Is the world finally learning Marx was right?

[B5C]

This was spreading through Facebook & Reddit:



Marx’s Revenge: How Class Struggle Is Shaping the World


Karl Marx was supposed to be dead and buried. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and China’s Great Leap Forward into capitalism, communism faded into the quaint backdrop of James Bond movies or the deviant mantra of Kim Jong Un. The class conflict that Marx believed determined the course of history seemed to melt away in a prosperous era of free trade and free enterprise. The far-reaching power of globalization, linking the most remote corners of the planet in lucrative bonds of finance, outsourcing and “borderless” manufacturing, offered everybody from Silicon Valley tech gurus to Chinese farm girls ample opportunities to get rich. Asia in the latter decades of the 20th century witnessed perhaps the most remarkable record of poverty alleviation in human history — all thanks to the very capitalist tools of trade, entrepreneurship and foreign investment. Capitalism appeared to be fulfilling its promise — to uplift everyone to new heights of wealth and welfare.

Or so we thought. With the global economy in a protracted crisis, and workers around the world burdened by joblessness, debt and stagnant incomes, Marx’s biting critique of capitalism — that the system is inherently unjust and self-destructive — cannot be so easily dismissed. Marx theorized that the capitalist system would inevitably impoverish the masses as the world’s wealth became concentrated in the hands of a greedy few, causing economic crises and heightened conflict between the rich and working classes. “Accumulation of wealth at one pole is at the same time accumulation of misery, agony of toil, slavery, ignorance, brutality, mental degradation, at the opposite pole,” Marx wrote.


http://business.time.com/2013/03/25/marxs-revenge-how-class-struggle-is-shaping-the-world/


It seems that the author is pointing out that Marx maybe only right on Capitalism, but not Socialism.

[LOLseph Stalin]

Of course they won't admit he's right about socialism since they don't want to feel threatened by people picking up Marxist ideas and staging a revolution.

[B5C]

Of course they won't admit he's right about socialism since they don't want to feel threatened by people picking up Marxist ideas and staging a revolution.

True, but also the author pointed this in the last paragraph:


That leaves open a scary possibility: that Marx not only diagnosed capitalism’s flaws but also the outcome of those flaws. If policymakers don’t discover new methods of ensuring fair economic opportunity, the workers of the world may just unite. Marx may yet have his revenge.

Basically: "Damn! We need nice capitalism or the workers would read more Marx & revolt!"

[RadioRaheem84]

True, but also the author pointed this in the last paragraph:


Basically: "Damn! We need nice capitalism or the workers would read more Marx & revolt!"

Is that not what they thought during the first Great Depression and the advent of the Russian Revolution before it?

That is always in the back of the upper crusts mind, it's just that during the 90s they really thought they beat the beast. Now it's rearing it's head back at them with bigger teeth.

[LOLseph Stalin]

True, but also the author pointed this in the last paragraph:



Basically: "Damn! We need nice capitalism or the workers would read more Marx & revolt!"

Yes, but it's also a pro-business, pro-capitalist magazine so Marxism is seen as a threat by them. They also have a capitalist audience to please. Of course a part of me hopes capitalism falls apart entirely so revolution will happen sooner.

[Zealot]

This attitude has been around for a while now. I remember writing in an essay something like "A lot of economists are now saying that Marx was right about capitalism but wrong about the solution". My professor asked me to cite which economists were saying this, apparently oblivious to how widespread this phenomenon is.

They are forced to say he's right when capitalism is at its low point because Marx is the only one that common people know about who critiqued capitalism. Communism has been the only other alternative to capitalism ever since the October Revolution. They need to confirm what everyone is already thinking (i.e, that Marx may have been right) while at the same time proclaiming socialism a failed alternative. In other words, we may as well pull through the crisis and stay on course with capitalism because the alternative is that god-forsaken socialism. This isn't an acknowledgement of Marx but, in fact, a complete repudiation of him (albeit, in the nicest way possible).

[Questionable]

Of course a part of me hopes capitalism falls apart entirely so revolution will happen sooner.

I'm not sure of capitalist crisis automatically equals a revolution. Without an organized party and a class conscious proletariat we're more likely to slide into fascism during a crisis, as history has shown.

[Raúl Duke]

I feel this is kinda a "repeat of history."
Not exactly, but this sentiment that "capitalism is in danger" and so on. Marx is viewed as "being right" in that in his critiques there are echos of whats occurring now.

The response has been a bit nebulous thought, I've seen the economist and now times talking this stuff but they don't go on and give a definite response. In the past, we had fascism, Keynesian economics, and New Deal.

