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Guest Post: Is Marxism Coming Back?
Submitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics
Is Marxism Coming Back?
It is true that as the financial and economic crises roll on, as more and more disasters accumulate, as more people are thrown into unemployment and suffering that more and more of us will question the fundamentals of our economic system. It is inevitable that many will be drawn to some of the criticisms of capitalism, including Marxism.
The Guardian today published a salutary overview of this revival:
In his introduction to a new edition of The Communist Manifesto, Professor Eric Hobsbawm suggests that Marx was right to argue that the “contradictions of a market system based on no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous ‘cash payment’, a system of exploitation and of ‘endless accumulation’ can never be overcome: that at some point in a series of transformations and restructurings the development of this essentially destabilising system will lead to a state of affairs that can no longer be described as capitalism”.
That is post-capitalist society as dreamed of by Marxists. But what would it be like? “It is extremely unlikely that such a ‘post-capitalist society’ would respond to the traditional models of socialism and still less to the ‘really existing’ socialisms of the Soviet era,” argues Hobsbawm, adding that it will, however, necessarily involve a shift from private appropriation to social management on a global scale. “What forms it might take and how far it would embody the humanist values of Marx’s and Engels’s communism, would depend on the political action through which this change came about.”
Marxism is a strange thing; it provides a clean and straightforward narrative of history, one that irons out detail and complication. It provides a simplistic “us versus them” narrative of the present. And it provides a relatively utopian narrative of the future; that the working classes united will overthrow capitalism and establish a state run by and for the working classes.
Trouble is, history is vastly more complicated than the teleological narrative provided by dialectical materialism. The economic and social reality of the present is vastly more complicated than Marx’s linear and binary classifications. And the future that Marx predicted never came to fruit; his 19th Century ideas turned into a 20th Century reality of mass starvation, failed central planning experiments, and millions of deaths.
Certainly, the system we have today is unsustainable. The state-supported financial institutions, and the corporations that have grown up around them do not live because of their own genius, their own productivity or innovation. They exist on state largesse — money printing, subsidies, limited liability, favourable regulation, barriers to entry. Every blowup and scandal — from the LIBOR-rigging, to the London Whale, to the bungled trades that destroyed MF Global — illustrates the incompetence and failure that that dependency has allowed to flourish.
The chief problem that Marxists face is their misidentification of the present economic system as free market capitalism. How can we meaningfully call a system where the price of money is controlled by the state a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where financial institutions are routinely bailed out a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where upwards of 40% of GDP is spent by the state a free market? How can we call a system where the market trades the possibility of state intervention rather than underlying fundamentals a free market?
Today we do not have a market economy; we have a corporate economy.
As Saifedean Ammous and Edmund Phelps note:
The term “capitalism” used to mean an economic system in which capital was privately owned and traded; owners of capital got to judge how best to use it, and could draw on the foresight and creative ideas of entrepreneurs and innovative thinkers. This system of individual freedom and individual responsibility gave little scope for government to influence economic decision-making: success meant profits; failure meant losses. Corporations could exist only as long as free individuals willingly purchased their goods – and would go out of business quickly otherwise.
Capitalism became a world-beater in the 1800’s, when it developed capabilities for endemic innovation. Societies that adopted the capitalist system gained unrivaled prosperity, enjoyed widespread job satisfaction, obtained productivity growth that was the marvel of the world and ended mass privation.
Now the capitalist system has been corrupted. The managerial state has assumed responsibility for looking after everything from the incomes of the middle class to the profitability of large corporations to industrial advancement. This system, however, is not capitalism, but rather an economic order that harks back to Bismarck in the late nineteenth century and Mussolini in the twentieth: corporatism.
The system of corporatism we have today has far more akin with Marxism and “social management” than Marxists might like to admit. Both corporatism and Marxism are forms of central economic control; the only difference is that under Marxism, the allocation of capital is controlled by the state bureaucracy-technocracy, while under corporatism the allocation of capital is undertaken by the state apparatus in concert with large financial and corporate interests. The corporations accumulate power from the legal protections afforded to them by the state (limited liability, corporate subsidies, bailouts), and politicians can win re-election showered by corporate money.
The fundamental choice that we face today is between economic freedom and central economic planning. The first offers individuals, nations and the world a complex, multi-dimensional allocation of resources, labour and capital undertaken as the sum of human preferences expressed voluntarily through the market mechanism. The second offers allocation of resources, labour and capital by the elite — bureaucrats, technocrats and special interests. The first is not without corruption and fallout, but its various imperfect incarnations have created boundless prosperity, productivity and growth. Incarnations of the second have led to the deaths by starvation of millions first in Soviet Russia, then in Maoist China.
Marxists like to pretend that the bureaucratic-technocratic allocation of capital, labour and resources is somehow more democratic, and somehow more attuned to the interests of society than the market. But what can be more democratic and expressive than a market system that allows each and every individual to allocate his or her capital, labour, resources and productivity based on his or her own internal preferences? And what can be less democratic than the organisation of society and the allocation of capital undertaken through the mechanisms of distant bureaucracy and forced planning? What is less democratic than telling the broad population that rather than living their lives according to their own will, their own traditions and their own economic interests that they should instead follow the inclinations and orders of a distant bureaucratic-technocratic elite?
I’m not sure that Marxists have ever understood capitalism; Das Kapital is a mammoth work concentrating on many facets of 19th Century industrial and economic development, but it tends to focus in on obscure minutiae without ever really considering the coherent whole. If Marxists had ever come close to grasping the broader mechanisms of capitalism — and if they truly cared about democracy — they would have been far less likely to promulgate a system based on dictatorial central planning.
Nonetheless, as the financial system and the financial oligarchy continue to blunder from crisis to crisis, more and more people will surely become entangled in the seductive narratives of Marxism. More and more people may come to blame markets and freedom for the problems of corporatism and statism. This is deeply ironic — the Marxist tendency toward central planning and control exerts a far greater influence on the policymakers of today than the Hayekian or Smithian tendency toward decentralisation and economic freedom.
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It sounds more like you are thinking of the Fembots in "Austin Powers":
Fembots
Marxism? No! Old Timey Beards? Yes!
Our old timey beards put the modern day Muslims beards to shame.
If obama and the communist democrat's have anything to say about it YES HELL YES it is
Obama, Hitler, And Exploding The Biggest Lie In History
http://www.forbes.com/sites/billflax/2011/09/01/obama-hitler-and-exploding-the-biggest-lie-in-history/
One thing is for sure - we definitely have a short supply of common sense. The vast majority of people are naive as to how the world works. Forget all of the "-isms" and let's focus on governing ourselves. It's a cliche, but nothing in life is free and well-intentioned people don't assume government positions to help you. All that you can rely on in this world are your own skills and any support network (i.e. family and friends) that you can (hopefully) cobble together.
