History

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

Andrew Cain — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:23:30 GMT

wilderness:
Thanks for getting back to me on this.

No problem.

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

wilderness — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 05:14:32 GMT

Andrew Cain:
wilderness:
Made me wonder if knowing Marxism better than a self-promoting Marxist might mean they are a traitor to Marxism.

Well if they don't know then they could just be experiencing false consciousness. I think that if a worker were educated on Marxism and rejected it then they might call him a class traitor. Which is strange because consciousness is suppose to be dictated by the relations of production so if a worker can reject the proletariat mentality then how effective is the economic base in dictating how we perceive the world?

Ah! I get it. Good point. It's really thought to be tied that close.

Andrew Cain:
wilderness:
Yet either they awake to knowing they are not of the real Marxist school and need to learn more of it and/or thus doubt is created because how could a Marxist really have such a differing opinion of what Marxism really is?

Well I just got involved in the second volume of Leszek Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism which deals with the theorists after Marx up until Lenin. Right after, I mean right after the passing of Marx his whole system began to break up in what can be called 'the golden age of Marxism.' I'll have to get back to you. I've actually been thinking about trying to get into the Mises daily with an article on this. I've only seen a few articles on Marx yet it seems to interest people when it comes up.

Thanks for getting back to me on this.

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

kowalskil — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:54:01 GMT

Leszek Kolakowski is a good source. Prompted by unexpected interest, I read his books three years ago. But that is not my field. At the age of 79 I often asks myself if time investment to study something profoundly is justified.

Ludwik Kowalski

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

Andrew Cain — Wed, 31 Mar 2010 03:41:57 GMT

wilderness:
Made me wonder if knowing Marxism better than a self-promoting Marxist might mean they are a traitor to Marxism.

Well if they don't know then they could just be experiencing false consciousness. I think that if a worker were educated on Marxism and rejected it then they might call him a class traitor. Which is strange because consciousness is suppose to be dictated by the relations of production so if a worker can reject the proletariat mentality then how effective is the economic base in dictating how we perceive the world?

wilderness:
Yet either they awake to knowing they are not of the real Marxist school and need to learn more of it and/or thus doubt is created because how could a Marxist really have such a differing opinion of what Marxism really is?

Well I just got involved in the second volume of Leszek Kolakowski's Main Currents of Marxism which deals with the theorists after Marx up until Lenin. Right after, I mean right after the passing of Marx his whole system began to break up in what can be called 'the golden age of Marxism.' I'll have to get back to you. I've actually been thinking about trying to get into the Mises daily with an article on this. I've only seen a few articles on Marx yet it seems to interest people when it comes up.

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

kowalskil — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 19:00:41 GMT

The essence of communism is in the idea of proletarian dictatorship. But proletarians today, at least in the US, England, Sweden, etc., are not the same as in 1848. Slow reversible changes (reforms) are often desirable alternatives. That is what I think.

Ludwik Kowalski

whose new book–”Tyranny to Freedom: Diary of a Former Stalinist,” and review are now available at

www [dot] amazon [dot] com

THIS IS NOT A COMMERCIAL ADVERTISING. 100% ROYALTIES AUTOMATICALLY GO TO A SCHOLARSHIP FUND.

Comments will be appreciated, either at the above website or in private. Thank you in advance.

kowalskiL@mail.montclair.edu

P.S.

The first chapter is online at

http://csam.montclair.edu/~kowalski/chapter1.html

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

wilderness — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 18:31:04 GMT

Andrew Cain:
wilderness:
It's truly been informative by both iskrabronstein and yourself. I agree with you, I hope it continues at least a little bit longer

Sadly, it looks like our dreams are crushed. I hope I at least got to him/her and brought about a seed of doubt which would lead to bigger, more pressing questions about the legitimacy of Marxism. I will say that such a thing is what I wish to happen but I know probably won't.

I came across this in my reading today. It is Mises on Marxism:

"They assume without hesitation that whatever is demanded by one’s class interests is always immediately evident and unequivocal. The comrade who is of a different opinion can only be a traitor to his class." - Mises; Epistemological Problems of Economics

Made me wonder if knowing Marxism better than a self-promoting Marxist might mean they are a traitor to Marxism. You would appear the real Marxist and place such an individual outside of Marxist ideology as said individual thereby holds a different opinion (saying this with that quote in mind). Of course I don't think a Marxist now a days, but one never knows, would think they are a traitor. Yet either they awake to knowing they are not of the real Marxist school and need to learn more of it and/or thus doubt is created because how could a Marxist really have such a differing opinion of what Marxism really is? It would be counter to their way of thinking inherent class logic. I don't know. I thought it was an interesting tid-bit from Mises.

What do you think?

