To Those Who Believe Marx Trumps Stalin

aelf said:

(1) A smart group knows it must stay smart - if you look at how the education system is structured, you can see how the ruling party poaches talent through scholarships and pure indoctrination. And they admit it too, stating that any group in their position would do the same (thus we see another core value in Singapore - an extremely realist kind of pragmatism).

(2) Smart/competent people do not necessarily want to put others before themselves. The ruling elite's official stance is that what benefits the country benefits them (and vice versa). However, they always have their eye on their benefit, and it's hard to say whether the two always go hand-in-hand. Indeed, high level public officials in Singapore are amongst the highest paid in the world in their line of work. And it should be obvious that, in a system where a small section of the population carry much more weight that their 'inferiors', the latter cannot keep the former in line.

(3) An oligarchy does not have to be nepotistic. Although there is reason to believe that, at the highest level, Singaporean politics is quite the familial affair, an oligarchy can also form when a small circle of people belonging to similar class and background are constantly at the top. This is the case for a lot of countries, true, but it's even more pronounced in Singapore given the small population and the lack of any effective counter to official authority. So we end up having a powerful nomenklatura perpetually consisting of the same kind of people, many of whom have known each other since they were in high school (and I know that because many of the people I know qualify for this group).

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I can't help but think that Singaporean government understood 1984 a little too well (and certainly better than the anti-socialists boors who insist on referencing it).

Traitorfish said:

In the Soviet Union's case, that is- supposedly- because socialism never achieved, rather than because the government forgot to dictate it. The USSR never developed past state capitalism into socialism, which is, in Marxism, the necessary precursor of any further development.

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But the Soviet Union never developed in that direction because the members of the Communist Party that ruled the country for 70 years never chose to do so......

Cutlass said:

But the Soviet Union never developed in that direction because the members of the Communist Party that ruled the country for 70 years never chose to do so......

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And why should they have done? They were capitalists, and Marx never once suggested that capitalists would be interested in socialism.

I don't think you can make any intellectually honest argument that people who called themselves the communist party are capitalists. In fact, in all my time on this forum, that's easily the worst thing I have ever seen you say. While it may be acceptable to say that state capitalism is necessary to transition to socialism, the simple fact is that people who make every claim to being committed to communism never made the attempt to transition from state capitalism to socialism. Claiming that these people were not communists is no better than those right wingers that claim that GW Bush wasn't a conservative. It's dishonest at its core. And the fact that you resorted to such a low argument really causes me to question the respect I had for you in the past.

It's not just the USSR that failed to transition to socialism, despite decades to work on the problem. I don't see that any of the nominally socialist or communist nations have even made a real effort to do so.

And I don't see that as criticism of the theory of socialism: I see it as a criticism of the socialist understanding of human nature. Given the choice, people, no matter how committed to socialist or communist ideology, but finding themselves absolute rulers of vast numbers of people, simply don't let go of that power.

It is not that they are not communists or socialists, it is that that are authoritarians and totalitarians that survive and rise to the top of revolutions and climb the bureaucracy in the era after the revolution.

You misunderstand my use of the term "capitalist"; I do not use it in the Liberal sense, in which it refers to those advocating or supporting liberal free-market democracy, but in the Socialist sense (as implied by my reference to Marx), in which it refers to the ruling class who controls the means of production. In the Soviet Union, the means of production were controlled by a bureaucratic elite, the Nomenklatura, the state acting as little more than a huge corporation with an all-encompassing monopoly. Stalin was really little more than the C.E.O. of Russia, Inc.

Of course, the Nomenklatura, to a man, claimed to be socialist, and it may even have true in some cases, but individual ideological convictions which are incapable of manifesting itself in institutional reform are, in this context, fairly irrelevant.

Cutlass said:

I don't think you can make any intellectually honest argument that people who called themselves the communist party are capitalists.

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I don't think you can make any intellectually honest argument that people who call themselves the republican party are communists.