Some want to bring back the old "Keynesian" model, others want to continue the course. Fascism or "fascist in practice" movements have come back/risen but I don't think they brings something new between these 2 options, they're more to ensure the co-operation of the working class (the usual role of fascism) towards the continuation of capitalism during a time of seemingly increasing class antagonism/strife, working class millitancy.

From what I can see, the "austerity," neo-liberalism, etc model is winning but who knows? I think why they jump in gusto is that the upper class is still riding that "wave" of being paramount world order since the fall of the USSR and think that despite a "bunch of whiners" on the street they will ultimately win.

[LOLseph Stalin]

I'm not sure of capitalist crisis automatically equals a revolution. Without an organized party and a class conscious proletariat we're more likely to slide into fascism during a crisis, as history has shown.

Which is why we need to work on raising peoples' class consciousness now before the system falls.

[Comrade #138672]

This attitude has been around for a while now. I remember writing in an essay something like "A lot of economists are now saying that Marx was right about capitalism but wrong about the solution". My professor asked me to cite which economists were saying this, apparently oblivious to how widespread this phenomenon is.

They are forced to say he's right when capitalism is at its low point because Marx is the only one that common people know about who critiqued capitalism. Communism has been the only other alternative to capitalism ever since the October Revolution. They need to confirm what everyone is already thinking (i.e, that Marx may have been right) while at the same time proclaiming socialism a failed alternative. In other words, we may as well pull through the crisis and stay on course with capitalism because the alternative is that god-forsaken socialism. This isn't an acknowledgement of Marx but, in fact, a complete repudiation of him (albeit, in the nicest way possible).I think that it is still a good sign, because they would be even happier if they could just denounce Marx completely. It is still a loss at their expense. They are just trying to make the best out of this loss.

[ed miliband]

firstly this sort of shoddy article has appeared perhaps weekly since 2007. nothing new. last year the bbc produced an hour long documentary saying more or less the same thing. the only thing remarkable about this is the writer neglected to include the obligatory paragraph about how, actually, marx thought capitalism was great!

secondly, it says absolutely nothing about why "marx was right". nothing. fuck all. it reduces marx to the banal observation that, hey, there's a gap between 'the rich' and 'the poor'. is value mentioned? hmmm, nope. commodities? nah. okay, even more simple... profit? no. all marx's work is reduced to one or two sentences from the manifesto. anything else would be much to difficult, of course.

[The Idler]

Apart from blatantly partisan press and media, I don't think there's some grand conspiracy. Agree or disagree, Marx was a pretty significant economic figure. Now and again, from time to time, business press and wider media consider this worth referencing. Were Marxist groups elevating him to some sort of pedestal this might put people off.

[Taters]

No.


"If the headline asks a question, try answering 'no.' Is This the True Face of Britain's Young? (Sensible reader: No.) Have We Found the Cure for AIDS? (No; or you wouldn't have put the question mark in.) Does This Map Provide the Key for Peace? (Probably not.) A headline with a question mark at the end means, in the vast majority of cases, that the story is tendentious or over-sold. It is often a scare story, or an attempt to elevate some run-of-the-mill piece of reporting into a national controversy and, preferably, a national panic. To a busy journalist hunting for real information a question mark means 'don't bother reading this bit'."

[Questionable]

Which is why we need to work on raising peoples' class consciousness now before the system falls.

...Yes, obviously. I'm just saying that all these people trembling in excitement for the failure of capitalism don't know what's in store for them right now.

The suggestion that the collapse of capitalism will bring about a proletarian revolution is crude economism. As communists we should be afraid of an economic collapse until we have a mass proletarian movement.

[RadioRaheem84]

Articles like this give me hope though because it shows just how out of touch and so stuck in their framework the establishment is. I mean they're so bad at explaining Marx I seriously think the author knows little other than "the rich and poor divide".

It gives me hope because it just takes more of us to get in there and transcend the new mediums. Many will educate workers and reach levels we didn't even dream of reaching. I am too optimistic I know but I think that it can be done because the establishment is out of ideas and in panic mode.

[RadioRaheem84]

last year the bbc produced an hour long documentary saying more or less the same thing.


link!

[B5C]

link!


QQuRHVNGiYo

[RedMaterialist]

Absolutely!!

[Orange Juche]

It seems that the author is pointing out that Marx maybe only right on Capitalism, but not Socialism.

Well, far far far more of what he wrote was about capitalism, not socialism.

[RadioRaheem84]

QQuRHVNGiYo

Before I pop some popcorn and get comfy, is this doc just totally bias against Marx? Is it at least somewhat interested in exploring if Marx was really right?

[Zealot]

Before I pop some popcorn and get comfy, is this doc just totally bias against Marx? Is it at least somewhat interested in exploring if Marx was really right?

Not against Marx per se but it uses the classic "in theory it was good but in practice" blah blah. Also, they completely warp some of Marx's theories and I assume that the writers didn't have a very good grasp of Marxist theory. Still interesting though.

[RadioRaheem84]

Not against Marx per se but it uses the classic "in theory it was good but in practice" blah blah. Also, they completely warp some of Marx's theories and I assume that the writers didn't have a very good grasp of Marxist theory. Still interesting though.

That is the trendy thing to do these days though is say Marx was brilliant in his analysis but his solutions were bad blah blah blah.

[RadioRaheem84]

But is the doc still relevant and would I learn anything at all by watching it?

[tuwix]

This was spreading through Facebook & Reddit:



It seems that the author is pointing out that Marx maybe only right on Capitalism, but not Socialism.


Class struggle was always recognized by sociological society. Marx is still regarded as the father of the economical approach to society behavior. However, it is very incorrect politically to quote Marx in mass media.



QQuRHVNGiYo

It is very good movie. Actually the whole series puts Marx in the three of the most influential economist in the world. I've found this very unusual for the television of the bourgeois state. BBC surprises me sometimes very much. Although I'd never put Hayek in those most influential economists in the world as they did.

[Orange Juche]

QQuRHVNGiYo

Ok - after watching it I have to say this. I agree with the criticism that they "didn't have a good grasp of Marxist theory", but it was still pretty good. But the ending really drove me nuts, the whole "but there's no alternative!"

Firstly, I agree with its premise that Leninism is not a viable alternative. But it would have taken, oh I don't know, a ten second search on any search engine to find the numerous theoretical alternatives to capitalism. It comes off, by its finish, that "well, yeah capitalism sucks, but things still are better than they used to be, and there isn't an alternative..." Bah. As someone who could have articulated to them an alternative that didn't resemble what had happened with the USSR etc, I found that intellectually lazy on their part... and insanely frustrating.

[B5C]

Not against Marx per se but it uses the classic "in theory it was good but in practice" blah blah. Also, they completely warp some of Marx's theories and I assume that the writers didn't have a very good grasp of Marxist theory. Still interesting though.

It's annoying how they warp stuff, but you can't really put most of all Marx concepts into an one hour show.

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Before I pop some popcorn and get comfy, is this doc just totally bias against Marx? Is it at least somewhat interested in exploring if Marx was really right?

They travel to an east-german labour camp.

[ed miliband]

It's annoying how they warp stuff, but you can't really put most of all Marx concepts into an one hour show.

they don't cover any of marx's concepts pal. there's no marx whatsoever in there; at the very most there's a marx viewed through heavy duty keynesian sunglasses (which i guess you'd dig given your david harvey avatar), but none of the man himself.

[ed miliband]

i really don't get this; you guys are so desperate for marx to be mentioned in the media - out of some weird idea that it might "radicalise" people, or because you think it's a sign that the bourgeoisie are finally "cottoning on" (or something equally absurd) - that you're happy for him to be displayed a complete caricature, for all his work to be reduced to a couple of sentences from the manifesto? sad state of affairs.

[RadioRaheem84]

The documentary was extremely frustrating to watch and the lady was completely annoying. All this drivel about how profits made living standards rise without a single mention that it was a labor movement and the Russian Revolution that made industrialists give up huge concessions which made living standards rise. No mention that the "rise" of a "middle class" in China has been more a managerial class that work for or under the big conglomerates. It is not the same thing as the growth of the middle class in the West during the early half of the twentieth century.

Several hundred different choices of cereal or other products? Mostly all owned by a few conglomerates, produced in the East or the global south by sweatshop labor.

If the standards were so great during the Golden Age then why the major social upheavels of the 60s and 70s?

Why do they keep attributing the rise in living standards to capitalism? Seriously what is the mindset behind this logic? Can someone please explain it to me? Do they think that because profits rose that these capitalits willingly out of the kindness of their hearts just gave it back to their workers in higher wages?

[B5C]

i really don't get this; you guys are so desperate for marx to be mentioned in the media - out of some weird idea that it might "radicalise" people, or because you think it's a sign that the bourgeoisie are finally "cottoning on" (or something equally absurd) - that you're happy for him to be displayed a complete caricature, for all his work to be reduced to a couple of sentences from the manifesto? sad state of affairs.

Without the "media" mentioning Marx. The wont be a more larger knowledge of Marx's ideas. Hell, "Capitalism: A Love Story" & "Inside Job" is what made me turn leftist and got me reading Marx's works.

It's not perfect, but it helps spread the message.

