Karl Marx Was Really a Free-Marketeer, Says Attali: Interview

[white_wolf]

I saw this on another forum and I thought I'd post it here.

"Attali argues that the theoretician widely blamed for the rise and fall of the Soviet Union was actually a free-marketeer who favored capitalism as a stepping stone to his communist ideal and predicted globalization as we know it today."



http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=amki8cR5MF34&refer=culture

[Bogart]

1. He did study Adam Smith and David Ricardo and may have been influenced by them...

Regrettably, he wasn't influenced enough and proceeded to waste his efforts on nonsense like the labor theory of value, which is demonstrably false.

[white_wolf]

2. If Labor does not create value, then what does?

And how is it demonstrably false?

[Bogart]

6. C-mon man, I did not say that labor does not create value.

To ensure that we are working from the same definition, Marx's theory, as understand it, is simple: the value of a commodity can be objectively measured by the average number of labor hours required to produce it. For example: If a pair of shoes takes twice as long to produce as writing a genetic algorithm, the shoes are twice as valuable as the algorithm.

Aside from the obvious fallacy that all skill sets are of equal value, it has long been demonstrated that entrepreneurial capitalists earn profits by forgoing current consumption, by taking risks, and by organizing and efficiently managing production.

[joshcryer]

10. That's not LTV. LTV says "value orginates from labor, therefore the laborer determines..."

..."its value."

The STV says "value originates from the market, therefore the owners determine the value."

Adam Smith agrees with LTV in principle, however, he merely points out that LTV cedes to STV because laborers will use market mechanisms to determine what value is. This is why Adam Smith isn't really "against" collectives or coops sharing their labor equally and this taking the rewards equally.

A modern anarchist like me would say "value originates from energy, and energy is plentiful, thus nothing has value."

[Bogart]

24. If "value originates from the market...," then consumers are the ultimate arbitrators of value.

Because without consumers, there is no market.

[joshcryer]

29. Yet, that doesn't tell us who should determine value. The owner or the laborer?

LTV says the laborer. STV says the owner who may not necessarily be the laborer. But since the STV is a subset of LTV, it is, assuredly, the laborer, in an equitable and fair system.

[joshcryer]

3. I second white_wolf's query.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

20. Why is the Labor Theory of Value "demonstrably false?"

[Bogart]

25. Because it does not account for the inequitable distribution of intelligence and beauty.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

27. How do you define intelligence and beauty?

That seems pretty arbitrary to determine what LTV accounts for, doesn't it?

[Starry Messenger]

28. What role do those qualities play in social production, which is the labor in capitalism?

That is, the mass production of good and services that society produces together with collective labor, ie. commodities. The LTV only concerns itself with mass labor under capitalism, not with individual production and merchandizing of unique products.

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2010/05/13/law-of-value-3-das-mudpie/

Marx was very clear that labor has to be useful labor to create value. Yet he didn’t think that is was this usefulness that creates value. Labor has been doing useful things for millennia. All societies are made up of useful labor. Marx calls this useful labor that makes up a society “social labor”. The organization of this social labor differs from society to society. In a capitalist society this social labor is organized through the commodity exchange: the products of labor are assigned market values and the fluctuations of these values coordinate the social labor process. This is a way of organizing social labor unique to capitalism and it has all sorts of unique properties that other forms of social labor don’t have. The usefulness of labor is not what is specific to capitalism. Value is. Hence, usefulness is not what Marx interested in talking about. Value is.

<snip>

If individual value and social value diverge what does this mean? Some people think that Marx held that individual value had to equal social value, that if I spend 15 hours making a sandwich then this has to be the value of the sandwich. But this is not at all what Marx argued. Marx wanted to show how individual values become social values in a market society. Unlike other forms of production in which we labor directly for use, in a capitalist society we labor to produce value. Yet society must still use the products of our labor. We can’t all make the same thing or all make useless things. Labor must be apportioned between the right tasks in the right proportions. Value is the mechanism that does this since value is the only connection between individual laborers. Marx sought to explain how value acted as a force for the regulation of individual labor, turning individual labor into social labor.

[The fact that social value differs from individual value is not a defect to Marx's analysis. It is the mechanism by which value asserts itself. How else could labor be apportioned between tasks in a society where labor is only indirectly social? The very fact that we have a field called economics in the first place is because the transformation of private labor into social labor is a mysterious, invisible one, it's law-like properties hidden behind constant fluctuations of market prices.]

