Useful Pages

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

What Economic System did Marx and Engels Advocate?

And here I don’t mean their utopian classless, stateless society (which they called “pure communism”), but the transitional system they advocated in The Communist Manifesto (English trans. 1888 edn., based on the 1872 German edn.; the first German edn. was published in 1848).

Here is what they advocated:
“The proletariat will use its political supremacy to wrest, by degrees, all capital from the bourgeoisie, to centralise all instruments of production in the hands of the State, i.e., of the proletariat organised as the ruling class; and to increase the total productive forces as rapidly as possible.

Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; by means of measures, therefore, which appear economically insufficient and untenable, but which, in the course of the movement, outstrip themselves, necessitate further inroads upon the old social order, and are unavoidable as a means of entirely revolutionising the mode of production.

These measures will of course be different in different countries.

Nevertheless, in most advanced countries, the following will be pretty generally applicable.

1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralisation of credit in the hands of the state, by means of a national bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labour in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production, &c, &c.” (Marx and Engels 1985 [1888]: 104–105).
The essence of the transitional Communist system was the complete nationalisation of all industry and business: the state would itself own all capital goods, and by implication centrally plan production and consumption of commodities, even the media (by point (6)).

But, in addition to this, the state would abolish private property rights in land and housing, and even the right to inherit private property (with the exception of insignificant personal family property), as in points (1) and (3) above. Indeed, according to Marx and Engels, this is essence of the Communist system:
“In this sense, the theory of the Communists may be summed up in the single sentence: Abolition of private property.” (Marx and Engels 1985 [1888]: 96).
Point (5) also requires the abolition of private banks, and state monopoly on banking.

In point (10), we find a strong opposition to child labour, which Marx and Engels were passionately opposed to. They stressed this in The Communist Manifesto in these words:
“Do you charge us with wanting to stop the exploitation of children by their parents? To this crime we plead guilty.” (Marx and Engels 1985 [1888]: 100).
But the disgust at the economic exploitation of children was hardly unique to Marxism: for example, even deeply Christian, 19th century Tory radicals and paternalists in the UK were vehement opponents of child labour, and were a driving force behind legislation to outlaw it.

Point (9) stands as a very strange, anti-urban – and even deluded – idea: to reduce the population of cities and redistribute population to rural areas.

It is obvious how all this requires an authoritarian, even totalitarian, political system, and it is not surprising that Marx and Engels advocated a “dictatorship of the proletariat”: abolition of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and legal and civil rights. For these reasons alone – even before we get to economic objections – Marxism stands as just another decidedly evil and monstrous authoritarian doctrine.

It can be seen how radically different the Marxist transitional state is from a modern economy with Keynesian macroeconomic management:
(1) The Marxist transitional state requires complete nationalisation of all production; by contrast, a Keynesian system is one where the vast majority of all production is done privately.

(2) Private property rights are extensive and a fundamental part of the legal and social organisation of states with a Keynesian heritage. In the Communist system, even private ownership of land, housing and the right to inheritance are abolished.

(3) In many modern states, even when central banks exist, banking is largely conducted by private financial institutions. The Marxist transitional state would have all banks nationalised. A further observation is that Marxism would essentially abolish developed markets for financial assets, especially secondary financial asset markets.

(4) Communication media tend to be largely privatised in modern states with a history of Keynesian macroeconomic management. Even in states with one nationalised television or media network (e.g., the UK with the BBC), all other media are privatised. In the Marxist state, all media are controlled by the state.

(5) Keynesianism requires no bizarre commitment to shifting population to rural areas.

(6) Keynesianism requires no “equal liability of all to work,” even though I dare say there are many people, even in Western countries, who might feel intuitively that this idea has some appeal.
At most, modern states do resemble the transitional Marxist state in point (2) (the progressive income tax) and point (10) (free or subsidized public education for children and abolition of child labour). But there are so many other differences (and significant ones to boot) that anyone who asserts, for example, that the modern UK or Canada must be communist because they have public education and no child labour is just guilty of stupid and lazy reasoning: committing the fallacy of hasty generalization and possibly the fallacy of composition.

Above all, what distinguishes capitalism ameliorated by Keynesianism historically from Communism is the commitment to democracy, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the rule of law and civil liberties. Although one can certainly find authoritarian states that practised Keynesianism in the past (e.g., fascist Japan and modern China), I say “historically” because the broad sweep of nations where Keynesianism has existed over the past 70 years have been overwhelmingly democratic and in the liberal tradition. To illustrate what I mean here, note how Chicago school monetarism was practised by Augusto Pinochet’s Chile (a dictatorship), but it is a bad mistake to think that monetarism is inherently authoritarian or requires authoritarianism. Most nations that have implemented monetarist ideas have been democratic: monetarism as a macroeconomic theory and practice is essentially neutral with respect to the political organisation of the nation where it is implemented. The same can be said of Keynesian economics, which in fact presupposes a very significant amount of private enterprise and private production.

One of the more interesting verdicts of Keynes on Marxism was that the doctrine was a “sickness of the soul” (Skidelsky 1992: 517), and, while Keynes was in a conversation with T. S. Eliot in 1934, Virginia Woolf described Keynes as he commented on Marxism:
“[sc. Keynes adressed] The economic question: the religion of Communism. [sc. Marxism was the] ... worst of all and founded on a silly mistake of old Mr. Ricardo’s which M[aynard] given time will put right.” (from the diary of Virginia Woolf, quoted in Skidelsky 1992: 517).
The “silly mistake of old Mr. Ricardo” was nothing less than the labor theory of value, an important point.

