{"id":36013,"date":"2018-07-08T01:00:50","date_gmt":"2018-07-08T05:00:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=36013"},"modified":"2018-06-18T10:33:54","modified_gmt":"2018-06-18T14:33:54","slug":"qotd-marx-on-how-to-run-a-true-communist-state","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2018\/07\/08\/qotd-marx-on-how-to-run-a-true-communist-state\/","title":{"rendered":"QotD: Marx on how to run a true communist state"},"content":{"rendered":"

What really clinched this for me was the discussion of Marx\u2019s (lack of) description of how to run a communist state. I\u2019d always heard that Marx was long on condemnations of capitalism and short on blueprints for communism, and the couple of Marx\u2019s works I read in college confirmed he really didn\u2019t talk about that very much. It seemed like a pretty big gap.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

I figured that Marx had just fallen into a similar trap. He\u2019d probably made a few vague plans, like \u201cOh, decisions will be made by a committee of workers,\u201d and \u201cProperty will be held in common and consensus democracy will choose who gets what,\u201d and felt like the rest was just details. That\u2019s the sort of error I could at least sympathize with, despite its horrendous consequences.<\/p>\n

But in fact Marx was philosophically opposed, as a matter of principle, to any planning about the structure of communist governments or economies. He would come out and say \u201cIt is irresponsible to talk about how communist governments and economies will work.\u201d He believed it was a scientific law, analogous to the laws of physics, that once capitalism was removed, a perfect communist government would form of its own accord. There might be some very light planning, a couple of discussions, but these would just be epiphenomena of the governing historical laws working themselves out. Just as, a dam having been removed, a river will eventually reach the sea somehow, so capitalism having been removed society will eventually reach a perfect state of freedom and cooperation.<\/p>\n

Singer blames Hegel. Hegel viewed all human history as the World-Spirit trying to recognize and incarnate itself. As it overcomes its various confusions and false dichotomies, it advances into forms that more completely incarnate the World-Spirit and then moves onto the next problem. Finally, it ends with the World-Spirit completely incarnated \u2013 possibly in the form of early 19th century Prussia \u2013 and everything is great forever.<\/p>\n

Marx famously exports Hegel\u2019s mysticism into a materialistic version where the World-Spirit operates upon class relations rather than the interconnectedness of all things, and where you don\u2019t come out and call<\/em> it the World-Spirit \u2013 but he basically keeps the system intact. So once the World-Spirit resolves the dichotomy between Capitalist and Proletariat, then it can more completely incarnate itself and move on to the next problem. Except that this is the final problem (the proof of this is trivial and is left as exercise for the reader) so the World-Spirit becomes fully incarnate and everything is great forever. And you want to plan<\/em> for how that should happen? Are you saying you know better than the World-Spirit, Comrade?<\/p>\n

I am starting to think I was previously a little too charitable toward Marx. My objections were of the sort \u201cYou didn\u2019t really consider the idea of welfare capitalism with a social safety net\u201d or \u201ccommunist society is very difficult to implement in principle,\u201d whereas they should have looked more like \u201cYou are basically just telling us to destroy all of the institutions that sustain human civilization and trust that what is baaaasically<\/em> a giant planet-sized ghost will make sure everything works out.\u201d<\/p>\n

Scott Alexander, “Book Review: Singer on Marx”, Slate Star Codex<\/em><\/a>, 2014-09-13.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

What really clinched this for me was the discussion of Marx\u2019s (lack of) description of how to run a communist state. I\u2019d always heard that Marx was long on condemnations of capitalism and short on blueprints for communism, and the couple of Marx\u2019s works I read in college confirmed he really didn\u2019t talk about that […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,7,53,41],"tags":[780,622,1076,576],"class_list":["post-36013","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-history","category-politics","category-quotations","tag-communism","tag-ideology","tag-karlmarx","tag-philosophy"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-9mR","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36013","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36013"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36013\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":36014,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36013\/revisions\/36014"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36013"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36013"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36013"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}