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Sharks Eat Bear posted:Question for anyone who still knows this thread exists... Ok I actually just read the court’s opinion and my take is: - the court’s ruling that a corporation can’t take actions to not maximize economic value for shareholders (weird double negative but trying to be faithful to the way it was written) only applies under a specific context where the corporation is being sold or changing ownership (Unocal standard) - most business operations are not conducted in the context of a takeover/sale, and would likely fall under a less strict standard of business judgment rule, i.e. company’s directors are running the business in good faith to a standard of reasonableness So I think when the nuances of the case are considered, Wolff’s point stands that fiduciary duty doesn’t mean that companies are required by law to return profit or wealth to shareholders. Not a lawyer so I’m sure there are specifics I’m not getting right
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Jul 20, 2021 02:57
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My take on this is what we generally understand to mean as being what's good for the company/its stakeholders is no longer true. An excerpt from Cedric Durand's "Fictitious Capital":    
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Jul 20, 2021 05:34
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You may also like JK Galbraith's The New Industrial State which was (unintentionally) written at the zenith of the managerial system, and so assumed it would last forever. It's very good for an insight into how the Keynesian period viewed itself, with Galbraith unwittingly capturing the dynamics (that, e.g., accumulating vast amounts of retained earnings gave managers a huge amount of power over shareholders) without anticipating that shareholders would fight back by reducing those retained earnings. It's not that the period could not anticipate agency theory, but instead chose to interpret it as an new social law of capitalist bureaucracy - right up until the moment it evaporated.quote:... the corporation accords a much more specific protection to the technostructure. That is by providing it with a source of capital, derived from its own earnings, that is wholly under its own control. No banker can attach conditions as to how retained earnings are to be used. Nor can any other outsider. No one, the normally innocuous stockholder apart, has the right to ask about an investment from retained earnings that turns out badly. It is hard to overestimate the importance of the shift in power that is associated with the availability of such a source of capital. Few other developments can have more fundamentally altered the character of capitalism. It is hardly surprising that retained earnings of corporations have become such an overwhelmingly important source of capital. Note that in your first highlight, the shareholder is not obviously being made better off or worse off - if the Fordist firm does not redistribute earnings to shareholders, and instead retains cash, then the value of the equity held by shareholders goes up by the value of that cash (obviously, in retrospect!). Rather, the shift is from financing investment through equity to financing investment through debt, supported ideologically/intellectually through the the Modigliani-Miller theorem, and motivated by invoking agency theory (shareholders setting out to discipline management by forcing them to issue debt instead of equity). (The rest of the chapter from Fictitious Capital doesn't really follow, as I read it - the shift documents a transfer of power from management to shareholders - from managerial capitalism to financialized capitalism - and then performs a sleight of hand to transpose "management" to "labour" - the last quoted pages have no logical relationship to the first ones. They're not necessarily wrong, but the argument doesn't have any actual relationship deeper than physical proximity on the page and the author just seem to hope the reader doesn't notice. "But what about the workers?" indeed) ronya fucked around with this message at 10:01 on Jul 20, 2021 |
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Jul 20, 2021 09:36
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Interesting stuff, thanks gradenko & ronya. Will need to read these references a few times over to make sure I understand Unrelated, but a friend recently shared the preface to JBS Haldane's 1939 book, The Marxist Philosophy and the Sciences. I wasn't familiar with Haldane or this book, but he was a prominent biologist/geneticist and apparently an avowed Marxist. I'm sharing this mostly for the benefit of any other folks like me who are still in the very early stages of reading & understanding Marx(ism); I thought this preface was very easy to understand, especially in its treatment of materialism, dialectics, and Hegel. Not a replacement for reading the primary sources themselves, but IMO seems like a pretty good crash course and will definitely help me internalize these concepts better and hopefully radicalize more friends & family  https://www.marxists.org/archive/haldane/works/1930s/philosophy.htm
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Jul 20, 2021 21:14
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I hope this doesn't count as a necropost, but I've recently had a particular fire lit under me after learning a lot more than I used to know about Yeltsin's coup in 1993, and my attention has shifted backwards to Gorbachev. Does anyone have any good books about him and the late era of Soviet history? My (perhaps flawed) impression of Gorbachev at present is basically FDR though the looking glass, so to speak: a singular figure trying to keep the house from coming down by putting his ear to the ground and attempting to harness the adversarial forces bubbling up, to reform by folding the corners all back into a cooperating unit. This worked for FDR: the American state in the 30s and 40s more fully became the master of capitalism instead of merely its interlocutor and conduit. This however, did not work for Gorbachev, and I'd love to learn more about why, and if there was any conceivable way for the Soviet Union not to fall apart post-Brezhnev.
