Did Marx Say this?

Subject: Did Marx Say this?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 14 May 05 - 02:52 AM

Ok, I think we have beaten each other up on the Capitalism v Socialism thread, so I would like to ask a different question.

Am I correct in thinking that Marx pointed out that the means of production and distribution of wealth has massive influence on the kind of society that is generated?

Hunting and gathering = primitive communism.
Farming = Feudal aristocracy
Industrialisation = organised labour and representational democracy.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Dead Horse
Date: 14 May 05 - 04:33 AM

He may very well have done, but I remember him best for saying "I never forget a face, but in your case I'm willing to make an exception" and "I wouldn't join any club that would have me as a member"

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:03 AM

Did Harpo say very much at all?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:21 AM

If some people thought I posted this just to provoke the Grouchists, honest I didn't, I was genuinely seeking a bit of political history.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:29 AM

What about us Harpists?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:30 AM

Were not we all 'brothers' to Marx?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Dave Hanson
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:30 AM

Never had a drop.

eric

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:33 AM

ABSTRACT INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT

ABSTRACT INTELLECTUAL THOUGHT

Now Marx and Engels always taught
That undue concentration
On abstract intellectual thought
Without its application
Is very bad, and always is
A source of great confusion,
And only helps the bourgeoisie,
And not the Revolution.

So that is why we always try
To keep a close relation
Between the statement of the line
And its practical application.

from the Australian CP,
From Ruthie Gorton of L.A., in Vancouver, 1975.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: rumanci
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:41 AM

oooo ..... maybe things are suddenly becoming clearer !   
That sort of obsessive, compulsive single pea eating one after the other, totally focused on a single target, completely oblivious to everything going on around them or being affected by any of it ??

That's where you Harpists get your inspiration from Shambles ?

hmmmmmmmm

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:45 AM

'Toot Toot' - said Harpo.

And I have lived my life by these profound words.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 14 May 05 - 05:49 AM

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 14 May 05 - 06:14 AM

who cares?

But don't forget the slaveholder societies Marx spoke of, and something he didn't go to since it didn't fit his theories: The Asian mode of production (mostly hydraulic, as Witfogel pointed out).

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Abby Sale
Date: 14 May 05 - 09:00 AM

I don't know, either but I do know that he held the notion that Hunting and gathering = primitive communism. I'm pretty sure he went further in this too declare that all primitive societies essentially practiced communism. It became a commonly accepted notion at the time.

Of course, he was dead wrong in this but anthropology hadn't advanced enough as a science to have cross-society studies available.

I've never heard of any primitive society in which any goods were held by the "state" although communalism (common ownership) was fairly common. Also, Karl never heard of all the primitive societies that were essentially capitalistic - especially in micronesia. And, if the term is loosly use, Australia as well. (Wives equalling money there in a very real sense.)

Well, I too, would personally rather read Graucho. The Graucho Letters seriously influenced my life and philosophy for dealing with large institutions and government. Still does.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: GUEST,brucie
Date: 14 May 05 - 03:03 PM

http://66.102.7.104/search?q=cache:GK_xYIT3gzoJ:www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/pr/primitive_communism.htm+Hunting+and+

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: GUEST,Uncle DaveO
Date: 14 May 05 - 06:30 PM

This is (at least in its inception) a serious thread, but it's not music or culture related. Some Elf ought to move it downstairs.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Bill D
Date: 14 May 05 - 10:42 PM

Is it even possible for someone to have a serious thread on a subject which has known puns and word play without several people jumping on the words?

Why can't you resist throwing Groucho & Harpo into a thread on Karl?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Stilly River Sage
Date: 14 May 05 - 11:10 PM

You guys are real cut-ups.

:)

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Peace
Date: 14 May 05 - 11:24 PM

Harpo's chance to get ahead.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 May 05 - 03:25 AM

Thanks to Abbey, Brucie and Stilly and to the students of film. I guess Saturday is much more a Grouchoist-Harpoist -and the othersist day.

