# Marxism One of History's Greatest failures



## BAYLOR (Jun 21, 2015)

Karl Marx and the whole Communist  philosophy expounded in  his communist Manifesto and his ponderous Work  Capital turned out to be an unrealistic pipe dream that could never possibly  work. And sadly millions of innocent people died in process. It failed miserably and quite frankly  deserved to fail.

I often wonder what Marx would have thought of carnage and human suffering caused by his works ?  If he had known would e have end bothered with the Manifesto and Capital? 

Thoughts?


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## Dennis E. Taylor (Jun 21, 2015)

Given any particular type of government (or economic model), there are people who are ready to declare it a failure. And there are other people who are ready to declare it a success. Observe capitalism and democracy. The nay-sayers will tell you that democracy is nothing but the institutionalized purchase of votes, and capitalism is just another form of serfdom.
I think Karl Marx would have found a way to compartmentalize the failures and use some form of the No True Scotsman argument to dismiss them. If there's one thing that's been proven over and over and over, it's that people are capable of believing (or continuing to believe) anything, regardless of contrary argument, evidence, or logic.


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## Dave (Jun 21, 2015)

Baylor - go visit a Kibbutz. You will find people living in a classless structure with their labour valued equally, without materialism and determining their own economic future and owning their own means of production.

Of course, that is only possible within a much larger capitalist society where there is a market for the goods they produce and where they are protected by a state military defence and have use of a currency backed by the state. It doesn't scale up at all well beyond a small community. Still, quite a sweeping statement to say that "it failed miserably!" 

Also you say "millions of innocent people died in process," but those, and the many, many millions more that have died in what Marx would call 'the historical class struggle' have at least achieved political rights and working conditions that make life bearable for the 'proletariat.' The many other millions of innocent people who died in other wars fought over nothing but economic rivalries between states achieved what exactly?


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 21, 2015)

Kibbutzim don't work anything like as well as Moshavim.* It's true they are the only real examples of communism. USSR, China, Cuba, Albania wasn't what Marx envisaged. Marx did of course borrow a lot of ideas from the Bible and Judaism. Early Jewish - Christian communities in the first century were very like communism and a Kibbutz.  Though in USA the Religious is associated with Republicans and the Right, in many ways Judaism and Christianity are more naturally socialist, and many of those faiths have been socialist reformers. Marx was of course from a Jewish background.

Democracy is terrible, but it's better than any the others. It doesn't work everywhere either. There is more than one kind of it too. I hate what we have in Ireland, but the Israel PR seems daft and the USA and UK both seem less democratic and less politically functional for different reasons. I think the biggest issue here isn't the system but the legacy of corruption, political dynasties, civil war politics, IRA and SF, post-British reaction etc and essentially a British designed Civil service. 

China is currently running an interesting experiment. In a way they have almost returned to pre-Mandarin structures, which in various forms existed for about 2000 years. It's certainly not Democracy, Communism as per Marx, nor USSR or Cuban style.

Real Communism only works for Angels.

(*I have visited a Kibbutz, but not a Moshav. I'm basing my statement on what many Israelis have told me rather than the Internet).


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## BAYLOR (Jun 21, 2015)

Dave said:


> Baylor - go visit a Kibbutz. You will find people living in a classless structure with their labour valued equally, without materialism and determining their own economic future and owning their own means of production.
> 
> Of course, that is only possible within a much larger capitalist society where there is a market for the goods they produce and where they are protected by a state military defence and have use of a currency backed by the state. It doesn't scale up at all well beyond a small community. Still, quite a sweeping statement to say that "it failed miserably!"
> 
> Also you say "millions of innocent people died in process," but those, and the many, many millions more that have died in what Marx would call 'the historical class struggle' have at least achieved political rights and working conditions that make life bearable for the 'proletariat.' The many other millions of innocent people who died in other wars fought over nothing but economic rivalries between states achieved what exactly?




Millions starved to death him the Ukraine in the 1930's while food was being exported out by Stalin's Henchmen,   and then there are the millions who died in his  Labor Camps,  Mao's  great leap forward killed  an cultural revolution killed about 30 million , There theses the 3 million who died in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The end.


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## Allegra (Jun 21, 2015)

Could Kibbutz be elsewhere? I doubt it. I feel it can only exist in Israel.

Last February I paid a visit to Highgate Cemetery East part when in London, mainly to have a look at Douglas Adams' grave and a Piano gravestone. Marx is also one of the famous residents there. I popped up a question to that massive head: _See what you have done?_ It seemed to me he just snorted: _Heck, they f***ed it up!_

Oh and there were fresh flowers laid at the grave by the faithful believers. Idealists will never die despite evidently his utopian ideology does not fit for the nature of mankind who have been proven to be the greediest, most dangerous animals on the planet. I do agree Marxism is one of the history's greatest failures. It's destined to be.


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## Dave (Jun 21, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> Millions starved to death him the Ukraine in the 1930's while food was being exported out by Stalin's Henchmen,   and then there are the millions who died in his  Labor Camps,  Mao's  great leap forward killed  an cultural revolution killed about 30 million , There theses the 3 million who died in the Killing Fields of Cambodia. The end.


Sorry, I thought you were talking about Marx.


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## BAYLOR (Jun 21, 2015)

Dave said:


> Sorry, I thought you were talking about Marx.



True they were Marxist in name only but they did draw  inspiration from Marx  though none of them achieved a True Marxist state .   They did Call themselves Communist/ Socialist ? They used  Marx prominently displayed in the their propaganda, They attempted unsuccessfully to utilize his ideas.


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## BAYLOR (Jun 21, 2015)

Dave said:


> Baylor - go visit a Kibbutz. You will find people living in a classless structure with their labour valued equally, without materialism and determining their own economic future and owning their own means of production.
> 
> Of course, that is only possible within a much larger capitalist society where there is a market for the goods they produce and where they are protected by a state military defence and have use of a currency backed by the state. It doesn't scale up at all well beyond a small community. Still, quite a sweeping statement to say that "it failed miserably!"
> 
> Also you say "millions of innocent people died in process," but those, and the many, many millions more that have died in what Marx would call 'the historical class struggle' have at least achieved political rights and working conditions that make life bearable for the 'proletariat.' The many other millions of innocent people who died in other wars fought over nothing but economic rivalries between states achieved what exactly?



Ive read about the Kibbutz . A number of  cultures used something like that, Native Americans  tribes for example.

At the national level , it hasn't translated.  At the very least I would call that, not a success.


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## Venusian Broon (Jun 22, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> They attempted unsuccessfully to utilize his ideas.



Then is it Marx's fault? Stalin became an autocratic tyrant, very much like the Tsar before Communism. That is a much better comparison to my mind. I'm sure if there hadn't been Marx the anti-Tsarist revolutionaries would have come up with some other radical system to replace the Tsar in 1917. Although in practice the revolutionaries always tend to gravitate to what existed in the first place. (See Napoleon becoming an Emperor, for example). So the question is did Stalin kill millions of his own people because of his Marxist ideals or because he was a paranoid dictator that found himself with the power to deport, manipulate and kill a vast nation. I'm of the opinion it was far more the second than the first, and Stalin could/would have got there with another creed like fascism or whatever.

