On May 5th, 1818, Karl Marx, hero of the international proletatiat, was born. His revolution of Socialist theory reverberates throughout the world carries on to this day, in increasing magnitude. Every passing day, he is vindicated. His analysis of Capitalism, development of the theory of Scientific Socialism, and advancements on dialectics to become Dialectical Materialism, have all played a key role in the past century, and have remained ever-more relevant throughout.
He didn't always rock his famous beard, when he was younger he was clean shaven!
Some significant works:
Economic & Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte
Critique of the Gotha Programme
Manifesto of the Communist Party (along with Engels)
And, of course, Capital Vol I-III
Interested in Marxism-Leninism, but don't know where to start? Check out my "Read Theory, Darn it!" introductory reading list!
The economic system isn't the same, though. Tribal societies don't have incredibly massive logistical chains and production methods suitable for satisfying the greatest amount of needs with the least amount of work possible.
Indigenous societies were and are incredibly complex and sophisticated in their own ways, but they aren't the same economic system I am speaking of, and they can't accomplish what post-Socialist Communism can.
Further, as comrade @[email protected] pointed out, primitive is not a derogatory term. This isn't the "noble savage" racist archetype, but a descriptor of early hunter gatherer societies as a unique mode of production.
The only difference you're talking about is quantity, not quality. Drag feels you're othering them on a weak basis. Industrialised communists have ten times as much in common with tribal communists as with industrialised capitalists, and what differences do exist, are our lack of knowledge of the land and respect for the traditional ways. We have more to learn from them than we have to teach them. You're dismissing them unfairly.
I'm not dismissing tribal societies, I just don't think tribal organizations are suitable to modern conditions in most of the world, nor do I want to live as tribal societies do. The quality is fundamentally different, tribal production is based on hunting and gathering, Marx's conception of Communism is based on massive industry and global cooperation. The quantity and quality are different.
Tribes are perfectly capable of running industrial manufacturing supply lines in terms of administrative ability. In Australia, tribes are refuelling helicopters. They're doing it under capitalism, because white people suck, but they could just as easily do it under communism if the white people had left well enough alone and not stolen the land and enslaved generations.
I'm not making an argument based on ethnicity, but mode of production. You yourself admit that those tribal societies no longer fit what we were talking about as Hunter/Gatherer societies, but are now being swallowed by the very same Capitalist machine, in fact to greater degrees thanks to the evils of settler-colonialism.
A hunter/gatherer society cannot make a helicopter, that's just a fundamental fact. If you move onto large industry capable of creating helicopters, you are no longer in the stage of "primitive communism."
You're making a circular argument. You're saying the distinction between "primitive communism" (can we avoid using 200 year old terms that belittle indigenous people?) and industrialised communism is meaningful, BECAUSE tribes aren't "primitive" anymore. That's an argument going in circles.
Drag is arguing at the level of meaning: drag says you can draw the distinction, but your reasons for doing so are bad and you shouldn't. The reliability of a measure is irrelevant if its construct validity is in question.
That's not my argument, actually. My argument is that tribal production based on hunting and gathering is entirely different from large scale industrialized economies, and to try to say they are more similar than different is missing the forest for the trees.
But all your arguments are based on technology and scale differences. You haven't named any differences based on principles of economic organisation. Drag says technology and scale aren't meaningful differences in this context.
Industrial production requiring complex networks of management, labor specialization, robust power grids, machinery, and more are entirely different from small communes. The economic organization is entirely different because of the different mode of production and level of technology.
Indigenous societies had complex networks of management and labour specialisation. Robust power grids and machinery don't change whether something is communism or not.
You're saying they're different because they're different. This argument is going around in circles just like your logic.
Having a robust and extensive power grid isn't the only requirement for Communism, but as Communism is based on large production and social planning, it is still a requirement.
You are saying a fish and a tree are the same thing because both are alive.
It's not. It's based on worker ownership of the means of production.
Public ownership is certainly another key aspect, yes. The form that public ownership exists in necessitates large scale industry in order to achieve production of the global economy along a common plan, as it emerges from the foundations laid by Socialism, as Socialism emerges from Capitalism, Capitalism from Feudalism, and more, all the way back to tribal production.
No, you don't need capitalism first in order to have communism. Turtle Island did communism without having capitalism first. Aren't you paying attention? Don't use assertions drag has already disputed as the basis for your arguments. You won't convince drag that way, you'll just wear drag out from repeating the same things over and over.
Try attempting to understand the entirety of drag's argument, instead of bouncing between pieces of it and addressing them one at a time with the same old rhetoric.
You can't address a unique and coherent argument by reading the counter to each part off your script.
I've already explained how tribal hunter/gatherer societies aren't the Marxist conception of Communism as a post-Socialist and highly industrialized society. Turtle Island did tribal hunter/gathering, not post-Socialist highly industrialized Communism. Your argument is neither unique or coherent and tries to say both the society of Turtle Island and Star Trek are the same thing.
Drag likes The Culture better than Star Trek, and in drag's opinion the economic ideology is the same: people do what needs to be done and look after each other.