The judgement of Keynes on the Soviet Union is given by Skidelsky:
“unlike the Webbs, he [sc. Keynes] could never think of Soviet Russia as a serious intellectual resource for Western civilisation. In the 1920s he had said that Marxism and communism had nothing of scientific interest to offer the modern mind. The depression did not alter his view. Russia ‘exhibits the worst example which the world, perhaps, has ever seen of administrative incompetence and of the sacrifice of almost everything that makes life worth living ...’; it was a ‘fearful example of the evils of insane and unnecessary haste’; ‘Let Stalin be a terrifying example to all who seek to make experiments.’” (Skidelsky 1992: 488).
The opposition of Keynes to Marxism was both economic and political. In reply to George Bernard Shaw in 1935 on the issue of Marx, this is what Keynes said about Marxism:
“Thank you for your letter. I will try to take your words to heart. There must be something in what you say, because there generally is. But I’ve made another shot at old K.[arl] M.[arx] last week, reading the Marx-Engels correspondence just published, without making much progress. I prefer Engels of the two. I can see that they invented a certain method of carrying on and a vile manner of writing, both of which their successors have maintained with fidelity. But if you tell me that they discovered a clue to the economic riddle, still I am beaten – I can discover nothing but out-of-date controversialising.

To understand my state of mind, however, you have to know that I believe myself to be writing a book [viz., The General Theory] on economic theory which will largely revolutionalise – not, I suppose, at once but in the course of the next ten years – the way the world thinks about economic problems. When my new theory has been duly assimilated and mixed with politics and feelings and passions, I can’t predict what the final upshot will be in its effect on action and affairs. But there will be a great change, and, in particular, the Ricardian foundations of Marxism will be knocked away.

I can’t expect you, or anyone else, to believe this at the present stage. But for myself I don’t merely hope what I say, – in my own mind I’m quite sure.”
(Keynes to Shaw, 1 January, 1935, quoted in Skidelsky 1992: 520–521).
And Keynes, as a progressive liberal, was adamant that civil rights and democracy were the most important things that any Western nation needed to preserve:
“... [sc. Keynes] could both love the communist generation for their idealism, and despise them for their muddle-headedness. If Keynes could not solve the ‘primal question’ of how to live, he felt he could solve the secondary question of what to do. His assault on the scientific pretentions of Marxism and the horrors of the Soviet system was unremitting, and needed no revelation of mass murder. He insisted on the supreme importance of ‘preserving as a matter of principle every jot and tittle of the civil and political liberties which former generations painfully secured.’” (Skidelsky 1992: 518).
BIBLIOGRAPHY

Marx, K. and F. Engels. 1985 [1888]. The Communist Manifesto (trans. S. Moore). Penguin Books, London.

Skidelsky, R. J. A. 1992. John Maynard Keynes: The Economist as Saviour, 1920–1937 (vol. 2), Macmillan, London.

52 comments:

  1. I'm going to copy and paste my thoughts from over at Facts and Other Stubborn Things...

    http://factsandotherstubbornthings.blogspot.com/2012/07/two-keynes-links.html?showComment=1343140395391

    "Regarding Marx and Keynes - according to Dr. Michael Emmett Brady, like Adam Smith, all three have one thing in common: an opposition to unbridled speculative activity. Dr. Brady agrees with Keynes by saying that Marx's central error was to follow in Ricardo's footsteps.

    Note that neither Brady nor I agree with Marx's conclusions or policy implications. I, like Brady, am just pointing out a historical attitude toward speculative activity. I wonder if some historian of economic thought has written a book on this or something...
    "

    ReplyDelete
  2. It is worth stating that any peaceful & democratic attempts at introducing socialism were simply violently overthrown by the U.S., so history has served to prove marx and engels right that capitalism will not go down without a fight.

    The atrocities committed under global capitalism are rarely drawn attention to, else dismissed as one offs or outside capitalism.

    I am skeptical of marxist-leninist approaches to revolution/reform. But bear in mind global capitalism has done far, far worse things than the USSR, Mao and whomever else combined. Just because nobody is pressing a 'kill' button, doesn't make it any better.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. United States has a long history of fringe socialist parties, such as the once briefly powerful Socialist Party of America under Norman Thomas' leadership. This group did once garner a million votes in polls for the Presidential candidates.

      No violence was used against them in their peak years of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s, and yet they repeatedly failed, even under the Great Depression. Working people preferred to vote for that wealthy inheritor, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, a relatively pro-business leader who was anything but a socialist.

      So let's not say that socialists are not given their fair chance!

      (Or that working people don't get the leaders they want, as if working people will only vote socialist.)

      Delete
    2. No violence was used against them in their peak years of the 1910s, 1920s, and 1930s

      Remarkably incorrect. The presidential candidate, Eugene Debs, campaigned from prison, put there by the fascistic, racist, warmongering hypocrite Wilson. The Ludlow Massacre. The Palmer raids. The First Red Scare. The refusal of the US Congress to seat two Congressmen elected by the people of New York. Etc.

      Chomsky has commented that the USA has the most violent history of state violence against labor in the world, where major incidents of the sort that have sparked revolutions elsewhere are ignored, under-reported, minimized and soon forgotten.

      Delete
    3. I was primarily referring to the US overthrowing socialist or communist parties in other countries, though Calgacus has corrected on the points aout the US.

      Chile, Guatemala, Indonesia, Vietnam, Eastern Europe, Italy post-WW2 - hell, basically everywhere in Latin America, SE Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East has experienced the US 'rescuing' them from communism.

      Delete
    4. Unlearningecon,

      I agree that the US state has a history of aggression and violence both internationally and domestically - most of in support of the economic interests of the controlling power-elite.

      But international capitalism is worse than Stalinist Russia and Mao's China ? Have you actually studies what those regimes did to their own people?

