Tag: communism

Two Trends in the American Socialist Movement: Why We Should Throw Kautsky Out With the Bathwater | Socialist Revolution

This tiresome and arrogant marxist boilerplate shows us why the whole set of movements on the left failed. I hold no brief for Kautsky but he did record the failure of Bolshevism.

I happen to agree with this essay: we should consider the failures of social democracy. But we must examine the even worse failures of the bolshevik revolutionaries. A whole new perspective is needed.
The entire marxist theory structure is flawed.
Our idea of ‘democratic market neo-communism’ gives some suggestions. The problem is rendered insoluble by marxists in trying to follow Marx.
In fact, it is not that hard to create a viable solution.
Thus, there are two main trends in the socialist movement. There are those who fight for socialist revolution, for reforms as a means to a revolutionary end, for the complete dismantling of the capitalist state, and for the establishment of workers’ democracy and a workers’ government, which would nationalize the key levers of the economy and mobilize the working class to defend the revolution. And there are those who limit their conception of socialism to gradual improvements in social welfare through a series of piecemeal reforms, treating these as an end in themselves and remaining within the limits of the capitalist economy and state. Moreover, the reforms they demand are contingent on what is “acceptable” to the capitalists, or “realistic” within the bounds of a system based on private ownership of the means of production—not the real needs of the workers and society’s material capacity to meet those needs.

Source: Two Trends in the American Socialist Movement: Why We Should Throw Kautsky Out With the Bathwater | Socialist Revolution

A reasoned idea of social transformation and its audience in waiting…

https://darwiniana.com/2018/11/08/some-suggestions-for-a-neo-post-marxist-communist-platform/

If the left could extricate itself from marxism, without betraying its broader impulse to challenge capitalism (by evolution or revolution), and produce a reasoned and functional plan for social transformation that was halfway decently thought out, had a plan for a new kind of ecological postcapitalist economy, and somehow safeguarded against stalinism/leninism, they would find a huge audience, even one that is revolutionary.
Continue reading A reasoned idea of social transformation and its audience in waiting…

Echoes of 1848

We linked to this older piece archived at redfortyeight.com today: a popular post, we repost the material here

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We have arrived at the moment foretold by the revolutionaries of the year 1848

May 3rd, 2017 •

The future of the world system at the end of globalization remains tremendously uncertain, but the crisis of capitalism at a time of planetary danger summons at once its dialectical companion, the idea of communism. Continue reading Echoes of 1848

Global warming as grounds for revolutionary ecological socialism…

R48G: global warming as grounds for revolutionary ecological socialism…
August 10th, 2018 •
We are almost at the gaian endgame: we need a revolutionary movement reborn from the internationals of the twentieth century, able to create a complete break with that past without frittering away the opportunity in facile reformism and yet not smothered in marxist dogmas. Continue reading Global warming as grounds for revolutionary ecological socialism…

The ‘working class’ is an abstraction, not a person…we cannot predict or control it

The ‘working class’ is an abstraction, not a person…we cannot predict or control it
July 16th, 2018 • Continue reading The ‘working class’ is an abstraction, not a person…we cannot predict or control it

The communist moment is coming, but is the left ready with a real platform? Marxist boilerplate isn’t good enough

The communist moment is coming, but is the left ready with a real platform? Marxist boilerplate isn’t good enough
July 13th, 2018 •
The whole of bolshevism was a wasted opportunity and part of the problem was the wrong analysis of Marxism
November 24th, 2017 •

We have repeatedly criticized Marxism on the grounds of its theoretical limits.
Its historical materialism is a world view too constrained for us now, and the stages of production theory is simply wrong. There is no inherent law of historical setting a progression from feudalism to capitalism to communism. And this view of the matter resulted in a collision of liberalism and its supposed opposite in a communism that was never even specified in advance. The whole of bolshevism was a wasted opportunity and part of the problem was the wrong analysis of Marxism.
In our manifestos and many posts here we have suggested a new approach that is a hybrid of markets, planning (and a third autonomous lower level), a reformed political system as real democracy, based on a constitutional neo-communism or Commons.
This set up should invoke a new international, but it must be a version of ‘socialism in one country’ and be able to work on that basis.
The point here is that capitalism isn’t going to evolve into communism without the action of free agents to bring it about. It is easy however to derive a logical ‘inevitability’ based on the need for a shared foundation as real democracy beyond the bourgeois brand.
First is the evolutionary version which might generate its own revolutionary outcome. But the next opportunity must not be bogged down in Marxist fallacies and Marx worship.

where are the socialist second thoughts on the failures of marxism…?//Fukuyama’s second thoughts: ‘socialism ought to come back’

Fukuyama has at least seen where he went wrong, but have the marx dogmatists, such as those at this religious marxism website, seen where marxism has gone wrong? They sound as if the legacy of marx, let alone lenin, had any successes. But it has not. It is a record of total failure. In part this is marx’s fault, for inflicting bad theories on his religious cult of personality. Continue reading where are the socialist second thoughts on the failures of marxism…?//Fukuyama’s second thoughts: ‘socialism ought to come back’