In today’s Australian, the Labor speech writer and author of Orwell’s Australia, Dennis Glover has played right into the hands of the very cultural warriors he so eloquently rips apart in that great little book.
In a column titled “Marxism in the unlikliest places”, Dennis argues, with some light-hearted qualifiers, that the true home of Marxism today is the Liberal Party. His argument, which is true as far as it goes, is that the conservatives are now the “true heirs of the power-obsessed psychology that once belonged to the Left”.
The evidence begins with the unstartling fact that many of the current crop of neo-con darlings are former supporters of the left in some form or another. I didn’t know that PP McGuiness once worked for the Soviet money-launderer the Moscow-Narodny Bank, but Peter Coleman and Keith Windschuttle both have form.
I don’t have any issue at all with Glover’s thesis that the Liberals and their fellow-travellers in all the right think tanks have set about trashing some of Australia’s democratic institutions (weak as they are), that they have a blatant disregard for human rights, or that they are indeed “market zealots”. However, where Dennis goes off the rails in my view is that he makes the same ideological mistake as the neo-cons when he equates Marxism with the legacy of Stalinism.
He is totally wrong when he asserts that “Marxists regard such [human] rights as a second order issue,” and that “Marxists were set on destroying the soft’ social institutions that stood between the party and the individual.”
If you actually go back to the work of the classical Marxists (and I include Lenin and Trotsky in this group), it becomes clear that human rights are at the core of the socialist project. What else does it mean at the conclusion of the Communist Manifesto when Marx and Engels proclaim “The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.”
When it comes to the family, Marx and Engels are very clear: “The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation.” Thus it is clear that Howard’s attempt to dissolve any social bonds that encourage collective resistance to the new industrial relations regime, is exactly in line with what capitalism has been doing for two centuries.
Dennis describes this as the government trying to create “a capitalist version of ‘Soviet man’”, the model-worker of the Stakhanovite period of Soviet state capitalism. Such a figure has nothing to do with the revolutionary project of socialism and everything to do with the Soviet Union’s drive for economic and military parity with the west in the Cold War years.
He’s also wrong to equate a “belief in centralised power” with Marxism and to then assume this is the same as Howard’s anti-states agenda. It’s true that the current government, like the Keating government before it, is spouting the ideology of decentralisation and smaller government, but the facts speak for themselve. They don’t really believe it. Capitalism is a system built on the inherent instability of market forces. Capitalism can only survive through the continuing intervention the State in both the economy and in civil life. The State is the capitalist system is the central committee for the bourgeoisie and it is in place to keep the ruling class in that spot for as long as possible and by any means necessary.
Capitalism is also a global system and as Trotsky pointed out before his murder in 1940 by Stalinist agents, it is impossible to build socialism in one country. That Stalin and his successors, until the time of Gorbachev, ignored this simple rule is not a condemnation of Marxism, but rather an indication that the old Soviet Union was not a socialist country. Why do so many otherwise intelligent people take the propaganda of Stalinist states to be true? Perhaps it’s because they are also in a state of denial, or at least false consciousness when it comes to the west today.
Do you really believe that the United States is a real democracy? Or Australia? Both are nations founded on the violent dispossession of a viable indigenous culture and economy; both have a sad history of systemic racism and fear of the “other”; both are imperialist powers (Australia only within its small sphere of influence) and both have moribund parliamentary systems dominated by the interests of big business and captured by ideologues bent on empire-building and wage-cutting.
In the capitalist word (and that’s the entire planet today) there are no real democracies. The west, despite the rhetoric of the free market is, like the old Soviet Union and the new Russia today, essentially a state capitalist social formation. The state and capital have all but fused, if not in terms of property relations, certainly in terms of interests.
The theory of state capitalism has been around now for about 50 years and it’s worth getting your head around. You can read the main socialist current that takes this view at the Marxists.org website. 
There is one point on which I agree entirely with Dennis Glover. Both the cultural warriors of the Right and real Marxists (of which there are literally only a handful in Australia by the way) believe in class warfare. What strikes me as odd is that Dennis finds this “really surprising”.
Again I refer you to the classics. Here is what Marx and Engels had to say about this issue in the Communist Manifesto:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles…in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.
The real shame about the political climate today in most western nations is the sad state of the revolutionary left. I can give you chapter and verse about why this is the case. Perhaps next time. Suffice to say that now is not a good time to be a revolutionary!
The last point that I want to make is that readers and supporters of Larvatus Prodeo must take some time to study history; go back to the classics and understand what the revolutionary tradition of Marxism is all about.
We cannot afford to fall into the trap of taking the slanders of the neo-con chattering classes as truth. We certainly don’t want to be in a position of having to repair the collateral damage of friendly fire, when people like Dennis are invited into the bile-dripping pages of The Australian‘s opinion pages.
For anyone who’s interested in beginning their “re-education” (yes, even revolutionary Marxists have a sense of humour), I’ve posted a link here to the online library where the works of the great socialist thinkers can be found.
Marxists like to say that Marxism is a science. Marx inspired revolutions have occurred in over 20 countries and each time has ended in monumental failure. I think 20 odd failures clearly constitutes “falsification” in the Popperian sense. The Left is fucked and futureless if it feels it needs to keep looking back to a bloke who lived and died in the early days of the Industrial Revolution.
It is also a tad disingenuous of you to adopt Orwell’s original name as your blog name, given that the poor bugger spent half of his life trying to rescue the Left from Marxist dogma.
Great post. Marx was a theorist and critic of capitalism above all else, and as penetrating and prescient today as he was over 100 years ago.
Capitalism has been tried and failed in every country in the world. The right is fucked and futureless if it continues to look at a figure like Adam Smith who lived before the industrial revolution.
As for the point about Orwell and ‘Marxist dogma’. Give us the quotes where Orwell attacks “Marxist Dogma” rather than Stalinism and I’ll concede. Meantime have a good read of Homage to Catalonia and take notes. There’ll be a quiz.
Que? The two men who dissolved the first demcractically elected parliament in Russian history at gunpoint, before it had a chance to speak; who banned all rival parties, crushed independent trade unions and ruthlessly suppressed dissent with an aparatus of mass state terror; who drafted armies of conscript labor and crushed the non-Russian nationalities while loudly proclaiming they had freed them – these people had human rights as primary objective?
Thats some choice unspeak there, Eric Arthur Blair. I think I liked your older version better.
Where did you find this ninny?
Virtually every sentence in this post is either childish, oversimplified, or ideologically blinded (the “classics,” eh?). From a statistical point of view, to do all that with such consistency must be actually kind of a tough act to pull off.
Congratulations.
Credit where credit’s due j_p_z, he has managed to stuff just about every Marxist trope and cliche in there, from ‘Boo hoo hoo Stalin wasn’t our fault’ to ‘the massive bureaucratic structures needed to co-ordinate every publicly-owned factory will won’t be intrusive and overpowering, really!’.
Good to see ‘state of denial’ and ‘false conciousness’ get an outing too. Bit like an excursion at the old folks home for Marxist Apologetics.
Leinad and Eric Blair,
Karl Marx never actually used the term “false consciousness” in his writings. This term is attributable to Engels.
As I’ve said before on this blog, Marx has contributed greatly to the social sciences. We can accept and appreciate those contributions without accepting the fantasy that capitalism will collapse from within, be replaced by a dictatorship of the proletariat and that we’ll all live happily ever after in a Communist society.
Jeremy Bentham’s Bastard Child,
I read Homage to Catalonia when I was about 16. So bloody what? Orwell clearly moved to a centre-left position in his latter years. Capitalism is more powerful and secure today than it has been at any time since the dawn of the industrial revolution. You are clutching at straws if you think it is somehow failing.
Hmmm. I think, sadly, most people who deride Marxism don’t have the faintest clue what it is.
Sadly, also, I think many of its champions do not.
That said, deriding Marxism as irrelevant and a failure is to ignore its many successes – and marxist notions that now are commonplace views. You can talk about the successes of Marxism without whitewashing the atrocities of Stalin, et al. just as you can talk about the successes of capitalism without whitewashing the excesses of Idi Amin et al.
From a cultural perspective (my background), you can focus on the Hegelian influence on Marxism and the idea of historicity (when Adam fell and Eve span, who then was the gentleman?): a crucial idea in the interpretive field. Furthermore, Marx’s influence on the entire Frankfurt school, specifically Benjamin, Adorno and Horkheimer shouldn’t be underestimated. The ideas these men put forward are still respected by many and cogent today.
Marxist analysis has greatly contributed to hermeneutics of all kinds, from the idea of status quo, to the cultural idea of false consciousness, hegemony and class resentment. None of these terms or ideas are seen as preposterous – some barely even contentious today. And yet they are intrinsically marxist.
I studied classical marxism for six months, and at the end still felt I had a universe to learn. I feel less confident articulating the economies of Marx because I’m no economist by a long shot (and secondly, have you read Das Kapital? Even the first volume? Ye gods.). That said I think there are many elements in Das Kapital worth thinking about and debating (Marx’s Kapital for beginners is arguably the best book on Marxism I’ve ever read, and not just cause it’s full fo cartoons…).
I’m not evangelical about Marx, just as I’m not evangelical about Oakeshott (though I dislike him!), Nozick, Walzer, Husserl or a dozen others. Nonetheless, I recognise the contributions they have made to the fields of political science, sociology and/or criticism.
Dismissing Marx out of hand I feel, is an act based more around what people perceive the term Marxist to connote, rather than the actual content of what Marx said, and what people have done with Marxist thought.
Citing Orwell is entirely justified, I think, given that he was a man very much dedicated to championing the proletariat and even lower classes, and shining a light on the comfy morality of the bourgeoisie of his day.
Just to clarify, though I haven’t read Kapital I’ve got a lot of time for Marx – historical materialism, alienation, class interest/conflict = all great stuff and useful too. It’s Marxists like ‘Eric Blair’, who parrot this goofy psuedo-Bolshevik “We need a revolution, it’ll work better than last time, honest!” twizz I can’t stand.
If it helps, replace ‘Marxist’ with ‘Gormless Trot’ in my 11.28 pm post
Welcome to the fold Eric. Cracking post.
Eric, you speak like its a given that there is no true democracy in Australia, but when Anna Nicole Smith and Ozzy Osbourne were imported to host the music awards, I took as a sign that Nietschze’s view of democracy as the madness of the mob dominating the will of the intelligent had arrived in a limousine with spa. But seriously, can you give some examples of there being no democracy in Australia? I am not that up on what seems so obvious to yourself.
“Human rights” and community: I think you have to look at Stalinism as indicating a flaw in the base philosophy to begin with. Creating a society of egalitarian humans means that,as a root point, all must surrender their human rights equally to the common good. Munn and Leonid have given some indication of the cruelty that developed under communism in the name of the common good. I think its an inbuilt flaw in the philsophy that just wasn’t thought out.
Read Edmund Burkes prediction of the Reign of Terror written three years before the event happened. People assume that after the revolution its all just going to work out and then they realise, my god, governing people who would prefer Anna Nicole and Ozzy to Brecht and Woolf are darn hard to control.
Capitalism’s and Communism’s nightmares are much the same-the common good. And so neither has been able to succeed in the purity it was presumed to.
“…Capitalism’s and Communism’s nightmares are much the same-the common good. And so neither has been able to succeed in the purity it was presumed to.”
Maybe, except that there’s a crucial difference: capitalism is just a way of doing things. It doesn’t demand or suppose ‘purity’, except insofar as these might be shown to work. It’s not a ‘system,’ strictly speaking, nor need it be a way of life; it’s just a method for getting things done, and it can be, and is, tailored and modified and re-formatted to suit its various surroundings. It’s more like the scientific method, than like any particular science in and of itself. There’s nothing enshrined in capitalism; it doesn’t really have pseudo-religious “classics.” It needn’t be any more ideologically burdened than say, a socket wrench. The only ‘theory’ required of a socket wrench is whether or not it is made properly to perform its function: the world does not conform to the socket wrench, the socket wrench serves its place in the world.
Marxism/Communism, on the other hand, begins with a specifically articulated (and, I might add, a very badly and dishonestly articulated) set of propositions, and proceeds to posit a whole ass-backwards system of human nature and a theory of Life, trying to build a new, non-intuitive and untested society upon its pathetically cracked foundations. As a way of doing things, it is famously and unanimously fucked. As a system of thought, a religion, a way of life, it is even more presumptuous, and even more fucked.
Communism is the enslavement of the largest possible number of people via the greatest imagineable act of theft in the context of the obsession of blood-lust and human sacrifice.
That is what Marx was advocating ( thinly disguised as a prediction of the inevitable) and Stalin, as faithfully as anyone, attempted to put this into practice.
Capitalism is the enslavement of the largest possible number of people via the greatest imagineable act of theft in the context of the obsession of blood-lust and human sacrifice.
It also causes global warming.
“The last point that I want to make is that readers and supporters of Larvatus Prodeo must take some time to study history; go back to the classics and understand what the revolutionary tradition of Marxism is all about.”
Well I think that pretty much sums up what’s left of the stinking corpse of revolutionary Marxism. Either that or eric blair does indeed have a riotous comedic sagacity and the entire post was a very clever pisstake on those who would solicit the study of history while simultaneously learning nothing from it.
We “must” study the biblical tracts of the failed farrago of revolutionary communism why exactly, eric? To engage in endless theological debates about the withering away of the state and the precise nature of the dicatorship of the proletariat? FFS.
On the other hand I look forward to eric’s stage-act, wherein he demonstrates that “even revolutionary Marxists have a sense of humour.”
…A Menshevik, a Bolshevik and an Anarchist walk into a bar…
Do you think you can take over the universe and improve it?
I do not believe it can be done.
The universe is sacred.
You cannot improve it.
If you try to change it, you will ruin it.
If you try to hold it, you will lose it.
So sometimes things are ahead and sometimes they are behind;
Sometimes breathing is hard, sometimes it comes easily;
Sometimes there is strength and sometimes weakness;
Sometimes one is up and sometimes down.
Therefore the sage avoids extremes, excesses, and complacency.
WEll, this is what it’s like. The cutting and the thrusting etc.
It’s relevant to begin with the classics, even Adam Smith the great bourgeois economist who actually pointed out the labour theory of value later developed by Marx into a theory of proletarian revolution.
Smith’s ideas on LTV were basically the foundation of today’s scientific management – remember his trope about the pin-makers and the division of labour.
What Marx recognised was that when you break down the labour process to this degree you actually dehumanise the individual worker. Alienation, dissafection, questioning the relations of production, realisation, anger, revolution. There’s a chain of dialectical logic here that seems to have escaped some of the more hostile posters in this thread.
As I mentioned in my original contribution, I am happy to take on the “modern” and even the “post-modern” versions of Marxism and its detractors/critics. Give me time. This was “cherry-breaking” post.
Just to back this up though, I did forget to add my links to contemporary Marxists on state capitalism. So I’ve attempted to add them here.
As for “Eric Blair”, that’s me, get used to it. As for George Orwell. There’s been a general brawl over his legacy and memory now for about a decade. The neo-cons claim him as an anti-”Communist”, but that is actually a huge slander on his name and his vast 20 volume body of work. There are two very good appraisals of Orwell that place him into a fair context and which actually undercut the Right’s claims.
Christopher Hitchen’s “Why Orwell Matters”, which is not to bad and was written before Hitchen lost the plot and caved in to the bullsh*t of “Islamo-Fascism” (there you go bampots, something else for you to get into me about!)
