Forum Post: Marxism without hysteria
Posted 12 years ago on June 30, 2012, 3:33 p.m. EST by TitusMoans
(2451)
from Boulder City, NV
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
Too many people criticise without knowing, especially when the object or subject they criticise goes against their preconceptions, their ignorance, their prejudices.
For a change I've decided to go to the source, Marx in The Communist Manifesto, to show how Marx believed the transition between a capitalist society and communist society would occur, step by step. Remember, this scenario supposedly follows immediately after the workers have overthrown their masters:
"1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes. 2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax. 3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance. 4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels. 5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly. 6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State. 7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan. 8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture. 9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country. 10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c."
These would be the steps leading to a full communist society, in which all property was held by the community and a central government would disappear as superfluous.
That's the dangerous stuff supposed experts warn against.
"Capitalism is not about free competitive choices among people who are reasonably equal in their buying and selling of economic power, it is about concentrating capital, concentrating economic power in very few hands using that power to trash everyone who gets in their way".~David Korten
One of the reasons Marx considered the proletariat propertyless--aside from subsistence property--was that nearly all the property (capital) was accumulated in the hands of the bourgeousie.
In monopoly, the game usually ends at that point.
True, well, sad but true. Greed seems to know very few limits.
Some evidential links to back up your excellent thead :
http://www.rdwolff.com/ ,
http://www.marxists.org/ ,
http://www.wsws.org/index.shtml ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism ,
http://www.internationalgramscisociety.org/ &
http://monthlyreview.org/2009/05/01/why-socialism .
fiat lux ...
Thanks. Ignorance is a stubborn master for many people.
Alas, it is "ignorance" itself which is being actively cultivated and nurtured within The USA, UK and elsewhere - especially when it comes to alternative socio-economic paradigms and perspectives !!!
ad iudicium ...
Ignorance makes people easier to deceive and control. That's probably why Marx and other revolutionary figures of the Industrial Age have insisted on educating the masses.
There is No Other option for The 99% but to 'Educate ; Agitate & Organise' otherwise we will continue to be sheep and lambs being 'fleeced' on the way to the slaughterhouse, unable to even bleat in self preservation or protest !!!
dum spiro, spero ...
Exactly. I believe each one of us is responsible to motivate workers. To not work against the ruling class amounts to being a judas goat, an instrument of worker exploitation.
Greed has plenty of limits, it is arrogance that blinds you to them. Hence, the bailouts for the greedy and the arrogance of doubling down on the same old, same old.
Don't blame me; I'm an anarcho-c#$$!%&*t (the last's a dirty word).
Lol. I should have wrote....blinds 'a person' to them.
Just having fun. :{)
Happy to amuse you. :-)
http://timiacono.com/wp-content/uploads/10-10-20_toles.jpg
most are not motivated by greed
can you envision a grassroots capitalism - barber shops and butcher shops - small farms etc a bit like the old days. the rules cold be designed to foster that type of system. a mixed economy might be the best way to go. no real point in going too far here - we are a long way from that - worker owned companies could still be capitalist no?
First, the quote by David Korton refers to laissez faire capitalism. If you take a look at the link, you can see he is for a free market-based economy with more humanized rules,, http://www.davidkorten.org/ten-rules-for-socially-efficient-markets.
I'm for a more egalitarian society and I think the key element to achieve that longterm is to prevent a few individuals from profiting off the labor of others. So yes, worker owned companies would be far enough, imo. A mixed economy would be fine. I dislike the censorship and propaganda against marxist ideas because it teaches people to be narrow-minded and prejudiced.
i agree - i think the idea of mondragon is correct - "we build the road as we travel"
Re. 'The Mondragon Example', I also append :
http://www.uk.coop/ ,
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cooperative ,
http://www.co-operative.coop/corporate/widermovement/ ,
http://trustcurrency.blogspot.co.uk/2010/07/cooperative-movement-in-century-21.html &
http://american.coop/content/building-us-worker-cooperative-movement-context-global-capitalism
fiat lux ...
