In defense of Marxism

[IndianaGreen]

CRITICAL THINKING By PHIL GASPER

In defense of Marxism

Marx's ideas are back--and beginning to be attacked in the mainstream media

If workers were able to carry out a successful revolution, Marx believed that they would need to use state power to prevent the old ruling class from staging a counterrevolution. At the same time, however, society would become much more democratic, because workers and their allies would make up the vast majority of the population. This is what Marx meant by the “dictatorship of the proletariat.” Marx and Engels viewed the short-lived Paris Commune of 1871, in which workers ran the city for almost two months, as an example of the dictatorship of the proletariat in practice. Crucially, the Commune instituted a variety of political mechanisms to make the state more democratic, including abolishing the standing army in favor of local workers’ militias, making all government positions electable and recallable, and paying elected officials no more than the average worker. As Engels noted, “In this way an effective barrier to place-hunting and careerism was set up, even apart from the binding mandates to delegates to representative bodies which were also added in profusion.”

It is hard to confuse the Paris Commune—which was defeated by external force, not as a result of any inherent contradiction in the effort to establish workers’ power—with the dictatorships over the proletariat set up by Stalin, Mao, and all too many others. Marx and Engels were utterly clear that they were advocating a more democratic form of government, and there is not the slightest reason to think that the attempt to establish a workers’ state must be somehow doomed to failure from the start. Marx did not unwittingly lay the groundwork for dictatorship by a minority by advocating an impossible goal.

There is one other criticism of Marx that Barber raises, this time of a more theoretical nature. Noting that Marx “revised and reshaped his ideas throughout his lifetime,” he points out that in 1877, Marx “wrote that Russia had a chance to bypass the capitalist stage of development and move straight to socialism.” But this suggestion, argues Barber, if “taken at face value, completely blew apart his previous theories of economically determined historical progress.”

Did Marx hold theories of economically determined historical progress? Marx certainly held that economic and material factors shape the rest of society, but Marx was no crude economic determinist, and he did not believe that historical progress was in any way inevitable. Indeed, Marx and Engels note at the start of the Communist Manifesto that class struggle—which they did think was inevitable—might end “either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large,” (a historically progressive outcome) “or in the common ruin of the contending classes” (a regressive one).

http://www.isreview.org/issues/66/critthink-marxism.shtml

[Warpy]

1. My defense of Marxism is that it seems to be a great bridge

between an economy stifled by a colonial oligarchy and a mixed economy of regulated capitalism and common sense socialism. Western Europe was able to achieve the mixed economy without turning Marxist. Their colonies have not been so lucky.

A brief, one or two generation period of Marxism seems to be what it takes to break the power and stranglehold the oligarchy has on the country's finances and political structure. After that, the country starts to progress.

It is, however, generally a miserable one or two generations.

[izquierdista]

2. Or a new oligarchy emerges

Like in parts of the former Soviet Union. The new oligarchs are little more than gangsters who spout a few Communist platitudes to keep the vast majority in penury. They aren't Romanovs or nobles, but they do know how to give less than they are able and take more than their needs.

[paulsby]

3. a defense of marxism? lol

what next? a defense of phrenology? alchemy? eugenics?

how about a defense of capitalism, a system that actually works!?!?!

and yes, i am including democracies like sweden, etc.

[Alcibiades]

4. You should read Capital

What Marx's work is is mainly a critique of capital. The alternative to capitalism he developed was actually painted in broad strokes, but his account of the failures of capitalism are dead on.

"In every stockjobbing swindle every one knows that some time or other the crash must come, but every one hopes that it may fall on the head of his neighbour, after he himself has caught the shower of gold and placed it in safety. Après moi le déluge! is the watchword of every capitalist and of every capitalist nation. Hence Capital is reckless of the health or length of life of the labourer, unless under compulsion from society."