I am all for puns and pretty much anything else that raises a smile on this thread or any other. I have been monitored by the thread police for behaviour likely to cause........on othe people's threads. Once accused of causing trouble on a thread, but still.

But, comrades, back to the objective reality. I thought I had sensed the presence of Marxists on other threads and am still looking for genuine enlightment on what the old boy thought.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Kaleea
Date: 15 May 05 - 03:49 AM

Although I have a brother, I've never been a brother to anyone including the Marx Brothers. I have, however, been a member of the Boy Scouts of America as well as a Fraternity--OK, I'll give you this part for free--it's called Sigma Alpha Iota, but am not of the male species. And, NO, I've never had that kind of surgery! I can also name the FOUR Marx Brothers, can you? Anyone care to figure all this out?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 May 05 - 03:56 AM

Please help me. I ask for Marxists and I get Anarchists!

I started this thread out of honest curiosity. I thought I could tempt some of those of you who had been shouting at each other on the Capitalism v Socialism thread.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Wilfried Schaum
Date: 15 May 05 - 05:30 AM

The best way to find out is to read his basic work "The Capital" yourself. Real boring stuff to read, so I stopped it some decades ago.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Don(Wyziwyg)T
Date: 15 May 05 - 05:36 AM

If Karl had had the benefit of the internet to disseminate his theories, I think he would have given up and taken a job as a taxi driver.

It's a damn shame that repeated requests from the initiator of a thread for serious answers doesn't produce at least a fair majority of on thread responses. Sorry Les, but I know very little about Marx (KARL), so can't add anything useful except my sympathy.

Don T.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: robomatic
Date: 15 May 05 - 05:38 AM

Les, so much has been written by and about K. Marx you need to go for a source and not an opinion to start. One of the big problems is there has been so much claimed about what he really said or meant that people are all over the map as regards him. I think that is why you attract people who wish to speak on the (truly more useful and benign) influence of the Marx Bros. In this forum you are likely to attract people who are as uninformed as yourself, only less likely to admit same.

You can google the quotes, you can google Marx, you can even, gasp, go to a library. For sure the information is out there.

"'Socialism is a great theory. The only problem is it can be realized.' a witty man once said and how right I was." - Ephraim Kishon

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 May 05 - 06:22 AM

Thanks for those warm and reasuring words.

I really don't think:

Hunting and gathering = primitive communism.
Farming = Feudal aristocracy
Industrialisation = organised labour and representational democracy.


requires a re-interpretation of the the theory of surplus value or Left wing communism an infantile dissorder.

Maybe just a slightly qualified yes or no would do. If the Marxists, and I do believe the visit the Mudcat, can't comment on this what can they contribute at all?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:13 AM

Is it even possible for someone to have a serious thread on a subject which has known puns and word play without several people jumping on the words?

NO

Why can't you resist throwing Groucho & Harpo into a thread on Karl?

Was it Karl Marx who said? - Most of us can resist everything but temptation.

It was Joe Offer who said "Learn to live with it" *Smiles*

Is it possible to have serious thread stay in the music section (where this one was placed) without some anonymous volunteer rushing to condemm it to the B/S?

Is it possible that any contributions to a thread can address the thread subject - rather than simply pass judgement on what other's choose to post?

This does not look very likely.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Piers
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:27 AM

Hi Les, I was away at a meeting yesterday. Interestingly something along these lines came up, it was shown that in various parts of the world undergoing the transition to fully-fledged capitalism, labour begins to organise de novo.

This if proof for the 'the materialist conception of history' one of the cornerstones of Marxism.

I think it is true that societies based hunting and gathering will a primitive communism, farming will be a feudalism and industrial-based society would be based on capitalism with it's labour versus capital antagonism, in the historical course of events - broadly, I think you are correct.

Below is a section from Chap One, of the German Ideology (1845-6).

The first premise of all human history is, of course, the existence of living human individuals. Thus the first fact to be established is the physical organisation of these individuals and their consequent relation to the rest of nature. Of course, we cannot here go either into the actual physical nature of man, or into the natural conditions in which man finds himself – geological, hydrographical, climatic and so on. The writing of history must always set out from these natural bases and their modification in the course of history through the action of men.

