/leftypol/ - Leftist Politically Incorrect

>>2609319
>People say that gradual reforms won't work, with the cited reason being that, so long as the bourgeois element is allowed to exist in any significant capacity, it will burrow its way into government and reassert control. But doesn't China disprove that? Their entire plan is to gradually reform their market economy into "full" socialism.
Reform under a proletarian dictatorship is possible and was what Marx advocated for. China is a dotp, the bourgeoisie is not organized as a political class and does not have state-power.
>I could easily see a scenario where technology allows the bourgeois to assert permanent control, using robots to replace the proletariat and surveillance and weapons to quell any opposition
capitalism functions by appropriating surplus value. surplus can be only made by humans, because humans have abstract work power, machines don't
> could also see the opposite happening, where capitalism keeps rewinding itself to earlier states indefinitely, creating a situation where life is "good enough" that people don't feel the need to rebel.
doesn't matter, the rate of profit tends to fall, the 'revert' back is always war and destruction and every new advancement makes the next war more destructive. boom and bust
>Can someone please give me a basic, working definition of what dialectics are in the context of Marxism?
dialectics is just the most abstract process of interaction between categories. it's the general way things move around. it's "the" law of every process when you get down to the most abstract (most distant from real things) categories.

>>2609319
>But doesn't China disprove that?
China already has acquired the state power and has control over its bourgeoisie. This is why it can afford to do successfull economic reforms.

>But is this actually a given?
Not really. If society keeps its course with neoliberalism, at some points the antagonistic interests will create a breaking point. However, if conflict were to arise, nothing necessarily predicts the proletariat from taking over. Furthermore, and although this is debated, for conflict to arise, the working class would have to be aware of its power. As it stands, even when proletarians starve to death, they keep believing that this is legitimate and that their boss’ property shouldn’t be questioned.

> Can someone please give me a basic, working definition of what dialectics are in the context of Marxism?
The dialectic is a method by which to analyze the world’s change. It believes that change occurs when contradictions arise, like differences in interest from different groups. It’s existed since ancient greece as a mean to discover truth and analyze history. For instance, Socrate would use the dialectic implicitly by presenting different pov to the people he talked to, as a way to challenge their thought.
Marx was a materialist, which means that he believed that ideas, feelings, institutions etc came from a material base. This applies to the dialectic for history because the opposing interests come from a material context. For example, the bourgeoisie needs free market, but the proletariat needs stability. Yet, the free market provokes crisis and instability. Thus, the perceived legitimacy of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat would be challenged if a crisis were to arise. In other words, a material contradiction would create an opportunity for change.
In simple words : The materialist dialectic is the idea that opposing interests take a material form and evolve through resolving conflicts.

> That sounds like like a (logical) contradiction to me. Doesn't the term "multipolar" imply multiple leaders?
This is indeed a contradiction. But please also note that the root of the contradiction is a material situation (the US loosing grounds to China economically, politically etc). It is a contradiction, and it stems from a material situation.

>China is a dotp, the bourgeoisie is not organized as a political class and does not have state-power.
How do they not? China has billionaires. I would imagine that they'd be able to buy influence in politics in the same way they could in any republic.

>capitalism functions by appropriating surplus value. surplus can be only made by humans, because humans have abstract work power, machines don't
Could you elaborate on this a bit? I'm specifically asking about a scenario where all, or at least most, of the labor that exists currently is done by AI powered robots. Would the surplus value instead be generated by the people at the company managing the machines?

>doesn't matter, the rate of profit tends to fall, the 'revert' back is always war and destruction and every new advancement makes the next war more destructive. boom and bust
So why do Marxists say that things like anti-monopoly laws are historically regressive and expand the lifespan of capitalism?

More than anything, I'm questioning the inevitability of communism. It's a very bold claim to make, and I don't feel comfortable accepting it until I understand the basis for it.

>dialectics is just the most abstract process of interaction between categories. it's the general way things move around. it's "the" law of every process when you get down to the most abstract (most distant from real things) categories.
That doesn't really explain how to "do" dialectics. I want to know what they are and how they work so that I myself may start thinking dialectically, allowing me to do my own analysis and verify that of others.

>>2609333
>Not really.
Interesting. So Marx's theory of history is more of a broad theory based on what he had observed, rather than a hard-set assertion that this is the way things must go?

