Fabianism

[Immanuel Can]

A) It limits the ability of people to make their own living better, but doesn't limit the elites from grabbing all the goods and power. Socialist regimes are always presided over by a soviet, or elite class, or party apparatchiks, or even by a dictator (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.) and tyrannize the ordinary person by depriving him or her of any ability to add value to his own situation. It has a 100% record of doing just that.

B) And it cannot, repeat, cannot allow democratic processes, because it cannot endure Socialism being voted out.

A ---If I flip a coin five times and it comes up heads each time does that mean it MUST come up heads if I flip it a sixth time?

With a coin, you already know there's another side: unless you forgot to inspect the coin first, and don't realize it's a two-header.

But what's your evidence there's any "other side" to Socialism? We've never seen it. So how do you know it has one? You don't.

And if the coin just keeps coming up "totalitarianism," every time, how many flips do you need before you start to suspect you're being gamed? And how many people have to die before you start to have a concern?

B -- That most certainly not specific even to authoritarian state socialism.

The term "authoritarian Socialism" is redundant. All Socialism has to be authoritarian, or it cannot implement Socialism. You should know that.

Forget "cannot endure"...

You cannot "forget it" without also "forgetting Socialism," since the latter demands the former. Socialism simply cannot allow for any rival to continue: not monarchy, not feudalism, not democracy, not constitutionalism, not Libertarianism...nothing that is not Socialism itself.

Those of us who say we are for democratic socialism...

Are making as much sense as people who claim to be for "freedom-loving dictators." There's no such thing. Socialism cannot permit anybody to vote it out, or exchange it for any other regime, even for a time.

100% record of failure, in spite of being tried by dozens of regimes in the last century. And not one single success. Ask yourself: "when am I going to stop letting the propagandists play me?"

[Dubious]

Well, the reason his disciples have had to add things to what he said is that almost everything he predicted turned out to be wrong. So Marx's failure is at the root of the problem of the Neo-Marxists' existence. Even they will tell you that much -- nobody can really believe in what they call "crude Marxism" anymore. He was too often simply wrong.

What is categorically illogical and non-sequitur in your statement is that the neo-Marxists would have made any attempt to extend, correct or update Marxism had it been the total or near total abject failure you keep insisting it was. Why bother trying to revive a dead horse which you determined Marxism to be; it makes absolutely no sense.

People who are ideologically-possessed make no sense. You're right. The Neo-Marxists are addicted to a hopeless task. They're trying to rescue a failed pseudo-economic, quasi-religious theory, Marxism. But it can't be done. That they refuse to see that, merely shows how ideologically-possessed they are.

Unfortunately, they're so crazed they take us all down with their devotion to a failed and suicidal utopian theory, if they can.

Marx could never have foreseen having seen only the worst that Capitalism had to offer at the time...just as people from 100 years ago could never have imagined the world existing today.

This is precisely the point. Marx imagined that the temporary travails of the Industrial Revolution were a profound and persistent set of conditions. They weren't. They were temporary. The antipathy between the proles and the bourgeoisie, the mercantile middle class, was going to be dissolved by advancing social conditions as industrialism developed. Prosperity was going to spread. The lower classes were going to move up, not merely into the level of the industrial middle class, but up the the level of the modern middle class...which is a level no industrial bourgeois ever enjoyed. Look at our technologies now. Look at our health care. Look at our subsidies. Look at our wages. Look at our educational benefits. Look at our middle-class consumption of goods. Look at our food supply. Nobody, not even the rich, in the Industrial Revolution enjoyed such prosperity as we do, even when we keep thinking of ourselves as ordinary or underprivileged.

Marx foresaw none of this. He was simply deeply wrong. Nothing of what he predicted came true. Even Russia, which is where Marx's revolution eventually broke out, did it in a non-Marxian way: for Marx had insisted that the necessary sequence went, feudalism, capitalism, revolution, Socialism. But Russia jumped from monarchy and feudalism straight into the Socialist project. Marx thought that could not happen, which is why he predicted revolution for England, not Russia.

The guy just never got anything right, really. So Neo-Marxists have their work cut out for them, trying to rescue a theory that has no validation. But they keep trying; and yes, that's irrational, and yes, that's impossible. But it never stops them trying.

Look at yourself: did you know Marxism has all those flaws? If you did, would you be campaigning for it? Or do you overlook those flaws, and imagine Marx was still right, and push him anyway? Irrational, perhaps it is; but it's unfortunately all too common, as well.

