Re: Marxism
9/9/24 22:41![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
asthfghl posting in ![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
talkpoliticsToday marks 80 years since the communist coup in my country, whish ushered my society into an era that lasted for nearly half a century and left deep traces on it that could be felt even today.
It also marks 80 years since the disappearance of my great-grandfather, kidnapped and murdered by the criminal communist regime for just having his own "bourgeois" business at the time. The only memory of him is his name being listed among the thousands of names on the Memorial of the Victims of Communism in Sofia, displayed below. May he rest in peace.
This reminds me of Marxism, which I'm now often hearing some people referring to with nostalgia as if it was something nice and beautiful.
People do have a rather short memory indeed.
But to my point. What is often overlooked is Karl Marx lived during the Industrial Revolution when work conditions were horrendous. There were no 8 hour work days, no 40 hour work week. No workers' compensations. No unemployment benefits. No retirement setups. Little to zero safety conditions for workers. Basically slave conditions. (Sound familiar to some?)
It was in this setting that he strove to proprose a radical and total revamping of economic and social conditions as we know it to address the barbaric work conditions of the time. And he was successful, because for close to a century revolutionaries around the world - Russia, communist parties in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America - fought to bring about its realization. In that sense one can say he was one of the biggest influencers of the 20th Century.
In the end his dream and utopia was not possible. It had to take Gulags and more Gulags to even set up a badly working communist system. In the end it was not worth it. And it hurt societies like mine big time, and for a long time. Not to mention the personal cost that I've talked about here.
It also marks 80 years since the disappearance of my great-grandfather, kidnapped and murdered by the criminal communist regime for just having his own "bourgeois" business at the time. The only memory of him is his name being listed among the thousands of names on the Memorial of the Victims of Communism in Sofia, displayed below. May he rest in peace.
This reminds me of Marxism, which I'm now often hearing some people referring to with nostalgia as if it was something nice and beautiful.
People do have a rather short memory indeed.
But to my point. What is often overlooked is Karl Marx lived during the Industrial Revolution when work conditions were horrendous. There were no 8 hour work days, no 40 hour work week. No workers' compensations. No unemployment benefits. No retirement setups. Little to zero safety conditions for workers. Basically slave conditions. (Sound familiar to some?)
It was in this setting that he strove to proprose a radical and total revamping of economic and social conditions as we know it to address the barbaric work conditions of the time. And he was successful, because for close to a century revolutionaries around the world - Russia, communist parties in Europe, Africa, Asia, South America - fought to bring about its realization. In that sense one can say he was one of the biggest influencers of the 20th Century.
In the end his dream and utopia was not possible. It had to take Gulags and more Gulags to even set up a badly working communist system. In the end it was not worth it. And it hurt societies like mine big time, and for a long time. Not to mention the personal cost that I've talked about here.
(no subject)
Date: 10/9/24 17:32 (UTC)It just crossed my mind: what if Karl Marx came back today? He may just take one look at the dreamers and endorse capitalism!
(no subject)
Date: 11/9/24 23:36 (UTC)Philosophy: Hegel was the precursor to Marx, but Marx also combined the Enlightenment 'stages of society' with Hegelianism.
One of Hegel's key ideas was that mankind became more moral the further advanced society became. What followed was that, in the Enlightenment, philosophers 'discovered' the stages of society. They said that all human society started out as tribal hunters and gatherers, they became settled agricultural kingdoms, and then they became mercantile and industrial. During these stages they said that human beings would become better, morally. So to the industrial nations, they assumed that they were morally superior to all tribal or agricultural nations.
Marx himself was a philosopher and an aristocrat (aside from writing, Marx never worked). But he did dedicate much time to solving the next phase of society. He suspected if he found the next stage of society, humans would advance in morality once again, and this advancement would eliminate injustice.
This idea was Marxism.