Rhian; Your analysis of Marxism is faulty for what it neglects to mention. Yes the Trotskyists opposed Stalin. A redeeming element for them. But they were not alone. Democratic Marxists of various sorts also opposed Stalinism - and indeed Bolshevism - in the post 1917 period. Here I'm talking of radical (Marxist) Social Democracy. Think Kautsky, the Russian Mensheviks, and the Austro-Marxists for a start. And remember there were other socialist traditions as well. (eg: French humanist socialism as epitomised by Jean Jaures) Closer to the end of 'Communism' the efforts of Gorbachev were of merit - and indeed had the Gorbachev reform trajectory continued the former Soviet sphere probably would have enjoyed deeper liberties and deeper democracy than they do now. And there's also the New Left and the Eurocommunists - both of which rejected Stalinism.

Re: Living Standards - there are things to keep in mind there too. *Technology* has improved lives, yes. But the wage share of the economy is shrinking. Workers' identity and consciousness is fading. This has seen resistance to the worst features of capitalism 'slipping away'; with assaults on industrial rights, social welfare, the public sector. And its been bad for distributive justice - and sometimes even bad for capitalism. (ie: because privatisation does away with natural public monopolies which deliver efficiencies to entire national economies)

Also equality in Australia has been long fading - re: attacks on welfare and labour market regulation. Many Australians could not dream of affording a roof over their head. And even worse for the working poor in the United States who face extreme exploitation.

You're right though that increasingly workers no longer identify as working class... That's due to old prejudices that need to be done away with. Many white collar workers today face menial, repetitive labour in ways akin to the old blue collar workers. Many also face exploitation and low pay. Its time for a return to class politics; in the context of a 'movement of movements' which builds alliances amongst diverse constituencies - including an internally diverse working class.

Tristan

Many leftists opposed Stalinism, but mostly in academia and fissile sectarian micro-parties that had no real impact. I remember tedious and obtuse arguments between Albanian and Peruvian style Maoists in union branch meetings. They never won an argument, or anything of note for their members.

And it’s not just Stalin – Mao, Hoxha, Tito, Castro, Ortega, Mugabe (and Trotsky, for the brief period he actually exercised power) were all brutal tyrants. After a while, people start to notice a pattern.

A moment’s thought will tell you that the wage share of national income can’t have been falling since Marx’s time. In fact, the annual national accounts show the wage share of the economy trended upwards in the 1950s and 60s, peaked in 1974-75, trended down until the late 2000s, and has picked up a bit since 2008-09. For most of the past 50 years it has fluctuated between 50% and 58%. This has only marginal effects on wages growth, which is driven mainly by growth in output and productivity. In the past 50 years, total compensation of employees has grown at 9.0% a year. If the wage share had stayed constant at its average over this period, compensation would have grown at 9.1% a year.

http://www.abs.gov.au/AUSSTATS/abs@.nsf/DetailsPage/5204.02013-14?OpenDocument
(calculated from table 6)

Housing affordability has improved in recent years due to rising wages and low interest rates.

http://www.rba.gov.au/publications/submissions/inquiry-affordable-housing/pdf/inquiry-affordable-housing.pdf

Though Australia’s Gini coefficient has increased in recent years (indicating some growth in inequality), this is not a strong or consistent trend. Real living standards have risen across the board for all income groups. In my view, this is a much more important social indicator (it matters more how much the real income of the poor has increased than how much Gina Reinhart’s income has increased).

http://www.treasury.gov.au/PublicationsAndMedia/Publications/2013/Economic-Roundup-Issue-2/Economic-Roundup/Income-inequality-in-Australia

I agree that workers' class identity and consciousness is fading. But that’s a product of the changing labour market and the failures of ideology that proposed that a person’s identity is most importantly defined by their economic class

Rhian. Marx was mostly right: commodification has penetrated every aspect of life; monopoly capitalism reigns; concentration of wealth ( anti Marxists are now documenting the 1%); because of internal contradictions capitalism is subject to booms and busts; survival of capitalism depends on capital accumulation. How communist parties interpreted Marx and attempted to put their programmes into practice is an entirely different matter.

Leslie

Even with the Great Recession, economic cycles are far less volatile than they once were. Monopolies are quite rare and usually regulated. Yes, the rich have got richer, but so have most of the rest of us.

The essence of Marx’s analysis was

1. The material lot of the working classes would get steadily worse under capitalism
2. Capitalism would become more unstable and crisis prone over time
3. Revolutionary overthrow of the economic and political system under the leadership of the Communist Party would result in a better outcome for workers.

For which, the verdict of history and experience is:

1. Wrong
2. Wrong
3. Wrong

Rhian just briefly the Austro-Marxists, the German USPD, the left-wing of the German SPD after reunification were not 'sects'. They represented a continuation of the democratic Marxist politics of the Second (not Third) International.

You're right that wages tended to grow (I think) from the post-war period until the early 1970s. But its been downhill since then. There were tendencies for wages to fall proportionately before WWII as well; and downward pressure on wages was always a problem for capitalism in the sense that individual bourgeois benefitted - but inequality meant capitalists struggled to find markets to actually sell their goods.

Also there are some things Marx ultimately got wrong. But a lot of these issues were explored by Marxist Revisionists themselves - such as Eduard Bernstein. And you haven't effectively refuted the SPECIFIC issues Leslie raises. You've shifted the topic ; which gives the impression of 'refuting Marxism'. But in fact you've failed to engage with Leslie's points.

Tristan

I think you are confusing wages and the wage share of factor income. It is a logical impossibility that the wage share could fall or rise indefinitely. The wage share of factor income varies a bit over time, but it has been fairly stable. Total factor income (roughly equivalent to GDP) has grown steadily almost every year for decades. Sometimes labour’s share is a little higher or lower, but this share effect is swamped by the growth effect. Labour has a slightly smaller share of a much, much bigger pie than in the 1970s.

Real wages in Australia and most other developed economies (though not, on some evidence, the USA) have grown almost continuously for decades. Unfortunately the ABS recently rebased its earnings data, so we only have data back to 1994. In the 20 years to December 2014 nominal wages rose by 108% while the Consumer Price Index rose by 70%, resulting in real wage growth of 22%. This real growth was dampened to some extent by compositional effects, especially the rapid growth of part-time work. For full-time ordinary time male wage earners, growth was 137% nominal, or 39% real.