Nanocyborgasm said:

There's no committee that is charged with maintaining merit. It's just a claim made by the state, and proven by nothing, and your description proves that. The state simply claims that everyone in charge is worthy of being in charge, based on nothing. It's not as if, in the US, there is a Supreme Court, which can repeal any law if it is contrary to the Constitution, if sufficient argument is made. There is no Committee on Merit, charged with maintaining a meritocratic structure with actual proven criteria. There's also no separation of powers, so all the organs of government naturally tend simply to be showcases of power of 1 group.

So that's why, despite your rabid claims, Singapore is an oligarchy. It only claims meritocracy without actually proving these claims.

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And just where are you getting this info from? FYI, my "rabid claims" are based on my experience of going through 8 years of the Singapore education system, 2 years of military service and living for more than 10 years here. And I'm supposed to take your word that meritocracy is not maintained due to the lack of a committee? Maybe, just maybe, I have seen myself how it works through the educational (i.e. career selection) system?

I see there is no point debating with you. You are probably more correct than anyone on anything.

Nanocyborgasm said:

In any case, I am only proposing a form of government that does not yet exist.

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So do I. Unfortunately for you, though, you are already inconsistent, so good luck with that!

Traitorfish said:

I can't help but think that Singaporean government understood 1984 a little too well (and certainly better than the anti-socialists boors who insist on referencing it).

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Quite so. It's not totalitarian, but it does resemble the tripartite society described in 1984 (Inner Party, Outer Party and the proles).

This thread is continuing to be very interesting. Can someone flesh out exactly what a meritocracy is, by the way? I like that I've started some good discussions in here.

Traitorfish said:

But Marx did not discuss the world as a series of isolated bubble-universes, he discussed it as a global entity. Marx's proletariat- which is hardly the only form the proletariat may take- is very much alive in the developing world, including India, China, and Latin America.

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The proletariat in the developing world was quite alive before the rich world turned on the welfare tap. For your argument to stand, you must assume they would never become rich like the poor in first world countries did. Is that a reasonable assumption? The Economist ran an article a month ago on the upward wage pressure in China, in which it cited a study that found labour costs in bigger firms tripled from 1995 to 2004. This is in clear contradiction to Marx's speculation (as I have argued in this thread), and consistent with, say, 19th century American wages (growing rapidly from a low base). You will need a very strong argument to contend that the third world would somehow stop following the pattern of rich countries, and start following a prophecy made a century and half ago, by a single, extremist school of economics with precious little success at predictions.

Even if they stay poor, the world is already very different from Marx's vision, which was an extremely polarised world, where only a few are extremely rich, and the rest are all equally poor. The dictatorship of the proletariat was supposed to be something like 99.99% of poor people dictating 0.01% of rich people, which doesn't sound as bad as the other way around. But if we magically establish the dictatorship today, it'd be more like 80% of poor people dictating 20% of not so rich, just affluent people. Is it still indisputably right?

One consequence of a rich proletariat is that modern welfare capitalism have became viable alternatives. If you still want communism to come up on top, you will have to find a way to make a communist economy work better than a capitalist one. In 19th century it wasn't as hard, yet the communists have only managed to beat Nicholas II. Today, "electrification of the whole country" isn't going to turn many heads. You need iPads for the whole country. And nobody has any idea on how to make that happen without a market. Marx's own view was that once you abolish private property, a vast amount of productive force gets magically released, which was once constrained by the inferior relations of production. That is unfortunately as far as his argument would normally go.

Traitorfish said:

To be fair, given that only two attempts were not either crushed in their foetal stages or absorbed into another entity (typically these very attempts), that doesn't necessarily signify very much. Trotskyists, for example, hold the various Soviet vassals to be deformed workers' states, the deformities stemming from the degenerate workers state which controlled them, and so not truly representative of independent failure.

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Obviously, a simple statement like that was bound to overlook a lot of complexities, which is why I said "tells the tale" rather than "proves it". My more solid arguments can be found in the Successful Communism thread too.

Specifically about your comments, "crushed in their foetal stages" is a poor argument. The Bourbon Restoration did not revert the Enlightenment. The Second Republic was established in 1848, a mere 44 years after Napoleon's coronation. Ideas can't be killed. They live and die by their own merits. If communism truly has as much virtue as classical liberalism, why is it that nobody believes in it any more, in the way people still believed in liberalism under Bourbon rule?

