Newf*g here but I just want to hear what you guys think about Corporatism and Feudalism. I hear not too many commies like it but I don't know what their reasoning is. Burp.
Sincerely: An Orthodox Christian Monarchist
>>2438543>Corporatism and Feudalism.Feudalism ended with industrialization, it was ended by the capitalist mode of production with the bourgeois order of things. Corporatism (in the modern sense) emerged out of capitalism not as a separate mode of production, but as a model for the bourgeois states to organize, the base for production is what defined capitalism - which persisted under corporatism.
The analysis for what constitutes the capitalist mode of production according to the communist movement is Das Kapital.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/ (Volume I)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1885-c2/ (Volume 2)
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ (Volume 3 - Unfinished)
Simplified version approved by Marx himself:
https://www.marxists.org/archive/cafiero/1879/summary-of-capital.htm >>2438607>Why not Corporatism?Because it is inferior to organic centralism and as a framework for the bourgeois state it can only serve the capitalist mode of production. If this is accepted the next question to follow would be "why not capitalism"? Which would be redundant to ask without first seeing the analysis and critique the communist movement is built upon
>>2438607.
>>2438543Feudalism is a mode of production primarily based around monopsony rent (not monopoly rent as is commonly misunderstood). Under feudal society, the peasants were not fully free to sell their labor. Consequently, bourgeois right wasn't needed to extra surplus-value. Think like a Banana Republic. If there's only one buyer then whether or not you own private property is academic.
Capitalism is a mode of production primarily based around free trade. Simple commodity production (the trade in things) eventually develops into commodity production or the trade in wage labor.
Corporatism is a variation of imperialism/state-monopoly capitalism which is a highly developed and stagnant form of capitalism overflowing with countervailing tendencies resisting the fall in the rate of profit. In its most extreme forms, capitalism disposes of whole nations in its attempts to keep the prices up and resist the fall in profit.
I think the answer as to why Communists oppose corporatism is because we basically already are living under corporatism. There is already the fusion of state and capital. The bourgeoisie have erected state-monopoly capital as a barrier to the fall in profits, necessitating the violent corrections of fascism and colonialism. But if the workers revolt and take control of the system then we can bring forward unprecedented progress and development.
>>2438551I don't get consider myself a Marxist Leninist and that's simply incorrect
Consolidating private capital to state institutions to centralize economies isn't corporatist. It doesn't back current bourgeois or potential bourgeois interests. At most you could say it's corrupt, but that could be said of any system of governance.
>>2438543as others have said, modern MLs are basically corporatists in that the support the dengist/mixed model that China currently practices, so OP is actually wrong, modern "marxists" do in fact support corporatism.
Now as far as why orthodox marxists do not support this its because failing to abolish commodity production will fail to ameliorate the root causes of capitalisms economic contradictions i.e. if you have corporatism you will still have unemployment, periodic economic crisis and economic cycles, the drive towards imperialism/war, and most importantly lack of workers democracy and alienation. So ultimately corporatism is just slightly more stable capitalism and in fact corporatism is already what the USA has and every western country already abandoned 100% free market economics in the 1930s around the great depression, even todays big USA tech companies had and have state support
>>2438543marxists see that state as the end product of class antagonisms so the concept that the state could act as some nuetral third party in class conflict is absurd. For example some duchy in western france at the height of feudalism is not some nuetral arbiter of law and social justice but the means by which the local noble family holds onto to power through various means. Even many of the enlightened monarchs of previous dynasties who did genuinely care about the peasantry and wanted to do shit like modernize had to contend a State they should nominally be the head of once all the noble families start getting pissy about serfs getting better rights.
I suppose the big difference between how proponents of medieval style corporatism(everyone has there place like a organ in a body) and marxists is that we don't think writing down a chivalric code demanding nobless oblige from the ruling class will immediately ameliorate class conflict and result in a class of elites with a paternalistic relationship with there subjects. If anything this all just superstructural shit to paper over glaring contradictions and economic inequality. Sort of a similar function to capitalists just telling you to start your own buisness instead of complaining and/or yapping abt muh ethical stakeholder capitalism.
