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Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism > This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a soci

by gepi79 8y ago

Quote from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marxism > This class struggle that is commonly expressed as the revolt of a society's productive forces against its relations of production, results in a period of short-term crises as the bourgeoisie struggle to manage the intensifying alienation of labor experienced by the proletariat, albeit with varying degrees of class consciousness. This crisis culminates in a proletarian revolution and eventually leads to the establishment of socialism—a socioeconomic system based on social ownership of the means of production, distribution based on one's contribution and production organized directly for use. As the productive forces continued to advance, Marx hypothesized that socialism would ultimately transform into a communist society; a classless, stateless, humane society based on common ownership and the underlying principle: "From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs". https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_ability,_to_each_according_to_his_needs https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/From_each_according_to_his_abi... Marx fantasized about what is called a democratic post-scarcity economy today. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy Compare with classic socialism: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contribution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/To_each_according_to_his_contr... I doubt that the author of the book tried to understand Marx because he wrote this: > Why is it, he wondered, that certain intellectuals are “merciless toward the failings of the democracies but ready to tolerate the worst crimes as long as they are committed in the name of the proper doctrines”? and > He quotes the French writer Simone Weil’s sly reversal of Marx: “Marxism is undoubtedly a religion, in the lowest sense of the word. . . . [I]t has been continually used . . . as an opiate for the people.” Marx wanted the opposite: - Marx wanted power for the people. I guess Marxism and Stalinism is the same for many people although they are opposites. - Marx wanted a revolution and not soothed tranquilized workers. And your claim is wrong too: > Today's basic problem is that we don't need that many people to make all the stuff. Neither Marx nor Smith addressed that problem. Regarding: > Economics for the 21st century needs to start dealing with these issues, not rehashing the 19th century. IMO some of today's economic, social and political concerns and proposed solutions seem similar to those in the 19th century.

