Is 3 a tulip or the gulf of Mexico? — Bartricks

3 is the current number of gods. There's always one god who thinks the other two are against her, so they can't agree on anything. That's why the world is so fucked up. The prophecy has it that a fourth god will come at the end of days to straighten things up.

May the Fourth be with you.

They're ALL the same, just theory. — Apollodorus

And that too is theory...

Not sure any economic theory "holds water" though. Marx helped us understand capitalism a bit better, but nobody ever has the final word.

If we can't change things, at least we ought to be honest about the facts and not pretend that neo-Marxists or neo-liberals or whoever have all the answers when they clearly don't. — Apollodorus

That seems gratuitous and angry. People try to find solutions to their problems. Should one get pissed about that?

Plus who said we can't change things?

I8 I'll

You don't know me. I have impeccable anticommunist credentials. Theoretically, Popper's radical critique of all historicism including communism is what got me started. I also read Russian refuseniks. In practice, I've travelled behind the iron curtain when it was still a thing, in Afghanistan under Soviet occupation, in China and in post-socialist Central Asia. I know a thing or two about communism as implemented. It's usually better than what they show you on FAUX News.

This said, my conclusion is that a central command economy is unsustainable over the long term, but that so too is capitalism, as rightly pointed out by Marx and others.

Thus the greatest value of communism, historically, resided not in proposing a viable long term alternative, but in pushing capitalist economies towards greater fairness and consideration of workers rights and interests, for fear of a communist revolution. We can see that clearly now that communism is dead: western economies have become far more unequal and thus less sustainable and solidary since the fall of the iron curtain.

You gave no indication that you had noticed the quote — Apollodorus

I commented on them repeatedly.

If all you are trying to do is piss off random people on the interwebs, you're doing okay. Not great but okay.

If you are trying to learn something, you're not doing what it takes.

Other than that, if you think that quoting Marx and Engels is a "lie", then you should take issue with the original authors. — Apollodorus

To pretend that a quote says X when it says Y, is a lie.

To post the same quotes several time, when once suffices, is the behavior of a mindless troll.

Grow some.

:up:

Sancta Mater Ecclesia did what it has always done, more or less successfully (e.g., the Reformation), for so long. That is, what was considered appropriate morally to the extent that didn't endanger its survival as a powerful institution, relatively content with its place and perception of itself as the One Holy, Catholic and Apostolic Church. — Ciceronianus the White

Yes, that would come close to a fair historical judgement in my view.

It has to do with my suspicion that you are just another scatterbrain MAGA internet warrior, busying himself with insulting Marx and Engels ad nauseam for the thrill of it.

I don't see any difference. — Apollodorus

Well, that's you I guess. What about being a black slave in the antebellum South? Would you like that better than being a Jew under Hitler, or a farmer under Stalin?

If I ever wish to reply to one of your posts in the future, I promise you that I will read it very carefully first.

IMO it's better to be a "peasant" than to be dead. — Apollodorus

You are repeating yourself.

I would rather be a farmer under Stalin than a Jew under Hitler.

He may have been "impactful" due to the massive propaganda by Engels and many others and, as I said, through the actions of his disciples like Lenin, Stalin, Mao, and Pol Pot. — Apollodorus

That's usually how people are impactful: by convincing other people to act.

However, Marxist political theory has long been exposed as deliberately ambiguous, inconsistent, and nonsensical. This is the true reason behind communism's abject failure. Marx was a fraud. — Apollodorus

I disagree. I think he was genuine and correct on many issues, like his analysis of the internal contradictions of capitalism and the shameless exploitation of workers. His prescription for the future were ill-founded and did fail, ultimately, but not before having done a lot of good things. Relax and drink your vodka.

However, Marx never achieved anything personally, did he? His only “achievements” were through Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong and other dictators and mass murderers. — Apollodorus

Marx has been the most impactful philosopher of all times, if one excludes Jesus from the race. He inspired millions of people to do things that were nearly unthinkable before him, including a lot of good things too. My experience with people from the ex USSR is that many of the old folks miss the "Soyuz" (Union) and speak fondly of it. You can read the same tone in some Russian novelists, who express well the fear but also the pride that was involved in being a citizen of such a vast and powerful empire as the USSR.

