Your parents extract surplus value from their employees. It belongs to the employees, not your parents. Your parents surely work, a lot probably, but they get to keep the full value of their work, their employees don't.
After years of surplus extraction your parents accumulate it in capital, that is passed down to their heirs. Their employees can't accumulate even a decent retirement in this economy. They could if their surplus value wasn't taken from them.
Your parents aren't bad people. But they are allowed and compelled to exploit others thanks to them owning the capital.
this is the last point i make in my response that is apparently too powerful for hexbear to actually post
Nah, nobody wants to kill the petty burshwá, sadly they tend to rabidly defend the unfair system that benefits them, and that's where the conflicts start. Proletarians ask for workers rights and they immediately vote for fascism.
Hell, most petty burshwá would have a better life under a planned economy instead of this where you can get charged all your savings and more for a cheap-yet-life-saving medical procedure.
But nobody has "kill bakeries owners" in a to do list to achieve communism.
the problem is that she's very deep into a crapton of silly conspiracy theories, and conspiracy theory circles are absurdly right wing... so she's a weird mix
Feel that, it is common in families.
I think there is a material base to why the conspiracies are docking, it justifies her privilege and lets her be at the same time feel as victim of powerful forces from above and below and justifies violence and force (such as exploitation) to keep what is rightfully hers. A part is the insecurity that our system creates.
Another part I think is the excellent propaganda that is possible nowadays, that is targeted at individuals and they do not live in reality, but constructed spaces in which alternate realities are created and alternate communities founded. With the lack of good social relations in which they feel accepted and secure (outside of hierarchies) they tend in my opinion to seek para social relations with that and take over the vibe and don't want that to be attacked, which is why they aren't open for facts or other emotional connections sometimes. Besides that they don't have or take the time and also lack the position to actually see what their position means for the system and align themselves more with capitalists against those that want more.
With undoing their economic power on one hand and at the other hand securing their life and good quality of life for their children they might actually feel much better (or at least their children/children children will). I for sure know that plenty of close and close-ish family of mine would be better off under socialism as the threat of starvation, losing health insurance or not having a pension, or not having social clubs would be done away with.
Yeah I agree wholehearted with what you wrote and can relate to what you write about your family on this point as well.
no one wants to hang your parents, we all just want their employees to have the same opportunities they currently get by taking their surplus labor value.
hey first off you're amazing and I hope it's been rewarding to take the first dive into theory
I'd love to address a lot of points but I'll just address a couple for now because I'm in a time pinch currently
Ideally if we only have one choice we have to make sure it's the right one, no?
yes, fully correct, 100%. Since the economy is fully democratized and planned, it is up to the state to decide if restricting brand choice is ideal or if it's actually in the state's best interest to keep competition alive. Solutions vary on this - I don't purport to know the best ones, but some examples are fashion would absolutely suck under one state brand and it'd likely be in the state's best interests to facilitate several simultaneous brands, where something like medicine would do better under one brand, as having all the data on studies/usage/manufacturing under one roof enables safer and faster development. Under capitalism, all we can do is let each industry be dominated by the corporation or corporations that are the most profitable, but under socialism, we are free to choose any mechanism we choose to decide how many brands there are and how they are run.
AFAIK a revolution in a single country did happen right?
yep. This is one of the things that Marx is notoriously wrong about, also that the highly developed world would see socialist revolution first. They tried their best to predict these things and they missed sometimes and you'll find that there is a ton of modern theory that addresses these gaps nicely.
do you have any examples? I'll add them to the massive pile...
I'm not who you asked, but I can think of a couple Marx/Engels concepts that have been expanded on by other theorists. What I find appealing about Marxism is that it's approached as a science. If something is wrong, then it is ripe to be corrected, without throwing the baby out with the bath water. The point is for the proletariat to collectively and scientifically develop an understanding of the capitalist world so that it may more effectively advance its class interests.
- How imperialism works, or more broadly, how capitalist societies relate to one another. Marx was obviously aware of imperialism and colonialism and alluded to its existence, for example in the famous chapter on primitive accumulation. But other theorists definitely made contributions on this front, for example V. I. Lenin, Ruy Mauro Marini, John Smith, Immanuel Wallerstein.
- How the oppression of women works in detail. Some names are Angela Davis, Silvia Federici, Claudia Jones.
- Ecology, I honestly haven't read much on this topic though I know it is super interesting, some names are Kohei Saito, John Bellamy Foster
Thanks for your questions!
Section 18
So I think part of this is based on a really commonly held misconception and another part because of the economic conditions that countries like the USSR and Cuba face(d).
The the first part, when we think of the state having total command of the economy we almost always consider it to be one single company having a monopoly over production.
While this has been the case in some instances, and it can be very beneficial with regards to industries that require or would benefit from standardisation (e.g. railways, utilities, recycling) or that require tight regulation (e.g. water supply, pharmaceuticals), there's a false notion that competition either cannot exist under socialism or that it did not exist.
