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Many of those things are not so new as you think. Have you read anything at all in original of Marx and Engels? They don't describe their society as "binary". They identify capitalists, proletarians, the remnants of the old feudal ruling class, and the middle classes or "petty bourgeoisie". The PB is discussed in many different parts of their works. I don't remember now if they clearly differentiate between the dissapearing old PB and the new that rises on the backs of capitalists, like engineers, accountants, contract lawyers and most importantly managers. But certainly later Marxists writers like Baran and Sweazy (Monopoly Capital).
Some people started at the bottom and made fortunes in the 19:th century as well, in particular in places like the American Frontier. Class mobility was at an all-time highest during the golden age of welfare society, the 1940:s - 70:s. It's not as high today as many imagine.
Owning stocks for a common person is more common today, but it wasn't THAT odd for someone from my grandfather's generation to hold ie a couple hundred LM Ericsson stocks. And in principle it's not that much difference between holding stocks, and having a long-term savings account. Both are a little bit of capital, money that generates money. In neither case does it make you part of the capitalist class.
Around the turn of the millenium there were a lot of "futurists" talking about how the work-capital contradiction was becomming obsolete and a new class of "knowledgocrats" or whatever buzzword was used was becoming more important. This never happened. While off course top programmers in Silicon Valley can earn very high salaries, no-one today thinks they are in control. It's evident that in the digital economy as well the people in control ultimately, are the owners.
I share OP's skepticism towards Marxism, and this is one of the strongest arguments against it in my opinion: Marxism is ultimately about power/control, not wealth. This worked fine in 1800s London where wealth and ownership were virtually synonymous, but it starts to fail in a modern market capitalist economy that makes entrepreneurship easy. Now you have a huge overlap between "rich proletariat" and "poor bourgeoisie". We can stretch this overlap to its absurd extreme with a question like: "Is the rich movie star worth $500M really more aggrieved than the owner of a failing coffee shop?" Sure, the rich proletariat don't have control, as you said, but they do have money, and therein lies the schism. Do you care more about power or money? You can only choose one. If you said "power", then you have absurd situations like the coffee shop owner vs. movie star comparison. If you said "money" then you're no longer a Marxist.
The modern poor self-employed has been discussed extensively by leftist writers, especially in the case of platform workers, where freedom and control is almost entirely an illusion. Now they actually have a specific capital, Uber (etc), dominating and exploiting them. In the case of the owner of a market stand in Bogota ie that is not so obvious. Probably he buys from a wholesaler who concentrate much more market power. He exists on the fringes of capitalism, where profits are the lowest and competition most fierce, while concentrated capital has laid claim to the more profitable sectors.
> In the case of the owner of a market stand in Bogota ie that is not so obvious.
It's not so obvious because it's an internal contradiction of Marxism. Marx specifically separated out the petite bourgeoisie as distinct class because they represented a thorny middle ground to his ideology. You can read his commentary in the Communist Manifesto (I'm assuming you have) and you can tell he's not sure what to do with them before finally saying, "they'll fall in line with the proles in our revolution, trust me bro". After the revolutions in the mid 1800s however, he came of the opinion that they tend to side with the haute bourgeoisie.
Therein lies the tension. Is it about money or is it about ownership (I used "power" in my previous post but I think "ownership" is more precise)? Now, one might say something like "well, it's kind of about both". This isn't really correct, though. If social class in Marxism is defined by their relationship to the means of production, then it must all be about ownership. Wealth happens to be a correlate that justifies Marx's callback to material conditions.
Marx also didn't really talk much about the "haute proletariat", for the lack of a better term. These are salaried workers who don't own their business but are high earners and invest in equity. You can think of highly paid software engineers, lawyers, physicians, and consultants, much more common now than in the 1800s. Personally, I don't think the haute proletariat are worse off than the petty bourgeoisie.
You should probably read more socialist text written after the 19:th century. A starting point that still holds up very well is Baran and Sweazys Monopoly Capitalism and Bravermans Work and Monopoly Capital. A hypermodern take is Varoufakis Technofeudalism, but it's so new it's difficult to say if it will become a classic or forgotten in 10 years time.
No, no. I completely get that Marx’s theory has been “improved” upon by newer leftist writings that tries to resolve this contradiction. Both the OP and I are talking about traditional Marxism.
>Both the OP and I are talking about traditional Marxism.
Yes, this. If there is are revised versions of Socialism that take the shortcomings of Marx into consideration, and level the criticism that Leninism and Maoism deserve, I haven't seen them. I also haven't seen ones that don't assume because I am Democrat middle class worker in the US economy that I am a enabler of fascism. I really enjoyed watching Second Thought on YT until a few weeks ago when the dude basically said people like me are more dangerous than MAGA conservatives and that if I wanted to know more about Socialism I should read Lenin. Sorry JT Chapman, I like you, I see you, I hear you, but I'm not a fucking fascist.
When I watch videos on the Hakim channel, the guys starts with all sorts of false assertions about how the US economy works, basing it strictly on an old school Marxist way of thinking that doesn't really apply.
>If you said "money" then you're no longer a Marxist.
This is directly contradicted by Marx himself in Capital Vol. 3.
>In England, modern society is indisputably most highly and classically developed in economic structure. Nevertheless, even here the stratification of classes does not appear in its pure form. Middle and intermediate strata even here obliterate lines of demarcation everywhere (although incomparably less in rural districts than in the cities).
>[...]
>The first question to he answered is this: What constitutes a class? — and the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to another question, namely: What makes wage-labourers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three great social classes?
>At first glance — the identity of revenues and sources of revenue. There are three great social groups whose members, the individuals forming them, live on wages, profit and ground-rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property.
>However, from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g., would also constitute two classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving their revenue from one and the same source. The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords-the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries.
Here he already identified that the development of capitalism was resulting in the creation of a new class (or subclass) of rich professionals. Rich movie stars, highly paid professional athletes and social media influencers didn't exist in the 1800s. An artist who had a wealthy aristocrat or business owner as their patron might be more comfortable than a regular small business owner, but it's irrelevant. How many super rich movie stars are there in the world? One thousand? Ten thousand? They have fuck all to do with the analysis of production and political economy.
>Therein lies the tension. Is it about money or is it about ownership (I used "power" in my previous post but I think "ownership" is more precise)? Now, one might say something like "well, it's kind of about both". This isn't really correct, though.
The fact that there are tensions, contradictions, tendences and counter-tendencies in Marxist theory is repeatedly acknowledged by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao. Like, what are you even trying to get at? No, Marx didn't write about literally everything because he died, and the world changed in the decades between his death and WW1. That's where Lenin comes in. Lenin may have also died before the current era of capitalism, but so what, the foundation of Marxist theory is still solid. Nothing you or the OP says contradicts the foundation AT ALL, the notion that an Amazon warehouse worker could hypothetically buy stocks and therefore is kind of a capitalist bro is laughable.
The primary contradiction is imperialism in any case, so the fact that Western 1st world workers can be materially better off by claiming even just a tiny stake in the imperialist pie is exactly what Lenin was talking about.
> top programmers in Silicon Valley can earn very high salaries, no-one today thinks they are **in control**.
> the people **in control** ultimately, are the owners.
Sounds almost like you don't actually care about the actual material conditons and prosperity of the people, and it's really only about *power* instead. 🤔
That's because the question I'm discussing is whether capitalism has been replaced with something else.
