"Marx was right about capitalism, but he was wrong about communism"

So is the opinion of the journalist who wrote this article. Anti-capitalism appears to be still on the rise.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-14764357

 

Yay! :cheers2:

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=85cL1HisrNc"]Robocop - I'd Buy That For a Dollar - YouTube

 

BRILLIANT ARTICLE!!!!!!!!! Thank you so much for posting!!!! What are your thoughts on how Capitalism has now become intrinsic with Materialism- these two "entities" have now become utterly inseperable- it's a symbiotic relationship- and look at how both have insidiously affected the culture, priorities, and attitudes of so many...look at what so many now have been taught to worship..like the article explained with such bold eloquence, the results of capitalism have been and continue to be frightening on many levels- it is a system that worships money over all else, with an allowance (and this part disturbs me bec. NOBODY talks about THIS part)- for the exact midevil atrocity to occur where the poor are judged by the rich, silver-spooned offspring of dynasties (America's wealthy upper class), who, while not EARNING their way to the top, FANCY themselves better because they "SUCCEEDED through Capitalism" while in fact, they just didn't HAVE to borrow and become in debt and suffer through the facade and snakeoil salesman routine of Capitalistic pipe dreams because their wealthy mommies and daddies paved the way for them with the family plethora of wealthy (no wonder in American, among today's rich youth, there are so many coldblooded, self entitled and cutthroat young Capitalists still heralding the cause, COMPLETELY at a loss to understand it's TRUE effects on the "real" people of the world, with whom this class is completely out of touch, but are controlled through the Capitalistic clutches of Materialism and the constant, desperate need for their own money in their struggle for survival, something the indiginously Upper Class cannot inherently understand.

 

Although to clarify, I agree to that communism is certainly not the answer, God knows what is- politics depress me!!

 

I have no idea. I think both are ideals that don't really exist. I think it just always been anarchy, no matter what systemic metaphors we try to attach to the world to help us understand how it works. We can never get away from that.

 

And you bring up a very important point! There are soo many great thinkers of both extremes on both sides that were such sincere, earnest idealists, who sincerely meant the best, and it's easy, when initially adamant towards once side, or, as we are, perhaps growing up in the jaded aftermath of one, to judge all its advocates or pioneers too harshly....
Men have lived their whole lives sincerely devoted to attempting to create truths and then empirically measure them by some means in order to save the world, or accept that such a task in entirety is impossible, because there will always be one piece of the jigsaw puzzle that we don't have and as a human being, CANNOT have- and ta dah: that introduces the issue of faith & religion. And so more battles begin.....

 

this. i really do second that emotion. diversity is reality. ideologies are just different words for the same lie, that the dominance of aggressiveness is ever excusable, or anything other then tyranny.

crapitalsim isn't the lone ranger, but its damd sure no exception.

 

