The fatal flaw in Marxism

Discussion in 'Politics' started by BennyF, Nov 10, 2010.

  1. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    These are the end times for capitalism. We have seen it's failure in the global economic meltdown. Profits over people is never a successful long term strategy.
     
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    The fatal flaw in Marxism: human nature (greed, me first, etc.), which BTW is even more fatal for pure (Ayn Rand) capitalism.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    Don't be silly. Even Objectivists claim to be pursuing social justice - they just define that to be whatever results from the putatively meritocratic aristocracy they want to set up. Similar for anarchists. There are no theories of social organization that do not claim to be advancing some conception of social justice - what other defensible goal can there by for such an endeavor?

    Or are you going to come out and admit that Libertarianism is about "fuck you, got mine"?

    Then it isn't justice. Any reasoned conception of social justice would have to include the entire society holistically. Your line here is circular.

    Didn't I just say something about blathering kooks?

    I'm not a Marxist. Did you read my earlier posts in this thread?

    Yeah, I suppose you have a list of State Department officials somewhere, eh Senator McCarthy?

    They are kooks in possession of an ideology that is as marketable (catering as it does to shallow narcissismn) as it is dangerous, and sufficient energy and determination to do real damage to my country and society. Or did you not notice the whole biggest-downturn-since-the-Great-Depression thing that your deregulate-and-shrug Objectivist fellow travellers just engineered?
     
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    That didn't prevent Democracies from establishing free education, abolishing child labor, the universal vote, universal healthy care (except the US), and retirement care, all demands of the Communist Manifesto.
     
  8. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    Fortunately no democracy follows pure capitalism. My statement stands. Also no reason why Marxism could not be democratic. Most small efforts at it (utopian societies) usually are, but fail for economic or other reasons.
     
  9. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,634
    Until you abolish human nature, though, no better system will exist than a mixed economy of regulated capitalism, and my suspicion is that the the balance will always favor the capitalism and not the regulation.

    It's certainly not that capitalism is perfect, but rather you have to ask "as compared to what?" Capitalism is the one that best uses human social instincts (including natural human self-interest) for the most benefit.
     
  10. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,383
    You are right about centralized being centralized. Your best case was 5 and 6. Even then context is important. My problem with you and Marx, Engels and Ayn Rand is that you are all so rigid and simplistic in your ideologies.




    9 made me wonder what they were talking about so I looked for the source and discovered that you edited the Communist Manifesto. You could have found the 10 Planks of the manifesto online and just cut and pasted them.


    Why did you edit the Planks of the Communist Manifesto?








    You can find the whole Manifesto and more clues into What Marx and Engels were thinking at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm and other pages from that website.

    Marx and Engels wrote:

    We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

    The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

    Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

    These measures will, of course, be different in different countries.

    Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

    1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
    2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
    3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
    4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
    5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
    6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
    7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
    8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
    9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
    10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production

    When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been concentrated in the hands of a vast association of the whole nation, the public power will lose its political character. Political power, properly so called, is merely the organised power of one class for oppressing another. If the proletariat during its contest with the bourgeoisie is compelled, by the force of circumstances, to organise itself as a class, if, by means of a revolution, it makes itself the ruling class, and, as such, sweeps away by force the old conditions of production, then it will, along with these conditions, have swept away the conditions for the existence of class antagonisms and of classes generally, and will thereby have abolished its own supremacy as a class.

    In place of the old bourgeois society, with its classes and class antagonisms, we shall have an association, in which the free development of each is the condition for the free development of all.






    Look at Marx/Engel's definition of "State"; "the proletariat organised as the ruling class". That is a very vague definition. They want to "centralise all instruments of production in the hands of" "the proletariat organised as the ruling class". Only in plank 6 does centralization clearly imply something that is not local. In other areas Marx and Engels were not suggesting to the presumed future revolutionaries how they should structure their government or how they should manage economic enterprises other than that the poor majority should be in control.



