Nuh-uh, no, you can't give him this sort of pass. He introduced the concept of "class struggle" and "class warfare" that took over so much of modern labor/monetary/commerce/market vocabulary, and specifically said that the transition to socialism/communism will take proletariat violence. The man has inspired as much harm and destruction as any person in history.
Nope, he advocated the initial overthrow of the government. Following needless violence against civilians was never in his playbook.
And he's not even right
Well... yes. That's why we're not Socialist...
The man's philosophies have led to more misery than just about anyone else in history.
Philosophies which inspire moral outrage are despicable. Marx himself wrote no letter which advocated the truly despicable actions you speak of. For that we should blame the ones truly responsible: Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
I'd implore you to please, please, please stop seeing Marx as a misguided would-be hero.
Your parent did no such thing.
Marx was no friend of humanity, and should be remembered as someone who had bad and violent ideas that led to millions of people oppressed and killed as part of the "proletariat revolution to overthrow the bourgeois".
Every revolutionary's ideas end up causing similar devastation. Democracy certainly has. So has civil rights.
Nope, he advocated the initial overthrow of the government. Following needless violence against civilians was never in his playbook.
I never understood him to address the government as such. I understood him to advocate the overthrow of the "bourgeoisie". That is, a class of people, distinguished (among other things) by the fact that they were the ones financing (i.e., accepting the risks for) industry. It was not simply a case of unseating rulers, or even attacking the persons embodying the rule. It was far more broad, attacking ones citizen neighbors simply because they were landowners, for example.
Every revolutionary's ideas end up causing similar devastation.
Absurd. The results of "communist" revolutions of the 20th century are orders of magnitude greater than the fallout of any other revolution, before or since. We're talking about the greatest mass killings ever seen my man.
I understood him to advocate the overthrow of the "bourgeoisie". That is, a class of people, distinguished (among other things) by the fact that they were the ones financing (i.e., accepting the risks for) industry.
Financing means accepting the financial risks for industry. It doesn't mean accepting the risk of having your hand crushed in a cheap machine, or being poisoned by the chemicals used in the factory, etc. There is more than one kind of risk, and to imply that the investor is the only contributor to an enterprise is as stupid as saying the same thing of the laborer.
Furthermore, overthrow is a fundamentally political conflict. At the time of Marx's writing, poor people were not allowed to vote. Was that equitable? A 19th century political thinker looking at today's society would conclude that Marx had won because today everyone over 18 (with the exception of criminals in some countries) is allowed to vote. This would have been unthinkable when Marx was writing his communist manifesto.
You are assuming that the political ascendancy of a proletariat (which has arguably already happened) is directly equivalent to genocide of the middle class. Nonsensical.
I understood him to advocate the overthrow of the "bourgeoisie".
This is mostly correct, although the correct translation for him would be the ruling class.
It was far more broad, attacking ones citizen neighbors simply because they were landowners, for example.
Never. One's neighbors are one's allies in the class struggle against the ruling class. Landowners would never be the "neighbors" of a peasant in Czarist Russia. More precisely, it would be a war waged beneath the underclass (in Russia, the serfs and such) and the ruling class. I think you have your view of history tainted by modern preconceptions. Also, you have to be careful of certain translations. Das Kapital and Manifest der Kommunistischen Partei in the original German lead to certain nuances of language that can be lost in a poor translation. Moore's is probably the best, although not perfect.
The results of "communist" revolutions of the 20th century are orders of magnitude greater than the fallout of any other revolution, before or since.
Oh, so the October Revolution (Октябрьская революция) had many more casualties than the American Revolution? Or the French Revolution (Liberté, égalité, fraternité!)? Or the American Civil War? Well, no. The incidents to which you refer are the massacres conducted by despotic rulers in so-called Communist countries. In fact, they weren't even called "Communist". They were Stalinist. Or Maoist. You hang these acts around Marx's neck like a noose but he didn't advocate them and would never approve. Marx didn't advocate massacre or mass slaughter or starvation (of the proletariat, no less!). He advocated violent revolution. Once that was done, however, the state was under the control of the people and no more violence was necessary than that needed to keep the peace. And Pol Pot? Pol Pot wasn't even remotely Marxist. Most of the Khmer Rouge attacks were targeted at the intellectuals. The intellectuals?! These were Marx's people! The intellectuals were necessary to help build a global Communist free state. Marx certainly didn't advocate killing himself.
You see, you have mistaken the acts of depravity that are the responsibility of the ones who committed them as done under the order of the "eternal Marx." In truth, Marx was nothing more than a name and a scapegoat. The people who committed these actions were stark, raving mad and committed most of them out of personal prejudice and thirst for power and control. As far as history goes, nothing out of the ordinary.
> Landowners would never be the "neighbors" of a peasant in Czarist Russia.
Why then the persecution of Kulaks?
> More precisely, it would be a war waged beneath the underclass (in Russia, the serfs and such) and the ruling class.
Karl Marx had a word for the “underclass” as you describe them. That is the “lumen-proletariat” (i.e. under the proletariat). What he advocated for them was as bad (if not worse) as his policies against the bourgeois.
You do realize that "what Marx actually preached" and "what happened in Soviet Russia" don't have to be the same thing, right? Do you really believe that Marx preached power-hungry, paranoid rulers that execute anyone that disagrees with them (or is just 'suspected' of doing so)?
Arguing against "Marx really stood for Y" with "but X happened in Soviet Russia" is intellectually dishonest.
Your comment "Why then the persecution of Kulaks?" implies that are you arguing against a "what Marx preached" argument with a "X happened in Soviet Russia" response. Am I confusing something here?
The "no true scotsman" fallacy would be closer to redefining "Communism" to "Marxist Communism." That's not the case here because this entire thread has been about what Marx himself believed/preached/wrote.
