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Loving Life Partner posted:So if you read a book like Capital that destroys capitalism, and a book like something Mises writes that destroys socialism, and it seems like you can probably find a book that posits good theories and decent inferences to destroy any established system or order or government, so where the hell do you decide to stand as an individual? I don't think any books by Mises "destroy" socialism. Which one are you thinking of?
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Jul 21, 2012 20:12
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Anyone have any good write ups about the countless horrible things Rush Limbaugh has done over the years? I'm talking everything from the rumored child sex tourism to the birth control debacle.
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Jul 21, 2012 20:13
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HineyBorelTheorem posted:I don't think any books by Mises "destroy" socialism. Which one are you thinking of? Well, I was lazily browsing Amazon for some books on the subject and saw this one and read some reviews: http://www.amazon.com/Socialism-An-Economic-Sociological-Analysis/dp/0913966630/ref=la_B000APA2Y4_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1342898466&sr=1-3 I haven't actually read the book, but just some of the reviews calling it a TOWERING ACHIEVEMENT OF INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT, etc. and how Mises "so totally destroys socialism and is cool and awesome". I haven't delved too far into the subject to feel comfortable having a concrete opinion on it myself. EDIT: I know Mises and Rothbard et al are the "free baby market" kinds of idiots though.
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Jul 21, 2012 20:22
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Loving Life Partner posted:So if you read a book like Capital that destroys capitalism, and a book like something Mises writes that destroys socialism, and it seems like you can probably find a book that posits good theories and decent inferences to destroy any established system or order or government, so where the hell do you decide to stand as an individual? Well, I always try to use empiricism as a basis for political beliefs. If a system of thought or theory explains the physical world accurately, then it is a good system. I tend to be left wing because left wing theories tend to explain the world I see around me better than right wing ones do. Note that Mises actually explicitly rejects empiricism and falsifiability. He literally says "I'm right, this is an axiom, evidence is irrelevant". Besides this most anarcho-capitalist works tend to twist logic to such an extreme and make such ridiculous assumptions and axioms that they lose any amount of credibility they might otherwise have. I'm not really set exactly in my political beliefs because obviously I don't know everything about the world around me, but I think that's a pretty good system.
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Jul 21, 2012 20:42
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namesake posted:The idea of permanently fixed sales assumes a neverending pattern of buyers collecting widgets and sellers collecting money, which is also completely nonsensical if that's all they do. More to the point, I don't have to justify my 'if.' Vermain said that competition requires growth - it's not necessary for me to describe the conditions leading up to a no-growth scenario to refute that, I only have to demonstrate that competition can exist in a situation without growth, which isn't exactly difficult to do. Also, really? quote:infinite money in the purchasers hands to continue purchasing widgets Strudel Man fucked around with this message at 23:18 on Jul 21, 2012 |
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Jul 21, 2012 23:15
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Idran posted:This might just be showing my utter lack of understanding of both economics and political science at this level, but why does capitalism require growth? I agree that eventually further growth would simply have to be impossible, but why couldn't you have some sort of capitalist system in an economy where there's no further growth? Again, this is completely due to my ignorance on the subject, but isn't capitalism just a description for any system that lets you exchange some sort of currency for goods or services? Or is there more to it that I don't get? The idea that capitalism requires constant growth is often deduced from the fact that when an economy's rate of gdp growth is slow (less than 2-3%) the economy is considered to be in a recession. Because recession causes significant social unrest, an extended period of no growth would be politically untenable. Although a long period of no growth is technically possible in a capitalist economy, it would most likely result in a revolution, fascist takeover, or a military coup d'etat (as in the late Weimar Republic, or in China under the KMT). Marx was probably the first person to popularize the idea that capitalism requires constant growth. Marx defines the capitalist mode of production as one in which capital accumulation occurs. For the capitalist, circulation follows the formula M-C-M in which money is used to purchase/produce a commodity which is sold for a larger amount of money, resulting in profit that can be invested in the form of capital (an investor buys a pin machine that transforms raw iron into pins, adding value to the product and thus increasing his profits). Marx contrasts this form of circulation with the traditional form C-M-C in which a commodity is sold for money which is in turn used to buy a commodity (a farmer sells a chicken to buy a wheelbarrow). The difference between these two transactions is that the farmer's motivation is to satisfy a personal need, while the capitalist's motivation is only to expand his enterprise, which is, according to Marx, the underlying logic of Capital. (Capital, Volume 1)
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Jul 22, 2012 00:50
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Strudel Man posted:More to the point, I don't have to justify my 'if.' Vermain said that competition requires growth - it's not necessary for me to describe the conditions leading up to a no-growth scenario to refute that, I only have to demonstrate that competition can exist in a situation without growth, which isn't exactly difficult to do. It's incredibly easy to show anything if you are allowed to set any parameters you want. Hey I solved the energy crisis because oil is infinite and global warming isn't real! quote:Do you think that consumers similarly require infinite money to fuel our indefinite and regular need to purchase, say, food? They would require a regular income, something your hypothesis doesn't explain or allow unless every consumer is a producer in which case why the gently caress are they selling widgets only to buy the same widgets. If they derive that income from other capitalist activities then there's no reason the widget market would be fixed except for you saying so and if they have them from non-capitalist economic sources then it's growth as the need for currency encroaches on these systems and expands market activity. Your whole example is begging the question.
