Is the key flaw of Marxism that all of its predictions are bullshit? Why do communists feel like facts have to conform to their feelings when Marx never said that? Marx was never a moralfag and based his ideas in the fact he believed the collapse of Capitalism was inevitable. 200 years on, and it has not collapsed or led to any sort of successful socialist revolution.
You can identify the exact point at which Marxists start coping and treating their belief system as a religion. From the Preface of The Poverty of Philosophy on Marxists.org:
>The above application of the Ricardian theory that the entire social product belongs to the workers as their product, because they are the sole real producers, leads directly to communism. But, as Marx indeed indicates in the above-quoted passage, it is incorrect in formal economic terms, for it is simply an application of morality to economics. According to the laws of bourgeois economics, the greatest part of the product does not belong to the workers who have produced it. If we now say: that is unjust, that ought not to be so, then that has nothing immediately to do with economics. We are merely saying that this economic fact is in contradiction to our sense of morality. Marx, therefore, never based his communist demands upon this, but upon the inevitable collapse of the capitalist mode of production which is daily taking place before our eyes to an ever growing degree; he says only that surplus value consists of unpaid labour, which is a simple fact. But what in economic terms may be formally incorrect, may all the same be correct from the point of view of world history. If mass moral consciousness declares an economic fact to be unjust, as it did at one time in the case of slavery and statute labour, that is proof that the fact itself has outlived its day, that other economic facts have made their appearance due to which the former has become unbearable and untenable. Therefore, a very true economic content may be concealed behind the formal economic incorrectness. This is not the place to deal more closely with the significance and history of the theory of surplus value.
Marx never would have said this lol, this is plain magical thinking
>>2777310>Marx was never a moralfag and based his ideas in the fact he believed the collapse of Capitalism was inevitable.Was that actually Marx or later "Marxists"? I think it might be better to say that capitalism is historically unstable rather than thinking it's inevitably going to collapse, since even if it does "collapse" that can serve as the basis for its reorganization or expansion. Like the unresolved world-historical problem isn't capitalism being in any danger or imminent collapse but its ongoing existence. A lot of communists also wear distorted ideological goggles which leads them to think anything that happens is a happening burger.
Idk what do you guys think. Begin arguing now.
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>>2777333>A lot of communists also wear distorted ideological goggles which leads them to think anything that happens is a happening burger.There has been not a single proper "happening" (as in an event of actual consequence where something radically "changes") since WW2, and there will most likely not be one until climate change starts hitting really hard.
>>2777310>based his ideas in the fact he believed the collapse of Capitalism was inevitablenever read marx award
>>2777362the last trve happening was in 1917 this is well known
>>2777310Marx saw plenty of times that revolution failed in his own life. Actually failed, not succeeded and built the most powerful industrial country to ever exist, two times. What you would call a failure because it doesn't solve all problems would, in fact, be an almost unimaginable success to Marx because he was thinking dialectically. He celebrated the Paris Commune while you whine about enormous socialist superstates with populations larger than America's. It's comical.
>>2777310Capital has become increasingly reactionary since Marx died and has outsourced the productive forces to the semi-periphery, including even its Socialist enemies, and has engaged in all sorts of madness to maintain falling profit rates besides outsourcing:
>destruction of the productive forces (especially through insurance fraud, endless wars, and false flag attacks)>prison labor (neo-slavery)>an increasing portion of commodities are rented out repeatedly or treated as services since they are not profitable upon a one-time sale (neo-feudalism, you see this especially with software-as-a-service)>"disruption" of traditional service industries by the unnecessary introduction of software services which only enshittify that industry (see municipal taxi industries being destroyed by rideshare apps)>rolling back of concessions made to the labor movements of the 20th century through privatization, deregulation, austerity, union busting>the rolling back of reproductive rights of women for the purpose of turning them into tradwife baby factories to pump out more workers>the enrollment of the downwardly mobile petty bourgeoisie into fascist programs whose nominal aim is to restore their lost glory, but whose real aim is to use them as cannon fodder against the rising global south and police against the re-emerging proletariat>the revolt against materialism/science/secularism and the encouragement of idealist/magical/religious systems of thought to control the ideological spectrum of society and limit the capability of the re-emerging proletariat to effectively strategize>the denial of unsustainable crises like the climate crisis>the stratification of the proletariat with identity politics along every imaginable axis: sex, age, race, ethnicity, language, nationality, etc. to prevent their unification against capitalthis state of affairs is very desperate however good Communist theorists (of whom there are many besides Marx)
usually avoid the teleological rhetoric of "inevitability," though sometimes they fail to do this, which I confess is unscientific. I would say the
permanent collapse of Capitalism is not "inevitable". It has frequent and awful crises.
