[Dave B]

Whether or not Stalin was personally a sincere democrat or  Marxist for that matter, in 1906, is a different question. I think not. I actually think he probably didn’t even write it as such and it was probably drafted for him by the Bolsheviks intellectuals and had his name attached to it. Neutral people, even before Stalin became what he was, described him as slow and stupid. And that pamphlet wasn’t; perhaps crude exposition of something clever.  Stalin was useful in the sense that he was one of the few non middle class members of the Bolshevik party. Unlike the Russian Anarchist Princes. The Georgian RSDLP, before 1917 were convinced, before Stalin was anybody, that he was part of the Tsarist Okhrana https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Okhrana I also think, as did the Mensheviks, that the Bolsheviks were not sincere democrats either. Stalin’s pamphlet itself is very radical more in the sense of what it denies than what it asserts. In that it appears to reject any kind of exchange whatsoever; even involving labour vouchers etc Which was subliminally swirling around even on the left of the second international at that time. When I discussed that pamphlet on Revleft with the Stalinist they said Stalin was wrong, then, as did the neo Bolsheviks.

[Dave B]

The point is that in 1906 Stalin was an orthodox Marxist, and thus a democrat. Eg http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3 What he became later is another question. The context of that 1906 Stalin article, written as a Bolshevik pamphlet, was in part a riposte to the Kropotkinists and Kropotkin himself who had accused the ‘Marxist’ of secretly desiring to introduce state capitalism if they should ever get into power. Thus;The Georgian Anarchists say the same thing only with greater aplomb. Particularly outstanding among them for the recklessness of his statements is Mr. Baton. He writes:    "What is the collectivism of the Social-Democrats? Collectivism, or more correctly, state capitalism, is based on the following principle: each must work as much as he likes, or as much as the state determines, and receives in reward the value of his labour in the shape of goods. . . ." Consequently, here "there is needed a legislative assembly . . . there is needed (also) an executive power, i.e., ministers, all sorts of administrators, gendarmes and spies and, perhaps, also troops, if there are too many discontented" (see Nobati, No. 5, pp. 68-69).    Such is the first "accusation " of Messieurs the Anarchists against Social-DemocracyThus, from the arguments of the Anarchists it follows that:    1. In the opinion of the Social-Democrats, socialist society is impossible without a government which, in the capacity of principal master, will hire workers and will certainly have "ministers . . . gendarmes and spies."2. In socialist society, in the opinion of the Social-Democrats, the distinction between "dirty" and "clean" work will be retained, the principle "to each according to his needs" will be rejected, and another principle will prevail, viz., "to each according to his services,"page 360    Those are the two points on which the Anarchists' "accusation" against Social-Democracy is based.  Has this "accusation" advanced by Messieurs the Anarchists any foundation?Stalin lays out what the Social-Democrats meant by communism and follows it with; As you see, the above-mentioned "accusation" of the Anarchists is mere tittle-tattle devoid of all foundation.

[Dave B]

What is a reactionary? That is an interesting question. A ‘progressive’ believes that there is a ‘natural’ or given a priori process of development driven ‘forward’ by something or other towards an ‘end’. Eg Darwinian evolution.  So you can go with the flow, or not like it, and react against it. Comprehending what a reactionary is, in fact usually more straightforward because it typically involves wishing to revert to a former and thus ‘known’ position. Thus in science it would involve reverting back to the;    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentric_model#Ptolemaic_system Whilst the progressive position would be that we are moving towards, and thus, unknown positions or as yet unknown realities or ‘scientific truths’.  [with Hegel it was about the inherent pleasure of an auto-didactic demiurge]  Where has L Bird gone? http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b08bzcd1 There was some good stuff in there about scientists and truth and Alice on epigentics which I dragged up a while ago. When it comes to economics etc reactionaries today for instance want to reset the socio economic clock and revert back to self employed simple commodity producing co-operatives with markets and money etc. Which according to Karl was the starting point of capitalism. A bit like turning the monopoly board over and starting again with no one owning Mayfair  and re running the game etc. Sometimes it can involve idealised ‘nostalgic’ versions of the past that have been corrupted by development and a wish to return to it be it King Arthur of the caliphate or whatever. As we did the Russsian revolution and the SR’s etc; they thought that the Russian culture even racially and congenitally was already communistic re the Mir system.  And capitalism rather than a progressive stage towards the potential for communism was decadent western deviation.  Scientist overturned platonic ‘idealism’ and adopted Democritus materialism but things go in cycles it seems. This recent stuff about observing electrons on the other side of the double slit experiment is doing my head in!

