Can proletarians truly exist in today's first-world nations with social security programs (mostly the EU member nations)? And if so, what percentage of the population do they make up there? Obviously if everyone suddenly stopped working and relied on unemployment benefits the bourgeois state would find a way to force them to work
again, existing unemployed are also already heckled.
But today as it stands even if you have no other reason not to work than simply not wanting to, your survival, your life, your weal and woe are never under threat in the nations this question is concerned with. Thoughts?
>>2427016>>2427029……you think everyone is under welfare, even in developed countries or that theres no workers living in immiserated conditions there?
>>2427032funnily enough MLs pretend communism is when you increase the size of the middle class lol
>>2427045"Capital is the command over the unpaid labor of others. The house of the worker can only become capital therefore if he rents it to a third person and appropriates a part of the labor product of this third person in the form of rent. By the fact that the worker lives in it himself the house is prevented from becoming capital, just as a coat ceases to be capital the moment I buy it from the tailor and put it on. The worker who owns a little house to the value of a thousand talers is certainly no longer a proletarian, but one must be Dr. Sax to call him a capitalist."
From Engels' Housing Question
Industrial workers in rich EU nations are overwhelmingly middle class. They are not proletarians, despite having to sell their labour power to make ends meet
>>2427069Half correct. Petite bourgeoise first worlder, however have family that lives off SS and while its not pretty, they arent exactly dying of starvation or even so immiserated that they would ever consider revolting
In any case, the bourgeois state obviously only organizes these sorts of programs because it ensures a more effective utilization of the labour power of its subjects in the long run. But if it has the side effect of also preventing the formation of a revolutionary proletariat that is a relevant question with regards to how to deal with that
>>2427077There's no first world "labor power". Most first world workers engage in management and realization of third world labor power (ingredients grown by third worlders or internally colonized workers bought for suppressed prices, assembled and sold for superprofits).
Welfare and concessions aren't there to placate proletarians or make things more efficient or whatever, they're there to NO LONGER MAKE THEM PROLETARIANS. Because capitalists more than anyone understand the danger of having proletarians around near them.
So they put the proletarians on the other side of the globe, and only keep the management around. Like the macro version of corporate structure.
>>2427053> They are not proletarians, despite having to sell their labour power to make ends meetWhy not? That's
the defining feature of the proletariat
>>2427084Not every worker is a proletarian, despite nearly all of them having to sell their labour power (ignore the edge case of rich people who work for fulfillment or other reasons)
If you are worker but your exploitation is small enough that you can build up reserves, obtain property (majority of middle class in first world nations own a home) etc. you gain a stake in bourgeois society. The distinction is made because the proletarians, the ones who truly have nothing to gain in this mode of production, are therefore the ones with the natural interest of abolishing themselves as a class
>>2427083This is liberal schizobabble. Extraction from the third world, and hence western factories acting as middle-men to transform the raw resources into finished prosucts has been the case since the dawn of capitalism.
Why in the hell would acquiring inputs from the outside change anything about the worker-capitalist relationship? Because you said so?
Secondly
> Welfare and concessions aren't there to placate proletarians or make things more efficient or whatever, they're there to NO LONGER MAKE THEM PROLETARIANS.Is ahistorical bullshit. Those gains were made by proles who fough for it, and changes jackshit about the on the ground relations.
Not just that, but:
- They have been progressively retracted since the 70's, with the final move against socialized healthcare hapoening as we speak. That makes no fucking sense if porky actually wanted firsties to have welfare and such
- Welfare is far from a first-world exclusive: subsidies, unemployment benefits etc are also common amomg the third world
You're a fucking clown at best and a fedplant made to combat any sign of class conciousness at worst.
>>2427096I agree with the first point obviously but there have been cases where bourgeois governments have realized that welfare can work in their favour, the most famous case being Bismarck in the German Empire
It is a pretty useful thing for the bourgeois state to be able to force workers via deductions to spend part of their wage on a fund for the unemployed, since the process of production under capitalism will always produce them and if they survive through the unemployment period their labour power is available still in the future, they also act a "reserve army of labour"
For this reason I dont believe things like unemployment benefits are going to be fully abolished in most of the first world, they provide usefulness to the bourgeoisie. Maybe if the government is made up of mouth breathing inbreds like seems to be the case in the US right now
>>2427087> The distinction is made because the proletarians, the ones who truly have nothing to gain in this mode of production, are therefore the ones with the natural interest of abolishing themselves as a classSince when did proletariat mean revolutionary? The proletariat can be revolutionary because it has an interest in abolishing capitalism, but a class being revolutionary is a condition which also dictated by may superstructural, non stricly material reasons. Moreover, if the non-proletariat have no revolutionary potential as you say, then there's no reason to push them towards them, leading therfore to renewed low-revolutionarity.