No offense but this feels like an answer in bad faith. You don't seem to try to understand what my points are and responding to them, you're just looking for a quote to take out of context and attack.
Although I'm a capitalist, my parents were born behind the iron curtain and my fam lived in multiple communist countries. They had to study Marxist theory in school. So I can provide some insight here.
>We have a middle class now.
>In the modern economy who exactly the "Capitalists" and the "workers" are gets very blurry. With the rise of white-collar middle class office workers, and the post industrial economy that relies on information skills.
Was always the case. Specialized and skilled labor has a long history of formally organizing. Certainly dating at least to the high middle ages in most parts of Europe.
Where ML theory draws the line is "who owns" vs. "who doesn't own, but has to work instead". What we today call "white collar" might have relatively more comfortable working conditions, but the underlying story is that they are still workers, subject, in theory to the same sorts of pressures, struggles, etc, as others workers.
Where things get blurry is when you have a whole class of people who both work as employees for others, and draw income from owning productive assets somewhere. For example, if you hold a stock portfolio that pays you dividends or a 2nd apartment that you rent out, that is a source of part (but not all) of your income.
>Socialists tie themselves in knots trying to address the "petty bourgeois, a pretentious eye roll inducing term that is ironically petty, that basically lumps them in with Capitalists.
In theory (as I've understood it), a "petit bourgeois" is a person who owns his own MoP and benefits from exploiting HIS OWN LABOUR. Meanwhile a "grand bourgeois" also benefits from exploiting THE LABOUR OF OTHERS". Communist countries treated those things differently. Some of them (like Hungary) therefore allowed things like self-employed or family-firms , and used this theoretical detail to justify that.
But again, I'm not actually a soc. This is just 2nd-hand information, based on what my parents had to learn in school. If any actual soc. reads this, feel free to set the record straight.
What I am saying is that there was a larger distinction between the "Capitalists" and the "workers" when Marx was writing. There was a middle merchant class, but it didn't look like the vast range of professionals we have today. The span of economic circumstances people can be in has grown significantly, as has the average person's relationship to capital.
A lot of Marxism is predicated on a violent revolution. There seems to be some wavering on whether Marx meant that Socialism (and specifically communism) would just emerge naturally out of Capitalism, but how people have chosen to take that message seems to be pretty clear. Most of the Leftists I hear\\read talking about this seem to think a violent overthrow of the system is the only way. OK. As a person that has read a lot of history, revolutions are rarely smooth affairs. Innocent people that had nothing to do with the situation get swept up by mobs. People can be smart, but mobs are dumb, angry beasts.
If Socialists were interested in reforming the system from inside by working it the way republicans have, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'm not totally unsympathetic to what they want. It's them quoting monsters and not realizing they are monsters that bothers me. There is an almost religious fervor to what some of them say, and I can't get on board with that. If they can't see that Marx isn't scripture, and that guys like Lenin and Mao just created a different kind of class society that was imperialistic and racist, then I can't support them.
You forgot about the lumpen proletariat, petite bourgeois, labor aristocracy, lumpen bourgeois...Marx kinda nailed it already. People always say Marx can't be applied today. But it absolutely can, it's just modern socialists have removed the entirety of the revolutionary seed of marxism to "fit" the times, and so here we are with nothing more than bourgeois academics and Chinese capitalists as the only actually existing socialism and a bunch of "legal marxists". You think they teach actual Marxism on campus? Lmao
My second major qualm about Marxism are these antiquated, pretentious, academic terms like bourgeois, proletariat, and all the sub variations of them. Because nothing sounds more working class than some ten dollar words from the 19th century that no one except Marxists use.
Socialists need to update their glossary.
Things are much more like that today than in Marx’s time. The main difference is that capitalism was less developed-there was no real consumer credit, trade unions, welfare state or even universal make suffrage in capitalist countries.
But at Marx’s time all factories and mills were rather small. There were still apprentices and journeymen and all sorts of middle classes outside the proletariat. Those groups were resisting BECOMING proletariat… luddites etc. So in the manifesto Marx is talking about a class trajectory… that peasants are becoming either owners or labor, artisans and apprentices the same. Even by the time of the Paris Commune, it was a lot of single-owner shops with maybe 20 workers and the boss was literally the owner with an office off the shop floor, not some guy hired by a board.
Our world today is fully developed capitalism. The working class is truly international and the world’s majority population.
The struggle of journeymen of that time can be seen in what amounted to petty bourgeois careers some decades ago: lawyers, architects, etc are now being exploited by capitalists the same as most jobs.
Depends on the specifics of the position. Do you own what you are working on, do you have managerial oversight over others, are you just working for networking purposes and actually live off a trust fund?
Class distinctions are not like corporate leveling where there are specific set designations… it’s based in general social relations. So some jobs might be skilled and privileged at one point and then deskilled and automated and made more cog-like.
Most people in tech are workers, most probably do not get astronomical wages for comparable work. Even many of the high paid ones with very large salaries still depend on wages for their main source of income and do not own anything they develop or do at their company. Certain unionized blue collar jobs used to be like that too in the 60s and 70s when some of those tasks were most important for larger capital circulation (think longshore crane operators.) Being well off but a worker might make you more apt subjectively to see yourself as a very slow investor or certain positions might have more control over other workers or there is some kind of stock scheme that benefits certain employees and makes them more willing to be loyal to the company.
On average, Tech workers make a lot of money in the US. Its quite common for a tech worker to be assigned a Junior dev to mentor. Does that make them no longer working class? What if they have 2 juniors. What if they lead a team if 2 for a project but spend all their time coding. What if they run a team of 3 and spend most their time working. Stock compensation is incredibly common in Tech, does that make them no longer a worker? What if they run a team if 3 spend 75% of their time coding and receive stock? Many tech workers get rich from the high pay for their skills, does this male them no longer a worker? What about their retirement investments? If they bought into an index fund, like many people do?
What I am trying to say is the idea of worker vs capitalist is far more complex real world, and is purposefully simplified order to give a clear group to murder in a revolution. There is no clear line, and will never be one, because if I ask someone else they will give me a different answer.
I thought it was based on economic relations (specifically whether you own the MOP) not social relations. If you are friends with the CEO, but still get paid to work (and don't make your money from passive capital gains), you're still working class, no?
As I see it, social relations are class, economic are encompassed by social relations and the specific way classes are related. So by social relations I am a worker because I can only sell my ability to labor in order to meet my needs. Our economic relations are how workers and bosses have e or do not have leverage or power in the production process. At least this is my impression - idk if the specific language is that important. The important thing is that classes are not deterministic or formalistic things, just functions of how society is reproducing itself.
People tend to want to separate the social and social but in many “Marxisms” they are interconnected… or at least I have some strong conceptual disagreements with more economically deterministic Marxist takes.
But at any rate, class is how people fit into society and the production process, not some kind of individual diagnosis of social position.
You are 100% right and Marxism is highly anachronistic to the point it's useless in today's society. But much lime flat earthers all the evidence in the world won't stop some people from having blind faith.
I see too many similarities in style and rhetorical approach between hard Leftists and Christian Nationalists. I am an atheist before anything else, and cannot stand the belligerence of zealotry.
It’s true that modern classes have fractured into many subclasses and intermediate positions. And that their interpositions aren’t always so obviously adversarial as class relationships were in primitive capitalism.
