@Decky That is not how it was in practice though. In practice from what I gather, in regards to unions, Communist and Nazis took pretty much the same approach.
@Potemkin Precisely. The capitalist system was born out of Revolution - the English Civil Wars and Glorious Revolution of 1688, the American Revolution of the 1770s, and the French Revolution of 1789 - and it has been in a state of crisis ever since. This has been a very creative chaos, however - capitalism, as Marx pointed out, has revolutionised all aspects of human society and has vastly expanded the forces of production, which is the very definition of what we mean by the word "progress". But the chaos constantly threatens to overwhelm the creativity, and the crises keep becoming more and more severe....
I know we agree in principle Pote, but we diverge on some things. I think communist a lot of times are wrong in their analysis of history. What Communist refer to "capitalism" I believe began with industrialization. Where organizated production of goods or "means of production" began to be concentrated in the hands of very few individuals. In a sense a new class arose out of industrialization. Call them capitalist, industrialist, business class, or 1% we are speaking about the same people.
In a sense they are the new aristocracy of our time. Coincidentally industrialization came about in the background of revolutionary political upheaval and rise of liberalism. Which made things all the more messy. The power vacuum that liberal revolutions left was quickly filled by this new wealthy and powerful class of people.
So today, we essentially ended up with plutocratic Republic. Where the new industrialist class are our patricians.
Exactly. In a sense, the rise of the Left and of socialism in the late 19th and early 20th centuries revitalised faith in the legitimacy of the state. The capitalists want the state to be just strong enough to enforce legal contracts, but no stronger; they especially resent it taxing the profits which they extract from the toiling masses. In fact, every possible resolution of the crisis of Modernity - which is the crisis of capitalism - require this re-legitimisation of the authority of the state over the grasping, liberal, atomised individual.
Capitalist are following their narrow interest of profit, it is true. These interest are indeed conflicting with the interest of the state. Since this new class is very power naturally they throw their weight around and subdue the state when it interferes with their interest.
This state of affairs is dysfunctional in the end. That is why it leads to aften into instability and crisis.
This certainty of future crises and future fuck-ups on the part of the ruling elite is in fact the best hope for the future. Capitalism, by its nature, can never rest; like a shark, it must keep moving, keep changing, keep developing, or die. It can therefore never achieve a final victory over its enemies, it can never achieve its 'End of History' state of calm repose, despite Fukuyama's premature declaration of victory.
Today they messed up on global scale again on so many levels it is hard to even know where to start. Plus with liberal progressive social reforms the mess is even further exaggerated.
I believe it is primarily because interests of the state have been superseded by the narrow interest of the capitalist, thus creating dysfunction state of affairs. Primeval social structure of humanity was not upheld, so we got the cosequences of it. Plus revisiting neo-liberal idealism on state level in recent decades did not help either.
And as I have mentioned, also idealistic badly thoughtout social progressive reforms pushed by the state, made things even worse.
It is going wrong in all possible ways all at once. We truly live in one bizarre time.
@fuser
No, I don't believe Communist, Third-Positionism or Liberalism are the same. These are drastically different movements, even though they do share some similarity between them.