Ah, yes... yet another attempt to 'save' Hegel from his marxist captors. And (as with most all the others) an ultimately futile and, frankly, embarrassing exercise, whenever undertaken. One wouldn't even know where to start with a critique of this mess of an opinion on the matter (and I'm no paid academic either; so it would be a long and tedious undertaking on my part): other than maybe to point to the obvious factual error that 'marxist [scientific socialist] theory doesn't grasp the dialectical relation between collectivism and individualism'[sic]. What utter balderdash. Of course it does.

C'mon fella: don't write a book if you're at such a low level of comprehension. You'll only embarrass yourself. However, there *is* money to be made in the rather lucrative cottage industry of anti-communist propaganda; so if you have no shame -- why just jump right in!

Dear Mr. Gilbert Holmes,

Mr. Karl Marx was born in a family of middle class standing and went to schools that led him to universities, hence to journalism.

Most probably you have the same origins and aspire to a similar career.

To get as famous as Marx, however, you got to forget his assumptions.

I know that it is hard but I assure you that it is far better; hard but not difficult.

Just take a laborer job for the rest of your working life.

How do I go about condemning this ignorant twaddle without flaming--which is what the scribbler deserves?
There is nothing in the whole infantile rant to indicate the author has the faintest idea what he's talking about, not on Hegel, dialectics or Marx. Compared to GH my understanding of these subjects is profound indeed (though I've still "much" to learn). I'm sorry GH, but I will not dignify your nonsense by attempting to correct it. Perhaps you can ask Graham Young to withdraw the article before it's too widely read?

Dear Gilbert Holmes,

A Taurus? I admit prejudice against anyone who thinks that is meaningful information.

For once I agree with Squeers.

• The thesis is an intellectual proposition.
• The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis, a reaction to the proposition.
• The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis and antithesis by reconciling their common truths, and forming a new proposition.

None of your examples are intellectual propositions, form a new proposition or are accurate.

The first:

Consider a young person trying to deal with their emotions. We can imagine that they will be angry and aggressive at times, (the thesis), and weak and lost at other times (the antithesis). As they mature, they will take something good from each of the extremes and blend them into a positive balance, becoming both strong and gentle (the synthesis).

I doubt that the young person will cease to be angry and aggressive at times and weak and lost at other times. Strong and gentle is not a synthesis.

The second:

Or we could look at a population of rabbits introduced to an island. At first spreading out and expanding in numbers, the rabbits eventually eat all the food. Their numbers decline again. If uninterrupted, this cycle will continue, with swings between a high and a low population, until eventually a stable population is reached.

In a real ecosystem, even a simple one composed of rabbits and grass, the population will never become stable but will continue to oscillate.

The third:

We could also look at the tension between law and crime. If there are high levels of crime, the law will become tighter in response. If the law is too restrictive, however, the people will fight against it. Hopefully at some stage we will come to a happy balance whereby the law is sufficient to constrain destructive elements, yet relaxed enough to enable us to go about our diverse lives.

There are continuing revisions of the legal code and its interpretation through both legislative action and precedents established by case law. No balance.

> Mr. Karl Marx was born in a family of middle class standing
> and went to schools that led him to universities, hence to journalism.

If I understand correctly, Marx was driven to the profession of journalism because he was essentially denied employment as a professor at the various universities he was associated with as a student: the administrations of which essentially didn't like his politics... In other words he was blacklisted.

What's changed, eh?

Marx, however, was so brilliant and accomplished, it is on record that not only is he widely considered to have been the best 'philosopher' of the Modern Era, bar none; but that essentially he and Aristotle are seen as the two top thinkers of all time: quite the accomplishment of a lifetime; and much of that talent was clearly apparent to those very officials who denied Marx his rightful place in the academy. But other considerations were, clearly, far more important... then, as they are today.

> • The thesis is an intellectual proposition.
> • The antithesis is simply the negation of the thesis,
> a reaction to the proposition.
> • The synthesis solves the conflict between the thesis
> and antithesis by reconciling their common truths,
> and forming a new proposition.
>
> None of your examples are intellectual propositions, form a new
> proposition or are accurate.

Your arguments against this author's 'theses' appear sound enough (at first pass & glance); just let me point out it would be misleading to give the impression of dialectics -- hegelian, materialist or otherwise -- as being primarily the product of the human intellect, in the Idealist manner. I believe it is important to stress instead that all human logic comes from the very developmental, stochastic, blind, emergent logic of Nature itself; and if something doesn't make sense naturally -- then it sure won't in the academic brain exercises which we call 'logic', dialectical or otherwise...

And of course the most important precaution to take in thinking along these lines is not to mix up the relative categories of what we are talking about. As the author appears to have no qualms about, himself.

This is all new territory to me, but could someone tell me if Scandinavian socialism would be regarded as an example of synthesis?

Hi Candide, cool name.

Don't know a lot about Scandanavia, but I suspect that you could argue that those countries have synthesized positive elements of capitalism and communism relatively well. Going a bit further left wing, and more controversial, you could also look at the version of socialism emerging in Venezuela and Bolivia.

You can however find elements of balance (with the synthesis of the polar opposites of collectivism and individualism) throughout the world. You could for example look at the strong opposition to the Qld Government's proposed asset sell-off.

David F, You would do well to have a think about Grok's comment, "..let me point out it would be misleading to give the impression of dialectics -- hegelian, materialist or otherwise -- as being primarily the product of the human intellect."

The dialectic does not only describe intellectual concepts, but also the actual manifestations of nature. (Also, I didn't ask the people that run my blog to mention that I am a Taurus. They did it for themselves. I'll see if I can remove the reference.)

Grok,

I am happy to criticize Marx, but if you read the other articles that I have posted on this site, you will see that I am just as hard on Adam Smith and David Ricardo. I don't like extremists from either end of the spectrum.

The problem with dialectic and its Marxian offshoots is that it is unfalsifiable. Since anything can be described as a 'swing' between two 'extremes' -- especially when you get to pick the 'extremes' -- there is no way that any claims made for a particular 'dialectic' can ever be proven false. Although this sounds good -- and it certainly sounded good to Marx -- more competent philosophers like Popper have shown that claims which cannot be disproven contain no information: they do not tell us anything we didn't know already. Marxism, like Freudianism, environmentalism and religion, cannot be falsified: not because it is true, but because it says nothing meaningful.

Aristotlean, Hegelian and Marxian dialectics are far more than simple syllogistics. Just as these dialecticians were far deeper thinkers than us modern day hacks! Hegel trumped Newton's mechanics and, it has been recently argued, anticipated Niels Bohr's understanding of the structure of the atom by a century and a half! using nothing but dialectical thought. Similarly Karl Marx's dialectical critique of political economy is more accurate and relevant now than it was in his own day. This is not "my opinion"; it is an acknowledged fact from people in the know on both sides of the political spectrum.
If people care to go beyond prejudice and "common sense", they need do some serious reading, like I have!
The communication revolution breeds ignorance!

Dear Gilbert Holmes,

The dialectic is a human description of a process. Whether it is a valid description or not a human description cannot be anything but a product of the human intellect.

David F,

I would suggest that all manifestations of nature can be understood to exist between polar extremes. Neutral between positive and negative, specific depth between deep and shallow, etc. The dialecic is another manifestation of that polarity.

Just because we are able to observe something as being polar, doesn't mean that it is not in reality polar.

I'm sorry GH, but I have to agree with David f.
For someone criticising someone else's understanding of the dialectic, your examples were poor. Far safer I think, to stick to examples in politics, such as the current state of our own country.
David f, at the risk of appearing pedantic, while I agree the case of the rabbits would never stabilise (in the absence of predation) I doubt the population would continue to oscillate for very long (in evolutionary terms).
Using the logic of 'the drunkard's walk' , sooner or later a low point in the population oscillation would coincide with a natural catastrophe, such as drought or disease, resulting in extinction.
As an admirer of Hegel, I fear Mr Holmes has done him no favours with this piece.

I'm sorry, grok, but I'm going to have to take issue here with your fanboyish adulation of Marx: 'however, was so brilliant and accomplished, it is on record that not only is he widely considered to have been the best 'philosopher' of the Modern Era, bar none; but that essentially he and Aristotle are seen as the two top thinkers of all time'.

Oh, come on! This is as foolish as the loons who acclaim Ayn Rand as the greatest thinker of all time.

Marx didn't even finish his own magnum opus, and spent most of his life leeching off far more successful and accomplished people like Engels.

ear Gilbert Holmes,

The dialectic is a human description of a process. Whether it is a valid description or not a human description cannot be anything but a product of the human intellect.
Posted by david f, Monday, 27 September 2010 6:36:33 PM

A very fair description.

And a wall is not a wall with out a wall.

Thank god for the righteous one's.

And divided humans will always be.

But a very good read.

Thank you.

TTM

Dear Grim,

About 48 years ago while working at the Johnson Foundation of the University of Pennsylvania I programmed a computer simulation of a simple ecosystem with data from the Canadian Arctic. The system consisted of fox, rabbit and grass. The resulting picture of the variation of the fox and rabbit population were two almost perfect sine waves out of phase with one another.

And that's very nice wording, I am impressed.

TTM

> The problem with dialectic and its Marxian offshoots is that it is
> unfalsifiable. Since anything can be described as a 'swing' between
> two 'extremes' -- especially when you get to pick the 'extremes' --
> there is no way that any claims made for a particular 'dialectic' can
> ever be proven false.

Ridiculously untrue -- not to mention a conscious lie in some people's mouths (you're just credulously passing it along as wholecloth of course, like most people). Dialectical-/historical- materialism is actually, in fact, the very essence of the scientific method extended to human society; even into the psychology and subjective life of individuals (as any real science must at some point) -- tho' much work remains to be done. Scientific socialism is very much a work-in-progress, being a part of the never-finished scientific revolution in general.

What is to be falsified? Marxism interprets the processes of the world in a scientific manner -- which are as open to experiment as appropriately as any branch of the more basic sciences like physics or chemistry. It simply makes extended claims in the social sphere: which are as hard to 'experiment' on as any social science; and so relies more on experience and becomes, in practice, as much an 'art' as any difficult, non-linear scientific undertaking.

> Although this sounds good -- and it certainly sounded good to Marx
> -- more competent philosophers like Popper have shown that claims
> which cannot be disproven contain no information: they do not tell
> us anything we didn't know already. Marxism, like Freudianism,
> environmentalism and religion, cannot be falsified: not because it
> is true, but because it says nothing meaningful.

You can say that a jillion times (and the bourgeois mass-propaganda media certainly tries to) but you can't make it true.

As for Herr Popper: the World Socialist Web Site (certainly the best source of daily marxist analysis on the Internet) has a few things to say about him... Here is perhaps the best refutation on their site: <http://wsws.org/articles/2005/sep2005/le4-all.shtml>. Kinda brief, unfortunately.

Gilbert, I thought it was a very good article. It made clear the underlying connection between Hegel and Taoism. I see where you are coming from now in seeking the middle path between extremes, hopefully the one of harmony and balance. The criticisms are harsh but interesting.

However I do not agree that the two extremes are represented by communism or collectivism on one hand, and “capitalism” or crony corporatism on the other.

I have already shown why it’s a false dichotomy to presume to identify “co-operation” with government – were the gulags or gas chambers an excess of co-operativeness? It’s nonsense.

And it is invalid to identify “competition” more with voluntary transactions than state transactions, since voluntary transactions do not take place unless they are mutually beneficial, while all state actions are zero-sum, depending on a coercive institution based on a claim of a monopoly of force and threats. No-one doubts this critique is true in relation to non-democratic states. But the addition of majority opinion does not make any material difference.

The way of balance does not require us to accept the prerogatives of gangsters, or protection rackets, or emperors, or armies, or states, as one of the ‘givens between which The Way seeks balance.

With respect, the Taoists’ understanding of the harmony of ying and yang was sounder than yours. Lao-Tze said that government, with its "laws and regulations more numerous than the hairs of an ox," was a vicious oppressor of the individual, and "more to be feared than fierce tigers.”

“The more artificial taboos and restrictions there are in the world, the more the people are impoverished — the more that laws and regulations are given prominence, the more thieves and robbers there will be.” : http://mises.org/daily/3903
His formula for good government was “masterful inactivity”, for then the world "stabilizes itself."
As Lao Tzu put it: "Therefore, the Sage says: I take no action yet the people transform themselves, I favor quiescence and the people right themselves, I take no action and the people enrich themselves—"

His follower “Chuang Tzu reiterated and embellished Lao Tzu's devotion to laissez-faire and opposition to state rule: "There has been such a thing as letting mankind alone; there has never been such a thing as governing mankind [with success]."
‘Chuang Tzu, moreover, was perhaps the first theorist to see the state as a brigand writ large: "A petty thief is put in jail. A great brigand becomes a ruler of a State." Thus, the only difference between state rulers and out-and-out robber chieftains is the size of their depredations.’

To say that we should seek “balance” between authoritarian government and crony corporatism is mistaken. There is no reason to expect that these, or a mid-way between them, will balance or harmonise legitimate conflicting interests.

Rather, balance requires that we seek the minimum of arbitrary aggression and let people harmonise their own interests using society’s spontaneous *consensual* mechanisms. Force is justified to stop aggressive force or fraud, that is all, which eliminates the justification for about 90 percent of our government. It is not justified to effect forced redistributions or paternalistic meddling, which describes all of socialism, crony corporatism, and the so-called middle way of our current bloated big government.

The idea that government is needed to engineer the fine detail of people’s lives, values and behaviour is like saying that government is needed to help water flow down-hill. Liberty and responsibility, supply and demand, profit and loss, work and leisure, savings and borrowing – these are the way to harmonising people’s naturally conflicting interests – not the destructive bullying meat-axe approach of more know-it-all central planning wrongly re-named as “balance”.

> About 48 years ago while working at the Johnson Foundation of the
> University of Pennsylvania I programmed a computer simulation of a
> simple ecosystem with data from the Canadian Arctic. The system
> consisted of fox, rabbit and grass. The resulting picture of the
> variation of the fox and rabbit population were two almost perfect
> sine waves out of phase with one another.
> Posted by david f

Surely you know about the work on animal populations and their fluctuations around chaotic attractors (the [predictable] number of attractors sensitively depending on the animals' reproductive rates), done by Robert May back in the `70s..? Google for it.

It's amusing to see how a partisan of an earlier stab at a dialectical understanding of Reality -- taoism in this case -- also feels that their hoary old belief system remains far above the crass 'materialism' of more modern-yet-threadbare philosophies -- and the mucking and grubbing in the cesspool of human existence they purport to get a handle on. But of course, this old claim is just more Idealist nonsense: put to us by people with a vested interest in maintaining the status quo of today. In other words: it's an affectation, generally, of a section of the soit-disant 'middle classes' of the imperialist West, taken from the (conveniently) 'inscrutable' East, for thoroughly pedestrian (and transparent) reasons.

And in fact, no taoist is ever going to solve the problems of the world, with their insular, subjectivist navel-gazing, focusing on individual enlightenment and/or salvation. Marxists however OTOH, intend to do *exactly* that (barring the imperialists making good on their threat to blow up the planet): because we understand *exactly* how the world ticks (more or less). And it does very much indeed start in the muck.

Quark Quark.

> I'm sorry, grok, but I'm going to have to take issue here with your
> fanboyish adulation of Marx...
...
> Oh, come on! This is as foolish as the loons who acclaim Ayn Rand
> as the greatest thinker of all time.

A definition of 'fanboy-dom' would be the claiming of qualities for someone else which are patently false -- this being apparent to just about everyone else... Right? And definitely in the case of Ayn Rand [I couldn't even finish reading the "Atlas Shrugged" someone lent me back in the `70s, it was so ridiculous. I dropped the book in disgust when the rich bozos began their world-stopping 'capital strike' down in "Galt's Gulch"... Someone please tell me how it ends!! (NOT) ;] this would indeed be so: seeing as the entire raison-d'être of this poisonous creature and her vicious entourage was as a wholly negative reaction to the perceived menace of 'communism'. There was and is no positive (that's a, I say, that's a PUN, son!) purpose whatsoever to Rand's destructive anti-project, however much its proponents try to dress it up and take it out into polite society.

In fact however, the *positive* message of scientific socialism would be just about the exact opposite of the entirely negative project of anti-socialists -- then as today. Unfortunately, since you clearly don't know a thing about marxism, there's not much I could say to convince you of the complete blank you've shot here against Marx -- other than to insist you read something by or about him, written by marxists.

In other words: everything I wrote earlier about Marx is essentially TRUE. No lies. No guff. He WAS the real McCoy.

> Marx didn't even finish his own magnum opus, and spent most of his
> life leeching off far more successful and accomplished people like
> Engels.
> Posted by Clownfish

This part isn't even worthy of a reply. The man _suffered_ for the Cause. Too bad he didn't finish; but science remains a collective work-in-progress regardless. We all soldier on.

Good points Grok,
one does wonder, since we're at "the end of history", why its priests/bean-counters need to invoke ancient mysticism to defend a nihilist-materialism, or god of indifference (free trade), though to be fair, the bourgeois elite also invokes the Christian God for those who favour protectionism. I doubt Peter Hume is one of these, he seems to be a purist who wouldn't suffer anything to compromise his ideal--leave if to the "benevolent" invisible hand to exact justice. The same justice Lao-Tse was so enamoured of; what a sublime simile, btw: "...like saying that government is needed to help water flow down-hill"; What sublime indifference to the vicious struggle this implies! As if Lao-Tse or Peter Hume could ever imagine themselves reduced to such a fundamental struggle for survival! But of course it's the basest hypocrisy, lies and condescension they both purvey from their privileged stations. They'd be all in favour of government protection if such conditions prevailed over "them". Perhaps PH would care to explain how he (or Lao-Tse) would preserve his monopoly (supposing he had or has one {probably only a petite bourgeois empire: read "ideology"}) without the rule of law and the military to back him up! As if we've ever had or could have genuine laissez faire.
While you're at it, PH, let's deconstruct this precious trope "collectivism" you and your ignorant ilk love to invoke? Marx's philosophy was actually predicated on genuine individualism! As opposed to the alienated, delusionary egotism you and Lao-Tse love to fetishise.
I'm not surprised you and GH have so much in common. It's a marriage made in heaven.
Dear Glok,
it's "oink oink", not "quack quack"

Dear Gilbert Holmes,

Marx, from what I've read, turned Hegel's dialectical theory the other way up. Hegel referred to the force that drives history along as "world spirit" or "world reason". Marx believed this was "upside down". He thought "material" change - particularly those caused by economic forces - was the main force that caused the changes that drove history along. He thought that these form the "basis" of society, while the "thinking" institutions formed the "superstructure", so that the material realm supports the thinking realm in society and they interact dialectically.
I'm only learning, but I can't see how Marx destroyed the dialectic - would you (or anyone else) care to elaborate?

Hegel: "For it is in the nature of humanity to press onward to agreement with others; human nature only really exists in an achieved
community of minds."

I see Hegel's view of freedom as a recipe for tyranny. Hegel's freedom was humanity working together as an organic whole in agreement on its eventual goal. The logical consequence is that the dissenter is an outcast. There is no room for the person who disagrees with or does not belong to the dominant paradigm. The gulag, the concentration camp, the graveyard and the crematorium are the destination for those who are not regarded as belonging to the volk or the vanguard class.

Hegel was influenced by Joachim of Fiore who saw society in three stages the stage of the father: Edenic peace, the stage of the son: human conflict, and the stage of the Holy Ghost: the millennium. Hegel also saw society in stages reaching an apotheosis. His apotheosis was the Prussian state.

The followers of Hegel divided into right Hegelians who were predominantly German nationalists and left Hegelians the most prominent being Marx. Marx's three stages were primitive communism in an economy of scarcity, class struggle and the apotheosis of advanced communism or the classless society in an economy of plenty.

Neither right Hegelians nor left Hegelians gave a damn about the individual. The 'freedom' defined by Hegel would be found by serving state, party or class. Human rights which were the protection of people against the state were unnecessary. They were bourgeois affectations. The mounds of corpses produced by the fascist statists and the Marxist statists were a logical outcome.

Hegel's philosophy is consistent with the statist philosophies of Marxism and fascism. The state will wither away when human kind is in agreement as there is no necessity for it. Conformity reigns supreme, and there is peace in the graveyard.

I think the world would be far worse had the USA not prevailed over the Marxist left Hegelians and the fascist right Hegelians.

David f,

I'd just like to address your ignorance first. Not to mention your willingness to slander those that you don't understand. Maybe you should take Squeers advice and do a bit more reading. There is a good article on the Internet Encycopedia of Philosophy at http://www.iep.utm.edu/hegelsoc/

Here we are told that "Hegel emphasizes the need for strong central governance, albiet without complete centralized control of public administration and social relations." and, "...the social realm of individual autonomy where there is significant local self goernance. The task of government is not to thoroughly bureaucratize civil society but rather to provide oversight, regulation and where necessary, intervention."

A balance between stable, effective government and freedom for individuals/local autonomy for communities. That could be used as a definition of democracy!

Poirot,

Hegel developed a complex, multi-levelled analysis of the entirety of existence, all based around the three-part, dialectical structure. I doubt if anyone exists that comprehends or would be able to explain the whole of Hegel's theory. My personal feeling however, is that Marx was probably overly critical of the spritiual aspect of Hegels work, rather than Hegel being overly focussed on it.

You can think of different paradigms or mindsets that emerge within our society. (through a dialectical process of course.) You can also see dialectical tensions within the actual institutions of the society. Our thoughts will feed into our social structure and our social structure will feed our thoughts. Marx was focussed on the latter at the expense of the former.

By suggesting that Marxism destroyed the dialectic, what I mean is that the strong association of the dialectic with the Marxist school's version of the concept has inhibited exploration of the concept in non-Marxist applications.

Peter Hume, Thanks for saying it was a good article. So many criticisms were starting to get me down. As usual, however, we do have a few points of difference. Personally I think that Lao Tzu would be turning in his grave if he knew that you were using him as a champion of laissez-faire.

Perhaps it will help you to understand my thoughts a bit more if I say again that I believe that both competition and cooperation are good if they are working in balance with one another, but either will be negative if it is expressed in the extreme. Within ourselves, we can be positively both strong and gentle or negatively aggressive or weak.

Also, there is an old concept associated with yin/yang philosophy. That is 'that in the extreme, the yin will flip over and become the yang and the yang will flip over to become the yin.' (my words) You can see this in a heavily authoritarian government that controls everyone so that they are all acting together for a common outcome. This can be seen as cooperative is one context but is obviously competitive in another. Likewise determining what is yin and what is yang within any given polarity will be entirely dependent on perspective.

By the way, pursuing free trade via Ricardo's theory of comparative advantage to it's logical conclusion would result in a situation whereby everyone was being controlled to do what they are relatively best at. Let's have an end to both lassez-faire and communistic extremism.

Oh, grok, thank you: I needed a good belly laugh.

Especially your previous post about how Marxists are going to solve the problems of the world, etc. etc. Yep, great to see how wonderfully all those Marxist states worked out ...

You also provided me with a good snigger-fest with your verbal dexterity, shifting goalposts so fast it fair made one's eyes water, and using a good many words to say exactly nothing at all.

Dear Gilbert Holmes,

Hegel's ideas could be used as a basis for democracy. However, democracy was incompatible with his idea of freedom. It is not nice to make an ad hominem attack and call someone who disagrees with you ignorant. I criticised your essay but did not call you names. I would appreciate the same courtesy from you. The fact is that the followers of the two Hegelian branches had an inordinate ability to make corpses. The Nazi made corpses are remembered, but the Marxist made corpses are somehow the result of an experiment gone wrong. They were once living people. However, they were seen as class enemies or deviants and eliminated.

Marx wrote in the Communist Manifesto what he thought of human rights:

"By this, the long-wished for opportunity was offered to "True" Socialism of confronting the political movement with the socialistic demands, of hurling the traditional anathemas against liberalism, against representative government, against bourgeois competition, bourgeois freedom of the press, bourgeois legislation, bourgeois liberty and equality, and of preaching to the masses that they had nothing to gain, and everything to lose, by this bourgeois movement. German socialism forgot, in the nick of time, that the French criticism, whose silly echo it was, presupposed the existence of modern bourgeois society, with its corresponding economic conditions of existence, and the political constitution adapted thereto, the very things whose attainment was the object of the pending struggle in Germany."

Bourgeois society had produced a number of reforms that Marx thought would be unnecessary in his utopia. The pending struggle in Germany refers to the fact that Marx at that time thought the communist revolution would come to Germany, but Germany was taken over by other followers of Hegel who were also good in making corpses.

If one eliminates the protections that have been set up against the tyranny of the state as the Hegelians did there is little to prevent mass murder.

The mounds of corpses produced by the Hegelians were a direct result of putting his philosophy into practice.

Squeers said:
> While you're at it, PH, let's deconstruct this precious trope
> "collectivism" you and your ignorant ilk love to invoke? Marx's
> philosophy was actually predicated on genuine individualism! As
> opposed to the alienated, delusionary egotism you and Lao-Tse
> love to fetishise.

They can't really wrap their minds around this one, can they? Whether in hegelian form or the superior, materialist marxist variety. Bourgeois empiricist thinking is so one-dimensional, stick-figurish and schematic, isn't it..? No wonder some of the people here turn so easily to more primitive forms of flowing, interpenetrating dialectical thought, such as what came out of the East, centuries ago. Of course, the main reason all such people are simply so wilfully blind is that they all, empiricist and Idealist, continue to credulously accept the hegemonic bourgeois propaganda 'trope' that 'stalinism == communism == socialism', etc. QED. Ipso Facto. Slam dunk. And so of course they then choose not to inform themselves about the real facts of the matter -- leaving it to the bourgeoisie's hired 'experts' (i.e. paid liars) to keep them 'informed' about political reality... Right. Suckers all.

But of course, socialism remains the human society of the future; and so it's still a preposterous 'unicorn' to these 'practical-minded' and hard-headed Idealists... instead of being understood for what it truly is: an entirely realistic, practical -- and highly- and desperately-needed and desired, frankly -- blueprint which transcends the brutal, crushing, impersonal logic of the capitalist market system.

Dear Poirit, thanks for a nice precis on the differences between Hegel's and Marx's ideas.

Marx was not a "right Hegelian". He rejected Hegel's spiritism/idealism out of hand in favour of dialectical materialism, though he never used that phrase (nor "historical materialism"). Nor was history simplistically dialectical for Marx; each period is its own dynamic in terms of the means of production, but the transitions were more problematic to plot.
Gh, why don't you just admit the reason you favour Hegel is because he neatly fits your Christian schema, whereas Marx rejected it. Hegel's historical dialectic was ultimately derivitive, tendentious and nationalistic. Marx's was not; nor was it dogmatic.

Dear david f,
I can only surmise that your thinking on this topic is utterly compromised by your experience and ideological orientation. Marx is not responsible for the horrors of Stalinism etc., nor are the concepts of socialism/communism forever worthless because they were abused. Nor is capitalism defensible because it prevails. It is more indeffensable than ever.
BTW, how many corpses has your saviour, the US, been responsible for since?

"Marx insisted that his method by itself offered no guarantees. In "The German Ideology" he was at pains to point out the limitations of his theory of history and to emphasise that it was no more than a guide to indicate fruitful areas of careful and exhaustive research. He derided Proudhon's attempt to apply the dialectical method to political economy, because it evaded major problems rather than resolved them". He warned against following Hegel in trying to apply "an abstract, ready-made system of logic". "Marx did not regard the adoption of dialectical logic as a magical solution for problems without having recourse to the thoroughness and rigour that he displayed in his own work. But in that work the dialectic became 'a scandal and abomination to the bourgeoisie' because it denied all claims that the capitalist system was in equilibrium and postulated instead its ultimate demise" (Lawrence Wilde).

Congratulations Gilbert on a rare article making this very important topic accessible to ordinary people.

Hegel may have made the word dialectic popular in European discourse but it is arguably a conceptual thread in through all human literature and even as you suggest a phenomenon of nature.

To: The critics; this article is obviously not intended to be an academically exhaustive critique. I am disappointed but unsurprised by the poverty of spirit, narrowness and the egotistical intellectualism of your interpretation and response.In the same vein, you misuse your rhetorical skills to attempt to demolish another. It may help you to read and internalise Eckhart Tolle.

