>>> Curtiss Leung <bofftagstumper at yahoo.com> 03/27/00 09:48PM >>>
Charles:
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
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CB: Not really. This is pretty much straight forward. The direct quote is:
"...the first step in the revolution by the working class, is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class, to establish democracy."
I think you mean you just never realized the obvious here before.
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-- and so completely oblivious to the obvious other complementary and qualifying statements Marx makes.
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CB: No, completely conscious and learned about Marx's writings on these issues.
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Charles, I'm absolutely charmed that you should take "Il n'y a pas de hors-texte" so seriously.
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CB: You are charmed by your own dillusions, not by what I am saying.
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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*!
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CB: Oh do we. Surely, you not talking about what I said, since I didn't say this. What I said was that Marx and Engels conceived of democracy as the working class as the ruling class. And as I just showed you above, that is exactly what they said.
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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.
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CB: This is a bit hard to follow. You might want to reiterate it.
The dictatorship of the proletariat is socialist democracy, just as bourgeois democracy occurs in a dictatorship of the bourgeoisie. That Marxism thinks in contradictions is indeed Hegelian dialectic, but conceived materially. As Lenin explains, democracy is still a form of state. There is still a repressive apparatus.
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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.
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CB: Hey, I tell jokes as much as anybody. You might want to make yours a little more succinct.
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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?
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CB: These are not accurate descriptions of how I see Lenin in relation to Marx AND ENGELS ( note the choice of words there, buddy). What is petit bourgeois by your definition ?
Think of it as a science, like Marx, Engels and Lenin did. Lenin has to be updated , just as Lenin updated Engels and Marx. Lenin represents an "accumulation" of developments since Engels and Marx's era. There are developments and accumulations since Lenin. For example, the Soviet Union has existed and ended.
It is the opposite of a religion, but it is a discipline like other scientists. There is a dialectic between discipline and openness to new developments and discoveries. The people who think as you do above mistake the rigor of the discipline aspect for dogma.
________ 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.
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CB: I lkkkljkj;jkdka
-- Curtiss, who believes that crude economic determinist arguments and rhetoric aren't the sole property of Leninists, either.
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