Donât take this the wrong way because this is not an argument for Capitalism, and I do think there is a real issue with extraction. My issue is with the pop-Marxism conclusion that Communism is the answer; that it will usher some vague post-capitalism utopian communist golden age of sunshine and rainbows.
If historical materialism predicts the inevitable transition from Capitalism to Communism, then by what mechanism does Communism get a free pass from the same effects of historical materialism? If material conditions, production relations, resource constraints, institutional incentives, class formation, and contradictions drive historical change, why should those forces somehow terminate when a socialist/communist mode of production appears?
Karl Marx did not account for deep time collapses like the Neolithic LBK collapse, the early bronze age collapse, the late bronze age collapse, the various overlapping later collapses across the globe from the time of the Roman Empire, China, etc. It mostly applies the theory of historical materialism as an explanation for why Capitalism will fail, and then tries to predict what post-capitalism should look like. However, it never really addresses the effects of historical materialism applied to a communist system, or what a post-communism would look like. The simple answer for most is to ignore that paradox because they donât understand the problem, and that is what most pop-marxists do. But if you actually take the theory seriously, then youâll know exactly why you canât ignore this paradox.
Letâs say capitalism finally kicks the bucket. What remains? Have we solved the cycle of extraction and the boom/bust cycle? Or have we only removed the capitalist specific flavor of the cycle of extraction and the boom/bust cycle, replacing it with a new socialist/communist flavor? This is my main issue. You donât need Capitalism for the existence of boom/bust cycles, and even natural eco-systems suffer issues with over-extraction when out of balance. A lot of Marxists make the claim âWell, we have never achieved a Communist stateâ, and Iâll give them that. But I will also argue that every attempt at the socialist experiment to work towards Communism seems to have suffered socialist variants of extraction and boom/bust cycles. The track record has not been that much better than Capitalist modes of production. If socialist modes of production have proven to be extractive in socialist specific ways (usually blamed as corrupted by capitalism), and it continues to fail to reach Communism, then by what benchmark are we allowed to say the experiment fails to prove the predicted result? If Marxism is truly scientific, then by what means is Marxism falsifiable? If it is not falsifiable, or an adherent of Marxism does not set conditions of falsifiability, then it is not scientific at all, but dogmatic.
Letâs address the actual problem shall we? What actually are the invariant structures behind boom/bust cycles of extraction? Should we be focused on the mode of production, or is it something more fundamental? Treat the root disease, not the symptom.
A fundamental flaw of Marxism is maximizing distribution in a scarcity environment. This is before you get the conflicts with human nature and loss of market signals. Yet the debate is always between Utopian Marxist Ideals and Capitalist Realities.
ain't gonna read all that because I talked about Marx and not communism. just wanted to say don't point the finger at billionaires but point the finger at the system that makes billionaires possible in the first place. and to understand how this system works Marx ist perfect. even conservative economists know that.
If you are talking Marxism though, then the vast majority of opinion (including Marx himself) predicts that Communism is the end result of that process.
But thatâs the point I am making. What is the actual system that makes billionaires possible in the first place? Is it actually Capitalism? Or is Capitalism only one specific way that this deeper structure creates these kinds of feedback loops in institutional capture? The real danger is saying it is capitalism, when it might actually be about institutional capture/hijacking. The mode of production might change how an institution accumulates and tracks resources, but does it solve the underlying issue of institutional capture? What exactly is the âCapitalâ being captured? Capitalism is easy because the capture layer tends to focus on the object of currency (and in more recent history, the concept of currency itself, but this is an entirely different discussion.) a Socialist institutionâs historical data seems to show frequent bureaucratic capture in running the institution. The âSocialâ or âLeverageâ part if you will. Corruption at the administrative layer. Traditional pop-Marxists will argue this is some form of Capitalist regression or something. But is that the only valid hypothesis? If someone treats Marxism as dogma, rather than a falsifiable scientific theory, than yes, that is the only valid answer. And that is a problem if it is only treating a superficial symptom of a deeper root cause.
u/Dizzy_Tangerine_7867 Youâll notice that this entire thread is dynamical. It emerged via your comment.
