: : About Marx/Engels and democracy:: : I did a word-search of the MECW on the Web of the word "democracy"...
: I'm pretty underawed by THAT sort of scholarship, Sam.
SDF: The whole MECW and much of Trotsky etc. are on the Web, it can be word-searched to your heart's delight. I was especially interested in this.
: Marx was fine with a vanguard---as my previous quotations from the 'First Address of the Central Committee' make perfectly clear---as long as it was a Communist vanguard.
SDF: Those guys thought the revolution was going to happen tomorrow, tomorrow as of 1852. No wonder they gave up on democratic participation in 1850. BTW, I never saw any refutation of any of the Braunthal quotes, no proof he was lying, and no real-life plot to install a vanguard at the head of the First International. Whatever. There's no WWMD sticker on my car. There's a better way, too.
: : Reread "Critique of the Gotha Programme". Still haven't found an endorsement of the word "equality".
: 'From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs' ring a bell?
SDF: Yeah, it doesn't have the word "equality" in it and in fact implies the OPPOSITE, that people are UNEQUAL but that socialism can make that irrelevant by meeting the principle of SUFFICIENCY instead. From each regardless of their INEQUALITIES in ability, to each according to their INEQUALITIES in need. Is Gee helping you with your command of logic, or do you just hate NJ so much you're clinging to this line of misinterpretation? Marx simply wasn't a defender of "equality," but rather an opponent of want and unfreedom.
