Presidential Election

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Windy City Ag
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In reply to nortex97 • 9:03a, 8/27/24
AG
You snipped a rather narrow section of that Wiki page to make your point.

You need to also include:

Quote:
According to orthodox Marxist theory, overthrowing capitalism by a socialist revolution in contemporary society is inevitable.

Revolutionary socialism is a political philosophy, doctrine, and tradition within socialism that stresses the idea that a social revolution is necessary to bring about structural changes in society. More specifically, it is the view that revolution is a necessary precondition for transitioning from a capitalist to a socialist mode of production. Revolution is not necessarily defined as a violent insurrection; it is defined as a seizure of political power by mass movements of the working class so that the state is directly controlled or abolished by the working class as opposed to the capitalist class and its interests.

Quote from the Communist Manifesto from old Karl himself

Quote:
The proletariat, the lowest stratum of our present society, cannot stir, cannot raise itself up, without the whole superincumbent strata of official society being sprung into the air. Though not in substance, yet in form, the struggle of the proletariat with the bourgeoisie is at first a national struggle. The proletariat of each country must, of course, first of all settle matters with its own bourgeoisie. In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat. The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class;

This is why no takes any conservative screaming Marxism seriously. It has violent roots that caused terrible outcomes all through the 20th Century. It is a hyper-charged accusation and as dumb ass calling Trump a fascist.

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nortex97
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 9:10a, 8/27/24
AG
A veiled civil war is an interesting thing to deny as to the democrats, or WEF, ETC intentions. I just didn't excerpt more from wiki to keep the post short. Marxists love to claim it's all so sophisticated and complex as to what they aspire to see happen.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to nortex97 • 9:17a, 8/27/24
AG
Quote:
A veiled civil war is an interesting thing to deny as to the democrats, or WEF, ETC intentions. I just didn't excerpt more from wiki to keep the post short. Marxists love to claim it's all so sophisticated and complex as to what they aspire to see happen
But the civil war concept is not veiled . . .it is explicitly stated. The Marxists called their shots and it burned down all sorts of societies from China to Greece to Poland to Vietnam to Korea to most of Latin America and too many other spots to list here quickly.
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nortex97
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 9:36a, 8/27/24
AG
Take mao, fine, but he didn't start with the cultural revolution. He had to be firmly n power with the unquestioned support of the red guard first. Disarm populace, target landlords, proceed thru enemies accordingly. This is why SCOTUS is so difficult aparaged by the left and Kamala herself. As well, of course, their ideas around speech censorship.

It's all part and parcel of the communist/marxist family tree.
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nortex97
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 9:52a, 8/27/24
AG
Gonna take a break again from this forum, but I do recommend folks follow Xi Van Fleet for some of the parallels.



I agree labels can be silly but I think the leftists running the Democrat party are dangerously close in their ideology/ideas/plans to what the CCP exemplified in the 50's-60's especially, and perhaps still today with advanced technologies being used to track citizenry/subject's in real time.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to nortex97 • 9:55a, 8/27/24
AG
Quote:
Take mao, fine, but he didn't start with the cultural revolution. He had to be firmly n power with the unquestioned support of the red guard first. Disarm populace, target landlords, proceed thru enemies accordingly. This is why SCOTUS is so difficult aparaged by the left and Kamala herself. As well, of course, their ideas around speech censorship.

It's all part and parcel of the communist/marxist family tree.
That is not how it really went down in my recollection. The First dustups started in the 1920s before it all get settled in 1950.

A power vacuum opened after the death of China's last monarch, who was overseeing a bunch of tribal states governed by warlords at that time. The new Chinese central government under the Kuomintang brand gets infiltrated pretty quickly by Russkie Soviets but a split emerges between nationalists and communists. Communist sympathizers in government and military are either purged or executed

In response, what we consider today the CCP retreats to the hills and starts an armed uprising using what it calls the Red Army and fires the first shots. Mao was still a soldier at this point. They kill each other for more than a decade with the CCP on the wrong end of almost all of it until Japan comes calling through invasion. The two sides keep fighting but also have to focus on the Japanese.

