Franz J. T. Lee: Venezuela between Jesus Christ and Karl Marx..

Franz J. T. Lee: Venezuela between Jesus Christ and Karl Marx...

A serious discussion about Marxism today is timely and welcome. Nationally and internationally, as can be witnessed currently in Mar del Plata, Argentina, and elsewhere, wherever President Chavez appears or gives an address or a press conference, the Bolivarian Revolution inspires, grasps the emancipatory imagination of the oppressed world.

However, capitalism is a very specific, complex, powerful, global, historical reality. From the active and theoretical point of view of annihilating its exploitative essence, of eradicating it from the face of the earth, only a specific science and philosophy has studied its historical process, its laws, its dialectics, its parasitic character and internationally how to eliminate it by means of scientific praxis and philosophic theory, by global workers' class struggle and world revolution. This living science and philosophy is socialism or Marxism. It replaced and excelled religious ideology of passively changing the world "peacefully" by means of the "grace of god."

Although nobody has come back as yet, to give us a report of living conditions in Heaven, nonetheless, no staunch Christian would ever doubt the "theory" of going to Heaven some day after death. Similarly, Marxism will only be disproved theoretically when all of us together will sing "Nearer my God to thee" in Heaven, and not in our universe, not in our solar system, not on planet Earth.

Naturally, Marxism has become the measuring-rod, to know who or what is really revolutionary, truly wants to emancipate the downtrodden billions on Earth. The global Christian "meek and humble" love Chavez, in the final showdown, they necessarily will have to love Marx also; in the end to be invincible, they will have to love the truth itself even more.

http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46734

I'm not a study of philosophy by any means, or political systems. But I was under the impression the whole Marx thing didn't work out, as played out via the Soviet Union.

Why the interest now?

Believe me, this is not a snark post. I am seriously needing an answer.

Sorry, but there is no sound-bite answer to your question.

A reader posed a similar, albeit longer, question to the World Socialist Web Site (WSWS). I believe the answer provided by WSWS will provide you with additional information that you can pursue at your own leisure.

I will point out that there is a wide range of opinions as to why the Soviet Union collapsed, and why the Socialist state envisioned by Lenin was betrayed by Stalin's autocratic bureaucracy.

For example, my friends at Socialist Party USA (SPUSA) will have a different take from my friends at Communist Party USA (USA), and their views will be different from that of the various socialist and anarchist groups. Having said that, I think the WSWS reply to a reader on this topic is quite appropriate to answer your question.

Here is part of WSWS's answer to a reader:

The first point I would make is that for the WSWS the betrayal of the Stalinist bureaucracy does not consist in its liquidation of the Soviet Union and the “eastern bloc” and the restoration of capitalism. These events were the culmination of processes which had been set in motion decades before.

As far back as 1936, Leon Trotsky, in his book The Revolution Betrayed traced the origins of the bureaucracy and warned that its monopolisation of political power, its nationalist doctrine of socialism in one country and the defence of its material interests and privileges against the Soviet masses would lead inevitably to the liquidation of all the gains of the 1917 revolution and the restoration of capitalism unless it were overthrown by the working class.

In that book Trotsky refused to characterise the Soviet Union as “socialist”. The Russian Revolution and the nationalisation of property had, he insisted, done no more than lay the foundations for the transformation of the Soviet Union into a socialist society. Its future depended on a complex series of national and international factors. The transition to socialism depended on the interconnection of two processes. If the revolution, which had begun by 1917, had extended to the advanced capitalist countries and if the Soviet working class was able to overthrow the usurping Stalinist bureaucracy then the USSR could evolve in the direction of socialism. However, if the Soviet Union remained isolated and if the bureaucracy, in defence of its material interests and privileges, continued to stifle the progressive tendencies inherent in nationalised industry and central planning, then the Soviet Union would undergo a continuous degeneration, leading eventually to the restoration of capitalism.

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2000/sep2000/corr-s12.shtml

Here is an excellent August 2005 BBC article about the socialism that is being build in Venezuela by the workers.

Chavez calls for democracy at work
Iain Bruce
In Puerto Ordaz, Venezuela

The heat and the noise are almost unbearable in the casting room of Line 3 at Alcasa.

This is one of two big aluminium plants in the south-eastern city of Puerto Ordaz, where most of Venezuela's basic industries are concentrated.

It is also the test bed for a new experiment in co-management, which President Hugo Chavez says is a key step towards a "socialism of the twenty-first century".

Alcides Rivero, who works here as a maintenance electrician, says co-management means that for the first time in this company's 37 years of existence, the workforce has control.

"It's us, the workers", he says, "who decide on questions of production and technology, and it's us who elect who will be our managers."

Marivit Lopez, from the personnel department, explains that the workers are also drawing up a "participatory budget" for 2006.

"The different departmental works councils are discussing and amending the existing proposal so that we get a budget that really fits the company's needs," she says.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/4155936.stm

Yugoslavia did the same thing. There aren't any Yugos around anymore, but then again, there isn't much of Yugoslavia around anymore either.

I think it's not in the theory - more in the implementation.

Das Capital will bowl you over with its descriptions of the ruling class and the nature of the monolithic beast we face today. You can find excerpts online. Most of Marx' predictions about how capital would evolve were dead on the mark.

So far his projection of an advanced working class taking the lead in a revolutionary situation (he thought it would happen in Germany or France or England first) has never developed as he expected.

Russian revolutionaries bought into that theory, and thought at first the European workers would create revolutions in the advanced countries of Europe. Circumstances during WWI led to the Soviets (small circles of workers and/or soldiers, usually led by the Bolsheviks) seizing state power. After WWI ended the allied forces turned their power toward encircling and attacking the USSR. Winning that civil war, the reds and workers in Russia found themselves pretty much isolated, and no other workers' revolution about to break out anywhere. Russia was a backward, feudal country, completely broken by two vicious wars on their own land, still completely encircled by their enemies, and completely impoverished with not one friendly country to turn to.

