Vote for Karl Marx!

[Wojtek Sokolowski]

At 12:03 AM 12/17/99 -0600, Carrol wrote:
>
>
>Art McGee wrote:
>
>> "Real" Marxists would not seek to promote the efforts of one man over
>> other equally revolutionary people.
>>
>> "Real" Marxists would instead be trying to bump Nelson Mandela and Martin
>> Luther King up higher, along with Marx, and help keep Gandhi where he is.
>
>I'll buy your negative argument, but your positive suggestions are as focused
>
>on the last century or so and on Europe as the vote for Marx. Gandhi is
>a vile choice, and if you are going to pick a 20th century African leader
>it should probably be Lumumba or Cabral.
>
>Was "the world" really enough of a single entity during the last 1000
>years to make the choice of one or even 10 greatest "men" sensible?
>
>And if you must pick a western figure from the last two centuries
>(and Mandela and Gandhi are in many ways western figures),
>then Marx makes sense because you find his impetus behind the
>achievements of so many other men and women. Perhaps one
>should select some who are anonymous (or at least not known
>to me by name): the last defenders of the Alhambra against
>the Castilian barbarians.

And if we are to pick a *national* leader, then why not Lenin or Mao?

A clear advantage of Marx over all of the above is that he was a true
internationalist, rejecting nationalism and national identities. Hence my
vote for him on the bbc site.

For the same reason, I would vote for Rosa Luxemburg as the woman of the
millenium - a great thinker and a true internationalist who, unlike most of
the German left, did not abandon her pacifism and internationalism to
defend the vaterland in world war 1.

wojtek