Rules TBD.
this yesterday is clearly in response to the news cycle this story is part of:
The linked article is a bit short on quotes longer than single words, but I'm guessing she didn't actually say what the headline says she did. In fact, that headline (though not the URL) has already been edited to replace the word "overthrow" with the word "transform". 🤣
Yeah, those quotes certainly sound pretty underwhelming. She recognizes there's a problem, but stops short of calling for ~~establishment~~ abolishment of capitalism.
I disagree on that interpretation. She's clearly saying capitalism has failed and should be done away with. She isn't arguing for socialism per se but her actual point (that ideology should not stand in for concrete action and material conditions) is well taken by someone who leans that way.
Without taking a position on what should replace capitalism it becomes just complaining in my opinion. Sure, lots of people agree capitalism is a failure, but the only known workable alternative is socialism. If she's not advocating for that then she's not really championing any actual solutions.
I think complaining isn't too bad an option.
Marx famously said he did not know what would come after capitalism exactly or at least how a stateless/classless society would come about in its specifics. Epistemological humility is valuable here!
You're referring to Marx discussing a far future society that grows out of socialism. Marx was pretty explicit regarding how he believed the transition from capitalism should be accomplished. We are in a situation where our biosphere is collapsing and if there is any hope of abolishing capitalism in time, then it has to be done using tools that have been shown to work.
Incorrect. There is nothing Marx about "communism growing out of socialism". He only refers to "higher" and "lower" phases of communism. The idea that "socialism grows into communism" was a revision by Lenin to try and explain how the Russian agrian feudalism was suppose to go to communism while skipping industrial capitalism.
What Marx refers to as the lower phase of communism is precisely what's understood to be socialism in the context of Marxism today. Meanwhile, your definition is itself incorrect. What Lenin refers to is the stage after the revolution where society transitions from capitalism towards a communist society. A great explanation of that can be found here;.
I'd be curious of your opinion on this video. I know the title will not make you happy but it extensively quotes Marx directly: https://youtu.be/rRXvQuE9xO4
It directly talks about Marx's concept of higher and lower phase communism and how this differs from the Leninist revision.
It seems to me that the video agrees that both Marx and Lenin had the same general idea of what communism is and the path there. The critique at the end of the video largely focuses on Stalin and the attempts to establish socialism in one state. However, the video also acknowledges that it would be practically impossible to establish anything resembling communism while capitalism remains the dominant ideology in the world.
In my opinion the video outlines the basic ideas correctly, however it also fails to address an important point which is that Marx focused on theory first and foremost. He provided a critique of capitalism and ideas for how a communist society could work.
Lenin ran an actual revolution and focused on the practical aspects of the transition from capitalism. Lenin should be viewed as making the ideas of Marx concrete and bringing them into practice. As the video notes, Lenin very much agreed with Marx on the goals of communism.
In my view, using Marx as orthodoxy goes directly against the idea of dialectical thinking championed by Marx himself. Ideas have to be put into practice to have value, and then the learning from implementing ideas have to be reintegrated back into theory.
Given that, Marx cannot be seen as a higher authority than Lenin because Lenin actually did the work of putting the ideas into practice and evolved the theory based on the results.
It's also worth noting that Lenin started out with many idealistic notions that he was eventually dissuaded of by reality. Lenin's document on NEP is a great example of this.
For example, the video talks about Marx recognizing the dangers of centralized authority, yet it doesn't address the fact that without such authority reactionary elements will fight to restore capitalism as we've seen happen time and again.
I think the video does some hair splitting regarding what is considered socialism and what is not. We can call the time of the dictatorship of the proletariat pre-socialism, or transitionary state, or whatever. What we choose to call it does not obviate the necessity of this stage. As long as capitalism remains the dominant ideology in the world, it's hard to see how any society can transition past this stage.
This is the elephant in the room that people arguing against Lenin's approach need to address. To date, we don't have any examples of working alternatives for overthrowing capitalism. Perhaps different approaches are possible, but none have been demonstrated to work in practice.
So, while I agree there is much to be learned from USSR both in terms of its success and its mistakes, I don't really see how a fundamentally different approach could be viable. I think that instead of throwing the baby out with the bath water, it's more productive to focus on what aspects of USSR allowed for opportunism and its ultimate destruction.
