Marx, Marxism, and popular conceptions

[quixotecoyote]

So you're saying that Marx didn't expect people to work for more than they would be paid? It's right there in the statement, a man will work to the limit of his ability and be paid in what he needs (a day's provisions). Lenin at least stated people would be rewarded for their work.

I said I would respond to this in a separate thread, and I am.

Unfortunately the letter I remember Marx writing on the topic was actually written by Engels.

Still, for what it's worth:

A fair day's wages for a fair day's work! A good deal might be said about the fair day's work too, the fairness of which is perfectly on a par with that of the wages. But that we must leave for another occasion. From what has been stated it is pretty clear that the old watchword has lived its day, and will hardly hold water nowadays. The fairness of political economy, such as it truly lays down the laws which rule actual society, that fairness is all on one side — on that of Capital. Let, then, the old motto be buried for ever and replaced by another:
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/05/07.htm


OK, found the sentiment I was looking for. Marx knows that it is unfair for a worker who works longer, harder, and with better skills to be compensated equally than someone who doesn't.
http://ih52.stier.net/texts/marx_gotha.htm

one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. ... Thus, with an equal performance of labor, and hence an equal in the social consumption fund, one will in fact receive more than another, one will be richer than another, and so on.

Now, Marx doesn't see this as the end state of affairs, but as how communism needs to be structured in reality. The line "from each according to his abilities; to each according to his needs" was not something he though would apply in the near future, or even in his lifetime, but to:

a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly

In other words, not anytime soon.


Now I'll be the first to admit Marx was wrong. He was stuck in a mindset that limited labor's participation to an industrial setting and considered mental labor the realm of the capitalist and the property owner. He failed to predict the knowledge/information industry and the specialized forms of knowledge workers would use and require.

I also think his idea of a planned economy fails to capture all the advantages of free markets. While the planned economy of Marx is not the command economy of Lenin, I'm having issues finding the cites to support and define the differences.

Marx was not right about everything, but he did correctly identify power imbalances, oppression, and systemic blocks to social mobility within a capitalist system. He correctly noted the imbalance of power between labor and management that perverts the labor market.

I'm not a Marxist, but I occasionally use Marxism as a critical theory to work with different texts. eta: which means that my familiarity with the economic side of things is probably not what it should be.

[Kthulhut Fhtagn]

Well, first I think there was some miscommunication on my part now that I've reread my comment and I must apologize for that. I didn't mean to say that Marx expected his system to unfairly treat workers but rather that his system would produce it regardless. Individuals, according to a pure communist system, would be required to work harder for less pay. That isn't intentional but it will happen. I certainly do believe that Marx and Engels did consider communism and the elimination of the wage system to be more beneficial to the worker.

I would say that the current wage system that most first world nations employ greatly exceed "a day's provisions". Not only are our paychecks set up to allow us more than a day's worth of provisions it also has to pay for numerous utilities and buy tons of useless crap to keep the economy moving. Sure, communism can be useful for many third world nations who aren't even getting paid enough for a day's provisions. But many of those nations already have closed economies bordering on communism, or are in fact actual communist nations. And are simply being abused by the corrupt government in place.

So, suffice to say I don't know what I'm supposed to be responding to here. I don't honestly disagree with anything said here, Engels and Marx certainly did say those things and they did believe the march towards communism was an inevitability that will happen far off into the future. So, I really don't know what I'm supposed to say here.

[blutoski]

One other massive misunderstanding about Marx' work is that there is a failure to distinguish between his description of Communism as an inevitable final state, versus his descriptions of the transitional period toward that endpoint.

Marx was attempting to extrapolate the industrial revolution in the same way that Ray Kurzweil is attempting to extrapolate the technological revolution. Kurzweil's followers build castles in the sky about what life will be like 'post-singularity.' Marx had similar thoughts about a post-revolutionary Communist world.

Essentially, Marx was trying to figure out what was going to happen when industrial production makes goods so cheap that they are practically free, and the machines are so efficient that maybe only a handful of workers are required to monitor each production facility. It's a reasonable question, but Marx' vision is very questionable.

More proximally, he attempted to describe the transition phase from a Capitalist society with the challenges listed above: tremendous production but few people with wages to buy the goods. He predicted a bunch of events, but modern labour movements focus on the expectation that owners would attempt to establish a perpetually stable alternative to Communism, keeping enough labour employed at a bare minimum level of existence. Labourers would be engaged in maintaining their paltry existence, plus they would be engaged in the manufacture of surplus goods for the owners. The share of resources could be very inequitable.

He argued for labour to resist this by organizing and siezing ownership of production, which could lead to both a more equitable distribution of resources, and he also argued it would lead to greater overall production. eg: instead of workers earning subsistence and a few owners being a little rich, an equitable approach would create a world where everybody is even richer than the owners in a Capitalist system. Something along the line of Prisoner's Dilemma or avoiding a Tragedy of the Commons.

[blutoski]

eg: instead of workers earning subsistence and a few owners being a little rich, an equitable approach would create a world where everybody is even richer than the owners in a Capitalist system. Something along the line of Prisoner's Dilemma or avoiding a Tragedy of the Commons.

Incidentally, I read a paper a few months ago that showed an interesting psychological trait in some people: they are more intersested in being the social winner than in the actual value of the material gains.

Specifically, they would rather be the guy earning $60k in an office where everybody else earns $30k than be the guy earning $100k in an office where everybody earns $100k.

I was surprised to learn that even one person thinks this way, much less about half of the survey respondants. It seems completely irrational.

[theprestige]

Incidentally, I read a paper a few months ago that showed an interesting psychological trait in some people: they are more intersested in being the social winner than in the actual value of the material gains.

Specifically, they would rather be the guy earning $60k in an office where everybody else earns $30k than be the guy earning $100k in an office where everybody earns $100k.

