Or perhaps now the young leftists who don't have any clue about the reality of the socialist experiment, — ssu

I've been down this road before. Conversations with people who considered themselves authorities on politics because they lived in a Right-Wing-Fascist-Dictatorship. I do not defend or advocate the Right-Wing fascist system of the Soviet Union. The only thing you can mean when you say Leftists have no clue, is exactly what I have been repeatedly pointing out, a workers revolt is not necessarily going to create a better system, thinking it will is delusion. There are many factors that come into play, pre-revolutionary factors as well as post-revolutionary factors. You seem to think you have settled the matter, but all you have really done is manifest that your theoretical position is driven by emotion. All the problems of class and society remain, how do you propose we approach these problems? How do you propose we go about making a better society, where human quality doesn't hinge on exploitation?

I've been down this road before. Conversations with people who considered themselves authorities on politics because they lived in a Right-Wing-Fascist-Dictatorship. I do not defend or advocate the Right-Wing fascist system of the Soviet Union. — JerseyFlight

???

If you start arguing that the Soviet Union was a Right-Wing-Fascist-Dictatorship, terms and definitions have no meaning for you.

You seem to think you have settled the matter, but all you have really done is manifest that your theoretical position is driven by emotion. — JerseyFlight

Contrasting how political ideologies have worked historically in the real world isn't driven by emotion.

All the problems of class and society remain, how do you propose we approach these problems? — JerseyFlight

A good start would not to put one historical political theorist on a pedestal for worship. It would be good to look at what has worked and why...and what has failed. Only then one is ready to think how to improve things in the present.

How do you propose we go about making a better society, where human quality doesn't hinge on exploitation? — JerseyFlight

How does the society improve and how has it improved? By many ways, but let's try to stick to the topic of this thread here.

I don't have the direct quote, but I think that even Marx said that the proletariat could go the other way, from not going for a revolution, but simply ending up demanding better wages from the capitalists.

Well, that's what the labour movement and trade unions generally did in the West: the implementation of labour laws, increase in pay and the improvement working conditions. The lower classes didn't fall into despair, on the contrary, absolute povetry was decreased. Liberal democracies could do something to correct the problems that the industrial revolution had created. Up to some point, at least. And these corrections were generally universally accepted by both the left and right, usually through the political system in nation states.

As the era of globalization changed a gear up, these accomplishments came into danger as labour competition became global. One billion Chinese suddenly coming to the market had to have a huge impact and the aspect of the issue being international, global, meant that the labour movement organized usually at the national level didn't have an answer to this. Hence the transfer of jobs from the rich countries to places were labour was more cheap.

I think perhaps from the viewpoint of Marxism, the lack of response to globalization from the international labour movement is the problem. And just why this difficult is obvious: if globalization has erased jobs in Western industrial countries, it has created them in the Third World. I'm not a leftie, but in this question I think we could find some common ground.

If you start arguing that the Soviet Union was a Right-Wing-Fascist-Dictatorship, terms and definitions have no meaning for you. — ssu

I care little about your formalism or anyone elses. The Soviet Union was a Right-Wing-Dictatorship presided over by Joseph Stalin. Just like all good Right-Wing ideology the Leader was allowed to unilaterally make the rules and issue executive orders without a democratic check on his power.

However, because your entire argument is based on the straw-man of the Soviet Union, no doubt you need to define it to fit your argument. Too bad that in reality it was a Right-Wing-Dictatorship.

the real world isn't driven by emotion. — ssu

Once again, you merely prove that you don't live in reality. Humans are exactly driven by emotion, which is why their world is driven by emotion. The problem with the world isn't the fact that we have too many dispassionate thinkers, but that the human world is full of passions.

A good start would not to put one historical political theorist on a pedestal for worship. — ssu

I think this is indeed a good place to start.

It would be good to look at what has worked and why...and what has failed. — ssu

By worked I assume you mean the cultivation of some kind of social quality, how do you measure it? This is important because your criteria will determine whether or not your standard is actually addressing the issues, suppressing them, or possibly even creating them?

Well, that's what the labour movement and trade unions generally did in the West: the implementation of labour laws, increase in pay and the improvement working conditions. The lower classes didn't fall into despair, on the contrary, absolute poverty was decreased. Liberal democracies could do something to correct the problems that the industrial revolution had created. — ssu

Labor struggles are never pretty. These are resistance movements. Why wouldn't you try to target the imbalances of power and possession that account for these struggles in the first place? You are already confessing to poor conditions, how did these conditions come about? No labor struggle has ever abolished "absolute poverty." Further, your analysis doesn't even take into consideration the whole notion of the activity of work itself.

So you admit that Liberal Democracies could do something to correct the problem, where was the democracy in the Soviet Union? And if it wasn't there how could the people address their social problems?

And these corrections were generally universally accepted by both the left and right, usually through the political system in nation states. — ssu

There is no empirical reality to this at all. Labor struggles are hard fought. Those who own the land and have wealth do not want to give up their power.

Hence the transfer of jobs from the rich countries to places were labour was more cheap. — ssu

Clearly you see this as bad thing. But this is how capitalism works, maybe you don't like capitalism? How should we go about solving this problem when it is created by the very axioms of the capitalist system?

I think perhaps from the viewpoint of Marxism, the lack of response to globalization from the international labour movement is the problem. And just why this difficult is obvious: if globalization has erased jobs in Western industrial countries, it has created them in the Third World. I'm not a leftie, but in this question I think we could find some common ground. — ssu

Hard to see how we are even on the same page here? What you are talking about is called a race to the bottom. Your analysis doesn't even make contact with the power structure of the system. It simply reproduces the social consciousness into which it was born. How can you change a system you don't even comprehend?

The World Bank didn't have any ability to gather statistics inside the country. And did the Soviet Union lie in it's statistics? — ssu

The World Bank has teams of researchers who analyze the data provided by the country. When they are unclear or do not correspond to parallel reports, they discard statements. This is the case with North Korea and other countries. In other cases, forgeries have been discovered. For example, I recall the case of Fujimori and the poverty rates in Peru. Or bad practices by WB officials themselves have been detected. I now remember the self-criticism for having manipulated statistics against Ms. Bachelet when she was president of Chile.

The World Bank had no interest in making things easier for communist regimes. As critics of the WB (I remember Joseph Stiglitz in particular) have pointed out, the WB is a very conservative institution, working in tune with the conservative trend in the world economy. It is very surprising that you accuse it of functioning as a front for communist regimes.

In general, within the natural reserves, the data of the WB can be considered as the most reliable or less dubious that can be contemplated. They are used by right-wing and centrist economists. And sometimes of the left. The comment on poverty in the USSR came from a conservative economics magazine.

What doesn't make sense is for you to become a radical skeptic just because the available data don't encourage your phobias. That's pure Trumpism.

Yes, Finland is a very special case. It is at the top of all social rankings. It does not seem that its recipe for success is exportable or that there has been a general spread of success in the world.

A good parallel indicator is the activity of social assistance NGOs. For example:

In a country of 5.4 million people, food banks, the Lutheran Church, the Salvation Army and other charities serve more than 22,000 people every week, a number that is growing steadily as a result of the continuing economic crisis.

"The situation has gotten much worse in the last ten years. When I started giving out free food in 2005, between 200 and 300 people came every week; today there are about 2,600,

By the way, the news refers to Finland.

I was talking about poverty. You of consumption.

Incidentally, I find it funny that one criticism of the USSR is that housing was expensive or that some health care had to be paid for. That's not supposed to happen in London or New York? Don't the clochards of Paris exist?

If you are trying to prove that the Communist Paradise did not exist, go to another one. I already know that. But don't sell me the Capitalist Paradise in return. I don't believe it either.

I care little about your formalism or anyone elses. The Soviet Union was a Right-Wing-Dictatorship presided over by Joseph Stalin. — JerseyFlight

Indeed you don't.

Hard to see how we are even on the same page here? — JerseyFlight

I guess we aren't. With utterly crazy statements from you like the one above it isn't surprising.

Indeed you don't. — ssu

One can either pretend that reality is a definition or one can look at the actual attributes of reality itself. It doesn't matter what you or I say about the Soviet Union, what matters is what the Soviet Union actually was. Did democracy exist in the Soviet Union? Did Stalin have power? Were there any democratic checks on his power?

. It doesn't matter what you or I say about the Soviet Union, what matters is what the Soviet Union actually was. Did democracy exist in the Soviet Union? Did Stalin have power? Were there any democratic checks on his power? — JerseyFlight

I'm saying that there weren't those checks, not even after Stalin, even if the totalitarian system became more "humane" by changing the labour camps to mental institutions.

Yet it is simply pure dishonesty and flagrant denial from you to try think that the teachings of Karl Marx had nothing to do with a society that had as it's state ideology Marxism-Leninism and that you try to call the Soviet Union a "right-wing dictatorship". I guess "right-wing" is just a swearword for you, so perhaps you could call Stalin a nazi too.

