Karl Marx is Back

[chequita guevara]

That Marx and Smith do have a lot in common isnt something opportune to mention (and probably among marxist either).

I got in a lot of trouble in my communist cult when I mentioned that. I pretty much lost my respect for them with that discussion, and didn't remain a member too much longer.

[Kidlicious]

He didn't really, and that's one of his major mistakes.

He thought that as the efficiency of factories would increase, so would the size of a disenfranchised unemployed proletariat. He just didn't realize that most people would end up selling services, and that their living conditions could be decent.

Most people don't sell services. The industrialized nations just moved all the manufacturing jobs overseas.

[Kidlicious]

The Groucho joke was quite funny the first time I heard it 30 years ago. Over the course of the 500 times I've heard it since it has become tediously dull and predictable.

Another predictable thing is the regular, recurring crisis of capitalism that Marx quite correctly observed. It's odd how many 'classical' economists happily ignore this until a really big and scary crisis punches them in the face and raises the spectre of an economy so seriously broken that prospects for recovery seem faint and remote.

However, as The Man said - Philosophers seek to understand the world. The point is to change it. Where should that change come from? Certainly not above, for when the ruling elite act to control capitalism in serious crisis the outcome can tend towards fascism rather than social democracy. Marx's solution saw the agency of the wealth-creators (workers, not capitalists) as the driving force. Few such organisations exist today, because of the failures of stalinism and the western labour movements of the past.

I'm also wary of 'plastic communists' - nihilistic, petty-bourgeois youth who think that an anti-capitalism of throwing objects through the windows of starbucks is the way forward, rather than a coherent, rational advancement of productive forces.

Any change from above is not going to be real change. It's just going to be the same kind of change that has always happen, change that isn't really change at all, except change in the people on top of the hierarchy.

Real change can only come from the bottom of the hierarchy, but those at the bottom don't have a proper consciousness to make that kind of change at this point in time, especially in America. I'm afraid that if the market fails for good today, fascism will definitely occur.

[Blaupanzer]

The market cannot "fail for good." People need food, clothing, shelter, etc., and need some method to trade their labor for these things. The FORM of the market can change. Hegel led us with his spirit of the state theories into believing that either capitalists must own the state or the state must own the means of production. Marx expanded the historical understanding of how capitalism had grown and postulated state ownership in which the state would magically fade away. How such a failed theory could "make a comeback" is beyond me. However, his historical analysis is still very useful, identifying weaknesses and obviously inadequate reactions to opportunities and crises inherent in the form. These insights should not be lost, but only emerge when the next crisis occurs. Communism as posed by Marx's followers failed with the fall of the Soviet Union. Fascism (or more realistically, National Socialism) failed with Nazi Germany. It makes no sense for us to revive Hegel's alternatives when both have already failed. We need to move on to a new dialectic to address the conflict between greed (renamed for scientific purposes) and whatever we're going to call greed's antithesis.

[Kidlicious]

The market cannot "fail for good." People need food, clothing, shelter, etc., and need some method to trade their labor for these things.

Do you know anything about market failures? During the depression food sat on the side of the road while people went hungry because no one wanted to pay to have it delivered to market. Right now it's not cost effective to recycle card board because the price has already fallen too far. Just because people need something doesn't mean that the market will deliver it. That's just a simple fact verified by history. The price mechanism simply doesn't work in reality the way that it works in your head.

The FORM of the market can change. Hegel led us with his spirit of the state theories into believing that either capitalists must own the state or the state must own the means of production. Marx expanded the historical understanding of how capitalism had grown and postulated state ownership in which the state would magically fade away. How such a failed theory could "make a comeback" is beyond me. However, his historical analysis is still very useful, identifying weaknesses and obviously inadequate reactions to opportunities and crises inherent in the form. These insights should not be lost, but only emerge when the next crisis occurs. Communism as posed by Marx's followers failed with the fall of the Soviet Union. Fascism (or more realistically, National Socialism) failed with Nazi Germany. It makes no sense for us to revive Hegel's alternatives when both have already failed. We need to move on to a new dialectic to address the conflict between greed (renamed for scientific purposes) and whatever we're going to call greed's antithesis.