We nuke Japan and liberate China

Shots start flying again, mostly because Stalin takes all seized Japanese war material and hands it to Mao with instructions to start breaking stuff. Mao turns out not to be a puppet and bites Stalin's hand while being fed. He drives the KMT forces to the beach and they eventually retreat to Taiwan.

Deaths from the conflict were estimated at more than 2 Million soldiers killed and another 4 million Chinese citizens

So unless you are saying that conservatives have been fighting incredibly bloody hot wars with progressives for a multi-decade period while being puppeted around by a foreign power, I don't really see a parallel.




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Jabin
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 1:23p, 8/27/24
Windy, what do you think are the necessary characteristics for something to be correctly classified as Marxist?
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Sapper Redux
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In reply to nortex97 • 1:41p, 8/27/24
nortex97 said:
Take mao, fine, but he didn't start with the cultural revolution. He had to be firmly n power with the unquestioned support of the red guard first. Disarm populace, target landlords, proceed thru enemies accordingly. This is why SCOTUS is so difficult aparaged by the left and Kamala herself. As well, of course, their ideas around speech censorship.

It's all part and parcel of the communist/marxist family tree.


I hope you understand how utterly ridiculous this sounds.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to Jabin • 2:58p, 8/27/24
AG
Quote:
Windy, what do you think are the necessary characteristics for something to be correctly classified as Marxist?

1) Focus on nationalization of many key industries

2) Centralization or at a minimum of greater control of capital in the hands of the state through much greater government control of the financial system. Probably manifests itself here through much more routine super regulation of the banking industry and capital markets akin to what was pulled out at the depths of the 2008
Credit Crisis

3) Free (insert stuff here) access to all - this means dismantling much of the private health care or educational system. Poof, gone to private high schools and colleges. Some version of the NHS comes up in place of our current system

4) Marxists favor the abolition of private property ownership . . . . don't know how this ever gets done but that was in the original pamphlet. I am sure what you would get in a US Style candidate is arguments for Intellectual Property Rights scaled back drastically or abolished and massive taxation on the exchange of real estate and other private property.

5) I would assume lobbying goes by by. What doe they say about the first thing to happen in a communist revolution is the killing of all the lawyers?

6) Tax Structure - Marx kind of jumped around this and so do the early Marxist parties but proposals ranged from abolition of our current system of taxation to an incredibly punitive and extremely progressive tax structure meant to redistribute wealth quickly. The Thomas Piketty "Tax on Capital" was pulled straight from Marxist platforms and would be instituted at drastically lower levels as compared to the Gretchen Whitmer plan that starts at $100 Million. Piketty advocated taxes start at $1 Million in net worth and jumps higher as your unrealized gains grow

7) Military and Foreign Policy - A drastic downsizing of our defense budget and a retreat from international conflicts

8) Immigration - Immediate legalization of undocumented immigrants with a new path to citizenship

9) Free Trade - No mas. All agreements scrapped

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nortex97
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 3:10p, 8/27/24
AG
You can always go back as far as you want in a movement/war/society to pick a starting point. I wouldn't claim the 1950's as some sort of Genesis moment. But the history is as fascinating as it is tragic.



Old tradition, old customs, habits, religion, all must be done away with (5 minutes in). That's the core faith.

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Silent For Too Long
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 4:09p, 8/27/24
Windy City Ag said:
Quote:
A veiled civil war is an interesting thing to deny as to the democrats, or WEF, ETC intentions. I just didn't excerpt more from wiki to keep the post short. Marxists love to claim it's all so sophisticated and complex as to what they aspire to see happen
But the civil war concept is not veiled . . .it is explicitly stated. The Marxists called their shots and it burned down all sorts of societies from China to Greece to Poland to Vietnam to Korea to most of Latin America and too many other spots to list here quickly.


