Really, well, I guess we know where you stand. You are among friends, but don't count me as one. BTW-Social Justice is marxist clap-trap. It cannot and will not ever be achieved, because once you have fulfilled it for one; you have done so at the expense of another. Additionally, revolutionary class warfare has been going on in America for over a century. The fact that you don't recognize it is stunning, but then again you are part of the problem not the solution.
All done by what? Democratic local government or a national dictatorship? I didn't see Marx state his view on that question. Maybe he did. I am not a scholar of Marxism. Yes Marx advocated big government but big government could be decentralized. I think the USA did better at providing free education when providing free education was a decentralized form of socialism. I think the educational bureaucracies are hurting education; but that does not change the fact that socialist public education made America a more prosperous nation than it would have been if it did not force those who could afford it to pay for the education of poor kids. This was good localized socialism. In 1647 the Commonwealth of Massachusetts mandated that towns provide education for children. This socialist practice spread from Massachusetts to other states. I personally would advocate socialistically mandating collecting taxes to pay for every child to have equal access to education but I would let the parents use their own free market choices to assign their child and the collected taxes to a school of their choice so long as that school met minimum standards. Since I want to give schools the right to reject difficult students I would spend extra taxes on the difficult students to offset the disadvantage that being in class full of difficult children would be for difficult children. I might want to spend extra on kids who are gifted in science since it is science and engineering (not business) that is the main foundation of the growth in prosperity. Are my preferences for how I would like public education to be too socialistic for your taste? Are even you a bit of a socialist when it comes to educating children? The point being that when small towns do socialist things like paving roads that is decentralized socialism. Are you a bit socialist when it comes to public paved roads? Are people who are socialist about public paved roads Marxists?
Centralized is centralized. Furthermore, if you had actually read the list instead being a marxist sympathizer. You would have noticed number 9 on the list. Therefore, nationally centralized. Fact, big government is big government it cannot be decentralized. To say otherwise isn't favorable to you. Another clear distinction that needs to be addressed is your bringing up highways. For starters, this particular issue isn't socialist if it is kept at the local level. It is simply a matter of needs to the local citizenry. They need a road, they vote to build a road. They build the road. Nothing socialist about that. I love how socialist, and by extension marxist sympathizers use this argument as a case proving that the opposition has socialist sympathies. It's bogus and furthermore you know it. This is not an example of how socialism works. Next education isn't about educating young minds, its about three seperate and distinct things. First, it is about getting federal funds. Second, it is about preventing lawsuits usually bogus in and of itself, because the suit is based off of political correctness. Third, it is about indoctrinating young minds into believing all the BS about global warming, the wonders of marxism, the incorrect teaching that fascism is a conservative ideology, the absolution of evolution, how eggs will kill you, etc& etc. Yes, that is a little over the top. However, some here will get my point, as I am sure you will as well; except that you will have to keep face so you will troll on about how I overstated the point. The point isn't exactly what they are teaching, but what they are omitting in their teaching. If you are going to teach global warming, then you must teach its opposite whatever you would call that. If you are going to teach marxism, then you better teach capitalism. If you are going to teach evolution, then you should teach religion. And if you are teaching one in a positive light, then teach the other the same way. Public education is a nice idea, except that who controls the coffers controls the content. Most schools talk a big game, but don't actually follow up on it. When you have 8th graders who still cannot read a text, what do you think education is about? When you have freshman in high school who still cannot read a dial clock, what do you think education is about? When you have students being told to remove the American flag from their bicycles, what do you think education is about? When you have students being suspended for wearing a pro American t-shirt, what do you think education is about? But when you privatize education, it becomes about educating young minds. True there will still be issues, but if that private school is run by the right people. Those issues will fast become non-existent.
Marxism as an economic philosophy isn't about centralization. Marxism is about an ultimately obtainable level of decentralization following a proletariat revolution. That people who pretended to be Marxist used his positions to further their own statist agendas doesn't change, in my view, what Marxism is, it just shows what the actual flaw in Marxism is: It is based so heavily on an optimistic view of humans being cooperative and altruistic, that it is unattainable. Worse, because it is so unattainable those who pursue it put themselves in a position to be manipulated by those claiming to pursue its goals, but who can then legitimately claim the need for a long "transition" that not only will never be completed, but could never be completed even under optimal conditions. If human beings were all angels, Marxism would have a chance at working; but if human beings were all angels, it wouldn't be needed. Marxism as explained by Marx is really a sort of utopian anarchy that follows a transition state. Problem is: there is no way to get to that utopia form that state.
