JM: But today, where is the dream
: of Marx, Lenin, Gorki, Trotsky, and Engels? SDF: Well, first of all, "communism" is going to get nowhere if its defenders are endlessly tied up in the defense of mass murderers like Lenin, whose Third International did more than anything to destroy Communist Parties around the world (Source: History of the International, 3 vols., by Julius Braunthal). The point is that any legitimate communist dream looks to the future, and not merely to people who have been dead for decades. Secondly, what made Marx important is that he championed a way of looking at human history that he called historical materialism, that was the basis for his dream. I presume you've read Marx and all that. What theory of human history is your dream based upon?
(skipping)
JM: Well, the Marxist Manifesto 2000 project is a meeting of all the major and current Communist minds to create a second Communist manifesto involving free elections, computer technologies, and the lessons we've learned from the failed Soviet Union.
SDF: I thought it was that "backstabber Gorbachev" who brought free elections to the Soviet Union. The point is that "free elections" mean a commitment to allowing voters, and not merely the vanguard of the revolution, to select the leadership.
Well, anyway, today the masses are in a trance brought on by excessive exposure to advertising, a trance which will end when capitalism collapses with certainty, i.e. not soon, but possibly within your lifetime. Only then will communists have a dim outside chance of making anything of the ensuing chaos.