You are locking Marxism into a tiny box and pretending it disappeared without a trace in Western Civilization.

This is complete and utter bull***** The ideals of Marxism prevailed throughout the universities from the 1920's to today, reininventing themselves into the modern progressive party.

At its core, all of it, is the primacy of forced equity. It's also inherently anti-theist. It is essentially a religious idea structure that places the socialistic realities of Man on its alter.

Western Civilization proved to be strongly resistant to the Marxian Mind Virus, so it had to adapt to the new host.

Also, as you mentioned, Marxism had a lot of bad press in the 20th century. Naturally it needed to go through some rebranding if it was going to survive.


It's silly to compare this to calling Trump a Fascist. American first populism has nothing to do with fascism. There is no ivory tower caldre writing the playbook of the modern American populism movement the way there is with Marxism and progressivism.

One is a politically charged pejorative, the other is actually descriptive of the historical reality.
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Silent For Too Long
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4:20p, 8/27/24
Also I think i should be clear that I haven't used the word communism once.

Marxism is the underlying ideal structure that begets communism, socialism, modern progresevism, etc. I find Christianity splitting into denominations to be perfectly analogous.

And obviously Marx himself wasn't the first to have Marxian ideals, he just collected, curated, and cultivated them into an organized idea structure.
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Silent For Too Long
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4:45p, 8/27/24
Just to throw this in there, but when a fortune 500 company can lose investors simply by not being woke enough, you control the means of production.

Those crafty little *******s took American capital by the balls without firing a shot.

What's even more terrifying is all the oligarchs have moved left. The military industrial complex, the pharmaceuticals, the media, academia. It's getting to the point that it's all power centers on one side and the American people on the other, with a bunch of useless sheep voting against their own best interest.

The power consolidation alone should worry anybody; one thing this country has done pretty well historically is keep the oligarchs fighting each other. But if that power consolidated around a Marxian ideal structure we are all ****ed. And the signs are a plenty. Weaponizing the state against political dissent and thought crimes, socializing more and more aspect in of life. The progressives have signaled their desire to control the medical field, academia, and energy sector directly through the state. They have always controlled the bureaucracy. There are absolutely terrifying machinations a foot while we sit here and pedantically wrestle with the limitations of marxian nomenclature.

Seriously, if you are any kind of intellectual and you aren't at least a little concerned with what's going on here, wake the ---- up.
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AggieRain
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In reply to Silent For Too Long • 9:56p, 8/27/24
AG
Silent For Too Long said:
Windy City Ag said:
Quote:
A veiled civil war is an interesting thing to deny as to the democrats, or WEF, ETC intentions. I just didn't excerpt more from wiki to keep the post short. Marxists love to claim it's all so sophisticated and complex as to what they aspire to see happen
But the civil war concept is not veiled . . .it is explicitly stated. The Marxists called their shots and it burned down all sorts of societies from China to Greece to Poland to Vietnam to Korea to most of Latin America and too many other spots to list here quickly.


You are locking Marxism into a tiny box and pretending it disappeared without a trace in Western Civilization.

This is complete and utter bull***** The ideals of Marxism prevailed throughout the universities from the 1920's to today, reininventing themselves into the modern progressive party.

At its core, all of it, is the primacy of forced equity. It's also inherently anti-theist. It is essentially a religious idea structure that places the socialistic realities of Man on its alter.

Western Civilization proved to be strongly resistant to the Marxian Mind Virus, so it had to adapt to the new host.

Also, as you mentioned, Marxism had a lot of bad press in the 20th century. Naturally it needed to go through some rebranding if it was going to survive.


It's silly to compare this to calling Trump a Fascist. American first populism has nothing to do with fascism. There is no ivory tower caldre writing the playbook of the modern American populism movement the way there is with Marxism and progressivism.

One is a politically charged pejorative, the other is actually descriptive of the historical reality.
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Sapper Redux
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In reply to Silent For Too Long • 10:18p, 8/27/24
Quote:
but when a fortune 500 company can lose investors simply by not being woke enough, you control the means of production.


