Karl Marx Genius Of The Modern World

by Brokeback Watchtower 94 Replies latest watchtower beliefs

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  cognisonance

  LoveUniHateExams

  It has murdered tens of millions of its citizens and all its proponents can say in its defense is that we haven't seen "true" communism yet - a 'No True Scotsman' fallacy of epic proportions!

  The proponents of many of Marx's ideas are NOT trying to defend totalitarian communism. There is no "No True Scotsman" fallacy here. It seems you and cofty are making a strawman argument here. I haven't read all of Marx's work, far from it, but from what I have read I see nowhere where he advocates for totalitarianism. If he does I'd like to know (please show me).
  
  

  cofty
  Supporting Marxism is the moral equivalent of promoting German National Socialism.

  Woah Cofty, be careful not to make the false cause fallacy here. What you are doing is equivalent to a creationist asserting that supporting darwinism is the moral equivalent of promoting the nazi eugenics program.

  From my perspective, the main work I've read of Marx directly is Wage Labour and Capital. I don't see much in that work to complain about (or anything at all to equate to nazism!). Some of the main arguments he makes that stand out to me include:

  1. Laborers are like slaves. A slave though has it much worse of course. A slave's whole life is a commodity that can be sold and owned. A free laborer is like a slave in that he sells off himself in fractions (a day's shift) to the capitalist. Life for him starts when he gets off work. Like the slave, his life is not his own while he is working.
     
  2. What a laborer gets paid in wages is the value of his labor-power (the cost of training and education of the workers for a specific task, as well as their replacement when they can no longer work). Labor-power is a commodity (like raw materials) that is purchased by the capitalist. The laborer doesn't receive a share in the product being produced. The profits from the production go to the capitalist. Since the production couldn't have happened without the laborer, and the product wasn't sold merely at cost, the value of the laborer's productivity is greater than the value of his labor-power. In essence, this surplus value is transferred form the laborer to the capitalist by nature of the relationship between the two. The laborer class has no choice but to sell themselves to the capitalist class in order to survive. As more of the surplus is transferred from workers to the capitalists, the more power the capitalists have, and the worse off are the workers. This is the crux of the unfairness of capitalism.
  3. Capitalism is ultimately unstable in the long run. The only way to avoid collapse requires perpetual growth and ever increasing productivity. To Marx, eventually this is unsustainable.
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  cofty

  cognison - In principle you are correct. Marx is just a dunderhead of an economist.

  But why does Marxism in practice always result in totalitarianism? How many tens of millions of corpses do we need before we admit that one always leads to the other?
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  LoveUniHateExams

  The proponents of many of Marx's ideas are NOT trying to defend totalitarian communism - then perhaps you can point me to examples of soft, fluffy Marxist countries that are thriving in the fields of human rights and economics ...
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  cognisonance

  Why does Marxism in practice always result in totalitarianism?

  Well... centrally-planned, hierarchical forms of socialism certainly has. Unfortunately, no country has attempted to implement a horizontal, decentralized one. For example I'm talking about concepts like libertarian socialism, participatory economics, and others.

  However, I'm aware of one microcosm with it's roots in 1960s era Marxism that has survived to this day where there is no central planning, and no authoritarian ruler, The Rainbow Family:

  "The Rainbow example threatens governments. It shows that people can live without rulers, without yielding their voices to representatives. It demonstrates that people can be responsible for themselves and maintain peace without coercion or force, without police. It is a model of a true participatory democracy, 'Government by the People.' The European Gatherings are bringing people of different ethnic and national backgrounds together to discuss their common future; to dream of a world without armies or wars. The Rainbow Family is the antithesis of a police state. It challenges all entities that govern by fear instead of cooperation. For them, the Rainbow Family provides the 'threat of a good example,' one others might follow (Chomsky 1987)."

  This does not mean I'm advocating we all gather in the woods as utopian hippies. I'm just trying to point out that your stated cause and effect would take only one example to disprove (of course this is not the counter example as they aren't a country and the analogy begins to break down). What I'm trying to say is that Totalitarianism ≠ Socialism no matter how much you are trying to equate the two.
  