http://www.outpost-of-freedom.com/library/SimpleSabotageFieldManualOSS1944.pdf

(b) Managers and Supervisors
(1) Demand written orders.
(2) "Misunderstand" orders. Ask endless questions or engage in long correspondence about such
orders. Quibble over them when you can.
(3) Do everything possible to delay the delivery of orders. Even though parts of an order may be
ready beforehand, don't deliver it until it is completely ready.
(4) Don't order new working materials until your current stocks have been virtually exhausted, so
that the slightest delay in filling your order will mean a shutdown.
(5) Order high-quality materials which are hard to get. If you don't get them argue about it. Warn
that inferior materials will mean inferior work.
(6) In making work assignments, always sign out the unimportant jobs first. See that the
important jobs are assigned to inefficient workers of poor machines.
(7) Insist on perfect work in relatively un important products; send back for refinishing those
which have the least flaw. Approve other defective parts whose flaws are not visible to the naked
eye.
(8) Make mistakes in routing so that parts and materials will be sent to the wrong place in the
plant.
(9) When training new workers, give in complete or misleading instructions.
(10) To lower morale and with it, production, be pleasant to inefficient workers; give them
undeserved promotions. Discriminate against efficient workers; complain unjustly about their
work.
(11) Hold conferences when there is more critical work to be done.
(12) Multiply paper work in plausible ways.
Start duplicate files.
(13) Multiply the procedures and clearances involved in issuing instructions, pay checks, and so
on. See that three people have to approve everything where one would do.
(14) Apply all regulations to the last letter.
(c) Office Workers
(1) Make mistakes in quantities of material when you are copying orders. Confuse similar names.
Use wrong addresses.
(2) Prolong correspondence with government bureaus.
(3) Misfile essential documents.
(4) In making carbon copies, make one too few, so that an extra copying job will have to be
done.
(5) Tell important callers the boss is busy or talking on another telephone.
(6) Hold up mail until the next collection.
(7) Spread disturbing rumors that sound like inside dope.
(d) Employees
(1) Work slowly. Think out ways to in crease the number of movements necessary on your job:
use a light hammer instead of a heavy one, try to make a small wrench do when a big one is
necessary, use little force where considerable force is needed, and so on.
(2) Contrive as many interruptions to your work as you can: when changing the material on
which you are working, as you would on a lathe or punch, take needless time to do it. If you are
cutting, shaping or doing other measured work, measure dimensions twice as often as you need
to. When you go to the lavatory, spend a longer time there than is necessary.
Forget tools so that you will have to go back after them.
(3) Even if you understand the language, pretend not to understand instructions in a foreign
tongue.
(4) Pretend that instructions are hard to understand, and ask to have them repeated more than
once. Or pretend that you are particularly anxious to do your work, and pester the foreman with
unnecessary questions.
(5) Do your work poorly and blame it on bad tools, machinery, or equipment. Complain that
these things are preventing you from doing your job right.
(6) Never pass on your skill and experience to a new or less skillful worker.
(7) Snarl up administration in every possible way. Fill out forms illegibly so that they will have
to be done over; make mistakes or omit requested information in forms.
(8) If possible, join or help organize a group for presenting employee problems to the
management. See that the procedures adopted are as inconvenient as possible for the
management, involving the presence of a large number of employees at each presentation,
entailing more than one meeting for each grievance, bringing up problems which are largely
imaginary, and so on.
(9) Misroute materials.
(10) Mix good parts with unusable scrap and rejected parts.
(12) General Devices for Lowering Morale and Creating Confusion
(a) Give lengthy and incomprehensible explanations when questioned.
(b) Report imaginary spies or danger to the Gestapo or police.
(c) Act stupid.
(d) Be as irritable and quarrelsome as possible without getting yourself into trouble.
(e) Misunderstand all sorts of regulations concerning such matters as rationing, transportation,
traffic regulations.
(f) Complain against ersatz materials.
(g) In public treat axis nationals or quislings coldly.
(h) Stop all conversation when axis nationals or quislings enter a caf.
(i) Cry and sob hysterically at every occasion, especially when confronted by government clerks.
(j) Boycott all movies, entertainments, concerts, newspapers which are in any way connected
with the quisling authorities.​

(k) Do not cooperate in salvage schemes

 

when capitalism actually finally falls, life will go on just fine without either of them.

i endorse complete ideological neutrality. and nobody killing each other over it either.

 

When Marx talked about capitalism which brand of capitalism was he referring to?

People need to take into account that since Marx's day capitalism has evolved differently in different countries. Countries like the U.S,Canada,Japan,Germany and Sweden are all capitalist countries but they all have their own version of it. So when we say that Marx was right about capitalism which brand of capitalism was he right about?

 

Marx was right about communism. The Marxist Communism works. But no one ever tried it the way he imagined it.

The world is really fuckd up right now. but most of the problems could be solved with a basic income.
http://www.basicincome.org/bien/aboutbasicincome.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income

 

If no one has ever tried Marxist communism then how do you know it works?

 

Yeah, if we were all doing well, we'd all be doing well.

