The ruptured 'Rapture'

Couldnt resist this.

I am a Christian but this rapture bunny nonsense is JUST way over the top.

AlbertCurtis wrote:I am a Christian but this rapture bunny nonsense is JUST way over the top.

Interesting!

Socialism and religion. What a rich topic.

godlessnorth wrote:

AlbertCurtis wrote:I am a Christian but this rapture bunny nonsense is JUST way over the top.

Interesting!

Socialism and religion. What a rich topic.

And your point is, comrade?

godlessnorth wrote:

AlbertCurtis wrote:I am a Christian but this rapture bunny nonsense is JUST way over the top.

Interesting!

Socialism and religion. What a rich topic.

Of course Marx railed against just such people as 'reactionaries' but then in Marx and Engels reactionary means little besides those that can out reason them, or do not accept their conclusions as having existential impart nor as being scientific, which they are not as any attempt to falsify them is deem reaction and thus reaction is just heretic on a new level. Marx and his disciples fear the middle ages model because IT WORKS very well and is stable and does not rely upon their nonsensical views of humanity to function. It is not and was not perfect but late medieval communalism in say France or England was much better than anything Marx or communism has ever produced if looked at minus the expectations of the atheist Engels and his jew, who both hate Christ and anything to do with him. That is was not ended by the peasants -- who are the workers, or Labores, and who almost always rebelled to KEEP their feudal rights and privileges, as both persons and as groups, not to be free of them -- but by the Nobles, or the Haves of Marx's half baked fantasies should tell you that it was not unbearable to the masses but merely not to the advantage of the few. Here is a system that functioned for a thousand years, more or less stably and in the end produced a fairly advanced society. Hence it MUST be reactionary as it is not Marxist and it is viable

I as you can no doubt tell have little use for Marx or his scribbles, and I read enough to know I have no use for him or his atheist man is the measure of all things arrogant, quasi-gnostic nonsense.

Marxism is merely an inferior religion, and ultimately a false faith, based upon false premises and thus worthless from my view. Its economic determinism is garbage and is its instance that conflict underlies all human and in fact all natural activity, is pure rubbish. It fails terribly every time it encounters reality. It is no more scientific than the Republic of Plato, and less interesting to read, and read about as well.

Marx knew this I think, and thus his and Engels fevered attempts to paint anyone outside of their faith as a here...er I mean reactionary...the Bolsheviks took it to the next level wherein even dedicated revolutionaries like the SR's -- a revolutionary,violently popular particularly Russian non-Marxist socialist party, with the majority of the peoples support and good will -- as 'reactionary' because they rejected Lenin's 'democratic centralism' which is dictatorship under any label after all.

Marxisms sole claim to fame is to be the faith of the greatest mass murders in history ie Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao, and little else. Any good that the nations under its sway have had are largely IN SPITE of its asinine dogmas and not because of them. Yugoslavia and Cuba are about as good as it gets and that was not, is not all that good. China would have starved, while mouthing platitudes about plenty, if the Cultural Revolution and its madness had continued, and any thinking person knows this is true. North Korea is hell on earth if you are not in with the party line. And so on it goes in actual time.

And while modern Western Capitalism is doubleplusungood, Marxism in all of its actual attempted forms has been worse, especially the Leninist/Maoist strain. Any claims that it liberated workers is pure fantasy, unless having no right to strike, no effective voice in government, being told what to think by party controlled papers and being a state slave, subject to arrest for idleness is liberty now a new and improved species of liberty. Slavery is freedom if that is the case. Gulags and censors a free society does not make.

I am stressed and the above as helped me relax; great loss, and thus I am not all in the game today, nor will I be for some time. I am beyond caring. Good day.

AlbertCurtis wrote:Of course Marx railed against just such people as 'reactionaries' but then in Marx and Engels reactionary means little besides those that can out reason them, or do not accept their conclusions as having existential impart nor as being scientific, which they are not as any attempt to falsify them is deem reaction and thus reaction is just heretic on a new level. Marx and his disciples fear the middle ages model because IT WORKS very well and is stable and does not rely upon their nonsensical views of humanity to function. It is not and was not perfect but late medieval communalism in say France or England was much better than anything Marx or communism has ever produced if looked at minus the expectations of the atheist Engels and his jew, who both hate Christ and anything to do with him. That is was not ended by the peasants -- who are the workers, or Labores, and who almost always rebelled to KEEP their feudal rights and privileges, as both persons and as groups, not to be free of them -- but by the Nobles, or the Haves of Marx's half baked fantasies should tell you that it was not unbearable to the masses but merely not to the advantage of the few. Here is a system that functioned for a thousand years, more or less stably and in the end produced a fairly advanced society. Hence it MUST be reactionary as it is not Marxist and it is viable

I as you can no doubt tell have little use for Marx or his scribbles, and I read enough to know I have no use for him or his atheist man is the measure of all things arrogant, quasi-gnostic nonsense.

