Class and democracy

[GoingDHfast]

Just after some help with my latest essay, I'm a bit stuck for ideas.. Just brainstorming at this stage so any ideas would be a help.

The essay topic:

What do we mean by class and its impact on democracy?

Its in the context of Politics - the unit is called The Nature of Politics.

Ideas I've had so far for essay structure (just pasted from my word doc):

- Often in modern politics people vote with their dollars – eg; if they do not like a certain product/service/politician they will not invest capital in that area. Obviously if enough wealthy people do this, whatever the product is it will not be very profitable. But the catch is, the more money you have, the more ability you have to do this; essentially you have more economic leverage. A poor person, or even a group of poor people have next to no leverage of this type as they don’t have the capital to tender in the first place. This is a fundamental problem with the classic argument of “if people don’t like it they will vote with their dollars” – what if you have no dollars?

- The term “class” was first coined by Karl Marx in the mid 1800’s although the class system dates back many hundreds of years before that. The feudal class structure was essentially based upon how much land you owned – the more land the more power you had.

- Literacy - Poor people are less literate, meaning they cannot communicate their democratic ideas and opinions as concisely as rich people who are better educated.

 

[Dumbellina]

Just after some help with my latest essay, I'm a bit stuck for ideas.. Just brainstorming at this stage so any ideas would be a help.

The essay topic:

What do we mean by class and its impact on democracy?

Its in the context of Politics - the unit is called The Nature of Politics.

Ideas I've had so far for essay structure (just pasted from my word doc):

- Often in modern politics people vote with their dollars – eg; if they do not like a certain product/service/politician they will not invest capital in that area. Obviously if enough wealthy people do this, whatever the product is it will not be very profitable. But the catch is, the more money you have, the more ability you have to do this; essentially you have more economic leverage. A poor person, or even a group of poor people have next to no leverage of this type as they don’t have the capital to tender in the first place. This is a fundamental problem with the classic argument of “if people don’t like it they will vote with their dollars” – what if you have no dollars?

- The term “class” was first coined by Karl Marx in the mid 1800’s although the class system dates back many hundreds of years before that. The feudal class structure was essentially based upon how much land you owned – the more land the more power you had.

- Literacy - Poor people are less literate, meaning they cannot communicate their democratic ideas and opinions as concisely as rich people who are better educated.

Come on Johnny, knock yourself out.

You must deal with historical legacy that only people who owned land, and even then only men, could participate in democratic institutions. This is reflected in the State's Parliamentary systems where the Upper Houses (Legislative Council in the case of NSW) were created to be made up of the land owning elite in order to protect their interests. So that is why the land-owning elite (which could include the financially poor) had all the access to democracy historically.

The connection between literacy and participating in democracy is weak. Sure they may have trouble communicating their ideas in writing or reading the written ideas of others, but you cannot forget that most political communication is verbal. A central part of the Australian political story is the shearers strikes in the 1890s, a legacy of which was the establishment of the Australian Labor Party and the organised union movement. Those shearers and the people coordinating the strikes were largely illiterate.

Furthermore basic education has be readily available to all classes for many years, meaning that education alone does not account class distinction.

The Marxist analysis would be that the land-owning elite (owners of production) control and used their monopoly on democratic systems (institutions) to protect and promote their own interests. The workers were subject to those institutions and when applied oppressively used there labour power (through strikes) to ensure democracy worked more in their favour.

 

[johnny]

Sorry mate but I'm kinda snowed under writing about incrementalism and bounded rationality in policy formation, ethics of covert research, thesis prospectus etc......

When does it have to be done by? I can talk for ages about the issue and posibly forward you some good links/reference material if you have the time to wait.

Google "conflict theory". Obviously as you've said, Marx is the main dude to look at here. Also look at some of the Labor party policies (eg sliding tax scale was one of Marx's ideas and has been implemented in Aust.), maybe look at communism/socialism in China etc.

Sorry I don't have more time.

 

[johnny]

Presemtation I gave on Marxism last year. It's in PRESENTATION format rather than essay. Hope it helps a little. Pity you're not in Sydney, I could have leant you all my stuff.


1st line:
The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles.

Marx:
In depicting the most general phases of the development of the proletariat, we traced the more or less veiled civil war, raging within existing society, up to the point where that war breaks out into open revolution, and where the violent overthrow of the bourgeoisie lays the foundation for the sway of the proletariat.