Mainstream economics paints macroeconomic disequilibria as abnormal, and fraud as something lamentable but avoidable through repeated interactions and some regulation. Marx understood both of these things as functional to the system. His analysis of the failures of advance industrial capitalism, and of the ever-increasingly fraudulent nature of financial capital, seems amazingly prescient today. Laissez faire capitalism is not doing too much better today than the command economies of the Soviet era did at the end of their run.

[paulsby]

5. why do you assume i haven't

don't assume facts not in evidence. and anybody who claims that "laissez fair capitalism is not doing too much better today... than the command economies of the soviet era did at the end of their run" is stunningly ignorant on two fronts. 1) there is no society on earth that comes even CLOSE to laissez faire capitalism. god knows it's not the US . singapore and hong kong are closer than the US, but still nowhere near laissez faire capitaliam 2) the argument that said nations (assuming you are referring to singapore, hong kong, etc. which are much closer to laissez faire than the US) are not doing "much better" than the economies of the soviet era is shockingly ignorant of the extent of suckitude of those economies get real. marxism failed because the theory is undeniably seriously flawed. it SOUNDED good. great. so did phrenology, alchemy and eugenics. doesn't mean they were good. marxism is a failed relic of history.

[Alcibiades]

7. I assume you have not because of your hyperbolic

criticism of Marx. If you had actually read Marx's critique of capitalism, you wouldn't be so dismissive. Perhaps you actually did read it and simply didn't understand it, which is understandable, as it's a pretty obtuse work. What's strange is that you fail to make a distinction between socialism as an ideal and "actually existing socialism," but then make exactly that distinction with regard to laissez faire capitalism. There are, in fact, states that do follow the prescriptive commands of laissez faire capitalism, states that have small government and low levels of regulation. We call them "the third world."

The closer a given state has followed these commands, the less well it has fared in this depression. What has caused the current depression was an increase for ever higher rates of profit, a drive intrinsic to the capitalist mode of production well understood by Marx. Marx understood that this drive led inexorably not just to the emiseration of the proletariat (a claim that has been somewhat falsified, but also somewhat supported by the income data for working class Americans since 1979), but also to the very fact you cite, the destruction of the whole laissez faire system:

"This is the abolition of the capitalist mode of production within the capitalist mode of production itself, and hence a self-dissolving contradiction, which prima facie represents a mere phase of transition to a new form of production. It manifests itself as such a contradiction in its effects. It establishes a monopoly in certain spheres and thereby requires state interference. It reproduces a new financial aristocracy, a new variety of parasites in the shape of promoters, speculators and simply nominal directors; a whole system of swindling and cheating by means of corporation promotion, stock issuance, and stock speculation. It is private production without the control of private property."

In other words, the shift in emphasis from manufacturing over to finance capital (which Marx understood would happen and which we have observed in our own time) leads to the creation of these vast empires of air, puffed up by leverage and prone to pop. A neoliberal economist would say that this sort of thing is no big deal and that these problems are self-correcting; a Keynesian would say that this only happens because the government has not fiddled with the system correctly. Marx's contribution, the one that makes him still interesting today, was to realize that this is inherent to the capitalist mode of production itself.

[paulsby]

9. this is typical paternalism

first you assume that i haven't read the theorist that i am criticizing. then, when i explain you made a silly assumption, you jumpt to the next tactic: that i don't understand it. iow, if i disagree with (nearly everything) marx said, then i just DON'T understand him. what you fail to grok is that one can know marx, be very familiar with his work, and ALSO think he was just staggeringly wrong. this is not an unusual position, especially in recent history after history has proven marx so profoundly wrong. i can read foucault. heck, i read him in french. i can understand foucault. AND think he's full of crap. and fwiw, i agree with marx that boom/bust cyciles (puffed up by empires of air) are endemci to capitalism. but that's hardly NEW. for fuck's sake, look at the tulip bulb scandal. that happened LONG before marx was even born. no proponent of capitalism (and god knows i am one) pretends that capitalism doesn't have its warts/. it's the worst system out there, except all the other ones.

[GillesDeleuze]

10. you fail at providing warrants.

i, too, have read foucault in french. and deleuze. the difference is in my debates, i provide warrants.

