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Very few people have actually read any of Marx's work. #1, it's not easy to read, #2, he has been demonized by countless people. His writings have been mangled and butchered dozens of times. He was so frustrated that his works were being misinterpreted that he himself declared, "I am no longer a Marxist"
It's ironic that according to Marx's writings, once Communism is achieved, the government ceases to exist. Very few people know this little fact.
The communism you and Karl refer to can never be achieved. The Dictatorship of the Protelariat is a dictatorship and the working class just can't get along with it well enough to allow the state of communism to become real. Yes, there is a difference in that socialism is the basic form of what communism will grow from and it just can't happen. After 70 years of that dictatorship in the Soviet Union it had to disband itself since it wasn't withering and dying as Marx said it would.
I think we have a couple of excessive socialists that could be members of the CPUSA right now talking here.
Have you readers of Marx ever read the entire Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States? Now I said entire there.
Indeed. Marx's perspective was that the state would "wither" away. So, rather than "big government" there would be no government.
But he did know that the Dictatorship of the Proletariat would be a huge bureaucracy in order to maintain itself. I wonder why we are seeing our bureaucracy growing with such rapidity. You know, the number of bureacracies it will take to run Obamacare?
I tried and tried back when the Cold War was hot and heavy but I just never did see anything but wither and die. I don't think that will likely happen with the people of the world today.
In other words, you have never read anything written by Marx.
As I said, it has been a long time since I read Das Kapital. Anyone who has studied the works of Marx should be able to find clear parallels between certain of Marx's ideas and those of modern progressives/liberals and the President. I am referring specifically to Marx's notion that profits accruing to capital arise from exploitation of workers, that workers are the source of all value.
To explore this notion in a modern context, I pose this situation. If FedEx workers had only handcarts and wagons, they would not be very valuable and their wages would be quite low. This is a function of the value that the employer is ultimately able to provide the customer. Add capital (airplanes, trucks, terminals, information technology) to the equation, and the employer is able to offer considerable value to customers and workers' productivity and incomes are high.
The capital adds value to every party, and deserves a return. Marx was wrong--workers are not the source of all value.
When workers are free to unlock as much or as little of their own potential as they wish, to acquire skills and experience, to choose a productive attitude or to be obstructive, AND one is free to sell his labor wherever and to whomever he chooses (or to start his own enterprise and provide value directly to customers), free market thinkers believe that each worker is being paid his economic value. If the worker is actually worth more, he is free to go out and get it--either from another employer, or by going into business.
The president subscribes to the "exploitation of labor" idea, and promotes efforts to raise wages above their economic value. Specific actions undertaken in the auto nationalization/bailout were an explicit attack on capital. (The reaming of Chrysler secured lenders, and the elevation of UAW VEBA claims over those of GM bondholders, both served to add value to workers at the expense of capital.)
I've read Marx, Yannicheengus, and I have read every filing on the GM situation and many of the court filings in the Chrysler lender cases. I own a GM bond, I understand the obligations that GM had to its pension plan and the VEBA trust, and I saw what happened. It is not capitalism.
The issues are complex, and it is simplistic to call the President a Marxist or a socialist. It is just as simplistic to allege that there is absolutely no basis for those claims, and far too easy to dismiss your opposition as unread or ignorant.
Feelings run deep because many of us believe that profits were the motive force behind the building of the most productive, wealthiest society in all of human history. The president seems to believe, with Marx, that exploitation of workers is a problem that must be alleviated at the expense of profits and capital.
OK, now what is Marx's answer to all the problems of capitalism? Did the working class in the Soviet Union ever live nearly as good as he said they would.
I love having people write out all the problems of the other systems but never manage to explain how theirs is so much better. Lets see now what have been the communist nations so far. Soviet Union, not much success. China, they are becoming more and more capitalist but still have a strong central government. Cuba, where all the people are so very happy.
When do we get to see one of those places have its government wither and die?