Marxist doctrine advocates the violent overthrow of the bourgeois revolution by the proletariat revolution. This doctrine of violent struggle was later encouraged and reinforced by Lenin in his publication “The State and the Revolution” when he wrote: “The suppression of the bourgeois state by the proletarian state is impossible without a violent revolution”.

The Marxist time line of social evolution was basic and straight forward: The feudal system was to be replaced by the bourgeois revolution. This was basically the industrial revolution where in, and I again quote Marx from the Communist Manifesto: “From the serfs of the middle ages sprang the chartered Burghers of the earliest towns. From these Burgesses the first element of the bourgeoisie were developed”. Burgher has a few meanings but the one most closely attached to Marxist meaning is: A member of the mercantile class of medieval Europe.
From this bourgeois revolution was to come the industrialization of production and the capitalist system. This system was to grow by fulfilling the global market which had been recently expanded by the colonization and rise of the North Americas. Only once this revolution had swept across the world would it be ready for the proletariat to rise. The Bourgeois society and capitalism had to reach it’s zenith in order to fully exploit the working class and exploit the workers fully. This collective of exploited workers would then vastly outnumber the owners of production/property/capital giving them the strength needed to collectivise and commit the global violent uprising that Marxism prescribed and encouraged.

This idea of the exploited taking control of their destiny appealed directly to the Chinese being that they had been exploited and occupied by both European, western and Asian countries. The Chinese Communist Party was founded in 1921 with the aid of Russia, who had only 4 years earlier had it’s own proletariat uprising, the Bolshevik revolution.

The Chinese up until this point was of Confucian nature, this was to say that it was a very traditionalist and inheritable system of belief which pursued harmony through discussion and non-violent means and rejected fanaticism. This direct antithesis of communist ideals was a leading encouragement to the new CCP and the Russians for violent revolution.

The CCP went on to encourage the heavily oppressed workers from Shanghai to Hong Kong to strike and demand better pay and working conditions. This attempt was mildly successful and in turn encouraged the rail workers to also strike. Yet this strike was bloodily suppressed by warlord troops so easily to the point that it was plainly obvious that industrialised China did not have the worker base strong enough to hold a successful proletariat revolution.

This was put down to the fact that China was well behind the rest of the industrialized world due to centuries of communal violence/civil war amongst dynasties and warlords and most recently foreign occupation. This meant that China had not had it’s own bourgeois revolution which was a necessary prelude to having a proletariat revolution. For how is a society to have it’s industrially exploited classes ready to take the reigns of government, if there is very few that are actually industrially exploited?

After years of attempts to forward the revolution that were nearly ended by KMT nationalist revolution the remnants of the CCP were forced to retreat to the outer northern Yannan districts. This is when the Second World War imposed itself on China. This was an opportunity for the CCP to gain some ground and in the confusion of war it was able to place itself in administration of a large area of internal China.
Up until now, Mao Zedong had been one of many in the CCP. But it was Mao the strongest adherent to Marxist theory who decided that China did not have the industrialization levels to afford the traditional style of proletariat revolution. But Mao did see another oppressed class. Being that China had not had its bourgeois revolution, this meant that it was still in its feudal era. According to Marx, this was still a form of exploitation, only it was not of an industrial/capitalist capacity. Therefore, Mao replaced the industrial proletariat with the rural peasant proletariat.

This distinction allowed Mao to initiate integral tenets of Marxist doctrine in order to perpetuate the revolution on a Sino premise. The exploitation that was apparent in rural China was that of the landlord elite over the rural peasantry that worked the fields for the landlords, lived in houses owned by the landlords and paid their taxes to the landlords who invariably didn’t pass much of this tax revenue onto the government but held onto it instead. This point was to allow Mao greater strength in selling the Marxist/socialist/communist ideal. For if the landlord is the exploiter through rural labour, he is also the enemy of equality by not even paying taxes. One of the points of Marxist communism is egalitarian and communal strength, with holding taxes from the general public purse is the exact opposite of communal nature.
How the revolution was won is not a point entirely applicable to the study of Marxism, but how Mao turned socialism into communism in light of Marxist theory is. I shall go on to detail a few of the Communist Manifesto’s central tenets and analyse how they played out when theory became practice in the PRC.




I’ve taken 9 of the central premises of Marxist doctrine and analysed how they were implemented in China and the results they’ve occurred
1. Abolition of property in land and application of all rents of land to public purposes.

