The Philosophy Discussion Forum

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 12:33 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 3:45 am

Gary Childress wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 3:30 am

Fair enough. I don't see everything you said as being true, but I'm just a fallible mortal.

Well, check it out. Read a Marx biography. Then you can make up your own mind.

I wasn't referring to Marx's biography. I was referring to your beliefs about all socialism being evil and your beliefs about some of Marx's observations that you think are false.

It's not an either or. It's not, either Marx was evil, OR Socialism is bad. It's both. What sprang from that rotten root turned out to be nothing but poisonous fruit. The verification is in what Socialism has done, not merely in what Marx was.

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 1:08 am

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2026 11:39 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2026 7:46 pm No, "Marxist" is a subset of "Socialist," rather than the other way around, just as "Communist" is a subset of "Socialist." "Socialist" is the umbrella term. But you'll have a hard time finding Socialists who are not willing to confess they admire Marx. He's pretty much the guy they look to. All the worse for them.

You admit it! (what a turnaround from arguing socialism is a contained within Marxism)

Admit what? Socialism is all the same pablum, just served in different bowls. The names change, but the substance is the same.

Discuss The True Levelers, the Shakers, and The Catholic Workers ) respectively well pre-Marx, slightly pre-Marx and overlapping, and post Marx). No ducking, for example "the True Levelers were agrarian, not industrial"(the means of production in their day almost entirely agrarian). They do not to me appear to be "same pablum". Note that I do not care if you want to exclude the "Christian communists" from your definition of communists provided you accept that I would be including them << that we would be differing on what we included/excluded when we used the term "communism" >>

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 3:29 pm

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 1:08 am

MikeNovack wrote: ↑Sat May 23, 2026 11:39 pm You admit it! (what a turnaround from arguing socialism is a contained within Marxism)

Admit what? Socialism is all the same pablum, just served in different bowls. The names change, but the substance is the same.

Discuss The True Levelers, the Shakers, and The Catholic Workers...

We can. But there is an important factor you haven't included in your thinking, when you turn to those examples. It's actually very plain in the examples you've selected; but you're not alert to it, apparently.

Every one of them was tamed by subordination to Western, Judeo-Christian ethics. Whenever Socialist zeal has been tempered by that ethos, it turned into things like collective bargaining, labour laws, welfare, prison reform, healthcare and education initiatives, social security and a reasonable level of economic viability to sustain those efforts, as well. Good things can happen when Judeo-Christian values are generally regnant in a society, regardless of the liabilities of various political options.

But you cannot miss this difference: historically, wherever Socialist zeal has been turned loose in the absence of such an ethos, and the whole system given over to Socialist dogma, the universal results have been quite different -- not just economic unsustainability, but violent revolution, theft, blackballing, racism, censorship, tyranny, starvation, torture, gulags and re-education 'camps,' death marches, executions, killing fields...and final social decay and collapse. The differences could not be more stark.

Does it make a difference whether Socialism is subjugated to the ethos of Judeo-Christian belief, or paired up with Atheism and turned loose on the whole system? You bet it does. And the virtues that we find in limited welfare-states are not due to Socialism. If they were, it would make no difference which regime we were considering...or, we might even find, the Judeo-Christian societies were less successful and free than the Atheist-Socialist regimes. But that is not at all what we find, is it?

So we have to keep those phenomena separate. There's one kind of Socialism that kills people: the totalitarian kind, the Atheist, secular kind. And there's a subordinate, less dysfunctional Socialist-desire that does not quite get out of hand, because it's moderated by a stable, moral, Judeo-Christian ethos.

Here's the most important question, maybe: what kind of a moral ethos is the West becoming now?

Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sun May 24, 2026 6:12 pm
Every one of them was tamed by subordination to Western, Judeo-Christian ethics. [/i]Whenever Socialist zeal has been tempered by that ethos, it turned into things like collective bargaining, labour laws, welfare, prison reform, healthcare and education initiatives, social security and a reasonable level of economic viability to sustain those efforts, as well. Good things can happen when Judeo-Christian values are generally regnant in a society, regardless of the liabilities of various political options.

You are sort of wrecking your case. It is one thing when you argue that only a religious based morality is possible. In effect, that only people who believe some god or gods instructed them how to conduct themselves would conduct themselves accordingly. It is another when you argue only Christianity will do*.

Look IC, I realize that is your sincere belief, but simply saying it over and over won;t convince any of different religions or secularists.

And you are confusing the (absolute) truth of a belief with the effect of a belief. It shouldn't matter if the god of the "pagan" is a false god, only whether the believer believes z(in the moral decrees of that god). Or for that matter, it shouldn't natter if the moral beliefs of the secularist are built on sand, only whether that secularist believes them to be correct.

** Jews do not bother correcting the notion of "Judeo-Christian" but the reality is that they believe in no such thing. Surrounded by Chrisitians, it can't hurt Jews if the Christians believe in this commonality