Is the naming of the counter-revolutionary tool of the Vatican and CIA (Walesa), or the comprador of Wall Street and enforcer of IMF austerity measures (Lula) supposed to be an argument against something I said? If so, I don’t see it.
From Sandino
It was $6.49 in 1997 adjusted dollars…but how you relate this to the fall of the soviet union is a complete mystery. It had been falling due to inflation pretty much since the '60…when the soviet union was still a going concern afaik.
How do you get that the soviet union had anything to do with this at all when the numbers were falling since '68 due to inflation??
From Sandino
What do you suppose people who own companies DO Sandino, if not work? Do you picture them sitting about in top hats smoking cigars lit with $100 bills while servants come in and out bringing them tidbits to eat and gin martini’s while the money rolls magically in??
If there is an idle rich class out there (I assume when you say “bourgeoisie” you mean the idle rich, as well as people that own their own companies), its pretty damn small IMO. I’ve actually known people that own their own companies (have YOU??) and I’ve yet to meet one that doesn’t work a hell of a lot more hours than their employees.
From Sandino
Couldn’t prove it by me. My parents folks were dirt farmers in Mexico. My folks started that way and came to America. They rose from the lowest levels of poverty to middle class through hard work. Neither of my folks even spoke English at all. I’m already surpassing them. My kids will do even better…if they work at it. There are no gifts here. If you work hard and are determined, you can do anything in this country. Contrast this to your paridise…where, if they were a factory worker, thats all they’d ever be. Oh, and they don’t have a choice to be a factory worker or not…the state decides that it needs factory workers, so thats what they are. Sounds like a lot of fun.
From Sandino
Why is the same not true of the US?? Did we start with more somehow after OUR revolution?? 'cause is sure doesn’t seem so, in any terms I can think of. Were we any more well reguarded in a world full of monarchy’s and dictatorships…with NO other democracies except a failed revolution in France? Did we not have to defeat THE world power to win our freedom, forge a new government and hold it together, moving in totally uncharted territory while doing so??
Did we not progress at a greater rate from absolutely NOTHING (very limited population, very undeveloped resources, non existant infrastructure, very few large towns let alone cities, very dispursed population…on and on)?? And…are we not still here, while the USSR self destructed and China is coming over to the dark side itself in fits and starts?? Are we not THE world superpower at this point in time? Even when the USSR was a going concern, was America still the worlds greatest industrial nation. Who might over take us some time in the near future?? Why, the EU might…who also happens to be made up of social-democracies using a modified version of the capitalist system (just as the US uses a modified version of the capitalist system).
I’m not denying that the USSR made strides in industrializing itself…it did, moving from a mostly agrarian feudal societ to a modern industrial power in a matter of a few decades…however the cost in human terms and in devistation of their environment was beyond belief. Maybe that cost is justified to you, but I don’t think many would agree with you that it was worth the price paid in either the USSR or China.
The US on the other hand, made even greater strides from a lower starting point, without the huge costs in lives (yes, there were some, and I’m not trivalizing them) or the horrible devistation of our environment (again, yes, there was some). And the US is still here…was here before the soviet revolution, is here after they have mostly been relagated to the dust bin of history…and will continue to be here for the rest of our lives at least…and most likely for several generations to come.
-XT
I love that, “there was some,” like that whole slavery thing, that must have been “kind of bad.”
In fact, the western capitalist states never advanced at anywhere near the rate of the USSR. The USSR did in a decade what it took the U.K. and U.S. to do in a century, and they did it without chattel slavery, without working their children to death in mines and candle factories, without working people at bare subsistence levels for 18 hours a day.
My question about Marxism is simple: What happens when I, as a strapping young worker, choose not to work as hard as I am able. Who decides when I’m being a slacker and need to be brought back into line? Does the group just inherently know and talk to me as a group, or are there designated people to do this task? Also, who plans the economy? How do they get appointed or whatnot? Do we simply all know that they are the right ones for the job? What happens if they seize power over the army, like Stalin did? How do we stop them?