      Delete
    5. Have you actually studied what international "capitalist" operators have done to people? Yeah, definitely worse than Stalinist Russia and Maoist China, but most of it happened "to someone else", so I guess "out of sight out of mind". What happened in King Leopold's Congo.... what happened to the slaves in Haiti.... true, more modern capitalists have made a point of dialing the abuse back a bit, but only due to the threat of slave/worker rebellion.

      Delete
  3. It is obvious how all this requires an authoritarian, even totalitarian, political system, and it is not surprising that Marx and Engels advocated a “dictatorship of the proletariat”: abolition of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and legal and civil rights. For these reasons alone – even before we get to economic objections – Marxism stands as just another decidedly evil and monstrous authoritarian doctrine.

    "Dictatorship of the proletariat" is easily misread, and even the link you provide contradicts your use of it in its opening paragraph:

    "The use of the term "dictatorship" does not refer to the Classical Roman concept of the dictatura (the governance of a state by a small group with no democratic process), but instead to the Marxist concept of dictatorship (that an entire societal class holds political and economic control, within a democratic system)."

    If that seems counterintuitive (as the use of language often does, across centuries and contexts), then let us put it into perspective: in Marxian terminology, we are currently living under a "dictatorship of the bourgeoisie," which is to say that said class exerts the dominant motive force on the organization of production, etc.

    The DoP can be entirely democratic, and indeed was envisioned as such. To help clarify further: implementing the job guarantee program promoted by the MMT crowd would be one of the major steps along the way towards establishing the DoP, as it would eliminate the inevitability of a "reserve army of the unemployed."

    Suggesting that the curtailment of freedom of speech or civil rights is in any way necessary to the DoP (as discussed by Marx and Engels) is just further echoing right-wing propaganda.

    One might add that point 3 is hardly alien to Keynesians, in light of his vague suggestions vis-a-vis the "somewhat comprehensive socialisation of investment" he proposes himself, along with the calls for nationalizing large banks that are not at all uncommon among Minsky's modern supporters.

    On an important note, Point 2 doesn't mean that people won't own things. In order to discuss this matter fairly, you'd have to distinguish between private and personal property.

    Finally, the anti-urban thing, as I understand it, reflects the historical point of view that people were sundered from their lands in order to create the first ever class of wage-laborers wholly at the mercy of the market and the class struggle. I think the idea is that if you make land available to people, more people will voluntarily take up family farms and various other gray shades between urban and rural. To me, the "gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country" seems to be saying "let's have more suburbs."

    I hope this helps!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Suggesting that the curtailment of freedom of speech or civil rights is in any way necessary to the DoP (as discussed by Marx and Engels) is just further echoing right-wing propaganda."

      If all communication media are owned and controlled by the state, how is this not eroding freedom of speech or civil rights?

      Delete
    2. I don't think this means that every tv station would be PBS or BBC (though in fairness, compared to other major news networks, it would probably be a step in a good direction).

      Given the era in which it was written, I am willing to suppose that he was talking about stuff like trains, ships and mail services. And I for one am pretty fond of the USPS. Nowadays, it would probably be take the form of fiber infrastructure, too.

      Of course, I do recognize the potential for abuse, given any sort of monolithic entity - public OR private. But that's, I think, where democracy is supposed to leverage the law of large numbers to keep things honest, same with any modern government.

      Left-wingers tend to overcompensate in their distrust of private business power by allotting too much trust to the public sector. As I've said here before, any left-winger worth his salt is equally distrustful of the government as any business; the difference is just accountability. But that needs to be exercised in order for it to mean anything.

      Delete
    3. "If all communication media are owned and controlled by the state, how is this not eroding freedom of speech or civil rights?"

      Depends what you do with 'owned and controlled' and exactly what it means.

      News International is hardly a shining example of the alternative.

      'Owned and controlled by the state' is saying 'owned and controlled by the people'. Bearing in mind this is Victorian, that means that the media is open to all with no vested interests.

      In the theory marxist states are run by the people for the people in an egalitarian fashion. Like all idealists they hadn't envisaged the inevitable degradation of that design into a dictatorship of the few via some 'communist party'.

      Bear in mind that all current communication media is controlled by the government. I've seen the black boxes that monitor the Internet channels.

      Delete
    4. LordKeynes said

      "If all communication media are owned and controlled by the state, how is this not eroding freedom of speech or civil rights?"

      In Australia, the ABC belongs to the State. Currently, the Federal Government is headed by the Australian Labor Party.

      Below, you'll find the list of contributors to the ABC's online discussion site. You'll find that among them, a considerable number (I suspect a majority, but I have no numbers) are from the Federal opposition (for one, the first name in the list), think-tanks associated to the opposition, some left-wingers opposed to the Labor Government, Austrian economists, the occasional foreign guest (including Noam Chomsky) and the whole gamut of opinion. You are invited to browse their profiles.

      I suspect not many of them have been imprisoned, beaten, tortured, fired from their jobs, or murdered for posting opinions contrary to Labor.

      That's how it does not erode the freedom of speech or civil rights.

      http://www.abc.net.au/unleashed/contributors

      But I may be mistaken.

      Delete
  4. In case I was not clear, when I reference a point by number, I'm referring to the six-item list appearing later in the post.

    ReplyDelete
  5. A is correct. Many biases against marxism come from a tacit acceptance of our current situation, whilst failing to see that the capitalist and rentier classes clearly control the bulk of the government, and that large amounts of violence, starvation and degradation are a part of everyday existence.