Gilbert don't worry to much about these poor souls, that is the sad territory of intellectualism and academia. Keep writing and make these important concepts accessible to the people who matter, ordinary people.

cheers
Duncan

duncan mills,

Gilbert Holmes said, "Marx and friends essentially told us that the way we think is determined by the structure of society. In other words, we will be selfish and greedy is we live in a capitalist society, and kind-hearted and benevolent is we live in a communist society."
His "other words" are purposely misleading, creating a false premise - and from that premise he constructs the third part of his article, ignorantly equating Marx's theory with "bath water". He then goes on to grope about for some positive examples of "synthesis" to mitigate the dehumanising impact that capitalism has on society.

Some of us "ordinary people" come to OLO to learn...Why shouldn't the academics criticise an article on their terms if they deem it unworthy of serious debate?

Dear Duncan Mills,
I'm all in favour of making complex ideas as accessible as possible, but that is a far cry from the dumbing-down and distortions Gilbert Holmes has served up. And before you condemn GH's critics---for their "poverty of spirit, narrowness and the egotistical intellectualism of your interpretation and response.In the same vein, you misuse your rhetorical skills to attempt to demolish another"---you might ponder that GH's article was itself highly rhetorical (even its title, no doubt to ensure it attracted attention) and inflammatory in its uncompromising stance. A position it fails completely to validate. There is nothing wrong with stating a position emphatically if it is unambiguous, but the author on this occasion is quite simply 'wrong' on all counts.

GH seems here and elsewhere genuinely motivated to offer solutions to our modern problems, though his intellectual "missions" are naive and just as idealistically derivative as Hegel's (though nowhere near as considered). That is, they suppose an anthropocentric bias that places humanity within a rather flattering grand-historical/spiritual narrative under God. Marx, on the other hand, was completely down to earth. As I've said elsewhere, religion works symbiotically with (that other great abstraction) capitalism to maintain the status quo (and, ergo itself) But that doesn't alter the fact that capitalism is unsustainable and unconscionable.

Marx considered himself first and foremost an economist, but in academe it was the economics departments who were first to reject his theory. His influence lived on in the other corridors of the humanities like philosophy and sociology which almost pride themselves on their economic illiteracy – the only bulwark of his support.

According to Marx’s theory:
• If you take an hour, and I take two hours, to produce a certain product, my work is worth twice as much as yours;
• one’s thoughts are determined by one’s economic class, each of which has its own different logic which is determined by one’s relation to the means of production. That’s right: tools and machinery determine your thoughts.

And as Marx was not a member of the working class, but of the sponging-off-your-hypocritical-capitalist-mates class, therefore he had no way, by his own theory, of knowing nor speaking for the interests of the working class.

Grok’s laughable presumption is to look on the world of theory and practice as if Marx’s jumble of errors and fallacies has been right all along. He ignores the last 120 years of refutations of Marx, and takes the standard socialist position that all the disastrous consequences of attempts to implement socialism were just some strange coincidence, nothing to do with any defect in socialist theory.

But this is invincible ignorance. Mises has never been refuted: economic calculation is impossible under socialism. It’s impossible in theory, and that’s why it doesn’t work in practice. As he said, the socialists will always be on the road to socialism, because they can never arrive.

Grok
I challenge you to defend any tenet of Marx’s theory on condition that you lose immediately if you have recourse to any of the following forms of argument:
• Assuming what is in issue
• Appeal to absent authority
• Ad hominem
I challenge you to refute the argument from economic calculation: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

GH
I was quoting Lao Tze.

Hi Grojk,

Being named after Stalin, I've always been a bit prickly about him, even after nearly seventy years. For much of that time, I have been struggling with the tropes

Stalinism = socialism
Repression of Hungarian uprising = socialism
Invasion of Czechoslovakia = socialism
Khmer Rouge = socialism
Tien an men = socialism
Castro + Castro = socialism
Mugabe, Mengistu etc. etc. = socialism

Yes, somewhere in the distant future, socialism may be achieved, I fervently hope, although in what form, God knows. But like the Irishman asked for directions, I don't think we can get there from here.

In order to remain oblivious, I should never have read Berlin's essay on positive and negative liberty, or Popper's brilliant works on the closed society, which I now believe all supporters of Utopias seek to achieve (at the regrettable expense, of course, of entire categories of human beings). I would have been dopier, but much happier.

Joe

Dear Squeers,

My uncle was an old Bolshevik who was arrested by the czarist police. He managed to get to the US in 1921. After four years of Lenin he was cured of Bolshevism and was able to appreciate the contrast. Not many people have had the opportunity. Emma Goldman also had that opportunity and wrote about the tyranny in 1921.

One of the posters wrote, “empiricist and Idealist, continue to credulously accept the hegemonic bourgeois propaganda 'trope' that 'stalinism == communism == socialism', etc.
”
I don’t accept that equation. Socialism could be a very good system provided that such guardians of freedom as a free press and an independent judiciary were preserved. I am against Marxism. One reason is that Marx opposed human rights which made socialism tyranny. It need not be.

Another thing wrong with the equation is that the USSR was rotten from the beginning. It was Lenin not Stalin who destroyed the revolution that got rid of the czar. Stalinism is merely Leninism practiced by Stalin. First the Cheka (which incorporated some of the elements of the czarist Ochrana.)slaughtered the anarchists. Lenin initiated the gulags and censorship. Trotsky and Zinoviev wiped out the Kronstadt sailors who aided the Leninist coup. They wanted Lenin to keep his promises. It was Lenin who destroyed what little independence unions had and turned into transmission belts for party line propaganda.

The problem is not socialism or communism. There is no reason we cannot have them along with the preservation of individual rights. The problem is not even Lenin, Stalin or Mao. John Howard with the freedom to oppress that those monsters had might be worse. The problem is that the Marxist states followed the recipe of that Jew hating bigot, Karl Marx, who saw no need for human rights.

I am reading the recommended article on Hegel. I shall also read about Hegel in Paul Edwards’ Encyclopedia of Philosophy. In the Internet article Hegel is quoted as saying “War is an ethical moment.” A succinct statement in favour of corpse-making.

The corpses were no accident.

The previous post by the bolshevik's nephew was garbage from end to end AFAIC: but of the well-known type which comes from someone with an east european background with personal or family experience of "really existing socialism" -- which credulous north americans are just supposed to accept as good coin. Because they (or someone) *were there*! Can't dispute _that_! We seen it on CNN and FOX!

Well, guess what..? I too had an uncle who was a bolshevik, eh? At least nominally so. Like yours. And he too came to north america long ago (he's long dead). He even owned and operated a small franchise business of a well-known product for a while (whatever else he did). Very capitalistic, wot. My point is: what's your point fella, really..? *Right now* the U.S. capitalist oligarchs and their fellow 'democratic' stooge governments are murdering people in Afrika and Asia and Latin America *by the millions*. THIS VERY MOMENT. Not to mention the effective system of slavery they operate around the planet... Thus it's simply amazing the shameless cherry-picking, special pleading and wilfull blindness of people with (dishonest) agendas to advance, and axes to grind... And I mean you, here.

As I said, the comment is garbage, however much it is based on facts -- because it's the *interpretation* of those facts that is garbage. But to go thru it, item by item, would take probably dozens of like comments here. So `nuff said about this one for now.

Dear David F,
thank you for your thoughts.
The causes behind the corruption and the murderous goings on in the Soviet Union are a major study in themselves, and I don't even consider myself qualified to have an opinion. However I do say that it simply isn't true that Marx opposed human rights! You will have to show me evidence, beyond your jaundiced reading of bits of his texts. I am frankly tired of the whole debate on OLO, and think I'm flogging a dead horse (a very Russian metaphor).
My main position is that I am opposed to capitalism, to my dying day; it is an evil and dehumanising system!
Does it necessarily follow then that I'm a "communist" or a "socialist"? Or that I "must" partake in the ignominy of what ensued in the 20th century? Why do we have this binary opposition; that you either support a patent evil, or you're a communist?

"I" believe in the human being, and in human rights! But I would extend those rights (and a concomitant obligation) to "all" humans and "all" cultures (indeed all species). In other words I would go beyond the rhetoric and the "selective" human rights that are enshrined, and observed in the breach, under our hypocritical and spurious liberal humanism!
It "isn't" that I'm devoted to communism, but that I'm antithetically committed to capitalism! Anyone who is capable of standing outside ideology, and assessing capitalism and its rapacious history, critically, "must" condemn it! Must see that it is not only iniquitous, but self-destructive and self-demeaning---of humans! and of human rights!
So yes, if you can sea a way to make capitalism viable, equitable, conscionable and sustainable, then I'm with you! If capitalism can provide for the whole planet's prosperity and fulfilment, and ensure "all" human rights, then by all means lets enshrine this formula and make it inviolable!
You say that "Socialism could be a very good system provided that such guardians of freedom as a free press and an independent judiciary were preserved". I'm with you! But not if it is based on capitalist exploitation.

Loudmouth:

Stalinism !== socialism. Period. That's the short answer. It's also standard bourgeois propaganda to continually (LOUDLY) claim otherwise -- but without explaining anything (of course, of course. And a horse is a horse... unless it's Mr. Ed!)

The _long_ answer -- the one you're actually asking for -- will take a while...
;>

Perhaps it would work for you in the short-term if I pointed out that all attempts at socialism so far have occurred in *poor* countries -- whatever their subsequent development -- contrary to the actual requirements of building socialism: which generally requires a functioning industrialized bourgeois state to kick off from, for what should be obvious reasons. And I should also point out as well that brutal "primitive capital[ist] accumulation" -- as e.g. de facto practiced by the stalinists in the CCCP, amazingly enough; and in China and Vietnam, etc. even now -- is a common feature of *all* un-industrialized nation states -- *nominally capitalist or otherwise*. So such brutality is NOT an inherent feature of "communism" (i.e. claimed 'socialism') per se, contrary to the damned lies of bourgeois disinformationists. We could name all sorts of brutal capitalist police states here right now, for instance. But note that you are *never* encouraged to SEE them as being such. And you should reflect on THAT fact a while, BigGobGuy...
;)

Dear Squeers,

According to Marx's original prediction the most industrialised and advanced capitalist states would have a Marxist revolution. Apparently he was wrong. Marxism is a form of tyranny which has prevailed in peasant societies with an authoritarian tradition such as czarist Russia and China. Fascism is a form of tyranny which has prevailed in industrialised societies with an authoritarian tradition such as Germany and Italy.

Where societies have less of an authoritarian tradition neither branch of Hegelianism gets in.

Fascism is more like Marxism than either is like the democratic societies.

They both are very good at corpse making, concentration camps and general oppression.

One party tyrannies stink whether the dictator is Marxist or fascist.

Hi Grok,

One problem with reality is that there is potentially a multitude of 'antitheses' to every 'thesis' (many negations to every negation, if you like): there is not just A and B.

So if America is A, not-good, it doesn't mean that everything else, B, is good (cf. Ahmeninejad, al-Qa'ida, Chavez, Mugabe). They may be C, far worse (or D, far, far worse): they may represent a REACTIONARY thesis to the American capitalist antithesis, a yearning for medieval or feudal PRE-capitalism, or a return (seriously) to the Neolithic idyll (cf. factions of the Greens).

And pointing out A's crimes may not absolve B or C or D from theirs. You get the picture, I hope.

David, yes, how can there ever be genuine and lasting socialism without safeguards for human rights ? Socialism surely must BUILD ON whatever social reforms, revolutions and innovations that capitalism historically (i.e. for its 'own' purposes) developed: they shouldn't just be thrown aside. Surely socialism must be morally better than capitalism, not just different from it ?

And to what extent did the Red Terror give carte blanche to all manner of White Terrors, including fascism and Nazism, to exterminate all of the groups who didn't fit into THEIR societies ? Did Lenin make a massive and (with hindsight) incredibly naive assumption that revolutions would rapidly spread across the world and be victorious everywhere, so that it wouldn't matter if, within five or ten years tops, all anti-revolutionary classes and individuals were 'processed' out of the way, in order for the proletariat to move quickly on to the second phase, to Communism, to the withering away of the state by, say, about 1930 ?

Over to you, Grok :)

Joe

> So yes, if you can sea a way to make capitalism viable, equitable,
> conscionable and sustainable, then I'm with you! If capitalism can
> provide for the whole planet's prosperity and fulfilment, and ensure
> "all" human rights, then by all means lets enshrine this formula and
> make it inviolable!

Of course, Marx is justly famous for *proving* that capitalism is *inherently* unstable -- and thus can NEVER have a future. Other than to destroy the very planet that gives us all life... And the kernel of this instability is the innate, compelling logic of capitalism, which utterly _requires_ of each pool of capital that it MUST expand -- and the faster the better: it is *imperative!* -- or it DIES (i.e. be extinguished or absorbed by more competitive capitals). Which process, oddly enough, leads _directly_ to monopoly 'capitalism'..!!? But that's another story for a later telling...
;P

> You say that "Socialism could be a very good system provided that
> such guardians of freedom as a free press and an independent judiciary
> were preserved". I'm with you! But not if it is based on capitalist
> exploitation.

The utter cluelessness which this quote is based on almost makes me want to cry... It is so thoroughly bourgeois in its limited horizon as to stultify, really. Because by its very nature, the democratic praxis of socialist -- and later, communist -- society *will be its own guardian* (talk about 'checks & balances'..!): and far, far better than that of any possible bourgeois political order. Certainly any we've ever known. And as for the fraudulent supposed 'independence' of bourgeois (and its feudal predecessor) judiciary (i.e.: politically-connected sleazoid lawyers in black robes): there will be no need for such sham justice in any conceivable future socialist or communist society -- because the aforementioned fully democratic praxis will be its own law, and its own justice. Truly people's justice. The real deal -- not the phony travesty we suffer today.

And we can expand on that at leisure, later. Even dialectically-so.
;)

Dear davidf,
I've had my suspicions before, but now I'm convinced that you don't even read your respondents' posts, at least not closely--with consideration. You are enamoured only with your own thoughts and cannot, will not, let them go (but take heart, you have plenty of company). I'm wasting my time.
I will be away for the next few days; perhaps it's just as well..

Comrade Grok,
you're rather an expurgative. But I should warn you that OLO is a conservative organ (panopticon), and most of the inmates are not used to having their chains rattled. But you would be long familiar with that.

We continue to hear this sentiment that “Socialism is good in theory but…”

But socialism is not good in theory. If it was, it would have worked, that’s the whole point.

Look at it this way. There are two competing theories. The Marxists say that
a) without anyone consciously making any effort, socialism will arrive in the advanced capitalist nations with the inexorability of historical law; which assumes that
b) given the right conditions, socialism can work.

The Austrian school of theory says that
a) socialism is impossible even in theory, and
b) attempts to implement it will necessarily result in planned economic chaos, arbitrary totalitarian government, and abuse of human rights.

Now which theory is better at explaining the facts?

Talk of the differences between the prospects of success of socialism in “rich” industrial versus other countries; or at the hands of Lenin versus Stalin or Trotsky; *or in any historical contingency whatsoever* is beside the point.

Socialism cannot *ever* work because of the economic nature of what it attempts. People who say socialism could work in practice, or is good in theory, are merely displaying their ignorance of the economics in issue, simple as that.

On the other hand, private ownership of the means of production arises spontaneously without central co-ordination; it is the necessary precondition to government but does not itself require government; it succeeds in feeding, clothing and sheltering the world’s population; and even where it is nobbled by governments confiscating most of what is produced and spending it on forcibly suppressing market transactions, it still functions to put the masses at the highest standard of living in the history of the world.

I challenge anyone saying socialism could work
a) to understand, and
b) to refute the argument from economic calculation: http://mises.org/econcalc.asp

If you want me to explain it, please ask.

Grok
I challenge you to defend any tenet of Marx’s theory on condition that you lose immediately if you have recourse to any of the following forms of argument:
• Assuming what is in issue
• Appeal to absent authority
• Ad hominem.

Keep it up, grok! This is hilarious! It's like being bored to death by some pompous, middle-class revolutionary in a student union bar in the 70s, all over again.

I also find it hugely ironic that you name yourself with a word coined by a writer who said of himself, 'I'm so damned libertarian, Ayn Rand is a bloody socialist compared to me.'

Dear Squeers,

You are right. I don't absorb all the respondents say. I feel approximately the same way towards Marxism that I do towards Nazism. Marxism was a brutal system producing about 100,000,000 corpses following Karl Marx, a Jew hating theoretician. That overrides anything else. I don't follow everything a Nazi would say defending his system because I remain appalled by what he is defending.

Marxists and Nazis are both human. The systems they defend appeal to them for some reason or other, but the record of both systems stinks to high heaven.

I have argued with religious fundamentalists on this list. I don't understood regarding a book written by men containing old legends as though it is actually true. At some point I stop arguing. If I had good sense I never would have started arguing.

All economic and social systems have flaws, but I feel Marxists set up capitalism as a devil in exactly the same way the Nazis set up Jews as the devil and the fundamentalists accept the invention of the supernatural devil.

However, Marxists, Nazis and religious fundamentalists are all human beings and should be treated with the consideration one should show to all human beings.

If I have failed to do so to anybody in this discussion please forgive me.

From a purely ethical point of view, the endless squabbling between socialists and capitalists is essentially about the difference between misfeasance and nonfeasance.
One of the two great weaknesses of capitalism is that its cornerstone is nonfeasance; the idea that if you are walking along a riverbank and happen to be wearing a $2000.00 suit and come across someone drowning, you are under no obligation to get it wet.
RW libertarians call this 'freedom'.
I'm guessing when Squeers mentions the corpses the US have left behind, he is referring to American imperialism; the fact that the US has been the most belligerent nation on Earth since WW2, and is currently occupying or 'benignly (militarily) aiding' 30 or 40 odd countries, in the name of 'Democracy'.
The number of corpses created through nonfeasance, this freedom to turn one's back, I would suggest, is far higher.
It is hardly a coincidence that poor countries almost invariably turn to socialism.
If your father turns his back on you, would you not turn to your mother?
The other great weakness, of course is the fact that the Holy Grail of mega rich arch capitalists is not more Capitalism. The Holy Grail is to be so successful, one can actually stop being a Capitalist.
While the great strength of capitalism is the spirit of competition, Arch Capitalists focus all their strategies on eliminating competition. They all want to be monopolists.
In short, I am a Capitalist.
Bill Gates is not a Capitalist, he is a Monopolist.
The directors of Bluescope and Rio Tinto are not Capitalists, they are Corporatists.
In this I agree with David f., Socialism may be a good thing; it may even be inevitable. But we can't get there from here.
At the moment, our society is driven and controlled by the over achievers, who are naturally competitive, so capitalism is clearly the most effective system.
The answer for us today is not Socialism; the answer is to remove the 'freedom' of nonfeasance from capitalism.

Actually, I think Aristotle was probably right when he argued that a happy medium was best sought.

Thank you every one for a beautiful dialectic.

After the critics rediscovered their care of humanity, it has been quite interesting and entertaining and also a good example of the dialectic in life.

The first amenable exploration of the dialectic I came across was in a phd presentation, unfortunately it was not available for closer examination at the time, as the author planned a book.

As I understood it, the author plotted the dialectic through the history classical western philosophy and suggested the critical disjunction was the European infatuation with Aristotles Logos and misunderstanding and neglect of his other category of reason the Rhetoros.

With Hegel, my interpretation is that Hegel implicitly tried to appropriate the Rhetoros using the Logos, a confusion of categories (at the level of paradigms or world views), if you like. This where I depart from Hegels work.

As we have seen in this discussion, like instrumental reason (in fascism), rhetoric can also be used unethically.However used respectfully it has inspired an enlightening dialogue (dialectic) and in the good old Australian tradition, an emerging synthesis.

To me this has been lovely little case study of the human spirit in action; and only a fool would deny the power and beauty of the human spirit at its best. Spirituality yes, religion no. IMHO Forget the religions by and large, they have been a tool for the dark side of the ego and have done nothing but dumb down individual existence and sap their agency. The mistake is the attempt to structure and institutionalise forums for spiritual practice and community.

With apologies to the academics for my pragmatic skimming.

Thanks everyone.

Hey Duncan,
if you're referring to me as one of the "critics (who) rediscovered their care of humanity", I don't resile from any of my previous comments.
I still think the examples the author chose were poor; particularly in the realm of biology.

Clownfish
“Actually, I think Aristotle was probably right when he argued that a happy medium was best sought.”

So it is, but on the other hand, “if you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything”.

The difference between capitalism and socialism cannot be decided by expedience; it must be decided as a matter of principle. The reason is because decision-making by political process will always be weighted in favour of an expansion of government at every turn, in favour of a presumption of socialist viability that is not reality-based, in favour of special pleading, and patronage, and privileges, and forced redistributions, and regulations, and expansion of bureaucracy.

A state by definition claims a power of ultimate decision-making: all disputes must be brought to the state for arbitration if it so decides. Would we ever think it reasonable to decide disputes by appointing Fred to settle them, including all the disputes to which Fred is a party? We would expect Fred to make decisions partial to his own interests, wouldn’t we? In fact, if he also had a monopoly of force, we should not be surprised if Fred actually starts disputes which he then settles in his own favour,should we? And that is in fact what we see with government all the time (think war on drugs, war on terror, war on carbon…).

Thus, even though Mises showed in 1920 that socialism can’t work even in theory, we have the sorry spectacle of dozens of states endlessly trying to square the circle, at the cost of millions of lives and squillions of treasure wasted.

Trying to settle the question by expedience with the state as arbitrator merely leads to socialism by instalments. This is the current state of politics in the western world: - government grows ever bigger, every time re-assuming all the principles that we already know are false, every time re-trying the foolery that we already know can never work in any historical contingency, every time externalizing the blame for the resulting negative consequences – thus repeating the errors of the socialist states at every stage.

Grim
It is true that all capitalists aspire to be monopolists. What stops it happening is competition from the market. And what enables it to happen is the licence of the arch-monopolist, the state e.g. intellectual property (Gates) and limited liability (Rio Tinto, BHP).

The case of the drowning man is relatively clear and in practice
a) is not really an issue because people tend to help and
b) governmental direction does not and cannot put society in any better position.

There are numerous serious problems with alleging a general need to arbitrarily compel infringements of what would otherwise be the rights of freedom and property on grounds (waters?) of the drowning man:
Firstly, it is a simple non-sequitur to jump from seeing a problem to concluding that government must be the solution.

Secondly, this re-relies on the false Hegelian idea that government is a sort of super-being with super-consciousness, and ethically superior to the individual. This has neither evidence nor reason to support it.

Thirdly, government does not in fact address the drowning man problem. It addresses false analogies of the drowning man problem, where government gets to decide what the analogy is, even if it’s got nothing to do with the original problem, for example being a single mother, or a low-skilled worker, or a poor multinational wanting a handout. This again raises the problem of government’s partiality in its own favour in deciding issues to which it is a party, or which it has provoked.

Fourthly, even though Marx is plainly disproved and undefendable, all his fallacies and errors keep getting an endless re-run, for example, the idea that employment is intrinsically exploitative, or the idea that inequality per se is a ground for government intervention, or the idea that socialism might work eventually if we just keep trying it.

Fifthly, the end result endless government expansion towards full socialism, when no-one has ever refuted the argument proving that it does not and cannot work, and produces consequences far worse than the original problem.

Thus the alleged problem of nonfeasance provides no justification for governmental action.

david f, I accuse you of blogging on OLO at half-past four in the morning.

What do you have to say for yourself?

Grim, I actually have a monopoly on my own poetry. But unfortunately I have been unable to abuse my market position, or indeed, to have a market position.

Predictably, this supposed discussion on how Hegel was hijacked by Marx has degenerated into the usual Internet idiocy of petit-bourgeois would-be thinkers 'explaining' just exactly how clueless they are about anything real -- let alone on understanding socialism in the least... But then, this whole thing is all the original author's fault: for having the hubris to think he could succeed in bold claims against what is well-proven, where many, many others have demonstrably failed.

None of the past day's comments are worthy of a reply -- being the usual assortment of moronic ridicule, total fantasy, irrelevancy and the like.

Maybe things could change if these types got tired and drifted away... but more likely this article and its comments will simply peter out, as most all the others anywhere have. Because there's simply no reasoning with the smug and unreasonable. It takes major upheavals and revolution to get such complacent minds out of their ruts. If even that.

Grok
Is that the best you can do - assuming what is in issue, appeal to absent authority, ad hominem, and nothing else, all in the one reply? - a veritable trifecta of fallacies.

I've really got you pegged, haven't I?

[Deleted for abuse.]

Dear Grok,

Peter Hume has a history on this forum of labelling people "idiots" if they don't respond to his "challenges".
Take no notice.

I think Orwell understood Hegel, Marx, Lenin etc.

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwel

Grok, Poirot, wow what amazingly clever rebuttals. You really showed ‘em, didn’t you? Grok's posts were larded with insult from the get-go; Hume only gave him some of his own back.

GH you are no closer to justifying ordering people around than the Marxists. Let’s suppose I advocate handouts or special laws favouring the X group. Can I get it under your claim of balance and if not why not?

Actually, david f, it was Huxley who really pegged it when he foresaw a future in which we would be endlessly distracted by trivia and brought to love our own enslavement.

As for grok, I have an amusing mental picture of Rik from 'The Young Ones', twenty years older and with an internet connection. Still, anyone who plainly admires Heinlein can't be entirely useless.

Clownfish wrote: Actually, david f, it was Huxley who really pegged it when he foresaw a future in which we would be endlessly distracted by trivia and brought to love our own enslavement.

Dear Clownfish,

Huxley was quite possibly right in his prediction but did not realise its beneficent effects. One of our social problems is the difficulty of accommodating to rapid technical change. Those like us who are mired in such trivia as posting to olo have our minds distracted from developing technology that creates change and are less likely to exacerbate that particular social problem.

Before I retired I designed MRI systems. They were expensive devices and were not always used well. The governments of some third world countries bought them for the sake of prestige. However, those countries did not have the technicians to use and maintain the equipment so the devices just sit there taking up space. If the money used to buy the devices had been squirreled away in Swiss banks at least someone would been able to use it for having fun in France where I understand one with money can have a great deal of fun.

Now that I am retired and spending my time in trivia like posting to olo and writing fiction and non-fiction which distracts people from producing technological change I am no longer creating devices which although ostensibly useful merely create problems by their existence. I am doing my part to slow down technological change which society has trouble adapting to.

I have asked a few people what they thought about the example of a rabbit population and have got a mixed response. Some agreed with me, some not.

Lets assume of course that we are talking about a closed system with only rabbits and steadily growing grass.

A handful of introduced rabbits will at first proliferate quickly and spread out to eat the long grass. Eventually there are hundreds of rabbits on the small island.

The rabbits eat all the grass, but as the grass supply decreases, the weaker (or less well respected etc) rabbits begin to starve. Before all of the rabbits have died, however, the grass begins to grow back. Perhaps a dozen rabbits survive.

With only 12 rabbits eating the grass, it begins to grow lush again, but this time it is unable to get as long as it was because the rabbits are once again multiplying. This time, the rabbit population peaks at about 100 individuals.

These rabbits once again eat the grass faster than it can replenish. The grass begins to diminish, and the rabbits breeding becomes less successful and some starve. This time 20 rabbits survive the squeeze.

In this way, with decreasing oscillations between too many and not enough rabbits, it seems to me that a relatively stable population of rabbits will evntually be reached, with these rabbits keeping the grass pretty well clipped.

This seems pretty logical to me. If it is wrong, can anyone explain in more detail how or why?

It is wrong Gilbert, because it is an idealised anecdote of how you wish the system you created in head would behave. It does not incorporate anything we know about ecology or animal and plant population dynamics.

In a 'closed' system, with no predators or diseases, all the rabbits are eventually going to die. They will strip the island of grass until starvation of the population starts. Even when the last of them are starving, after most of them have already died, the grass has to grow pretty fast for them to survive. But even given that the grass may in fact grow very fast, the stochastic (random) effects of population crashes mean that you have to have at least one male and one female surviving. The stochastic effects that affect small populations mean that even then, either a bad season or no rain will probably eventually happen and the grass won't grow fast enough or the rabbits will probably suffer severe inbreeding depression from having the population go through multiple genetic bottlenecks. There is no bounce back from a population extinction. Local extinctions happen to many species all the time.

The system is never really in 'equilibrium', that's just an illusion. Patterns exist, sure, but they aren't permanent.

It is an idealized anecdote, but I am still not entirely convinced.

If we think of a slightly larger island, and we say that the sustainable carrying capacity of the island is 1000 rabbits, even though the population could swing wildly, it would be very unlikely that the rabbits would die out altogether. Instead, the population would trend toward the carrying capacity.

The specific example is not so much the issue for me anyway, although I am intrigued by that one. I am more interested in the interplay of the dialectic as I have tried to define it.

Actually, I am far from an expert on Hegel, and while I do respect him for his work on the dialectic, I am not in a position to endorse or not all of his political or spiritual veiws etc.

