- cross-posted to:
- eco_socialism@lemmygrad.ml
- cross-posted to:
- eco_socialism@lemmygrad.ml
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Environmental destruction is largely rooted in capitalist need for constant growth and consumerism, and the climate crisis cannot be solved without abolishing capitalism. This system is forced upon us by the capital owning class that currently holds power in out society. Class struggle is necessary to overthrow capitalists and create an economy that’s sustainable.
I disagree. In any species, there will always be some ‘better’ or ‘worse’ (those are relative so in quotation marks). Even communist societies had ‘betters’ and those who were worse (and in gulags for being worse). Some will be more atractive to the opposite sex, some smarter, some stronger, some with better skills or talents than others, some with a higher drive/motivation. There will always be classes. We might be able to even things out a bit, create a more fair playing field, of course. When lower classes rise, they almost always consume more and that is not good for environmentalism. I’ve always thought that having far stricter enforcement on the quality and safety of products would immediately have a huge impact on the environment.
Classes are not created from differences in people’s abilities that make them better or worse than anyone else, and the Marxist goal is not to make everyone “equal.” Classes are made from people’s relations to the means of production and “the abolition of classes means placing all citizens on an equal footing with regard to the means of production belonging to society as a whole” (Lenin in his address to a liberal professor).
Stalin has also discussed this point before:
The kind of socialism under which everybody would receive the same pay, an equal quantity of meat, an equal quantity, of bread, would wear the same kind of clothes and would receive the same kind of goods and in equal quantities—such a kind of socialism is unknown to Marxism.
All that Marxism declares is that until classes have been completely abolished, and until work has been transformed from being a means of maintaining existence, into a prime necessity of life, into voluntary labour performed for the benefit of society, people will continue to be paid for their labour in accordance with the amount of labour performed. “From each according to his capacity, to each according to the work he performs,” such is the Marxian formula of socialism, i.e., the first stage of communism, the first stage of a communist society.
Only in the highest phase of communism will people, working in accordance with their capacity, receive recompense therefor in accordance with their needs: “From each according to his capacity, to each according to his needs.” … It is those who know nothing about Marxism who have the primitive idea that the Russian Bolsheviks want to pool all wealth and then share it out equally.
- Stalin, Interview with Emil Ludwig, 13 December 1931
Perhaps Stalin meant ‘classes’ that could not be escaped from - in the sense of Dhalits in India or Etta in Japan. I am not extremely familiar with the serf/peasant structure of Russia (or Europe for that matter), but I think many were tied to the land and lord. I am fairly sure there are not such classes in the west now. 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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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I hate communism more than almost anything else. I hate conglomerates, too, for the same reason - you both believe in “might makes right”. The individual is and always will be the smallest minority. Whether you bully with your money or with the masses, the result is the same: you thinking your way is better and therefore forcing everyone else to do as you say. If that is done in a small group, you’d call that bullying or, at least, inconsiderate or rude. I guess i really just hate bullies.
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I am certainly not open to communism.
