[MD] Commie Talk and USA bashing?

[Arlo Bensinger]

[Chris]
I am not a dogmatic, nor was Marx, and neither is Pirsig. We must be 
open to new Dynamic input.

[Arlo]
Marx is wrong about some things. So is Pirsig. So is Kant. So is 
Plato. So is Rand. So am I. So are you. So is Platt. This simple 
reality seems to escape people who like everything bundled into neat 
little packages. I see two dangers all the time; (1) people blind 
themselves to what an author says in order to see that everything 
s/he wrote is "right" or "wrong", (2) people use these packages to 
demonize and deify ideologies (demonize others, deify their own).

Everyone who writes anything writes from a specific historical, 
cultural perspective. It is good to try to point to the 
decontextualized meaning in many cases, but it is also good to 
remember that the contextual word is always a metaphor, always bound 
by the specific material-historical forces that gave it volume. 
"People should see that it's never anything other than just one 
person talking from one place in time and space and circumstance. 
It's never been anything else, ever..." (ZMM)

[SA]
But I think there is something else to Marxism.

[Arlo]
Marx's fundamental drive (IMO) was (1) the belief that a capital 
economy alienates man from his labor, (2) that the accumulation of 
material wealth was a distraction that enslaved man and distracted 
him from the noble pursuits our humanity enables. What Marx saw was 
the power structures of the aristocracy collapse only to be replaced 
with a new power structure (a wealth-based capistocracy) which again 
led to a few (bourgeoise) holding power over and living off the labor 
of the many (proletariat). The social conditions of Europe from 
1820-1850 reveal the rise of sweatshops and factory conditions that 
many (most) toiled under to support the rising wealth of others. This 
is what Marx witnessed, and this is what he wrote about.

What Marx failed to see, and Chris points out, is that his solution 
was derived from within the very metaphysical structures he failed to 
see. "The true system, the real system, is our present construction 
of systematic thought itself, rationality itself, and if a factory is 
torn down but the rationality which produced it is left standing, 
then that rationality will simply produce another factory. If a 
revolution destroys a systematic government, but the systematic 
patterns of thought that produced that government are left intact, 
then those patterns will repeat themselves in the succeeding 
government. There's so much talk about the system. And so little 
understanding." (ZMM)

Marx believed that man's oppression was caused by social structures, 
rather than seeing that those social structures are themselves there 
because of "present construction of systematic thought", and this is 
why Marxist revolutions failed (IMO) and left in the place of the 
structures they overthrew militant and aggressive dictatorships. They 
attacked the structures of society but not the underlying cause, the 
metaphysical systems that create alienating and oppressive structures.