In fact, neither are true - the USSR had competing companies operating in the same industry or in monopolies in different regions, with the view that the practices which were most efficient would be expanded and adopted more broadly.
China actually does this with social policy today; they use different regions as test labs to try out changes in policy, to assess their effectiveness and potential consequences, and to either abandon these policy changes or to expand them depending on how successful they are.
The second part of this is that countries like the USSR and Cuba faced extremely harsh economic blockades and they were essentially pre-industrial at the point of their revolutions. The USSR especially had to deal with a huge military buildup in Europe and in Asia (due to having borders in each continent).
The upshot of this is that there were/are limited consumer goods because there were higher priorities, such as preparing for WWII and the need to modernise agriculture and industrialise the nation, meaning that often consumer goods were/are limited.
With this in mind, most western countries have deindustrialised and it's likely that a revolution in a western country would necessitate a rapid reindustrialisation for reasons that I won't go into here but I would anticipate that there would be a period of limited consumer goods for a post-revolutionary western country as well.
Do you think this is better for an average person? main things that scare me are that, much like with companies in a market, how could we ensure the state produces things that benefit us and not benefit itself instead?
I have a few thoughts on this.
One thing to consider is that under modern manufacturing, often our consumer goods are produced in factories that are similar if not identical (and often they are produced in the very same factory) using similar or identical raw materials.
A lot of what we see in consumer choice is a mirage or it's so subtle in its distinction from similar goods that it's barely a difference at all.
I think that the west upholds the absolute glut of consumer choice as inherently good although I'm not convinced that it's nearly as beneficial as we are led to believe but I'll spare you the rant on that particular issue.
Another consideration is that, while an abundance of choice in consumer goods may well be beneficial for the individual, this often is the opposite case for the environment and so we would need to be responsible and weigh the needs of the individual against the needs of the community, the world, and especially the environment.
There would need to be democratic structures in place for a socialist society to function and be sustainable. This would necessarily extend to influence over production of consumer goods as well.
this is what worries me about only having a single national bank too. Ideally if we only have one choice we have to make sure it's the right one, no?
A single national bank is about the state having total control over fiscal policy and the economy. That doesn't mean that there wouldn't be regional banking institutions that could operate beneath a national bank at the consumer and/or industry level though.
How would niche things, that benefit some part of the population but not everyone, be produced? Things like... fumo plushies, board games, or to put a less banal example, something that helps a condition that is uncommon and doesn't spread but still exists, like special shoes to help some kinds of foot deformation for example...
This is a really good question and it's one that remains to be answered by the future post-revolution society in question.
I envision that there would be the necessity for upholding regional production, especially for marginalised ethnic groups, so that their cultural traditions would be supported (and even strengthened) by the socialist system.
I know it probably sounds odd to put it in these terms since cultural traditions seem abstract, and some definitely are, but so much of what determines a thriving cultural tradition is based on material things - food and food production, clothing, arts and crafts, musical instruments, architecture and so on.
With that in mind, a post-revolutionary society must uphold regional production of goods.
I also think that there will always be a place for artisanal production, whether by necessity due to limited access to raw materials (think of something like truffles or particular wild honey which is culturally significant), or as you've mentioned to cater to the needs of people who are outside of the norm for whatever reason. This might be people of unusual stature or body type, for example, and thus there would always be the need for a small but not insignificant industry for bespoke goods. Tailoring and shoemaking would be some example of this sort of small, artisanal production to meet the needs of a small minority of people for whatever reason.
Board games might be produced by hobbyists and enthusiasts in their spare time. This happens more and more under capitalism with the GoFundMe model. There's no reason why a similar system of government grants couldn't be established in a socialist society where people could use a democratic process (e.g. voting) to support a particular pre-funded project to create a new board game.
I'm going to use the idea of money just to keep this example simple and easy to relate to but imagine if the government gave every citizen an allocation of credits to use in a national GoFundMe style model. Say each person gets awarded $1000 worth of non-transferable credits for use in this model per year. People could "donate" these credits to support a project and, if successfully funded, the project could be awarded a grant to create their new product.
also, what would inspire innovation if it's not competition?
I think that there's a common misconception that the market is the only way to innovate or compete.
Ultimately, people compete and they strive for excellence regardless of market incentives or otherwise; when kids compete in a race, competive sports more generally, or things like gaming, we don't award food only to the kids who excel. Sure, there can be prizes and money awarded to competitors but typically that's only in higher level competitions.
It's worth noting that USSR was extremely technologically innovative during its lifespan.
In many ways the market inhibits innovation due to things like patent law (you know how we're living through this huge boom in 3D printing, right? That's only because the patent for 3D printing expired in recent years and for the previous decades there was essentially no innovation because of the way the market works) or financial competition, such as between pharmaceutical companies; pharma corporations do not share their research with one another because they seek to maintain their competitive edge and thus their profit model. This ultimately means that we almost certainly have multiple pharmaceutical companies duplicating research and development rather than dedicating those resources towards expanding a greater, shared body of knowledge on pharmaceuticals.
