Common Ground with Marxists

I found these quotes on revleft.com. I'm posting them because I think that in some cases the only real difference between us is an understanding of economics. I'm finding it easiest to quote myself by posting again... sorry i'm a noob about forums ><

Socialist: "To paraphrase Marx, "expropriate the expropriators". As socialists, we see the capitalists as currently expropriating the workers by accumulating profits from the workers' labor.

So by seizing the means of production and "nationalizing" them or making them common property, we will be preventing the capitalists from exploiting the workers and the workers as a whole can themselves own and run the means of production."

Comrade Alastair: "A world of complete freedom. Voluntary association in every respect. Never having to do anything for anyone that you did not want to do, unless you chose to do so of your own free will. No pressures of survival. A world where you could sleep in every day, eat whatever you want whenever you want every day, a world you could wake up at whatever time you wanted and do whatever you wanted, including nothing much, with your day. A fucking paradise, and if communism is possible then please let it happen in my lifetime because I really want to retire into a society like this. I just wish I could have been born into it :-("

Pogue: "What I found was the way to get around this is to keep your politics basic and transparent for yourself. I have done this. All you have to do mate is basically support the working class, support what is in the interests of the working class. Not lead them, not create socialism for or with them, but support them. What does this mean? Well, a number of obvious, clear-cut things. For example, supporting working class workplace organisation into unions and subsequent struggles like strikes, supporting and advancing their cause as your own (which it is, if your working class). This means opposing fascism. This means opposing the electoral facade (in clear opposition to your understandable but in my opinion incorrect opinion on democratic socialism). This means quite simply always acting in the itnerests of the class. It doesn't matter whether or not things look impossible - so what if through my support with members of my class in strikes doesn't cause a revolution - you can't plan things out like that. But all I will know is I always stood for the interests of my class."

Snowflake:

Socialist: "To paraphrase Marx, "expropriate the expropriators". As socialists, we see the capitalists as currently expropriating the workers by accumulating profits from the workers' labor.

It is the free market claim that competition in the marketplace drives the accumulation of profits down to zero, and that profit margins serve as signals to entrepreneurs to shift their investments to better meet the demand of the masses.

Snowflake:

So by seizing the means of production and "nationalizing" them or making them common property, we will be preventing the capitalists from exploiting the workers and the workers as a whole can themselves own and run the means of production."

This is interesting too because the proles could obviously seize the means of production by buying shares of corporations. Does this mean that communists support the corporate model? Obviously they claim not to but it does allow a non violent way for the working class to control the means of production.

Snowflake:

Never having to do anything for anyone that you did not want to do, unless you chose to do so of your own free will.

Sounds like the NAP. Though obviously the human condition requires that even the solitary man must earn a living somehow.

Snowflake:

I have done this. All you have to do mate is basically support the working class, support what is in the interests of the working class.

I think the utilitarian free market advocates try to do this.

Anyway. The point in this post is not to quote a bunch of guys I could beat into the ground without their knowledge. I was just poking around on the (ugly) revleft forums to see what they had to say about kapitalists, and I found a lot more similarity than I would have predicted.

Wanted to share it on the mises forums...

Nature and society do not tolerate the idle. If a poor person idles away their time, they starve. If a wealthy person idles away their time, their money slowly drains away. This is not because of capitalism, but just in the nature of reality. If a socialist or communist system were able to prevent this (it's not), all it would accomplish is a disastrously lower standard of living. Anyone who wants their society to provide everything for them is not a libertarian, regardless of their economic knowledge.

Austrian literature has (and many people on these forums have) also exploded the fallacy of class interests. I don't understand why Marxists feel that the working class is automatically more important and deserving than entrepreneurs, managers, or investors—probably partly to do with the Labor Theory of Value. Again, faith in the LTV reflects radically collectivist leanings, regardless of the economic knowledge of the proponent.

So, to address the main point of your post, I respectfully disagree wholeheartedly. I do think that some socialists are proponents of freedom and liberty and kind of "lost their way" as it were (some of us here used to be in this position), but the great majority worship collectivism. It's not a matter of fact or fiction, or economic knowledge; it's faith—replacing religion with socialism.

