Originally posted by ontheli
[email protected] 19, 2007 02:46 pm
I suppose the first question I have is what motivates you to join an organisation that has no electoral or popular support, and endorse an economic and social model that has been refuted both in practise (You will claim that the socialist model proposed by Lenin was not true socialism, but what Lenin initially proposed under War Communism was exactly the model Marx and Engels proposed as a stepping stone to the withering away of the state and the establishment of the dictatorship of the proletariat) and in theory (Socialist and communist economics is the laughing stock of all economists)
With this in mind, would you not prefer to endorse a society which takes care of its weakest - from the cradle to the grave - but also allows competition to occur and the ability for someone from the back end of no-where to start his own business and become rich? Do we really need to have one absolutism (Socialism) or the other (Capitalism)
Does society not work best when we take a little from every culture and transplant it into our own? Should the same not work for economics?
Come on guys, do you have to be so offensive and insulting to people who come here to argue? It makes us look juvenile, and seems as if we don't have a proper answer to his question.
OK, liberalleft, you say it failed in practise....first off, only the USSR is worth analysing in terms of socialism in practise because it was the only self-proclaimed socialist country that actually had a proletarian revolution, and wasn't just an elite clique of utopians trying to forcibly create a communist society. Since you've done a phd, you probably know the basics of historical materialism and why the vast majority of marxists would agree that predominantly agricultural countries cannot have a working class revolution; mainly because there is no working class.
The USSR failed for a number of reasons, but it's important to emphasise that Lenin and much of the soviet leadership recognised that socialism, in an economically and culturally backward country such as Russia, will inevitably fail unless the revolutionary wave across Europe was successful. Revolutionary France also descended into dictatorship, and many people at the time thought an attempt to build democracy will inevitably create tyranny. Frankly, it seems too convenient for it to be an accepted truth that attempting to construct a more just, democratic, free and prosperous society will only end up leading us straight to hell.
As for marxist economics being the laughing stock of mainstream economists; academia, especially economics, is not scientific and objective and there are ideological forces determining what's accepted in the mainstream. These "economists" who laugh at marxism would be the same IMF smart guys who caused the East Asian and Argentinian economic crises in 98 and 02 respectively, by demanding that their governments raise interest rates astronomically to encourage capital to enter the country-with the predictable effect that interest rates were so high bankruptcy hit the country, so obviously there was no investment happening! This is because the standard macroeconomic model of economics taught at grad schools doesn't take bankruptcy into account, possibly because economics professors like to believe in the "invisible hand" of the market that solves all problems; these economists are hardly fountains of objective scientific wisdom. And let's not get started on the bloodier mishaps of the elite of economic academia in the IMF...
You say why not support a mixture of socialism and capitalism; firstly, this is impossible. Either the economy is democratically planned by worker's councils, or it's ran by a private elite for profit rather than the good of society. The welfare state is not a combination of the 2, it is still fundamentally capitalism only with institutional charity; and it's not sustainable as long as the economic base remains dominated by private interests! It's undeniable that all across Europe the welfare state is being slowly dismantled; why? There's 2 reasons. Reason 1 is the complacency and lack of militancy amongst the working class, which removes any motivation to sacrifice profits in favour of sedation of the masses. Reason 2 is that Asia and other regions have cheap labour and no expensive "red tape" (as conservatives like to call it) such as health and safety regulations and labour laws. Manufacturing jobs are outsourced and investment is lower than it could be, so the state has started cutting back on social spending, and face little resistance-although it is starting to hot up again, and class struggle will definately be back on the mainstream agenda soon enough!
Basically, social democracy has failed.
As for what motivates me?
The failure of reformism to bring about any meaningful, permanent change is what pushes me towards a radical critique of capitalist society. And the strength of that radical critique is what motivates me to a revolutionary.
Also, 1/5th of the world are in extreme poverty, income in the richest 20 nations is 37 times higher than in the poorest 20 (a ratio that has doubled in the last 20 years), 34 countries currently have falling life expectancy, 30,000 people a day die from easily preventable diseases, and 1 billion people don't have access to clean water.
This isn't just because they haven't developed, their lack of development is integral to the global economic system. This world has been shaped by imperialism, and the global power structure has remained more or less the same since those days began. (with a few exceptions, such as China-and China only developed due to it's revolution!) What Lenin and Wallerstein called the periphery; basically the poorest countries; is necassarilly exploited for superprofits by the imperialist bourgeoisies. (and now China too) It's impossible for them to develop independantly of the west, because indigneous industries cannot compete with the advanced industry and consequently low prices of western companies, so they must rely on investment in particular industries; and obviously, a country can't become a developed country if only one industry is developing. Attempts by their states to intervene in their own economies are generally met with military retribution, from the Opium Wars to...well, basically the entire cold war.
So third world nations become dependant on superexploitation to attract investment, that doesn't really lead to anywhere but lining the pockets of local elites. This is why third world nations have such flawed or non-existent democracies; the elites cannot accept working class influence on the state because their economies; and their wealth; are dependant on oppression of the workers. Despots, too, are an inherent part of capitalism due to the fact it is a global system, not a specific choice for one nation to choose.
Your liberal idealism will lead nowhere; your heart is in the right place but the world that you want is incompatible with capitalism, and only a radicalised and organised international proletariat can bring about change.