Left-wing 2.0

[Redempption]

Hey comrades,
One thing that I often find myself thinking is how does our ideologies apply in modern day society, the reason for that is when I read original books like "the communist manifesto" they speak of a world very diferent of our own, this leads me to ask all of you: Are our ideologies still up to date with today's problems?

Things like "class struggle", "wage labor" and others are still real (they will exist as long capitalism does) and the idea of creating a free egalitarian society is still interesting, but others seem to be in need of update. Is the class struggle still betwen proletariats and capitalists? What about the growing middle class, how do they fit in all this? What about executives and stock-market people? Are corporations of today equal to what Engels and others wrote about, in their time?

Another thing that I notice when read about modern socialists/communists/anarchists proposals is that they are not really diferent to what their equivalents in past centuries defended, what do communists think about environmental changes? Does socialists parties have an oppinion on gay marriege and animal rights? How will people vote/support us if we keep speaking the same thing we did 100 years ago?

Our final goals and our struggles will always be the same, but in order to keep that alive we also need to answer the problems of today and show people that they have a place in our ideas, there is no point in keep saying "proletariats of the world unite" to people who call them selves workers, and maybe that means rethink our ideologies and adapt them to our current society.

[BIXX]

Hey comrades,
One thing that I often find myself thinking is how does our ideologies apply in modern day society, the reason for that is when I read original books like "the communist manifesto" they speak of a world very diferent of our own, this leads me to ask all of you: Are our ideologies still up to date with today's problems?

Yes.


Things like "class struggle", "wage labor" and others are still real (they will exist as long capitalism does) and the idea of creating a free egalitarian society is still interesting, but others seem to be in need of update. Is the class struggle still betwen proletariats and capitalists?

Yes.


What about the growing middle class, how do they fit in all this?

I think you are referring to the petite bourgeoisie... They fit in as either allies to the cause (by being pushed ever lower on the economic scale) or enemies (by exploiting workers).


What about executives and stock-market people? Are corporations of today equal to what Engels and others wrote about, in their time?

The executives are just the bourgeoisie...

The stick market people are bourgeoisie, but is say they are of a different type (if they don't have majority control over a company or more, if they do have control then they're just executives).


Another thing that I notice when read about modern socialists/communists/anarchists proposals is that they are not really diferent to what their equivalents in past centuries defended, what do communists think about environmental changes?[/QUOTE

I'd recommend reading "green" anarchist/communist works.

[QUOTE=Redempption;2654321]Does socialists parties have an opinion on gay marriage and animal rights?

If they're actually socialist then their opinion is pro gay marriage and pro animal rights.


How will people vote/support us if we keep speaking the same thing we did 100 years ago?

Well, what I'm getting that is that we do have opinions on these matters. I mean, I think there aren't many big new theories regarding these things being written, but at least in the anarchist community (so I'd assume also the Marxist etc... Communities as well) we have essays and people coming up with answers.


Our final goals and our struggles will always be the same, but in order to keep that alive we also need to answer the problems of today and show people that they have a place in our ideas, there is no point in keep saying "proletariats of the world unite" to people who call them selves workers, and maybe that means rethink our ideologies and adapt them to our current society.

Well, again, that's what I was getting at, we do have other talking points, it just seems a lot of us ignore them.

(Ps I think like less than half of us are identifying as "left" anymore as many of us see the "left" as problematic.)

[Partigano]

I'd advise looking into some more contemporary theorists to complement the classics like the Manifesto. Marxism, Anarchism, and most of the Revolutionary Left has not stopped writing as time has passed and if you count periodicals and pamphlets there's really no limit to the amount of perspectives/theory that's out there.

Marxist Internet Archive, really all you need.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hey comrades,
One thing that I often find myself thinking is how does our ideologies apply in modern day society, the reason for that is when I read original books like "the communist manifesto" they speak of a world very diferent of our own, this leads me to ask all of you: Are our ideologies still up to date with today's problems?Actually when I first read the Manifesto, I was more impressed by how relevant it was despite being written in such a different time. There are sections which are out of date, but the broad strokes, I think, are more relevant now that when they were originally written and the working class was not a world majority, and capitalism was only dominent in some regions.

They way he talks about capitalism going around the world and reproducing the lands it touches in its own image is almost oracle-like in how spot-on it is.