Actually Marx's critique of the capitalist system was pretty much spot on - apart from the inequalities he essentially makes the point that it will be a system that will be continually in a state of boom and bust. But that's his critique of the problems of the capitalism, not a feature of communism.

Does the system that he suggested to replace it work? In all honesty, IMHO, probably not with Humanities development, requirements and desires. Marx himself settled into a middle class and comfortable life in London after all, rather than storming the barricades and propagating his ideas by force.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 22, 2015)

Venusian Broon said:


> because he was a paranoid dictator that found himself with the power to deport, manipulate and kill a vast nation.


Yes, nothing to do with Marxism.



Venusian Broon said:


> Marx himself settled into a middle class and comfortable life


No-one has ever produced an economics / politics / social / other utopian blueprint that has worked in the real world?

Many of them hare thought provoking, have interesting ideas and worth reading. Perhaps I'll try reading what he actually said.

But which book to start with?
http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/author/46

Inexplicably Das Kapital is only in Greek on Gutenberg.


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## Hex (Jun 22, 2015)

Marxism was a pretty influential idea in the Twentieth Century. I don't think it can be described as a failure.

Revolutions don't often result in stable governments, and the revolutions in Russia and China, while they were initially, theoretically, Marxist, pretty soon lost any real resemblance to Marxism. In the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 30s, most of the great Marxist theoreticians were subjected to show trials and executed.

I think what made Marxism attractive continues to exist: the idea that it doesn't have to be all about the individual all the time, that we share with other people, that the structures we have where people who cannot work, or who do necessary but unattractive jobs, are punished, poorly paid and despised, need to be questioned.

It's easy to say Marxism caused many deaths, and it did, but world-wide consumerism enslaves and kills many thousands of people, and still does. We look away from that because it's inconvenient. If we recognised where our cheap food and clothes come from, we'd feel bad about it, and we might even stop buying them -- and we can't have that.


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## Mirannan (Jun 26, 2015)

A very simple critique of Marxism and socialism in general (I looked it up; he didn't originate this):

The central idea of socialism can be summed up as "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". A very high-sounding sentence. But consider - Who is it that determines what you need? Because whoever it is, being human they will decide they need more than you do - and back we go to aristocracy. The Soviet Union had aristocrats, and China still does. The fact that they are not called aristocrats is irrelevant.


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## Hex (Jun 26, 2015)

We let ourselves off with all sorts of nasty behaviour because "it's human nature", but there's as much evidence to indicate that humans are very good at living in collaborative, supportive groups as evidence suggesting people are innately selfish and want more of the resources for themselves even when they know it damages others.

One of the best things about Socialism in general is that it expects better things.

And, while it may, arguably, be likely that some people would have more than others (and perhaps not solely according to their needs), small inequalities on that level would be much better than what we currently have, where within the world and within countries like the UK and the US, the rich control an outrageous proportion of the resources while others go hungry or homeless or die of treatable diseases, and that -- this amassing of great wealth -- is seen as somehow admirable and virtuous. It's societal, aimed at making us consume, not somehow innate to humans.


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## Dave (Jun 26, 2015)

Mirannan said:


> ...Marxism and socialism in general (I looked it up; he didn't originate this).


Read Acts of the Apostles in the New Testament of the Christian Bible. Start at 4.32. I think that is the origin of your quote. It was written by Paul's Doctor, Luke, about early Christian sects around 4AD. The last time I went to church the Minister told the largely white, middle-class, Conservative leaning congregation, "Don't worry, it wasn't Communism" but I tend to think he was completely wrong. 

And I have to agree with Hex. Social inequality in the world is the cause of all of our problems; probably every problem I have just heard on the News this morning from migrants and border controls, to Greece, to council services cuts. For the last century the gap between rich and poor was steadily reduced. In the last ten years it has started to grow greater again. I'm not advocating communism but this rise in social inequality cannot be good. It isn't even a good thing for the rich people, if they could only understand that. I know someone who worked in Ecuador for a large oil company. He and his family lived in a mansion with servants, security guards and every convenience, but they couldn't leave the house because they were followed everywhere by starving beggars with absolutely nothing. They effectively became prisoners within their own home.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 26, 2015)

Dave said:


> Social inequality in the world is the cause of all of our problems;


Specifically greed by those in control and also merely ordinary well off people.


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## MWagner (Jun 27, 2015)

Marxism is dangerous is because it's utopian. Many of the worst crimes in history have been at the hands of people who genuinely believe they're trying to achieve paradise. Utopian ideals are dangerous because they excuse almost any behaviour if its aim is achieving this ideal. Surely it's permissible, even our duty, to eliminate anyone who stands in the way of paradise?

Egalitarianism is distinct from Marxism. Egalitarianism doesn't posit a totalitarian system to govern society and enforce equality.



Dave said:


> Social inequality in the world is the cause of all of our problems...





Ray McCarthy said:


> Specifically greed by those in control and also merely ordinary well off people.



I disagree. The wealthy and powerful aren't any more likely to be selfish and cruel than the poor. They only have a greater scope for acting on the flaws that are in every one our hearts. Any society or form of government is going to be flawed because humans are flawed. "Out of the crooked timber of humanity, no straight thing was ever made" [Kant]. We are not naturally angels. Greed, fear, violence, shame, status-seeking are part of our nature, as much as hope, compassion, reason, and altruism.

We are social animals. That means we care about other people. It also means we have strong innate desires to have status within our communities. Some people will always want to rise higher than others. In some cultures it's the number of eagle feathers in a head-dress. Or the number of cattle in the pasture. Or the number of wives, or the status one one's sons and daughters. In others it's the numbers of zeroes following the number in the bank account. Yes, ambitious people sometimes have unpleasant characteristics that go along with that characteristic (but then, so do the poor and apathetic). And yet, we all benefit from ambition. We're probably all be living in mud huts eating roots an grubs if it wasn't for ambition. Most of the great works of art we enjoy were created by someone with an unrelenting ambition for greatness.

I think the true flaw in humanity holding us back is the impulse to divide people into us and them that allows us to blame and dehumanize others. The wealthy. Foreigners. Muslims/Christians. Conservatives/liberals. We need to expand our radius of empathy to include _everyone_. That includes the rich and powerful.


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## Ray McCarthy (Jun 27, 2015)

MWagner said:


> The wealthy and powerful aren't any more likely to be selfish and cruel than the poor.


True.
But is affects 1000s more people.


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## Mirannan (Jun 27, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Marxism is dangerous is because it's utopian. Many of the worst crimes in history have been at the hands of people who genuinely believe they're trying to achieve paradise. Utopian ideals are dangerous because they excuse almost any behaviour if its aim is achieving this ideal. Surely it's permissible, even our duty, to eliminate anyone who stands in the way of paradise?
> 
> Egalitarianism is distinct from Marxism. Egalitarianism doesn't posit a totalitarian system to govern society and enforce equality.
> 
> ...



