Einstein's Defense of Socialism(luxemburgist.wordpress.com)
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Einstein's Defense of Socialism
http://luxemburgist.wordpress.com/2010/09/05/einsteins-defense-of-socialism/
5 comments
Ironic that Einstein, writing in America after fleeing the horrors of national socialism in Germany, still entertained notions of subjugating the individual to the state.
Uhh, you know that the National Socialist Worker's Party didn't really have anything to do with socialism?
I'm sorry but that just isn't correct. I'm absolutely not saying all socialists are Nazis but the Nazi party was an extreme example of the socialist philosophy. That philosophy being that the Government should use its power to socially engineer a better world (the opposite of which being the libertarian philosophy that the Government should exist to protect people against social engineering by allowing them to do what they want even if those actions are detrimental).
Obviously it's all a sliding scale but to say OstiaAntica is flat out wrong is not accurate.
Obviously it's all a sliding scale but to say OstiaAntica is flat out wrong is not accurate.
The Nazis were facists, which is to say that there was "private property", but the state could tell you what you had to do with "your" property. In socialism, the state owns the property. It's a distinction without much of a difference, the main one being that socialism is a little more honest.
Spoken like a true 5 minute dabbler with an extremely cursory knowledge of the topic at hand. Bravo!
Actually, the "state owning the property" is not a core idea of socialism --it was only a "feature" of "really existing socialism", and even USSR had things like the NEP. Except for the backward places where "really existing socialism" developed, extremely few europeans (or american for that matter) socialists believed that it was a proper socialism at all.
As in, there are several types of socialism. Things americans complain about and deny as "socialism" (universal health care, for one), are proposed by even right-wing parties in Europe.
I'm sorry, but a cursory glance at one book or a documentary, or something heard from a friend of a friend, won't do. In order to intelligently discuss matters of world politics one has to do a little research. And it would be better if that research was impartial. Buy some books from both sides of the argument, and from both sides of the atlantic (and even the pacific).
The average opinion even on this matters, even on a site like "Hacker News" is often little better than what creationists know about evolution.
Actually, the "state owning the property" is not a core idea of socialism --it was only a "feature" of "really existing socialism", and even USSR had things like the NEP. Except for the backward places where "really existing socialism" developed, extremely few europeans (or american for that matter) socialists believed that it was a proper socialism at all.
As in, there are several types of socialism. Things americans complain about and deny as "socialism" (universal health care, for one), are proposed by even right-wing parties in Europe.
I'm sorry, but a cursory glance at one book or a documentary, or something heard from a friend of a friend, won't do. In order to intelligently discuss matters of world politics one has to do a little research. And it would be better if that research was impartial. Buy some books from both sides of the argument, and from both sides of the atlantic (and even the pacific).
The average opinion even on this matters, even on a site like "Hacker News" is often little better than what creationists know about evolution.
I highly recommend the Political Compass:
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
It changed my 1 dimensional thinking about the sliding scale between left and right and I feel richer for it.
http://www.politicalcompass.org/
It changed my 1 dimensional thinking about the sliding scale between left and right and I feel richer for it.
The main problem with nazism(and probably communism) is that it isn't democratic, not that it's socialistic.
Social engineering can be a good thing, in the right quantities. just look at sweden. but it's very hard to achieve this right quantity under a dictatorship, not to talk about the awfull people that usually lead dictatorships.
Social engineering can be a good thing, in the right quantities. just look at sweden. but it's very hard to achieve this right quantity under a dictatorship, not to talk about the awfull people that usually lead dictatorships.
Emm, actually Hitler adopted the "Socialism" part of "National Socialism" in order to win leftist votes, in a giant bait-and-switch scheme.
The Nazi party had nothing to do with socialism, as the term was and is known and defined in the relevant political literature.
Or, more correctly, the horrors of Nazi germany had nothing to do with economic regulation and the social health care et al, and all to do with racist ideology, dictatorship and imperialism.