I was surprised to learn that even one person thinks this way, much less about half of the survey respondants. It seems completely irrational.
Really?

See, I'm not at all suprised to learn that people exhibit a wide range of values and priorities, and that there's plenty of them who measure their self-worth by something other than money.

[blutoski]

Really?

See, I'm not at all suprised to learn that people exhibit a wide range of values and priorities, and that there's plenty of them who measure their self-worth by something other than money.

I was not surprised at the existence of this attidude: I was surprised at how common it was.

My opinion is that this is the source of lower standards of living. eg: my friend's dad who would rather have his children starve to death than live an average life with a union job. People who would rather murder their daughter than be 'dishonoured' by her decision to become a surgeon. &c.

[Childlike Empress]

I think it is beneficial to show a marxist analysis in live making, you know, to first lower the amount of irrational fear produced by the mentioning of that person in ordinary americans. Richard Wolff manages to do it in 40min:

7382297202053077236

[Mark6]

Incidentally, I read a paper a few months ago that showed an interesting psychological trait in some people: they are more intersested in being the social winner than in the actual value of the material gains.

Specifically, they would rather be the guy earning $60k in an office where everybody else earns $30k than be the guy earning $100k in an office where everybody earns $100k.

I was surprised to learn that even one person thinks this way, much less about half of the survey respondants. It seems completely irrational.

It is not all that irrational. Within their respective environments, the first guy has better mating prospects than the second guy.

Better yet, compare a guy who makes 50K and lives in a neighborhood where average income is 25K vs. a guy who makes 100K and lives in a neighborhood where average income is 250K. Not only the first one has better mating prospects (granted his "prospective mates" wear dresses ten times cheaper, but how many men really care?), he may be able to hire a maid/servant of some sort. The second one -- not a chance. And having someone to do things for you so that you do not have to do them yourself is more important to many (most?) people than just being able to afford fancier gadgets. Middle class buy things. The rich buy services.

[DaN K. StAnLeY]

Marx? The commie?? Hehehehe

[Oliver]

I think it is beneficial to show a marxist analysis in live making, you know, to first lower the amount of irrational fear produced by the mentioning of that person in ordinary americans. Richard Wolff manages to do it in 40min:

7382297202053077236


Wow, that's quite sad - I never saw it from that angle. :(

[dann]

Now I'll be the first to admit Marx was wrong. He was stuck in a mindset that limited labor's participation to an industrial setting and considered mental labor the realm of the capitalist and the property owner. He failed to predict the knowledge/information industry and the specialized forms of knowledge workers would use and require.

I don't get this: Was Marx wrong because he didn't predict the information industry of a 150 years later? Did he even try to do this anywhere?

Over the years I have read Das Kapital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/) a couple of times in three different languages and not in any of them did I see him make predictions like this - mainly because he was a scientist of economics, he analyzed capital[i] and published his findings in a book aptly named. He was not a [i]diviner.

But speaking of predictions: When I studied sociology, a very conservative lecturer, an anti-Marxist, credited him for a couple of a actual 'predictions', i.e. in as far as you analyze something and discover its nature, which is what Marx did with capital, then you know how it behaves, how it acts.
(Out of this some people make the false definition of science that it predicts something, and if it does so correctly, it is supposed to be true. It isn't however: Pre-Copernian astronomy was able to make a lot of accurate predictions, but their explanation of the workings of the heavenly bodies was still ass backwards!)

Marx maintained that it is the tendency of capital to accumulate, grow ever larger and conglomerate. Economists of his times, however, preferred the euphemistic idea of the wealth of capitalism spreading out, which is why they predicted that in the future everybody would be a capitalist.
And somehow even today the advocates of capitalism still prefer their euphemistic paraphrases of reality:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4510629#post4510629
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4515827#post4515827
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4515876#post4515876

My favourite modern Marxists:
GegenStandpunkt (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/en_index.html) (in English – see for instance the recent articles When the Banks Crash (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/banks-crash.html) and What the Collapse of the Financial System Teaches about the Wealth of Capitalistic Nations (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/financial-collapse.html)) and their associates Ruthless Criticism (http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com)

[dann]

A very recent leaflet (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/crisis-demo-leaflet.pdf) about the protests against the crisis of capital, which unfortunately is not yet a crisis of capitalism.

[dudalb]

Gee, I have to start a thread showing how Nazism failed not becuase it was a bad system, but just because the wrong people tried it.....

[dann]

Yes, why don't you? You should always stay in character, Godwin!

[dudalb]

And you continue to ignore that Marxism has been at best a failure and at worst a murder machine as bad an Nazism whenever it has been tried.
But go ahead with you fantasies about the dictatorship of the proletariat and all the other wonderful Marxist doctrine that has failed time and time again.

[dann]

Yes, dudalb, you continue to post the same
irrelevant (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4452263#post4452263) nonsense (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4503579#post4503579) and ignore (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4455085#post4455085) all (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4461969#post4461969) refutations (http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=4472373#post4472373), which seems to make it the wiser choice to simply ignore you.
Why don't you just start you Nazi thread?

[quixotecoyote]

I don't get this: Was Marx wrong because he didn't predict the information industry of a 150 years later? Did he even try to do this anywhere?

I wasn't criticizing him for not being a psychic, it's just that aspects of his work which limit the role of the worker to interchangeable physical labor don't mesh well with current circumstances.

[Oliver]

Gee, I have to start a thread showing how Nazism failed not becuase it was a bad system, but just because the wrong people tried it.....


:popcorn1

[dann]

I wasn't criticizing him for not being a psychic, it's just that aspects of his work which limit the role of the worker to interchangeable physical labor don't mesh well with current circumstances.

Well, in some respects it's probably grown even worse, and if you are limited to apply for the jobs where only "interchangeable physical labor" is required, you're as *********** now as you were 150 years ago.

