- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
cross-posted from: https://lemmy.ml/post/29626672
On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.
He didn’t always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!
Some significant works:
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)
And, of course, Capital Vol I-III
Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don’t know where to start? Check out my “Read Theory, Darn it!” introductory reading list!
You must log in or register to comment.
Any social relation that exists is natural. The term natural is practically meaningless and is built on a fallacious idea that there is one true way humans were meant to live.
Also, natural does not mean better or worse than any other way.
The one true way humans were meant to live is free, it is the natural way for us to live when we’re not distracted by capitalism. Not just because we don’t see it, but because it actually no longer exists in the collective consciousness in any form it takes, at least not as a “reasonable alternative” to communism and more as something that must be prevented.
Humans are just animals surviving however we can, like any living thing. There is no way we were meant to live because there is no intention behind our existence, other than our own intentions. The way we live now is just as natural as we lived 500,000 years ago because both lifestyles evolved from how our nature interacts with the environment we live in.
I agree with you that being free is a better way to live but I think that’s a different and more solid moral argument than speaking of how we were “meant” to live. The latter idea can smuggle all sorts of ideas into the conversation, such as appeals to authority, tradition, religion, etc.
KS Robinson addresses this in the Mars trilogy. With adequate aging suppression and some post-scarcity on a thinly populated planet, a movement of hardcore primitivism emerges, tempered by brushing up against the modern. For some, it’s still an instinct.
Even Alexander commented that if he wasn’t in his social position he might live like Diogenes, naked and wild. It’s an old conundrum, a million years of wild vs. 80,000 or so of settled.
Just because an author addresses it in a book doesn’t mean they’re right
Right about what? I don’t think he makes any definitive arguments or assertions, other than maybe that some people are like that.
I know a few people who can be seen in that light, as marginally re-wilded. Rather extraordinary people, so I would not say they are representative of anyone else, but do illustrate the existence of the urge.
Oppression and slavery are older than feudalism, even agriculture.
Hey LibertyLiz. Nothing to add, just wanted to say hi. I enjoy seeing your name pop up spitting truth. Hope you’re doing good!
Similarly, the word “Humane”; if a human does something, it is human-like behavior. It is not synonymous with “good” or “ethical”.
We define human ideals to guide us in most cultures, and in english, at least, it does reference this narrative quality to the word ‘humane’, as more human-like behaviour than behaviour that is bad for the species, such as cruelty.
inb4 “capitalism is just markets and those existed for 5 billions years. Checkmate”
Ha! frontrun that tried argument by 1 minute
Wrong, capitalism when government doesn’t do stuff. Naturally socialism is when government does stuff, and when government does a lot of stuff its communism.
/s
There are quite a few of those over on the Lemmy.ml version of this post.
How is it not?
Because capitalism is not just markets?
Expand on that please
Not without a dinner and a movie first!
Why are you guys so hostile to simple questions?
I don’t feel I was particularly hostile.
Did you answer my questions, or just reply with snark?
It was a joke. I for one got it and thought it was very funny.
So you don’t want anyone being curious about socialism. Ooook then.
Capitalism is private ownership of the means of production, i.e. machines, land, factories, companies, capital. Capitalism doesn’t even need a free market. In practice it always tries to control the market in the form of regulatory capture, cartels, oligopolies, and monopolies, because they are more profitable.
One example: Capitalism requires private property of the means of production. Markets don’t. You can have usufruct markets.
Based on this definition, private property and means of production have existed far more than 400 years.
Private property of the mop.
Private property of the mop.
???
Private property of the means of production.
Private property existed beforehand, Means of productions obviously did. But explicit private property of the means of production is a relatively new invention.
I fail to see a distinction between a Lord owning a farm with a mill that produced flour and a capitalist owning a factory that produces flour.
Feudalism isn’t exactly capitalism but it’s splitting hairs. Nor do I agree with Engels that serfs had it better because it was in their Lord’s interests. If that was the case then a Capitalist would treat it’s workers better as well.
Removed by mod
Butthurt much?
Someone needs to get the cliffs notes of Marxist theory huh.
