Why was Marx so poor?

[CesareBorgia]

I can picture Marx living right now and how simple it would be to open an online brokerage account and
with his knowledge of economics and the current international situation to make money.

But I recently caught something in Marx's exchange with Engles. In it, he states how he regrets not having
enough means to speculate on the financial market, which at the time was in the midst of a sell-off for fear
of an Anglo-American war which Marx knew was not going to happen. He wanted to take advantage of it but
couldn't because he had many debts and was begging Engles to help him just get by.

But why couldn't he get a job at a finance firm? Were the circumstances such in the UK that would have made it impossible?

[Leftsolidarity]

I bet not a single employer would want to hire one of the fathers of communism.

[Property Is Robbery]

I bet not a single employer would want to hire one of the fathers of communism.
How many people do you think had heard of him when he was still alive?

[bezdomni]

But why couldn't he get a job at a finance firm? Were the circumstances such in the UK that would have made it impossible?


The fact that he had been exiled from every country he ever lived in and had a reputation for being a troublemaker would have made it hard for him to get a "respectable" job.

The main reason though was he selflessly devoted most of his life to seriously studying political economy and understanding the developments and contradictions of his time (which are still, for the most part, relevant to us today). Obviously it took years and years for him to write Capital, which must have required countless trips to the British Museum Library and many sleepless nights reading/writing/editing his book.

Being a communist revolutionary doesn't pay very well, but that isn't what we're after, now is it?

[Leftsolidarity]

How many people do you think had heard of him when he was still alive?

He was well known while alive also.

[Property Is Robbery]

He was well known while alive also.
Yeah but not well enough to be hindered in a job search.

[Leftsolidarity]

Yeah but not well enough to be hindered in a job search.

I disagree.

[The Man]

He was well known while alive also.


Uh.. No he wasn't..

[RedSunRising]

Yes...One of his kids was basically killed by poverty. He worked selling railway tickets for a time because his journalism was paying.

[The Man]

Yes...One of his kids was basically killed by poverty. He worked selling railway tickets for a time because his journalism was paying.

It's sad that someone so influential, so inspiring, and envisioned the new world, was living off of Engel's money..

[Ocean Seal]

Uh.. No he wasn't..
I would think that he was. Considering he was very involved in the first internationale and he gained enough influence to divide it into two camps with one under him. Marx was even kicked out of Prussia which would mean that he gained some kind of fame. Plus the man was devoted to studying economics, philosophy, and the worker's struggle, so he might not have had the time for everything.
As a side note, Marx's mother is quoted to have said the same thing. You know all this about capital yet the true mystery is why you have so little of it.

[Rooster]

I would think that he was. Considering he was very involved in the first internationale and he gained enough influence to divide it into two camps with one under him. Marx was even kicked out of Prussia which would mean that he gained some kind of fame.

Many people all over Europe were exiles, refugees or immigrants and many of them ended up in London at that time. This doesn't mean that he wouldn't have been able to get a job. There was no real back ground checks on people on those days.


Yes...One of his kids was basically killed by poverty. He worked selling railway tickets for a time because his journalism was paying.

He tried to get a job as a ticket clerk at Paddington station but was turned down because of his handwriting.

[bezdomni]

He would frequently pawn his belongings also.

Once he pawned off his last pair of pants to buy a box of cigars (I can imagine him sitting there in his underwear, smoking cigars by the window).

He would also pawn off his coat regularly, and then buy it back when he had money and go to the library to do research for Capital (since it wasn't proper to go out without your coat).

[Manic Impressive]

Yes...One of his kids was basically killed by poverty. He worked selling railway tickets for a time because his journalism was paying.
I'm gonna look it up but I'm pretty sure he got turned down for that job because his handwriting was illegible.

Marx was terrible with money his outgoings regularly exceeded his outgoings. He felt he had to keep up appearances of his social class renting houses which were too large, with furniture which was grand and expensive sending his daughters to expensive schools, doctors bills and so on. His income was not that bad and would have afforded him a comfortable life in comparison to the vast majority of the population. He could have taken a house or apartment outside the centre of London but that wouldn't have looked too good and it would be a slightly longer journey to the British Library, unfortunately and obviously unknowingly if he had lived further from the centre the water was much cleaner which might have had an impact on the health of the family especially Fawkes.

Oh and Marx might have had some notoriety in France and Germany but was pretty much unknown in England even among many socialists. You can find evidence of this in his letters and by his presence at the first meeting of the International being very understated.

[the_red_pickle]

Living in a capitalist world we are too used to expect "financially successful" being on the list of accomplishments of our role models so this truly makes it hard to swallow, although deep down knowing very well that Marx's worth, meaning his accomplishments and his hopes for our world are absolutely priceless.

[ColonelCossack]

because he never really had a proper waged job, most of the money he got was from Engels, his books, and occasional newspaper articles.

[SacRedMan]

He ran out of money because of his writings, deportations, etc. But he got money from his parents, friends and party-members... So no, the guy wasn't a hobo for around that time.

[Tjis]

Marx had a maid.
Doesn't really seem like something a poor person would have.

[ColonelCossack]

Marx had a maid.
Doesn't really seem like something a poor person would have.

he wanted to keep up a 'respectable lifestyle', even though he could barely afford it- piano lessons, maids etc were often at the expense of eating, paying bills, and paying rent.

[ColonelCossack]

He worked selling railway tickets for a time because his journalism was paying.

Didn't he get sacked from that because his handwriting was too bad?

[Tifosi]

Wasn't he for most of his time in London on one big pub crawl?

[B0LSHEVIK]

At least he wasnt a tweeker, lol.;)

[Tommy4ever]

He comes across as a bit of a lay about to be honest. An incredibly brilliant lay about but a lay about all the same. :p

Basically spunged off Engels for a living.

[KurtFF8]

Uh.. No he wasn't..

Wait, what?

[Rooster]

Basically spunged off Engels for a living.

I think Engels should be nominated for a "best mate of all time" award.

[Leftsolidarity]

I think Engels should be nominated for a "best mate of all time" award.

Agreed, he was a total bro.

[Queercommie Girl]

The fact that Karl Marx was poor is a badge of honour.

[Vanguard1917]

He was poor because poverty was hardly unheard of in 19th century Britain.

[Tim Finnegan]

Wasn't he for most of his time in London on one big pub crawl?
Actually, Marx was extremely studious, he just knew how to enjoy himself. He was one of those students with a "work hard, play hard" mentality, and basically never grew out of it.


The fact that Karl Marx was poor is a badge of honour.
Why? I don't see why fetishising poor finances is any better than fetishising wealth.


He comes across as a bit of a lay about to be honest. An incredibly brilliant lay about but a lay about all the same. :p

I wouldn't say that he was a "layabout", as such- he worked very hard, he just wasn't all that interested in doing the sort of work that anyone was particularly interested in paying him to do. His independent style of study was similar to that of many other great minds of the age, like Charles Darwin, he just lacked the good luck of being an independently wealthy country squire who could afford to spend his life on unwaged intellectual pursuits.

[Queercommie Girl]

Why? I don't see why fetishising poor finances is any better than fetishising wealth.


Who is "fetishising" anything? Economic base determines superstructure. A poor person would speak for fellow poor workers. Do you think a millionaire would ever genuinely support socialism for the poor?

Also to treat "fetishising poor finances" on the same level as "fetishising wealth" is clearly wrong since socialists should generally be on the side of the poor and be biased against the rich.

[Queercommie Girl]

Actually, Marx was extremely studious, he just knew how to enjoy himself. He was one of those students with a "work hard, play hard" mentality, and basically never grew out of it.


Just don't make this into a law and force it on all workers in the name of the "vanguard party" as a matter of "communist morality".

Each to his/her own. Some people like to work more, others like to play more, others like both, some just don't want to do too much of anything.

[caramelpence]

Economic base determines superstructure.