The issue of the science embodied in the machinery of the automatic system and the fate of the worker's body was debated in speeches to London Chartists in 1856, where Marx announced that "all our invention and progress seem to result in endowing material forces with intellectual life, and in stultifying human life into a material force", and in his notebooks of 1857-8, where he observed that "it is the machine which possess skill and strength in place of the worker, is itself the virtuoso, with a soul of its own in the mechanical laws acting through it". Under the "system of machinery", as he defined it in early 1858, "the automatic one is merely its most complete, most adequate form, and alone transforms machinery into a system". http://www.hrc.wmin.ac.uk/theory-babbagesintelligence1.html

You can take supermarket cashiers and their cash registers as an example of this. Marx would not have been surprised that the menial worker would be confronted by the means of production, the latter containing the intelligence (doing calculus, for instance) that is no longer required in the worker. That somebody has the job of writing the software wouldn't surprise Marx. In his days workers were confronted with machines invented and assembled by engineers ...

[DC]

I think it is beneficial to show a marxist analysis in live making, you know, to first lower the amount of irrational fear produced by the mentioning of that person in ordinary americans. Richard Wolff manages to do it in 40min:

7382297202053077236

thanks for the link

a very good video :)

[blutoski]

It is not all that irrational. Within their respective environments, the first guy has better mating prospects than the second guy.

Better yet, compare a guy who makes 50K and lives in a neighborhood where average income is 25K vs. a guy who makes 100K and lives in a neighborhood where average income is 250K. Not only the first one has better mating prospects (granted his "prospective mates" wear dresses ten times cheaper, but how many men really care?), he may be able to hire a maid/servant of some sort. The second one -- not a chance. And having someone to do things for you so that you do not have to do them yourself is more important to many (most?) people than just being able to afford fancier gadgets. Middle class buy things. The rich buy services.

I'm not sure that's true. We're talking about comparison with office peers, not the physical neighbourhood where the guy goes home after work.

If this was really a driving factor, it would follow that rich people would move to poor neighbourhoods to be big fish - we see the opposite tendency.

[bobrayner]

he was a scientist of economics, he analyzed capital[i] and published his findings in a book aptly named.
Then why are some of his "findings" on this subject impossible to reconcile with widely available evidence? Doesn't sound very "scientific" to me.

According to a real economist, Marx's Capital is: "an obsolete textbook which I know to be not only scientifically erroneous but without interest or application for the modern world"

Popper reckoned that Marx's supposedly "scientific" ideas could not be so, because they were unfalsifiable. Popper understood the nature of science.

It must be distressing for marxists to contemplate the fact that supposedly marxist revolutions happened in backwards, agrarian countries rather than industrialised capitalist countries as would be expected from Marx's writings. No doubt marxists can think of some post-hoc justification. Maybe they can blame evil capitalism somehow. Instead of improving on capitalism, these revolutions brought poverty, oppression, inefficiency, and poverty; of course we'll need to blame somebody else for that too.

Marx couldn't even build a functional theory of "profit" or "value". Didn't stop him writing thousands of pages about it. Some scientist.

Marx claimed: "The value of labour-power is determined, as in the case of every other commodity, by the labour-time necessary for the production, and consequently also the reproduction, of this special article"
In the real world, values are affected by supply and demand.

He was not a [i]diviner.
He wrote all kinds of predictions. For instance:
"What the bourgeoisie, therefore, produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable"
...and so on. When do you expect the bourgeoisie to fall? Does anybody still see the world through lenses of "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat"?

[dann]

It is too boring to discuss Marx with somebody who obviously knows about him only from his critics' biased summaries, not from what he actually wrote.
Little as Vulgar-Economy knows about the nature of value, yet whenever it wishes to consider the phenomena of circulation in their purity, it assumes that supply and demand are equal, which amounts to this, that their effect is nil. If therefore, as regards the use-values exchanged, both buyer and seller may possibly gain something, this is not the case as regards the exchange-values. Here we must rather say, “Where equality exists there can be no gain.” [5] It is true, commodities may be sold at prices deviating from their values, but these deviations are to be considered as infractions of the laws of the exchange of commodities [6], which in its normal state is an exchange of equivalents, consequently, no method for increasing value. [7] Karl Marx, Das Kapital, chapter 5: Contradictions in the General Formula of Capital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ch05.htm)

Popper was a philopher of science, who had no idea what real science is or how it works. It was an embarrassment to science that he was actually used in a recent trial against creationism. When scientists invoke Popper, they are always nonsensical.
It is really besides the point, but I'll elaborate on this since this is an error that many skeptics tend to commit when they cannot think of any sensible arguments against creationists.
An example of one of these is James A. Murray’s article Does Evolution Disprove the Bible? (http://members.tripod.com/SDARIweb/murray_2_1.text). I actually translated the article, Modbevises Bibelen af evolutionslæren? (http://www.skeptica.dk/2000/murray.htm), without realizing at the time how wrong this part of it was:

The controversy between evolutionists and creationists exists probably because both sides make many of the same predictions about the observable features of life. Both predict that living organisms should fit well into their environments. Both predict that organisms should function well. Both predict that the forms of an organism and its parts should follow from their function. But evolutionary theory makes two critical and testable predictions that differentiate it from creationist ideas. First, evolutionary theory predicts the existence of fossils of long extinct organisms, and the lack of ancient fossils of the more recently evolved species because living things were not all alive at the same time. Second, evolutionary theory predicts that organisms will not be designed perfectly. Rather, the form of an organism will be shaped principally by two forces, the functions the organism must carry out, and the form of its ancestors.

Notice what happens when science subscribes to Popper’s idea of bold predictions: The description of science becomes contra-factual!
I can see why it is such a captivating idea to an evolutionist because it is one that lets evolution ‘win’ over creation: We make correct predictions, the Bible doesn’t!
However, if you know just an inkling of how Darwin actually discovered evolution (and Murray does!), you also know that this presentation of the controversy is wrong. Darwin started out as a Christian, spent 20 years searching for and analyzing fossils before he finally formulated his theories. He was not a Popperian nincompoop who came up with a funny idea and only then began the arduous task of trying to falsify it. Darwin was a scientist, Popper wasn’t! (Maybe this is the reason why Murray asked us to consider finding something more up-to-date when I translated his article ten years ago. I don’t know.)