Do you not understand what the means of production refers to? Getting investors, who by definition have money to invest, to switch who they invest with, has nothing to do with the actual means of production. I'm sensing that Marxism is just a boogeyman for you.
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Rongagin71
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In reply to Sapper Redux • 10:47p, 8/27/24
AG
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dermdoc
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In reply to Sapper Redux • 7:29a, 8/28/24
AG
Sapper Redux said:
Quote:
but when a fortune 500 company can lose investors simply by not being woke enough, you control the means of production.


Do you not understand what the means of production refers to? Getting investors, who by definition have money to invest, to switch who they invest with, has nothing to do with the actual means of production. I'm sensing that Marxism is just a boogeyman for you.
It is certainly a boogeyman for me. It is evil.
No material on this site is intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. See full Medical Disclaimer.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to Silent For Too Long • 9:19a, 8/28/24
AG
Quote:
You are locking Marxism into a tiny box and pretending it disappeared without a trace in Western Civilization.

This is complete and utter bull***** The ideals of Marxism prevailed throughout the universities from the 1920's to today, reininventing themselves into the modern progressive party.

So this is what I mean by your clumsily trying to force a link between undistilled marxism of the late 19th and early 20th Century and today's political platforms. Just because you keep saying it over and over again doesn't prove a point. You have provided very little reasoning, supporting detail, or data. It just means you personally believe it while most of the rest of society does not.

Quote:
At its core, all of it, is the primacy of forced equity. It's also inherently anti-theist. It is essentially a religious idea structure that places the socialistic realities of Man on its alter.

Western Civilization proved to be strongly resistant to the Marxian Mind Virus, so it had to adapt to the new host.
Agreed that forced equity is the core of Marxism, I also agree that Marxist theory is anti-religion because those early political babblers thought it was a tool of the bourgeoisie to prevent violence in the lower classes.

And "Western Civilization", whatever that means, did not really prove resistant to Marxist ideology. You are skipping over the French Revolution, The Spanish Civil War, the Greek Civil War, the Finnish Civil War, the German Socialist Revolution of 1918, the Bienne Rosso Conflicts in post WW1 Italy, and too many other very declared socialist conflicts in the 20th Century. Western socialists just got shot down primarily by nationalist/right wing or monarchical governments.

Quote:
Also, as you mentioned, Marxism had a lot of bad press in the 20th century. Naturally it needed to go through some rebranding if it was going to survive.
"Bad press" - Talk about playing things down. How many people died because of Marxist regimes? I once read an estimate at around 95 million. That is a little more than bad press.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to Silent For Too Long • 9:57a, 8/28/24
AG
Quote:
Also I think i should be clear that I haven't used the word communism once.

Marxism is the underlying ideal structure that begets communism, socialism, modern progresevism, etc. I find Christianity splitting into denominations to be perfectly analogous.

And obviously Marx himself wasn't the first to have Marxian ideals, he just collected, curated, and cultivated them into an organized idea structure.

And now I get it . . . . this is the fundamental error in your reasoning and helps me understand why you are so very off course. Marxism is most definitely not the "underlying ideal structure that begets communism, socialism, modern progresevism, etc"

Socialism and communist movements pre-dated Marxism. The official version of we think of as communism is traced by historians to 1793, nearly 30 years before Marx was born. They first use of the term socialism came around in the Age of Enlightenment and that was built on socialist theories that go way way back before that but were never coined as socialist.

The concept of Marxism was a very specific and defined subset of socialist theory that was developed closer to 1850. Traditional socialist theories advocated working within democracy to achieve communal ownership of property. Marxism was the first (violent) splinter group of socialists that called for temporary revolution to and dictatorship, total seizure of all property, etc.

So that is why folks calling progressives of today Marxists look confused and unserious. It is also why social democracy is a rejection of Marxism. Social Democrats most definitely work within democratic systems to achieve socialist goals.

