Does anyone know how a Marxist Society would be organised?
Afghregastan
05-04-2005, 03:14
I'm not referring to a Stalinist State, I'm talking about a Marxist state.
Anarchic Conceptions
05-04-2005, 03:16
At what stage?
AFAIK Marx never explicitly said what his utopia would be like, he only make vague references. Which allowed it to be corrupted so successfully.
Kervoskia
05-04-2005, 03:46
Carefully.
Trammwerk
05-04-2005, 05:58
It would be a kind of democracy, to start. Probably a proletariat-style democracy; that is, not a republic, but one in which everyone had a vote and nobody represented you but you.
Thing is, Marx never describes how power is handed back over to the people once it's given to the State. So we don't know how power functions in this new, Marxist society; how it is given, how it is taken.
Afghregastan
05-04-2005, 06:13
It would be a kind of democracy, to start. Probably a proletariat-style democracy; that is, not a republic, but one in which everyone had a vote and nobody represented you but you.
Thing is, Marx never describes how power is handed back over to the people once it's given to the State. So we don't know how power functions in this new, Marxist society; how it is given, how it is taken.
That's the thing that always made me suspicious and motivated me to slide into the anarchist camp. Besides if workers actually seize the means of production for their own use the state has already been overthrown. But I'm getting ahead of myself... Late, g'night.
Xenophobialand
05-04-2005, 07:10
I'm not referring to a Stalinist State, I'm talking about a Marxist state.
Depends how you mean. If you mean politically, then it wouldn't really be organized at all. People would control the means of production, so there would really be no need for the state, and once the transition to communism was complete, the state would wither away.
If you mean economically, Marx didn't think it would matter so long as everyone in some way had equal and total control of the means of production. If that means everyone has their own kiln to make plates, then that's how they would do it. If that means that the soviets at the shirt plant give everyone at the plate kiln all the shirts they need in exchange for all the plates the shirt workers need, then that's how they'd do it.
Marx thought that anarchism got it backwards, because they waste effort on fighting the state when what they should be fighting is for control of the means of production. If you don't control that, then whether the state exists or not is irrelevant. Before adopting anarchism, you should really read Marx' responses to Bakunin.