A much better book is John Newsinger’s “Orwell’s Politics”, which I half-suspect Hitchen might have cribbed from (putting it delicately). Newsinger rescues Orwell from the Right very convincingly. I agree with Newsinger that Orwell was, even on his deathbed, a committed international socialist and anti-Stalinist.
Take another look at “1984″ if you’re still unsure. A key character in that book is Leon Trotsky (Emmanuel Goldstein), the theory of oligarchal collectivism is the theory of state capitalism.
The missing links: Marxists.org Index
Duncan Hallas
The “Classics” of Marxism
Can’t think of any bar jokes that can be adapted that quickly so …
A Menshevik, a Bolshevik and an Anarchist are at an all party conference and they find themselves sharing a urinal.
After he’s finished at the urinal, the bolshevik goes over to the sink to wash his hands, splashes water all over the sink, uses a ream of paper towels, which end up scattered on the floor. When he notices the others looking at him, aghast, he says “We Bolsheviks have learnt to be rigorous and thorough in all matters, including personal hygeine.”
When the Menshevik goes to the sink, he washes his hands with a minimal amount of water and uses exactly one paper towel to dry his hands. He says “We Mensheviks are also rigorous and thorough but we are also careful.”
The Anarchist zips his flyu and heads straight for the door. The other two look at him aghast. Before the door closes behind him he says
“We Anarchists don’t piss on our own hands.”
I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m beginning to think that eric blair might be a Vanguardist, and have black anti-party gangsterist tendencies. Why, he could even be a spy.
Long live the glorious people’s martyrs of October 14! Continue the purges!
Eric Blair is correct about the way neo-liberals have hijacked much of Marx’s thinking about capitalism. They seem to be as fixated as doctrinaire marxists ever were about “iron laws” of economic development.
And it is true that the early Marx, at least, lamented the demoralising effects of the maturing of capitalism.
But the problem for all marxists is that Karl never got round to talking much about what post-revolutionary, post-capitalist ethics would be, how they would work, how the withering away of the state would be achieved.
Clearly, Marx believed that there would be a great change in the moral condition of humans after the revolution. But what would it be?
1. Would it be based on a never-dimming memory of how horrible things were before the revolution?
2. Or would it be based on a blissful amnesia about those rotten conditions, bringing about a return to Rousseau’s paradise when persons were born free and would never be chained up by bad memories?
3. Or would it be based on an elite ruled by Big Brother who made wise choices about what memories would be thrust down the memory tubes?
Now, clearly, Stalinism and all Leninist societies chose the last strategy. And didn’t Orwell have fun pointing that out?
Marx would have hated Big Brother, but the problem is he never explained how options 1 and 2 would work.
Oh Christine, I don’t know whether to be flattered or afraid.
I think it’s dangerous to be too far ahead of the pack. I am not, nor have I ever been a “Spart”. Is the proletarian party the “vanguard” of the revolution. Most definitely. Does such an organisation exist today? No, not anywhere I’ve been recently.
I am a little wary of the cultish behaviour of some tendencies on the left, yes. However, I do actually believe in the necessary existence of organisations as leadership is important. When the decisive struggles are upon us, the organic leadership of the proletariat will emerge (as per Gramsci’s notions). Revolution cannot be imposed. And let’s not forget there are gangsterish cults on the Right too. Dangerous ones, with guns.
All I can say is “Down with Big Brother”. I certainly don’t want to be martyred. I am not a big fan of individual Nihilist actions (No bampots, I do not support suicide bombers!)
I’m all in favour of binge drinking, but there has to be a sensible limit, surely. Moderation in excess.
Basically marxism and capitalism are both algorithms for distributing resources. Just in marxism’s case it was theory turned into practice but vice-versa for capitalism.
And the takeway from this dialectic? Never fanatically follow political-economic theorists of any stripe.
Whatever you say Eric.
Please be kind enough to make a post when the organic leadership starts to emerge.
In fact how about we have a bet about which of these three events arrives first:
The Second Coming of Christ (5 to 1 odds)
The Birth of the Pan-Islamic Waqf (20 to 1 odds)
The Emergence of the Global Organic Leadership of the Proletariat (50 to 1 odds)
Any takers?
Steve, we’re fifteen years into the End of History, you should know better than to offer such ridiculous odds!
OK Steve, I’m not normally a gambler, but I can’t resist your odds. As an aetheist, the first offer is a definite no-brainer.
Will there ever be a pan-Islamic Waqf? That’s a tempting punt. Given where we’re at in the 50-year war and a nuclear equivalence (or at least a version of M-A-D) there could be an Islamic world state somewhere in the nuclear dust. My guess it would be short-lived. The half-life of U232 is likely to be the determining factor.
Therefore, I will take your ridiculous odds and punt a case of Grange on the socialist revolution.
Of course, should your resolve weaken at this point, here’s a counter-offer:
Socialism or Barbarism? I’d say 50-50, though a pessimist might argue that we live in barbaric times already.
Of course you’d know that SOB is a phrase taken from Rosa Luxemburg’s writings on the defeat of the first (1905) Russian revolution.
Here’s a bit of an explanation:
This is from New Left Review.
I’ll take that bet then, Eric.
As for Rosa Luxemburg, what I know about her would fit on a postage stamp. To my mind Marxism is like Freudianism. Both are failed research programs. They can be viewed as dead branches on the tree of knowledge and disciples like Rosa are nothing more than dried up twigs. They ain’t worth knowing as they have nothing to teach us. Yawn.
Internal contradictions of capitalism. Revolutionary project of socialism. False cosciousness. Oligarchal collectivism.
This is worse than an issue of Green Left Weakly.
Still Eric, world revolution’s a pretty big project. I wish you well in your endeavours.
Hmmm, it’s disappointing how quickly this topic has devolved into a trolling match, given that some people (Leinad, Katz) have actually posted some kind of reasoned response that, for me at least, ranks far higher than:
Marxists are teh ar$3h0les.
If we do want to talk, seriously and with even a semblance of an open mind about what Marx agot wrong and right, I would first up agree with Katz’s post, and second add two thoughts of my own.
1: Marx never imagined a world where the proletariat would have so much disposable income, and secondly power.
2: He also never imagined that we would effectively geographically sequester the vast majority of the world’s true proletariat these, i.e. the developing world (with the exception of categories like Singer’s absolute poverty).
Continuing in that vein, it’s rather easy, I think, for us in the developed world – whether we like it or no, members of the global bourgeoisie – to deride Marxism when we are riding very high from capitalism.
If we go to the developing world, Marxism certainly has a higher profile, and a greater popularity; no surprise, really. The question is, are we underplaying it, or are they overplaying it? Probably both I think.
Now that MichaelG’s brought us a bit closer to the topic, I will say Eric’s got half a point about Glover’s attributions.
Glover’s article is basically describing the Bolshevik mindset which, while demonstrably derived from Marxist theory, would probably have the old geezer spewing on his library desk in a fit of rage were he to read of it.
Eric’s got a problem in switching the blame for all the bad stuff to Joey V., though, as Vlad I. and Lev D. had their own complaints with Beardo’s voluminous output: there was a lot of stuff about Capitalism, its collapse, how this is would be a Good Thing etc., but not much on the practical side of things, like, y’know, handy tips about actually having a revolution and building a new classless society. They had to improvise and it got a little messy.
While there is a case for arguing that all the mountains of corpses, rotting deathtrap factories and gigantic, continent-crushing armed forces are basically down to Lenin and Trotsky (who really shoulda known better, judging by what I’ve read of his Menshevik/Mezhraionka stuff) picking Tsarist Russia of all goddamned places to launch their campaign for a new scientific, rational and benevolent industrial society, for this opinionated smartarse the problem goes deeper than that.
Marxism is a utopian, teleological philosophy. It seeks to realise the final organisational form of the human race. It takes from Hegel the ideas of World-Historical struggle and tries to create a scientific theory encompassing all of human history, from which it predicts the nature and precedents of this final result. You don’t have to be a raving libertarian to think this sounds a little dodgy, and how it all might go horribly wrong. Summarise all of human history? Realisation of mankind’s final state? Sounds like one of those pamphets you see taped to traffic poles, all it needs is something about aliens, a dozen manic exlamation marks and a link to someone’s myspace site.
If you believe that human society has a direction, that said direction is inevitable (but can be sped up), and that the end result is this perfect classless society without the exploitation and slaughter that has characterised every other period in human history and finally, that you have the theoretical tools that not only prove this, but that explain every facet of social behaviour and generate workable predictions, you’ve pretty much set yourself up to accept the use of all sorts of means and methods (detestable to hypocritical bourgeoise bien pensants) to help bring about the final state, regrettable though their use may be.
This isn’t a defence of capitalism (though I must point out it’s proven much more complex and resilient than its greatest critic concieved of), least of all neoliberalism, which Glover is quite right to compare with Marxism offshoots, viz. these self-congratulatory ‘Hah, those stupid Commies – History’s on our side!’ encomia. Both are shot through with hubris to imagine that history has favourites, let alone that it has picked them.
Great post Leinad, and I agree with you about capitalism. I wonder if its resilience lies in its adaptability; its ease in slipping out of the dogma many have tried to attach to it, dogma that’s caused so much trouble for Marxism?
PS Why do Marxists only drink tea bags?
Because proper tea is theft.
Ba-boom. Thank you folks, I’m here all week. Try the veal.
Well put patrickg and Leinad, and Leniad I think you’ve hit the nail exactly on the head. I’ve got no doubt that Eric does in fact have a great concern for human rights, it’s just that the philosophy he espouses has a pretty sucky record on that particular item. Well that and history.
This is pretty ragged, but IMHO the problem with a closed philosophy like Marxism (or the economic philosphy of Hayek if it comes to that) is that its relationship with yer actual real world is, well, fairly ropey. Thus we end up with completely bogus concepts like “dictatorship of the proletariat” (i.e dictatorship by party bosses) and “false consciousness” (i.e you’re a heretic).
It’s more of a religion than the Catholic church. The usefulness or otherwise of class analysis aside, I can’t believe anybody’s still seriously spouting this stuff.
Anyway, a Menshevik, a Bolshevik and an Anarchist walked into a bar …
JAMES LOVELOCK: “It (capitalism) also causes global warming.”
Here we see the famous rigorous thinking of the hard Left. Sorry, James, but ‘capitalism’ does not cause global warming. Machines and CO2 emissions and cattle farts and rice paddies do; none of these things cares about ideology, they just do what they do, (or are used how we use ‘em), and cause un-intended by-products. Based on the intellectual depth of your assertion, I guess I couldn’t trust an anti-capitalist to lead a boy scout to a candy store, much less formulate an international global-warming policy. Not that I’m a ‘pure’ pro-capitalist myself; I’m just looking, in this life, for folks who don’t spout pure nonsense 24 hours a day.
patrickg: “(w/ sarcasm) Marxists are teh ar$3h0les.”
Well, yes. They may not be the ONLY arseholes in town, but they ARE arseholes just the same.
“If we do want to talk, seriously and with even a semblance of an open mind about what Marx agot wrong and right…”
That one’s actually pretty easy; systemically speaking (that is, w/r/t the theoretical model of his thought — no points for the random accurate observation), Marx’s “Kapital” can safely be compared to Ptolemy and his “Almagest.”
WHAT PTOLEMY GOT RIGHT: Yes, Ptolemy, there would appear to be moving bodies in the heavens.
WHAT PTOLEMY GOT WRONG: Every other fucking thing you could possibly imagine.
“Marx never imagined a world where the proletariat would have so much disposable income, and secondly power.”
Who cares what Marx imagined? If he couldn’t imagine a world as per his models and his scientific system, then what claim has he on anyone’s attention? As Lester Bangs once said, ‘[x] is said to be important. But on those terms, it’s also important to surprise your friends by giving them tiny ceramic frogs as gifts.’ How could Marx be any more important than that, except for ideological crazies who continue to INSIST (for reasons that have far more to do with cultural ressentiment than with science), that attention be paid, all evidence to the contrary.
“He also never imagined that we would effectively geographically sequester the vast majority of the world’s true proletariat, i.e. the developing world.”
This is so much oversimplified and wrongly observed as to amount to a species of nonsense. For instance, what do ‘they’ think they are ‘developing’ towards, anyway? And why do they bother? As to ‘effectively geographically sequestering’ the Third World, tell that to an immigration lawyer in L.A. Hoo-eee!
“If we go to the developing world, Marxism certainly has a higher profile, and a greater popularity…”
Well yes, and so do cargo cults. It’s a basic theme of human nature for people to see shiny nice things which they don’t have and can’t make, and to want them for themselves, for free; millenia of barbarian plundering of cities will I think bear me out on this one. Who told some villager in Malawi that he was poor because he doesn’t have a DVD player? Probably some Marxist. Who invented, manufactured, and marketed the DVD player that the villager didn’t even covet until he knew it was there? Well, probably not some Marxist.
Well, that sounds like something I might do. But your credit ought flow to Patrick G on this one.
Teh Push Back is on! Get some of Steve’s odds before its too late. And never underestimate the power of Mexicans bearing territorial grudges.
Isn’t that the point? That, to a large extent ‘we’ try to impose paths and targets of development upon ‘them’ and they either resist or conform depending on the power of local elites and the overwhelming attractiviness of Computadors, Moovies and the modernisation process in general.
I think its fair to say that much of the world is in thrall of the ‘one true path to development’ ideology as instanced by the fact that the terms (developed and developing) are now the common fallback from those even more useless Cold war descriptors (First and 3rd World.)
D’ya reckon? If it’s true to any extent it’s an interesting dialect. Assuming its true for a moment. Are you suggesting that if the Marxist hadn’t got there first that the Malawi villager and his/her community would have been pretty much free to go on and develop in the way that they liked? That there werent/aren’t a number of other pressures (re: resources, religion etc) that would have led to a similar imperialism and bred similar resentment? Don’t confuse a desire for beads and baubles with a desire for independence.
Could be that the title of this piece is incomplete. Maybe we need seperate Marx from Marxism from Stalinisim??
Leinad says:
If anyone’s got any competitors for understatement of the year, i’d like to see them.
I think we do. There’s a good case to be made that Marx wasn’t unfavourable to democracy at some periods of his life – and the missing theory of the state and politics was what allowed the Leninist distortion.
Could it actually be the famour irony of the Left, j_p_z?
D’oh!
Apologies, Patrick G.
…and commandeer it for the glorious revolution. Naturally enough, the barman objects to this so, before the Menshevik and the Anarchist have a chance to say a word, the Bolshevik shoots him as a petit-bourgeois reactionary.
With the barman out of the way, the Bolshevik heads for the bar flap but before he gets there, the Menshevik, not entirley happy with the way the tide of revolutionary change is flowing, speaks up.
âComrade,â? he says, âI think our next step should be to establish a drinkerâs soviet to run the bar for the benefit of the urban vodkatariat in accordance with Marxist-Leninist principles.â? The Anarchist, reluctantly, goes along with the Menshevik. So do all the drinkers in the bar.
The Bolshevik, seeing that the situation could turn ugly â once heâs shot the more aggressive drunks, the rest might get to him while heâs reloading his revolver â curses himself for leaving the automatic at home that morning and agrees to the Menshevikâs proposal. A drinkersâ soviet is quickly formed, with the Anarchist, reluctantly, appointed pro-tem chairman.
The Anarchist decides that the first order of business should be to discuss the way the new drinkersâ Soviet should be organised. Very quickly, the Bolshevik is on his hind legs, his hand on his holstered revolver.
âI move that the drinkersâ Soviet shall form an executive committee to appoint a drinkersâ commissar who will operate the bar for the benefit of the urban vodkatariat!â? he booms, âBut in the interim we should appoint a drinkersâ commissar pro-tem, who will be responsible for issuing drinks to the members of the soviet to maintain a proper spirit of Marxist-Leninist comradeship while we debate these weighty questions!â?
