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AIBU?

Share your dilemmas and get honest opinions from other Mumsnetters.

To think a Marxist society would be an improvement

243 replies

Downtroddenhousingass · 12/02/2019 09:06

Lots of people are so anti corbyn but there are many forms of Marxism and many could be far better than the system we have now imo.

Obviously corbyn isn't looking to replicate venezuela, that's been horrendously managed for a long time and was always going to end badly

OP posts:
Downtroddenhousingass · 12/02/2019 17:57

For the person asking about Marx

OP posts:
Chloemol · 12/02/2019 17:58

Every country has its issues in how it’s managed. The op may like the sound of the French and Scandinavia countries models but try living there, it’s not all good as is evidenced everyday. Better the devil you know. And imho Corbyn is a loose cannon, changing with the wind and would be useless. I don’t think even he knows what he really believes in

Justanotherlurker · 12/02/2019 17:58

I think you should state which version of Marxism you follow then, remember Marx himself said he wasn't a Marxist, and his most famous unpublished letter

www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/ni/vol01/no04/marx.htm

Let me draw your attention to a specific line at the end of that first paragraph:

In different passages of Capital, I have made allusion to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome.

If you look in your English language copy of Capital you will never find such an allusion. It consists of a single footnote which Marx added to Capital when he made a French translation of Volume I.

Other than a few stray corrections borrowed from the French by Engels after Marx's death, that revised French edition has never been rendered into English, even after 150 years.

This is the famous unpublished letter where Marx basically does an about-face and renounces dialectical materialism. He never wrote anything else remotely like this. Nearly all strains of "Marxism" which consider themselves to present Marx's orthodox thought, e.g. Western Marxism, Marxism-Leninism, Maoism, and Trotskyism, would find this late Marx a total alien to them.

Marx gives us some tools for diagnosing systemic social flaws, but we are living in a very different era and we need to learn how to separate those tools from the failed pseudoreligion of dialectical materialism.

So until you can offer anything other than fuzzy thinking, then it's a capitalism with restrictions

MiddleClassPerm · 12/02/2019 18:01

I'm not the most intelligent of people and I'm confused by the doctor/janitor example.

A doctor works hard at school, studies for years, pays fees for all that studying and works a huge amount of hours. Should she (Smile) not be compensated for that with a higher wage?

Also, how would the wages work? Would the doctor's wage go down to that of the janitor or would the janitor's go up to match the doctor?

Surely this would just mean that people wouldn't bother with all that studying to become a doctor and become a janitor instead? In that case we'd have no doctors and there would be so many people wanting to be janitors that there would be no more janitor's jobs?

I'm so confused Blush

Patroclus · 12/02/2019 18:02

DG Rossetti That was Lenin's theory of Proletarian Internationalism and Trotsky's Permanent Revolution. They didnt consider Russia developed enough to hold out on its own so wanted to spread their borders and economy. In practice they really wanted to leach off Germany and they nearly managed this.

Put simply I would say Marxism is abolition of class, nationalisation of all production and 100% employment in a state which produces what it needs, not individuals producing what is profitable.

Interestingly this is actually something like how Britain worked during the war.

Downtroddenhousingass · 12/02/2019 18:04

I've already said revolutionary Marxism and a mixture of social democracy.

And it's been said people wouldn't be paid the same.

I'm personally in favour of a citizen's income and people do what they like to earn more on top.

I disagree the world is different now, so many things (like Orwell spoke about also) are just as relevant now.

OP posts:
BejamNostalgia · 12/02/2019 18:04

OP, let me tell you a little story about Socialist East Germany. My Grandad, for various reasons was able to defect to the West. His family were left behind and were punished in his stead by being debarred from decent jobs and education or public office or decent housing etc, etc.

One of his sisters managed to get some false papers and start living a life which wasn’t tainted by her brothers defection. She met a man, got married and had children. She didn’t speak a word to them about her past, because even in her own home in the most intimate moments she knew that the state could be listening and it would break her cover.

In the late 90s when the Iron Curtain crumbled, she admit the truth and told her husband and children the truth about her background. Her husband broke down in tears after she spoke and then admitted that he too was a member of a stigmatised family who had adopted a new identity to flee the past. They were married for 30 years and had children together yet they were still too frightened to tell each other the truth.

I can tell more stories about children who were effectively dumped by their parents in order to dedicate their lives to the state. Children who grew into young adults who came across their parents in the state apparatus but both ignored the link because affection for family is a bourgeois concept.

Or perhaps you have already heard the story of the Russian boy celebrating by the USSR because he informed on his own parents for hoarding grain for which they were executed.

How do you intend to manage collectivisation? Gulags for resistors?

And what about bread shortages when the baker shuts shop early because he makes the same if he shifts 5 or 5,000 loaves?

KissingInTheRain · 12/02/2019 18:10

Socialism can be as much as wanting to raise the minimum wage.

Oh I see, all nice, kind things are socialist and all nasty, bad things are capitalist.

What about the job to which the minimum wage applies? Is that a good thing or a bad thing? Perhaps if it’s created in the private sector it’s nasty capitalism, but if it’s public sector it’s a shiny socialist job?

Seems to me socialists (and the rest of the ideological rather than sensible left) just follow a religion. When people do bad things the Christians call the behaviour ‘unchristian’; those who follow the faith of socialism call it ‘capitalist’.

