Marxism

[baraluila]

"An internal conflict occurs inside the middle class. How can you turn it into a conflict that will be interesting from a Marxist point of view?"
"Remember that a conflict shall be in the service of the society."

This is an assignment that I have to do, but seriously I don't know how to start, please help..........:crazy:

[cacian]

Hi
First I think to understand what Marxism is about.
Do you understand Marxism?

[kev67]

This may refer to the petit-bourgeoisie. If you mention the petit-bourgeoisie you will maybe get an extra point. The petit-bourgeosie (basically the lower middle class) were conflicted because they often lived in the same communities as the proletariat, but had similar economic interests as the bourgoisie. For example, they did not want private property abolished, or inheritance tax imposed, or the minimum wage to be increased because they may have employees of their own. The petit-bourgeosie included small business owners such as shop-keepers and people like factory foremen, who worked on the behalf of the owners. A foreman would have come from a working class background, but would strive to increase productivity for the owners by making sure the other emloyees worked as hard as they could.

You could also mention the Quakers. Prominent Quakers set up factories. They were industrialists rather than aristocrats, so upper middle class rather than upper class. They employed thousands of the working class. Sometimes they did not pay them particularly well, but they were paternalistic to their employees. For example, Bournville built a small village for their workers. In Reading, the big Quaker employers were Huntley and Palmer, who made biscuits. Their employees were not paid particularly well, but were employed for life, being moved to easier jobs as thet grew older. They all tended to live in a area called New Town, where everyone knew each other. Quakers were tea-total so there were not many pubs around the estates they had built, although there were temperance houses.

[Mason Pringle]

Marxism is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions

[OrphanPip]

Marxism is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions

Well, not quite. Marxism, as conceived by Marx, is just a historical and economic methodology. Marx himself in his political activity was mostly a labour activist and supporter of democratic socialism, two movements that did a lot of good for most people in the West. Marxism as a method to understand social change has never harmed anyone. Socialist International was also an early advocate of women's rights.

The degree to which the atrocities committed by Marxist-Leninist can be attributed to Marxism itself is debatable. Marx never really articulated a political mission, he was just a historian, sociologist, and economist. Strictly speaking, neither Democratic Socialists or Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, they just draw on different elements of Marxist thought. If one is going to blame Marx for the communists, then they also have to credit him for workers' rights and the social welfare state.

[cacian]

Marxism is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions

It is important to point that any ideology that does not agree with the majority has the power to go sour.

[Phocion]

Marxism is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions

Sorry, but you quite clearly don't know anything about Marxism. I think it is a struggle to find any philosophical world-view that was not taken up and pursued in an absurd way by inferior minds and your comment is no more accurate or less frivolous than attributing the calamities of national socialism to Nietzsche and Schopenhauer, or even Plato, Hegel, and others.


Well, not quite. Marxism, as conceived by Marx, is just a historical and economic methodology. Marx himself in his political activity was mostly a labour activist and supporter of democratic socialism, two movements that did a lot of good for most people in the West. Marxism as a method to understand social change has never harmed anyone. Socialist International was also an early advocate of women's rights.

The degree to which the atrocities committed by Marxist-Leninist can be attributed to Marxism itself is debatable. Marx never really articulated a political mission, he was just a historian, sociologist, and economist. Strictly speaking, neither Democratic Socialists or Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, they just draw on different elements of Marxist thought. If one is going to blame Marx for the communists, then they also have to credit him for workers' rights and the social welfare state.I just don't think it even debatable, mostly because of the reasons you go on to explain. Marx never proposed Socialism as some kind of Utopian ideal: he saw the emergence of socialism as an inevitable outcome of the progress of history, which he thought would arise naturally in developed countries, not to be imposed on some rural serfdom. Marx never placed himself on the side of the proletariat for ethical reasons, or as a result of injustice, but because he saw their victory as the necessary outcome of the process of dialectical determinism.

And, in all honesty, he was pretty close to getting it right: we live in remarkably socialised society (considering our history), and this has been a result of class struggle. What Marx got wrong was his inability to anticipate the adaptability of capitalism, which allowed the workers to gain enough to be appeased within the system through trade unionising etc. If this had not happened there undoubtedly would have been a greater number of revolutions.

Most of what went wrong with Marx was a result of him building on Ricardian economics anyway (which held a pretty strong consensus at the time), so you might as well blame him for the slaughter of millions to if you're going to take that view point.

[JBI]

Well, not quite. Marxism, as conceived by Marx, is just a historical and economic methodology. Marx himself in his political activity was mostly a labour activist and supporter of democratic socialism, two movements that did a lot of good for most people in the West. Marxism as a method to understand social change has never harmed anyone. Socialist International was also an early advocate of women's rights.

The degree to which the atrocities committed by Marxist-Leninist can be attributed to Marxism itself is debatable. Marx never really articulated a political mission, he was just a historian, sociologist, and economist. Strictly speaking, neither Democratic Socialists or Marxist-Leninists are Marxists, they just draw on different elements of Marxist thought. If one is going to blame Marx for the communists, then they also have to credit him for workers' rights and the social welfare state.

Who cares about the degree. Nationalism killed millions upon millions, Fascism killed millions, Capitalism still kills millions, Tribalism killed millions, Feudalism killed millions. Why do we even make this distinction anymore. Quite frankly all dominant ideologies taken to extreme have the power to kill millions.

Now, who is counting how many communism perhaps saved. I would say also the number is in the millions. Think of all the people before the Maoist era who had a life expectancy of less than 30. Now, are we going to attribute their development and modernization to Mao? Maybe, but it seems hard to argue, the same way communism facilitates atrocities that are human but neither starts them or directly encourages them.

[mal4mac]

Marxism is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions

Christianity is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions.

Easy game this :)

[ennison]

Marxists managed it quicker. Count em up . Anyway Marxism as a practical philosophy is deader than his Highgate headstone. Hip hip hurrah!

[PeterL]

Marxists managed it quicker. Count em up . Anyway Marxism as a practical philosophy is deader than his Highgate headstone. Hip hip hurrah!

Well put. another cheer for the people

[Phocion]

Marxists managed it quicker. Count em up . Anyway Marxism as a practical philosophy is deader than his Highgate headstone. Hip hip hurrah!

Once again: not Marxists.

[Eiseabhal]

So commie states aren't Marxist? Yeah right! Not only Marxist but bloody failures.

[JBI]

Marxists managed it quicker. Count em up . Anyway Marxism as a practical philosophy is deader than his Highgate headstone. Hip hip hurrah!

You are so wrong on so many levels. Marxism as an ideology and train of thought is more alive than ever. I am yet to meet a modern historian who has not totally been shaped by marxist modes of thought. Even if you are not a Communist, marxism has still probably shaped most academic and academic thinking people's mentalities.

As for killing faster, not really. China, for instance, has suffered much bigger deaths due both to foreign invasion, famine, Christianity, western Culture, Nationalism and Capitalism, let alone cronyism and authoritarianism.

[ennison]

Well I have met many non-Marxists. The stunted intellectuals you refer to are well represented by the late (Good choice Eric) Hobsbawm and a nasty piece of work he was. It seems to have escaped your notice that the last twenty to thirty years has seen the wholesale abandonment and destruction of Marxist governance which ruled many states by terror for two generations. Perhaps China is playing footsie with capitalism in order to extend the shelf life of its one-party crony state but that will fail and pop will go that mob. No doubt you would point to Cuba as a country where single party terror has worked wonders for literacy - not impressed pal. In desperation you might point to North Korea but that for its population is a prison. People always want to run away from Marxist states. Why?

Answer. Because they are stagnant and brutal.
I certainly do not venerate small "intellectual" elites who absorb Marxist holy thought and say they are on the side of progress. Piss off is the reaction of a working man to that nonsense. In all Marxist states the worker is reduced to a slave. In all Marxist states there is a little gang of elitists running the show for their own benefit.
If you point to non-Marxist states as having some features of Marxist states as somehow evidence for the health of Marxism this only emphasises the cloud-cuckoo nature of your beliefs. Having communal health systems for example can be achieved by nations that have no Marxist influence whatsoever on their political thinkers (I know there are millions in Yankeedoodledom who find that a hard fact to grasp). Marxism is a discredited political/social philosophy of the twentieth century's era of social catastrophe.