Thank you. Reds and Blues fighting back and forth always brings me back to the immortal Robert Frost.
Some say the world will end in fire,
Some say in ice.
From what I've tasted of desire
I hold with those who favor fire.
But if it had to perish twice,
I think I know enough of hate
To say that for destruction ice
Is also great
And would suffice.
Regardless of whether the right or the left wins, the shit's still fucked up and bullshit.
i do not care which -ism you call it but the problem of the civilization is how to distribute productive capital in such a way that it does not concenrate in the hands of the few (be it capitalists or marxists who both are eager to rule who should get what).
My proposition is instead of taxing workforce we should tax capital ownership. The key question then is who will decide what to spend collected taxes on
Forget about Marxism.
It's BOLSHEVISM (think: police state, gulags....) that you've gotta worry about - and all the pieces (TSA, DHS, NDAA, militarised police forces, surveillance, drones....) are almost in place in the USSA.
Marxism - "I feel your pain bro... let's me an' you get your neighbor to fix it" - is just the touchy-feely, pretty wrapper.
Question: are raging, elitist statists the only ones allowed to grow an awesome beard?
MANBERNKRUG?
akak asked:
Not at all.
http://etc.usf.edu/clipart/58100/58163/58163_schurz_carl.htm
Fascism. NOT Communism. Get the basic definitions correct.
Under 100 IQ plus over 130 IQ would be a majority so shouldn't the system be set up to benefit the majority?
Wasn't much resting amongst either group under USSR or Mao. Much more likely to be in a labor camp then resting.
The ones who did not join the communist.
Thoughtful analysis. Rare among guest posts sometimes ;P
I would add the following note. State Marxism failed utterly to solve the fundamental problem of theoretical Marxism, namely, the alienation of labor. Work still sucked, it still was exploitive, it still was grossly inefficient, dehumanizing, etc.
Hence the old, old secret, that central planners on the right and left suck balls.
They tend to not only kill economies, they also do not even deliver on making work itself better, but in fact, botch the matter up even further!
And we wonder why smart people "go off the grid," eh?
Marxism is a stateless society... Your concept is wrong. Communism never existed, it's all socialism. In fact, communism is a thread to the stae as it is stateless... The only communists I know are The Smurfs....
FOFOA wrote the definitive work on this subject: http://fofoa.blogspot.com/2010/07/debtors-and-savers.html
Marx was right about the eternal class struggle, he just didn't understand the two classes, which is what lead to the world takeover by debtors in his name, then again in the name of resisting him.
Who's down with TPP?
There should be 500 + responses to this topic.
''The chief problem that Marxists face is their misidentification of the present economic system as free market capitalism. How can we meaningfully call a system where the price of money is controlled by the state a free market? How can we meaningfully call a system where financial institutions are routinely bailed out a free market?''
This is incorrect. The chief problem is that today's first world has a combination of cognitive dissonance and Stockholm syndrome. What you have had is State capitalism with varying degrees of control by Western governments through-out history which is well documented by economists like Ha-Joon Chang especially in books like:
http://www.amazon.com/Bad-Samaritans-Secret-History-Capitalism/dp/159691...
and: http://camara.ie/web/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/Kicking-away-the-ladder....
Additionally he has written about "free" markets in the most insightful manner in his most recent book. Here is how he begins:
Undoubtedly Marx and his ideas have their flaws but I'm not sure "oversimplification" is one of them(read Marx's criticism of Hegel). Regarding 'capitalism' he had no illusions and deserves not only to be read but to be embraced which is not to say held as some kind of prophet but more of an advisory voice.
Sounds like a little kid trying to get out of cleaning his room by telling his mother there is no objective definition of clean, and that true cleanliness doesn't exist.
The child gets a beating, and so should your author.
I junked because you fail to admit the obvious. Political definitions are open to interpretation whereas objectivity is Science's claim to fame and even there it is still open to scrutiny and falsification.
I guess you can turn a blind eye if you want but it doesn't mean that his criticism is invalid.
I junked him because he contributed nothing... whether correct or incorrect.
absurd rubbish.
Every once in awhile someone with a functioning mind who has taken the trouble to educate themselves writes something on here.
People here understand the vampire squid. The vampire squid has sucked the 3rd world dry, there are no more colonial resources to extract, and the squid has turned to the last victim available. The host.
Marx was very right about his projection of capitalism. His solutions, no better. And you are quite right that there has never been nor will be a free market. All politics/economics is just the exercise of power and leverage. And when one group gains too much leverage, collapse or violence is guaranteed.
At the grass roots level, of course, capitalism fails quite often. F'rinstance: http://www.news4jax.com/news/South-Florida-lifeguard-fired-after-saving-...
"Jeff Ellis, an Orlando-based company, is contracted by the city and paid to man the beaches, but only in the most populated spots. "
I don't consider your example a failure of Capitalism at all. A city government hired a grossly inept, inhumane (corrupt in my opinion) life guard services company as you can expect any government agency to do.
What the government does is Socialism or Mercantilism, the granting of corrupt monopolies using government force of arms. The Lifeguard company in question fired their lifeguard for "saving someone's life, he wasn't supposed to save" In a free market environment such a hugely useless "lifeguard company" would quickly go bankrupt after people realized how harmful they were. In a Mercantilist system like we have, government protects monopolies, probably sharing the taxpayer loot among crony friends and family connections.
The lifeguard company is doing some backpedaling after their policies got some bad press, but I doubt their contract is in danger, unlike the swimmers they are paid to not save.
Well of course humanity will be fucked over, its the human condition of a fallen race.
Capitalism will fail when most of the work is done by computers and robots. Societies cannot wait many decades for new jobs to appear through new innovations without collapsing before that.
Marx covered that.
And let me guess: his solution was .... Norway!
Yes, sitting on massive petroleum and natural gas reserves, and feeding off the stream of money generated by the sale of those resources, can (temporarily) fund, and ameliorate, a great many statist mistakes. Just as smoking crack (so I hear) can make one feel like master of the world --- for a little while.
You mean like a certain NA nation had before you all allowed it to be given all away to a handful of plutocrats for a pittance, and were left with naught but a mess and a whopping unpaid bill for the privilege, as the populace was deceitfully coaxed into debt slavery to make damned certain that any remaining dregs go to what you obviously consider the 'right sort of people'?
Hahaha! Honestly, give me an effing break already, willya? The unrecoverably indoctrinated choir you keep preaching to doesn't need anymore convincing than you do, and those of us who live the real world see right through every last one of the unbelievably thin arguments to which you are so fond of applying the subjunctive 'MUST BE'.
As I've said oh so many times before: facts are stubborn things...when Norway's MASSIVE SWF is wholly depleted, or when Norway has a national debt.... hell, the next time they run a deficit.... we can talk. Until then you and your woefully deluded ilk's whole 'temporary schmee-mensism' theory is just what it has always been
WISHFUL THINKING
Like anywhere else Norway may have 99 problems, but odious national debt ain't one.