Recommended reading:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r3m7MWWUZfYTimestamps:
0:00 Introduction
2:59 | 1. The Destruction of the Productive Forces
14:10 | 2. The Revolt against the Machine
29:04 | 3. The Revolt against Science
40:29 | 4. The Revolt against "Democracy" and Parliament
50:45 | 5. "National Self-Sufficiency"
1:05:10 | 6. War as the Final "Solution"
>>2777333I don't consider historical materialism outdated but something about the 21st century scapes it.
>>2777310>Marx was never a moralfag<"From the standpoint of a higher economic form of society, private ownership of the globe by single individuals will appear quite as absurd as private ownership of one man by another. Even a whole society, a nation, or even all simultaneously existing societies taken together, are not the owners of the globe. They are only its possessors, its usufructuaries, and, like boni patres familias, they must hand it down to succeeding generations in an improved condition." They must? Why?
>>2778337Even a lot of capitalists are Georgists these days (inb4 Marx shat on Georgism, not the point).
> 1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.Is actually effectively in practice for a lot of places. Revolution is still necessary but the capitalists have to grant reforms like this every so often to keep the system from falling apart.
>200 years on, and it has not collapsed or led to any sort of successful socialist revolution.
1/3 of the entire world was socialist for a time. It took capitalism over 1000 years of scrounging around the periphery of the world before it overcame feudalism. Comparatively speaking it has proven far more fragile than what preceded it.
it's a stupid and pointless question. what do you mean by "if he were alive today?" does that mean he's alive and 208 years old? Does it mean was born now instead of then? How old is he? Does he have different life experiences? Was he still born in Trier?
>>2777453>not succeeded and built the most powerful industrial country to ever existLiberal revolution
There are an increasing number of capitalists themselves who are basically admitting that capitalism won't survive forever. Like Musk admitting that robots and AI would make money and markets irrelevant.
>>2777310>Is the key flaw of Marxism that all of its predictions are bullshit?Stopped reading right here. Dumbest troll thread in a while. Fuck off, liberal porky retard. It's actually frightening how accurately Marx describes contemporary economic, social and political conditions in the beginning pages of the Communist Manifesto which was written almost 200 years ago.
>>2778344>Even a lot of capitalists are Georgists these daysThe father of marginal utility theory, Gossen (1854), promoted the public ownership of land to be given out by lease, yet was still pro-capitalist
To put it in further context, Smith like Marx saw that the landlords impose ground rents on capital, extracting revenue from surplus value. Offsetting property taxes and business rates to land valuation rewards capital and punishes rentiers (since the LVT is supposed to encourage growth). It is somewhat outdated, since ground rent as an economic category has de facto been replaced by property taxes. Smith speaks on housing rents for example, but considers it entirely secondary, while Engels sees housing rents as a type of land valuation passed on to consumers, in "The Housing Question" (1872); one of the worst texts of Marxist canon. Taxing housing rents is tricky however, so controlling rents by price fixing is better. If rents are subject to economic "laws", the laws can be fixed to rates.
>>2777310The hardest pill to swallow is the fact that Marx's key insights, that being the critique of alienation and the commodity form, are the least understood and least popular aspects of 'Marxism.' The vast majority of workers are fine with being estranged from the means of production, so long as they receive reasonable compensation. And generations of social democrats and Leninists have muddled socialism to mean just that - redistribution, fair wages, 'justice' and equality, etc. Those who do take Marx's critique seriously are sneeringly derided as 'western Marxists' who are wrong because they don't see nationalizing the oil industry as the bedrock of communism.
So no, if Marx was alive today he'd probably not call himself a communist, and he'd be stuck in an armchair 24/7 furiously reading to try and figure out how the fuck it went so wrong.
>>2777310No, he would be a Bakuninist today.
>>2777310>Would Marx even be a communist if he were alive today?Yes he would be and he would agree with my line
Why should anyone be a communist? What good does it do?
