Remember: This is about learning about why Marx came up with his theories and eventually Communism. It’s about learning how countries like Finland have embraced capitalism without losing their Socialism benefits.
Marx’s method was about materialism was that it evolved out of consciousness. The dialect came from his regard of nature and society as their evolvement and evolution as their constant struggle in conflicting forces. Marx dared to criticize capitalism. He pointed out errors in the political economy along with the contradictions. Capitalism shows it’s instability even in Marx’s time. And we continue to see them. Why! Marx saw the economic imbalance which we are experiencing today.
Trotsky focused on five key elements of Kar Marx’s theories:
- The Theory of Increasing Misery. We must keep in mind that Marx made his theories based on what he and Engels were seeing. They were economists, not politicians. Under Trotsky’s review of this theory, the bourgeois capitalist gets wealthy by exploiting the proletariat until the proletariat is disabled or dies. Then they move on their replacement for that person. Trotsky brought up a point that Hitler and Mussolini hated Marx as much as our government does. Why? Because they, as our government, are the very thing that Marx and Engels warned against.
- The Reserve Army and The New Sub Class of the Unemployed. Trotsky made an analysis of the overwhelming poverty from the Great Depression, made people happy to see WW II because it meant work. Work for those who had been out of a steady paying job for years. At this point, I have to wonder if what’s occurring now is the same scenario as that. You break a population’s spirit with poverty, unemployment, coupled with homelessness and they will gladly take whatever job comes their way. They won’t care about the immoral consequences of it. During the Great Depression and Dirty Thirties, people were so starved and so sick of the poverty that when WW II was announced they lined up to join the military having forgotten about the Bonus Army and their consequences of wanting back pay for the jobs they lost during their service in WW I. In the military, they would have a steady pay, what my late father called three squares a day, roof over their head.
- The Decline of the Middle Classes. Again this is something we have been seeing since NAFTA in the 90s. During the 80s when shows like Dynasty, Dallas and Knots Landing were huge, everyone in the upper-middle class could afford their own mini-mansion. But there was a huge price with it. That came when NAFTA sent many jobs to China. In which companies and the Chinese government made mutually beneficial deals. So much for the “China is stealing our intellectual property”. We saw gutting in 2008 again become very transparent. With that, Marx found it hard to argue for the virtue of capitalism.
- The Industrial Crisis. Trotsky noted while the industrial boom did improve the lives of the workers, it was only temporary and only on the surface. The Industrial Boom seemed to have “abolished” the risk of a crisis of past years. However, the crash of 1929 made it clear that was wrong. As the Great Depression brought a level of poverty that would have horrified Marx. Between 1930 and 1939 there were over a million labor hours lost resulting in 133 billion total income loss of the American families. Trotsky questioned if this didn’t qualify as anarchy, then what would? I agree.
- The Theory of Collapse and Decay of Capitalism. I am combining these because they are the cause and effect of the other. When there is a collapse of capitalism, there is automatically a decay of it as well. Marx understood that you have a select group of people who are never affected by the collapse of the economy because they own everything that drives the economy. Look at China right now. Their country has come to a complete stop. Why? Because no one can leave their apartments because of an illness that was the result of bioterrorism. Why would someone do something so grotesque to another nation? Kill off your competition before they are stronger than you. There products in the harbors in China that can’t be disturbed or loaded because no one can go to work. Marx warned about things like this.
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