That Marx was wrong on so many points is of course a problem, precisely because he was so impactful. So communism ultimately failed. But as a social experiment it was demonstrably more effective than nazism, which was a total, utter failure. And a great deal of social democracy -- which still survives in Europe -- is about merging a bit of capitalism with a bit of communism. This too is Marx' heritage although he did not expect it.

Fair enough.

Nobody did much to try and stop the Holocaust. Even the people in the known and able to do something impactful, like the allied, did very little to try and stop it. So why single out the CC now, if not because of some old anti-catholic prejudice?

Georges Brassens was never a believer ; he lambasted priests for a living, and used gods in his verses “only for poetic reasons”. Yet he could recognize as his own the intense compassion expressed in Francis Jammes’ poem La Prière (The Prayer).

By the little boy who dies by his mother
While other children play in the courtyard
And by the wounded bird who doesn't know how
Its wing suddenly bleeds and falls from the sky
By thirst and hunger, fever and delirium
Hail to you, Mary

By the children beaten by the drunk returning home
By the donkey who gets kicked in the belly
And by the humiliation of innocents punished
By the virgin sold and undressed
By the son whose mother has been insulted
Hail to you, Mary

By the old woman who stumbles under too much weight
Exclaiming "My God!"
By the unfortunate ones whose arms
Couldn't ever repose on human love
Like the cross of the Son on Simon of Cyrene
By the horse fallen under the chariot it drags
Hail to you, Mary

By the four horizons that crucify the world
By all those whose flesh is torn or dies
By those who are without feet, those without hands
By the sick who’s operated on and moans
And by the just put among the ranks of killers
Hail to you, Mary

By the mother learning that her son is healed
By the bird calling the fallen bird back to the nest
By the thirsty grass that welcomes the rain
By the lost kiss, by love returned
And by the beggar who finds the change he'd lost
Hail to you, Mary

Any time now, the anti-papists are going to tell us all the good deeds done by the Lutherans, the Evangelicals and the Methodists to stop to Holocaust.

If that's your story, go for it

The apology was for not having done anything to stop the Holocaust, not for "their role in the Holocaust". Try again, with less hatred in your heart.

We differ on well-documented facts — 180 Proof

Facile anti Catholic hatred aside, it is a fact that the Catholic Church resisted Nazism to a greater degree than any other Christian denomination.

It is also a historical fact that the Nazis tried to arianize the Jesus story. They made of Jesus a Viking, and called it "positive Christianity" as opposed to the traditional forms of Christianity. What do you think them darn papists thought of this splendid idea?

Comprehension, on the other hand, and non-superficial reading skills, are very good to have on a philosophy website. What you said here I covered in the first one or two sentences in the same post that you are critiquing. — god must be atheist

I was not critiquing anything, mind you.

I would place chattel slavery on a par with the Holocaust in terms of the atrocities committed, so I concede the point that monotheists can do pretty horrible things. Still, there is something particularly sinister in the mass killing of folks in an industrial ethnic-cleansing mode, for no other reason than
pseudoscientific hatred.

To associate the Nazis with the Catholic Church as a whole is simplistic and even a blatant denial of history. The CC was persecuted by the Nazis much more and offered more resistance to Nazism than Protestant churches.

she gets her will done, while I fix things around the house easily, and know the difference between postmodernism and logical positivism. On top of this, I constantly crack jokes she does not like, and she still smiles and closes one eye to them, while she speaks trivial stuff and I listen intently and make big eyes at what she says, and agree with her all the time. For the two of us it's a small price to pay for the benefits we give and take, and we mutually revel in the joy of the exchange. — god must be atheist

Complementarity of skills is a good thing in a couple. But there need to be some common ground on values I believe.

You must know the saying: Marriage is like a besieged city: those who are out want to get in, and those who are in want to get out....

La nuit dormait dans son verseau,
Les chèvres buvaient au rio,
Nous allions au hasard
Et nous vivions encore plus forts
Malgré le frette et les barbares.

Nous savions qu'un jour ils viendraient
À grands coups d'axes, à coup de taxes
Nous traverser le corps de bord en bord,
Nous les derniers humains de la terre.

Le vieux Achille a dit:
«À soir c'est un peu trop tranquille.
Amis, laissez-moi faire le guet.
Allez! Dormez en paix!»

Ce n'est pas le bruit du tonnerre
Ni la rumeur de la rivière
Mais le galop
De milliers de chevaux en course
Dans l'œil du guetteur.
Et tout ce monde sous la toile
Qui dort dans la profondeur:
«Réveillez-vous!
V'là les Yankees, v'là les Yankees,
Easy come, Wisigoths,
V'là les Gringos!»

Ils traversèrent la clairière
Et disposèrent leurs jouets de fer.
L'un d'entr'eux loadé de guns
S'avance et pogne
Le mégaphone.

«Nous venons de la part du Big Control,
Son laser vibre dans le pôle,
Nous avons tout tout tout conquis
Jusqu'à la glace des galaxies.
Le président m'a commandé
De pacifier le monde entier.
Nous venons en amis.
Maintenant assez de discussion
Et signez-moi la reddition
Car bien avant la nuit
Nous regagnons la Virginie!»

V'là les Yankees, v'là les Yankees
Easy come, Wisigoths
V'là les Gringos!

«Alors je compte jusqu'à trois
Et toutes vos filles pour nos soldats.
Le grain, le chien et l'uranium,
L'opium et le chant de l'ancien,
Tout désormais nous appartient,
Et pour que tous aient bien compris
Je compterai deux fois
Et pour les news de la CNN:
Tell me my friend
Qui est le chef ici?
Et qu'il se lève!»

Et le soleil se leva.

Hey Gringo! Escucha me, Gringo!
Nous avons traversé des continents,
Des océans sans fin
Sur des radeaux tressés de rêves
Et nous voici devant vivants,
Fils de soleil éblouissant
La vie dans le reflet d'un glaive.

America! America!
Ton dragon fou s'ennuie,
Amène-le que je l'achève.
Caligula, ses légionnaires,
Ton président, ses millionnaires,
Sont pendus au bout de nos lèvres.
Gringo! t'auras rien de nous.
De ma mémoire de titan,
Mémoire de 'tit enfant:
Ça fait longtemps que je t'attends.
Gringo! Viens-t'en!
Viens-t'en!
Que Dieu te blesse !

La nuit dormait dans son verseau,
Les chèvres buvaient au rio,
Nous allions au hasard
Et nous vivions encore plus forts
Malgré le frette et les barbares.

he expected many to be killed as a result of the revolution the two of them were promoting. — Apollodorus

Why yes. So your point is?

It's the same ideology. The only difference is that Marx and Engels had no means of implementing their ideology whereas Hitler did. — Apollodorus

Marx achieved far more than Hitler. You can say what you want of Stalin but the USSR was a country of peasants in 1917, and it won the space race less than 50 years later, while also winning the second world war in the meantime... So communism did work for them, in a way that Nazism did not.

you forget — Apollodorus

I didn't. Stop being so confrontational. Just because I didn't mention the moon's of Jupiter either doesn't mean I FORGOT them.

The concentration camp is a very old idea. Neither Lenin nor Stalin invented it. Remember the US deportation of the Navajo in 1864 (the Long Walk of the Navajo). There are other examples throughout history.

At the same time that it's a disadvantage, inasmuch as you can't rely on anyone else to follow the same ethics as you do. — god must be atheist

Indeed. The best you can do is ally yourself politically, maritally or otherwise with some who do share enough of your values, in the hope of promoting them.

The present generation is like the Jews whom Moses led through the wilderness. — Apollodorus quoting Marx

If you remember your Bible, the Hebrews in question were not exterminated. Simply they couldn't reach the promised land for some absurd unworthiness reason. The next generation did, according to the myth. What Marx is saying here is that, although he and many others had placed high hopes in the 1848 revolutions across Europe, these revolutions all failed; hence his generation won't see the promised land, but the next generation will, as it will be better prepared and educated and thus more "worthy".

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” (238). — Apollodorus quoting Engels

As I said, this is from a very polemic text written right after the brutal suppression of popular revolutions in Vienna, Budapest and Paris. It is an unfortunate polemical statement. It's very different from Hitler's "scientific racism".

And I deny that ethics ever worked very well anywhere in any society. It is a soft rule, you have a choice of accepting of its teachings for what you want to accept, and not accept and make your own those ethical values that are generally forbidden to you.. — god must be atheist

That has advantages though: it makes ethics more fluid and evolutionary.

I say both perspectives have merit.

1. The sphere can be considered as white (as having the property of whiteness) in a stable, predictable manner. In most situations where there is enough light to spot colors, the ball will appear white. It's only in the rare cases of a colored light (or no light of course) that the ball will not appear white. But

2. There are indeed cases where the ball does not appear white, rare or trivial as they may be.

Likewise, most of the times it is not a moral course of action to kill a man. But if said man has only a few hours of a horrible agony to live, and if he asks you to shorten his suffering, it could appear as the moral thing to do.

A matter of need more often than taste. Our shifting philosophies serve a vital need to make sense of our lives, they are not decorative.

The belief that belief in god is necessary for being good is itself not good. — James Riley

Excellent point. It's a form of bigotry.

That doesn't mean that he didn't express the idea — Apollodorus

Well then, you should be able to find a quote where he expresses the idea.

you seem to have forgotten the concentration camps copied by Hitler from Marxists like Lenin and Stalin. — Apollodorus

Concentration camps have been used by many others including the US. The real Nazi innovation was the death camps, the factories of death.

So you don't agree that America -- or supposedly any other nation -- needs a core set of ethical values. The law should be enough. But by your own reconning, the rule of law is not doing so well in America...

So, Marx and Engels:

1. Used Darwinism as "the basis for their class struggle".

2. They believed in a new type of man that "could cope with the new socialist world order".

3. And they believed that Slavic nations had to be eliminated.

All three elements are later found in Nazi ideology. — Apollodorus

1. Marx and Engels developed their historic theory in the 1840's, inspired mostly by recent or contemporary political events: the American and French revolutions, the 1848 revolutions and the like, much before they ever heard of Darwin who published On the Origin of Species in 1859. Marx then simply recognized an objective and obvious similarity between his views of history and Darwin's view of evolution. I don't see what's wrong with that.

2. Yes of course. That's the basic idea: man can and must evolve.

3. I don't think so. Engels was commenting à chaud, in a polemical manner. I don't see Marx planning the final extermination of all Slavs in any of those quotes and links you posted.

There are many other things the Nazis borrowed from the Marxists: the idea of a mass party and ideology, the idea of revolutionary violence as a natural means for progress, the very idea of history having a meaningful direction, etc. etc.

Nazism was a twisted, sad copy, a nationalist plagiarism of Marxism, done by paranoid murderers.

the point seems clear to me that absent any conception of a summum bonum, an ultimate end or good, then the only moral philosophy can be some form of utilitarianism, the greatest good for the greatest number. I suppose you could appeal to something like eudomonia — Wayfarer

But then, the end justifies the means and we know that leads to the trampling of human rights. Utilitarianism alone does not suffice. We do need to work toward general welfare, but not at the cost of individual oppression. E.g. the police can't summarily kill an individual without due process, even if his death would make millions of other folks happy.

The solution to our moral and political qualms are never to be found in ONE principle alone, like "work for the greater good". There's always several principles to be considered, including inalienable rights of the individual which society cannot trample on, such as habeas corpus, but also the rights of future generations and hence the moral imperative of environmental sustainability. The basic human Darwinian drive to compete with one's neighbour has also to be acknowledged and room left for it through an ethic of fair and open competition (e.g. in business, sport or science). Utilitarianism is just too simplistic and one-dimensional to work.

You are confusing this place with a hate site. Go back to 4chan or something.

So you're talking about Engels now? Try and focus. Scatterbrains not welcome.

But that's a Deist notion of God, which will not do here. — tim wood

Not do what?