Asking if Marx would have been a communist today is irrelevant and ascribes some form of great man theory to him or makes him into some kind of Christ like figure which is entirely anti-materialist. What should be important is what he said and if it's still relevant, and a lot of his theory still clearly is even if it isn't coming into practice as people expected.
>>2778582So marx was an idealist who thought revolutions should be driven by "alination" and not, like, putting food on the table?
>>2778816Alienation is why anyone has issues with putting food on the table
>>2778818ah, dang, good point
going to tell the homeless person that they should read adorno
>>2778818Are you retarded?
>>2779149That statement is perfectly accurate though. Alienation takes many forms, one of which is alienation from the product of labour (i.e. having no control over the value you produce) which obviously contributes to poverty. The other forms (alienation from labour, from others, and from species-being) are more abstract sure, but I don't think you can understand Marxism without understanding alienation. Marx is pretty clear when he does take tentative steps to describe higher stage communism that it wouldn't simply be wage labour with the state replacing the capitalist, although the lower stage could (and I believe would) look a lot like this. It would instead completely transform man's relationship to labour, making it a joy and expression of the inherent human drive to create and grow, rather than a tedious and burdensome obligation. The problem with leftcoms however is that they are possessed by the same delusions as the anarchists, in that they believe that the lower stage can effectively be skipped and deride it as simply the reproduction of capitalism despite it lacking (both in theory and practice) generalized forms of commodity production, wage labour, anarchy of production, and private property. MLs are correct that the Soviet Union and 20th century AES achieved at least an early form of lower stage socialism, but leftcoms are correct that this isn't nearly enough to realize the transformation that Marx spoke about.
>>2779170>The problem with leftcoms however is (…) they believe that the lower stage can effectively be skipped…There's literally no leftcoms who believe in shit like this.
Also great reply beside that, I agree.
>>2779198I'll admit I'm not expert on leftcom theory, but I will qualify my statement by saying that it's less that they believe they can skip the lower stage of socialism, and more that they believe they can transition directly to it within a short period of time, absent any preliminary phase or gradual change. I suppose then that their mistake is less egregious than the anarchists, but it's still of the same kind. For example I've never heard a convincing counterargument to what Stalin says about commodity production in the USSR, which is simply that its existence on the margins of the Soviet economy does not negate the overall socialist character of the Soviet system. His reasoning here is perfectly sound, since forms of merchant capital, commodity production, wage labour, and bourgeois property existed all through the middle ages. However these operated on the periphery of the feudal European society (e.g. in the Italian city states, Hanseatic League, etc.) whereas the vast majority of production was carried out in a feudal form, the vast majority of people existed under feudal relations, etc. The leftcom position seems to be that without the instantaneous and complete abolition of all vestiges of capitalism, then not even the lower stage has been achieved. E.g. the existence of commodity production, even in a marginal and limited form, somehow negates the socialist character of the entire system, even though they would not say this about the persistence of feudal or slave elements even in modern capitalism.
>>2779214Leftcoms mostly critique the fact Stalin made unnecessary theories about Socialist mode of production which is wrong, not because they believe you can abolish commodities but Stalin consciously falsify Marxist understanding of Socialism and DoTP.
Marx, Engels and Lenin all knew that DoTP is only political power of proletariat which controls and organize Capitalist society under their rule, not immediately transforms it into "Socialism", Stalin wrongly redefined Socialism as state of being possible in one country.
Leftcoms mostly critique Stalin of this notion not because State Capitalism = Le Bad, but because Stalin's theory of socialist commodities falsify how we understand Socialism, it's actually Stalin who believe we can achieve Socialism in one country which is absurd, Leftcoms are the ones who know it's impossible, instead they tend to believe that DoTP is something we strive for at the moment, Socialism is something what we can only achieve after world revolution, Stalin thought otherwise which is far from both Marx's and Lenin's understanding of Socialism and DoTP.
There was no Low-Stage Socialism in Russia.
>>2777310If Marx was alive today he would be bouncing on my fat cock, bitch
>>2779363>Leftcoms mostly critique the fact Stalin made unnecessary theories about Socialist mode of production which is wrongBut why are they wrong? Every leftcom I've ever spoken to seemed to just treat it as self evident that "socialist commodity production" was a revisionist oxymoron. Nobody ever explains why his points about it being marginalized and not compromising the socialist character of the Soviet economy is wrong.