After spewing lots and lots of words, you somehow STILL did not manage to even tangentially address the crucial point that I brought up, and have done with your narrow and cherry-picked example of Norway time after time: dipping into savings (even, or especially, when those savings consist of natural resources) to fund an unsustainable spending spree hardly proves the value of the socialistic/statist economic policies of a given government. Hurray for Norway! Now how about the "mixed-economy success story" of Iceland, for example? Funny how you consistently fail to address THAT nation --- or almost any other.
One could drive a train through the gaping holes in your "logic". But such is par for the course when dealing with diehard, disingenuous statists such as yourself.
As you well know, you truly disingenuous tea-towel holder, Iceland was attacked. And I've addressed your insipid 'point' (again, and again in fact), by pointing out its inherent pointlessness.
So sorry that it is so difficult for you...let me try it another way: just because you really really really really want something to be so, doesn't necessarily mean it is; especially when the facts don't back your fantasy up. LIKE THEY DON'T.
As I fully expected --- nothing but more arrogant bluster and irrelevant hot air.
But you would realize the idiocy of your constant and one-note harping on the "success" of Norway if you lived, as I do, under a government which HAD a huge gusher of petroleum-fueled wealth which is now well past its peak, with said government being forced to make increasingly hard financial choices and cut back on its former big-spending ways of 30 years ago, which were apparently subconsciously presumed would last indefinitely.
In addition to being an incredibly condescending prick, you really are quite a total idiot.
Your tragic tale of 'wherever forneverland' is so sad it brings a tear to my eye <sniff>. In case you hadn't noticed, over the past forty some odd years having your nation's wealth sold out from underneath you for pennies on the dollar doesn't exactly gain you membership into a club that is all that exclusive.
But what does it have to do with Iceland or Norway?
Again (and again and again, sheesh): Norway's Sovereign Wealth Fund is designed specifically for 'rainy days', IE. their reasonably well educated electorate know damn well the difference between infinite and finite, and, unlike those on your unfortunate magical mystery island, won't tolerate politicians who pretend that they don't. And it bears repeating that Iceland, as you well know you truly disingenuous tea-towel holder, was attacked.
Say, what ever happened to your Neverforeverland's SWF? Hmmmm?
And exactly where is this place, anyway? Does it exist outside of your teeny tiny little mind? If you see it as such an excellent example of a rebuttal, you're obliged to disclose, no? You're the one taking it out for a troll, after all.
You are truly an arrogant, infuriating, condescending son of a bitch. Trolldom incarnate. Intelligent discourse is impossible with one as close-minded, elitist and brainwashed so completely into the statist mentality as you.
I have given enough hints above, in combination with what you already know or can assume about me, that ANYONE with any knowledge of the world would be able to figure it out. But you insist on trying to make me explicitly divulge personal information, which I will not do. And actually, I hardly feel the need to validate myself to you anyway, being that you are such a complete jerk and asswipe. Fuck you.
PS: I do honestly and sincerely wish that arrogant monsters and enablers of statist evil such as yourself would drop dead --- I would feel not one iota of remorse stepping over (or on) your dead body in the street, particularly in light of the hundreds of millions who have been killed over the centuries as a result of the kinds of statist policies which you wholeheartedly advocate.
"...in light of the hundreds of millions who have been killed over the centuries as a result of the kinds of statist policies which you wholeheartedly advocate."
In the last four decades Norway and Iceland invaded the what now? tha f did I miss....Is this about the baby harp seals? Is this the horrific slaughter of innocents that is hurting you so much, deep down inside your skeevy little heart? If so: yeah, sure I get it. Ick. Damned socialists.
As for your 'neverforeverland': how can you possibly misconstrue that as me prying into anything, considering the fact that you're the one who dressed it up, put some lipstick on it, brought it out and paraded it around as if it was some sort of mathematical certainty...look, do I stutter or something?
PS: I do honestly and sincerely wish that troglodyte homunculi and enablers of statist evil such as the kind you espouse would just grow up. And whether or not you are capable of admitting or perceiving it you yourself do in fact promote a brand/degree of 'statism' and mixed economy, despite ironically deriding 'the very idea' in almost every single post that you regurgitate---I'm not absolutely certain that if I saw you on fire on the other side of the street I would cross to piss you out; perhaps if I had had a few beers...in light of the hundreds of millions who have been killed over the centuries as a result of the kinds of statist policies which you coldy advocate as you deliberately, repeatedly and grossly misrepresent anything you consider even marginally outside the narrow realm of the stunted vision to which you so desperately cling.
For icing on the cake: you call yourself a Christian while howling for my blood like a rabid dog? Hahaha! What a berk.
Marxism coming back? ROTFLMAO...... it never left but has only accreted and solidified it's hold here in the land of the serfs.
Word:
The 10 PLANKS stated in the Communist Manifesto and some of their American counterparts are...
1. Abolition of private property and the application of all rents of land to public purposes.
Americans do these with actions such as the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution (1868), and various zoning, school & property taxes. Also the Bureau of Land Management (Zoning laws are the first step to government property ownership)
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
Americans know this as misapplication of the 16th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, 1913, The Social Security Act of 1936.; Joint House Resolution 192 of 1933; and various State "income" taxes. We call it "paying your fair share".
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
Americans call it Federal & State estate Tax (1916); or reformed Probate Laws, and limited inheritance via arbitrary inheritance tax statutes.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
Americans call it government seizures, tax liens, Public "law" 99-570 (1986); Executive order 11490, sections 1205, 2002 which gives private land to the Department of Urban Development; the imprisonment of "terrorists" and those who speak out or write against the "government" (1997 Crime/Terrorist Bill); or the IRS confiscation of property without due process. Asset forfeiture laws are used by DEA, IRS, ATF etc...).
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
Americans call it the Federal Reserve which is a privately-owned credit/debt system allowed by the Federal Reserve act of 1913. All local banks are members of the Fed system, and are regulated by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) another privately-owned corporation. The Federal Reserve Banks issue Fiat Paper Money and practice economically destructive fractional reserve banking.
6. Centralization of the means of communications and transportation in the hands of the State.
Americans call it the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and Department of Transportation (DOT) mandated through the ICC act of 1887, the Commissions Act of 1934, The Interstate Commerce Commission established in 1938, The Federal Aviation Administration, Federal Communications Commission, and Executive orders 11490, 10999, as well as State mandated driver's licenses and Department of Transportation regulations.
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.
