As a result, my comment makes even less sense than usual.

The intended link to my elevator speech about capitalism is here.

Still, even though Marx gave some good analysis for his time I’m suspicious of any line of thought that claims it gives a “total” vision of human history and society, right or left wing.

Think about it: supporting a large military-industrial establishment that undermines our economy, supressing dissent, torturing people, suspending civil rights, invading other countries in the name of a “revolution”. Very….”Soviet” of them isn’t it?

Its like we’re becoming what we were opposed to in the Cold War.

I actually suspect that neocons are, in a sense, Marxist–a lot of their programs and the franker versions of their ideals are consisten with someone who has read Marx’s economics but rejected his allegience with the working class.

This seems to be true of a lot of useful-idiot capitalists. They internalize the idea of Marx’s class distinctions, but with themselves as the capitalists (a little like all the people who dream of living in some fantasy of the more-or-less distant past, but always as aristocracy rather than as peasants). The biggest things they miss as a result seem to be the recognition that lots of people are both capitalists and laborers at the same time, and that a lot of things that are good for labor (e.g. evironmental laws) are good for capital as well, because capital does not actually live on another planet…

It kind of confirmed for me the idea I’d been toying with, which Mark Foxwell articulates above: these fuckers know that Marx was right, and they intend to use that knowledge against us.

Actually, it wasn’t Bill it was his father Irving, but that is the case, all of the founding members of the neocon philosophy started out as strident commies, they advocated armed revolution to bring about a worker’s paradise, seeing that they were on the wrong side of history, they revised their philosophy to advocate wars of democratic liberation to bring about a citizens paradise, the operative notion here is war, as long as someone else is fighting it. ‘cause you know their asses are to valuable to get involved n the nitty-gritty.

Its interesting that you would say that, because many of the top neoconservatives are former Marxists of the Trotskyite variety. Ex., Bill Kristol. So you’re pretty spot on.

I do have my own awareness that communism and socialism are quite distinct. Its the communists who seem to get two confused. In their dreams, communism is a pure and orthodox form of socialism. In the real world socialism can be found in varying degrees in most governments and countries while communism is mostly remembered as a form of orthodoxy for its own sake.

But, as a pro-working-class Marxist, even I can give good reasons why capitalism is justified in particular stages of history. As long as the working class is better off under capitalism that they would be under some other system, it is justified IMHO. I just happen to agree with Marx that his anaylysis shows why capitalists will inevitablty undermine that justification in practice, and that the history of the attempt to check and regulate capitalism in the public interest since the Great Depression demonstrates that tendency amply. We _could_ have a socially just capitalism, it is just ridiculously unlikely given that capitalism gives unchecked power to the wealthy–it would depend on that class becoming and remaining enlightened and benign enough to tolerate and indeed sponsor regulation that would tend to be against their immediate interest–and competition between capitalists tends to eliminate from power and influence any capitalists who don’t go with the trend of grabbing all the power and benefits they can at every opportunity.

So I think at least some neocons have read their Marx and understand him better than the average “Marxist” university professor. They just are using it against Marx’s purpose. Which is morally undermining, and they tend to lie about it.