[Shevek]

You are so wrong on so many levels. Marxism as an ideology and train of thought is more alive than ever. I am yet to meet a modern historian who has not totally been shaped by marxist modes of thought. Even if you are not a Communist, marxism has still probably shaped most academic and academic thinking people's mentalities.

Marxism is certainly not dead, but the Marxist focus on economic and class relations is not the dominant theoretical approach in history anymore. At least in Canadian and British history more attention is being paid to Gramsci (who I recognize was a Marxist), who embraced politics and the state not as a mere "superstructure" but a central way of managing class relations through hegemony. The most popular academics like David Harvey still accept the basic tenets of Marxist political economy, and they are the ones who tend to get mainstream attention. But at my university and beyond, there are plenty of historians who have been shaped far more by post-structuralism than Marxism, and their only engagement with Marxism is in refutation of it. In the field of social history, there are two big theorists - Gramsci and Foucault - and it's becoming more rare for recent scholarship to engage directly with Marx.

[cafolini]

Well I have met many non-Marxists. The stunted intellectuals you refer to are well represented by the late (Good choice Eric) Hobsbawm and a nasty piece of work he was. It seems to have escaped your notice that the last twenty to thirty years has seen the wholesale abandonment and destruction of Marxist governance which ruled many states by terror for two generations. Perhaps China is playing footsie with capitalism in order to extend the shelf life of its one-party crony state but that will fail and pop will go that mob. No doubt you would point to Cuba as a country where single party terror has worked wonders for literacy - not impressed pal. In desperation you might point to North Korea but that for its population is a prison. People always want to run away from Marxist states. Why?

Why?
A difficult question to accept an answer without the big stick that will make it convincing.

[julian94]

Marxism is an ideology that led to the slaughter of millions

Democracy is an ideology that led to the slaughter of hundreds of millions.

[Eiseabhal]

Aye right. That'll be the democracy of donaldduckdom then.

[islandclimber]

I prefer the democracy of daffyduckdom. :p

[julian94]

Aye right. That'll be the democracy of donaldduckdom then.

Nahhhh, it's simply called democracy. Would you believe that they killed this guy named Socrates?

[mal4mac]

If you point to non-Marxist states as having some features of Marxist states as somehow evidence for the health of Marxism this only emphasises the cloud-cuckoo nature of your beliefs. Having communal health systems for example can be achieved by nations that have no Marxist influence whatsoever on their political thinkers...

It's difficult to see how any left leaning party could have no Marxist influence. Take the UK Labour party (which started "communal health system" - the NHS.) It was certainly influenced by Marxism, indeed the Labour Party affiliated to the Second (Socialist) International in 1908. This was accepted by the International Bureau, supported by Lenin, who viewed the British Labour Party as representing “the first step on the part of the really proletarian organisations of Britain towards a conscious class policy and towards a socialist workers’ party.”

[JBI]

Marxism is certainly not dead, but the Marxist focus on economic and class relations is not the dominant theoretical approach in history anymore. At least in Canadian and British history more attention is being paid to Gramsci (who I recognize was a Marxist), who embraced politics and the state not as a mere "superstructure" but a central way of managing class relations through hegemony. The most popular academics like David Harvey still accept the basic tenets of Marxist political economy, and they are the ones who tend to get mainstream attention. But at my university and beyond, there are plenty of historians who have been shaped far more by post-structuralism than Marxism, and their only engagement with Marxism is in refutation of it. In the field of social history, there are two big theorists - Gramsci and Foucault - and it's becoming more rare for recent scholarship to engage directly with Marx.

Both Foucault and Gramsci are Marxist thinkers. They rely on the system and the top=down approach significantly. Hegemony is top-down.

[miyako73]

A subclass division/conflict within the middle class. The upper middle class has the exclusive chance and opportunity to be elite and those in the lower middle class has the particular misfortune that forces them to slide down to the class of the masses.

[Eiseabhal]

The question is, was the elimination of Aristotle a mere tiff between parasitic slave-owning intellectuals or was it a genuine progressive movement that the dialectic can show to have been a step towards that goal of Proletarian Dictatorship to which we and all the Marxist elite aspire. As with The French Revolution I believe it is too early to have a true historical verdict.

