"Marx wrote this at his time ,when X , but now Y"

[garrus]

Are there any valid points that can be made in the format of the title?

One quite convincing i've heard, is that Marx formed his strategy keeping in mind the need to centralize & advance production sufficiently, to satisfy human needs, while today this has already been achieved by capitalism production concentration and technology.

[Ethics Gradient, Traitor For All Ages]

Under capitalism society has in fact achieved the means to address human need, it just can't finish the job by distributing them properly until capitalism is gone. Lots of what Marx has to say is dated but its generally not his economic writing that suffers from that.

[Yet_Another_Boring_Marxist]

I think many people will disagree with me, and I think that given the amount of debate over what I am about to say that this controversy is indeed legitamate. But when Marx wrote that socialism can't be established without global revolution and that socialism and communism are one in the same, he didn't nor couldn't based his observations on the concrete realities that would face the proletariat if they took state power in one country and not the entire world, partially I think this is because Marx wasn't a very good theorist on imperialism and couldn't understand the uneven development of capitalism and the crises of capitalism.

[MarxArchist]

Are there any valid points that can be made in the format of the title?

One quite convincing i've heard, is that Marx formed his strategy keeping in mind the need to centralize & advance production sufficiently, to satisfy human needs, while today this has already been achieved by capitalism production concentration and technology.
And serfs met their needs under the rule of feudal lords who would rob them of any surplus yes? Kolakowski and Marcuse along with some in the New Left in general are why so many socialists are focused on reforms as the end and not a means to an end. Cultural change is 'the revolution' they seek (hence the 1960's/1970's mentality). 'Workers in advanced nations can't be the revolutionary agent' which is why those who are somewhat revolutionary in the New Left take on Maoism. It's mostly a cluster fudge of bad ideas.

I also wouldn't say everyone's material needs are met in advanced capitalist nations such as the USA. Millions are homeless, destitute and in prison and more millions are working poor who, in order to provide material needs, work up to three jobs, some in slave like conditions. Working just two jobs in order to survive is slave like conditions. It's real easy for some bourgeois academic to sit back at Harvard University and theorize everyone's material needs are met under capitalism. Lets not even mention the fact Earth is rather large and, well, if you think everyone on earth has their material needs met I'd say you're insane. Even so, if somehow everyone's material needs were met under capitalism it doesn't change the exploitative power dynamics. Liberation is also the goal of communism you know.

[Buck]

An example of some of the when x but now y can be demonstrated by his idea of lower-stage communism, which would be exactly the same as upper-stage, but with labor vouchers to prevent shortages that he believed to have existed at the time, but he later gave up this stance. Another can been seen near the end of the Communist manifesto, where marx and engels made out a list of reforms to the societies of the 1800s because they thought that the world of the 1840's didn't have the material conditions necessary for socialism, thinking that the "dictatorship of the proletariat" would have to last years, even decades. His/their views on this also changed as society progressed. Another point of theirs was the theories of permanent revolution, which proved to be false, and then he again rejected it.

[slum]

i think garrus was suggesting that capitalism has evolved production (evolved not right term, am tired. made more efficient?) to the extent where human need could be entirely met were it not for capitalism prioritizing profit over that need

it would be pretty hard to look at the world (or out one's window in many places) and think that people's basic needs are being met- i think the issue is, do we have the technological and organizational capacity to do that, if production were planned to address need

to which, yeah, we do many times over, and yet people starve and die of water-borne illnesses etc

[Flying Purple People Eater]

Are there any valid points that can be made in the format of the title?

Not if it isn't referring to anything specific. If someone's trying to use that as an argument then it's just bland rhetoric.


One quite convincing i've heard, is that Marx formed his strategy keeping in mind the need to centralize & advance production sufficiently, to satisfy human needs, while today this has already been achieved by capitalism production concentration and technology.

Not really. I don't know where you got the Marx bit from, but he fully acknowledged that this was the goal of the capitalists: To make a higher profit with a more productive variable capital (workers) and constant capital (machines). This couldn't occur without technological development and concentrated populaces - in fact, it was this technological leap that planted the seeds for capitalism in the first place.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Are there any valid points that can be made in the format of the title?Well ys there are many changes since when Marx was writing and now and obviously there is no one "diffinitive" Marxism since people following this basic method often have different views or emphasize different aspects of general Marxist thinking.