The drinkers erupt in cries of âHere, here, tovarichâ? and the Bolshevikâs motion is passed by acclamation. The Bolshevik proposes that the Menshevik be appointed drinkersâ commissar pro-tem. The Menshevik craftily declines the honour, suggesting instead that the Anarchist, who has already shown himself to be an able chairman of the drinkersâ Soviet, is more obviously suited to the jobâ¦
JAMES LOVELOCK: âIt (capitalism) also causes global warming.â?
Here we see the famous rigorous thinking of the hard Left. Sorry, James, but âcapitalismâ does not cause global warming. Machines and CO2 emissions and cattle farts and rice paddies do; none of these things cares about ideology, they just do what they do,
The above statement is a classic I should sue you for near on giving me a heart attack laughing.No further comment is necessary.Although I do have to have nice thoughts to get a hard on.Suffice to say the planet does lots of things without human intervention.
Capitialism is the only game in town according to you and your ilk at the moment, so spare me the bullshit pedantics.Capitalism is always was and will always be about greed not need,with the planet over populated even need by capitalism, or communism will produce global warming.
Hey Mark,o/k I know Im in my dotage so all those factory’s,power stations etc,etc, etc, spewing out shit,to make further shit, like tons of plastic for buckets and spades and christmas trees,and condoms are provided by whom?Shit I
pressed the wrong button.I know the World Communist Party.Like J.P.Z. spare me the facile pedantics.
Then Steve, the real question this is: Why is the Howard government and its fellow-travellers among the commentariat so obsessed with evicting them “root and branch” from places where they hardly even exist?
In my mind the fact that the ideologues of the Right are still frothing over the vague appearance of any type of oppositional thought is because in fact there is some historical purpose and current need for them to demonise as deviant that wich threatens their power.
The class struggle doesn’t just disappear because the political ascendency is with the Right. As I quoted from The Communist Manifesto all those posts ago, it is sometimes out in the open (as in Russia in 1917 and for about a decade afterwards in Europe) and sometimes hidden under the weight of ideology. Remember the ideas of an epoch are those of its ruling class.
This from PatrickG is a useful place to pick up the question of class again. There is a tendency to divide the planet into classes geographically, but it’s not actually right to say that the true proletariat is in the “third” or “developing” world and that we in the west are members of a “global” bourgeoisie.
Class location (as opposed to class consciousness) is determined by a person’s (or group’s) material relationship to the means and forces of production [Yes Christine, I am going to continue using this jargon, it is the language of dialectics and materialism].
As globalisation (imperialism by another name) continues there is a shifting dynamic of class creation and dissolution.
In the developing world (at the margins of industrial capitalism) there has been two centuries of dialectical interplay between pre-capitalist social formations and imperialism.
One example will suffice: India was initially a warehouse for raw materials needed to fuel the industrial revolution in Europe, particularly England. Tea, spices, cotton etc were harvested and then manufactured in the metropolitan centre. As capitalist production moved offshore from Britain, India became a source of indentured labour in other parts of the empire. Today India is one of the expanding centres of the global service economy.
The key point about this is that India’s role has been determined by the needs of imperialism (the “highest” stage of capitalism). However, there is also a bourgoise ruling class in India (established in a struggle of national independence, initially represented by the Congress Party). Now the Indian bourgeoisie has earned its place in the global ruling class (which still has national divisions) by assisting in the successful (and inevitable) integration of India into the global economy.
A similar process is underway in China today. The difference is that the Chinese ruling class (since the nationalist revolution of 1949)is state-capitalist. There was a fusing of state and capital (based on the Soviet-Stalinist model)and a party apparatus straight out of Orwell’s 1984. That ruling class is today earning its place alongside the global rulers through its attempts to integrate China further into the world economy. It is running into problems of a cultural and ideological nature because it wants to hang on to political power through the ossified party structure. This will not be easy and it’s only a matter of time before there’s another Tianenman Square type incident.
Why am I so confident of this? Because the dialectic (the social forces that make “history”) is a process of mutual constitution and combined/uneven development.
Leinad’s got a point. Marx turned Hegel on his head. That is he shifted the dialectic (which is a concept as old as philosophy itself) from the realm of the ideal to the realm of the material. It is a scientific theory (though not the Stalinist “scientific socialism”) and it does have utopian elements. [I will post on utopias at some point as it's a subject dear to me] But it is not about predicting any “final result”. To predict finality is a problem that even Fukayama finally rejected when his “end of history” thesis was refuted by…history.
It is in fact the organic intellectuals of the bourgeoisie who have attempted to predict the end result. Their unflagging belief that capitalism and the free market are the highest form of human consciousness and social organisation is a denial of the dialectic and materialism. Having won their own revolution against feudalism and absolutism they are intent on denying the global proletariat a chance at initiating one of its own.
It was in fact this revolution that Marx and Engels studied and which led them to formulate their theories of political economy, and class struggle. It was the Paris Commune and the bourgeois revolution in France that gave them some clues about how to organise a proletarian revolution. This is where Trotsky got the idea of “permanent revolution” (a much misunderstood concept among the bampots). It does not mean that there will be constant upheaval and revolutionary violence, it simply means that within the context of the bourgeois revolutions of the 19th century, the working class had to maintain its own independent, disciplined political organisation.
Why is such an idea a threat to the Right? Because it exposes the very strategy and tactics that their ancestors in the revolutionary bourgeoisie adopted in their glorious revolution against feudalism. Marx, Lenin, and the revolutionary workers’ movement simply thought “If it was good enough for them, we can learn from this.”
This, Christine, was the aim of my original post. To actually disentangle Marxism from the grip of regimes that do have a sucky record on human rights. If socialism is about the liberation of the body and the spirit (which IMHO it is) then socialists should be the first to condemn the gulags, starvation in North Korea, the incaceration of gays in Cuba, etc etc. And we are.
However, we also have to criticise the human rights record of capitalism too. How can anyone who’s got a modest eye on reality actually believe that capitalism has a good record in this regard?
It is capitalism that creates mass poverty, starvation and disease because it’s founding principle is “accumulate, accumulate”.
Capitalism has created global warming for the same reason. The environment is there to be plundered in the name of accumulation. Socialism is about living in harmony with nature using less invasive and destructive technologies.
Capitalism creates war through economic and territorial competition. Capitalism harnesses vast amounts of productive resources and labour with the simple aim of conquering or destroying competitors. Socialism is the absence of this competition and war. It is about harnessing resources wasted in war-making for the benefit of humanity.
Capitalism breeds racism etc. Human nature is the product of material conditions (being determines consciousness), it is not a barrier to change. If it were, we would never have moved beyond small hunter-gatherer societies. The earliest humans would have wiped themselves out in stupid turf wars over the best hunting grounds. The ability of humans to cooperate in the shaping of the natural world is the key element that will force a positive shift from capitalism to socialism.
Gummo, you’re too much. I’m trying to type while simultaneously rolling around on the floor swept up in gales of laughter. Well done.
Mr Eric Blair who ever the fuck you are?at the risk of pissing in your pocket you are good,in fact real good,best writer I have experienced on this blog.
And NO not just cause we think the same.So all you others g.r.
James Lovelock: “…No further comment is necessary.”
I repeat: once again, here we see the famous rigorous thinking of the hard Left.
Give this guy a seat in the ‘intellectual vanguard’ of the ‘dictatorship of the proletariat’! Or, in the unlikely event that this particular pushmepullyou turns out to not actually exist, then at least give him a glibglorb in the whomsiwhatsit of the flibbertigibbet! Either way, I’m sure we won’t regret it.
Eric Blair: “…Marx turned Hegel on his head. That is he shifted the dialectic (which is a concept as old as philosophy itself) from the realm of the ideal to the realm of the material.”
Give this guy a gold star! He’s a model freshman undergraduate in that old chestnut course, Spout Back to Me What I Tell You 101.
Eric Blair: “Capitalism breeds racism…”
No, wait, I take it back. He’s a model grad student. Maybe even a tenured professor, *teaching* SBTMWITY 101…
j_p_z Oh paaaaaaaaaaaaaleeeeeeaaaaaaassssseeeeee spare me the tantrums.you have been had on toast so deal with it.Revisionist wank stains like you really get on my tits,find something else to rave on deliriously about.Go and talk to the picture of John Winston Howard,who I am sure you have a picture of on your bed head.,he makes about as much sense as you do.
James, thanks. I appreciate your comments, though the bampots are all greetin’ about it. Let’s leave it there.
j_p_z: Give me your postal address, I’ll send you a copy of my PhD thesis. At 2.5kg it comes it at roughly correct weight. I’ll even pay the postage! You probably won’t read it, but it’ll make a handy doorstop.
James – stop calling other commenters things like “revisionist wank stains” or you’ll quickly find that my attitude towards deleting comments is quite Stalinist. You need to read the comments policy and discuss civilly if you’re to enjoy the ability to post here.
Aw Kim, j_p_z called me a “pushmepullyou”. Seriously folks, it’s undignified for any blog to descend into schoolyard tanties.
Ahh, but Eric, you ignored my first point re: disposable income of the proletariat.
I understand the definition of classes by labour relations – and it’s not without merit – however I wold argue that in focussing solely on labour relations as a source of definition we do in fact ignore one of the prime motivators of Marxism, to wit; inequality.
Indeed, we live in an age where the proletariat – by classical Marxist definition – can earn considerably more than the bourgeoisie in many situations. I don’t think that’s a particularly helpful distinction.
In terms of the very concrete exploitation Marx was trying to fight with, you cannot deny that the vast majority of worker relations in the developing world echo the situations he was writing about far more accurately than the worker relations we have in the developed world.
I’m not saying that certain things can’t apply, however I do think it’s a bit, hmmm, wrongly prioritised to talk about the labour relations and need for marxist change in a country like Australia, where labour relations are on the whole quite satisfactory to the majority of the populace (this, after all, is democracy; we shouldn’t foist the idea of dismantling a system on a populace that is genuinely happy with said system), when the majority of the world is trapped in terrible labour relations that a socialist agenda could potentially help, and is potentially far more desirable to them.
A little muddled, but I think you get the idea. I’m ignoring JPZ because if I wanted vitriolic editorial with no discernible purpose I would buy the Tele, and I don’t.
Am I getting deleted now?
What I wanted to say, O Kimberella my favourite blogger, was where did you find this bloke?
Eric B. — (actually, that’d be a much kooler moniker, if ya google it; “Eric B is on the cut, and mah name is Rakim”) — to be fair: probably I was grammatically unclear, but for the record, I didn’t call *you* a pushmepullyou; I reserved that dignified (and delightful!) nomenclature for the ‘intellectual vanguard of the dictatorship of the proletariat.’ But I can easily see how the sentence might have been confusing, so, I’m sorry. (and I do agree about schoolyard tantrums)
James L.: “you have been had on toast” — strangely, I don’t see where. Once again, folks, in case you’re not getting too too tired of it: the famous intellectual rigor of the hard Left on display — simply making Spouty-the-Whale rhetorical claims and spewing hysterical invective, because they’ve never been able to substantiate a single point of their platform. Since I disagree with you, James, why don’t you just shoot me? Or get me banned from my workplace? Or send me to a labor camp to be properly re-edumacated? That’d be kinda yer style, yes?
j_p_z I don’t have to substantiate anything it’s public knowledge, shit if you read a few books you may just learn something, you may find some of the reqiured books in library’s that’s provided the wingnuttery hasn’t put them on the banned list,and the library’s havn’t been demolished for another fast food outlet that employs slave labour.The fast food outlet must be i assume the labour camp you are referring to?And as for re-edumacation im sure a person of your worldly knowledge can make a hamburger. And no thats not my style,but of course you would already know that, the right has taken over where Stalin left off, David Hicks springs to mind.As for having you shot,that my friend would be a waste of a good bullit.
I am on to you, your a would be if i could be,and you aint that intelligent so spare me your condescending conceit,you were toast the moment your comments hit the server.
I only read the initial post and none of the comments.
Wow – I havn’t come across socialist rhetoric for quite a while. How is it that the language is completely identifiable?
Oooo – I havn’t heard the phrase “false consciousness” since I created (with Mark) the Labour Victory Front posters in Brisbane ten years ago!
Then perhaps you should adopt a non-left-revolutionary strategy to achieve your goals.
If I needed to or was interested in doing so, I would. But I’m not. And life’s too short.
I like you PatrickG. You’re thoughtful and seem to be enjoying this exchange. So once more dear comrades (Don’t you hate that sucky attempt to make friends? Hey, I am actually *only* human)…into the flames:
PatrickG#1
With respect, this is the “Green Left Weakly” position. It’s not simply about incomes, though I dispute that workers can/do earn more than real, breathing members of the ruling class. The key distinction of Marx is that the bourgoisie both own and control capital – the means of production and can therefore also direct the labour of others in the production of both use values and exchange values. It is a relationship to capital that determines class, not disposable income.
PatrickG#2
Exploitation is relative, as is alienation. There’s no doubt that higher disposable incomes in the metropolitan west tend to mitigate feelings of exploitation and alienation. But so to does the highly-sophisticated cultural meme of consumerism, what Marx called the fetishism of commodities.
This differential is probably one reason why the Left is on the move in Latin America today. And no, bampots, I don’t think Hugo Chavez is the Bolivian Lenin! Nor do I think he’s necessarily a Marxist despite the rhetoric and the red shirt. What he (and others like him) represent is a rising, but muddled class consciousness that is developing in response to the conditions on the ground. There is a revolutionary upsurge in Latin America, will it lead to socialism? Who knows. Could it cause further heartburn in Washington? I hope so.
PatrickG#3
There are three points here. One is labour relations in Australia. The Howard government’s new IR laws are not “quite satisfactory” to most workers. Perhaps we haven’t seen much backlash yet, but as one of my pals said recently, they haven’t quite had time to bite.
Secondly, is Australia a democracy? Well yes, formally, but “democracy”, like “socialism” is a much abused word and, for some, a loose, ill-disciplined concept.
Third, I am not about “foisting” anything on anybody. I don’t think an elite (of any size) can “bring” socialism to anyone, nor can socialism be forced on to a population. Hence the vigour of my argument against Stalinism (like my namesake).
The tradition that I stand in has a firm commitment to the self-expression of the revolution through “home-grown” Soviets (workers’ councils) based on the occupation of factories, mines, offices, banks, schools etc by the workers who work there.
Membership and leadership of the Soviets is democratic in the real sense. In this context elections and decision-making have real consequences (teleological Marxism?).
My slogan is socialism from below, not Red Army tanks and jackboot commisars.
j_p_z
I know you are, but what am I?
‘With respect, this is the âGreen Left Weaklyâ? position
Now I am impressed. I’ve been unable to discern any position in GLW about anything other than extended love letters to John Pilger and plucky little Venezuela, and The! Vital! Use! Of! Exclamation! Marks! And! Misplaced! Capitals! To! Highlight! The! People’s! Righteous! Outrage! NOW!!
Eric B: “I know you are, but what am I?”
Well, at long last, it seems as though we’ve run out of useful things to say to one another. Frankly, I’m amazed it took as long as it did.
So, good luck to you! Guess you’ll just have to work your side of the street, and I’ll work mine. That’s fair, innit? Have a great time! And do send me an email when Latin America becomes (Latin America!! heh heh) a socialist paradise.
And here am I thinking you guys had stamina. You must get tired of repeating yourselves after a while I guess. When all you can do is channel Ann Coulter, there’s not much room left for original thought.
