Canary in the Coal Mine - Day

4:10AM - Skāde

Q: Kāpēc Latvijā nav rūpniecības?
A: Pēc neatkarības atjaunošanas politiķi aicināja: sagrausim lielo rūpniecību, kurā galvenokārt strādā cittautieši! Viņi aizbrauks, un mums sāksies labāka dzīve. Rūpniecību sagrāva, bet cittautieši neaizbrauca.

12:48PM

2:54PM

We are firmly convinced, that it is not practical experiments which are dangerous but the theoretical articulation of communist ideas; true practical experiments (and be they carried out en masse) can be answered by cannon as soon as they become dangerous; ideas, however, which control our thoughts, subordinate our convictions to them, and to which reason rivets our conscience—these are bonds impossible to break without tearing into pieces one’s heart, these are demons which a man can conquer only by subjecting himself to them.

— Karl Marx

3:04PM

That all “Western Culture” developed and flowered in the soil of “private property” is a historically acknowledged fact. In this sense the whole technological and scientific culture of Europe and North America owes its very existence to private property as an indispensable condition sine qua non. No sensible Marxist has denied or denies this. On the contrary, the theory of Marxism has, in all fairness, always valued the historically progressive role of private property and has stressed its advantages in comparison with the prebourgeois, feudal type-class forms of the social organization of human activities.

Both Marx and Engels began their careers precisely as the most radical theoreticians of bourgeois democracy, as the most determined defenders of the principle of private property, which in their eyes at that time coincided with the principle of full and unconditional freedom of personal initiative in any sphere of life, whether material or spiritual. In his capacity as leader of revolutionary democracy, the young Marx even opposed the idea of a socialization of property. Marx rejected communism as a theoretical doctrine, for to him it seemed to be a reactionary attempt to galvanize the “corporate principle,” the ideal of Plato.

( ... tālāk ... )