The fatal flaw in Marxism

Discussion in 'Politics' started by BennyF, Nov 10, 2010.

  1. BennyF Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    448
    This is only important if you've been noticing that the government (State, Federal, or Local) is making an attempt to control your life by going beyond constitutional limits.

    First, the limits in the US Constitution were put there for a reason. King George III of England was the ruler of the most powerful nation on the earth, and he used his power across the Atlantic Ocean to try to take most of the autonomy away from legitimate British subjects. The early Americans had already paid for their transportation in wooden ships across a very large ocean with few guarantees that they would arrive safely, and they had already agreed to send tax money back home to England.

    Fast forward to 1918. Another ruler, the Tzar of Russia, living in a palace with gold, diamonds, artwork on the walls, and enough family members to continue the bloodline indefinitely, was overthrown by an angry mob. Vladimir Lenin was in London, writing a book when he heard the news. He traveled to Moscow, declared himself to be the leader of the majority party ("Bolshevik" in Russian), entered the hall where the new Russian Congress was to meet, and threw them out, thus beginning the second Russian Revolution. Notice the fact that he wasn't responsible for the first one.

    Unfortunately, Lenin's Political views included very little good will towards the vast majority of the Russian population, most of whom simply wanted to earn a living, feed their families, and be left alone. He decided to make most of northern Asia one state with him as the leader, and he dispatched armed troops to kill as many people as necessary to accomplish that end. They were so successful at it, they took over the governments of countries that had quiet, non-violent people who were raising and educating families and leaving others alone.

    Joseph Stalin, a documented alcoholic, was unhappy with the autonomy that countries like the Ukraine had. Forgetting the fact that they had millions of acres of fertile farmland, he decided that unless they became rabid revolutionaries, they would be killed, and there went the traditionally large harvest of wheat and other crops that Joey needed to feed his own people.

    The bottom line is this. Whenever a governmental system emerges that has no checks and balances on fallible human beings who happen to make it to the top of the system, you can count on those people being listed as mass murderers in the Guiness Book of World Records.

    Guess who's number one in that book? Chairman Mao, who also had no one to throw him out after his own Communist Revolution ended up killing tens of millions.

    Guess who's number two? Joseph Stalin, who some Russians still get nostalgic about, now that the United States is the world's most powerful nation, even with our current economic problems that some of us are dealing with.

    Whenever you find someone who says that the whole world could (or should) be governed by one organization, ask them if the person at the top of that organization is capable of making a mistake and killing millions of people by his bad decisions.

    Then ask them if anyone else can force them out of office when (not if) they screw up.

    Finally, ask them if the world might not be better off with a few hundred separate countries, each one having their own political and social policies, electing their own leaders, installing their own local governments, solving their own problems, and sending ambassadors everywhere else to brag about the accomplishments of their own countries.
     
    Last edited: Nov 10, 2010
  2. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  3. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    In all honesty even the constitution false to go far enough to check and contain the essential greed and corruption of people.

    Marxism great flaw was that it blamed the rich and capitalism when the problem was the fundamental greed and selfishness of all people: it literally blamed a symptom rather then the problem! Because of this Marxism is still theoretical, no nation has managed to make the switch to a true Marxist state without falling into totalitarianism and I don't think its even possible.

    No I'm still waiting for a political manifesto that demands and present sever means to control all greed, greed in our kleptocratic government AND economic systems! Today some countries with social democracies and mix model economies have come close, they control greed through an assortment of ad hoc policies and tuned capitalism to compete against its self instead of gaming the system, but still they do so in trial and error with out seeming to understand the fundamental and core enemy that is human greed.
     
  4. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  5. nirakar ( i ^ i ) Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    3,383
    What you BennyF are describing is not specifically Marxism because Marxism is primarily economic ideas and class consciousness ideas rather ideas about governmental structure. Marx spent more time on what government should do and who the government should serve but less time on how the government should be organized and how it should deal with dissent. Marx was a clear advocate for free speech which is counter to what Russia and China did. Even the word "Communism" to me means a economic system tied to some socio-economic goals but is not a political or governmental system. In theory a highly democratic highly localized communism was possible.

    http://anselmocarranco.tripod.com/id25.html
    http://books.google.com/books?id=xY...age&q=marx engels "view on democracy"&f=false
    http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/rbr/rbr1_marxstat.html
    http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch02.htm.

