Unfortunately, this is ahistorical. Failures of pre-Marx Socialists such as Robert Owen came from the idea that you could convince Capitalists to do the right thing if you proved it with logic and reason. Marx developed upon this and learned that Mode of Production largely determines what ideas are acceptable, rather than the Utopian idea that Socialists had to wait for a “Great Man” privy to universal truths to defeat everyone in some grand Marketplace of Ideas.
To expand: Robert Owen ran semi-Socialist company towns with large expansions in protections, lower working hours, and high rates of profit. When he took his model to the other bourgeoisie, he was cast out of high society and publicly humiliated. The problem with Utopians like Owen is that they became obsessed with imagining some grand model that needed to be thought of and started, that a perfect system existed and simply needed to be discovered in the mind of Great Men to exist in Reality.
There have, of course, been Capitalists who have made concessions, but these were won through conflict and struggle, not logic and reason. Instead, Marxists take the stance that development drives what’s acceptable discourse, and that the next system in development emerges from the current system. Ie, Socialism is brought about from solving the contradictions within Capitalism, as made necessary from the progression of Capitalism. Monopolies and large armies of industrial workers equips the Proletariat with the Means and Knowledge necessary to bring about Socislism.
Engels writes about this in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific, I highly recommend this for those uninformed about Marxism. Engels is flowery in prose, but it’s an essay that takes roughly an hour to get through.
To expand: Robert Owen ran semi-Socialist company towns with large expansions in protections, lower working hours, and high rates of profit. When he took his model to the other bourgeoisie, he was cast out of high society and publicly humiliated.
Owens built a practical model for socialist economics, which reverberates into the modern day. He was living proof that these policies could create prosperous surplus over time, and his methods did get adopted in subsequent socialist governments.
But it’s true. Simply proving out the mathematics of socialist economics isn’t enough, because the practice still overly democratized political influence. For authoritarian capitalists, this wasn’t seen as beneficial. Better to Rule in Hell than Serve in Heaven.
Engels writes about this in Socialism: Utopian and Scientific
This feels like a big nut of it
But the perfecting of machinery is making human labor superfluous. If the introduction and increase of machinery means the displacement of millions of manual by a few machine-workers, improvement in machinery means the displacement of more and more of the machine-workers themselves. It means, in the last instance, the production of a number of available wage workers in excess of the average needs of capital, the formation of a complete industrial reserve army, as I called it in 1845, available at the times when industry is working at high pressure, to be cast out upon the street when the inevitable crash comes, a constant dead weight upon the limbs of the working-class in its struggle for existence with capital, a regulator for keeping of wages down to the low level that suits the interests of capital.
Not enough to be efficient. You need to be the guy doing the firing when the downturn comes, rather than the guy who is getting fired.
That struggle for power is what Capitalists cling to.
Owens built a practical model for socialist economics, which reverberates into the modern day. He was living proof that these policies could create prosperous surplus over time, and his methods did get adopted in subsequent socialist governments.
But it’s true. Simply proving out the mathematics of socialist economics isn’t enough, because the practice still overly democratized political influence. For authoritarian capitalists, this wasn’t seen as beneficial. Better to Rule in Hell than Serve in Heaven.
Exactly, it isn’t merely enough to create as close to a win-win situation as possible, control must be retained and the ability to further exploit retained.
I hate how Marx has become synonymous with Socialist thought despite the fact that Marx represents only the Bureaucratic side of Socialism and Proudhon and other Anarchist thinkers are ignored. Proudhon literally wrote Property is Theft.
Marx became mostly synonymous because Marxism is the only form of Socialism that has long-lasting historical relevance. Additionally, Marx built on Proudhon, as he did Smith, Saint-Simon, Owen, Hegel, Decartes, and more. Marxism was merely a culmination of Human development, not a grand revelation for a Great Man (as previously discussed with Owen and other Utopians). This is the kernal of why Marx denied calling himself or contemporary Marxists “Marxists,” though with substantial time difference and common nomenclature we nevertheless call ourselves as such for the sake of common language.
The same goes for Lenin and other Marxists post-Marx himself, like Franz Fanon, Mao, Fred Hampton, Che Guevara, Thomas Sankara, Luxembourg, Einstein, Parenti, and so forth. None were magically imbued with Grander Knowledge, all were working with what had been discovered and learned up to their point of relevance.
There have been individual Anarchist movements, like Revolutionary Catalonia or the EZLN, but when it comes to making real impact Marxism has actually been implemented at scale.