Marx could easily be forgiven for failing to imagine in 1848 how Capitalism would upgrade itself during the 20th century. Much of that refinement came about by reporting on the dismal conditions during that period. The fact that Marx was wrong in his predictions is not in the least unique. Almost everyone fails in their prophecies of the future there being far too many unknown variables in such a blueprint.

It is not his failure in describing the future of Capitalism which is still intently studied but his analysis of Capitalism itself as a system in which he excels, the accuracy of which becoming evermore apparent. That part you didn’t mention because according to you he failed in everything. In one post you write that he’s an idiot which reminds me of the unforgettable post in which you assert that Nietzsche was a weasel because he killed your pathetic god.

If you want to see an example of how blatant prejudice and your perverse kind of cultism completely destroys any analytical ability one may normally have in creating idiots and weasels, look in the mirror.

The summarize Marx with the least amount of words it's only necessary to say he failed in one subject but excelled in another. If you bothered to look into it you wouldn't need to ask what that is or why he's still so consistently mentioned and quoted by subsequent commentators, historians and analysts.

[Gary Childress]

A) It limits the ability of people to make their own living better, but doesn't limit the elites from grabbing all the goods and power. Socialist regimes are always presided over by a soviet, or elite class, or party apparatchiks, or even by a dictator (Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot, etc.) and tyrannize the ordinary person by depriving him or her of any ability to add value to his own situation. It has a 100% record of doing just that.

B) And it cannot, repeat, cannot allow democratic processes, because it cannot endure Socialism being voted out.

A ---If I flip a coin five times and it comes up heads each time does that mean it MUST come up heads if I flip it a sixth time?

With a coin, you already know there's another side: unless you forgot to inspect the coin first, and don't realize it's a two-header.

But what's your evidence there's any "other side" to Socialism? We've never seen it. So how do you know it has one? You don't.

And if the coin just keeps coming up "totalitarianism," every time, how many flips do you need before you start to suspect you're being gamed? And how many people have to die before you start to have a concern?

B -- That most certainly not specific even to authoritarian state socialism.

The term "authoritarian Socialism" is redundant. All Socialism has to be authoritarian, or it cannot implement Socialism. You should know that.

Forget "cannot endure"...

You cannot "forget it" without also "forgetting Socialism," since the latter demands the former. Socialism simply cannot allow for any rival to continue: not monarchy, not feudalism, not democracy, not constitutionalism, not Libertarianism...nothing that is not Socialism itself.

Those of us who say we are for democratic socialism...

Are making as much sense as people who claim to be for "freedom-loving dictators." There's no such thing. Socialism cannot permit anybody to vote it out, or exchange it for any other regime, even for a time.

100% record of failure, in spite of being tried by dozens of regimes in the last century. And not one single success. Ask yourself: "when am I going to stop letting the propagandists play me?"

Then the wealthy elite will continue to own everything, and everyone else will remain serfs who must rent their labor to assist them in accumulating more and more wealth. Don't pretend you can change the world without changing anything in the world. What we have now is what we will have if your choice is to do nothing. There will be more bailouts for the wealthy, and there will be more exploitation of less developed societies. Don't pretend to be surprised if that doesn't change, because it's not going to change, and it NEVER has for capitalism. Capitalism has a 100% track record of exploitation. It started with citizens of the capitalist countries, and when the citizenry got sick of being exploited, it was farmed out to the third world. If you have a problem with any other alternative than unlimited propertarianism, then you have your world now. It's here. Enjoy.

[Immanuel Can]

A ---If I flip a coin five times and it comes up heads each time does that mean it MUST come up heads if I flip it a sixth time?

With a coin, you already know there's another side: unless you forgot to inspect the coin first, and don't realize it's a two-header.

But what's your evidence there's any "other side" to Socialism? We've never seen it. So how do you know it has one? You don't.

And if the coin just keeps coming up "totalitarianism," every time, how many flips do you need before you start to suspect you're being gamed? And how many people have to die before you start to have a concern?

B -- That most certainly not specific even to authoritarian state socialism.

The term "authoritarian Socialism" is redundant. All Socialism has to be authoritarian, or it cannot implement Socialism. You should know that.

Forget "cannot endure"...

You cannot "forget it" without also "forgetting Socialism," since the latter demands the former. Socialism simply cannot allow for any rival to continue: not monarchy, not feudalism, not democracy, not constitutionalism, not Libertarianism...nothing that is not Socialism itself.