I'll try to respond to your other points when I get the chance. Apologies for rambling. I hope that some of this comment is useful to you.
have indeed heard stories that people in socialist countries "only have one or two brands of X", I'm not sure to what extent that is true but it seems like the natural conclusion from doing this...
Do you think this is better for an average person? main things that scare me are that, much like with companies in a market, how could we ensure the state produces things that benefit us and not benefit itself instead?
Is the time spent finding the cheapest brand of in the store actually valuable? Is there any real difference in canned bean brands. Toothpaste is similar, outside of flavor and specific "sensitive" formulas, is there a point to having many brands?
This actually probably goes for all the different brands in the grocery store. What's the point of having a "choice" between canned tomatoes from Kroger or Hunts?
Now obviously different flavors/formulas are a bit of a grey area (i.e. Pepsi vs Coke), but at least when it comes to things like beans, toothpaste, and I would argue healthcare, choice actually makes us less free.
I just don’t think that’s true. There are different qualities of tomato’s for example. The value of choice gets even clearer when we look at things like phones or computers
Tiers of "quality" for products exist under communism too. Some people need powerful computers, other just need to open their mail. There is a demand for several tiers and flavors, that demand can be met in a planned economy.
Then how do you decide who gets the better and who gets the worse food? Doesn’t that introduce inequality. And yes good food isn’t a necessity so you can argue that there is no real need for good food but that’s just depressing for people who like food
The first priority is that everyone gets adequate food, and once that has been achieved, variation can be achieved from locally sourced produce.
I don’t think that is true at all. Food is “bad” because as you said the producers cut costs. But you are forgetting that these costs represent real world resources. You have the choice to A. Produce less with a better quality or B produce more but with a worse quality. In order for us to be able to provide for food for everyone food quality is going to suffer even if only a bit
Even if that was the case, which it isn't at all, would you NOT trade everyone eating adecuately for you not eating the fancy variety of tomatos?
How much human suffering is caviar worth to you?
The works of the roots of the vines, of the trees, must be destroyed to keep up the price, and this is the saddest, bitterest thing of all. Carloads of oranges dumped on the ground. The people came for miles to take the fruit, but this could not be. How would they buy oranges at twenty cents a dozen if they could drive out and pick them up? And men with hoses squirt kerosene on the oranges, and they are angry at the crime, angry at the people who have come to take the fruit. A million people hungry, needing the fruit- and kerosene sprayed over the golden mountains. And the smell of rot fills the country. Burn coffee for fuel in the ships. Burn corn to keep warm, it makes a hot fire. Dump potatoes in the rivers and place guards along the banks to keep the hungry people from fishing them out. Slaughter the pigs and bury them, and let the putrescence drip down into the earth.
There is a crime here that goes beyond denunciation. There is a sorrow here that weeping cannot symbolize. There is a failure here that topples all our success. The fertile earth, the straight tree rows, the sturdy trunks, and the ripe fruit. And children dying of pellagra must die because a profit cannot be taken from an orange. And coroners must fill in the certificate- died of malnutrition- because the food must rot, must be forced to rot. The people come with nets to fish for potatoes in the river, and the guards hold them back; they come in rattling cars to get the dumped oranges, but the kerosene is sprayed. And they stand still and watch the potatoes float by, listen to the screaming pigs being killed in a ditch and covered with quick-lime, watch the mountains of oranges slop down to a putrefying ooze; and in the eyes of the people there is the failure; and in the eyes of the hungry there is a growing wrath. In the souls of the people the grapes of wrath are filling and growing heavy, growing heavy for the vintage.
You can have a planned economy that encompasses "niche" consumer products too. Regardless that nowadays most "niche" things scale up in consumption really quick thanks to quick logistics. Something being niche doesn't mean it shouldn't be produced.
Also, you can have systems where the state controls the big and medium levers of economy (energy, grains (wheat/corn/soy/etc), healthcare, housing, education) through different kinds of state organisms/"enterprises", while the small scale production, say fresh-bread bakeries is handled by small coops.
how about we worry about that when everyone has food that is high enough quality to not kill them. but presumably first come first serve or something? people will have more free time to prepare food better regardless? reorganizing the entire economy around human value instead of profit would so completely alter american foodways so much that the question is borderline pointless?
You're describing a different in product at this point though (i.e. style of bread, etc) rather than a "brand". Again, products where generics are literally the same and simply have a brand (ibuprofen for example) are what you were talking about and unless you're entirely brain poisoned there's no difference between Advil (brand) and the generic chemical!
A lot of the different products in stores are really made by a small number of conglomerates. Those companies are making new products all the time through what are essentially little internal planned economies. They are doing it to stave off competition, but these aren't products being developed in "the marketplace". They are deliberate planned processes.
