what killed Marxism?

Marxism, or what many people identify as Communism sounded like a great idea. That there was no class. Whats mine is yours and yours is mine. We all share the fruits of our labor. So what killed it? I have been reading about the Iroquois and Inca n societies which were quite well off and advanced Until white Spaniards and Europeans came along to destroy their society and then steal the ideas behind them.

Marxism, or what many people identify as Communism sounded like a great idea.

That there was no class.
Sure their wasn't there are the have and have nots. The boss and the ditch digger.

Whats mine is yours and yours is mine.
You believe that because I think it goes against human nature. Drop a steak in front ot 2 hungry dogs and watch them fight over it. people are no different.

We all share the fruits of our labor.
Sounds good on paper but truth is no one is going to want to share everything they have with others.

So what killed it?
It can't work unless there is a government or dictator to enforce it. Again there are those with power and those without and power corrupts.

Look at Venezuela falling a part, Their elected president just made him self dictator. The governments price controls are causing all kinds of problems and there is a black market growing.

www.washingtonpost.com...

I completely disagree.
Maybe if capitalist nations and national security states would stop invading, and butchering fledgeling socialist countries, we could see a marxist state actually function.

What killed marxism?
Capitalism, Class power, and control. From the time the bolshivik revolution to the fall of the USSR, Capitalist nations, led by the US government invaded, encircled, slaughtered, and led sanctions and embargo's designed to circumvent socialism and the . And they still do it today, look at Angola, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Chile, Afganistan (even before the soviets), Libia, Iraq, Grenada, Guatimala, Hatti, Cuba and Yugoslavia.

The social gains those countries attempted to make were crushed by proxy/mercinary wars, counterinsugencies and counterrevolutions led by the CIA, or direct military intervention.

Why you ask? because those countries attempted to redistrubute the land and the wealth of the country DOWNWARDS, to the middle class and poor. THose countries interfeared with the overweening priviledges of the comprador class that was in power, and that is intollerable to them.

Want to know more about the bloody history of capitalism? look into this guy: Michael Parenti, found here: www.michaelparenti.org...

Read some of his articles, or better yet, buy one of his books.

Originally posted by fiveangelsfrank

Sure their wasn't there are the have and have nots. The boss and the ditch digger.

One wonderful part of a marxist critique is the fact that it actually looks at class power and a driving force instead of completely ignoring it. Capitalism give you the haves and the have-nots, this rich and the poor. Private gain means public poverty.

We all share the fruits of our labor.
Sounds good on paper but truth is no one is going to want to share everything they have with others.

THen how come Nicaragua was doing so well before US intervention? And yugloslavia? Hatti?

What 'killed' Marxism is the triumph of socialism, which was Marxisms goal all along.

Capitalism = Thesis

Marxism = Antithesis

Socialism = Synthesis

Every western industrialised nation was socialist by shortly after WWII at the latest, and if there is any country left anywhere that is not socialist now I would be surprised.

Mission accomplished. Next step: one world socialist government.

Marxism as in Das Kapital exists as it has since it was written as a philosophy it was never it its literal sense implemented.

In USSR there was Leninism, Stalinism etc and power and internicene conflicts corrupted these until the econmy dropped out.

Communism is a closed system of economy and like the free market of capitalism is rarely seen successfully in its pure form.

Originally posted by AMANNAMEDQUEST
Marxism, or what many people identify as Communism sounded like a great idea. That there was no class. Whats mine is yours and yours is mine. We all share the fruits of our labor. So what killed it? I have been reading about the Iroquois and Inca n societies which were quite well off and advanced Until white Spaniards and Europeans came along to destroy their society and then steal the ideas behind them.

What connection are you trying to make between the Inca's and Marxism?
Karl Marx never came up with the idea for his book and he certainly didn't believe in any of it. He was approached to script a book, he was given a clear idea of what the subject of the book was to be.

Communism in Russia was really about a dictatorship. It never really was a situation where everyone was equal. It was just like in Orwells book, Animal Farm, we are all equal except some are MORE equal than others!!! The bastards in power were never on any kind of equality, not in Russia anyhow. Fidel Castro was an exception, the other communist rulers and all their minnions in every district were alot better off than the rest. China today is communist, and it is a most evil and barbaric regime.

Communism couldn't ever really work in society, because everyone is supposed to be equal, but that is really based on everyone making an equal contribution to society, of course everyone doesn't contribute equally to a society and those who do more will expect more. To have such a society does also require very strict inforcement for the system to work, and such a society does infringe on everyones basic human rights. So in theory it might sound like an ok idea at first but it wouldn't work in practice.

Originally posted by resistor


Every western industrialised nation was socialist by shortly after WWII at the latest, and if there is any country left anywhere that is not socialist now I would be surprised.

Mission accomplished. Next step: one world socialist government.

And what is your definition of socialism? Massive personal wealth? Huge public poverty? No ecological protection? Militaristic oppression on a global scale? Thats capitalism brother.

At least a one world socialistic government would grant you the right to a job, a pension, healthcare, paid vacations, and other social programs. What has capitalism brought us? Massive public poverty, a failing ecosystem, a failing infastructure, huge military buildups, massive public debt, and global oppression of any differing social order.

You got it backwards buddy, you'd be better off under socialism, than capitalism.

5 words
joseph stalin
and
chairman mao

they completely warped marx's good ideas and twisted the face of marxism forever

I can't believe how many people can even defend communism.
How many people have got on inner tubes to leave the US and go to Cuba. None that's how many.
That wall around Berlin wasn't there to keep us out it was there to keep them in. How many cities in the US have walls with gunners and mine fields. None.
Here you can go as far as you want. There you do as you are told and if you don't like it they send you to a gulag.
How many people are running to N Korea, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Chile, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Bolivia or Mexico to live under their standard of living.
People are crossing deserts, oceans and doing anything to come here and live the American way. They will risk death and many die trying to get here. Can we say the same about communist countries. Nope.
Obesity is the biggest problem the poor have in the US. They don't stand in long lines to get their collective bread. They shop and go home and watch their cable TV.
Our system is making the world better not marx's. In a couple of generations China won't be communist. They have the fastest growing economy and they will be the biggest market. Then what. You think the Chinese are going to work all day making plasma TV's for the US and go home and watch 60's vintage 13 inch black and whites.
So you keep telling your self that communism is good.

Soviet monument to make way for Reagan
www.breitbart.com...



[edit on 10-2-2007 by fiveangelsfrank]

Originally posted by fiveangelsfrank

Our system is making the world better not marx's.

Soviet monument to make way for Reagan
www.breitbart.com...

SORRY BUT IN WHAT WAY IS 'OUR' SYSTEM MAKING THE WORLD BETTER?




[edit on 10-2-2007 by KilgoreTrout]

What killed Marxism? I think the idea itself was it's own demise.

I've read a fair share of Marx's work, and I too found myself entralled in his work. This idea of a classless state and everyone working together, something inside you just sits right. But it goes against all human nature. As we evolve, certain tendencies become apparent. Abusing power is something that we can not overcome. We need to install a system where one man does not have absolute power. Anyone with absolute power is doomed to abuse it. Hence, Marxism or Communism, can never work.

So what killed Marxism? Marxism killed itself.

Originally posted by fiveangelsfrank
I can't believe how many people can even defend communism.
How many people have got on inner tubes to leave the US and go to Cuba. None that's how many.

Your right, none are leaving because many dont have the faintest clue of whats really happened in Cuba. You cant sit there and justify a pre-Castro Cuba (batista) and say it was better. that country was ruled by an autocratic comprador who worked his people to death for the sake of the capital accumulation process. Castro came in and at least he gave the poeple something.

That wall around Berlin wasn't there to keep us out it was there to keep them in. How many cities in the US have walls with gunners and mine fields. None.

Id build a wall around my country too if it were attacked within the first few months of its insecption. Maybe the USSR wouldnt have had such a massive military buildup if Western Capitalists werent so pissed about their lost markets.

Here you can go as far as you want. There you do as you are told and if you don't like it they send you to a gulag.

Oh yes there is repression in communist states, just as there is in capitalist states. Its funny you should mention the gulag. Funny because after the fall of the soviet union, you never heard of the millions of people that should have been pooring out of the gulag. You never heards of the hundreds of thousands of political refugee's being freed. Maybe you never herd of all those people because the gulag existed more in the minds of Western Leaders and Media Pundits than it did in real life. THe figure thrown around is that communism killed 100 million, but the researchers that came up with that number never listed any of their sources.

How many people are running to N Korea, Mozambique, Nicaragua, Chile, Afghanistan, Libya, Iraq, Iran, Grenada, Guatemala, Haiti, Cuba, Yugoslavia, Venezuela, Bolivia or Mexico to live under their standard of living.

Of those countries listed, only 4 are socialistic in nature. the others are client-state "free-market" capitalist nations, set up by the US national security state BY FORCE.

Dont even try to tell me the people in those countries are better off under capitalism because its just not true.

People are crossing deserts, oceans and doing anything to come here and live the American way. They will risk death and many die trying to get here.

The idea that America is a paradise has permiated throughout the Third World largely because of American Propaganda. People go to the US either because their current client-state regiem is way to repressive (in which case many are sent right back where they came from) and the others leave seeking " a better life" IE personal wealth and luxury. THats what they see in the US luxury. But the fact is fewer and fewer Americans are living those luxurious lives.

Obesity is the biggest problem the poor have in the US. They don't stand in long lines to get their collective bread. They shop and go home and watch their cable TV.

Pathetic. You have no idea what your talking about here. the poor in the US have just as many problems as many in the third world. you really think richer americans take care of the poorer ones? what world are you living in?



[edit on 10-2-2007 by InSpiteOf]

Our system is making the world better not marx's.

someone already pointed this out but how is Capitalism making the world better? Its a fact that global poverty is growing at a faster rate than the world population is. Capital is being consolidated into the hands of the very few while the many are being oppressed economically and politically. ANytime th epoor try to rise up with dignity they are crushed by counterinsugency forces trained by the CIA.

In a couple of generations China won't be communist. They have the fastest growing economy and they will be the biggest market.

Ya and it has nothing to do with what the people want and everything to do with what the few rich business owners want. Dont kid yourself, free market capitalism doesnt work for you, it works for its self and the capital accumulation process.

Then what. You think the Chinese are going to work all day making plasma TV's for the US and go home and watch 60's vintage 13 inch black and whites.

No i think the poor and middle class chinese will be even more repressed and denegrated when free market capitalism takes over. there will be more sweat shops and child labour, less ecological protections and job protections, and more and more profit for the few.

So you keep telling your self that communism is good.

communism may not be the best system out there, but capitalism definatly isnt either. Social democracy is what i believe in.

There was a joke that went around Russia shortly after the fall of the soviet union that went something like this.
Q: What has capitalism done in 1 year that socialism couldnt do in 70?
A: Make socialism look good.

Soviet monument to make way for Reagan
www.breitbart.com...

So what? the rich leaders taht benifitted from the soviets collapse want to raise a statue with public moneys. That doesnt mean that communism was the worst evil out there. Reagan was a monster and a terrible human being. He launched the bloodiest war in the Nicaraguan history in support of an autocratic rightwing miltaristic regiem.



[edit on 10-2-2007 by InSpiteOf]

[edit on 10-2-2007 by InSpiteOf]

I agree with InSpiteOf, essentially capitalism killed Marxism.

Capitalism, by its very nature, is mutable and highly adaptive. It will change itself, by means of controlling the media and education, as well as its own marketing mechanisms, in order to protect itself. It will also vociferously attack any perceived threat and attempt to consume it and make it its own. It can absorb other ideologies and change them to serve its needs. The very existence of this thread is evidence of that, in a way!

Look at the way in which capitalism has used, and is still using, Christianity to promote itself. Look at how it is now using "terror" to bring the populations of Iraq and Afghanistan into our lovely global market!

If we look at McCarthyism in the US during the early Cold War, we can see how capitalism even used communism (or at least the fear of it) to strengthen it as never before! I think we are still living today with that legacy of Socialism and Communism, or, indeed, any alternative system, as being dirty and evil and insiduous. Its what gave us New Labour here in the UK.

Capitalism, as a system, is by far the most effective one ever created in terms of its ability to influence the thinking of its populations. Even greater than Soviet or Nazi propaganda - that is why it has survived and they have not.

I may be throwing myself to the sharks here, but I think that, ultimately, capitalism will also destroy itself, and that this is ultiamtely inevitable.

Another big factor, which obviously exacerbated McCarthyism, is the role of China and Russia, which were not communist or socialist states at all, but totalitarian dictatorships. People still associate communism with those states. Lets not be confused by what passes itself off as communism - we have yet to see a true communist state, IMO, but I will be looking further at the histories of the smaller states that InSpiteOf mentioned.

I think another factor is that Marx was very much a writer of his time, and wrote in the mode and context of his era. His 19th Century style of mecha nising political systems ( I mean to say that the 19th Century philosophers held a very mechanistic world view) and the terminology he uses are difficult to relate to today, and a 21st Century reader has to dig deeper to find the good stuff than the original audience. Despite this, I think his core critiques and descriptions of capitalism are still very much valid today.
Also the concept of alienation is still very much alive! How did you feel at work this week?


I have used communism and Marxism synonymously (sp?) here, but communism was certainly not all their was to Marxism. It was also a method of looking at political system that related very much to Hegelism, and also a description of the social and political implications of capitalism and industrialisation.
Should the title of this thread really be "What killed Communism?"
And is it dead?

Sorry for the long post.

As America emerged from the Great Depression, madcap comedies no longer provided the relief from day-to-day misery; by avoiding the growing international tension, they just seemed juvenile. That, plus the fact that many of Groucho's jokes were overtly sexual, meant that they didn't appeal to America's changing tastes. The singing "adventure comedy" duo of Crosby and Hope replaced the Vaudeville humor of Chico, Harpo, Zeppo, and Groucho.


The "other" marxism died out because it appealed to what is best in humanity: charity, humility, a sense of justice, equality, and community.

Those great ideals are qualities men choose to possess when it suits them. But only when they choose to do so.


Capitalism, on the other hand, appeals to humans as they inherently are. By speaking in terms of personal gain and material benefit, and the freedom to waste or hoard it, it Capitalism appeals to men and women who can never long escape their own base natures.

Basically, marxism is practical for any civilization inhabited by egoless altruistic robots. But among apes, capitalism reigns.


That, or you can believe that a secret cabal of insiders, who mouthed the platitudes of marx while despoiling the very monument to his thought, always venally corrupted every marxist state to serve their own dark ends.



all the best.
.

Originally posted by AMANNAMEDQUEST
Whats mine is yours and yours is mine.

Thats not cool. Whats mine is mine, keep your crap to yourself, no?

We all share the fruits of our labor.

Thats not true though. In communism, everyone benefits from the labour of the few. Thats great for everyone else.

So what killed it?

*salutes*

I have been reading about the Iroquois and Inca n societies which were quite well off and advanced Until white Spaniards and Europeans came along to destroy their society and then steal the ideas behind them.

Where'd you hear that? They werent'. Their technology was stone age. The Incans were a hereditary dictatorships where the preistly class was the only other authority. There was no communism. The iroquis were disorganized with local tribes and villages being run by small time and relatively benevolent warlords. They were not communist.

"Castro came in and at least he gave the people something. "
what has he given them? Nothing. They are no better off now then before him and I know people that have been on those rafts. They have nothing good to say about dear leader.
"Maybe the USSR wouldn't have had such a massive military buildup if Western Capitalists weren't so pissed about their lost markets"
Yeah right if Stalin could have kept going he would have taken it to the Atlantic coast. The biggest post WW 2 tragedy was leaving eastern Europe under communist control.
"Don't even try to tell me the people in those countries are better off under capitalism because its just not true"
Free markets lead to better living and that's a fact. Their will be people that don't do well and others that do obscenely well off the sweat of others but that's just the way it is. Maybe it's cruel but life isn't fair.
"The idea that America is a paradise has permitted throughout the Third World largely because of American Propaganda"
I heard that all before but the fact is people will risk everything to come here. If you work hard will do well here. This country isn't just a one race nation. The US was built by immigrants from ever corner of the planet. Most trying to leave a living hell for one reason or another.
"Pathetic. You have no idea what your talking about here"
Really I was poor once and worked my way out of it. I rather be poor here then poor in some 3rd world dump. If you don't want to be poor just work hard and there is a way out. I don't expect any one to help me.

I often wonder why so many people equate a Socialist state with Stalin/Mao/Castro etc. Is it because they have no understanding of the issue or have been brainwashed into thinking Socialism means state dictatorship?

It doesn't have to be that way. A socialist state should be one with a social conscience, where everyone is treated equally, where people through hard work can prosper, where a government serves the people and not the other way round.
What we have had in the past in supposedly communist or socialist states is pure dictatorship which, when you compare to many "democratic" countries, is not very different. Those communist states were run by elitist dictators and powerful families who imposed their will on the people, not very different from the mainly 2 party systems we have in the western world.

"I often wonder why so many people equate a Socialist state with Stalin/Mao/Castro etc"
I would say because socialism and dictaors make you dependent on them. No thanks I want as little contact with the governmant as possible. I don't want to be dependent on it for anything and I don't believe in taken from Y to support X.

"socialist state should be one with a social conscience, where everyone is treated equally, where people through hard work can prosper, where a government serves the people and not the other way round"
That's what we have here. "prosper" how do you prosper when what you make is taken and doled out to everyone else that didn't work as hard as you?

"government serves the people and not the other way round"
You got that backwards. Socialist serve the government.

"Those communist states were run by elitist dictators and powerful families who imposed their will on the people, not very different from the mainly 2 party systems we have in the western world"
Sure it is. As much as the politians in the US suck we can still vote them out. Just look at last Nov. In Jan of 2009 GWB will board a plane and leave DC. He will not stay in office as much as people here think. The founders of the US made sure that no one man could become king or emporer. We may not be perfect but we will never be ruled like that. People that live under dictators are partly to blame for their problems.