Communism, Marxism, Socialism, Capitalism, What are your thoughts?

[yung.carl.jung]

edit: scratch that, not replying. this thread is hot garbage. makes me want to delete the last 15 minutes from my memory. I'm gonna read a book.

 

[red_elk]

 

[yung.carl.jung]

they went with a really mediocre mozart aria in the original film. complete BS imho. as if a bunch of prisoners doing hard, menial physical labor would be awestruck by some flamboyant 18th century aria, instead of confused or annoyed. they should've at least played Johnny Cash or Hank Williams or Blind Lemon Jefferson or something. or this anthem, obviously

 

[red_elk]

Thank's for reminding, I didn't even remember what he played in original film

 

[Gorbles]

* I'm stuck in Folsom Prison, and time keeps dragging on *

So if you have to read Marx to discuss Marxian plans, is there any value in trying to have a movement based on this when everyone in the movement is going to be too dumb/uneducated to participate?

There's actually some debate about this in the leftist circles I'm from, namely must-read-Marx vs. don't-have-to-read-Marx. I come from the latter myself, but that's more because of time and commitments. Notably, I don't reject Marx because I haven't read him. I don't reject the principles espouses in this and other threads (I have some outstanding replies to get back to, but I think these stem from me not framing my arguments clearly in the first place. Hopefully, anyhow).

There are people that will, to borrow and earlier phrase, pooh-pooh you if you haven't even read Marx. Nobody in this thread that I've seen matches that description. Everyone has provided informative answers (in the face of disappointingly-remarkable amounts of bait, in some cases). Everyone has tried to engage with skeptics, provide links, provide embedded videos, the works.

So it's not "have to read Marx" vs. "don't have to read Marx" in terms of discussion valid socialist (or general leftist) education. That's not what we have in this thread. We have people explaining the general principles; making the right arguments, describing their socialist proposals fairly and in some depth at times . . . with absolutely no recognition that this has been the case. That's why this has degraded into "read Marx". It's the equivalent of a bunch of people disseminating and paraphrasing from a biology textbook until their patience expired, at which point they just literally start referring to the textbook for the foundational principles contained therein.

 

[Lexicus]

Another point brought up is that negative externalities are not factored into the price system. I quote Mises:

If negative externalities are factored into the price system why does it cost $15 to fill my gas tank

 

[sophie]

So if you have to read Marx to discuss Marxian plans, is there any value in trying to have a movement based on this when everyone in the movement is going to be too dumb/uneducated to participate?

No. You're missing the point, and you're missing the point on three levels.

1) As I keep saying: Marxism is not a plan. It's not a programme. It's not a road map. It's an analytical framework for examining and understanding capitalism and revolutionary movements. If it helps, you can think of it like psychology, sociology, or economics. The mind, the society, and the economy will exist irrespective of the presence of the study, and you don't need to be a psychologist, sociologist, or economist to come to conclusions about those respective fields, or make decisions within their purview of study. Likewise, psychology, sociology, and economics don't - on their own - provide a clear programme for success. Rather, the three disciplines provide analytical frameworks for studying and understanding the respective fields, and insights gleaned from that study can help you come to conclusions about what actions would be most effective at achieving outcomes which you deem desirable in your particular circumstance. That's what Marxism is. It's a tool which is extraordinarily useful for understanding capitalism, and for figuring out effective courses of action for political organization and revolutionary strategy, but Marxism is not strictly speaking necessary for socialist political action, just as economics is not strictly speaking necessary for state governance.

