there could not be a form of government that embodies Marx’s system without resorting to some form of liberty denying authoritarianism — Deus

I disagree that a liberty-denying authoritarian system is unavoidable or inevitable -- while granting that often enough we have opted for, cooperated with, eagerly supported, or did little to prevent, tyranny. Nothing straight was ever built with the crooked timber of mankind, per E. Kant.

One form of marxism that has been proposed is 'industrial democracy'. It's DeLeon's American plan. DeLeon thought that democratic means should be employed to achieve socialism IF the appropriate institutions are available. He thought that they were available in the last quarter of the 19th, first quarter of the 20th centuries. The key piece is wide-spread organizing of industrial unions plus public education, political activity, and elections. A fully organized working class (which composing the workforce) would have the power to compel deep political and economic change -- backed up, of course, by the imposition of sit-down strikes (denial of labor, denial of production).

108 years on from DeLeon's death, we know that his plan was unsuccessful, but not for lack of a bloody revolution.

Nuanced forms of socialism could be one way, the other is to accept capitalism as the best we have although not perfect. — Deus

Capitalism does not approach the low bar of "not perfect". There are several countries that are doing well with governmental / economic systems that include "socialistic" elements. (They are all capitalist, but have incorporated a reasonably robust social welfare system.) Accuulation of wealth at the expense of the working class is still the name of the game in these enlightened states (Norway, Germany, France, etc.), but at least th well being of the people as a whole has been given some consideration -- as opposed to the American system which is intensely capitalistic, and "drop dead if you can't hack it".

You’re probably referring to Scandinavian nations in that last post. Systems which fare quite well and provide a very fair version of capitalism with responsible redistribution of taxable income through the various layers of society.

As proven by history that all communist systems have been enforced by dictators — Deus

I fail to see any system ever in place or that ever theoretically could be in place that if "taken on" wouldn't be met by something similar, one way or the other.

Any system that isn't set in place or would otherwise form naturally regardless of human action (gravity, society) is, much like the human body itself, in a constant state of negentropy (degradation).

As proven by history that all communist systems have been enforced by dictators I see no further adaptation or advancement of his theory that could save it.

Nuanced forms of socialism could be one way, the other is to accept capitalism as the best we have although not perfect.

Back to the title of the thread and main point there could not be a form of government that embodies Marx’s system without resorting to some form of liberty denying authoritarianism. — Deus

The tone of this seems to fall in the category of demonizing communism typical of many advocates of capitalism. Has the spirit of Marx's communism been corrupted? Sure. Just like every other ideal that humanity attempts to implement. I am not a communist, but I do believe that we can achieve a much higher level of social justice. But that spirit of social justice isn't a product of a particular economic system or form of government. Rather, the success or failure of those is a function of the spirit of social justice.

The idiom “one cannot make an omelette without breaking a few eggs” serves well to explain that it isn’t so much a hijacking but the inevitable result of such a system. Such a system doesn’t occur naturally, but is imposed, often against the wishes of large subsets of the population. A state can now use Marx’s dream to justify any and all atrocities and privations.

He thought that they were available in the last quarter of the 19th, first quarter of the 20th centuries. The key piece is wide-spread organizing of industrial unions plus public education, political activity, and elections. — Bitter Crank

I don't undrstand why you say that DeLeon's plan was unsuccessful.

America has a prosperous working class. Public education is mandatory. There are elections. Politically it is a slanted country, compared to other industrialized countries, but hey, maybe the other countries are slanted and America is straight.

If you work, and have a decent job, you can make decent living. What more can a human want? Work in peace, have a family with a bright future, and worship to his heart's desire. He can drink beer any time he wants, shoot the neighbours if they walk onto his lawn, set up a gun-nest and take out a few dozen people. Randomly or to a pattern. -- You can't find this much happiness in other countries.

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As proven by history that all communist systems have been enforced by dictators I see no further adaptation or advancement of his theory that could save it. — Deus

Benevolent tyrants is your answer.

shoot the neighbours if they walk onto his lawn, set up a gun-nest and take out a few dozen people. Randomly or to a pattern. -- You can't find this much happiness in other countries — god must be atheist

Silly me! How did I fail to notice these splendid features?

If you work, and have a decent job, you can make decent living. What more can a human want — god must be atheist

I'd cut out "and have a decent job" -- that's clearly saying there are jobs for people who count, and jobs for people who don't count. So if you don't have a decent job, you work hard, and yet don't see anything from your work.

Such a system doesn’t occur naturally — NOS4A2

If you look at the earliest examples of statehood, these forms "occur naturally" as seen by their repeated emergence and are at the same time imposed, and are deeply exploitive.