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Sep 4, 2021 20:23
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Tweezer Reprise posted:I hope this doesn't count as a necropost, but I've recently had a particular fire lit under me after learning a lot more than I used to know about Yeltsin's coup in 1993, and my attention has shifted backwards to Gorbachev. Does anyone have any good books about him and the late era of Soviet history? My (perhaps flawed) impression of Gorbachev at present is basically FDR though the looking glass, so to speak: a singular figure trying to keep the house from coming down by putting his ear to the ground and attempting to harness the adversarial forces bubbling up, to reform by folding the corners all back into a cooperating unit. This worked for FDR: the American state in the 30s and 40s more fully became the master of capitalism instead of merely its interlocutor and conduit. This however, did not work for Gorbachev, and I'd love to learn more about why, and if there was any conceivable way for the Soviet Union not to fall apart post-Brezhnev. I would last it was very unlikely especially after 1979. That said, I would say I would have some difficulty comparing FDR and Gorbachev, while both had ambitious plans. I would say FDR's goal was more about bolstering what was an relatively weak state while Gorbachev was working in relative reverse even if it was for what he thought was good reasons. As for why the Soviet Union fell apart, in my opinion it is much more of a dollar and cents issues, trade and energy prices.
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Sep 5, 2021 04:57
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Tweezer Reprise posted:I hope this doesn't count as a necropost, but I've recently had a particular fire lit under me after learning a lot more than I used to know about Yeltsin's coup in 1993, and my attention has shifted backwards to Gorbachev. Does anyone have any good books about him and the late era of Soviet history? My (perhaps flawed) impression of Gorbachev at present is basically FDR though the looking glass, so to speak: a singular figure trying to keep the house from coming down by putting his ear to the ground and attempting to harness the adversarial forces bubbling up, to reform by folding the corners all back into a cooperating unit. This worked for FDR: the American state in the 30s and 40s more fully became the master of capitalism instead of merely its interlocutor and conduit. This however, did not work for Gorbachev, and I'd love to learn more about why, and if there was any conceivable way for the Soviet Union not to fall apart post-Brezhnev. I would recommend "Armageddon Averted" by Stephen Kotkin as a look into the final days of the Soviet Union
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Sep 5, 2021 05:10
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Just read a (random social media post) critique of Marxism wherein someone claimed that there is no longer a distinction between the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie classes because workers can have 401ks and "own" a house. For a moment I thought this was insightful, but then big picture it seems wrong to claim that this means they're no longer distinct classes. Insightful to highlight that yes, the Bourgeoisie tried to make workers reliant upon Capitalism for their retirement and security with 401ks, so now we have workers that want the stock market number get bigger, but to claim theres no longer 2 distinct classes?
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Sep 6, 2021 19:57
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Owning a personal domicile and having a pension (albeit one that is is superficially investment) does not make someone bourgioisie and represents a misunderstanding of what that term typically means. The bourgeoisis support themselves predominantly or entirely through ownership of capital.
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Sep 6, 2021 20:17
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I wouldn’t be surprised if they claim retired workers living off 401k are suddenly bourgeois.
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Sep 6, 2021 20:25
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There is some interesting commentary, can’t remember if I read itt or in cspam, about the professional managerial class (PMC). My recollection is that it’s similar to petite bourgeoisie in terms of aspiring to the status and morality of the haute bourgeoisie, but adapted for the modern information economy, ie white collar middle managers that don’t own capital but also don’t really do any productive labor. Perhaps akin to what your friend is thinking of? not a fault of Marxism, just a more modern phenomenon and way for capitalism to entrench and further divide the working class.