Things like "class struggle", "wage labor" and others are still real (they will exist as long capitalism does) and the idea of creating a free egalitarian society is still interesting, but others seem to be in need of update. Is the class struggle still betwen proletariats and capitalists? What about the growing middle class, how do they fit in all this? What about executives and stock-market people? Are corporations of today equal to what Engels and others wrote about, in their time?I think most of the things that are irrelevant are aspects that are more specific. Like I said I think the broad strokes have held up better than any other attempt at explaining the way modern society functions.

The class struggle today is as much between prols and capitalists than ever - our specific circumstance (at least in many places) is not the lack of this struggle, but the lack of a movement of workers (revolutionary or often even reformist). But there has been a ruthless attack by the capitalists to speed up production and increase exploitation relative to the post-war era. The manifesto describes the class struggle as always existing but often being hidden and I think we had been in that hidden phase for much of the last generation which compounds some of the inexperience and unpreparedness of the working class now that crisis has returned in an overt way.

As for the middle class, I think in places like the US, while this is a large segment of society, it is also exaggerated - consistantly in the mainstream but often on the left too. In the US "everyone is middle class" and in Australia they invert the same premise and say "everyone is working class" - but the point is the same, it offers a different understanding of class (one where home-ownership defines "middle class status" in the US). Really I think the phenomena is not one where post-war US increased the middle class to that extent, more that sections of workers who reaped the benifits of an increading standard of living had been won to a middle class ("induvidualist") view of politics.

But really in the US most people are working class and there is a large beurocratic middle class, but actually a pretty small owning middle class (shop-keepers, etc) relative to countries with more social democratic policies. But at any rate, the middle class is a large group, though smaller than workers, but they have less economic power when it comes down to it.

Finance capital is very important to modern capitalism and this is different than at the time of the Manifesto - credit is also different, the ammount of things that have been incorporated into the market is much more now, imperialism functions differently now, the social reforms of the post-war era are not something that Marx and Engels forsaw, the development of things like (in my view) class systems that used Marxism to justify themselves (i.e. the USSR) are new factors. Neoliberalism is something that marxists have talked about for a while, but I think that marxism has actually not really wraped it's collective head around yet.

But all of the above are specific circumstances which exist on an constantly shifting terrain - the fundamental things remain the same however. As much as finance capital has become important, it's still production which creates the wealth which finance uses in their gambling. The conditions for workers were different in the 1890s than in the 1930s when industrial organization was possible and different in the 1970s and different today. But despite shifts in the workforce, it's still labor which produces wealth and the exploitation of that labor that produces profits... the ways this is accomplished are always changing though.


Another thing that I notice when read about modern socialists/communists/anarchists proposals is that they are not really diferent to what their equivalents in past centuries defended, what do communists think about environmental changes? Does socialists parties have an oppinion on gay marriege and animal rights? How will people vote/support us if we keep speaking the same thing we did 100 years ago?In regards to real movements against class exploitation and against social oppression, I don't think that revolutionaries (aside from times of radicalization when much larger portions of the population are revolutionary) themselves create the movements. It's more a question of how do people who think that the whole system is the root of these issues respond to the organic movements that arise from it. While not always consistantly, in general Marxists and Anarchists have responded to new movements against sexual oppression or sexism or environmental destruction. We have learned both positive and negative lessons from movements of the oppressed and tried to generalize the lessons that we think will help our class and the oppressed advance their struggles. This is an ongoing process and one that I think shows in practice that Marxism and Anarchism are living movements (though small at the moment) not dogmas (though either - and any set of ideas for that matter - have been used that way).


Our final goals and our struggles will always be the same, but in order to keep that alive we also need to answer the problems of today and show people that they have a place in our ideas, there is no point in keep saying "proletariats of the world unite" to people who call them selves workers, and maybe that means rethink our ideologies and adapt them to our current society.Well we should always look critically at our assumptions, but I think this example is not one of antiquated or outdated ideas - but just changes in language. I think that is a good way to view the relevancy of older works of Marxism... the language and the specifics may be different, but the foundations on which those things rest, are largely the same.

Capitalism is a dynamic and changing system defined by motion and competition and clashes of different forces. From the vantage point of a generation, observing the current workings of the system might make it seem like things are completely different from other time periods, but what Marxism is best at is getting to the root workings of things. In Capital, for example, Marx explains these foundations and then basically says, "but in real application, because so many factors are at play, that things don't play out according to a simple formula". It's like we can understand gravity, but if we roll a ball down a hill, understanding gravity won't help us know where the ball will end up or really how fast or stright it will roll. If a ball get's caught on something halfway down the hill, it would be wrong to conclude that gravity is only 1/2 as strong or that it stopped working at some point.