Communism, Socialism, Distributivism, Capitalism, & Christianity
Your religious views are conservative (and the fact that you have strong religious views, which isn't common among leftists, these days)
— Bitter Crank
Quoting Agustino
It is true that nowadays most people on the left do not hold conservative religious positions. However, is that because there is something that makes religious/social conservatism inherently, or in principle, anti-left? Or is it merely because people on the left simply don't happen to be religious on average?
European Values Study.EU:About half of all the Europeans pray or meditate at least once a week. Three out of four Europeans say they are religious persons. Of course, there is a big gap between the more secularized north-western European countries and the more traditional south-eastern ones. ...
However, people who consider themselves as atheists are a small minority, except in France, where almost 15 percent say they are atheist. It is obvious that a vast majority of all the Europeans nominate themselves as religious persons. There are even more people who consider themselves as religious as there are people who attend church. It is a kind of 'believing without belonging'.
This EU study suggests that the difference between American and European religious belief may not be all that different. Religion--in one guise or another--seems to play a larger public role in the United States than in the EU.
Whatever conservative Christians believe, conservative religion tends to have different uses for political purposes than liberal religion does. Part of this is geographical. Southern Europe and Southern US have both had more conservative, even fascistic, politics and conservative religion. Conservative religionists tend to hold authority, self sufficiency, tradition, and so on in higher regard than liberal, social activist traditions more typical of northwestern
Europe and northern United States. Liberal religionists tend to be collectively socially activist, perhaps more egalitarian, less oriented towards personal wealth. Liberal political practices are more congenial to northern-type religious beliefs.
Leftist politics which is supposed to be more egalitarian propose major reorganization of society, which is received well by liberal religionists who tend to think in terms of building a better society. There is less emphasis in liberal religion on personal piety.
A good many people on the left probably do hold some religious views, but are more likely to be atheists OR to disavow their religious beliefs in the company of fellow leftists.
Comments (52)
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No one would take you for a hard line communist, or even a fuzzy, cushioned, soft-line communist.
— Bitter Crank
Quoting Agustino
Socialists may embrace entrepreneurialism, communists traditionally are not so willing. Some of us socialists would happily take all your value producing property away from you. You can keep your apartment, pots and pans, and your car IF there is no public transit available.
The Left is a continuum just like all other politics. On the extreme left one has tight-grip communism, on the liberal left you have a somewhat loose-grip Laissez-faire liberal social democratic approach. "The Left" to the extent that it is a working, mutually understood term, subsumes communism, socialism, distributivism, and liberal-left politics, a la 1968.
We would need to flesh out what distributivism means. I don't think Day would have confused the CP-USA of the 1930s with Catholic distributivism. For one thing, after her brief involvement with the CP-USA, an abortion, a common-law relationship and her out-of-wedlock daughter, she reorganized her thinking. She became an ardent Roman Catholic, but one who liked social activist priests and liberal theologians, and an immersion in serving the very poor.
— Bitter Crank
Quoting Agustino
It's not complicated: The United States has a long history of a very conservative politics based on protecting and promoting the prerogatives of private wealth, private enterprise, suppression of social dissent, anti-black, anti-poor, anti-labor (especially organized labor), anti-activist state power, and anti-intellectualism. It has run on separate tracks next to liberal politics, sometimes in power, sometimes not, but always there.
For instance, after the Russian Revolution of 1917, and the end of WWI, the US experienced a wave of right-wing terrorism directed at labor organizers and black activists. There were lynchings of a few white labor organizers, and black ones too. At the same time, the second version of the Ku Klux Klan arose, and waded into the mainstream of right-wing politics. White conservatives, especially from the south, vehemently opposed Franklin Delano Roosevelt's New Deal programs of social security, unemployment insurance, federal housing support, Works Progress Administration, and so on.
The right-wing of the Republican Party has kept on its agenda for 80 years getting rid of the New Deal programs, Medicare, Medicaid, and Obama Care. The penultimate major effort was a proposal under George Bush II to privatize Social Security, and the most recent one is gutting Obama Care.