The problem is that a definition such as yours makes the whole existence of a class entirely subjective depending on the year
revolutionary potential of a class
>>2427113westoid labor chauvinists like you object at the notion that westoids aren't proletarians because "that would mean revolution in the west is impossible", forgetting the millions of proletarians in the west who are excluded from the categories of "western" and "citizen", by design.
It's the feature of western ideology to forget about the existence of immigrants, lumpens, the declassed, colonized, criminals, etc. etc. within their own countries and think of themselves as the subjects of history.
>>2427113I did not say that every proletarian has to be revolutionary. I did say and affirm that the proletariat as a class has the revolutionary interest of abolishing itself, no matter how the current status of the consciousness of this fact is in the individuals that make up this class.
And yes, the non-proletariat has no revolutionary potential. What would the middle class revolutionary program be? Protecting their assets? More fair competition and protection against big business? This is the essence of impotent middle class political movements and already exists for a long time
>>2427114Ain't no mautist
>>2427115I am sorry but classes have objective definitions which don't depend on how much they're likely to throw a revolution that year.
Riddle me this: if they aren't proles, then who is the bourg exploiting? And if they aren't exploiting these people in the first world, then why are they employing them, while also cutting their wages and benefits for the past half-century? Is the first world the only place without a proletariat? Where the argentinian, indian, mongolian, maldivian, uzbek, indonesian and moroccan proletariat? None of these groups are about to throw a revolution anytime soon, so I suppose they aren't prles either, innit?
>>2427113>calling others liberals<we communists have to convince the masses into abolishing capitalismYup, just another day on leftoidpol.
>Since when did proletariat mean revolutionary?The absolute fucking state.
>a class being revolutionary is a condition which also dictated by may superstructural, non stricly material reasonsThis illiterate retard is just sayin' things at this points and sprinkling some buzzwords that would only convince other fellow retards.
The proletariat are revolutionary because they don't have control over
any means of production, a complete lack of stake in the functions of capital and state, thus disenfranchised from the proceeds of social labour, so have to sell their capacity to work as a commodity to not starve and die. That's why they have nothing to lose (unless those with property or reserves).
>>2427016>>2427040This isn't to say the proletariat doesn't care about protecting their wages. But the thing is, if you're middle class with a decent income, you're not as revolutionary as the proletariat, who quite literally have nothing to lose. The proletariat's revolt is driven by their economic needs, which turn into political goals as capitalism pushes them towards that. Communists can convince them of this, and once they realize their goal goes beyond just a wage increase, they develop political aspirations. The people who are into these revolts are mostly prole motivated by their needs, while the middle class is more focused on preserving their current status and often doesn't even engage in the revolt and engage as to go back to their previous status.
Think about it: a single mom working at Walmart, trying to support her kids in a crime-ridden neighborhood, compared to some business assistant living comfortably with a high-paying job. How does class society affect them, and who's more likely to get involved in a revolution?
It's funny how pseuds here get their idea of revolution is all about education and voluntarism. They think they're doing great by targeting everyone, but I've always said what drives some to revolt is their daily struggle, while others are comfortable. Education along when you unite proletarians against capitalism and help them organize and collective action. Meanwhile you morons think literally everyone can just be assimilated into the revolution.
>>2427117What is this middle class? Did you find a specimen that neither works or emplys?
>>2427123Do youbreally have anything besides cope? Or are you on about how the USSR collapsed some 20 years before it actually did, that welfare rained from the sky in the west or that neoliberalism had to be forced into the west? You're a manchild who thinks highly of himself by putting the other westerners down. Honestly I think the definition of gusano wpuld be accurate, since ypu like to champion an enlightened foreigner while putting your connationals down.
>>2427132This retarded subhuman is so confidently talking about shit they don't even bother reading about, incredible. The kneejerk reaction to the term "middle class" is pretty funny too, plus the Amerifat conception of middle class as solely "small business owner" and absolutely nothing else.
Try actually engaging with Marx instead of educating yourself on tweets!
>>2427146Absolitely illiterate.
