"Hey, Karl! Karl Marx! What have you been up to? I've not seen you since 1989!"

[samclem]

While we appreciate humor in responses, too much, pointed in good fun towards current political groups, tends to send the thread off-track. Let’s keep it about the OP as much as possible.

Just saying…

samclem GQ moderator

[Northern_Piper]

@Gorsnak

@Northern Piper

So, is there anywhere that the Marxist theory still is in vogue, other than Cuba and Vietnam?

This is about the Saskatchewan election, the NDP, and the Regina Manifesto, isn’t it?

Merely following up on the historical dialectic…

[Northern_Piper]

@Derleth

@CateAyo

Lenin, Trotsky and Stalin corrupted the premise in the Soviet Union. Mao did the same in China.

Marxists are fond of saying this whenever someone points out that Marxism has been the proximate cause of some of the worst failures of the 20th Century. The problem with these statements is that it’s shifting the goalposts: Those countries were indeed founded on a Marxist footing and Marxists then accepted them as such. Claiming they were not Marxist now that they have failed is redefining your terms midstream and is fundamentally dishonest.

This is actually what prompted my question. Back around 1990 or 1991, I got in a little discussion about the implications for the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-away of the former Warsaw Pact countries, and the establishment of new governments therein. I innocently stated that it seemed to me that Marxism was now pretty much dead as political/economic philosophy, and was promptly corrected by one of the other people in the discussion, who said that the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries weren’t really Marxist, so the dissolution of the Soviet bloc really wasn’t a comment on the correctness of Marxism.

I thought I’d update myself on this issue, hence this thread.

[Shagnasty]

@Northern Piper

This is actually what prompted my question. Back around 1990 or 1991, I got in a little discussion about the implications for the fall of the Soviet Union and the break-away of the former Warsaw Pact countries, and the establishment of new governments therein. I innocently stated that it seemed to me that Marxism was now pretty much dead as political/economic philosophy, and was promptly corrected by one of the other people in the discussion, who said that the USSR and Warsaw Pact countries weren’t really Marxist, so the dissolution of the Soviet bloc really wasn’t a comment on the correctness of Marxism.

I thought I’d update myself on this issue, hence this thread.

It is turtles pretty much all the way down so don’t expect a full resolution on this issue in your lifetime.

[WarmNPrickly]

I’ve always thought of Karl Marx as the Sigmund Freud of political science. Many of his ideas were dead wrong, but he demonstrated a new way to analyze and approach the problem that fundamentally changed the way things are done today.

[jayjay]

@samclem

While we appreciate humor in responses, too much, pointed in good fun towards current political groups, tends to send the thread off-track. Let’s keep it about the OP as much as possible.

Just saying…

samclem GQ moderator

Sorry, sam. I lost track of the fact that this was in GQ.

[Charlie_Tan]

@Derleth

Needless to say, Marxist Economic Determinism is a crock of fragrant shit.

@Lumpy

As far as being a theory goes, Marxism is today regarded as a fascinating, thought-provoking theory whose predictions were pretty much dead wrong.

Care to offer some examples? The predictions that the first country which would be faced with a workers’ revolution would be Russia? That there would be a shift in economic power from the North Atlantic (W.Europe and the American North East) to the Pacific Rim? Things he wrote in the middle of the 19th century?

People from both the left and the right tend to refer to Marx without having read the original sources, those on the right laugh and point tothe fall of the USSR and (some) people on the left say that “Well, that wasn’t true Marxism.”

Marx might more correctly be labeled philosopher and he wrote copious amounts of text. Some of it looked at the world around him qand made predictions as to what might happen. Those philosophical musings have since been used by a number of people for a number of reasons, but I think the precise reason many of them didn’t come to pass is in fact due to the Russian Revolution of '17. Many countries, ravaged from WWI, looked in horror and realized that the same fate might be in for the ruling class, the rich, the aristocracy and the royalty, as had happened in Russia. It’s no coincidence that the universal franchise to vote came to be in almost all Western European countries in the ‘20s. The backlash that followed (Nazism, Fascism) are equally logical and the equilibrium that eventually followed, after WWII, is quite in line with som of Marx’ predictions. There’s more power and more wealth in the hand of ‘the people’ today than ever before. The mean to get there turned out to be capitalism and not (an armed) revolution. But it really is quite the revolution, looking at a perspective from 150 years ago.

Don’t dismiss Marx for the corrupted failure of some regimes doing stupid things in his name during the 20th century.

[Northern_Piper]

@Charlie Tan

The predictions that the first country which would be faced with a workers’ revolution would be Russia?

