Marxism and contemporary society.

[Dracon II]

From what little I learnt of Aristotle I didn't really like him.
His conceptual separation of oligarchy & aristocracy, tyranny & monarchy, and democracy & polity into a bad/good binaries doesn't stike me as contibuting much at all to the study of politics. There really is no objective difference between oligarchy and aristocracy, or tyranny and monarchy apart from the latter two in the binaries being more well established with a stable system of domination.
His justifications of slavery and the limitation of the franchise are also quite vulgar and anachronistic. Funny also that Locke justified slavery as nothing more than the just compensation of victory in war... it contradicts his entire theory of inherent rights and reinstates a might makes right ethos... the very thing that he (presumably) wanted to dispel.

Ayn Rand.... wasn't it "atlas shrugged" that convinced Officer Barbrady (south park) that reading was "gay" and just not worth it? I've put off reading any Rand for fear that I might come to the same conclusion... besides I don't think she's a big thing at all in Australia... I've certainly only heard of her through Americans. I guess other countries are still a bit nervous about celebrating and defending greed.

the idea of machines eliminating the need for human labour is now more credible than ever.

I was just reading some articles about the Technocratic movement that talk about exactly the same thing. They argue that the monetary and price system fundamentally flawed, and that income denominated in man hours worked is inefficient in a society where machines do most of the work. Their solution is little too utopian though... they advocate replacing money with "energy credits"... the sum representation of everything produced... which would then be distributed equally amond all the citizens.

[Sikander]

Originally posted by Agathon
I think that Marx is more relevant now than ever.

What Marx failed to predict is that the millions of man-hours spent by the bourgeois reading and arguing his works would sap the energy and intellectual vitality from that class, making revolution impossible.

[Dracon II]

Originally posted by Sikander




What Marx failed to predict is that the millions of man-hours spent by the bourgeois reading and arguing his works would sap the energy and intellectual vitality from that class, making revolution impossible.

Reading and arguing doesn't change anything. The reason why revolution is 'impossible' is material. Most people in the west have houses, cars, hair dryers and stocked fridges. The things you own end up owning you. Consumer capitalism has become everybody's mode of reproduction.

Another block on revolutions is the sheer concentration of physical power backing states nowadays. If the state hits protestors with batons for flying a kite (as happened in Australia recently)... imagine what it would do if there was a revolution. You'd certainly know what your patriot act is all about, anyway.
Part of my course last year was about the debates between Kautsky and Lenin. Kautsky is what you might call a Fabian; he believed that socialism could be achieved by peaceful, parliamentary means... whereas Lenin saw such means and such institutions as inherently bourgeois and hence a recipe for failure. One of the readings for that week was by Engels who (I think it was the introduction to the history of class struggle in england) wrote about how advances in firearm and artillery technology, and the new, rectangular grid type city planning made armed insurrection against the Government nearly impossible, and thus other roads to socialism must be found.
I would say that most discontents would weigh the opportunity cost of an insurrection today and probably deduce that quietism is the more expedient course....

[chequita guevara]

Engels was right in his analysis but wrong in his conclusions. No modern revolution will succeed without the support of the military. Even a professional military such as ours can switch sides, though the circumstances under which it might do so would be dire and catastrophic.

[Patroklos]

I think I could slaughter a good 1-2 hundred commie instigators myself.

And there is alot of me around

[Patroklos]

Even a professional military such as ours can switch sides, though the circumstances under which it might do so would be dire and catastrophic.

Correct, a military is nothing more than a cross section of the populous.

However with todays volunteer militaries getting it to switch sides is much harder. Conscripts get resentful alot faster. But since military members are now salaried workers, they are not only invested in the system ideology wise, but very much so economically.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Alexander's Horse
Marx was a very good sociologist but a terrible economist and dreadful political theorist.

Given that Marx wrote about capitalism, and his analysis of it is still spot on, even if capitalism has continued to evolve, I'd have to say you are incorrect. Furthermore, his insight into looking into the material reasons for politics are better than a lot of what passes for political science these days. Your problem is you think that Marx made some kind of prescription for the future society, when he explicitely refused to do so.

There's no escaping the fact that the political and economic movements his writings helped spawn were all a dismal failure.

At one time, 1/3rd of all humanity were living under governments which claimed some allegience to his writings. The countries which made those claims had much faster economic growth than most capitalist countries, with few exceptions. The problem wasn't Marxism. The problem was the Stalinist parasite on Marxism.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Patroklos
Correct, a military is nothing more than a cross section of the populous.

However with todays volunteer militaries getting it to switch sides is much harder. Conscripts get resentful alot faster. But since military members are now salaried workers, they are not only invested in the system ideology wise, but very much so economically.

Exactly.

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by Patroklos
I think I could slaughter a good 1-2 hundred commie instigators myself.

I'd prefer you didn't.

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

Originally posted by chegitz guevara

At one time, 1/3rd of all humanity were living under governments which claimed some allegience to his writings. The countries which made those claims had much faster economic growth than most capitalist countries, with few exceptions. The problem wasn't Marxism. The problem was the Stalinist parasite on Marxism.

Even if one accepts teh above statement at face value, the problem manifiests itself in sustainability, as the faithful fanatics of communism die off only to be replaced by the slothful ignorant and corrupt. No real world mechanism has yet been employed that allowed the momentum of the first generation's revolution to be translated into an ongoing multigenerational juggernaut.

Or in other words, it takes a fever of enthusiasm/passion to affect change, and given that enthusiams wanes as generations pass what built in mechanism, if any exists, to promote change at the pace required?

Finally, the historical examples of communism are by and large capable of taking advantage of the hockey stick growth one normally expects from moving from nonidustrialized to industrialzed societies. Now you may argue that because of communism and moreso the fervor of the faithful this was more likely to happen, but that is unproven IMO.

[Imran Siddiqui]

The countries which made those claims had much faster economic growth than most capitalist countries, with few exceptions. The problem wasn't Marxism. The problem was the Stalinist parasite on Marxism.

The economic growth was unsustainable, unless those countries ended up liberalizing, like China has.

Marx's economics are nothing pretty. His politics and sociological theories were important in history and some changes in capitalism. However, like DanS said, one thing Marx missed by a good margin was capitalism's ability to transform itself to adapt to the times.

Oh, and to some people Marxism is definetly a religion.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Imran Siddiqui
The economic growth was unsustainable, unless those countries ended up liberalizing, like China has.

Economic growth in capitalist systems is ever sustainable?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
Finally, the historical examples of communism are by and large capable of taking advantage of the hockey stick growth one normally expects from moving from nonidustrialized to industrialzed societies.

There's no 'hockey stick' growth in capitalist economies?

[Ogie Oglethorpe]

No, Hockey stick gorwht has accompanied most every nations move from nonindustrial to industrial. To say then that the effect seen by communist nations during this time period is purely a function of communism and not industrialization is fallacy.

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Ogie Oglethorpe
No, Hockey stick gorwht has accompanied most every nations move from nonindustrial to industrial. To say then that the effect seen by communist nations during this time period is purely a function of communism and not industrialization is fallacy.

Maybe the point is that industrialization doesn't just always happen. Sometimes it happens in certain places because of the conditions that exist there, and sometimes it happens because it's planned.