Everytime the term corporatism is brought up in an English speaking context - and especially an American one - there's always a need for a friendly reminder, one of a linguistic kind:
the kind of corporations this ideology talks about are not single business entities like Nike, Coca Cola, Ford or any for profit business in general, even very small ones. The corporations of corporatism are a kind of state-mandated entities where everyone involved in a certain industry - for example steel production - must be part of a corporation, which can perhaps be better translated in modern English as guild. So, in a corporatist state, everyone involved in the business of steel production must be a member of the steel production corporation/guild, regardless if they are business owners, managers, administrative clerks, technical experts and engineers, factory workers and labourers, even janitors and caretakers if they are directly employed by a steel making company. Independent, grassroots, non-state unions are not allowed. Everyone must obviously pay a membership fee.
Fascist Italy is the foremost attempt at creating such a system. In the mid-twenties, BM outlawed trade unions - and the larger one just decided to vote for its own dissolution in the face of it, then the same faggots would rebuild the trade union movement after ww2, which explains in large part why labour conditions in Italy are for the most part shit - and imposed this structure of a few dozen of corporations encompassing all businesses and their employees. Obviously they officially followed a line of class collaboration, while in practice they repressed labour for the advantage of capital. They were state-mandated bodies and they were of course just another set of tentacles of the fascist party and state.
Just to be clear, they played a fundamental role in implementing the economic policy of the regime, which was fully agreed with capital. In the twenties, they enforced a largely classical liberal and conservative line, while in the thirties the regime moved into a more statist and dirigiste direction as a necessitated response to the 1929 international financial crash. That's when you had BM and all his stooges pushing for autharky and protectionism, while on the political sphere they moved toward integrating the corporations inside the political system. Up to the late thirties, there was still a house of representatives which was a remnant of the old liberal system of government. Obviously it was filled by party members handpicked by BM and approved through a phony plebiscite once every five years. Now, they wanted to eliminate that and have a new house of corporations serving as a legislature, whose membership would be elected among the corporations themselves, obviously after the desired candidates were approved by BM and then duly approved by each corporation with some sham internal vote. The organic law providing for that was approved in 1939, but I guess you all know what happened at that point and that kind of system never came to fruition.
While no modern state functions like that, I think it's important to shed light and clearly explain what it was all about, in no minor part because some relics of a certain way of organising parts of the pension system and the logic followed by a large part of the labour union movement nowadays - even the ostensibly "leftwing" parts of it - are still in place. Personally, I have direct expierence of a couple of things in that regard, but I've been going on for long enough and let's end this effortpost here for now.
>>2438543Corporatism =/= NeoFeudalism.
Let's get that out of the way.
The former is a unitary mode of politics.
The latter is Aristotelian mixed constitutionalism.
>>2439184You actually had to pay the feudal lord to live and work on his land.
Nevermind you were not even allowed to move, if the lord charged you too much.
>>2441548Absolute monarchy is nevertheless more authentic monarchy politics.
Neofeudalist spiel is just an unadulterated oligarchy apologia.
>Newf*g here but I just want to hear what you guys think about Corporatism and Feudalism. I hear not too many commies like it but I don't know what their reasoning is. Burp.
Okay, so as for feudalism its pretty simple: the "feudal contract" both doesn't have a material basis anymore, and the idea of de-facto being tossed into a caste that's inescapable (the peasantry, for example) sounds frankly unpleasant. When I talk about the "material basis" I mean that originally the thought was that Peasants produce the food and Feudal lords "protect" the peasantry, however modern innovations have made said "protection" utterly meaningless. We don't need one guy on a horse "protecting" us, we've got firearms and an organized military that functions really well when it at least attempts to promote via competence and not "The Duke of Swarick ALWAYS leads the 5th Battalion!"
Plus I'm American, any new "aristocracy" would be recruited entirely from celebrities and hedge fund managers. You want some creep like Steven Cohen and his progeny just ruling you for the rest of your natural life?
