Marxism: what's in it for me?

[Sandino]

*Originally posted by El_Kabong *
**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?**

Who said anything about “creating havoc and tribulation”? We don’t claim to have the ability to start a revolution out of whole cloth. Rather, the capitalist system itself creates its own crises, which recur periodically. The laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production intensify the contradictions inherent in capitalism. This eventually leads to a breakdown where the system is unable to operate as before. At such a time, it can become possible for the working class to take power, provided they have built the organizations and developed the consciousness required.

As Marxists, we fight for the improvement of the day-to-day living standards of the workers. This is not only an end in itself, but serves the higher purpose of strengthening the working class as a whole. Only a united and strong working class, with a highly developed consciousness can take power during a crisis, and ward off the destruction of civilization.

Which is another point you seem to have brushed off. Apparently you don’t want to accept that capitalism will eventually gring civilization itself into dust, if a thermonuclear holocaust doesn’t eliminate life on Earth first.

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?

This is a question that depends on which class you solidarize with. If you are with the workers, then you would want to overthrow the oppressors and exploiters of the working class.

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.

We don’t idolize the working class as it is. The working class will only be able to come to power if it unites. This can only be done if the proletariat becomes the vanguard of all the oppressed, fighting not only to liberate itself, but all of humanity.

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.

What a ridiculous statement. We are living in a world that is dominated by the dictatorship of capital. The tiny minority of exploiters who run the U.S., rule the world through force. We are talking not about grabbing power where there was none, but throwing out the bloody imperialists and instituting the rule of the oppressed.

It strikes me that you may need to educate yourself on the true nature of imperialism. Do you read any leftist periodicals?

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.

The world today looks much like it did in 1913. The destruction of the USSR opened the door to a partial return to pre-WWI norms. And, right up to a few years before the war, people said things much like you wrote above. Europe had lived in “peace” (within Europe, at least–it was raping the rest of the world) for 50 years. Yet, this “peace” was illusory, in that it only masked the simmering conflict underneath.

WWI was a contest to divide the world’s spoils among the great powers. Essentially it was a contest to see whether Britain or Germany would dominate the world. The shifting economic power of the advanced capitalist states was at odds with the military and political dominance of the world by the U.K.

Today is a similar situation. The U.S. rules the world for the moment, but it does so only because it has overwhelming military power. It’s economic power, however, does not match its military and political dominance. In order to maintain this dominance, it will be compelled to engage in an ever increasing series of wars and counter-insurgency campaigns. The increased intensity of competition between the capitalist states after the fall of the USSR has necessitated increased exploitation of workers at home, but even more so abroad. The workers of Latin America, for example, are really being smashed. The U.S. is compelled to increase the exploitation of its super-exploited wage slaves overseas. In addition, it is compelled to protect its interests all over the world, which will mean more military adventures, like the one in Iraq for example.

The other advanced capitalist states are not going to just sit back and let this happen. They are in a fight to the death with their American counterparts for markets and resources. The increasing economic power of Japan and Germany can easily be transformed into military power. It will be a matter of time before competition over markets turns into trade wars, which become shooting wars. We have already seen a presentiment of this in the struggle over the spoils in Iraq, for instance, as France was desperate to stop the Americans from stealing “their” oil. The current spat over steel tariffs are another example of an incipient trade war.

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.

Most of it is brainwashing. These boards self-select for the most brainwashed people in our society, so of course, there is going to be a lot of hostility to Marxism. Another reason is that very few of the board members are working people. I read a few threads before I started posting here, and I remember one on picket lines. Most of the posters were quite open about their intention to cross picket lines. That is an indication of the class nature of this board, which is very hostile to working people.

** 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?**

Didn’t I say that, every worker would experience a huge increase in living standards.

The goal of Marxists is to reduce the amount of time people have to spend doing arduous labor. We want to see living standards for working people improved, and working hours declined. Under a planned, collectivized economy this becomes possible. Instead of technological improvements putting people out of work, they would be used to decrease the working hours, so that people could spend more of their time improving themselves. Since the economy is planned, it is much more efficient and productive. This becomes a positive feedback loop–as more people have more time to devote to their own education, you get a greater improvement in the sciences and arts, which creates ever greater improvements in technology, which makes it possible to reduce the working hours still further, and so on. Within ten years, I would say, we could have a twenty hour work week. Within twenty years, a ten hour work week.

