United States Heading towards a Depression?

There have been a lot of comments about Marxism here. I don't get it. Why bother arguing the situation at all?

As far as I can see there are no examples of Marxism or Communism as Marx or Engels described it. There are no nations that implemented it. Certainly no large examples. It simply never existed.

The two examples most often cited are the USSR and China. This wasn't Marxism as described as Marx and Engels. These were state run tyrannical dictatorships that abused the workers within their nations. They certainly didn't have the results of sellilng goods flow back to the workers. Instead they:

1. Centralized the control of funds and kept most of it in the central governments
2. Kept the workers poor, impoverished, poorly housed, and deprived of rights
3. Built huge oppressive militaries
4. Murdered possibly up to 100 million of their own populations from roughly the 1920's to the 1980's.

Nothing in their experiences describes that which Marx or Engels described.

I don't see why anyone, on either side is busy arguing about Communism. That which Marx or Engels described never existed as far as I can see.

 

Yes, because with people like Pelosi in charge, Teachers Unions are able to get boners at $25 a pop on the backs of taxpayers:
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5iGvAw44XehrKzx43-IAcbHxMrEiQD9HE1PHO1
Especially in school districts that have 4 schools in the top 10 WORST schools in the nation!

Thank God for people like Nancy.

 

As I stated earlier, I'm not expert on Marxism(like Glenn Beck lol), but my understanding is that item 1 from your list is a prerequisite to Marxism. Without the government in the catbird seat, the bourgeoisie would have their way with the working class. The problem is, once you get item 1, items 2,3, and 4 seem to historically follow.

The way the system is set up right now, we reward failure. The worse your district is, the more money we throw at it in an effort to make it better. More than a few studies have shown an inverse relationship between government $$ thrown at a school district and standardized test results from the students in that district. What semi intelligent human being at the receiving end of that cash would not encourage lower scores to get more cash? You catch the news story about the city manager in Bell, California with a $1.5mil/year compensation package? Capitalism at work.

 

I agree with you about USSR and China but the mistake that you are making is that you are concentrating on political aspect of Marx and Engels writing while Marx and Engels never claimed to be some kind of fortune teller about future form of government and actually Marx in his letters says that he can not predict it and the the future working class will decide what form the future government will have.
The importance of Marx and Engels writing is their analyze of surplus value and the problems that Capitalism system have. If you read and really think about it then you can see the global market (EU, Nafta,..), moving the production from western world, government involvement in production (State Capitalism) and how state capitalism will be the harshest form of Capitalism was already described in their writings.

 

As to these discussions on Marxism:

@ONation: As I see it, if step 1 comes first....basically Marxism, as Marx or Engels wrote about it, goes down the drain. To me, step 1 simply describes how the USSR and China evolved. To me its a first step toward govt tyranny, nothing more. .....but then you and I aren't experts, are we?

@Gworld. I still don't see the point. If Communism as Marx or Engels wrote about it never came into practise, why argue, discuss it. Its moot. There is nothing to compare. It never got applied so you can't compare it to anything else or compare anything else to it.

 

It isn't just Marxism that has so far failed....

Ronald Reagan is the father of gov't deficits as are the Republican descendent's up to George Bush. The Democratic congress that ruled for 40 years up to Newt Gingrich never allowed a deficit greater than a days cookie jar. This nation can no longer afford the incompetent and inept rhetoric espoused by proven philanthropist in charge of the nations Treasury and Congress.

Surly the electorate has matured to a reasonable understanding as to the culprits of our national insolvency and will vote accordingly on Nov. 2.


.............

Todays news projects 360,000 jobs will be saved when including the public sector employment with the enactment of the "aid to states" legislation.....the Republicans can only think of their gains in elections rather than actually doing something to deserve it?

 

@BW, you really crack me up

You condemn the partisan politics of the right, while writing highly partisan posts of your own.

