Marxism -- fatal cure for an imaginary disease (was Commie nonsense)

From: Michael LaTorra (mike99@lascruces.com)
Date: Sun Jun 18 2000 - 15:41:34 MDT


"Terry W. Colvin" fortean1@frontiernet.net allegedly wrote:
Subject: Re: FWD (EXT) Re: Commie nonsense

I thought we can only evaluate
an experiment in a scientific sense
if the (starting) conditions suggested
by the theory were set.

As we know, this was not the case,
Marx recommended 1. the economically,
technologically most developed
countries that were producing goods
in abundance 2. Countries with
reasonable standard of literacy and
some experience in (bourgois) democracy.

Mike LaTorra replies:
Do you mean countries like Germany? Or Czechoslovakia? Or perhaps Hungary?
Or do you restrict your classification of "most advanced" to the USA at the
beginning of the 20th century?
  If the countries I listed first are acceptable candidates for Marxism,
then clearly the experiment has been tried and failed, but not for lack of
trying. The blood, sweat and tears of numerous unwilling "experimental
subjects" show that the only thing most of them were willing to risk their
lives for was trying to escape from their respective "workers' paradise"
States.
  However, if you think only the USA qualified for Marxism, then please
explain why, when Leon Trotsky visited America, he concluded that it did not
need a revolution. Was he insufficiently Marxist for you?

Terry:
The failure was not due to "communism"
but to its absence.

Mike:
LOL! Are you the Pope of Marxism, or do you have some evidence and arguments
to support your pontifications?

Terry:
So this is the usual ignorant and crappie
strawman propaganda....

Mike:
Yes, that's certainly the way your statements seem to me. I have made a
thorough study of Soviet Marxism using documents in English and Russian, and
although I can fault the Russian Marxists for much, I cannot fault them for
being insufficiently Marxist.

Terry:
...and I won't join Forteana
to put them right... but Terry - pass this on,
I'm sure it is off-topic there, too, but if anyone
wants a (decent!) argument, you may pass my email
address...

Mike:
A decent argument is not what you have given us, but merely in your words
"the usual ignorant and crappie strawman propaganda" for which Marxists have
become justly famous. If you want to debate the facts of Marxism in
practice, I've got the facts to back up my claims. If you want to debate
Marxist theory, then please don't waste my time because Marxist theory bears
as little resemblance to reality as cartoon physics.
  Look, if Marxism is so great, yet it has failed everywhere it has been
tried with utterly catastrophic results, then why would any advanced country
want to try it? Just to disprove Marx once and for all at an even greater
cost in human misery?

Regards to friends of freedom everywhere,

Michael LaTorra
mike99@lascruces.com



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