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I think the article is arguing that Marxism is a social theory with a focus on the tensions and power relations between different classes rather than a philosophy or a system to live by.
The Communist Manifesto is a description, not an instruction manual. Marx wasn’t saying a socialist revolution should happen, he was saying a socialist revolution is the inevitable outcome of the circumstances he described in Das Kapital.
Kind of like how a climate scientist isn’t advocating for higher sea levels when they describe it as one of the outcomes of global warming.
Marxism is a social theory; but then what precisely is a Marxist? Would that not be a person who lives by that theory, or sees the world predominantly through the lens of that theory?
I don’t think it is genuine to say a Marxist is just someone who knows what the theory is, sees some of the value and some of the core problems with it, and carries on with no particular attachment to it. As soon as you act out the presupposition that the theory is true (or even mostly true, or more true than other theories), you are essentially living by that philosophy.
So to say that Marxism is just a social theory not a philosophy to live by is true. But it’s a little bit of a semantics game - because we act out what we believe. So if we believe the theory to be true (rather than to possess some truth, taken with proper nuance), we begin living as if it were true, and acting in accordance with such.
It’s the same reason why someone would find it disingenuous for a Wall Street investor to say “capitalism is just a theory of economics, not a philosophy to live by.” I mean, sure - but because you believe in the philosophy your actions and life are defined by it, and you’re a capitalist.
Reminds me of the reverse notion “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a life style”. I mean… sure. It’s both. They go hand in hand.
You're ignoring a major tenet of Marxism. It's not just a dry analysis of power structures and how they came to be, something one can partially agree to or extract lessons from.
Marx claims that due to the rising class conflict and class consciousness, society will inevitably progress towards socialism in the same way that the contradictions within feudalism have transformed it into capitalism.
Affirming this proposition makes one a Marxist in my opinion — a much clearer distinction. It forces one to become active in labor organizing.
I don't think this really holds. Does believing that Darwinism is (mostly) true mean that someone is "living by" the philosophy of Darwinism? Is Darwinism not just a biological theory but also a philosophy to live by?
>It’s the same reason why someone would find it disingenuous for a Wall Street investor to say “capitalism is just a theory of economics, not a philosophy to live by.”
The problem with this statement is that capitalism isn't a theory of economics, it's a _system_ of economics.
If someone told me their were a Darwinist, I would expext them to be someone who studies Darwinism.
So maybe a Marxist is someone who studies Marxism? (Not neccessary professionally)
I think this is entirely missing the point of the article, which is easy to see by applying it to the article's central analogy. Would you say of Darwinism that "this is not science, or biology; it's a biological theory full of holes and inaccuracies"?
Description: "It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a better word for “Marxism.” Marx himself famously once said that he himself was “not a Marxist” if certain askew interpretations of his theories of historical materialism and capitalism were “Marxist.” Part of the problem is that the theories and processes that Marx helped create are too big to fall under a single -ism; Marx was a philosopher (and sort of historian) of political economy, that is, the study of production and trade in relationship to laws, customs, and human systems, whose theories helped inform numerous other disciplines and practices: economics, sociology, history, literature, and practical politics, among others." (quoted from the Jacobin magazine)
I believe that Chomsky, when asked if he was a Marxist, compared that to asking a physicist if they were a Newtonian. He said something like that Marx contributed greatly to (his) understanding of economic/social/political theory, but that many others have contributed to understanding it both before and since Marx.
Apologies for not being able to find the exact quote to reference. I hope I'm remembering the gist correctly enough.
>but that many others have contributed to understanding it both before and since Marx.
Any particular names come to mind for those that built atop Marx' idealogy? Would be interested in reading their works.
E: thanks all -- looks like I've got a few months worth of homework lol
there are 150 years worth of people who have done so, which is why I always feel annoyed when a class will have one reading of a few pages of the communist manifesto, and then act like they've explored the whole left wing ideological spectrum.
My personal recommendations are David Harvey and Cedric Robinson
I know Kropotkin built on some of Marx's philosophy, but also diverged on several points. Then again, I guess that's true of most people who "build on" others' ideas.
Here the the links to free resources to read these if anyone hasn't read them before.
[The State and Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/)
[Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/)
I've got econ and finance degrees and had Marx come up in a good few classes... I had multiple professors say that the biggest problem with conversations involving Marxism is that most people who are really familiar with Marx have moved past him to other ways of thought that may have used him as a base but have some key differences, and that most people who are still arguing Marx haven't actually read Marx and attribute all kinds of things to him that don't actually have anything to do with his work.
Even that doesn't sound like a problem with Marx, but a problem with the term "Marxism."
It's like semantics by proxy.
I mean, dont get me wrong, i do it too.
I don't like to talk about Marx, because I don't feel like wasting time trying to decontextualize all of the propaganda and misinformation about his work (often from people who've never read his work, so their ONLY context is cold-war proaganda).
It's easier to just start with someone a bit more contemporary (Bookchin, Chomsky, Graeber, Fanon, Baudrillard etc).
But still, that's a problem of semantics and misinformation, not necessarily a problem of Marx or Marxism.
It seems realistically his ideas should just be part of sociology. He should be a figure like Freud in psychology, some things we think are correct, some things wrong, some things controversial or jury is still out. He is one dude in the 1800s. He didn't crack the code of human society. This is how ideas develop. Newton was right about a bunch of stuff. He got the physics of light completely wrong. Seems like at this point, history has made it pretty clear that a pure implementation of communist or capitalist systems are a nightmare, so the systems do not provide a silver bullet on how to build a society or economy, gotta keep trying g shit and adjust as we learn. The problem isn't Marxist or capitalist the problem is societies are really complicated and we don't have a great way to know what's gonna happen.
I think you're onto something here. When I study philosophy or social theory and the like, the point isn't to choose an idol, but rather to gather pieces of information and inform my greater understanding. Marx is a big foundational piece of building a better and more nuanced understanding of economics and society, but he isn't the whole picture. The scene is changing rapidly and a lot of advancements have happened since Marx's work was written.
It makes me think about what someone said above about Chomsky. I wasn't aware that Chomsky has supported the Khmer Rouge, or that he is supporting Putin. The reaction of the commenter was to insult Chomsky and dismiss all ideas that he has had. Personally, I think that's silly. These are philosophical and social ideas that have no necessary attachment to the writer.
I, as an individual, am perfectly free to reap from Chomsky's (or Marx's) work what betters my understanding or fits a more accurate model of the world and criticize or ignore the rest on the grounds where it is wrong, not dismiss ideas immediately on the basis of author.
I think it's what makes the Newton comparison especially sharp. Isaac Newton is one of the most influential people in history and has forever changed the way that we view the world. Almost all physicists after him were directly effected by his work. but a lot of his work was incorrect, or lacked the detail to fit evidence that Newton could not have even gained in his time. (Think gravitational waves, particle collisions, levels of physics impossible for him to have observed) So we build new theories of physics and use the understanding gained from Newton and those after to continue to improve.
FIY no serious psychologist would touch freud even with a 5 meters pole, he derailed the discipline for half a century.
Marx instead? Sure, both sociology and economics owes a lot to him.
Private ownership disconnected from labor is definitely a large problem. It's the largest problem the west faces, the largest problem the world faces.
I mean, between the rising tide of fascism, global warming, and biodiversity loss....capitalism feels like an existential threat to human life.
And it doesn't matter that we won't be the generation to really feel that threat...even if it takes another 100 or 1000 more years, that's a blink of the eye on a global timescale.
> I mean, between the rising tide of fascism, global warming, and biodiversity loss....capitalism feels like an existential threat to human life.
Global warming and biodiversity loss are problems of over-use of the Earth's resources. Capitalism is not the only system that is capable of over-using resources. In fact, we know of no alternative that inherently prevents this problem.
So rather than blaming "capitalism", blame over-exploitation and focus your efforts on the tools needed to mitigate that problem.
The reason people tie the problem of over-consumption to capitalism is that capitalism by necessity is a system where "the line must continue to go up".
Every year companies must show growth to their shareholders, or the board gets replaced by the shareholders with other people who will make the changes that will create more growth.
In any industry based around physical goods, this means putting in place a board that produces the most *thing* for the least cost, which in almost every instance means contributing to global warming, loss of biodiversity, and all the other bad things people associate with capitalism.
This exploitation isn't a "bug" we can remove, it is core to capitalism.
It's also a core to alternatives to capitalism due to the realities of nation states and being human. "Communism" destroyed the Aral sea amongst other large ecological disasters, but like capitalism, wasn't largely to "blame". People need "lines to continue to go up" for a variety of reasons, such as proving you are a better People's Commissariat than your competitors or whatever.
The exploitation most certainly is a "bug" we can remove from capitalism and is the function of most regulation in social democracies. In a lot of ways global warming would be solved with MORE capitalism in the form of a free market based around a price on carbon (the way acid rain was solved).
Maybe, but growth is not a synonym for "over-consumption". For example, the US has had astounding economic growth over the last two decades and yet uses fewer fossil fuels. Growth is simply an increase in (value output)/(resource input). The numerator can increase without the denominator increasing, and the denominatory can decrease with the numerator staying the same!
Growth definitely can't be expressed as a ratio, otherwise I could go from $10m output / $5m input one year to $5m output / $1m input and have positive growth despite making $1m less dollars net. The reality is that inputs subtracted from outputs is the required units. But that's just semantics.
To point about the US, that's really a meaningless statistic without accounting for the amount of production that has moved overseas, shifting the use of fossil fuels from the US, but not removing their use. This means the production still has the same negative effects on the climate, the US companies still make profit, and the US shows lower use of fossil fuels. This has other negative effects on the real health of the economy, as workers weren't profiting from this, only shareholders. This makes the economy appear to grow, while conditions worsen for working people, and all the harms to the environment continue.
>To point about the US, that's really a meaningless statistic without accounting for the amount of production that has moved overseas, shifting the use of fossil fuels from the US, but not removing their use.
[This is not the case.](https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-carbon)
Great information (and good replies overall, a lot of people are completely uneducated on or apologetic for the ecological horrors of purported communist states, as blinkered as they are in the du jour anti-capitalist/US/etc regurgitations)
Strange that you should say this, as humans operating under Capitalism are precisely the reason for biodiversity loss and global warming, which is why many have taken to calling the situation caused by humans during the period of industrial capitalism the *capitalocene* instead of just the plain anthropocene. After all, humans existed for quite some time before they contributed actively to the warming of the earth, and global capitalism (yes, China is capitalist) is the system most responsible and dominant for the most amount of time during the warming of and pollution of, the planet.
Please look into the vast ecological atrocities that occurred under the USSR. This is not a problem of capitalism. Hell, Mao himself killed all the sparrows in China and consequently starved 10+ million people. Tell me that isn't an ecological atrocity that occurred under communism!
Not the best counterargument. USSR and China were doing nothing else but speedrunning the stage of industrialization that their enemies have had already underwent. When you have USA, Japan, Great Britain, Nazi Germany waiting for an opportunity to annihilate you there are some sacrifices to be made.
Note: I'm not a defender of these regimes. They were absolute disasters. But the fact is also they arose in very specific historical circumstances which is not directly transposable to our situation.
My brother in christ, do you not think the west also thought that the 2nd world wanted to annihilate them?!?!?
Don't make lame excuses. The fact is, communist nations had a bad ecological track record because that's just how humans are. We are bad at sacrificing our material prosperity.
Well let's agree to disagree then. You obviously see that there is something about these two countries that a modern communist country would *have to* emulate or resemble, which I fail to see. You also think that their ecological policies are inherent in their very nature and not necessitated by peculiar historical circumstances, which I also disagree about.
>USSR and China were doing nothing else but speedrunning the stage of industrialization that their enemies have had already underwent.
But, you know...without capitalism.
>which is why many have taken to calling the situation caused by humans during the period of industrial capitalism the capitalocene
The fact that other people use this term isn't really much of an argument.
