Social capitalism is superior to both extremes

[Maslo]

Extremism rarely leads to something good, especially ideologic (political) extremism. This is true for extremist capitalism (individualism) and its also true for extremist socialism (collectivism).

Why even bother with suboptimal extremes, when you can combine best of both worlds, while leaving the worst out to obtain superior system?

Social (welfare) capitalism neatly solves the wage slavery problem present in pure capitalism - with good welfare system the dichotomy between having to work or any wage or dying of lack of basic necessities vanishes. Thus we can ensure any work selling contract is truly voluntary, so the slavery aspect dissapears.

As we can see this solves pure capitalism wage slavery and lack of basic necessities problem without introducing more problems as is the case with socialism, such as decrease of motivation to work and innovate - profit motivation and individual success motivation is retained.

As Charles Murray put it: “Billions for equal chances, not a penny for equal results ."

We have also empirical evidence to support this conclusion. Both states which embraced one ideology - socialism (eastern europe..) and capitalism (USA) are inferior in quality of life to social capitalist states (scandinavia).

I am also gonna ask this question on the forum of opposite extremists - libertarian capitalists:

Justify why pure socialism/communism is better than social capitalism.

[Nox]

:gorbachev:

All Social Capitalism does is make the problems in Capitalism not-as-bad-but-still-pretty-bad-anyway, why not remove them completely with Communism?

I would even argue that the main reason Social Capitalism works so well in some Scandinavian countries is because they have small populations + tons of natural resources, so to be honest no matter what political system they had they'd be pretty well off regardless.

[danyboy27]

Well, social capitalism has you call it is bound to fail beccause capitalist will always try eventually to wreck it for short time gain and increased worker submission.

has long has the exploitative element remain, shit will happen beccause those with this great power who are unaccounted for will use it for their own gain.

Communism is the economic version of democracy, and while democracy in itself isnt perfect, its always better than dictatorship.

There is no middle ground with the concept of dictatorship, you either want it or you dont.

[Maslo]

:gorbachev:

All Social Capitalism does is make the problems in Capitalism not-as-bad-but-still-pretty-bad-anyway, why not remove them completely with Communism?

Because, as I have said, communism (or socialism, communism is impossible to work without free energy, strong AI robots and matter replicators) is equality of results, not only chances - thus it greatly diminishes incentive and motivation to work and innovate. It introduces its own huge problems.

Social capitalism solves problems of capitalism (not just diminishes), without introducing additional problems, or negating the good side of capitalism - high individual motivation to work and innovate.

[LancashireLenin]

That's not true, revisionist social democracy has failed. The idea that you can unleash market forces and use the state to address the problems has been found unworkable- have you not been paying attention over the last 30 years of reaction to revisionist social democracy? Tomorrow the UK parliament debates a Health and Social Care bill that means the end of the NHS in all but name. That's 'social capitalism'.

It isn't extreme to demand that democracy applies to the economic as well as the political. It isn't a case of 'well, there are two sides, so whatever is in between must be right'. No. We advocate 2+2=4, capitalism advocates 2+2=6. 2+2=5 is just as wrong.

[Nox]

Because, as I have said, communism (or socialism, communism is impossible to work without free energy, strong AI robots and matter replicators) is equality of results, not only chances - thus it greatly diminishes incentive and motivation to work and innovate. It introduces its own huge problems.

Communism can work without Robots. However, don't mistake Robotisation as something futuristic; it's something we have the capability to do right now with the technology we have. The reason we keep nagging on about Robotisation is because Robotisation is only possible under Socialism/Communism. It would not work under Capitalism whatsoever, because it would greatly reduce demand, that's why they don't do it right now.

People won't need to work much anyway, and even when they do it will be something they enjoy.


Social capitalism solves problems of capitalism (not just diminishes), without introducing additional problems, or negating the good side of capitalism - high individual motivation to work and innovate.

Social Capitalism barely solves any of the problems. It's foolish to use Scandinavia as an example of its success, for the reasons I mentioned in the first post.

Those problems are hard-wired into the fundamentals of the Capitalist system, no matter how 'Social' the Capitalism is, they will always be present to a certain degree.

[Broletariat]

Golden Mean fallacy is it?


For starters, Socialism/Communism aren't any form of "extreme" any more so than we would say feudalism is an "extreme" compared to Capitalism.

They're just totally fucking different modes of production.

[Maslo]

Well, social capitalism has you call it is bound to fail beccause capitalist will always try eventually to wreck it for short time gain and increased worker submission.

has long has the exploitative element remain, shit will happen beccause those with this great power who are unaccounted for will use it for their own gain.

Communism is the economic version of democracy, and while democracy in itself isnt perfect, its always better than dictatorship.

There is no middle ground with the concept of dictatorship, you either want it or you dont.

I am not a fan of pure democracy. There is a reason Aristotle put it between the worst forms of government. Its simply mob rule, dictatorship of the majority. And while it may be preferable to bad dictators, it is clearly inferior to benevolent dictatorship. There is nothing that says majority always makes most optimal decisions, especially when compared to more wise minority.

My ideal political system is direct technocracy/sofocracy - rule of the wise and educated citizens.

As for your claim that social capitalism is long-term unstable and will over time turn into pure capitalism - I dont think history agrees. If anything, we see the opposite progression in western social democracies - increase in socialist elements over time.

[Maslo]

That's not true, revisionist social democracy has failed. The idea that you can unleash market forces and use the state to address the problems has been found unworkable

citation needed. Countries with the highest quality of life on this planet (Scandinavia) have social democracy, not pure socialism or pure capitalism. It has anything but failed.

[Kotze]

Extreme equality in the sense of everybody getting exactly the same no matter how long they work and how stressful or dangerous the work is they do is not something I'm in favour of, and I'm pretty sure it's only a minority among those who call themselves socialist or communist who hold that position.

I agree that quality of life is better in Scandinavia than what people had in the USSR or what people have today in the USA, and that life in the USA has been better than in the USSR. However, I do think that development of computing and communication technology has shifted things in favour of more centralized economies.

I also find the concept of similar opportunities without similar outcomes problematic, in that I don't quite see how you could have similar opportunities then, unless there is mandatory adoption for everybody.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Extremism rarely leads to something good, especially ideologic (political) extremism. This is true for extremist capitalism (individualism) and its also true for extremist socialism (collectivism).

Why even bother with suboptimal extremes, when you can combine best of both worlds, while leaving the worst out to obtain superior system?

Because an extreme position is not always sub-optimal depending on one's terminal goals. Anyone morally opposed to slavery has an extreme position on it, but considering the terminal goals of somebody morally opposed to slavery then this makes sense. To assume otherwise is to commit the golden mean fallacy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_to_moderation).