Americans call it corporate capacity, The Desert Entry Act and The Department of Agriculture… Thus read "controlled or subsidized" rather than "owned"… This is easily seen in these as well as the Department of Commerce and Labor, Department of Interior, the Environmental Protection Agency, Bureau of Land Management, Bureau of Reclamation, Bureau of Mines, National Park Service, and the IRS control of business through corporate regulations.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
Americans call it Minimum Wage and slave labor like dealing with our Most Favored Nation trade partner; i.e. Communist China. We see it in practice via the Social Security Administration and The Department of Labor. The National debt and inflation caused by the communal bank has caused the need for a two "income" family. Woman in the workplace since the 1920's, the 19th amendment of the U.S. Constitution, the Civil Rights Act of 1964, assorted Socialist Unions, affirmative action, the Federal Public Works Program and of course Executive order 11000.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries, gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equitable distribution of population over the country.
Americans call it the Planning Reorganization act of 1949 , zoning (Title 17 1910-1990) and Super Corporate Farms, as well as Executive orders 11647, 11731 (ten regions) and Public "law" 89-136. These provide for forced relocations and forced sterilization programs, like in China.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children's factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.
Americans are being taxed to support what we call 'public' schools, but are actually "government force-tax-funded schools " Even private schools are government regulated. The purpose is to train the young to work for the communal debt system. We also call it the Department of Education, the NEA and Outcome Based "Education" . These are used so that all children can be indoctrinated and inculcated with the government propaganda, like "majority rules", and "pay your fair share". WHERE are the words "fair share" in the Constitution, Bill of Rights or the Internal Revenue Code (Title 26)?? NO WHERE is "fair share" even suggested !! The philosophical concept of "fair share" comes from the Communist maxim, "From each according to their ability, to each according to their need! This concept is pure socialism. ... America was made the greatest society by its private initiative WORK ETHIC ... Teaching ourselves and others how to "fish" to be self sufficient and produce plenty of EXTRA commodities to if so desired could be shared with others who might be "needy"... Americans have always voluntarily been the MOST generous and charitable society on the planet.
I sometimes wonder if the deal struck during the Reagan administration was: "We give up". "You tear down the wall to give us the political victory and together we will cooperate on converting the world to one world government under Zio-Communist (Russian style) rule".
Nah, we got the Saudis to flood the market with oil, and suckered them into Afghanistan.
As nemesis of crony, kleptocratic, hubristic, monopolisitic capitalism; in its ultimate throws of financialised self celebration now beginning to smoulder like Vesuvius over sleeping Pompei. Not as new prophet of golden age of collectivist dawn renaissance. It would be a rerun of 1917!
And your attempts to hang the current corpocracy trend, pure product of US hegemonial Oligarchy abetted by European surrogates, notably in UK, is not a correct historical analysis. In the USA, the State does NOT control the means of production and distribution as Marxism proclaimed it should. Its the private sector that controls not ONLY those means as always (except for FDR new deal days), but ALSO the State and has morphed its so called republican decisions, from behind the curtain since Reaganomics days. The State belongs to the private sector; the very ones Marx stigmatised.
You have found the wrong culprit in your denouement of this "whodunnit". The smoking gun is private corpocracy held now on a globalist plane which makes nation-state control of their power practically impossible. If anything these private world oligarchies can manipulate elected governments made impotent, in total impunity.
We are in that supreme parody of republican Senate as depicted by Capra in "Mr Smith goes to Washington." Mr BIG runs the show.
Only this time it doesn't look like it will finish well.
This is bad political analysis and feeds the already MSM manipulated, simplistic reasoning of skewed knee-jerked populism.
Don't resuscitate the ghost of MArx, your bogey man, to disculpate current capitalistic carence and its root chimera the free market.
My relatives, who are probably fairly representative of middle America, don't care a bit about corporatism, fascism, marxism, economics, demographics etc. They are stunningly ignorant of the world and the political process and really just care about who is giving them stuff!
There's a rumor going around that "Obama is going to give everybody $1000 before the election". When I say that Obama can't give anybody anything because only Congress can pass legislation that grants money they get that special look of the truely stupid who think they are clever and tell me he's going to do it anyway.
Nothing really changes in human nature. As long as the ignorant masses are granted a pleasing level of bread and circuses (Big Macs, iPhones and Reality TV in modern terms) they will vote for the guy who is seen to grant the most goodies. That's why this election will be an uphill struggle for the android Romney.
So Karl Marx (lifelong defender of democracy, suffrage, humanities education, civil liberties, and a free press) equals Stalinist gulags?
A neocon is a neoliberal with no imagination, and a libertarian is a neoliberal with no money.
Generally I'm a "class clown" around these parts yet I feel an urge for sober discourse here for some reason. What you wrote is harsh but not without some truth.
I wish Americans would just read more William James and less political theory at this point.
Pragmatism.
He was a very bad philosopher who didn't understand economics and believed that centralisation, control, revolutionary violence, and dictatorship could create prosperity.
lol, that says it all. AS philosopher he opened a new frontier before anybody else. Your resumé is too shallow to merit any further comment.
He is a kid. I give him merit for opening the subject up for discourse.
It will keep coming back in the years ahead.
compassionate yes, disproportionate in his merit?
"Is Marxism Coming Back?"
Socialism rules since long, for the finance industry, that is. The bankster keep all profits, but if there are losses, they are socialized. Marx would be thrilled.
Since I was is college in the 90s our political philosophy class usually centered arguments around Star Trek : TNG. The society portrayed in the show was the Marxist dream. A post capitalistic society reborn from the ashes of war brought about because of greed.
Money was abolished, so somehow greed was abolished and everyone worked towards the common good. Nobody starved because the replicator could create matter from energy, and due to dilithium generators, there was abundant clean energy. No more fossil fuels, no more pollution. Somehow, nobody was obese and nobody overindulged. There was no lust for power and your status if life was prett much determined by the results of your centrally administered test.
I never saw if they talked about replicator rations, or if you could just replicate diamonds and lobster all day long. Life on Earth was never a big plot point of the show.
What was a big plot point was the establishment of a powerful military complex, like our previous socialist empires. Becoming a part of Starfleet was the goal of everyone, because Starfleet took care of you from cradle to grave. The starship became the symbol of protection, disguised as a means of exploration.
It was always the Ferengi (Jews), Klingons (Blacks), or Romulans (Chinese) causing problems for the whites because they had not accepted the idealism of the Federation.
marxism will get its chance, revolution and change is on the horizon.........its all in platos republic............
This is all so completely silly. Marxism is a social philosophy that describes certain everpresent conflicts in economies/societies.
The chief problem that Marxists face is their misidentification of the present economic system as free market capitalism.
Complete nonsense. It doesn't matter one bit what the current economic system is, because no one apparently has the courage to keep the discussion focused on Marxism. The problem is that in the USA, people are so irrationally fearful of talking critically about the (non-existent and widely asserted) "capitalist" system here that Marxist thought has been mislabeled and misunderstood by the media and political classes. Mr. Aziz is no exception. Even though he believes he's an authority on the subject, he makes the most elementary mistake here: "working classes united will overthrow capitalism and establish a state run by and for the working classes."