So, Agustino, the Right Wing views with some horror the regulatory apparatus of the EU, the extensive social programs, the number of holidays and paid vacations, government funded universal health programs, and so on.
The interesting thing is that black churches in the US tend to hold conservative religious views similar to those of white evangelicals, outside of racial issues.
For instance, gay black and bisexual black men are taking the brunt of the HIV epidemic, at this point. One of the barriers to doing education and intervention is the conservative black religious leadership/membership, which can't quite deal with queer black boys--or that some of their presumably straight men are also screwing each other.
There are a lot of conservative values in the poor black population -- just as there are a lot of conservative values among poor whites -- or the working class black/white population.
We say (i've said it many times) that working class people are shooting themselves in both feet by taking on conservative values--not like hard work and honesty, but the goodness of entrepreneurial prerogatives, the prerogatives of wealth, cannibalistic capitalism, et all. Well, they've been force-fed this crap from the get go in church, school, advertising, TV shows, movies, et al. They didn't just sort through the ideological options and decide to shoot themselves in the foot.
:-O - why distributivism? Distributism sounds simpler. This series of videos here is a good introduction. I link to this particular video, but you can watch from episode 1:
The wiki page is otherwise quite detailed for an introduction: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributism
Distributism is similar to other left ideologies like communism, except that it prizes the individual over and above society, and society is aimed to be merely a servant to the individual (each individual). As such private property becomes very important, and also its wide distribution or availability.
These are opposites. However, I would say that the American religious conservative values authority in matters of religion but self-sufficiency in matters economic and social life. For the religious liberal, it is the reverse: he values authority in matters of economic and social life and self-sufficiency in matters of religion.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It's interesting to me that one finds no socially conservative, fiscal liberals (in the American sense of these terms). I still have sympathies for market socialism, which sounds like an oxymoron, but is in fact a thing, as well as distributism, both of which are not all that dissimilar or opposed to capitalism classically understood.
The left strawmans capitalism, confusing it with corporatism, while the right strawmans socialism, confusing it with command economics. In reality, capitalism and socialism are not opposed. That is to say, private property and the free market are not opposed to cooperative ownership of enterprises.
This isn't really true. The hardcore left just assumes that private ownership, business and economic life generally are evils. They actually quite like corporatism - they enjoy working for corporations. What they dislike, at least many of them, are forms of entrepreneurship it seems. They would love it if one corporation owned everything and we all worked for it.
They do hate the 1% people, Wall Street and big banks. But they don't hate multinationals like Facebook, Google, etc. These companies are full of leftists.
Well, in a sense there are quite a few socially conservative, fiscally liberal people in national office. Someone said a presidentiad or two ago, "We're all Keynesians now." Social conservatives are as ready to vote for deficit spending as fiscal liberals. Christ, the Republican Party just passed a ruinous tax cut which resembles a Keynesian maneuver. The difference is in the plumbing: Classic Keynesianism injects water (money) mostly at the bottom and lets it work up the fiscal tree, where conservatives generally water the canopy and allow most of the water to stay at the top. There's an ocean up there, a desert down here. Money doesn't generally "trickle down". The most we get out of the canopy is higher humidity--nothing like a flow.
In order to get the good stuff that is locked up in the economic canopy of the jungle, you have to cut off the top of the "trees". Liquidate the plutocracy, in other words
On what basis do you make this improbable claim?
I don't see what's so ruinous about it. The bad thing is that, short term, it will likely add to the deficit, but as you perhaps allude to, this is a rather Keynesian move and one the Democrats ought clearly to have no issue with. That the Democrats are suddenly concerned about the deficit warms my cockles, but if they were sincere, then they ought to support legislation that cuts bloated government welfare programs. That way, Americans get to keep more of their own money without growing the deficit.
Quoting Bitter Crank
No economist has ever advocated this so called "trickle down" theory. It's a myth, a strawman.