Social (welfare) capitalism neatly solves the wage slavery problem present in pure capitalism - with good welfare system the dichotomy between having to work or any wage or dying of lack of basic necessities vanishes. Thus we can ensure any work selling contract is truly voluntary, so the slavery aspect dissapears.

The communist position is more than about not dying through lack of necessities. It also seeks to abolish what Marx called alienated labour (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation).


As we can see this solves pure capitalism wage slavery and lack of basic necessities problem without introducing more problems as is the case with socialism, such as decrease of motivation to work and innovate - profit motivation and individual success motivation is retained.

As Charles Murray put it: “Billions for equal chances, not a penny for equal results ."

People don't want to work because working sucks under capitalism.


We have also empirical evidence to support this conclusion. Both states which embraced one ideology - socialism (eastern europe..) and capitalism (USA) are inferior in quality of life to social capitalist states (scandinavia).

Capitalism in Scandinavia may be more humane (at least by appearance), but capitalism is a global system and improvements for a minority of the world's population do not justify its existence.

[Maslo]

Communism can work without Robots. Communism can work without Robots.

It cannot, for the same reasons Venus project and other moneyless societies cannot. Even Lenin I think acknowledged that communism appears only in the future, once we achieve what would today be called Technological Singularity.


It would not work under Capitalism whatsoever, because it would greatly reduce demand, that's why they don't do it right now.

Explain what you mean. You think a company owner comes into work in the morning and thinks "Well, I could replace all my workers with machines now and save big bucks, but I wont do it because demand would lower?"

The reason why we dont do robotisation more is because we are not there yet technologically, contrary to Zeitgeist fantasies. Capitalism actually greatly incentivises robotisation. because it increases profits.


Those problems are hard-wired into the fundamentals of the Capitalist system, no matter how 'Social' the Capitalism is, they will always be present to a certain degree.

What problems? Wage slavery and lack of basic necessities is solved completely by good welfare system. Are there other problems?

[Broletariat]

What problems? Wage slavery is solved completely by good welfare system. Are there other problems?


Even assuming you can implement your system, yes.

Alienated labour will always mean a tendency to crisis.

[Ocean Seal]

Let me break it down.
Most of the First World: Social Capitalism
Most of the Third World: Predatory Individualist Capitalism

Haven't you ever had the wild idea that maybe social capitalism can only exist because of the horrible exploitation of the third world through a more predatory capitalism? That the first world is locked in an economic relationship with the third world? And that through that relationship it can provide welfare to its workers while starving the grand majority of workers. Oh and another thing, most of the time welfare still leaves you in the shit, say all you want about the Soviet Union but everyone had a job, everyone had a purpose, and everyone earned the fruits of their labor.

[LancashireLenin]

citation needed. Countries with the highest quality of life on this planet (Scandinavia) have social democracy, not pure socialism or pure capitalism. It has anything but failed.

One of the mistakes you're making is in looking at them in isolation. Nordic social democracy cannot be sustained without the super-exploitation of others abroad, just as in more neoliberal capitalist countries. And it isn't sustainable- the UK tried full employment and a strong welfare state and it led to the Winter of Discontent and the Thatcherite reaction.

Social capitalism, as you put it, still suffers from the cyclical, crisis-prone nature of capitalism (when I say 'it' suffers, of course, it is the working people and poor who suffer). And it doesn't solve the basic problem of capitalism which is the lack of democracy- the economy affects how people live far more than anything currently under democatic control. Benign dictatorship is not something to be settled for because it is apparently moderate, even if it did 'work'.

[Welshy]

Explain what you mean. You think a company owner comes into work in the morning and thinks "Well, I could replace all my workers with machines now and save big bucks, but I wont do it because demand would lower?"



The problem is that it would completely destroy its consumer basis. With robots completely handling production, you would have no jobs for a very large section of the world (if not the majority). When people don't have jobs, they can't afford to buy the products the companies produce. And if you think a strong welfare system could solve this, then where would you get the money from since the majority of the world would be incapable of paying taxes?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

It cannot, for the same reasons Venus project and other moneyless societies cannot. Even Lenin I think acknowledged that communism appears only in the future, once we achieve what would today be called Technological Singularity.

A technological singularity isn't necessary. We have the potential capability today of being able to run materially abundant societies without money or markets in some parts of the world, and the rest of the world requires only sufficient development to catch up. A moneyless non-market economy would not be bound by the strictures of the dismal science, but only by the laws of physics and the resources available to us, which are plentiful. Not being based on growth for growth's sake, such a society would be better able to commit itself to long-term projects such as the industrialisation of space, necessary to exploit the vaster resources of the Solar system.


The reason why we dont do robotisation more is because we are not there yet technologically, contrary to Zeitgeist fantasies. Capitalism actually greatly incentivises robotisation. because it increases profits.

Only by replacing workers with cheaper alternatives. If they actually used mechanisation of labour to it's fullest extent, flooding the market with durable and low-cost products in the process, they would go bankrupt no matter how many benefit from their products.

[Nox]

It cannot, for the same reasons Venus project and other moneyless societies cannot. Even Lenin I think acknowledged that communism appears only in the future, once we achieve what would today be called Technological Singularity.

It can work. If you think it doesn't, I think you need to learn a little about how Communism and Capitalism work from an economic perspective. In Communism, it makes no difference whatsoever whether the workers are human or machine, whereas in Capitalism it would destroy the economy.




Explain what you mean. You think a company owner comes into work in the morning and thinks "Well, I could replace all my workers with machines now and save big bucks, but I wont do it because demand would lower?"

Yes. Anyone competant in economics (I assume most business owners are) knows that there needs to be a sufficient amount of demand for the Capitalist system to work. Robotisation of the workforce would greatly reduce the demand.

Never heard of supply and demand?




What problems? Wage slavery is solved completely by good welfare system. Are there other problems?

The exploitation of labour can never be solved.

Another problem is raised by a welfare system in a Capitalist economy; people dislike working in a Capitalist system so they can just refuse to work and live on the welfare.

[Maslo]

Even assuming you can implement your system, yes.

Alienated labour will always mean a tendency to crisis.

But all proposed solutions to this alienated labour produce far greater tendencies to crisis as the "problem" they try to solve:
All involve huge decreases in incentive to work, innovate and create new means of production compared to status quo.

Is this worth it? I believe it is not, I dont consider "alienation" of your labor a problem if you voluntarily and without coercion agreed to it, only involuntary wage slavery is a problem.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

But all proposed solutions to this alienated labour produce far greater tendencies to crisis as the "problem" they try to solve:
All involve huge decreases in incentive to work, innovate and create new means of production compared to status quo.

