The rise of the Office Space class. — schopenhauer1
The almost complete movement of mass production to the global East and South. — schopenhauer1
A democratization of science and technology- — schopenhauer1
Am I right in saying this is more like "Three Things the Communist Manifesto Got Wrong"? — jamalrob
The bourgeoisie consists of large capitalists -- owners of factories, warehouses, office towers, rental buildings, railroads, banks, brokerages, and so on The petite bourgeoisie consists of small farmers that own their own land, small store owners, some professionals (lawyers, doctors, dentists), etc. and a few others. The difference between the bourgeois and the working class is that the bourgeoisie earns its income from the labor of others. The working class person is dependent on his ability to work to get paid. Working class people earn a wage; they are paid for time on the job. The bourgeoisie are paid by returns on investment.
Almost everyone is working class. The relatively small number of people who own high-value production properties are bourgeoisie. — Bitter Crank
Good point. Maybe categorizing the bulk of white collar work as "petite bourgeoisie" is incorrect. The working class makes a wage but not returns on investment, true. I guess the point is that are all these things a fatal blow to his ideas? Whether wage workers are not getting enough investments or not, if there is not enough agitation for the working class to feel exploited, then Marx was essentially wrong. What do people care if capital is owned by individuals or by the state if they have their basics met? The Democrats would say that with a tweaking of healthcare, and some other social programs, some of those basic needs can be expanded, but that's about as much sympathy as you're going to get in the American system. That doesn't change things structurally. — schopenhauer1
-Marx, Grundrisse, 324-25.What appears as surplus value on capital's side appears identically on the worker's side as surplus labour in excess of his requirements as worker, hence in excess of his immediate requirements for keeping himself alive. The great historic quality of capital is to create this surplus labour, superfluous labor from the standpoint of mere use value, mere subsistence; and its historic destiny is fulfilled as soon as, on one side, there has been such a development of needs that surplus labour above and beyond necessity has itself become a general need arising out of individual needs themselves -- and, on the other side, when the severe discipline of capital, acting on succeeding generations, has developed general industriousness as the general property of the new species -- and, finally, when the development of the productive powers of labour, which capital incessantly whips onward with its unlimited mania for wealth, and of the sole conditions in which this mania can be realized, have flourished to the stage where the possession and preservation of general wealth require a lesser labour time of society as a whole, and where the labouring society relates scientifically to the process of its progressive reproduction, its reproduction in a constantly greater abundance; hence where labour in which a human being does what a thing could do has ceased
Maybe categorizing the bulk of white collar work as "petite bourgeoisie" is incorrect..... I guess the point is that are all these things a fatal blow to his ideas? Whether wage workers are not getting enough investments or not, if there is not enough agitation for the working class to feel exploited, then Marx was essentially wrong. — schopenhauer1
In his later work, at least, Marx's substantive prediction was not that the working class will become so irritated by distribution-side inequality that they'll revolt and install a worker's state. Rather, it was that technological development, on a long enough timeline, will progress to the point that less and less human labor is required in the process, and yet our ability to consume the goods produced thereby will still depend (because of the structure of the economy) on our ability to sell our labor power for wages -- a constraint on consumption which was once necessary to facilitate production, but will be, at that time, no longer so. The transition to a mode of production not organized around the exploitation of human labor will then follow as a matter of course. It will be obvious to the industrial reserve army what must be done (i.e. it will not take any political cajoling by mustache men with nationalist credos). — Glahn
I'm not against luxury, by any means., but it's just silly to say that Marx got this wrong. It ignores the international character of communism, and it ignores why lower-class peeps in rich countries would buy luxury goods (both socially speaking, i.e. capital, and personally speaking, i.e. looking for a reason to live) — Moliere
You could be. Do you have a reason for the distinction? — schopenhauer1
Marx's communism was to be successful in the most industrialized of countries, which really never transpired anywhere and does not look to be happening anytime soon in America or Europe- the most industrial of industrialized regions. — schopenhauer1
Anyone here familiar with Herbert Marcuse, and the other 'new left'? I suppose they're passé now (hey even the word 'passé ' is passé ) but a lot of what they say resonates with me (sans their materialism, however.) — Wayfarer
