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You just got Marxism mixed up with the dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union. Please read the Communist Manifesto before you lambas

You just got Marxism mixed up with the dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union. Please read the Communist Manifesto before you lambast it with an uninformed critique.

jerf 15y ago
The Communist Manifesto leads directly to the "dictatorial regimes of the 20th century". The Communist Manifesto is not founded in any reality (psychological, political, economic), and as it is applied but fails to bring the promised benefits as it is completely ungrounded in reality, it also encourages the leaders to come to the conclusion that the only reason this can be is that the people aren't trying hard enough. This requires a stronger centralized rule to fix the problem and force the people to comply, but strengthening the centralized rule just causes more problems because centralized rule doesn't work, and it certainly doesn't work with the horrifyingly wrong Communist economic model. This causes yet more centralized power to be amassed and yet more crackdowns, until it crumbles under its own weight. It's utterly predictable, mostly because we've seen so many try to apply it and fail in exactly the same way each time. We're well past the point where we can say the Communist Manifesto directly leads to dictatorial regimes. I will recant this statement when someone manages to apply it without turning into a dictatorial regime, but don't hold your breath for that.
- ashconnor 15y ago
  You'll have to detail these applications because having studied 20th century history I haven't seen any countries implement anything that looks remotely socialist, except 1930s Barcelona. Now were I disagree with Marxism is the advocation of the "Dictatorship of the proletariat" which I believe results in these state capitalist dictatorial regimes. I'm not an intellectual, don't take my work for it. Chomsky is a good source of information regarding the Soviet Union: http://youtu.be/K4Tq4VE8eHQ http://youtu.be/K4Tq4VE8eHQ
mynameishere 15y ago
This is called the "No true Scotsman" fallacy, and it's one of the sloppiest fallacies you can commit. It's astonishing how many people cling to it with regards to Marxism. The same thing can be said of anything. The Nazi regime wasn't really fascist. Obama isn't really a liberal. Bush wasn't really a conservative, etc, etc. All of those statements are true. And no true conservative would start a war of aggression. And no true Marxist would butcher millions. In fact, the Soviets were constantly justifying their policies based on the writings of Marx and Lennon.
- ehsanu1 15y ago
  Based on Wikipedia's definition of this fallacy, I don't think your examples fit. From Wikipedia: No true Scotsman is an informal logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule. The key part is "without reference to any specific objective rule", which I don't think you're taking into account.
- ashconnor 15y ago
  This isn't the case. Marx differs from other ideologies in that it was Karl Marx himself that wrote The Communist Manifesto. I can't do the same for most other ideologies; there's no Conservative Manifesto as it were. With that in mind we can take Marx's book and compare it against history in these countries. If you do this then you will come to the conclusion that these regimes were not Marxist and in fact not even close to socialism.
smsm42 15y ago
Here's the danger of making assumptions about people you don't know on the internet. As it happens, I not only read the manifesto, I was born and raised in the country that had the study of the discipline of "Scientific communism" a requirement for getting any higher education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_communism So I have a very good reason to assume that my background in both theory and practice of Marxist regimes is no less than yours. While one could have legitimate differences on the merits of teaching of Marx, it is obvious to any informed person that they were presented as the scientific basis for building new kind of society both in theory and in practice. Even if the theory was false and the practice made it degrade into dogmatic repetition of meaningless drivel, it was still presented as the scientific approach and meant to be so.

You just got Marxism mixed up with the dictatorial regimes of the 20th century, such as the Soviet Union. Please read the Communist Manifesto before you lambast it with an uninformed critique.

jerf 15y ago

The Communist Manifesto leads directly to the "dictatorial regimes of the 20th century". The Communist Manifesto is not founded in any reality (psychological, political, economic), and as it is applied but fails to bring the promised benefits as it is completely ungrounded in reality, it also encourages the leaders to come to the conclusion that the only reason this can be is that the people aren't trying hard enough. This requires a stronger centralized rule to fix the problem and force the people to comply, but strengthening the centralized rule just causes more problems because centralized rule doesn't work, and it certainly doesn't work with the horrifyingly wrong Communist economic model. This causes yet more centralized power to be amassed and yet more crackdowns, until it crumbles under its own weight. It's utterly predictable, mostly because we've seen so many try to apply it and fail in exactly the same way each time. We're well past the point where we can say the Communist Manifesto directly leads to dictatorial regimes. I will recant this statement when someone manages to apply it without turning into a dictatorial regime, but don't hold your breath for that.

ashconnor 15y ago
You'll have to detail these applications because having studied 20th century history I haven't seen any countries implement anything that looks remotely socialist, except 1930s Barcelona. Now were I disagree with Marxism is the advocation of the "Dictatorship of the proletariat" which I believe results in these state capitalist dictatorial regimes. I'm not an intellectual, don't take my work for it. Chomsky is a good source of information regarding the Soviet Union: http://youtu.be/K4Tq4VE8eHQ http://youtu.be/K4Tq4VE8eHQ

mynameishere 15y ago

This is called the "No true Scotsman" fallacy, and it's one of the sloppiest fallacies you can commit. It's astonishing how many people cling to it with regards to Marxism. The same thing can be said of anything. The Nazi regime wasn't really fascist. Obama isn't really a liberal. Bush wasn't really a conservative, etc, etc. All of those statements are true. And no true conservative would start a war of aggression. And no true Marxist would butcher millions. In fact, the Soviets were constantly justifying their policies based on the writings of Marx and Lennon.

ehsanu1 15y ago
Based on Wikipedia's definition of this fallacy, I don't think your examples fit. From Wikipedia: No true Scotsman is an informal logical fallacy, an ad hoc attempt to retain an unreasoned assertion.[1] When faced with a counterexample to a universal claim, rather than denying the counterexample or rejecting the original universal claim, this fallacy modifies the subject of the assertion to exclude the specific case or others like it by rhetoric, without reference to any specific objective rule. The key part is "without reference to any specific objective rule", which I don't think you're taking into account.
ashconnor 15y ago
This isn't the case. Marx differs from other ideologies in that it was Karl Marx himself that wrote The Communist Manifesto. I can't do the same for most other ideologies; there's no Conservative Manifesto as it were. With that in mind we can take Marx's book and compare it against history in these countries. If you do this then you will come to the conclusion that these regimes were not Marxist and in fact not even close to socialism.

smsm42 15y ago

Here's the danger of making assumptions about people you don't know on the internet. As it happens, I not only read the manifesto, I was born and raised in the country that had the study of the discipline of "Scientific communism" a requirement for getting any higher education: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_communism http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_communism So I have a very good reason to assume that my background in both theory and practice of Marxist regimes is no less than yours. While one could have legitimate differences on the merits of teaching of Marx, it is obvious to any informed person that they were presented as the scientific basis for building new kind of society both in theory and in practice. Even if the theory was false and the practice made it degrade into dogmatic repetition of meaningless drivel, it was still presented as the scientific approach and meant to be so.