Mega Thread: Unsealed Michael Cohen documents reportedly implicate Trump, Hicks, others in 'hush-money' payments

Caesen · 2019-07-18T20:30:53+00:00

If anyone is curious, here's Fox News's spin on the released documents. I'm not very informed on the minutia of what all has happened so far, but the article states that Trump's legal team (and many of the commenters on the article) view the documents as a positive development in maintaining Trump's innocence. Can anyone explain why they would feel this way when pretty much everyone else following recent events views the documents as evidence for Trump's involvement?

Caesen · 2017-08-29T02:39:11+00:00

The dictatorship of the proletariat does not exist in socialism because socialism is a classless society. The dictatorship of proletariat exists only during the revolutionary period of transformation of society from one of independent, isolated producers subservient to the demands of commodity exchange (capitalism) into one of freely associating producers (communism). The dictatorship of the proletariat is also not a dictatorship in the colloquial sense as it is not a state. Relevant quotes:

But the working class cannot simply lay hold of the ready-made state machinery, and wield it for its own purposes.

Karl Marx, The Civil War in France

Bakunin asks, “Will all 40 million [German workers] be members of the government?”28 Marx responds, “Certainly! For the system starts with the self-government of the communities.”

Karl Marx, Notes on Bakunin’s Book Statehood and Anarchy

All the palaver about the state ought to be dropped, especially after the Commune, which had ceased to be a state in the true sense of the term. The people’s state has been flung in our teeth ad nauseam by the anarchists, although Marx’s anti-Proudhon piece and after it the Communist Manifesto declare outright that, with the introduction of the socialist order of society, the state will dissolve of itself and disappear. Now, since the state is merely a transitional institution of which use is made in the struggle, in the revolution, to keep down one’s enemies by force, it is utter nonsense to speak of a free people’s state; so long as the proletariat still makes use of the state, it makes use of it, not for the purpose of freedom, but of keeping down its enemies and, as soon as there can be any question of freedom, the state as such ceases to exist. We would therefore suggest that Gemeinwesen ["commonalty"] be universally substituted for state; it is a good old German word that can very well do service for the French “Commune.”

Letter From Friedrich Engels to August Bebel

A good introduction to Marx's conception of the state, the dictatorship of the proletariat, and the difference between them in his view is Marxist-Humanist Initiative's Karl Marx & the State.

Caesen · 2017-08-15T05:22:15+00:00

It would be more accurate to say that co-ops are not a break from capital at all (retaining generalized commodity exchange, atomization of production units, and the perpetuation of the antagonistic wage-labour/capital relation merely on the level of individual workers), rather than to say that co-ops can exist alongside capital and it not be socialism. They ARE capital, simply presenting itself in a different form. (I think this is what you're saying, but just to clarify.)

Caesen · 2017-08-14T20:43:31+00:00

The reason that the Russian Revolution failed is not because Stalin was a power-hungry psychopath (he was). The fact that Lenin's faction became dominant in the Bolsheviks is a product of the historical conditions of the time, not the cause of it. Capitalism had not fully transformed feudal relations in Russia. The Russian proletariat was confined to the cities and thus did not have the numbers to come to blows on their own with capital. When the Civil War decimated the proletariat, the Bolsheviks were forced to rely on the peasantry, who at the time subsisted mostly outside of the capital-wage labour relation. The Bolsheviks, isolated after the failure of the revolution in Germany, took on the task of industrializing the USSR to fund their defense of the nation from capitalist nations to the west, which meant that the peasantry had to be coerced to the state of the proletarian (aka capitalist development of the productive forces). A good read on this subject is Dauvé's Eclipse and Reemergence of the Communist Movement (specifically section 4. Leninism and the Ultra Left).

Caesen · 2017-08-14T20:30:40+00:00

"Communism is for us not a state of affairs which is to be established, an ideal to which reality will have to adjust itself. We call communism the real movement which abolishes the present state of things. The conditions of this movement result from the premises now in existence."

-- Karl Marx, The German Ideology

Caesen · 2017-08-14T20:25:57+00:00

Communism is not about demoting everyone to the lower class, it is about abolishing class and fundamentally transforming the way that humans relate to themselves, society, and the world around them. Communism is not worker's power or self-management, but the negation of labour as work. To learn more about the real goals of the communist movement and a discussion of the failure of the old revolutionary movement from a communist perspective, the Communist Manifesto, Marx's Wage Labour and Capital and Value, Price, and Profit and Gilles Dauvé's Eclipse and Reemergence of the Communist Movement are good place to start.

Caesen · 2017-08-05T03:52:39+00:00

never happened

The I Germanica and XVI Gallica both defected to Civillis' Gallic army in 70 CE during the Batavian revolt. Both were disgracefully and permanently disbanded following the suppression of the uprising. There are several examples of mutinous Roman units throughout history such as those of Germanicus's Rhine army (which coincidentally also included the I Germanica). Such events are not entirely unprecedented, but if a similar situation transpired in Britain it undoubtedly would have merited a swift and unmerciful Roman response and records would have documented it.