> the history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own efforts, is able to develop only trade union consciousnessWhich is why you need a party of revolutionaries, because otherwise the proletariat by itself doesn't really try to overthrow the goverment and such: a political program, organization and party are needed
>>2427091Not all poor people have interests outside of capitalism which is what distinguishes middle class and lower class people scientifically. The poor farmer, more privileged wage earner with disposable income, artisan and SBO have more incentive to care more about expanding or conserving their little reserves rather than struggle against bourgeois society because they have no other option and have nothing to lose. If you're poor but still have assets to lose that sustain your subsistence beyond barely livable earnings, you're not lower class even if there's overlap with the conditions of living.
You have substantially different relation to how you relate to capitalist society, even if the distinction
apparently seems negligible or semantic, which is exactly what bourgeois ideologies strive at; to conflate the proletarians and poor middle classers together as "consumers" in economics or "citizens" in political science, so as to obscure proletarian class independence and the reemergence of a labour movement based on solely proletarian class interests.
>>2427153>The proletariat doesn't even have to be a majority because communism isn't about democracy>>2267132>communism isn't democratic
>It is ridiculous to think that Mr. Kautsky could find in any country even one out of a thousand of well-informed workers or farm labourers who would have any doubts as to the reply. Instinctively, from hearing fragments of admissions of the truth in the bourgeois press, the workers of the whole world sympathise with the Soviet Republic precisely because they regard it as a proletarian democracy, a democracy for the poor, and not a democracy for the rich that every bourgeois democracy, even the best, actually is.https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1918/prrk/democracy.htmSURELY LENIN WAS ONLY SPEAKING METAPHORICALLY
SURELY COMMUNISTS REJECT ALL DEMOCRACY AND DIDN'T ACTUALLY BELIEVE THERE WAS ANY SUCH THING AS PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACY
>>2427153It doean't
have to be, but it
is >>2427169>Your post is a self-reference to imply continuity that the bourgeois still cater towards communism Not what I said at all and anyone can scroll up and read.
>or that communism originated wholly from themyou have made up two things I didn't say
>if you want to pull shit out of your ass you would at least have to imply a connection between continuity of Hegel and Marx, Here is another "filibuster" for you, courtesy of Marx himself:
>Whilst the writer pictures what he takes to be actually my method, in this striking and [as far as concerns my own application of it] generous way, what else is he picturing but the dialectic method? Of course the method of presentation must differ in form from that of inquiry. The latter has to appropriate the material in detail, to analyse its different forms of development, to trace out their inner connexion. Only after this work is done, can the actual movement be adequately described. If this is done successfully, if the life of the subject-matter is ideally reflected as in a mirror, then it may appear as if we had before us a mere a priori construction. My dialectic method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is its direct opposite. To Hegel, the life process of the human brain, i.e., the process of thinking, which, under the name of “the Idea,” he even transforms into an independent subject, is the demiurgos of the real world, and the real world is only the external, phenomenal form of “the Idea.” With me, on the contrary, the ideal is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought. The mystifying side of Hegelian dialectic I criticised nearly thirty years ago, at a time when it was still the fashion. But just as I was working at the first volume of Das Kapital, it was the good pleasure of the peevish, arrogant, mediocre Ἐπίγονοι [Epigones — Büchner, Dühring and others] who now talk large in cultured Germany, to treat Hegel in same way as the brave Moses Mendelssohn in Lessing’s time treated Spinoza, i.e., as a “dead dog.” I therefore openly avowed myself the pupil of that mighty thinker, and even here and there, in the chapter on the theory of value, coquetted with the modes of expression peculiar to him. The mystification which dialectic suffers in Hegel’s hands, by no means prevents him from being the first to present its general form of working in a comprehensive and conscious manner. With him it is standing on its head. It must be turned right side up again, if you would discover the rational kernel within the mystical shell. In its mystified form, dialectic became the fashion in Germany, because it seemed to transfigure and to glorify the existing state of things. In its rational form it is a scandal and abomination to bourgeoisdom and its doctrinaire professors, because it includes in its comprehension and affirmative recognition of the existing state of things, at the same time also, the recognition of the negation of that state, of its inevitable breaking up; because it regards every historically developed social form as in fluid movement, and therefore takes into account its transient nature not less than its momentary existence; because it lets nothing impose upon it, and is in its essence critical and revolutionary. The contradictions inherent in the movement of capitalist society impress themselves upon the practical bourgeois most strikingly in the changes of the periodic cycle, through which modern industry runs, and whose crowning point is the universal crisis. That crisis is once again approaching, although as yet but in its preliminary stage; and by the universality of its theatre and the intensity of its action it will drum dialectics even into the heads of the mushroom-upstarts of the new, holy Prusso-German empire.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p3.htmmarx began writing his economic manuscripts around 1858, so thats a conservative estimate. reading the young marx, it s clear to see his anti-hegelianism, but later in life, comes back to him.
