Apolyton OT Feuds

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Cort Haus


As I said above, Asher vs Mobius would be worth a ringside seat.

Nah, that wouldn't be fun. MOBIUS would probably pwn himself as badly as he did here.

[aneeshm]

I don't have a feuding buddy.

[SlowwHand]

Originally posted by Impaler[WrG]
I want an arch-nemisis too! Quickly someone disagree with me.

Here.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by notyoueither
The notion of class struggle is signature Marxian.

Others may have adopted the POV, and I think that is Ned's point.

Except the notion that classes and their conflicts was AN important part of political life, was par for the course in the 19th century, among "liberals", conservatives, etc as well as socialists of various stripes. What was special about Marxists was A. Their belief that class struggle was THE driver of history B. Their attempt to systematize it C. Their belief (shared by other left socialists) that property was theft D. well, a whole bunch of other things.

The notion that class and class conflict are important to social and political life is no more uniques to Marxists, than the notion that things move, things hit each other, this has consequences, is unique to British Natural philosophers.

(And yes, that implies that the belief that classes DONT conflict, or that mentioning that they do is somehow a threat to liberal capitalist democracy, is just as silly as claiming that things dont move, or that when they do they dont hit each other)

[Ned]

Ah, but Marxism is just a "flavor" of socialism. You know I consistently oppose socialism not because of its sharing concepts with Marxism, but because of its reliance on concepts of class warfare.

There is also a difference, is there not, between legally imposed classes and defacto classes. The stuggle for most of history was the people against the nobility, etc. When nobility ceased to exist in places like the US, socialists and Marxist continued to talk in terms of class warfare as if nothing at all had changed, as if the rich were a legally protected class that the commons could not join regardless of their efforts. Thus being rich was equivalent to being noble. Rich folk making a buck became "robber barons."

Liberalism flowed from Christianity. It represented a 2000 year struggle for more rights for the common man. The basis for liberalism is the Christian view that all men are created equal before God. This leads to the natural concept that all men should be equal before the law.

Liberalism seeks equality of RIGHTS, not equality of WEALTH. Socialism and Marxism seek the latter because of their reliance on concepts of class struggle even in the absence of legal privilege. This leads, ineluctably in my view, to a complete lack of freedom as equality of wealth can only be IMPOSED on man by removing all freedom.

[Cyclotron]

Originally posted by aneeshm
I don't have a feuding buddy.

Well, whenever there is a predominance of Dharma and a decline of Adharma, O aneeshm, I manifest myself. I appear occasionally to protect the wicked, destroy the good, and promote world chaos.

[LordShiva]

Originally posted by Cyclotron
Well, whenever there is a predominance of Dharma and a decline of Adharma, O aneeshm, I manifest myself. I appear occasionally to protect the wicked, destroy the good, and promote world chaos.

[lord of the mark]

Originally posted by Ned
Ah, but Marxism is just a "flavor" of socialism. You know I consistently oppose socialism not because of its sharing concepts with Marxism, but because of its reliance on concepts of class warfare.

Whatever. I was referring to general usage,not socialit or leftist usage.

There is also a difference, is there not, between legally imposed classes and defacto classes. The stuggle for most of history was the people against the nobility, etc. When nobility ceased to exist in places like the US, socialists and Marxist continued to talk in terms of class warfare as if nothing at all had changed, as if the rich were a legally protected class that the commons could not join regardless of their efforts. Thus being rich was equivalent to being noble. Rich folk making a buck became "robber barons."

Everyone talked about classes. Metternich talked about classes. Conservatives, the old nobility talked about classes, noted the bourgeois were a class, and and considered the alliance of other classes with the bourgeois against the nobility unnatural. Disraeli, no socialist he, defended the class interests of small farmers against the coalition of bourgeois and workers that would end the corn laws. Similarly all kinds of trade issues, monetary issues, had class implications, which folks on both sides were quite aware of.

Whether rich folk are ipso fact theives, and whether progressive taxation and income redistribution are justified or not, is a logically distinct issue from the fact that classes exist, even in "liberal" IE post-aristocratic society, and that their conflicts over a range of issues are A driving force of politcs (though not, IMO, the only major driving force - but then Im not a Marxist)

[Cyclotron]

Ned, LotM, I don't think the point of "Apolyton OT Feuds" was to get one started in this thread.

[aneeshm]

Originally posted by Cyclotron


Well, whenever there is a predominance of Dharma and a decline of Adharma, O aneeshm, I manifest myself. I appear occasionally to protect the wicked, destroy the good, and promote world chaos.

I'm with Shiva here:

[Ned]

LoTM, I am not going to disagree with you that "class-speak" is older than and indepedent from Socialism. It has existed in Western society at least since the early Roman Republic where the fundamental struggle was for the Plebans to obtain more rights from the Patricians. In the modern day we have the Working, Middle and Upper classes defined by wealth, not by legal privilege. I do not dispute this.

What I disagree with is the concept that wealth is equivalent to legal privilege and must be ended in order for there to be equality of "rights." Even if wealth does confer more power (as in the OJ Simpson case), it does not confer more legal rights, at least here in the US.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Cyclotron
Ned, LotM, I don't think the point of "Apolyton OT Feuds" was to get one started in this thread.

These two guys don't Feud.

Both are pretty level headed guys who refrain from flaming. Two gooduns here I say.

[Heresson]

Originally posted by aneeshm
I don't have a feuding buddy.

You have 1,2 billion of them

[Kuciwalker]

Yeah, Ned's threads don't descend into flamewars, nor do lotm's.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
Yeah, Ned's threads don't descend into flamewars, nor do lotm's.

They gotta work on that.