Ask a Red, Second Edition

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Perhaps you should create an Index like Plot has?
Are we likely to find anyone willing to trawl through 30 pages which contain roughly as much confused bickering as serious discussion and try to make some sense of it? :lol: (I guess it would be viable if we started a new thread with the Red Diamond rules in place from the start, if we were willing to abandon this one twenty posts early.)
 
Ok guys, do you think some system that fits Marx's ideal society is ultimately achievable, or not? You want straight questions, so answer this straight: will the world inevitably, fatalistically become a Marxist paradise one day? Yes or No?

If that society is inevitable, you will have to have some kind of practical system, for example your worker's assemblies and committees. Claiming your theory is purely theoretical does not negate the need for a practical system. But the very possibility of such a practical system without class struggle is what I'm talking about here. "There is more than one way to change the world" is not an argument for the plausibility of a classless society. In itself it simply says change is possible, which of course is - nobody argues otherwise. But could any change be both communist and practical?

To say "[it] provides a theoretical basis upon which praxis can be developed" is to shove responsibility to those that develop such a praxis. When they get it wrong again, you will be free to criticise them for not offering "true Marxism", exactly like what you did to Lenin. This disconnection between theory and practice is precisely what's wrong with modern versions of communism. By denying practicality, you are arguing that your idea of Marxism can't ever be wrong, no matter how much misery the praxes cause, because it's always someone else's fault for not understanding your theory correctly.

So the third question: is it theoretically possible that Marxism is wrong? If so when would you know it's wrong?

In comparison, "free market" is wrong plenty of times, e.g. bubbles and crises. Moreover, free market doesn't have to be pure to work. It can mix fairly well with state welfare. Does communism have same kind of flexibility?

Both of you have effectively made two arguments so far: that somehow changes can be achieved "organically", but neglected to argue why "organically" means desired results; and that it doesn't have to involve violence, but again, you stopped at saying "[n]obody is talking in North Korean or even in Soviet Union terms", without explaining why "not talking about it" means "it won't happen". Communists have a notorious record of doing the exact opposite of their words. If history is any guide, your merely saying "it won't happen" is a good predictor that it will. To make people trust you, you need to make the more strenuous effort of proving more or less rigorously that it really won't happen.

And the fourth question: noting that every single praxis that claimed to be Marxist turned out to be a catastrophe, how do you know whether any specific future praxis can succeed before it is implemented? Particularly, given the Trotskyist idea that revolution has to happen world-wide simultaneously (which, incidentally, is an revisionism that Marx didn't agree), would you suggest that we should put the livelihood of every single person on this planet in a prodigious gamble?



What I am arguing, on the other hand, is that the "organic" change, right after a revolution and in absence of any restrictions, is the very same one that leads to violence.

According to historical materialism, exploitation evolved when private property came into being, as the have-nots had to rely on the haves to produce anything in return for feeding themselves. Marx's solution is to abolish private property, so everyone becomes haves, removing the possibility of exploitation. But is it really possible for everyone to become haves? What is the meaning of ownership in this case? Does whatever form of ownership you have preclude the possibility of exploitation? If it doesn't, what is the reason that exploitation won't evolve again, like it did the first time?

My earlier post was an attempt to address this exact problem. Can you have a form of ownership that is meaningfully, rather than rhetorically, egalitarian? Is it possible at all for everyone to have precisely equal say on everything regarding the means of production? If the answer is no, then the fundamental conclusion of Marxism - that abolishing private property equals abolishing exploitation - does not hold, for that in a system where private property is nominally abolished, but a more powerful class still exert de facto influence over means of production, the source of exploitation is not removed.

The questions regarding, say, the sausage-snatcher, were meant to solicit your understanding of ownership. If "a person" would not end up with "the power", what does? "The society"? But as I argued before, it is a mistake to assume such an entity exists. Letting "the society" have power means, in practice, give power to a committee of delegates that claims to represent the people. And it's a grievous mistake to assume such a committee "have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole."

