bebatjof 🇵🇸I went to a collective learning event today about Marxism. Hello yes I'm a Marxist now.
In 2 weeks it's about anarchism so maybe ask again then.
It was super interesting and I'm very happy that I managed to attend.
🔹 Context: industrial revolution. Mechanisation in agriculture meant less workers were necessary on the field, so people go to the city to find a job. This leads to exploitable workers, low wages, dangerous conditions.
🔹 Marxism is a scientific method. (I didn't know that.)
🔹 "Philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point, however, is to change it." Now finally a philosophical point of view I can agree with.
🔹 Hegel: ideas and understanding are the motor of change in the world.
Marx: no, material conditions are. You need to change the material conditions of people in order to change your understanding of the world.
This is "materialism" (Marx) as opposed to "idealism" (Hegel).
🔹 For example: individual wage labour creates individualism, whereas villages create solidarity, because people have specialisms. If the baker is ill, no one in the village has bread. In a factory, workers compete for wages.
#marxism #Hegel #Marx #materialism #idealism #individualism #solidarity
🔹 Dialectics
🔹 Marxism is a lot of things. It's a method, a theory of history, a critique of capitalism, an analysis of class struggle, and then communism. Communism is a political and an economical system, it's a stateless, classless and moneyless society. According to Marx, communism was a hypothesis of the future, his speculation, his prediction of what was going to happen. Not a moral obligation.
🔹 Anarchism is idealistic and principled against the state. Marxism wants to create the material conditions for this to happen 'naturally'. The state will stop existing because we don't need it anymore.
🔹 The contradiction of capitalism. The proletariat does labour for a wage, the bourgeoisie owns the means of production. Wealth, class and power are centralised in the state.
🔹 Capitalism relies on "naked" exploitation: it IS exploitation. Naked means that there is no need to "justify" the exploitation through race or religion or...
🔹 Mode of production (eg capitalism or feudalism)
(equals) =
relations (between classes)
(plus) +
forces (= means + workers)
Dialectical relationship: they influence each other.
🔹 Commodities and the labour theory of value. I thought this was a lot of words to say that labour adds value, and that surplus value comes from the power of labour through underpayment. Workers are paid the minimum amount that is necessary for them to show up the next day and work again.
What I didn't understand fully: labour adds value, okay, labour turns a bunch of wool into a hat so that is clearly added value. However, scarcity (whether real or perceived) also adds value, no? So what does Marx say about this? Does sentimental value have a place in Marxism?
🔹 "socially necessary labour time". If an average person needs one hour to repair a car, one hour is going to be the price paid. A slower person doesn't get more money. Quantification of labour through xyz is unfair.
🔹 Alienation. (This was super well put.) The worker creates the product, but doesn't own the product. The moment the product is finished, the worker loses their relation to it. The product becomes more valuable than the worker, and thus more powerful. So the more the worker works, the more he loses value and power. The objectification of labour means the loss of realisation for workers.
This reminded me a lot of the Rana Plaza disaster (garment-factory building in Bangladesh that collapsed, killing more than 1000 workers). These workers make clothes, absolutely not for themselves, and their lives are valued less than the product.
Today I attended a collective learning event on anti-imperialism.
We discussed the final part of Marx, Lenin, Rosa Luxemburg, Mao, Samir Amin and a practical example.
#antiimperialism #Marx #Marxism #communism #Lenin #Mao #SamirAmin #RosaLuxemburg
The communist revolution, working towards a communist society, means creating the material conditions for a stateless society. A stateless society is always also a classless society.
From each according to their ability, to each according to their needs.
1️⃣ "Workers of the world, unite!" aka class consciousness.
2️⃣ Seize the means of production. Produce for your needs, not for profit.
3️⃣ Dictatorship of the proletariat. This is seen as a true democracy, as opposed to the bourgeois democracy we have now.
What I don't understand about this is how the means of production are to be seized by the proletariat, who are then also going to rule, so the state owns everything. Then the states stops existing. There's a big leap there.
So Marx theorised that capitalism would always need growth, more capital, more labour, so in the end, this would fail, as it would eventually reach its limits. Why did this not happen (yet)? Because the collapse is postponed, because of imperialism.
Some key thoughts of Lenin
🔹 Monopoly capitalism. In Marx' time there was competition between companies, but Lenin saw that in the end monopolies will prevail.
