCross]

If you are going to delete my post you should delete TIG's too.