Actually, Sweden is socialist, in the sense most americans define the word, as well as New Zealand, and it's all the better for them --and they have tens times more refined than either US Republican or Democrat policies.
The Nazi party had nothing to do with socialism, as the term was and is known and defined in the relevant political literature.
Or, more correctly, the horrors of Nazi germany had nothing to do with economic regulation and the social health care et al, and all to do with racist ideology, dictatorship and imperialism.
Actually, Sweden is socialist, in the sense most americans define the word, as well as New Zealand, and it's all the better for them --and they have tens times more refined than either US Republican or Democrat policies.
I feel like you are all somehow far from the truth.
I live in Moldova, a state that appeared as a consequence of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact (also known as the Stalin-Hitler pact). We had the Communist Party ruling our country until 2 years ago.
I've been talking to both Romanian (Fascist) and Russian (Soviet) soldiers, and they all agree, both Nazism and Communism are socialistic regimes. I strongly recommend "The Soviet Story", watching it might clear your views.
I live in Moldova, a state that appeared as a consequence of the Ribbentrop-Molotov pact (also known as the Stalin-Hitler pact). We had the Communist Party ruling our country until 2 years ago.
I've been talking to both Romanian (Fascist) and Russian (Soviet) soldiers, and they all agree, both Nazism and Communism are socialistic regimes. I strongly recommend "The Soviet Story", watching it might clear your views.
http://ia700107.us.archive.org/17/items/TheSovietStory/THE_S...
"The classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way." ... "They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust." - Karl Marx
Everyone should watch this movie - especially people that think that socialism is a benign idea.
"The classes and the races too weak to master the new conditions of life must give way." ... "They must perish in the revolutionary holocaust." - Karl Marx
Everyone should watch this movie - especially people that think that socialism is a benign idea.
`maxharris` is either a moron or a liar, or more probably both. The first fragment of this sentence is genuine Marx, writing for the New York Daily Tribune, as a one-second search would have shown him. The second I cannot find; it is certainly not in the same article, as the ellipsis fraudulently suggests. If it exists the chances that it refers to a transition to socialism, communism, or whatever Marx is supposed to have favored, are certainly zero.
In the Daily Tribune article, Marx is discussing emigration (mostly to America) from England, Ireland and Scotland, in the years around 1850, and the gruesome commentary of English writers of the period.
The Economist, for example, he quotes as writing:
"The departure of the redundant part of the population of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland is an indispensable preliminary to every kind of improvement. The revenue of Ireland has not suffered in any degree from the famine of 1846-47, or from the emigration that has since taken place. On the contrary, her net revenue amounted in 1851 to £4,281,999, being about £184,000 greater than in 1843"
I.e. they "regard ‘Net-Revenue’ as the Moloch to whom entire populations must be sacrificed..." as Marx puts the view of the Ricardians.
The context can be found here on a website for true believers: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/04.htm
I don't see any easy way of search for ancient Economist articles, but I notice that in the same year the American writer Carey quoted the same passage as from "Economist, (London,) Feb. 12, 1853." in his book on the slave trade http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8000/pg8000.txt
In the Daily Tribune article, Marx is discussing emigration (mostly to America) from England, Ireland and Scotland, in the years around 1850, and the gruesome commentary of English writers of the period.
The Economist, for example, he quotes as writing:
"The departure of the redundant part of the population of Ireland and the Highlands of Scotland is an indispensable preliminary to every kind of improvement. The revenue of Ireland has not suffered in any degree from the famine of 1846-47, or from the emigration that has since taken place. On the contrary, her net revenue amounted in 1851 to £4,281,999, being about £184,000 greater than in 1843"
I.e. they "regard ‘Net-Revenue’ as the Moloch to whom entire populations must be sacrificed..." as Marx puts the view of the Ricardians.
The context can be found here on a website for true believers: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1853/03/04.htm
I don't see any easy way of search for ancient Economist articles, but I notice that in the same year the American writer Carey quoted the same passage as from "Economist, (London,) Feb. 12, 1853." in his book on the slave trade http://www.gutenberg.org/cache/epub/8000/pg8000.txt
So how do you deal with the following quote?
