In 1883, Karl Marx wrote a letter to Paul Lafargue and Jules Guesde, the French Marxists, and accused them of denying the importance of reformist struggles. Marx had become more sympathetic to parliamentary politics as a tool for bettering the condition of workers and began to realize the importance of trade unionism for ameliorating the woes of the proletariat; and had begun the revision of Marxism that would ultimately be completed by Eduard Bernstein. He was headed in the direction of social democracy, though Marx would have never settled for a mixed-economy solution to the problem of capitalism. In that letter, he asserted that insofar as the French socialists actually represent the ideas espoused in "The Communist Manifesto," he could not identify as a Marxist himself. This is the origin of his famous line, "I am not a Marxist." What he meant is that he no longer thought that the revolution necessarily had to be violent. He believed that electoral politics and reform could achieve socialism in places like America and Britain.
I don't think Marx would have settled for the "mixed economy" that followed from Fabian Socialism and Bernstein's evolutionary socialism, nor would he have liked the fully-socialist Lange-Lerner model of market-socialism. He probably would have still pushed for the abolition of money and markets—he would likely have continued to be a communist in addition to being a socialist, but he was becoming more open to the idea that the revolution could be peaceful. Unlike Bernstein, Marx would also have continued to demand public-ownership of the means of production too, rather than settling for a watered down mixed economy.
I find it interesting how communism socialism and a lot of other ideas are so heavily demonized.. on paper they are great ideas but I guess if you have idiots executing those ideas there's bound to be problems, although the same could be said of all governments democratic capitalism isn't so special.
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Well, nothing like Marxism has ever been tried. Leninism has little similarity to Marxism. But socialism has been tried in various forms. The more anarchistic varieties, Revolutionary Catalonia, the EZLN, and modern Rojava were/are interesting expiriments. Social democracy in Sweden and Norway, though not full socialism (which is their greatest fault), is quite interesting too. Personally, I think the Lange-Lerner model (cf. Oskar Lange and Abba Lerner), the RICH economy (cf. Robert Anton Wilson), and FALC (cf. Aaron Bastani) are the most promising socialist models. Although, I do really appreciate Murray Bookchin and Abdullah Öcalan too.
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Interesting article , i didn't know somethings about marx
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that was nice to read knew many things about marx and communism.
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amazing post, i like it
Your post is very helpful to me
thank for sharing @ekklesiagora
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Marxism is a strange paradox; what I mean is Marxism seems to put an emphasis on wealth and material. The doctrine seems to want everyone to be equal, now I don't mean everyone competing under equal rules. But everyone just equal when it comes to materialist idols. First money isn't all that important to everyone, second competition is fun honestly do you want to play a game where nothing happens? BORING. The whole ideology seems born out of deep resentment and envy of others, though wrapped in a vale of equality.
Bottom-line, when you see a Whale on steemit do you want to take all his stuff and distribute it to yourself and your friends? Or do you want to congratulate that Whale on their success?
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That is a pretty big oversimplification, don't you think?
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It sounds to me like you aren't very familiar with Marx, nor with the conditions of the working class majority during the Industrial Revolution.
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Honestly I wasn't looking at the psychology of Marx at the time of his writings. Though, if you look at the mid to late 1800's in Europe one can see the cause of the idea of communism. There seems to be a balance of totalitarianism. One side is the Monarchy and the other side is communism, when people live under the boot of a royal long enough they want that royal to live under their boot. Interesting idea and it was worth testing, unfortunately it was tested and ended in over a hundred million people dead. Having kings was an interesting idea too, ended in countless millions dead. Marx in my mind was the reaction to totalitarian monarchy style government. All actions have an equal and opposite reaction.
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Again, seems like you don't understand Marx. Personally, I am not a Marxist myself, but I do find some of his ideas interesting (others of them are frustrating and irritating).
The reality is that Marx wasn't really as much of an authoritarian as we tend to think today. If you look at his work on the civil war in France, he really has a lot in common with Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, the father of modern anarchism. Marx and Engels basically advocated communalism and delegative democracy with recallable delegates. Very similar to Murray Bookchin's model. Basically, they thought that capitalist exploitation in the factories would impoverish the workers until they could not even survive without rebelling. So the workers would rebel and take over the government, more or less democratically. The idea of an authoritarian vanguard party was a Leninist idea that Marx would have despised. Also, Marx thought the State was the tool of the dominant class and existed for exploitative purposes. He recognized it could also be used as a tool by the workers, but he thought the proletariat State should be temporary. Basically, the workers would take over the State to keep from creating a power vacuum with the revolution, then use the apparatus of the State to implement socialist reforms. Ultimately, the democratized State and egalitarian social order would lead to a withering away of the State. Thus, we'd end up with something much more like communist anarchism. Marx was no totalitarian. Leninism, which dominated Marxist circles after Marx, was a very totalitarian ideology though.
Marx was fundamentally opposed to the domination of man by man, whether in the workplace or in society in general. Leninism was a distortion of Marxism.
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Interesting conclusion, I can somewhat agree that the abstract writings of Marx did not produce in practice a direct reflection of the writings. The original flaw though, which I think we both agree about, is the intervention of the state in either case.
For example if workers want a union, great setup a union, but you don't need permission from the state to bid for wages. In fact you do not want the state to help, because then they get a cut and can take away this "right" whenever they want. The state is not the best instrument to deliver rights, the state is far better at taking away rights, which I think causes the issue of totalitarianism. Great conversation, really appreciate the discuss.
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