Ugh, not only do those terms relate to different aspects or "levels" of society rather than the relationship between ideas and the material position of individuals, the argument that you are apparently making, namely that individuals having a certain material position leads them to produce or accept certain ideas rather than others, and that impoverished individuals are led towards revolutionary analysis, is a really poor one. Not only does it totally dispense with all capacity for reflection and abstraction when it comes to the origins of ideas in general, the particular claim concerning the origin of revolutionary ideas is rendered invalid by the fact that it has generally been the more skilled and better-off sections of the working class, rather than the very poorest or most vulnerable workers, that have exhibited the greatest acceptance of political radicalism, and the greatest capacity to organize and fight, as exemplified by the role of engineering workers in the Russian Revolution and in Britain during the post-1917 revolutionary wave. Marx himself was conscious of this in his analyses of fights for reformist legislation like the eight-hour day. Moreover, what makes the working class as a whole the class that fights for socialism is not its poverty, given that there have always been other strata like rural tenants or highly vulnerable petty-bourgeois individuals in cities who are worse off than workers, but its position at the heart of modern industry, which is precisely why Marx, in the Manifesto, critiques the Utopian Socialists for regarding the proletariat only in its role as "the most suffering class", and also praises capitalism for pulling individuals out of "rural idiocy" as part of the process of producing the working class as a social force. The dominant thrust of his account, at least in the Manifesto, of the evolution of the working class, is that it is precisely through the process of increasing its living standards, becoming better-organized, and winning victories under capitalism that the working class becomes capable of taking power. What this shows is that, from Marx's perspective, there is no simple relationship between material conditions and consciousness - or alternatively, and to stick closer to his own formulations, that there is such a relationship, and material conditions need to be understood in more complex terms than simply living standards, in that they must also embody various aspects of lived experience, such as the type of work that different individuals and social groups do, the concentration of capital across the economy as a whole, the size of production units, their background training and education, opportunities for social mobility, and so on.

Marx's poverty wasn't what made him a brilliant theorist, and he shouldn't be seen as a better person for living in poverty. He should be praised and critiqued on the basis of his ideas.

[Tim Finnegan]

Who is "fetishising" anything? Economic base determines superstructure. A poor person would speak for fellow poor workers. Do you think a millionaire would ever genuinely support socialism for the poor?
What does wealth have to do with economic class? Marx may have been poor, but by his reckoning he was not a worker, merely a down-at-the-heel petty bourgeois intellectual. His advocacy on behalf of the workers was just that, advocacy, and he consciously- and scrupulously- avoided taking up any formal position of authority within the Workingmen's International for the very reason that he did not consider himself to be one of them.


Also to treat "fetishising poor finances" on the same level as "fetishising wealth" is clearly wrong since socialists should generally be on the side of the poor and be biased against the rich.
Neither are indicative of social class, at least not as such. You can generalise from the latter- if you set aside incidences such as professional athletes, musicians, etc. as exceptions enabled by the capitalist systems and of essentially no consequence- but to generalise from the former is to set aside the very social relationships which Marx was at pains to detail in favour of a vague, borderline-romantic image of "the poor".


Just don't make this into a law and force it on all workers in the name of the "vanguard party" as a matter of "communist morality".

Each to his/her own. Some people like to work more, others like to play more, others like both, some just don't want to do too much of anything.
And I'm sure that Marx would've agreed. Despite what his detractors- and all too many of his nominal supporters- seem to believe, the man was hardly the petty-tyrant they claim.

[a rebel]

Marx's father owned a factory, correct? And he came from a well off family, I don't understand how he could have been so broke.

[Rooster]

Marx's father owned a factory, correct? And he came from a well off family, I don't understand how he could have been so broke.

Man, don't people read about Marx here? You're thinking about Engels, whose father owned a factory in Manchester in England. Marx's father worked in law.

[Vanguard1917]

Who is "fetishising" anything? Economic base determines superstructure. A poor person would speak for fellow poor workers. Do you think a millionaire would ever genuinely support socialism for the poor?

Even putting aside the fact that the co-founder of Marxism -- Engels -- was not an impoverished man, that is flawed logic. It implies that Marx's discoveries were not the product of objective, scientific inquiry, but of his own particular living conditions. In reality, the latter clearly impeded his work, which was cut short as a result of health problems most definitely related to his poverty.

[Queercommie Girl]

Even putting aside the fact that the co-founder of Marxism -- Engels -- was not an impoverished man, that is flawed logic. It implies that Marx's discoveries were not the product of objective, scientific inquiry, but of his own particular living conditions. In reality, the latter clearly impeded his work, which was cut short as a result of health problems most definitely related to his poverty.

Are you denying that a person's objective circumstances determine their consciousness to some extent? I didn't say this was the sole determining factor. But there is no absolute "objectivity" in anything either. As Marx himself said, it's not consciousness that determines conditions, but conditions that determine consciousness.

Workers are the section in society that can build socialism not because workers are "saints", but precisely because of their conditions in society.

If Marx didn't have the objective conditions which enabled him to truly engage with the poor working class at the time, there would have been no Marxism, no matter how brilliant his scientific mind may be.

[Queercommie Girl]

What does wealth have to do with economic class?


Excuse me? You seem to be completely ignoring quantity in favour of quality. Isn't it the case that in every capitalist society that has ever existed, the vast majority of capitalists are much wealthier than the vast majority of workers? Are you saying this statistic is not significant at all?



Marx may have been poor, but by his reckoning he was not a worker, merely a down-at-the-heel petty bourgeois intellectual.


I didn't say he was technically a worker. He was a poor intellectual, but his conditions were sufficiently close to that of most workers at the time for him to be able to truly engage and empathise with them. A very rich person sitting in his palace, villa or ivory tower wouldn't have been able to do what Marx did.

You cannot say that Marx's own personal background had no bearing on the nature of his work. That would be a non-materialist perspective. Conditions determine consciousness.



Neither are indicative of social class, at least not as such. You can generalise from the latter- if you set aside incidences such as professional athletes, musicians, etc. as exceptions enabled by the capitalist systems and of essentially no consequence- but to generalise from the former is to set aside the very social relationships which Marx was at pains to detail in favour of a vague, borderline-romantic image of "the poor".


Well no I'm not using a romanticist image of the poor, since I'm not ignoring the qualitative distinction, in terms of relation to the means of production, either. All I'm saying is that one must consider both quality and quantity. Lenin, after all, did explicitly limit the maximum wage differential among workers in a socialist society. To say that social class is independent of wealth is to totally ignore quantity and solely focus on quality.

Isn't one of the central goals of communism to eliminate economic inequality? If you only focus on the qualitative distinction of social class, you could in theory end up with a socialist society in which everyone is technically a worker, but there is still significant wealth inequality. That's not the kind of "communist society" I have in mind.

[Tim Finnegan]

Are you denying that a person's objective circumstances determine their consciousness to some extent? I didn't say this was the sole determining factor. But there is no absolute "objectivity" in anything either. As Marx himself said, it's not consciousness that determines conditions, but conditions that determine consciousness.

Workers are the section in society that can build socialism not because workers are "saints", but precisely because of their conditions in society.
When Marx discusses material conditions, he refers primarily to the relationship to the means of production, not to something as simple as financial status. Peasants and lumpenproletarians are quite usually poorer than proletarians, but Marx against their capacity for revolutionary agency, because they do not fulfil the appropriate social role within capitalism. Why, therefore, should a petty bourgeoisie intellectual, as Marx considered himself to be, be an exception to this, simply because he was frequently skint?


If Marx didn't have the objective conditions which enabled him to truly engage with the poor working class at the time, there would have been no Marxism, no matter how brilliant his scientific mind may be.Even setting aside the questionable nature of the claim itself- throwing out, as it does, the majority of all Marxist theorists- it's not even accurate. Marx's impoverishment was of a very different sort than that of the workers, that of a pauper-intellectual rather than a poorly paid or underemployed worker, and with no direct relationship to the class struggle which was responsible for the impoverishment of the working class. The idea that a similar tendency towards indebtedness could be crucial in allowing Marx to form a scientific theory of history is, quite frankly, just plain nonsense.


Excuse me? You seem to be completely ignoring quantity in favour of quality. Isn't it the case that in every capitalist society that has ever existed, the vast majority of capitalists are much wealthier than the vast majority of workers? Are you saying this statistic is not significant at all?
I'm saying that result is not cause.


I didn't say he was technically a worker. He was a poor intellectual, but his conditions were sufficiently close to that of most workers at the time for him to be able to truly engage and empathise with them.
...
You cannot say that Marx's own personal background had no bearing on the nature of his work. That would be a non-materialist perspective. Conditions determine consciousness.(These points are addressed above.)


A very rich person sitting in his palace, villa or ivory tower wouldn't have been able to do what Marx did.Well, except Engels.


Well no I'm not using a romanticist image of the poor, since I'm not ignoring the qualitative distinction, in terms of relation to the means of production, either. All I'm saying is that one must consider both quality and quantity. Lenin, after all, did explicitly limit the maximum wage differential among workers in a socialist society. To say that social class is independent of wealth is to totally ignore quantity and solely focus on quality.Only insofar as wealth is a determinant of ones ability to accumulate capital. In itself, it signifies nothing, because it does not constitute a set of social relations, these being the foundation of a social class.


Isn't one of the central goals of communism to eliminate economic inequality? If you only focus on the qualitative distinction of social class, you could in theory end up with a socialist society in which everyone is technically a worker, but there is still significant wealth inequality. That's not the kind of "communist society" I have in mind.Yes, but you're addressing wealth as a concept that would even be an applicable concept to a communist society, so you've apparently fallen off the path at some point. Communism is post-commodity, and therefore post-monetary, at least in the sense that "money" is traditionally understood.