"The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward." - Friedrich Engels
A quick google search shows that this one is NOT hard to find:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=Mdj3AXU2YEEC&pg=PA167&#...
Engels was the co-founder of Marxism, and there is a great deal of evidence that the Soviet Union murdered tens of millions of its own citizens. Given these facts, any reasonable person will conclude that Marxism is an ideology that leads to mass murder.
"The next world war will result in the disappearance from the face of the earth not only of reactionary classes and dynasties, but also of entire reactionary peoples. And that, too, is a step forward." - Friedrich Engels
A quick google search shows that this one is NOT hard to find:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1849/01/13.htm
http://books.google.com/books?id=Mdj3AXU2YEEC&pg=PA167&#...
Engels was the co-founder of Marxism, and there is a great deal of evidence that the Soviet Union murdered tens of millions of its own citizens. Given these facts, any reasonable person will conclude that Marxism is an ideology that leads to mass murder.
The quote from Engels (1820-1895) dates from 1849. But whatever the text may mean, it would be absurd to claim that it is an expression of 'Marxism', whatever in turn that may mean. (I would have thought that Engels invented "Marxism" -- about 30 years after writing this newspaper article.)
I don't care to defend Engels early middle or late, but this text doesn't have the murder-favoring aspect you are pretending it does. It is a commentary on ultra-complicated post-1848 politics; there is little here that wouldn't have been accepted by an American observer of the time.
Interpretation is again helped by the preceding sentence (at a bare minimum) which might be thought just as creepy: "The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names."
The disappearance of a 'reactionary class' evidently means: the coming to a social order in which that is not one of the classes. The disappearance of a 'dynasty' doesn't mean murder of the ruling family. The disappearance of 'nations' (Nationen) and 'peoples' (Voelker) is the same: not the destruction of individuals, but the formation of some wider social unity, in which those distinctions of Volk don't arise. It is like the disappearance of the Confederacy.
The language Engels is employing is indeed ugly. But it is impossible to believe that he or anyone in the mid 19th c. would be arguing for something in the nature of genocide. They were simply too naive to envisage such a thing.
That the Soviet Union was a death machine that murdered millions is obvious. It has nothing to do with the materials quoted, from Marx or Engels. The question why you continue to fabricate connections is still open.
I don't care to defend Engels early middle or late, but this text doesn't have the murder-favoring aspect you are pretending it does. It is a commentary on ultra-complicated post-1848 politics; there is little here that wouldn't have been accepted by an American observer of the time.
Interpretation is again helped by the preceding sentence (at a bare minimum) which might be thought just as creepy: "The general war which will then break out will smash this Slav Sonderbund and wipe out all these petty hidebound nations, down to their very names."
The disappearance of a 'reactionary class' evidently means: the coming to a social order in which that is not one of the classes. The disappearance of a 'dynasty' doesn't mean murder of the ruling family. The disappearance of 'nations' (Nationen) and 'peoples' (Voelker) is the same: not the destruction of individuals, but the formation of some wider social unity, in which those distinctions of Volk don't arise. It is like the disappearance of the Confederacy.
The language Engels is employing is indeed ugly. But it is impossible to believe that he or anyone in the mid 19th c. would be arguing for something in the nature of genocide. They were simply too naive to envisage such a thing.
That the Soviet Union was a death machine that murdered millions is obvious. It has nothing to do with the materials quoted, from Marx or Engels. The question why you continue to fabricate connections is still open.
<quote>The disappearance of a 'reactionary class' evidently means: the coming to a social order in which that is not one of the classes. The disappearance of a 'dynasty' doesn't mean murder of the ruling family. The disappearance of 'nations' (Nationen) and 'peoples' (Voelker) is the same: not the destruction of individuals, but the formation of some wider social unity, in which those distinctions of Volk don't arise. It is like the disappearance of the Confederacy.</quote>
The only way to make people really disappear is to kill them or throw them into a gulag. Why would a ruler go on supporting people that he wants to see disappear? Marx and Engels spent their lives undermining individual rights ("you have the right to be left alone, as long as you don't steal from, kill or defraud other people"), which is the only thing that would have kept these genocides from occuring.
