Artevelde
Well-known member
- Joined
- Jul 29, 2013
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It really doesn't seem possible that history (i.e. the things that happened...or perhaps more perspicuously, the stories we tell about the things that happened) could reveal what someone's ideas and motivations were or are. The best it can do is give us a clue about them, but with some obvious caveats. To say otherwise, you may as well claim that (for example) business owners who start a business but fail intend to fail, or that someone whose house is struck by a tornado wanted their house to be struck by a tornado, or that Albert Einstein and Marie Curie intended for people to make nuclear bombs.
I wonder if you could point out where, in The Communist Manifesto, Marx explicitly called for systematic bloodshed and oppression. He thought there would be a revolution, of course...but you can say that about any numer of proponents of democracy and market economics. You could also say that about Jesus--indeed, it was his anti-establishment rhetoric that got him crucified in the first place. So, show us where Marx thought it should be necessary to do massive and cruel violence over and above what was necessary to revoke the established social order.
Marx believed that the Paris Commune should have executed many more people, to name just one example.
Fact is that Communist regimes and parties have demonstrated throughout history that mass-murder and brutal oppression are the hallmarks of Communism.