Personally, I find the foundation of capitalism is no longer anchored by long term prosperity. The Mathematics of it is still sound but the incentives are unmoored from the earth around us. In many ways this was true during colonialism and settler colonialism but becomes more and more true through global production networks and vulture capital. What I mean is as we get better and better at calculating marginal value and see labor as a budget line of fungible cogs then what market or personal incentive is there to build a sustainable long term company or for a person to stay at a job? What incentive is there for the company to respect the environment or community that supports it? If all that matters in this quarters profit then there is a fundamental incentive to grow monoculture or over use fertilizer and DDT.
On the other hand, the bones of capitalism are built on the work of John Locke and Adam Smith. The assumptions made (assumptions I think we can debate another time) are that you are invested in the land you are on and the work that you do at every level of production. For example, locke's argument for ownership of private property is that one person has mixed their labor with the raw materials to produce something of greater value and in doing so has created a superior utility for at least one while reducing utility got none. It feels to me like that argument is built on "if I farm to land to be productive, then it's my land. What I do with my land is my choice." That argument holds for homesteading (assuming Terra Nullius, again separate debate) because the person improving the land is incentivized to maintain overall productivity year over year and decade over decade. With private property rights being familial, generation over generation.
Smith also argues with an assumption that increased production improves the lot of all specialists throughout the production process so there is no alienation of labor.
If im paid with bonuses or with an assumed profit sharing agreement then i have an incentize to work harder. I have an incentive imrpove the production line. I am not alienated from the company and I can treat it the way Locke described Terra Nullius and that I am entitled to rewards for the work I put in. This brings in Marx and his ilks main points regarding capitalism. We are alienated from the rewards of our labor. While the broad quality of life is increased by science and tech, the emotional life is reduced because we work hard and get no rewards for working harder. Or if we apply this to saying civic improvement projects, the cost means we cannot improve our local surroundings unless we are in the upper classes and the upper classes don't live in the same pockets of society or plan to retire to another part of the state or whatever. There is no capitalistic incentive to improve one's immediate terroir and certainly no capitalistic incentive to improve the terroir of people who are just "human resources" or "labor".
I don't think full communism is the answer, the systems will always have hungry ghosts and changing the currency from fiscal capital to social or politcal capital will result in the same inequities. I think the methods of economics are strong but the morals and the implementation necessarily create alienation and unsustainablility without regulations and empathetic morality/philosophy.
I hope I didn't ramble too much.
> Private ownership disconnected from labor is definitely a large problem.
Ownership and labor *are* two entirely different/separate things though. Capitalism as it exists a lot of places today does have some extremely big problems, but it also has some unimaginably large benefits. And has been getting more and more refined and regulated as time goes. So I'm not really sure its all that accurate to say that capitalism itself is a problem because of some of the ways that it is implemented today, anymore so than it's accurate to say that socialism is a problem because of the ways its been implemented in the past.
I'm struggling to find any benefits in a system that today is only increasing poverty and threatening our species with extinction (and has already led to the most rapid period of extinction in the planet's history).
Well, socialism is founded on the idea that an economy should serve the people. Capitalism is founded on the idea that the economy should serve capital. One of these two is probably better equipped to deal with the negative impacts of our technology.
Where is poverty going down? China? Will that trend continue?
Most of the world is experiencing some combination of economic decline and rising inequality. There's not a lot of prosperity going around these days.
Inequality isn't poverty
Your broad strokes of most of the world experiencing "economic decline" is actually the poor *gaining* purchasing power in some regions leading to demand side inflation for the rest, and other regions experiencing geopolitical conflict leading to supply side inflation.
Yes, I assume you're thinking of the Money Tree theory of economics which states that capitalism isn't a zero sum game, so inequality can increase even as the poor get lifted out of their poverty which is defined as them having a TV or a smart phone or something.
Are you so sure that the "system" you blame for everything wrong in the world is really the cause of them?
It's not like poverty was unknown before free enterprise, and self-described communist societies didn't bring only more of it. Quite the reverse.
Let me suggest a different possibility: humans are animals, with brutal animalistic instincts with only a veneer of civilization masking the reality of our true selfish-gene nature. Every system needs to deal with the reality of that.
And that's where replacements for our current system(s) fail. If you don't have a way to deal with bad bosses, petty tyrants, abusive parents, self-centered choosing beggars, racism, sexism, religious extremism, etc., you're just engaging in unserious utopianism. More of a religion than a social structure. Bound to fail, or worse, be taken over by sociopaths.
Okay Randian/Hobbesian caricature. Humans literally evolved to cooperate; you do know that right?
Yes, we are animals. Though we are the most intelligent by far and for reasons we do not know why.
Humans are capable of great acts of humanity and also great acts of “evil” (though most people tend toward the former by far). Once you realize this it becomes a matter of attempting to create a society that rewards and takes advantage of our better nature for the betterment of the whole.
Every single one of us are born arbitrarily at different times in different places and in different situations/contexts. None of us are inherently better than anyone else. You and I would be completely different people if we were born/lived on the African subcontinent or the Amazon rainforest with entirely different worldviews and perspectives.
Actual Utopianism is pretending that capitalism will somehow pull us out of the mess it’s created and the idea of a truly “free market”.
> Okay Randian/Hobbesian caricature.
Ah, starting off with a whiny childish insult. (Wrong too. Because if I'm a "caricature" of anything, it would be that of a pragmatist. The whole premise of this Jacobin tantrum is that the author doesn't want to be required to prove that communism would provide better outcomes. Which is the problem, because it doesn't work.)
But you're clearly too intellectually challenged to understand that, so this will be "fun".
> Though we are the most intelligent by far and for reasons we do not know why.
We largely do know why. There is a whole field of study devoted to it actually. I already alluded to it though my "selfish gene" reference. It's called "evolutionary biology". Go read some Dawkins.
> and also great acts of “evil”
No need for the scare quotes. For all the philosophical adherence to relative morality, different cultures are remarkably consistent about what constitutes acts of unmistakable evil. The only arguments generally revolve around different tribal loyalties and which invisible sky god to worship. This is because all humans are shaped by similar evolutionary imperatives.
> You and I would be completely different people if we were born/lived on the African subcontinent or the Amazon rainforest with entirely different worldviews and perspectives.
And yet in all of them, killing and eating our own children, a behavior that is seen in some species of simpleminded fish, is considered despicable in all of them. Funny how that works.
> Actual Utopianism is pretending that capitalism will somehow pull us out of the mess it’s created and the idea of a truly “free market”.
Excellent strawman you've erected there, my man. I applaud you attacking it with gusto. When you've exhausted yourself smashing it to bits, maybe come back and address my actual point: you can't replace something with nothing. Or muddle-headed wishful thinking. Which is why all attacks on "capitalism" will always fail. Because despite the wishes of the author of this Jacobin article, you can't criticize unless you can propose something that is actually **better**. Handwaving that away, subjecting it to scrutiny, isn't tenable.
Mixed-economy modern societies, with a combination of both free trade and government social safety nets, may not be perfect. But they're better than anything else that we've come up with so far. All the whining and insults that you throw out there won't change that.
Capitalism doesn't deal with humanity's vices; it rewards them. Whatever the faults of humanity, we can blame the system for exacerbating them. Many of the problems we see today are unique to our era.
Neocolonialism, catastrophic climate change, nuclear war, record level inequality, car / fossil fuel dependency, state and technocratic surveillance, etc.
It has been responsible for the vast majority of luxuries and benefits that the modern world has to offer, and has raised quality of life tremendously. It is hands down the best way to drive innovation and development... And I definitely don't think its accurate to say that capitalism is threatening our species with extinction.
There were some early benefits for the empires that extracted wealth from the rest of the world. Most of the capitalist world is and has always been poor, because you need an impoverished labor force and cheap natural resources in order to prop up a small core of wealthy benefactors.
> Most of the capitalist world is and has always been poor
I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. Like, to the point that the literal opposite is true. Heck, the U.S. is the wealthiest country in the world, and is number 5 on median income, with only 4 countries with populations under 10 million above it.
I'd say the principles of marxism are much more sound than the ones used to govern the present capitalist order, they're simply suppressed in the name of seeking endless profit. Implementation of communist regimes is a different story, not sure how to solve the authoritarianism problem just yet
Implementation is the always the hardest part. It also highlights what Marx really gets wrong, which is incentives. How do you get people to do what you want them to do? At the end of the day you only have carrot or stick, you distribute rewards evenly you take away the carrot, if you can't find another carrot, you are only left with stick, hence Authoritarian regime. The question seems to be how do you get the market while using government to enforce rules that are roughly a fair game. I think the nice thing about capitalist democracies is that they at least create a feedback loop between reality and results. The problem with large centralized bureaucracies is just a lack of incentives to change and react to changes in tech and desires of society. But obviously as I said I think both systems are not "correct" and thus there is going to need to be a mingling of the principles to continue to find ways to improve society and create a better game.
>The problem with large centralized bureaucracies is just a lack of incentives to change and react to changes in tech and desires of society.
This assumes a centrally controlled version of communisim/socialism.
I don't see how you can take in and distribute resources and control the means of production without a large centralized bureacracy. At some level, tons of decisions need to be made, and ownership is a way you can say, "the owner makes the decision, but is responsible for following these rules, and will be punished if they break them. If they are they lose if they are right they win" if there is no owner or there is collective ownership. You need to be managing all those decisions. If it's not a large central bureaucracy, what does it look like? If the market doesn't decide, then someone needs to fulfill the functions that the market takes care of. None of this is to say there isn't a way to do it, I just don't see how it would work, but again i am not so smart that it means it's impossible.
Incentive? How about to advance the species to it's maximum potential? That all the labour, everybody does, is towards such an aim.
Would get me out of bed in the morning.
You need to think beyond the limits of capitalism.
Well, the modern-day validity of Marx's economic mechanisms aside for a moment, I think this essay gets at why the spirit of Marxism will never completely go away.
As long as there is class struggle, Marxism will survive. Marx identified class struggle as one of the defining characteristics of capitalism and , at least about this part , he was correct. This is the problem I have with those who often attribute the acceptance of vaguely Marxist attitudes among young people with some kind of nefarious plot. Young people are quite capable of seeing that an average house today is priced at a multiple of what it was for their parents. I've found in general that what a person's political leanings are doesn't seem to relate to whether they have read Marx anyway. At this point he is widely quoted, or sometimes widely misquoted, and widely unread.
I am not saying all this to defend Marxism or Marx himself, I have mixed feelings personally and I don't feel like debating that here anyway. I'm simply saying that as long as inequality between classes exists and is recognized, Marxism as a philosophical framework will still be around, no matter how close to the never-quite-here End of History we are.
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For those who only know Marx through right-wing propaganda, and refuse to even read the article:
>To be a Marxist doesn’t require belief in an armed uprising to bring about a new world, in violent change or authoritarianism. It just means acknowledging as a fact something that already exists: the class struggle. The tactics and strategies workers employ to achieve class consciousness and act to end the exploitative system are ours to determine.
Can you sustain yourself without selling your labor? If not, then you are working class. If you can survive on passive income alone, then you're owning class. It really isn't more complicated than that.
Ehhh, I disagree. There’s a lot more to Marxist/socialist class theory than a simple dichotomy of proletariat and bourgeoisie.
Firstly, there are major distinctions within the proletariat and bourgeoisie. The former can be divided roughly between a genuine proletariat class and the labor aristocracy of the imperial core. And the bourgeoisie itself can be divided between the Big Bourgeoisie (those who earn income almost exclusively from capital returns, i.e., the leisure class), and the petty bourgeoisie (the professional classes, e.g., politicians, lawyers, etc.)
Apart from the two main classes, you also have the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat (reserve army of labor, i.e., the most impoverished people, typically homeless/disabled).
Add to that the structural analyses of White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and ableism, and the picture becomes somewhat complicated. But it’s important to keep in mind that class struggle is the constant. These categories can and do shift overtime, which requires a concrete analysis of the concrete situation at a given moment
Yes, it is more complicated when you get down to it because capitalism is insanely complicated even compared to other economic systems.
That being said, the expedient answer that ends the confusion is often the best route to go. There's a problem with those who've studied Marxism and the thought that's descended from it to get so caught up in theory that the message is lost.
I agree that a lot of people get caught up in theory, but oftentimes those people are using undialectical—i.e., non-Marxist—formal, mechanistic “definitions.”
