The return of Marx

[dcsmart]

The ideas of Karl Marx--that class society creates great wealth for the few at the expense of the many--ring truer every day. Brian Jones examines Marx's revolutionary ideas in this first of three articles.

February 16, 2009

IN THE last 150 years of U.S. history, you can't point to a generation whose most active, radical layers have not been drawn to the ideas of Karl Marx.


Columnist: Brian Jones
Brian Jones is a teacher, actor and activist in New York City. His commentary and writing have been featured on GritTV, SleptOn.com and the International Socialist Review. Jones has also lent his voice to several audiobooks, including Noam Chomsky's Hegemony or Survival, Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's Voices of a People's History of the United States and Zinn's one-man play Marx in Soho (forthcoming from Haymarket Books).

This was true of the abolitionist movement (Marxist immigrants even fought with the Northern Army in the Civil War), the early pioneers of our labor movement, the hundreds of thousands (if not millions) who passed through Socialist and Communist Parties in the first half of the 20th century, and of the many thousands who joined the Black Panther Party and other parties that declared themselves against capitalism and in favor of socialism in the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Millions of people around the world have sought, from the Marxist tradition, a way to win a different kind of society free of poverty, oppression and war. That rather hopeful premise--that a different kind of world is actually possible--goes a long way toward explaining how it could be that the only book that can compete (in terms of paid sales) with the Bible is the Communist Manifesto.
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FULL ARTICLE
http://socialistworker.org/2009/02/16/return-of-marx

[DFW]

1. It remains a utopian principle

"From each according to his ability to each according to his need" assumes a willingness
to abandon human nature, and that the notions of greed, insecurity and fear of anyone not
conforming are completely abandoned. No society ever based on Marxism has ever succeeded
because its leaders have always considered themselves something better than the led: better
informed, better suited to lead, and they have never given up power willingly, even when
the masses (in whose interests they supposedly lead) desire it.

Until human nature changes, Marxism will never work. You'd have an easier time convincing
all tigers to become vegetarians.

[dcsmart]

2. i agree......that is why socialism will not work.

even though i post many articles from socialist sites, i like their focus starting with working people, and i do think Marxist economic theory is sound, i agree with what you say. i think a regulated capitalism is all we have to work with.

[Blue Meany]

3. Socialism also tends to destroy the motivation to work...

I saw this living in China before the rise of capitalist enterprises; people holding their secure government jobs had very little work ethic; they often only worked in morning and left or slept in the afternoons. It's very different there now.

Capitalism can be great at motivating people to produce and innovate, but left unregulated it concentrates resources and power in the hands of just a few, who then use that power to run society in their own parochial interests. I think there needs to be a ceiling on the wealth indivdiuals are allowed to have, after which 100% of assets are taxed. This would protect democracy from the anti-democratic tendencies of capitalism and would provide the resources to elminated absolute poverty.

[Better Believe It]

4. So workers are lazy in Cuba and Venezuela?

[angryfirelord]

6. Not necessarily true

Yugoslavia did well under Tito. Heck, even the Soviet Union had some significant economic growth until the 1970s. I think the issue with socialists/communists is that they want to implement a new system all at once. Looking back at history, that seems to only lead to dictatorships and a new form of bourgeoisie. A gradual transition from capitalism to something like market socialism would probably work better and wouldn't have the "shock" element in it.

[DFW]

7. But Yugoslavia did "well" because Tito looked away a lot

And he also made his country a de facto NATO member, so he wouldn't have to worry
about Brezhnev & Co. deciding to bring him back into the fold by force. He also
kept many hostile ethnic factions at bay by repression.

The trouble is that a gradual transition will not happen because it would give those
with immense wealth and political power the time to organize an effective opposition
to thwart it. Again, you count on a beneficial side of human nature that I just don't
see existing broadly enough for that gradual transition ever to occur on its own. That
is why socialism has always needed political repression to keep it in place. Look at
countries like Russia or Poland or Romania. The masses today are dirt poor except for
those who learned to adapt to the previous Communist system, i.e. if you can outwit the
government, you live well. If not, you remain a serf. Socialism only helps the serfs in
theory, never in practice, because the ruling elite always assumes they know better than
the masses what is good for the masses.

[eridani]

8. Also got lots of loans and credits from the West as a reward for

--telling Stalin to go stick it where the sun don't shine.

[DFW]

10. Very true. It was a gutsy move at the time.

Tito got rewarded by being considered an unofficial member of NATO (got this from a news correspondent
from West German radio news who was down there a lot at the time), with all the unspoken promises of
military protection in case of a Warsaw Pact threat. None came--not at all the style of the Soviet
leadership, so it can be reasonably assumed that they took Tito's unofficial NATO status seriously.

[eridani]

9. Don't confuse diagnosis with proposed treatment regimens

Marx did very well with the former; not so hot with the latter.

[ProgressiveProfessor]

5. Hopefully the reprise is short lived

Sort of like the current Che fashion trend