Why Marx was Right

[Taverner]

Marx was right. Seriously, he was.

Did you read Das Kapital?

I did. And then I read it again.

Then I read reviews of it, because let's admit it. Karl Marx was not the best writer in the world.

I come from the journalistic tradition, like Hemingway.

Keep it Simple, Sir.

Anyway, Marx says that the workers will gain power through the dialectic, that is communication.

It doesn't happen all at once, but the communication eventually communicates class consciousness.

This is the key - realizing you are part of a class, and you will be lower than the 1%, as long as they can help it. Now think about any liberation movement - whether civil rights, anti-apartheid or the American labor movement.

Once they got organized, they went out and antagonized their oppressors so much, they gave them a few things in recognition for their slavery.

Sometimes this lifted that group out of slavery, sometimes it didn't.

But as long as a group is oppressed, they will complain about said slavery.

Thus, it is important that class consciousness happens.

As they say, the first rule about holes. When you realize you are in one, stop digging.

We are in a hole, and various groups are starting to realize this.

They will fight for their group's rights, and eventually, as long as we keep vigilant, we will move forward towards a more egalitarian system.

The problem is that the 1% do not want to give this up. They want to continue to rule like kings.

So it takes vigilance. The American Labor Movement has been stymied since the 1970s.

As every last one of us is a worker, we should combine our forces and work towards this goal, so that the progress of history continues towards where it should go, rather than where it shouldn't.

[gordianot]

1. Once upon a time there were several nation states who studied Marx at length.

They read his works, it was accepted State dogma. They may have studied it but obviously did not understand it, look where they are today. My opinion the 1% has more to do with alpha human behavior of our species of ape. Marx theory works on an intellectual level but does not account for human behavior.

As the little girl says in the ATT commercial "I want more". Our species of Ape is very greedy and will use any tools available to realize that greed.

[TBF]

2. Complete BS -

And I have no idea why you'd bring it to the Socialist Progressives Group. Folks like to keep things on an individual level and blame "human nature" rather than take a hard look at the systems they have developed. I don't believe people are inherently greedy. That is a learned behavior that is reinforced and rewarded by capitalism.

[Taverner]

3. Please allow me to retort:

Yes, I will agree the 1% is motivated by that survival skill, of being alpha

However many things are motivated by previous survival instincts, including slavery, serfdom and monarchies

Hell, all of us would love to be rich

But we won't all be rich

Lenninsts didn't care for it so much, and Stalinists REALLY didn't care for Marx

If capitalism were to go around fixing the problems cited by Marx, I would still think capitalism was the best solution

But it doesn't

Socialism does - in so far that it is not mandated by some central authority far away

Or any central authority for that matter

[gordianot]

4. Excellent retort.

I would maintain that the reason Lenninist and Stalinist did not care for Marx is they were on top of the Alpha pyramid. Overcoming human nature will not be easy.

[Taverner]

5. That's why I think a decentralized socialism is the solution

Of course, what if one of the autonomous collectives becomes tyrannical?

There has to be a check and balance between the state and the collective - and this was what the US tried to do

Things didn't work out so well however...

I am more Anti-Capitalist than Marxist

I think he has some great ideas, but so does John Zerzan, Carl Sagan and the great European Socialist economists of the last turn of the century

There are a lot of good ideas out there, problem is the money isn't in them...

[gordianot]

6. I met a distant cousin who grew up in East Germany at family reunion.

He was definitely among the ruling elite from an early age. His father was a engineer in Nazi Germany well educated and under the Communist system he did well. At an early age cousin same age as myself was very involved in the Communist youth groups served his stint in the East German Army, was a youth political leader. He was afforded the best education getting a Doctorate in Electrical Engineering two homes and as he described it two really crappy cars. I expressed an interest Marx as theory at that he laughed. He could quote Marx verbatim to the page and chapter. Literally years in political school. It seems he is today a dedicated capitalist not because he prefers the system as he stated it is "what he knows how the world works". For him West German capitalism was a perfect fit. His one criticism of Marx was that he did not understand people and what motivates them. He called Socialism a good idea but to me he was out for his share or more.

I tend to view people as another living organism. As a living organism we seek reinforcement as do all living organisms with a central nervous system. It gets complicated humans require a broader range of reinforcement than flat worms.

About 20 years ago anthropologist documented two Baboon troops who were in direct conflict over a meat packing dump in Africa. It seems the two troops managed to kill off the Alpha males and their female counterparts due to infected meat. What was left were the lower status juvenile males and females in one troop. These survivors spent long hours involved in group grooming, nurturing the young and managed to avoid a typical Alpha hierarchy. They totally avoided the meat dump even without competition. After a decade a much more peaceful troop of Baboons emerged. I am not sure what their status is today.

[joshcryer]

7. I came to the conclusion that revolutionary class consciousness is near impossible.

However, I also came to the conclusion that consumer consciousness is a proven, richly valuable tool, which corporations via copy testing and polling achieve on a daily basis. With very good results (oh, and the individuals resulting from this do not sense that their options are being manipulated).

In that vein I decided that class consciousness is most easily achieved through class consumer consciousness. That is, you have consumers who, via their consumption, are taught about class and how to emancipate themselves from the class structure.

This is where I would basically disagree (while agreeing, note) with Marx (among others, as well as Chomsky and Debord). Marx (as well as Debord and Chomsky) believe that consumer culture is "alienating." I believe the precise opposite though I agree with their arguments about why consumer culture is alienating in the current capitalist mode of production. Consumer culture with individuals who are involved in the totality of the process as workers within their consumption structure would be extremely emancipating, it would be extremely socializing. There would be no alienation in any arguable way.

You go down to a local "maker factory" and make yourself a new fangled oPhone made with Open Source hardware and software and given away freely to anyone. You have no idea how the oPhone works or the machines work that make the oPhone, all you know is that everyone has one and you want one too. The first thing you do when you enter the maker factory is get greeted by someone who asks you what your level of expertise is. You say you are a complete newbie and aren't sure of how anything at the factory works. They ask you how much time you're willing to devote, and you respond all day. "Perfect!" You then spend the day talking to technicians about how to build your oPhone, the procedures used in the factory process could be completely automated or could have some sense of factory line work, either way works. This horizontal mode of production is intrinsically anti-capitalist and socialist in nature. At the end of the day you leave the "maker factory" with an oPhone and have learned a lesson in socialism and class structure, all the while you are completely part of the process and there is zero alienation whatsoever.

Why would you then go to a store like Wal-Mart, ran very much like a hierarchical socialist functioning system (their margins are less than 10% and they're one of the largest employers in the world), when you could go to the "maker factory"? You have to pay Wal-Mart, the "maker factory" would be giving stuff away for "free" (your own labor would of course be valued at the "maker factory" so that's a bit overstated). As a consumer you are going to be compelled to go to the "maker factory." Therefore consumerism is a good tool to create class consciousness whether we like it or not.

This thing about consumerism for or against reminds me of old programming debates about GOTO and how it was "considered harmful." Except GOTO was predated by CONTINUATIONS (they're essentially the same except continuations pass a value) and in fact CONTINUATIONS are an extremely powerful tool when it comes to programming. Anyway, the point of this tangent is that we got GOTO wrong, and I think Marx (and a lot of those who followed him) got consumerism wrong. And I think it hurt socialism in the long run for it.

[Taverner]

8. +1000