"History" Book Rubbish

[Marx Lenin Stalin]

In my "history" book that we are using, it says the following regarding the great Karl Marx:


1. False Predictions.

Marx predicted that class conflicts would supercede nationalist conflicts among workers, however this is not so. Even today there are nationalistic conflicts all over the world. Regular people still are patriotic and proud of the country they came from. Thus nationalism trumps Marx' notion of "class."

2. Failure

Marx also predicted that capitalism would evetually fail and that reform would be impossible: his only prescription for the excesses of capitalism is violent revolution. However, capitalism has been able to drastically reform itself from the days of Marx and now child labor laws, workers rights, minimum wage, social security, maternity leave, etc have all made it much easier for workers, without resorting to revolution.

3. Relevance in the modern world.

Marx' relevance in today's world is becoming more and more diminished as a social philosophy for change. Because of the failure of the Soviet Union, which based itself on Marxist principles, most people have decided to look past the ideas of Karl Marx as a way of solving society's problems.

In Depth: Communism is a radical form of socialism inspired by the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. In the communist society, the means of production would be taken over by the workers. In reality though, communism has meant that the Communist Party would imposed a dictatorship and become the new rulers of the state. Indeed, Lenin and Stalin believed in strengthening Russian power and the Russian state in much the same way the Czars of Russia did. People who hold non-Marxist points of view would not be tolerated.


So comrades, if you ever wonder why reaching people about our ideas is so hard this is precisely why. Bourgeois propaganda at its finest: currently being taught in every school in every capitalist country every single day. If you ask me, it's capitalist brainwashing.

If any of you have the inclination, feel free to tear this "history" apart! ;)

[Forward Union]

They forgot to add that People who held Marxist points of view that weren't in line with Lenins, weren't be tolerated either.

[chimx]

is that a highschool history book?

once you get to college you will find yourself reading many books that speak quite highly of marx, from historiography to sociology.

[loveme4whoiam]

If you start reading anything that hasn't been editted or written explicitly to fall into the capitalist doctrine regarding anything Communist you start reading things that are complimentary of Marx. Hmm, I wonder why that is? Perhaps he was on to a smart idea after all :P

[bcbm]

Rip that page out.

[Lenin's Law]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2006, 04:21 PM
is that a highschool history book?

once you get to college you will find yourself reading many books that speak quite highly of marx, from historiography to sociology.
This is a very elitist attitude.

ONCE you get to college?!? As if everybody goes there and not a minority??

In reality, only about a third of US citizens have a college degree. (And even then, only a minority of those college students actually take a history course) So what do you say to the overwhelming majority that *only* go to high school? Including most working class and working poor people??

To heck with them!? Work harder and save up for college?!?

Of course it is entirely relevant what is said in high school history books and I completely reject the elitism that says "they'll learn it in college" when the reality is that most people, especially most workers, will never go to college.

Why does it seem that time and time again it's the anti-authoritarians that appear to be living in a different world, a more privileged world, where everybody goes to college or can just quit their job to join some commune (from a post PA made in another thread). I find it sad that so many "revolutionaries" are that out of touch with reality.

[bcbm]

Originally posted by Stalin's Law+Sep 29 2006, 08:58 PM--> (Stalin's Law @ Sep 29 2006, 08:58 PM)
[email protected] 29 2006, 04:21 PM
is that a highschool history book?

once you get to college you will find yourself reading many books that speak quite highly of marx, from historiography to sociology.
This is a very elitist attitude.

ONCE you get to college?!? As if everybody goes there and not a minority??

In reality, only about a third of US citizens have a college degree. (And even then, only a minority of those college students actually take a history course) So what do you say to the overwhelming majority that *only* go to high school? Including most working class and working poor people??

To heck with them!? Work harder and save up for college?!?

Of course it is entirely relevant what is said in high school history books and I completely reject the elitism that says "they'll learn it in college" when the reality is that most people, especially most workers, will never go to college.

Why does it seem that time and time again it's the anti-authoritarians that appear to be living in a different world, a more privileged world, where everybody goes to college or can just quit their job to join some commune (from a post PA made in another thread). I find it sad that so many "revolutionaries" are that out of touch with reality. [/b]
Indeed. There is unfortunately a large trend among leftists of many stripes who, after being college-educated, tend to hold elitist and ultimately classist views towards those who have not gone to college and may come from a less privileged background. An entire sociological study was done of this in France, though not strictly among leftists, and there was some examination of it following the 2004 election in the US.

[BreadBros]

If any of you have the inclination, feel free to tear this "history" apart! ;)

Ill try my best.


1. False Predictions.

Marx predicted that class conflicts would supercede nationalist conflicts among workers, however this is not so. Even today there are nationalistic conflicts all over the world. Regular people still are patriotic and proud of the country they came from. Thus nationalism trumps Marx' notion of "class."

