I think communist are faggots. the way they address each other as comrade even though they don't like each other is stupid.
man, they are faggots.
any communist here think otherwise?
I would say that communist manifesto and theory is good to the society, but men are bound by their weakness in greed, power, cheating, jealous and hatre, therefore communism fail as the founder failed to foreseen the weakness in men whilst manifesting his own theory of world utopia.
Likewise, capitalism, which we had embraced for many years and had make most of us rich and lead a good life have recently show sign of weakness...and again it is due to men weakness.
The international Socialist movement was both a product of the nineteenth century and a revulsion against it. It was rooted in some of the characteristics of the century, such as its industrialism, its optimism, its belief in progress, its humanitarianism, its scientific materialism, and its democracy, but it was in revolt against its laissez faire, its middle-class domination, its nationalism, its urban slums, and its emphasis on the price-profit system as the dominant factor in all human values. This does not mean that all Socialists had the same beliefs or that these beliefs did not change with the passing years. On the contrary, there were almost as many different kinds of Socialism as there were Socialists, and the beliefs categorized under this term changed from year to year and from country to country.
Industrialism, especially in its early years, brought with it social and economic conditions which were admittedly horrible. Human beings were brought together around factories to form great new cities which were sordid and unsanitary. In many cases, these persons were reduced to conditions of animality which shock the imagination. Crowded together in want and disease, with no leisure and no security, completely dependent on a weekly wage which was less than a pittance, they worked twelve to fifteen hours a day for six days in the week among dusty and dangerous machines with no protection against inevitable accidents, disease, or old age, and returned at night to crowded rooms without adequate food and lacking light, fresh air, heat, pure water, or sanitation.
These conditions have been described for us in the writings of novelists such as Dickens in England, Hugo or Zola in France, in the reports of parliamentary committees such as the Sadler Committee of 1832 or Lord Ashley's Committee in 1842, and in numerous private studies like In Darkest England by General William Booth of the Salvation Army. Just at the end of the century, private scientific studies of these conditions began to appear in England, led by Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People in London or B. Seebohm Rowntree's Poverty, a Study of l own Life.
The Socialist movement was a reaction against these deplorable conditions of the working masses. It has been customary to divide this movement into two parts at the year 1848, the earlier part being called "the period of the Utopian Socialists" while the later part has been called "the period of scientific Socialism." The dividing line between the two parts is marked by the publication in 1848 of The Communist Manifesto of Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels. This work, which began with the ominous sentence, "A spectre is haunting Europe—the spectre of Communism," and ended with the trumpet blast, "Workers of the world, unite!" is generally regarded as the seed from which developed, in the twentieth century, Russian Bolshevism and Stalinism. Such a view is undoubtedly an oversimplification, for the development of Socialist ideology is full of twists and turns and might well have grown along quite different paths if the history of the movement itself had been different.
The history of the Socialist movement may be divided into three periods associated with the three Socialist Internationals. The First International lasted from 1864 to 1876 and was as much anarchistic as Socialistic. It w as finally disrupted by the controversies of these two groups. The Second International was the Socialist International, founded in 1889. This became increasingly conservative and was disrupted by the Communists during World War I. The Third, or Communist, International was organized in 1919 by dissident elements from the Second International. .As a result of the controversies of these three movements, the whole anticapitalist ideology, which began as a confused revolt against the economic and social conditions of industrialism in 1848, became sorted out into four chief schools. These schools became increasingly doctrinaire and increasingly bitter in their relationships.
The basic division within the Socialist movement after 1848 was between those who wished to abolish or reduce the functions of the state and those who wished to increase these functions by giving economic activities to the state. The former division came in time to include the anarchists and the syndicalists, while the latter division came to include the Socialists and the Communists. In general the former division believed that man was innately good and that all coercive power was bad, with public authority the worst form of such coercive power. All of the world's evil, according to the anarchists, arose because man's innate goodness was corrupted and distorted by coercive power. The remedy, they felt, was to destroy the state. This would lead to the disappearance of all other forms of coercive power and to the liberation of the innate goodness of man. The simplest way to destroy the state, they felt, would be to assassinate the chief of the state; this would act as a spark to ignite a wholesale uprising of oppressed humanity against all forms of coercive power. These views led to numerous assassinations of various political leaders, including a king of Italy and a president of the United States, in the period 1895-1905.