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Jul 22, 2012 01:03
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Small Talk posted:The idea that capitalism requires constant growth is often deduced from the fact that when an economy's rate of gdp growth is slow (less than 2-3%) the economy is considered to be in a recession. Because recession causes significant social unrest, an extended period of no growth would be politically untenable. Although a long period of no growth is technically possible in a capitalist economy, it would most likely result in a revolution, fascist takeover, or a military coup d'etat (as in the late Weimar Republic, or in China under the KMT). I can't talk about China but it's my understanding that the Weimer Republic was much worse than "no growth." I would imagine no growth to be more like Japan stalling out today or what Korea might do in a few decades. The Weimar Republic was basically nonfunctional, unsustainable, and heavily indebted beyond hope of recovery not to mention the obvious hyper inflation.
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Jul 22, 2012 03:31
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I hope this is a good place to ask, but there is a letter or editorial that was written by Herbert Hoover during FDR's administration that was essentially about 'welfare' queens eating better than their hard working neighbors who were freezing to death inside a fireless home whilst the queens were given government firewood. If anyone could help that would be amazing, I've been looking for it for maybe an hour and I can not find it.
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Jul 22, 2012 06:06
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mugrim posted:I hope this is a good place to ask, but there is a letter or editorial that was written by Herbert Hoover during FDR's administration that was essentially about 'welfare' queens eating better than their hard working neighbors who were freezing to death inside a fireless home whilst the queens were given government firewood. If anyone could help that would be amazing, I've been looking for it for maybe an hour and I can not find it. I don't know where this is, but last year I read a set of letters sent to the Roosevelt administration. One of them was pretty much as described, complaining about people abusing the New Deal and that they were destroying the country's finances and destroying the incentive to work. Another one called the New Deal a Judeo-Bolshevik plot for communism to take over America. I remember thinking that one could easily find a slightly edited version of them in the editorials section of the local newspaper.
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Jul 22, 2012 07:08
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Rogue0071 posted:I don't know where this is, but last year I read a set of letters sent to the Roosevelt administration. One of them was pretty much as described, complaining about people abusing the New Deal and that they were destroying the country's finances and destroying the incentive to work. Another one called the New Deal a Judeo-Bolshevik plot for communism to take over America. Do you have this? It sounds exactly what I was reading in college, and Hoover's name was under the authorship but it wasn't like the headline or emphasis of the article.
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Jul 22, 2012 16:01
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:No, because any competition in that situation would not be meaningful competition, it'd be at best theater. We're not talking about competition, we're talking about growth.
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Jul 22, 2012 16:04
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Loving Life Partner posted:EDIT: Even the really strong free market types think Mises is at the lunatic fringe. Economics just pretends that Marx didn't exist. It doesn't necessarily say he was wrong.
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Jul 22, 2012 19:01
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So if someone i know tries to justify the Israeli dominance of Palestine with quotes from the Bible do i actually need to debate him or can i just tell him to stick the bible up his rear end while i link him sites to the humanitary crises that is the I\P conflict? I did the latter but i'm sure there's a more PR response.
