I don't know where I fit

[Hades]

I want to start off by saying I don't wish to offend anybody in any way with something that could be seen as ignorance. I haven't really spoken about my views in any way so I am not sure where I stand. But I have a feeling I stand more so on the left.

I see the problems Capitalism has on the world and in part the corporations. I see no reason to discuss them as we all get the gist of what is wrong. But I think there is the possibility there that the corporations could do great things for the world, but they need the incentive to do so.

I find the current status quo to be detrimental to either party progressing through the difference to find a compromise that works for all parties.

Is there a realistic end game that actually solves anything, it could be ignorant but the world feels just as much fucked as it was 20 years ago. Is the fight against capitalism going in the right direction, or are we just pissing into the wind?

[Sand Castle]

You sound like a social-democrat. But I don't know you that well, so I'm just guessing. That is where you fit. Unfortunately for you, this isn't the forum for social-democrats.

There are plenty of social-democratic websites out there for you to post on though.

[Psycho P and the Freight Train]

No offense but you just sound like a typical liberal honestly.

[exeexe]

Welcome to the forum. Dont let the other demotivate you. Just ask a lot of questions.


Is the fight against capitalism going in the right direction, or are we just pissing into the wind?
Well if you want to fight capitalism you have come to the right place, but you will have a lot to learn.

[Loony Le Fist]

I see the problems Capitalism has on the world and in part the corporations. I see no reason to discuss them as we all get the gist of what is wrong. But I think there is the possibility there that the corporations could do great things for the world, but they need the incentive to do so.


I too have mulled over this question: can we make corporations nicer. Unfortunately, I believe the answer is no. The only way to incentivize them to benefit workers and society is to fundamentally change their structure and make them worker owned. Of course, then I believe they cease to fit the definition of corporations.



I find the current status quo to be detrimental to either party progressing through the difference to find a compromise that works for all parties.


Could you drill down a bit more into this? I’m not quite sure I get what you mean by this.



Is there a realistic end game that actually solves anything, it could be ignorant but the world feels just as much fucked as it was 20 years ago. Is the fight against capitalism going in the right direction, or are we just pissing into the wind?

I think we can’t predict what the end game is because the future is indeterminate. You can only get there by executing the steps and no one has a crystal ball. I think the world is actually more fucked than it was 20 years ago by the numbers. Nonetheless, it is this indeterminacy that is not only worrisome, but it can also be a source of hope.

I think if we stick to the basics: worker ownership and control of the means of production, there is hope. In fact, I think it fits right into the whole personal responsibility rhetoric we all hear lately. It's a great way to hijack that meme, so to speak. What could be more powerful and inspiring than workers taking control of an enterprise for themselves, instead of having some ignorant executive team running the show?

A complex message involving too much dialectical philosophy and such will very easily drive away people who this message can so desperately benefit.

[Црвена]

I see the problems Capitalism has on the world and in part the corporations. I see no reason to discuss them as we all get the gist of what is wrong. But I think there is the possibility there that the corporations could do great things for the world, but they need the incentive to do so.

How do you propose we give corporations the incentive to do great things for the world? Should they be regulated more heavily by the government, rewarded for serving society, made partly government-owned or taken over and collectively managed by the workers?

[consuming negativity]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch03.htm

Rosa pretty much destroys the idea of reform of the capitalist system there, and over 100 years ago predicts the rise and fall of trade unions with pinpoint accuracy. In essence, she points out that the state is controlled by capitalist interests and so reforms that happen through the state can only ever serve the interests of capitalism. She additionally points out that unions are not a form of serious reform as they become a class collaboration effort between labor and capital against other capitalists. And as capital accumulates and becomes concentrated due to these efforts, it will destroy the bargaining power of the unions that were able to limit capitalist exploitation previously. Resulting in a rollback of labor rights that you should be familiar with if you pay attention to the world. As any serious efforts to enact change, such as OWS, become subject to violent repression, the only real vehicle of progress left to us is violent revolution to seize the means of production. In the words of liberal darling JFK, making reform impossible makes violence inevitable.

[Five Year Plan]

http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch03.htm

Rosa pretty much destroys the idea of reform of the capitalist system there, and over 100 years ago predicts the rise and fall of trade unions with pinpoint accuracy. In essence, she points out that the state is controlled by capitalist interests and so reforms that happen through the state can only ever serve the interests of capitalism. She additionally points out that unions are not a form of serious reform as they become a class collaboration effort between labor and capital against other capitalists. And as capital accumulates and becomes concentrated due to these efforts, it will destroy the bargaining power of the unions that were able to limit capitalist exploitation previously. Resulting in a rollback of labor rights that you should be familiar with if you pay attention to the world. As any serious efforts to enact change, such as OWS, become subject to violent repression, the only real vehicle of progress left to us is violent revolution to seize the means of production. In the words of liberal darling JFK, making reform impossible makes violence inevitable.

