Justin Schwartz: Not everyone here is a Marxist, but we all here see the world through Marx colored glasses. Hereabouts, that isn't an insult. In fact, the denial of it is an insult. We are not dogmatic about it, and we welcome libertarians, conservatives, and liberals who come to learn and teach; we have had several at various points on the list. But we are not going to defend our general left perspective against an all points attack that presumes, as the mainstream perspective in our society presumes, that we have the burden of proof on everything. We have to do that in the outside world all the time anyway. If you want to play on those terms, and can swallow your revulsion at our Through the Looking Glass assumptions, contributing what you can, you'll get along. Otherwise people will regard you as a troll.
+++++++++++++++++++++
I can see how my activities might be regarded as trolling, so let me say here that I acknowledge problems with capitalism. However, I find the blanket assertion of capitalism's responsibility for more deaths than marxism to be uncompelling on it's face, even Davis must resort to external factors such as weather to ground his claim. Marxist regimes did not have an overt goal of thinning their populations, did they? Why should we assume capitalism does, just because there was a famine and key individuals hardened their hearts to the plight of the hardest hit? The abuses documented in history are not properly saddled on any economic system in my view, although some economic systems do lend themselves to these and other sorts of abuse more readily than others. In all cases, it is the people involved, and not the economic system per se, that deserve blame.
George Thomas
-- _______________________________________________ Get your free email from http://www.graffiti.net