[Raúl Duke]

But the ending really drove me nuts, the whole "but there's no alternative!"

That's the message the elites/the Spectacle/the what have you want to push.

"Austerity, neo-liberalism, whatever all suck; but remember folks there's no alternative to capitalism so go home and remember to vote election time." It's the whole Fukuyama "End of History" crap about capitalism being all there is and the pinnacle of social progress or whatever.

Sometimes I feel that all these "Marx was right pieces" are usually framed in a way so to normalize people to the shittyness of capitalism that is upon us now (because hey, "Marx was right!") but also remind us that there's, in their world-view, no real alternative (or that the only so-called alternative is reformism and activism, blah blah).

[ckaihatsu]

Agreed that mainstream (bourgeois) journalism can be sly, myopic, or a mixture of the two.

Regardless of the intentions or politics behind any such wordings, we can still look at the text empirically and analyze it objectively, at face value:










[T]he government still discourages independent worker activism, often with force. Such tactics have left China’s proletariat distrustful of their proletarian dictatorship.


Note how China -- widely already-associated in the mainstream mind with "communism" -- is *implied* to have a national leadership that is ultimately "proletarian" in nature, though it may be an as-expected-communism-gone-awry 'dictatorship'.





“The government thinks more about the companies than us,” says Guan. If Xi doesn’t reform the economy so the ordinary Chinese benefit more from the nation’s growth, he runs the risk of fueling social unrest.

Marx would have predicted just such an outcome. As the proletariat woke to their common class interests, they’d overthrow the unjust capitalist system and replace it with a new, socialist wonderland.


"Wonderland" is sheer hyperbole and is thoroughly disingenuous, given the context. There's no room in the subject matter here for any tongue-in-cheek -- either it's a flat attempt at a stylish shorthand, or else it's an intentional slight.





The political left, dragged rightward since the free-market onslaught of Margaret Thatcher and Ronald Reagan, has not devised a credible alternative course.


As others have noted, the article points in the direction of a void concerning any possibilities away from a merciless monetarism.





Why do they keep attributing the rise in living standards to capitalism? Seriously what is the mindset behind this logic? Can someone please explain it to me? Do they think that because profits rose that these capitalits willingly out of the kindness of their hearts just gave it back to their workers in higher wages?


We shouldn't hesitate to remind people that the economy -- and therefore the world's society -- can be controlled by capitalists, or it can be controlled by workers. Any gains, therefore, *must* be won by working class struggle, in its own interests -- this increases its control over the respective (proletarian) proportion of the world's economy.

[ckaihatsu]

Looks like a former Reaganite is jumping ship, too....


David Stockman - The Federal Reserve Has Become A 'Serial Bubble Machine'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6gxGzdw1YFk

[ckaihatsu]

CrossTalk - Crisis Capitalism

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GcMXqivJmYg

[Klaatu]

I've been watching the new series "The Vikings" on The History Channel. It is remarkable how similar capitalism is, to the way the Vikings plundered and pillaged, back in A.D. 790. The more things change, the more they stay the same, it seems.

[Klaatu]

Looks like a former Reaganite is jumping ship, too.... David Stockman...

Stockman has also said recently that this "tax-cuts-for-the-rich" idea* was a huge mistake. We have now learned that cutting taxes on the rich has actually done great harm to the country.

*Actually this is Arthur Laffer's idea (The Laffer Curve) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Laffer_curve

[Crixus]

Not against Marx per se but it uses the classic "in theory it was good but in practice" blah blah. Also, they completely warp some of Marx's theories and I assume that the writers didn't have a very good grasp of Marxist theory. Still interesting though.

They said Marx didn't like 'terrorists' (people like Lenin is what they're implying) and that communist revolutions were rushed in regions not ready for communism. She said Marx would have said the source of the current crisis is globalization which facilitated both capital flight from the west (jobs gone) and created a larger global work force for workers in the west to compete with (a cheap labor source for capitalists). This means workers in the west weren't making good wages and couldn't afford to buy truck tons of useless shit to keep the economy going so capitals solution was to lend money to people who couldn't afford to pay it back.

It's all a rather brief look at some basic Marxist ideas with the end goal of reforming capitalism in order to save it from itself. It's all rather patronizing. "Ah look at this cute little Marxist theory...." * pats on head*

[Klaatu]

"couldn't afford to buy truck tons of useless shit to keep the economy going"

:laugh:

Especially when that shit is intended to break in a certain amount of time, so you will have buy a new one!
Modern products are actually designed that way, to keep you coming back.

My dad has this old clock above his fireplace, built around 1870, made in Germany, and still runs! How's that for comparison?