 

Breezewood: The David Stockman editorial is about as serious an indictment on GOP politics/economics as anything out there. After all, Stockman basically introduced these ideas and aggressively promoted them about 30 years ago. Now he has seen how they have rebounded to crush the American economy. Stockman is a serious person who had first hand experience with these issues.

 

We have never reached the speed of light but does it mean that we should stop studying physics and what happens if an object approaches that speed? The communism that Marx and Engels talk about will rise from the failure of Capitalism as production system and it is not a government form in itself since as Marx himself admitted, he could not guess/predict future government form but he supported the experience in Paris Commune revolt as a POSSIBLE form.
Instead of concentrating on your image from Hollywood movies about how bad communists are, read his economical writings and you will be surprised how much of what is happening right now, is described in his writings.

 

GWorld: I don't place the theory of communism in a negative light. I believe that its only too bad that the one phenomena that saw a grass roots control during the period when Marx and Engels lived and wrote was so short lived. Way too hard to measure its effectiveness.

As to the political aspects of large scale communism....Stalin and Mao were mass murderers, tyrants, and dictators. They did little or nothing for the welfare of the people in their respective lands.

OTOH: When the right wing screams about socialism and communism as a danger to the economic system I firmly believe they are inventing bogeymen out of thin air. Without real long term examples....its nothing to write about or denigrate. its simply a system that never had a history in which to test and measure its effectiveness.

So what???

Since there haven't been true examples of communism as Marx or Engels described it as a reasonably long term working example how can anyone say it doesn't work as an economic system. Nobody knows.

The mixture of a political system and an economic system is an ongoing evolving system subject to changes all the time.

Frankly, the Right Wing in the US simply uses it as attack language to further their political agenda. They have created a bogeyman out of thin air that doesn't exist.

Meanwhile as the current Right Wing screams and rants about the dangers of communism to put forth their own political agenda David Stockman, truly one of their founding fathers, has pointed out that the Right Wing agenda has been bankrupting America.

 

You are again thinking of Communism as political government form instead of production form but these are two different things. Let´s talk about Capitalism, USA, UK and Singapore are all Capitalists but each has different form of government. Communism is a production form which replaces Capitalism as Capitalism replaced Serf system (feudalism) and slavery.

China or USSR were not Communist states because the government owned production tools. If you read Engels, in his book anti-Duhring he talks about this in his argument against Duhring and gives army as an example and says just because government controls army, it doesn´t make it a socialist organization. Engels talked about this mistaken idea about socialism even before China and USSR experiance.

Concentrate on Marx writing from economy aspect and it will look like a blue print of all the problems that we are facing today. That is the reason that computers don´t solve the problems of capitalism but actually accelerate the internal problems of Capitalism.

 

Quite the contrary, communism is the largest form of slavery. Where as the capitalist economy consists of private ownership and opportunity for all, the communist economy consists of a common or public ownership. In other words, the STATE owns all. You're a slave to a machine that promotes welfare for the common good. In an effort to do away with class, communism in fact creates two classes of people in society. Those that produce, and those that decide who to redistribute what they produce. Marx was looking to eliminate class warfare, but in affect actually removed the opportunity for everyone to have an equal chance to be in whatever class they desired.

There's obviously a reason why Marx never explained how the economy would work in a communist system of government. He created all the finer aspects of a utopian society but left out the most important part; the economy.

Seems Marx died a very poor man. Ironic.

 

Economies thrive when society is encouraged ( read "rewarded" ) for their creativity. This includes the reward of higher education. Who here remembers when the word " yankee ingenuity " was in force ? Was this not the time when the economy of the United States was the world´s number one economy ? Was that just a coincidence ?


The Japanese are very ingenius also. So are the Germans. There are two basic forms of government : LINK

 

Mia, this may have been your best post since the photo of your beer fridge, which I am especially fond of. Gworld claims the perceived failure of communism is because we have all mistaken the system of government(Communism) for a system of production(Communism). I'm hard pressed to see how you separate the two. Earlpearl's Step 1 seems like a natural prerequisite to having the government equitably and fairly distribute Gworld/Marx's "surplus value". How else is the surplus value going to get distributed? The government would have to do it.

