Wow, its been a few weeks since I have worked on my Blog, as I have been reading furiously trying to get a grasp on all of this stuff! It usually takes me 2 or 3 times to get the gist of most of the readings, so I have been focusing on that.
As for Marx, I have been familiar with his work since I was about ten years old when I accidentally read Orwell's Animal Farm because I thought it was a children's book! I think his philosophies are really compelling and I have had an evolving position on communism ever since my interest was accidentally triggered.
I must say that I agree with most of his basic tenets. I do see the source of human suffering to be grounded in economic disparity, and that religion is a way for the oppressed to relieve the pain of daily life. The creative work of the working class is transformed into a commodity for the benefit of the ruling class, and it is coupled with the exchange of happiness in this life for the hopes of a better life after death. In this way, humans really do fail to live up to their potential by being cheated of a satisfying existence in the now.
I find fault in Marx's ideas on several fronts. In order for Marxism to succeed, an unrealistic reliance on uniform human solidarity is taken for granted. As is seen in the record of history, people have the ties of nationalism and race that have superseded ties of class. To counteract this, there needs to be an oligarchy in place that makes decisions for the people that is paramount to fascism. Lastly, Marxism, in its goal of removing religion as a blindfold, sets itself up to become a religion in and of itself. All hopes and aspirations of mankind are still dependent on a higher power, this time in the from of government.