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sc94597 on 03 February 2018
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donathos said:
sc94597 said:

This argument is of the same form as the argument absolutists used against early liberals when they advocated for republicanism and representative democracy. "Rome and Greece failed, monarchy is the best form of government because the people need a sovereign to keep order. Do you want the war of all against all?"

If the democratic and republican governments of Athens and Rome had produced results on par with the Soviet Union, then perhaps that would have been a good argument to make against making another attempt. For after all, if we do not learn from history, what is our other recourse? If I cannot point to the results of fascism as an argument why fascism is a bad idea, then how do we assess the claim that fascism deserves another try? I expect you might agree with regards to fascism, but socialism did just as much harm.

sc94597 said:

There is quite a bit of diversity in socialist thought, and it does oneself a disservice to only understand and know about Marxist-Leninism.

And yet the person I'm responding to was referring to Marx/Engels, and making Marxist talking points, etc. Besides which, it is a mistake to assume that I only understand or know about one version of socialism.

Well they did produce results "on par with the Soviet Union." Pretty much every horrible thing said of the Soviet Union can be said of Rome (both the Republic and Empire) and many Greek city-states. Who said anything about not learning from history? There are things to learn from the totalitarian mess that was the Soviet Union, simplistic conclusions like "Socialism [in general] is always bad or wrong" is not one of them. It's a position without nuance. 

What you can do is try to prove that fascism (or socialism) are bad because they always end with the results that we've seen in the Soviet Union or fascist Europe, but that is a hard thing to prove. Particularly for fascism it is easier because it's not as broad an ideological tent as socialism, but even for fascism it is pretty difficult, which is evidenced by the number of fascists in the world. Ironically, fascism was Mussolini's attempt to revive Rome, so that tells you how despotic Rome could be. 

Classical marxism and Marxist-Leninism aren't the same thing. I take it VGPolyglot  (as an ancom) accepts the prior, but not the latter. Even still, it's possible to cite Marx and Engels without being a Marxist or a Marxist-Leninist. I personally don't find much of value in Marx besides the things he appropriated from older socialists (the Ricardian Socialists, Proudhon, etc) but some people find his theories of historical materialism and a few other things interesting. 

Last edited by sc94597 - on 03 February 2018