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I also very much like the method of thought of Thomas Hobbes - trying to be logical, to take everything into account, to build from one stage to the next, to be reasonable and always sceptical of human nature and mysticism of any kind. Nowadays Hobbes is often reviled in academic circles (or at least the ones I was aware of) for his belief that only an all powerful state could keep a society from civil war - but if he was writing a theory of how society IS, then we should judge him by such a standard, and how many major societies do exist or have existed, where there is not a Great Leviathan? How often has it proved that when a power vacuum is created, both looting and rioting, and civil war breaks out?
The power of the state shouldnt just be measured by despotic power, but also in infrastructural power, the degree into which it infiltrates the life of the citizen. The American state today, while the people are protected by many checks and balances and so on, is far more powerful than the most autocratic medieval state, because it is so much bigger and reaches so much farther and deeper.
As a communist myself, the idea that by nature people are violent and selfish, and that without rule life will be "nasty, brutish and short" is both difficult and depressing, Marx & Engels certainly did contradict Hobbes, saying that after the initial revolution and overthrow of capitalism (which I believe with complete certainty will occur) their will be socialist state, and this state will wither away as power becomes totally decentralised. Perhaps the Hobbsian way of looking at it would be that the people themselves become the state - that the leviathan actually consumes the entire society. To some people perhaps it is a nightmare, I dont know.
I certainly believe that Hobbes theory of state has been proved completely correct, and that Marx's theory of capitalism and its collapse was also correct, and in fact capitalism as Marx uinderstood it has collapsed, in the revolution of 1914-1918 (WWI) - Marx did not anticipate the rise of a new form of capitalism, social capitalism - but the same inherent flaws exist in the present system and I believe it too will be crushed, either by revolution or climate disaster. In terms of what follows capitalism, my own belief if that for the good of the people I hope for Marx to be proved correct, and if this belief is shared, then it shall become a self fulfilling prophecy.
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"Do not tell lies, and do not do what you hate,
for all things are plain in the sight of Heaven. For nothing
hidden will not become manifest, and nothing covered will remain
without being uncovered."
The Gospel of Thomas
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