[Dave B]

I think there is a problem with how debt might be calculated. If a business is entirely owned by its share holders then it is not in debt? If ‘it’ borrows money from banks (in bonds), originating perhaps from central bank QE, for share purchases then is it in debt? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Share_repurchase  eg http://www.reuters.com/investigates/special-report/usa-buybacks-cannibalized/  Or merely transfer of ownership to the central banks? Wage slave debt is a different issue and a bit like debt peonage that Karl briefly mentioned in volume one https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Debt_bondage  or even more like the hiring out system of the ‘real’ slave system? The practice of "hiring out" was one feature of urban slavery that gave the enslaved a route to independence in their daily lives. Through this process, slave owners rented slaves to others. Enslaved people could, by arrangement with their owners, also hire themselves out. They then resided in or near the renter, who was officially, if not in practice, required to refrain from mistreating his leased property. Money earned from hiring out went into the owners' pockets, but oftentimes the laborer got to keep some himself. In this way, a slave might save enough not only to live on his own, but also to buy his freedom. http://www.pbs.org/wnet/slavery/experience/living/history.html

[Dave B]

 there is a short article on SR's and Menshviks and the bolsheviks 'new capitalism' attached; https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1922/xx/twelve.htm

[Dave B]

The Mensheviks had been part of the Zimmerwald movement from the start. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zimmerwald_Conference The Bolsheviks had tried to have them thrown out in 1917  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Third_Zimmerwald_Conference Various Russian political groups and parties etc were accused of wishing to continue the first world war and that has been assumed to be a desire to continue the patriotic war to defeat the Germans in alliance with the western powers etc. However that was not the case as Lockhart the British spook at the time reported to the British government that there was no mass support for that idea in Russia at the time and advised them that attempting to bring Russia back into the war under those terms was a waste of time. There was however political support in all parties including the Bolsheviks and SR’s against not resisting the invasion, and surrender, of ‘revolutionary’ Russian land to German imperialism etc Eg the Brest Treaty of Brest-Litovsk That resistance position within the Bolshevik party; as well as objections to the introduction of state capitalism was described as “leftwing childishness.” Even left SR’s becamed pissed off with the consequences of that and attempted a coup against the Bolsheviks in July 1918. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left_SR_uprising  The left SR’s had a considerable political base and constituency in the areas that had been ‘handed over’ to the Germans. The position was made even more complicated as at the time it was widely believed, correctly as it turned out, that the Bolsheviks were being funded by the Germans in payment for taking a ‘defeatist’ position. The SR’s were such a wide based political organisation I think it is meaningless to attribute to them any fixed positions on anything. Most of their base was peasant but they had working class support even if that working class support were first generation peasants. Some of them accepted large tracks of Marxist theory although they did believe that Russia didn’t need to pass through the capitalist stage and could go straight towards some form of communism or socialist revolution; a position they shared with the ‘anarchists’.  I think many of the SR’s shared the same position as that we normally associate with ‘Maoism’; whatever that is.  By the 1930’s the ‘Menshevik’ leadership had adopted a Trotskyist position as regards Russia Letter sent to the editor of the MANCHESTER GUARDIAN by Theodore Dan, appearing in that publication on September 4, 1936.If the Soviet Union is to be preserved as the nucleus of peace, and the war peril facing all humanity thus exorcised, all friends of the Russian Revolution and of world peace must stand resolutely on the side of the Russian workers and peasants in order to assist them to defend the possibilities of democratic and Socialistic development of the Soviet Union against the nationalistic and Bonapartist policy of Stalin. The Moscow murders are perhaps one of the final warnings.—Yours, &c., Paris, August 28.http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistappeal/vol02/no09/dan.htm

[Dave B]

I think these kind of ideas have been around before particularly in the US   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ruskin_Colony https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julius_Wayland https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Human_Drift https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_C._Gillette

[Dave B]

Yes Very apropos Adam. If that was deliberate it was very clever! I also meant to say “I wasn’t expecting it”

[Dave B]

I also think there is a relevance of Wittgenstien to chapter one of volume of capital. Viz-a-vie expended labour time being embodied in the material envelop of a commodity. Maybe it was an accident that Karl was bought on as a substitute for Ludwig?

