Not magically i think unionization is paramount to the revolution. The evidence could be interpreted as you do. The european nations are indeed good counterexample to marx. Germany before nazis, france in the 1968, partially greece, but there us just invaded. That being said this does not discourage democratic unionization and strikes. They are still effective we just have to adapt so that they remain effective. I think that as the exploitation will increase like now in the us, workers will feel the class struggle and recognize that they cannot remain idle. The organizers then I would prefer to be revolutionary marxists instead of just revolutionaries. Maybe we use the word differently, by marxists here i mean that workers owning the means of prod. is their main goal.
Nobody is arguing against unionization and strikes though. What’s being said is that these things alone are demonstrably insufficient to overthrow capitalism. The only approach that has been shown to work reliably is the one Bolsheviks pursued. By Marxists, I mean people who have genuine understanding of material dialectics and are able to apply this understanding to the current material conditions to produce the desired results. Marxism is a framework for understanding the world.
So you regard the situation in russia after 1905 or maybe even before as comparable to what either today capitalism is, or back then was? I think that first of all since russia back then was not even industrialized for any future revolutions we are essentially forced to accept marxs framework. We are not overthrowing monarchy. Also russia back then was so incredibly disorganized and non resilient that modern comparison in developed countries is very difficult. And when you say that bolshevism proved itself as good at overthrowing capitalism, my point is partially also that it wasnt exactly much capitalist like, what russia was back then. Otherwise there would be barely any difference between mensheviks and bolsheviks, since the bourgeois revolution wouldbt be needed.
Korea and vietnam would be simmilar, china as far as industrialization goes.
i dont think that we are going to be overthrowing weak poorly managed monarchies. I think that the revolution against capitalism in future will be more simmilar to marxs writing. But i also think that after that the framework of material conditions will be understood even by regular workers.
So you regard the situation in russia after 1905 or maybe even before as comparable to what either today capitalism is, or back then was?
I’m pointing out the historical fact that the labor in Russia was sufficiently class conscious to carry out the revolution which disproves your thesis that further capitalist development was necessary.
And when you say that bolshevism proved itself as good at overthrowing capitalism, my point is partially also that it wasnt exactly much capitalist like, what russia was back then.
I don’t even know what point you’re attempting to make here. What stage of capitalist development Russia was at is utterly irrelevant. The actual problem was that the means of production were privately owned, and the goal of a socialist revolution is to put the ownership in the hands of the working majority. That’s precisely what Bolsheviks did.
i dont think that we are going to be overthrowing weak poorly managed monarchies. I think that the revolution against capitalism in future will be more simmilar to marxs writing. But i also think that after that the framework of material conditions will be understood even by regular workers.
The workers in the west are far more educated today than they were a century ago. The levels of literacy are far high, access to information is much more readily available, and so on. Yet, despite that, the revolutionary potential in the west is entirely absent. It’s quite clear that the framework for understanding material conditions doesn’t just spontaneously appear among the workers. As Bolsheviks correctly understood, a socialist revolution requires a professional vanguard of revolutionaries to organize the workers.
Yes it was a revolution against a preindustrial and mostly feudal monarchy. It baffles me how you want to infer something about how this would work against a late capitalist industrialized system.
The point of capitalist development is relevant to a historical materialist. I hope that we will agree that the hierarchy of owbership is radically different under feudal monarchy and developed industrialized capitalism. The means of production were in the hands of the state controlled by the party, controlled by the central committee or politburo. I would prefer if they were not only in the hands of the workers, but also in their control. I dont think that the workers appreciated under stalins decision for example that they had to give out more grain than they produced. Means of production were truly only in their hands, not control.
Well lets not forget western history. A materialist may expect this consciousness during crises and unions to rise in numbers. 1960s for example. In the us very large part of the population simply democratically and actively opposed in no small part their current material conditions and chose to not adhere to the capitalist line. Yes the fbi crushed many of these movements, but they very much emerged democrstically, from the material conditions. Assault the workforce, you will get dissent.
I partially agree, but this is common to all marxists, that this dissent needs to be organized, but in my view theres little need for the specific form of a vanguard party.
Yes it was a revolution against a preindustrial and mostly feudal monarchy. It baffles me how you want to infer something about how this would work against a late capitalist industrialized system.
It baffles me how you can’t understand how the exact same principles apply to a late stage capitalist system.
I hope that we will agree that the hierarchy of owbership is radically different under feudal monarchy and developed industrialized capitalism.
Do elaborate on that because what people are realizing is the exact opposite, hence people like Varoufakis now using terms such as technofeudalism.
