University professors in the USA can be extremely smart. Take for example Robert Paul Wolff. So what do you do when smart people argue for absurd nonsense? When it comes to Kant the guy is a genius. So one might be inclined to ask did he never hear about the Gulags? Or the sweet policy of Mao to force industrialization and thus force the peasants into industry and with no one left to plant and harvest 38 million peasants "disappeared".
In the Vorkuta Gulag, a general came and asked over and over for at least 20 minutes the men to speak up if they have any complaints. And he promised no one would be punished. A professor of history stood up, and said "I know that for what I have to say ten years will be added to my sentence." The general again promised for the umpteenth time that no one would be punished. The professor recounted the history of slavery, and finished by saying that what we are experiencing here, is the worst kind of slavery in the entire history of mankind. He did not get the ten year sentence that he expected. He was shot immediately.
But this problem has bothered me for as long as I remember. I have always believed that smart in one field meant smart in another field. However it is clear to me that Americans know this to be not true. No one [but me] ever thinks that Mozart could have been a mathematical genius.
So back to Wolff being a Marxist. I would like to suggest that care for the weak and feeble is not a Marxist invention, but goes back to the Golden Rule. [This is something that Nietzsche saw clearly. He put the blame for morality and compassion squarely on the shoulders of the Bible. And he was right!
But obviously the Nietzschean critique of the central problem of morality is true--most of what people claim to be their moral motives are all hypocrisy. But contrary to Nietzsche, the fact that getting to be decent and really authentic caring person is hard, does not mean that it is impossible. [As noted before me.] We know this already from Isaac Luria that most of this world is evil. [Foundation is equally good and evil. Creation is mostly good. Emanation is all good.]
I think the best understanding of communism can be gained from the example of a village in South Vietnam after the Communists took over. They had been fishing, and thus making a small amount of a living. They could at least make ends meet. The Communists came with the (usual) promise of free stuff for everyone. Then came in and took away the fish. [I forget the name of the village that I am thinking of, but this was the general approach]
