The leap from socialism to communism.
Marx outlined two phases of progress that must be completed before communism can prevail. Essentially, he outlined the reason why we should move from capitalism to socialism, and finally from socialism to communism.
However, I don't believe we will ever be able to make the leap from socialism to communism.
Here's why... Socialism is the golden mean between the benefits of progress and prosperity that competition entails under capitalism, whilst preserving the benefits of the proto-communist state through high taxation and redistributive policies.
However, given my understanding of the issue, when no more progress can be instilled through capitalism, such as machines replacing the labor force (which will happen soon), then there is a shift in the balance towards the appeal of communism.
How far off are we, when productivity increases become redundant is another issue and capitalism will have nothing more to offer is profoundly unknown; but, I'd like to address this proposed evolution of capitalism towards socialism, and then the final leap towards communism(?)
However, I don't believe we will ever be able to make the leap from socialism to communism.
Here's why... Socialism is the golden mean between the benefits of progress and prosperity that competition entails under capitalism, whilst preserving the benefits of the proto-communist state through high taxation and redistributive policies.
However, given my understanding of the issue, when no more progress can be instilled through capitalism, such as machines replacing the labor force (which will happen soon), then there is a shift in the balance towards the appeal of communism.
How far off are we, when productivity increases become redundant is another issue and capitalism will have nothing more to offer is profoundly unknown; but, I'd like to address this proposed evolution of capitalism towards socialism, and then the final leap towards communism(?)
Comments (165)
Space tourism is just one example for why it won't work like that.
The working class, on the other hand, has everything to gain, and it is the efforts of the working class that will either move society toward socialism or leave it where it is -- in complete thrall to capitalism. How will/would the working class move society towards socialism? By organising the power of the working class in opposition to capitalists, and towards a society friendlier to the needs of the people.
How likely is this to occur? I don't know. I hope it will happen; I wish it would happen; I fear that it will not happen.
Well, this is a common misconception about economics. Marx couldn't have fathomed about the deflationary tendencies of progress in technology. Anyone correct me if I'm wrong on this, @fdrake?
Well, yes. That's the ad hoc method done through revolution. However, a more progressive measure would be done by reaching a point where deflationary tendencies causing printed money to become more valuable... A rising tide lifts all boats, as they say.
Wrt. to the rich, since money is becoming more valuable, their power may as well grow, hence under our current FED guidelines of monetary policy, we have to maintain inflation at a stable and low level, as the top priority for the FED to do.
Which texts are you referring to?
There are a lot of interpretations. Some argue the reverse of what you are saying about "phases."
I'm under the impression that this is the standard interpretation of Marxist economics. Anyone care to chime in about this?
Socialism didn't work anywhere where it was tried, so hopefully nobody is trying to leap back to that misery.
Quoting Wallows
No.
Your confusing a mixed economy to socialism. If you keep capitalism and add a welfare state to it, that's not socialism. Mixed economy is a form of capitalism where most industries are privately owned with only a small number of public utilities and essential services under public ownership and the government has a larger role than otherwise in the economy. Typically there is a welfare state.
If you have a functioning democracy, it's likely that however dominant socialists (or basically social democrats) would be, the opposition will be heard and the policies will be basically a compromise. What this means is that the economy will likely stay capitalist thanks to (private ownership), even if the government has a lot to say and decides to nationalize some industries.
So, I may have been using the terms too broadly. I still feel as though the logic is sound in the OP, according to Marxist economics.
Where was it tried?
So they say--but if you don't have a boat in the first place...
Wallows: Marx was preaching revolution. He wasn't preaching monetary policy.
The revolution which Marx was interested in was the seizure of resources (land, factories, etc.) and the power too direct production for the benefit of the proletarian class (which is most people). The formula "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs" isn't about lifting the yachts of the FORMER ruling class. It's about enabling people to fully utilise their talents for the benefit of all, and receiving a share of goods proportional to their needs. Some people have more than others to offer (they are stronger, smarter, more skilled, handier, healthier, etc.) and can give more to the community. Most of us are kind of "in the middle". Some people have greater needs: they have children to care for; their spouse needs insulin every day, etc. As for needs, most of us are "in the middle".
That's the basis on which goods are distributed. Monetary policy (making money more valuable) is irrelevant to the socialist/communist revolution. Forget about it.
Bringing Luther's sentiment forward, I would say "It is better to be live in a well run capitalist economy than in a socialist economy run by jackasses. Similarly, "It might be better to try socialism than put up with a ruinous capitalist system run by jackals, even if socialism has not been proven to work."
The fact is, capitalism is not proving itself compatible with a liveable future. The oil companies (capitalists all) clearly plan to suck up the last profitable drop of oil and burn it. By the time they get done doing this, a liveable future will likely be impossible. Unfortunately, it doesn't seem like our democratic institutions are going to be able to control the economic powers.
I'm not sure there will be any sort of socialist revolution. But I'm pretty sure capitalism is offering a no-win future. Socialism seems worth a try.
Yes; but, if the economic conditions are not ready to introduce pure socialism or even utopian communism, then it will fail. What I described in the OP is an operational rationale, under economic terms, for the state of affairs that would precipitate a successful socialist state.
Western countries are finding it difficult to satisfy an increasing number of their citizens not because of a lack of growth but because of the extraordinary inequity in the distribution of the benefits of that growth.
As for Marx, Popper's critique stands good for me.
So what happens next?
Totalitarian states in Asia encouraging capitalist growth. Asia is now the centre of scientific and technological development. The United States failed to support its education system and hence failed to invest in the future. It is only managing at the moment on the momentum built up by Google and Intel.
Europe is a mess.
Russia is too small an economy to make much difference on the world stage. All hot air and no fire.
Africa remains a basket case.
China. Japan. Indonesia.
Then India and perhaps Brazil.
You are right that "if the economic conditions are not ready to introduce [s]pure[/s] socialism [s]or even utopian communism[/s], then it will fail"
Uncle Karl would approve. However, the relevant "economic conditions" are not to be found in monetary or financial policy, one way or the other. The "economic condition" that matters is whether or not the workers have developed their intellectual and technical capacities to take over the management of the economy. This management job will have to be taken away from the capitalists. No way in hell are they going to just say, "Oh, well, it's your turn to turn things now. Here are the keys to the Kingdom."
At the present time, corporations employ many people who have considerable technical insight into how the businesses who employ them work. What they do not have is an intellectual grasp of class consciousness (what it means to be 'proletarian' or 'capitalist') or the practice to work together with other members of their class to manage the economy. Class consciousness, and unionism, is anathema to capitalists. Some workers have it; many do not.
It won't be easy, of course. As far as I know, nobody knows how to run any economy so that periodic crises are avoided. Capitalists have mechanisms to judge consumer need and demand. Some of these mechanisms can be carried over into capitalism, and some of them should not be. Socialist managers will have to develop coordinating systems to connect the people's material needs with the material production centers. This isn't a problem that any business school graduate will find mysterious.
Excluding wealth from home-ownership, Norway's government owns over 70% of the nation's entire wealth, which is notably more than the percentage of wealth in China that's owned by it's government. The state owns over 70 companies, including the largest financial company, telecom company, and oil company. That sounds like a successful and workable socialized ownership of capital to me. Additionally, other models that socialize capital such as worker co-operatives are successful alternatives to traditional company models.
Quoting Banno
Aye. It's important not to forget that it was advanced by Marx as a scientific theory. I can't recall Popper's exact line off the top of my head, but it was to the effect that when spontaneous revolution, as per Marx's original writings, failed to arrive, his devotees saved the theory at the expense of its falsifyability. It was no longer demonstrably wrong precisely because it was no longer scientific.
I think there are a lot of shades of meaning that are important here. European capitalist countries do seem to have had a more constructive approach to global warming than... some others.
Most people outside the USA are quite amused by what is considered "socialism" there. It seems both inevitable and hilarious that the end result of decades of conservative rhetoric damning any kind of social safety net as "socialist" has been that large numbers of people have concluded that they would actually quite like a bit of socialism, thank you very much!
Marxist Leninism has obviously produced dystopias that that most people who've had to live in basically wanted to be rid of. But does that apply to socialism more generally? Command economies more generally? I'm not convinced. Once it became possible to measure the size of the Russian economy in Western capitalist terms, it became clear that it was basically the size of the Netherlands. If anything I'm more impressed by the fact that that such an economy managed to give the US a run for its money for as long as it did than I am by the fact that it collapsed in the end - as a result of the fact that it was spending something like 30% of its GDP on the military.
A big part of the problem here is that social and economic theories become ideologies. At which point any meaningful analysis or criticism of the doctrine informing government policy largely stops, and publicly attempting to engage in such analysis or criticism often becomes quite dangerous - for the person attempting to provide this important social good. Perhaps the most important point here being that public analysis of the doctrine informing government policy is a social good, and there are consequences to not having it. Just as there would be if we stopped building roads.
Another problem with the politicization of social and economic theories is that it often seems that everything has to be reduced to the level of a sound-bite to have any "cut-through" at all. But then, how can these theories be put into effect without being politicized?
Not a situation that leaves one feeling terribly optimistic about the future of humanity.
anyone who says that Marx claimed Communism was inevitable - as if it can arrive fully formed without human agency - clearly hasn't read Marx.
Okay, I have to cop to that. But such is my understanding of him. If it's wrong, perhaps you could tell us what he does say, and where.
To put it simply, Marx wrote how Capitalism tends, in various ways, towards crises, which of course is historically true. The instability of the system, along with growing inequality that is packaged within it, presents the opportunity to restructure and reorganize the political economy.
I realize that quoting out of context can be dangerous, and I don't claim to have done any more than a bit of searching online. But that said...
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/download/pdf/Manifesto.pdf
"The Communist Manifesto had, as its object, the proclamation of the inevitable impending dissolution of modern bourgeois property."
page 5
"What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."
page 21
The SEP also disagrees with you:
"The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx’s prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism."
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/marx/
I'll be honest: I am disinclined to invest the level of effort necessary to come to a really well informed view of my own. I remain open to the possibility that my current view is misinformed and... wrong. But if you want to convince me of that, I'll need a bit more than you've given us so far.
Marx described the reasons for class conflict (between the proles and capitalists) and that the proles would win--not because it was his preference, but because the exploited class would eventually achieve a level of development where they could, and would, dispossess the exploiters. Of course, they (WE) don't have to win -- now or at any time in the future. However, whether the proles are victorious or die trying, capitalism still contains within it the seeds of its own destruction. One of those seeds is its remorseless search for resources, markets, and profit. Capitalism is a feeding machine with no reason to ever stop. That's one of its fatal flaws.
We see this fatal flaw in the behaviour of the oil companies (for just one example) who continue to seek new sources of petroleum, despite the accumulating greenhouse gases which are likely to bring about a catastrophe that is ruinous to capitalists and workers, petit bourgeoisie, and lumpen proles alike: global heating.
Karl Marx didn't lay out a time table. Fortunately for impatient young people, they are likely to live long enough to see the grand demolition derby toward the end of this century, when major systems start crashing in a big way. I'm rather glad I won't be around for the show. Unfortunately, it will be a long time before another intelligent (whatever that might be) comes along.
Quoting Theologian
Well besides the fact that the SEP statement doesn't include a citation to an actual Marx quote, the following sentence literally refutes that: 'However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal."
Quoting Theologian
Well if you aren't willing to put in the time to read Marx, maybe stop pretending to know what he says?
For Christ's sake, Theologian, that's not an excuse in heaven or hell. AT LEAST read the Communist Manifesto a couple of times (it's not long) or read a Das Kapital zum Dummkopfs
But, here's the thing that you or Marx missed out on. Namely, that advancements in technology and resulting productivity increases via automation, AI, and the rest would cause the same luxurious lifestyle of the bourgeoisie, to be available even with the income of a proletariat worker, given enough time and possibly credit... So, essentially this renders class struggles as irrelevant. This has been happening for a great while already.
So, following this logic, there will be some point at which productivity increases saturate. I mean, they can't just keep on rising indefinitely. Therefore, when that sort of scenario happens, is when socialism becomes a viable alternative.
How did he address this glaring fact that anyone would spot out?
I've only been seriously studying philosophy for a little over a year. There are some hard choices I need to make as to which of the many dense tomes that are ahead of me I invest my time and energy in - and in what order. I always try to be upfront as to the limits of my own knowledge, and one of the reasons why I engage here is that I figure I might actually learn a thing or two from people who are a bit ahead of me. Or at least know more about certain things than I do. If you want to be contemptuously dismissive of that, then fine. But I think that says more about you than it does about me.
I would also point out that so far at lest I am the ONLY person on this thread to make the effort to back up ANYTHING I've said with any references at all. And I have backed them up: with two instances in which Marx explicitly claimed that his predictions would "inevitably" come to pass, and one reference to an authoritative secondary source which said exactly the same.
By contrast, your main response at this point seems to be ridicule. Ridicule is not a valid argument form, and I do not find it persuasive.
There are also serious problems with the things the two of you are saying.
First of all, @Maw, let's put the quote I gave and the line you added immediately after together, so everyone can see the whole thing.
""The analysis of history and economics come together in Marx’s prediction of the inevitable economic breakdown of capitalism, to be replaced by communism."
You claim: Quoting Maw
The which being:
"However Marx refused to speculate in detail about the nature of communism, arguing that it would arise through historical processes, and was not the realisation of a pre-determined moral ideal."
Clearly, this doesn't refute the preceding sentence. Refusing to speculate on the nature of communism, or exactly how it would arise, is not the same as not claiming that it is inevitable.
I can claim that the sun will inevitably explode while refusing to specify exactly how, or describe the exact nature of the explosion. You might not be very impressed by my claim. You might even consider my failure to give any details to be a serious flaw in my whole sun exploding theory. But my refusal to provide the details does not change the fact that I did say that the sun would inevitably explode.
There is no refutation here.
Now, @Bitter Crank, let's look at your post. You begin by saying:
Quoting Bitter Crank
Well, you've got me there. But up until now, no-one mentioned either. It doesn't change the fact that Marx said what he said. In both works.
Moving on, I claimed that Marx said that certain things were inevitable. To which you replied:
Quoting Bitter Crank
And this is... supposed to show that I am wrong? Because it seems to me that you alternate between making my argument for me:
"Marx described the reasons for class conflict (between the proles and capitalists) and that the proles would win--not because it was his preference, but because the exploited class would eventually achieve a level of development where they could, and would, dispossess the exploiters."
And then immediately contradicting yourself:
"Of course, they (WE) don't have to win -- now or at any time in the future."
Does that seem internally consistent to you?
To say nothing of the fact that all of the above, all of it, is left at the level of raw assertion. You provide not one shred of evidence to support your claim that this is what Marx actually said.
Finally, you end with:
Quoting Bitter Crank
The thing about this is that while it may mean that Marx's theories were never scientific, and I was wrong to say that they were (and so was he, by the way -- I'm not the one who coined the term "Scientific Socialism"), it certainly doesn't mean that they are scientific now.
Absent some kind of timetable, or account of the circumstances under which it will inevitably come to pass, no prediction is scientifically valid. It's like the old joke: "This serum could provide immortality - but it will take forever to test!"
There's always tomorrow.
My knowledge of Marx is, I admit, derived from secondary sources. But so far at least, I think I have put together a vastly better referenced and more coherent argument than either of you. Or even, dare I say, than both of you put together.
Reading this, I can't help but think of two quotes: one from Bill Gates, the other from The Buddha.
"640k ought to be enough for anyone."
~Bill
"Like a thirsty man drinking salt water, desire can never be satisfied."
~Buddha.
