26 Jan 2024 7:35 am
(PART I of III)
LowIQTrash: "I will concede your argument that the SU did indeed practice socialism as envisioned by Marx..."
To clarify, I have stated that the U.S.S.R. practiced socialism. But I've not argued that Dr. Marx envisioned what socialism would look like in practice, for he and Engels never did that. They described what they saw as the prerequisites for a socialist society, i.e., a developed capitalist state, as the precursor. But, for reasons I have often discussed herein, they didn't describe a futuristic socialist society because doing so would have flown in the face of the dialectical materialism they set forth. (As an aside, I will say that I think Marx and Engels were mistaken concerning their belief that socialism could only come to fruition within the context of capitalist societies. After all, although it never evolved into a communist society, the Soviet Union established a successful socialist experiment against semi-agrarianism and held onto it for more than seventy years. I also think that had they lived to see the Bolshevik Revolution, they would have supported it despite their reservations, just as they eventually came to support the Paris Commune after advising against it.)
LowIDTrash: "The end goal of Marxist politics is communism, which I understand is an abolition of all commodity exchange and markets (not just wage labor and private property) in contrast to 'bourgeois socialism/anarchism' from the likes of Proudhon."
That's correct.
LowIDTrash: "I consider communism a pipe dream...yes, of course, with more advanced technology, we can produce more and more products at marginal cost..."
The pipe dream is the belief that this society won't eventually collapse due to the pressures of its ever-growing wealth disparity. Currently, 66.6% of the total wealth - working-class produced wealth - in the U.S. is owned by 10% of the population. Workers are already at one another's throats while locked in an artificial competition for the few economic crumbs the capitalist class leaves to them. Where is the breaking point, 76.6% of total wealth in the hands of %5 of the populace, 86.6% to 3%, or 96.6% to 1%? We're facing societal collapse because of this discrepancy, yet the band plays on.
LowIQTrash: "Even if something like that were to happen (who knows when, if ever), communism is also stateless, which means that the borders defining nation-states would be erased. In the spirit of Marx, achieving such a goal requires an international revolution where "workers of the world" unite."
What of it? Ultimately, nation-states have only been around for roughly 400 of humankind's 300,000-year history. They were only created to accommodate the now utterly antisocial capitalist system, a system that only serves a tiny few while subjecting the social majority to horrors without end.
LowIQTrash: "I don't see this happening, ever. People tend to be inherently racist (ethnocentric) and favor 'their group' for biological reasons. That isn't something you can 'fix' since it's an ingrained feature of human beings, hence my proposal that nation-states will remain."
People aren't inherently racist any more than they are intrinsically greedy. It's the ruthless capitalist system that has distorted human nature. And that's not merely figuratively so. For example, the word "race" wasn't used to categorize human beings until the 16th century when capitalism's forerunner - mercantilism, needed a way to justify the slave trade. Dehumanizing people via the n-word, "savages," "uncivilized," etc., served to soothe white Europeans who otherwise might have found an objection or two.
(END OF PART I)