What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[Jester]

If you don't agree with the ideals of communism, fine. If you don't think people should be treated as equals, fine. We just have to fundamentally disagree there, that is an ideological difference that cannot be reconciled because we view the world differently. The problem I have though, is with people who lump everyone who claims to be Marxist in the same group with Stalin and Mao, and therefore we must be some evil dictator that wants to control you and make your life miserable. That isn't the case at all, yet many seem to believe this way which is quite alarming. The states that have "labeled" themselves communist have been pretty bad, but that is not what I am disputing. What I am disputing, is whether Marxism is an evil ideology or not. It isn't. I believe it is a system that can work, and work quite well. But like anything else, it must be done right. Thus far, it has not been so, since for it to work there has to be democracy in place first. But at the same time, I think it is unfair to dismiss it and its advocates because of a few dictators who only had their self interests in mind to the cost of everyone else. It would be like someone saying I want to do the same things Stalin did, which is absolutely not the case.

I do not object to your Marxism. Want to claim you're a different kind of Communist? Feel free. Want to claim that there are ways of making Marxism work without recourse to violence and oppression? Claim away. Those claims at least are coherent and not ahistorical nonsense.

But you can't project *your* vision of what Communism is, on to the historical entity itself, as if Communism was defined by your preferences and beliefs, as if some logic games are going to cleanse the historical record. Plenty of people read Marx long before you did, who were Marxists, who came to very different conclusions. Some of them were idealistic dreamers, some were progressive reformers, and some of them were bloodsoaked revolutionaries. Some were all three. Communism has a long and complicated history. You simply have no right to deny their historical experience, to define away whatever categories you don't like.

-Jester