Men can be distinguished from animals by consciousness, by religion or anything else you like. They themselves begin to distinguish themselves from animals as soon as they begin to produce their means of subsistence, a step which is conditioned by their physical organisation. By producing their means of subsistence men are indirectly producing their actual material life.

The way in which men produce their means of subsistence depends first of all on the nature of the actual means of subsistence they find in existence and have to reproduce. This mode of production must not be considered simply as being the production of the physical existence of the individuals. Rather it is a definite form of activity of these individuals, a definite form of expressing their life, a definite mode of life on their part. As individuals express their life, so they are. What they are, therefore, coincides with their production, both with what they produce and with how they produce. The nature of individuals thus depends on the material conditions determining their production.

The fact is, therefore, that definite individuals who are productively active in a definite way enter into these definite social and political relations. Empirical observation must in each separate instance bring out empirically, and without any mystification and speculation, the connection of the social and political structure with production. The social structure and the State are continually evolving out of the life-process of definite individuals, but of individuals, not as they may appear in their own or other people's imagination, but as they really are; i.e. as they operate, produce materially, and hence as they work under definite material limits, presuppositions and conditions independent of their will.

The production of ideas, of conceptions, of consciousness, is at first directly interwoven with the material activity and the material intercourse of men, the language of real life. Conceiving, thinking, the mental intercourse of men, appear at this stage as the direct efflux of their material behaviour. The same applies to mental production as expressed in the language of politics, laws, morality, religion, metaphysics, etc., of a people. Men are the producers of their conceptions, ideas, etc. – real, active men, as they are conditioned by a definite development of their productive forces and of the intercourse corresponding to these, up to its furthest forms. Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious existence, and the existence of men is their actual life-process. If in all ideology men and their circumstances appear upside-down as in a camera obscura, this phenomenon arises just as much from their historical life-process as the inversion of objects on the retina does from their physical life-process.

We set out from real, active men, and on the basis of their real life-process we demonstrate the development of the ideological reflexes and echoes of this life-process. The phantoms formed in the human brain are also, necessarily, sublimates of their material life-process, which is empirically verifiable and bound to material premises. Morality, religion, metaphysics, all the rest of ideology and their corresponding forms of consciousness, thus no longer retain the semblance of independence. They have no history, no development; but men, developing their material production and their material intercourse, alter, along with this their real existence, their thinking and the products of their thinking. Life is not determined by consciousness, but consciousness by life.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:42 AM

Ok now we are cooking.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 15 May 05 - 01:15 PM

Kaleea, the five Marx brothers were:

Groucho
Harpo
Chico
Zeppo
Gummo

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Bill D
Date: 15 May 05 - 05:38 PM

Durn, Dave...you beat me to it!

(and I apologize for drawing his Shamblesship into this....)

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 05 - 05:42 PM

The real question is this: Did Karl Marx believe in censorship?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: sixtieschick
Date: 15 May 05 - 05:57 PM

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Once Famous
Date: 15 May 05 - 06:58 PM

No, Karl Marx did not believe in censorship.

He believed in showing full frontal nudity in all magazines.

He also believed women should not shave their armpits.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:02 PM

Oh!

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:39 PM

What an elephant was doing in my pajamas I'll never know.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:44 PM

If they were dotted pyjamas, he was likely doing the polka. If they were striped, he may have thought he was doing the zebra. Hehehe.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: The Shambles
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:45 PM

Sleeping?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 May 05 - 07:51 PM

He tell me zat he does not wear ze bra. He eez zee male elephant.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Peace
Date: 15 May 05 - 08:48 PM

John, we gotta start gettin' out more. That actually developed a picture in my mind. This IS becoming scary.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: John Hardly
Date: 15 May 05 - 10:15 PM

"That actually developed a picture in my mind."

That's a trunk, brucie! ...a TRUNK!