Trotsky correctly observed that in the Soviet Union the working class never actually had power. But I don't get how he was going to do anything differently, noting that Lenin and Stalin stole plenty of his policies anyway. I would appreciate some education here. In particular it'd be interesting to know how he'd deal with incidents like the Prague Spring.

Traitorfish said:

Whenever someone references Anglo-American capitalist culture as self-evidently reflective of essential and universal "human nature", I die a little inside.

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Greed is no less evident as a part of human nature than benevolence. Human nature is a complex mess that can be egoistic and altruistic at the same time. A workable system must accommodate both. That is where capitalism works better. Not everyone has to be selfish for the market to work. Charities can do just fine, and in fact make the market less rough. In contrast, everyone has to be satiable in the communist society (i.e. do not ask for more than they need). A few greedy people, with sufficient motivation, can turn the whole system upside down, because the system has no builtin checks and balances against exploits, as opposed to a liberal society which has rule of law, rights to free speech, and protection of private property, etc.

Traitorfish said:

I think that's rather what Marx hoped to express when he rendered the phrase "From each according to his ability, to each according to his need." Equality of result, despite the ham-fisted stereotypes, was never something that Marxist have pursued.

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Indeed, the stereotype is wrong. Marx did not argue for equal distribution. Stalin did not implement it. So the proper critiques should be: whether the abundance that allows for "to each according his need" is at all possible; in absence of abundance, how you can make sure the Inner Party does not get unduly more than the uneducated masses.

Traitorfish said:

Well, trendy affected cynicism aside, that's something of an over-simplification. Socialism generally places a lot of value on cultivating class conciousness and engaging more directly with politics on all levels, allowing the proletariat to self-educate on these matters (because who else is going to teach us?), encouraging a progressive transition rather than an overnight transition to anarchy.

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"[C]ultivating class consciousness" is an euphemism for "start agreeing with us". The proletariat does not educate itself. It is not a single person. Rather, it's those who have gained class consciousness that would educate those who have not. Confusing the two, and call both "the people", was one of the most powerful deception ever invented. It allowed one set of self-claimed enlightened people to impose their view on the rest. Because we are all "the people", we should think the same. So if I think you want this you should think so too, because I'm more enlightened and I know better than you do. You can't argue I'm wrong. I'll just say sorry, you don't have your class consciousness yet, you don't know what you're talking about. Why don't you just shut up and listen to what I say.

Traitorfish said:

As I've said before, the very same arguments can be and were made against liberal democracy for centuries, and we more-or-less proved that wrong. Why are we to be so convinced than one step further towards autonomy will doom us, when every step thus far take has been for the best?

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This makes no sense. What were the steps "thus far take[n]"? Do you count collectivisation? That was certainly sold as one step further towards autonomy. Self rule by the collective, which was taken to mean the same as "the people" within. If you count it, then not every step was for the best, and it follows that we still need to be careful about which step to take. If you don't count it because it didn't work out to be what it claims to, how are you going to tell the next step you are fancying wouldn't turn out to be the same?

Cheezy the Wiz said:

That's precisely what he said. The point is that people know, not that someone else decides for them.

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Traitorfish said:

It would be, but it's not a claim he ever made. Communism a system of anarchy and direct democracy, after all; it is assumed that this would be an internal decision of each collective with the full participation of every member.

As Cheezy says, the point is to allow people to decide for themselves; Marx's communism is, after all, anarchistic.

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Hmmm, interesting...

My take is that Marx did make this assumption. But it wasn't an arrogant one. The Industrial Revolution, until late 19th century, was largely an effort to make the same things more efficiently. A smock is a smock, whether sewn by hand or by a machine. An oil lamp is something that lights in dark; you don't want it to have a compass, an accelerometer, a GPS and a camera. What the average affluent person could expect to own did not change much from his ancestors in the previous centuries, not until Alexander Bell, Thomas Edison, Henry Ford and the likes who started creating things that never existed before. Karl Marx died too early to see how that changed consumer behaviour.

