[lbo-talk] Bakunin on Marx

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Sun Jul 1 20:37:00 PDT 2007


"Peter Ward" <peterhartward at gmail.com> wrote:

I've always had my doubts about marxian socialism. To me, the reason seems like plain common sense; and, in the case of the Soviet Union, seems to have been borne out by history: Power, in whatever manifestation, negates the well-being, material and moral, of most of the population (and probably damages those "with" to a much larger extent that is usually admitted). The view, widely expressed by the left (usually in some disguised form)*, that somehow one could still live happily under a tyranny is fallacious and requires quite a lot of political naivete, it think. *********

Because you conflate socialism and Stalinism, you would naturally have doubts about what you call, "marxian socialism". You also seem to have a problem with power. Most of us do, but not because we have power; just the opposite. If society was organized as a free association of producers, with each individual producer having equal political power with every other individual producer, you might change your mind about power. But, as things stand, unless you're a member of the ruling class, you really don't have much power and I can see how you'd much rather that power not be concentrated in even fewer hands than it might be within the class dominated society you currently live within. As for tyranny, most thinking leftists, I know, would probably be quite happy to put their current rulers under the 'tyranny' of a proletarian democracy. But I see what you're getting at, a Stalinist Party dictatorship is not a proletarian democracy, even as many deluded "Marxist-Leninists" would wish it to be.

Mike B)

An injury to one is an injury to all http://www.iww.org/

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