Yes - and m-dragon is really only a prototype and proof of concept - diversify it and others will innovate and improve upon the idea
Install an engaged, intelligent public and this "capitalism" would look very differernt.
Imagine a city where there are no Walmarts, Home Depots, Targets, Bankof Americas/Chases, etc. Just mom and pops, because the public was smart enought to realize what purchasing at these monsters means.
I would like that city very much.
I worked at a mom and pop for seven years, and their goal was to be the next Walmart.
Really, because while growth is good, Walmart's practives to get there are pretty disgusting.
Are you saying Walmart's practices (their values) were different when Walmart started out?
What the hell do you think? Dont link in good hard working people with op
Who the fuck are you to talk? You're the one who goes around linking everybody (the masses), which I am sure include good hard working people, and calling every last one of them asses.
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Ya, the ol "masses are asses" post was a good one, lots of good discussion on how much of a role do we all play in this mess.
Im assuming Walmart was different at the beginning, but maybe they started off as cut throats. Honestly, I dont know. Im sure that storyhas been rewritten at this point anyways.
I don't know are the three wisest words anyone can speak. I don't know how Sam Walton started out either, but I know how it ended up. I do know from first hand experience, being in a very close relationship with the owner of a mom and pop business, how the owner regarded his competition. It was never the goal to compete with him so the customer won, it was always the goal to end his competition, and take his share of the market.
It's unfair to blame capitalism for the greed and apathy of others. Greed hordes wealth under any economic system. In America the greedy are just more numerous through the sieve of emigration from foreign countries.
Capitalism is 100% guilty of concentrating capital. It is designed that way.
Name a system that does not have wealth concentrated in the hands of the few? I can't think of one except a vague picture of the Anarchists in northern Spain shortly before WWII.
That is the point of this post I believe.
Capitalism is designed so that the one the people respect the most gets the money. this is clearly not the case now,...
Did your mom drop you on your head when you were a baby? Capitalism was designed to make respectable people rich.......oh, that is so rich with gullibility. Yeah, them rich white slave owners were so dang respectable we didn't even have a civil war over it or anything.
LOL
I can't believe some of the things people say.
hchc should change his name to Eore.
Then again you get the blatant shills who have sold their soul to the corpoRATs - those never stop amazing me as to how they are willing to sell out humanity - theirs along with everyone else.
Eore???
What's sad is I really don't feel he is a corpoRAT, I think hchc really is just that gullible. He's caught up in that tea party wacky, patriotic mindset to defend individual liberty and capitalism even when it flies in the face of rational sense. Probably has lewd fantasies about Sarah Palin also.
AHhaahahah Sarah P Heehehehohohooo.............Eore from winnie the poo.
Yeah I wonder about hchc - he is so damned depressing - his stated objective is to inflame /shame people into activism.
I keep telling him he just drives people away.
Ohhh ---- Eeyore. I like Eeyore, and that little android Marvin from Hitchhikers G to the G. You're right - Eeyore is a perfect fit for hchc. Eeyore has a poor opinion of most of the other animals in the Forest, describing them as having "No brain at all, some of them", "only grey fluff that's blown into their heads by mistake"
I love the hitchhikers guide to the galaxy - Book - movie was so so.
Good by and thanks for all the fish.
Life the universe and everything. 64?
Few movies do the source material justice.
Sanitarium as Sauron? - OK
Al Franken as Frodo?
[-] 1 points by JadedCitizen (3776) 6 minutes ago
give me these two and you can pick the rest....
Santorum - Sauron,, http://www.pissedonpolitics.com/?p=1158
Ron Paul - Gollum,, http://redalertpolitics.com/2012/04/04/its-time-to-go-away-ron-paul-the-gollum-of-the-gop/ ↥twinkle ↧stinkle permalink
He does look like a Frodo now that you mention it. LOL.
Very very appropriate.
