"My best suggestion for overcoming this challenge, when reading A Theory of Justice, is to go into it thinking “this is the book that killed Western Marxism,” and then focus on figuring out how it managed to do so."
I've argued a related point, that if you want to build a successful Communism, in which all property is held by the government, then you have to do that by first embracing liberalism. See "How to build a pragmatic Communism that works intelligently and efficiently":
If only it had killed it. It just made it a bit sickly.
We know it's a complete failure, yet people are continuing to make the attempt at totalitarian Marxist government. Capitalism and oligarchy are a terrible combination, as we're seeing now. How about we go back to democracy and capitalism instead of trying on the Marxist hat?
We already have feudalism/never got rid of it. Modern landlords are direct descendants of lords, peasants now just pay for their own security too (and of course have a concept called the State that can protect peasants against the landed class, under some conditions).
That has been tried, but any shred of democratic process ends up giving way to collectivist control requiring a bureaucratic dictatorship. One can only conclude they are incompatible.
How is that different than the small cohort of ultra wealthy driving policy, both directly and through soft influence? It’s all sausage making, pick your flavor.
It has delivered for the shareholder class while driving down fertility rates through unfavorable economic macros.
“Growth for whom”? Growth has proven valuable primarily to the wealthiest, who continue to demand more. Good luck with future squeezing as structural demographic declines are locked in.
Fertility rates have been decrease with improved standard of living, and the poorest have the most children. Hungary gives 5% of gdp to people who have children, yet have barely stopped the decline in births because of this. Other countries have similarly failed.
Where and when? And how is allowing capitalists horde wealth and power incompatible with democracy? I’d say having workers in more control is more democratic than the top down power structure of capitalism
Your preconceived notion that Marxism requires totalitarianism makes this opinion fall flat.
Marxist ideals don't require totalitarianism, it also doesn't require the full implementation of socialism/communism to derive some ideals to strive for a fairer society.
As another comment in this thread has posted, I recommend you to actually read the "Communist Manifesto" and see how much of it you'll actually agree with.
> How about we go back to democracy and capitalism instead of trying on the Marxist hat?
How do you suggest going about that when capital is power and power has a tendency to try to take over systems, such as democracy and exactly what's happening with oligarchies being a natural follow up from the structures of power created by capitalism itself?
You complain about Marxism ideals leading to totalitarianism but fail to see how capitalistic ideals lead to a different form of social disease. What if capitalism is incompatible with the ideals of democracy? How do we deal with that to foster another system that could combine the best of both worlds?
That's more what I think about rather than a fight between two ideologies stuck in the past...
Does anyone have any information on where the author gets his claim that Cohen has a "road to Damascus moment" upon arriving at Harvard? I can't find anything on that, or even anyone else claiming Cohen was a "liberal".
This article is very light on supporting quotes or references, so im very suspect of his claims that analytical Marxist converted to beliefs that are opposed to Marxist analysis. Especially given many of Cohen's later works are focused on scientific socialism.
The author does not claim that Cohen has a "road to Damascus moment" when he arrives at Harvard. Instead, this is the claim:
"This created something of a “road to Damascus” moment for Cohen. It forced him to ask the basic question: what is it that I dislike most about capitalism?"
That is, Cohen needed to take a moment and then ask himself deeper questions about his starting assumptions. That is the claim.
I hate how impossible this topic is to discuss, most people have a preconceived notion of what Marxism is that is usually so off base and you have to argue with their idea of what it is and not what it actually if
The problem with this discussion is thinking that the good life is about access to material resources and that we should examine unequal access to them and fix that.
It is simply missing that there are other more important inequalities and that people are being deprived of other things in life. Main one being mating opportunities and access to attractive sexual partners.
You could fix inequality in access to material resources, but then people who are ugly would still be deprived of having attractive mates who love them.
I think a key part of this is that the Labor Theory of Value has fallen flat. (which he mentions in the article)
In our increasingly complex and technologically advanced society, the LTV looks more and more out of date, especially since the marginal revolution proved its worth with societies exponential growth on the basis of its theories. The value of a good comes from what people each value it and are willing to pay, and there are clearly other factors than labor that go into a good.
