• SFloss (they/them)
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    3 years ago

    Perhaps Stalin meant ‘classes’ that could not be escaped from - in the sense of Dhalits in India or Etta in Japan.

    Stalin was a Marxist, thus I’m fairly sure he means “classes” in the Marxist sense, not that the Dhalits or Etta don’t still count in the conversation of abolishing classes. I’m sure the lower your status in the Indian class system, the higher chance of you being a part of the proletariat class. The two systems are still linked.

    Your last name can’t prevent you from being hired or promoted usually - nor can your skin color or sex. You can rise in the world.

    This is false. Social mobility is rather limited in places like the United States, especially for those not already related to people of higher social classes, or people of color, or women.

    Even if it weren’t, it’s impossible for everyone to “rise” from the proletariat class to the bourgeois class. Capitalist development necessitates further and further concentration of capital into fewer hands, hence the creation of monopolies and the rise of wealth inequality. There has to be more labourers than bourgeoisie, otherwise production at the scale necessary under capitalism would be impossible. However, as capital is concentrated into fewer and fewer hands, you see the increase of the proletariat and lumpenproletariat. It’s one of the contradictions that shows why capitalism will fail. Death, the victory of the dialectic.

    • GenkiFeral
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      1
      arrow-down
      4
      ·
      3 years ago

      the bourgeois are merely the upper middle class. The system we have now is a mixed economy (fascism for the wealthiest, capitalism for the middle classes, and socialism for the poor classes).

      You mean financial mobility, I guess, because “you can take the girl outta the hood/trailer park, but you can’t take the hood/trailer park outta the girl”.

      |Capitalist development necessitates further and further concentration of capital into fewer hands, hence the creation of monopolies and the rise of wealth inequality. That is probably fascism and I agree with you 100% on that. Fascism is destroying the west and will soon swallow the entire world whole - global rule by the 1%. Conglomerates are bed-buddies with politicians (gov’t) and the help each other stay strong - kinda like the lords often helped the kings/queens. The rest of us are squeezed out. People call it ‘capitalism’, but it is really oligarch or fascism. Capitalism is merely allowing anyone to own capital - be that a home, the building they operate a business in, their own farm land, investment properties.

      I’m American and appalled at how much conglomerates own and control and how our gov’t (really THEIR gov’t since they own them!) allows conglomerates to continue to grow without enforcing monopoly or anti-trust laws. That is not what our forefathers intended and they foresaw the need for future Americans to revolt. It is part of nature for bullies to rise to the top, but also part of nature for the rest of the group to reach a breaking point, then destroy the bullying rulers.

      But, classes? There will always be classes. As long as there is a free flow between the classes, that is fine with me.

      • SFloss (they/them)
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        4
        ·
        edit-2
        3 years ago

        the bourgeois are merely the upper middle class.

        No…the bourgeoisie are those who hold control of the means of production, it has nothing to do with the amount of wealth one has, and everything to do with one’s relationship or perceived relationship to the means of production (PMCs or the labor aristocracy).

        The system we have now is a mixed economy (fascism for the wealthiest, capitalism for the middle classes, and socialism for the poor classes).

        Sorry, but this is politically illiterate. This completely misunderstands every one of these politico-economic systems. Where did you get this idea from?

        Capitalism is merely allowing anyone to own capital - be that a home, the building they operate a business in, their own farm land, investment properties.

        Capitalism allows for anyone to own and accrue private property, but the existence of private property necessitates the existence of people without private property, as Marx analyzed.

        You are horrified at our intending to do away with private property. But in your existing society, private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths. - Marx in the Communist Manifesto

        Allowing anyone to own capital will always lead to this “squeezing out” that you mention, it’s how capitalism operates, even if it’s against your principles of HOW it should operate.

        But, classes? There will always be classes. As long as there is a free flow between the classes, that is fine with me.

        The return of Kautskyism and the rejection of the class struggle. Please read Lenin’s State and Revolution to see why this was bad 100+ years ago and remains bad now.

        • GenkiFeral
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          arrow-down
          5
          ·
          3 years ago

          i’ve been around people of all walks of life and find most of human nature -regardless of race, sex, religion, politics, class- to be outright scary and disgusting. Changing classes won’t change that. If certain people today (not 100 years ago) don’t own anything, it isn’t my fault or my problem. My own kin from 300+ years seem to have gone up and down in class repeatedly- one would be dirt poor (the newspaper called my great-great-father a pauper in his obituary) and another would be much wealthier - even though his 3 older brothers were not as wealthy. One might be called founder and town leader, yet his grandkid was the pauper and other kin trapped wolves for their skins (not well off). Same family, but proves that not even close kin have the same mindset.

          I HATE communism. it is idealistic, negates reality, whines when it should be working or thinking. Making excuses gets you nowhere. btw, Marx is long dead and lived in another land in another generation.

          • poVoq
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            6
            arrow-down
            1
            ·
            edit-2
            2 years ago

            deleted by creator