I'd cut out "and have a decent job" -- that's clearly saying there are jobs for people who count, and jobs for people who don't count. So if you don't have a decent job, you work hard, and yet don't see anything from your work. — Moliere

You're jumping into extremes. "you work hard, and yet don't see anything from your work." That is not true. You see something from your work.

"that's clearly saying there are jobs for people who count, and jobs for people who don't count." This is illogical. Nobody is ranked for jobs whether they count or don't. The job market works on the basis of elasticity of demand versus supply. "Decent" does not mean virtuous or with valor; it means "not extravagant, but not introvagant, either." People whom you mistook for those who don't count still count; but they perform jobs due to any number of reasons which are not coveted by the employer with respect to the available pool of people willing and able to do that job.

I feel you are extrapolating in illegal (logically illegal, not criminally illegal) fashion because maybe your social conscience pushes you over to the other side of reason. Meaning, I am afraid you can't accept that America, the most capitalist of all industrialized nations, pays very good wages.

American workers get good pay because of the competition among employers to get hired help. I believe that if for every IT position there would be ten unemployed IT professionals, then they would settle to work for half the state-decreed minimum wage.

Silly me! How did I fail to notice these splendid features? — Bitter Crank

That was my attempt at sarcastic humour.

To spell out my position in the most literal manner for your convenience: there are people who get paid less than they should be paid, and what I'd change in your formula -- in answer to "what more do you want?" -- is that if you work you can make a decent living, regardless of what you do.

I like "make a decent living". In 2000, the president of the U of MN agreed with one of the unions that $16 was a minimum living wage. two decades later, a minimum living wage would a good deal more, given inflation, depending on where you live. In the upper Midwest 31,000 per year might do it; in New York, 41,000 would be needed for an individual. For a family of four, something closer to $100,000 would be needed.

The other part, "regardless of what you do" might be tougher to pull off, because people (especially the upper middle class) tend to be quite wedded to the idea that certain jobs should get much more income--professions, especially. The reasons why the professions are well paid (college professors, lawyers, doctors, etc.) is that they worked very hard (in the early 20th century) to establish themselves as closed shops with steep entry requirements. It isn't that college professors or lawyers, doctors, dentists, etc. are worth what they are paid -- it's that they have managed to limit the supply. (There are more lawyers than there are jobs, happily,)

It might be more useful to pay people on a scale of how unpleasant their work is, rather than how limited the personnel supply chain is. The dirtier the job, the higher the pay -- rather than the reverse.

If you look at the earliest examples of statehood, these forms "occur naturally" as seen by their repeated emergence and are at the same time imposed, and are deeply exploitive.

Very true. States are essentially the organized means of exploitation imposed by the conquering class upon the vanquished, and it has been that way from their beginning. Even through centuries of reform their fundamental functions and institutions still remain.

The end result is that all subsequent political movements, whether Marxist, liberal, or fascist, have only ever convinced the revolutionary to adopt and use the system of their oppressors to serve their political ends.

In the face of your criticism of what previous attempts at radical change have amounted to, what do you propose instead?

States are essentially the organized means of exploitation imposed by the conquering class upon the vanquished — NOS4A2

That is true, but it doesn't exhaust the utility of the state for projects launched by the vanquished class of people. In a functioning society, even one made up of the vanquished, people coordinate their efforts; land is protected from floods; houses are built to a minimum standard; food is produced and distributed; literacy is acquired, etc. Sometimes the coordinated efforts run counter to the interests of the ruling class (literacy and political activity for example).

Conquest may be step 1, and if you exterminate the vanquished there will be a longer period of peaceful obedience before your own people develop divers desires and begin to organize themselves to acquire them.

Total control is very difficult to maintain for long. What applies to our best free and democratic efforts also applies to our worst, dictatorial efforts: The people get tired and sloppy; people are persistently devious; we find ways to resist. Before long, things fall apart.

To spell out my position in the most literal manner for your convenience: there are people who get paid less than they should be paid, and what I'd change in your formula -- in answer to "what more do you want?" -- is that if you work you can make a decent living, regardless of what you do.
5 hours ago — Moliere

Now I became spellbound. ----

I agree with the "what more do you want" part, in a socially just society nobody would feel they are pulling more than their weight for less wages.

I don't agree with the "people should be paid" part. I mean, it's noble, it's humane, but if you live in a market economy, people only should feel that they INDIVIDUALLY should be paid more. And that is how everyone feels, I am not kidding you.

So... who should decide who should be paid how much? In a market economy, it's not WHO but WHAT decides. At least it's a dependable, reliable way of dishing out wages. If everyone feels it's unfair, that's a fair game then.

Is Marxism hijackable? That, my friend, is the right question. If it is then something's wrong with it, oui mes amies? Using simple logic here.