The problem is that greed is the only thing driving capitalism. Take away greed and capitalism can not exist. Capitalism is a hierarchial system. Greed is what makes it so. Greed fuels the engines.

[Theben]

Do you know anything about market failures? During the depression food sat on the side of the road while people went hungry because no one wanted to pay to have it delivered to market.

QFT. The image that sticks best in my mind was of shotgun-wielding guards keeping starving people away from huge piles of oranges that were left to rot in the sun... in order for the price of oranges to increase.

[Blaupanzer]

My dispute was not whether the market can fail. It was whether such a thing could be permanent ("fail for good"). If Roosevelt had not convinced people that he could fix their problems, we would have had a full scale revolution in America. Several factories were occupied by workers when he took office and at least one NG unit had refused to remove them by force. Short-term price adjustments (or market failures) can disrupt distribution, but people will not let their children starve in sight of food. I actually do know quite a bit about market distortions and failures.

As to the dialectic (the part of Hegel's theories that actually work), pick your own name for the current monopoly capitalist system, which I called "greed." Then postulate whatever mechanism would be the opposite (original capitalism's opposite was communism and its extreme was Naziism). I am, like you, having a hard time postulating a working opposite to what is now the ruling economic regime but such thinking does or soon will exist somewhere.

[Caligastia]

Can someone give me a real-life example of a Marxist system or policy that succeeded in its aims?

[Cort Haus]

The very early stages of the post-revolutionary societies in the fledgling USSR and Nicaragua saw important gains in essential areas, until war imposed from outside destroyed the improvements. Cuba made striking gains in health and education, despite failings in other areas. Again, outside intervention (trade embargoes this time) put the dampers on the economy.

It is worth mentioning though, that Marx predicted that well developed industrial capitalist economies were the ones most likely to succeed at building socialism, rather than relatively backward and rural ones. No sufficiently advanced society has so far been involved in a serious attempt at building socialism from the bottom-up, and hence the conditions that Marx suggested as being the most appropriate have not arisen.

Germany post-WW1 is perhaps the closest that any country has been to encountering the revolutionary potential most conducive for a serious challenge to the capitalist mode of production.

[Barnabas]

The Soviet Union managed to develop the country and give its citizens an acceptable standard of living. And that while investing half of the budget in military stuff.

That was the big problem of the Soviet Union, when you have enough nukes to destroy the world, why do you need to spend so much money in the military?

They should have dedicated themselves to making better cars, better tvs to make the citizens happier.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Can someone give me a real-life example of a Marxist system or policy that succeeded in its aims?

Does parts of the 10 point plan in the Communist Manifesto count?

If so, then:

A heavy progressive or graduated income tax, Free education for all children in public schools, & Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form - have all succeeded in being adopted by every Western democracy and, I'd argue, its good they have.

[FrostyBoy]

I believe the modern world is beginning to simplify, leading towards a kind of mutation of communism and capitalism; let's call it compitalism. yes, yes I like it.

The less developed nations will go through the same stage the modern nations did, mass produce, mass sell/buy, mass own, mass discard, until they too realize life is better when simpler.

This will cause money to become obsolete, as we will have found a way to produce whatever we need with no loss of energy resources.

[Darius871]

I believe the modern world is beginning to simplify, leading towards a kind of mutation of communism and capitalism; let's call it compitalism. yes, yes I like it.

The less developed nations will go through the same stage the modern nations did, mass produce, mass sell/buy, mass own, mass discard, until they too realize life is better when simpler.

This will cause money to become obsolete, as we will have found a way to produce whatever we need with no loss of energy resources.

I believe you're full of ****.

[FrostyBoy]

i believe you're full of ****.

prove me wrong darius, prove. Me. Wrong...

[Darius871]

I only said I believe you're full of ****. Only concluding that you're full of **** would require evidence of any kind.