"Still I am a Marxist," the exiled Tibetan Buddhist leader said in New York, where he arrived today with an entourage of robed monks and a heavy security detail to give a series of paid public lectures. "(Marxism has) moral ethics, whereas capitalism is only how to make profits," the Dalai Lama, 74, said. However, he credited China's embrace of market economics for breaking communism's grip over the world's most populous country and forcing the ruling Communist Party to "represent all sorts of classes". "(Capitalism) brought a lot of positive to China. Millions of people's living standards improved," he said. The Dalai Lama, giving a series of lectures at the Radio City Music Hall in central Manhattan until Sunday, struck a strikingly optimistic note in general, saying that he believed the world is becoming a kinder, more unified place.
Anti-war movements, huge international aid efforts after Haiti's earthquake this year, and the election of Barack Obama as the first black president in a once deeply racist US are "clear signs of human beings being more mature", he said. The Dalai Lama said he felt a "sense of the oneness of human beings," jokingly adding: "If those thoughts are wrong, please let me know!" Although China, which forced him to escape for his life in 1959, is loosening up, he had harsh words for a Communist leadership that he said still seeks to rule by fear. As Chinese become richer, "they want more freedoms, they want an independent judiciary, they want to have a free sort of press", he said. The Chinese Government, he said, seeks harmony, "but harmony must come out of the heart, not out of fear. So far, methods to bring harmony mostly rely on use of force." Asked why tickets to his lectures are selling for as much as hundreds of dollars, the Dalai Lama said none of the money went to him personally.
"You should ask the organiser. I have no connection." He said he was "always asking the organiser: tickets must be cheap. For myself, I've never accepted a single dollar like that." Some of the money goes to charities, such as hunger relief, he said. "Unfortunately," he added, bursting into his trademark laughter, sometimes the "organisations are a little richer."
O RLY? Yet, he is persecuted by China for his religious beliefs as a result of Marxism.
Socialism and Marxism both contain in addition to economic prescriptions, moral philosophy. Material and legal equality essentially. Capitalism can be seen as a vehicle for harnessing the resources to be utilized by Marxist or socialist policy. The Chinese are understanding that communism cannot survive or prosper without capitalism, in a world of capitalists at least.
I thought Marx ignored moral topics in his writing. If leftist morality is "social justice" or economic equality, it is basically religion because they are chimeras.
Democracy means the opportunity to be everyone's slave.—Karl Kraus.
"Socialism and Marxism both contain in addition to economic prescriptions, moral philosophy. Material and legal equality essentially. Capitalism can be seen as a vehicle for harnessing the resources to be utilized by Marxist or socialist policy. The Chinese are understanding that communism cannot survive or prosper without capitalism, in a world of capitalists at least."
So, in reality what is really the point of Socialism? I mean, when Lenin would talk about of the fuel crisis in Russia, he would admit that "there is no where we can turn to for such people except the old class" i.e. the capitalist businessmen, realizing that central planning is not succesful in allocating the scarcity of resources.
Thus is revealed the fallacy of Marx, and the Soviet Revolution. Dictatorship of the Proletariat is still dictatorship. It cannot know or predict the needs and wishes of the populace better than they do themselves, and thus any attempt to do so is futile. Enforced subdivision of property is still utilizing the principle of property, and any system which actually conceives of capital must be capitalist.
The Soviet Revolution did not usher in Communism. It was (most especially under Stalin) a totalitarian governance of capital. Communism (and Socialism as defined by Marx) seeks to eradicate even the notion of capital, and thereby eradicate the need for a State. The State, after all, to whatever degree it exists, only exists to govern or protect property. All else that it does stems from this essential premise.
So, the point of Socialism and Communism is to induce altruism. Marx thought this could be achieved by State authority held by the 'people', and thus missed the point entirely of his own philosophy.
If you do wish to know more about it, I'd recommend seeking out Peter Kropotkin's The Conquest of Bread as a starting point. The full text can be found online.
^ Good post, thanks.
The Dalai Llama has also said that people are poor and rich because of their past lives. Which is why he hangs out with powerful, rich people. Who had to have been ultra Buddhists in a past life. This is a great economic theory. I wonder if there is a reincarnation theory of the business cycle. RTBC. If Richard Gere misuses anymore gerbils, we could be in for a major bank run and crash in 40 years.
Then there is his running a feudalist society... Penn and Teller here weigh the pros and cons of Tibetan slavery versus communism.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYEOSCIOnrs
with spiritual leaders like these who needs enemies?
Where there is no property there is no justice; a proposition as certain as any demonstration in Euclid
Fools! not to see that what they madly desire would be a calamity to them as no hands but their own could bring