The means of production were in the hands of the state controlled by the party, controlled by the central committee or politburo.
The party represents the working majority, and it’s clear primitive organization simply does not scale. It is not possible for large numbers of people to coordinate effectively without central planning organs. There’s a reason these structures evolve in every human society as it scale. Not only that, but we see the same thing happening in nature as well with complex organisms evolving things like the nervous system and the brain. It’s an efficient solution to the problem of coordination.
I dont think that the workers appreciated under stalins decision for example that they had to give out more grain than they produced. Means of production were truly only in their hands, not control.
I don’t think you appreciate that redistribution of resources at scale avoided local hoarding and prevented famines. In fact, the famine in the 30s was in large parts caused by kulaks hoarding cattle and grain.
Well lets not forget western history. A materialist may expect this consciousness during crises and unions to rise in numbers. 1960s for example. In the us very large part of the population simply democratically and actively opposed in no small part their current material conditions and chose to not adhere to the capitalist line. Yes the fbi crushed many of these movements, but they very much emerged democrstically, from the material conditions. Assault the workforce, you will get dissent.
And the movement FBI had to crush were very much organized along Bolshevik principles which proves my point. Black Panthers were explicitly a Marxist Leninist movement.
I partially agree, but this is common to all marxists, that this dissent needs to be organized, but in my view theres little need for the specific form of a vanguard party.
And this sort of view is precisely where there are no serious movements in the west.
Well again you provide no historical proof against a industrialized capitalist system. Trying to argue that it will work the same is the opposite of mhistorical materialism.
Ok here I dont know where to begin. Well lets beginwoth capitalism. Why was the bourgeois revolution so violent precisely against feudal lords. If the structure is the same why were their estates privatized in sich a manner? Why did feudalist system not develop industries? Why is marxs critique not applied to feudalism also, when they could be used interchangebly. You use some wording that yannis has used and try to claim that pretty much all marxists and even most economists dont understand what they talk about.
i agree with the scaling argument. Thats why the soviets and factory committees were founded, so that they could be what controlls the production as informed and effective as possible.
Yes these hierarchies evolve in ant colonies for example. You know the workers do what they must and will die if the colony chooses so. I must admit that i fail to see the relevancy. A worst social darwinist could use such an argument.
Yet weirdly enough, despite the scapegoat of kulaks, the worst year of the famine coincided with the worst yield. And the famine was most pronounced in the argricultural regions. Note that this would not have happened if the regional soviets were in control, because they would know the yield. Centralization is effective, just not when it comes to knowing information that is decentralized. Then it becomes incredibly uninformed. Again note that this has nothing to do with workers controlling their production. Giving away more grain than you produce was an example of how marxist these policies and organization were.
Some were, many werent. Actually the most populous ones, the largest ones, were definitely not.
Again without proof. Counterexamples: during the 1930s crisis the unions in us were incredibly strong, 1960s and i guess crises in general.
Well again you provide no historical proof against a industrialized capitalist system. Trying to argue that it will work the same is the opposite of mhistorical materialism.
The historical proof is that industrial capitalism transitions into financial capitalism as we see happening in the west.
If the structure is the same why were their estates privatized in sich a manner? Why did feudalist system not develop industries?
See, this is why you need to spend a bit of time to actually understand what dialectical materialism is before debating it. Capitalism arose from the technological advancements that occurred under feudalism. Capitalism stemmed from changing dynamics within society that shifted power into the hands of the merchant class.
You use some wording that yannis has used and try to claim that pretty much all marxists and even most economists dont understand what they talk about.
No, I actually understand how capitalism evolved and the material conditions that drove it. I also understand how capitalism itself evolves and why the industrial stage transitioned into financialized stage. These are things any Marxist should be able to comprehend.
Yes these hierarchies evolve in ant colonies for example. You know the workers do what they must and will die if the colony chooses so. I must admit that i fail to see the relevancy. A worst social darwinist could use such an argument.
You fail to see the relevancy because you’re once again failing to apply dialectical thinking to the problem. Hierarchies are a tool for solving the problem of coordination. Similar problems occur both in societies and in nature, and similar solutions evolve in both contexts. Furthermore, hierarchies do not imply that workers don’t have no power or that there is strict top down management. The brain doesn’t micromanage how your body functions, it sets the general goals and delegates their execution. Similarly, we can look at China as a modern example where there is bottom up organization at the local level that works in harmony with large scale planning at high level.
Yet weirdly enough, despite the scapegoat of kulaks, the worst year of the famine coincided with the worst yield. And the famine was most pronounced in the argricultural regions. Note that this would not have happened if the regional soviets were in control, because they would know the yield.
