Marxism

[Nevertopia]

I know there's other stuff Marx wrote about his own beliefs, I just don't know all the titles of his books because, well, I'm not a communist.

All you really need to know is marxism has failed everytime its been tried.

[Kubra]

I know there's other stuff Marx wrote about his own beliefs, I just don't know all the titles of his books because, well, I'm not a communist.

K but what about capital will make kids averse to communism
Apart from the crippling boredom of their assigned reading

[Northern Davincia]

Capitalism revolves around the individual deciding what is best for themselves. I do not pretend to know what is best for someone at any given time, unlike command economy planners, but the free market is largely benevolent in design because it lacks controls.

Capitalism revolves around the business cycle, which is (all too often) not the purview of individuals. When the economy crashes, you don't go pointing at Jane Doe that she's not been buying enough consumer goods or invested enough of her meager paycheck-to-paycheck savings or pointing at John Doe that he's not expanded his outfit's production sufficiently to employ all the willing job-seekers, etc. Of course, this does not mean the range of items affordable and available to your average Joe hasn't increased, but these don't appear on the market because he, as an individual, has decreed that they should. I get that what you ultimately mean by the above is that the individual can decide if he wants such and such an amount of flour or such and such an amount of tomato sauce, but such choices are also limited by the state of affairs which he exists in. It's the freedom to decide how to meet his consumption desires, given the choices and disposable income available (which, let's face it, is subject to a myriad of disparities).

To say that the free-market has "design" is a bit misleading, because it is not an intentional state of affairs; it can be steered, but as a supra-individual entity it has a mind of its own, so to speak - that is also the exact reason state capitalist "planning" in the Eastern Bloc failed, for all their attempts at subverting value and bringing it under the control of state actors. And command economies are not the purview of Marxism; when Marxists speak of false consciousness or not following one's interests, it is little different from being critical of the willing slave; they don't do it under some assumption that this means individuals can't decide what goods they want.

Also, lol at the supposed "benevolence" of the free market. I'm sure the externalities generated in the form of chemical factories dumping their waste appears oh so "benevolent" to those who have to drink poisoned water and risk exposure to toxic fumes, or that the

The business cycle is a feature of capitalism, but not what its finer mechanisms depend on. The system maximizes individual freedom strictly in a setting where scarcity is present. Indeed, the free market is pulled by the Invisible Hand that acts as the culmination of every individual's input/choices. You point to the worst instances of occasional wrongdoing on the part of capitalists, yet at the same time technology advances rapidly and becomes cheaper. There is a boom in the field of green energy, or environmentally-friendly products. You blind yourself to all the good that has been done so far.

[Luziyca]

Do you believe that Marx's views on the class dichotomy are valid, or reductionist? Some modern authors have claimed that Marx downplayed the role of intersectionality in oppression, but Marx himself wrote about gender roles etc often, including in the Manifesto.
I would say they are mostly valid, given that I'd argue that as a basic way of explaining who runs things, it is pretty clear it is proletariat v. bourgeoisie, given the latter controls everything, and the former only have their labor. It may not as be as in-depth into the intersectionality of oppression, but even then, given they would likely be worse off than if they're not in the intersection, we could see how class plays a role here.

Is Marxism—Leninism revisionist, or is it merely an extension of Marx's views?
It all depends on how you define revisionism. On one hand, I can agree with Lenin's assertion that imperialism has helped prolong capitalism, and I think Marx would probably approve of that development. However, Lenin's ideas about telescoping the capitalist and communist revolutions together is a bit iffy at best, and I don't think Marx would approve of that. I also don't know whether vanguardism is particularly sound, especially in a more developed society like Canada or the United Kingdom. Then again, I have not really looked into Lenin's works (as opposed to Marx's Communist Manifesto), so I don't think I can make a proper conclusion.

Do you believe that Marx has been vindicated or damned by the more than 170 years since he began to publish his theories?
I'd say he would have been vindicated, particularly in the past decade or so, given how we've had two "once-in-a-lifetime" financial crises, growing inequality between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, austerity measures which hurt the proletariat, and efforts to roll back the protections that the people have secured, just to name a few. While I don't think we can exactly reach Marx's utopian ideal of communism, and while there are some things which have become pretty dated, I'd say his general principles have held up quite well given the distance since he first began writing those theories.