    You can't have it both ways. Either not everything socialist is Marxist or Everything socialist is Marxist even if it is socialism that you approve of. Both an elected local government taxing to pay for roads and an elected national government taxing to pay for health care are socialist activities. You can say you approve of one activity and not the other but if you support either activity than you favor some socialism. Any government service provided free of charge (paid for by taxes) to all is socialism. If there was a regressive tax system as in Feudalism then you could make a case that free public services available to all are not socialist.

    At this link http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htm to the last part of the Maifesto Marx and Engels identify three forms of socialism that they say is not Communist (and by extension not Marxist). If Marx does not think all Socialism is Marxist should I believe him or you on that question?


    Our own John T Galt, Ayn Rand who created the "John Galt character" , Murray Rothbard (the anarcho-capitalist) and similarly minded people as well as Muslim/Christian/Jewish/Hindu extremists, and Marx and Engels and all simplistic Communists all share the traits of simplisticness, rigidity and ideological purity.

    Sorry John T Galt, but you write as if you almost don't see shades of gray in your worldview.


    8th graders that can't read is a symptom of the bureaucracies disempowering the teachers and a symptom of parents and youth culture not preparing the children to be students.



    What is useful to learn is a matter of opinion. What is the truth is a matter of opinion. History is a matter of opinion. All of these questions overlap with religion and politics. I don't want to trample of the right of parents to brainwash their children in the style that they prefer; so I agree with you that the state should not control the schools. But keep in mind that leftists are also frustrated by the schools teaching an ideology to their children that is far to the right of their beliefs. Teaching kids that Smoot Hawley created the depression offends me because it is false and it is right wing propaganda. Minimizing and excusing what the colonists did to the native Americans offends me because I don't want blind patriots but rather would have children prepared to face reality and see the faults in their own group as well as the faults in others.

    I think I would prefer that children be taught the truth, but what the truth is is subjective. Balancing truth with false ideas does not appeal to me. Also how do you choose which false ideas are worthy of being presented and which false ideas are not worthy of being presented?



    I don't want creationism taught to children because I consider that to be a waste of the children's and teacher's time.

    On Global warming it looks like you and I could not support the same school. I don't support political correctness and so would not give equal time to false ideas. We shouldn't have to support the same school.

    But global warming does not need to be taught in school before college so maybe we could support the same school if the school ducked controversial topics. Or we could support the same math teacher and chose which biology and history teacher children go to within the same school based on the ideology of the parents. Of course then children would be embarrassed that their peers know their parent's ideology.

    .........................................................................

    I believe Marx and Engels wrote this stuff while being living in exile in Dickensian London at the same time period in which Dickens was writing about mr. Scrooge.

    Karl Marx said, Dickens, and the other novelists of Victorian England, "...issued to the world more political and social truths than have been uttered by all the professional politicians, publicists and moralists put together...".


    Marx was responding to a real problem that needed fixing but his diagnosis and cure were simplistic and inaccurate. I think you John T Galt are also responding to real problems but with inaccurate diagnosis and cures.
    ...................................................

    Some Marx or Engels quotes


    The bourgeoisie, during its rule of scarce one hundred years (1748 to 1848) , has created more massive and more colossal productive forces than have all preceding generations together.........

    The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.

    ..........Owing to the extensive use of machinery, and to the division of labor, the work of the proletarians has lost all individual character, and, consequently, all charm for the workman. He becomes an appendage of the machine, and it is only the most simple, most monotonous, and most easily acquired knack, that is required of him. Hence, the cost of production of a workman is restricted, almost entirely, to the means of subsistence that he requires for maintenance, and for the propagation of his race.

    You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population
    .........







    But you Communists would introduce community of women, screams the bourgeoisie in chorus.

    The bourgeois sees his wife a mere instrument of production. He hears that the instruments of production are to be exploited in common, and, naturally, can come to no other conclusion that the lot of being common to all will likewise fall to the women.

    He has not even a suspicion that the real point aimed at is to do away with the status of women as mere instruments of production.

    For the rest, nothing is more ridiculous than the virtuous indignation of our bourgeois at the community of women which, they pretend, is to be openly and officially established by the Communists. The Communists have no need to introduce community of women; it has existed almost from time immemorial.