I sympathize with Anarchists, of course, there are many great comrades among their ranks. However, it is undeniable that Marxism has played much the grander role in historical development, hence the greater importance and relevance to discussing said topics.
Sorry to spam you with nitpicks, but I do feel obliged to say that while Einstein was certainly a socialist and spoke very well of Lenin and even Stalin, I don’t think we have evidence of him having a specific and cultivated political ideology that fit a label like “Marxism.” I think he was more of a generic humanist who appreciated what his Marxist contemporaries were doing.
Incidentally, how did Marx borrow from Proudhon? I fully only know of Proudhon through Discourse about concerning material he wrote and that quote about, ironically, wishing for a future where he would be executed as a conservative.
how did Marx borrow from Proudhon?
He read Proudhon and using his work as the base of critique he worked his own theory up. Poverty of Philosophy was a major milestone in Marx theory and one of the predecessors of Capital.
I don’t think we have evidence of him having a specific and cultivated political ideology that fit a label like “Marxism.”
This could be a stretch in your opinion, but the way Einstein describes wishing for central planning in Why Socialism? it’s evident to me that he is working off of Marxist ideas, even if we don’t consider him to be a “true believer” or anything.
Incidentally, how did Marx borrow from Proudhon?
Less borrow, more influence and shape. Marx was as much influenced by good thought as thought he disagreed with, which he elaborates on in The Poverty of Philosophy, just like he was with Adam Smith.
I think that what fucked over Owen, according to Engels, was not his coops but his assessment that they were inadequate and more fundamental changes to society were required, concerning marriage, religion, and something else that I forget. For just the coops, he was celebrated in a way that isn’t even that different from the OP, because he didn’t really shatter the existing paradigm, but produce an extremely productive version of it that just happened to be relatively pro-social.
That’s a fair point, but Engels does elaborate that Owen’s thinking was flawed from the start, Socialism isn’t randomly beamed into people’s heads but developed as a course of Historical Development, hence the development of Historical Materialism.
Oh sure, Owen was mistaken from the outset because his genuinely more-efficient way of running things isn’t going to be as profitable to the owning class, meaning that no amount of advocacy can escape the gravitational pull of the profit motive dragging it down into the mire of human misery. I was just talking about what he did that ruined his career from a practical standpoint by drawing the ire of the bourgeoisie, which was not his company town model alone.
isn’t going to be as profitable to the owning class
Not entirely true, however his method empowered proletarians to take more control and eventually bargain for more, or accumulate enough to compete eventually, which would go against long-term profit.
I was just talking about what he did that ruined his career from a practical standpoint by drawing the ire of the bourgeoisie, which was not his company town model alone
Fair enough!
Many times in the past, corpos have been told with substantial evidence that “crunch time” actually means less productivity overall and that well-rested employees do better work, but they like “crunch time” anyway and the cruelty is the point so they ignore that.
Okay. But where’s the cost analysis for me giving them respect? I doubt it is worth a mere 53% performance increase in the common ranks.
Having sat through corpo leadership training this isn’t really even hyperbole. it was 60% this, 30% marxist theory repackaged with non-scary words and 10% good advice
Dude having to do this shit with your resume when everything you’ve done is design bridges or make things has me wanting to kill these marketing majors
I literally have to make up shit like ‘installed foundations at 34.2% faster rate and increased lunch break efficiency by 12%’
Oh no I meant the first thing specifically lol. Nobody in that entire program cared about efficiency by KPIs. Why would they, that’s enforced without training anyhow
The workplace is about the power relationship between the boss and the worker. Bosses are willing to take the ostensibly less productive option (e.g. 5 instead of 4 day workweeks) to maintain a sense of precarity in their workers that is in the long run more beneficial to them by way of suppressing wages, dissuading job seeking, and making them less likely to stand up for themselves over their conditions.
It’s weird how they can take the long view on some things and yet they will happily run a company into the ground for a 1% higher quarterly return.
Have you read Marx? Capitalists serve Capital and its accumulation, not necessarily their own long-term interests. The draw and power of accumulation is so high that short term wins become necessary, which results in crisis.
Yep, the Reserve Army of Labor must be preserved, and time to allow Proletarians to accumulate on their own time and eventually compete must be stifled.
tl;dr-- the cruelty is the point.
No wonder they have such raging boners for forcing people back into offices.
A more accurate panel would be the CEO leaning over and whispering “I know how to run a business. This speaker is full of shit”
