You take offense too easily. As Carrol can tell you, when I insult you, you won't mistake it. (I think I called him a bucket of rancid pigshit. To be be fair, I thought he had called me a cop. Now that's unforgivable. Being a lawyer is bad enough ;)).I have, in fact, been exceptionally fair and patientw ith you, and I am being so now. Rather more than I usually am. OK, I missed your transition period argument. But I can construct how one might go. Referring to the Critique of the Gotha Program, where Marx distinguishes between the phases of communism, and states that in the lower phase, remuneration would be according to contribution, but in the higher phase, when the productive forces unfettered, according to need, you might argue that Marx thinks that the lower development of the productive forcesd require a state in the first phase of communism. Unfortunately this argument runs smack into the text, where Marx clearly says that there would have to be institutions in the lower phase that performed some of the functions that state institutions perform, but it's quite clear that does not think of these as state institutions. (Personally I think all this is utter nonsense, but we are talking about the interpreattion of Marx's writings.) I don't know why you are stuck on this. It is true that Marx maintains some things, at least some of the time, that you might call economic determinism. The weak dependency thesis in the argument above, that certain social formations require a high development of the productive forces, is probaly too weak to really count, but Marx has other more genuinely ED views. He Also maintains that before you get to socailsim, the workers need to establish a workers state. The propositions are not really connected, eithers o far as you have shown or so fara s I think. Both of them are fair game for discussion. You might easily attack either seperately. You have done sow ith regard to the latter, commenting on the tilerably dismal record of Marxist statebuilding. Why do you need more? Why is the connection so important? As to the supposed slanders of your heroes, as I suggested, the validity or invalidity of the ideas is independent of the personal attitudes of the people who propound them. As to Makhno, since i was running on distant memories, I did a teeny bit of quick research. Evan Mawdley barely mentions Makhno in his The Russian Civil War; W. Bruce Lincoln has more discussion in Red Victory, but nothing one way or the other on antisemitism.The following link, by an a anarchist defender of Makhno <A href="http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1346/Makintro.htm">http://www.geocities.com/CapitolHill/Congress/1346/Makintro.htm</A> has a  chapter on antisemitism, in which he admits that Makhno's followers included antisemitic progromchiks, but argues that Makhno himself disapporoved. His concrete evidence is pretty thin, M apparently had one antisemetic sloganeer shot and a group of progromchikji disciplined. The author notes that some Jews fought along with the Makhnovites, but that doesn't show that there wasn't antisemitism, including at the top. After all. lots of Jews were Bolshies, and under Stalin, anyway, there was antisemitism all the way up. So, I conclude that so far as I know, we don't know if Makhno was an antisemite, but we know that lots of his followers were. That's true of the Bolshies too, except we do know that (Stalin aprt) none of the old Bolshies were antisemites. Lots of their supporters were. Bakunin is a clearer case. His antisemitism, which was quite virulent, is documented, among other places, in the vey hostile discussion by Hal Draper, Karl Marx's Theory of Revolution, Vol. IV: Critique of Other Socialisms, 291ff. Draper is pretty biased and vituperative, but he gives sources with references. He quotes language like the following from 1871: "this whole Jewish world which constitutes a single exploiting sect, a sort of bloodsucker people, a collective parasite. . . " As I say, this sort of bigotry doesn't mean that Bakunin wasn't right about other important things. jks          n/ a <blackkronstadt@hotmail.com> wrote: <BLOCKQUOTE style="PADDING-LEFT: 5px; MARGIN-LEFT: 5px; BORDER-LEFT: #1010ff 2px solid">You've essentially dealt with my arugement against the marxist need for a necessity of a workers state under a transitional period, being linked to economic determinism, by ignoring it, and instead focusing on my mention of anarchist theory showing the fallcy of marxist theory, insisting this is my only arguement and that it is not in and of itself sufficient. in essence, you're throwing an insult. kind of like the marxist slander you repeated against Mahkno, which was quite inexcusable. >I'm starting to doubt whether discussion with N/A on thsi point is >worthwile, but I don't think the problem is with the attribution of ED to >Marx. Hw sometimes maintained several theses that, in suitably strong form, >could plausibly be described that way, and many Marxists have thought that >these theses were actually true, Gerry Cohe n being the latest. ED is not an >insult, it's just a thesis. It might or might not be true in some sense. In >the weak sense that therea re economic conditions for the existence of >certain social formations, necessary but not sufficient, I regard it as >obviously true. And so do you. Communism or even socialism is impossible in >a complex society unless the priductive forces are highly developed. >The problem with N/A is that he fails to see that he has not identified any >sense of ED in which that doctrine is tied to Marx's thesis that the >workers need a workers state. When this is pointed out, he shifts ground >entirely and starts talking about how anarchism has been vindicated against >Marxist theories of the state because it weas prophetic. That has nothing >to do with ED. Since there has been no progress on this score in the >thread, I'm signing off the discussion. >jks > C arrol Cox <CBCOX@ILSTU.EDU>wrote: > >Carrol Cox wr! ote: > > > > > > > > I think you are wasting your time, Justin, in arguing with people who > > only want to have a label to put on what they don't like so they can > > forget about it. > > > > Endless chatter about "determinism" is childish. > > > >To avoid misconstrual, and to stick to my metaphor: I think Justin is >attempting to give adult answers to childish questions. And that is >usually a waste of breath. For the most part those who babble of Marx's >(or Marxists') "economic determinism" simply don't know what they are >saying, and are not about to take any answer except simple confirmation >seriously. They will not be able to _see_ or _hear_ any answer which >does not conform to their mechanical presuppositions, and those >mechanical presuppositions make the phrase "Marx's economic determinism" >a mere tautology. > >C arrol > > > Carrol > > > >--------------------------------- >Do you Yahoo!? >Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now _________________________________________________________________ MSN 8 with e-mail virus protection service: 2 months FREE* http://join.msn.com/?page=features/virus </BLOCKQUOTE> <hr size=1>Do you Yahoo!? <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com">Yahoo! Mail Plus</a> - Powerful. Affordable. <a href="http://rd.yahoo.com/mail/mailsig/*http://mailplus.yahoo.com">Sign up now</a>