Anarchism and Communism, beyond Marx, finding common ground

Karl Marx, Fredrich Engles, thats the Victorian Age.
You know Schrooge and Bob Crachit,

So much has happened since that time, Like FDR's New Deal.

Do Marx's maxiums still apply to an economic model that has changed so much?

 

Is there a more current Marxist Theorist than Karl Marx ?

 

Marx is about the relationship between classes and the nature of capital accumulation.

Before you can state Marx is out of date you have to ask the following:

- Has the relationship between owners and workers changed into a different arrangement?

- Has the nature of capital accumulation changed?

The answer is no, the capitalists goal is still the perpetual accumulation of capital and this is still done through the exploitation of the labour of the proletariat. Infact over time Capitalism has fallen more in line with how Marx viewed capitalism.

 

It seems to me that Marx's theroies apply on a more global scale. The first world has a large middle class but the third world has wide spread poverty.

 

absolute drivell !

yes - the nature of it has changed - in Britain at least some 40 to 50 percent of workers now have either shares in their company or own stocks and bonds. They are largely homeowners with a mortgage. The economy has changed and the way in which social relations are conducted

the fact is that marx has little relevence in a culture dominated by transglobal corporations and was by-and-large talking about how workers came from a feudal economy. He actually describes capitalism rather than corporate capitalism and lived at a time when the economy was governed by a much more simplistic model.

Marx would not have written the same book if he began writing now and if you bothered to read its many volumes rather than a short synopsis by sympathetic authors I expect you would agree with that analysis.
Like most people I expect you would get about - what - 50 pages in before you just couldnt see the page for tears of boredom. It is a most boring and -for our times - inaccurate book.

You may like to read it here
http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1867-c1/index.htm

this is about as interesting as it gets isnt it

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wake me up if you find anything more interesting than an indepth analysis of someones bellybutton fluff
actually - given a preference I would read that analysis rather than Das Kapital

 

Marx's ideas apply much more today than they did during his time, and there are too many mordern marxist theorists to count.

to check out how his ideas apply more today see

www.marxist.com


and to see some of the more recent people look at people in the archive at

www.marxists.org

though not all of the people in that archive are marxists, theres still tons of people who have added on to his work. Marx is what we know.

 

That's hilarious. Marx is still popular - everybody at www.ilovemarx.com agrees!

This is such ridiculous circular logic I think it demonstrates why marxism is a bankrupt ideology, and most of its supporters don't even understand it. It has been reduced to slogans like "exploiting the workers". Yes, those exploited workers who have seen living standards continually rise since the publication of Das Kapital. In fact it has only accelerated - Korea rose from one of the poorest, least developed economies to a wealthy industrial powerhouse in just a few decades. Did Marx predict that? No, he was too busy predicting the collapse of capitalism.

There's two key elements to Marx's theories. Historical materialism (which said capitalism would collapse on its own contradictions), which as I showed above isn't working too well. Some people turn Marx into a sort of Nostradamus, saying of course he is right - just not yet! But given it has been more than a century, I'd say you 'd have to be pretty desperate to believe that. It is also a cheap way of saying that Marx cannot, by definition, ever be proved wrong until the end of time.

The other key theory was the labour theory of value, which is no longer taken seriously in economics.

So all we're left with is juvenile sloganeering, reducing Marx to "the workers are exploited because the capitalists make profit!"

 

He didn't specifically predict that, but he predicted globalization by studying the the nature of capitalism. That falls in line with what he wrote.

Historical materialism is more than just capitalism collapsing on its own contradictions. It includes studying the class struggle, and the nature of the class struggle. Marx though, among other things related to historically materialism, that workers would form unions to fight and campaign for better working conditions and wages, better terms of contract, and he was right.

It would be possible to prove Marx wrong in the future if humanity achieves socialism without the class struggle becoming so fierce that it causes a revolution.

Marxism isn't a system of beliefs. It is a system of knowledge. If it is scientific (free from idealism), it is marxist, and vice versa.

The labour theory of value is correct.

 

I'm sure he predicted night would follow day too. Come on, the world was already globalising by the time he put pen to paper. International trade is a lot older than you think.

This is like saying Marx discovered Marxism

You are once again giving him credit for predicting something that already existed. And why didn't he predict the decline of trade unions as societies developed beyond the industrial era he lived in (and which most of his supporters still live in, in their minds)?

Marxism is for useless theoretical utopia advocates. It is an abandoned ideology, the only reason to study it is to learn how much damage it caused for the poor people of the world unfortunate enough to live under its proponents.

 

athouritarian statist ideologys [i e marksism -leninism] are the polar oposite of libertarian decentralist ideologys [ie anarchism individualist or collectivist ]

 

Any collectivist ideology is neither libertarian or decentralist. This is where left wing anarchistm fails - at heart it is still collectivist.

 

Collectivism sounds like something you'd be all for.

 

I'm a real libertarian capitalist, unlike you, a right wing conspiracy theorist loon.

 

Pepik, you sound more like a passenger on the GEORGE W. BUSH EXPRESS.

 

Since when does George Bush believe in free trade, legalisation of drugs, pro-choice, or gay marriage?

I'm also in favor of repealing the patriot act, shutting down homeland security, and eliminating the department of energy.

Oh and so much more.

 

Ah... well, I suppose you just lost your ticket to the GWB Xpress.

 

Shane, you seem to be coming around. I argued the case with you in this forum that capital is a much greater threat than the state before and you seem to have disagreed then. I'm glad we now agree.

I like Charles Wilson's quote in Camus' notebook: (I paraphrase) "We need total revolution. Not to install the dictatorship of the proletariat, but to give life a chance."