quote:

---

We will only point out here that naturally all specifically Marxian "laws" and developmental constructs--insofar as they are theoretically sound--are ideal types. The eminent, indeed unique, heuristic significance of these ideal types when they are used for the assessment of reality is known to everyone who has ever employed Marxian concepts and hypotheses. Similarly, their perniciousness, as soon as they are thought of as empirically valid or as real (i.e., truly metaphysical) "effective forces," "tendencies," etc. is likewise known to those who have used them.

---

[ 04 August 2004: Message edited by: rasmus raven ]

As for this topic, cut and paste from the other thread.

quote:

---

Even if most people now have discredited Marxism as an economic system than does not render it outdated. Marx’s works provide the basis for some of the best critiques of modernity. Even if the logic of history did not work out the way Marxists thought it would, many of the points arising from the analysis of the dialectic are still valid. On a wider philosophical level, the break with Cartesian dualism to a system of praxis is an important one and one that has influenced much philosophical thought in the modern area. Plus using phrases like the “reification of reality” can help you score with hippy chicks.

---

What I think is well past the best-before date is the idea that someday the workers of the world will throw off the chains of their oppression and live in the Proletarian Utopia. Mostly this seems to be a tenacious stream of thought among older folk who want to sell you crappy little "Comrade Worker" newspapers, and idealistic college kids, but they seem to be entirely impervious to the idea that nobody's really all that interested.

quote:

---

just how many Canadians are actually interested in living their belief in Marxism (hint: more Canadians believe they were Cleopatra in a previous life.)

---

If you think Marxism hasn't affected Canadian lives then you are in the-nile.

At least half of Marx's 10 planks put forth in the Manifesto have been implemented, somewhat implemented or at least discussed in Canada.

Check (implemented)...
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
10. Free education for all children in public schools.

Implemented to a certain degree...and now on the processed of being reversed:
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (Air Canada, Via Rail, CBC)
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.

quote:

---

If you think Marxism hasn't affected Canadian lives then you are in the-nile.

---

Well, if I'm not mistaken, the Nile is just a river in Africa.

Actually, I don't discount what Marx has given many societies, but I don't think that people, at least in North America, particularly crave to live under all-out Marxism.

quote:

---

Originally posted by yiya:
At least half of Marx's 10 planks put forth in the Manifesto have been implemented, somewhat implemented or at least discussed in Canada.

Check (implemented)...
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
10. Free education for all children in public schools.

Implemented to a certain degree...and now on the processed of being reversed:
5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state. (Air Canada, Via Rail, CBC)
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.

Discussed (recently)
3. Abolition of rights of inheritance ( )

---

I believe that many Canadians genuinly believe in free public education and a progressive tax system. Canadians will consider or have considered state ownership of enterprises and communications, limiting inheritance, etc. Many expect the state protect the environment - that it create and enforce laws to that end, etc.

Whereas most Canadians would squirm at an idea if it is presented as a Marxist idea, the idea itself is not the offense. The source, Marx, offends them because the man is equated with Hitler around here. I can agree to the fact that Marx as a brand name is not the best marketing tool for Marxist ideas.

Is Marxism acceptable to many Canadians? I would say yes. Do they know it? No.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mr. Magoo:
Actually, I don't discount what Marx has given many societies, but I don't think that people, at least in North America, particularly crave to live under all-out Marxism.

---

I am not sure what you mean by All-out Marxism. Most people have an idea of what that looks like. Like with "heaven" "equality" and "freedom", everyone knows what they mean when they utter these words but no two conceptions would look alike. I suspect my conception of All-out Marxism looks less scary than yours.

quote:

---

Its important to note that all of these reforms can be done without changing the class structure, as they have been done... Oh, and #2 is being reversed with every tax cut, and #10 is very slowly being whittled away with the rise of private schools in Ontario and elsewhere.

---

The ideas that Canadians entertain change depending on the circumstances in which they live. When these things change - income, work conditions, civil liberties, home life, etc - then ideas change. There is not a direct link, though between ideas and conditions - a mistake made by many. Canadian labour militancy was quite hopeless in 1930, but deterministic materialists would have you believe that a depression would instantly cause revolution. But consciousness tends to lag behind material reality. Why? To quote Marx again,

quote:

---

The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas, i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society, is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production, so that thereby, generally speaking, the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are subject to it.

---

Therefore, ideas can change gradually, but on occassion make huge leaps in huge numbers of people. They become radicalized and see through many of the ruling ideas, but those ruling ideas linger and periods of revolutionary consciousness can subside rapidly. This is where a revolutionary party - organizing the most militant and revolutionary sections of the working class - is necessary to make the arguments within the class to tear down capitalism and build a workers state (many disagree with this method, of course).

So, while Canadians may not be receptable to Marxism now, they can be in the future and if we look at the last election, there was definitely a shift to the left in the Canadian population.

There are some great talks (on mp3) given at the British Marxism conference on the topic that tie together ideas, the working class as well as the revolutionary party:
1) How do Ideas Change? by Judith Orr
2) Lenin and the Party (One, Part Two, Part Three) by Tony Cliff

I came to think that the distinction between base and superstructure was pretty raw and creaky, or at least it was understood and applied in clumsy ways by most serious Marxists I knew and/or read. That's not to say that I don't agree that there is something "basic" about economic relations -- but I think that everyone's understanding of the interactions and interplay among economic, social, and cultural forces is pretty primitive.

quote:

---

Originally posted by rasmus raven:
It's interesting that the idea of Marxism as a "value system" has really no theoretical place within Marxism itself. Yet most Marxists, and Marxist rhetoric, including that of Marx himself, are fuelled by moral outrage.

There's a good book that deals with this subject, Marxism and Morality, by Steven Lukes.

---

He lived in 19th century culture, not in the 21st century. He doesn't answer us questions about target groups and messages in todays world.

The class struggle is outdated, and a very unappealing messsage. Workers in west belong to the richest 20% of this planet. Are they really that oppressed?

I think that like the bible, Marx is often given too literal of a read. He was a prescient and brilliant thinker of his time, however he could never have foreseen the conditions in which we now live.

Marx is extremely valuable in an educational capacity but he is just a jumping off point. I believe that our view of the world and what it requires should never be rooted too intimately in one thinker or book. I think we should peruse as many as possible to gain our own, unique critique of modern society and use that to inform our response to it.

Marx has many lessons for us but unfortunatly the term has been so thouroughly co-opted in the popular vernacular that half our battle sometimes is convincing people that we aren't marxists.

Not because there's anything wrong with what Marx wrote but because the perception of his ideas has been so heavily tainted with Stalin's State Capitalism and American propoganda that all it equates to in people's minds is the Gulag.

Nonetheless class division is still the defining division of our time, as it was of Marx's. The Bourgeoise (CEO's, multinationals, etc.) live in the absurd lap of luxury off the backs of the working people (Whether they be Wal Mart clerks or sweatshop workers - the level of exploitation may be different but the exploitation remains)

We need something new and abrupt, a Global Justice Network which could amalgamate all the progressive organizations and struggles under one umbrella.

Also, the factory owners in the third world are certainly better off than a welfare mom, or Wal Mart "Associate" here.

We bleed the third World dry , but we aren't even the ones benefiting from it. Those upper few percent of society (Whether it be American or Zimbabwean) are sucking us all dry.

What about the American woker laid off when his plant moves to Mexico so that it's owners can oppress someone else even more. He's been exploited, they've been exploited and the bosses are laughing all the way to the bank.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Socrates:
If we could only realize that we don't really benefit from the status quo and join with the exploited of the South ..... we'd all be better off.

---

quote:

---

Marx knew nothing about environmental problems of today

---

Marxist ecological thought is priceless. Marx developed an understanding of the nature-society dialectic without which we would lack understanding of the ecological crisis of capitalist society. We ignore him at the peril of being ineffective environmentalists.