By the way, for people with access to the Danish TV channel DR2: Tonight at 20:40 there is a documentary about the Dover trials: Judgement Day: Intelligent Design on Trial (http://www.dr.dk/tjenester/programoversigten/w3c/epg.asp)

I've already discussed Popper in this forum and elsewhere:
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1240724#post1240724
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1241267#post1241267
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1246642#post1246642
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1246648#post1246648
http://forums.randi.org/showthread.php?postid=1247687#post1247687

[Mark6]

I'm not sure that's true. We're talking about comparison with office peers, not the physical neighbourhood where the guy goes home after work.

Which is why I said that neighborhood examples is a better one. The office example is very strained.

If this was really a driving factor, it would follow that rich people would move to poor neighbourhoods to be big fish - we see the opposite tendency.
Actually, some do -- I know of some well-off Americans who had moved to India precisely for that reason. But most poor neighbourhoods have a lot of bad aspects which outweigh "the big fish" advantage. Like the likelyhood of being robbed or killed. :)

[Edited]: Now that I think of it, it seems that best situation, if you are rich, is a relatively small wealthy neighborhood within an hour or two commute (whatever local mode of transport is) from poorer neighborhoods. That way you are physically secure, get to interact with other wealthy people, have high-quality stores, restaurants, etc., yet maids, gardeners, store clerks, nannies are within reach. When expensive neighborhoods grow so large that these people physically can not get to their potential employers, the employers' quality of life suffers.

[bobrayner]

It is too boring to discuss Marx with somebody who obviously knows about him only from his critics' biased summaries, not from what he actually wrote.
There's a copy of Kapital on my bookshelf.

Instead of actually addressing the claims and the evidence, you choose to spread irrelevant lies and ad hominems.

Marx's predictions failed; marx's claims cannot be reconciled with the available evidence.

[dudalb]

Does anybody still see the world through lenses of "bourgeoisie" and "proletariat"?

Yes, and a few of them post there.
They sound pretty silly, but there are still a few True Beleivers around.

[DC]

There's a copy of Kapital on my bookshelf.

Instead of actually addressing the claims and the evidence, you choose to spread irrelevant lies and ad hominems.

Marx's predictions failed; marx's claims cannot be reconciled with the available evidence.

I found your post with claims, but cant find the post with the evidence.
Where is it?

[ZouPrime]

I see Marx a bit the same way I see Darwin: someone who clearly made a interesting, pertinent and relevant commentary of a specific issue, but who was also clearly wrong on many things we today understand because of the many other peoples who came after them. Today, their work are still notable mainly because of their historical context. But no modern biologists would read "the origins of species" to understand evolution, because recent books on the subject are far more complete and current. The same way that no modern economists would read Marx to understand the 21st century world economy, because our understanding of it has grown so much since him.

[bobrayner]

I found your post with claims, but cant find the post with the evidence.
Where is it?

Here's a trivial example:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0f/Brent_Spot_monthly.svg/800px-Brent_Spot_monthly.svg.png
Marx argued that in the long run, the cost of commodities is largely determined by labour inputs, because Marx did not fully understand price mechanisms (although he did fairly well here (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1847/wage-labour/ch03.htm)). The Brent spot price has halved over the last year, and in the 10 years before that it increased eight-fold. Did the labour input per barrel of oil increase massively over a decade and then suddenly fall in half? Of course not (I can post some oil-industry employment statistics if necessary). Consequently Marx's claim does not fit observed trends.

We could try again with hundreds of other commodities. We'd find similar discrepancies.

Other Marx claims can be discarded for similar reasons.

Sometimes Marx even contradicts himself. If you accept competitive markets, and if you accept that industries and workers respond to price incentives (Marx accepts both these things; he wasn't all wrong) - then how can the "reserve army of the unemployed" exist as Marx describes? A large long-term surplus of available workers would simply push down the cost of labour until demand catches up with supply.

[dudalb]

I see Marx a bit the same way I see Darwin: someone who clearly made a interesting, pertinent and relevant commentary of a specific issue, but who was also clearly wrong on many things we today understand because of the many other peoples who came after them. Today, their work are still notable mainly because of their historical context. But no modern biologists would read "the origins of species" to understand evolution, because recent books on the subject are far more complete and current. The same way that no modern economists would read Marx to understand the 21st century world economy, because our understanding of it has grown so much since him.


Marx made a contribution by being one of the first to use analysis on economic issues, but the conclusions he came to were totally wrong.
Once again,every time that Marx's basic ideas have been tried in practice, they have failed miserably at best, and been a murder machine riveled only by Nazi Germany at worst.

[dann]

Except for the fact that "Marx's basic ideas" never actually "have been tried in practice". What they did in the Soviet Union (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/USSR/USSR-contents.html) and its affiliated states was to introduce all of the capitalist phenoma criticized by Karl Marx in Das Kapital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm) in 'socialist' "versions" (http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/socialism.htm).

[dann]

I found your post with claims, but cant find the post with the evidence.
Where is it?

On his bookshelf too, I guess. He should take it down and read it ...

[dann]

I see Marx a bit the same way I see Darwin: someone who clearly made a interesting, pertinent and relevant commentary of a specific issue, but who was also clearly wrong on many things we today understand because of the many other peoples who came after them. Today, their work are still notable mainly because of their historical context. But no modern biologists would read "the origins of species" to understand evolution, because recent books on the subject are far more complete and current. The same way that no modern economists would read Marx to understand the 21st century world economy, because our understanding of it has grown so much since him.

