Walicki

When, in the absence of these distinctions, Walicki falls back on talk of what "experience has shown," he is at best irrelevant and at worst seriously distorting of Marx's views.

Marx and Freedom Ollman, Bertell 1984

When Marx says, for example, that "the appropriation of a totality of instruments of production is ... the development of a totality of capacities in the individuals themselves," this is not — as Walicki believes — a comment on the "miraculous power" of nationalization to reunify the capacity of the individual with the capacities of the species.

Marx and Freedom Ollman, Bertell 1984

There is, for example, nothing in Marx's writings that suggests — contra Walicki — that Marx is "ready to sacrifice the present generation for the sake of the future" (this is what capitalism does to workers), or that he would countenance "forcible indoctrination ... and other coercive means" to win support for socialism.

Marx and Freedom Ollman, Bertell 1984

A similar error occurs when Walicki claims, Marx "did not foresee the possiblity that, even in a socialist welfare state, men might still be dominated by a bourgeois scale of values, that their needs and aims might remain just as mean and egoistic, just as 'inhuman' (by his standards) as under capitalism."

Marx and Freedom Ollman, Bertell 1984

Surely, Walicki knows that Marx argued against centralization and control of education by the socialist state (Gotha Critique).

Marx and Freedom Ollman, Bertell 1984

Joe Walicki, Chair, Green Sanctuary Program, Unitarian Universalist Community Church of Washington County

Eco-Justice 2009