- Capitalism and Alternatives -

Squirming?

Posted by: Red Deathy ( Socialist Party, UK ) on January 14, 19100 at 15:37:51:

In Reply to: Is that your final answer? posted by Stoller on January 10, 19100 at 18:22:34:

: No, I beg to differ. We are arguing over the Marxian predicate of INDUSTRIALIZED ACTIVITY (which demands the division of labor in manufacture) and the Morrisian fantasy of PREINDUSTRIAL modes of production.It's a big distinction.

And as I said, Morris' argument does not conflict with Marx's, he states that eventually, in our abundance, we would return to craft production as a form of luxury that we can afford. Remember, Morris independantly developed his own model of dialectic, in which future developments woiuld contains re-covered elements of past epochs.

: But this 'organic' interplay you envision is utterly utopian. Socialism is born out of capitalism---and capitalism has created the 'craft-idiocy' that resists the despecialization anticipated by Marx and Engels' German Ideology quote.

Not a all, it is a scienticific evaluation based on a model of the material conditions under socialism. After capitalism, something new will develop, and while the de-specialisation of capitalism is a necessary stage, as per morris, socalism will allow us to return to something entirely old and new.

Remember, teh crux of teh Marxian idea, is that our labour is our essence, our life activity, and that to return to a wholeness of subject, we must return, or build a-new, an alignment between activity/labour and social being.

: Also, this 'organic' jazz you propose negates fundamentally Marx's concept of the dictatorship of the proletariat. Please see Marx's letter to Weydemeyer, 5 March 1852, for a refresher in Marxist thinking...

The dictatorship iof the proletariate is simply the class rule of teh working class, i.e. democracy, and it will last for the five minutes of the revolution (or will we force capitalists to buy shares at gun-point?) It does not mean party rule, or subserviqence to any form of state.

: That's lame.

Again, you refuse to actually debate the point, and merely assert that it is lame, or previously, craven - what about geography? Wouldn't we indeed have differentiated productive relationships based on available geographical production possibilities?

: Choose betwen Marx and Morris, Bill. I hate to see you squirm like this...

Whose squirming? I do not remotely see them as at all incompatable/ While we're about it, why don't you move from argument by assertion into something more reasonable?



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