Riku Sayuj's Reviews > The Communist Manifesto

This review is going to cost me:

Robot J. McCarthy (@RedScareBot) just 'spotted' me on twitter. oh dear.

Joseph McCarthy claimed there were large numbers of Communists and Soviet spies and sympathizers inside the United States federal government and elsewhere.

https://twitter.com/RedScareBot/statu...

Are you going to enunciate your argument about the real history? I'm not sure what you mean.

If there weren't equally large numbers of Capitalists and US spies and sympathizers inside the Soviet government and elsewhere, why not?

Ian wrote: "Are you going to enunciate your argument about the real history? I'm not sure what you mean."

No not argument - direct quotation. They enunciate it :) that is the manifesto. - real vs written history - the marxian twist on hegel's progression. That is all that is meant here.

Ian wrote: "If there weren't equally large numbers of Capitalists and US spies and sympathizers inside the Soviet government and elsewhere, why not?"

No Idea. You gotta ask McCarthy, man.

Riku wrote: "No not argument - direct quotation. They enunciate it :) that is the manifesto. - real vs written history - the marxian twist on hegel's progression. That is all that is meant here."

Engels (in 1886) was making the distinction between the period of written history and the period of pre-history. After the publication of the Manifesto, research had discovered evidence of common ownership of land in pre-historic Russia. "With the dissolution of the primeval communities, society begins to be differentiated into separate and finally antagonistic classes.” Prehistory "played out" into the written history of class struggle. It's a slightly different catch to the one I inferred you were making in your review. It's not a distinction between written and real, but written and pre-.

Ian wrote: "Riku wrote: "No not argument - direct quotation. They enunciate it :) that is the manifesto. - real vs written history - the marxian twist on hegel's progression. That is all that is meant here."

..."

You are right. I was being glib and careless. I have added a sentence. I was referring to Engels' version of real history versus normal ideas of history.

Engels at Marx' funeral:

“History was for the first time placed on its real basis. The palpable, but previously overlooked fact that men must first of all eat, drink, have shelter and clothing, and therefore must work, before they can fight for domination, pursue politics, religion, philosophy etc., this palpable fact at last comes into its own right”.

It's about the difference between the material or the real, and the ideal. This is partly why Marx believed he had to invert Hegel: so he could get up on his feet and move (toward revolution, for example).

Of course, none of this means that Marx and Engels were right. But you have to go outside their philosophy to prove them wrong, rather than argue on the basis of internal inconsistencies.

Such is the tragedy of my motherland India that its macaulay generation finds a conartist like Karl Marx and his works as 5 star but finds a Hero like Savarkar and his philosophy of Hindu Nationalism as dangerous and worthy of lowest rating. If only Karl Marx had remained a conartist mooching money off his relatives and friends the world would have been a better place. How funny it is, for a man who never stepped into a factory nor ever worked in a farm in his entire parasitics life, to stand up and pretend to fight for the rights of farmers and workers? To give forth an ideology that promotes a class war for equality, when all the time the aim is to crush democracy and establish the dictatorship of ...proletariat?...nah...communist party comrade! To fight for "peace". Establishing an armed proletariat class for a classless society. [F**king for virginity comrade!]

If only this man had kept himself away from spreading his poison, the bloodthirsty ideology of communism would have never been born. 170 million people wouldnt have been killed under a bloodstained banner of sickle and hammer.....and we in India would have been spared from a lot left wing idiots and ultra left terror. What steaming dump of a pseudo intellectual nuisance.