I'm not arguing that for Marxist orthodoxy. I'm arguing about the historically contingent fact of what Marx said. As in the question that is being discussed above is not "what's true socialism?" (a nonsense question because words are maps not territories) but rather "what did Marx say about lower and higher phases of communism and did he distinguish between socialism and communism in his use of vocabulary?"
And he didn't. That distinction in terminology is a revision my Lenin. You might agree with that revision. That's fine. I'm not arguing it's right or wrong, just the historical use of the terminology.
As the video notes, Marx clearly talked about a transitional period which Lenin termed as socialism. It's fair to note that the term was popularized by Lenin, but my point is that the concept does not originate with Lenin.
Ideas have no independent existence from people. This is idealistic thinking. Historically contingent facts about what people actually wrote, said, or did is concrete reality. Arguments about where ideas originate apart from historically contingent facts is not materialist.
Attributing Lenin's writings to Marx is counter to historical fact. If you want to say that Lenin based his idea off Marx and that Marx had statements that provided inspiration but it's another thing entirely to argue that somehow through some magic immaterial process a some true platonic form of "idea" persisted between one person and another and only became fully articulated with Lenin.
Ideas have no independent existence from people. This is idealistic thinking.
Not sure where you're suggesting I'm arguing otherwise. What I actually said was that Lenin built on the ideas Marx put forward, and fleshed these ideas out through the process of implementing them. There is no disagreement between Marx and Lenin.
Attributing Lenin’s writings to Marx is counter to historical fact.
That's not what I'm doing as I've explained in great detail above.
it’s another thing entirely to argue that somehow through some magic immaterial process a some true platonic form of “idea” persisted between one person and another and only became fully articulated with Lenin.
That's just a straw man you're making that has nothing to do with anything I said.
Not sure where you’re suggesting I’m arguing otherwise. What I actually said was that Lenin built on the ideas Marx put forward, and fleshed these ideas out through the process of implementing them. There is no disagreement between Marx and Lenin.
Marx and Lenin are not the same person. Lenin built off of Marx but what he espoused is not identical to Marx. To treat Marx's ideas as if they have some independent reality apart from his articulation, as if Lenin could be said to have somehow fulfilled and brought to fruition it's true final platonic Form is an idealist ontological view.
Lenin and anyone else interpreting or reading Marx are by definition in some capacity transforming whatever idea they're inspired by.
Here's another somewhat creative way to illustrate this argument I'm making:
Let's actually look at the word "inspire". Etymologically comes from the Latin for "to breathe into". To "inspirit" a thing. https://www.etymonline.com/word/inspire
Spirit? A spirit? A ghost? What?
This concept of spirit is old. It's relevant in a lot of Bible translation stuff. The greek equivalent is "pneuma" (the basis for the word pneumonia since this concept of spirit has been tied with this concept of breathing animating force for something)
If I breathed out and you breathed in some of the air I breathed in, would you say you now are breathing my breathe? Maybe, but I wouldn't. I would say you're breathing the air that I blew out as part of my process breathing. But the breathing part is tied to the thing I'm doing. The physical concrete reality of my actions. You can put air in a bottle because it is a substance but a "breathe" isn't something that exists as substance in isolation from it's form. The "team spirit" isn't a substance, it's a particular set of concrete relationships within a team. Marx's "spirit" that inspired Lenin is not Lenin's spirit.
Treating spirit like it's some concrete reality is Hegel, it's idealistic, it's not materialist at all. It's reification ( in the general rather than specifically Marxist sense). Marx wrote a concrete set articulations of his ideas. His articulations inspired other people. But other people's interpretations and reinventions of his articulations is not identical to his articulations.
I know some of this etymology stuff sounds a bit goofy but it helps to have some of the background on how the ideal/materialism debate originally evolved out of the greek and latin writers that came before.
Marx and Lenin are not the same person. Lenin built off of Marx but what he espoused is not identical to Marx. To treat Marx’s ideas as if they have some independent reality apart from his articulation, as if Lenin could be said to have somehow fulfilled and brought to fruition it’s true final platonic Form is an idealist ontological view.
Once again, ideas are living and evolving things that are rooted in experience. Lenin took the ideas that Marx established and built on these ideas through practice. That has nothing to do with any Platonic forms or idealist ontological view. What I actually meant was that Marx had a theoretical understanding of the ideas he put forward based on his observation of the capitalist society he lived in. Lenin had more direct experience that helped flesh these ideas further. I don't know why you keep insisting on twisting that into something else.