    Our bourgeois, not content with having wives and daughters of their proletarians at their disposal, not to speak of common prostitutes, take the greatest pleasure in seducing each other’s wives.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    I think intellect can overcome instinct.
     
  12. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,634
    I doubt that. On a population wide scale you can't expect people to people unselfish because you tell them to be unselfish. As David Hume wrote:

    You can no more talk yourself out of being selfish than you can out of being in love. So far as I can tell, we have tried to train selfishness out of kids for a long while, and yet we are all still self-interested. Look at the number of people on both sides of the debate who cannot separate passion from reason in making political decisions...and for most of us those decisions are not even all that personal.

    Selfishness is a way of leading us to a greater degree of personal satisfaction, sometimes (though not always) at the expense of others. When others pay for our selfishness, that we should stop by regulation (so long as the regulation does not cause more economic harm than it prevents). In many other cases, though, my desire for more adds for most people. If I want to become a millionaire, that is a selfish goal. Yet to attain it I must typically engage in activity that others will find valuable and pay me for. Plus I may create jobs, pay taxes, and generally improve my community.

    When I buy from a vendor he sells at a price that gives him an economic surplus and I buy at a price that gives me one as well. Transactions are win/win for both sides, not zero sum.

    Capitalism encourages all of that, whereas other systems limit that (which is the same as saying "limit the freedom to do that") in those cases--the majority of cases--in the name of clamping down on the relatively rare transactions where one side is getting hurt. Or they allow only those transactions that get special approval. In principle the latter works, but in practice no government can analyze the goods and bads of every transaction, to they make generic rules that cost society more in lost good deals than the harm they wished to prevent.

    Or, at least, those are my views. In your view, what is the best system of economic organization?
     
  13. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,383
    Obviously both Intellect and instinct are at play in what we have now. Eastern mysticism found that suppressing instinct does not work and that the best way to limit the control that instinct has over us is to remain nonjudgmentally aware of the instincts. Being against instincts produces perversion in the long run.

    I think society has already overcome instinct compared to the past. To advance further in this direction intellect needs to be used to build better social structures that keep us aware of instincts and our non-instinctual goals. Religion played this role but also used repression and delusion.

    What new social structures better than religion, politics and psychology are needed?

    It is probably going to be an endless struggle for humanity to bot fall back into feudalism or tribalism.
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    I would hesitate to characterize capitalism as a basic instinct, it does fulfill certain needs and desires that could be fulfilled in other ways. Can't you see the similarities between tribalism and Communism? There is no private property in a tribe.
     
  15. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,383
    Capitalism is not an instinct; it is the outcome of instincts including greed and will to power modulated by intellectual outgrowths of compassion and understanding of common interest.

    Capitalism is what takes place at this level of Awareness of and understanding of and repression of instinct and the possibilities beyond instinct. The physically strong are not allowed to steal from the physically weaker and the intellectually strong are only allowed to steal from the intellectually weaker under certain conditions that provide some protection of the smart from the smart. Capitalism would not work without these relatively modern prohibitions on stealing.

    Pollution laws are one of the most recent additions to the prohibitions against stealing. The ending of feudal serfdom and slavery is recent.

    It seems to me that every prohibition against stealing has increased the efficiency of Capitalism. A touch of socialism also seems to increase the efficiency of capitalism by by increasing the number of capable competitors.

    Families share and work cooperatively. In some families the father being physically strongest dominates the family repressively and makes his family miserable as he uses them for his emotional and physical whims. Tribes do the same things as families on a larger level.

    Communism aspired to be like the kind cooperative type of family and instead ended up being the worst type of family.

    Capitalism does not aspire to be a nice family or even to be nice or to be a family. Capitalism is a bunch of strangers living together who don't trust each other but are enforcing an agreement that they are not allowed to kill each other.
     
    Last edited: Nov 17, 2010
  16. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    I think more cooperation is required in capitalism. The urban people are trusting the farmers not to keep all their crops, and the farmers are trusting that small green pieces of paper mean something, and both are trusting that it's perfectly reasonable for abstract financial instruments to govern the profitability of these transactions. Marxism is just another step towards mutual cooperation and interdependency.
     