There is no limit to the productivity of a planned economy. Eventually it could become so productive that people voluntarily donate labour power, and recieve everything they desire. This is the highest stage of communism, where there exists no state or classes, and is based on, “From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs.”

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.

Suspect? I remembered the exact figure wrong, but it is a fact that the minimum wage has been declining for the past three decades. Other measures of well-being for working people tell a quite similar tale. In general, living standards have been getting worse, and there is no sign that they will improve. ONLY militant class battles have the potential to bring gains for working people.

The thing about “efficient implementation” is somewhat funny. There can never be such a thing in a capitalist economy. Capitalism is not a rational system. It does not operate on principles that have anything to do with meeting human needs, but for the sole purpose of creating profit. A necessary component of this is the maintanence of the reserved army of the unemployed. Unemployment is not a failing of capitalism, but a necessary part of capitalism. Job security is something that can never exist under capitalism.

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.

Working people create the wealth of society, they should decide how it is distributed. You are proposing to just let the exploiters keep on exploiting.

**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”. **

What kind of meaningless nonsense is this: “the individual should command the economy”!?

Capitalism is a system of generalized commodity production, that grew out of a historical process. It has nothing whatever to do with “individuals commanding the economy.” The economy is “commanded” by the compulsion to maximize profit.

[XT]

Completely enjoyed the discussion eponymous.

From eponymous

I think one of the biggest flaws in Marx’s analysis of capitalism is what you’ve stated above. Marx failed to anticipate how adaptive and resilliant capitalism would and has become (by incorporating elements of socialism). However, Marxian’s are still around trying to salvage some of Marx’s insights into the nature of capitalism. They might argue that just because capitalism has become adaptive and resilliant over time, doesn’t necessarily imply that it will continue to be so in the future. So Marx’s critique of capitalism hasn’t necesarily become invalid.

I have to say, I’ve never seen a committed Marxist ever back off or attempt to modify their system based on empirical data. Most of the time they have their heads buried so far in Marx/Lenin/Engels works that they wouldn’t know reality if it bit them on the bottom. Look at Sandino for a good example. All of the Marxist (the committed ones) are just like him. There is no give in them at all…they will MAKE the world conform to their own world view.

However, you are right. Just because they haven’t been willing to change or modify before (with the possible exception of China…they SEEM to be trying to do what the capitalist nations die, i.e. integrate some of the more palatable things from the opposing system) doesn’t mean that they never will. Maybe they will. As I said in an earlier post, I would like to see a peaceful and productive try at it…but IMO, a modification of marxism using democratic/capitalism elements would really be only degrees different than, say, modern European capitalism, with its heavy emphasis on socialistic aspects.

-XT

[Sandino]

*Originally posted by dal_timgar *
I just think Marxism is a nice but unworkable, theoretical ideal.

Marxism is NOT an ideal. It is not a philosophy. It is not a type of government, economic system or society. Marxism is a doctrine, that is to say, it is a theory and a guide to action.

Marxist practice flows from a science of logic called dialectics, which, briefly, says everything changes. Marxists don’t look at the world as a collection of things, but as a series of processes. Everything that exists came into existence, and will pass away. Nothing is eternal or unchanging.

We try to look at things in their historical process of becoming. We don’t look at things in isolation, for nothing can be separated out from the rest of the world, nothing exists except as part of a historical process.

It was this way of looking at the world that allowed Marx to “uncover the laws of motion of the capitalist mode of production,” as he put his goal in Capital. Capitalism is NOT a static system, but constantly changes. By observing the laws which underlie the motion of capital, one can see how the thing changes, how it creates its own gravediggers, and how it works inexorably toward a crisis, a state where it is unable to function.

[jayjay]

It’s been an awfully long journey to that crisis, Sandino. Did we miss it?

[pervert]

Perhaps all of the true communists were taken in the rapture?
Sorry, sorry. no offence to the rapturists amongst us.

