Marxism

that was me

What sort of Marxist are you?

i belive in the original works of Engles and Marx, Troscky and in some cases Lennin. i do not belive in or condone Stallin or Meo.

i belive in a Workers Democracy

I can agree with you, but I’m more of a Right wing Neo-Marxist and Voluntary Communist.

By the way, not all of what Mao did was bad, just most of it.

Ah, a fellow troskyist; excellent. Actually I can’t really decide if I’m a troskyist or a democratic socialist. I’m not sure that revolution is absolutely necissary. I mean, it definately is if the sort of government systems we have now continue to work (or not) the way they do now.

well as history has shown, a fast move into communism does not seem to work all that well. thats why it’s best to take the change in steps. we start with moving to a sociel Democrocy. the thing is communism does not work isilated. thats why before we can become marxist, every one or allmost everyone must be on bord for the change.

Exactly. A communist revolution cannot start at the snap of your fingers. It must be well thought out and planned with the support of the masses. You cannot have communism without first moving into socialism, which requires a lot of groundwork. It is much easier to have a revolution then to try and maintain a working system afterwards (French Revolution being one example).

to see a marxist revalution in action today, take a look at argentina.
there are now soviet conceils (or popular assemblys as the are called in argintina) in every city, town and vilage and on march 17 they held there first national meeting. although this is not an offical goverment. it will mostlickly become the ofical govern.ment

Marxism is the government of the future. But it will take a few years, hell a few decades, for the memory of the old Soviet Union to fade. I say give it 20 years before Marxist countries start popping up again.

Marxism is all about gradual evolution. Just because capitalism is currently the system that “works,” doesn’t mean it’ll always be. I’m already predicting the failure of capitalism due to supply side economics. Sooner or later, existing markets will be over saturated and can bear no more, leading to worldwide depression (imagine the Great Depression x10). It’ll probably take around 50 years, but the revolution is definitely going to happen.

COme on, Market over saturation? Too many beanie babies so we have to experience the worst economic depression the modern workd has seen? :lol: :evil:

the currant economic situation is comparible to that of the late 1920’s.

Oh Yes, I’m sure 50 YEARS from now Beanie Babies will lead to the destruction of the world…
But lets, for your sake, (who seems to believe Beanie Babies is the ONLY product overproduced in large quantities).

Say for example you work in a Beanie factory and are paid $10 per hour. In a day’s work you produce $200 worth of Beanie Babies. However you are only paid $80 that day - where did the other $120 come from? Workers are paid for their ability to work and not the work that they do. We are given enough money to live (just) so we can maintain a steady pool of workers for exploitation by the capitalists. The extra $120 goes as profit to the capitalist. He gets this money purely because he previously had enough money (capital) to own factories, equipment, etc. but he has actually done nothing productive in this process. (In fact, if you remove the capitalist taking profit, production proceeds quite smoothly - the same is not true if you remove the workers). This extra profit on top of wages is called surplus value. After spending some of the surplus value on mansions and private jets, our capitalist is forced to re-invest the surplus back into production. Investment is the motor force of the capitalist economy and helps improve the productivity of labor. If our capitalist does not invest, then he will be out-competed by other more efficient capitalists who do. If investing in new machinery makes production of Beanie Babies 20% more efficient then the boss can fire 20% of the workers (or cut everybody’s hours 20%) and still make just as much stuff. Unfortunately for the capitalist his profits are based on how much labor is worked ($120 per worker); when he fires people the rate of surplus value to investment decreases. This is fine as long as the market is growing and the capitalist is selling more items in total (even though the profit per item is decreasing - the recent explosion of the computers market is an excellent example of this). Unfortunately this eventually reaches its limits; the tendency for the rate of profit to fall means that an initial relative reduction in profits turns into an absolute reduction in profits. Workers earning $80 a day can only buy so many Computers and the capitalist cannot sell his goods at a profit. Our poor boss is forced to close factories and lay off even more people (e.g. Nortel Networks). While we may gain intellectual satisfaction in the fall of a particularly exploitative employer, it is clear that the workers in this situation are far worse off than the boss. The crisis of capitalism is systemic.

First of all, I was being fecesious with the beanie babies.

Second, wouldn’t a government bureacracy be even worse managing a factory? Besides Henry Ford invented doing the oppossite of what your Evil Beanie Baby Capitalist did. At some point he raised his workers’ wages to $5 which was several times the average wage for uneducated work. Ford’s contemporaries thought that he was mad, that he would lose money, and the first year he made a lot less money but then not only did his workers start producing a lot more Model Ts but they began to buy them. Ford’s profits went through the roof and worker’s wages everywhere went up.