[Cisairse]

If the workingmen control both the state and the means of production, it wouldn't be private property.

isnt that just a capitalist democracy?

Not remotely.

[Cisairse]

I know there's other stuff Marx wrote about his own beliefs, I just don't know all the titles of his books because, well, I'm not a communist.

It's absolutely hilarious that you said Marx should be "required reading" and then immediately admitted that you haven't read any of it

[UniversalCommons]

Control means own the means of production. In communism, the party owns the mean of production, and the worker works for the party. The party has never simply dissolved. There are still two classes. This is the fallacy of Marxism.

If the worker owned the means of the production, you would either have a partnership where everyone owned everything, a cooperative where the workers owned the company, or if there was a stock market ( a kind of joint share system where people who worked in a place, had ownership shares, not just a salary, family businesses, individual ownership, union ownership, or some kind of arrangement where the workers owned things outright without intermediaries. In addition, common assets like land and natural resources would probably be controlled by a long term sovereign arrangement where people who lived in the country would get a percentage share in the ownership or formally distributed to the citizens of the country (a kind of pool of sovereign wealth) . Pure salary work would probably be limited to government bureaucrats or salaried military officers. There would also be various kinds of arrangement to own machinery directly that produced things. A society based on direct ownership might not look like what you expected.

You own your house, you own a portion of the business you work in, you partake in a share of the common resources, you partake in the decisions of how things get automated. How you would define this situation would be different legally and ethically. It would neither be ownership, nor communal property. It might be closer to a sharing economy with rights of use for everyone partaking in it. Again in this state there is no party or bourgeoise, there are only citizens.

There would be no party, just a group of people who owned everything in a common legal arrangement. The party would have disappeared in the end state. Turning this into a practical state would be very different than what Marx originally thought. What would it mean to "own" the means of production in a modern state where there were universal common definitions of property. The market does not disappear, it becomes regulated or simulated to a high degree. People are expected to have interests self reliance.

[Cisairse]

Control means own the means of production. In communism, the party owns the mean of production, and the worker works for the party. The party has never simply dissolved. There are still two classes. This is the fallacy of Marxism.

If the worker owned the means of the production, you would either have a partnership where everyone owned everything, a cooperative where the workers owned the company, or if there was a stock market ( a kind of joint share system where people who worked in a place, had ownership shares, not just a salary, family businesses, individual ownership, union ownership, or some kind of arrangement where the workers owned things outright without intermediaries. In addition, common assets like land and natural resources would probably be controlled by a long term sovereign arrangement where people who lived in the country would get a percentage share in the ownership or formally distributed to the citizens of the country (a kind of pool of sovereign wealth) . Pure salary work would probably be limited to government bureaucrats or salaried military officers. There would also be various kinds of arrangement to own machinery directly that produced things. A society based on direct ownership might not look like what you expected.

You own your house, you own a portion of the business you work in, you partake in a share of the common resources, you partake in the decisions of how things get automated. How you would define this situation would be different legally and ethically. It would neither be ownership, nor communal property. It might be closer to a sharing economy with rights of use for everyone partaking in it. Again in this state there is no party or bourgeoise, there are only citizens.

There would be no party, just a group of people who owned everything in a common legal arrangement. The party would have disappeared in the end state. Turning this into a practical state would be very different than what Marx originally thought. What would it mean to "own" the means of production in a modern state where there were universal common definitions of property. The market does not disappear, it becomes regulated or simulated to a high degree. People are expected to have interests self reliance.

You're describing vanguardism, which is integral to ML and very soundly rejected by most other Marxists, including Marx himself.

[Nevertopia]

isnt that just a capitalist democracy?

Not remotely.

could you explain it then?

[Cisairse]

Not remotely.

could you explain it then?

Private property means private (ie individual) ownership of the means of production. If the workers (communally) own the means of production, there is no private property, only communal property.