Comrade Alastair:

"A world of complete freedom. Voluntary association in every respect. Never having to do anything for anyone that you did not want to do, unless you chose to do so of your own free will. No pressures of survival. A world where you could sleep in every day, eat whatever you want whenever you want every day, a world you could wake up at whatever time you wanted and do whatever you wanted, including nothing much, with your day. A fucking paradise, and if communism is possible then please let it happen in my lifetime because I really want to retire into a society like this. I just wish I could have been born into it :-("

I see socialists are still suffering from the incentive problem. If there is no pressure for survival [ i.e. no labor ] then there is no work necessary. All wants have been satisfied as if the world was suddenly stopped in a static prism. It assumes that a post-scarcity society has been achieve or can be achieved. Such utopian thought should be regulated to the fiction isle of the library of thought. 

Pogue:

All you have to do mate is basically support the working class, support what is in the interests of the working class

What is the class interest? It is so ambiguous and arbitrary.

Pogue:

or example, supporting working class workplace organisation into unions and subsequent struggles like strikes, supporting and advancing their cause as your own (which it is, if your working class). This means opposing fascism.

So this person's premise that we cartelize the labor market...in order to stop fascism? Drink poison to save ourselves from poison? It is clearly evident that these 'theorists' are so wrapped up in on great their ideas are that few of them actually think about how they would actually work or the implications of such ideas.

Pogue:

This means quite simply always acting in the itnerests of the class.

Again who decides this interest? Marxists couldn't even completely follow Marx. This individual is now proposing that class interest can be achieved by a diversity of individuals?

Pogue:

so what if through my support with members of my class in strikes doesn't cause a revolution - you can't plan things out like that. But all I will know is I always stood for the interests of my class.

This is lovely. Such a statement comes from a bourgeois with a computer. Suddenly the proletariat is 'his class' as if he paradoxically owns it.

The way I see it:

Similarities: Want max freedom and wealth possible.

                  Belief that someone has upset the fairness of the game [Capitalists/Gov't]

Differences: How to get above [Take away from someone, because the fact that they have more than me obviously means they stole it from me/Give everyone free choice to use their powers as they can].

                  Vision of Utopia [Everyone gets all they want from some cornucopia, preferably plucked from homes of evil rich/Everyone gets all they want from efforts of the gifted bringing indirect rewards to all]

                  Atitude to violence [Good when used for me because I have been ripped off in some distant past, bad when used against me/Good to defend oneself, bad to start up with someone]

                  How profit is made [Paying employee less than he deserves/Finding someone who wants what I have so much he'll pay more than I did for it]

 

 

Snowflake:

It is the free market claim that competition in the marketplace drives the accumulation of profits down to zero, and that profit margins serve as signals to entrepreneurs to shift their investments to better meet the demand of the masses.

The marxists generally believe in something called the Iron Law of Wages, according to which competition between capitalists is really collusion among capitalists (doublespeak, right?) which drives wages lower and lower.

Snowflake:

This is interesting too because the proles could obviously seize the means of production by buying shares of corporations. Does this mean that communists support the corporate model? Obviously they claim not to but it does allow a non violent way for the working class to control the means of production.

See the aforementioned Iron Law of Wages - the proletariat are kept at or very near subsistence. (How they manage to buy things then, like boats and LCD Televisions, etc., is beyond me!)

David Z:

The marxists generally believe in something called the Iron Law of Wages, according to which competition between capitalists is really collusion among capitalists (doublespeak, right?) which drives wages lower and lower.

David Z:

See the aforementioned Iron Law of Wages - the proletariat are kept at or very near subsistence. (How they manage to buy things then, like boats and LCD Televisions, etc., is beyond me!)

Yeah... The real difference seems to be an understanding of economics. ><

 

Well the Iron law of wages is an example of the class conscious of capitalists. What they want to achieve is class consciousness of the proletariat to 'fight back'. I wouldn't really say that there is an understanding of economics on the side of Marxists. They combine strange quasi-Hegel philosophical tenets with classical British school of economics [ this is the most schooled of the theorists]. These theories have long been disproved by the economic community [ which is why you don't have many Marxist economists ] but it is still pervasive in the social sciences due to the concept of metaphysical 'alienation'. I don't know of any current Marxist theory of economics that is actually thought out and workable. They usually give the same tired arguments that have been refuted 100 years ago.