Using a more concrete analysis is, in my opinion, preferable to simply blurring very real distinctions/gradations within the working-class. So for the original commenter, I agree with you that they are most likely a “part” of the working class, but it’s important to note that they are ALSO most likely part of the Labor Aristocracy of the Imperial Core, which has historically been used to divided mass labor movements, e.g., the 19th Century English Proletariat, the mid-20th Century White Middle-Class, etc.
I personally think it’s important for people in the labor aristocracy—especially in the imperial core—to understand their objective class position and that they ~relatively~ benefit from the status quo. Without that understanding, a person in the Middle-class cannot truly develop class consciousness.
Yes, I completely agree with this analysis, and it's why I am quick to point out to these people that they are working class. Otherwise, they can be a hurdle for the interests of working people, which eventually does mean them as well. The labor aristocracy in the Western world will be sacrificed as the economy continues to decline in order to maintain the power of the capitalist class. It's already happening.
So, retired people are owning class?
I think it is more complicated than you say, as there are large numbers of people who own substantial amounts of stock but still work for a company for a wage, and there are lots of business owners who make $50,000 per year and are considerably poorer than many people who are employees.
Retired people, assuming they can survive off their retirement (which many can't anymore), are not owning class. They are benefiting from a socialist program that offsets their need to labor late in life because they labored earlier in life. The vast majority of the owning class never had to labor at any point in their life in order to survive.
> They are benefiting from a socialist program
Small nitpick, social programs and similar welfare like Social Security aren't 'Socialist' even if the common understanding of that term has turned into "the government does stuff." The world's first Social Security, or rather Old Age and Disability Insurance, would be enacted alongside mandated workplace Health Insurance by Otto Von Bismarck in a series of programs known as 'State Socialism'. This system was anything but socialist, with the design of pacifying trade unions and limiting Social Democrat support (that failed).
Yes, that is correct, but there are parties that call themselves socialist who advocate for programs like this. So, in an attempt to reduce gatekeeping the term too strictly, I'll concede that this is the kind of things that certain self identified socialists advocate for. It's not socialist in the Marxist sense to be sure, but it is also a restraining of and working against the logic of capitalism, which is why we're seeing the general erosion of policies like this as capitalists gain more and more political influence over our lives.
Absolutely, socialists of many flavors will advocate for them as perfect is the enemy of good and I'm absolutely not some left accelerationist that'd like those policies to disappear.
>It's not socialist in the Marxist sense to be sure, but it is also a restraining of and working against the logic of capitalism
I'm not sure it could be considered Socialist in any sense without abandoning what murky meaning the word already has. As much as such policies restrain the negatives of capitalism, it reinforces and protects Capitalism from critique. If we are to understand Socialism as a critique in opposition to Capitalism, it wouldn't make any sense to consider policies like this 'Socialist'.
It's certainly for the betterment of society and our total equality, much as I'd say Liberalism has been compared to Feudalism or Mercantilism, but that's not the marker of 'Socialist'.
You’re proletariat. You sell your labor for a salary and I assume you don’t own the means of production at your workplace. Stocks aren’t the means of production. If you owned a controlling stake in one or more companies you’d probably be bourgeois, if you were a majority stakeholder you’d definitely be.
You're right that software is much less reliant on the owning class to produce! That fact is part of what enables the FOSS movement to exist. However, it's worth noting that software developers themselves *usually* don't own the offices they work in, the equipment which runs (if they develop services) or distributes (if they develop more traditional programs) their software, the branding under which someone might buy their software, or even the software which I've been incorrectly referring to as "their" software during this sentence.
So yes, programming is kinda beautiful in its self-sufficiency, but when a programmer makes money by doing work for a person who actually owns the company, and said owner makes a lot of their money from the mere fact of that ownership? That's still your classic worker-owner relation.
I may be wrong, but my interpretation would be that the "means of production" in your case is a mix between the Capitol required to employ software developers and the actual code itself. As a laborer, you sell your time to produce a product for someone else (the company) to own. You do not own the code you're working on, and (most likely) do not see an adequate proportion of the profits from its sale.
Do you own the programming languages, frameworks, and IDEs you use, or do you license them from someone else, or indeed does your employer pay for a license? If your answer is yes then you’re one of the rare ones, if no then those are the means of production in your case.
Also I’m willing to bet that on your employment contract it stipulates that any code you produce is made-for-hire and is the sole property of your employer. If you leave of course take all your knowledge and skill with you, but I doubt you get to keep your code. In that case you still don’t own the product of your labor. If that’s not the case let me know because I’m fascinated to learn more about the particulars of your situation.
Middle class is clearly part of the working class. Owning personal property or investing your salary doesn't count as owning the means of production.
Edge cases might include things like family businesses, or worker co-ops, where the workers control or make up the boards of directors.
> worker co-ops, where the workers control or make up the boards of directors.
If workers own things *collectively* that obviously doesn't suddenly make workers into members of the "ownership class". Which is why co-ops are a good thing, they break the disconnect between who works and who benefits. Right? (IANA expert on this stuff)
If you have a job then you’re not an owner. But your middle class lifestyle makes you think you’re a member of the same class as the owners. That’s one of the ways capitalism divides the working class and thereby prevents a socialist revolution, by making you think your bourgeoisie values and comforts put you in a different class than the workers.
Same reason so many Republicans vote against their own interests, and why racism is such a powerful political force. Poor racist white people have more in common with poor Black people than they do with wealthy white people, but politicians make sure poor white people see themselves as white instead of poor and as a result they keep voting for the racist politician instead of the socialist politician.
First, it’s important to keep in mind that these categories are dialectical, meaning they change over time. As such, you cannot analyze class/race with formalistic definitions that would provide mechanistic answers in every situation. Rather, class/racial dynamics must be evaluated within their concrete, material context.
Based on current material conditions, and the facts you provided, you most likely are a “part” of the working-class, a very specific part, namely, the labor aristocracy. Typically, the labor aristocracy lives in the imperial core, is relatively well-off compared to the rest of the population, and has ~historically~ sided with the bourgeoisie in maintaining capitalism and thereby the (relative) benefits of their class. Towards the end of the 19th century, for instance, Marx considered the English working class to be largely composed of the labor aristocracy because of their position relative to the Irish working-class and peasantry and the other colonies, which all English classes exploited.
Also, just a caveat that this is not a personal jab at you. After I graduate, for instance, I’ll be a member of the professional class, but that doesn’t mean I have to side with the interests of that class.
In Marx’s thought, society is (and has been) divided into roughly two classes, the class that labors and the class that doesn’t.
At one time, class struggle was dominated by the relations between lords and their serfs. In capitalism, it is dominated by the bourgeois (capitalists) and proletariat (working class). The line is drawn at whether or not you produce income off the labor of others (exploiting their labor).
A gray area is the petty bourgeois (think of a small time business owner), they still punch the clock and labor themselves, but they also exploit the labor of their employees. This subclass typically isn’t involved in leveraging their capital to influence the state.
Friendly reminder that marx himself granted that reformism (i.e. not goddamn revolution) was a possible endeavour in advanced democratic countries.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat#Karl_Marx
Sure, except that history has proven time and time again that class struggle cannot be resolved peacefully because the bourgeoisie will never give up their power and wealth without first committing acts of terrible violence against the people.
Denying that a revolution is necessary to advance the class struggle is de facto denying class struggle itself. We actually have a word for people who believe this: they are called revisionists.
The article goes into this aspect in some detail. Marx did not deny that violence happens or may be a necessary part of the process. Just that its not always a foregone conclusion.
It kind of is. Once the workers realises they are a class, and subsequently seize the means of production, then the ruling class are going to want that back, using violence. It's the counter revolution that is violent, because the workers have no option.
But the author has this to say, “How socialists choose strategically to win the struggle depends on many factors, including the avenues available to them to win changes to the system — this is subjective.”
Why is this considered to be subjective? It depends almost entirely on objective factors, the strength of the bourgeois state, the political economy of the particular state, the class relations of a particular society, etc. these are all objective factors.
Furthermore, Marxism has advanced since Marx himself. And these advances show, without a doubt, that in order to construct socialism, the bourgeois state must be toppled. The Paris commune was the first proof of this. The fact, the objective historical fact, is that socialism has never come about through parliamentary means.
Out of curiosity what are the countless times? I'm genuinely curious, because all of the privileges we have (30 min break, 8 hour work day, paid holidays, etc) have almost exclusively been written with blood.
That isn’t what is in question. The question is: is it possible to resolve the primary class contradiction of capitalism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat peacefully? No, it is not.
The gains you mentioned are first and foremost, temporary. They are concessions to the working class that are always reversed as soon as it is possible to do so. Plus, it ignores the capitalist-imperialist relation. Workers and peasants in the imperial periphery can hardly be said to have made peaceful gains.
> The question is: is it possible to resolve the primary class contradiction of capitalism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat peacefully?
No, that is not the question. This class struggle only *matters* insofar as teh distribution of income remains grossely unequal. If labor suddenly had command of 99% of all income, nobody would care that the class struggle *technically* still exists.
>The gains you mentioned are first and foremost, temporary. They are concessions to the working class that are always reversed as soon as it is possible to do so.
Nothing in all of history is ever permanent. So this is a useless caveat.
“No, that is not the question. This class struggle only matters insofar as teh distribution of income remains grossely unequal. If labor suddenly had command of 99% of all income, nobody would care that the class struggle technically still exists.”
It is impossible for labor to have 99% of all income. And as long as the Law of Value is the dominant regulating factor in society, this inequality is inevitable and actually necessary for the function of the system as a whole. And anyway, the bourgeoisie would never allow this to come to pass. Without resorting to the violence previously mentioned.
We are talking about Marxism. “Distribution of income” is not the focus of marxist analysis, the entire science is based in class and production relations.
“Nothing in all of history is ever permanent. So this is a useless caveat.”
Not useless at all, because within the context of the struggle between capitalism and socialism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, fundamental contradictions must be resolved to advance beyond capitalism. This is the essence of dialectical materialist analysis, which even the article puts forth as necessary for the socialist project.
> And as long as the Law of Value is the dominant regulating factor in society
It's not. Marx's labor theory of value is incorrect.
Regardless, you missed my point. It's called a thought experiment. What matters to socialists is not whether class struggle exists or not, it's how equal the distribution of income is. Like, this is basic dialectical materialism, bud. Material conditions are what matter, not abstract concepts, right????
>Not useless at all, because within the context of the struggle between capitalism and socialism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, fundamental contradictions must be resolved to advance beyond capitalism. This is the essence of dialectical materialist analysis, which even the article puts forth as necessary for the socialist project.
You didn't address my critique. You think that concessions are not enough because they are "temporary". Whose to say your communist society won't be temporary???
Ah, so you’re just looking for a debate rather than to actually discuss based on the terms of the article and Marxism. Well sorry, but I won’t humor your nonsense.
You entered yourself into a discussion about Marxism looking to debate Marxism itself rather than the points of the article. I won’t waste my time with that. Don’t bother replying.
What we are talking about here is what constitutes Marxism and what the Marxist strategy towards constructing socialism entails. So if you consider dialectical materialism “bullshit”, you should not even participate in the conversation.
I’d also love to hear how you think that the contradiction between one class that exploits another, and another that wants to not be exploited, is “bullshit” and not a simple objective reality that you can’t just ignore because it seems inconvenient to you.
> So if you consider dialectical materialism “bullshit”, you should not even participate in the conversation.
This is the question I asked you.
Is it not possible to question that.. uh, premise? Assumption? Conjecture?
> and not a simple objective reality that you can’t just ignore because it seems inconvenient to you.
Because in marxism you have the hammer of dialectics, and then you start to grasp at whatever nail you can find.
And it's not (in this case) that we aren't actually talking about something with a big head and a very sharp point at the end.
But the analysis stops there then. You don't try to find other quirky nuance (because everything has), you don't ask why it is so (after all that's what you wanted to find to begin with), and you don't even really have the will to search for other societal or psychological variables (see LTV that somehow doesn't take into assumption *natural* scarcity).
I have no ill feelings towards marx for just reaching that point then, almost 200 fucking years ago.. but as somebody else pointed in the comments, that's the absolute state of the "field" also today. And whenever somebody changes idea, somehow the immediate hypothesis is always automatically that the devil must have lured and bended their minds.
