Dialectic
Religious Scholasticism
“A demonstration that Marxism has all the defining attributes of a religion would be incomplete without a warning against its own peculiar brand of scholasticism.” ~Max Eastman
Marxism
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Capitalism
Revolutionary Dictatorship
“The Marxist method is to accentuate the class struggle, organize it, and carry it forward…in full consciousness of the ruthlessness of the forces at play, to the goal of a revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat.” ~Max Eastman
Animism
Society is One?
“Marx is concerned to defend the concept of society as a single ‘object, reality, sensibility,’ having the character which all objects have–namely, that of self-active practicality.” ~Max Eastman
Communism
Officialdom Gone Mad
“Officialdom gone mad, officialdom erected into a new and merciless exploiting class; the people universally disarmed; gripped in the fist of a ruling clique which, when needful, wages armed war on the people.” ~Max Eastman
Communism
Belief in Fantasy
“The belief that such a millennium could be brought into being by ‘some combination of lawyers, business and labor managers, politicians and intellectuals,’ is hard to take seriously.” ~Max Eastman
Communism
Russian Revolution
“The Russian revolution is perhaps the greatest tragedy in human history, terrible in the breadth of its impact, terrible in the depth of its significance, terrible in its personal details.” ~Max Eastman
Marxism
Lenin’s Methods
“I still regarded Stalin’s totalitarian dictatorship as an enemy, rather than a result, of the policies of Lenin. It took me another two years to arrive at the knowledge that Lenin’s methods—bolshevik Marxism—were to blame.” ~Max Eastman
Socialism
State Prison
“Instead of liberating the mind of man, the Bolshevik Revolution locked it into a state’s prison tighter than ever before.” ~Max Eastman
Socialism
Scientific Experiment?
“It was juvenile of me to imagine that humanity as a whole, especially by splitting itself into two halves, could turn a whole period of history into a scientific experiment.” ~Max Eastman
Socialism
Fairy Tale
“We are still beguiled by this other fairy tale: that a group of liberal-minded reformers can take charge of the economy and approximate a free and equal society.” ~Max Eastman