No that’s pure nonsense. What would’ve happened was that the famine would’ve been worse in other regions. We can look at actual research on the subjet here. The reality is that during the 1932 Famine, the USSR sent aid to affected regions in an attempt to alleviate the famine. According to Mark Tauger in his article, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933:
While the leadership did not stop exports, they did try to alleviate the famine. A 25 February 1933 Central Committee decree allotted seed loans of 320,000 tons to Ukraine and 240,000 tons to the northern Caucasus. Seed loans were also made to the Lower Volga and may have been made to other regions as well. Kul’chyts’kyy cites Ukrainian party archives showing that total aid to Ukraine by April 1933 actually exceeded 560,000 tons, including more than 80,000 tons of food
Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.
Aid to Ukraine alone was 60 percent greater than the amount exported during the same period. Total aid to famine regions was more than double exports for the first half of 1933.
According to Tauger, the reason why more aid was not provided was because of the low harvest
It appears to have been another consequence of the low 1932 harvest that more aid was not provided: After the low 1931, 1934, and 1936 harvests procured grain was transferred back to peasants at the expense of exports.
Tauger is not a communist, and yet even he is forced to admit that the Soviets really did try to alleviate the famine as best as they could.
Not magically i think unionization is paramount to the revolution. The evidence could be interpreted as you do. The european nations are indeed good counterexample to marx. Germany before nazis, france in the 1968, partially greece, but there us just invaded. That being said this does not discourage democratic unionization and strikes. They are still effective we just have to adapt so that they remain effective. I think that as the exploitation will increase like now in the us, workers will feel the class struggle and recognize that they cannot remain idle. The organizers then I would prefer to be revolutionary marxists instead of just revolutionaries. Maybe we use the word differently, by marxists here i mean that workers owning the means of prod. is their main goal.
Nobody is arguing against unionization and strikes though. What’s being said is that these things alone are demonstrably insufficient to overthrow capitalism. The only approach that has been shown to work reliably is the one Bolsheviks pursued. By Marxists, I mean people who have genuine understanding of material dialectics and are able to apply this understanding to the current material conditions to produce the desired results. Marxism is a framework for understanding the world.
So you regard the situation in russia after 1905 or maybe even before as comparable to what either today capitalism is, or back then was? I think that first of all since russia back then was not even industrialized for any future revolutions we are essentially forced to accept marxs framework. We are not overthrowing monarchy. Also russia back then was so incredibly disorganized and non resilient that modern comparison in developed countries is very difficult. And when you say that bolshevism proved itself as good at overthrowing capitalism, my point is partially also that it wasnt exactly much capitalist like, what russia was back then. Otherwise there would be barely any difference between mensheviks and bolsheviks, since the bourgeois revolution wouldbt be needed.
Korea and vietnam would be simmilar, china as far as industrialization goes.
i dont think that we are going to be overthrowing weak poorly managed monarchies. I think that the revolution against capitalism in future will be more simmilar to marxs writing. But i also think that after that the framework of material conditions will be understood even by regular workers.
I’m pointing out the historical fact that the labor in Russia was sufficiently class conscious to carry out the revolution which disproves your thesis that further capitalist development was necessary.
I don’t even know what point you’re attempting to make here. What stage of capitalist development Russia was at is utterly irrelevant. The actual problem was that the means of production were privately owned, and the goal of a socialist revolution is to put the ownership in the hands of the working majority. That’s precisely what Bolsheviks did.
The workers in the west are far more educated today than they were a century ago. The levels of literacy are far high, access to information is much more readily available, and so on. Yet, despite that, the revolutionary potential in the west is entirely absent. It’s quite clear that the framework for understanding material conditions doesn’t just spontaneously appear among the workers. As Bolsheviks correctly understood, a socialist revolution requires a professional vanguard of revolutionaries to organize the workers.
Yes it was a revolution against a preindustrial and mostly feudal monarchy. It baffles me how you want to infer something about how this would work against a late capitalist industrialized system.
The point of capitalist development is relevant to a historical materialist. I hope that we will agree that the hierarchy of owbership is radically different under feudal monarchy and developed industrialized capitalism. The means of production were in the hands of the state controlled by the party, controlled by the central committee or politburo. I would prefer if they were not only in the hands of the workers, but also in their control. I dont think that the workers appreciated under stalins decision for example that they had to give out more grain than they produced. Means of production were truly only in their hands, not control.