The moral is, not every capitalist is as stupid as the one you described.

No, not all capitalists are greedy pigs only looking out for themselves, just that most are. Also the reason Ford was able to increased wages was that he could afford to. He had virtual monopoly over the automotive industry (half of all cars sold) and was making a yearly salary of 300+ million (today’s standards) compared to less then 20,000 of the Average Joe. Combined with the fact his labor production increased 380%, it’s interesting how Henry didn’t raise salaries even higher. Also the dismal performance during the Great Depression showed massive layoffs in the automotive industry due to lack of demand and overproduction in the 1920s when other industries (ex. agriculture) were declining during the same period.

Moses, you seem to have omitted some important elements. For example, the greedy capitalist is ultimately responsible for providing jobs for the labour. His/her initial investment, the risk that was taken (80% of all small businesses fail), the dreams involved, the blood sweat and tears that goes into a business - building and running - all (in my mind) suggests that the person who dreams big, has the talent, education and expertise, and works hard deserves in some degree to make his/her dreams come true. The poor exploited workers have a choice over whether or not to work for Joe company (true, many of them are not intelligent enough to make good choices, and many times there is an “employer’s market” - but this can change to a worker’s market very quickly, especially as education increases, more people take risks and require more workers, thus dwindling the supply) and with current labour laws they have quite a bit of latitude in deciding to screw over the people who give them money in exchange for “work” (i’ve worked in a few unions now, and i have NEVER been encouraged to work by the union bosses - quite the opposite).
Call me naive, but there are other elements to this discussion then the screwing over of the masses (come Enron, Nortel, Crossroads, and other recent examples of corporations run amuk)

You brought up some very good points. You brought up the fact that 80% of all small businesses fail. Is the underlining reason that these people also don’t pour their blood, sweat, and tears into business? No. Simply he is out invested by more efficient businesses who do can do things at a lower cost. Unfortunately those businesses turn out to be monopolies.

During periods of slump, the bigger capitalists, with economies of scale, are better able to survive. Capitalism has an inherent tendency to concentrate into monopoly. They also try to get out of these crises by selling goods on foreign markets. However, all the other capitalists are trying to do the same and the world is only so big. Also in the very act of exporting to foreign markets the capitalists develop the productive forces in these countries (eg. Indonesia, China) which then start producing a surplus for export - exacerbating the problem. The only solution at this point is to take these foreign markets by force.

Of course there still exists a huge “demand” for workers - houses for the homeless, or food for the hungry, or medicine for the sick - but for a capitalist, demand only means anything if it is backed up with hard cash. Capitalism gets itself in this mess because it produces for profit and not for need.

Now let’s use money, the basis of capitalism. Let’s say you have a $10,000 bill (they exist). You could use it to go and buy a 48-inch HDTV, a small motorcycle, and 200 pounds of candy. That bill cost the US government less to print than a sheet of newspaper. So why does money work? You can’t take a newspaper and buy a motorcycle. But everyone in the world is in on a secret. Everyone is going along with a deal: they’ll pretend your scrap of paper is worth a motorcycle as long as you will. You can’t take this bill to a government bank and exchange it for gold. Money is nothing but a promise everyone’s made with everyone else.

i was reading the communist maniphesto last night and in part of it , not in so many words but Marx basicly said,
" the only diference between a slave and a worker is you buy the slave but rent the worker". when you go to work you are not being paid for the resorce or the value that you add to the product but for the resorce that you your self provide, Labour.

now theres somthing i have to get off my chest.
there is a G8 summit coming up in Alberta and one of the big topics is Africa. now here is a place that does not have the resorces, wealth, capital, or stable government to efectivly run it to what they need. so they look to the west for help. and what do we do, we give them money- oh wait no, we don’t give them money we loan them money and expect them to pay it back and pay interest on it. and we keep loaning them money becase they need it, and we keep expecting them to pay of there debts.
it’s gotten to the point that more money is payed out in interest payments in some African countrys then what they spend on healthcare. even some of the that forian aid money gets recyculed back into loan payments. it’s rediculus.
it’s things like this that make me think of how important it is to work toward that old marxist saying. “from every one to there abilitys to every one to there needs”.
we could just give the african nations what they need, medician, clean water, food and of all things at this point conrticeptives. and they could give us what they can give, dimonds and oil.

but there hapend to be more profit in what we are currently doing then in helping other human beings.

I think Africa would be far better off today than if it had remained isolated from the rest of the world without any imperialism and man drain from (both N & S) America and Europe. Even if they had to live in a “primitive culture” (or the “White Man’s Burden” as Europeans put it), at least they had a stable society, food, and shelter.