Those of us who say we are for democratic socialism...

Are making as much sense as people who claim to be for "freedom-loving dictators." There's no such thing. Socialism cannot permit anybody to vote it out, or exchange it for any other regime, even for a time.

100% record of failure, in spite of being tried by dozens of regimes in the last century. And not one single success. Ask yourself: "when am I going to stop letting the propagandists play me?"

Then the wealthy elite will continue to own everything,

They won't, if you get off your butt and do something. Make yourself some money. Add some value to the world. Then you can have your own little kingdom. They won't stop you; they won't even care.

What we have now is what we will have if your choice is to do nothing.

You haven't been paying any attention. I've said we do have to do something: but it must take into account the realities of fallibility in human nature. Failure to do that is what empowers despots.

Capitalism has a 100% track record of exploitation.

Actually, that's quite false. Here: https://www.compassionate-capitalism.or ... ed-project, and here: https://borgenproject.org/microenterpri ... countries/. I could give you dozens more such cases.

[Immanuel Can]

Marx could easily be forgiven for failing to imagine in 1848 how Capitalism would upgrade itself during the 20th century.

Sure. He was ignorant of that.

But can he be forgiven for being a horrible human being -- like raping his houskeeper and then disowning Fredrick, his child? Can he be forgiven for his Satanism, his abuse of his friends, his humiliation of his wife, his horrible temper, the suicides of his children...maybe. But not so easily.

And can he be forgiven for being behind the killing of 120 million human beings in the last century alone? Maybe not so much.

It is not his failure in describing the future of Capitalism which is still intently studied but his analysis of Capitalism itself as a system in which he excels,

He excels in nothing. His mother famously said of him, "He writes so much about capital; I wish he'd make some." But he was a bum and a sponge. He knew nothing about it.

[MikeNovack]

"Those of us who say we are for democratic socialism.." Are making as much sense as people who claim to be for "freedom-loving dictators." There's no such thing.

I do not know why you are having so much trouble understanding that you do not create truth "by definition".

You are defining "socialism" as"authoritarian socialism" and using that to conclude "socialism" is necessarily authoritarian. No complaint so far. It is your definition and you are making it perfectly clear what you mean when YOU say "socialism".

But you are then going on to argue that OTHER PEOPLE who are not defining socialism as just "authoritarian socialism" cannot be speaking of socialism when they speak of "democratic socialism". You KNOW we are not defining socialism as JUST "authoritarian socialism". We would be speaking nonsense ONLY if we were accepting your definition and you know we are not.

I have repeatedly asked you "then what do you want to call X?" (example after example of what I would consider an instance of "socialism"). In order to converse with you I am willing to consider using a different word. No, the problem is NOT that I am not giving you my definition because it covers a WIDE range, would be including those examples which over and over you reject as being relevant.

[Dubious]

Marx could easily be forgiven for failing to imagine in 1848 how Capitalism would upgrade itself during the 20th century.

Sure. He was ignorant of that.

But can he be forgiven for being a horrible human being -- like raping his houskeeper and then disowning Fredrick, his child? Can he be forgiven for his Satanism, his abuse of his friends, his humiliation of his wife, his horrible temper, the suicides of his children...maybe. But not so easily.

And can he be forgiven for being behind the killing of 120 million human beings in the last century alone?

Everything you say against those who are contra your agenda is replete with nothing more than the most corrosive, mind-blowing, blundering prejudice a diseased mind can come up with. Though long verified and no-longer in the least questionable, it still surprises by its excess when implying that he was behind the killing of 120 million human beings in the last century alone. That statement amounts to an ad hominem at the most extreme scale imaginable!

Here are a few extracts of a more historically balanced view....

Where bias matters most
A lot of the harsher portraits come from anti-Marx or anti-communist writers who explicitly aim to condemn him, and those works often pile motive upon motive in ways scholars regard as overstated. A contemporary review of one such hostile biography argued that even when facts are accurately assembled, the interpretation can become “pure vilification” and leave out Marx’s intelligence, family bonds, and influence. That is a useful warning: the evidence base is real, but the framing is often ideological.

The Helene Demuth incident is a good example of how historical bias can turn a thin, messy evidentiary record into a moral certainty on one side or the other. It shows how easily a private fact can be used either to condemn a historical figure wholesale or to dismiss criticism as politically motivated. The basic historical claim is that Karl Marx fathered a child with the family servant Helene Demuth, and that Frederick Engels publicly took paternity to protect Marx’s marriage. That story is often invoked as evidence that Marx was hypocritical, exploitative, or personally immoral. Because the episode is intimate and politically charged, it has become a kind of Rorschach test for how people read Marx.

