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Broody, you always mistake political forms for economic forms.
Economic forms are, in the context we live in, either socialism or capitalism. Unless you want to argue the Soviet Union was a socialist society, it must have been a capitalist society. Whether it was a capitalist society with private capital, or with state (national) capital, is immaterial here - Engels covered this in the 1880s, for Darwin's sake.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Is this resistance or a costume party?
Either way I think black with bandanas is a boring theme.
fka Creep
I would suggest capitalistic relations were born earlier. A lot of people (including many Marxists) plot the origins of capitalism from the origin of towns, merchant capital's takeover of the handicrafts and guilds and so on, but really you need to look further back into the 14th century and the changing social relations in villages; the process of the poorer peasants becoming landless labourers and the wealthier peasants (farmers, husbandmen and yeomen) becoming so wealthy that they produced beyond subsistence, at profit, and indeed employed the aforementioned poorer peasants as wage labourers, which is quite well documented in manorial rolls and court records.
Of course, this is all theoretical. Whilst it would not be properly historical materialism to suggest that the move from the capitalist to communist mode of production will mirror the move from feudalism to capitalism (i.e. a general theory of transitioning modes of production), one would have to think that at least some of the features will be shared; I mean, we KNOW that the revolutionary class just like before, will come from inside the declining mode of production (the split peasantry in feudalism, the working class in capitalism), we know that moving from a class society to a post-class society will involve a transition in social structure which, unlike the political side of the revolutionary process (i.e. power!), will certainly NOT happen overnight.
Just food for thought.
Why not? It seems like an acceptable substitution for 'for god's sake' for an atheist to use, even if it's a tad cheesy.
Nope.
Is this resistance or a costume party?
Either way I think black with bandanas is a boring theme.
fka Creep
You cannot have something "in between" capitalism and socialism anymore than you can have something in between the pregnancy and not being pregnant. It's one or the other.
Any real change implies the breakup of the world as one has always known it, the loss of all that gave one an identity, the end of safety. And at such a moment, unable to see and not daring to imagine what the future will now bring forth, one clings to what one knew, or dreamed that one possessed. Yet, it is only when a man is able, without bitterness or self-pity, to surrender a dream he has long possessed that he is set free - he has set himself free - for higher dreams, for greater privileges.”
-James Baldwin
"We change ideas like neckties."
- E.M. Cioran
I'm not sure why you think this contradicts what I said. In an earlier post, quoted by Negative Creep, I say "the difference is capitalism had its 3-500 years of economic development before the political revolutions". The English bourgeoisie (actually, the developing 'British' bourgeoisie) had its political revolution from 1640 or thereabouts. 300 years before that is 1340. I regard the period of the Hundred Years War (1337-1453) as being crucial for the development of capitalism in England, France and the Low Countries, and slightly later Scotland, Italy and Germany too (due to the knock-on effects of the war on neighbouring countries).
The peasantry was not the revolutionary class in feudalism. The bourgeoisie was the revolutionary class in feudalism. That's the difference. The proletariat is both the exploited class (analogue of the peasantry in feudalism) and the revolutionary class (anaologue of the bourgeoisie in feudalism). That's why the socialist revolution has to be different. We can't build our economic power before our revolution (unlike the bourgeoisie) because we're too busy being exploited.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
Well...
You are not pregnant, but you have already taken the decision to become so.
You are not pregnant, but you are already having regular sexual relations to that end.
You are not pregnant, but the spermatozoids are already on their way towards your ovaries.
You are not pregnant, but your ovule has already been fecundated, and is moving towards the uterus.
You are pregnant, but have already taken the decision to terminate the pregnancy.
You are pregnant, but are already in the waiting room of Planned Parenthood, waiting for your abortion.
You are pregnant, but the doctor is already inserting the appropriate instrument into you, to perform an abortion.
You are pregnant, but the fetus is already moving towards the open.
Your baby is halfway out your vagina (are you pregnant?)
