[fuser]

But we are not trying to get support for communism but "socialism" the transitory period and we do have blueprint for that, for example Soviet Democracy.

[Turning Point]

But we are not trying to get support for communism but "socialism" the transitory period and we do have blueprint for that, for example Soviet Democracy

historically, soviet democracy was far from perfect. Once assuming power in October 1917, the Petrograd Soviet formed the PCheka (or Petrograd Cheka) which was designed to be a temporary means to combat counterrevolution in Petrograd.

The PCheka was less harsh than the national VCheka based in Moscow, but with Uritsky's assassination the Cheka, which had hitherto remained more moderate under Uritsky's leadership, became an integral part of the Red Terror in Petrograd.

The Cheka did on the other hand foil several serious counterrevolutionary plots, having raided the British Embassy which had become the base of for foreign British agents, chiefly Cromie who sought out help from domestic counterrevolutionaries in a bid to either install a right-wing military dictatorship or a possible restoration of the monarchy.

It is worth noting that in contrast to the future KGB, the Cheka was highly decentralized and was based inside the soviets on a district-by-district basis. But that in no way mitigated the authoritarian aspect of the Cheka, which evolved into a more centralized NKVD under Stalin.

Besides the Cheka, the district soviets themselves gradually became centralized around the overarching Petrograd Soviet in 1918 when soviet power was most threatened.

However, for a time the district soviets managed to guard their independence jealously but only for a time.

In taking up municipal services in Petrograd, a bureaucracy developed. With the ouster of all other parties from the soviets, the soviets themselves lost their multiparty status and in effect had become fully Bolshevised by 1918.

Not to mention the fact that as the crisis in 1918's Petrograd developed further, the Bolsheviks and Left SR Parties developed a bureaucracy outside and inside the soviets.

By the time of the first anniversary of the October Revolution held in Petrograd, the nascent bureaucracy was clearly in place and separated from the masses.

The Chinese Revolution on the other hand had also developed a bureaucracy, which at first was rather small and consisted of poor peasants at the village level in the form of communist party branches.

It is worth noting that the Communist Party of China (CPC) took steps to cleanse its ranks of impurities (in the form of self-criticism of cadres), as there was by 1948 serious issues of cadres either becoming corrupt or becoming authoritarian in their day-to-day relations with the villagers.

A central problem of modern, 21st-century Marxists is how to mitigate bureaucracy (and the corruption, authoritarianism, isolation from the masses that follows the inevitable creation of a bureaucracy, even a small one), something which handicapped the Russian and Chinese attempts at building socialism in the 20th century.

IMHO democratic procedure and/or habits should be encouraged in a future socialist society, be it multiparty or single-party.

The Chinese Revolution of 1949 put a lot of emphasis on popular power, and there were serious attempts before and during the Cultural Revolution to mitigate the bureaucracy which had become prevalent in Chinese society then.

Although I'm not necessarily against the theory of the vanguard party, I believe that multiparty democracy should exist alongside popular power (i.e. administrative power exercised through councils at the local urban and/or rural level)

democracy is indispensable to socialism, IMHO.

[fuser]

That was just an example to show that we (marxists) do have rigid ideas for "what now" after revolution even though there can be much debate over it, minute details aren't really relevant here. With all its fault "Soviet democracy" was far superior to "liberal democracies".

But just for clarification I am not claiming that any new socialist state should follow exactly the soviet style socialism only.

[The Immortal Goon]

Moderation Note:

The discussion about how Marxism is not the answer has been moved to the thread titled, "Marxism Is Not The Answer."

-TIG

[TheSkyHMaestro]

When Transhumanism arises, we will definitely see, worldwide...

[ronimacarroni]

...
Like start trek?

[Aksu]

As Marx said himself:

“In a higher phase of communist society, when the slavish subordination of the individual to the yoke of the division of labour has disappeared, and when concomitantly the distinction between mental and physical work has ceased to exist; when labour is no longer the means to live, but is in itself the first of vital needs; when the productive forces of society have expanded proportionately with the multi- form development of the individuals of whom society is made up – then will the narrow bourgeois outlook be utterly transcended, and then will society inscribe upon its banners, “From everyone according to his capacities, to everyone according to his needs!”

Any questions more specific than this paragraph is able to answer are merely speculative in nature.

[Kman]

^Haha such religious gibberish......

In a higher phase of communist society, when the slavish subordination of the individual to the yoke of the division of labour has disappeared, and when concomitantly the distinction between mental and physical work has ceased to exist

How does this take place? The distinction between brain work and muscle work is pretty distinct, I dont see how you can make this disappear unless you change how the universe works, something I think even Saint Marx is incapable of doing.

when labour is no longer the means to live, but is in itself the first of vital needs

So Marx is gonna make boring factory a vital desire in people? How is that going to take place? Work will always be boring for the vast majority of people, again something that Saint Marx cannot change.

when the productive forces of society have expanded proportionately with the multi- form development of the individuals of whom society is made up

Utter meaningless gibberish.

then will the narrow bourgeois outlook be utterly transcended, and then will society inscribe upon its banners, “From everyone according to his capacities, to everyone according to his needs!”