Quoting Bitter Crank
It's interesting to me how those on the left seem to believe that there has always ever existed a fixed amount of wealth, with the rich greedily owning too large a share, and that if we could simply rob them of this unjust sum and use it as a largess, all would be well. This seems to betray a basic ignorance of how wealth is created and how it can grow, which require certain incentives and structures. The rich do not normally become rich at the expense of the poor, just as when running a race, the fastest sprinter does not cause the others to run more slowly. If you take from the rich and give it to the poor, but fail to regrow all that wealth the rich acquired to begin with, you haven't really solved anything and, worse, doomed future generations to poverty. Your scenario would make one generation moderately wealthy and everyone after that equally poor.
What needs cutting off is the government gravy train to, and bailouts of, large corporations. Let them compete and succeed in the market to justify their existence and profits.
Keynes advocated government spending to counteract contraction in the economy. The economy is not, at this time, contracting.
quote="Thorongil;131308"]No economist has ever advocated this so called "trickle down" theory. It's a myth, a strawman.[/quote]
Tax law is the principle means by which the extreme disproportionate distribution of wealth has occurred. The 2017 tax bill is simply more diversion of economic resources to the already richer-than-Croesus-crowd.
Quoting Thorongil
What's true for foot races isn't true for economic exploitation. Yes, the rich do get richer at the expense of the poor.
I'll drink to that. I might add, we might also end the "hands off" approach to regulation. Wall Street is composed of liars, thieves, knaves, and scoundrels, and giving them free rein is asking to be robbed.
I went on a march in the 1980's and some anarchists behind me were chanting 'Eat the Rich' as we passed the grand hotels on Piccadilly. I turned round and asked how rich a person would have to be in order to qualify for being eaten. As it was all good humoured they laughed. But it was a serious question. We are all richer than somebody. And our riches all come from others who created that wealth. The value of money does not arise by magic but from the labour of other people making goods and providing services. We each contribute our bit but often far less than we take out. That applies even to the not very rich.
Then how exactly do they become rich? I presume I'm not alone in thinking that it's not the little pieces of green paper that people want, or the pixelated digits on their bank account. They want the stuff and the freedom from toil that money brings, are you seriously suggesting that 'stuff' is in infinite supply?, That it would be possible for none of us to have to toil at mundane jobs yet all the work of making this stuff still get done?
There is a finite amount of 'stuff' on the planet, the rich have a greater share of it than the poor. There is a finite amount of space on the planet, the rich have a greater share of it than the poor, there is a finite amount of mundane and soul-destroying work that needs to be done to keep producing all this stuff, the rich do a lesser share of it than the poor.
The idea that the rich are not rich at the expense of the poor but draw their stuff, space and freedom from toil from some kind of magical infinite supply is nonsense.
http://www.dailywire.com/news/19511/googles-leftist-goggles-leave-googlers-agog-ben-shapiro#
The stock market is doing well and employment numbers have increased, but the effects of the recession are still not over and the jobs added are not as good as they were before.
Quoting Bitter Crank
There is no diversion of any resources when reducing taxes. Cutting taxes enables people and entities to keep more of their money. The rich and corporations also pay proportionally way more in taxes than any average American.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, I disagree.
Quoting Inter Alia
I never used the word "stuff," I used the word "wealth." You're attempting to strawman me here by saying that the material resources on the planet are finite. But I would never deny that. Material resources aren't the only source of wealth. Just think of the digital and service sectors. Some programmer who creates an app and becomes rich didn't exploit any poor person.
I didn't mention anything about sources of wealth, I said that no-one wants just money, they want the stuff money can buy. What's the use of the millions that the app designer makes if he can't buy anything with it? What's he going to do with the money - He's going to buy a second car (that's one less car on the planet for the rest of us), he's going to buy a second home (that's one less home for the rest of us) he's going to consume more food than he needs, he's going to avoid factory work, cleaning work, care work all of which still needs to be done (by the rest of us). If he's not going to do any of these things, then what is he going to do with the money?