Evidence?

[Tim Cornelis]

Capitalism, private property, limits the freedom of the worker. No amount of "social capitalism" can correct this fact.

Workers' self-management is the solution.

Eastern Europe can hardly be considered "Socialist" as the workers did not control the means of production.

[Tim Cornelis]

But all proposed solutions to this alienated labour produce far greater tendencies to crisis as the "problem" they try to solve:
All involve huge decreases in incentive to work, innovate and create new means of production compared to status quo.

Is this worth it? I believe it is not, I dont consider "alienation" of your labor a problem if you voluntarily and without coercion agreed to it, only involuntary wage slavery is a problem.

Actually, no innovation is part of humans as social beings who desire purpose, autonomy and mastery. Not monetary reward, monetary reward generally halts innovation.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u6XAPnuFjJc

[Maslo]

The problem is that it would completely destroy its consumer basis. With robots completely handling production, you would have no jobs for a very large section of the world (if not the majority). When people don't have jobs, they can't afford to buy the products the companies produce. And if you think a strong welfare system could solve this, then where would you get the money from since the majority of the world would be incapable of paying taxes?

The production companies actionaries and maintenance workers income taxes of course. The price decrease of such mass production would lower the product costs so much that it would be enough.

Its a self-correcting system: people get substituted by robots, welfare system strain increases, BUT profit income of robot owners also increases, thus income tax increases, and also prices of products decrease.

[scarletghoul]

pro tip : 'extreme' is relative to some idea of a 'neutral center', which is almost always the dominant ideology or status quo. by placing yourself in this imaginary 'center' you are simply supporting the established order, and making yourself irrelevant as a human being.

[Maslo]

A technological singularity isn't necessary. We have the potential capability today of being able to run materially abundant societies without money or markets in some parts of the world, and the rest of the world requires only sufficient development to catch up. A moneyless non-market economy would not be bound by the strictures of the dismal science, but only by the laws of physics and the resources available to us, which are plentiful. Not being based on growth for growth's sake, such a society would be better able to commit itself to long-term projects such as the industrialisation of space, necessary to exploit the vaster resources of the Solar system.



Only by replacing workers with cheaper alternatives. If they actually used mechanisation of labour to it's fullest extent, flooding the market with durable and low-cost products in the process, they would go bankrupt no matter how many benefit from their products.

How would such moneyless non-market economy work? Everything I have seen on the RBE forum are just very vague catchphrases that do not say anything of substance. Saying "computers will manage it" says nothing without concrete algorithm and who will control it.

I bet it would contain the equivalent of monetary system and market inside, just obscured and called differently.


Only by replacing workers with cheaper alternatives.

Yes, that is the whole point of robotisation, isnt it? Whats the problem?


If they actually used mechanisation of labour to it's fullest extent, flooding the market with durable and low-cost products in the process, they would go bankrupt no matter how many benefit from their products.

Why would they go bankrupt of they undercut all competitors prices and still provided superior quality? They would swim in money.

[Hit The North]

The problem is that the OP regards this as a choice between ideologies when, in fact, it is about the choice between social relations. Capitalism is not an ideology, or even the particular arrangement of institutions in society. It is, first and foremost, a social relation between alienated labour on the one hand, and private property on the other hand. Capitalism is the expropriation of social labour and its transformation into private property.

Social capitalism, therefore, to have any meaning, must preserve the private ownership of the means of production and maintain the alienation of labour. It must facilitate and encourage the maintenance of a regime of accumulation based on the exploitation of labour power. It must allow the commodities produced by social labour to remain within the sphere of private production and exchange. It must preserve the wage relation and, therefore, cannot be a solution to wage-slavery, only its endorsement.

As others have pointed out, you are merely returning to the illusions of welfare state capitalism as if blissfully unaware of how far this has been under attack by 'real' capitalism over the last three decades.

[Maslo]

Evidence?

Profit motive incentive (desire for more wealth) + passion for the work = incentives to work and innovate in capitalism

passion for the work = incentive to work and innovate in communism

2 is more than 1.

As for empirical evidence, just compare shitty soviet products after 40 years of profit motivation absence with western products of the era... If they could not copy from the west, it would be even far worse.

[o well this is ok I guess]

thus it greatly diminishes incentive and motivation to work and innovate. It introduces its own huge problems. Name one great innovator that created purely for the cash, rather than their sheer passion for the subject.

[Tommy4ever]

No one here really thinks social democracy is a bad thing. Social democracy is able to blunten the edge of capitalism and deal with some of the worst excesses. The problem is that it remains capitalism and the inherent problems with that system remain. The instability remains, the exploitation of labour remains, the self destructive nature of the system remains, unemployment remains, social problems remain. But now you have a bloated state that needs to borrow excessive quantities in order to continue functioning and remains at the mercy of markets. Yes you've done away with the worst problems capitalism inflicts on society, but not all of them by a longshot.

[Maslo]

The problem is that the OP regards this as a choice between ideologies when, in fact, it is about the choice between social relations.

Yes, it is a choice about social relation IDEOLOGIES, namely individualism and collectivism.

[Welshy]

The production companies actionaries and maintenance workers income taxes of course. The price decrease of such mass production would lower the product costs so much that it would be enough.

Now we come to a second problem. Before I get to that, I would like to say that I highly doubt that the jobs made up by employing people to maintain the machines would match the number of people left with out jobs because they were replaced by robots. Also if production can be completely handled by robots, then why can't the store fronts?

Now for the second problem. Let's assume that we are able to employ a sufficient amount of people to maintain the robots to make up for those fired when they were replaced by the robots. Now these new people would have to be well educated as the maintain the systems of robots would require people skilled in mechanical engineering and computer science. Because of the necessary education and experience required for this job, the new workers would have to be paid more than the workers the robots replaced. So in the end the companies have to spend more then they would have had to before bringing the robots.




Its a self-correcting system: people get substituted by robots, welfare system strain increases, BUT profit income of robot owners also increases, thus income tax increases, and also prices of products decrease.

Yeah because a similar cycle is working so well right now. Economic crisis happens and businesses lay people off and welfare system strain increases, but then business profits increase and oh wait people are still unemployed, the business owners are fighting to decrease income taxes and the welfare system is still strained and is now being attacked.

[Maslo]

Name one great innovator that created purely for the cash, rather than their sheer passion for the subject.

INTEL, AMD, ATi, nVidia companies. The whole computer hardware and IT industry actually. Automobile and aviation industry before it.

