Ray, I wasn't saying that Marx wasn't a complex thinker. He was, but his
thought was essentially utopian, suggesting that, if people followed the
analysis and ideas he set forth, the world would be a much better place. And
Russia of the late 19th and early 20th centuries was a prime candidate for
becoming a better place. For the common people it was about as bad as a place
could get.
There is no doubt that things did get materially better for the common people
under communism -- or really "under Stalinism" might be a better way of putting
it. However, intellectually and culturally, they lived in a system of extreme
repression. What the Stalinist regime was trying to do was to create an ideal
system in which everybody adhered to the line and path that the state laid out.
No deviation was allowed. Millions were sent to the gulags or shot by the
NKVD because they took issue with the official line.
After Stalin died in 1953, the system softened somewhat. By the 1970s and
1980s there were signs that it was in serious trouble. It collapsed in 1991.
I spent a month in a cockroach infested Moscow student residence in 1994.
Russia was in chaos. Nobody was sure of who was running it. There had been no
market economy under the Soviet system and nothing legitimate had yet formed up
when I was there. If people really needed something, they might stand a chance
of getting it via "the mafia", whoever it was. Collecting taxes proved
impossible. If the state needed money, it would print it. If it needed
foreign exchange, it would get it via "oligarchs" who had connections to
foreign banks. It recompensed the oligarchs by giving them state owned assets
via the "loans for shares" scheme.
In my opinion, what happened in Russia is a very good example of utopianism
gone wrong. I found the people I dealt with in Russia to be very bright and
able to cope under disastrous circumstances. They had to be after many years
of brutal repression followed by a decade of chaos.
Ed
----- Original Message -----
From: Ray Harrell
To: 'RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION,EDUCATION'
Sent: Monday, August 23, 2010 4:23 PM
Subject: Re: [Futurework] Half-time score: Darwin 1, Marx 0
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
To: RE-DESIGNING WORK, INCOME DISTRIBUTION, ,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
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