    A revolution needn't be violent. It's the capitalist class' clear willingness to use violence (e.g. domestically: OWS protests, internationally: all of history) that would turn it so.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Unlearningecon@July 24, 2012 8:53 AM
      "The atrocities committed under global capitalism "

      I don't think it makes much sense to attribute real or alleged crimes under international law committed by any of the large Western powers to "capitalism".

      E.g., when the US was involved in the Vietnam war it had a Keynesian system. Was Keynesianism responsible for the horrors of the Vietnam war? No.

      Delete
    2. Things like the Vietnam war were all to do with the idea of repressing socialism and communism. The US documents - and apologetics for things like that - make this clear.

      You are correct to say not *everything* bad that happens is due to capitalism - history is, of course, more complex than that. But a large amount of violence occurred due to the US/UK trying to repress socialism, often because the interests of particular companies were threatened (Chile exhibited this kind of rationale, and Guatemala even more clearly with the United Fruit Company).

      Other violence is in the name of extracting resources, such as much of the violence in Africa that continues to this day, and e.g. the Iraq War.

      And there are of course the large numbers of people who starve every day as resources are simply vacuumed out of their countries. Peasantry has never been great, but don't buy the myth that it was utterly disastrous until good old capitalism came along.

      Delete
    3. What violence in Africa is being caused by "extracting resources"?

      Rwanda and Burundi were about a Hutu/Tutsi conflict, where the Hutu leadership felt it could build greater solidarity in their society by finding a common enemy.

      Congo was about Tutsi rebels unleashing vengeance on the Congolese supporters of the Hutu leadership in Rwanda.

      Uganda and CAR are about Museveni's brutal persecution of the Acholi tribe, one of whose member had been a major previous regime leader, and the resultant backlash to Acholi persecution in the form of the LRA.

      Nigeria, Niger, and Mali are about the rise of radical Islamists who wish to purify the syncretic Islam of the Sahel region.

      Sudan is about the purely unabashed hatred of Christian Sudanese by a radically Islamist majority.

      All major African conflicts have religious, tribal, and communal causes, and I seriously doubt General Motors or Exxon wished to see petty tribal vengeance be executed, especially when it hurts their business, not benefit it.

      Delete
    4. Well, just to give one example: do you own a cellphone? If so, you're part of a resource struggle! (Most of our coltan comes from the DRC.)

      Delete
  6. I'm not a marxist though not anti-marx either but this is in some places a bad distortion of the facts.Bare in mind Marx and Engels did not always agree.Some of your errors have been covered above in a post about 'dictatorship of the proletariat'.

    ReplyDelete
  7. "If all communication media are owned and controlled by the state, how is this not eroding freedom of speech or civil rights?"

    I think the underlying assumption behind the immediate centralization of transportation and communication is that these are natural monopolies. "Communication", I think, means things like the telegraph and post. If this is correct, this is not far from the opinion of some less-radical classical economists. The argument about land rent is also not far from mainstream classical economists (and the physiocrats): recall that Adam Smith and others following him argued that a tax on land value (as distinct from buildings) was the least distortive and most just tax.

    -Will

    ReplyDelete
  8. Could nationalizing the entire money system have a positive effect? That's a question I would like to see explored.

    ReplyDelete
  9. "It is obvious how all this requires an authoritarian, even totalitarian, political system, and it is not surprising that Marx and Engels advocated a “dictatorship of the proletariat”: abolition of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and legal and civil rights."

    As an anarchist, I don't have much time for Marxism's "transitional" state -- however, it is unfair to say that Marx and Engels argued for the "abolition of democracy." They simply did not.

    Marx's reporting on the Paris Commune (when he simply appropriated, without acknowledgment, the ideas of Proudhon whole-sale!) shows that he thought his system would lead to a extension of democracy (he did not call it "the dictatorship of the proletariat" but Engels did).

    However, I would argue that he had a flawed theory of the state and that it would create the preconditions for the rise of totalitarianism (as Bakunin, at his best, argued). As was the case under Lenin and the Bolsheviks -- initially democratic, once in power they started to undermine the soviets to maintain party power and created a party dictatorship (which they defended wholeheartedly against the likes of Kautsky and Martov).

    In terms of the economic transition ideas, these are pure state-capitalism -- the state becoming the boss, with everyone wage-workers employed by it. There is not a single word on workers' self-management of production in the Manifesto, for example. Compare this to Proudhon's 1848 election manifesto:

    "We do not want expropriation by the State of the mines, canals and railways: it is still monarchical, still wage-labour. We want the mines, canals, railways handed over to democratically organised workers’ associations operating under State supervision, in conditions laid down by the State, and under their own responsibility. We want these associations to be models for agriculture, industry and trade, the pioneering core of that vast federation of companies and societies woven into the common cloth of the democratic and social Republic."

    This was seen the means of creating a universal association, a federation of worker controlled workplaces without the state. Unlike Marx and Engels, Proudhon's is a genuinely socialist manifesto.

    So don't say that Marx and Engels wished to abolish democracy -- few Marxists would agree. Better to say they advocated a state-capitalist transition regime which would degenerate into tyranny rather than a free communist society.

    Iain
    An Anarchist FAQ

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am sympathetic to anarchism, and I have had that FAQ bookmarked for ages.

      I agree with the thrust of your argument, though I think the "state capitalism" classification is more a contingent than necessary outcome. It implies that the state is extracting and accumulating surplus value, while in a post-capitalist society, there would be no such thing as "value" in Marx's sense, as labor would be directly social.

      I think it's stretching the definition of "wage labor" to attribute it to the condition of a democratic state society, absent the anarchy of production of the marketplace, private expropriation of the social character of labor, etc. Really, the biggest difference between "railways administered by democratically organised workers' associations operating under State supervision" and "railways administered by a bureau of a democratic state" could prove to be a subtle one, depending on the details.