1. To enact the Marxist ideal of equality it was seen that private property was the standard by which man differentiated his status and exploited the peasants in China’s rural feudal system. Therefore this system had to be reversed and property redistributed thereby bringing peasants up to full equality with the other elements of society. Land holdings were therefore taken, by force if necessary and along with agricultural tools such as livestock tools, seed grain, money and any other form of wealth. When the bourgeois landlords were physically apprehended by the Communists, the peasants were encouraged to criticize and harass them for their exploitative indiscretions. This usually resulted in assault and many times death via violence. (Moise 107)

 

[johnny]

Although this process was not without the difficulties of reality on the ground. In the early years of the revolution (45-49) when it was restricted to the Northern Provinces, the Party had held unrealistic expectations of what land reform could achieve. The Party accused the landlords of being only 10% of the population and holding over 70% of the wealth. This proved to be a gross over estimate and when all property had been redistributed, the Party found that at best the peasant’s problems were only partially alleviated. For the problem was that there was simply not enough wealth to go around.

2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.

2. Progressive and graduated taxation was an important issue in Chinese society. During the nationalist years landlords and local officials were guilty of skimming tax payments made to them before they passed them on to the government. Over time this made them stronger and by zero sum, the government weaker. Therefore ignoring the Marxist premise for this tenet, the CCP were vigorous in implementing it as not to suffer a like result. The progressive and graduated tax was to mean to the CCP that the more wealth you were to hold, the more tax you were to pay. The taxes had to be paid not to the local landlord, but directly to party cadres. This also satisfied a Marxist principal of equality in that when the workers paid a share of the tax to the CCP/PRC, they were gaining their “share” of the crop and therefore further emancipating themselves from the feudal oppressions they’d been previously operating under.
Yet once again, Marxism had not taken into account the greed that had formed the bourgeoisie or in China’s case, the landlord elite, in the first place. Hence the local cadres found their fingers to be just as sticky as the previous feudal landlords and at times even protected certain landlords through friendship or personal gain. This is quite obviously against the laws of Marxism.

3. Abolition of all rights of inheritance.

3. Inheritance was a central tenet of Confucian thought. Not only did one inherit wealth from their parents but also title and therefore opportunity. This restricted opportunity to the elite and was one of the pillars of a class stratified Sino society. Therefore this Marxist doctrine was highly applicable to the CCP. The CCP demolished all remnants of this Confucian tradition to the point that even if you were not a land lord or exploiter of the peasants, it was said that your inheritance was a product of exploitation and therefore should be returned. And returned it was.

4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels

4. China’s history holds a story of foreign occupation by most of the world’s industrialized nations during the late 1800’s. From the early 1900’s Japan had been a constant harassing threat and occupier to the point when they launched a full scale invasion which proclaimed their involvement in the Second World War. So when the CCP came to acting on this Marxist principal, it was done eagerly. Any Chinese that were seen as collaborators with the occupiers were apprehended, stripped of their wealth and many times executed. At this point due to the earlier civil war between Chinese nationalists and the CCP, most foreign nationals had fled the country. This Marxist principal is assumedly proclaimed in an attempt to abolish levels of status and exploitation by foreign stronger forces. For under Marxism, any “controlling” force, which external intervention can only be, is exploitation, especially when the foreign force is seen to be leeching a country’s resources. Only this exploitation is on an international basis.

5. Centralization of credit in the banks of the state, by means of a national bank with state capital and an exclusive monopoly.

5. This Marxist tenet was carried out by the CCP when the revolution reached the cities. But the CCP faced the same problem here as they faced with agriculture and means of production. The Marxist approach had not allowed for the skill vacuum created by removing all “capitalists” from what was originally a capitalist pursuit. Therefore it used the same approach. Those who were an asset because of their economic skills and experience were retained in their positions after the CCP took control of the organisation and also offered these people “incentives” to continue on. The fear of this was the same once again, that offering incentives of personal gain was the same premise of individual gain and inequality that Marxism itself was attempting to abolish. These problems were later to be rectified by the “great Proletariat Cultural Revolution”.

6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the state.

6. This was easily done by the CCP without any real consequences to society or the revolution.

7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the state; the bringing into cultivation of waste lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.

7. This exercise of extending the states means of production and cultivation and improvement of land capabilities with a common plan was the basis for the great leap forward. And will discuss along with the 8th point.