My own interpretation of the dialectic comes from an interest in polarity. Specifically in this context I look at there being three fundamental polarities. Yin/yang as the underlying polarity, being/non-being and separateness/connectedness which are more related to actual goings on in the world.

Specifically then, I look to there being two categories of dialectic within which all dialectic progressions will fit. The first relating to the being/non-being polarity. Here we can look at whether something is either more or less manifest (such as rabbits). We could also use an example of how much food there is in the pantry. Sometimes there will be too little, sometimes too much, but it will trend toward a balance.

The second category of dialectic progression that I look at relates to the separateness/connectedness polarity. Here we look at interactions and motivations. We have competitive/cooperative, self/community, angry/weak etc.

> Is that the best you can do - assuming what is in issue, appeal
> to absent authority, ad hominem, and nothing else, all in the one
> reply? - a veritable trifecta of fallacies.
> I've really got you pegged, haven't I?
> Idiot.
> Peter Hume

Rest my case.
;P

> If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on
> a human face - forever.
> George Orwel
> david f

Eric Blair was right on the money often enough; but again: the primary intellectual/ideological failure of the petit-bourgeois types on this forum (or anywhere, for that matter) is their accepting the basic false premise of capitalist propaganda that 'stalinism == socialism'. Because it manifestly does NOT. And how this all ties into Hegel and the dialectic of Reality, is in the utter failure of stalinists (or their bourgeois allies for that matter) to actually understand and properly use dialectical-materialism. Which leads back directly to Herr Professor Hegel.

> ...MRI systems... expensive
> devices and were not always used well. The governments of some
> third world countries bought them for the sake of prestige.
> However, those countries did not have the technicians to use
> and maintain the equipment so the devices just sit there taking
> up space.

The problem with thinking like this: while the person presenting it may be getting the up-front and superficial 'facts' of the matter right, their relatively contextless presentation of them (like here) in fact defaults to the logic of the capitalist worldview -- which is in itself highly distorted, superficial and very, very dishonest, in the most criminal sense. Nowhere here, for instance, is any attempt made to demonstrate the very real relations between these corrupt political elites of these neo-colonial countries and the ruling elites of the Western imperialist countries: who in fact not only make this corrupt behavior possible, but even positively *encourage* it.

And proper use of even the hegelian dialectic would allow us and encourage us to properly relate 'facts' to the correct relative and absolute contexts.

> In this way, with decreasing oscillations between too many and not
> enough rabbits, it seems to me that a relatively stable population
> of rabbits will evntually be reached, with these rabbits keeping the
> grass pretty well clipped.
>
> This seems pretty logical to me. If it is wrong, can anyone explain
> in more detail how or why?
> GilbertHolmes

Besides the fact that such ideal situations do not exist in Reality (bugsy covered this quite thoroughly!), I have already pointed out it has been well-established that the population growth of e.g. biological systems -- including rabbits -- in FACT vary by _rate_ of growth in a way which oscillates according to 1 or more *chaotic attractors*. This is a major fact of all Reality which you simply must become aware of. If you intend to write (e.g. professionally) on such matters in anything more than a sophomoric way, you must acquaint yourself 'with the literature', as they say. Otherwise you are just wasting everyone's time.

> My own interpretation of the dialectic comes from an interest in
> polarity. Specifically in this context I look at there being three
> fundamental polarities. Yin/yang as the underlying polarity, being/
>non-being and separateness/connectedness which are more related to
> actual goings on in the world.

Actually, you misunderstand dialectic because you are lumping together different levels of Reality -- ontological or otherwise -- and choosing whatever resulting setup appeals to you. Dialectic develops by series of 'triads' (cough) which 'ascend' by succeeding levels of complexity: _emergent_ complexity, actually -- which produces ever newer qualitative phenomena. Like the reflective/reflexive [self-]consciousness of physical Beings.

> Specifically then, I look to there being two categories of
> dialectic within which all dialectic progressions will fit.
> The first relating to the being/non-being polarity.

So finally you are addressing the basic ontology of existence -- as you should have at the beginning of this exercise.

> Here we can look at whether something is either more or
> less manifest (such as rabbits).

A category or two too far, AFAIC.

I'm finding the idea of a Marxist chiding anyone for believing that ideal situations can exist in reality most snicker-inducing.

Grok wrote: Eric Blair was right on the money often enough; but again: the primary intellectual/ideological failure of the petit-bourgeois types on this forum (or anywhere, for that matter) is their accepting the basic false premise of capitalist propaganda that 'stalinism == socialism'.

One of the false techniques of argument is to set up a strawman and argue against it. Stalin did not set up the dictatorship. That was Lenin. Lenin initiated the gulags, had his cheka execute class enemies, brought back censorship that Kerensky had eliminated, destroyed the freedom of trade unions and created a one party tyranny. In doing so he followed the prescription of Marx who advocated putting all transportation and communication in the control of state. Stalinism is Leninism is Marxism. However, that is not socialism. Socialism does not mean tyranny, but Marxism does.

It is neither Stalinism nor socialism that is the problem. It is Marxism.

Clownfish.
Yes. Positively hootful.

Grok
“Rest my case.”

In case you haven’t noticed, you haven’t actually made a case, nor refuted mine.

If we strip away your passionate conviction that there is something dreadfully wrong with individual freedom and private property, and something most excellent about the wisdom of Marx, and your personal argumentation and other logical fallacies, there’s nothing left.

No-one is arguing that Stalinism = socialism. The argument is that attempts to implement socialism result in arbitrary despotic government and greater poverty for the masses.

“Nowhere here, for instance, is any attempt made to demonstrate the very real relations between these corrupt political elites of these neo-colonial countries and the ruling elites of the Western imperialist countries: who in fact not only make this corrupt behavior possible, but even positively *encourage* it.”

No, but neither have you made any such attempt, have you? Nor have you shown how these exploitative power blocs are the result of private ownership of the means of production, rather than of centralised governmental direction and control of production, much of it explicitly motivated by socialist ideas.

“And proper use of even the hegelian dialectic would allow us and encourage us to properly relate 'facts' to the correct relative and absolute contexts.”

Nor have you properly related ‘facts’ to the correct relative and absolute contexts. You haven’t made any argument in favour of socialism at all; nor refuted the argument showing it is impossible.

“Dialectic develops by series of 'triads' (cough) which 'ascend' by succeeding levels of complexity: _emergent_ complexity, actually -- which produces ever newer qualitative phenomena. Like the reflective/reflexive [self-]consciousness of physical Beings.”

What’s that supposed to mean?

I bought some food, plates and cups the other day. They were the product of private property and voluntary exchange. I can’t see anything exploitative about the process by which they were produced. I say it was mutually beneficial to all parties. Your task is to show why they were necessary exploitative. So far you haven’t got to square one.

GH
Assuming your rabbit/grass hypothesis were agreed, then… what do you say follows?

I passed by a lot of crap and even some real questions, simply because life is too short... We can always get to everything eventually, anyway.

>> “Dialectic develops by series of 'triads' (cough) which 'ascend' by
>> succeeding levels of complexity: _emergent_ complexity, actually --
>> which produces ever newer qualitative phenomena. Like the reflective/
>> reflexive [self-]consciousness of physical Beings.”
>
> What’s that supposed to mean?

(Leaving aside the snide innuendo implied) Where do you want to start? With my attempt at avoiding the infamous "wooden triad" of the fixated bourgeois mentality, which apes dialectical development w/o actually understanding it? As opposed to the real process of development: the polar "moments" of the dialectic (i.e. as in 'momentum' or 'moment of inertia'), which express the true dynamic essence of the development of real things..? Or somewhere else?

> I bought some food, plates and cups the other day. They were the
> product of private property and voluntary exchange. I can’t see
> anything exploitative about the process by which they were produced.
> I say it was mutually beneficial to all parties. Your task is to show
> why they were necessary exploitative. So far you haven’t got to square
> one.

You clearly understand nothing of import in bourgeois economics --- let alone what Marx explained about capitalism. So probably the best approach here is to cut to the chase and 'debate' the reality of Marx' famous "Labor Theory of Value" (i.e. the complete theory -- not Ricardo's incomplete initial work). Neoliberals keep claiming to have driven a stake thru the heart of this theory; but apparently it keeps rising up, undead, to haunt the capitalist world...

> Assuming your rabbit/grass hypothesis were agreed, then… what do you
> say follows?

What follows is modeling Reality as it is: systematically and scientifically. And today we have computers: so pleading 'complexity' is no longer an issue, as it was in the Paper-and-Pencil Age.

I get pensions from the United States along with Social Security. However, look at what Marx wrote in the Manifesto as his prescription for the Marxist state.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.

The Marxist states follow the prescription of Marx. I volunteered to help settle refugees from the USSR while it existed. They came with nothing. Marxism required confiscation of what they had worked for.

In the Manifesto Marx wrote:

"Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes."

In the United States or Australia I can own a home and not be deprived of it arbitrarily.

Marx also advocated:

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

If a person dies young the children may become wards of the state.

Marx also prescribed:

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

That eliminates a free press. In Australia the Marxist Green Left Weekly can publish. In Marxist countries publications opposing the Marxist ideology or independent of the state cannot.

Marx also advocated:

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

Industrial armies cannot be organized without coercion. Conscripted sent to go to labour camps working on such projects as the canal to the White Sea were victims of Marxism. An estimated 20% survived the camps.

Marx also advocated:

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

The above means that people live not where they want to but where the government decides.

Marx also wrote in the Manifesto:

You must, therefore, confess that by "individual" you mean no other person than the bourgeois, than the middle-class owner of property. This person must, indeed, be swept out of the way, and made impossible.

That is a prescription for murder. The corpses were no accident. They were a direct result of the evil of Marxism.

Peter Hume,

Whether or not one sees exploitation in the globalised free market often depends on one's perspective.

Below is a link dealing with Indian children labouring in hazardous conditions to make party balloons for western children - it is a perfect example of exploitation carried out at the behest of unchecked globalised free trade.

http://www.causecast.org/news_items/9346-indian-child-labor-responsible-for-american-kids-birthday-bashes

I give up debating Grok because
a) his entire approach consists of presuming to know better than everyone else without showing reason or evidence, as if he reclines on a couch of ineffable wisdom
b) he has not given any justification of socialism whatsoever
c) he has not refuted the argument that socialism is incapable of economic calculation and must necessarily result in planned economic chaos and despotism
d) his argument essentially consists of calling anything he doesn’t like ‘bourgeois’ and smugly assuming that that settles all questions in his favour.

My argument is with those who reject Marxism but still hope for governmental intervention to mollify the alleged harshness of private ownership of the means of production.

For example, david f rejects Marxism but apparently still reserves the possibility that socialism could be good. Gilbert rejects Marxism but still hopes that government interventions could provide “balance” and harmonise conflicting interests. Poirot accuses child labour.

My argument is that the same defects of the State which prevent it from realizing the hopes of the Marxists, also make it instrinsically unable to realize the hopes of the interventionists.

Both the Marxists and the interventionists have in common that they want to achieve a better society by means of forced redistributions of property, and infringements of individual liberty. The interventionists share the Marxist view that capital and that employment are intrinsically exploitative, and that government should try for fairness’ sake to control supply, demand, prices, profits, or losses.

Although the interventionists explicitly disown Marxism, in fact their assumptions are informed by the same Marxian and socialist ideas which have thoroughly permeated the humanities.

However socialist theory continues to founder and crumble whenever it runs into the rocks of sound economics which disproves all its assumptions.

That is why the interventionists, like the Marxists, can never explain:
• *how* government is going to bring about these hoped-for net benefits, and
• *how* anyone knows that any given policy action is beneficial to society as a whole, rather than causing negative consequences, both ethical and economic, worse than the original problem.

So… how?

Appeal to collectives, classes, -isms, averages, aggregates, and abstract concepts like “competition” and “co-operation” won’t cut the mustard. There is always still a need to show how policy will not result in injustice in the individual case. If you can’t do that, you are in no better position than the full-on Marxists.

The interventionists repeat the same errors of
• Hegel (individual as nothing compared to wondrous all-knowing, all-good super-being the State) and
• Ricardo (fallacy of conceiving value in vast collective monolithic lumps like “labour” and “capital”.)

All economic phenomena originate in individual action and all value, both ethical and economic, must be understood in such terms before there can be any hope of a greater advance.

Poirot
All the relevant States already have child labour laws. So obviously a presumption of State beneficence is not viable.

If the outcomes for the parties to a transaction are better than they otherwise would be, it’s mutually beneficial, not “exploitation”.

The fact that doctors sell medical services, or shops sell drinks, does not make them responsible for disease or thirst respectively. Capitalism is a way of rationalising natural scarcity. It is not itself to blame for the original scarcity any more than any alternative system is – on the contrary, it has done more than any system to reduce it.

What makes you think the workers or their parents want what’s worse for them? Why do you believe the outcome for child workers would be better in the absence of this subsistence? You and Sarah Nelson are always free to send them extra money that you think they should have. Their poverty is no more the fault or responsibility of the employers or consumers than it is yours. On the contrary, the employers and consumers are doing more than anyone to alleviate it. Real moral concern proceeds voluntarily, not by force.

In any event, the idea that enough forceful orders can provide for a more equitable or productive distribution is baseless; it never takes account of the greater ethical and economic deficits that the intervention itself *always necessarily* causes.

Peter Hume:

[Deleted for abuse.]I mean, how many ways are there to back out of a losing argument anyway, pretending the exact opposite..? I think they've already ALL been tried: and this is just a recap of some or one of them.

In any case: marxism remains safe and sound as THE ideology (and praxis) of our day; and is still the de facto horizon of human thought and understanding -- until the next stage of human society takes shape: and its people can live free of the mental and material fetters of bourgeois society... and such debased and even depraved spirits have ceased to exist anywhere on the planet.

Hoorah hooray, a happy day.

Next!

I look to results. The Scandinavian states have interventionist governments, a strong social net and high taxes. They also have societies which combine a high degree of personal freedom and a high degree of economic security. From what I can see they are by far the best places to live on the planet.

Grok worships at the shrine of Marxism, and Peter Hume worships at the shrine of corporate capitalism. I won't argue economic theory with either of you. I just point out that the Scandinavian systems conform to neither of your ideologies but are still the best places to live in many respects.

Marxists have not produced one decent society. When something doesn't work the ideologue will follow the same path with more vigour. It will go right next time. Unmoderated corporate capitalism has generated societies with great maldistributions of wealth and has produced great suffering in the less developed world. Grok and Peter Hume seem to me prisoners of their ideologies. Grok argues by calling names derived from the Marxist glossary.

I don't believe that Marx was an evil man, but he prescribed a most evil system. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

[Deleted. Refers to deleted comment above.]

Wow - we are amazed at your perspicacity.

david f
Without answering the economic questions, you are unable to say whether a given condition is because of, or despite, given policy measures.

What makes you think that the desirability of Scandinavia is not because of the degree of individual liberty and private property that they have not yet destroyed, rather than because of the socialist bureaucratic central planning they have?

The USA is the commonest popular example of supposed unmoderated corporate capitalism. Yet government there takes over 60% of the product of the nation and spends all of it on intervening in supply, demand, prices, profits or losses – and all in the name of the public interest, the national interest, social justice, the workers, racial equality, gender equality, the environment etc. etc. etc.

Now remember that the Austrian school argument against these measures is precisely that they will produce the kinds of negative consequences you don’t like about the USA – systemic corruption, privileges and injustices.

While you yourself will not venture an economic explanation, we see exactly what the Austrian school predicts will result, and what the interventionists predict will not result from these interventions. And lo you blame non-existent ‘unmoderated corporate capitalism’! Can you name even one area of corporate activity in the USA that is not regulated by government?

In fact what you are looking at is the system you advocate: a thoroughgoing governmental regulation of every aspect of economic life in the name of social justice; not a system based on individual liberty and private property.

So both in coming (socialist assumptions) and in going (blaming the result on capitalism) your method is the same as that of Grok; the only difference being that his Marxism is first-hand; yours is third- or fourth-hand.

I do not defend corporate capitalism: that is a straw man. The current scene of corporate capitalism and soft fascism is the inevitable result of the policies that you 'progressives' favour –neither full socialism on the one hand, nor a system of individual liberty and private property on the other.

Peter Hume,

You'll never persuade me that the form of work in my example of child exploitation is preferable to subsistence farming in a communal setting.

Grok,
Talking of the next stage of human society taking shape:
It seems to me that the alienated state of industrial man emanates from large-scale industrial practices. It is in the localised nature of small-scale enterprises that man begins to connect to a greater degree with the product he is forming. In that setting, there is a "connection" between the individual, his community and the purpose of his labour. This is fundamental to a healthy psychological outlook. In this situation, man is able to "apply" his labour and expertise in a rational and meaningful way within the immediate context of his daily life.
This is closely aligned to Hegel and Marx's ideas on the interactive relationship between the way we work and our consciousness.

Dear Peter Hume,

As I said I am not going to argue economics. The Scandinavian countries are great places to live, and I will leave it at that.

I will just note that much of the US budget has little to do with intervening in supply, demand, prices, profits or losses. Much of it is devoted to paying interest on debt, supporting a grossly inflated military and funding entitlements.

It makes arguing simpler if you can line me up alongside grok. Just put everyone who does think like you together as the other. grok does the same thing.

Hey, Peter Hume.
I'm guessing your post (some pages back now) prefaced 'Grim' was a rebuttal of my post. The reason I have to guess is because by my count, you used the word 'Government' about 7 times; whereas I didn't use the word once.
Apples and Oranges, Peter?
To demonstrate my willingness to box my opponent -rather than my own shadow- let me address your points one by one.
“It is true that all capitalists aspire to be monopolists. What stops it happening is competition from the market.”
This makes precisely as much sense as saying: “It is true all Olympic contestants want to win. What stops it happening is competition ...from other competitors(?)”.

“The case of the drowning man is relatively clear and in practice
a) is not really an issue because people tend to help and...”

One billion children (out of a possible 2.2 billion) live in poverty. Would you say this statistic is the result of:
a) people tend to help, or
b) people have the right to turn their backs?

“Firstly, it is a simple non-sequitur to jump from seeing a problem to concluding that government must be the solution.”
There's that 'G' word again, which you seem obsessed with, and I didn't mention; however...
“Force is justified to stop aggressive force or fraud, that is all...”
How would you define 'aggressive force', Peter? Do you mean bullying behaviour? Such as when a large company does a little price cutting, to send a smaller competitor to the wall?
You say the Mises has never been refuted, but he's never really been widely accepted either, has he. Perhaps what you really mean is that you have never accepted any rebuttals, but then, neither has our friend Grok.
I admit, rebuttals are hard when the opponent comes out with statements like “there is no such thing as Society” (to get around the nonfeasance problem), or “climate change is a myth” (since 'economic calculation' has a problem with such issues).
Hint: if your philosophy doesn't strictly agree with reality, it isn't reality that's wrong.
And finally:
"That is why the interventionists, like the Marxists, can never explain: • *how* government is going to bring about these hoped-for net benefits, and...”
But you answered this one yourself, Peter.
“Force is justified to stop aggressive force...”
All we have to do is apply the same standards of civilised behaviour to the market place, that we apply to all other aspects of society.
Oh that's right, there's no such thing as society, is there.

It never fails, I'm away a day or two and miss all the fun!

Dear GH,
you might be surprised to learn that dialectical thought is not mechanically devoted to synthesis (you're in way out of your depth). So who cares about your bloody rabbits!

After perusing the posts I missed (and glossing a few), I sympathise completely with Grok. I have long felt the same frustrations as he clearly does with the patent ignorance that abounds on the subject of Hegel and, more importantly, Marx's new paradigm. It really is difficult not to be contemptuous (and depressed) when one again and again encounters the ideological drivel soaked up during those intensive decades of mass-indoctrination in shallow bourgeois justification.
Indeed it's not all ideology, it's an incongruous mixture of breath-taking naivety and cynicism. Ideological blindness is no excuse in toto as the facts of Western rapaciousness are plain. What we have here on OLO, and in the wider community, is sophism (wilful self-deceit) and evasion of responsibility behind an indefensible and inhuman economic rationalism.
In short, pleading ignorance doesn't get you off the hook! Poirot's example will serve: you are defending a system (which has not relented since its inception) based on child-abuse and exploitation in general! Bourgeois morality, secular and Christian, isn't worth sh!t. It's a great big F(expletive) lie! And deep down, it's defenders know it!

Grok,
I appreciate your obvious understanding of the issues, beneath the ideological surface.
The one point I infer from your position that I'm sceptical of, is that a dialectical shift to communism can be relied upon. I can imagine both capitalist dystopias (oxymoron) and comprehensive collapse; communism seems to me a remote possibility, as indeed does revolution?

I find it hard to understand how we can spend so much time debating instead of doing more productive things with our time...

Proving someone else right/wrong deserves such time? time that money cannot buy. When we are old, we might look back and think:" So i spent all that time doing this?".

I hope it is/was worth it.

> The one point I infer from your position that I'm sceptical of, is
> that a dialectical shift to communism can be relied upon.
> I can imagine both capitalist dystopias (oxymoron) and
> comprehensive collapse; communism seems to me a remote possibility,
> as indeed does revolution?

I don't want to give the impression that a communist future for humanity is 'inevitable': it's only 'inevitable' if the capitalists don't destroy the planet and all Humanity first... and it's hard to get everything across in 350-words-or-less, eh? -- considering the intellectual hypocrisy we have to deal with here, on top of that. I mean, most of these people don't even have an accurate understanding of true 'ad hominem', vs. simply calling them on the larger issues they studiously avoid.

But Marx has certainly proved that any capitalist dystopia will be short-lived. What police states are long-term stable? In the feudal & slave era, everything just happened slower. Class conflict is inherent in the system -- and so only absolute destruction would end that. And everything else.

But seeing as we have already well-advanced into a worldwide pre-revolutionary situation for the first time in history, I think your pessimism about the working class' victory over this tiny financial elite and their goons is already misplaced. Happily enough. And knock on wood.
;>

grok: right on, brutha!

lol

Are you still wearing loon pants and kaftans, too?

> I find it hard to understand how we can spend so much time debating
> instead of doing more productive things with our time...

This is a rather one-sided 'debate', lady. As for the utility of it: tell me the utility of actively walking around in circles, when you are in fact lost in a forest... rather than sitting down instead and first attempting to figure out where you are; or at least which direction you should be headed in.

And if you can understand the link between this above example and an answer to your question -- then you very probably might have figured out why "debate" is not at all a waste of time. Assuming it is a real debate (dialectic).

> As I said I am not going to argue economics. The Scandinavian
> countries are great places to live, and I will leave it at that.

Is Sweden still the suicide capital of Europa, if not the world..?

In any case: the person who wrote this doesn't have a clue -- nor seems to (typically) care to understand -- how the world-wide division of labor works. And how the Western imperialist countries, whether (former) social-democrat or neoliberal, are at the top of the capitalist food chain -- while the neo-colonies and less powerful states are forced to operate on economic and political terms which suit the financial elite of these core predatory powers. Including even Sweden (which financiers have been recently preying on the Baltic and east european countries... but now are getting burnt. Like all the other financial parasites. But *we* are going to pay, nonetheless).

> That is why the interventionists, like the Marxists, can never explain:
> *how* government is going to bring about these hoped-for net benefits

Well, that's an untruth. Marxists have explained plenty. But what do you want here, with all the usual intellectual dishonesty, ignorance -- and 350 word limits to 4 max posts a day? Be reasonable (I won't hold my breath).

Hi there all,

I empathise with the lady and yes I think she has a good point (to be held dialectically), women so often inject practical realism into male preening.

While debate and discussion is useful to create new understandings out of dialectical tensions, we all need to be mindful of our vulnerability to obsessive behavior.

To continue with the intellectual preening, a little; I feel the debate has become a little obsessed with absolute truths, as did Hegel, in my view.

My conjecture is that with the continued evolution of democracy (and I think Australia is evolving, if you look at current developments, including severe constraints on electoral funding.)

Such reform will facilitate a more sophisticated , creative and reliable community dialectic that will allow the development of a synthesis of the best of the capitalism/communism dialectic; providing that it also integrates, as I am sure it will, a secular human spiritual awareness.

The distress of the planet as we see it, has arguably more to do with humanities spiritual poverty as a consequence of humanities infatuation with the Logos to the cost of Dialectical reason; or if you prefer, an infatuation with instrumental reason. An infatuation well explained by Religions inability to withstand the examination of instrumental reason and Religions systemic vulnerability to corruption of the soul of its participants.

Consequently I believe it is only with a spiritual awareness integrated into a democratic community practices that humanity can summon the self discipline and love for the planet necessary to live a peaceful existence with dignity.

In summary, one can see the importance of understanding the dialectic as the primary tool of human progress. This is what enthuses me about the exploration the concept, however deficient the scope has been in this forum.

cheers D

Couldn't agree with you more Duncan,

"...one can see the importance of understanding the dialectic as the primary tool of human progress. This is what enthuses me about the exploration the concept, however deficient the scope has been in this forum."

While we are on the subject of society however,....

In my opinion we can witness in recent times a melting away of the negative polarity between the ideological positions of 'capitalism' 'communism'. The entire human population has had a pretty good think about it all and is looking for a new way. A way that is democratic, ecologically sustainable and egalitarian.

So far the 'third way' (of Bill Clinton, Tony Blair and Kevin Rudd etc) has failed to really deliver, being caught up with economic growth, free trade, and competition as the sole engine of a healthy economy. The third way has also so far failed to recognize the importance of stimulating small community interdependence and local self-reliance.

Despite these false starts, I can't help thinking that attempting to reclaim the third way is our best way forward.

I am an advocate of a social organization tiered from the small neighbourhood to the global scale (with perhaps seven levels: neighbourhood, village, small city or bio-region, state, nation, geo-region and globe.) This system should be decentralized, so that while remaining as part of a larger grouping, communities of every scale would be largley locally autonomous and aim toward local self-reliance.

A directly democratic system of governance could be employed within this structure, so that the self-managing communities directly appoint and directly control their representatives within broader government bodies.

The system should in my opinion try to create a balanced cooperative/competitive economy. This would mean that close to people's homes, a mosaic of cooperative enterprises and locally focussed private businesses would operate. On the broader scale, there would be significant government ownership and control of major productive assets.

Democratic reform is I suggest the best way to bring about these changes.

Cheers.

GilbertHolmes, I agree.

Dear GilbertHolmes,

I don't know that it's possible to have a society that is democratic, ecologically sustainable and egalitarian. It may be possible. Whether it is or not I think ecological sustainabilty should get top priority.

GH:
<In my opinion we can witness in recent times a melting away of the negative polarity between the ideological positions of 'capitalism' 'communism'. The entire human population has had a pretty good think about it all and is looking for a new way. A way that is democratic, ecologically sustainable and egalitarian.>

This is pure fantasy. The chattering classes will hold to the hegemonic centre, and all this up-beat PC would collapse the moment their living standards looked like being compromised (look at the "action" on AGW). In any case the Keynesian experiment was always unsustainable and inequitable. The future prospect (varying from country to country) is one of worsening "austerity measures".
"The entire human population has had a pretty good think etc."
This is mind-numbingly Pollyannaish and parochial. Actually, half "the entire population" has been and is struggling for bare survival! And it's just as well as the planet could not support them in the style "we've" become accustomed to! Sooner rather than later, states will be forced to revert to capitalism's default mechanism: the devil take the hindmost!

Eric Hobsbawm, speaking of, "the collapse of the Golden Age hopes for world social improvement" said, earlier this year: "I never cease to be surprised at the sheer lunacy of the neocon project, which not merely pretended that America was the future, but even thought it had formulated a strategy and tactics for achieving this end".
Capitalism is in crisis and the world is in a period of monumental change and power-shift.
Good luck with the social engineering, GH. BTW, what's your plan for the third world?

Oh so the Marxist communists know better than everyone else the way to a fairer and more productive society, based on their superior understanding of economics?
BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAA!

Admirers of Hegel and Marx who wish society were communist are just genocides waiting to happen - dangerous fools, that is all.

Poirot
Obviously either they don’t prefer subsistence life in a communal setting, or it’s not an option for them.

The fact remains that the traders and consumers of balloons are doing more than anyone else in the world – and far more than you, Grok or Squeers - for the living standards of the workers you claim to care about.

I saw Tim Costello once preening himself on having embargoed certain chocolate, because it was made in some poor African country with child labour. It never occurred to this pious fool that he was exchanging their condition of subsistence for one of starvation.

Capitalism has raised the living standards of the masses to the highest levels in the history of the world, and socialists like you have decried and deplored and opposed it every step of the way.

