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Anti-Leninists, what is something you'd like to tell tankies that we actually never heard? (lemmygrad.ml)

submitted 3 days ago by yet_another_commie@lemmygrad.ml to c/asklemmy@lemmy.ml

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I won't downvote anything

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[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (2 children)

Marx never said centrally plan the economy.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 3 points 1 day ago (1 children)

In Critique of the Gotha Programme:

What we have to deal with here is a communist society, not as it has developed on its own foundations, but, on the contrary, just as it emerges from capitalist society; which is thus in every respect, economically, morally and intellectually, still stamped with the birth marks of the old society from whose womb it emerges. Accordingly, the individual producer receives back from society -- after the deductions have been made -- exactly what he gives to it. What he has given to it is his individual quantum of labour. For example, the social working day consists of the sum of the individual hours of work; the individual labour time of the individual producer is the part of the social working day contributed by him, his share in it. He receives a certificate from society that he has furnished such and such an amount of labour (after deducting his labour for the common funds), and with this certificate he draws from the social stock of means of consumption as much as the same amount of labour costs. The same amount of labour which he has given to society in one form he receives back in another.

Such a system requires centralized planning, Marx's entire reason for predicting Socialism to overtake Capitalism came from Marx's analysis of Capitalism's centralizing factor. As industry gets more complex, it grows, until everything is owned in common after revolution and gradual expropriation from Capitalists.

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 1 points 14 hours ago (1 children)

The long quote is about the Principle of Equivalence, not about central planning.

You present a case for Principle of Equivalence, and declare "therefore central planning!" Your conclusion doesn't follow from your line of reasoning.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 14 hours ago* (last edited 13 hours ago)

Marx's observations of Capitalism and markets indicated that as they grow more complex and advanced, they centralize and require more advanced administration. The quote I am specifically referencing is indeed about attacking notions of equivalence, but in the background he very clearly mentions "deductions for social funds," etc etc.

In order to abolish class, all ownership must be equal over all industry. Decentralized networks of communes that trade with each other doesn't accomplish this, it makes everyone a petite-bourgeois owner of that which is within their commune, as they do not control other communes. There must be some form of centralized planning to make ownership equal across all of society.

Abolition of private property can only truly be made possible through a single world government. There can be units for local control, but these must be subservient to the whole in order for class to truly be abolished.

If we are allowed to pull from Engels, he even directly references this as the "Administration of Things," as a post-State society:

Although the knowledge that economic conditions are the basis of political institutions appears here only in embryo, what is already very plainly expressed is the transition from political rule over men to the administration of things and the guidance of the processes of production -- that is to say, the "abolition of the state", about which there has recently been so much noise.

Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

[–] EchoCT@lemmy.ml 3 points 2 days ago (1 children)

True, but we know that one. He also never had a plan to achieve communism either. The devil's in the details of HOW we get there.

[–] frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml 1 points 2 days ago (1 children)

How about this one to make Leninists mad: Marx and Engels said ad nauseum for 40 years that the democratic republic is the political form in which the class struggle can be fought and won.

[–] Cowbee@lemmy.ml 2 points 1 day ago

Are you meaning that Marx and Engels were reformist? That's frankly wrong, Marx and Engels were thoroughly revolutionary, and this has been proven correct in practice as revolution has been the only successful way to implement Socialism thus far.