So when some gibberish happens then heaven will be reached?

[ronimacarroni]

So Marx is gonna make boring factory a vital desire in people? How is that going to take place? Work will always be boring for the vast majority of people, again something that Saint Marx cannot change.

well boring factories will be automated eventually anyways. Also "Saint Marx" was against the division of labor (I think). We can all do some of the boring work.

So when some gibberish happens then heaven will be reached?

The socialist state would organize everything so workers can manage their workplace (You know like workers coop) , then after the state won't be necessary. Society will be like either the smurfs or star trek. You know, that is unless Gargamel manages to turn us into smurf soup.

[Turning Point]

So Marx is gonna make boring factory a vital desire in people? How is that going to take place? Work will always be boring for the vast majority of people, again something that Saint Marx cannot change.

If you are willing to have an open mind, may I suggest this piece written by a user on the Kasama Project's web site:

http://kasamaproject.org/threads/entry/why-socialism-because-of-wednesday

from the final paragraph:

Under capitalism non-alienated labor, whether playing music, programming, painting, writing, or laying brick happens in between “work,” on the weekends (if we are lucky enough to have weekends off) or in the evenings (if we are working the first shift), but one of the main objectives of socialism is to transform work so that it is no longer the interruption of life but instead the activity that makes life most interesting and fulfilling.

Work under socialism would assume new forms, being truly fulfilling to the worker and, under ideal circumstances, the worker would (finally!) have control over their workplace through the creation of workers' councils.

Work would be stripped of its dull, repetitive meaning under capitalism, while the worker would be empowered to take charge over their own workplace under socialism.

That's the aim of socialism, to liberate work from a stifling capitalism.

when the productive forces of society have expanded proportionately with the multi- form development of the individuals of whom society is made up

Utter meaningless gibberish.

Socialism, the transitional period which comes in between communism and after the overthrow of capitalism, would make way gradually for communism as the state withers away and as classes disappear over time.

IMHO under socialism a state will furthermore be wholly necessary, but the state would not be the present state (i.e. bourgeois-democratic) we know of today; rather, the state under socialism would be set up as to allow for new forms of popular power, representation inside and outside of the work place, and democratic decision making from the bottom-up.

Ideal, yes. But also possible.

Sometimes the turgid writings by Marx (and Einstein), Engels, Lenin, etc. can seem like "meaningless gibberish," but really your best bet is to read them with an open mind and an eye for the sometimes tedious Marxist language, esp. when reading anything by Marx or Engels.

I would recommend this book to get a better view of what Marxist socialism entails from someone who specializes in Marxism:

http://www.amazon.com/Socialist-Alternative-Real-Human-Development/dp/1583672141/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1370374725&sr=1-2

or, The Socialist Alternative: Real Human Development by Michael Lebowitz

Read it with an open mind, if you ever do get around to finding a copy.

[KlassWar]

Carter as I said, could a capitalist in feudal era exactly describe "capitalism of today"? No.

This. The material basis from which communism can arise has yet to be built. For example, to really abolish wage labor, money and prices entirely might well require achieving a functionally post-scarcity society. That would require a degree of development and refinement of the productive forces that simply does not exist today. To organize a functioning direct democracy in which the masses themselves self-rule (not just a representative model with recall referendums and ballot initiatives tacked on) would require both a degree of political consciousness and universal at-will access to telecommunications (specifically, you'd need all people to be able to regularly access a network secure enough to cast valid votes in). Aside from the changes in the relations of production, the cultural superstructure must change: To really get rid of the exploitation and oppression of man by man, privilege and prejudice must be dismantled, society must overcome outdated moralisms and religious superstitions... Long story short, it's gonna take a while to set all that up.

After the initial socialist revolution takes over somewhere, we're talking years or decades of economic and social development, political changes, relentless agit-prop and mass political education. We also happen to kinda need the collapse of the anti-communist powers (which pose a threat for socialist countries until their final defeat) before communism can be built.

While we cant't know with certainty the details of how communism will look like, the rough outline is quite clear: Collective property of the means of production, which will be democratically managed, the State as a repressive apparatus to enforce class rule will wither away (as there will be only one class of emancipated proletarians, ain't gonna be no class enemy to keep down), the collective being able to provide for the material needs of the whole community.

[Eran]

If I understand correctly (and it is, of course, very difficult to understand), the ultimate communist global society would have production decisions made by the worker class (which, by that time, will comprise of all of humanity).

Thus workers will have a say about their working conditions and production aims, but an equal say together with billions of other people.