There are many examples of how people can bridge class divides. For example, does a licensed professional own enough personal capital to produce their own professional services? Arguably yes. Can a person who has a computer own enough capital to “own” their personal freelance services? Yeah, that might be an interpretation.
The more pressing question for me is the future. Capital always finds a way to demean the value of labor so it can commodify their labor again. For example, tech is actively pushing STEM education so that it can over-produce STEM workers whose value of skill will thus be lowered. Capital is already demeaning the value of the “exclusive” knowledge-ownership that previously belonged to the professions. Look at pharmacists, for example. The pharmacy owners know what the pharmacist is trusted to do the computer actually does now. So they are becoming more expendable to the owners, like an average worker is. They are being “surveilled” more with metrics that then get them fired. The same will happen eventually with anyone else who invested in personal capital.
As to your examples of people starting companies, it’s vitally important to distinguish having an idea from the actual implementation of that idea. Do many company owners invent things that are valuable? Sure! And they should be compensated for their contribution at a reasonable rate.
But can the guy who had the idea behind Amazon actually take credit for the work workers do that makes its actual implementation possible? No, not really, no. They should make the value of their invention, but workers should be compensated for the value of their implementation.
>tech is actively pushing STEM education
Who is? Who is "tech?" There isn't a group of people working together to achieve some nefarious goal. STEM is popular among parents who want their kids to have a degree that will get them a good job. Education should be more than job training, but that is a discussion for another time. I work in aerospace so I know what trying to find qualified engineers and IT people is like. There is a legit shortage of people, and if you are looking for a good paying job, having those skills is a meal ticket. No one is "pushing" it.
>But can the guy who had the idea behind Amazon actually take credit for the work workers do that makes its actual implementation possible?
It makes me want to throw up a little to have to defend Jeff Bezos, but he wasn't just a venture capitalist with an idea. Meither were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. These are people that built a business, and for a while did more than just manage people. They are workers. I will totally conceded that their businesses run off the labor of others; they aren't stocking shelves or working a register. But someone had to come up with that business and make it work, and I'm sorry, but the people working in a Amazon warehouse wouldn't have been the ones to build that business. The treatment they receive is abhorrent and is 100% the result of a system that values money over human dignity. That's something that should be addressed, but that is a cultural feature of the US, not an indictment of Capitalism as a whole since workers are treated much better in European countries. China is largely a Socialist country and treats factory workers terribly, so there isn't a great case to be made regarding the live of a laborer in a Socialist economy.
One of the funniest things I found when reading Marx was that the guy writing the introduction was ADAMENT that Marx's Capital can only be applied to that time and space, lol.
Youre supposed to take the tenets of marxism and apply them to the present to understand the development of the object youre studying.
The mistake in not marxism itself
>**Communism** is for us *not* a state of affairs which is to be established, *an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself*. We call **communism** the real **movement which abolishes the present state of things**. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence.
Marx, The German Ideology
>What we have to deal with here is a **communist society**, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it **emerges from capitalist society**; which is thus in every respect, *economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges*.
Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme
>In themselves **money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence**. They want transforming into capital. But **this transformation can only take place under certain circumstances** that center in this, viz., that **two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sums of values they possess, by buying other people's labor power; on the other hand, free laborers, the sellers of their own labor power and therefore the sellers of labor**. . . . With this polarization of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the laborers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labor. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale.
Marx, Capital
>The **co-operative factories run by workers themselves are**, within the old form, the first examples of **the emergence of a new form**, even though they naturally reproduce in all cases, in their present organization, all the defects of the existing system, and must reproduce them. But **the opposition between capital and labour is abolished there**, even if at first only in the form that the workers in association become their own capitalists, i.e., they use the means of production to valorise their labour.
Marx, Capital
>The capitalist stock companies, as much as the **co-operative factories, should be considered as *transitional* forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one**, with the only distinction that **the antagonism is resolved** negatively in the one and **positively in the other**.
Marx, Capital
>**Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other**. Corresponding to this is also a political **transition period** in which **the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat**.
Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program
>(a) We acknowledge the **co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism**. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers.
>(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the **transfer of the organised forces of society**, viz., **the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves**.
>(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork.
Marx, Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council
>If cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; **if the united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan**, thus taking it under their control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production—**what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, “possible” Communism?**
Marx, The Civil War in France
>The matter has nothing to do with either Sch[ulze]-Delitzsch or with Lassalle. Both propagated small cooperatives, the one with, the other without state help; however, in both cases the cooperatives were not meant to come under the ownership of already existing means of production, but create alongside the existing capitalist production a new cooperative one. **My suggestion requires the entry of the cooperatives into the existing production**. One should give them land which otherwise would be exploited by capitalist means: as demanded by the Paris Commune, the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And **Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale**. *It must only be so organised that society, initially the state, retains the ownership of the means of production so that the private interests of the cooperative vis-a-vis society as a whole cannot establish themselves*. It does not matter that the Empire has no domains; one can find the form, just as in the case of the Poland debate, in which the evictions would not directly affect the Empire.
Engels to August Bebel in Berlin
>In the modern economy who exactly the "Capitalists" and the "workers" are gets very blurry.
It's not blurry at all. We have a class system because of capitalism. One controls and influences the country's economy and political space using capital and exploitation. The other pro-actively works to live and has substantially less power over economic and political choices.
But we don't and those two classes don't really exist. No one is really controlling the economy beyond the macro level. Lobbying is a thing, and money is a loud megaphone, but it is fantasy to think that there is a cabal of people sitting around dictating the economy of the US.
What's more, as I pointed out, the "worker" is pretty vague these days. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook from a college dorm room. He is still an employee of a giant multi-billion company. He is technically a "worker." He also has influence via lobbying, but no control, as is demonstrated by getting called in to testify before congress.
Meanwhile, a person like Keith Gill, a nobody with a few dollars to rub together, can play the stock market and make millions. He doesn't control any means of production, but is richer than I will ever be.
A person that runs a business making boutique guitar pedals, making soap, selling mugs on Etsy, or working their naughty bits in front of a camera on OnlyFans are more "capitalists" than a mid-level director of a giant corporation that makes more in a year than they ever will.
Our economy and society is way more complex than what Socialists want it to be. They wants to reduce it to a simple equation because that makes it easier for them to discuss. But it just isn't that easy. They need to update their theories for a more multi-faceted world.
There's a reason why there's a societal focus on **the 1% vs the 99%**. It's not fantasy, not a theory.
>He is still an employee of a giant multi-billion company
Elon is the CEO of *seven* companies. He is not an employee and far from an example you'd want to use. He is a capitalist.
>a nobody with a few dollars to rub together, can play the stock market and make millions.
Yeah, and anybody can scratch a ticket and win millions. Anyone can gamble with $5 and come out with thousands. This isn't capitalism at work to uplift the poor. **More than half of America is currently living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to pay for decent living because of capitalism, not personal decisions**.
Our class system, workers vs owners, is not debatable and refuses reality.
Edit: read too fast and quoted wrong, but Mark Z isn't an "employee" either
>Elon is the CEO
I purposely didn't mention him because he is a Capitalist in the Marxist sense. He came from a rich family that got their money from resource extraction in Africa and then bummed around, investing in companies to make money off of them. He has never had a unique idea. Everything he does is based on someone else's work. He may also be a legit fascist. So fuck that guy.