I think yes and @Deus is right when he said that the most socialist countries or states use tyranny to promote Marxism. Because they know this is the only way to do so.

Syat ... a paradox then. The system that puts people first leads to despotism of the worst kind. Have you heard of Gödel's loophole? Maybe something similar is going on with socialism & communism - there's a bug in it.

Have you heard of Gödel's loophole? Maybe something similar is going on with socialism & communism - there's a bug in it — Agent Smith

I couldn't have explained it better!

I couldn't have explained it better! — javi2541997

:smile:

The utility of the state is a part of the problem. People think they can just set the great machine in motion and reach their desired goals, so they compete to sit at its levers. Understandable. However, whatever direction it moves or whichever class it operates to benefit, people are being ground beneath its weight at all times. It operates parasitically, survives on plunder and extortion, so the immorality of it all would remain even if angels occupied its positions.

Worse, its coordination requires force and coercion. Involuntary coordination is on the spectrum of slavery. Assuming that it’s evil to force people to serve my ends, I’d much rather find voluntary means of coordination.

Stop thinking in statist terms is a good start.

Is Marxism hijackable? That, my friend, is the right question. — Agent Smith

I agree!

And I'd say that it is not.

All the concerns about the one true Marx are understandable -- due to the anti-communist propaganda machine that has been and continues to operate on the popular USian conscience -- and I've shared the sentiment in a previous life. I get the feeling, but I'd say it's wrong.

There's a funny line with Marx going on -- there are those who want to say he is pure, but the real applications are somehow wrong, and there are those who want to say the real applications are the heart of the matter.

On the interpretive angle both agree that the real instances of Marx's work are undeniably wrong, tyrannical, and so forth. Lenin as misguided zealot, more or less re-iterated over the course of every socialist country.

But there are people who benefited from the efforts of socialism. Socialism is not the paradise people imagine. The warts are on the level of systematic violence against innocent groups. However, in comparison to any modern nation.... well, that's just the recipe for making a nation: genocide, repression, appropriation, and exploitation are the name of the game. That's how you win the nation-building game (and it's a pyrrhic victory).

***

That nation-building ends in a pyrrhic victory, most of the time, is the fact upon which any propaganda machine can be built from. If you want your people to avoid notions that might make them like those people, then you utilize the dark facts of any nations history to paint that nation as bad while using the positive facts about your own nation to paint it as a good one, so people are attached to your nation and fear the other nation.

I think that's where a lot of attitudes towards Marxism and socialism are from. Marxism is a full on tradition with political actors that continue to influence the international world, though. Like any tradition it comprises of many, but what it is not is a foregone conclusion of obvious evil and wrong.

I’d much rather find voluntary means of coordination. — NOS4A2

Sure thing! All you need is a sparsely populated world of hunter-gatherer bands composed of a few dozen people at most.

It could be as you suspect that states are now and always have been conspiracies against free individuals and small groups. In the present age (consisting of the last 5,000 years) states certainly have been conspiracies, especially more recently. On the other hand, larger populations don't exist in close proximity without regulation (the state), else one has constant violent turmoil.

There are people who think that the state preceded agriculture. They propose that some ambitious creative types introduced agriculture and village living as a means to the end of creating a parasitical state living off the labor of peasants. The book is Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States by James C. Scott, 2018.

I don't know what you are like. What are you like? Are you constitutionally incompatible with densely organized and thickly populated statist societies? Are you a renegade? Are you a street-smart anarchist warrior? Or are you a typical guy who happens to be unusually peeved by the demands of others in the form of the state?

Hey, I don't like overbearing organizations either, be they states, corporations, non-profits, religious organizations (overbearing religious organizations are especially bad), kindergartens, book clubs or block clubs, or individuals. Who does?

I’d much rather find voluntary means of coordination. — NOS4A2

Democracy is the only such means.

Democracy is the natural state of social organization. Leaders emerge, but they lead by the consent of the led. If they lose that consent, they are removed, because the led outnumber them. Simple.

It is only when populations increase to an unnatural extent, due to the invention of agriculture, that tyranny becomes possible. While the led still outnumber, they now need organization to effectively resist. This becomes difficult with increasing numbers and a determined ruling elite which suppresses such organization.

Democracy is the institutionalization of the original, natural state of affairs, and is the only means of voluntary organization of large numbers. It's sole function is too maintain voluntary rule by consent, by providing an institutionalized organization the masses would otherwise lack. It is only ever partial, and it is always under attack, always threatens to devolve into minority rule, as we are observing across the world now. But it's all we've got.

Remember: the Marxists drove the Bakuninists out of the First International.

Marxism =/= communism.

Communism =/= socialism.

Socialism =/= Marxism.

Political democracy without economic democracy is a rigged sham, thus the rise and spread of 'reactionary populisms' globally.