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

Andrew Cain — Thu, 25 Mar 2010 12:49:03 GMT

wilderness:
It's truly been informative by both iskrabronstein and yourself. I agree with you, I hope it continues at least a little bit longer

Sadly, it looks like our dreams are crushed. I hope I at least got to him/her and brought about a seed of doubt which would lead to bigger, more pressing questions about the legitimacy of Marxism. I will say that such a thing is what I wish to happen but I know probably won't.

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

wilderness — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 18:29:03 GMT

Andrew Cain:
I best tone it down or else he may leave. Then I will be allllll alone again.

It's truly been informative by both iskrabronstein and yourself. I agree with you, I hope it continues at least a little bit longer.

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

Andrew Cain — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:57:42 GMT

nirgrahamUK:

Mr Cain, you are totally MVP

Thanks! And I learned all of this at my local library!

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

Andrew Cain — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:51:39 GMT

I best tone it down or else he may leave. Then I will be allllll alone again.

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

wilderness — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:24:57 GMT

This time around you get to share Good show Cain!

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

nirgrahamUK — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:19:49 GMT

Mr Cain, you are totally MVP

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

Andrew Cain — Wed, 24 Mar 2010 03:03:35 GMT

iskrabronstein:
These two statements are where we have our divergence - you seem to be arguing that the class superstructure and social makeup dictates the actions of a given individual or collective within that society. This position is really only accepted by Maoists and Stalinists, generally as a result of its employment in the Cultural Revolution and purges in the Soviet Union - not to actually root out members of those classes, mind, but to villainize communists who failed to parrot Party Doctrine.

No you are just a revisionist Marxist who is trying to save the doctrine from self-imploding. If you admit that actions & beliefs contained within the superstructure which is supported by the economic base are dictated by the relations of production then you would be forced to admit that a bourgeois cannot possible understand or encourage proletariat revolution since they themselves are member of the class that is suppressing the proletariat. The majority of socialist theorist are bourgeois, not proletariat so it would look foolish if this whole theory about how class conflict is played came under the purview of a bourgeois. Even orthodox Marxists knew this right after Marx's death. Karl Kautsky had to make up this ridiculous justification for why a bourgeois intellectual like Marx announced this whole theory about socialistic class conflict since our belief structure is dictated by our class interests. His justification was that intellectuals float above class conflict therefore allowing them to see it making it seem that Marxists intellectuals have discovered the act of levitation. Of course the counter argument to that is: If Marxist intellectuals can do it, why can't everyone else? Of course there is no rational answer to this so we get revisionists who start watering down the Marxist theory in order to sustain its every decaying foundation. They try to warp it into a relativist notion in order to better increase the ambiguity of Marx's writings.

iskrabronstein:
For Marx, the economic structure and class superstructure of a society play a central and integral role in the formation of class consciousness – but not a definitive role.

If the economic structure and class superstructure doesn't play a definitive role, then what does? What is not economic is contain in the superstructure itself. It contains all facets of human interaction which do not deal with economic relations of production. So if not those, then what? Some invisible, unannounced, unnamed structure?

iskrabronstein:

Wrong.

"The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property." - Marx

Well we have to get pass the simplistic pronouncements of a propaganda pamphlet. In the German Ideology, Marx openly states:

'Individuals have always regarded themselves as the point of departure; their relations are part of the real process of their lives. How can it be, then, that their relationships become independent of them, that the forces of their own lives gain control over them? The answer, in a word, is--the division of labor, the degree of which depends on the extent to which productive forces have developed.'

That is alienation. The inability for man to dominate nature and the social institutions which they create. That is the whole root of why the negation of capitalism is communism. That is the driving force behind historical development, the onward and upward motion towards the culmination of private interest and public interests, of humanity becoming a species being. Now not only have I just shown you that the division of labor is the root of alienation but also that human relationships and forces become independent of the individual actor therefore meaning that bourgeois superstructural institutions gain control over the minds and actions of bourgeois individuals. A bourgeois cannot help but act like a bourgeois. Since he is alienated, he cannot control the social institutions which forced him into a class interest.

iskrabronstein:
That is frankly a nonsensical response, totally unrelated to the question I asked. Is diversion of the line of argument a standard tactic here? But in answer to your contention – do you not suppose that labor would still have to be organized along trade and industrial lines under a socialist state?

Arrival at alienation is a spontaneous event for the worker which happens at the full culmination of the capitalist system. It's called 'aufhebung', a transcendence. It just poof, happens. There is no planning to bring about class consciousness. It is self-discovery concerning the concept of alienation. Thus like I said, it is historically inevitable. It will just happen. Nobody knows when exactly, its just suppose to be at the end of capitalism.

iskrabronstein:
“The meeting was jammed with a large number of assorted radicals. There were English Owenties and Chartists, French Proudhonists and Blanquists, Irish nationalists, Polish patriots, Italian Mazzinists, and German Socialists. It was an assortment united not by a commonly shared ideology or even by genuine internationalism, but by an accumulated burden of variated grievances crying for an outlet. The English were against special privilege, the French against Bonapartism, the Irish against the British, the Poles against Russia [Poland was occupied by Russia in 1795], the Italians against Austria, and the Germans against capitalism. There was no necessary or integral interconnection among them – except what Marx later tried to provide in the organizaton that followed the meeting. Under the chairmanship of Edward Spencer Beesly, an English Positivist historian and professor at London University, radical oratory was given free rein. Marx himself did not speak. He was, as he wrote later, a ‘silent figure on the platform.