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Sep 6, 2021 22:06
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I think it is a better argument for the existence of a middle class, as there are still plenty of people with functionally no reason to give a poo poo about investments or whatever and there are still people for whom finance is a vehicle for gigantic amounts of power, but there are also people who have either big pensions or investments but don't really have much influence, and people who own houses etc and might be mortgaged to hell and back and thus desperately want to keep house prices high because they want to resell their house later on or release equity from it before they die. And so they are rabidly opposed to anything that might "hurt business" or improve housing rights, in addition to usually being very culturally identified with lovely right wingers on a bunch of stuff. And that's relevant if you think there are enough of these people out there to influence politics, though at that point I would imagine strict marxists would tell you that it doesn't really matter because proper revolutionary politics will sweep all that away etc.
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Sep 6, 2021 22:15
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A good way to think about classes is that they are defined by the relationship they have with other classes. So, a worker still has an adversarial relationship with his employer regardless of whether or not he has a 401K: the worker wants higher wages, safe work environments and better benefits. The employer wants the opposite. Whether the worker has a humble investment doesn't really make him want his own wages go down. This is why "middle" class isn't really a class, their relationships do not meaningfully differ from those of the "lower" class until you get to the petit bourgeoise and the PMCs.
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Sep 7, 2021 00:03
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How that translates to, for example, retirees who own houses and pensions, however, I think is more complicated. I also cannot remember if I have raised it here before or not, but I also think that the attempt to absolutely draw the line between bourg and prole is complicated by the concept of probable life outcomes. If someone has a reasonable chance of being able to retire early and live comfortably without having to work afterwards, or transition into being a petty landlord or something, entirely because they are highly waged or in receipt of some other employment based benefit, that person, I think, has a different relationship to society and capitalism than someone who will surely work until they die. Yes they are exploited for at least a period of their life, but they can transition into becoming the exploiter, or at least apparently ceasing to be exploited depending on how you interpret "having enough money in the bank to live on for some time" as a concept. In theory yes they would benefit from not having to be exploited at all and having guaranteed security, there is no reason why their lives should be that sort of gamble, but equally it is quite possible for them to end up with a life they are reasonable (if extremely selfish) to be happy with under the current economic model. So while I agree that many workers and the bourgeoisie are clearly and diametrically opposed, I also think that there are people in the middle whose relationship to the two classes are materially more complicated if you look at it as a whole-life sort of thing rather than just the very immediate term, and sometimes even in the immediate term for people who have already passed the point at which they have acquired a good outcome and now the maintenence of that outcome is tied up in preserving the current socioeconomic system, or even people who, on the face of it, might have had a pretty poo poo outcome (spent the overwhelming majority of their life in work) but whose current position in that overall outcome (being retired) still is no longer the same as that of the worker struggling against their employer. OwlFancier fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 01:22
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Cpt_Obvious posted:A good way to think about classes is that they are defined by the relationship they have with other classes. So, a worker still has an adversarial relationship with his employer regardless of whether or not he has a 401K: the worker wants higher wages, safe work environments and better benefits. The employer wants the opposite. Whether the worker has a humble investment doesn't really make him want his own wages go down. You can find out if someone is middle class is by asking them to pick between higher wages, a safer work environment, and better benefits, versus higher house prices, and a rising stock market. If they have to think about their answer, they are middle class. For plenty of people, arguably a plurality of the US and UK electorate, working out what their rational class interest actually is requires a spreadsheet. For example, the median house price rise in the UK was last year higher than the median wage. That’s exceptional, and presumably unsustainable. But money for nothing is _way_ better than money for working. And so that influences people’s interests and identity in ways simple income statistics that treat the two as the same fail to capture.
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Sep 7, 2021 01:32
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What happens if a factory is owned by the workers, but instead of generating excess value the factory makes a loss?
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Sep 7, 2021 01:40
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02-6611-0142-1 posted:What happens if a factory is owned by the workers, but instead of generating excess value the factory makes a loss? The same thing that happens in any other business: money comes out of the reserves to cover the loss. If the business is run poorly and there are no reserves, then it closes down. The major difference is that if the factory goes under the workers get a cut when the assets get liquidated, rather than just getting fired.
