Why can't we combine Marx with Aristotle? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Discourse exclusively on the basis of historical materialist methodology.
Forum rules: No one line posts please. This forum is for discussion based on Marxism, Marxism-Leninism and similar revisions. Critique of topics not based on historical materialism belongs in the general Communism forum.
#13898288
I am deeply fascinated by Aristotle and at the same time I agree 100 % with Karl Marx when it comes to economics.

My ideal society is an aristocracy of wise old men/women where everybody know their place in society but the economy is ruled by an iron fist.

Why is it impossible to combine these things? Why does Marxist economies always have to be combined with vague things like personal liberty and other bullsh*...?

If we know our place in society and accept that we are all equal but some are more equal than others, and we have a strict hierachy and harmonious society, everyone will be living in paradise (paradise = safety, comfort and eternity).
#13898367
slipofmind wrote:If we know our place in society and accept that we are all equal but some are more equal than others, and we have a strict hierachy and harmonious society, everyone will be living in paradise (paradise = safety, comfort and eternity).


"Shut up slave, know your place and work for me. You're living in paradise, you know?"
Sorry, no. What do you mean exactly with "all are equal, some are more equal"? It sounds like you want to hide your true agenda with rhetoric.
#13901336
slipofmind wrote:I am deeply fascinated by Aristotle and at the same time I agree 100 % with Karl Marx when it comes to economics.

My ideal society is an aristocracy of wise old men/women where everybody know their place in society but the economy is ruled by an iron fist.

Why is it impossible to combine these things? Why does Marxist economies always have to be combined with vague things like personal liberty and other bullsh*...?

If we know our place in society and accept that we are all equal but some are more equal than others, and we have a strict hierachy and harmonious society, everyone will be living in paradise (paradise = safety, comfort and eternity).


Since when is Marxism about liberty?

I'll agree though. There isn't much difference between "eudaimonia" and a dictatorship of the proletariat. Class conflict isn't much different from Aristotle's classification of gold, silver, and bronze souls.
#13901397
Marx's doctoral thesis was largely about how Aristotle was, "contradictory" and Epicurean thought was an unsung heroic truth.

To work backward, you should read the short work by CLR James, "Every Cook Can Govern."

The title of which is a reference to Lenin:

Lenin wrote:We are not utopians. We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration. In this we agree with the Cadets, with Breshkovskaya, and with Tsereteli. We differ, however, from these citizens in that we demand an immediate break with the prejudiced view that only the rich, or officials chosen from rich families, are capable of administering the state, of performing the ordinary, everyday work of administration. We demand that training in the work of state administration be conducted by class-conscious workers and soldiers and that this training be begun at once, i.e., that a beginning be made at once in training all the working people, all the poor, for this work.


Marx's work is heady, but he demands more freedom and liberty than the capitalist (ie, Liberal) system is capable of providing. His colleague Engels points out:

Engels wrote:Democracy would be wholly valueless to the proletariat if it were not immediately used as a means for putting through measures directed against private property and ensuring the livelihood of the proletariat. The main measures, emerging as the necessary result of existing relations, are the following:
#13901403
So pick the worst of both the political and economical worlds?

How is this system different, structurally, from the good-old Soviet Union? With senior members of the Communist Party serving as your philosopher-kings?

Why would you expect it to work any better?
#14020539
I am deeply fascinated by Aristotle and at the same time I agree 100 % with Karl Marx when it comes to economics.


If you agree with Karl Marx, then you would also, by definition, agree with his philosophy of Historical and Dialectical Materialism, as these form the basis of his "critque" of Capitalism.

Why is it impossible to combine these things? Why does Marxist economies always have to be combined with vague things like personal liberty and other bullsh*...?


Maybe to some Revleft or S-E posters it might be, but Dialectical Materialism talks about focussing on the real world instead of abstractions, and "personal liberty" is one of these.

If we know our place in society and accept that we are all equal but some are more equal than others, and we have a strict hierachy and harmonious society, everyone will be living in paradise (paradise = safety, comfort and eternity).


When Communism comes, "heirachy" based will be obsolete. Also, there is no eternity, everything that has ever lived or been created will die.
#14020557
slipofmind wrote:Why can't we combine Marx with Aristotle?


Because they're largely antithetical. Aristotle's thought is aligned with much of Socrates, whereas Marx's thought is more akin to Plato's.

slipofmind wrote:My ideal society is an aristocracy of wise old men/women where everybody know their place in society but the economy is ruled by an iron fist.


Very platonic of you.

slipofmind wrote:Why is it impossible to combine these things?


It isn't. In fact Marx does combine these ideas. Instead of entrusting power with "philosopher kings" à la Plato, Marx entrusts it in the "proletariat". There is essentially no difference between the two. Both Plato and Marx excel one group or collective at the expense of everyone else.

slipofmind wrote:If we know our place in society and accept that we are all equal but some are more equal than others...