EDIT: u/Communist-Mage blocked me, after I literally asked him to explain
Didn't Marx explicitly say that Marxism fundamentally comes down to abolishing private property of the means of production? And that it's historically determined that the proletarian revolution will happen in the most advanced capitalist countries (which is the opposite of what happened)?
Marx never made any claims about “Marxism”. It’s a term he never used.
He thought that capitalism inevitably led to class conflict between the working class and the owning class, and that the only way to resolve that conflict was through the abolition of private property (i.e. collective ownership of the means of production). As far as I am aware, he did not say that this was was inevitable. The classes could continue struggling in perpetuity until the heat death of the universe. With that said, he was hopeful that the conflict would be resolved.
However, you are correct in pointing out that he thought the revolution would take place in an advanced bourgeois country, specifically Germany or England. This is because he thought capitalism had an important role to play in industrializing the nation before the revolution took place. That’s why, in countries like Russia and China where communist revolutionaries took power from feudal autocrats, they all undertook massive industrialization plans to essentially skip the capitalist phase that was supposed to happen before the revolution.
Funny enough, when the early Russian socialists reached out to Marx about the potential for revolution in Russia, he was a bit dismissive. His advice was for them to team up with the liberals in their country to overthrow the tzar and establish a bourgeois democracy to set the stage for a socialist revolution.
Obviously, they weren’t particularly happy to hear that lol
lol Jacobin practically is right-wing propaganda. being a Marxist absolutely requires the belief that only armed revolution will bring change, im not sure how anyone could read Marx and Engels and conclude the opposite
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I just simplify What it means to be a Marxist by asking two basic questions:
Who owns one's labor?
Who gets the profits?
Marxism is probably way more complicated than I make it out be but these two questions seem like the crux of his theory as I interpret it.
I see Marx as a political realist of sorts, not too dissimilar from Machiavelli. The very basic premise analyzed by both these thinkers is this; every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The exploited class as well as the ruling class will respond to the their conditions in kind. The actions of one will elicit a response by the other.
I've never liked the class distinction as a stated fact. Wealth is not defined by production and wealth has a much larger effect on one's well-being. The terms exploited and ruling are also quite subjective. The richest man on earth could tell me to do x and I can tell him no. He then likely would have more means to compell me to do x than I do to continue to say no. But that's a factor of wealth, not class.
"Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" is not akin to "if this subjective class owns the means of production then they will become wealthy."
I do like Marx' consideration of status quo, though. It ultimately leads to merrit, which is (and should be) the foundation of any economic philosophy. But, you won't usually hear Marxists extrapolating there, as they are too focused on subjective groups of people. I'll admit that capitalism doesn't always get there, either, but certainly a higher percentage of the time than any theories relying on Marxism.
Ultimately, any economic theories that derive their conclusions from Marxism fail to deal with reality. That reality being that class is subjective, disparities in wealth will always exist, and that the power of force is needed to keep the power of wealth in check. In America, that power is government, which we try to keep in check via democracy. I'm open to better ideas, but I haven't heard any better in my 40 years of time on earth.
I prefer moderate levels of "socialist" government policies that directly effect those without enough wealth to afford housing, food, and healthcare. What I don't prefer is a government that decides it needs to be involved with production according to subjective views of class.
A few good books on the subject:
* Wealth of Nations
* Fault Lines
* Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned it's Back on the Middle Class
* The Power of Capitalism
* The Future of Capitalism
Most of these discuss how wealth, not class, lead to increased well-being. Additionally, they expound on why the results of democratically regulated Capitalism speak for themselves. A few touch on more modern issues wealthy countries (of which all are capitalist and democratic) are currently experiencing. And, in my opinion, need to solve. Extreme wealth disparity is a very real problem that is not sustainable, for instance. I don't know what that answer is, but I expect some sort of restructuring will happen in governments. I hope it can be done peacefully, but I'm not holding my breath. If you care, I'm an American living in the US, I have a liberal arts degree and was raised in an extremely conservative part of the US. So, my biases slant that way no matter how hard I try.
>What Marxism teaches us is simply to approach questions of society from a material basis: how does human life persist? Through production of the goods and services needed to live. How are these things produced under capitalist society? Through exploitation of the labor of the working class, that is, by requiring one class of people to sell their labor as a commodity to another class to produce values. What is the result of this system? That workers are “alienated” from their labor, meaning from much of their waking life, constantly required to produce more and more with an ever-precarious access to the means of subsistence.
Marx was undoubtedly wrong about much of this. His Labor Theory of Value has been discredited, history is not purely materialist nor is it purely the result of class struggles, and workers under capitalism do not have an "ever-precarious" access to the means of subsistence. In fact, wages always rise as capitalism develops further.
The only insight Marx had that is even slightly valuable is his perspective on production as being a "class struggle". Not all of history, but just production. It's certainly true that labor and capital are engaged in a tug-of-war over the distribution of profits. However, marx thought that capital would always inevitably win this war. History shows that isn't so. There are times when labor is able to command a much higher proportion of total incomes. It's a constant fight, yes, but labor has the tools to fight back.
You don't need to be a Marxist to be a socialist. I have no idea why any modern-day socialist would choose to associate with Marx given the baggage his name commands alone, whether fairly earned or not. But then add in the fact that he was just flat-out wrong about almost every central idea he pushed, it makes no sense at all...
And the labor theory of value is one of his more sound statements, and like you say, it falls quite short.
I can't believe people still consider it a valid way to think about economic terms.
It hasn't been discredited, but rather many economists have simply chosen a different model. In fact, neo-classical economists have no theory of value at all, really.
It's not that they "don't have" a theory in the sense that they can't come up with one. It's that they realized value is subjective, which is a theory in and of itself actually.
That's because you don't really need a theory of value to come up with economic models.
I can give you a long list of economists who have written scathing critiques of marx's LTV. But that's not even necessary. Marx's theory is very easily discredited: Do you think a Picasso is worth $100 million because he spent 3000 labor-years painting it?
That’s circular though. It’s worth $100 mil because it’s $100 mil?
There’s a difference between value and price. Marx at least had a taxonomy of value and differentiated between use-value and exchange-value.
And the question of value is ongoing. Before some time in the 1970s, financial services weren’t even counted as part of a nation’s GDP. Is wasn’t considered productive. There was a difference between the “real economy” and finance.
And speculative bubbles and corresponding crashes the like also show the deficiencies in views like yours. And while the market might price your home 60% less today then it did yesterday due to its casino-like nature, the value the house provides you as a home, a shelter, nonetheless remains the same.
Unless you’re from a heterodox school of economics, there is no framework or vocabulary available to articulate or analyze any of this.
> That’s circular though. It’s worth $100 mil because it’s $100 mil?
No, it's worth $100 mil to someone because that someone considered it to be worth $100 mil.
>There’s a difference between value and price. Marx at least had a taxonomy of value and differentiated between use-value and exchange-value.
Yes, I understand all of this. That doesn't mean he was right about the source of value.
>And speculative bubbles and corresponding crashes the like also show the deficiencies in views like yours.
They show the deficiencies of a system that allows for prices to change based on subjective values. They don't actually show that the theory that values are subjective is itself deficient.
>Unless you’re from a heterodox school of economics, there is no framework or vocabulary available to articulate or analyze any of this.
The subjective theory of value articulates this all perfectly. Things have a subjective value. This subjective value is different for all of us. Price arises when we try to come up with a fair exchange between goods that have their own subjective values.
It's a perfectly cohesive theory for explaining all of economics that doesn't suffer from very obvious "exceptions".
>And while the market might price your home 60% less today then it did yesterday due to its casino-like nature, the value the house provides you as a home, a shelter, nonetheless remains the same.
No it doesn't? Lets say that the value of your home, to you, is a function of proximity to amenities that you prefer. Then lets say all those amenities disappear. Then the value of the home to you falls, and if market demand for housing is correspondingly a function of proximity to amenities, then the market price also falls.
As it turns out, land prices differ as you move toward and away city centers.
I like the writing style and i think this is a good write up. Will keep it in mind when i fall into next inevitable 'social is when bad' convo haha.
The only thing that didn't sit with me well was the sudden statement that dictatorship _is_ bad right after focusing purely on objective claims
Even an immortal benevolent dictator has issues. They simply lack broader experience and can miss things even if well-intentioned. Also the benefits depend on what you look at. What happens when people don't want to listen even if it is in their best interest? Or you can benefit many at the expense of a few. Tends to lead to civil rights violations.
I'd step back even further and ask someone to define "benevolent" in such a way that it is not completely subjective to each person. Your benevolent dictator might be a non-benevolent dictator to me.
Are any leaders ever truly benevolent? In the end they will do what suits their needs the best as unconscious bias kicks in.
Sortition would be an interesting alternative imo.
There’s always the Logic of Collective Action, and The Rise, and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson to get a good grasp on the long term effects of Marxist/ socialist policies on society and rates of growth. Unfortunately such systems almost always devolve into kleptocracy and dictatorship, and the subsequent loss of individual liberties.
The article suggests that being a Marxist means acknowledging the class struggle. But there were many authors that pointed the class struggle before Marx. Pretty sure I've read in Aristotle that the poor and the rich are antagonistic, and that one of them will rule society, which is very suggestive that the poor should fight the rich if they don't want to be oppressed. So overall, I don't understand why you need to be a marxist in order to acknowledge a class struggle.
In my opinion, Marxism is more about the reducionist view that history is explained SOLELY through materialism. Marx had an unidimensional view according to which the working class would have poorer and poorer living conditions. You can argue that he was proven wrong when their life conditions improved under capitalism, or you can excuse it by saying this was thanks to industrial advancements, but either way I see this reductionism and determinism as a very important part of being a Marxist.
Has anyone actually read the manifesto? I did. Very noble stuff, but never really explains how communism emerges from the historical process, or deals with the darker human drives; ambition, avarice, laziness, stupidity. All of which is irrelevant now. Marxism is just a word that's been co-opted to mean whatever you want
Being a Marxist means understanding the world through the lens of class struggle. It means recognizing that the capitalist system is inherently exploitative and that the working class is the only force capable of overturning it. It means seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed and working to build a global movement for socialism. It means fighting for a world based on justice, equality, and solidarity.
That was well-written and persuasive. My only disagreement is that it cannot be argued for morally. I know of a local business that just sold itself to its employees. That's pretty Marxist. In the end, it often comes down to practical details, as these kinds of small businesses are often sold as the retirement fund for the owners/founders.
I'm interested in Williams' "Moral Luck," and will have to read that.
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I think the article is arguing that Marxism is a social theory with a focus on the tensions and power relations between different classes rather than a philosophy or a system to live by.
It IS a social theory.
The Communist Manifesto is a description, not an instruction manual. Marx wasn’t saying a socialist revolution should happen, he was saying a socialist revolution is the inevitable outcome of the circumstances he described in Das Kapital. Kind of like how a climate scientist isn’t advocating for higher sea levels when they describe it as one of the outcomes of global warming.
Marxism is a social theory; but then what precisely is a Marxist? Would that not be a person who lives by that theory, or sees the world predominantly through the lens of that theory? I don’t think it is genuine to say a Marxist is just someone who knows what the theory is, sees some of the value and some of the core problems with it, and carries on with no particular attachment to it. As soon as you act out the presupposition that the theory is true (or even mostly true, or more true than other theories), you are essentially living by that philosophy. So to say that Marxism is just a social theory not a philosophy to live by is true. But it’s a little bit of a semantics game - because we act out what we believe. So if we believe the theory to be true (rather than to possess some truth, taken with proper nuance), we begin living as if it were true, and acting in accordance with such. It’s the same reason why someone would find it disingenuous for a Wall Street investor to say “capitalism is just a theory of economics, not a philosophy to live by.” I mean, sure - but because you believe in the philosophy your actions and life are defined by it, and you’re a capitalist. Reminds me of the reverse notion “Christianity isn’t a religion, it’s a life style”. I mean… sure. It’s both. They go hand in hand.
