Ask A Red V: The Five-Year Plan

[Tahuti]

Honestly, I don't even know what "dialectical materialism" is. Not even a basic grasp. Couldn't even tell you why it's wrong.

Historicism? Marxism effectively present Capitalism as a machine that is pre-programmed to destroy itself right?

 

[Hygro]

Historicism? Marxism effectively present Capitalism as a machine that is pre-programmed to destroy itself right?

However, an infinity of time is allowed to pass between capitalism's birth and such a self-destruction. So not really?

 

[Whomp]

It fails...nvm. Not a discussion thread.



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[ReindeerThistle]

Essentially, Capitalism will self-destruct, because it is in its own interest to do so. I think we had arrived to that conclusion before, though I think I understand the underlying processes better now, thanks.

Well, that's the thing, it won't, because the superstructure (institutions of government, et al, that the bourgeoisie have set up to maintain their exploitation) will continue to tdevise ways of bailing them out -- e..g the 1997 Asian financial crisies, the 2008 Mortgage meltdown... etc. The government of the ruling class finds ways to keep the system hobbling along.

Would you say communism is more about the subjugation of capital by labour or the fusion of capital and labour?

Socialism is the subjugation of capital by labour. As Marx points out, the Capitalist "integument" is torn asunder, leading the way for the proletariat to construct its own state. The proletariat becomes the ruling class and the bourgeoises become the oppressed (though not, hopefully, in the violent way the working class is deprived of food, clothing, other basic needs) by way of a socialist state.

Communism, as the next stage, occurs when there exist NO class antagonisms, because the classes will disappear. Without classes, and without class antagonisms, you do not need a state. The state, then, will wither away and the distribution of goods and services will be the order of the day, not the managing of class antagonisms.

I'm probably repeating myself again, however, it may be logically consistent after all. So the contradiction cannot possibly be, for it would not allow to sustain the 'system' for even a little moment. It would be perpetually false and cannot exist. Any overthrowal of capitalism would be through the free will of the people involved and only that. Unless I have just understood it plainly wrong, I perceive that this might be a major problem of dialectics in general. Again, I might be wrong here.

As my micro-lecture on dialectics suggests, the only reaosn the bourgeoisie are still the ruling class is because they have the government at their disposal. Take out the government, and you have a "fair fight," as it were. The dialectics (and dialectical and historical materialism, if you will) comes into play because the proletariat (the advanced and class-conscious members of the working class) relaizes it does not NEED the bourgeoisie to run production, since the bourgeoisie are so far removed from the production.
Only two classes can control production: proletariat, who can remove and re-supply their labour; and bourgeoisie, who can remove or re-supply capital.

The system stays in place, even though the elements of the category "socialism" replace elements of the category "capitalism" -- but the aufheben happens when the state is overthrown.

Historicism? Marxism effectively present Capitalism as a machine that is pre-programmed to destroy itself right?

No, see above. Marxism, according to Louis Althusser, is anti-historicist. It does not believe that anything could be understood within itself, but only in relation to everything else.

However, an infinity of time is allowed to pass between capitalism's birth and such a self-destruction. So not really?

Not, so to speak... elements of the category "Capitalism" emerged during feudalism. It was not until REVOLUTION overthrew the monarchs who kept fuedalism in place that the bourgeoisie put in their own state... The bourgeois state has only really existed for the last 240 years, or so... The fuedal states lasted fro about 1000+ years...

 

[Hygro]

It fails...nvm. Not a discussion thread.



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Here's the thread where we debate it. Also the thread for Reindeer to post his tributes to Stalin http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512697

Not, so to speak... elements of the category "Capitalism" emerged during feudalism. It was not until REVOLUTION overthrew the monarchs who kept fuedalism in place that the bourgeoisie put in their own state... The bourgeois state has only really existed for the last 240 years, or so... The fuedal states lasted fro about 1000+ years...

I recommend Arrighi's The Long 20th Century for a brief overview of the formation of capitalism in 13th century Italian city states and its spread through Europe via shifting hegemonic seats of capital. It's still way too oversimplified but I found it highly resourceful in conceptualizing Marxian capital history.