[o well this is ok I guess]

INTEL, AMD, ATi, nVidia companies. The whole computer hardware and IT industry actually. Automobile and aviation industry before it.I never asked for a company. Such a question cannot apply to a company, since a company cannot feel something like "sheer passion".
Name a single man.

[Hit The North]

Yes, it is a choice about social relation IDEOLOGIES, namely individualism and collectivism.

No, it is about the key social relations of production, not the thoughts in people's heads. If you want to preserve capitalism you have to preserve the productive relationship. This means private ownership of firms, extraction of surplus labour, the preservation of wage slavery.

You could then supplement this with a benign political state and a thriving municipal polis with generous social welfare rights. But this is unstable - a temporary truce between the social nature of production and its expropriation by capital. You will end up with crises because by preserving the economic exchange between labour and capital, you will merely preserve the class struggle that spins out from it.

The only long-term solution is the abolition of the private bonds which prevent people from benefiting and enjoying the fruits of their collective labour. It is the capitalists and their system that is a drag on our mutual development.

[DinodudeEpic]

The extremes are not socialism and capitalism, but socialism and feudalism. Socialism is economic democracy, feudalism is economic monarchy, rule by birth. Capitalism is economic oligarchy or meritocracy, rule by money/merit/nepotism. Social capitalism is really just market capitalism, but with some government restrictions. The Soviet Union is State Capitalist, with capitalist means of production in the form of the Soviet Bureaucracy, but with a non-market economy.

In this case, Socialism merely means workers control over the means of production, not government control of said production.

Also, I'm actually an ardent individualist.

The real battle is not between individualism and collectivism. There are plenty of collectivist capitalist regimes, (Fascism, the Soviet Union's state capitalism, and such.)

[Hit The North]

Profit motive incentive (desire for more wealth) + passion for the work = incentives to work and innovate in capitalism

passion for the work = incentive to work and innovate in communism

2 is more than 1.


Yes, you've got it! We want a society where everyone has a passion for their work because they have control over it and realise themselves in it. Communists want a society where individual creativity thrives and is not lashed to the profit motive and the preserve of an over privileged elite.


As for empirical evidence, just compare shitty soviet products after 40 years of profit motivation absence with western products of the era... If they could not copy from the west, it would be even far worse.


The Soviet Union was obviously not a democratic society of free producers. In other words, it was not communism.

[RGacky3]

INTEL, AMD, ATi, nVidia companies. The whole computer hardware and IT industry actually. Automobile and aviation industry before it.

Most of all of those innovations were accomplished by the state.

[RGacky3]

As we can see this solves pure capitalism wage slavery and lack of basic necessities problem without introducing more problems as is the case with socialism, such as decrease of motivation to work and innovate - profit motivation and individual success motivation is retained.


Decrese of motivation has never been a problem in industries where workers have control. Most workers have no profit motivation, infact if their productivity goes too high, some might loose their job.

Also Capital nowerdays is liquid, people can move to avoid these things.


social capitalist states (scandinavia).


Norway and Denmark have massiave productive public sectors, and large cooperative industries, its hardly welfare Capitalism, Sweeden is more welfare capitalism, and they arn't doing to well right now.

Germany is another system, which has co-determination and laws giving communities control over industries, these are not tax and welfare policies, they are full on socialist policies.

Now both of these countries still are essencially capitalist in nature, but their Socialism is not Social capitalism, its productive state owned industry and cooperatives in one model, (which basically holds up the economy), and worker and community control in another (again, basically supports the economy).

But both those models are subject to dismanteling very easily if the Capitalist class can pull it off, infact in some countries its happened, such as the UK, which used to have a relatively socialist model, it does'nt take much.

If the reason for those 2 models success is socialism, then why not go all the way.

This false dictomy about 2 extremes, is rediculous, getting rid of slavery used to be extreme, There is nothing extreme about economic democracy and workers democracy.

[StoneFrog]

So can any form of capitalism (even a half caste capitalism) survive without exploiting workers? At the moment thanks to imperialism those most effected by capitalism are in poor countries forces to sell their labour to rich countries. Though one country can prosper, you can't look at in isolation.

What are these Scandinavian countries biggest industry?

[danyboy27]

I am not a fan of pure democracy. There is a reason Aristotle put it between the worst forms of government. Its simply mob rule, dictatorship of the majority. And while it may be preferable to bad dictators, it is clearly inferior to benevolent dictatorship. There is nothing that says majority always makes most optimal decisions, especially when compared to more wise minority.

Benevolent dictatorship always degenerate and rarely end up with a long term progress. that why the nobility system was abandonned in most countries, beccause no matter how much x king was great, the sucessor where pretty good at fucking everything up what was previously achieved.

Democracy isnt perfect, but many of the currents imperfection could be corrected if we could apply democracy in the economy and production.

The problem right now isnt the influence of the population on democracy, but the inflience of economic forces.



My ideal political system is direct technocracy/sofocracy - rule of the wise and educated citizens.
.
while i agree with many tenets of technocracy, i dont believe the wise men should be the only one running the show. Many productive elements of society dont have what you could consider a higher education, that dosnt mean they cant come up with idea. everyone deserve a voice.



As for your claim that social capitalism is long-term unstable and will over time turn into pure capitalism - I dont think history agrees. If anything, we see the opposite progression in western social democracies - increase in socialist elements over time.

Until the economics forces found out a way to do away with those socialist elements, see the tatcher in england. regan in the U.S and the liberal party reign in Canada for further exemples of how its playing out.
The austerity measures we are experiencing right now is just the tip of the iceberg.

[Maslo]

I never asked for a company. Such a question cannot apply to a company, since a company cannot feel something like "sheer passion".
Name a single man.

Thomas Edison. He patented every invention and actively enforced his patents, so we can conclude he also wanted to profit from them.

Anyway, my point about IT industry still stands, just because there were more people involved in an invention does not mean they cannot have feelings, thats a non-sequitur.

[Tommy4ever]

Thomas Edison. He patented every invention and actively enforced his patents, so we can conclude he also wanted to profit from them.

Anyway, my point about IT industry still stands, just because there were more people involved in an invention does not mean they cannot have feelings, thats a non-sequitur.

Wait .... Are you saying that Thomas Edison would never have attempted to invent anything if there wasn't an opportunity for profit?

[Maslo]

No, it is about the key social relations of production, not the thoughts in people's heads. If you want to preserve capitalism you have to preserve the productive relationship. This means private ownership of firms, extraction of surplus labour, the preservation of wage slavery.