The Communist Party broke into two contingents, one led by Trotsky whose position seemed to be that without revolution in other countries, there could be no "workers' state" in Russia. And the side led by Stalin, who said WTF? are we supposed to just quit now? We must build on what we have accomplished, whether or not the rest of the world falls into the expected Marxist pattern.

Which all led, of course, to the purges, the exile of Trotsky, and the supremacy of Stalin, who with great leadership skill found ways to pull the USSR into the 20th Century and through yet another great war fought on Russian soil. He also brought about a system of governance and society that was nothing at all as anticipated by Marx, Lenin, etc. It was, nonetheless, held out by the West as an example of a "Communist" state - though Communists everywhere knew it was a deformed socialist state that had little to do with Marx or Communism. And in the end there was the ultimate downfall and overthrow of the Soviet system, glorified here as the final overthrow of Communism and goodbye good riddance to Marx. :shrug:

Marx aside, even if you do not buy into the working class as vanguard, or the monolithic nature of monopoly capital, any sensible person is able to see that without some redistribution of power and wealth, this world as we know it can not exist much longer.

Many of the good folks in South and Central America obviously can.

Wat

Marxism isn't a living science. It's dead, and buried, after falling under the weight of it's own false premises. The prediction of religious dogma being supplanted by marxist dogma strikes me as particularly apropos, and not because I think it's going to happen.

Chavez's experiments in nationalization and nonprofit organizations are going to be financed with oil revenues. Oil revenues can make even feudal theocratic monarchies to look like successes in the short run, for as long as the oil revenue exceeds and covers up the inefficiencies and inequalities of the system.

that Bush is giving us.

After all, the polar opposite of a false theory isn't the truth, but another false theory.

Whatever Bush's theory du jour is...and I think it's mostly whatever fits his true inclination towards cronyism, and protecting his kind from the rigors of markets and risk while having them descend with full force on everyone else....it in no way makes Marxism look any better.

That's what I am afraid happened to Venezuela. They took an opportunity to reform to a place that is bad in a completely different way and are calling it progress.

I read the NYT article on Chavez's plans, and all I could think was: oil money will prop up the system, and the wealth of the nation will be pissed away on an ineffective and inefficient economy. It'll be the same as Saudi or Indonesia, where the country has huge oil production and yet remains poor at it's very essence.

>>I read the NYT article on Chavez's plans,

The NYT has had it out for Chavez for quite some time, so I would hardly use it as a source of information. Can you pleae be more specific about how Venezuela is going to be a poor and inefficient economy besides your broadside slogans that sound like they come from Reagan?

I can't think of what else Marxism actually produced with efficiency.

The NY Times is still standing by their "star" reporter Judy Miller. This is the same NY Times that had Bill Safire as a columnist and has that idiotic mouthpiece for the Likud Tom Friedman on the payroll.

Stop drinking whatever brand of Kool-Aid you are drinking!

That's mine. So whatever. But one hardly has to be the Paper of Record to note that Marxism hasn't inspired any success stories.

Marx, who of course was no saint, lived a complicated life in which he was alternately consumed by philosophical issues, the history of science, economic theory, practical politics, the study and creation of propaganda, and a certain moral outrage against the conditions of life experienced by many of his contemporaries.

When certain of his views became fashionable, he himself said, rather acidly, that he was not a Marxist.

Some of his philosophy is still fun to read, and some of the anthropology seems insightful. His political commentaries always struck me as a bit nasty, and I find his abstract economic theory boring.

On the other hand, his approach to analyzing practical politics, and its relation to economic class interests, is sometimes conceptually useful: it belongs to a European intellectual tradition that has produced other important masters of suspicion (like Freud) who, though never the final word on any topic, may still provide extremely useful insights into the hidden significance of public utterances and the ways political speech can be used to disguise the actual state of affairs.

And his moral outrage about the cynical exploitation of people, the cruel and unnecessary contradictions between conspicuous consumption of a leisure class and the grinding poverty of those who actually performed the labor to support that leisure, is still breathtaking after a hundred and fifty years ...

think Marxism is a restatement of the Sermon on the Mount. Like you said, the part that people enjoy is merely attitudinal, where he criticizes exploitation.

It's his approach to analyzing practical politics, class interests, history that was actually never conceptually useful, if by that one means an accurate depiction of reality and having the ability to predict the future. That's why Stalin ended up in charge of the Soviet Union, and Trotsky, the consumate theorist, ended up in Mexico with an ice axe in his back. That's why the last active communist state is North Korea, and the last active communist insurgency in Nepal, and why none of the western democracies that Marx was actually thinking of as the scene of the proletarian revolution did more than flirt with Marxism. And that's why western democracies and market economies, for whatever their failures, outlasted the marxist experiments, and grinding poverty isn't what it used to be. As Engels said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating.

If Marx belongs to the European tradition of suspicion and moral outrage, one can also safely say that suspicion and moral outrage does not a society make. I think that's a great lesson to keep in mind, as America reacts with moral outrage and suspicion to the current government. It is wrong to believe, ast implied in other posts, that if I don't like the faulty, selfserving and cynical theories of the Bush Admin made under the flag of freedom and capitalism, that I have to give credit to a polar opposite. In fact, I would argue that the Bushites and the Leninists aren't polar opposites, as shown by folks like Wolfowitz who have been both.

How ironic that it is precisely because of Bush's pursuit of raw, undiluted capitalism, that capitalism's grave is being dug by its many victims.

You fear that the world is beginning to see that America's "freedom and democracy" are nothing but a fraud and a sham. The world already knows, as many in the US do, that "free trade" is nothing more than a blank check for corporations to exploit workers.