Lenin and anyone else interpreting or reading Marx are by definition in some capacity transforming whatever idea they’re inspired by.
Not sure why you're implying that I said anything contrary to that.
Treating spirit like it’s some concrete reality is Hegel, it’s idealistic, it’s not materialist at all. It’s reification ( in the general rather than specifically Marxist sense). Marx wrote a concrete set articulations of his ideas. His articulations inspired other people. But other people’s interpretations and reinventions of his articulations is not identical to his articulations.
And that's literally what I said in my previous comment. Perhaps I was not articulating myself clearly, but I think I was clear in what I said here: "Lenin built on the ideas Marx put forward, and fleshed these ideas out through the process of implementing them."
I did not say anything about things being identical. I said that experience adds fidelity to the ideas and evolves them.
Once again, I'm talking about a materialist dialectic understanding of how ideas evolve through praxis.
I highly recommend reading this book on dialectical materialism to see the key differences from the prior idealist philosophies https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/185265.ABC_of_Dialectical_and_Historical_Materialism
I know what dialectical materialism.
What I actually meant was that Marx had a theoretical understanding of the ideas he put forward based on his observation of the capitalist society he lived in. Lenin had more direct experience that helped flesh these ideas further. I don’t know why you keep insisting on twisting that into something else.
And what I'm saying is that Marx's ideas are not Lenin's ideas.
And what I'm saying is that you're arguing against a straw man because nowhere did I make this argument. My argument, as I've repeatedly explained, is that Lenin built on the ideas that Marx championed.
Right and the ideas of Lenin are not the ideas of Marx. Hence the author is dead etc.
So when talking about Marc it is inaccurate to say he wrote about "communism coming out of socialism". He didn't. He wrote ahout a lower and higher stage of communism. To take lenins terminology and impose it on older author is anachronistic in the same way that some fascist trying to invoke the Roman empire for their own ideology, or some modern GOP pundit claiming they're in the party of Lincoln.
I've already addressed this point at length above.
You did not refute the central point which is that ideas are not transferable between people. You cannot equate the ideas of two disparate people.
If that's not what you're doing that's fine. But then if that's jot what you're doing you shouldn't be using anachronistic terminology when talking about Marx.
No, that's just a straw man you keep making. I've repeatedly explained that Lenin built on the ideas of Marx. And I've also explained that the idea of a transitionary period Marx describes has evolved into what we commonly refer to as socialism nowadays. What you keep trying to argue is that Lenin introduced the concept of socialism as opposed to terminology, and that's at odds with the facts.
I think I've been pretty clear in what I said above, and I don't know why you keep twisting it into something other than what I said.
I didn't argue that Lenin introduced socialism. I'm saying that Marx did not use the term socialism to refer to a transitory period. That is the only argument I'm making. Using anachronistic terminology confuses the issue. There's no point in trying to ad hoc impose Lenin terminology on Marx work. It's bad historical practice at the very least.
I mean I get it when people say "Jesus was a commie". It's a rhetorical tool. Obviously Jesus did not identify as following a specific historical tendency birthed out of the industrial revolution and colonialism. But I get the point that people are trying to make. But it would be absolutely absurd and not useful rhetorically to say "Jesus was a maoist". That just confuses the issue with anachronisms.
I am not twisting what you've said. I'm trying to make a very specific point about how language is used and you're not listening (or I'm not explaining it well. I admit I am not perfect but I'm trying my best)
I didn’t argue that Lenin introduced socialism. I’m saying that Marx did not use the term socialism to refer to a transitory period.
And I've never disputed this point. What I said is that the transitionary period is what we commonly refer to as socialist phase in modern parlance. I'm honestly not sure what the point is disagreement is here.
What I said is that the transitionary period is what we commonly refer to as socialist phase in modern parlance.
Right and my contention is that it is not correct to equate parlance like that.
It would be like saying "Jesus was a Maoist" because you believe that his particular gospel of apocalyptic anti-imperialist spiritualism was structurally similar to certain tenets of Mao and therefore creates some sort of transhistorical link.
Ideas aren't transhistorical. They are not independent of human minds. They are necessarily embedded in their historical context. They're not transferable just because they look similar.
