John Ransom wrote:
>Communists have been incredibly puritanical. Stalin's movement to
>"eliminate the Kulak's as a class"; Mao and Chiang Ching's cultural
>revolution are both real big examples.
This is deeply unfair to Marxists and Marxism. Why is it that anyone who
generalizes wildly about "postmodernism" is rebuked for doing violence to a
diverse collection of thinkers, but you can get away with the same sort of
recklessness when characterizing Marxists. You know, Marxists have been
among the most severe critics of Stalinism and Maoism, and for all the
right reasons. Many of the early Bolsheviks even were sexual and aesthetic
radicals, as are many, if not most, of the Marxists I know today. These
puritanical/oppressive tendencies of Stalin and Mao have as much to do with
Russian and Chinese history as they do with that grand abstraction known as
Marxism.
Doug
>Communists have been incredibly puritanical. Stalin's movement to
>"eliminate the Kulak's as a class"; Mao and Chiang Ching's cultural
>revolution are both real big examples.
This is deeply unfair to Marxists and Marxism. Why is it that anyone who
generalizes wildly about "postmodernism" is rebuked for doing violence to a
diverse collection of thinkers, but you can get away with the same sort of
recklessness when characterizing Marxists. You know, Marxists have been
among the most severe critics of Stalinism and Maoism, and for all the
right reasons. Many of the early Bolsheviks even were sexual and aesthetic
radicals, as are many, if not most, of the Marxists I know today. These
puritanical/oppressive tendencies of Stalin and Mao have as much to do with
Russian and Chinese history as they do with that grand abstraction known as
Marxism.
Doug