In terms of the psychological aspects of alienation, do people believe there is a significant difference between:
1. A worker having no say about his working conditions or aims (the capitalist baseline), or
2. A worker having one vote in a few millions (or billions) as to his working conditions or aims (the communist end-state)?

[oppose_obama]

Another great post by eran. Exactly!

[Turning Point]

In terms of the psychological aspects of alienation, do people believe there is a significant difference between:

1. A worker having no say about his working conditions or aims (the capitalist baseline), or

2. A worker having one vote in a few millions (or billions) as to his working conditions or aims (the communist end-state)?

you seem to be confusing #2 with the socialist transition stage (i.e. workers' control over industry) which in revolutionary Russia took the form of soviets (councils) seizing factories through the use of armed Red Guard detachments and running the factories without the traditional (capitalist) management.

Workers' control of industry was a major part of the Bolsheviks' radical program for the new socialist society, but for a variety of reasons workers' control was phased out and replaced by the Vesenkha which took over and managed nationalized factories

IMHO workers' control is possible (esp. nowadays), and would be leagues better then the present system wherein workers' have zero say on what gets produced and where workplaces are run by managers divorced from the existing working-class.

Workers' councils would add bottom-up democratic decision making to a shop floor, and would encourage workers to make important economic decisions.

[Eran]

How am I confused?

You seem to be advocating worker controls. Do workers have a say only about conditions and production decisions in their own factories, or also on those in society more generally?

If it is the former, it seems like you are reintroducing private ownership of the means of production and the inequality it inevitably produces. Even if the private owner is the corporation of all workers in a factory, a successful factory will still reward its workers more highly than a failing one.

If, on the other hand, you believe workers have a say in every productive enterprise, and regardless of the means via which they exert that say (e.g. directly or through representatives), the average worker still has only one vote in millions or billions over his own working conditions.

So I repeat my question. In terms of the psychological aspects of alienation which, if I understand correctly (and please let me know if I don't) are related to divorcing the worker from having substantive control over the production process in which he is involved, is there a difference between:
1. The capitalist baseline within which the worker (we assume) as no such control, and
2. The socialist/communist end goal in which all workers, universally, share such control, and thus each worker has only one vote in billions as to his working conditions?

[The Immortal Goon]

How am I confused?

For one, not everyone is reduced to proletariat anymore than capitalism reduced everyone to peasant. Once the bourgeoisie is liquidated as a class, the proletariat has also been liquidated as both exist in relation to the other. Do remember that this is dialectics.

Alienation has little or nothing to do with political control of factories as such and everything to do with material reality, and from this material base, a superstructure like a political system arrises.

...Political economy conceals the estrangement inherent in the nature of labor by not considering the direct relationship between the worker (labor) and production. It is true that labor produces for the rich wonderful things – but for the worker it produces privation. It produces palaces – but for the worker, hovels. It produces beauty – but for the worker, deformity. It replaces labor by machines, but it throws one section of the workers back into barbarous types of labor and it turns the other section into a machine. It produces intelligence – but for the worker, stupidity, cretinism.

The direct relationship of labor to its products is the relationship of the worker to the objects of his production. The relationship of the man of means to the objects of production and to production itself is only a consequence of this first relationship – and confirms it...

Through estranged, alienated labor, then, the worker produces the relationship to this labor of a man alien to labor and standing outside it. The relationship of the worker to labor creates the relation to it of the capitalist (or whatever one chooses to call the master of labor). Private property is thus the product, the result, the necessary consequence, of alienated labor, of the external relation of the worker to nature and to himself.

Private property thus results by analysis from the concept of alienated labor, i.e., of alienated man, of estranged labor, of estranged life, of estranged man.

True, it is as a result of the movement of private property that we have obtained the concept of alienated labor (of alienated life) in political economy. But on analysis of this concept it becomes clear that though private property appears to be the reason, the cause of alienated labor, it is rather its consequence, just as the gods are originally not the cause but the effect of man’s intellectual confusion. Later this relationship becomes reciprocal.

Only at the culmination of the development of private property does this, its secret, appear again, namely, that on the one hand it is the product of alienated labor, and that on the other it is the means by which labor alienates itself, the realization of this alienation.

So private property causes alienation, not political abstractions.

Cease private property, cease the alienation. Political abstractions are a consequence of the physical relations we have with the real world; the real world doesn't conjur from the ideals of our magical thinking as libertarians seem to believe.

[Eran]

Please help me understand Marx in this respect.

Clearly, he feels that labour in the context of a factory owned by a capitalist creates alienation. This is, presumably, in contrast with older forms of production, e.g. in cottage industries in which production was done by a family unit working at home, using smaller machines they themselves owned and controlled.

Correct so far?