Historical lesson
The broader lesson is that controversial figures often get judged through a moralized lens that exaggerates whatever fits a preexisting view. With Marx, the Demuth story is repeatedly used either to discredit his ideas by attacking his character or to show that his critics are obsessed with scandal rather than evidence. So the incident reveals how biography, politics, and confirmation bias can become inseparable in historical memory.
A careful reading would say: the episode likely says something real about Marx’s private conduct, but it says even more about how historians, polemicists, and readers project moral narratives onto incomplete evidence.

Differences between historical biography and polemical character assassination
Historical biography aims to reconstruct a person’s life as faithfully as the evidence allows, while polemical character assassination aims to damage reputation by selecting and amplifying facts to support a moral verdict. The difference is less about whether the facts are true and more about how selectively they are used, what questions are asked, and whether the writer is trying to understand or to condemn.

Character attack
Character assassination works by collapsing complexity into a verdict. It tends to foreground scandal, flatten context, and present one or two episodes as proof of a person’s essence. Historians of the topic note that this style often relies on emotionally charged rhetoric and on audience predispositions more than on balanced reconstruction.

For Marx specifically
With Marx, the Demuth affair, personal abrasiveness, and other unpleasant details can belong in biography, but they become character assassination when they are used as a shortcut to prove that his ideas are therefore false or evil. The best historical writing keeps those questions separate: what he did, what he believed, and what later readers want to make of him.

[FlashDangerpants]

I have repeatedly asked you "then what do you want to call X?" (example after example of what I would consider an instance of "socialism"). In order to converse with you ....

You are not conversing with him, he doesn't converse. If you want a particular question answered, then ask him nothing else.

[mickthinks]

Everything you say against those who are contra your agenda is replete with nothing more than the most corrosive, mind-blowing, blundering prejudice a diseased mind can come up with.

Marx had a housekeeper. Her name was indeed Helene Demuth. She conceived Fred Demuth while in Marx’s employ, yes.

Even supposing Werner Blumenberg is right to credit surviving copies of Louise Freyberger's lost 1898 letter as factual, which is a stretch, you still need to explain why you deduce sexual molestation from pregnancy.

Does all sexual intercourse amount to molestation in your view, or just when there's a leftie you want to smear?


Hint: that's a rhetorical question. There's no need to give your answer, Manny, because it won't be an honest one.

[Immanuel Can]

"Those of us who say we are for democratic socialism.." Are making as much sense as people who claim to be for "freedom-loving dictators." There's no such thing.

I do not know why you are having so much trouble understanding that you do not create truth "by definition".

That's a silly thing to presume: nobody thinks that. But what definitions do is clarify whether or not what one person is understanding by a particular word is similar or not to the thing another person is understanding. That's why you owe definitions to terms you use: so people can find out if they agree with you or not.

You are defining "socialism" as"authoritarian socialism"

Then point me to one example of "non-authoritarian Socialism." There's never been such a regime, in any country, anywhere. Socialism HAS to be authoritarian in order to mobilize its program at all.

[Immanuel Can]

he was behind the killing of 120 million human beings in the last century alone.

That's actually a statistical fact, and easy to verify. Regimes devoted to Marx's doctrines actually probably killed many more than that, and certainly dispossessed, starved, brutalized, tortured and incarcerated vast numbers more. We can count the bodies...though not all of them, because those regimes must have gotten away with at least some we don't know about.

Maybe you just don't like that truth. But truth doesn't care: it is what it is.

[Dubious]

he was behind the killing of 120 million human beings in the last century alone.

That's actually a statistical fact, and easy to verify. Regimes devoted to Marx's doctrines actually probably killed many more than that, and certainly dispossessed, starved, brutalized, tortured and incarcerated vast numbers more. We can count the bodies...though not all of them, because those regimes must have gotten away with at least some we don't know about.

Maybe you just don't like that truth. But truth doesn't care: it is what it is.

In your mind anything you believe becomes a statistical fact. No further inquiry called for. You never deviate from that super simple process of twisting any belief or prejudice you have or endorse into an immutable fact which you denote as TRUTH. But truth, in fact and by definition, does care and in caring, cares nothing for your version of it. Your subjective truths become objective lies in almost every statement you make.