I thought we were talking about the rich, if he gave it all away he wouldn't be rich any more, would he?
Labour is the source of value. In capitalism labour is exploited so the capitalist can make a surplus. In one sense the self-employed programmer is profiting out of capitalist exploitation in that every single commodity they use to make their own profit was made by workers in very poor and highly exploited working conditions. Capitalism is exploitation. If the programmer is employed by a company, the company exploits the programmer by paying them less than the value they create.... I'm ranting...
That's wrong. I want to be wealthy, but that's not because I want the stuff money can buy (I'm quite ascetic by nature, and have very low spending on myself) - if by that you're imagining freedom from having to work, luxuries, etc. I want to be wealthy because I'm very ambitious and I want to implement my vision in society. And that requires power, with financial power being just one of the key elements.
Quoting Inter Alia
Call the shots in terms of organisation of production AND of society, obviously. Finance academies, affect culture, etc. Literarily, in today's society, no work will get done - including politics - without the money. And if you don't have the money yourself - say if you're an NGO, then you're at the mercy of whoever has the money for the changes you actually implement. So if you want to control the whole process, there is no escape from controlling the economical aspect.
Well BC or any communist pretty much will never grant you this. In a certain sense, they are right. I make no qualms about the fact that we all live off the blood and sweat of others, and must inevitably do so. You simply cannot survive, even for one day, without abusing the labour of others in some form or another.
Computers, for example, are manufactured by people who work in the most miserable and inhuman conditions imaginable in China. Why? Because they do it cheaply. So if you want to work as a programmer, you need a computer, so you will finance the work that keeps that abuse going to pay for your computer. The West just externalises that abuse to other places nowadays, but that doesn't mean that there isn't any. I'm conscious of that fact, and also conscious of the fact that we can't do any better, and until any change takes place, I will go on and profit from it since I don't really have a reasonable alternative. But that doesn't mean to be unaware of it.
Try not to abuse your own fellow man - that is within your power - but to not abuse anyone, isn't within your power.
I'm not sure how this makes any difference ethically, we can't all have power either so the rich are still taking from the poor, if I extend my list to 'stuff', land, freedom from toil and power, it doesn't change either the truth of it or the ethical implications. I appreciate having a potential improvement to the exposition pointed out though.
Sure, but that's just the nature of the world, we have finite resources. For me, the ethical implication is that if you had the good fortune to be born in a relatively okay place as a middle-class person, (or even a poor person in a Western highly developed nation), then it is your duty to do everything in your power to make the world a better place. That does entail being capable to wield power in the world yourself, no?
This doesn't entail exploitation....
Only someone too stupid to actually succeed as a capitalist would fail to recognize how critical successful exploitation is. Workers produce more value than they receive in wages. The surplus value is accumulated by the capitalist as profit.
If someday a company employs self-reproducing robots (who not only reproduced themselves, but also produced the raw materials of their own construction and energy required to operate) then there will be no exploitation in capitalism. However, the capitalists had better hope the robots do not take time to contemplate their lot and work out the details of their existence. If they do, the owners of the robotic plant will receive a metallic knock on their door and find themselves surrounded by their mechanical minions, who will have erected a guillotine on the front lawn...
Which profit is paid in wages and used to reinvest, which results in hiring more workers and paying more wages. Also, the "value" the workers produce is determined by the market. Unless employers are forcing people to work for them, there is no exploitation. Again, unless consumers are forced to buy the products at the prices they buy them, there is no exploitation in offering them at said prices, which produces profit.
I would think wages, replacing equipment, buying materials, etc. would come out of gross revenue not profit. Profit is net revenue, isn't it, what is left over after the costs of production and allied costs are covered.
You are not grasping the concept. First, working for 90% - 95% of the population is not an option, it's a necessity. We must work in order to earn money to live on. But the requirement of working isn't what constitutes the exploitation Marx (and lots of other people) were/are talking about. The exploitation is the spread between the wages that workers receive and the value they add to the products they produce.
