Editorial: End Not Mend Capitalism

[PJShannon]

Following is a discussion on the page titled: Editorial: End Not Mend Capitalism.
Below is the discussion so far. Feel free to add your own comments!

[Cjames1961]

The problem with your analysis is that it violates Karl Marx's later thinking. As Meghnad Desai the marxian economist details in his Marx's Revenge or as I do in my The Singulairty and Soclalism, only the full evolution of capitalism leads us to the end point of capitalism and the arising of a new form of production.  We re dealing with an evoutionary process that brings on the revolution,.

[ALB]

Here's our review of Desai's book:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2000s/2002/no-1179-november-2002/book-reviewsand what it said on this issue:

Quote:

According to Desai, Marx argued that socialism could only be successfully established when society's productive capacity had been fully developed under capitalism. This was certainly not the case in Russia at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917. Desai, however, maintains that capitalism is still far from having reached its potential. Although, he entertains the possibility of genuine Marxian Socialism, he relegates it to a distant future.

In the meantime, while waiting for capitalism to fully develop, Desai sits in the House of Lords for the Labour Party.But capitalism is already developed enough, and has been for many years, for society to go over to a classless world society based on the common ownership and democratic control of productive resources, with production for use not profit and distribution on the principle of "from each according to their ability, to each according to their needs."

[Brian]

Cjames1961 wrote:

The problem with your analysis is that it violates Karl Marx's later thinking. As Meghnad Desai the marxian economist details in his Marx's Revenge or as I do in my The Singulairty and Soclalism, only the full evolution of capitalism leads us to the end point of capitalism and the arising of a new form of production.  We re dealing with an evoutionary process that brings on the revolution,.

I would suggest that if you and Desai were to put the writings of Marx in their historical context – in that during his time capitalism still had some way to go in becoming the dominant global mode of production – you would reach the same conclusion that Marx reached 'I'm no Marxist'.  The theory that capitalism still needs further development in order to produce the potential for abundance is in my opinion a shallow suggestion for a reformist approach to political activity.  Capitalism, historically, solved the problem of production its incapable of solving the problem of distribution.  Only socialism can achieve this.

[JOHN GAULT]

Your article is wrong. It is socialist societies where the minority dominates the rest. The government tells us what to do, instead of ourselves. I can decide if I want to give money to the poor, or buy a new house. I can decide if it is worth investing in a company, or if it is better to put the money in the bank. What makes you think that you are smarter than other people? Why do you think you know how to allocate resources? If I work hard, and make a great product, I don't need you to tell me how to use it. We the people don't need you. You, the government, are here to support us, not to be the enforcer of socialistic policies. I hope that you socialists fail in your attempt to turn the world back into the stone age.

[jondwhite]

Go somewhere without money and tell me how free you are.

[alanjjohnstone]

Have you taken time to read this website's About Us."The SPGB and our companion parties in the WSM claims that there can be no state in a socialist society."A lot more of your unwarranted concerns are answered if you care to spend the time to read it. 

[Anonymous]

Seems like the editorial suffers from absolutism thinking.  It denies the possibility of things such as capitalims or socialism existing on a spectrum or preferably on an N-dimensional graph of human behavior.  Similarly the question of abundance or scarcity presuposes falsley that there can exist a platonic idealistic form of abundance that encompasses all things. There is no such thing as abundance, only more or less abundance.  On another track of reasoning, there clearly are non-material things in our information age that do seem to achieve the theoretical abundance.  There is an abundance of comments and opinions and ideas and insight. Marx didn't define ideas as products of labor, but then Marx didn't have the world wide web to consider.  Capitalist centers of innovation are primarily made up of information workers who produce no tangible physical goods such as toasters, but they clearly are laborors in many sense of the word for pruposes of communism critiques of capitalism.   I think it's more relevant to classify parts of our economy or specefic activities as communistic or capitalistic.  Consider wikipedia for example.  It's free association, voluntary contribution of ideas and anyone can take from it any idea or words which are not diminished.  If ideas and knowledge is a product then wikipedia is already the most successfull peoples store and thriving in the heart of capitalism.  What seems to be another problem with the article is it's still stuck in ignorance of behavioral economics. Much of marx critique of capitalism used behavioral economics thinking before it was given the name "behavioral economics".  But the behavioral economist of today, such as myself a User Experience Designer, have reached an understanding of how people work far in excess of Marx and we can thank Marx for his original work in the field and acknowledge his contributions without limiting our understanding to his writings.  the article claim that 

Quote:

It also entails ignoring the vital – indeed crucial – fact that, as these problems are engendered by the capitalist system itself, they cannot be solved within its framework of minority ownership and production for profit, a system which all these parties uphold in one form or another.

is also questionable on several grounds. Capitalism does not require the existence of minority ownership and production for profit. Again, look at wikipedia as a counter example.  Also non-profit organizations and charity exist in capitalism as long standing practices.The argument of "end not mend" is also ambiguous as to how to end capitalism and how to distinguish ending capitalism from mending capitalism.  I feel the "end not mend" argument is born out of frustration not creative thinking.  The traditional argument for ending capitalism is based on an idea that the course of capitalism is know to be antithetical to communism at all stages of evolution and in all possible permutations.  such certainty is ridiculous. The very definition of capitalism and communism needs to be questioned. 

[Anonymous]

At the present the working class in the whole world  produce sufficient food and others resources to satisfy the need of all the inhabitants of the earth more than two times the existing population, scarcity and over population is just a fallacy created by capitalism, and the bourgeois economists. The problems is the private expropriation of those resources produced by mankind.A the t present time we are going thru a crisis of over production, and the crisis are longer than the period of what they call 'prosperity", The over production is produced due to the chaotic mode of production of capitalism, One of the enemies of the capitalists is capital itselfCapitalism is fully developed, and there are more wage slaves that in prior epochs, wage slavery is a world wide phenomenon. The allegations that capitalism is not fully developed yet is for peoples who need  binocular to see the reality. It is the other extreme of the permanent revolution of Leon Trotsky which is also a false theory. We have the objective conditions but we do not have the subjective conditions yetThe commentary number 5 is totally wrong, and those are the typical allegations of peoples who do not have a clue of what socialism really is, it is the same old definition of the capitalist rulers and the left wingers too. The US, the Western Empires and Russia distorted completely the idea of what socialism really isSocialism can not be established by a minority, and it is something that we have  said thousands of times in this forum, and in all our analysis, socialism is going to be a stateless society, such thing as workers state, socialist countries, socialist leaders, leaders of revolution, those are wrong conceptions. The slaves can not oppress himself or herself.Nobody working hard had become rich, there are millions of peoples around the world who are working hard and they can not fulfill the needs of their family, the only way to become rich is by stealing the sweat of another human beings.With the  robbery perpetrated on real estate, and the tankers  and  the real estate gtaken over  by financial institutions,  the prices have been inflated above the real value  and most peoples buying a house do not own the house, the own a title that the have to share with a bank, and then, they rent the property to a bank for 30 or 40 years, and in some places, after the mortgage is paid, they must continue paying for the land. The period to buy and own a house is around 50 years, 20 years working to save moeny for the down payment, and 30 years to pay the mortgage, sone peopes die without being able to own the propertyThe whole capitalist society is based on a fetishism, or what Marx called the fetishism of the commodity..This article show the whole army of parasites that exist in the so called real estate business:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2010/no-1275-november-2010/housing-capitalism-and-socialism Tihis article written by the WSM is correct, when we do not know about a subject matter, it is better to put a zipper in our mouth, and listen to others peoples in order to learn. The pigeons can not shoot against the shotgun

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