US Politics: Meet the New Right, same as the Old Right

[Wise Fool]

Well said.

And you guys blanche when I say there's a strong Marxist worldview in these threads...

...I have a strong Marxist worldview because I asked a guy what he thought Marx's worldview was?

[Ramsay Gimp]

...I have a strong Marxist worldview because I asked a guy what he thought Marx's worldview was?

Why else would you reflexively leap to his defense, in response to the very non-controversial statements by ericxhn that

a. Marxism's attempted implementations have failed and

b. he got many important things wrong

If I said that Nazism was a monstrous and failed ideology, and you jumped in to say "oh yea, why do you think so? all ideologies have failures, after all.." you would rightly be taken as defending Nazism (and no, I'm not equating Marx with the Nazis)

[The Undead Martyr]

It's always easier to write about a dystopia than a utopia. Just like it's always easier for the opposition or minority party to take potshots at malfeasances and errors by ruling or majority party than it is to actually govern themselves.

That Marx managed to find flaws in capitalism doesn't make his worldview valid or his proposals sound. In fact, history has decisively shown that Marxist derived economic and political systems fail and often disastrously. Capitalism has has flaws and it's excesses need to be tempered, but it is still, similar to democracy, the worst economic system with the exception of all the others.

His worldview is quite valid- he basically asserted that societies are predominantly if not exclusively defined by the means of production (do we use manual labor or machines? Slaves, serfs, or immigrants? Who's in charge of production and distribution?) and the class system built around those relations e.g. Feudalism, Patrician republicanism, or the bourgois nation state. He postulated that capitalism is the system wherein the capitalists, who own the means of production, hire the labor of the working class on the market, and produce goods for exchange on the market and.or profits rather than for use; and that the system ascribed by classical liberalism would see competition shrink the ranks of the capitalists to a few uber-capitalists, the losers sinking to the ranks of the proletariat; and that this whole edifice eventually would collapse into revolution.

His "error" as such was that he failed to account for the growth of the middle classes, or rather that the classical model of capitalist-proletariat doesn't fit as well in the era of international corporations and managerial positions. Keynes etc. also broke the process by consciously using the state to mitigate the plight of the productive classes and hopefully stall the process of upwards accumulation, a process that has resumed since the 1980s onward, with a vengeance.

Marx also wrote about the base-superstructure relationship between the material basis of society and the ideological glue that holds it together; for feudalism, the chivalric ideals, religion, divine right of kings, etc. all of which emphasized filial loyalty a la Confucianism and a sense of naturally ordered hierarchy; for the slave-system of the South, the superstructure is one of White Supremacy and virulent racism; for the modern era, it's the "Protestant Work Ethic" and the go-to lines of hardcore Republican types. One can even apply this to the USSR- ironically they used the language of socialism ("Socialism in one country" and "protecting the revolution from external and internal enemies) to justify the oligarchic cronyism established. Quite like the French Revolution, in that internal and external existential threats combined with opportunistic politicians to turn a revolution into a repressive authoritarian regime.

Marx also (along with Engels) commented on current events, e.g. the failures of the 1848 revolutions- Engels in particular seemed to have a racist/19th century view of revolutionary races, e.g. the Poles, Italians, Germans, French == "the Rebel Alliance" and the slavs, particularly the Russians, Austrians and Croats = the counter revolutionary villains. This was (aside from the contemporary "scientific racism) also probably a legacy of the fact that Russia and Austria were the major counterrevolutionary powers, whereas the Italians, Germans and Poles were the ones rebelling and pushing for national unification, with i.e. Croats usually acting as the hired muscle for the Austrian regimes in Italy etc.

But that's Engels.

Anyway Marx made various predictions- including the rise of America on the basis of immigrants from i.e. Ireland fleeing there and bolstering its economy; the internationalization of capital, the process of accumulation (which as noted has accelerated in recent years) and gives a fascinating background on things like why "time is money," why there was such a big fuss over limiting the working day, and the push for machinery/technology to ramp up production. He's not perfect, but he remains one of the greatest and most incisive and thought provoking social thinkers.

Yeah, otherwise it fails disastrously. And how do we temper it? With a healthy dose of socialist economic policy. The question isn't which one is better, the question is what balance of the two is best. Those arguing that either is perfect is frankly stupid or ignorant of history.

Marx IIRC advocated a socialist movement in the developed capitalist economies- that is, you need capitalism to create an industrial proletariat before you can have a proletarian revolution. In that sense the western democracies partially went socialist due to popular pressure in the Great Depression- in effect we had a political revolution of sorts. Socialism, it must be noted, is merely the intermediate stage, where "from each according to his ability to each according to his labor"- the goal is to transition to communism, a classless, stateless society where "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs."

One should also note that there are many socialist-y ideologies, ranging from social democracy/"Fabianism" (what won out in Europe and the "mixed economy" you refer to) advocating gradual and internal market reforms, to outright communists advocating the abolition of the market and the state, to Leninists- Lenin, given the problem that Russia lacked a proletariat, advocated using a "vanguard party" to seize control of the state and essentially "speed run" through capitalism and socialism straight to communism. It... didn't work well, although Russia and China made industrialized extraordinarily fast and violently.

