Marxism for Super-Experts

Wrong. See OP

 

???

The only reason I brought it up again is because you quoted it in post #92...

...and you didn't refute "Young Marx" with the words of "Mature Marx". The words of "Mature Marx" were a defense of "Young Marx". He simply reiterated what he had already said.

"It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened." --Karl Marx

These are "Mature Marx's" own words, "Must employ forcible means, hence governmental means", yet you insist that he didn't mean to use forcible governmental means to meet his ends...

 

"It means that so long as the other classes, especially the capitalist class, still exists, so long as the proletariat struggles with it (for when it attains government power its enemies and the old organization of society have not yet vanished), it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means. It is itself still a class and the economic conditions from which the class struggle and the existence of classes derive have still not disappeared and must forcibly be either removed out of the way or transformed, this transformation process being forcibly hastened." --Karl Marx

No I am stating that through the experiences of the Paris Commune, the Polemic processes of transtional governece, hastely outlined in the Communist Manifesto, are not NECESSARY.

The destruction of said capitalist class within a particular area can succeed without Bourgeois State apparatus being formed.

If he blindly believed what he wrote 20 years prior to the Paris Commune, why did he not critque it its economic and political organization????

Logical inferences can go a long way.

There was no State

 

I was also quoting Mature Marx from his use of the paragraph in his response to Bakunin not the Manifesto as an ideological source.

 

That quote, "It means that so long as..." was written by Marx in 1874 or '75 in respone to Bakunin. The Paris Commune was in 1871...

So 3 to 4 years AFTER the Paris Commune, Marx was still advocating for his interim despotic government.

"...it must employ forcible means, hence governmental means."

 

Omg. How many times do I have to say this to you.

No. It means that Marx rectified the reality, through his exposure to the Paris Commune, that a capitalist class can become evicerated if the means of production are seized in decentralized yet consolidated socialist movement. I.E. The Paris Commune. Only Pragmatically, given its placement in the paragraph, does Marx advocate this political siezure. These are all reasoned and logical inferences extrapolated from ideological maturation of Marx.

So again explain to me, if Marx at first glace favors this "despotic governance of Totatlitarian leadership, why did he not critque the Paris Commune???

 

Well it bloody well should do. I basically put forward the views of the most common type of Marxist, at least in the UK, the Trotskyist position. I have looked at the various Trotskyist groups and I can only see one which hasnt had major flaws, so I am sympathetic to that, the CWI.

You claim to be a Marxist, but in nearly 30 years of being a Marxist I have never heard of anyone with your views before, so I am the vast majority and you are the tiny minority, so it is your job to convince me at least of what your position is, your basic reasoning.

In the Russian revolution, even out and out anarchists often fought on the side of the Reds.

But all serious parties - Trots, anarchists etc, even Stalinists who really have no theory, never tire of trying to get their ideas over, you seem a bit half hearted.

I will read the rest of you post later anyway, bit knackerd now.

Oh, btw, you should be glad that I am quite gentle with you, mostly I just rip people to shreds.

I dont even know where you get these ideas, I dont remember you mentioning any authors or organisations or anything. It's almost like you made it up yourself. I put forward, as best I can (I am no expert), the views of Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky and Luxemburg. Actually I think you mentioned Luxemburg once? Didnt she found the German Communist Party?

 

Indeed, Global Humanism seems to have his own ideas about what Marxism is which flies in the face of the words of Marx himself.

He seems to subscribe to some ideology, that much is clear, but that ideology is NOT Marxism.

 

Hah!

you flater yourself to much friend.

Lets deduce my position:

I am on the Left within the Communist Spectrum as I believe in communal democracy as both a transitional and final stage of communist revolution.

I believe in the eviceration of the State, as it is main mechanism to perpetuation class antagonism. [anarcho-communism]

Yet, coming from an academic discipline of international political economy I find myself dabbling in the theories of many political economists. Marx, at least in my interpretation, resonates with ideals outlined above even as the revisionist movements of the past have signified otherwise. Given this endeavor, no, I do not find myself pertaining to any particular party though I have my list of favorite theorists.

