Serious topic - ask the expert: Marxism

[Galt]

This is why I like to use religious analogies when discussing politics. This is also why I didn't appreciate when Tom tried to label me a Rand-nut.

In fact, I can't think of a single author I don't have beef with.

If I didn't spend so much time talking about myself, I would say that I'm too mature for labels.

[TomViolenz]

This is why I like to use religious analogies when discussing politics. This is also why I didn't appreciate when Tom tried to label me a Rand-nut.

In fact, I can't think of a single author I don't have beef with.

If I didn't spend so much time talking about myself, I would say that I'm too mature for labels.

I don't think naming yourself Galt was a good decision then...

[re:dream]

It's irony. He's being all obscure and cleverer than us.

[TomViolenz]

It's irony. He's being all obscure and cleverer than us.

The problem with irony is that it doesn't work on the net! No matter how many emoticons you put, someone will misunderstand you and take enough issue to annoy you to hell.
Many Lounge threads should be prove enough for this!

If I would talk here, as I do IRL there would be no end to it!

[Galt]

This is why I like to use religious analogies when discussing politics. This is also why I didn't appreciate when Tom tried to label me a Rand-nut.

In fact, I can't think of a single author I don't have beef with.

If I didn't spend so much time talking about myself, I would say that I'm too mature for labels.

I don't think naming yourself Galt was a good decision then...

You can like a character without liking the author... For example, I think Jesus is cool, but I'm not a huge fan of God's work over all.

[re:dream]

it is sectarian of me to say that people who claim to be Marxists who are not Trotskyists are not proper Marxists. .

I completely agree

[TomViolenz]

No! The DDR did NOT represent any sort of attempt to put socialism into practice. The DDR was created by Stalinism as a barrier against the west. Stalinism was fighting any attempt at creating socialism at the end of WW2. Stalinism was not trying to create socialism, in fact it was trying to create CAPITALISM! However in 1947 the Truman Doctrine led to America starting the cold war as Truman tired of Stalin's failure to secure pro-capitalist regimes in the countries of Eastern Europe.

Capitalism was impossible to achieve there, without special conditions, for reasons similar to what Trotsky explained with regard to Russia before the revolution. I can explain this in detail in future posts. Socialism was also impossible, so the result was Stalinist dictatorships.

Economy was centrally planned, mostly state owned. As Tom explained just now, quite a number of East German socialists and communists supported it (at least at first) Thus, a pretty good example of actually-existing socialism!

Rubbish! Socialism is a democratic structure, a million times more democratic than capitalism as Lenin put it, and that wasn't even describing something he aspired to - actual socialism, it was describing what existed in 1918. Socialism is not the rule of an elite. Socialism is not the sabotage of every attempt at socialism around the world. Socialism is not the murder of all the best socialists.

I know a number of East German socialists supported it, but that is neither the whole story nor the whole point. The point is that Stalin's top priority was to make sure socialism never happened anywhere. I can explain this in relation to any country you wish to name. Let's take Spain. The Stalinists sabotaged the revolution, on the orders of Moscow...

Please let the post writing not distract you from finishing that answer to the most fundamental problem of Socialist economy. You need to get this done and posted before you can goof off again with your usual shenanigans

[re:dream]

Show me some Marxists who are not Trotskyists.

Theodor Adorno
Louis Althusser
Perry Anderson
Alexander Bogdanov
Friedrich Engels
Frederick Jameson
CLR James
Henri Lefebvre
Michael Löwy
György Lukács
Rosa Luxemburg
Stuart Hall
Karl Kautsky
Karl Korsch
Samora Machel
Karl Marx
Antonio Negri
Nicos Poulantzas
Jacques Rancière
Georges Sorel
Tran Duc Thao
E P Thompson
Rick Turner
Raymond Williams
Harold Wolpe
... to name but a few

[TomViolenz]

I actually want to pose the question to Funken: How do you think a Socialist economy should be structured, so that it can adapt to the needs of the people?

In advanced countries we call initially for the nationalisation of the top few hundred companies, to be run under democratic workers' control. The board of directors of a nationalised company would consist of 1/3 people from an elected government, 1/3 from the workforce of that industry, and 1/3 from the public/consumers. All would be paid the average wage and be subject to regular elections plus the right of the electors to reconvene and recall at any time. Also you would have special bodies to plan innovation - improvements to production, and implementation of innovation. The decision making needs to be devolved as much as possible to shop floor and local levels. The ultimate goal is that everyone takes part in decision making part time, and therefore there is no fixed bureaucracy or full time politicians or government as such.

Democracy on this scale is not a nicety, a luxury to be added if possible. It is as vital for the functioning of a planned economy as oxygen is for the human body. Trotsky predicted that the Russian regime would eventually collapse back to capitalism if it did not get this democracy via a political revolution, and he was proved right in the 1980s.

It is necessary because a bureaucracy will always be slow, secretive, self interested, ill-informed, and generally unable to ensure progress in the long term. Trotsky predicted the economic collapse of the USSR at a time it was progressing quite rapidly. How did he know? Because Marxism predicts this as its best guess based on historical observations. Marxism is about abolishing all hierarchy and authoritarianism, not about increasing it, because hierarchy and authoritarianism go against what really motivates the human spirit.