>If society keeps its course with neoliberalism, at some points the antagonistic interests will create a breaking point.
My question is, what happens when it takes a third option? What if we retreat into Keynesianism or democratic socialism? And even beyond that, what happens in the scenario where advances in technology shrink the proletariat into a small enough portion of the population that they no longer have enough sway to enact any real change?

>Furthermore, and although this is debated, for conflict to arise, the working class would have to be aware of its power. As it stands, even when proletarians starve to death, they keep believing that this is legitimate and that their boss’ property shouldn’t be questioned.
So what would happen in such a scenario? Fascism? And what would come after that? Or would things get stuck there?

>The dialectic is a method by which to analyze the world’s change. It believes that change occurs when contradictions arise, like differences in interest from different groups. It’s existed since ancient greece as a mean to discover truth and analyze history. For instance, Socrate would use the dialectic implicitly by presenting different pov to the people he talked to, as a way to challenge their thought.
>Marx was a materialist, which means that he believed that ideas, feelings, institutions etc came from a material base. This applies to the dialectic for history because the opposing interests come from a material context. For example, the bourgeoisie needs free market, but the proletariat needs stability. Yet, the free market provokes crisis and instability. Thus, the perceived legitimacy of the bourgeoisie by the proletariat would be challenged if a crisis were to arise. In other words, a material contradiction would create an opportunity for change.
In simple words : The materialist dialectic is the idea that opposing interests take a material form and evolve through resolving conflicts.
So dialectics is just the idea that everything exists in a web of causation, and to think dialectically is to study this web, as opposed to its individual elements? If so, I'm not sure why Marxists make such a big deal of it. People have been studying causality since at least the ancient Greeks, and it's pretty fundamental to pretty much all modern science, not just Marxism. Don't get me wrong, I understand that the advent of materialism probably had a big impact the way we think of causality, since everything exists in the same material world, but it would've impacted the way we think of a lot of other things too. Why is so much emphasis placed on causality?

I feel like I have to be missing something. It can't just be a bunch of terminology for describing webs of causation, right?

>This is indeed a contradiction. But please also note that the root of the contradiction is a material situation (the US loosing grounds to China economically, politically etc). It is a contradiction, and it stems from a material situation.
When I say contradiction here, I mean in the non-Marxist sense. I don't see how a world can be multipolar while also having a singular leader.

>>2609319
>People say that gradual reforms won't work, with the cited reason being that, so long as the bourgeois element is allowed to exist in any significant capacity, it will burrow its way into government and reassert control. But doesn't China disprove that? Their entire plan is to gradually reform their market economy into "full" socialism.

This is because they had a proletarian revolution to put a communist party in power BEFORE reforming. Engels himself said that the proletarian revolution can transform society gradually (i.e. reform society), it's just that you need revolution FIRST.

doc related is treated as a meme around here, but I sincerely suggest you read throught it. Should only take maybe 1 hr tops.

>>2609499
>This is because they had a proletarian revolution to put a communist party in power BEFORE reforming.
Why would this make a difference?

>doc related is treated as a meme around here, but I sincerely suggest you read throught it. Should only take maybe 1 hr tops.
Thank you, I will.

>>2609500
I'm aware of how China broad-strokes treats its bourgeoisie. My question is, why can't that sort of thing happen from the other direction? Why can't a capitalist society be agitated by the proletariat to implement policies that take power away from the capitalist class, gradually turning into a socialist state?

Again, I want to make it clear that I'm not trying to argue with anyone. I don't know what I'm talking about, and my goal is to learn.

>>2609521
The proletariat can only win temporary and specific concessions in a capitalist society. They are always at risk of losing it all in the near future. Look at what Thatcher did.

With China, you have that long-term guarantee that those gradual reforms favouring the proletariat will continue and be consolidated, they’re stable, not constantly at risk of bein reversed.

>>2609535
I've heard people say this a bunch, but my question is, why?

>>2609538
Because the ruling class of capitalist society is the bourgeoisie, whatever they were forced to cede to the workers today, they can take back tomorrow.
Look at France increasing the work hours or retirement age in recent years.
Or various countries implementing austerity measures.