PS (So far the Buddha seems to be winning! :gasp: )
I've been seriously studying philosophy for nearly a decade. @Bitter Crank, who is over 70 years old, has been studying philosophy and Marxism in particular for much longer than that. What I find "dismissive" is someone who has not read an iota of Marx and yet has already passed judgement on Marxism because of secondary sources, de-contextualized readings from a political pamphlet, and a citation-less online encyclopedia, which while useful is not a substitute for doing the actual readings.
Using the Communist Manifesto as the crux of Marxist thought is problematic for two reasons, 1) it was hastily written propaganda to influence readers during political upheavals of 1848 and 2) it was written during Marx's youth, which is notably different than Marx's mature years. The Communist Manifesto is an interesting text, but it's not vital in understanding Marxism, which is better understood as a critical analysis of Capitalism anyway, as oppose to laying a path towards Communism or Socialism, or what have you.
Throughout Marx's Capital, his most important work, he goes through great pains to avoid any deterministic language, preferring instead to characterizes processes and relations in more ambiguous terms such as "appears" or "seems to" or "tends to", etc. For Marx, the historical process works through dialectics between various factors, including technological advances, the social relations between people, modes of production, mental conceptions of the world and prevailing ideologies etc.. How these interact and play out is not causally circumscribed. Surely, there are those who interpret Marx as a historical determinist who believed that Communism was a historical inevitability, but I think a fair reading of Capital should dismiss that view as an overly simplistic portrayal of Marx's thought, which is otherwise quite complex and rich. This is why I recommended David Harvey as a guide, who persuasively argues for such an interpretation (and he has been teaching Marx for over 40 years).
If you want to better understand how we can transition from Capitalism to Socialism, it is helpful to read critical analyses of Capitalism in order to pinpoint alternatives, and Marx essentially laid the foundation for analyzing Capitalism, so that's a more appropriate place to start. Given Marx's influence in both philosophy and economics, I think he's more than worthy of committed investment.
While that's sometimes claimed, that's not quite what Marx thought, and most of the misunderstanding of Marx is due to the same problem, a misinterpretation of the word 'proletariat'
This was a very old concept, since Roman times in fact, of a class of people who have rights to vote in a democracy but who are illiterate. It is to the advantage of the bourgeoisie to limit education, and therefore over time the class of illiterate increases until its decisions dominate the republic. The proletariat are easy to manipulate, and therefore do not vote in their favor. Some may argue that the process is well underway in the USA, perhaps for good reason.
I confess: Back when I was an English major (shortly after Adam and Eve moved out of Eden) I too had to decide which long boring books I would skip. Sometimes the skipped books were important. But... there are only so many hours in a day, and one's brain can absorb and process only so much. I admit it: The thought of reading all of Shakespeare is still horrifying. Or any of Thackeray and Trollope. It's not going to happen, and I still call myself an English major.
I believe in evolution, but I didn't read Darwin. Instead I've read lots of bits and pieces about evolution. Over the intervening 50 years, I've managed to fill in some of the deeper gaps left over from my undergraduate time. For those of us with average brains and average education, that is about the best we average souls can do.
Get a room full of Marxists together and you will run into one of two things (depending on the flavour of the marxists present): Either you get doctrinaire agreement or you get a fight. I prefer the fighting types.
For a quicker read, you might try Marx's short "Value, Price, and Profit"; it's available as a PDF from several sources.
I am a lot less confident in the socialist eschaton [the final event in the "divine plan"] than I was once, maybe 30 or 40 years ago. Now I think we'll be lucky to make it through a few centuries of global warming.
You do have a point there. Most people confuse Marx with Engels and Lenin. Marx was more of a theoretician. Engels and Lenin were more practical. I drew this about Marx's thought as pictures are easier to understand.
Well, I'm just going to come off as trite here; but, the US is a classless society. The only discriminating factor you get in the US is an educational achievement. But, the poor get a free ride in terms of accessibility to cheap subsidized loans provided by the government. The situation with college loans is really skewed to say the least, once you pass the threshold from economic poverty to affluence.
While that might have had some truth in the past, the educated are now dismissed as 'elitist' unless they also have money.
Thou prole, the only thing you're going to come off with that statement is wrong.
The United States has always had a class structure, and it has one now. In the first century of our glorious Republic, the class structure was organised along these lines:
The Ruling Class (always a small percentage of the population)
The Middle Class (substantially larger than the Ruling Class, much smaller than the Working Class)
Working class (the Proletariat) (by far the largest class--90% of the population)
Lumpen Proles
These elements of the class structure are still in operation, but have changed. The propertied Ruling Class may be smaller now than in the past, but is far richer, and more powerful. Some elements of the Middle Class have shifted to the Upper Class. High level professionals, most highly educated, have joined the Middle Class, and occasionally (Nancy Pelosi, Mitch McConnell) serve in the Ruling Class, as long as they remain useful. Merchants, small to medium manufacturers are Middle Class.
The Working Class are all still wage slaves. What has changed greatly, and this especially for the Working Class, is the DELUSION that they are "middle class" -- something better, higher, more sophisticated than mere wage slaves. This DELUSION, perpetrated by the running dog lackies of the PR industry for the Ruling Class, has been quite successful. So successful, in fact, that intelligent people like yourself think class has disappeared.
Class has not disappeared. It is as deterministic and pervasive as ever. It is just that this thin fabric of falsehood has been thrown over the class structure and obscures class perceptions. The wealth and power of the Ruling Class are kept hidden and/or obscured. Working Class people are, by and large, never in a position to observe the great wealth and power of the Ruling Class first hand. If an investment fund owned by several extremely wealthy people decide that 3M or GE or Boeing are not making enough profit, they can put intense pressure on the management of these companies to cut labor costs. Suddenly you are out of a job, and you will never know that several unknown people meeting in New York made decisions that have put you on Unemployment, and maybe long-term joblessness.
Class interests among the Ruling Class and (real) Middle Class are carefully looked after. The Ruling and Middle Classes understand that their privileged position in society depends on keeping the very large working class under control.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Thank you, Bitter Crank. That's pretty much where I'm coming from. The practical reality, I think, for all of us, is that if we limit ourselves only to those thinkers whose work we have the wherewithal to read directly, our intellectual horizons would shrink drastically. There's just too much out there. As our American friends might say, sometimes we need the CliffsNotes version.
Now, @Maw:
Quoting Maw
But how dismissive have I been really? Yes, I start out with the view that Marx says that the fall of capitalism is inevitable. Based on the secondary sources I've seen to date, I had no reason to believe that to be controversial. But once that view was challenged, I acknowledged the limits of my own knowledge, and I think have been pretty open to the possibility that I what I thought I knew may have been wrong.
If you want to talk lack of citations, frankly, look to the beam in your own eye. But speaking of, my own list of secondary sources now include this:
"Ultimately, according to Das Kapital, the 'capitalist class becomes unfit to rule, because it is incompetent to assure an existence to its slave within his slavery.' Consequently, the capitalist system collapses, and the working class inherits economic and political power."
https://www.britannica.com/topic/Das-Kapital
I still make room for the possibility that Das Kapital says no such thing. It's not like I consider Britannica to be infallible. But I do consider it a little more authoritative than a random person I just met on the internet. I want to stress that I don't mean that to be a slight or an attack on anyone present. I acknowledge that any of you could with equal validity describe me in exactly the same terms. Absent some pretty compelling argument or evidence, if I said one thing and Britannica said the opposite, can anyone here honestly say that they'd believe me?
Absent some previously earned credibility, pointing at a very thick book and saying "Oh, it agrees with me" doesn't count for very much. Because, as we all know, no-one can read all the thick books. Including you, Maw.
Whether you care enough to put in the effort to unpack it a bit more is up to you.
Quoting Bitter Crank
Yes; but, let's not kid ourselves. Class structure may as well still exist; but, not in the same manner as when Marx was describing the socio-economic's of Germany or England some 152 years ago.
The situation of our current proletariat is dramatically better than back then, many thanks to education and the rungs of the social ladder being not as far apart. Despite the outcries of liberals today of stagnant wages and lesser social mobility than say the 1950's, we do have a pretty progressive tax system, low-cost education for the poor through subsidized loans, a generous package offered by the military if one wants to go down that route, and a booming economy.
Economic downturns are inevitable, one has to accept that fact under a capitalist socio-economic system.
Where has socialism been tried? Let's see...
Russia, China, Poland, East Germany, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Albania, Cuba, Cambodia, North-Vietnam (Vietnam), Mozambique, Angola, Laos, Afghanistan, Benin, People's Republic of Congo, Ethiopia, North Korea, Mongolia, Somalia, South Yemen, Nicaragua, Syria, Libya, Algeria, Sudan.
Among others.
And then there has been the socialist revolutions, uprisings and proxy states not being very successfull either:
The Paris Commune (18 March–28 May 1871)
Strandzha Commune (18 August–8 September 1903)
Soviet Republic of Soldiers and Fortress-Builders of Naissaar (December 1917–26 February 1918)
Finnish Socialist Workers' Republic (28 January–29 April 1918)
Odessa Soviet Republic (31 January–13 March 1918)
Donetsk–Krivoy Rog Soviet Republic (12 February–May 1918)
Alsace Soviet Republic (9–22 November 1918)
Free Socialist Republic of Germany (9 November 1918 – 11 August 1919)
Commune of the Working People of Estonia (29 November 1918 – 5 June 1919)
Saxony Soviet (November 1918–14 March 1919)[52]
Latvian Socialist Soviet Republic (17 December 1918 – 13 January 1920)
Free Territory (1918–1921)
Lithuanian–Byelorussian Soviet Socialist Republic (27 February–25 August 1919)
Hungarian Soviet Republic (21 March–6 August 1919)
Mughan Soviet Republic (March–June 1919)
Bavarian Council Republic (6 April–3 May 1919)
Limerick Soviet (15–27 April 1919)
Crimean Socialist Soviet Republic (28 April–26 June 1919)
Bessarabian Soviet Socialist Republic (May–September 1919; 15–18 September 1924)
Slovak Soviet Republic (16 June–7 July 1919)
Persian Socialist Soviet Republic (9 June 1920–September 1921)
Galician Soviet Socialist Republic (8 July–21 September 1920)
Hunan Soviet (9 September 1927–October 1927; succeed by Jiangxi–Fujian Soviet and then Chinese Soviet Republic)
Guangzhou Commune (Guangzhou Soviet) (11 December 1927 – 13 December 1927)
Shinmin Prefecture (1929–1932)
Ngh?-T?nh Soviet (1930–1931)
Chinese Soviet Republic (7 November 1931 – 22 September 1937)
Socialist Republic of Chile (4 June–2 October 1932)
People's Revolutionary Government of the Republic of China (22 November 1933 – 13 January 1934)
Asturian Socialist Republic (October 5–18, 1934)
Anarchist Aragon (21 July 1936 – 1939)
Revolutionary Catalonia (21 July 1936 – 1939)
Finland Finnish Democratic Republic (December 1939–March 1940)
Political Committee of National Liberation of Greece (10 March 1944 – 28 August 1949)
Second East Turkestan Republic (12 November 1944 – 20 December 1949)
People's Republic of Korea (6 September 1945–February 1946)
Azerbaijan People's Government (November 1945–December 1946)
Republic of Mahabad (22 January–15 December 1946)
Provisional People's Committee for North Korea (February 1946–9 September 1948)
Marquetalia Republic (1948–1958)
Provisional Revolutionary Government of the Republic of South Vietnam (8 June 1969 – 2 June 1976)
National Revolutionary Council of Gambia (30 July 1981 – 5 August 1981)
Democratic Republic of Yemen (21 May–7 July 1994)
BUT OF COURSE... nobody from any of these countries or these revolutions etc. GOT IT RIGHT! :razz:
As Slavoj Zizek has said, Marx many time said that history/events can go the other direction he envisioned them going... and that typically was the way how things went.
Like (if I remember my Marx correctly) that the Proletariat can choose just to want higher pay and not opt for a revolution and communism. Which actually is a smart observation.
Well, jackals and jackasses aren't great as leaders in ANY society no matter who owns the capital.
Quoting Bitter Crank
The Social Democrats, the Ex-Communists (the Leftist Alliance), the Green Party and the Centrist Party are making a bold new effort here in my country now. The conservative Party is in the Opposition after being 12 years in power.
But if there's democracy, there's a safety valve called elections, so I'm not afraid of what is to come. Try as hard as they want. (And the new administration already backtracked from the most extreme left-wing ideas... :up: )
haha don't take it personally son, Maw is a veteran on these forums and on the previous one. He is an outspoken leftist (not Marxist though, as he leans more towards anarchism/left wing libertarianism), a bit insecure, hence his 'contemptuously dismissive' comments and a bit autistic when it comes to social interaction. Nevertheless, he is incredibly well read and is, so far from what I have seen here, pretty much correct on Marx's work.
Quoting ritikew
As for the "son" part, I may be a little older than... Quoting Theologian
...may have lead you to believe! :wink:
What I said is, true, but I never said I hadn't done anything else. Though I am definitely not up there with Bitter Crank!
As for the Quoting ritikew
...part, feel free to make the case. I'm certainly not here claiming to be any kind of expert on Marxist theory myself.
I just don't find it persuasive when someone's entire argument is "Hey, I've read the book, so I know." Especially when it's a long and complex book, and it seems that there are plenty of other folks who've also read the book and "know" differently.
This is such a Chomsky move lol. But it is also the reason why he lost my respect that I had for him. Like Chomsky, you are an intelligent bloke Maw. And like Chomsky, you cherry pick some misleading facts and must deliberately dance around facts that would demolish the notion you try to put forward.
I have mixed feelings about Chomsky. But I was very unimpressed by the description he gave of Skinner as a "Nazi." Which he bravely did after Skinner was dead and so could no longer sue for libel.
Maybe one day I will start a thread on methodological behaviorism...
On a completely different note, I am afraid I don't know what the facts are that would demolish what Maw said here. Could you expand on this point a bit?
Norway's tax structure is quite close to OECD average:
Not quite the "socialist" country that people like to portray...
Maw is referring to this article: https://www.peoplespolicyproject.org/2018/03/14/the-state-owns-76-of-norways-non-home-wealth/
Leaving aside that the phrase "entire wealth" is blatantly wrong, even provided the incredibly misleading article, which is a politically motivated piece of junk. The statistic "non-home wealth" is ad hoc defined to serve a political agenda.
Ahh, yeah. Okay. Makes sense. Thank you for the comprehensive reply. :smile:
It's hard to tell how old someone is here. A member who recently left in a justified huff because he felt abused by the moderators, said he was 83--probably one of the older members here. Nothing about his writing style gave away his age.
Some people write their age, and some people don't.
I told you that this reading of Marx stems primarily from David Harvey who has been teaching classes on Marx and Capital for around 40 years. Which is more "authoritative" to you: a professor who has been teaching the subject for 40 years or an excerpt from an encyclopedia article written by.....? You can cherry pick statements online all you want, but I'm not even asking you to simply believe me, I'm asking you to read the actual work before crystallizing your judgement on an author you haven't read. Marx is unfortunately a much maligned and misunderstood thinker, so I recommend reading him yourself, and if that is too demanding for you at this time, then I would recommend holding judgement. But given the undeniable prominence of Marxist philosophy within the last 200 years you'll have to grapple with him eventually.
lol who is this?
That is your argument for socialism? I don't know if I should laugh or be genuinely happy, perhaps I'll do both.
Norway is a capitalist country. No way around it. None. You could argue that it's a mixed economy, I could agree with that. But just think WHY Norway's government owns over 70% of the nation's entire wealth. There's a simple reason for that.