2) This sort of thinking is, itself, antithetical to Marxist theory. Marxism rests on two fundamental theoretical positions: dialectics and materialism. By the latter is meant that the material precedes the ideal, i.e. ideas emerge to describe the real social and economic relations in the physical world, rather than ideas manifesting and reifying the material structures (as Hegel has it). The upshot of this in this context is that effecting social change is not a matter of "convincing people that your idea is good." Rather, social change comes from the real material and social relations at hand. This is why Marxism holds that the proletariat is the only class with revolutionary potential. The arrangement of social and economic relations are such that the contradiction between material alienation and regular social intercourse within the class will inevitably manifest in the proletariat transforming from a class "in itself" to a class "for itself". This isn't a matter of educated/uneducated. The role of the communist isn't to convince the proletariat that Marxism is "correct" or "a smart idea," the role of a communist is to awaken the class consciousness which already exists in every worker. And that class consciousness exists because of the material social and economic relations that worker experiences every day: their alienation - their vague sense when they come home from work at the end of each day that they got ripped off somehow. Marxism holds that this stuff will happen, the job of Marxists is to help it along.

3) The vast majority of Marxists have been uneducated. I reject such an elitist notion out of hand that one needs to possess some level of education or "intelligence" (however defined) to understand this stuff. That being said though, I think it's much easier to understand this stuff when you come in making a good faith effort to actually understand it.

 

[Traitorfish]

It's a tool which is extraordinarily useful for understanding capitalism, and for figuring out effective courses of action for political organization and revolutionary strategy, but Marxism is not strictly speaking necessary for socialist political action, just as economics is not strictly speaking necessary for state governance.

Moreover, one of Marx's central conclusions is that socialist political action will happen regardless of whether there is any theoretical body equivalent to Marxism, that it was already happening before Marx and Engels arrived on the scene, and would have continued happening whether or not they arrived at all. Marx was always very explicit that the purpose of his work was to facilitate working class political activity which he not only assumed, but knew very well from first hand experience, was going to happen whether or not he was present.

I tend to think that Marx's fundamental project was to produce an account of history, at least of modern history, from the perspective of the working class, to contribute in a rigorous and empirical way to the self-knowledge that the working class achieves through political activity. Marx himself might have disagreed with this framing, given his commitment to a "scientific" understanding of history, but I think that's a useful way to think about what Marxism is "for".

 

[Joij21]

And yet most socialists treat Marxism as if it were some kind of plan to follow and refer to. Nonetheless if we simply look at Marxism from a scholarly point of view, then how are we to trust any of his analysis as valid? Almost none of his work is scientific, he never utilizes any case studies to prove his theories. Therefore most of his "analysis" falls under the category of his own opinion not facts. Are there any current scientific studies that prove towards the conclusion that Marx was right? If so then please post links.

Then we also have the problem in Marxism where clearly the entire premise of it's theory rests on an entirely western-centric point of view. According to Marx society goes from communal->slave based->feudal->capitalist->socialist->communist. Except there's one problem, only Europe is known to go from slave based to feudal due to the fall of Rome. This is simply not replicated elsewhere. Therefore many eastern civilizations would therefore be incapable of producing capitalism according to Marx(and therefore all economic systems thereafter). He then also fails to understand that slavery also returned to the West after feudalism with the Atlantic slave trade. So it would seem that things should instead go feudal->slave based(again)->capitalist. However he then also fails to understand that a slave-based system is essentially the same as capitalism(with goods being bought and sold with private ownership). So was it capitalist->feudal->capitalist? Feudalism itself was simply the economic system which Germanic tribes that replaced Rome specifically used. Therefore is feudalism even required for capitalism to exist when it appears capitalism already existed before feudalism? Should it be communal->capitalist->socialist->communist?

So is Marx specifically proposing that only a European based culture is capable of progressing to communism? Is this perhaps maybe his own colonial/racist mindset influencing his view on what he considers to be truly civilized? Is this therefore proof that maybe Marx never considered anything outside of Europe to be true civilization, but rather a world inhabited by savages incapable of higher economic theory and thought? If so, than wouldn't a racist like Marx not be the kind of person who you would look at their work and believe it has any substance? And if a man such as Marx is incapable of coming up with an accurate portrayal of historical facts then how can one trust his validity in making future predictions as to the progression of economies/future societies? If his past interpretations are wrong then clearly his predictions that society will inevitable progress to communism must therefore also be wrong.

