Slave Society

[Orcris]

According to Marx and Engels, the stages of history (up until this point) were primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, and capitalism. I don't really understand the slave stage, though. According to Marx, the classes were the slave owners and the slaves. This stage seems capitalist to me, though. Not everybody was a slave or slave owner. There was a large merchant class as well. Also, not all societies went through this stage. From what I know, it seems like many Asian societies jumped right from primitive communism to feudalism, without going through any slave stage. Can someone explain this stage of history to me?

[homegrown terror]

i think what it is referring to is societies like ancient egypt, greece, and pre-imperial rome, where the bulk of unskilled labor was done by a slave population, usually taken from neighboring lands, and usually owned by the working class. yes there was a large artisan and merchant class, but politically they did not operate in a position as either the oppressor or oppressed, and are therefore relatively inconsequential in discussion of class dynamics.

[Sidagma]

Marx's understanding of pre-capitalist economics is astoundingly basic and eurocentric. I wouldn't take it too seriously. Hardly even all of Europe followed the path that he described and felt was a historical inevitability; different cultures and societies had and continue to have their own different economic systems before capitalism.

[tuwix]

According to Marx and Engels, the stages of history (up until this point) were primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, and capitalism. I don't really understand the slave stage, though. According to Marx, the classes were the slave owners and the slaves. This stage seems capitalist to me, though. Not everybody was a slave or slave owner. There was a large merchant class as well. Also, not all societies went through this stage. From what I know, it seems like many Asian societies jumped right from primitive communism to feudalism, without going through any slave stage. Can someone explain this stage of history to me?

Marx planned a seperate book about this issue. But his life has ended. His friend Engels wrote it and reality seems to be a little bit different. Its title is "The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State" http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1884/origin-family/

Book describe how civilisation develeped forom prinitive communism to feudalism and its relation to form of family and state. The slave stage isn't so sharply showed.

[cyu]

Someone really ought to make a sticky along the lines of "We don't think Marx was God's Son" :D

In any case, see also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slavery_in_China

Or from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_China

The exchange of monetary compensation for a woman’s hand in marriage was also utilized in purchase marriages in which women were seen as property that could be sold and traded at the husband’s whim.

[Narodnik]

Regarding slave societies, I find it interesting to point out to various leninists, who see central planning as the core of socialism, that you can also have centally planned slave societies, like in Sparta, where slaves couldn't be private property, but were all nationalized.

[garrus]

The classes are never black and white, but tend to become such.
Merchants and artisans exists even today, who are neither part of the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat, but are not the dominant class.

Contrast this with Lenin's opinion of "whoever controls the middle class will seize power" , paraphrasing.

edit:

Regarding slave societies, I find it interesting to point out to various leninists, who see central planning as the core of socialism, that you can also have centally planned slave societies, like in Sparta, where slaves couldn't be private property, but were all nationalized.
Central planning is an economic strategy.It's not "bad" or "good" in itself.
Also spartans did own land.

[Narodnik]

Merchants and artisans exists even today, who are neither part of the bourgeoisie nor the proletariat, but are not the dominant class.
According to Marxism. According to anarchism and (revolutionary) democratic socialism, they're part of the proletariat.


Also spartans did own land.
It was a state slavery, not state feudalism.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Regarding slave societies, I find it interesting to point out to various leninists, who see central planning as the core of socialism, that you can also have centally planned slave societies, like in Sparta, where slaves couldn't be private property, but were all nationalized.ut-oh, because the market uses decentralized planning. Now what do we do?

[Narodnik]

Markets = competition, and planning = coordination, meaning markets cannot be planned by definition. Decentralized planning is e.g. Parecon, AnCol, AnCom, Council Communism, and similar.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Markets = competition, and planning = coordination, meaning markets cannot be planned by definition. Decentralized planning is e.g. Parecon, AnCol, AnCom, Council Communism, and similar.
I was being snarky and while I agree that nationalization in the abstract is not socialism, I think decentralization proponents just make the same mistake in reverse in fetishizing how things are organized over who does the organizing. Central planning is not the problem in so-called socialist countries, centralized planning organized by unaccountable structures dedicated to building a national economy - in other words lack of worker's power - is the problem.

Workers will need a degree of centralized planning.... How would airport workers do anything if each plane or airport didn't have a way to coordinate? How would regions make up for the geographical structural inequalities of capitalism, if workers couldn't coordinate on a larger scale when needed?