vixen99 8y ago
What Marx actually wanted? We'll take your word for it, shall we? So what did Karl Marx want? "Until its complete extermination or loss of national status, this racial trash always becomes the most fanatical bearer there is of counter-revolution, and it remains that. That is because its entire existence is nothing more than a protest against a great historical revolution... The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the earth. And that too is progress." -Karl Marx, 1849, Neue Rheinische Zeitung.
- gepi79 8y ago
  Could you explain ? Extermination of what ? > The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the earth. And that too is progress." Clearly his prediction failed because the next world war was not about Marxism. Although Hitler might have gained some popularity by speaking against the global capitalist rentier elite and financial system; I do not know. IMO WW1, WW2 and the Cold War should be considered as 3 parts of the same nuclear world war. At least there is much more democracy after "the war" and old power structures have been replaced by more modern power structures.
- jacobolus 8y ago
  Note that you are quoting (a not necessarily nuanced translation of) Engels, not Marx. http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me06/me06_165.htm http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me06/me06_165.htm You might want to read Hegel and then reading other works by Marx and Engels for context if you are interested in Engels’s theories about history, popular movements, etc. And maybe studying a bit about European history. You could start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848_in_the_Austrian_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848_in_the_Aus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 (Admittedly these Wikipedia articles are not the best sources. I’m sure you can find better books about the Austrian empire in the mid 19th century and specifically 1848–1849 if you hunt around.) For that matter, you might want to just read this whole essay instead of quoting two random partial sentence out of context, along with some innuendo that readers who come along will be shocked to learn some deep secret about Engels’s motivations by reading two sentences. Here’s an machine-produced (google translate) translation of the first bit in its surroundings; I'm sure a human translator would do a better job but you can get the basic idea. Sorry for the extended quotation, but I feel that a shorter bit chopped out is more likely to lead you to misunderstanding. """ [...] The year 1848 brought at first the most terrible confusion to Austria, releasing for a moment all these different tribes, hitherto intermarried by Metternich. Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Poles, Moravians, Slovaks, Croats, Ruthenians, Romanians, Illyrians, Serbs came into conflict with each other, while in each of these nations the individual classes also fought each other. But soon order came into this jumble. The warring parties divided into two large army camps; on one side of the revolution the Germans, Poles and Magyars; on the side the counter-revolution the rest, all the Slavs except the Poles, the Romanians and the Transylvanian Saxons. Where does this divorce come from, what facts underlie it? This divorce corresponds to the whole history of the tribes in question. It is the beginning of deciding the life or death of all these great and small nations. The whole earlier history of Austria proves it to this day, and the year 1848 has confirmed it. Among all the nationalities and monasteries of Austria are only three who have been the bearers of progress who have actively intervened in history, which are still viable - the Germans, the Poles, the Magyars . Therefore, they are now revolutionary. All other great and small tribes and peoples have the mission to perish in the revolutionary world-storm. Therefore, they are now counterrevolutionary. [...] Pan-Slavism did not arise in Russia or Poland, but in Prague and Agram. Pan-Slavism is the alliance of all the Slavic nations and monks of Austria, and secondarily Turkey, to fight the Austrian Germans, the Magyars and possibly the Turks. The Turks just come in by accident and, as a run-down nation, can not be left out of the question. Panslavism, in its basic tendency, is directed against the revolutionary elements of Austria and therefore reactionary from the outset. Pan-Slavism immediately proved this reactionary tendency by a double betrayal: by sacrificing the only Slavic nation to date, the Poles , its petty national peculiarities and selling itself and Poland to the Russian tsars . The direct purpose of Pan-Slavism is to produce a Slavic empire from the Ore Mountains and the Carpathians to the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Sea under Russian imperial jurisdiction, an empire that is approximately the same except for the German, Italian, Magyar, Wallachian, Turkish, Greek and Albanian languages a dozen Slavic languages and major dialects. The whole thing is held together not by the elements that used to hold and develop Austria, but by the abstract nature of Slavism and the so-called Slavic language, which, however, is common to the majority of the inhabitants. But where does Slavdom exist in the minds of some ideologues, where the "Slavic language" is more in the minds of Messrs. Palacky, Gaj and Co., and almost in the Old Slavic litany of the Russian church, which no longer understands Slavs? In reality, all of these peoples have the most varied degrees of civilization, from the advanced level of modern industry and education of Bohemia (by Germans ) down to the almost nomadic barbarism of the Croats and Bulgarians, and in reality all these nations have the opposite interests. In reality, the Slavic language of these ten to twelve nations consists of as many usually incomprehensible dialects, which can even be reduced to different main tribes (Czech, Illyrian, Serbian, Bulgarian), by the complete neglect of all literature and the rudeness of most peoples became pure patois and with few exceptions always had a foreign non-Slavic language as written language. The Pan-Slavic unity is thus either a pure enthusiasm or - the Russian Knute . <172> And which nations should go to the head of this great Slavic kingdom? The very same one which for a thousand years has been shattering, splintering, impelling others, non-Slavic peoples, their supply of vital and viable elements, saved by the victorious weapons of non-Slavic peoples from submergence in Turkish barbarism, small, mutually separated, impotent tribes deprived of their national strength from a few thousand to not two million! So weak have they become that, for example, the tribe, which was the strongest and most dreadful in the Middle Ages, the Bulgarians, now known in Turkey only for their gentleness and feebleness, and putting their fame in it, dobre chrisztian, good Christian call! Where is one of these tribes, not excepting the Czechs and Serbs, who has a national historical tradition that lives in the people and goes beyond the smallest local fights? The period of Pan-Slavism was in the 8th and 9th centuries, when the southern Slavs still occupied the whole of Hungary and the East and threatened Byzantium. Could they not resist the German and Magyar invasions, could they not gain independence and form a durable empire, even as their two enemies, the Magyars and Germans, mutilated each other, how do they want it now, after a millennial subjugation and denationalization? It is not a country in Europe that does not possess, at any angle, one or more peoples' ruins, remnants of an earlier population, pushed back and subjugated by the nation, which later became the bearer of historical development. These remnants of a nation which, as Hegel says, are relentlessly trodden down by the course of history, these peoples' trashes are always, and remain until their utter obliteration or denationalization, the fanatical carriers of the counterrevolution, as their very existence is in itself a protest against a great historical revolution , So in Scotland the Gaeles, the pillars of the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745. Thus in France the Bretons, the supports of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800. So in Spain the Basques, the pillars of Don Carlos. Thus, in Austria, the Pan-Slavic Southern Slavs, who are nothing more than the peoples of a very confused millennial development . That this likewise very confused peoples' tragedy sees its salvation only in the repentance of the whole European movement, which for him should not go from west to east, but from east to west, that the liberating weapon, The band of unity for him is the Russian Knute - that is the most natural thing in the world. The Southern Slavs had thus clearly expressed their reactionary character before 1848. The year 1848 made him open to the day. When the February storm broke out, who made the Austrian revolution? Vienna or Prague? Budapest or Agram? The Germans and Magyars or the Slavs? It is true that among the more educated southern Slavs there was a small democratic party that, while not giving up its nationality, wanted to put it at liberty. This illusion, which also succeeded in arousing sympathy among the West European Democrats, sympathies that were fully justified as long as the Slav Democrats fought against the common enemy - this illusion was broken by the bombardment of Prague. From this event, all South Slavic tribes, after the Croats' act, made themselves available to the Austrian reaction. Those leaders of the South Slavic movement, who still further fiddle with the equal rights of nations, democratic Austria, etc., are either nailed-down enthusiasts, such as many newspaper writers, or villains like Jellachich. Their democratic assurances mean nothing more than the democratic protestations of the Austrian official counter-revolution. Enough, in practice, the restoration of the South Slavic nationality begins with the most brutal rage against the Austrian and Nagyan revolution, with a first great service of love, which they prove to the Russian Tsar. The Austrian camarilla found, apart from the high nobility, the bureaucracy and the soldiery, only support from the Slavs. The Slavs decided the fall of Italy, the Slavs stormed Vienna, the Slavs attack the Magyars from all sides. At their head as spokesman the Czechs under Palacky, as swordsmen the Croats under Jellachich. This is to thank for the fact that in June the German democratic press sympathized everywhere with the Czech Democrats when they were carted off by Windischgratz, by the same Windischgrätz, who is now their hero. [...] """

