Process
Status Items Output None Questions None Claims None Highlights Done See section below
Highlights
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What we now call Marxism is, first and foremost, a theory of history — of the different stages of historical development, of how the capitalist stage we’re now at works, and of how we can transcend capitalism and achieve socialism. Marx postulated that the legal and political institutions of every society are downstream of its “relations of production.” These are the relations between some class of “immediate producers,” who actually make the products and services that make society run, and the ruling class of any given society — for example, the relationship between slaves and slave-owners, between medieval peasants and lords, or between modern-day wage laborers and business owners.
✏️ This and next couple of highlights are some core tenants of Marxism. 🔗 View Highlight
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When Marx says capitalist labor relations are marked by “exploitation” he doesn’t just mean unfairness or one group having a comparative advantage. He means that some of the hours worked by proletarians are ones in which they create the equivalent of what they get back in their wages while others are hours in which they work for the benefit of their employers — and that this extraction of “surplus labor” is essentially involuntary, since working-class people have no realistic way of making a living other than to sell their working hours to capitalists. These relations of production are in turn downstream from the level of development of the forces of production — i.e., the capacity that a society has to produce things to meet people’s needs
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When Marx used the term class, he meant classes as defined by their relationship to the means of production — e.g., factories, farms, or even restaurants where people produce food in order to make a profit. The belief that we can have a society without classes in this sense isn’t the belief in some impossible conflict-free utopia, but simply the belief that, now that we’re at a stage of history where the forces of production have developed enough to allow for generally shared abundance, we can achieve a better society by replacing individual with collective ownership of the means of production.
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Far from being Marxists, though, most of them are at worst soulless technocrats happy to read from any script they think is good for their institution’s PR, and at best radical liberals whose vision is not of a classless society but of a society in which the top slots in the class hierarchy are apportioned in a demographically fair way between different races, genders, sexual orientations, gender identities, and so on. They don’t want those “major corporations” to be nationalized and put under workers control, for example — they want more black and female CEOs.
✏️ Just a quick reality check when people might claim that Marxists or socialists are in power more… that’s not who’s in power. At best they’re people that want more fairness and justice and diversity, but being socialist would mean wanting means of production to be in the people’s hands.. and for more state public goods and services. 🔗 View Highlight