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Jul 23, 2012 06:59
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Mans posted:So if someone i know tries to justify the Israeli dominance of Palestine with quotes from the Bible do i actually need to debate him or can i just tell him to stick the bible up his rear end while i link him sites to the humanitary crises that is the I\P conflict? If claims to land thousands of years removed should count, then the entire western hemisphere needs to pack up and go home. Other then that, if they are using the bible, you are not going to change their mind, since it is your word vs the Word of God.
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Jul 23, 2012 17:42
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Does anyone have any good information about the Universal Access fee and how WASTEFUL it is? Someone linked me some stupid Free Phone Frenzy video about the Free Phone Frenzy This ties back to wasteful government spending in general, and I'm not entirely convinced it's as significant of a problem as conservatives claim it to be. Are there any recent studies showing the rates and cost of fraud, welfare queenism, etc.?
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Jul 23, 2012 20:27
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I'd welcome some stats about welfare fraud, because they're really, really hard to google with all your results coming up as rightwing blogs. I've seen them before but didn't save, and as I remember welfare fraud is completely insignificant thing, both in breadth and scope. Not a lot of people do it, and if they do it's for hilariously small amounts. "Welfare Queens" are entirely created concept intended to be a racist doqwhistle, and nobody has ever even proven them to exist, let along be a problem.
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Jul 23, 2012 20:45
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I know I've seen a good article or two about the positive/negative rights false dichotomy posted in D&D. Anyone remember them?
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Jul 24, 2012 06:30
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Zeitgueist posted:I'd welcome some stats about welfare fraud, because they're really, really hard to google with all your results coming up as rightwing blogs. Wouldn't know where to get statistics for the USA, but if it helps you at all, for the UK (which has the exact same popular conception of rife benefit fraud among the 'poors') the Department of Work and Pensions released these statistics: Fraud and Error in the Benefit System: Preliminary 2011/12 Estimates (Great Britain) These stats show how insignificant the issue is in the grand scheme of things (particularly when placed next to the estimates of tax evasion being in the region of Ŗ80 billion a year), although our right-wing government and many of the papers tried to make things sound worse by combining the fraud and error stats into one and making it sound as if it was all due to fraud (when error accounts for the majority of it).
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Jul 24, 2012 08:09
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GreenCard78 posted:I can't talk about China but it's my understanding that the Weimer Republic was much worse than "no growth." I would imagine no growth to be more like Japan stalling out today or what Korea might do in a few decades. The Weimar Republic was basically nonfunctional, unsustainable, and heavily indebted beyond hope of recovery not to mention the obvious hyper inflation. Yup. The Weimar Republic was brought down by a horribly economic crisis that saw extremely high unemployment (the hyperflation 6-7 years earlier was a factor as well, though not to the extent that the received historical narravative claim). And growth below 2-3% isn't a recession, it's slow growth. Recessions are periods of negative growth.
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Jul 24, 2012 08:24
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Ograbme posted:I know I've seen a good article or two about the positive/negative rights false dichotomy posted in D&D. Anyone remember them? Eh, I have one here that's not exactly seminal: http://unlearningeconomics.wordpress.com/2012/05/25/the-neverending-battle-against-the-dichotomies-of-libertarianism/ You can scroll up to page 55 here for Adam Swift's definition: http://books.google.co.uk/books?id=koYetXlCc-IC&lpg=PR1&pg=PA55#v=onepage&q=bahamas&f=false
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Jul 24, 2012 12:25
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dilbertschalter posted:Yup. The Weimar Republic was brought down by a horribly economic crisis that saw extremely high unemployment (the hyperflation 6-7 years earlier was a factor as well, though not to the extent that the received historical narrative claim). The Weimar Republic was not "brought down" by an economic crisis at all, although it certainly sped up the political factions that led to its demise. Germany underwent an on-and-off civil war between the bourgeoisie and proletariat from the last few months of World War 1 to the rise of the Nazis. The demise of the Weimar Republic constituted the final victory of the bourgeoisie in that civil war and the demise of the worker's organizations. The first World War was in fact effectively ended by the kickoff of the German revolution as a fleet mutiny among the mostly proletarian sailors spiraled into the end of the monarchy and a general uprising of workers across the country. The