[Dave B]

I got interested in Wittgenstien.  He was at Manchester university doing pioneering work on aeronautics at the kite and balloon research station near the grouse inn pub near Glossop around 1908 and the Wright brothers time Which was also a favourite pub of mine for starting and ending walks in the pennines. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:The_Grouse_Inn_near_Glossop.jpg  He stayed at that pub. He also working on light weight combustion engine that was at least half of the problem with building planes. He actually took a patent out on what looked like something that might have evolved into a pre frank whittle jet engine.   I think Bertrand Russell, who was an ok kind of guy as they go had a high opinion of Wittgenstein. He did write a seminal book on philosophy for dummies. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_History_of_Western_Philosophy Thus on Wittgenstein’s kite flying ambitions!  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cFXWKEc84ew I think I eventually understood what he was on about; which was an interesting idea and it isn’t that complicated as these thing often aren’t. It helps of course watching star trek https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darmok I thought that that episode was Wittgenstien ish and later found an essay in a book I think  on it by a star treky/philosophy bod who came to the almost  identical conclusion/ analysis. The same theme I think popped up again in the recent sci film Arrival; although I was expecting it as I avoided all potential plot spoilers and need to watch it [Arrival] again probably.

[Dave B]

Dialectic or also known as the dialectical method, is a discoursebetween two or more people holding different points of viewabout a subject but wishing to establish the truth through reasonedarguments. The purpose of the dialectic method of reasoning is resolution of disagreementthrough rationaldiscussion, and, ultimately, the search for truth. One way to proceed—the Socratic method—is to show that a given hypothesis(with other admissions) leads to a contradiction; thus, forcing the withdrawal of the hypothesis as a candidate for truth(see reductio ad absurdum). Another dialectical resolution of disagreement is by denying a presuppositionof the contending thesis and antithesis; thereby, proceeding to sublation(transcendence) to synthesis, a third thesis.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dialectic  So actually to give it a quite valid broad definition it just about ‘logically’ questioning the validity of any set of presupposed ideas etc with any kind of why, how or what if. That makes us in fact, and proper scientists in general, arch Dialecticians whether or not we like it or not. Unless we are emotional or utopian communists accept communism because it feels instinctively correct. [1]  However to get the crap out of the way first; you can have non materialist dialectics, in fact you would have to, otherwise material dialectics would be a tautology.  Examples of modern non materialist dialectics would be Bishop Berkeley,thus;   This theory denies the existence of material substanceand instead contends that familiar objects like tables and chairs are only ideasin the mindsof perceiversand, as a result, cannot exist without being perceived. Berkeley is also known for his critique of abstraction, an important premise in his argument for immaterialism. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Berkeley And L Bird obviously. As well as; René Descarteshypothesized the existence of an evil demon, a personification who is "as clever and deceitful as he is powerful, who has directed his entire effort to misleading me." The evil demon presents a complete illusion of an external world, including other minds, to Descartes' senses, where there is no such external world in existence. The evil demon also presents to Descartes' senses a complete illusion of his own body, including all bodily sensations. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evil_demon  I suppose we will have to deal with Hegel somewhere along the line; and before that look at the antecedent to that; Heraclitus. It was no accident I suspect that in the Monty Python philosophers football match, it was Hegel and Heraclitus who were respectively the captains of the German and Greek teams. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Philosophers'_Football_Match https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2gJamguN04 %5Bthe numbers on the original line up appear to be mixed as for instance Nietzsche number 10 is booked as number 5 etc]  “Heraclitus was famous for his insistence on ever-present changeas being the fundamental essence of the universe.” [And from Diogenes on Heraclitus;] “All things come into being by conflict of opposites, and the sum of things "the whole") flows like a stream.”  