Class conflicts ARE superceding nationalist conflicts. Marx predicted that this would happen as capitalism developed. Nationalist conflicts, when they do happen, tend to be in pre-capitalist societies and even then the power of international capitalism has mitigated their occurance greatly. The traditional differences that seperated, say, a French person from a German person in terms of their actual day-to-day lives are nearly completely destroyed. National conflicts that do arise tend to be over the rise of capitalism in formerly imperialist-exploited countries, and their competition to already established capitalist nations. The mistake your book makes is assuming that capitalism has reached its final stages of development, when in fact it is barely beginning to enter such a stage of "late capitalism" as some would term it.



2. Failure

Marx also predicted that capitalism would evetually fail and that reform would be impossible: his only prescription for the excesses of capitalism is violent revolution. However, capitalism has been able to drastically reform itself from the days of Marx and now child labor laws, workers rights, minimum wage, social security, maternity leave, etc have all made it much easier for workers, without resorting to revolution.

Marx didn't focus on reforms! He was talking about transcending class society itself! Besides many of those reforms were reforms meant to make capitalism more efficient. It doesnt make sense to have kids laboring when having them in schools learning the skills necessary to work specific occupations created by capitalists is far more profitable, it doesnt make sense to have pregnant women working unless you want inefficiency, it doesnt make sense to have woman at home instead of at the workplace when their entrance into the labor market is far more profitable. As for the minimum wage and social security, HA! The minimum wage is incredibly low and social security will probably be worthless in a few decades. Reform IS becoming impossible. I'd like to see any country (with the exception of a few states that manage to defy integration into formal international capitalism) make even the least radical reforms, its nearly impossible today because every country is a part of organizations such as the WTO, IMF, World Bank, etc. that regulate the economies of countries on the part of international bankers and capitalists.



3. Relevance in the modern world.

Marx' relevance in today's world is becoming more and more diminished as a social philosophy for change. Because of the failure of the Soviet Union, which based itself on Marxist principles, most people have decided to look past the ideas of Karl Marx as a way of solving society's problems.


Flat out incorrect. Karl Marx's relevance is actually increasing at the moment. The struggle in the past has been to fit Marx's ideology into practice. The conditions that Marx describes (international capitalism, destruction of nationalism, advanced producton techniques) etc. did not really exist, and where they did imperialist success and the nature of the proletariat did not radicalize them. Therefore Marxist philosophy only found practical use in third-world struggles (i.e. Mao) and in helping to restructure capitalism to modern standards that previous governmental systems were unable to (Russian revolution, Mexican revolution). The conditions that Marx set for when capitalism could not only be temporarily destroyed, but REPLACED with a classless society are coming into fruition as we speak. His relevance only stands to grow. His relevance may be portrayed as being weak, this is in order to divert people from reading his ideas. But as most of the people on this board prove, these ideas are the product of material reality and cant be subverted, and eventually people will come to them in greater numbers.


In Depth: Communism is a radical form of socialism inspired by the ideas of Karl Marx and Frederick Engels. In the communist society, the means of production would be taken over by the workers. In reality though, communism has meant that the Communist Party would imposed a dictatorship and become the new rulers of the state. Indeed, Lenin and Stalin believed in strengthening Russian power and the Russian state in much the same way the Czars of Russia did. People who hold non-Marxist points of view would not be tolerated.

Nope, Socialism will likely be a temporary stepping point towards Communism, which in turn is the seizing of power by the proletariat class. The historical circumstances of the creation of the proletariat class means that we will, in all likelihood, destroy the entire system of class society and create an egalitarian society. Socialism as it happened in Russia and elsewhere occured because the workers took power but were unable to transcend class society because the material reality of society had not developed to allow it, ergo they did the best they could.


So comrades, if you ever wonder why reaching people about our ideas is so hard this is precisely why. Bourgeois propaganda at its finest: currently being taught in every school in every capitalist country every single day. If you ask me, it's capitalist brainwashing.

Definitely.


once you get to college you will find yourself reading many books that speak quite highly of marx, from historiography to sociology.

Not true, I'm in college myself, took a class on modern philosophy, it had a section on Marx in it and it was UTTER RUBBISH. Professor presented the whole of Marxism as being Marx's 10 points for Germany in the Manifesto and as essentially being "tax everyone 100% and redistribute it equally", NO mention of materialism, NO mention of his theories on class society, nothing. There are a few supposedly "radical" professors on my campus, mostly focusing on colonial histories, unfortunatly most of them teach the stuff in a very post-modern style focused more on the concepts of subjectivity in literature and the such, which frankly is not my cup of tea. Also, they're "radical" if you consider upper middle class individuals who theoretically espouse Leninism (or at least its theories on imperialism) and yet seem to focus 100% on post-modern theories of culture and seem determined to refute any material analysis of history to be radical.

