I do not consider the Soviet Union or China a successful example of Marxism, Communism, or the like. — schopenhauer1

The problem you have is that Marxist theory did not predict what would happen after communism raised the standard of living of the proletariat to such an extent that the class no longer exists. According to the classical definition in the time of Marx, the proletariat is too poor to change its own status and too uneducated to read and write.

The real problem with Marxist theory of social evolution is that it succeeded at a rate beyond the wildest dreams of its original proponents. So they did not state what should happen AFTER the proletariat elevated itself, which has been, in lack of other better theory, a cycling backwards in political evolution, rather than an evolution to the kind of minimal state proposed by Nozick, which arrived on the scene rather too late to make a difference.

Meanwhile, the old bastions of capitalism are rapidly regressing, as evidenced for example that one third of all Americans now believe Trump was stating undisputable fact when he claimed that Clinton was a criminal and that Obama wiretapped his phones, because they do not have the discretion to recognize that Trump is exactly the kind of con-artist that Marx was warning against. So the descent into military totalitarianism continues in all but name.

The problem you have is that Marxist theory did not predict what would happen after communism raised the standard of living of the proletariat to such an extent that the class no longer exists. — ernestm

Didn't Marx say that it was through the bourgeoisie that the proletariat would ascend? Not that the bourgeoisie would do this as a favor to the proles. Rather, by working in the organizations put together by the bourgeoisie (factories, offices, banks, etc.) the proletariat would acquire the skills needed to manage society themselves, and in throwing off the yoke of the bourgeoisie would acquire the means to raise their standard of living.

Communism comes after the proletariat is ready (through inadvertent preparation by the bourgeoisie) to seize the means of production--to dispossess the dispossessors. The proles were not ready to throw off the yoke of the bourgeoisie in Russia -- there was hardly such classes yet in czarist Russia. China wasn't a mature capitalist state either, and as in the case of Russia, communism was installed at the point of a gun.

Nowhere has the working class -- proles -- completed the process of acquiring the level of skills needed to run society, though in Europe and North America, and in several other locations, they are getting significantly closer. (remember, "worker" includes managers who are just hired hands.) Many workers engage in many of the complex tasks of management.

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. — schopenhauer1

Exactly. China and the Soviet Union were not communist at all. The USSR was essentially a state-owned capitalist economy. There was one owner: the state. Everybody worked for the state. This might have been tolerable had it not been for Stalin who shared the Nobel Prize for nastiness with Adolf Hitler. After Stalin finally died in 1953, things gradually loosened up a bit. At least there weren't any more extensive purges and mass deportations to Siberia.

China was operated as a state owned corporation too, except there were some rather wild swings in policy--like the Cultural Revolution and the disastrous Great Leap Forward. After that they decided that getting rich was glorious. Now you have a mostly capitalist country under tight control by the "communist" party, with the party being one of the most aggressive firms.

Both the USSR and China did manage, at times, to put together a half-ways stable society where life could go on normally without radical disruption. But these were episodes, not the rule.

In time, workers in China and Russia may be in a position to develop the skills needed to manage society, to expropriate the expropriators, but it won't be soon. Both countries have significant problems (quite different ones) to overcome.

Nowhere has the working class -- proles -- completed the process of acquiring the level of skills needed to run society — Bitter Crank

That's not entirely fair. Many of those now running the Chinese Communist party and some of the Russian oil oligarchs can cite extremely poor families in the past. And there is limited space at the top, so it only takes the fact that a clear number have succeeded in doing that to demonstrate that the communist regimes far exceeded the original expectations, and had served their purpose in elevating national well being to the level where people can now choose their own lives, and moreover, can read and write better to higher levels than countries with a purely capitalist past now demonstrate. And more recently, Russia and China's economic growth has far outstripped that of the USA for decades.

I'll grant that the Chinese Communist Party probably has elevated the skills and horizons of its cadre, many of whom were quite possibly of peasant stock. The bureaucracy of the CCP is like any bureaucracy anywhere and its employees/cadres/members will learn as much there about management as they will working at an insurance company.

I'll grant that under the CCP, GDP has been high (it had to be high to maintain social goals and stability) and in the many businesses spawned in China, lots of more or less bourgeois operations are teaching people how to operate a complex society. That's all to the good.