Since you don't buy a new oil lamp every year because an upgrade with better features came out, it was easier to predict needs. Suppose we know how long a lamp lasts on average, and how many rooms there are in the town, we can use very simple arithmatics to find out the number of lamps we need each year to replace the old ones. And because we're not making better lamps, any advances in manufacturing must lead to a decrease in costs. If the total demand is fixed, and costs keep dropping, it isn't hard to imagine a day when we can afford everyone all the oil lamps he needs.

This has little to do with how "people know". After all, in a market economy people know as much about what they need, and the capitalists already try very hard to understand it. How does living in small collectives introduce any improvement? Besides, Marx wasn't fond of isolated, small collectives. He did talk about "society regulates the general production", in which the society was clearly meant to be something big enough to allow all kinds of labour activities. Small collectives can't do everything by themselves. But if they can't make everything, they have to trade with each other, so they'd need division of labour, which was supposed to be one of the original sins leading to all the sufferings since slavery. So you end up needing a single, unified "workers of the world" society anyway. But how could the society regulate the general production without omniscience? The only reconciliation is to assume getting to know what people want is intrinsically trivial, which is what I think Marx meant, given that he wrote practically nothing on the subject.

Keep in mind that being anarchistic in Marx's sense does not mean orderless. The government was not, as today's left take it, an organisation that regulates private activities. Abolishing the government does not mean abolishing planning. Rather, he thought the government was the reason you could not have proper planning - it was something used to impose bad planning (caused by capitalist greed, and in turn causes overproduction) onto the ruled.

aelf said:

Whoops, mistake there. Read my earlier posts (or this post) for explanation.

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What's mistaken and how did that post explain the mistake?

aelf said:

In principle, I fail to see the real difference between this and the modern social contract. More on this later.

Clever but false. Having the same economic situation might cause different people to have a similar world view, but nowhere have I seen it stated that they would make exactly the same decision about what's best.

Your view about the duality of dictatorship and democracy in the dictatorship of the proletariat has blinded you to the fact that the possibility of disagreements are not completely eliminated, much in the same way as agreeing to the social contract in a particular modern nation state does not imply complete subordination to the state. Indeed, your complaints about the dictatorial aspects of the dictatorship of the proletariat also apply to modern nation states: If certain people disagree with the laws of the state, it can be dealt with in two ways: education and dictatorship (i.e. by the use of force, using the state's authority to inflict physical punishment).

I think Rousseau's The Social Contract and Weber's Politics as a Vocation make enlightening reads about the democratic yet coercive power of the modern nation state.

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It's not my view! It's the truth! You should've recognised it! Are you like an American spy???

Jokes aside, How else can you explain the absence of the state? The education-cum-suppression dictatorship in theory only exists in the socialism phase. What do you do when people disagree in the communism phase? Marx left nothing on how to resolve differences in a communist society. Why? Just slipped his mind?

The idea that truth is manifest was an axiom, a premise Marx used to build his world on. It's implicit in his writings, but you are not likely to find where he argued for it, because he took it to be self-evident truth, something that doesn't need to be explained or proven. If you ask him directly, I imagine he would cite fifty cases where people's attitude changed after they moved to a different class. If you try a counter-example, he'll mostly likely say it's because the person concerned hasn't woken up to his class consciousness yet. See Popper's critiques on positivism in this respect. And since you mentioned Rousseau, you might be interested in this guy too.



The fundamental difference between a liberal state and a Marxist state is that modern liberal governments do not assume, in general, that truth is manifest. Both Republicans and Democrats may try hard to convince as many people as possible, but the structure of the government does not sanction any particular theory or ideology as The Truth. Of course, the Declaration of Independence talks about self-evident truths. Yet by and large the American government cannot force its citizen to accept what is truth. Liberal principles defend both its supporters and its enemies. The same protection afforded to Ann Coulter also guards you from being thrown into a reeducation camp because you disagree with Iraq War. Your freedom of speech is protected by the system. Why do you need freedom of speech in the first place? Because it's not possible to tell a priori if an idea represents truth. Everyone deserves a say regardless of how ridiculous he sounds. He might not in a few decades!

aelf said:

I'm not enamoured of popular perceptions or thinking either. But I live in a technocratic society and I don't like what I see.

I don't think there is any better way, and the only solution to mass stupidity that I can conceive of is education. The problem with the kind of meritocracy you envision is precisely the problem with an elitist degenerate workers' state, where power is concentrated in the hands of the party and its technocrats. Granted it theoretically guarantees greater competence, but for how long anyway?

Basically, to some extent a meritocratic political system is antithetical to the "one person one vote" egalitarian sort of democracy that we are accustomed to. And moving away from the latter would only entrap society in the elitist problem, which would disconnect it from the democratic principles you seem to be espousing when you criticise Soviet-style Communism.

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Indeed, which is why the unwashed masses must have their say, even if they are wrong. Stalinism was a meritocracy. The inherent danger of meritocracy is that the elites get to define what's a merit. If they don't agree with you, you're screwed.

Nanocyborgasm said:

Perhaps for the same reason as the Soviet Union never had any body, that I'm aware of, that enforced a drive towards "true" communism, that it never came close to having one, and instead also devolved into little more than a totalitarian oligarchy.

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Traitorfish said:

In the Soviet Union's case, that is- supposedly- because socialism never achieved, rather than because the government forgot to dictate it. The USSR never developed past state capitalism into socialism, which is, in Marxism, the necessary precursor of any further development.

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The Vanguard Party was supposed to be the body that enforces a drive towards true communism. That they failed does not mean they did not try, or at least not that they didn't claim they tried.

Cutlass said:

But the Soviet Union never developed in that direction because the members of the Communist Party that ruled the country for 70 years never chose to do so......

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And this was the true problem. Marx did not anticipate that, because he assumed the People's party would do what's good for the People. So he left precisely zero measure on how to prevent people from saying one thing and doing another. But I suspect he would see right through "Vanguard Party" and call it for not being an actual people's party. The trouble is, he probably would've thought everyone else would see right through it too, because truth is manifest. That tragically didn't help the millions who believed in Lenin. And the handful who still do.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

Haven't they? How important is the founder of a publicly-traded multinational corporation?

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Err, how about take a look at this page?
The listed 15 people either (co)founded their main companies, or was an early investor, or was the relative and successor of a founder. Are you going to say they're not capitalists? Or do you mean they're not important?

Cheezy the Wiz said:

How many proletarians have you met? I assure you I know a great many.

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I think I've met more proletarians than you have, unless by "proletarians" you mean only the "poor" people who live in the rich capitalist countries, and enjoy the benefits of welfare, charity, and actual upward social mobility.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

Anyway, their supposedly "dissapearance" from the First World really means nothing, since they have grown exponentially abroad due to capitalist imperialism in Latin America and Asia.

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See last post.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

I should have expected an "end of history" statement from you.

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Funny you should say that. I was under the impression that Marxists were the ones who told the story of the "end of history". Have you thought about what happens after communism is achieved? Is there anything more than everyone just living happily ever after?

In any case, I don't need to say "end of history". All I have to say is that all evidence suggests Marxism has about as much chance of coming back as slavery. Sure, if tomorrow we have a nuclear holocaust, either might return. I still wouldn't bet on that.

Cheezy the Wiz said:

So the what?

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It means you have not made a good argument on why Lenin was not authoritarian. A diktat to excommunicate a (former) comrade doesn't strike me as especially democratic.

Dachs said:

I don't think you can make any intellectually honest argument that people who call themselves the republican party are communists.

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No, just doing the communists job for them.

Alassius said:

What's mistaken and how did that post explain the mistake?

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That seeking the equal distribution wealth is not the essence of Marxism? You can have a society spread the wealth and not be the least bit Marxist at all.

Alassius said:

It's not my view! It's the truth! You should've recognised it! Are you like an American spy???

Jokes aside, How else can you explain the absence of the state? The education-cum-suppression dictatorship in theory only exists in the socialism phase. What do you do when people disagree in the communism phase? Marx left nothing on how to resolve differences in a communist society. Why? Just slipped his mind?