And now you’ve got the gall to say that the problem is that everyone in the world doesn’t have living standards like the workers under advanced capitalism.

Grim
As usual, a veritable slather of personal insult, bait and switch, misrepresentation, straw men, false attribution, evasion, double standards, and every kind of logical fallacy known to man.

And for all that, nothing that you have said gives any reason why socialism is preferable as any kind of response to the alleged problem of nonfeasance.

All
The common thread underlying all your argumentation is the idea that, if we see an economic problem of some kind of scarcity or poverty, government or socialism is the presumptive solution.

The Marxian ideas that capitalism makes the masses poorer, or that socialism makes them richer, are just inexcusable economic ignorance.

You don’t understand what you’re talking about, and it’s simple as that.

Any reply other than proving how economic calculation under socialism is possible, is mere intellectual dishonesty

Grok, Squeers, with science, if the facts don't fit the theory, you throw out the theory and keep the facts. With religion, if the facts don't fit the theory, you throw out the facts and keep the theory.

What you've got is religion.

Marxists spent the last 150 years saying that capitalism lowers the standard of living of the masses to subsistence level. Now you're saying that capitalism makes the standard of living too high! Which one is it?

Grok, you say 350 words isn't enough. But in this whole thread you haven't even begun to justify your laughable position that public ownership of the means of production would make the masses better off - or Squeers that it would be better for the environment.

Poirot, so you and causecast are going to employ those workers at the wage you think they should have, are you?

Gilbert, you are suffering under the same mistake as the Marxists - that there is no truth but ideology and that we can have any economic reality we want just by readjusting property titles. We can't. Reality kicks in eventually. For example, all the welfare states in the world have unsustainable welfare programs. It's only a matter of time - years or decades - before all of them collapse.

Democracy can't change the laws of economics. The majority can vote themselves something for nothing all they like. If your third way can't work without government making it happen, it means it's not a third way at all.

I sometimes watch "Venture" on Bloomberg tv, with Cris Valerio.

Commonly its about some freshfaced 20something kid with a great
idea, lots of fortitude and dreams, who sets out to create a
company from nothing. There are dozens of them, thriving in
the internet environment, changing the way we do things.
Billion $ companies like Facebook, Twitter and a host of others
are the result. Some write new applications for I-phones, some
create internet games that people can play online.

Its always inspirational, as it shows what just about anyone can
create, if they really want to and have a go. Simply by focussing
on what consumers might want.

The fact that in our society these opportunities are still there
for the taking, if people just get off their butts and have a go,
I find liberating.

What a sad day it would be if the likes of Squeers, Grok or Grim
ran the show politically and all this innovation was denied
to the world, as they followed their ideology of envy.

Peter Hume,

Is it really so very amusing to you?

Your attitude is a "prime" example of the obscenity of globalised capitalism.

For you to hold up a dust-covered child working twelve hours a day in a hazardous environment as a "beneficiary" of globalised free trade, defies comprehension and is a withering testament to your warped humanity.
As was the case in the 18th century, unfettered industrial advancement usurped the role of household craft, transferring manufacture to urban factory environments - the people had little option but to follow. The same thing is taking place in the third world today. In countries like India, global corporations have moved in, impacting the livelihoods of the rural population and further propelling the shift to towns and cities.

You seem to think it's all a big joke - I would love to see you put to work in balloon factory - wonder how many BWAHAHAHAHA's we'd hear from you then.

(Unbelievable!)

> What a sad day it would be if the likes of Squeers, Grok or Grim
> ran the show politically and all this innovation was denied
> to the world, as they followed their ideology of envy.
>Posted by Yabby

What's sad is seeing the likes of Yabby wilfully taken in by this propaganda [Deleted for profanity], while billions are NOT served, world-wide -- even inside the U.S. for that matter. Remember I mentioned earlier about 'cherry picking' being one of the underhanded methods trotted out in 'debate' here (everywhere)? Well, this is a very good example of that.

Sienna:
> Grok, you say 350 words isn't enough. But in this whole thread you
> haven't even begun to justify your laughable position that public
> ownership of the means of production would make the masses better off
> - or Squeers that it would be better for the environment.

Then I guess you haven't been paying attention to your local 'Nitely Snooze' on the telly. And for that matter, I guess too that Reality hasn't quite caught up with you yet... But it will -- with not a marxist in sight at the time, either, I'll bet.

And '350 words' just means it would take longer. Not that I expect success in a forum such as this in any case: where close reasoning -- not to mention true facts -- is clearly not the main concern.

Sienna,

It's not about a "wage" - it's about a workplace abomination and capitalist exploitation. No-one should have to work in those conditions, especially in what amounts to slavery in the service of western excess.
Here we have children at one end of the trade spectrum, mucking about in a mire of chemicals so that children at the opulent end can enjoy decorations at their parties - slight ethical anomaly there - don't you think?

It suits the hysterical purposes of PH and co to denigrate "heretics" who take capitalism's name in vain. We are deemed bawling malcontents for not fawning to big business and defecating on the abused concept (joke) of human rights the way they do. PH and co are the humblest (meanest) of creatures in their slathering, uncomprehending zeal for a system that cannot but fail, destroying along the way the untold millions it gave a living to in exchange for any semblance of quality of. You are the ideologue, PH, benighted in an ideology in which you have everything invested, and so you must defend the indefensible. It's extraordinary that those who see plainly this fools' paradise, who must needs live within their means and husband their self-respect, these "realists" are subject to the ridicule of capitalism's ideologically enslaved minions.

I've already cited Hobsbawm, here's another famous historian, Emmanuel Wallerstein, writing in March this year:

"What has sustained the accumulation of capital since the 1970s has been a turn from seeking profits through productive efficiency to seeking them through financial manipulations, more correctly called speculation. The key mechanism has been the fostering of consumption via indebtedness. This has happened in every Kondratieff B-phase; the difference this time has been the scale. After the biggest A-phase expansion in history, there has followed the biggest speculative mania. Bubbles moved through the whole world-system—from the national debts of the Third World and socialist bloc in the 1970s to the junk bonds of large corporations in the 1980s, the consumer indebtedness of the 1990s and the us government indebtedness of the Bush era. The system has gone from bubble to bubble, and is currently trying to inflate yet another, with bank bailouts and the printing of dollars.

cont..

..cont

The downturn into which the world has fallen will continue now for some time, and will be quite deep. It will destroy the last remaining pillar of relative economic stability, the role of the US dollar as reserve currency for safeguarding wealth. As this happens, the main concern of every government in the world will be to avert uprisings of unemployed workers and the middle strata whose savings and pensions are disappearing. Governments are currently turning to protectionism and printing money as their first line of defence. Such measures may assuage momentarily the pain of ordinary people, but it is probable that they will make the situation even worse. We are entering systemic gridlock, from which exit will be extremely difficult. This will express itself in ever wilder fluctuations, which will make short-term predictions—both economic and political—virtually guesswork. This in turn will aggravate popular fears and the sense of alienation.

Some claim that the greatly improved relative economic position of Asia—Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, China and to a lesser extent India—will allow a resurgence of capitalist enterprise, through a simple geographical shift of location. One more illusion! The relative rise of Asia is a reality, but one that undermines further the capitalist system by over-extending the distribution of surplus-value, thus reducing overall accumulation for individual capitals rather than increasing it. China’s expansion accelerates the structural profit squeeze of the capitalist world-economy".

Grok,

"As for the utility of it: tell me the utility of actively walking around in circles, when you are in fact lost in a forest... rather than sitting down instead and first attempting to figure out where you are; or at least which direction you should be headed in."

Besides the general statement that we should be heading toward communism, this sitting down and thinking is actually something that socialists have consistently failed to do. As I said in the article:

"With the addition of materialism to the dialectic for example, Marx and friends essentially told us that the way that we think is determined by the structure of our society. In other words, we will be selfish and greedy if we live in a capitalist society, and kind-hearted and benevolent if we live in a communist society.

Believing that our minds are currently corrupted by capitalism, therefore, and that as soon as capitalism is destroyed we will all want to move into mutually supportive communes together, this has led to the unfortunate tendency within socialist/communist circles to focus on revolution rather than on designing better systems of governance and economics."

Not true? Perhaps you can explain a few details for us then. What about the communist method for appointing government officials, or the communist interpretation of what drives inflation and how to manage that within the economy, or even whether communists believe in heavy specialization and free trade (or centralized distribution) or protectionism and local self-reliance.

This whole concept that we are incapable of designing better systems seems to me to be a smokescreen. Surely, 'we don't know the answers' would be a more useful contribution to the debate.

> Besides the general statement that we should be heading toward
> communism, this sitting down and thinking is actually something
> that socialists have consistently failed to do.

Well, THAT would be an instance of a 'damned lie'. And more cherry-picking, AFAIC.

Where do you people come up with this [deleted for profanity], anyway? There are *national libraries-full* of the works of socialists of all stripes, detailing exactly this. And *then* when we do try to work anything out in detail, we get castigated for supposed "utopian" planning, by exactly the same shameless critics... However in _your_ case, Gilbert Holmes, I think we should stick to far simpler things than "communist central planning" for entire societies...

> Not true? Perhaps you can explain a few details for us then.

Your strawman arguments only demonstrate the poverty of your philosophy, Herr Holmes. Obviously Marx or (most) marxists would not make such crude, artificially-polarized claims. Life is more complex and nuanced than that. You talk like a damned stalinist or Republican, AFAIC.

> What about the communist method for appointing government officials

First off: there is no "communism" in this world. Yet. Only _communist parties_. To go on in this vein is to engage in simple and crude propaganda. As well: you really mean _stalinist_ here, when you write "communist". And I have already -- repeatedly -- disavowed stalinism's proclaimed identity with socialism. Hell -- worry about unaccountable appointed officials in your own society, for that matter.

> or the communist interpretation of what drives inflation and how to
> manage that within the economy,

Howsabout youse stopping printing money like there was no tomorrow (which very well may be the case) -- AND creating debt-money claims on multi-thousand multiples of real economic output..?

> or even whether communists believe in heavy specialization and
> free trade (or centralized distribution) or protectionism and
> local self-reliance.

Say what? Is one of the above a reference to "opportunity cost" and "comparative advantage"? Or maybe eco-freakdom..? I could add more; but the number '350' limits our intellectual horizons here.

*What's sad is seeing the likes of Yabby wilfully taken in by this propaganda [deleted refers to deleted comment above]*

Sorry Grok, but clearly you are blind. For you are one of the
beneficiaries of the huge amount of innovation going on all around
you, every day. You clearly never had to use Soviet issue sandpaper
to wipe your butt! You live in a society which produces such surpluses, that we can still afford to feed you, clothe you etc,
if you decide to work or not, head off to the Nimbin hills and become
a dope smoking, guitar strumming hippie or not.

Innovation takes place at every level of society, as people make
choices about their lives, consumers get to vote with their wallets,
its highly democratic.

Even Fidel recently admitted that his system is a failure. Its
seemingly just taken him 50 years or so to realise it.

The internet, PCs etc, all here today because of the innovation
going on by millions of individuals, right under your nose. But
you are too blind to see even that.

[Deleted for abuse.]

.

> you are one of the beneficiaries of the huge amount
> of innovation going on all around you, every day.
> You clearly never had to use Soviet issue sandpaper
> to wipe your butt!

Ever seen a clearcut forest..? Cherry-picking again.

"Innovation" actually _pre-dates_ capitalist relations of production. But it's a classic conceit of capitalism's apologists to give it credit for even the rising and setting of the sun.

As for Soviet products (aside from you refusing to understand 'stalinism !== socialism'): where markets were not a factor -- such as the military -- production often outperformed their imperialist analog. As for market commodities themselves: AFAIK some were indeed superior to their Western analogs, comparing apples with apples. However, your limited grasp of the issue doesn't take into account anything outside of a cartoon image of economics IMO, and all the factors involved. Let alone any political considerations.

> Innovation takes place at every level of society,
> as people make choices about their lives, consumers
> get to vote with their wallets, its highly democratic.

What's democratic about voting with your wallet, when you have no money..? Besides the incontrovertible fact you've inadvertently pointed out: that bourgeois society truly operates on the principle 'one dollar/one vote'. And guess who wins all the "elections", eh..?

> Even Fidel recently admitted that his system is a
> failure. Its seemingly just taken him 50 years or so
> to realise it.

You're not qualified to analyze what Castro says. Neither are your media friends.

> The internet, PCs etc, all here today because of the
> innovation going on by millions of individuals,

It's well understood -- more by marxists than anybody -- that capitalism has indeed been a *great* advance: compared to feudal or slave society. However, you continue to ascribe "innovation" as being innate to only capitalism. It manifestly is not. Socialist/communist production will certainly leave the wretched, primitive capitalist variety in the dust.

> Perhaps its just all tht verbal masturbation making
> you go blind :)

At least I'm not deaf and dumb to boot.

*Ever seen a clearcut forest..?*

I certainly have and I've seen it regrow. I've also
seen recycled toilet paper. Fact is, I have and want
a choice what I use, not be told by people like you.

*"Innovation" actually _pre-dates_ capitalist relations of production.*

Sure it does, its the natural system, its how humanity
progressed as hunter gatherers. It was only later on that
those with a power agenda of Govt, tried and still try to
impose their will on the rest of us, by force if need be.

*What's democratic about voting with your wallet, when you have no money..? *

You are free to get off your butt and earn some. Otherwise we create
so much wealth in our generous system, that we will give you some.

*However, you continue to ascribe "innovation" as being innate to only capitalism. It manifestly is not. Socialist/communist production will certainly leave the wretched, primitive capitalist variety in the dust.*

In that case let me choose, between your "Govt issue" product and
that created by people more innovative then Govt committees.
The problem is that you want to rule by dictate, whilst your
political elites live it up to the max.

Today's workers in Australia, largely own the means of production.
Their super funds are worth around 1.2 trillion, as much as the
whole ASX combined. Marx would turn in his grave lol.

> I certainly have and I've seen it regrow. I've also
> seen recycled toilet paper. Fact is, I have and want
> a choice what I use, not be told by people like you.

What an innane, evasive reply. FYI: a clearcut forest never actually just "regrows". More than simply the trees are destroyed when such an ecosystem is ravaged by capitalist moneygrubbers -- 'Mr. Ecology' 'recycler'.

> *"Innovation" actually _pre-dates_ capitalist relations of
> production.*
>
> Sure it does, its the natural system, its how humanity
> progressed as hunter gatherers. It was only later on that
> those with a power agenda of Govt, tried and still try to
> impose their will on the rest of us, by force if need be.

You're really a broken record. According to your logic, even government powertrippers are "natural". Be consistent, ferkrissakes.

> *What's democratic about voting with your wallet, when you have no
> money..? *
>
> You are free to get off your butt and earn some. Otherwise we create
> so much wealth in our generous system, that we will give you some.

Comic book 'common sense'. Tell that one to all the hardworking people who never seem to be able to make ends meet under capitalism. Perhaps they're just STUPID, huh?
Sheesh.

> you continue to ascribe "innovation" as being innate to only
> capitalism. It manifestly is not. Socialist/communist production will
> certainly leave the wretched, primitive capitalist variety in the
> dust.*
>
> In that case let me choose, between your "Govt issue" product and
> that created by people more innovative then Govt committees.
> The problem is that you want to rule by dictate

You know NOTHING about socialism. It's about *getting rid of government*. Just like libertarian ideologs claim to be about.

> workers in Australia, largely own the means of production.
> Their super funds are worth around 1.2 trillion, as much as the
> whole ASX combined. Marx would turn in his grave

That's not what I'm reading, mate. But do dream on in DreamTime...

Grok says "...socialism.... It's about *getting rid of government*"

That's funny. Getting rid of government is apparently what Peter Hume is on about too. Yet another case of the extreme yin flipping over to become the extreme yang perhaps.

*FYI: a clearcut forest never actually just "regrows".*

It does when it was replanted on what used to be farmland.
But if it floats your boat, on old growth forest you are
free to practise sustainable logging, ie just take a few
trees now and then. All possible under our system.

*Tell that one to all the hardworking people who never seem to be able to make ends meet under capitalism.*

You mean those who
max out their credit cards, no matter how much they earn? You
mean those who blow it on the pokies? They are grown up, they
are free to make decisions about their lives, like budget and
say no. With freedoms come responsiblities.

*It's about *getting rid of government*. *

Yet that is never how it pans out. Its always the few at the top,
trying to dictate to the masses.

*That's not what I'm reading, mate.*

Well Grok, you won't find it in the Socialist Left Weekly. Yet the
figures are freely available, prove me wrong, go on.

Dear Gilbert Holmes,
the central premise of Marxism is that capitalism (apart from being dehumanising and unconscionable) is untenable because of inevitably shrinking profit margins, which is why the system demands and "must have" non-stop growth; that is, to transfuse a fiscal entropy that "must" entail within a closed system. Ours is a closed system. This aspect of Marx's thought is CDF (though nobody else figured it out) and the main reason for my objection to micro-economic reform, i.e. it is based on the merest logic
I find Marx's theory of alienation compelling, but I'm willing to admit that it borders on metaphysics since we can't know to what extent we are not "fully human" under capitalism. I would therefore be willing, on that basis, to talk about reforming the actually existing economy we have, so that it afforded everyone an optimum amount of quality time: i.e. social reform. I assure you I do not relish the prospect of bloody revolution and/or economic melt-down. My objection then to the reforms you advocate (as worthy as they may be in themselves) is that as long as it is driven by the profit motive, with no cap on wealth, it is like the proverbial rearranging of deckchairs on the Titanic, which is why I called them "pure fantasy".
Even if such a cap on wealth, and protectionism, was put in place, there would still be our obligation to the rest of humanity, as laid down according to the dual (symbiotic) hypocrisies of Humanist and Christian doctrine, which is why I asked what your plans for the third world were.

"Despite the tinkerings and reprieves that may prove feasible in the short or middle run, capitalism is ultimately destined for extinction. 'The true barrier to capitalist production,' as Marx neatly put it, 'is capital itself.'" (Carl Freedman)

I am exasperated with hammering this point on several threads. Social welfare has only ever been a device for keeping the means of production productive. Like all religious adherents, you believe what you want to believe, despite all contradictory evidence.

That does seem like an interesting post Squeers, though I do have a little trouble understanding it.

I do think that one of the problems with capitalism is that it involves an addiction to economic growth, and that the answer to that is to have a significant chunk of economic activity to be cooperative, because in a time of reduced economic output, this will provide both continued employment as well as the supply of goods services. We might me working and getting less but the whole system doesn't need to be bottoming out because it is getting smaller.

"to transfuse a fiscal entropy that "must" entail within a closed system" could you explain that a little more?! I also don't know what CDF means.

"My objection then to the reforms you advocate (as worthy as they may be in themselves) is that as long as it is driven by the profit motive, with no cap on wealth, it is like the proverbial rearranging of deckchairs on the Titanic"

I actually believe that the predominance of the profit motive within our current economic system is a significant problem. A much more active cooperative aspect of the economy, that produces and distributes goods and services at cost, is something that I advocate. This will not only reduce our addiction to economic growth, but will also provide a price signal (via the labour theory of value) against which competitively produced and sold items can be measured. (Adjusting currency value to this price benchmark would also enable us to have zero inflation.)

cont..

I am also an advocate of a wealth tax. I am an advocate of private investement, especially by small investors in local businesses (in line with the proposed locality tax). With investment, however, those with more wealth will tend to become wealthier still, increasing the gap between the rich and the poor. Beyond certain limits therefore, I suggest that an increasing tax on assets be applied that would effectively mean that massive personal wealth is impossible.

I do support the idea that people be rewarded for effort, risk and innovation, but beyond enabling a pretty good house, a good chunk of spending money and a pretty successful business focussed on providing for the needs/wants of the local bio-region, I do not support mechanisms that enable the massive growth of private wealth.

My plans for the third world revolve around changing the direction of development aid to focus on encouraging local self-reliance and community interdependence as compared to ecouraging the development of industries that sell things in order to gain money which can then be used to buy things. The latter is moving us away from ecological sustainability, reduces democracy, will tend to encourage the concentration of wealth in private hands, etc.

Dear Gilbert Holmes,
I'm mortified my post wasn't clear, I'm always at pains to be crystally so.
It is simply the case that in order to maintain profit margins, new markets have to be created. All stable market's are subject to entropy, that is diminishing returns on production because of competition and falling prices as well as domestic satiety. There must therefore be continuous innovation and market expansion, i.e. growth. That is why we now have global capitalism (along with concomitant species decimation, habitat destruction and, increasingly, resource scarcity. The closed system I refer to then is our planet and its potential markets. According to one Marxist theorist the economic crisis has been forestalled partly thanks to what he calls a "spatial dialectic" i.e. an era of phantasmal innovation and commodities (computer software for instance, and the concomitant hardware): the "communication revolution".

Much of what you say I heartily agree with, such as wealth tax and a wealth cap. Indeed for me there should also be complete equality in terms of education, health care and other services. But then the system would cease to be capitalism and the whole dynamic behind wealth creation would be disincentivised (ghastly American neologism). We'd have to find something else to be motivated by, and we'd have to live within our means rather than on borrowed time. In fact, we would then be some kind of communism!
The point is that what you are recommending is incompatible with capitalism, indeed antithetical; the present system cannot be reformed, it is what it is. Welfare (a delusion born of the boom) is just another drain on profits and ultimately unsustainable.
The whole reason Marx fomented revolution is because he saw all this and knew that those who owned the means of production wouldn't give it up without a fight. Freedom (and now survival) has to be fought for. But ideology is a formidable opponent!
If you disagree may I ask, how would you suggest we get the government to implement the reforms you recommend?

Squeers, congratulations, that's the first time a socialist in this thread has actually come up with a coherent economic argument, rather than merely assuming that capitalism is exploitative, socialism is the solution, and name-calling.

>... there should also be complete equality in terms of education, health care and other services.

What are the other services?
Why should there be any area in which inequality is permitted?
Why don’t the same considerations apply to these permitted areas, as apply to education, health care etc.?
How are you going to stop the permitted inequality from permanently affecting the areas in which there should be equality?
Why not complete equality in terms of everything?

&#10146; But then the system would cease to be capitalism and the whole dynamic behind wealth creation would be disincentivised (ghastly American neologism). We'd have to find something else to be motivated by... In fact, we would then be some kind of communism!

How is that different from what I’ve been saying all along?

Are you accusing capitalism of impoverishing the masses or raising their living standard unsustainably high? Which one is it?

The problems you are pointing out are the problems that socialist economists were discussing in the 1910s as impediments to the implementation of socialism. I maintain that they haven't been solved because they can't be solved in theory, let alone in practice. And here you are admitting that the state of socialist economic theory is no more advanced than it was before the Bolshevik Revolution.

What do you say to the argument that economic calculation is not possible under public ownership of the means of production?

Let's suppose you were able to re-shape society as you wish and there was universal agreement. Now let's suppose that we socialise the means of production as much as you would want them socialised.

Do you genuinely think that that would be viable in practice? In your opinion would mass starvation result? Or not? Seriously.

Do you genuinely think that the economic and political problems faced by the socialist states in the 20th century were all down to historical contingencies, no reflection on the merit of socialist economic theory?

If people are to be permitted the same standard of living under socialism, then how is that an improvement on the closed system problem? Why wouldn't people still want nice food, nice housing, nice clothes, paper, toilet paper, biscuits, holidays, internet, and so on?

But if they can't live at the same standard, so as to preserve resources for future generations, then why won't future generations need to forego the use of the same resources for the same reasons - i.e. it's really saying those resources can never be used?

If capitalism is drastically unsustainable, then why will the reduction in living standards not have to be drastic?

If so, and everyone must be made to live much poorer, then how can that be said to be more humane, less alienating, or economically or ethically better?

Even assuming socialism were possible in theory and practice, which it isn’t, how would it be any improvement on the original supposed problem?

So once we get past the socialist technique of histrionic name-calling, and on to actual problems of economics, we find that the whole socialist argument crumbles into self-contradiction and absurdity.

Poirot
So it’s better for them to starve?
Or socialism raises the standard of living of the masses?
Or you’re going to send them the money?

What are you actually saying, apart from having a hissy fit.

hi Squeers,

Actually in breaking my previous post into two parts, I managed to delete at least one paragraph. It related to restricting private wealth and was cut out from the beginning of the second post. I was unable to fi it last night because of Grok's perenial problem (350 words and four posts per day limit) I think it read something like this:

You will recall that I proposed a 'locality tax' that would be like a GST but applied like a trade tariff, whereby goods and services would be more expensive the further away from home they were sourced. This would encourage the development of small, locally focussed private businesses but would make the private ownership of large businesses extremely difficult. As a business became larger therefore, the incentive would be to 'sell' the business into the community/government system.

"There must therefore be continuous innovation and market expansion, i.e. growth."

I think that what we can look for is a consistent renewal of the economic infrastructure rather than necessary growth. Enabling private interests to compete against cooperative ventures (also allowing a cooperative business from one region to sell into the marketplaces of other regions) would help with this renewal by promoting innovation and efficiency. Balancing competition and cooperation!

Personally I think that we are and will continue to be paradoxically motivated by both self-interest and benevolence. As I've suggested previously, it is my belief that both of these are 'good' in context. We just need to structure our society to get the best out of each. Capitalism is built on the idea of competition between self interested parties, communism on cooperation within a mutually supportive community. Both systems then are built on half truths.

cont.

"...how would you suggest we get the government to implement the reforms you recommend?"

I am an advocate of vigorous social reform. In this I am fighting to prevent social breakdown leading to or through chaos. The idea of destroying what we have got in the hope that we will be able to build it better later is in my opinion what led us to Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot. And the concept is unfortunaltely built into Marxist thought.

Instead, in my opinion, we need to remain focussed on what it is that we are trying to do, making sure that we get the detail correct to the best of our ability. From this position, we try to stimulate discussion, we advocate, we try to get our policy suggestions into the political arena, etc. If we do gain influence, we engage as many people as possible in the process of determining and implementing appropriate reforms. In short, we proceed carefully and gently, yet vigorously.

Pursuing this kind of agenda, as moderates, I actually believe that the power of those that would try to work against us is pretty minimal compared with what we can muster. Pursuing division and confrontation, however will surely lead to painful swinging on the dialectic rope! (While our planet burns!)

Dear Gilbert Holmes,

You seem to be advocating what Karl Popper called piecemeal social engineering. Try a change. If it works for the better continue in that direction. If it doesn't scrap it and try something different. That seems to me more reasonble than a grand ideological vision leading to an apotheosis. Piecemeal social engineering is the way evolution works. Changes must be advantageous every step of the way.

You don't justify atrocities to produce eventual pie in the sky.

What I'm saying...Sienna, is that people like you always excuse western exploitation on the spurious grounds that if those in third world weren't slogging away for us in some God-forsaken hole of an enterprise, that they would be starving.
Perhaps if the West stopped stomping around the globe disrupting indigenous systems and "capturing markets" those people could exist quite happily.

Have a read of this.....

http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_2000/lecture5.stm

Poirot
You haven't established that it is exploitation yet. All you've established is that they're living in poverty. I don't like it any more than you do.

But given that you aren't intending to do anything about it personally, what makes you think that central planning, rules and regulations, bureaucracies and restricting employment and business, are going to be able to improve the situation without creating negative consequences worse than the original problem?

"people like you always excuse western exploitation"
So what we have in your reply is:
1. circular
2. personal
and that's it. You still haven't formed any clear concept of the problems you are trying to solve. Just because there is scarcity and poverty in the world doesn't mean a) that social co-operation is exploitative, or b) that socialism can work, or c) that it's self-evident that you don't have to prove your case.

> on the spurious grounds that if those in third world weren't slogging away for us in some God-forsaken hole of an enterprise, that they would be starving.

So they do have better options, it's just that they choose not to use them? Well that's obviously wrong, isn't it? So obviously they would either be starving, or they would be worse off, without this employment, wouldn't they? What you're saying literally doesn't make sense.

> Perhaps if the West stopped stomping around the globe disrupting indigenous systems and "capturing markets" those people could exist quite happily.

What's that supposed to mean? People shouldn't travel overseas? Perhaps the evil West shouldn't sell them tractors or tools or machines or technology or fertiliser? I thought profit was evil, Poirot? Only loss-making is morally okay, Poirot? So those farmers were private property owners, and therefore evil capitalists, and their trying to make profit was evil, too?

See the thing is, your entire technique consists of seeing something you don't like, having an emotional reaction against it, and blaming capitalism without understanding what you are talking about. You're just endlessly saying "exploitation", even if the arrangement is keeping them alive and is therefore obviously beneficial.