largest socialist party in Germany, the Social Democratic Party (SPD) had been entirely converted to social patriotism and nationalism during the war but retained the temporary support of the proletariat through inertia. The SPD worked overtime to crush the uprising, calling in French troops to dismantle the soviets in Alsace-Lorraine and working with the reactionary Freikorps which supported the monarchy to smash other workers' councils and the Bavarian Soviet Republic. The unrest and class conflict boiled into impatience with the SPD and in 1919 the revolutionary vanguard of the proletariat joined with the few internationalist, anti-war socialists who had lasted through the war - notably Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht who lead the Spartacus League and the Communist Party of Germany (KPD). This led to the Spartacist Uprising - an urban revolt primarily in Berlin in January 1919. Though Luxemburg and Liebknecht knew the revolt was premature, they felt compelled to support it (much as the Bolsheviks supported the worker's action in the July Days). The uprising was crushed by the SPD and Freikorps and Luxemburg and Liebknecht were assassinated by Freikorp death squads. The bourgeoisie regained its footing and retaliated in 1920 with the Kapp Putsch. In response to an attempt by the government to disband some Freikorp units, the units launched an uprising. The government was mostly paralyzed, but the disunity amongst the Freikorps leaders and an enormous general strike by the proletariat caused the putsch to collapse. This in itself kicked off a number of small left-wing uprisings and revolts which were smashed by the SPD. In 1922-24, the revolutionary situation was brought to a boil, with the proletariat ready and able to seize power (in contrast to 1919) but the Communist Party of Germany failed it. The KPD had purged its leadership of "Trotskyist" - ie, Leninist and International socialists - and replaced them with Stalinists headed by Ernst Thälmann. The Stalinists thought an uprising was futile and suppressed any attempt to call one. The Hamburg branch kicked off an insurrection of its own, although hopelessly alone without the support of the party as a whole. After the Hamburg uprising was crushed, the KPD foreswore revolutionary activity and committed itself to parliamentarism. The betrayal of this uprising, frustration at the failure of the revolution and its ebbing tide, and the general chaos in the country led to the rise of the first fascist movement in Germany - the Beer Hall Putsch. Although able to recruit from among the petty bourgeoisie and feeding off of the right-wing lurch in the aftermath of Hamburg, the NSDAP (National Socialist German Worker's Party, aka the Nazi Party) couched itself in reactionary terms, recruiting World War 1 general Erich Ludendorff, a strong proponent of the "stab in the back" myth. The putsch failed, and the Nazis were temporarily repressed, but continued to gain strength as the proletarian struggle weakened. The situation in 1929-1933 saw the collapse of the final resistance to fascism. The Comintern (Communist International) was firmly in the hands of Stalinists and preached a new theory of "social fascism" - that social democracy was a branch of fascism and should be combated first. This ran in contrast to what Trotskyists advocated - a united front of all labor parties and working-class organizations to crush fascism, to be followed by the struggle for the proletarian state (much as the Bolsheviks supported Kerensky, a Social Revolutionary, in August of 1917 against the monarchist military uprising of Kornilov, then overturned Kerensky in the October Revolution). Consequently, the KPD launched an assault on the SPD rather than the Nazis. For its part, the SPD promoted reactionary Paul von Hindenburg for President, hoping to keep Hitler out. This plan went awry when Hindenburg appointed Hitler chancellor. Having seized power, the Nazis were able to use their new instruments of state, and the mobilized force of the petty bourgeoisie to smash the labor organizations, unions, working-class parties, and all organized forms of proletarian power. This constituted the final victory of the German bourgeoisie in a 15-year civil and class war. The dissolution of the Weimar Republic was not the result of economic conditions, although such conditions certainly accelerated and intensified the struggle. Rather, the collapse of the Weimar Republic was the consequence of a titanic political and class struggle of the bourgeoisie and proletarian and the realization of the bourgeoisie that in order to win the civil war and protect its property democracy was no longer sufficient - the forces of the petty bourgeoisie were necessary to establish the fascist dictatorship. The particular reason as to why the struggle terminated with a fascist dictatorship instead of a proletarian dictatorship and soviet democracy has a number of causes - to name a few: betrayal of the working class by the SPD, appalling leadership on behalf of the KPD, intentional betrayal of the German revolution by the Soviet Union in order to further Stalin's political interests in his struggle against Trotsky. The end of bourgeois democracy and the fall of Weimar was, however inevitable, regardless of economic conditions - a class struggle once started must be carried out to one end or another. Dual powers like the Weimar Republic or the February-October Russian regime in which multiple classes hold large sections of power cannot stand indefinitely, and must be decided in favor of one class or another.
