sigh.
...
Socialism, Revolution and Capitalist Dialectics
by Dr. K R Bolton
May 4, 2010
“Big business is by no means antipathetic to Communism. The larger big business grows the more it approximates to Collectivism. It is the upper road of the few instead of the lower road of the masses to Collectivism.”—H. G. Wells.[1]
The Marxist premise was that
socialism must proceed from a capitalist economy.
Hence Marx wrote in The Communist Manifesto:
National differences and antagonisms between peoples
are daily more and more vanishing, owing to the development of the bourgeoisie, to freedom of commerce, to the world market, to uniformity in the modern of production and in the conditions of life corresponding thereto. The supremacy of the proletariat will cause them to vanish faster.[3]
Marx further stated:
Generally speaking, the protectionist system today is conservative,
whereas the Free Trade system has a destructive effect. It destroys the former nationalities, and renders the contrasts between workers and middle class more acute. In a word,
the Free Trade system is precipitating the social revolution. And only in this revolutionary sense do I vote for Free Trade.[4]
In Marx’s own day, he saw the then dominant and newly emerging Free Trade School as part of a necessary dialectical process of history that makes more acute the antagonism between the classes, internationalizes the proletariat and indeed as “precipitating the social revolution.”
...
Lenin instituted the New Economic Policy for the purpose of bringing Russia, hitherto still undeveloped industrially, into the stage of
industrial development required as the prerequisite for building socialism, and opened the new Soviet state to foreign capital.[5] Today, the Chinese leadership can rationalize capitalist economic innovations on the basis that China must first develop a certain economic phase
before proceeding to a fuller socialist economy. Vietnam at the moment, after having spent much of its history fighting for sovereignty against foreign domination, whether it be that of ancient China, or colonial France, or the American presence, now succumbs to the global economic development model and has entered the world economy, subjecting herself to World Bank and International Monetary Fund “guidance” and “advice”, and having 42% of its GDP
serving debt, which the World Bank assures us is an acceptable debt level.[6] Here again Vietnam’s leadership is within the Marxian dialectical framework of
building its economy through capitalist structures and debt as a prelude to socialism and ultimately to communism, assuming that a state once becoming part of the international financial structure can ever remove itself.
...
Capitalism and Dialectics
What is not generally recognized is that capitalism also has a dialectical approach to history. In this dialectical capitalism, the synthesis that is supposed to emerge is a “Brave New World”
centralized world economy controlled not by commissars and a politburo but by technocrats and boards of directors. A strategy of dialectics means backing movements in the short term to achieve quite different, even opposite goals, in the long term. Hence the rationale behind capitalists supporting socialist and even communist movements, as will be shown. As stated above H. G. Wells opined—approvingly—at the time of the Bolshevik Revolution that
Big Business and communism are both paths to the same end—”Collectivism.” The “socialistic” orientation of certain capitalists at the apex of the world economy is exemplified by a statement by the late Nelson Rockefeller of the famous capitalist dynasty: “I’m a great believer in planning. Economic, social, political, military, total world planning.”[7]
Socialism, Revolution and Capitalist Dialectics | Foreign Policy Journal
etc.
they plan.
centuries in advance.