[chimx]

actually just shy of 2/3s of american high school graduates goto college, though many of that group will eventually drop out. my point was that high school has very little to do with actual education and the low quality of reading material reflects that.


Nope, Socialism will likely be a temporary stepping point towards Communism, which in turn is the seizing of power by the proletariat class.

likely? the withering state has a great history...






....or wait

[Rodack]

Originally posted by Stalin's Law+Sep 30 2006, 02:58 AM--> (Stalin's Law @ Sep 30 2006, 02:58 AM)
[email protected] 29 2006, 04:21 PM
is that a highschool history book?

once you get to college you will find yourself reading many books that speak quite highly of marx, from historiography to sociology.
This is a very elitist attitude.

ONCE you get to college?!? As if everybody goes there and not a minority??

In reality, only about a third of US citizens have a college degree. (And even then, only a minority of those college students actually take a history course) So what do you say to the overwhelming majority that *only* go to high school? Including most working class and working poor people??

To heck with them!? Work harder and save up for college?!?

Of course it is entirely relevant what is said in high school history books and I completely reject the elitism that says "they'll learn it in college" when the reality is that most people, especially most workers, will never go to college.

Why does it seem that time and time again it's the anti-authoritarians that appear to be living in a different world, a more privileged world, where everybody goes to college or can just quit their job to join some commune (from a post PA made in another thread). I find it sad that so many "revolutionaries" are that out of touch with reality. [/b]
Are you suggesting that we should close schools of higher learning in order to be fair to those who do not attend, Comrade?

[BreadBros]

Originally posted by [email protected] 30 2006, 04:45 PM
likely? the withering state has a great history...






....or wait
Thats not what I was implying. I was stating that in my opinion some sort of transitionary phase between capitalism and classless society may not be necessary or may be so short-lived that a true label is never applied to it. In such a case our future use of the word Socialism may possibly merely be to bourgeois revolutions where the workers held temporary powers or somehow set certain elements of the state agenda.

[chimx]

the book says "in reality" though. in other words, "in practice thus far". i can find no disagreement.

[BreadBros]

Yes, if you take peoples words for it an accept that calling something socialist equals it being so. I think if you look at these revolutions from a historically materialist analysis you will see that they are in actuality, ultimately revolutions towards establishing capitalism. I hesitate to call them bourgeois since in most of them there is no bourgeoisie present as a revolutonary force, although the creation of one seems to be a result.

[chimx]

while you may be right, the fact that they have identified themselves with marxism, going so far as to say it is an extension of marxism, one can understand why any history book would come to such a conclusion.

[Political_Chucky]

Originally posted by [email protected] 29 2006, 08:21 AM
is that a highschool history book?.
It also depends in which state you come from because every textbook in each state is different. Its based on different standards. In my text book for my government highschool class, its more of an unbiased opinion on marx. But it still points out Russia's failures, which can't be used because they were never a real communism in my opinion.

[Rodack]

Originally posted by Political_Chucky+Oct 1 2006, 05:30 PM--> (Political_Chucky @ Oct 1 2006, 05:30 PM)
[email protected] 29 2006, 08:21 AM
is that a highschool history book?.
It also depends in which state you come from because every textbook in each state is different. Its based on different standards. In my text book for my government highschool class, its more of an unbiased opinion on marx. But it still points out Russia's failures, which can't be used because they were never a real communism in my opinion. [/b]
You are correct, true Communism as described by Karl Marx and Fred Engal has never been achieved. Although Marx's theories look great on paper, in practice, more factors are introduced that Marx could never emagined. Getting away from Karl Marx and Fred Engals theories on Communism and re-engineering a better path towards enlightenment for the common good would be more productive for our cause. Marx and Engal may have been considered visionaries over 150 years ago but those first world theories are better suited for the 3rd worlds of today

[RaiseYourVoice]

did you actually read them? because most of what critiques of capitalism often write today is nothing other than what marx and engels already wrote down ^^

[Hit The North]

Originally posted by [email protected] 1 2006, 12:58 AM
the book says "in reality" though. in other words, "in practice thus far". i can find no disagreement.
No, by using the term "in reality", the author is making a distinction between the theory and the reality - in other words, implying that "in truth" the theory does not work. He's as good as saying that communism is only a pipe dream; that its most gifted theorist was wrong.

[Janus]

Marx also predicted that capitalism would evetually fail
Marx's beliefs that capitalism would soon fail did prove to be wrong but that is because it was near impossible at the time to imagine how much capitalism would transform and mutate. Anyways, I think he only got the time scale wrong on that one. ;)

[Invader Zim]

Not true, I'm in college myself,

I guess it depends on the course. A large portion of the reading I do is that of the British Marxist Historians, not just out of choice but also out of necessity.