***************
Lots of "transitional states" in my opinion.
(More than Thomas Aquinas would have reckoned in any way.)
Luís Henrique
America basically went from slavery to capitalism, right? Skipped the feudalism part of "historic progression". And during the abolitionist movement, a lot of them were actually for socialism, seeing wage labor as a kind of servitude, that's actually when and where the term "wage slavery" developed, so they were not only for skipping feudalism, but also capitalism, going from slavery to a classless economy of workers' self-management.
Are you referring to national chauvanism?You, my friend, are succumbing to the most ruthless version of Stalinism.
FKA Vacant
"snook up behind him and took his koran, he said sumthin about burnin the koran. i was like DUDE YOU HAVE NO KORAN and ran off." - Jacob Isom, Amarillo Resident.
Firstly, the materialist conception of history is not an intrinsic component of communist ideology. Stop using Communsim and marxism interchangeably, it's exceedingly irritating, though judging some of the other posts you've had the grace to privilege us with, it's of no surprise that to you Marxism means nothing beyond simply being another word for "communism". Had you the slightest understanding of the notion of historical materialism, an understanding of Marxism as a completely revolutionary understanding of human social movement I can guarantee that at least half the things you've posted you would not have.
Now, to answer your question, I don't know of any Marxists who've claimed that Feudalism has been completely eradicated on a global scale. Alas, out of my own generosity I will not simply dismiss this as a straw man, though. India never experienced a radical political change that (on a political level) solidified the hegemony of the bourgeois class. Instead, over time, dynamically, the bourgeois class took control of the newly independent state and previous remnants of Feudalism (the caste system, etc.) were radically adjusted to the hunger of capital. I don't know if the developments in India's forces of production will eventually do away with these, but I can tell you that Liberalism and Capitalism are not necessarily a two-deal package, i.e. Liberalism has been for the most part a phenomena for the European bourgeoisie and the state's that it has influenced.
[FONT="Courier New"] “We stand for organized terror - this should be frankly admitted. Terror is an absolute necessity during times of revolution. Our aim is to fight against the enemies of the Revolution and of the new order of life. ”
― Felix Dzerzhinsky [/FONT]
لا شيء يمكن وقف محاكم التفتيش للثورة
Rosa Luxembourg writes interestingly on this subject in her Anti-Critique of "Accumulation". She suggests that, in reality, capitalism requires the existence of non-capitalist strata for its continuing function - after all, if all intercourse exists within the realm of the bourgeoisie and proletariat, accumulation necessarily hits a limit. In fact, the constant expansion of capital, and its continuing proletarianization of new peoples and classes is necessary. As such, a Marxist analysis of capitalism presumes that non-capitalist forms persist (or else this shit would be over already).
Yup.
The life we have conferred upon these objects confronts us as something hostile and alien.
Formerly Virgin Molotov Cocktail (11/10/2004 - 21/08/2013)
But state capital, if it abides by the laws of use instead of exchange value, is not capitalism in the contemporary sense. Nazis had state interferance in the ecnomy which still abode by the laws of the market whereas productive property in the USSR didn't abide by a single law of market economies, and development and distribution of economic goods didn't actually profit anybody, since there was no private ownership of the capital. Seemingly fundamental laws of capital did not, 0%, abide by any laws of capitaism, or else the suger bought from Cuba wouldn't of been bought, and the current state of the russan economy would of existed as long ago as 1930, which they did not.
Last edited by Geiseric; 23rd January 2013 at 02:06.
For student organizing in california, join this group!
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=1036
http://socialistorganizer.org/
"[I]t’s hard to keep potent historical truths bottled up forever. New data repositories are uncovered. New, less ideological, generations of historians grow up. In the late 1980s and before, Ann Druyan and I would routinely smuggle copies of Trotsky’s History of the Russian Revolution into the USSR—so our colleagues could know a little about their own political beginnings.”