Here is how Marx put it(as written by John Bellamy Foster):
1) capitalism has created an 'irreparable rift' in the 'metabolic interaction' between human beings and the earth, the everlasting nature-imposed conditions of production;
(2) this demanded the 'systematic restoration' of that necessary metabolic relation as 'a regulative law of social production';
(3) nevertheless the growth under capitalism of large-scale agriculture and long distance trade only intensifies and extends the metabolic rift;
(4) the wastage of soil nutrients is mirrored in the pollution and waste in the towns--'In London,' he wrote, 'they can find no better use for the excretion of four and a half million human beings than to contaminate the Thames with it at heavy expense';
(5) large-scale industry and large-scale mechanised agriculture work together in this destructive process, with 'industry and commerce supplying agriculture with the means of exhausting the soil';
(6) all of this is an expression of the antagonistic relation between town and country under capitalism;
(7) a rational agriculture, which needs either small independent farmers producing on their own, or the action of the associated producers, is impossible under modern capitalist conditions; and
(8) existing conditions demand a rational regulation of the metabolic relation between human beings and the earth, pointing beyond capitalist society to socialism and communism.

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: yiya ]

quote:

---

(Marx) had very little idea how wide the north south divide would grow

---

“the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, and exploitation grows.”

"The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together."

quote:

---

Originally posted by yiya:

“the mass of misery, oppression, slavery, degradation, and exploitation grows.”

"The more the division of labor and the application of machinery extend, the more does competition extend among the workers, the more do their wages shrink together."

I think he had a clue...

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by CrazyMiranda:
Yes yiya Marx knew about the environmental problems of his time. But he didn't know much about global warming, or water shortage, oceans, lakes and rivers being polluted, the rape of rainforests, the hastened extinction of species.

Did he?

---

Oh, I don't know...

Environment:
"Capitalist production, therefore, develops technology, and the combining together of various processes into a social whole, only by sapping the original sources of all wealth - the soil and the labourer."

"The development of civilization and industry in general has always shown itself so active in the destruction of forests that everything that has been done for their conservation and production is completely insignificant in comparison."

Pollution:
"Capitalist production, by collecting the population in great centres, and causing an ever increasing preponderance of town population.., disturbs the circulation of matter between man and the soil; i.e., prevents the return to the soil of its elements consumed by man in the form of food and clothing; it therefore violates the conditions necessary to the lasting fertility of the soil. By this action it destroys at the same time the health of the town labourer."

Overconsumption:
"The production of too many useful things results in too many useless people."

Neoliberal totalitarianism:
"In bourgeois society capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality."

Does Marx mention dependancy on fossil fuels?

quote:

---

Originally posted by CrazyMiranda:

'the more do their wages shrink together' Didn't actually happen, did it? I don't see how that points to the growing divide between north and south and it's implications in the 21th century world. What does Marx say about that?
When we want to assess this question, we simply forget Marx.

---

Yes, it did.

E.g.: Workers in the States are affected by industry that moves south of the border. As a result, workers on both sides of the border can benefit from low and lower wages. Non-unionized, Walmart jobs in the North, low paying industrial jobs in the South. That is "wages shrinking together" to me.

E.g.: Measurements of equality in North America, such as the gini coefficient, clearly show that our societies are becoming more unequal, not less. The lower income bracket is increasing and the higher bracket is decreasing in numbers. A few people making a lot more and more people making little.

If we "simply forget Marx" our memory lapse will cause us to simply not understand why there are few good jobs in Canada. We may conclude it's because "all those damn immigrants are taking our jobs." Marxist analysis is relevant, methinks.

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: yiya ]

1. Mainstream (neoclassical) economists don't call themselves "Smithists."

2. Marx himself would be horrified to see such a cult of personality develop around his work that modern socialists still identify themselves so closely to someone who died over a hundred years ago. Marx considered his socialism to be "scientific" and would certainly have expected that "science" to progress. As it has, in many interesting permutations and directions.

3. While modern economists don't call themselves "Smithists," and indeed, reject many of Adam Smith's original ideas, they still acknowledge a tremendous debt of gratitude to the "founder" of their "science." I don't think there's anything wrong with those of us holding "left" or "heterodox" positions doing the same for Marx.

[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by CrazyMiranda:
We don't need Marx to tell us that production and consumption pollute.

---

Really? Who did you think told you and the rest of the world?

Good environmentalists get Marx. They know that:
1. Capitalism pollutes. The system, by its structure, cannot avoid extraction.
2. The environmentalist movement needs to address inequality. You can't solve environmental problems while ignoring class differences. I.e. don't increase taxes on the poor in order to reduce consumption.
3. The bottom line of a company is profits. No matter how green it purports to be.
4. The environment will continue to suffer as long as capitalism thrives.

If you already know this, then good for you. Others lack the class analysis.

quote:

---

Originally posted by robbie_dee:

2. Marx himself would be horrified to see such a cult of personality develop around his work that modern socialists still identify themselves so closely to the work of someone who died over a hundred years ago. Marx considered his socialism to be "scientific" and would certainly have expected that "science" to progress. As it has, in many interesting permutations and directions.
[ 05 August 2004: Message edited by: robbie_dee ]

---

I agree on all 3 points you have made. The problem with not discussing Marx directly when discussing whether or not Marxism is relevant to the left is that there are too many thinkers, workers, fighters that came after Marx and followed in his tradition. It's hard to focus the discussion.

Is the work of Lenin, Che Guevara, Fidel Castro, Gramsci and Paul Bellamy Foster relevant to the left today? I think yes. It's unfair to describe them as Marxists because, as you mentioned, the ideas and the work have developed, deverged, progressed, since Marx.

I believe that ideas and analysis that originated with Marx and Engels (class analysis, dialectical materialism, etc) are used and accepted by the left today. Mostly, we just don't know it.

quote:

---

1. Capitalism pollutes. The system, by its structure, cannot avoid extraction.
2. The environmentalist movement needs to address inequality. You can't solve environmental problems while ignoring class differences. I.e. don't increase taxes on the poor in order to reduce consumption.
3. The bottom line of a company is profits. No matter how green it purports to be.
4. The environment will continue to suffer as long as capitalism thrives.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by worker_drone:

Then why are all the rivers in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union such a lovely shade of brown?

---

I got two problems with your argument:
1. Marxist ideas and conceptions are not the same as the Soviet Union. Marx analyzed the economic system called capitalism and gave the world a map with which to read it. The Soviet Union resulted from an experiment to end the exploitation of workers.

I think we can all agree workers in the Soviet Union are not free from their chains. That experiment failed.

On the other hand, the "Marxist map," for lack of a better term, is still very useful. It hasn't failed.

One is not the other.

2. Just because we understand exactly how capitalism pollutes, contaminates, extracts and exploits, it doesn't mean that other systems cannot degrade the environment in their specific ways.

Even so, if we acknowledge the limitations of Marx because he is "out of date" or whatever, then let's acknowledge the numerous advances made by those using Marx's theories as their method and theoretical base. Marxism, as developed by Marx, Engels, Lenin and others, has provided the most effective base for everything from anthropology, women's oppression, the roots and cause of racism, environmentalism and more.

Many would vehemently disagree with this, and that's why Marxism has to be saved from Stalinist, Maoist and Castroite distortions.

Move on, the man lived in 19th century. This is here and now. To suggest that we need Marx to understand how the causes of environmental problems partly lie in production, profit maximizing and how consumption is linked to it, is silly. Millions of people who have never read Marx understand it, and better than Marx ever did. It's not like this is some divine knowledge that a normal person cannot grasp, if he/she cares about the subject.

The same with women rights and many other things. Marx (or his followers) never had a monopoly on saying important things about these subjects.

[ 06 August 2004: Message edited by: CrazyMiranda ]

It's not a new phenomenon that is peculiar to the North-South divide and it happens between AND within countries. In fact, the people who explained it best were dependency theorists from the South: Furtado, Cardoso, Dos Santos and Sunkel. Dependency theorists believed that poor countries were not poor simply because they didn't have "the entrepreneurial spirit." They argued that under the current economic structures, so called developing countries would keep on getting poorer. And don't say you didn't need them to know that, because you did.

The best of these thinkers, IMHO, understood that the North and the South weren't homogeneous territories. Within the South, there were those whose interests lay in maintaining the international laws. They benefit from the exploitation of their own countries and they make sure things stay as they are. If we want to change unequal North-South relations, we need to do something about this class. The dependency theorists who put this forth, about 30 years ago, were of the Marxist tradition. So, you see, understanding class helps.