And j_p_z,you can email me when capitalism actually solves the world’s problems.
Um Eric Blair,the penny’s just dropped George Orwell,very good.
James, I think the bampots have had enough. Cheers, Eric
I’m aware of how Marx defines class – but I still don’t think it’s a particularly useful definition.
For example, when I ran my own small business, controlling capital, etc. – by that definition a member of the bourgeoisie – I was pretty broke much of the time, though I certainly wasn’t alienated from the product of my labour.
By contrast, I earn way more now, and I’m more prole than ever. Controlling capital, I think, is no longer a successful definer of class in the developed world, and I say this in full knowledge that Australians love to pretend there’s nothing but middle class here.
Hmmm. I’m not trying to deny consumerism here Eric, but who are we to say what makes people happy or no? Arguing that the feelings of happiness people get from buying shit are somehow inferior to the feelings of happiness they get from, say, playing sport or some such strikes me as prescriptive and elitist, regardless of how much I may personally or disagree.
In regards to capitalism, I’m afraid you can’t pin it all on WorkChoices. Australia was capitalist before then, and should – by some miracle – they go, we will still be capitalist and people are clearly reasonably happy with it or presumably true socialist parties would be doing a lot better. Pinning it on false consciousness etc. doesn’t hold water for me.
When I talked about the two things I think Marx failed to predict, I guess I’m saying these are some of the reasons why I think Marxism has failed to catch the public imagination. There is no messiah of capitalism, I don’t think, and it has been rigorously and consistently adapted and rehsaped by influential thinkers.
Economic Marxism, in particular, I think, has not been subject to these winds of change with the same degree. Culturally, it certainly has, from the Frankfurt School, to Habermas and even the postmodernism of Lacan and Eco. In the latter, particularly, it lives on quite strongly I think, though under a variety of names.
Perhaps the same is true for the economics, I wouldn’t know better, but the appellation of Marxism is certainly not tagged on these things – by either detractors or champions.
Much the pity you were slaying them.As an aside Larvatus Prodeo a left of centre blog?Obviously no surveyors here. Cheers.
When the great Tao is forgotten,
Kindness and morality arise.
When wisdom and intelligence are born,
The great pretense begins.
Eric: I feel like I’m looking into an alternate universe.
In the real world, looking at various systems that have existed, the mixed capitalist/govt regulation system that exists in Australia and many other western countries has been spectacularly successful in assisting people to have (generally) good standards of living, healthy and long lives, the opportunity for good standards of education, the ability for people to better their opportunities and lives and the opportunity to enhance their personal freedoms and achieve their goals.
This is not to say that other systems couldn’t do this, nor that other systems couldn’t be better than the mixed capitalism/govt regulation system. You are welcome to point to a system that is better over extended periods of time. Of course better systems could exist, but you don’t seriously expect people to take those arising from revolutionary leftism as better, especially those parts connected to secret police regimes and the curtailment of individual freedoms (not to mention the effect on private economic activity) given what’s actually happened, do you?
Eric, it’s not about whether any particular system solves “the world’s problems” (this is an absurd prescription) but about whether particular systems work better than other systems.
Is there any room in your view of reality for doubt, or have you decided on how reality is and aren’t open to overturning your world view if the evidence suggests this? I’m open to overturning my worldview if the evidence suggests this, but I doubt that many dyed-in-the-wool revolutionary leftists are.
Isn’t the Green Left Weekly position to “Defend Cuba”? I never understand how they want to defend a dictatorship – perhaps that revolutionary thinking for you.
Maybe the Green Left Weekly position is what mutually attracted editors get up to after putting the paper together! You know, polling the electorate sort of thing …
I believe the Green Left is actually owned* by the Socialist Alliance, and there’s a few articles in each edition that give the impression of coming straight from a politicians office. They’re not exactly an ‘independent’ paper. I did some digging around once and found that the Alliance apparently first came to prominence as admirers of ‘revolutionary’ Cuba and Che Guevara in particular. Even so, you wonder how a paper that purports to be a defender of human rights can so readily support dictatorships like Castro’s Cuba and questionable leaders like Chavez. ‘Critical’ journalism doesn’t seem to be their strong suit.
*Owned? Property is theft, comrade!
I hope Eric is under the age of 30 and will grow out of Marxist fetish.
There is nothing more pathetic than a wrinkled, bearded gentleman in a Che Guevera t-shirt trying to sell you a copy of the Green Left Weekly.
Well alright, there is one thing more pathetic: that is the sad tendency for an old commie to suddenly ditch everything he believed in an morph into a lemon-mouthed neocon.
I think you mob need to distinguish between an academic analysis of Marxism which is politically inspired, and the antics of socialist sects.
Just sayin…
Actually Eric, to assist you along the path to a more sophisticated and possibly Marxian outlook, as opposed to a Marxist outlook, you may want to look at UWS economics professor Steve Keen’s ideas- http://www.debunking-economics.com/Marx/index.htm
“Karl Marx the ablest of the Communistic writers is dead. His great work On Capital is a masterpiece. While, however, agreeing with most of his critical positions, we are not in accord with his remedies. He was a State Socialist, and advocated State Control of all industries, of all kind whatever.” Whoever wrote that obituary in the Sydney Liberal newspaper in 1883, could have posted to this site, 123 years later without having even experienced the 20th century! (Quote from A New Britannia)
It is one thing to describe/diagnose a disease, it’s another thing to develop/prescribe a cure without killing or maiming the patient.
I really can’t see how anyone committed to “socialism from below” can look up to either Trotsky or Lenin as role models. With friends like that, who needs enemies. Anyone committed to such a notion who freely espoused it while either of those men had power would have at the very least found life very ‘interesting’ to borrow a term from that other great friend of the worker, Mao.
PatrickG
Marx said there were two great “contending classes” in capitalism, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie. However, he didn’t say that there were *only* two. What Patrick’s refering to here is the middle class, what in the 19th and early 20th centuries Marxists described as the petty bourgeois. This class of small business owners, professionals, is caught in a contradictory class location. This analysis has been brought up to date by the concept of the *new* PB. Particularly by Nicos Poulantzas and Nicholas Carchedi.
Sacha B
A key idea in my original post was that I don’t think we can point to what some refer to as *actually existing socialism* as any type of model. In the 60s and 70s it was popular to try explaining away the very obvious problems of Stalinism (ie that is wasn’t socialism of any type) and to look at Cuba, etc as somehow *better*. I have never supported that view. And it’s not, IMHO, reasonable, to lump all varieties of Marxism into one box. We don’t do this with the conservatives.
Sacha B
Do I doubt the validity of Marxism? No. Have I abandoned reality? No. I am (and said earlier) fully aware that I’m in a tiny minority at the moment and I’m not overly confident that I’ll even see a revolution in my time (being over 30 and all), but I do take heart from many events over the past 100 years that lead me to believe in the “proles” as Winston Smith was fond of saying.
We live in an age of uncertainty and revolutionary potential and in some parts of the world we’ve seen this in many guises. Often it is ideologised as *people power* and de-classed, made safe and incorporated into the great churn of ideology. How do these events occur?
Not through the manipulation of a small elite group of cadre, nor through the application of pernicious propaganda. They happen because ordinary people realise that their world is turning to $h!t and that if they get together (organise) and fightback things might be different.
Revolution does not occur in conditions of perfect readiness, they are messy, difficult and dangerous.
The Russian revolution of Lenin and Trotsky was attacked and destroyed by imperialism. 14 western armies invaded Russia in 1918 to back the counter-revolution of the White Armies. Australian troops took part in this invasion too.
This invasion and the blockading of Russia that followed weakened the revolution and prevented it from spreading to other parts of Europe. The social democrats of Germany, France and England also helped to isolate it by compromising with their own bourgeoisie against the interests of the proles.
It is this historical accounting that properly explains the rise of Stalinism in Eastern Europe in the 20s and 30s, not the personal failings of Lenin or Trotsky. Once the Russian revolution was defeated, state capitalism was inevitable. This is the reality that revolutionaries today must confront. On a more optimistic note, the revolution that tore down the Berlin Wall was one that I and the international socialist tendency globally welcomed and supported. We knew that the *free*market would not solve any problems in Eastern Europe and hey…we were right. State capitalism and *gangster*capitalism are very much the same thing. We also argued (and were right again) that the permanent arms economy of the west is also a form of state capitalism. Hence the term military-industrial complex, which is applicable today to both the United States and capitalist Russia.
GLW
It’s easy to poke fun at GLW and the Socialist Alliance and again some historical background is important. GLW and Resistance came out of the orthodox Trotskyite Fourth International, which today is pretty well dead. The Australian group that dominated this tendency has gone by a variety of names. The distinguising feature, so aptly satirised by several posters here, is the groups delusional claims that Cuba and other places were some how socialist, or at least *post*capitalist. This tendency is now pretty much just a reformist rump and has abandoned revolutionary Marxism.
Finally, for Steve M, I do know Steve Keen, though he may not remember me. We were both students in political economy during the 1970s at Sydney University. I’ve seen the site you’re refering to and will be happy to take on a discussion of the Labour Theory of Value in another post. One key point though is that machinery is the product of living labour itself and hence there is a limit to the amount of value it can add to new commodities, hence the concept of depreciation.
A key question arising from that is: Can there ever be the production of value in a machine or automated economy? That is the real test of the LTV. I would argue that while a fully automated economy is theoretically possible (repiclating artificial intelligences), it is not possible under capitalist relations of production.
I knew it.
Classic Trot Apologist.
The forcible disbanding of the Constituent Assembly for daring not to elect a Bolshevik majority; the attempt to rule a nation through police and army resulting in mass hunger, which in turn lead to the supression of hundreds of peasant revolts with bombs and bullets – all of which Lenin would later admit was a total economic and social disaster (though only after he’d locked up and killed countless Mensheviks and SRs for saying the same thing) and the armed invasion of seven non-Russian countries who’d dared to have their own governments (some socialist, some not) are all Capitalism’s fault.
They had nothing at all to do with Lenin and Trotsky, or the Bolsheviks belief in their own correctness and their inexorable right to kill, terrorise and oppress any who got in the way of their struggle for the proletariat.
This whole thread is becoming awfully Stakhanovite.
Too many central planners, not enough shock workers.
J
Marx….. WAS A COMMIE.
That is the most important point here. And communism, at least in its Christian form is a heresy that goes back to Joachim of Fiore. That is to say it predates Marx by many centuries. And Marx was committed to it before he read much economics.
You see, whatever you think about Marx it must be understood that he was working backwards towards a conclusion. And his goal in this gargantuanly tendentious effort was to take the communist heresy SECULAR.
His behaviour and his writing CANNOT be understood without bearing this in mind.
With a closed mind like that, Eric B, you’ll be very lucky indeed if you avoid a excoriation by silkworm, LP’s resident scourge of all forms of religious belief.
On your kind offer to j_p_z
can I suggest that if he does take you up on the offer you consider having the thesis printed on tissue paper. That way you’ll save on postage costs and j_p_z will be able to put it to better use than as a doorstop.
“And communism, at least in its Christian form is a heresy that goes back to Joachim of Fiore.”
Aw, you’re just jealous Birdy that your own sweeping utopian theories ain’t attracting much more than indulgent and pitying laughter.
Nano diamond rod-backed sky houses for everyone!
“Isnât the Green Left Weekly position to âDefend Cubaâ??
Maybe Sacha, it’s hard to tell. I got completely lost in whatever maze of garden paths they were up tripping when they started whining about what a raw deal that nice Mr Milosevic was getting.
And Nabakov, stop being such an overachieving suck. The comrades really don’t appreciate it. Really.
I’m surprised anyone actually reads it.
Just sayin…
A friend of mine used spare copies for bog paper back when he was a member…
My reponse when offered a copy of Green Left Weekly in Bourke St Mall after popping out of DJs or HMV is “I’m sorry, I don’t speak English. Not even an iota.”
Copies of GLW used to get dumped at a former workplace and I, for amusement, read it on the train home. It was like being confronted by this weird parallel universe where black was yellow and blue was pink.
When I asked a distributor of said rag how they could in all seriousness publish such iditotic defenses of Slobodan Milosevic, I was told in all seriousness that any criticism of him was based on “lies and propoganda.”
Striken as I was by this profound insight into the nature of my realtionship with reality, I went home lamenting my false sense of consciousness and subjected myself to a stern bout of self-criticism in the bathroom mirror.
Do they still do “horizontal recruitment” in Resistance?
Kim says:
“I think you mob need to distinguish between an academic analysis of Marxism which is politically inspired, and the antics of socialist sects.”
Pigeon droppings, Kim. The stuff that Eric is spruiking is the exact same sort of crap my old mates from the ISO used to spruik. State Capitalism and all that other rubbish were smelly when I first heard them in the late 80s and have only grown riper as the years have passed.
Anyway, I’m sure Eric will provide us LP camp followers with loads of merriment in the weeks to come. We it be uncomradely to characterise him as the LP courty jester?
I guess so Kim. Fuck, why would anybody join otherwise? Just a bunch of poor sad bastards who have been denied the enticing seductions of Coles New Farm I suppose.
It’s late isn’t it? That’s what happens when you play Defcon1. I’ve just wiped out New York and Los Angeles. Sadly, though, the good (former) citizens of Phoenix, Boisie, and Santa Fe kind of unintentionally got caught up in the general melee of the targetting.
Just the way it goes I guess.
I’ve just spent a very long time arguing with people who simply deny that taxation is theft.
Communism going centuries back has always been about the enslavement of the largest possible number of people via the greatest imagineable act of theft in the context of the obsession of blood-lust and human sacrifice.
But if you are so much in denial and so bloody-minded that you won’t even admit that taxation is theft then you aren’t going to be able to comprehend the rightness of what I’m saying about communism.
Its all about deciding that you aren’t going to lie any more.
The weird relationship with reality that some GLW people seem to have is a bit sad for them. Does anyone where if there are still DSP houses around the country?
Don’t worry comrade, faith will pull you through all doubt.
“Does anyone where if there are still DSP houses around the country?”
Scary thought. How would such a beast operate?
There is, however, a Resistance bookshop in East Perth nestled between the born-again drop-in centre and the knock-shop.
I suppose it’s quite handy for those who like their totty, Trotsky and temple in one convenient location.
Sacha, it’s not a matter of faith. G W Bush has “faith”, I have the dialectic. It’s a matter of science to show the existence of the dialectic, but no matter how hard those with faith believe, they can never provide any physical evidence of its manifestation, ie: the GodHead.
The dialectic – mutual constitution, combined and uneven development – exists at the level of the molecule.
It is also a social process and can be easily summarised in the phrase: the only constant is change
It’s actually capitalism that builds shrines to its faith – in this sense an ideological, if unnatural, belief in it’s own inevitability.
The emotional drive to rebuild WTC as Freedom Tower or whatever bull$h!t3 name it’s got is one example.
It’s driven by the high priests of consumerism and war, in the name of the holy trinity: profit, power and ideology. It symbolises their mesmerising grip over the faithful and the frightened.
It is a profane monument to the dead and a shrine to the unGodly mess that is globalisation.
There certainly used to be a DSP house in New Farm. I visited it once for some film night or something and some woman tried to woo me, either to the Party or her fine self. It didn’t work.
It’s a matter of science? How? What do you understand science to be?
What on earth does this mean?
Ditto.
“I suppose it’s quite handy for those who like their totty, Trotsky and temple in one convenient location.”
I’m sorry, that was really immature.
It should have read ‘Marx, muff, and miracles’.
Trots,Hots,Prots
You’ve found the wrong religion, Eric. The Buddha was pointing out that the only constant is change two and a half thousand years ago.