As for Corporatism, I believe it mistakes systemic problems for regulatory ones. One of the principle assertions by Marx is that there are contradictions within capitalism that spell its doom. The most basic and obvious of which: it's predicated on infinite growth on a finite planet. Adding guardrails can prevent the worst of those contradictions from breaking down, but the result is that when it does it breaks even harder. Sure you can try to create a corporatist system that favors workers more, but those investors want profit growing year over year, and eventually you'll reach a point where profit can't grow without cutting into wage labor.
>>2440890Not big on Deleonism, but I remember he advocating for some kind of "syndicalist democracy", basically. If I got it correctly, he was for a party-kind of organisation taking power through properly political ways - don't know if he was revolutionary, reformist or agnostic on that front - and then this new socialist government would have called this industrial union based kind of body to take over and adjourned itself sine die. Main difference with fascism as it evolved is that the classic state and its government would have remained - in its one-party and reactionary form obviously - and the
house of corporations would have been just a rubber stamp body, with no effective legislative initiative if not on very minor issues and this house itself would have been full of handpicked delegates the executive - thus BM itself - would have approved before being put to the "vote" - in fact a plebiscite with the only option to approve the official candidates every
corporation had to elect. On the other hand, I understand Deleonism envisioned an actual democracy inside the industrial unions, with I guess contested elections and - but I may be wrong - possibly recall elections, no one handpicked from the top and in fact no "top" existing as no "political" independent executive would have existed anymore. Also, obviously, there wouldn't have been private owners aka capitalists in any industries, while fascist corporatism formally wanted to bring them and wage labour together, to show they had successfully "harmonised" capital and labour, thus marketing itself as a "superior" form of government, instead of the classic liberal form of capital explicitly dominating or class-struggle based socialism where labour takes over. In truth we know it was indeed a more brutal way to submit labour even more than the old liberal system allowed to do, but BM and his henchmen loved to brag about some really pitiful form of really primitive welfare - cutting taxes and paying some skimpy benefits to families with a lot of children or having these kinds of institutions where a bunch of poor children were sent by train on summer holidays in some sea resort or kind of clinics for single mothers where they can stay to live in a kinda old English workhouse - and that somehow demonstrated they actually care for the poor and the workers, not like the liberal robber barons and landlords.
That said, in my previous post I forgot to actually clarify the
corporations thing. In Italian, they are in fact called
corporazioni, but that word have never had the same meaning as the modern English
corporation, which mainly means a single business entity, a company, usually a very large one, but in some specific context in the past may have had a more broad meaning like in
municipal or
town or
city corporations, like the local government bodies of many place in Britain and its colonies used to be called and in an even more distant past
corporation could even stand for
guild, which is in fact the best match for
corporazioni.
While I'm not addressing any single post now, I see many anons are talking about absolutism. In truth, guilds emerged and were stronger at the height of feudalism, when many kings and emperors often only nominally ruled over anything more than their personal fiefs, while cities and towns ruled by systems of guilds in some cases were able to obtain "privileges" like exemptions from taxes, having to raise armies if the ruler demanded it etc. In some cases they were completely independent republics. When stronger and more centralised national states consolidated and many developed in absolutist regimes, often guilds were left in place in their towns, but they just remained as ceremonial body or at most as municipal governments, sometimes some of the old "privileges" were maintained, but the balance of power had definitely shifted.
>>2442653"I think Communism just wants to put everyone at the same level"
Worth clarifying that I don't think everyone is equal or can ever be equal but corporatism is the best we can get to everyone equally having a special meaningful role within society.
>>2438543Any reactionary group of aristocrats that existed and didn't fall was already collaborating with capitalists, with greater repression of workers, even though it was a barrier to a country's economic development. After the First World War, the reactionary classes no longer had a distinction, integrating themselves into the most parasitic of financial capital and a lackey of capitalist imperialism. Neoliberalism adapted everything that was useful to the ruling class of fascism. If you fantasize about trying to invent that class conciliation exists to deceive workers into being exploited by their irreconcilable enemy class, then you are either being dishonest in co-opting naive workers as useful idiots to be used and discarded, or you are the bourgeoisie's own useful idiot, lying to yourself so that you can later be discarded by the bourgeoisie when you are no longer useful.