🔹 Finance capitalism, following industrial capitalism. Making profits on loans and interests, on top of labour and production.
🔹 Super profits (and super exploitation). The contradiction of capitalism increases, which leads to colonialism. Workers in colonies provide labour for even lower wages. The difference between the wage of the worker and the surplus value of the product increases even further.
🔹 Labour aristocracy (the rise of the middle class).
Rosa Luxemburg:
🔹 Imperialism is not the final stage of capitalism, it is a cycle, an ongoing feature.
🔹 Capitalism inherently needs imperialism, war and violence.
🔹 In the context of the early 20th century there was a "crisis" of underconsumption: workers were too exploited to keep buying things, the bourgeois class was saturated.
🔹 Colonialism: capitalism destroys societies to create a new exploitable labour force.
🔹 A part of the destruction of these societies is to install a class state!
🔹 Militarism is an inherent component of capitalism.
Ali Kadri then builds on this and says that militarism creates a cycle to reinforce capitalism. When the whole world is colonised, one part will be destroyed in war, to create new opportunities for capitalism to restart the cycle.
For Marx, past labour is stored in commodities, for example a knitted scarf. (The difference between a scarf and a ball of yarn is labour, the act of knitting. So the past labour is "in" the scarf.)
Kadri introduces the concept of "dead labour". This is when the end product is not for consumption (like the scarf), but it's death itself (like the war machinery).
The system absorbs labour power and destroys human bodies for profit.
Violence is not a symptom of capitalism, but an inherent component.
#RosaLuxemburg #AliKadri #militarism #capitalism #colonialism #antiimperialism #violence
Mao and dialectical materialism.
This was very theoretical at first.
🔹Every process, every development is caused by an internal contradiction. External factors exist but they are never crucial for a process. Contradictions are the basis of motions and processes. Each process and each contradiction need their own method, the analysis needs to be qualitative.
🔹 There is always a principle contradiction. The one central necessary contradiction to be identified, plus how it interacts with other contradictions.
There is also always one principle aspect, which the aspect of the contradiction that is currently dominating. This determines the (current) nature of things.
🔹 Within a principle contradiction there can be a secondary contradiction. The opponents of the secondary contradiction are united in the primary contradiction.
🔹 So in Mao's (early) time. One contradiction is China's feudalist society, where the masses, the farmers, are opposed to the bourgeois class, the landowners. However, after losing the first Sino-Japanese war, there is also a contradiction between Chinese nationalism and Japanese imperialism. In this case, Mao argues that the principle contradiction is "against imperialism", and that the feudalist contradiction becomes secondary. Hence, Mao said that the communist party should form a coalition with the Kuomintang (Chinese nationalist party), against the Japanese (during the second Sino-Japanese war).
🔹So to recap: the Chinese communists are against the Kuomintang, but this contradiction becomes secondary when Japan invades China, then the communists and the Kuomintang are united in the principle contradiction against imperialism.
#mao #maoism #DialecticalMaterialism #kmt #kuomintang #ccp #communism #china #imperialism #antiimperialism
I really don't think I agree with this.
You can't shove secondary contradictions to the background just because there is a more pressing matter, even if it's really important. Of course it depends on how big the original contradiction was.
Samir Amin expanded on marxism and described class relations on a world scale. There is the center, who dictates the terms and conditions, and the periphery, which is underdeveloped, exploited and prevented sovereignty. The center extracts surplus value from the periphery.
🔹 Important: the proletariat in the center benefits from the periphery.
🔹 There is uneven development and uneven exchange.
🔹 There is a hidden transfer of value. The wages in the periphery are way lower than in the center which increases the surplus value. This transfer is "hidden" cause it's not easily measured.
Radical de-linking.
The emancipation of the underdeveloped countries will not happen within this capitalist system. Instead, Amin puts forward radical delinking as a breakaway from global capitalism and from the dependence on the imperial center. This requires economic innovation in order to produce for own needs instead of for profit. In addition, there should be south-south cooperation (eg the brics countries). It also necessarily involves building a defence against the West.
#marxism #SamirAmin #capitalism #anticapitalism #RadicalDelinking
Escaping the petrodollar is virtually impossible as IMF loans come with conditions (and sanctions).