      Delete
    2. At a glance, my reply there reads kind of funny; sorry, I am still waking up.

      Delete
  10. Interesting post. It helps to broaden my perspective on short and middle-term policy.

    I still don't think, however, that freedom of speech, civil liberties, etc. are incompatible with socialism -not even marxist socialism once you consider that Marx's long-term goald was the abolition of political authority.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I would distinguish

      (1) Western social democracy/democratic socialism (e.g., the old style Swedish Social democratic party; Old Style British Labour Party) from

      (2) Marxist transitional "socialist" systems.

      Socialism in sense (1) is of course perfectly compatible with democracy, and its intellectual sources are to a far greater extent to be found in progressive liberalism, Keynesianism or Fabian socialism than in Marxism.

      Delete
    2. Well, I wouldn't consider the first type socialist at all, insofar as it merely grants a space for the government to participate in the economy while the overall institutional structure of bussinesses remains pretty much intact. When I say socialism I mean collective ownership of the means of production, either inderectly (through the state) or directly (workers' coops). Marxism may be implied in this definition but i don't see this discription in and of itself in tension with civil liberties. That's what I meant.

      Delete
    3. Co-ops are quite obviously the healthiest form of societal organization, but they have a tendency to collapse into authoritarianism, greed, manager takeover, and, well, "demutualization" as happened to so many American mutual insurance companies.

      I don't think the problem of maintaining stability and member-worker-manager unity in coops has been solved.

      Delete
  11. I think it is fair to judge Marxism by the actual nations that claimed the mantle of Marxism, just as it is fair to judge laissez-faire capitalism by the closest historical examples of that system operating in the real world.

    Orthodox Marxists and libertarians sometimes fall back on the argument that their preferred systems were never really tried. Perhaps they are correct, but it is entirely reasonable for people to look at the nearest historical approximations of those philosophies in order to make value judgments.

    Much of what Marx and Engels wrote does seem to have been put into practice by the Soviets and others, perhaps not perfectly, but have there been many successful counterexamples of Marxian socialism working in practice on a large scale?

    ReplyDelete
  12. "Most nations that have implemented monetarist ideas have been democratic: monetarism as a macroeconomic theory and practice is essentially neutral with respect to the political organisation of the nation where it is implemented."

    Kaldor disagreed:

    "Mrs. Thatcher is our first Marxist Prime Minister -- none but a Marxist could speak so contemptuously of consensus politics. She was reported to have said in Australia recently:

    'To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies... It is the process of avoiding the very issues that have got to be solved merely to get people to come to an agreement on the way ahead.'

    I can almost hear Lenin speaking these words when in October 1917 he bullied 17 'wet' members of his politburo in order to take risks and seize power which they were most reluctant to do."
    -- Nicholas Kaldor speaking in the House of Lords 12/11/1981

    I'm with Kaldor. Thatcher's policies would have been reversed in the next election if it weren't for the Falkland's War and the ingenious propaganda campaign she cooked up.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Keynes wrote:

    "Now, though this state of affairs would be quite compatible with some measure of individualism, yet it would mean the euthanasia of the rentier, and, consequently, the euthanasia of the cumulative oppressive power of the capitalist to exploit the scarcity-value of capital. Interest today rewards no genuine sacrifice, any more than does the rent of land. The owner of capital can obtain interest because capital is scarce, just as the owner of land can obtain rent because land is scarce. But whilst there may be intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of land, there are no intrinsic reasons for the scarcity of capital."

    and

    "I see, therefore, the rentier aspect of capitalism as a transitional phase which will disappear when it has done its work. And with the disappearance of its rentier aspect much else in it besides will suffer a sea-change. It will be, moreover, a great advantage of the order of events which I am advocating, that the euthanasia of the rentier, of the functionless investor, will be nothing sudden, merely a gradual but prolonged continuance of what we have seen recently in Great Britain, and will need no revolution."

    "Thus we might aim in practice (there being nothing in this which is unattainable) at an increase in the volume of capital until it ceases to be scarce, so that the functionless investor will no longer receive a bonus..." - The General Theory, Chapter 24, Concluding Notes on the Social Philosophy towards which the General Theory might Lead

    The above is virtually indistinguishable from Marxism.

    Keynesianism is pro-communism in the area of money production. State monopoly. Central banking is one of the ten planks of Communism in the Communist Manifesto.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "Keynesianism is pro-communism in the area of money production. State monopoly."

      Rubbish. You might as well say that Mises was pro-communist in the area of production of security and justice.

      Central banking in any Western tradition involves a system where the vast majority of banking is done privately and where money production also involves significant private fractional reserve demand deposits, as well as the standard private money things like bills of exchange, promissory notes, and even cheques.

      Delete
  14. Lord Keynes,
    I don´t understand German, but here is the translation in Spanish for the point 6:
    "6.a Nacionalización de los transportes."
    http://www.marxists.org/espanol/m-e/1840s/48-manif.htm

    It means "nationalisation of the means of transport" and nothing else. That´s what the translator understood, at least in this version, which is in the most consulted marxist site on the web (at least for contents in Spanish).

    Also you said:
    "The essence of the transitional Communist system was the complete nationalisation of all industry and business: the state would itself own all capital goods, and by implication centrally plan production and consumption of commodities, even the media (by point (6))."

    The point 6 doesn´t support your statement, even under your interpretation of it. As was said before, in the transitional period, the complete nationalisation hasn´t happened yet.

    I´m sorry that you feel the need to build opinions based on such an insufficient knowledge of the matter in question. I don´t see the necessity of it. Maybe reading the correspondence of Marx would give you a better perspective on this matter, but i fear you´re not really interested.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. My quotation is taken from the English translation (1888 edition) based on the 1872 German edition.