Let's start with two quotes:
<In pointing out that their mode of exploitation was different to that of the bourgeoisie, the feudalists forget that they exploited under circumstances and conditions that were quite different and that are now antiquated. In showing that, under their rule, the modern proletariat never existed, they forget that the modern bourgeoisie is the necessary offspring of their own form of society.
<For the rest, so little do they conceal the reactionary character of their criticism that their chief accusation against the bourgeois amounts to this, that under the bourgeois régime a class is being developed which is destined to cut up root and branch the old order of society.
<What they upbraid the bourgeoisie with is not so much that it creates a proletariat as that it creates a revolutionary proletariat.
<In political practice, therefore, they join in all coercive measures against the working class; and in ordinary life, despite their high-falutin phrases, they stoop to pick up the golden apples dropped from the tree of industry, and to barter truth, love, and honour, for traffic in wool, beetroot-sugar, and potato spirits.(2)
<As the parson has ever gone hand in hand with the landlord, so has Clerical Socialism with Feudal Socialism.
<Nothing is easier than to give Christian asceticism a Socialist tinge. Has not Christianity declaimed against private property, against marriage, against the State? Has it not preached in the place of these, charity and poverty, celibacy and mortification of the flesh, monastic life and Mother Church? Christian Socialism is but the holy water with which the priest consecrates the heart-burnings of the aristocrat.
<Karl Marx, 1848, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature, 1. Reactionary Socialism, A. Feudal SocialismIf you cling to the fantasy of the petty bourgeoisie then here is another quote:
<This school of Socialism dissected with great acuteness the contradictions in the conditions of modern production. It laid bare the hypocritical apologies of economists. It proved, incontrovertibly, the disastrous effects of machinery and division of labor; the concentration of capital and land in a few hands; overproduction and crises; it pointed out the inevitable ruin of the petty bourgeois and peasant, the misery of the proletariat, the anarchy in production, the crying inequalities in the distribution of wealth, the industrial war of extermination between nations, the dissolution of old moral obligations, of the old family relations, of the old nationalities.
<In its positive aims, however, this form of Socialism aspires either to restoring the old means of production and of exchange, and with them the old property relations, and the old society, or to cramping the modern means of production and of exchange within the framework of the old property relations that have been, and were bound to be, exploded by those means. In either case, it is both reactionary and Utopian.
<Its last words are: corporate guilds for manufacture; patriarchal relations in agriculture.
<Ultimately, when stubborn historical facts had dispersed all intoxicating effects of self-deception, this form of Socialism ended in a miserable fit of the blues.
<Karl Marx, 1848, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Chapter III. Socialist and Communist Literature, 1. Reactionary Socialism, B. Petty-Bourgeois Socialismhttps://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch03.htmPrevious economic modes of production were technologically limited and there is no turning back, where any reactionary class of aristocrats will be absorbed as the worst collaborators of finance capital against the workers in the service of financialization.
Now let's watch a video by Michael Parenti called "Functions of Fascism," demonstrating that all false "rebels" are integrated with the financial capital that has been perfected in today's neoliberalism:
https://archive.org/details/FunctionsOfFascism >>2442708Why are you even here than?
I don't mean that as in imma scream for jannies, fuck jannies
But you just rage baiting yourself. Dumb. Undialectical. Are you Jason Unruhe?
>>2444339I believe National Socialism to be a direct Opposition of Communism, they are opposites, but they fight for the same exact position and in that way, they are the exact same thing especially when you consider National Socialism originating from Strasserism which was a Marxist ideology.
And today when you see these "neo nazis", they don't realize that National Socialism was a movement created by the Germans for the Germans and not to be exported to other foreign nations much like ᴉuᴉlossnW's Fascism.
Those who call themselves National Socialists today are only larping, and the Communists are larping as well in the same manner.
>>2438551Tbh they really are.
Fascism probably got its ideals of a one-party state from Leninism.
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