I read the article Poirot. Your writer makes some valid points,
then totally screws up on others. All emotion and a lack
of facts, is not going to do it, in the final analysis.

So lets first look at the big picture. It cannot be denied,
that globalistation has dragged hundreds of millions of
Indians and Chinese out of poverty. All the figures that
I have seen, show that they simply don't starve anymore,
as they used to.

Yes indeed, the Indian population used to be far more
sustainable. The West screwed up bigtime. We introduced
vaccines, we introduced antibiotics etc. Yet we ignored
the booming population that this would create and our
religious fanatics made sure that family planning would
not become commonly available. The result - unsustainable
population growth.

Indian agriculture has been the first to suffer from this.
Its all very easy to blame globalisation, but the fact remains
that rural populations have grown dramatically and with each
generation, land per family is reduced. You can't keep
dividing these plots in half each generation, many "farms" in India
are little bigger then a reasonble garden plot. So India
faces a similar problem as Rwanda faced.

I am the first to support permaculture as a way for the third
world to feed itself. If farmers can make a living that way,
good on them. But those tens of millions who have moved to
the cities, need to be fed too. The price of food matters to
them. Are you suggesting that the slum dwellers pay ever more
for food, so that those rural plots can become ever smaller?

They tried that in Europe. If you owned 8 cows, you simply farmed
the taxpayer for a living. It was a disaster. I really don't
think that this will solve India's problems.

> You seem to be advocating what Karl Popper called piecemeal social
> engineering. Try a change. If it works for the better continue in
> that direction. If it doesn't scrap it and try something different.
> That seems to me more reasonble than a grand ideological vision
> leading to an apotheosis. Piecemeal social engineering is the way
> evolution works. Changes must be advantageous every step of the way.

And here we find a clue to one aspect of the failure of bourgeois intellect (as epitomized in the work of the AFAIC arrogant and obtuse Herr Doktor Popper): the inability/unwillingness to grasp (at least in this context, conveniently) the very salient fact that humans -- as being *conscious actors* in the World: and not mere dumb, brute forces of Nature (my apologies to Pachamama) -- operate on a VERY different set of principles (emergent natural "laws") than do, say, droughts and rock-slides, or even epidemics and species' sexual selection dynamics. And it is this higher-order organization of human society's interactions with its own natural environment which very much indeed does set us apart from the other animals: to the extent that we really *can* 'master' what heretofore have been blind, brute 'forces of Nature'. Like even 'evolution by natural selection' -- viz. even Darwin's stressing of humanity's ability to transform this process in new qualitative ways thru animal husbandry, etc.

> You don't justify atrocities to produce eventual pie in the sky.

Tell that to the anglo-american imperialists and their stooge "allies", with their present colonial aggressions in Asia, Afrika and the Americas -- not to mention all their recent post-war atrocities, the murder victims numbering in the MILLIONS. One-sided attribution of atrocities to somehow being a "communist" thing will get you exactly nowhere, I ASSURE you. Unless, of course, your intention is simply to obfuscate any intelligent dialog for the duration, as a form of ideological warfare/'full spectrum dominance'... as not a few here seem to be attempting in their way, even subconsciously.

> What I'm saying...Sienna, is that people like you always excuse
> western exploitation on the spurious grounds that if those in
> third world weren't slogging away for us in some God-forsaken hole
> of an enterprise, that they would be starving.
> Perhaps if the West stopped stomping around the globe disrupting
> indigenous systems and "capturing markets" those people could exist
> quite happily.

The utter one-sidedness of these people is simply amazing, isn't it? If we could only harness this wilfull, selective blindness as a source of energy (hot air), the energy crisis would be immediately solved!

> I am an advocate of vigorous social reform. In this I am fighting
> to prevent social breakdown leading to or through chaos.

It's already been explained to you (if perhaps not yet 'proven') that ALL efforts at reforming capitalism WILL founder on the hard and irresistible fact of inexorable logic: that the *imperative* of capital to expand and accumulate itself (at an ever-faster pace, to boot) WILL corrode and undermine ALL attempts at defying this de facto 'Law of [capitalist] nature'. The ONLY solution, in fact, is to *transcend* this unyielding logic with a yet _higher_ one... And guess what that is.

So please do not continue beating your head against this irresistible cliff face simply because that is what all other similarly-deluded reformists have been doing (actually since the neolithic, and the rise of surpluses -- and thus of expropriating classes). Reforms have their uses, sure; but only the context of more _fundamental_ change. Otherwise they become mere pipedreams.

> The idea of destroying what we have got in the hope that we will
> be able to build it better later is in my opinion what led us to
> Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot.

Besides that you consistently and disingenuously misrepresent the method and the goals of socialism, I will state AGAIN that Stalin and other stalinists -- like Mao; and certainly pseudo-stalinoids like Pol Pot and the korean Kims -- were/are *national* independence revolutionaries, in poor countries starting out with an overwhelming peasant, agrarian economic base: and thus absolutely not a basis upon which to build real socialism. These forces, in fact, represent what we call the 'bourgeois nationalist/democratic revolution' against the preceding, essentially feudal and colonial/comprador forms of social organization. Each one has been different, both in course and in outcome, for various unique historical reasons -- but none have been truly socialist revolutions.

> And the concept is unfortunaltely built into Marxist thought.

No it's not -- and to persist in this delusion means that you will certainly never contribute anything of much value to the general intellectual history of Humanity.

Dear Sienna (PH?),
First, it's unhelpful to keep spitting "socialist"; name calling is unproductive.
Capitalism "is" based on exploitation, no?
There is nothing sinister in my "other services"; I mean social infrastructure generally. Our system is based on private/public apartheid. Why should a rich kid receive superior education/healthcare?
<Why not complete equality in terms of everything?>
I agree in terms of what a society provides for its citizens; that would allow the "true" distinctiveness of individuals to shine out on a level playing field. Equally provided for according to an equitable social contract, each one of us could be motivated by and distinguish ourselves for our natural/personal accomplishments. These are not "impediments", but the strengths of socialism.
I was pointing out to GH that what he is advocating is, essentially, communism.

<What do you say to the argument that economic calculation is not possible under public ownership of the means of production?>
Nonsense.

<Do you genuinely think that [socialising the means of production] would be viable in practice? In your opinion would mass starvation result? Or not? Seriously.>
Yes, it "could" be viable. Democratic freedoms evolved (differently in different countries), so too could a system based on material equality. Mass starvation/privation is already occurring under and because of capitalism. A sudden change to socialism would of course be disruptive and a transitional period that preserved essential services would be optimum.
Do you suppose when the capitalist bubble finally bursts there will be less disruption/starvation?

<Do you genuinely think that the economic and political problems faced by the socialist states in the 20th century were all down to historical contingencies, no reflection on the merit of socialist economic theory?>
Yes and no. Breakaway socialist states were in a hostile environment and never had an opportunity for healthy development. Such another attempt, to be successful, would have to be unmolested and unintimidated, i.e. more or less global. I think such a transition is extremely unlikely, however, in the prevailing context. There will more likely be a war of economic attrition (already underway) and (this time) a consummated nuclear stand-off.
cont..

..cont.

Hopefully the survivors will have learned something and create a just and sustainable human culture.

The closed system problem, as I hinted above, demands we "must needs live within [our] means and husband [our] self-respect". In other words we should not devote our lives slavishly to any economic rubric, but adapt as circumstances dictate and live sustainably; symbiotically with, rather than at variance, with natural systems. At present human society has all the self-governance of a mouse plague.

<If capitalism is drastically unsustainable [do you deny it?], then why will the reduction in living standards not have to be drastic?>

The reduction would only be drastic in wealthy countries. A rise of living standards could be just as drastic for over half the planet.

BTW, you are yet to mount a defence of the charges brought against capitalism?

GH: <I am an advocate of vigorous social reform. In this I am fighting to prevent social breakdown leading to or through chaos. The idea of destroying what we have got in the hope that we will be able to build it better later is in my opinion what led us to Stalin, Chairman Mao, and Pol Pot. And the concept is unfortunaltely built into Marxist thought.>

Dear Gilbert Holmes,
I'm all for that! And supposing capitalism could be reformed along the lines you suggest (though what your talking about is socialism by stealth), how do you convince the bourgeoisie (let alone the true capitalists) to agree to such reforms. How do you turn pie in the sky into reality? Even after the GFC, corporate profits, executive salaries and overall wage-disparity continue to rise to ever more obscene levels. Governments meanwhile are dumped on the mere prospect of tax-hikes. How do you shift bourgeois hegemony to your way of thinking?
Sorry, but all you're offering is syllogistic rather than dialectical thought.

Dear davidf,
you appear to be on the same wavelength. Marx's dialectical thought was based almost entirely a critique of capitalism; which, btw, is showing no signs of "advantageous [changes] every step of the way", quite the reverse.

Bravo Poirot!

The question of the 'high standard of living' in rich capitalist countries is interesting. As I recall, Annie Lenard (Story of Stuff, nice little vid) claimed about 90% of the things we buy are thrown out within six months of buying them.
Is rampant consumerism absolutely necessary to healthy Capitalism? And more to the point, does it materially improve our quality of Life -which isn't necessarily synonymous 'standard of living'- and certainly isn't ecologically sustainable.
Popper's 'piecemeal' approach is sensible and attractive, yet... Here I risk delving into applying 'natural' laws to human endeavour, but it has appeared to me that Dollo's Law does have some application. Airships seem enormously more practical, use a thousand times less fuel, require far less landing space in crowded cities, and are virtually silent; but it has already been tried, so let's not go there again...
Is it just ego? Common sense suggests that if you see a system that works better than your own, why not adopt it; like the educational and economic systems of the Scandinavian countries, for instance. Instead, we slavishly follow the lead of the US and England, without waiting to see if the idea works, or is applicable to our circumstances. For instance, the free insulation scheme was an Obama incentive, but unlike Oz the Americans had had a bureau to handle such supplements in place for about thirty years.
As to Yabby's claim that innovation somehow belongs to Capitalism, this is simply nonsense. Not only were the Russians first into space, but it was the American Government (not the corporations) which matched -and eventually passed- the Russian efforts.
By far the majority of great strides in technological progress has been achieved by Government agencies, or through Government funding. Our own CSIRO used to be highly regarded for world class innovation, before it was 'corporatised' (whereas once the highest paid individual in CSIRO was the Chief scientist, now he rates about 17, behind the various business managers and accountants).

In truth, Corporations hate innovation. It costs too much to retool. The exception of course is in planned or perceived obsolescence, such as clothing and car companies, and most strikingly, the housing market.
Has anyone stopped to consider, that in Europe there are homes literally hundreds of years old? If they could build homes hundreds of years ago that would last hundreds of years, why can't we?
In a sustainable society, with a stable population, houses -the working man's greatest capital expense- should essentially be free.
In summary, I believe Capitalism can be reformed; indeed it is being reformed. What's remarkable is that with all the experts, all the academics, all the studies, the reform appears to be happening 'organically'; without anyone having a clear long term goal.
Rising fuel prices and carbon taxes will impose the need for local production, as Gilbert requires.
The free interchange of ideas, such as here on OLO, will create the informed public which Henry Ford feared would riot in the streets (if they understood how the world of banking and finance worked).
It would be so nice to think that we were finally clever enough to voluntarily jump into progress and expansion (both social and technical), instead of being pushed, either by circumstances beyond our control, or by circumstances we haven't bothered to control.

Dear Grim,
As always, I agree with most of what you say, except here, where you begin: <In summary, I believe Capitalism can be reformed; indeed it is being reformed...>

I do not see that what you were saying previously is summarised subsequently. Can you point to any instances where capitalism is being reformed? Can it be reformed while corporations and capitalists continue to rake in billions? How successful do you think the "free interchange of ideas, such as here on OLO", has been or ever will be in changing bourgeois hegemony? It could easily be argued that the ubiquity of such chatter actually inoculates the system against meaningful change. Moreover imo the whole spectrum of the modern electronic public sphere, at odds with itself, constitutes only a marginal section of the populace, more useful for marketing strategies than effecting social change. Indeed, we malcontents actually strengthen the status quo with its semblance of a progressive culture. Most online users are watching porn or playing games.
I agree "it would be so nice to think that we were finally clever enough to voluntarily jump into progress and expansion (both social and technical), instead of being pushed, either by circumstances beyond our control, or by circumstances we haven't bothered to control", but I see no real evidence that this is more than wishful thinking. Can you point out any groundswell movements that threaten to impose or instantiate meaningful reform?
I'm not a pessimist, but a realist.

*As to Yabby's claim that innovation somehow belongs to Capitalism, this is simply nonsense. Not only were the Russians first into space*

Err Grim, at what cost to Soviet workers? They were queing to buy
a loaf of bread, struggling to buy meat and other basics, their
consumer goods were crappy.

We've seen it time and time again, workers expected to toil away
to suit the ideology and egos of the self proclaimed, arrogant
intelligencia.

Ignore nature at your own peril. People act in their own enlightened
self interest, which is more important to them then any grand dreams
of the State or the dreamers who try to control them.

Innovation and efficiency happen at every level of industry and
business. If I own the business, its in my interest to cut waste,
to focus on customers etc. If decisions were made in Canberra,
frankly I would not bother, much rather go back to bed and
sleep for another hour or two.

That is exactly what we have seen with every socialist system and
why they have failed in the past. Ignore human nature at your
peril.

Grok,

So let's get this straight: as we approach Marx's bicentenary, there haven't yet been any socialist revolutions, no socialist states, no socialist governments ? Anywhere in the world ? Yet this promised land is imminent ? Attempts to install or promote any other form of society are futile ?

Yes, pure capitalism is not the answer. But just because A, capitalism (= bad), may not be working, doesn't mean that everything else, B, ( = good) therefore must work. Neither A nor B may work. And B encompasses a huge range of forms from foraging through to Pol Pot's social-fascism, many of which support neither a population nor a satisfactory way of living. Some social and economic forms may even be worse than A: just ask the women in Afghanistan.

But you want us to put our money, and indeed our lives, at the service of this untried option, C, the true socialism of Grok ?

Good luck !

Joe

Dear Yabby,

On the subject of feeding India's huge population. Can you explain your argument in relation to that country's practice of stockpiling food to artificially inflate prices? Why do people go hungry when there is an abundance of food? This food is either stored in warehouses, the open air or left in the fields to rot.

If the so-called innovations rob the locals of knowledge, force them off the land and deprive them of the means to purchase food...can you tell me who really benefits from this innovation?

http://www.mindfully.org/Food/India-Starve-Surplus2dec02.htm

Dear Poirot,

I traded with India in the 70s. At the end of it all I walked away,
shaking my head, more aware as to why they were poor.

Getting anything passed by their many officials, with their many
stamps of approval, was virtually impossible. Any logic or reason
was thrown out the window. The whole thing could only be described
as constant chaos. The Indian companies who were trying to export
products to Europe, could only cringe in embarrasment at their
own officialdom.

If you think that the average bureaucrat in Dehli cares greatly
about starvation in other parts of India, think again.

Politics in India has always been the problem. How much it impedes
good economics, is the question.

> I traded with India in the 70s. At the end of it all I walked
> away, shaking my head, more aware as to why they were poor.

Given the slant of your posts here, I highly doubt you learned anything other than the 'wogs' certainly weren't 'up to snuff'...

> Getting anything passed by their many officials, with their
> many stamps of approval, was virtually impossible.

The pathology of colonialism and post-/neo-colonialism is well understood. Except by "Free Market" ideologs, of course.

> If you think that the average bureaucrat in Dehli cares greatly
> about starvation in other parts of India, think again.

Like that's somehow a revelation. The alienation of people from one another, psychologically and morally -- due in the first instance to their alienation from each other by means of their estrangement in their various associations to the common means of production -- is a well-known fact. Except to "Free Market" ideologs, of course, of course.

> Politics in India has always been the problem. How much it impedes
> good economics, is the question.

'Politics', as they say, is "concentrated economics". So true. But its amazing how your entire line of thinking not once reaches back to the British Raj... which is "politics" indeed. And in India, no less. Especially before the Partition.

People who talk about different possible “economic systems” are merely displaying their ignorance of economics. It’s like saying why don’t we have a different physics, or a different chemistry, because we don’t like the old one?

Underlying the idea of different economic systems is the idea that there is really no such thing as universally true propositions of human action, no such thing as reason, or economic science. Everything is just a matter of opinion, of “ideology”, and no-one has any more claim on the truth than anyone else.

Of course if this were true:
a) socialists would have no more claim to truth or right than anyone else and there’d be no reason to have socialism rather than capitalism; and
b) the different attempts to implement socialism would have worked; or at least some, or even just *one* of them would have worked.

Dear Peter Hume,
you raise fascinating considerations here. Economy is indeed a part of human life, but what is ostensibly economics today is a gross distortion of what it was to Plato and Aristotle and philosophy in general prior to the capitalist era. Economics, according to Aristotle, is properly only the art of acquisition in the sense of procuring those items useful to a household or a state; "true wealth consists of such use-values, for the amount of property which is needed for a good life is not unlimited". True economy then is a "rich" life complemented with the satisfaction of all its needs. What we have under capitalism is analogous to what Aristotle called "chrematistics", or acquisition for its own sake. "Economics, unlike chrematistics, has a limit ... for the object of the former is something different from money, of the latter the augmentation of money. By confusing these two forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum as the final goal of economics" (Aristotle).
What we have today is chrematistics, not economy!

Your suggestion that there are "universally true propositions of human action", including "economic science" is, imo, true, but you seem to be saddling human nature with an ignoble chrematistics rather than a virtuous spirit of "economy". Indeed it is today uncontested in vulgar circles that Man is "by nature" insatiably acquisitive. This is arguably not so; Man's nature is distorted by capitalism; s/he is to be pitied for an addiction that has attained the status (indeed the stature!) of a norm. Rather than true human economy, arguably innate, capitalism, or 'political economy', is an abstraction, a virus.

Interesting posts today everyone!

David f, "You don't justify atrocities to produce eventual pie in the sky." Personally I think that you should say sorry for this smudge on my character. You were upset when I said you were ignorant, while you are inferring that I am some kind of closet war criminal. If I can spell it out for you again; I do not support any reforms that are not popularly supported.

Squeers, Sienna etc, This idea of a necessary drop in living standards in order for us to become more sustainable does not take into account the current massive inefficiencies in the economic system. By this I am referring especially to the efficiencies that can be gained through cooperation and sharing, most particularly at the local levels of society. My previous article on OLO was of course on this subject, criticizing Adam Smith for describing competition as the sole engine of a healthy economy. http://www.onlineopinion.com.au/view.asp?article=10904

Squeers, "I was pointing out to GH that what he is advocating is, essentially, communism."

Thankyou for trying to include me, but I am definitely not advocating communism. I do not believe that it is possible to rescue socialism/communism from it's doomed position as the dialectical opposite of capitalism.

But actually I think that we can see a melting away of the negative polarity between those two enemies. Instead we are moving forward in a new way that has taken something good from either extreme. I would suggest, therefore that both moderate socialists and moderate capitalists are much better defined as being in neither of the opposing categories but in the middle. The child from the two parents, the third part of the dialectical triad. This us and them debate is not only negative, it is also way behind the times. Here's to the new paradigm. Enjoy your taco

*I highly doubt you learned anything other than the 'wogs' certainly weren't 'up to snuff'...*

I expected nothing less from a self opinionated poster such as yourself
Grok, then to try and create a strawman argument. It won't work,
sorry.

But as a matter of interest, rather then rely on pencil pushers
such as yourself to find out what was wrong with India, I asked
the Indians who lived there. Their overwhelming reply was nearly
always the same. "Too many people!"

But what I have gleaned from your posts, is that you know diddly
squat about business. Its really quite straightforward, but clearly
beyond you. Produce win-win outcomes, where everyone benefits
and everyone is happy.

*What we have today is chrematistics, not economy!*

That depends on the indivdual, Squeers. Plenty of free market
believers get to a point where they accept that they have enough to
see them out, so retire early to follow their passions. Others
such as Murdoch, do it out of pure passion, as they would find
say playing golf, rather boring. Others, such as Gates and Buffett,
see it all as a huge game, then see the challenge in giving it all
away, to the benefit of humanity. Not everyone is thrilled by the
thought of tending the roses in their old age, or even pondering
about Aristotle for that matter.

Squeers, "Sorry, but all you're offering is syllogistic rather than dialectical thought." No-one has ever accused me of that before. I am not sure what to think!

Grim, "Rising fuel prices and carbon taxes will impose the need for local production, as Gilbert requires."

It is true that fuel and carbon prices will encourage us to localize. Unfortunately, it will not necesarily encourage us to establish the appropriate social infrastructure etc. In short, unless we steer the ship, we will not be pushed where we want to go.

With this in mind, as well as carbon and other resource use and pollution taxes, let us also have things like local cash currencies, trade tariffs on things not purchased locally, incentives to share and cooperate with neighbours, (as an example of a reform, we could legislate to allow neighbourhood bodies to manage rental houses in their area if they would like to), etc.

Gilbert Holmes wrote: David f, "You don't justify atrocities to produce eventual pie in the sky." Personally I think that you should say sorry for this smudge on my character. You were upset when I said you were ignorant, while you are inferring that I am some kind of closet war criminal."

Dear Gilbert Holmes,

I was referring to those who make apologies for the crimes of Lenin and the other Marxist criminals. To the best of my knowledge you have not done so, and I was not referring to you. I don't think and did not mean to imply that you were any sort of war or other criminal.

I had not meant to post further because the discussion has devolved into an unpleasant slanging match. However, set your mind at ease. As far as I know your character is irreproachable.

Actually, my ignorance is boundless.

> I was referring to those who make apologies for the crimes
> of Lenin and the other Marxist criminals.

You know, you can SAY that about great revolutionary heroes like Lenin -- but I wonder what your lot will be saying and doing when we put the whole passel of your surviving arch-criminal bourgeois leadership on trial for War Crimes and Crimes Against Humanity in the future... It's too bad we can't get to ALL the capitalist war criminals and slavers -- like just about every U.S. president, from George Washington on down -- who already lie in their plush mausolea; but we can and will certainly put their _posterity_ on trial. Because we will be writing the Future's history books (or their electronic equivalent).

As the saying goes, david f: 'He who lives in a glass house shouldn't throw stones'...

> It is true that fuel and carbon prices will encourage us to localize.
> Unfortunately, it will not necesarily encourage us to establish the
> appropriate social infrastructure etc. In short, unless we steer the
> ship, we will not be pushed where we want to go.

And how do you propose to take control of this 'ship of state' from its present -- murderous and armed-to-the-teeth -- pirate crew? By 'voting' them off the bridge? Moral suasion, perhaps? Bribery? Trickery..?

> With this in mind, as well as carbon and other resource use and
> pollution taxes, let us also have things like local cash currencies,
> trade tariffs on things not purchased locally, incentives to share and
> cooperate with neighbours, (as an example of a reform, we could
> legislate to allow neighbourhood bodies to manage rental houses in
> their area if they would like to), etc.

While this hippie-dippy "Small is Beautiful" stuff continues to go over well with the still-comfortable (but not for long) and reformist liberals and petit-bourgeois Left, the fact remains that only world-wide organization of the world's resources under a socialist federation of workers & farmers states could possibly make the transition to a 'sustainable' 'world-class' lifestyle enjoyed by *every* human being on the planet.

"Growing your own" just won't cut it, I'm afraid.
Talk about utopian.

Excuse me. I have to go out and plow the 'back 40' with my mule...

The larger the organisation, the greater the gap between those at the top, and those at the bottom. This isn't theory, this is observable fact. There should be nothing more frightening to any thinking person than a single world encompassing organisation; whether it be a world government, or an oligarchy of global corporations.
Just as we have (largely) come to accept that nature's way of NOT putting all the eggs in one basket (diversity) is the best way to avoid extinction, so we should now have the maturity to accept the need for economic diversity also. So long as people are individuals, with different wants, desires and needs, no shoe will ever be found that fits all.
Viva la difference.
Squeers, you are right in regard to my 'summary'. It was more a very brief summary of my thoughts, than of my posts (on this thread). As to the signs of reform, I agree with your analysis that the world is in crisis, and changes will occur. That laissez faire Capitalism is collapsing at the same time as Humanity is achieving an unprecedented awareness of eco-fragility is interesting.
But what I see most of all is the breakdown of large institutions (like governments imposed, with no regard for local ethnicity or culture) into smaller ones. Even the EU is showing signs of fracture.
What is most vital today and tomorrow is not which side of the political debate wins, but that we recognise that war itself is the enemy; and that just because the community next door is 'different', does not give anyone the right to force them to conform.
The most efficient machine is the one which is neither seen nor heard, but just does what it is supposed to do. This is what all Libertarians wish for in their governments.
Where we differ, is in the RW belief that markets -the very home of corruption- can ever be self regulating, with no rule of Law.
This is very much to "ignore human nature at your peril".

Dear Gilbert Holmes,

Have you read E.F. Schumarcher's classic "Small is "BeautifuL"? (Grok reminded me of it with his "hippy dippy" reference).
The blurb on the back says: "Dr Schumacher maintains that Man's current pursuit of profit and progress, which promotes giant organizations and increased specialisation, has if fact resulted in gross economic inefficiency, environmental pollution and inhumane working conditions.
Dr Schumacher challenges the doctrine of economic, technological and scientific specialisation and proposes a system of Intermediate Technology, based on smaller working units, communal ownership and regional workplaces utilising local labour and resources."
Sounds right up your alley, don't you think? It was first printed in 1973, but obviously still relevant.

Dear Yabby,

I remember reading somewhere recently that the population in India didn't really explode until after colonisation...can't remember where I read it, but will keep hunting and try and find the piece. Also read (In Niall Ferguson's, "Empire") how that around the year 1700, India controlled about 25 percent of total world output, while Britain was more like a parasite on the periphery,...a reminder of how things can alter...Ferguson writes: "The idea that Britain might one day rule India would have struck a visitor to New Delhi in the late seventeenth century as preposterous."

> People who talk about different possible “economic systems” are merely
> displaying their ignorance of economics. It’s like saying why don’t we
> have a different physics, or a different chemistry, because we don’t
> like the old one?

I'm glad you put it this way... because then it becomes easier to explain your egregious error in not understanding the *emergent* character of all developing phenomena: especially including the bourgeois economic system, which has only been dominant in the world for the past few centuries. For that matter: what sort of "economics" did our cavemen ancestors practice, 100.000 or 200.000 years ago, hmm..? In fact, your sort of reified thinking leads directly to widespread howlers like seeing cavemen as living in 'nuclear families', etc. (of course), and even seeing Fred Flintstone as being a fine working class exemplar of our paleolithic past...

For that matter, how can the understanding of simple or even complex chemical reactions explain the 'wonder' of the myriad life processes going on all around us? Or mere 'supply and demand' explain the workings of the "Global" world economy..?

> Underlying the idea of different economic systems is the idea that
> there is really no such thing as universally true propositions of
> human action, no such thing as reason, or economic science.
> Everything is just a matter of opinion, of “ideology”, and no-one
> has any more claim on the truth than anyone else.

Indeed, there's no such thing as "human nature" -- as it is posited by the ideologs of the "Free Market"; only human *social* nature: which is conditioned by the evolving society we all live in. Fred Flintstone very much did NOT think as we think today, in many ways. Nor did people of the medieval period, for that matter. And the fact that you fixate on the ideology and technique of one historical period (your own, of course) as being the epitome of all that is human -- besides being hubris of among the most obtuse kind -- blinds you to the true, emergent, evolving nature of Reality itself.

Well friends, my wife and I are away for a couple of days of quiet and sunshine.
Grim,
if what you say about the break-up of large social entities is true, I think the phenomena is matched by the increasing wealth and power of stateless corporations.
I'm persuaded that out best hope is for some kind of world governing body; a world of disparate states will kill each other off, and we do live in one goldfish bowl. If we can model climate change, we ought to be modelling global humanity and how it can be maintained sustainably and equitably. Paradoxically, I believe a world society would re-enliven cultural distinctiveness. All cultures are at present suffused with the serum of capital and their distinctiveness consists only in their relative wealth/impoverishmnet and how they market themselves.

Gilbert,
I've asked direct questions above; if you want to contest the charge of syllogistic thinking you'll have to address them.

Grok,
Marx did believe in human essence/nature/species-being. And his idea of social evolution was not an item of faith, or even a grand narrative (Engels promoted that). His dialectic was more a "negative" dialectic a la Adorno; a logical model of the primary driving force of humanity, ownership of the means of production.
I'm not sure the picture of revolution you conjure up sounds like much of an improvement on revolutions of the past. If there ever is a reformed economy I suspect it will have to be a peaceful transition born of necessity. Global human decimation is much more likely, I fear; in which case they'd be nothing to stop the whole process repeating itself in a debased form.