Your insistence that there has to be an original mating couple which replaces evolution - or evolutionism as you call it - is one instance among an abundance of such. Without an "original mating couple" the entire bible falls apart from the very start. Ergo, the bible must be true and evolution false.

The last thing the world now needs are those of your ilk having quarantined gross stupidity in a brain which allows no influx of doubt or its subsequent questionings to ascertain the probability of any supposed truth.

On this site, which is supposed be about philosophy but rarely is, you reign as the ultimate of dead ends.

Extreme cultists like you are and remain the most expendable subspecies on the planet.


Does Russian or Chinese Communism have anything in common with Marx?

Yes—**but only in a limited and often distorted way**. Russian and Chinese communism both drew on Marx’s ideas about class conflict, capitalism’s contradictions, and the goal of a classless society, but neither matched Marx’s full vision very closely.

What they share with Marx...

Marx emphasized that history is shaped by class struggle, and both the Russian and Chinese revolutions presented themselves as Marxist attempts to overturn exploitative class relations. They also borrowed Marx’s criticism of private ownership of the means of production and his claim that capitalism creates deep social inequality.

Where they differ...

Marx expected socialism to emerge mainly in advanced industrial societies, not in mostly agrarian countries like Russia and China at the time of their revolutions. He also imagined communism as a stateless, classless society, while the Soviet Union and the People’s Republic of China became strong one-party states with centralized authority.

Russian vs Chinese versions

Russian communism became associated with Leninism and later Stalinism, while Chinese communism became shaped by Mao Zedong and later by reforms that allowed a mixed economy. So both were Marx-inspired, but each adapted Marx to very different national conditions and political goals.

Plain answer...

So the answer is: **yes, they have Marxist roots, but they are not faithful copies of Marx’s own idea of communism**.

[Immanuel Can]

he was behind the killing of 120 million human beings in the last century alone.

That's actually a statistical fact, and easy to verify. Regimes devoted to Marx's doctrines actually probably killed many more than that, and certainly dispossessed, starved, brutalized, tortured and incarcerated vast numbers more. We can count the bodies...though not all of them, because those regimes must have gotten away with at least some we don't know about.

Maybe you just don't like that truth. But truth doesn't care: it is what it is.

In your mind anything you believe becomes a statistical fact.

Actually, dead bodies are remarkably easy to count...as long as you can find them.

yes, they have Marxist roots, but they are not faithful copies of Marx’s own idea of communism

This is the old dodge about "there's never been real Marxism." What this means though, is very simple: that safe Marxism is not real, and real Marxism is not safe. I have to agree with that.

[Dubious]

That's actually a statistical fact, and easy to verify. Regimes devoted to Marx's doctrines actually probably killed many more than that, and certainly dispossessed, starved, brutalized, tortured and incarcerated vast numbers more. We can count the bodies...though not all of them, because those regimes must have gotten away with at least some we don't know about.

Maybe you just don't like that truth. But truth doesn't care: it is what it is.

In your mind anything you believe becomes a statistical fact.

Actually, dead bodies are remarkably easy to count...as long as you can find them.

yes, they have Marxist roots, but they are not faithful copies of Marx’s own idea of communism

This is the old dodge about "there's never been real Marxism." What this means though, is very simple: that safe Marxism is not real, and real Marxism is not safe. I have to agree with that.

What an incredibly stupid statement. Can't come up with anything better! Forever the same; nothing new! Almost single-handedly you've managed to turn this place into a wasteland which has nothing to do with philosophy. If I were Rick, I wouldn't waste another dollar on the site. It's become the opposite of what it was meant to be.

[Immanuel Can]

In your mind anything you believe becomes a statistical fact.

Actually, dead bodies are remarkably easy to count...as long as you can find them.

yes, they have Marxist roots, but they are not faithful copies of Marx’s own idea of communism

This is the old dodge about "there's never been real Marxism." What this means though, is very simple: that safe Marxism is not real, and real Marxism is not safe. I have to agree with that.

What an incredibly stupid statement. Can't come up with anything better! Forever the same; nothing new! Almost single-handedly you've managed to turn this place into a wasteland which has nothing to do with philosophy. If I were Rick, I wouldn't waste another dollar on the site. It's become the opposite of what it was meant to be.

So...debating Marx isn't "philosophy," in your thinking? Again, in some ways, I have to agree: Marx is more a religion than anything.