Sometimes the dictatorship of Stalin is said to be where the Soviet Union lost it's cause. Yet it is simply ignorance to try uphold the fallacy of Soviet Union being a possible success "if not for Stalin". Stalin, the great scapegoat. How many times have I heard "if not Stalin" ...how benign the system would have been under Lenin. This thinking totally disregards the intrinsic problems of Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to a totalitarian system.

Mikhail Bakunin saw this flaw well in the ideas of Karl Marx and writes in Marxism, Freedom and the State:

But in the People's State of Marx, there will be, we are told, no privileged class at all. All will be equal, not only from the juridical and political point of view, but from the economic point of view. At least that is what is promised, though I doubt very much, considering the manner in which it is being tackled and the course it is desired to follow, whether that promise could ever be kept. There will therefore be no longer any privileged class, but there will be a government, and, note this well, an extremely complex government, which will not content itself with governing and administering the masses politically, as all governments do to-day, but which will also administer them economically, concentrating in its own hands the production and the just division of wealth, the cultivation of land, the establishment and development of factories, the organisation and direction of commerce,, finally the application of capital to production by the only banker, the State. All that will demand an immense knowledge and many "heads overflowing with brains" in this government. It will be the reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes. There will be a new class, a new hierarchy of real and pretended scientists and scholars, and the world will be divided into a, minority ruling in the name of knowledge and an immense ignorant majority. And then, woe betide the mass of ignorant ones!

Such a regime will not fail to arouse very considerable discontent in this mass and in order to keep it in check the enlightenment and liberating government of Marx will have need of a not less considerable armed force. For the government must be strong, says Engels, to maintain order among these millions of illiterates whose brutal uprising would be capable of destroying and overthrowing everything, even a government directed by heads overflowing with brains.

Bakunin was right far before the Soviet Union was formed on the new ruling class in the "classless society" which would rely on armed force. That the same thing happened in China and in many other places where communists took over, which says something about the ideology of Marx.

Yet it is simply pure dishonesty and flagrant denial from you to try think that the teachings of Karl Marx had nothing to do with a society that had as it's state ideology Marxism-Leninism and that you try to call the Soviet Union a "right-wing dictatorship". — ssu

It has as much to do with Marx's teachings of a democratic society ordered by workers as North Korea. This is one of the great dangers and tragedies of Marxism, it is so easily hi-jacked by dictators. It is actually your own fallacy, people think the name is equivalent to the substance. I have already provided citations on this thread that clearly demonstrate that Marx did not teach a political system of state dictatorship. He is not responsible for Stalin. Dictators will use whatever ideology they can to come into power.

I did not merely try to call the Soviet Union a Right-Wing-Dictatorship, in actual practice that's what it was. You don't like this fact because it refutes your strawman argument.

I guess "right-wing" is just a swearword for you, so perhaps you could call Stalin a nazi too. — ssu

He was not a Nazi but he was in the exact same political position as Hitler, they both had absolute power without democratic checks on that power.

Yet it is simply ignorance to try uphold the fallacy of Soviet Union being a possible success "if not for Stalin". — ssu

No one on this thread has done this that I am aware of. This is certainly not my argument. This is another strawman. You are very ignorant about Marx's political philosophy. The whole idea of taking a peasant society (nearly feudalistic) and artificially thrusting it into communism is a joke. In Marx's theory the contradictions of advanced capitalism lead to the conclusions of communism. Society must advance through a series of organic stages, this is required to produce the social consciousness necessary to communism. I would again like to here state, I am not a Marxist, and I most certainly do not advocate Marxist revolution, I am merely trying to swiftly educate you on Marx's position.

How many times have I heard "if not Stalin" ...how benign the system would have been under Lenin. This thinking totally disregards the intrinsic problems of Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to a totalitarian system. — ssu

I agree with this, but for reasons very different from your strawman formation.

What a great Bakunin quote. I wish I knew the full context but I agree with what he said here. The difference is that you think this simply settles the matter, and Marx is quickly disposed of, but this is not the case. I see problems, but I am not sure I have ever encountered a more species-intelligent-thinker. One cannot think about material life and ignore Marx, even those who try end up in the same place. He simply thought about society in concrete terms, unshackled from the errors of idealism.

I think it is important when analysing Marx and the problem of private property, that the issue of communism, as a means of resolving the issue through collective ownership not be conflated with the problem. The problem of communisms are not really relevant to today and dealing with the issue of private property. Could we agree that we are not going to be seeing a return to the approach of aiming for collective ownership?

The issues are still pertinent today, of course, we can agree, actually it's worse than ever. Amazon as an example, is such an efficient producer and that has destroyed so many livelihoods and we know it's only going to get worse. The control over the means of mass efficiency are going to end up in the hands of fewer and fewer people because of ever-increasing efficiency.

I don't see a way to address the disease but it is possible to mitigate the damage by wealth redistribution and I think that has become what we're resigned to. Either wealth redistribution will occur in equal measure to the destruction caused or we will end up in a dystopia. That and limiting the profiteering by creating appropriate rights and protections for workers.

What kind of "intelligent restructuring" are you looking to discuss?

[Note: I wrote the first half when posted his reply largely making the same basic counter-argument, so decided to continue with some more arguments on other things rather than just repeat largely the same thing.]

Sometimes the dictatorship of Stalin is said to be where the Soviet Union lost it's cause. Yet it is simply ignorance to try uphold the fallacy of Soviet Union being a possible success "if not for Stalin". Stalin, the great scapegoat. How many times have I heard "if not Stalin" ...how benign the system would have been under Lenin. This thinking totally disregards the intrinsic problems of Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to a totalitarian system. — ssu

This is simply propaganda. Hitler emerged out of a liberal capitalist system, supported by capitalists, but it seems pretty clear you would not hold this against liberal capitalism but would argue that Hitler presented a different ideology that was able to emerge out of liberal capitalism, sure, but has nothing to do with liberal capitalism. Likewise, there was still a "market" in Nazi Germany, are you proposing that this fact is condemnation of all market theorist (from Smith to Keynes)?

If the answer is obviously no, as that's a ridiculous argument, so too is the idea the actions of Stalin somehow condemn the ideas of Marx to such a degree that it can be just assumed without even needing to know anything about Marx and what he wrote (which you obviously don't).

Likewise, can we assume all the genocides and slavery committed by European empires would be 'simply pure dishonesty and flagrant denial from you to try think that the teachings of' Jesus "had nothing to do with a society that had as it's state ideology' Christianity? That we need not even bother reading what Jesus had to say to know he was pro-genocide, pro-crusades and pro-slavery because nominal Christian empires did such things? They're calling themselves not just Christians but the literal body of Christ with a pope representing the word of God not just saying crusades and conquest is cool, but indeed demanding it happen.

Do you only bring this kind of argument against Marxism, but wouldn't against market theorists or Christianity, but rather in those contexts view it as pure idiocy?

Or, are do you share the same opinion as nearly all good-faith interlocutors both for liberal-capitalism and socialism, whatever brand, that things can go wrong. Markets and liberal institutions can and do fail leading to totalitarianism, which both liberal-capitalists and socialists can agree is a bad thing. Likewise, socialist revolutions against totalitarianism (or are you defending Tsarists Russia as a bastion of freedom?) can and do go wrong resulting in as bad or worse totalitarianism, which both liberal-capitalists and socialists can agree is a bad thing.

Mikhail Bakunin saw this flaw well in the ideas of Karl Marx and writes in Marxism, Freedom and the State: — ssu

You shouldn't quote Mikhail Bakunin if you have no idea what he was about and what was his basis of disagreement with Marx.

Bakunin believed Marx favoured totalitarianism because Marx didn't believe you could just wipe clean all state institutions and things turn out ok (a la. Pol Pot). Marx believed that getting piecemeal victories like working hours, worker protections was a good thing in itself but also actions through which the working class learns how "to do politics" and gain confidence. Bakunin believed simply wiping out the state and all state institutions, would bring society back to a natural community based tribalism and that humans naturally and spontaneously didn't fight or exploit each other absent the state.

Go research the Bakunin-Marx disagreement and come back and defend Bakunin.

Likewise, Marx viewed the Paris commune (direct democracy) extremely favourably and the first appearance of "workers managing their own affairs"; if he wanted a totalitarian state run by nominal Marxists theorists he would have said so both in his writing and through explicit, or at least implied, criticism of the Paris commune.

Bakunin's argument for Marxism leads to totalitarianism was basically that Marx recognized you're still going to need all the skills that exist in Bourgeois institutions and people for society to function, you can't just wipe the slate clean; hence, the revolution towards a classless society can't be achieved in one fell swoop of annihilating the state but is a complicated process of workers learning things and learning to work together to achieve goals (like working hours and mines not collapsing on them all the time due to under-investments - i.e. unprofitable outlays - in safety).