Marx didn't conceive of communism only as post socialist, nor as only industrialised. He was willing to admit Haudenosaunee were communists. You're the one claiming he was restrictive about these things when you've already admitted he called it "primitive communism". If Marx said primitive communism isn't communism, show a quote, because that conclusion is the opposite of self evident. It's extraordinary and requires extraordinary evidence.
You can't get to the highly developed technological foundations of The Culture without developing into Star Trek first. A single and small society cannot develop the technology for it, a vast society is necessary to even make a helicopter.
Marx never "admitted" that the Haudenosaunee had a Primitive Communist system, it was accepted outright. That doesn't mean it had the same society as what Marx advocated for, nor had a society that Marx saw as the historic destiny. The society of the Haudenosaunee did not have a society as Marx describes in Critique of the Gotha Programme:
Marx spoke of Primitive Communism as it needed to exist, and then gave birth to class society thereafter.
Indigenous tribes skipped Marx's first phase and went straight to his higher phase. Exactly what Marx described happened, when early humans began organising themselves into communes instead of acting as troupes of apes. The productive forces increased alongside the development of the individual into modern homo sapiens, and all the springs of cooperative wealth flowed more abundantly. With the advanced social structures of communism, they were able to perform more technologically advanced forms of work with greater rewards, like hunting mammoths or building longhouses.
It's the reverse, actually. Tribal hunter/gatherer societies are themselves the first Mode of Production, each paving the way for the next. Tribal societies worked out of necessity, and did not have a multiplication of productive forces, as they worked with tools and not large scale machinery that magnifies the productive labor of an individual. Further, each tribe only shared ownership over its own resources, not global humanity as a whole.
You can be an AnPrim if you want, but it's overwhelmingly clear that you can't be a Marxist AnPrim. You have to toss out the entirety of Historical Materialism, and simply hope that what has happened every time agriculture is discovered, that is, the creation of class society, somehow doesn't happen this time.
Tools are force multipliers. Hunting game is several times easier with a spear, boomerang, or bow than with bare hands. Gathering firewood is easier with a stone or copper axe.
Drag isn't an anprim. Remember that thing drag said about trying to understand the whole argument? Drag said primitive communism and industrial communism are the same communism. If drag doesn't believe in a meaningful distinction, why would drag want to avoid industrialised communism? No, your assumption doesn't make sense. It's like you forgot our whole conversation and just responded to drag's most recent message in isolation. You're probably overworking yourself, having so many arguments all the time, and that's why you can't pay attention. Slow down, breathe, and read carefully. Try to empathise. Drag's comments will still be here later. Try to get into fewer arguments so you can devote the proper attention to each one. It's disrespectful to pay so little attention.
Spears, boomerangs, and bows are indeed force multipliers. Simple tools like those lasted for millions of years since inception, because they are the peak of hunting technology among tribal hunter/gatherer societies. These did not multiply and scale larger and larger into abundance, instead agriculture is discovered and class society and the division of labor emerges.
Tribal hunter/gatherer societies are not the same as global systems of highly industrialized production based on equal ownership across all of humanity. drag is calling a fish a tree, because both are alive, and is resorting to personal attacks because drag doesn't have an actual argument. The qualifier "Primitive" in "Primitive Communism" and the lack of a qualifier for "Communism" as described in the above quote from Critique of the Gotha Programme alone tells us that these are not the same system.
Primitive communism and industrial communism are both communism, just like pepperoni pizza and cheese pizza are both pizza. The above quote doesn't have a qualifier because it describes both kinds of communism.
Tribal production did not come from large industry as created by Capitalism, did not rapidly increase the productive forces but largely stagnated until the discovery of agriculture and thus the beginnings of class society, and labor is the means of want in tribal society, not life's prime want.
There are similarities between the two, but ultimately both form entirely different structures and modes of production, hence why Marx spent his whole life advocating for advancing to Communism as a highly industrialized and global society, and against those who want to turn that clock back.
Drag thinks you forgot that drag isn't an anprim again. Otherwise the last paragraph is pretty random to include.
drag is arguing that tribal society and Star Trek are the same formation of society, which is wrong. I'm well aware that drag don't consider drag an AnPrim, that's not the point of the last paragraph, the point was to show that Marx considered tribal society to be entirely distinct from Communism. Hence, when Marx describes Communism, we find immediate discrepancies with how tribal society is formed and run.
Well it wouldn't make any sense for him to advocate for a return to primitive technology, because he wasn't a primitivist. He advocated for the kind of communism he could see in Europe's future. He was a European historian interested in predicting and making European history.
Your arguments are weird. You're citing the fact that Marx talked to Europeans within a European framework as evidence he didn't respect indigenous societies as communists. That doesn't make any sense. Of course he did that, it doesn't mean he thought the people he called communists weren't communists. It just means he had an area of specialisation. Drag has specialties too; drag doesn't know the first thing about Jewish communism, so drag doesn't talk about Kibbutz-es. That doesn't mean drag doesn't respect Jewish communism. Marx is the same way. Everyone is the same way about whatever part of their field they've specialised in.