Well, no .....
There is no comparing the two: Modern biology is actually based on Darwin's work, but you are right that students of biology need not read the book since Darwin did not (and could not) know about DNA, for instance.
Modern economists (http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/capitalistscomp.htm#[1) (see note 1), however, do not in any way base their theories on Marx. For instance, Marx actually knew that the recurring crises (http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/crisis.htm) are an inevitable part of capitalism. This is something that economists have to rediscover -again and again - and they still tend to think that the latest crisis is primarily the result of the exaggerated greed of a few financial capitalists and a state power relaxing the reins too much.

[dudalb]

Except for the fact that "Marx's basic ideas" never actually "have been tried in practice". What they did in the Soviet Union (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/USSR/USSR-contents.html) and its affiliated states was to introduce all of the capitalist phenoma criticized by Karl Marx in Das Kapital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm) in 'socialist' "versions" (http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/socialism.htm).

Oh Please.
Everytime Marx's ideas have been tried the "Capitalist Phenenmenon" have crept in. Maybe the "Capitalist Phenenmenon" are just reality .
How often does something have to be tried and failed until you admit the basic ideas are wrong,and it's not just the wrong people tried them.
Your ability to ignore history is incredible. It's just the same the way creationist can ignore science if it's disagrees with their beliefs.

[dann]

OK, dudalb, clarify for me and the rest of the readers which "ideas have been tried". In the Soviet Union, instead of doing away with the wage-earning proletariat (i.e. with money, capital etc.), they invented socialist money, socialist wages and even socialist loans and profits. They weren't first abolished and then later "crept in".
If you want to know what was actually wrong with the Soviet system, you can start here (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/USSR/USSR-contents.html), but I don't think that you do. Marx' 'idea' (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm) was to do away with the capitalist phenoma he criticized in his major work.
The only thing you're right about is capitalist phenomena are reality. If you want to know what kind of reality, you can start here (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/en_index.html).

By the way, the body count (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War_casualties) and poverty (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/poverty.html) that democratic capitalism has managed to produce in this reality both before, during and after WW2 is nothing to brag about ...

[dudalb]

So you want to get rid of Money? :dl:

[dann]

Yes (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/financial-collapse.html), I do (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm).

[69dodge]

Yes (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/financial-collapse.html), I do (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm).

I read your first link. (The second is ... kind of long.) I don't see that it recommends eliminating money.

Anyway, what would you prefer to money? Barter? No ownership of anything at all by anyone at all?

It has to be decided, somehow, who will do what work and who will get to use what products of that work. How do you envision this happening?

[Tsukasa Buddha]

For the lulz, there are a few quotes from Marx where he rejects Marxists :p .

[dann]

I read your first link. (The second is ... kind of long.) I don't see that it recommends eliminating money.

Well, no. The attitude is that when you know what money (or in the case of the article: money transformed into credit) is and what it does, you draw your own conclusion. I belong to a school of thought that appreciates knowledge of the world. It's a little like knowledge about diseases: If you know what AIDS is and does to you, you don't need to be told, "so we recommend that you try to avoid catching it". However, some people will use actual knowledge for other purposes due to different interests, and in the case of capitalism it is obvious that some people benefit from it:Lowering production costs is more important to the profit margin than providing charity for drone-workers.

And that's what running a business is all about - maximizing profits.I couldn't disagree with a statement like this, that actually is what business is all about, but even if Fnord added, "and this is why capitalism is such a brilliant idea", it wouldn't persuade me that it is.

But it's true: Das Kapital (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm) is kind of long. However, even the Chinese (http://worldblog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2009/04/08/1885418.aspx) are beginning to read it again. There is also an excellent summary of the criticism of work and wealth in capitalism (http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/Marxwealth.htm). Here a few paragraphs about what happens when production takes place with money (not yet the accumulationof money, i.e. capital) as the incentive:

1.
If one produces for the market, then one only produces to get money from others. Then the needs that cannot be paid for are economically virtually non-existent, no matter how urgent they are. Without the fulfillment of this all-important precondition for the capitalist mode of production, needs remain neglected. Think only of AIDS and malaria medicines for Africa, the existence of hunger, misery and homelessness.
Vice versa, needs are served only insofar as they can be paid for. This explains why, on the one hand, needs for the highest types of luxuries are satisfied and, on the other hand, the most basic needs are not satisfied because they cannot be paid for.
Therefore, it is impossible to maintain that our society is reasonable in the sense that, as long as there are people who have no roof over their head, the production of luxury buildings is put on hold. This reasonable order is impossible in our society because need has its measure of recognition in the money that someone has.
2.
The fact that use values are produced only for the purpose of attracting money from the pockets of potential customers lowers the quality of the use values that are produced. In the borderline between poor and rich buyers, the choice of products divides into luxury goods of the finest quality for some and a lot of junk and mass-produced commodities, food that makes people sick, for those who don't have much money but are certainly not to be scorned as a commercial opportunity.
3.
When production is for the market, all risks are privatized. Someone who is older, ill or handicapped or is only clumsier, who cannot perform the average socially necessary labor, who must make greater efforts, has bad luck. He is not able to put competitive products on the market and see where he is left.
However, this socially necessary average has yet another side. It means the question whether the labor that one expended is needed. And it is the customers who decide with their willingness to pay money on whether an individual who has made his expenditure has actually objectified socially necessary labor. Or whether it was simply wasted.
One day the society needs, for example, lots of computer scientists. Lots of students crowd into packed lecture halls, obtain the necessary knowledge in the hope of an insane job and a good salary and then one day hear that no more computer scientists are needed. This risk is their problem.
So the alleged greatest possible general benefit does not look so great. And one can deduce from all this only that production is production for the market, a mode of production whose purpose is to produce exchange value.


Anyway, what would you prefer to money? Barter? No ownership of anything at all by anyone at all?

