Future? What Future?

| by Agi | 3:25 PM |

Last week I wrote a post about the Eastern philosophical foundations of defeatism. The comment thread evolved into an interesting discussion about peoples' favorite philosophers. Unfortunately the thread vanished into the abyss of Blogspot when our new Fugee template was installed.

One comment stood out in my mind and I've been thinking about it this week. Someone wrote that Karl Marx would be the philosopher of the 21st century, and that they were excited about the future of Marxism. I immediately thought to myself...how could anyone hope for the triumph of Marxism during the 21st century after all the oppression, carnage and war Karl's ideas caused during the last century. Granted, capitalism killed a fair share of people too, but Marxist ideas spawned some of the most horrible mass murderers of the 21st century--Stalin, Mao and Pol Pot to name a few.

I'm not saying Marx directly intended for his theories to be translated into genocidial social engineering, but hell, there is no way of enforcing his program as listed in the Communist Manifesto without resorting to brutal oppression and totalitarianism.



I thought Marx was cool when I read his shit in my political theory classes in college. Then I realized that his whole goal is to highten the antagonistic relationships in society (not resolve them) and create an unnatural, unrealistic society governed by a "dictatorship of the proletariat".

I might be a lefty, but I ain't no statist.

Have at it if you will.

(cross-posted at the defeatists!) (image from Bureaucrash)