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: 'The mortgage that the peasant has on heavenly blessings guarantees the mortgage that the bourgeois has on peasant lands.'---Marx.Interesting, the Bible refutes ownership of land and property in a more poetic manner though, I think you'll find the Capitalist selectively enforces and preaches the bible and the end result has very little to do with God or anything of that sort.
: : [I] would look for something more like 80% state owned, 20% private or 90% state owned, 10% private. I'm CERTAINLY not a Marxist, precisely because of the atheistic implications.
I think there's better reasons for being "not a Marxist" than it's atheistic dimension, infact modern society and the tolerance and rationality exercised by believers would have pleased the then athiests to such an extent that they would conern themselves with it no longer.
: Does belief in God negate class interests? God is certainly no elected official! Therefore, belief in God (supreme authority) is incompatible with democracy.
Really? I think you'll find the issue of power, inequality and division was introduced by Satan not God, Satan who was not protesting the inequality etc. but complaining that it was not to his personal advantage. I assume we are speaking metaphorically for the benefit of atheists and agnostics but is it not very democratic to suggest that anyone who would lead must be servile and appreciate, through experience, the position of the very least?
God isnt elected but it is like saying is every intellectual genious elected? Any real or perceived inequity is a result of the differing capacities not oppression or power, was Marx elected as the supreme source of socialist knowledge? Then how did that come about? It was less than beneficial, especially for the people of Russia.
: And this business about 'just a little private ownership.' Who gets the tiny slice? For that matter, who is the 'state'? Please define your terms in real---not heavenly---language!
That is slightly unfair, I think NJ is battling with the question of property in a Socialist republic honourably. We'd all in theory love to see equality and sharing but would be like to pass around CD's and get them back scraped or lead our car and get it back with a dent? The fact is property in some sense is legitimate, Anarchists like Proudhon call it possession or the product of labour, but Capitalism or political systems that allow people to acquire power through it's monopoly is not legitimate.
That state again, always with the state.
None.
