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Insofar as millions of families live under conditions of existence that separate their mode of life, their interests, and their culture from those of the other classes, and put them in hostile opposition to the latter, they form a class. Insofar as there is merely a local interconnection among these small-holding peasants, and the identity of their interests forms no community, no national bond, and no political organization among them, they do not constitute a class. They are therefore incapable of asserting their class interest in their own name, whether through a parliament or a convention. They cannot represent themselves, they must be represented. Their representative must at the same time appear as their master, as an authority over them, an unlimited governmental power which protects them from the other classes and sends them rain and sunshine from above. The political influence of the small-holding peasants, therefore, finds its final expression in the executive power which subordinates society to itself.
Marx, 18th Brumaire of Louis NapoleonCaesar, Planet of the Apes
depends on what you mean. pursuit of one’s self-interest is fine, and not actually avoidable.
misidentification of your individual self-interest as seperate from that of others is bad. The key is that “individualism” and “collectivism” aren’t actually opposites.
If individualism is taking a shower, brushing your teeth and going to school then it’s not a bad thing.
If individualism is blaming individuals for collective failures then its bad. Margaret Thatcher is infamous for saying “there is no such thing as a society”.
Eg. Look at jobs. Let’s say the market demands 100 jobs but the amount of people who want a job is 150. Then there is nothing any individual can do to ensure that there is full employment. 50 people will remain unemployed without collective action. The neoliberal “solution” would be to train the unemployed, turning it into an individual not having skills. However, training doesn’t create more jobs because jobs are determined by various other factors like total demand for goods backed by ability to pay. You are just swapping people in and out of employment. One person gets a job another loses it, at the end 50 people stay jobless.
The cornerstone of Marxism, however, is the masses, whose emancipation, according to its tenets, is the principal condition for the emancipation of the individual. That is to say, according to the tenets of Marxism, the emancipation of the individual is impossible until the masses are emancipated. Accordingly, its slogan is: “Everything for the masses.”
J.V Stalin, Anarchism of Socialism.
There is no, nor should there be, irreconcilable contrast between the individual and the collective, between the interests of the individual person and the interests of the collective. There should be no such contrast, because collectivism, socialism, does not deny, but combines individual interests with the interests of the collective. Socialism cannot abstract itself from individual interests. Socialist society alone can most fully satisfy these personal interests. More than that; socialist society alone can firmly safeguard the interests of the individual. In this sense there is no irreconcilable contrast between “individualism” and socialism. But can we deny the contrast between classes, between the propertied class, the capitalist class, and the toiling class, the proletarian class?
On the one hand we have the propertied class which owns the banks, the factories, the mines, transport, the plantations in colonies. These people see nothing but their own interests, their striving after profits.
They do not submit to the will of the collective; they strive to subordinate every collective to their will. On the other hand we have the class of the poor, the exploited class, which owns neither factories nor works, nor banks, which is compelled to live by selling its labour power to the capitalists which lacks the opportunity to satisfy its most elementary requirements. How can such opposite interests and strivings be reconciled? As far as I know, Roosevelt has not succeeded in finding the path of conciliation between these interests. And it is impossible, as experience has shown. Incidentally, you know the situation in the United States better than I do as I have never been there and I watch American affairs mainly from literature. But I have some experience in fighting for socialism, and this experience tells me that if Roosevelt makes a real attempt to satisfy the interests of the proletarian class at the expense of the capitalist class, the latter will put another president in his place. The capitalists will say : Presidents come and presidents go, but we go on forever; if this or that president does not protect our interests, we shall find another. What can the president oppose to the will of the capitalist class?
J.V. Stalin, Marxism vs. Liberalism
But I have some experience in fighting for socialism
Love how understated he is in his writings.
The capitalists will say : Presidents come and presidents go, but we go on forever; if this or that president does not protect our interests, we shall find another.
I wonder if he knew about the business plot already at this time, or if it’s your standard communist Cassandra powers
Was lookin’ at this thread, thinkin’ “all the bullshit amercanism spews about LIFE LIBERTY AND THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS, the individualist bullshit, all the stuff you could actually want or need from that is achieveable through collectivism eventually anyway” and it turns out some old guy with a big moustache came to that conclusion decades before I was born.
Doing shit that is for your benefit, fuck everyone else results in poor outcomes for society.