Marx's communism was STATELESS. It was a form of social anarchism in which there IS NO CENTRAL AUTHORITY guiding economic decisions, markets, criminal justice, foreign policy, etc.
"Communism" has been re-defined as "centralized State ownership and management of the economy," because in every historical example of the purported attempt to create a communist society, it was driven by totalitarian State power. This is a fine redefinition, justified and appropriate, but to *pretend* that Marx was longing for a powerful central state guiding the economy is to either TOTALLY MISUNDERSTAND his concepts or to INTENTIONALLY MISSTATE his objectives.
So which is it in this case? Does Aziz completely miss the point of Marx's work, or does he intentionally mislead the reader?
As for communism, what the hell, it's obviously not any *threat* to the well-being of the humans on Earth.
It makes one wonder, why even after 80 years of communism failing to make any progress towards dominating the world or enslaving the rich or whatever it is that makes it so SCARY, Americans are still so terrified of it that it cannot even be discussed without "opponents" INSTANTLY resorting to personal attacks, irrational claims, and bizarre contrafactuals.
If I take Marx's aims at face value, it is true he wanted to create a stateless society with no central authority.
How did he want to do that? Revolution, followed by the the dictatorship of the proletariat.
In other words, he wanted to use the mechanisms of centralisation, violence, force and economic planning. That's Wolfowitz logic; you don't create a stateless society through a powerful, violent and dictatorial state (just as you don't spread democracy with bombs).
He didn't seem to grasp how easy it was to abuse his ideology.
Yeah, well, you think Christ would've predicted the Crusades?
For a philosophy that poses no threat it sure has killed an awlful lot of people.
Idiotic. Philosophies don't kill people. If you understand logic, your claim is a total category mistake.
If I were interested in quibbling along that line of reasoning, we could go back and forth about how "capitalism" kills millions every year.
Dumb dumb dumb.
How many people has Stalin starved to death under the principle of communism? 14 million How about Pol Pot? 20 million. Or maybe Communism has a redemeemer in Mao....nope 45 million. Communism is responsible for more deaths than anything resembling capitalism.
Based on such absurd principles, would you agree that "Christianity" has blown up a few abortion clinics?
My guess is you never read the communist manifesto. Should I provide a link or would you just like a few lines?
Here's a good one:
The immediate aim of the Communists is the same as that of all other proletarian parties: Formation of the proletariat into a class, overthrow of the bourgeois supremacy, conquest of political power by the proletariat
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. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization 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 obligation 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 labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, etc.
That was a simple question. You're afraid of an honest discussion. I hadn't previously believed you were stupid, but if this isn't stupidity, your indoctrination must have been INCREDIBLY powerful.
Your superior intellect is evident in your need to validate yourself through insults.
now youre just being rude cos he kicked your ass.
Every Marxist country that I can think of ended, or began with firing squads, mass murder, forced starvations, the gulag system with untold numbers of innocents imprisoned in death camps.
This is not really up to debate, it is simple historical fact.
Yet here on ZH we have the greatest fans and defenders of Communism/Socialism/Command economy. And all you Marxist cheerleaders mock ridicule and loathe any mention of liberty, free market, freedom of choice, private property.
All I can say is thank God we have so many guns considering what is in your hearts...
Instead of lining us up against a wall we can laugh at you idiots!!
Please provide me a list of countries that did not end or begin with firing squads, mass murder or starvation. (and don't forget the new world was founded on genocide)
You really are deluded. Or just stupid.
Yeah maybe the new world was founded on genocide as you say, but it was not founded on "self-genocide."
IOW, the retards, idiots and imbeciles who supported Marxism/Leninism, are also the same mind-dead vegetables who also quickly ended up in a Gulag and up against a wall getting shot, probably while protesting their true devotion to the revolution.
BTW, kind of self-defeating of you to mention the 'founding of the new world' ? What does that mean?
So I am trying to scan through all of Western European history and American history (South American history I consider more of a basket case) and I can't find any genocide, mass murder, of the SELF-MURDER of the kind that is Stalinism. England murdered the Irish, but they considered them subhuman, targetting them for extermination, and that being the case it's up to the Irish to defend themselves, flee or die, kind of like your Indians hm?? I consider Ireland put up a better fight than your gang.
Killing your enemy is war, being killed by your own government is something else, something Communist about it eh Comrade?
Ireland had access to equal technology, and didn't have entire villages wiped out by a small pox infected blanket. The history of western civilization is the history of war and conquest. Why is this so hard to grasp?
It doesn't make a difference which ism or crusade it was done under.
Well, there was ancient Egypt. One of the earliest "civilizations" we have good records of, and it was an entire empire of slaves to the Pharoahs.
The early New World Spanish and Portuguese colonies were pretty shitty, too. They were comparable to Stalinist Russia in terms of brutal exploitation and murder of the settlers, just hecka lot smaller. They also had access to a lot of imported slave labor that the Stalinists didn't have, so they had another group to soak up some of the violence.
Both examples were also completely non-Marxist, non-communist, and non-revolutionary. Same shit happened in a LOT of places.
Prole, you are on a roll.... keep it coming...
Did you get your history and political-economy education from comic books?
PS Look up the Cathars and Hugenots for a start....
"Max the 2000 year old Mouse" I am thinking...
Not Cuba, though. Did you forget that one, or do you not consider it communist? Or could you perhaps have made a mistake?
Holy shit you ignorant fuck. Comparing a few misguided abortion clinic bombers to an ideology that KILLED 50 MILLION PEOPLE is so absurd you are either ENTIRELY SICK IN THE HEAD or a COMPLETE FUCKING IDIOT.
Which is it I wonder.
Exhibit 1: the personal attacks, because it's too intimidating to permit big scary ideas to be discussed.
What are you talking about? Your first response started and ended with personal attacks.
Nah. Claiming that "philosophies kill people" really is a stupid mistake to make. No one has EVER been killed by a philosophy. (And Christianity has NOT blown up any abortion clinics, although I suppose if I thought the way you do, I might think it has.)
You were exhibit 1 for the "irrational claims" bit.
Do whatever you have to do to prevent that big scary IDEA you hate so much from being discussed. It's not like folks can't see what's happening here.
But they grow beyond philosophy when the become functioning political power. Nobody would look at the history of the Catholic church plundering the Americas philosophy. Nor Mao's actions philosophy. Philosophy is just the sales pitch for action. The WMD and yellow cake of it's day. But behind the idea, lies the executor of power, whether it be Stalin or the Pope-and the executor of the power determines the actions.
The abortion clinic bomber is just a true believer that wandered of the reservation and acted alone, a true believing zealot, who ended up being too much of an idiot to be usefull.