  17. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    It seems to run second best compared to Scandinavian Socialism, by almost any measure you can name. Business innovation* per capita, life expectancy, educational levels, low crime rate, everyone well feed** and with good health services, etc. for dozen of other measures of what makes for a desirable society.

    Can you name, on a per capita bases, ANY area in which US version of capitalism is better?
    (Hint: 30 times higher fraction of population in prison is not one.)


    *See two page list of major Swedish businesses here:
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_companies_of_Sweden Click on any listed to learn what they do, how big they are, etc. (Usually that is link to their home page.)

    Including many of global importance such as:
    Electrolux
    Hasselblad
    IKEA
    Saab
    SAS Group
    Scania
    Svenska Cellulosa***
    Tetra Pak
    Volvo
    Ericsson

    ** A recent study found 15% of US populations was "food insecure" which was defined as not having funds to buy needed food at least once per month. USDA food assitance programs (food stamps, etc.) are at all time high of users.

    SUMMARY: The world's richest capitalistic country should be ashamed of it poor performance for many.
    The US certainly is a terrible model of government now, unless your goal is to destroy the middle class and concentrate wealth in the hands of a few..

    *** You may not know their name, but there a good chance they supplied fiber for your newspaper or cardboard boxes although Canada and Brazil are cutting into their non-EU market share.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 17, 2010
  18. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    Scandinavian Socialism does that. They are, to a large extent, "Their brother's keeper."
     
  19. Pandaemoni Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,634
    Scandinavian countries are not exactly anti-capitalist. While they are certainly doing well, they have also taken turns in favor of greater privatization, openness to investment and trade, and there was even some tax cutting for corporations there a few years back. Their protection of private property rights is robust.

    It's an interesting model, but the U.S. and they are shades of difference within the same system of regulated capitalism, not completely different systems.

    Denmark (score 77.9) falls just behind the U.S. (score: 78) on the index of economic freedom, and Sweden (72.4) is not that far behind. Rounding it out there's Finland (73.8, higher than Sweden), Iceland (73.7, just behind Finland) and Norway bringing up the rear (69.4). Of all those countries, including the U.S., they all rank as "mostly free" save for Norway with her "moderately free" rating.

    http://www.heritage.org/index/Ranking

    I take them as a lesson that my preference for more freedom in my regulation may sometimes be a mistake (though I am fine with things like universal healthcare myself). I need to consider that more fully, but I do not take them as a repudiation of capitalism.
     
  20. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    Yeah, Scanadanavia seems to fit into discussions of US politics in a very stilted way, as if they are paragons of expansive socialism. This is apparently because of the high personal income taxes and universal healthcare. Meanwhile, Scandanavia exhibits many features that would strongly appeal to American conservatives, such as low corporate taxes and regulations, high per-capita defense spending, state churches, compulsory military service, etc.. Sweden in particular has had privatized schools for nearly 20 years and has long been one of the 10 largest arms exporters in the world.
     
  21. Billy T Use Sugar Cane Alcohol car Fuel Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    23,198
    I did not suggest they were either of these. I only noted that their more socialistic form of government is concerned with the welfare of ALL their citizens. For example, unlike the US, you need not live in a higher income area to have good schools, or be middle class to go see a doctor, etc. You will likely pay higher taxes if services like these are provided to ALL, but that does not make you a "repudiation of capitalism" or "anti-capitalist" - just a more human government that cares for ALL of its citizens.

    Note also that FIRST in my listing of some of the ways that Scandinavian Socialism was better than the US, was: "Business innovation per capita." As many falsely assume that can not be true in a Socialistic government, I gave a list of major, well known, global companies that started up in Sweden.

    I also note that you have not risen to my challenge*:

    Can you name, on a per capita bases, ANY area in which US version of capitalism is better (than Scandinavian Socialism)?

    The whole point of my post was to show that your (Churchill, like claim) that capitalism was not "perfect" but just better than any other system is false.