It's that they not only had nationalized their oil wealth like many oil producing countries have done, but (unlike the UK with the North Sea oil revenue) didn't use the oil income to finance government spending. What they made was an enormous Sovereign Wealth Fund and used only the interest from the fund to finance the Welfare State, and this is the reason WHY the government wealth is so high in Norway. So your prime example of large government owned wealth is because of a 1 trillion dollar wealth fund investing in over 9 200 companies globally just tells the state where socialism is now. In denial. Because these kind of schemes are quite ordinary in Nordic countries, which aren't socialist. As if we mean by socialism the thing it used to mean in the 20th Century, not that it's just a derogatory word for some and something that differs from the present US for others.
But as a Cuban card carrying communist said to me in 1989, the objective of socialism in Cuba is to become a Sweden.
And Sweden of course, is still a capitalist country.
edit: In fact, when I studied philosophy, Marx was portrayed as a minor young Hegelian, with little to no original contributions to either philosophy or economics. He has done great for the field of sociology though.
edit(2): f*ck, I make so many typo's it's embarrassing. It's late and I am tired..
is a specific tax policy sufficient for doing a socialism now?
Quoting ritikew
The article doesn't hide the percentage of national wealth owned by the state when homeownership is factored in, which is nearly 60%. What's the problem?
I'm not "contemptuously dismissive" because I'm "insecure". I'm contemptuously dismissive because I'm "incredibly well read" while being an "intelligent bloke" :smirk:
I also haven't considered myself to be a libertarian socialist since around 2015, or since whenever I read Mariana Mazzucato's book, The Entrepreneurial State.
And what is it about the class situation that Marx observed that is so different today?
1/3 of the population gets a college education. 1 out of 3. 2 out of 3 do not. Yes, if you are sufficiently poor, there is limited financial assistance available. But let's not kid ourselves: People are borrowing real money to pay for living expenses during college, tuition, books, fees, transportation, etc. But sure, education is available to far more people now than 150 years ago.
The poorest 10th of the population owe more than they own. 100 million Americans have less than $5000 saved for retirement. The average amount of savings for retirement is about $90,000. 90k is better than nothing, but if, after you retire, you don't own your house outright; if you have uncovered medical / dental expenses; if you have to buy a car; the $90K will disappear very quickly.
A large share of Americans have a desperate to precarious financial future.
I'll grant you: the grinding poverty and crude exploitation of the industrial revolution in the mid 19th century has been replaced by a kinder, gentler exploitation and redundancy than what Karl Marx or Charles Dickens observed. We eliminated child labor (in many parts of the world); plants are generally much safer now than they were then; the daily hours worked is far fewer now than in Marx's day (in the US and Europe). Living conditions are better for most people now than in the past.
But be careful how you compare. Having indoor plumbing (today) is much better than using an outhouse. Having hot and cold running water, a flush toilet, and screens on the windows makes life much better now than it was in 1850. However, in 1850 hot and cold water on tap, flush toilets, screens on the windows, central heating (or adequate heating), were rare for EVERYBODY.
People do not feel much gratification in being told that their lives are shitty compared to the people who rule over them, but their lives are really quite grand compared to people who lived 150 years ago.
Well, every manager understands that shit-paid jobs and unhappy workers don't contribute to productivity. Furthermore, the demand for labor has gone up significantly since Marxs' time. At the very least, these two factors contribute to better wages and economic growth. I'm not sure about this; but, Marx incorrectly assumed that wants and desires can be satisfied, which if you go the grocery store and see a multiplicity of superior and inferior goods, then that's all that needs proving in regards to the issue.
Quoting Bitter Crank
So, when will things start appearing as rosy and good for your tastes? Just wondering what kind of standards for social mobility you have in mind here?
So what you are basically arguing is that state capitalism is a step into socialism: countries investing their revenue into the stock market (of other countries) is socialism, which sounds very funny. But I guess you look at megacorporations like BP or Equinor (former Statoil) and see wonderful examples of steps towards socialism...
Because that wealth that you are talking about, the Norwegian 1 trillion dollar wealth fund (Government Pension Fund Global), which was last year worth about $195,000 per every Norwegian citizen (which explains the stats you desperately cling on to as evidence of a step towards socialism), invests in the global stock market and hence just embraces the globalized capitalist system. The fund doesn't at all invest in Norwegian companies as the Norwegians understand the negative consequences such move could have (which truly would be genuinely a way to socialism...and also a path to inefficiency and possible corruption).
Quoting Maw
Basically a step to the right from traditional socialism, I'd say.
What you are totally missing (and likely won't even bother think about) is that the system isn't at all "a step in the right" direction. Having government owned companies simply doesn't change the capitalist system. It's not a precursor to socialism. Especially when these arrangements have been done in unison with the right wing parties: for example Statoil was formed by a unanimous act passed by the Storting, the Norwegian parliament. What is crucial to notice that these kind of acts by the government don't attack capitalism and do not try to change the model to socialism.
That Equinor (the state oil company of Norway) competes in other markets than just on Norwegian territory show the efficiency and the market driven mentality and the success of the company. The dismal performance for example of the Venezuelan PDVSA shows how socialism wrecks things (even if the company wasn't performing well either when the country was run by a right-wing administration). The whole narrative of "curse of oil" is actually about the perils of nationalization of a lucrative industry (which doesn't ask much if anything from the labour force in the country).
And do you live in the Nordic countries? I do. Referring to your "workers" cooperatives, the most successful cooperatives here are simply consumer owned cooperatives that are managed totally like modern corporations. They have just the exception to other corporations that the "member card"-program is simply an "owner"-card program. In Finland we have cooperatives that simply dominate the retail market and have pushed out the "Mom and Pop "-stores out. Cooperatives that did fail here were those owned by Finnish Communist Party as they simply weren't well lead well, which just show how lousy true communists are at capitalism (or managing anything).
wut? Can't even make any sense of that sentence.
Quoting Maw
Quoting Maw
What you attempt to insinuate is that the Norwegian government owns/controls 60% (or the majority) of the means of production in the country. Let's accept your flawed logic to that number of 60% for sake of argument. It includes Oil fund that is literally twice their entire economy and the vast majority of it is in foreign assets. Like I stated above, as you can see, the representative number is more around 38%, Norway is mostly privatised.
Maw has gone down the path of revisionism. So he was quite sensitive to dismiss your deterministic interpretation of Marx, hence his autistic and insecure response. It is not a popular view that is being held among Marxists, so I would not sweat too much over his comments.
Marx's teleological view of history is a more common interpretation and so your 'deterministic' remark is not as ignorant as Maw insinuates here, albeit perhaps not very accurate. Marx held the view that capitalism is fundamentally unstable that would collapse due to its internal contradictions.
By the way, a tip, if you decide to read on Marx, note that he uses very specific and situated definitions that highly depend on their context for their meaning and purpose. It makes his work confusing and tough to read directly. A typical continental philosopher.
I am actually autistic, and flippant uses of the term, as above, are not helpful. Understanding autism is hard enough without people saying (for example) "on the spectrum" when they really mean something else. Thanks. :smile:
No, the Sovereign Trust Fund is a component of the wealth that I am talking about. The other being the 70+ SOEs that comprise a majority of Norway's GDP, wealth stemming from land ownership, and nearly 30% ownership of stocks on Norway's domestic Oslo Stock Exchange. In fact, the Sovereign Trust Fund wasn't established until 1990, and didn't receive in-flow until six years later, at which point the Norwegian government nevertheless owned nearly 40% of the nation's wealth. This latter fund, the Government Pension Fund of Norway, was established 50 years ago and invests in many large Norwegian companies. Such a shame they couldn't have known of the "terrible consequences" and the "inefficiency" and "corruption" you are speaking about. My point is that these are workable solutions that step away from capitalism towards a "flavor", if you will, of socialism i.e. government managed wealth used to fund the welfare of a state within which there are free and fair elections so that even a right-wing party is able to win elections (although I'd wager that Norway's Conservative Party is still to the left of America's Democratic Party). To my mind, any sort of meaningful socialism necessarily (but not sufficiently) requires collective ownership of wealth. Is Norway a "socialist" country? No, but certainly such a system is more ideologically aligned with socialism than it is with capitalism
Ownership of wealth doesn't mean ownership of the means of production. They own 70+ SOEs, but that doesn't constitute 60% ownership of the country's wealth.
Who is this by the way, you are running around claiming I'm autistic and insecure several times, I think you should probably just say who you are.
Comparing conditions many decades apart is always difficult. One can used 'chained consumer price indexing" only so far back before it becomes questionable. We can be reasonably certain that US $1 in 1913 is equivalent to $25 in 2018. Then we have to compare income figures and cost of living. That gets more difficult. A good share of what people bought in 1953 or 2013 wasn't available in 1913.
It's much more difficult to work back to the 1850 UK £1 and compare it to 2018 £1. The demand for labor went up, did it not, because economies became larger? Certainly the demand for labor in mid 19th century was fairly high. Many hands were needed to tend the new machines.
That the quality of life for many workers is better now than 160 years ago is certainly true. Were we to return all of the manufacturing to the United States that has been off-shored over the last 70 years, we might not say the same thing. A lot of the jobs that are being done now in China, Bangladesh, or Malaysia are manufacturing and assembly jobs that used to be done here. The workers in SE Asia are being paid shit wages. Were shoes, clothing, plastic products, and so on to be manufactured again in the US -- with prices staying as low as they are now -- it is likely that the wages and quality of work life in the US would take a nose dive.
Quoting Wallows
Quoting Wallows
Not really. "Proletarian" just means "working-class person, worker, working person, plebeian, commoner, ordinary person, man/woman/person in the street". If you are paid a wage for doing work, whether that be repairing railroad tracks or working as an accountant for the railroad in an air conditioned office, you are still a worker -- a member of the proletarian class.
"Alienation" as Marx defined it, is a technical term -- different than existential alienation. A worker is "alienated from the product of his labor" by the terms of employment. The employee comes to work, does a fine job and turns out a great product, but the company owns the product, sells it, and keeps the profit. The worker has no control over the stuff he makes. That's what "alienation" means for Marx.
Marx would likely have understood the existentialists "alienation", had he been around to read Camus.
I don't think alienation of either the Marxist variety or the existential variety has been even slightly diminished. I'd say it is worse than ever. A lot of the unhealthy, crazy behaviour we see in society is actually the heroic effort on the part of many people to dull their pain, their alienation.
A troll that needs validation...
But, I mean... You do agree that the welfare of the proletariat is getting better? My analysis in the OP points towards a future, where having astronomical sums of money doesn't correlate with increased wellbeing. I'm thinking about how to put this another way. If the purchasing power of my money increases to the point of being able to afford the same goods as my bourgeoise counterpart, then that would seem to imply that instead of the rift between the two growing apart, they are actually converging.
Please keep in mind, that even if the money bag has a lot of capital, then that still is irrelevant to the contrasting effect it has to the poor bloke given that the same goods can be attained at a lower cost to both parties. But, I do concede that the money bag will have an absolute advantage over the proletariat in terms of expanding his or her influence in terms of job creation or self-sufficiency through investing in the market.
If you studied economics in the 1960s, one of your textbooks on the Soviet economy would have, on its cover, a graph showing GNP growth of the US vs the USSR. The latter started far behind the US, but the gradient of its growth curve was far steeper than the American one: the Soviets seemed to be growing at about 7% a year, vs the Americans' 3%. The curves, if extrapolated, crossed some time near the end of the century.
Then ... Well, the story is best told by a remarkable novel by Francis Spufford,Red Plenty. There, you can see the living human reality of what certain economists had much earlier determined as the central flaw of a non-market economy: the inability to set rational prices. (This is called 'the economic calculation problem', or 'the socialist calculation problem'.)
The wise Chinese rapidly abandoned Central Planning, while retaining Party control. The Soviets followed fifteen years later. Now only Cuba and North Korea still retain this model. A visit to Cuba is an eye-opener in terms of the realities of the planned economy. Watching queues of people waiting patiently to receive their food rations should tell you all you need to know about socialism.
Today no one argues that 'socialism is more efficient than capitalism' (which was a central premise of Marx, who himself praised capitalism for liberating the productive forces, the growth of which he rightly understood to be the key which would allow us to leave the kingdom of necessity and enter the kingdom of freedom).
Instead, socialism is redefined to mean some form of social-democracy: a kinder, gentler capitalism, where someone else pays your college tuition. Or it's motivated in terms that ignore the economic question.
A few brave souls have tried to rescue socialism by proposing some form of quasi-market for a socialist economy, or indeed 'market socialism', but since the main appeal of socialism is emotional and ethical, few take much interest in their ideas. In particular, the working class, even in countries in which it used to be socialist, has abandoned this ideology. It's now held -- or rather the word is used -- by privileged young college students, on their way to a cushy job with a global corporation.
It's sort of like secular Christianity: lip-service is paid to it, but no one actually expects its Coming, or orders their own personal life according to its ideals.
If the purchasing powers are close to equal, that sounds correct. But they have to be close to equal, at the same time. If I can suddenly buy a Ferrari and a mansion, but the bourgeoisie is now buying spaceships and planets, then I am still reaching for the pitchfork and torches. Will the majority of people ever be satisfied as the "under" class?
Well, the standard of measure should be the human happiness index. If buying a Tesla Model 3 is within the means of the proletarian, then I can't imagine a better product a bourgeoisie could purchase that would increase satisfaction.
I tend to agree. But that is why I used a more obvious example. And since 99%+ of the planet today cannot afford a Model 3, it suggests we have a long way to go.
So what about this as a definition of 'genuine' socialism: the means of production are owned/controlled collectively, and the collective body that owns/controls them is subject to democratic control by the working class.
That would rule out both capitalist welfare states, however pleasant, and the current and former Communist societies.
I personally would add that the collective ownership/control of the means of production precludes competition among the collectively-owned enterprises: the workers in one steel plant don't try to win contracts away from another steel plant, and don't compete with them to produce a better product at a lower price. No one is made unemployed, no factory can go out of business, any difference in wages is directly due to differences in skills or responsibilities: so a skilled worker might make more than an unskilled one, but two equally-skilled workers in two different plants will have the same wage for the same work. Production is centrally planned, albeit by a body subject to democratic control. I believe this is how socialism has always been conceived of by most socialists.
I say that "I personally" would include this in the description of genuine socialism, but I know there are thoughtful socialists who envision a socialist society where the market is still in play -- workers would compete against each other, and prices and production would be set by blind market forces rather than by conscious planning. This seems to contradict the spirit of socialism, however, which envisions production for human need -- as determined by the democratically-elected central planning body -- rather than for profit. But since some socialists claim that central planning is not necessary, I just add it as an appendix.
The Norwegian Pension Fund system compromises of two wealth funds.
Quoting Maw
:roll:
So just why then they decided NOT TO invest the larger funds money into the domestic market. I think they know a bit more about investing than you do. And also have avoided the so abundant pitfalls from the easy money that oil wealth brings that are so common in other countries.
Quoting Maw
Sure, but that is something called reaching a consensus in politics. You have to remember that these kind of policies, especially the so-called socialist welfare programs, were here accepted and done together with right-wing parties. As I've always said, a right-wing conservative from a Nordic country would seem to an American as a left-leaning Democrat, if not a pinko liberal. Yet again the social democrats here are also different breed from genuine socialists. Again the power of consensus politics.
Quoting Maw
But it should be also noted that collective ownership of wealth, just cooperatives, go perfectly at hand with capitalism: let's remember that Bismarck wasn't a socialist, but was trying to fight socialism with the government lead social security system, which is exactly that collective ownership of wealth.