The problem with re-inventing the wheel is not that it's exhausting or time-consuming, it's that we are not so brilliant as to be able to re-invent it. Why ignore what was done and not build from those foundations? You don't have to understand Marxist theories, but you won't get far if you don't.

[ 06 August 2004: Message edited by: yiya ]

No, solidarity with workers in poorer countries does not harm the overall interests of workers in the "advanced capitalist countries". There have always been short-term contradictions among the oppressed. Other than Ireland, one of the most glaring in Marx's day, and remarkably similar to the current arguments about sweatshops and denial of basic human rights, was the question of cotton production in the slaveholding US south. There was strong solidarity with the antislavery movement among British mill workers, though they stood to lose in the short run, and everybody who has read Dickens or Engels knows what squalid conditions they lived and worked under.

I've just heard from trade unionist friends in Germany, one of those countries where the workers enjoyed many benefits of modern social democracy. Those are under attack - a "Blairite" attack from Schröder's SPD - hard to resist as there is no other credible left party and the labour unions are so tied to the SPD - if you read the bbc or dw-world.de you'll see the sweeping cuts to unemployment insurance benefits. Now with the expanded EU, it is easy to move jobs to Poland. International workers' solidarity to fight this race to the bottom is more important than ever before (Polish-German ghost of Red Rosa comes to the fore!)

quote:

---

Originally posted by lagatta:

No, solidarity with workers in poorer countries does not harm the overall interests of workers in the "advanced capitalist countries".  

---

quote:

---

If the middle class western worker today sided with the exploited workers in the south, his own pay check would decrease, fact, his consumption would decrease, fact, and from this view point it's not a change that is easy to market to them.

---

quote:

---

Denying the fact does not make it go away.

---

If we could achieve global worker rights (which is of course totally utopistic), the western corporations would have to pay the third world workers multiple times what they now pay, then to remain profitable they would have to increase the prices of their goods in west. This would directly affect the consumption of the western middle class worker, who now would find himself in a position to consume less. Which for him/herself would concretely mean that he would be poorer.

Multiple times increased foreign aid, stricter environmental regulations etc. it would all be seen in the product prices, and in the decreased consumption of the western middle-class worker.

[ 06 August 2004: Message edited by: CrazyMiranda ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by lagatta:
The point is not worshipping Marx or anyone else but seeing that working-class internationalism is more important than ever before, in an increasingly globalised world. 

---

I agree. Marx should be not be worshipped - religion being the opiate of the masses and all.

Crazy, I do think you have a point. As long as many workers in the West equate consumption with happiness, how are they supposed to give up the "gleefulness" of neo-liberalism willingly?

We agree that international workers solidarity is the goal - but how are we supposed to get there if workers in the North are consuming more and more? Even the majority that works McJobs and doesn't consume much now, fight for the right to consume later. They are willing to prop up capitalism in hopes they'll have "bling bling" in the future.

Unions today cannot offer you job stability, rest, education, health because the biggest selling point is more money.

quote:

---

Originally posted by yiya:

We agree that international workers solidarity is the goal

---

I think the goal is to change the world to a direction in which environmentalism, altruism (or justice or whatever we call it) and individual freedom in these limits are more and more reflected in the structures and our every day behaviour.

If these can be achieved in a capitalist world, and I hope and believe they can be, then I don't see a need to move further.

quote:

---

Originally posted by CrazyMiranda:

I think the goal is to change the world to a direction in which environmentalism, altruism (or justice or whatever we call it) and individual freedom in these limits are more and more reflected in the structures and our every day behaviour.

If these can be achieved in a capitalist world, and I hope and believe they can be, then I don't see a need to move further.

It's also a more appealing point to start, when the clear majority of westerners, also workers, attach positive images and feelings to capitalism.

---

Is it a clear majority? You believe that people's ideas are static, that they don't change. Capitalism is inherently unstable, and people can and have quickly lost their illusions in its stability, and its ability to be reformed. The dynamics of capitalism will always lead to a boom-bust cycle, and always lead to war. Its competition and the profit-motive that drive the system, and significant progressive reforms are always implemented through mass working class struggle, but are always in danger of being repealed, and commonly are.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug the Red:

Is it a clear majority?

---

Of course it is, this is not even debatable. Everyone who has tried to chat with common people on this topic is well aware of it.

quote:

---

You believe that people's ideas are static, that they don't change.

---

Never did I make such a silly statement, you are now inventing things.

quote:

---

Capitalism is inherently unstable, and people can and have quickly lost their illusions in its stability, and its ability to be reformed.

---

This have been said over and over again by Marxist for 100+ years and today in west capitalism is more supported than ever.

And I would like to see a theory how capitalism could not be controlled to reflect green and altruist values if political will to make these changes could be achieved.
Worker rights, environmental standards, progressive taxation, even min and max wage regulations etc.

quote:

---

The dynamics of capitalism will always lead to a boom-bust cycle, and always lead to war.

---

I seriously disagree with that. There were wars for thousands of years before modern capitalism, which started in the 18th century to my understanding.
In fact there were wars more frequently than in the capitalist era.
It's a question of human understanding, human morality, human world view. Canada is a capitalist country, is it inevitably going to attack another nation?

quote:

---

Its competition and the profit-motive that drive the system, and significant progressive reforms are always implemented through mass working class struggle, but are always in danger of being repealed, and commonly are.

---

Selfishness is a human trait. It is not going to go away capitalism or not capitalism. In theory capitalism can be controlled, if political will can be achieved.
This fight, no matter how desperate, it still a more realistic prospect that 'a revolution' in a western world, where no-one but a tiny marginal support such idea, and most detest it.

quote:

---

And please don't limit your view to just westerners, because capitalism is a global system. I assure you that most people are not entirely content with their current lot.

---

Ah.. but that doesn't really matter that much, does it? If we are realistic?

The global power economicly, militarily, politically residers in the rich industrialist countries and a few growing economies like China.
Therefore the change is most important in these societies where it matters the most, and where, if successful, it can lead to a radically more altruist and green order in the world.

About "the majority", I would hardly call your response an argument. Who is this "everyone" you refer to as proof of your "point".

You may not have specifically said people's ideas are static and don't change, but everything write assumes this - You seem to believe that "capitalism is more supported than ever". This refers back to "the majority", which you can't offer any evidence of. So much for that argument.

You would like to see a theory of how capitlaism could not be controlled to reflect "green and altruist values"? Perhaps you should brush up on your history books. Every significant progressive reform you cite has been done through mass struggle in spite of the interests of capitalists. These people did not support capitalism - they opposed it and tried to change it. Granted, they didn't replace it with something like socialism, but that's besides the point. That people continue to fight against capitalism to improve their individual and collective lot in life, is proof that most people aren't supporting capitalism like those who benefit from seeing their reforms rolled back - ie: the capitalists.

As for war, it may have happened for thousands of years before capitalism, but that doesn't preclude that it isn't inherent in capitalism (which in fact started in different regions at different times, not "the 18th century"). And please back up your statement that wars were more frequent than in other systems than capitalism? You can't certainly argue that wars under capitalism are more destructive. I should have been more specific - wars are a product of class-society: capitalism, feudalism, Greco-Roman slavocracy, etc. While there was certainly conflict in pre-class hunter-gatherer socieities (which consists of most of the history of humans), there was certainly nothing comparable to what class societies have produced. You should also brush up on your anthropology.

"Canada is a capitalist country, is it inevitably going to attack another nation?" Yes - Serbia, Afghanistan, Iraq, Haiti, Quebec, First Nations, etc. Read some history. Canada is helped out a lot by American imperialism, too, so we don't always have to send "our boys". Consider how long it took Chretien to finally decide about the Iraq War - he decided 48 hours after a quarter million marched against war in Montreal.