The Chinese Communist Party, while always at risk of degenerating into a capitalist party, has all the historical baggage of you know, communism. Kinda like you can assault all kind of rights in America but you can never touch the Gun Rights and Free Speech rights. That is too engrained in Burger fabric.

if china goes capitalist, will dengists become ultras?

>>2609542
Could you elaborate on the instructional factors behind this?

Also >>2609544 is not me (OP)

>>2609460
>China has billionaires. I would imagine that they'd be able to buy influence in politics in the same way they could in any republic.
A lot of so called billionaires are just party members who were nominated to run state-ran enterprises

>Would the surplus value instead be generated by the people at the company managing the machines?
In the end you need someone to use and activate the machine. So yes, it would be the person managing the machines.

>So why do Marxists say that things like anti-monopoly laws are historically regressive and expand the lifespan of capitalism?
Because monopolies are another type of contradiction in between the « free market » and the ability to detain private property.

>That doesn't really explain how to "do" dialectics.
Analyze from where different interests come from, and expand on how conflict might arise.

>So Marx's theory of history is more of a broad theory based on what he had observed, rather than a hard-set assertion that this is the way things must go?
Yes.

>My question is, what happens when it takes a third option? What if we retreat into Keynesianism or democratic socialism?
Well then the proletariat keeps its current form, and keeps being exploited until the heat death of the universe. More realistically, progressively wealth would be concentrated in the hands of few with influence on politics, creating some form of libertarian society where 90% has control over the rest.

>So dialectics is just the idea that everything exists in a web of causation, and to think dialectically is to study this web, as opposed to its individual elements?
That’s correct. It would furthermore be to to analyze it materially in the marxian sense

>I'm not sure why Marxists make such a big deal of it.
Marx himself didn’t write much about it, and Engels used it to develop his biological science. Later marxists wrote about it because it’s a rare snippet of « philosophical » marxism, and at the time most academic marxists were philosophers rather than economists.

>Why is so much emphasis placed on causality?
Marx wanted to have a « scientific » socialism, which meant removing a normative and moral structure to capitalism. The dialectic was an easy way to justify acting for socialism without ascribing a moral side to it. However, it was also used to create a historic determinism by Mao and Stalin.

>>2610693
The fact that the party accepts bourgeois members is actually insane. In the USSR the NEPmen couldn't even vote.

>>2610693
>Alot of so called billionaires are just party members who were nominated to run state-ran enterprises
WOWZERS! Clearly this is REAL $$ocialism! My good friend Ferdinand Lassalle spoke about this…

Bro got his understanding of marxist politics from browsing this website. Damn that's bleak

China has billionaires but 80% of the time they're subject to democratic centralism as party members. Their influence in politics is offset by apparatchiks and the military; they're technically consultative but the fact that state ownership of capital is high in China allows the apparatchiks to offer a counter elite that nominally possesses hegemony in China.

The specific Chinese flavor of capitalism would horrify Keynes or Milton, and most Western Marxists to boot, because it's primarily productivist, as opposed to consumerist, and the Chinese traditionally have loved involution, where capitalist elites are egged on with hyper competition to drop the rate of profit to zero.

===

The problem with social democracy as a social mode is the relations of power; if you have a strong and robust capitalist class, you can't have a real social democracy. Look at the Scandinavian countries; while they're infamous for high social welfare and income equality, the wealth equality is off the charts, with the Wallenbergs (not Jewish) owning 30% of the Stockholm Stock Exchange in the 1970s.

>>2610759
>because it's primarily productivist, as opposed to consumerist
Bro thinks he said something

>>2610779
Difference is whether you're Scandinavian model (porky bribes you with welfare to not revolt) or Xi-Deng model (vanguard party is trying to make you work harder for socialist construction).

China treats social welfare as primarily infrastructure investment or human capital development; you get healthcare and a roof so you can work, and education is grueling because it should be.

>>2610693
>A lot of so called billionaires are just party members who were nominated to run state-ran enterprises
So their money was a result of state intervention?

>Because monopolies are another type of contradiction in between the « free market » and the ability to detain private property
This confuses me a bit.

From what I understand, you're saying that, in the web of causation, monopoly capitalism is caused by non-monopoly capitalism and is a cause of communism. When monopoly capitalism or something similar meets anti-monopolist reforms, it produces a non-monopolistic form of capitalism, placing us further away from communism than we were before.

Is this understanding correct?