I don't believe that this was some unforseeable connection. The bloody language in Engels' writing makes more sense in this context.
Historical context does matter, but if you do it to the point where you can't even judge anything in history as good or bad for people, you're just following the current academic fad rather than thinking sensibly. This is especially important when the ideas you're judging are still present in the world around you, and when some aspect of history is still not properly understood in most people's minds, as is the case with the history of Communism.
The only way to make people really disappear is to kill them or throw them into a gulag. Why would a ruler go on supporting people that he wants to see disappear? Marx and Engels spent their lives undermining individual rights ("you have the right to be left alone, as long as you don't steal from, kill or defraud other people"), which is the only thing that would have kept these genocides from occuring.
I don't believe that this was some unforseeable connection. The bloody language in Engels' writing makes more sense in this context.
Historical context does matter, but if you do it to the point where you can't even judge anything in history as good or bad for people, you're just following the current academic fad rather than thinking sensibly. This is especially important when the ideas you're judging are still present in the world around you, and when some aspect of history is still not properly understood in most people's minds, as is the case with the history of Communism.
"The only way to make people really disappear is to kill them or throw them into a gulag."
But no one was suggesting making anyone disappear, least of all Engels. All the myriad principalities and duchies of the German world are now gone, except Liechtenstein & Co -- this is an example of what Engels is anticipating and saying would be an 'advance' (he is thinking in this case of those of the southern parts of the Austrian Empire) Those who wanted the unification of Germany didn't want to kill off the people of Schleswig-Holstein! The suggestion is an outrage! Every rational person in the period thought that (1) a world full of petty duchies ruled by the church keeping peasants in darkness, etc etc. was fated to go away and that (2) this would be good; Americans, who were familiar with something better, would have been even more emphatic than Engels. In claiming that the ideas here propounded are the source of all evil, you are claiming that e.g. America is an example of this evil.
The claim that Marx and Engels 'spent their lives undermining' individual rights does not come with any evidence. Marx spent his life trying to write a book about the inner nature of the so-called 'capitalistic mode of production', of which he managed to finish one volume. It's a good read, you should try it sometime. Incredibly funny for one thing. That it is somehow all an argument against individual rights is a complete inversion of the actual text. You are as usual employing Russian barbarism as an argument against Marx.
You are in fact representing Stalinist propaganda. The idea the the Soviet Union somehow realized something in Marx is pure Stalinism. Marx did nothing appreciable except attempt an analysis -- true or false it matters not -- of the present, specifically capitalistic form of life, without offering the least suggestion for a possible replacement: "I am not writing recipes for the cook-shops of the future". Every attempt to imagine a possible better future society he sneers at as utopianism, Fourierism, Saint Simonism etc etc. The only formula he has for the imagined replacement is "communism", i.e. people living together and making their life together on the basis of thinking out together how to live together and make their lives together -- an ancient expression, another word for democracy -- and one admitting as many interpretations, many of course corrupt.
But no one was suggesting making anyone disappear, least of all Engels. All the myriad principalities and duchies of the German world are now gone, except Liechtenstein & Co -- this is an example of what Engels is anticipating and saying would be an 'advance' (he is thinking in this case of those of the southern parts of the Austrian Empire) Those who wanted the unification of Germany didn't want to kill off the people of Schleswig-Holstein! The suggestion is an outrage! Every rational person in the period thought that (1) a world full of petty duchies ruled by the church keeping peasants in darkness, etc etc. was fated to go away and that (2) this would be good; Americans, who were familiar with something better, would have been even more emphatic than Engels. In claiming that the ideas here propounded are the source of all evil, you are claiming that e.g. America is an example of this evil.