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Jul 24, 2012 22:28
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All societies are characterized by continual class struggle of one kind or another so I find the statement "a class struggle once started must be carried out to one end or another" somewhat questionable. Perhaps you mean that once class warfare crosses a certain threshold of intensity then it will inevitably be resolved by one class or another seizing power (or the ruin of that society)? I suppose all class struggle has to be resolved in the same sense that in the long run we're all dead, but nothing in your admirably detailed account actually substantiates your thesis. You've written an excellent descriptive narrative of the events but your conclusion doesn't actually follow from what you've written. You just present a lot of historical data to which an arbitrary sounding assertion has been artificially attached. You also seem to be over emphasizing the idea that the Nazis were a dictatorship of the bourgeois. While it is undeniable that the bourgeois made Hitler's rise to power possible it doesn't follow that he was their agent. Hitler deftly outmanoeuvred the actual establishment parties represented by Hindenburg and von Papen and pushed Germany in a direction that did not always reflect bourgeois desires or interests. Your account seems overly mechanistic in this regard and leaves out the degree to which Hitler's particular ideas and experiences shaped the regime that he lead. Why couldn't the class struggle in Weimar have continued on and off again for another two or three decades? The course of the 20th century in countries like America, France, Britain and Canada have demonstrated numerous successes and setbacks for both labour and capital, even if capital has always maintained the upper hand. Stating that one side or the other must inevitably "win" seems overly reductive, unless I'm misunderstanding what you mean by "win" and you're alluding to a more temporary sort of success rather than permanent domination.
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Jul 25, 2012 02:53
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Your point about my thesis is apt, I was wrong to state "a class struggle once started must be carried out to one end or another" (a statement that is, as you note, meaningless). I instead meant something to the effect that once a class struggle has progressed to the point of civil war, it must be decisively decided one way or another. The struggle of labor against capital in the United States or Canada, for example, never reached the point of a civil war. The maintenance of bourgeoisie democracy was thus possible in both. Such was not true in, say, Russia in 1918 or Spain in 1936. Germany was in that setting of civil war - albeit one of sharp turns wielding insurrection and coup rather than trench and battle-line. Italy in the aftermath of the first world war is a good parallel to Germany - the country begins an open struggle between the bourgeoisie and proletariat, and thus begins a civil war that must place one or the other in power. I think that fascism necessarily represents the interests of the bourgeoisie and capitalist property regardless of whether the current capitalist class actually supports it or not. In Poland, for example, Pilsudski carried out his 1926 coup against the bourgeois parties of the day - only to create a fascist regime that defended capital and was fiercely anti-Soviet. The Polish bourgeoisie protested (to the extent that some unperceptive socialists thought Pilsudski was their ally) but acquiesced as they saw the regime's benefits. A line from The Revolution Betrayed strikes me here - stating while fascism may be distasteful to the Western bourgeoisie, so long as the Soviet Union exists it remains a friend "if not of today, then at least of tomorrow". The bourgeoisie certainly often dislikes fascism - I suspect its social roots and foot soldiers are too close to those of proletarian revolution for comfort - but so long as they face a threat from revolution they will come around to it. In regards to the idea of Weimar surviving, it could not have survived precisely because the class struggle had developed to such an extent and such an open extent. Neither the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat accepted the legitimacy of the Weimar state - as the repeated revolts and coups demonstrate. The fact that the struggle lasted as long as it did can be ascribed to the fact that the proletariat started with an enormously advantageous position and it took concerted effort to squander it to permit the bourgeoisie a chance to fully realize its plans. Germany was a powder keg waiting for the spark. My point is really that the situation in Germany was not caused or decided by the economic problems the Republic faced - rather, the economic situation exacerbated or calmed the struggle for a time depending on its course. The general flow of events, however, were dictated by the struggle for control between two classes and not by vacillations in (for example) prices or employment. Further, the result was not determined by the course of economic events but rather by the political, tactical, and organizational failures of the left-wing parties and the ability of fascism to exploit them. I apologize if my message seemed to be too short on analysis for its evidence - I started writing and got a bit caught up in the narrative and I think the point I tried to make suffers for that.
