Marx and compensation
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Go on, I'll share this, just reading Engels on the pesants, and came across this little gem of a quote:
Quote:As soon as out Party is in possession of political power, it has simply to expropriate the big landed proprietors, just like the manufacturers in industry. Whether this expropriation is to be compensated for or not will, to a great extent, depend not upon us but the circumstances under which we obtain power, and particularly upon the attitude adopted by these gentry, the big landowners, themselves. We by no mens consider compensation as impermissible in any event; Marx told me (and how many times!) that, in his opinion, we would get off cheapest if we could buy out the whole lot of them.https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894/peasant-question/ch02.htm
Whatever happened to that guy who kept suggesting we should all club together to buy the capitalists out?
Actually quite an interesting article, all told.
How are we supposed to compensate the capitalists? Perhaps we can assure them that when socialism is established there will be no need for them to work if they don't wish to do so. Of course, they may have difficulty finding lackeys to do their cooking and cleaning. Otherwise it will be a bit like nationalisation–they won't have to rise until midday.Anyway, the progress towards socialism is not being held back by capitalists' reluctance to embrace it.
There is a possible way they could be compensated.Those who disagreed and didn't want to go along with the majority socialist revolution could be offered an island somewhere. Then all the paper money that exists throughout the world could be dumped on the island and they could distribute it among themselves as they saw fit.There would probably be some non-capitalist supporters willing to tag along with them and be their wage slaves. That way they could get on with their capitalist games while the rest of society salvaged the mess left over from capitalism.
Actually, there's a quality quote in that article: "Under the developed capitalist mode of production, nobody can tell where honesty ends and cheating begins."
Could the Party not just get a huge, huge loan from Wonga and buy the entire global means of production from the capitalists? They might fall for it.
Well, in essence, that's what the Labour Party did back in '45, they took out huge loans (or, rather, they converted shares into debt, which they paid interest instead of dividends).
Young Master Smeet wrote:Well, in essence, that's what the Labour Party did back in '45, they took out huge loans (or, rather, they converted shares into debt, which they paid interest instead of dividends).yes but if we get a loan from Wonga we can just tell them to F+@! off when they ask for their money back, everyone else does.
Also, of course, on the weekend before socialism is established we'll have to spend all our money since it will be worthless on Monday ….
SocialistPunk wrote:There is a possible way they could be compensated.Those who disagreed and didn't want to go along with the majority socialist revolution could be offered an island somewhere. Then all the paper money that exists throughout the world could be dumped on the island and they could distribute it among themselves as they saw fit.There would probably be some non-capitalist supporters willing to tag along with them and be their wage slaves. That way they could get on with their capitalist games while the rest of society salvaged the mess left over from capitalism.rodmanlewis wrote:It's best to avoid irony–people will take you seriously.Hi Rod,I have to admit there is an element of irony in my post above.However I don't see what would be problematic in offering a place to try to continue with a capitalist orientated system, to those who didn't want to go along with the formation of a democratically decided socialist society?
We should remember that the establishment of socialism is going to endeavour to be world-wide and perhaps in some parts of the world, the ruling class might well be bought off with a private jet or two, a mansion on a tropical island, if it deters a possible blood-bath. Let us not forget that in some regions where family/religious clan loyalty over-rides class solidarity that the warning from Jay Gould may well be a reality, "I can hire one half of the working class to kill the other half."But for now it is hardly worth discussing
alanjjohnstone wrote:But for now it is hardly worth discussingYet here we are Alan, discussing it on a thread about compensation being paid to capitalists. Better leave it at that then?
"and perhaps in some parts of the world, the ruling class might well be bought off with a private jet or two, "The hell they will. They will be amply compensated by us introducing a humane system which doesn't put their heads on spikes.
I think this was about anticipating a communist revolution before or when a significant proportion of overall production in terms population/labour power was agricultural and was thus by default non proletarian-ised, unwaged and politically ‘backward’ etc etc. According to their own theories of political economic development etc; the ‘peasantry’ would still be locked into the little independent businessman idea. With economic aspirations to own their own small farms, produce stuff and sell it at a fair price or at its value without exploitation; like the Ingalls in The Little House On The Prairie. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_House_on_the_Prairie_(TV_series) (It is really important I think to watch this kind of TV as background to Marxist economics.) If, or when, we wereat this stage of ‘national’ or ‘regional’ development then maybe 30-40%? of the population would be at this stage of development. Not only that they would be ‘in control’, or concentrated within a essential sphere of production to communism; ie food production. So you would have, then, a choice. Force them to produce stuff for free at gun point? Send communist factory workers into the country to take over the farms and learn to plough the fields, again etc. Or sit back and wait for the development of industrial scale agri-capitalism, which has only just over the last 50 years started to take hold in the ‘western world’, and maybe regards global agricultural commodities and sphere of production in general. As regards these small farmers etc and their cultural/ political background, you only really need to find them and talk to them, as well as watching programmes like; ‘The Little House On The Prairie’. The first generation South East Asians, parents mostly, in the UK, still with peasant relatives in India/Pakistan, are a good place to start. Industrial workers, since the 1960’s, still fixated with the idea of the extended family farm back home, pouring wage earned hard currency, as remittances, back into economic black hole 10 acre farms in the Punjab etc. It is not though now that these people are not anti-capitalists, or not bourgeois. They are playing a game whose basic rules they accept and are loosing at; it in their case to agri-capitalism. The responses are varied. One is to throw in the towel and see things as they are, and become wage workers. Another is to stick fast to the peasant to the economic political/cultural analysis and play the capitalist class system of economies of scale and go into or remain at the level of cooperative, syndicalism, economic communes etc. Producing commodities and trading them with others etc. It is perhaps no historical/political /cultural accident that the new world of Abe Lincoln has produced the likes of Richard Wolff. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article44485.htm There was some other ‘contemporary’ analysis in the 1860’s I think which concerned the then perceived problem of the much slower development of capitalism, mechanised capital, and waged work in the sphere of agricultural production. Which to some extent, as a prediction, was accurate. It is only fairly recently that small European dairy (for instance) farmers have starting crying about big ‘farms’ at one end and merchant capitalism (supermarkets) at the other. I think the idea in the 1860’s was that in addition to the anticipated slow introduction of capitalism into the sphere of agricultural capitalism for pre-Monsato and other technological reasons. These peasants and their political/cultural ideology would hold out to grim death and would have to be slowly starved out of their farms. I mean this is another important programme about that kind of ‘reactionary’ tendency’. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Good_Life_(1975_TV_series) They suggested fast tracking the ‘peasants’ to wage workers by nationalising the land. Eg or for discussion? https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1872/04/nationalisation-land.htm There was an even a worse, pro Richard Wolff example, as below. https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1890/letters/90_08_21.htm But the issue in 1890-ish was that socialism required an advanced industrial society to run it and the ‘workers’ were then as thick as pig shit and the ‘technicians, agronomists, engineers, chemists, architects’; Where in bed and whoring with the owners of capital. Well the ‘chemists’ have come down in the world since then and we now have to sit in the canteen in our blue overalls with the riff raff.
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