You assert that capitalism is the worst system, except for all the others.

However, you fail to look at two key arguments presented to you in this thread.

1. The most unregulated systems are areas of corporate tyranny and systemic undoing of basic human rights. That is, when systems of water become privatized, the poor are excluded. See Bechtel.

2. That mixed economies have way better rates of literacy, infant mortality, equitable distribution of income, and a rawlsian understanding of equitable distributions of opportunity. See Europe.

Thirdly, I would add, you completely ignore how the benefits of capitalism (entrepreneurship, free negotiation) are best maximized within a framework of social responsibility.

Economic libertarians see a utopia of freedom. The rest of us see meat packing plants with children's fingers being mangled in machinery.

State-marxists see a utopia of post-individual ontology. The rest of see the new boss as the old boss.

[Alcibiades]

12. You are being impolite

All I was trying to do was to remind that it is necessary to think. You have gone a step further.

[GillesDeleuze]

13. plz

point to phrasing deemed impolite?

I haven't called a name. I haven't accused any of ignorance. Just pointing out flaws in arguments.

I would like to be a nice poster.

Thank you.

[Alcibiades]

14. I was being ironic

Meant only to imply that someone wasn't thinking. You pointed out (yes, as politely as possible) that they may not know how to.

[GillesDeleuze]

17. oh, the internetz. n/t

[TrogL]

16. Welcome to DU (if somebody hasn't done it already)

Good to have someone new here apparently versed in logic.

[GillesDeleuze]

18. thank you n/t

[Alcibiades]

11. It's not a tactic

I'm going by the best available evidence, because you made an error that someone who had seriously studied Marx would not, which is to assume that what he does is to construct an alternative economic system. This isn't what he did. Marx critiqued capitalism, and it is exactly that critique that is being borne out today, as noted in the OP. And it's not simply the existence of bubbles that makes Marx significant, but his understanding of them as part and parcel, an inevitability, of the capitalist mode of production that makes him so valuable today. That you can write that his understanding was not new at the time only reinforces the extent to which his understanding of economic crises has become commonplace today. What I'm seeking to do here is exactly what you endorse, which is to take what is valuable (Marx's critique of capitalism as a tool to understand the current economic crisis) and ditch what is not (the whole accretion of Leninist-Stalinist-Maoist theoretical garbage mass produced by Soviet Bloc academics in the 70 years following the Russian Revolution).

[tiny elvis]

19. thanks for this thread. here is the book

Capital
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/
and thanks to paulsby for setting up two excellent arguments

[Daveparts]

6. Is that what we see in modern America?

Capitalism working so well that 26 million Americans will be made homeless by the end of the year!
Capitalism working so well that 600,000 Americans a month lose there jobs most never to be rehired!
Capitalism working so well that 45 million Americans have no health care.
Capitalism working so well that the health care lobby is spending $1.5 million a day on your Congress people to guarantee that you don't get meaningful reform.
Capitalism working so well that E-nron employees lost their pensions to greed and most the perpetrators were sentenced "months" in prison.
Capitalism working so well that GM dumps it's toxic waste sites onto you the tax payer
Capitalism working so well that GM sells a record number of cars in China
Capitalism working so well that GM dumps its pension responsibilities on to you the tax payer.
Capitalism working so well that state workers in California get paid for four days but have to do the same amount of work they did in five.
Capitalism working so well that companies earning billions of dollars set up a mail drop in the Cayman Islands and pay less in taxes than you do.
Capitalism working so well that Warren Buffet pays less in taxes as a percentage of his income than his secretary.

Saying that Capitalism works is like saying the Titantic had excellent rescue facilities, it's easy to do if you've got a seat in the life boat

[Alcibiades]

8. Oh, stop it!

Everyone knows that the state is bad and the free market is good! Marx is so bad we can simply dismiss him without actually understanding him. Why let reality interfere with the smooth operation of these truths?

[Tansy_Gold]

15. rofl

:thumbsup: