It has been noticed that many on these boards use the terms “communism” and “Marxism” as though they were interchangeable values.

Fellas, if the two words meant the same thing ---we wouldn’t have to have two different words.

Of course, it makes one wonder about the intellectual honesty of someone that would equate some professor that claims to be a Marxist with child molestation..

It is strange that you only find a rabid hatred for Marxism and a positive disavowal of the concepts of his work amongst those that have not actually read or studied what the works are.

Grant that all of us are entitled to our own opinions, but it becomes much more interesting when we are dealing in terms of informed opinions as opposed to unabashed prejudices.

When Marx wrote CAPITAL in 1867, he was writing a critique of capitalism. His theses were the presentation of a theory of history in which change was the central idea. Marx’s aim, expressed by Eric Fromm, was “that of the spiritual emancipation of man, his liberation, it was aimed at the full realization of individuality”

Marx wrote at a time of dramatic capitalistic excess, before child labor laws, and he saw capitalism very much as Charles Dickens did in OLIVER TWIST.

Intellectual honesty demands that when attempting to make sense of the complexities of the past, we must be on guard against projecting our subjective frameworks onto historical events and re-arranging them to support our own visions and prejudices.

Marx’s vision was to have a world where the goal was to be the “classless society” in which equality; justice and plenty would prevail. This desired society could only be brought about by the social struggle over man’s economic needs as expressed in the industrial capitalistic society. He called this inevitable development dialectic materialism.

The countries that have been denigrated on these pages, as being representative of the failures of communism did never fit the paradigm envisioned by Marx. None were developed industrialized capitalistic countries. Hence, none were Marxists be definition.

The closest thing to the existence of a Marxist society functioning would be in the utopian social experiments we have had here in the United States. A good example would be the Oenida Society in upstate New York.

Marx is no more responsible for the misfortunes that have been created in his name than Jesus Christ is responsible for the atrocities that have been committed in his.