: Who in their right mind would CHOOSE crushing individual poverty over collective prosperity? : Before you strive to answer that, observe that: as it stands now, it's the CAPITALISTS who will expropriate the last of the peasants, anyway...
: But global capitalism is doing the 'evolving.' The small outfits are always undersold by the larger ones, consequently they fall deeper into debt, go bankrupt, end up proletarianized, etc., etc... insert possibility for socialist transformation here...
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Yes, this is certainly true - simply a matter of playing out the "logic" of the capitalist system.
From the Peasant Question:
"On the contrary, it is the duty of our Party to make clear to the peasants again and again that their position is absolutely hopeless as long as capitalism holds sway, that it is absolutely impossible to preserve their small holdings for them as such, that capitalist large-scale production is absolutely sure to run over their impotent antiquated system of small production as a train runs over a pushcart. If we do this, we shall act in conformity with the inevitable trend of economic development, and this development will not fail to bring our
words home to the small peasants."
And indeed it is an "inevitable trend" - under CAPITALISM.
It's simply that the material consequences of capitalism - scientific progress, the modern efficient factory (Engels admired Taylor!), large scale production - are necessary outcomes of a capitalist system.
The advantage of socialism is that being human centered (sorry for the mushy phrase) it is able to critically question what we mean by "Progress" and people need not be crushed by some internal wheel of "inevitability"
But I guess I was thinking of the Zappatistas when I wrote the previous post. In their case their aim is to Maintain their Commons against private encroachment. The sad thing is that there is no strong socialist party to counter the Mexican governments plan to institute capitalist "Progress" into the Chiapas region.
: : Marx covers a lot of ground. There's "Scientific Socialism" and there's the Marx of 1844.
: I've never been in love with the 1960s liberal 'two Marx' theory.
: First he analyzed capitalism, then he studied the communist example of the Paris Commune (which radicalized him) then he analyzed capitalism yet again.
: It's all one Marx.
Yes...it is all one Marx. And he spoke of alienation in Volume III of Capital as well.
