Feb 12
To R. Scott Clark and his quotation blogpost on the abolition of private property from the Communist Manifesto. This quotation occurred on Heidelblog
But that comment was made within a context. And that context concerned itself with capital and class warfare. Marx was not talking about the individual private property of the proletariat for he followed the above statement declaring that the bourgeois had already abolished that property. At this point, we might want to remember what was declared in Occupy Wall Street's "Declaration of the Occupation Of New York City." One of grievances expressed was:
"They have taken our houses through an illegal foreclosure process, despite not having the original mortgage."
For the above quote and other grievances, see http://www.nycga.net/resources/documents/declaration/
A study of Marxism and communism will point out that individual private property for consumption was allowed for and existed. So the question is, why have the above quote by itself? Why not include some details that would help the reader understand more precisely what Marx meant?
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Feb 14
To R. Scott Clark and his quotation from the Communist Manifesto. This quotation occurred in Heidelblog
Here's a suggestion. In stead of just offering quotes, why not encourage people to read the part of the work in which the quote comes if not the whole work so things are not read out of context.
For the Communist Manifesto see
You previously quoted from Marx's "German Ideology," which is actually know as "A Critique Of German Ideology." This can be found at
Personally, I don't agree with all of Marx's solutions. However, I believe his analysis of Capitalism can be quite accurate and especially of today's neoliberal capitalism.
Finally, our loyalty to capitalism or socialism or any other ism can serve as an indicator of whether our allegiances are more tribal or are more objective and then possibly Scriptural.
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Feb 15
To R. Scott Clark on quoting George C. Watson as saying that the Nazis were socialists. This book comes from a quote for a book by George C. Watson. This occurred on the Heidelblog
No, the Nazis were not socialists. In fact, the people who were first persecuted and imprisoned by the Nazis were socialists and communists. And one of the reasons why the Nazis persecuted the Jews was over the confusion of the Jews with the Bolsheviks. Hitler looked at Russia and its "socialism" as its mortal enemy.
The basic tenet of Socialism is worker-controlled work places where the workers would democratically control the means of production. This is why even Lenin and Trotsky were considered to be part of the Bourgeoisie by some Marxists because they favored a Bourgeoisie dictatorship (see http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1918/russian-revolution/ch08.htm). That Hitler wanted to eliminate democracy from the beginning is another proof that Hitler and the Nazis were not socialists. Though Marx could tolerate totalitarian rule at the beginning, for a country to become socialist, it would have to resort to democracy in the workplace and in the country. A foundational part of Socialism is extending democracy to the workplace. Hitler was adamantly opposed to democracy.
But let's go further. Another basic tenet of socialism, at least what Marx proposed, was the elimination of private property among the Bourgeoisie. Hitler preserved Bourgeoisie private property especially since industry leaders were instrumental in ushering him into power. Another difference was that while Marxists believed in the international, Hitler was a strict nationalists who campaigned on the restoration of the country and traditional values.
I've seen the attempts to tie the Hitler and the Nazis with the Left before. And in essence, it's not the label that shows whether one is a Socialist, it is the concepts that one promotes and follows. The belief in traditional values and hyper nationalism with the belief in country first is more related to certain forms of conservatism. Heck, it is the traditional campaign platform of the Republican Party and it opposes the Marx's Revolution.
Another Conservative trademark here is the association of Socialism with big gov't. Again, the control of the workplace by the workers is the first tenet of Socialism. That countries like the Soviet Union saw the need for control by a vanguard shows that they were socialist in name, but not in concept.
So the real question is, how honest do conservatives want to be regarding socialism?
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Feb 18
to Joe Carter on his blogpost that is part 3 of a series talking about what liberal evangelicals should know about the economic views of conservative evangelicals. This post appeared on the Acton blog
Carter makes two points here. The first point is that Conservatives recognize structural injustices and their effects on the poor. The second point discusses the immorality of the ever increasing federal debt. Will discuss the second point first.
Do conservative evangelicals know that there are Leftists who agree that our ever increasing debt is immoral? Chris Hedges and Noam Chomsky are two such Leftists. One of their solutions to the debt is to have our nation switch from privatized medicine to a single-payer, universal healthcare. One of the savings from such a system is a reduction in the administrative costs of providing and paying for healthcare because there would be more uniformity. Also, Leftists have, for a long time, complained about corporate welfare and how that acts as a cause for our ever increasing debt. This is especially true when it comes to our military spending. Leftists have other suggestions for cutting the debt but the point here is that many conservatives are not aware that there are Leftists who feel that our ever increasing and enormous debt is immoral and that future generations will bear the brunt of this debt.
But Carter's first point regarding structural injustice is where Leftists will disagree with him. It isn't that Carter doesn't identify some of causes of this injustice. Carter does acknowledge racism as being an injustice that has been addressed but still lingers. And here, Carter and Leftists would agree though they might disagree on the degree of racism that still exists. And adequate schools can also be a problem but Carter's solution does not take the big picture into account.
The problem Carter has here is considering whether our current economic system is structurally unjust. If such a consideration turned into an admission, then Carter would have to acknowledge the need for revising the current economic system or supporting a new system.
We should consider whether Karl Marx has a valid point regarding Capitalism's use of wage labor (click here). Because wages are paid for units of work, the labor power of the worker becomes a commodity. And just like any other commodity, the businessman will often opt to pay the lowest he/she can for any given commodity. This relegates the worker into becoming a disposable object of profit. And if the worker is disposable, so is his or her community that relies on them to financially support it. Capital's treatment of the worker objectifies him/her so that they no longer have intrinsic value.
When we consider what Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto, that constant revolution is what the owner of Capital relies on to survive and that, because of globalization, the law of supply and demand has driven the cost of labor down, we see that the worker can very easily and often encounter a perfect storm that costs him/her their job. Because of all this, many workers are always at risk for losing their jobs to lower paid workers from other countries. And this occurs not just with the lowest skilled workers, it occurs with technical people as well. Computer programmers and Information Technology people have lost their jobs to the outsourcing of jobs overseas. BTW, outsourcing jobs to other countries does not pose the only risk to workers and their jobs, job automation leading to technological unemployment does too.
All of this makes the worker very vulnerable because he/she is placed in a highly volatile job market. When we add to that the fact that many lower skilled jobs are now receiving poverty wages, the worker's plight becomes more dire. All of this volatility is due to the business owners preferred ethic of maximizing profits. This ethic causes other problems such as environment destruction as business owners try to cut more costs to increase profit.
Furthermore, we can add how some who own businesses have accumulated enough wealth to gain a measure of control over lawmakers.
One doesn't have to be a Marxist, that is one who follows Marx's solutions to the problems inherent in Capitalism, to recognize and try to solve the above problems. But it is that Marx's criticisms of Capitalism point out some of the structural injustices that come with our capitalist system. These are injustices which Conservatives are unable to see.
Finally, Carter complains that some liberal evangelists have interpreted the Conservative position as having blamed the person in poverty for their plight. His complaints seem to overlook the faultfinding Conservatives exercise especially concerning the personal values of those who are poor in conjunction with the lack of criticism of the current system.
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