And let's take a look at your approach at distribution:

P(B): Yes.
P(B)(i): In capitalism, money functions for the worker as what you might call "consumption points", that is, a measured entitlement to consumption. Similarly, some form of measured entitlement could exist under communism, but distinguished by the fact that their attribution is direct, not obtained through commodity exchange, and that their redemption does not constitute a further form of commodity exchange.
P(B)(ii): As in capitalism, this is not an issue. "Free access", although an idea tampered with as a long-term outcome (assuming certain levels of technological and social development), is evidently ineffective in any immediate sense.

So you acknowledge that Marx's notion of material abundance won't work. You then have to deal with the not-so-trivial problem of what to have in place of "according to his need". Does everyone have equal consumption points under your system? If yes, you are disagreeing directly with Marx. If no, how do you allocate these points? Who should have more points than others? The more "needy"? Suppose I'm in charge of handing out points, what stops me from twisting whatever rules you have established, and giving myself more points than others?


I don't consider the obligation to contribute to society in order to benefit from society to be "oppressive". Frankly, only a sociopathic narcissist would hold themselves in such high regard as to consider themselves free from such an obligation.

The question again is who gets to decide what kind of work "contributes to society". Suppose I think I'm contributing to society by fiercely attacking communism, what do you do? Do you allow me food and ink? Or do you conclude that I'm not fulfilling my obligation to the society, and force me to do something else than criticising?


Ok, then going back to the original point, what is it about these forms of governance, as distinct from liberal forms of government, that makes corruption an exceptional problem?

Now you also acknowledge that you need some kind of government in your society? Revisionism!

Your committees do not offer an innate defence against its own corruption. Nobody can live independently of the committees, because they are the effective owner of properties. A liberal economy offers different capitalists with conflicting interests. A welfare government offers another alternative to the capitalists. Each of these compete against each other, to the effect that no power is concentrated enough to become self-accumulating.



As for the question of private property, I don't see why you see the need to try and declare some sort of victory here (as if it matters). I'm just not particularly concerned about the validity of propertarianism per se. I'm more interested in how property ownership is perceived and how much of a determining role it plays in social relations.

In short, I'm not interested in amateurish discussions about which side prevails. It's not a contest. I'm interested in the analysis and critique of actual phenomena.

That was slightly more than a declaration of victory, when you argue "a more organic view ... opens the way for culture to spearhead change". How does your view spearhead change if nobody believes in it? Do you predict some kind of mythical event to magically make people accept your view?



"treacherous defeatism" my arse. There is more than one way to change the world. I've already provided you with a vision of praxis, and although I can't say that everyone here endorses something like that, it's a good example of how so-called revisionists (such as John Holloway) operate. On the other hand, you seem to have a preoccupation with talking about violent methods. Maybe it goes to show just what are the actual obsessions of supposedly peace-loving liberals?

The obsession of classical liberals is exactly to stop such violent methods from happening.
 
*boring soapboxing*
Less of that please. We've been over this: straight questions, or GTFO.

So you acknowledge that Marx's notion of material abundance won't work. You then have to deal with the not-so-trivial problem of what to have in place of "according to his need". Does everyone have equal consumption points under your system? If yes, you are disagreeing directly with Marx. If no, how do you allocate these points? Who should have more points than others? The more "needy"? Suppose I'm in charge of handing out points, what stops me from twisting whatever rules you have established, and give myself more points than others?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

The question again is who gets to decide what kind of work "contributes to society". Suppose I think I'm contributing to society by fiercely attacking communism, what do you do? Do you allow me food and ink? Or do you conclude that I'm not fulfilling my obligation to the society, and force me to do something else than criticising?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Democracy

Now you also acknowledge that you need some kind of government in your society? Revisionism!
Not really.

Your committees do not offer an innate defence against its own corruption. Nobody can live independently of the committees, because they are the effective owner of properties. A liberal economy offers different capitalists with conflicting interests. A welfare government offers another alternative to the capitalists. Each of these compete against each other, to the effect that no power is concentrated enough to become self-accumulating.
:confused:



(A lazy reply? Certainly, but still around twice as much effort as was merited by the original.)
 
Are you even trying to defend your ideology?
 
No, I'm trying to answer civil questions about Marxist thought and theory. We've been over this.

And which question of mine is not civil?