The fact that we discover the social value of our individual labor in the market creates the illusion that it is the market itself which is creating value. We bring the objects of our labor to market and there they are turned into money, making it seem like the subjective decisions between buyers and sellers are what create these money prices. This is what is being insinuated by the Mudpie argument: that it is the subjective valuation of the usefulness of a commodity that determines its value, not the labor that goes into it. Yet this is an illusion, a fetish created by the fact that our labor is indirectly social.

http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/2011/11/15/law-of-value-8-subjectobject/

Private labor is the amount of labor an individual worker devotes to the production of a commodity. The goal of the worker is for her private labor to become social labor, that is, that her commodity be sold in the market and thus be equated with all the other commodities in the market, making her labor part of the total social labor of society. But this isn’t so easy. Because production is only coordinated through the fluctuation of market signals, it is always uncertain whether commodities will be sold, and whether private labor will become social labor.

<snip>

...in order for private labor to become social it must produce at the socially necessary labor time. SNLT is a way in which the social level of productivity acts back upon the private labor of the individual, disciplining the individual to work at the social average

[joshcryer]

4. I believe that ultimately Marx's theory set back socialism by a century because of this.

Attali thinks that Marx's view is due to be inevitable, the grand historical materialism roadmap, if you will. I don't buy it.

[PETRUS]

5. Do you mean this view (inevitability) provides an excuse for inaction?

Can someone with better knowledge of Marx than I have provide commentary on the article linked in the OP?

[joshcryer]

8. No, the basis for capitalism as the foundation means that you actually give capitalism...

...a platform, you allow capitalism to be effectively legitimized. Then what happens is, as you try to "transition away" from capitalism, the crony-aspects of capitalist hegemony are merely absorbed by the state apparatus.

It's nothing sinister, it's just how humans are. If you are a party leader, and the people want to democratize, you will want to maintain the party leadership, so you instate oppressive policies that don't allow people to freely socially democratize.

Marx's views on property and labor relationships was not new, what Marx brought to the table was Historical Materialism which basically lays out the basis for how all societies are. It's extremely specious at best, and neglects technological advancement (he couldn't have predicted that technology would have advanced the way it has).

It also leads to the concept that production is the basis for inter-human relationships, I would argue (and perhaps that is what is being argued by the author in the OP, the interview doesn't necessarily indicate that, however). This is a strictly capitalist view of human relationships, which is why anarchists are about moral or ethical practices as opposed to analytical approach. We accept that not everything can be blueprinted and planned to excruciating details, and we leave it up to the people to decide.

The Party then falls to the wayside and we don't have to worry about the natural apparatuses' that prevent people in positions of authority from giving it up in order for socialism to truly flourish.

[Bogart]

7. It is difficult to "buy" much of anything that was clearly the most tragic failure

of the twentieth century. Rather than performing as advertised--to remedy the economic and moral defects of capitalism, it has far surpassed capitalism in both economic malfunction and moral cruelty.

The funny thing is that while Marx is credited for the "idea" of socialism, he wrote very little about either a moral or a practical blueprint for it. The true architect of the original socialist blueprint was Lenin. Within the first four years of the Utopian plan he instituted, Soviet production had fallen to 14% of its pre-1917 levels. Subsequently, Stalin instituted a new Utopian blueprint for the Soviet people, a.k.a., forced collectivization, which resulted in the death 20 million Russians.

Nevertheless, the idea and the ideal of a socialist Utopia somehow linger on. Unlike children who eventually discover that the tooth-fairy does not exist, many adults continue to believe of castles in the sky.

[joshcryer]

9. The LTV was a logical construction, even Adam Smith agrees with the LTV.

The LTV is in fact not controversial, at all. Modern variants would be ETV (Energy Theory of Value), but they're all based on the same approach, that other human beings should not own the labor which they themselves do not possess, otherwise you have to invent a system to control that labor (or energy), and that system itself is an arbitrary invention of humanity. It all comes down to the old philosophical idea "Where does property originate?" There are plenty of theories. God gave it to us. Society gave it to us. So on and so forth. The only logical consistency is that 1) non-possessive property is a social construction that is very rare in nature and 2) that the only valid form of property that doesn't require an arbitrary enforcement mechanism (Kings, warlords, governments, police, etc) is possessive property.