No reason to believe the couldn't happen under a state run planned economy.
lots of good responses in here, i'd just like to throw in that socialist kellogg added a fourth variety of cereal to their production at some point (not sure if that's in this article but anyway) so there's an example of workers owning the means of production increasing variety.
https://www.fightbacknews.org/2021/8/8/venezuela-workers-take-over-kellogg-factory-now-known-socialist-kellogg
if there was no competition, every soda fountain could be a coke freestyle and you'd be able to get pepsi flavors and weed out of it too.
Several of these really only apply to a fully socialist fully centralised system, I'll answer under that assumption.
consumer choice
ShowInstead of this. Where dozens of different companies are all independently pursuing exactly the same thing, wasting the labour of thousands of talented engineers competing to come to exactly the same outcome, you will instead get less of this skilled labour wasted. It takes the labour of one team of engineers to come to this outcome, all the rest of these talented people can be put towards achieving something useful instead.
This parallel construction of the same product that does the same thing with practically no difference is a monumentally huge waste of labour. One of the easiest examples of the inefficiency of markets. Think of what useful and innovative things these people could be doing instead of.... This? Making the same shit over and over and over in competition with one another.
How would niche things, that benefit some part of the population but not everyone, be produced? Things like... fumo plushies, board games, or to put a less banal example, something that helps a condition that is uncommon and doesn't spread but still exists, like special shoes to help some kinds of foot deformation for example...
There's no reason niche things can't be produced by a centralised system where inventors bring their things and make a case for them, then the department assesses their usefulness and agrees or does not. For niche things this is actually much more likely to happen than for things that aren't niche, because it costs considerably fewer resources to do.
Lots of completely useless products will never get invented, simply because there is oversight.
Section 19 I'm curious what communists think about this with a modern lens? AFAIK a revolution in a single country did happen right? And in Russia so none of the places Engels proposed. It didn't really spread from there.
If the German revolution had succeeded the global revolution was extremely likely. All of Europe, the middle east and asia would have gone to revolution. Africa would have followed easily under these conditions. South America too. The US would have been isolated and followed.
It's not often in history that killing a single person changes its course, but in the case of the German revolution the killing of Rosa Luxembourg did.
do marxists think only economic class exists? wouldn't there still be political classes? here it says that classes would end up disappearing because they only form due to division of labour. But isn't there even in a fully realized socialist state a division of labour? even if everything is nationalized, isn't there still a difference in power between, like, a furniture factory worker and the bureaucrat that oversees the state's furniture building company? even if that bureaucrat is not monetarily richer than the worker per se.
Class under capitalism is used to interpret the primary contradiction of capitalism, class war. Between the exploiter and exploited. You could divide up the new system into a hierarchy of power to analyse its contradiction dialectically and try to discover where things will go but you're flying blind with no historical examples due to the nature of capitalism still existing. We simply don't know what contradictions will arise in the new society. Certainly history will not end, but this is guessing best left to fictional writers as it is so far in the future to not matter to us.
I have one doubt about what Engels says about democratic socialists, mainly that small capitalists ("petty bourgeoisie") in general tend to have the same interests as the proletariat.
He's right about democratic socialists, but you're right about the petty bougs. The modern interpretation of this class is that they do not hold the interests of the proletariat, and they are the primary class that pushes for fascism.
I think Engles is partially right, in that the smaller members of the PB are all but proletarianised. There's not a huge difference between a remote worker who is "technically a contractor" but would be an employee if it ever went to the labour board, and some sole trader/artisan equally beholden to their corporate clients, but who has a shop and some minimal capital to do their job.
On the other hand some restaurant chain owner guy with 30 employees is definitely not on the side of the workers.
I was thinking more of the person who owns like...3 cafes with his own brand, but you're not wrong.
Great questions!
Re: Section 24
Small business owners, in some sense, do have more in common with the proletariat than they realize. Their economic situation is usually very precarious - at any time, if business slows down they will find themselves as part of the proletarians if they lose their business. This happens fairly often under capitalism. Further, ruthless competition among capitalists means the capitalist economy trends toward monopoly - squeezing out small business owners.
I have a friend who is a capitalist (inherited the family business). I once asked him what he liked about being a business owner. He didn't use these exact words, but essentially he loves making a lot of money and being "the boss" i.e. holding power over people. He doesn't actually care that much about the work itself. And frankly he isn't very good at it, but the business he inherited was already pretty successful.
Then you have my dad, who is also a small business owner. He doesn't have any employees. He does it because he loves that line of work; he doesn't really make that much money from it. But he's at the age where he could retire but he doesn't want to because he enjoys the actual work - meeting with people, working with them on solutions, etc.
Under socialism, there's plenty of opportunities for people like my dad and I suspect your parents as well. You still definitely need people who can manage a team, run an enterprise, etc. My dad could still basically do the exact same work under socialism and it wouldn't really be any different. In Cuba today, this is actually fairly prevalent, people who basically run their own one-person shops. But this still applies to situations where you manage people. Honestly, there's no reason your parents couldn't do what they do now but under socialism. Granted, they may report to some planning entity (or not, depending on the stage and nature of socialism) but all the "managing" stuff is still just as valuable under socialism, if not moreso.