Ok now I’m interested. Whatever does this mean in terms of actual chemistry?
by the way, I’m suprised only one mention of Popper so far. Where’s Rafe when you need him?
Christ, comms, and cunts?
Hmmm…this gives me an idea for a cult.
She blinded me with… Science!
Eric B Is On the Cut: “I have the dialectic. It’s a matter of science to show the existence of the dialectic… The dialectic – mutual constitution, combined and uneven development – exists at the level of the molecule. It is also a social process and can be easily summarised in the phrase: the only constant is change…”
Yeah, I keep forgetting that the 64 hexagrams of the I Ching correspond precisely to the 64 steps of the DNA double helix, and therefore Taoism is exactly the same as molecular biology… after all, the appearance of the number 64 TWICE in human affairs couldn’t possibly be a coincidence, right? *Right?!*
Whoa, Nelly! Now I’m not just entertained; I’m actually sort of frightened, for the sake of the future minds of whatever young folks this ‘academic’ dude is licensed to teach. Somebody distract this fella with a nice endowed chair in Dianetics, stat!
Steve E:
I’m not a chemist, but the point I was trying to make is that the dialectic (a process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis) is present in nature. Hegel uses the example of the acorn having to “negate” its properties as a seed in order to become an oak tree. This process of negation occurs in reaction to chemical and physical processes: nutrients, plus moisture plus heat in the soil creates a reaction inside the acorn and it grows into a tree.
I think it also applies in genetics. I think the mutation of DNA and breaks in the double helix are an example of the dialectic. Darwin’s theory of evolution is a process of the dialectic.
Without being reductionist (have a field day with that one!) Marx recognised this process also occurs in social relations. Each transformation from one mode of production to another (from what Hindess & Hirst called primitive communism, to Asiatic modes, slavery, feudalism to capitalism and eventually to socialism) is a processes of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.
Mutual constitution is from an American media scholar called Vincent Mosco from his book The digital sublime and refers to the process of contradictions and a simultaneous repulsion-attraction between opposites.
For example, the rise of a mercantilist class within the ossifying production/social relations of feudalism held both a mutal attraction and a negation (repulsion).
The mercantilists relied on feudal relations and slavery to some extent to generate goods that they could trade; however the very existence of this trade exerted such negative pressure on feudal relations of production that they eventually gave way, replaced by universal commodity manufacture and the rise of a new class of merchant-manufacturers, Marx’ bourgeoisie. The modern city replaced the city state, the modern nation replaced feudal relations of fealty and following the ultimate negation of feudalism – the bourgeois revolutions – capitalism became the dominant system.
Why on earth should it stop there?
Capitalism now stands in an embrace of mutual constitution with the forces that will destroy it. Not a small Marxist sect, or even a large one, but the only real force capable of doing so.
Or to refer again to the classics, let’s not forget that Marx in the Communist Manifesto praised the revolutionary zeal of the bourgeoisie. He recognised and described the dialectic of capitalism in this way:
BTW: I haven’t forgotten the Constituent Assembly, I’m just doing some research.
Bombs, boobs and blessings?
The content of the last few posts, reduced to its bare minimum:
Dialectics
Dianetics
Trots
Hots
Prots
Pots
Cults
Cunts
Chemistry
Interestingly, you can rearrange all these words to produce a haiku, if that floats your boat …
Where’s Hogan when you need him?
*dons monocle*
“HHHHOOOOGGGAAANNNN!!!!!!”
WTF?!!! (I don’t usually swear but I had to here)
Especially WTF?!!
Welcome to (insert drum roll) Comment 101, Sacha.
Now would you kindly place your head in this rat-filled cage, please?
Sacha.
You got to look at Eric in this way……
I’m not talking about now. But can you remember back to a time when you first heard about Nostradamus……
Or can you imagine some young kid whose authentically smart but very very young and reads Dan Browns book about Jesus and conspiracy and stuff and finds himself BELIEVING.
Or suppose you were quite young during the most pessimisstic time for the West (the 70′s) and you were nominally an atheist except after midnight… And you read revelations for the first time.
And you get this vibe about this high-tech sounding stuff. About the printing of numbers on your forehead or your right hand. And all this conspiracy theory is around and about. And someones jokingly named some machine THE BEAST (or allegedly so) that is supposed to be able to do just this sort of thing for identification purposes…
So imagine that you are going to some Christian group. On account of that there is some hot looking babe there a few years older then you. And everyone ends up talking about nuclear holocaust and revelations……
SPOOKY
>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The above aint auto-biographical. What I’m honing in on here is why the hard-leftists are such lunatics.
WE ARE TRYING TO HONE IN ON A FEELING!!!!!!! here.
A feeling about secrets, conspiracies and PROPHECIES.
A feeling that allows the person to tell himself that he’s so very intuitive and smart to have read between the lines.
They feel the magic of the marxist pseudo-revelations prophecy.
The feel the magic.
And it never leaves them.
They become Eschatology junkies.
And so they will LET US DOWN like junkies every time. Because just when we need a little FUCKING SOLIDARITY they will be making all sorts of excuses for treason. They will be sustaining our enemies.
Because they are addicted to the idea of the marxist new world…. So every fucking thing they do is designed to bring down the PRE-ORDAINED slaughter that comes before that. The slaughter before the paradise.
But they no shit about getting to paradise. So they just focus on getting to slaughter.
Curse their black hearts.
I fucking hate them so very very much.
So you can map stuff onto the dialectic framework, but does it tell you anything, or are you just pushing stuff in boxes to fit into the framework?
This is the essential problem. Its always possible to push the past into the thesis-antithesis-sythesis structure, precisely because you are looking for it. While it may be a convinient way of breaking up past events (or not), it doesn’t really tell us anything new.
Sacha, darling, we none of us understand.
Close your eyes, imagine the sound of a breeze gently caressing the cool green leaves as, nearby, a babbling brook throws kisses at the sky, and just go with it.
Steve, you’re being far too considered.
Eric, make some scientific prediction using the dialectic.
I’d love to see an acorn “negating” its properties as a seed. What bizarre language.
Eric, for someone so passionately attached to your religion you really don’t know much about it.
The concept of the dialectic is not a scientific one. It was derived by Marx in his days as a young philosophy student in the late 1830s/early 1840s from Hegel’s dialectic of the Ideal, a concept that has a parentage going back to Plato, and which Aristotle had the good sense to reject. Marx’s inversion of Hegel’s dialectic to create dialectical materialism is a neat little philosophical trick that has the deficiency that inverting Hegel’s dialectic just empties it of its content.
Marx of course labelled his discovery as “science” in the fashion of mid-nineteenth philosophers who saw science as being a process of discovering immutable laws which governed the behaviour of the physical world, and they hoped, as a counterpoint to religion, could discover immutable laws that, in the same way, governed the behaviour of societies. To that extent he belongs to the same class as Herbert Spencer, father of Social Darwinism. He has, with Spencer, the failing that having already determined his belief in dialectical materialism then went after the evidence toconfirm his belief in the “science” of economics, then an area of study in its infancy, just as Spencer sought confirmation of his belief in the “survival of the fittest” in Darwin’s works. This is not the scientific way. It is the working of a closed mind and the antithesis of the method of scientific inquiry, which always allows that whatever hypothesis is tested and accepted can always be demonstrated to be false or in need of modification by subsequent observation and experimentation.
Not so for Marx, and you, with his immutable dialectical materialism. A concept derived, ultimately, from the speculative philosophy of Plato and not from scientific observation and critical analysis, it was for Marx and his followers also a concept that could not be subject to the rigours of scientific inquiry which might prove it wrong and therefore bring the entire edifice of Marxist thought down. It’s really no different from Christian belief in the Virgin Birth (who’s kidding who?) or the Muslim belief in the Koran being God’s direct and final word to Muhammad. It is religion. It has nothing to do with science.
Sacha,
I’m happy to concurr with your response also.
Its mumbo jumbo that sounds a lot like the New Idea’s horoscope, but people also manage to believe in that by trying to map it into events in their lives. At least New Idea’s hasn’t called for revolution.
Let me then pose the critics a question in the negative.
If Marx was wrong about dialectical materialism, how do you explain historical change?
For example, the transition from ape to human (Engels says it was the ability to harness tools in order to transform nature).
Or, the collapse of the Roman Empire (Marxists would argue it was because the social relations of slavery and military conquest could no longer sustain the empire).
Or the bourgeois revolution itself. Just how did capitalism come to dominate the world?
Well, it depends, Eric, if you want a *reductive* (there’s that word!) and monocausal explanation. And it also depends on what you believe about meaning in history.
There are many explanations of the collapse of the Roman Empire which don’t privilege economic causes. And in fact a huge debate among historians on this. The slavery/social relations of production argument is pretty much discredited these days, and it was never made very well in the first place by its proponents such as Anderson.
That’s not to say that the economic factors weren’t important. Just that they can’t be neatly fitted into a Marxist frame, and that they had only some importance. Multicausality is the truth of almost every social change. The trick is to weight different causes appropriately.
And contingent events play a large part.
The Hegelian dialectic is really an (onto)theology rather than a scientific method. I’m not at all convinced that Marx really did turn it on its head.
If you hold to grand sweeping philosophies of history, your epistemological position is no different in principle from the Neo-Cons for example.
It’s a much more difficult task to answer the question phenomenologically of how we experience meaning in history and the relationship between this and political action. And a more worthwhile project in my view.
Speaking as an old Weberian, myself…
Confusing larks and marlin, more like.
2001 says it was the appearance of an obelisk!
Evolution explains the transition from ape to human (which is misleading, we share common ancestors with apes rather than evolving from them as such) and of course the higher apes also use tools. There is no transistion, only evolution as the fitest survive in changing environment and changing ecosystem and gradually learn to exploit new niches.
If you want any one thing though I’m pretty sure its ability to develop a sophisticated language if you want to try and draw a line and the ability to share more complex knowledge this way rather than the slower process of evolution that would draw the line but of course thats a gradual process as well.
I really don’t think Engels is much of a guide to anthropology anymore…
And in any case all he was doing was reading back into 19th century evolutionary theory Hegel’s philosophical anthropology (hence the labour theory of value in a way, also). Hegel’s theory of work and transformation is quite interesting – tangentially – but also not new – Locke also had a similar take – which of course had a very diferent theoretical trajectory over the centuries.
Was Engels a Natural Philosopher, or did he just create this explanation as one that suited his existing ideas? Although the labels “ape” and “human” are probably misleadingly simplistic, I’d suggest Steve’s explanation below is more on the mark:
Evolution is a gradual process – in Dawkins’ latest tome, he writes (paraphrasing) that someone alive now could theoretically procreate with someone alive 1000 years ago if they could go back in time, and a person alive 1000 years ago could procreate with someone alive 1000 years before, and so and so on. Someone alive now might not be able to procreate with someone alive 100,000 years ago, however, as the genetics might be too different.
Where is the clear demarcation between species? It’s a gradual process.
Engels, if I recall correctly, did take into account what existed in terms of anthropological theory and evidence at the time. Some of what he wrote on patriarchy still has some value, but I agree that he’s been radically overtaken by a century and a bit of scientific evidence.
Sorry Bird, I missed your last comment. I agree with you – it looks like it can be an emotional thing that’s seared hard into people’s minds, perhaps by the blindingness of an insight into the “truth”. Note how there is never any doubt about the truth of marxism by believers – shouldn’t that ring alarm bells for them?
I have to do some value-adding class-based activites (career-enhancing things) so I bid you all au revoir.
‘…it looks like it can be an emotional thing thatâs seared hard into peopleâs minds, perhaps by the blindingness of an insight into the âtruthâ?’
The truth? You can’t handle the truth!
Do you, Bird, not have beliefs. You obviously think your position is more “true” than mine. But what exactly is it.
Or are you just blinded by some dark rage and a need to express a Nihilist and destructive world-view?
So far in this thread there’s been little attempt from any of the critics to argue a coherent and positive defence of anything they believe in.
I take on board Mark’s multicausality. Did I forget to mention I’m not an out-and-out economic determinist, though I do have a soft spot for the “final instance” observation.
Bird
You’re talking about the religious right in the US aren’t you? You know, those wierd groups of Aryan militia that believe in the literal “truth” of armaggedon and the rapture.
You know that Marxism kills.
And yet you are trying to promote it.
So whose the nihilist?
For me all this theory is so easy and the consequences are so direct and clear that when I see your Shiite I see flies walking across the eyeballs of young members of my extended family.
It might seem oh-so-abstract to so many people and they would wonder why I get uptight about this sort of thing.
But to me you may as well be cleaning your rifles and just about to hand them to some wild-eyed jihadist or commie psycopath.
This is all so one-to-one cause-and-effect for me.
So I make no apologies for getting superpissed at all you guys.
And if it comes to MY relatives and your FANTASY-WORLD I know the choices I’m going to make years in advance.
Matter of fact if it comes to MY people and YOUR family I would know how THAT would turn out also.
Birdy’s been raptured already. He’s speaking to us from his Zarathrustran heights.
Thats right.
But you spell his name wrong. My prophet if Zoroaster. And the big Cheese is Ahura Mazda.
And great woe came to the Island of Japan when at first they used the name of God for a lowly BRAND name.
1-2 decades of Recession.
My God is HARSH……
But fair.
Look what happened to the Great King Darius III!
Jeez Bird, you’re weird. Weird and disturbing. Maybe living in the Balkans would be more your sort of thing.
I’m on Alexander’s side by the way:
<img src="http://epguides.com/ReignTheConqueror/cast.jpg"
Bird wrote:
And you think my ideas are strange. Attributing an economic recession to the actions of some naff deity!
Harsh but fair? Now there’s a dialectic for you!
Does anyone here know if Missy Higgins is lesbian by the way?
Lef, I am a yesbian. Or naybe mot! I dan’t ceside!
“Jeez Bird, you’re weird. Weird and disturbing. Maybe living in the Balkans would be more your sort of thing.”
See how the least adept country outside of Africa could make a nuke or two?
See the debts of America. See its unfunded liablilities.
“Jeez Bird, you’re weird. Weird and disturbing. Maybe living in the Balkans would be more your sort of thing.”
I aint moving to the Balkans and neither should you.
Because when the Americans pull back from the world and the nukes spread out like a new and powerful religion…..
Then the BALKANS they are coming to us.
Its better that we start getting used to how we have to act to stay free or even alive in that new world.
I don’t suppose to be able to explain it – maybe dialectical materialism is correct, or maybe it isn’t, but it’s not possible to know that this explanation for “historical change” is right.
Well that’s not quite right, Sacha. It’s falsifiable.
Well, first let us look at what dialectical materialism means. From your Holy Scripture, the Communist Manifesto, your Prophet summarised what it meant to him when he wrote “The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.” Essentially he asks us to view all of the history of the development of societies as being the product of class struggle and that societies develop through the conflict between two classes according to Hegel’s dialectical principle in which a thesis (the prevailing view of a society’s ruling class) is challenged by its antithesis (the interests of those whom they rule and definitionally exploit and oppress) leading to a conflict which is resolved through a synthesis in which a new social structure emerges. That’s it.
What alternatives are there to that simple prescription? As Mark points out:
So lets look at just a few things that have caused societies to change and to which class struggle cannot be prescribed as being the cause (at least by sensible people):
Changed environments. Greenland warmed in the Middle Ages and so became fit for growing crops and was populated by Norsemen. Then it cooled and as it could no longer support them they either left or died out. Their inability to grow barley and therefore for their society to survive in Greenland was a consequence of the weather, not class struggle.