Now you are just being silly and parsing words. If you want to be technical all those deaths were caused by a people who embraced the philosophy of communism.
As far as being afraid, I can assure you the only fear I have in life is for the future of my children with what is about to come . But I help mitigate that fear by teaching them to think critically and to question anything that is being fed to them. They are also pretty self reliant as well familiar with a range of weapons.
all those deaths were caused by a people who embraced the philosophy of communism.
There are competing issues, here, but you're overstating the importance of the belief-systems in looking at Stalinist Russia.
The early "problem" was centralized command (and plunder) of the rural areas by people who didn't understand anything about the logistics of food production. That's got nothing to do with Marxism (the philosophy) and a lot to do with a very poorly constructed "communist" economic system. Murdering and exiling people doesn't produce wheat. (Just like selling insurance doesn't provide health-care.)
It WAS NOT THE CASE that tens of millions of Russians "embraced" Marxism, or worked to implement communism. They were threatened by central power and had no effective means to resist. Misguided notions of how to force them to submit did most of the early damage.
Stalin and his party were not Marxists, they were just another group of tyrants. There's ALWAYS someone ready to shoot people if it puts some money in the pocket or food on the table. Most of the Stalinists hadn't read Marx, just as most of the SS hadn't read Mein Kampf.
Would you attribute a philosophy to the American people when "we" invaded Vietnam, too? Which philosophy is it that we embraced that led to that engagement?
I reject the premise of the question. In a "democratic" society if the nation is not invaded then the populace have to be tricked into war by some "threat". In a command and control society there is no such subtleties. They just take you to war.
The bottom line is there will never be any pure model of any "ism" because there will always be a body of people who will corrupt it. There will always be a group of people who want to exercise power over another.
We had a standing draft. Orders were given, the soldiers went.
Much later, Nixon even proudly announced that he would not be swayed by public opinion, because he somehow knew that the majority of Americans were completely committed to the war.
Blunderdick, you have not made a single valid point on this thread, probably in your entire ZH tenure. Your posts are peurile, arrogant, insulting, vaguely crafty in a sophistic manner.
In other words you are a fucking dick-head, with nothing of any substance to say whatsoever.
And as for your little butt-buddy troll partner, yeah I get it, Stalin, the pope, same thing I'm sure bro!!
Thank you for your candor. I'm delighted that I'm unconsciously able to generate such anger and hostility in your adorable little mind. I look forward to seeing you raise your own substantive point sometime in the future.
Sorry dude, in the death toll category RELIGION is the reigning undefeated champion, 10,000 years running. No ISM has ever come close.
Communism is responsible for more deaths than anything resembling capitalism.
___________________
Could it be provided a body county for capitalism?
AnAnonymous asked:
It would be easier to provide a strawsman duchy for AnAnonymousism.
Blah, blah, blah. What we need is a serious dose of go-to-jailism
'Frogmarchist'
Put all the blue beards in jail; including those ghosts of Karl and Frederick. While we are at it condemning facial hair of totalitarian philosophers why not include Nietzsche as well; he had a superbly wicked, anti-dialetical yet radical mustache!
Haha, Nietzsche now that's a guy who even deserves less to be called a philosopher than Marx...and i say that as a man who walked (quite literally) on his path.
The dreams of Frank Marshall Davis (big Marxist) the president's, Barak's, real father.
See the "Dreams From My Real Father" DVD
Anyhow my Human Geography teacher suprised the crap out of me today when he agreed that you have to question the mainstream media, that the TSA is the NWO and that Turkey and NATO are supplying the destabilization forces into Syria. Fuckin "A" the Globalists are flaunting the takeover publicly now. Daammnnn!
Yes, indeed, teachers are waking up and they are disturbed by what they are being forced to do to remain comfortable slaves, with a guaranteed government pension. I know quite a few.
It is not that many of them do not know their situation, only that they are afraid to do anything about it.
IMO, at some point this too will boil over.
Teachers? teachers are the ones pushing marxist.
if FMD was his biological father Im Santa Claus. that manchurian commie homo is the product of a test tube cocktail from a genetic lab. the entire hawaii-kenya dialectic is false as well. truth far stranger than fiction.
Free markets give the little guy a voice ! When ladies gossip over the backyard fence on wash day .... Proctor & Gamble pays attention ! Monedas 1929 Comedy Jihad Socialism Is "Riding Dirty" On The Little People
Maybe I get confused between what Marxism is and what Marx wrote in the "Communist Manifesto". I see nothing in the Communist Manifesto that says anything about Stalinist or Maoist communism, which is all about eliminating all of the people who are capable of critical thinking/challenging them and then equally subjugating most of everyone else under the tight control of an oppressive oligarchy.
The Communist Manifesto was all about making the proletariat unhappy about their current situation, giving them a vision where the proletariat shared in the power and then plotting a path for overthrowing those currently in power... typical community organizer B/S for putting himself (or his masters) in power by USING the oppressed as cannon fodder. As was later shown, there never was any intention of sharing power with the people/proletariat (the same could be said about the US Declaration and Constitution ... only wealthy land owners had factual access to power). How many dead Ukranian farmers and how many dead Chinese intellectuals constitute the required evidence?
So what are the principles of this Marxism of which you write?
1/ Dialectic conception of History, the inevitability of the overthrow of capitalism by the working classes (Narrative Marxism)
2/ Central economic planning.
3/ Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
4/ Class consciousness (Negation of individualism)
A deterministic view of history; that has been proven wrong, aka Dictatorship of the proletariat to permit the dissolution of state itself. The uncertainty principle still rules man.
What riles anti-marxists is not that he said what he said as philosopher. It's that he dared to defy the Oligarchs by proclaiming the violent revolution as inevitable, deterministic solution. History's finger. Even Voltaire who destroyed both the church and royalty used dersion to achieve his aims not violence. Now this new nemesis of the bourgeois order promoted the use of the naked blade, as a natural extension of French revolution violence.
The use of the naked blade worked well in creating stable, prosperous, egalitarian societies, didn't it?
nope, don't bend my words; those are not MY views, those were HIS, and I said they were proven wrong. You have a chip on your shoulder about his violence and deterministic bend of mind. I don't approve of his violence but that is monday morning quarterbacking! In those times he felt the same rage as Victor Hugo and Charles Dickens about the human condition imposed by nascent capitalism on the masses. And it translated into his ideology.
You are that very category of person who I mention who taints his philosophical analysis, which is original and brilliant, with his ideological weakness. As a pollitical commentator you should have learnt better after all these years from all that literature which has disected Marxist legacy into all its components.
Your analysis stays slanted as you have an agenda : downgrade Marxism to UPGRADE that OTHER chimera the "free market", and its theoretical, iconistic proponents the US capitalists; whose current demise fills you with NOSTALGIA for a "false" paradise lost.