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Jul 25, 2012 03:51
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This stuff about the history of Germany and how it was a class struggle is absolutely fascinating.  I mean, it might seem obviously like that to you, but I went through a typical American education, the term "class struggle" never came up.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:29
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Marx wasn't kidding around when he wrote "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It's a very interesting way of looking at history, that's for certain.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:38
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Yeah, in school you learn the Weimar was poo poo and the Nazis won elections and got to power. Literally not a single noise about communism existing in Germany.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:39
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It's the same basically everywhere, to the point where the SPD has the sheer gall to use the post-war period as the historical base of their ideology. The SPD is the worst because they're not even competent social-democrats and have basically never been. The SPD aren't the only example of "reform socialists" or social democrats essentially playing an actively reactionary role regarding ongoing revolutions, either - it's happened in France, in Hungary and in Norway as well, and that's just off the top of my head. Arguably it also happened in Russia before the Bolshevik seizure of power. Communist skepticism of social-democrats is not simple dogmatism, it's also a very harshly learned historical lesson.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:50
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V. Illych L. posted:Communist skepticism of social-democrats is not simple dogmatism, it's also a very harshly learned historical lesson. Then again the same is true of anarchists and communists, respectively. Seriously though, anarchists are like the canary in the mine during a revolution. The second the communists start killing the anarchists the revolution isn't worth winning anymore since it'll lead to a totalitarian state anyway.
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Jul 25, 2012 14:51
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Well communists and anarchists have a long and storied tradition of killing each other even before the revolution, but I'm not going to deny that anarchist skepticism towards basically everyone is well-founded.
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Jul 25, 2012 15:01
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Here's something I don't quite understand about the housing crisis meltdown, that's probably very basic and is never talked about in the book I read ("The Big Short", which is fantastic btw), or the threads I've read about it: Okay, so I understand just about everything related to the crisis. The mortgage originators giving wheelbarrows of money to people who could never hope but default, packaging the loans into bonds, packaging the BONDS into "collateralized debt obligations", and inventing wild new Vegas style things for people to put money into, and also the smart ones who shorted the market buying the insurance swaps on those CDOs. The only thing I never get is when does the capital actually change hands and what intervals? I know that the originator has to give funds to a property manager or private individual to take possession of the house, but do they get paid right away when they sell the bonds? When the bonds are repackaged and stakes are sold, are those guys paid right away? Are the transactions just kept in ledgers and subrogated out or something? I know all these middlemen made tons off the fees for their "services", but there's never any mention of when the money changes hands. I imagine it's 100% electronic and never materializes until someone collects a salary or something with commissions included, but it's just such a warped way to manage finance, it seems.
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Jul 25, 2012 16:19
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Loving Life Partner posted:The only thing I never get is when does the capital actually change hands and what intervals? The home owner gets the money when they get the loan. The seller gets it when they sell the house. The appraisers got it when they did an appraisal. The loan agent gets it as commission based on the size of the loan and how hosed up the terms were(ballooning payments, variable rate, no documentation etc) The RE agent gets it for selling the house. The lender gets the money when it sells loan, or bundle of loans, to the investment bank, which is how it can afford to make loans with a high failure rate. The investment bank takes all the awful loans and makes a poo poo sandwich and sells it to investors as prime rib, often selling the same cut to multiple people because banks are magic and laws are not there or not mattering. The investors make their money selling this poo poo back and for and collecting dividends until it they don't and then we get a crash. Most of this transfer of funds is electronic. Does this help?
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Jul 25, 2012 18:26
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V. Illych L. posted:Well communists and anarchists have a long and storied tradition of killing each other even before the revolution, but I'm not going to deny that anarchist skepticism towards basically everyone is well-founded. I never understood why anarchism and communism are so separated. Doen't a revolution need a force? Doesn't it need a central place where the country can be organized? Doesn't a country need to also let the local regions govern themselves, avoiding making the whole country act like a single entity with the same issues and virtues? Shouldn't communism and anarchism work together? Reading Lenin it seems he at least gave lip service to the necessity of working both systems together, altough my knowledge of it is pretty poor and i need a lot of further reading.