Marxism is merely an inferior religion, and ultimately a false faith, based upon false premises and thus worthless from my view. Its economic determinism is garbage and is its instance that conflict underlies all human and in fact all natural activity, is pure rubbish. It fails terribly every time it encounters reality. It is no more scientific than the Republic of Plato, and less interesting to read, and read about as well.

Marx knew this I think, and thus his and Engels fevered attempts to paint anyone outside of their faith as a here...er I mean reactionary...the Bolsheviks took it to the next level wherein even dedicated revolutionaries like the SR's -- a revolutionary,violently popular particularly Russian non-Marxist socialist party, with the majority of the peoples support and good will -- as 'reactionary' because they rejected Lenin's 'democratic centralism' which is dictatorship under any label after all.

Marxisms sole claim to fame is to be the faith of the greatest mass murders in history ie Lenin, Stalin, Pol Pot and Mao, and little else. Any good that the nations under its sway have had are largely IN SPITE of its asinine dogmas and not because of them. Yugoslavia and Cuba are about as good as it gets and that was not, is not all that good. China would have starved, while mouthing platitudes about plenty, if the Cultural Revolution and its madness had continued, and any thinking person knows this is true. North Korea is hell on earth if you are not in with the party line. And so on it goes in actual time.

And while modern Western Capitalism is doubleplusungood, Marxism in all of its actual attempted forms has been worse, especially the Leninist/Maoist strain. Any claims that it liberated workers is pure fantasy, unless having no right to strike, no effective voice in government, being told what to think by party controlled papers and being a state slave, subject to arrest for idleness is liberty now a new and improved species of liberty. Slavery is freedom if that is the case. Gulags and censors a free society does not make.

I am stressed and the above as helped me relax; great loss, and thus I am not all in the game today, nor will I be for some time. I am beyond caring. Good day.

Don't sweat it, comrade. Shit's rough nowadays.

I am Catholic by birth. If the church had any balls left these days I would have embraced the religion. But, alas, it seems everything these days is going to shit. It's a re-shuffling of the cards, so make of it what you will.

On your point about dictatorship, bugger that. You, me, and however else, that's all we'd need to flex some muscle. The crux of the 'problem' is that no one wants to commit to the game. And who would? Like I said, the cards are being reshuffled, we are still struggling to work out what the rules of the game are.

We need to remake our attitude while we have the chance. Fuck them, the rule makers. Really, we don't need anyone but ourselves. Might is Right, at this point. I mean, in the confines of socialistic revolution, of course. It's infantile, and here's where we start. Revolting against the status quo in favour of ourselves. Goodbye to the idiots.

I don't mind talking about individual problems. At least we're honest.

AlbertCurtis wrote:Of course Marx railed against just such people as 'reactionaries' but then in Marx and Engels reactionary means little besides those that can out reason them

Actually, Karl Marx was far more sympathetic to religion than people give him credit for. For example, here is his famous quote about religion being a "opium of the people" in its full context:

"The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man—state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

Criticism has plucked the imaginary flowers on the chain not in order that man shall continue to bear that chain without fantasy or consolation, but so that he shall throw off the chain and pluck the living flower. The criticism of religion disillusions man, so that he will think, act, and fashion his reality like a man who has discarded his illusions and regained his senses, so that he will move around himself as his own true Sun. Religion is only the illusory Sun which revolves around man as long as he does not revolve around himself."
Marx, Karl. A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right (1843).

Neither Marx nor Engels supported the forced abolition of religion, they merely felt that once the economic base of society was fundamentally altered, the material conditions which originally helped give rise to religious institutions would wither away. This view, I believe, is partially correct and partially flawed—for it makes perfect sense that under conditions of poverty and despair, people will naturally gravitate toward religion more than they would under more favorable material circumstances, since religion offers them some sort of condolence (i.e., 'at least in the afterlife you'll finally receive justice and experience paradise'). However, I believe Marx was incorrect in assuming that the mere abolition of poverty and economic exploitation would be sufficient enough to end religion altogether. Ultimately, religion stems from man's ability to comprehend his own mortality. The fear of death will always spur people toward notions of the afterlife, and thus religion. I'm a staunch atheist myself, and yet my own fear of nothingness (following my inevitable death) leads me to wish there was some sort of afterlife—but alas, I'm incapable of believing any such notion.

Marx and his disciples fear the middle ages model because IT WORKS very well and is stable and does not rely upon their nonsensical views of humanity to function. It is not and was not perfect but late medieval communalism in say France or England was much better than anything Marx or communism has ever produced if looked at minus the expectations of the atheist Engels and his jew, who both hate Christ and anything to do with him.