I disagree entirely with your last sentence. I am not empathetic, nor do I ever intend to be, towards those who wish harm to my society and/or individuals within it. That list includes religious fanatics (of any sort), habitual criminals, dishonest financiers, corrupt politicians and officials.

I agree with you that rich an powerful people aren't evil simply because of their riches and power. However, two points about that; first it matters a lot more whether a billionaire is evil than whether a beggar is simply because the billionaire's evil does more damage; and second that in today's society people are often rich and powerful because they are evil.

Edit: Ray snuck in first with the first point. :/


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## mosaix (Jun 27, 2015)

Let's wait and see just how big Capitalism's failure will be before we decide what was histories greatest failure. Western industrial and agricultural growth was built on cheap slave labour. In the States this was imported, in Europe we invaded and built empires instead. Domestic labour supported industry and agriculture for a while until they asked for more. Now it's labour in the far east. When they ask for their share it'll be Africa - then where?  Right now we have financial crisis after financial crisis, each one coming closer and closer together.

Let's just wait and see...


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## BAYLOR (Jun 27, 2015)

mosaix said:


> Let's wait and see just how big Capitalism's failure will be before we decide what was histories greatest failure. Western industrial and agricultural growth was built on cheap slave labour. In the States this was imported, in Europe we invaded and built empires instead. Domestic labour supported industry and agriculture for a while until they asked for more. Now it's labour in the far east. When they ask for their share it'll be Africa - then where?  Right now we have financial crisis after financial crisis, each one coming closer and closer together.
> 
> Let's just wait and see...



So far , nobody has found a viable alternative to Capitalism that's viable on a  global scale.


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## Mirannan (Jun 27, 2015)

mosaix said:


> Let's wait and see just how big Capitalism's failure will be before we decide what was histories greatest failure. Western industrial and agricultural growth was built on cheap slave labour. In the States this was imported, in Europe we invaded and built empires instead. Domestic labour supported industry and agriculture for a while until they asked for more. Now it's labour in the far east. When they ask for their share it'll be Africa - then where?  Right now we have financial crisis after financial crisis, each one coming closer and closer together.
> 
> Let's just wait and see...



Then where? Look at any car factory and see the answer. And the cheaper robots get, the smaller-scale the uses to which they will be put. Already, it's possible to buy a robot for flipping burgers. At the moment, they aren't worth buying; the amortised cost of them together with maintenance costs is higher than that of employing someone for the job. This might, and probably will, change.

Capitalism's problems are coming, and to some extent are already here, for a reason that Marx never envisaged and probably couldn't have. Simply put, low-skilled human workers are becoming obsolete. And not everybody is capable of learning how to do highly skilled jobs. Simply banning the use of robots for routine jobs isn't going to work either, because there is always going to be another country willing to use them.

If we are lucky, there is going to be a transition from today's world to one in which the only people with jobs are the ones who want and are able to work, at creative and/or fulfilling jobs. But the transition is going to take time, and it won't be pretty.


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## BAYLOR (Jun 27, 2015)

Mirannan said:


> Then where? Look at any car factory and see the answer. And the cheaper robots get, the smaller-scale the uses to which they will be put. Already, it's possible to buy a robot for flipping burgers. At the moment, they aren't worth buying; the amortised cost of them together with maintenance costs is higher than that of employing someone for the job. This might, and probably will, change.
> 
> Capitalism's problems are coming, and to some extent are already here, for a reason that Marx never envisaged and probably couldn't have. Simply put, low-skilled human workers are becoming obsolete. And not everybody is capable of learning how to do highly skilled jobs. Simply banning the use of robots for routine jobs isn't going to work either, because there is always going to be another country willing to use them.
> 
> If we are lucky, there is going to be a transition from today's world to one in which the only people with jobs are the ones who want and are able to work, at creative and/or fulfilling jobs. But the transition is going to take time, and it won't be pretty.




There are always going to be boom and bust cycles  but collapse and total failure? Unlikely. . It's going to be here in some form or another and thriving long after all of us are gone .


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## mosaix (Jun 27, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> There are always going to be boom and bust cycles  but collapse and total failure? Unlikely. . It's going to be here in some form or another and thriving long after all of us are gone .



But, Baylor, plot the boom and bust cycles, say for the UK, and see the timescales. Shorter boom periods, more serious busts and ever rising personal debt.


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## BAYLOR (Jun 27, 2015)

mosaix said:


> But, Baylor, plot the boom and bust cycles, say for the UK, and see the timescales. Shorter boom periods, more serious busts and ever rising personal debt.



Ultimately , that will all sort itself out , but it may  take a major depression to do so .   I do see that as a  possibility of deep depression on the horizon.


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## Dave (Jun 27, 2015)

MWagner said:


> The wealthy and powerful aren't any more likely to be selfish and cruel than the poor. They only have a greater scope for acting on the flaws that are in every one our hearts.


It wasn't me that said they were, but rich people can certainly live in a bubble in which they have no idea about how the rest of society lives. Plenty of historical examples for that being true if you want me to supply them. There were also, however, plenty of famous philanthropists too, though there seems to be less of them about in our modern society today. I can think of a few very famous people but the main problem is the gap between rich and poor is still widening.

Marx thought that the struggle of the poor for better employee rights, fair pay and safe working conditions was the lever for radical social change. I happen to agree. Very few of the changes (that we now take for granted) came about because the rich woke up one morning and thought it was a good or moral thing to do. The changes came only following violent clashes, civil unrest, martyrdom of the ringleaders or, in other countries, actual civil wars and revolutions.



MWagner said:


> We are social animals. That means we care about other people. It also means we have strong innate desires to have status within our communities.


We are tribal. We care about ourselves and our family first. Next we support our wider tribe of people like us either by kinship or shared culture; the people who interact with us.


MWagner said:


> We need to expand our radius of empathy to include _everyone_. That includes the rich and powerful.


That is certainly the solution but that is more Utopian than Marxism. When did those rich and powerful last interact with those at the opposite end of their society? Or have a desire to do so?


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## BAYLOR (Jun 28, 2015)

Marx talked about establishing a society that was classless , with complete economic and social equality. But given humanities current state,  this is ultimately not a realistic goal.  Class divisions and economic inequality are inevitable in society, the only way that changes, is if people abandon the pursuit of material goods and rewards. That's not happening, at least not in out lifetimes, if at all.


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## Dave (Jun 28, 2015)

We are not all equal and we can never be so, however, it is morally unjust for a company to pay one person millions while most are on a minimum wage that doesn't even cover their cost of living without government benefits. It isn't the fact that there is economic and social inequality, it is the shear size and scale of the differences that is wrong. That can be legislated for to correct.


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## DrMclony (Jun 28, 2015)

OK, this post is in response not merely to this thread, and is not directed any any one person. Rather, this thread leads me to resond to some "trendy untruths" which abound since the 1950s. I am not a communist, however neither was Stalin, or Lenin, or Mao, in my opinion.

