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Maybe related to massive mail voting - just speculation haven’t seen breakdowns.

Isn’t this something like the 100th attempt at making air taxis happen? I guess the idea is too shiny to not attract new money every decade or so.

Forget about the nominally right wing media, look at how the NY Times have covered every threat to democracy, ever. From Hitler to the business plot to Trump.

You cannot arrive at a true communist state through violent revolution.

It’s possible that what you say is true but Marx himself in poverty of philosophy thought you couldn’t arrive without it.

I guess my overall point is that Marx was a man of his time with similar failings and sensibilities of men of his time - amongst other things he was homophobic, he was considering people in groups wholesale in a way that’s rather distasteful, and in a way that allowed later supposed followers to use these writings to fuck over whole populations.

I’m not sure why people are rising up to whitewash these things - they don’t negate the other insights anymore than Newton’s insane occult obsession negates calculus or the theory of gravity.

I mean while i agree with the premise of that argument this sounds a lot like ‘no true Scotsman’… which instances do you see as being in the true spirit then?

what

I’m not sure what you had trouble grasping - I explained the thought in detail in the paragraph following.

And if I quote him saying the same things about the peasant class

I don’t see how making the same horrible comments about another whole class of people counteracts the horrible comment about others.

“Your honour, and if I show that my client stole from other shops, not just the one he is being prosecuted for, wouldn’t you concede that that negates the theft from this shop?”

First I think what he wrote goes beyond them lacking the revolutionary potential and specifically being an active obstacle - I think the words were “significant counterrevolutionary force” and “more likely to sell out to reactionary intrigues”.

But either way, to be honest I don’t see a functional difference between Marx’s beliefs and every implementation of the communist manifesto known to date.

That is, it doesn’t matter what he wrote or believed in his heart of hearts if it can be interpreted in such broad strokes as to allow the implementation of the dear leader mindset with his writings as a touchstone without fail.

And it doesn’t matter what he thought should be done with the lumpen elements if he thought of them as less than, disgusting, parasitical, and even objecting to the cause, (his writings certainly show disgust in my opinion) - true believers to the cause will see them (as they have) as obstacles and will do whatever needs to be done to remove them - as they have.

Well - here’s the thing with “lacking revolutionary potential” and a dear-leader mindset.. anyone dear leader deems lacking is labeled lumpen and thrown to the furthest gulag or has their rights removed and confined.

Eg in Stalinist Russia certain groups like the Roma, Crimean Tatars, Chechens, Koreans or homosexuals were labeled as such wholesale.

In modern times the Uighurs need reeducation etc.

But he did write quite extensively on Lumpenproletariat.

vagabonds, discharged soldiers, discharged convicts, runaway galley slaves, swindlers, charlatans, pickpockets, tricksters, gamblers, procurers, brothel keepers, porters, intellectuals, organ grinders, rag-pickers, knife-grinders, tinkers, beggars; in short, the entirely undefined, disintegrating mass, thrown hither and yon, which the French call la bohème.

That is quite a few groups he considered subhuman, where half the ‘cleansing’ operations under communism have derived their theoretical excuses from.

Wow, they are incredibly cheap in the US - in Australia they are nearly double the price per kg.

Pistachios seem awfully cheap from what I know pistachios to cost even considering high caloric density.

Seems unlikely given that ascetic hermits around the world are known for living to a ripe old age.