>>2610759
You're using a lot of words that I don't know the meaning of. Can you please provide some definitions?

>>2610728
>>2610779
Please don't start arguments, I'm trying to learn.

>>2610753
Kind is tbh.

>>2609331
>capitalism functions by appropriating surplus value. surplus can be only made by humans, because humans have abstract work power, machines don't

That seems kinda tangential to the concern he raised

>People say that gradual reforms won't work, with the cited reason being that, so long as the bourgeois element is allowed to exist in any significant capacity, it will burrow its way into government and reassert control. But doesn't China disprove that? Their entire plan is to gradually reform their market economy into "full" socialism.
marx himself was a reformist (1848):
<Section II has made clear the relations of the Communists to the existing working-class parties, such as the Chartists in England and the Agrarian Reformers in America. The Communists fight for the attainment of the immediate aims, for the enforcement of the momentary interests of the working class; but in the movement of the present, they also represent and take care of the future of that movement. In France, the Communists ally with the Social-Democrats against the conservative and radical bourgeoisie, reserving, however, the right to take up a critical position in regard to phases and illusions traditionally handed down from the great Revolution.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch04.htm
he also had the idea of peaceful transition (e.g. parliamentary electoralism):
<Surely, at such a moment, the voice ought to be heard of a man whose whole theory is the result of a lifelong study of the economic history and condition of England, and whom that study led to the conclusion that, at least in Europe, England is the only country where the inevitable social revolution might be effected entirely by peaceful and legal means.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/p6.htm
he also says that communism will be effected by a gradual transition from capitalism (1875):
<these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/ch01.htm
>I could easily see a scenario where technology allows the bourgeois to assert permanent control, using robots to replace the proletariat and surveillance and weapons to quell any opposition.
in this case, this wouldnt be capitalism, but a form of slavery, with the ruling class reverting to being masters over property.
>Can someone please give me a basic, working definition of what dialectics are in the context of Marxism?
dialectics in the context of marx's writings are applied historically and economically. in short, dialectics are used to see the ways in which concepts develop into their absolute form. this is done economically (e.g. capital vol. 1) where "labour" develops into capital, which as a "concept", creates itself (e.g. value, or money, turns to surplus value, where it accumulates by its perpetual movement). historically, marx sees how class begins by a division of labour (e.g. alienation) which divides property between owners and non-owners. this is the scene of class struggle, which reaches its absolute concept in capitalism. in both cases, communism represents the negation of these developments, where alienation is reverted to self-directed being.

>>2614530
>marx himself was a reformist (1848):
>he also had the idea of peaceful transition (e.g. parliamentary electoralism):
>he also says that communism will be effected by a gradual transition from capitalism (1875):

Your quotes are real but I think the interpretation that Marx is "reformist" is false. Reformism is supporting purely reform. Revolutionary politics utilizes both legal (reformist) and illegal (violent) struggle. So to utilize reforms strategically is not counter-revolutionary, as long as there is an illegal revolutionary struggle going on in parallel with it. See >>2613733

>>2614530
>>2614602
That's interesting. So a full on revolution isn't actually necessary; change can come in the form of legal reforms, provided they're backed by the threat of illegal violence. Do I have this right?

>>2615575
> change can come in the form of legal reforms, provided they're backed by the threat of illegal violence. Do I have this right?
It's theoretically possible but highly unlikely. The more clear point is that, if you only do legalism, the ruling class can just make your party illegal if it gains too much ground, forcing you into illegality anyway. The mixture of legal with illegal struggle is tactical, not moral. It is a diversification of strategy so that you don't have all your eggs in one basket. In the event the bourgeoisie makes your above-ground organizations illegal, you already have illegal structures in place to continue your struggle. By illegal struggle is not simply meant adventurism or banditry. Let me give a clear example of illegal struggle: Wildcat strikes in the US were made illegal under taft hartley. if unions had any balls they would still do those. but in a more intense struggle like a civil war most of what the revolutionaries do will be considered illegal and criminal. The bolsheviks robbed a bank once in 1907.