I prefer a more balanced approach, that gives both the devil and the pioneer his due. And I don't adhere to ANY chimera.
A Marxist couldn't stop the dialectic even if his class consciousness required it...
BTW / whatever our differences, hats off to you for writing this at age 25! You are way ahead of the curve and its good to see someone with ideas and independent mind at that early age! Bravo!
I think actually what riles the anti-Marxists was his political career with Engels. The fact is, as a philosopher, he was OK, as a politician, he was just another lying scheming manipulating power-seeking bastard.
He BECAME the social-climber that he blamed for most of society's problems when he realized that his "gospel" wasn't going to deliver the proles to his "brilliantly-conceived" paradise on Earth.
The failures were (in order of importance): the man, the implementation, the political tactics.
The public can be very ignorant and that my friend is how Marxists come in to power.
Is Marxism coming back ? It never went away !!! Monedas 1929 Comedy Jihad People Never Stopped Farting .... Neither !
I don't care what you call it. When you give a private bank the monopoly to create money, and the government is paid to look the other way even, in the case of serious fraud and racketeering, things will not turn out well for most people.
We have to an answer to crony capitalism other than Marxism. Come on!
One of reason the USSR was let collapsed during the Perestroika is because some of it's leader understood they could be way more corrupt in a capitalist sytem.
Very good. Putin certainly understood this.
One thing that would be cool coming back are those beards!
Marxism means the Party bosses keep money, power and all the pretty young sexy pussies to themselves in USSA and China. No, thank you.
thats monarchy!
Is Marxism Coming Back?
Well, only if doing so will benefit the upper 1/4 of 1%. Let's call it Neo-Marxism. So I would say: most likely.
Q: Where do political refugee flee to in a politically globalized world?
So with examination of the ways that capitalism and marxism have both failed in the long run, I have to believe we can come up with ways to counteract the negatives of each in a way that can create a fair and sustainable economic system. The problem, of course, is that change becomes next to impossible in a corrupt world.
The real modern day adherents of Marx are pushing for participatory economics, not the damn Khmir Rouge.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-xbjITEZj0
Marx's opponents and proponents have one thing in common: they haven't read his books and they're totally clueless.
The few people (mainly academicians) who've made the effort to read and understand works like Grundrisse and Kapital - most have huge respect for the guy. For the rest - one-liners are enough to summarize his whole body of work: "he dun simplifies history" or "planned economy, that's yer problem". Piss off and educate yourself.
I didn't have to read much of Marx to know what he was about, or to have tremendous respect for the guy. Who else can say that their ideas directly resulted in the deaths of over 50 million people? That's someone to be reckoned with, all right.
Where does that leave Jesus?
PS. I like comments that start with a proud proclamation of the posters' own dimwitted ignorance.
If you can't tell the difference between Marx and Jesus, then I definitely feel bad for you.
They were both disillusioned jews with beards and bad haircuts. Its an easy mistake to make.
I'll take corprotocracy and the militay industrial complex/war machine for 500 Alex.
What philsophical madness has killed more in the last century than any other?
How exactly is Marxism coming back if the World is moving away from equality rather than towards it?
What you see out there is the other statist political theory, Fascism. Both Marxism and Fascism are big on centralised control of the means of production, but at least the former aims at equality of outcomes (even if somewhat naively), while the later is all about the many working for the good of the few.
As for Capitalism, in the absense of true Democracy (i.e. proportional voting - all the rest just leads to corrupt political duopolies) and a strong, independent judicial system, since the payout of fixing the rules of the market under those conditions is always better than the payout of improved efficiency and competitiveness, it will always degrade into Fascism as a vicious-cycle is created where those with the most capital deploy it to buy rule-setters and rule-enforcers, thus accumulation capital faster, thus having ever more capital to pay for the rules to be changed or enforced for their benefit.
What you see all around you in the likes of the US, UK and most of the EU is the end-game of Capitalism within flawed Democracies.
Not the end game for capitalism. It's the end game of the current iteration of marxist central planning done by committees of the parasitic central banker ruling class who thought they could keep the masses satiated using perpetual debt and fiat trickery. Result? Same destruction of wealth and civil society via massive misallocation of resources, just as surely as if it were done by a committee of communist central planners.
What we're seeing is not free market capitalism, it's an economic Freakshow. Martin Armstrong recently responded to the current rampant financial fraud and manipulation going on, such as Liborgate, by pointing out that these are not an anomaly. That it's silly not to think this is how things have always been done by the central bankers controlling the state regulators. We are only seeing it now because the wheels are coming off.
Naturally, Marxists are going to label the current failure by central bankers as a failure of free market capitalism so they can roll out their stupid ideas again. Namely, that you can get something for nothing by taking it from somebody else. Marx was a racist who never worked a day in his life.
I think you're confusing Marxism with Social Democracy. That's from Engels, not Marx.
The closest there ever was to implementing Marxism was the Soviet Union and the Eastern Block countries and those got stuck in the Revolution of the Proletariat state.
There is not and never was any country which achieved Communism as per Marx's definition of it.
Social Democratic theories, on the other hand, are what underpins things like higher taxes for the rich and the social safety-net.
I suggest you read more books rather than get your information exclusivelly from American neo-conservative websites.
Holy Fucking Shit. If you think Marxism is about "equality" then you are really fucking stupid.
There are exactly two types of people in Marxism: the politically connected (and thus fabulously wealthy, in relative terms), and the utterly indigent.
I suppose if you want to focus only on the utterly indigent, then sure, there is "equality" there. But that would be a retarded thing to do, wouldn't it?
The purpose of Marxism is to achieve Communism which is an utopia where everybody is equal. Marxism states that the path to achieve Communism is through a Dictatorship of the Proletariat.
Sounds to me that Communism, as Marx defined it (so not the bullshit use of the word by Eastern Block nations and neo-McCarthyists) is well-intentioned, though unachievable and unsustainable due to human nature.
What you describe is the result of the Dictatorship of the Proletariat in the real world, i.e. once the self-proclaimed representants of the proletariat get power, they keep it and abuse it for personal good (surprise, surprise).
Fascism, on the other hand, was and always has been a political theory where an elite mantains the levers of power and owns the means of production while the masses work for them.
In a separate comment on this thread you proudly state your ignorance of what Marism actually is.
Your anger at what is happening in America is understandable, but your ignorance is pitiable, you are merely regurgiating some half-rememebered factoids es Glenn Beck might have said.
I am in no way socialist/communist/left-leaning, but facts do exist and Marxism isn't what Fox News tells you it is.