Syndicalism was a somewhat more realistic and later version of anarchism. It was equally determined to abolish all public authority, but did not rely on the innate goodness of individuals for the continuance of social life. Rather it aimed to replace public authority by voluntary associations of individuals to supply the companionship and management of social life which, according to these thinkers, the state had so signally failed to provide. The chief of such voluntary associations replacing the state would be labor unions. According to the syndicalists, the state was to be destroyed, not by the assassination of individual heads of states, but by a general strike of the workers organized in labor unions. Such a strike would give the workers a powerful esprit de corps based on a sense of their power and solidarity. By making all forms of coercion impossible, the general strike would destroy the state and replace it by a flexible federation of free associations of workers (syndicates).
Anarchism's most vigorous proponent was the Russian exile Michael Bakunin (1814-1876). His doctrines had considerable appeal in Russia itself, but in western Europe they were widely accepted only in Spain, especially Barcelona, and in parts of Italy where economic and psychological conditions were somewhat similar to those in Russia. Syndicalism flourished in the same areas at a later date, although its chief theorists were French, led by Georges Sorel (1847-1922).
The second group of radical social theorists was fundamentally opposed to the anarcho-syndicalists, although this fact was recognized only gradually. This second group wished to widen the power and scope of governments by giving them a dominant role in economic life. In the course of time, the confusions within this second group began to sort themselves out, and the group divided into two chief schools: the Socialists and the Communists. These two schools were further apart in organization and in their activities than they were in their theories, because the Socialists became increasingly moderate and even conservative in their activities, while remaining relatively revolutionary in their theories. However, as their theories gradually followed their activities in the direction of moderation, in the period of the Second International (1889-1919), violent controversies arose between those who pretended to remain loyal to the revolutionary ideas of Karl Marx and those who wished to revise these ideas in a more moderate direction to adapt them to what they considered to be changing social and economic conditions. l he strict interpreters of Karl Marx came to be known as Communists, while the more moderate revisionist group came to be known as Socialists. The rivalries of the two groups ultimately disrupted the Second International as well as the labor movement as a whole, so that anti-labor regimes were able to come to power in much of Europe in the period 1918-1939. This disruption and failure of the working-class movement is one of the chief factors in European history in the twentieth century and, accordingly, requires at least a brief survey of its nature and background.
The ideas of Karl Marx (1818-1883) and of his associate Friedrich Engels (1820-1895) were published in the Communist Manifesto of 1848 and in their three-volume opus, Das Kapital (1867-1894). Although they were aroused by the deplorable conditions of the European working classes under industrialism, the chief sources of the ideas themselves were to be found in the idealism of Hegel, the materialism of the ancient Greek atomists (especially Democritus), and the theories of the English classical economists (especially Ricardo). Marx derived from Hegel what has come to be known as the "historical dialectic." This theory maintained that all historical events were the result of a struggle between opposing forces which ultimately merged to create a situation which was different from either. Any existing organization of society or of ideas (thesis) calls forth, in time, an opposition (anti-thesis). These two struggle with each other and give rise to the events of history, until finally the two fuse into a new organization (synthesis). This synthesis in turn becomes established as a new thesis to a new opposition or antithesis, and the struggle continues, as history continues.
A chief element in Marxist theory was the economic interpretation of history. According to this view, the economic organization of any society was the basic aspect of that society, since all other aspects, such as political, social, intellectual, or religious, reflected the organization and powers of the economic level.
From Ricardo, Marx derived the theory that the value of economic goods was based on the amount of labor put into them. Applying this idea to industrial society where labor obtains wages which reflect only part of the value of the product they are making, Marx decided that labor was being exploited. Such exploitation was possible, he believed, because the working classes did not own the "instruments of production" (that is, factories, land, and tools) but had allowed these, by legal chicanery, to fall into the hands of the possessing classes. In this way, the capitalistic system of production had divided society into two antithetical classes: the bourgeoisie who owned the instruments of production and the proletariat who lived from selling their labor. The proletariat, however, were robbed of part of their product by the fact that their wages represented only a portion of the value of their labor, the "surplus value" of which they were deprived going to the bourgeoisie as profits. The bourgeoisie were able to maintain this exploitative system because the economic, social, intellectual, and religious portions of society reflected the exploitative nature of the economic system. The money which the bourgeoisie took from the proletariat in the economic system made it possible for them to dominate the political system (including the police and the army), the social system (including family life and education), as well as the religious system and the intellectual aspects of society (including the arts, literature, philosophy, and all the avenues of publicity for these).