>>2427167You're making shit up to mask illiteracy, if "communism was leftist" you would think at least Marx, Engels or Lenin would have said so, but instead its just self-referenced bullshit masked as "analysis"
>HURRR COMMUNISM EXISTS BECAUSE OTHER THINGS HAPPENED BEFORE SO THATS CONTINUITY that's like saying general secretariat is continuity of tsardom because tsardom precedes it.
>>2427176we have gone from
>its a filibusterto
>you're making shit upyou are incapable of responding directly, and you will just say it is because you don't have to. fine. well I don't have to respond at all. have a nice rest of your weekend. hope you don't waste it being stupid.
>>2427159>PROLETARIAN DEMOCRACYlmfaooo i was just posting on another thread about how whenever someone uses these two specific words together you know they read lenin in the most retarded way possible
lenin does explicitly talk about proletarian democracy, but morons being morons of course they misunderstand what he means. they think its some sort of special version of the democratic procedure that automatically produces a "proletarian" outcome and have to lie about what it means because all they can do is quotemine out of context
>be lenin, scoffing "bourgeois patriotism"<retards here: ermmmm so dialectically speaking we can have a proletarian patriotism 🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔🤔 everyone ITT should read Age of Extremes by Hobesbawm to get a good historical accounting of the important historical changes to the world between 1914 and 1991, including with regards to the first world and class.
>>2427185communism is post-hegelian. To be post-something is to be continuous with that something, rather than purely contrary with it. Marx absorbed aspects of Hegel and rejcted others. That is not discontinuity, it is exactly what is meant with continuity. Also it's weird you jumepd from implying communism is totally divorced from the bourgeois revolutions that came before to making it about hegel. Hegel was a philosopher. He was not Robespierre or Garibaldi or really a bourgeois revolutionary at all
>>2427159Incredible to post this text from Lenin and not even understand it yourself. Truly a shithole filled with nothing but illiterate fucks.
The content of democracy "changes every time the Demos changes" (Engels). This is why Lenin points out that to speak of pure democracy, i.e. democracy in isolation from class and the economic situation of the voters, is absurd. But for you fucks democracy automatically has a proletarian content, which means that any bourgeois state has to be condemned as undemocratic.
What you retards are doing is exactly what Lenin criticises in Kautsky. >>2427215 (Me)
P.S. There is not a SINGLE mention of Marx, Engels or Lenin continuing with the "leftism" brand. Keep fuming.
>>2427268Not beating the history illiteracy accusations.
Like I'm sorry but even if ᴉuᴉlossnW wasn't as outright brutal as hitler, weaving a red flag or saying you were a commie would get you in exile at best, and more likely dead otherwise, which isn't the case in west as of now. You only have big words that you throw around fruitlessly.
>>2427016IM GASPING FOR AIR, IT SAYS IT RIGHT THERE, HOLY SHIT
>The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century.THE PROLETARIAT DOESN'T EXIST ANYMORE, ITS THE 21ST CENTURY. WHAT THE HELL HAVE WE BEEN ARGUING FOR ALL THIS TIME?
>>2427386mid 17th century: from Latin proletarius (from proles ‘offspring’),
denoting a person having no wealth in property, who only served the state by producing offspring, + -an.
HOLY SHIT, THE PROLETARIAT'S ROOT WAS BREEDING. THE PROLETARIAT'S DEFINITIVE CHARACTERISTIC IS BREEDING. IF PEOPLE STOP BREEDING (GO ON A STRIKE TO REFUSE TO REPRODUCE) THEN THEY HAVE THE LEVERAGE OVER THE STATE INSTRUMENT. HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT. HOLY SHIT.
>>2427407Why should they?
They're excited but I doubt they're about to give themselves a heart attack, and they are cooking
The one thing they're missing; peace means overproduction, the productive forces causing a profitability crisis; and then if an attempt to fix that with war occurs, then anons iron logic comes into play
>>2427386"You have nothing to lose but your chains" was a pro-prison statement.