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This is already removed from your original objection that there can be no disagreement in a Communist society whatsoever. And I have no idea why the absence of the state is equated with the absence of social order or of any means to resolve differences. How did communities resolve differences within them before the advent of the modern state?

Alassius said:

The idea that truth is manifest was an axiom, a premise Marx used to build his world on. It's implicit in his writings, but you are not likely to find where he argued for it, because he took it to be self-evident truth, something that doesn't need to be explained or proven. If you ask him directly, I imagine he would cite fifty cases where people's attitude changed after they moved to a different class. If you try a counter-example, he'll mostly likely say it's because the person concerned hasn't woken up to his class consciousness yet. See Popper's critiques on positivism in this respect. And since you mentioned Rousseau, you might be interested in this guy too.

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The irony is that the primacy and universality of rationality is the cornerstone of most liberal thought, which is in turn the foundation of modern capitalist society. This isn't simply about different people having different preferences. It's about people reasoning and agreeing with each other on the fundamental rules of human society. In rejecting this premise, you are in fact moving into the territory of post-modern discourse that is very often influenced by later Marxist schools of thought. Congratulations.

(Incidentally, some of what Isaiah Berlin wrote about objective moral values and the existence of conflicts between them seem curiously similar to Hegel)

Anyway, I doubt I want to get into an argument about whether there are such things as objective moral facts, whether or not you know that you are leading the discussion in this direction. Suffice to say that the left is quite divided over this. Still, I can safely maintain that certain things are obviously true and that certain criticisms of society are quite solid. I'm not particularly interested in whether or not there is such a thing as the Truth or the Absolute or whatever, so I'm not going to comment further on this.

Alassius said:

The fundamental difference between a liberal state and a Marxist state is that modern liberal governments do not assume, in general, that truth is manifest.

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Are you sure? Are you saying that liberals don't believe that there are objective moral facts? Then why is consensus good? Why is maximising utility the right thing to do? If modern liberal states (which are what we're talking about here, not governments) make no assumptions about moral facts, how is it that they impose judgement on the acts of individuals?

Alassius said:

Both Republicans and Democrats may try hard to convince as many people as possible, but the structure of the government does not sanction any particular theory or ideology as The Truth. Of course, the Declaration of Independence talks about self-evident truths. Yet by and large the American government cannot force its citizen to accept what is truth. Liberal principles defend both its supporters and its enemies. The same protection afforded to Ann Coulter also guards you from being thrown into a reeducation camp because you disagree with Iraq War. Your freedom of speech is protected by the system. Why do you need freedom of speech in the first place? Because it's not possible to tell a priori if an idea represents truth. Everyone deserves a say regardless of how ridiculous he sounds. He might not in a few decades!

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Isn't it just a matter of degree? Are you telling me that the liberal state cannot and does not impose truths such as the notion that murder is wrong? Or, in fact, that freedom of speech is right? This is not a dichotomy between force and voluntary participation. Liberal states are backed by force. The question is in the ethics of where and when to apply that force.

And to reduce this matter into an issue of freedom of speech trivialises it. What if you can say anything you want but can have no influence whatsoever on the organisation of society? Why do you think there is a crisis of participation in many of today's democracies?

Alassius said:

Indeed, which is why the unwashed masses must have their say, even if they are wrong. Stalinism was a meritocracy. The inherent danger of meritocracy is that the elites get to define what's a merit. If they don't agree with you, you're screwed.

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If meritocracy is mostly to be measured by how adept you are at surviving and making use of prevailing political circumstances, then yes I suppose you could call it a meritocracy.

@Allasius: To be quite honest, I'm not really interested in resurrecting a three-week old debate- especially when your quotes are selected from across it's length, rather than from a single point within it- all for the sake of defending an ideology to which I do not subscribe (and given what is either an inability or a refusal to properly distinguish between Marxism-in-theory and Stalinism-in-practice, which anyone here truly subscribes to), and about which I was merely attempting to clarify some misconceptions as best I was able. As such, I'll hope you'll forgive my reluctance to engage with your arguments.