As for selfishness, is it really an all conquering drive? Selfishness - the individualistic, destructive type - that is portrayed today as natural, is a manifestation of people's drive for self-preservation in a system where they are competing with others. Individuals are pitted against one another. As I've mentioned, the vast majority of human history was spent in pre-class society, where selfishness as we know it did not exist, and self-preservation was accomplished through collective production and consumption, not through ruthless individual competition. In socialism, the absence of competition and an environment of mutual cooperation, selfishness as we know it, would virtually disappear.

quote:

---

Originally posted by rasmus raven:
Seems like whenever someone disagrees with you, CrazyM, you say that your point of view is "not debatable",

---

Why do you lie?

quote:

---

that they have to recognize "the facts" (ie what you claim to be the facts), or that they are "not realistic".

---

This is not true. I only use it in some cases, which are verified facts for everyone who has bothered to study them.
Most people have a positive image of capitalism in the west, try this yourself.
Most people have a rather negative image of the term Marxism in the west (nevermind communism), try this yourself.
You will notice we are talking about huge majorities.

quote:

---

This is not an argument, merely a tactic to shut people down.

---

I have offered many arguments, most of which have been left unanswered. I think you are being unfair.

quote:

---

Eventually others will lose interest and walk away. Since one of your points is that we need to communicate with people by respecting where they are at, why don't you start by practising what you preach?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Doug the Red:
In socialism, the absence of competition and an environment of mutual cooperation, selfishness as we know it, would virtually disappear.

---

That's cloud cuckoo land. No system is going to remove the traits inherent in human beings. They can partly change, things can get better. But never this sort of utopia.

quote:

---

Finally, your so-called geopolitical analysis is a disgrace. Its reductionism beyond reductionism, and its frankly insane. Can you actually promote such a view where the vast majority of the world's population is considered insignificant?

---

Read again what I wrote. I didn't say they were insignificant. They are who we are trying to help. Whose's got the potential to help them, the financial strenght, the medical know how, the environmental know how, the biggest say in global politics etc.

While the NDP has a strong working class base, and many socialists among its ranks, I don't think anyone can honestly say that the goal of the NDP is a socialist Canada. And it burns me a little to see things like the Regina Manifesto and other historical documents from the history of the NDP deleted from the NDP website. So I'm not looking to the NDP to provide any substantiation of the socialist vision or a defence of the marxist tradition. However, one of my favourite places to check out on the web is the SACP (South African Communist Party) web site.

At the time that the communist governments in eastern Europe were collapsing, the SACP was gaining members by leaps and bounds. As far as I know the SACP was the only CP in the world that was having that kind of success. And their leader at the time was Joe Slovo.

Slovo wrote an essay in those days called Has Socialism Failed? where he addressed the issue raised by this thread. So I'm happy to borrow from the late Joe Slovo...

SACP honours Joe Slovo

Firstly, the SACP still honours Slovo nine years after his death. So I think it is fair to say that his views are still fairly well represented in today's SACP:

quote:

---

Cde Joe Slovo is one of our key monuments to the glorious struggle of liberation and transformation of our country, and to this end he ranks alongside heroes such as Nelson Mandela, Oliver Tambo, Walter Sisulu as one of the architects of our nation and democracy. Cde Slovo is also one of the symbols of the non-racial character of our struggle, a man who abandoned racial privileges of South Africa's white population under apartheid and chose to dedicate his entire life to the struggle for the liberation of the black majority. That is why he became such a symbol of hatred for the racist minority apartheid regime, and yet loved and adored by millions of oppressed South Africans.

---

OK...enough about Slovo's revolutionary "credentials". What did he say?

"For our part, we firmly believe in the future of socialism; nor do we dismiss its whole past as an unmitigated failure... But it is more vital than ever to subject the past of existing socialism to an unsparing critique in order to draw the necessary lessons. To do so openly is an assertion of justified confidence in the future of socialism and its inherent moral superiority. And we should not allow ourselves to be inhibited merely because an exposure of failures will inevitably provide ammunition to the traditional enemies of socialism: our silence will, in any case, present them with an even more powerful ammunition."

Slovo, in his essay, identified some approaches that he felt were mistaken at the time. These were:

a)Finding excuses for Stalinism.

"Among a diminishing minority there is still a reluctance to look squarely in the mirror of history and to concede that the socialism it reflects has, on balance, been so distorted that an appeal to its positive achievements (and of course there have been many) sounds hollow and very much like special pleading. It is surely now obvious that if the socialist world stands in tatters at this historic moment it is due to the Stalinist distortions."

b) Attributing the crisis to the pace of perestroika (Blaming Gorbachev) I think it is fair to identify the Canadian CP as taking this view, if measured by their Program. We have:

quote:

---

...opportunist and counter-revolutionary forces gained the upper hand with the leadership of the Party (CPSU...N.Beltov), and finally brought about the collapse of the Soviet system and with it the other socialist states of Europe.

---

I can't leave this issue of "blaming Gorbachev" without re-iterating Slovo's related rhetoricial question: "The transformations which have occurred in Poland, Hungary, the G.D.R., Czechoslovakia and Bulgaria are revolutionary in scope. With the exception of Romania, is there another example in human history in which those in power have responded to the inevitable with such a civilized and pacific response?"

c)a moratorium on criticizing capitalism/imperialism. Slovo called this "unilateral ideological disarmament."

d) socialist theory made the distortions inevitable.

Here is a lengthy quote on marxist theory from Slovo's essay:

"Let us touch on some of the concepts which have come under fire in the post-perestroika polemics:

* Marxism maintains that the class struggle in the motor of human history. (This must be understood as providing the immediate explanation of the way major social change manifests itself in a situation in which the relations of production have become obstacles to the development of the productive forces.)...it remains valid both as an explanation of past social transformations and as a guide to the strategy and tactics of the struggle to win a socialist order; a struggle in which the working class plays the dominant role.

* The economic stagnation of socialism and its poor technological performance as compared to the capitalist world sector cannot be attributed to the ineffectiveness of socialist relations of production but rather to their distortion. Socialist relations of production provide the most effective framework for maximizing humanity's productive capacity and using its products in the interests of the whole society.

* Marxist ethical doctrine sees no conflict between the contention that all morality is class-related and the assertion that working class values are concerned, above all, with the supremacy of human values. The separation of these inter-dependent concepts provided the context in which crimes against the people were rationalized in the name of the class. We continue to assert that it is only in a non-exploitative, communist, classless society that human values will find their ultimate expression and be freed of all class-related morality. In the meanwhile the socialist transition has the potential to progressively asserting the values of the whole people over those of classes.

* The great divide which developed between socialism and political democracy should not be treated as flowing naturally from key aspects of socialist doctrine. This approach is fueled by the sullied human rights record and the barrack-room collectivism of some of the experiences of existing socialism. We believe that Marxism clearly projects a system anchored in deep-seated political democracy and the rights of the individual which can only be truly attained when society as a whole assumes control and direction of all its riches and resources.

* The crucial connection between socialism and internationalism and the importance of world working-class solidarity should not be underplayed as a result of the distortions which were experienced. ...Working class internationalism remains one of the most liberating concepts in Marxism and needs to find effective expression in the new world conditions.

So...is the marxist tradition relevant to the left today? If working class government (socialism) matters to leftists...then the answer is clearly "Yes". What else is there? The "Third Way" is a dead end. Capitalism at its current stage dominates the world in a way that is very consistent with the descriptions of The Communist Manifesto.

It's a funny thing...socialist are described, variously, as unrealistic and "idealistic". Yet the idea that our current way of organizing society will, eventually, come to an end doesn't even enter the heads of people who make such assertions. Apparently they think that unlike all other societies in the history of humanity...capitalism is eternal.

Yea, right.

Here is Fred Engels prognostication of the future history of humanity from The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State :

quote:

---

A mere property career is not the final destiny of mankind, if progres is to be the law of the future as it has been of the past. The time which has passed away since civilisation began is but a fragment of the past duration of man's existence; and but a fragment of the ages yet to come. The dissolution of society bids fair to become the termination of a career of which property is the end and aim, because such a career contains the elements of self-destruction. Democracy in government, brotherhood in society, equality in rights and privileges, and universal education, foreshadow the next higher plane of society to which experience, intelligence and knowledge are steadily tending. It will be a revival, in a higher form, of the liberty, equality and fraternity of the ancient gentes. (Morgan, Ancient Society)

---

Higher planes? Maybe Freddie wasn't such a doctrinaire materialist after all??