What I was referring to was that the Marxian explanation of capitalism does show that the system collapses itself, for a few reasons. One is that Marx himself assumes a scarcity of money, which is a product of when he lived. It would be 28 years after the publication of Capital before Knapp, another German political economist, published his theory of Chartalism and showed how money actually works.

But there are other reasons why Marx's logic of capitalism is self-destructive. Nevertheless, there's no theoretical reason why the time span of capitalism's self destruction isn't infinite. In other words, the revolution may be the next stage in history, whatever "revolution" means (Marx's view changed more than once), but the next stage in history is not an inevitability. History can get "stuck" so to speak.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

@Hygro: I agree that the system does not collapse on itself... that was my point. Likewise, the slave system did not collapse on itself...

The period of change may take millenia as it did the slave system, or a millenium, as feudalism... but the change itself was sudden.

That's the sublation/ aufhebung to which Kaiserguard refers...

Thanks for the reading referral... I'll add it to my list of "Next time I throw my back out" reading list. Right now, I'm powering through [I[The Civil War in France[/I].

PS: I can post tributes to Stalin, here... can't I?

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

Here's the thread where we debate it. Also the thread for Reindeer to post his tributes to Stalin http://forums.civfanatics.com/showthread.php?t=512697

It seems that, as of late, it has turned into a Russian cultural review...

Maybe I'll drop some MLM stuff in here or there soon, to mix stuff up. This stuff tends to become very Euro-centric, and while I don't ascribe to Maoism, I do think it's valuable to have such people around who do.

 

[Agent327]

As Marx points out, the Capitalist "integment" is torn asunder

The what?

Source?

Answer still pending.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

The what?...

integument... typo... sorry. You know, "skin." The skin or "superstructure" of the capitalist state is remove and replaced by a proletarian state.

 

[aelf]

Explain the contradiction of capital in the most precise detail possible

I believe the fundamental contradiction goes back to the assumptions that underlie economics, to the notion of utility and the question of value.

Marx makes a distinction between market value and use value. His contention is that labour is expended to make material things for their use values (i.e. their utility to human beings, which is probably unquantifiable), and yet the value of those things are governed by their market values, which are quite independent of their use values. Similarly, labour has a use value, which is the number of a particular type of good that it can produce within a given time in accordance with the socially necessary labour time to produce the good; yet the value of labour is governed by its market value, which is quite independent of its use value. The market system, therefore, is fundamentally alienating.

This dichotomy between use value and market value is the source of the exploitation of labour by capital through the concept of surplus value. If labour is able to produce 10 of good x in an hour, the capitalist will pay that hour's worth of wages for a period exceeding 1 hour that labour needs to produce 12 of good x. Thus, through such an 'extension of the working day', capital is able to squeeze surplus value out of labour.

This method of accounting may seem odd at first, but it actually makes a lot of sense today. This is, after all, the primary and most obvious means by which capital exploits the increasingly common form of labour today, that of 'white collar' labour (including Drucker's favourite "knowledge workers"). What are your official working hours? How much do you end up working on average each day? And most contracts for this kind of labour specifically preclude one's eligibility for overtime pay, at least within a certain number of hours worked. And white collar labour do not organise, because we supposedly have enough bargaining power as individuals.

What about the whole deal about ownership of the means of production? It fits into the picture as well. I suppose the idea is that if you own the means of production, there can be no surplus value siphoned off from your labour because you will enjoy the all fruits of the latter (i.e. the profits from the business).

 

[ParkCungHee]

Are "anti-bourgeois" right-wingers even a thing, any more, in any substantial way? They're marginal in all but the most peripheral regions of the world.

They're actually growing in a lot of places actually, especially in Catholic circles which have come to view Liberal Democracy as fundamentally incompatible with Catholic thought. You can usually find them inCommunio and more accessibly in TAC like this article.

I think the anti-bourgeois right is actually a thing to watch out for in the future, as the logic of Capitalism turns on those who fed it. Going forward, it's hard to see how the future has any room for bourgeois conservatives.

I'm reading that article in libcom you linked to, and the commentary on the Victorian Ruling structure and Thatcher made me kept thinking I was reading something from the far right.

 

[Traitorfish]

A lot of that TAC article does ring pretty familiar, I'll give you that. This is probably something I should look further into.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Ron Paul is an example of this... an isolationist anti-rich person.