Given that Marxists are not primitivists, i.e. you don't call for scaling-back technological progress, presumably you still see (given current level of technology), people working to produce using large and expensive machines, of the kind that cannot in an economically-sensible way be owned and controlled by individual workers.

(How am I doing?)

So the vision must be of a world in which workers still use large and expensive machines that they do not personally own and control in their production.

What is then different about production in a communist society, that makes alienation less of a problem?

[The Immortal Goon]

The use of the word, "personally."

They do own the machines and every mode of production as much as they own everything else. Really, as much as the cottage industry owned its own means of production. The work done, therefore, is for the individual and the community in that both are the same. You must realize too that social relations and relations with ourselves will have changed as a result of this.

In feudalism people thought nothing of dying en masse for the promise of spiritual salvation, be ding knee and starving to a lord, and accepting that someone was born better and superior to one's self. All things capitalism did away with and that capitalist man cannot really understand because our relationship with materials (and thus society) is different. Socialism, and communism, will so be different.

[Eran]

So people who materially work under very similar circumstances would have a very different sense of alienation because of changing mentality (comparable to the change from feudal to capitalist societies)?

In other words, if a person today works in a factory making shoes being one of 300 other workers and having no say over what shoes are being made, whom they are distributed to, etc., feels, naturally, alienated from his work.

Under communism, we may well have a person working in what looks, materially, very similar. He is still making shoes in a factory with 300 other workers and having no say (as an individual!) over what shoes are being made, whom they are distributed to, etc.

However now, knowing that he works for society rather than for a capitalist employer, he no longer feels alienation?

[The Immortal Goon]

Let's put it this way:

Under feudalism people worked on big tracts of land, rocking fields, planting wheat, irrigating water, weeding, harvesting, storing, paying the bills to the landlord, rotating crops, and then starting again.

Under capitalism, people work on big tracts of land, rocking fields, planting wheat, irrigating water, weeding, harvesting, storing, paying the bills to the landlord, rotating crops, and then starting again.

Yet I'm sure you'd agree there is a difference between feudalism and capitalism.

When you simply look at what is similar and ignore the actual differences, it's easy to be flippant. But the peasant is working for his baron or lord. The capitalist is working for his boss or bank; the socialist is working for himself and community-both being the same process and end goal.

To take a part of a very long quote from Marx:

<(4) [In the manuscript: "5". – Ed.] Just as private property is only the perceptible expression of the fact that man becomes objective for himself and at the same time becomes to himself a strange and inhuman object; just as it expresses the fact that the manifestation of his life is the alienation of his life, that his realisation is his loss of reality, is an alien reality: so, the positive transcendence of private property – i.e., the perceptible appropriation for and by man of the human essence and of human life, of objective man, of human achievements should not be conceived merely in the sense of immediate, one-sided enjoyment, merely in the sense of possessing, of having. Man appropriates his comprehensive essence in a comprehensive manner, that is to say, as a whole man. Each of his human relations to the world – seeing, hearing, smelling, tasting, feeling, thinking, observing, experiencing, wanting, acting, loving – in short, all the organs of his individual being, like those organs which are directly social in their form, ||VII| are in their objective orientation, or in their orientation to the object, the appropriation of the object, the appropriation of human reality. Their orientation to the object is the manifestation of the human reality, [For this reason it is just as highly varied as the determinations of human essence and activities. – Note by Marx] it is human activity and human suffering, for suffering, humanly considered, is a kind of self-enjoyment of man.

Private property has made us so stupid and one-sided that an object is only ours when we have it – when it exists for us as capital, or when it is directly possessed, eaten, drunk, worn, inhabited, etc., – in short, when it is used by us. Although private property itself again conceives all these direct realisations of possession only as means of life, and the life which they serve as means is the life of private property – labour and conversion into capital.

In the place of all physical and mental senses there has therefore come the sheer estrangement of all these senses, the sense of having. The human being had to be reduced to this absolute poverty in order that he might yield his inner wealth to the outer world. [On the category of “having”, see Hess in the Philosophy of the Deed].

The abolition [Aufhebung] of private property is therefore the complete emancipation of all human senses and qualities, but it is this emancipation precisely because these senses and attributes have become, subjectively and objectively, human. The eye has become a human eye, just as its object has become a social, human object – an object made by man for man. The senses have therefore become directly in their practice theoreticians. They relate themselves to the thing for the sake of the thing, but the thing itself is an objective human relation to itself and to man, [In practice I can relate myself to a thing humanly only if the thing relates itself humanly to the human being. – Note by Marx] and vice versa. Need or enjoyment have consequently lost its egotistical nature, and nature has lost its mere utility by use becoming human use.

In the same way, the senses and enjoyment of other men have become my own appropriation. Besides these direct organs, therefore, social organs develop in the form of society; thus, for instance, activity in direct association with others, etc., has become an organ for expressing my own life, and a mode of appropriating human life.