Serious Marxism, Socialism, Communism, Anarchism: the left-wing political & economic thought thread

Myzozoa

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https://www.theguardian.com/news/2018/apr/20/yanis-varoufakis-marx-crisis-communist-manifesto
ignore the authors opening celebration of the supposed poetics of marx's writings

"
Similarly, Marx and Engels failed to estimate the impact of their writing on capitalism itself. To the extent that the manifesto helped fashion the Soviet Union, its eastern European satellites, Castro’s Cuba, Tito’s Yugoslavia and several social democratic governments in the west, would these developments not cause a chain reaction that would frustrate the manifesto’s predictions and analysis? After the Russian revolution and then the second world war, the fear of communism forced capitalist regimes to embrace pension schemes, national health services, even the idea of making the rich pay for poor and petit bourgeois students to attend purpose-built liberal universities. Meanwhile, rabid hostility to the Soviet Union stirred up paranoia and created a climate of fear that proved particularly fertile for figures such as Joseph Stalin and Pol Pot.

I believe that Marx and Engels would have regretted not anticipating the manifesto’s impact on the communist parties it foreshadowed. They would be kicking themselves that they overlooked the kind of dialectic they loved to analyse: how workers’ states would become increasingly totalitarian in their response to capitalist state aggression, and how, in their response to the fear of communism, these capitalist states would grow increasingly civilised."

read this the other day and thought of the ideology threads on this forum
 

Chou Toshio

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So guys, am I the only one who feels super stoked by Jeremy Corbyn’s First Refusal idea? I’m still a social democrat, still a capitalist who believes in markets— but this idea is just brilliant. In the normal confines of government action it hurts my brain to think about how to create the right incentives to keep jobs in a country; to reign in the ills of globalization. The idea that any company that wants to sell itself, ship over seas, etc. first has to give the workers a pass at buying the operation, and the government is going to very cheaply lend them the money to buy it and turn it into a worker coop— that is just too brilliant for words. It’s Democratic, it’s so uninvasive, gives a choice to all parties, but sooooo profound. It cuts through all the bullshit, and gives workers but a liberty and dignity in one fell swoop. I just think it’s brilliant. The US is probably impossible far away from such a proposal now and such a proposal would have a minimal impact here in Japan, but I got to clap my hands and cheer for British labor.
 

Chou Toshio

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If there is enough response maybe should be a new thread— but I really wanted to say something about a fallen brother, Michael Brooks.

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Completely stunned Brooks is gone. This is going to sound cliche, but he WAS so young, he WAS so talented— and as I listened in I always believed he would be a critical moral anchor and leader for the upcoming generations.

I can’t recall ever being so saddened by the death of a public figure. This was someone who really mattered.

The loss of Michael Brooks is really a loss for the world imo— he was a true brother to humanity.

Rest in Power.:psytear:
 
I'm surprised this thread only has one post in 2020. It's been one hell of a year and, from an American perspective, I feel like we're witnessing the slow-motion collapse of the neoliberal order. The country is facing multiple simultaneous crises: the opioid epidemic, radical polarization, the increasing wealth gap, and a total mismanagement of COVID-19. Although the working class bears the brunt of these crises and billionaires are coming ever-closer to becoming trillionaires, I think we're witnessing pretty momentous era for American politics. For one, I find Marx, Hegel and Engels to look more like geniuses by the day, and the foundations of both the Democratic and Republican parties are under extreme scrutiny. It seems practically every American has lost their faith in the democratic process (rightly so, imo) people are being radicalized in both directions (the fascists are out of the woodwork), and it really seems that Marx's conflict theory holds up.

Things are pretty dicey right now and will be for the foreseeable future, but, if we turn to Marx, this is all to be expected. Major conflict will likely be inevitable, but I think it is equally likely to result in progress. I believe this quote from Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci best describes my thoughts about right now:

"The old world is dying, and the new world struggles to be born: now is the time of monsters."

I'm hoping to see this thread revived because, again, I think it's truly a bewildering time to be a leftist. I'd love to hear some of your guy's perspectives.
 
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