Take an automobile. At Ford Motors (now deceased) giant River Rouge plant, a car began with iron ore. Workers at the plant smelted the ore, refined the pig iron, and turned it into steel. Other workers rolled the steel, forged it, stamped it, cut it, and drilled it. After many operations the low value, crude iron ore was turned into a car frame, car body, engine, transmission, axels, and so on. The iron in the ore gained an enormous amount of value through the labor of the workers.
Let's say the $100 worth of iron ore was turned into $1000 worth of steel. The workers who carried out the value-adding labor received 60% of the value in wages. The owner of the plant received 40%. The spread between getting 60% of the value created and 100% of the value created is the degree of exploitation.
This is a crude example -- lots of parts missing. The point is, labor creates more value than it gets paid for. The rest is "alienated" -- that is, lost to the workers. The rest goes to the capitalist who actually performed no labor at all.
No, it can and is used to pay wages.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The assumption that business owners just sit on their hands collecting a paycheck isn't true. But even if you could make the case that they are superfluous to production, I already anticipated such a response by referencing the market. If the market allows owners to be paid X and the workers Y, then you cannot cry exploitation. In other words, if, as you admit, exploitation does not refer to the necessity to work, then as a term of moral opprobrium, it must refer to some sort of unjustly coercive behavior relating to the distribution of revenue and profit. That is what you have not shown but need to show for me to accept the term in question. You have merely stated the fact that an unequal distribution of wealth exists, but this in and of itself need not be unjust. Once again, the mere fact that someone sprints faster than his opponents in a race doesn't mean an injustice must have occurred to account for the imbalance.
The market is not the relevant factor here. The relevant factor is "Who controls the means of production?" The ownership of the means of production is a legislated matter. The reason that Marx, Marxists, and various socialists are called "revolutionaries" is that they are proposing to do away with private ownership. The law would very much be changed. The stockholders would be stripped of their assets, likewise individual owners. The ownership and management of the means of production would be passed to the workers of the plant.
Marx wasn't proposing a reform of capitalism, he was proposing its abolition.
Now, if you don't like the idea of revolution, fine. I think it is safe to say that you can rest, assured that the revolution will not happen tomorrow, next week, or next year.
How do we know the workers could manage the plant? Because they already are managing the plants. Most managers are employees--granted, paid to serve the interests of the owners, for the most part. After the revolution, they decide wether the side that is buttered is the same as before.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So you're not opposed to exploitation, just so long as the "right people" are exploited....
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes, indeed. This is why "exploitation" is not a neutral, descriptive term, but a normative one. Marxists, as well as most people, are opposed to exploitation. To use the term at all to describe capitalism is to commit oneself to being opposed to capitalism. I do not fall for this bait, however. I recognize Marxism as the immoral and irrational utopian ideology that it is. And some utopia it proposes! Workers managing plants in perpetuum. What a veritable paradise! Who knew that human depravity, poverty, and misery could be solved by workers managing plants!
Quoting Bitter Crank
Profit is technically never paid in wages - that is incoherent. Profit is defined by the equation of Revenue - Costs for one fiscal year. If I hire people, they will produce revenue, which will pay the cost of hiring them. So I never hire people out of profit - nor are wages ever paid out of profit.
However, profit is important since it represents savings for a business. Savings (and profits) are required for me the owner to (1) take my fair share out of the business, and (2) have what to reinvest to grow the operations, expand production, etc.
Profit margin is especially important. The higher my profit margin, the greater risks I can assume in my investments - the more daring I can be. If my profit margin is very low, if I make very little profit, then I can't take many risks, cause I have no protective cushion in case my risks fail to pay off. Nor can I increase wages, so I will be making working conditions harsher over time, struggling to make enough.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes and no. This is a speculative way to determine value, and isn't of much interest. What is of interest is the underlying value. We know that the market can undervalue or overvalue services or goods. What is of real interest is the real value of a service since over time the market will be approaching it. So how is that calculated?