Barter is the predecessor of the exchange of goods for money, i.e. barter evolves into a monetary system when one of the bartered articles (e.g. gold and/or silver) is transformed into money. The latter would be a good idea, but you could also describe it as ownership by everyone of everything, i.e. no private ownership. However, people tend to think of property, i.e. private property, as something that's mutually exclusive: It's mine, I have to fence it in, to exclude others from using it, which is why they think of it mainly as the lack of propertey. (And when this becomes a fixed idea, some people cannot even go to the beach without fencing in a part of it for the exlusive use of themselves and their family.)

It has to be decided, somehow, who will do what work and who will get to use what products of that work.

Why not let people decide?

How do you envision this happening?

I don't (http://www.gegenstandpunkt.com/english/communist-vision.html).

[dann]

For the lulz, there are a few quotes from Marx where he rejects Marxists :p .

Moreover, one should distinguish between "Marxism" and "what Marx believed"; for example, shortly before he died in 1883, Marx wrote a letter to the French workers' leader Jules Guesde, and to his own son-in-law Paul Lafargue, accusing them of "revolutionary phrase-mongering" and of lack of faith in the working class. After the French party split into a reformist and revolutionary party, some accused Guesde (leader of the latter) of taking orders from Marx; Marx remarked to Lafargue, "if that is Marxism, then I am not a Marxist" (in a letter to Engels, Marx later accused Guesde of being a "Bakuninist")
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karl_Marx

He also criticized the draft of the programme (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/index.htm) of what was to become the Social-Democratic party. Interesting reading since he wrote this after his studies of capital, unlike the much earlier Communist Manifesto (http://www.ruthlesscriticism.com/CommunistManifesto.htm).

[kevinquinnyo]

Do you know what Boris Yeltsin's favorite destination was when he first visited the United States in 1989?

The statue of Liberty? No.

The Golden Gate Bridge? No.

The White House, the Grand Canyon, the Empire State Building, Hoover Dam, Mount Rushmore? No, no, no, no, and No.

Yeltsin was most amazed and fascinated by a supermarket in Houston, Texas. He couldn't understand how there were aisles and aisles of seemingly endless food products and household items, arranged so neatly and efficiently on the shelves.

He couldn't understand that the reason this was possible wasn't because of a better organized central approach, but rather the result of millions of individuals setting prices organically by mutual consent.

I hope this is relevant and/or helpful.

[Mark6]

It has to be decided, somehow, who will do what work and who will get to use what products of that work.

Why not let people decide?

Because people, with very few exceptions, are selfish, shortsighted, and extremely unwilling to admit when they are wrong. And even the exceptions simply do not have mental capacity to optimize something as complex as a country's (or even a city's) economy. And nobody ever came up with a better system for negative feedback to punish unproductive decisions and to allocate resources, than money. See kevinquinnyo example above.

In fact, the unselfish people tend to be even MORE unwilling to admit they are wrong -- exactly because they think their decisions are made "for the greater good".

[dann]

Do you mean to say, in the present financial situation, that unproductive decisions are actually punished??!

I hope this is relevant and/or helpful.

No, not really. I don't know what Yeltsin's got to do with anything. My guess is that a lot of Russians would still, after 20 years of capitalism, be as fascinated as Yeltsin was back then. I don't think that anybody has denied that capitalism is very good at producing a lot of wealth, but it is even better at excluding a lot of people from this wealth. The stuff on the shelves doesn't do the people without money any good. All the stuff has a price tag, and the guard at the exit is there to make sure that your hunger isn't satisfied, your thirst isn't quenched, if you don't pay.

[The_Animus]

And you continue to ignore that Marxism has been at best a failure and at worst a murder machine as bad an Nazism whenever it has been tried.
But go ahead with you fantasies about the dictatorship of the proletariat and all the other wonderful Marxist doctrine that has failed time and time again.


Kinda like the airplane. Failure after failure after failure. Tons of variations were tried at best resulting in failure, at worst resulting in death. Good thing we didn't give up on that.

Capitalism has its strengths and provides many benefits to society. Capitalism has flaws and can cause serious problems for society. Capitalism was not decreed as the best and only logical economic form by god. And I'm tired of even the idea of trying alternatives being immediately criticized and attacked.

Back to the airplane, when the first successful one was made they didn't go "well all the other ones before this didn't work nearly so well so this must be the best we can possibly have and let's not try to make any improvements or try any different designs ever again!" because that would obviously be utterly retarded. Yet when it comes to things far more important, such as government, the economy, and the way we live and how our culture/society works we do just that. It's mind boggling.

Because people, with very few exceptions, are selfish, shortsighted, and extremely unwilling to admit when they are wrong.

This is true. But I'd say it's even more accurate if you replace people with business. In fact business is designed to be this way. As much profits in as little time is the sole goal.

[kevinquinnyo]

Kinda like the airplane. Failure after failure after failure. Tons of variations were tried at best resulting in failure, at worst resulting in death. Good thing we didn't give up on that.


Are you actually comparing airline tragedies to the Holocaust, or the Stalin Famine?

It's probably not necessary to provide proof of this, but here's a conservative estimate anyway. The Stalin Famine and the Holocaust combined is around 15 million deaths total.

I calculated about 75,000 aviation deaths since 1942, not including military deaths, so let's just round up to 100,000.

100,000/15,000,000 = .00667 or two-thirds of one one-hundreth of one percent of the fatalities associated with failed socialist states. (Nazi Germany and USSR only by the way)

But this isn't surprising to you, you're just being ridiculous and you know it.

[kevinquinnyo]

Capitalism has its strengths and provides many benefits to society. Capitalism has flaws and can cause serious problems for society. Capitalism was not decreed as the best and only logical economic form by god. And I'm tired of even the idea of trying alternatives being immediately criticized and attacked.



The thing about capitalism is that it's not engineered. It is merely a reflection of human nature. It didn't ever need to be implemented by anyone, or decreed by anyone as a system.