Now - Boner or Cantor as worm tongue?
McConnel as Golem?
[-] 2 points by JadedCitizen (3776) 0 minutes ago
Thou are truly devilish dka----Bernie Sanders, THOU SHALT NOT PASS CITIZEN'S UNITED !!!!! ↥twinkle ↧stinkle permalink
give me these two and you can pick the rest....
Santorum - Sauron,, http://www.pissedonpolitics.com/?p=1158
Ron Paul - Gollum,, http://redalertpolitics.com/2012/04/04/its-time-to-go-away-ron-paul-the-gollum-of-the-gop/
It does seem like they have been brought together in the darkness and bound there. Frodo! Sam! - where are you???????????
[-] 2 points by JadedCitizen (3776) 0 minutes ago
We seem to be living the lord of the rings today, striving to rid the land of a corrupt ring of greedy darkness and burn it in Mount Doom while there is still time left. ↥twinkle ↧stinkle permalink
LOL.
To true - the best adaptation that I have seen is The lord of the rings trilogy and even that could have been several movies longer to get in the missed detail and I still think it would not have been as good as the books as it is YOUR imagination taking the journey when reading.
We seem to be living the lord of the rings today, striving to rid the land of a corrupt ring of greedy darkness and burn it in Mount Doom while there is still time left.
"Of Mice & Men" with John Malkovich is the best book to movie I've encountered.
Very good adaptation to film and theater. I believe it was the simplicity of the story and scenes that made it possible to translate to different media like that so successfully. It never left the realm of your ( our ) interpretation/experience of the story and the conflicts.
[-] 2 points by EagleEye (16) 0 minutes ago
"Of Mice & Men" with John Malkovich is the best book to movie I've encountered. ↥twinkle ↧stinkle permalink
I saw the version with Robert Blake - long long time ago.
Bernie Sanders as Gandalf?
You Shall Not Pass !
[-] 2 points by JadedCitizen (3776) 0 minutes ago
LOL. ↥twinkle ↧stinkle permalink
Thou are truly devilish dka----Bernie Sanders, THOU SHALT NOT PASS CITIZEN'S UNITED !!!!!
If you dare: http://youtu.be/QO2IAwWl35A
Further to TM's comment below, do you dare ?
fiat lux ...
You know, I watched your video and as I watched it I thought of how similar photos and phrases of the ravages of capitalism around the world could be used in place of the ones used.
If you dare?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K4Tq4VE8eHQ&feature=related
Good video.
If the argument has to be animated, I don't believe it carries much weight. Put some meat on the bones, quote worthy philosophers, political theorists, revolutionaries with working-man credentials, not puppets with strings pulled by capitalist masters.
If you dare, read The Communist Manifesto, The German Ideology, and Das Kapital by Karl Marx, or for shorter reading try Lenin's The State and Revolution, maybe even Che Guevara's "Political Sovereignty and Economic Independence."
These men all lived under the yoke of capitalism; the first formulated the great theory of political-economic freedom of the Industrial Age; the latter two became legendary revolutionaries, fighting the good fight, and also contributing to the advancement of Marxian ideology with their writings.
I'm kind of shocked that these 10 steps are appealing to you. There are a few points that are particularly disturbing. The government has control over communication - wouldn't that include the free press and the internet? "Gradual abolition of distinction between town and county - more equitable distribution of populace" does that mean people are relocated to other parts of the country?
Is there no fear of oppression when you give the government such total control over everything? Now that I think about it, isn't that where communist governments have failed in the past?
I can see why people warn against this stuff...
You did read that this was Marx's idea of a transition period, during which capitalism was dismantled.
A free press, is that what we have now? Literally all major media outlets are corporatist tools, nothing else. The press would be controlled by the community in a communist society.
No, Marx did not want to force people to relocate; he assumed many people would want to live in the country, once no economic advantage favored the cities, which is the way an industrial, capitalist society works.