Tea Party, of course,.totally funded by the Koch brothers...

 

[Traitorfish]

Ron Paul really isn't an example of what Park is talking about. He's a heterodox conservative, in certain respect, but pretty firmly within the terms of bourgeois conservatism. If anything, more firmly rooted within those terms than most.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

Ron Paul, not Rand Paul... anyway, we refer to it as "right cover" for the bourgeoisie.

Either way, left or right, tacit or overt, it's the Mussolini census....

(Pollster: "There are 23,000 Christian Democrats, 13,000 socialists, 46,000 social democrats, 9,000 monarchists..."

Mussolini: "But what about the Fascists? How many fascists?"

Pollster: "Oh, they're all facsists!")

 

[Mouthwash]

Ron Paul really isn't an example of what Park is talking about. He's a heterodox conservative, in certain respect, but pretty firmly within the terms of bourgeois conservatism. If anything, more firmly rooted within those terms than most.

Austrians really shouldn't be spoken about in those terms. They cannot, within their framework, engage the concepts of society or politics as anything outside of peripheral distortion of the market, which is due mainly to the irrationality of individuals as opposed to the market as a whole. (That the state, by mere fact of its existence, refutes this does not seem to have occurred to them.) If you reject such a position, for them, it's only a matter of finding the misstep in logic you've committed and correcting it. The idea is actually kind of a fundamental fallacy, although I can't think of anything to analogize it. Perhaps the Pythagorean cult?

Let me try and be clearer: If you've ever talked to an Austrian, you may have come across a confused rejection of 'empirical economics' in favor of 'logical economics' proceeding from axioms. This is a result of their commitment to either subordination or integration (depending on the specific instance) of incommensurable concepts like classical logic with contextual sciences such as human action.

 

[ReindeerThistle]

I can never understand what fascists are saying because my foot is always on their throat.

 

[Hygro]

Austrians really shouldn't be spoken about in those terms. They cannot, within their framework, engage the concepts of society or politics as anything outside of peripheral distortion of the market, which is due mainly to the irrationality of individuals as opposed to the market as a whole. (That the state, by mere fact of its existence, refutes this does not seem to have occurred to them.) If you reject such a position, for them, it's only a matter of finding the misstep in logic you've committed and correcting it. The idea is actually kind of a fundamental fallacy, although I can't think of anything to analogize it. Perhaps the Pythagorean cult?

Let me try and be clearer: If you've ever talked to an Austrian, you may have come across a confused rejection of 'empirical economics' in favor of 'logical economics' proceeding from axioms. This is a result of their commitment to either subordination or integration (depending on the specific instance) of incommensurable concepts like classical logic with contextual sciences such as human action.

Sums it up. The Pythagorean cult is not a bad comparison.

 

[carmen510]

From what (admittedly little) I've read about the Russian Revolution, it seems that Nestor Makhno was the closest towards realizing communism, insofar as it was a moneyless and classless society with communal ownership of the means of production.

Should Makhnovism and the experiment of the Free Territory be upheld as an example of communism that could actually work, or do you think there are fundamental or practical flaws with Makhno's theories (other than the fact that Bolsheviks prevented them from coming fully into fruition)?

 

[Traitorfish]

I'm not sure we can actually talk about "Makhnovism" as a particular body of thought. Their thought and rhetoric was a hodge-podge of agrarian socialism, platformists, Kropotkinism and revolutionary syndicalism, among other things, which his reflects the heterogeneity of the movement itself: peasants, workers, soldier-mutineers and bandits-turned-revolutionaries; Ukrainians, Russians, Jews, Tartars and Cossacks. There was no dominant idea, program or group, and the fact that Makhno emerges as such a prominent personality seems to reflect his non-attachment to any one specific school or program, and thus his ability to mediate between differing tendencies within the movement.

This is also true of the Red faction, and I'd really argue that the Black Army isn't something to be imagined as separate from an opposed to the Reds, but as a splinter faction that rejected Bolshevik hegemony. Even our categorisation of the Reds as "socialist" and the Blacks as "anarchist", while not inaccurate, tends to reflect the dominant voices and ideas of the movements, rather than telling us who or what they represented.