You are afraid that Bush has taken off the blinders that people had about the true nature of capitalism and its much ballyhooed "free enterprise" myth.

You fear that the oppressed of the world, who no longer choose to remain silent, will ditch the different variants of capitalism and embrace a philosophy in which they are the ones empowered.

You are fearful that the closing words of the Communist Manifesto will become the new Gospel for a new global society that will replace Bush's "New World Order."

Bush may be digging a grave, but no amount of gravedigging for his brand of capitalism is going to reanimate the Marxist corpse. All you get is two dead worldviews.

Your declaration that Marxism is going to be a successor is just the sloganeering based on the same, erroneous Marxist predictions based on it's erroneous science. Did Marx predict the SU, much less the end of it? Did he predict the growth of freedom and wealth in the West? And where does the Cultural Revolution fit in? Yeah, I don't put much stock in Marxist predictions.

There's more chance of going christian theocracy or fascist than Marxist. After all, the failure of marxism is a more recent memory than the conquest over fascism or the end of feudal christian state.

All you have shown is that you are well educated, another fine product of our educational system and its efforts to turn all of us into fine, obedient consumers (not to mention a century and a half of anti-Socialist propaganda).

I'll take it then that you support the Caracas elites against Chavez's Bolivarian Revolution, after all, that was the topic of this thread before you hijacked it with your William F. Buckley talking points.

Being trapped in this dialectic, you assumed that I would side with certain Caracas elites. Or a fan of Bill Buckley.

And you're wrong.

By the way, if you want to hear the talking points, you shouldn't go to Buckley. You should go to Eastern Europe. After all, that's where the theory failed, and where people dumped it as soon as they were allowed. As Freddy Engels said, "the proof of the pudding is in the eating." They ate Marxism for a half century.

You will be amazed as to how disgruntled and disillusioned they are about their new gained "freedoms" in a unified Germany.

Ask the women of Poland how they feel about losing abortion rights that they had enjoyed under the "evil" Communist government, and that they lost under the capitalist and Catholic controlled governments that followed it.

Ask the Russian people if they are better off today than they were under the Communists? The only ones that will answer in the affirmative are the mafia and the new class of speculators.

Yeah, the proof is in the pudding alright!

Sixty years after communism was forced on Eastern Europe, you are ready for the vote as to whether they want it or not. As soon as the people have a choice, and they choose to not be communist, you're ready to ask their opinions!

The Poles could vote for Marxism TODAY, if they wanted it. Unlike before, there isn't a thing stopping the exercise of popular will. But they aren't. Instead, they are voting for economic union with Western Europe. Ooopsy, Daisy!

As for the Germans, after years of chancing death to escape to the West, they found that there simply wasn't anything else to do but reunify with the West. They too made a choice. Care to compare relative incomes and freedoms before and after reunification? I didn't think so.

Are the russians better off than under the communists? Why, yes. You can compare them with the lovely time the Belarussians are having, retaining their communist state. At least the Russians have a chance. At worst, Russia will fall back into an impoverished, totalitarian state....right where Marxism had taken them anyway. They had nothing to lose, and everything to gain. Good luck to them.

Really, you've forgotten the cardinal rule of Marxist ideology--to claim that any place that's called itself Marxist WASN'T. Because nobody wants to trade what they have for the Soviet Union. You have to tell them that they are trading what they have for a land of lollipops and cotton candy, like the quote in the OP.

You are quite good at spouting Voice of America propaganda. Congratulations!

Let's have a vote, because, after all, we are busy holding everyone to standards of democracy and fair economic status BUT communist countries. After all, the communist state of the GDR obviously made a huge mistake in reunification because it failed, like all marxist countries, to hold a real vote. The communist leaders of East Germany simply made a mistake.

Let's hold the vote. OOPSY DAISY too late! They held a vote, and the Essis won:'



http://www.expatica.com/source/site_article.asp?subchannel_id=52&story_id=25083&name=East+Germans+to+take+Germany's+political+reins
November 4, 2005
BERLIN - Germany's two main political parties will soon be led by veterans of East Germany's peaceful revolution of 1989-90 which chased one of the former communist bloc's most hardline regimes from power.

Christian Democratic Union (CDU) leader Angela Merkel is poised to become not only Germany's first eastern leader but also the first woman to ever lead the nation.

Matthias Platzeck will in two weeks be elected chairman of the Social Democrats (SPD), Germany's oldest political party which looks back on a proud 140-year history. Most analysts predict he will be the SPD's next chancellor candidate.

*******

Because, as your article notes, no complainer compares the east as it was with what it is. They compare expectations after reunification with what it is. Nobody wants to go back to the reality of the GDR.

and you are wetting your pants with your Faux News talking points.

Get rid of the Electoral College and allow for multi-party free elections with proportional representation, and then you can brag about you precious bourgeois "democracy."

BTW, Merkel is another Maggie Thatcher. I guess that's your kind of leader.

How can you defend the GDR and the USSR systems and complain of the US's flawed democracy?

Marxism merely failed to deliver prosperity. But as to democracy and civil rights, the communist states and their communist parties were actively and bloodily opposed.

If you want more democracy, you want less Marxism.

Can you say the same about that country whose flag you have in your avatar?

I don't care what was in the GDR constitution any more than the rulers of the GDR did. They didn't care, I don't care.

The constitutions were no less of a lie than the "elections". Lies propagated by a state system of propaganda.

Now, maybe my constitution doesn't have everything I want, but that's very different than saying it is ignored by the ruling elites entirely. In the first instance, the constitution could be changed and my situation improved. In the second, the constitution could be changed and my situation wouldn't improve. Why wouldn't it improve? Because my situation is entirely at the whim of people beyond the law.

