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Comment by leftyted | Hacker News Reader

This isn't a question of idealizing people who lived thousands of years ago, it's just an observation about how ideas pass through the centuries. Also, philosophers who wrote thousands of years ago are relevant today. It's not like we've answered questions like "what is knowledge?" "what is good?" and so on.

I never said that "only since Marx" was the government an instrument of violence owned by the ruling class. I said that idea is a Marxian idea. And it is. Also, I never meant to imply that it's a wrong idea (I think it's wrong, but you don't have to).

The fact that you're mouthing ideas from Marx without even realizing it while denying the concept of intellectual heritage is stunning.

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I did not mentioned not implied idealization. I said they are irrelevant to topic at hand.

Also, I think that you don't really know what Marx actually wrote. Nor do you know much about historical context surrounding Marx. Or Lenin and Stalin for that matter. Makes me think you likely dont have such a deep knowledge of Greeks either.

Aristotele is completely irrelevant to topic of domestic violence. So is topic of "what is knowledge".

"Mouthing ideas from Marx" is completely absurd mischaracterization of what I wrote. It is more of your manipulative attempt then an argument.

I at least have read Marx. The idea that the government is a tool of class warfare is distinctly Marxist, as he's the one that made an argument for why this is. This is why Marx advocates for the State, before it is dissolved, to be put into the control of the proletarian class, the do callee Dictatorship of the Proletariat (which isn't a dictatorship in the common sense of the word).

At least from what I read, I don't think that they were arguing that Marx wanted the State to be an instrument of violence, just that he observed that the state was an instrument of violence for the ruling class, and made a good argument for why it would always be unless class itself was abolished. I think that they were referring to this intepretation, which is also compatible with what you said.

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