You could then supplement this with a benign political state and a thriving municipal polis with generous social welfare rights. But this is unstable - a temporary truce between the social nature of production and its expropriation by capital. You will end up with crises because by preserving the economic exchange between labour and capital, you will merely preserve the class struggle that spins out from it.

The only long-term solution is the abolition of the private bonds which prevent people from benefiting and enjoying the fruits of their collective labour. It is the capitalists and their system that is a drag on our mutual development.

The "surplus labor" is an ideological construct, I see nothing wrong with what you call "surplus labor" if its voluntary, and the onlt alternative is stealing.
Wage slavery (involuntary work selling) is completely abolished by welfare state.

-

If collectively owned companies are really better than privately owned when it comes to fulfilling consumer wishes, why havent they defeated capitalist companies in an open market?

If its really true that collective ownership is equally vital in innovation and enterpreneurship, why havent any collectively owned companies even appeared? Its not like someone forbids workers from peacefully leaving their employers and forming their own collectively owned companies now.

In other words, if socialist mode of production is really possible, and BETTER, why havent it appeared at least once, and defeated all capitalist companies in competition?

[Rusty Shackleford]

"Social Capitalism" will cease to exist as soon as the contradictions within capitalism force a change. the Social Democracies of Germany and France rake in money for their workers by exploiting workers in other countries. The financial collapse is effectively bringing an end to that.

[Maslo]

Yes, you've got it! We want a society where everyone has a passion for their work because they have control over it and realise themselves in it. Communists want a society where individual creativity thrives and is not lashed to the profit motive and the preserve of an over privileged elite.



The Soviet Union was obviously not a democratic society of free producers. In other words, it was not communism.

Not everyone has a passion for work which is needed. Some people are lazy and greedy. And profit motive converts greed into incentive to work. It is thus a positive force, one which is absent in communism.

Soviet Union was similar in terms of lack of profit motive, and results of such lack.

[Maslo]

Wait .... Are you saying that Thomas Edison would never have attempted to invent anything if there wasn't an opportunity for profit?

He may have not invented so much if there was no profit motive.

[StoneFrog]

Funny i swear your sound like your saying humanity would stop working and innervating if they don't get a "cookie" at the end.

The "cookie" at the end doesn't have to be money, "necessity is the mother of all inventions" not greed. Filling that necessity is a reward in itself.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Exactly. The idea that invention is driven by the profit motive is simplistic and ahistorical.

[Hit The North]

"Social Capitalism" will cease to exist as soon as the contradictions within capitalism force a change. the Social Democracies of Germany and France rake in money for their workers by exploiting workers in other countries. The financial collapse is effectively bringing an end to that.

I'd like to see the data that supports this assertion. As far as I know, the welfare states of Europe are paid for through taxation or through government borrowing. How does the super exploitation of workers in Indonesia by corporations like Disney, Nike, etc., help to support the welfare regimes of Europeans and Americans?

[Maslo]

Funny i swear your sound like your saying humanity would stop working and innervating if they don't get a "cookie" at the end.

The "cookie" at the end doesn't have to be money, "necessity is the mother of all inventions" not greed. Filling that necessity is a reward in itself.

Thats just a saying, and I dont thing its correct, we invent lots of things that are not immidiately necessary.

Greed (desire for having more) is the father of all inventions, and lazyness (desire for working less) is the mother. :)

The point is WHY do you even want to remove the "cookie" motivation, even if it was only of tiny benefit? Its not harmful in social capitalist system.

The problem of current establishment is not that there are very rich people. The problem is ONLY that there are very poor people. Social capitalism takes care of it.
If there are no poor, why do you have problem with the rich? Are you greedy?

[Rusty Shackleford]

so, theres no possible connection between super profits made on the other side of the world and the wealth of an imperialist capitalist? how about the wealth of the US? if france or germany are borrowing, from who?


German banks made billions off of the bombing of yugoslavia for example.

[Maslo]

Exactly. The idea that invention is driven by the profit is simplistic and ahistorical.

Innovation is driven by many things, and profit is one of them.

The idea that innovation is driven by only one thing, and that its never profit is simplistic and ahistorical.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Thats just a saying, and I dont thing its correct, we invent lots of things that are not immidiately necessary.

Such as?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Innovation is driven by many things, and profit is one of them.

The idea that innovation is driven by only one thing, and that its never profit is simplistic and ahistorical.

I never claimed that there was a single drive behind innovation.

[StoneFrog]

Thats just a saying, and I dont thing its correct, we invent lots of things that are not immidiately necessary.

Greed (desire for having more) is the father of all inventions, and lazyness (desire for working less) is the mother. :)

The point is WHY do you even want to remove the "cookie" motivation, even if it was only of tiny benefit? Its not harmful in social capitalist system.

The problem of current establishment is not that there are very rich people. The problem is ONLY that there are very poor people. Social capitalism takes care of it.
If there are no poor, why do you have problem with the rich? Are you greedy?

Well for one by not getting rid of the "cookie" your only inciting corruption in the bodies of power. With the rich gaining the power through corruption, just as has happened countless times in capitalism. The body of power which is meant to correct the inherent flaws in capitalism would end up working in the opposite direction.

Yes im greedy and im sure the next person is greedy, to a level, but because of this is why any sort of market system will fail. Only by removing that which, provokes us to implement agents of excessive greed, will any sort of true democracy be formed.

The fact that i support the notion that EVERYONE has an equal right in the say and development of humanity is why communism is the only way.

[Maslo]

Such as?

There are hundreds types of cars on the market. Are they all necessary? If its not necessity what has driven the development of additional car types development, what was it?

[Rusty Shackleford]

There are hundreds types of cars on the market. Are they all necessary? If its not necessity what has driven the development of additional car types development, what was it?
the need for profit.

[Tommy4ever]

Innovation is driven by many things, and profit is one of them.

The idea that innovation is driven by only one thing, and that its never profit is simplistic and ahistorical.

Profit is something that drives inovation. Just look how corporations have driven inovation in fields like the car industry and electronics. But it is neither the only motive of innovation (many capitalists seem to be rather confused on this point) nor the most effective. The majority of history's innovations, indeed the majority of world changing innovations of the capitalist era, have not been primarily driven by the profit motive.

Just because someone takes out patents and tries to profit from his innovations does not mean that profit was his primary motive. It seems pretty natural that if someone does something unique that they would want to profit from it, but it also rare for someone to go out and try to invent something with the purpose of making money - because most of the time this actually makes inventing something new and innovative more difficult.