"Workers of the world, unite" meant that we should do a good job, working for the bourgeoisie.
"A specter haunting Europe" was about the importance of ghost busting.
>>2427016All first-world countries have proletarians, including Israel, for the identitarians here who romanticize the proletariat as something moral. The petty bourgeoisie is made up of workers who control the means of production but do not earn the majority of their livelihood through the exploitation of other workers through their ownership relationship. This includes artisans, small independent shop owners, and independent peasants. Because of this, they tend to be politically confused by market competition and antisocial tendencies, where their only choice is to accept the common interest with the proletariat or be puppets who will be discarded by the bourgeoisie. Many resentful people here don't even know the difference between a productive worker and an unproductive worker. Communists can be from other classes of workers if they accept the supremacy of the proletariat to abolish private property, abolish the anarchy of production, and act on what they have in common for this class to have political domination in the dictatorship of the proletariat to exercise revolutionary terror. This includes capitalists if they wish to be class traitors for the extinction of their own class.
Let's begin with an example of a petty bourgeoisie that refuses to act in concert with the proletariat, as per Marx:
<No one had fought more fanatically in the June days for the salvation of property and the restoration of credit than the Parisian petty bourgeois – keepers of cafes and restaurants, marchands de vins [wine merchants], small traders, shopkeepers, handicraftsman, etc. The shopkeeper had pulled himself together and marched against the barricades in order to restore the traffic which leads from the streets into the shop. But behind the barricade stood the customers and the debtors; before it the creditors of the shop. And when the barricades were thrown down and the workers were crushed and the shopkeepers, drunk with victory, rushed back to their shops, they found the entrance barred by a savior of property, an official agent of credit, who presented them with threatening notices: Overdue promissory note! Overdue house rent! Overdue bond! Doomed shop! Doomed shopkeeper!
<Salvation of property! But the house they lived in was not their property; the shop they kept was not their property; the commodities they dealt in were not their property. Neither their business, nor the plate they ate from, nor the bed they slept on belonged to them any longer. It was precisely from them that this property had to be saved – for the house-owner who let the house, for the banker who discounted the promissory note, for the capitalist who made the advances in cash, for the manufacturer who entrusted the sale of his commodities to these retailers, for the wholesale dealer who had credited the raw materials to these handicraftsman. Restoration of credit! But credit, having regained strength, proved itself a vigorous and jealous god; it turned the debtor who could not pay out of his four walls, together with wife and child, surrendered his sham property to capital, and threw the man himself into the debtors’ prison, which had once more reared its head threateningly over the corpses of the June insurgents.
<The petty bourgeois saw with horror that by striking down the workers they had delivered themselves without resistance into the hands of their creditors. Their bankruptcy, which since February had been dragging on in chronic fashion and had apparently been ignored, was openly declared after June.
<Karl Marx, The Class Struggles in France, 1848 to 1850https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1850/class-struggles-france/ch02.htmNow let's pick up with Lenin on the labor aristocracy and the chauvinism of opportunists:
<In a letter to Marx, dated October 7, 1858, Engels wrote: “…The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.” In a letter to Sorge, dated September 21, 1872, Engels informs him that Hales kicked up a big row in the Federal Council of the International and secured a vote of censure on Marx for saying that “the English labour leaders had sold themselves”. Marx wrote to Sorge on August 4, 1874: “As to the urban workers here [in England], it is a pity that the whole pack of leaders did not get into Parliament. This would be the surest way of getting rid of the whole lot.” In a letter to Marx, dated August 11, 1881, Engels speaks about “those very worst English trade unions which allow themselves to be led by men sold to, or at least paid by, the bourgeoisie.” In a letter to Kautsky, dated September 12, 1882, Engels wrote: “You ask me what the English workers think about colonial policy. Well, exactly the same as they think about politics in general. There is no workers’ party here, there are only Conservatives and Liberal-Radicals, and the workers gaily share the feast of England’s monopoly of the world market and the colonies.”