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nortex97
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 10:07a, 8/28/24
AG
Marx primarily appeals to academic types seeking a veneer of sophistication for their leftist beliefs. The actual details/specifics/ugliness of the theology are too 'nuanced' for mere inferiors to comprehend. Marx and Engels (co-authors of the communist manifesto, fyi to those reading who are unaware), both died as failures as men. Marx owned no land and was broke. Engels was a wealthy leftist English snob more along the stereotypical lines who enjoyed poetry and fox hunting, too hauty to marry, and termed 'the kind of man Stalin would have had shot.'

The intellectual appeal of their body of work in the 21st century to the American left is utterly disgusting.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to Silent For Too Long • 10:08a, 8/28/24
AG
Quote:
Just to throw this in there, but when a fortune 500 company can lose investors simply by not being woke enough, you control the means of production.

Those crafty little *******s took American capital by the balls without firing a shot.

So individuals exercising their voting power as shareholders in a legal entity in accordance with their personal beliefs is Marxist? A clue here . . . in Marxist societies there will be no shareholders and there will be no corporations so that kills your analogy out of the gates.

But beyond that, Lots of people don't own Philip Morris or Altria or British Tobacco shares because they find tobacco morally objectionable. Lots of folks have followed SRI policies as well. I sit on church endowment board and we actively use SRI standards that exclude defense companies, liquor companies, handgun manufactures, and several other industry groups that are viewed as not in keeping with church doctrine.

Sharia finance exists all over the world to help Muslim investors keep within the tenets of their faith.

Quote:
What's even more terrifying is all the oligarchs have moved left. The military industrial complex, the pharmaceuticals, the media, academia. It's getting to the point that it's all power centers on one side and the American people on the other, with a bunch of useless sheep voting against their own best interest.

The power consolidation alone should worry anybody; one thing this country has done pretty well historically is keep the oligarchs fighting each other. But if that power consolidated around a Marxian ideal structure we are all ****ed. And the signs are a plenty. Weaponizing the state against political dissent and thought crimes, socializing more and more aspect in of life. The progressives have signaled their desire to control the medical field, academia, and energy sector directly through the state. They have always controlled the bureaucracy. There are absolutely terrifying machinations a foot while we sit here and pedantically wrestle with the limitations of marxian nomenclature.

Seriously, if you are any kind of intellectual and you aren't at least a little concerned with what's going on here, wake the ---- up.

And now we are here.



Lets stick to the Religion and Philosophy guidelines of the board and not engage in pure conjecture
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to nortex97 • 10:10a, 8/28/24
AG
Quote:
Marx primarily appeals to academic types seeking a veneer of sophistication for their leftist beliefs. The actual details/specifics/ugliness of the theology are too 'nuanced' for mere inferiors to comprehend. Marx and Engels (co-authors of the communist manifesto, fyi to those reading who are unaware), both died as failures as men. Marx owned no land and was broke. Engels was a wealthy leftist English snob more along the stereotypical lines who enjoyed poetry and fox hunting, too hauty to marry, and termed 'the kind of man Stalin would have had shot.'

The intellectual appeal of their body of work in the 21st century to the American left is utterly disgusting.

I don't disagree with with anything you said here say except for that the details are there for anyone to read and in doing so they should not confuse modern progressivism with Marxism.

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Jabin
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 10:15a, 8/28/24
Quote:
. . . they should not confuse modern progressivism with Marxism.
Would you agree that modern progressives, while not being strictly Marxists, have borrowed heavily from Marxism? For example, they've taken Marx's economic classes and modified them into other types of classes based on perceived power inequalities?

Additionally, can one truly lump "modern progressivism" into a single category? Isn't it in reality a bunch of disparate groups that are lumped together for convenience sake in discussions?
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Sapper Redux
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In reply to dermdoc • 10:24a, 8/28/24
dermdoc said:
Sapper Redux said:
Quote:
but when a fortune 500 company can lose investors simply by not being woke enough, you control the means of production.