I totally understand what you are saying in the last part, and totally understand why that would anger people into action. It angers me into action. But that actions *isn't* socialism as laid out by Marx, and especially not by Lenin or Mao.
>Our class system, workers vs owners, is not debatable and refuses reality.
It's totally debatable and that is what we are doing here. My argument against Marxism is that it draws too sharp a delineation between two made up classes of people that don't really exist anymore. This is an extremely important detail to me as a cis middle class white guy. Why? Because in the conversations I've had with Leftists, they are pretty pumped on the idea of violent revolution, and pretty sour on people that look like me even thought I'm fairly left by US standards. But because I don't pass their purity tests, I could get my ass frog marched to the gallows because some fuckwit with a head full of old writings and no experience in life has some blood lust they need to sate. Fuck. That. Shit. Revolutions are messy and never go as planned.
Nuance is import. Context is important. Life is complex and full of gray areas. Don't like it? Tough shit.
I hate to break it to you but the inequality between the rich and poor is at an all-time high. Just because we have modern conveniences doesn't mean there isn't a clear majority of people STRUGGLING and a select few who are hoarding it all. I think their theories apply to today just as well as they did back then.
There is nothing in my statement that would imply that there isn't a massive difference in wealth. I said that the theories in Marxism don't apply well to our modern world because there are more then just the two groups of "capitalists" and "workers." The broad white collar middle class didn't exist then.
You just kind barfed out a non sequitur canned response that didn’tactually respond to my post at all. Try harder.
>because there are more then just the two groups of "capitalists" and "workers."
I'm disagreeing with this. You can still see two groups in the modern day.
Cool, but you are wrong. The lines between these has blurred as there are a lot of people that have their feet in both worlds. I know things are easier if you believe in a binary world, but it isn't that way. Everything is shades of gray.
There are quite literally people who own property and those who do not. People who have the money to invest and those who do not.
There is a point where you obtain so much money that it becomes easier to get more money than it is to spend it.
By any of these metrics, you can clearly see two groups.
The people who are in a position to repossess your belongings are the capitalist class. You should understand the words of Marx before talking about them.
But a person can own property and own stock but still be a "worker." That’s what I'm talking about. There are wealthy managers that pull a salary like everyone else, it's just very high. You have shelf stockers with a small nest egg on Robin Hood. You have people running small businesses out of their garage. Billionaires that started a small company and are still working that same job after years.
Are their people born into wealth and just con their ways through life, gambling money on other people's efforts? Yes. And sure, you have people with nothing but the shirt on their backs. But these are the extremes. The vast majority of people are somewhere in between with varying levels of "capitalist" and "worker." The socialist narrative used to gin up discontent just doesn't hold water.
>But a person can own property and own stock but still be a "worker."
Yeah sure, but that isn't what makes someone a capitalist. I was just pointing to something that you can clearly distinguish two groups from.
>The vast majority of people are somewhere in between with varying levels of "capitalist" and "worker." The socialist narrative used to gin up discontent just doesn't hold water.
No. There is quite literally a capitalist class and a working class. You just don't understand the definitions or want to acknowledge them. I'm not sure which.
Again refer to the last sentence from my last comment. You and most of the people here are not capitalists. You might support capitalism but those are two different things.
The biggest problem with Marxism is that they misunderstand the source of value (value is subjective, it does not come solely from labor) and they misunderstand markets (central planning doesn’t work).
The fact that Marx’s class distinctions are sorta blurry in practice is immaterial. Until Marxists realize the true source of value and the problems with central planning, Marxism will remain a dead end.
>You didn't say anything about whether it is accurate to what Marx said.
What I said earlier:
>Marx didn't claim any and all labor creates value
The mud pie argument isn't valid specifically because it's an argument against something Marx didn't claim.
> The mud pie argument isn't valid specifically because it's an argument against something Marx didn't claim.
Marx claimed that the value of a thing depends on labor inputs. The mud pie argument demonstrates that the value of a thing is not dependent on labor inputs. Therefore, it is a valid argument.
*"Nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value."*
That's what I say. It's oudated and wrong ideology which doesn't apply to modern world. That's like arguing against kings and queens. There's none anymore (except in few backwards countries)
And I'm all for arguing against Kings and Queens. Thomas Paine nailed it.
I am equally for not allowing the wealthy to become a new form of aristocracy. I often feel like we are sliding into a new form of feudalism. That's why I starting looking more closely at Socialism. I agree with many of their conclusions about the dangerous trajectory of unfettered Capitalism, but I can't get on board with their solution. Marxism just doesn't work. My interactions with Leftists on Reddit, and watching some channels on YT, lead me to think they many Leftists don't see any failings in Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. I'm sorry, but these guys whiffed, and Leftists refuse to criticize them so they can come up with a more well thought out solution.
Dead ideology. I'd like to see something new apart from meme capitalism and zoomer socialism that is so popular now by kids working at macdonalds or regular entry level jobs (and they think they are the shit).
Truth is, only capitalism applies best to modern world, while socialism is so outdated that I can smell its stench from miles away.
It is a very obsolete way to see the world. Someone who makes about 80k per year of profit from owning a modestly successful coffee shop with like 3 employess on payroll is not the same as someone who makes $200 million per year just from asset value inflation.
It wasn't that clear cut in Marx's time either. I believe he used terms like, petite bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat and aristocracy of labor to describe different classes.
Man, even your insults suck.
So the difference today is worse than when there were Kings and serfs? When there were Pharaohs and literal slaves? No, things are not clearer than ever. Get your head straight.
yes cripple boy , class distinctions are more clearer than ever in human history.
from useless social media billionaires to skid row tent residents
nothing as been more obvious of class antagonisms
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Many of those things are not so new as you think. Have you read anything at all in original of Marx and Engels? They don't describe their society as "binary". They identify capitalists, proletarians, the remnants of the old feudal ruling class, and the middle classes or "petty bourgeoisie". The PB is discussed in many different parts of their works. I don't remember now if they clearly differentiate between the dissapearing old PB and the new that rises on the backs of capitalists, like engineers, accountants, contract lawyers and most importantly managers. But certainly later Marxists writers like Baran and Sweazy (Monopoly Capital). Some people started at the bottom and made fortunes in the 19:th century as well, in particular in places like the American Frontier. Class mobility was at an all-time highest during the golden age of welfare society, the 1940:s - 70:s. It's not as high today as many imagine. Owning stocks for a common person is more common today, but it wasn't THAT odd for someone from my grandfather's generation to hold ie a couple hundred LM Ericsson stocks. And in principle it's not that much difference between holding stocks, and having a long-term savings account. Both are a little bit of capital, money that generates money. In neither case does it make you part of the capitalist class. Around the turn of the millenium there were a lot of "futurists" talking about how the work-capital contradiction was becomming obsolete and a new class of "knowledgocrats" or whatever buzzword was used was becoming more important. This never happened. While off course top programmers in Silicon Valley can earn very high salaries, no-one today thinks they are in control. It's evident that in the digital economy as well the people in control ultimately, are the owners.