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Sep 7, 2021 06:10
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The thing about PMC disourse is that if anything I feel like the PMC are a very 1960s phenomenon, and they've been on the decline now for decades. White collar labor has been massively deskilled by computers. "Managers" in the traditional Taylorist sense are on the way out, the whole point of the gig economy is that there are no managers but the algorithms. If anything we're returning to a nineteenth century system where the main class division really is just property ownership once again. A huge amount of "postmodern" left discourse I think took the conditions of the mid 20th century as normal and that was just wrong
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Sep 7, 2021 10:34
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The "PMC" idea is pretty dumb and at best an attempt to "red wash" the idea of the middle class. You can describe a manager (sub)class, which doesn't directly produce profits to be exploited, but is has almost no overlap with the professional (sub)class. If you lump them together you get the liberal concept of the middle class, just admit that it can be useful. Well, there is always a chance that PMC means the jews. The only vaguely sensible framing of the existing middle class as a marxian class is the maoist one. Which has us being exploited locally, but exploiting globally. I don't like it because I consider the control over the products to be more important then the sharing of products, but it is coherent. Things of course get further confused, because during early capitalism things where different. There the big artisanal class formed the core of the small bourgeoisies and the middle class so they were practically identical. These days there is no core there, and the pb is split into workers with some savings and millionaires with side jobs.
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Sep 7, 2021 11:09
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Even in the early 20th century, Marxists recognized that an individual person will not necessarily fall into exactly one class. The importance is the distinction between class interests - those of labor and those of capital. And an individual person's actions are driven by these interests as they are objectified by the capitalist mode of production. In the following quote, Rosa Luxemburg describes how the activity of worker-owners must be primarily driven by the interests of capital, despite that they by all accounts are workers (emphasis mine): Rosa Luxemburg, Reform or Revolution posted:But in capitalist economy exchanges dominate production. As a result of competition, the complete domination of the process of production by the interests of capital – that is, pitiless exploitation – becomes a condition for the survival of each enterprise. The domination of capital over the process of production expresses itself in the following ways. Labour is intensified. The work day is lengthened or shortened, according to the situation of the market. And, depending on the requirements of the market, labour is either employed or thrown back into the street. In other words, use is made of all methods that enable an enterprise to stand up against its competitors in the market. The workers forming a co-operative in the field of production are thus faced with the contradictory necessity of governing themselves with the utmost absolutism. They are obliged to take toward themselves the role of capitalist entrepreneur – a contradiction that accounts for the usual failure of production co-operatives which either become pure capitalist enterprises or, if the workers’ interests continue to predominate, end by dissolving. I believe offhand that even Marx said as much but I can't think of a citation to back that up, so I will avoid making a claim on that 
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Sep 7, 2021 18:29
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Ruzihm posted:Even in the early 20th century, Marxists recognized that an individual person will not necessarily fall into exactly one class. The importance is the distinction between class interests - those of labor and those of capital. And an individual person's actions are driven by these interests as they are objectified by the capitalist mode of production. This is interesting because I hear a lot about co ops from popular streamers like vaush and apparently Hasan but I haven't watched any of the latter's content regularly. Open question to syndicalists that want co ops; how do you respond to an analysis such as Rosa's here?
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Sep 7, 2021 20:08
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droll posted:Open question to syndicalists that want co ops; how do you respond to an analysis such as Rosa's here? Forgive me for my lack of deeper contextual knowledge here, but is this analysis saying that co-ops are considered failures because they don't last forever?
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Sep 7, 2021 20:26
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Somfin posted:Forgive me for my lack of deeper contextual knowledge here, but is this analysis saying that co-ops are considered failures because they don't last forever? The traditional marxist analysis says that co-ops don't last forever. I don't know of any marxist or anarchist thinkers that disagree. The internet marxist "argument" is that things that don't intrinsically last forever are useless.