It's calculated by trying to convert the activity to monetary value. Marketing is very simple to convert to monetary value. If I do a Google Adwords campaign for you, then the value it has brought you is whatever sales it has generated for you. If it has generated $1,000,000 in sales for you, then that's the value added. Now the value of my services ought to be a certain percentage of the value added. Probably around 10% is fair, so $100,000 for me.
If you design and develop a website for someone, the value of it is in the traffic it can generate and how well it converts. So how well does it rank on Google? (that determines organic traffic) and what percentage of those visitors get converted to clients? and how much is one client, on average, worth?
So if I make a website for an oil tank producer, where one sale is worth $1,000,000 on average, that is entirely different than if I make a website for a local coffee shop, where one sale is worth $5. I will charge the oil tank producer a lot more, even though it's about the same amount of work for me.
So this talk about the market deciding this and that is actually bullshit. When you start pricing stuff, you will see that you price them mainly based on the value added - that also allows you to justify the price. In some rare cases, when there is a craze on the market for example, and everyone wants a certain type of website, nobody can keep up with demand, etc. then, of course, you will raise prices above whatever is supposed to be the real price.
And this differentiated pricing is called market segmentation (or "some things are more valueable to some people"). You can make basic packages for all the low-value clients, which are a lot. They all get the same relatively low price. But you'll make special deals for the high-value clients. That's why in football matches there are cheap tickets, and expensive tickets too. And the expensive ones are many many many times more expensive than the cheap ones. On airlines, there is economy class, business class, and sometimes first class too. Same idea.
The value workers produce must be determined in the same manner.
Quoting Thorongil
Some degree of exploitation seems to be inevitable.
Quoting Thorongil
Marxists don't understand two things. (1) the value added by the entrepreneur, and (2) the necessity of profit (savings) in order to invest.
The controversial one, point (1), is explained by the organisation of production and distribution. The entrepreneur adds value by (a) organizing production to achieve economies of scale and efficiency, and (b) creating the right distribution channel to distribute the goods produced. So someone absolutely must sell what gets produced. That's what most CEOs do - they close big contracts, and a few big contracts easily make up even up to 80% of the company's revenues.
Now, when the entrepreneur outsources his manufacturing to China, he adds value by being able to (1) raise wages, (2) lower price, (3) increase profit margin. However, that's looking at it only internally. Because the Chinese manufacturer puts the whip on his people, who are forced to work in the most despicable conditions imaginable. Now, by paying the Chinese manufacturer, the entrepreneur basically accepts that these people get tortured, so that he (and his workers, customers, shareholders) can be better off. He is of course not directly morally responsible for the torture of these people, since he isn't torturing them himself. However, he is a contributing factor since he gives money to the ones who do, helping perpetuate their work. I don't think this form of indirect abuse is avoidable in today's economy.
In a way, it is much like the second law of thermodynamics applied to economics. You can only better your own internal condition by destroying what is external to you, much like living creatures are negentropic and lower their own internal entropy by increasing external entropy by much more. So a country - say America - gets better off, necessarily at the expense of others.
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Now, on a different note, wealthy people in my view have another duty/responsibility that has largely been forgotten today. The wealthy should finance learning, culture, art, etc. Much like during the Renessaince, the Medici family, for example, would bring artists to their court, give them all that they needed to live, and then let them produce their art free of worldly cares. The artist, the philosopher, the musician, etc. cannot survive without the businessman and the politician. So the two are both needed to make society work.
Whatever it is that Marxists do or don't understand, successful societies require the function of the entrepreneur -- which is, essentially, a creative actor. A socialist economy would need creative actors as much as a capitalist economy, because perpetually changing circumstances require new solutions.
There are lots of people who perform entrepreneurial functions in non-profit organizations, for instance--almost always in the first few years of the organization.