The problem I have with Marxism is this: It works if everyone wants to play along and thinks the same way. But it can’t deal with people who try to manipulate it. I tend to look at it like Orwell did in Animal Farm.
Also, I think you need to stop using the USSR as an example of a Marxist state after the death of Lenin, since you yourself have said that it is not a good example of a true Marxist state.
That’s actually 8 questions.
In the first stage of socialism you would have to have a system of wages, where wages were based on productive output. Those who refuse to work don’t get paid. The factories would probably be managed by single managers appointed either by the local soviet or national planning council, and wages would be determined according to work. (I say “probably,” since in the USSR they experimented with a system of committee management but it didn’t work out.) The economy would be planned by a central authority elected by either a national vote or by delegates of the soviets.
Power stays in the hands of the workers exactly to the extent that they are able to defend it. We call for the arming of the workers, and are opposed to all gun control measures.
The question of Stalinism, though, is not just a question of some formality of voting or something, but of the power of the working class. Stalin was able to usurp power only because the working class had ceased to exist as a coherent class, and the state was under a siege imposed by much more powerful states surrounding it. In a healthy workers state, the power would be firmly in the hands of the working class. Any fool like Stalin that attempted any of the foul maneuvers Stalin used would be swept away with a flick of a finger by the conscious working class.
Well, thanks but I already knew the definition of dictatorship.
Anyway, here’s certainly one of the major problems I have with the system Sandino proposes. What is the use in creating havoc and tribulation (i.e. ‘smashing the state’) to replace one dictatorship with another? What, if anything, makes dictatorship of the proletariat inherently more fair than any other dictatorship? Rather cynical view of things, isn’t it?
I’m still having trouble seeing precisely why the ‘working class’, as a whole, would be fundamentally better or fairer at wielding power than any other group. Better at protecting their own interests, maybe, but what about those groups that, by the stroke of a definition, are not part of the new proletariat elite? Who protects them?
During my time at the railroad, there were some fine folks I worked with and there were some assholes (and many were drunks and/or bigots to boot), but I wasn’t very impressed with the intellectual skills of many of them, and I believe any outside observer who had attended even a few union meetings, as I did, would have cringed at the idea of any of these worthies in a position of real power.
I’ve come round to the notion that maybe it sould be fairly difficult to achieve power over other individuals, and that there should in fact be as many roadblocks as possible in the path of those who would seek to gain power, from whatever class or group. Only by doing this can we protect the interests of those (the majority, I believe) who wish to live unmolested without constantly having to fight violently for their own interests. Most importantly, the proletariat or whatever you want to call it should be just as subject to those roadblocks as any other group. That means violent revolutions would have to be only the most extreme tactic to address the most extreme situations.
So. Getting back to Sandino’s original response, an impled question is, is there an urgent need for a violent revolution in the USA right now? I’d say not. I don’t think Sandino has made any kind of effective case for the early, violent overthrow of the current US (and, presumably, western European) governments, and the remarks about some sort of nuclear war between unnamed parties being an inevitable result of capitalism strikes me as illogical and pure scaremongering.
I wonder how Sandino accounts for the overwhelmingly negative reaction to his proposals here. Yeah, I know, “brainwashing”, but I’ll just point out that without concrete descriptions of what, specificially, people would gain from such a system, people will tend to go with what they know. Sorry, Sandino, but you haven’t yet answered my main question, at least in any terms that I can comprehend. In the worker’s paradise, would I have a bigger apartment? A better wage? A newer car? A longer, more fulfilling retirement? More time to pursue my hobbies? What?
Regarding the economic case for a revolution in the USA, as others have pointed out, his figures for decline of minimum wage standards (really only one of many aspects that determine quality of life) are a bit suspect. About the only point that holds water, in my view, would be the relative lack of job security that currently exists, but the issue of what to do with those whose work is not currently needed IMO could be just as well addressed by efficient implementation of current mechanisms as by throwing everything over and starting again from scratch.
