Yet democracy was only a tool for the proletariat, to get power. Others classes have to fall under the lead of the proletariat. This shows clearly how Marx isn't at all a democrat or believes in democracy. Marx or his followers do not believe that (liberal) democracy could be self correcting and fix many of the injustices. Neither was it acceptable to be a socialist who attempts to work within the system. — ssu

I think Marx was basically a Democrat as the whole idea was to gain political power through democratic means (or other means in non-democratic countries) to then push through rules that would put an end to class struggle by effectively abolishing class distinction. Once everyone is in the same class, democracy logically followed as both economic and political power would be vested in the same people and the democratic would no longer be marred by class struggle.

Communism was about the enfranchisement of everyone.

Pick a different word if you don't like it. The point is that the response is totally reasonable. Learning that dictators ruthlessly killed hundreds of millions of people... hatred and fear, disgust, contempt, are not irrational responses. In any case you will have to make a distinction between appropriate emotional response and inappropriate. You will also be forced to use a qualifying word.

I think Marx was basically a Democrat as the whole idea was to gain political power through democratic means (or other means in non-democratic countries) to then push through rules that would put an end to class struggle by effectively abolishing class distinction. Once everyone is in the same class, democracy logically followed as both economic and political power would be vested in the same people and the democratic would no longer be marred by class struggle. — Benkei

Concise clarity here. I would encourage those who are objecting to stop trying construct strawmen and argue instead, why they disagree. 1) can we ever really abolish class distinctions? (Even if the answer is no, thought doesn't end there). So what can we do to lessen or correct the inequality caused by class distinctions? The capitalist answer is precisely what Marx critiqued, and we are seeing his criticisms play out more now than at any other time in human history.

2) Would democracy logically follow if class distinctions were abolished? Why or why not?

What class makes up the majority of society? — JerseyFlight

The middle class, which isn't the favorite class divide of Marx. A lot of those nasty bourgeoisie in that category.

(What rarely is mentioned is that the upper class has gotten bigger too:)

I think Marx was basically a Democrat as the whole idea was to gain political power through democratic means — Benkei

Looking at the theories of Karl Marx, it's quite strange to say that the whole idea was to gain political power through democratic means.

Good lord, you have got to be kidding me? I think you mean, the workers?

The middle class, which isn't the favorite class divide of Marx. — ssu

You're looking at the "middle income class". Marx doesn't divide classes up by their income; he divides them up by whether or not they own the means of production.

Almost everyone in every income class, except a tiny fraction of people at the very top, are in the "lower class" (proletariat) by Marx's reckoning, inasmuch as they do not own the means of production, they just sell their labor.

The only "upper class" on Marx's reckoning are those who own so much that they don't have to work.

There is in theory a tiny boundary layer (who Marx AFAIK doesn't recognize) of those who own exactly enough for their own needs and still have to work to cover their own consumption, neither living for free off the labor of others nor paying to borrow the capital of others. But capitalism makes that an extremely unstable position: once you're there, it's really easy to either work more or slack off and fall to one or the other side of that divide, and then capitalist forces take over (you have to start borrowing and working more to service that debt, or you can start lending out or hiring poorer people to do your work for you) and you fall quickly into one or the other class.

MARX AND THE SERIOUS QUESTION OF PRIVATE PROPERTY II:

"To nationalise the land, in order to let it out in small plots to individuals or working men's societies, would, under a middle-class government, only engender a reckless competition among themselves and thus result in a progressive increase of "Rent" which, in its turn, would afford new facilities to the appropriators of feeding upon the producers."

Here Marx makes an argument as to why it won't work to partially nationalize property. Because it will retain the same divisive structure of competition.

"I say on the contrary; the social movement will lead to this decision that the land can but be owned by the nation itself. To give up the soil to the hands of associated rural labourers, would be to surrender society to one exclusive class of producers.