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Sep 7, 2021 20:32
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VictualSquid posted:The traditional marxist analysis says that co-ops don't last forever. I don't know of any marxist or anarchist thinkers that disagree. .....what? What is this argument and how does it apply to the USSR especially with regards to thinkers like Lenin who form the basis of ML thought? And what about the dictatorship of the proletariat that is intentionally a temporary structure? Edit: and please do me a personal favor and keep Vaush out of the thread except as an example of modern revisionism. Cpt_Obvious fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 20:57
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Like, yeah, co-ops aren't going to be the one weird trick that undoes capitalism, but they're not meant to be, and we wouldn't want co-ops to be a weapon. They're the better world we're striving for, where companies exist because all of the parts of the company want them to exist and if that desire fades or can't be sustained then the company goes away. Not lasting forever is a feature.
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Sep 7, 2021 20:59
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Somfin posted:Like, yeah, co-ops aren't going to be the one weird trick that undoes capitalism, but they're not meant to be, and we wouldn't want co-ops to be a weapon. Edit - typing this made me realise that we are living in a world where Rivendell pays Gandalf to creste new Saurons so they can keep getting paid to supply expeditions to Mount Doom. The Artificial Kid fucked around with this message at 21:11 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 21:09
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The Artificial Kid posted:Bring back the days when x Company meant something more like Fellowship of the x, rather than a self sustaining superorganism that continues to eat people decades after x has been made onsolete. This poo poo is why Americans have substandard internet connections
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Sep 7, 2021 21:32
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Somfin posted:Forgive me for my lack of deeper contextual knowledge here, but is this analysis saying that co-ops are considered failures because they don't last forever? In R or R, Luxemburg is flaming Eduard Bernstein for some hot takes as she saw them: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch03.htm quote:Bernstein rejects the “theory of collapse” as an historic road toward socialism. Now what is the way to a socialist society that is proposed by his “theory of adaptation to capitalism”? Bernstein answers this question only by allusion. Konrad Schmidt, however, attempts to deal with this detail in the manner of Bernstein. According to him, “the trade union struggle for hours and wages and the political struggle for reforms will lead to a progressively more extensive control over the conditions of production,” and “as the rights of the capitalist proprietor will be diminished through legislation, he will be reduced in time to the role of a simple administrator.” “The capitalist will see his property lose more and more value to himself” till finally “the direction and administration of exploitation will be taken from him entirely” and “collective exploitation” instituted. Or in other words, https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch01.htm quote:The capacity of capitalism to adapt itself, says Bernstein, is manifested first in the disappearance of general crises, resulting from the development of the credit system, employers’ organisations, wider means of communication and informational services. It shows itself secondly, in the tenacity of the middle classes, which hails from the growing differentiation of the branches of production and the elevation of vast layers of the proletariat to the level of the middle class. It is furthermore proved, argues Bernstein, by the amelioration of the economic and political situation of the proletariat as a result of its trade union activity. Basically, she is chewing him out for abandoning the question of how the means of production can cease functioning as capital, and for him rather focusing on how best to manage and rearrange existing capital. Indeed, she calls Bernstein out for saying that the conditions under capitalism as it is reformed is on a positive trajectory for workers and at worst "defensive" towards socialism. Cruelly, she is proven right when she is murdered by the liberal state for being a communist: https://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch09.htm quote:After rejecting the socialist criticism of capitalist society, it is easy for Bernstein to find the present state of affairs satisfactory – at least in a general way. Bernstein does not hesitate. He discovers that at the present time reaction is not very strong in Germany, that “we cannot speak of political reaction in the countries of western Europe,” and that in all the countries of the West “the attitude of the bourgeois classes toward the socialist movement is at most an attitude of defence and not one of oppression,” (Vorwärts, March 26, 1899). Far from becoming worse, the situation of the workers is getting better. Indeed, the bourgeoisie is politically progressive and morally sane. We cannot speak either of reaction or oppression. It is all for the best in the best of all possible worlds… (Side note, Bernstein's attitude here is oddly familiar to me, but I can't put my finger on it) But in short: Somfin posted:[Coops] not lasting forever is a feature.