So Marx wrote about communism. To date, there has been no state established which was a Marxist communist state. Sure, many fascist states, or dictatorships with tendencies towards state ownership, but they are nothing at all like Marx's Communism. Perhaps such an ideal is impossible while humans continue to suck. Now then, I have long ago grown weary of the attitude that Marx, an academic, was responsible for deaths. He was not a murderer, as one man told me, he was not even Russian, as another said with an air of superior authority. He did not write solely on communism. We know from his notes he had planned not merely a single manifesto, but a series, each detailing a different system. A capitalist manifesto, a democratic manifesto, etc. Each would describe in explicit detail the ultimate expression of an ideal, a social and political construct to describe a possible way of living together, as humans. To claim he wanted and supported communism is like saying that ebay wanted and supported the iPhone above all other products in their field. Simply not true. To continue the ebay metaphor, it is like saying that eBay not only support apple products but are responsible for their incredibly crap screens which break every time you sneeze. Poor logic begats poor conclusions. Also, to claim that democracy and capitalism are intertwined and inseparable, or as I have seen recently in one article, the same damn thing, is the ultimate in get me out of here stupidity.

By that way of looking, I believe it is erroneous to state that Marxism is a mistake of history. We can not know this, because we have not yet seen a Marxist society in action. As for the rest, well...

Capitalism has failed. It failed years ago, but it takes a long time for a large market force system to wind down and die. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no question, western capitalism in the fashion of the twentieth century has failed, and will be gone within the foreseeable future. If it isn't, then humanity will be extinct within a scant few centuries. Look up German light bulbs if you want to begin to understand why. Democracy has not yet failed, although when I look at our current government here in Australia, I am forced to wonder if I may be wrong. Democracy still has its legs, and it knows how to use them. The trouble is that our current forms of democracy are controlled by twentieth century western capitalists, who are inherently undemocratic, and currently fighting to hold up their wealth in the death throws of their forms of capitalist ideology. As such, we currently must question if we even have a democracy. 

Now, in layman circles, there seems to be enormous confusion about all this stuff, and that is a large part of why we have a problem. If everybody knew and understood what these things were, and what they mean to us as citizens, we would have a better shot at it. Fighting the complacent and ignorant nature of our capitalist society is the greatest challenge to the future of humanity on a philosophical level. Understanding what Marxism really is, and why attempts at societies that have in the past been labeled as Marxist have failed, is key to opening minds to the possibilities we can create as a species, as we grow into a brighter and more prosperous, and I would hope equatable future.

The bottom line: Put a tyrant in charge, and any system will fail. Fascism can grow from all types of society, and all it takes is one twisted soul to create the seed of that destruction. With capitalism, we are seeing many such twisted souls, banding together to destroy the very freedoms that capitalism used to represent in the popular consciousness. Therefore I would argue that capitalism is as much a failure of history as Marxism could ever be.


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## DrMclony (Jun 28, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> There are always going to be boom and bust cycles  but collapse and total failure? Unlikely. . It's going to be here in some form or another and thriving long after all of us are gone .



This point is very important, and I am glad Baylor brought it up. A lot of us tend to think of capitalism as nothing more than the twentieth century system of unsustainable growth and progress for the sake of progress. This is not true, and in this Baylor is correct. Capitalism will always exist in some form, because people always want something they don't have. Trade creates imbalance as people try to attach a legitimate and comparable value to products and labour, and this trade is the seed of capitalism. Twentieth Century capitalism became too unbalanced. An elegant capitalism is possible, and if it comes about, could be interesting, but it is not possible while enormous inequality persists. The case of the two Canadian cities looking at introducing a guaranteed minimum income is perhaps the beginning of mankind searching for ways to achieve the balance which has been missing. If so, then perhaps the future is stranger and more wonderful than we imagined, or perhaps it is more dangerous. It's sunday morning and I did not sleep well, so I can't be sure!


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## Hex (Jun 28, 2015)

Nice posts, @DrMclony. The Greens in the UK have a minimum income on their manifesto. Fingers crossed something comes of the idea.

Incidentally, in case something I wrote gave rise to it: I didn't mean to suggest that rich people are worse than poor people, although many of them demonstrate a fabulous capacity for selfishness that poorer people cannot. I just meant, there is nothing inherently virtuous or impressive about amassing huge amounts of money. Sure, sometimes you did something really worthwhile (I don't begrudge JK Rowling a penny), but _that's _what you should be proud of, not the money.

There are vice chancellors etc floating around who are paid a lot in terms of what universities have, and who go from well-paid job to well-paid job, but in fact they are catastrophes who leave the places that employed them foundering and so much in debt that they need to lay off academics, which means that students get a worse deal etc etc. I don't know how they keep getting good jobs unless it's a sort of emperor's new clothes situation. (This doesn't apply to most vice-chancellors!)


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## DrMclony (Jun 28, 2015)

Hex said:


> Incidentally, in case something I wrote gave rise to it: I didn't mean to suggest that rich people are worse than poor people, although many of them demonstrate a fabulous capacity for selfishness that poorer people cannot. I just meant, there is nothing inherently virtuous or impressive about amassing huge amounts of money. Sure, sometimes you did something really worthwhile (I don't begrudge JK Rowling a penny), but _that's _what you should be proud of, not the money.



The idea of rich people being selfish and poor people being generous is one that has been around a lot, and there have been times when studies have shown poor people to give a greater percentage of their wealth to others, but like anything, those are still questionable. It has also been shown that those who win lottery or otherwise come into sudden wealth have a tendency to change their voting habits towards the conservative parties who will pander to the wealthy, when prior to the wealth they voted for parties that catered to a more egalitarian view, favoring welfare programs and the like.

So the question arises: Do we vote and think politically according to whichever view will serve our own wealth better? Or are we as humans better than that, and those studies merely highlight some other statistical anomaly? I know for certain my vote will not change. I have had times in my life where I was so broke it beggars belief, and other times when I was doing very well. At either extreme I thought and voted the same. However, I am yet to be wealthy enough that I can spend indiscriminately without worry, so who knows? I like to think that extreme wealth would not change me.


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## Dave (Jun 28, 2015)

DrMclony said:


> So the question arises: Do we vote and think politically according to whichever view will serve our own wealth better? Or are we as humans better than that, and those studies merely highlight some other statistical anomaly?


It is one of the only explanations I can find for the result of last month's UK election.


DrMclony said:


> I like to think that extreme wealth would not change me.


Maybe not, but some people have never known what it is like to have absolutely nothing left until they are paid again. There are a few things in life that I think it is impossible to understand unless you have actually walked in those shoes yourself. I'd include the death of a child, death of a sibling, being made redundant, being unemployed, being racially abused. However, I think I digress.

It is safe to say that money can't buy you happiness but it does take away the stress of being poor.


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## MWagner (Jun 28, 2015)

Dave said:


> It wasn't me that said they were, but rich people can certainly live in a bubble in which they have no idea about how the rest of society lives. Plenty of historical examples for that being true if you want me to supply them.



Of course. And poor people typically have no idea about how rich people really live, beyond the salacious fodder of celebrity culture and the villainous stereotypes of popular entertainment, where the antagonist to our hero is almost invariably a rich and arrogant snob.



Dave said:


> That is certainly the solution but that is more Utopian than Marxism. When did those rich and powerful last interact with those at the opposite end of their society? Or have a desire to do so?



