Well, the election is now less than 3 months away, and my campaign strategy is more or less set.
I have discovered that there are 2 ways my candidacy gains currency:
1) personal self promotion
2) a wide web of electronic precincts run by voters and supporters in my district
In order to promote #2, I have endeavored to make my website a primary source of information and thought from the politically conservative point of view.
Well, #1 is the usual sort of campaign activity, of which I am engaging in the usual variety, but I am beginning to realize the limitations of this in the absence of a well financed media buy strategy, even more since I have decided to forgo the usual political fund raising as being unseemly.
Tuesday, August 24, 2010
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
Thoughts on Karl Marx
I finally read (the relevant parts of) ‘The Marx-Engels Reader (Robert C. Tucker, ed.)’. I found this book to be most illuminating, and recommend it. Why spend so much time on this? If you are going to defeat the enemy, you must first understand his core philosophy.
The introduction was quite useful: the editor gives you Marx’ philosophy in a nutshell. ‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’ was also important. Here, you will find his beliefs on free will, the proletariat, private property, communism, and science as god. Strangely, the selections from ‘Capital’ were only marginally useful: Marx attempts, with little success, to rewrite the tenets of capitalism. Going from this work to the ‘Communist Manifesto’ was jarring, inasmuch they seemed to be written by different people (e.g. Engels).
Another point I realized: you have to trace the development of communism. Marx was the solid, German philosopher. Engels was the PR/application arm of this team. Do not confuse this pair with Communism as implemented by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the subsequent changes by Stalin, and further changes by Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The flavor of Communism in China by Mao is different still, and much closer to that of Marx than the Russian variety.
Final word: just because Communism was a practical failure, do not dismiss it so lightly. It has a solid, difficult-to-refute philosophical basis.
The introduction was quite useful: the editor gives you Marx’ philosophy in a nutshell. ‘Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844’ was also important. Here, you will find his beliefs on free will, the proletariat, private property, communism, and science as god. Strangely, the selections from ‘Capital’ were only marginally useful: Marx attempts, with little success, to rewrite the tenets of capitalism. Going from this work to the ‘Communist Manifesto’ was jarring, inasmuch they seemed to be written by different people (e.g. Engels).
Another point I realized: you have to trace the development of communism. Marx was the solid, German philosopher. Engels was the PR/application arm of this team. Do not confuse this pair with Communism as implemented by Lenin and the Bolsheviks, the subsequent changes by Stalin, and further changes by Khrushchev and Brezhnev. The flavor of Communism in China by Mao is different still, and much closer to that of Marx than the Russian variety.
Final word: just because Communism was a practical failure, do not dismiss it so lightly. It has a solid, difficult-to-refute philosophical basis.
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