At the end of the transition process a true communist society would flow from the final part of the transition to when no government was required at all. In the meantime he expected the government to be democratically controlled.
I disagree with many of Marx's postulations, but his viewpoint was influenced by his time, the mid 19th century. That does not change the fact of his accuracy in predicting the evolution of the capitalist system, which, through its increasing subjugation of the working class, has in effect created its own grave diggers (paraphrasing Marx).
The Manifesto was a thirty-page tract summarizing communism. I suggest you read that first then begin with the the entire set of Das Kapital. Thousands of pages of Marxian theory, which I can hardly do credit to in a few paragraphs.
I can only use the communist countries in the world (past or present) as a model, and the control of the media and press exercised by those regimes was significant. While our mainstream press is influenced by $$ - there is a independent press that I think is becoming stronger. Unfortunately, our independent press seems to have significant bias on the issue it is covering.
I agree that I should read the manifesto at the very least.
You clearly live up to your moniker and seem to be a fair and open minded person who is unafraid of information and thus with due deference and respect to your good grace, I append for you and all :
http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/download/manifest.pdf & possibly -
http://occupywallst.org/forum/in-defence-of-the-broad-church-of-socialism-from-t/ .
ipse scientia potestas est ...
You can't expect a dictatorship (of the "proletariat"-actually party nomenclature) to lead to freedom.
The people have to break their chains themselves by self-organising.
Marx, Engels, et al believed that once oppression became severe enough the workers would revolt, because they had no other options.
But they thought the workers needed a small group to guide them.
Marx talked vaguely of a "vanguard"- this could even mean some charismatic non-authoritarian leaders with no coercive authority. This is acceptable, as long as the workers don't end up following them blindly (see Walessa, Soldarnosk and turning a struggle for more democracy in socialism into a struggle for "free" markets after Walessa got corrupted by the Pope).
Lenin, then, out of no-where claimed Marx meant a Party like the one functioning in the USSR, murdering dissidents.
Lenin has <nothing> real to do with Marx.
Undoubtedly Lenin has heavily influenced Marxist-type revolutionaries, including Fidel and Che. Still, so as not to discredit Lenin, Trotsky, and other Bolsheviks, they believed that immediately following a workers' coup, a strong, unified central authority would assure the successful transition to communism.
The Bolsheviks mistakenly (in my opinion) believed the Paris Commune failed, because no strong leadership emerged to plan a continued offensive against the Thiers' government.
If Lenin had lived, and Stalin not seized power in the Soviet Union, the history of modern "socialist" states might have ended differently.
As reviled as Hugo Chavez has become in the United States, he has implemented a moderate Leninist movement, which, though authoritarian, has moved toward spreading democratic-communistic ideals without morphing into a totalitarian state.
Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua has moved from Leninism toward a heavily socialized democracy, but has joined the Bolivarian Alliance, which indicates his support of Hugo Chavez and the modern Latin American implementation of communism.
You almost got the facts right this time, TitusMoans. Congratulations.
That's why welfare and other New Deal programs that kept poor people "good enough" are largely detrimental. We should have had a revolution back in the 1930's or 40's. Roosevelt knew this.
The New Deal was just the old deal repackaged. Even then, however, with the Dust Bowl catastrophe, the US might have had a revolution, if WW2 hadn't occurred, which gives more credence to the notion that our government tacitly participated in the events leading to Pearl Harbor.
Pretty much ever gov believes taht too
That's not the position of most governments; they will push until workers are at or slightly below bare subsistence. If workers are educated about their options and how to go about redressing them, they most likely will break their own chains before desperation forces them into an uprising--e.g. the French Revolution.
Self organizing -
Move to Amend - update.
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You called in from all over the U.S. (including Hawaii and Alaska!) to report on your calls, and that was very helpful.
Towards the end of the day, we started to get some very interesting report backs from people who actually did get through to Durbin's office. Durbin's staffers started to tell callers that THEY had reached out to MTA, and that MTA either: has been invited; will be invited; or, that discussions are ongoing about MTA's participation.