>it's actually Stalin who believe we can achieve Socialism in one country which is absurdSocialism in one country was just a practical response to the failure of the socialist revolution outside of Russia. It didn't deny the necessity or possibility of world revolution, and the USSR played a major role in spreading and sustaining socialist revolutions around the world for decades. What would the alternative be? Just giving up by the mid 1920s because other revolutions failed? Moreover I don't see how that's related to Stalin's point about commodity production in the USSR. That's a separate issue from world revolution. What Stalin said could still be true even in a world socialist republic.
>>2779422>But why are they wrong? Every leftcom I've ever spoken to seemed to just treat it as self evident that "socialist commodity production" was a revisionist oxymoron. Nobody ever explains why his points about it being marginalized and not compromising the socialist character of the Soviet economy is wrong. The fact that State make surplus from commodities and invest them back into State industry doesn't make it less Capitalistic, under Socialist economic relations there wouldn't be any surplus in first place.
>necessity or possibility of world revolution, and the USSR played a major role in spreading and sustaining socialist revolutions around the world for decades. What would the alternative be? Just giving up by the mid 1920s because other revolutions failed? Moreover I don't see how that's related to Stalin's point about commodity production in the USSR. That's a separate issue from world revolution. What Stalin said could still be true even in a world socialist republic.You fail to understand my point, Leftcoms critique Stalin because of idea that Socialism CAN exist in ONE country, not because existing Workers State might be in state where it has to protect itself, also great error of Stalin politics related to Socialism in one country would be submitting whole International under USSR's rule which marks rather opportunistic character of Stalin's behaviour.
>>2778582>generations of social democrats and Leninists have muddled socialism to mean just that - redistribution, fair wages, 'justice' and equality, etc.it's astonishing you lump Leninists and Socdems together when the split between Marxism and Social democracy started with WW1. It was Lenin who was Revolutionary Defeatist and the Kautskyist Social Democrats who were Revolutionary Defencist. Leninists never distorted Marxism into Social Democracy. They never talked about "fair wages" rather, they echoed Marx's Gothakritik which explicitly stated that surplus would still exist under the dictatorship of the proletariat, but it would be a socialized surplus rather than a privately held surplus. Additionally socialist countries did not simply betray Marxist principles Willy Nilly, rather they dealt with the contradictions of being the earliest successful socialist revolutions in a Capitalist world. They were surrounded, besieged, and constantly aggressed upon with coup attempts, arms races, sanctions, embargoes, wars of extermination, etc. If the Soviet Union were truly opportunist they would have taken the Marshall Plan and privatized in 1945.
>>2779539>under Socialist economic relations there wouldn't be any surplus in first placeMarx explicitly says otherwise in Critique of the Gotha Program. He argues that there would necessarily be deductions from the proceeds of labour to support those who cannot work, or who do necessary but non-productive work, and to support the maintenance and expansion of the means of production.
>Leftcoms critique Stalin because of idea that Socialism CAN exist in ONE country, not because existing Workers State might be in state where it has to protect itselfYeah but that leads to a nonsensical conclusion. If you agree that a worker's state focusing on its own development is a reasonable reaction to the failure of world revolution, then surely it would be absurd to promote this line while also believing that socialism is impossible in one country.
>submitting whole International under USSR's rule which marks rather opportunistic character of Stalin's behaviourI'll concede this point. The domineering tendency of the USSR vis a vis other communist parties and later on other socialist states was a critical mistake.
>>2779610Notice: that shut him up
>>2777310>the fact he believed<treating their belief system as a religionzero self awareness thread
>Marx never would have said this lol"lol" liberals when they are faced with scientific inquiry can't help but react like Elon Musk, a total dud ideology unable to do any higher order critique, just kneejerk slop content that pretends there are no contradictions.