Yeah Marx wrote during 18th century European mercantilism which really has no resemblance to a truly free market system...

I would be interested to know what these economies looked like though. Did the elites bar entry into the market? Did any of the proles ever try to start their own "means of production"s? Was there any competition between the capitalists?

It seems like Marx's identification of the "army of unemployed" would subvert the bourgeois agenda, since it would make startup costs of setting up a business next to nil.

Snowflake:

I would be interested to know what these economies looked like though.

I think a good example of the extent that Britain was willing to go to force open markets during the 19th century would be something like the Arrow Wars with China. Before Marx's time, a good example would be the Dutch East India Trading company. The problem with Marx is that he realized there was such a thing as mercantilism, however he did not think of it as a distinct system of production apart from capitalism. He saw it as a transitional toward capitalism. It is strange though because he characterized the capitalist mode of production as 'free trade, free buying and selling' in the Communist Manifesto yet also postulated that the bourgeois class used the state in order to sustain their trade markets. It is a contradiction to say that capitalism is free trade, yet capitalism is sustained by the bourgeois political class. Of course such contradictions are nothing new to Marx himself. Concerning the competition between capitalists, this is another puzzling statement. On the one hand capitalists are suppose to have class consciousness in the repression of the proletariat through the Iron Law of Wages and yet capitalists are in constant conflict with one another in order to gain resources and pieces of capital. So we have to ask which one is it? Are the capitalists actually unified in their interests and if they are then why do they compete with one another?

Laughing Man:

... Are the capitalists actually unified in their interests and if they are then why do they compete with one another?

You could argue that their interests are unified in keeping any new comer from joining their ranks, while they compete with each in exploiting markets. However, I think this would imply that they believe that competition is not a zero-sum game, which would contradict the "one-pie" theory. But I digress since I'm only speculating. You should write a layman's guide to Marx.

Daniel:

You could argue that their interests are unified in keeping any new comer from joining their ranks, while they compete with each in exploiting markets

But for the very reason that cartels form is the very reason they are broken, namely the quests for profit.

Daniel:

You should write a layman's guide to Marx.

I'm still researching. I need to get the first volume of Main Currents of Marxism, plus some works by Charles Fourier, Gabriel Mably, Francois Babeuf and also Morelly. I'm still building my little library of Marxist thought.

Laughing Man:

Daniel:

You could argue that their interests are unified in keeping any new comer from joining their ranks, while they compete with each in exploiting markets

But for the very reason that cartels form is the very reason they are broken, namely the quests for profit.

Yeah, I agree with you. The only way they can maintain that cartel, or otherwise keep new comers from entering or rising in the market, is with the state. But now you don't have free exchange, free buying, and free selling. In other words, you don't have capitalism. I don't understand why Marxists get confused over this.

Laughing Man:

Daniel:

You should write a layman's guide to Marx.

I'm still researching. I need to get the first volume of Main Currents of Marxism, plus some works by Charles Fourier, Gabriel Mably, Francois Babeuf and also Morelly. I'm still building my little library of Marxist thought.

I see. Perhaps you could write some articles and submit them to LRC, LvMI, and Libertarians Papers.

Daniel:

Yeah, I agree with you. The only way they can maintain that cartel, or otherwise keep new comers from entering or rising in the market, is with the state. But now you don't have free exchange, free buying, and free selling. In other words, you don't have capitalism. I don't understand why Marxists get confused over this.

Well Marxism has really become more and more utopian since the death of Marx and Engels. The scientific element lost favor due to its obvious contradictions especially in Capital volume III. It's like going to a football game with your favorite football team. Then a referee comes a long and calls pass interference. You know it was the right call but you boo anyways. That's kind of what Marxism is, the reflexes of a dead corpse that spasm in odd fashions.

Daniel:

I see. Perhaps you could write some articles and submit them to LRC, LvMI, and Libertarians Papers.

Well I really have to work on my writing style. I emailed all the high volume writers for this site and they all basically replied back to me "Read Mencken!" They also said to find a favorite author you have so I have been using an inner monologue with David Gordon's voice. [ I hope he doesn't find that creepy ] He is just well spoken and a very well thought out writer, so good in fact that his voice comes through to you in his articles. So I got the inner monologue thing going, I got Mencken on the way and a new Kindle DX for all the Mises PDF books. Joy!