If you agree with Marx's view that the lumpenproletariat lacks revolutionary potential are you worried about it expanding? Because its certainly looking like thats the way most developed economies are heading.
As for your question of civil servants I think it depends for the most part on the kind of civil servant you mean. Certainly many of them are involved in the productive processes, managing public resources, enforcing safety standards. Certainly, your claim that they are essentially paid by the capitalist class to manage things is correct, so I have to wonder what appreciable difference there is between a civil servant working on social security and an accountant working in corporate payroll.
Apologies for any problems with this post, I am on a cell phone.
I had a talk with Inspector Cribb about this. Our conclusion is that Marx is wrong. There's no reason they shouldn't be able to organize progressively. After all, they were organized
regressively in 1848, when they were Louis-Napoleon's base of power.
As for the civil service comparison, I was attempting to cover things under umbrella terms, and I could not come up with a decent explanation for the difference between these two seperate-from-production groups, so I dropped the effort entirely. I don't think they're similar at all.
I'm not sure about relations between Marxist socialism and non-Marxist socialism.
I'm not sure of the question you're asking.
With all respect to your political views, I ask you as somebody who is becoming more and more libertarian lately.
You certainly realize that making such a statement is, in fact, a statement against someone's political views. As if we worried about it being respected! But continue, I have thick skin.
What social privileges you deem acceptable, and are there any social systems you find not acceptable? That is, would you support Obamacare (I'm sure they've asked you before), and health care in general? I suppose you'd say "yes" to healthcare, but I are there any restrictions you'd put to it? Would it cover abortion? Lung cancer treatment for smokers?
The restrictions are up to the society that creates it. But the Affordable Care Act is not universal health care, it is regulation of a still-private industry, and we almost invariably support universal health care.
Do you support work-class syndicates, which's members get benefits as labourers? I am asking this as a citizen of a country where being a syndicate member gets you 5 more days paid leave.
I'm not sure how a syndicate works under capitalism, but socialist syndicates I have a certain sympathy towards. What you describe sounds more like a labor union.
Also, what is your view on bureaucracy? Do you think that social systems could exist without it? How would you review the idea of a privately owned social systems, or social systems ran by non-government structures? Private schools? Co-operative pension funds?
Weber said the decisive reason for the advance of bureaucratic organization has always been its purely technical superiority over any other form of organization. It is inevitable in order to coordinate large numbers of people and large enterprises, whether they are publicly owned or privately owned. Bureaucracy can become cumbersome at times, though, so it's our duty to make sure it's as streamlined and effective as possible at whatever it needs to do.
I do not think schools should be able to be privately funded. I don't know what a privately owned social system is, you would have to give me an example, but seeing as we oppose the existence of private property
as such, I'm certain that I'm against it.
I realize how many times this question must have been asked, but are you a classical Marxist or something else?
Hopefully this exchange will prove insightful:
What are you actually mean to when you say that Cheezy's politics are "idealistic"? Generally speaking, the term isn't a subjective measure of realism, it's a fairly neutral description of an ideology as being based in the assumption that it is possible to make the world conform to a series of preconceived ideals, which wouldn't be a particularly fair or even useful description of Cheezy politics which lie in terms of praxis (and he's entirely free to correct me if he feels this to be inaccurate) somewhere between the Eurocommunist and Front-orientated Trotskyist traditions. If, however, you're simply using "idealistic" to describe any ambition for radical social and politicla change, than I can only say that you're muddying the water of the debate by taking as an unstated your premise the impossibility of real change in one direction or the other, and from this concluding that all politics orientated towards radical change are equally (in)valid, rather than actually making a case for why this might be so.
Nonsense, you're vindicating me fantastically, and I appreciate that in a most UnGentlemanly way.
I just need you to qualify this word for me:
It may be the wrong word, but what I'm basically getting at is that you'd identify yourself with that part of the Leninist tradition drawing on Western Marxism- Gramsci, Lukács, etc.
Ah okay, yes. I don't think we have a word for that.
As of late, the last year or so, I've taken an increasingly keen interest in the uniquely American brand of socialism as envisioned by Eugene Debs and Bill Haywood; combining the better parts of pre-USSR European socialism with an almost anarcho-syndicalist approach, and given an American flair. Which is why I don't really like the compartmentalization that we communists are so obsessed with; unless one literally draws one's entire understanding of socialist/communist thought from a single fountain, our ideas, theories, and analyses are aggregates from multiple sources.