What model of medieval communalism are you referring to, exactly?

Marx never "produced" a specific model of communism because he felt that "recipes for the cookshops of the future" were Utopian. Even his Communist Manifesto only offered practical suggestions for proletarian movements to follow, should they happen to come into power immediately; it definitely wasn't meant to be a specific blueprint for the formation of a communist society. Marx purposely chose to only offer vague ideas as to what he thought communism might look like in the future (e.g., the abolition of generalized commodity production, money to be replaced by labor vouchers, economic planning replacing market relations, etc.) To pin the legacy of Eastern European and/or Asian state socialism on Marx is as illogical as attempting to pin the Catholic Church's child abuse scandals on Jesus Christ.

That is was not ended by the peasants -- who are the workers, or Labores, and who almost always rebelled to KEEP their feudal rights and privileges, as both persons and as groups, not to be free of them -- but by the Nobles, or the Haves of Marx's half baked fantasies should tell you that it was not unbearable to the masses but merely not to the advantage of the few. Here is a system that functioned for a thousand years, more or less stably and in the end produced a fairly advanced society. Hence it MUST be reactionary as it is not Marxist and it is viable

What of The Peasants' Revolt of 1381? The Irmandiño Wars? The Cornish Rebellion of 1497? The German Peasants' War of 1524–1526? The Diggers' movement in 1649? Need I go on?

Certainly even the formation of bourgeois society was superior to the "Divine Right of Kings" and feudalism which preceded it. I'm not suggesting that it was better in every way, but at least the age of Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution transpired. People were finally able to receive an education regardless of social class (though wealth clearly determined the level of education you'd receive), people weren't permanently placed into their social class by virtue of birth, etc.

Marxism is merely an inferior religion, and ultimately a false faith, based upon false premises and thus worthless from my view. Its economic determinism is garbage and is its instance that conflict underlies all human and in fact all natural activity, is pure rubbish. It fails terribly every time it encounters reality. It is no more scientific than the Republic of Plato, and less interesting to read, and read about as well.

The accusation of "economic determinism" is only applicable to the materialist conception of history, and even there it's something of a straw man argument. The notion that Marx believed that conflict underlies all human activity is also a mischaracterization of dialectical materialism. Dialectical materialism is a method of philosophical analysis which seeks to locate and dissect contradictions that are both necessary for, and yet destructive of, particular processes or entities. Obviously, not all human activity consists of such contradictions.

Furthermore, the real strength in Marx's work rests with his critique of capital. Most of the socialist tradition in general shares in many of the criticisms Marx leveled against capitalism throughout the duration of his life.

the Bolsheviks took it to the next level wherein even dedicated revolutionaries like the SR's -- a revolutionary,violently popular particularly Russian non-Marxist socialist party, with the majority of the peoples support and good will -- as 'reactionary' because they rejected Lenin's 'democratic centralism' which is dictatorship under any label after all.

Certain segments of the Socialist-Revolutionary Party actually defected to the Bolsheviks. Moreover, the Socialist-Revolutionary Party was itself influenced by Marxism. Now, it's true that Lenin essentially took over Russia in what amounted to a coup d'état, but again, it's unfair to blame Marxism for the crimes of Bolshevism.

China would have starved, while mouthing platitudes about plenty, if the Cultural Revolution and its madness had continued, and any thinking person knows this is true. North Korea is hell on earth if you are not in with the party line. And so on it goes in actual time.

Mao's absurd "Great Leap Forward" was denounced vigorously by many intelligent Marxists throughout the world. Even Leon Trotsky opposed the forced collectivization of agriculture. As for North Korea, it's a military junta with a command economy; it doesn't even nominally pay tribute to Marx anymore ("Juche" replaced it as the official state ideology). If you read Marx's critique of "barracks communism," you'll find that it's applicable to virtually every manifestation of state socialism which has hitherto existed.

And while modern Western Capitalism is doubleplusungood, Marxism in all of its actual attempted forms has been worse, especially the Leninist/Maoist strain. Any claims that it liberated workers is pure fantasy, unless having no right to strike, no effective voice in government, being told what to think by party controlled papers and being a state slave, subject to arrest for idleness is liberty now a new and improved species of liberty. Slavery is freedom if that is the case. Gulags and censors a free society does not make.

The notion that capitalism is better than state socialism is completely subjective. With that said, recent surveys have found enormous segments of Eastern Europe today favor a return to state socialism—that's how poorly capitalism has performed for them. Obviously I think we can do much better than either system, but the fact remains that as bad as state socialism was, many Eastern Europeans still feel that it served their needs better than capitalism is able to. Not having a right to strike, being deprived of significant say in political governance, having to endure propaganda, etc. are all characteristics which are observable throughout virtually every capitalist nation.