That's not exactly true -- WE reached out to Durbin's office, not the other way around; and, we have NOT been formally invited to participate in the hearing, YET . . . but it is a hopeful sign!
We will let you know, immediately, if we do get an invite.
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If no one owns property, how does someone live in a home without someone else living in it?
Have you ever rented a place to live? You didn't own it, yet you lived there as long as you paid the rent.
Even if you "own" a house, property taxes must be paid in most areas, or the state will confiscate the house. In a community where property is shared; use can be designated, just as it has been in various historical communes, starting with the early Christians in Jeruselum.
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"True Socialism, in which everyone is truly equal, does not just resemble a prison - it is a prison. It can not exist unless it is surrounded by high walls, by watchtowers and by guard-dogs, for people always want to escape from any socialist regime, just as they do from a prison. If you continue your attempts to establish a model society you will need to build walls around it. You will be forced to do so sooner or later by the flood of refugees." -Viktor Suvorov
"True socialism" has not been practiced by any government to date. So, obviously a good reason exists to doubt Suvorov's statement.
"How do you tell a communist? Well, it's someone who reads Marx and Lenin. And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone who understands Marx and Lenin."
*someone who owns land, factories, rentals, means of production, and lives off of the labor of others.
The 1%'ers are communist? All business owners are communist?
Huh.
Who knew?
[-] 3 points by luparb (274) 22 minutes ago
And how do you tell an anti-Communist? It's someone* who understands Marx and Lenin....
*someone who owns land, factories, rentals, means of production, and lives off of the labor of others. ↥twinkle ↧stinkle reply permalink
lives off of the labor of others.
Well I guess it makes sense as the greedy corrupt white collar criminals do seem hell bent on buying the government for to use as their own dictatorship.
Huh.
Just like the U.S.S.R. The Soviet Socialist Republic Russia.
Huh.
How weird.
All this time we have been trying to get them to be democratic and here the Greedy were hero worshiping them.
What a World.
They are capitalist. I think you misread me. There is no private ownership in communism.
Tell that to the dictators of Russia or China. They own it all even today as they pretend to move towards democracy.
com·mu·nism noun \ˈkäm-yə-ˌni-zəm, -yü-\ Definition of COMMUNISM 1 a : a theory advocating elimination of private property b : a system in which goods are owned in common and are available to all as needed 2 capitalized a : a doctrine based on revolutionary Marxian socialism and Marxism-Leninism that was the official ideology of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics b : a totalitarian system of government in which a single authoritarian party controls state-owned means of production c : a final stage of society in Marxist theory in which the state has withered away and economic goods are distributed equitably d : communist systems collectively
Communisim has never happened anywhere to date - the private ownership is done by the governments of both Russia and China. Nothing has ever been equally shared out.
Capitalism gone too far is a dictatorship.
The greedy assholes who caused the economic meltdown and others of fossil fuel industry and power/energy industry. They are trying very hard to get the USA to be the same - only it will be known as the Incorporated States of America. Then the incorporated World.
Fight the disease People.
I agree. We live in 'interesting' times. We need real change.
"May you live in interesting times" - is a Chinese Curse.
Kind of a stupid curse when you think about it - as the curser if successful suffers the same as the cursed.
Truth.
Try social anarchism.
Wherever it worked, it succeeded (Spain until Franco crushed it by force, Kibbutz in Israel, Chiappas, many anarchist communes all over the planet, Ukrainian Free Territory etc).
Up to national scale it has been proven to work (ie Spain during Civil War).
What remains is on an international scale.
That's another bad quotation from someone, who obviously has neither read nor understood Marx.
The Communist Manifesto is only about 30 pages long. Go ahead and read it; it won't pollute your mind.
In socialism, not everyone is truly equal. The govt controls everything.
Communism is a totally different story.
Socialism fails. Communism is humanity's hope. (read about them and find out the difference, hint communism actually means NO state)