I think the most interesting socialists are those who have tried to grapple with 'the Socialist Calculation Question' put by the 'Austrian' economists, and who have advanced models of socialism that supposedly deal with it.
I would urge all serious socialists ( who would like to see socialism in the sense used above, ie. collective ownership of the means of production, under democratic control) to read Francis Spufford's Red Plenty and then to think about how the problems described there would be dealt with in a democratic regime.
You said originally said that the internal fund "doesn't at all invest in Norwegian companies as the Norwegians understand the negative consequences such move could have", the obvious answer simply being 1) that it's a fund dedicated to international stocks, not domestic stocks, because 2) they have had sizable investments for 30+ years prior in their domestic stock. 1/3 ownership in their domestic is already a sizable percentage.
Quoting ssu
It's at least nice that the Nordic countries can agree on a strong welfare state, strong worker's rights, and other common sense policies and programs that should be a foundation to a developed country. But the GOP has mostly turned away from consensus politics since the 90s and have only escalated their Machiavellianism since McConnell took the helm, while simultaneous turning farther to the right.
But notice the other side of what it means to have political consensus: it means that the social democrats go just fine with the implementation of right wing policies too. Especially when the market mechanism does work. It can be quite easily argued that the Nordic countries like Sweden or Finland were far more socialist and centrally governed in the 1960's and 1970's than now. Hence these countries aren't on the path to more socialism, but are what is called mixed economies.
I'll give you a good example. In the 1970's there was a structural overdemand of rental housing. Hence the government's idea at that time was regulate the market... which made things worse. Once when the new regulations came into law, the supply of rental houses simply vanished. My great aunt rented flats back then and she would get one hundred responses from one ad for a flat in the newspaper. So desperate were people that some even sent the first months rent in a letter to her. Even in the 90's there was still this huge demand for flats: for one opening she would have her phone ringing all the day and tens of people would come to see the flat, any flat. Then the government decided to end the regulation and have total freedom in making the tenancy agreement. This opened for even companies to be established that rent out flats. And finally the market was balanced. If you know rent a flat, only at the time when schools are starting are there any crowds. Nobody talks about problems in rental housing anymore as it simply isn't a problem anymore. And needless to say, since the 1990's we have had social democrats in power and they haven't changed the decisions. When the free market mechanism works, why bother?
Political hacks never raise this issue of adapting things from the other side of the political aisle. The only acceptable narrative is to list the problems which the other side creates and things that don't work thanks to the other sides policies. Reminding people that Bismarck really wasn't a socialist, but founded with social security one of the bedrocks of the 'leftist' welfare state, isn't something that the ideologues on both sides want to admit.
Quoting Maw
In the US winner takes it all. And when you have just two parties, no need for consensus.
I genuinely fear that the type of political tribalism, the demonization of the other side and the refusal of any kind of political consensus is creeping into the Nordic countries too.
It's starts with a refusal to engage with parties that are deemed 'populist'. The best thing to happen here was that then called "True Finns" party was after an election victory let in to the new administration. And then the mass migration event to Europe happened while they were in the administration. This lead the party to break up. Now they have regained the support after being in the opposition and I hope that the new central-leftist administration won't follow the example of Sweden and simply announce that they will never do anything with the party. Parliamentarism needs that the various parties do seek consensus and to have a dialogue.
What's the difference between socialism and communism according to you and Marx?
Quoting Wallows
What, according to you, are "the benefits of progress and prosperity" entailed by capitalist competition?
What are the drawbacks, or socioeconomic costs, associated with those "benefits", and with the capitalist economic system that, by your account, entails these benefits?
Quoting Wallows
What are the "benefits" of the proto-communist state? Why proto- here, and not all the way?
Is taxation essential? Can't they just do away with money entirely, and distribute labor and other resources according to whatever reasonable consensus may be achieved in good faith by the community of human beings?
What are the constraints on this exercise in political imagination?
Quoting Wallows
I suppose that's one way things could go.
When does it happen that a capitalist socioeconomic organization loses the capacity "to make progress"?
Perhaps you've heard the same sort of rumors I've heard along these lines: The capitalist system tends to generate socioeconomic crises by periodically misallocating resources. But why should we expect that some period of crises will put a definitive end to the sort of economic system we call capitalist? Doesn't it seem about as likely that capitalism will continue to adapt itself to historical circumstances? I see no reason to suppose we can predict the outcome, as if according to some Gothic teleology.
Socialists like Engels and Lenin postulated the withering away of the state, the idea that coercing people to socialism would at some point become unnecessary and the state apparatus would slowly disappear. This turned out to be false, and the state only became more powerful. The bridge from capitalism to communism—socialism—turned out to be false. Socialism is a bridge to totalitarianism.
Once everyone has access to whatever resources they wish - which has happened VERY quickly over the past few decades - then ‘wealth’,in term of ‘money’, will dissolve. I cannot imagine how the idea of ‘state’ is going to last another century if technological advances continue to break physical barriers.
Neither do I see communism as a desired goal of any kind. The issue is economic, but the means of creating a ‘classless’ society, in terms of access to resources, means the whole economic system, trade is goods and such, will negate the need for any ‘economic system’.
Human beings thrive on novelty, interaction and competition. This is not to say negotiations, ‘social contracts’ and cooperation are not also part and parcel of human life. My point is that I don’t really think humans are completely malleable - we generally a species of two contrary positions (overly cautious and quick to attach ourselves to what seems to best fit the immediate situation).
The most useful thing I’ve heard from the direction of Marx is to regard the personal value of some ‘worker’. If I asked you to stack blank pieces of paper everyday for a large sum of money it would devalue our sense of self-worth. That is the biggest problem of labour today and in the future. People want to feel USEFUL.
This so mindbogglingly incredibly naive it is almost painful to read and respond to.
By "everyone has access to whatever they wish" what you actually mean is everyone around you in your class has access to sufficient resources to be happy in your opinion and you don't give two figs about first-peoples thrown off their land and forests burned to graze the cattle you eat, or the factory worker living in slave-conditions to make your electronics, or the people that don't have the skills to "cut it" and are homeless but contribute to the system by being a signpost of fear to keep the wage-slaves focused on the rat race.
Classes are not vague. People who are homeless form a class of identifiable people that share the characteristic of being homeless. People who work for a subsistence wage and have no capital form a class of people with these characteristics. People who work for a higher than subsistence wage and have enough capital to avoid homelessness in the short term (but not long term) if they were fired form a class sharing these characteristics. People who have enough capital that they do not ever have to work if consuming only the rents, interest or capital gains increase of their capital stock form a class sharing this characteristics. Or, as usually referred to there is the under-class, lower-class, middle-class and upper class of economic means.
Classes are only vague if you are securely middle to upper class and simply ignore everyone else. Then yes, who cares if you have a meaningful job, washing machine, a car and can go on great vacations and have fun on the internet and virtual reality or whether you have a mansion, a yacht and the complete set of Victorian styled servants.
Now, is there enough resources for everyone to share a middle-class level of comfort? It's trivially easy to prove as production efficiency has increased hundreds to thousands of fold, depending on how it's measured, and it's almost impossible to argue that there is not enough production capacity to provide everyone a decent standard of living. The whole point Marx is trying to explain is why this doesn't occur; how can people remain wage-slaves through several orders of magnitude increase in productivity (far more than population increase)?
If your point is just that you personally don't feel part of a class, no more willing to go to bat for the rich than the poor, again, if you bother to read Marx, he's completely aware of this. The fact that people form objective economic classes, Marx is very well aware, does not automatically create political parties of those groups.
There are of course problems with Marx, but pointing out there are in fact classes formed in a capitalist society in relation to capital ownership or lack-of-ownership is not one of those problems.
As to your contention of "accelerating material abundance that will soon satisfy everyone!" this is claimed every decade by proponents of capitalism since capitalism emerged: look at the steam boat and pump, affordable hammers and nails, the electric ironing board, the auto-mobile, the microwave, the flying machine! How easy life has already become for everyone, what paradise awaits!
I wasn’t saying anything extraordinary or particularly naive. I guess you thought I meant everyone has access now? I didn’t. I meant a great swath of the human population has access today that merely a few decades ago. Literacy, family planning, health care and wealth have gone up and child mortality, war and poverty have gone down.
I never mention not feeling part of a class. My point was that capitalism has, although in fits and starts, moved everyone up the ladder over all. This is undeniable isn’t it? I’m not saying social action hasn’t helped too (far from it!). Once we get to a certain point then the idea of ‘money’ will begin to dissolve: I don’t mean next week though or in 10 years.
That’s all. No big deal other than pointing out that the average person today is in a better position than 100 years ago with more ready access to trade, education and healthcare.
It is undeniable, in my view. Compare South to North Korea, West to East Germany. Extreme poverty throughout the world might be eradicated in our lifetime.
If we’re talking ‘monetary’ wealth rather than access to unlimited resources, then, yeah. I don’t seriously expect to see a world where everyone has the same level of opportunities as me, and if they did it would lead to a more immediate problem of ‘personal value’ - meaning a self of ‘worth’ - as I mentioned.
Humans live to strive, and strive to live. How we’d cope as a social species if we all had equal, and immediate, access to endless resources I cannot imagine! We appear to need a ‘goal’/‘struggle’ in life. I have no answer as to how society could find meaning, with today’s apparent attitudes, without something to push against. I do believe that the answer lies in our innate joy of learning and exploring though.
Well, you should definitely give Marx a go then, as this is one of his predictions: that capitalism definitely seems good at the start.
Quoting I like sushi
This is up for debate.
In questioning this assertion there is first the consideration of what constitutes wealth; do we mean only privately held goods or public goods too? Obviously, proponents of capitalism will say "oh, oh, only privately held wealth counts!" in which case, indeed, if we add it up it has significantly increased on average.
However, if we suspect we are being fooled by a garbage-in-garbage-out analysis, and consider public goods too, then the situation is very different.
First, if we consider social institutions protecting political freedom a social good, then we now have to question whether increase in private wealth on average for a nation and increase in national power and technological sophistication that comes at the expense of political freedom a worthy trade-off. What if some increases in average private wealth come at the expense of a sort of Faustian bargain with totalitarianism and the increase in general wealth translates directly to an increase in totalitarian power? If public institutions are undermined by capitalism -- either leading democracy towards totalitarianism or reinforcing totalitarianism whenever it can make use of capitalist systems -- then it is not a given that increases in average private wealth compensate decreases in public institutional wealth.
Second, if increases in average private wealth come at the expense of the earth's capital basis of production (ecosystems) -- that we are in affect drawing down our capital base and spending those resources flippantly -- then there is no basis to argue that the increase in wealth is, overall permanent. It is not a given that increase in technological and scientific knowledge wealth always exceeds decreases in ecological wealth. If, overall, we are actually just drawing down the earths capital and pretending it's revenue, this is not a "macro economically justifiable" situation, just a plunder based system that leaves a bad situation to future generations (as well as many living today who feel the effects of these negative externalities). Small is Beautiful is a depressingly old book that explains this pretty well.
That is why proponents of capitalism, such as libertarians or neo-liberals, eschew empirical investigations into these questions, social and environmental, and just throw out extremely simplistic metrics of progress (hence the term "myth of progress": it must be believed without question or else the whole intellectual edifice collapses). If questioned they have no empirical arguments, just the assumption that 'technology is going to fix everything soon'.
Quoting I like sushi
Above is the basis on which to deny it, however, if you accept, even the benefits you do see around you, also caused by socialist policies, then you haven't really formed an argument for capitalism, just modernity in a general sense.
Quoting I like sushi
A point in capitalism or a point in socialism? Either way, look backwards and compare technology now to 50, 100, or 200 years ago, wouldn't people at any of these times certainly believe, given a description of our level of technology, that we "no longer have poverty" and "no longer have money" with such amazing powers and productivity levels? If you lived at those times making a similar argument to what you're making now upon what basis would you say anything different to what you're saying now?
I’m not entirely sure what this means.
Anyway, if we’re going to have a discussion it would be nice to build from some common ground.
What do we agree on?
Without meaning to paint a black and white picture of capitalism, socialism or communism I hope we can generally agree that there is no pure form of any? I hope we can also agree that capitalism has helped to bring many people out of severe poverty (this doesn’t mean it is the main force only an important one among many). It is also true, I hope you agree, that social force has helped reign in (with varying degrees of success) capitalism where necessarily and reversed the chance of returning to some Gilded Age.
To add, I hope we can also agree that a great deal of Marx’s world was influenced by the impact of the industrial revolution. Today most of the concerns imagined - by people like Charles Dickens - never came to fruition. Now we live in a completely different economic landscape and we certainly have to assess how best to deal with the coming problems and the immediate problems.
My concern is that many more people have access to the most amazing tools (mobile phones + internet) yet I’m unsure if anyone has really been taught to use it to its fuller potential - for education and training.
Anyway, let us stick to what we can agree on. I ask because if there is no common ground then there is no charity in the discussion only accusations and hyperbole. I’m not interested in that kind of exchange.
"Wealth" is a very broad term, and proponents of capitalism generally only focus on privately held wealth, usually material things and their direct proxies. However, if this isn't the whole story of wealth, then it's not straightforward to say when and where "wealth has increased".
If we can be both materially poor as well as politically poor (disenfranchised), then it is not clear if one improves at the expense of the other that wealth has really increased. For instance, consider a political revolution that brings democracy but not very strong democracy (high likelihood of a coup bringing things back to despotism) and during this revolution many things and livelihoods were destroyed; it may not be clear that the slight increase in political wealth compensates the large decrease in private wealth (people may say "we are worse off than before"). Likewise, consider an increase in private wealth in a despotic state that reinforces that despotism (because the state is now also stronger), people who don't like that despotism may feel they are actually worse off than before (democracy is actually further rather than closer and they are more, rather than less, likely to be imprisoned and tortured for their political beliefs).
Now, if a country has both very strong democratic political institutions and also a high average private wealth, then I would definitely agree that country is very wealthy. But how many countries are these? Not very many. A key contention of the proponents of capitalism some decades ago was the completely unfounded theory that market processes create increase in average private wealth which creates democracy -- that the more there are "markets" the more there will be democracy. History has proven this theory false and the proponents of capitalism generally don't even bother with this claim anymore.
This private and public wealth distinction I mention as it is very fruitful to think about.
However, where you maybe unsure how public wealth, in terms of one's share in institutions, can be measured and what trade-offs (increases in average private wealth at the expense of in institutional wealth), the ecological criticism of capitalism is far stronger and easy to measure.
There is simply no refuting capitalism (market forces) have lead to a high rate of consumption of natural resources (unless one is uninterested in science) that is unsustainable.
There is simply no reasonable economic argument that can justify being unsustainable. This is why the proponents of capitalism simply ignore or deny the science of these issues while simultaneously asserting that our science is so good it's going to simply solve all ecological problems if they exist (which they don't, climate scientists are corrupt, but if ever there was a problem, which there isn't, then technology, created by our amazing science, is going to fix it).
In economic terms, if the average standard of living today is due to drawing down the earths capital stocks (the basis of production) and simply consuming that capital, then this is the characteristic of an extremely inefficient economic system. If you live off your capital, destroying it and pretending it's revenue, then at some point you will run out of capital and be destitute. I.e. if you sold all your belongings and lived like a super rich person for a day, renting a yacht, hitting the clubs, buying everyone champagne, this does not make you a super rich person, the wealth is completely illusory; we would call you a fool for buying us campaign with the money you got by liquidating all the assets your future depends on. The rate of consumption of drawing down a capital stock isn't really relevant. The higher the rate you consume your own capital the more you can appear wealthy in the short term; if you spend all your capital in half an hour people around you will be more impressed than if you spent it all over a year, but that doesn't really matter.