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heraclitus  I think clearly there is an antecedent relationship to the Hegelian dialectics eg;Everything is transient and finite, existing in the medium of time.Everything is composed of contradictions (opposing forces).Gradual changes lead to crises, turning points when one force overcomes its opponent force (quantitative change leads to qualitative change).in modern terms emergent property or emergence [2]Change is helical(periodic without returning to the same position), not circular…https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DialecticSo what Hegel did or thought or whatever was that societies, cultures ideology or whatever had inherent ‘contradictions’ which caused them to resolve themselves by forming new societies cultures ideology or whatever and so on.Now Hegel was an anti materialist philosopher to start off with; so when he observed this process he naturally assumed human development and our world etc was just an ongoing philosophical ‘debate’.It is a classic case of anthropomorphic projection [3] Or in other more familiar words;"I suppose it is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail."https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Law_of_the_instrumentActually I think I prefer Barack Obama’sIf that's the only tool, if we think we only have a hammer, then everything becomes a nail, then we are missing opportunities…. Going back to Hegel the ‘material’ world would be a bit like a computer simulation or ‘game’ with an ‘escape’ or secret ‘ending’.Although I am not a computer gamer myself.He arrived at that idea in part because he accepted;Law of cause and effect.Nothing changes unless something other that itself or external to it changes itSocieties, cultures ideology change.Therefore something external to them must be driving the change towards an ‘escape’ or secret ‘ending’.[ We are now just much more familiar stuff changing as a result of ‘internal’ natural processes eg evolution, the big bang, condensation of matter into stars, super nova producing more familiar chemical elements etc.]If we just stick for the moment with changing cultures and ideology and just IDEAS  of a philosophical of a ‘hammer’ like nature; and come to materialism, techmology and science a bit later.Then you could argue that humans had an inherent intellectual interest and propensity to solve philosophical paradoxes etc. Hegel I think would just say where did that come from if it isn’t a manifestation of an external spirit?We should know now that;….one basis of invention is science, and science can be an outgrowth of pleasurable intellectual curiosity…. And;Instinctive [pleasurable] intellectual curiosity or intellectual curiosity for its own sake with clearly no defined or understood objective or material benefit [which is why it has to pleasurable] is am evolved successful behavioral strategy.When the objective is more palpable or appears as a material necessary; it then becomes the mother of invention.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necessity_is_the_mother_of_inventionSo we return to materialism.And humans;……….must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature………https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch48.htmblah blahSo nature is out there and exists independently of thought processes and its up to us to make the best of it etc.Which we have done after an albeit crappy fashion and it is our ‘rationally regulating our interchange with Nature’, bringing it under our common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature.Which is a bit of a sick joke at the moment but I suppose that is the whole point.[1] this would perhaps include Feuerbach and 1844 Karl where the human essence or nature as a social instinct was part of are material nature which only acquired a material based thesis from Darwin in 1871.[2] emergence is becoming an increasingly important idea in theoretical physics Thus it was a central theme in this recent Institute of Physics lecture The origin of the Universe. From macrophysics to microphysics Wednesday, 11 January 2017, 18:30 – 19:30 Professor Lucio Piccirillo, University of Manchesterhttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmergenceWhilst reference is made to Aristotle no ‘credit’ seems to be given to Democritus, or Hegel for whom it was one his maxims.[3] Anthropomorphic projection was first used by Fuerbach to explain christianity.I can’t resist adding the next link; it is worth while I think just for the best cartoon ‘explanation’ of quantum mechanics double slit experiment I have seen yetStarts at 15;10 Although the stuff towards the end on Gnostic (Marcionite and basically Cathar) christianity is interesting only for historical reasons and it the best I have seen it done in less than 10 minutes.https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YGxVGtkTa4sDon’t shoot the messenger this stuff is all the rage at moment and it isn’t tin foil hat people; I wish it was!

[Dave B]

