Good point. I like Keith's work with it however. I'm not so sure that I agree that Marx was a simple ideologue. I think he was as scientific as any of the economists to date. Also the development of competency across class lines from the current crop of Soviet graduates has made mush of America's work force wherever they have encountered them. At some point it felt like WE lost the cold war since they were taking over so much with their superior training. We are even being ferried into space by their space program today. They have more Russian opera at the Met then we ever had American and Russians are singing everything. Then there is IBM and Silicon Valley. I lived in a Russian community in Pennsylvania. They were a very impressive bunch of people with excellent skills and cultural values. True they did have a dictator but somehow it all seemed to work out and then they graduated into the present. What are we doing except longing for a Hero-dictator to rescue us from Democracy?
REH From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Ed Weick Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 1:33 PM To: Keith Hudson; RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, EDUCATION Subject: Re: [Futurework] Half-time score: Darwin 1, Marx 0 I don't think one can draw comparisons between Marxist and Darwinian thought. About the only thing they have in common is that Capital and Origin were written at about the same time. However, beyond that, Darwinism is scientific and therefore testable by experimentation and observation. While Darwin may have got some things wrong, what he proposed about the evolution of living things is generally held as true. Marxist thought, on the other hand, is ideological. It proposed an ideal system, which if followed, would lead to an ideal non-competitive society in which workers owned the means of production and everybody would benefit. We like to point at the Soviet Union as an example of Communism at work. That is not what is was. Most of its reality was that of a vast gulag operated by a huge bureaucracy under the thrall of a supreme leadership headed, through most of its history, by Stalin. China is cited as another example. Yet it is not communist in the sense that Mao Tse Tung, Chou En Lai and other of its founders envisaged it. If it is anything, it is a supreme example of state capitalism. Nevertheless, I don't think we should throw Marx away. While Marxism may become repression and brutality at the nation-state level, something very much like it can work at the small scale communal level. I think of the agricultural communes people I know established in parts of Canada or the cooperatives I saw in Costa Rica, examples of people owning their means of production and working to the common good. Ed ----- Original Message ----- From: Keith Hudson <mailto:[email protected]> To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, <mailto:[email protected]> ,EDUCATION Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 5:47 AM Subject: [Futurework] Half-time score: Darwin 1, Marx 0 It is perhaps strange that two of the most powerful minds of 19th century England never met, even though they were almost exact contemporaries and lived and worked not far from each other. I speak of Charles Darwin (1809-1882) and Karl Marx (1818-1883). The publication of their major works, Origin of Species (1859) and Capital (1867) was also very close. Karl Marx, of course, read everything and bought Origin as soon as it was published. He was bowled over by it because Darwin's theme of competition was so close to his own. Marx wrote to his friend, Engels, ". . . this is the book which, in the field of natural history, provides the basis for our views." He probably wrote to Darwin at the time, though no record exists. However, when Capital was published eight years later he sent a copy to Darwin, and inscribed it: "Mr Charles Darwin on the part of his sincere admirer Karl Marx". This time Darwin replied. "I heartily wish I was more worthy to receive it, by understanding more of the deep & important subject of political economy. Though our studies have been so different, I believe that we both earnestly desire the extension of knowledge & that this in the long run is sure to add to the happiness of mankind." That was actually an extremely diplomatic reply because Darwin didn't read Marx's great work! He might have peeked at a page or two but most pages remained uncut when he placed in his library. Besides the theme of competition, they both shared another important one -- the importance of the environment. In Darwin's case it was the natural environment. As the number of life-forms increased (that is, more varieties of potential food) then this forced more and more specialization -- and thus more species -- to come into existence. And, within each species, individuals competed. 'Unfit' individuals who couldn't raise enough children to replace themselves died out. In Marx's book, it was the production environment, not the natural one, that forced specialization on society. In his time the environment was the industrial revolution. This was forcing at least two main classes into existence -- the workers and the capitalists (with their bourgeois hangers-on, the middle-classes). Furthermore, Marx maintained, the class gap would go wider and wider. The rich would become richer and richer, and the workers would become increasingly impoverished until finally they would either die out or be forced to revolt and bring socialism about. Unlike Darwin, whose evidence came from a wide variety of sources, Marx's main evidence came from one person, Friedrich Engels, a rich business owner -- and, paradoxically, a fox-hunting capitalist! -- who fed Marx with statistics of the working class in the factories of Manchester. Engels was a compassionate man -- we must give him credit for this -- and was saddened by the living and working conditions of factory workers. They were, of course, pretty awful in the early part of the 19th century because this was the first flush of the new breed of factory owners and industrial expansion. In fact, however, the living conditions and the economic prosperity of factory workers was already steadily increasing at that time. If Engles had thrown his statistical net much wider than Manchester and over a longer time span he would have discovered this. Consciously or unconsciously, Engels chose statistics from the worst factories and districts of Manchester and, already, the data were many years out of date. By mid-and late-century, as the industrial revolution swept into Europe, Marx's and Engels' ideas of increasing impoverishment seemed to be confirmed. Back in England, however, by late 19th century, ordinary workers' incomes were increasing at a smart pace. He and his wife were now buying new consumer goods as they appeared -- even though they took hard saving in those days -- and most working parents in the industrial cities were paying for their children to be educated. The workers were starting building societies in order to buy their own homes, and when they went on holiday and walked about in their Sunday-best clothes on the seaside esplanades, they would be mixing with the middle-class and the very rich. In England and Western Europe, the wealth and income gaps still existed, of course, but they continued to narrow down all the way through to the 1960s or '70s. Meanwhile, in the communist countries of central Europe where Marxist ideas were being seriously applied, an income gap between the powerful (the nomenklatura) and the ordinary workers had been increasing! Personal ownership of property-wealth didn't exist by law but, in effect, amply compensated for by personal leases by the privileged of second homes (dacha) in beautiful countryside and luxurious seaside holidays. But then, at around 1990 the communist system collapsed. At least it did in Russia and its satellite countries. In China, it has been more of a case of communism sliding into a revived form of Confucianism. At this stage we could say that Marx's political version of competition and environment has failed but that Darwin's had survived. However, all is not quite as it seems. We can't call it a victory for Darwin just yet. Since Russia and China have chosen free enterprise over communism, class division and income differentials seem to be growing again (both there and in the West). So we can't yet say that the score is Darwin 1, Marx 0. It must be considered a half-time result. In fact, Darwin's original ideas pack another big punch, quite as powerful as "survival of the fittest". Although it has been amply confirmed by scientific research in recent years, the public -- even the very well educated part of the public -- are largely unaware of its implications. Darwin's second idea is even more powerful than "survival of the fittest" in one respect. It has deep and specific social implications. It may even be the case that Marx might be correct all along -- even though he can no longer take credit for it! So I will call it a half-time score for now and write about the second half tomorrow. Keith Keith Hudson, Saltford, England _____ _______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
_______________________________________________ Futurework mailing list [email protected] https://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/futurework
