I'm slowly discovering you guys are better Marxists than people at revleft.

Miscellaneous General
1

Lets just look at some things Mises said.

“The syndicalistically organized state would be no socialist state but a state of worker capitalism, since the individual worker groups would be owners of the capital.”

This is basically the theory of State Capitalism as applied to the USSR.

"Even less worthy of serious attention are those schemes of social reform which, while not condemning the use of money in general, object to the use of gold and silver In fact, such hostility to the precious metals has something very childish in it. When Thomas More, for example, endows the criminals in his utopia with golden chains and the ordinary citizens with gold and silver chamber pots, [2] it is in something of the spirit that leads primitive mankind to wreak vengeance on lifeless images and symbols.

It is hardly worthwhile to devote even a moment to such fantastic suggestions, which have never been taken seriously. All the criticism of them that was necessary has been completed long ago. [3]"

Guess what citation three was? We’ll discuss this tomorrow actually in Chapter 3

2

I am not sure I would call the USSR “sydicalist”, since I don’t think that their workers can be described as ‘owners’(owners in the Menger/Mises sense of practical control,)

In any case to Austrians it is not a suprise that the Soviet Union was not ‘real’ Socialism since that is impossible to acheve.

Also now I have the attention of a real Marxist, I was wondering what you think of Lavoie’s chapter on Marxism in Rivalry & Central Planning (part 1)

I found it illuminating, however given Lavoie is an Austrian it would be helpful for a marxist view.

3

Is there anyway to flip this text?

Edit: Downloading it fixed it, I’ll read the whole thing then comment on all of it.

4

I’ll type up what I think as I encounter it.

I’m not sure which of Marx’s predictions they’re referring to as having not come true.

They make an interesting statement here.

“For too long Marxists have been content to develop a critique of Capitalism and leave all discussions of workings and workability of Socialism to others.”

When earlier they admitted that a critique of Capitalism is at one and the same time a blueprint for Socialism. I would also like to remark that Marxists hold that “the emancipation of the working class must be an act of the working class.” I don’t even think should a revolution come that brings us to what I would call Communism, that those participants would even, as a majority, self identify as Communists. More and more I’m seeing that Marx’s critique of Capitalism can be found, distorted, in various other ideologies too. We consider our roles as Communists to be very insignificant in social transformation. We try not to lead and control movements for fear of things like Stalinism and Maoism. The working class already runs society as it is.

We can speak only very generally about how society will be organised under Socialism.

The article also says that every revolution to date has been “premature” according to Marxian analysis, and I would whole heartedly disagree with this. The reason that the USSR failed was because they were incredibly dependent and expecting the German Revolution to succeed. It would have been a perfect match, USSR with massive raw materials, Germany with massive industrialsiation. From there the Revolution could have easily spread. The Fascists in Germany would have been stopped and then those in Italy could have well been avoided as well, allowing the Italian revolution to fully ripen. With this spread of Communism, there would have been no disarmament of the thousands of armed communists in Turkey, nor the slaughter of the Ukrainian anarcho-communists. When China had its “revolution” Mao could have been prevented coming into power by propaganda attempts to show the people that what Mao was doing was NOT Communism, and that the Shanghai Commune was a much better example of Communism.

Ultimately some lessons to be learned are this. Communism is an international system, the reason is plain and simple. We essentially have a division of labour amongst countries due to a natural spread of raw materials, one nation cannot sustain itself, all nations today import many things. Nobody wants to associate or trade with a Communist region, just look at Cuba, it barely threatens the status quo yet it’s had an embargo for 50 something years.

Class collaboration is a huge no-no, Mao really screwed this one up. It’s the same reason why the Civil Rights movement in America never really became “revolutionary” it had a working-class base with petit-bourgeoise leadership.

I really don’t want to “spoil” anything in Capital, but I think I’ll go ahead and do it anyway. The article psoes the question if Capitalism will ever be ready for Socialism to emerge, well, it has been for quite some time now. The thing which makes Socialism possible is the fact that Capitalism takes the working class and puts them to labour collectively, while gaining the benefits of their synergy and co-operation. Outside of the working-place they are isolated as economic units, but when purchased together they come and work together collectively. The model for Socialism is inside the sweatshop. There are two types of division of labour. Division of labour in society and division of labour in the work-place. Amongst society, you have different spheres of production, and, in order to access the products of these spheres, you must have something to trade for them, here the products of labour confront each other as commodities. In the work-shop however, you have various products of labour that are simply passed along to the next worker. It is the PERFECT example of “from each according to ability, to each according to need” you have too many people making shoestrings and not enough to string the shoestrings? Hire more to string the shoestrings, or fire more making the shoestrings, either way you have set each divided portion in the workshop to work, according to their ability, and they are being supplied according to their need. Socialists merely want to move this division of labour in the work-shop to the division of labour in society. The economic calculation question is silly because it’s done EVERY DAY in factories.