I share OP's skepticism towards Marxism, and this is one of the strongest arguments against it in my opinion: Marxism is ultimately about power/control, not wealth. This worked fine in 1800s London where wealth and ownership were virtually synonymous, but it starts to fail in a modern market capitalist economy that makes entrepreneurship easy. Now you have a huge overlap between "rich proletariat" and "poor bourgeoisie". We can stretch this overlap to its absurd extreme with a question like: "Is the rich movie star worth $500M really more aggrieved than the owner of a failing coffee shop?" Sure, the rich proletariat don't have control, as you said, but they do have money, and therein lies the schism. Do you care more about power or money? You can only choose one. If you said "power", then you have absurd situations like the coffee shop owner vs. movie star comparison. If you said "money" then you're no longer a Marxist.
The modern poor self-employed has been discussed extensively by leftist writers, especially in the case of platform workers, where freedom and control is almost entirely an illusion. Now they actually have a specific capital, Uber (etc), dominating and exploiting them. In the case of the owner of a market stand in Bogota ie that is not so obvious. Probably he buys from a wholesaler who concentrate much more market power. He exists on the fringes of capitalism, where profits are the lowest and competition most fierce, while concentrated capital has laid claim to the more profitable sectors.
> In the case of the owner of a market stand in Bogota ie that is not so obvious. It's not so obvious because it's an internal contradiction of Marxism. Marx specifically separated out the petite bourgeoisie as distinct class because they represented a thorny middle ground to his ideology. You can read his commentary in the Communist Manifesto (I'm assuming you have) and you can tell he's not sure what to do with them before finally saying, "they'll fall in line with the proles in our revolution, trust me bro". After the revolutions in the mid 1800s however, he came of the opinion that they tend to side with the haute bourgeoisie. Therein lies the tension. Is it about money or is it about ownership (I used "power" in my previous post but I think "ownership" is more precise)? Now, one might say something like "well, it's kind of about both". This isn't really correct, though. If social class in Marxism is defined by their relationship to the means of production, then it must all be about ownership. Wealth happens to be a correlate that justifies Marx's callback to material conditions. Marx also didn't really talk much about the "haute proletariat", for the lack of a better term. These are salaried workers who don't own their business but are high earners and invest in equity. You can think of highly paid software engineers, lawyers, physicians, and consultants, much more common now than in the 1800s. Personally, I don't think the haute proletariat are worse off than the petty bourgeoisie.
You should probably read more socialist text written after the 19:th century. A starting point that still holds up very well is Baran and Sweazys Monopoly Capitalism and Bravermans Work and Monopoly Capital. A hypermodern take is Varoufakis Technofeudalism, but it's so new it's difficult to say if it will become a classic or forgotten in 10 years time.
No, no. I completely get that Marx’s theory has been “improved” upon by newer leftist writings that tries to resolve this contradiction. Both the OP and I are talking about traditional Marxism.
>Both the OP and I are talking about traditional Marxism. Yes, this. If there is are revised versions of Socialism that take the shortcomings of Marx into consideration, and level the criticism that Leninism and Maoism deserve, I haven't seen them. I also haven't seen ones that don't assume because I am Democrat middle class worker in the US economy that I am a enabler of fascism. I really enjoyed watching Second Thought on YT until a few weeks ago when the dude basically said people like me are more dangerous than MAGA conservatives and that if I wanted to know more about Socialism I should read Lenin. Sorry JT Chapman, I like you, I see you, I hear you, but I'm not a fucking fascist. When I watch videos on the Hakim channel, the guys starts with all sorts of false assertions about how the US economy works, basing it strictly on an old school Marxist way of thinking that doesn't really apply.
>If you said "money" then you're no longer a Marxist. This is directly contradicted by Marx himself in Capital Vol. 3. >In England, modern society is indisputably most highly and classically developed in economic structure. Nevertheless, even here the stratification of classes does not appear in its pure form. Middle and intermediate strata even here obliterate lines of demarcation everywhere (although incomparably less in rural districts than in the cities). >[...] >The first question to he answered is this: What constitutes a class? — and the reply to this follows naturally from the reply to another question, namely: What makes wage-labourers, capitalists and landlords constitute the three great social classes? >At first glance — the identity of revenues and sources of revenue. There are three great social groups whose members, the individuals forming them, live on wages, profit and ground-rent respectively, on the realisation of their labour-power, their capital, and their landed property. >However, from this standpoint, physicians and officials, e.g., would also constitute two classes, for they belong to two distinct social groups, the members of each of these groups receiving their revenue from one and the same source. The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords-the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries. Here he already identified that the development of capitalism was resulting in the creation of a new class (or subclass) of rich professionals. Rich movie stars, highly paid professional athletes and social media influencers didn't exist in the 1800s. An artist who had a wealthy aristocrat or business owner as their patron might be more comfortable than a regular small business owner, but it's irrelevant. How many super rich movie stars are there in the world? One thousand? Ten thousand? They have fuck all to do with the analysis of production and political economy. >Therein lies the tension. Is it about money or is it about ownership (I used "power" in my previous post but I think "ownership" is more precise)? Now, one might say something like "well, it's kind of about both". This isn't really correct, though. The fact that there are tensions, contradictions, tendences and counter-tendencies in Marxist theory is repeatedly acknowledged by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Mao. Like, what are you even trying to get at? No, Marx didn't write about literally everything because he died, and the world changed in the decades between his death and WW1. That's where Lenin comes in. Lenin may have also died before the current era of capitalism, but so what, the foundation of Marxist theory is still solid. Nothing you or the OP says contradicts the foundation AT ALL, the notion that an Amazon warehouse worker could hypothetically buy stocks and therefore is kind of a capitalist bro is laughable. The primary contradiction is imperialism in any case, so the fact that Western 1st world workers can be materially better off by claiming even just a tiny stake in the imperialist pie is exactly what Lenin was talking about.
> top programmers in Silicon Valley can earn very high salaries, no-one today thinks they are **in control**. > the people **in control** ultimately, are the owners. Sounds almost like you don't actually care about the actual material conditons and prosperity of the people, and it's really only about *power* instead. 🤔
That's because the question I'm discussing is whether capitalism has been replaced with something else. No offense but this feels like an answer in bad faith. You don't seem to try to understand what my points are and responding to them, you're just looking for a quote to take out of context and attack.
Although I'm a capitalist, my parents were born behind the iron curtain and my fam lived in multiple communist countries. They had to study Marxist theory in school. So I can provide some insight here. >We have a middle class now. >In the modern economy who exactly the "Capitalists" and the "workers" are gets very blurry. With the rise of white-collar middle class office workers, and the post industrial economy that relies on information skills. Was always the case. Specialized and skilled labor has a long history of formally organizing. Certainly dating at least to the high middle ages in most parts of Europe. Where ML theory draws the line is "who owns" vs. "who doesn't own, but has to work instead". What we today call "white collar" might have relatively more comfortable working conditions, but the underlying story is that they are still workers, subject, in theory to the same sorts of pressures, struggles, etc, as others workers. Where things get blurry is when you have a whole class of people who both work as employees for others, and draw income from owning productive assets somewhere. For example, if you hold a stock portfolio that pays you dividends or a 2nd apartment that you rent out, that is a source of part (but not all) of your income. >Socialists tie themselves in knots trying to address the "petty bourgeois, a pretentious eye roll inducing term that is ironically petty, that basically lumps them in with Capitalists. In theory (as I've understood it), a "petit bourgeois" is a person who owns his own MoP and benefits from exploiting HIS OWN LABOUR. Meanwhile a "grand bourgeois" also benefits from exploiting THE LABOUR OF OTHERS". Communist countries treated those things differently. Some of them (like Hungary) therefore allowed things like self-employed or family-firms , and used this theoretical detail to justify that. But again, I'm not actually a soc. This is just 2nd-hand information, based on what my parents had to learn in school. If any actual soc. reads this, feel free to set the record straight.