Is that correct? I thought that Marx predicted that the revolution would come in the heavily industrialised countries, as the next step in the development after the industrial revolution? Russia wasn’t a heavily industrialised country, so didn’t Lenin then develop the modification to Marxist theory to explain why the Revolution came to Russia? (Hence the term “Marxist-Leninist”)?

Please let me know if I’ve got this incorrect - PolSci 101 is a long way off in my rear-view mirror.

[Shagnasty]

@Charlie Tan

Don’t dismiss Marx for the corrupted failure of some regimes doing stupid things in his name during the 20th century.

Under what circumstances would it be possible for anyone to legitimately dismiss Marx and his ideas in your estimation? It seems that is not possible for most of his die-hard supporters and that is the sign of a crack-pot at best.

[Captain_Amazing]

@Charlie Tan

Care to offer some examples? The predictions that the first country which would be faced with a workers’ revolution would be Russia?

From Engel’s afteword to Marx’s “On Social Relations in Russia” (bolding mine)

On the other hand, it is not only possible but certain that after the victory of the proletariat and the transfer of the means of production into common ownership among the West European peoples, the countries which have only just succumbed to capitalist production and have salvaged gentile institutions, or remnants thereof, have in these remnants of common ownership and in the corresponding popular customs a powerful means of appreciably shortening the process of development into a socialist society and of sparing themselves most of the suffering and struggles through which we in Western Europe must work our way. But the example and the active assistance of the hitherto capitalist West is an indispensable condition for this. Only when the capitalist economy has been relegated to the history books in its homeland and in the countries where it flourished, only when the backward countries see from this example “how it’s done”, how the productive forces of modern industry are placed in the service of all as social property — only then can they tackle this shortened process of development. But then success will be assured. And this is true of all countries in the pre-capitalist stage, not only Russia. It will be easiest — comparatively speaking — in Russia, however, because there a section of the indigenous population has already assimilated the intellectual results of capitalist development, thereby making it possible in revolutionary times to accomplish the social transformation more or less simultaneously with the West.

[Charlie_Tan]

@Shagnasty

Under what circumstances would it be possible for anyone to legitimately dismiss Marx and his ideas in your estimation? It seems that is not possible for most of his die-hard supporters and that is the sign of a crack-pot at best.

It’s quite easy to dismiss the application of his theories in former and current communist countries, and I do just that. It’s just that I’m tired of the memes *Marx had some beautiful ideas, but they could never work in the real world * and Well, of course he was a crack-pot, look what happened to the Soviet Union.
Marx wrote so much, it’s intelectually lazy to just dismiss him for the few things he wrote, that ended up inspiring the failed communist experiments of the 20th century.

And, all in all, I can’t think of a single individual who had a bigger influence on the world during the 20th century than him.

[CateAyo]

@Charlie Tan

People from both the left and the right tend to refer to Marx without having read the original sources, those on the right laugh and point to the fall of the USSR and (some) people on the left say that “Well, that wasn’t true Marxism.”… Don’t dismiss Marx for the corrupted failure of some regimes doing stupid things in his name during the 20th century.

Thank you. You made my points far better than I.

I also agree with your remark, later, vis a vis, intellectual laziness on both sides of the political spectrum regarding Marx. Thanks.

[Gfactor]

Moved from General Questions to Great Debates.

Gfactor
General Questions Moderator

[CJJ]

A similar question was broguht up in this thread some time ago, one I remembered because it gave what I consider a very good answer:

@Exapno Mapcase

Marx took a specific problem, the rapid industrialization of Europe in general and Britain in particular, saw some real and overwhelming evils, and postulated a general solution.

With hindsight, we can see that the general solution would not have worked and that it was applied in times and places outside of the original. But the problem was very real. It was solved only through government action, which Marx believed was an impossibly - quite true in the monarchies of Europe of his time.

In the very long term, capitalism has created middle classes and this was the solution to the problem Marx was facing. He could not have foreseen this, because nobody foresaw this. And it wouldn’t have pleased him to learn that even in the best of all examples, the U.S., it would take a full century for the solution to come to pass.

I think this is the best approach to Marx: He was addressing a specific problem at a specific point in time, developed an economic theory to understand what he was seeing, and made predictions based on it. The theory has since been abused, and the problem he addressed was solved in a way he could not anticipate; he would not be the first historical philosopher to get his predictions wrong. His writings then are interesting for the way he identified the problem, not necessarily for the solution he proposed.

