Again, I have to reply:
> CB: As The Manifesto says, democracy is the working
> class as the ruling class, given that the working
> class is the overwhelming majority of the
> people, and democracy is the rule of the majority of
> the people as a whole.
My goodness, what an innovative and subtle reading -- and so completely oblivious to the obvious other complementary and qualifying statements Marx makes. Charles, I'm absolutely charmed that you should take "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte" so seriously. But no matter! We now have a scientific discovery to rival the ones put forward in Proudhon's _Philosophy of Poverty_! *MARX WAS SIMPLY OUT TO MAXIMIZE HAPPINESS -- THE GREATEST GOOD OF THE GREATEST NUMBER*! The dictatorship of the proletariat -- the actually existing examples of which still bought and sold labor-power, but from the masses as a whole, and only giving in exchange the survival of the masses as a whole, indifferent to the nullity of actually existing individuals (some slight Hegelian residue there, tsk, tsk) -- must be indeed an Eden of rational maximization of happiness. It is the exclusive realm of Freedom from hate speech, Equality of immiseration, Common property, and Lenin. Freedom from hate speech because because both buyer and seller of labor power both recognize the authority of the happiness maximizing state, which has put aside such silly notions as the free development of each as the free development of all. Equality of immiseration, because the poverty of the producers matches the poverty of their material and social conditions, and we must, must we not, build the a solution to a maximization problem upon the assumption of equal exchange. Common property because each disposes only of the nothing they already have. And Lenin, because all this has been centrally and democratically decided. The only force bringing them together and putting them into relation with each other is force.
Let the postmodernists have their irony. That leaves more sarcasm for me. And having said that, let me conclude with a direct statement: the notion that Lenin had a *MONOPOLY* (note the choice of words there sir) on the interpretation of Marx is as petit-bourgeois a notion as I've ever seen. And the sight of this one correct interpretation being passed on from generation to generation with little or no accumulation and then actually declining in importance and power compared to other interpretations -- hmm, well that actually looks like feudal production, now doesn't it? And we know how significant feudal production is today, don't we?
An idea whose time has come has no time to waste. Marx's ideas are urgently needed today, and covering them up with Lenin's embalmed corpse is...well, *counterrevolutionary* is a word that comes to mind, but I wouldn't want to say anything inflammatory. At least not until the Central Committee of the Cyberian Communist Party has resolved the difficult questions of hate speech and fascist speech. -- Curtiss, who believes that crude economic determinist arguments and rhetoric aren't the sole property of Leninists, either.
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