I would not call a member of the Catholic clergy, a commissioned military officer, a high energy physicist or a tenured university professor as practicing a hobby or simply doing a job for money. They are doing something they enjoy, feel proud about their achievements, feel they are making a difference and view what they are doing is a contribution to society. This is what Marx viewed as the way society would be organized when it became possible to dispense with the market mechanism a time when we would not have to ration goods and services by setting wages and prices.
So you do understand intrinsic value! Different examples same principle.
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Modern capitalism is all about what economists call the optimization problem and the socalled efficient use of the means of production and capital. Marx felt that technology would evolve to the point that society would only need a small number of specialists to produce all the food, clothing, housing and goods and services needed and wanted by everyone. This would present our society with a problem of what you would do with the vast majority who aren't needed to produce anything?
When you call a 3-5% of unemployment rate full employment based upon those actively looking for work whose view is gaining currency?
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Would you let all of societies wealth fall into the hands of that very small minority and let the majority waste away.
I wouldn't but, but that is certainly where the trend lines and certainly the direction that many reactionaries have no compunction at see such an outcome as a favorable one.
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Marx felt this was a dangerous state of affairs since the majority might not tolerate being destroyed. Marx felt we would have to find a way to distribute societies wealth,and educate the people to want to do work because the only real crime is being a parasite.
I have no clue as to why you think that we are at odds on any of these points.
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We already have elements of this communist norm in the examples I mentioned above and examples of how to organize this type of society. .
In my opinion, everyone in college should be required to at least read the first few chapters of Kapital on money and the commodity form.
Oh yes, cherry pick his writings without taking all into account.
You know, in 1952 I made a heckling speech in a speech class in which I tried to talk the class into becoming communists and wasn't heckled once. I finally figured out that I knew too much about communism and the others didn't know anything about it and my cherry picked info made believers our of them. I didn't even waste time asking the teacher if I could explain all that CRAP to the class and hoped I had managed to take them away from their enraptured state before we left. I stayed with them outside class to make sure I hadn't created a lot of communist sheep. Scary as hell.
Sometime during my last two years in college I read a book in the library that wasn't about the topic I went in to study but it said that the easiest people in the world to take down that very primrose path are those of 18 -22. The communists of that period knew that and they went after those students very hard.
Do any of you worshipers of Marx know why it is that those people are so easy to haul in? How many of you are of that age group, anyway? I think most of you are.
It's important not to confuse the descriptive parts of anyone's writings (Marx included) with the prescriptive parts. Marx was a social critic and analyst, and quite a few of his observations are still very astute and interesting. That's a separate matter from his proposed solutions.
Imagine that you have a baffling illness, and a series of doctors have failed to diagnose you correctly. Finally, you do find a doctor who cuts through the haze of mystery and diagnoses your condition. Then he tells you to cure yourself by swallowing a large amount of poison. His description was very perceptive, but his prescription was far more questionable.
This actually happens quite often with social theorists. They make great observations, then propose solutions that don't quite work out.
Well Marx was no less dyed in the wool that any of them, the only problem (well not the only problem) is that they ignored his arguments that you couldn't have a socialist state until capitalism had reached its highest level of development. Imperial Russia was barely a capitalist state and even more barely an industrial one. As for China... shouldn't have even been mentioned in the same breath.
But I still hold a great deal of his analysis regarding the effects of capitalism on the working class as being right on the money. What to do about is a whole other issue.
When a man makes up all those great sounding words he should explain how we get there. When people read him and don't really understand it makes sense to me that they will miss as so many have up to now.
Lenin considered that Imperialism was the highest form of capitalism. We all know now that he was dead wrong. One of the key features of capitalism is its ability to adapt to changing circumstances. So, it is a fair question as to whether capitalism has a "highest level of development" in which case, can socialism ever be achieved?
What we knew back in the early 20th century just wasn't much more than that capitalism is bad because Marx didn't explain how to get from point A to Point B and since nobody knew many tried to make the trip.
Now that so many know what has to be done, who is going to get it done.
Again, how many college students do we have in this thread? If any, at all, how many of you are majoring in anything other than some social science?
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