Let's talk about Marxism!! :)

angelica

SPEEDY MCCREADY wrote:

Harpo was my favorite.....

but Groucho got all the ladies.......

cornnifer

CorporateWhore wrote:

Karl Marx made many predictions about what would happen to the proletariet as the capitalists exploited them. He claimed that more and more people would become poorer and poorer, slowly entering into the same proletariet lifestyle. He predicted that the working class and the capitalists would grow farther and farther apart. The capitalists would gain more and more power, but also dwindle in number. More monopolies would arise. Essentially, there would be a proletariet versus the capitalists.

None of these things have happened.




?

This is happening! The gap between the haves and the have nots is growing larger and larger. The midle class is rapidly shrinking. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. it gets worse almost by the minute.

RainDog

CorporateWhore wrote:

None of these things have happened. We have a middle class and we have had it for 200 years in America. The level of competition in our economy is enormous. More monopolies have not arisen. The poor are becoming richer and richer! 100 years ago, the bottom rung of society lived FAR (comparably) to the bottom rung of society today. The point is: the poor have a higher standard of living than the poor have ever had at any time in history.

All of the things you mentioned here are maintained by a mixed economy, not by pure capitalism. Labor laws, wage laws, worker's rights, and sundry other "Marxist" aspects of our economy help keep our poor "rich" and our middle class nice and comfy; while individual business interests, investments, and other capitalist ventures keep us productive, so we'll actually have some of that wealth to spread around. Pure capitalism would likely lead to exactly what Marx predicted.

You seem to have your head stuck on the idea that your average American liberal is on the far left - a communist or Marxist - when the truth is far from it. Just as American conservatives are not glorifying (nor glorified by) the far right - fascism/Nazism - due to the fascistic belief in Nation over the individual and corporate control over the State and personal "business" - American liberals are not typically glorifying (nor glorified by) the far left. Soviet and Chinese style communism were/are not in favor of freedom of speech or expression, violently oppressed Jews, Christians, homosexuals, etc., and completely abandoned the idea of individual human rights. Face it, in a communist society, the ACLU would be strung up right alongside the bourgeoisie.

Mixed economies seem to have the most success, both in wealth production and civil rights. Capitalist means to socialist ends - and it's what we have here in the U.S. If we could just accept the fact that our country owes just as much of its prosperity to "Marxism" as it does Capitalism, we could quit this bickering about ideology and get back to arguing over where to spend the money.

RainDog

cornnifer wrote:

This is happening! The gap between the haves and the have nots is growing larger and larger. The midle class is rapidly shrinking. The rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer. it gets worse almost by the minute.

Hopefully, in the near future the trend starts to spring back and the wealth gap begins to shrink. It's not too late, and it doesn't require the total usurption of our current structure.

We'll know when it's too late when that gap is forcibly shrunk. Bad times ahead if we let that happen.

catefrances

socialism will look very appealing to the fatcats when they lose all their wealth.

macgyver06

marxism...lol...

how foolish

miller8966

marxism is for people who cant leave the university.

VictoryGin

CorporateWhore wrote:

The simple fact is: the gap between rich and poor has not widened in America.

American Roulette

In our winner-take-all casino economy, the middle class is getting royally screwed. A call to arms for populism, before it’s too late.

By Kurt Andersen

A couple of weeks back, out in Omaha, I happened to share a ride to the airport with a pair of United pilots. Both were classics of the type—trim, square-jawed, silver-haired, twangy-voiced white men, one wearing a leather jacket. Sam Shepard or Paul Newman could’ve played them. They spent the entire trip sputtering and whining—about being baited and switched when their employee ownership of the airline had been evaporated by its bankruptcy, about the default of their pension plan, about their CEO’s 40 percent pay raise, about the company to which they’d devoted their whole careers and now didn’t trust a bit, and, in effect, about turning from right-stuff demigods who worked hard and played by the rules into disrespected, sputtering, whining losers. The next morning back in New York, I read the news about the record-setting bonuses on Wall Street, an aggregate amount 1,100 percent higher than in the go-go year of 1986. The 2006 revenues at just one bank, Goldman Sachs, were larger than the GNPs of two-thirds of the countries on Earth—a treasure chest from which the firm was disbursing $53.4 million to its CEO and an average of $623,000 to everybody who works at the place.

read the rest here: http://nymag.com/news/imperialcity/26014/index.html

RavennaSeattle1911

nikita kruschev was the first rock star

FinsburyParkCarrots

This thread epitomises the concept of false consciousness.

CorporateWhore

FinsburyParkCarrots wrote:

This thread epitomises the concept of false consciousness.

Marx's ideas epitomise the concept of a falsehood.

sapperskunk

miller8966 wrote:

marxism is for people who cant leave the university.

LOL, I like that. Mostly because it's true.