      The words "Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State" appear plainly in this text.

      Does it occur to you that the Spanish version may be incorrect, or using a different edition?

      Delete
  15. Sure, it can be incorrect, but it´s the interpretation of a translator, not your interpretation. As such, it can help to interpret what the English translator meant to communicate.
    Anyway, i leave a German version which meaning is quite transparent:
    "6. Zentralisation des {49} Transportwesens in den Händen des Staats."
    http://www.mlwerke.de/me/me04/me04_459.htm#Kap_II
    I don´t believe "Transportwesens" bears the meaning of "mass media" or anything like it (http://mymemory.translated.net/es/German/English/transportwesen). But you can argue, of course, that this version is also wrong.
    If this is the case, feel free to find the correct original version. Actually it would be methodologically mandatory to do so before extracting conclusions.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Ezequiel,

      The words "Centralisation of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State" appear in all the English editions from the 1888 English translation by Samuel Moore.

      Phil Gasper's The Communist Manifesto: A Road Map to History's Most Important Political Document (2005) - the standard work that gives us a textual history of the menifesto through marginalia - tells us on page 70 (note 6) that the "reference to communication was added in Moore's translation following the introduction of the telephone."

      Moore translated the text with the assistance of Engels. I find it unlikely that these words did not have the approval of Engels.

      Karl Marx (1818–1883) was himself long dead, so presumably this was nothing but a simple revision of the text approved of by Engels himself, in light of new technology.

      I hope this settles the matter for you.

      Delete
    2. Communication (meaning the telephone lines) is a natural monopoly (remember Ma Bell?) due to network effects, and natural monopolies on valuable infrastructure act exactly like governments.

      The choice, then, is: private, unelected government (Ma Bell), or elected government (telephone coop, or nationalized phone system like Britain had for a while). Marx and Engels got this one right.

      The casual attitude towards democracy was the real glaring flaw in their proposals; every last one of the "Soviet" countries pushed the actual masses and their elected soviets out of power pretty darn quick.

      Delete
  16. Lord Keynes,
    thanks for the research.
    But that´s not what we are discussing, is it? I have no problem with the choice of the English translator. I´m rather disputing your interpretation of it.
    I defend that "Centralisation of the means of communication and transport" doesn´t include the centralisation of mass media, as you said above. Also, i defend that it doesn´t imply the centralisation of all means of production, but you don´t seem to be discussing this in the commentaries.
    To support my argument, i present a Spanish version and a German version which pretty much clarify the question (in the assumption that they are accurate).
    To shorten the disagreement, i could ask you the following question:
    ¿On what grounds do you base your statement that the transitional marxian state requires the abolition of free press and of freedom of speech?

    I quote from the post to remind the readers:

    From the post: "It is obvious how all this requires an authoritarian, even totalitarian, political system, and it is not surprising that Marx and Engels advocated a “dictatorship of the proletariat”: abolition of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and legal and civil rights. For these reasons alone – even before we get to economic objections – Marxism stands as just another decidedly evil and monstrous authoritarian doctrine."

    From the comments: "If all communication media are owned and controlled by the state, how is this not eroding freedom of speech or civil rights?"

    It´s impossible to connect what you say to be obvious with what you have quoted from the Manifest, or with any marxian text.

    ReplyDelete
  17. "On what grounds do you base your statement that the transitional marxian state requires the abolition of free press and of freedom of speech?"

    Please show me one communist state in in real life where there has not been "abolition of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and legal and civil rights."

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Communist states aren't necessarily Marxist states.

      Much as Corporatist states aren't necessarily capitalist.

      Delete
    2. Yes, I suppose there is a difference between the (1) "theoretical" Marxist state on paper and (2) how these states actually turned out in the real world.

      But don't the real world attempts to turn the "on paper" state into reality show something?

      Delete
    3. They do. They show that things get lost in translation. Idealistic structures never happen in reality.

      Hence the distortion of the 'free market' ideal in Corporatism, and the perversion of 'communal' control of the media in Communism.

      Those ideals can't work because they elevate humanity to something it isn't.

      Pragmatic economics has to take humans as they are - warts and all.

      Delete
    4. L.K.,
      Must I suppose that we have finally agreed on the fact that the abolition of freedom of speech, etc, isn´t in Marx´s writings? (at least not in those that we have read).
      Now then, we can change the subject.

      "Please show me one communist state in in real life where there has not been "abolition of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and legal and civil rights.""

      In real life no communist society has existed since the beginning of agricultural states and class societies (maybe some kibutz would be close). I use the marxist definition in which there´s no state whatsoever and the means of production are owned by the community.
      In real life there has existed an experience of dictatorship of the proletariat, in the French Commune. Some denominate these transitional states indifferently as "dictatorship of the proletariat" or "socialism", as a first step towards communism.
      It´s called a dictatorship because one of the classes rules, it has no other connotations. In this case, the working class rules, democratically, as happened in Paris.
      In this experience the power was effectiveley in the hands of the people, ergo it can be considered a valid socialist experience.

      Of course, you are thinking about the societies which ruling parties called themselves "communists" and that claimed to have constructed "socialist" societies...
      But at the same time, this ruling burocracies were actively struggling to stop the socialisation of the means of production. The people didn´t have the power, ergo these can´t be considered valid socialist experiences (in the marxian meaning of the word).