There's also the anarchists, which are a whole 'nother ball game. We/they share a lot of ideas with Marx vis a vis capitalism and its ties to the state, but tend to be far more... divided, on the question of what sort of systems to replace it with, as well as being firmly opposed to Leninist statism; Bakunin split with Marx over this issue, asserting that the state can never be revolutionary and must be abolished simultaneously with capitalism if a true revolution is to occur. There are mutualists who advocate merely abolishing private ownership and allotting goods based on labor, collectivists who advocate distribution based on need/sustenance, various market and non-market systems, syndicalist "worker owned/managed" businesses, etc. etc.

[OnionAhaiReborn]

Capitalism and liberalism won, guys. Get over it. The Glorious Proletarian Revolution isn't coming

You may well think that, but it doesn't make Marx right. He wasn't advocating for an injection of socialism into a market-dominated model, he was arguing for a complete seizure of the means of production by the workers

He did advocate some steps that could be taken to transition from capitalism to socialism to, eventually, communism. Steps like a graduated income tax, which obviously is in place, and surely you must hate. I'd think an extreme libertarian would recognize just how successful the left has been. Without recognition from where would come the desire to roll-back all of these victories? And given the apparent need to oppose the left's anti-capitalist victories, does that not make it clear that, no, capitalism has not won some final victory, here to remain eternally?

[The Undead Martyr]

:ack:

The Communists who "destroyed Fascism" were no better than the Fascist themselves

Orwell begs to differ. For that matter, the Nazis were definitely worse than the Soviets- their entire regime was predicated on world conquest and mass genocide, whereas the USSR's regime was merely a totalitarian empire... which also almost single handedly won WW2 and fought the fascist rebels in Spain (when no other government would lift a finger), and turned a backwards feudal monarchy into an industrial superpower capable of facing down the US for half a century.

Yes, they killed millions in the process, but so did the European colonialists in the slave trade/Congo/Americas/India, and these mass killings were not a central tenet of the regime as they were in Germany. If there's any regime that rivals the Nazis I'd pick the CSA, and they're certainly worse than the USSR- they had absolutely no redeeming qualities and founded their entire regime on the mass enslavement of African Americans.

[sologdin]

kids these days. no need to substantiate marx, a nineteenth century intellectual, now. the world has moved on, and marxism has moved on. sticking with marx himself, now, is like sticking with darwin or newton, or, worse, turning his writings into scripture.

RG--

stating that liberalism won agrees with marxist theory on the one hand or with fukuyama on the other. heh.

i think the distinction between injection into market and complete seizure is hard to draw. the first injections, via democratic process, would meet and in fact have met resistance. they would and have necessitated further despotic inroads &c.

[Galactus]

Why else would you reflexively leap to his defense, in response to the very non-controversial statements by ericxhn that

a. Marxism's attempted implementations have failed and

b. he got many important things wrong

If I said that Nazism was a monstrous and failed ideology, and you jumped in to say "oh yea, why do you think so? all ideologies have failures, after all.." you would rightly be taken as defending Nazism (and no, I'm not equating Marx with the Nazis)

Because "marxism" and "nazism" aren't really comparable terms. (I'm honestly not sure there is any genuine counterpart to Marx and Marxism in terms of ideology, you might perhaps compare him to Darwin)

More seriously, we're all (even his opponents) in some sense heirs of Marx. Our analytical tools, the way we discuss society, the issues we raise... These have all been influenced by Marx (often as much as what he got wrong as what he got right, but that's the way it works for most thinkers)

Also remember; Western europen welfare state has more than a little bit of Marx in their DNA, and while challenged, they're still around.

[The Undead Martyr]

kids these days. no need to substantiate marx, a nineteenth century intellectual, now. the world has moved on, and marxism has moved on. sticking with marx himself, now, is like sticking with darwin or newton, or, worse, turning his writings into scripture.

RG--

stating that liberalism won agrees with marxist theory on the one hand or with fukuyama on the other. heh.

i think the distinction between injection into market and complete seizure is hard to draw. the first injections, via democratic process, would meet and in fact have met resistance. they would and have necessitated further despotic inroads &c.

:agree: Marx is one of humanity's greatest thinkers- right or wrong, much of what came after him is written in response to his works; in this he is comparable to Darwin. And like Darwin we should treat him and his works as they are- brilliant, flawed, revolutionary- and human.

Because "marxism" and "nazism" aren't really comparable terms. (I'm honestly not sure there is any genuine counterpart to Marx and Marxism in terms of ideology, you might perhaps compare him to Darwin)

More seriously, we're all (even his opponents) in some sense heirs of Marx. Our analytical tools, the way we discuss society, the issues we raise... These have all been influenced by Marx (often as much as what he got wrong as what he got right, but that's the way it works for most thinkers)

Also remember; Western europen welfare state has more than a little bit of Marx in their DNA, and while challenged, they're still around.

The Nazi comparison gets old really fast.