I shall graciously explain Marxism

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Yeah when I was growing up, I was conditioned to react negatively to him. However, when I started actually reading about him as a person, I realized I was in fact falling victim to one of the things his work describes. The powers that be want you to react to him.

He won me over when I read that some bookseller in Turkey got arrested for selling his books - because he mentions the Armenian genocide. So this dude went over to Turkey and demanded to be tried with the guy! He was willing to risk going to a Turkish prison. The government freed them both.

He's a "progressive libertarian," which I also consider myself. If you are a true libertarian you want to limit both government and private sector power. The best way to counter private sector power is through popular control of government, because otherwise the private sector tends to gain control.

I find Chomsky, linguistics to one side, to be a poor political theorist, whose positions are often grossly immoral.

Essentially he holds a massive double standard. If the US does something, it is bad. If someone else does something, it is not bad.

He denied the Cambodian and Bosnian genocides, he has been awful on Ukraine, he was a strong supporter of Hugo Chavez... meanwhile he opposed the US intervention in Kosovo and the Gulf War.

It's only bad when the US does it, mmkay.

You are repeating falsehoods. He did not deny the Cambodian genocide.

He explained why he is harsher on the US - its because we are the world's stongest power and capable of change.

He also does not oppose arming Ukraine, look up what he actually said recently.

I'm not going to do your google searches for you.

If you could summarize that article without undue effort, please do so. Looking at that reminds me of some people I know who seem to have a problem with the US (or any other Western power) supporting the Ukraine cause and NATO in general, but I've always attributed their sentiments to their having been Leftists during the Cold War (one of them in fact fled to a neutral country until Jimmy Carter came to power but I've never known the details of what he feared, his life in exile was quite difficult). For that reason I never much cared to listen to their arguments as I thought they were just trying to manufacture facts to support a point of view that had seemed to me to have been informed by emotion.

The GOP in Congress bascially opposes aid to Ukraine. And the most high profile apologists for Putin are MTG and Tucker Carlson, both right wingers. Though there are extremists of both right and left who oppose America aiding Ukraine.

Thanks natural plastic.

Ok it seems Marxism has many flaws and isn't self evident truth that should be the basis of many college courses then


The revolution in Russia was engineered by sending lenin in there by train. So that was not natural at all. Not sure about the other revolutions.

I think marx can be considered a call to arms or violence because it's similar to me going up to one school boy and saying 'hes exploiting you!!' or 'he called your mom a bad name!?!'

Then if there is violence I can simply say that you can't prove it was my fault because I didn't advocate for violence explicitly.

Also if marx wrote the communist manifesto and that advocates for government ownership of everything
and communist countries are organised exactly like that
then how can it be said that Marxism and communism are different?

So, very soon after the manifesto was printed there were working class uprisings in France and Germany. So provacative words can easily be used to cause violence like that.
So,in college you have critical gender theory. Which says that women are exploited, violence is not advocated but it's bound to cause hostility.

Marxism is responsible for massive suffering in the 20th century and to this day in many places arround the world. Over a hundred million dead and billions who suffered all kinds of extreme suffering. Yet here we are discussing whether Marxism is good or bad.
Pathetic.

Noam Chomsky's status as the "most-quoted living author" is credited to his political writings, which vastly outnumber his writings on linguistics.  He exploits his titles, positions, and reputation to attack capitalism while enjoying its fruits -- biting the hands that feed him.  Karl Marx was a drunkard who mooched off whoever would give him food, money, and a place to sleep -- a couch-surfing bum.  Donald Trump is a liar, an adulterer, and a bully who uses other people's money to feed his selfish ambitions.  How do people like these achieve such great influence over the masses?  By playing up to their desire for an ideal society -- a "Utopia" -- where the masses would overturn the status quo and put themselves in control . . . to be overthrown by subsequent disgruntled masses following another charismatic leader.

If all it takes is one spark, it's fair to say the fire was bound to start.

What was the ideology that made the Belgian Free State so terrible? Was that Marxists too?

The US support for Pol Pot and the Marxist Khmer Rouge seemed contradictory to their anti-communist rhetoric but was completely geopolitical in it's strategy and happily enabled genocide in Cambodia and in other countries like Bangladesh. It does not require asking Noam Chomsky as it simply reflects US foreign policy which has always been to make alliances where the outcome is most beneficial to US interests.

In this respect the US aren't much different to the old European colonial powers. Its appropriate to call it warrior-capitalism which works when you can use military power to subjugate poor people to become cheap expendable labour for making American goods and instigate coups and civil wars to remove regimes that don't kow-tow to your interests.

Marxism may not work but the other systems rely on military power to appropriate an advantage. Any wonder aliens have no interest in making contact with humans. We are all deplorable (not just Marxists).

Marxism certainly worked for the Cuban independence movement, the ANC and HAMAS

The US considered all three (Castro's movement, ANC and HAMAS) as terrorist organisations.
Today Cuba is still run by Marxists
South Africa is run by the African National Congress
Palestine is run by HAMAS

I guess if you asked somebody living in one of those countries they might enthusiastically extort the bona fides of living in a Marxist state

ANC are a social democratic party.
Hamas are an Islamic party, they're also anti-communist.

Granted, I bombed with HAMAS (no pun intended) as I conflated them with the PLO (who did have Marxist roots). I mean't to say the PLO run Palestinian state was allowed to flourish. Yasser Arafat was friends with the Soviets and was given red carpet treatment in Britain.

The ANC were effectively labelled communists in their early years and while they are social-democratic now their militant wing have strong ties to Marxism.

Anti-communism was how the apartheid government tried to frame it's brutality. Not sure we should be taking them at face value.