      Good reading material on the nature of the dictatorship of the proletariat would be Marx´s "Class Struggle in France" and it´s introduction by Engels (1891) http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1871/civil-war-france/postscript.htm in which, interestingly enough, he writes about the blanquist revolutionaries as the vanguardist, disciplined doctrinaries, in a way that could remind us of the bolshevik party, and he applauds the fact that their centralisation ideals didn´t come true, on the contrary, the people could hold the power. This is essential for any meaningful definition of socialism: who has the power.
      I hope i haven´t overextended myself.

      Delete
    5. Ezequiel@August 1, 2012 3:58 PM

      (1) For goodness sake. Read the words:

      "Of course, in the beginning, this cannot be effected except by means of despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production; "

      Marx and Engel's manifesto strongly requires that some kind of authoritarianism is required to establish all their points listed above.

      (2) The "there has never been a communist state in all of history response" is simply not convincing.

      I will rephrase the question: in ALL real world attempts to establish the "transitional" Marxist state (as described by the points above), which ones have not been authoritarian?

      Delete
    6. "Marx and Engel's manifesto strongly requires that some kind of authoritarianism is required to establish all their points listed above."

      Well, Bakunin disagreed, provoking the big breakup at the Hague Conference in 1872. And Proudhon disagreed. And all the anarcho-syndicalists disagreed.

      While Marx and Engels may have at one point thought that this was necessary, there were a buttload of Communists who disagreed with them on this point.

      Delete
  18. Lord Keynes,
    It would be nice to get direct answers. The constant failure to do so should tell you something about the solidity of your position.

    Let´s see, this quote of yours is meant to support your previous opinions: "despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production;"

    So from the above, you deduce the following:

    "It is obvious how all this requires an authoritarian, even totalitarian, political system, and it is not surprising that Marx and Engels advocated a “dictatorship of the proletariat”: abolition of democracy, freedom of speech, the rule of law and legal and civil rights. For these reasons alone – even before we get to economic objections – Marxism stands as just another decidedly evil and monstrous authoritarian doctrine."

    Quite a leap, isn´t it? Despotic expropiations are not just that, but are also, according to L.K, the abolition of all human rights in general and the rule of a dictatorship in the vulgar meaning of the word (so any socialist revolution is by definition, inhuman, since at some point it must violate private property by force: "despotic inroads on the rights of property, and on the conditions of bourgeois production").

    Is that really what you´re saying?
    "Marx and Engel's manifesto strongly requires that some kind of authoritarianism is required to establish all their points listed above."

    Yes, the dictatorship of the proletariat is still a statal society and it operates with rules, and decisions are made that must be enforced, etc, especially to make sure that the abolition of private property takes place. This part is done without asking permission to the bankers and such.
    No, there´s no concentration of power in the hands of a vanguard. I already showed the dislike of Engels towards that kind of outcome. I repeat, the power must be effectively and democratically in the power of the working class.


    "(2) The "there has never been a communist state in all of history response" is simply not convincing."

    Actually it´s very convincing, or else you would have refuted it. But it´s simply true.

    "I will rephrase the question: in ALL real world attempts to establish the "transitional" Marxist state (as described by the points above), which ones have not been authoritarian?"

    None that i know of, except for the Commune of 1871, but not following any "manual".
    (This is how a question is answered directly -To answer it your way would have been asking you if, for example, you feel responsible for the doings of the socialdemocratic administrations in Spain by Zapatero, or in Greece, or in Great Britain, or in France, or in Germany, or in Japan, or the last years in the formerly golden Sweden, etc. Do these socialdemocratic parties represent your political ideals? No need to answer this.)

    ReplyDelete
  19. "It would be nice to get direct answers. The constant failure to do so should tell you something about the solidity of your position. "

    I thought my position is quite clear: in order to do all things from points (1) to (10), the transitional Marxist state requires authoritarianism. That is my inference from

    (1) what is proposed in these 10 points, and
    (2) the empirical evidence of real world transitional Marxist states.

    E.g., how else would one appropriate all capital goods without massive authoritarianism?

    Once the state has seized control of communication media is it really realistic to think dissenting opinions will be heard in this "dictatorship of the proletariat"? That basic rule of rule will be maintained? All opposition results in "confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels."

    The evidence I point to is precisely real world attempts to implement this "transitional" state: as you say, you know of none (except the Paris commune) where authoritarianism did not result.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. "E.g., how else would one appropriate all capital goods without massive authoritarianism?"

      Did you even think about this?

      Just stop respecting property rights, and wait for the workers to seize the factory (workers HAVE seized factories, even in the US, even in the last decade). All the state has to do is organize enough of an army to see off the Pinkertons.

      Delete
  20. Lord Keynes,
    I quote the title of your post and your presentation:

    "What Economic System did Marx and Engels Advocate?
    And here I don’t mean their utopian classless, stateless society (which they called “pure communism”), but the transitional system they advocated in The Communist Manifesto"

    You haven´t been able to link your conclusions (authoritarianism) to what is actually said in the Manifesto, because you couldn´t defend your interpretations of some passages of it. Your objective in this post can´t be met under it´s own terms (your own terms).

    Therefore you had to introduce ad hoc arguments to find some other support to your position. I don´t believe this to be an invalid method of discussion, but it doesn´t look good when it´s used to hide the initial flaws of the argument (since these flaws are never acknowledged).
    Your ad hoc arguments could contribute to your initial conclusion. But they don´t.
    First, it was point 6 what held your position. You ignored the critique to your interpretation of it, but you introduced another argument:
    the "despotic abolition of property means authoritarianism" argument, which critique you also ignored, but at the same time felt the need to introduce another ad hoc argument to deviate from the previous path:
    the "real life DoPs were authoritarians" argument. When i show you that the only real DoP wasn´t authoritarian, you dismiss this empirical evidence, don´t make any comment about it. When i say this is the model Marx and Engels had in mind, when i say Engels applauded the triumph of the democractic tendencies in the Commune, you answer nothing. Instead, you ask me about what happened NOT with the actuall DoP but with the "attempts" to create DoPs.

