The Statesman and Marx

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

jondwhite wrote:

Not New Statesman but The Statesman!

I'm all in favour of writing to the press, but, Vin, did you send it to the New Statesman or to the Statesman which is an Indian paper? 

 I followed Alan's link and but made the same mistake as the OP about name. I have not sent it, just 'commented' on the article.Her article does not refer to the abolition of the wages system and money. It is the responsibility of socialists to point this out.It is our main raison d'être

[Anonymous]

ALB wrote:

Might be better to get our Indian comrades to follow this up. I'll email them.

 So UK members connot comment on matters abroad

[ALB]

Of course they can. It's just better to draw attention to our party in the country concerned than to our party here in Britain.

[Anonymous]

moderator1 wrote:

alanjjohnstone wrote:

Perhaps the mod can change the thread title since i cannot

What do you suggest?

 Change 'New Statesman' to 'Statesman'.

[SocialistPunk]

Vin wrote:

She claims Marx had no solution. Socialism/Communism was the solution. Everyone new what it was, why should Marx have to spell it out?

Did everyone know? I was under the impression that during Marx's time there was no one concensus regarding communism/socialism. I thought  the concept was still evolving.But as I've said on a few occasions, I'm no expert on Marx. So if I'm wrong, please show me.As for the notion that it was not necessary to "spell it out" such thinking is odd. The SPGB saw fit to "spell it out" in the DoP.  Why would that be?If Marx had been crystal clear regarding his concept of communism/socialism, why is there so much confusion over what he meant?

[Anonymous]

Hi SP,  We certainly have to spell it out today but before Labour and the Russian revolution, communism was generally known as a moneyless society based upon voluntary cooperation.  State capitalism and market socialism were post Marx https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pre-Marx_socialistsMarx gave a scientific basis for communism

[Anonymous]

SP I am making a broad generalisation but generally there was a consensus. Marx for example did not criticise anarchists for advocating a society without a state, he criticised their methods of achieving such a society 

[robbo203]

ALB wrote:

I think we are all getting the wrong end of the stick here. I don't think this is what Gupta implies. Actually, it's not a bad article 

 Hmm, I disagree, Adam. I think it IS what Gupta implies –  that communism was tried and failed in the Soviet Union et al and that, remarkably,  interest in Marx continues DESPITE this failure. That seems to me to be a clear identification of the kind of society Marx was struggling to bring about with what happened in the SU.  Yes,  the definition she offers of a socialist/communist society is not a bad one – a society based on social  ownership of the means of production – but that does not necessarily rule out her imagining that precisely such a society was what was achieved in the Soviet Union in the first place. But for this I would be much less harsh in my criticism of Gupta.  The fact that she seems to have gone along with the the kind of liberal narrative concerning the collapse of communism without a word of dissent, rather spoit it all for me to be quite honest

[SocialistPunk]

Vin wrote:

SP I am making a broad generalisation but generally there was a consensus. Marx for example did not criticise anarchists for advocating a society without a state, he criticised their methods of achieving such a society 

Well there is this from the SPGB pamphlet, "Russia 1917-1967 A Socialist Analysis", that ALB brought my attention to sometime last year.

Quote:

How much agreement there was about the nature of the transformation they hoped to bring about by their different policies, can be seen for example in the Manifesto of English Socialists issued jointly in 1893 by the Fabian Society, the Social Democratic Federation and the Hammersmith Socialist Society. The signatories including William Morris, George Bernard Shaw, H. M. Hyndman and Sidney Webb, were able to agree on the following declaration which appeared in the Manifesto:“On this point all Socialists agree. Our aim, one and all, is to obtain for the whole community complete ownership and control of the means of transport, the means of manufacture, the mines and the land. Thus we look to put an end for ever to the wage system, to sweep away all distinctions of class, and eventually to establish national and international communism on a sound basis.”

