Oh are you all from the same school?
Obsequium amicos, veritas odium parit
No, I'm in Political Economy. We don't need a separate economic history course! (But my department likes him at least!)
Depends which school you mean! The uncomplicated answer is yes (I think - hellothere, I'm presuming you're at Usyd and not just doing the one subject here?).
allez cuisine!
Yes, amazingly, it seems that we all go to the same university (and went to the same high school to boot - well, I knew that about idolatrie, but hellothere was a pleasant surprise)! I was just thinking what the chances for that must be...we could start a socionics club or something, lol.
()
3w4-1w2-5w4 sx/sp
EII 4w5
so/sx (?)
But the means of production of which you speak - that is, the capital - is owned by the people. In the 19th century, the "people" of which Marx speaks felt a clear alienation from their work, because, essentially, the capital - the means of production - was owned by a few capitalists; what you had was an oligopoly, a bit like what you have in Russian society today, except with far less human rights.
Yes, but there is no money in communist society. "Barter economy" (nice term by the way) is what exists in the end state of communism. Marx outlines what should happen after communism in The German Ideology.
Exactly. The closest anyone has got (in my opinion) has been Castro, and you could say he was like the vanguard party for Cuba, while the rest of the world becomes communist, if not for the fact that Castro had the Trotskyite party eliminated (and of course Trotsky was the guy who came up with the idea of the vanguard party).The world Marx was envisioning would be radically different from ours. So judging it by indicators we use for capitalism obviously does it no favours and just makes it appear ludicrous. Communism does not imply central planning, and Marx explicitly wrote that he did not think Russia would move to communism because, when he was writing, they just were not advanced enough in capitalism for the natural progression to be made.
Aw, thanks Christy! <3
The absence of money as a medium of exchange does not make the economic activities of a communist society bartering, though from the surface it might look the same (a certain amount of goods exchanged for a certain amount of another good.) The difference is that in a barter economy, I own my potatoes and you own your corn. Conversely, you do not own my potatoes and I do not own your corn. When exchanging in the absence of money, we're determining the relative value of corn to potatoes and giving each the requisite quantities, thus there is a) the valuation of property and b) the exchange of property.
In a communist society, because all means of production and resources are communally owned, when I give you potatoes, I am giving you potatoes that you also own and you're giving me corn that I also own. Therefore the act of giving each other goods we each want cannot be described as an exchange, merely a transference of goods. There is no quid pro quo since there is no private property and no valuation of the goods takes place. It's just: 'Hand those five potatoes will you, Jack, I need to make stew tonight' and 'Sure, Jill. And pass those three cobs of corn will you - I think corn will be lunch.' And since we all communally own everything, you wouldn't hoard, nor would you take more than you needed - imagine taking more than you needed from yourself. It's logically incomprehensible.
The critical step, of course, is to accept communal ownership of property. To some extent, this happens already with certain goods within a family/relationship and there are sociological studies that show some communities do have that attitude toward certain goods, such as a community well. Whether these isolated examples can ever testify to the possibility that at some point in time private property will no longer be the foundation of our (liberal democratic) society, is another question.
()
3w4-1w2-5w4 sx/sp
The people control the economy without business classes.
Johari Box"Alpha Quadra subforum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
Johari Box"Alpha Quadra subforum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
And there you have it. The failure of such a collectivist economy is precisely that it needs a fundamental change in human nature - the "new communist man". Which is not only impossible but, in my opinion, totally undesirable. That did not stop people like Stalin, Mao and less famous ones like Nyerere from trying.
, LIE, ENTj logical subtype, 8w9 sx/sp
Originally Posted by implied
But in that post you had just said it was impossible, without further elaboration -- right?
Anyway, it makes sense that people who tend to believe that people's behavior, or even their thoughts, are totally "situational" and very influenced by external circumstances, are the same people who would be inclined to try to create the "new communist man".
, LIE, ENTj logical subtype, 8w9 sx/sp
Originally Posted by implied
What is interesting is that it all fits together in Marxist thought, with the idea that you are less an individual than a member of your class. Hence also the logic of "reeducation", and the idea that individuals - even those wielding huge power - are of little importance in history.
