Word up to Chomsky.
>As for Marx, does anything at all survive? For
>more than a century, Marxism was throughout continental Europe the
>leading intellectual framework for thinking about how political
>institutions can realize the nature of man.
Am I wrong in thinking this is a bit of an exaggeration?
>IQ is important in
>determining life's outcomes and IQ is not acquired by merit, then one
>legitimate line of argument is that the government should intervene
>to make up for the unfairnesses of nature and capitalism. What we did
>not realize was how important the egalitarian premise is to the
>worldview of the Left. It is not enough that governments guarantee
>equal rights to all; it is not even enough that governments intervene
>***to equalize outcomes***. It must also be true that inequalities in
>individuals are the result of the social, economic, and political
>system, rather than of inherent differences in ability. I am still
>not sure why this premise is so important-the intellectual case for
>redistributionist policies does not depend on it-but it is.
Do the implications of "to each according to his needs" entail an equalization of outcomes, or merely a floor level of decent living conditions?
>But eugenics is in
>disrepute because of Nazism, which has led us to forget that before
>Nazism it referred to a movement centered in Britain that was
>respectable and especially popular among intellectuals.
I remember Cockburn writing about how Americans were at the forefront of the movement.
Peter Kilander