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Sep 7, 2021 21:53
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Are posters in this thread saying worker co-ops are temporary because they will, as Luxemburg puts it, become either pure capitalist enterprises or fail/dissolve? Or is there a follow-on from this where they play a different role in the revolutionary movement if they haven't become pure capitalist enterprises yet?
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Sep 7, 2021 22:40
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droll posted:Are posters in this thread saying worker co-ops are temporary because they will, as Luxemburg puts it, become either pure capitalist enterprises or fail/dissolve? Or is there a follow-on from this where they play a different role in the revolutionary movement if they haven't become pure capitalist enterprises yet? I can't speak for all posters but I think they're worth pursuing as a means of harm reduction. But I fully expect that the most successful co-operative worker-owners will sooner side with interests of capital over the interests of labor. I think if there is any revolutionary potential in co-ops, it is in those which collectively fail (whether by choice or by chance) to be among the most successful at extracting profit, and are thus among the least financially successful.
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Sep 7, 2021 23:03
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It's not revolutionary or anything, but like mutual aid is worth pursuing where it does not detract from a greater struggle because there is some benefit (both material and in agitprop) in taking what is available to us under the capitalist norm and using it to form a more just basis. Same as with mutual aid, it's very popular with people who still believe in reform or who fear actual revolution for whatever reason, legit or not. Also they're very popular among anarchists and other libertarian-inclined ideologies which are broadly tolerated in the US in a way that more direct proposals are not They are susceptible to being corrupted yes, but that's the nature of anything operating within the blood engine
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Sep 7, 2021 23:08
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droll posted:Are posters in this thread saying worker co-ops are temporary because they will, as Luxemburg puts it, become either pure capitalist enterprises or fail/dissolve? Or is there a follow-on from this where they play a different role in the revolutionary movement if they haven't become pure capitalist enterprises yet? Either by directly helping people in the short term, or by building relations on which further efforts can be built, or even by showing the good outcome of leftists actions as propaganda, or by teaching the workers the values of cooperation, or by being a forum where deep theory can be learned, and so on. One side thing is, that the discussions between Bernstein and Luxemburg that were quoted barely mentioned co-ops because they are not common in Germany. But their arguments about Unions and electoral movements mostly apply. Another point to remember when bringing up that debate re:a current topic, is that Bernstein was the one arguing that reform and revolution were mutually exclusive and the revolutionaries were arguing that both are mutually reinforcing. While in internet debates it is often the opposite alignment. literally the first paragraph of "reform or revolution" posted:At first view the title of this work may be found surprising. Can the Social-Democracy be against reforms? Can we contrapose the social revolution, the transformation of the existing order, our final goal, to social reforms? Certainly not. The daily struggle for reforms, for the amelioration of the condition of the workers within the framework of the existing social order, and for democratic institutions, offers to the Social-Democracy the only means of engaging in the proletarian class war and working in the direction of the final goal – the conquest of political power and the suppression of wage labour. Between social reforms and revolution there exists for the Social Democracy an indissoluble tie. The struggle for reforms is its means; the social revolution, its aim. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 23:20 on Sep 7, 2021 |
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Sep 7, 2021 23:17
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VictualSquid posted:Co-ops are temporary and should do something good before they fail. That gets confusing because the word ‘revolution’ in used in two different ways, in the conventional one, as a specific event, and also to refer to the, presumably desirable, status quo _after_ the revolution. You seem to be claiming that Bernstein supported reform as a means to revolution as an end in the former sense, not the latter. I don’t think this is true. Bernstein seems to me to be talking about the ‘social revolution’ as a goal,; laying out the Social Democrat position that progressive reform has no a priori limit in the status quo it can eventually achieve. This is different to the 1930s version of Democratic Socialism, which was based on the idea that you_ first_ win a vote, _then_ fight a war, as in Spain. And then the other strands which regarded winning a vote as a distraction from what actually mattered. Which as the modern Taliban have shown, can be an entirely successful tactical choice in the right circumstances. Just not, as it turned out, interwar Germany. Not much of this has any relevance to the modern left, where none of the words involved mean anything like the same thing. Except, perhaps; fascism, and even that is probably as much a source of confusion as Insight.