I complain that one American citizen is jailed without trial. But the communist countries had no such standard at all. You can't compare them, not apples to apples. You argue that communism's lies are prettier than the west's reality. Well, okay. If you like lies, that's for you.

Had the USSR still existed today, there is no way that Bush could have gotten away with the shit he has pulled. There would not have been a US invasion of Iraq. The UN inspectors would have been allowed to finish their job, and in the process, they would have debunked all the lies about WMD.

Had we had a USSR, over 2,000 GIs and 100,000 Iraqis would be alive today.

You bet, I wish the USSR was still around!

That's a pretty high price to put on somebody else because your country has fucked it up.

Fact is, Bush is more a throwback to the national security regime built up during the cold war than the Bush I--Clinton buildown. I was thoroughly enjoying the peace and global surge of prosperity that came with the iron curtain coming down.

She hasn't even warmed up the Chancellor's chair...

Critics protests against Merkel

Sunday, November 6, 2005 Posted: 0817 GMT (1617 HKT)

BERLIN, Germany (AP) -- Opponents of welfare cuts demonstrated Saturday against the proposed new German government, which they fear will target social programs as it scrambles to plug a massive budget deficit.

It rained at times in Berlin and turnout appeared far short of organizers' forecast of 10,000 -- contrasting with huge crowds that protested benefit cuts last year.

At a separate event, conservative Chancellor-designate Angela Merkel said she was confident of agreeing soon on a coalition that will "find solutions" to Germany's problems.

Germany's Sept. 18 election gave neither center-left nor center-right alliances a parliamentary majority, forcing Merkel's conservatives and outgoing Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder's Social Democrats into talks on a left-right "grand coalition."

The alliance will require painful compromises as they seek to boost the sluggish economy and cut unemployment.

Demonstrators converged on Berlin's signature Brandenburg Gate with placards demanding politicians keep their "hands off wages and pensions" and urging them to "fight unemployment, not the unemployed."

http://edition.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/europe/11/06/germany.protests.ap/index.html

After all, you aren't in favor of the other candidate: you're in favor of a system without elections at all.

The people vote for candidates that want to cut benefits, and the only solution is to take that choice away by establish a people's dictatorship....as if you somehow have a better knowledge of the possibilities of the situation than the poles and germans who lived under, and next to, those regimes.

Your original point was that we should be asking the East Germans and the Poles. Now you aren't for asking them at all, are you?

which share similar backgrounds, interests, livestyles, and objectives, and the members of such a group will naturally tend (absent some dedicated effort to think critically about themselves and their place in the world) to produce a self-justifying culture and ideology. Surely such groups tend to organize to defend what they consider their interests.

Do you regard it as accidental that, as the oil discovery and production passes a peak predicted long ago, the United States finds itself governed by oil company insiders who early in their rule studied world oil maps, then invaded a major oil producing country (after warning the citizens there not to attack oil infrastructure), carefully preventing looting at the oil ministry (but nowhere else); that these same people had foreknowledge of a 2002 coup in another major oil producing nation and immediately recognized the coup government (though Chavez reclaimed power shortly afterwards); that the US cannot establish meaningful fuel economy standards for vehicles; that these insiders used Katrina (for example) to reduce environmental regulations on the oil industry; that they are forcing open ANWR for oil drilling; and that the oil companies are making record profits?

Is this all too impolite to mention? Or is it perhaps some divine mystery that we will only when we come, someday, to the bright Courts of Heaven?

Speaking strictly for myself, I should think, rather, that there is a class of people associated with the petroleum economy and that it might be one of several useful classes to analyze ...

But there aren't the be all and end all for behavior. Human behavior isn't due to a single cause, namely, class.

That's why the Marxists were blindsided by WWI. They predicted that the working classes and elites of one nation wouldn't fight the working class and elites of another. They believed that the national identities were false, and that class identities were real, and that the working classes wouldn't fight their brethren on the other side.

Then it turned out that nationality was a much stronger motivating factor than class identity, and people turned out to slaughter on the basis of nationality. What Marxism predicts to be the most, if not only, factor in determining behavior, was not. The predictive power of Marxist analysis is zero.

with genuine ideas rather than distorted shadows.

Marx never claimed class as "be all and end all for behavior." But existing social forces will mold our consciousness, unless we make a concerted effort to be critical and self-critical in our thinking. This observation is closely related to the Freudian observation that subconscious desires and tendencies can drive behavior, so that psyche is not necessarily eliminated by repression -- though it can be governed somewhat if brought into the conscious mind.

Marx did not believe that spontaneously evolving consciousness would necessarily track real world conditions with accuracy: rather, he said that popular attitudes tended to reflect events about fifty years earlier. But consciousness does not develop merely passively and spontaneously: since the invention of movable type, it is mass produced. The continuing improvement of instruments for the mass production of consciousness (movies, radio, TV ...) has been accompanied, not only by deliberate propaganda use of these tools, but also by an often almost invisible (accidental or incidental) use of the tools to reproduce the sociocultural views of those who control the media machinery. Not only the owners of the mass media believe in this mass production of consciousness: so do the advertisers, as well as everyone who seeks media attention for an idea. And the modern history of efforts to organize the working class is closely tied to the struggle against mass produced false consciousness: nobody, who believed that popular consciousness MUST necessarily evolve to reflect reality, would bother with trying to educate people or trying to sway opinion -- and yet labor history is full of examples of people trying to do exactly that.

More pointedly directed at your WWI "example": if what you were saying were true, the "Marxists" to whom you refer would have passively done nothing to confront organized war propaganda and the development of pro-war mentality. But there is, in fact, a textual record of opposition to the war ...

The dialectic, the inevitability, the secular paradise...it's not a misportrayal to call it cartoonish.

