...Critical free thinking means your brainwashed? has anyone a dictionary handy?!: If Marx meant what you claim he meant, why didn't he refer to the ballot box? Did he not know the difference between the ballot box and force?
OK some background facts, until Thomas Paine wrote commonsense and the rights of man democracy popularly meant anarchy that is why universal sufferage was used to refer to electoralism in Britain or other advanced nations reluctantly accepting the accountablity of the government to the governed.
If Marx had refered to democracy he would have appeared an anarchist.
The history of the Social Democratic (Marxist) Parties in Europe post Marx are a clear example of why Marx was a ballet boxer, there are also excellent written sources available from the DSA on Marx's electorial inclination.
He famously said that only fools would be goaded into street fighting when the ballot box existed as an alternative when he was striving for the expulsion of the Blanquists (statists usurpers like Lenin) and Bakuninists (anarchists) from the international.
:Your interpretation is bogus and disengenuous.
Why is that? Is this an indictment of NJ's Character just because he disagrees with you? That hardly seems fair, neither does it seem grounded in the tolerance and critical empathy of free politics not to mention democracy.
:He said precisely what he meant.
Well then the sources speak for themselves as NJ has said Marx said that in Holland and the US Socialism would come non-violently through the ballot box.
:Just look at the many times that force has been used to acheive a Marxist utopia.
I think you'll want to differentiate between Marx and the Marxists.
: : Vietnam again? I suppose you preferred the violence of the Right when they killed 3 million Vietnamese. Any terrorist acts the Left committed in the US (and I don't really approve, I would prefer passive disobedience myself) were in reposne to teh atrocities committed by the Right.
: Your position then is classic amongnst the Left: I'll decide when violence is necessary because I know better than everybody else.
And this is not mirrored on the right of the political spectrum?
It's not the left that is organising armed militias all over america or havent you noticed.
: The Right killed three million Viet-Namese? Seems that I recall something about the N. Vietnamese invading the South. Think that those deaths would have taken place if Ho Chi Minh hadn't invaded? Ever hear about self-defense?
Yeah, so what the fuck where the US doing in Vietnam? Self-defending the Vietnamese?
: Yes, Viet-Nam now, Viet-Nam tomorrow and Viet-Nam always. The Leftists of this country showed their true colors in that conflict and no one should forget their pusillanimous behavior towards the duty owed to their own country and their contributions to helping the enemy in time of war.
Where do you get off? It's not the place of some sanctimonious tax dodging jingo to tell any decent citizen that they have a "duty" to go and be executed in the course of someone elses bloody cause.
The enamy was a backwater would be lucky if they ranked as third world nation buddy and remember they kicked your fucking ass out of their country and blaming the Left, what is this phantom? "the left" where never that organised, for your defeat in an unjust slaughter changes nothing.
: Particularly the "intelligentsia" of that era.
Anti-intellectualism raises it's ugly head once again, when are you all going to accept that:
A) Your not the worlds fucking saviours and subserviance to US foreign policy is not freedom at it's best.
B) You should keep your noses out of other peoples domestics.