Most scientific projects don't actually offer huge financial rewards for the scientists taking part (aside from healthy wage), yet these people are still able to be much more innovate than you or I could be if we just sat down and thought up ideas for our million pound invention. Indeed, even though the profit motive encourages corporations to pour money into R&D the people on the ground who are actually making the innovations tend not to see a huge portion (if any) of that profit themselves. So how are they motivated primarily by profit? I sense I am rambling but can't be bothered ot read over what I've written so I will sum up:

The profit motive is more often than not a secondary motive for inovators. Yes these people will do all they can to profit from whatever they have invented, but rarely does someone go out to invent something new for the sheer purpose of making profit.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Edison never invented much - he hired people who worked on things which he patented and then took credit for. So yes, Edison is an example of the profit-motive at work.

Of course if technology development wasn;t based around private property and profits, then shared information and research would have allowed a better light-bulb and electrical grid. We also would have had movies a lot sooner since Edison's version was crap and better versions existed but Edison sued the other versions and claimed that his patten was over all film-based motion picture devices.

The profit motive spurrs development of technology, but is also a fetter on the development of technology. That is, it develops technology only if it is useful in the profit motive and fits into the current relations of production. So while scientists know how to build massive indoor growing facilities that can feed an entire city with a few large skyscrapers (which would also filter water and produce oxygen and eliminate the need for pesticides or the shittiest parts of farm-labor) why do that when land is cheap and you can make more profit. Obviously non fossil-fuel based technologies are an example of that as well - even though it would be more rational and better for everyone, the profit motive prohibits this kind of technological development.

[Hit The North]

so, theres no possible connection between super profits made on the other side of the world and the wealth of an imperialist capitalist? how about the wealth of the US? if france or germany are borrowing, from who?


German banks made billions off of the bombing of yugoslavia for example.

I'm not denying the existence of super profits. I'm questioning your assumption that the capitalist collect up all this profit and spend it on workers welfare. You must think the Western bourgeoisie is a saintly institution!

[Jimmie Higgins]

Though invention in the abstract is not based on the profit motive alone - if that were true then hardly any technologies would have been invented in the first place. The implementation of those discoveries, technology, is connected to the social relations of society.

So, for example, Romans discovered steam-power. Did they implement it? No, they made toys from it and used them in religious or entertainment spectacles. Why? Because why develop it further when you have slaves to move things for you. Capitalism is the same, we have the ability to feed the world but don't because - why should we - it would weaken the profit-system. We could go to the moon - but why? We can't really put communications satellites or missiles on it so it has no use under capitalism even if it would have use for humanity as a whole.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

There are hundreds types of cars on the market. Are they all necessary? If its not necessity what has driven the development of additional car types development, what was it?

It depends what you mean to say when you talk of different "types" of car. Obviously something like a pickup truck is going to be useful for different functions than say, a two-seater open-top. But beyond such externalities is there really that much difference between say, an Audi A1 (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Audi_A1) and a Fiat Bravo (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fiat_Bravo_%282007%29)?

Of course different manufacturers have different histories and design philosophies and so on, but that sort of thing doesn't need money or markets to exist, just people who give a fuck about making cars.

[Maslo]

We could go to the moon - but why? We can't really put communications satellites or missiles on it so it has no use under capitalism even if it would have use for humanity as a whole.

What use? Apart from tourism and base for eventual deeper space exploration there is not much use for the Moon. Not now.

Anyway, how do you explain this:
"SpaceX plans to get humans on Mars"

Publicly owned non-profit NASA failed to get us out of LEO in 40 years, after billions spent. For-profit private enterprise SpaceX is planning to go to Mars by 2020, and already has superior technology.

[Maslo]

Riddle me this...

If collectively owned companies are really better than privately owned when it comes to technical advancement and fulfilling consumer wishes, why havent they defeated capitalist companies in an open market?

If its really true that collective ownership is equally vital in innovation and enterpreneurship, why havent any collectively owned companies even appear? Its not like someone forbids workers from peacefully leaving their employers and forming their own collectively owned companies now, or someone forbids collectivist enterpreneurs. If collectively owned companies are viable, and really better than private companies, then there should be no need for revolution!

In other words, if socialist mode of company ownership is really viable, possible to appear without stealing ideas and means of production from capitalists, and BETTER, why havent it appeared at least once, and defeated all capitalist companies in competition, or at least established itself as widespread alternative?

[ZeroNowhere]

Capitalism of any sort, when counter-posed to socialism, is an extreme. The two systems are mutually exclusive and there is no middle ground. We are all extremists and fanatics here, and you are no exception. The fact that you claim not to represent 'either extreme' shows that you don't really know what you're on about.

Personally, though, I'm for anti-social socialism. We shall rise as one, and then go off and just kind of do our own things.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What use? Apart from tourism and base for eventual deeper space exploration there is not much use for the Moon. Not now.

Anyway, how do you explain this:
"SpaceX plans to get humans on Mars"

Publicly owned non-profit NASA failed to get us out of LEO in 40 years, after billions spent. For-profit private enterprise SpaceX is planning to go to Mars by 2020, and already has superior technology.Missed my point entirely.

I was not arguing that we should go to the moon, just that development is tied to the ruling relations of production. Romans had basic engines but didn't know what to do with them because their productive power was based on slave-labor; capitalism's focus is profit and so things that don't support that system go underdeveloped or unused.

[CommunityBeliever]

INTEL, AMD, ATi, nVidia companies. Computer users frequently have to do this stupid thing known as saving (in order to transfer a data object from RAM onto the disk). What the fuck? Why the fuck should anyone ever have to do this?

Intel decided to make x86-64 use a 48-bit address space, so now how the fuck are we going to manage to unify RAM and disk into a single address space with those Intel mother-fuckers running around? Fuck Intel, fuck AMD, ATi, nVidia, and the rest of them.

Another huge pain in the ass comes from when you have to install a device driver for a hardware product, possibly from one of these companies, on on open system such as Linux. Fucking hardware companies can't just give us open-source device drivers.


The whole computer hardware and IT industry actually. Okay lets discuss the whole computation industry then. Many people, including me, still gladly use computers that were invented over twenty years ago (the Lisp machines). These were mainly developed at the MIT AI laboratory with state-funding.

But when we had the privatisation/commercialisation of computers/IT with companies like M$ and Apple and their "personal computers" we got the AI winter and the big cluster-fuck that we are in now.

As an example look at that fucking shitstorm known as the "world wide web." How idiotic is this fucking thing? What kind of a fucking idiot would ever use SGML for anything, let alone for a worldwide platform like the web? And don't get me started on the JavaScript clusterfuck.

If these idiots just had a basic knowledge of what some computer users knew almost fifty years ago then the web wouldn't be a hodgepodge of contradictory platforms like HTML5, Flash, Silverlight, Java, etc.