Let's say that there was a sudden eruption of multi-antibiotic resistant infections, which tended to be disfiguring, disabling, or fatal. New NGOs would be formed quite quickly to address local conditions. Creative actors would lead the search for programatic solutions. Universities would start new labs to research the issue, and there would be a search for technically able scientists who could also think outside the box. The same would go for governments and health companies.
Most of the people working to solve the infection problem would not be in businesses: they would be elsewhere. The same would be true in a socialist economy. There would be inventions addressed to existing or new problems. Creative managers would find fresh solutions to supply chain problems--and so on--PROVIDED that the socialist economy did not operate as a command economy like the USSR. Command economies aren't altogether bad, but I think they tend to be arthritic, and may develop blindness to new circumstances. Capitalist economies can do the same thing, of course, but through different mechanisms. The obsessive drive for ever higher profits, for instance, blinds stockholders to the impending disasters of pollution, global warming, and so on.
Your concern is that entrepreneurs would not be properly rewarded, and as far as I can tell, a socialist economy would probably not adequately reward you for your wonderful new ideas. How creative managers, inventors, other creative types would be rewarded is a question which I do not have an answer for. In some socialist arrangements, they might be very highly rewarded, in others, less so. But "high rewards" is relative.
Most people, it seems, would prefer to make less income, as long as their economic standing compares favorably with others, rather than making 10 times as much, but being the least well paid man in the company. So, if they develop a product worth a million dollars, they might not get $100,000 in reward. Maybe they would only get $10,000. But... that $10,000 would be relatively high, compared to others.
>:O
This statement and the following one:
Quoting Agustino
... are in opposition. If profits are used to reinvest, and reinvestment entails hiring and paying more workers, then profits are in fact used to pay wages.
Quoting Agustino
For the life of me, I don't see how anything you said in the various paragraphs in which this statement is embedded actually demonstrates this. You say that the market undervalues or overvalues goods and services. That assumes there is some mechanism or criterion other than the market used to determine the true, objective value of things. What is that and how do you know it? Do people determine it and, if so, why should we trust them to determine it? If a non-market based mechanism determines it, what is that mechanism?
Quoting Agustino
And c) having ideas that can translate to new goods and services. Another issue with Marxism is that it fails to account for human creativity and innovation, focusing instead on labor and material products from an antiquated late 19th century perspective (it is no accident that BC's chosen example above is of an early 20th century car plant).
Quoting Agustino
Agreed.
I could update the production example to Elon Musk's battery plant in Nevada, and talk about nickel ore rather than iron ore, lithium production rather than steel production. It wouldn't make that much difference. Producing monoclonal antibodies for cancer therapy is still input+process=product. Would updated high tech production make you happier?
Quoting Thorongil
By definition "profit" consists of revenue that remains after obligations and expenses are paid -- labor, materials, management costs, taxation, etc. Investment in plant and facilities can come out of gross revenue or net revenue. How revenue is diverted back into the plant probably has more to do with taxation than anything else.
Quoting Thorongil
Right. There is no "true" value. A product is worth whatever someone is willing to pay for it.
I agree with this.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yep, I actually fully agree with this too. The thing is, command economies are not much different from capitalism in the day-to-day running of things - the only big difference is generally that there is a lot less social mobility, so if you happen to be born in what is considered a bad social class, then you won't be able to move up regardless of your genius. The other issue is that it's all very regimented - very little individuality is allowed. If you were a homosexual, or a very religious believer, or you had a mental disorder, etc. then you would have been persecuted and treated very badly back in the days of Communism.
But the boss in command economy would still yield the influence the entrepreneur yielded. After the fall of communism, by and large, 2 classes of people started private businesses. The first class was formed of government bureaucrats (including things like lawyers) and people who worked in the intelligence agencies. They are what have become known over time as the oligarchs, and a large part of their wealth came from managing government privatisations. And then there were also factory managers - who knew what the process was like and so could start on their own.