<On December 7, 1889, Engels wrote to Sorge: “The most repulsive thing here [in England] is the bourgeois ‘respectability’, which has grown deep into the bones of the workers…. Even Tom Mann, whom I regard as the best of the lot, is fond of mentioning that he will be lunching with the Lord Mayor. If one compares this with the French, one realises, what a revolution is good for, after all.”[10] In a letter, dated April 19, 1890: “But under the surface the movement [of the working class in England] is going on, is embracing ever wider sections and mostly just among the hitherto stagnant lowest [Engels’s italics] strata. The day is no longer far off when this mass will suddenly find itself, when it will dawn upon it that it itself is this colossal mass in motion.” On March 4, 1891: “The failure of the collapsed Dockers’ Union; the ‘old’ conservative trade unions, rich and therefore cowardly, remain lone on the field….” September 14, 1891: at the Newcastle Trade Union Congress the old unionists, opponents of the eight-hour day, were defeated “and the bourgeois papers recognise the defeat of the bourgeois labour party” (Engels’s italics throughout)….
<That these ideas, which were repeated by Engels over the course of decades, were so expressed by him publicly, in the press, is proved by his preface to the second edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England, 1892. Here he speaks of an “aristocracy among the working class”, of a “privileged minority of the workers”, in contradistinction to the “great mass of working people”. “A small, privileged, protected minority” of the working class alone was “permanently benefited” by the privileged position of England in 1848–68, whereas “the great bulk of them experienced at best but a temporary improvement”…. “With the break-down of that [England’s industrial] monopoly, the English working class will lose that privileged position…” The members of the “new” unions, the unions of the unskilled workers, “had this immense advantage, that their minds were virgin soil, entirely free from the inherited ‘respectable’ bourgeois prejudices which hampered the brains of the better situated ‘old unionists’” …. “The so-called workers’ representatives” in England are people “who are forgiven their being members of the working class because they themselves would like to drown their quality of being workers in the ocean of their liberalism…”[…]
<The bourgeoisie of an imperialist “Great” Power can economically bribe the upper strata of “its” workers by spending on this a hundred million or so francs a year, for its superprofits most likely amount to about a thousand million. And how this little sop is divided among the labour ministers, “labour representatives” (remember Engels’s splendid analysis of the term), labour members of War Industries Committees, labour officials, workers belonging to the narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question.[…]
<The last third of the nineteenth century saw the transition to the new, imperialist era. Finance capital not of one, but of several, though very few, Great Powers enjoys a monopoly. (In Japan and Russia the monopoly of military power, vast territories, or special facilities for robbing minority nationalities, China, etc., partly supplements, partly takes the place of, the monopoly of modern, up-to-date finance capital.) This difference explains why England’s monopoly position could remain unchallenged for decades. The monopoly of modern finance capital is being frantically challenged; the era of imperialist wars has begun. It was possible in those days to bribe and corrupt the working class of one country for decades. This is now improbable, if not impossible. But on the other hand, every imperialist “Great” Power can and does bribe smaller strata (than in England in 1848–68) of the “labour aristocracy”. Formerly a “bourgeois labour party”, to use Engels’s remarkably profound expression, could arise only in one country, because it alone enjoyed a monopoly, but, on the other hand, it could exist for a long time. Now a “bourgeois labour party” is inevitable and typical in all imperialist countries; but in view of the desperate struggle they are waging for the division of spoils it is improbable that such a party can prevail for long in a number of countries. For the trusts, the financial oligarchy, high prices, etc., while enabling the bribery of a handful in the top layers, are increasingly oppressing, crushing, ruining and torturing the mass of the proletariat and the semi-proletariat.[…]
<On the economic basis referred to above, the political institutions of modern capitalism—press, parliament associations, congresses etc.—have created political privileges and sops for the respectful, meek, reformist and patriotic office employees and workers, corresponding to the economic privileges and sops. Lucrative and soft jobs in the government or on the war industries committees, in parliament and on diverse committees, on the editorial staffs of “respectable”, legally published newspapers or on the management councils of no less respectable and “bourgeois law-abiding” trade unions—this is the bait by which the imperialist bourgeoisie attracts and rewards the representatives and supporters of the “bourgeois labour parties”.
<One of the most common sophistries of Kautskyism is its reference to the “masses”. We do not want, they say, to break away from the masses and mass organisations! But just think how Engels put the question. In the nineteenth century the “mass organisations” of the English trade unions were on the side of the bourgeois labour party. Marx and Engels did not reconcile themselves to it on this ground; they exposed it. They did not forget, firstly, that the trade union organisations directly embraced a minority of the proletariat. In England then, as in Germany now, not more than one-fifth of the proletariat was organised. No one can seriously think it possible to organise the majority of the proletariat under capitalism. Secondly—and this is the main point—it is not so much a question of the size of an organisation, as of the real, objective significance of its policy: does its policy represent the masses, does it serve them, i.e., does it aim at their liberation from capitalism, or does it represent the interests of the minority, the minority’s reconciliation with capitalism? The latter was true of England in the nineteenth century, and it is true of Germany, etc., now.