by gepi79 8y ago

vixen99 8y ago

What Marx actually wanted? We'll take your word for it, shall we? So what did Karl Marx want? "Until its complete extermination or loss of national status, this racial trash always becomes the most fanatical bearer there is of counter-revolution, and it remains that. That is because its entire existence is nothing more than a protest against a great historical revolution... The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the earth. And that too is progress." -Karl Marx, 1849, Neue Rheinische Zeitung.

gepi79 8y ago
Could you explain ? Extermination of what ? > The next world war will cause not only reactionary classes and dynasties, but also entire reactionary peoples, to disappear from the earth. And that too is progress." Clearly his prediction failed because the next world war was not about Marxism. Although Hitler might have gained some popularity by speaking against the global capitalist rentier elite and financial system; I do not know. IMO WW1, WW2 and the Cold War should be considered as 3 parts of the same nuclear world war. At least there is much more democracy after "the war" and old power structures have been replaced by more modern power structures.
jacobolus 8y ago
Note that you are quoting (a not necessarily nuanced translation of) Engels, not Marx. http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me06/me06_165.htm http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me06/me06_165.htm You might want to read Hegel and then reading other works by Marx and Engels for context if you are interested in Engels’s theories about history, popular movements, etc. And maybe studying a bit about European history. You could start with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848_in_the_Austrian_Empire https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848_in_the_Aus... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Revolutions_of_1848 (Admittedly these Wikipedia articles are not the best sources. I’m sure you can find better books about the Austrian empire in the mid 19th century and specifically 1848–1849 if you hunt around.) For that matter, you might want to just read this whole essay instead of quoting two random partial sentence out of context, along with some innuendo that readers who come along will be shocked to learn some deep secret about Engels’s motivations by reading two sentences. Here’s an machine-produced (google translate) translation of the first bit in its surroundings; I'm sure a human translator would do a better job but you can get the basic idea. Sorry for the extended quotation, but I feel that a shorter bit chopped out is more likely to lead you to misunderstanding. """ [...] The year 1848 brought at first the most terrible confusion to Austria, releasing for a moment all these different tribes, hitherto intermarried by Metternich. Germans, Magyars, Czechs, Poles, Moravians, Slovaks, Croats, Ruthenians, Romanians, Illyrians, Serbs came into conflict with each other, while in each of these nations the individual classes also fought each other. But soon order came into this jumble. The warring parties divided into two large army camps; on one side of the revolution the Germans, Poles and Magyars; on the side the counter-revolution the rest, all the Slavs except the Poles, the Romanians and the Transylvanian Saxons. Where does this divorce come from, what facts underlie it? This divorce corresponds to the whole history of the tribes in question. It is the beginning of deciding the life or death of all these great and small nations. The whole earlier history of Austria proves it to this day, and the year 1848 has confirmed it. Among all the nationalities and monasteries of Austria are only three who have been the bearers of progress who have actively intervened in history, which are still viable - the Germans, the Poles, the Magyars . Therefore, they are now revolutionary. All other great and small tribes and peoples have the mission to perish in the revolutionary world-storm. Therefore, they are now counterrevolutionary. [...] Pan-Slavism did not arise in Russia or Poland, but in Prague and Agram. Pan-Slavism is the alliance of all the Slavic nations and monks of Austria, and secondarily Turkey, to fight the Austrian Germans, the Magyars and possibly the Turks. The Turks just come in by accident and, as a run-down nation, can not be left out of the question. Panslavism, in its basic tendency, is directed against the revolutionary elements of Austria and therefore reactionary from the outset. Pan-Slavism immediately proved this reactionary tendency by a double betrayal: by sacrificing the only Slavic nation to date, the Poles , its petty national peculiarities and selling itself and Poland to the Russian tsars . The direct purpose of Pan-Slavism is to produce a Slavic empire from the Ore Mountains and the Carpathians to the Black, Aegean and Adriatic Sea under Russian imperial jurisdiction, an empire that is approximately the same except for the German, Italian, Magyar, Wallachian, Turkish, Greek and Albanian languages a dozen Slavic languages and major dialects. The whole thing is held together not by the elements that used to hold and develop Austria, but by the abstract nature of Slavism and the so-called Slavic language, which, however, is common to the majority of the inhabitants. But where does Slavdom exist