"The nationalisation of land will work a complete change in the relations between labour and capital, and finally, do away with the capitalist form of production, whether industrial or rural. Then class distinctions and privileges will disappear together with the economical basis upon which they rest. To live on other people's labour will become a thing of the past. There will be no longer any government or state power, distinct from society itself! Agriculture, mining, manufacture, in one word, all branches of production, will gradually be organised in the most adequate manner. National centralisation of the means of production will become the national basis of a society composed of associations of free and equal producers, carrying on the social business on a common and rational plan. Such is the humanitarian goal to which the great economic movement of the 19th century is tending." Marx, The Nationalization of the Land, Marx and Engles Collected Works Volume 23

So this is the question, will the nationalization of land lead to a change in the organization and process of labor? Will it allow labor to emancipate itself from the system of capital? Will this then lead to the result of the nullification of class distinctions? (Perhaps, a more fitting question, which stands at the base of Marx's thought, is it even possible to have an advanced class society, must society advance beyond class in order to progress itself into higher stages of intelligence?) Will a society, without class, if such a thing can exist in economic terms, lead to the resolution of many of its social tensions and contradictions?

These are interesting and important questions, clearly humans are greatly affected by economic systems, especially when those systems hold vital goods hostage behind a wall of required activity. That we could not do better than the present inequality seems self-evidently false.

What is most clear, is that Marx understands something sweepingly vital, how society is organized matters to the quality of society itself. The process of this movement is also the movement that accounts for much of the psychological, even physical structure, of the individual.

Marx was a humanist. He was thinking in terms of species consciousness, which is far higher, and more responsible, than individual consciousness. I would argue that it constitutes the domain of adult thinkers.

Yeah i wasn't careful with my words. Have you seen the headlines. There has been an 8 fold increase in militias since 2008. I wasn't careful with my words. I know who Abraham Lincoln and Jefferson Davis is.

.

a vast majority of people are generally content with their lives — whollyrolling

citation needed

a vast majority of people are generally content with their lives. — whollyrolling

In the days of plantation-slavery a vast majority of slaves were content with their lives as slaves, one could not get them to resist or see its tyranny. You have uttered a point that doesn't comprehend itself.

How Americans think income should be distributed, how they think it is distributed, and how it actually is distributed:



So clearly Americans generally think things are economically worse than they should be... and in fact, things are actually much worse than they even think it is.

Source: Americans Want to Live in a Much More Equal Country (They Just Don't Realize It)

The daily press? The daily press is primarily a farce. — whollyrolling

You could say that. But you can find interesting things as long as you know how to separate the straw from the grain. And complement it with other sources. Information demands effort, it doesn't come to you like manna.

Let me just add here that the people I've heard complaining about the conditions of outsource factories are primarily "the 1% wealthy elite", — whollyrolling

That's weird. I haven't seen those people you say. My sources are journalists and activists who are not among the 1% who benefit from exploitation.

Again, you have no idea who you're speaking to and know nothing of my character. — whollyrolling

I was a "left-wing liberal" my entire life. — whollyrolling

I'm not interested in your character but in what you say. And there's nothing leftist in what you say.

As far as your commentary on media and the wealthy 1% "elite"--I agree with some of it, but that isn't what we were discussing. — whollyrolling

We are discussing that, because it is part of Marx's predictions about the evolution of capitalism. The worldwide concentration of capital is one of the few that has come true.

For one thing, and you need to be more specific about location, the nations to which these manufacturing tasks are outsourced are impoverished and in need of work, — whollyrolling

This is one of the classic excuses of the exploiter: I pay them a shitty salary, the working conditions are infamous, but they must thank me: I give them work. And I'm getting richer and richer. Everybody is happy, is it not?