[Red_Black]

@Derleth

Marxists are fond of saying this whenever someone points out that Marxism has been the proximate cause of some of the worst failures of the 20th Century. The problem with these statements is that it’s shifting the goalposts: Those countries were indeed founded on a Marxist footing and Marxists then accepted them as such. Claiming they were not Marxist now that they have failed is redefining your terms midstream and is fundamentally dishonest.Marxist Economic Determinism predicted that the governments of the world would wither and die once the Revolution had been stabilized and the Proletariat empowered. Needless to say, Marxist Economic Determinism is a crock of fragrant shit.

Stuff and nonsense. Perhaps you could point out to me exactly how the USSR (for example) actually followed the principles that Marx set out. The degenerated workers state set up there had nothing to do with what Marx envisaged.

You do know that Marxism actually gets rid of the state, right?

[Derleth]

@Red & Black

The degenerated workers state set up there had nothing to do with what Marx envisaged.

Again with this statement. It seems an article of faith.

You do know that Marxism actually gets rid of the state, right?

Not in practice it doesn’t. Only in the dreams of Marxists.

Marx quite clearly said that Capitalism would inevitably lead to Communism. In fact it has not: Communism has never replaced a Democratic Capitalist nation where it stood. Marx also stated that an important feature of Communism is the planned economy. In fact that has never worked whenever it has been tried and has always lead to shortages of essential goods. Come back when you have a solution for the calculation problem.

To take a more detailed view (all quotes are translations of Marx):
[ul]
[li]“Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other – bourgeoisie and proletariat.” Stuff and nonsense. The middle class rose and my closest friends, for example, are neither bourgeoisie nor proletariat.[/li][li]“Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells.” Bemoaning the lack of centralized control only makes you look the fool, Marx. Hayek so firmly refuted this tripe anything I could add would be superfluous.[/li][li]“It is enough to mention the commercial crises [recessions] that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly.” We don’t have Panics anymore. We don’t have runs on banks anymore. We don’t have capital-D Depressions anymore. The system was improved. Marx believed it couldn’t be, and Marx was wrong.[/li][li] “Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce.” So being able to live better than my great-grandparents is wrong somehow? Nonsense![/li][/ul]Now let’s get to the meat of Marx’s plan:
[ul]
[li]“Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.” The USSR did this.[/li][li]“A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.” The USSR did this.[/li][li]“Abolition of all rights of inheritance.” The USSR at least did something close to this.[/li][li]“Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.” The USSR did this. The USSR went so far as to confiscate their lives.[/li][li]“Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.” The USSR did this.[/li][li]“Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.” The USSR was famous for this. "There is no Truth in Pravda… ", remember?[/li][li]“Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.” The USSR did this. Resulted in a lot of people with no business holding a shovel trying to farm.[/li][li]“Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form.” The USSR did this. The problem for Marxism is that so did the Capitalist countries.[/li][/ul]

[BrainGlutton]

Socialist parties of various forms, most of them at least influenced by Marxism, have long been and are still major players in the politics of every industrialized democracy on Earth, except the United States. (This book examines why that is.)

[LonesomePolecat]

@BrainGlutton

Socialist parties of various forms, most of them at least influenced by Marxism, have long been and are still major players in the politics of every industrialized democracy on Earth, except the United States. (This book examines why that is.)

You think the Democrats aren’t socialist, that no Democrat in today’s party has been directly or indirectly influenced by Marx, Lenin & Associates? An amusing notion.

[BrainGlutton]

@LonesomePolecat

You think the Democrats aren’t socialist, that no Democrat in today’s party has been directly or indirectly influenced by Marx, Lenin & Associates? An amusing notion.

I have no doubt most members of the Socialist Party USA or the Democratic Socialists of America vote Democrat in most elections because, well, what else are they gonna do?

Nevertheless, no, the Democrats aren’t socialist. A moronic notion. :dubious:

[Gorsnak]

@LonesomePolecat

You think the Democrats aren’t socialist, that no Democrat in today’s party has been directly or indirectly influenced by Marx, Lenin & Associates? An amusing notion.

While there is some socialist influence on the Democratic Party, it’s pretty minimal. I would expect it was somewhat more substantial back in the New Deal days, but by the standards of that time the New Deal would have been a pretty minimal influence.

I was tongue-in-cheek when I made reference to the Regina Manifesto before, but perhaps I should elaborate. The third largest national political party in Canada is the New Democratic Party, which was formed out of the earlier Canadian Commonwealth Federation. The founding document of the CCF is the Regina Manifesto, which is an out and out communist document. Granted the current NDP government in Saskatchewan has shifted away from socialism to an extent that would have Tommy Douglas spinning in his grave, it is a party with socialist roots and with socialist influences completely unlike your Democratic Party. Most western European nations have similar socialist parties. That’s what BrainGlutton was talking about, not some slightly leftist tendency amongst a few Democrats.