How do workers build the organizational capacity and acquire the self-confidence necessary for pulling off a revolution, if not through the successful and escalating struggle for reforms?

[consuming negativity]

How do workers build the organizational capacity and acquire the self-confidence necessary for pulling off a revolution, if not through the successful and escalating struggle for reforms?

One, you're assuming that successful and escalating anti-capitalist reforms can ever happen. Two, you're assuming that they lend themselves to organization and confidence. Three, you're assuming that the organization and confidence are necessary for revolution.

The first point was already shattered by Luxemburg. Go read the work if you are unsatisfied with my quick summary, although you can find quick and simple refutations of reformism by many authors. The other two points are irrelevant in the context of reformism being a useless vehicle for the class struggle. Which, apart from argument, has been demonstrated to be true in reality. Hence the wonderful nature of scientific socialism.

[Five Year Plan]

One, you're assuming that successful and escalating anti-capitalist reforms can ever happen. Two, you're assuming that they lend themselves to organization and confidence. Three, you're assuming that the organization and confidence are necessary for revolution.

History proves that successful and escalating anti-capitalist reforms have happened. It's not an assumption.


The first point was already shattered by Luxemburg. Go read the work if you are unsatisfied with my quick summary, although you can find quick and simple refutations of reformism by many authors. The other two points are irrelevant in the context of reformism being a useless vehicle for the class struggle. Which, apart from argument, has been demonstrated to be true in reality. Hence the wonderful nature of scientific socialism.

Luxemburg was opposed to reformism, not reforms. You've obviously never read one her best works, which was Social Reform or Revolution. Here, I'll link it for you in case you ever really want to become familiar with her politics: http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/

The first paragraph of the work is particularly instructive:


At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim.

[consuming negativity]

History proves that successful and escalating anti-capitalist reforms have happened. It's not an assumption.



Luxemburg was opposed to reformism, not reforms. You've obviously never read one her best works, which was Social Reform or Revolution. Here, I'll link it for you in case you ever really want to become familiar with her politics: http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/

The first paragraph of the work is particularly instructive:

Cite your history and don't quote Rosa out of context. She did not claim that serious, lasting reforms were possible but that our struggle for immediately better conditions are tied inextricably with the communist revolution which the proletariat undertakes out of self-interest.

Moreover, why am I even having this discussion with a non-restricted poster? If meaningful, lasting reforms were possible, violent revolution would not be necessary. That minor victories can be won temporarily is meaningless except to show how those victories, one, as I said, will be repealed, and two, serve only to preserve capitalism which is in the interest of the ruling class. They are strategic retreats.

[Five Year Plan]

Cite your history and don't quote Rosa out of context. She did not claim that serious, lasting reforms were possible but that our struggle for immediately better conditions are tied inextricably with the communist revolution which the proletariat undertakes out of self-interest.

Are you familiar with the history of Russia in 1917? The working class didn't go on strike in order to achieve a social revolution. It did so for reforms, including before and after the February Revolution. The Provisional government, a bourgeois government, implemented some of those reforms, including the abolition of the death penalty and the election for a constituent assembly, among others, but the working class was not satisfied and continued to escalate its struggle. Lenin captured the essence of their demands with the slogan "peace, land, and bread." These measures would have been reforms, but they were reforms that the bourgeoisie was not capable of delivering. Hence, they were transitional in nature, and exposed the liberals for where they really stood in relation to the peasantry and the working class. In other words, it was through struggle, including a successful struggle for some reforms, that workers can begin to learn of the need for revolution. They aren't born with this knowledge, or acquire it magically simply by working for a capitalist firm.

Your claim that I am taking things out of context by quoting the entire first paragraph of Luxemburg's arguably most famous work, where she actually summarizes the argument she lays out in the rest of the pamphlet, is ridiculous, and in any event, would require you to make an actual argument by presenting the supposedly missing context that changes how we should view that paragraph.


Moreover, why am I even having this discussion with a non-restricted poster? If meaningful, lasting reforms were possible, violent revolution would not be necessary. That minor victories can be won temporarily is meaningless except to show how those victories, one, as I said, will be repealed, and two, serve only to preserve capitalism which is in the interest of the ruling class. They are strategic retreats.Nobody said anything about "lasting" reforms, which implies that capitalism is still in its ascendancy and is capable of providing increasing standards of living. It's not, but that doesn't mean that reforms of any kind are impossible or that struggling for them isn't a process necessary for the working class to develop revolutionary class consciousness.