And let me be clear that I do not condone sweatshops, but that's a whole other conversation. — whollyrolling

Well, it looks like you do. In any case, the maquiladoras and other industries established in the third world by Western companies are an essential part of capitalism. It's global capitalism, you know. In many of the corrupt countries what keep the business going it is the local bourgeois class (capitalism) that benefits along with the transnational corporations. And they are democracies endorsed by the American Friend and the rest of the gang. Nowadays you have to present things with a good facade, even if they are as rotten as ever underneath. Ballots are made, they are put in ballot boxes and the usual ones with different collars win. That's nice and it quiets down some well-meaning critics. "The People want it." This is what Marx rightly - in this case - denounced .

Yet democracy was only a tool for the proletariat, to get power. Others classes have to fall under the lead of the proletariat. This shows clearly how Marx isn't at all a democrat or believes in democracy. — ssu

Obviously. Marx was not a liberal Democrat. He thought that parliamentary democracy was an instrument in the hands of the bourgeois class and that other types of democracy must be sought that would put an end to exploitation. This is the alphabet of Marxism.

"Communists must unremittingly struggle against these bourgeois socialists because they work for the enemies of communists and protect the society which communists aim to overthrow." — ssu

If one analyzes the role of European social democracy after Marx there is no doubt that he was right, from his assumptions.

And neither did the Communists that took up arms and were eager to kill the class enemy. — ssu

Don't be melodramatic: Marx didn't want to "kill" an entire class. He wanted the bourgeois class to disappear as a class because it was living off the exploitation of humanity. In his opinion this would happen "naturally" when private ownership of the means of production disappears. But he did not think that the process would be very peaceful. The exploiters don't like to have their means of exploitation taken away from them and they have enough power to defend themselves violently. The way he had done it in Europe (France especially during the communes of 1848 and 1871) made this very clear.

Here is some truth and some errors that we can discuss calmly, if you want to do so.

That's exactly what he argued for countries that he considered to have strong democratic institutions such as the UK and the Netherlands.

You might try thinking about what David Mo is saying instead of blurting out a barrage of convictions.

How Americans think income should be distributed, how they think it is distributed, and how it actually is distributed: — Pfhorrest

There has long been a large sample of surveys that say that what happens in capitalist countries (including "democratic" ones) is not what people think it should be in terms of social justice.

The defenders of the system (who are usually the ones who benefit from it) often argue that social justice is at odds with freedom. Therefore, there must be more freedom (for the riches) than social justice (for the poor).
If the argument is not convincing, they move on to the next line of argument: democratic systems are not good, but everything else is worse.
If the argument is not convincing, they move on to the next phase: There is no alternative. Capitalist liberalism is a natural necessity. Scientific economy and so. Besides the defenders of the system are very strong and very violent: you cannot go against the rich. It is our destiny to be subject to them.

Apart from these arguments there is the subliminal propaganda exercised by a multitude of advertisements, films and series that show the delights of capitalism (Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas type) and the horror of non-capitalist systems (terrorists, bombs, dictatorships, pest...).This is one of the most important gaps in the Marxist theory of revolution.

With all this battery of resources it is not difficult to understand why the reformist (social democratic, for example) road has always been a failure (and here Marx was right too).

And one wonders:
Why is the scarecrow of communism still being used when there are virtually no communists today? Why does it keep coming back to a 19th century thinker who's already quite old-fashioned?

I can think of only two possibilities:
1. To throw a smokescreen over the problems of capitalism.
2. Because Marx was right about a few basic points about capitalism.

They are not exclusive. There may be others I can't think of now, of course.