 

[Traitorfish]

Then we also have the problem in Marxism where clearly the entire premise of it's theory rests on an entirely western-centric point of view. According to Marx society goes from communal->slave based->feudal->capitalist->socialist->communist. Except there's one problem, only Europe is known to go from slave based to feudal due to the fall of Rome. This is simply not replicated elsewhere. Therefore many eastern civilizations would therefore be incapable of producing capitalism according to Marx(and therefore all economic systems thereafter). He then also fails to understand that slavery also returned to the West after feudalism with the Atlantic slave trade. So it would seem that things should instead go feudal->slave based(again)->capitalist. However he then also fails to understand that a slave-based system is essentially the same as capitalism(with goods being bought and sold with private ownership). So was it capitalist->feudal->capitalist? Feudalism itself was simply the economic system which Germanic tribes that replaced Rome specifically used. Therefore is feudalism even required for capitalism to exist when it appears capitalism already existed before feudalism? Should it be communal->capitalist->socialist->communist?

So is Marx specifically proposing that only a European based culture is capable of progressing to communism? Is this perhaps maybe his own colonial/racist mindset influencing his view on what he considers to be truly civilized? Is this therefore proof that maybe Marx never considered anything outside of Europe to be true civilization, but rather a world inhabited by savages incapable of higher economic theory and thought? If so, than wouldn't a racist like Marx not be the kind of person who you would look at their work and believe it has any substance? And if a man such as Marx is incapable of coming up with an accurate portrayal of historical facts then how can one trust his validity in making future predictions as to the progression of economies/future societies? If his past interpretations are wrong then clearly his predictions that society will inevitable progress to communism must therefore also be wrong.

Marx's grand historical model is really the least important thing about his work. His thinking in this line with, and derivative of, the "stageist" view of history that predominated among European scholars of his era. Like much of that scholarship, it does tend to de-historicise non-European societies, and has been consequently rejected by later generations of scholars.

What Marx is primarily concerned with is the transition from feudalism to capitalism, and from capitalism to socialism. "Feudalism", in Marx's work, really means manorialism, the agricultural organisation of medieval Western Europe, rather than the specific legal and cultural norms of Frankish Europe, which Marx saw as proceeding from manorialism. He is not concerned with the "civilisation" which is erected upon the material basis of Western European manorialism, but with the material basis itself, of the specific set of social relations it represents, and how those relations were transformed into capitalist social relations: from direct personal relationships between serf and lord to the commodity-mediated relationship of worker and employer. Marx does not consider in detail the emergence of capitalism under other circumstances, because, historically, no such alternative emergence occurs.

Marx's explanation as to why this is the case is indeed simplistic: he tends to assume that everywhere outside of Europe was dominated by unreconstructed peasant communes, which was demonstrably not the case in large parts of Asia. (Conversely, it was true of large parts of Europe, including parts of Ireland and Scotland only a few hundred miles from where Marx was writing in London.) His explanation for why Europe developed an agricultural system which with the potential to produce capitalism was hazy; Marx was not a classicist, and even if he was, the political economy of the late classical world was scarcely explored at the time he worked. But all of this is peripheral to his project of describing how capitalism emerged out of European manorialism, which he seeks to describe empirically, as something which actually happened. We do not need to refuse the possibility that capitalist agriculture might have developed on the Yangtze to acknowledge that it did develop on the Thames and the Rhine.

"Marx was racist, therefore, wrong" is not just an incredibly bad faith critique, it's also a really, really obvious one, so I'm surprised that it didn't occur to you that this might be something people have thought about previously.

 

[Crezth]

"Communism doesn't work" - Libertarian citing a guy who praised fascism.

 

[Lexicus]

"Communism doesn't work" - Libertarian citing a guy who praised fascism.