But there isn't anything wrong with simplicity if it accurately described the way the world works. It simply doesn't. The concept that if one simply spends enough time trying to "educate" the masses, then the socialist man can be created...been tried, failed. Neither propaganda nor force nor mass murder of the openly malcontented created the class consciousness that Marx premised his entire world view upon, not just to predict the future but to explain the past.

Oh, no doubt the Marxists opposed WWI. But the critical fact is that so few followed, not that they opposed it. The working classes of Germany marched off to slaughter the working classes of France, the elites of Great Britain sent their heirs to die fighting the elites of Germany.... The opportunity Marxists saw for an awakening of class consciousness never happened. Instead, there was an awakening of national consciousness, which remains the organizing principle for collective human effort. That, and private for-profit enterprise. Working class interests were expressed in trade unions and parties participating in liberal democratic systems, which Marx saw as the enemy of the proletarian revolution.

In short, the attraction of Marxism is that it is an intricate, beautiful, coherent Theory of Everything which has an eventual happy ending. All it fails to do is meet the scientific standards that Marxism pretends to, which is, does it predict or post-dict. It doesn't. Economically, socially, it's a dead end. Just because it's pretty doesn't mean its true or helpful in any sense.

Karl Marx was a philosopher, not a psychic genius. Of course he didn't produce some magical recipe for utopia and of course alot of his ideas were wrong. Of course his perspective was flawed, of course his prescriptions were flawed. Anyone who picks up a book written by a philosopher who has been dead since 1883 and expects anything different is an idiot.

Marx's work contains ideas. Interesting ideas, bad ideas, good ideas, insights, analysis, etc. His work should be read critically and with an understanding of the contexts in which they were written.

I really don't think we need thought police. Accepting that Marx's ideas might have some validity or usefulness will not cause anyone to attempt to repeat mistakes or wrongs of past movements and people who have utilized Marx's ideas.

As did all the other Marxist theorists.

I don't think we need a thought police, either, although the communists did. I think we need to call an ideology a failure on any particular criteira that one want's to set for it except being some sort of precious NOT CAPITALISM.

That is a valid criticism. And anyone who claims marxism is science is as wrong, and wrong in a very similar way, to anyone who claims freudian ideas are science. In both cases you get philosophy based to a certain degree of critical thinking and scientific understanding that completely abandons the constraints of the scientific method.

I don't think we need a thought police, either, although the communists did.

No. Facists did. Thought police are inherently incompatible with the idea of communism.

I think we need to call an ideology a failure on any particular criteira that one want's to set for it except being some sort of precious NOT CAPITALISM.

Huh?

There is no need to call any ideology a failure.

The problem with Marxism isn't just that it's not science. It's that it is wrong and pretends to science.

Thought police may be "inherently incompatible" with the idea of communism, yet, one can't find a state attempting to practice communism without them. Why is that?

Apparently, every actual institution of the theory either caused, or made possible the rise of persons who were interested in, a totalitarian state.

I'll call that a failure. It's a failure under the values and goals of Marxism itself. Add that to the fact that Marxism can't really provide the material comfort it promises, and you've got a washout. The question really is, how can you NOT call the ideology a failure? It's a huge edifice built on sand.

But it is just that, an article of faith. It is rediculous to claim that no marxist ideas can be practiced. That is no more reasonable a position than claiming that marist ideas are garunteed to work.

The problem with Marxism isn't just that it's not science. It's that it is wrong and pretends to science.

It doesnt pretend to be science in any modern sense, it pretends to be more scientific than it is, which again is something you find throughout philosophy (and economics) as philosophers attempt to draw conclusions where science cannot follow.

The problem with Marxism is that it is antiquated and myopic. There is so much more out there besides Marx that must be understood to have a realistic understanding of things.

Thought police may be "inherently incompatible" with the idea of communism, yet, one can't find a state attempting to practice communism without them. Why is that?

That doesnt make any sense.

How can a state that is acting in ways incompatible with communism be attempting to practice communism?

Rather obviously a government whose actions are incompatible with communism who claims to be attempting communism is lying, much like states who do the exact same things whilest claiming to be attempting democracy are lying too.

Apparently, every actual institution of the theory either caused, or made possible the rise of persons who were interested in, a totalitarian state.

The institutions in totalitarian societies and the theories employed by those seaking power made possible totalitarianism? How suprising.

I guess its just a coincidence that throughout history people have employed similar strategies, rhetoric and institutions to grab power using all kinds of other popular ideologies, including democracy.

But even though it is obvious to us that power corrupts our democratic society and not democracy, we should certainly assume that it was the (unpracticed)ideology of communism that corrupted people in other societies. Clearly hoping for a future society based on cooperation is what caused these men to grab power and become tyrants, not the natural human desire for power that has manifested itself in every society in history.

I'll call that a failure. It's a failure under the values and goals of Marxism itself.

You will call what a failure? The fact that Marx wasnt able to provide a perfect utopian manual?

Add that to the fact that Marxism can't really provide the material comfort it promises, and you've got a washout.

Right, no idea derived from Marx can possibly work because you say so. Once again this is just as rediculous as claiming that ideas from Marx will certainly work.

The question really is, how can you NOT call the ideology a failure?

I prefer not to repeat meaningless anti-communist propaganda.

Any way you cut it, badly.

For the faithful, it was a failed attempt, in that it wasn't "really communist", which simply shows that it isn't possible to be "really communist". One can say that all the movements in every single country were hijacked by bloody dictatorships. But what can one say about an ideology which, on the way to implementation, ALWAYS get hijacked and NEVER provides?

You can say it doesn't work, or you can just ignore reality and stay on the level of "intentions".

I'll stick to ideologies which, when practiced, don't end up with a bloody totalitarian state in EVERY instance.

Communism's been tried.

No it hasnt.