[Sandino]

*Originally posted by Shodan *
Take the first Five Year Plan. Collectivization of agriculture was going to cause the huge increases in productivity that Sandino has predicted repeatedly for a planned economy over free markets. It didn’t. By 1932, 60% of the USSR had been collectivized, but farm output dropped by 23%.

When you are sworn in in a courtroom, they ask you to promise to tell “the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.” The reason for the “whole” truth part is that one can tell a lie by only giving a part of the truth, such as what you have written above.

It is true that agricultural output declined in the first few years of collectivization. What you “forgot” to mention, though, is that these years were nothing less than a civil war in the countryside, and a massive famine wracked the land in 1931-2. Does this mean that collectivized agriculture is less productive than individually owned farms, though? Of course not.

The history of the collectivization of agriculture in the USSR is a long and disgusting one. Essentially, the Stalinists were forced into it, after appeasing the kulaks for a decade. Truly criminal mismanagement and the monstrous methods of the Stalinists created a catastrophe during the first few years.

There is no question, though, but that the industrialization of the USSR was achieved at a rate that far surpasses any other economy in history. It is difficult to measure things like GDP for a state like the USSR in the 1930’s, but what can be measured are the outputs of important products. For example, production of coal, oil and iron increased by over 300%, steel by 250%. The number of power stations increased from 20 to 95 from 1920 to 1935, with an increase of kilowatts from 253,000 to 4,345,000. Industrial production increased by around 300%, and in particular, the heavy industries increased their output by more than 10 times. As Trotsky put it, “Socialism has demonstrated its right to victory, not on the pages of Das Kapital, but in an industrial arena comprising a sixth part of the earth’s surface–not in the language of dialectics, but in the language of steel, cement and electricity.”

This is an indubitable fact, and attempts to muddy the waters by presenting only the miserable failures of the early part of industrialization are sheer mendacious cynicism.

**After WWII, much of the economic growth of the USSR consisted of rebuilding their industry. This was achieved, not by the centralized planning so naively endorsed by our latest Marxist, but by the estimated five billion rubles worth of reparations paid by the Germans between 1945 and 1956. Cite. **

Oh please. Five billion rubles cannot even begin to account for the enormous growth of the ruined soviet economy.

Starting, once again, from a devastated country bombed into rubble by the capitalist Nazis, they had to rebuild. They did more than rebuild. By the 1960’s, even bourgeois ideologists had to admit that the planned economy was more productive. The Soviets demonstrated the power of their economy by being the first to put a man (and woman) in space, being the first to use communication satellites, and so on.

Perhaps, though, we should listen to what the bourgeois apologists have to say. Take Stephen Cohen, for example, a professional anti-communist–err, “sovietologist”–for several decades, a vicious Princeton-ensconced ideologist. He writes, in Sovieticus,

“The Soviet Union’s gross national product at least quadrupled between 1950 and 1980… Between 1950 and 1980, for example, per capita real consumption tripled.” (pp.23-24)

This is in an anti-communist tirade, mind you. The point is that these are simple facts, which the sophisticated anti-communists don’t try to lie about.

Furthermore, the USSR’s economy grew consistently, without any of the periodic shocks and crises that capitalism is prone to, without ever having a problem with unemployment (for long stretches unemployment was zero), and without EVER experiencing a crisis due to overproduction.

Do you really think 10% growth in 22 years compares favorably with the West and free-market capitalism?

I refute your lies with an anti-communist (Stephen Cohen), who knows the right kinds of lies to tell.

**The idea that Marxist economies can even approach the levels achieved by capitalism is absurd. To suggest that they could or have surpassed them is even more so. **

The ONLY country to raise itself from third world status into that of the advanced states in the 20th century was the USSR. The USSR experienced the most dynamic growth of any economy in history.

Furthermore, when capitalism was restored in Russia in 1992, the economy went to hell, despite the fact that the exact same people were running it.

It is probably the case that crude lies about the soviet economy will work on a board as reactionary as this one. But, if you ever want to convince a more sophisticated audience, like an audience of militant trade unionists, for example, you should come up with some more plausible sounding lies.

[furt]

Sandino, could you address SimonX’s question: If he, as a worker, saves enough money to buy a restaurant and hire employees, is he then bourgeoise?

