Quote:
Originally Posted by deepsepia
The problem is that Marxism in practice is contemptuous of democracy-- they have no use for it. "Democratic conditions" presume that you want rule of law. Marxists are plain enough that class struggle, rather than rule of law, is their aim.
No reason to expect that folks will achieve what they don't seek.
Democratic Socialists/Social democrats, by contrast seek some of the goals of the Marxists, but with a respect for rule of law and democratic institutions of the State. Its not an accident that Sweden ended up a more civilized place than Cambodia or Albania-- they sought different things. You can't achieve what you don't want in the first place. Marxists have had plenty of opportunities to support democracy-- its plain enough that they simply don't want it.
This is a non sequitur, "whataboutery". The US has its failings -- arguably never moreso than today in my lifetime-- but at an explicit level we're clear enough about what we seek-- and that's the rule of laws, not men, classes or parties.
Marxists don't seek that, don't want that. The State is subordinate to the Party, which answers to . . . well, to no one.
So Marxism in practice is intrinsically hostile to rule of law, separation of powers and constitutional government; not because of some defect, but because that's the design. Somehow, magically the Party will represent the will of the workers, and equally magically the organs of the State will carry out their just desires.
Ah, but what if they don't?
Well then, comrade, then its time to find out just who's in charge of the Secret Police, because that's how you'll find out what "the law" is.
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You put all the Marxists in the same bags and that's utterly wrong.
Sadly Marxism is an unachieved theory.
Marx never was really clear how to politically or socially resolve the problems of the people inside a community.
If you read Kropotkin essay "Communism and Anarchism", he analysed why politically Communism would failed.
That's probably why there were these different forms of brutal or unachieved Communisms and even before, there was the separation between Marx and Bakounin, who decided to follow the Anarcho-Marxism instead of a Communo-Marxism.
After reading the "Communist Manifesto", it's quite clear that Marx was impressed by several aspects of the efficiency generated by the Capitalism, but
he denounced the terrible effects on the social life, on the environment, on the culture, on the quality of life of the workers. Through the unceasing reinjection of money into the circuit in the way to always makes more benefit, capitalism will push a large part of the population into poverty and change them as robots.
If you take the time of reading the chapters of the Kapital dedicated to the alienation, that's a remarkable psychological work: Workers and people become slaves of their products, of their properties, ...
How do we look at American workers in Europe?
For us, the American worker is almost like a Japanese one.
Maybe that's a caricature, but that's what we learned about him.
The American worker only get one week holiday per year.
He's afraid to go on holiday because he could be fired when he come back.
He's the slave of his boss, who can fire him in the minute.
He's totally addicted to make money, his only dream is to become... rich.
It even was depicted in several TV series like Mad Men, Boardwalk empire or Desesperate Housewife....
The American icons are businessmen, managers, economists, billionaires but rarely philosophers, writers...
That's very very far from freedom.
The American way of life of lower class employees seems to be based on very strong submissions to the market and the goodwill of your managers.
So maybe that's different from one state to another. That's difficult for us, European, to know, because differences between your states are less clear than in Europe where the languages and during decades the currencies were totally different.
As European people, we see your country as a country that is based on huge unfair social differences, with a very strong poverty that our ancesters tried to reduce as much as possible in Europe. We see USA as a place with a huge criminality, where obesity became normal but that is for us a symptom of depression and social misery, etc...
That's all bad points that were stigmatised by Karl Marx about the dangers of Capitalism.
Das Kapital is not only a book written from the mind of Marx, it's a book based on analysis made by a lot of humanists or economists who wrote point of views before Marx himself.
He quoted at least more than 20 different authors and was very impressed by the relevance of their observations.
I'm sad to say, but the industrial and financial politics of the USA since the WWII is more negative for the future of the humanity than beneficial. Viciously the American administration tried to make his standard as a worldwide standard.
But for us American people are the folks that consume 5 planets per head.
Almost all the people in the world believes that American people (in its globality, not head by head) is the representation of pure egoïsm and will to destroy the world for its own benefit.
We never had this view about Soviets or Chinese until they began to contribute to the Capitalism.
Why are we speaking of American imperialism?