And why would anyone think that the kind of people who want to utterly destroy the other side are the kind of people who have the moral bearings to be able to rebuild a good society?

I’m curious, where did you encounter them?

It is normal thinking for Marxists.

Of course there are some who fit the description you imply. But there’s a huge range of political ideologies which have been influenced by Karl Marx and his intellectual successors - aka Marxism.

Lol I think there was a Marxist hiding under my bed to get me the other night ;).

Such an easy boogie-man word to use.

Even scarier are those “cultural marxists.”

Here’s some fact-based information: https://www.nyu.edu/projects/ollman/docs/what_is_marxism.php

> In American capitalism's latest crisis, the combination of growing unemployment and worsening inflation has confounded all the usual experts. The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer. Only Marxism, as an account ofthe rational unfolding of a basically irrational capitalist system, makes sense of our current chaos. In class struggle, it also points the way out. The rest is up to us.

I'm calling baloney on the "fact-based information". That's not an objective source; that's a true believer being a cheerleader.

Ahhh, I see your point. Fair. I read about the first third and assumed the rest was just as neutral.

TBH I should have looked at the author more carefully - I thought the page was like the NYU equivalent of Stanford’s online encyclopedia of Philosophy, sort of an anodyne online primer.

Thanks for pointing that out.

However based on my understanding I will say that most is the article seems pretty on point as being a description of the basics of Marx / Marxist thought.

I’ll also throw in that I think this is the thought that should demand our attention:

> The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer.

Don’t have to be Marxist to see that.

>>> The most powerful nation in history cannot erase poverty, provide full employment, guarantee decent housing or an adequate diet or good health care to its people. Meanwhile, the rich get richer.

> Don’t have to be Marxist to see that.

No. And you can see the consequences that are plastered all over the evening news.

Whether Marx has the right solution is a different question. But the problem is real. (Myself, I'd be inclined to say that Germany has a better solution than either the US or Marx. But I've never lived and worked in that system, so I don't really know.)

I agree : ). Don't think I'd call myself a Marxist but I think the school of intellectual thought he spawned (as opposed to the totalitarian governments mis-using his name) makes valuable contributions to understanding our politics and economy.

And yeah I like the German social-democrat model too.

Also, big-ups to us for having a fairly civil conversation : ).