From these three concepts of the historical dialectic, economic determinism, and the labor theory of value, Marx built up a complicated theory of past and future history. He believed that "all history is the history of class struggles." Just as in antiquity, history was concerned with the struggles of free men and slaves or of plebians and patricians, so, in the Middle Ages, it was concerned with the struggles of serfs and lords, and, in modern times, with the struggles of proletariat and bourgeoisie. Each privileged group arises from opposition to an earlier privileged group, plays its necessary role in historical progress, and is, in time, successfully challenged by those it has been exploiting. Thus the bourgeoisie rose from exploited serfs to challenge successfully the older privileged group of feudal lords and moved into a period of bourgeois supremacy in which it contributed to history a fully capitalized industrial society but will be challenged, in its turn, by the rising power of the laboring masses.
To Marx, the revolution of the proletariat was not only inevitable but would inevitably be successful, and would give rise to an entirely new society with a proletariat system of government, social life, intellectual patterns, and religious organization. The "inevitable revolution" must lead to an "inevitable victory of the proletariat" because the privileged position of the bourgeoisie allowed them to practice a merciless exploitation of the proletariat, pressing these laboring masses downward to a level of bare subsistence, because labor, having become nothing but a commodity for sale for wages in the competitive market, would naturally fall to the level which would just allo\v the necessary supply of labor to survive. From such exploitation, the bourgeoisie would become richer and richer and fewer and fewer in numbers, and acquire ownership of all property in the society while the proletariat would become poorer and poorer and more and more numerous and be driven closer and closer to desperation. Eventually, the bourgeoisie would become so few and the proletariat would become so numerous that the latter could rise up in their wrath and take over the instruments of production and thus control of the whole society.
According to this theory, the "inevitable revolution" would occur in tile most advanced industrial country because only after a long period of industrialism would the revolutionary situation become acute and would the society itself be equipped with factories able to support a Socialist system. Once the revolution has taken place, there will be established a "dictatorship of the proletariat" during which the political, social, military, intellectual, and religious aspects of society will be transformed in a Socialist fashion. At the end of this period, full Socialism will he established, the state will disappear, and a "classless society" will come into existence. At this point history will end. This rather surprising conclusion to the historical process would occur because Marx had defined history as the process of class struggle and had defined the state as the instrument of class exploitation. Since, in the Socialist state, there will be no exploitation and thus no classes, there will be no class struggles and no need for a state.
In 1889, after the First International had been disrupted by the controversies between anarchists and Socialists, a Second International had been formed by the Socialists. This group retained its allegiance to Marxist theory for a considerable period, but even from the beginning Socialist actions did not follow Marxist theory. This divergence arose from the fact that Marxist theory did not provide a realistic or workable picture of social and economic developments. It had no real provision for labor unions, for workers' political parties, for bourgeois reformers, for rising standards of living, or for nationalism, yet these became, after Marx's death, the dominant concerns of the working class. Accordingly, the labor unions and the Social-Democratic political parties which they dominated became reformist rather than revolutionary groups. They were supported by upper-class groups with humanitarian or religious motivations, with the result that the conditions of life and of work among the laboring classes were raised to a higher level, at first slowly and reluctantly, but, in time, with increasing rapidity. So long as industry itself remained competitive, the struggle between industrialists and labor remained intense, because any success which the workers in one factory might achieve in improving their wage levels or their working conditions would raise the costs of their employer and injure his competitive position with respect to other employers. But as industrialists combined together after 1890 to reduce competition among themselves by regulating their prices and production, and as labor unions combined together into associations covering many factories and even whole industries, the struggle between capital and labor became less intense because any concessions made to labor would affect all capitalists in the same activity equally and could be covered simply by raising the price of the product of all factories to the final consumers.
In fact, the picture which Marx had drawn of more and more numerous workers reduced to lower and lower standards of living by fewer and fewer exploitative capitalists proved to be completely erroneous in the more advanced industrial countries in the twentieth century. Instead, what occurred could be pictured as a cooperative effort by unionized workers and monopolized industry to exploit unorganized consumers by raising prices higher and higher to provide both higher wages and higher profits. This whole process was advanced by the actions of governments which imposed such reforms as eight-hour days, minimum-wage laws, or compulsory accident, old age, and retirement insurance on whole industries at once. As a consequence, the workers did not become worse off but became much better off with the advance of industrialism in the twentieth century.