[Queercommie Girl]

Ugh, not only do those terms relate to different aspects or "levels" of society rather than the relationship between ideas and the material position of individuals,


But for individuals also, ultimately conditions determine consciousness. Of course this is never a simplistic mechanical relationship here, rather it's a complex dialectical relationship, but ultimately it's still material conditions that are primary, rather than the abstract mind.



the argument that you are apparently making, namely that individuals having a certain material position leads them to produce or accept certain ideas rather than others, and that impoverished individuals are led towards revolutionary analysis, is a really poor one.
This "poor analysis" is one which Marx himself made. Conditions determine consciousness. I didn't say it's the only determining factor, or that this determination is in a simplistic linear mechanical manner, or that "the poorer the person is, the more revolutionary potential he/she has". However, it is un-materialistic to think that one's objective material conditions have no bearing on one's ideological outlook. Most adherents of socialism are generally from the poorer layers of society rather than the richer layers, this is an empirical scientific fact.



Not only does it totally dispense with all capacity for reflection and abstraction when it comes to the origins of ideas in general,
No it doesn't totally dispense with them at all, since I never said the determination is a simplistic mechanical one. Rather, it's a dialectical process. But unless you are a Platonist of some sort, you would agree that ultimately the material world comes before the "realm of abstract ideas".



the particular claim concerning the origin of revolutionary ideas is rendered invalid by the fact that it has generally been the more skilled and better-off sections of the working class, rather than the very poorest or most vulnerable workers, that have exhibited the greatest acceptance of political radicalism, and the greatest capacity to organize and fight, as exemplified by the role of engineering workers in the Russian Revolution and in Britain during the post-1917 revolutionary wave.
Not really. It's neither the richest nor the poorest layers of the working class that are the most revolutionary, but rather the ordinary mass of workers that are relatively well-organised that is the backbone of the revolutionary process. Elite workers and the labour aristocracy are actually more likely to turn to reformism and social democracy. Communism states that those who have nothing to lose can only lose their chains. But elite workers do have something to lose, so are afraid to fully engage in the revolutionary struggle.

However, it would be discriminatory to write-off either the revolutionary potential of elite workers or the poorest and most vulnerable layers of the working class, as some socialists tend to do. Any evaluation here is only of a quantitative and relative nature. Fact is, all layers of workers have the potential to engage in the revolutionary process.

Also, even the "richest" workers generally are still poor by bourgeois standards.



Moreover, what makes the working class as a whole the class that fights for socialism is not its poverty,
Correction: Moreover, what makes the working class as a whole the class that fights for socialism is not only its poverty, and in some circumstances not primarily its poverty.

But it's clearly mistaken to simply consider poverty to be irrelevant. Marx himself recognised this.



given that there have always been other strata like rural tenants or highly vulnerable petty-bourgeois individuals in cities who are worse off than workers,
Not necessarily worse-off than workers as a whole, but only some workers.



but its position at the heart of modern industry, which is precisely why Marx, in the Manifesto, critiques the Utopian Socialists for regarding the proletariat only in its role as "the most suffering class", and also praises capitalism for pulling individuals out of "rural idiocy" as part of the process of producing the working class as a social force.
Ok, the urban working class is more advanced than the peasantry, and more organised than the poor urban petit-bourgeois. But as Lenin clearly pointed out, the fact that workers are the leading class doesn't mean other poor layers of society, such as the peasantry, cannot participate in the revolutionary process. Indeed, Lenin proposed an alliance of workers and peasants, - i.e. Hammer and Sickle, not just the Hammer.



What this shows is that, from Marx's perspective, there is no simple relationship between material conditions and consciousness - or alternatively, and to stick closer to his own formulations, that there is such a relationship, and material conditions need to be understood in more complex terms than simply living standards, in that they must also embody various aspects of lived experience, such as the type of work that different individuals and social groups do, the concentration of capital across the economy as a whole, the size of production units, their background training and education, opportunities for social mobility, and so on.
I don't disagree. I never said there is a simple linear relation here. What I'm saying is that income level obviously also play an important role. Marx didn't deny that workers are important because they are the "most suffering class", only that this is not the only factor at play, or indeed in many situations the most important factor.

I never suggested it's the only factor at play, obviously not. But surely it is an important factor, and cannot simply be dismissed?



Marx's poverty wasn't what made him a brilliant theorist, and he shouldn't be seen as a better person for living in poverty. He should be praised and critiqued on the basis of his ideas.
You cannot completely separate the life of a person from his/her ideas in the abstract sense. Obviously it's wrong to simplistically state that Marx's poverty is what made him a socialist, but clearly it's not an irrelevant factor either.

[Queercommie Girl]

When Marx discusses material conditions, he refers primarily to the relationship to the means of production, not to something as simple as financial status.


And I didn't say it's simply a matter of financial status either. All I'm saying is that it is obviously a factor that cannot be ignored.



Peasants and lumpen-proletarians are quite usually poorer than proletarians, but Marx against their capacity for revolutionary agency, because they do not fulfill the appropriate social role within capitalism.


Actually Lenin believes in the revolutionary alliance of workers and peasants, so the fact that workers are the leading class doesn't mean peasants are non-revolutionary or even reactionary. The communist symbol is the hammer and sickle after all, not just the hammer. The CCP also believes that while the working class is the leading class in a revolution, the peasants are the semi-leading class.

And most socialists I've had contact with today certainly wouldn't exclude most of the unemployed from revolutionary organisation. The unemployed is technically the "lumpen-proletariat".



Even setting aside the questionable nature of the claim itself- throwing out, as it does, the majority of all Marxist theorists


Apart from Engels, most Marxist theorists are at most middle class. Hardly "rich".

I'm not comfortable with where this line of thinking is going, since parties like the PSL have used such arguments to claim that even the billionaire bureaucratic capitalists in the Chinese ruling bloc today can potentially turn to genuine socialism, since there have been plenty of examples of "rich socialists".



it's not even accurate. Marx's impoverishment was of a very different sort than that of the workers, that of a pauper-intellectual rather than a poorly paid or underemployed worker, and with no direct relationship to the class struggle which was responsible for the impoverishment of the working class. The idea that a similar tendency towards indebtedness could be crucial in allowing Marx to form a scientific theory of history is, quite frankly, just plain nonsense.


There are both differences and similarities. You are being nonsensical to just focus on the differences. Are you saying Marx didn't participate directly in working class movements?

I didn't say poverty is the only factor, or even in many situations the most important or primary factor. But it is fucking idealistic BS to completely write-off the relevance of income level altogether.



Only insofar as wealth is a determinant of ones ability to accumulate capital. In itself, it signifies nothing, because it does not constitute a set of social relations, these being the foundation of a social class.


Well, it would still be a problem if some workers are paid much more than others, even if there is absolutely no chance of capital accumulation what-so-ever. This is why Lenin stated that the maximum wage difference in a socialist society cannot exceed 4 times.



Yes, but you're addressing wealth as a concept that would even be an applicable concept to a communist society, so you've apparently fallen off the path at some point. Communism is post-commodity, and therefore post-monetary, at least in the sense that "money" is traditionally understood.


What about in a socialist society? What Leninism believes as the transitional stage between capitalism and communism? Money would still exist under socialism, right? So does this mean significant income inequality is permissible under socialism, as long as there is no real chance of capital accumulation?

(If this is the case, then frankly I'm not a "socialist")

[Tim Finnegan]

And I didn't say it's simply a matter of financial status either. All I'm saying is that it is obviously a factor that cannot be ignored.
I'm not ignoring it, I'm just noting that it isn't a determinant of class conciousness.


Actually Lenin believes in the revolutionary alliance of workers and peasants, so the fact that workers are the leading class doesn't mean peasants are non-revolutionary or even reactionary. The communist symbol is the hammer and sickle after all, not just the hammer. The CCP also believes that while the working class is the leading class in a revolution, the peasants are the semi-leading class.The "leading class" is what I mean by revolutionary agencies. Lenin accepted the position of Marx and Engels, laid out in texts such as The Class Struggle in France and On Social Relations in Russia that the peasantry is a quasi-class, incapable of either gaining class conciousness or of effectively organising independent revolutionary movement, and so can only become revolutionary when thrown by circumstance into the orbit of the proletariat, which is the true revolutionary agent in a capitalist society. It is crucial to note, I would suggest, that the proletarians are understood by Marxism to be a constant and necessary factor of socialist revolution- of proletarian revolution, which for Marx is much the same thing- while the peasants may or may not appear, as is the situation at the time. Thus, Marxists (who do not indulge in the badly-disguised Narodnikism of the Maoists) saw the "alliance of workers and peasants" as necessary in a country like Russia, but unnecessary- or at least not particularly important- in a country like Britain, where the peasantry was a political irrelevance confined to the Gaelic fringe.