    Capitalism, tends to ignore the needs of those without funds to pay. (Such as visit to a doctor when when first sick for preventive care, instead of later to hospital emergency room when care is much more expensive and less effective. - A major reason why medical cost in US per capita are twice what they are in Scandinavia and life expectancy is about three years LESS.)

    It is this concern for ALL that distinguishes Scandinavian Socialism from the US, not some hostility towards creating innovative businesses. On a per capita basis they excel there too.

    *PS, if anyone else wants to tell where the US is better, (provides a more desirable society for its citizens), feel free to help Pandaemoni with this difficult task.
     
    Last edited by a moderator: Nov 18, 2010
  22. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    Your best case was 5 and 6. Even then context is important.

    Really, and why is that? Because those were the only ones that actaully mentioned centralization. The entire plank is about centralization. That is the context. The wiping out of the bourgeoisie. The seized control by the proletariat with the planks to be the prime factors of this state. There is no sugarcoating it is what it is.

    My problem with you and Marx, Engels and Ayn Rand is that you are all so rigid and simplistic in your ideologies.

    This is rich and it is followed up with comments like this:

    Sorry John T Galt, but you write as if you almost don't see shades of gray in your worldview.;

    You can't have it both ways. Either not everything socialist is Marxist or Everything socialist is Marxist

    Apparently, it only simplistic when it applies to the opposition. However, can you not make distinctions on issues? This is a typical hang up of most lefties that I have encountered. It isn't that they cannot make one think about the enitre scope of things, they can. It is that they have a hard time categorizing issues. That would include labeling people as certain types and then stereotyping all under the same umbrella.

    On the other hand, I get accused of doing the same thing. However, I believe that what I have identified is an incompatible manner of thinking by my opposition. I see thinking that cannot possibly go hand in hand with one another. While I confess to being susceptible to the same, I have not found much intellectually challenging to this here. Not an malicious statement towards you, but a general statement concerning this site.

    Why did you edit the Planks of the Communist Manifesto?

    First, any editing done was so to shorten the typing.

    Second, any editing done does not really effect the outcome of the planks. Certainly not as I see it. The entire plank does not change its overall goal of mass centralization. I believe only those imbibed in its principles cannot see this.

    You can find the whole Manifesto and more clues into What Marx and Engels were thinking at http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm and other pages from that website.

    I have been referring to this site for years, probably about 10 years. In fact, I have it bookmarked. I also have several books about Marx as well. Enough that one might believe me to be one, but I am keeping the enemy close.

    That is a very vague definition. They want to "centralise all instruments of production in the hands of" "the proletariat organised as the ruling class".[/

    And you cannot see this organization as a state?

    Both an elected local government taxing to pay for roads and an elected national government taxing to pay for health care are socialist activities.

    Trust me, I see your point. However, I believe that as long as such activity is voted for by the people it falls under the general welfare and the Constitution. Once the taxes on such are merely imposed on the people by congressional vote alone, or by presidential fiat, then it becomes something else. For seveal years now, the latter has been what government has done consistently. All of this incidentally in the name of the public good. Euphemism for socialism.

    The irony of your post is delicious. There is so much of it.

    I wonder if capitalist were to pull all of their ideas and product from the market how would you survive? Afterall, most socialist truly live by the creed of biting the hand that feeds you.

    So what if capitalists simply withdrew from society and took all of their many toys with them? What would you feed off of then? Afterall, your production would then by owned by your workers and it would be centralized by them. Would they then become the elites? BTW- Marx thinks so, which is why there is the need for constant revolution. Would they be capable of continuing a society? I suspect some would and I also suspect they would then by understanding of the basic problems and issues to be faced daily. In short, if they are allowed to work they would themselves become capitalists.

    In short, many marxists ideas about capitalists are too vague. They simply spout greed and exploitation and they never give a second's thought to what the hell they are talking about.

    Withdraw capitalists, withdraw. Let them see what they have wrought, and let them see how they will survive without their usual hostages they love to vilify.
     
  23. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    Read Alinsky much?
     

Share This Page