oldngray
nowhere special
That was my point. The supposedly communist countries have been reverting to capitalism which is exactly the opposite of Marxist theory.
what did karl marx speak about?
- Thread starter rickyb
- Start date
That was my point. The supposedly communist countries have been reverting to capitalism which is exactly the opposite of Marxist theory.
"supposedly communist" is a more accurate term than communist, because it didnt resemble communism at all: america and USSR called it communism for political purposes.
and what has the capitalist countries been turning towards? communism. look at the music industry, its all shared for free online. books and movies shared freely over the internet. uber might replace taxi drivers jobs.
loss of jobs due to automation. capitalism cant continue to exist if it doesnt have enough jobs to fill. online shopping replacing jobs in retail. robots set to do alot of medical work. http://stats.oecd.org/index.aspx?DataSetCode=ANHRS#
the jobs that remain in america are increasingly low paying. which is why workers are increasingly drawn towards an economic system which more closely resembles communism --> workers democratically controlling the jobs they work in.
and what is the environment dictating to us?
UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)
Well-Known Member
The most eloquent of the three was the one who never uttered a word.
And capitalist nations have had to employ things like social security, medicare, Obamacare, not to mention socialized medicine in every modern capitalistic country except the US...for now. Again, who "won" and who "lost"?
There's never really been a communist country in the sense that Marx envisioned it, probably because it's a utopian ideal that just doesn't work in the real world. The countries that have claimed to be communist are generally just dictatorships that rely on state capitalism with a sprinkling of socialist policies on top. The western democracies have actually done a better job of instituting real socialist economic policies than the supposed communists have.
Overpaid Union Thug
Well-Known Member
They use cheap labor, some of which is child labor, and manipulate currency prices along with stealing the ideas and patents of others. Those are the things they really do well.
They are currently building a huge market for their goods in Africa. Roads, bridges, all kinds of infrastructure and the sort.
Overpaid Union Thug
Well-Known Member
Google, much like the rest of liberal controlled multimedia, is hellbent on making sure that the American population remains full of low/false information voters. And they are doing a damn good job of it.
UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)
Well-Known Member
One need only to visit the Current Events forum to get confirmation of this.
http://www.theguardian.com/sustaina...-communism-robots-employment?CMP=share_btn_fb
Generally, the rate of technological progress and labour productivity is rising, but wages are stagnating and factories are shedding jobs. Recent research indicates that 35% of jobs in the UK are “at risk” of being automated.
Generally, the rate of technological progress and labour productivity is rising, but wages are stagnating and factories are shedding jobs. Recent research indicates that 35% of jobs in the UK are “at risk” of being automated.
DriveInDriveOut
Inordinately Right
Technological singularity is rapidly approaching. There are going to be a lot decisions that need to be made in a very short period of time about how we deal with it economically. I don't think it will end well for anyone.
Babagounj
Strength through joy
The President of the Chamber of Tourism of Venezuela’s Andean state of Mérida has warned tourists hoping to enjoy the state’s mountain vistas over the Easter holiday that they will have to bring their own soap and toilet paper to Mérida’s hotels.
Gerardo Montilla told the press this week that the shortages of necessary goods crippling the nation have greatly hurt his state’s tourism industry. Hotel owners in the region, he claimed, “are going through the embarrassment of having to tell their guests to bring toilet paper and bath soap.”
Gerardo Montilla told the press this week that the shortages of necessary goods crippling the nation have greatly hurt his state’s tourism industry. Hotel owners in the region, he claimed, “are going through the embarrassment of having to tell their guests to bring toilet paper and bath soap.”
UpstateNYUPSer(Ret)
Well-Known Member
I always bring my own toiletries, including soap, when I travel. I don't normally bring my own toilet paper.
Babagounj
Strength through joy
Maybe you should start to .
And only use an environmental friendly type .
dont konw too much about it, but i have also heard its a myth. so i dont know. i do know automation is getting rid of jobs, yet most people are not benefitting from it, the benefits are going to a small portion of hte population.
you should look into america's meddling with venezuela for control and post some here.
One hell of an article.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/karl_marx_was_right_20150531
"He foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites, since “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production” and “the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships … the relationships which make one class the ruling one.”
And as we witness the denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism, Karl Marx is vindicated as capitalism’s most prescient and important critic.
No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself."
Capitalism developed alongside slavery and feudalism. Communism (aka worker controlled cooperatives), which marx described as workers controlling the jobs they work in, currently develops alongside capitalism.
Note bernie sanders currently is promoting worker cooperatives as 1 of his 12 major presidential issues. Basically just as radical (by american standards) as having a black man as president.
Chris Hedges continues: "the final stages of capitalism, Marx wrote, would be marked by developments that are intimately familiar to most of us. Unable to expand and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system would begin to consume the structures that sustained it. It would prey upon, in the name of austerity, the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens.
It would, as it has, increasingly relocate jobs, including both manufacturing and professional positions, to countries with cheap pools of laborers. Industries would mechanize their workplaces. This would trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class—the bulwark of a capitalist system—that would be disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes declined or remained stagnant. Politics would in the late stages of capitalism become subordinate to economics, leading to political parties hollowed out of any real political content and abjectly subservient to the dictates and money of global capitalism.
There comes a moment, Marx knew, when there would be no new markets available and no new pools of people who could take on more debt. This is what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis.
These corporations ... would use their power, usually by seizing the mechanisms of state, to prevent anyone from challenging their monopoly. They would fix prices to maximize profit. ... And in the end these corporate monopolies would obliterate free market competition.
The final stages of what we call capitalism, as Marx grasped, is not capitalism at all.
“The top five banks—JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.—account,” the report went on, “for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits. In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry—with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy—would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.”