And most socialists I've had contact with today certainly wouldn't exclude most of the unemployed from revolutionary organisation. The unemployed is technically the "lumpen-proletariat".A distinction is drawn between the temporarily and the permanently unemployed. The former are attempting to sell their labour power on the market, that is, to become wage-labourers, while the former are not, which creates a distinction in class. After all, workers are workers even they are not actively selling their labour power, i.e. when they are not at work, so why would they cease to be simply because they spent less time than usual engaged in this sale?


Apart from Engels, most Marxist theorists are at most middle class. Hardly "rich".I didn't suggest that they were rich, simply that they did not come from impoverished backgrounds, and did not develop their ideas while living in a state of indebtedness like Marx. Of the major Marxist thinkers, only Gramsci could be said to have known poverty as a matter of fact part of life, rather than as some peculiar condition of individual political activity.


I'm not comfortable with where this line of thinking is going, since parties like the PSL have used such arguments to claim that even the billionaire bureaucratic capitalists in the Chinese ruling bloc today can potentially turn to genuine socialism, since there have been plenty of examples of "rich socialists".That is hardly the claim that I am making.


There are both differences and similarities. You are being nonsensical to just focus on the differences. Are you saying Marx didn't participate directly in working class movements?

I didn't say poverty is the only factor, or even in many situations the most important or primary factor. But it is fucking idealistic BS to completely write-off the relevance of income level altogether.I'm not writing off the relevance of income, I'm suggesting that income is secondary to class status, and that by arguing that an indebted petty bourgeois intellectual has more in common with the average worker than a well-paid worker- that a blue-collar worker has more in common with a pauper-intellectual than with a white-collar worker- you abandon the entire concept of class struggle that underpins Marxist thought.


Well, it would still be a problem if some workers are paid much more than others, even if there is absolutely no chance of capital accumulation what-so-ever. This is why Lenin stated that the maximum wage difference in a socialist society cannot exceed 4 times.
...
What about in a socialist society? What Leninism believes as the transitional stage between capitalism and communism? Money would still exist under socialism, right? So does this mean significant income inequality is permissible under socialism, as long as there is no real chance of capital accumulation?

(If this is the case, then frankly I'm not a "socialist")Not everyone adheres to this particular revision of Marxist thought. But, that's a discussion in itself...

[Jose Gracchus]

What does "semi-leading" really mean in practice? Strikes me as a particularly mystifying piece of rhetoric.

[Queercommie Girl]

I'm not ignoring it, I'm just noting that it isn't a determinant of class conciousness.


It may not be the primary determinant in some situations, but it's still an important factor.



Thus, Marxists (who do not indulge in the badly-disguised Narodnikism of the Maoists) saw the "alliance of workers and peasants" as necessary in a country like Russia, but unnecessary- or at least not particularly important- in a country like Britain, where the peasantry was a political irrelevance confined to the Gaelic fringe.
Don't try to bash Maoism when you don't know what you are talking about. I'm not really a Maoist as such, but for all its faults in the concrete sense, at the level of principle Maoism is nothing like Narodnikism. Maoism doesn't believe it is intrinsically necessary to have revolutionary peasants in the advanced capitalist West or Japan, but only in countries with a significant peasant population, like say India today.

Also, it's not just Maoism that believes "workers are the leading class, while peasants are the semi-leading class", but the CCP in general. And not all the CCP are Maoist, there are also Trotskyists like for example Chen Duxiu, the founder of the CCP.



A distinction is drawn between the temporarily and the permanently unemployed.
In other words, people who are unable to work in the long-term due to disability must be excluded from revolutionary organisations. :rolleyes:

Not to mention the inherently disgusting and discriminatory nature of this stance, I have actually worked with various socialist/Marxist organisations in the UK, and none of them reject disabled people as a matter of policy.



That is hardly the claim that I am making.
I didn't say you were making such a claim, but you can see how the argument "income level is irrelevant to whether or not one can be a genuine socialist" can be utilised by those who wish to apologise for the ruling bloc in China today.



I'm not writing off the relevance of income, I'm suggesting that income is secondary to class status, and that by arguing that an indebted petty bourgeois intellectual
In what sense is an impoverished intellectual like Marx "petit-bourgeois"? Petit-bourgeois is an economic definition, mainly used to refer to small businessmen and managerial layers, it's not a cultural or aesthetic definition at all, just like the so-called "middle class" in everyday language isn't even a real class in the economic sense.



has more in common with the average worker than a well-paid worker- that a blue-collar worker has more in common with a pauper-intellectual than with a white-collar worker- you abandon the entire concept of class struggle that underpins Marxist thought.
And where did I say that exactly? I simply pointed out that even your so-called "well-paid white collars" are still quite poor by bourgeois standards.



Not everyone adheres to this particular revision of Marxist thought. But, that's a discussion in itself...
Revision? You mean like Lenin's insistence that the wage level of workers cannot differ by 4 times, or Trotsky's sharp critique of the so-called Stakhanov movement?

I'm actually more of a Leninist than "original Marxist", since I believe Leninism is a higher level development of original Marxism.

You may treat Marxism as some kind of fundamentalist religious gospel, but I don't. As Tony Cliff once pointed out, if Marxism doesn't move forward, then it's dead. The "original" or "traditional" or "classical" isn't always the best at all.

So you are saying in a socialist society, it's ok for people like footballers to continue to earn millions of pounds, far above most of ordinary workers? Are you kidding? Remind me why we are fighting for socialism in the first place, if people must wait until some future communist age (god knows how long it would take to arrive) for there to be complete and general economic equality?

Communism does not believe in "each according to his/her labour", to be frank. Communism believes in "from each according to his/her labour, to each according to his/her needs". At the very least, having significant income inequality during the transitional socialist phase would hamper the achievement of this ultimate communist goal, because wealth equals power and rich people potentially would have the means to engage in reactionary and counter-revolutionary activities using their wealth.

So call it "revisionist" all you like, because frankly I don't give a shit about dogmatism. I got interested in Marxism precisely because I believe in economic egalitarianism. If "Marxism" can't offer that, then I'm not a "Marxist".

[Queercommie Girl]

What does "semi-leading" really mean in practice? Strikes me as a particularly mystifying piece of rhetoric.

"Mystifying" in what way? Are you an Orientalist or something who believes non-Western schools of thought like Maoism must be "mystical", unlike "rational" Western thought?

Essentially the Maoist stance is not so different from the Leninist one in the fundamental sense. So go on, call Lenin a "mystic" too. At least don't just pick on the Orientals.

[Thirsty Crow]

"Mystifying" in what way? Are you an Orientalist or something who believes non-Western schools of thought like Maoism must be "mystical", unlike "rational" Western thought?

Mystification, as a function of bourgeois and petite bourgeois ideology, has nothing to do with the dichotomy of the rational and the irrational. Rather, it is a rhetorical manouver within the overall strategy of reaction, concealed or clearly revealed.

In that sense, bourgeois aplogia in the field of economics is mystification as well.

[Queercommie Girl]

Mystification, as a function of bourgeois and petite bourgeois ideology, has nothing to do with the dichotomy of the rational and the irrational. Rather, it is a rhetorical manouver within the overall strategy of reaction, concealed or clearly revealed.

In that sense, bourgeois aplogia in the field of economics is mystification as well.

My point simply is that Maoism is not really different from Leninism on this issue, despite the fact that one could argue that in reality Maoism was not properly applied in history. So don't just pick on Maoism. If you are a left communist or anarchist who disagrees fundamentally with Leninism, then fair enough.

[Queercommie Girl]

caramelpence,

You say "poor and vulnerable" workers don't have a lot of revolutionary potential. Do you not consider the poor migrant workers in China today "poor and vulnerable" relatively speaking? Are you trying to suggest that they do not have a lot of revolutionary potential? That's a very elitist viewpoint, to be frank. Any real socialist, regardless of tendency, would consider the poor and overworked migrant workers in China today to be one of the most significant potential revolutionary forces in the country.