If capitalism is simply converting the earths capital basis (life sustaining systems required to produce any standard of living whatsoever) and pretending the consumption of that capital is income, then if wealth measurements ignore this and you simply measure short term average material wealth then you will conclude that average material wealth is going up that "people's income is going up". The higher the rate of drawing down the earths capital basis and pretending it's income, the higher the average private wealth is going to be. But if a narrow measurement of wealth is a garbage measurement, then the conclusion you get out if is garbage also.
I’ll wait for some response to my request for common ground.
I will say though that painting proponents of capitalism as being against social tools is pretty much the kind of talk I was looking to avoid. Social policies are predominant in all capitalist economies (that’s why they’re referred to as ‘mixed economies’ - which is a very mixed bag from nation to nation and trade deal to trade deal).
Wealth is a broad term, your share in public institutions is part of your asset base. Public institutions are assets owned by whoever controls those institutions.
Quoting I like sushi
I am not equating wealth with income either, I don't know where you get that.
Quoting I like sushi
I've already said that if you want to discuss "what's happened" without making a distinction between capitalist policies and social policies, then a better term is modernity.
What is a "mixed economy" a mixture of? It's a mixture of capitalist and socialist based policies. The proponents of a mixed economy are not the proponents of capitalism, they are the proponents of a mixture.
The proponents of capitalism want to minimize the socialist part of the mixture, if not get rid of it entirely, that's what makes them proponents of capitalism and not proponents of a highly regulated welfare state with very strong unions.
At the same time, proponents of capitalism want to claim basically all good things are caused by capitalism (market forces). If Finland is the happiest country in the world ... well that's because of capitalism! nothing to do with strength of social democratic institutions, welfare state policies, rehabilitation based justice system, publicly owned utilities and other market intervention, or that unions have increased in number and power over the last decades rather than decrease.
But, as I have gone over, modernity is not sustainable, what economists that support status quo capitalism (i.e. paid propagandists) identify as private wealth represents converting humanity's capital base and spending it (i.e. destroying the resource base) and calling that process wealth creation. Wealth creation, under any definition of wealth private or social, must be sustainable to have really been created. A company that is drawing down it's capital faster than it makes income can appear stable in the short term but is, by definition, going towards bankruptcy. The faster an individual or a company liquidates assets the more, in the short term, that company or individual can appear to act like a truly wealthy individual or company (doing things expected of the truly wealthy), but it is an illusion (the "truly wealthy", in a narrow materialistic sense, buy the startups and the yachts and the champagne and throw the parties with income that their capital base yields not by liquidating that capital base overall; if humanity as a whole is liquidating it's capital base to pay for the party, this is not real wealth but illusory wealth).
Quoting I like sushi
There is essentially no common ground along the lines you point out.
The myth of progress is just that: a simplistic myth, essential to short circuit any thorough analysis and to conclude "well, whatever modernity is, it's been pretty good!" which is why you wait for the myth of progress input to carry out further reasoning for the desired outputs. Without the myth of progress, all sorts of claims must actually be checked empirically (can private wealth increase at the expense of public wealth? must be checked. Is wealth production, of any kind, at the expense of the resource base happening? Must be checked.).
To make an analogy, if you are trying to get to next town over and plot a course that takes you over a cliff and instant death, moving towards that cliff is not progress towards the next town. Status quo economists (i.e. paid propagandists) want to be able to simply measure how fast the economy is walking (how much is being produced) and claim that therefore that's how quickly it is progressing; that the purpose of an economy is to progress in this way and that lot's of progress has already occurred. However, if this rate of change of production represents a process that brings disaster relentlessly closer, rather than farther away, then it is progress towards disaster.
Wealth is not a narrow term, it basically represents "goodness", but by defining it narrowly in it's measurement, economists that are proponents of capitalism (i.e. paid propagandists) can use all sorts of bait and switch fallacies (don't we want to be more wealthy? don't we want to support wealth creation? aren't therefore wealth creators good things and we should let them create more wealth? all of which is garbage-in-garbage-out arguments if the measurement of wealth is only one narrow aspect of what is meant by wealth) and also derail any constructive conversation into meaningless imaginary games of moving wealth around in charts that represent no actual data points about the real world.
I’ll ask once more ...
Quoting I like sushi
Or make your own suggestions? I don’t care what you don’t agree just yet. I’m only interested in what we can agree on (see above).
Note: If you don’t believe things have gotten better for people due to capitalist economics then the worlds problems must be due to socialist economics or communism. That is if you disagree that the distinctions aren’t completely black and white - if so you’re correct; there is nothing more to be said.
This is really a poor debate tactic to avoid clarifying your position.
I've already stated that if you're not making a distinction between capitalist and socialist policies then you're essentially just referring to modernity (whatever happens to be out there in recent times).
My position is that your position is inherently contradictory, you want to support the statement "things have gotten better for people due to capitalist economics" while appealing to performance under a mixed economy a la "Social policies are predominant in all capitalist economies (that’s why they’re referred to as ‘mixed economies’ - which is a very mixed bag from nation to nation and trade deal to trade deal)".
And you want to avoid teasing apart what is due to socialism and what is due to capitalism.
So, I disagree with the analytic framework of viewing contradiction as totally fine.
I also disagree with the statement that life has gotten better. If you spend all your capital today on renting a yacht and champagne it maybe true that today life is good, but it doesn't follow from this that your life has gotten better if you are destitute tomorrow.
Sustainability is inherent in the notion of wealth. Someone who is spending "like a rich man" but unsustainable we would not consider to actually be a rich man, rather creating the illusion of being a rich man.
We do not agree that life has gotten better for most people. This is the myth of progress, it is essential to nearly all arguments supporting the status quo, because the status quo today is inherently dynamic it is required to assume that this dynamic change is good, is progress towards better things. If you start with the premise the status quo is good, of course you quickly end with the conclusion that the status quo is good. The myth of progress is that starting assumption that the status quo is good.
Knowing this, you will now be able to spot it whenever you hear things, such as has happened already in this conversation, that 'child fatalities have gone down' due to progress, due to capitalism, therefore progress has been good and capitalism also, or 'people are wealthier' on average, or 'our technology is super good'. The goal in all these arguments is to short circuit the concept of wealth, which has a broad meaning basically representing "good things", and tying it to a single metric that has increased, such as child mortality, and excluding things like political wealth (one's power to affect government, in other words ownership of your government, and in turn what your government owns that you therefore share if you have power over it) and sustainability.
Quoting I like sushi
This is not a logically sound argument. If A is composed of B, C, D and you discover A is poisonous, it does not follow that B, C and D must all be poisonous.
'Communism' as represented by totalitarian Soviet Stalinism, definitely was no more ecologically sound than capitalism, being just as dependent on oil and doing things like draining whole lakes to grow cotton along with other catastrophes. (And there is a seed of this in Marx who does not question the goodness of industrialization; an industrialization fetishism to use Marx's language.)
However, the ecological failure of totalitarian Soviet Stalinism does not provide much evidence against proportional democratic socialism with heavily regulated markets. These proportional democratic socialist countries with heavily regulated markets nations are, however, a small minority of economic systems, so it's difficult to argue are a cause of global ecological exhaustion. Furthermore, if you go to these countries, there is far sounder ecological policies internally than compared to countries where capital dominates policy making; the theory lines up with what we find in practice.
I assumed you may have something to say. Now I don’t.
Good luck. No hard feelings.
Well if you really are not concerned about debating what's true and what's false, great tactic to avoid challenging your own beliefs and assumptions.
Marx does not use "fetishism" in this sense, and he arguably doesn't even use the word pejoratively. Rather, he uses it to mean the attribution to inanimate objects of powers or characteristics that properly belong to people. In particular, he writes about the reification and naturalization involved in market exchange, which is a "fetishism of commodities" in which relations between labouring people are seen as relations between objects: social relations become properties of things, and this state of affairs is experienced as being natural.
Generally, economic growth in capitalist form has made life better in several measurable ways for people all over the world. This in itself is not an "argument supporting the status quo", but just a fact. Similarly, we can acknowledge the benefits of growth in the Soviet Union without endorsing forced collectivization, terror, and the use of slave labour (and environmental devastation, as you point out). My argument against capitalism is that progress in human development doesn't happen fast enough, fairly enough, or securely enough, and ties us all into a system of endless toil and precarity.
I would argue Marx uses the term pejoratively (just not only pejoratively), and of course not using the sexual connotation "fetish" has today but the connotation the word had in the 19th century, which I agree you correctly refer to as "reification".
But to those not aware of the context of fetish when Marx was writing:
Quoting Wikipedia
I completely agree with Marx's use of the term fetish, the basic point that money becomes "a human-made object that has power over others [...] the emic attribution of inherent value or powers to an object" and that this psychological relation to money in a capitalist society is why it makes sense to accumulate money indefinitely "for the purpose of accumulating yet more money" being sufficient reason to do so (that there is never "enough", no other natural end point of capital accumulation other than what is possible to accumulate), whereas other commodities it would be bizarre to devote one's life to accumulating and storing a maximum quantity of grain or copper or beanie babies (without making any use of such commodities other than to accumulate more of the same); that if anyone one in capitalist society that met someone who lived meagerly and efficiently to simply increase a large store of beanie babies we would view as wack, accumulating a large store or grain when people are hungry we'd view as immoral, and someone just making a giant store of copper we would suspect of perhaps illegally trying to corner the market -- but if we met someone fully devoted to simply making as much money as possible we'd view as completely normal, in fact laudable.
I think we agree on this point.
It is this same psychological relation I levy at Marx's idea of a industrialized scientific society which he takes for granted as a good development. Marx does not realize that science and technology also has this fetish kind of power over us. What is the material view of history other than this fetish.
Quoting jamalrob
This what I'm debating against. This argument reduces to "measurable if you choose to measure metrics that have increased", which, sure, I grant that. But that some metrics have improved is not sufficient reason to conclude capitalism or modernity in general has been an overall improvement. For instance, a nurse that measures a fever has gone down in a patient is right to note this change as a good thing ... but if the nurse then measures that the patient's heart has stopped, there may not be overall improvement.
This is the core of the myth of progress, of using very broad terms like "wealth" and "life improvement", then choosing a narrow metric of measurement of one or a few aspects included in these things, and then claiming that any arguing about other metrics is immature and childish and shutting down the discussion.
My view of capitalism, or just modernity in general that would include soviet communism, is that it is akin to ever increasing doses of cocaine; there are short term "good effects" but at a massive long term cost; the short term "life improvement" is an illusion. If you have ever argued with someone in the honey moon phase of cocaine or other stimulants who think it's great and made their life better, you get the exact same structure of argument as the myth of progress (it's seems pretty good right now bro) and my argument against capitalism and modernity is exactly the same as you will be trying to make cocaine.
Yes, productivity has gone up (just like with cocaine) but if it is a dynamic that moves towards ecological collapse (cardiac arrest) then the goodness of this productivity is wholly illusory (just like cocaine addiction). Marx and Marxists after him were keen consumers of the cocaine of industrial civilization. That the soviet union devoted itself to industrialization is not a rupture with Marx; where we can argue Marx would not have approved of the soviet union is not "endorsing forced collectivization, terror, and the use of slave labour (and environmental devastation, as you point out)" as you point out.
The industrial revolution and urbanization, in my view, are entirely a mistake, the pathway to the destination that goes over a cliff and breaks all your bones.
In saying this, I am not against literacy, democracy, medicine, science and increasing our technological powers; but all these things are independent of industrialization in my view (they are historically tied together, but not intrinsically tied, we can have these things without urbanized industrialized civilization; and we will have these things without industrialization as it is unsustainable and so will come to an end one way or another: localized decentralization of production or complete ecological collapse is the choice facing us, from my point of view).
First you say you're arguing against the claim that "economic growth in capitalist form has made life better in several measurable ways" but then you appear to accept it in the next sentence. I did not claim that capitalism has made everything better. I was trying to point out that any critique of capitalism that doesn't accept, or that disapproves of, the improvements that capitalism has enabled is worthless, or worse, reactionary.
Otherwise I completely disagree with your basic argument that industrialization and urbanization are bad, but I didn't really intervene here to debate it.
I don't accept it in the next sentence. I accept that some metrics have increased, that is not the same as saying there has been an overall improvement. I go onto explain how this is possible with the example of the nurse and then later again with the example of cocaine.
Quoting jamalrob
I agree that we should look at whatever historical metrics are available objectively. Pretty much every post I've made has aimed to dismantle the myth of progress you are inferring here: that a few metrics prove a general point (a few cases a generalization does not make).
I do not view improvements that are not sustainable as improvements, they are the illusion of improvement, just as the rate of walking or running on the wrong path is not advancement; the more you go the wrong way the worse off you are regardless of how efficient you travel.
Quoting jamalrob
The badness is in the non-sustainability of these systems, that has simply been the empirically verifiable result of what has happened in developing these systems. "You cannot argue with nature" as Feynman reminds us in the context of a small technological disaster, and industrialization is (in the context of human history) an argument with nature we are losing incredibly fast.
I said that "economic growth in capitalist form has made life better in several measurable ways", not that "there has been an overall improvement". If you accept that some metrics have increased, and that these increases have improved life, then you agree with the statement you said your were debating against.
Quoting boethius
Maybe this is the answer, in which case, yeah, reactionary.
This is the myth of progress in a nutshell.
The mistake you make is "that these increases have improved life". This conclusion does not follow from the premise "some metrics have increased".
A patient who's fever has gone down has this improved metric, so the patient does indeed have this going for them, if the patient's fever is decreasing because the patient died (which other metrics tell us) we cannot conclude the life of the patient has improved. The "improvement" of the reduction of fever is an illusory improvement, it "would otherwise be a good thing" if the patient was recovering.
You must add the qualification of "all else being equal" or "insofar as we are only looking at these metrics" to "that these increases have improved life" to turn it into sound tautology of just reiterating that the metrics have indeed increased.
This is the bait and switch fallacy, you are in the first part of the argument considering a narrow definition of improvement and then switching the meaning to "improvement of life" which is far more general. You want to catch opponents of the myth of progress in a "gotcha" of saying that the metrics in question are not an improvement; the way to deconstruct the myth is by proper analysis of what we might otherwise include in the idea of "life improvement" (such as social wealth) and that even if we agree on "human quality of life" what may seem like quality of life improvement, if is only short term, is potentially a metric of harm and not benefit; the local rate of change of a metric does not inform us of where that metric is ultimately going (the distance as the crow flies between you and your destination does not necessarily indicate how quickly you will get to your destination nor whether you will go over a cliff on your current distance-minimizing rate of change).
NOTE: "The Human Development Index (HDI) is a statistic composite index of life expectancy, education, and per capita income indicators"
Are you saying that these are not improvements at all, because other problems somehow make them illusory? Millions would disagree.
Quoting boethius
I am saying that life has improved in certain measurable ways.
Now please don't respond once again by arguing against claims that everything is getting better. I'm not making that claim.
Links:
https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/human-development-index-escosura?time=1870..2015&country=GBR+USA+KOR+IND+CHN+BRA+CPV+AGO+GMB
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_Development_Index
Millions disagree with a lot of things I believe, doesn't bother me. I'm pretty confident we can find many things you believe where we can see millions disagreeing with.
Yes, other problems make many increased metrics (not all, specifically facets of industrialization) under modernity illusory (whether you attribute the increase to capitalist or socialist policies, or a mix leaning on way or another; which is also an important debate).
If an increased metric is due to a system that is not sustainable, then the idea that the increase in that metric (the objective observation) is actually an improvement (a moral judgement that what we are seeing is actually good), then it is an illusion that the metric increase represents an actual improvement.