But Russian Oil Oligarchs? They are mostly just plain liars, thieves, swindlers, and scoundrels. I don't care how humble their origins were.

I wouldn't call Russia a healthy state, yet anyway. It's GDP growth hasn't been super. It's rate of population growth was very poor -- even negative -- for a time. I'm all for less than ZPG, but Russia's population was doing poorly because of a case of collective depression, alcoholism, anomie, economic stagnation (or shrinkage), and so forth--following the collapse of the USSR. That's now 27 years in the past, and sure, they are recovering. I wish them well.

Well sure. And as Russians will point out, there are far more liars, thieves, swindlers, and scoundrels here, and you may be surprised, if you look it up, that population growth has also been increasing in the last 20 years--at less than its GDP, unlike the USA.

China's economic growth has far outstripped that of the USA for decades — ernestm

This is true. The US economy and society completed what in retrospect was a century long cycle in 1970. We had tremendous growth in population, output, innovation, invention, development, etc. between 1870 and 1920, and then a reprise of growth, but with mature technologies from 1920 to 1970. From 1970 to the present, we have seen all sorts of changes in the economy -- particularly the shift of mass-production from our country to places like China.

One of the reasons we stopped growing (more than our piddling 2%) was that all of the growth gains that could be extracted from the technological innovations of the previous century had been extracted. Steam power, gasoline power, electrical power, atomic power, telephone, radio, television, computers, automation, aviation, infrastructure construction, etc. were done. Certainly there were innovations: the smartphone, the personal computer, the internet, the microwave, and all that. But these were not huge-industry spawning innovations like railroads in 1890, telephone and telegraph, and electrical generation; like autos were in 1920, or television was in 1950, or aviation. Nothing like them has appeared in the last 50 years. And, many analysts think, won't in the foreseeable future, either.

So we are going to be surpassed in growth by other nations: China, hopefully India (for their sake), Africa, and maybe Russia. They have a lot of catching up to do -- lots of growth potential.

(Just to wet blanket all this, Some countries will see delightful growth, unless climate change creates so many problems that everybody will be racing to stay afloat economically, let alone soar.)

I had checked a graph showing their GDP growth. Yes, it's much, much better now than it was in 2000.

One of the reasons we stopped growing (more than our piddling 2%) was that all of the growth gains that could be extracted from the technological innovations of the previous century had been extracted. — Bitter Crank

Right. But that's ONLY true if you interpret 'growth' as the American rich and power mongers want you to define it. What America COULD have done was expand its idealism by accepting more other nations as states, and export education and science instead of weapons and war.

Last month a Russian company demonstrated a giant 3D printer that can extrude concrete to make an entire 4-room house in <24 hours, at a cost of total $10,000. Estimated lifespan of the house is >150 years, and all it needs is a coat of paint. They are using the in Siberia now.

If the USA did that, it would still be growing. But it was more to benefit of the USA's own oil oligarchs, such as the Bush family for example, to sell and export war, which only diminishes growth. So everyone turns a blind eye to Venezuela now, it hardly even gets mentioned in the news, when in the 1960s they were even asking if it could become another state in the USA. But no, the USA oil drew the lines instead. Not even Puerto Rico managed to cross that line.

OK, now you are talking about something else altogether.

I agree with you 110% that the American oligarchy has a wretched record in just about every respect. They are, as far as I am concerned, scum, filth, and dirt. So, you won't get any argument from me about how bad they are.

I wasn't aware that Venezuela was interested in joining the union as a state.

While I am impressed by a concrete extruder that can 'print' a 4 room house in 24 hours, I'm not sure how much of an advantage such a device is. Whatever has been keeping 4 room concrete houses from being built isn't the lack of a 3D printer. Still, if the printer can do it and in the process use less energy, less material, and still produce a strong wall, that is a worthwhile advance.

Just an aside, did you know the world may have passed "peak sand"? [Quelles horreurs!] The kind of sand that is required to make excellent concrete isn't all that common, and zillions of tons of it have already been dug up and used. Most sand doesn't work well in concrete--the particles are either too big, too small, are laced with salt, or have some other problem. So, maybe the concrete extruder solves that problem in some way.

Now, getting back to growth.

