Looking At Capialism from OUTSIDE THE BOX

[construct]

Absolutely nothing... lol!

Well, you know, I beg to differ. There are lines of thought from Marx to the present. Certainly one of those lines ran through Lenin, Stalin, and Kruschev. Why, Herbert Marcuse wrote a whole book explaining all this. He called it Soviet Marxism.

There was a branching off from that in China. The very first quotation in the Little Red Book is

The force at the core leading our course forward is the Chinese Communist Party.

The theoretical basis guiding our thinking is Marxism-Leninism.

There it is. I copied it right out of my copy that is sitting here on my knees. I didn't even have to walk across the room to get my copy. I keep it right here. Chairman Mao wasn't talking through his hat. He knew what he was saying. He saw the connection between Marx and Lenin, and he built upon it.

And there are other brands of Marxism, too.

The point being that Marxism didn't end with Marx. How do you go about determining who is the "true" protector of his legacy?

 

[JB3]

All of Marx's principals were thrown out the door before the Soviet Union was even formed.

And that, right there, is where you have your history wrong. They were not, and any accurate reading of history shows that they were not. I've read Marx, Lenin, and read Stalin, and the two are very closely related.

Just FYI as well: in my previous post I was not saying that your beliefs in socialism and your criticisms of capitalism were wrong. What I was saying is that if you are going to vociferously defend your beliefs, as you are, you need to be well-versed in the principles and history of both sides, as well as the criticisms. If you're not, the holes in those elements of your argument make it a little difficult to take that argument seriously, and you will get called out for that. (as I did in that post)

 

[KrisHawkXXX]

And that, right there, is where you have your history wrong. They were not, and any accurate reading of history shows that they were not. I've read Marx, Lenin, and read Stalin, and the two are very closely related.

Just FYI as well: in my previous post I was not saying that your beliefs in socialism and your criticisms of capitalism were wrong. What I was saying is that if you are going to vociferously defend your beliefs, as you are, you need to be well-versed in the principles and history of both sides, as well as the criticisms. If you're not, the holes in those elements of your argument make it a little difficult to take that argument seriously, and you will get called out for that. (as I did in that post)

"My Argument?"

I didn't know we were arguing hon.. I thought we were having a discussion.

Marx's ideas WERE thrown out. You DO Know there are different books on MARX and distorted views on what people THINK Marx meant? Alot of his wording is VERY complex and sometimes needs to be re-read to fully understand what he is saying. I think there are things I can't stress by typing over a computer because I'm drunk and really tired of having to explain this to people. I've gotten through to many people but its so exhausting after a while...

 

[Kulindahr]

1. I never said only the white people are the well to do.... I'm looking at American Culture.

2.I think we are in two different worlds or have grabbed a certain perspective of the issues based on our own sources. I would never trust something I learned if it came out of an American text book whether its college or High School because those interpretations of communism will always be wrong. What Stalin attempted was a whole different idea. He read about Marxism for 5 minutes, and understood only about 1% of what was read.

3.I think this will always be a controversial issue sadly and people will always resort back to the thought of the Soviet Union and will never allow themselves to shake that idea out of their heads because that is all they know.

This is an example of your communication problem: 2 & 3 here just repeat things you've said before, and don't address my post at all. That makes you sound like a trained parrot.

 

[Kulindahr]

Kris, what you're arguing for here (in the technical, not the colloquial, sense of the term) is what is sometimes called "spiritual Marxism", because those who hold to it tend to treat Marxism practically as a religion, and because it focuses more on the development of individuals than on historical forces.

It's a legitimate view; I once wrote a paper on it. The problem is that Marx' view of history is heavily edited to make his ideas work, and those for the future literally have to be taken on faith.

 

[construct]

Kris, what you're arguing for here (in the technical, not the colloquial, sense of the term) is what is sometimes called "spiritual Marxism", because those who hold to it tend to treat Marxism practically as a religion, and because it focuses more on the development of individuals than on historical forces.

It's a legitimate view; I once wrote a paper on it. The problem is that Marx' view of history is heavily edited to make his ideas work, and those for the future literally have to be taken on faith.

It's interesting that you bring this up because I thought about something similar a little while after I posted my query about Marxist theory. I've never heard it called "spiritual Marxism" before, but what you describe seems not too different from what I was thinking about.

How's this? We'll start with a critique of advanced industrial capitalism--something like what Marcuse talks about in One-Dimensional Man--manufactured need/manufactured fulfillment, buying off the proletariat with increased leisure and such. Then, we develop personal strategies to avoid or counteract the manipulations of the capitalist social system. Then, we jettison the Marxist deterministic philosophy of history and the utopia of a communist stateless society as unattainable. What we're left with is a nomadic existence with lines of flight. Nomadic existence and lines of flight should not here be read as pejorative terms. They should be understood in a more positive light because they represent freedom from debilitating attachments and flights of creativity. Thus they operate both to avoid entrapment and to allow creative freedom.