Marx was pretty moderate and argued to kick Bakunin out of the International not because Marx was a totalitarian that wanted all the power, but because he didn't believe in Bakunin's program of bringing down states through intrigue (i.e. assassinating government officials). Marx didn't advocate assassinating government officials to bring down the state, but rather gaining political power through organized worker actions like strikes.

Essentially the reasons Marx viewed workers as a revolutionary class is because you needed knowledge to work in a factory, innovate, and for a capitalist economy to functions, and so capitalists could not but help providing this education. Slaves was not a revolutionary class because it was predicated on keeping the slaves as ignorant as possible (in thousands of years of slavery no slave rebellion revolutionized slaving societies); rather, it's the bourgeoisie that are the revolutionary class against slave based society because they discover more efficient means of production that are incompatible with slaves (skilled manufacturing - which at first seems compatible with slave based resource extraction elsewhere, but eventually gets so efficient you can use skilled manufacturing techniques to extract resources also, so - why not? both on efficiency grounds, ethical grounds that the slaves aren't "practically needed" as well as on economic motivational grounds of selling capital equipment in the resource extraction market, resulting in a contradiction in the system resolved by the Bourgeoisie overthrowing the state and implementing liberal capitalism).

Marx does not "hate on the bourgeoisie", as propagandists like Peterson like to believe, but genuinely views slavery as worse than wage-labour and is happy the Bourgeoisie developed to a position of wealth and power to be able to overturn the slavery/serfdom (which, despite thousands of years of many slaves being motivated to overturn slavery, did not manage to do; racists would say it is because the slaves ere just weak and inferior, but to Marx it is due to the slave system both keeping slaves as ignorant as possible within a true totalitarianism of controlling almost every aspect of a slaves life; i.e. the means of production, doing all difficult tasks by brute force, in a slave economy kept slavery stable, and it required material changes in the economy, not simply the thought that slavery maybe bad, to result in a tangible revolution against slavery).

However, an antagonistic class separation remains in liberal capitalism (at first simply based on the end state of feudalism of who ends up owning the land and factories etc. when feudalism stops but gets worse and worse because capital accumulates in fewer and fewer hands) which is, largely speaking, a large proportion of people (having gained no wealth under feudalism, being slaves or serfs) have only their labour to sell in the new system and a smaller proportion of people effectively own all the means of production and therefore dictate the terms and conditions of when, how and to what purposes labourers can produce and therefore survive. The owners of the means of production, Marx does not care if you call them "capitalists" or not, have an enormous negotiating advantage in being able to use the immediate survival of workers as a bargaining chip. However, unlike slaves, workers are not entirely powerless as, although the owners of the means of production can threaten the worker's survival, the workers can threaten the owner's profits (all slave owning society's acted immediately, ruthlessly and as a community to put down any slave rebellion, breaking their spirit or just killing them all, as they could just get new slaves and it was obvious to them any real rights or any real better conditions for slaves would just lead to more slave rebellions) whereas such methods are not available in a liberal capitalist society and capitalists cannot depend on the goodwill of other capitalists, out of community bonds, to keep them in business (i.e. individual capitalists are motivated to negotiate a settlement to a strike by making real concessions, whereas slave owners were quite aware that slavery is only possible with complete and total subjugation of the slave and any real concession impossible; that if a slave owner needed to "put down" his entire crop of slaves to avoid any real concession, that's what he would do and he'd be helped out by other slave owners to get rolling again, by each plantation sparing a few slaves and no-interest loans to buy new slaves, in thanks for "doing what needs to be done", as it's clear to all the slave owners that no individual slave owner must genuinely fear breaking and killing slaves with the slightest hint of defiance regardless of the cost).

Why liberal capitalists hate Marx so much, even if he's thankful for them ending feudal modes of slavery, is because he points out that workers who have no means of production are not the "ideal of the shop-keep owner or the feudal black-smith" that owns their means of production, but are easily exploited in a structure that is akin to slavery. The economic heart of slavery is that the slave does produces for their own replacement (whether survival of the slave or then just kidnapping a new slave, whatever is more profitable) and the different between this substance value the slave produces and the total value is the profit that the slave owner pockets.

Liberal capitalist theory is adamant, indeed ferociously convinced, that a similar structure does not happen in liberal capitalist economies, that everyone gets their fair shake: that market forces are natural forces and therefore moral (as all natural forces cannot, by definition be immoral; it makes no sense to call a river or a thunderstorm or our feeling of hunger when we have not eaten "immoral"). Marx's critique of capital makes basically 3 arguments: 1. commodity production is not a natural thing; projecting it into the past makes no sense, feudal society was not a capitalist society and even less so clan, tribal and family society can be viewed somehow as natural capitalism at work 2. commodity production alienates workers from their environment and each other due to not producing for their own needs as a creative force in their own life but 3. commodity production inherently drives wages to subsistence levels and so workers do not ultimately benefit from increases in productive efficiency (productivity can increase 100 fold and yet workers are still tired and have precarious lives without real wealth; i.e. capitalist production does not naturally lead to everyone becoming capitalists and both working to produce and owning things, real security, but maintains the division between the haves and the have nots; on occasion a havenot can move to being part of the haves, but this doesn't change anything structurally speaking) 4. the economic and social problems commodity production creates leads to both a world market, as tapping into new markets and new labour pools is always the easiest resolution to capitalism's woes, and also leads to recurring crisis, the woes themselves.

There is many things to criticize in Marx, but he has a fairly coherent outlook on history that can be engaged with if you were interested in engaging with other ideas on a philosophy forum. When history professors talk about the "revolution of the printing press" they are putting forth a materialist conception of history. Likewise, when historians attribute feudal society as a result of technologies in warfare (the night of the samurai being the ultimate weapon of war and so easily setting themselves up as rulers) rather than because people just so happened happened to think feudalism was a good idea for centuries over large areas of the globe that had little interaction except the transmission of technology, again this is an idea of Marx (previous to Marx, it was essentially assumed power centers were the result of "superior people" and that political changes where the result of intellectual debate as such; someone "came up with arguments for liberalism, these arguments were good and so feudalism started to fall apart unable to defend itself on an intellectual level"), such historians are describing historical materialism as Marx does.

Marx does not deny that ideas also affect history, just notes that that they too must be produced, and in each epoch the ruling ideas just so happen to be the ideas supporting the rule of the ruling class: for thousands of years the divine rights of Emperors and Kings is a super credible, central political idea, and somehow as soon as feudal aristocracy is overturned the idea is laughable.

Of course, things change, for Marx this means that there must be a group that, within the old system, has, due to real changes to the economy that the system creates, gains enough power to start producing their own ideas. Slaves never developed a revolutionary theory of how to practically defeat their slave-owners (despite being very much convinced slavery was bad and motivated to become not-slaves), they were not a revolutionary class (not because they are "inferior people" or less morally relevant, but because the slave system never developed in a direction where slaves achieved the means of production of ideas to become a revolutionary class; slave owners were very careful to keep slaves in the conditions necessary for slavery; hence, why it's often said slavery "became obsolete", but if we ask ourselves why slavery could not innovate or integrate innovations elsewhere: Marx's idea of history is a good explanation: educating slaves to be skilled workers is simply incompatible with slavery).

However, merchants and manufacturers (who lived in burgs, and so people simply started calling them "bourgeois", who were not feudal lords (and, just like today the economic structure can permit some of us, but not all of us to work our way to having real capital, the feudal system could only give titles to some of the bourgeoisie and not all of them; resulting in dissatisfaction for every rich man left behind) - these men created the revolutionary ideas of liberalism that feudal rights had no natural or otherwise justifiable basis ... but, being rich men, just so happened to keep the idea that property rights, concerning their own property claims, did have natural or otherwise justifiable basis. They recognized that without aristocracy the only alternative to totalitarianism (incompatible with their property claims) was democracy, but were very conscious that there are more poor than rich and so needed to carefully craft a form of democracy in which the poor could not gain real power over property rights; hence, constitutional protections of property are based, not on democracy that people can vote for what is who's property if they want, but rather on the idea that their is a natural right to property and therefore there must be an independent judiciary (independent from what? from democracy) that sorts out property claims and the complicated contractual disputes that arise out of them.

“To assure the success of the revolution one must have ‘unity of thought and action’. [Marx is quoting Bakunin.] The members of the International are trying to create this unity by propaganda, by discussion and the public organization of the proletariat. But all Bakunin needs is a secret organization of one hundred people, the privileged representatives of the revolutionary idea, the general staff in the background, self-appointed and commanded by the permanent ‘Citizen B’ [i.e., Bakunin].”51

But in order for education to take place, the working class must be organized, and one such venue is the trade union movement: “It is in trade unions that workers educate themselves and become socialists, because under their very eyes and every day the struggle with capital is taking place.”