[Tim Cornelis]

I was being snarky and while I agree that nationalization in the abstract is not socialism, I think decentralization proponents just make the same mistake in reverse in fetishizing how things are organized over who does the organizing. Central planning is not the problem in so-called socialist countries, centralized planning organized by unaccountable structures dedicated to building a national economy - in other words lack of worker's power - is the problem.

Workers will need a degree of centralized planning.... How would airport workers do anything if each plane or airport didn't have a way to coordinate? How would regions make up for the geographical structural inequalities of capitalism, if workers couldn't coordinate on a larger scale when needed?

Central planning necessarily leads to bureaucratic, unaccountable structures. This was not coincidental. Central planning requires thousands of bureaucrats that keep track of all goods. Coordination does not imply centralism, decentralisation means decision-making power is distributed to lower levels.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Central planning necessarily leads to bureaucratic, unaccountable structures. This was not coincidental. Central planning requires thousands of bureaucrats that keep track of all goods. Coordination does not imply centralism, decentralisation means decision-making power is distributed to lower levels.the power needs to be from the bottom up, but there are practical necessities for central coordination, which can fairly easily be made accountable if we are talking about a society based out of worker's power. The problems in Russia and other countries were not technical problems, they were class ones: who, not how.

Again, air traffic controllers have to have central decision-making because each plane, each airport can't decide on it's own without planes crashing on the runway. Decentralization mandates make the same fetish as Stalinist nationalizes, just from a different direction.

Some things wouldn't need centralized planning, but some things would. Accountability is based on workers actually having power, how they then work out things can carry based on how they best want to accomplish this task. A city-wide subway system needed central planning, but this can be done while retaining worker's power by having elected or rotating positions; this is much different than centralized planning done by government beurocrats s who are only accountable to the beurocrats above them, have power over workers, and organize their planning based on budgets set by capitalist politicians.

[Narodnik]

Central planning is not the problem in so-called socialist countries, centralized planning organized by unaccountable structures dedicated to building a national economy - in other words lack of worker's power - is the problem.
In the same way "social-demoracts" say it is not the capitalists that are the problem, it's unaccountable capitalists.


Workers will need a degree of centralized planning.... How would airport workers do anything if each plane or airport didn't have a way to coordinate?
IMO, central planning is not about the geographical extent to which a coordination extends, but about the existence of cental planners, who give orders to do those who execute the plans.

Also, I do think that nationalization can be socialistic, if there is decentralized planning, with the worker councils coordinating to run the economy, a thing, as I understand, Luxemburgism proposes.

[Jimmie Higgins]

In the same way "social-demoracts" say it is not the capitalists that are the problem, it's unaccountable capitalists.
Ahh, so what is the beurocratitalism? What system do beurocrats represent? They serve capitalism or state-capitalism or they can be made subordinate to the power from below organized through worker councils. They have no system of their own because they produce no wealth. They manage and coordinate things, but for what purpose? For coordinating the building of a national economy for the state capitalists, for enabling various tasks in the profit system for capitalists. For workers, some things will just practically need accountable coordination, like I said this can easily be done by subordinating the coordination positions to the councils and workers.


IMO, central planning is not about the geographical extent to which a coordination extends, but about the existence of cental planners, who give orders to do those who execute the plans.but this is often a necessity, but those planners, who are they accountable to? Maintaining profits, a party elite, capitalist politicians.... Or the worker councils or analogous bodies of workers power from below.


Also, I do think that nationalization can be socialistic, if there is decentralized planning, with the worker councils coordinating to run the economy, a thing, as I understand, Luxemburgism proposes.yes, this was the point I was trying to make, there is no one perfect form, organizational questions IMO depend on how workers can best do their thing. Especially early on, I think workers will have to have a way of setting priorities and centrally directing where needed resources should go and so on. If this is done through processes of debate and mass voting through councils, I see no issue with the centralization or elected reps out of this process, eroding worker's power. If some militia or unaccountable party does this on their own, there may be issues down the road (assuming the arty or militia, had true intentions in the first place) because of this substitution ism.

[Geiseric]

Regarding slave societies, I find it interesting to point out to various leninists, who see central planning as the core of socialism, that you can also have centally planned slave societies, like in Sparta, where slaves couldn't be private property, but were all nationalized.

Ummm they had farms, and that was it. You owned the farm, meaning you owned the slaves which were basically cattle. There were centers of administration, with a king, who was also a landowner, who had authority usually with consent of the Landowners, which constituted the Democracy and Senate in Athens and Rome. The emperor was eventually basically the richest landowner, who managed to invade enough land to secure it for him or he inherited it.
The artisans, smiths, miners and stuff could of been private slaves of nobles who worked exclusively for him. They had bureaucracies set up in cities more than the countryside I believe, but roads fixed this. In Sparta you were slave or landowner, it was pretty simple. In rome they had "free people" who could theoretically travel all through rome during the pax romana for economic opportunity, which a lot of time meant the legion. But they were hardly nationalized, or put under state control, that would mean the roman state owned farms which it didn't, it protected them.

