SR – Hold your fire for a moment. You’re not thinking straight -You invoked Orwell to add weight to your assertion Marx was a “nut.” But I pointed out that Orwell didn’t share your opinion of Marx. I’ll underscore that one more time. Here’s Orwell on Marx:

“‘Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also’…. It was Marx who brought it to life. And ever since he did so the motives of politicians, priests, judges, moralists and millionaires have been under the deepest suspicion-which, of course, is why they hate him so much.”

Orwell is right about that. Marx was hated by whatever-is-is rightists long before there was anything resembling an “elite and all-powerful socialist state” anywhere in the world. And, trust me Storm, they didn’t hate em because they loved their wives. Still – I THANK you for YOUR outrage. For Real. When I read over that passage from Orwell praising Marx, it underscored to me what was problematic (right from the jump) with Marx’s fierce critiques. And, believe it not, what’s really dangerous (NOW!) is not the Manifesto’s bluster about the State. Thanks (but no thanks) to Lenin’s ugly legacy, doubt we’re going to have to deal with too many more “totalizing” versions of Socialism. (Hugo no go far.) But the “materialism” behind Marx’s GREAT assault on the hypocrisy of the 19th Century bourgeoisie is (in the End) bad news. It’s VERY hard to get from their to the other, expansive visions of humanism that Marx held in his head at the same time. The Mean Men of Property he was wailing on deserved everything he could give em as he sat reading Blue books in the British museum that detailed the miseries of factory life (and tried to avoid thinking about his carbunkles). But if you focus (like Marx) too much on the smaller impulses that inform people’s acts, you can’t get back to love and our better angels. And, if you have a genius for anger – as Marx certainly did – your work may end up helping create states/ideologies without pity (that you would’ve seen through in a hot second if you’d been around)…