--Carl Sagan
But that just made it inefficient, not socialist. And you ducked the question of what economic system you think comes between capitalism and socialism.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
All you are saying here is that there are transitional states within capitalism and within communism but not between them which is fair enough (and the more interesting argument is about what these transitional states can and, equally importantly, cannot consist in). I contend, for instance, that we are in the capitalist transitional state right now and have been ever since capitalism became technically obsolete circa the beginning of the 20th century.
But it still remains the case that you are either pregnant or you are not - does it not?
Last edited by robbo203; 23rd January 2013 at 18:26.
For genuine free access communism
http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?groupid=792
There was no bourgeoisie under feudalism. There were peasants (free and unfree), Lords and then higher (so Knights and above..).
Where do you think the bourgeoisie originated? They didn't just come from the ranks of the manorial Lords. They came largely from the wealthier peasantry, who by the 14th century had started to not only accumulate large landholdings, but had actually started to employ poorer peasants and produce therefore at a surplus. I haven't had a chance to look at market trade records, but from what I understand, there is evidence of this surplus from such records.
There was a definite division, by the 14th Century, between wealthier peasants and poorer peasants. By 1381, it's difficult to really think of the peasantry as a group with homogenous interests. In fact i'd argue by this point in time the wealthier peasants' interests were largely becoming similar to those of the Lords (i.e. forming a bourgeoisie) and the poorer peasants were becoming, largely landless, wage labourers.
You're arguing about degrees of capitalism here. There's no such thing as a degree of a mode of production. A society is either capitalist or it is feudalist or it is neither of these (i.e. some un-forseeable future post-capitalist society).
Capitalism requires money, states, a bourgeoisie, a proletariat and exchange. Exchange doesn't have to be perfect competition or imperfect competition. In fact many Marxian/radical economists would argue that competition is merely a temporary form of exchange, and that oligopoly/tendencies towards monopoly also make up genuine long-run forms of exchange under capitalism. There's a large body of work in Marxism (Cowling, Sweezy et al.) that says there is a tendency towards monopoly under Capitalism.
In other words, the form of exchange is never static, and so just because production and exchange were somewhat different in the USSR to the western capitalist economies, does not disqualify it from being a capitalist mode of production. In fact, it cannot have been anything else.
Are you serious?
Of course there was a bourgeoisie under feudalism, it just wasn't the dominant class in society. It didn't create itself in 1640 out of nothing and have a revolution. It had been developing since the 1300s.
So you think there was a bourgeoisie, as I said earlier, and contrary to what you just said?
What is it that you're attempting to argue here? Perhaps if you sorted out what you're trying to say, you might not end up flatly contradicting yourself. What you are doing at the moment is disagreeing with what I'm saying, and then repeating the argument you just disagreed with in slightly different words.
Example:
The main argument I have with this is that the interests of the 'wealthier peasants' were ' largely becoming similar to those of the Lords'; I disagree, the rising bourgeoisie was coming to challenge the aristocracy for hegemony of society, but if you merely mean that both were exploiting classes, and each had its own interest in continuing class domination, then yes, I agree.
Critique of the Gotha Programme, Pt IV: http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch04.htm
No War but the Class War
Destroy All Nations
Lucius Accius (170 BC - 86 BC): "A man whose life has been dishonorable is not entitled to escape disgrace in death."
And in the Amazon we see some forms of primitive communism. Get my point?
A set of stages of historical progression that Marxism talkes about is listed as: primitive communism, slave society, feudalism, capitalism, socialism, communism.
USA went from slavery to capitalism.
Also, there's also the Marxist idea that socialism can only come in the most industrially developed capitalist societies where there are basically only the capitalists and the wage-workers (the peasants and artisant basically dissappearing).
In Ukraine and Spain entire societies have established funcioning systems that deposed capitalists and abolished capital, and in both those examples, the wage-workers were a minority.
Do these real-worlds examples show that the two mentioned Marxist ideas about economic progression are false?