It is a trivial exercise for an organization to draw down capital and spend the proceeds in a way that seems like income; but it is not the case that the organization is improving through such a process.
Executives and even workers may benefit in the short term by selling or mortgaging core assets and paying themselves a higher wage or even reducing the cost of their product or service (and so buyers also seem to benefit), but it is simply unsound to look at such metrics and say "things are improving; this is good business".
Of course, organizations do sell and mortgage assets, moving that money to the revenue side of the books is not what we'd base a judgement of whether it's a good idea or not: but rather, is that part of a sustainable plan? If it's not sustainable we'd say it's bad business, criminal if the plan wasn't even trying to make the business sustainable but just embezzling money out of the business to benefit a few, we would say it is then defrauding the shareholders.
The shareholders in this analogy are the people alive today but also future generations. If what we do today is liquidating the earth's assets and calling it income, we are defrauding future generations of those assets. It's trivial to show that by liquidating assets we can improve quality of life metrics in the short term (just as it's trivial that management can liquidate assets and pay themselves, and workers if they feel like it, a great salary today), and the faster we draw down those assets the higher the quality of life in the short term we can create.
For a while (since capitalism emerged) the organization "western civilization" and later "humanity" was doing bad business, drawing down assets without realizing it's not sustainable (not creating equally good assets for future production), but now the evidence is overwhelming that our plan isn't sustainable and so we have moved since a few decades to the defrauding the shareholders side of the analogy.
You missed the point, or else you're intentionally ignoring it (which seems likely based on the intellectual dishonesty of your recent posts). The point is not simply that millions disagree with you, but that those millions disagree with you because they have benefited from the massive improvements that I mentioned. Their lives have improved. For example, they have lost less children thanks to their improved access to improved healthcare, they've been able to send those children to school, they've lived longer and healthier lives, they've been able to buy washing machines to release women from day-long drudgery, and so on. In saying that these millions disagree with you, I wanted you, or people reading this, to see what you are saying, namely that these improvements are not really improvements at all--and thus to see just how misanthropic and reactionary your position is.
What's dishonest about repeating my argument and dealing with criticism?
How do you know it's not that you have missed the point and how is argument I'm intentionally missing the point more credible than the argument you're intentionally missing the point and pre-emptively accusing me of what you're doing as a Trumpian-style diversion tactic that has proven to be extremely effective on those that lack critical thinking skills?
Please, share your reasons why we should assume prima facie that your argument throwing shade on my intentions is more credible than a similarly structured argument throwing shade on your intentions of throwing shade on my intentions.
Quoting jamalrob
This is in no way a problem for my argument. Drawing down the capital of a company to increase the income of executives, or even workers, benefits those executives and workers. If they have no analytical ability to question the long term affects of this or if they simply have no interest in the long term affects, then it's perfectly reasonable that they see such a management decision as beneficial to them and would be willing to argue it's "just a good thing in general".
Quoting jamalrob
I totally understand that you want to play this gotcha game of catching me denying "children not-dying is good". And I totally get why you will simply continue down this path rather than engage in the criticism of this analytical framework I have brought up. The myth of progress is a foundational myth of our society, as with foundational myths in the past, society simply no longer makes sense without it and undermining the myth is to undermine the prevalent conception of society and invite disruption (and potentially the loss of what people who believe in the myth view as the ultimate purpose of society, and therefore cannot conceive of any change with respect to the myth as a good thing under any circumstances; i.e if you believed in sacrificing to the gods the whole purpose of society is to sacrifice to the gods and there simply is no potential criticism of the status quo of sacrificing to the gods from within the mindset of belief in the myth). However, as with previous foundational myths, the fact that "millions believe it" doesn't make it true.
The mistake you are making is only considering local rate of change. I believe the local rate of change of infant fatality is decreasing, I I believe this "all else being equal" or "without considering other metrics" is a good thing (decreasing child fatality is one of my priorities, just not the only one and improving this metric in a way that works only over the short term is in my view not a real improvement), but if the system that has made these changes brings us to an ecological collapse then we are worse off than we were before, the short term benefits were illusions in any general sense.
A CEO that embezzles money from their company and gets away with it is benefiting in a local sense -- I am not denying that there is a benefit from the perspective of the CEO, a benefit does exist in at least one conception of the world -- and if that CEO shares the loot around (perhaps to undermine people's vigilance to question him or go over the books that they otherwise might do) then those people benefit too in a local sense, but it is false to then infer there is a global benefit to the company, much less humanity as a whole.
There is simply no way to divorce the concept of "life improvement" from the concept of sustainability; you can say "well, maybe our system is not sustainable but it's improved my life and some other people's lives and that's what I care about" but that is to admit that there is no improvement in a general sense and also to admit that one's argument is by definition not compelling to people who do not exclude future generations from the concept of "what improves people's lives". If you tell me "look, the boomers made bank and capitalism was the main cause of that and a lot are now dead or will be dead before we even see what happens to the environment when pushed to the limits" I would agree with the conclusion that therefore, capitalism was good ... for the boomers (who only cared about themselves), I would not agree with any attempt to generalize to young generations now that will experience the consequences of past resource extraction and pollution dumping nor subsequent generations.
That is why the myth of progress is foundational, once the claimed progress has a cost attached there is no way to short-circuit the argument to "therefor capitalism is good" in any form of modernity, it becomes necessary to look into this cost and do a cost-benefit analysis over the number of generations that you care about. If capitalism comes at a cost of corruption and tyranny down the road as the concept of civic duty is dissolved in a corrosive sea of self-narrow-material-interest, ignorance-praise and wage-slaves simply not having the time to understand their political situation, or transferring a large proportion of the global means of production to communist China, then that cost has to be understood and factored in; one has to actually go and check what kind of system capitalism creates down the road, the argument that "well these metrics have gone from here to there" doesn't tell us what will happen in the future about other metrics nor even that metric!
If capitalism is not sustainable then by definition it cannot be good in any sense for future generations; so, again, one has to actually go and check if it's sustainable or not. You can argue capitalism is in fact sustainable, but this is a empirical argument that has to actually be made; you can argue that you don't care whether it's sustainable or not, you just want people to agree that some metrics have gone from A to B so far, but then you can't expect people to conclude anything particular about the system as a whole and its future.
What the myth of progress provides the proponents of the status quo is a reason to not check; if we believe some things have gotten better and those some things represent the whole and if we believe the future resembles the past then we conclude things will continue to improve and don't need to check any of the available empirical checkable things about the whole other than a few "some things" that serve as input to the argument, and if anyone disagrees we first accuse them of not caring about that metric (the gotcha I'm referring to) and then second we wave our hands around and claim science and technology will solve all problems in the future as they arise, even getting off planet if need be, while simultaneously dismissing the work of any scientists that claim our problems are here and now.
Precisely this kind of response. You know very well that I did not claim there was anything dishonest about repeating your argument and dealing with criticism. This is tiresome.
Quoting boethius
This is gibberish, but from what I can make of it it's full of baseless assertions, and baseless attributions of what you see as the enemy position. Diversion tactic? What are you talking about? I came here to make two simple points, first that you used "fetishism" in a way unrelated to Marx while claiming it was "Marx's language", and second that economic growth has led to improvements. You have done everything you can to deny that these improvements are improvements at all, and this is what I want to show, that you are dismissing real benefits that people have enjoyed, on the basis of possible future problems. I'm not interested in directly confronting your inhumane apocalyptic dogma.
What then is dishonest? You've made this claim:
Quoting jamalrob
I'm defending against this claim not by claiming that you believe responding to criticism is intellectually dishonest but with the argument "I am responding to criticism and therefore intellectually honest".
It' you making a claim without any supporting arguments, my argument is those supporting arguments don't exist. So, back up your claim or then retract it, or then explain how "not willing to backup a claim nor retract it" is anything other than intellectually dishonest.
Quoting jamalrob
It's not gibberish. You've made the "baseless assertion" of "which seems likely based on the intellectual dishonesty of your recent posts" and "you missed the point, or else you're intentionally ignoring it".
And you qualify "intentionally ignoring" with "which seems likely based on the intellectual dishonesty of your recent posts", yet you have no supporting arguments for this, nor citation of where I'm being intellectually dishonest.
I point out your claim is baseless and provide an alternative claim, that I'm being intellectually honest with in addition to this the supporting argument that I am responding to criticism, and you view this as baseless and gibberish.
Ok, please also support your arguments here about why my argument with supporting argument is baseless and gibberish, yet your argument that lacks any supporting argument is honest philosophical work.
Well that's as good an example of begging the question as you're going to get, you've actually described them as "improvements" when what is at issue is whether they are or not.
The things you've pointed to are numbers, numbers which have gone up or down. Metrics do not 'improve' they either go up or down. Whether their doing so constitutes an 'improvement' is a judgement, and any rational person would consider someone a fool for not taking all relevant factors into account when making a judgement.
So it makes no sense at all to say an increased supply of washing machines is an 'improvement' on its own. Why would you deliberately decide not to take account, in that judgement, of factors which you know full well are relevant to it (sustainability, pollution, quality of work, power relationships etc...)?
If my argument begs the question, it does so in the way that Moore's Here is one hand does.
I've described them as changes in a metric, which I agree the various metrics discussed have changed in the proposed way (infant mortality, longevity, average material comfort).
I've described that to go from the observation of the metric over a given time to the idea of "improvement" is a moral judgement. It's this moral judgement that begs the questions: "improvement overall or improvement in one area at the expense of other, potentially more important areas" as well as "improvement for who".
For instance, China has recently announced that facial recognition will be required to get a phone number and each time you access the internet, in addition to existing mass surveillance, crackdowns on dissidents, and no free speech. It's a question that must be answered whether the increase in average material comfort for the average Chinese is worth while exchange for zero free speech and zero anonymous internet access (a freedom we are both enjoying as we have this conversation). Most of the reduction of poverty in the last decades has been in China, so if we are referencing China to support "progress of metrics" to support "capitalism and/or modernity has improved people's lives", we must actually resolve the question of "is it worth it to the average Chinese, the increase in material things at the expense of even more intimate surveillance and thought policing than existed before?" This is not a trivial question to answer. If you say "well millions of Chinese say it's worth it" well my question for you is "first are you sure it's worth it and they're not mistaken, and, second, do they even really believe this or do they just say it due to coercion from the Chinese state ... and people who disagree we don't hear much from".
I've also detailed how I have zero problem accepting some metric really is an improvement (a moral judgement of goodness) from some perspectives, with the analogy of the embezzling CEO, if he gets away with it and views selfish self-serving as a good thing then life has improved for the embezzling CEO. However, that an improvement exists from one perspective does not entail it exists from all perspectives. If a system isn't sustainable it is by definition "not a good thing" from the generations that will suffer the consequences of an unsustainable system. If we don't care about those generations, then I agree it's possible to conclude "life has improved", but this is just the tautology of "life has improved for those who think life has improved", and if millions disagree later, tough for them.
That's the matter I'm taking issue with. I don't see how it makes any sense to say something is an improvement "in itself" where, by that, you mean "when ignoring certain other factors inextricably connected with it" .
The only thing that metric has done "in itself", is go up. To judge that to be an improvement involves a decision about how many explicitly linked factors you're going to take into account. There's no pure default number of additional factors that constitute "in itself".
Most technological innovations that take root are improvement relative to the hosting society's agendas.
So there's a vague similarity to evolution. Much of the technology you see around you, if broken down, would be found to have come into existence originally as just crazy ideas in people's basements. One crazy idea inspires another and the stream of events is taken up by social forces. Thus the crazy idea becomes necessary to the average person's life, literally, since eventually the average person has to conform to social norms to survive.
So even socialism without money (which is what the Bronze Age palace economy basically was) would take us down into a static existence. There would still be volatility, but not coming from the waves in the economic system itself, but from drought and war.
But you can say the same thing about writing, or metal work, or the wheel, or essentially any technology required for our economy to work and the history of it's development. Money is a useful technology and has an interesting history, but it's one out of many such technologies.
My point was that much of the benefits we sometimes think of as capitalist in origin are really just a side effect of the use of an abstract medium of exchange.
I'm not poo pooing the wheel.
Yes I agree with your point about not equating money to capitalism, but your phrasing "It's not so much capitalism that unleashed human potential. It's money." seems to put special emphasis on money as unlocking human potential; seems a very ambitious statement relative other critical technologies (unless the author is saying the same thing about them too). Since this thread is on socialism and communism, I'd be interested if the author you cite, writing on the history of money and capitalism, is aware that, at least as how you phrase it as "unleashing human potential", seems an example of the fetishism Marx was talking about; does the author deal with this idea?
It's not a history of capitalism.
By definition to make the distinction between money and capitalism is to comment on the history of capitalism.
[quote=jamalrob]My argument against capitalism is that progress in human development doesn't happen fast enough, fairly enough, or securely enough, and ties us all into a system of endless toil and precarity.[/quote]
Plutonomics?
[quote=boethius]My view of capitalism, or just modernity in general that would include soviet communism, is that it is akin to ever increasing doses of cocaine; there are short term "good effects" but at a massive long term cost; the short term "life improvement" is an illusion. If you have ever argued with someone in the honey moon phase of cocaine or other stimulants who think it's great and made their life better, you get the exact same structure of argument as the myth of progress (it's seems pretty good right now bro) and my argument against capitalism and modernity is exactly the same as you will be trying to make cocaine.
Yes, productivity has gone up (just like cocaine) but if it a dynamic that moves towards ecological collapse (cardiac arrest) then the goodness of this productivity is wholly illusionary (just like cocaine addiction).
[ ... ]
I do not view improvements that are not sustainable as improvements, ...[/quote]
Entropology?
[quote=Maw]I also haven't considered myself to be a libertarian socialist since around 2015, or since whenever I read Mariana Mazzucato's book, The Entrepreneurial State.[/quote]
:cool:
It does make sense. If I couldn't buy a washing machine (income) and didn't have access to a launderette (infrastructure or economic development, not part of the HDI but significant for my example), it would make my life worse. To measure things at all requires the isolation of specific metrics. The ones we choose to measure here are based on the things we all value; they are factors that contribute to freedom, opportunity, health, leisure, and so on.
Here's a contrived example. We value education. It's usually better to go to school than not to go to school, even if there's a risk that you will be run over by a car on the way there. But, you may ask, what if going to school always leads to traffic-related premature death: surely that means going to school does not represent an improvement over not going to school? Of course not: it just means we need to do something about the traffic or the location of the school (or whatever).
But, you may further ask, what if going to school inevitably leads to traffic-related premature death? I.e., what if the increased HDI, and economic growth more generally, inevitably leads to environmental catastrophe and social breakdown? Well, that hasn't been shown.
So maybe this is all just about the choice of words. I think that @boethius could make his case more strongly by saying, yes, there have been improvements, but those improvements have been achieved unsustainably, and continuing to pursue them will lead to terrible consequences. And then we could argue about that, which is the substantial disagreement.
Maybe you can now see what I've been doing here. I have not really been arguing directly over that substantial disagreement, but trying to reveal what @boethius's choice of words, his choice to actually deny demonstrable improvements, says about his position more generally.
OK, I get where you're coming from. Your third example is really what I'm thinking about, where some other factor in inextricably linked and so to ignore it in any judgement of 'improvement' would be perverse.
You're saying that the preference of the householder for having a washing machine has been shown (and so is a reasonable factor to include in the judgement), but the associated environmental and social problems have not (and so it is reasonable to exclude them from the judgment)?
I think that the case for environmental problems associated with mass production of white goods is almost unarguable. I grant it's not 100%, but then neither is the preference of the householder (do they really prefer it, how do we know what they really think, etc...). There's always room for doubt, but that goes both ways.