[Nevertopia]

could you explain it then?

Private property means private (ie individual) ownership of the means of production. If the workers (communally) own the means of production, there is no private property, only communal property.

oic, so thats why marxism fails. It has no checks and balances for corruption or rewarding effort. Everything is everybody else's problem right?

[Cisairse]

Private property means private (ie individual) ownership of the means of production. If the workers (communally) own the means of production, there is no private property, only communal property.

oic, so thats why marxism fails. It has no checks and balances for corruption or rewarding effort. Everything is everybody else's problem right?

Marx didn't spend a lot of time discussing how the post-seizure society would work or look like. Plenty of other authors have, though, and there's endless disagreement.
One of the more common ideas is to democratize all of society by having workers elect their managers, similar to how republics solved the same legitimacy issue when they replaced monarchies by democratizing the powers that be.

In fact, you can draw a lot of parallels between the transition from absolutism (where states were considered the private property of a monarch) to republics (where states are considered a public manner deriving legitimacy from the people) with the transition from capitalism (where the means of production consists mostly of private property) to socialism (where the means of production are publicly owned).

[Nevertopia]

oic, so thats why marxism fails. It has no checks and balances for corruption or rewarding effort. Everything is everybody else's problem right?

Marx didn't spend a lot of time discussing how the post-seizure society would work or look like. Plenty of other authors have, though, and there's endless disagreement.
One of the more common ideas is to democratize all of society by having workers elect their managers, similar to how republics solved the same legitimacy issue when they replaced monarchies by democratizing the powers that be.

In fact, you can draw a lot of parallels between the transition from absolutism (where states were considered the private property of a monarch) to republics (where states are considered a public manner deriving legitimacy from the people) with the transition from capitalism (where the means of production consists mostly of private property) to socialism (where the means of production are publicly owned).

so it is capitalist democracy.

[Cisairse]

Marx didn't spend a lot of time discussing how the post-seizure society would work or look like. Plenty of other authors have, though, and there's endless disagreement.
One of the more common ideas is to democratize all of society by having workers elect their managers, similar to how republics solved the same legitimacy issue when they replaced monarchies by democratizing the powers that be.

In fact, you can draw a lot of parallels between the transition from absolutism (where states were considered the private property of a monarch) to republics (where states are considered a public manner deriving legitimacy from the people) with the transition from capitalism (where the means of production consists mostly of private property) to socialism (where the means of production are publicly owned).

so it is capitalist democracy.

No, it is not capitalism. Do you know what capitalism is?

E: Actually did you even read my post?

[The Sovereign Realist State]

To answer my own questions:

• I'm weary of modern socialists who claim that Marxism is "class reductionist," because I believe that Marx was correct to correlate all other oppressive criterion to class.
• I haven't read anything that shows Marxism—Leninism is revisionist per se, but many supposedly ML states other than the Soviet Union corrupted Marxism to suit their anticolonial agenda and thus became highly revisionist in their actual operation.
• I believe that Marx's theories have only become more true in society since he began to publish his works.

If you believe the USSR was the only true political implementation of marxism...

...why did it fail?
...Why was it better than many other non-marxist regimes when living conditions and civil liberties were worse?

[Nevertopia]

so it is capitalist democracy.

No, it is not capitalism. Do you know what capitalism is?

E: Actually did you even read my post?

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

[Cisairse]

To answer my own questions:

• I'm weary of modern socialists who claim that Marxism is "class reductionist," because I believe that Marx was correct to correlate all other oppressive criterion to class.
• I haven't read anything that shows Marxism—Leninism is revisionist per se, but many supposedly ML states other than the Soviet Union corrupted Marxism to suit their anticolonial agenda and thus became highly revisionist in their actual operation.
• I believe that Marx's theories have only become more true in society since he began to publish his works.

If you believe the USSR was the only true political implementation of marxism...

...why did it fail?
...Why was it better than many other non-marxist regimes when living conditions and civil liberties were worse?

I don't believe that, because it would be a very silly thing to think really.