For the faithful, it was a failed attempt, in that it wasn't "really communist", which simply shows that it isn't possible to be "really communist".

So the fact that the attempts to create something failed prove that such a thing cannot be created?

That is horrible logic.

One can say that all the movements in every single country were hijacked by bloody dictatorships. But what can one say about an ideology which, on the way to implementation, ALWAYS get hijacked and NEVER provides?

People say nice things about freedom and democracy all the time.

You can say it doesn't work, or you can just ignore reality and stay on the level of "intentions".

Or you can not jump to silly conclusions and aquire a nuanced understanding of the ideas and history involved that allows you to see how rediculous your anti-communist generalizations are.

I'll stick to ideologies which, when practiced, don't end up with a bloody totalitarian state in EVERY instance.

No, you will stick to your superficial understanding of the world where such statements make sense.

Tyranny has been with us since the dawn of time. The idea that believing we can live cooperatively is responsible for tyranny is ludacris.

But let's allow that the states and parties that called themselves communist really weren't. None of them, since all communist states weren't successful.

But it cannot merely be a coincidence that marxism, which intends and is premised on a belief that we can live cooperatively, is used as the fig leaf for totalitarians. There must be something inherent in marxist theory that makes it the ideology of choice of totalitarians. After all, nobody ever instituted a one party police state waiving a copy of The Wealth of Nations, or Jean Jacques Rosseau.

And of course there is: it's the theory that there is going to be period of dictatorship, not lording over a world of cooperation, but engaging in a violent overthrow and rearrangement of the social system. Marxism presumes a non-consensual process, and once all the cotton candy and cooperative people open the door to a temporary dictatorship, why, it never, ever leaves. So in a sense, yes, the people who believed in Marxism brought us Stalinism. They were ready for a little bit of dictatorship by a nice guy, and a decent respect for what really happens in this world should have told them the risk of a little dictatorship by a nice guy is a lot of dictatorship by a tyrant.


In the end, it doesn't prove that no marxist state could ever exist, but then again, what could?

Me, I would rather have an ideology based on the more realistic view of our founding fathers, who didn't just assume away the tendencies of men to selfishness and to grab control over each other.

of history, the ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life. Other than this neither Marx nor I have ever asserted. Hence if somebody twists this into saying that the economic element is the only determining one, he transforms that proposition into a meaningless, abstract, senseless phrase ...

"We make our history ourselves, but, in the first place, under very definite assumptions and conditions ...

"In the second place, however, history is made in such a way that the final result always arises from conflicts between many individual wills, of which each in turn has been made what it is by a host of particular conditions of life. Thus there are innumerable intersecting force, an infinite series of parallelograms of forces which give rise to one resultant — the historical event. This may again itself be viewed as the product of a power which works as a whole unconsciously and without volition. For what each individual wills is obstructed by everyone else, and what emerges is something that no one willed. Thus history has proceeded hitherto in the manner of a natural process and is essentially subject to the same laws of motion ...

"Marx and I are ourselves partly to blame for the fact that the younger people sometimes lay more stress on the economic side than is due to it. We had to emphasise the main principle vis-á-vis our adversaries, who denied it, and we had not always the time, the place or the opportunity to give their due to the other elements involved in the interaction ..."

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_09_21.htm

"he ultimately determining element in history is the production and reproduction of real life."

After all, that's a scientific approach. If Marxism is going to follow a scientific approach, and real life shows that Marxism has no predictive power, than it isn't just that Marxism is complicated. It's that it is wrong.

The only way to avoid that conclusion that Marxism is a failed ideology is to downgrade Marxism from a science past an ideology and into a fluffy set of aphorisms about cooperation being good and exploitation bad, or how a worker feels alienated from the final product.

.. well as Engels, was to a certain cartoonish summary of their efforts to understand the origin and effects of social forces.

Sneering at cartoons is a silly waste of time; you might profit more from your efforts, if, instead, you would at least struggle with real ideas ...

Remember where we started this conversation? Failed Marxist states. Isn't that enough to sneer at?

After all, the beautiful ethereal Marxism, whether "truly" complicated or elegantly simple, is just a bunch of theorizing that isn't connected with any particular reality.

Part of the constant tweaking of Marxism is to find something that appeals for a political manifesto, and to find something that post hoc explains the failure. In the end, however, whether there is a "true" Marxism that is out there but nobody ever gets to practice becomes a question that those in the affected nations got sick of pondering.

At some point, one has to adjudge the constant mental massaging of Marxism to be a silly waste of time, an effort that will not profit anyone except the totalitarian elites that rely on it as their justification. Certainly there are enough peoples that have come to the conclusion that the failure of Marxism is systemic.

the observation that he explicitly disavowed some of what is sometimes called Marxism.

You have said nothing interesting or specific about particular "Marxist states" (whatever they might be), and nothing about definite political lessons to be learned from actual historical details.

As a child of the Cold War, I've heard most of the standard noise repeated thousands of times by now -- so no matter what I think of it as a first approximation to the truth, it long ago began to sound like empty static to me.

I do dislike people placing their words in my mouth: I have not called "Marxism" (whatever you mean by that) "beautiful," "elegantly simple," &c &c -- I simply expressed a view that Marx's ideas are worth confronting as real ideas ...

<edit: clarity>

For some reason, you don't see reality as capable of "confronting" an idea.

Well, maybe you don't think that the "Marxist states" are interesting or important, but a few hundred million of people did, having been forced to live in them and forbidden to leave. My question, why DON'T you think it is important that no state that has called itself Marxist has met even low standards of liberty, justice, material progress, and most have imploded dramatically? Marx thought those things were important, Marxism sought them, but then when they fail to appear, then you say it doesn't "confront" Marxism. Even Marx wouldn't be so disconnected from reality.