    The haste with which Marx wants to forcibly transform attitudes and methods of operation would seem to fit with totalitarianism but Marx was also anti-totalitarian and he liked representative democracy though he disliked that it had been captured by wealthier people.

    Marx does not seemed to have been clear on the form of governance.

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

    I don't see totalitarian as being the flaw in Marxism because I don't see totalitarian as being part of Marxism.

    It is not clear to me how centralized Marx and Engels thoght decision making should be.

    You are talking about political systems.

    My thoughts on the fatal flaw in Russian and Chinese Communism as economic systems.

    1 Central planning fails. Theories are inferior to trial and error and power corrupts. Central planning whether done by governments or huge corporations leads to people at the top of the hierarchy (who have inevitably flattered themselves about their own brilliance and indispensability) enforcing their theories on everybody producing below even though they don't have time to be knowledgeable on all the subjects upon which they are ruling and they won't be open to hearing negative feedback on how their theories are failing. With trial and error in a competitive environment the ideas that fail stop being followed and the ideas that work expand in their usage. With Central planning it is harder to see what would have worked better because only the Central planner's idea was tried and even after the people at the ground level can see that the idea has failed they are still compelled to work by the method of the failed idea.

    2 Greed. Communism expected people to work like ants for the good of the ant colony without any desire for personal gain. That may work for ants but it should be noted that worker ants don't have sex and children of their own and therefore are biologically designed to serve the colony rather than to serve themselves. Humans don't work that way. While humans can be altruistic they are primarily motivated by personal greed and any economic system that does not use personal greed for motivation will fail.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2010
  6. Google AdSense Guest Advertisement



    to hide all adverts.
  7. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    OP doesn't say anything about Marxism. The undermining of democracy by Lenin and Stalin is generally considered their major, fatal departure from actual Marxism (particularly emblematic was Lenin's subversion of the soviets into organs of hierarchal dictatorship, rather than grassroots democracy). Note that the various ills mentioned are all features of tyrranical government, rather than of Marxism as such (right-wing tyrants haven't fared any better - see Hitler, Mussolini, Franco, etc.).

    The relevant place where Marxism goes wrong is by proposing the muddled idea of a transitional "dictatoship of the proletariat" (which is actually supposed to be an improvement in terms of democracy, in contradictory fashion) prior to the attainment of true democracy under a classless society. Unfortunatley Marx never came up with any real plans for how that should be implemented or play out. This makes it all too easy for any supposedly-Marxist movement to institute plain old dictatorship in the place of capitalist power structures, while delaying the transition to democracy indefinitely (since the classless society never actually comes about). Basically, the program demands an enlightened dictatorship that will then turn around and institute a perfect democratic society, rather than succumb to the temptation to perpetuate its own power at society's expense. This is analogous to the flaw in Objectivism (which is unsurprising, given that the latter is a reactionary mirror-image of the former).

    In more general terms, Marxism's flaw is to get so caught up in its criticism of capitalism (which is more-or-less on the money, if a bit dated by now) that they skip over the hard work of inventing a truly superior system in favor of revolutionary class warfare. The premise seems to be that capitalism is so bad that class revolution can't possibly produce a worse outcome (which is pretty naive). So when such revolutions succeed, they quickly become vehicles for the cynical and power-hungry, and the whole project of constructing a classless utopia on the ruins of capitalism gets reduced into a facade, and the new dictatorship limps along under the justification of permanent class revolution against outside powers.

    tl;dr version: political movements premised on an enlightened vanguard implementing a utopia in the wake of total worldwide revolution produce perverse outcomes.
     
  8. woowoo Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    232
    I agree, greed! its a fundamental flaw in our makeup that's preventing
    us from evolving to a higher dimension. it may have had an evolutionary
    advantage as hominids on the savanna but our intellect has outpaced
    its biology and now that advantage is retarding our development.
     
  9. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    Spoken like a man who isn't rather than is. It will come to you slowly.

    That might because the Constitution wasn't designed for the people. It was designed to limit government.

    Ahh, but who actually defines greed & selfishness? You? Obama? Most people who make this accusation have no problem when it applies to themselves, or they simply wish to be included on all "their perceived greed & selfishness". But truly simply saying someone is greedy doesn't mean it is true. That is the central flaw of marxists.

    Wrong, it is being practiced by several nations and by particular leaders who simply mask what they are doing, and since one of marxisms greatest accomplishment has been its ability to infiltrate the educational system. It has succeeded in convincing many that it is still only a theory. Any form of socialism soft/hard/different variants is still marxism.
     