Marx didn't disrespect tribal societies by calling them "primitive communism," it was a way to denote how the classless, stateless, moneyless society in tribes inevitably moves towards class society with the advent of agriculture, and it's only through Communism as he described that class, the state, and money can be permanently ended. Marx was an internationalist, he saw Communism as a global system that would eradicate borders, not erect hard borders around Europe.
And, for what it's worth, you should disrespect modern Kibbutz, they all depend on settler-colonialism and the genocide of Palestinians.
Drag didn't accuse Marx of disrespecting indigenous communism, drag's argument is based on the fact Marx didn't. How many times did you read drag's comment? Try rereading it one more time than that.
drag's point requires Marx to have been exclusively talking about Europe, when he was an internationalist concerned with global Communism. drag can continue to launch personal insults to avoid engaging with the points made, and it won't make drag any more correct for doing so.
Being an internationalist doesn't mean you don't write to an audience. Marx was a very European man with European subconscious biases, and the readers who provided the most feedback on his ideas were Europeans. Writing to an audience is inevitable in the process of creating a work. Ideology doesn't change the practical truths of the work. As a materialist, you should understand that.
Sure, that doesn't mean he considered tribal societies to have the same economic formation as post-Socialist, post-Capitalist Communism. In being an internationalist, he believed Communism to be a global system, not isolated in small, relatively disconnected tribes.
https://www.odysseytraveller.com/articles/ancient-aboriginal-trade-routes-of-australia/
They weren't as different from you as you think.
Relatively disconnected, as in the aboriginal people were not coordinating with people in Eurasia, Africa, and the Americas, in order to figure out the best production methods to suit everyone's needs. I of course knew that there were and are relatively complex methods of logistics in tribal societies, but these are in no way comparable to the ability for someone in Korea to communicate near instantly with someone in Alabama.
Well that requires the internet, and Aboriginal Australians didn't have the internet before colonisation. Having the internet wouldn't have changed much in terms of the economic ideology. It would be the same communism, just with internet. They would have shared songs by email as well as at ceremonial grounds.
Also, don't put Alabama on the same level as Korea. Put the USA on the same level as Korea, or put Alabama on the same level as Gyeonggi. Lemmy has enough US-centrism.
Tribal societies could not develop the infrastructure for internet even if they knew how to do so, without first developing agriculture to allow for specialization, then working up through technology to be able to create computers. Tribal societies could not develop the internet without developing class society, in other words.
I don't put Alabama "on the same level" as Korea. Alabama and Korea are geographically similar sizes, and over 11,000 kilometers away, hence the usage. Again, drag repeats the tactic of deliberately trying to find bad-faith readings and personal insults for me, rather than tackling the argument.
You're confusing insults and advice. Drag is telling you how to be a better communist. You're interpreting that as an attack because you see online discussions as being about performing correctness, instead of as a dialectical process where both parties benefit. You should read some Hegel.
Drag is talking about a hypothetical where white people don't suck, don't invade Australia, and trade advanced technology like computers and looms with independent and sovereign indigenous nations. Drag believes they would industrialise without major economic changes. It would be the same communism before and after.
Accusing me of US centrism, being a poor communist, etc is insulting clothed in the form of "advice." I have read Hegel, actually, and am familiar with the dialectical process, the problem is that that's not applicable here. drag has dodged arguments and moved goalposts the entire time on false premises of tribal hunter/getherer societies being the same as heavily industrialized post-Socialist societies, and has regularly picked the worst-faith interpretation of my points. This isn't beneficial for both parties, I benefit nothing except in showing onlookers my point, and drag is insistent on not actually engaging with the points I make.
If an outside society traded computers for pelts, pottery, art, or other goods producable in tribal societies, they still would not have access to power grids, nor the free time to specialize and utilize them at scale. They would need agriculture for that, and would develop a form of class society. Even if an industrial society gave this tribe everything it needed to be industrialized, it would have to rely on global systems of logistics and trade for replacement parts like semiconductors. This would necessitate the transformation into some degree of class society.
Tribes are relatively small in number, in order to accomodate industry, they would need a population boom, or rely heavily on imports and become essentially part of the global Capitalist system anyways.
Why did this person put so much time & effort into being wrong and convincing no one?
Fairly certain drag is a troll, honestly. drag has done similarly clearly wrong trains of thought and validates "soulists."
From what I can tell, they're doing the anarchist nostalgic idealization / fetishization of the past. Usually goes along with idealizing poverty, defeat, and religious "self-sacrifice", on the terms that this is more "pure" and moral than the modern day with its modern production methods, science, technology, and gasp ability to feed millions of people with labor-saving technology.
When indigenous peoples do start taking up the mantle and uplifting themselves out of poverty by industrializing (Vietnam, China, DPRK, etc), then these same anarchists denounce them for the "betrayal".
While I agree that that's the tactic drag is going for, I believe the purpose behind it is less innocent than that, drag has admitted elsewhere to intentionally trying to get banned from Lemmy.ml "while sharing leftist history." The intent is to portray the Marxist position as racist.