Well lets not forget western history. A materialist may expect this consciousness during crises and unions to rise in numbers. 1960s for example. In the us very large part of the population simply democratically and actively opposed in no small part their current material conditions and chose to not adhere to the capitalist line. Yes the fbi crushed many of these movements, but they very much emerged democrstically, from the material conditions. Assault the workforce, you will get dissent.
I partially agree, but this is common to all marxists, that this dissent needs to be organized, but in my view theres little need for the specific form of a vanguard party.
It baffles me how you can’t understand how the exact same principles apply to a late stage capitalist system.
Do elaborate on that because what people are realizing is the exact opposite, hence people like Varoufakis now using terms such as technofeudalism.
The party represents the working majority, and it’s clear primitive organization simply does not scale. It is not possible for large numbers of people to coordinate effectively without central planning organs. There’s a reason these structures evolve in every human society as it scale. Not only that, but we see the same thing happening in nature as well with complex organisms evolving things like the nervous system and the brain. It’s an efficient solution to the problem of coordination.
I don’t think you appreciate that redistribution of resources at scale avoided local hoarding and prevented famines. In fact, the famine in the 30s was in large parts caused by kulaks hoarding cattle and grain.
And the movement FBI had to crush were very much organized along Bolshevik principles which proves my point. Black Panthers were explicitly a Marxist Leninist movement.
And this sort of view is precisely where there are no serious movements in the west.
Well again you provide no historical proof against a industrialized capitalist system. Trying to argue that it will work the same is the opposite of mhistorical materialism.
Ok here I dont know where to begin. Well lets beginwoth capitalism. Why was the bourgeois revolution so violent precisely against feudal lords. If the structure is the same why were their estates privatized in sich a manner? Why did feudalist system not develop industries? Why is marxs critique not applied to feudalism also, when they could be used interchangebly. You use some wording that yannis has used and try to claim that pretty much all marxists and even most economists dont understand what they talk about.
i agree with the scaling argument. Thats why the soviets and factory committees were founded, so that they could be what controlls the production as informed and effective as possible. Yes these hierarchies evolve in ant colonies for example. You know the workers do what they must and will die if the colony chooses so. I must admit that i fail to see the relevancy. A worst social darwinist could use such an argument.
Yet weirdly enough, despite the scapegoat of kulaks, the worst year of the famine coincided with the worst yield. And the famine was most pronounced in the argricultural regions. Note that this would not have happened if the regional soviets were in control, because they would know the yield. Centralization is effective, just not when it comes to knowing information that is decentralized. Then it becomes incredibly uninformed. Again note that this has nothing to do with workers controlling their production. Giving away more grain than you produce was an example of how marxist these policies and organization were.
Some were, many werent. Actually the most populous ones, the largest ones, were definitely not.
Again without proof. Counterexamples: during the 1930s crisis the unions in us were incredibly strong, 1960s and i guess crises in general.
The historical proof is that industrial capitalism transitions into financial capitalism as we see happening in the west.
See, this is why you need to spend a bit of time to actually understand what dialectical materialism is before debating it. Capitalism arose from the technological advancements that occurred under feudalism. Capitalism stemmed from changing dynamics within society that shifted power into the hands of the merchant class.
No, I actually understand how capitalism evolved and the material conditions that drove it. I also understand how capitalism itself evolves and why the industrial stage transitioned into financialized stage. These are things any Marxist should be able to comprehend.
You fail to see the relevancy because you’re once again failing to apply dialectical thinking to the problem. Hierarchies are a tool for solving the problem of coordination. Similar problems occur both in societies and in nature, and similar solutions evolve in both contexts. Furthermore, hierarchies do not imply that workers don’t have no power or that there is strict top down management. The brain doesn’t micromanage how your body functions, it sets the general goals and delegates their execution. Similarly, we can look at China as a modern example where there is bottom up organization at the local level that works in harmony with large scale planning at high level.
No that’s pure nonsense. What would’ve happened was that the famine would’ve been worse in other regions. We can look at actual research on the subjet here. The reality is that during the 1932 Famine, the USSR sent aid to affected regions in an attempt to alleviate the famine. According to Mark Tauger in his article, The 1932 Harvest and the Famine of 1933:
Some bring up massive grain exports during the famine to show that the Soviet Union exported food while Ukraine starved. This is fallacious for a number of reasons, but most importantly of all the amount of aid that was sent to Ukraine alone actually exceeded the amount that was exported at the time.
According to Tauger, the reason why more aid was not provided was because of the low harvest
Tauger is not a communist, and yet even he is forced to admit that the Soviets really did try to alleviate the famine as best as they could.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2500600