This tendency toward rising standards of living also revealed another Marxist error. Marx had missed the real essence of the Industrial Revolution. He tended to find this in the complete separation of labor from ownership of tools and the reduction of labor to nothing but a commodity in the market. The real essence of industrialism was to be found in the application of nonhuman energy, such as that from coal, oil, or waterpower, to production. This process increased man's ability to make goods, and did so to an amazing degree. But mass production could exist only if it were followed by mass consumption and rising standards of living. Moreover, it must lead, in the long run, to a decreasing demand for hand labor and an increasing demand for highly trained technicians who are managers rather than laborers. And, in the longer run, this process would give rise to a productive system of such a high level of technical complexity that it could no longer be run by the owners but would have to be run by technically trained managers. Moreover, the use of the corporate form of industrial organization as a means for bringing the savings of the many into the control of a few by sales of securities to wider and wider groups of investors (including both managerial and laboring groups) would lead to a separation of management from ownership and to a great increase in the number of owners.
All these developments were quite contrary to the expectations of Karl Marx. Where he had expected impoverishment of the masses and concentration of ownership, with a great increase in the number of workers and a great decrease in the number of owners, with a gradual elimination of the middle class, there occurred instead (in highly industrialized countries) rising standards of living, dispersal of ownership, a relative decrease in the numbers of laborers, and a great increase in the middle classes. In the long run, under the impact of graduated income taxes and inheritance taxes, ... the great problem of advanced industrial societies became ... the exploitation of unorganized consumers (of the professional and lower-middle-class levels) by unionized labor and monopolized managers acting in concert. The influence of these last two groups on the state in an advanced industrial country also served to increase their ability to obtain what they wished from society as a whole.
As a consequence of all these influences, the revolutionary spirit did not continue to advance with the advance of industrialism, as Marx had expected, but began to decrease, with the result that the more advanced industrial countries became less and less revolutionary. Moreover, what revolutionary spirit did exist in advanced industrial countries was not to be found, as Marx had expected, among the laboring population but among the lower middle class (so-called "petty bourgeoisie"). The average bank clerk, architect's draftsman, or schoolteacher was unorganized, found himself oppressed by organized labor, monopolized industry, and the growing power of the state, and found himself caught in the spiral of rising costs resulting from the efforts of his three oppressors to push the costs of social welfare and steady profits on to the unorganized consumer. The petty bourgeois found that he wore a white collar, had a better education, was expected to maintain more expensive standards of personal appearance and living conditions, but received a lower income than unionized labor. As a consequence of all this, the revolutionary feeling existing in advanced industrial countries appeared among the petty bourgeoisie rather than among the proletariat, and was accompanied by psychopathic overtones arising from the suppressed resentments and social insecurities of this group. But these dangerous and even explosive feelings among the petty bourgeoisie took an anti-revolutionary rather than a revolutionary form and appeared as nationalistic, anti-Semitic, anti-democratic, and anti-labor-union movements rather than as anti-bourgeois or anticapitalist movements such as Marx had expected.
Unfortunately, as economic and social developments in advanced industrial countries moved in the un-Marxian directions we have mentioned, the unionized laborers and their Social Democratic political parties continued to accept the Marxist ideology or at least to utter the old Marxist war cries of "Down with the capitalists!" or "Long live the revolution" or "Workers of the world, unite!" Since the Marxist ideology and the Marxist war cries were more easily observed than the social realities they served to conceal, especially when labor leaders sought all publicity for what they said and profound secrecy for what they did, many capitalists, some workers, and almost all outsiders missed the new developments completely and continued to believe that a workers' revolution was just around the corner. All this served to distort and to confuse people's minds and people's actions in much of the twentieth century. The areas in which such confusions became of great significance were in regard to the class struggle and to nationalism...
great wall of text .
...Are we witnessing the collapse of capitalism itself, as some have suggested? That is unlikely in my view. More is needed to bring about the end of the capitalist system than an economic crisis, no matter how severe. A change of system, or mode of production, has a positive as well as a negative side to it. It involves not just crisis and the collapse of the old system, but also the creation of an alternative, of a new order. This is not only an economic process it is also a political one. It requires the existence of political forces that can bring this about. Despite the enormous and widening gulf of inequality and widespread poverty and misery, however, such forces do not exist. There are, at present, no effective and credible anti-capitalist forces.