[caramelpence]

You say "poor and vulnerable" workers don't have a lot of revolutionary potential

I said that it has historically been skilled and better-off workers who have been at the forefront of political activism and the most aggressive class struggles, not that other workers possess no "revolutionary potential" regardless of other factors or the complexities of particular situations. This is a generalization based on historical experience, including the experience of the pre-1949 Chinese working class, and I would also point out that the poorest workers have often (though not always) been a source of support for right-wing forces and populist movements that offer the prospect (or perhaps the illusion) of inclusion and community, in addition to not being as progressive as more "privileged" sections. For example, when the KMT launched their coup in April 1927 in cooperation with the Green Gang, the Green Gang was able to draw on those highly exploited workers who had been brought to Shanghai from rural areas like Subei and who were under the control of labour bosses and contractors, whereas it was the skilled workers with stable employment and control over their wages who had led the most important post-1919 economic struggles, such as the Hong Kong seaman's strike in 1922, and who were at the forefront of the CPC's efforts to gain control of Shanghai and defend themselves against the KMT and its allies. In a similar way, in Latin America in the post-war period, it was the temporary and easily dispensable workers who inhabited the shack communities on the peripheries of major cities, such as penny vendors, personal servants, car washers, shoeshiners, newspaper and lottery vendors, and occasional day laborers, collectively known as "los descamisados" or "the shirtless ones" in the Argentine context, who served as the social base for populism in its left-wing and right-wing forms, Personism being the paradigmatic example.

As for migrant workers in contemporary China, an additional complexity in that context is that migrant workers generally retain rural hukou and therefore retain access to land in their original rural communities, which is important from the perspective of the Chinese government and the prospects for a working-class movement in China because it means that there exists a basic safety-net, in the absence of meaningful social security provision in the cities, that migrant workers can fall back on when they are made unemployed at short notice. That complexity aside, I think that the vanguard role of skilled and better-off workers is broadly applicable to China as well insofar as the most aggressive workers are not the migrants but are the workers in the large state-owned enterprises in the northern cities who are facing the erosion of their historic privileges. This is a point that has been made repeatedly by labour scholars such as Ching Kwan Lee and I think it is amongst those workers that a revolutionary movement has the best chances of emerging, even whilst migrants may play an important supporting role.

I think this is a really important and interesting issue, so if you want to continue the discussion, I ask that we split the thread.

[Manic Impressive]

ok back on topic (and this actually involved me doing some reading:p)

In 1853 Marx received £150 from Engels, usually submitted 2 articles a week for £2 per article to the New York Daily Tribune, £50 a year from Neue Oder-Zeitung. The bare minimum of his income in a year was £200 and his annual rent was £22.

So where'd the money go?



To give you an idea of the real state of affairs, I have asked my wife to draw up a statement in respect of the £20 advanced by you and the £24 I drew on the Tribune (of which £2 were overdrawn) on 16 June. From it you will see that, as soon as a fairly substantial sum such as this arrives, not a penny is left over even for the most urgent day-to-day expenses, let alone enjoyment of any kind; that exactly the same sickening struggle recommences the following day, and within a very short time the creditors, having received only the most meagre payments on account, once more begin to exert exactly the same pressure in respect of other bills which have accumulated in the meantime. At the same time you will see that my wife hasn’t spent a farthing on clothes, etc., for herself, while the situation as regards the children’s summer dresses is subproletarian. I think it is essential that you should go through these particulars since it would not otherwise be possible to arrive at a correct opinion of the case.

Statement in respect of £20 received 19 May. Paid out:
Rates (water, gas) £7 —
Pawnshop, interest £3 —
Redeemed from pawnshop, for £1 10
Wages2 —
tallyman (who had to be paid weekly for a coat and trousers)— £18
Shoes and hats for the children £1 10
Baker £1 —
Butcher £1 10
Epicier £1 —
Cheesemonger— £10
Coal — 10
Statement in respect of £24 received 16 June from the ‘Tribune’
School for quarter February, March, April £8
Loaned by Schapper for daily expenses over 4 weeks, repaid £3 —
Linen redeemed from pawnshop £2 —
Wages £1 —
Tallyman £1 4
Butcher £2 —
Epicier £2 —
Greengrocer £1 —
Chemises, drones, etc., for the children £2 —
Baker £2 —

Thus, after 17 June there was again not a single penny in the house and, to cover for four weeks day-to-day expenses which had to be paid in cash, we borrowed £4 from Schapper, about £2 of which, however, went on the abortive loan operation in fees.
The full state of indebtedness, as it now stands in London, is as follows. (It will show you that a large part of the same consists in debts to small épiciers who have stretched their credit as far as it will go.)


Rates, due 25 June £9 —
School, due 2 August £6 —
Newspaper man (for a year) £6 —
Tallyman £3 9
Butcher £7 14
Baker £6 —
Épicier £4 —
Greengrocer and coal £2 —
Milkman £6 17
Owing to previous milkman and baker in Soho £9 —
Dr Allen (£7 paid out of last but one Tribune money) £10 —
Lina Schöller £9 —
Schapper £4 —
Pawnshop £30 —
Of these debts, the only ones I don’t consider urgent are those owing to Dr Allen, Lina Schöler, the old creditors in Soho and part of what is due to the pawnshop.

http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1858/letters/58_07_15.htm

[Jose Gracchus]

"Mystifying" in what way? Are you an Orientalist or something who believes non-Western schools of thought like Maoism must be "mystical", unlike "rational" Western thought?

Essentially the Maoist stance is not so different from the Leninist one in the fundamental sense. So go on, call Lenin a "mystic" too. At least don't just pick on the Orientals.

Dude, my ancestors sacrificed unlucky people to the Great and Mighty Huitzilopochtli. Can your lame claims of Occidental chauvinism. Could you try, I dunno, answering the question? Say I want to start the Mao-Trot Party of glorious vanguard leadership where there are some peasants and workers. What cadre should be drawn from? What should be the strategy? Etc.? Where does the "semi-leading class" come in as a meaningful device in this context?

[Arlekino]

I watched film series Karl Marx Mododyje Gody Karl Marx youth years, are in seven parts and film is about his life, struggles of poverty. Well if you compare Charles Dickens stories about poverty I would not say Karl Marx was so poor, The series is very good, is involving Englels, his wife and of course his intellectual life of communist ideas, as I wish to say it was in Russian language. But I tried to contact few and asked could anybody can put subtitles in English but I could not get reply.

[Tim Finnegan]

It may not be the primary determinant in some situations, but it's still an important factor.
By definition, it is always the secondary determinant. Class is determined by relationship to the means of production, personal finances being significant in determining only insofar as they lock the majority of workers within that class, while they are significant in determining class conciousness insofar as they aid of hinder its attainment. Poverty alone cannot stand in for a class-membership which you do not have.


Don't try to bash Maoism when you don't know what you are talking about. I'm not really a Maoist as such, but for all its faults in the concrete sense, at the level of principle Maoism is nothing like Narodnikism. Maoism doesn't believe it is intrinsically necessary to have revolutionary peasants in the advanced capitalist West or Japan, but only in countries with a significant peasant population, like say India today.

Also, it's not just Maoism that believes "workers are the leading class, while peasants are the semi-leading class", but the CCP in general. And not all the CCP are Maoist, there are also Trotskyists like for example Chen Duxiu, the founder of the CCP.My point was merely that Marx attributes sole revolutionary agency to the proletariat, and regards other classes- peasant, petty bourgeois, and so on- as constituting at best revolutionary allies. If you have problems with that, take it up with Messrs. Marx and Engels.


In other words, people who are unable to work in the long-term due to disability must be excluded from revolutionary organisations. :rolleyes:

Not to mention the inherently disgusting and discriminatory nature of this stance, I have actually worked with various socialist/Marxist organisations in the UK, and none of them reject disabled people as a matter of policy."Permanently disabled" in the sense of being habitually unemployed, or of habitually avoiding participation in formal employment in the official market. The permanently or long-term disabled are obviously a special case, as with the temporarily disabled or the retired. I'm sorry I didn't make that more clear, but I'd appreciate if you were, in future, more conservative in attempting to infer sweeping ableist declarations from my posts.


I didn't say you were making such a claim, but you can see how the argument "income level is irrelevant to whether or not one can be a genuine socialist" can be utilised by those who wish to apologise for the ruling bloc in China today.Not really, given that I am sceptical of "income level" in the contemporary sense as constituting a meaningful concept in a truly communist society. It's not that I am slower to damn the Chinese party-oligarchs than yourself.


In what sense is an impoverished intellectual like Marx "petit-bourgeois"? Petit-bourgeois is an economic definition, mainly used to refer to small businessmen and managerial layers, it's not a cultural or aesthetic definition at all, just like the so-called "middle class" in everyday language isn't even a real class in the economic sense.It is, to my understanding, how Marx self-identified. You can dispute the details, but it really isn't important: the point is that Marx was not a proletarian, nor did he consider himself to be.