[ 07 August 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

quote:

---

CrazyMiranda stated in another thread: The class struggle is outdated

---

Hard to take serious someone who calls themself crazy. More importantly, try telling your remark that class struggle is "outdated" to working people trying to improve their situation at Wal-Mart. I'm sure they would appreciate your "appealing" and "effective" remarks.

Come to think of it...if marxism only had the principle of solidarity and internationalism going for it, then marxism would still be valuable today. But the marxist tradition is so much more that that alone...

[ 08 August 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

1) What does Marxism offer? If it's supposed to be an alternative explanation for how capitalism works, someone has to do some homework. Modern economic methodology requires explicit axioms, a rigourous (i.e. mathematical) deductive analysis that yields testable predictions for observable data, and a rigourous statistical analysis that demonstrates that this model explains the data better than the available alternatives. If Marxists cannot or will not accept this challenge, then they don't deserve the attention that they currently receive.

2) What is the point of class analysis? I have yet to see a workable definition whose pertinence can withstand the slightest amount of scrutiny.

3) What does Marxism have to say about what happens after the revolution? Given the events of the 20th century, this question deserves more than slogans.

[ 08 August 2004: Message edited by: Oliver Cromwell ]

quote:

---

Modern economic methodology requires explicit axioms, a rigourous (i.e. mathematical) deductive analysis that yields testable predictions for observable data, and a rigourous statistical analysis that demonstrates that this model explains the data better than the available alternatives. If Marxists cannot or will not accept this challenge, then they don't deserve the attention that they currently receive.

---

I counter with Gödel's Incompleteness Theorem

quote:

---

that within any given branch of mathematics, there would always be some propositions that couldn't be proven either true or false using the rules and axioms ... of that mathematical branch itself. You might be able to prove every conceivable statement about numbers within a system by going outside the system in order to come up with new rules an axioms, but by doing so you'll only create a larger system with its own unprovable statements. The implication is that all logical system of any complexity are, by definition, incomplete; each of them contains, at any given time, more true statements than it can possibly prove according to its own defining set of rules.

---

quote:

---

My point is that - AFAICT - Marxism doesn't even attempt to present an alternative that can be compared to existing models.

---

Marxism is not a critique of capitialism as a purely economic system, it a critique of it as a social and philosophical system. Economics can give us models on how best to produce goods, create jobs, check inflation, and so-on; however it does not tell us what ends to use this knowledge. These involve value choices that can not be provided from an economic model. Classic Keynesism, for example shows how inflation and employment are linked. What you do with that model depends on what value system you are working in. You can maximize growth, you can preserve existing wealth, you can balance the two; the system provides info on the best measures to reach these ends, but does not tell you anything about the desirability of any particular end. Marxism suggests that the best ends for the average working stiff are not the same the people making the economic decisions. It critiques the end-values of the system. It is a meta-criticism of the goals of the system, not of the models that propel it.

quote:

---

What is the point of class analysis? I have yet to see a workable definition whose pertinence can withstand the slightest amount of scrutiny.

---

I think the above statement shows were class is important for Marxist thinkers. Basically there are two classes, one is working for the present social order, for the other, the social order is working for them.

quote:

---

What does Marxism have to say about what happens after the revolution? Given the events of the 20th century, this question deserves more than slogans

---

quote:

---

Marxism suggests that the best ends for the average working stiff are not the same the people making the economic decisions. It critiques the end-values of the system. It is a meta-criticism of the goals of the system, not of the models that propel it.

---

This is the principal-agent problem (to which acres of journal and textbook space have been devoted), so it's not really a new idea. I still want something that can be tested empirically.

quote:

---

Basically there are two classes, one is working for the present social order, for the other, the social order is working for them.

---

quote:

---

My bad for making a three-part post... But here goes anyway.

---

I am I being overly sensitive, or I am being dismissed as not measuring intellectually to the challenge present by your questions?

You seem to only be interested in responding to the economic side of my responses. What drives the value judgments behind an economic system? Marxism is a response to this question, it looks at the power relationship within the system. I am not a Marxist or an economist. I come from a political/social theory background. I have found that having a working knowledge of different theories was useful. Theories are like filtered lens; look through different ones, and different elements of the picture appear. Some theories are better for looking at certain types of issues than others. I have found that elements brought foreword by examining issues from a Marxist viewpoint has proved useful to me in understanding certain issues. I, don’t think that people should rely on any one perspective, for that blinds them to other parts of the picture, nor do I think anyone should discard certain perspectives if they can still prove useful.

I know that Marxist analysis has been applied in other fields (such as literary criticism - eek!). But if his analysis cannot withstand scrutiny on his own turf, then it's hard to see why it should be taken seriously elsewhere.

Edited to add:

I should add that although standard economic theory advocates a laissez-faire policy in many/most situations, I do not make the common mistake of attributing any particular moral status to the market. Markets - or any other resource-allocation mechanism - are not inherently good or evil. Value judgments can only be made about outcomes.

[ 08 August 2004: Message edited by: Oliver Cromwell ]

[ 09 August 2004: Message edited by: Rand McNally ]

quote:

---

What does Marxism offer? If it's supposed to be an alternative explanation for how capitalism works, someone has to do some homework.

---

Current understandings of capitalism, would not be what they are if not for Marx and his followers.

Without actually touching on Marxism as a theory for liberation, here is a small list of Marxian contributions to the field of economics:

1. shaping the understanding of the role and development of the state in capitalism and, more specifically, the development of an understanding of the determinants and economic effects of military spending,
2. analysis of the labour process, and by extension, laying the foundation for the current conception of Fordist and postFordist systems of mass production
3. development of understanding of rate of accumulation as it relates to the role of savings, the rate of profit, inflation, crowding out and excess money supply.

The above examples are punctual.

Marx took economics beyond Newton. He was the first serious exponent of the concept that economic laws were historically specific, in contrast to the classicals search for universal laws. Marx also used dialectical analysis, with its emphasis on crisis and contradiction, with a materialist interpretation - which predates Keynes' "boom and bust."

Although most of us don't know it, Marxian economics has not been discredited in academic circles. They contribute, greatly to the understanding of capitalism. The current, most active, economic schools of thought in the Marxist traditions are the french "Regulation" school and the post-Keynesian school in the USA.

quote:

---

Originally posted by yiya:

Current understandings of capitalism, would not be what they are if not for Marx and his followers.

---

[ 09 August 2004: Message edited by: Rand McNally ]

quote:

---

Modern economic methodology requires explicit axioms, a rigourous (i.e. mathematical) deductive analysis that yields testable predictions for observable data, and a rigourous statistical analysis that demonstrates that this model explains the data better than the available alternatives. If Marxists cannot or will not accept this challenge, then they don't deserve the attention that they currently receive.

---

Hurrah for the dominant ideology and it's myths.

Economics is a set of social constructions that bear no resemblance to any naturally occuring activities. The assumptions it makes concerning human motivatiion and social behaviour have repeatedly been demonstrated as erroneous. The way that we relate to one another within the context of the capitalist social structure is not the only way we could be capable of relating ot one another and our environment in terms of engaging in productive activity and exchanging of life sustaining resources.

In reality economics is deeply embedded in capitalist ideology, it is a descriptive analysis lacking predictive validity. It's true function is in desribing the artifice of capitalism it serves to legitimize it as some naturally occuring phenomena.

If economics really did have 'no resemblance to any naturally occuring activities', then you should be able to show that by means of an econometric analysis using available data. If Marxist theory explains the data better, then conventional economics wouldn't have a leg to stand on. My point is that Marxists don't even attempt to carry out such a statistical analysis. Why not? What have they got to lose?

quote:

---

Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:
If Marxist theory explains the data better, then conventional economics wouldn't have a leg to stand on.

---

Economics is not a natural or exact science. Its purpose is not limited to objectively explain data or to describe naturally occurring phenomena.

Economics deals with the way in which humans choose to distribute wealth. As such, it has a social component, unlike math or physics.

Conventional economics, as you call it, can only offer up theories as to why we do the things we do and how we can do them better. "Better" being a subjective concept.

