IngSoc:

@Mona

So the right to free association is ephemeral and not inalienable?

Without free association, there would be no "libertarian philosophy" at all!

The problem is one of implications built into a theory. Some of these are not obvious to the original theorist. But in the end, the theory is only meaningful insofar as it move people to act, and in these acts the implicit values in the system become explicit.

So, to pick out the value of Marx or Jesus or Rothbard, we have to look at how their principles have been put into action, and what the results have been, rather than to look at them simply in the abstract.

So, in my view, Marx has to be carefully trod - both unionism and Lenninism come out of Marx. There's danger in them words, and what is of value should be re-synthesized, and the dangers recognized.

The same with Jesus. The "Jesus philosophy" as represented by the New Testament, has both valuable and deadly lessons, which we can see in their implementation. Christianity can't take credit for Francis of Assisi without taking the blame for Torquemeda and the New World Conquest.

The greatest danger lies in the totalizing philosophies - which until recently have been the bulk of Western philosophy. One universal logic for every time and place, come hell or high water. "One ring to rule them all." Despite the positive values in these philosophy, they all carry the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil, a poison that has only recently been identified. Mathematics abandoned that proposition a century ago - but political theory, not quite yet. The Libertarians are in love with over-simplicity.

Please...being Jewish is as much a collective identity as it is an individual one. Being a Jew means identifying with a group of people. No Jew I've ever met claims that they and they alone constitute Judaism. That it may be an abstraction (although I would argue that it is just as concrete as individual identity) makes it no less operative.

Unionism did not come out of Marxism; the seeds of unionism, in fact, pre-date Marx. See, for example, Chartism and Syndicalism. Unions evolved from medieval guilds, which certainly pre-date Marx.

...and if people can't see any comparison at all between the roles of O'Reilly and Olberman -- not whether they're good or evil, right or wrong, us or them -- but their roles, then you're seriously not even trying to be an honest observer of the media.

Wasn't the Communist Manifesto an organizational work? My understanding was that Marx was involved in a number of organizations which were often dominated by his cohorts. Often, the actual grunt work was done through Engels, who was more of the party (socializing and hookin' up with hot chicks) kind of guy. Toward the end of his life, Marx worked toward pulling his support for all his buddies - but I don't have my Life of Karl Marx in front of me right now.

But I have to disagree on totalizing philosophies. They were a mistake - a necessary mistake, in the same way that Newtonian physics were a necessary mistake. But now, any useful philosophical system has to take into account the lack of universalism of any particular logical system. It has to have it's borders embedded in it, and clearly recognized. Philosophy has tended toward tyranny because it was only in the late 19th century that it even started to become clear that logic was limited in that way. And that is how we were all victims of Plato until very recently. The law of non-contradiction is only applicable within a specific context.

"Gassing Mother Wasserman with her baby killed two people, not a collective."

You are delusional. Your focus on a narrow effect has you blinded to cause. Yes two people dead. Why?

Is the drive to genocide to kill each individual for their individual identity?

Is the drive to ban Gay marriage, (another collective, two people who are married and enjoy plenty of rights as a collective only) based on Joe Average homosexual's individual identity? No, it's based on the rights of a certain collective, heterosexual married couples, and the rights that another collective, homosexual couples, should not have.

@Jojo You didn't answer a single question. What you did do is illustrate my point. You conflate Jesus with Christianity as if he created it. You show how, in order to hold this opinion of blaming the theorist, one must know very little about either theorist or implementation or both.

Any idea can be turned into a universal concept. What is it about pre 20th century thought, that is different post 20th century?

the drive to ban gay marriage is based on some very closed-minded people's assertion that homosexual couples should not have equal rights...

There is no such thing as a single Jew, in terms of Jewish theology. Judiasm is explicitly a group construction - you can't have a minyan of one. You can keep on defining everything in terms of individuals; that is the nature of a closed circle of insanity, that a single principle explains everything. But that won't get you anywhere you haven't already been to.

I could also define an entire legal system simply based on group rights, where no individual rights exist. It would be completely self-consistent and practical; the majority of legal systems throughout human history have been that way. They also have been completely tyrannical by excluding the individual. Your Libertarianism is the same thing on it's head - you would exclude the group dynamic from your legal reasoning, and thereby blind the legal system to real aspects of human behavior.

Blechh, it's always the same thing. The Christian Fundamentalists tell me that the Bible is true because the Bible says it's true. You tell me that everything legal is individual because you define it so,.

I had a long post prepared, but I lost it. I need to get going. I'll just briefly summarize what I wanted to say:

Marx was not really involved in organizational work, he was a theoretician, and his conflicts with Bakunin, et. al. were over theory, not practical organizational matters. The Manifesto was, as I said, not a theoretical work; although reflective of his thinking at the time, Marx later disowns it as obsolete and not reflective of changed conditions. I don't really know what Engels was doing other than running the family business in Manchester and providing Marx with support; you may be correct in that Engels was the actual implementer of Marx's ideas, but also take into account that Engels had ideas of his own. Marx was not an organizer, he was a theoretician.