I didn't proudly state my ignorance, fucknut. I merely observed that it is pretty easy to get down to the basics of what Marxism is about, for anyone who has critical thinking skills and a strong enough bullshit detector. There is a reason Marx wrote thousands of pages of bullshit, much of it quite reasonable-sounding: it's the elaborate hand-waving of an expert illusionist.
per usual, a brilliant post, Aziz
'our post modern capitalist/ democratic republic was predicated on established laws - required laws... given authority within the constitution et.el, period! the degeneration of past laws has undermined the sole cornerstone of america's humanistic providence. thus, the statism of a neo self-encumbered zeitgeist movement has hastily[?] brought about political rhetorical discourse being painted by 'modern-electorate expressionist' onto a chiaroscuro opaque canvas. however, the artist are not real... but imposters - sophistic panderers are they, in a surreal diorama of dichotomous morass?'
summary: "Ockham's razor"__ all is what it is, only when we understand the meaning of a 'Gilded Age'?
thankyou again :-))
First of all, Marx actually did describe financial bubbles and bailout through printing etc...but i leave it to his fans to discover his description in Book 2 of Kapital i believe. To be honset i can't get worked up over his definiton of capitalism since there also different ones on the right or classical liberal thought, much can be said about his theory of history and religious/ atheist philosophical tenets.
Secondly, do his economic disciples actually offer different solutions to the ones presented by our current set of central planners ? Not really. But the 'ideological' ones have some other social engineering ideas instead.
Our "current central planners" promote government-based solutions. Although there are certainly "Marxist disciples" who went in the direction of State-managed economy, there are others who did not, and would prefer to shrink (or smash) the central State.
You'd probably have to talk to them if you wanted to hear their ideas. I'd suggest reduced consumption of finite resources along with elimination of centralized State authority. Most of our "resource conflicts" are based on maintaining authority-institutions that are not serving any beneficial purpose. Businesses can fail and "disappear," but when States fail, they start killing people.
You can kill a *State* without anyone being hurt. The USA is probably next to die, one way or the other, so the question is whether we're going to set the planet on fire so guys like Obama and Romney can play their little games and be well-paid at the rest of the country's expense.
You should check out 'titoizam' and Mondragon cooperative in Spain.
Liked the article. Marxist ideology never left. It's become embedded in warm, fuzzy redistributive policies. The policies are open ended and aim to achieve the same goals without violent revolution. Lately, it's just slid out of the closet, complete with de facto state run MSM.
The old money (monopoly) trusts made an unholy alliance with "progressives" like Woodrow Wilson to pay for creeping socialism through deficit spending and inflation in exchange for the monopoly of the monetary system through the creation of the FED in 1913. The old Money Trusts in America, eg. Rockefellars, "gave up" the oil monopoly in exchange and morphed it into a piece of the Federal Reserve Bank monoply.
Corporatism and Fascism are similar except corporations, such as the bankers, are calling the shots to the state in the former while strongmen, like Hitler, Moa and Castro, call the shots to the corporations in fascism. They all suuuck!
I call all central planning fascism because it has a more catchy ring to it and and because that's where the net effect seems to end up. There's always one sociopath that rises above the other sociopaths in central planning who calls the shots.
hahahaha ... if it wasn't for paranoia and xenophobia.... libertarian theology would have NOTHING to rely on.
corporatism = fascism. fascism is when the corporations own the government. communism is when the gov't owns the corporations. yes, there IS A difference and yes, it does MAKE A difference.
the inability for extremist rightwingers/fascists/libertarians to KNOW what they are and what they advocate for? ... well ....that's called DELUSIONAL SOCIOPATHY
You have convinced me Comrade!
What we really need to achieve equality and prosperity is politically enlightened, superior Leftists, like you Comrade, to point guns at us, shoot those of us you find personally unworthy (Shades of Che your demi_God) and then perpetually boss those of us you let live, around for eternity. Please tell me what to do, you are superior to other men, so please rule over us!
You can't complain that people call our system "free market", then turn around and call it "Marxist". That's just stupid. It's neither.
http://www.theblaze.com/stories/van-jones-describes-utopian-green-world-...
We should just all stop asking for pay .
Marxism isn't a "philosophy" is a tool like a hammer, used for a specific purpose, to transfer private wealth and assets to the state-for tranfer to more powerful individual people later.
Marxism will always be a threat whenever people have private assets and a "flexible" government.
Yes, since the "flexible" government will eventually funnel all the economic wealth up to the 1%, at which point the 99% will revolt and insist on Marxism.
The people who you are dealing with want to both loot and rebrand you.
Marxism doesn't merit all this attention .... we should be focused on giving Capitalism a chance .... at last !
Guest post: Zerohedge communist paranoia fest
Zen: What all men do? Seek
Hegal: What all men do? Think
Marx: What all men do? Work
USA: What all men do? Hope
PRC: What all men do? Save
IRI: What all men do? Pray
Of course marxism is back, it never really left. Theres a communist living in the whitehouse...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=igZG1_49Hd4
We are becoming like Germany in the 20's.......and will trend toward marxism or fascism. Take your pick.
Honest capitalism died long ago. It's not on the menu, and won't be for awhile.
Read Marx - Das Kapital - "Capitalism will inevitably form into Fascism"
It's all in there - capitalism didn't 'die' - it just did what it was always going to.
You just convinced yourself otherwise (or didn't know to begin with)
I understand the choices; but neither seem to be anywhere near the classical definition of what their inherent reality is: Marxist government usually turns into a dictatorship of one with a planned economy run by cronies and thieves who know nothing of economics. The current rendition of capitalism is an oligarchy-controlled planned economy run by the banks, their cronies in government and thieves on Wall Street. In either case the free market is nowhere to be seen.
....but as Marxism is supposed to rise from the collapse of Capitalism (Marx 101) - then we have never seen a Marxist Government.
The Soviet Union may have called itself 'Marxist' - but it never was. It was a Bolsheviek dictatorship.
Doesn't anyone study political history these days? - or does everyone now wait until FOX tells them what to say and think?
Pure pathology, so characteristic of our times (in centuries).
Capitalism, Marxism, free market and all similar abstract terms do not exist in real world. Those are just words, like love. Their use is meaningless unless described very precisely and anchored in reality in such a way that all discussing parties agree on it. Once we start (and we did long ago) discussing abstract terms without even knowing what they are, where everyone has his/her own ambiguous idea, its called pathology and results in infinite barking fest. Maps (our minds) ceased to be meaningful representations of their respective terrains (reality around each of us). We are trying (through communication) to connect these deformed puzzle pieces into a bigger picture. Its meaningless.
Philosophy was the historical basis for science, which resulted in raising the standard of living for the vast majority of the planet. Whether it's meaningless or not is simple opinion, but the social changes we're going to see over the next few years are going to be heavily influenced by how people try to solve their own problems. Government power peaked, and as it declines, there will be opportunity for the properly motivated to construct their own preferred lifestyles.
Should google or wiki 'titoizm' and Mondragon cooperative
Marxism coming back? It never left Hollywood or even skipped a beat among the Hollywood idiots.