Was Marx really right? - and on what scale?

[mentalbunny]

I have to admit that I have read nothing by Marx, but I know a little of what he wrote down, like the whole dictatorship of the proletariat and it's very interesting stuff, but was he really right in his prognosis, cos it sure as hell hasn't happened yet.

my german/philosophy teacher reckons that it could in fact happen on a Global scale, and the thrid world countries will overthrow the First World, and I would agree that this is more probable than the workers in each country overthrowing their "superiors". But what do you think?

[Umoja]

Unless people see a glaring problem, they generally hate to change the Status Quo. This is especially true if it applies to them, otherwise they usually can live with it. This is why many authoritarian governments are able to exist.

[mentalbunny]

Um, maybe this would get more responses in Thoery, so if any Mods are passing, please move it! Thanks in adavnce!

Thanks for your comment, Umoja, I guess that's why revolution is so hard, because people get comfy and don'r want to change their lifestyles, they refuse to see how it will benefit them and the rest of mankind.

[Umoja]

It's not even so much that. Marx thinks that if workers realize that they need change, that they'll go and change it, but it doesn't work like that, because if it did then Dictatorships wouldn't exist at all. People are in general scared of change, since it'll possibly not solve problems and only create more. Like if your house is burning up around you, but the room your in isn't on fire, your gonna want to wait for help, not go out the door into the flaming hallway, and run outside.

[MJM]

#Moderation Mode



Moved here (http://www.che-lives.com/cgi/community/topic.pl?forum=13&topic=676)

[MJM]

While life may seem all rosey and fine now, workers rights are slowly being removed. While there was the UUSR the capitalists had good reason to fear worker unrest, there was an alternative right there and it had happened!
Now the era of the USSR has passed into history the capitalists have become much more like they were back in Marxs day, or at least more open about it.
Sweat shops are the norm and union busting and anti worker laws are becoming more and more common.
The bricks of the berlin wall were still being carted off when the capitalist class in my country passed new anti labour laws and the unions stood by and let it happen.
Now the welfare state is a thing of the past and privitisation is everywhere.
The workers lot will again become as dull and tedious as the 19th century, whether it be unemployment in the west or long hours in the 3rd world.
It will happen, my only hope is we take power before the world is destroyed by pollution, expolitation and war. Otherwise it'll be too late.


Here's something to think about.
If you told someone in 1985 that the USSR would be gone by 1991 what do you think they would say?

We can never really guess what will happen in the future and progress happens exponentially. Empires rise and fall much quicker as time passes by, ten years becomes a hundred or even a thousand in terms of progress.

[redstar2000]

What's really needed here, Mentalbunny, is a kind of chart. On one side would be the "predictions" of Marx and Engels about the evolution of capitalism and the rise of communism...and on the other side would be an entry as to how well the "predictions" have been verified in the last century.

Two books that attempt this arduous task: Marx's Revenge by Meghnad Desai (ISBN #1859846440) and Why Read Marx Today? by Jonathan Wolff (ISBN #0192803352).

The real "sticking point" of course is the question: why haven't the workers in the most advanced capitalist countries made a communist revolution yet?

We can advance possible explanations for this...it does, for example, take a rather long time from the period when a new class emerges until it is finally ready to assume state power. The first faint stirrings of English capitalism go back to when, 1200CE or thereabouts? It wasn't until the 19th century that English capitalists really became powerful and, from a technical standpoint, it wasn't until 1911 (right?) when the powers of the House of Lords (landed aristocracy) were finally curtailed and the English capitalist class "formally" assumed power.

Another possible explanation is that capitalism has not yet completely exhausted its "productive possibilities"...something that Marx said had to happen before communism became a practical possibility.

Still another: the capitalist class has fully grasped the utility of illusions like patriotism, religion, and (covert) racism...and has used them with extraordinary skill to keep the working class blinded and disunited. The capitalist domination of the media, the educational system, etc. gives them a temporarily overwhelming advantage in sustaining those illusions.

And so on. One "explanation" that Marxists would reject is the one you hear so often in left circles...this or that personality "betrayed" the revolution. If Marx was right, then personalities have little influence on the fundamental course of history; history is about classes.

What I think is interesting, and revealing, is the fact that bourgeois academics and theoreticians have been unable to construct a viable historical paradigm to rival that of Marx and Engels. They can only assert, rather desperately in my view, that history is entirely "accidental" and "random" in character...full of "rogues" and "heroes" acting out the mystical drama of "human nature".

Probably the most "advanced" capitalist thinking these days revolves around a "neo-Darwinian" metaphor suggesting that capitalism "mirrors" natural selection and dominates because of its inherent superiority over other past systems. It is more "fit".

Yet I detect a hint of nervousness even here...for if the "neo-Darwinian" metaphor was really accurate, then the possibility of a "yet more fit" system would have to be acknowledged...when what the defenders of capitalism really want is "an end to history, dammit!"

We shall see.

:cool:

[canikickit]

Another possible explanation is that capitalism has not yet completely exhausted its "productive possibilities"...something that Marx said had to happen before communism became a practical possibility.

Sound like we're screwed. When are the "productive possibilities" exhausted? When all the oil and natural resources are gone, and the workforce is so depleted and downtrodden that we've no choice, and can't even discuss things like this?

