curious-marx

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

  • AnneVolin
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    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.