Huh or you could explain a little
If you’re genuinely curious, you’ll look up the information yourself.
I’m not going to go through the effort to baby-bird you Marxist theory when you obviously don’t care to verify for yourself.
Removed by mod
How is capitalism only 400 years old? Maybe the term, but you can’t seriously think feudalism isn’t an extreme form of capitalism:
- private property: the land and even the people on it were owned by the elite
- profit motive: they had currency and it was hoarded by the royals and their kin
- capital accumulation: see above
- wage labor: slave labor
The same thing existed in roman times, ancient greece, and even ancient Egypt which had empires and kingdoms spanning 5 thousand years where grain and other things were a currency.
Humans have been horrible to each other for their own private benefit, greed, and just pure cruelty for thousands of years.
Capitalism and Feudalism are both examples of class societies, but are not the same. Both have had working and owning classes, but the nature of relation to production is different, thus the class mechanisms at play are different. Engels sums it up succinctly in questions 7-10 of Principles of Communism, but I’ll only copy 7 and 8, as they are more relevant here:
Question 7 : In what way does the proletarian differ from the slave?
Answer : The slave is sold once and for all; the proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave, the property of a single master, is already assured an existence, however wretched it may be, because of the master’s interest. The individual proletarian, the property, as it were, of the whole bourgeois class, which buys his labour only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence. This existence is assured only to the proletarian class as a whole. The slave is outside competition, the proletarian is in it and experiences all its vagaries. The slave counts as a thing, not as a member of civil society; the proletarian is recognized as a person, as a member of civil society. Thus, the slave can have a better existence than the proletarian, but the proletarian belongs to a higher stage of social development and himself stands on a higher level than the slave. The slave frees himself when, of all the relations of private property, he abolishes only the relation of slavery and thereby becomes a proletarian himself; the proletarian can free himself only by abolishing private property in general.
Question 8 : In what way does the proletarian differ from the serf?
Answer : The serf enjoys the possession and use of an instrument of production, a piece of land, in exchange for which he hands over a part of his product or performs labour. The proletarian works with the instruments of production of another for the account of this other, in exchange for a part of the product. The serf gives up, the proletarian receives. The serf has an assured existence, the proletarian has not. The serf is outside competition, the proletarian is in it. The serf frees himself either by running away to the town and there becoming a handicraftsman or by giving his landlord money instead of labour and products, thereby becoming a free tenant; or by driving his feudal lord away and himself becoming a proprietor, in short, by entering in one way or another into the owning class and into competition. The proletarian frees himself by abolishing competition, private property and all class differences.
Hey Cowbee, just wanted to say I really appreciated your contributions to the comments which were super informative. 👍
No problem, thanks for the crosspost! 🫡
This is just an absurdly broad definition of capitalism. I mean it’s so broad as to be meaningless.
You should check out mutual aid by pyotr kropotkin. Sure, we have several thousand years of history of the carnage of states and individuals. Thing is, humans have existed for over 100,000 years – there is a lot missing about what our “natural” state is. Archaeological and anthropological evidence show that human societies exist on a wide spectrum of peaceful --> violent, stateless --> hierarchical.
Your implication that humans are inherently bad, cruel, competing for resources, etc. is a vestige of theory from Thomas Hobbes, connected to social darwinism, that completely ignores the observed behavior of a vast amount of animal and insect species, wherein individuals aid one another out of no apparent immediate benefit to themselves.
A somewhat famous passage from kropotkin to illustrate:
[…] to reduce animal sociability to love and sympathy means to reduce its generality and its importance, just as human ethics based upon love and personal sympathy only have contributed to narrow the comprehension of the moral feeling as a whole. It is not love to my neighbour — whom I often do not know at all — which induces me to seize a pail of water and to rush towards his house when I see it on fire; it is a far wider, even though more vague feeling or instinct of human solidarity and sociability which moves me. So it is also with animals. It is not love, and not even sympathy (understood in its proper sense) which induces a herd of ruminants or of horses to form a ring in order to resist an attack of wolves; not love which induces wolves to form a pack for hunting; not love which induces kittens or lambs to play, or a dozen of species of young birds to spend their days together in the autumn; and it is neither love nor personal sympathy which induces many thousand fallow-deer scattered over a territory as large as France to form into a score of separate herds, all marching towards a given spot, in order to cross there a river. It is a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy — an instinct that has been slowly developed among animals and men in the course of an extremely long evolution, and which has taught animals and men alike the force they can borrow from the practice of mutual aid and support, and the joys they can find in social life.
