t wrote:

On Thu, 16 Oct 2008 20:42:21 -0700, Mark & Juanita
wrote:


Given your professed deep knowledge of the definitions of socialism,
Marxism, and communism, please help the rest of us by participating in the
following exercise:

1) Compare and contrast Marx's infamous quote: "From each according to
his ability, to each according to their need" with the following quote
from The One in response to the question, "You're going to raise my taxes,
aren't you?":


My point was about the misuse of terminology. Here is the reading
list from the seminar on Marxism and Socialist Thought:


The Communist Manifesto. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. 1848.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific. Friedrich Engels.

State and Revolution. Vladimir Lenin.

The Foundations of Leninism. Joseph Stalin.

The New Class. Milovan Djilas.

The Conspiracy of the Ivory Tower Intellectuals. Laszek Kolakowski.

The New Program of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

On Practice. Mao Tse-tung.

Combat Liberalsim. Mao Tse-tung.

Socialist Thought, A Documentary History. Albert Fried and Ronald
Sanders.



After you are done reading these you will better understand.


Rather than wasting a considerable amount of time reading that dreck (I've
seen and read sufficient excerpts to get the plot), I prefer to observe the
resulting catastrophes that have resulted from their implementation -- I
absolutely understand the toll on human lives, prosperity and productivity
that such systems have inflicted upon their nations' victims. Further,
from such observation, I see no reason why any person with more than two
working brain cells to rub together would want to see their own country
headed down that same path of wealth redistributionism and command economy.
That was my point, "from each according to his ability, to each according
to his need" isn't a very far step from "I believe that when you spread the
wealth around, it helps everybody".






tom watson

--
If you're going to be dumb, you better be tough