This is what's wrong with the news these days.

[FireIceTalon]

You have a strange definition of one dimensional. I think it is more akin to viewing every issue as an 1800's struggle of the proletariat shedding the yokes of their Capitalist masters.

So you deny that there is a class struggle in capitalism today (or at any point in capitalism's history for that matter), despite all the insurmountable evidence to the contrary? It isn't an "1800's" struggle, it is an on-going, observable, and contingent historical process. The class struggle is most definitely real......very, very real, in fact. The mere presence of wage labor and capital, and the presence of the State, and artificially constructed borders, is as much evidence of this struggle as the existence of life itself on this planet confirming the existence of the sun.

Every social issue in society has a class element to it. EVERY single one. Because that is how people are fundamentally divided, and have been for the better part of the last 10k or so years. Not by race, or nationality. Not by gender. Not by religion or culture. Not by sexual orientation. Not by fat or thin, or blonde or brunette. Not even by political ideology. But by class. That isn't one dimensional, that is just an observation of objective social phenomena. Sure, there is clearly oppression and social stratification of ethnic minorities, women, gays/transgender, or religious minorities - but they are the divisions of labor that have been socially constructed to further stratify the working class. You cannot talk about any social problem in society without understanding its intersection and relationship to class, or you get a incomplete view of the problem and how it is manifested. If you take racism for instance, I don't think any rational person will deny that racial barriers and discrimination exist. But to understand how this type of oppression operates in a society, a necessary understanding of its intersection with class struggle is crucial.

Instead, you are dismissive of the sheeple surrounding you, and your superior enlightened attitude is off putting at best. They couldn't possibly be aware of their indoctrination in the free market capitalist society into which they were born. Heaven forbid they ascribe to non-Marxist concepts like owning property, or free choice.

Just one problem: they don't own property, nor do they have free choice. Voting in who your next rulers will that will represent the interests of private capital for the next 4-5 years is not free choice, anymore than a absolute monarch appealing to divine right to rule over you is. The freedom to starve, is not free choice. The freedom to choose which capitalist will extract surplus value from your labor and turn it into a profit for himself is not free choice. Not being able to afford decent healthcare, and watching the health of those you love deteriorate because of the daily stresses of living under capitalism and not being able to afford to reverse it, IS NOT FUCKING FREE CHOICE (this last one resonates strongly with me, thus the extra emphasis). And you say I have strange definitions of things? What you call freedom, I call tyranny, and that is why you will NEVER catch me saluting those stars and stripes, which are the ultimate symbol of oppression. No patriotism in this boy here, and there never will be. Wage slavery is no better than chattel slavery.

And my views can hardly be off putting, since a majority of the time I keep them private in a classroom setting. If anyone would be the victim here, it would be me, since my views are the one that would be marginalized and "ganged up on", depending on the composition of the class. Last semester I had a class were I was able to articulate the Marxist viewpoint and the class and professor was receptive towards it (even if they didn't necessarily agree with it) - but I was comfortable in being able to express myself without being scorned or harassed. In my classes this semester, I can't read how they would react so I have generally kept my views under wraps for now. I've had classes in the past where it was clear I would be uncomfortable with being able to express my views.

Maybe a different great man. Or, perhaps due to its perfection, it was divinely inspired.

Sounds like a far better description of capitalism and its quack mythologies (such as the concept of the so-called "invisible hand" - buhahahaha), as described by capitalists.

Or, maybe they are correct, and just seek to point out a big steamy pile of crap when they see one lest an unsuspecting political science student step in it and get it all over their post-graduate potential.

This is a pretty childish response, not to mention one that has no merit as a genuine argument. You haven't yet, in any debate with me, past or present, been able to provide one shred of empirical or scientific evidence to disprove Marxism as a credible mode of analysis. Because the truth is, so long as capitalism is the prevailing system, Marxism is relevant. Almost every top classical economist or free-market intellectual has tried their hand at doing this, and none of them have succeeded, what makes you think you can? Again, if it were the "steaming pile of crap" you claim, it would have no credibility and the capitalists wouldn't have to continue to take such measures to demonize it - there would be no reason for them to. Much in the same way religious fundamentalists still try to deny that evolution is a real phenomena.

You've assumed a false premise, and presented a straw man argument. I've never suggested that removing him would change anything. Yes, it is probable that some other tycoon would fill the gap. What I said was that society acts, when it works correctly, to fix conditions where power is unchecked. Often, in order to get "the people" upset enough to act, they need some hard examples of why they must. So it was in the early 1900's with restraining capitalist monopolies. Do you think those powerful agencies fought against those changes to check their power?

All well and good. But you are speaking in a political context only. Sure you can provide checks and balances on a government, but for a media figure this is much tougher to do since they do not "officially" make any laws, even if they do an outstanding job of mind control and manipulating public opinions. You can change governments or regimes if they are inept (all of them are inept anyways since they are designed to serve the ruling class, but I am playing your game here for a moment), but cultural hegemony is a another animal entirely - since it is simply an abstract social phenomenon and not a tangible institution or individual. You can't vote out someone like RM because he isn't a government official, even if he effectively has as much or even more power than one.