And where did I say that exactly? I simply pointed out that even your so-called "well-paid white collars" are still quite poor by bourgeois standards.[/quote]


Revision? You mean like Lenin's insistence that the wage level of workers cannot differ by 4 times, or Trotsky's sharp critique of the so-called Stovokahist movement?Revision, in that the retention of generalised commodity production after the end of capitalism contradicts Marx's originally conception of communist revolution. As I said, it's a different discussion, and not one that we need to hash out here.

[Queercommie Girl]

Dude, my ancestors sacrificed unlucky people to the Great and Mighty Huitzilopochtli. Can your lame claims of Occidental chauvinism.


Right, and I suppose the medieval Catholic Church's actions of burning witches to death on a cross are so much more "civilised" than the human sacrifice rituals of the native Americans...:rolleyes:

Just because your ancestry is partly non-white, doesn't mean you can't assume a Western chauvinist attitude. In fact, it's pretty common. In China we call those people "bananas" - yellow on the outside, white on the inside. That Japanese evolutionary psychologist trash who made racist remarks against black women belongs to this self-hating category, since he once made the remark that Asian cultural traditions held back Asian scientific achievement. When Hong Kong was handed over to China in 1997, on BBC they interviewed a Hong Kong Chinese person who stated that "it is sad to see the end of the British empire" like a fucking lapdog.

My point is simply that you shouldn't just pick on Maoism. If you disagree with the approach to the peasantry in Marxism-Leninism in general, then that's a fair enough point, but that's a discussion for a different thread.

[Queercommie Girl]

Poverty alone cannot stand in for a class-membership which you do not have.


Which is a point I have not made. Nevertheless, poverty is an important factor, and cannot just be ignored.



My point was merely that Marx attributes sole revolutionary agency to the proletariat, and regards other classes- peasant, petty bourgeois, and so on- as constituting at best revolutionary allies. If you have problems with that, take it up with Messrs. Marx and Engels.
And as I said before, I believe Leninism is superior to "original Marxism", and Leninism is a higher level development of "original Marxism". I prefer the more explicit notion of the "alliance between the workers and the peasantry" put forward by Leninists and Maoists.



"Permanently disabled" in the sense of being habitually unemployed, or of habitually avoiding participation in formal employment in the official market. The permanently or long-term disabled are obviously a special case, as with the temporarily disabled or the retired. I'm sorry I didn't make that more clear, but I'd appreciate if you were, in future, more conservative in attempting to infer sweeping ableist declarations from my posts.
Well, I'd also appreciate it if you stop referring to my points as "plain non-sense" just because you disagree with them or frankly because you didn't understand them fully in the future.

Accusations of "ableism" aside, I think even those who consciously choose to not participate in the "work market" under capitalism, i.e. those who choose to be long-term unemployed, rather than due to disability, should certainly still be included in revolutionary organisations, even though objectively their potential impact in the revolution would be less than many layers of the "working class proper".



Not really, given that I am sceptical of "income level" in the contemporary sense as constituting a meaningful concept in a truly communist society.
I was more talking about the transitional socialist stage of society, rather than the communist society of the future.



It is, to my understanding, how Marx self-identified. You can dispute the details, but it really isn't important: the point is that Marx was not a proletarian, nor did he consider himself to be.
I didn't say Marx was part of the "working class proper" either, which even from a purely objective economic perspective, clearly isn't true.

My point is that "class" in Marxism is solely determined by economic factors objectively speaking, e.g. relations to the means of production, not by cultural or aesthetic factors, or indeed "self-identification".

The "petit-bourgeois" refers to something very precise in Marxism. It's not just an "include-all" loose category to be used whenever you find it difficult to place a particular person in any of the other well-defined class categories.



Revision, in that the retention of generalised commodity production after the end of capitalism contradicts Marx's originally conception of communist revolution. As I said, it's a different discussion, and not one that we need to hash out here.Are you one of those left commies who believe communism can arrive immediately or very quickly after the revolution so one does not really need a prolonged socialist stage? I think such a view is unrealistic at best, but as you said, it's a different topic.

But at any rate, if you do take such a view, then there is even more reason to reject significant monetary income inequality after the revolution, since as I said, that would only hamper the ultimate goal of achieving a post-monetary communist society.

P.S. when I said the fact that Marx was poor should be considered a badge of honour, what I meant was that Karl Marx was an extremely intelligent scholar, and if he chose to he could have been rich and famous easily. Yet he chose to sacrifice his chance of achieving personal wealth in order to dedicate himself to the socialist movement. That's the "badge of honour", not Marx being poor per se.

[Queercommie Girl]

Could you try, I dunno, answering the question? Say I want to start the Mao-Trot Party of glorious vanguard leadership where there are some peasants and workers. What cadre should be drawn from? What should be the strategy? Etc.? Where does the "semi-leading class" come in as a meaningful device in this context?


It's a debate for another thread. Why go off-topic so much here?

To summarise though, the point is that all of the poorer layers of capitalist society could potentially participate in a revolution, but the urban working class is the most important section due to its better organisation and more "advanced" consciousness (generally speaking). But this doesn't mean the democratic aspirations of the other layers of the poor can just be ignored in favour of the working class. So obviously party cadres can be drawn from both workers and peasants, as well as the urban petit-bourgeois, but ideologically the greatest amount of emphasis must be placed on the organised urban workers.

[Queercommie Girl]

I said that it has historically been skilled and better-off workers who have been at the forefront of political activism and the most aggressive class struggles, not that other workers possess no "revolutionary potential" regardless of other factors or the complexities of particular situations. This is a generalization based on historical experience, including the experience of the pre-1949 Chinese working class, and I would also point out that the poorest workers have often (though not always) been a source of support for right-wing forces and populist movements that offer the prospect (or perhaps the illusion) of inclusion and community, in addition to not being as progressive as more "privileged" sections. For example, when the KMT launched their coup in April 1927 in cooperation with the Green Gang, the Green Gang was able to draw on those highly exploited workers who had been brought to Shanghai from rural areas like Subei and who were under the control of labour bosses and contractors, whereas it was the skilled workers with stable employment and control over their wages who had led the most important post-1919 economic struggles, such as the Hong Kong seaman's strike in 1922, and who were at the forefront of the CPC's efforts to gain control of Shanghai and defend themselves against the KMT and its allies. In a similar way, in Latin America in the post-war period, it was the temporary and easily dispensable workers who inhabited the shack communities on the peripheries of major cities, such as penny vendors, personal servants, car washers, shoeshiners, newspaper and lottery vendors, and occasional day laborers, collectively known as "los descamisados" or "the shirtless ones" in the Argentine context, who served as the social base for populism in its left-wing and right-wing forms, Personism being the paradigmatic example.

As for migrant workers in contemporary China, an additional complexity in that context is that migrant workers generally retain rural hukou and therefore retain access to land in their original rural communities, which is important from the perspective of the Chinese government and the prospects for a working-class movement in China because it means that there exists a basic safety-net, in the absence of meaningful social security provision in the cities, that migrant workers can fall back on when they are made unemployed at short notice. That complexity aside, I think that the vanguard role of skilled and better-off workers is broadly applicable to China as well insofar as the most aggressive workers are not the migrants but are the workers in the large state-owned enterprises in the northern cities who are facing the erosion of their historic privileges. This is a point that has been made repeatedly by labour scholars such as Ching Kwan Lee and I think it is amongst those workers that a revolutionary movement has the best chances of emerging, even whilst migrants may play an important supporting role.

I think this is a really important and interesting issue, so if you want to continue the discussion, I ask that we split the thread.

I don't know exactly what tendency you subscribe to, but I think your views are rather elitist, based on my experience of working with Maoist and Trotskyist groups in China. Since most of them are generally more "pro-poor" and would greatly focus on and emphasise the important role poor migrant workers in China today would play in the socialist revolution.

BTW, what is your view of the "Stakhanov movement" in the Soviet Union?

I have a trans friend who could have been a "white-collar" teacher at a school in Shanghai but she was explicitly discriminated against due to her transgendered status, and was fired from her job just for that. Now she is a temporary part-time worker who earns very little and has no stable employment at all.

I suppose by your scheme people like her would be considered to be a part of the "poor and vulnerable" layer of workers who have significantly less revolutionary potential. I'm obviously not accusing you for being explicitly sexist or queerphobic, but objectively the inevitable consequence of your scheme, which focuses mostly on the highest-paid sections of the working class, is to focus mainly on workers who are male and heterosexual (of all races), since in any particular country, whether Western or non-Western, women generally earn significantly less than men, and queer people even lesser than straight people. So even though you have no explicit sexist or queerphobic views, the objective implication of your ideology is such that heterosexual males are more favoured in the revolutionary process.