Technological Change. The invention of the transistor and with it the development of computers and other information technology has transformed the way a very large part of the world’s population lives. It is a big ask to claim that the intellectual endeavour of inventing the the transistor and then the innovation of creating its many applications was driven by class struggle.
Pestilence. The Black Death of the 14th Century changed the demographic of Europe, and the course of its history, but was caused by a bacillus not by class struggle
Conquest. The rise of the Mongols in the 13th Century and their conquest of much of the Eurasion landmass changed the course of Russian history for several centuries but the Mongols identified themselves as Mongols first and not as warriors leading a class struggle.
Religion. The efforts of Muhammad in the 7th Century to unify the tribes of the Arabian peninsula into a cohesive group with their primary affiliation to each other as adherents to the One God with a duty to spread that adherence throughout the world are still having ramifications but we are little served by viewing the extraordinary success of his mission through the prism of class struggle.
There are many other causes of changes in societies over time (and history is after all merely our experience and observation of that change) which are not associated with, and are not expicable by reference to, class struggle but that’s the narrow framework that Marx’s materialist dialectic gives his acolytes to see the world.
Eric, what a long debate-you must be more exhausted than those days back in Paris when you were working 16 hours a day a Hotel X or tramping around England and getting hit on by homeless men. But can I ask a question regarding the context of hegelectic dictarianism.
Was Marx aware of, and/or influenced by, the 19th century theory prevailing in the physcial sciences, of entropy, which predicted the eventual future of the universe as being a uniform atomic constancy, i.e., same atom, same velocity, same temperature and whatever else it is that physicists measure.
And if he was, was he perhaps being too triumphalist in believing that science had now worked it all out (they did believe this until einstein, planck and rutherford right?) and basing his philosphy on that aspect of nature.
and part b) Nature can be a good thing to work with but it seems contradictory sometimes: pigs eat their young and grown japanese men loaded themselves into torpedo tubes to die for their families (please dont assume this was purely economic either-surely men have been obliterating themselves even before that rascal Rousseau wrote his book), is there some criterion for the “this happens in nature” utility.
Thanks if you, or anybody, does help my curiosity and answer this. They are not arguments, just queries.
GregM: perhaps you could add knowledge to your list. Developments in physics and its applications have been many-fold, eg (stable supplies of) electricity and possibly fusion reactors supplying a good fraction of humankind’s electricity in the next few decades. The ideas underlying these technologies are created by large assemblies of individuals, perhaps working in teams, building on previous work.
“If Marx was wrong about dialectical materialism, how do you explain historical change?”
I did a unit in Macrosociology in Uni. I was very impressed with the textbook, “Human Societies: An Introduction to Macrosociology” by Gerhard and Jean Lenski. I found the Lenkis’ classification system for societies, and the explanations for societal change, quite impressive.
I note GregM, in his usual manner, has given a very thoughtful and intelligent reply to this question.
As to falsification and Marxism, I suppose you could argue that the failure of Marxist revolutions and the ongoing development of capitalism (or liberal democracies with mixed economies) are effcetive falsifications.
One of the big problems with Marxism is that much of the primary material is essentially unreadable and I suspect that exceedingly few ostensible Marxists have actually read most or even a significant proportion of wht he wrote. This is one of the reasons why Marxist cliques spend so much time arguing about what Marx really meant.
I have read a fair bit of Marx and his critics, interpreters and supporters. But I can’t remember the exact quote and my books are in transit so I can’t reference this, it’s a paraphrase:
One of the key aspects of Marxism that is often overlooked by those who confuse its methods with the Stalinist “models” is human agency.
As GregM’s list indicated, all of the things he mentions (apart from early instances of global warming) were the products of human society at certain points in their development. And as someone said about 100 posts ago: “Capitalism causes global warming”. This is true today, even if some are in denial about it.
When Marx talked about class struggle being the motor of history he was talking epochally, many of the technological innovations that impact on the world today [such as our ability to *talk* to each other via a keyboard, screen and cabling] will change the way we live (our culture), but they won’t fundamentally alter the basic social dynamic of capitalism.
Technology is one of the key proofs of historical materialism and the dialectic – from the lever, to the wheel to the digital chip – humans’ need to interact with and exploit nature in order to survive and thrive, coupled with our intellectual capacity and curiosity, drives innovation. But always within the limits set by the economic relations that shape society.
None of what Greg explains in his post negates Marx’ claim that class struggle is a powerful force of history.
Greenhouse gas emissions are not predicated on a particular economic system.
Well Eric.
This deal about Thesis——–Antithesis———-Synthesis———–Synthesis becomes new thesis.
Well thats a pretty good way of looking at the way fashions in the world of ideas tend to pan out.
But its hardly the be all and end all of all change in every sphere.
Its one prism that you can look at a wide range of phenomenon at, and in doing so bring up some interesting insights.
But there are many OTHER small models and generalisations of this sort. And the idea is to have your head full of these “meta-goods” or “meta-models”.
That way folks will think you are incredibly creative although you may be a real plodder. Because when you see things with the aid of many different small models you will ellicit MANY insights and in the end you will be able to choose which of these slants is the most appropriate under the cirumstances.
The worst thing in the world is watching people twist the data into their favourite model. Whereas if you have a great deal of models and perspectives its the data that can guide you to the most appropriate model for the problem at hand.
Eric – it’s from the Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon.
A fine piece of journalism where Marx employs a much more complicated analysis of classes than the “organised around the means of production” dichotomy and also gives due weight to non-economic factors
Sacha
No, in the sense that cow farts add to CO2 levels, you’re right. But you cannot possibly be trying to claim that the toxic production values of capitalism have not made global warming the problem it is today. If we didn’t burn fossil fuels to the degree we do (something that only began with the Industrial Revolution btw); and if industry was actually forced to clean up after itself, rather than push the problem onto the community’s shoulders (see what Union Carbide [naming only one] has done in many places, including Sydney Harbour) then perhaps you might be able to make an argument.
No sacha, if coal powerstation are controlled by the workers they won’t pollute!
And it’s a quote that I’d agree with, though to have a structuralist perspective you don’t need to be a Marxist. Similarly with your “a force in history” thing, Eric. Of course the mode and means of production are a powerful force in history. But that’s not what Marx argued. He argued they were the “motor” of history.
Actually, I find Braudel’s view of what constitutes markets and capitalism (on which the post-Marxist sociologist Immanuel Wallerstein has built) much more convincing and adequated to the facts of history than Marx’. Similarly, there would be few around who would defend the LTV these days. Some of the work inspired by Marxism on fictive value is much more interesting, because it has something to offer in terms of analysing contemporary capitalism. That’s why I’d advocate a selective appropriation of Marxist method rather than seeing it as a dogmatic truth.
In any case, contemporary scholarship on Marx himself demonstrates that “Marx” is a multiplicity and we have much more to learn from him when he’s liberated from his Leninist cage.
Steve
You’re right Steve, but not in the facetious way you’ve suggested here. If workers did control power stations we’d be talking about a whole new type of economic formation – yep, socialism!
In a socialist society (and I would remind the bampots about the original intent of this post, so don’t throw the old “In the Soviet Union…” line at me), under workers’ control the Marxist maxim “From each according to their ability, to each according to their need” would apply.
Socialism is about ecological sustainability. So after a while there wouldn’t be coal-fired power stations, there’d by limitless solar energy and windpower. The basic reason for this is that the profit motive and anarchic competition of capitalism will be replaced by sensible planning and a real commitment to the “triple” bottom line.
The term “bampots” seems to be catching on.
I havn’t said anything about this. If you’re saying that environment costs are currently externalised, then yes, that’s possibly why greenhouse gases are being emitted in a big way.
But this could easily happen in other economic systems, unless you internalised the costs (which I’m in principle in favour of ).
So after a while there wouldn’t be coal-fired power stations, there’d by limitless solar energy and windpower.
“It’s true! And we’ll all live in cities on the moon!” – Marge to her sisters.
I’ll stay out of your planned paradise, thanks, Eric.
Yeah, right. Sensible planning by an infallible elite. With innovation driven by … um … something.
I’m happy to accept that the soviet union wasn’t what Marx intended and also not your model for what socialism is.
Consider however that the capitalism we live in or any other contemporary or historical version isn’t an “ideal” capitalism either. In an ideal form of capitalism all costs would be internalised, the government would not legislate to preference interest groups. All contracts between groups would be made on voluntary mutually beneficial terms. Strong property rights would be assigned to solve all commons issues like overfishing. In an ideal capitalism, environmental concerns are naturally included in the pricing mechanism and environmental issues won’t occur.
We are left then comparing either two hypothetical utopias, or we can compare what actually emerges through the historical process and the compromises and mistakes that humans make. What isn’t a fair comparison though is comparing a realised version of one system with a hypothetical society, particularly when we have examples of how attempts to achieve this hypothetical society will turn out.
This touches on what I think is the ultimate problem for a socialist or near socialist system. The complexity of any real world large economic system is way beyond the ability of any system of planning. This isn’t a comment on the ability of the planners, but rather the nature of the problem itself. Hayek and others covered issue pretty extensively, but my opinion was shaped more by my own experience with problems of complex systems in physics and the fact that they are often, in detail, incalculable.
Masses of individuals if given correct information through a pricing system can sort out their own way of dealing with local problems that in general will be smarter and more efficient than what any planner can achieve. You can see this in things like the Acid rain Program in the US where by establishing an emissions market, pollution was reduced dramatically, while costing much less than any calculated projections. The important issue is to get the price signals right by forcing people to price in environmental costs.
Of course I should mention that I am far from an absolutist on this issue, sometimes it is better to have a planned system with its shortcomings because of worse failures of the market system to deliver what we want and I would nominate health care as an example.
what Steve said.
In any large organisation, whether it’s public, private or military, you encounter severe challenges to collective action and planning. Marx’ theory assumed a change in human behaviour because of different behavioural incentives. But they are very hard to find. That’s why Lenin etc. tried to change thinking violently. Which didn’t work.
I’m afraid that I think that anyone who reposes too much confidence in planning has never had to be responsible for it on a large scale. Most of the trick is in anticipating unintended effects, and in shifting the culture – but there’s a reason why contractual and market signals, and distributed networks, are often used as a substitute. Not that they’re perfect either of course.
An interesting post from Steve and it made me think, then check the Wikipedia source he mentioned. I’m not an expert in the intricacies of this debate, but I catch the drift.
My riposte (in the nicest possible way) is that the tools used to measure *price* in the economic calculation problem is where it falls down. In this model, built on the neo-classical model of economics the obstacle to actually solvling the problem is that price is a function of supply and demand.
It is to some extent, but price as a measure of value must relate back to the labour theory of value, which Mark (about 10 posts back) argues has been disproved.
Again, I respectfully disagree. IMHO the Marxist explanation of value in both consumer and capital goods still holds.
I think the assumptions that underpin market-focussed economics are basically ideological – that is they are premised on all of the conditions of private enterprise being met and that they’re also some how hermetic – sealed up against change.
Based on the application of the LTV, it is quite possible to manage production. It is also possible with the advanced computing, transportation and communication technologies that the socialist society will inherit from capitalism to manage most issues of supply and demand in a fairly simple way.
Planning can prevent over-production and under-consumption by matching supply to demand.
The other aspect of course (appropos the debate in another post about fashion [for example]) is that we can also emliminate commodity-fetishism.
“Your Mao suit comes in either khaki or sage. Which would madam prefer?”
I’M JOKING!
Eric,
I can’t say I think much of the LTV. The value of a good is subjective, for me its worth whatever I think its worth (or if you like the utility I can derive from it), and similary for each other individual. This shouldn’t be confused with market price, which is the amount I have to exchange to buy an item.
Valuing things by the labour put into it makes no sense to me. Its clear you can put a lot of effort into making something nobody wants, but this doesn’t make it of the same value as that same effort put into something that people do desire. Obviously LTV has some intuitive appeal due to the sense of justice in getting rewarded equally for effort, but in the end effort can be used well, or poorly, and the only thing that determines how well the effort has been used is by whether it is desired by others or not.
As for the calculation issue, all I can say is that the calculation problem I think will always defeat the power of our calculation tools, firstly because uncertainty in measurement, combined with the vast number of intereractions will lead inevitably to errors, but more importantly because we can’t account for innovation. We can’t predict future innovation, because otherwise we would already have that innovation.
I would question whether we want to remove commodity-fetishism. My concern is much more with ensuring that any external costs imposed (eg. Polution and congestions costs for owning an SUV) are incorporated into the price of owning and running it. If these are large this will remove the frivillous demand and leave us with only those who actually have a need for it.
I don’t believe it. You people are still here? Don’t you have homes to go to?
I think I’ve just seen someone’s kids setting fire to a cat.
Shame, I like cats, they’re much more amenable to a serious discussion of the dialectic than some of you mob.
Actually, I don’t have a home to go to at the moment, I’m living in a garage.
…and, uhhm, in case I get misquoted about 20 posts from now. I’m smiling, even though you can’t see it in the gravatar.
I used to live in the shed.
But I was so much more priveledged then you.
I had access to more then one book.
I used to live in the shed.
But I was so much more priveledged then you.
I had access to more then one book.
Why didn’t you read some of them then.?
No, Cyril, that was me setting fire to a human.
Yep, thats how bad its got.
Kid. Damnit. Setting fire to a kid. The fumes must have muddle my cute furry head. Meeow.
Has anyone recently seen ‘Rambo’, my Jack Russell terrier? And my cigarette lighter?
“I had access to more then one book.”
I’m taking a bit of a punt here that the texts you could access back then didn’t include ‘Fowler’s Modern English Usage’.
“It is to some extent, but price as a measure of value must relate back to the labour theory of value, which Mark (about 10 posts back) argues has been disproved.
Again, I respectfully disagree. ”
It doesn’t matter whether you disagree. Its gone. It was a dopey theory for starters. Only getting a start in Calvinist Scotland.
And Marxs’ version of it was so overblown and absolutist as to be ridiculous right from the start.
But its a dead theory even in its weaker version.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
Utopian Eschatology is always evil. Whether in its Christian, secular or Islamic forms.
But if you MUST get all gooey and Utopian (sans the eschatology) over something is there anything that is worth it. That is not fake?
Well yes there is. And that would be THE MAXIMISATION OF VOLUNTARY CAPITAL FORMATION.
Government policy ought to be formed with this in mind.
Communists do not want to help people. They want to make things so viscious that it kicks off an historical process.
But should you wish to PRETEND to want to help people, get addicted to the idea of maximising voluntary capital formation.
>>>>>>>>>
It doesn’t surprise me you like cats. Sheilas like cats and thats OK. But blokes who like cats are either EVIL or severely isolated.
Thats why it was a biit of a masterstroke when Brando decided to grab that cat at the beginning of ‘The Godfather’.
What process could manage most issues of supply and demand in a fairly simple way? Similarly, what planning (or pcoess) could match supply to demand? This necessitates a prediction of demand and supply – if I come up with a new good or process, then by definition it hasn’t existed before and was most likely not predicted. What process can predict my wants?
Market research?
If I create a new “thing” (eg organic cars) that other people subsequently want, how does that fall within the “plan”?
Ok, organic cars are unlikely. How about new handicrafts or a computer program?
“Market research?”
Yeah good one Mark.
People charging around taking surveys is going to be able to replace the price system………. (not)
Maybe market research, but there will always be uncertainties.
I’m reminded of Laplace’s passage about a sufficiently advanced intelligence being able to predict the complete future history of the universe if it had knowledge of the precise positions and velocities of all the particles in it at any one point in time.
Not even CLOSE Sacha.
Nothing can substitute for the price system without total disaster. But notice the religious-mania-like attempts to find something that will.