Marxism poses that the current system is unfair to most of the population. It suggests that wealth can be distribute in fairer ways. That would be "better" as far as I am concerned.

It's senseless to think that the capitalist economics is accepted because it can explain data. It's accepted because it reinforces the system we have chosen. It rarely deals with the fact that what we've chosen is crappy.

[ 11 August 2004: Message edited by: yiya ]

1. Economics necessarily must predict in an ideal, simplified universe.

2. We do not as yet have a general mathematical theory of complex interactions even in ideal worlds, even deterministic interactions.

1. Do you begin by claiming that you have a neutral science and then try to generate a neutral model?

or

2. Do you begin by claiming a particular moral and ideological stance that says something about the means as well as the ends, and then propose a technical "economic" mechanism to satisfy the ideological bent?

What kind of messages could get a larger following?

If the value goals (green, altruist) are the same, then the question is one of concrete results and realism.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Mandos:
I think that doing 2 is more well-founded than doing 1. Doing 1 is somewhat (self-)deceptive, because usually one ends up subconsciously embedding ideological assumptions anyway.

---

What assumptions are you referring to? Our assumptions are explicitly laid out - if there's a missing 'subconscious ideological assumption', it will generate an error in logic that can be readily identified. Is there some ideological component to logic that we're not aware of?

And believe it or not, economists have actually considered the possibility that the decision about whether or not a given allocation is 'good' is a political decision. For the most part, the policy recommendations we make are based on
efficiency results: is it possible to make everyone strictly better off with another reallocation of resources? We advocate free trade because it's more efficient - and we make it clear that the gains from trade have to be redistributed in order to make everyone better off.

quote:

---

And believe it or not, economists have actually considered the possibility that the decision about whether or not a given allocation is 'good' is a political decision. For the most part, the policy recommendations we make are based on
efficiency results: is it possible to make everyone strictly better off with another reallocation of resources? We advocate free trade because it's more efficient - and we make it clear that the gains from trade have to be redistributed in order to make everyone better off.

---

quote:

---

And I can only haul out the good old in the face of yet another unsupported assertion that my colleagues and I are simply pawns - witting or no - of some giant capitalist conspiracy.

---

It's not a matter really of being pawns in a conspiracy.Economists are like priests in the catholic church. Are priests pawns in a catholic conspiracy? No but they are deeply embedded and emeshed in the operation of the larger organization, there thoughts and actions are impacted by the social forces of the ideology. Both priests and economist deeply believes there is no other way of viewing the world than within the context of their ideological framework.

What's true of the economist is essentially true for us all though it is impossible not to be influenced by the social system that not only you were born into but that has been in existence for over 400 years and influences every aspect of life.

quote:

---

Economics deals with the way in which humans choose to distribute wealth. As such, it has a social component, unlike math or physics.

---

The triumphant materialists of the last three centuries have been capitalists. They weren't brave enough to self-identify as such until sometime in the last generation or so, but they have definitely taken to a simplified version of the Marxian pyramid like ducks to water.

quote:

---

we need to be something other than materialists.

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by N.R.KISSED:

Agreed

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:

If economics really did have 'no resemblance to any naturally occuring activities', then you should be able to show that by means of an econometric analysis using available data. If Marxist theory explains the data better, then conventional economics wouldn't have a leg to stand on. My point is that Marxists don't even attempt to carry out such a statistical analysis. Why not? What have they got to lose?

---

quote:

---

Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:

We advocate free trade because it's more efficient

---

Erik the Red:

quote:

---

I think that what's happening now more closely resembles what Marx predicted than what most mainstream economists predict.

---

That's not a substitute for a rigourously-argued statistical analysis.

And I'd be very interested to see references to studies that demonstrate that free trade increases inefficiencies. Theory and evidence, please.

I shall try to return tomorrow.

Do I think that the race to the bottom has speeded up? That the crap we produce is getting crappier, although it enriches the capitalists more and more? And that that whole process is corrupting the guts of more and more workers, just as NRK says?

quote:

---

Originally posted by skdadl:
Oliver, please forgive me, but I have to go to sleep now, and I can't do you and the Vatican at the same time.

---

Aw, please. I have been swearing that I will go to sleep for at least two hours.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:

That's not a substitute for a rigourously-argued statistical analysis.

And I'd be very interested to see references to studies that demonstrate that free trade increases inefficiencies. Theory and evidence, please.

---

quote:

---

And N.R.Kissed, you've increased your number of unsubstantiated dismissals of economists to two in one thread. You've now reached your quota. A third time will buy you a big can of whoop-ass.

---

A)Would it be possible to express that formula as a function?

B)What exactly is the price of whoop-ass on the open market or are we dealing again with manufactured demand?

[ 12 August 2004: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

quote:

---

Well, it's certainly a solution to a lot of problems. If human welfare doesn't depend on material well-being, things like poverty cease to be issues worth worrying about.

---

Now I'm not sure whether you're being grumpy or patronizing or possibly some combination like grumpatronizing, however...

The point I was making is that concepts such as inflation, GDP and even unemployment are not natuarally occuring phenomena such as gravity or thermal dynamics. They are social constructions that are the result of interactions with other social forces and power dynamics within a broader political ideological system.

Both capitalism and economics suggests that poverty, extreme inequality and productive marginalization of human potential are somehow necessary to "market efficiency". Economics supports capitalism ideologically by limiting possiblities but also making our goals abstraction and artifice rather than attempting to confront genuine goals of productivity and allocation.

As far as human welfare being dependent on material conditions this is true only to an extent human welfare or planetary is not well served when a minority engages in rabid consumption and consumerism.

We have our doubts, too, but we're a little more systematic about investigating their validity. Have you spent any time at all reading the research published in economics journals? Much of it consists of prodding and challenging the assumptions made in the standard textbook model, and seeing what the model would predict if they were modified one way or another. Another chunk consists of statistical analysis that can be used to see whether or not changing the assumptions generates a model that fits the data better.

With over a hundred posts on this, it's hard to even know where to begin, let alone address all of the points. But for me, it ain't about whether Marxian thinking is still relevant to the "left" (whatever that means), but whether the "left" is still relevant to Marxian thinking.

Despite all the misinformation and slander against Marx's works, there's no denying what so ever that they provide a fairly accurate depiction of the workings of any form of capitalist economy and some good insights into the solutions to the damage it does, even though these works were compiled during the industrial revolution.

So on this post, just on the CM and "Marxism" itself:

The ten demands of the CM, as posted by Yiya, are in fact only interim measures forced on the state by working people as concessions intended to provide a democratic basis for the further change, ultimately the abolition of the state and the economic class divisions that depend on it:

"Ultimately wresting in varying degrees more of the means of production in to the hands of the proletariat organized as a class."

Further: "when all of the means of production are sufficiently socialized into the hands of the proletariat, it will have abolished the state (which Marx defined as the oppression of one select group--or "class"--of people over everyone else) and its own supremacy as a class."

Keep in mind that this is very esoteric writing, also badly translated from 19th century style German it was written in.

This is better explained the Critique of the Gotha Program, by Marx and Engels, where they outline in more practical terms what the CM advocated and what socialist movements of their time were pushing for. These include things like community-based enterprises run via democratic free cooperative associations interacting and trading freely, universal ballot elections (which at that time were rare), setting of basic standards via referendum voting, independent judiciary, etc.

Remember that the CM was inspired by the large number of communes in Europe (where the term "communist" comes from). These were democratic self-governing cooperative townships that for generations have fought against totalitarian feudal tyrannies only to be put down by the rising power of the equally totalitarian capitalist class of the industrial revolution, and being absorbed into the large growing urban working class.

The CM and later the Gotha Program were inspired by efforts to develop similar type of economy and government of the communes on a much larger national or even international scale.

Wrong. "Marxist" tradition is based in practice on the ideas of democratizing our economy, moving away from maximum wealth accumulation by a select group at the expense of everyone else, de-commodifying as much as possible our labour, human needs and environment and using the basic human instinct of mutual survival as the motivator for production, innovation, etc.

Abandoning this leaves us all stuck in the corporate capitalist traditions that are damaging and oppressing us today. I know that's what the "green" Party and the "Libertarians" want, but they're out to lunch.

