The Offtopicgrad Soviet: A Place to Discuss All Things Red

[red_elk]

That was so cool.

I see LSD reached the Soviet art community.

Can only say for sure that it reached Armenian art community at that time.

Spoiler :

Link to video.

 

[Hygro]

this strongly reminds me of the one time I took Ambien to sleep and instead was awake hallucinating for 3 hours.

 

[Cheezy the Wiz]

I don't agree that getting rid of materialism cripples marxism, which is why I'm a Marxian and not a Marxist

Well without materialism it becomes basically a Hegelian system, and thus totally unworkable with regards to history.

 

[Tahuti]

Now, here is a chicken or egg question: Did capitalism originate from the conception of the modern state, or vice versa?

 

[Lexicus]

Well without materialism it becomes basically a Hegelian system, and thus totally unworkable with regards to history.

I'm not sure what exactly you mean by this. Dialectical materialism can't be used to predict any historical events as-is, if that's what you mean by something that's "workable with regard to history."

 

[aelf]

Now, here is a chicken or egg question: Did capitalism originate from the conception of the modern state, or vice versa?

Under dialectical materialism, capitalism clearly comes first. Social relations of production determine the political system, which is why feudalism gave way to the modern state.

 

[Lexicus]

Under dialectical materialism, capitalism clearly comes first. Social relations of production determine the political system, which is why feudalism gave way to the modern state.

Well, it's actually not true that dialectical materialism would predict capitalism coming before the modern state.
The modern state is what allowed capitalism to displace feudalism. The modern state came first in actual history.

 

[aelf]

I'm pretty sure that that's not correct from an orthodox Marxist viewpoint. The modern state is predicated on the monopoly of power to protect property ownership. For this to happen, there must first have been a propertied class to bring it about, and this ruling class is distinct from the landed class that relied on serfdom.

 

[Lexicus]

I'm pretty sure that that's not correct from an orthodox Marxist viewpoint. The modern state is predicated on the monopoly of power to protect property ownership. For this to happen, there must first have been a propertied class to bring it about, and this ruling class is distinct from the landed class that relied on serfdom.

The state, period, is an entity which protects private property - Orthodox Marxists would recognize pre-modern states as fulfilling that function as well.
Note also that the mere existence of the bourgeois class is not synonymous with capitalism in any theory I'm aware of. The bourgeois has arguably existed in one form or another since the classical age.

 

[Hygro]

When did the modern state arise? Capitalism emerged in 12th century Italy.

 

[Lexicus]

Nonsense, capitalism emerged in 19th century England.

 

[Hygro]

There's a /s missing, right?

 

[Lexicus]

Capitalism emerged when markets in labor, land, and money were established...in other words, in 19th century England. Specifically with the passage of the New Poor Law in 1834 which abolished the system of poor relief and forced the poor to find employment or be consigned to the workhouse.

Don't take my word for it, read Weber and Polanyi, whom I consider to be authoritative on this question. The establishment of a market in labor is the most important development because it places the substance of life itself at the disposal of the capitalists.

 

[Flying Pig]

So how come we got rid of the workhouses, and capitalism did just fine? Or how come it sprung up independently in places with no workhouses?

 

[Lexicus]

The workhouses aren't essential to the point, which is that you need to make the practical alternatives to wage labor even worse than wage labor in order to set up a labor market. The idealized version of this is work or starve, the workhouses were a third option, they could have been done away with and the dynamic wouldn't have changed much if at all.

 

[Hygro]

Capitalism emerged when markets in labor, land, and money were established...in other words, in 19th century England. 12th century Italy. Specifically with the passage of the New Poor Law in 1834 which abolished the system of poor relief and forced the poor to find employment or be consigned to the workhouse. installation of mechanical clocks in town centers, allowing the common folk to understand abstract (labor-time, especially) commodification and the buying and selling of labor-time.

Made a couple of edits.

 

[Flying Pig]

The workhouses aren't essential to the point, which is that you need to make the practical alternatives to wage labor even worse than wage labor in order to set up a labor market. The idealized version of this is work or starve, the workhouses were a third option, they could have been done away with and the dynamic wouldn't have changed much if at all.

You've got poor people starving and freezing to death through most of history, though, so I don't buy that capitalism happens when the poor are stopped from being idle and more and pull themselves up by their bootstraps into wage labour - you've got the same basic assumption about what poverty is as the Osbornes, Camerons and Trumps of this world.

 

[Tahuti]

When did the modern state arise? Capitalism emerged in 12th century Italy.

It's a fuzzy process. 17th century Netherlands is suggested as a starting point for capitalism as well, along with the modern state (Treaty of Westphalia, which I'm sure Dachs will destroy without mercy).

The British land enclosures are argued as a starting point for both modern statecraft as well as capitalism.

So the answer would probably be "Between the 12th and 19th century".

 

[Vectors]

Are worker's cooperatives viewed positively as a way to bring about class consciousness of the proletariat and widening the spread of the means of production?

 

[Lexicus]

Made a couple of edits.

And while that is probably an important precondition of capitalism it is not synonymous with capitalism.

You've got poor people starving and freezing to death through most of history, though, so I don't buy that capitalism happens when the poor are stopped from being idle and more and pull themselves up by their bootstraps into wage labour - you've got the same basic assumption about what poverty is as the Osbornes, Camerons and Trumps of this world.

So, honestly, I have no idea where you got this from. Poverty is a consequence of the social situation, and in England where capitalism got started the free peasantry had to be prised off the land and into idleness before that "problem" could be fixed by compelling them to work or starve.
The work or starve arrangement is often horribly cruel and monstrously unjust but at bottom it is largely responsible for the tremendous growth of productive capacities over the past two centuries.
Poverty in the advanced capitalist countries today is all the result of arrangements which are held to by conscious choice. In the US for example we purposely keep people unemployed in the name of fighting inflation.