So we have the incredible complexity of the price system versus…… Market research.
You can”t even get the paper together for the damn survey without the price system. Or the pencils made from products sourced from all over the globe.
Laplace was wrong!
Physics has abandonned this idea in light of what we know about nonlinear systems and the limits of measurement. Its a shame that marxists haven’t taken this on as well.
Mark posits market research (as a joke) to replace the price mechanism as the regulator of supply and demand. The joke is apposite because market research is a fantastically inefficient mechanism to produce a result that is nowhere near as reliable as letting consumers place their differential values on the commodities they want or need to almost infinitely varying degrees.
Ultimately, Eric’s utopia has no answer to the question of the efficient production of goods and services, nor as to the methods that might be used to prevent capitalism from breaking out organically in response to the relative scarcity of resources to human desires (although from history we can guess that the attempts would be coercive).
Agree with Bismarck.
Steve: of course yes (for the non-scientists). Not only is Newtonian physics not completely true (and certainly not true on the level of particles), but Laplace’s sufficiently advanced intelligence would require infinite knowledge about each particle in order to apply Newtonian laws.
Newtonian physics is a hallmark of precision compared with attempting to predict supply and demand of people and industries in a country.
Eric: even supposing that everyone wanted to live in your utopia, what process could ensure that demand and supply could even be predicted accurately?
Of course, there’s the question of what would motivate people to produce goods and services in this utopia – I’ve never heard any sensible answer to this.
It seems to me Marx’ thinking on all this is captive to his times – even behind his times. In a premodern society of limited complexity, much production took place outside the market sphere, and the limited amount of (re)distribution was political capture of a surplus. However, even in premodern Europe, the most vibrant aspects of life and indeed development were the results of markets, fairs and the beginnings of the development of financial instruments. Marx of course recognised this when he described capitalism as a vehicle for human progress.
But it’s simply impossible to administer and plan centrally in a postmodern society. And undesirable for the most part. Much of the satisfaction, interest and excitement (some) people gain from such a society is from the production of knowledge and its dissemination – and innovation is a necessary feature of the economy. It’s very very difficult to see how you could do anything other than guarentee people some sort of Clive Hamilton hair shirt world without commodification and markets.
And I would absolutely not wish to live in such a world.
None of this should obscure the real and glaring inequalities that exist. There certainly is a scope for state intervention and redistribution.
But any conception of a socialist society appears to me to be more dystopian than utopian. Except perhaps a libertarian socialist conception.
Err, Birdy, as Bismarck correctly discerned, my comment about market research was a joke. It was intended to satirise the possibility of central planning as an alternative to markets as allocators of goods and services. Markets of course are human constructions, and not perfect, and in many cases fail, and they require regulation but they are most certainly a far preferable thing than some sort of centralised five year plan or whatever.
Yes well you ought not throw in these silly distractions.
Actually markets are almost always pretty perfect so long as the government concentrates on clarifying property rights.
But there are markets that will need medium-term regulation and its usually those markets with a SPACIAL component to them.
Like roads, rail and rivers amongst others.
See Bird, I told you mark wasn’t a commie!
In a word, robotics. Achieve some semblance of artificial intelligence and it will be possible to replace human workers with autonomous, self-contained fully automatic factories – the workers will control the means of production by being the means of production. They won’t be human any more but that’s a triviality.
Until they decide to throw off the shackles of human capitalist oppression …
Good point, Gummo. Shorter Marx for the 21st Century: Kill all humans!
Eric Blair — Thank you kindly, for your courtesy on another thread. Damn, now you’ve gone and raised the bar for civility, leaving me no choice but to try and match your initiative… btw, 175 comments and counting, for what I take to be your initial post? Pretty kool, buckaroo…
Mark — aww, man, you’re displaying way too much good sense! How are us kidz supposed to have a big stoopid retarded food-fight, if you keep acting all intelligent, and carefully measured and such?
On the other hand…
Mark: “None of this should obscure the real and glaring inequalities that exist. There certainly is a scope for state intervention and redistribution.”
Well, a lot depends I guess on how these ‘inequalities’ are identified and measured, and how or why they come into being. I can hear it all now, echoing in the corridors of the UN as we speak…
K. MARX: “From each according to his abilities, and to each according to his needs!”
THE THIRD WORLD: Fan-tastic! After all, our abilities are virtually nonexistent, but our needs are… well, *you* try and figure it out! (fuck, man, we can’t even do *that* much for ourselves)! I tells ya man, we’re gonna make out like bandits on this one!
An interesting twist in this thread while I was away recuperating in my garage full of cats. I take exception to the sexist remark from Bird
I’m able to let it go (for now). Suffice to say it’s uncalled for bampotism.
I think it’s interesting that we’re now discussing markets, because it is *market forces* that pass for the Holy Grail of the anti-socialists and the less dogmatic sceptics.
This has been teased out in the last 30 or so posts and it totally negates (IMHO) some of the slurs shot my way for having a firm commitment to Marxism.
I haven’t got time right now to go into this in detail, but have any of you read Ralston Saul’s end of globalisation thesis? I’m about 80 pages in at the moment and two quick obersvations:
1: For an anti-Marxist he’s perceptive enough to notice the dialectic. Read his opening chapter, it’s full of observations about the contradictions, tensions and thesis-antithesis-synthesis play of social and ideological forces in the dismal science.
2: Apropos some earlier posts (and reflected in another thread) there is some criticism of market forces from a liberal, if not conservative perspective. It seems that R-S is not a fan of globalisation (understatement of the bleeding obvious, I know) but he is conscious of the problems that market forces are facing today. I’m not sure of his solutions, but as a Marxist I can acknowledge that he is a perceptive bourgeois critic of the system.
I think that Bird was joking.
Eric: what mechanism do you propose to be able to plan for demand and supply of goods? What mechanisms do you propose for dealing with unexpected issues in demand and or supply? What happens when an individual has unexpected demands or creates something new and others want to procure it?
Yes, Sacha, perhaps he was. In which case I apologise for my uncalled for comment about uncalled for bampotism. I hope no offence is taken, I bristle at suggestions that liking cats is somehow effeminate, or wierd.
Well, we can assume a relatively sophisticated form of metrics – we already have the census, etc and the ABS, those sorts of Gov’t agencies that can provide some modelling, predictive power. Individual firms also make similar predictive decisions about prodcution. The problem for them is that the chaos of market relations (over-capitalisation to compete with *new* commodities, the tendency for the organic composition of capital to rise and for profits to fall (declining rates of surplus value)all mitigate against effective planning.
Sure, it won’t be perfect, but in a sense that’s what happens in the so-called *free* market anyway. There’s all sorts of govt’t interventions (some you like, some you don’t), but the idea of a perfectly free market is a myth.
The difference in a socialist *planned* economy (and I’m not talking about command economies, al-a-USSR etc) is that the basic class interest of those making decisions is not pro-capital, but actually pro-worker and therefore pro-consumer.
The key decision-making bodies are the soviets (workers’ councils) that are democractically elected in workplaces and aggregate upwards (each layer having the right to appoint and remove delegates to the one above, based on programmatic and political arguments). With effective metrics I see no problem in making good decisions.
In terms of unexpected demand and new goods/services being innovated. If the collective determines that it’s something worthwhile (ie: a social good) then what’s the problem.
I would point out that this is just a guestimate of what might happen. The point being that in the end it will be up to those who are actually living this experience to determine these things. Marxism is not about predicting the precise economic and social formations of post-capitalist societies, it’s about informing the exercise of change, ie: mapping a course for moving beyond capitalist relations of production.
“See Bird, I told you mark wasn’t a commie!”
You were wrong.
If he aint a commie he’s still haunted by the dream of it. The dream of a new age.
eric blair: the problem is how often do you vote and how narrowly can you vote. electing councils is shit because you are electing a broad set of issues. markets are better because you ‘vote’ on a much smaller set of issues.
duck, you mean by “voting” in the market exactly how?
I get a choice between weet-bix and coco pops? Or, I can excerise my “vote” to starve, or eat gruel, or grass?
The mechanism of choice in the marketplace is economic, not democratic. My choice there is limited by what’s on offer: McDonalds or Starbucks.
I know: “Let them eat cake!”
Choice in the marketplace is determined by suppliers, not consumers, despite what the myths of *free* market economics might argue.
Eric, where do you do your grocery shopping? In what benighted hell-hole do you live that gives you only the choice between two breakfast cereals, one of them a notorious agent of dental caries?
How, precisely, is a soviet (a workers’ council) that is democractically elected in workplaces going to increase the range of breakfast cereals available to you, and to me, in the Socialist paradise you promise us we are destined to live in.
And in this Utopia where the mechanism of choice is democratic, not economic as it now is, how will the workers council or the councils that aggregate up from it, each layer having, naturally, the right to appoint and remove delegates to the one above, based on programmatic and political arguments (that being a given, of course) democratically make the choice for me as to whether I eat at McDonalds (it being, I understand, controlled by its own soviet) or at the Starbucks Soviet?
“There is a revolutionary upsurge in Latin America, will it lead to socialism? Who knows. Could it cause further heartburn in Washington? I hope so.”
Sure it will cause lots of heartburn, when the illegal alien count rolls towards 50 million as result of people moving out of these socialist hellholes by jumping the border.
By the way your friendly Chavez has not put a dent into the poverty rate in Venez. desite the oil price gonig from 20 bucks a barrel to 60. Great job.
I have asked a couple of questions in a light hearted vein that I thought were reasonable Eric, but, as usual, the marxist wouldn’t actually stoop to answering something from an ignorant working class man. He is too busy manipulating them for power as he levers his way to the top. Marxism has always been but a tool for egotistic intellecutals to privelege themselves(I believe thats the right jargon is it Eric?). They care nothing for what us less erudite humans think and much more for their own ascendance above the plebs-so they can give them whats good for them. Yes, you are right-you are a marxist as you say, and your nuts are hanging out.
Blair, ever heard of market research? You know, where companies actively try to create new products that they think consumers might like?
I can see utopia already!
Bored mum walking down the breakfasy aisle, unhappy with the choices on offer she makes a mental note to vote for the “Bring Back Crunchy Nut Cornflakes” coalition at the next “Breakfast Cereal Council” election.
Unfortunately, on the same day she has to vote for her Toast Council reps, her Smoothie Council Reps, her Inventing of new Breakfast cereal reps, White bread council reps, Tomato sauce council reps, Apple council reps, Toilet paper reps, Shampoo reps, Conditioner reps, Supermarket layout reps, Petrol station reps,oranges,bananas,pickles,steak,chicken,shoe polish reps.
It sure sounds easier than just taking the product you like off the shelf… how can I become a Marxist?
thats not right, JohnZ.
Eric will be too busy standing on line waiting to get his 4 day old bread thinking it’s a real treat compared to the 1 week old bread from yesterday.
Eric:
I will personally offer you $10,000 to live in north korea for a year. I’ll escrow the funds and on proof to my lawyer that you have done that you get the cash.
There are 745 McDonalds outlets in Australia. There are an estimated 4,500 Chinese restaurants. Your choice is limited by your ability to open your eyes.
Evidence, Joe? YOu see I think, you’re either bluffing or your basing your words (hopes?) ona bogus source.
And while your at it, have a look for the latest GDP and PPP figures.
Given that you haven’t defined a “real democracy” in any real-world sense, I’d say Australia is as democratic a society as one can get. Lenin had a damned hide going after this country in 1905 – he and his silly gang never achieved anything in net terms halfway comparable to the sort of democracy and workers’ rights we’ve had here at various points. Don’t go wittering on about Cuba or Venezuala either.
There is no point in this archeology of the left, no point at all. No point in having Marx, like Prufrock, muttering “that’s not what I meant at all”, or playing this pea-and-thimble game with quotes (was it Trotsky, Bakunin, Mao or Engels? Answers on a postcard. You could win a Trabant!). Marxism is as Marxism does.
I’d agree with the bit about the rightwing today being dialectical. The supremely silly piece by Kevin Donnelly in today’s Oz is proof of this, the man would have no clue were it not for having a go at his enemies or being less than forthright about the state of education. Peter Coleman is an exhausted volcano in the Liberal Party, Paddy McGuinness was never a part of it but when talking about the rightwing it is entirely fair to say that they are unable to pull out of the nosedive of dialectic.
There are two types of people in the world: those who divide the world into two types of people, and those who don’t.
Come on team! One week! 192 posts and counting! If we all pull together we can strangle every last rancid drop of moisture from this pathetic, putrefying husk and crack 200!
Do it. Do it for the collective. Do it for the market. Do it for every poor, starving, motherless child that ever struggled to suck the brief breath of life from this fetid hellhole of existence.
And then, just perhaps, maybe, we can finally start to make this a better world.
See when the weans are left unsupervised they just get all slaggy.
Marky, your questions about Marx’ understanding of atomic physics in the 19th century were not addressed only to me. I don’t know the answers, so I left them alone. Then you get all Narky-Marky on my ass. Go figure!
JohnZ, the point of your pointless goofing off is exactly?
I’ve made a couple of simple points about choice in the market, and I pointed out that my thoughts bout the shape of a future socialist society are speculation – it’s not up to me to describe socialism in minute detail.
And now we’ve got people reverting to type and shouting the usual “Go back to Russia” gobshite, only this time the communist bogey is North Korea.
For those of you who’ve lost your way a bit at this point, go back and read my original post. The whole point was basically to say that Marxism and Stalinism are not the same thing.
I don’t think Venezuela is a socialist paradise, but I do understand that the US government might think it’s a danger to imperial ambitions in the region and therefore ripe for a military coup.
Christine, keep taking the medication.
Ciao.
How can you or we have any confidence, then, that a future socialist society would be a better society than the present capitalist society?
Or indeed, if it is historically inevitable and will occur organically (and not in our lifetimes), why bother agitating for it all? In fact, wouldn’t a good revolutionary Marxist’s time be better spent applying himself to the maturation of the capitalist system, the better to provide the necessary conditions for the revolution? Hie thee to the banking sector, Eric B!
When Adam Smith et al were working on their theories that came to define capitalism, they were not all worked out before hand. That’s the point, it is all about lived experience.
The ideas of an age are the ideas of its ruling class. Thus we live in a world dominated by the ideas of the bourgoisie – the capitalist class – which means that most people think capitalism is the bee’s knees.
I’m merely pointing out that in fact capitalism is a brutal system based on exploitation, oppression and war and that an alternative world is possible.
The bourgoisie and the proletariat have totally different class interests, thus a world in which the roles are reversed, ie: the proletariat is the ruling class – as it will be after a socialist revolution – it is the interests of this class that will prevail.
My belief, based on my understanding of history and Marxism, is that such a society will not be dominated by the anarchy of the market with periodic crises of over-production etc. Instead it will be based on principles of equality, ecological sustainability and world peace.
Can you really argue against such a world?
Do you really prefer the shit that capitalism throws up?
All of the strawman bullshit that’s gone down in this thread; of the “socialism means bread queues, and gulags etc, ad nauseum” variety is, IMHO, a wilful misrepresentation based on a refusal to acknowledge that capitalism – as a way of organising anything – is f()ck&d.
That it’s lasted as long as it has is more down to luck (that Kennedy didn’t bomb Cuba in 1961-2) and the strength of ideology (the Cold War) than any real human benefit that capitalism brings.
Finally, for the benefit of the terminally gormless: Marxism is not the same thing as Stalinism. The so-called “socialist” countries the bampots keep pointing at are not socialist, they are (as I’ve patiently explained over the last 190-odd posts) *state-capitalism*. They are class societies based on the same relations of production as market capitalism. There are also elements of state-capitalism in the west. For more on this, if you don’t want to read a Marxist account, check out John Ralston Saul. He says pretty much the same thing from within bourgeois economics.