When totalitarian hellholes call themselves "people's democratic republic of whatever", nobody blames their failings on democracy and republicanism. Why is communism held to a different standard?
> When totalitarian hellholes call themselves "people's democratic republic of whatever",
Because all those groups professes a Marxist philisophy (e.g. The democratic People's Republic of Korea). I personally attribute most of Africa's problems to Marxism. Almost all of the failed states' parties professes a Marxist ideology.
No-one can point to a communist country that works. Every communism/Marxist country that fails, is said to be "not truly communist". Yet there are many variations of free market countries and they are all at least moderately successful.
This is like trying to claim that "the Bible is a failure" because people have used it to justify everything from Nazism to plantation slavery to KKK activities.
People will glom on to an ideology (X), pull out the parts they don't like (Z) and add in some of their own 'flavor' (Y). Then they try to claim that X+Y-Z = X. And if you try to tell them differently they will just claim that their brand is the 'true' brand of X ideology. This is true of everything from socioeconomic ideologies to religious ideologies. To say that X is a 'failure' because all X+Y-Z combinations up until now have failed is intellectually dishonest. Claiming that making a distinction between X and X+Y-Z is the 'True Scotsman Fallacy' is misguided at best (and misdirection at worst).
Most of these 'so-called' communist states are nothing more than power-grabs. They use Communism as a buzz-word to gain the support of the people. Sure they also put private industry under state-control, but this has little to do with trying to improve the condition of the 'common man' and more to do with the increasing power of the government (and therefore the despot). If you're a power-hungry dictator, which sounds better: (1) you have direct control of private industry or (2) private industry can do its own thing making money for other people than yourself?
If you want to argue that the term 'Communism' is defined by what the public thinks it means (much the same argument against the people that try to correct the usage of 'begs the question'), then yes, these totalitarian states are Communism, and Communism is a failure. ...But a majority of the (American) public supported invading Iraq because they believed that Saddam Hussein was responsible for the attacks on 9/11, that doesn't mean it's true.
If myself and all of my friends dress up like dinosaurs, act like dinosaurs, and refer to ourselves as dinosaurs, it doesn't make us dinosaurs. Nor does it prove that 'all dinosaurs' were 5-6 feet tall, stood up-right, and spoke English.
Your first point has been satisfiably answered by fellow commenters so I will leave it alone.
Karl Marx had a word for the “underclass” as you describe them. That is the “lumen-proletariat” (i.e. under the proletariat). What he advocated for them was as bad (if not worse) as his policies against the bourgeois.
No. OK this is clearly an argument from ignorance. First, please don't give German lessons if you don't speak German. The word is "lumpenproletariat" and it doesn't refer to anything like the "underclass" of which I was speaking. Lumpen doesn't translate to "under the proletariat" but to something like "rags of the proletariat." Marx was describing the people who he saw as being the refuse of the society: thieves, con-men, pimps (brothel owners).
From Marx himself:
Das Lumpenproletariat, diese passive Verfaulung der untersten Schichten der alten Gesellschaft, wird durch eine proletarische Revolution stellenweise in die Bewegung hineingeschleudert, seiner ganzen Lebenslage nach wird es bereitwilliger sein, sich zu reaktionären Umtrieben erkaufen zu lassen.
Roughly translated to[1]:
The “dangerous class”, the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society, may, here and there, be swept into the movement by a proletarian revolution; its conditions of life, however, prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.
You'll notice that he basically said they were tools (ostensibly independent) who were likely to defend the status quo and would have to be defeated when the time came. I'd like to see where he advocated their slaughter.
> First, please don't give German lessons if you don't speak German.
I did not claim to speak German. (I can understand German when read or speaken slowly to, btw). Also note that your German "translation" is not a translation at all, but a paraphrase of the paragraph in English. The words "thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society" never occurs in the German sections.
The correct translation for "diese passive Verfaulung der untersten Schichten der alten Gesellschaft" is "the passive rotting bottommost section of the old society".
Don't give German lessons if you do not speak German.
Also note that Marx de-humanises the people (by calling them "rotten".
Also note that your German "translation" is not a translation at all, but a paraphrase of the paragraph in English.
Given that different languages have different semantics all the best translations are paraphrases.
Though perhaps you didn't notice the footnote. That is Moore's translation, not my own. Once again, you are wrong. You are literally correct, but Moore's translation (edited with Friedrich Engels) is semantically correct. If I had translated it myself I would have said something like "the passively rotting lowest strata left of the old society," which is probably a little closer to your own rather than Moore's, but for the most part I think Engels knew what he was saying, given that he helped write the original German and all.
I do speak German, btw.
Also note that Marx de-humanises the people (by calling them "rotten".
Nope, he advocated the initial overthrow of the government. Following needless violence against civilians was never in his playbook.
And he's not even right
Well... yes. That's why we're not Socialist...
The man's philosophies have led to more misery than just about anyone else in history.
Philosophies which inspire moral outrage are despicable. Marx himself wrote no letter which advocated the truly despicable actions you speak of. For that we should blame the ones truly responsible: Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot.
I'd implore you to please, please, please stop seeing Marx as a misguided would-be hero.
Your parent did no such thing.
Marx was no friend of humanity, and should be remembered as someone who had bad and violent ideas that led to millions of people oppressed and killed as part of the "proletariat revolution to overthrow the bourgeois".
Every revolutionary's ideas end up causing similar devastation. Democracy certainly has. So has civil rights.
Marx brought this kind of thing: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_rouge
Laughable. The Khmer Rouge followed Das Kapital in name only.
Please, please get educated and stop whimsically giving him a nod.
I would say the same but I am not as disrespectful.