In China today, it's certainly true that the "old workers" in the industrial centres of North China are better organised and have a better political consciousness than the poor migrant workers from rural areas. A lot of the recent protest movements were initiated by these layers, for instance the courageous struggles of the trade union activist and worker's rights lawyer Zhao Dongmin in Xi'an. I certainly don't agree with some socialists in the West that these layers have no real revolutionary potential. Nevertheless, for Marxist-Leninists it is also important to realise that virtually all of these "old workers" are merely "reformists", none of them really want to upset the status quo in China in any fundamental way. They are all still intrinsically loyal to the CCP government. The poor migrant workers from rural areas, on the other hand, because they have nothing to lose, tend to be politically more radical, at least potentially.

Here is an excerpt from a Chinese article I've translated into English for Chinaworker (CWI China):

According to the views of orthodox Maoists in China, these economic struggles by the "new workers" of China do not challenge the basic ownership rights of capital, and they are at most a kind of "trade unionist" consciousness, a manifestation of "proto-revolutionary awareness". Also these young workers are generally "individualistic, short-sighted, slothful, selfish and disorganised". They are different from the "old workers" who have experienced the Maoist period, who are much more "class-conscious" and "politically aware". But aren't this kind of discriminatory views towards the “new workers” of China similar to how the capitalists view workers? The negative views some new workers in China have towards "the old stagnant Maoist socialist flag" indeed reflect Maoism's own problems.

In addition, the "revolutionary old workers" promoted by Maoists are getting old both individually and as a class, and are weakening politically, and will eventually exit the arena of history. Capitalists with the aid of time is silently destroying them, they are the remanent memories of the last instance of deformed revolution and the swan songs of the last defeat of class warfare. Even if one day in the future, genuine socialism where workers democratically control all enterprises is truly established, these enterprises would still be very different from the "state-owned enterprises" of the Maoist era. But now we wish to give our utmost respect to the "old workers" of China who are "roaring their last" and continuing the struggles against capitalism. Their determined struggles during this most difficult period have demonstrated the fighting spirit of the Chinese working class which possesses a glorious revolutionary tradition.

Of course, the "new workers" have yet to develop a fully mature class consciousness, but at the same time they have not been influenced by the old bureaucratised workers' movements and Maoism. As the primary force of the Chinese working class in general both today and in the future, they shall become the main fighting force of the Chinese worker's movement. As Lenin pointed out: "We are a party of the future, and the future belongs to the youths. We are a party of those who establish new things, and the youths always like to follow those who establish new things. We are a party that fights against the old corrupt things of the world tirelessly, and the youths are those who are most prone to tireless struggles."


Full Article here:

http://chinaworker.info/en/content/news/1243/?ls-art0=150

[Tim Finnegan]

Which is a point I have not made. Nevertheless, poverty is an important factor, and cannot just be ignored.
Then what point are you making? If you accept that poverty is a relevant factor only within the terms of class conflict, a conflict in which Marx was not an economic participant (as opposed to a political participant), then why do you claim that his non-exactly-poverty was important in allowing Marx to formulate his ideas?


And as I said before, I believe Leninism is superior to "original Marxism", and Leninism is a higher level development of "original Marxism". I prefer the more explicit notion of the "alliance between the workers and the peasantry" put forward by Leninists and Maoists.And as I said previously, elevating the peasantry to the status of a revolutionary agent- something that Lenin, whatever you think of him, cannot be substantially accused of- fundamentally contradicts the Marxian theory of class struggle under capitalism. Hence my "Narodnikism" comment.


Well, I'd also appreciate it if you stop referring to my points as "plain non-sense" just because you disagree with them or frankly because you didn't understand them fully in the future.There's a small difference between giving arguably hyperbolic evaluations of a given point, and presuming rampant bigotry on the part of another poster.


Accusations of "ableism" aside, I think even those who consciously choose to not participate in the "work market" under capitalism, i.e. those who choose to be long-term unemployed, rather than due to disability, should certainly still be included in revolutionary organisations, even though objectively their potential impact in the revolution would be less than many layers of the "working class proper".[/qupte]
Well, they can join such-and-such little sect, if that's what you're talking about, but a "revolutionary organisation" in any meaningful sense of the word is a class organisation, and so must draw itself up along class lines.

[quote]I was more talking about the transitional socialist stage of society, rather than the communist society of the future.And I was dismissing the notion of a "transitional socialist stage" as a revision of the Marxist understanding of proletarian revolution. As I explain later on...


I didn't say Marx was part of the "working class proper" either, which even from a purely objective economic perspective, clearly isn't true.

My point is that "class" in Marxism is solely determined by economic factors objectively speaking, e.g. relations to the means of production, not by cultural or aesthetic factors, or indeed "self-identification".

The "petit-bourgeois" refers to something very precise in Marxism. It's not just an "include-all" loose category to be used whenever you find it difficult to place a particular person in any of the other well-defined class categories.Again, I only meant to say that Marx did not consider himself proletarian, that most Marxists since have concurred, and that I see no reason to revise that analysis. Whatever class he was actually part of- if any substantial class- is not important.


Are you one of those left commies who believe communism can arrive immediately or very quickly after the revolution so one does not really need a prolonged socialist stage? I think such a view is unrealistic at best, but as you said, it's a different topic.

But at any rate, if you do take such a view, then there is even more reason to reject significant monetary income inequality after the revolution, since as I said, that would only hamper the ultimate goal of achieving a post-monetary communist society.I don't believe that "immediately after the revolution" is a phrase that actually makes sense within the framework of a proper understanding of class struggle. Revolution is a social process, not a political event, in which the communist movement organically generates communism as a product of its own organisation and waging of class struggle. Money may possibly be retained for some time after the initial outbreak of revolutionary struggle, but that merely indicates the as-yet incompleteness of that struggle; a stable communist society is by definition post-commodity, and so without a money-commodity. (Setting aside the question of various forms of credit, "labour vouchers", and so forth.)


P.S. when I said the fact that Marx was poor should be considered a badge of honour, what I meant was that Karl Marx was an extremely intelligent scholar, and if he chose to he could have been rich and famous easily. Yet he chose to sacrifice his chance of achieving personal wealth in order to dedicate himself to the socialist movement. That's the "badge of honour", not Marx being poor per se.Well, that's certainly a less contentious claim.

[MarxSchmarx]

I hate to sound like a BNPer, but it's awfully hard to make a living in London if you don't speak English, and more so back then. Marx's command of English was notoriously bad and I think he did about as well as he could among the German-speaking emigre community of the time.

[Queercommie Girl]

Then what point are you making? If you accept that poverty is a relevant factor only within the terms of class conflict, a conflict in which Marx was not an economic participant (as opposed to a political participant), then why do you claim that his non-exactly-poverty was important in allowing Marx to formulate his ideas?


To say that "poverty is a relevant factor only within the terms of class conflict" is a completely meaningless statement. Class society is the origin of poverty. If there are no classes, then there is no poverty.

I said Marx's poverty made it easier for him to get close enough to the workers to formulate an empirical scheme of socialist movement. Had he been very wealthy, this would have been much more unlikely.



And as I said previously, elevating the peasantry to the status of a revolutionary agent- something that Lenin, whatever you think of him, cannot be substantially accused of- fundamentally contradicts the Marxian theory of class struggle under capitalism. Hence my "Narodnikism" comment.
Lenin did consider the peasantry to be a "revolutionary agent" under certain circumstances, and I don't see anything wrong with it.

Also, I'm not really a Maoist, but I don't intrinsically reject Maoism either. You may consider Maoism to be "un-Marxist", but I don't.

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Marx and Engels were not 100% correct on every single thing? I mean it's quite likely that Marx himself was queerphobic, does this mean it's ok for Marxists today to be queerphobic?

You can continue to treat Marx and Engels like religious prophets if you wish, but I will never do that. I believe Marxism is a scientific tradition that must always move ahead. If it doesn't move ahead then it's dead. This is also called evolution. Something is correct if it is judged to be empirically valid for the socialist movement, not because "Marx said so".



There's a small difference between giving arguably hyperbolic evaluations of a given point, and presuming rampant bigotry on the part of another poster.
Where is the "rampant bigotry"? I didn't explicitly accuse you for anything either. Maybe you were reading too much into it.



Well, they can join such-and-such little sect, if that's what you're talking about, but a "revolutionary organisation" in any meaningful sense of the word is a class organisation, and so must draw itself up along class lines.
So your idea is that suppose you are the leader of a revolutionary organisation, you will literally not allow long-term unemployed people to join? What about other "non-worker" elements in society, just as the urban petit-bourgeois, students and peasants? What about people who have the potential to work but are only in long-term unemployment due to explicit discrimination? Well, if your organisation is only made up of people who are strictly speaking "workers", then that's surely a good sign of making the organisation into a pathetic little sect. Not to mention your dogmatic adherence to "original Marxism" probably won't attract that many workers anyway.