Hey, there are no doubt a huge number of people in the US who feel they haven’t got what they deserve out of life. Some have been treated unfairly, some are simply lazy. I fail to see, however, anything particularly noble or fair in dealing with this problem by simply designating one economic group or another as the enemy, and taking all their stuff.
I’ll leave central economic planning for some other time, but that one’s least convincing of all. In my view, the individual should command the economy, not the other way round. I’m afraid I’d more readily get behind a slogan along the lines of “to each according to his wants, from each according to his ability and willingness to share”.
From Sandino
Well, the difference old boy is that in the US we acknowlege our fuck ups and work to correct them. We dont hide them, or shoot people who try and bring them up, even if they ARE an embarrassment on the nation. Slavery was a horrible thing, something that we are rightfully ashamed of. Its something that we had to deal with…and we did. Contrast that to, say, your denial in the Lenin thread. When faced with real numbers you simply wave your hands and CLAIM that the numbers are bullshit…without providing a shred of proof. Now, if YOU were to show ME some numbers detailing the deaths due to slavery, I’d look at them very carefully and would most likely agree with them, or at least offer counter numbers that showed that, yes, a lot of innocent people died in the slave trade. I know that you don’t see the difference, but it is important.
The same with the foul labor practices you are refering to at the end of the quote up there. Yes, they happened in our early stages of industrialization, and they were horrible. However, again, we changed…sometimes it took brave individuals to FORCE the change, but it never too mass murder to do it…and eventually we DID change. Another key difference. And the process continues to this day.
And, admittedly socialism DID have an impact (A HUGE impact) on our system and our country…we were smart enough (well, some of us were) to take the good aspects of it and integrate it into OUR system. There ARE no true advanced Capitalist countries in the world today, and with good reason…they are all mixed to one degree or another with socialism. Our very democracy is mixed with it…and again with good reason. However, this is what our people wanted, and they didn’t have it forced down their throats at gun point. You rarely see people fleeing from a democracy to a true communist country…why do you suppose that is, where the converse IS true…hell, we see people putting themselves AND their families at risk to get away from them. Look at all that died fleeing Cuba and Vietnam in the past.
I challenge you on your assertion that the US progressed slower. My god man, we helped INVENT the industrial process…and from a start a hell of a lot lower than Russia started (Russia after all had vast man power pools, an industrial base, vast agricultural resources, vast natural resources that were already developed for the most part, a military arms industry, a relatively modern army and fleet, etc). After all, they got there start AFTER the entire industrial process had already been well established, and with an industrial base already established that the “workers and peasants” could steal and build on. Granted that they had been spanked pretty hard by the Germans in WWI, however afaik the Germans never seriously touched Russia’s industrial base. So, when the revolution happened, they had a fairly good base to start from…they didnt have to create everything from whole cloth.
America went from being basically a small colonial rebellion with a VERY limited arms manufacturing and industry (they were still importing heavily from Europe for manufactured goods and such), VERY undeveloped natural resources (most hadn’t even been identified yet), NO army at all to start, and fought two wars of independance with the worlds most powerful country in terms of military and industrial might, build up its industry from nothing (because the whole concept of ‘industrialization’ hadn’t even been invented yet by the British)…and in a relatively short time (I’d say by the early 1900’s) was probably THE industrial power in the world. By any measure I’d say that the US came further faster…and they are still going like the energizer bunny. Where is the USSR today? What about the Eastern Bloc countries? China is going well…but then, they have adopted many of the capitalist ways to do so.
-XT
A question for our resident Marxists, and I’ll confess to have only a superficial understanding of all of Marx’s theories, so please correct any assumptions I make that are wrong.
Doesn’t Marx posit that the worker’s state, once fully realised, will alter human nature and usher in a new type of human consciousness more suited to the communist system? I’d be very interested in the details of this and whether, if did make such a prediction, modern Marxists still subscribe to that idea.
We’ve come a long way in our understanding of what human nature is and how it got that way since Marx was putting his thoughts down on paper.