Sorry if I am a little bit mad here, having to work with/program on these privately-developed computer systems every day is quite frustrating.

[Maslo]

Missed my point entirely.

I was not arguing that we should go to the moon, just that development is tied to the ruling relations of production. Romans had basic engines but didn't know what to do with them because their productive power was based on slave-labor; capitalism's focus is profit and so things that don't support that system go underdeveloped or unused.

What is profit?

Profit is achieved when you provide something people want. Why should we spend lots of resources (yes, money represents resources) on something only few people want (unprofitable venture)?
And money in social capitalism is still spent on many things which are not profitable, at least not in the short term, so this again does not apply to social capitalism.

As for your slaves example, yes, it would be foolish for romans to use engines when they have lots of cheap slaves, assuming the engines delivered inferior performance.
Anyway, I would still like citation for such claim.

[Tim Cornelis]

Profit motive incentive (desire for more wealth) + passion for the work = incentives to work and innovate in capitalism

passion for the work = incentive to work and innovate in communism

2 is more than 1.

As for empirical evidence, just compare shitty soviet products after 40 years of profit motivation absence with western products of the era... If they could not copy from the west, it would be even far worse.

As pointed out earlier, the facts show that monetary reward halts innovation, not stimulate. Autonomy, purpose and mastery are the three factors that stimulate innovation, not monehhh!

[Maslo]

Computer users frequently have to do this stupid thing known as saving (in order to transfer a data object from RAM onto the disk). What the fuck? Why the fuck should anyone ever have to do this?

Intel decided to make x86-64 use a 48-bit address space, so now how the fuck are we going to manage to unify RAM and disk into a single address space with those Intel mother-fuckers running around? Fuck Intel, fuck AMD, ATi, nVidia, and the rest of them.

Another huge pain in the ass comes from when you have to install a device driver for a hardware product, possibly from one of these companies, on on open system such as Linux. Fucking hardware companies can't just give us open-source device drivers.

Okay lets discuss the whole computation industry then. Many people, including me, still gladly use computers that were invented over twenty years ago (the Lisp machines). These were mainly developed at the MIT AI laboratory with state-funding.

But when we had the privatisation/commercialisation of computers/IT with companies like M$ and Apple and their "personal computers" we got the AI winter and the big cluster-fuck that we are in now.

As an example look at that fucking shitstorm known as the "world wide web." How idiotic is this fucking thing? What kind of a fucking idiot would ever use SGML for anything, let alone for a worldwide platform like the web? And don't get me started on the JavaScript clusterfuck.

If these idiots just had a basic knowledge of what some computer users knew almost fifty years ago then the web wouldn't be a hodgepodge of contradictory platforms like HTML5, Flash, Silverlight, Java, etc.

Sorry if I am a little bit mad here, having to work with/program on these privately-developed computer systems every day is quite frustrating.

How would you do without saving? Run the whole memory on disks (horribly slow), or have only RAM (huge costs, constant need for electricity)? Especially 20 years ago?

Well, call me when socialists develop something better.

[Tim Cornelis]

Riddle me this...

If collectively owned companies are really better than privately owned when it comes to technical advancement and fulfilling consumer wishes, why havent they defeated capitalist companies in an open market?

If its really true that collective ownership is equally vital in innovation and enterpreneurship, why havent any collectively owned companies even appear? Its not like someone forbids workers from peacefully leaving their employers and forming their own collectively owned companies now, or someone forbids collectivist enterpreneurs. If collectively owned companies are viable, and really better than private companies, then there should be no need for revolution!

In other words, if socialist mode of company ownership is really viable, possible to appear without stealing ideas and means of production from capitalists, and BETTER, why havent it appeared at least once, and defeated all capitalist companies in competition, or at least established itself as widespread alternative?

That;s because if I am a capitalist and I own a business, I will want to expand it because more businesses will generate more profits. But a worker cooperative has no stimulation to expand enterprises because it will not generate more profits to the workers since it has to be shared amongst the extra workers.

Collectively owned companies have appeared, by the way. So yes they are viable. But this tactic still operates in a capitalist framework.


Farmers’ cooperatives: Cooperatives manage 99% of Sweden’s dairy production,
95% of Japan’s rice harvest, 75% of western Canada’s grain and oilseed output, and
3
60% of Italy’s wine production. 99% of Japan’s fish production is also run
cooperatively.
2. Banking cooperatives: Some of Europe’s major commercial banks are cooperatively
owned or organised, including Germany’s DG Bank, Holland’s Rabobank, and
France’s Credit Agricole.4
3. Housing cooperatives: In Europe, there are 10,614,000 housing coops. 15% of
Norway’s and 2% of the United Kingdom’s housing stock is cooperative. The Czech
Republic has 10,000 housing cooperatives. 25% of housing development in Turkey in
the last 25 years has been through the cooperative system.
4. The National Cooperative Business Association: In the USA, the National
Cooperative Business Association includes 47,000 cooperatives serving as many as
100 million people, or 37% of the population.5
5. Maleny: Australia’s best-known example of a cooperative community is Maleny, on
the Sunshine Coast Hinterland. Maleny is a small rural town of 4,000 people, which
supports 17 cooperatives, including a cooperative bank, a food cooperative, a
cooperative club, a workers’ cooperative, a cashless trading cooperative, four
environmental cooperatives, and several community settlement cooperatives. The
Maleny Credit Union was started in 1984, and today has more than 6,000 members
and more than $15 million in assets.6
6. The International Cooperative Alliance: Finally, today more than 760 million
people throughout the world are members of cooperatives. They are members of the
world’s largest non-government organisation, the International Cooperative Alliance,
which represents more than 250 national and international organisations

On slavery:



Historians have long argued that the reason why the ancients failed to develop
an industrial society, despite all the science of the Greeks and the engineering
skills of the Romans, was the institution of slavery. Where all industrial
production was relegated to slaves, rational calculation of labour costs was discouraged.
A slave was not paid by the hour, so the master had no incentive to
account for the hours of his servants' labour. Without such calculation there
was little incentive to economise on labour time. So, for instance, although
the Romans knew of the water wheel, they never moved on to the widespread
application of mechanical power (White, 1962).

source: Towards a New Socialism, p. 40

[Jimmie Higgins]

Riddle me this...

If collectively owned companies are really better than privately owned when it comes to technical advancement and fulfilling consumer wishes, why havent they defeated capitalist companies in an open market?Devious... Riddler, but with my Bat-duction I can turn the tables... on your fiendish... plot! If capitalist farming production is so much more efficeinet and productive than feudal crop production (which was individualist and atomized in nature whereas capitalism tends to centralize this process and utilize a collective labor force of wage-workers) why didn't capitalist farming replace the peasantry and develop like capitalism in mills and towns? Why did many countries have to enclose the land or abolish the peasantry as an institution before capitalist farming methods took hold?