I don't think Marx is wrong (on that point, at least) but it doesn't bode very well, does it?

[redstar2000]

Canikickit, I don't think Marx meant the phrase "productive possibilities" in the abstract...I think he was referring to a break-down in the capitalist economy's ability to produce and innovate because of the built-in constraints of the system itself.

Capitalism needs "investment capital" and "investment capital" does not exist in the absence of at least the possibility of profit.

What happens when there are little or no potentially profitable investments to make? In different ways, we can see the consequences of this in Japan and Argentina...a decade of stagnation in Japan and a partial economic collapse in Argentina.

If you can imagine something like this on a global scale, then I think Marx would say that things will start to get very interesting...even though there are still plenty of factories, plenty of farms, plenty of oil reserves, etc., the system itself begins to falter. Or, in Marx's terminology, "the relations of production have become fetters on the means of production".

We could be approaching this situation right now...or it could be as much as a century or more in the future. Nobody knows.

But if Marx was right, then something like this has to happen, sooner or later.

:cool:

[Kez]

If you go to www.marxist.com, it shows how capitalism is in crisis, and people who i have talked to on the subject suggest 5 years uyntil capitalism is restored.

Now is the time to do something and agitate, now unless we read marx, engels, lenin, trotksy we gonna get fuckin no where, and we cant just "use our brains" to go forward, that is opportunnism and bollocks, weve seen it fuck things up before now we gotta learn.

[socialist2000]

Marx said some really clever stuff, but as you can probably tell I follow what Robert Owen said.

[Krobanikov]

Is it really wise to follow any man?

[Blibblob]

To follow is to basically become their slave, they dont have to be alive, yet rule you.

[RedRevolutionary87]

i think i agree with your german teacher, since the world has now become one big country the populations of the third world have in a sense become the new proleteriat of the world, and they can and probably will become the actual leaders of the workers revolution with the low scale workers in the first world rebebling with them.

[Show me the Money]

every society has their one proleterians, and there isn't just own society, imo.

so a worldwide revolution will not only occur when the third world workers struggle to overtrow the ruling class but/and we should indeed support them... and make efforts and commit to that cause.

(Edited by Show me the Money at 12:51 am on Mar. 5, 2003)

[Blibblob]

The third world countries are not going to revolt yet. They actually have to feel like they are going to get something out of it. They need some hope. Our hopeless revolution needs to start first. And then enlist them.

[TheDerminator]

Marx was ambivalent as to whether or not the advanced capitalist socities would require a revolution or be changed through democratic means. In my view the days of the conspiratorial revolution are over in relation to advanced countries. Only a democratic movement has the momentum to overthrow capitalism.
As regards the role of the individual in history, the Russian Marxist Plekhanov, simply got it wrong. The individual does matter and the most obvious proof of it is the role of individuals such as Marx and Lenin was indispensible to the socialist movement.
The socialist movement will remain weak world-wide as long as it is divided upon sectarian lines. However, it is an unpredictable world and you can never know what might help to galvanise the movement.
derminated.

[Kez]

christ al-fuckin-mighty

[redstar2000]

I disagree with TheDerminator.

I think Engels was far more impressed by the initial electoral success of German social-democracy than Marx was.

But looking at the 20th century history of left electoral politics, it just didn't work.

That doesn't mean that the only alternative is "conspiratorial revolution"...on the contrary, meaningful revolution would involve very large numbers of people. Think May 1968 in France.

Also, I agree with Plekahnov on this issue: if Marx or Engels or whoever had never existed, the broad outlines of history would be unchanged...though some of the details would have been dramatically different.

That seems to me to be one of the core differences between historical materialism and various bourgeois schools of history that emphasize chance and accident or the role of "great men". The development of capitalism created the conditions for the emergence of communism...and someone would have come up with the idea even if Marx had never lived.

As to being a "follower", it depends on what is meant by that word. Someone who uses the tools of Marxism to analyze current developments could be called a "follower"...but hardly a "slave". Is someone who uses the tools of modern mathematics a "slave" of the mathematicians who formulated the tools?

:cool:

[peaccenicked]

Thederminator is wrong on Plekhanov. It is simply a caraciture to say he underestimated the role of the individual in history. Marx was not ambivalent on the role of democracy in advanced countries, he believed that it was possible for the proletariat to win power through parliamentary democracy in England.
Lenin, in "The State and Revolution" over rules Marx proclaiming that the advanced countries had become over-militarised for peaceful revolution.
As to Marx being right, it is too abstract a question.
Marx covered too much ground to be given such complete ovation.
It is more scientific to ask was Marx right about this or that. Name your subject.

[DeadBoss]

OK perhaps I'm talking absolute crap but I think that Marx was wrong on a major scale because he was a materialist.. How can anything change if you believe there is no mind (only brain) and when all change first happen in the mind of people?? In this sense I think that Marxism and capitalism have much more in common than most people think..sad I may add this is..

OK I'm not to say that the Marxist theory does not work or that it is entirely not grounded.. All I'm saying is that the dialectic part of the dialectic materialist theory is often misinterpreted or let say underestimated by Marxists themselves.. That is probably the main reason I am not appealed by the particular theorist.. However on many other levels Marx said a lot of things that made much practical sense and allowed people to think about REAL change, perhaps for the first time in a long time..