Tag: marxism

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

universal and working class consciousness…//On the Birth of Global Green Consciousness

universal and working class consciousness…//On the Birth of Global Green Consciousness
We have been critical of marxism but wary of critiquing its key focus on the working class: it is a brilliant strategic thought one challenges to one’s theoretical peril. And yet we have also considered a critical stance, given as noted, its failure to really emerge as expected. The working class has never quite been revolutionary, not surprising since it is an abstraction not a person and has no real ‘essence’ as do people, and the idea reintroduces class domination upside down just as a socialist end point wishes to abolish class. Continue reading universal and working class consciousness…//On the Birth of Global Green Consciousness

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…

Stages of production theory? A system of epochs done right

Marx’s classic analysis of capitalism is marred by its unnecessary theoretical framework of historical periodization, e.g. …feudalism, capitalism, communism…The result is a misperception of the complexity of world history which doesn’t follow the marxist analysis as historical materialism.

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A system of epochs done right…. Continue reading Stages of production theory? A system of epochs done right

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.