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Who was it that said that Christianity was the grandmother of Bolshevism?

They should have said that Judaism is the grandmother of all political ideologies.

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Yep. Just as true would be to say Plato is their godfather. I'm reading Shafarevich's "Socialist Phenomenon" at the moment, and all those socialist novels and tracts from the 16th to 18th centuries read like direct copies of Plato's Laws.

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Jul 23, 2022Liked by Harrison Koehli

Regarding the influence of Plato on Marx there is a direct line from the role of the authorities described, particularly in the last three books of the Laws, to Marx. Specifically the authorities are tasked not just with upholding order in the community but also with policing order within each individual, i.e. thought control.

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Thanks, York. There's definitely a similarity of ideas. I think what Russell was getting at, however, was a direct line of transmission, i.e., evidence that Marx actually read the Laws, or got similar ideas from someone who got them directly from Plato. If there's evidence of that, that would be really cool!

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Jul 23, 2022Liked by Harrison Koehli

Sure. As per Karl Popper (mentioned by Gmirkin) Marx’ labour theory of value is a form of Platonic essentialism / idealism because it posits a ‘true’ value behind whatever the actual wage is (Open Society and its Enemies).

I think this is true up to a point but also a bit overstated. Marx’ entire economic theory is rehashed Ricardo and Ricardo’s value theory in turn can be found in various iterations going back to the scholastics. So there’s probably no smoking gun in terms of direct attribution, not that Marx liked to acknowledge any influences anyway, him being a singular genius and all that.

Best bet is probably the Paris manuscript from 1843 before he discovered materialism. I’ll take a look.

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