But gotta run..

*In short, unless we steer the ship, we will not be pushed where we want to go.*

In short, with the wrong captain, he could take us right into
the rocks!

I don't think tht you have thought this one through very well, GH.

So I'll give you a couple of simple examples, from 100'000

We take things like pencils and ball point pens for granted. They
are cheap and we want them to remain so, even in your society,
where you want everything produced locally.

The Discovery Science channel last weekend showed how both these
items are made. The product might be simple, but the machinery to
automate the processes, is quite complex and certainly not cheap.

It makes absolutaly no economic sense, to duplicate this kind of
machinery everywhere, tie up capital in buildings, machinery, just
to produce small volumes. All you would land up with, is very
expensive pens and pencils.

So who would be the ultimate losers? Consumers of course. Which
means all of us.

That is just two products, out of 100'000

Dear Grok,

I support or find excuses for no criminals.

In the elections to the Constituent Assembly the Social Revolutionaries got 27% of the vote, and the Bolsheviks got 18% of the vote. Not willing to abide by the election results Lenin had his supporters turf out the constituent Assembly. He established the dictatorship. Lenin's Cheka murdered people because of their class identification which is not very different from murdering someone because they are a Jew or a Gypsy. Lenin founded the first gulags a few months after he took power. Lenin brought back censorship which Kerensky had eliminated.

Lenin remains scum, and you remain blind to his criminality.

> What we have under capitalism is analogous to what Aristotle
> called "chrematistics", or acquisition for its own sake.
> "Economics, unlike chrematistics, has a limit ... for the
> object of the former is something different from money, of
> the latter the augmentation of money. By confusing these two
> forms, which overlap each other, some people have been led to
> look upon the preservation and increase of money ad infinitum
> as the final goal of economics"

As the above demonstrates, what the bourgeois apologists fixate on as being some sort of "universal truth" (and thus true for all time) is in fact merely a very animal tendency (amongst others) to "accumulate" resources (nuts, meat, gold, etc.); but taken to an extreme under the present system of capital accumulation. They make the mistake of seeing this one aspect of animal nature in our society as being necessarily always the same in dimension, duration and quality, etc. -- when it's in fact a deadend in its present, hypertrophied state, due to the fact that private individuals are allowed to make self-interested decisions concerning what are more and more obviously the public means of production.

> Your suggestion that there are "universally true propositions of
> human action", including "economic science" is, imo, true, but
> you seem to be saddling human nature with an ignoble chrematistics
> rather than a virtuous spirit of "economy". Indeed it is today
> uncontested in vulgar circles that Man is "by nature" insatiably
> acquisitive. This is arguably not so; Man's nature is distorted by
> capitalism

What these people are doing is choosing to emphasize whatever human/animal characteristics suit their social position best; and so of course they emphasize greed/accumulation as they need it -- and other traits as they need them, in other situations. And need I say this is highly hypocritical -- not to mention extremely un-scientific.

*due to the fact that private individuals are allowed to make self-interested decisions concerning what are more and more obviously the public means of production.*

Sheesh, those "evil" people, actually allowed to make decisions
for themselves. We'll have to get out the socialist hammer and
knock them back into the mould which we want them to live in.

Control freaks waving the socialist banner, is the real problem
that we face. Luckily they are few and far between. The world
has seen the outcome, if they are given any say at all.

Dear Poirot,

Yes indeed, population increased in India in the last couple
of hundred years or so, as it has elsewhere. There are many reasons,
for one, less plagues, less wars, better nutrition, etc.

Moving foods like potatoes, maize, tomatoes and various other
crops around the globe, had its effects on population. The
development of vaccines, antibiotics and other medicines has
also had a dramatic effect.

What we as a species have ignored to some degree, is the effect
of all these things on population. In India for instance,
they have around 2.5 % of the world's land, yet 17% of the population.
So pressures are enormous.

Last time I checked, still only about half of Indian women were
using family planning. Too many people remains there no 1 problem
and its not getting better.

Schumacher's 'Small is Beautiful' is indeed an excellent text, and anyone who hasn't got a copy on the shelf should consider investing in one. (or maybe share one with a friend) I hope you have read it Grok.

Encouraging small scale economics is about giving control to people and communities. It is also about intensive resource management in a scarce world. We can still engage in specialized professions and have the odd pencil factory set up.

Grok, Yabby. A discussion of socio-economics will certainly not be complete without consideration of human nature.

IMO there is such a thing as human nature. It swings between the physical and the energetic on one spectrum and the desire to control and the desire to commune with our surrounds on the other spectrum. (These come from my idea that I mentioned earlier of two categories of dialectical tensions: being/non-being and separateness/connectedness) This gives us what I call the four primary emotions: Toward sensual beauty, toward empathetic connection, toward being in control of our circumstances and toward justice.

Within ourselves we need to balance these sometimes contradictory tendencies. With balance, all is positive. Too much of one or the other however will result in either the loss of the self or the loss of community.

Ideally our society will be structured to facilitate the complexities of our being. Not assume or expect us to be one way or another at the expense of the other aspects of our being, as capitalism and communism have tended to do from opposite ends of the spectrum.

I'm interested in the effects that large scale industry for profit has on indigenous populations....they are the ones who end up in the cities with no means of support.
Part of my argument here concerns the uprooting of such people, and their relocation away from their traditional food sources.
A good example is the damming of the Mekong River for a hydro-electric operation. The locals have been relocated, given compensation ($5,000) and now have electricity and T.V...which on the surface seems an advancement, yet they now cannot access their farms or the river because they are too far away. They are having to come to terms with having to "buy" food. The Mekong is an abundant provider of sustenance and now they cannot partake of it.
The same thing has happened in India where in the last fifty years there have been thirty three hundred big dams built - 40 percent of the world's big dams have been constructed in India, and even if your village managed to escape being flooded, the further downstream you are, the worse off you find yourself...sugar factories and golf course promoters are more likely to be beneficiaries than ordinary people.

*I'm interested in the effects that large scale industry for profit has on indigenous populations....*

Poirot, I'm interested why you seemingly always want to blame
everything on large scale industry for profit. Most of these
decisions are made by politicians and bureaucrats. They make
the rules, the rest of us have to abide by them.

The Communist Chinese Govt is well known for not giving a hoot
about the rights of individuals. So why your focus on just
for profit industry?

Gilbert, indeed there is a thing called human nature. I'm
fascinated by fields such as neuroscience and evolutionary
psychology. But feel free to invent your own wheel, if you wish.

Dear Yabby,

Are you suggesting that Chinese large-scale industry does not turn a profit?

http://www.businessweek.com/news/2010-09-27/chinese-industrial-company-profits-rise-55-on-year.html

Dear Poirot,

No, for I know that some Chinese companies are not state owned and
do make a profit.

What I am curious about is why you want to blame political decisions,
made by Govts, on companies.

The Chinese for instance, have a long history of taking whatever
land they need, without much concern about the people. Especially
for building dams.

So from my perspective, you are biased.

Since we are straying far afield from hegelian vs. marxist dialectics, let me introduce one basic example (which could be of either one), from the standpoint of political-economy: since the Rightwingers here (and these reactionary days, even most liberals are de facto Rightwingers) absolutely insist on making everything about this 'dialog' _political_ in terms they can understand and expect and demand. So while political developments, per se, are in fact a higher, more complex and concrete order of dialectical relations than, say, the more abstract and Ideal "Being" and "Nothingness", we can still point to basic dialectical relations at this level; such as how bourgeois "Democracy", while continuing (just barely today) to give us their much-vaunted and proclaimed *forms* of democracy (if that), in fact entirely betray that promise (and have from the beginning, actually) by almost completely emptying that form of any real, meaningful, truly democratic *content*...

And of course, the VERY first thing the Reichwingers here will want to talk about then would be the not-very-democratic praxis of the "people's democratic republican" democracies. As if their constant attempts here at typical misdirection are fooling anybody.

Dear Yabby,

Grok makes good points about "democracy".
Government intervention and participation in these decisions is usually a partnership between them and corporate elites. Arundhati Roy says that: "For contractors and politicians, just the building of a dam makes them a lot of money".(3,500 big dams built in India in the last fifty years - 40 percent of the world's big dams).
For instance, Enron once signed a secret contract with the Indian Government that guaranteed that corporation profits that added up to 60 percent of India's rural development budget.
So government and multi-nationals are in bed together. We've been here before, Yabby, so you know what I'm going to bring up next...the WTO, the IMF and the World Bank - who open the door to the multi-nationals to deal with governments (or even dictate to them) to assist in centalising resources and denying autonomy to the common man.

Correction: that should be 3,300 big dams built in India in the last fifty years

Yes, Poirot, a pox on capitalism. I'm sure many of us on this thread would agree wholeheartedly.

But Grok,

There must also be very many of us who have spent our lives, perhaps from early childhood, working towards (where possible) and waiting ,waiting, waiting for that socialist exemplar, some form of socialism which did not either degenerate quickly into the most ghastly fascism (Cambodia, Ethiopia, the USSR, China, Congo-Br, Yugoslavia), transform itself into some form of state capitalism (China, Vietnam), turn itself into a morally bankrupt, armed camp (North Korea) or fizzle out (Zimbabwe, Cuba).

Marx has been dead for nearly 130 years. There have been umpteen uprisings, rebellions, communes (Paris, Canton), revolutions, guerilla wars, all over the world, all attempting to put some form of socialism in place - and, in my view, all have failed. We can blame capitalism for this (well, what the hell did you expect 'it' to do in response to imminent overthrow but fight back ?) especially US capitalism, but one way or the other, failure has been the upshot. Many of us, I'm sure, feel that we have p!ssed our working lives away going into bat for socialism (as we may have interpreted it) and got nowhere, that's it all been a giant con.

[TBC]

Grok,

[cont]

So given that there must be something better than capitalism, and that socialism seems not to have worked anywhere, what do we do now ? Where do we go from here ? The temptation seems to be to go backwards, to some pre-capitalist Eden, to the idylls of medieval times, or of Paleolithic 'communism', or to find validity in and praise for 'anything but the here and now' such as Islamist extremism, or deep, dark Greenism: ultimately anti-people ideologies.

But can we build on democracy and what Marx would have seen as the vital contributions of bourgeois social development, i.e. the Enlightenment, equal human rights, advanced human organisation, etc., and to get beyond these valuable achievements to build better societies ?

You can slag Popper, but if revolution, cutting every Gordian knot in sight, has not worked, then can better societies be built incrementally ? Slowly ? Painfully ? But without sacrificing vast human populations in the process ? After all, what is more important, some theoretical ideal, or the people who are supposedly to benefit from it ?

And just on the topic of human nature, above: I'm sure that no two people contributing to this thread would agree on everything: put any two of us in a room and we would be disagreeing within five minutes - true ? People are not automatons - we each have our own life-experiences and interpret the world variously on those bases. There never will be (I fervently hope) just One New Man (or Woman) - we always, I certainly hope, will argue like cats in a bag. MY socialism, or whatever supplants it, will be unpredictable, even unplannable, utilising the genius of a multitude of individuals.

I wonder what that sort of society would look like ?

Just asking :)

Joe

Alan Kohler, on his "Business Specatator website, makes some
interesting comments this morning. Australia is far more
socialist then China. In Australia the workers largely own the
means of production through their super funds, dividends from
those means of production are regularly paid by companies and
workers benefit through both dividend payments and company
tax payments. In China the State largely owns the means of
production and workers are paid nothing but a wage.

So there you have it Groky, you live in a socialist heaven :)

Poirot, yes indeed the Indians have built alot of dams. The nation
would starve and the cities would run out of water without them.
The Indian people benefit.

Loudmouth:
As I've covered a few times here already: 'stalinism !== socialism'. So "going to bat" for stalinism, for one thing, has been a guaranteed trail of tears for millions over decades. Which OTOH doesn't prove much *more* than that stalinism is NOT socialism -- no matter what anyone says.

And indeed: many people have decided that, if we cannot move forward (based on just this one set of experiences and no other, whatever number of its variations over some few decades) then we must move -- by their inexorable 'logic'... backward. But what kind of dumb logic is that. Small is NOT beautiful in the wrong context, for instance. But dialectical logic would make that clear -- proving here AFAIC nothing so much as that Gilbert Holmes doesn't understand his ABCs of dialectics...

The thing is to KNOW what socialism is all about -- and very few do, obviously -- and therefore come to understand that it has never really been TRIED yet. And that too, as well, by socialist logic and a scientific, historical understanding of past and present society, **that the planet has never been more ready for socialism than it is right now**.

I'll get to the specific stuff you ask about in a following comment.

As for Yabby: he of all people, even unknowingly (uncomprehendingly) points to the true fact(!!) that even in capitalist Oz, many aspects of society are actually MORE socialistic than in China(!!) -- even including corporate organization of social production: and even its 'control' by large pools of workers' capital pension funds(!) -- tho' of course, as usual, he doesn't know what to _do_ with these facts: much as a little boy stealing a joyride on a big tractor or his daddy's car, can really mess up what he thought he was on about...

Dear Yabby,

This is perhaps my last post here as we seem to be going around in circles.
Re: your reference to India's need for so many big dams. I'll direct you back to my link on the stockpiling of food by the Indian authorities and the massive surpluses. Seems people are still going hungry because the water from these dams is diverted away from ordinary souls and goes instead to large-scale growing operations. This leaves the ordinary man unable to grow his own and totally dependent on the artificially contrived "market".

Grok,

Your arrogance is just breath-taking ! You are either some sixteen-year-old twit who has just discovered this Bright New Idea, or some 64-year-old ex-SPA member who has learnt nothing in fifty years.

Maybe ten BILLION people have come into being since Marx's time - and you think you have such exclusive knowledge, you are so mentally privileged, so uniquely brilliant, such a genius, that you KNOW that socialism has not really been tried yet ? Do you really think it has not been tried in a vast number of situations and permutations, by perhaps a couple of billion of those people ?

So, like the gambler at the roulette table who has lost his fortune after consistently backing the wrong numbers, you want him to borrow so that he can keep gambling ?

Sounds like Einstein's definition of insanity to me, mate :)

Joe

Dear Poirot,

When people buy 6ha plots for 3000$ to irrigate, its hardly bigtime
farmers doing it.

http://www.indianchild.com/agricultural_system_india.htm

This is the thing. Your biased mind can only ever look at one
side of the equation. Many millions of Indian farmers use irrigation.
Perhaps you need to do a bit more homework on the subject.

*tho' of course, as usual, he doesn't know what to _do_ with these facts*

Yabby doesen't need to DO anything with these facts, just point them
out. At first Grok, you didn't believe them, now you have no answer to
them.

Grok, I liked your comments about democracy, although it did take me a few minutes to disect your convoluted style. I think we can look at a dialectic tension between more or less democracy in the same way as there is a tension between me having either more or less time sitting here writing. (This would be on the category of being/non-being)

More interestingly though, I think that we can look at the ideal of democracy as existing as a balance between the extremes social cohesiveness and individual freedom. (separateness/connectedness) Too much of either will be terrible, either totalitarianism or anarchy, but we can take something good from either end of the spectrum to create a stable, organized society with high levels of personal and community freedom.

"...we are straying far afield from hegelian vs. marxist dialectics,..... since the Rightwingers here....absolutely insist on making everything about this 'dialog' _political_ in terms they can understand."

I like this too. We are certainly not hearing a lot of, "Oh, isn't the dialectic an interesting concept!" from the likes of Yabby or Peter Hume. It's all just communism sucks and capitalism is great.

*but we can take something good from either end of the spectrum to create a stable, organized society with high levels of personal and community freedom.*

That is just the problem Gilbert. Perhaps PH and myself simply
have a higher regard for the freedom and rights of the individual,
compared to yourself, who thinks he should be the captain of the
ship and clearly wants to control others, as part of your emotional
make up. You are not the only one. Grok clearly thinks that he
knows what is best for us workers. Ego mania comes to mind here.

As to the rest, I recently read a beautiful quote. It came down
to knowledge being the accumulation of facts, wisdom being in
their simplification. There is some truth in that. I'll stick
to wisdom :)

.

Gilbert Holmes wrote: "...we are straying far afield from hegelian vs. marxist dialectics,..... since the Rightwingers here....absolutely insist on making everything about this 'dialog' _political_ in terms they can understand."

Dear Gilbert,

Do you regard as Rightwinger one who doesn't accept hegelian and/or marxist dialectics? That would make Mikhail Bakhunin, Emma Goldman, Peter Kropotkin and many others previously regarded as left Rightwingers.

Hi David, That was actually a quote that I lifted from one of Grok's posts. I quoted him then responded.

My observation that Peter Hume and Yabby (who of the various contributors here I would classify as more right wing) are not using dialectical arguments seems to me to agree with the basic premise of the article from which this discussion ensued: That marxism has monopolized the dialectic, which is actually a much bigger and more beautiful concept than Marx or friends realized.

Dear Gilbert,

I try to avoid the terms, left and right, altogether. They are too often used a means of name calling. The ur leftists were the rich French bourgeoisie who sat on the left of the speaker in parlement.

GH: <My observation that Peter Hume and Yabby (who of the various contributors here I would classify as more right wing) are not using dialectical arguments seems to me to agree with the basic premise of the article from which this discussion ensued: That marxism has monopolized the dialectic, which is actually a much bigger and more beautiful concept than Marx or friends realized.>

Dear GH,
so far you've said nothing to indicate you have the faintest idea what "the dialectic", as you call it, is. You've just found a shiny little something you like to equate childishly with yin yang. And yet you have the nerve to pretend to understand Hegel! And to disparage the monumental thought of Karl Marx and others who followed after him!

The "right wing" ought to enlist you as an ally, for you're no friend to the left with your heedless surmise and puerile prognostications.
Unless you care to show us some depth of understanding, I see you as a rather ordinary figure skater.

Dear Yabby,

Notwithstanding your superior "wisdom" and my "bias"- the second part of you link appears, for the most part, to support my position - especially in relation to the Narmada River development.
This (my last) link is even more to the point.

http://sanhati.com/excerpted/2698/

Gilbert, it seems to me that you and Grok tend to take what
Marx claimed about human behaviour, far too seriously.

Perhaps you want to update yourself by 100 years or so.

On this very weekend, they have been screening Charlie
Rose's "Brain Series" episode 11, which is about how
human brains make decisions.

http://www.charlierose.com/view/collection/10702

Its the latest neuroscience.

Its on Bloomberg tv, or you can read the transcripts
online, if you wish.

Hi Squeers,

Marx himself either did not know or ascribed little significance to the fact, but Hegel was certainly aware that the roots of the dialectic lie predominantly in the concept of yin/yang polarity.

Sheesh Poirot, your last link has a banner over the top of
it, making the website's agenda quite clear. Could you perhaps
try a little less biased sources for your information?

Try this one:

http://www.adb.org/Water/actions/ind/irrigation-reforms.asp

As to PVR on plants and seeds, the laws of PVR are similar
around the world. Indian farmers have a choice, as do
Australian farmers.

There is an actual real life experiment going on, which I
observe on my way to town. On one side of the road a Govt
bred canola crop, which had to be cut for hay, as it failed
in the drought like conditions. On the other side, a PVR
crop of canola, where the farmer bought the seed from a
company which has invested tens of millions in breeding
better varieties. That crop looks pretty good actually,
given the conditions and the farmer will harvest a crop.

Should I now condem the evils of companies investing in
plant breeding for a royalty payment?

Gilbert,m

My crude understanding of Marx's reference to the dialectic is that dynamically

(a) some problem arises, some hassle, as a messy consequence of some previous process or situation (i.e., thesis), and

(b) all sorts of reactions, oppositions, resistances are thrown up, devised, put into play (antithesis) to attempt to resolve the tensions generated by this hassle, so that

(c) after many failures, tragedies and disasters, across many different situations, a workable 'solution' prevails temporarily (synthesis) which seems to resolve the hassles, tensions and imperfections of the original thesis, but

(d) in turn becomes yet another thesis, never perfect, never finished, always open to objections, reactions, resistances, (i.e. antitheses) which compel the search for yet more syntheses.

i.e. Marx was exploring a never-ending process which leads ever 'higher', to more inclusive, comprehensive, sophisticated and embracing solutions to the inevitable imperfections of praxis, of the realities of social practice, praxis.

So, although Marx himself may have been unaware of it, he was trying to cope with the openness and uncertainty of post-Enlightenment knowledge and society, i.e. the permanent revolution, if you like, of an unending process of thesis-antithesis-synthesis.

But on the other hand, the common 19th century and ANTI-Enlightenment yearning for closure may have impelled him to proscribe yet another closure, a Utopia, the Final Solution to Class Struggle, the Communist Society, the Grand Synthesis posing the Grand Anti-thesis, Socialism, to the Grand Thesis, Capitalism, to produce a Synthesis purged of all flies in the ointment so that the Perfect Class, the Historic Proletariat, could attain the Perfect Society, purged of all those other classes and groups which have hitherto plagued REAL society. Ergo: end of thesis-antithesis-synthesis, and heaven on earth.

I'm sure that Marx and Engels were decent men, well-intentioned, but .....

after 160 years of wishing, I am beginning dimly to suspect that we were yet again led well and truly up the creek. After nearly two hundred years, there has to be a better way, one that does not rely on Saviours, but on real, actual human beings, us.

Joe

Hi Joe/Loudmouth,

Good comment!

I think your a,b,c,d points are a good description of the dialectic, though I would say more classically Hegelian than Marxist.

I think that while things do have a tendency to find positive balance between the opposing thesis and anti-thesis, life is not static. So a newly found 'balance' will tend to become unstable over time and subject to new dialectical tensions arizing from within it.

We are capable however, of establishing social institutions that are more rather than less balanced and stable, just as we are capable of cultivating our own personalities so that we are more balanced, stable and less likely to crack up.

But this is not utopian, just hopefull, and I think inspiring. As you say, and as Confucius would surely have said, it is up to us.

Marx seemed to think that the tension between the individual and the community, between competition and cooperation would somehow vanish within a communist society; but this can never be. The tension will remain. It will just be either more or less manifest, depending on how good we are at creating and maintaining a well balanced society.

>My crude understanding of Marx's reference to the dialectic
is that dynamically

>(a) some problem arises, some hassle, as a messy consequence
of some previous process or situation (i.e., thesis), and...

The thing to remember here, UltraGob, is that, for all sorts of human reasons, people start with the complicated, societal relations *first* -- rather than starting with a foundation in the necessary 'boring' stuff: i.e. dialectical-materialist relations of physical reality... Some types even go to the extreme of claiming that dialectics is only the 'method' itself (and not a few supposed marxists) -- and all the rest of it is nonsense. Which is itself, of course, utter nonsense of the first order.

So the people here should rather concentrate on the _simple_ stuff first, before going on to more complex relations; but of course, they don't want to *DO* that. They want to discuss *only* what interests THEM... And thus all the wasted verbiage here (and elsewhere).

> i.e. Marx was exploring a never-ending process which leads
ever 'higher', to more inclusive, comprehensive, sophisticated
and embracing solutions to the inevitable imperfections of
praxis, of the realities of social practice, praxis.

That's right, SuperBoca: the Universe is an open-ended process of processes -- with emergent properties developing out of the quantitative and qualitative changes occurring thereby. And I find it endlessly amazing that almost NO bourgeois "critics" of marxism care to even comprehend this -- let alone try to refute it, or claim it as their own, or whatever (except in bourgeois science recently, in the latter case).

> So, although Marx himself may have been unaware of it, he
was trying to cope with the openness and uncertainty of
post-Enlightenment knowledge and society, i.e. the permanent
revolution, if you like, of an unending process of thesis-
antithesis-synthesis.

Surely you jest, O cacophonous-piehole. Marx, if anyone, is STILL the World record-holder in understanding exactly that, AFAIK.

>the common 19th century and ANTI-
Enlightenment yearning for closure may have impelled him
to proscribe yet another closure, a Utopia, the Final
Solution to Class Struggle, the Communist Society, the
Grand Synthesis posing the Grand Anti-thesis, Socialism,
to the Grand Thesis, Capitalism, to produce a Synthesis
purged of all flies in the ointment so that the Perfect
Class, the Historic Proletariat, could attain the Perfect
Society, purged of all those other classes and groups which
have hitherto plagued REAL society. Ergo: end of thesis-
antithesis-synthesis, and heaven on earth.

A bogus claim against marxism. That's more Hegel's -- which Marx famously corrected, making the dialectic *materialist*, not _Idealist_.

Understand that Marx *very carefully* DIDN'T prescribe a detailed plan for communist society *because* he and Engels et al. had analyzed previous attempts at designing utopias -- and come to understand all of them were Idealized plans growing out of the heads of their creators, ready-formed: rather than necessarily, out of objective conditions of society. And a sure sign of not understanding Marx is the criticism Marx *didn't* give us a detailed plan for socialism!

Actually, Marx knew full well that communist society would develop according to its own higher laws -- but was wise enough not to second-guess that which none of us could know beforehand.

>I'm sure that Marx and Engels were decent men, well-intentioned,
but .....

>after 160 years of wishing, I am beginning dimly to suspect
that we were yet again led well and truly up the creek. After
nearly two hundred years, there has to be a better way, one
that does not rely on Saviours, but on real, actual human
beings, us.

You've allowed bourgeois propaganda (and our failures, of course) to cast doubt in your mind. Only the wage-laborers and allies can take power, democratically. That *is* socialism. And Marx figured it out. Don't give up yet. Understand what we still have to do.

And there have never been as many proletarians on the planet as there are today...

>I think that while things do have a tendency to find
positive balance between the opposing thesis and anti-
thesis, life is not static. So a newly found 'balance'
will tend to become unstable over time and subject to
new dialectical tensions arizing from within it.

>We are capable however, of establishing social institutions
that are more rather than less balanced and stable, just
as we are capable of cultivating our own personalities so
that we are more balanced, stable and less likely to crack up

I think you are somewhat confused about the functioning of the basic "dynamic equilibrium" of Reality; and so here you mix "balance" with "not static" and "dialectical tensions" all together in the same breath. What's more, you continue to draw inaccurate analogies between dialectical relations at very different levels of complexity. So of course for instance, class society, with its economic basis is nowhere to be found -- or implied -- in your Idealist schema for a [petit-bourgeois] utopian "small is beautiful" future (let alone in your theory of individual psychology).

But at least you get the gist of the dynamic-yet-in-equilibrium situation. However, as in the game of horseshoes: that is not nearly enough.

>Hi Squeers,

>Marx himself either did not know or ascribed little
significance to the fact, but Hegel was certainly
aware that the roots of the dialectic lie predominantly
in the concept of yin/yang polarity.
>Posted by GilbertHolmes

This is a *demonstrably (and frankly, ludicrously) FALSE statement*.
(And no, I am NOT going to be demonstrating that anytime soon. *You* prove otherwise -- unless I luckily stumble across Marx writing on Hegel's antecedents, in the next little while.)

And actually: the 'roots' of the dialectic lie *wholly* IN PHYSICAL REALITY, Gilbert Holmes... *Remember* that, please. Be accurate -- and critical -- in your thinking. Especially if you are intending to write a _book_ on the matter...
!!
??

Dear Grok,
it looks like this sorry chapter is going to close, and without GH evincing the least embarrassment, let alone apology (to Marx or Hegel) for his ignorant effrontery:
<Marx poisoned modern political philosophy because he didn't understand the dialectic>

But then the beauty of wilful ignorance is that its meditations are so self-sufficient. It must be wonderful to have such a blithe unconcern for even rudimentary understanding of a topic in professing oneself an expert.
I suggest vanity-publishing for your ideas, GH, or better still save yourself the expense and post it online gratis. If on the other hand you're interested in truth and rigour, try an academic journal, though I fear such would be far more scathing than I've been, that is if they bothered to skim past the first paragraph.
Sorry, but you deserve excoriation.

I said, "Hegel was certainly
aware that the roots of the dialectic lie predominantly
in the concept of yin/yang polarity."

I have looked, and although I am sure I read in a good source that Hegel did recognize the influence that yin/yang had on his thought, I cannot find it. ..and it is not mentioned in the texts that I have reviewed. Neither does it seem to be a widely considered idea. In the light of that I probably would have written both my article and comments a litte differently, but not significantly.

Hegel did study and lecture in Chinese philosophy, however, and there are certainly strong parallels between dialectics and polarity. ..and I am far from the first to recognize that. Being quite anthropocentric, Hegel was also quite anti-chinese generally so it would be relatively easy for him not to have credited influence from that source.