In western democracies we have many functions roads, health, education, security in which a government provided service exists side by side with market alternatives. I think the public confidence in those functions in different countries is a good metric of that countries ability to operate a service for the public good. There’s no need for revolution, just keep shaping a culture that understands how to eliminate corruption and govern services for the universal good, and we can iterate our way to automated luxury communism:
Lets fix schools & hospitals first, then we can talk more
Our civilisation today is less corrupt, less violent, fairer than it was a thousand years ago, I am optimistic that this will continue to be true for the next thousand years of new todays
You might have pockets that are at this moment appear to be less corrupt, less violent, and more fair…but human nature is human nature. Those things don’t go away—they hide temporarily until circumstances change just enough for them to emerge again.
My hope is that the situation is better than that, the human nature is an interaction of genes and environment, and that human culture is constantly evolving, and that environmental change, makes for different people.
> Marxists, after having removed all of the bullshit from Marxism, discovered that there was nothing left but liberalism.
This is not true. Marxism deals with much more metaphysical questions than liberalism does. The issue is not just that some people are poor and others are rich and that that's unfair. That has been true since time immemorial, but Marx's object of inquiry was specifically the economic system brought into being by the industrial revolution and other material changes. That system by its nature produces specific classes of people (proletariats and bourgeoisie), and Marxism is really about an analysis of those classes and the ethical questions brought about by their interaction.
So for example a big issue Marx is concerned with that is totally absent from liberalism is this concept of 'alienation'[1], whereby a worker becomes wholly estranged, in an artificial way, from the product that he creates; and whereby labour, normally a self-realizing and delightful undertaking, becomes instead commoditized as merely a means to existence.
I think this is very wrong. Rawls isn't liberalism, or at least A Theory of Justice isn't liberalism. Maybe he imagined it to be, but there is no actual relation to it.
The equal opportunity principle is probably impossible in a society that permits large capital owners. Campaign donations are certainly right out, because there's always people on margins who can't afford to give them, and they do lead to people not have an opportunity to influence politics.
People can imagine that Rawls' system is liberal, and I imagine he imagined it, but the reality is that liberalism is not an implementation of Rawls' system and there is in fact no connection between it and liberalism other than people's imaginings.
It's like 'Here's an axiomatisation of arithmetic' and you find that it has nothing to do with arithmetic at all-- it's some kind of nonabelian not-even-a-ring which might exist, but where nobody has even tried to prove it.
This idea about not taxing ultra-productive individuals is actually compatible with the Marxian conception of socialism. 'to each according to his contribution', so for a Marxist there's nothing problematic with Nozicks argument. Marxism is an ideology for people who want to build things and want the whole thing they build, not an ideology for egalitarian-- the text presents this as something which leads people not to be Marxists, and that's probably true in academia-- after all, social scientists aren't usually building things that they want to enjoy in their entirety and of which they want the whole thing, so of course they're not going to be Marxists, but they aren't really the people it's made for either.
It's easy to say it failed, but if you look at the communist manifesto's actual demands:
> the abolition of private property in land and inheritance; introduction of a progressive income tax; confiscation of rebels' property; nationalisation of credit, communication, and transport; expansion and integration of industry and agriculture; enforcement of universal obligation of labour; and provision of universal education and abolition of child labour.
Most, if not all of these are now uncontroversial standards in modern states. It's not considered Marxist that we have ended child labor, and we have universal education, or that we have progressive incomes taxes, or that the state regulates credit/communications/transport. In fact these are just common sense practices that we all know would be a disaster if we abandoned them.
So we've basically adopted the majority of what the manifesto recommended, and now we're high-fiving and saying Marxism is dead. Capitalism arguably survived because it adopted these.
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[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 73.7 ms ] threadI've argued a related point, that if you want to build a successful Communism, in which all property is held by the government, then you have to do that by first embracing liberalism. See "How to build a pragmatic Communism that works intelligently and efficiently":
https://demodexio.substack.com/p/how-to-build-a-pragmatic-co...
We know it's a complete failure, yet people are continuing to make the attempt at totalitarian Marxist government. Capitalism and oligarchy are a terrible combination, as we're seeing now. How about we go back to democracy and capitalism instead of trying on the Marxist hat?
I don’t believe such a conclusion is forgone.
“Growth for whom”? Growth has proven valuable primarily to the wealthiest, who continue to demand more. Good luck with future squeezing as structural demographic declines are locked in.
https://english.kyodonews.net/news/2024/08/5e488d2474cf-japa... (Japan)
https://www.piie.com/research/piie-charts/2024/chinas-popula... (China)
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-68402139 (South Korea)
https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/pressroom/nchs_press_releases/2024/... (US)
Marxist ideals don't require totalitarianism, it also doesn't require the full implementation of socialism/communism to derive some ideals to strive for a fairer society.