5

My memory is a bit scetchy but I think that means, stuff like the concentration of industry (to the extent that it could be easily taken over & run by the proletariet), & the continuing immiseration of the proletariat & the disapearence of the petit bourgeoisie & middle class into the proletariet.

6

I think, if you consider society as a whole, all of these predictions will have held.

7

To the extent that socialistic policies and ideas have held sway, yes those things have happened a little. The problem with the Marxist analysis of it is that the classes he lays out as being at “war” are wrong. It’s not workers vs. capitalists, since capitalists also work, but the political class, i.e. those with political favor, vs. those without political favor.

8

‘‘I really don’t want to “spoil” anything in Capital’’ “The model for Socialism is inside the sweatshop”

Don’t worry you are not spoiling anything, Lavoie talks about that on page 41. I have to say I was suprised when I first read that Marx so explicitly comparared socialism to a factory. I thought that might have just been exageration by opponents.

9

We’ll get to that later.

You have to understand that we hold all of the ills that come from factory life and such are due to the fact that production is carried out for the benefit of the individual capitalist as opposed to concern with the worker’s there.

I’ll comment on the next chapter in a separate post.

10

When China had its “revolution” Mao could have been prevented coming into power by propaganda attempts to show the people that what Mao was doing was NOT Communism, and that the Shanghai Commune was a much better example of Communism.

The idea that a revolution could be ‘saved’ with sufficient propagandizing doesn’t really seem very Marxist, as far as I am aware.

Socialists merely want to move this division of labour in the work-shop to the division of labour in society.

Didn’t Marx talk about abolishing the division of labour, or something of the sort?

I have to say I was suprised when I first read that Marx so explicitly comparared socialism to a factory. I thought that might have just been exageration by opponents.

To be fair, Pizza von at least seems to just be comparing them in terms of involving collective labour to satisfy the needs of consumers. Generally the comparison is used in a different sense by opponents, including myself, so comparing the two uses is somewhat like comparing the statement that a man is like a mountain because he’s tall with the statement that a man is like a mountain because he’s barren and lifeless. Of course, they can both be valid, in the same way that Capital is like a mountain in both aforementioned ways.

11

“We’ll get to that later.”

Why later? I’m not your student and you’re not a professor.

12

i think it is so he doesnt have to repeat himself when he gets to the topic in Capital

13

So there’s a part in Capital where Marx predicts that his predictions will be wrong?

14

Unfortunately, my time for this project has run out and all I can comment for this chapter is this.

“Mises contends that advanced technological production is too complex to be (begin paraphrasing) centrally co-ordinated and needs to be de-centralised to a degree”

This isn’t a problem for Communism really, as it is de-centralised to a degree.

15

I didn’t mean just literal propaganda, but a sort of propaganda by example.

Amongst society yes.

16

i assume no but pizza simply wants to explain the whole capitalist-v-worker later when he gets to the topic in Capital

17

No, but we do consider economic classes later, so please hold those questions until then.

18

We (Austrians) do have unavoidable strong ties to Aristotle and Max Weber that a MArxist may find interesting. As I understand Marx was very much an Aristotlean as well. Interesting enough, in his own way, so was the other extereme left Hegelian, Mr. Stirner - who also flows in nicely with Austrian thinking.

Here is a book and a long article for anyone interested in thinking about such things:

http://mises.org/books/max-weber.pdf

http://ontology.buffalo.edu/smith/articles/menger.html

Also there was the brilliant Rudolf Hilferding who was a contemporary of Schumpeter and Mises, who started as an Austrian economist and drifted to one of leading Marxist theorist. He could be called an Austrian-Marxist in some sense.

19

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“Amongst society yes.”

This is my favorite part. The DoL. How can a marxist economy ever hope to produce things like computer chips? Or won’t we? =/

People can’t do the shit they want to do without at some level depending on others. We’ll all be farmers and don’t give me that BS about how the state will “liquidate itself” magically after all of the power has been given, through our good friend democracy, to the marxists.

“Whelp. I’m off to mine some silicon, then copper, then petroleum, then i’ll need a laser,…” “On making a computer”

EDIT: #Pizza “No, but we do consider economic classes later, so please hold those questions until then.”

who does this kid think he is?

20

Rudolf Hilferding was never an austrian economist, nor did he have mises or schumpeter influence. he was an austrian as far as nationality is concerned but he was never austrian as in a follower of the mengerian school