Right, large assortments of diverse opinion and Marx shutting up. What wonder romanticism.

iskrabronstein:
“The meeting voted unanimously to appoint a provisional committee to work out a program and membership rules for the proposed international organizaton. Marx was appointed a member of the committee, which met a week later and, being large and unweildy, agreed on a small subcommittee to do the actual work. Marx became a member of this crucial subcommittee. The only other German on it was “my old friend, the tailor Eccarius", as Marx wrote to a communist friend in Solingen. The subcommittee met in Marx’s house, and so powerful was his intellectual ascendency and certainty of purpose – the In Augural Address – and the rules – Provisional Statutes – of the new organization. Henceforth Marx was to remain its predominant spirit and the indomitable personality that held the disparate International Association together for eight difficult and often stormy years, until it was shattered by bitter internal dissensions.”

This doesn't contradict anything I stated. I stated that Marxists largely ran the First International, something you are confirming by saying that Marx himself made the rules for the organization, and that Bakunin's ilk were the main source of tension for the Marxists, something you implicitly confirm with the 'bitter internal dissensions.'

iskrabronstein:
“The superprofits of imperialism enable the capitalists to buy off the workers in the home country. Lenin points out that this had been foreseen by Engels in a letter to Marx as early as 1858, "The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois ... For a nation which exploits the whole world, this is of course to a certain extent justifiable." Lenin confirms that this trend had continued to develop and was accompanied by opportunism on the part of many working class leaders and socialist writers. He carefully analyzes and dismisses the opportunism of Kautsky and his followers and concludes that "the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism"

This is an insulting snide comment thrown at Kautsky. It's not as if they REALLY are bourgeois. They are mirroring them like a parrot would a person's voice. The parrot doesn't really talk, it mimics. It's obviously one of the most insulting comments you can throw at a Marxist. That they are a bourgeois and also calling them a revisionist after Lenin's time.

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

iskrabronstein — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 20:20:18 GMT

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Andrew Cain:

iskrabronstein:
What you fail to prove, however, is that this fact precludes a bourgeois intellectual from advocating socialist policies or a working-class man from being politically conservative.

Because of their relationship to the means of production their motif of class consciousness dictates their actions. So because a person has a capitalist relationship to the economic base, their superstructure is created around that capitalist base and therefore their views on religion, law, politics, and mannerisms are all based on a capitalist relation to the forces of production.

These two statements are where we have our divergence - you seem to be arguing that the class superstructure and social makeup dictates the actions of a given individual or collective within that society. This position is really only accepted by Maoists and Stalinists, generally as a result of its employment in the Cultural Revolution and purges in the Soviet Union - not to actually root out members of those classes, mind, but to villainize communists who failed to parrot Party Doctrine.

The classical, and most common Marxist interpretation of class consciousness is developmental, as R.J. Rummel (professor emeritus of political science at Hawaii University) explains:

"The force transforming latent class membership into a struggle of classes is class interest. Out of similar class situations, individuals come to act similarly. They develop a mutual dependence, a community, a shared interest interrelated with a common income of profit or of wages. From this common interest classes are formed, and for Marx, individuals form classes to the extent that their interests engage them in a struggle with the opposite class...

As Marx saw the development of class conflict, the struggle between classes was initially confined to individual factories. Eventually, given the maturing of capitalism, the growing disparity between life conditions of bourgeoisie and proletariat, and the increasing homogenization within each class, individual struggles become generalized to coalitions across factories. Increasingly class conflict is manifested at the societal level. Class consciousness is increased, common interests and policies are organized, and the use of and struggle for political power occurs. Classes become political forces. (http://www.hawaii.edu/powerkills/CIP.CHAP5.HTM)

Consequently, class consciousness (and necessarily the influence it bears on one’s character and decisions) ebbs and flows with the current of class struggle – it is not some kind of caste into which someone is born, lives, and dies. For Marx, the economic structure and class superstructure of a society play a central and integral role in the formation of class consciousness – but not a definitive role. Class consciousness is a constantly shifting concatenation of interests, that gains in intensity and definition as class struggles themselves grow more violent – to argue otherwise is to put words in the mouth of Marx to suit your own position.