And tell me, what exactly do you mean by "little sects"? Like the Trot organisations in the West? If you accuse others to be "little sects" then it implies you must be a member of a large organisation. But I really doubt that is the case.



And I was dismissing the notion of a "transitional socialist stage" as a revision of the Marxist understanding of proletarian revolution. As I explain later on...
As I said, I'm not a dogmatist. Which means I don't think everything in "original Marxism" is completely correct. Marx, hard to believe as it may be for you, is far from being a "god", and he made many mistakes, like any other human being. Sometimes the theories of later Marxists are indeed superior to the ideas of Marx himself.



Again, I only meant to say that Marx did not consider himself proletarian, that most Marxists since have concurred, and that I see no reason to revise that analysis. Whatever class he was actually part of- if any substantial class- is not important.
Did I ever say Marx was technically a part of the working class economically speaking? No. Please read more carefully in the future.



I don't believe that "immediately after the revolution" is a phrase that actually makes sense within the framework of a proper understanding of class struggle. Revolution is a social process, not a political event, in which the communist movement organically generates communism as a product of its own organisation and waging of class struggle. Money may possibly be retained for some time after the initial outbreak of revolutionary struggle, but that merely indicates the as-yet incompleteness of that struggle; a stable communist society is by definition post-commodity, and so without a money-commodity. (Setting aside the question of various forms of credit, "labour vouchers", and so forth.)
Well, a society that is dominated by the use of "labour vouchers" isn't really fully communist either, since communism is not actually "each according to his/her labour", but "each according to his/her needs".

[Desperado]

Which Marx? From 1869 towards the end of his like he lived like a Victorian gentleman, "send[ding] his daughters to a ladies' seminary, attend continental spas and even boast[ing] of gambling on the stock-exchange [(!)]" [[I]Marx, David McLellan].

At times he had to write furiously to get more money (he wrote eight hundred pages of the Grundrisse in less than six months), but it wasn't that Marx's income wasn't adequate, it's that he was awful at managing and spending it - something he himself often reflected on and said was ironic considering how much he wrote on capital. His worst times were in Dean Street, but following 1864 (thanks to a legacy, and then in 1869 more help from Engels) he had pretty much no financial problems (which was good timing because it was from then on that he spent an awful lot of time in the IWA ("I am in fact in charge of the whole business") rather than on writing).

[Tim Finnegan]

To say that "poverty is a relevant factor only within the terms of class conflict" is a completely meaningless statement. Class society is the origin of poverty. If there are no classes, then there is no poverty.
My point was that poverty only influences the attainment of class conciousness within the terms of a more fundamental set of social relationships, i.e. class membership, and so cannot be taken to carry any universal significance set apart from class experience. Marx may have been poor at times, but his poorness had very little to do with that of the workers, however comparable its symptoms.


I said Marx's poverty made it easier for him to get close enough to the workers to formulate an empirical scheme of socialist movement. Had he been very wealthy, this would have been much more unlikely.And it was observed that this is, in fact, a load of old cobblers, because Marx's theory was developed by careful study of economical, historical and social literature, of great reems of raw data, and by intense development of the information found in those sources, and not simply by noting "Why, old Jim the carpenter looks a bit down on his luck this week!" for the fifteenth thousandth time. It may have lent Marx some sympathy that he may not have otherwise possessed, but there's no reason to think that it should have changed his politics or his theory, given that both developed quite smoothly between those times when he was and was not in a situation of financial hardship.


Lenin did consider the peasantry to be a "revolutionary agent" under certain circumstances, and I don't see anything wrong with it.Well, that is not my impression, but that's really a question for Lenin-scholars among us...


Also, I'm not really a Maoist, but I don't intrinsically reject Maoism either. You may consider Maoism to be "un-Marxist", but I don't.

Has it ever occurred to you that maybe Marx and Engels were not 100% correct on every single thing? I mean it's quite likely that Marx himself was queerphobic, does this mean it's ok for Marxists today to be queerphobic?

You can continue to treat Marx and Engels like religious prophets if you wish, but I will never do that. I believe Marxism is a scientific tradition that must always move ahead. If it doesn't move ahead then it's dead. This is also called evolution. Something is correct if it is judged to be empirically valid for the socialist movement, not because "Marx said so".I'm not assuming this position because Marx did- or because I believe that Marx did- but because I believe it to be the proper position as dictated by Marxist theory. "Revision", in this sense, is not problematic because it challenges The Holy Word, but because it involves challenging the fundamental conception of class struggle under capitalism in Marxist thought, as initially but not exclusively examined by Marx; that is, that it poses a class which is external to the central struggle of capitalism, a class which is entirely disposable as a class, and a class who have consistently declined in number, influence, and economic relevance alongside the development of the capitalist economy, as a potential revolutionary force. If such a position appeals, then one is entirely free to occupy it, but one cannot justify its occupation within the terms of a body of theory that by definition excludes that position, any more than one can stand in Spain while standing in Poland.


Where is the "rampant bigotry"? I didn't explicitly accuse you for anything either. Maybe you were reading too much into it.You suggested that I meant to exclude the seriously disabled from the workers' movement, and, by logical extension, social life in a post-revolutionary world. That would certainly be a "rampantly bigoted" position to hold, if I did indeed hold it.


So your idea is that suppose you are the leader of a revolutionary organisation, you will literally not allow long-term unemployed people to join? What about other "non-worker" elements in society, just as the urban petit-bourgeois, students and peasants? What about people who have the potential to work but are only in long-term unemployment due to explicit discrimination? Well, if your organisation is only made up of people who are strictly speaking "workers", then that's surely a good sign of making the organisation into a pathetic little sect.Well, firstly, I'm not a fan of "leaders" making sweeping decisions, but assuming that this is semantics rather than a crucial point...
Again, I draw a distinction between involuntarily unemployment and voluntarily unemployment. Those who seek to sell their labour but are unable to do so, or who would seek to sell their labour if not for an illness or disability, are properly regarded as proletarians. Lumpenproletarians are specifically defined, in my understanding, by the establishment of a different set of relations to the means of production, rather than a mere inability to act upon those relations in the most profitable fashion.
Peasants and the petty bourgeoisie I would also exclude, although they'd certainly be encouraged to form their own allied groups, and in those cases where it is appropriate I would fully expect a workers organisation to work alongside a peasants organisation, not least with an eye to transforming peasants into workers through one method or another.
As for students, I honestly consider those three or four years to be a minor enough to set aside in favour of a longer-term view. Plus, in the UK, most of the buggers are part-time workers during those few years anyway, so the whole question becomes essentially moot.


Not to mention your dogmatic adherence to "original Marxism" probably won't attract that many workers anyway.You really shouldn't scare-quote things that I've never actually said.


And tell me, what exactly do you mean by "little sects"? Like the Trot organisations in the West? If you accuse others to be "little sects" then it implies you must be a member of a large organisation. But I really doubt that is the case.I don't think that it implies anything of the sort, any more than saying "you are standing on the ground" implies that I am flying through the air. I simply draw a distinction between small political organisations- which are hardly invalid in and of themselves- and mass movements.


As I said, I'm not a dogmatist. Which means I don't think everything in "original Marxism" is completely correct. Marx, hard to believe as it may be for you, is far from being a "god", and he made many mistakes, like any other human being. Sometimes the theories of later Marxists are indeed superior to the ideas of Marx himself.Again, this isn't about dogma, this is about theory. The Marxist understanding of proletarian revolution, as derived from a materialistic basis by Marx and others, proposes the abolition of generalised commodity production, something which can not be the case if commodity exchange is retained, i.e. if money is still the basis for the distribution of goods. Now, I'm aware that there is some variety within Leninism as to the exact understanding of "socialism", and that some would in practice constitute a departure from generalised commodity production, so I'm not meaning to tar all conceptions of "socialism-not-communism" with the same brush, but that does not seem to be the case in regards to the sort that you are describing, and so I am able to observe that it is a basically un-Marxian position.


Did I ever say Marx was technically a part of the working class economically speaking? No. Please read more carefully in the future.I didn't say you did. I was merely clarifying an earlier point.


Well, a society that is dominated by the use of "labour vouchers" isn't really fully communist either, since communism is not actually "each according to his/her labour", but "each according to his/her needs".The actual organisation of a communist society will presumably go some distance beyond a literal interpretation of a single sentence.

Edit: Also,

http://img17.imageshack.us/img17/9679/originalmarxism.jpg

Because I couldn't quite help myself.
http://imageshack.us/photo/my-images/17/originalmarxism.jpg/

[28350]

cuz he was lazy

[ImStalinist]

Who would like to hire someone who is a threat to your power... or would be :laugh:.