Don't be melodramatic: Marx didn't want to "kill" an entire class. He wanted the bourgeois class to disappear as a class because it was living off the exploitation of humanity. In his opinion this would happen "naturally" when private ownership of the means of production disappears. But he did not think that the process would be very peaceful. The exploiters don't like to have their means of exploitation taken away from them and they have enough power to defend themselves violently. — David Mo

"Don't-be-melodramatic: Marx-didn't-want-to-kill-an-entire-class." This is just hilarious, you have me cracking up David. Sad that this even needs to be stated. Sane clarity in your exposition here. Also, the common sense of it, who would argue that it's acceptable to live off the exploitation of humanity? And yet this is the history of the world. Also sad that those who defend themselves, those who try to make a better life for themselves and their children are brutalized by those who exploit and want to keep their power. Any of the objectors on this thread would do good to study the history of the labor movement in America. Poor coal minors living in abject poverty tried to stand up for themselves, merely to give their children a better life. It wasn't greed! And what happened? The owners called in gun men from out of state and murdered the workers. The workers get blamed for violence when they try to form groups to defend themselves. Truly heartbreaking.

The defenders of the system (who are usually the ones who benefit from it) often argue that social justice is at odds with freedom. Therefore, there must be more freedom (for the riches) than social justice (for the poor).
If the argument is not convincing, they move on to the next line of argument: democratic systems are not good, but everything else is worse.
If the argument is not convincing, they move on to the next phase: There is no alternative. Capitalist liberalism is a natural necessity. Scientific economy and so. Besides the defenders of the system are very strong and very violent: you cannot go against the rich. It is our destiny to be subject to them.

Apart from this argument there is the subliminal propaganda exercised by a multitude of advertisements, films and series that show the delights of capitalism (Greta Garbo and Melvyn Douglas type) and the horror of non-capitalist systems (terrorists, bombs, dictatorships, pest...).This is one of the most important gaps in the Marxist theory of revolution. — David Mo

What you have here stated summarizes so very swiftly the way capitalist ideology functions. They often pretend to be champions of reason and truth, that is, until these virtues expose the brutalities and stupidities of their system, then they dismiss reason and begin to talk about pragmatism. I have experienced this first hand with libertarians. "If the argument is not convincing they move on to the next line of argument..." "There is no alternative... a natural necessity." That's just it, isn't it my friend, the same as all cult thinking, Nihilism, "the world will collapse if you reject our system."

And then my question for you is: what are you going to do with the 4 billion year old genetically encoded competitive nature of all species when you remove all elements of competition from your utopian society, are you going to rewrite RNA/DNA codes? — whollyrolling

If you're trying to claim a kind of genetic determinism, specifically social Darwinism, friend you have it all wrong. Your personality structure, which includes your ability for empathy and compassion, is not predetermined by your genetics. Sure, they play a role, but they are not the determining factor, the maturation environment of the human specimen, both physical and psychological, these are the determining factors. So this is how the argument actually goes, when capitalism deprives human beings of what they need to develop, when it induces environments of stress through poverty and economic coercion, these traumas retard the quality of human development. You cannot be part of an advanced species if you don't know how to cultivate healthy humans!

The way you get better humans is by raising them in healthy environments. This is not my mere opinion, see the work of Allan Schore.

Further, your objection, like so many other objections in this domain, begins with the false metaphysical assumption of the predestined evil of human nature.

And one wonders:
Why is the scarecrow of communism still being used when there are virtually no communists today? Why does it keep coming back to a 19th century thinker who's already quite old-fashioned?

I can think of only two possibilities:
1. To throw a smokescreen over the problems of capitalism.
2. Because Marx was right about a few basic points about capitalism.

They are not exclusive. There may be others I can't think of now, of course.

There are plenty of communists.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_communist_parties

The history speaks for itself. So why would we shy away from criticism?

Further, your objection, like so many other objections in this domain, begins with the false metaphysical assumption of the predestined evil of human nature. — JerseyFlight

If you're trying to claim a kind of genetic determinism, specifically social Darwinism, friend you have it all wrong. — JerseyFlight

Exactly! But it's even worse because the defenders of capitalism play with two cards: neo-Darwinism and contractualism. When it suits them, they appeal to the contractualist card to show off capitalism's pacifying virtues (Steve Pinker). When things don't work out, they claim the competitive Darwinian basis of capitalism. What are we left with? Can we or can we not?