Besides, your analysis makes no mention of class conflict, which is what is at the heart of all this. Constraining capitalism, as I mentioned before, only shrouds it in a happy face and at the very best, it is a band-aid. It doesn't remove the inherent exploitative social relations that makes it what it is. Wars, poverty/economic and social inequality, alienation, and the stratification of many identity groups within the working class, are permanent fixtures in the capitalist system. If Marxists thought reforming capitalism was good enough, well, we wouldn't be Marxists anymore - social democracy would suffice. Or if we thought that socialism could gradually be achieved through a bourgeois election process, again, we wouldn't be Marxists (or anarchists, for our anarchist friends out there), we would be utopian socialists. We disagree with both of these propositions, and as much as you'd like to deny it, I'd say history has done a pretty solid job of proving us right. This includes the fall of the fUSSR and its State Capitalist regime, which contrary to popular belief, didn't prove Marx wrong, but actually, in many ways, proved him RIGHT. All it did was prove that 'socialism in one country' (Stalinism) is not feasible (which most Marxists knew long before Stalin or even Lenin was ever a thought), and that Stalin used a vulgarized, dogmatic interpretation of Marxism to justify the material conditions of his rulership. But we don't point to Marxism as being the problem here any more (or less) than we do Darwinism for being used in unscientific and dogmatic social context to justify Hitler's racist ideology and the Holocaust. To do so in either case, is ahistorical, and very much intellectual dishonesty.

Besides the fact that the very models upon which these organizations are based are anathema to the premises of Marxism. Advertising? Sponsors? Investors? What are you, Capitalists? No, the communist venue of choice is indoctrination at re-education camps.

Obvious troll is obvious. The Cold War politics/Mcarthyism kool-aid tastes great to some still, I see?

So, then, a fringe of the political Marxist fringe. At some point, you become a party of one.

Do you have legitimate evidence to objectively quantify Impossibilism as being fringe within Marxist tendencies, or is this just another assumption that you pulled out of thin air? From what I can gather, it seems to overlap into a substantial amount (solid majority?) of them. They differentiate quantitatively - some feel that reforms are merely irrelevant in the long run, while others see them as directly bolstering the capitalist system, with everything in between. I personally tend to lean more toward the former since the latter is a much stronger and more cynical view, though it is at times, right.

And even if it is "fringe", I'm not sure how this invalidates it, since there is no scientific law that says any sort of "fringe politics" is automatically wrong or invalid. Oh wait, because it is "safe" by cultural norms, and logical to always take the middle road, right?

In other words, the broken vessel cannot be repaired. You advocate a new vessel, but cannot describe what that looks like. But, you'll know it when you see it. And... it involves a revolution.

Like so many people have in the past and still do, you make the same serious error over and over in presenting Marx as some 19th century Nostradamus whose goal was to predict the future - which very clearly was not his agenda. Nor is it how Marxism (a materialist interpretation of history, analysis of the development of human social relations, and the material conditions/productive forces of society shape this development) should be used. Any theoretical system (valid or not) used to predict the future is bound to fail in doing so, which is why Marxism doesn't concern itself to describing a future socialist society in great detail. He left that for the idealist, utopian socialists who thought some utopia was right around the corner, whereas Marx and Engels were interested in the system we live in NOW - capitalism, as being the key for understanding how socialism was a possibility, as well as why it should come about.

His goal was to understand the economic laws of capitalism and how the system works in the most comprehensive and scientific way possible, although Marxism as a system was developed after his death. It is also used as a system to create a scientific revolutionary programme based on the analysis of the capitalist system and its processes. By understanding the problems intrinsic to capitalism and what makes it objectionable to the interests of the proletarian, it is enough to create the building blocks for socialism, the anti-thesis to capitalism and wage labour. I would say it is pretty arguable that not only was an understanding of capitalism sufficient for building socialism, but that such an understanding could very well be a prerequisite.

In short, Marxism as a theoretical system is fine, and is not the problem. But your idealistic interpretation of it or what you think it should be, and thus your incompetence in understanding what it effectively is, is actually the problem. Not the theory itself.

Of course. It doesn't support your POV.

It has nothing to do with my PoV. If I were pro-capitalist, it wouldn't change that his statement is factually incorrect, and ultimately, irrelevant in a historical context. "If we have the Bible, we have no need of Darwin"....

Ok, let us descend into the 1800's model of the Marxian worker mindset. What does labor do without a factory in which to work? What do they make without understanding demands, and supply? Anarchy is not a management strategy that yields an economy.

So you assume a class conscious/educated proletarian doesn't understand economics or how to meet their own class interests, or that workers somehow need capitalists in order to survive? Gee willikers, by your logic, we ought to have become extinct long ago in that case - like, thousands of years ago. Yet here we are. Ironically, you are as elitist as Lenin ever was. Maybe more so. But....

Thankfully, we know for a cold hard fact that we don't need capitalists and bureaucrats in order for people to produce the things they need to survive, or for the people who make it run to be able to run it. Maybe in your 'Great Man theory' conception of the world, you need someone telling you when to clock in to work, how long to work, what to produce, how to produce it, what benefits you can have, what your wage will be, and that their ideas are the only legitimate ideas and should never be questioned because they know best....but that certainly isn't the case in the real world.

If anything, it is capitalism that has a lot of splainin' to do....it constantly over-produces commodities, mismanages peoples talents, misallocates resources (especially on the production useless luxury goods), and in general, it is a pretty wasteful system.... in addition to all its exploitation and contradictions.

Bottomline: Workers do not need capitalists to survive - in fact, it can be pretty easily argued that the capitalist class is a threat and detriment to our survival, and even if it isnt, it certainly is to our livelihood, and our dignity. Which is more than enough to justify their destruction as a class, and ultimately this signals the end of our class as well, which is what we want: a classless society. Their very position in society makes them parasitic, and if they all somehow magically disappeared tomorrow, believe me, the world would continue, and the rest of us would survive just fine without submitting ourselves to bourgeois idealism.