Now what would be different under socialism would be a.) you're not gonna make a fortune, although income could be higher than people that report to them. This is how every socialist country has operated so far - income distinctions, but not so much that you are creating class distinctions. And b.) you can't be a dictator over the people that report to you. Workers have rights and socialism usually entails more democracy in the workplace. But even in a situation like a co-op, you need people who can make managerial decisions and "run" the enterprise.
So if you parents enjoy the work for what it is, then no reason they couldn't enjoy things under socialism (maybe even more, given that the precarity would be gone). But people like my friend, they obviously would hate it but if your reason for being a small business owner is the obscene wealth and controlling people... then yeah socialism isn't for you.
If competition is erradicated when every line of production is controlled by the state as Engels is proposing, will that mean an end of variety in consumer choice?
the free market already does this in some ways, and socialist states have already solved it in other ways. the free market has a tendency to try to develop economies of scale where the technology can be more economical than the current process, always at the cost of human labor. as marx points out, all value is derived from human labor, so when a technological development lowers the amount of human labor required for the same output, this is a literal lowering of the value of the commodity in question. if i invent a machine that makes it take half as much human labor time on average to make a coat, then the value of the coats i create are halved. all of which to say, in our current epoch, most of what you consume is already produced by relatively homogeneous processes in large factories that produce for a number of entities. peanut butter is a good example. the same factory will produce many different brands of peanut butter, and the difference comes down to the recipe used for a given production time, and then packaging and whatnot. so the nature of commodity production 1) allows for commodity diversification that we already experience in much of our lives, at limited cost to productivity, in a socialist context and 2) this has historically been a possibility in a socialist states that do or have existed. there is also less diversity than you would think in terms of commodity production. so ultimately no, consumer choice for the goods that we currently expect choices for would be largely unchanged except presumably where the current choice is artificially generated by bourgeois social influence.
Do you think this is better ... have to make sure it's the right one, no?
the capital behind commodity choice is itself separable from the brand marketing that presents it socially, so ultimately yes, unifying production plans can in general allow for greater resilience and flexibility. we already see this in certain aspects of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie economy in the us, such as walmart having a near monopoly on commodity distribution and logistics in rural areas (and many (sub)urban areas as well). the idea that anyone ever gets a blank slate of capital that they have to start from scratch with is not an accurate one. the revolution inherits the material conditions of the state that came before it.
niche goods
niche good production is currently allocated by profitability, which is to say, the difference between the cost of the wages for people that produce the product and the capital required and the ability of those who require them to pay for them. capitalist microeconomics i think provides a pretty accurate description of the situation in terms of pricing. of course, depending on the need, the actual human value cost of the production can vary considerably, but ultimately, a revaluation of labor distribution on the grounds of human need instead of profit would see a decrease in the cost of producing necessary niche goods like medicines for rare conditions. a good example of that principle in action is the extremely high quality of medical care in Cuba.
what would inspire innovation if it's not competition?
in many ways, "innovation" isn't even required. a shift in the motive of production from profitability to human need under current technological conditions would be enough to feed, clothe, and give medicine to the entire human populace in a relatively short period of production. an extremely large amount of labor and technologically relevant resources are expended for nonsense that can help the biggest capitalist squeeze a little more human labor under their control. freeing that up for benefiting people would be of unfathomable benefit to society.
1/2
Section 19
they assumed that the proletarian uprising would have the greatest hold and the strongest power in the most developed places which have the most wage laborers. this prediction was ultimately incorrect. in russia, and virtually every other communist revolution we talk about, what you end up having is a much smaller contest between a thin stratum of wage laborers and petit bourgeois communist sympathizers (lenin, trotsky) that exist in the slightly industrially developed urban areas, soldiers that are dissatisfied with the instability of the failing feudal elite and join the communists, and peasants that are sympathetic to being free of the current governance that subjugates them as serfs all against an elite with outdated martial defenses. so you get the revolution in a russia shattered by the first great war, we in some way already see the failure of the global revolution at this point with the social democrat party of germany voting to join the war, and ultimately, history proceeds in the inverse form that Engels suggested here. the bourgeoisie was in fact weakest where they only barely existed in the ruins of a preceding social order regardless. china's revolution is very similar. a dying empire breaks down into a nationalist v communist civil war that the communists win because the peasants are awfully tired of having all their fucking grain taken by the aristocracy to sell. germany, Engels' last place victor on his list that includes neither russia or china, has a failed revolution with the spartacist revolts and the betrayal of the social democratic party, and not even failed communist revolutions in france, england, or the us. i think the failure of marx and engels here was to recognize the stratified ability to partially pay off the domestic proletariat by further tightening around the colonized workers in their global holdings.