Do you not understand what the means of production refers to? Getting investors, who by definition have money to invest, to switch who they invest with, has nothing to do with the actual means of production. I'm sensing that Marxism is just a boogeyman for you.
It is certainly a boogeyman for me. It is evil.


Finding it in every politician or policy you dislike shows how imaginary the issue is. Like the boogeyman.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to Jabin • 10:25a, 8/28/24
AG
Quote:
Would you agree that modern progressives, while not being strictly Marxists, have borrowed heavily from Marxism? For example, they've taken Marx's economic classes and modified them into other types of classes based on perceived power inequalities?

I think both Marxists, Leninists, Progressive, Social Democrats, along with many other groups represent differing evolutions of theories that predated Marxism. Marx was borrowing from others really.

I saw this chart once and found it interesting.

https://www.economicshelp.org/blog/glossary/different-types-of-socialism/



Marxism and Leninism are the "State Control" version that is in competition with many other forms of socialism. Today's progressives are a closest to the top right of the graph.

Quote:
Additionally, can one truly lump "modern progressivism" into a single category? Isn't it in reality a bunch of disparate groups that are lumped together for convenience sake in discussions?
Good point. I think the Democratic Umbrella has anarcho-socialists running around in there, but they are the distinct minority.
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Rocag
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In reply to nortex97 • 10:32a, 8/28/24
AG
Quote:
Marx and Engels (co-authors of the communist manifesto, fyi to those reading who are unaware), both died as failures as men. Marx owned no land and was broke.
There's just something about a Christian accusing someone as leading a failed life on a religiously themed forum and offering their lack of material possessions as proof that I find deliciously ironic.
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nortex97
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 10:32a, 8/28/24
AG
Windy City Ag said:
Quote:
Marx primarily appeals to academic types seeking a veneer of sophistication for their leftist beliefs. The actual details/specifics/ugliness of the theology are too 'nuanced' for mere inferiors to comprehend. Marx and Engels (co-authors of the communist manifesto, fyi to those reading who are unaware), both died as failures as men. Marx owned no land and was broke. Engels was a wealthy leftist English snob more along the stereotypical lines who enjoyed poetry and fox hunting, too hauty to marry, and termed 'the kind of man Stalin would have had shot.'

The intellectual appeal of their body of work in the 21st century to the American left is utterly disgusting.

I don't disagree with with anything you said here say except for that the details are there for anyone to read and in doing so they should not confuse modern progressivism with Marxism.
Thank you. I think you are mistaken though with respect to the lineage of American 'progressive' movement at least back through Wilson.
Quote:
In the 1880s, Woodrow Wilson was pursuing a quintessentially Progressive educational path. Attending graduate school based upon the German model, Wilson earned a Ph.D. in political science and history at Johns Hopkins University in 1886. Until he found a home at Princeton in 1890, he was a professor at Cornell, Bryn Mawr, and Wesleyan. Like any aspiring professor, he produced a number of publications. They unapologetically revealed his embrace of progressivism and a large administrative state.

Written in 1887, few of Wilson's writings more blatantly spell out his praise of a state with virtually unlimited authority than "Socialism and Democracy." As he states, the new question that Progressives were asking was "not whether the community has power to act as it may please in these matters, but how it can act with practical advantage a question of policy." The philosophical argument of limited constitutional government is swept aside by a triumphal progressivism that announces the victory of the federal state and simply decides the best reforms to pursue.
Much more has been written about this (undoubtedly not the best source, just in a rush right now), but the truth is he was highly influenced by Marx and the socialist ideologies which flow from these interlinked political theories. This is, in truth, the dominant ideology/philosophy of the Democrat party today.

