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I'm sure you would. I don't doubt that you've murdered people in the army in whatever bullshit war you've been in. But I guess you wouldn't call it murder when you're wearing a uniform.

   

Though Marx's overall Idea was bad, he was a great thinker who had many good ideas. It is unfortunate that some tried his overall Idea and subsequently predictably failed. This has lead many to reject all his Ideas, whether Good or Bad. They would throw out the Baby with the bathwater.

Western Democracies, including the US, use many of his ideas even today and are better off because of it.

   

The problems with modern capitalism can be quickly solved by a newer and better regulatory regime enforced by government. Employing a discredited throwback like blood-soaked Marxism would be the action of a less-than-creative atavist yearning for a mythical non-existent past.

Such thinking shouldn't be taken seriously by any rational, reasonable person.

   

Thumbs up toi that. Socialism isn't such a bad word. After all, most countries, if not all countires, still have socialist parts--usually their armed forces for example. The judiciary isn't usually privatized and the state controls law enforcement in most countries.

The idea that any capitalism should not be fettered in any way is just as wrong-headed as the idea that socilaism should be absolute (communism). Capitalism is so voracious it will eat itself--right after it's finished devouring the middle class. It needs to be controlled.

   

Yeah, but under capitalism the middle-class at least gets to have a good time for a while first. Under socialism and it's genocidal "eliminating the bourgeousie" nonsense the middle-classers are held in even greater contempt than the upper class by the workers. Or at least it's that way if you go by the strictest fundamentalist Marxist/socialist interpretation of communist scripture.

And I'm not sure that the destruction of the middle class is even inevitable anyway. The contemporary stress on the middle class was caused by a bad profit-making idea that shipped too many manufacturing jobs overseas in too short a time period. Regulate this better, like by slammming huge import tariffs on corporations that eliminated North American jobs and set up shop in China or Mexico, and there's still a possibility that this negative trend can be reversed. Under socialism a negative trend exists forever (eg the Russians and their endless series of "Five Year Plans" etc that invariably made daily life continuosly worse for practically everyone outside the political state power structure) just because questioning the state usually is the worst no-no a person can commit, and more often than not resulted in said malcontents getting a bullet in the skull and an unmarked grave in a swamp somewhere.

   

Socialists choose to label murder as 'Great Leap's Forward', reeducation, social engineering, acts committed in the name of the People and cultural revolutions. They are so much more creative when it comes to candy coating something brutal.

   

Quoting Karl Marx is like quoting Idi Amin or Pol Pot. The guy spawned the likes of history's most prolific mass murderer - Lenin, who cares what his views were on anything.

   

Marx spawned "history's most prolific mass murderer"?!? Oh...do tell...

   

I don't adhere to any specific interpretation of socialism and I denounce most forms of communism, as Maoism, Leninism, Stalinism and so forth.
There is no use generalizing.

   

Yet you do so all the time.

   

You do it all the time with the USA

   

heh,guess I'm not the only one that picked up on that.

   

Karl Marx wasn't a very good...well whatever he was he wasn't the best of it (Economist/Philosopher etc).

I question his use of quantitative data to support his work. He seemed to just sputter random hypothesis and conclusions, that didn't make too much sense even in those days.

Understandably democracy and equal rights in Europe were a taboo in his lifetime and his positions were understandable.

   

He was more a Philosopher than a Scientist/Researcher/Policy Wonk.

   

Marx could be called the father of 20th century communism. There are no more ruthless ideologies than that in history. Lenin's plank was communism.

   

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