Liberation of colonies.
Former colonies still don't have control over means of production, so they are not free. One essential value is the land, which brings us to the agrarian question: modernisation of agriculture will lead to surplus, and historically this has led to industrialisation and an increase of capitalism. How can we avoid this? Small scale agriculture, production for own needs instead of profit, yes, but in reality it remains a difficult point.
Revolution comes from the periphery. (Socialism in the west is social imperialism.) How can the west support radical delinking?
Next thread: anarchy!
https://elk.zone/twoot.site/@bebatjof/116506430198002300
side quest: thread on Rosa Luxemburg
bebatjof 🇵🇸 (@[email protected])
Anarchy learnings thread! Previous thread: Marxism and anti-imperialism https://elk.zone/twoot.site/@bebatjof/116427455916190205
Meneer de salonsocialist@bebatjof Orthodox Marxist view is this: the state is a necessary structure of managing class conflict in a class-based society. Do you have classes in conflict? Then you have a state to manage the conflict. Do you not have classes? Then no state is needed and also does not arise.
Now, class, for a Marxist, is a product of social relations relating to an economic base of society. So, once the economic base is transformed so that class conflict, and ultimately class *itself*, disappears, the state will no longer be necessary. State will "wither away" in accordance with the disappearance of class; reappear to the extent that classes remain.
In short: the state is not an "owner" or necessary controller of things (as your formulation assumes), for a Marxist. The state can be an owner or controller of some things, but that is not its basic function. What characterizes the state for a Marxist is that is it a necessary political structure of class conflict, which just loses its function when classes disappear.
A 'political' organization of a classless society would, by definition, be something other than a state-form on the Marxist view. It would be a mere tool for administering things, not managing structurally antagonistic social relations.
@bebatjof Now, a further question is how this is supposed to actually happen (i.e., this restructuring of the economic base and disappearance of classes). Very few Marxists have a concrete answer to that, with many of them saying it is (currently) even unanswerable to us from our historical juncture (which is decidedly pre-revolutionary and we do not have a crystal ball and all that). But the above is the direct answer to the question as you formulated it.
@bebatjof That being said, there are a lot of different models for how this is supposed to work:
- Leninist “transition state” theory (highly structured state phase as mechanism)
- Council communism (decentralized workers’ councils as mechanism)
- Anarchist communism (explicit rejection of transitional state, often no clear mechanism or entirely incompatible views with Marxism)
- Contemporary Marxist sociology (varied models of post-capitalist governance and how that is supposed to pan out in terms of overcoming the state)
@bebatjof What makes one a Marxist when it comes to a theory of the state is *not* agreeing on which mechanism will work politically. As you can see above, Marxists disagree wildly about which political path can and will work (or be effective). It is not a failure of Marxism that it does not provide that answer uniformly, since there is no uniquely Marxist stance on which politics or mechanisms will work.
What Marxists share is the common notion of the state as a certain kind of thing, i.e., a necessary structure arising out of class antagonisms, which makes it downstream from the class phenomenon itself and thus social relations in the economic base.
@bebatjof Incidentally, this is an issue on which anarchists and left-wing liberals can be differentiated quite nicely from Marxists, too. They tend not to accept this understanding of the state and, when they are theoretically cognizant of their core difference with Marxists, they tend to push back on defining the state along the lines I explained above.
@Hylas I had to think about this for a while before replying.
Basically you are confirming what I said, while also saying that this is not a failure of Marxists.
There is clearly a big leap between state communism and a stateless society, and Marx does not have an answer here. You have explained Marxism back to me, added that there are several models and that Marxists disagree with each other, which completely confirms my point.
Calling this not a failure of Marx / Marxists is tendentious and your disdain of anarchists is very much showing. I asked for help (implicitly) but not for a lecture. You're clearly knowledgeable, but I don't feel like engaging in a conversation.
Good day.
@bebatjof That’s fair—I won’t push the discussion further.
Just to clarify one thing: I wasn’t simply confirming your point. I was trying to point out that your initial question rests on a view of the state (as a kind of owner-agent) that Marxism doesn’t really share, which is why my reply took the form it did. I was aiming to explain what Marxism, on its own terms, is trying to say.
In any case, I’ll leave it there. Good day.
@Hylas lol. Yeah, exactly.