Marx believed that such forces would be brought into being by capitalism itself. He argued that the industrial working class, created by the conditions of modern industrial work under capitalism, would constitute such a force. The conditions of the working class in industrial countries at the time he was writing were dreadful. Agricultural and handicraft workers were driven off the land and into cities and factories. Industrial production in factories had greatly intensified exploitation and worsened working conditions. Workers, including women and even young children, were driven by economic necessity to work extraordinarily long hours for near starvation wages. Protection for workers' welfare and rights was minimal.
Nevertheless, for Marx the working class are not a mere impoverished, downtrodden, dehumanized and exploited mass. The impact of industry is not purely negative. The working class was energised and radicalized by these conditions. It was united and educated, its solidarity and consciousness were increased. Steadily, through the 19th and into the first half of the 20th century, it became politically stronger -- better organized and more militant. A revolutionary industrial working class grew up just as Marx predicted.
In the advanced capitalist world, however, conditions are much changed since then. Whether these ideas apply still today is questionable. In particular, the character of the classes that make up these societies has been transformed. The industrial working class is now only a small and still diminishing part of work force of advanced industrial societies. This is due partly to global economic changes and the growth of industry in China and elsewhere; but it is due also to changes in the character of production itself, particularly with automation and the use of information technology. The old industries which gave birth to the revolutionary working class have been transformed. The old industrial working class in these industries is only a small fraction of its former self. Increasing numbers of people work in the service sector -- in offices, shops and even at home using computers. Trade union membership and political militancy have declined. The solidarity and class consciousness which characterized the industrial proletariat in its heyday is gone. It is doubtful that it will ever return.
Nevertheless, it is important to see that class is still the fundamental form of division in capitalist society: that aspect of Marx's analysis still stands. The working class still makes up the great majority of the population even though its character has changed. For the most part it is now located in offices and shops, in distribution depots and call centres, rather than in factories. But it is still the working class, made of people who are in subordinate positions, who have no share in capital and are dependent entirely on their labour for their livelihood.
Many commentators have ceased to regard the working class of any sort as a potential revolutionary force. Instead they look to disenfranchised, dispossessed and disaffected social groups -- to women and minority groups, and to the young. They look for revolutionary potential to the environmental movement, the women's movement, and to the amorphous anti-capitalist movement. However, these groups lack the solidarity and unity of interests of the class-based socialist movement or the unifying vision of Marxism. It is doubtful that they can form a sufficiently united or coherent movement. The working class is still the most likely revolutionary agent.
There is little present sign of its fulfilling this role, but it would be a mistake to interpret this as a mark of satisfaction with the present state of things. Particularly with the economic recession that is now upon us, there is a large measure of alienation and disillusion. The main reason why people are so quiescent is that they see no way in which they can bring about significant change which will lead to a better future. Once that hope is present the situation could change quite rapidly.
It is likely that the economic crisis will erode still further people's faith in the established political parties that support the present order, and lead to a greater level of support for radical alternatives, of both left and right. However, it is not certain that the left will be the main beneficiary. If the experience of the great Depression of the 1930s is anything to go by, the danger is that a nationalist and far right reaction will develop. The prospects for socialism are still distant.
Similar things must be said about the situation in the third world. The theory that the massive wealth that was generated in the bubble of the last thirty years would 'trickle down' and benefit even the very poorest has proved illusory. On the contrary the gulf between rich and poor has increased dramatically, not only within nations like the USA and Britain, but also globally. In large parts of Africa and Latin America the most dreadful levels of poverty and disease are endemic, and yet for the present there are no signs of revolutionary forces emerging. Who can doubt, however, that the conditions exist for revolutionary movements and that they will arise given the right circumstances.
In the newly industrializing nations of Asia the situation is perhaps different. China and more recently India have been industrializing at an unprecedented rate. The processes that were occurring in Britain in the middle of the 19th century, and which Marx analyzes in Capital, are being repeated on a massive scale and at an accelerated pace. People are flooding in from the countryside to the cities to work in the newly created factories and sweatshops which have sprung up. Extremes of wealth and poverty exist side by side. Whether these developments will lead to the creation of a militant working class in Asia, as they did in Britain, remains to be seen. But again, there are few signs of this so far that I am aware of.
