[p2p-research] Post-Capitalism

[Ryan Lanham]

Marx was just some guy in the British Museum with a pen and library card.  I
really wouldn't rank him as a first-order thinker.  He punched way above his
weight.  Lenin was a fool and a tool of the Germans.  Stalin was a beast by
any measure.  Mao was a general and a warlord of some talent.  China has
disintegrated since his death into something approaching a combination of
the US and Germany at various stages in the 20th century.  People like
Chavez are laughable buffoons.  Castro is perhaps the best mind of the
communists.  He really understood what was necessary to have a shot.  I
think he is very sad that it has all failed so badly.  I really think he was
a true believer.  Trotsky was the best mind of the communists...that's what
made him so dangerous.  He understood that you couldn't run things and be a
true communist.  That doomed him.  Stalin was just a run of the mill
fascist.

On Tue, Jul 13, 2010 at 12:51 PM, Kevin Carson <
free.market.anticapitalist at gmail.com> wrote:

> On 7/12/10, Ryan Lanham <rlanham1963 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > Arguing with Marxists is very similar to arguing with anyone who believes
> > strongly in their point of view.  Personally, I see little evidence to
> > support Marxism any time I've made admittedly minimal efforts to
> understand
> > it.  As I am inclined to work with and use things that are evidential, I
> > have never seen any reason to seriously engage Marxism any more than I do
> > have reason to engage others systems or beliefs that are minimally
> > evidential.  That said, some very smart people have used Marxism as a
> basis
> > of analysis particularly in sociology and history.  I don't diss it as a
> > sort of theory of how the world works much from those academic
> traditions.
> > It isn't useful as economics or social policy so far as I can tell.
>
> I don't really even think any form of Marxist state practice can be
> straightforwardly drawn from Marx himself, because Marx was so vague
> about his ideas of a post-capitalist society.
>
> I do find Marxist ideas useful as a tool of analysis.  I think Marx
> and the Marxists got it wrong on the root cause of economic
> exploitation.  But given that it does in fact occur, and that things
> like maldistribution of purchasing power, overaccumulation and
> underconsumption are all real, Marx's theory of late capitalism in
> Capital vol. III  and the analysis of assorted neo-Marxists in the
> Monthly Review group is pretty much spot-on.  Particularly useful has
> been that group's analysis of financialization, jobless recoveries,
> etc., from the 1980s on.
>
> It's also interesting how Marxist theories of overaccumulation
> dovetail to a considerable extent with Austrian theories of
> malinvestment.
>
> --
> Kevin Carson
> Center for a Stateless Society http://c4ss.org
> Mutualist Blog:  Free Market Anti-Capitalism
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com
> The Homebrew Industrial Revolution:  A Low-Overhead Manifesto
> http://homebrewindustrialrevolution.wordpress.com
> Organization Theory:  A Libertarian Perspective
> http://mutualist.blogspot.com/2005/12/studies-in-anarchist-theory-of.html
>
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-- 
Ryan Lanham
rlanham1963 at gmail.com
Facebook: Ryan_Lanham
P.O. Box 633
Grand Cayman, KY1-1303
Cayman Islands
(345) 916-1712
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