While I agree with much that he says, my opinion is that while there are several reasons why Marxist parties the world over have split continually for well over a hundred years, dialectical materialism isn’t one of them. What I do claim is that this mystical theory has made a bad situation worse.

I explain why here:

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/page%2009_02.htm

1) A ‘worker state’ is not an economic system (as would be capitalism or socialism). It might refer to the transition period from one to another (e.g. capitalism to socialism), but it does not entail a stable and dominant mode of production.

2) History moves in zigzags and not a straight line. European history has many examples of temporary retreats back to feudalism.

3) Compared to the time it took feudalism to transition to capitalism and even the period capitalism has been around, the efforts of the Marxist-Leninists in building a socialist state is like the blink of an eye. Lenin himself did not believe that socialism could be established in a single country and was counting on the working class in other Western countries to rise up. When these revolutions did not materialize, Lenin realized that the revolutionary situation occurs more in the weakest links of the capitalist system (thus Nepal).

4) Social upheaval and revolution takes different forms in different countries, mainly depending on the level of development of the productive forces (and not the genius of the revolutionary leadership). A socialist revolution in France, obviously does not look anything like the one in Nepal or Afghanistan, but those in Nepal or Afghanistan, in the absence of concrete proletarian forces and the presence of peasants will have their limitations (even though conditions are riper in those countries for social upheaval than in France).

5) There are a lot of attacks on Marxist-Leninists for their mistakes or failed attempts at constructing socialism. Few, however, look with the same eye to the disastrous state of Western European social democrats who, in the name of labor, keep selling out the working classes to their bourgeoisie. Does Gordon Brown (and the British Labor Party) in any way represent labor? And the German social democrats? Are European citizens able to avoid the disasters of capitalist crises because of their social democracy? Apparently not.

The chosen title aptly epitomises this article – white is black if we choose to associate whiteness with the colour black and so on. That’s an absurdity to all us familiar of properties such as ‘whiteness’ and of what is black, but to someone ignorant of both this would sound as a logically valid sentence. My point is that Marxist economics offers the scientific tools (observations, principles, concepts etc) to understand the dynamics at play in our societies – it’s not a dead dogma that may only relate to the set of circumstances that begot it.

How else are we to understand the value the worker produces for his/her employer, and how else are we to understand the question of property?

The economic neoliberal paradigm capitalises on notions of personal fulfillment whereby (Starbucks) latte-sipping, i-pod-grasping, GAP-attired, aspirationist individuals pursue their happiness in whichever way they please so long as they cause no real harm to others [please forgive the caricature]. In reality, however, it conveniently glosses over the iniquities that arise in every field of its endeavours – be it the curtailing of the provision of welfare measures, liberalisation of internal markets, rules against subsidies (forcing hitherto agriculturally self-sufficient states to import wheat from the US for instance) and so on. If for you Marxism is no longer relevant, could you kindly please elucidate as to which, therefore, is the more valid and cogent narrative through which we are to understand the world around us, that’s to say, what’s the alternative narrative that offers answers to the questions: what is social injustice and what forms does it take; why does it matter; is it morally neutral, positive, or negative; what are the remedies against its forms and so on?

Or are the above questions irrelevant or simply the wrong ones to the answers available?

http://homepage.ntlworld.com/rosa.l/index.htm

Just because something seems like or actually is anti-semitic, doesn’t mean it isn’t true.

http://www.heretical.com/miscellx/bolshies.html

but russia was ruled by communists thus had lethal enemies. china is ruled by communists; thus it needs to acquire good weapons to abide.
it can be done via industrialization only.

as US wld never sell china their best weapons. today, as gaza had shown any land can be pulverized just from air alone with minimal casualties.

wld cuba with nuclear weapons be so hounded by haters of socialism? probably not as it cld threaten US not only with own wmd but wld arm other socialist lands with wmd.
thnx