Stalinist "socialism" was in fact a different kind of capitalism, as far as anarchists are concerned. The government nationalization and controlling of everything is, to anarchists, not fundamentally different from a large corporation doing the same.

Let me give you an example. You want to protest a large corporation because they killed someone you loved. You go to their building and you start protesting. They get security guards, they then call the police and have you arrested for trespassing. You want to protest the government because a family member died because health insurance doesn't cover dental and they got a bad infection. You go to a local government office and start protesting, on public property. The government then brings in the police and has you trotted off for disobeying some arbitrary ordinance. No difference. None whatsoever. Which is why I am against these sorts of systems, and it doesn't win me any favors with other more state orientated socialists, because they think I'm agreeing with the right wing when I bash Cuba's policing methods or Venezuela's policing methods. No, I am consistent in that I decry it when a corporation does it and I decry it when a state does it. They're not fundamentally different.

[LooseWilly]

11. I would agree— many, "like children", believe in sky-castle utopias: I call them Democrat Apologists

I find it funny when I glance through Wiki on the subject looking for a terse nugget to express the disdain with which Marx treated utopians... and I find this. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utopian_socialism)

Definition

The utopian socialist thinkers did not use the term utopian to refer to their ideas. Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels referred to all socialist ideas that were simply a vision and distant goal for society as utopian.

...

A key difference between "utopian socialists" and other socialists (including most anarchists) is that utopian socialists generally don't feel class struggle or political revolutions are necessary to implement their ideas; that people of all classes might voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it were presented convincingly.[1] They often feel their form of cooperative socialism can be established among like-minded people within the existing society and establish small enterprises designed to demonstrate their plan for society.

The description sounds to me like the "all classes might voluntarily adopt their plan for society if it were presented convincingly" utopians who frown on OWS tactics of port closures, and who argue that capitalism works but just needs to be regulated... the current line of the Democratic party. I would say it also seems to (and here I disagree with the exclusion of anarchists from the ranks of the utopians in the Wiki) include the strategy of "moral and ethical" emphasis being espoused by joshcryer in this thread... dropping his anarchism soundly into the "utopian bucket" along with all those who would argue that the "ideal" can be reached without the forced collectivization and likely many deaths that Stalin resorted to.

There, I said it. I think Stalin was right. I think the failure of the USSR stemmed from the consequent efforts to undo the work Stalin had done before the changes he wrought could "truly take root" in the society.

[joshcryer]

12. I'm having a hard time following that. OWS is, at its heart, "cooperative socialism established...

...among like-minded people within the existing society."

OWS will, eventually, adapt and form its own alternates within our society, they will not result in political reform, nor will they act as an aggressive force and cause a civil war. They will be a long term anti-political force that may or may not result in significant change, that will have to be seen. I'm optimistic.

The failure of the USSR started in the beginning. One need only look at the Petropavlovsk resolution preceeding the Kronstadt rebellion, which wanted to democratize the entire system. The people in Kronstadt had already "voluntarily adopted their plan for society if it were presented convincingly." But those very people who used "forced collectivization and likely many deaths" against Kronstadt completely destroyed the entire society. By orders from Trotsky himself.

They wanted to democratize and socialize. They fought for it. The "hard hand" of "communism" is a farce. Stalin was wrong, Lenin was wrong, Trotsky was wrong.

You don't create OWS by chaining everyone and forcing them to be the way they already are. As soon as you do that, OWS will die. Just as Kronstadt did.

Humans will do it spontaneously. If there is any system on the planet that keeps cropping up without outside forces, but rather from within, it's the spirit of this libertarian democratic socialism.

[LooseWilly]

16. Long live "libertarian democratic socialism"? In the form of up-cropping iterations? Utopian much?

OWS is a movement, not a society. It is direction and velocity, not a destination in-and-of-itself. A movement is not socialism... it can be a means of achieving (or attempting to achieve/establish) socialism, but socialism can't exist within a movement that has no economic system— because socialism isn't a "state of mind", it is an economic system.

Perhaps some form of socialism prevailed within the OWS camps, but calling the OWS movement itself "cooperative socialism" is kind of like opportunistically pimping out the term "socialism" for a "rhetorical buck" ... if you ask me. It takes socialism and uses it as a label for anything cooperative— which may be a utopian use of the term but it certainly isn't a scientific use of it.

As for your assertions about the USSR— I can't help but marvel at your willingness to consider the issue as if it existed within a vacuum... a geo-political vacuum in which US and UK forces weren't enforcing a blockade on all trade and supplies while simultaneously training and arming "resistance fighters" as well as inserting troops of their own to fight and destabilize the incipient regime.

