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<quote>The disappearance of a 'reactionary class' evidently means: the coming to a social order in which that is not one of the classes. The disappearance of a

<quote>The disappearance of a 'reactionary class' evidently means: the coming to a social order in which that is not one of the classes. The disappearance of a 'dynasty' doesn't mean murder of the ruling family. The disappearance of 'nations' (Nationen) and 'peoples' (Voelker) is the same: not the destruction of individuals, but the formation of some wider social unity, in which those distinctions of Volk don't arise. It is like the disappearance of the Confederacy.</quote> The only way to make people really disappear is to kill them or throw them into a gulag. Why would a ruler go on supporting people that he wants to see disappear? Marx and Engels spent their lives undermining individual rights ("you have the right to be left alone, as long as you don't steal from, kill or defraud other people"), which is the only thing that would have kept these genocides from occuring. I don't believe that this was some unforseeable connection. The bloody language in Engels' writing makes more sense in this context. Historical context does matter, but if you do it to the point where you can't even judge anything in history as good or bad for people, you're just following the current academic fad rather than thinking sensibly. This is especially important when the ideas you're judging are still present in the world around you, and when some aspect of history is still not properly understood in most people's minds, as is the case with the history of Communism.

applicative 16y ago
"The only way to make people really disappear is to kill them or throw them into a gulag." But no one was suggesting making anyone disappear, least of all Engels. All the myriad principalities and duchies of the German world are now gone, except Liechtenstein & Co -- this is an example of what Engels is anticipating and saying would be an 'advance' (he is thinking in this case of those of the southern parts of the Austrian Empire) Those who wanted the unification of Germany didn't want to kill off the people of Schleswig-Holstein! The suggestion is an outrage! Every rational person in the period thought that (1) a world full of petty duchies ruled by the church keeping peasants in darkness, etc etc. was fated to go away and that (2) this would be good; Americans, who were familiar with something better, would have been even more emphatic than Engels. In claiming that the ideas here propounded are the source of all evil, you are claiming that e.g. America is an example of this evil. The claim that Marx and Engels 'spent their lives undermining' individual rights does not come with any evidence. Marx spent his life trying to write a book about the inner nature of the so-called 'capitalistic mode of production', of which he managed to finish one volume. It's a good read, you should try it sometime. Incredibly funny for one thing. That it is somehow all an argument against individual rights is a complete inversion of the actual text. You are as usual employing Russian barbarism as an argument against Marx. You are in fact representing Stalinist propaganda. The idea the the Soviet Union somehow realized something in Marx is pure Stalinism. Marx did nothing appreciable except attempt an analysis -- true or false it matters not -- of the present, specifically capitalistic form of life, without offering the least suggestion for a possible replacement: "I am not writing recipes for the cook-shops of the future". Every attempt to imagine a possible better future society he sneers at as utopianism, Fourierism, Saint Simonism etc etc. The only formula he has for the imagined replacement is "communism", i.e. people living together and making their life together on the basis of thinking out together how to live together and make their lives together -- an ancient expression, another word for democracy -- and one admitting as many interpretations, many of course corrupt.
- maxharris 16y ago
  > The claim that Marx and Engels 'spent their lives undermining' individual rights does not come with any evidence. From http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil332/trmarxII.htm http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil332/trmarxII.htm "Note how much the early Marx is influenced by Hegel: (1) Individualism is a problem to be overcome. (2) Emancipation is the goal, but of a species-being not as an individual. Freedom is identified with the universal (844)." "Private property "is the product of alienated labor, and ... it is the means by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation."" The right to private property is an individual right. If someone is totally deprived of the right to their property, they can't survive: take away someone's food, clothes, home, bed, etc., and they're dead before long. This happened millions of times in the Soviet Union and in China, among other places. You really can't go on pretending that Marx had nothing to do with it!

applicative 16y ago

"The only way to make people really disappear is to kill them or throw them into a gulag." But no one was suggesting making anyone disappear, least of all Engels. All the myriad principalities and duchies of the German world are now gone, except Liechtenstein & Co -- this is an example of what Engels is anticipating and saying would be an 'advance' (he is thinking in this case of those of the southern parts of the Austrian Empire) Those who wanted the unification of Germany didn't want to kill off the people of Schleswig-Holstein! The suggestion is an outrage! Every rational person in the period thought that (1) a world full of petty duchies ruled by the church keeping peasants in darkness, etc etc. was fated to go away and that (2) this would be good; Americans, who were familiar with something better, would have been even more emphatic than Engels. In claiming that the ideas here propounded are the source of all evil, you are claiming that e.g. America is an example of this evil. The claim that Marx and Engels 'spent their lives undermining' individual rights does not come with any evidence. Marx spent his life trying to write a book about the inner nature of the so-called 'capitalistic mode of production', of which he managed to finish one volume. It's a good read, you should try it sometime. Incredibly funny for one thing. That it is somehow all an argument against individual rights is a complete inversion of the actual text. You are as usual employing Russian barbarism as an argument against Marx. You are in fact representing Stalinist propaganda. The idea the the Soviet Union somehow realized something in Marx is pure Stalinism. Marx did nothing appreciable except attempt an analysis -- true or false it matters not -- of the present, specifically capitalistic form of life, without offering the least suggestion for a possible replacement: "I am not writing recipes for the cook-shops of the future". Every attempt to imagine a possible better future society he sneers at as utopianism, Fourierism, Saint Simonism etc etc. The only formula he has for the imagined replacement is "communism", i.e. people living together and making their life together on the basis of thinking out together how to live together and make their lives together -- an ancient expression, another word for democracy -- and one admitting as many interpretations, many of course corrupt.

maxharris 16y ago
> The claim that Marx and Engels 'spent their lives undermining' individual rights does not come with any evidence. From http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil332/trmarxII.htm http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil332/trmarxII.htm "Note how much the early Marx is influenced by Hegel: (1) Individualism is a problem to be overcome. (2) Emancipation is the goal, but of a species-being not as an individual. Freedom is identified with the universal (844)." "Private property "is the product of alienated labor, and ... it is the means by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation."" The right to private property is an individual right. If someone is totally deprived of the right to their property, they can't survive: take away someone's food, clothes, home, bed, etc., and they're dead before long. This happened millions of times in the Soviet Union and in China, among other places. You really can't go on pretending that Marx had nothing to do with it!