Luxemburg

Veblen

Riccardo

Babeuf

Debord

 

Hah another flaterer

Respond to my post

 

There's nothing to respond to. You want to deny Marx's own words. You've even gone so far as to claim that the Paris Commune somehow cancels out words that Marx wrote 4 years after the event.

 

If simple words can't calm your torrent of unlearned and cyclical questions & comments then in words of Jeff Bridges:

"Cant do nothin' for ya' son"


Moving On.

 

I'd like to hear instead about how to apply Marx to contemporary economics. With technology advancements that allow work to become more and more automated, workers are losing jobs at an accelerated pace. Not just in America but also globally, machines are replacing workers. This results in a smaller global consumer base; perhaps not right away, but within 100-200 years or so it is entirely conceivable that the middle class will shrink to such a point where they are no longer capable of purchasing the amount of goods and services necessary to sustain the global economy. I think we need to have a conversation about private property, about what it means now and more importantly what "private property" should mean going forward. I think one key question is: what good is innovation if only a small number of wealthy "owners" benefit from it? Lower prices can only take us so far, we also need to maintain a strong consumer base.

 

You know it does...

In your academic work, who corrects all the spelling? Personally I just turn on the spell check in Firefox. Anyway, I would like to see where Marx says a vanguard party is not needed. As for the peasants, i have already shown how Lenin orientated towards them, they got to vote in the Soviets, they got land, and he even said that on land questions the Bolsheviks would not vote against the Left SRs.

why did you paste this? What is so wrong in it? Wasnt the Paris Commune like a soviet? It basically gives peasants rent-free land.

where does it say totalitarian dictatorship? It says "all workers be armed".

http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/government/constitution/1918/article2.htm

Oh come on! Now you are sticking up for people who sided with the Whites! You show you true colours. The Whites killed 150,000 Jews and tried to smash the revolution. Lenin saw the need for a professional party which was fairly selective, but is still became a big, broad party, and besides, it was the Soviets which ran Russia, not the Bolshevik Party. In fact the way the revolution degenerated later, due to it's isolation in a backward country, was partly because thousands of non-socialists joined the party.

The Paris Commune lasted a very short time. The Bolsheviks managed to get Russia out of WW1 and defeat a capitalist counter-revolution backed by Britain, America, Japan etc.

Engels said
"he Commune made use of two infallible expedients. In this first place, it filled all posts — administrative, judicial, and educational — by election on the basis of universal suffrage of all concerned, with the right of the same electors to recall their delegate at any time. And, in the second place, all officials, high or low, were paid only the wages received by other workers. The highest salary paid by the Commune to anyone was 6,000 francs. In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates [and] to representative bodies, which were also added in profusion”; moreover noting that the State is “at best, an evil inherited by the proletariat after its victorious struggle for class supremacy, whose worst sides the proletariat, just like the Commune, cannot avoid having to lop off at the earliest possible moment, until such time as a new generation, reared in new and free social conditions, will be able to throw the entire lumber of the State on the scrap-heap”"

This is what the Bolsheviks did, and what Trotskyists insist on today, elected representatives on the average wage, with the right to recall

 

Why would you expect these people to debate honestly?

 

Daft were not going to agree and trust me, your doing a poor job at convincing me. Typos do not diminish my arguement.

At the end of the day I Chastise Lenin and his Bolshevisks and you do not.

Im moving on and you probably should too. A more interesting question has been asked anyway.

 

Awesome question.

I've also pondered this myself, especially coming from the discipline of International Political Economy.

So here is my interpretation of contemporary events-

I believe you hit it right on the mark, given the progressive innovations coming out of the manufacturing sector of the global economy. Not only is consumer class, through the lens of middle-tier income, becoming evicerated, but so is the last remenants human-based manufacturing capacity.