Rich people interact with people far less affluent than themselves all the time. Nannies, waiters, etc. It's obviously not an equitable social relationship, but it's overstating things to say the rich have no contact with or understanding of the poor. A great many of the wealthiest 5 per cent were in fact born middle class (in the North American meaning of the term as average income). In my part of the world, the wealthy are mostly people who have made a bundle in the oil industry, and a great many of them are the children of farmers or suburban teachers. They grew up eating Kraft dinner and now they have a vacation home in Palm Springs.

What I'm getting at is when you say We need to do something about Them, where Them is any identifiable group of people, you're part of the problem. That need to separate the people in the world into Us and Them, into the Virtuous and the Sinners, into Heroes and Villains, is one of those intransigent qualities of the mind that we have to overcome. We're making real progress in some areas, but I don't think you can say 'we shouldn't divide people into us and them when it comes to race or gender or religion, but it's perfectly okay when it comes to wealth,' because that innate desire is the problem. Make the world egalitarian materially and the Us and Them will manifest itself in other differences.



DrMclony said:


> To date, there has been no state established which was a Marxist communist state.



No state has been established which manifests any theoretical model or ideal. Humans are far too messy to ever live by any abstract model academic could dream up without an imposition of massive force and indoctrination. Capitalism has some pretty big flaws, but it's greatest merit is that is flows quite naturally from humanity's innate appetites and desires. It doesn't have to be imposed because it's built on the simple fact that people want things. If you have property and you give people independence about how to deal with that property, you're going to end up with something that looks like capitalism.



DrMclony said:


> Now then, I have long ago grown weary of the attitude that Marx, an academic, was responsible for deaths. He was not a murderer, as one man told me, he was not even Russian, as another said with an air of superior authority. He did not write solely on communism. We know from his notes he had planned not merely a single manifesto, but a series, each detailing a different system. A capitalist manifesto, a democratic manifesto, etc. Each would describe in explicit detail the ultimate expression of an ideal, a social and political construct to describe a possible way of living together, as humans.



That's an interesting academic exercise. But as I've said, I think the effort to impose any idealized model of social arrangement is going to end in tears. Utopianism is dangerous. It fosters justifications for all kinds of horrors. And humans being what they are, it can only be imposed by force. So I don't blame Marx for this theories, I blame people who want to impose ideal models of society on others.



DrMclony said:


> Capitalism has failed. It failed years ago, but it takes a long time for a large market force system to wind down and die. Nevertheless, there is absolutely no question, western capitalism in the fashion of the twentieth century has failed, and will be gone within the foreseeable future.



Materially, it's been a tremendous success. There are very few people on the planet who would want to change places with their grandparents or great-grandparents. I know I can't think of a time or a place in history when I would rather be an average person. It's interesting to note that capitalism has strong support in Asia today, where hundreds of millions of people who are newly middle class don't want any part of the grinding rural poverty that their parents and grandparents endured.



DrMclony said:


> Now, in layman circles, there seems to be enormous confusion about all this stuff, and that is a large part of why we have a problem. If everybody knew and understood what these things were, and what they mean to us as citizens, we would have a better shot at it. Fighting the complacent and ignorant nature of our capitalist society is the greatest challenge to the future of humanity on a philosophical level.



Global finance is pretty complex stuff. I doubt even most educated middle-class citizens of the West understand it. But then most people don't have much interest in things beyond their own narrow experience. And that has always been true. I don't think that limitation of human curiosity and understanding is peculiar to our modern capitalist societies. Only a tiny fraction of people will read Thomas Piketty's _Capital in the Twenty-First Century_. Of course, only a tiny fraction of people will read the great works of 21st century literature, or become familiar with the latest in string theory. Heck, even in our domain here of science fiction and fantasy, most readers will only ever seek out the most popular and unchallenging texts. Complacency and ignorance are innate to all cultures, not just modern capitalist ones.

And frankly, matters were much worse in the past. In our capitalist era literacy and education have exploded. Three hundred years ago it would have been ridiculous to expect any but a tiny fraction of people to understand even the basics of our economic and social systems. The fact we're having this conversation right now, and we're (presumably) not great lords or cloistered academics is pretty remarkable in the scheme of things.


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## Dave (Jun 28, 2015)

MWagner said:


> Rich people interact with people far less affluent than themselves all the time. Nannies, waiters, etc. It's obviously not an equitable social relationship, but it's overstating things to say the rich have no contact with or understanding of the poor.


Even in the US, I find it hard to believe that Nannies to rich kids are your societies very poorest citizens. Maybe I'm wrong there, but aren't they often British teenagers? And the Waiters are struggling actors? Anyway, I never mentioned doing anything about "Them and Us" and I thought my last two posts made my own position clear. I'm not advocating for imposing a societal structure upon anyone, but governments can and should tax and legislate to ameliorate the worst excesses of capitalism.


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## Michael Colton (Jun 30, 2015)

We actually know the answer to this. He still would have wrote it.

The reason we know this is that during his lifetime he already saw people taking his ideas and starting to go down roads with them that he never intended. He decried them and continued to work.


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## BAYLOR (Jul 26, 2015)

Michael Colton said:


> We actually know the answer to this. He still would have wrote it.
> 
> The reason we know this is that during his lifetime he already saw people taking his ideas and starting to go down roads with them that he never intended. He decried them and continued to work.



Robert Owens  and Edward Bellamy for example?


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## Extollager (Sep 12, 2015)

A couple of thoughts. 

1.Marx's philosophy was and is animated by hatred.  Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Pol Pot are his heirs.  But not all those who are animated by hatred are killers.  Still, they rejoice in attaining power over others.  Who whom?

2.I suppose most varieties of modern thought are Marxist.  For one thing they are materialist in their assumptions.  When you combine materialist philosophy with hatred, you get a license to kill, imprison, suppress dissident thought (cf. political correctness), etc.  As in Soviet Russia one may, for certain occasions, refer to "spirit" (as in the "spirit of the people" etc.), but Marxism rules out _transcendence_.  To it, Christianity, Judaism, Taoism, Hinduism are all quite thoroughly wrong.  Meaning itself is merely a social construction --

and of course that is orthodoxy in American colleges of education, in university English departments, etc.  Hence Theory must be inculcated in students so that they always read "texts" while bringing to them the baggage of class/racial/gender antagonism; they must always read as _modern people_ (even if they call themselves "postmodern").  Ruled out of court from the beginning is any real engagement with the _transcendence_ latent or overt in everything from Wu Ch'Eng-En's _Journey to the West_ to Dante's _Comedy_ to Wordsworth's poetry to Dickens's _Christmas Carol_.  Ignore that element when it appears, or explain it away (deconstruct it; "expose" its "implication in "patriarchy" or whatever else will drain it of value).  

(I am thankful for old teachers of mine who were not thus pawns [fellow-travelers and useful idiots] of the Zeitgeist.  Here again I honor the late Brian Bond, "under who we observed an appearance of Byzantium," U. Milo Kaufmann, and others.)