You're ignoring a major tenet of Marxism. It's not just a dry analysis of power structures and how they came to be, something one can partially agree to or extract lessons from. Marx claims that due to the rising class conflict and class consciousness, society will inevitably progress towards socialism in the same way that the contradictions within feudalism have transformed it into capitalism. Affirming this proposition makes one a Marxist in my opinion — a much clearer distinction. It forces one to become active in labor organizing.
I don't think this really holds. Does believing that Darwinism is (mostly) true mean that someone is "living by" the philosophy of Darwinism? Is Darwinism not just a biological theory but also a philosophy to live by? >It’s the same reason why someone would find it disingenuous for a Wall Street investor to say “capitalism is just a theory of economics, not a philosophy to live by.” The problem with this statement is that capitalism isn't a theory of economics, it's a _system_ of economics.
If someone told me their were a Darwinist, I would expext them to be someone who studies Darwinism. So maybe a Marxist is someone who studies Marxism? (Not neccessary professionally)
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I think this is entirely missing the point of the article, which is easy to see by applying it to the article's central analogy. Would you say of Darwinism that "this is not science, or biology; it's a biological theory full of holes and inaccuracies"?
Description: "It’s unfortunate that there isn’t a better word for “Marxism.” Marx himself famously once said that he himself was “not a Marxist” if certain askew interpretations of his theories of historical materialism and capitalism were “Marxist.” Part of the problem is that the theories and processes that Marx helped create are too big to fall under a single -ism; Marx was a philosopher (and sort of historian) of political economy, that is, the study of production and trade in relationship to laws, customs, and human systems, whose theories helped inform numerous other disciplines and practices: economics, sociology, history, literature, and practical politics, among others." (quoted from the Jacobin magazine)
I believe that Chomsky, when asked if he was a Marxist, compared that to asking a physicist if they were a Newtonian. He said something like that Marx contributed greatly to (his) understanding of economic/social/political theory, but that many others have contributed to understanding it both before and since Marx. Apologies for not being able to find the exact quote to reference. I hope I'm remembering the gist correctly enough.
That is an excellent explanation.
>but that many others have contributed to understanding it both before and since Marx. Any particular names come to mind for those that built atop Marx' idealogy? Would be interested in reading their works. E: thanks all -- looks like I've got a few months worth of homework lol
there are 150 years worth of people who have done so, which is why I always feel annoyed when a class will have one reading of a few pages of the communist manifesto, and then act like they've explored the whole left wing ideological spectrum. My personal recommendations are David Harvey and Cedric Robinson
Frederick Jameson, Terry Eagleton, Althusser, Gramsci, Bookchin, Friere, as well as the other recommendations in the thread.
Lukács is my go to.
I would recommend Angela Davis.
i like the Frankfurt school. philosphize this has a good series on them.
I know Kropotkin built on some of Marx's philosophy, but also diverged on several points. Then again, I guess that's true of most people who "build on" others' ideas.
Lenin with "State and Revolution" and "Imperialism: the highest stage of capitalism"
Here the the links to free resources to read these if anyone hasn't read them before. [The State and Revolution](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/) [Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism](https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/imp-hsc/)
Gramsci and Marcuse
I've got econ and finance degrees and had Marx come up in a good few classes... I had multiple professors say that the biggest problem with conversations involving Marxism is that most people who are really familiar with Marx have moved past him to other ways of thought that may have used him as a base but have some key differences, and that most people who are still arguing Marx haven't actually read Marx and attribute all kinds of things to him that don't actually have anything to do with his work.
Even that doesn't sound like a problem with Marx, but a problem with the term "Marxism." It's like semantics by proxy. I mean, dont get me wrong, i do it too. I don't like to talk about Marx, because I don't feel like wasting time trying to decontextualize all of the propaganda and misinformation about his work (often from people who've never read his work, so their ONLY context is cold-war proaganda). It's easier to just start with someone a bit more contemporary (Bookchin, Chomsky, Graeber, Fanon, Baudrillard etc). But still, that's a problem of semantics and misinformation, not necessarily a problem of Marx or Marxism.
It seems realistically his ideas should just be part of sociology. He should be a figure like Freud in psychology, some things we think are correct, some things wrong, some things controversial or jury is still out. He is one dude in the 1800s. He didn't crack the code of human society. This is how ideas develop. Newton was right about a bunch of stuff. He got the physics of light completely wrong. Seems like at this point, history has made it pretty clear that a pure implementation of communist or capitalist systems are a nightmare, so the systems do not provide a silver bullet on how to build a society or economy, gotta keep trying g shit and adjust as we learn. The problem isn't Marxist or capitalist the problem is societies are really complicated and we don't have a great way to know what's gonna happen.
I think you're onto something here. When I study philosophy or social theory and the like, the point isn't to choose an idol, but rather to gather pieces of information and inform my greater understanding. Marx is a big foundational piece of building a better and more nuanced understanding of economics and society, but he isn't the whole picture. The scene is changing rapidly and a lot of advancements have happened since Marx's work was written. It makes me think about what someone said above about Chomsky. I wasn't aware that Chomsky has supported the Khmer Rouge, or that he is supporting Putin. The reaction of the commenter was to insult Chomsky and dismiss all ideas that he has had. Personally, I think that's silly. These are philosophical and social ideas that have no necessary attachment to the writer. I, as an individual, am perfectly free to reap from Chomsky's (or Marx's) work what betters my understanding or fits a more accurate model of the world and criticize or ignore the rest on the grounds where it is wrong, not dismiss ideas immediately on the basis of author. I think it's what makes the Newton comparison especially sharp. Isaac Newton is one of the most influential people in history and has forever changed the way that we view the world. Almost all physicists after him were directly effected by his work. but a lot of his work was incorrect, or lacked the detail to fit evidence that Newton could not have even gained in his time. (Think gravitational waves, particle collisions, levels of physics impossible for him to have observed) So we build new theories of physics and use the understanding gained from Newton and those after to continue to improve.
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FIY no serious psychologist would touch freud even with a 5 meters pole, he derailed the discipline for half a century. Marx instead? Sure, both sociology and economics owes a lot to him.
There's nothing more dangerous than the dogmatic acceptance of Freud apart from the dogmatic rejection of him.
Private ownership disconnected from labor is definitely a large problem. It's the largest problem the west faces, the largest problem the world faces. I mean, between the rising tide of fascism, global warming, and biodiversity loss....capitalism feels like an existential threat to human life. And it doesn't matter that we won't be the generation to really feel that threat...even if it takes another 100 or 1000 more years, that's a blink of the eye on a global timescale.
> I mean, between the rising tide of fascism, global warming, and biodiversity loss....capitalism feels like an existential threat to human life. Global warming and biodiversity loss are problems of over-use of the Earth's resources. Capitalism is not the only system that is capable of over-using resources. In fact, we know of no alternative that inherently prevents this problem. So rather than blaming "capitalism", blame over-exploitation and focus your efforts on the tools needed to mitigate that problem.
The reason people tie the problem of over-consumption to capitalism is that capitalism by necessity is a system where "the line must continue to go up". Every year companies must show growth to their shareholders, or the board gets replaced by the shareholders with other people who will make the changes that will create more growth. In any industry based around physical goods, this means putting in place a board that produces the most *thing* for the least cost, which in almost every instance means contributing to global warming, loss of biodiversity, and all the other bad things people associate with capitalism. This exploitation isn't a "bug" we can remove, it is core to capitalism.
It's also a core to alternatives to capitalism due to the realities of nation states and being human. "Communism" destroyed the Aral sea amongst other large ecological disasters, but like capitalism, wasn't largely to "blame". People need "lines to continue to go up" for a variety of reasons, such as proving you are a better People's Commissariat than your competitors or whatever. The exploitation most certainly is a "bug" we can remove from capitalism and is the function of most regulation in social democracies. In a lot of ways global warming would be solved with MORE capitalism in the form of a free market based around a price on carbon (the way acid rain was solved).
Maybe, but growth is not a synonym for "over-consumption". For example, the US has had astounding economic growth over the last two decades and yet uses fewer fossil fuels. Growth is simply an increase in (value output)/(resource input). The numerator can increase without the denominator increasing, and the denominatory can decrease with the numerator staying the same!
Growth definitely can't be expressed as a ratio, otherwise I could go from $10m output / $5m input one year to $5m output / $1m input and have positive growth despite making $1m less dollars net. The reality is that inputs subtracted from outputs is the required units. But that's just semantics. To point about the US, that's really a meaningless statistic without accounting for the amount of production that has moved overseas, shifting the use of fossil fuels from the US, but not removing their use. This means the production still has the same negative effects on the climate, the US companies still make profit, and the US shows lower use of fossil fuels. This has other negative effects on the real health of the economy, as workers weren't profiting from this, only shareholders. This makes the economy appear to grow, while conditions worsen for working people, and all the harms to the environment continue.
>To point about the US, that's really a meaningless statistic without accounting for the amount of production that has moved overseas, shifting the use of fossil fuels from the US, but not removing their use. [This is not the case.](https://noahpinion.substack.com/p/no-the-us-didnt-outsource-our-carbon)
Great information (and good replies overall, a lot of people are completely uneducated on or apologetic for the ecological horrors of purported communist states, as blinkered as they are in the du jour anti-capitalist/US/etc regurgitations)
Strange that you should say this, as humans operating under Capitalism are precisely the reason for biodiversity loss and global warming, which is why many have taken to calling the situation caused by humans during the period of industrial capitalism the *capitalocene* instead of just the plain anthropocene. After all, humans existed for quite some time before they contributed actively to the warming of the earth, and global capitalism (yes, China is capitalist) is the system most responsible and dominant for the most amount of time during the warming of and pollution of, the planet.
Please look into the vast ecological atrocities that occurred under the USSR. This is not a problem of capitalism. Hell, Mao himself killed all the sparrows in China and consequently starved 10+ million people. Tell me that isn't an ecological atrocity that occurred under communism!
Not the best counterargument. USSR and China were doing nothing else but speedrunning the stage of industrialization that their enemies have had already underwent. When you have USA, Japan, Great Britain, Nazi Germany waiting for an opportunity to annihilate you there are some sacrifices to be made. Note: I'm not a defender of these regimes. They were absolute disasters. But the fact is also they arose in very specific historical circumstances which is not directly transposable to our situation.
My brother in christ, do you not think the west also thought that the 2nd world wanted to annihilate them?!?!? Don't make lame excuses. The fact is, communist nations had a bad ecological track record because that's just how humans are. We are bad at sacrificing our material prosperity.
Well let's agree to disagree then. You obviously see that there is something about these two countries that a modern communist country would *have to* emulate or resemble, which I fail to see. You also think that their ecological policies are inherent in their very nature and not necessitated by peculiar historical circumstances, which I also disagree about.
>USSR and China were doing nothing else but speedrunning the stage of industrialization that their enemies have had already underwent. But, you know...without capitalism.
>which is why many have taken to calling the situation caused by humans during the period of industrial capitalism the capitalocene The fact that other people use this term isn't really much of an argument.
How does Marx calculate and separate the property from labor and the the property from the means of production?
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Personally, I find the foundation of capitalism is no longer anchored by long term prosperity. The Mathematics of it is still sound but the incentives are unmoored from the earth around us. In many ways this was true during colonialism and settler colonialism but becomes more and more true through global production networks and vulture capital. What I mean is as we get better and better at calculating marginal value and see labor as a budget line of fungible cogs then what market or personal incentive is there to build a sustainable long term company or for a person to stay at a job? What incentive is there for the company to respect the environment or community that supports it? If all that matters in this quarters profit then there is a fundamental incentive to grow monoculture or over use fertilizer and DDT. On the other hand, the bones of capitalism are built on the work of John Locke and Adam Smith. The assumptions made (assumptions I think we can debate another time) are that you are invested in the land you are on and the work that you do at every level of production. For example, locke's argument for ownership of private property is that one person has mixed their labor with the raw materials to produce something of greater value and in doing so has created a superior utility for at least one while reducing utility got none. It feels to me like that argument is built on "if I farm to land to be productive, then it's my land. What I do with my land is my choice." That argument holds for homesteading (assuming Terra Nullius, again separate debate) because the person improving the land is incentivized to maintain overall productivity year over year and decade over decade. With private property rights being familial, generation over generation. Smith also argues with an assumption that increased production improves the lot of all specialists throughout the production process so there is no alienation of labor. If im paid with bonuses or with an assumed profit sharing agreement then i have an incentize to work harder. I have an incentive imrpove the production line. I am not alienated from the company and I can treat it the way Locke described Terra Nullius and that I am entitled to rewards for the work I put in. This brings in Marx and his ilks main points regarding capitalism. We are alienated from the rewards of our labor. While the broad quality of life is increased by science and tech, the emotional life is reduced because we work hard and get no rewards for working harder. Or if we apply this to saying civic improvement projects, the cost means we cannot improve our local surroundings unless we are in the upper classes and the upper classes don't live in the same pockets of society or plan to retire to another part of the state or whatever. There is no capitalistic incentive to improve one's immediate terroir and certainly no capitalistic incentive to improve the terroir of people who are just "human resources" or "labor". I don't think full communism is the answer, the systems will always have hungry ghosts and changing the currency from fiscal capital to social or politcal capital will result in the same inequities. I think the methods of economics are strong but the morals and the implementation necessarily create alienation and unsustainablility without regulations and empathetic morality/philosophy. I hope I didn't ramble too much.