Hi Vin I doubt want to derail this thread, perhaps I need to start another. But what I found interesting about it. Was that a capitalist was analysing capitalism in pretty much the same way as the Marxists were. His central tenet was the increasing concentration of ownership and control of, say industrial production, which was bad, eg the 99.9% thing And the increasing alienation of the workers themselves being turned into cogs in machine which he appears to describe in ways that would be a credit to any Marxist. However he was not a ‘reactionary’ as he accepted the Marxist notion of necessary historical progress and the benefits of industrial production re productivity etc. Eg Masons post capitalism stuff?   And seemed to attack or criticise the increasingly dysfunctional nature of commercial or finance ‘capitalism’. Not only that he appears to be central to or part of a whole genre of mostly American thought from around 1880 including books that sold 2 million copies and others with several print runs, as well as H. G Wells Things to Come Technocratic utopia and engineers and scientists running the show re our Zietgiest friends H. G Wells Time Machine Bellamy’s Looking Backwards. Film Metropolis, written by Thea von Harbou and directed by her husband, Fritz Lang And reactions to it like William Morris.  I think a bod called Henry George was probably quite influential a started the ball rolling on that side of the pound. .. His most famous work, Progress and Poverty(1879), sold millions of copies worldwide, probably more than any other American book before that time. The treatise investigates the paradox of increasing inequality and poverty amid economic and technological progress, the cyclic nature of industrialized economies………. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_George There is an element of disappearing up your own arsehole a bit with historical discussion of the development of ideas etc. And it does look like state capitalist bolshevism coming from the capitalist class instead of other pseudo ‘socialists’. Although it appears at least that Gillete was a democrat advocating a “World Syndicate”. Apparently Gilletes second expensive book was co written with Upton Sinclair. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Upton_Sinclair Below is an analysis of Gillete;  The Human Drift which outlined in detail his belief that the traditional structuresof democracy were being slowly crushed by the tyrannical power of modern industry, and that the only way to prevent the calamity of a hostile corporate takeover on a national or global scale was to overthrow the existing world order and preemptively replace it with what he called a United Trust. This trust would be a single, all-powerful corporation that specialized in absolutely everything —the monopoly to end all monopolies. Its role would be to provide the whole population with meaningful employment and every necessity of life from the cradle to the grave. The trusts character and destiny would be controlled by its legions of employees, whose right to vote in company matters lay in their status as stockholders —this would be the new citizenship. Every company and government in the United States would be destroyed by this giant. All of their former employees and citizens would be folded into the corporate monolith’s swelling ranks until nothing and nobody else was left. At last the wasteful, brutal competition of the capitalist era would be replaced by cooperation, and corporate industrialism would be guided to achieve its full potential as the compassionate but supremely powerful liberator of humanity: “United Intelligence, Material Equality. And a Gilllete quote from  1910: Corporations will continue to form, absorb, expand, and grow, and no power of man can prevent it. [They] are the actual builders of a cooperative system which is eliminating competition, and in a practical business way reaching results which socialists have vainly tried to attain through legislation and agitation for centuries.To complete the industrial evolution, and establish a system of equity, only requires . . . support of “World Corporation”.

[Dave B]

I know it is a bit different but I came across some stuff about capitalist utopia’s eg by Gillete https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_C._Gillette it looks as if his second book might be more interesting I was wondering if anyone knew anything about it? This is what a Stalinist said of it  …..the capitalistic Utopias of Carver, Gillette and others for the workers directly to buy out the capitalist industries (expressed in their books respectively, The Present Economic Revolution in the United States and The People’s Corporation); the fatalism of Veblen who, in The Price System and the Engineers, maintains that capitalism will eventually, through the working of its inner contradictions, get into such a chronic and devastating crisis that in desperation society will spontaneously call upon the engineers to take over the operation of the industries and the government.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/foster/1932/toward/05.htm It is selling on Amazon for  $2500

[Dave B]