Section 20
i think ultimately that at this point, Engels himself is engaging in a bit of utopian dreaming about what the actual material outcome of the abstract, context-free end result of scientific socialism would look like to experience. in this description, it is presupposed that the society has preceded through the abolition of the dictatorship of the bourgeois, the construction of a dictatorship of the proletariat that would oversee the democratization at the local level of capital among workers, and then finally the dissolution of a state construct existing at all. the other thing i think he fails to see here is capitalism's willingness to both eschew technological development in favor of the cheap fruits of military conquest and eschew technological development in favor of squeezing logistics, production, and price. capital will shoot itself in the foot for the sake of profit so to speak, in terms of developing away the necessary divisions of wage labor.
as for education, on the one hand is simply the preceding point, that sufficient technological development and capital investment will ultimately make individual laborers ever more unnecessary or differentiated. under a dictatorship of the proletariat that sees this occur in the context of democratic ownership of capital by workers (not necessarily a state apparatus for marx/engels) it makes sense to invest in the long-term pursuit of freeing up labor time, since human labor is what value is derived from. and ultimately, since all value is derived from human labor, the communist dream reaches its horizon when all commodities lack all value because they require negligible amounts of human intervention. on the other hand, the form of education we currently have is not particularly concerned chiefly with the development of human intellects and the production of innovation. pedagogical research shows that pretty much everything about how we organize education is empirically ineffective, and there are also important critiques to be made about how our education system currently serves myriad purposes for the capitalist, from training workers in the management and subjugation of their free time for large amounts of time to the sorting of potential members of the most learned echelons of society being limited to those with the necessary predisposition to not question or be broken by capitalist labors. Discipline, punish, filter. most of the systematic organization of our society is rendered purposefully ineffectual and violent by the need of the dictatorship of the bourgeoisie to subjugate and supplicate of the majority of people, even here domestically.
Section 24
These democratic socialists are either proletarians who are not yet sufficiently clear about the conditions of the liberation of their class, or they are representatives of the petty bourgeoisie, a class which, prior to the achievement of democracy and the socialist measures to which it gives rise, has many interests in common with the proletariat. [emphasis mine]
first note that engels here is discussing a person who as a member of the petty bourgeoisie or the proletariat has taken up the banner of socialism for themselves. engels is distinguishing different types of socialists from communists, but all of the types discussed would call themselves socialists. for the petty bourgeoisie, they are much closer to being tossed back to wage labor than a full on capitalist member of the bourgeoisie that owns means of production at scale. the petty bourgeois person is someone who in some way or another works for themselves and doesn't really need to employ other people on the basis of wages. with all due gentleness, your parents aren't members of the petty bourgeoisie, they are the bourgeoisie, categorically speaking. to actually discuss though, i don't think the idea is that they should be cast out of society, but rather, that they 1) at 70 should probably not have to / be allowed to labor as such regardless? 2) shouldn't be allowed to eat up the profit generated by the labor of the employees. marx/engels are not saying that there isn't some amount of labor that a factory owner might do. the point is that that labor and their circumstance does not rightfully entitle them to own the surplus value generated by other human beings. just because they don't have 100 or 1000 wage slaves doesn't make profiting off the employees they do have a moral good. capital ownership is all rent-seeking with extra steps. the rent is just sought from the labor of others directly as opposed to literal rent that operates at an additional layer of indirection. the employees that currently have the profits of their labors stolen by your parents should, in the marxist view, be the collective and democratic owners of the capital in question.
2/2
fuck, took me damn near an hour to write this and another fifteen minutes figuring out how to get it to post. fuck.
so many of my questions are just trying to understand how we could not make things only for profit
it's hard. partly why so many people take the Capitalist Realism inroad to anticapitalism. it's kind of the first thing you notice is how hard it is to imagine alternatives.
the bracelets that track if amazon workers are moving?
yes, and also that the innovations are used extremely inefficiently, as you rightly pointed out.
would you mind clarifying this part?
marx and engels' analysis was highly focused on the condition of the proletariat under industrialized capitalism in bourgeois european societies that hadn't necessarily thrown off their monarchies yet. consider that the year of publication of this is 1847, a year before the slew of liberal revolutions of 1848 in europe. so in terms of their relatively far future predictions of conditions and circumstances that did not reach their zenith until the end of WWI, the culmination of the communist preparation for the millennarian coming of the global revolution, they didn't take into account the increasingly global nature of capitalist exploitation. the colonial holdings of the fractured european society of the early 20th century were extremely valuable, and control over those was a key catalyst for WWI, a war of terminal crisis inn european capitalism, sort of imploding on itself. modern europe doesn't really exist until after that crisis concludes. it's also the stage of development where the communist revolution truly seemed to be ready to kick off, that circumstances for the proletariat had finally deteriorated to the point that bourgeois society itself was about to mindlessly obliterate itself. but, notably, the communist organization just never really gained traction to do the whole global revolution thing. marx and engels figured it would happen first in the imperial cores, because those places had the most developed proletariats. however, they didn't have a way to predict the interdiction of the colonial holdings on how the situation panned out. conditions essentially never really reached a point where communist organization could sweep away the authority of the bourgeois states. england never had a revolution, they had extensive colonial holdings, the profits of which could be used to give better wages to domestic workers while the capitalists still made incredible profits. the most successful colonial empires were the most able to use extra violence in the colonies to get extra labor and resources to buy off the proletariat at home. germany had a real attempt at a revolution, had very few colonies incidentally, and lost because the communists were betrayed by their social democratic allies, who at that point were too embedded in the operating structures of their bourgeois state to intentionally implode it. especially after they had agreed to let germany get involved in WWI, something that in many ways made the betrayal of the communist revolution inevitable. russia didn't have colonies, russia was the colony. the broader russian empire was the local bread basket of europe, operating at basically feudal production to grow grain for the industrialized west. it turned out to be much simpler to topple their bourgeois state because it barely existed in the first place.