I remain your comrade and admirer,
Leon Trotsky

I can't find in Ennison's post any reference to the British Labour Party or the UK NHS. But let us assume he was referring to that, even if there were people influenced by Marx in that Party post WWII (There were of course) the party was a mass party containing a wide variety of people, many of whom were motivated by Christianity rather than Marx and many who were seeking pragmatic answers to social problems. The idea of communal health systems contains things like the provision of clean drinking water, something that the Tory Party was good at providing in major UK cities long before the Labour Party actually existed. The opinion of a mummy on the British Labour Party is not important.

[ennison]

Taing dhuit Eiseabhal s bliadhna Mhath ur dhuit nuair a thigeas i. Like the ref to the mummy. The Marxists just lurv their pharaohs.

[Shevek]

Both Foucault and Gramsci are Marxist thinkers. They rely on the system and the top=down approach significantly. Hegemony is top-down.

Foucault a Marxist? I cannot see how Foucault could be considered a Marxist thinker. Foucault's system of power, not to mention Gramsci's, is much different than the orthodox Marxist approach. You can use Foucault and Gramsci to study top-down power relations, but to Foucault, power is not contained to domination. People in Foucault's account are the active participants, "vehicles," in power relations and so studying the forces of economy and state are not sufficient to fully understand power. Plus treatment of the top-down forces themselves are a lot different between Marx and Foucault. Marx theorized the state as an apparatus of control, whereas Foucault abandoned theorizing _the_ state altogether preferring to look at power relations rather than just institutional structures. As for Gramsci, the idea of hegemony through persuasion is something novel to Marxist thinking that does allow for investigation of grassroots developments. Resistance is key to hegemony, as there is also counter-hegemony, so no Gramscian will get the full story by restricting themselves to top-down forces.

[JBI]

From Foucault's mouth - I'm very proud that some people think that I'm a danger for the intellectual health of students. When people start thinking of health in intellectual activities, I think there is something wrong. In their opinion I am a dangerous man, since I am a crypto-Marxist, an irrationalist, a nihilist.

Seriously though, just because you diverge does not mean you are rooted in this sort of thought. It is impossible to get away from Marxism.

[OrphanPip]

Foucault's ideas are not strictly Marxist, but they do build out of a Continental philosophical tradition that Marx was a part of. Gramsci is a Marxist, and I find it difficult to separate him from Marxism.

Even if Foucault is not a Marxist, his ideas have been appropriated to an extent by Marxist critics working in Cultural Studies, and several New Historicists combine Marxist ideas with Foucauldian post-structuralism. My own MA thesis combines Marxist theory of the novel (drawing on Michael McKeon's dialectical approach to the genre) with a New Historicist concern for social context, they simply work well together because they share much of the same philosophical basis.

[prendrelemick]

Well I have met many non-Marxists. The stunted intellectuals you refer to are well represented by the late (Good choice Eric) Hobsbawm and a nasty piece of work he was. It seems to have escaped your notice that the last twenty to thirty years has seen the wholesale abandonment and destruction of Marxist governance which ruled many states by terror for two generations. Perhaps China is playing footsie with capitalism in order to extend the shelf life of its one-party crony state but that will fail and pop will go that mob. No doubt you would point to Cuba as a country where single party terror has worked wonders for literacy - not impressed pal. In desperation you might point to North Korea but that for its population is a prison. People always want to run away from Marxist states. Why?

Why - because they are run by Uber-Capitalists

I don't think Marx can be blamed for any tyranical state. He was about exactly the opposite, He was about "We the People" just like America. The People ruled by The People for the benefit of The People. He thought that capitalism was not the best option to achieve this as it is basicly flawed and could not last. The fatal flaw of Capitalism as he saw it, was that capital flowed from the poor to the rich, and this cannot go on indefinitetly. He was an admirer of the progress achieved by Capitalism though. It's a system that gets things done.

There is some thought that his predictions about Capitalism are coming home to roost at last, easy credit (so the poor can continue to enrich the capitalist) and the advent of global wide trading (so there are more poor to enrich the capitalist) has put off the evil day, but can it much longer?