OuT oF cOnTeXt

 

[Joij21]

Marx does not consider in detail the emergence of capitalism under other circumstances, because, historically, no such alternative emergence occurs

The Roman Empire would be a perfect example that would refute that claim. It had in fact a truly capitalistic economy without any form of manorialism preceding it whatsoever. Unless your arguing that a slave owning society is not capitalist. However that would be antithetical to the Atlantic slave trade of which Carl Marx admits was capitalism.

 

[red_elk]

Unless your arguing that a slave owning society is not capitalist. However that would be antithetical to the Atlantic slave trade of which Carl Marx admits was capitalism.

How about slave owning society is not necessary capitalist?

 

[Lexicus]

Another is that “planning” is done because of those price signals that the communist seeks to abolish.

And here's how that's working out in reality...

But just as we found ourselves feeling busier than ever before, something strange happened to hospitals nationwide: the sector went into free fall. To prepare for a potential swell of patients with severe Covid-19, and to preserve critical supplies like ventilators and personal protective equipment (PPE), hospitals cancelled elective, often lucrative, surgical procedures across the board. Clinic visits were also cancelled so as to avoid turning physicians’ offices into coronavirus incubators. Meanwhile, desperate efforts to acquire additional supplies and staff put hospitals into bidding wars against each other. Costs rose, revenue sunk, and hospitals went into the red.

In the first quarter of 2020, spending on health services plunged by 18 percent, sinking gross domestic product with it. The health sector shed some 1.4 million jobs, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Some 243,000 lost employment at doctors’ offices, about 135,000 at hospitals, and around a half million at dentists’ offices. Physicians and nurses, even in Covid-19 hotspots, faced pay cuts and job losses in the middle of the pandemic. Boston Medical Center, a safety-net hospital that provided a large amount of care to Covid patients, was expected to lose $100 million in April and May, the Boston Globe reported, and proceeded to furlough some 10 percent of its staff.

This is unprecedented: health care is a famously resilient industry in the face of economic downturn. “The data clearly show,” notes a 2018 article in the Monthly Labor Review, “that the Great Recession had little, if any, negative effect on job growth in health care”—even while unemployment soared to 10 percent nationwide. But Covid-19 is different: health services shuttered across the country at the very moment that millions of people lost income and health insurance. The consequences were absurd: in the midst of a pandemic the likes of which we have not seen for a century, the U.S. health system was, paradoxically, defunded.

In truth, this is no paradox. Covid-19 hit the health care industry with simultaneous supply and demand shocks. Hospitals’ “products”—particularly elective surgeries that command high reimbursement rates from private insurers—could no longer be sold. Wares that were suddenly more valuable—like pandemic preparation, or prolonged care for patients with respiratory failure—did not pay enough, or at all. The U.S. health finance system was functioning exactly as it was designed to: it was operating as a business, and this quarter was very bad for business. The crisis hence laid bare what happens when a health system is built on the framework of capitalism—when health care is packaged into marketable units, when some patients make money for hospitals, and others do not.

 

[Crezth]

OuT oF cOnTeXt

"In the context of the 1920's, it made sense to support Hitler."

 

[Lexicus]

"In the context of the 1920's, it made sense to support Hitler."

isn't that practically a direct quote by Zardnaar

 

[Joij21]

How about slave owning society is not necessary capitalist?

You mean like Egypt? That only proves my point that economic and societal systems are not as clear cut as Marx liked to think they were. And its further nonsense to think Marx is a genius for utilizing a linear progression system to describe all mankind.

 

[Joij21]

"Marx was racist, therefore, wrong" is not just an incredibly bad faith critique, it's also a really, really obvious one, so I'm surprised that it didn't occur to you that this might be something people have thought about previously.

How is it in bad faith when your also admitting his racism appears quite obvious? You also admit that others have thought about this as well. Some of which probably adhere to or have adhered to Marxist principles as well?

 

[Crezth]

How is it in bad faith when your also admitting his racism appears quite obvious? You also admit that others have thought about this as well. Some of which probably adhere to or have adhered to Marxist principles as well?

All white folks are racist, don't be so uptight.