For An Independent and Socialist Canada: A Marxist-Leninist View Chapter 4: It is the purpose of this section of our paper to put forward, in its broad outlines at least, the program of the Progressive Workers Movement for national independence, to show the relationship between the struggle for independence and the struggle for socialism, and to explain our views on what socialists should do in the context of the present Canadian situation. But there is more to the achievement of socialism than the mere statement of its necessity and inevitability.
If there are arguments against Marxism that deserve to be taken seriously, then one might expect to find them in such a prestigious publication. The second riposte was to point out that the theory stank too.
But if the assumption that Stalinism had anything to do with the actual ideas of Marx and Engels is false, then this argument against those ideas loses all its bite.
On the face of it, it is rather difficult to square the practice of Stalinism, which created police states and rule by self-perpetuating bureaucracies, with anything that exists in the writing of Marx and Engels. From their earliest involvement in politics, Marx and Engels were radical democrats who wanted to dramatically expand democratic control of society and to create conditions that would permit human freedom to flourish.
The soviets were left as empty shells, and power was usurped by a new bureaucratic ruling class that used brutal methods to industrialize the country in an effort to catch up with its economic and military competitors in the West.
Barber offers a reply of sorts to this defense of Marxism. The argument now is not that Stalin, Mao, and others were doing what Marx intended, but that Marx somehow opened the door for them to do what he did not intend.
But how exactly is he supposed to have done this? By being careless in his choice of words? By advocating a way of organizing society that would inevitably fail, giving rise to its opposite? Neither charge has much merit. If workers were able to carry out a successful revolution, Marx believed that they would need to use state power to prevent the old ruling class from staging a counterrevolution.
This represents a victory for right-wing populist reaction in Canada’s largest province. It also represents class polarization and the collapse of the “middle”. The Kathleen Wynne’s Liberal government has been demolished, and has lost official party status. Revolution is a three-day festival of Marxist ideas, hosted by. Would the USA benefit from socialism? 62% Say Yes 38% Say No Yes to end poverty The argument that socialism kills the drive to Excell at work is B.S. What it does do however is make it where you don't have to to way up the food chain to make it. Socialists are not in favor of a dictatorial government. Unless you come across . Socialism is, to date, more widespread than fascism. Moreover, socialism can exist within countries as main overall economic and social system, but can be also present within segments of a country, such as in education, health care, and corporation systems. If a country has not declared itself as socialist in the national constitution, it cannot be labelled as socialist by third parties.
At the same time, however, society would become much more democratic, because workers and their allies would make up the vast majority of the population. Marx did not unwittingly lay the groundwork for dictatorship by a minority by advocating an impossible goal. There is one other criticism of Marx that Barber raises, this time of a more theoretical nature.
Marx certainly held that economic and material factors shape the rest of society, but Marx was no crude economic determinist, and he did not believe that historical progress was in any way inevitable. In fact, in the letter of that Barber is referring to and which it is possible he did not actually readMarx responds to a critic who sounds a lot like Tony Barber.
Marx writes that this critic feels himself obliged to metamorphose my historical sketch of the genesis of capitalism in Western Europe into an historico-philosophic theory of the marche generale [general path] imposed by fate upon every people, whatever the historic circumstances in which it finds itself, in order that it may ultimately arrive at the form of economy which will ensure, together with the greatest expansion of the productive powers of social labor, the most complete development of man.
But I beg his pardon. He is both honoring and shaming me too much. Let us take an example. In several parts of Capital I allude to the fate which overtook the plebeians of ancient Rome.
They were originally free peasants, each cultivating his own piece of land on his own account.
In the course of Roman history they were expropriated. The same movement which divorced them from their means of production and subsistence involved the formation not only of big landed property but also of big money capital. And so one fine morning there were to be found on the one hand free men, stripped of everything except their labor power, and on the other, in order to exploit this labor, those who held all the acquired wealth in possession.My opponent claims that based on this marginal statistic, the majority of Americans want a change to Capitalism.
However my opponent's other statistic which says that 53% of Americans favor Capitalism over Socialism leads us to the exact opposite conclusion that my opponent makes.
The Marxist argument is that the growth of capitalism necessarily results in the subsuming of all other production methods, manifesting itself in colonialism, rather than that any sort of conquest or occupation is necessarily a result of capitalism.
In Marxist theory, socialism (also called the socialist mode of production) refers to a specific historical phase of economic development and its corresponding set of social relations that supersede capitalism in the schema of historical materialism.
Barber’s argument against Marxism echoes two lines of criticism that he notes were used during the Cold War to “hit back at the Marxist foe.” The first response was that “Whatever the theory, the practice stank.
The two extreme ideas; liberalism and Marxism, both are result of strong view of one school of thoughts denying the avidity of their opponent’s thinking. Soon, the liberal and socialist ideas developed into their latest stages. For example, liberalism cloaked in to economical theory of supply and demand.
Similarly, Marxism degenerated into mysticism and sectarianism. The argument for socialism begins with criticism of capitalism. Capitalism is an economic system based on private ownership of means of production and their operation for profit.
The biggest disadvantage of capitalism is inequality of opportunity. In capitalism, we have to buy opportunities in exchange of money.