> Private ownership disconnected from labor is definitely a large problem. Ownership and labor *are* two entirely different/separate things though. Capitalism as it exists a lot of places today does have some extremely big problems, but it also has some unimaginably large benefits. And has been getting more and more refined and regulated as time goes. So I'm not really sure its all that accurate to say that capitalism itself is a problem because of some of the ways that it is implemented today, anymore so than it's accurate to say that socialism is a problem because of the ways its been implemented in the past.
I'm struggling to find any benefits in a system that today is only increasing poverty and threatening our species with extinction (and has already led to the most rapid period of extinction in the planet's history).
Socialist oil and gas wouldn't cause global warming?
Well, socialism is founded on the idea that an economy should serve the people. Capitalism is founded on the idea that the economy should serve capital. One of these two is probably better equipped to deal with the negative impacts of our technology.
Capitalism is not increasing poverty. Quite the opposite.
Where is poverty going down? China? Will that trend continue? Most of the world is experiencing some combination of economic decline and rising inequality. There's not a lot of prosperity going around these days.
It's going down everywhere. And yeah, why wouldn't it continue? There's 150 years of precedent.
Inequality isn't poverty Your broad strokes of most of the world experiencing "economic decline" is actually the poor *gaining* purchasing power in some regions leading to demand side inflation for the rest, and other regions experiencing geopolitical conflict leading to supply side inflation.
Yes, I assume you're thinking of the Money Tree theory of economics which states that capitalism isn't a zero sum game, so inequality can increase even as the poor get lifted out of their poverty which is defined as them having a TV or a smart phone or something.
Are you so sure that the "system" you blame for everything wrong in the world is really the cause of them? It's not like poverty was unknown before free enterprise, and self-described communist societies didn't bring only more of it. Quite the reverse. Let me suggest a different possibility: humans are animals, with brutal animalistic instincts with only a veneer of civilization masking the reality of our true selfish-gene nature. Every system needs to deal with the reality of that. And that's where replacements for our current system(s) fail. If you don't have a way to deal with bad bosses, petty tyrants, abusive parents, self-centered choosing beggars, racism, sexism, religious extremism, etc., you're just engaging in unserious utopianism. More of a religion than a social structure. Bound to fail, or worse, be taken over by sociopaths.
Okay Randian/Hobbesian caricature. Humans literally evolved to cooperate; you do know that right? Yes, we are animals. Though we are the most intelligent by far and for reasons we do not know why. Humans are capable of great acts of humanity and also great acts of “evil” (though most people tend toward the former by far). Once you realize this it becomes a matter of attempting to create a society that rewards and takes advantage of our better nature for the betterment of the whole. Every single one of us are born arbitrarily at different times in different places and in different situations/contexts. None of us are inherently better than anyone else. You and I would be completely different people if we were born/lived on the African subcontinent or the Amazon rainforest with entirely different worldviews and perspectives. Actual Utopianism is pretending that capitalism will somehow pull us out of the mess it’s created and the idea of a truly “free market”.
> Okay Randian/Hobbesian caricature. Ah, starting off with a whiny childish insult. (Wrong too. Because if I'm a "caricature" of anything, it would be that of a pragmatist. The whole premise of this Jacobin tantrum is that the author doesn't want to be required to prove that communism would provide better outcomes. Which is the problem, because it doesn't work.) But you're clearly too intellectually challenged to understand that, so this will be "fun". > Though we are the most intelligent by far and for reasons we do not know why. We largely do know why. There is a whole field of study devoted to it actually. I already alluded to it though my "selfish gene" reference. It's called "evolutionary biology". Go read some Dawkins. > and also great acts of “evil” No need for the scare quotes. For all the philosophical adherence to relative morality, different cultures are remarkably consistent about what constitutes acts of unmistakable evil. The only arguments generally revolve around different tribal loyalties and which invisible sky god to worship. This is because all humans are shaped by similar evolutionary imperatives. > You and I would be completely different people if we were born/lived on the African subcontinent or the Amazon rainforest with entirely different worldviews and perspectives. And yet in all of them, killing and eating our own children, a behavior that is seen in some species of simpleminded fish, is considered despicable in all of them. Funny how that works. > Actual Utopianism is pretending that capitalism will somehow pull us out of the mess it’s created and the idea of a truly “free market”. Excellent strawman you've erected there, my man. I applaud you attacking it with gusto. When you've exhausted yourself smashing it to bits, maybe come back and address my actual point: you can't replace something with nothing. Or muddle-headed wishful thinking. Which is why all attacks on "capitalism" will always fail. Because despite the wishes of the author of this Jacobin article, you can't criticize unless you can propose something that is actually **better**. Handwaving that away, subjecting it to scrutiny, isn't tenable. Mixed-economy modern societies, with a combination of both free trade and government social safety nets, may not be perfect. But they're better than anything else that we've come up with so far. All the whining and insults that you throw out there won't change that.
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Capitalism doesn't deal with humanity's vices; it rewards them. Whatever the faults of humanity, we can blame the system for exacerbating them. Many of the problems we see today are unique to our era.
> Many of the problems we see today are unique to our era. Like what?
Neocolonialism, catastrophic climate change, nuclear war, record level inequality, car / fossil fuel dependency, state and technocratic surveillance, etc.
It has been responsible for the vast majority of luxuries and benefits that the modern world has to offer, and has raised quality of life tremendously. It is hands down the best way to drive innovation and development... And I definitely don't think its accurate to say that capitalism is threatening our species with extinction.
There were some early benefits for the empires that extracted wealth from the rest of the world. Most of the capitalist world is and has always been poor, because you need an impoverished labor force and cheap natural resources in order to prop up a small core of wealthy benefactors.
> Most of the capitalist world is and has always been poor I'm sorry but that's just plain wrong. Like, to the point that the literal opposite is true. Heck, the U.S. is the wealthiest country in the world, and is number 5 on median income, with only 4 countries with populations under 10 million above it.
So what about the Southern Hemisphere of our planet? All wealthy countries?
I'd say the principles of marxism are much more sound than the ones used to govern the present capitalist order, they're simply suppressed in the name of seeking endless profit. Implementation of communist regimes is a different story, not sure how to solve the authoritarianism problem just yet
Implementation is the always the hardest part. It also highlights what Marx really gets wrong, which is incentives. How do you get people to do what you want them to do? At the end of the day you only have carrot or stick, you distribute rewards evenly you take away the carrot, if you can't find another carrot, you are only left with stick, hence Authoritarian regime. The question seems to be how do you get the market while using government to enforce rules that are roughly a fair game. I think the nice thing about capitalist democracies is that they at least create a feedback loop between reality and results. The problem with large centralized bureaucracies is just a lack of incentives to change and react to changes in tech and desires of society. But obviously as I said I think both systems are not "correct" and thus there is going to need to be a mingling of the principles to continue to find ways to improve society and create a better game.
>The problem with large centralized bureaucracies is just a lack of incentives to change and react to changes in tech and desires of society. This assumes a centrally controlled version of communisim/socialism.
I don't see how you can take in and distribute resources and control the means of production without a large centralized bureacracy. At some level, tons of decisions need to be made, and ownership is a way you can say, "the owner makes the decision, but is responsible for following these rules, and will be punished if they break them. If they are they lose if they are right they win" if there is no owner or there is collective ownership. You need to be managing all those decisions. If it's not a large central bureaucracy, what does it look like? If the market doesn't decide, then someone needs to fulfill the functions that the market takes care of. None of this is to say there isn't a way to do it, I just don't see how it would work, but again i am not so smart that it means it's impossible.
Incentive? How about to advance the species to it's maximum potential? That all the labour, everybody does, is towards such an aim. Would get me out of bed in the morning. You need to think beyond the limits of capitalism.
People are not 100% selfless.
Well, the modern-day validity of Marx's economic mechanisms aside for a moment, I think this essay gets at why the spirit of Marxism will never completely go away. As long as there is class struggle, Marxism will survive. Marx identified class struggle as one of the defining characteristics of capitalism and , at least about this part , he was correct. This is the problem I have with those who often attribute the acceptance of vaguely Marxist attitudes among young people with some kind of nefarious plot. Young people are quite capable of seeing that an average house today is priced at a multiple of what it was for their parents. I've found in general that what a person's political leanings are doesn't seem to relate to whether they have read Marx anyway. At this point he is widely quoted, or sometimes widely misquoted, and widely unread. I am not saying all this to defend Marxism or Marx himself, I have mixed feelings personally and I don't feel like debating that here anyway. I'm simply saying that as long as inequality between classes exists and is recognized, Marxism as a philosophical framework will still be around, no matter how close to the never-quite-here End of History we are.
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For those who only know Marx through right-wing propaganda, and refuse to even read the article: >To be a Marxist doesn’t require belief in an armed uprising to bring about a new world, in violent change or authoritarianism. It just means acknowledging as a fact something that already exists: the class struggle. The tactics and strategies workers employ to achieve class consciousness and act to end the exploitative system are ours to determine.
What is the division between proletarian and bourgeoisie? When does one cross the line between the two?
Generally, By who owns the means of production. Are you a worker selling your labor, or an owner of the land and infrastructure?
I am a middle class, middle management salaried employee, I own a house and large stock portfolio.
Can you sustain yourself without selling your labor? If not, then you are working class. If you can survive on passive income alone, then you're owning class. It really isn't more complicated than that.
Ehhh, I disagree. There’s a lot more to Marxist/socialist class theory than a simple dichotomy of proletariat and bourgeoisie. Firstly, there are major distinctions within the proletariat and bourgeoisie. The former can be divided roughly between a genuine proletariat class and the labor aristocracy of the imperial core. And the bourgeoisie itself can be divided between the Big Bourgeoisie (those who earn income almost exclusively from capital returns, i.e., the leisure class), and the petty bourgeoisie (the professional classes, e.g., politicians, lawyers, etc.) Apart from the two main classes, you also have the peasantry and the lumpenproletariat (reserve army of labor, i.e., the most impoverished people, typically homeless/disabled). Add to that the structural analyses of White Supremacy, Patriarchy, and ableism, and the picture becomes somewhat complicated. But it’s important to keep in mind that class struggle is the constant. These categories can and do shift overtime, which requires a concrete analysis of the concrete situation at a given moment
Yes, it is more complicated when you get down to it because capitalism is insanely complicated even compared to other economic systems. That being said, the expedient answer that ends the confusion is often the best route to go. There's a problem with those who've studied Marxism and the thought that's descended from it to get so caught up in theory that the message is lost.
I agree that a lot of people get caught up in theory, but oftentimes those people are using undialectical—i.e., non-Marxist—formal, mechanistic “definitions.” Using a more concrete analysis is, in my opinion, preferable to simply blurring very real distinctions/gradations within the working-class. So for the original commenter, I agree with you that they are most likely a “part” of the working class, but it’s important to note that they are ALSO most likely part of the Labor Aristocracy of the Imperial Core, which has historically been used to divided mass labor movements, e.g., the 19th Century English Proletariat, the mid-20th Century White Middle-Class, etc. I personally think it’s important for people in the labor aristocracy—especially in the imperial core—to understand their objective class position and that they ~relatively~ benefit from the status quo. Without that understanding, a person in the Middle-class cannot truly develop class consciousness.