It's existence is a result of the natural state of human interaction. We trade with other people in a mutual way, naturally. Do you understand this?

Socialism on the other hand is an engineered system. It actually has to be decreed and implemented by force.

Basically what I'm saying is that capitalism is natural. It's a free market of exchange. Socialism is not natural.

[DC]

Anarchy is also "natural"

[The_Animus]

Are you actually comparing airline tragedies to the Holocaust, or the Stalin Famine?

No. Earlier it was said that communism in the past has failed miserably and therefor should never be attempted again, nor used as a possible means of improving our current capitalist system. Before the first successful airplane was created there were tons upon tons of failures trying to find a design that worked. My point was that simply because forms of government/economics have failed in the past doesn't mean they would always fail or that new variations of a similar idea couldn't be used in place of or to improve our current capitalist ruled world.

The thing about capitalism is that it's not engineered. It is merely a reflection of human nature. It didn't ever need to be implemented by anyone, or decreed by anyone as a system.

It's existence is a result of the natural state of human interaction. We trade with other people in a mutual way, naturally. Do you understand this?

Socialism on the other hand is an engineered system. It actually has to be decreed and implemented by force.

Basically what I'm saying is that capitalism is natural. It's a free market of exchange. Socialism is not natural.

First for future discussion I don't think capitalism and free market should be interchangable. Free market is a form of capitalism, not capitalism itself. I suppose you could call it true capitalism if that suits you.

Second all economic systems are engineered. If people disapeared so would capitalism, or socialism for that matter. Capitalism is an economic ideal put into practice by people. It has been build upon, changed, regulated, deregulated, sometimes going back to a previous state it has been in. Further people have lived without capitalism far longer than with it. Capitalism relies on the concept of privitization, which is also a human conception.

Prevailence is not the same thing as natural. Just because it is the most common economic form used today does not mean it was destined for humans to progress to this system. I would say that it is so prevalent because it provides much power to those who wield it masterfully and those with such power can have strong influence in keeping it and expanding it to other areas.

Anarchy is also "natural"

;) That is about the only one that is natural. Dictator have you ever read Homage To Catalonia?

[kevinquinnyo]

No. Earlier it was said that communism in the past has failed miserably and therefor should never be attempted again, nor used as a possible means of improving our current capitalist system. Before the first successful airplane was created there were tons upon tons of failures trying to find a design that worked. My point was that simply because forms of government/economics have failed in the past doesn't mean they would always fail or that new variations of a similar idea couldn't be used in place of or to improve our current capitalist ruled world.


Right, but what I'm saying is that 15 million deaths is different than the few deaths that occurred as a result of testing and experimenting with aviation.

And the difference matters. 15 million people dying is enough to say, okay enough is enough, it doesn't work.


First for future discussion I don't think capitalism and free market should be interchangable. Free market is a form of capitalism, not capitalism itself. I suppose you could call it true capitalism if that suits you.

Second all economic systems are engineered. If people disapeared so would capitalism, or socialism for that matter. Capitalism is an economic ideal put into practice by people. It has been build upon, changed, regulated, deregulated, sometimes going back to a previous state it has been in. Further people have lived without capitalism far longer than with it. Capitalism relies on the concept of privitization, which is also a human conception.

Prevailence is not the same thing as natural. Just because it is the most common economic form used today does not mean it was destined for humans to progress to this system. I would say that it is so prevalent because it provides much power to those who wield it masterfully and those with such power can have strong influence in keeping it and expanding it to other areas.



;) That is about the only one that is natural.

You don't get it man.

Capitalism is the result of people trading with one another mutually, consensually. This is because people have varying skill sets and geographical advantages than others, and because people are motivated to generate wealth for themselves.

The result of these natural human behaviors and characteristics is capitalism.

You seem to think that there is a conspiracy to keep capitalism alive by a few wealthy people at the top, and everyone else wants the government to distribute and control production from the top.

This is simply untrue. The economy is made up of willing participants. It's just people interacting with one another on a daily basis. That's all it is. It isn't a big, bad boogeyman that craps on poor people.

Competition is the machine that drives innovation, reduced costs, higher standard of living, more wealth for all. Do you understand this?

[The_Animus]

Right, but what I'm saying is that 15 million deaths is different than the few deaths that occurred as a result of testing and experimenting with aviation.

And the difference matters. 15 million people dying is enough to say, okay enough is enough, it doesn't work.

I disagree. Initial medical practices killed vast amounts of people. But we didn't stop and decide it just didn't work. Had the first nuclear programs been located in heavily populated cities and gone wrong it would have killed millions, but that doesn't mean it doesn't work. You are equating number of deaths to whether or not something works. This is not how things work.



You don't get it man.

Capitalism is the result of people trading with one another mutually, consensually. This is because people have varying skill sets and geographical advantages than others, and because people are motivated to generate wealth for themselves.

The result of these natural human behaviors and characteristics is capitalism.

You seem to think that there is a conspiracy to keep capitalism alive by a few wealthy people at the top, and everyone else wants the government to distribute and control production from the top.

This is simply untrue. The economy is made up of willing participants. It's just people interacting with one another on a daily basis. That's all it is. It isn't a big, bad boogeyman that craps on poor people.


I understand what you are saying. I just don't agree.

Please explain or cite evidence which shows that privitization of everything is natural.

If capitalism has not existed for a majority of the time people have been on this planet, how can it be 'natural'?

Trading of goods is not equal to capitalism. Trading goods/services is just that. Doing so according to a set of rules/regulations is an economic system. Capitalism is one of many economic systems.

Willing participation is a hazy issue. If I don't like the system what am I supposed to do about it? I can either join in or not have shelter, water, or food. Not exactly great options there. I also consider a majority (as in more than half) of people to be ignorant. I don't really care what the majority of people think about energy policy because many of the people who respond to those type of polls don't know anything about it other than the 30 second sound bites they see on the news.