>>2778582>sneeringly derided as 'western Marxists' who are wrong because they don't see nationalizing the oil industry as the bedrock of communism. <The nationalization of Iran's oil industry in 1951 was led by Mohammad Mosaddegh, who sought to regain control of Iran's oil resources from foreign companies, particularly the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (AIOC). This move was driven by widespread dissatisfaction with foreign exploitation and a desire to benefit the Iranian economy. The nationalization led to a crisis, culminating in a coup d'état in 1953, orchestrated with U.S. involvement, that ultimately restored the Shah’s power and reversed the nationalization."Of course I'm not going to defend Iran's state socialism!" - Jewish anti-Stalinist Marxists on The Antifada podcast or This Is Revolution podcast who consider themselves to "take Marx's critique seriously" like you do. I assume serious communism is when you're a gamerchair Marxist who scolds workers for not being 'real communists' because they are willing to support Oct 7th in public and willing to support Iran in public against globalist international finance imperialist Jeffrey Epstein class of Bear Sterns guys like Pete Hegseth?
Only the PMC pundit class is allowed to sneer, only Zionists are allowed to sanction violence against Israel, its DEEPLY UNSERIOUS for goy workers to sneer at their antagonistic PMC class who defined their entire personality around seething with contempt at our national ability to give healthcare to children, which Israeli anti-Stalinists have also defined their entire personality around seething at.
PMC libertarian socialism has always been Zionist ideology that fights to liberate globalist free markets rather than actual people, as we continue to see in BlackRock occupied Ukraine since the 2014 Zio-Nazi Soros anti-Stalinist redditir coup. The same woke sociailsts who for years gained social capital for their communist brands by saying "Venezuela is a dictatorship" or "Assadist tankies aren't real communists" have always been aligned with these Nobel Peace Prize winning Zionists who say "Venezuela is Hamas" and "Israel is liberating Syria". The /r/Breadtube smuglord lecturer class were always friends with the Epstein class, always sending letters to heroic anti-Stalinist pedos like Chomsky. The western left are so pathetic that they invented a new world-historic slur, 'campaign socialists', for these losers hanging out at parties who sneer at actual workers for engaging in collective struggle (DEEPLY UNSERIOUS!)
>he'd be stuck in an armchair 24/7 furiously readingThe western left are SO PATHETIC that they invented a new world-historic slur, 'gamerchair socialists', for their typically soy PMC socialist imaginary. Notice how these Zionist reddit socialists will never once imagine speaking to the actual working class, the actual revolutionary subjects. its just worthless ultraleftist infantile solipsism from Contrapoints fans who would never, ever deign to speak to their undocumented goy slaves who have no human rights under the dictatorship of Tony Blair's global ID card regime that is being tested in Palestine
>>2778816people who study marx often divide his work into different eras and attest that young marx who wrote about alienation had a significantly different outlook to marx who wrote capital volume 1
Another garbage 'ClipboardImage.png' filename post
>>2779422>But why are they wrong? Every leftcom I've ever spoken to seemed to just treat it as self evident that "socialist commodity production" was a revisionist oxymoron. Nobody ever explains why his points about it being marginalized and not compromising the socialist character of the Soviet economy is wrong. Its the fact that Stalin tries to justify declaring a "Socialist Mode of Production" to have been established in 1936. You can call it a Socialist economy if you want, but a Socialist MoP is a blatant revision of Marx and Lenin, who understood the lower phase of communism / socialism as merely the stage in which contradictions of the Capitalist MoP gives way to a Communist MoP. To say there is a Socialist MoP in the middle and that elements of the Capitalist MoP like commodity production are actually not elements of the Capitalist MoP at all but elements of a Socialist MoP is revisionism.
Remember, Modes of Production are self-replicating systems, it gives the idea that just as a revision to feudalism from a developed capitalist state is more or less impossible, or a slave society to a primitive communist one (without some major catastrophe like a foreign invasion comparable to what the societies in the Americas faced), a revision to capitalism is practically impossible. Stalin went so far as to declare in Mastering Bolshevism that his opposition to Trotskyism after the so-called establishment of the Socialist MoP was not a difference in which social forces they represented, but rather solely that Trotskyism was a gang of saboteurs facilitating a German invasion, and that will be how the USSR could see a capitalist restoration. They did not see that Capitalist elements (aside from ideology) still existed in the USSR, because they explained away all capitalist elements as actually being elements of a "socialist MoP".
This is exactly why Khrushchev was able to argue that continued vigilance against right-deviationism was nothing more than paranoia, because if the threat of foreign destruction of socialism was no longer present, wouldn't it be impossible for right-deviationism to actually destroy socialism? This is why education on spotting right-deviationism practically fell to zero throughout the USSR's later existence.
