: Of the pro-collectivist regulars who also attend this board, I believe Samuel Day Fassbinder, Barry Stoller, Nikhil Jakiumar, and Red Deathy have all espoused the following sentiment in one form or another in response to accusations of the depravity exercised within Soviet or Chicom systems. That response goes something like this;: "The Soviets and Chicoms never implemented pure Marxist/communist principles so we cannot judge the depravity of the USSR or China to be indicative or representative of Marxist ideology."
: This response always reveals to me the ego and character of the person propounding this point. While my point here will undoubtedly be construed as an ad hominem attack upon the character of those mentioned, I feel it is quite appropriate for a man to examine himself to see and eventually acknowledge bias in his viewpoints.
: To suggest, "pure Marxist/communist ideology has never been tried" is to posit one of the most convenient arguments available on behalf of this economic theory. Obviously, if the world offers no examples of the pure application of Marxist principles, the world offers no example of pure Marxist failures either.
: To that I answer; A dishonest intellectual is the essence of uselessness.
: Intellectuals can only serve a valuable purpose in this world when their ideas translate into practical solutions for problems or provide a furtherance of a paradigm or a shift of a paradigm toward that goal. The work product of a dishonest intellectual is therefore, nothing. If the world offers no example of the implementation of pure Marxist ideology, esoteric and evasive "pure" Marxism exists only somewhere deep within the bowels of the intellectual community. It is, therefore, relegated to a far less practical function of brain fodder for sporting intellects. Regardless of the utility Marxism serves in that context, one's perception of Marxism should never be presented as ubiquitous or axiomatic reasoning. The definition of "pure" as it relates to Marxism must be established and agreed to before any implementation of it will ever take place on a wide scale.
Let me interrupt your rant for a moment to point out that there are OBVIOUS DIFFERENCES between RD and SDF, on one hand, and NJ and myself on the other.
RD and SDF impugn all real-life models of communism for theoretical models whereas NJ and myself have supported some actual instances of applied communism---however conditionally.
Nonetheless, criticizing communism after it has been applied for such a short span of time (less than a century) is imperious.
By your standards, one should criticize capitalism after its first appearance. Let us consider England and America in the early 1800s. Such a capitalism was without doubt harsh and dictatorial. No less so than any of the real-life examples of communism that give you such clarity of criticism.
The rest of your points have now been obviated.
Try again.
None.
