Well by the time they’ve formed a steering committee, drafted a resolution condemning capitalist light bulb manufacturers, gone out and tried to sell a few newspapers, condemned the resulting darkness as bourgeois oppression and then gone down the pub; none.
But never mind, come the revolution…
Comrades the proletariat are incandescent with rage
Motion passed. By.
You know, I almost became a communist. But then I realized that I prefer for my plans to work.
ReplyDeleteAs one of the few folk across the pond who own a copy of the Communist Manifesto (currently on loan to a friend), I can tell you without a shadow of a doubt that Marx should have done more field research.
Communism/Marxism/Trotskyism/Maoism all mean well, but are so sadly flawed as to cause as much if not even greater harm to the proletariat they intend to protect.
“I almost became a communist” sounds like it was too much effort or something. Was the queue too long perhaps?
ReplyDeleteIn my opinion Marx did his field research. He was a great philosopher, economist and political theorist. It’s not his fault that what he envisaged has never been put into practice properly. He never intended for pre-industrialised nations to apply it. Marx was fine, it’s peoples’ grasp and interpretation of his writing that leaves much to be desired.
Eh, the line was small, actually. And rigorously monitored by an ever-paranoid and increasingly ruthless bourgeois. I felt (and was advised) that it was best to keep a distance, and simply learn from Marx's writings along with my own experiences.
ReplyDeleteDon't get me wrong, I do not blame Marx for the impact of his work. He himself was dead-on with his observations, and his theories all carry a great weight of truth. He was one of the most brilliant minds to ever grace humanity. Sadly, humanity has this curious habit of warping and perverting any social system.
A fascinating trait of the bourgeois is that it seems to self-replicate. Historical instances where the ruling class were overtaken by the people (Post-revolutionary France, China, and Russia, to name a few), ended with another segment of the proletariat abruptly taking the old throne through a combination of political maneuvering, armed enforcement,
personality cults, and (sigh) nationalism.
While I know for a fact that Marx took many observations from the French Revolution into his own works, I believe he may not have taken enough. The historical implementation of his work indicates that the bourgeois-proletariat complex is likely a product of a dark section of the human condition. Arab Spring, with the overthrow of numerous totalitarian dictators, just to see them replaced by similar regimes, shows this as well.
I still maintain that Marx needed to conduct more field research, but given the amount that he already conducted in his lifetime, I realize that may be asking too much of one man.
On the whole I would say we are in agreement
ReplyDelete