As another comment in this thread has posted, I recommend you to actually read the "Communist Manifesto" and see how much of it you'll actually agree with.
> How about we go back to democracy and capitalism instead of trying on the Marxist hat?
How do you suggest going about that when capital is power and power has a tendency to try to take over systems, such as democracy and exactly what's happening with oligarchies being a natural follow up from the structures of power created by capitalism itself?
You complain about Marxism ideals leading to totalitarianism but fail to see how capitalistic ideals lead to a different form of social disease. What if capitalism is incompatible with the ideals of democracy? How do we deal with that to foster another system that could combine the best of both worlds?
That's more what I think about rather than a fight between two ideologies stuck in the past...
This article is very light on supporting quotes or references, so im very suspect of his claims that analytical Marxist converted to beliefs that are opposed to Marxist analysis. Especially given many of Cohen's later works are focused on scientific socialism.
"This created something of a “road to Damascus” moment for Cohen. It forced him to ask the basic question: what is it that I dislike most about capitalism?"
That is, Cohen needed to take a moment and then ask himself deeper questions about his starting assumptions. That is the claim.
It is simply missing that there are other more important inequalities and that people are being deprived of other things in life. Main one being mating opportunities and access to attractive sexual partners. You could fix inequality in access to material resources, but then people who are ugly would still be deprived of having attractive mates who love them.
Interesting read: https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/comparing-income-sex-redist...
In our increasingly complex and technologically advanced society, the LTV looks more and more out of date, especially since the marginal revolution proved its worth with societies exponential growth on the basis of its theories. The value of a good comes from what people each value it and are willing to pay, and there are clearly other factors than labor that go into a good.
Keep?
This is not true. Marxism deals with much more metaphysical questions than liberalism does. The issue is not just that some people are poor and others are rich and that that's unfair. That has been true since time immemorial, but Marx's object of inquiry was specifically the economic system brought into being by the industrial revolution and other material changes. That system by its nature produces specific classes of people (proletariats and bourgeoisie), and Marxism is really about an analysis of those classes and the ethical questions brought about by their interaction.
So for example a big issue Marx is concerned with that is totally absent from liberalism is this concept of 'alienation'[1], whereby a worker becomes wholly estranged, in an artificial way, from the product that he creates; and whereby labour, normally a self-realizing and delightful undertaking, becomes instead commoditized as merely a means to existence.
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation
The equal opportunity principle is probably impossible in a society that permits large capital owners. Campaign donations are certainly right out, because there's always people on margins who can't afford to give them, and they do lead to people not have an opportunity to influence politics.
People can imagine that Rawls' system is liberal, and I imagine he imagined it, but the reality is that liberalism is not an implementation of Rawls' system and there is in fact no connection between it and liberalism other than people's imaginings.
It's like 'Here's an axiomatisation of arithmetic' and you find that it has nothing to do with arithmetic at all-- it's some kind of nonabelian not-even-a-ring which might exist, but where nobody has even tried to prove it.
This idea about not taxing ultra-productive individuals is actually compatible with the Marxian conception of socialism. 'to each according to his contribution', so for a Marxist there's nothing problematic with Nozicks argument. Marxism is an ideology for people who want to build things and want the whole thing they build, not an ideology for egalitarian-- the text presents this as something which leads people not to be Marxists, and that's probably true in academia-- after all, social scientists aren't usually building things that they want to enjoy in their entirety and of which they want the whole thing, so of course they're not going to be Marxists, but they aren't really the people it's made for either.
> the abolition of private property in land and inheritance; introduction of a progressive income tax; confiscation of rebels' property; nationalisation of credit, communication, and transport; expansion and integration of industry and agriculture; enforcement of universal obligation of labour; and provision of universal education and abolition of child labour.
Most, if not all of these are now uncontroversial standards in modern states. It's not considered Marxist that we have ended child labor, and we have universal education, or that we have progressive incomes taxes, or that the state regulates credit/communications/transport. In fact these are just common sense practices that we all know would be a disaster if we abandoned them.
So we've basically adopted the majority of what the manifesto recommended, and now we're high-fiving and saying Marxism is dead. Capitalism arguably survived because it adopted these.