I don't think this sytem is flexible enough to work effectively. And I also want to point out that for the bad reputation that bureaucracies have, they are not only one of the most important inventions human kind has made, (without it any seperation of labor into seperate chunks of processes (vital to any modern civilisation) would be impossible), but also the body where most of the institutional knowledge gets acuired, stored and distributed. Having constant elections for any, but the top part of this body, would disrupt its work significantly.
Besides to see if your system would work, you can't start with just the top 100 companies, you need all of them, otherwise the rest of the economy could just make up for the problems in your system.

[TomViolenz]

Castro indeed was not a Socialist at the time of the revolution. His aim was much closer to a social democracy (or bourgeois in Funken speak). Only when it became obvious that the US would not accept a free Cuba, Cuba HAD TO look elsewhere for strong trading partners.

Exactly.

The only one at the time (as pretty much today) who was willing and able to go against the US was the Soviet Union (now Russia). This alliance came at the price of becoming a "Socialist" country. Not the worst one either, until the economic help from the SU dried up in '91. The reason why Cuba is poor today btw. has as much to do with their system, as it does with the US blocking any trade with them. (Not just their own, mind you, but it enforces this even for companies in other countries if they want to still trade with the US)

So, seeing as you just said what I said, what is slanted about what I said????

he was a nationalist. He wanted Cuba to be a bourgeois democracy.

I don't think there is much support for you claim that he was "nationalist", at least not in the implied meaning of "ultra-nationalist", and "bourgeois" just means "traitors" or "naive weaklings" for communists.
Don't forget I learned communist speak already in school. I know all the code words!

[Sage]

Too many Marxists fetishise what happened in Russia in 1917-19. The "Red Terror" plus the removal of people's religious freedom, which has ended up having sad implications now with Pussy Riot... it really wasn't as nice & friendly and perfect as some would have us believe.
Lenin's idea of a vanguard party has clouded too much of left thinking, revolution has become romanticised. It is messed up when you have left-wing types who think revolution & reform are polar opposites. Plus if socialism can only truly work if the entire world adopts it, then it can't happen.
Socialism can be more subversive in our society, how can we adopt the ideology on an individual level, amongst our peers, friends, family, rather than expecting it to just happen on a national level.

[TomViolenz]

By 17 June the strike had spread to most of East Germany's industrial cities, involving 300,000 workers. Factory meetings were held in Berlin, leading to detailed discussions on the crimes of the SED regime. They elected workers' councils and called for demonstrations.

In Merseburg, 10,000 workers singing revolutionary songs, marched to the city centre where they met up with thousands more. They stormed the police station, ransacked SED party offices and broke into the jails to release prisoners.

In Halle 8,000 railworkers seized the SED HQ, the council offices and prisons. In Leipzig workers occupied the youth headquarters and destroyed all the portraits except those of Karl Marx. In Brandenburg the so-called 'people's judges' and public prosecutor were beaten up.
Counter-revolution

EAST GERMANY'S rulers had lost control but by then Russian tanks and troops - which had propelled the SED into power - were moving into Berlin. Martial law was proclaimed.

Despite the enormous heroism of the workers, the uprising was crushed. The SED made temporary economic concessions but these only lasted as long as the revolutionary crisis. Six of the uprising's leaders were executed, four were given life sentences and 1,300 more brought to trial. An estimated 260 died from Russian bullets.

Inevitably the Stalinist bureaucracy branded this uprising a "counter-revolution" - in reality at no time did the workers demand privatisation of industry or a return to capitalism. The fact that the SED leaders purged their own members - 71% of local party secretaries were fired for supporting the workers -confirms that. A third of those leading the protests had been members of the pre-war Communist Party. The "counter-revolution" was being carried out by the Stalinists!

The uprising showed the workers' instinctive striving for workers' democracy - their example was followed in later years by workers in

Hungary, Czechoslovakia, Poland and was an inspiration to East German workers in 1989 when the Stalinist dictatorship collapsed.
http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articl ... -stalinism

If you only read biased news, you'll only get biased information. It's not surprising that a socialist party would interpret the events this way though.

[TomViolenz]

The "Red Terror" plus the removal of people's religious freedom, which has ended up having sad implications now with Pussy Riot...

Just to make this clearer: The religious freedom removed in the revolution was actually the freedom to have ANY religion.
While the problem for Pussy Riot is, that todays Russia uses Religion as "Opium for the people" to rally them and keep their eyes on their preachers and not on what Putin is doing. So the lack of freedom of religion today, is mostly a lack of freedom to criticize religion.

I also don't think that the former has necessarily lead to the later.

[Galt]

Now I could spend days posting stuff like this if you want, including quotes from Che, from Castro himself, from all sorts of solid sources. Castro became a 'socialist' after the revolution.

You could. But then again, Che was one of the worst human-beings to ever sully the face of the planet, so it wouldn't do much good to your cause

[Galt]

You should be asking why Stalinism would crush the Spanish revolution. Why did Stalinism try to stop every revolution around the world? Why did Stalin's regime kill all the socialists in Russia? The details are what count, not meaningless sound bites.

Talk about the actual details. If Stalinists killed Trotskyists but still wanted to achieve socialism, show me some evidence. Why did Orwell say what he said in the quote I posted?

Well, this would be impossible, because your definition of socialism is simply too narrow, and indeed impracticable.

The problem is that you're not the only socialist on this planet. You don't own that word. And your understanding of this is limited by your own bigotry.

This is why I'm saying that you give socialism an even worse name than it already had. Being a brainwashed socialist doesn't mean you also have to be a psycho-rigid douche, now does it?