 

Good article, one criticism though, the writer doesn't actually mention Communism until the last sentence

20th century Communism in China and Russia was nothing like Marx's idea, they weren't actually popular revolutions they were both fairly small groups of activists inspired by Marxism rather than general uprisings. Marx's prediction was based on what he saw in 19th century Europe where the poor were moving from rural into urban lives, he predicted that the concentration of the poor would allow for them/us to organise against the ruling class

The 20th century countries that turned communist were still rural....

You can view China and Russia's behaviour as full on Communist countries as fairly consistent with their pattern over a much longer period of history, the reason that two countries so powerful turned to Communism was more to do with their ruling class having failed to achieve capitalism, both countries had incredibly weak and decadent monarchies in charge.

I think in the West where the urbanisation/industrialisation had occured, they managed to buy the poor off with social services and so on at the expense of the poorer countries, first through resources and then through labour. The problem with this is that it requires urbanisation which will eventually lead to the uprising that Marx predicted

I don't think that he was wrong in essence, I think that his mistake was that he predicted that Communism would occur in Europe. I would guess at some point in the next 20 or 30 years as China, India and Brazil continue to industrialise we will get to that point where a significant majority of humans live in cities and Communism will be more realistic

It probably won't be called Communism, although I'm 31 and I'm one of the last generations to remember Communism as something we learned about at school as an 'enemy' that could destroy us, so I would imagine when I am old it won't have the same associations in the west as it does now......

 

My thinking is people should do their own thing. If you want socialism (a very misused term by liberal and conservative media, by everyone from Micheal Moore to Fox News), which I do, don't waste your time trying to install a dictatorship of the proletariat that controls and regulates the means of production. A dictatorship of the proletariat is an oxy-moron, as it only serves the apparatchik and no one else. The CCCP contradicted its own propaganda, as a small elite telling people what to do does no more to facilitate a classless society than the IMF's actions facilitate free markets.

My idea of true socialism is what the Mondragon Co-op has. Its owned and run directly by its workers, involves absolutely no state intervention, and they produce goods that are traded on an open and free market. They've also been in operation in Spain since 1953. They've outlived entire governments that labeled their selves as socialistic and democratic.

IMO. true socialism is a business model, not a government policy. BTW, I see people constantly labeling government subsidies for the poor as socialism, which it isn't. This is social democracy, which does nothing to get at the heart of poverty like true socialism does. Its simply just a form of government sanctioned charity and does nothing to address the issue of the ownership of the means of production and the immense leverage that large concentrations of capital have over the rest of the populace. Its a policy that allows corporations to exist, but they use taxes to feed the poor. As long as corporations exist, this isn't going to work, as they'll use their immense capital to do everything they can to role back the social contract to 1900.

 

All the definitions and perceptions of communism and socialism since the time Marx defined them have changed, primarily as a result of charismatic political rulers who admired Marxist theory. Communism and socialism have been the labels given to any society under the rule of 'great leaders' and 'revolutionary fathers'. This has prevented aspects of socialist lifestyle from creating the benefits or simply the perception of justice that it needs to be democratically supported.

I don't think apolitical leaderless socialism (in the form of decentralized or libertarian socialism) has ever even gained traction much less created a revolution for one main reason Marx IMHO did not account for - it takes much more effort and almost a more complex society in order for there to be group communication, or the kind of communal awareness it would require to overcome our need to be put in line by the aristocracy and cults of personality. The top-down methodology is something that's almost wired into our understanding of the civilized world.

This type of structure relates back to the times of monarchs, emperors, and conquerors. It's probably the biggest thing holding us back to the limitations of the dark ages despite advancement in technology. This is why socialist critics often define capitalism and imperialism as one in the same central 'problem' facing humanity.

Technology has recently grown to the point that it's force enough to start pushing against the iron rule of oligarchy in a meaningful way. But also, technology now allows the elite's defenses to launch surveillance measures, counterintelligence, and precise lethal force (if necessary) against any revolutionary force which might arise.