In layman's terms- The Prolitariat, after the 19th century, eventually became both the middle-class and lower-middle class within industrialized nations. This was consituted by a growing access to education, trade unionism, etc. However, the marginializing effects of the capitalist system, that equally estranges the worker from his product as well creates barriars to social mobility has once again revealed itself in the 21st century. This revelation is emboddied in the exploding costs of college education. The middle class is disappearing yet those that once represented this economic class, now, on a systemic level, find themselves generationally cut out from said innovations. Service Sector jobs are increasingly reserved for those that can afford the education, while the avalibility of non-service sector jobs is diminishing.

What you have is a powder Keg for Marxist Revolution in the 21st century. As you theorized, purchasing power will collect itself in the 21st century bourgeoise class and the consumer goods, that once calmed the revolutionary might of the prolitariat will no longer be the sustainable opium of the masses.

Yet, interestingly enough, these issues stem from Marxist interpretations of private property. This reality of economic order, as Marx defined it years ago, promotes the ideological dominiance of individual competition. Looking forward, especially with the increasing strain on resources and a growing global population, global self-sustainablity is something that will be required in the coming years. It remains to be see how nations will handle this issue, yet what you could see is more Marxist communal co-habitation and necessity-based production over the capitalist production of excess. Given this, private property may become a minority facet of the global economy.



All IMO of course

 

I do debate honestly.

Interpretations may differ but only a nieve dog who barks at the moon would assume their prattle is infinitly correct.

 

Spin it however you want, but tyranny of the proletariat is still tyranny.

And, again, even if it were peaceful, the entire crux of Marxism is the labor theory of value, which is treated about as seriously by modern economists as creationism is by modern biologists.

 

Your OP had nothing to say on the subject except the claim that a "real" Marxist state would a democratic one, this doesn't really address any of his concerns.
I have to say one of the most vaguely disturbing things in the world to me is to see Marxists argue.
But at any rate to address the OP anyone who believes that the Soviet Experiment was communism, especially after the death of Lenin, is deluding themselves. I would argue that it would have been impossible to turn out socialistic in the Marxist sense anyway, too agrarian, too poor, too uneducated and obedient to authority, even if it had somehow avoided the tyranny that should seem to come from a disunited proletariat it wouldn't have the wealth accumulation from capitalism which Marx seemed to deem necessary

 

Well it's a sorry state of affairs when a libertarian is backing me up and a so called Marxist cant be bothered to try to explain his views to me.

 

What tf is this supposed to mean? Marx says government force is required and you say it isnt. Why are you saying that Marx said the opposite of what is clearly spelled out here?

Oh, btw. You keep saying Russia's backwardness was not relevant. In the same article from 1874 Marx says

"A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. "

 

As I've said. I've moved on from this cycical arguement. You should too.

My interests are more expansive then arguing with you.

Moving On.

 

same article

"where the peasant exists in the mass as private proprietor, where he even forms a more or less considerable majority, as in all states of the west European continent, where he has not disappeared and been replaced by the agricultural wage-labourer, as in England, the following cases apply: either he hinders each workers' revolution, makes a wreck of it, as he has formerly done in France, or the proletariat (for the peasant proprietor does not belong to the proletariat, and even where his condition is proletarian, he believes himself not to) must as government take measures through which the peasant finds his condition immediately improved, so as to win him for the revolution; measures which will at least provide the possibility of easing the transition from private ownership of land to collective ownership, so that the peasant arrives at this of his own accord, from economic reasons."

Seems kinda along the lines Lenin was thinking.

 

This is so frustrating. I need to say this one more time.

Marx says, in that quote, that if the bourgeois class remains as a staple of economic organization after or during a revolution the governmental means must be taken.

The Paris Commune represents a revolutionary affirmation where this did not need to take place.

Therefore, the Paris Commune is a model for other revolutions as its democratic yet forceful siezure of the means of production evicerated the bourgieos in Paris as a empowered economic class.


DONE.