Archives for May 2016

Universal Basic Income: Insight From Historical Materialism

May 28, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

The idea that government should provide every citizen with a basic income sufficient to sustain a decent standard of living, and that this provision should be given without constraint to work, is spreading like wildfire around the world, and is being taken very seriously by some very serious people.1 It is arguably the best solution to hand for addressing the […]

Universal Basic Income and the Politics of Production

May 28, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

This post was originally published on the criticallegalthinking.com website. Finally, someone else who understands that if basic income does not address the structural nature of capitalist class inequalities it is insufficient: Universal Basic Income and the Politics of Production by Scott Timcke • 25 April 2016 Of late there have been a growing number of people who […]

Welcome

May 6, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

The original intention of historical materialism was to provide a theoretical foundation for interpreting the world in order to change it. This was not an empty slogan. It had a very precise meaning. It meant that Marxism sought a particular kind of knowledge, uniquely capable of illuminating the principles of historical movement and, at […]

What Does “Post-Capitalist” Mean?

May 3, 2016 by Admin Leave a Comment

We cannot begin to explore the subject of post-capitalism without a clear, working definition of the word capitalism. Otherwise, how would we know that capitalism was ending? We cannot have a clear definition of capitalism unless we understand what makes the capitalist mode of production unique. So we must understand what a mode of production […]

The growing perception that existing social institutions are unreasonable and unjust, that reason has become unreason, and right wrong, is only proof that in the modes of production and exchange changes have silently taken place with which the social order, adapted to earlier economic conditions, is no longer in keeping -

Friedrich Engels, Socialism: Utopian and Scientific

Modern bourgeois society, with its relations of production, of exchange and of property, a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, is like the sorcerer who is no longer able to control the powers of the netherworld whom he has called up by his spells.

-Marx and Engels

Man today is confronted with the most fundamental choice; not that between Capitalism and Communism, but that between robotism (of both the capitalist and communist variety), or Humanistic Communitarian Socialism. Most facts seem to indicate that he is choosing robotism, and that means, in the long run, insanity and destruction. But all these facts are not strong enough to destroy faith in man's reason, good will, and sanity. As long as we can think of other alternatives, we are not lost; as long as we can consult together and plan together, we can hope. But, indeed, the shadows are lengthening; the voices of insanity are becoming louder. We are in reach of achieving a state of humanity which corresponds to the vision of our great teachers; yet we are in danger of the destruction of all civilization, or of robotization.

- Erich Fromm, The Sane Society (1955)

In the social production of their life, men enter into definite relations that are indispensable and independent of their will, relations of production which correspond to a definite stage of development of their material productive forces. The sum total of these relations of production constitutes the economic structure of society, the real foundation, on which rises a legal and political superstructure and to which correspond definite forms of social consciousness... It is not the consciousness of men that determines their social being, but, on the contrary, their social being that determines their consciousness.

- Karl Marx

The ideas of economists and political philosophers, both when they are right and when they are wrong, are more powerful than is commonly understood. Indeed, the world is ruled by little else. Practical men, who believe themselves to be quite exempt from any intellectual influences, are usually the slaves of some defunct economist....Soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, which are dangerous for good or evil.

- John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money