This isn’t to endorse primitivism, or Rousseau’s state of nature. I’m not sure I would even say “humans are innately good,” necessarily. Clearly, we have the potential for evil. But the idea that capitalist competition, social darwinism, humans reveling in their own private benefit, greed, and cruelty, is natural, is both played out and nonsensical.
edit: Source https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-mutual-aid-a-factor-of-evolution
The problem with that passage is that every behaviour that he attributes to ‘a feeling infinitely wider than love or personal sympathy’ can more readily and obviously be seen in terms of self preservation and individual gain. This is not to say that every instance of these behaviours in every species is selfish, but his explainations do nothing to disprove that. Neighbour’s house on fire? Put it out before it spreads here. Ruminants being attacked by wolves? Form a circle to protect your sides and rear. Woleves hunting as a pack? More members bring down bigger prey so there’s more food per member, and less personal risk of injury. Kittens play to hone their hunting abilities, and to start to form dominancy hierarchies. Birds flock together because it’s more efficient to follow another bird, rather than lead. And so on.
None of this is some gotcha that proves that cooperation is somehow unnatural, or that selfishness is more natural, but to assume the opposite is hopelessly naive.
More cooperation and working towards the common good would do wonders for the human race, but it’s fighting against a lot of instincts, both old and new.
I don’t really agree, but I do understand where you’re coming from. I do think you’re right in pointing out that all these behaviors give the individual a more likely chance to survive, but I also think that is exactly Kropotkin’s point. That these social behaviors were naturally selected, the individuals who displayed them were more likely to survive.
But where I disagree is in the fact that the individuals themselves aren’t consciously thinking, “this is what will give me, an individual, the best chance to survive.” You see what I mean? For example, the horses forming a circle around the young to defend from wolves – they’re not thinking, “I need to protect myself.” They have an instinct to protect the young, so the young go in the center. If an adult were purely individualistic, it would enter the circle, itself, right? Or if my neighbors house is on fire, what’s most advantageous for me as an individual is to run away, but I feel compelled to yell for help. Or kittens – wouldn’t they be better off as individuals if they just killed off their siblings, so that they could have a full mouth? But no, being raised with other young kittens allows them to learn to hunt through play, to groom themselves, and to learn socialization tactics and reading body language, which further increases their chances of survival when encountering other cats as adults.
So yeah, you’re totally right in a sense, animals act in these ways because their ancestors passed on the genes that predisposed them to acting this way, and those behaviors make them more likely to survive because they (the behaviors) made their ancestors more likely to survive. See what I’m getting at? Kropotkin’s point is that it is evolutionarily advantageous to engage in social activity and cooperation.
I totally buy it, personally. You ever think about why we blush involuntarily? Or why we feel so wretched when we think we haven’t been accepted socially? Why it feels good to just help someone, or when we wince when we see someone else in pain? We’re social animals, built to socialize. I mean, we all speak a language! We naturally are compelled to talk baby-talk at babies. We touch each other, even in platonic, non sexual ways. These social behaviors are rewarded because they helped us survive, yes, but we don’t think about them as actions we take to increase our chance of survival. We do them because they feel good, because they’re supposed to.
Thank you for a thoughtful reply, and my appologies for only responding to what appear to be the key points, life has decided to get busy.
You are correct in saying that the animal behaviours discussed are largely evolutionary, the question is what the driver is. Maybe I am being too cynical, but in each example I see a behaviour that is tailored to the benefit of the individual and their genetic line, rather than to the benefit of the group as a whole.