Here, in order to be able to offer energetic opposition to the democratic petty bourgeois, it is above all necessary for the workers to be independently organised and centralised in clubs... The speedy organisation of at least a provincial association of the workers’ clubs is one of the most important points for the strengthening and developing of the workers’ party; the immediate consequence of the overthrow of the existing governments will be the election of a national representative assembly. Here the proletariat must see to it:

I. that no groups of workers are barred on any pretext or by any kind of trickery on the part of local authorities or government commissioners.

II. that everywhere workers’ candidates are put up alongside the bourgeois-democratic candidates, that they are as far as possible members of the League, and that their election is promoted by all possible means. Even where there is no prospect whatever of their being elected, the workers must put up their own candidates in order to preserve their independence, to count their forces and to lay before the public their revolutionary attitude and party standpoint. In this connection they must not allow themselves to be bribed by such arguments of the democrats as, for example, that by so doing they are splitting the democratic party and giving the reactionaries the possibility of victory. — Marx - quotes lifted from this essay by Ann Robertson, The Philosophical Roots of the Marx-Bakunin Conflict

*Note that at the time propaganda just meant spreading one's ideas, it did not get a manipulative connotation until WW1, when it started to mean accusing one's opponent of eating babies.

Anyways, it's pretty clear that Marx viewed democracy favourably and that revolutionary changes can be brought about through democracy; he doesn't say "we need to organize the working class, participate in democracy as best we can ... but then Pounce! when the bourgeoisie least expect it and setup a despotic dictatorship of enlightened revolutionaries"; which is basically what Marx is accusing Bakunin of doing.

The economists have a singular way of proceeding. For them there are only two kinds of institutions, artificial and natural. Feudal institutions are artificial, while those of the bourgeoisie are natural. They resemble in this respect the theologians, who likewise distinguish two kinds of religion. Every religion other than their own is a human invention, while their own emanates from God. In saying that the existing relations - the relations of bourgeois production - are natural, the economists assert that these are the relations in which wealth is created and the productive forces are developed in accordance with the laws of Nature. Consequently, these relations themselves are natural laws, independent of the influence of time. They are eternal laws which must always govern society. Thus there has been history, because there were feudal institutions, and because in these feudal institutions are to be found relations of production entirely different from those in bourgeois society, which latter none the less the economists wish to present as natural and therefore eternal. — Marx

If you were interested in history, you'd know, or could quickly find out, that nearly all achievements made by labour (hours, safety, right to unionize, free education, universal healthcare, etc.) was advanced by communist, anarchist and labour movements; no gains were spontaneously tossed to the workers by the owners of the corporations; you may say "well of course! why would they; it's in their interest to pay the workers as little as possible and do as little for the workers conditions as possible, unless it happens also to be profitable", but then what is even such an argument other than that Marx was obviously right, that the market does not naturally protect workers via mysterious forces of balance and that therefore workers will need to organize politically for their own interests (if the capitalist is "good" even when opposing what we today agree is good - unions, working hours, etc. - then how are the workers bad in actually achieving them? More specifically, actually achieving those things through unions and so on while calling themselves Marxists; simply because Lenin and Stalin ultimately failed with Bukanin's strategy of taking over the state with "100 people, privileged representatives of the revolutionary idea" you dismiss the achievements of Marxists in democratic processes elsewhere?). That many of the organizations that lead these battles were directly descended from organizations Marx was involved in, or influenced by Marx's ideas, or then obviously very similar ideas, leading to the welfare state, is a history that you may be interested in: though we can't assign all the credit to Marx, we can't assign any credit to large owners of capital who were the opposition at every step, nor any of the credit to liberal economists decrying political action as "inefficient" because any state interference in the market will be bad for everyone.

Welfare state's, such as Finland, have massive levels of interference in the market both in regulation of what you can do with property as well as how you are able to treat and manage employees, along with direct government management, over 50% of GDP, of the economy, including direct state ownership of strategically important corporations. Oh, and they have healthy and powerful unions and "social" or even "socialist" parties since decades.

Are you arguing the welfare state is incompatible with Marx's ideas? Or just coming from totally different conception of society?

Likewise, the problems that welfare state's still nevertheless have, are these, to you, totally unintelligible in a Marxist framework. Would you argue that the problem of depression in Finland has nothing to do with alienation people feel as producers of commodities (or managers of producers somewhere down the line of commodities)? Would you argue the problems of sustainability for welfare states, both within and as a part of the global ecosystem, have nothing to do with the world-market's internal logic of requiring ever more commodity production; with any hick-up in commodity production and consumption creating an economic crisis?

Of course, Marx did not know the future (nor even very well the past), so there's a lot of things missing in Marx's theory, but you'll need to actually read Marx and demonstrate how his ideas are simply irrelevant (that there simply "is no class antagonism between workers and owners") or how, despite promoting participation in democracy and unions as the basis for revolutionary activity (Marx uses revolution to describe profound structural changes, not only violence; for instance, he views capitalism as constantly revolutionizing, "disrupting" in today's lingo, economic relations through innovation, and that the original revolutionary power of the bourgeoisie due, not to violence, but simply being able to organize produciton in a better way than serfdom and slavery), nonetheless has crafted some sort of secret linguistic virus that leads his readers to inevitably want totalitarian central planning, or something along those lines.

Essentially the entire world left views the welfare state of the Nordics, Switzerland and co. as obviously superior to "freer" forms of capitalism and obviously a better and more robust system than the Soviet Union. Where people on the left mention positives of the soviet system it's to contrast with the results of free market experimentation on post-Soviet Russia, that led directly to mob rule (as in gangsta) within a decade, lower life expectancy and the very predicable wide-ranging support for a strongman that can at least contain mob rule (granted, by fighting as dirty). People who get deep into this issue, argue that soviet democratic reformism (which Gorbachev was a nominal supporter of) could have led to a welfare state type system rather than total economic collapse under the brilliant advice of Washington consensus economists; obviously that didn't happen, but the end result being bad is neither an argument for the Soviet Union nor an argument for the free market policies that were tested out in post-Soviet Russia.

Welfare state policies being obviously superior to post-Soviet economic liberalism, is not an argument for free-market capitalism. Welfare states are obviously a mix of liberal capitalism and socialist (including Marxist socialism) ideas; refusing to engage with the Marxist roots of the welfare state (that you enjoy the benefits of!), which, again, aren't the only roots, simply because "Soviets bad" is to simply choose to live in ignorance of history. The welfare state is simply not an "achievement of capitalism, of what the market can do when it is left to it's natural inclinations"; the productive template is the achievement of capitalism (though, relatively quickly, with massive state subsidy in all sorts of areas to keep that original template dynamic going; just as must in the USA through warfare spending as European countries spending on things like healthcare, education and research of all kinds, notably CERN), but nearly all the things we can point to that make working life more secure and healthy (i.e. actually benefiting from this productive template) is due to "socialist agitation".

The issues are still pertinent today, of course, we can agree, actually it's worse than ever. Amazon as an example, is such an efficient producer and that has destroyed so many livelihoods and we know it's only going to get worse. The control over the means of mass efficiency are going to end up in the hands of fewer and fewer people because of ever-increasing efficiency.

I don't see a way to address the disease but it is possible to mitigate the damage by wealth redistribution and I think that has become what we're resigned to. Either wealth redistribution will occur in equal measure to the destruction caused or we will end up in a dystopia. That and limiting the profiteering by creating appropriate rights and protections for workers. — Judaka

Although this seems to be the case, I would argue that Marx is fundamentally right that class divisions cannot be maintained indefinitely, that simply redistributing wealth cannot be the end goal as it can't be maintained. A great argument for this is the incredibly high tax rate in the US during and post-WWII, if this was a stable state of affairs then this sort of policy simply would have "won" and not been reversed (just as once American revolutionaries defeated the English, the new state of affairs was stable, they simply "won" and there was little possibility for King George to reverse things) ... yet, as you note, wealth disparity is worse than ever (not simply within capitalist history, but you need to go back to things like Genghis Khan and Egyptian pharaohs to find comparable wealth disparity levels).

However, I would agree with you that the "communist revolution" as conceived by Marx (i.e. factory workers unionizing, striking and taking over democracy) is impossible today as you suggest. I would also argue that Marx's idea of "worker revolution" could only have ever given us the welfare state, basically because large scale capitalist production which Marx was witnessing the emergence of requires a state to manage and normal people simply don't understand it well enough for effective management (and, I would argue, can't understand it, as it simply takes too much time, being so far removed from everyday life, to do so; not that conservatives or pro-capitalist parties understand it better, but each fails in turn to accomplish managerial goals and is forced to let the other "give it a try"); so, through unionizing and party politics, such as Marx suggests, the workers can gain benefits in some states, as we see in the Nordic model, but these are neither global, due to capital being able to cross borders and simply find conditions suitable for labour exploitation (if not existing, then engendering "race to the bottom" inter-government competition), nor really adequate in themselves (welfare states clearly still have problems). Conditions which, regardless of worker protection and benefits in some places, give rise to Googles and Amazons and Apples and Facebook and other billionaires that clearly have incredible influence along with the collection of previous top-dog industrial-corporations such as Boeing, that are of course still around.