The current crisis has brought the capitalist economic system to the brink of breakdown. It has demonstrated that the free market is a dysfunctional basis for economic life. In this respect it has confirmed Marx's critique of capitalism. There is no sign yet of the forces that Marx believed would emerge to bring about its overthrow and supersession. Nevertheless, the conditions in which such forces could develop are present. The question of alternatives to capitalism is on the agenda once again.
The failure of the market has forced Governments to take a large stake in banks and a major role in the economy. These measures have been described as 'socialist' by advocates of the free market. There is an element of truth in that description. State ownership and control of the financial system and other large enterprises is a necessary condition for socialism in that these enterprises are taken out of private hands and social control exercised over their operations. But more is involved in socialism.
What more? Now that Governments have taken these measures, the question is: what should they do with these newly acquired assets and powers? What sort of economic and financial system do we want? It is for his answers to these questions, as much as for his criticisms of capitalism, that Marx is important and relevant today.
What has been done so far should not be confused with socialism as Marx understood it. These measures have not been taken in the interests of working people or the community as a whole. Their primary aim is to rescue the banks and other parts of the system from collapse. The intention is to return them to the private sector and the free market as soon as conditions make this possible, and to do nothing in the meantime which will jeopardise this aim.
Socialism is something quite different. It involves a planned economy, run in the interests of the community and particularly of working people. Socialism means an economy ruled not by alien and uncontrollable economic forces, but consciously planned and operated for the good of all rather than for the profits of a few. In the present context, this means, for example, investment in hospitals, schools, social housing, public transport and other much needed infrastructure, and in initiatives to deal with the threat to the environment.6
Moreover, for Marx this would be only the first step towards a fully socialist society. Ultimately he envisages a further stage in which the alien mechanism of the market is not only brought under control, but eliminated altogether, and society is governed by the principle 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs!'7
This is a remote and distant vision. Nevertheless, it is a vitally important idea which must be kept alive.
One of Marx's most important insights is that capitalism is a particular stage of historical development not an inescapable necessity. Society and the economy need not be ruled by the hostile and alien mechanism of the market. Capitalism came into existence at a certain time, it has a life history, and it is likely to become an increasing barrier to the full use of productive powers. Marx envisages that it will eventually be superseded by a voluntary and cooperative organization of social and economic life in which goods and services are distributed according to need rather than ability to pay, and people contribute their labour to produce them willingly and not only because they are paid to do so. A better alternative to capitalism is possible. This is the basis of Marx's criticism of it.
Until 1935, Mao's position in the CCP was that of a dissident, and he was, more than once, reprimanded and demoted, or removed from party positions. His chief difficulty was that he refused to accept the party's official view, insisted on by Russian-trained Communist leaders, that the revolution must be based on urban industrial workers, the "real proletariat."
Instead Mao envisioned the party as a tightly disciplined group that could be raised to power on the revolutionary activities of the great mass of impoverished and discontented peasantry.
Closely related to this idea were two others that were equally unorthodox:
(1) the role of rural guerrilla warfare in wearing down and ultimately defeating a "reactionary government" and
(2) a fundamental emphasis on the distinction between "imperialist" and "colonial" nations.
This last point made it possible for Mao to regard the backward and undeveloped colonial areas as possible areas of revolutionary activity, where, as in China, the exploited peasants could provide the revolutionary impetus and could defend their revolutionary achievements by guerrilla warfare.
The more orthodox Communist line was that a revolution could be carried out only by an urban proletariat that could be found only in an advanced industrial area, and that such an industrial base was essential to provide the modern military equipment needed to defend the revolutionary achievement against the counterattacks of aggressive, capitalist countries.
In a sense Mao was much closer to the realities of modern politics and to the experience of Soviet Russia itself, since it is perfectly clear that no advanced industrial nation will go Communist and that the movement must make its advances in underdeveloped areas if it is to be successful anywhere.
Since the objections to Mao's position came from the center of world Communist theory in Moscow, Mao distinguished between the Russian and the Chinese experience by calling Russia an "ex-imperialist" country and China an "ex-colonial country."
This, as we have said, has passed through six successive stages, of which at least four are called "capitalism." Three features are notable about this development as a whole.