>"The class struggle is outdated, and a very unappealing messsage"

Wrong again. Class struggle is a fact of life in a class-based economy. Every time you hear some corporate leader warning that higher wages, better labour laws, more scrutinous environmental standards will create a backlash from those cliques that control large sums of investment capital, that's a clear expression of class struggle: things that benefit the public interest vs things that maintain the power and privilege of those who control the economy and the means of production.

A solution: the democratization of our economy--as in working people and their communities taking greater control their economic destiny via organizing and educating around gaining control of the businesses we work in and the wealth we create.

>"Workers in west belong to the richest 20% of this planet. Are they really that oppressed?"

Yes they are, and using such a silly obtuse statistic says little about the real every-day situations people face.

First, considering that according to both UN studies and reports to the recent World Social Forums, about two per cent of the world's population controls and whopping 78 per cent of the world's measurable wealth, being part of this supposed "richest 20 per cent" you mention ain't exactly a wondrous thing, is it.

Second, the fact that it is still the workers of both the west and the developing world that create the wealth via their labour, time, skills and innovation, yet get to control and benefit from so little of it going back to them (as most of it gets frozen out of the economy by being centralized into so few hands), automatically proves they are oppressed.

Given that despite such huge concentrations of wealth the "west" (that's another subjective term), this same part of the world is plagued by chronic economic stagnation, unemployment, ballooning consumer and personal debt, consistent lack of personal savings, a growing under class of poor and marginalized people and persistent, and nowadays worsening, lack of access to adequate health care, education, social services, economic opportunities, restriction on a variety of civil rights and liberties and lack of a clean safe environment, shows that oppression is alive and well here.

>"The western middleclass worker, whether he realises it or not, is more an oppressor than oppressed in todays world."

Nope, and the above-mentioned observations prove this. In addition, western workers do not benefit directly in any way from the brutal working and living conditions of workers in the third world since they are not the prime beneficiaries of the wealth created by third world labour. Rather, the prime beneficiaries are largely the same institutions that benefit from the exploitation of western labour: multi-national corporations and elite investment houses and the global banking system.

>"How can our work be worth so many products we buy, so many things we consume?
It is made possible by the exploitation of the poor in the south."

This is a political guilt-tripping slogan with no economic fact to back it. The exploitation of the poor in the south does little to improve the living standards of working people in the north as far as I can tell.

Looking at run-away industries to the third world and comparing this with pricing trends over the last 30 years show clearly the corporate profitability of firms that have relocated to the third world have increase overall substantially. Yet consumer prices for these products made there and sold here have not declined as a result.

In fact consumer reports I have read show end-user prices range from hundred plus percentage mark-ups for home electronics to thousand plus percentage mark-ups for clothing and textile goods over third world production costs. So, while the plundering of third world labour has been a bonanza for various global corporate clubs, don't tell me it's been a great benefit for western workers (legions of whom have lost their jobs due to these same runaway industries over the last 20 years).

So. it's not that working and living standards and civil rights for western workers have been kept artificially high. It's that these same things for third world workers are being kept artificially low.

History shows the main reason why us western working class folk having been more successful at getting more of us out of outright poverty and away from totalitarian dictatorship, along with more opportunities for personal advancement is because we have been more successful over the past two centuries at organizing as workers and citizens and community members, via labour unions, guilds, cooperatives, community associations, social justice movements etc.

But since the rise of the global corporate era, and things like the WTO, IMF, World Bank, multi-national conglomerates and their close association with "superpower" states (like the US) and other oppressive dictatorships, organizing by the commons has become much more difficult.

The third world has been particularly held back by this, which is like a form of neo-colonialism, to the point of where its people are not being able to win any benefits of industrialization that workers in the west were more able to do. It's also why so many of the freedoms and standards people have won in the west are now being eroded.

The point of where forecasts made by Marx and others about universally declining wages, shrinking markets, and falling rate of capital return are actually becoming more evident as wage rates and consumer savings and spending power are falling, while third world wages and savings are remaining more or less stagnant. This has been the overall trend in the last 20 years, and it's useless to deny it.

Lastly, a stupid comment that needs to be addressed:

>"Then why are all the rivers in Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union such a lovely shade of brown?" Worker_Drone

This type of lame-ass comment can sure ruin a good debate. It's the usual type garbage we hear from capitalist apologists who have no leg to stand on.

quote:

---

Originally posted by Klingon:
Q'uQ! Doug. Don't you think you should ask your brother for his permission before you post his picture on the net?

---

While on holidays I attended two of Bernard Shaw's plays - Pygmalion and Man and Superman (the short version). In these plays you do not get a sense of the stern Marxian working class just itching for the opportunity to murder the rich. You get a sense rather that the working class believes progress and science will eventually provide the necessary authority to reform society rationally.

In our times marxism has been used to shock, upset, and essentially alienate liberals from the debate. But the the working class is essentially liberal (when not in the media sponsored grip of utter reaction).

Few unions can claim radical membership. The population in general does not see the Marxian form of revolutionary socialism as a good thing or even possible. Neo Marxists like Marcuse (see Eros and Civilization) argued that the assumptions made by Marx in the 19th C at the height of the industrial revolution where incorrect. The working class is not motivated to use class war and violence to upset the class structure but is rather ensnared by eros and its love of life. Even our own Mel Watkins thinks that there is very little in Marxism to help us resolve the current empasse.

I thoroughly agree on all of these points. I think that a Revolution can happen but it could be a peaceful one. Canada has some history that points to the possibility that war and bloodshed are not the only way to do politics. In Venzuella Chavez has retrained his military to build houses and public works and is successfully reforming the country in the face of US interference and the ruling class abuses.

Castro persists in Cuba with a human rights record that is at least as good as the US and provided one of the worlds's best healthcare systems in the interim while under the full weight of the US embargo.

Che Guevera did not believe that the revolution could be won without the use of military force but he is dead, the victim of the same reactionary forces he was bent on destroying.

Even in the literature of the moderate left one of the great rationalizations for opposing neoliberal and reactionary policies is the threat of social unrest. I think this is a lame argument because it is just a tepid version of the Manifesto. Canadian icon Pierre Trudeau is often videocited talking to reporters at a strike in Quebec in the early sixties. "...workers will rise up in arms.. er not in arms but in protest...", he says. Lame. A Marxian reflex that does not address the issue.

In BC, on the edge of a potential province-wide strike against the Campbell government, union representatives caved in to the threat of state reprisals and took a 20% wage cut from a drunk and a fascist. This was not because it would not have likely resulted in fines etc., etc., but because they felt the "movement", the NDP support would have been castigated by the public for being to radical, too communistic,too Marxist!

The result of the working class movement being aligned with the Marxist argument that the primary force for social change in society was and is Thanatos, applied violence, has resulted in a vast disproportionate reaction. The entire history of the police is directly related to the evergrowing need to protect those with property from those that don't have it. If the same amount of resources were spent on educating people about the social agenda and devising schemes on how to implement it peacefully, then we wouldn't need police.

We need to talk about society and community in ordinary terms and not rely on the bogus intellectual rationalizations that attempt to make Marx's contribution to the human project more (or less) significant than it is in real terms.

The left needs to aggressively reject the notion that the violence Marx concludes to be the means of transformation is a valid deduction. The contradiction is in this argument is that violence is the very same social institution that is destroying society and the planet we live on. It is what needs to be eliminated for all practical purposes and entirely, if possible.

It is not a religious admonishment of a faint ideal but an essential and realistic need to get rid of violence in order to save the planet. This is the flip side of even the Bush doctrine of war on terror or Reagan's star wars project. Their doctrines are totally hypocritical of course for the end does not justify the means however false and misleading the ends they claim are.

The point I think Marxists have avoided is this age old adage. Perhaps the working class feels it wiser to look for means other than murder and mayhem, particularly wise if the other side was better equipped for the task! Or maybe working people are not as brutish and violent as everyone tells us we are supposed to be or need to be...

[ 13 August 2004: Message edited by: Boinker ]

quote:

---

Originally posted by Oliver Cromwell:
Because when it is accompanied by programmes to help those hurt by free trade, everyone is better off.