By the way, this is why the ACP says that Russia is socialist, they consider it impossible that a "Socialist MoP" could have reverted to a Capitalist MoP. This is because Stalin declared a "Socialist MoP" to be a thing and invented "Socialist Commodity Production" to explain away why it had elements of Capitalist society in it.
>>2779670>Marx explicitly says otherwise in Critique of the Gotha Program. He argues that there would necessarily be deductions from the proceeds of labour to support those who cannot work, or who do necessary but non-productive work, and to support the maintenance and expansion of the means of production.Since when funds are surplus?
>Yeah but that leads to a nonsensical conclusion. If you agree that a worker's state focusing on its own development is a reasonable reaction to the failure of world revolution, then surely it would be absurd to promote this line while also believing that socialism is impossible in one country. Workers state should focus on developing both their internal state and external revolutionary movements without unnecessary separation between them, also how does one country develop socialism in one country alone?
>>2780153
"(…) we have always urged and reiterated the elementary truth of Marxism—that the joint efforts of the workers of several advanced countries are needed for the victory of socialism." - Lenin
>>2777310Whether Marx would be a Marxist or not owes less to any intellectual factors about Marxism and more to his disposition. Factors that would make him a Marxist: High openness and perhaps high neuroticism. Factors that would count against him being a Marxist: low agreeableness, high conscientiousness.
>>2777489You are wrong about identity politics. Most idpol libs from Tumblr have become some variety of self-described marxist or communist (of course they have - high openness, high agreeableness, high neuroticism, low conscientiousness…) and generally recognize that capitalists are "the problem". The way this manifested as corporate idpol has the opposite trajectory to the one you imagine. Companies didn't become "diversity champions" to cause infighting amongst their (mostly service sector) workers, they responded to
bottom up pressure from their employees by giving the most tokenistic concessions possible to their demands. Once it became clear that this wasn't enough and that the pressure would continue, they then immediately pivoted to reaction and backed Trump 2.
Young people across the developed world are more unified against capital than they have ever been. Idpol has actually been an optimal strategy for bringing people left because it starts by telling neurotics that the reason they feel bad all the time is because of an actually-existing social issue, then moves on to explaining how that actually-existing social issue is actually the fault of capitalism.
The beautiful part is that this dynamic would continue even if capital made real concessions, because neurotics will always feel bad and always want an explanation for why they feel bad, and capitalism has seeped into everything which means it's always ostensibly at the root of the problem.
It will be an unpopular view but: for the most part deregulation doesn't belong in the list of concessions rolled back. Deregulation is the one good idea neoliberals had. Generally speaking, it is good to just let people do things and it is bad to try to protect worker pay and conditions via rigid regulations that can't respond to changing conditions. Look at British Railways, for example, where a handful of empty trains are run every day because the paperwork to close a route is more trouble than all that waste.A good Marxist can understand why neoliberalism ultimately failed: they got caught up on (crooked) privatization, austerity, union busting, and tax cuts while mostly leaving regulations alone. (Because regulations usually create a group of people who can lobby to keep them, but the hypothetical winners from deregulation don't exist yet. e.g. a huge chunk of Trump's material petit-bourgeois and bourgeois base are people who own highly regulated businesses like Coca Cola bottling plants which would immediately go under if subject to real market competition.). Indeed, one of the major sets of regulations that should be abolished is regulation of trade union activity and restriction on the right to strike! Sometimes I think if Marx was alive and experienced things like central air conditioning he would give it all up.
What are you talking about? I am alive today!
>>2777310>But what in economic terms may be formally incorrect, may all the same be correct from the point of view of world history. If mass moral consciousness declares an economic fact to be unjust, as it did at one time in the case of slavery and statute labour, that is proof that the fact itself has outlived its day, that other economic facts have made their appearance due to which the former has become unbearable and untenable. I don't see how this contradicts Marx at all. Once an idea takes over the masses it becomes a material force which can change history. If the masses declare wage-labor to be done for, it is done for. It's a bit of a theoretical wankery, but it is completely in line with the materialist conception of history.
>>2780259>If the masses declare wage-labor to be done forthey will get beaten by their ruling class until they stop having wrong thoughts
>>2780153The inexistance of a socialist world economy makes it impossible to do it in one country. How do you plan on keeping yourself afloat without a state capitalist economy? You must extract surplus value from your workers even if only from the purpose of international trade. To some degree all state controlled enterprises have a profit motive
>>2780224Capitalism was always everything. Whatever mode of production you happen to be a participant of determines nearly everything about your life.
