> This reminds me of an interview with Marx by an American reporte
> that I
> read somewhere years ago. At the end of the interview, the reporter
> posed the question: "What is?" There followed so long a pause that the
> reporter thought KM had fallen asleep, and then the reply: "Struggle!"
> This was near the end of Marx's life.
>
> Carrol
>
> Miles Jackson wrote:
>>
>> Dennis Perrin wrote:
>>>
>>> I feel the same way about the States. Why should our ideas about
>>> social justice and political intelligence be normative in a country
>>> where the larger culture promotes inequality, aggression, historical
>>> lying and economic theft? Aren't we pushing our values on people who
>>> find them appalling?
>>>
>>> Dennis
>>
>> As a general rule, social change is the result of a dedicated and
>> well-organized minority imposing their values on society as a whole
>> (e.g., the American Revolution). The sooner we discard the myth
>> that
>> social arrangements are the democratic result of the consent of the
>> majority, the better.
>>
>> Miles
Marx derived any and all forms of despotism from widespread "prejudice" and "superstition", identifying "human being" with the capacity for "enlightenment" so that the existence of despotism indicated an absence of "human being".
"Enlightenment" in his sense required constant "struggle" as in Goethe's claim at the end of Faust that
None is of freedom or of life deserving " Unless he daily conquers it anew.
The social arrangement that is Marx's "true realm of freedom" is the creature of "enlightenment" in this sense and, hence, involves perpetual "struggle". .
It can't be the product of "a dedicated and well-organized minority imposing their values on society as a whole".
Ted
Ted