Again, very platonic of you. You haven't mentioned or referred to Aristotle once in your post. Are you sure you're not confusing Aristotle with Plato? If so, then Marx and Plato are very compatible.
#14020686
Marx's thought is more akin to Plato's.


Fail. Marx was a materialist. Plato was an idealist.

Instead of entrusting power with "philosopher kings" à la Plato, Marx entrusts it in the "proletariat". There is essentially no difference between the two.


The two are inherently antagonistic concepts.

Both Plato and Marx excel one group or collective at the expense of everyone else.


The point of Marxism is to liquidate not only the bourgeoisie, but also the proletariat. The class system in general must be liquidated and everything must lose the class character. This is the opposite of Plato's republic, which keeps and maintains different groups.
#14021744
I too have a feeling OP confuses Plato with Aristotle.

The latter had a largely favorable view of private property, critised communal ownership in the light of the free-rider problem, and thought a healthy polity should be skewed towards the middle-class, not to mention his theory of "natural-born slaves". I'm not sure how all this is potentially compatible with Marxism. He was only concerned with excessive wealth and with usury (the whole Golden Mean and "money is barren" principles).

The fact both Rothbard and Rand held more or less sympathetic opinions on him ought to tell us something.

Daktoria wrote:Class conflict isn't much different from Aristotle's classification of gold, silver, and bronze souls.

That was Plato's. Aristotle also proposed a triple division, but within a single human - vegetative, animal, and rational soul (the last one further divided into reactive and active parts).

And I think you'd be wrong in the comparison. Class identity is not an essentialist trait.
#14144506
If we know our place in society and accept that we are all equal but some are more equal than others...


The OP seems to be under the assumption that Animal Farm (published in 1945) is less about the rise of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the former Soviet Union then it is about communism as an ideology (a common assumption about George Orwell's book is that it is an indictment aimed towards discrediting communism, something that upon a closer reading of both the book and of the author's own life is proven to be factually untrue IMHO).

Lenin never sought outright to create a single-party dictatorship; His writings prior to the October Revolution of 1917 focus on the creation of a commune-state, i.e. a state based on the Paris Commune but suited to the backwards conditions prevailing in Russia at the time.

Furthermore, this commune-state was to be based on the Russian soviets that had reentered the Russian political scene after the monarchy was overthrown in the February Revolution of 1917. They had been suppressed by the monarchical regime since the failed 1905 Russian revolution.

These soviets of workers, soldiers, and sailors (and later peasants) were to be the basis for a new type of state not beholden to one sole party.

In fact, during the Second All-Russian Congress of Soviets the Bolsheviks willingly chose to be in favor of a multiparty government that was to be responsible to the soviets (and to the C.E.C., which functioned as the legislative branch of the new soviet government while the Sovnarkom functioned as it's executive branch).

Even more so, eyewitness accounts by journalists such as John Reed noted that at the Peasants' Congress that Lenin (who attended the Peasants' Congress) appeared to be all in favor of a future Constituent Assembly.

From John Reed's Ten Days That Shook The World, Chapter 12, The Peasants' Congress

Link: http://www.marxists.org/archive/reed/1919/10days/10days/ch12.htm:

Lenin:

“However,” he went on, in an unmoved voice, “nobody will deny that the present Government of Russia has been formed by the Bolshevik party...”


Lenin continues:

The present Government is a Government of Soviets; we have not only invited the Peasants’ Soviets to join that Government, but we have also invited representatives of the Left Socialist Revolutionaries to enter the Council of People’s Commissars….


And finally he says:

“The Soviets are the most perfect representatives of the people—of the workers in the factories and mines, of the workers in the fields. Anybody who attempts to destroy the Soviets is guilty of an anti-democratic and counter-revolutionary act. And I serve notice here on you, comrades Right Socialist Revolutionaries—and on you, Messrs. Cadets—that if the Constituent Assembly attempts to destroy the Soviets, we shall not permit the Constituent Assembly to do this thing!”


In other words, a stern warning was given out by Lenin and the Bolsheviks that the Constituent Assembly would be shut down IF it moved to obstruct or dismantle the soviets, prior to it's first (and last) meeting months later.

And, according to the very long and analytical book by Alexander Rabinowitch The Bolsheviks In Power, that is exactly what it tried to do and for that reason was shut down by the Left SR-Bolshevik government shortly after it's first meeting.

IMHO, this leads me to believe that the Constituent Assembly was the very embodiment of the counterrevolution Lenin and others feared. It was a legalized (and legitimated) way of ridding the country of the soviets.

And this all came prior to the single-party state's sudden formation, so allegations of the nature that the Bolsheviks only wanted their own dictatorship to trample over the "democracy" of the Constituent Assembly increasingly appears to be false as more and more evidence is examined by historians past, present, and future.

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