The difference between Marxism and Socialism

Romantic Heretic said:

As my favorite writer puts it, "The last functioning Marxists are the head of large, usually transnational corporations. The last functioning Marxist philosophers are neo-conservative."

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No offense man, but your "favorite writer" is 0 for 6, by my count.

"Early capitalism" was not "based on the class struggle." That's nonsense. The Marxist class struggle was inconsequential, per William's bit.

Now, a very strict neo-conservative--in the original sense of the word--could actually be a Marxist. Hell, I'm not totally un-Marxist, myself.

But the modern neoconservative, as he/she is usually identified, is not much of a Marxist, at all.

There are still plenty of functioning Marxist thinkers, though. Quite a number of them in History, Sociology, and Economics departments throughout the land.

Now, one of my favorite authors is--or was, since he is now dead--a full-bore Marxist: C.B. Macpherson. He's Canadian, to boot.

C.B. Macpherson is actually very relevant to this discussion in general. It helps to know Marx, of course, but I think the most fruitful essays deal with the differences between Locke and Hobbes, at least to the extent Macpherson sees socialist states as protecting -- rather than restraining -- liberties.



AMC

robeiae said:

No offense man, but your "favorite writer" is 0 for 6, by my count.

"Early capitalism" was not "based on the class struggle." That's nonsense. The Marxist class struggle was inconsequential, per William's bit.

Now, a very strict neo-conservative--in the original sense of the word--could actually be a Marxist. Hell, I'm not totally un-Marxist, myself.

But the modern neoconservative, as he/she is usually identified, is not much of a Marxist, at all.

There are still plenty of functioning Marxist thinkers, though. Quite a number of them in History, Sociology, and Economics departments throughout the land.

Now, one of my favorite authors is--or was, since he is now dead--a full-bore Marxist: C.B. Macpherson. He's Canadian, to boot.

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Quelle surprise.

Don said:

Hmm... let me look up something...

Yeah, that's what I thought. The founding fathers thought the idea of an elite sucked, threw out the elite, and attempted to establish a society ruled by law, not by the elite. They even attempted to bind that government down by the chains of the Constitution.

So socialism is a movement to re-instutitionalize the concept of an "elite," which was supposed to be eliminated by the Jeffersonian Republic idea, but has slowly made inroads in recapturing control of society over the last two centuries, leading to an elite that consumes almost half of society's output today, while producing absolutely nothing?

Thanks, I just wanted to be clear on that. I've always read it that way, but it's nice to have confirmation.

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deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.

Note that the "governed" merely consent. It is also worth noting that an elite is not necessarily the same as those in the situation of having "just powers"...to look at it another way, when the Constitution was written, there was only one kind of capital, the type that has inherent symbolic power so that those with capital were automatically in the oligarchy in whose interest the Constitution was composed. In the current world there is another whole realm of Capital in the form of virtually instanteous shifts in anything that might be a commodity. Generally to go from units of capital A (symbolic power) to units of capital B (a superfluid that can shift through any range of commodities and instruments and contracts) something a bit illegal has to happen. For example, say a heroin cartel in Uzbekistan wants to knock out a competitor's truck repair shop in Afghanistan and they need it done as soon as possible because in a superfluid situation, 60 million today gets you 80 million tomorrow, but 60 million tomorrow gets you nothing. With the right connections, word gets to the US Anti-Taliban forces that that truck shop is full of Truck bomb Terrorists...some capital B money changes hands and you get a dose of capital A (symbolic power) that gets the job done. Boom. No more truck repairs. Everybody is happy but the people who worked in the repair shop. For them the Apocalypse was today and the US Constitution was pretty irrelevent.