There is an alternative to this economic vision of large scale corporations, which is local living. The psychological argument that "it's in people's nature is to want the commodities that only large corporations provide to enjoy in the obviously superior urban culture" is irrelevant if such a state of affairs is simply not sustainable. If we have to live more locally, do more for ourselves and our neighbors, this is as impossible to imagine without also effectively owning the means of this local production as it is impossible to imagine workers effectively owning the means of production of an Amazon or Apple. Small is Beautiful makes the purely economic case that such a revolution is possible starting in the poor regions of the world.

I did not merely try to call the Soviet Union a Right-Wing-Dictatorship, in actual practice that's what it was. You don't like this fact because it refutes your strawman argument. — JerseyFlight

In this case, you are simply creating your own fantasy. In the Real World Soviet Union is considered socialist and leftist. Sorry.

I am not sure I have ever encountered a more species-intelligent-thinker. One cannot think about material life and ignore Marx, even those who try end up in the same place. He simply thought about society in concrete terms, unshackled from the errors of idealism. — JerseyFlight

Right, Marx is on the pedestal. I thought it would be so with you.

What a great Bakunin quote. I wish I knew the full context but I agree with what he said here. — JerseyFlight

So you do agree with the criticism that Bakunin makes of Marx? Interesting.

If you want to see the whole work, it is here. The quote was from chapter 3.

Goodness friend, what a rigorous and relevant reply. Thank you for taking the time to write it. It stands as a testament to accurate information and a tough beat-down of misinformation. I don't know enough about the conflict between Marx and Bukunin. There should be a saying, when it comes to Marxism there is too much to know.

This needs to be stated and clarified: ssu has been thoroughly refuted at this point. Of course, he is free to prop himself up on the basis of empty ego and groundless self assertion, but the repeated replies on this thread have been quite devastating in pointing out his hypocrisy and contradiction. Insisting that one's emotional view is the proper one will not make it so.

In the Real World Soviet Union is considered socialist and leftist. — ssu

The content of being is not a matter for formal definitions. America was considered a "free country" through it was steeped and born in slavery. What matters are the actual functions and form of political systems.

Boethius, here is a long answer for a long comment. Thanks for the reply, anyway. Hopefully you will have the time and patience to read my response, but let's cut it more shorter if we continue the discussion.

If the answer is obviously no, as that's a ridiculous argument, — boethius

Well, I too find it as a ridiculous argument. If not Stalin, then some other. In the end all Proletarian dictatorships have become true dictatorships, if they have lasted long enough.

so too is the idea the actions of Stalin somehow condemn the ideas of Marx to such a degree that it can be just assumed without even needing to know anything about Marx and what he wrote (which you obviously don't). — boethius

As this accusation will be hurled at anyone criticizing Marx, I have referred to what Marx has written.

Do you only bring this kind of argument against Marxism, but wouldn't against market theorists or Christianity — boethius

What a strawman. Of course not

As if I wouldn't criticize the Church when there would be reason to do so. Surely you can criticize the Catholic Church for the crusades, but even better critique is simply what justifications people have used from the Holy Bible for the at-the-time society with things like from the Romans 13:1

Let every person be subject to the governing authorities. For there is no authority except from God, and those that exist have been instituted by God.

Somehow Christians in liberal democracies and even in monarchies have gotten past this.

You shouldn't quote Mikhail Bakunin if you have no idea what he was about and what was his basis of disagreement with Marx. - Go research the Bakunin-Marx disagreement and come back and defend Bakunin. — boethius

Another strawman.

The fact is that an anarchist like Bakunin can clearly tell the errors in Marx's thinking. What his own proposals and his thinking are is totally a different matter. And being an anarchist, I do think I'll find there things that I disagree with. Here Bakunin makes the clear case as likely do many other, but likely anybody else than a leftist criticizing Marx would be totally irrelevant. Otherwise I don't have to "defend" Bakunin. In hindsight many philosophers have been correct on some issues and wrong in others. It is as simple as that. And btw, you didn't say anything about this criticism that was objected against Marx.

Liberal capitalist theory is adamant, indeed ferociously convinced, that a similar structure does not happen in liberal capitalist economies, that everyone gets their fair shake — boethius

Liberal capitalist theory? What is liberal capitalist theory? Having studied economics, I don't recall this kind of theory. Perhaps be more specific just who you are talking about.

If you were interested in history, you'd know, or could quickly find out, that nearly all achievements made by labour — boethius

Seems you don't even read what I wrote, because I did refer to this above in the discussion.

More specifically, actually achieving those things through unions and so on while calling themselves Marxists — boethius

Not all trade unions are Marxists. There obviously are Marxist unions, but a lot aren't. Just like Marx isn't the only socialist around.

though we can't assign all the credit to Marx, we can't assign any credit to large owners of capital who were the opposition at every step, nor any of the credit to liberal economists decrying political action as "inefficient" because any state interference in the market will be bad for everyone. — boethius

Any credit? Trade unions were legalized in the UK when Karl Marx was six years old. And the reason why a brilliant philosopher like Marx got things so wrong, that the revolution didn't happen in the UK or Germany, is exactly because the state and the capitalists did do concessions and the Western States could do something about the inequalities brought on with the industrial revolution (and with earlier ones too).

Are you arguing the welfare state is incompatible with Marx's ideas? Or just coming from totally different conception of society? — boethius

What I'm arguing is that the modern welfare state was an answer to many issues that Marx pointed out and it didn't eradicate capitalism and private property. It has worked somewhat well.
And those societies that really did try to implement Marxist theory had lousy economic performance.

Would you argue that the problem of depression in Finland has nothing to do with alienation people feel as producers of commodities (or managers of producers somewhere down the line of commodities)? — boethius

I have no idea what you are implying with "people feeling alienation as producers of commodities". Finnish economy is a small export oriented economy with an ageing population, which is hard hit during global recessions (like this one), which naturally present a problem for the welfare state as taxes ought to pay for the system.

you'll need to actually read Marx and demonstrate how his ideas are simply irrelevant — boethius

Ideas of Marx aren't irrelevant, especially how much influence he has had on the World stage, but the main point was the reality of how the system works, how the government would work and how all the various experiments with Marxism have been a bit of a disappointment.

Welfare states are obviously a mix of liberal capitalism and socialist (including Marxist socialism) ideas; refusing to engage with the Marxist roots of the welfare state (that you enjoy the benefits of!), which, again, aren't the only roots, simply because "Soviets bad" is to simply choose to live in ignorance of history. — boethius

If you would refer to "socialist roots" of the welfare state I could agree with that, but you insist using "Marxist roots". As a person who has gotten a masters in economic history from the university, I do beg to differ here, because this simply isn't true in the historical perspective. You simply have to make a difference between social democracy and the Marxist-Leninist communists of the 20th Century as this divide was huge during the Cold War. Simply put it, not all "socialism" is Marxism and especially with the history of the Nordic countries, Marxists and Marxism hasn't been the driving force behind the welfare state but social democrats and usually the social democratic parties and ideological figure behind were people like Gunnar Myrdal. And of course, the programs were accepted and furthered by right wing parties too.

This needs to be stated and clarified: ssu has been thoroughly refuted at this point. — JerseyFlight

Great answer, which tells just how open you are to open discussion.

Oh, ad hominems! Great.

And btw, it's Bakunin, not Bukunin.

Well, I too find it as a ridiculous argument. If not Stalin, then some other. In the end all Proletarian dictatorships have become true dictatorships, if they have lasted long enough. — ssu

Did you even read what I wrote?

So, to be clear, you attach the genocides and slavery of "Christendom" to the teachings of Christ? If not, it seems the exact same argument structure.

Somehow Christians in liberal democracies and even in monarchies have gotten past this. — ssu

Well if it's just a question of time, then why not bring Stalinism back and see what happens?

Why not give Stalinism thousands of years of leeway?

I'll engage with your other comments if you're able to resolve this problem.

Nope, that refers to my quote from the Bible. The quote was basically used as an argument why monarchies exist and why people going against a monarchy are "un-Christian". People used those lines here even in 1918.

So, to be clear, you attach the genocides and slavery of "Christendom" to the teachings of Christ? — boethius

Just as Jesus Christ obviously doesn't talk anything that would justify a crusade, I don't.

It will be clear to all careful readers that you are not comprehending your own inconsistencies and errors. This discourse did not go well for you, namely because you sought to leverage a strawman. I honestly don't see what's left in your position that can even qualify as a valid objection. It has been thoroughly exposed and refuted.