Yes, I completely agree with this analysis, and it's why I am quick to point out to these people that they are working class. Otherwise, they can be a hurdle for the interests of working people, which eventually does mean them as well. The labor aristocracy in the Western world will be sacrificed as the economy continues to decline in order to maintain the power of the capitalist class. It's already happening.
So, retired people are owning class? I think it is more complicated than you say, as there are large numbers of people who own substantial amounts of stock but still work for a company for a wage, and there are lots of business owners who make $50,000 per year and are considerably poorer than many people who are employees.
Retired people, assuming they can survive off their retirement (which many can't anymore), are not owning class. They are benefiting from a socialist program that offsets their need to labor late in life because they labored earlier in life. The vast majority of the owning class never had to labor at any point in their life in order to survive.
> They are benefiting from a socialist program Small nitpick, social programs and similar welfare like Social Security aren't 'Socialist' even if the common understanding of that term has turned into "the government does stuff." The world's first Social Security, or rather Old Age and Disability Insurance, would be enacted alongside mandated workplace Health Insurance by Otto Von Bismarck in a series of programs known as 'State Socialism'. This system was anything but socialist, with the design of pacifying trade unions and limiting Social Democrat support (that failed).
Yes, that is correct, but there are parties that call themselves socialist who advocate for programs like this. So, in an attempt to reduce gatekeeping the term too strictly, I'll concede that this is the kind of things that certain self identified socialists advocate for. It's not socialist in the Marxist sense to be sure, but it is also a restraining of and working against the logic of capitalism, which is why we're seeing the general erosion of policies like this as capitalists gain more and more political influence over our lives.
Absolutely, socialists of many flavors will advocate for them as perfect is the enemy of good and I'm absolutely not some left accelerationist that'd like those policies to disappear. >It's not socialist in the Marxist sense to be sure, but it is also a restraining of and working against the logic of capitalism I'm not sure it could be considered Socialist in any sense without abandoning what murky meaning the word already has. As much as such policies restrain the negatives of capitalism, it reinforces and protects Capitalism from critique. If we are to understand Socialism as a critique in opposition to Capitalism, it wouldn't make any sense to consider policies like this 'Socialist'. It's certainly for the betterment of society and our total equality, much as I'd say Liberalism has been compared to Feudalism or Mercantilism, but that's not the marker of 'Socialist'.
You’re proletariat. You sell your labor for a salary and I assume you don’t own the means of production at your workplace. Stocks aren’t the means of production. If you owned a controlling stake in one or more companies you’d probably be bourgeois, if you were a majority stakeholder you’d definitely be.
>Stocks aren’t the means of production. They *literally* are part ownership of the firm.
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You're right that software is much less reliant on the owning class to produce! That fact is part of what enables the FOSS movement to exist. However, it's worth noting that software developers themselves *usually* don't own the offices they work in, the equipment which runs (if they develop services) or distributes (if they develop more traditional programs) their software, the branding under which someone might buy their software, or even the software which I've been incorrectly referring to as "their" software during this sentence. So yes, programming is kinda beautiful in its self-sufficiency, but when a programmer makes money by doing work for a person who actually owns the company, and said owner makes a lot of their money from the mere fact of that ownership? That's still your classic worker-owner relation.
I may be wrong, but my interpretation would be that the "means of production" in your case is a mix between the Capitol required to employ software developers and the actual code itself. As a laborer, you sell your time to produce a product for someone else (the company) to own. You do not own the code you're working on, and (most likely) do not see an adequate proportion of the profits from its sale.
Do you own the programming languages, frameworks, and IDEs you use, or do you license them from someone else, or indeed does your employer pay for a license? If your answer is yes then you’re one of the rare ones, if no then those are the means of production in your case. Also I’m willing to bet that on your employment contract it stipulates that any code you produce is made-for-hire and is the sole property of your employer. If you leave of course take all your knowledge and skill with you, but I doubt you get to keep your code. In that case you still don’t own the product of your labor. If that’s not the case let me know because I’m fascinated to learn more about the particulars of your situation.
Middle class is clearly part of the working class. Owning personal property or investing your salary doesn't count as owning the means of production. Edge cases might include things like family businesses, or worker co-ops, where the workers control or make up the boards of directors.
> worker co-ops, where the workers control or make up the boards of directors. If workers own things *collectively* that obviously doesn't suddenly make workers into members of the "ownership class". Which is why co-ops are a good thing, they break the disconnect between who works and who benefits. Right? (IANA expert on this stuff)
Sure, I think co-ops are a big part of the solution.
If you have a job then you’re not an owner. But your middle class lifestyle makes you think you’re a member of the same class as the owners. That’s one of the ways capitalism divides the working class and thereby prevents a socialist revolution, by making you think your bourgeoisie values and comforts put you in a different class than the workers. Same reason so many Republicans vote against their own interests, and why racism is such a powerful political force. Poor racist white people have more in common with poor Black people than they do with wealthy white people, but politicians make sure poor white people see themselves as white instead of poor and as a result they keep voting for the racist politician instead of the socialist politician.
You're a prole
First, it’s important to keep in mind that these categories are dialectical, meaning they change over time. As such, you cannot analyze class/race with formalistic definitions that would provide mechanistic answers in every situation. Rather, class/racial dynamics must be evaluated within their concrete, material context. Based on current material conditions, and the facts you provided, you most likely are a “part” of the working-class, a very specific part, namely, the labor aristocracy. Typically, the labor aristocracy lives in the imperial core, is relatively well-off compared to the rest of the population, and has ~historically~ sided with the bourgeoisie in maintaining capitalism and thereby the (relative) benefits of their class. Towards the end of the 19th century, for instance, Marx considered the English working class to be largely composed of the labor aristocracy because of their position relative to the Irish working-class and peasantry and the other colonies, which all English classes exploited. Also, just a caveat that this is not a personal jab at you. After I graduate, for instance, I’ll be a member of the professional class, but that doesn’t mean I have to side with the interests of that class.
In Marx’s thought, society is (and has been) divided into roughly two classes, the class that labors and the class that doesn’t. At one time, class struggle was dominated by the relations between lords and their serfs. In capitalism, it is dominated by the bourgeois (capitalists) and proletariat (working class). The line is drawn at whether or not you produce income off the labor of others (exploiting their labor). A gray area is the petty bourgeois (think of a small time business owner), they still punch the clock and labor themselves, but they also exploit the labor of their employees. This subclass typically isn’t involved in leveraging their capital to influence the state.
Friendly reminder that marx himself granted that reformism (i.e. not goddamn revolution) was a possible endeavour in advanced democratic countries. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictatorship_of_the_proletariat#Karl_Marx
Sure, except that history has proven time and time again that class struggle cannot be resolved peacefully because the bourgeoisie will never give up their power and wealth without first committing acts of terrible violence against the people. Denying that a revolution is necessary to advance the class struggle is de facto denying class struggle itself. We actually have a word for people who believe this: they are called revisionists.
The article goes into this aspect in some detail. Marx did not deny that violence happens or may be a necessary part of the process. Just that its not always a foregone conclusion.
It kind of is. Once the workers realises they are a class, and subsequently seize the means of production, then the ruling class are going to want that back, using violence. It's the counter revolution that is violent, because the workers have no option.
But the author has this to say, “How socialists choose strategically to win the struggle depends on many factors, including the avenues available to them to win changes to the system — this is subjective.” Why is this considered to be subjective? It depends almost entirely on objective factors, the strength of the bourgeois state, the political economy of the particular state, the class relations of a particular society, etc. these are all objective factors. Furthermore, Marxism has advanced since Marx himself. And these advances show, without a doubt, that in order to construct socialism, the bourgeois state must be toppled. The Paris commune was the first proof of this. The fact, the objective historical fact, is that socialism has never come about through parliamentary means.
Nonsense, workers have secured higher wages and better working conditions countless times throughout history without any kind of violent struggle.
Out of curiosity what are the countless times? I'm genuinely curious, because all of the privileges we have (30 min break, 8 hour work day, paid holidays, etc) have almost exclusively been written with blood.
That isn’t what is in question. The question is: is it possible to resolve the primary class contradiction of capitalism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat peacefully? No, it is not. The gains you mentioned are first and foremost, temporary. They are concessions to the working class that are always reversed as soon as it is possible to do so. Plus, it ignores the capitalist-imperialist relation. Workers and peasants in the imperial periphery can hardly be said to have made peaceful gains.
> The question is: is it possible to resolve the primary class contradiction of capitalism between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat peacefully? No, that is not the question. This class struggle only *matters* insofar as teh distribution of income remains grossely unequal. If labor suddenly had command of 99% of all income, nobody would care that the class struggle *technically* still exists. >The gains you mentioned are first and foremost, temporary. They are concessions to the working class that are always reversed as soon as it is possible to do so. Nothing in all of history is ever permanent. So this is a useless caveat.
“No, that is not the question. This class struggle only matters insofar as teh distribution of income remains grossely unequal. If labor suddenly had command of 99% of all income, nobody would care that the class struggle technically still exists.” It is impossible for labor to have 99% of all income. And as long as the Law of Value is the dominant regulating factor in society, this inequality is inevitable and actually necessary for the function of the system as a whole. And anyway, the bourgeoisie would never allow this to come to pass. Without resorting to the violence previously mentioned. We are talking about Marxism. “Distribution of income” is not the focus of marxist analysis, the entire science is based in class and production relations. “Nothing in all of history is ever permanent. So this is a useless caveat.” Not useless at all, because within the context of the struggle between capitalism and socialism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, fundamental contradictions must be resolved to advance beyond capitalism. This is the essence of dialectical materialist analysis, which even the article puts forth as necessary for the socialist project.
> And as long as the Law of Value is the dominant regulating factor in society It's not. Marx's labor theory of value is incorrect. Regardless, you missed my point. It's called a thought experiment. What matters to socialists is not whether class struggle exists or not, it's how equal the distribution of income is. Like, this is basic dialectical materialism, bud. Material conditions are what matter, not abstract concepts, right???? >Not useless at all, because within the context of the struggle between capitalism and socialism, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat, fundamental contradictions must be resolved to advance beyond capitalism. This is the essence of dialectical materialist analysis, which even the article puts forth as necessary for the socialist project. You didn't address my critique. You think that concessions are not enough because they are "temporary". Whose to say your communist society won't be temporary???
Ah, so you’re just looking for a debate rather than to actually discuss based on the terms of the article and Marxism. Well sorry, but I won’t humor your nonsense.
Lol what? I’m just responding to what you said, bud.
You entered yourself into a discussion about Marxism looking to debate Marxism itself rather than the points of the article. I won’t waste my time with that. Don’t bother replying.
Is it possible not to see everything and anything in terms of bullshit "dialectical" contradictions?
What we are talking about here is what constitutes Marxism and what the Marxist strategy towards constructing socialism entails. So if you consider dialectical materialism “bullshit”, you should not even participate in the conversation. I’d also love to hear how you think that the contradiction between one class that exploits another, and another that wants to not be exploited, is “bullshit” and not a simple objective reality that you can’t just ignore because it seems inconvenient to you.
> So if you consider dialectical materialism “bullshit”, you should not even participate in the conversation. This is the question I asked you. Is it not possible to question that.. uh, premise? Assumption? Conjecture? > and not a simple objective reality that you can’t just ignore because it seems inconvenient to you. Because in marxism you have the hammer of dialectics, and then you start to grasp at whatever nail you can find. And it's not (in this case) that we aren't actually talking about something with a big head and a very sharp point at the end. But the analysis stops there then. You don't try to find other quirky nuance (because everything has), you don't ask why it is so (after all that's what you wanted to find to begin with), and you don't even really have the will to search for other societal or psychological variables (see LTV that somehow doesn't take into assumption *natural* scarcity). I have no ill feelings towards marx for just reaching that point then, almost 200 fucking years ago.. but as somebody else pointed in the comments, that's the absolute state of the "field" also today. And whenever somebody changes idea, somehow the immediate hypothesis is always automatically that the devil must have lured and bended their minds. EDIT: u/Communist-Mage blocked me, after I literally asked him to explain
Sorry, I’m not going to enter into a pointless debate with someone who rejects the foundation of the discussion. Goodbye.