  

  --

  Works Cited:
  

  Niman, Michael I. “People of the Rainbow: a Nomadic Utopia.” People of the Rainbow: a Nomadic Utopia, University of Tennessee Press, Knoxville, 1997, p. 214.
  
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  cofty

  I'm just trying to point out that your stated cause and effect would take only one example to disprove

  But no such example exists despite numerous failed attempts and tens of millions of murders by socialist states of their own citizens.

  Communism ALWAYS leads to dystopia.
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  cognisonance

  perhaps you can point me to examples of soft, fluffy Marxist countries which are thriving in the fields of human rights and economics ...

  Perhaps you can point me to an example of a Marxist country? I haven't seen one.

  Stalin's totalitarian regime was an extension of Leninism, which in turn was an adaptation from Marx (of course Stalin's Marxism-Leninism used Marxist's ideas as propaganda to justify his totalitarian rule as the means to achieve socialism). Specifically, Marx himself did not advocate for a dictatorship by totalitarian former working class people (while the real working-class had no say), Rather during the transition between capitalism to communism the whole working-class would participate in a government that resembles something like a direct democracy (far from what we think of as dictatorship, but it would result in the oppression of the capitalists). He called this idea the "dictatorship of the proletariats". Of course, this is not what happened in Russia when Stalin self-imposed a single party police state, so you can't say Russia is an example of a Marxist country. Same goes for North Korea and China.

  Now I'm not saying the Marx is right in all of his ideas (neither am I fully aware of all of them -- this subject gets really complex if you start digging into it and his writing style is not easy to read). Additionally, there are other adaptations of Marxism other than the Marxism-Lennism flavor (e.g. Libertarian Marxism). And since most people equate Marxism with Socialism, I should point out that socialism does not equate to marxism either (even though here in the US most people equate Marx, Socialism, Communism, and central planning, as all one and the same). Thus, I also recommend looking into Libertarian Socialism and Participatory Economics for other perspectives.

  Lastly, according to Chomsky, it was not just the capitalist countries that were opposed to socialism but also the Soviet State as well. The result is that we are left with a situation where many people view socialism as a bad thing and this prevents us from eventually achieving "a more decent society and a liveable world in the West" and elsewhere.
  
  In short, I don't think this is a simple black and white thing where we can say capitalism == good and socialism == bad.
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  cofty

  He called this idea the "dictatorship of the proletariats"

  ie the nightmare of Mao's China? or is that more akin to Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge?
  
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  cognisonance

  I haven't looked into Mao or Pol Pot. If those situations resulted in a minority ruling over the majority I don't think this is what Marx meant by "dictatorship of the proletariats". If your point is that like Mikhail Bakunin (and later even George Orwell), that Marx's ideas of how to handle things immediately after the revolution is over could never work out the way he envisioned, and that totalitarianism would result during an attempted transition from capitalism to communism, than I could be included to agree with you. It may not be possible. For that matter I'm not comfortable with the idea of a bloody revolution in the first place. However I was trying to point out that I'm not aware of any country that was doing things the way he envisioned. By the way, Bakunin advocated skipping any government after a revolution. I can't see that working either.
  
  However, to say that socialism (what Marx and others either aimed for genuinely or with lip service) is somehow a bad thing -- I don't agree with you. His critique of what's wrong with capitalism I agree with. I also agree that we need a better system, we need socialism. How to get there is the question.
  
  
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  cofty

  Communism like all utopian ideologies is founded on a wrong-headed assumption about humans. We are not blank slates that can be reprogrammed to "get with the programme".

  We have an innate nature with complex intuitions about fairness and autonomy.

  This is why every attempt at applying Marxism in the real world requires the imposition of a police state and a system of public shaming and informants. The weakening or even dissolution of family relationships is essential so that the new comradeship can demand universal loyalty. Any degree of punishment and state murder is justified if only the last vestiges of reactionary opposition or dissent can be eradicated then utopia will prevail.

  It is a failed philosophy. It is not that we just haven't tried the right sort of Marxism yet. That much ought to be clear.
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  cofty

  Sorry our posts overlapped i wasn't ignoring your input.