  10. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    Not according to your most wonderful buddies pdude & joe, who have several times intimated that marxism is a social system.

    I agree with you though that it is first and foremost an economical system. In fact, I would break it down to being more of a localized union system that has evolved into a greater economical system.
     
  11. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    The constitution requires the government to work for the general welfare. Those who accuse the current administration of Marxism are fools and tools of our very own corporate aristocracy. You jackasses better smarten up.
     
    Last edited: Nov 11, 2010
  12. ElectricFetus Sanity going, going, gone Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    18,523
    and it does not go far enough in doing so.

    We are all greedy and all selfish, that is the truth, and if there is anyone truly altruistic that is an exception to the rule that can't be counted on to run a government! Our government though a vast improvement for its time does not go far enough to limit the damage that power fed greed can cause and has been gamed some time ago into a kleptocracy.

    And again marxism does not cover greed as a core issue.

    Only claimed to be in practice but is not actually in practice, and no your general claim that any socialism is Marxism is a fallacy, might as well say we still have feudalism because money can still be inherited, socialism is a far broader topic then Marxism, not the other way around.
     
  13. John99 Banned Banned

    Messages:
    22,046
    Not me.
     
  14. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    The Constitution specifically states it is intended to create a government for the benefit and general welfare of the people. All this anti-socialism talk is just because monied interests don't want to pay taxes and want cheap labor. This is the opposite of government by and for the people, it's fascism.
     
  15. quadraphonics Bloodthirsty Barbarian Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    9,391
    Stuff and nonsense. Marxism lays out a very specific program of revolution and class warfare - the social democrats of Scandanvia (for example) are nothing of the sort. It's only Marxism if you try to achieve social justice through revolutionary class warfare. You're reducing Marxism into a scare-word to tar anyone holds social justice as a political value (which is nearly everyone, by the way).
     
  16. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    Just out of curiosity, what do you think about all the Goldies in the present Government? Apparently there has never been a US Government that has empowered more GoldmanSux employees than the preset one. As I can't stand most bankers, it sort of pisses me off.
     
  17. spidergoat pubic diorama Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    54,036
    It's a sign of the erosion of barriers between wall street and government, and this is a danger to all of us.
     
  18. Michael 歌舞伎 Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    20,285
    ARE there any barriers?

    I feel like the vote last week was a charade.

    Some Citizens voted for higher taxes, some Citizens voted for lower taxes, some for tax the middle, some for tax the top. OK, so now we let Congress express the will of the people and we'll see where that takes us.

    Nope.

    Ben Shalom Bernanke comes along and he decided what we want. He prints off a trillion or so dollars. He thinks inflation will get us through. So, it doesn't matter which way you voted. If Bernanke gets his way, you will be taxed out of 25% of your income through inflation. Who the f*ck gives him the right to decide my future? That's routing the entire system. IMO that suggests the barriers are completely gone. There a merrygoround between the Fed / GoldmanSux / Citi and the White House.



    Get this. Not a single Banker is in jail. None of Junior Bush's cronies are in jail. Most of the laws that restrict our freedoms are in place. Seems like a bunch of bullshit if you ask me.
     
  19. iceaura Valued Senior Member

    Messages:
    30,994
    There is no such thing as a Marxist state.

    Marxism is not only theoretical, it is theory. It has certain implications for political organization, but they are pretty vague.
     
  20. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    Let's see:

    1. Abolition of property

    2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax

    3. Abolition of all right of inheritance

    4. Confiscation of property of all emigrants & rebels

    5. Centralization of credit into the hands of the state

    6. Centralization of communication & transportation

    7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state

    8. Establishment of industrial armies

    9. Gradual abolition of the distinction of town and country

    10. Free education

    Yeah, you're right it seems pretty unclear how much centralization Marx & Engels were calling for!
     
  21. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    Actually it does go far enough in limiting the government. That was until hard core lefties got ahold of the Congress & SC, then came heavy regulation. Coolly and quietly inserting government into our lives more and more!

    And again marxism does not cover greed as a core issue.

    Then why is it worried about redistributing wealth?
     
  22. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    And what the Constitution meant by general welfare was laid out. It isn't in the penumbras of it.
     
  23. John T. Galt marxism is legalized hatred!! Registered Senior Member

    Messages:
    617
    Spoken like one in denial. Sometimes you are just too close to the situation to see it for what it is.
     

Share This Page