Don't you see how easily you resort to dismissing questions offhand? Exactly like what Leninists did to dissidents? I'll quote a story told by Václav Havel:

In 1974, when I was employed in a brewery, my immediate superior was a certain Š, a person well versed in the art of making beer. He was proud of his profession and he wanted our brewery to brew good beer. He spent almost all his time at work, continually thinking up improvements, and he frequently made the rest of us feel uncomfortable because he assumed that we loved brewing as much as he did. In the midst of the slovenly indifference to work that socialism encourages, a more constructive worker would be difficult to imagine.

The brewery itself was managed by people who understood their work less and were less fond of it, but who were politically more influential. They were bringing the brewery to ruin and not only did they fail to react to any of Š's suggestions, but they actually became increasingly hostile toward him and tried in every way to thwart his efforts to do a good job. Eventually the situation became so bad that S felt compelled to write a lengthy letter to the manager's superior, in which he attempted to analyze the brewery's difficulties. He explained why it was the worst in the district and pointed to those responsible.

His voice might have been heard. The manager, who was policically powerful but otherwise ignorant of beer, a man who loathed workers and was given to intrigue, might have been replaced and conditions in the brewery might have been improved on the basis of Š's suggestions. Had this happened, it would have been a perfect example of small-scale work in action. Unfortunately, the precise opposite occurred: the manager of the brewery, who was a member of the Communist Partý s district committee, had friends in higher places and he saw to it that the situation was resolved in his favor. Š's analysis was described as a "defamatory document" and S himself was labeled a "political saboteur." He was thrown out of the brewery and shifted to another one where he was given a job requiring no skill. Here the notion of small-scale work had come up against the wall of the post-totalitarian system. By speaking the truth, Š had stepped out of line, broken the rules, cast himself out, and he ended up as a subcitizen, stigmatized as an enemy. He could now say anything he wanted, but he could never, as a matter of principle, expect to be heard. He had become the "dissident" of the Eastern Bohemian Brewery.
 
Don't you see how easily you resort to dismissing questions offhand? Exactly like what Leninists did to dissidents?
And here I was under the impression they shot them.
Edit: Also, your story sounds like any other job, under any other system.
 
And here I was under the impression they shot them.
Edit: Also, your story sounds like any other job, under any other system.

Occassionally. For the most part, dissidents were sidelined in the manner described by Havel. There were just too many of them to shoot.

The similar story can happen under capitalist system. The difference is that S could have moved to a different factory, or tell his story in a different newspaper not controlled by the manager. His voice would not "as a matter of principle" be silenced.

This is the very reason why nobody gets shot for being a dissident in a liberal society, not even Marxists who seek to overthrow it. No matter how rich you are, how hard you try to suppress S's voice, it's not going to work. S will find a way to have his voice heard. If you kill S, somebody is going to notice. We are not saying that a liberal society can completely eliminate evil. It doesn't. We simply make sure that the evil can't do as much harm.
 
So for the most part, the U.S.S.R. were exactly like people who don't provide extensive answers on online forums?

You know, I think that's the most extreme apologism for the Soviet Union I've ever heard on these boards.
 
That was slightly more than a declaration of victory, when you argue "a more organic view ... opens the way for culture to spearhead change". How does your view spearhead change if nobody believes in it? Do you predict some kind of mythical event to magically make people accept your view?

Nobody believes in what? That we shouldn't run away with the profit motive and actually take pride in what we do? Nobody believes in that?

Alassius said:
The obsession of classical liberals is exactly to stop such violent methods from happening.

And yet in this thread you are full of references to Leninists, Stalinists and whatever even when talking to people who have explicitly said that they don't identify with those factions. Who's the one obsessed about violence here?

Don't you have like work to do instead of coming here to argue with people in circles? There's more profit to chase while you waste your time here talking to a bunch of idealists. What for? Nobody believes the stuff that we subscribe to anyway, right? I don't get why you keep pestering Reds when you insist that they don't matter. It's positively schizophrenic, like the thing you have about violence.
 
And which question of mine is not civil?
Your entire contribution to this thread has been an extended attempt to provoke argument through a slough of red herrings, strawmen and boring soapbox rambles. You have no interest in using this thread for what it is intended, and I have no interest in indulging you in that.

Don't you see how easily you resort to dismissing questions offhand? Exactly like what Leninists did to dissidents? I'll quote a story told by Václav Havel:
Oh, stop being so melodramatic.