Dapplegrey · 12/02/2019 18:11

Like anarchy (which is very successful for the company my brother works for)
Can you tell us more about the success of the anarchist company that your brother works for?

BejamNostalgia · 12/02/2019 18:12

Oh, and I forgot the main one. How do you reconcile Marx’s ideas with modern connected society?

Marx wrote in a period when means of production were were large, static infrastructure and the economy based on producing goods. These days businesses and the wealthy go to wherever offers them the most favourable conditions.

This has happened in the French economy you referred to. It’s economy is stilted by overegulation, companies don’t want to invest there. The headline 75% income tax for high earners was dropped as a failure: all the wealthy left and took their money with them so tax receipts fell instead of grew.

Macron’s current problems really stem from those policies too.

Downtroddenhousingass · 12/02/2019 18:12

BejamNostalgia yes awful, but as has been said many times it was evil people behind that not socialism. Stalin didn't become evil due to it, he was always a nasty gangster.

Everyday it's mentioned here how many commit suicide due to universal credit / disability assesments but the moment anyone suggests society should move in a different direction people use the worst examples to say it shouldn't change at all 🤷‍♀️

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Patroclus · 12/02/2019 18:13

Thats all your own bizarre projections Kissing. Frankly I cant be arsed with it.

ResistanceIsNecessary · 12/02/2019 18:13

The talk of janitors being less valuable than doctors reminded me of Douglas Adams - the story about the telephone sanitisers being deemed 'unecessary' and sent to another planet along with others who weren't thought to be terribly useful. The remaining important big-wigs were then wiped out by a virulent illness which they contracted from dirty telephones...

The problem with true Marxism is that it does not encourage any freedom of thought or expression - because deviation from the norm places the concept in jeopardy. That's why countries which have tried full communism end up inflicting awful treatment upon their citizens. China's forced abortions and sterilisations for example. There's also no incentive to work hard, to create, to develop and innovate, if your discoveries and creations won't net you any reward or recognition for your efforts.

Downtroddenhousingass · 12/02/2019 18:13

Yes he works for Suma, a very successful company with lots of very happy staff.

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Justanotherlurker · 12/02/2019 18:16

I'm personally in favour of a citizen's income and people do what they like to earn more on top.

Who is going to pay for the repackaged UBI in your social democracy, so far it hasn't had the desired effect in trails and no one can work out how to fund it.

I disagree the world is different now, so many things (like Orwell spoke about also) are just as relevant now

Yeah, this is why we need to move away from the psuedo religion

We are far more globalised economy now just for starters

Patroclus · 12/02/2019 18:20

The whole equal wage thing is something I cant get behind with marxism as well. Orwell's suggestion for a sensible socialist policy was I think no person should be earning more than 20 times the amount of the minimum wage (this was also in the 1940s). It would actually more likely support a doctor earning as much as an advertising executive or investment banker.

Gth1234 · 12/02/2019 18:20

YABU

End of.

KissingInTheRain · 12/02/2019 18:22

Thats all your own bizarre projections Kissing. Frankly I cant be arsed with it.

Yeah, sure.

Patroclus · 12/02/2019 18:24

And i'll say again, do people think how things work now is sustainable? unregulated capitalism is bringing the world to an end- see the story about polar bears desperately invading a russian island yesterday.

ResistanceIsNecessary · 12/02/2019 18:25

I agree society needs to move in a different direction, but the answer doesn't necessarily mean a binary choice between communism and a completely free capitalist market. I am in favour of state control of certain elements - social housing, transport, healthcare etc.

The comment about JC being gentle and full of care made me howl, I'm afraid. Yes, he's very concerned alright - as long as you aren't Jewish. Or a woman who objects to being told that being 'female' is a state of mind and that sex-based initiatives and protections are discriminatory. Or someone who is concerned about Momentum actively targeting MPs and Councillors who aren't pro-Corbyn.

When voting in the last GE I was speaking to my MP (Lab). We had a good chat on the doorstep about austerity etc. They had some choice views on JC and not one of them was complimentary. Rather significant that they don't feel confident going public with them though - it's a poor feature for any organisation if its leader or person in a position of influence, cannot be criticised without a wave of vitriol being unleashed upon those who voice concern.

Lolkittens5 · 12/02/2019 18:29

To OPs point about disability benefits, if people didn’t make false claims for free money then the government wouldn’t have to pay for investigators and but geniune claimants through misery to get what they are owed.

The fact people do make false claims demonstrates why socialism/Marxism doesn’t work. It requires all humans to act in good faith and they often don’t.

Patroclus · 12/02/2019 18:33

1.01% of benefit money paid out is lost to fraud. Its not top of my priorities.

DGRossetti · 12/02/2019 18:34

To OPs point about disability benefits, if people didn’t make false claims for free money then the government wouldn’t have to pay for investigators and but geniune claimants through misery to get what they are owed.

Except ....

To think a Marxist society would be an improvement
Limensoda · 12/02/2019 18:35

Anything would be better than the fucked up system we have now Grin

Limensoda · 12/02/2019 18:38

The fact people do make false claims demonstrates why socialism/Marxism doesn’t work. It requires all humans to act in good faith and they often don’t

Hmm,...and all that tax evaded and avoided shows Capitalism works?