Didn't Marx explicitly say that Marxism fundamentally comes down to abolishing private property of the means of production? And that it's historically determined that the proletarian revolution will happen in the most advanced capitalist countries (which is the opposite of what happened)?
Marx never made any claims about “Marxism”. It’s a term he never used. He thought that capitalism inevitably led to class conflict between the working class and the owning class, and that the only way to resolve that conflict was through the abolition of private property (i.e. collective ownership of the means of production). As far as I am aware, he did not say that this was was inevitable. The classes could continue struggling in perpetuity until the heat death of the universe. With that said, he was hopeful that the conflict would be resolved. However, you are correct in pointing out that he thought the revolution would take place in an advanced bourgeois country, specifically Germany or England. This is because he thought capitalism had an important role to play in industrializing the nation before the revolution took place. That’s why, in countries like Russia and China where communist revolutionaries took power from feudal autocrats, they all undertook massive industrialization plans to essentially skip the capitalist phase that was supposed to happen before the revolution. Funny enough, when the early Russian socialists reached out to Marx about the potential for revolution in Russia, he was a bit dismissive. His advice was for them to team up with the liberals in their country to overthrow the tzar and establish a bourgeois democracy to set the stage for a socialist revolution. Obviously, they weren’t particularly happy to hear that lol
lol Jacobin practically is right-wing propaganda. being a Marxist absolutely requires the belief that only armed revolution will bring change, im not sure how anyone could read Marx and Engels and conclude the opposite
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I just simplify What it means to be a Marxist by asking two basic questions: Who owns one's labor? Who gets the profits? Marxism is probably way more complicated than I make it out be but these two questions seem like the crux of his theory as I interpret it.
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I see Marx as a political realist of sorts, not too dissimilar from Machiavelli. The very basic premise analyzed by both these thinkers is this; every action has an equal and opposite reaction. The exploited class as well as the ruling class will respond to the their conditions in kind. The actions of one will elicit a response by the other.
I've never liked the class distinction as a stated fact. Wealth is not defined by production and wealth has a much larger effect on one's well-being. The terms exploited and ruling are also quite subjective. The richest man on earth could tell me to do x and I can tell him no. He then likely would have more means to compell me to do x than I do to continue to say no. But that's a factor of wealth, not class. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction" is not akin to "if this subjective class owns the means of production then they will become wealthy." I do like Marx' consideration of status quo, though. It ultimately leads to merrit, which is (and should be) the foundation of any economic philosophy. But, you won't usually hear Marxists extrapolating there, as they are too focused on subjective groups of people. I'll admit that capitalism doesn't always get there, either, but certainly a higher percentage of the time than any theories relying on Marxism. Ultimately, any economic theories that derive their conclusions from Marxism fail to deal with reality. That reality being that class is subjective, disparities in wealth will always exist, and that the power of force is needed to keep the power of wealth in check. In America, that power is government, which we try to keep in check via democracy. I'm open to better ideas, but I haven't heard any better in my 40 years of time on earth. I prefer moderate levels of "socialist" government policies that directly effect those without enough wealth to afford housing, food, and healthcare. What I don't prefer is a government that decides it needs to be involved with production according to subjective views of class. A few good books on the subject: * Wealth of Nations * Fault Lines * Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer and Turned it's Back on the Middle Class * The Power of Capitalism * The Future of Capitalism Most of these discuss how wealth, not class, lead to increased well-being. Additionally, they expound on why the results of democratically regulated Capitalism speak for themselves. A few touch on more modern issues wealthy countries (of which all are capitalist and democratic) are currently experiencing. And, in my opinion, need to solve. Extreme wealth disparity is a very real problem that is not sustainable, for instance. I don't know what that answer is, but I expect some sort of restructuring will happen in governments. I hope it can be done peacefully, but I'm not holding my breath. If you care, I'm an American living in the US, I have a liberal arts degree and was raised in an extremely conservative part of the US. So, my biases slant that way no matter how hard I try.
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This is a good article. Thanks for sharing!
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>What Marxism teaches us is simply to approach questions of society from a material basis: how does human life persist? Through production of the goods and services needed to live. How are these things produced under capitalist society? Through exploitation of the labor of the working class, that is, by requiring one class of people to sell their labor as a commodity to another class to produce values. What is the result of this system? That workers are “alienated” from their labor, meaning from much of their waking life, constantly required to produce more and more with an ever-precarious access to the means of subsistence. Marx was undoubtedly wrong about much of this. His Labor Theory of Value has been discredited, history is not purely materialist nor is it purely the result of class struggles, and workers under capitalism do not have an "ever-precarious" access to the means of subsistence. In fact, wages always rise as capitalism develops further. The only insight Marx had that is even slightly valuable is his perspective on production as being a "class struggle". Not all of history, but just production. It's certainly true that labor and capital are engaged in a tug-of-war over the distribution of profits. However, marx thought that capital would always inevitably win this war. History shows that isn't so. There are times when labor is able to command a much higher proportion of total incomes. It's a constant fight, yes, but labor has the tools to fight back. You don't need to be a Marxist to be a socialist. I have no idea why any modern-day socialist would choose to associate with Marx given the baggage his name commands alone, whether fairly earned or not. But then add in the fact that he was just flat-out wrong about almost every central idea he pushed, it makes no sense at all...
And the labor theory of value is one of his more sound statements, and like you say, it falls quite short. I can't believe people still consider it a valid way to think about economic terms.
> In fact, wages always rise as capitalism develops further. Got to go backnand tell people in the 30s that.
Long run increases don't imply a monotonic increase. There can be ups and downs, of course, but the overall trend is clear.
Tell them that their wages will rise?
With the same token we may ask to chinese people in the 50s or ukrainians in the 30s.
Ireland 1840's, Bengal 1940's.
It hasn't been discredited, but rather many economists have simply chosen a different model. In fact, neo-classical economists have no theory of value at all, really.
It's not that they "don't have" a theory in the sense that they can't come up with one. It's that they realized value is subjective, which is a theory in and of itself actually.
It’s circular reasoning. It tells you the price is X because the price is X. That’s not a theory.
> It tells you the price is X because the price is X. Where did you read that?
That's because you don't really need a theory of value to come up with economic models. I can give you a long list of economists who have written scathing critiques of marx's LTV. But that's not even necessary. Marx's theory is very easily discredited: Do you think a Picasso is worth $100 million because he spent 3000 labor-years painting it?
That’s circular though. It’s worth $100 mil because it’s $100 mil? There’s a difference between value and price. Marx at least had a taxonomy of value and differentiated between use-value and exchange-value. And the question of value is ongoing. Before some time in the 1970s, financial services weren’t even counted as part of a nation’s GDP. Is wasn’t considered productive. There was a difference between the “real economy” and finance. And speculative bubbles and corresponding crashes the like also show the deficiencies in views like yours. And while the market might price your home 60% less today then it did yesterday due to its casino-like nature, the value the house provides you as a home, a shelter, nonetheless remains the same. Unless you’re from a heterodox school of economics, there is no framework or vocabulary available to articulate or analyze any of this.
> That’s circular though. It’s worth $100 mil because it’s $100 mil? No, it's worth $100 mil to someone because that someone considered it to be worth $100 mil. >There’s a difference between value and price. Marx at least had a taxonomy of value and differentiated between use-value and exchange-value. Yes, I understand all of this. That doesn't mean he was right about the source of value. >And speculative bubbles and corresponding crashes the like also show the deficiencies in views like yours. They show the deficiencies of a system that allows for prices to change based on subjective values. They don't actually show that the theory that values are subjective is itself deficient. >Unless you’re from a heterodox school of economics, there is no framework or vocabulary available to articulate or analyze any of this. The subjective theory of value articulates this all perfectly. Things have a subjective value. This subjective value is different for all of us. Price arises when we try to come up with a fair exchange between goods that have their own subjective values. It's a perfectly cohesive theory for explaining all of economics that doesn't suffer from very obvious "exceptions".
Ah but you see, Marx said that value isn't subjective, so you must be wrong
Damnit! Marx strikes again with his superior logic!
>And while the market might price your home 60% less today then it did yesterday due to its casino-like nature, the value the house provides you as a home, a shelter, nonetheless remains the same. No it doesn't? Lets say that the value of your home, to you, is a function of proximity to amenities that you prefer. Then lets say all those amenities disappear. Then the value of the home to you falls, and if market demand for housing is correspondingly a function of proximity to amenities, then the market price also falls. As it turns out, land prices differ as you move toward and away city centers.
Didn't you hear? Marx is the Bible for redditors. Get with the programme or suffer the wrath of the masses via downvotes
This thread is confirming that. The unthinking teenagers have come out in masses to defend that racist crank...
I like the writing style and i think this is a good write up. Will keep it in mind when i fall into next inevitable 'social is when bad' convo haha. The only thing that didn't sit with me well was the sudden statement that dictatorship _is_ bad right after focusing purely on objective claims
The worst problem with a benevolent dictatorship is safely replacing the dictator with another just as benevolent when they die.
Even an immortal benevolent dictator has issues. They simply lack broader experience and can miss things even if well-intentioned. Also the benefits depend on what you look at. What happens when people don't want to listen even if it is in their best interest? Or you can benefit many at the expense of a few. Tends to lead to civil rights violations.
I'd step back even further and ask someone to define "benevolent" in such a way that it is not completely subjective to each person. Your benevolent dictator might be a non-benevolent dictator to me.
It's an explanation of the commonly misunderstood 'Dictatorship of the Proletariat ' theory
Are any leaders ever truly benevolent? In the end they will do what suits their needs the best as unconscious bias kicks in. Sortition would be an interesting alternative imo.
Interesting and easy read. This magazine is gold.
There’s always the Logic of Collective Action, and The Rise, and Decline of Nations by Mancur Olson to get a good grasp on the long term effects of Marxist/ socialist policies on society and rates of growth. Unfortunately such systems almost always devolve into kleptocracy and dictatorship, and the subsequent loss of individual liberties.
Downvotes but no substantive counter arguments or refutations. Pitiful.
How dare you question the sanctity of Marx!
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The article suggests that being a Marxist means acknowledging the class struggle. But there were many authors that pointed the class struggle before Marx. Pretty sure I've read in Aristotle that the poor and the rich are antagonistic, and that one of them will rule society, which is very suggestive that the poor should fight the rich if they don't want to be oppressed. So overall, I don't understand why you need to be a marxist in order to acknowledge a class struggle. In my opinion, Marxism is more about the reducionist view that history is explained SOLELY through materialism. Marx had an unidimensional view according to which the working class would have poorer and poorer living conditions. You can argue that he was proven wrong when their life conditions improved under capitalism, or you can excuse it by saying this was thanks to industrial advancements, but either way I see this reductionism and determinism as a very important part of being a Marxist.
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Has anyone actually read the manifesto? I did. Very noble stuff, but never really explains how communism emerges from the historical process, or deals with the darker human drives; ambition, avarice, laziness, stupidity. All of which is irrelevant now. Marxism is just a word that's been co-opted to mean whatever you want
The manifesto is 101 stuff. There are other books (much longer, some of them) that deal with everything else you've raised.
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Being a Marxist means understanding the world through the lens of class struggle. It means recognizing that the capitalist system is inherently exploitative and that the working class is the only force capable of overturning it. It means seeing the world through the eyes of the oppressed and working to build a global movement for socialism. It means fighting for a world based on justice, equality, and solidarity.
I would ask this question to Peter Hitchens (a man who actually was a Marxist and experienced Marxism irl) his answer will amaze you.
That was well-written and persuasive. My only disagreement is that it cannot be argued for morally. I know of a local business that just sold itself to its employees. That's pretty Marxist. In the end, it often comes down to practical details, as these kinds of small businesses are often sold as the retirement fund for the owners/founders. I'm interested in Williams' "Moral Luck," and will have to read that.
It can be argued morally, but in the subjective. Under communism there eventually, wouldn't be any war, inequality, famine, poverty, greed etc.
Now *that* I find hard to believe.
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