The horses forming a defensive ring have their young on the inside, and are acting to protect them, not the young of others. The person acting to put out the fire at a neighbour’s house seeks to stop it spreading to their house (look at reports of historical fires in cities for many examples) or to encourage others to help them in times of trouble. Kittens playing together rather than attempting to kill their siblings benefit directly from the play, and lack the necessary strength to kill anyway. Other species’ young are not so delicate. Any altruistic behaviour can be framed as selfish when you consider the benefits the individual gains, both in terms of a positive feeling and in terms of social ‘credit’ for want of a better term, although that take may really be too cynical for most.
One of the most obvious ways to see how selfish these behaviours are is to see what happens when they don’t work out for some reason, say lack of resources, or where a larger benefit can be gained by acting differently. Lions kill each others cubs, in many species the strong will monopolise resources to the detriment of weaker members of society, others will steal cached food from members of their own kind. Even herd animals will leave the slowest members behind if it means personal survival.
As I said, I do think humans would benefit from much more cooperation, but I think Kropotkin’s point is weak and mostly relies on the reader thinking the animals mentioned are cute and fluffy, or majestic, rather than thinking about their behavior. I think his point would have been better made by comparison to either bees or ants, which clearly operate communally, with little regard to individual benefit. They’re perhaps not so pleasant a comparrison, and are notably hierarchical with a ‘queen’ as the topmost tier, but, to me, they seem to fit his argument better.
Hey, no need to apologize! I totally get it.
I agree with you wholeheartedly, even with your cynicism :) I agree, any altruistic behavior fits within this context of evolutionary behavior and is ultimately driven by the need for individuals to survive long enough to reproductive age. To be honest, I’m actually not sure where we disagree. I think, maybe, we are interpreting Kropotkin differently. To continue with the idea about horses – I think the problem with your posit (horses protecting their young) is that it isn’t only the horses who have offspring who form the circle, but also horses who don’t have offspring. This might sound like I’m saying, “See, since even the horses that do not have offspring join the protective ring, we see that altruism occurs in nature,” but as you pointed out, this too is an evolutionarily driven behavior. It’s not necessarily selfish in the eyes of the individual (I don’t think), but it’s an urge, driven by generations and generations of horses who exist on a spectrum from least social (do not participate in the circle) to most social (participate in the circle, and many more social activities), in which those horses that are more socially participative are more likely to reach adulthood and reproduction.
I can’t remember if Kropotkin addresses the violence that happens in the natural world, but I’m pretty sure he reconciles it. I don’t think he outright denies competition in Mutual Aid, even though I can see how you come to that conclusion with that passage. I agree with you, it is easy to look at opposing examples of competition rather than cooperation in the natural world, even among the same species. Especially when it comes down to resource scarcity – then you start seeing less cooperative behavior. I think Kropotkin’s point is not to deny that competition exists, but to push against the idea that that is the only thing that exists. The way I understand it, he was writing in a post-Darwin time, when the scientific community was taking Darwin’s ideas and applying them to society with Social Darwinism – survival of the fittest not only in nature but in social life, as well. So instead of a “noble savage” kinda idea, where Kropotkin is saying “everything in nature is peaches and roses,” he is more saying, “look at all this cooperation in nature that is being ignored by the ‘survival of the fittest’ camp.” Anyways, that’s how I read the book – but it’s not really captured in that single quote.
Funnily enough, your exact example with ants is one Kropotkin uses in Mutual Aid! He basically goes along the evolutionary ladder, from least complex organisms to most (although, beginning with insects I’m pretty sure) and shows the cooperation within various species, not to deny the existence of competition, but to show that it isn’t the only, or even the most, important force in evolution.