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Sep 8, 2021 12:44
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It has been forever since I read any of that, so I might be misattributing my interpretations. The old social democratic position that Luxemburg is defending was that reform effort (electoralism, unions and so on) is preparatory work for an eventual illegal* revolution that establishes some form of communism. Bernstein's position is that the reform effort can achieve revolutionary radical change while staying within legal reformist frameworks and establish communism without a vulgar revolution. That was the main meaning of social democratism for quite some time. Neither of those definitions are part of the current meaning of social democracy. The theorists that argued starting with illegal work generally were talking about efforts in places where peaceful organizing is already illegal, like tsarist russia or colonial possessions. Lenin's early work specifically said that he considers a liberal revolution in russia a forward step and that he would then switch tactics to be more like the SPD. Arguments for illegal action as the primary vehicle of revolution within vaguely democratic countries are pretty much limited to some 19th century first wave anarchists and modern keyboard warriors. *Luxemburg specifically argued for a mass strike instead of an armed uprising as the shape of that revolution. e: The debate itself is of little interest to modern politics and in large part only kept popular due to Luxemburg engaging writing style. But I do think that the underlying argument between reform and revolution/illegal action being mutually exclusive or mutually reinforcing to be a still important discussion. I personally favour the later conclusion. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 13:27 on Sep 8, 2021 |
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Sep 8, 2021 13:22
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Seems basically right, only nitpick is that, while Rosa was initially part of the _Social_ Democratic Party, she left it to become what is generally called a _Socialist_ Democrat. Which afaik is the same as _democratic socialist_, at least as the term was used at the time (I.e. ‘after the revolution, there will still be elections’). It is the latter period, after she broke with the Second Internationale, that anyone who talks about her politics are usually referencing.
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Sep 8, 2021 16:47
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radmonger posted:Seems basically right, only nitpick is that, while Rosa was initially part of the _Social_ Democratic Party, she left it to become what is generally called a _Socialist_ Democrat. Which afaik is the same as _democratic socialist_, at least as the term was used at the time (I.e. ‘after the revolution, there will still be elections’). She left to found or join the USPD/the Spartacist. As did Bernstein, because they both opposed ww1. Though Bernstein later rejoined the spd while Luxemburg was killed. Both also separately and consistently tried to reclaim the word social democratic from the actual centrists that led the SPD since 1914. Most Germans do refer to Luxemburg's views as spartacism, while democratic socialism was considered an anglicism until the 2000s. And now it is used for Bernstein's views presented as opposition to the existing social democratic party or of course the name of a different specific party. The main thing to learn from the history of german social democracy is that you shouldn't try to identify with a label too strongly, because it might mean the opposite in 20 years. VictualSquid fucked around with this message at 17:07 on Sep 8, 2021 |
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Sep 8, 2021 17:04
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bernstein (and kautsky) voted for the war credits in 1914. he supported the war when it mattered; only liebknecht broke collective discipline on that vote, meaning that only what would later become the sparakist bund and from there the KPD was credibly anti-war. the USPD was always a temporary coalition between the zimmerwald left and the two-and-a-half internationalists and could only exist in the context of a disastrous total war; once that was over, it immediately splintered into murderous rivalries
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Sep 8, 2021 20:33
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V. Illych L. posted:bernstein (and kautsky) voted for the war credits in 1914. he supported the war when it mattered; only liebknecht broke collective discipline on that vote, meaning that only what would later become the sparakist bund and from there the KPD was credibly anti-war. the USPD was always a temporary coalition between the zimmerwald left and the two-and-a-half internationalists and could only exist in the context of a disastrous total war; once that was over, it immediately splintered into murderous rivalries Thanks, I must have remembered that wrong.
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Sep 8, 2021 20:36
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he did join a united front against the war in 1915 or 1916 to be fair
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Sep 8, 2021 20:43
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I'm interested in learning about the necessary material preconditions for capitalism's existence. Have any writers identified what environmental states must exist in order for capitalism to exist, or written extensively about the relationship between capitalism and the underlying physical world?
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Sep 10, 2021 21:22
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