Nope, that refers to my quote from the Bible. The quote was basically used as an argument why monarchies exist and why people going against a monarchy are "un-Christian". People used those lines here even in 1918. — ssu

Your argument is that we can judge what Marx wrote based on what Stalin did. That's what you literally say:

Sometimes the dictatorship of Stalin is said to be where the Soviet Union lost it's cause. Yet it is simply ignorance to try uphold the fallacy of Soviet Union being a possible success "if not for Stalin". Stalin, the great scapegoat. How many times have I heard "if not Stalin" ...how benign the system would have been under Lenin. This thinking totally disregards the intrinsic problems of Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to a totalitarian system. — ssu

Or at least, your only evidence so far that "Marx's ideology, which do inherently lead to totalitarian system" is the Soviet Union.

Just as Jesus Christ obviously doesn't talk anything that would justify a crusade, I don't. — ssu

Ok, so if what Christians do is not necessarily a good reflection of what Christ talked about, you do agree, after all, that what Stalin did may not be a good reflection on what Marx talked about?

Or, do you really not see what's going on here?

Your argument is that we can judge what Marx wrote based on what Stalin did. That's what you literally say: — boethius

Let me put it this way.

What communist revolution has ended up being a democracy?

I am sure that Marx did want direct democracy, and as you said, was all for things like the Paris Commune, but that is the whole point. How to do it? And where is that democracy, if people want to have private property or otherwise go and "betray" the class struggle? Why the government and all the planning ended up as it did? The theory needs that strong centralized government. That's the whole point of the anarchist Bakunin critique of the Marxist state starting from things like: "reign of scientific intelligence, the most aristocratic, despotic, arrogant and contemptuous of all regimes".

When you say the class system is not sustainable - do you mean morally, politically, economically?

When we look at Amazon, we see a company utterly destroying local businesses that cannot compete and this has been happening since the industrial revolution. If mass production could be competed with by "local living" then why has this happened and what's going to happen differently?

Soon Amazon is going to have driverless trucks, increased automation across the board and they will be so affordable, convenient and just all-around great for consumers, who can compete? So the trajectory for the destruction of the lone person making a chair, the lone person owning a shop and the small business, it's all being destroyed and it's going to keep getting worse.

Automation is going to replace millions of workers and whoever owns the automation is going to be exceedingly rich and not having to pay any workers - unions and such won't cut it anymore.

Besides wealth redistribution, we could examine a model such as how Singapore dealt with land, forced acquisition by the government and perhaps in the future we will see the US government somehow force Amazon to sell them their company. I don't know but wealth redistribution seems to be the only thing that can be looked at right now.

@JerseyFlight You've made good contributions here, but I want to take issue with your portrayal of the Soviet Union as a fascist or right-wing dictatorship. Much as it pains me to say it, I agree with @ssu on this.

the tyranny you are referencing is Right Wing tyranny, fascism. It's what you get when individuals are put into power without a check on that power, it's what you get when individuals in power are allowed to execute any order they want and the people obey out of fear (see Arendt); it's what you get when you subvert democracy. — JerseyFlight

The Soviet Union was a Right-Wing-Dictatorship presided over by Joseph Stalin. Just like all good Right-Wing ideology the Leader was allowed to unilaterally make the rules and issue executive orders without a democratic check on his power. — JerseyFlight

This is the closest you come to explaining how the Soviet Union was right-wing. Something like this: a government or state is right-wing if it is undemocratic or totalitarian, or is run by a dictator. The Soviet Union was such a state, therefore it was right-wing.

The problem here is that this is not what right-wing politics is, assuming the conventional understanding of the term, which seems still to apply usefully despite shifts in usage. The politically right is conservative or reactionary: it seeks to preserve existing social hierarchies, or reintroduce past hierarchies. It argues that such a preservation or return is necessary, because those hierarchies are based on what is in some sense natural, and that attempts to improve on them or get rid of them are doomed to failure and chaos. "Right wing" is thus importantly ideological, i.e., it's not just about methods of governance.

It could be argued that the Soviet state was conservative in many ways, because it feared change and strenuously protected the privileges of the political elite. But the purpose of this conservatism, certainly for Stalin, really was to preserve the gains of the revolution by any means possible, and consolidate socialism. They really did think they were on the way to communism, although there was growing scepticism about this in the last few decades of the Soviet Union, when no such progress was evident. But even then, in the eighties, a man could rise to the position of General Secretary of the Communist Party who was a committed Leninist and believer in the communist future of the Soviet Union (of course, in the course of events he came to realize how naive he had been).

There's another way that the Soviet Union and Stalin might be characterized as right-wing: the targeting of ethnic minorities, e.g., the deportation of the Chechens, Kalmyks, Balkars, Tatars, and many others, and what became something like official anti-Semitism by the time Stalin died (a policy that was quickly reversed). I think this characterization is fair, but again it has to be balanced against the wider aims and in this case Stalin's paranoid handling of the war.

What I think we can say is that to the extent to which the Soviet Union was conservative or even reactionary (as with Great Russian chauvinism and anti-Semitism), it was so in the conscious service of a Left-wing cause, which by any standard makes it quite different from a right-wing state.

Many Marxists don't like to admit it, but Stalin was a committed Bolshevik, communist, and Marxist, popular in the party for his ability to get things done and absolutely dedicated to the cause. Even if many fellow-Bolsheviks, including Lenin himself, thought he was a bit rough and dangerous, he was one of them. And he felt this too: he was not a charlatan, using the Party and the apparatus of Terror to set himself up as dictator--this is a cartoon-like but sadly still popular Trotskyist fantasy--but had grown up in the Party and worshipped Lenin and his aims.

It was the apparatus of government, secret police, and the ruthless elimination of opposition that had developed in the revolutionary and Civil War period that Stalin inherited and extended.

After 1945, he did come to enjoy his role, and became a more self-conscious dictator, but until then he had seen himself to a large degree as a party worker sacrificing himself for the cause. Incidentally, this seems to demonstrate, better than the image of him as a dictator, the dangers of radical politics (note that I'm not condemning radical politics as such but appealing for self-awareness).

It's worth looking at what the Soviet state, and Stalin in particular, actually did when gaining and maintaining power (which they did genuinely believe was a dictatorship of the proletariat). Aside from merely maintaining power, all of their positive efforts were aimed at smashing capitalism and the remnants of feudalism and destroying the class structure, which in effect meant not only the confiscation of private property but also the literal destruction of the people of certain classes: the urban bourgeoisie and petite bourgeoisie, and the small landowners among the peasantry. As it happened, of course, the ordinary proletariat and peasantry suffered too, through starvation, terror, and compulsion. The fascists did not attempt any such fundamental reordering of Italian or German social and economic relations, because they had vastly different aims, a vastly different ideology.

There's probably much more to discuss but I'll leave it there.

Please note that I'm not here arguing that Marx can be blamed for all of that. I haven't made up my mind how to think about that question.

EDIT: you mentioned Arendt, but the importance of the term totalitarian is surely that left and right can both take on this character in practice, that totalitarianism is a tendency beyond left and right.

When you say the class system is not sustainable - do you mean morally, politically, economically? — Judaka

In this context I mean ecological sustainability.

When we look at Amazon, we see a company utterly destroying local businesses that cannot compete and this has been happening since the industrial revolution. If mass production could be competed with by "local living" then why has this happened and what's going to happen differently? — Judaka

The usual answer is that the industrial revolution depended on the enclosure movement of kicking peasants off the land. Bourgeois economic theory both condemns Feudal definitions of ownership (serfs and estates etc.) but takes for granted the good Lords had a right to kick everyone off the land.

Likewise, bourgeois economic theory takes for granted that "urban culture" is superior to "rural culture" and the movement to the cities is just a natural cultural evolution to a better place. However, if we look closely, most people that have emigrated to cities over in the industrial revolution went to slums and horrifying working conditions and were clearly better off as peasants.

A peasant is not compatible with the capitalist mode of production, as peasants can produce food for themselves by gardening, build their own houses, make their own chairs and baskets etc. (of course, by "rural living" here I do not mean agribusiness that turns the land into a substrate for maximum commodity production, such "farms" and the illegal immigrants that work on them is not an example of peasant life and organization, of course with many terms and conditions on the "Lords" land, that existed in feudal times).

Therefore, we come to the question of efficiency for what? Efficient at living? or efficient at producing as many commodities as possible? Way more commodities than anyone needs.

In other words, in a narrow perspective, large industrial production seems efficient as it has massive throughput, but in a wider perspective it is inefficient in terms sustainable use of raw materials as well as inefficient in terms of producing "what people need" (rather than simply "producing as much as possible"; the dreaded overproduction).

We have seen since the industrial revolution how overproduction is absorbed: war, planned obsolescence, growing the population (at first a happy side-affect of medicine, and later by a policy of immigration), manipulative marketing and debt.