The calls of the Petropavlovsk resolution would've been all well and nice if there weren't forces trying to undermine the new Soviet Union and re-establish a state in which capital would not be threatened ideationally around the world...

Instead— you are essentially asserting that, having successfully fought a revolution to overthrow the most reactionary government in Europe, the Bolsheviks should have agreed to, while being threatened by Western capitalist/imperialist forces and proxy forces, disbanding and allowing any and all parties to compete in a completely free and "liberal" election to determine how power would be re-established.

A very anarchist-friendly dream, to be sure... but who, in your scenario, would've kept the imperialist forces at bay while this freewheeling election took place? The sailors of Kronstadt, without any leaders? (The officers would surely, by the logic of your own assertion that the petition should've been accepted, also have had to resign their positions... else the petition would simply have amounted to a request that the Bolsheviks surrender unconditionally.)

The people of Kronstadt hadn't accepted anything... they were just rebelling against the idea of having to share their foodstuffs in a re-distribution plan necessitated by a host of circumstances at the time (not all of which necessarily reflect a genius-in-all-things by Lenin and the Bolsheviks). They wanted to democratize the way the Tea Party wants to democratize... in the sense that they wanted to re-establish a perceived affluence from an earlier time.

The Kronstadt rebels were wrong... or as wrong as the hungry ever are. The actions of Stalin led to progressively less and less necessity to employ force to enforce the state's power to re-distribute resources as necessary while industrial and economic development work was carried out.

Maybe, if Lenin had taken over a portion of a new continent that was outside the reach of any contemporary imperialists to interfere with, then a more organic and free-electing form of socialism could've been implemented— but Lenin wasn't blessed with the geography presented to Brigham Young... with only an ineffectual early 19th century US military and some scattered pre-industrialized tribes of nomadic societies to contend with— rather than the US and UK industrialized militaries which had just been honed to extreme veteran status by a mobilization and several years long World War with a major industrial power.

Likewise, OWS isn't facing some token resistance to its goals, but is rather "in the heart of the beast". Nonetheless— they aren't socialism. And they certainly aren't libertarian democratic socialism.

They are a movement striving for change... but I'm not the one trying to chain them to anything— especially not libertarian democratic socialism.

On the other hand... if the movement is going to engender socialism, it's not going to be a cooperative system "established among like minded people within the existing society"... because socialism can't exist "within" the existing society. Socialism requires making a new society. And a free voting populace, immediately on the heels of the unmaking of a familiar society, are prone to vote for something familiar... and therefore like the old society— and that is the threat that you so persistently ignore.

[joshcryer]

17. Trotsky's lies were just that, lies. Kronstadt was real, it wasn't an "imperialist...

...invention." Imperialism being, of course, the "socialists" "Emmanuel Goldstein." It's worked well for them for almost a century, and I'm sure it will continue working well for them for a long time yet.

The Petropavlovsk resolution was a perfectly reasonable request. Elections, freedom of speech, what wonderful concepts, that completely should never be given up due to fears from external forces. Hell, even centrist liberals understand that, because of their push back against the patriot act, and other oppressive laws due to "terrorism." Ironically, we understand that "terrorism" is used as a sort of new kind of "Emmanuel Goldstein" yet living within a system that invokes it so easily, we fail to appreciate how "imperialism" is, and has been, used as such.

The Soviets were not afraid of "sharing their foodstuffs." They wanted equality. Hell, Petropavlovsk itself says that all rations should've been equalized, because the Bolsheviks themselves were maintaining an army using up all of the rations via prodrazvyorstka. The entire country was under control of the Red Army and was experiencing a kind of oppression never before seen to any society thenceforth except for perhaps the Germans or North Koreans. It was so bad at one point even strikers themselves could be persecuted (like any good capitalist country would do), this is partially what pushed Petropavlovsk into being.

Anyway, socialism can be an economic and political system. OWS is certainly politically socialist.

[LooseWilly]

18. Socialism can be a political system? Don't we call socialism, as a political system, democracy?

And likewise... democracy as an economic system is— socialism.

OWS is neither. Both are terms used to describe a political or economic system in place in a state— a place.

OWS is not a place.

Socialism and Democracy are not "states of mind". They are not aspirations, though they may be states aspired to.