What I am saying is that there was a larger distinction between the "Capitalists" and the "workers" when Marx was writing. There was a middle merchant class, but it didn't look like the vast range of professionals we have today. The span of economic circumstances people can be in has grown significantly, as has the average person's relationship to capital. A lot of Marxism is predicated on a violent revolution. There seems to be some wavering on whether Marx meant that Socialism (and specifically communism) would just emerge naturally out of Capitalism, but how people have chosen to take that message seems to be pretty clear. Most of the Leftists I hear\\read talking about this seem to think a violent overthrow of the system is the only way. OK. As a person that has read a lot of history, revolutions are rarely smooth affairs. Innocent people that had nothing to do with the situation get swept up by mobs. People can be smart, but mobs are dumb, angry beasts. If Socialists were interested in reforming the system from inside by working it the way republicans have, I wouldn't have a problem with it. I'm not totally unsympathetic to what they want. It's them quoting monsters and not realizing they are monsters that bothers me. There is an almost religious fervor to what some of them say, and I can't get on board with that. If they can't see that Marx isn't scripture, and that guys like Lenin and Mao just created a different kind of class society that was imperialistic and racist, then I can't support them.
You forgot about the lumpen proletariat, petite bourgeois, labor aristocracy, lumpen bourgeois...Marx kinda nailed it already. People always say Marx can't be applied today. But it absolutely can, it's just modern socialists have removed the entirety of the revolutionary seed of marxism to "fit" the times, and so here we are with nothing more than bourgeois academics and Chinese capitalists as the only actually existing socialism and a bunch of "legal marxists". You think they teach actual Marxism on campus? Lmao
Lumpenbourgeoisie are not a thing.
Those are mob bosses
Mob bosses are part of the lumpenproletariat.
Marx hated the non working poor even more than modern Republicans.
My second major qualm about Marxism are these antiquated, pretentious, academic terms like bourgeois, proletariat, and all the sub variations of them. Because nothing sounds more working class than some ten dollar words from the 19th century that no one except Marxists use. Socialists need to update their glossary.
Things are much more like that today than in Marx’s time. The main difference is that capitalism was less developed-there was no real consumer credit, trade unions, welfare state or even universal make suffrage in capitalist countries. But at Marx’s time all factories and mills were rather small. There were still apprentices and journeymen and all sorts of middle classes outside the proletariat. Those groups were resisting BECOMING proletariat… luddites etc. So in the manifesto Marx is talking about a class trajectory… that peasants are becoming either owners or labor, artisans and apprentices the same. Even by the time of the Paris Commune, it was a lot of single-owner shops with maybe 20 workers and the boss was literally the owner with an office off the shop floor, not some guy hired by a board. Our world today is fully developed capitalism. The working class is truly international and the world’s majority population.
The struggle of journeymen of that time can be seen in what amounted to petty bourgeois careers some decades ago: lawyers, architects, etc are now being exploited by capitalists the same as most jobs.
If you are a software engineer, are you "working class"?
Depends on the specifics of the position. Do you own what you are working on, do you have managerial oversight over others, are you just working for networking purposes and actually live off a trust fund? Class distinctions are not like corporate leveling where there are specific set designations… it’s based in general social relations. So some jobs might be skilled and privileged at one point and then deskilled and automated and made more cog-like. Most people in tech are workers, most probably do not get astronomical wages for comparable work. Even many of the high paid ones with very large salaries still depend on wages for their main source of income and do not own anything they develop or do at their company. Certain unionized blue collar jobs used to be like that too in the 60s and 70s when some of those tasks were most important for larger capital circulation (think longshore crane operators.) Being well off but a worker might make you more apt subjectively to see yourself as a very slow investor or certain positions might have more control over other workers or there is some kind of stock scheme that benefits certain employees and makes them more willing to be loyal to the company.
On average, Tech workers make a lot of money in the US. Its quite common for a tech worker to be assigned a Junior dev to mentor. Does that make them no longer working class? What if they have 2 juniors. What if they lead a team if 2 for a project but spend all their time coding. What if they run a team of 3 and spend most their time working. Stock compensation is incredibly common in Tech, does that make them no longer a worker? What if they run a team if 3 spend 75% of their time coding and receive stock? Many tech workers get rich from the high pay for their skills, does this male them no longer a worker? What about their retirement investments? If they bought into an index fund, like many people do? What I am trying to say is the idea of worker vs capitalist is far more complex real world, and is purposefully simplified order to give a clear group to murder in a revolution. There is no clear line, and will never be one, because if I ask someone else they will give me a different answer.
Yeah no shit the real world is nuanced, I said that in my post when I wrote that class isn’t like corporate job leveling.🙄 Did you even read my reply?
I thought it was based on economic relations (specifically whether you own the MOP) not social relations. If you are friends with the CEO, but still get paid to work (and don't make your money from passive capital gains), you're still working class, no?
As I see it, social relations are class, economic are encompassed by social relations and the specific way classes are related. So by social relations I am a worker because I can only sell my ability to labor in order to meet my needs. Our economic relations are how workers and bosses have e or do not have leverage or power in the production process. At least this is my impression - idk if the specific language is that important. The important thing is that classes are not deterministic or formalistic things, just functions of how society is reproducing itself. People tend to want to separate the social and social but in many “Marxisms” they are interconnected… or at least I have some strong conceptual disagreements with more economically deterministic Marxist takes. But at any rate, class is how people fit into society and the production process, not some kind of individual diagnosis of social position.
You are 100% right and Marxism is highly anachronistic to the point it's useless in today's society. But much lime flat earthers all the evidence in the world won't stop some people from having blind faith.
I see too many similarities in style and rhetorical approach between hard Leftists and Christian Nationalists. I am an atheist before anything else, and cannot stand the belligerence of zealotry.
It’s true that modern classes have fractured into many subclasses and intermediate positions. And that their interpositions aren’t always so obviously adversarial as class relationships were in primitive capitalism. There are many examples of how people can bridge class divides. For example, does a licensed professional own enough personal capital to produce their own professional services? Arguably yes. Can a person who has a computer own enough capital to “own” their personal freelance services? Yeah, that might be an interpretation. The more pressing question for me is the future. Capital always finds a way to demean the value of labor so it can commodify their labor again. For example, tech is actively pushing STEM education so that it can over-produce STEM workers whose value of skill will thus be lowered. Capital is already demeaning the value of the “exclusive” knowledge-ownership that previously belonged to the professions. Look at pharmacists, for example. The pharmacy owners know what the pharmacist is trusted to do the computer actually does now. So they are becoming more expendable to the owners, like an average worker is. They are being “surveilled” more with metrics that then get them fired. The same will happen eventually with anyone else who invested in personal capital. As to your examples of people starting companies, it’s vitally important to distinguish having an idea from the actual implementation of that idea. Do many company owners invent things that are valuable? Sure! And they should be compensated for their contribution at a reasonable rate. But can the guy who had the idea behind Amazon actually take credit for the work workers do that makes its actual implementation possible? No, not really, no. They should make the value of their invention, but workers should be compensated for the value of their implementation.