"Marx poisoned modern political philosophy because he didn't understand the dialectic." That was written by the people at OLO, but I'm definitely not about to say sorry to Marx. I am happy with my belief that his interpretation of the dialectic was poor.

I looked up excoriation and came up with this:

excoriation
the act of stripping of possessions wrongfully and by force; spoliation or robbery.

the process of removing the skin or outer layer; flaying.

You begin with insults and end with threats Squeers. Perhaps you would like to say sorry.

Dear Gilbert,
I don't take any pleasure in insulting you, and I'm certainly not threatening you (words also have figuralive and metaphoric values. The word excoriate stuck in my mind when I read Tolstoy's use of it to describe an old tree). But you have made outrageous claims. I've spent hundreds of hours trying to appreciate Hegel's and Marx's thought, and am truly humbled at how far above me they are in learning and comprehension. It's bloody galling when someone denounces these great thinkers in a few glib sentences.
It doesn't matter if Hegel did use the concept of yin-yang (who hasn't), dialectical thought is much more than syllogism. Even with Hegel it was more a negative dialectic, a way of thinking that was not resolved in synthesis. Neither was Marx's dialectical materialism the simplistic grand narrative it's popularly made out to be.
You say, "I am happy with my belief that his [Marx's] interpretation of the dialectic was poor". Well sorry, but your "belief" don't cut no mustard. Of course you'll have no trouble getting applause since the masses have been conditioned for decades to hold the same "beliefs".
I think your intentions are honourable, and I salute them, but the situation is more complex than you appear to realise.
I look forward to more articles from you, but I hope you'll be more circumspect.

>the beauty of wilful ignorance is that its meditations
are so self-sufficient. It must be wonderful to have
such a blithe unconcern for even rudimentary understanding
of a topic in professing oneself an expert.

Trying to run down all the sophistry and mistakes in each post of these rightwing commentators here would take dozens of replies each. Tackling such willful ignorance would balloon exponentially: a truly augean labor. Then there are the committed ideologs like Yabby. Not worth the effort, because they are not swayed by inconvenient truths.

>I suggest vanity-publishing for your ideas, GH, or
better still save yourself the expense and post it
online gratis. If on the other hand you're interested
in truth and rigour, try an academic journal, though
I fear such would be far more scathing than I've been,
that is if they bothered to skim past the first paragraph.

It would have to be a vanity press: because Holmes couldn't possibly pass peer review anywhere with this rubbish -- other than with some ideological 'think tank', maybe, that might publish anything remotely anti-communist... he could try that angle.

Who could think to write and publish a book on a subject of which they are so incompetent in? I've never considered writing one, even tho' I'd be much more competent: simply because I understand the effort that would be involved -- and the level of professionalism required... and I have more important things to do.

Squeers:
>Dear GH,
so far you've said nothing to indicate you have the
faintest idea what "the dialectic", as you call it,
is. You've just found a shiny little something you
like to equate childishly with yin yang. And yet you
have the nerve to pretend to understand Hegel! And to
disparage the monumental thought of Karl Marx and
others who followed after him!

Holmes' strategy seems to be to pick up his ball and go home and pout, and not seriously try to learn anything here (and no, this is not a 'mirror'-type situation. The leftists here have little to learn from the Right. We've lived our entire lives in bourgeois society and understand it quite a bit better than they do).

>The "right wing" ought to enlist you as an ally, for
you're no friend to the left with your heedless surmise
and puerile prognostications. Unless you care to show us
some depth of understanding, I see you as a rather
ordinary figure skater.

Like most people, GHolmes does not rise to the occasion when caught out -- and instead defends his wounded ego past all reason. Quite pedestrian response, indeed. This, of course, is NOT the road to Enlightenment... He could have learned quite a lot here from us, actually. Wonder what he could have been thinking the response would be to his little dismissive anti-communist essay. I suppose he is not too critical of the ideological environment he has grown up in -- not a good sign, when one wants to be a professional critical thinker...

I'm still hoping Loudmouth will come back with some questions. THAT is a useful way to spend time here. The rest is mostly garbage.

Thank you, Grok, for reiterating my points. Cacophonous pie-hole - that's a fair description of both of us :)

Questions ? Here's one: how socialism, after all the attempts, disasters, false starts, failures, in a myriad of different political situations ? How is it supposed to work ? Why hasn't it worked properly already ? If not now, and after 160 years, when ?

'It hasn't worked too well yet because capitalism opposed it so effectively, so deviously, so evilly, so desperately': Well, what did you expect the bourgeoisie to do in response to losing their raison d'etre ? Wasn't that always on the cards ?

You're not the only one who has worshipped at this particular shrine, Grok, who has poured their years into looking at the angles, the hows and whens, and flitted from hope to hope, from promise to promise, from Great Teacher to Great Teacher.

All for nothing so far. And you want us to keep betting on the same dead horse ?

Joe

*Grok, who has poured their years into looking at the angles, the hows and whens, and flitted from hope to hope, from promise to promise, from Great Teacher to Great Teacher.*

IMHO Groky and other theorists commit a common mistake. The
thing with any hypothesis is that if only one of your assumed
assumptions is wrong, the whole lot lands up being flawed.

Their first mistake is that they really don't know much about
basic human nature, neither did Marx.

A bit of an update in modern neuroscience might enlighten them,
but they are far too deeply bogged down in their own beliefs,
to even consider that. History however, proves me correct.

Yes, as Marx noted, history often happens twice,

* the first time (Belgium 1830, Europe 1848, Paris 1871, Russia 1905, 1917, Hungary, Bavaria, Berlin, Hamburg, 1918-1919, Canton 1926, etc. etc. etc.),

* the second time as farce (post-2010).

If something didn't work the first two hundred times, something which required the risking of everything, why think it might work the 201st time, Grok ? But if I was a CIA agent, it's what I would be advocating, in order to draw out the naive and pure of heart to try to do the same thing all over again, and in that way gut the progressive movement.

It didn't really work 160 years ago, 100 years ago, 60 years ago - why should it do so when the 'objective' conditions for supposed success are fading away year by year, GFC notwithstanding ?

The point surely is: there has to be a better way, in vastly more complex conditions than 1847, an incredibly fragmented working class (relatively speaking) co-opted into the system, immensely more powerful productive forces and intricate work processes. Do we have another 160 years ?

Joe

" .... the first time ....... as tragedy."

Yabby said:
"Their first mistake is that they really don't know much about basic human nature, neither did Marx."

Eric Fromm, writing about the misrepresentation of Marx"s theory in his book, "Marx's Concept of Man", writes:
"I want to emphasis the irony which lies in the fact that the description given of the aim of Marx and the content of this vision of socialism, fits almost exactly the reality of present-day capitalist society.
The majority of people are motivated by a wish for greater material gain, for comfort and gadgets, and this wish is restricted only by the desire for security and the avoidance of risks. They are increasingly satisfied with a life regulated and manipulated, both in the sphere of production and consumption, by the state and big corporations and their respective bureaucracies; they have reached a degree of conformity which has wiped out individuality to a remarkable extent. They are, to use Marx's term, impotent "commodity men" serving virile machines. The very picture of mid-twentieth century capitalism is hardly distinguishable from the caricature of Marxist socialism as drawn by its opponents."

Seems Marx understood basic human nature very well.

Grok says, "....you continue to draw inaccurate analogies between dialectical relations at very different levels of complexity. So of course for instance, class society, with its economic basis is nowhere to be found -- or implied -- in your Idealist schema...."

If Marx had suggested that the dialectic tension between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would result in the emergence of the middle class, he may actually have been remembered for offering up something important!

*they have reached a degree of conformity which has wiped out individuality to a remarkable extent.*

So let me see. We would have what is probably the most diverse
and tolerant society ever known. From the dope growing hippie
in Nimbin or Bridgetown, to the surfer kid in Byron or
Margaret River, to the Hare Krishna chanting devotee, our
society bankrolls the lot. From the kid entrepreneur on the
net to the 2 million small businesses, people are doing their
thing, as they wish.

From running a few goats to produce goats cheese, to taking
peoples dogs for a walk for a living, anything is possible.

Yet here sits your Eric, telling me that society has lost
its indivuality and is becoming conformist.

Hehe :)

.

Ah, Poirot, Grok has been talking about the EARLY Marx - you and Fromm are talking about the LATE Marx, post-1848, post-Indian Mutiny, post-Commune. Even in those 30-35 years, Marx and the progressive movement learnt a huge amount about what was possible and what wasn't - and all the while, even then, it was all evolving, transforming, 'emerging'. So what has 'emerged' in the 130-140 years since then ? What did the 'progressive' movement have to take on board by way of Leninist butchery [a.k.a. 'red terror'] in the meantime in order for the original purposes of the revolutionary movement to retain any coherence ?

No, there has to be something better, which incorporates the formal democracy and human rights of capitalist societies and builds on these, and also does not depend on the extermination of any and all suspected class enemies, so that 'Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization, becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master - free'.

Joe

> Ah, Poirot, Grok has been talking about the EARLY Marx
- you and Fromm are talking about the LATE Marx, post-1848,
post-Indian Mutiny, post-Commune. Even in those 30-35 years,
Marx and the progressive movement learnt a huge amount about
what was possible and what wasn't - and all the while, even
then, it was all evolving, transforming, 'emerging'. So what
has 'emerged' in the 130-140 years since then ? What did the
'progressive' movement have to take on board by way of Leninist
butchery [a.k.a. 'red terror'] in the meantime in order for the
original purposes of the revolutionary movement to retain any
coherence ?

Lenin was a butcher compared to whom? The imperialists who invaded Russia (or had others do the job for them) immediately upon both the April and October revolutions -- who were in fact engaged in and just finishing slaughtering *tens of MILLIONS* of people in their "war to end all wars" -- and who would soon be _repeating_ this crime against humanity on an even more ghastly scale? And who are continuing the process up to this very day..?

Lenin, in fact, was an *exemplary revolutionary leader* LM, in many ways -- who did the best he could to lead a revolution under incredibly difficult circumstances. Would that you might spend a little more time understanding the true world situation of the period -- and the necessary actions which must be undertaken in any war and revolution (and the tragedy of failure). I invite *anyone* to do better.

>No, there has to be something better, which incorporates
the formal democracy and human rights of capitalist societies
and builds on these, and also does not depend on the
extermination of any and all suspected class enemies, so that
'Man, at last the master of his own form of social organization,
becomes at the same time the lord over Nature, his own master -
free'.

Again, LM: 'stalinism !== socialism' -- and you really, really don't understand important things about socialism that everybody should. For whatever reason (like decades of bad/collaborationist leadership in your country, etc.)

> If Marx had suggested that the dialectic tension between
the bourgeoisie and the proletariat would result in the
emergence of the middle class, he may actually have been
remembered for offering up something important!

How do I respond to such profound ignorance? Someone help me, please! Squeers? Loudmouth?

Dear grok,

In February 1917 the czar was overthrown in the Russian Revolution. In October 1917 the Russian Revolution was over. Lenin and his Marxist thugs staged the Bolshevk coup. Lenin was a butcher compared to the czar. His Cheka slaughtered more people in three months than the czar's Ochrana did in the previous 25 years.

As Napoleon had done previously Lenin talked of freedom while bringing autocracy. He like Napoleon was a counterrevolutionary. No real revolution brings dictatorship and tyranny.

Lenin was the first of the twentieth century dictators followed by Mussolini, Stalin and Hitler. The Russian people are still not free of the heritage of Marxist-Leninist tyranny, Putin is a product of the KGB.

Marxism like fascism and other noxious ideologies still has its followers hoping for power. Maybe they’ll stage a comeback. I can only hope not.

Grok,

Thanks for your question: Lenin's butchery was much like other butcheries, a = b = c = ...... , no matter how he justified it, and it raises other questions:

* is butchery necessary for a revolution to achieve and maintain power ? Or are gulags and laogai sufficient ? If so, are they compatible with the human rights of ordinary people ?

* if so, how is such a revolution in any way superior morally to whatever it is assuming to transcend ?

* is such butchery (of class enemies by socialists, of minorities and others by fascists, of non-believers by Islamists, of Muslims by Hindu fanatics, etc.) unavoidable - is it necessary to the revolutionary process, to clear the ground for the New Man, Aryan rule, Shari'a law, the Hindutva, etc. ?

* where does it stop ? Which groups are next ? Should we study the history of the Khmer Rouge more closely for pointers ?

Most importantly,

* can there be better ways to achieve our goals, for which Marx tried, 130-160 years and many technological and social epochs ago, tried to lay the ground-work ?

Which raises the crucial question: is socialism relevant in the same ways any more ?

>If something didn't work the first two hundred times,
something which required the risking of everything,
why think it might work the 201st time, Grok ? But if
I was a CIA agent, it's what I would be advocating,
in order to draw out the naive and pure of heart to
try to do the same thing all over again, and in that
way gut the progressive movement.

With all due respect, LM: You really don't understand either marxism or the history of the past hundred years, however much you have tried, apparently. You're essentially giving in to the bourgeois version of events and reality here. Bottom line: no matter how many times they defeat us, we come back at them -- because we are THE essential cog in the machine; they, OTOH, only have to be defeated ONCE -- and then they are GONE. Forever. Guess which side the odds favor?

>It didn't really work 160 years ago, 100 years ago,
60 years ago - why should it do so when the 'objective'
conditions for supposed success are fading away year by
year, GFC notwithstanding ?

Here is where you are exactly wrong, LM: the objective conditions have never been *more* ripe for socialism than today. In fact, they were putridly OVER-ripe decades ago, as others have stated elsewhere: and only matters like world war and the slaughter of over 100.000.000 people and the "creative destruction" of much infrastructure, etc. and the penetration of "Third World" markets (and MUCHO outright fraud) has allowed capitalism to maintain itself a while longer. No; in fact, LM, where marxists have failed miserably for the most part, is in the *subjective* sphere of class-consciousness and organization.

>there has to be a better way,
in vastly more complex conditions than 1847, an
incredibly fragmented working class (relatively
speaking) co-opted into the system, immensely more
powerful productive forces and intricate work processes.
Do we have another 160 years ?

Socialism isn't inevitable in any teleological sense. Nuclear war could indeed snuff out this capitalist order -- and everything else.

More on your above questions, later.

> Lenin's butchery was much like other butcheries

There was no "butchery" under Lenin and the bolsheviks. There was revolution and civil war. You might as well be a know-nothing middle-class pacifist to continue to use logic like this, LM. And if you're continuing to confuse Lenin with the stalinists -- then you're fixating on ir-reality as much as the Reichwingers here.

And if you think today's mafioso financial oligarchy are not intending and planning *right now* to slaughter us uppity workers by the MILLIONS very soon -- and the working-class' plans MUST take this approaching capitalist class violence fully into account: and act accordingly -- then you have, uh, learned very little about life and our recent historical past, Herr LM.

Thank you, grok, but there WAS the Red Terror, then the famine, which between them killed off around twenty million. Not to mention the crushing of the Workers' Opposition, the Narodniki, and Kronstadt.

I'm not saying that Lenin alone was to blame for all of this: Dzerzhinsky, Trotsky, Bukharin, and yes Stalin, all played their revolutionary roles in overthrowing a semi-capitalist regime and installing a new feudalism. Then the back-flip from "Land to the Tillers!" policy to one of forced collectivisation, and another few million died in yet another famine.

My question is: was it worth it ? Should we take your advice, Herr Grok, and do it all again, in our different contexts and circumstances ?

Joe

>Thank you, grok, but there WAS the Red Terror, then
the famine, which between them killed off around
twenty million. Not to mention the crushing of the
Workers' Opposition, the Narodniki, and Kronstadt.

Why do you accept bourgeois lying figures as good currency? These propagandists pull those figures out of their rear ends, really -- whatever the truth of the matter. The REAL numbers are always generally at least an order of magnitude lower, in my experience. But besides the fact that you continue to fixate on the ugliness of a revolution -- rather than the real context of a far greater ugliness surrounding it -- makes me think you really don't understand the true nature of why any of this occurs in the first place. As if people really have a choice about killing -- or being killed. Seems to me, LM, you are not yourself faced with looming or imminent life and death choices like the rest of us, frankly.

>My question is: was it worth it ? Should we take your
advice, Herr Grok, and do it all again, in our different
contexts and circumstances ?

If capitalism could actually solve the problems of the world as they loudly proclaim every freaking moment of the day, it would be FOOLISH to call for anything BUT *supporting* them. However, you discount the endless suffering of the billions of the world *caused* by these capitalist liars and murderers -- to fixate instead on the sound and fury of the passing moment: like a child fixating on bright, shiny objects -- while adult life unfolds overhead and around them...

Sorry I have to put it that way -- but you ask for it, frankly.

We are appalled by the prospect of revolutionary violence not merely as we ponder the viciousness of our prospective death, but by the prospective death of ideals. Similarly, the death of an innocent (the macho-hyperbolic “women and children”) in itself is not the appalling factor; it’s the death of the “idea” of innocence. Death is banal; it is the utilitarian inverse-notion of the spectacle of death, on a grand scale, that offends. A single innocent death is merely shocking, an offence against the ideal, whereas death en masse is appalling to contemplate. Yet death en masse is merely a single death multiplied. The equation threatens the ideal, and that is what binds us together. That is the rationale behind hegemony. To support revolution is to renounce all ideology, to be naked and vulnerable in the world “in preference” to continuing on, humiliated, in an exploitative system of comforting illusions (damn lies!); a system which fosters far more misery, and death of innocents, than the revolution itself that is perennially forestalled. Moreover, beyond the death of ideology, the actual violence we dread is the violence we feel immanent within us, enlivened by our system. According to Alain Badiou the violence of alienated individualism and our animality are, “one and the same thing”; which is to say that the evil “nature” of man is “the nature of man under capitalism!” Revolutions are desperate attempts at freedom, not gratuitous violence! If you want to see gratuitous violence on a truly grand scale, look at the continuing history of capitalism!
For revolutionaries it is better to die, better to risk violence, than to live demeaned.
Histories of revolutions are or course written by the victors.

Grok and Squeers,

I see. So there is only (a) capitalism, and (b) violent revolution ?

There is no c, d, e, ..... ? Nothing else is possible ?

No alternatives to constantly self-renewing capitalism but endless reprises, one way or another, of Red Terrors and the shining Khmer Rouge example, policy-induced famines, the sacrifice of millions, the gulags, laogais, re-education/starvation camps ?

I'll keep looking, thanks :)

Joe

Dear Joe,
it was against my better judgement to make any further comment on this thread, but I did try to post something that went beyond the kind of simplistic, insulting, binary logic you've predictably thrown back.
Think what you like (though it's not thinking), but please don't presume to impose your crude constructions on my thinking.
On that note, I'll bow out.

Thank you, Squeers - I thought that what I wrote was a devastating attack precisely on binary thinking, specifically grok's either/or, not to mention his 'tu quoque' defense of revolutionary/anti-capitalist brutality by citing anti-revolutionary/capitalist brutality, as if:

brutality a > brutality b, therefore b better than a [in a universe of a, b].

My point was exactly that: what might the alternatives be to these very unattractive options ? ARE there any other options ?

Please don't leave us hanging like this: come back on-line and give us some much-needed guidance :)

Joe

Loudmouth:
<Please don't leave us hanging like this: come back on-line and give us some much-needed guidance :)>

Dear Joe,
I don't pretend to be any kind of guru, so spare me the sarcasm.

<My point was exactly that: what might the alternatives be to these very unattractive options ? ARE there any other options ?>

The "options" are what Marxists, Critical Theorists and Continental philosophers have been exploring since about 1960!!

Meanwhile capitalism has only tightened its ideological grip, and today's generations of the bourgeoisie have no conception of their own demeaned state, nor any regard for the offshore working classes they continue to exploit at a remove. But this kind of merely ethical talk may not be to your taste (bewilderingly, ethics and Laissez fare are today somehow thought synonymous!), that's why I generally argue the pragmatics of the need for change; that capitalism is unsustainable, is headed for a cliff, never mind ethics!

The option then, to answer your question, is to go over the cliff (as Grok hinted, probably be pushed!).
There are no easy options.

*For revolutionaries it is better to die, better to risk violence, than to live demeaned.*

Ah Squeers, that does indeed sound like Osama in Laden, or
Castro for that matter. So what do they do? Make the lives
of millions miserable, by force as required.

I've yet to see too many swimming back towards Cuba and
even old Fidel has now seemingly conceded that his experiment
was a failure.

*and today's generations of the bourgeoisie have no conception of their own demeaned state*

Of course. People don't know what is good for them, revolutionaries
do it seems.

Capitalism, for all its faults, has dragged more people out of
poverty then any other system. Capitalism, for all its faults,
has given more people the opportunity to use their talents as they
see fit, not as others see fit.

Gilbert Holmes made one very valid point. Some men seem to
have in innate need to control others at any cost. Now you
seemingly can justify their use of violence, to achieve that.

Thank you, Squeers,

Yeah, my own exploration for options dates from about 1961-62. Still looking.

Frankly, I hope I go to my grave with not a single person's blood on my hands or death on my conscience, in the belief that I have not sacrificed anybody to my political vanity. Think very carefully because as Yabby suggests, the cavalier attitude that

* people's lives are as nothing compared to the completion of the historic task of revolution

is not all that different to

* the rationale of Osama and all the other supporters of the Caliphate and Shari'a law.

What is socialism worth if it puts people a very distant second ? Second to what ? Some ideal ? What the hell are we supposed to be working towards if people have so little value ? By all means, as a revolutionary, jump over your cliff, but don't presume to take innocent people with you.

But, despite grok's confidence, you only get the chance to do that once.

Joe

You know, I thought Loudmouth was a bit different than the other lot -- but more discussion reveals how little that difference actually is. He chooses not to understand some very basic facts about life, living as he does in the relatively privileged upper echelons of imperialist society, IMO.

My attitude for Reichwingers and social-democrats alike has always been that the coming period of world revolution will reveal the inadequacy of their relatively similar way of thinking, in VERY concrete ways...

So learn the hard way then, Loudmouth. And don't blame people like me: it won't be us who will be shooting/brutalizing/starving/yadda you.

Yabby and Loudmouth,

this is why I shouldn't have bothered. You reduce everything to your own puerile logic and shamelessly misrepresent people who try to think outside your miserable little square.
I've said elsewhere that I deplore all violence, and above that I don't relish revolution. But of course I'm compared with Bin Laden! (There was a good interview on Wednesday's or Thursday's Late Night Live btw, which offers a refreshing new take on western interventionism in Islamic affairs and is relevant to the debate here).
Loudmouth:
<* people's lives are as nothing compared to the completion of the historic task of revolution>

I didn't say this, nor imply it; it is your goonish and outrageous interpretation.

Similarly, this execrable little rant has nothing to do with what I've said: <What is socialism worth if it puts people a very distant second ? Second to what ? Some ideal ? What the hell are we supposed to be working towards if people have so little value ? By all means, as a revolutionary, jump over your cliff, but don't presume to take innocent people with you.> nor is it attributable to Marxist thought generally, which does put people FIRST--before economics!!

Nor have I recommended jumping off cliffs!
I have said we are going over a cliff with the present system, by which I mean economically, ecologically and ethically (you can add ontologically and spiritually to the list!).
I accept your apology!

Feel free now to conjure demons and fabricate to your heart's content.
You'll forgive me, though, if I take no further heed of your tawdry nonsense.

Grok and Squeers,

If that's the best you can offer, I don't see any reason to change what I have written. Thank you for closing those doors.

I'll keep looking.

Joe

See Squeers? It's impossible to discuss marxism or dialectics w/o obtuse people going round and round in obsessive little circles insisting that we instead apologize for stalinism's crimes, real or imagined. And of course the capitalist context of everything is always irrelevant -- because of course, these same people always live in the best of all capitalist worlds, even if they deny it for polemical reasons...

So like I said (and how I live my life and my relations with such people): they are simply going to have to learn about reality the hard way -- if they are lucky enough to survive the lesson, that is.

Party at Ground Zero.
See you there (in Hell) -- and don't be late, y'hear..?

Grok,

Can we try to get beyond talking about stalinism, as if that form of totalitarianism has been the only pathway that socialism can take, as if every 'experiment' with socialism degenerates in this way, into an abuse of absolute power in the name of the very 'people' who are being abused ?

Oops. I'm a bit late :(

In 160 years, and with a multitude of experiences in revolutions, uprisings, communes, governments, mountain soviets and jungle redoubts, have there been occasions when it has NOT gone down this path ? Seriously, has it ? How long ago ? What happened to these exceptions ?

Seriously, how can it work without degenerating into what used to be called social-fascism ?

And if it can't, then what ? What might be an alternative to BOTH capitalism and stalinist-socialism ?

Joe

Loudmouth:

How can we make you understand that you don't understand a damned thing -- except the propaganda you've been gullet-fed your entire life..? And you think we're trying to pull something over on you, or other.

The problem is YOU, however: and everyone like you. You wear your 'false consciousness' proudly, like a bloody medal. You don't know jack-doo-dah about socialism -- that much is painfully obvious. And I'm reduced to just saying this, because you don't take a point -- like the other ideologs who've passed thru here. How often must we go over the same points, like we're beating our heads thru a concrete wall?

Hi Grok,

Thanks for the empty ad hominems: they indicate the bankruptcy of your defenses of totalitarianism. I was born a CPA baby, named after you-know-who, grandad was a Wobbly, and I have always been interested, obsessed really, in where it all might be heading, as one qould. I date my first readings of Marx and Lenin in about 1961, Mao in 1962, etc. I've been around the block in that sense, so unless you have something substantial to add, I suggest you leave it to the big kids.

I firmly believe that, one day, something like the spirit of socialism will prevail, but it won't [by bitter experience] be anything like what we have seen over and over again so far. It won't be the same wheel, so please quit trying to re-invent it.

Joe

They're only ad hominem when they're irrelevant to the argument at hand; so as I've said previously: making such a claim only points up the low level of your argumentation -- and not really to any failing on my part.

As for the fact that you are actually a 'red diaper baby' -- and yet you can spout what you have here: it can only mean that, whatever you've read or experienced and whenever you did, you certainly DIDN'T *understand* the most part (or any, frankly) of it. And since neither of us has lived under "really-existing socialism", we can't beat each other over the head with _that_ particular historical, concrete 'experience', like the occasional east european here can try to do.

You've turned into a waste of time, Loudmouth, like Holmes and Yabby. Only Squeers and maybe one other are worth any more effort here.

*And since neither of us has lived under "really-existing socialism",*

Perhaps it's time to redefine all this. Despite the multitude of
attempts, socialism has been unable to create the claimed nirvana,
for the result was usually, more like a gulag.

The closest thing to socialism is really happening right here,
financed by the wealth generation of capitalism.

Over 100 billion $ a year alone in Australia, spent on social
welfare. Healthcare, education, all provided by the State.
Increasingly workers own the means of production, 1.3 trillion $
at last count.

Workers, with some of the world's cushiest working conditions.
Workers, earning some of the world's highest wages, living in
the world's largest houses. Aussies in general, have life
on a plate, if we are just a little bit honest.

But the veins of envy run deep in some posters. If some are
doing a bit better then them, perhaps because of more effort,
life must be unfair. No matter how good some of these posters
have it, they still want more. Such is human nature it seems.

Yabby:
<Workers, with some of the world's cushiest working conditions.
Workers, earning some of the world's highest wages, living in
the world's largest houses. , if we are just a little bit honest.>

Dear Yabby,
can't you see that your every opinion takes for granted the fundamental context, the default ideology, of capitalism? You can't imagine any other world.
"Aussies in general, have life on a plate", you say..
You're incapable of conceiving of "life" as being anything other than a mean and selfish competition. A state-sanctioned, state-facilitated provision, whether one works for it or bludges on it; that's all there is, right?
You can't even conceive that anyone could be driven by anything but self-interest, and thus envy ... it follows: <the veins of envy run deep in some posters>
Yabby et al, I don't envy or covet; I really don't. Incredible as that may seem to you, it's true.
I apologise, Joe, GH and others, for the tone of some of my posts; I know I must seem arrogant (I'm sure you can think of better adjectives), but I assure you that it's sheer frustration! It seems impossible to get beyond your programming!

Joe,
Marxist thought has been in a state of contemplative quiescence for decades (pondering your options), but has now woken up again to the fact that all its efforts were in vain, and that Marx was right; emancipation cannot be derived from the superstructure, only from the base. There has to be economic and ergo material reform. But our masters will never comply.
Grok is more optimistic than me. I think it's the cliff.