Trotsky's lies were whatever they were, I am not concerned with them, or defending them. (And, just to be clear... you are calling imperialism socialism's "Emma Goldstein"?... as if Western Imperialism were some sort of fictional boogey man faced by the USSR? Am I getting that right?)

The Petropavlovsk Resolution called for equalization of rations... and then some (http://www.marxists.org/history/ussr/organisations/1921/02/28.htm)

8. To remove all road block detachments immediately; {Armed squads which confiscated food that was illegally purchased from the peasantry.}

9. To equalize the rations of all working people, with the exception of those employed in trades detrimental to health;

10. To abolish the Communist fighting detachments in all branches of the army, as well as Communist guards kept on duty in factories and mills. Should such guards or detachments be found necessary, they [are] to be appointed in the army from the ranks and in the factories and mills at the discretion of the workers;

So the resolution called for a stop to the stopping of illegal purchasing of food from (and selling by) the peasantry... equalizing food (taking food back from the army that was now left to turn and face the external imperialist pressures that opposed their victory over the czar & his peoples)... and for the abolishment of all the Bolshevik units in the army (surrender by victors in the revolution, pretty please).

Now that's some Utopian ass shit, you ask me. "Perfectly reasonable"? Not so much. Counter Revolutionary? Yeah, pretty much.

If some Loyalists in New York had sent a similar resolution to Washington and the Congressional Congress— are we to suppose it would've been honored? In 1777, with British troops still apt to land and re-impose colonial rule, would all Congressional troop units have been abolished and a vote to re-establish colonial rule been honored at the request of some citizens in Raleigh?

Hell, Lincoln wouldn't even allow secession four score and eight years later, would he?

And comparing Al Qaeda today with US and UK expeditionary forces in the 1920s is laughable.

[joshcryer]

19. Yes, imperialism would've had little effect had Petropavlovsk been inacted.

The Communist guards were to be kept on duty where it mattered (as per Petropavlovsk), and imperialism would've been fraught with trying to take over the democratically controlled workers factories. Instead the central Bolshevik system decided that those factories should be run by central committees, of whom were nothing but a different form of aristocracy.

You defend Trotsky's lies when the entire "imperialist threat" was predicated on pure lies. Calling the rebellion a "French counterintelligence" coup, for example. Purely made up bullshit. Petrograd was sympathizing with Kronstadt, which is why Trotsky made up his bullshit. The almighty party couldn't dare even attempt to allow the people, working from the bottom up, to implement socialism.

Meanwhile the Communist government was making concessions with the "foreign imperialists" while the proletariat was treated like garbage, internally. Petrograd was even forced into martial law so that they couldn't materially assist Kronstadt. Quite a few historians view Kronstadt as the ultimate in peoples socialism.

After the October Revolution the entire elective democratic system was abolished, the Cheka were put into place to suppress everything. Compulsory military service, death sentence for objectors, forced labor, agrarian and industrial conscription of the peasantry, the suppression of worker protest, the list goes on. The whole thing was paternalistic to the core, the Russian people were treated as children that the Almighty System Must Control. Complete absurdity.

The anarchists were against it from the start, they knew the result (and let us not pretend history did not prove them correct, as they most certainly were). When the Bolsheviks cracked down on the anarchists in Moscow for protesting against their policies, Kronstadt sided with the anarchists (this was a few years before the rebellion, and but one of the things that put Kronstadt at risk).

When OWS style workers protests swept Petrograd (Petrograd Assembly of Plenipotentiaries), and they were suppressed and their rations denied, Kronstadt had enough. It was very shortly after that Kronstadt decided they were going to make a stand against such tyranny.

OWS is a movement, sure, you can use whatever pedantry you wish. OWS, like Petrograd Assembly, does stand for equality and justice. You can make some sort of specious claims that the Petrograd Assembly wasn't socialist because it wasn't "a political or economic system in place in a state" but I think anyone reading this knows what I mean when I say they both are "socialist." Sure, they are not socialist states, they are socialist in spirit. And when the state does oppress these 'movements' it should be decried, and not justified because we have a convenient Emmanuel Goldstein at our disposal to do so.

1: any of various economic and political theories advocating collective or governmental ownership and administration of the means of production and distribution of goods
2 a : a system of society or group living in which there is no private property b : a system or condition of society in which the means of production are owned and controlled by the state
3: a stage of society in Marxist theory transitional between capitalism and communism and distinguished by unequal distribution of goods and pay according to work done

You'll note that the "state" requirement here only fits half of these definitions, one of which is Marxist.