I would say that in the history of capitalism there reached a point where businesses found that they had reached a sort of 'cap' to how much they could sell because there were only so many necessary products that people would buy on their own. At this point it was necessary to create needs and wants in people through advertising. Consumption needed to be made a part of life in order to continuously produce and sell more and more goods. After all, with ever increasing population everyone still needs to work or else they can't buy shelter, food, etc. In order to sustain that we need to produce, sell, and buy good equal to what is needed to provide money for all those people, and the only way to do that is to create a society based upon consumption. To buy, use, discard, and buy again in ever greater amounts to support the every greater population. And the best part is that if we don't do this, the system falls apart. If we don't continually spend money all the time people lose their jobs, which results in less spending, which results in further job loss, in a nice spiral of death. Unless of course government steps in and either ups government spending or lowers taxes, both of which increase spending. But then that essentially defeats the purpose of a free market.


Competition is the machine that drives innovation, reduced costs, higher standard of living, more wealth for all. Do you understand this?

I understand what you are saying. But again, not true. Competition is a single motivator for innovation, not the only motivator. And the wealth part is ridiculous. The wealth gap has been continually widening, not shrinking.

There is more. So much more. Unfortunately this takes up a lot of time =/

[h.g.Whiz]

So you want to get rid of Money? :dl:


YES .....I'm #14 of 25 since 3-22-08
http://www.gopetition.com/petitions/abolish-money-worldwide/signatures.html

1 year from now I will be 1 of hundreds
2 years from now 1 of thousands
3 years from now 1 of millions

Don't laugh our great great grandkids will be reading this one day.

[Travis]

Anarchy is also "natural"

Not for humans it isn't. If it were then we'd constantly have our hierarchies breaking down and dissolving and only holding on through brute force and intimidation. Instead humans show a propensity to organize and create governing systems regardless of what the situation is.

[Gregoire]

I think it is beneficial to show a marxist analysis in live making, you know, to first lower the amount of irrational fear produced by the mentioning of that person in ordinary americans. Richard Wolff manages to do it in 40min:

7382297202053077236


Thanks for the video.

As a Skeptic, I have always tried to seek out other points of view, particularly those on the fringe which do not get any attention from the media.

(You would think Paul Krugman was the only "left wing" critic of our current President if you never made such an effort. Although, CSPAN has had a lot of writers from the left who make some of the same points the economist in the video made.)

That said, I have some problems with this video.

Just to name a few things:

Here is the first academic of the Left who actually admits workers did better between the 1820's to the 1970's. (I think Jean Francois Revel argued this too, but is he still considered Left Wing?) Read any socialists literature from the 1950's or 1960's and all you will hear is how terrible things are for the working class. Why doesn't he openly state he is making this break?

(See 10:13)
Also this is the first academic of the Left I have heard who actually partially blames problems on women working as if women would have preferred to stay home and not advance their careers. He later goes on to attack divorce as a symptom of the problems with Capitalism when most of us think relaxing divorce laws and making gender discrimination illegal in the work place (i e women now have more choices) are more important reasons for the rising divorce rate.

Now it is true that the Law of Supply and Demand (which is refreshing to a hear this self proclaimed Socialist refer to) does predict if you increase the number of workers through this mechanism and through globalization and immigration, you will see an effect on wages, but unfortunately, he doesn't do a good enough analysis to measure this effect.

In listening to this you would think it would have been better to live in the 70's without all the advances we have now. Just think how medicine (just to give one example) has dramatically changed in that time. And please note: for that reason benefits paid to workers which are not part of the "wage" data he cites have increased dramatically too since 1975.)

His last point about the mostly "Republican" "entrepreneurs" really being "Communists" makes little sense. Bermuda shorts and what one wears to work has little to do with what defines an economic system. Even the structure of the partnership the engineers formed again is not the issue. The key point is why the engineers he mentioned were doing what they were doing. And I would bet profit motive would have a lot to do with it.

I could go on but I'll close with his point about advertising causing people to borrow what they could not afford. People who know me on this forum no I am no right winger, but I have to ask why doesn't he ever mention personal responsibility? There are millions of working class people who don't borrow beyond their means. (Read Michelle Singletary's Washington Post column.)

[Bombastic Penguin]

Karl Marx's definition of an egalitarian society was one where there is an equality of material wealth among people. An egalitarian society would also include status, education, and wealth. Marx was all about the proletariat over throwing the bourgeoise. It's also very obvious what he meant by bourgeoisie, seeing that the lower middle-class was refereed to as the petit bourgeoisie. Now we have a society where the proletariat has abolished private ownership laws, and controls the means of production, Everyone is supposed to "enjoy" equality, but at the lowest level. Then there's the question of land redistribution, and people with stressful and difficult jobs, which require years of training being denied monetary incentive. Do not competition, education, and material prosperity play a role in an ideal society?

The real rhetorical question is:

Who the hell wants to live in that type of society?

Either way all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

[DC]

Karl Marx's definition of an egalitarian society was one where there is an equality of material wealth among people. An egalitarian society would also include status, education, and wealth. Marx was all about the proletariat over throwing the bourgeoise. It's also very obvious what he meant by bourgeoisie, seeing that the lower middle-class was refereed to as the petit bourgeoisie. Now we have a society where the proletariat has abolished private ownership laws, and controls the means of production, Everyone is supposed to "enjoy" equality, but at the lowest level. Then there's the question of land redistribution, and people with stressful and difficult jobs, which require years of training being denied monetary incentive. Do not competition, education, and material prosperity play a role in an ideal society?

The real rhetorical question is:

Who the hell wants to live in that type of society?

Either way all animals are equal, but some are more equal than others.

if you want to make comparisons to animals.
Do you know of any animal that will hoarding enough wealth/food to feed the whole planet one year while most other animals have just enough to survive and others even not enough to survive.