So I get what you're trying to say, but I disagree that problems are not inextricably linked to the benefits. I think they are, and I think the prevailing scientific opinion backs me up on that. The world simply has a finite supply of energy, materials and social resources (people who are prepared to do stuff you don't want to). Any benefit which relies on those thing, beyond the rate at which they can be replenished, is de facto coming along with a cost which cannot reasonably be ignored.
No that's not my position. My position is that there have been associated problems, and that recent climate change and other environmental problems are caused by economic growth, but that the two things are not inevitably linked, at least not to the detriment of human beings. I believe that the primary aim of policy should be to improve people's lives and that the best way to do that while also solving the associated problems is more economic growth, which will allow us all to switch to cleaner energy, find more resources and use existing ones better, and also allow particularly vulnerable populations to protect themselves from change. In a nutshell, an economically growing humanity can clean up after itself, as is evident when we look at history.
There are several commentators who argue this case from across the political spectrum, but unfortunately many of them go too far in celebrating the wonders of capitalism. This is understandable: capitalism might not be the best way to solve these problems, but so far it is the best way we've found to achieve quick growth, and given the choice between capitalism and Malthusian de-growth, I'll take the former, along with the millions who buy washing machines as soon as they can afford them.
This is more or less where I'm coming from: https://www.neweurope.eu/article/the-no-growth-prescription-for-misery/
Obviously if I'm going all-out to argue for this I'll have to do a lot more, but I'm not sure I want to get into one of those statistics-drenched debates, and I hadn't really intended to get into it when I first entered this discussion--so if I decide to chicken out, I apologize.
In regards to the OP in what fashion is this going to affect or effect any possible transition from a more capitalistic geopolitical world into something approximating a ‘better’ future for all?
Whilst many may reel against the idea of giving African households, and the means offload domestic duties, there is the negative impact of doing so on African society at large - the empowerment of women. You will generally find that poverty is an extremely potent motivator so those having a faction if time freed up generally look to improve their situations (through education/training and/or adding to machines/equipment that can free up more time). The knock-on effect of women having greater freedom is they are then able to help educate their children better and take control of how many children they have (because healthcare has slowed down child mortality).
Generally speaking the ‘western world’ (basically meaning Europe, North America and other countries o a similar economic/technological level) needs to lead the way in terms of creating sustainable, and affordable, energy sources.
Regardless, people will have more freedom when they have easier access - money generally allows people wiggle room to improve their situation and step up. Mobile phones are hugely important and can/do help people at the bottom broaden their opportunities. Sadly I don’t think we’ve any serious idea about what kind of impact the internet will have: let alone what impact it already has had.
I’m more worried about the future of less developed countries and their ability to produce food. The climate is certainly changing and this means some areas will not be able to produce as much food - such crisis in certain areas around the world could (and probably will) be hugely disruptive.
Another worry is that I believe the ‘western world’ is going to be hit much harder as the rest of the world catches up - simply because people feel a slight pinch as a chasm where in other parts of the globe such financial difficulties are the norm.
Some guidance from the OP may be helpful at this moment? I don’t know exactly what area they wished to focus on, but I’m sue we cannot cover everything from trade, education, environment, climate change, geopolitics, social action, media influences, technological advances (in various areas) and the power of private companies over governments, not to mention the potential positive and negative effects of all of these.
I stepped aside for those reasons initially. I’m more interested in what the OP has to add if anything? If nothing I doubt I’ll do much more than watch from now on.
This is exactly what @Isaac is saying in the what you quoted. I'm pretty sure he doesn't disagree that a metric can be measured, but to say that it is therefore good or bad, the change requires extrinsic factors (an understanding of the system that isolated metric is apart of).
You cannot say an "to measure things at all requires the isolation of specific metrics" to the conclusion "therefore that metric has improved" and from there "therefore the system that metric is apart has improved", without more context (as well as a moral system from which to judge what is good and bad).
Which is exactly why you bring up yourself, "and didn't have access to a launderette": this is an extrinsic factor!
If we see laundry machine ownership is going down we need context to understand if this is good or bad, even from the perspective of just laundry. If people are replacing laundry machines with a more efficient laundromat service (new and cool uber for laundry) we may conclude "insofar as laundry is concerned, it's getting better", but again it's only a "judgement that it's good" if it excludes other extrinsic factors tied to laundry in general.
Now, if both laundry machines and laundry services are going down, you may say "well certainly that's bad" but again we need context. What if people were unnecessarily doing too much laundry and a campaign of awareness was able to decrease the laundry metric and we'd look at the decrease and say "this is great, the program is working, resources are being saved".
What if someone invents clothes that never have to be washed or can be just produced a new every time! Sure, doesn't seem plausible, but it's not plausible due to extrinsic factors, due to context, we must actually go and check this context.
Just as isolated metrics about a patient aren't sufficient to claim the "patient is improving", just like isolated metrics about a corporation finances isn't sufficient to claim "the company is improving".
If the context of all economic development is unsustainable, or comes at the cost of greater 1984 style tyranny, then, yes metrics have gone up and down, but there is no way to jump to the conclusion that "therefore things have improved". If you want to make a claim such as "life for most people has improved" isolating a part of "what life means" such as tracking a metric or two, doesn't get to that conclusion. The myth of progress gets to that conclusion through the various fallacies I have been deconstructing.
Yes, I did get that, I just didn't paraphrase it very clearly, my mistake.
Quoting jamalrob
I disagree with this, I don't see how, on the face of it, more of the same could possibly be a cure for the problems the previous growth caused.
Quoting jamalrob
I think you're right. It's not really what this topic is about, and I'm not sure I've time for a full-throated attack on growth either.
The relevant part of what we've been discussing though is this...
Quoting jamalrob
I think this is more myth-building. Its the only way we've found because it's the only way we've really tried. That's not much to commend it. For a start, economic growth does not seem at all to depend on how capitalist a country is. Some very socialist economies are doing very well, some extremely free-market economies have done very badly. If the degree, or proportion, of capitalism in an economy does not correlate well with human development, it seems, on the face of it, quite unlikely that its capitalism that's responsible.
There are several ways. For climate change, there are technological solutions, such as clean energy, and they require massive research and investment; and societies with highly developed infrastructure and commanding resources effectively can protect themselves from unwelcome changes. So both mitigation and adaptation can be achieved with growth. For other environmental problems, we can see the positive results in developed countries already, where e.g., pollution has been reduced.
It's not more of the same, but more and different.
Quoting Isaac
But you appear to agree that "it's the only way we've found", which is what I said (although I actually said "best way we've found so far") Otherwise sure, you're pretty much right here I think. I'm not arguing for capitalism but for growth.
I don't disagree with technology, but I do think there's a big problem in the "growth to solve" argument when it comes to unknowns.
Past development wasn't undertaken and promoted by people who didn't care a fig about the consequences. It was undertaken and promoted by people who were (almost) completely unaware of the consequences. They went ahead anyway, and here we are with a very serious social and environmental crisis on our hands.
So the solutions you talk about obviously seem like solutions now. We're in the same situation now as the early fossil-fuel enthusiasts were in 200 years ago. What happens when we find out the Indium in solar panels causes devastating damage to microbes, the disruption to air streams caused by wind power results in damaging weather pattern changes, the habitat loss from converting to biodiesel is worse than the fossil-fuel it's replacing... These are all real concerns by the way, just not well researched enough to provide any concrete worries yet. The point is our optimism about growth blinds us to the historic fact that virtually everything we thought was going to be some brilliant development turned out to be shit, in terms of some (usually long-term) undesirable consequences.
What makes you so confident that, unlike almost every development in the past, today's 'solutions' won't just end up being tomorrow's problems?
True, and yet...
Few things are more important.
Quoting Isaac
That's not exactly what I'd say. I'd say I'm confident that we can deal with the problems that come up. It's never absolutely certain but I think the alternatives to technological progress are immoral, unfair, dangerous. My attitude to the precautionary principle is, roughly, that if you know you can make a change for the better, and if it won't be outweighed by changes for the worse as far as you can tell, then there is no justification for failure to make that change. This is how we do it.
And it's important to point out that past developments have not just ended up being today's problems. They have been good in many ways.
There are exceptions, of course. Nuclear weapons, for example, which could end up being a really stupid idea. This does show that the technological cannot be separated from the political, but I don't think it should lead us to seek to slow down technological progress as such.
Growth usually goes hand in hand with population growth. Countries that afford rights to women become reliant on immigration because women who aren't chained to childbirth avoid it.
So continued growth tends to be somewhat reliant on human rights violations somewhere, if not here.
Otherwise, growth is possible because we're coming out of a depression. Devotion to that is devotion to occasional mass suffering.
How do you hold to growth as inherently good? I think it just happens. It's not good or bad.
Of course this may well be the death throes of the human species. I don’t think so though, but like all the other obstacles we’ve faced I believe in the resourcefulness of humanity. People are very vocal today - it’s something we should take as an encouraging sign. If everyone was simply rolling over waiting to die (as some folks actually profess) we’d already be finished.
For some reason my post sparked this digression. I didn’t bring up the environment or climate change; both of which are going to get worse before they get better. We’re currently in a damage limitation phase right now and financial clout should probably be directed toward areas that benefit these rather than merely treating the symptoms (ie. Educating young women as no.1 priority) not pumping resources into some one in a million shot that looks good but is both ineffective and could possibly exacerbate the situation.
You haven't. My criticism is exactly the fallacy you continuously repeat such as in your next sentence:
Quoting jamalrob
Yes, I get that your measuring things.
Quoting jamalrob
This is your mistake. It is not reasonable to describe their increase as improvements in themselves, even less make the leap to "therefore things have improved generally" that "life has improved generally or for most people".
It does entail ignoring the context, that's exactly what it entails. You can only bestow a "moral satisfaction" about the metrics if you ignore the context, if you include the statement "all else being equal" (this is the catchall phrase to say exactly this: if we ignore anything in the context that might lead us to another conclusion, then we would conclude this metric going this way is a good thing) otherwise, the context can lead us to another conclusion.
If the growth comes at massive ecological costs in the future that are far more onerous than all the short term increases in the various metrics, then we can question that growth represents an improvement for humanity.
It's not something that can be resolved in principle, you actually have to go out and check. If you value sustainability then you need to actually go and checkup on the metrics that tell us something about sustainability and if the economic growth you find pleasing comes at an ecological cost you have to make an argument that it was worth it, the argument "I look at some metrics because I care about those metrics ... but I also care about a context out there ... but I don't bother to look at metrics representing that context" doesn't make sense.
If you don't look at ecological metrics: it's because you don't value the ecosystems! Otherwise, by your own logic you would look at metrics that inform us of the state of the ecosystem because you care about the ecosystem. If those metrics are going in a bad direction, you can no longer say "look at this growth, look how everything is going up, certainly a good thing". You need to make an argument that the trade-off is worth it, otherwise your argument is simply "if you only look at things that are going in a good direction then you conclude things are going in a good direction and we can assume will continue to do so".
You can't just throw in a patch-up that "ok, I care about other things too ... I just don't look at them closely ... but I'm sure things are ok over there and in the future". That's what your argument boils down to, a completely baseless assumption that whatever the costs have been, whatever they will be, we don't need to look at those costs closely.
You throw up a graph of growth as I'm sure you've been itching to do as soon as you sense the myth of progress has stood it's ground. But you don't put up a graph of "level of free speech in China" of a graph of "bio-diversity" or "a graph of global forest cover" or "a graph of cultivatable land" or "a graph of remaining seed diversity" or "a graph of ground-water stores" or "a graph of top-soil". You simply assume, if these really are problems, that we'll solve those problems. This is an empirical claim and requires an empirical investigation to know anything about. There are physical limits to what we can do.
However, if industrialization is inherently unsustainable -- that it's industrialization, whether capitalist or socialist or a mix of the two, that has caused the ecological crisis in a physical "cause-effect" relationship (the actual physical objects that make-up industrial civilization) -- then it's simply not reasonable to say "well, more of the same will certainly cure the disease it's causing". Maybe it can! But you need very powerful arguments to convince someone more of what's making them sick is actually going to cure them.
If industrial civilization is not sustainable, you can put up as many graphs as you want showing things, that I agree "all else being equal" are good things, but if the system those metrics are describing is not sustainable then all those metrics are going to crash (that is what not-sustainable means) so not only will you lose the things you haven't bothered to throw up graphs about you'll also lose those things you do like looking at graphs about. You can argue "ok, things may crash for future generation, sooner or later, don't really care; I value people today and an industrial way of life for those people", then your argument is sound, but what follows it that it's not compelling to someone who does value future generations.
And there is an alternative: non-industrial technological civilization, meaning local production and consumption -- which can include doctors, literacy, democracy, low infant mortality, longevity -- but with the critical difference that it can be sustainable and the critical problem that it is a very radical change. However, that it's a radical change and politically difficult to implement (departs from the industrial status quo) is not a counter argument if the thesis that industrialization (large infrastructure with globally integrated material flows) is not sustainable, is correct; it becomes inevitably the only option (again, that's what non-sustainable means), the only questions are "do we get there at all" and "how much damage do we let industrialization do to the planet before making these changes". In other words, if industrialization is not sustainable then we have taken a wrong turn and the further we go down that path the worse off we are.
Can you elaborate? I'm having trouble understanding what's the issue your trying to point out?
Is it a matter of definitions?
Yes, under entailment so to speak.
Quoting tim wood
Depends. Well, yes. Is there any alternative?
I had a discussion with this fellow anarchist once about my admiration for what the Costa Ricans achieved, they abolished their military and developed a welfare-state capitalist industrialization in combination with worker cooperatives. Not perfect, but we could learn from it as a model for third world development that's preferable to other countries who pursued economic growth in very authoritarian ways. And I was met with dismissal. And that's when I abandoned anarchism.
I guess I call myself a socialist. The term "Democratic Socialism" sounds nice. Others on the Left accuse that label of being just an ambitious form of social democracy, but that's definitely not right with respect to my views.
The issue is "what is good growth" and "what is bad growth". This requires an understanding of the system and where it's going but also a moral theory to be able to decide what's good and bad about where it's going; with an understanding of the economic-ecological system as it exists today and a moral theory it is then also possible to decide what is feasible and justifiable to do about it.
De-growth of globalized industry while growing local production, from the perspective of most people, is actually higher growth in terms of more activity, more things to do; if there is suddenly no mass imports made with slave-labour from China this is going to create room for local fabrication of a lot of things; an activity boom in most places importing from China (perhaps a total collapse of the Chinese economy, but overall more activity).
The core problem with "free-trade is always good" is that it does not account for the ecological costs of the infrastructure and ecological cost of the energy spent to physically trade globally nor the political cost of being dependent on a potentially coercive force (i.e. economists who present free-trade as "efficient" without considering the negatives, are just propagandists -- they are certainly aware the negatives can outweigh the positives, they just choose to ignore reality to fool their gullible students).
For a very large amount (though not all) of products, if you perform an an analysis where the negative externalities are internalized, suddenly it is not at all clear-cut that local production is not-competitive. So why not internalize those costs?
The only argument for not internalizing the cost of negative externalities is:
1. deny such negative externalities even exist (which is not an argument against the principle that negative externatilities should be internalized, just a coping mechanism for being unable to think critically when confronted with empirical evidence one is in denial as well as existing protection from negative externalities that one does not want removed) or
2. not valuing future generations that are most affected by those negative externalities (nor any poor person today affected by those externalities). This is a sound argument to not internalize externalities, but it is not compelling to people who do care about future generations and the poor.