This is the very reason why nobody gets shot for being a dissident in a liberal society, not even Marxists who seek to overthrow it. No matter how rich you are, how hard you try to suppress S's voice, it's not going to work. S will find a way to have his voice heard. If you kill S, somebody is going to notice. We are not saying that a liberal society can completely eliminate evil. It doesn't. We simply make sure that the evil can't do as much harm.
Given that you live in a city under the jurisdiction of the London Metropolitan Police, then I can only assume that you are either extremely sheltered, or have defined "liberal society" in such a way as to conveniently exclude any apparent contradictions to this essentially axiomatic statement of yours.
 
Question: Do you think people spend too much time arguing over labels and the various connotations that go with them, rather than discussing the issues themselves?
 
Question: Do you think people spend too much time arguing over labels and the various connotations that go with them, rather than discussing the issues themselves?
Probably, but I don't leftists are any more fundamentally prone to that than anyone else; we just tend to drown ourselves in idiosyncratic terminology, so it stands out a lot more.
 
Basically, alienation (as I understand it) is, at it simplest, the mental and physical separation between the people who make products and those who buy them. Like when you buy a t-shirt at JC Penny, but don't think about who made it or where. When you buy from the person who makes it, there's a more personal exchange that happens and it's easier to sympathize with their plight, whatever it may be. Or something.

I guess I am not the only odd person around here that go with his girlfriend in JC Penny and complain how expensive it is to purchase garments that are made in Vietnam, Nepal, India, Bangladesh, and the Philippines, while over there they barely make a sufficient amount of wages to compensate long hours, poor health, and stress of high cost of living.

I have to say she does look at me weird whenever I keep reading "Made In X" from those tags; and I wouldn't be surprised to see clerks and retail workers looking at me in an odd way.:crazyeye:
 
Insofar as they both constitute planned investment of resources, yes, but not much more than that. Ceaușescu's Romania was a state capitalist regime, rather than a communist society, so the social relations it represents a fundamentally different.

Really? I think it was very much central planning. A totalitarian communist state, if you will (though everybody loved it, so the "totalitarian" part didn't really come in until later).

How did Communist Romania differ from actual communism? (Other than the eventual collapse due to a dictator who went crazy)

At a fundamental level, it would be determined by workers' councils, although of course various intermediary bodies may appear.

Wouldn't this be very difficult to accomplish?? I mean, you're talking about democratically deciding everybody's wages essentially! How do you get everyone's opinion in? Should everyone's opinion come in for each issue? Are people just appointed to councils and those councils decide things (a sort of representative democracy)?
 
Moderator Action: Alassius, you appear to have steadily moved away from asking to arguing. Would be fine to do that in most threads, but not this one. It is titled 'Ask a Red', and is more about learning of a particular theoretical perspective than proving it wrong. You're quite welcome to start another thread to continue your argument, but it's clogging up this one, so it'd probably be best for all involved if you were to take a break from this thread for a while. Thanks.
 
Probably, but I don't leftists are any more fundamentally prone to that than anyone else; we just tend to drown ourselves in idiosyncratic terminology, so it stands out a lot more.

It wasn't the left I was thinking of. ;)
 
Oof, alienation is a very interesting concept, but it takes some effort to explain. In my understanding, it has a lot to do with commodity fetishism. Familiar with that term?

Kinda, in the same way I'm 'kinda' familiar with the general concept of alienation. Nothing in depth. Commodification placing an arbitrary value on human labour, alienating the product from the producer, the producer from society, and therefore the producer from the self. Or something like that, IIRC.

:lmao:

Basically, alienation (as I understand it) is, at it simplest, the mental and physical separation between the people who make products and those who buy them. Like when you buy a t-shirt at JC Penny, but don't think about who made it or where. When you buy from the person who makes it, there's a more personal exchange that happens and it's easier to sympathize with their plight, whatever it may be. Or something.

The step that seems similar to me is the final one of the alienation of the producer from their intrinsic humanity, as they lose what it means to be part of society (if that is right; is it?). Thymos is meant to be the human desire for recognition (in the sense of having their humanity recognised), and my initial impressions based on that superficial understanding was that the thymos Fukuyama identifies is pretty much the same aspect of humanity that structuralists (would you use that term?) would say is lost through that alienation.

