Marx has an attack on "crude communism in the Paris Manuscripts, "the consummation of this envy [shades of Nietzsche] and of this leveling down proceeding from the preconceived minimum." EPR, ME Reader at 83 (Tucker, 2d ed.)
A very important passage, but not a shade of Nietzsche. Nietzsche hated ressentiment only because his inferiors would have imposed on him idealistic democratic and socialist behaviour -- like that of "gentle Jesus meek and mild", or the Golden Rule. In fact Marx (like Che Guevara -- "an army that does not hate will not win") had a place for vengeance and hatred. He wrote in 1850:
Above all, during and immediately after the struggle the workers, as far as it is at all possible, must oppose bourgeois attempts at pacification and force the democrats to carry out their terroristic phrases. They must work to ensure that the immediate revolutionary excitement is not suddenly suppressed after the victory. On the contrary, it must be sustained as long as possible. Far from opposing the so-called excesses - instances of popular vengeance against hated individuals or against public buildings with which hateful memories are associated - the workers' party must not only tolerate these actions but must even give them direction.
Of course this was during a period of misery and famine, and these were not computer jockeys.
The difference between Marx and Nietzsche in this regard is that between human righteous indignation and animal predation. Nietzsche wrote:
And we are the first to admit that anyone who knew these "good" ones only as enemies would find them evil enemies indeed. For these same men who, amongst themselves, are so strictly constrained by custom, worship, ritual, gratitude, and by mutual surveillance and jealousy, who are so resourceful in consideration, tenderness, loyalty, pride and friendship, when once they step outside their circle become little better than uncaged beasts of prey. Once abroad in the wilderness, they revel in the freedom from social constraint and compensate for their long confinement in the quietude of their own community. They revert to the innocence of wild animals: we can imagine them returning from an orgy of murder, arson, rape, and torture, jubilant and at peace with themselves as though they had committed a fraternity prank...
Can anyone tell me what we can learn from this? Or why there is, as one lister put it "nothing objectionable" in it?
J. D.