Marx left a ton of "blanks" in his "script" for the future of the workingmen. ML is one way to fill in the blanks. There are plenty of other ways.

[Cisairse]

No, it is not capitalism. Do you know what capitalism is?

E: Actually did you even read my post?

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

Right. In a socialist society, there is no capital accumulation. That's the key difference.
In fact most of the other "details" of the differences between socialism and capitalism derive chiefly from the fact that there is no capital accumulation in socialism.

Further, the means of production are not privately or corporately owned in socialism.

[UniversalCommons]

You are wrong, it is partially capitalist in that it relies on trade and markets. It draws from the concepts of Mondragon which is a cooperative corporation, SAIC which is an employee owned corporation, and directly employee ownership by workers and unions. It aims to cut down on salaried workers and increase ownership. It is also built around concepts of workplace democracy which is highly productive. It also comes from ideas like the Meissner plan which creates greater employee ownership by allowing people to pay into payroll taxes to buy shares in places they work. The end point is a mixed economy with a much higher amount of employee ownership. If you take it to its long endpoint, you can create a highly productive mixed economy with near complete worker ownership. Thus in a market system you end up with democratic control and ownership of the means of production which cannot occur under communism. It also is more productive, has less layoffs, and is more stable than the communist idea. This is how it is explained from the viewpoint of Bernie Sanders. https://www.vox.com/2019/5/29/18643032/ ... rship-jobs It is much more of a possibility than what is coming from the Communist Manifesto.

If you remove all the incentives for producing everything by removing all management, then make everything becomes a giant flat bureaucracy where there are no reasons to be productive, you end up with a huge mess which does not support anyone. Suddenly, there is no management, no incentives, no party and a complete lack of direction.

Capital accumulation allows for investment. What is the means of storing wealth for future use in a "postscarcity society". By definition first you get abundance. How do you then take it from abundance to superabundance, or the "terran federation."

[The Sovereign Realist State]

I don't believe that, because it would be a very silly thing to think really.

Marx left a ton of "blanks" in his "script" for the future of the workingmen. ML is one way to fill in the blanks. There are plenty of other ways.

Such as?...

[Nevertopia]

An economic system in which the means of production and distribution are privately or corporately owned and development occurs through the accumulation and reinvestment of profits gained in a free market.

Right. In a socialist society, there is no capital accumulation. That's the key difference.
In fact most of the other "details" of the differences between socialism and capitalism derive chiefly from the fact that there is no capital accumulation in socialism.

Further, the means of production are not privately or corporately owned in socialism.

doesnt that just create a system where everybody is perpetually poor? Or the very least an inability to rise above their means and needs?

on a sidenote i think its a neat idea for a capitalist communism corporate hybrid where the employees owns the corporation they work for. Its very democratic capitalist.

[Alcala-Cordel]

Private property means private (ie individual) ownership of the means of production. If the workers (communally) own the means of production, there is no private property, only communal property.

oic, so thats why marxism fails. It has no checks and balances for corruption or rewarding effort. Everything is everybody else's problem right?

You seem to be basing that on state capitalist regimes like the USSR, which was not Marxist.

[Nevertopia]

oic, so thats why marxism fails. It has no checks and balances for corruption or rewarding effort. Everything is everybody else's problem right?

You seem to be basing that on state capitalist regimes like the USSR, which was not Marxist.

yes it was.

[Alcala-Cordel]

I don't believe that, because it would be a very silly thing to think really.

Marx left a ton of "blanks" in his "script" for the future of the workingmen. ML is one way to fill in the blanks. There are plenty of other ways.

Such as?...

Anarcho-communism, left-communism, Trotskyism, council communism, Luxemburgism, and many others that are either based on or use Marxist ideas.
We have so many factions

[Nevertopia]

>:(

Such as?...

Anarcho-communism, left-communism, Trotskyism, council communism, Luxemburgism, and many others that are either based on or use Marxist ideas.
We have so many factions

personally I think Zizekism communism is the most realistic faction to come out of the marxist camp. Instead of focusing on how capitalism is bad, he made a case on how it can be used to provide for the people when not being used soley to accumulate wealth.