As for Fukayama, I've admittedly never read him. From what I know of him, he seems to be a Hegelian-rooted neoconservative. I know he wrote that End of History book back in the 90s, which is particularly unimpressive in its assertions.

It is this vastly different endpoint that intrigues me about the seeming similarity of the two. The problem identified seems to be similar, but I think whereas a structuralist would say that this is due to capitalism, Fukuyama says that capitalism is the solution (and from that, liberal democracy is the pinnacle of ideological development). Obviously this isn't going to be a view at all compatible with your own. What would be your critique of that idea?
 
Really? I think it was very much central planning. A totalitarian communist state, if you will (though everybody loved it, so the "totalitarian" part didn't really come in until later).

How did Communist Romania differ from actual communism? (Other than the eventual collapse due to a dictator who went crazy)
As I said, in Marxian terms Ceaușescu's Romania constituted a "state capitalist" regime, which is to say a regime in which the capitalist class was constituted by the state, or more accurately by a cartel of state firms. In Marxist economic thought, "capitalism" is not a set of legal institutions of private property (although legal institutions are of course of relevance) but of the fundamental relationships of production in any given society. In all the 20th century "Marxist" states, the fundamental relations of capitalism- commodity exchange, the separation of labour and capital manifested in wage labour, etc.- were present, and showed absolutely no signs of disappearing with time.

Wouldn't this be very difficult to accomplish?? I mean, you're talking about democratically deciding everybody's wages essentially! How do you get everyone's opinion in? Should everyone's opinion come in for each issue? Are people just appointed to councils and those councils decide things (a sort of representative democracy)?
I don't think that it's necessary for everyone around the globe to have a say in deciding what everyone else's wages are, if that's what you're asking. Planning can and should occur on a variety of different levels, much as it does within any halfway well-organised company until capitalism. (After all, the idea that the CEO of a multinational company would personally set the wages and work-hours of everyone in his employ is equally absurd, yes?)
 
Kinda, in the same way I'm 'kinda' familiar with the general concept of alienation. Nothing in depth. Commodification placing an arbitrary value on human labour, alienating the product from the producer, the producer from society, and therefore the producer from the self. Or something like that, IIRC.

Yup. It's probably worth mentioning that the notion of arbitrariness does not mean it's entirely decided by somebody. It's decided by the market according to values of socially necessary labour, which in today's context can (IMO anyway) simply be understood as labour costs. To such a value is added other components of marginal cost and a markup, from which you get the price/exchange value of a commodity (basically I'm just adding in contemporary economics stuff here).

Anyway, the important thing from the Marxist perspective is how the use value of the product becomes forgotten or at best secondary to the exchange value. As such, the worker's role as the producer of something useful becomes sidelined. The worker becomes a means to profit, and his/her productivity is measured by how much income he/she is generating for a business. As a result, it becomes difficult to understand and take pride in one's true role as a part of the social relations of production that generates real material goods rather than surplus value/profit, the latter which necessarily entails some form of exploitation. In short, a worker is alienated from his/her own labour because he/she is compelled to see it in terms of being simply a means to the end of someone else's profit. That's the fundamental notion of alienation as I understand it.

As you said:

Camikaze said:
The step that seems similar to me is the final one of the alienation of the producer from their intrinsic humanity, as they lose what it means to be part of society (if that is right; is it?).

So, yeah, you pretty much got it right.

Camikaze said:
Thymos is meant to be the human desire for recognition (in the sense of having their humanity recognised), and my initial impressions based on that superficial understanding was that the thymos Fukuyama identifies is pretty much the same aspect of humanity that structuralists (would you use that term?) would say is lost through that alienation.

It is this vastly different endpoint that intrigues me about the seeming similarity of the two. The problem identified seems to be similar, but I think whereas a structuralist would say that this is due to capitalism, Fukuyama says that capitalism is the solution (and from that, liberal democracy is the pinnacle of ideological development). Obviously this isn't going to be a view at all compatible with your own. What would be your critique of that idea?

How does capitalism solve that problem? I think that's where the meat of the disagreement would be.
 
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