In the first place, each stage crated the conditions which tended to bring about the next stage; therefore we could say, in a sense, that each stage committed suicide.
The original economic organization of self-sufficient agrarian units (manors) was in a society organized so that its upper ranks—the lords, lay and ecclesiastical—found their desires for necessities so well met that they sought to exchange their surpluses of necessities for luxuries of remote origin. This gave rise to a trade in foreign luxuries (spices, fine textiles, fine metals) which was the first evidence of the stage of commercial capitalism. In this second stage, mercantile profits and widening markets created a demand for textiles and other goods which could be met only by application of power to production. This gave the third stage: industrial capitalism. The stage of industrial capitalism soon gave rise to such an insatiable demand for heavy fixed capital, like railroad lines, steel mills, shipyards, and so on, that these investments could not be financed from the profits and private fortunes of individual proprietors. New instruments for financing industry came into existence in the form of limited-liability corporations and investment banks.
These were soon in a position to control the chief parts of the industrial system, since they provided capital to it. This gave rise to financial capitalism. The control of financial capitalism was used to integrate the industrial system into ever-larger units with interlinking financial controls. This made possible a reduction of competition with a resulting increase in profits.
As a result, the industrial system soon found that it was again able to finance its own expansion from its own profits, and, with this achievement, financial controls were weakened, and the stage of monopoly capitalism arrived. In this fifth stage, great industrial units, working together either directly or through cartels and trade associations, were in a position to exploit the majority of the people.
The result was a great economic crisis which soon developed into a struggle for control of the state—the minority hoping to use political power to defend their privileged position, the majority hoping to use the state to curtail the power and privileges of the minority. Both hoped to use the power of the state to find some solution to the economic aspects of the crisis. This dualist struggle dwindled with the rise of economic and social pluralism after 1945.
The second notable feature of this whole development is that the transition of each stage to the next was associated with a period of depression or low economic activity. This was because each stage, after an earlier progressive phase, became later, in its final phase, an organization of vested interests more concerned with protecting its established modes of action than in continuing progressive changes by the application of resources to new, improved methods. This is inevitable in any social organization, but is peculiarly so in regard to capitalism.
The third notable feature of the whole development is closely related to this special nature of capitalism. Capitalism provides very powerful motivations for economic activity because it associates economic motivations so closely with self-interest.
But this same feature, which is a source of strength in providing economic motivation through the pursuit of profits, is also a source of weakness owing to the fact that so self-centered a motivation contributes very readily to a loss of economic coordination.
Each individual, just because he is so powerfully motivated by self-interest, easily loses sight of the role which his own activities play in the economic system as a whole, and tends to act as if his activities were the whole, with inevitable injury to that whole. We could indicate this by pointing out that capitalism, because it seeks profits as its primary goal, is never primarily seeking to achieve prosperity, high production, high consumption, political power, patriotic improvement, or moral uplift.
Any of these may be achieved under capitalism, and any (or all) of them may he sacrificed and lost under capitalism, depending on this relationship to the primary goal of capitalist activity—the pursuit of profits. During the nine-hundred-year history of capitalism, it has, at various times, contributed both to the achievement and to the destruction of these other social goals.
The different stages of capitalism have sought to win profits by different kinds of economic activities. The original stage, which we call commercial capitalism, sought profits by moving goods from one place to another. In this effort, goods went from places where they were less valuable to places where they were more valuable, while money, doing the same thing, moved in the opposite direction.
This valuation, which determined the movement both of goods and of money and which made them move in opposite directions, was measured by the relationship between these two things. Thus the value of goods was expressed in money. and the value of money was expressed in goods. Goods moved from low-price areas to high-price areas, and money moved from high-price areas to low-price areas, because goods were more valuable where prices were high and money was more valuable where prices were low.
Thus, clearly, money and goods are not the same thing but are, on the contrary, exactly opposite things. Most confusion in economic thinking arises from failure to recognize this fact. Goods are wealth which you have, while money is a claim on wealth which you do not have. Thus goods are an asset; money is a debt. If goods are wealth; money is not wealth, or negative wealth, or even anti-wealth.
They always behave in opposite ways, just as they usually move in opposite directions. If the value of one goes up, the value of the other goes down, and in the same proportion. The value of goods, expressed in money, is called "prices," while the value of money, expressed in goods, is called "value."