I'm not sure what alternative lessons you think can be drawn from these occurances, because you don't try. Rather, you simply announce that they have no bearing on real Marxism (which you leave undefined) because apparently you have no idea if there ever was a real Marxist state ("whatever that may be").

So bottom line is, your idea of confronting ideas doesn't include whether or not the ideas reflect reality, provide practical solutions, explain the past or predict the future. Certainly you don't address any role that Marxist ideas may have had in creating some of the most spectacularly evil regimes of the last century. Like I've said, I don't remember anybody claiming justification from Adam Smith or Thomas Jefferson for instituting a totalitarian state, but at your level of analysis, what's actually done with the ideas isn't any evidence about the value of the ideas themselves.

Given your lack of interest to address anything more concrete than an idea as an idea, you're just going to have to expect that people are going to draw a correlation between Marxism and what bad and failed regimes have said is Marxism, between Marxism and what bad and failed regimes have done in the name of Marxism. You should also expect people to draw an inference about Marxism from the lack of a single acceptable society professing Marxism.

Since I've already conceded that Marxism is a beautiful, complex and elegantly structured ideology, and you don't seem to care if it ends up getting people dead, disenfranchised or poor, it seems that the only ground of agreement is that Marxism carry a warning label: Not for Human Consumption, Do Not Try at Home.

.. that "Marxists" believe in historical inevitability, that WWI took "Marxists" completely by surprise, and that "Marxists" believed the working class would spontaneously rise up against that war.

Your assertion that I "don't see reality as capable of 'confronting' an idea" seems a gratuitous insult: in fact, I do consider careful historical investigation to be a useful source of concrete insights.

I simply indicated that I did not think you had said anything interesting or important.

As I said before, you're merely repeating some standard lines that I've heard thousands of times, and (completely independent of any question about where my sympathies lie) I do not expect to learn anything useful from the rehash of highly derivative slogans.

.. it is discourteous of you to continue to put words in my mouth, after I have objected to the practice.

.. to judge the mental fitness of large groups of people, on the basis of ideas they may have professed, under the justification that several unsavory governments have loudly professed similar ideas, how would anyone dare express any idea?

Many people consider themselves Christians, being fully aware of the terrors of the Counter-Reformation and of other searches for witches and heretics. Hardly a Christian today believes in burning transvestites, and yet the official complaint on which Joan of Arc was burned included that crime.

A number of totalitarian regimes have preached anti-communism: one remembers, for example, Hitler's government, the South African apartheid regime, Pinochet's Chile, and a dozen others.

My own country has, more than once, proudly gone to the slaughter under some proud banner of Democracy, often against "the savages." When done with "the savages" on this continent, America proudly went abroad to slaughter them in, say, the Philippines a century ago -- or in Iraq, today. If your approach were consistent, would such events count, in your mind, as evidence against "democracy" or "capitalism" or "modernism"?

In my view, terms like "Christian," "anti-communist," "democratic," "capitalist," "modern," "Marxist" are too vague to be the basis of useful generalizations ..

the Jaures' Manifesto adopted by the Extraordinary International Socialist Congress at Basel in November 1912, a year and a half before War actually broke out:



This text does not indicate any belief whatsoever in the historical "inevitability" that you attribute (in your various posts) to "Marxists." Rather, it reads as a combination of political analysis, advice, and counter-threat in the face of a looming war. The analysis is that war is distinctly possible (though not inevitable), that it will not serve workers' interests, but that definite organizing opportunities would nevertheless result if war were to break out. The advice is to whole-heartedly resist the pro-war forces by every possible method, in parliaments and in the streets. The counter-threat is intended to forestall military action by reminding the ruling classes that war can create destabilizing circumstances far from the battlefield.

There is, in this manifesto, no prediction that the working classes will not fight: rather there is the advice, given as strongly as possible, that organizers must attempt to prevent war by uniting workers against war. Nobody who believed history evolves with "inevitability" would put such emphasis on the importance of immediate organizing action.

Now, it is true that they did not, on the whole, do very well at this, and that, in fact, across Europe many individuals who had opposed an abstract war as a mere capitalist adventure immediately spun around and supported their own countries' participation when actual hostilities began. Political cowardice like that is not at all uncommon, and you can probably (with only minor effort) remember recent examples of similar cowardice. The Second International, of course, fell apart as a result.

Was the manifesto then wrong? I have really never liked Lenin, so it is not hagiography for me to notice that he returned to Russia to overthrow the czarist regime that had hanged his older brother -- and that he thus took advantage of the war's destabilizing effect, predicted in Jaures' manifesto.

But for most of Second International, the mistake was one easily made, a mistake often repeated in history: they intellectually understood the possibility that war could break out, and they knew abstractly how to fight against the possibility -- but they failed to make detailed practical plans. It is similar to the mistake that many Germans made a quarter of century later, when they realized in some merely conceptual what the Nazis were planning and yet failed to organize decisively and effectively in opposition.

This story is certainly a tragedy. You, on the other hand, seem to read it as a bedtime fable, with a tidy moral -- at the cost of glossing over all the details from which we might profit ...

<edit: typo>

state-capitalism/fascism isn't working very well either and would collapse under its own inherent inconsistencies if not for the vehicle of wealth re-assignment, the State. Marxism still wins out hands down as far as painting an accurate picture of what capital is all about and how we need to work away from the system. Socilaism isn't anti-market anyway, it just provides a bigger boogeyman effect when you say it is...Socialism works within market forces by granting the State authority to regulate the forces. Oil revenues are just revenues, it is what you do with the wealth that determines the value of your program. Enriching the rich isn't much of a program in my worldview.

Marxism has no explanatory power whatsoever. The dialectic is false, the theory of the value of capital is false, it's assumptions about the groups with which people will identify is false.