so then... would like... a youtuber be petty bourgeois? a writer?
sure, those are good examples. a doctor that in a practice, a lawyer in a practice, typically work that is considered "professional" labor is petty bourgeois, specifically when it's private practice thereof. a lawyer that is solely a public defender is essentially a wage slave of the bourgeois society that employs them (and not a well-paid one mind you).
sadly they have to keep doing it because we need to finish the house we bought...
it's a funny thing, but from the analysis of how capitalism functions, your parents are unfortunately in the class of owners of the means of production, they're just bad at it in a technical sense. i don't mean that as a moral judgement, they're just not as good at doing capitalism as like, a wall street psychopath. the tension in liberalism ultimately comes down to these questions of how we are individually to feel and relate to things we want to morally valuate. circumstance would determine what would happen with your parents under a communist revolution. if they're truly kind people, perhaps their workers wouldn't harbor too much resentment, you know? but that's what it really comes down to, they're on the winning side in our society by being in the position to dictate to their workers that the extra part of the value they create is going to your parents' house that the workers can't share in. i'm not, and i don't think anyone normal would agree that your parents are inhuman monsters like elon musk. it's just that they're in the same relationship to other people in terms of the means of production.
18 (iv) Organization of labor or employment of proletarians on publicly owned land, in factories and workshops, with competition among the workers being abolished and with the factory owners, in so far as they still exist, being obliged to pay the same high wages as those paid by the state.
Doesn't mean there will only be one product, but what is meant that the labour market is to be abolished, that the threat of unemployment, starvation and alike is done away with. A fundamental force in capitalist societies which bring out some of the worst things in inter class warfare.
However my main point would be a bit more fundamentally. The text you cite is written by Engels and it is written to be a pamphlet to present the major collective understandings/(underpinnings of communists at that point. It was written before the communist manifesto, too. It is a good easy read especially in the context of the "spring of nations" 1848 and associated revolutions and movements.
I don't believe that Engels got everything right at that point, but already achieve a good theoretical advanced back bone of communism at the age of 27 back then. Only 20 years later would the first edition of Capital be published.
In my opinion the Russian Revolutions as well as the Chinese Revolution were both Marxist, but they both weren't quite the type of communist revolutions thought about at that point by Engels. The Revolutions and Civil War which created the Soviet Union was created in a feudalist state with incomplete industrial transition. While serfdom was officially abolished in Russia in 1861 its after effects remained till the Soviet Union. Plenty of reasons were there why the revolution was successful the weakening of the capitalist powers in the country and on the continent were a large part. The vanguard party that modulated the dynamics was also essential, though that meant that the material and social conditions weren't as older theory suggested.
It is a good starting point and I really appreciate that you try to find both, the way the texts work and the ways in which you think there are things that lead to either wrong conclusions or you don't agree with. Discussion and the academic or scientific method are tools that are quite good for people starting to read theory. We are rather having people who are aware, than people who accept theory texts as sacred texts without error or space for interpretation.
This isn't an answer to your questions but a general overview of what people mean when they say socialism. There's socialism in the sense of having a socialist economy where workers control the means of production and socialism in the sense of a socialist society with a socialist base and socialist superstructure. In simple terms, the base is the economy and the superstructure is politics, so a socialist society has a socialist economy and a socialist politics that reinforce one another. What does a socialist politics entails? It seems an actual democracy (not this farcical version of democracy we have now), it means a completely politicized citizenry who has undying love for humanity and complete hatred for anything that would seek to divide, humiliate, or harm humanity, it means a people completely free of all forms of bigotry and who tremble at the sight of injustice.
In terms of consumer choices, why can't those choices be something that is consciously discussed within the community? There's no reason why something like toothpaste flavor can't be societal discourse, with the end result being whatever consensus that is reached being implemented in real life.You could have a social media post clowning on a particular flavor leading to a lively discussion on various official channels (official Lemmy instance, town hall meeting) about how the flavor sucks leading to an election to recall the surgeon general because they insist on not removing that nasty flavor. For crap like Funko Pop, why should society be oriented towards production of useless junk that no one but a select minority want? There's a concept within Marxism called "socially necessary labor," meaning labor that's actually useful to society. Making useless junk like Funko Pop is arguably not at the level of socially necessary labor and shouldn't even exist. In terms of things like orthotics, we're also assuming a certain level of political development within the people, and among this includes the conviction that disabled people ought to live dignified lives. You don't need a market economy to live in a society where diabetic people get free insulin and trans women get free estrogen pills. If anything, a market economy leads to people overcharging shit (the amount that insulin gets charged compared with the production cost of producing insulin is abominable).