>tech is actively pushing STEM education Who is? Who is "tech?" There isn't a group of people working together to achieve some nefarious goal. STEM is popular among parents who want their kids to have a degree that will get them a good job. Education should be more than job training, but that is a discussion for another time. I work in aerospace so I know what trying to find qualified engineers and IT people is like. There is a legit shortage of people, and if you are looking for a good paying job, having those skills is a meal ticket. No one is "pushing" it. >But can the guy who had the idea behind Amazon actually take credit for the work workers do that makes its actual implementation possible? It makes me want to throw up a little to have to defend Jeff Bezos, but he wasn't just a venture capitalist with an idea. Meither were Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, and Mark Zuckerberg. These are people that built a business, and for a while did more than just manage people. They are workers. I will totally conceded that their businesses run off the labor of others; they aren't stocking shelves or working a register. But someone had to come up with that business and make it work, and I'm sorry, but the people working in a Amazon warehouse wouldn't have been the ones to build that business. The treatment they receive is abhorrent and is 100% the result of a system that values money over human dignity. That's something that should be addressed, but that is a cultural feature of the US, not an indictment of Capitalism as a whole since workers are treated much better in European countries. China is largely a Socialist country and treats factory workers terribly, so there isn't a great case to be made regarding the live of a laborer in a Socialist economy.
One of the funniest things I found when reading Marx was that the guy writing the introduction was ADAMENT that Marx's Capital can only be applied to that time and space, lol.
Youre supposed to take the tenets of marxism and apply them to the present to understand the development of the object youre studying. The mistake in not marxism itself
That's what the post Marxists believe, at least.
Post marxists? You just said it yourself. Marxs capital was the application of marxism in that time and space.
Yep. And anybody who tries to apply it elsewhere is clearly missing something, lol. Even the guy who made that point did the same thing.
>**Communism** is for us *not* a state of affairs which is to be established, *an ideal to which reality [will] have to adjust itself*. We call **communism** the real **movement which abolishes the present state of things**. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence. Marx, The German Ideology >What we have to deal with here is a **communist society**, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it **emerges from capitalist society**; which is thus in every respect, *economically, morally, and intellectually, still stamped with the birthmarks of the old society from whose womb it emerges*. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Programme >In themselves **money and commodities are no more capital than are the means of production and of subsistence**. They want transforming into capital. But **this transformation can only take place under certain circumstances** that center in this, viz., that **two very different kinds of commodity-possessors must come face to face and into contact; on the one hand, the owners of money, means of production, means of subsistence, who are eager to increase the sums of values they possess, by buying other people's labor power; on the other hand, free laborers, the sellers of their own labor power and therefore the sellers of labor**. . . . With this polarization of the market for commodities, the fundamental conditions of capitalist production are given. The capitalist system presupposes the complete separation of the laborers from all property in the means by which they can realize their labor. As soon as capitalist production is once on its own legs, it not only maintains this separation, but reproduces it on a continually extending scale. Marx, Capital >The **co-operative factories run by workers themselves are**, within the old form, the first examples of **the emergence of a new form**, even though they naturally reproduce in all cases, in their present organization, all the defects of the existing system, and must reproduce them. But **the opposition between capital and labour is abolished there**, even if at first only in the form that the workers in association become their own capitalists, i.e., they use the means of production to valorise their labour. Marx, Capital >The capitalist stock companies, as much as the **co-operative factories, should be considered as *transitional* forms from the capitalist mode of production to the associated one**, with the only distinction that **the antagonism is resolved** negatively in the one and **positively in the other**. Marx, Capital >**Between capitalist and communist society there lies the period of the revolutionary transformation of the one into the other**. Corresponding to this is also a political **transition period** in which **the state can be nothing but the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat**. Marx, Critique of the Gotha Program >(a) We acknowledge the **co-operative movement as one of the transforming forces of the present society based upon class antagonism**. Its great merit is to practically show, that the present pauperising, and despotic system of the subordination of labour to capital can be superseded by the republican and beneficent system of the association of free and equal producers. >(b) Restricted, however, to the dwarfish forms into which individual wages slaves can elaborate it by their private efforts, the co-operative system will never transform capitalist society. to convert social production into one large and harmonious system of free and co-operative labour, general social changes are wanted, changes of the general conditions of society, never to be realised save by the **transfer of the organised forces of society**, viz., **the state power, from capitalists and landlords to the producers themselves**. >(c) We recommend to the working men to embark in co-operative production rather than in co-operative stores. The latter touch but the surface of the present economical system, the former attacks its groundwork. Marx, Instructions for the Delegates of the Provisional General Council >If cooperative production is not to remain a sham and a snare; if it is to supersede the capitalist system; **if the united co-operative societies are to regulate national production upon a common plan**, thus taking it under their control, and putting an end to the constant anarchy and periodical convulsions which are the fatality of Capitalist production—**what else, gentlemen, would it be but Communism, “possible” Communism?** Marx, The Civil War in France >The matter has nothing to do with either Sch[ulze]-Delitzsch or with Lassalle. Both propagated small cooperatives, the one with, the other without state help; however, in both cases the cooperatives were not meant to come under the ownership of already existing means of production, but create alongside the existing capitalist production a new cooperative one. **My suggestion requires the entry of the cooperatives into the existing production**. One should give them land which otherwise would be exploited by capitalist means: as demanded by the Paris Commune, the workers should operate the factories shut down by the factory-owners on a cooperative basis. That is the great difference. And **Marx and I never doubted that in the transition to the full communist economy we will have to use the cooperative system as an intermediate stage on a large scale**. *It must only be so organised that society, initially the state, retains the ownership of the means of production so that the private interests of the cooperative vis-a-vis society as a whole cannot establish themselves*. It does not matter that the Empire has no domains; one can find the form, just as in the case of the Poland debate, in which the evictions would not directly affect the Empire. Engels to August Bebel in Berlin
>In the modern economy who exactly the "Capitalists" and the "workers" are gets very blurry. It's not blurry at all. We have a class system because of capitalism. One controls and influences the country's economy and political space using capital and exploitation. The other pro-actively works to live and has substantially less power over economic and political choices.
But we don't and those two classes don't really exist. No one is really controlling the economy beyond the macro level. Lobbying is a thing, and money is a loud megaphone, but it is fantasy to think that there is a cabal of people sitting around dictating the economy of the US. What's more, as I pointed out, the "worker" is pretty vague these days. Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook from a college dorm room. He is still an employee of a giant multi-billion company. He is technically a "worker." He also has influence via lobbying, but no control, as is demonstrated by getting called in to testify before congress. Meanwhile, a person like Keith Gill, a nobody with a few dollars to rub together, can play the stock market and make millions. He doesn't control any means of production, but is richer than I will ever be. A person that runs a business making boutique guitar pedals, making soap, selling mugs on Etsy, or working their naughty bits in front of a camera on OnlyFans are more "capitalists" than a mid-level director of a giant corporation that makes more in a year than they ever will. Our economy and society is way more complex than what Socialists want it to be. They wants to reduce it to a simple equation because that makes it easier for them to discuss. But it just isn't that easy. They need to update their theories for a more multi-faceted world.