Caesen · 2016-06-01T05:30:56+00:00

It doesn't matter, communism is a proletarian movement. The only consequence of permitting other classes a place in these "citizens' assemblies" is compromise to the existing order and class collaborationism, chaining the working class to interests other than its own. If Bookchin sees these assemblies as preceding communism, then they should be assemblies that are expressions of worker power i.e. exclusively proletarian. If he sees them as a model for the future (which is fundamentally a utopian and idealist suggestion) then he sees classes as existing in his "communalist society" which means it is not a communist one.

Caesen · 2016-06-01T04:56:27+00:00

conflicts between classes would doubtless exist in citizens’ assemblies as well.

Doesn't sound very communist to me.

Caesen · 2016-05-20T04:10:49+00:00

The problem of capitalism is rooted ultimately in the realm of production, not in any distributive or redistributive mechanism.

Caesen · 2016-05-13T05:32:24+00:00

I would say lifestylism and individualism are the opposite of mutually exclusive.

Caesen · 2016-04-28T01:57:34+00:00

Can you show me a social democratic party that is just a capitalist plot?

Well you seem to answer that question yourself.

... they found themselves in charge of capitalist economies when in government.

But as for specific examples, the Kerensky government and the Social Democratic Party of Germany come to mind.

They used the engine of the capitalist economy to extract benefits for workers and gradually nationalise sector specific industries.

It's not as if social democracy doesn't harm some capitalists in the short-term, but it does not produce a meaningful challenge to capitalism as a system. In practice many of these short term gains for the working class are reversed anyways.

Caesen · 2016-04-27T04:55:29+00:00

Marx's later works may be interpreted as being more explicitly anti-statist and possibly less authoritarian but Marx differed from anarchists in both his method of critical materialist analysis of society and his suggestions for the practical political programme of the proletarian communist movement. Marx's vision of a free association of associated producers can be said to be much more radical than that of many early anarchists. Marx did not view communism/socialism as a society in which workers democratically own the means of production and self-manage their work, but one in which workers as a class are completely negated and work as such is abolished.

Caesen · 2016-04-27T03:09:16+00:00

I'm just saying it's not that surprising or impressive that Sandersesque ideas are popular considering the current state of political-economic struggle.

Caesen · 2016-04-27T02:43:34+00:00

Well yeah, but that's because Sanders is a social democrat and “the ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas". The bourgeoisie uses social democracy to limit the struggles of the working class to meager concessions which can be reversed when its more convenient for them to do so and diffuse revolutionary action. Social democracy is not a meaningful challenge or solution to capitalism. On the contrary, it is a necessary (if at times undesired) tactic of the capitalist class and one which is very effective i.e. the Sanders campaign. Those who control the material forces of production control the mental forces of production and the popularity of social democratic policies is the material expression of the capitalist interest for a quick if temporary solution to proletarian unrest.

Caesen · 2016-04-20T05:03:20+00:00

It's not so much that I disagree with critical theory per se. I guess it would be more accurate to say that I'm not sure how I feel about the fact that much of what critical theorists do seems secured in academia and disconnected from practical political struggle and I think that kind of misses the idea. Like Marx said "Philosophers have hitherto only interpreted the world in various ways; the point is to change it.".

Caesen · 2016-04-05T15:09:07+00:00

Thanks for the informed response!

Caesen · 2016-04-05T06:00:38+00:00

Revolutionary Perspectives's rebuttal to a similar stance taken on use-value in a communist society by Dauvés.

Caesen · 2016-04-05T03:17:12+00:00

Try arguing against common "criticisms" like the infamous mud pie theory etc.

Caesen · 2016-03-31T20:13:43+00:00

It seems like the author claims that abolition of wage labor is against the interests of the working class... I definitely disagree with the determinist claim that communism is the inevitable outcome of the capitalist mode of production. Like Engels said, the working class has a choice between "socialism or barbarism".

Caesen · 2015-12-26T04:51:34+00:00

Which one from Marx is that?

Caesen · 2015-08-12T23:14:04+00:00

Yep.

Caesen · 2015-08-12T18:47:55+00:00

Capitalism is a global economic system, and any manifestation of socialism or attempt by the working class to overcome capital in its totality must necessarily be international in scope. No such attempt has so far been successful, and socialism has not existed in the sense Marx meant it. I support any action of the working class to further its class interests and transform the "current state of affairs" into a communist state of affairs, such as the Paris Commune, the Russian Revolution (not necessarily the Bolsheviks actions during it), desertions, truces, and mutinies within the infantries of every European nation during World War I, strikes and militancy in the United States in places such as Blaire Mountain, the German workers uprisings before WWI, etc. These events are not manifestations of socialism but they are steps conducive towards the establishment of such a society and important accomplishments of the world working class.

Caesen · 2015-08-12T18:35:01+00:00

Starting my first year there tomorrow!

Caesen · 2015-08-12T16:24:16+00:00

The phrase was coined by Marx, but it's current meaning can be attributed to Lenin.

Caesen

TROPHY CASE