Is this what you have in mind? I guess once we've done all that, there's not much Marx left, is there?

 

[JB3]

"My Argument?"

I didn't know we were arguing hon.. I thought we were having a discussion.

Marx's ideas WERE thrown out. You DO Know there are different books on MARX and distorted views on what people THINK Marx meant? Alot of his wording is VERY complex and sometimes needs to be re-read to fully understand what he is saying. I think there are things I can't stress by typing over a computer because I'm drunk and really tired of having to explain this to people. I've gotten through to many people but its so exhausting after a while...

Argument is another term for discussion. It is also a term for the point or line of reasoning a person is using, and that is the context in which I used it.

I understand quite clearly what Marx was going for, and I also understand the different branches of Marxist theory. Every single one of them can trace their ideological and systemic roots to Marx; to say otherwise, or to argue that his ideas were 'thrown out' is just not true.

 

[BostonPirate]

I agree with JB. As far as I know, without Marx, there could not have been communism. I may be wrong and I would not mind being proven wrong.

also on a side note... this thread is a refreshing departure from the standard pick a side and fight. I am learning from this thread about a topic I thought was dead. I still would never support communism as a functional system because I am far to pragmatic to believe it could work, but I like knowing more than I knew before.

anyway.... back to the topic...

One thing that as a pragmatist I am having a bit of a hard time digesting is spiritual Marxism. If marx thought that religion was the opiate of the peoples, wouldn't he himself dislike this application of his ideologies?

 

[construct]

One thing that as a pragmatist I am having a bit of a hard time digesting is spiritual Marxism. If marx thought that religion was the opiate of the peoples, wouldn't he himself dislike this application of his ideologies?

I don't know. I guess he'd think it was all pretty frivolous. Do you think he would like Gustavo Gutiérrez or Jürgen Moltmann?

At least as I envision it, it kind of takes the 'social' out of 'socialism,' doesn't it?

 

[BostonPirate]

I don't know. I guess he'd think it was all pretty frivolous. Do you think he would like Gustavo Gutiérrez or Jürgen Moltmann?

At least as I envision it, it kind of takes the 'social' out of 'socialism,' doesn't it?

that it does.

I have a really big interest in watching how a persons ideas evolve through others after his death, and considering how that person would or wouldn't approve really guides my first impression of a new push on their old idea.

 

[construct]

Well you know with Gutiérrez, there is still class consciousness and the struggle for liberation. He just proclaims that Jesus is on their side. He works with the biblical narratives to develop a theological support for the class struggle starting with the liberation of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt. If God is on the side of the oppressed, then he is opposed to the oppressors. The political revolutionary aspect of Marxism is taken pretty literally.

Moltmann does a bit more idealizing. His idea of the church as vanguard--well, you never get the impression that he's going to take up arms. Besides, he was talking about liberating the oppressors as well as the oppressed. I don't know what he was doing in May 1968. It might be interesting to find out. He was in Germany at the time. Surely with the strikes to the west and Prague Spring to the east, the spirit would have been felt at Tübingen as well.

In France at the same time, Tel quel had already been founded. Everybody who ever hoped to be anybody in philosophy, sociology, literary theory had to at act like they were Marxish if not Marxist. All the major post-structuralists were published in Tel quel, but few of them explicitly claimed to be writing as committed Marxists. Most of them supported the uprising in May 1968. (Derrida went on vacation to Algeria.) When that settled down, Deleuze and Guattari began work on Capitalism and Schizophrenia and Foucault turned his attention to prison reform.

 

[palemale]

The argument that "pure" Marxism didn't exist and/or doesn't work is a bit stale. The same is true for Capitalism. What matters is whether specific systems worked in specific countries. Soviet communism was a failure. Chinese communism has been a success. Why? China introduced significant capitalist policies into the system, which is leading it to have a booming economy.

Similarly, pure capitalism hasn't worked anywhere. Capitalist systems in North America, Europe, Japan, Australia and New Zealand because those systems introduced significant socialist policies into their systems, which led to enormous advances for working class people and led to the development of a huge middle-class and, as a result, led to widespread prosperity and stable democracies in the westernized, industrialized countries.

 

[Kulindahr]

It's interesting that you bring this up because I thought about something similar a little while after I posted my query about Marxist theory. I've never heard it called "spiritual Marxism" before, but what you describe seems not too different from what I was thinking about.