---

Perhaps. But what leftist thinking including Marxism can explain which your economics cannot is *why* that never seems to happen. It not happening and the reasons why is part of the model. Therefore, Marxist analysis would predict the failures that resulted where your economics do not.

This would be a specific example of what Marxism can predict better than standard economics.

Incidentally, I'd say the whole Marxist crisis-of-capitalism thing has in some ways held up better than is generally thought. Note that Marx didn't have a specific timeline in mind, which is doubtless very comforting to Marxists; but leaving aside the convenience that no matter how long it takes one can always say "I'm sure it was supposed to take this long", nonetheless it seems as if he expected it to take a while, sorta until it had gone as far as it could. Feudalism lasted a few hundred years, after all.

My Marxist theory is thin at best and ill-remembered. But as I hazily recall, the deal was that capitalism inevitably sought two things--increased production and the extraction of increased surpluses from labour. In time problems crop up, as greater and greater production, along with a labour left with very little to spend, leads to a glut of goods. The labour power per individual would keep on increasing, until each individual ended up able to make far more than they could consume. In the short term, capitalism would compensate by finding new markets, by continuous expansion until it covered the globe. Also by continuing to invest their capital into ever greater production. There was stuff about that, where the money would become less and less efficient, which reminded me of the junk investments before the Asian crisis, but I can't remember just how it went.
But when capitalism was all-encompassing it would at some point prove unable to adjust, and crises of overproduction and falling return on investment would become more and more severe, eventually crashing the system.

Keynesianism was in essence an attempt to grapple with this very difficulty, which seemed very worrisome in the light of depressions in the thirties among other instabilities. Since then, capitalism has not crashed, but it has done some of the other things predicted. It has spread itself wider and wider until it has become ubiquitous over the globe. And it has spread itself in other, non-geographic ways--moving into areas of life that the market had not previously penetrated, or intensifying its presence. And it has extracted greater and greater surpluses from labour, with occasional interruptions for a while after a crisis. And it has extended labour's power to buy by harnessing consumer debt, allowing people more and more to buy things they can't actually afford (although this is so far a largely North American phenomenon as far as I know).

Ultimately, there are two ways of looking at this whole deal. One could say that yes, capitalism is prone to instabilities but there will always be new ways to extend it so that its inability to handle a fairly steady state will never be a crippling issue. Or one could say that sooner or later, capitalism will run out of fixes and new worlds to conquer and will overbalance.
I'm prone to the latter view. Seems to me that Capital's natural response to any given problem is to take everything a step further, like someone who's overbalancing and keeps running forward to try and get his feet under him. But we're running out of room on a number of fronts: Global scope, which is hitting its limits. Expanded internal scope, which is hitting its limits; most of what was going to be privatized has been--when the new frontier is water, you know there isn't much further to go. Ecological footprint, which is hitting its limits. Fossil fuel supply, which is a large part of what made such an expansionist approach possible, is running out. Which may not seem like a Marxist comment per se, but Marxism definitely predicts that Capitalism will expand until it uses up everything it can get its hands on.

Even imperialism seems mostly reduced these days to re-imperializing the people they'd already colonized, only harder this time, trying to keep more of the spoils than the local comprador class used to be willing to hand over. And it's being less successful and more expensive; I'm thinking of Iraq, where they used to have a moderately compliant dictator fairly firmly in place, but he kept more of the oil money than they are now willing to let Iraq have. The renegotiation of the terms is not going well. And there are few new colonies to conquer who have anything worth taking or are worth selling to. We may see recolonization of Africa, as imperialist capitalists decide the resources they extract and markets they create by indirect means aren't enough--but again, I doubt the renegotiation of terms will go well.

On another front, labour productivity with technological assistance is now such that the natural, obvious solution would be for people to be given living wages for fewer hours of work. Instead, capital drastically expands (and regiments) the service economy and moves industrial production to places with less technology but lower pay, because living wages for fewer hours would reduce the surplus extracted by capital. Meanwhile, there are two possibilities with respect to the moved industrial production. Either the technology and wages there improve, in which case the rate of profit will tend to fall and workers in the technological countries will demand living wages for fewer hours of work. Or they do not, in which case there will in the end be widespread revolutions.

It could be argued that global capitalism is in the process of hitting its limits and running afoul of its contradictions. In which case a Marxist analysis would predict a last hurrah, an orgy of greed and accumulation, a last few desperate fixes, followed by major collapse and change to the system. An analysis that takes Marxist concerns on board but says they're overblown would predict serious disruptions but an ability to accommodate them with some new deepening or intensification or expansion. Mainstream analyses might say Marxists are jumping at ghosts. We'll see what happens.

quote:

---

Rufus Polson:...I tend to think that Marxist analysis of Capitalism is very interesting and remains relevant, but while it makes clear the need for an alternative, it does not necessarily point to any particular alternative, no matter what some Communists or Socialists might think.

---

I think it points to the following:

1. That socialism has got to be working class government. In a sense, that is the definition of socialism.

The Russian workers in their revolution developed a new social institution (workplace council or soviet) and for a Canadian socialism to work I think there needs to be the development of new working class institution(s) that can be nursed to adult strength before opening a can of whoop-ass on bourgeois institutions. A straight electoral victory won't cut it because there will simply be capital strikes, sabotage, and as a last resort, open violence by "friendly" countries. The idea of "dual power" is very much a concept used by marxists and VERY relevant.

2. It's got to involve a radical democratisation of social life. The revolution has to be able to defend itself...and the best defence is a mobilized and motivated population. Just look at present-day (or 1962) Cuba. Any invader would get a beating...or would preside over a cemetery. Personally, for Canada, I like the idea of a radically democratized civil service...where the input of working people and their creativity is really unleashed to serve the people of Canada. Just look at the three Health Canada scientists for proof of that. But the concept could be applied more broadly...to include the improvement of existing institutions and the creation of new ones...designed to strengthen democratic muscles and prepare for the inevitable counter-revolution.

The assertion that the revolution must be able to defend itself is straight orthodox marxism. And it is true...not in some econometric mathematical way, but in the sense of social wisdom, born from experience and paid for in workers' blood.

OK...that's 2. In broad outline...a couple of points that characterize socialism from orthodox marxist theory.

quote:

---

Personally I'm an Anarchist of some stripe, and I tend to think that Marxist analysis of Capitalism is very interesting and remains relevant, but while it makes clear the need for an alternative, it does not necessarily point to any particular alternative, no matter what some Communists or Socialists might think

---

I agree. But I think there is a strong policing function built into anarchism which almost, paradoxically presupposes some sort of government. Bakunin I think argued that Anarchists violence could be used to defend the "natural order" from the state (read corporate or government) interference.

And I think that alot of what he wrote about back in 1848 in the Manifesto of the Communist Party still rings true today...some of it more so with corporate power being even more concentrated that Marx' wildest nightmares and technological change wiping out old industries faster than ever.

Where it gets complicated, and the debates have been raging for the last century and a half...is what to do about it.

There have been all kinds of reform and revolutionary movements that have sought to move the world towards a more egalitarian society. There have been some successes and there have been some absolute failures...and some of those failures committed crimes against humanity in the name of moving towards a more egalitarian society.

Some of those criminals carried portraits of Karl Marx around or quoted his writings as they were committing those crimes.

And the fact that certain regimes with an egalitarian view ... or at least an alleged egalitarian view of the world have achieved power and made a mess of things, has allowed the ruling elites of this world to point to those failures to justify their hold on power.

But does the fact that some folks who screwed-up or committed crimes against humanity did so in the name of Marx or Marxism make Karl Marx irrelevant today? I don't think so.

Many crimes against humanity have been committed in the name of Christianity. Does that make Jesus Christ or Christianity irrelevant? Again, I don't think so.

The problem in my view is that some societies have turned Karl Marx' writings into a kind of secular religion complete with heretics.

Instead, I think we should treat Karl Marx' writings as just that...Karl Marx' writings...the 150 year old ideas of a particularly smart guy on the nature of capitalist society.

[ 15 August 2004: Message edited by: radiorahim ]

What are you doing on this thread?

[ 15 August 2004: Message edited by: Debra ]