Bourgeois economics assumes people need to consume commodities all the time, that this is a natural thing to happen, but if we look closely at peasants of the past (as well as people who happen or choose to be in similar circumstances today - of course they don't call themselves peasants, but "homesteaders") such peasant economics naturally invites capital investment. Rural dwellers buy tools to do things for themselves; it's simply cheaper and quicker to learn basic maintenance and fabrication skills than hire someone for every task. Any food grown locally is far cheaper than food that needs to be picked, stored, transported (to multiple locations); any food waste is composted (without the re-centralization transport problem) simply because that's the easiest thing to do and the benefits are obvious. The idea of regular consumption has obvious immediate negatives since shops are not just down the road, and if one needs to (pay) to go someone regularly to get stuff, the question naturally arises whether there's some investment that can replace this commodity (i.e. planting some apple trees and making one's own apple juice).

Why this doesn't happen (in the West) is not an economic question, but the "who owns the land" question. In the West today if we talk about "gardening" and "fishing" the assumption is that we're talking about wealthy people that garden and fish for fun, not to save money; likewise, if we talk about "skiing" we assume we're talking about wealthy people skiing for fun, not a convenient rural transport winter technology. So, the question arises that if the wealthy are constantly playing at being peasants for fun, shouldn't we just organize society so that everyone can do these things both to have fun and save money: that we make our rural landscapes like the idyllic beautiful places where the rich go for vacation, just that people happen to also live there?

So, much more can be said why such a "return to the land" is more efficient in terms of resource allocation: that it's easy to garden in bio-diversity based way that's good for nature whereas it's hard to produce commodities with the same methods ("things" aren't produced in sufficient quantities at the same place to warrant the capital investments in sorting, packaging, storing and transport technology; such food is only fit to be picked and eaten, or stored in jars; totally useless to the capitalist system), that with more people living in such a way a network effect of trade occurs making it even more efficient (local artisan production displaces imported commodities), that lowering transport of commodities and commuting means both lowering the cost of living but also lowering the cost of transport infrastructure (which can still there, but with radically less throughput, it is much less costly and less environmentally damaging), and new means of production (3D printing, CNC machining etc.) constantly reduce the scale in which precision manufacturing is economically possible (further reducing the need of importing commodities), and also that communication technology would still allow lot's of existing jobs today to be done at-distance and further increase foreign exchange of the community.

The problem is of course land ownership. Since the industrial revolution to now, land consolidation to remove communities living on the land to turn land from living spaces to substrate for commodity production, has been a violent affair (first through enclosures, second through arranging to financially ruin small farm and other peasant-like people, and third through letting natural disasters, like drought, and economic disasters do the dirty business without anyone needing to pay attention, as well as constantly flooding rural places with subsidized commodities, whether as the go-to market entry tactic or as well as state subsidy of capitalism in general, to ruin the local economies and increase commodity reliance), we don't see this much in the West anymore, as the process is largely complete.

Technologically speaking, it's easy to go out into the country-side, look at agribusiness desserts and draw up a technical plan to make small houses, forest gardens and permaculture, water management systems or rain capture and contouring, renewable energy systems, etc. Worse, it's easy to go to the suburbs and conclude that the same resources could support much more people and vibrant communities.

Why this doesn't happen is buying this land is expensive and the people who's life would improve don't have that kind of money. Indeed, not only do they not have that kind of money, but they are in debt and the kind of idyllic living described above assumes one does not need to maximize commodity production to keep up with debt repayments (that everyone one does in this sort of decentralized community living arrangements is not just to save money, but for fun, for community team building, as exercise of the body and mind; it saves money too, but does not maximize the kind of commodity production that is needed to payoff debts; only wage labour provides those circumstances for most people, and barely so as it may still take decades of full tilt, at the the psychological limits of commodity production to maybe payoff a few debts for most people).

Of course, society could simply cancel all debts, take the land from agribusiness and setup homesteaders with the tools and materials to live in an obviously ecologically superior way that is good for everyone, and can still produce more food for the whole of society (forest gardens and other forms of permacutlure are more productive than mono-culture fields, even on agribusiness own terms of pound per acre, but the comparison almost can't even be made if water and fossil inputs and nutrients per acre as output is used, not to mention biodiversity and regional ecological resilience tree transpiration and roots provides is included in the analysis).

Society does not even need an excuse to take agribusiness land (could just say "we don't give a shit about investor complaints; other people can win the "battle of ideas" if they put in the effort, there's no metaphysical basis to put some ideas of limits for the winning") but if it wanted and excuse it could say "the promise that privately owned land by profit maximizing capital would preserve the land for everyone must now be a promise kept; we will analyse everyone's land, and anyone that did not accomplish this preservation of the value on the land of biodiversity and soil nutrients forfeits their land as part of a retroactive social contract based on the same precedence that our precious bankers retroactively pardon themselves for financial crimes now and again" or then just use imminent domain and pay the land-owners in a currency in the process of collapse (imminent domain laws do not preclude ecological necessity as a basis for land appropriation; maybe they will in the near future, but society could simply choose to not give a shit about that anyways).

This isn't happening anytime soon, in the West, but there are places in the world where people aren't currently trapped in commodity production maximizing infrastructure, often still own their land as a community, and so everything I describe above is simply an immediate improvement of their tool-set, quality of life, foreign exchange, and local environment that they still feel intuitively and obviously dependent on, and improving the means of this kind of peasant production is relatively easily advanced through cooperation between those communities and western hippies who have a bit of capital, a "proper" education required for systems analysis to be sure things are actually better and not worse, and a fevered dream (that's from the malaria though, also a solvable problem).

As climate change, resource depletion, moves in the "great game", disrupt our global industrial commodity throughput device, more and more places will essentially drop out of capitalism regardless of whether the propaganda people jealously guard tells them it's a good thing or not, and what I describe above will become the only game in town. Of course, people may choose to play the game of raiding other towns down the dusty road of entitlement instead; time will tell us who wins.

""Right wing" is thus importantly ideological, i.e., it's not just about methods of governance."

I do not agree with this. Hard to see how political ideology does not contain premises regarding governance? This seems like drawing an artificial line. The methods of Right wing governance are literally in the direction of monarchy. While conservatives in America give lip service to democracy, they do everything in their power to abolish it, which is consistent with totalitarian methods of rule.

"But the purpose of this conservatism, certainly for Stalin, really was to preserve the gains of the revolution by any means possible, and consolidate socialism."

For me this is another problem. Socialism is not the same as communism. Further, it honestly matters little what ideology a political party or leader claims to be advocating, what matters are the authoritarian or democratic actions carried out by the party or leader. It is too naive as I see it, to take, for example, North Korea at its word that it's goal is to make a society for the workers. This is just the ideology that the totalitarian system uses to hold onto its power and increase its power.

"What I think we can say is that to the extent to which the Soviet Union was conservative or even reactionary (as with Great Russian chauvinism and anti-Semitism), it was so in the conscious service of a Left-wing cause, which by any standard makes it quite different from a right-wing state." 

It's exceedingly hard to sustain this premise in contrast to Marx's radical humanist philosophy of freedom. I again would not argue that a nation or state is characterized by its creed but by its political action. This is quite an important point because it's one of the ways people seem to be duped into totalitarian systems in the first place. The logic then goes, "as long as we have the right creed there will be freedom," and yet an administration shreds the actual democratic checks on political power, this is a large problem indeed. 

Eric Fromm writing directly on this topic said the following, "The Russians believe that they represent socialism because they talk in terms of Marxist ideology, and they do not recognize how similar their system is to the most developed form of capitalism. We in the West believe that we represent the system of individualism, private initiative, and humanistic ethics, because we hold on to our ideology, and we do not see that our institutions are, in fact, in many ways becoming more and more similar to the hated system of communism. We believe that the essence of the Russian system is that the individual is subservient to the State, and hence that he has no freedom. But we do not recognize that in Western society the individual is becoming more and more subservient to the economic machine, to the big corporation, to public opinion. We do not recognize that the individual, confronted with giant enterprises, giant government, giant trade unions, is afraid of freedom, has no faith in his own strength, and seeks shelter by identifying with these giants." May Man Prevail? pg.84-85, Doubleday & Company, Inc. 1961 

"Many Marxists don't like to admit it, but Stalin was a committed Bolshevik, communist, and Marxist, popular in the party for his ability to get things done and absolutely dedicated to the cause."

Marx did not advocate the implementation of a massive bureaucratic system. When we here speak of "the cause," it is doubtful we are talking about Marx's political humanism.

"Incidentally, this seems to demonstrate, better than the image of him as a dictator, the dangers of radical politics..."

