[demonrail666]

YES. it always cracks me up how american leftists cry for the rights of everyone except for those of the poor. feminist heiresses, trust-fund ecowarriors, suburban vegans, etc. there is no discussion of class. just look at this board as a microcosm.

It's much the same over here. For a lot of people on the Left, class has become a kind of obstacle rather than a foundation stone. I'm not sure why this occured but it seemed to take root in the 1960s when Marxist groups began looking to students (God help them) and the Third World and later, in the 70s and 80s, to women and sexual minorities. Whatever the causes, it has led to a kind of abandonment of what I see as basic core leftist principles in favour of a far easier to manage emphasis on the so-called oppressed - even when by nature these will also include, as you rightly describe them, 'feminist heiresses, trust fund ecowarriors, suburban vegans, etc.'

you really can't breed revolutionary saints.

Wouldn't you say that the US and the UK are doing just that right now, in places like Afghanistan? Not that they'd call them 'saints', of course.

capitalism as an economic system is much more efficient, capitalism as a belief and ideology is a mental turd.

Maybe relative to the epic waste of the Soviet model but let's face it, with its growing need for things like built in obselecence, capitalism is catching up fast.

capitalism will run into trouble once it covers the globe, as marx predicted. so i do not see globalization as an evil force-- it's simply another step in the economic evolution of humanity.

Exactly. Equally, capitalism is wrongly denigrated by sections of the Left when again it was Marx himself who celebrated it as a necessary step beyond feudalism. The only difference in that sense between Marx and today's fiscal-Right is that he saw capitalism as a necessary step towards something better while they see it as a fait accompli. The End of History, as you mentioned.

so you're not a maoist

No. If I'm honest I wouldn't describe myself as a marxist, either. I have definite issues with capitalism and do favour the idea of communism but fail to see the relevance of a re-awakening of a Leninist style of communism. My view is that Marx provided a kernal of brilliance and truth in his analysis of capitalism but that his proposals for an alternative need to be revised dramatically before they can even begin to engage with the current socio-economic climate. I'm not sure what that alternative will look like but, in a sense, that's what excites me. With Soviet style Marxism now resigned to history and capitalism doing all that it can to follow it, now seems like the perfect time for young economists and political thinkers to start trying to iron out what you (I think rightly) see as those internal mechanistic errors inherent within the Soviet model and forge something that, while maintaining Marx's core ideological tenets, offers a radical re-think of what events have shown to be its inadequate infrastructure.

I don't know whether any of this will ever take place and I certainly don't know how it will if it does. I suppose my basic point is that at the heart of Marx was a bloody good idea that we'd be stupid to discard just because the first attempt at trying to put it into operation wasn't a success. There needs to be a revolution within Marxism before we can ever again have a Marxist revolution.