<Engels draws a distinction between the “bourgeois labour party” of the old trade unions—the privileged minority—and the “lowest mass”, the real majority, and appeals to the latter, who are not infected by “bourgeois respectability”. This is the essence of Marxist tactics!
<Neither we nor anyone else can calculate precisely what portion of the proletariat is following and will follow the social-chauvinists and opportunists. This will be revealed only by the struggle, it will be definitely decided only by the socialist revolution. But we know for certain that the “defenders of the fatherland” in the imperialist war represent only a minority. And it is therefore our duty, if we wish to remain socialists to go down lower and deeper, to the real masses; this is the whole meaning and the whole purport of the struggle against opportunism. By exposing the fact that the opportunists and social-chauvinists are in reality betraying and selling the interests of the masses, that they are defending the temporary privileges of a minority of the workers, that they are the vehicles of bourgeois ideas and influences, that they are really allies and agents of the bourgeoisie, we teach the masses to appreciate their true political interests, to fight for socialism and for the revolution through all the long and painful vicissitudes of imperialist wars and imperialist armistices.
<The only Marxist line in the world labour movement is to explain to the masses the inevitability and necessity of breaking with opportunism, to educate them for revolution by waging a relentless struggle against opportunism, to utilise the experience of the war to expose, not conceal, the utter vileness of national-liberal labour politics.
<V.I. Lenin, “Imperialism and the Split in Socialism” https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1916/oct/x01.htm >>2427510>>2427532Wrong, so why do you think Marx and Engels were in favor of cutting all indirect taxes on products consumed by workers, including alcohol, if these workers are unable to consume alcohol due to a lack of reserves, according to your fantasy of what a proletarian is.
Let's look at examples of Marx and Engels' political programs to prove my point:
<15. Introduction of strongly progressive taxes and abolition of taxes on consumption.
<Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels March 1848, Demands of the Communist Party in Germanyhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/03/24.htm
<12. Abolition of all indirect taxes and transformation of all direct taxes into a progressive tax on incomes over 3,000 francs. Suppression of all inheritance on a collateral line [8] and of all direct inheritance over 20,000 francs.
<Karl Marx and Jules Guesde 1880, The Programme of the Parti Ouvrierhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1880/05/parti-ouvrier.htmLet's take an example of Lenin's political program before the revolution:
<As a basic condition for the democratisation of our country’s national economy, the Russian Social-Democratic Labour Party demands the abolition of all indirect taxes and the establishment of a progressive tax on incomes and inheritances.[…]
<8) State insurance for workers covering old age and total or partial disablement out of a special fund formed by a special tax on the capitalists.
<8) Full social insurance of workers:
<a) for all forms of wage-labour;
<b) for all forms of disablement, namely, sickness, injury, infirmity, old age, occupational disease, child-birth, widowhood, orphanhood, and also unemployment, etc.
<c) all insurance institutions to be administered entirely by the insured themselves;
<d) the cost of insurance to be borne by the capitalists;
<e) free medical and medicinal aid under the control of self-governing sick benefit societies, the management bodies of which are to be elected by the workers.
<V. I. Lenin, Materials Relating to the Revision of the Party Programme, Draft of Revised Programmehttps://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/reviprog/ch04.htm >>2427347I actually work in a factory and it employs thousands of people.
>>2429470>The Sahel social coup regimes for oneNone of those governments are communists, nor do they claim to be. They're nationalist social democrats at best, which is obviously an improvement and worth supporting, but they don't show any indication of overturning capitalist class relations in their countries. However we've been through this a million times by now: non-communist nationalists in the third world sell out and become compradors far more often than not. The INC, the KMT, Iraqi Ba'athists, Nasserites, even all the African "ML" states that immediately went socdem in 1991, etc. Moreover those governments came to power in military coups (albeit popular ones), not as a result of an organized working class seizing power. They don't contribute to the thesis that the third world proletariat and peasantry are more revolutionary in the Marxist sense.