I guess my one last point is illustrated like this: if competition for resources were the primary force driving evolution, wouldn’t we see a continuing trend of individuals in a species with more and more physical strength, brutishness, competitive nature, and rejection of cooperation? In other words, wouldn’t we see a phasing out of cooperative behavior in favor of individual antagonisms and competition for resources? Here I’m thinking of my house cats – we’re in the process of introducing them, at the moment, and managing their anxieties about the other. Even though Bella is very territorial, each day she is showing more and more signs of acceptance of Suzie – through cat language of course – slow blinking, flopping on her side, chirping when she walks up to her. If competition where the only, or the most important driver of evolution, I’m not sure we would see this kind of behavior from Bella – I’m not even sure these cat-signs of flopping slow-blinking, chirping, would exist! Of course, they occur with more frequency as she slowly realizes resources are not scarce, that she can coexist with this other cat Suzie, and that she’ll get treats each time she has a positive interaction ;)
Anyways, thank you for your thoughtful reply. I’m curious to hear what you think, it’s been fun chatting. I think even if you’re skeptical of Kropotkin from that passage, it’s still worth reading the book in whole. You probably wouldn’t find that you agree with everything, or even most, but at the very least, I think it’d be an interesting insight into how a person thought post-Darwin, pre-WW1.
Removed by mod
What a dick-ass comment. I’m not trying to dunk on you dude. If you don’t wanna read more about the thing you yourself are professing (humans inherently bad), where that idea got popularized, and people who have refuted it throughout history, you don’t have to. But I find it interesting and just wanted to give you a reading suggestion. Christ.
You made a good comment for the rest of us to read in any case 👍
Thanks unruffled. That passage from Kropotkin really moved me when I first read it. atro really struggled with rule 1. Hope your day goes good!
Because that’s not how feudalism worked, your land was yours as long you supported your ruler, who actually owned everything.
The definition of capitalism is that you have private ownership of the means of production, feudalism was more like a big Pyramid scheme or MLM, King owns everything, but kinda lends some lands to nobility those manage it and people on it and then goes down all the way to the peasants who also get some small land in exchange for working on their rulers land
your land was yours as long you supported your ruler, who actually owned everything
In other words, the land wasn’t yours.
Just like today!
capitalism is a term created to describe the situation where private corporations started having more power than the government… i’d say the East India Tea Company was the beginning of capitalism.
Capitalism is also older than Marx. (Shhh don’t tell them that)
I don’t think anyone really claimed otherwise. 400 years ago was 1625. Unless you thought Marx lived in the 1600s this comment makes little sense.
The wish to overthrow those in power is probably as old as humans.
Alles Gute lieber Herr Marx!! <3
(ger.: best wishes to u dear mistr marx!! <3)
Before that it was called feudalism.
Capitalism was supposed to solve the issue of generational wealth so that the amount of money you have directly represents the number of hours you worked regardless of profession or how much money your parents had
But people in power/people with wealth aren’t going to give it up so no matter what system you try, they are going to modify it
Communism remedies this by having no one in power. Unfortunately that is still subject to the above so we have many examples of countries that failed to become communist
“Yeah, well how old is communism?”
🤣
Yep, being self serving is a part of human nature. No shit, it’s the only reason we still exist.
1.) Assuming that’s truly innate, why should we uphold a system that incentivizes and rewards self serving behaviors with more power?
2.) I would argue a much more genuine claim to why we still exist is actually our communal nature.
Well, because nobody actually tries anything different on a global enough scale. Edit: Why even try. We’re gonna die in ~70 years anyway.
No one has yet to provide an example of any socialist government around today.
Must be a whole lot of them, huh.
What specifically do you mean by “socialist government”? There are many valid ways to interpret that.
There are many governments which follow various socialist schools of thought (China, Vietnam, Cuba, Laos, DPRK), the ruling leader of Burkino Faso certainly has Marxist influence, the large Zapatista territory in Chiapas, Mexico (population ~300,000) is governed in a socialist manner, one of the two main parties in the Nepalese government is communist, as well as almost all of the opposition (it’s… complicated). And this is taking an anti-capitalist definition of socialism, none of that social-democracy Nordic model stuff.
This is not exhaustive. Many more self-declare themselves socialist..
Now, whether someone believes each of those governments fits their definition of “socialism” is a whole other story.
Not to forget all the peoples that practice Pre-Marxist socialism.
The prevalence/popularity of an idea has no direct relationship to it’s merit.
In other words, even if there were no socialist friendly governments (which isn’t the case, but even if it were), that wouldn’t be proof that socialism is a bad idea.