Another take (and again, it just depends where one wants to draw a line as to the 'starting point' for the progressive theology):

Quote:
Is there an actual end to the progress of progressives? Is there a threshold of equality that must be crossed, one that would at least allow us to claim victory? Is there some utopia just around the corner, achievable in some viable way?
Quote:
I will not walk with your progressive apes,
Erect and sapient. Before them gapes
The dark abyss to which their progress tends
If by God's mercy progress ever ends,
And does not ceaselessly revolve the same
Unfruitful course with changing of a name
J.R.R. Tolkien, "Mythopoeia"
Just as the progressives of today have no real sense of where their progress might or should lead, they have even less sense of their origins. Progressivism, as understood in the last several centuries, originated in the thought of the Prussian philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831) and his contemporary Johann Gottlieb Fichte (1762-1814). As with all Prussians and most philosophers, Hegel's and Fichte's thoughts were complex and varied, not easily reduced to a quick soundbite or even a few sentences. Still, the progressive understanding of them is surprisingly simple. Drawing their own ideas fromand frankly distortingthe ancient wisdom of Hera****us, the two Prussians believed that life moves forward through the struggles of societal forces. The forces that dominate most aspects of society, Fichte labeled the "thesis." Those who opposed those forces, he called the "antithesis." In their strugglethrough and by which neither would wholly winemerged a third thing, the "synthesis." The synthesis, once arrived at, quickly became the thesis, opposed by a new antithesis. And the cycle started all over. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to nortex97 • 11:15a, 8/28/24
AG
Interesting stuff but I would again say that Wilsonian Progressivism was not influenced by Marx or Marxists.

He tried to intervene against the Leninists in the Russian Civil War, going as far as to send 8,500 US troops to halt the spread of communism.

He then refused to recognize the Soviet Union and came up with the containment policy that would later be harnessed by George Kennan.

His 14 points plan was an drafted as an alternative to the global socialist movement of Lenin.

He signed off on the Palmer Raids.


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Silent For Too Long
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 11:29a, 8/28/24

Quote:

And now I get it . . . . this is the fundamental error in your reasoning and helps me understand why you are so very off course. Marxism is most definitely not the "underlying ideal structure that begets communism, socialism, modern progresevism, etc"


Wow. Could you possibly be more arrogant and obtuse?

Oh please great master! Educate me! Redirect me in my lost ways!
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to Silent For Too Long • 11:31a, 8/28/24
AG
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Wow. Could you possibly be more arrogant and obtuse?

Oh please great master! Educate me! Redirect me in my lost ways!
So you don't want to address my (obvious) point and will just resort to personal attacks.

Noted. This is not a serious conversation.
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dermdoc
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In reply to Sapper Redux • 11:40a, 8/28/24
AG
Sapper Redux said:
dermdoc said:
Sapper Redux said:
Quote:
but when a fortune 500 company can lose investors simply by not being woke enough, you control the means of production.


Do you not understand what the means of production refers to? Getting investors, who by definition have money to invest, to switch who they invest with, has nothing to do with the actual means of production. I'm sensing that Marxism is just a boogeyman for you.
It is certainly a boogeyman for me. It is evil.


Finding it in every politician or policy you dislike shows how imaginary the issue is. Like the boogeyman.
Fair enough. And I have not done that.

Let me ask you this, is today's mainstream Democratic Party more to the left than say 30 years ago? Is it okay for conservatives to point that out without resorting to the Marxist label?

And what are we "progressing" to?

One last question, do you think Marxism is evil?
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nortex97
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 11:59a, 8/28/24
AG
Windy City Ag said:
Interesting stuff but I would again say that Wilsonian Progressivism was not influenced by Marx or Marxists.

He tried to intervene against the Leninists in the Russian Civil War, going as far as to send 8,500 US troops to halt the spread of communism.

He then refused to recognize the Soviet Union and came up with the containment policy that would later be harnessed by George Kennan.

His 14 points plan was an drafted as an alternative to the global socialist movement of Lenin.

He signed off on the Palmer Raids.
That has to imho be read in historical/political context, as to the Russian civil war. Wilson at that point was President and wanted Russia to remain in WW1, so supported Kerensky's government, essentially. It backfired spectacularly, but is the history it is, if outside the scope of this forum unfortunately. My point is just that he supported Kerensky vs. the Bolsheviks not out of principle…but because he needed the former (as did JP Morgan, fwiw, no doubt no small component in WW's judgment).