I guess it's an open question on whether you could have a bigoted socialist society like say a white supremacist socialist society. In my opinion, you can't have a socialist society that isn't at least trying to combat bigotry because if bigotry isn't combated, economic stratification is going to form with the bigoted majority at the top and the targets of bigotry at the bottom. It might not be capitalist, but it really shouldn't be called socialist either.
I'm very enthusiastic about something like this... has it actually happened in socialist states though? or is it more of a goal?
There's Cuba where the 2019 Cuban constitutional referendum was proceeded by community meetings. There were around 135,000 of those meetings where ordinary Cuban people hashed out what they wanted to add to the constitution, what they want to take out, and so on. Cuba has around 11 million people, so there's a decent chance the majority of Cuban people has attended at least one meeting. This is why Cuba being slandered as some dictatorship by some reactionary gusano living in Miami completely falls flat.
I can see the point if only Funko Pops are produced, but it's more about the collection of niche things, one alone is not very useful but if there's a lot of products that appeal to some select people it just generally makes a more happy society in my opinion, I like that I can collect fumo plushies and figurines about my favorite characters, I like that I can have 12TB external hard drive to hoard data stuff, I like that I can wear shoes that don't deform my feet and hurt me, etc etc. there's thousands of products like these that on their own aren't that useful but the collection of them means everyone can find a solution fit for them. If these things disappear and all choices are reduced to only a few "general" things, I feel like people would be a lot less happy
There's a Marxist concept called commodity fetishism, the idea that the social relations towards commodity production gets obscured and turns into inherent properties of the commodity itself. So, the fact that a certain car is more expensive than another car is taken as evidence that the car is somehow better rather than the social relations that goes towards producing that car. Maybe the more expensive car is just more expensive because they don't exploit their workers as much or the car company didn't get as much government subsidies and so on. The consequence of commodity fetishism is that the labor that goes towards producing that commodity is ignored, which means if that labor is exploitative, consumers won't recognize or care about that exploitation because it's not even factored in when they see the commodity. This is why gamers start malding when you talk about how game development is filled with exploitative practices like crunch time and rampant sexual harassment.
The reverse side is another Marxist concept called worker alienation, the fact that workers are alienated from the commodities they produce. A worker has no control in what they produce or how they produce it. They largely do what their supervisors tell them to do, which goes up to the chain of command up to the owner, who largely plans out what commodities gets produced based on what the market demands. So, the ultimate arbitrator of what and how a commodity gets produced isn't even a human, but an inhuman entity called the market. The ultimate expression of worker alienation would be something like a grocery worker living on food stamps forced to destroy excess food by dumping it and pouring bleach on it so homeless people can't dumpster dive.
If you combine the two, you have a situation where workers are alienated from the commodity they produce and consumers are alienated from production process of the commodity. To use chocolate as an example, you have cocoa farmers who never tasted chocolate before and chocolate consumers who have never seen what coca beans actually look like. This is a form of estrangement between worker and consumer. And since every worker is themselves a consumer and almost every consumer is themselves a worker, what commodity fetishism and worker alienation ultimately entails is workers being alienated from each other, everyone living as atomized individuals, which leads to the horrible capitalist hellworld we live in right now. This is why nobody gives a shit about wearing mask.
But in a socialist society where commodity fetishism and worker alienation aren't a thing (or far less of a thing because there's probably going to be some residual forms of commodity fetishism and worker alienation), consumers will recognize the labor that goes towards making the commodity and workers will have a say in what or how the commodity gets produced. To finally loop back to things like Funko Pops, what if the workers in the Funko Pops factory say, "Fuck you, we're not producing this plastic crap anymore. We're going to make plastic plates for disabled people who have a hard time washing dishes instead. If you want Funko Pop, you can go make it yourself."
I should've used the example of workers refusing to make the niche product. This is how capitalist ideology like commodity fetishism constantly slips into your mind. But to rephrase the question: why should workers be forced against their will to produce what they and the vast majority of society consider to be useless junk for a small select minority? Is this not unfair for the workers who have to make that useless shit?
I think useless niche products will still exist, but they will most likely exist on an artisan level. Furry porn is a niche product, but you don't need a factory to produce furry porn. Furry porn is something between the client and the artist. In fact, the production of furry porn isn't as hard hit by commodity fetishism and worker alienation. The client has to research what artist they want and the artist has a clue of what particular sexual tastes the client has when the client asks for a commission. Unlike the production of most commodities, the production of furry porn preserves the social relationship between consumer and worker. This means that in a socialist society, the production of furry porn would largely be the same. If anything, it's the production of other commodities that will start to closely resemble the production of furry porn.