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?
I may have not explained my concern enough or adequately, or emphasized it enough, but for the same reasons I try to explain why can’t Marx and Engels be held responsible for not knowing what may have happen next, the same would apply to Lenin and others. The issue here is whether the development and the changing faces of the same monster (capitalism) have promoted a surface reality that traditional theoretical tools do not “readily” explain/interpret, definitely not for many people in the working class. So Marxism-Leninism is drifting more and more to be a tool in the hands of a special elite of intellectuals isolated from their societies.
To say Lenin has all the answers has two possible explanations and an assumption. The assumption is I am asking this because I have not read Lenin, I have not read Mao, I have not read Stalin, but does it matter?
The two leads from the response “read Lenin” follow this mode of thought. Lenin’s completion and improvement on the theory was final, and as a global scientific theory of how the world works, it can describe and predict anything that will happen in the future. Like a magic sphere resembling the universe. (dead end)
A Nothing really changed since the time Lenin wrote about 2.5kg of theory (I have lived with the entirety of Lenin’s writing published in the 50s which my father bought with his very first salary as a merchant mariner with one older cousin sentenced twice to death and in exile in Poland and one in prison for being a member of the party). In nothing really changed in 100 years would have Karl’s, Fred’s, Vlad’s, and Joseph’s hair would be standing up in the air with this one.
B The west developed an urge to conquer China and its labor force, the Chinese government said OK, I’ll rent you the labor force you want, I stay in charge, and opened up a faucet and drained industrial production from around the world in its backyard, together came capital and all the west is left is a market and its marketing. This creates a dynamic imbalance that we haven’t been able to fully grasp or see it unfold. Due to this working people in all continents can’t really see a way out of this, and I am not even sure if they want out. (and this is only a minor unforeseeable complication to things that “have” changed and couldn’t be anticipated by theorists a century ago.)
So we need more and new tools that help people understand. What we have is a manifesto that for 94% of the population of the earth leaves an impression “this doesn’t apply to me, it is useless”. Why read any further and understand any further if the entry level document is irrelevant to their material conditions?
Furthermore, taking over or even reforming the local/state/nation/government not only doesn’t improve conditions in the minds of working people but it would nearly guarantee an abrupt deterioration of conditions. Food and energy supplies are nearly everywhere controlled by neoliberal minded privately controlled markets. People know and understand this in the surface level. Whether you are in Bolivia or Slovenia the material conditions will deteriorate once a government gets in power opposing the rule of multinational banking and trade.
With all respect to Vladimir, he fails to describe today’s dilemmas, anxiety, insecurity, interdependence, globalized capital has enforced.
… fascism the final stage of capitalism … now that is some metaphysical brilliant outlook into the deep future, which may be today, or the day after.
Overthrowing, taking over, reforming the state (any state) today is the most secure way to social disaster, famine, violence, chaos. Meanwhile it will do nothing than changing social relationships from those based on exchange into collective relationships (communal - communism). I may not like this reality but this doesn’t change it. To change material conditions, to leave capitalism behind, there must be an other way which we need to identify and propose as “hope”.