However in my view, this statement on its own is not specific enough so as to sweep away all confusion about what socialism/communism actually is.What I'm getting at is, if the definition of socialism/communism had been nailed down and everyone knew what it was, it wouldn't then have been so easy to distort through disagreements on how to achieve it. To me such confusion suggests the definition was fuzzy and still in the process of evolving. Unfortunately the lazy version has become the widespread accepted definition.A simple request goes out to the Marxists. Please provide me with the best quote, or quotes, from Marx that best encapsulates the concept of socialism/communism. 

[Lew]

Vin wrote:

SP I am making a broad generalisation but generally there was a consensus. Marx for example did not criticise anarchists for advocating a society without a state, he criticised their methods of achieving such a society

Not true. Marx’s main anarchist protagonists were Stirner, Proudhon and Bakunin, and none of them wanted socialism. They wanted a society without a state, it is true, and Marx and Engels recognised that an anarchist society would be stateless. But Marx had plenty of serious criticisms of anarchists and anarchism that went well beyond the methods they employed.For instance, consider the case of Max Stirner. Most of the German Ideology, by Marx and Engels, is a rebuttal of Stirner’s ego-centric anarchism. Stirner’s extreme individualism is a form of solipsism – there is no such thing as society, there are only individuals. This has probably been the most historically influential of anarchist ideas, and it long pre-dates Thatcher. Stirnerite anarchism flourished during Nazi Germany. If it strikes you as odd that anarchists could prosper under a Nazi state, then we must remember that in this ideology an anarchist can support anything they like as an act of individual sovereignty.Marx had plenty to say about Stirner and Proudhon, but he did not criticise their methods for achieving a stateless society. Why not? Because their objectives were not socialist, so it didn't matter. In Bakunin's case, Marx did criticise his methods but only because it would lead to an unnecessary and bloody civil war.– Lew

[Anonymous]

Thanks Lew but as I said I  was being very general. If we accept that Marx gave a scientific basis for socialism – then there must have been a 'socialism' to make 'scientific.  what was socialism?  

[Young Master Smeet]

Always useful:https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm

Quote:

It means that the proletariat, instead of struggling sectionally against the economically privileged class, has attained a sufficient strength and organization to employ general means of coercion in this struggle. It can however only use such economic means as abolish its own character as salariat, hence as class. With its complete victory its own rule thus also ends, as its class character has disappeared.

…

Quote:

With collective ownership the so-called people's will vanishes, to make way for the real will of the cooperative.

The nearest thing we get from Charlie (there's some good stuff from Fred) is this, in Capital volume II:

Quote:

On the basis of socialised production the scale must be ascertained on which those operations — which withdraw labour-power and means of production for a long time without supplying any product as a useful effect in the interim — can be carried on without injuring branches of production which not only withdraw labour-power and means of production continually, or several times a year, but also supply means of subsistence and of production. Under socialised as well as capitalist production, the labourers in branches of business with shorter working periods will as before withdraw products only for a short time without giving any products in return; while branches of business with long working periods continually withdraw products for a longer time before they return anything. This circumstance, then, arises from the material character of the particular labour-process, not from its social form. In the case of socialised production the money-capital is eliminated. Society distributes labour-power and means of production to the different branches of production. The producers may, for all it matters, receive paper vouchers entitling them to withdraw from the social supplies of consumer goods a quantity corresponding to their labour-time. These vouchers are not money. They do not circulate.

  We have a standing critique of labour vouchers, but it's clear from here (and the Critique of the Gotha programme) that Charlie saw they had a role.

[Young Master Smeet]

Oh, and this one is good:

Quote:

In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases; thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual material production. Just as the savage must wrestle with Nature to satisfy his wants, to maintain and reproduce life, so must civilised man, and he must do so in all social formations and under all possible modes of production. With his development this realm of physical necessity expands as a result of his wants; but, at the same time, the forces of production which satisfy these wants also increase. Freedom in this field can only consist in socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control, instead of being ruled by it as by the blind forces of Nature; and achieving this with the least expenditure of energy and under conditions most favourable to, and worthy of, their human nature. But it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins that development of human energy which is an end in itself, the true realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this realm of necessity as its basis. The shortening of the working-day is its basic prerequisite.

