Queen Elizabeth II (Update: the Queen has passed)

Saintman2884 said
Paul Robeson was a great man who did a lot of great things in his life. No one's perfect and Ill leave it at that.

Left-wingers or liberals, as long as their reasonable, sensible, and make good, rational points, and most do sometimes, I have no problem with that.

Its just it's difficult for me to look past the many internal contradictions and the often-authoritarian streak thats always run through Marxism. Sure, you have Fabians but I wouldn't consider someone like Bernie Sanders or even past Labour PM's like Ramsey McDonald, Atlee, or even Harold Wilson to be "Marxist". Far from it, in fact.

If Ive been too argumentative or came on too strong, I apologize. One has to be very careful not to allow one's preferences to become an obsession and all-out consume him.

Honestly, I do enjoy a debate with you and you are very enlightening at times, however, I would enjoy your posts and viewpoint more - even respecting our differences - if I felt we could just agree to disagree on left wing politics. I'm perfectly fine with you about 90 per cent of this stuff anyway. No one wants to defend Stalin etc.

But equally, I have met far-left sympathisers who profoundly care about social justice, equal rights, civil rights, the horrors of vampire capitalism, education etc.
There is nothing in Marx and Engels 'Communist Manifesto' that talks about the need for gulags or death camps. For the most part it's a vision of a more equal just society written from the point of view of someone despairing at the nightmarish conditions of the poor in the Industrial Revolution.

So being a 'Marxist' in that sense doesn't make you a bad person or someone who supports murder. I know this because some of my family are Marxists and not one of them wants anyone killed or imprisoned for holding a different point of view (well, except my cousin).

I don't want to get involved in a long drawn out defence of something I don't need to defend anyway....this is I guess what I mean and why I feel frustrated.

Let's accept that we are both fundamentally caring decent people with a different viewpoint which has been formulated from personal experience and intellectual investigation and just accept we hold very different views about some things. This is actually what tolerance and free speech means in practice so this is a result :)