TT17

1. My personal dislikes/disagreements about the reading: Engels prediction for the simultaneous victory of the ‘’’’civilized’’’’ proletariat in England, Amerika, France, and Germany clearly was wrong. These places are the heart of capital & reaction today, and that doesn’t even touch on the loaded language of what he deems as ‘civilized’. Next, while I do agree with his takes on creating a ‘well rounded’, atheist, proletariat with no national allegiances. I have to wonder how exactly would we get this done, his answers weren’t exactly convincing. He seems to argue that the proles will just become experts in everything, disintegrating the roles people fill in society, disintegrating classes, and blurring the lines between urban & rural life. Meanwhile the need for religion and the state will just naturally vanish into thin air. While I do believe in these end goals, I struggle to see how this is all possible using the road map he provides. Maybe I’m just misinterpreting what he is saying, or have a limited creative perspective on the issue. Finally, he opens up a can of worms in section 24/25 in a few ways. He seems to advocate for the use of electoralism to further the cause, working with democratic socialists to a limited degree, and even going so far to advocate support for the bourgeois coming to power over the monarchy. He also seems to take a patsoc angle, ‘turning the constitution against the bourgeoisie and use it in the interests of the proletariat’. This is obviously a nuclear grade take, the constitution was written by and for the bourgeoisie, there will be no ‘turning it on them’.

2. My personal likes/agreements about the reading: There was quite a bit that I enjoyed about the reading, I thought that the way he believes in replacing competition with association was a great line. Also the way he beautifully states, ‘revolutions are not made intentionally and arbitrarily, but that, everywhere and always, they have been the necessary consequence of conditions which were wholly independent of the will and direction of individual parties and entire classes’. The entirety of section 18 is a banger, reading it made my heart flutter and give me chills. Section 18 beautifully states how exactly communists intend to get the project done. I also found it interesting how he states that with the fall of private property, the fall of prostitution will follow, given that prostitution is based off of private property. We’ve had plenty of discussion on sex work on the grad, so I implore people to read further on the subject there. Finally, the way Engels DESTROYS the various flavors of fake socialists with FACTS and LOGIC was just a cherry on top.

3. How this could be applied today: The need for to abolish private property is absolutely necessary today, as it was made clear by Engels that this is a core theme of communism. The very fabric of our society revolves around the protection of, and rights for, property owners. I’m sure we can all think of a few examples where property rights are given priority over everything else, including human lives. Private property needs to go, this is as true then as it is today. ‘Will it be possible for private property to be abolished at one stroke? No, no more than existing forces of production can at one stroke be multiplied to the extent necessary for the creation of a communal society’. I hope the anarchists among us are taking notes, Engels explicitly states that this won’t be done overnight. Next, it is very apparent to me that all of the steps laid out in section 18 are being done, or have already been done, in actually existing socialist countries in one way or another. Thus making section 18 in particular incredibly relevant to today, and personally was my favorite take away from the reading. Lastly there’s the subject of electoralism, as we should know electoralism historically speaking hasn’t been the driver of social progress. Electoralism can be useful, it can be a good addition, if we can make even a small bit of progress through elections then we should be practical in doing so. However for the most part this avenue is a dead end, voting for bourgeois candidate 1 over bourgeois candidate 2 in the bourgeois run election wont bring any meaningful change. At best this avenue will be a temporary band aid solution. There’s a ton of great content by fellow comrades that go into the details of this, please go check them out for a deeper analysis on the subject.

You’re welcome! It’s incredible how an almost 200 year old book can provide us such great insights into our modern society.

You know what? You downvoting libs have done it. You changed my mind. Its over, its finished, you win again. I will go rethink my life now and vote for Hillary (it’s HER turn). Just please, for the love of God, no more downvotes. Please! Have Mercy!!

Thankfully internet points do not matter at all. It’s the only thing these libs have to retaliate with as they see their worldview collapse around them.

Edit: I summarized my points and put them in a FAQ section for my future posts. This question has come up many times before so I’ll address it that way going forward.

I think that was a great takeaway from the reading. It is fascinating to see how capitalism effects different classes under the same system. The writing you quoted at the end of the chapter was great! I agree with their assessment that capitalism is a self defeating ideology, and that the same forces that create/drive it, will inevitably lead to it’s own demise. It MUST be gotten rid of, it CAN be gotten rid of!

Thank you comrade I really appreciate it

My answers to the study guide:

1. Labour is when you do work in general. Labour-power is a commodity that you sell to a capitalist in exchange for wages.
2. If I labour to make a pizza at home then sell that pizza to a buyer, that would be an example of me ‘selling my labour’. If I were to go to the capitalist pizza shop owner and agree to make pizza for them, for a certain amount of time, for a fixed wage. This would be an example of me ‘selling my labour power’ as a commodity to the capitalist.
3. Maybe I’m wrong here but I don’t believe he makes the argument that supply and demand play no factor in prices. He is simply adding the cost of production into the equation.
4. Sellers compete on the market to offer the lowest price, buyers will go with the lowest price, thus a race to the bottom. I can’t see an example where Marx uses products in short supply while also decreasing in price at the same time, maybe I missed something. I see him making the opposite argument, that when supply is low, the sellers will work together to drive the price up.
5. The cost of production is directly related to the price of a commodity, thus giving the capitalist incentive to cut labour costs. Giving the capitalist the biggest portion of the profits.
6. Wages boil down to the bare necessities for keeping the species alive, able to work, produce future working offspring, and getting enough nutrients to get through a working day. Notice how he emphasizes the word species, there are plenty of individual workers who don’t get enough to fill these basic needs. Rather the goal is to keep the species alive just enough to keep the money machine working.
7. According to this logic with free public education wages would decrease, simply because the cost of giving workers the bare necessities would go down significantly. I argue despite this potential problem there should be free or a reduced cost of education, and that this logic too simplistic.
8. Although you might be able to make a ghoulish argument that increased immigration will lead to lower wages, I sure will not. I think that framing is missing a lot of context while leading to dangerous and xenophobic conclusions. I don’t think it’s as simple as more immigrants = bad wages. Frankly I find that rhetoric disgusting and reeking of fascistic principles. Marx didn’t say a word about immigration during the reading. Pisses me off that the study guide would even include that, as if it’s appropriate to ‘debate’ human beings living their lives outside of the arbitrary border they were born into. Call me a moralist if you want, I don’t care, I refuse to engage in any further discussion or ‘debate’ on this subject. If you think we shouldn’t allow immigration because of a potential drop in wages, I’d be happy to smash the keyboard over your head and force feed you the pieces.
9. He’s making the argument, in an antiquated gross way, about how by themselves (people or objects) they are only that person or object. It’s the way that person or object interacts in the system is when they become an integral part of said system. For example a car sitting in the garage is just a car, if I use that car to deliver pizzas for a capitalist it becomes an instrument in the capitalist system.
10. He’s stating that capitalism is a social relation of production, just like other systems are about how a given society chooses to produce.
11. I’m going to use my example of a car again. A car sitting in the garage is just a car, if I use that car to deliver pizzas for a capitalist it becomes an instrument in the capitalist system.
12. The dead dominate the living in the sense of ‘old money’. Great great grandfather accumulated capital in the slave trade, great grandfather expanded that capital by getting rich on the war machine, grandpa expanded that capital with a pizza chain, dad expanded that capital on real estate, the son inherits all of that capital, and so on. This is what I mean by ‘old money’, it’s been proven that most wealth/capital is inherited. This is how the dead come into play, because it was accumulation of the sweat/blood/tears of dead workers that allowed the rich family to have such vast capital today.