Comparing the Clinton regime to the Stalin regime

[Jacob Segal]

>\  The central theme
>>of Marxian socialism is that people should be treated as ends in
>>themselves, and not in the phony atomistic sense of Kantian liberalism, but
>>ends in themselves as species-beings developing themselves.
>
Rakesh states:
>Jacob, such ethical socialism is the central theme of misty pre Marxian
>revolutionary thought. Marxian socialism has an objective foundation. As
>Rosa Luxemburg put it:
>
>"According to Marx, the rebellion of the workers, the class struggle, is
>only the ideological reflection of the objective historical necessity of
>socialism, resulting from the objective impossibility of capitalism at a
>certain stage. Of course, that does not mean (it still seems necessary to
>point out those basics of Marxism to the 'experts') that the historical
>process has to be, or even could be, exhausted to the very limit of this
>historical impossibility. Long before this, the objective tendency of
>capitalist development in this direction is sufficient to produce such a
>social and political sharpening of contradictions in society that they must
>terminate. But these social and political contradictions are essentially
>only a product of the economic indefensibility of capitalism. The situation
>continues to sharpen as this becomes increasinly obvious. If we assume with
>the 'experts' the economic infinity of capital accumulation, then the vital
>foundation on which socialism rests will disappear. We take refuge in the
>mist of pre Marxist systems and the schools which attempted to deduce
>socialism solely on the basis of the injustice and evil of today's world
>and revolutionary determination of the working classes."
>
>In The Accumulation of Capital--An Anti Critique. MR Press, 1972, p.76
>
>rb

I think Marx criticized ethical socialism for positing moral ideals
independently of social reality.  But Marx had his own understanding of the
good life, as seen in On The Jewish Questions and elsewhere.  The problem
with ethical socialists for Marx is that they were either impotent or
potentially dictatorial.

In another message, Charles Brown says I confuse Marxism with pacifism.
Marx was not against violence, obviously, since for him capitalism was a
process of systematic violence.  However, again, Marx did not believe that
socialism could be merely imposed.  This was the misunderstanding of Lenin,
which Martov and the Menshiviks knew quite well and were imprisioned or
killed for their sins.

Jacob Segal