3. society has no right to protect itself from negative externalities from individuals and companies (there is so many problems with this I'll need to make another post if people don't see the obvious fundamental contradictions).
Now, if negative externalities (ecological, social and political) are internalized (which is a case-by-case empirical question requiring empirical investigation), and a product is still competitive being centrally produced, I have no argument against it. For instance, if computer chips simply can't be made locally and all the pollution externalities are internalized into the cost, I have no problem with a centralization of this process. However, if you imagine a world where only things like computer chips or similar complexity are being transported globally, this is a massive reduction in global transport: yes, basically dismantling what globalize industry as we know it today.
A regulated market is trivially easy to render sustainable: you just enforce internalization of costs. It's also not even that disruptive to do this to most people, life improves without those negative externalities (that's why it's negative; the myth of progress is the idea that negative externalities are somehow good for you or intrinsically tied to good things). Who it's not good for are the economic elite who's wealth is tied to global scale infrastructure and material flows.
Now, I agree that the first step is social democracy, we need government able to regulate in the interests of people. But I disagree (with Marx) that capitalism will fail resulting in a socialist uprising that then results in communism. Capitalism (laws dominated by capital rather than people to allow those profitable negative externalities to continue; i.e. "money should be equal to votes, ideally directly but failing that through unconstrained ability for money to influence politics") will fail, in terms of internal contradictions, due to ecological collapse (something that has been revealed empirically, not knowable in principle), and if we want to avoid ecological collapse we need to do something about it before capitalism collapses due to ecological collapse, not afterwards.
And I also agree that part of this step is distribution of wealth (social safety net) so that people aren't subsistence wage slaves and have time to think about global issues and future generations and be able to review what really are negative externalities and how best to internalize those costs.
Vis-a-vis the OP, if communism results from this process it is not because of the failure of markets and revolution, but because enforcing negative externalities in a reasonable way simply makes local production more and more competitive until (most people) are living in relatively small communities and are no longer alienated and, through these direct relationships, money is no longer the principle medium of relation (might still be around, just not a dominant force).
The HDI is not a good measure relative to the things we're discussing here.
1. It heavily weights school enrolment (1/9th of the total score), this heavily favours countries with younger populations, making it look like developing countries are doing better), and making population growth alone and indicator of development.
2. It ignores income inequality in its GDP measures (1/3rd of the total score). Given that we know. Since the wealthiest 1% obtain around 15% of GDP, rises in this metric do not mean that the poor are any better off.
3. Trading GDP for life expectancy (1/3rd weighting each) has the statistical effect of suggesting that any extra year of life has the same value, and that this value is linked to GDP. Again, the effect is to make it look like developing countries are doing better than they arguably are.
4. Life expectancy and literacy are finite, GDP is not. Giving each an equal rating yet again favours developing countries (who can still realistically improve life expectancy and literacy) against developed countries (who can only improve GDP, effectively throttling their improvements to 1/3rd).
Basically, the net effect of all this is to make it look like growth is good, that developing countries (where growth is greatest) are doing better than they arguably are.
Furthermore, the data is highly ahistorical. It starts around 1870, and shows a steady increase since then. But a lot of extremely significant factors other than economic growth are correlated with that date range.
1. The discovery and distribution of antibiotics. Hugely correlated with a drop in death rates. (particularly infant mortality). One single discovery which had nothing whatsoever to do with economic growth.
2. The end of the colonial era. Colonialism was probably more responsible for rises in literacy rates than economic growth (and not really for good reasons). Schools were a means of freeing up women to do factory work and at the same time effect cultural change in the young. Education, measured by enrolment alone, is not always a good thing.
3. The end of mass urban immigration. A function of increasing mass production and enclosure of common land is to push mass urbanisation. This leads to tremendous health implications and coincides with the start of the graph. Take India for example. Ancient Ayurvedic texts from pre-colonial India refer to "Middle age" from 30-60, and odd thing to say if life expectancy was below 25.
What do I say that contradicts this?
My point is that if industrialization is not sustainable then, if you care about future generations (if you don't this isn't an argument for you), industrialization will collapse along with the ecosystems.
Maybe this isn't possible to avoid, that all attempts will fail.
However, your argument seems to be "well, people like industrialization, and whether it's sustainable or not, we have need, for political expediency, to continue with it". Now, if you finish that argument with "... we need to continue with it until the ecosystems collapse", then your argument is sound and I have no analytical criticism. Our difference is one of values, I don't want the ecosystems to collapse.
You can argue industrialization is sustainable, this is an an empirical claim and requires empirical investigation and a lot of time; if you care about the ecosystems and future generations you will carry out such an investigation, if you don't care you will not bother to investigate (you can claim to care anyways, but critical thinkers might not agree that's consistent with your actions). My point is that our view of the current system depends on whether we think it's sustainable or not. If you make an empirical review you can't come back to the myth of progress and just patch it up with "ok, maybe it's not sustainable but that doesn't matter".
If global industrialization isn't sustainable, and if we view sustainability as a moral imperative, then we must try to change our production methods to something else regardless of the political enthusiasm from western populations, either due to not having time to think about it or due to being a beneficiary of the current system or due to profoundly not caring about sustainability. Such a political project is not guaranteed to succeed but if it's a moral imperative then it's simply the reasonable course of action to people who have that world view and ethics.
I don't have analytical criticism of people who don't share my world view and ethics. If someone doesn't care about future generations, wants the status quo and reasons that they should just promote the myth of progress regardless if it's true or not, I have no analysis for them. Makes sense.
My analysis is not directed towards people who don't care about future generations, but people who do, trying to untangle the myth of progress that might otherwise lead them to believe there is no alternative than an unsustainable system and that there are as good moral arguments for continuing an unsustainable system (graphs of gdp and whatnot) as there are for trying to become sustainable (even if it means dismantling global industry as we know it today, and rich people throwing their little rich people tantrums about it).
If you show me the best path to sustainability is more global industrialization, that what has caused the problem will solve it, then I'll accept that's what we should do. But such an argument requires more than hand-waving and vague references to "political feasibility", it requires a very deep empirical investigation that our problems can, in fact, be solved with more industry and small changes to the status quo. My investigation into this subject, so far, leads me to the conclusion that it cannot; that the energy required to run global industry, in particular transportation of large amounts of material, has no industrial fix, and the only solution is shorten the length material travels as much as is feasible (and, importantly, that internalizing the costs of global industry makes shorter-material-flows more competitive; it's not a radical change to the status quo in terms of using markets, but rather a radical change to the status quo in terms of letting the rich and powerful disproportionately dictate the regulation of global markets through their various known schemes to avoid sustainable regulations -- the throwing the hands in the air and saying "ah, well, we can't do anything about that" is simply not true, we can do something about it).
Socialism could have taken power over all the world in the 19th and 20th centuries, only if they had let their tactics of "doublethink" aside and truly accepted their egoistic nature.
In reality, what most people don't understand is that Socialism truly worked (as a mean to hold on power), but Communism can never be achieved.
What do you mean by that?
I mean that all socialists (at least the politically active ones) use the method of hypocrisy to their advantage and this is the "doublethink", they know that what they say in most cases is not true, but they accept it as the only truth, because for them, that "truth" is the best one in the immediate case. What is more egoistic than consficate the property of the people for their own state-proclaimed "good"?
So in conclusion, Socialism as a mean to hold on power worked, but as a political ideology no, it failed miserably.
Are you going to even define socialist for us?
Would you agree with the first paragraph of Wikipedia:
So please, defend why "all socialists (at least the politically active ones) use the method of hypocrisy to their advantage and this is the 'doublethink', they know that what they say in most cases is not true, but they accept it as the only truth" for this large class of theories, or then define socialism if you don't agree with the above definition.
For instance, does socialism to you include regulation and progressive taxation? Or only collective ownership of one form or another as the wikipedia entry?
I think a better theory of hypocrisy is with regards ideologies that view self interest as fundamental to market transactions and deregulation and lower taxes as good things that also happen to benefit the private interests of the speaker. Isn't it by definition self-interest to propose an ideology that, if implemented, furthers' one's self interest, and therefore, by definition, a hypocritical position?
Not to say you are a proponent of such a theory, though you are welcome to elaborate your own view, but rather, because you have a keen eye for what kinds of people and theories are hypocritical, wouldn't this be a better fit to the hypocritical pattern: belief that self-interest is justified, therefore reasoning backwards to what ideologies promote one's self-interest (regardless if the ideology is true or not)?
This definitely describes the kind of people that enjoy the egoism of Socialism, but my point is that they use their rethorical power over lies to govern over the masses, i'm not saying that this is wrong or otherwise, i'm just pointing out that they don't accept their own greed.
I agree it is also a prerogative, a chastisement as you say; my elaboration was is simply to clarify that it's not prerogative in a way we understand fetish today (for obvious reasons). It's also not without philosophical content.
In my opinion, the philosophical content is that Marx is drawing attention to the religious transition happening in the development of capitalism: between devotion to the church and the immaterial well being of the soul and devotion to science and material wealth (all while claiming the previous social relations were also due to material conditions), in using fetish in the context of capital accumulation: that money is the new object of worship with mystical significance in a capitalist economy (greed of course existed before, but was not approved of; and church and monarchy could dominate merchants, and lords and priests could of course be accused of greed, but gold and power in feudalism operated differently than capital accumulation in capitalism).
Quoting Valentinus
Could you elaborate on this?
But who are you talking about?
If you're talking about Stalin, sure.
If you're talking about every single person that has tried to unionize (take some degree of control over the means of production) or that has founded a cooperative for socialist beliefs or the people who overthrew the Russian Tzar (not knowing yet the Soviet Union would become a totalitarian nightmare) or the communists that resisted the Nazi's (and were tortured when found), I'm just not seeing the greedy hypocrisy in all these cases.
You'll need to provide some argument that collective ownership somehow leads to the mental state you describe as a tendency, or then that the theory you are concerned with has an inherent contradiction such as self-interest based theories, we seem to agree, do have.
One way to think about it is to compare Marx with Veblen.
Veblen emphasized how people bought stuff to fit in with the winning crowd. That is not a hazy vision of the "social value" of a product but a direct exchange of value to serve a specific need of the moment:
Namely, to be perceived by the people who have power as a player, willing to play.
That willingness to play is obviously a part of Marx's observations of class but it does not make all other observations along those lines "Marxist."
There is a range of phenomena that was claimed by an explorer many years ago and the interesting stuff about the discovery is oddly not just about those claims. But it is also true that the claims cannot be dismissed simply because we have proof that we have gotten past them and now live in a different place.
We don't have that proof.
The heads of states. Stalin, Mao, Castro, Pol Pot, etc... The individuals that really took power, for me, they only used Socialism as a mean to inhibit their egoism, because they didn't accepted who they really were.
Quoting boethius
I don't see how these people were integrated in my comment (at least the politically active ones), for me they were only poor, uneducated people that thought that in that moment, Socialism was the only way out.
Which is why I asked you to clarify what you meant by socialism. Most people do not qualify socialist as referring to the the leaders of dictatorships, but you are free to do so if you make your meaning clear.
As for your statement here, if you read a biography of Stalin or Mao, for instance, they seemed fairly lucid and accepting of their tyrannical ambitions. Indeed, when Stalin got word from his agents in China (in charge of helping to organize the soviet sponsored communist revolutionaries there) that there was a sadistic and crazy Mao guy killing and raping and torturing (and really enjoying it) as well as ruthlessly getting rid of potential communist leader rivals (who doesn't even seem to believe in communism, just opportunism for power), and so these agents recommended needing to deal with or sideline Mao in some way, Stalin sent word back: That's my guy, put him in charge!
However, that sadistic tyrant use social crisis and movements to take power is a constant throughout history, there is no special relationship to socialism.
"Socialist revolutionaries" (at least as described by their opponents, whenever convenient) also brought the 40 hour work week, child labour laws, worker safety, and built the social welfare states in Europe that have the highest quality of life (Finland now the happiest place on earth).
More so, the socialist movement that brought Stalin to power was explicitly vanguardism (the idea that a revolutionary elite need to seize power ... and ideas are pretty vague from there), which was an offshoot of more mainstream socialism in central Europe that was more democratic and incremental rather than revolutionary (that whatever socialists want to achieve, it must be first through sharing ideas and organizing with normal people and second through creating or strengthening democratic processes and third through those democratic processes; and if this results in compromise, especially in any short of medium term outlook, then that's fine).
Vanguaridism was fairly fringe and just not that popular in central Europe, which is why Lenin and co. went to Russia during a chaotic civil society collapse (due to WWI) and tried the Vanguardism theory there (which, mind you, is not what the "Soviet" movement was about; the Soviets were local democratic units wanting more local rural self-management and at least some representation at the state level, and the first Russian revolution resulted in a compromise situation with the aristocracy, of having a democratic representational house as a check on a house of Lords (that controlled the military), but in the wake of disastrous military defeats due to aristocratic incompetence, the Bolsheviks (still fairly fringe) just seized the parliament buildings and managed to cut deals with enough police and military units to consolidate power; most people didn't know what was going on at this point, and keeping the Soviet name was a good marketing tactic to undercut potential opposition.
My point is, social democracy or democratic socialism is just that, socialist and democratic and has a very different history than the Soviet Union and the CPP and it's also pretty clear why vanguardism would and did immediately produce dystopian totalitarianism states, and socialist opponents of vanguardism made all those arguments at the time (what they called the delusion of capturing the state).
Now, you can decide not to call it a form of socialism if you want, it doesn't matter to me, but what I wish to draw your attention to is that there is a historical project of self-described socialists that resulted in very different conditions than the Soviet union and has developed lot's of policies that we now have the benefit of being able to simply check that they work empirically (universal health-care, free and equal funded education at all levels, robust public transport systems, rehabilitation based justice systems, paid vacation, paid maternity leave, homes for the homeless, ownership participation of key industries by the state, hyper strong labour union protection laws ... and collectivist defense programs such as conscription that provide a credible deterrent to invasion at a reasonable cost).
I don't think we're in disagreement here. I clarify Marx on the forum when others bring up Marx, but I generally don't bring up Marx myself in talking about policy in the here and now. Just as I would clarify Kant or Anselm or Aristotle or any other thinker if someone tosses them in and I thought it's a debatable point.
I do, however, find it relevant the fear of Marx and the popular intellectual game of trying to rediscover Marx's points without ever crediting Marx and insisting that Marx was about something completely different and wrong ... by people that haven't read Marx.
The issue for me here is more to do with propaganda; sometimes, as you suggest, there's no need to bring up propagandized names and new names can be coined for the same concept to out-maneuver the propagandists (such as saying 1% instead of capitalist ruling class). Other times, I think it's useful to call propaganda's bluff and unpack propaganda's game and explain what the words meant to the people using them at the time, or that still are, as this can strengthen individuals as well as the community's critical thinking skills in being more aware of how propaganda works.
So I think we agree here that both points of view are legitimate.
Quoting Valentinus
Yes, my goal is not to retroactively expand Marx's writing to include everything arguably that fixes problems or then is a compatible extension with it. As I mention above, I wouldn't bring Marx into any specific contemporary policy debate, unless someone else does inaccurately and it's an opportunity to expose their ignorance and so undermine all of their other claims too.
However, since this is a philosophy forum, as mentioned above, my view is Marx is a relevant thinker to understand like all the other important thinkers. It's useful to know when and where an idea originated and how it has developed since and what historical actors and movements, explicitly or implicitly, used or were influenced by the idea and what happened to those people and movements. Though name dropping long dead thinkers can seem like haughty erudition, my view is the opposite is more confusing as it leads people to believe that everything was thought of yesterday (a laziness that leads to an endless stream of rediscovery fever and praise).