No subject

"Negative freedom means the lack of forces which prevent an individual
from doing whatever they want; Positive freedom is the capacity of a
person to determine the best course of action and the existence of
opportunities for them to realise their full potential. 

The overwhelmingly dominant tendency in the history of bourgeois society
has been to open up negative freedom, by removing feudal and other
reactionary constraints on freedom of action.  ..."

I doubt the victims of genocide wanted to die, so clearly
they were not granted "negative freedom" to avoid being killed.

As I understand the article "negative freedoms" appear to 
be freedom from coercion.  This was supposed to be one of the
first gains of the social evolution Marx was espousing.  The
KGB, Red Army, and others seemed to apply plenty of coercion.
Then their empire collapsed.  Just as Marx predicted for
coercive capitalistic societies.  Perhaps the issue is not
the organization of the means of production but the coercion
applied to create the organization.  Early capitalism was
pretty coercive, much less so now in the U.S. with mature
regulatory processes in place to "restrict" everyone except
Microsoft and other Bush Buddies.

China is a bit more perplexing.  Are the Chinese people 
gaining more "negative freedoms" relative to where they
started when the Communist Party took over?

> 
> My objection is that these articles are extremely and irreparably
> NPOV.

Well they are certainly written from a Marxist viewpoint.  The
terms seem fairly precisely defined and used.  Many of the
assertions and assumptions are explicitly stated.  To me this
would seem easier material to repair than much of what we
produce as a first draft to start with ourselves.  The "errors"
are fairly obvious as they clash with our own bias.

<snip>

regards,
Mike Irwin