Quote:
Originally Posted by peter12
Classic socialism with roots in Hegal and Marx, with revolutionary adaptions by Mao, Lenin, Trotskey, and Stalin definitely advocates the wiping of human nature with a re-write carried out by a strong state.
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I'm not a socialist, and my opinion on Castro is "good riddance"--though I think the jury is out on whether his brother will be any better.
But I think your understanding of the Left Hegelian tradition is a little flawed. Mao, Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin don't really belong in the same category as Marx, who along with Engels was primarily a social theorist. His one explicit political tract, the Communist Manifesto, argues not that human nature should be wiped clean, but that workers should reclaim part of the capital that they produce. It's pretty short on specifics--and if you've read it you know that. If you haven't I think you'll be surprised--it's worth picking up.
An interesting wrinkle--according to the Marxist philosophy, the endpoint of
capitalism (not Marxism) is the erasure of the individual subject, who is anyway powerless in the face of monopoly capitalism, which is the final stage in its historical advancement. Note that his attitude toward "human nature" is precisely opposite to what you say.
The old saw that "Stalin wasn't a real Marxist" is true. To equate them is to engage in bad politicial history. Stalin may well have believed that "human nature should be wiped clean." Marx didn't.