, LIE, ENTj logical subtype, 8w9 sx/sp
Originally Posted by implied
, LIE, ENTj logical subtype, 8w9 sx/sp
Originally Posted by implied
It is interesting that you bring up Orwell, as he was a socialist himself. In his book Homage to Catalonia he documented the successes (and flaws) of the 1936 Spanish revolution, which lead to the organization of society along very communistic lines.
One thing that's interesting to note is that the Soviet Union and allies worked night and day to destroy Spain's social revolution; I think it's pretty telling that the USSR put so much effort into thwarting what was one of the biggest experiments in communism in history. Indeed, centralized, top-down socialism (a la USSR) was an obvious failure, but as you might realize from the article I linked to, writing off more organic forms of communism rooted in democracy (which is much closer to what Marx envisioned) is a little harder...
delta nf (?) ... 4w5 (?)
No need for name calling, jackass. People control the economy because people are the economy. They make all of their economic decisions in life without necessarily taking a single business course, and for the most part they make these decisions rationally. This is the great assumption of classical economic theory.
Johari Box"Alpha Quadra subforum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
Johari Box"Alpha Quadra subforum. You will never find a more wretched hive of scum and villainy. We must be cautious." ~Obi-Wan Kenobi
This is one of the problems with the communist model. FDG wrote about this earlier in the thread: the difficulties in putting together a model to predict the necessary composition of production. However the guiding principle is that since everyone owns everything, you would not exploit it beyond what you need to take. There would be no point in building shelter that goes unused, so no one would do that. Innovation would benefit all people, and that would be the incentive to do so. The Classical idea is that with the economic problem 'solved', people could turn to focusing on progress in culture.
But arguing that everyone would need business training to manage the economy is applying a neoclassical principle to the communist model, which just doesn't work.
I don't think what Stalin and Mao did had much to do with communism as Marx described it. Stalin completely departed from the Leninist tradition in Russia, which was closer to Marx's model, and I think many of his flaws can be laid solely at his feet (mental illness or whatever other reasons there may be included). As you said, in communism, there is not meant to be any one figure who dominates history. Both Stalin and Mao broke that. Any economic model can give rise to totalitarian regimes, and to taint all of communism with the tag of Stalin and Mao does a disservice to the theory.
I don't quite understand what you're saying here. Are you referring to people who would be more swayed by socialist theory as being ones who are easily influenced? The various traditions in Marxian thought are extremely diverse, and I'm not sure they can really be homogenised like that. Though I may be misunderstanding you there.
Orwell was firmly against Soviet communism, which I think is a good argument for making it distinct from theoretical Marxist communism. 1984 and Animal Farm are good critiques of all the ways in which the USSR departed from communism. The 'centralised, top-down' model of communism that USSR practiced is so far from what Marx wrote about that it is ludicrous to hold it up as a good or valid example of communism.
allez cuisine!
I think the missing piece here is that people do "change" without being "changed" by anything but continued existence, so, again, we really can't know whether or not communism will ever be possible. It's idiotic, arrogant speculation to judge either way.
But, for a certainty, back then,
We loved so many, yet hated so much,
We hurt others and were hurt ourselves...
Yet even then, we ran like the wind,
Whilst our laughter echoed,
Under cerulean skies...
Karl Marx - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Does anyone know how he is typed? Otherwise what type do you think he is?
As far as I know, the Russians typed him as ILE, and no-one that I'm aware of has ever really challenged it.
Quaero Veritas.
Which is odd, because no one remembers him for his Ne/Ti acheivements. He doesn't even get acknowledged for anything by real ENTps like John Maynard Keynes. His remarks on economics are widely regarded as misconceived. The only thing he ever succeeded at was to mobilize tons of people towards a creed, which is more of an beta NF kind of skill.
I think an INFp typing should be looked at.
Originally Posted by Keynes on Das Capital
I think he was NiTe
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ILE
LII 5w6 sx/so
4w3-5w6-8w7
LII or LSI
"The final delusion is the belief that one has lost all delusion."
-- Maurice Chapelain
ILI-Ni