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## Hex (Sep 12, 2015)

Do you really think Marxism was motivated only by hatred? Isn't there an argument that it was motivated at least partly by the sort of compassion that was -- and remains -- absent in capitalist understandings of the world?


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 12, 2015)

Extollager said:


> Dickens's _Christmas Carol_.


Which to C.S. Lewis was purely secular and materialistic!
But yes. Marxism is based on Jewish Law and early Christian communities. But forgets that we are not like Data or Spock, but selfish humans. It's philosophy suited only to Saints and Angels and turns ordinary rationalists into demons.



Hex said:


> Do you really think Marxism was motivated only by hatred?


I do think Marxism was motivated by compassion for the oppressed, the downtrodden, the exploited, the serf. But it results in hatred because it only works for perfect un-selfish loving rationalists. Not regular people.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 12, 2015)

Hex said:


> Do you really think Marxism was motivated only by hatred? Isn't there an argument that it was motivated at least partly by the sort of compassion that was -- and remains -- absent in capitalist understandings of the world?



Marx  advocated the violent  overthrow of the Capitalist class , the seizing of property and dictatorship of the the working class.  There doesn't seem to be much in the way of compassion there.


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## Extollager (Sep 12, 2015)

Hex said:


> Do you really think Marxism was motivated only by hatred? Isn't there an argument that it was motivated at least partly by the sort of compassion that was -- and remains -- absent in capitalist understandings of the world?



*I said "animated," not "motivated."  There's a difference.  

"Capitalism" is a narrower concept than Marxism.  Capitalism is a concept relating to economics and law.  It leaves out whole aspects of human life.  There can be a capitalist marketing of works of art, but capitalism doesn't have an aesthetics according to which we may judge the goodness of those works of art.  Marxism, however, is all-inclusive.  You can have a Marxist aesthetics (cf. "Soviet realism," "Brutalism," etc.), a Marxist psychology, etc. -- in fact the better a Marxist you are, the more sure you will be to have these and more.  But one may be a capitalist in economics and law while being free to espouse varying theories of art, philosophy, etc. and one may be a Christian, an atheist, etc. and be an adherent of capitalist economics and understandings of the law.  One may be an Amish capitalist, one may be a Wall Street speculator and capitalist.  One may practice compassion and be a capitalist, one may be stingy and contemptuous and be a capitalist.  Capitalism affirms private property.  With that freedom one may accumulate tenement properties and charge burdensome rents, or one may give generously, endow scholarships, build hospitals, etc.  

Marxism is animated by resentment and envy, even if in the guise of compassion.  Take the lyrics of Lennon's "Imagine."  There are innumerable people who think this is a lovely song of aspiration for a just world.  But look at what it says:

"Imagine"

Imagine there's no heaven
It's easy if you try
No hell below us
Above us only sky
Imagine all the people
Living for today...

Imagine there's no countries
It isn't hard to do
Nothing to kill or die for
And no religion too
Imagine all the people
Living life in peace...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will be as one

Imagine no possessions
I wonder if you can
No need for greed or hunger
A brotherhood of man
Imagine all the people
Sharing all the world...

You may say I'm a dreamer
But I'm not the only one
I hope someday you'll join us
And the world will live as one 

...To attain this scenario, everything from Taoism to Christianity to Plato's belief must go: there is nothing above or below us, i.e. there's no transcendence, there's just the material world.   Religion, which has inspired most of the world's great visual art, music, and literature, will no longer exist.  Probably he does not intend that existing works of art with religious content will be destroyed, although that has always been the case to some degree in the most virulently Marxist countries.

Also, Lennon's scenario extinguishes "countries."  Of course a moment's thought shows that this can only mean a global bureaucracy will have to do the things that make government necessary.  It will decide what side of the road everyone is to drive on, what the holidays shall be, what the school curricula shall be, what human resources shall be allocated to the manufacture of children's toys and who shall design them, etc.  

There shall be no possessions.  I shall not be able, using my own property, to express my personality, to explore realms of significance (e.. my personal library, though perhaps I may check out books from the state library).

Lennon has it right in expressing Marxism's essential and inherent totalitarianism.  In a capitalist society it may be possible to retain privacy.

Dostoevsky saw it coming.  It's interesting to put Lennon's lyrics alongside the remarks of the Grand Inquisitor (that totalitarian theorist), as well as next to Orwell's "Beasts of England" in Animal Farm.
*


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## Extollager (Sep 12, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> Karl Marx and the whole Communist  philosophy expounded in  his communist Manifesto and his ponderous Work  Capital turned out to be an unrealistic pipe dream that could never possibly  work. And sadly millions of innocent people died in process.



Documentation: *The Black Book of Communism*, published by Harvard University Press.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 12, 2015)

If such a world as he sang of in* Imagine*  came into being, would Lennon the wealthy superstar have willingly given up his wealth, possessions, prestige  and freedom of who he was to be one of the proletariate class ? Would he have really wanted to live there?


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## MWagner (Sep 12, 2015)

I think Marxism was motivated by a desire to redress injustice. But that's not the same as compassion. Lenin was one of the least compassionate persons to walk the stage of history*, and Russia's Communists had a blistering contempt for the serfs who made up the great bulk of Russia's poor.

In general, most ideologues I've come across regard humanity as a machine or puzzle to be solved. However idealistic their social models, they tend to lack genuine empathy and warmth for their fellow men.

* To put it in SFF terms, Lenin was Stannis Baratheon without the warmth.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 12, 2015)

MWagner said:


> I think Marxism was motivated by a desire to redress injustice. But that's not the same as compassion. Lenin was one of the least compassionate persons to walk the stage of history, and Russia's Communists had a blistering contempt for the serfs who made up the great bulk of Russia's poor.
> 
> In general, most ideologues I've come across regard humanity as a machine or puzzle to be solved. However idealistic their social models, they tend to lack genuine empathy and warmth for their fellow men.




Lenin grew up in a very brutal environment , He had older brother who had be executed by the Czars secret police , combine that with the years of embittered exile that would explain a few things about him.


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## Dave (Sep 12, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> Marx  advocated the violent  overthrow of the Capitalist class , the seizing of property and dictatorship of the the working class.  There doesn't seem to be much in the way of compassion there.


No, he didn't! And neither did Engels. Other people have, and have cited his work to give it credence. Terrorists use the Bible and the Quaran to give credence to their activities too. Charles Manson said that John Lennon's lyrics told him to murder people. 

You started this thread and you called it "Marxism One of History's Greatest failures." Marxism is not one of history's greatest failures. On the contrary, the use of Marxist theory to make sense of a past that might otherwise defy analysis has been widespread among historians. I have argued with you on the basis that your thread title is wrong. If you want to argue a different point i.e. That Communism has failed, then start another thread.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 12, 2015)

Dave said:


> No, he didn't! And neither did Engels. Other people have, and have cited his work to give it credence. Terrorists use the Bible and the Quaran to give credence to their activities too. Charles Manson said that John Lennon's lyrics told him to murder people.
> 
> You started this thread and you called it "Marxism One of History's Greatest failures." Marxism is not one of history's greatest failures. On the contrary, the use of Marxist theory to make sense of a past that might otherwise defy analysis has been widespread among historians. I have argued with you on the basis that your thread title is wrong. If you want to argue a different point i.e. That Communism has failed, then start another thread.