Marxism was blindsided by WWI and hasn't had a clue about a thing since.

Unless I missed Marxism predicting the rise and fall of the USSR, or explains how the west became more rich and more free since the 1880s...which it has, whatever failings it has from it's own ideals...one has to wonder exactly WHAT Marxism has managed to predict. All one gets is post hoc explaination from another variant on the ideology, which the announcement that true Marxism in now on its way..

And switching from marxism to socialism, which pretends that Norway is somehow following the scientific dictates of Marxism, is a red herring. Nor is socialism merely regulating market forces, no matter how much the right wing theorists want to equate the two. Controlling trucking charges regulates market forces, which the US does. Socialism puts the commanding heights of the economy directly under the control of the state. But it's not Marxism.

And what one does with the wealth is precisely the point. Using the wealth to attempt a system that will not and does not work, and then use the revenues to it's basic inability to provide, is exactly the wrong move. Bad systems mean the oil wealth gets pissed away. Compare Nigeria, Saudi with Norway.

http://www.earthrights.net/docs/oilrent.html

It isn't communism.

Precious.

around stigmatizing a communist boogeyman than an ideology designed around developing a society built on cooperation.

Right on Cold Warrior!

in reality requires force and a totalitarian state.

After all, comparing apples to apples, the reality is that stigmatizing the commie bogeyman has a basis in truth, and the "design" has nothing to do with what actually happened.

It's pretty funny to defend communism as designed around developing a society based on cooperation, when the "development" requires a totalitarian state that forces obedience to a ruling elite.

The bottom line is, you evaluate communism by lollipops and cotton candy dreams of a few college kids a million miles away from the communist state who begin and end with the intention. I don't. As Freddy Engels said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The failure of Marxism isn't merely on the theoretical level.

Yep, it is, when the "ideology designed around cooperation" in reality requires force and a totalitarian state.

While marxism does inddeed call for the use of force and what would be a more or less totalitarian if temporary dictorship, that idea is not inherent to communism.

That is how marx believed the stage would be set for communism. There is no inherent force or totalitarian state in communism and neither would play a role in any real attempt at communism.

After all, comparing apples to apples, the reality is that stigmatizing the commie bogeyman has a basis in truth, and the "design" has nothing to do with what actually happened.

Alot of propaganda has a 'basis' in truth. What it isnt, however, is true.

It's pretty funny to defend communism as designed around developing a society based on cooperation, when the "development" requires a totalitarian state that forces obedience to a ruling elite.

When did I defend communism? I defined communism as a society based on cooperation because that is what communism means. You may believe, like Marx, that a totalitarian state was a neccessary step on the path to communism, but the dictatorship in marxism wasnt itself communism, it was a step on the path to communism as he saw it.

The bottom line is, you evaluate communism by lollipops and cotton candy dreams of a few college kids a million miles away from the communist state who begin and end with the intention.

Not only does this sentance not make any sense, it is completely untrue. This must be a favorite strawman of yours since nothing I have written resembles this charecterization.

I don't. As Freddy Engels said, the proof of the pudding is in the eating. The failure of Marxism isn't merely on the theoretical level.

No it exists only in the minds of cold warriors and people who lack real knowledge of the issue.

This is such an excellent example, I agree. And I was struck in reading it how very much like the original Russian workers' and soldiers' soviets of the early 20th Century it sounds.

And to add just one more comment: any progressive needs to have a good working understanding of Marx. No matter where you stand in terms of economic theory, if you don't know what the man said, how can you possibly argue with those who call you a commie?

Wat

It is as simple as that.

Attempts to lump him into some sort of evil empire are simply attempts to marginalize a thinker who delivered a devestating critique of capitalism and supported a radical interpretation of democracy.

Philosophers arent scientists, they dont produce precise knowledge. We are expected to hold Marx to a rediculous standard. Because his ideas didnt magically create highly functional societies, we are told he has nothing of interest to say.

Marxism pretends to be a science, not a philosophy.

And he has lots of interesting things to say. After all, I didn't read him and the cliff notes for nothing.

The reason why Marxism is marginalized is because nobody wants to try to make it work in the way Marx said it would work anymore, aside from an insurgency in Nepal. Well, maybe Zimbabwe is still avowedly Marxist. A theory nobody wants to practice is marginal.

They present unscientific theories as facts. They go above and beyond science, they speculate, and up until modern times they almost always thought their theories were scientifically accurate. And modern philosophers almost always utilize and mimick science for the obvious reasons.

Yes, Karl Marx presented ideas that he believed were true and prsented as true and that were not backed up by science. So has almost every philosopher in history and many philosophers today.

The reason why Marxism is marginalized is because nobody wants to try to make it work in the way Marx said it would work anymore, aside from an insurgency in Nepal. Well, maybe Zimbabwe is still avowedly Marxist. A theory nobody wants to practice is marginal.

If that were the case there would be absolutely no reason to marginalize Marxism, or more accurately to have marginalized Marxism.

Regardless. I am certainly not going to argue that an ideology based soly or even primarily on the writings of a long dead philosopher is a solid foundation for a social movement.

Marxists today are generally either people who have developed thier own philosophies based on some of Marx's ideas but ammended to account for flaws and new information, or they are revolutionaries living in conditions that resemble the workers in Marx's time.

In niether case is it neccessary to marginalize them.

There are several more schools that make socialism the end goal, and not all of them agree with Marx's method towards achieving a socialist order, although Marx's contributions towards the understanding and analysis of capitalism is valuable. The only significant difference between Marxists and other socialist groups is how it is implemented. It is how it is implemented that has been the million dollar question and could mean the difference between socialist communes built on democracy, mutual cooperation, and free association and an authoritarian tyranny masquerading as worker democracy and pretending to represent the interests of everybody.