I am relatively new here, so please excuse my newbiness, I mean no harm or disrespect. Nor have I researched enough on how the original community was expelled by the CEO of reddit.com inc.
If I can identify with something concretely and not negotiably, is a firm believer of dialectical materialism, so I am not posting questions as an outsider to dialectical materialists. I am only posting questions to dialectical materialists, so idealists don’t waste our time responding.
I do not wish to play devil’s advocate, I usually hate the attitude, but I can’t help to have questions that fit the profile. As a first step I’d like to state that the theory of Marx & Engels and the evolution of Marxism is not one and the same, for reasons that relate to the questions. So here we go.
In the time Marx lived and struggled and in specific when he wrote Capital, the world was smaller, in population, and also scientific knowledge of the world itself. Since then sciences such as anthropology and archaeology evolved rapidly being really young at the time. This and other scientific knowledge was not yet available, so Marx can’t be held accountable for things not yet known. He could also not be accountable for things that happened after his theory was established and based on his material reality.
Even during his life time his ideas and theory affected an amazing portion of working people around the earth, the way they organized and struggled, and the early effects of this influence as partially witnessed during his time. Labor struggle did continue to be influenced and carried on past his time. This struggle had effects on how capital dealt with labor, and also how the state/s tried to remain in power to best serve capital while not collapsing under labor pressure.
Not a static picture A and picture B kind of comparison, but a dynamic process that had its qualitative and quantitative differences in various parts of the world, I think we can safely say that the social democracy was a dialectic product of struggle and capital domination. Not only did the state evolve but also capital evolved in identifying the enemy and source of trouble, as well as the uncomfortable shape of the evolved state. So anti-communism was born through this dialectic process and resulted in the things we very well know now.
Although Marx may have developed the theory to be as scientific as possible, and it is the role of scientific theory to interpret material reality but also form predictions, we can’t expect Marx to have metaphysical abilities to see the future and the details of the dialectic he helped form, as this itself would have been a violation of his own philosophy. Marxists on the other hand did apply theory, sometimes in an idealistic way, to interpret dynamic political/economic processes of the decades that followed.
It is clear through class analysis that the logical proposal for the working class to overpower and defeat the ruling class would be to organize, better, more massively, and more effectively. The other class now being affected by this growing organization (syndicalism) isn’t it expected to defend itself by organizing better itself?
Can it be possible that the state didn’t provide adequate defense and be sufficient organization for the class due to its evolution in the late 19th and early parts of the 20th century in some parts of the world, primarily where capital was mainly based and centered? Would they seek better organization of the nation/state or would they seek further unity among its class globally and try to organize as to be able to control the nation/states?
Marxists seem to have resisted such consideration but I believe that if Marx himself was around he would entertain the possibility of such development.
If so, what is this federation of capital, how does it relate to its influence on different states, and what are the new roles of states within this new framework of capital defense against labor? It appears to be very effective both in accumulation of capital, labor defeat, and on its original goal of anti-communism. But can we revert and conclude it exists because of its effects?
If such possibility exists, how does it effect labor organization and goals overthrowing this federated capital rule?
Are there any good audio books on the theory you would recommend?
you can have a look at the Socialism For All channel for well-narrated audiobooks (just ignore his other videos, he has some ultra-leftist takes)
I love the audio format, but I’ve never really listened to real, classical theory books as audiobook, so can’t recommend from experience. State and Revolution should be decent to listen to, maybe Principles of Communism too. In general works from the 20th century should be better suited for that, I personally wouldn’t take much away from an audio book of eg Value, Price and Profit. Afaik the classical works all have free audio-versions on Youtube, you’d just have to look for a voice you enjoy.
I post an article about linux and the left and within a few hours there are more messages than anyone can handle responding to. I post on theory, dialectical materialism, and I get 3 people writing a comment. Meanwhile the post on linux was political, it didn’t aim to provide technical debate, but people are more comfortable with the technical part than deal with the political.
Social media of 21st century dynamics even in an m-l community, is very disappointing to see.
Imagine if I pick up on the detail of the mention of IMF/WB/IBRD and argue that those institutions have nothing to do with the federation of global industrial capital, banks like HSBC, DB, Moody’s, … do, and whether true or false it derails the content of the discussion to a separate irrelevant subject.
Right in the middle of ww2 many previous known as powerful countries (economically) gathered under US pressure in Breton Woods and signed an agreement. The content of the agreement really was that private institutions such as the Fed.Reserve, and major banks can credit and debit each other without state intervention and necessary gold reserve transfers to cover deficits. Those participants agreed and signed, and after the war most others followed as not to be left out.
This was a passive move by “states” to allow private sector banking work under the radar of the state, a privilege or authority of the state silently passed to private hands. Why wouldn’t they react, it made states less important and autonomous. Progressively when it came time for states to borrow by publishing debt, this debt wasn’t negotiated by and between states, but by a privately controlled and regulated market. So the global market of debt is privately held and manipulated by those same banking/financing institutions.
The IMF/WB is just a setup/spokeperson to address the issues of all the weak nations that are literally sucked and digested over and over again by those private bankers. GB/UK debt was much higher and less sustainable than the debt of Ireland, Portugal, Spain, Greece, Italy (PIIGS) but the IMF wouldn’t ever go into the UK implementing measures to negotiate and refinance their debt. If US, Uk, De, Fr, Jp, debt was to be deemed unsustainable then this capitalism has collapsed.
Public property was rebranded state property, and as “property” stripped of human rights, can be traded in the market and end up in private hands. We are approaching a stage where states no longer have anything to base a mortgage to borrow more. So a state has become barely a manager of its citizens/residents. This is the only thing that remains for sale. So between state legitimacy and repression there is not much left of the “old state”, and there is little any electoral process can do to change this quality. So capitalism has created its own dead end for itself and the state, and the only ones who must deny this reality are working people themselves who strive for continuity.
A great war can reset many things for yet another cycle of another capitalism (the early one died in the 1930s this one is about to die now. Russia is stuck trying to play national capital and state of the pre-1930s era all by itself.
Those are some of the things I was hoping a scientific theory can explain to the lay man to realize there is something “we” need to do “now” with what we have in front of us.
To explain to a franchised store worker that the owner of the means of production is accumulating capital by exploiting their labor is something the system has been engineered not to reveal to the employee. People just don’t see it. They are not allowed to see it, it is part of the counter measured engineered into modern capitalism. That their state is in debt to finance a fake market of industrialized products and services is something they are locked out of. It has nothing to do with them, but they are ultimately paying for the state’s deficits and mortgage payments. The class enemy has vanished in a way. There is nobody to protest to that is able to address the problems.
We have to admit, those pre-war2 and post war designers of the new world order as a disguise of capitalism is ingenious, bordering evil. Anti-communism and anti-syndicalism are key components of the design.