[Sandino]

*Originally posted by furt *
**Sandino, could you address SimonX’s question: If he, as a worker, saves enough money to buy a restaurant and hire employees, is he then bourgeoise? **

Owners of small businesses that hire labor on a small scale are considered to be a part of the petit bourgeois, or the “small” bourgeois. Their status is more ambiguous than that of the proletariat and the “big” bourgeois. Generally, they hate and fear both. They have the “big” bourgeois hatred and contempt of the working people, but they also hate the big bourgeois that can wipe them out with the stroke of a pen. Every small business owner is just a wannabe big capitalist. They have all the same appetites and desires, but experience a sense of frustration at not ever being able to achieve the big bucks.

The petit bourgeois is constantly being ruined and assimilated back into the proletariat. I don’t know the exact figures for the past few years, but something like 90% of small businesses fail in their first year. The small business is the mechanism by which the big bourgeoisie replenishes itself with new ideas and innovations. Those small businesses that show a profit are eaten up by the big businesses, those that can’t are ruined.

In every proletarian revolution so far, a majority of the petit-bourgeois has gone over to the side of the proletariat. During a crisis, the petit-bourgeois tends to think like a proletarian, since he knows that he is basically in the same boat. A revolutionary party tries to win the petit-bourgeois over to the side of the proletariat.

[El_Kabong]

Sandino, I’ve think I’ve heard pretty much everything you have to say. I’m not going to waste my time commenting further on your lengthy missives, which IMO mix a few salient points with an enormous volume of hot air. As someone recently said about another subject: “It is a common fault of alternative writers to treat their own thought processes as research, and to elevate them to the status of evidence”. This, I think, is the crux of the problem here.

Frankly, further dialogue with you on this subject would be pointless. You are of course welcome to believe what you wish about the world around you. Just try not to go around hurting people just 'cause you disagree with their politics, OK?

[Ale]

Great!, Sandino, you´re back, now you can give us a cite for this:

[QUOTEby Sandino
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.[/QUOTE]

[John_Mace]

*Originally posted by Sandino *
Owners of small businesses that hire labor on a small scale are considered to be a part of the petit bourgeois, or the “small” bourgeois. Their status is more ambiguous than that of the proletariat and the “big” bourgeois. Generally, they hate and fear both. They have the “big” bourgeois hatred and contempt of the working people, but they also hate the big bourgeois that can wipe them out with the stroke of a pen. Every small business owner is just a wannabe big capitalist. They have all the same appetites and desires, but experience a sense of frustration at not ever being able to achieve the big bucks.

Where do you get your info about how the “petit bourgeois” think and what their opinons are? Can you quote some polls that substantiate what you are saying? It sounds to me that you are simply stating what Marxists believe to be the thoughts of these people.

The petit bourgeois is constantly being ruined and assimilated back into the proletariat. I don’t know the exact figures for the past few years, but something like 90% of small businesses fail in their first year. The small business is the mechanism by which the big bourgeoisie replenishes itself with new ideas and innovations. Those small businesses that show a profit are eaten up by the big businesses, those that can’t are ruined.

Again, let’s have some actual statstics about the P.B.s being “ruined”. Not just what your theory predicts. Business failure does not mean exile to the minimum wage earning class.

[Sandino]

*Originally posted by Ale *
**Great!, Sandino, you´re back, now you can give us a cite for this:

“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.”**

What kind of a cite would you prefer? It is hardly a secret that Walesa was a tool of the Vatican and CIA. He often had photo-ops with priests, and never missed an opportunity to profess his devotion to the Catholic church. Is it CIA funding for Solidarnosc that you doubt? Solidarnosc–company union of CIA and bankers.

As far a Lula goes, I don’t see what the controversy here is. Lula is, in fact, going to implement IMF mandated austerity measures. It was a condition of allowing his election. Lula doesn’t even pretend to be anti-capitalist, much less socialist. He is a garden variety capitalist politician who knows the right kind of reformist rhetoric to spew, but as far as real gains for the workers of Brazil, he isn’t going to deliver anything but betrayal.

[Ale]

Predictable :rolleyes: