curious-marx

Something something rent, profit of enterprise, and interest are surplus value under the rule of Capital

  • Drewfro66@lemmygrad.mlEnglish
    4·
    1 day ago

    I think the important thing to point out is that with Agriculture/Peasants and Industry/Proles, these represent a dialectic contradiction: within a mode of production there is an oppressing class and an oppressed class.

    A “Finance Socialist” state would not be run by the oppressors within the Financial system - it would be run by the oppressed. Just as the PRC is not ruled by landlords and the USSR was not ruled by Capitalists.

    Who exactly the oppressed class under the Public Finance mode of production (if it can even be considered a distinct mode of production) would be is the important question. I think as we transition deeper into a “Gig Economy” world, the answer is the Lumpenproletariat.

    • AnneVolinEnglish
      4·
      2 days ago

      Who exactly the oppressed class under the Public Finance mode of production (if it can even be considered a distinct mode of production) would be is the important question. I think as we transition deeper into a “Gig Economy” world, the answer is the Lumpenproletariat.

      Hooray someone gets it. However if you take this statement to it’s logical conclusion using Marxist theory and combine it with the typical political leanings of lumpenproles you get a ban from this instance!

    • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
      2·
      2 days ago

      Who exactly the oppressed class under the Public Finance mode of production (if it can even be considered a distinct mode of production) would be is the important question.

      Huh, I never really thought of that (it’s not a mode of production; it’s just another way of surplus value sucking, like landholding and industry with rent and profit, though it does finance capitalist and state projects)

      I think as we transition deeper into a “Gig Economy” world, the answer is the Lumpenproletariat.

      Lumpenprole?

      I think I’m kinda biased in that lumpenprole aren’t exactly proles but a marginalized and totally disenfranchised chaotic wildcard class without much relation to the productive forces, that may ally randomly with proletarian or bourgeois forces, so I have my doubts…

      I don’t trust a mixed bag for something relating to the commanding heights of the economy

      Personally, I’d rather go the Lenin route and fully restructure the financial sector to be more suited for conventional working class ranks; from peasants and proletariat, as a tool towards state-allocated credit and funding

      Capitalist culture has created large-scale production, factories, railways, the postal service, telephones, etc., and on this basis {that socialism seizes, if not creates} the great majority of the functions of the old “state power” have become so simplified and can be reduced to such exceedingly simple operations of registration, filing, and checking that they can be easily performed by every literate person, can quite easily be performed for ordinary “workmen’s wages”, and that these functions can (and must) be stripped of every shadow of privilege, of every semblance of “official grandeur”.

      • AnneVolinEnglish
        1·
        2 days ago

        Personally, I’d rather go the Lenin route and fully restructure the financial sector to be more suited for conventional working class ranks; from peasants and proletariat, as a tool towards state-allocated credit and funding

        Damn that’s crazy you got a time machine to 1910 Russia?

          • AnneVolinEnglish
            1·
            2 days ago

            Sorry I’m being flip but it’s funny to effectively advocate to literally do the same bullshit Lenin did to the peasants to the lumpenprole gig workers by destroying and remaking their industry at cost to them.

            It’s like reading history to repeat the same mistakes.

            • Lemmygradwontallowme [he/him, comrade/them]@hexbear.netOPEnglish
              1·
              2 days ago

              I guess I did an error by not investigating more into lumpenprole (something something Mao quote). If you can explain your side, maybe I’ll understand, but if you’re just here to win an argument, then I forsake it, due to my ignorance…

              • AnneVolinEnglish
                2·
                2 days ago

                The 3 basic components of “workers” of socialist classes are:

                • proletarians – wage laborers capable and open to organizing / socialism
                • peasants – small and independent farmers
                • lumpenproletarians – literally anyone who works for a living but is incapable or closed to organizing and typically explained away as “criminals”/hobos/layabouts/irrideemables etc. because this shit was written in the fucking 19th century by an insecure guy who if not for his friend would be one of them.

                Their 3 classical class enemies are:

                • bosses – literally the people who make them work
                • landlords – people who own land that make money off of tenant farming or larger farmers employing smaller farmers
                • finance capital – literally the force that strips the 2 more classical classes into pure fungible labor e.g. gig work

                The overarching story of socialism is that:

                1. Lenin began with the proletarians, but ignored and vilified the peasants. Stalin carried this crown with Stalinist brutality
                2. Mao began with the peasants and brought the proletarians into the fold, which made Stalin mad because Mao embarrassed the USSR in various ways with his success
                3. The USSR falls
                4. China turns market capitalist modes of development but claims its “market socialism”

                The problem with what you’re advocating is the fact that it falls into the same trap that Lenin fell into with the peasants. He attempted to force the economic conditions that proved his theory rather than theorize from the economic conditions that existed. He never had an answer for what to do with peasants and how they fit into the equation, he also never made good on his promises to them.

                Likewise you have the same problem now except worse, while Russia had many peasants they weren’t the majority, the US or <your favorite country here> because of finance capital has a majority of lumpenproletarians who are effectively beat down. Attempting to run the Lenin playbook on these people is just literally slowly killing them over time while still extracting value from them. Given that these people make up the actual masses, unless you actually understand lumpenproles and activate them into proletarians you’ll never have a “revolution” or a political movement. Even worse if you somehow eke one out counter revolutionary forces will eat you alive because lumpenproles are quite open to the reactionary self serving trickery that counter revolutionary forces would employ to get them on your side. It’s why Trump never goes below 38%.

                The bad news is that this is purely greenfield theoretical space that isn’t really explored in theory or practice by most historical socialist theorists, and given that there are no new serious socialist theorists to be found it’s a bit dire.