[Fantastic Anarchist]

21. Marx wasn't the first guy "credited for the idea of socialism."

There were many more before him ... and there were many who opposed his specific view.

[joshcryer]

22. Unfortunately, we didn't nip it in the bud. I think Marx's theories...

...would've been fine had we not allowed them to be "implemented" in ways that were authoritarian. But your recent OP pretty much underscores that. To Marx's credit, outside of historical materialism, he did not prescribe a significant path toward communism.

It all really falls apart with his overt advocacy of the vanguard (which in theory is amazing, in practice falls apart; and believe me when I say this, I was a true advocate of the vanguard for many years, even after I realized I most identified with anarchism, it was extremely hard to "let go&quot .

[Fantastic Anarchist]

23. It really is ...

But the two most important events that we should learn from are:

The Paris Commune (which Marx began to revisit his earlier ideas about a so-called state and vanguard).
The Russian Revolution (which vindicated both Proudhon and Bakunin regarding utilizing the state to effect revolution - and of course Lenin's obsession with the vanguard theorized by Marx).

It should be noted that Marx (when he admired Proudhon and looked to him for guidance) lifted Proudhon's ideas on "scientific socialism" and took them as his own. Marx's ambition then allowed him to turn on Proudhon and erect a straw man against Proudhon's "Philosophy of Misery" with his own polemic, "Misery of Philosophy."

So, yeah, there's that ...

[Bogart]

26. I agree, he was not the first, but he was the most prominent.

[Starry Messenger]

13. I've seen variations of this argument before.

It comes from not understanding (or deliberately not understanding) the materialist process for writing about society. Marx was simply stating the stages of human society and their economic forms and how the processes led from one to the next in a pattern that could help explain the how the forces of society function. He did say that capitalism was an improvement over feudalism, which it was. It unleashed the productive forces of humanity in an incredible manner and human society took a qualitative leap. No one who looks at history could deny that there were progressive achievements of capitalism that could not have functioned under feudalism. He is acknowledging that they existed and were improvements. The subject of the interview leaves out huge parts where Marx also tells the bad side of what happened to create "private property" and how workers are exploited, etc. He wasn't in favor of keeping it, lol.

Marx's writings about the American Civil War are a good example of Marx writing about the development of Capitalism in a region as a progressive leap forward towards socialist goals. The Marxists were strongly opposed to Southern slavery* and also maintained that it was holding back the progress of American society by its very existence, because labor in bondage is both cruel and racist, and also cannot join the free labor of the wage-earning working class. They observed that the labor movement was at a standstill at that time in the US because of the distorting effect of the slave-ocracy and the slave labor economy. Once the slaves were freed, Capitalism was free to develop along a less distorted and productive path. (Of course, the corrosive effects of racism are still in existence to divide the workers, but the first stone was loosened.) But if you were to stop at that place in the story, you'd think he was applauding the rise of the success of American Capitalism. But what he's saying is that Capitalism needs to develop to a point where the working class is strengthened to take on its historical task--eventually ending Capitalism.

*(Little known fact: one of Lincoln's Union Army Colonels was a Marxist and personal friend of Marx himself-http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Weydemeyer)

[joshcryer]

14. The aristocracy didn't end with capitalism, though.

Which is basically why most anarchists I know don't see an "improvement" of capitalism over feudalism. Capitalist serfdom is still very real.

[Starry Messenger]

15. No, it isn't an abrupt break.

You are correct. But feudalism had decayed to the point where it could no longer make society function, and the aristocracy no longer fulfills that function today. Our news headlines are not filled with the dealings of the crowned heads of this and that. Capitalism was an "improvement" in as much as it was the inevitable stage after feudalism, it arose in that society in an embryo form. The ruling class of bourgeois took the place of the aristocracy, but with their own ruling class ideas. Some of them are remnants of feudalism, and some of them are their own creation--like the Enlightenment. They are still oppressive, but their ideals have been transmitted to the working class that they oppress.

Unfortunately for them, the workers want their slice of "Life, Liberty and The Pursuit of Happiness", even though the bourgeois never intended it for them. Of course, the nobles had never intended for the Burgers to have political power, and that didn't work out very well for the nobles. But the balance of forces and conflicts is very uneven, it is true. Different national conditions lead to different balances of social forces.