Marxists are/have been happy to note Wilson's remarks and final words re: Marx:

Quote:
Wilson was not the kind of a man who found it easy to admit that he was mistaken, and so he never pardoned or released Debs. But Wilson knew that Marx was the force behind Debs, and on at least one great occasion Wilson spoke directly to the challenge and the influence of Marx.

It happened during the peace negotiations at the end of World War I, and in the narrow sense involved the issue of whether or not to intervene with massive force to overthrow the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia. But his remarks tell you a very great deal about Wilson's support for various reforms. Here is what he said:
Quote:
"There was certainly a latent force behind Bolshevism which attracted as much sympathy as its more brutal aspects caused general disgust. There was throughout the world a feeling of revolt against the large vested interests which influenced the world both in the economic and in the political sphere. The way to cure this domination [is in my] opinion, constant discussion and a slow process of reform; but the world at large [has] grown impatient of delay.... Bolshevism was therefore vital because of these genuine grievances.... British and American troops were unwilling to fight in Russia because they feared their efforts might lead to the restoration of the old order, which was even more disastrous than the present one.... It was certainly a cruel dilemma...."
Finally, and as Wilson realized, Marx understood power. The dynamics of capitalism would generate power against capitalism. Hence capitalism must either transform itself or it would be changed by a resort to force. In his last public document, a deeply moving essay published in 1924 called "The Road Away from Revolution," Wilson urged Western leaders to transform capitalism into a more humane social order because otherwise capitalism would destroy itself in an attempt to destroy socialism.
His animus toward capitalism was again in his final writing. While Wilson was one of our more 'philosophically' oriented presidents, he was tragically flawed in his Marxist teachings which led to many of his tremendous failings as a leader/man (racist/socialist/elitist etc). The Palmer raids, themselves the genesis of J Edgar Hoover's reign of terror in America, were likewise a political response to domestic threats, not ideologically approved/rationale themselves by Wilson. The later, much detested FBI I'd leave for a different forum for obvious reasons.
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Silent For Too Long
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In reply to Windy City Ag • 12:00p, 8/28/24
When you talk down to people who are just as informed as you are on a topic and merely disagree with you, you are going to elicit a negative response.

I'm not the first person to see a continuous adaptation of the same core ideological principles from Marx to modern progressives. This is not some novel concept. It's perfectly understandable if you don't see it. But to act like anybody that does only does so because they aren't as educated as you is exhibiting insane levels of hubris.
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Windy City Ag
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In reply to Silent For Too Long • 12:31p, 8/28/24
AG
Quote:
When you talk down to people who are just as informed as you are on a topic and merely disagree with you, you are going to elicit a negative response.

I'm not the first person to see a continuous adaptation of the same core ideological principles from Marx to modern progressives. This is not some novel concept. It's perfectly understandable if you don't see it. But to act like anybody that does only does so because they aren't as educated as you is exhibiting insane levels of hubris.
In your proclamation that Marxism was the intellectual basis for socialism you, to borrow from your Christian Church Framework, basically stated that the Anglicans inspired the creation of the Jewish Faith.

You should not be surprised nor offended when people point out that your statement is incredibly wrong. That is not people talking down to you, it is people correcting you. Part of life.

And I am willing to believe that you are widely read on this stuff but I am also hoping you actually cite something you read at one point. Otherwise, you are saying you are correct because you saw something on the internet once. And the internet is full of all sorts of crap, so I don't doubt someone somewhere said that but it doesn't make it at all logical.

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12:32p, 8/28/24
Many people have noticed how the Lion King shows massive influence from Shakespeare's Hamlet.

Wind City Ag would likely "well actually " these people how Shakespeare wasn't the originator of the story as if that had anything to do with the original premise of the Lion King being heavily influenced by Hamlet.
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