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Jul 25, 2012 19:51
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Orange Devil posted:Marx wasn't kidding around when he wrote "the history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles". It's a very interesting way of looking at history, that's for certain. I've heard this before. How literally do Marxists take it? Is the history of society solely a matter of class struggle (a very strong claim that seems relatively easy to refute), predominantly a matter of class struggle (moderate claim, but difficult to confirm or refute) or is class struggle the one invariant in all of history (weakest claim I can think of where that statement still retains meaning)?
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Jul 25, 2012 20:29
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Zodium posted:I've heard this before. How literally do Marxists take it? Is the history of society solely a matter of class struggle (a very strong claim that seems relatively easy to refute), predominantly a matter of class struggle (moderate claim, but difficult to confirm or refute) or is class struggle the one invariant in all of history (weakest claim I can think of where that statement still retains meaning)? I don't think he intended it meant it to be an inviolable definitive statement, and viewing quotes like that is pretty naive. What he likely meant was that most of the conflicts of history tend to be ones of class struggle, which often isn't explicitly stated or viewed as such.
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Jul 25, 2012 21:00
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One thing to remember is that the "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" quote is that it doesn't come from one of his academic works, but rather the Communist Manifesto which is a statement of purpose for a political group, and it's the opening line of the body of the work. It's designed to be a grandiose statement that grabs the attention of those who read it, whether they agree or disagree. Remember the "Attention Getter" sentences your elementary school teacher told you to use? It's one of those, and probably the most famous one of all times.
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Jul 25, 2012 21:15
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Zeitgueist posted:I don't think he intended it meant it to be an inviolable definitive statement, and viewing quotes like that is pretty naive. Hey peeps a whole bunch of those wars n poo poo is from rich people being dicks - Karl Marx
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Jul 25, 2012 21:50
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A Fancy 400 lbs posted:One thing to remember is that the "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles" quote is that it doesn't come from one of his academic works, but rather the Communist Manifesto which is a statement of purpose for a political group, and it's the opening line of the body of the work. It's designed to be a grandiose statement that grabs the attention of those who read it, whether they agree or disagree. Remember the "Attention Getter" sentences your elementary school teacher told you to use? It's one of those, and probably the most famous one of all times. One I've always remembered is, "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race."
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Jul 25, 2012 21:51
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Golbez posted:One I've always remembered is, "The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race." That one didn't get so much attention though. The bombs, on the other hand.
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Jul 25, 2012 21:59
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Mans posted:I never understood why anarchism and communism are so separated. Doen't a revolution need a force? Doesn't it need a central place where the country can be organized? Doesn't a country need to also let the local regions govern themselves, avoiding making the whole country act like a single entity with the same issues and virtues? It's incompatible methods. Anarchists and communists generally agree that capitalism has to go, and a new system has to grow out of the ashes (i.e. developed communism for most, both anarchists and communists). Anarchists want to go all the way at once, immediately abolishing state power and establishing communism right away whereas communists aim for using state power to express the dictatorship of the proletariat before eventually having it wither away in a sort of dialectical negatory process (note that negative dialectics is mostly an innovation of Theodor Adorno, and you will not find any references to such a thing in Marx or other early Marxist works). This has proven to have Problems in the past, including the tendency of a party dictatorship essentially replacing the intended class dictatorship ā la the Soviet Union or China, regression to dicatorship by a charismatic person or clique, like North Korea or Albania, or complete collapse, like Cambodia. Anarchism, on its hand, has proven to be terribly vulnerable to reactionary force brought against it, and it must be admitted to the opposition of communist forces in Spain and in the Ukraine (though I maintain that the Black Army was essentially hostile to the Reds and that that conflict was inevitable, and that Stalin's comintern was essentially a reactionary force anyway). Curiously, Anarchism seems to be popular in western left-wing movements these days, with its organisational models being very en vogue and employed by groups like Occupy and the Indignados, among others. In the end, anarchism is so fundamentally different from communism that it should be no surprise that they come to blows in a revolutionary situation; the communist wants to seize state power where the anarchist wants to smash it altogether. I mean, even different flavours within communism have a seriously hard time working together, and I don't imagine it's much better with the anarchists.
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Jul 26, 2012 03:18
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