Brevity, Clarity, Inclusion, And sometimes spellling...
Yes I've been kicking the wiki-tires a little.. see m:erosion? but cyberspace is evolving. Humans, however are not.. so we need to think about what we are and where we are going. Wikipedia, dispite it's bookish zest for all things un-contravercial is really a anti-dissent thinktank --by trying to reach for the most-common-denominator, it will attain perfect mediocracy.. I'm interested in how things can work. Some of what I write is dismissed by glib nonsensical talk... see also m:erosion
Example: I wrote of Karl Marx,
Rather than explaining how society should function, Marx described the "exploitive" nature of common social relationships based on historical ccounts. And, in light of the totalitarianism practiced in the name of "Marxism" in the 20th century... Marx declared that he himself was not a "Marxist" (Key Ideas in Human Thought, Kenneth McLeish, Prima Pub.p.448)
This has been deleted several times as "misleading" ....OF WHAT? People here have some very odd POV problems..
Another more museing example: I wrote of Austin Powers, ...known for his joyful manic hyper sexual saying "Yea Baby ! Yea" . This was encyclopedic but over writen by speculation that his name "Austin" was derived from the british car Austin-heilie(sp)... Well maybe... but do I have to keep going back just to make a simple entry?
Wikipedia:erosion is now a definable thing in the history of cyberspace.
Current interests E-Consensus and a better description for meme
You ask:
Hi, I was wondering why you try to omit the quote that Marx disagreed with "marxism" ...
I omit it for three reasons, I guess. First, Marx did not live to the 20th century, so he cannot possible have disagreed (0r of course agreed) with 20th century Marxism.
Thanks I checked and he was talking about "french marxism" and engles apparently mentions german version ..
"...so-called" Marxism in France is an altogether peculiar product, so much so that Marx said to Lafarque: what is certain is that, for me, I am no Marxist"...Lafarque, of course, was Marx's son-in-law and Bernstein later used the quote in his autobiography...
According to Draper, a variation appears in an Engels letter to Schmidt in 1890 - critiquing a book review by Moritz Wirth:
"...little Moritz is a calamitous friend. The materialist conception of history has a lot of such friends today, to whom it serves as a pretext for not studying history. Just as Marx said about the French "Marxists" of the late seventies: All I know is that I'm not a Marxist"...
- Second, this simply is not what the quote means, didn't you read the whole letter, and the letter Marx was responding to? Finally, Marx was most definitely a revolutionary concerned with practical politics, and not just analyzing systems. Whether he would have admired or rejected others like Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, or Mao is an impossible question since Marx died before these men were politically active. Slrubenstein
I suppose we needed'nt guess too hard since he never advocated genocidal marxism.. what I thought was instructive about the quote is that there is little consensus on just what marxism is supposed to be other than the misunderstanging and collected works...
Perhaps such a quote to me is simply instructive where as you find it hard to place in context. Does the wiki Karl Marx or marxism ever percolate to discussion of his views on how his work was used?
- I think this is simply no issue, since there is no reason to believe that Marx would or would not have approved of what people do since his death. As to during his life, his reasons for rejecting his son-in-law's actions may be rather different from the point you wish to make. As to the larger point -- that Marx and Marxism are not interchangable, I agree 100% and think the article should make this clear. I simply do not believe that this particular quote accomplishes this, except in the most misleading and disingenuous way. Slrubenstein