You’re getting a bit ahead of yourself. The decade in which the USSR made the greatest strides in industrial output was 1927-1937, which coincides with the worst times of Stalin’s rule; a man that you seem to admit was a mass murdering monster. People were used as chattel slaves belonging to the state, worked to death, and wages in fact fell during this period as well.
Oh hang on; you just dismissed Lech Walesa as a counter-revolutionary tool. I think the point of mentioning him was an example of how undemocratic and un-free a communist society is when it bans labour unions.
But…but…Dissonance! Labor union are unnecessary in true Marxist nations because the state is composed of the workers, and therefore cannot have other than the workers’ best interests in mind. Therefore labor unions are unnecessary agitators which are best dealt with by re-education.
I’m tempted to just email this to someone else on the boards and check it against Sandino’s real answer when he posts it, but oh well…
Cite?
It’s not about the philosophy, or the persecutions, or the economic mismanagement, or the terror…
It’s about the Gnarly Christmas Gifts!
Sandino,
I’m very unfamiliar with Marxism. I would really, truly like to know the answer to my question about starting my own business.
If I scrimp and save til I have enough capital to start my own business, say a restaurant, and I hire some people to help me run it, does that render me a member of bourgeoisie?
Sam, that site is the funniest thing I’ve seen in a long time. “beanie baby progrom” LOL I’m going to laugh about his for several days. Thanks!
…even though you’ll end up doing four times as much work as any one of your future employees just to keep the restaurant breaking even…
*Originally posted by pervert *
Well, I think we are probalby quibbling over the term capitalistic tendencies. I think of capitalism in a more strict sense (like the definition you provided above), rather than such things as as private property and exchange (sharing/trade). These things are found in all socieities and all economic systems in different forms and to different degrees.
OK, I think we are clearer now. I think the only difference here is that I would disagree there being many aspects of capitalism found in hunter/gatherer socieities. There are some (some concept of property and sharing/trade, for example), but there are many differences - which is why one can make a distinction between the two. Your right, we would need to show how these tendencies in human behavior (some idea of property and sharing/trading) take us from hunter/gatherer socieities, to chiefdoms, to straified agricultural societies, to agricultural capitalistic societies, to merchant capitalistic societies, to industrial capitalistic societies, to where we are today.
Well, I do think that humans (that is most humans) DO have some moral sense. That is, I think that you would be upset if I raided your band and took all of your finely-crafted spears. I think what is important to get at is understanding how diffrent socieities deal with such issues as exhange (trade and sharing) and how conflict is resolved (from simple disputes to warfare).
In hunter/gatherer socieites there was more of a tendency of fusion/fission in their approach in surviving and dealing with other humans. That is, hunter/gatherers tended to band together for survivial purposes. But if conditions within the band became too confining (for example, disputes between members), it was relatively easy for some members of the band to simply leave (and possibly join up with other human beings).
WIth the advent of the agricultural revolution, you start to see different forms of human organization. This is around the time when stratified socieities became much more common. People were much more restricted in their ability to simply leave a given geographic area; so some kind of system needed to be in place that helped deal with simple disputes/warfare and activity such as trading and sharing.
It’s not a coincidence that with the agricultural revolution society became more stratified (and interesting question to answer would be to ask whether the stratification occurred before the agricultural revolution - as a result of, say climatic change or population pressure - or whether the agricultural revoluton was responsible for creating the stratification). Someone or some group became responsible for monitoring/organizing this society. So in this regard, you see the beginnings of government (and later the state) as a component of society.
I agree…
Well, again, it depends on what you mean by sharing. If I’m forced to give you some of my stuff with nothing in return - in a way, this is uncapitalistic. But we do this all the time (example - taxes). Taxes are sometimes seen as “the cost of doing business”. Many people don’t have a problem with taxes if there is a system in place that is reasonably fair. Of course, the bigger question is what are fair taxes?
There are also other activities that we are compelled or forced to do. I think here a major distinction is the degree to which people are forced or compelled to do certain things.