However, I will suggest that you do not fully understand the concepts of "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie". The two are not simply fancy words for "relatively poor" and "relatively well-off", but refer to relationships to the means of production: the proletariat are those who do not own the means of production, but who sustain themselves through the sale of their labour, while the bourgeoisie are those who own the means of production, and sustain themselves through the profits of production. As such, even the majority of wealthy Western professionals are proletarian- the small exception being those who belong to the petite bourgeoisie- albeit often inordinately wealthy and complicit in the system of capitalist exploitation. This misunderstanding may, I think, be the root of some of your criticism of both Marxism in particular, and socialism as a whole.

Traitorfish said:

@Allasius: To be quite honest, I'm not really interested in resurrecting a three-week old debate- especially when your quotes are selected from across it's length, rather than from a single point within it- all for the sake of defending an ideology to which I do not subscribe (and given what is either an inability or a refusal to properly distinguish between Marxism-in-theory and Stalinism-in-practice, which anyone here truly subscribes to), and about which I was merely attempting to clarify some misconceptions as best I was able. As such, I'll hope you'll forgive my reluctance to engage with your arguments.

However, I will suggest that you do not fully understand the concepts of "proletariat" and "bourgeoisie". The two are not simply fancy words for "relatively poor" and "relatively well-off", but refer to relationships to the means of production: the proletariat are those who do not own the means of production, but who sustain themselves through the sale of their labour, while the bourgeoisie are those who own the means of production, and sustain themselves through the profits of production. As such, even the majority of wealthy Western professionals are proletarian- the small exception being those who belong to the petite bourgeoisie- albeit often inordinately wealthy and complicit in the system of capitalist exploitation. This misunderstanding may, I think, be the root of some of your criticism of both Marxism in particular, and socialism as a whole.

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I suspect any pedestrian criticism of Marxism dwells precisely on such conflation of concepts. I've prodded Alassius many times about criticism of Marxism other than the allegation that Stalinism or some other brand of repressive dictatorship is what Marxism amounts to (which he is so far unable to show), and he has come up only with Popper's criticism of unfalsifiability. That's well and good, but those who do not believe in "scientific" Marxism cannot care less. So these are far from conclusive criticisms, but people with a little knowledge simply repeat them because they are convenient.

As for the conflation of the meaning of classes, it allows pedestrian critics to conveniently criticise the Marxist economic angle with contemporary criticisms about wealth sharing in capitalist systems. Nevermind that to bring about such radical changes (in accordance with the proper conception of class) would involve changing the rules by which society operates, thus potentially making those criticisms moot. More points of criticism = more win!

lord_joakim said:

This thread is continuing to be very interesting. Can someone flesh out exactly what a meritocracy is, by the way? I like that I've started some good discussions in here.

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Since I didn't see anyone spell it out, a meritocracy is a system in which people rise to the top of the system on the benefits of their own merits, as opposed to something like, say, a spoil system, in which the man in power gives all the high positions to his best buddies and most fervent supporters, or a hereditary system in which titles are passed from father to son.

In short, those who are good at their job rise through the system, rather than those who are the best posterior-kissers. Or at least that's the way it's supposed to work.

Arwon said:

I think the idea was that superabundance would mean stuff wasn't worth fighting over any more, so the state (being made of people) won't need to violently retain power and resources because there is so much to go around.

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That only works if resources are near-infinite, which they never are.

Owen Glyndwr said:

Since I didn't see anyone spell it out, a meritocracy is a system in which people rise to the top of the system on the benefits of their own merits, as opposed to something like, say, a spoil system, in which the man in power gives all the high positions to his best buddies and most fervent supporters, or a hereditary system in which titles are passed from father to son.

In short, those who are good at their job rise through the system, rather than those who are the best posterior-kissers. Or at least that's the way it's supposed to work.

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As I understand that, isn't it what we have (Or should have) in a social-liberal democracy?

lord_joakim said:

As I understand that, isn't it what we have (Or should have) in a social-liberal democracy?

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That is what it pretends to have, yes. It is merely a convenient excuse for why the rich deserve their wealth and the poor deserve their destitution.