[ralfy]

The global capitalist system cannot be sustained because of increasing debt, peak oil, and global warming (with environmental damage). The only thing that can be sustained will involve localization and major decreases in resource and energy consumption.

[consuming negativity]

Are you familiar with the history of Russia in 1917? The working class didn't go on strike in order to achieve a social revolution. It did so for reforms, including before and after the February Revolution. The Provisional government, a bourgeois government, implemented some of those reforms, including the abolition of the death penalty and the election for a constituent assembly, among others, but the working class was not satisfied and continued to escalate its struggle. Lenin captured the essence of their demands with the slogan "peace, land, and bread." These measures would have been reforms, but they were reforms that the bourgeoisie was not capable of delivering. Hence, they were transitional in nature, and exposed the liberals for where they really stood in relation to the peasantry and the working class. In other words, it was through struggle, including a successful struggle for some reforms, that workers can begin to learn of the need for revolution. They aren't born with this knowledge, or acquire it magically simply by working for a capitalist firm.

Your claim that I am taking things out of context by quoting the entire first paragraph of Luxemburg's arguably most famous work, where she actually summarizes the argument she lays out in the rest of the pamphlet, is ridiculous, and in any event, would require you to make an actual argument by presenting the supposedly missing context that changes how we should view that paragraph.

Nobody said anything about "lasting" reforms, which implies that capitalism is still in its ascendancy and is capable of providing increasing standards of living. It's not, but that doesn't mean that reforms of any kind are impossible or that struggling for them isn't a process necessary for the working class to develop revolutionary class consciousness.

We aren't in disagreement. This argument is over a misunderstanding.

[Five Year Plan]

We aren't in disagreement. This argument is over a misunderstanding.

Well, there is also this gem: "She additionally points out that unions are not a form of serious reform as they become a class collaboration effort between labor and capital against other capitalists." Do you mean by this that revolutionaries should not join and work inside trade unions in hope of breaking them from their class collaborationist ways? Are they inherently class collaborationist?

[consuming negativity]

Well, there is also this gem: "She additionally points out that unions are not a form of serious reform as they become a class collaboration effort between labor and capital against other capitalists." Do you mean by this that revolutionaries should not join and work inside trade unions in hope of breaking them from their class collaborationist ways? Are they inherently class collaborationist?

What do you think?

[Five Year Plan]

What do you think?

So instead of answering my question, you ignore it then ask me the same question? Really? Surely you don't think that will end well.

[consuming negativity]

So instead of answering my question, you ignore it then ask me the same question? Really? Surely you don't think that will end well.

I asked your opinion on something and that's how you respond? It's called a discussion.

[Five Year Plan]

I asked your opinion on something and that's how you respond? It's called a discussion.

You refuse to answer a question I asked, then presume to lecture people about how discussions work. You can't possibly be this stupid.

[consuming negativity]

You refuse to answer a question I asked, then presume to lecture people about how discussions work. You can't possibly be this stupid.

I haven't thought about it much, so I asked what your opinion was. There really isn't any need to act like that.

[Five Year Plan]

I haven't thought about it much, so I asked what your opinion was. There really isn't any need to act like that.

It wasn't a question I plucked from thin air, then obstinately started demanding answers to. The reason I asked was that you approvingly attributed to Luxemburg the notion that trade unions are inherently class collaborationist and that therefore revolutionaries ought not to work in them or attempt to strengthen them. It's an odd thing for somebody to write approvingly about a position (which actually wasn't Luxemburg's, in case you were wondering), then when pressed, says that he doesn't know whether he agrees with the position because he hasn't thought much about it.

[consuming negativity]

It wasn't a question I plucked from thin air, then obstinately started demanding answers to. The reason I asked was that you approvingly attributed to Luxemburg the notion that trade unions are inherently class collaborationist and that therefore revolutionaries ought not to work in them or attempt to strengthen them. It's an odd thing for somebody to write approvingly about a position (which actually wasn't Luxemburg's, in case you were wondering), then when pressed, says that he doesn't know whether he agrees with the position because he hasn't thought much about it.

Alright. So you don't have a position then.

Not worth the time.

[Five Year Plan]

Alright. So you don't have a position then.

Not worth the time.

I have a position, but generally don't jump on command for people who bait and switch in the middle of discussions.