    Of course at this point we are no longer talking about what Marx and Engels advocated, but you still want to use this as an argument, against all logic.

    "E.g., how else would one appropriate all capital goods without massive authoritarianism?"

    Was the Commune "massively authoritarian"? No, i already explained this point. If you think the expropiation of the means of production by the workers is authoritarian by itself, as a concept, then you´re not using the usual meaning of the word (as the one in Wikipedia) and our disagreement losses all interest.
    If you think the coertion needed to take posession of the working place is on its own authoritarian, then you´ll have a hard time explaining how any democracy with a police force which defends by force the legal fiction of private property, is not "authoritarian".
    Authoritarianism is the opposite of a state ruled by the majority of the people in a democractic (real democracy, which means real power) way.

    ReplyDelete
  21. "It is obvious how all this requires an authoritarian, even totalitarian, political system, "

    No, it's not obvious at all, and in fact it's totally wrong -- an authoritarian system would immediately fail at this, because the power used in it would generate property.

    Look at the anarcho-communists for the viewpoint that this requires the *opposite* of an authoritarian political system, rather something anarchist.

    If you want a more cynical view of that, read LeGuin's _The Dispossessed_ for the theory that this would require early childhood indoctrination to, basically, change human nature! I suspect she is correct, and perhaps that would actually work.

    ReplyDelete
  22. I'm 2 years late to the party, but as a marxist I'd like to note that the ten planks (that everyone likes to get his panties in a bunch over) were rejected *by* marx and engels during their lifetimes, which is mentioned in the introduction to the last edition to the communist manifesto. They were the last development of a set of Engels' ideas on a transitionary revolutionary program that started with the confession of faith of a communist and the principles of communism (two first drafts of the manifesto in which Marx himself was not involved).

    Among other things, the abolition of all rights of inheritance doesn't mean what you think it means. Rights of inheritance are only relevant in the case of private property, where you inherit the title to it. But marx supports a system of personal occupancy-and-use property scheme. You don't have a title to it. You own it by virtue of usufruct, Use in the legal sense. Your children already live in your house and use your stuff. They don't actually need to inherit it.

    Marx considered the dictatorship of the proletariat a constitutional direct democracy. See for example the principles that I mentioned above, where Engels notes that first the communists should attempt to create a democratic constitution and where such a constitution already exists (naming the US as one such place) they ought to use it to the benefit of the working class that is the majority of people. You can also see Marx's work "The civil war in france" where he describes the democratic government of the commune, with its immediately recallable representatives, the horizontal decision making mechanisms and the abolition of state bureaucracy with much glee.

    He called it a dictatorship of the proletariat, because he believed that in a democratic state the proletariat, being the majority, would dictate policy. On the other hand he called republics dictatorships of the bourgeoisie and flat out considered the politicians a buffer placed there by the capitalists to uphold their interests. It's easier to bribe 400 people, after all.

    A DotP is defined as the exact opposite of how you describe it. A constitutional, democratic, civil society.

    I'm saying all this in the interest of providing a systematic reading of marx, whose ideas where expressed (much like nietzsche's) in a very bitter and sometimes edgy way that makes them easy to misunderstand when provided with tidbits of them.

    Take what you noted, that despotic measures would be necessary. Marx is being blunt here instead of sugarcoating stuff. He considers that any revolutionary change would necessarilly be violent. If you read the principles you'll see they consider that violence defensive, but they're not sugarcoating it. See marx's conspectus of Bakunin's statism and anarchy, he's pretty much telling bakunin that they are saying the same thing with different words. Marx would consider the actions of say the spanish anarchists exactly those of a DotP, and exactly "despotic" as they were expropriating the expropriators and all that. You don't go from "private ownership of the MOP" to "worker ownership of the MOP" without first taking that ownership from the private owner and giving it to the workers. It's just how it goes. Perhaps he is being uncharitable to himself by calling this despotic.

    If you want to understand marx's opinion on the state you can read "on freedom of the press" on one side and one of his latter works "critique of the ghotta programme" on the other. This would crush any idea you might have that he liked states.

    ReplyDelete
  23. You can make all the arguments you want against the transitionary state, and especially against the leninist vanguardism (what we libertarian socialists like to call a dictatorship of the "elite" of the proletariat), in fact aside from the anarchists even marxists (the left-communists like luxemburgh and panekoek and the autonomists like those in the frankfurt school or Holloway) reject the transitionary state-capitalist scheme alltogether.

    Finally, the ten planks by no means describe a communist or socialist society. You yourself note that their "utopia" is classless, stateless and moneyless. However this is the definition of communism. We can't just redefine the content of the form of social organisation just because someone used its name in correlation with something else too many times. No matter how many Kims call their NKoreas a people's republic, they will still be monarchies. You can argue that one transitionary scheme or other is authoritarian and counter-productive and many marxists do as well, but this in no way characterises the proposed form of social organisation positively or negatively.

    Communism would not necessarilly be a utopia, either. You could have a classless, stateless and moneyless system that would fail miserably, for example because it couldn't function without price signals, or because a top-down organisation is necessary to maintain order. But that failled system would actually be a failled communist system on account of fitting the definitional criteria of a communist society.

    The opposite is like someone starting a feudal state which he consistently calls capitalist. But it would not be capitalist because it would not be organised along the lines of generalised dependent employment as the definitional criteria of capitalism demand.

    In short, saying that a guy from france is not a scottsman is not a no true scottsman.

    ReplyDelete