How's this? We'll start with a critique of advanced industrial capitalism--something like what Marcuse talks about in One-Dimensional Man--manufactured need/manufactured fulfillment, buying off the proletariat with increased leisure and such. Then, we develop personal strategies to avoid or counteract the manipulations of the capitalist social system. Then, we jettison the Marxist deterministic philosophy of history and the utopia of a communist stateless society as unattainable. What we're left with is a nomadic existence with lines of flight. Nomadic existence and lines of flight should not here be read as pejorative terms. They should be understood in a more positive light because they represent freedom from debilitating attachments and flights of creativity. Thus they operate both to avoid entrapment and to allow creative freedom.

Is this what you have in mind? I guess once we've done all that, there's not much Marx left, is there?

Well... not really.

The spiritual Marxist definitely believes the utopia is inevitable, but also believes it can't be worked toward in any physical or political terms. If an asteroid hit the planet and plummeted us back into a feudal stage, he'd be content to be in that stage because he'd be certain it would give way to mercantilism and then to capitalism and ultimately to the workers' paradise. He rejects revolution as a path to utopia, because Marx' progression must occur naturally; to attempt to force it is to delay it.

To a great extent the spiritual Marxist shares ground with the optimists who believe that the human race is evolving to some more powerful yet benign stage of evolution, where people will be free from hunger and other physical needs because they've changed. There's a subtle difference, though: the spiritual Marxist believes that humans already have what is needed, but social forces trap us in the chrysalis, so to speak. That's evident in such statements of faith as "greed is not something we are born with". That may be so, but it is not demonstrable; the picture in Lord of the Flies may be the truth, after all. "There are enough resources" is another statement of faith, held despite analysis which makes it dubious at best.

So -- and this is the connection whence the term derives -- spiritual Marxism is akin to (to coin and mangle some phraseology) laissez-faire evangelical Christianity, wherein believers are certain that everyone will come to (faith in) Christ, but really don't believe there is anything practical they can do to make it happen: it will come to pass, and the only thing they have to do with it is to spread the word and otherwise be content in whatever situation obtains.


That probably doesn't do it justice, but then my reading of Marx ended in giggles late one night reading a Western Civ 301 text flat on my back in a recliner chair, staring at a ceiling with darts in it, with Wagner (IIRC) playing on the stereo, when I realized that the only way to know if Marx is even close is to catch a ride to the future on something faster than the stately march of quantum tau progression. I decided that the only sensible version of Marxism was spiritual Marxism (though I hadn't heard the term yet), because the process can no be forced than could I leap forward in a time machine to observe if it occurs at all.

 

[construct]

Well... not really.

The spiritual Marxist definitely believes the utopia is inevitable, but also believes it can't be worked toward in any physical or political terms. If an asteroid hit the planet and plummeted us back into a feudal stage, he'd be content to be in that stage because he'd be certain it would give way to mercantilism and then to capitalism and ultimately to the workers' paradise. He rejects revolution as a path to utopia, because Marx' progression must occur naturally; to attempt to force it is to delay it.

To a great extent the spiritual Marxist shares ground with the optimists who believe that the human race is evolving to some more powerful yet benign stage of evolution, where people will be free from hunger and other physical needs because they've changed. There's a subtle difference, though: the spiritual Marxist believes that humans already have what is needed, but social forces trap us in the chrysalis, so to speak. That's evident in such statements of faith as "greed is not something we are born with". That may be so, but it is not demonstrable; the picture in Lord of the Flies may be the truth, after all. "There are enough resources" is another statement of faith, held despite analysis which makes it dubious at best.

So -- and this is the connection whence the term derives -- spiritual Marxism is akin to (to coin and mangle some phraseology) laissez-faire evangelical Christianity, wherein believers are certain that everyone will come to (faith in) Christ, but really don't believe there is anything practical they can do to make it happen: it will come to pass, and the only thing they have to do with it is to spread the word and otherwise be content in whatever situation obtains.


That probably doesn't do it justice, but then my reading of Marx ended in giggles late one night reading a Western Civ 301 text flat on my back in a recliner chair, staring at a ceiling with darts in it, with Wagner (IIRC) playing on the stereo, when I realized that the only way to know if Marx is even close is to catch a ride to the future on something faster than the stately march of quantum tau progression. I decided that the only sensible version of Marxism was spiritual Marxism (though I hadn't heard the term yet), because the process can no be forced than could I leap forward in a time machine to observe if it occurs at all.

So it's just a fancy version of post-millenialism. How disappointing! It may be closer to Motmann, I don't know. For him the church does have a function in making progress toward the goal through social and political action and the like, but it is not revolutionary like with guns and stuff.

Moltmann was writing in dialogue with Adorno, Althuser, Horkheimer, and Habermas. It might be time for me to look more closely at the Frankfurt school.

 

[kallipolis]

Text book theories are fine for those who believe that Utopian theories can be transferred from books into our daily realities with the ease that most of us can make a cup of coffee.