But on a larger level, often new developments and shifts in capitalism have been used by radicals and non-radicals to argue that capitalism is now fundamentally/qualitativly different and therefore certain fundamental aspects of Marxism need to be jetisoned. I think most of the time this is mistaking movements on the surface of the Ocean for tidal changes. Post-marxism, parts of the New Left, "Precariate" proponents and so on all say capitalism has changed to such an extent that workers are not the agents of revolutionary change; various Marxist and non-Marxist economists have declared over and over that economic crisis has been "solved" and contradictions in capitalism have been eased and therefore revolution is no longer needed, reform, if not just the logic of the invisible hand, is enough now.

But I think in the long-view there have not been such fundamental changes - althoug capitalism is a system of constant motion, so of course there have been rapid superficial changes and shifts (which was also described by Marx and Engels in their understanding of capitalism).


One quite convincing i've heard, is that Marx formed his strategy keeping in mind the need to centralize & advance production sufficiently, to satisfy human needs, while today this has already been achieved by capitalism production concentration and technology.Well this was achieved (though to a lesser extent because capitalism was still in the process of becoming a world-wide system at that point) in Marx's time and Marxism sees this process as part of how capitalism "re-makes the world in it's image" but it was also a contradictory aspect of capitalism. Theses processes also de-skill labor through more advanced production techniques which makes labor less pleasant and more alienating; vast wealth is also created that can potentially meet everyone's needs, but because of the nature of this system this increase in production and wealth then also creates more poverty by concentrating the wealth created to big capitalists who then have more power to reduce wages (or speed-up production) and dictate working conditions which only then create more hardships for the very people, the workers, whose efforts actually create that vast wealth.

For Marxism, capitalism isn't just "bad", it's contradictory: the increased possibilities created through capitalism are constricted by that same system.

[Nevsky]

Are there any valid points that can be made in the format of the title?

Not if it's meant to show that marxism is outdated, that Marx was only rigtht in realation to the circumstances of his time. In fact, many of today's problems of the capitalist world correspond with Marx' analysis.

Marxism, however, is not an eternal dogma like the ten commandments but a system of thought, a method of analysing economics and society. Marx himself says "Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence." (Marx, The German Ideology), which is why marxims always needs to reinvent itself.

[garrus]

I also wouldn't say everyone's material needs are met in advanced capitalist nations such as the USA.
I'm not saying thare are met, but they can be, production-wise( meaning that the production potential is enough).


Not really. I don't know where you got the Marx bit from
The argument i mention has been addressed to me, and i have also met it in Bookchin's 'Listen , marxist'


capitalism has changed to such an extent that workers are not the agents of revolutionary change;
This is also mentioned in Listen marxist.


But I think in the long-view there have not been such fundamental changes - althoug capitalism is a system of constant motion, so of course there have been rapid superficial changes and shifts (which was also described by Marx and Engels in their understanding of capitalism).

I pretty much agree, but i'd be nice if something was found that is a change substantial enough to contradict Marx...
Not because i have a grudge with the guyu or anything , but just to be able to shut the mouth of non-leftists who consider leftists to follow his proposals no-critically.

As if it's my fault that Marx did such a good job.:lol:

[Anglo-Saxon Philistine]

I think many people will disagree with me, and I think that given the amount of debate over what I am about to say that this controversy is indeed legitamate. But when Marx wrote that socialism can't be established without global revolution and that socialism and communism are one in the same, he didn't nor couldn't based his observations on the concrete realities that would face the proletariat if they took state power in one country and not the entire world, partially I think this is because Marx wasn't a very good theorist on imperialism and couldn't understand the uneven development of capitalism and the crises of capitalism.

Whether "socialism" is identical to "communism" is probably a semantic issue - as I see it, to Marxists-Leninists the term "socialism" means the planned economy under the dictatorship of the proletariat, to Bolsheviks-Leninists the lower stages of communist society, and to the supporters of the SPGB communism, period.

Sometimes I think it might be best to limit the term "socialism" to the political movement, to be honest.

Anyway, I agree that there are weaknesses in Marx's corpus, and that he should not be quoted as if he were the holy scripture. That said, I do not think that the history of revolutionary states in the 20th century really supports the notion that a long term dictatorship of the proletariat is possible in the absence of an international revolution - and I think imperialism is actually the deciding factor, since imperialist pressure causes bureaucratic deformations to remain permanent and even to amplify in some cases, creating an unstable situation. That said, I think that existing but deformed workers' states could be used to further the revolution, and of course a deformed workers' state is an improvement over a bourgeois ones.