The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. Consequently, true pacification requires the withdrawal of tolerance before the deed, at the stage of communication in word, print, and picture. Such extreme suspension of the right of free speech and free assembly is indeed justified only if the whole of society is in extreme danger. I maintain that our society is in such an emergency situation, and that it has become the normal state of affairs. Different opinions and 'philosophies' can no longer compete peacefully for adherence and persuasion on rational grounds: the 'marketplace of ideas' is organized and delimited by those who determine the national and the individual interest. In this society, for which the ideologists have proclaimed the 'end of ideology', the false consciousness has become the general consciousness--from the government down to its last objects. The small and powerless minorities which struggle against the false consciousness and its beneficiaries must be helped: their continued existence is more important than the preservation of abused rights and liberties which grant constitutional powers to those who oppress these minorities. It should be evident by now that the exercise of civil rights by those who don't have them presupposes the withdrawal of civil rights from those who prevent their exercise, and that liberation of the Damned of the Earth presupposes suppression not only of their old but also of their new masters. — Marcuse, Repressive Tolerance
Am I right in saying this is more like "Three Things the Communist Manifesto Got Wrong"? — jamalrob
You could be. Do you have a reason for the distinction? — schopenhauer1
whether people want to say he is right or wrong, whatever you want. there'll be a Tweetable comment on it. — ernestm
The less you eat, drink and buy books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorise, sing, paint, fence, etc., the more you save – the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor rust will devour – your capital. The less you are, the less you express your own life, the more you have, i.e., the greater is your alienated life, the greater is the store of your estranged being. — Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts
(1) The concept of “one-dimensional man” asserts that there are other dimensions of human existence in addition to the present one and that these have been eliminated. It maintains that the spheres of existence formerly considered as private (e.g. sexuality) have now become part of the entire system of social domination of man by man, and it suggests that totalitarianism can be imposed without terror.
(2) Technological rationality, which impoverishes all aspects of contemporary life, has developed the material bases of human freedom, but continues to serve the interests of suppression. There is a logic of domination in technological progress under present conditions: not quantitative accumulation, but a qualitative “leap” is necessary to transform this apparatus of destruction into an apparatus of life.
(3) The analysis proceeds on the basis of “negative” or dialectical thinking, which sees existing things as “other than they are” and as denying the possibilities inherent in themselves. It demands “freedom from the oppressive and ideological power of given facts.”
(4) The book is generally pessimistic about the possibilities for overcoming the increasing domination and unfreedom of technological society; it concentrates on the power of the present establishment to contain and repulse all alternatives to the status quo.
The whole post-fascist period is one of clear and present danger. . — Marcuse, Repressive Tolerance
The philosophers have only interpreted the world, in various ways; the point is to change it.
Yes. He wrote lots of other things, and it's a very varied body of work. The Communist Manifesto is a political pamphlet written at a very specific time for specific practical purposes. — jamalrob
Anyway, I'd say that Marx's work predicts the way capital moved and has moved up to today -- by global expansion. I don't think that nationalist petit bourgeois people are objectively motivated to enact communist revolution. I'm not arguing that point. Only that what you cite as things against Marxism could also reasonably be read as predictions of Marxism, given the characterization of capital. — Moliere
Also Marxism is broader than Marx too -- you can't just ignore the various revolutions which put the theoretical ideas into practice. Consider the Theses on Feurbach (it's short! no worries :D ) -- I'd say it points that the practical, in-the-world action is just as if not more important than the understanding of ideas. — Moliere
So you think that based on these movements of capital to global East and West, and mechanization of production will produce some sort of communist state- one described by Marx in whichever stage of his writing you prefer to draw from? — schopenhauer1
I do not consider the Soviet Union or China a successful example of Marxism, Communism, or the like. I see it as dictators and or cadres of dictators (politburo, etc.) taking control of a country and running it like a police state and then easing up on restrictions when it became economically necessary to allow for more free trade elements and accumulation of wealth. It was all top down. Dictatorship of the Proletariat not being a metaphor but literally a dictatorship. People "needed" to programmed to be Marxist through gulags, workforce programs, and stifling of free speech. If man was supposed to be free and self-actualized because they weren't exploited or worried about accumulation of wealth, that never really worked out. They may not have accumulated much wealth, bu they were certainly exploited by whatever the state mechanisms dictated to them. There was never a good way to implement the transition of the modes of production and accumulation of wealth without mass death and total control of people's movements and lives. More democratic socialism is just capitalism with safety nets. I do not think that as Marxist or Communist. — schopenhauer1
I think you'd be sympathetic to some of his One-Dimensional Man, which I read ages ago. More sympathetic than me, probably. — jamalrob
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