*You can't imagine any other world*

I certainly can, Squeers. The very thought of somebody like
yourself or Grok in charge, telling us others what to do, as you
seemingly know what is best for us, fills me with horror.

I'll stick to a free market system thanks, where people make
up their own minds, as to what is good for them. As long as
they have some fairness of opportunity, is my main concern.
Australia provides that.

*You can't even conceive that anyone could be driven by anything but self-interest*

I simply have a different understanding and perception of what
drives human behaviour, then you do.

If you Squeers, help that little old lady across the street, did
you do it because you are so selfless, or did you do it because
afterwards you can pat yourself on the back, tell yourself what
a kind fellow you are and your brain chemstry rewards you with
feel good endorphins?

I can tell you, you would not do it, if it made you feel bad.

As its in your interest to feel good, you are in facting out
of self interest, aware of it or not.

Yabby, you said - "I'll stick to a free market system where people make up their own minds, as to what is good for them."

What's free about being kept in ignorance, distorted consciousness, and in debt - that's how most westerners live these days - constantly scuttling about in order to pay (with interest) for all the things they've "acquired" - that's a form of servitude, and it's achieved by the market providing an "overabundance of stuff".

"I simply have a different understanding and perception of what drives human nature, then you do."

You seem to be proving Marx right in his belief that man's actions are derived from the social organisation in which he is embedded - "It is not consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." - which would explain why you believe self-interest is the driving force behind human nature.

Just a couple of points in passing:

Grok,
<<<“If I understand correctly, Marx was driven to the profession of journalism because he was essentially denied employment as a professor at the various universities he was associated with as a student: the administrations of which essentially didn't like his politics... In other words he was blacklisted.
What's changed, eh?”>>>

A hell of a lot!

Marx is indeed a man born before his time , nowadays, his political leanings would have put him in the box seat for most university professorships (at the very least, he could well have found a top job with the ABC!)

Poirot, Squeers et al.
I think you're making things too complicated. It's really quite simple –you don’t have to had read and memorized all the buzz phrases from Wissenschaft der Logik, or Das Kapital.

Here’s a much more succinct critique of human nature/society/collectivism.

PS To put it in context, I have renamed the characters the little "bourgeois" hen and the “class conscious” but “exploited” cat, dog and rat .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zr-yQGD9eAA

*which would explain why you believe self-interest is the driving force behind human nature*

Not so Poirot. If you still believe in the old tabula raza
theory, then you are way out of date. We understand far
more about human behaviour today, then Marx at that time ever did.

Both genes and environment affect our behaviour. But if you really
want to learn more, evolutionary biology and primatology will
teach you far more about these things, then Marx could even
dream of.

People do in fact, act out of enlightened self interest. No matter
how much you try with your re education policy, you will never
convince them all, that they should not.

That is exactly why all attempts at socialism have so far failed.

Or as Horus points out, a simple utube clip kind of sums it up.

"Not so Poirot, If you still believe in the old tabula raza theory, then you are way out of date. We understand far more about human behaviour today, then Marx at that time ever did."

From what I've read, Marx didn't believe that man at birth was an entirely blank entity, however, he recognised a difference between "human nature in general" and that part of his nature which is modified by the experience of history unfolding. He termed the appetites which are not innate to general human nature as "relative"- and these would include the excessive and often superfluous "needs and desires" inherent in capitalist societies, which have been heightened by increased production practices.

Poirot:

Yabby isn't really interested in the truth -- he's interested in making anti-communist propaganda. He doesn't really care what Marx actually understood about anything: just how he can conceivably twist it against the socialist cause.

Dear Poirot,
I agree with Grok, you're wasting your time, just as I've been wasting mine. It's too easy to mock something when you don't have the faintest idea. Like GH's original article, the stuff put up for the other side here doesn't even constitute a straw man---you have to have some slight notion of a thing to parody it.
Yabby et al. I'll save you a lot of time---that is if you have any interest in dispelling your ignorance---and advise you what to read. The best essay I've ever come across that elucidates dialectics (and human "essence"), classical, Hegelian and materialist, is "The Concept of Essence" by Herbert Marcuse.
It's difficult reading, but only about 50 pages. Go away and read it (take notes), and then we can discuss the matter in a more useful manner?

Dear Horus,
loved the little red hen! but I think you miss-attribute the parable. The "rat" btw is a mouse.

Anybody who actually still wants to discuss dialectical-materialism -- even how it differs from hegelian idealist dialectics -- is welcome to put something forward. Even clueless questions about the history of the past 150 years are welcome -- if asked in good faith.

Bad faith we will leave to the french existentialists.

I like the discussion about human nature. It is very much on topic; depending on what we believe about human nature, we will structure our society accordingly. If we believe that we are essentially motivated by empathy and moral virtue, then we will believe in the possibilities of anarcho-communistic societies, where we will all live in mutually supportive communes, pursuing the common good together.

If we believe that we are essentially self-interested however,(motivated by sensual pleasure and away from fear?!), then we will wish to harness positive outcomes that arise from people pursuing their own interests and to control divisive elements from the top down.

The belief about the nature of human nature will tend to swing from one extreme to the other, as well as to sometimes find balance (in other words in what I am defining as a dialectic sense), in the same way as the institutions of the society will swing between being too focussed on the individual, too focussed on the collective, or balanced between the two.

Realistically I think that we are both self-interested and benevolent, competitive and cooperative etc.

Yabby,

"If you ..... help that little old lady across the street, did
you do it because you are so selfless, or did you do it because
afterwards you can pat yourself on the back, tell yourself what
a kind fellow you are and your brain chemstry rewards you with
feel good endorphins? I can tell you, you would not do it, if it made you feel bad."

Don't sell yourself short Yabby. You can claim your love just like you can claim your power. As for evolutionary biology, if you are interested, OLO is putting up another article of mine probably on Tuesday titled 'The Dual Drivers of Evolution' looking at competition and cooperation in the context of evolution.

Squeers, I searched for Marcuse's concept of Essence on Wicki,
nobody has bothered to even write a 1 page essay to sum it up.
Clearly the rest of the world is not as convinced as you, that
it matters.

When I was in my teens, I lived in Paris for a couple of years.
Its an inspiring place, full of inspiring people. People
inspired by Freud, Jung and all the rest. I read and discussed
countless opinions, to improve my understanding of human nature.
Nearly all of them led up little then a garden path. For
of course philosophy is mere speculation and as Dawkins
wisely pointed out, our mountain of knowledge increases daily,
so all of us alive today, have the ability to know far more about
the world, then even an Einstein did in his time.

Any hypothesis is worthless, if only one of the assumptions made
are flawed. Yet you ideologues seem to bog yourselves down in
much way out of date philosophy. That is wonderful navel gazing,
but little else. Fans of Jesus and Allah, have similar trains
of thought, with their old books.

Personally I've made far more progess in understanding the world,
by broadening my understanding of life and including biology,
evolution theory, primatology, endocrinology, genetics and neuroscience
as fields of interest.

I also don't have the arrogance of a Poirot, who seemingly thinks
that people are mindless and that she knows better then them,
how much they should or should not consume, how little or how hard
they should work, how much or little they should borrow, etc.
I prefer for people themselves to decide these things, as long
as they live by the consequences of their actions.

Continued for all...

As for Marxism, the idea that, "It is not consciousness of men that determines their being, but on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness." (Presumably Marx via Poirot) is non-sensical. I am suspicious that Marx came up with this one not through any actual belief in the concept but simply because it supports the idea of revolution. (Squeers, Grok, you may react violently to this but it is possible that you have been brainwashed.)

We may go along with our society to some extent, adjusting our belief systems, becoming more competitive or cooperative, materialistic or spiritual etc. If our society goes too far one way or the other, however, we will not keep going with it, we will reject it. (As we continue to reject the wilder excesses of lassez faire and we have rejected numerous attempts at socialism.)

Squeers, Grok,

My interpretation of the dialectic is different to Marx's. That doesn't mean that it is either automatically wrong, or that I am ignorant. If the guy is that good, surely he can stand up against a little criticism.

Personally I think that your own position (Grok especially) is so marginal as to be almost politically irrelevant. You do no favours to the socialist movement, much of which has had very positive elements.

You want questions Grok?! I usually look for friendly communication before kicking in with questions. (I guess you can always blame your rudeness on capitalism.... or perhaps it is just the emotional trauma associated with being brainwashed by Karl Marx.)

Yabby:
<Any hypothesis is worthless, if only one of the assumptions made
are flawed. Yet you ideologues seem to bog yourselves down in
much way out of date philosophy. That is wonderful navel gazing,
but little else. Fans of Jesus and Allah, have similar trains
of thought, with their old books.>
For heaven's sake, Yabby! I can assure you I am a thoroughgoing sceptic in all things. 'That'is the appeal of Marx's materialism; it is precisely 'not' like the speculations and idealism of philosophy and religion! Historical materialism is based on a real, 'material' dialectic which provides an 'immanent critique' of capitalism. You don't have a bloody clue mate! And Marcuse is a world-renowned authority on the subject regardless of what Wiki doesn't have to say about it. The modern hubris you sprout, btw, about the communication revolution and the "ability" to 'know more than even Einstein', doesn't take into account that the information still has to be processed by each individual brain. Moreover, this glut of information merely makes a world of ignorant dilettantes. I would rather have quality (depth of understanding) than quantity (superficial knowledge, as demonstrated in abundance on this thread).
GH: <My interpretation of the dialectic is different to Marx's.>
You haven't given us your interpretation of 'the dialectic', just some woolly nonsense; perhaps you'd like to lay it out for us?

Gilbert Holmes,

(To clarify)...Marx wrote in 1859: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness."
Why do you find this nonsensical?

Why don't you have a squiz at his ideas on human nature before you go surmising on the reasons he comes up with things?

*Don't sell yourself short Yabby. You can claim your love just like you can claim your power.*

Ah Gilbert, but love of course, is based on how something or
somebody makes YOU feel, so based on your self interest.
We have had this discussion before on OLO, but we can have
it again.

*Historical materialism is based on a real, 'material' dialectic which provides an 'immanent critique' of capitalism. You don't have a bloody clue mate!*

That is wonderful for you Squeers, but of course it all relates
back to human behaviour and the assumptions we make.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx's_theory_of_human_nature

Much as you seemingly hate modern information, that is not a bad summary
of what Marx believed. Enough to shoot holes through, all
over the place.

Squeers etc,

Gilbert's Interpretation of the Dialectic in 350 Words or Less

The dialectic is inherent within all progressions within nature, small and large, complex and simple. Dialectically speaking, progressions involve a swinging between archetypal, polar extremes, with also a tendency to progress forward discernable, via a resolution being found between those extremes.

The dialectic nature of progressions is best understood in terms of the broader polar (yin/yang) nature of nature. Specifically, I suggest we can recognise three 'fundamental polarities':
1.yin/yang is the underlying polarity.
2.being/non-being relates to manifestation and structure. Here we have more/less, matter/energy, body/mind
3.separateness/connectedness relates to consciousness and interactions. Here we have cooperate/compete, love/self-interest, the interplay between the self and community etc.

So with yin/yang as the underlying polarity, we can look at precisely two categories of dialectic progression; on the being/non-being spectrum and on the separateness/connectedness spectrum.

We can look at these two like a vertical and horizontal axis if we like. (This is similar to Ken Wilber's quadrants, though he is perhaps as prolific and complex as Karl Marx and I haven't read it all.)

Looking at human society, Sorokin suggested that we can witness three competing paradigms, the sensate, (materialistic) the ideational (spiritual) and the idealistic (balanced) though I think with the two intersecting kinds of dialectic progression, it is a little more complex than this.

The primary dialectic tension within our global society over the last two hundred years would I suggest be between what I call 'separatism', and colletivism. While he has informed the debate, on the two axis that I mentioned, Marx falls down hard on the materialistic and on the collectivist ends of the two spectrums.

Personally, I am an advocate of balance.

Dear Yabby,
I carefully read through the wiki-link (when I should be sleeping) and found nothing in there to contradict my position apropos Marx and Marxism as I've sketched it here and on other threads. But I owe you a debt of gratitude for leading me (unwittingly) to one of the best and fairest assessments I've come across on Marx and his thought, within the very wiki-link you provided:
http://www.stanford.edu/~allenw/webpapers/Marxpreface.pdf
It is the new preface to the second edition (2004) of Allen Wood's "Karl Marx"
I urge everyone to read it (including davidf, if you're still about, David).
Marx's thought is not a matter of doctrine for me (nor was it for Marx); it is food for thought (and action. No, not terrorism, a la Bin Laden, but concerted and dogged effort based on a DEMAND for a better, fairer and healthier way to regulate society and fulfil human potential {essence btw is simply that: "potential"}) just as Marx intended.

G A Cohen's criticisms of Marx's philosophy have been effectively refuted btw.

Dear Gilbert,
woolier and woolier.

Dear Squeers,

Yes, I am still around. However, no philosophy or ideology has meaning as an abstraction. It takes shape according to what humans do with it. Marx's opposition to human rights as an excresence of capitalism made his system fatally flawed whatever virtues were in the rest of it. It justified the actions of Lenin and the other criminals in making great mounds of corpses.

You can spin your theories and blame the corpses on capitalism. grok and you are unable to recognise evil. Your rationalisations don't sound too different from the rationalisations of other ideologues who defend other evils. "Those who carried out the inquisition weren't really Christians."

I find the fluency and wit with which evil crap is defended interesting.

Squeers wrote: ‘It is the new preface to the second edition (2004) of Allen Wood's "Karl Marx"’

Is Allen Wood a pseudonym for Woody Allen?

I just finished "A Very Brief History of Eternity" by Carlos Eire who was born and grew up in Castro’s Cuba. The book is not concerned with Marxism, but here are a couple of quotes from it:

"One of the chief assumptions I have tried to challenge in all my work is the conceit that ideas matter very little or not at all in human history, that mentalities or collective thoughts are mere symptoms, perhaps even involuntary reflexes or passive epiphenomena, flotsam and jetsam, meaningless effluvia in the septic tank of class conflict, bobbing on the surface of a swirling gurge of natural, economic and political forces.”

“We are now repeatedly told by the thinking class that truth too, is strictly in the eye of the beholder, along with beauty and goodness, unless it happens to be a truth confirmed as such by a scientist or their political party. Yet, despite all disclaimers, there are still many on earth who believe in Truth with a capital T in a metaphysical sense, and some, unfortunately, who think that It is neatly encapsulated in some superior thoughts of their own, or some Book that they alone can interpret correctly. And sometimes they hanker for blood with an insatiable thirst...”

grok and you may now return to defending the indefensible.

Dear Davidf,
perhaps you should organise a book burning---anything by or in support of Marx which, as you invoke with ersatz religious fervor, constitutes "indefensible" "evil". In fact anything that challenges or criticises capitalism as "natural law" should be condemned as 'freethink' and 'expurgated' (you'll be needing high-sounding euphemisms).
Evil and dangerous radicals like could be rounded up and punished for their thought-crimes..

You work out the details, I'm sure you'll get a strong following!

In the meantime, read the link above and swallow your gall.

You're fond of criticising religious folk for their irrational prejudices, but it's perfectly ok for you to use precisely the same hyperbole (certainly there's never been any substance to your attacks on Marx), and to cherish your own closed-mindedness!

Dear Squeers,

I am against persecuting or prosecuting anyone for their opinions whether the opinions favour Marxism, supernatural belief, fascism or any other nonsense. I am against suppressing opinions. I am against sending people to re-education camps as the Marxists have done so that people can absorb the 'proper' opinions.

Freedom is a risky business. You allow any sort of nonsense which doesn't present a clear and present danger with the risk that people will follow the nonsense.

Capitalism is not natural law. Any of its aspects can be challenged. The particular challenge called Marxism has already resulted in great oppression. It has not shown itself to be a reasonable alternative.

you are trying to make me out as thought I approve of the oppressive tactics of totalitarian states. I fully support your right to spout your evil crap. I am just calling it for what it is.

As Davidf wrote:

<<Capitalism is not natural law. Any of its aspects can be challenged. The particular challenge called Marxism has already resulted in great oppression. It has not shown itself to be a reasonable alternative.>>

Squeers and grok, please excuse my crude attempt to understand the dialectic, but this juxtaposition of capitalism and Marxism shows, to me, an inevitability that Thesis does not necessarily throw up just one Antithesis, which inevitably leads to just one Synthesis. Thesis-Antithesis is not just some form of Manichaeanism, either/or, 'to each thesis, there is one andonly one antithesis'.

What I'm trying to grapple with is that, even in terms of Hegel's 'negation of the negation', there are any number of antitheses to any thesis: Marxism was one AT to the capitalist T; but so was a reactionary return to feudalism, or neo-feudalism. So was a withdrawal from the world entirely.

So was (is ?) the Greens' hankering for a pure, pre-capitalist, pre-feudal, pre-agricultural, world of foraging, treading lightly upon the Earth Mother.

And so is the pre-feudal, tribal, incredibly reactionary Islamism of al-Qa'ida, the Taliban, and supporters of the Khalifate - indeed, supporters of any fundamentalist religious movement. In fact, there is a sort of weird overlap between the reactionary AT of some of the Greens and the religious fundamentalists - both oppose the capitalist T, from different reactionary positions.

And of course, the supposed resolution of these T-AT struggles may produce any number of ghastly outcomes: what is the logical outcome of an extreme Green AT ? Back to the caves. What is the logical outcome of the religious-fundamentalist AT, particularly that of the supporters of the world-wide Khalifa ? A fair amount of butchery of the unbelievers, then back to the caves.

[TBC]

[cont.]

There is nothing inevitable about the thesis - antithesis - synthesis process [an endless process, as Marx points out]. Nothing is predetermined. Nothing is 'necessary', in that sense. Meanwhile, the ground shifts under our feet all the time. The capitalist T may be superseded, but it may prevail for a hell of a long time, simply by virtue of the weaknesses or deficiencies - or reactionary nature - of alternative ATs.

Has socialism been one of those alternative ATs ? Well, has it succeeded anywhere ? Finding reasons why it hasn't is not quite the same thing as showing that it has, or could.

So to show courtesy to grok for the term, what might 'emerge' to take its place ? Marx would, I'm sure, have been quite comfortable with the notion of 'emergence', of new forms arising which nobody could have anticipated - including himself.

Joe

Dear Squeers,

Apparently you lack an appreciation for the human right of free expression. That means allowing the free expression of ideas one might find loathsome, obnoxious or even evil. That is necessary for a free society since I want to be allowed to express my own ideas which others may find loathsome, obnoxious or even evil.

For your information I lived in the United States during the McCarthy period where people were being persecuted for the expression of ideas favouring socialism or Marxism. I belonged to the American Civil Liberties Union at that time and opposed McCarthyism. I opposed firing people for opinions which had nothing to do with their jobs. I opposed equating loyalty to the United States with seeing Reds under the beds.

I support democracy. That means giving full right to the expression of all opinions even those opinions which oppose democracy such as Marxism. The Marxists have a terrible record in that regard. Many intellectuals and artists left the USSR during Lenin’s rule when he instituted censorship and suppressed the other parties. Leftists such as Emma Goldman and Debs saw the evil of Leninism and condemned it for its suppression of expression.

The moderator of a discussion list I was a member of expelled a Marxist for her opinions. I posted material opposing that expulsion on the grounds that she had not attacked anybody personally or used expressions in bad taste but merely expressed opinions that most people disagreed with. I was approached by a member of a Marxist group to join them. He apparently had difficulty in seeing that one could support the expression of ideas one disagreed with so I must be favourable to Marxism. You apparently have the same difficulty.

However, Marxists and Nazis do not appreciate free expression when they take power although they both are willing to accept the freedom of a democratic society to promote their evil crap. I support their right to promote their evil crap although I recognise it for what it is.

Things seem to be hotting up here...sorry to interrupt....but I just want to reply to Yabby's last post referring to my perceived penchant for arrogantly knowing what's best.

Yabby,
This is a debate...I'm simply putting forward my opinion, which I might add, is no less arrogant than your own.
From a personal standpoint, I couldn't give a hoot what other people do. I know full well that they can't resist all the stuff. They either don't realise or don't care that they are lashed to the system.
It might surprise you, Yabby, that I don't go around spouting this stuff to all and sundry - unless I'm having a discussion somewhere like here. I try and live my own own life as much as I can on the periphery of all the bells and whistles of capitalism, just a simple life, that's all. I'm not a revolutionary, but I do have an opinion.
Most dwellers in our society don't bother, or don't have the time to think (let alone "decide for themselves") where they are going, how to relieve the stress or how best to live their lives.
They are recumbent on the conveyor belt....and they just keep gliding along.

>However, Marxists and Nazis do not appreciate free expression
when they take power although they both are willing to accept
the freedom of a democratic society to promote their evil crap.

Nazism IS capitalism -- just w/o the "democratic" pretense. So what pretentious, diversionary bull-dada.

Thus spoken by a true believer in 'our' fraudulent and ersatz bourgeois "Democracy": that only 'works' so long as no one is paying close attention to how it actually operates... mafia-like, in many respects, when its not just an infantile 'dog-and-pony show'. Iraq, Afghanistan -- and a LONG string of other tributary states which weren't paying their tribute on time to the American Empire -- are examples of where much of the moolah comes from to maintain this system and its very loud parasitic classes.

I mean, you work so HARD for 'your' money...(pfft): but Third World wage slaves work FAR HARDER than you, mate, I am sure: and yet don't get more than a fraction of what you pull in. And why is that, eh..?

>no philosophy or ideology has meaning as an abstraction.
It takes shape according to what humans do with it.

About the only intelligent and true thing you've said here.

>Marx's opposition to human rights as an excresence of
capitalism made his system fatally flawed whatever virtues
were in the rest of it.

This isn't even just wrong: it's simply a flat-out LIE.
Stop repeating it.

>It justified the actions of Lenin and the other criminals
in making great mounds of corpses.

Slanderous and libelous lies against heroic revolutionaries aside: AFAIC one of the main reasons you bourgeois types constantly scream this stuff is because your intent is actually to misdirect people's attention away from the FAR larger "mounds of corpses" produced by capitalism.

This is one area where 'mine is bigger' is definitely NOT something to be aiming for.

And 'stalinism STILL !== socialism' -- as you people dishonestly and obsessively continue to bleat.

Dear Poirot,
Beautifully put. I feel much the same way.

Dear davidf,
I have suffered your scathing slanders, and distortions (admittedly born of prejudice and ignorance rather malice) quite enough, here and elsewhere, so I thought, in my last post, you ought to experience the same indignity.
I have nothing more to say to you on the subject. I feel utterly vindicated (as is Marx) in Allen Wood’s forward which, ironically, Yabby led me to. Having read through it I can hold my head up that I’ve never said a word on the subject on OLO that isn’t ringingly endorsed by Wood. Here is a sample that applies peculiarly to your position:

“Those hostile to Marx have not hesitated to practice … abuses regarding Marx that they would not practice on any other thinker.
Thus Marx is often read mainly to discover in his texts the supposed source of the misdeeds of his self-appointed followers in the Soviet Union or elsewhere. (I have heard it suggested, for instance, that the excessively harsh derisive polemical tone of Marx’s writings makes him a fit target of blame for the atrocities committed in the Stalinist purges and the Cultural Revolution; it seems to me that the authors of these suggestions ought to listen more closely to themselves before asking us to credit their judgments about when someone is being excessively harsh.) Such readers are uninterested in the questions Marx was addressing, still less in the historical context in which he addressed them. Their more or less open intent is to terrify us into accepting the message: “You must not think this way” (lest you become a monster). But this is no different from telling us: “You must not think at all” -- at least, not about whether capitalism is a justifiable social system”.

And Dear GH, for you:
“The capitalist market system, as a historical reality,
cannot exist without class oppression. Fantasies about a possible egalitarian market
system may certainly exist in the minds of apologetic theorists and would-be reformers, but they have no existence in reality”.

Amen

Poirot,

"Most dwellers in our society don't bother, or don't have the time to think (let alone "decide for themselves") where they are going, how to relieve the stress or how best to live their lives.
They are recumbent on the conveyor belt....and they just keep gliding along."

That's a bit cynical isn't it?! Surely we are capable of thinking for ourselves as well as going to work, hanging out with our families etc!

"...Marx wrote in 1859: "It is not the consciousness of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary, their social being determines their consciousness."
Why do you find this nonsensical?"

I find this non-sensical for the reason mentioned in my earlier post; if our society sucks, we will not necessarily start to suck ourselves. We will reject our society. In other words, thought will change our society.

We can therefore measure shifts within our society at least equally as well in terms of shifts in consciousness, as compared to shifts in patterns of production as Marx has focussed on. The enlightenment, the renaissance, the reformation etc all involved shifts in consciousness that then drove the direction of the society.

To further critique Marx, IMO, any eco-utopian shift within our society is likely to come from the middle class and be driven through democratic processes of government. Not through any overpowering of capitalists by oppressed workers.

David f.

You employ an interesting debating technique at times.

The minute anyone endeavours to engage you in any meaningful analysis of Marx's theories (as separate from their falsified appropriation by the Soviet Communists) you immediately invoke your "mounds of corpses", while reinforcing the whole hellish tableau with your incantations against "evil crap".
For someone who boasts of their love for fair and free expression, you seem overly keen to accuse people of being ideologues, even though they have made it clear that they wish to explore concepts and ideas. You seem to go out of your way with a vehemently closed-mind, to extinguish any alternative view in a welter of offended humanity.
It does you a disservice

>>"...Marx wrote in 1859: "It is not the consciousness
of men that determines their being, but, on the contrary,
their social being determines their consciousness."
Why do you find this nonsensical?"

>I find this non-sensical for the reason mentioned in my
earlier post; if our society sucks, we will not necessarily
start to suck ourselves. We will reject our society. In
other words, thought will change our society.

I'm amazed that people can continue to spout this Idealist nonsense with straight faces (so to speak). All of human society -- all of LIFE, period -- is a struggle for the material resources with which to survive another day on the planet: and yet this 'philosopher' can dismiss the obvious primacy of this struggle, because of his own particular narrow personal/social interests and history. As have many vested interests before him.

The best that can be said about the intellectual confusion exhibited above, is that what Holmes is *really* driving at is how the _subjective_ factor involved in conscious human praxis, in its turn, conditions those primary material conditions of existence, in an endless ('ascending') feedback loop of dialectic; but of course, marxists are a quantum leap or two or three beyond this rather threadbare and topsy-turvy, funhouse reflection on reality.

>To further critique Marx, IMO, any eco-utopian shift
within our society is likely to come from the middle
class and be driven through democratic processes of
government. Not through any overpowering of capitalists
by oppressed workers.

Proving nothing so much as (beyond the narrow-minded hubris of such a statement) that Gilbert Holmes not only is exactly the type of person with the sort of agenda we have asserted from the beginning; but that he understands absolutely nothing about how the world actually works.

Of course, Karl Marx is the genius in question here. Gilbert Holmes is merely the comic relief.

Gilbert Holmes,

If we use the example of the Industrial Revolution in Britain, are you saying that the change in the mode of production from a cottage base to a factory one, and the ensuing shift of the population from a rural setting to an urban one, was "not" the driving force behind the shift of consciousness that followed?
Are you saying that a new consciousness sprang up amongst the population that preceded the change in the mode of production that it would be beneficial for them to live in an urban conglomeration, employing machinery to do what they had done by hand - and that therefore they had better get cracking to develop the technology to make it possible?
If that is what you are saying, then it seems illogical.

The change in the mode of production and the accompanying economic imperatives drove the changes that lead to a shift in consciousness.

I guess the conclusion to all of this is that interesting as
it was at its time, today Marxism is largely out of date,
for of course Marx could not predict the future, just like
the rest of us.

But I concede, it will keep the likes of Grok and Squeers
amused and busy for years, which is not such a bad thing
in the end, better then them being bored.

Marx could not have dreamed, that our capitalism/ social
welfare mix, would land up seeing workers largely own
the means of production.

Marx could not have forseen, that "work" in the modern
world would not be the sweat and toil of his day, but
see workers spend increasing work time, fooling around
on the internet or facebook and still be paid for "work".
Marx might be amazed, that many workers do in fact enjoy
their work with a passion.

Marx could not have forseen, that modern banking, venture
capital and similar, would do far more to give people
the choice to function at their potential, then any of
his theories.

Marx could not have forseen, that other species are not
that different from ours, as he seemed to think. Perhaps
he was still influenced by the old Descartes scientists,
who used to nail dogs feet to the floor and claim they
were mere machines, when they howled in pain.

So we shall have to put Marx to rest as an interesting
and quaint part of history, but certainly a total failure
in terms of changing human society for the better, as all
attempts by others to implement his theories, shows.