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Comment by yk | Hacker News Reader

> But this implicit line that there's a secret cabal of "capitalists" all persuaded by some idea that they never publicly proselytize, [...]

The way the Marxist argument for class interest works, is that there does not need to be a secret cabal. To discuss this in the context of basic income (BI): Some capitalists, that is some owners of capital, depend on cheap unskilled labor. Each of them concludes independently, that a BI is against his own interests, since it would reduce the incentive to take unpleasant jobs and force them to pay their workers more.

Or more generally, some people have similar interests, not because they conspire, but because they are in a similar socio-economic situation. And this socio-economic situation generates class interests. ( Marx then goes on to argue, that the capitalist class can more easily leverage its interests, and therefore the workers need class conscious to counter this leverage.)

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Thanks for the clear explanation. It annoys me when people assume that any observation of aligned interests is an allegation of conspiracy.

> Marx then goes on to argue, that the capitalist class can more easily leverage its interests, and therefore the workers need class conscious to counter this leverage.

And anyone who disagrees with Marx on hearing his ideas is suffering from False Consciousness and needs to be Re-Educated, perhaps in a Camp somewhere.

Why the strawman?

You do not need to be a marxist to agree one some of the basic principles put forward.

Marx was not 100% wrong, he was just wrong some very specific and important places.

Very much agreed. I don't go along with all of what Marx wrote but there are some insights in his work that are ignored by a lot of people because they have a knee-jerk reaction about anything or anyone related to "communism". If one does not agree with a school of thought, it is still childish to ignore or misrepresent its ideas.

> Why the strawman?

The Gulag Archipelago.

> Marx was not 100% wrong, he was just wrong some very specific and important places.

Of course he wasn't 100% wrong. All modern developed countries have adopted some of his ideas, such as public schools and laws against child labor.

His notions of an Apocalyptic struggle between Labor and Management, his totalizing philosophy which seeks to explain all social conditions through one dialectic, and his refusal to admit that capitalist countries could adopt some of his ideas and stay capitalist, however, lead to some of the worst regimes in history, and we can't forget that.

Do you also blame Nietzsche for Nazism?

Marx analysed quite correctly the era he lived in and the problem with capitalism. He was just wrong to think that this would never change.

For instance today may of us are the owners of our own means of production. You don't need your employer to buy you a machine and they can't just replace you without having lost the knowledge that you represent.

Marx didn't live in such a world and thus his premise wasn't universal enough.

> Do you also blame Nietzsche for Nazism?

Of course not. Marx was directly responsible for Communism because he laid the blueprints, and the USSR implemented them. Therefore, Marx is responsible for the USSR.

But communism was not what happened in the USSR.

Yes, it was. It's dishonest to claim that your system has never been tried when it has been tried and failed.

You can go down the list of things the Communist Manifesto proposed and see that the USSR did all of them: http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Essays/Marxism.html

Ahh yeah when you are out of arguments go for the persons motives right? Where have I ever claimed to that communism was my system? Pray tell.

I think you need to read up on history my friend. And perhaps read the actual work of Marx before being so cock sure about what you are claiming.

Then we can have an adult discussion about the many issues with communism.

Your condescension means you didn't read my cite or engage me honestly at all. And I even picked out the easy-to-read citation, too.

...lead to some of the worst regimes in history, and we can't forget that.

Yeah, because without his ideas, Russia would have turned into a well functioning capitalist democracy. The past 20 years have been pure bliss now that the burden of communism has been cast off- since there is now no way for power hungry leaders to control the nation.

> The past 20 years have been pure bliss now that the burden of communism has been cast off

The past 20 years were directly preceded by 70 years of the USSR. If modern race relations in the US can be blamed on slavery and Jim Crow, both of which have been dead for longer than the USSR has, then Russia's modern problems can be blamed on Marxism and Leninism.

...can be blamed on Marxism and Leninism.

Well yeah, you can blame it. Doesn't make it true. Of course a country can't magically be divorced from what happened 20 years ago, but the point behind my sarcasm was it is exceptionally naive to assume Russia's problems were caused solely because it was nominally communist.

> it was nominally communist.

Not just nominally. It went down the list of the Communist Manifesto and implemented things, and it wound up with Stalin.

Woah, I didn't know when one thing preceded another that it is certain that thing caused the other. Thanks for opening my eyes.

In your mind, has Communism ever been responsible for bad things happening?

Could I prove to you, even in theory, that Communism has bad outcomes? What kind of evidence would I need?

By that logic. All makers of bread knifes and hammers are responsible for murders being done with them.

> Marx then goes on to argue, that the capitalist class can more easily leverage its interests, and therefore the workers need class conscious to counter this leverage.

Do you have any objective arguments against this statement?

I can take a crack at this one.

Class lines are not well-defined. A CEO may share certain interests with shareholders but their interests are not all identical. By using the frame of class you create a situation in which those without power pit themselves against those with power, and encourage those with power to reciprocate. That is a horrifically bad position for those without power to be in because you're de facto creating two teams where one of them has an insurmountable initial advantage.

The better strategy is to break the "classes" apart so that you can pit the different powerful interests against each other rather than uniting them against you. There is a subset of the wealthy who benefit from a basic income. The masses would do better to ally with that subset and combine their money with your votes to achieve the common goal, than to keep painting them as the enemy for long enough that they start fighting you too.

Class lines are not very defined, and never were, but at least for political analysis the exact boundaries do not matter much. What matters is the difference in influence between the main bodies of the classes.

And while thinking about Marx one needs to keep in mind, that Marx did analyse the mid 19th century economy. Your example of a CEO is actually a quite good one, since a CEO is controlling capital which he does not own, a arrangement that essentially did not exist in the middle of the 19th century. And I think that this split between capital control and ownership of capital is one of the most important theoretical difficulties in applying Marxist analysis to 21st century finance capitalism. The other problem is, that in the 19th century Labor movement the workers had a nuclear option: If the workers just refuse to work, they will be as broke and unemployed as the capitalist they refuse to work for.

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