But that's ONLY true if you interpret 'growth' as the American rich and power mongers want you to define it. What America COULD have done was expand its idealism by accepting more other nations as states, and export education and science instead of weapons and war. — ernestm

Whether we exported education and science or weapons of war wouldn't have made any difference in the analysis I was drawing from. (It would have made all the difference in the world MORALLY.) All the industrialized nations experienced a tremendous boost from steam power, railroads, internal combustion, electrical generation, lighting, radio, telecommunication, airplanes, and so on. They all followed a similar trajectory of benefits, and eventually, diminishing returns (in terms of economic growth).

What we (and others) didn't do was distribute these good technologies to less developed economies. East Africa, for instance (Kenya, Uganda, Tanzania...) had very little telephone service in 1995, especially outside of a handful of large cities (like Nairobi), and most people in the cities didn't have telephone service either. The arrival of the cell phone (relatively inexpensive and needing radio transmission towers rather than extensive wiring) solved that problem, but that wasn't America's doing, for the most part. Africans developed sophisticated services for the (now primitive) hand sets they were holding--like financial services, crop price information, and (of course) just plain communication.

Solar panels are bringing electricity, and some electrical devices, to places that were using kerosine lamps in 1995. That means children, for instance, can read in the evening, or curl up next to the radio and list to the BBC World Service. Again, that wasn't our doing.

Mostly what some countries like Nigeria or Venezuela got was oil drilling and oil pumping technology which didn't help them all that much. The people there are mostly getting ripped off by everybody (locals and outsiders) in a position to do so.

Well, you must forgive me for introducing too many extraneous topics, lol. But I do persist in reiterating my thought on VALUE. Americans are pre-programmed to consider value in terms of fiscal wealth. And I will provide a parallel example. Today I was forwarded an essay on how one American wanted to gain a Rhodes scholarship to Oxford by arguing that a rational approach to altruism would solve the world's worst problem, poverty:

http://quillette.com/2017/04/20/crucible-application-process/

And the applicant woefully misunderstood the level of cynicism such a hyperbolic statement would cause in the ivory towers, which first is totally disinterested in pathos as a mode of rhetorical persuasion in academics; and secondly, and for more significantly, maintains a profound objection to the USA's consideration of money as some absolute gauge and method to fix all woes. Just because society places a fiscal value now on the commodities you cite does not imply that they necessarily have any greater fiscal value on the services I cite. Consider for example, what would have happened in history Ford automobiles not changed the entire nation to believe that factory work to make travel easier was the way to go forward. In alternative history lines, cars could have been considered nothing more than a necessary evil, and had it been discovered how to make plastics from corn before they were made from oil refinement, we would be surrounded by crop fields and canalboats instead of roads And maybe Europe would even never have let the railroad companies buy up all the canal locks then fill them with concrete to render them unusable, which started the whole modern race to force all alternatives to the current preferred mode of transport into oblivion by buying the patents and burying them. .

So maybe that's just because I was cursed with an international education. But on this issue, I really do have to side with the British. Academically speaking, that is.

Thanks for the link. Young Dillon Bowen is a very clear, articulate thinker. I enjoyed reading the piece--and being introduced to Quintette--Damn -- another interesting forum.

I don't know -- are Americans really any more pre-programmed to think about value in fiscal terms than others? Thinking in fiscal terms about value isn't second nature to me. My moral compass was pre- and re- programmed by Christian (both Protestant and Catholic) theology, even if I am no longer a paid up subscriber to its formal creed.

Yes, Ford really was a watershed. I just started reading a book about Janesville, Wisconsin and the closure of the GM assembly plant there--it operated from around 1920 to 2010. Speaker of the House Paul Ryan grew up in, and represents, Janesville as part of his district. In the late '60s the plant was given the honor of making the auto that would bring GM's total up to 100 million -- and that's just GM. Ford, American Motors, Chrysler, Studebaker, and Packard add how many million more.

It would be very difficult to over-estimate the social, moral, psychological, demographic, geographic, and economic consequences of the automobile industry. We did have an alternative to the 300 million+, more than the 1-car-per-person, approach. Pretty good Intra-urban, inter-urban, and trans-continental ground transportation was in place at the time the auto industry was hatched and reared. This is all familiar news.

Well... I have a big medical appointment in 2 hours and all sorts of things to do before I leave, that I should have been doing now, but this is more interesting.