Why Communism?
(Still working on that post...)
First, let's get the basics out of the way. It is not 'capitalism' as some spontaneous 'free market' (holy shit, lol) which was responsible for this, because the standards of 'improving the quality of life' were not taken on spontaneously but existed within the framework of state civic-society as precluding this standard to be fulfilled. In the context of all of the 'oppressed nations' (by Imperialism) of the 20th century gaining national bourgeois-independence, the goals of modernization were always there and the 20th century marked the struggle for fulfilling them. But before the 'living standarsd' were able to have been shot up, various struggles, internal developments, state-building, etc. precluded that. Take South Korea, which was a shit hole for the better part of its whole existence. During this period the framework for 'state-building' for the context of capitalism (to emulate the West) was going on. This looked different in many countries - states were more likely to be Communist if old social bonds had to be uprooted violently rather than passively, as they were in South Korea, Taiwan, parts of South America, etc. There are various laws, and regulations, which are in place which if not for which people would be living just as poorly as they always were. Think about worker's fights. Did 'capitalism' give workers an 8 hour work day? Workers had to directly fight for that, against the spontaneous interests of capital. Likewise, various political AS WELL as social developments have precluded the global standards that make previous conditions of life simply unacceptable. These standards, in many ways can be said to be vestigial: We face a population crisis precisely because mechanized agriculture, among other things allow for the sustenance of populations which are not necessary for capitalist production whatsoever. This alone contradicts the bare 'rationality' of the market spontaneously: If it is simply market processes that are responsible for this increase in a standard of living, why do we face an 'overpopulation' crisis and why is it that approximately only 20% of the present world's population is necessary for the sustenance of global capitalism? It is because definite standards are in place which disallow vast swaths of people to go hungry, to be killed by disease, etc. which are in many ways political in nature. But they are also because of the fact that increased technological innovation allows for the production of commodities in far larger quantities and also more cheaply, so larger populations can be sustained because we have reached a technical, etc. capacity which allows for their sustenance. The role of the capitalist increasingly becomes like the role of an aristocrat - they are not even any longer productive, but passively collect profits where marginal costs for the production of tangible goods decrease. And let's not forget the rise of monopolies on essential life that are not even productive at all: Telecommunications, electricity, etc. companies which produce nothing but extract rent from being able to 'own' certain things.
The 'rise in the standard of living' doesn't actually have anything to fucking do with the 'idea' of capitalism but the development of the productive forces in previously colonized and oppressed nations (by Imperialism) which was already their trajectory path throughout the entire period of 'de-colonization'. How can it be said that 'capitalism' as some idea juxtaposed to Socialism is responsible, when this rise of the standard of living was simply the result of the further development of capitalism as juxtaposed to pre-capitalist social formations? You can talk about China and Vietnam, but they too were situated in the context of emerging from pre-capitalist, feudal relations which were politically and culturally only negated through Communism (but not always: See South Korea, Singapore, Iran, ETC.). As for places like the United States, if we are referring to new developments, how is this new? Life in the US in 1970 was better than in 1930. Life in 1928 was better than life in 1898. Life in 1898 was better than life in 1798. So how did Marx 'not foresee' an increase in the rise of a standard of living when it has always been increasing constantly in capitalist states in congruence with technological innovation, etc.?
But the main point: the absurdity of this question becomes apparent when we ask the simple question: What is this 'capitalism'?
The way in which this question is phrased, posits capitalism to be some separate thing that which we, innocent, better-life seeking humans 'use'. Yet capitalism is constituted only by men and women like us, so the better question is, what position are we in to act like we ought not to destroy the existing order, because we find 'utility' in it, when this order of things is constituted only by actual individuals like us? Why do we have to 'trick' ourselves in this way? The word capitalism is being used as though it is like a separate tool we 'use'. How is it a 'tool' when it is nothing but our own activity?
And it is a shame you uncritically accept this argument at face value. "If competition proves to be..." Stop right there. Why is it that you allow for the actual particular processes being referred to, to be condensed into this abstraction called 'competition'? Competition can mean anything. Capitalist society is just as 'cooperative', if not more, than it is 'competitive'. It is simply nonsense to speak of 'competition' in the particular context of the capitalism that has 'raised the global quality of life' and 'raised global living standards', because we are living in an age of capitalism constituted by large, international cartels, conglomerates, monopolies, irrevocably intertwined with vast bureaucratic-state-corporate planning apparatuses in the particular nations that which they operate within. The shameless ideology here is the pathological assumption that global capitalism, in all its complexity, in the past few decades was the elaboration of the lemonade stand. Yet this is not the case, and finally, it is tautological to argue on behalf of the existing order because of the 'raise in the quality of life' for the grand majority of people. That is because the standard of the actual quality of life, is created by the real conditions of the organization and production of life. That changes in the real conditions of the production and organization of life have occured cannot be an argument in favor of it, because again, this was not owed to something external from men and women called 'capitalism', it was owed to what they were doing directly alone. What were men and women doing specifically, that was congruent with this 'raising of the standard of life'? Increased food production, urbanization, integration into global processes, the building of newer infrastructure, the rise of international 'humanitarian' agencies, the rise of globally shared standards of life that which all countries were held accountable for reaching, and so on? If men and women by default desire these things, why must they be tricked into doing that which you are arguing they already want?