in the minds of some ideologues, where the "Slavic language" is more in the minds of Messrs. Palacky, Gaj and Co., and almost in the Old Slavic litany of the Russian church, which no longer understands Slavs? In reality, all of these peoples have the most varied degrees of civilization, from the advanced level of modern industry and education of Bohemia (by Germans ) down to the almost nomadic barbarism of the Croats and Bulgarians, and in reality all these nations have the opposite interests. In reality, the Slavic language of these ten to twelve nations consists of as many usually incomprehensible dialects, which can even be reduced to different main tribes (Czech, Illyrian, Serbian, Bulgarian), by the complete neglect of all literature and the rudeness of most peoples became pure patois and with few exceptions always had a foreign non-Slavic language as written language. The Pan-Slavic unity is thus either a pure enthusiasm or - the Russian Knute . <172> And which nations should go to the head of this great Slavic kingdom? The very same one which for a thousand years has been shattering, splintering, impelling others, non-Slavic peoples, their supply of vital and viable elements, saved by the victorious weapons of non-Slavic peoples from submergence in Turkish barbarism, small, mutually separated, impotent tribes deprived of their national strength from a few thousand to not two million! So weak have they become that, for example, the tribe, which was the strongest and most dreadful in the Middle Ages, the Bulgarians, now known in Turkey only for their gentleness and feebleness, and putting their fame in it, dobre chrisztian, good Christian call! Where is one of these tribes, not excepting the Czechs and Serbs, who has a national historical tradition that lives in the people and goes beyond the smallest local fights? The period of Pan-Slavism was in the 8th and 9th centuries, when the southern Slavs still occupied the whole of Hungary and the East and threatened Byzantium. Could they not resist the German and Magyar invasions, could they not gain independence and form a durable empire, even as their two enemies, the Magyars and Germans, mutilated each other, how do they want it now, after a millennial subjugation and denationalization? It is not a country in Europe that does not possess, at any angle, one or more peoples' ruins, remnants of an earlier population, pushed back and subjugated by the nation, which later became the bearer of historical development. These remnants of a nation which, as Hegel says, are relentlessly trodden down by the course of history, these peoples' trashes are always, and remain until their utter obliteration or denationalization, the fanatical carriers of the counterrevolution, as their very existence is in itself a protest against a great historical revolution , So in Scotland the Gaeles, the pillars of the Stuarts from 1640 to 1745. Thus in France the Bretons, the supports of the Bourbons from 1792 to 1800. So in Spain the Basques, the pillars of Don Carlos. Thus, in Austria, the Pan-Slavic Southern Slavs, who are nothing more than the peoples of a very confused millennial development . That this likewise very confused peoples' tragedy sees its salvation only in the repentance of the whole European movement, which for him should not go from west to east, but from east to west, that the liberating weapon, The band of unity for him is the Russian Knute - that is the most natural thing in the world. The Southern Slavs had thus clearly expressed their reactionary character before 1848. The year 1848 made him open to the day. When the February storm broke out, who made the Austrian revolution? Vienna or Prague? Budapest or Agram? The Germans and Magyars or the Slavs? It is true that among the more educated southern Slavs there was a small democratic party that, while not giving up its nationality, wanted to put it at liberty. This illusion, which also succeeded in arousing sympathy among the West European Democrats, sympathies that were fully justified as long as the Slav Democrats fought against the common enemy - this illusion was broken by the bombardment of Prague. From this event, all South Slavic tribes, after the Croats' act, made themselves available to the Austrian reaction. Those leaders of the South Slavic movement, who still further fiddle with the equal rights of nations, democratic Austria, etc., are either nailed-down enthusiasts, such as many newspaper writers, or villains like Jellachich. Their democratic assurances mean nothing more than the democratic protestations of the Austrian official counter-revolution. Enough, in practice, the restoration of the South Slavic nationality begins with the most brutal rage against the Austrian and Nagyan revolution, with a first great service of love, which they prove to the Russian Tsar. The Austrian camarilla found, apart from the high nobility, the bureaucracy and the soldiery, only support from the Slavs. The Slavs decided the fall of Italy, the Slavs stormed Vienna, the Slavs attack the Magyars from all sides. At their head as spokesman the Czechs under Palacky, as swordsmen the Croats under Jellachich. This is to thank for the fact that in June the German democratic press sympathized everywhere with the Czech Democrats when they were carted off by Windischgratz, by the same Windischgrätz, who is now their hero. [...] """