Note: I realize this person is trolling; I’m not replying for their benefit. Still worth countering the nonsensical fallacy they’ve spewed into the community, IMO.
There are plenty of socialist policies in place around the world. Just like there are plenty of capitalist policies. There are no purely capitalist or socialist countries.
You can’t look at Scandinavia and America and say they are the same thing. It’s a different mix and Scandinavia is much more socialist leaning and has much better outcomes.
When people speak of Capitalism and Socialism, they aren’t speaking of the Private and Public sectors. In the US, for example, the millitary is in the public sector, but its purpose is to extract vast profits in the private sector.
Instead, what matters is which aspect of society is the principle, ie which controls large firms, key industries, and the government. That’s why Cuba, despite having a private sector, is Socialist, while Scandinavia is Capitalist.
Why was my question removed? I literally just asked what countries are socialist.
Almost every country on the planet is a mixed economy. There are no pure capitalist or socialist countries that I know of.
When people speak of Capitalism and Socialism, they aren’t speaking of the Private and Public sectors. In the US, for example, the millitary is in the public sector, but its purpose is to extract vast profits in the private sector.
Instead, what matters is which aspect of society is the principle, ie which controls large firms, key industries, and the government. That’s why Cuba, despite having a private sector, is Socialist, while Scandinavia is Capitalist.
No. Scandinavia has national bargaining agreements. It’s more socialist than it is capitalist. Yours is a dumb reactionary definition.
Having national bargaining agreements in an economy driven by Private Ownership of large firms and key industries does not make it more socialist than capitalist. It means labor organization is stronger than in other Capitalist countries, but the character of the economy is the same underneath. I wouldn’t call Marxist analysis “dumb and reactionary.”
Marx never got to see socialism implemented. When discussing its implementation, he is not a good source. When discussing the issues of capitalism, he is great. This absolutist, primitive thinking on the matter only serves the bourgeoisie.
I really don’t think you’ve engaged much with Marx if you think the fundamental distinctions between Capitalism and Socialism have changed to the point of calling systems thoroughly dominated by Private Property “more Socialist than Capitalist.” Marx called this Social Democracy “Conservative Socialism,” or “Bourgeois Socialism:”
A second and more practical, but less systematic, form of this Socialism sought to depreciate every revolutionary movement in the eyes of the working class, by showing that no mere political reform, but only a change in the material conditions of existence, in economical relations, could be of any advantage to them. By changes in the material conditions of existence, this form of Socialism, however, by no means understands abolition of the bourgeois relations of production, an abolition that can be effected only by a revolution, but administrative reforms, based on the continued existence of these relations; reforms, therefore, that in no respect affect the relations between capital and labour, but, at the best, lessen the cost, and simplify the administrative work, of bourgeois government.
His analysis is still on the nose for Social Democracy, where worker protections are sliding, and the system itself reliant on exploiting the Global South.
That’s Marx’s conclusion. Again, he did not see what happened in the 20th century and revolutionary socialism failed catastrophically. We will not get the chance to try that again. Cry into your copy of Capital all you want.
Socialism exists in forms that are not pure. Every co-op is socialism existing within capitalism. And they are worth celebrating their successes. Instead of adhering to some rigid doctrine that has failed to make any sustained progress for two centuries now.
Just asking questions? Sure.
Yes actually. Id like to know.
Why is being curious “reactionary”? That’s ridiculous.I’m guessing your question was asked in quite a suggestive way. I have to ask: why should it be important?
"Which countries are socialist " is suggestive? Lol what? I’m what way is that suggestive?
Context matters, homie.
Yeah it does. We’re in a thread about the father of socialism, honey buns.
honey buns
I don’t appreciate that kind of sexualizing address.
I already linked you the answer matey. If you want to learn about socialism we have lots of communities for that on lemmy, just take a browse. But this community is not for serious political debate or discussion. It’s just for memes.
Both communism and capitalism are naturally occurring in the animal kingdom in a reductive state. Communism is just more sustainable.
Removed by mod