Okay . But he did project that the wealthy class would lose to the workers via revolution and those do tend to be violent( yes im splitting hairs on this on). But the problem is that that will never happen and the reason is because his whole premise  doesn't seem to  take into account that the wealthy class and the government won't be smart enough to buy off the working class with better wages and working conditions. which did happen. So much for Marx's analysis with regard to class struggle and the impending revolution.

And why scrap this thread , so far it's been quite interesting.


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## Stephen Palmer (Sep 12, 2015)

Marx's great contribution to the world is his concept of the true needs of human beings. He was way ahead of his time, and that's why a lot of his theories went to pot when introduced into the real, savage, nineteenth century world.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 12, 2015)

Stephen Palmer said:


> Marx's great contribution to the world is his concept of the true needs of human beings. He was way ahead of his time, and that's why a lot of his theories went to pot when introduced into the real, savage, nineteenth century world.



Then there was the even more savage 20th century.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 12, 2015)

Stephen Palmer said:


> Marx's great contribution to the world is his concept of the true needs of human beings. He was way ahead of his time,


I don't think any of it was original, not really.


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## Hex (Sep 12, 2015)

I'm not sure that it's fair to judge Marxism as a theory by what Lenin (or Lennon) made of it. Much of what Marx actually wrote was intended to help workers rather than those who owned the means of production. His vision was for revolutions to take place in societies which had advanced to a far higher stage than Tsarist Russia.

I'd agree that many people who are angry at what they see to be injustice express themselves while borrowing from Marx, but I don't think what they say is necessarily -- or even often -- an accurate reflection of Marxism itself.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 12, 2015)

Hex said:


> I'm not sure that it's fair to judge Marxism as a theory by what Lenin (or Lennon) made of it. Much of what Marx actually wrote was intended to help workers rather than those who owned the means of production. His vision was for revolutions to take place in societies which had advanced to a far higher stage than Tsarist Russia.
> 
> I'd agree that many people who are angry at what they see to be injustice express themselves while borrowing from Marx, but I don't think what they say is necessarily -- or even often -- an accurate reflection of Marxism itself.



Fair enough and very good points.


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## Extollager (Sep 12, 2015)

Hex, I'm saying that an intrinsic element of Marxism is class antagonism.  If you take out the hostility to the bourgeoisie and to religious authorities, then you don't have _Marxism_ left.   _"Marxism" without these things would be like "Christianity" without the Cross.  _

Btw, Marxism was presented as being a _science.  _Marx believed he had discerned the ineluctable laws of society and history to such an extent that he could predict (not that he "had a vision," in some la-de-da humanistic sense, but that he could _predict_) under what conditions and where the proletarian revolution _must_ break out.  Marxism was a philosophy, a science, and a religion.


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## Hex (Sep 13, 2015)

It was Engels, wasn't it, who coined the quotable, "religion is the opium of the people"?  I don't think Marxism was a religion in any real sense, but I'd agree Marx was trying to produce a tool that was predictive.

And to be fair, when they were writing, there was a great deal of class antagonism, and it went both ways, it was just that the other side (the non-proletariat) controlled everything. The point of Marxism was fairness -- those who do the work should benefit from it -- and because the situation in which people operated was deeply unfair, it was antagonistic.

Both Marx and Engels were solidly bourgeois themselves, of course.


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## Dave (Sep 13, 2015)

My point is that he, himself, wasn't calling people to arms, he was merely saying that, based upon his study of social and economic history, his theory predicted that this revolution was a natural and unavoidable conclusion. And to that extent he was correct, because it did happen in some places and we haven't yet reached the end of the road either. His theory may be flawed (and there are libraries of books about that) and there may be no Utopian Communist state waiting for us at the end of the process, but his theory itself can't be described as a failure. He wasn't a soldier, he was a man who spent his time in libraries. 

Some people believe that Nostradamus predicted the rise of Hitler and 9/11. So, is Nostradamus responsible for those? Is he a failure because he didn't predict that all the problems of the world would be solved and that we would all live in peace and harmony with goodwill to all men, but instead predicted death and destruction.

Now it appears that everyone else here wants to argue a completely different point, namely that Communism is not a Utopia and that the people who called for revolution in the name of Marx were misguided and responsible for millions of deaths. This point I don't disagree with and so I have nothing else to add.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 13, 2015)

Hex said:


> It was Engels, wasn't it, who coined the quotable, "religion is the opium of the people"?


I thought it was Marx. Anyway, it's been replaced by TV, especially the Day Time flavour.



Dave said:


> His theory may be flawed (and there are libraries of books about that) and there may be no Utopian Communist state waiting for us at the end of the process, but his theory itself can't be described as a failure.


Yes. The analysis isn't bad. If people were better it might work 



Extollager said:


> _"Marxism" without these things would be like "Christianity" without the Cross. _


Which would be pointless, the disciples would just be a Jewish denomination and every think else is more or less in every great religion and been said by every great moral philosopher. There was nothing novel whatsoever in the Moral teaching of Jesus or Paul (the Gospels written a good while after most of Paul's writing, so his teaching isn't some sort of Revisionism).

Marxism was an attempt to turn a lot of stuff already known (but ignored by those in control) into a science.


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## Stephen Palmer (Sep 13, 2015)

Ray McCarthy said:


> I don't think any of it was original, not really.



I think it was highly original. And Erich Fromm did even better with it!


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## JoanDrake (Sep 13, 2015)

I think you're all missing a point. Marx didn't criticize Capitalism because he thought it wasn't altruistic, he criticized Capitalism because he thought it didn't work, and, in his day, it didn't.

You think we have it bad with the suffering of the poor? Think of Marx's time, Dickensian London, where starved corpses on the street and beggars everywhere were accepted and commonplace things.

And the reason Capitalism didn't work then was the same reason it's breaking down now,  the gap between rich and poor (though the disparity itself came from different causes). Income disparity like we have now doesn't just mean that rich people have more than poor people, it means the rich people have everything and the poor have nothing whatsoever. That is not a viable system, because the rich get rich and maintain their wealth from poor people buying things from them. If the poor are too poor they will make the rich poor too.

One of Capitalism's more ardent advocates called Capitalism an "Unknown Ideal". Just like pure Communism, a real, pure and trammeled Capitalism has never existed and probably never will. We are spoiled by living in a world where the regulation/prohibition of monopolies is not only accepted but applauded. The end of monopolies was just about all that Marx was specifically asking for. I'm pretty sure that he said once that he had no problem with "shopkeepers" even rather wealthy ones.

Marx was against Mr Gradgrind, not Bill Gates, at least to my understanding.

Communism, at least a partial and "softened" communism, stripped of it's class warfare, dictatorial proletariat, and revolutionary fervor, isn't Utopian and impractical, indeed, its really the most practicable system we've yet found, the one that rules the world today.


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## BAYLOR (Sep 13, 2015)

I agree, the current economic situation  that we have is not sustainable in the long run . Im think that at some point , there will be a severe economic correction, a depression probably on the order of the one we had back in the 30's maybe worse . It will effect everyone rich and poor.


