And from some of the more questionable passages in Herr Nietzsche (who is great nevertheless overall.) — igjugarjuk

A great thinker and iconoclast - but not a great man, to my view.

I confess I use a couple of passages from Zarathustra as a scapular. :wink:

To all. Please don't respond to troll posts as your replies are likely to be deleted along with the posts.

To all. Please don't respond to troll posts as your replies are likely to be deleted along with the posts. — Baden

That's okay, don't mind your deleting them. Thanks for stepping in. I'll do my best to hold my tongue in the future. (Not easy..........)

@karl stone When I read the Communist Manifesto, I don't find any inspiration or justification for the gulags, purges, mass executions, genocides, etc. that arose under the banner of Marxist Leninist rule. Still, it happened. Very similar events occurred in the Chinese iteration of Marxism.

In Russian, Chinese, and other totalitarian regimes the model followed was the centuries long despotism of the preceding regimes, and the character of the people who led the respective revolutions. There is not too much that is admirable in Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Fidel, et al.

Because it was buried in its own little grave of the bureaucratized, stale, moldy Socialist Labor Party (SLP) and capitalist repression, the democratic model of American socialism faded into oblivion. De Leon, Debs, and others held that democratic processes (union organizing, political campaigning, education, voting, legislation, etc.) were the route that should be pursued to socialism. It was tried in the early 20th century.

Did it succeed? No, obviously. Why not? It was repressed the same way that unions were repressed: long campaigns of negative propaganda, laws blocking organizing activity, covert infiltration and disruption, and so forth. The democratic model remains, however, and option where democratic life occurs. Socialist prospects in the United States? Poor to DOA.

Thanks for the thoughtful post.

Socialist prospects in the United States? Poor to DOA. — Bitter Crank

Makes you wonder why Rightists are always sounding the socialism siren. We're already too socialist for the bulk of the upper-class to super-rich.

@karl stone Please stay away from the philosophical discussions if you want a casual chat/whinge. If you can't, your posts will be deleted and you will be banned.

Quite clearly the aim of socialism is man. It is to create a form of production and an organization of society in which man can overcome alienation from his product, from his work, from his fellow man, from himself and from nature; in which he can return to himself and grasp the world with his own powers, thus becoming one with the world. Socialism for Marx, was, as Paul Tillich put it, "a resistance movement against the destruction of love in social reality." — Fromm, Marx's Concept of Man, p. 51

Enjoying this OP. Fromm is incisive and acute. It has often stuck me that a deep dive into the true nature of capitalism may be the only reliable path to a nuanced appreciation of Marx.

"By alienation is meant a mode of experience in which the person experiences himself as an alien. He has become, one might say, estranged from himself. He does not experience himself as the center of his world, as the creator of his own acts — but his acts and their consequences have become his masters, whom he obeys, or whom he may even worship. The alienated person is out of touch with himself as he is out of touch with any other person. He, like the others, are experienced as things are experienced; with the senses and with common sense, but at the same time without being related to oneself and to the world outside positively."
- Fromm, The Sane Society, p.120 Sect.C.2.b "Alienation”

"We consume, as we produce, without any concrete relatedness to the objects with which we deal; We live in a world of things, and our only connection with them is that we know how to manipulate or to consume them."
- Fromm, The Sane Society p.134 Sect.C.2.b "Alienation”[/quote]

Marxism looks good on paper - it's the same with everything else. The true valence (+/-) of an idea is revealed when, as they say, the rubber meets the road.

We need to investigate why and how good ideas fail.

Marxism, it seems, in but a coupla years, spawns dictators (cults of personality). The Supreme Leader lives, if you notice, a capitalist life, amassing wealth like how entrepreneurs in capitalist societies are allowed to. The rest - ordinary folk - are prohibited from engaging in any private enterprise.

Glad you're enjoying it.

So much kindness and humanity in Fromm's writings - along with some novel and illuminating psychology. I was a bit astonished to discover that Fromm and the Frankfurts have been demonized by the right as purveyors of an insidious form of cultural Marxism. I can only suppose it's the anti-capitalist iconoclasm that gets their goat. And the general challenge to the political and cultural status quo. As if it's not obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our society has gone insane.