I am old enough to have played the part of Odysseus during my student days, when travelling around the Soviet Bloc countries.

Hungary impressed me. Romania disgusted me. Poland enthused me with its people's sense of pride and self respect. I missed out on The Ukraine, and Bulgaria but included Albania, and now understand why we here in Greece have been invaded by so many hundreds of thousands of Albanians.

Communism as it was practised in Eastern Europe was a depressing indictment of theoretical ideas, that in practice translated into an Soviet controlled empire of totalitarian regimes, whose peoples suffered under the weight of enormous corruption, exploitation and denial of humanitarian values that we take for granted in The West.

As inefficient, as our free enterprise system is, I will always appreciate the shortcomings and successes of capitalism, in preference to the miseries that Communism imposed upon Eastern Europe.



Johann's reference to the success of the DDR reminded me that so many East Germans risked their lives (many lost their lives) fleeing into capital West Germany, to escape the DDRs success stories. I cannot recall West Germans moving East to escape the capitalism of the GDR.

 

[Kulindahr]

So it's just a fancy version of post-millenialism. How disappointing! It may be closer to Motmann, I don't know. For him the church does have a function in making progress toward the goal through social and political action and the like, but it is not revolutionary like with guns and stuff.

Moltmann was writing in dialogue with Adorno, Althuser, Horkheimer, and Habermas. It might be time for me to look more closely at the Frankfurt school.

I suppose.

I just saw it as a case of people being so certain they were right that they didn't see any need to act -- a faith visible through inaction, if you will.

Though maybe KrisHawk here is more in line with Moltmann -- he's at least talking about the goal, which encourages action even if there's no call to action. "Spiritual-evangelistic Marxism"?

 

[Kulindahr]

^ I want to tell you one quick fact, Kall, before I give you a cite.

The quick fact is that Eastern Europe, and especially the DDR, was reduced to rubble after WW2.

The United States pumped billions of 1940 $ into Western Europe. By contrast, the Soviet Union, which was reduced to a pulp itself, had no money to rebuild Eastern Europe.

So your comparison is unfair.

That being said, the DDR accomplished a most remarkable feat. Starting from a point of complete devastation, and with few natural resources, it built a civilization out of scratch.

And now, the cite:

http://snipurl.com/zyz2v

I note the one person at that site who said he'd never seen anyone homeless before.

You don't see anyone homeless here where I am, either -- because to be homeless and visibly so is a crime (not in name, of course, but still a crime).

 

[construct]

This thread needs new life. How about Billy Bragg singing "The Internatione"? It's the translation he worked out with Pete Seeger's help.



Here are the lyrics, so you can sing along. (One usually stands with one fist up at an angle (perhaps the left)).

Stand up, all victims of oppression
For the tyrants fear your might
Don't cling so hard to your possessions
For you have nothing, if you have no rights
Let racist ignorance be ended
For respect makes the empires fall
Freedom is merely privilege extended
Unless enjoyed by one and all

Chorus:
So come brothers and sisters
For the struggle carries on
The Internationale
Unites the world in song
So comrades come rally
For this is the time and place
The international ideal
Unites the human race

Let no one build walls to divide us
Walls of hatred nor walls of stone
Come greet the dawn and stand beside us
We'll live together or we'll die alone
In our world poisoned by exploitation
Those who have taken, now they must give
And end the vanity of nations
We've but one Earth on which to live

And so begins the final drama
In the streets and in the fields
We stand unbowed before their armour
We defy their guns and shields
When we fight, provoked by their aggression
Let us be inspired by life and love
For though they offer us concessions
Change will not come from above

 

[philusmc]

Let me weigh in from a slightly different angle -- a more narrowly focused on the day-to-day acts of "capitalism" that we encounter in our daily lives. Not to date myself too much, but I can actually remember when you could engage a service or buy a product without the fear of being ripped off or deliberated cheated. That you actually were sold something with quality craftsmanship or a service delivered with ethical and professional intent. If you find such today, it would be like finding a dinosaur bone in your back yard -- RARE. Every aspect of our "capital" establishment -- from the mega corporations to the local corner shop, is designed to rip you off, to cheat you, to misrepresent their product/service just to jack up the price. The boom of the internet provided an entirely new tool for the cheats and frauds. If we can extract the money that is wasted in this country because of fraud or a lame attempt to counter fraud we probably could advance the lifes of lower/middle class folks tremendously.
I know this is a narrow view on a much more complicated and complex world of "capitalism" but, nonetheless, liars,cheats, fraud does enter into the picture. I know this probably will come across as being more cynical than it really is.

 

[Kulindahr]

^ The internet is a powerful tool the other way, too. Looking for a vehicle a few years ago, I did a web search and found most of the area dealers listed, with attached customer comments. It wasn't hard to figure out which outfits were crappy and which good.