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## Ray McCarthy (Sep 13, 2015)

JoanDrake said:


> Marx was against Mr Gradgrind, not Bill Gates, at least to my understanding.


You must mean some different Bill Gates. He's a philanthropist now, but he used under hand tactics to create a de-facto monopoly, and for many years OEMs paid a per PC DOC then windows fee, even if the PC was shipped with a different OS. His first product was Free Dartmouth BASIC ported  by a friend in a short period of time to 8080 assembler. PCDOS/MSDOS was sold to IBM before it existed. They bought it (QDOS) from a company down the road that had ripped of the x86 version of CP/M (both done by Digital Research).
Bill Gates even bailed out Apple so as to maintain the illusion of competition. The Mac was then (and largely now too) only a niche product and wasn't in reality competition. The only two genuine from scratch successful and really good MS Products are Excel and Word. Ironically delivered for Mac first as Windows wasn't yet working properly.  Mac then was a MkII Lisa, it and Windows GUI as well as Amiga and DR GEM (on PC and Atari) were all copied from Xerox (developed in late 1970s). Current Windows is based on NT, derived from DEC VMS for VAX and the IBM OS/2 (1985).  MS released own version of OS/2 in 1989 and 1st real Windows OS, NT3.5 in 1993. (The Win 2.0, Win3.1, Win95, Win98 were really only shells on DOS).  MS ripped off a billion consumers and held back computing by over 10 years with their behind the scenes shenanigans. Which haven't stopped.

Instead of oppressing millworkers, Bill Gates oppressed consumers. Marx I think would be very unhapppy about Apple (US Marketing Co. using cheap Chinese labour), Google, Facebook and Windows 10 tracking and spying on people in ways that would have made Stazi and KGB envious. GCHQ and NSA spying wholesale on their own people. Marx if still alive would be writing a very different sequel to Das Kapital
Much of the worst excesses of Capitalism are in the end self defeating. Much of what upset him (like Luther and Catholic Church in a way!) has gone anyway with no revolution or communism. Communism has proved to be unscaleable beyond the size of a small Kibbutz, which don't work as efficiently as the hybrid Capitalist / Socialist Moshav. The USSR never really had Communism as envisaged by Marx, nor has China. China today is more like a socialist version of pre-1912 Empire.

Perhaps there are interesting parallels between how the the German Princes exploited Luther's teaching for political ends and how Lenin and Stalin exploited Marx's teaching for political ends.


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## Stephen Palmer (Sep 14, 2015)

BAYLOR said:


> I agree, the current economic situation  that we have is not sustainable in the long run . Im think that at some point , there will be a severe economic correction, a depression probably on the order of the one we had back in the 30's maybe worse . It will effect everyone rich and poor.


 
Agreed. It will be linked to oil production, I suspect - by which I mean the lack of it.


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## Gramm838 (Sep 15, 2015)

Stephen Palmer said:


> Agreed. It will be linked to oil production, I suspect - by which I mean the lack of it.


But they keep finding more oil, so we are not running out of it any time soon; and oil needs will be overtaken by fuel efficiency in the coming few years, so I'm not sure where the cause for a great depression is going to come from.

Sound more like some sort of wishful thinking...


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## MWagner (Sep 15, 2015)

I wager the likeliest cause of a severe and prolonged economic decline is the relentless automation of production and services that requires the labour of fewer and fewer people. Once two-thirds of the people on the planet are completely unnecessary economically, our means of allocating wealth is going to become a smoking anachronism.


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## Dave (Sep 16, 2015)

I wasn't going to reply again but MWagner has reminded me of the science fiction magazines that I would read as a child - things like *TVCentury21 - *predicting a future as a world where robots did all the labour and man had a lifestyle filled with leisure activities.

In reality, robots do some of the labour, but the rest is left to a few people working 60+ hours a week in unsociable shifts, a few working zero-hours contracts, mass unemployment, and a few super rich who are paid huge salaries for working a few hours per week.

I expect to be lectured that I don't understand the pressure of being rich once again, but I'm quite sure it is preferable to the other three options.


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## Stephen Palmer (Sep 16, 2015)

Gramm838 said:


> But they keep finding more oil, so we are not running out of it any time soon; and oil needs will be overtaken by fuel efficiency in the coming few years, so I'm not sure where the cause for a great depression is going to come from.
> 
> Sound more like some sort of wishful thinking...


 
My feeling is that it isn't. In most cases it isn't the finding of the oil, it's the relative expense of extracting it. As less remains, it gets more expensive to acquire, and at some point this century - estimates vary - we'll hit that point.

As for efficiency, you only have to look at the current and projected energy "requirements" (note inverted commas) for billions of human beings to see that fuel efficiency ain't going to happen. We'll hit the wall first.


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## Darth Angelus (Sep 20, 2015)

Bizmuth said:


> Given any particular type of government (or economic model), there are people who are ready to declare it a failure. And there are other people who are ready to declare it a success. Observe capitalism and democracy. The nay-sayers will tell you that democracy is nothing but the institutionalized purchase of votes, and capitalism is just another form of serfdom.
> I think Karl Marx would have found a way to compartmentalize the failures and use some form of the No True Scotsman argument to dismiss them. If there's one thing that's been proven over and over and over, it's that people are capable of believing (or continuing to believe) anything, regardless of contrary argument, evidence, or logic.


I think this pretty much spot-on. It is not impossible, nor even hard, to declare any political or economic system you don't like to be a failure. You could for example say that capitalism fails in eliminating inequality and poverty, thereby causing millions to die worldwide, from starvation. You could also say the system fails when it comes preserving the environment.
Of course, strong supporters of capitalism will challenge the idea that the capitalist system is the cause of this, but strong supporters of communism would deny that system's responsibility for certain things it is accused for by its critics, including the OP.

And as for what others have done in Marx's name, is Jesus Christ then also responsible for every single thing done in his name since?

None of this is meant to be defending active genocide, when done in Marx's name (or for any other cause), but it is hard to know for certain why a certain system fails, in any particular case.
If we look at the Soviet Union, I am pretty sure the civil war, WWII and the Cold War took its toll, and it wasn't as rich or developed as certain western countries to begin with, i.e. even before the October revolution. Those circumstances aren't ideal, and it may or may not have failed, even if it had been a capitalist system. As it is impossible to repeat the twentieth century with a capitalist (and everything else about it the same) Soviet Union, you can't really compare results.
Then again, perhaps it was Marxism that caused Soviet to fail.
What I am saying is that the critics who are inclined to believe Marxisn is doomed to fail will see that as the cause of the fall of the Soviet Union. Those who do believe in Marxism have plenty of other possible causes to use as excuses for that particular system's failure.
I am uncertain which is correct, and I think either side will fill this uncertainity with personal conviction, as always in politics.


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## BAYLOR (May 22, 2016)

So much Venezuela's bold experiment in Socialism .


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## BAYLOR (May 5, 2018)

It's the 200 anniversary of Karl Marx's Birth . I think if he were alive , he wouldn't be in too good shape.


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