Marxism, it seems, in but a coupla years, spawns dictators (cults of personality). — Agent Smith

Might as well blame Jesus for the ostentation of the Catholic church and for all the little boys molested by the Pope's meiny. It's the same kind of link - of social visionary to the momentum of corruptive opportunism.

This thread is an attempt to take a look at Marx's actual words - in the hope that it will give us a clearer picture of how profoundly his vision has been corrupted.

Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme is said to provide a clear picture of how Marx would have liked to see his vision put into action. I hope to take a close look at it soon. It's online here: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1875/gotha/

That said, I'll always be a student of Marxism and never a master.

The Supreme Leader lives, if you notice, a capitalist life, amassing wealth like how entrepreneurs in capitalist societies are allowed to. The rest - ordinary folk - are prohibited from engaging in any private enterprise. — Agent Smith

If you can find some justification for a cultic Supreme Leader in Marx's words, I'm all ears.

I can only suppose it's the anti-capitalist iconoclasm that gets their goat. And the general challenge to the political and cultural status quo. As if it's not obvious to anyone with eyes to see that our society has gone insane. — ZzzoneiroCosm

I think that's spot on.

I think that's spot on. — Tom Storm

Sad that their ideology commits them to overlooking the profound humanity of a thinker like Fromm.

The banality of [ultra-conservatism]...

I'm not well-versed in Marxism to formulate a sensible reply to your question. All I can say is there's a link between Marxism and totalitarianism. Is it just an accident, a question of circumstances, or is Marx's ideology deeply flawed?

Is it just an accident, a question of circumstances, or is Marx's ideology deeply flawed? — Agent Smith

That's the big question here.

That's the big question here. — ZzzoneiroCosm

:snicker: Well, I recall someone telling me that accidents are to be expected and there's nothing interesting going on unless, he said, it always happens at the same spot!

Is it just an accident, a question of circumstances, or is Marx's ideology deeply flawed? — Agent Smith

I'm not convinced that we can say Marx's ideology is deeply flawed given that those totalitarian, ostensibly 'communist' states didn't actually follow Marx.

I would say there is something inherently dangerous in the aftermath of any social/political revolution, whether it be Communism, Fascism, secular or religious. What does Zizek say again? 'The biggest problem with revolution is the morning after.' Human nature and power play have a habit of hijacking and distorting the fidelity of theory.

:zip:

Thanks for the quote:

What does Zizek say again? 'The biggest problem with revolution is the morning after.' — Tom Storm

"What I'm interested in is the morning after. That is to say: The measure of a successful...revolution is... how will ordinary people feel the morning after when things return to normal? Here our fantasies reach a limit."

Zizek

https://youtu.be/Z_4cjK0Lb9Q . About two minutes in.

The Declaration of the Right to be Guillotined.

An Arab spring with a Muslim Brotherhood winter.

Strange fruit from an Eden seed.





Here is a fruit for the crows to pluck
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck
For the sun to rot, for the tree to drop
Here is a strange and bitter crop



Blood on the leaves and blood at the root... And the leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations.

Turning to Marx's Critique of the Gotha Programme: In Part 1, Marx describes his vision of Stage 1 and Stage 2 of emergent communist society:

Stage 1:

The same amount of labor which he has given to society in one form, he receives back in another. Here, obviously, the same principle prevails as that which regulates the exchange of commodities, as far as this is exchange of equal values....The right of the producers is proportional to the labor they supply; the equality consists in the fact that measurement is made with an equal standard, labor....But one man is superior to another physically, or mentally, and supplies more labor in the same time, or can labor for a longer time; and labor, to serve as a measure, must be defined by its duration or intensity, otherwise it ceases to be a standard of measurement. This equal right is an unequal right for unequal labor. It recognizes no class differences, because everyone is only a worker like everyone else; but it tacitly recognizes unequal individual endowment, and thus productive capacity, as a natural privilege. It is, therefore, a right of inequality, in its content, like every right. Right, by its very nature, can consist only in the application of an equal standard; but unequal individuals (and they would not be different individuals if they were not unequal) are measurable only by an equal standard insofar as they are brought under an equal point of view, are taken from one definite side only -- for instance, in the present case, are regarded only as workers and nothing more is seen in them, everything else being ignored.