You, apparently, have not actually read Marx. The withering away of the State was one of Marx's goals, or rather destinations, following the overthrowing of the inevitable industrial capitalist dominance of said State. Marx theorized that with the proletariat in control of the State it would soon have no function, and being useless as well as expensive would gradually disappear in some unspecified manner. The notion that people's basic character and behaviors are products of their economic class, and people can only be persuaded to treat each other decently if they are prevented from becoming wealthy, hardly fits the description "optimistic".
Why yes, of course, that must be why Marx said that advanced countries would have the following generally applicable: 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 Who else would control this kind of advanced society but the state?
Ya know, when I saw that you had posted here I couldn't wait to read your enlightened commentary. You didn't disappoint. Once if Marx's goal was the withering away of the state, then why did he say that the most advanced societies would apply these general basics: 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 Seems sympathizing with marxism really blinds even the most enlightened ones. Just out of curiosity, how exactly does this advanced society preclude a state? I am eagerly awaiting the next enlightened response.
You should read some Marx, some time. It's interesting, although a grim and dull slog for prose. Until then, a willful state of mystification will be your lot. Good luck!
Your perfect for tonight. However, you presume too much when you ask me to read something I have been studying for years. Perhaps, pride is getting in your way. Afterall, you responded to a perfectly legitimate question with a conceded response of presumption. Hmm, I wonder what to take from this? But not to worry, soon those other brilliant sympathizers will come to your rescue. With all the talk of fearmongering, & intellectual reduction, as well other usual remarks attempting to reduce opposition into ridicule.
Then your question is not honest. I was giving you the benefit of the doubt. Here's what you pretend to be replying to, with the overlooked parts bolded: You did find that part, in something Marx wrote, yes?
Here was the original question, that by the way is an original statement by Marx himself: Once if Marx's goal was the withering away of the state, then why did he say that the most advanced societies would apply these general basics: 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 Seems sympathizing with marxism really blinds even the most enlightened ones. Just out of curiosity, how exactly does this advanced society preclude a state? Here was your answer: You should read some Marx, some time. It's interesting, although a grim and dull slog for prose. Until then, a willful state of mystification will be your lot. Good luck! Then you continued your presumptious behavior with this: Here's what you pretend to be replying to, with the overlooked parts bolded: Once again to include your bolded parts, of which I have italicized, that I supposively ignored: I still counter with my original question that is borne out of an original statement by Marx. If the withering away of the state which is controlled by the proletariat, would soon have no function then: How could an advanced state which includes this: 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 How does this function without a state? Therefore my question was not only honest it was legitimate. Answer the question without apology or sympathy towards Marx, or without your vague attempts to reduce the question. I will make it easier for you, though you haven't earned the benefit of the doubt here due to your own dishonesty. If the state is to wither away after proletariat control wrested from capitalists, then how could be the abolition of property, progressive or graduated income tax, centralization of anything, free education, etc., without there being a state? Who would make sure these things happen in the advanced state as written by Marx himself? If there is no state, how could these issues be ensured without a state? It is pretty simple isn't it? Yet, you choose to obfuscate, dance, and generally pretend sophistication where none exists.
Don't worry, I've long made it a rule to account anyone who displays affinity for Ayn Rand in the "want nothing to do with" camp. So you've been on the list of people I do not want to be friends with since the very first time I encountered your username. Social justice isn't "for one." By definition, it's concieved at the societal level. And if it's actually just, then there's nothing to complain about in whatever harm befalls specific individuals in the process. Don't be silly. What we've had is reactionary class warfare - our society is more-or-less exactly the one that Marx was criticizing in his classic works - leading to an expansion in inequality, power and privilege for the monied, etc. It requires a truly Randian paranoia to equate the modern USA with any kind of Bolshevik revolution. But then, that's why Objectivists have such a well-earned reputation as blathering kooks.
Marx envisioned no such advanced state. Those are all necessary, in Marx's view, to oppose and eventually destroy the tyranny of the existing corporate industrial state, which otherwise will inevitably, in Marx's opinion, act in the interests of the ownership class. They each and specifically counter some means by which the corporate statists in the service of the ownership class get and keep power over the proletariat. The result is supposed to be the rise of the proletariat to governing power, at which time most of those means become irrelevant (read them: you don't need to ban inheritance of nonexistent private property, for example. Private property itself requires the backing of a government, so its vanishing and the withering of the state would coincide. And so forth. )
The answer to "who" is that Marx, again, imagined humans to be angels and expected that in a state free society people would live in a frictionless efficient communal manner (hence "communism"). People would band together out of the desire to serve the common good and help their fellow man. In a funny way, Marx strikes me as having some things in common with Murray Rothbard (the anarcho-capitalist), with the obvious difference that Rothbard expects that markets and property rights will lead people into cooperating in a stateless society, whereas Marx thinks the general sense of humanity and decency will be enough. (Rothbard even believed—even with anarchy—the market would provide for national defense, protection of property rights, a stable currency and many other things that we often think of as "State"-provided.) I do think it is a mistake to assume that because most people see a State as necessary for order, that Marx must have thought so, and so Marx's talk of a stateless society was somehow, I suppose, a lie to cover a statist agenda. I think he was as sincere in his belief in his vision of proletariat anarchy as ordered and efficient as Rothbard was. Most anarchists believe their preferred post-state societies will be orderly and peaceful.
Really? And what was that you wrote a few posts back....hmm...., oh yeah, you wrote to me that "You should read some Marx, some time. It's interesting, although a grim and dull slog for prose. Until then, a willful state of mystification will be your lot. Good luck!" Apparently the reason you cannot answer the question is because it is in fact you who is in a "willful state of mystification". The Norton Critical Edition of the Communist Manifesto page 74 is Marx saying. Yes that Marx, you know the one you just said didn't envision such a state, wrote the following: "Nevertheless in the most advanced societies" the following is applicable: 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 Your following statement is however accurate: And so does the abolition of private property, so what is your point? Finally are you ever going to answer the question?
I am utterly heartbroken that you won't consider me a friend!! Social justice is impossible and this time I will make clearer for you, though I suspect you knew exactly what I meant. Once you have achieved it for one group, it comes at the expense of another group. As for your last incendiary comment, progressive taxation for over a century considering the Constitution forbid it before an amendment was passed is not a reaction. It is an act of war against the individual. There is nothing paranoid about that just fact. But I know you marxists have a hard time with facts, which is why most of you live a life of lies and deception. You get away it because you have infiltrated society very stealthily, yeah I know a little about stealth socialism. Also, if rand and randians are such kooks why the fuck are you so bothered by them??
Why yes, because after all there is no other society that would serve a greater good. Of course, I know the immediate response is that capitalism doesn't, at least from marxist sympathizers. But I wonder what the point in capitalism would be to produce things to make life better, if not to serve a greater good. yes it is true that one is dealing with another, but there is an exchange there that helps two people have a better life. I get your point, but I am going to say something that you will have to investigate yourself. Marx wasn't exactly a proponent of anarchy, furthermore to him anarchy doesn't achieve the overall goal of equality, at least the equality that he sought. I cannot disagree with this statement, but it would require morals. For most people morals are a religious entity. Though personally, I don't need religion to be moral. But the point is that Marx wanted a classless, moraless society and in his mind to achieve that religion had to be vanquished. Except I refer to what I stated above concerning Marx and anarchy. Therefore, I cannot agree on your assessment here.
The continued nonexistence of private property does not require a State. The abolition of existing State establishment of private property might or might not, depending, but in any case would only have to be done once - after which, the State would be irrelevant in the matter: according to Marx. Similarly with the other items in your list. Read them - few of them would even apply to the situation Marx envisioned subsequent to the rise of the "workers of the world". They are obviously not prescriptions for the governing of the post-Revolution world. Marx envisioned the withering away of a State made irrelevant by the rise to power of the proletariat. For one thing, their influence on my country and my life has been malign in general and spectacularly disastrous in particular (Alan Greenspan will do for example). They get into positions of real power, and their juvenile economics and fantasy world political beliefs do real harm. Meanwhile, their bizarre assertions and disconnection from real life muddle and waylay useful discussion of issues large and small.
"The proletariat will use its political power to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralize all instruments of production into the hands of the state, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible." -Marx The Communist Manifesto, A Norton Critical Edition p. 74 The above quote does not support your assertion and it comes straight from the man himself, not me. Look it up, I have no reason to lie. In short, I ain't making this up. It is coming straight from Marx himself. Where does this say anything about the withering away of the state? Furthermore, tell me how does the abolition of private property stay enforced without a state? You're confusing Marx's assertion of a capitalist state being taken over by the rise of another state. Except that you are totally denying the rise of the proletariat ruling class, the other state. Why do you keep sugarcoating this? I mean sure it would be wonderful if a withering away of the state could happen and everyone would be on the same page. Seriously, you don't think I would love to see it? The withering away of the state, I mean! Except there is one huge problem! We weren't made that way, we have human emotions that foster human reactions and desires.
Marx saw political power nothing more than the means of one class's domination of another. All political power in capitalist society was the power used to oppress the working class, through taxes, regulations, etc. As Engels wrote: And from the manifesto: Marx believed in the abolition of classes and with that the abolition of taxation, which he saw as the exploitation of one class by another. As he wrote in his "Class Struggles in France: 1848-1850": In the end he saw his program as not simply creating a new class structure in which the proles dominated their former masters, but one where no one could dominate anyone else, as everyone yields all their political power.