If you mean legally enforced sharing in the sense of exchange or trade, then it is HIGHLY capitalistic. In other words, if I agree to work for you for a set salary and you agree to pay said salary, then we have entered a contract. And a contract is an agreement between you and me - I agree to give you my labor in return for you giving me money. If, on the other hand, you decide not to pay me, what recourse do I have? One of the key principles underlying capitalistic societies is a means of enforcing agreements (and also enforcing property rights). If we weren’t compelled to abide by are agreement (our trade with one another), then the system of capitalism wouldn’t work very well (indeed, it might not even be seen as capitalistic).
Hmm…interesting question. I really don’t know about this. There are certain advantages in some societies to engage in theft rather than trade. If I’m bigger and stronger than you, I can make you work for me (slavery). Why go to all the trouble to “make nice” with other people (in order to trade) if there is an economic/social advantage for me (and my group) to have others do it for me (like nomadic pastorialists who raid agricultural settlements)?
Ah, a very interesting question. Some would contend that it is an inherent nature of humanity to engage in warfare. I don’t doubt that humans are more aggressive than many other animals (biologically speaking), but I think our agressiveness manifests itself only in certain conditions (such as resource scarcity and population pressures). Again, I think there is a close parallel between the rise of stratified societies (as a result of the agricluture revolution) and a rise in our propensity to engage in aggressive behavior.
I agree - but I think one area where Marx falters is in his understanding of just how important our biological nature is with respect to the “mode of production” (economic activity) and how socities come to become organized. I know Marx had a extreme dislike of Thomas Malthus (an early economist), but Malthus did touch on a key theme regarding human beings - our propensity to increase our numbers (to have offspring). And I think that such things as an increasing population in a given area with limited resources (or the inability to produce resources to maintain a rising population) do play a critical role in our understanding of how socieities are organized and how they evolve over time.
This is a little OT, but I’ll indulge anyway.
Nazism is thoroughly infused with racism and any manifestation of it, no matter how small seems to lead to violence. Therefore I think it needs to be fought anywhere it springs up. Furthermore, it seems to be rotten the core. I have a hard time imagining any good intentions associated with it.
Many bad things have been done in the name of something good, but Nazism is just a bad thing to begin with.
I truly believe that Sandino, for example, has some good intentions, therefore I think there is far more to be gained by debate than outright denunciation. For me, it would be like denouncing Catholics because of the inquisition.
I agree, “many” was the wrong word to use. I shoudl have said something to the effect that some of the most important aspects of capitalism can be found in nature.
I think we may be quibbling again. I started this hijack because of my knee jerk reaction to the word share. It now appears you may have simply meant transfer. I usually draw distinctions between sharing, trading, and taking. They all involve transfering of resources. But they have very distinct moral implications. <OverSimplificationWarning> Specifically, trading is good, sharing is nuetral, and taking is bad. </OverSimplificationWarning> I have a problem when the moral implications of trading and sharing are reversed. It implies that giving something for nothing (sacrifice) is a good thing while trading value for value is somehow not as good.
Well, the sense of loss you describe is not exactly what I meant by moral implications of stealing. I was concerend more with the conceptualization that is wrong for the stealer to steal. Not simply that it is wrong to be stolen from, but that it is wrong to steal. I don’t think this sense of the morality of theft developed until much later.
I would like to suggest to you that communism is as well. I am certainly not defending Nazis, racists, or anything like that. I would just like to point out that communism may in fact be worse. The phrase “from each according to his ability to each according to his need” implys a slavery of the able to the incompetent. It means that those who cannot do become slavers. Racism is clearly irrational. But this philosophy is the opposite of irrational. It suggests that some humans are not people because they are able to produce wealth. Facists and Communists both share a willingness to allow the state to decide arbitrarily what people are worth. While they differ in what constitutes worth, and they are certainly both irrational, I would suggest that communism is more irrational to the extent that is possible.
Ok, that’s my radical libertarian rant for this thread. 