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I can appreciate what you're getting at, but your point carries little weight. How many Left Wingers (or Right Wingers, for that matter) have never read Mein Kampf but are quick to call someone a nazi or fascist? How many economists have actually read the original writings of Adam Smith or John Meynard Keynes?
More directly to the point, the followers of a movement like marxism can actually change the definition of marxism in the way they apply his ideology. It matters less what Carl Marx said and more what 'marxists' have done or failed to do in the name of marxism. The original text was just a template.
Fascism predates Mein Kampf, so not sure why you would need to read it to understand Fascism. This forum is proof that many left and right wingers don't understand Fascism or Nazism. The word Fascism is probably just as misunderstood as Marxist. If you are an economist and you've never studied Adam Smith or Keynes, than you are a pretty sad excuse for an economist. Modern day Marxists cant even agree as to what a Marxist is. Even Karl Marx, spelled with a K, said "I am not a Marxist" Would you feel comfortable blaming the sermons of Jesus Christ for the bombings of abortion or the Spanish Inquisition?
it's just that in a world of freer markets we don't have to pass that totalitarian stage on the way there
Actually, that's exactly what happens. It's covered in Chapter 10 Vol. 1 of Capital as a matter of fact. We came out of a more totalitarian labor-wage model after the Civil War, when overall wages were indexed to slavery and thus kept artificially low. It's no coincidence the labor movement began in the years immediately after when the violence of the state was no longer overtly used to set wage prices and the period from post-Reconstruction through the Gilded Age up to the beginning of the Progressive Era is the key economic policy focus of libertarianism.
Amazing that people get hung up on labels and try to gain high ground in an academic discussion when it matter not a whit.
The words we hear comming from Obama and his minions are not what we want to hear, call that collection of policies whatever you want, it doesn't matter. What matters is that the content is repulsive to the majority of America.
You missed the whole point of this thread. It's in the OP, on page 1.
Amazing that people get hung up on labels and try to gain high ground in an academic discussion when it matter not a whit.
The words we hear comming from Obama and his minions are not what we want to hear, call that collection of policies whatever you want, it doesn't matter. What matters is that the content is repulsive to the majority of America.
I would suggest that we wait for the next election to determine that.
Likely more than you do, as did Hitler about Capitalism. See, there is more to things, in reality, than the name you want to associate with them. Your being clueless about Marx and his take on economy is something you claim to have read, but you clearly didn't get it. Besides, your examples also assume politics and economics being integral and interchangeable. That itself is a problem you might want to address first. Then perhaps take up and study Marx.
Capitalism is not a theory. Capitalism is an economic system in which the means
of production are privately owned and operated for profit, usually in competitive markets.
Marxism is a theory and can be interpreted differently by different people.
We've seen different interpretations through history.
They have at least one thing in common though they've served to justify tyrannical regimes.
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