Your other criticisms, regarding the monolithic status of a class and the local differences in development of class consciousness, are equally answered by a proper definition of the term. In times of relative peace, when class struggle slackens or is appeased by reform, the influences that enforce class separation weaken as well. In times of social crisis, classes coalesce and become more defined. This can occur on a variety of scales, from municipal (ex. Paris Commune) all the way up to national (Bolshevik revolution)

This is really all basic Marxist currency, I am frankly surprised you are so determined to challenge it.

Andrew Cain:

These are all benign byproducts of alienation which stems from the division of labor. Marx does not care about 'education'. Sure he points to it in the Communist Manifesto but it is not a traditional interpretation of 'education' meaning the learning of a specific trade or skill. No one is suppose to have a specific trade or skill in a socialist society and education would only be used in so far as to bring about class consciousness. To say that individuals should be educated beyond worker values is to establish an implicit division of labor because you have individuals pursuing specific professions that they excel at.

No, they are concrete realities that shape the class mobility within a society – part of the capitalist class superstructure. They have just as much influence as any other limiting factor on social mobility, and probably more than most.

Andrew Cain:

Being a Marxist, you should know that it isn't inequality or wages that Marx really cares about. It all stems from the division of labor. That is what alienation is, that is what the socialist revolution seeks to end. You could give workers ridiculous sums of money, give them the highest standard of living of anyone in society and it still would not remove the alienation that Marx says inevitably must come to an end.

Wrong.

"The theory of Communism may be summed up in one sentence: Abolish all private property." - Marx

Your original comment about the idea of historical inevitability came as a response to a question of mine:

iskrabronstein:
If Marx was so set on the pure class-origin of the Marxist labor movement, wouldn't he have attempted to build his own socialist parties rather than attempting to organize the various currents, reformist and revolutionary, Owenite and syndicalist, into the First International

Andrew Cain:

Not if he thought that it was historically inevitable.

That is frankly a nonsensical response, totally unrelated to the question I asked. Is diversion of the line of argument a standard tactic here? But in answer to your contention – do you not suppose that labor would still have to be organized along trade and industrial lines under a socialist state?

Two things:

“The meeting was jammed with a large number of assorted radicals. There were English Owenties and Chartists, French Proudhonists and Blanquists, Irish nationalists, Polish patriots, Italian Mazzinists, and German Socialists. It was an assortment united not by a commonly shared ideology or even by genuine internationalism, but by an accumulated burden of variated grievances crying for an outlet. The English were against special privilege, the French against Bonapartism, the Irish against the British, the Poles against Russia [Poland was occupied by Russia in 1795], the Italians against Austria, and the Germans against capitalism. There was no necessary or integral interconnection among them – except what Marx later tried to provide in the organizaton that followed the meeting. Under the chairmanship of Edward Spencer Beesly, an English Positivist historian and professor at London University, radical oratory was given free rein. Marx himself did not speak. He was, as he wrote later, a ‘silent figure on the platform.’

“The meeting voted unanimously to appoint a provisional committee to work out a program and membership rules for the proposed international organizaton. Marx was appointed a member of the committee, which met a week later and, being large and unweildy, agreed on a small subcommittee to do the actual work. Marx became a member of this crucial subcommittee. The only other German on it was “my old friend, the tailor Eccarius", as Marx wrote to a communist friend in Solingen. The subcommittee met in Marx’s house, and so powerful was his intellectual ascendency and certainty of purpose – the In Augural Address – and the rules – Provisional Statutes – of the new organization. Henceforth Marx was to remain its predominant spirit and the indomitable personality that held the disparate International Association together for eight difficult and often stormy years, until it was shattered by bitter internal dissensions.” (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/f/i.htm#first-international)

“The superprofits of imperialism enable the capitalists to buy off the workers in the home country. Lenin points out that this had been foreseen by Engels in a letter to Marx as early as 1858, "The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois ... For a nation which exploits the whole world, this is of course to a certain extent justifiable." Lenin confirms that this trend had continued to develop and was accompanied by opportunism on the part of many working class leaders and socialist writers. He carefully analyzes and dismisses the opportunism of Kautsky and his followers and concludes that "the fight against imperialism is a sham and humbug unless it is inseparably bound up with the fight against opportunism" (http://sfr-21.org/imp-hsc.html)

Re: Did Karl Marx think communism was a good thing?

Andrew Cain — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 11:40:53 GMT

kowalskil:
But try to present such data to communist today. You will indeed receive a list of crimes committed by capitalist governments. Comparing these data makes no sense because communists promised to be much better. Brutality and violence, they say, is profit-motivated. Our motivation is very different.

The case can be made that what many communist claim as 'brutal capitalist acts' are in fact mercantilism/corporate fascism. A Marxist cannot make the claim that the result of Soviet Russia and Communist China was 'not communism.' It indeed was the beginning of what Marx called 'crude communism.'