In any case, Marx spoke very little about post-revolutionary society, but he never said it would be the end of all competition among men. He simply said it would be the end of a special kind of capitalist competition--the competition between exploiters and exploited.

There are plenty of communists. — NOS4A2

For God's sake! Apart from the Communist-Capitalist parties that are as Marxist as my aunt - well my aunt is quite a bit more than they are - the rest are just unimportant residues that fade away on their own. The world is capitalist, man. If you were afraid, you can relax.

You're looking at the "middle income class". Marx doesn't divide classes up by their income; he divides them up by whether or not they own the means of production. — Pfhorrest

And Marx puts on a pedestal a very specific type of labor, not having much thought to farmers or the self-employed, who can be indeed poor, but, as with farmers owning their small patch of land are theoretically totally different by the values of Marx (which can be seen clearly in the treatment of the so-called 'kulaks' and even here in Finland during the Red rebellion in 1918). The sharecropper or tenant farmer has the wrong ideas for Marx if he wants to own his land. Which again show the flaws in his theories that Marx as a city dweller didn't think so much.

A lot of those in the Bourgeoisie are what basically now belong to the middle class. Marx in his Communist Manifesto argues the following:

The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with
reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science,
into its paid wage labourers.

The priest sounds dubious here as belonging to what Marxists see as the intellectual Opium dealers from a bygone era (and Capitalism doesn't reject religion, just look at the US). The fact is that functioning capitalist societies have not impoverished the physician, the lawyer or even the man of science (with poets I don't know).

Obviously. Marx was not a liberal Democrat. He thought that parliamentary democracy was an instrument in the hands of the bourgeois class and that other types of democracy must be sought that would put an end to exploitation. This is the alphabet of Marxism. — David Mo

We have had a lot of experience of these "other democracies" and how democracy is killed by this method when there isn't actual representation of any others than those firm believers of the right cause. And this is why communism is so bad and has failed where social democracy has basically triumphed.

If one analyzes the role of European social democracy after Marx there is no doubt that he was right, from his assumptions. — David Mo

How so?

All I have to do is to look at my conservative party in this country and how it supports the welfare state to see how successful the modern social democratic movement has been in Europe.

Marx didn't want to "kill" an entire class. He wanted the bourgeois class to disappear as a class because it was living off the exploitation of humanity. — David Mo

:lol:

That's really funny, David. What do we call people who want a whole group of other people to disappear and then make statements like:

The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.

Working Men of All Countries, Unite!

"Only by forcible overthrow" doesn't seem like this "disappearance" would be peaceful. Stop trying to make Marx some kind of benign social democrat when he clearly isn't one.

That's really funny, David. What do we call people who want a whole group of other people to disappear and then make statements like: — ssu

Marx wanted class distinction to disappear by adjusting social and economic rules in such a way everyone becomes part of the same class.

Also Marx wrote plenty about farmers actually. Even believing, towards the end of his life, that a communist revolution would me more likely in an agrarian society.

For God's sake! Apart from the Communist-Capitalist parties that are as Marxist as my aunt - well my aunt is quite a bit more than they are - the rest are just unimportant residues that fade away on their own. The world is capitalist, man. If you were afraid, you can relax.

That’s nonsense. They may benefit from the current economic hegemony, like Marx and everyone here, but they spread the gospel of Marx wherever they go. Are you a Marxist?

Are you a Marxist? — NOS4A2

Even if he's not I can assure you that you are a socialist, and would never pack up your goods and move to a purely capitalist country. American is actually the greatest socialist country that has ever existed on the face of the earth. This is not my opinion, this is an empirical fact. America redistributed 4.5 Trillion dollars into the stock market. And the Pentagon cannot account for a whopping 21 Trillion dollars! But you know, a medical system for your aging grandmother is too expensive, it could end up costing 1 Trillion dollars! America has engaged in more wealth redistribution than all the Marxist and Socialist countries combined!