To help make this more concrete consider convergent evolution and genes. You've probably heard of carcinisation: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carcinisation
That's the tendency of animals in specific kinds of environments to trend towards a crablike body form. This has happened dozens of times independently across the Tree of Life over the last couple of billions of years.
There is no "crab gene". There is no gene which is "crabness". Two crabs look similar, they have similar material conditions that gave rise to them and we can use human language to draw parallels between them but to reify "crab form" as the concrete "crab gene" would be a mistake.
A gene is a concrete thing. It's a very specific chemical encoding with a concrete physical history. The "crab body form" is not concrete. It's an idea, it's a useful idea but it's not the physical concrete material reality itself, and confusing the two creates misunderstandings about what is a crab or isn't a crab.
Right and my contention is that it is not correct to equate parlance like that.
I guess I look at this from a completely different perspective. My view is that there is a particular state the society goes through which is the transition between capitalism and communism. We gain increasingly more understanding about how this transition looks like based on developing increasing complex theories and testing them. I'm not sure if you've seen this essay, but it sums up the process pretty well https://hermiene.net/essays-trans/relativity_of_wrong.html
From this point of view, what matters is that there is a necessary transitional period, and it makes sense to refer to this period as socialism in the context of Marxist theory. Whether Marx used the term or not is not really an interesting or even important question. This is why I don't see this as conflating ideas.
You seem to be incapable of separating map and territory in your mind. I do not know what more I can say.
The issue is not that Marx did not merely use a specific piece of vocab. It is that you can not treat ideas as transhistorical.
Here's another way to put it by analogy: the gravity of Einstein is not the gravity of Newton. Newton's worldview and his understanding of his theories in that worldview does not reflect in the worldview of Einstein. We can certainly recognize how Newton influenced Einstein and how that gave foundation for new ideas and evolution of ideas but when Newton says "gravity" he does not mean the same thing as when Einstein says "gravity". They are using the same word to mean different things. Their use of the word is historically contingent.
Here’s another way to put it by analogy: the gravity of Einstein is not the gravity of Newton.
As I've just explained, I don't think that's a very useful way to look at the world. Gravity is gravity, and Newton's conception of gravity was less accurate than Einstein's conception. How each individual conceived of gravity does not change how gravity works. Similarly, the socialist phase of development is a material phenomenon that the society must go through. How Marx or Lenin conceived of this phase does not change the nature of this phase. Fixating on historical understanding of this phenomenon is not useful outside of doing historical analysis.
Gravity is not the word gravity though! The idea of gravity is not the same thing as the force itself. The word "socialism" is not the material transition of society.
Seriously please take this issue under consideration: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reification_(fallacy)
That's literally my point, the words are just labels for underlying concepts. I didn't say the word socialism is equivalent to the material transition of society. What I said is that it best captures our current understanding of this concept.
And I'm arguing that concepts have no independent reality apart from words.
The word is not the concept. But the concept is also jot the material reality. You're reifying concepts and treating them as if they have some sort of transhistorical reality.
I completely agree that the word is not the concept, that's literally what I've been saying in the past few comments in several different ways.
I'm not reifying concepts and treating them as if they have some sort of transhistorical reality. I'm saying that at any point in time we have a particular understanding of the concepts which builds on prior ideas.
I feel like we're just talking past each other at this point, and we're clearly not getting anywhere. I propose we stop here. Nothing new has been said for a while.
What we refer to as normal is an extreme system built on the exploitation of people and the planet.
“It is a system defined by colonialism, imperialism, oppression and genocide by the so-called global North to accumulate wealth that still shapes our current world order.”
Ms Thunberg added: “If economic growth is our only priority, then what we are experiencing now should be exactly what we should be expecting.”
The Climate Book ... she decided to venture into political waters in her speech - having previously avoided doing so.
The book is pretty capitalist tho 😂 https://theclimatebook.org/the-book/
Edit: by capitalist I meant it being proprietary and commercial; not open access, no free license. I did not mean things like surplus per se, or that its ideas promote capitalism.
BTW when you get serious about ecology and climate change, capitalism being a bad system which drives all that is the logical conclusion.
https://monthlyreview.org/2018/05/01/the-physics-of-capitalism/
That was totally unexpected!
Greta is correct, but I fear that the full power of the continued red scare will be brought to bear and inflict the final blow on her having much sway in the States.
o7 o7 o7