which of the following of Marx's ten points do you support?

[Marokai Backbeat]

2, 3 (Partially), 5 (Partially), 6 (Partially), 10.

[True Federalist (진정한 연방 주의자)]

Would have thought that everyone would support point nine. Of course it looks a little funny because of the way it's written, but think about it. Especially think about when it was written.

Why would anyone support nine?

I'm exaggerating for effect (I think), but the obvious answer is that it's actually happened and that most people would not be happy to see it reversed. Not if they really thought about it.

Not really.  Compared to when Marx wrote, population is more urbanized now than then.  While it is true that the urban areas have diffused somewhat, I don't think Marx was talking about turning people into farmers of turfgrass with his point 9. Rather in those days before the heavy mechanization of agriculture, I think he was thinking about the inefficiency of the seasonal nature of rural labor and the means to alleviate it so as to increase production to the benefit of all.  That's why this point follows point 8.

Point 8 is about getting people out of the factories and into the fields at the crucial times of harvest and planting.

Point 9 is about getting work to the rural population that is needed year round, but at tasks that do not require a full day's labor each day.  It is not about modern suburbanization.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Even at the time when this was written Marx believed that the traditional rural way of life was doomed and would be a thing of the past within a reality short period of time. One of the funniest things about the Manifesto is that the world it describes is one that would only start to emerge (outside the early industrial districts and a handful of huge cities) in the decades after it was written. If you read the text and knew nothing else about nineteenth century Europe (especially outside Britain and Belgium) you would assume that this was already a mature and thoroughly urbanised industrial society.

Fundamentally, of course, it's more a piece of utopian propaganda than a document containing practical suggestions for realistic reforms.

[I Am Feeblepizza.]

I support five and ten to varying degrees.

[Brandon H]

Which ones have a our last few as well as current president supported?

[angus]

I dreamt about shop class last night.  I suppose it was this thread that triggered it.  I took Shop II in the eighth grade.  We had a semester of woodshop and a semester of metalshop.  I made some cool stuff.  Still have some of it.  I never took shop I.  I'd taken musical theater and band as my seventh grade electives.  And band and shop as my eighth grade electives.  But somehow they couldn't fit me into shop I so they put me in shop II.  I remember when we each designed and built a table out of ash wood, mine must have been pretty good, because my teacher, Mister Franklin, held it up to the class and said, in his hillbilly voice--he must have been from Kentucky or Deep East Texas or southern Ohio or somewhere like that--"Look class, a shop I student in a shop II class.  You should all be doing so well.  Look, the top opens.  Look at those beautiful hinges, inlaid..."  I was so embarrassed.  Anyway, I learned some useful skills in those classes.  Never tried to make any money off those skills, though. 

Years later I spoke on the phone to Mister Fernandez, the head of the vocational/technical trades at my high school.  I had never taken any of his classes, but I was a junior in college and was applying for a job as an English/Spanish translator, and his wife had been my Spanish III teacher and my Spanish IV teacher in the 11th and 12th grades, respectively.  I had excelled in her class, worked hard to be proficient and conversant in Spanish, won trophies at interscholastic league competitions, etc.  And we became friendly.  She was the first teacher I had who ever bought me a mixed drink.  In the 12th grade she bought me a traditional tequila margarita.  It was probably technically illegal, since the drinking age was 19 and I was still 17 or 18, but times were different then, and such things were no frowned upon as much.  Anyway, I wanted to use her as a professional reference for this translating gig.  Unfortunately, she had died of cancer about a year earlier, her husband told me.  So we talked for a while about her, and that she was one of my favorite teachers, and we got around to talking about voc/tech training.  I'd never taken any of those classes in high school, but they had automotive trades, mechanics, etc.  And I vaguely remembering him saying something about how back in the 60s it was real job training, but now (now being about 1989), it was more of a joke.  Well, I ended up getting that job anyway.

I doubt that any of them were Marxists.  I'm pretty sure Mr. Fernandez and Mrs. Fernandez were probably Democrats.  But I think we see from this poll that most of us think that Marx had a couple of good ideas, and a whole lot of crazy ones.  (30 of 51 support taxes; 42 of 51 support public schooling, and all the rest are low level of support).  And I think you could say that about any philosopher:  a couple of good ideas, but mostly crazy ones.  Except maybe the Buddha, Jesus of Nazareth, and Ron Paul.  They seemed to have more good than bad ideas.