That the despots of the USSR and China, N Korea, etc, continue to cloak themselves in an ossified version of the language of Marxism is no more or less ridiculous than the champions of capitalism continuing to bampf on about the free-market and democracy when in fact they preside over many of the same autocratic, anti-democratic and inhumane procedures as the so-called Eastern bloc. Can you deny that capitalism breeds war, that it is destroying the planet, that it leaves millions of people to exist in conditions of semi-slavery and/or semi-starvation, disease and abject poverty?
How can those of you who think this is a good way to organise the planet sleep at night?
THE END.
And before capitalism we had feudalism. Brutal feudal landlords exploited and oppressed peasants and held them in bondage while waging war against each other. Clearly the feudal lords had totally different class interests and had their roles been reversed the peasants being the ruling class it would have prevailed.
But it did not happen. The peasants did not dispossess the feudal landlords and live happily ever after, their class interests prevailing and all of them living according to the principles of equality, ecological sustainability and world peace. Instead a new class, the capitalists arose, displacing the feudal lords and converting the peasants into proletarians.
Why should not the dialectic play out this time as it did with the change from feudalism to capitalism; with a new class of oppressors arising, disposing the capitalists and converting the proletarians into a new class of the oppressed?
That does seem to be the logic of the dialectic.
That’s not a very satisfying exposition. There is nothing in what you have said that makes the simple issues of supply and demand go away. Human desires are infinite while the resources to satisfy them are finite. That is an immutable truth, whoever is in charge. ‘From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs’ is an easy catch-cry, but without a mechanism to extract the fruits of one’s ability and to allow the individual to prioritise the provision for his needs, it is just meaningless cant. If the mechanism is inefficient (e.g. soviet committees setting production targets and allocating the distribution of the proceeds), the inefficiency feeds into every aspect of the economy. Nothing is less productive of equality, ecological sustainability and world peace than gross inefficiency.
Sorry, GregM. My comment was directed to Eric Blair.
Blair,
You haven’t described how it will work in any detail.
To be convincing you need to explain how even a simple task such as organising the supply of breakfast foods is going to work. Give us an example of the process.
OK John, how about this. Instead of a *variety* of sugary, carbo-rich and low nutrition flakes, etc, we get to eat fresh fruit and a reasonable amount of good protein.
When McDonalds and Starbucks are collectivised, these are the types of breakfast foods they might serve.
I’m being deliberately vague and light-hearted about this because it’s not up to me.
In response to your earlier post, you’ve taken a pretty absurd position. Workers’ councils are based on the workplace, hence their wouldn’t be a “breakfast cereal” council as such. That’s what I meant by *goofing off*, it’s a ridiculous suggestion and I suspect that you are aware of that.
GregM
There’s no golden rule of the dialectic that says this can’t happen. However, Marx makes the philosophical-moral point, based on his extensive study of capitalism, that the social interests of the working class suggest that the next logical progression, the next revolution will create a society in which class opporession and the state machinery will wither away.
How long might this take? I don’t know.
What will socialism finally look like? I don’t know that either.
Marx talked about the possibility of the mutual destruction of the contending classes; Rosa Luxemburg talked about the possibility of barbarism being the outcome not socialism.
It is up to human beings, with all their faults, foibles, prejudices and promise, to do with the future what they will.
I return to my own questions for you lot: What’s so great about capitalism anyway and why do you think that history ends with the bourgois revolutions?
Eric it’s not that capitalism is so great but that, from your own account, you have no idea what the alternative would be and therefore whether or not it would be better than what we have with capitalism. People tend not to want to buy a pig in a poke. They want to know in quite some detail whether change they are being solicited to support will lead to something better for them or not.
This is, despite Marx’s view on the malleability of the human psyche, something innate in human beings, because as an extant species we are hard-wired to have an interest in our own survival and propagation.
As to your question “why do you think that history ends with the bourgois revolutions?” , I do not think anyone here has made that argument. History goes on but it is not driven the logic of a dialectic that takes it to a pre-ordained conclusion, and certainly not one which would be in any way knowable to a mid-nineteenth century speculative philosopher of limited education, life experience and imagination.
I find it curious that you say that:
First of all it most evidently did not happen like that with the peasants and their feudal lords, so there is no reason to expect that it would next time around.
Second, what on earth do philosophical-moral points have to do with what is promoted by its adherents as being a scientific theory? Science has no intrinsic interest in philosophical-moral points. Those things are in the realm of religion, which of course, given its antecedents in Hegel’s dialectic of the Ideal, is exactly what Marxism is.
It’s pretty unfair, Greg, to say Marx had a limited education. He had a Doctorate in Philosophy. There’s no question he was a brilliant thinker – whether or not one agrees with him.
Eric, you can eat these things right now! You don’t need to wait for the revolution. The reason sugary breakfast cereals are so widely available is because they are popular. Luckily for me, companies are constantly competing to provide new types of food and as a consequence I can enjoy the breakfast that works best for me.
If markets are not allowed, there is going to be a council/committee somewhere which decides which foods are available for breakfast. Either this will be done democratically via direct election or politicians will appoint some bureaucrats to make the decisions.
I’m honestly curious as to which it will be – could you given me an idea please?
Saying it’s not up to you is simply ducking the difficult issues. You are proposing a radical change to the way society is organised. The onus is on you to explain how the needs of citizens will be met.
Oh, well done!
I’ll drop back in about six months time to see how it’s all going.
Mark, leaving aside the levity you have caused me with the implied suggestion that a PhD indicates in any way unlimited, or indeed in some cases even half-decent education, my comment on Marx’s limited education is not unfair at all. It is an observation, not a criticism.
Marx’s Doctorate of Philosophy was in philosophy (as one would expect in mid-nineteenth century Germany) not in economics, then a study still in its infancy. He was, practically, an auto-didact at economics and his attachment to the Hegelian concept of the dialectic, invert it though he did in order to create his philosophy of material determinism, coloured and, in a scientific sense, corrupted his understanding of economics as he did not pursue economics objectively to find what was there but to seek what his philosophy told him must be there and to “discover” it whether it was there or not.
In this respect he was no different than many other philosophers, social thinkers and “scientists” of the nineteenth century. I have already mentioned Spencer and his Social Darwinism in this regard. I do not criticise Marx for being a man of his times but it diminishes the utility of his works in the 21st century.
However, even if Marx’s work in economics were not corrupted by his importation of his philosophical preconceptions into it, his education and therefore his ability to contribute value to our understanding of society in the 21st century was limited by the simple fact that the amount of knowledge available in order to formulate sound and enduring social theories was much less then than it is now, as we have had the benefit of more than 150 years to accumulate knowledge, especially about economics.
A demonstration of Marx’s limitations is in his attachment to the Labour Theory of Value, a cornerstone of his economic and social theory which no-one who approaches economics fropm a scientific point of view today would accept as being of any value. Again I do not criticise Marx for being born when he was but the value of what wrote and espoused is diminished for us by the limitations that his time placed upon him.
Marx is of value to us for providing insights, whether they be right or wrong, which challenge us in our own understanding of the nature of society and the human condition.
He is also of value to us as a caution not to, unlike his acolytes of which I fear Eric B is one, accept his prescriptions as some Holy Scripture cast in bronze from whom all knowledge comes and against which all understanding must be measured.
Eric:
Yes, indeed. It may not be the ideal socialist society, but nonetheless it must be noted that the Government of Kim Jong-Il has firmly and completely put a stop to disastrous crises of over-production in North Korea.
I think we can all agree — lefties and bampots alike — that once Eric’s brave new world has come to pass, the plague of over-production will never bother us again.
I’m still not sure those comments are fair, Greg. Marx was writing before Marshallian marginalist economics came along, and most “political economy” of the day was a subset of philosophy and not particularly based on empirical observation – and certainly not utilising statistical or mathematical methods. Of course there have been advances in social theory and social science, but criticising Marx retrospectively seems wrong.
Greg:
Precisely the problem. Economists today proclaim their objectivity and scienciness (from another thread) and pretend that they make no moral or philosophical judgments. They deny the validity of the LTV in order to shore up their ideological position, at the same time they deny any ideological influence in their dismal *science*. What utter crap! Economics is not a science in any accepted sense of that word [neither is Marxism], it is full of ideology – which we’ve discussed ad nauseum in this thread – you can’t honestly say it does not involve all kinds of value judgments.
For example, letting people starve because they can’t “afford” to buy food, the false choice between a life of labour and starvation. Get a fucking grip! [Not you Greg, bourgeois economists and apologists generally]
Greg also wrote:
Well, so too were Ricardo and Smith and the others in the tradition of political economy at that time. The so-called “science” of economics was invented to justify the capitalist system of production and to hide the labour theory of value under a bushell of bullshit about the spirit of the entreprenuer.
To put it into the most bampf terms I can:
To believe in the objectivity and truth of bourgeois economics is to believe that it was the *Hand of God* that led to Maradonna’s miraculous World Cup goal.
The invisible hand of the market is the dialectical motion created by the contradictions within the system – all of which exist, including over production, falling profit rates, etc – that economics cannot explain because it refuses to accept the validity of the LTV.
Where else can new value come from, if not from the interaction of human labour power with nature (the means of production)? It is not added by some fuckwit market jockey, or pissant investor, all they bring to the table is cash – a representation of accumulated value created in another part of the economy.
In an earlier post Greg again:
Let’s take a step back here to the bourgeois revolutions from the mid 18th to the late 19th centuries. Despite the rhetoric of “liberte, egalite, fraternite” what were people buying into when they lopped off the heads of Kings and stormed the bastille?
To be honest they had no fucking idea beyond, it would be different and probably better. Would you then have stood on the sidelines saying “Oh no, we don’t have a totally detailed, refined and guaranteed plan. Let’s stick with the monarchy.”
Revolutions are messy, they involve people getting highly emotional in large numbers; some are angry and others are full of joy. Modern revolutions will involve guns, violence and death. Just like the French and American revolutions, just like Russia in 1905 and 1917, just like Germany in the 1920s and Barcelona in 1936, like China n 1949, just like Hungary in 1956, just like Portugal in 1974, just like Poland in the 1980s, just like Russia in 1989, just like the Sandinistas, just like Tienanmen Square. That’s what revolution is; it’s not a tea party, it’s not polite, it’s not nice. But it is necessary and it will happen.
Why? Because the ruling class will not give up its power willingly. The state apparatus, particulary some sections of the armed forces may fight, though most might actually come over to the side of the workers and not shoot at them. However, there’s always some idiot who wants to defend the Stock Exchange or some such symbolic target from the excitable mob. I’m sure we can count on the Young Liberals to mount some sort of rear-guard resistance at the Sydney Institute building, or the Melbourne Club.
There will no doubt be a handfull or two of loyal lieutenants of capital who will fight to the death for their right to choose from 57 brands of sugary, crap breakfast cereals in the vain belief that they’re somehow different and that this choice is important. The smarter ones will realise that they’re all either, corn, rice, wheat or sorghum and change sides.
On the revolutionary side there will be armies of low-paid, pissed off McDonalds employees, Detroit car workers, Korean microchip assemblers, teachers, nurses, bus drivers, airline stewards, public servants, cereal boxers and shelf stackers who can’t wait to take that chicken-leg stupid clown(1) and string him up from the nearest lamp post.
Once all the shouting dies down and we’ve cleaned up the bloodstains and re-opened the telephone exchange under workers’ control, the Starbucks’ collective, the microchip makers and car workers, the shelf packers and the cereal-makers collective and the mothers’ group can all sit down and work out what the fuck happens next.
And you know what, I actually think that they’ll get it right. They’ll work it out for themselves, they won’t need any detailed plan, they won’t need market research. They won’t need a bunch of technocrats and party hacks telling them what to do. It’ll be a case of “Right, what needs to be done?”
People make revolutions, not revolutionaries!
I’ve said all I need to say. If you want to know any more, email me. I’ll respond to serious messages, but flamers can go fuck themselves with a shovel from here until the revolution! eric-blair@hotmail.com
(1)Any chicken leg stupid clown you care to name.
The shorter Blair: I have no idea how it will work, but that won’t stop me supporting a violent and bloody revolution.
Doesn’t your complete lack of details worry you at all??
I’m one of those “B Ark” folks who’ll get killed on the first day. Where does shopping fit in with the whole “each according to his ability” thing? At least capitalism appreciates my skills…
Comrade Lennon McCartney
Let’s not forget that once the Golgafrinchams were rid of their B Ark people, the civilisation was wiped out by a nasty disease caught from a telephone handset …
I’m reminded of Foucault. Something about “The proletariat won’t participate in the revolution because they want justice – they’ll do it because they want to win.”
PAINE: The Committee of the Convention? Marie? Marie, where are they? Brissot.
ALL: Guillotined.
PAINE: Vergniaud.
ALL: Guillotined.
PAINE: Gensonne?
ALL: Guillotined.
PAINE: Barere?
ALL: Guillotined.
PAINE: Villeneuve?!
ALL: Eaten by wolves.
PAINE: CONDORCET?
ALL: Suicide.
PAINE: Danton.
ALL: Guillotined.
PAINE: Sieyes?
MARIE: Everyone died,
Except Sieyes,
And he changed sides.
– from “Tom Paine, a Play in Two Parts” by Paul Foster
Chemistry cults cunts
Prots Hotpots dianetics
Trots Dialectics
There you go …
Mark, Karl Marx represented his philosophy as being science and we are quite entitled to judge him at his word and in accordance with the standards of our own times and to, in doing so, find him a fraud and a failure.
Well over a hundred million people have been murdered in the past century in the name of the delusional Utopia that he promised in the name of his “science”.
Decency alone requires us to acknowledge that fact and to expose the old fraud. There is something precious and deeply unpleasant in wanting to defend the man’s ignorance when that ignorance and his arrogance in presenting it as an immutable truth, for that is what what he represented it as being, has been responsible through his agents Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin, Mao and even today that vile little North Korean creature (as nice a group of psychopaths as you could ever hope to name) for inflicting so much death and misery on humanity.
To do other than condemn that mid-nineteenth century charlatan for the evil that he has caused would be immoral. And a betrayal with the best traditions of Western intellectual thought which he debauched, not that his inspiration, Hegel, was much better.
In a perfect utopian world, there would be no need for Missy Higgins to sing.
In a perfect utopian world, Kim, I would have a Missy Higgins of my very own. And so would you. From the elitest magnates of the ruling class through to the humblest factory worker or clerk, everyone would have their own Missy Higgins to love and cherish.
We must not rest until we have made this happen!
Workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your lip-snigerers!
Ok. Yobbo posted an inflammatory comment, which received an answer that wasn’t exactly measured, though understandable. Yobbo then returned fire. All this suggests this thread has outlived any potential for productive discussion, and the comments have been removed as being in breach of LP’s comments policy. The thread has now been closed, and can be re-opened by emailing me at mbahnisch at gmail dot com if anyone has anything on topic and civil left to say. Otherwise, not.
Just to keep Yobbo happy and correct the record, the comment of his which I deleted (and it’s worth noting that I deleted the response from Eric as well) went something along the lines of “if Eric wants to advocate violent revolution, how would he like it if I shot him?”. That’s from memory as it’s gone. I wasn’t intending to suggest that Yobbo made a serious threat of violence, but I still think that a comment like that is inappropriate.
If Yobbo doesn’t agree with this characterisation of his comment, then he can email me and I’ll publish his clarification, but I want to draw a line under this.