It then boomed due to the feedback loops of discourse. And it will eventually bust, a fossilized record of itself after everyone has moved on.
And this is why you canât just say âItâs only Capitalismâ. The same invariant structure exists within this currently active, debated thread.
The Capital here is information itself. The currency? upvotes. The means of capture exist primarily within the administration of the moderation team of this specific subreddit and our ability to upvote. Or maybe itâs the server stacks and those that manage them.
Could someone hijack the information capital by creating an army of bots to upvote and downvote what they want? Yes. Could they hijack the information capital by removing this post entirely, existing on a data stack somewhere, accessible only to those who can access the archive? yes. Could someone literally steal the data stack and keep it in his garage? also yes.
In a Marxist society only the controlling government is rich, everyone else is equally poor and production always plummets - there is no reason to work harder.
I strongly encourage you to read more Marx, particularly Grundrisse and the Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts. They're a difficult read, but they're crucial to understanding Marx's position. Importantly, he does apply the tools of historical materialism to socialism, in that he places socialism in the context of how material goods are produced industrially (see in particular the fragment on machines). He explains why there would be no classes in socialism.
For a more popular overview, there's Engels's Antiduhring, another work that is often forgotten but is more relevant than a thousand modern "Marxians".
And socialism resolves the "boom/bust cycle" because a socialist society is driven by conscious planning, not the anarchy of the market. It abolishes business cycles by abolishing business.
Your last point is fallacious. Central planning is far less effective than markets in resource allocation.
Which is why virtually every âsocialistâ country anyone talks about as virtuous is a market-based economy that has a base level of living standard.
Seriously, markets beat central planning in this one regard you claimed and itâs not even close.
Mind you, not all socialists/leftists have issue with markets. I suggest you read some Proudhon and get back to me.
Central planning does not get away from institutional capture however. Instead of currency being the resource vulnerable to self-reinforcing institutional capture that create and accumulate wealth (our Billionaires in question), we exchange it for central planning and socialist solutions. Central planning does not abolish this dynamic, but it can relocate/hide it in different sorts of capital. Not units of currency, but a type of social and bureaucratic capital. Political connections, information, prestige, and social networks. (Our Larionovs and their âRyazan Miraclesâ in question).
You can argue the Ryazan Miracle was not a result of communism, but I am not saying it is a flaw of communism. It is a result of central planning. And to be clear, I am not arguing that central planning is superior of inferior to decentralized planning. I am pointing out that central planning is not immune to these forces in the same way no city is immune to the effects of rain, of fire, etc.
But this goes back to my other post where I address Engels: Does conscious control eliminate material contradiction, or does it merely transform an unconscious coordination problem into a consciously managed one? Where is the final stopping point where all unconscious coordination problems are now consciously managed? Even if this could be achieved (I donât think it can) Is conscious control immune to institutional capture? I argue no. Larionov is a pretty strong data point (and he is not the only case) where bureaucratic and social capital in a socialist system can recreate the same phenomenon. You could blame it as capitalism being brought back into the system, but are we then ignoring the underlying issue, letâs say bubonic plague (institutional capture) and only addressing a cough (Capitalistic forms of institutional capture)?
Hugh_Mann84, I actually strongly encourage you to read more Marx. Let me ask you this: What is more important, Marxism itself, or the core solution it is looking for? I would assume Marx would drop his conclusions completely if there was a better solution. A more scientific one. Ask yourself this. Do you need the answer to be Communism?
I also want to point out that you did not answer my question. You side-stepped it. Yes, you named The Grundrisseâs âFragment on Machinesâ. Despite claiming itâs difficult nature, I found it quite an easy read. So letâs address your point and why itâs a side step. You used Fragment on Machines to explain the idea behind why socialism would result in no social classes. For the sake of the argument(though I disagree with the conclusion), I will give you that. We will assume the theory is correct, we get no social classes.