There's a reason why there's a societal focus on **the 1% vs the 99%**. It's not fantasy, not a theory. >He is still an employee of a giant multi-billion company Elon is the CEO of *seven* companies. He is not an employee and far from an example you'd want to use. He is a capitalist. >a nobody with a few dollars to rub together, can play the stock market and make millions. Yeah, and anybody can scratch a ticket and win millions. Anyone can gamble with $5 and come out with thousands. This isn't capitalism at work to uplift the poor. **More than half of America is currently living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to pay for decent living because of capitalism, not personal decisions**. Our class system, workers vs owners, is not debatable and refuses reality. Edit: read too fast and quoted wrong, but Mark Z isn't an "employee" either
>Elon is the CEO I purposely didn't mention him because he is a Capitalist in the Marxist sense. He came from a rich family that got their money from resource extraction in Africa and then bummed around, investing in companies to make money off of them. He has never had a unique idea. Everything he does is based on someone else's work. He may also be a legit fascist. So fuck that guy. I totally understand what you are saying in the last part, and totally understand why that would anger people into action. It angers me into action. But that actions *isn't* socialism as laid out by Marx, and especially not by Lenin or Mao. >Our class system, workers vs owners, is not debatable and refuses reality. It's totally debatable and that is what we are doing here. My argument against Marxism is that it draws too sharp a delineation between two made up classes of people that don't really exist anymore. This is an extremely important detail to me as a cis middle class white guy. Why? Because in the conversations I've had with Leftists, they are pretty pumped on the idea of violent revolution, and pretty sour on people that look like me even thought I'm fairly left by US standards. But because I don't pass their purity tests, I could get my ass frog marched to the gallows because some fuckwit with a head full of old writings and no experience in life has some blood lust they need to sate. Fuck. That. Shit. Revolutions are messy and never go as planned. Nuance is import. Context is important. Life is complex and full of gray areas. Don't like it? Tough shit.
I hate to break it to you but the inequality between the rich and poor is at an all-time high. Just because we have modern conveniences doesn't mean there isn't a clear majority of people STRUGGLING and a select few who are hoarding it all. I think their theories apply to today just as well as they did back then.
There is nothing in my statement that would imply that there isn't a massive difference in wealth. I said that the theories in Marxism don't apply well to our modern world because there are more then just the two groups of "capitalists" and "workers." The broad white collar middle class didn't exist then. You just kind barfed out a non sequitur canned response that didn’tactually respond to my post at all. Try harder.
>because there are more then just the two groups of "capitalists" and "workers." I'm disagreeing with this. You can still see two groups in the modern day.
Cool, but you are wrong. The lines between these has blurred as there are a lot of people that have their feet in both worlds. I know things are easier if you believe in a binary world, but it isn't that way. Everything is shades of gray.
There are quite literally people who own property and those who do not. People who have the money to invest and those who do not. There is a point where you obtain so much money that it becomes easier to get more money than it is to spend it. By any of these metrics, you can clearly see two groups. The people who are in a position to repossess your belongings are the capitalist class. You should understand the words of Marx before talking about them.
But a person can own property and own stock but still be a "worker." That’s what I'm talking about. There are wealthy managers that pull a salary like everyone else, it's just very high. You have shelf stockers with a small nest egg on Robin Hood. You have people running small businesses out of their garage. Billionaires that started a small company and are still working that same job after years. Are their people born into wealth and just con their ways through life, gambling money on other people's efforts? Yes. And sure, you have people with nothing but the shirt on their backs. But these are the extremes. The vast majority of people are somewhere in between with varying levels of "capitalist" and "worker." The socialist narrative used to gin up discontent just doesn't hold water.
>But a person can own property and own stock but still be a "worker." Yeah sure, but that isn't what makes someone a capitalist. I was just pointing to something that you can clearly distinguish two groups from. >The vast majority of people are somewhere in between with varying levels of "capitalist" and "worker." The socialist narrative used to gin up discontent just doesn't hold water. No. There is quite literally a capitalist class and a working class. You just don't understand the definitions or want to acknowledge them. I'm not sure which. Again refer to the last sentence from my last comment. You and most of the people here are not capitalists. You might support capitalism but those are two different things.
The biggest problem with Marxism is that they misunderstand the source of value (value is subjective, it does not come solely from labor) and they misunderstand markets (central planning doesn’t work). The fact that Marx’s class distinctions are sorta blurry in practice is immaterial. Until Marxists realize the true source of value and the problems with central planning, Marxism will remain a dead end.
You think the mud pie argument is valid, you have no idea what Marxists say about value.
The mud pie argument is valid. It proves that value does not come from labor.
Like you have been told multiple times: Marx didn't claim any and all labor creates value. You're being insincere.
I don't really care if he claimed that or not. The mud pie argument proves that value is not measured by labor inputs. It is a subjective quantity.
I know you don't care whether or not your argument is accurate to what Marx actually said. That's what I'm bringing attention to.
No it's not. You said, "You think the mud pie argument is valid" You didn't say anything about whether it is accurate to what Marx said.
>You didn't say anything about whether it is accurate to what Marx said. What I said earlier: >Marx didn't claim any and all labor creates value The mud pie argument isn't valid specifically because it's an argument against something Marx didn't claim.
> The mud pie argument isn't valid specifically because it's an argument against something Marx didn't claim. Marx claimed that the value of a thing depends on labor inputs. The mud pie argument demonstrates that the value of a thing is not dependent on labor inputs. Therefore, it is a valid argument.
*"Nothing can have value, without being an object of utility. If the thing is useless, so is the labour contained in it; the labour does not count as labour, and therefore creates no value."*
That's what I say. It's oudated and wrong ideology which doesn't apply to modern world. That's like arguing against kings and queens. There's none anymore (except in few backwards countries)
And I'm all for arguing against Kings and Queens. Thomas Paine nailed it. I am equally for not allowing the wealthy to become a new form of aristocracy. I often feel like we are sliding into a new form of feudalism. That's why I starting looking more closely at Socialism. I agree with many of their conclusions about the dangerous trajectory of unfettered Capitalism, but I can't get on board with their solution. Marxism just doesn't work. My interactions with Leftists on Reddit, and watching some channels on YT, lead me to think they many Leftists don't see any failings in Marx, Lenin, Stalin, Mao, etc. I'm sorry, but these guys whiffed, and Leftists refuse to criticize them so they can come up with a more well thought out solution.
Dead ideology. I'd like to see something new apart from meme capitalism and zoomer socialism that is so popular now by kids working at macdonalds or regular entry level jobs (and they think they are the shit). Truth is, only capitalism applies best to modern world, while socialism is so outdated that I can smell its stench from miles away.
It is a very obsolete way to see the world. Someone who makes about 80k per year of profit from owning a modestly successful coffee shop with like 3 employess on payroll is not the same as someone who makes $200 million per year just from asset value inflation.
It wasn't that clear cut in Marx's time either. I believe he used terms like, petite bourgeoisie, lumpenproletariat and aristocracy of labor to describe different classes.
> There was a clearer distinction between the haves and have-nots. distinction is more clearer than ever you muppet
Man, even your insults suck. So the difference today is worse than when there were Kings and serfs? When there were Pharaohs and literal slaves? No, things are not clearer than ever. Get your head straight.
yes cripple boy , class distinctions are more clearer than ever in human history. from useless social media billionaires to skid row tent residents nothing as been more obvious of class antagonisms
Oh! Using a pejorative for the disabled to mock someone. How ablist of you. I think you just lost your Tankie Card.
this cripple can't debate for shit lmao