(referring to the privatization of public assets) None of these seizures of basic services make them more efficient or reduce costs. That is not the point. It is about feeding off the carcass of the state. And it ensures the disintegration of the structures that sustain capitalism itself. All this Marx got.
The victims of financial fraud would be made to pay for that fraud. And what saved us from a full-blown depression was, in a tactic Marx would have found ironic, massive state intervention in the economy, including the nationalization of huge corporations such as AIG and General Motors.
We live, rather, in the twilight stages of global capitalism, which may be surprisingly more resilient than we expect, but which is ultimately terminal. Marx knew that once the market mechanism became the sole determining factor for the fate of the nation-state, as well as the natural world, both would be demolished.
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/karl_marx_was_right_20150531
"He foresaw that capitalism had built within it the seeds of its own destruction. He knew that reigning ideologies—think neoliberalism—were created to serve the interests of the elites and in particular the economic elites, since “the class which has the means of material production at its disposal, has control at the same time over the means of mental production” and “the ruling ideas are nothing more than the ideal expression of the dominant material relationships … the relationships which make one class the ruling one.”
And as we witness the denouement of capitalism and the disintegration of globalism, Karl Marx is vindicated as capitalism’s most prescient and important critic.
No social order ever disappears before all the productive forces for which there is room in it have been developed; and new higher relations of production never appear before the material conditions of their existence have matured in the womb of the old society itself."
Capitalism developed alongside slavery and feudalism. Communism (aka worker controlled cooperatives), which marx described as workers controlling the jobs they work in, currently develops alongside capitalism.
Note bernie sanders currently is promoting worker cooperatives as 1 of his 12 major presidential issues. Basically just as radical (by american standards) as having a black man as president.
Chris Hedges continues: "the final stages of capitalism, Marx wrote, would be marked by developments that are intimately familiar to most of us. Unable to expand and generate profits at past levels, the capitalist system would begin to consume the structures that sustained it. It would prey upon, in the name of austerity, the working class and the poor, driving them ever deeper into debt and poverty and diminishing the capacity of the state to serve the needs of ordinary citizens.
It would, as it has, increasingly relocate jobs, including both manufacturing and professional positions, to countries with cheap pools of laborers. Industries would mechanize their workplaces. This would trigger an economic assault on not only the working class but the middle class—the bulwark of a capitalist system—that would be disguised by the imposition of massive personal debt as incomes declined or remained stagnant. Politics would in the late stages of capitalism become subordinate to economics, leading to political parties hollowed out of any real political content and abjectly subservient to the dictates and money of global capitalism.
There comes a moment, Marx knew, when there would be no new markets available and no new pools of people who could take on more debt. This is what happened with the subprime mortgage crisis.
These corporations ... would use their power, usually by seizing the mechanisms of state, to prevent anyone from challenging their monopoly. They would fix prices to maximize profit. ... And in the end these corporate monopolies would obliterate free market competition.
The final stages of what we call capitalism, as Marx grasped, is not capitalism at all.
“The top five banks—JPMorgan, Bank of America Corp., Citigroup Inc., Wells Fargo & Co. and Goldman Sachs Group Inc.—account,” the report went on, “for $64 billion of the total subsidy, an amount roughly equal to their typical annual profits. In other words, the banks occupying the commanding heights of the U.S. financial industry—with almost $9 trillion in assets, more than half the size of the U.S. economy—would just about break even in the absence of corporate welfare. In large part, the profits they report are essentially transfers from taxpayers to their shareholders.”
(referring to the privatization of public assets) None of these seizures of basic services make them more efficient or reduce costs. That is not the point. It is about feeding off the carcass of the state. And it ensures the disintegration of the structures that sustain capitalism itself. All this Marx got.
The victims of financial fraud would be made to pay for that fraud. And what saved us from a full-blown depression was, in a tactic Marx would have found ironic, massive state intervention in the economy, including the nationalization of huge corporations such as AIG and General Motors.
We live, rather, in the twilight stages of global capitalism, which may be surprisingly more resilient than we expect, but which is ultimately terminal. Marx knew that once the market mechanism became the sole determining factor for the fate of the nation-state, as well as the natural world, both would be demolished.
wkmac
Well-Known Member
Read that piece by Hedges when it first posted at Truthdig. Interesting read.
As to Marx criticism of capitalism in political economy, he was not the first to do so and much of his criticism by Marx's own admission come from the radical individualist and laissez-faire advocate in Thomas Hodgskin.
Bakunin, whom I consider a hero, warned Marx in using the State to achieve communist ends to the point that Marx had Bakunin expelled from the First International but in the end, the Soviet Union itself proves Bakunin correct and even V.I. Lenin admitted the desire of Soviet economy was indeed State capitalism. If capitalism is compatible with both Marxism and Corporatism and under each, labor as in average folk suffer, why do we have this almost divine driven loyalty to this ideal called capitalism?
Communist China is becoming a dominate global power using capitalist means.
As to Marx criticism of capitalism in political economy, he was not the first to do so and much of his criticism by Marx's own admission come from the radical individualist and laissez-faire advocate in Thomas Hodgskin.
Bakunin, whom I consider a hero, warned Marx in using the State to achieve communist ends to the point that Marx had Bakunin expelled from the First International but in the end, the Soviet Union itself proves Bakunin correct and even V.I. Lenin admitted the desire of Soviet economy was indeed State capitalism. If capitalism is compatible with both Marxism and Corporatism and under each, labor as in average folk suffer, why do we have this almost divine driven loyalty to this ideal called capitalism?
Communist China is becoming a dominate global power using capitalist means.
i was thinking that too the other day, capitalism is like religion
chomsky and hedges both admire bakunin.
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