OutOfBreath

CorporateWhore.
If the point of this thread is to call out anyone agreeing with marxism just to tell them "You're stupid", well the debate wont exactly be going anywhere.

Also, what constitutes a marxist isn't clear either, as there are many schools of thought within marxism. You seem to mean Soviet communism by marxism, and I think you will be hard pressed to find any supporters of that. Especially on an american/european board.

Furthermore, as raindog pointed out, any success you claim for capitalism is really a success for mixed economy. There are no pure "capitalism" as there is no pure "marxism" or "socialism". Difference between countries is in the mix of the two. Utilizing capitalist means for socialist ends is the force responsible for the development and so on you brag about.

And this is precisely why Marx was wrong back in the day. He didn't think that the capitalists and workers could ever be reconciled. But his foundation was relatively skilless (hence replacable) workers, whereas industry and labour market specialized so that the interchangability of workers were reduced drastically. Together with the building of welfare states and redistribution of resources through taxation, the middle class became possible, and the lowest classes weren't as poor off as before. This happened during the mid to late 1800s across the board in western countries. Fueled by concerns about civil unrest among the rulers. If you read history from that era, you'll see numerous riots, revolts, establishing of communes and so on.

However, removal of these intermediates may still prove Marx right.

One can also take the view that the proletariat has been moved out of our countries and into the third world. Looking globally on it, Marx may not have been proven wrong yet. In that view, we in the west are the owners and middle class, while our working class is working for us for a pittance a day in some third world country.

One can also say, in continuance of the historical account, that Marx never got to be right, because his warnings and scenarios were heeded and changed.

---

If you're out for calling names, then I guess you can call me a marxist. But I am not a communist, nor do I support command economy. It's possible. Me being a marxist has then more to do with the fundamental perspective of my worldview, and heeding and acknowledging some of Marx' central concepts. (if not all, or even the most widely known ones)

Peace
Dan

OutOfBreath

miller8966 wrote:

marxism is for people who cant leave the university.

Hehe. Somewhat true. At least marxists tend to be thorougly educated and knowing of the ways of the world.

Peace
Dan

angelica

CorporateWhore wrote:

Marx's ideas epitomise the concept of a falsehood.

False consciousness is something entirely different. 98% of our population lives with a false consciouseness, literally, according to base psychology. (Maslow's hierarchy of needs, whereupon a mere 2% clarify their awareness becoming REAListic)

With such a minority REALizing the "truth", people such as Marx have been able to see what others presumably are unable to. Also, even Marx was dismayed that his ideas became skewed within his own lifetime. This has been said about him: ""there are few thinkers in modern history whose thought has been so badly misrepresented, by Marxists and anti-Marxists alike." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism

Like with what the mystics have told us through the ages, what many great thinkers have shown us has been distorted by the wide majority who with lack of awareness are labouring under ignorance, and lack of personal insight and vision. This false consciousness is independent of the original ideas in question being faulty. aka: when you point the finger at someone else, there just may be three more pointing back at you.

wavescamecrashing

Just to point out something that no one has said yet:

Marx was thinking globally. he did not believe that a communist utopia could be achieved through one country becoming socialist/communist.

Stalin pushed for 'socialism in one country' Hitler was a national socialist. This had nothing to do with Marx.

And as many people have pointed out, viewing Marxist theory from a global perspective and the man is bang on.

'the wreck is going down,get out before you drown'

wavescamecrashing

also, this is how Lenin and the Bolsheviks justified doing things like invading Poland, to spread communism. In Germany, Britain and France there were fairly strong calls or attempts for socialism around the same time. The failure of these and the onset of the USSR has left a perception that communism failed. But by Marx's definition, it had never existed in the first place. Hence why we are still able to view ourselves in the middle stage...

FinsburyParkCarrots

CorporateWhore wrote:

Marx's ideas epitomise the concept of a falsehood.

What do you know about Marxism? Clearly nothing. Maybe as little as you know about the concept of nationhood. Marxists have better things to do than engage for any length of time in tit for tat internet squabbles, with a lumpenproletariat armed with 2MB Internet connection speeds and a bookmark of the Drudge Report.

gue_barium

lumpenproletariat
noun

1. People in a society who, for whatever reason, do not work, eg the homeless, beggars, criminals, etc.

Form: Lumpenprotelariat
2. now derog
People of the lower classes in a society who are perceived as having no interest in improving them-selves intellectually, financially, etc.
Derivative: lumpenproletarian
adj

Etymology: 1920s: from German Lumpen rag + proletariat; first coined by Karl Marx in 1850.

FinsburyParkCarrots

Thanks for that. The term tends also, more recently, to connote people not of the educational or earning elite in a capitalist society, who are easily bought off by supposedly improved material conditions (access to state controlled media, for example), and "think they're so clever and classless and free", but are still fucking peasants as far as anyone with a brain can see.