>>2614503
It's at the core of the argument, he said
>the bourg will start using AI to replace proles
this can't happen, otherwise there's no surplus, no bourgeoisie, no proletariat. No communism either, because you always need surplus in any kind of society (to cover use and accidents)

>>2615575
what is a "full-on revolution" anyway?
the transition of powers is necessarily constitutional.
all revolutionary movements in history have also been overdeterminations of the contemporary teaching, like Jesus appealing to the spirit of the law over the letter of the law. edward coke in his "petition of rights" (1628) also appealed to what was on the books, propagandising "the rule of law", leading to the eventual english civil war and republic. the concept of "free-born rights" (t. john lilburne, 1645) are the rights of nature, imposed by constitutional reforms in france via the "declaration of the rights of man" (1789). one affirms the rights he possesses against their political repression. the rights of property are also codefied here by gerrard winstanley (1653) and locke (1680), with locke also conditioning the social contract as the "consent of the governed", later qualified as the right of government in the US declaration of independence (1776). thus, as thomas paine wrote, a people have the right to revolt, and this is a stipulation of one's freedom. the rule of law thus applies to the spirit of freedom (which as per kant is the necessity of practical reason, or ethics). so then, revolution is not lawlessness, but is supreme lawfulness which upholds order:
<Regretfully I speak this fatal truth, [the king] must die because the nation must live […] I propose that you take immediate legal action on the fate of Louis XVI. . . . I ask that the National Convention state that from this moment on he is a traitor to the French nation and a criminal against humanity.
https://revolution.chnm.org/d/324

>>2609331
>capitalism functions by appropriating surplus value. surplus can be only made by humans, because humans have abstract work power, machines don't

I disagree with this, robots could theoretically produce surplus but they don’t because they can’t reproduce on their own. Their “reproduction” requires human labor currently. Like a lot it, for a robot to reproduce it would need to be able to mine, transport, refine and also generate all the energy required to do all that on its own. And a reproduction cycle that requires a massive heavy industrial base and cities worth of electricity makes it extremely vulnerable. So Op I wouldn’t worry about the robot uprising any time soon.

>>2609319
> I could easily see a scenario where technology allows the bourgeois to assert permanent control, using robots to replace the proletariat and surveillance and weapons to quell any opposition.

Advances in technology are what ends current classes rule. The hunter gathers were usurped by the Neolithic farmers, the farmers were overthrown by slave empires, slave empires gave way to feudalism and feudalism was crushed by capitalism. The musket and steam engine didn’t cement the rule of the monarchies of yore, it paved the way for bourgeoisie to take control. So it might not be the proletariat that advances us to the next mode of production(which might not be socialism) but the PMC under the bourgeoisie that actually run the mega corporations that produce these technologies. Like a board room revolt from project managers and the like who will start looking at CEOs like musk, similar to how the bourgeoisie saw Louis XIV and the Hapsburg.

>I could also see the opposite happening, where capitalism keeps rewinding itself to earlier states indefinitely, creating a situation where life is "good enough" that people don't feel the need to rebel.

This isn’t possible anymore as all these new technologies that the ruling class relies on requires massive centralized institutions. So even I’d say the U.S attempted to revert to an earlier stage of capitalism they would be making themselves weaker in the face of other rising more centralized states like China.

>>2609319
>But doesn't China disprove that
Gradual reforms won't work, but they should still be pursued. Also, China isn't socialist, no matter what simps say.
>>2609331
>the bourgeoisie is not organized as a political class and does not have state-power.
lole, lmoa even
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_millionaires
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_number_of_billionaires

>>2616729
Be careful, you're going to summon him!

>>2616729
>Also, China isn't socialist, no matter what simps say.
I've seen people argue back and forth a bunch on this one. Why would you personally say it isn't socialist?

>>2616729
>per capita
Read my post again. CAPITALISTS (not billionaires/millionaires - the first is a relation to the MoP, the second is a description of how much cash money you have; one is a social relation, the other is not) as a POLITICAL CLASS. You are fucking poison to the movement, dude.

>>2616736
Cause it's capitalist. Wage labor.

>>2615896
>Robots could produce surplus
Value is socially necessary abstract human labor. Machines, whether automated or “self-reproducing” do not create new value. They only transfer the value already embodied in them. If production becomes fully automated, the value of commodities tends toward zero, because the socially necessary labor time tends toward zero.

>>2617234
I think we fundamentally agree but you think the logic of capitalism would break down under a full automated system and there would be no way for the capitalist to extract the surplus value.