(Capital 3)

[Anonymous]

Socialist solution involved abolition of wages and money? Now it means alLsorts, which was the point I was making. 

[Dave B]

Ironically I think one of the best analyses of what Marx meant by socialism with citations and quotations from Marx himself to back up his argument came from Stalin in 1906. Stalin also clearly uses socialism and communism interchangeably to such an extent the he uses a fraudulent insert into a Karl quotation.  IIIPROLETARIAN SOCIALISM  http://www.marx2mao.com/Stalin/AS07.html#c3 There is also the context of Anarchism. I think the basic thrust of the article is that the final objectives of [Kropotkinist] anarchism and Marxist socialism are the same. And that Kropotkinist suspicions that the methodology of ‘Marxism’ ‘would arrive at state capitalism ….’. Was ‘mere tittle-tattle devoid of all foundation’. Although the Marxist critique of orthodox or Bakuninist anarchism involved other things.  Orthodox or Bakuninist anarchism was accused of by orthodox Marxism of basically ‘vanguardism’ which in the Anarchist camp, as perceived by Marxists, came under the Bakuninist ‘secret brotherhood’ modus operandi or label. The ‘Marxist’ variation of the ‘secret brotherhood’ had been ‘before Lenin’ historically ‘Blanquism’. Thus the Mensheviks in one place accused the Bolshevik vanguardism of Blanquism and Bakuninism in one sentence. But I suppose that is just about organisational political methodology etc. The other fundamental, and historically ironic, difference between Bakuninist anarchism and Marxism was the attitude to the possibility of achieving ‘communism’ or stateless socialism in a backward country before or without the full prior mature development of capitalism, in particular Russia. Or stageism.  Karl said no. Schoolboy stupidity! A radical social revolution depends on certain definite historical conditions of economic development as its precondition. It is also only possible where with capitalist production the industrial proletariat occupies at least an important position among the mass of the people. And if it is to have any chance of victory, it must be able to do immediately as much for the peasants as the French bourgeoisie, mutatis mutandis, did in its revolution for the French peasants of that time. A fine idea, that the rule of labour involves the subjugation of land labour! But here Mr Bakunin's innermost thoughts emerge. He understands absolutely nothing about the social revolution, only its political phrases. Its economic conditions do not exist for him. As all hitherto existing economic forms, developed or undeveloped, involve the enslavement of the worker (whether in the form of wage-labourer, peasant etc.), he believes that a radical revolution is possible in all such forms alike. Still more! He wants the European social revolution, premised on the economic basis of capitalist production, to take place at the level of the Russian or Slavic agricultural and pastoral peoples, not to surpass this level […] The will, and not the economic conditions, is the foundation of his social revolution.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1874/04/bakunin-notes.htm Lenin at this point in 1905 was also against the Anarchist position; which was shared in that respect with the SR position  If Social-Democracy sought to make the socialist revolution its immediate aim (in Russia) , it would assuredly discredit itself. It is precisely such vague and hazy ideas of our “Socialists—Revolutionaries” that Social-Democracy has always combated.  https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1905/apr/12b.htm  Again one of the best short and pithy descriptions of communism comes from the Bolsheviks.  V. I. Lenin, From the Destruction of the Old Social System, To the Creation of the New   Communist labour in the narrower and stricter sense of the term is labour performed gratis for the benefit of society, labour performed not as a definite duty, not for the purpose of obtaining a right to certain products, not according to previously established and legally fixed quotas, but voluntary labour, irrespective of quotas;  it is labour performed without expectation of reward, without reward as a condition, labour performed because it has become a habit to work for the common good, and because of a conscious realisation (that has become a habit) of the necessity of working for the common good—labour as the requirement of a healthy organism. It must be clear to everybody that we, i.e., our society, our social system, are still a very long way from the application of this form of labour on a broad, really mass scale.  But the very fact that this question has been raised, and raised both by the whole of the advanced proletariat (the Communist Party and the trade unions) and by the state authorities, is a step in this direction.  http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1920/apr/11.htm

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