By the time we reach page 22, I get the impression that Marx unloads on what the agenda is by using the bourgeoisie as the vehicle.
“In Communist society, accumulated labour is but a means to widen, to enrich, to promote the existence of the labourer.”
Why would you promote the existence of the labourer when he is partially responsible for the creation of capital and it appears he won’t be working much, if at all?
Also, how can accumulated labour, ie surplus labour promote the existence of the labourer?
Marx doesn't explain how that would work.
Are we to believe that a labourer sits on a bench until his number is called so he can do a job?
Or is this how a basic income is dovetailed into a workforce that won’t be working much?
“In bourgeois society, capital is independent and has individuality, while the living person is dependent and has no individuality. And the abolition of this state of things is called by the bourgeois,abolition of individuality and freedom! And rightly so.”
Isn’t this exactly what we’ve seen throughout history?
The Soviet Union, North Korea, etc. You have what appears to be no or very little individuality and freedom, is severely curtailed.
“The abolition of bourgeois individuality,bourgeois independence, and bourgeois freedom is undoubtedly aimed at. By freedom is meant, under the present bourgeois conditions of production, free trade, free selling and buying.”
Would not there be a system in place that would allow these freedom’s?
If there is such a system, wouldn’t that mean that system would have to cease to exist in order to get rid of these things the bourgeoisie consider free?
But doesn’t the proletariat have a concept of free, and if they do, why isn’t that considered?
Marx doesn’t seem to be interested in them in this regard and instead is basically advocating for burning the system down - where have we heard that before?
“But if selling and buying disappears, free selling and buying disappears also.
This talk about free selling and buying, and all the other “brave words” of our bourgeois about freedom in general, have a meaning, if any, only in contrast with restricted selling and buying, with the fettered traders of the Middle Ages, but have no meaning when opposed to the Communistic abolition of buying and selling, or the bourgeois conditions of production, and of the bourgeoisie itself.”
Marx juxtaposes the “fettered traders of the Middle Ages” with the bourgeoisie when he talks about freedom, but freedom has no meaning in relation to Communism.
If it has no meaning, does he mean then that freedom won’t exist or as a concept, it is null and void?
Either way, what we understand as freedom will be removed, what then will replace it?
If you aren’t free, you, by definition, are un-free what does that mean?
I doubt everyone will be in physical shackles, but given the technology of today, is not a microchip embedded under the skin that transmits your whereabouts a type of shackle?
What about your GPS enabled phone that never leaves your hands?
Some may say no and to many that is probably the case, but how much freedom must you lose before you come to realize you are un-free?
Curfews, or only certain people can enter certain places.
This sounds inconvenient at best until you look around and see that the only place you can go is the perimeter of your house, without good reason.
Couple that with the lack of ability to purchase what you want when you want, and what do you have?
Not to mention, which is probably in most people’s minds the most important, is freedom of thought.
Is this to be removed as well or is only approved thought allowed to enter your mind?
Now it makes sense when Marx says,
“In bourgeois society, therefore, the past dominates the present; in communist society, the present dominates the past.”
You retard one’s ability to think new thoughts and analyse when you control history.
Given a new paradigm that he is advocating control of the past is paramount, especially for those who remember growing up in a world where history is formed by the past.
It would now allow those in power to weave any tale they choose for any purpose and you, the unsuspecting public, will never know, or maybe you will but that type of thinking is forbidden.
Does this sound like a world anyone would want to live in?
It’s an un-free world.
If the world is un-free do we have any choice in anything we do, or will we be assigned a job, a place to live, what books to read, what games to play, and who to have sex with by some administrative board that apparently has the knowledge to know what is best for you?
Is this what Marx wants, or is he trying to tell us what is in store for us?
Either way, it seems black and white to me, and we are only on page 22!
He continues on page 23
“Communism deprives no man of the power to appropriate the products of society: all that it does is to deprive him of the power to subjugate the labour of others by means of such appropriations”
But didn’t Marx tell us that wage-labour creates capital, and that creates exploitation of the worker?
I guess you just need to buy just enough and not too much of whatever you need, as long as it’s not some form of private property, if you need that you’ll just rent it I guess.
What is significant on this page is his segue into culture
“Just as, to the bourgeois, the disappearance of class property is the disappearance of production itself, so the disappearance of class culture is to him identical with the disappearance of all culture.”
No culture, that entails a lot of different aspects in humans.
I guess when you’re all painted with the same brush, what does it matter if there are such things as differences.
However, he makes one thing is clear, when culture disappears you then become a mindless cog in the machine, completely and utterly replaceable.
I can almost feel the hatred coming from the words Marx spews.
“But don’t wrangle with us so long as you apply, to our intended abolition of bourgeois property, the standard of your bourgeois notions of freedom, culture, law,. Your very ideas are but the outgrowth of the conditions of your bourgeois production and bourgeois property, just as your jurisprudence is but the will of your class made into a law for all, a will, whose essential character and direction are determined by the economical conditions of existence of your class. The selfish misconception that induces you to transform into eternal laws of nature, the social forms stringing from your present mode of production and form of property—historical relations that rise and disappear in the progress of production—this misconception you share with every ruling class that has preceded you. What you see clearly in the case of ancient property, what you admit in the case of feudal property, you are of course forbidden to admit in the case of your own bourgeois form of property.”
There is hatred in those words, so much so I would think most would like to know why.
The problem here is even if Marx is correct in what he says; he basically says don’t argue with him if you use the bourgeoisie concepts of freedom, culture, and law because they are irrelevant to what he is advocating.
Those are based in class and property, something that he has dismissed as invalid.
The very real problem with this is Marx has not defined new meanings to these words, ie, freedom, culture, law, or provided new terms and definitions.
It means either they don’t exist, or they exist in any form other than their current form, i.e. bourgeoisie.
The point is, they are not defined, which means they can be undefinable, or the definition is so fluid as to be undefinable.
To put it another way, the paradigm of communism will run rough-shod over capitalism and logical reasoning behind the takeover is irrelevant.
It’s one paradigm asserting its dominance over another.
Think of it like this: did the European’s steal the North American Indian’s land? The prevailing winds tell us yes, but in actuality, the answer is no.
The Indians lived their lives completely devoid of understanding of who and what the Europeans were.
They are paradigm one.
The Europeans are paradigm two.
Both meet on the lands of North America.
Both paradigms can’t live side by side, so war ensues for one to dominate the other.
Paradigm two wins and supplants paradigm one.
What recourse do the Indians have?
Absolutely none.
Were lands stolen?
No, because conceptually you can’t steal land from outside of the paradigm you are living in.
Later on, to avoid further bloodshed, treaties were signed, but make no mistake about it, those treaties were signed inside paradigm two.
Those treaties basically said we, the Europeans, are allowing you, the Indians, to live on the following lands in return for no more war.
Now, years later, when those treaties are not honored, that is 100% theft, according to the rules of paradigm two, of which the Indians now belong.
To be clear, paradigm doesn’t just mean a group of people, it encompasses everything that group of people are, meaning: culture, language, laws, etc, basically the totality of their existence.
The same thing will happen if we tried to colonize a planet.
We would displace the current inhabitants, if there were any and if we could, and start living on Earth 2.0.
They, in turn, would live on earth 2.0, not their planet.
Marx is working within the current paradigm to show us he has his own paradigm and this is dangerous because it up ends everything we know about society, business, culture, laws, etc.
Now that we can wrap our head around the fact that he is creating a new paradigm, the question then becomes, is this something that I want to live in?