[Narodnik]

They have no system of their own
Technocracy, state-capitalism.


For workers, some things will just practically need accountable coordination, like I said this can easily be done by subordinating the coordination positions to the councils and workers.
Or replacing it. There are private airports, and private air companies, and they can coordinate without any central authority over them, likewise could worker coops replacing them.


If this is done through processes of debate and mass voting through councils
If it is done that way, that's not central planning. That's a blueprint of the economy straight out of the Bakunin's Revolutionary catechism, that's non-hierarchical decentral planning organizing and expanding, which can be done up to world-wide level.

[Jimmie Higgins]

According to Marx and Engels, the stages of history (up until this point) were primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, and capitalism. I don't really understand the slave stage, though. According to Marx, the classes were the slave owners and the slaves. This stage seems capitalist to me, though. Not everybody was a slave or slave owner. There was a large merchant class as well. Also, not all societies went through this stage. From what I know, it seems like many Asian societies jumped right from primitive communism to feudalism, without going through any slave stage. Can someone explain this stage of history to me?

On the issue of other classes, well what did the merchants use for trade? Products made with the use of slave labor, or made from the wealth made possible by slave labor. This is why it could be argued that even though not everyone was an aristocrat or slave, that these were the two decisive classes for that society.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Technocracy, state-capitalism.yes, like I said, they have no system of their own, they attach to one system or another: in the examples you gave, it's forms of organizing capitalism by a intelligencia or beurocratic elite.


Or replacing it. There are private airports, and private air companies, and they can coordinate without any central authority over them, likewise could worker coops replacing them.yeah those private companies have to submit to a centralized authority lol. There just has to be coordination and centralization for some tasks for practical reasons and some of these can't be decided by mass vote all the time. Instead it seems totally reasonable to have centralized bodies as long as they are subject to the councils or whatever other democratic bodies.

[goalkeeper]

Ignore the linear of primitive communism through to capitalism and trying to fit diverse modes of production into neat boxes Marx made up. Rather look at classes, how production is organised and the surplus distributed and controlled and if a number societies modes of production seem to operate in the same way, you generalise that into a certain name for a mode of production. Use Marx's method, don't try to fit everything into his conclusions.

[Narodnik]

it's forms of organizing capitalism by a intelligencia or beurocratic elite.Which makes it "their" system. Here I'm pretty much with the parecon view that there are three economic classes- workers, owners and menagers, menagers having their system- technocracy, of which state capitalism is a form, thus Leninisms not being worker, but menager movements.


There just has to be coordination and centralization for some tasks for practical reasons and some of these can't be decided by mass vote all the time.It doesn't have to "all the time". The airplane coordination doesn't have to be decided on a day-to-day basis, but all the workers of air-transport industry can agree on a plan of coordination and they continue work following that plan. That's decentral planning, being there is no central planning authority.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Which makes it "their" system. Here I'm pretty much with the parecon view that there are three economic classes- workers, owners and menagers, menagers having their system- technocracy, of which state capitalism is a form, thus Leninisms not being worker, but menager movements.It is not "their system" - it's their management of capitalism. The USSR beurocrats used the state to stand-in for the tradditional role of privite capitalists.


It doesn't have to "all the time". The airplane coordination doesn't have to be decided on a day-to-day basis, but all the workers of air-transport industry can agree on a plan of coordination and they continue work following that plan. That's decentral planning, being there is no central planning authority.This is just replacing a central elected representative body with a central guiding protocol, it's differnet methods for doing the same thing, and I think a voted on agreement will work in many cases (and increasingly as production is stabilized and made easier), but for this particualr example, it would be best to have accountable people who can make the necissary quick decisions so that there's less chance of planes getting different signals and crashing on the runway.

There is no magic in centralized methods or decentralized methods, the question is methods to do what and under what power? As long as power is rooted in councils, as long as production is under the collective control of the collective laborer/producers, then even if there is corruption, it's a secondary matter. The problem in the USSR was the disconnect with worker's power, this is what eventually allowed for substitutionism and then ultimately an internal counter-revolution. Assuming there is worker's power, and any beurocracy is subbordinated to that mass democratic power, then the question of decentralization or centralization is mostly a question of which is best suited and efficient for fufilling the tasks desired by this democratic power.