I agree with you. This is the reason I am not a Marxist. My approach to the problem is not ideological or romanticized. However, radical politics are neither Left or Right, they are mindless! It is quite frightening to realize that the thinker is caught between emotional political extremes.The mindless from the Left is just as dangerous as the mindlessness from the Right. But in all of this I still see a lesser of two evils. (However, if we are talking radical revolutions then this lesser option is off the table). If totalitarianism has taught us anything, it is that we must always pay attention to the sabotage of democracy. It would not have been possible for Hitler or Stalin to do what they did if there were democratic checks on their power. This is one reason why American conservatism is so dangerous, it doesn't respect democratic procedure, it tries to circumvent it, deny its valid authority, and where it can, destroy it.

"Aside from merely maintaining power, all of their positive efforts were aimed at smashing capitalism and the remnants of feudalism and destroying the class structure, which in effect meant not only the confiscation of private property but also the literal destruction of the people of certain classes..."

It was a disastrous social experiment. However, the Soviet Union was a state capitalist welfare system.
Concluding with Fromm:

"The question whether the Soviet system is a socialist system has been answered in the negative. We have concluded that it is a state managerialism, using the most advanced methods of total monopolization, centralization, mass manipulation, and moving slowly from exercising this
manipulation by violence to exercising it by mass suggestion. It is, while resembling socialism in certain economic features, its very contradiction in a social and human sense, and is actually converging with the trends of the most advanced capitalistic countries..." Ibid.  

Therefore, we come to the question of efficiency for what? Efficient at living? or efficient at producing as many commodities as possible? — boethius

Most excellent question here, and the real point is that capitalist culture only asks this question from the basis of the profit motive. Instrumentalism = tyranny through efficiency, negation of the question of life.

We have seen since the industrial revolution how overproduction is absorbed: war, planned obsolescence, growing the population (at first a happy side-affect of medicine, and later by a policy of immigration), manipulative marketing and debt. — boethius

Overproduction is likely a concept that (skeptical) readers on this thread are not familiar with. I have never thought about it in terms of its absorption (reconciliation of the contradiction). This is most accurate. It is a kind of hidden danger in capitalism, a contradiction that emerges from its production process.

So, the question arises that if the wealthy are constantly playing at being peasants for fun, shouldn't we just organize society so that everyone can do these things both to have fun and save money: that we make our rural landscapes like the idyllic beautiful places where the rich go for vacation, just that people happen to also live there? — boethius

A most interesting question. As you well know, acclimating to this idea is exceedingly hard for those of us who grow up in commodity driven societies. There is so much work to be done in the realm of education. However, what is most interesting, if a model could be successful in this direction, which is exceedingly problematic, given the fact that it would still exist as a bubble subjected to the market forces of capital, then I am probe to think it would catch on. People are starting to taste the real sting of capitalism's tyranny of economic coercion.

I want to interact with more of what you said but I don't have time. Thank you for taking the time to explain things, it's obvious that you are well educated in Marxist thought and political theory in general. I look forward to more interaction.

The politically right is conservative or reactionary: it seeks to preserve existing social hierarchies, or reintroduce past hierarchies. It argues that such a preservation or return is necessary, because those hierarchies are based on what is in some sense natural, and that attempts to improve on them or get rid of them are doomed to failure and chaos. "Right wing" is thus importantly ideological, i.e., it's not just about methods of governance. — jamalrob

I do not agree with this. Hard to see how political ideology does not contain premises regarding governance? This seems like drawing an artificial line. The methods of Right wing governance are literally in the direction of monarchy. — JerseyFlight

You seem to have ignored the word "just". Was this a mistake?

Generally, your entire response is based on either (1) ignoring the definition of right-wing that I gave, quoted above, or (2) implicitly holding that the Soviet Union satisfied that definition. You seem to want to argue that authoritarianism is always right-wing, so I can see why you want to go for (1). But I don't see how you can just ignore the definition: if you disagree with it or think it's useless, then I think you should say so explicitly. Same for (2).

I conceded that the Soviet Union sometimes had a conservative and even reactionary character, but argued that the self-consciousness of the regime as a socialist one on the way to communism and the government's actions to destroy the old social structure and institute a completely new one, show that the the Soviet Union cannot be called right-wing.

Would you claim that Lenin and the original Bolsheviks were also right-wing? They were certainly authoritarian. They dissolved the Constituent Assembly and banned competing parties--without the support of the soviets--when the Socialist Revolutionaries, not they, won the election. They set up the Cheka to spread terror and destroy opposition from the left and right. They hoped this would be a temporary state of affairs, but they were willing to sanction the most horrendous atrocities as means to the end of communism. The Soviet authorities continued to think like that until the Union fell apart.

They were Marxists. You seem to be under the impression that to be a Marxist is to be merely a faithful follower of Marx, but this is not what it meant to be a Marxist in the early twentieth century. Marxism was a tradition that grew largely out of Engels' interpretation of Marx, and the latter's humanism was not well-known at the time (much of Marx's work remained unpublished).

But still, they were Left-wing. Here is Engels, arguing against the anti-authoritarians in the socialist movement:

Why do the anti-authoritarians not confine themselves to crying out against political authority, the state? All Socialists are agreed that the political state, and with it political authority, will disappear as a result of the coming social revolution, that is, that public functions will lose their political character and will be transformed into the simple administrative functions of watching over the true interests of society. But the anti-authoritarians demand that the political state be abolished at one stroke, even before the social conditions that gave birth to it have been destroyed. They demand that the first act of the social revolution shall be the abolition of authority. Have these gentlemen ever seen a revolution? A revolution is certainly the most authoritarian thing there is; it is the act whereby one part of the population imposes its will upon the other part by means of rifles, bayonets and cannon — authoritarian means, if such there be at all; and if the victorious party does not want to have fought in vain, it must maintain this rule by means of the terror which its arms inspire in the reactionists. Would the Paris Commune have lasted a single day if it had not made use of this authority of the armed people against the bourgeois? Should we not, on the contrary, reproach it for not having used it freely enough? — Engels, On Authority

https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/10/authority.htm

If you wish to say that radical undemocratic politics is bad per se, and that politics is like a circle on which extreme left and extreme right meet, then I can respect that, but to label this meeting-point as right-wing is merely tendentious: if the circle of politics is true, then the meeting-point can be either left or right.

If totalitarianism has taught us anything, it is that we must always pay attention to the sabotage of democracy. It would not have been possible for Hitler or Stalin to do what they did if there were democratic checks on their power. — JerseyFlight

Absolutely, I agree.

And I agree with the last quotation from Fromm, that the Soviet Union was "state managerialism". This didn't make it right-wing or fascist, though I agree that it was totalitarian, in the 1930s perhaps the most thorough totalitarianism that has ever existed.

If totalitarianism has taught us anything, it is that we must always pay attention to the sabotage of democracy. It would not have been possible for Hitler or Stalin to do what they did if there were democratic checks on their power. — JerseyFlight

Absolutely, I agree. — jamalrob

And the lack of democratic checks is the basic problem. Why I argue it's an inherent problem is because Marx has an agenda, communism, and an singular agent, the proletariat, which makes democracy just a tool to get to communism and to eradicate capitalism. So what about those who don't think this way? What democracy is for them? What is the role of consensus? What if too many people want to stray off from the project?

This is the way that authoritarianism creeps into the cause when theory hits the road. Marx anticipates a clash with the old regime, even if he hopes things being peaceful, but this more violent confrontational path comes to be the roadmap for marxist parties. Yet is there a road map to get to direct democracy?

And the lack of democratic checks is the basic problem. Why I argue it's an inherent problem is because Marx has an agenda, communism, and an singular agent, the proletariat, which makes democracy just a tool to get to communism and to eradicate capitalism. — ssu

I do not remember if it is in The 18th of Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte or in The Class Struggles in France (I can look it up), Marx qualifies the dictatorship as the "worst possible political regime". With such an assumption it is not surprising that he tried to qualify the phase of 'dictatorship of the proletariat' as a class dictatorship against class. In the terms of the first Lenin or Trotsky, "a workers' democracy". Consequently, they launched the slogan of 'all power to the soviets', against the Duma, considered a bourgeois chamber.

Why did the slogan remain a slogan? There are a hundred theories about this. A social and political analysis is necessary.

I think that Marx never addressed how the post-capitalist communist society would specifically be organized and turn from the proletarian dictatorship to full communism as the dictatorship was just a transitory phase.

Yet democracy isn't a safety valve for Marx, which people do agree with here, but a battle to be won, just as centralization is the means for the scientific planning to replace the market mechanism. As is written in the Communist Manifesto:

We have seen above, that the first step in the revolution by the working class is to raise the proletariat to the position of ruling class to win the battle of democracy.

The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degree, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionizing the mode of production.

And direct democracy? I guess for the bolsheviks it was the soviet councils and "to soviet" was the answer to the question of democracy. And they surely understood the problem of this and put their hopes on education, on new generations creating the New Soviet Man (and woman), who would have as a trait selfless collectivism. What then Aleksandr Zinovyev later depicted as the outcome of this Homo Sovieticus was something else.