>>2427215>Are you implying socialism itself has bourgeois liberal origins?It literally does through Fourier, Owen, and other Bourgeois Utopian Socialists. Utopian Socialism evolved out of classical liberal enlightenment, and was seen as a natural extension of those ideals. The scientific socialism of Marx and Engels was both a critique of Utopian Socialism, but a continutation of it at the same time. Scientific socialism is post-utopian socialism. But it is not anti-socialism or non-socialism. It is a socialism that kept the socialism and removed the utopianism. This goes back to what we were saying about being post-something not being the same as being non-something, or anti-something.
Scientific Socialists also inherited the revolutionary zeal of the Jacobins and sans culottes while learning from their bourgeois mistakes.
>>2429515I agree, and that's why I view them positively, but again, let's be realistic about the benefits these governments can provide and their limitations.
>>2429510Of course brown people can do socialism. I'd say Cuba is probably the most authentic socialist state in the world, probably in history. But these governments in the Sahel do not even claim to be socialist.
401k is finance imperialism, probably
https://www.top1000funds.com/2024/07/profiting-from-war-europes-pension-funds-mull-investing-in-defence/>>2427506>All first-world countries have proletarians, including Israel, for the identitarians here who romanticize the proletariat as something moral.Marxism is about praxis, not mere analysis. A less academic definition might see the proletariat "identity" as the subset of workers who recognize their own collective power to push history forward and enact their own dictatorship. Liberals have false consciousness and reject proletarian morality. Liberals want to be kulak landlords
>>2427601<"Socialism never took root in America because the poor see themselves not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires"how's it going?
>>2427606>Workers in the west have evolved into an obstacle to revolutionThey want passive income, they want to feast on old people's retirement savings by doing bitcoin Wall Street bullshit. They said "Elon Musk is a man of the people!" for a reason lol
>and the development of productive forcesThey do the opposite, look at how they use AI and other 'innovations' that are like stripping the copper (and human resources lol) out of their infrastructure to sell for their private profits. Americans can't even tell if a tornado is coming by
>>2429552umm umm
shits pants and criesyou're fucking MAD you stupid LEFTOID
ummmmm
digs shit out of pants and throws at wall to see what sticksFUCKING you don't know ANYTHING do you, ummmmm
pisses and cries everyhwere and begins swimming in itunder REAL PROLETARIAN COMMUNSIM imperialist first worlders like you will be SHOT
collects paycheck from FBI real proletarian mass line is to DISAGREE WITH YOU!!!
brain swells to size of hot air balloon, begins levitating away and echoing increasinglyAND BESIDES!!!! under communism you will still have proletarian kings, proletarian CEOs, and proletarian father figures of proletarian nuclear families engaged in proletarian mentorship of proletarian novices in a proletarian guild system which exists for proletarian competence
>>2429531> A less academic definition might see the proletariat "identity" as the subset of workers who recognize their own collective power to push history forward and enact their own dictatorship.< Establish new definition nobody has agreed on, not even motivating it> Liberals have false consciousness and reject proletarian morality. Liberals want to be kulak landlords< Accuse everyone else of being a liberalSlime behaviour
> They want passive income, they want to feast on old people's retirement savings by doing bitcoin Wall Street bullshit. They said "Elon Musk is a man of the people!" for a reason lol> They do the opposite, look at how they use AI and other 'innovations' that are like stripping the copper (and human resources lol) out of their infrastructure to sell for their private profits.This is bile dogshit btw: a class is primarely identified with their relation to the means lf production.
Did the pesants stop being such when they supported the king against the french revolutionaries? Dis the pesants become something else when they revolted against the emperor in china and the feudal lords in europe? No, it did not, because the current position of a group of people in regards to this or that policy because of their
subjective interests of the moment has nothing to do with where they
objective interests live.
To say otherwise rejects a material understanding of how society works
>>2429579 (me)
Re: did Marx stop calling them workers when the luddite masses tried to destroy the machineries that capital used against them? No
>>2429658Sure Anon, I'm sure
this time the third world national bougie government won't sell out and become compradors in 15 years. I mean when has anything like that ever happened before?
>>2429658That's not communism at all anon that's just further development of capitalism
This is even so in modern capitalist societies because you can't just modernize through sheer political will. You need foreign investments to create machine tools and industrial commons, and to get foreign investments you need to intensify rate of exploitation inside your country. Therefore building a sweatshop is ideologically communist, because using that you can get Capital which you then can invest in hard industries and would in the long run reduce dependency between the periphery and the core. Therefore, building a sweatshop is ideologically communistic.
Do you understand how perverse this developmental, Stageist talk is
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