But these defects are inevitable in the first phase of communist society as it is when it has just emerged after prolonged birth pangs from capitalist society. Right can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby. — Marx - Critique of the Gotha Programme

Stage 2:

In a higher phase of communist society, after the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labor, and therewith also the antithesis between mental and physical labor, has vanished; after labor has become not only a means of life but life's prime want; after the productive forces have also increased with the all-around development of the individual, and all the springs of co-operative wealth flow more abundantly -- only then then can the narrow horizon of bourgeois right be crossed in its entirety and society inscribe on its banners: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs! — Ibid

This could also be of interest: https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1881/ethnographical-notebooks/

A summary: https://marcellomusto.org/marxs-ethnological-notebooks/

He also, apparently, did a lot of ecological research in the period between the publication of the first volume of Capital and his death. But I don't believe those notes have been (widely) published yet as I can't find them.

:up: Nice.

[Marx's] studies of prehistoric and ancient society led him to the conclusion that the patriarchal family should be seen not as the original basic unit of society but as a form of social organization more recent than was generally believed. It was an organization “too weak to face alone the hardships of life” (472). It was much more plausible to assume the existence of a form like that of the American native peoples, the sindiasmic family, which practised a “communism in living” (Marx 1972, 115). — Musto

The point of this thread: Marx's vision of communism has been corrupted in various ways. — Deletedmemberzc

"Corrupted" and also amended. Some of his criticisms of capitalism have not aged well but some others have.

I think it is clear his main criticism of capitalism was in fact wrong. He predicted that capitalism would lead to an increase in poverty. In his time it is quite easy to see why he would think this, but he was simply proven wrong by history on this main point.

That said, many of his subordinate criticisms of capitalism have yet to be resolved.

It is probably worth listening to what someone said about Lenin here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6TK9c-caEcw

I think it is clear his main criticism of capitalism was in fact wrong. He predicted that capitalism would lead to an increase in poverty. In his time it is quite easy to see why he would think this, but he was simply proven wrong by history on this main point. — I like sushi

It aged very well actually. You should read up on his ideas on technological and geographical displacement (to the perifere) as well as displacement in time. Profit seeking runs on externalising costs. The burdens on the perifery and future generations are huge and even in contemporary western society most people are significantly in debt for the majority of their lives.

He said the middle class would get sucked down into poverty. They didn't. That fact is not up for debate.

That is not to say he pointed out valid issues with capitalism. I do not believe any one in history has ever been proven correct in every prediction that they made - and even those that were correct are seldom so for valid reasons.

He said the middle class would get sucked down into poverty. They didn't. That fact is not up for debate. — I like sushi

Patience is key here. In my opinion, the current middle class will indeed get sucked down into poverty. Just give it a bit more time.

That is silly. What he said would happen did not happen. Pretending he made this claim yesterday is simply ignoring that fact that capitalism did the exact opposite to what he predicted after his death.

Charles Dickens made the very same kind of predictions too. It is completely understandable given the socio-politcal climate of their times. It just didn't pan out as they expected.

And again, all that aside, Marx certainly pointed out problems with the economic system that are worthy of examination today. I am not simply dismissing every criticism he had of capitalism.

He is one of those rare cases of a person being wrong about so much and still becoming a major figure. It comes as no surprise then that the ideas, when implemented, led to disaster and mass misery.

Not just the man himself but the accolytes. The Marxist interpretation of sociopolitical progression from primitivism to communism was proven wrong as soon as China went from feudalism straight to socialism, to then become the strange authoritarian state capitalism with ZEEs that we see today.

Just give it a bit more time. — Tarskian

"Two more weeks, trust the plan!"