[Eiseabhal]

So let's see then. You're saying that The Bolsheviks, The Khmer Rouge, Fidel, Ceausescu, The Stasi etc etc were uber Capitalists

[JBI]

So let's see then. You're saying that The Bolsheviks, The Khmer Rouge, Fidel, Ceausescu, The Stasi etc etc were uber Capitalists

Perhaps not. But they are all men, does that make all men bad? Or they are all powerful men, does that make all powerful men bad?

Either way, none of them are marxist in the traditional sense, or at least in terms of system. Marxism sees the revolution and communism as inevitable. There is no right or wrong then, since it is inevitable, and to an extent, the progress in the last 60 years, particularly in Europe is a product of such an "inevitable". Semi-Socialism has worked wonders for Canada, that I can assure you. Medicare has proven to be the biggest source of national pride. Tommy Douglas, the father of medicare, was even voted the greatest Canadian.

[Eiseabhal]

Perhaps not!!

Some people here need to get out more.

[JBI]

Some people here need to get out more.

In your home in Scotland you see marxism first hand right? I live in China - the disastrous effects of a faulty pseudo-communism are everywhere. Lets just say I have an inside perspective, given that my reception of Chinese marxism at least is not limited to Western, or translated works.

[Eiseabhal]

No I do not see Marxism first-hand but I hear lots of outdated bs from wannabe revolutionaries who have never got their hands dirty working and never will.

[Shevek]

I still think placing Foucault and Foucauldian thinkers under the umbrella of Marxism misrepresents what Foucault tried to accomplish. Whereas Marx borrowed from Englightenment humanism to demonstrate the exploitation that occurs under capitalism, Foucault traces Enlightenment humanism itself back to techniques of power. Marx wants to show how capitalism alienates our "species-being" - Foucault wants to investigate how the knowledge of a "species-being" has been used in political rule. Just compare Hobsbawm's histories of nineteenth-century British industrial society with those of Patrick Joyce. They are dramatically different in focus, scope and sources despite both examining issues arising from industrialization and class privilege.

Not to mention the fact that Foucault's philosophical project also built on Machiavelli, Smith and Bentham, and in his later work he perhaps engaged more so with these thinkers than Marx.

And I realize there are many interpretations of both thinkers that make them easy to use together in various disciplines, but there are some clear tensions between the two approaches.

[JBI]

I still think placing Foucault and Foucauldian thinkers under the umbrella of Marxism misrepresents what Foucault tried to accomplish. Whereas Marx borrowed from Englightenment humanism to demonstrate the exploitation that occurs under capitalism, Foucault traces Enlightenment humanism itself back to techniques of power. Marx wants to show how capitalism alienates our "species-being" - Foucault wants to investigate how the knowledge of a "species-being" has been used in political rule. Just compare Hobsbawm's histories of nineteenth-century British industrial society with those of Patrick Joyce. They are dramatically different in focus, scope and sources despite both examining issues arising from industrialization and class privilege.

Not to mention the fact that Foucault's philosophical project also built on Machiavelli, Smith and Bentham, and in his later work he perhaps engaged more so with these thinkers than Marx.

And I realize there are many interpretations of both thinkers that make them easy to use together in various disciplines, but there are some clear tensions between the two approaches.

Foucault's histories are unmistakenly Hegelian, like almost everything Marx wrote. The problem we have is tracing Foucault through Marx, or directly through Hegel. I am of the mind to think he read the Hegel through Marx.

[Shevek]

Foucault's histories are unmistakenly Hegelian, like almost everything Marx wrote. The problem we have is tracing Foucault through Marx, or directly through Hegel. I am of the mind to think he read the Hegel through Marx.

Yet Foucault rejected history as progress, as well as a universal narrative, which is what the dialectical approach is all about. Could you explain why his history is Hegelian?

[prendrelemick]

So let's see then. You're saying that The Bolsheviks, The Khmer Rouge, Fidel, Ceausescu, The Stasi etc etc were uber Capitalists



Yup! The friuts of the people's labour ended up in the hands of the ruling elite. Is that not a Capitalist model according to Marx?

[ralfyman]

Part of state capitalism.