The claim that Marx and Engels 'spent their lives undermining' individual rights does not come with any evidence. Marx spent his life trying to write a book about the inner nature of the so-called 'capitalistic mode of production', of which he managed to finish one volume. It's a good read, you should try it sometime. Incredibly funny for one thing. That it is somehow all an argument against individual rights is a complete inversion of the actual text. You are as usual employing Russian barbarism as an argument against Marx.
You are in fact representing Stalinist propaganda. The idea the the Soviet Union somehow realized something in Marx is pure Stalinism. Marx did nothing appreciable except attempt an analysis -- true or false it matters not -- of the present, specifically capitalistic form of life, without offering the least suggestion for a possible replacement: "I am not writing recipes for the cook-shops of the future". Every attempt to imagine a possible better future society he sneers at as utopianism, Fourierism, Saint Simonism etc etc. The only formula he has for the imagined replacement is "communism", i.e. people living together and making their life together on the basis of thinking out together how to live together and make their lives together -- an ancient expression, another word for democracy -- and one admitting as many interpretations, many of course corrupt.
> The claim that Marx and Engels 'spent their lives undermining' individual rights does not come with any evidence.
From http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil332/trmarxII.htm
"Note how much the early Marx is influenced by Hegel: (1) Individualism is a problem to be overcome. (2) Emancipation is the goal, but of a species-being not as an individual. Freedom is identified with the universal (844)."
"Private property "is the product of alienated labor, and ... it is the means by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation.""
The right to private property is an individual right. If someone is totally deprived of the right to their property, they can't survive: take away someone's food, clothes, home, bed, etc., and they're dead before long. This happened millions of times in the Soviet Union and in China, among other places. You really can't go on pretending that Marx had nothing to do with it!
From http://faculty.washington.edu/wtalbott/phil332/trmarxII.htm
"Note how much the early Marx is influenced by Hegel: (1) Individualism is a problem to be overcome. (2) Emancipation is the goal, but of a species-being not as an individual. Freedom is identified with the universal (844)."
"Private property "is the product of alienated labor, and ... it is the means by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation.""
The right to private property is an individual right. If someone is totally deprived of the right to their property, they can't survive: take away someone's food, clothes, home, bed, etc., and they're dead before long. This happened millions of times in the Soviet Union and in China, among other places. You really can't go on pretending that Marx had nothing to do with it!
> I don't care to defend Engels early middle or late, ...
> The language Engels is employing is indeed ugly.
You agree that Engels was a philosopher, and his philosophy is not defensible.
But here's where we probably disagree: I believe that philosophy is something that does have an impact on the world. A vast number of people (both powerful and not) read Engels (and Marx - and Kant), and this played a major role in the decisions they made in their lives. There's definitely a trickle-down effect here: learned people get the ideas first, and apply those ideas to their own fields. Less-educated people don't read philosophy, but they get the gist of it this way. (And, of course, there are shades in between.) This is consistent also with the fact tha philosophical ideas take a relatively long time to permeate the culture. Summary: in a sense, philosophy determines the course of history.
Kant originated the ideas that Marx and Engels applied to politics, which influenced Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. (It is true that many other politicians were also influenced by Marx and Engels, but they were either not running big countries, or had countries that were behind the philosophical forefront of the era, such as the USA.)
Is it any surprise that blood-soaked ideas lead to mass death? I don't think that Kant, Hegel, Marx and Engels were idiots that didn't know what they were doing or what their ideas actually meant.
> The language Engels is employing is indeed ugly.
You agree that Engels was a philosopher, and his philosophy is not defensible.
But here's where we probably disagree: I believe that philosophy is something that does have an impact on the world. A vast number of people (both powerful and not) read Engels (and Marx - and Kant), and this played a major role in the decisions they made in their lives. There's definitely a trickle-down effect here: learned people get the ideas first, and apply those ideas to their own fields. Less-educated people don't read philosophy, but they get the gist of it this way. (And, of course, there are shades in between.) This is consistent also with the fact tha philosophical ideas take a relatively long time to permeate the culture. Summary: in a sense, philosophy determines the course of history.
