GENIUS FORUMS

The standard non-Hegelian base-superstructure interpretation of Karl Marx’s dialectics is false. Marx’s basic dialectic is actually this: thesis = communal ownership + poverty, antithesis = private ownership + wealth, synthesis = communal ownership + wealth.

—Wheat

Yes.

In this we see Lenin's Russia (and many other political upheavals in pre-industrial societies) rightly put into its actual historical context against the West as antithesis when almost all who identify themselves as communists identify with the October Revolution as synthesis.

But, it is evident in his writings here and there that Lenin himself knew this.

Unbottle the collective and out pours the billionaire capital of the world.

Yeah, but that's a bit misleading.

They might all be Russian billionaires, but they protect their wealth from taxes by transferring wealth to offshore subsidiary companies. So it doesn't really explain anything significant, I think, in terms of the particular citizenship of the rich except that you don't become a Russian citizen to take advantage of tax breaks!

Leyla Shen wrote:Yeah, but that's a bit misleading.

They might all be Russian billionaires, but they protect their wealth from taxes by transferring wealth to offshore subsidiary companies. So it doesn't really explain anything significant, I think, in terms of the particular citizenship of the rich except that you don't become a Russian citizen to take advantage of tax breaks!

In the culture of materialism managing a billion bucks is a challenge most are willing to tackle. I wonder how many charities benefit from this backlash to collectivism.

They could hardly exist without it. Look at the Catholic Church.

The power of the church lies in what fuels the continuity, don't you think? The church came from mind, has existed since inception, thus now exists as an aspect of mind more stable than a single lifetime. Apparently this triggers a human response to sustain something permanent, perhaps this living refutation of impermanence buffers the bleak emptiness of a perceived ending of all. The power in that continuity may lie in placing the church before the individual. The individual exists for the church and what it represents. Obviously the bureaucracy that compels dollar support has tapped into a powerful force of mind.