>>2779214Most leftcom critiques aren't that great, but the better ones come from councilcoms who advance labor time calculation as the lower stage of socialism. The problem with the USSR is that workers had no right of disposal to their product, and were thus still alienated from their labor and society. Likewise the wage relation, commodity production, etc. still existed, even if their forms were distorted by the presence of central planning. You can't advance to communism from here, that's the central problem, you'd have to have a second economic revolution to truly abolish these forms and replace them with labor time calculation or something more advanced. The only thing a Soviet-style system can do is degenerate back into capitalism, which is exactly what happened, facilitated by the intense alienation of Soviet society and the general falsification of Marxism in the east.
>>2779610Way to completely miss the point. Leninism is the economics of Social Democracy taken to the extreme: a paternalistic party-state which provides for the people, ensures fair distribution of wages and commodities while bullshitting enough theory to make people think it's "socialism".
>>2780149>also how does one country develop socialism in one country alone?By eliminating their bourgeoisie in the main and beginning the process of socialist construction through the rational planning of the economy
>>2780264>And you can always jump to any other mode of production. This is anti-thetical to Marxist historical materialism. Why would a prior MoP be reverted to unless a catastrophic loss in productive means occurs? Means of Production are, alongside the expropriation of surplus, the defining characteristic of Modes of Production. Yes it's true that once a more advanced MoP emerges other societies at a much lower level of development can skip the intermediary stages due to transfer of technology and state formation, but this chart acts as if for example the reversion from a Socialist Economy to a Capitalist economy was a reversion to a historical MoP which isn't true, the existence of a "Socialist Economy" itself indicates that the Capitalist MoP still has elements in society that never went away. This chart then replaces "Feudal MoP" is "peasant economy", I guess so it can sandwich together 11th century Europe and ancient Sumer together as having the same MoP? You know that MoPs are characterized in part by the Means of Production right?
>>2780224>It will be an unpopular view but: for the most part deregulation doesn't belong in the list of concessions rolled back. Deregulation is the one good idea neoliberals had. Generally speaking, it is good to just let people do things and it is bad to try to protect worker pay and conditions via rigid regulations that can't respond to changing conditions. deregulation doesn't refer to
merely to letting people "do what they want" but also the rolling back of workplace safety laws, food and drug regulations, environmental and waste disposal regulations, etc.
>>2780149>Since when funds are surplus?Because if you're going to have anything leftover after workers have accepted their compensation, there must necessarily be a surplus. This is exactly why Marx criticizes the notion of workers receiving "the undiminished proceeds of labour," since if every worker received their full output as compensation there would be nothing left for the purposes I mentioned.
>Workers state should focus on developing both their internal state and external revolutionary movements without unnecessary separation between themThe Soviets did exactly this though. Even when they were practicing "socialism in one country" they were still supporting communists abroad and of course set up communist governments in Eastern Europe after the war. You're taking the "one country" part too literally, it effectively just meant that the USSR would see to its own development and security first before turning its attention outward.
>>2780281>The problem with the USSR is that workers had no right of disposal to their product, and were thus still alienated from their labor and society.What would such a right look like in practice though? If production is subordinated to a central plan, then individual firms and their workers can't be deciding on their own how much to produce, according to what standards, where to distribute their products, etc.
>Likewise the wage relation, commodity production, etc. still existedThe existence of wages is debatable since I would argue that the Soviet system conformed to the criteria for renumeration laid out by Marx in Critique of the Gotha program, though of course they probably could have done more to replace money with something like labour vouchers. I would argue emphatically that commodity production was not generalized however, since goods were produced and distributed according to a common plan for use, not as articles of private exchange for profit seeking purposes.
>You can't advance to communism from hereI don't see why not. Why would a second revolution be necessary to replace Soviet money with labour time calculation?
>>2780583NTA
state transition has to be possible otherwise you cant explain why the USSR fell and became capitalist again without saying real socialism never existed at all and being idealist
>>2777310No I wouldn’t, I only invented Communism as a joke and you guys fell for it!
why have there been so many channers here lately? which board did we get posted on?
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