As you stated, what you end up with is a dictatorship that distributes the wealth, pocketing an ever increasing portion for the ruling class. The dictatorship must militarize to defend against revolutionaries who are unhappy with the government theft. Eventually, the system collapses in on itself, either by coup, or economic collapse from poor productivity in comparison to more capitalistic states. This brings us to Gworld's claim, and indeed an argument made by many other communists, that communism in a single nation is a farce. According to them, communism needs to be implemented world wide to work. By eliminating any capitalist nation with motivated workers and high productivity, the communist state has nothing to compete with and therefore continues to exist for lack of competition.

There are many real world examples of this. Reagan quite literally spent the USSR into the ground, despite their brilliant scientists and bountiful natural resources. The USA has many competitors for worldwide markets but continues to dominate, I would assert, largely based on the fact our society is more capitalist. Our citizens used to receive less from their government, but worked harder based on the idea social mobility. Based on the idea that one can be raised in the slums and become just about anything if they work hard.

Right now, what we see is a staggering increase in the power of the Federal government, in terms of spending, control, and abuse of states rights. You see the same power grab going on in the private sector as the Fortune 500 sucks up the lions share of the nation's GDP. It would seem crony capitalism and communism have something in common. Consolidation of power.

"five days from now we will fundamentally change America"
Barrack Hussein Obama

 

What can I say, stupid people make stupid posts.

Have you ever read something by Marx or Engels? I can make it even simpler, have you ever read anything beside TV guide? You are probably one of the last people in USA who still believes that every drunk in a trailer park has the opportunity to one day miraculously become rich and spends his day worrying about how much tax the government is going to take from his future wealth.

 

Exactly. And there is an argument to be made that this is exactly what Marx had in mind.

Marx was not stupid. He understood that if you create a worker class that is separate and apart from the aristocrats that run things, you create a class of people that lack ambition, drive, or any motivation whatsoever. Marx packaged it as "all for the common good" but in reality he knew that he was creating a class of slaves with zero self-esteem. But that is exactly why Communism always fails - if the workers have no hope for a better life, their lives become ones of bitter disappointment and alcoholism. I'm sure gworld is familiar with that, aren't you? And that leads to a complete lack of production.

It's the difference between theory and practicality. Capitalism, with all it's flaws, motivates people and gives them hope for a better life. Communism snuffs out that hope and suffocates people by promising lives of quiet desperation.

EXACTLY! Look at gworld's post. Read it. Everyone, read it again. As a Communist, he believes that if you live in a trailer park, your life has no hope, that you should just surrender your life and let the government take care of you. He proves everything I wrote above - that ambition and a hope for a better life is a waste.

I believe in the American Dream.

I believe that every drunk in a trailer park has the opportunity to one day miraculously become rich.

 

In a way I can understand why you and mia feel this way. What else do you have to look forward to? If it wasn´t for this dream, you could have as well end your life now.

 

It is only a wonder why the American people would vote for a political party that since Ronald Reagen has consistently driven the American economy into the ditch.

Which is worse? ... Believing in their brand of voodoo economics or being bought by their candidates. The puzzle has equal ramifications from both ends as the American public seems swayed by both....it is a tossup.


Oh, and funding for their Iraq war or balancing the national debt absolutely should not include a 3% hike on McMahon's taxes because.....just ask a Republican, the voodoo answer between air filled ears speaks for itself.

This issue is slated for Sept. when the Senate will propose legislation eliminating tax breaks for people earning 250X and above - just maybe the public will catch onto the Republican economics with the rampant inequities and conduct themselves appropriately on Nov.2.

 

The only ingenuity that pays off now is figuring out how to get the government to subsidize you while concurrently taxing your competitors.

The U.S. has gone from a nation of producers to a nation of looters. Obama may be fiddlin', but FDR started this fire.

 

gworld is funny