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Piers
Date: 16 May 05 - 09:08 AM

Initially I thought that the contention that parliamentary democracy was part of the superstructure built on the material basis of society wasn't necessarily true. Obviously Marx was long dead by the time workers were enfranchised in the UK so he can't help, but I think it probably is true that advanced capitalism requires some form of democracy for stability because with the development of the productive forces with increasing division of labour and therefore education, one inevitably gets the ability to think for one's self and not be dictated to. Dictatorships generally exist in societies that have not fully developed fully fledged capitalism, i.e. mostly peasants instead of mostly working class.

These are quite interesting on capitalism and democracy.
http://www.spgb.org.uk/Q-democanddictat.htm
http://www.spgb.org.uk/Q-parliament.htm
http://www.spgb.org.uk/Q-marxanddictat.htm

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Seamus Kennedy
Date: 16 May 05 - 01:00 PM

Say the secret woid, the duck will come down and you'll win $100.
Now, you wanna play You Bet Your Life?

Where would Marx have been without Fenniman?

Seamus

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Once Famous
Date: 16 May 05 - 02:16 PM

He would have still had Waldo.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Les in Chorlton
Date: 17 May 05 - 12:17 PM

Now that I think about it

Hunting and gathering = primitive communism.
Farming = Feudal aristocracy
Industrialisation = organised labour and representational democracy.

has a bit missing. The bit is capitalism.

Do capitalism and industrialisation go hand in hand? Capitalism is good at moving wealth around and enebling new things to be needed, invented and discovered. This led to industrialisation and the scienetific revolution.

As for conflict, that will exist between who owns the means of production, land or factories and poeple who work there, peasants or workers.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 May 05 - 05:25 PM

what are the "means of production"?

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Once Famous
Date: 17 May 05 - 05:48 PM

Socialism in America sucks.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 May 05 - 08:21 PM

John Hardly:

The "means of production" are all of the capital property necessary to produce goods, both the direct production and support functions.

Thus, farm land is part of the means of production. Factories are part of the means of production. Those are easy.

Then the stores and warehouses to distribute goods.

But the trains and busses to get the workers to work are part of the means of production, as are the highways on which they run, and the trains and roadbeds ditto. Obviously utilities such as water and gas and electric and sewers are "means of production". Even more importantly, in the USSR, the distilleries to make vodka, a necessity of life.

Essentially, at least as far as the Soviet interpretation went, "the means of production" was anything that produced or facilitated any of the goods or amenities of life.

Aunt Olga's garden was, I suppose, technically part of the means of production, but it was tolerated, and even her private selling of her beets she'd raised was tolerated partly because of the difficulty of policing on that detailed level and partly because the officially controlled economy stank as far as "producing" and distributing goods to the populace.

In effect, as applied, "the means of production" was everything economic beyond the most personal activities.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: John Hardly
Date: 17 May 05 - 09:10 PM

Well, Dave, Now that's just how I would have guessed it to be.

So essentially, the minute you make something, your neighbor owns it. And he only let you borrow the hammer.

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: Uncle_DaveO
Date: 17 May 05 - 10:28 PM

And sickle.

Dave Oesterreich

Subject: RE: Did Marx Say this?
From: GUEST,Piers
Date: 18 May 05 - 04:03 AM

From socialist dictionary that used to be available on line:

Means of production. Land, factories, railways, offices, communications, etc. A mode (or system) of production is constituted by its forces and relations of production. The forces of production in capitalism include means of production and labour power. (See also FORCES OF PRODUCTION; RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION.)

Forces of production. What can be broadly understood as technology, the forces of production include materials, machinery, techniques and the work performed by human beings in the production of wealth. (See also HISTORY; RELATIONS OF PRODUCTION.)

Relations of production. Classes in society are determined by the possession or non-possession of the means of production. In capitalist society it is the relations of production which constitute the capitalist class and the working class. (See also CLASSES; FORCES OF PRODUCTION.)

Means of production are present in every society but only in the form of capital, according to Marx, when employed as a force of production.    Capitalist economics sees capital as wealth used to make wealth, regardless of whether it is a factory actually producing something or a large sum of money which is gambled to make more money, but actually that only redistributes wealth that has already been produced.