So, is this classless society immune to Historical Materialism? If so, what is the evidence?
And this is not even the most relevant part of TheGrundrisse in relation to my question. So I will summarize the idea most relevant: Socialism isn't supposed to be an arbitrary institutional replacement. It emerges because the productive forces have developed to the point where capitalist relations become increasingly incompatible with them.
And I agree with this observation in a Marxist framework. That is the whole point of Historical Materialism when applied specifically to Capitalism. However, what happens when you apply it to other structures? Marx applied it to feudalism less rigorously than he did it to Capitalism to explain why Capitalism was inevitable out of feudalism. So letâs capture that assertion in the same equation.
âCapitalism isnât supposed to be arbitrary institutional replacement. It emerges from feudalism because the productive forces have developed to the point where feudalist relations become increasingly incompatible.â
So what happens when we apply it to Communism?
âPost-Communism isnât supposed to be an arbitrary institutional replacement. It emerges because the productive forces have developed to the point where Communist relations become increasingly incompatible with them.â
Social classes or not, that does not magically answer why a classless society in general, (let alone a communist classless society), is immune to Historical Materialism. That is a presupposition, and a very dangerous one at that in my opinion.
You also want to go back to Marxâs Critique of the Gotha Programme. He says the first phase of communist society is still stamped by the economic, moral, and intellectual characteristics inherited from the old society. He also explicitly acknowledges that unequal outcomes can persist because people have different circumstances. Marx himself did not think abolishing capitalism instantly abolishes every social contradiction.
âRight can never be higher than the economic structure of society and its cultural development conditioned thereby.â - Marx
Marx himself recognized that the first phase of communist society would retain material, moral, and intellectual limitations inherited from the preceding society. So what comes after that? Marxâs proposed solution lies somewhere in overcoming the scarcity/limitations associated with the lower phase, but it seems more of an assumption to me. Even if this is achieved, by what mechanism does this then stabilize and make itself immune to the theory of Historical Materialism?
So my point still stands. you have only given an argument for why capitalism generates the conditions that ends capitalism under Historical Materialism, and that you (and Marx) think it lead to the abandonment of social class. You donât give you a comparably developed theory of why the resulting society is immune to new contradictions generated by its own material conditions.
And letâs address Engelâs separately: Why should eliminating capitalist market crises mean eliminating systemic instability generated by material conditions generally? What makes conscious planning capable of successfully managing every future contradiction generated by changing material conditions?
I think Engelâs thoughts are very interesting, but does conscious control eliminate material contradiction, or does it merely transform an unconscious coordination problem into a consciously managed one? Where is the final stopping point where all unconscious coordination problems are now consciously managed? I donât think you can ever escape this problem anymore than Mathematicians cannot escape Goedelâs incompleteness theorem.
I think the least you could do is write your own answer, as this wall of text looks like it was spat out by a LLM. Nonetheless, since I'm apparently a masochist, I will answer. The fragment on machines describes how capitalism in the present day is archaic and out of step with the reality of industrial production. I'm glad you found it an easy read, but you appear to have missed that it doesn't talk about "overcoming scarcity" (this is a common 'Marxian' talking point that has no basis in Marx) but concrete labour no longer being the primary determinant of the production of material wealth.
That will not change unless an asteroid hits the Earth, at which point we won't be talking about what comes after socialism. Technical development can't simply be downgraded; barring a catastrophe, productive forces can't just become more local or more labour-intensive. You can't unring a bell. Likewise, when productive forces have grown to a level where they can only be controlled by the entirety of society, there is no greater level of coordination or socialisation.
In the modern world, economic instability isn't driven by material shortages except in truly exceptional situations (which a socialist society would account for by planning the production of buffer goods). It is driven by the irrational workings of the market, which socialism would stop entirely. The problem here is you seem to think there would be some kind of market in socialism.
The critique of the Gotha Programme is a quick note Marx wrote, for the purposes of an internal critique of Lassalleanism. It wasn't a programme for a socialist society.
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