A brief history is; That theme started in the 1840’s by Fuerbach with his essence of christianity which Karl and Fred thought was brilliant; which it was. It was ‘debunked’ in 1845 by Stirner in his ego and his own in 1845. Which led to reappraisal of Karl’s and Fred’s ‘erstwhhile philosophical conscience’  position in their German ideology. Then in 1871 Darwin with his social instincts in ‘Decent of Man’ provided a materialist basis for the essence Fuerbach’s 1840’s idea which had been abandoned because there then hadn’t been one. Thus Darwin’s in ‘Decent of Man’ debunked the debunking of Fuerbach ( and Kant to some extent) by Stirner; and thus to that extent debunked that part of the essence of German Ideology, and standard Marxism’s approach to Christianity. Then towards the end of the 19th century the then standard Marxism felt free to revisit the subject and readopt the original Fuerbachian thesis. And we saw a renewed interest in early christianity and commumism. eg https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/early-christianity/index.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1905/misc/socialism-churches.htm https://www.marxists.org/archive/kautsky/1908/christ/index.htm And I think Bernstien’s revelation of the Whinstanley material in 1890 ish was no accident either. Incidentally mixed in with this late 19th century intellectual milieu of christianity and ‘communism. In 1888 Friedrich Nietzsche of all people, in his analysis agreed that the essence of (early) christianity was libertarian communism. He said the ‘anarchists, by which I think he was talking about ‘libertarian communism’ were essentially christians. And  he said the ‘communists’ by which I interpret as I think he understood it essentially  ‘Leninism’, were merely envious for power and only wished to replace them with themselves.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Antichrist_(book)  There is a lot of cross over between Nietzsche and Stirner and the core ideas are very similar.  And they are both interesting albeit sophists in my opinion. So to start with Fuerbach’s essence of christianity. Fuerbach ‘started off’ with the idea that the people that generated and took on board early christianity were instinctive, prejudiced,  emotive, psychologically and personally communists, for some reason or another. So they were irrational communists first or to start off with. And they had then generated and refashioned and/or accepted a set of ideas from the ones they had available to them at the time, eg ‘religion’  to fit into with their communistic prejudices. The trick cyclists call it rationalisation. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rationalization_(psychology) And also Fuerbach in this context, 50 years ahead of his time in his essence of christianity, was the first to explore anthropomorphic projection. Or he said that the value systems that the gospel god and JC had were in fact the value systems of the early christians themselves. So early christians ‘made’ god and JC out of the aspirational value system image they had of themselves.   https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psychological_projection Or in other words you can get a ‘royal road’ idea of what someone is like from the wet dreams and fantasies they conjure up. Incidentally George Eliot was embroiled in all this kind of stuff and she certainly, in my opinion, read all her books, knew exactly what rationalisation and projection was.  Take it or leave that; it is my honest appraisal having hacked through all that shit.  [As a digresssion when we think of christianity we justifiably think of the murderous vindictive, war criminal , hypocritical shit house of the old testament. To which modern christains revert to rationalise and justify their position. That was a problem for a very significant strand of early christianity eg the Marcionites.  They said that the old testament god was a bastard and therefore nothing to do with and different to their idea of God. Ironically we probably know more about Marcionism an even Marcion than we do about early christianity itself; thanks to the dedication of very early surviving material from the 2nd century attacking it.  And that he was, with a relatively rich multiple cross reference biography, the son of a rich merchant capitalist from circa ad 150. Thanks to the early Christians we know for almost certain that the gospel of Luke was extant around AD because Marcion had allegedly rewritten it, and we appear to have most of that. Not substantially different from ‘our version’ apart from the nativity stuff is absent. Which is ideologically consistent with Marcion ideology that sort to separate the old testament material from the ‘new religion’ ]  So anyway to go back to Karl and Fuerbach, in 1844; shamelessly and anachronistically paraphrasing the argument in post Darwinian 1871, Pannekoekian and Kropotkinian mutual aid  terms We have evolved to be instinctive and emotive primitive communists are can’t be contented unless we live in a ‘social’ environment to and for which we are congenitally pre-conditioned to live in. Anymore than animals in a zoo can be.  After having gone on an ‘unfortunate’ historical detour we are at the position were we we live in an anti communistic, self-estranged  and anti social instinct ‘private property’ social world. But we have the potential to return to communism, for which we instinctively strive, with all the technology, ‘entire wealth of previous development’  to boot.  Thus  Karl MarxEconomic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844  ….(3) Communism as the positive transcendence of private property as human self-estrangement, and therefore as the real appropriation of the human essence by and for man; communism therefore as the complete return of man to himself as a social (i.e., human) being – a return accomplished consciously and embracing the entire wealth of previous development. This communism, as fully developed naturalism, equals humanism, and as fully developed humanism equals naturalism; it is the genuine resolution of the conflict between man and nature and between man and man – the true resolution of the strife between existence and essence, between objectification and self-confirmation, between freedom and necessity, between the individual and the species. Communism is the riddle of history solved, and it knows itself to be this solution. ….. Stirner and Nietche said that the ‘riddle of history’ was looking after number one, the ego, and concern for others was for saps; invented by people who looked after themselves. The essence of the argument isn’t that intellectual and in fact quite simple. I like a bit to go on holiday and stay in villa’s in the Algave with a little private swimming pool, have a working washing machine and a supply of clean underpants etc. But my social instinct ‘ego’ feels bothered and harassed by the mere existence of poor people. 

[Dave B]

I suppose that might be interesting if my computer could open it. Below is a youtube of the pro constituent assembly demonstrations and allusions to the massacre by the Bolsheviks in response. 21 dead according to the Bolsheviks themselves, around 80 I think according to the SR’s and hundreds wounded.   https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MGyxb7N5l94 The guy below produces some interesting translated material  http://www.korolevperevody.co.uk/korolev/doclist.htm

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