Or do you mean to tell me that in fact, actual people do not want better infrastructure, healthcare, food, mechanized agricultural production, education, but that Marxiansocailist (or anyone) knows what is best for them, even if they do not agree? That these people have to be tricked into playing a game, to fulfill goals (i.e. a higher quality of life) that they do not want? Now, if they do want such a thing as a 'higher quality of life', why do they have to be tricked into fulfilling over-reaching, homogeneous and international goals (such as eliminating hunger, and 'absolute poverty) that they already want? Why is it not within their capacity to instead directly fulfill their prerogatives, as they are, and not through the medium of 'capitalism'? If we want to eliminate hunger, why not do this directly and consciously, why must we trick ourselves into eliminating poverty and hunger as an incidental, rather than direct, effect of our life-activity, if we truly want to eliminate these things?
So yes, it is true that through globalization, integration into the global market and global capital has facilitated the prerogatives of 'modernization' otherwise taken on by the national bourgeoisie, whether through 'socialism' or something else. So should we not critically ask why? Should we not critically ask why the 'standard of life' has been able to have been increased at every level, or are we going to shrug our shoulders, assume this question to be unimportant, and attribute to some magical, external thing called 'capitalism' so-called desirable outcomes in life? The 'rise' in the standards of living, is not in the context of the same historical epoch of capitalism.
There is no memory of history. That there is an 'increase in the quality of life' compared to pre-globalization, doesn't make a SINGLE difference in the level of discontent of the actual worldly masses, in the same way that the increase of the standard of life compared to feudal life, did not change the veracity that which the European proletariat were willing to fight and were discontented with the existing order of things. This is the whole point of historical materialism. In fact actual historical experience contradicts the assumptions of the person you are paraphrasing: The more workers are able to win, and improve their quality of life, the more they are willing to fight. That is what history shows. How can that be explained?
And this leads us to another point: First and foremost, the significance of 'absolute poverty' and its political implications are not so simple, because there is no trans-historical standard of poverty. What we call poverty IS fucking relative, because the social antagonism is spiritual, it is social: Even if every citizen was living the equivalent of a millionaire today, so long as the social relations that they are constituted by persist, it does not make an iota of a difference as far as their propensity to fight and their spiritual discontent goes. That is because the standards society sets forth, for the attainment of being a dignified individual, so you can actually feel like a fucking human being, are irrevocably incompatible with the lives of the majority of the people, for purely systemic reasons: It is not possible that a large portion of the population can attain the universal essence of man as standardized by their conditions of life, even if they put in every single ounce of effort, this is how this game works. It is not like everyone can own, relative to both society's productive capacities as well as nature, precisely what is proportional to their prerogatives, it is not like if everyone tried as hard as they could and was "equally skilled" at being a capitalist they would all own equally just as much as the others. The misery and suffering of the world's exploited, marginalized and excluded does not have to fucking answer for the fact that they are living better than their parents were a hundred, a thousand, or a hundred thousand years ago. The veracity of their misery and suffering does not answer for this, because society does not answer for history: Society is self-sufficiently constituted and actively reproduces itself. The human spirit does not hold itself to trans-historical standards. It holds itself ONLY to the standards of its own conditions of existence as they exist in the here and the now.
It's just so silly. Think about the argument the person is using: The conclusion is that all of the struggles, the veracity of all of the impassioned struggles in the modern epoch hold themselves to the standards of 500 B.C., as though we must always consult the fact actively that we are not living like people in 500 B.C. are. Yet the controversies of 500 B.C. didn't have a fuck to do with holding themselves to the eternal golden standard of 2016. The tautology is simple: The standards of life are created by the conditions and standard of the real expression of life, so to argue for the present conditions of life, by the 'standards' of life relative to the past, ignores that the conditions of (the organization, production, etc.) of life in the past were different, too. The real conditions of life create the 'standards' of what is acceptable for living. The standard of living never went up - the conditions of life merely changed. It did not make a single difference as it concerns the level of global suffering, which cannot actually be measured (Before the user wishes to cite 'happiness' indexes) in any outward way. Globally, do people no longer feel it necessary to turn to superstition, alternative, reactionary political movements, drugs, etc.? They don't. The disgusting idiocy of saying we ought to get on our fucking knees, shut up, and be grateful for the world that we live in because the implications of reverting back to conditions fifty years ago are bellow the present standards is just fucking STUPID for a very simple reason: The implications of reverting back to the standards of life we had fifty years ago for our society are different than the standards of life fifty years ago as they actually existed fifty years ago. In other words, the agony and suffering standards of life fifty years ago would induce for a person living today, is not the same agony and suffering that people fifty years ago actually faced. And why? Because people living fifty years ago did not hold themselves to the standards of society in 2016! They held themselves to the standards of life in 1966. Likewise, for the people getting out of absolute poverty, when they were living in absolute poverty they did not hold themselves to the standards of life they find themselves now while they were in it.
Finally, you ask, 'Why Communism'. You say, you tell us, that 'absolute poverty' is a thing of the past, and that 'capitalism is solving all of the trans-historical human problems' and whatever you want. Okay, you're content. You're fine. you can go about your day. Now go and tell that, to the vast swaths of actual living people in the world who don't seem to see that. Go take that assessment and use it to explain the mass global unrest occurring right now, the exponential rise of Fascism in the United States, Europe and the near east. The overwhelming naivety is appalling. You say all of this, and yet people are as discontented with the system today than ever, they simply channel this in different ways and lack the means to articulate their real discontent scientifically.
You seem to not get the point of Marx. The point is: No matter the productive capacities of capitalist society, no matter where it takes our society, no matter the degree that which it is able to exert new mastery over nature, no matter the degree that which the quality of life improves, all of this remains constituted only by the actual men and women who supposedly reap the benefits of it, all of this is only constituted by men and women. That's it. 'Capitalism' does nothing, as some abstract idea, because capitalism is a word we use to describe a definite condition of the organization, production and reproduction of real human life, an expression and mode of human life.