Kant originated the ideas that Marx and Engels applied to politics, which influenced Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao. (It is true that many other politicians were also influenced by Marx and Engels, but they were either not running big countries, or had countries that were behind the philosophical forefront of the era, such as the USA.)
Is it any surprise that blood-soaked ideas lead to mass death? I don't think that Kant, Hegel, Marx and Engels were idiots that didn't know what they were doing or what their ideas actually meant.
Again, I don't think there is any evidence for these claims; they are bald assertions evidently made with an ulterior motive, which is what makes this all unjust. It would never have occurred to Kant or Marx that anything like the genocides and purges of the 20th century were even possible. They were, if you like, naïve. It was better times. It was by slow degrees that these things did become possible. The savagery of the First World War, and the sick character of the Tsarist regime, are together quite enough to explain the blood-curdling aspects of the Bolshevik regime, and its Stalinist development. Any number of 'ideologies' could have filled the vacuum; in Russia, Marxism was the least likely given what it seems to say, but so it was.
The suggestion that Kant has blood on his hands in this connection is so completely outrageous and evil -- it puts one in mind of LaRouchites putting everything down to Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and the change in attunement of instruments. This is nonsense which serves to disable the listener's sense of reality. Once one is willing to blame Kant for Russian barbarism, one will stop at nothing. But the truth is, the same holds for Marx, who held to an entirely conventional moral system, basically that of Aristotle.
The suggestion that Kant has blood on his hands in this connection is so completely outrageous and evil -- it puts one in mind of LaRouchites putting everything down to Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and the change in attunement of instruments. This is nonsense which serves to disable the listener's sense of reality. Once one is willing to blame Kant for Russian barbarism, one will stop at nothing. But the truth is, the same holds for Marx, who held to an entirely conventional moral system, basically that of Aristotle.
> But the truth is, the same holds for Marx, who held to an entirely conventional moral system, basically that of Aristotle.
Really?
Marx to Engels: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/letters/48_1...
"I have devised an infallible plan for extracting money from your old man, as we now have none.
Write me a begging letter (as crude as possible), in which you retail your past vicissitudes, but in such a way that I can pass it on to your mother. The old man's beginning to get the wind up."
Explain how in the hell someone with a moral system that's "basically that of Aristotle" wrote this.
Really?
Marx to Engels: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/letters/48_1...
"I have devised an infallible plan for extracting money from your old man, as we now have none.
Write me a begging letter (as crude as possible), in which you retail your past vicissitudes, but in such a way that I can pass it on to your mother. The old man's beginning to get the wind up."
Explain how in the hell someone with a moral system that's "basically that of Aristotle" wrote this.
> it puts one in mind of LaRouchites putting everything down to Aristotle and Bertrand Russell and the change in attunement of instruments.
Yes, LaRouche and his gang are crazy. I don't share their philosophical views, and I certainly don't agree with their political methods. (Apparently, they are so inconsequential that I can't even remember who they are. I've only heard about them twice before, and each time I needed to look the Wikipedia entry to learn about them all over again.) Having read the page now, I can say with certainty that I oppose LaRouche's views more than most people do: I despise his most beloved philosophers.
Your claim is like saying that because creationists and evolutionists both have ideas on the origin of life, and because one group (the creationists) is clearly nuts, the sane scientific mindset has no validity because it also advances a worldview.
Yes, LaRouche and his gang are crazy. I don't share their philosophical views, and I certainly don't agree with their political methods. (Apparently, they are so inconsequential that I can't even remember who they are. I've only heard about them twice before, and each time I needed to look the Wikipedia entry to learn about them all over again.) Having read the page now, I can say with certainty that I oppose LaRouche's views more than most people do: I despise his most beloved philosophers.
Your claim is like saying that because creationists and evolutionists both have ideas on the origin of life, and because one group (the creationists) is clearly nuts, the sane scientific mindset has no validity because it also advances a worldview.
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Interesting, even though i'm not suprised knowing Einstein's affinity for Spinoza : he must have carefully read Marx and other materialist philosophers.