Maryland abolishes death penalty.

[kandrathe]

Yea, you quote a free-market advocate to try and offset what I said, when such an advocate will obviously present capitalism in the same way that I was critiquing Shoju for, so that it is presented with its own agenda - thanks for helping me prove my point! You fail epically, as usual, Kandrathe.

Max Eastman? You mean the guy who started out as the editor of extreme leftist "The Masses"? The guy who went to the Soviet Union during the revolution, and was chums with Lenin, and Trotsky? It is perhaps inconvenient for your belief system that after fully immersing himself in Communism, and Marxism that he converted to a more enlightened position.

Also, trying to use a website supposedly hosted by a Marxist that supposedly rejects DM doesn't really help your cause either. Gee, his word must be the gospel!! You are going to have to do much better than this.

Well, yes. I read the entire "for beginners", and am in the process of digesting the entire lecture series. How about you? Interested at all in alternative views from other Marxists? Or, are you trapped in your "Marxist Bubble"?

My statements aren't assumptions, they are observations made because of his clear separation of capitalism from political and social problems, and thus capitalism being viewed as not a totality, is implied in his method of thinking; for example when he viewed the way countries interact with one another as being the cause of the problem, as if this is a separate entity or process from capitalism (it isn't). Your and his thinking treats these things as being separate from one another, when they clearly are not - they are very much interrelated and interact with one another.

But, this is your unfounded proposition. You can't just claim he is wrong, and you are right. In between, there needs to be a rationale for making such a claim. You've yet to provide anything like it.

Earlier in the discussion, when I pressed you on specifics of your solution you said;

Marxism indeed doesn't have a framwork, because it IS a framework, and it is that framework that serves as a guide for those fighting for socialism. You want it to predict EXACTLY how socialism will look, and that is impossible because it depends entirely on the material conditions of the time, should socialism become a reality. Artisans (who ultimately became todays capitalist class) during the feudal era could not predict exactly how capitalism would work, just socialists cannot predict exactly how socialism will look. We each have our own set of values respectively and society will be setup to reflect those values as they have been in prior epochs of history. Your notion is almost as absurd as asking a biologist to predict the evolution of a particular species of insect. Predicting the future of history depends on way to many interacting factors, much in the same way predicting the course of evolution does. Modes of analysis are used to understand current conditions to show which futures are possible and not possible. We'll leave it up to religious fundamentalists to make bold predictions like The Rapture being inevitable outcomes of our social existence, or capitalists who predict this system is the be all end all despite its countless contradictions, inefficiencies, and the fact it creates the very seeds of its own destruction (as all class based systems before it did). At the end of the day, Marxism is perfectly honest (and brutally so) in its analysis and its intentions.

Bolded by me. This is a DM answer. We can't know because the future hasn't happened yet. It's crap. I know that if no one plants crops, we won't eat. I know that if we crap in the water we'll have no safe drinking water. I can predict some futures, not all, but some. This is the notion of risk and reward. I could eat all the grain, or I could risk some of the grain by planting it, to get more grain. It is a fundamental thing.