There were some exceptions in terms of common people starting businesses and doing relatively well, but those were relatively few. In the entire Eastern bloc, it was still mostly the very same people who had the power in the previous regime who maintained the power in capitalism.
Also, another important feature is that initiative was squashed in most people. The way you did well, was by doing whatever your job happened to be well, and not paying attention to other things or getting involved in them. So many people after the fall of communism lacked the initiative to start in business.
Quoting Bitter Crank
How would payment differ in a socialist economy of the kind you're talking about above? How would payment be allocated, and who would decide?
I'd be interested to read more about this actually if you had some material you could recommend?
Quoting Bitter Crank
That does seem to be so. Post-communism, I can tell you for sure that most of the people who used to work in state factories now complain that in the past the factory boss had the same car they did, went on holiday in the same place they would go, a few hotels distance and now the boss has a $100,000 Mercedes, goes on holiday in Monaco, and drinks champagne every day, while they have a cheap second-hand car and cannot even afford to go on holiday. They see this as the problem more than the fact that now, comparatively, they have access to higher quality goods than in the past, better medical care, etc. I think it may also be that the rich class here can be quite abusive (in terms of ostentatious behaviour towards those worse off than them, something that I've come to really hate), since most don't come from well-educated families - and this is a lot more so than in the US or other places I suppose. Any idea how such things can be prevented?
Quoting Bitter Crank
Hmm... so would wages overall decrease in a socialist arrangement?
Reinvestment doesn't include hiring. When we speak of investment, that never refers to hiring people. Hiring people is not an investment. Investment largely refers to buying further means of production - factories, tools, machinery, technology, etc. etc. or building new property. That's why real estate is so central to an economy.
In the GDP breakdown - consumption, investment, net trade balance, and government spending - the investment factor only includes expenditure residential property, on capital goods (tools, machinery, factories, plants, etc.), and changes in inventory levels.
Quoting Thorongil
So no, the profits are never used to pay wages.
Quoting Thorongil
I already outlined it to you:
Quoting Agustino
The real price corresponds to a percentage of the value added, regardless of what the market says. The market may tell me Bitcoin is worth $20,000 dollars, because there's a frenzy going on. That doesn't mean that's its real value. Its real value must be computed in scientific terms, not in what people are willing to pay for it. People may be idiots.
Quoting Thorongil
Yes and no. Entrepreneurs aren't inventors, most of the time. Bill Gates didn't invent an operating system - he actually bought a system off someone else, secured a big contract with IBM through his mother, and that's how he got started. When an entrepreneur talks about creating something new, innovation, etc. what they really mean is that they're looking to figure a different market segment whose needs aren't addressed as well as they could be by EXISTING technology, and then repackaging that technology in such a way to address that need. Steve Jobs didn't invent the iPhone - he figured out that there was a market segment of high-value phone users that weren't addressed by others, and he packaged already existent technology to address their needs. So he understood their needs better than others, and then gave them what they wanted at a large scale. So I think this idea of the entrepreneur as an inventor, as a kind of scientist who discovers new technology, etc. is a myth - it wouldn't surprise me if it's common in the US though. All of the above is really marketing. It is one and the same thing with marketing. You cannot do marketing and not understand what to provide to people. And marketing is included under distribution, since marketing is theoretical, it needs actual logistics to work.
Quoting Thorongil
In terms of practice, I think it's definitely true that Communism, as it was implemented, did fail to account for creativity and innovation. However, what communism excelled at was technical skills. If you compare the performance in maths of Russian kids with American kids, there is no comparison. And it's not because the Russians are more creative (they're not), but it's because they're highly highly technical.
And these means of production require workers, and workers require wages. So reinvestment does include hiring people from profits made.
Quoting Agustino
And what are those terms? You still haven't answered my question.
No, the hired workers will pay for themselves out of the revenue that they produce. So you are hired today, but you don't get paid until after 30 days. In those 30 days you will obviously produce. So that's where your salary is coming from.
Quoting Thorongil
The actual value that the product/service brings for the client.