8. Equal obligation of all to work. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.

8. The conversion to a Marxist socialism/communism required a “communal” approach to production. This approach saw the families of each village pooling their recourses and efforts in view of a higher return and an equality of effort. These collectives grew from the original 5-10 family work unit into at the largest scale of up to 2000 families making up a single work unit. All return from effort was to be pooled and redistributed by the state on a basis of a return of effort. Whilst this Marxist principal is fine in its premise, it was all but impossible to implement in reality. This reward as to effort overlooked skill, strength and availability. If one had the skill to operate a tractor, his reward was higher. If one was stronger and fitter, his reward was higher. If one’s work units opportunity for work was higher because of land arability or access to tools, their return was higher. This obviously necessitates a stratification of wealth and opportunity within the socialist communes and bred the resentment that occasioned the peasant revolution in the first place. It may be possible to see this Marxist principal almost an impossibility due to human and material variabilities.

The great leap forward also saw agricultural practices formed from years of experience over ruled and dictated by the central committee in order to improve land quality and further agricultural production. As per most authority gained by force as the Communist Manifesto had prescribed, lower echelons were afraid to point out the faults of the central authority. Therefore when communiqués came down the line ordering impractical agricultural methods, there was no dissent. Further more, when the return was lower than previous years the local cadres fearful of giving bad news gave vastly overblown accounts of their return. This snowballed nation wide and resulted in the famine of 1967-69, which were dubbed “the bad years”. It seems that the theory of Marxist revolution of production and methods was being sapped by the greed and self righteousness of human nature to the point where everyone was equal and free in starvation.

9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of all the distinction between town and country by a more equable distribution of the populace over the country.

9. This was probably the CCP’s hardest Marxist tenet to implement. Not only was there a class stratification due to the ownership of property (remember that the distinction was in feudal terms, not capitalist/bourgeois) but there was a huge gap between the city and rural folk in both wealth, opportunity, identity and culture. Many times the CCP attempted forced migration of city to country and restricted movement into the city. But this was never to have any success, to the point that now after China’s economic rationalization, there is still a gap between the two and heavier restrictions are being placed on rural to city movement. The CCP also used “re-education through labour” to break down any capitalist sentiments of city folk by moving them to rural labour camps. As it turns out and ironically so. It was Deng Xiao Ping who implemented China’s economic rationalization, after even he had endured years of “re-education” via rural labour.

 

[johnny]

After some time the communes were up and running and working hard to implement a great industrial leap forward in an attempt to compete with Great Britons productive dominance. Massive work parties and communal production efforts did not produce the great leap forward in production and prosperity as imagined, thus resulting in the years of famine and starvation earlier mentioned. Mao’s Marxist inclinations had proven faulty and the people of China were coming to realize this. It was then that Mao decided to regain power through the Leninist/Stalinist cult of personality embodied by the “Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution”. This is to imply that Mao had thought China industrially advanced enough to have its proletariat revolution. The Cultural Revolution enacted the Marxist tendency to be out with the old and to smash tradition. After ten years of massive social upheaval, mass death and destruction, China was left with not only many of its cultural and historical artifacts in ruins but the mid level advances in modernisation had been either destroyed or left destitute. It was now that many in the Communist party came to realize that the Sino version of Marxism/Socialism/Communism had been a complete and utter failure.

Deng Xiao Ping went on to control the central committee and dissolved the communes and work parties, denounced the “Great Proletariat Cultural Revolution” and went on to economically rationalize China towards a modern capitalist, bourgeois society.
For all its wondrous ideology, well meaning egalitarian aspirations, Marxism in China just did not work when implemented into reality. It seems the same goes for both Russia and Cuba today.

Question: If Marxism has faded as an ideology that a country can base its economic practice on, has Marxism left an enduring legacy so much so that we no longer recognize the Marxism that may well be dictating our social and economic for a today?

Marx, Karl. Engles, Freidrich. The Communist Mannifesto. Penguin, London. 1976
Ritzer, George. Goodman, Douglas. J. Sociological Theory. Sixth Edition. McGraw Hill, New York.
Lenin, Vladimir. The State and Revolution. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1917/staterev/ch01.htm#s4
Moise, Edwin. Modern China a history. Second edition. Pearson, Essex. 1994
Meisner, Maurice. Mao’s China and After. Third Edition. Free Press, New York. 1999


Only problem with this is that China is not a democracy. But there may be some info in there helpful to you.....