In the US why was slavery increasing towards the mid-1850s even though new technologies were being developed and used for cotton production?

A: because the existing social relations - that is, the ruling classes who owed their power to the feudal or slave systems - opposed the implementation of these new developments.


If its really true that collective ownership is equally vital in innovation and enterpreneurship, why havent any collectively owned companies even appear? Its not like someone forbids workers from peacefully leaving their employers and forming their own collectively owned companies now, or someone forbids collectivist enterpreneurs. If collectively owned companies are viable, and really better than private companies, then there should be no need for revolution!Because these collectives are NOT changing the relations of production. Collective production under capitalism is just capitalist production (i.e. for profit) organized in a different - although more fair - way. There is exploitation happening, it's just self-exploitation - they are basically a bigger version of a family owned restaurant where the whole family works and shares the sacrifice as well as any profit.

Both collective workplaces and family businesses tend to fail because of the pressures of the capitalist system. They are still subject to market-based overhead and pricing and competition. When the capitalist economy crashes they still go under because of non-collective Bank owned debts and like family farms and small businesses, they fail. Capitalism tends to centralize i.e. monopolize production into fewer and fewer large firms.

Just like the merchants and early capitalists had to get rid of the peasantry as an institution in order to have full capitalist social relations take hold, workers can not have a democratically run economy while capitalist relations remain. There will have to be a re-shaping of society along democratic lines for any of this to happen and be sustainable.

[Jimmie Higgins]

What is profit?

Profit is achieved when you provide something people want.

I'm pretty sure that feudalism provided people with things they wanted to some extent, but there were no profits involved - it was direct exploitation as in you grow X ammount and I'm taking some of it because I'm the Lord. I'm pretty sure that bartering provides people with something they want and yet it is an equal exchange.

POW! ZING! AYN! BLAM! LTV! Take that Riddler!

Now riddle me this: why is it that the biggest supporters and apologists of the market know so little about its fundamental mechanisms or historical development?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Anyway, I would still like citation for such claim.Sorry for being an asshole and teasing so much. I've been up all night and am feeling zesty!

Here's a citation I found:
http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/1300.shtml


The steam engine was invented by Heron, an ancient Greek geometer and engineer from Alexandria. Heron lived during the first century AD and is sometimes called Hero. Heron made the steam engine as a toy, and called his device "aeolipile," which means "wind ball" in Greek. The steam was supplied by a sealed pot filled with water and placed over a fire. Two tubes came up from the pot, letting the steam flow into a spherical ball of metal. The metallic sphere had two curved outlet tubes, which vented steam. As the steam went through the series of tubes, the metal sphere rotated. The aeolipile is the first known device to transform steam power into rotary motion. The Greeks never used this remarkable device for anything but a novelty. A steam engine designed for real work wasn't designed until 1690, when Dionysius Papin published plans for a for a high-pressure steam engine. Thomas Savery built the first steam engine in 1698. Watt (http://www.enchantedlearning.com/inventors/indexw.shtml#Watt) later improved the steam engine.He was Greek and in Egypt but this was during the time of the Ancient Roman society.

[Maslo]

If capitalist farming production is so much more efficeinet and productive than feudal crop production (which was individualist and atomized in nature whereas capitalism tends to centralize this process and utilize a collective labor force of wage-workers) why didn't capitalist farming replace the peasantry and develop like capitalism in mills and towns? Why did many countries have to enclose the land or abolish the peasantry as an institution before capitalist farming methods took hold?


Because the peasants were actively prevented from leaving the feudal relationship with their lords, and actively prevented from taking part in capitalist mode of production, with force.

No such thing is happening now, noone forces the workers to work for private employer, they can leave at any time, and noone prevents the workers from forming their collectively owned socialist companies, they can do so at any time.

False analogy.


Because these collectives are NOT changing the relations of production. Collective production under capitalism is just capitalist production (i.e. for profit) organized in a different - although more fair - way.

Definition of socialism:
Common ownership of the means of production.

There is nothing about monetary system, profit or lack of it. Market socialism also exists, actually due to Economic Calculation Problem it is probably the only a bit viable socialist ideology.


self-exploitation

:D
I had to stop at this. Self-exploitation? Really? Thats a whole new twist in marxist theory. :D Is my right hemisphere exploiting the left one or what?

There can be no talk about exploitation without an employer, and when the worker owns means of production and the whole profit goes to the workers.
You seem to think that workers do not have their own free will or are incapable of rational decisions. If they are exploited, they should at least FEEL exploited.


Both collective workplaces and family businesses tend to fail because of the pressures of the capitalist system. They are still subject to market-based overhead and pricing and competition.

Consumer does not care what mode of production produced his new car, only that it is better or cheaper.
If their products are not worse, they should succeed. If they are worse, then the socialist system is clearly suboptimal. Its really that simple.

[Maslo]

while i agree with many tenets of technocracy, i dont believe the wise men should be the only one running the show. Many productive elements of society dont have what you could consider a higher education, that dosnt mean they cant come up with idea. everyone deserve a voice.


I had to return to this. Yes, I also believe everyone deserves a voice, but the voices should not be equal when it comes to decisions. My ideal government system is direct democracy with techno/sofocratic elements:

All citizens can propose laws and vote through the internet directly about the proposed laws submitted by other citizens (kinda like national internet forum with poll option), BUT the individual votes would not have the same weight - vote weight would depend on the individuals education, maybe test results (both general knowledge, IQ and EQ), criminal record, expertise and degree in the issue the law relates to, longterm unemployment may lower the weight, special achievements like Nobel prize may increase it etc..

Democracy 2.0 :)

This direct government system also eliminates another downside of current social capitalism democracies, and that is corruption of government representatives by the rich, since there are NO representatives. :)

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

I had to return to this. Yes, I also believe everyone deserves a voice, but the voices should not be equal when it comes to decisions. My ideal government system is direct democracy with techno/sofocratic elements:

All citizens can propose laws and vote through the internet directly about the proposed laws submitted by other citizens (kinda like national internet forum with poll option), BUT the individual votes would not have the same weight - vote weight would depend on the individuals education, maybe test results (both general knowledge, IQ and EQ), criminal record, expertise and degree in the issue the law relates to, longterm unemployment may lower the weight, special achievements like Nobel prize may increase it etc..

Democracy 2.0 :)

Who gets to decide what counts as a positive or negative weighting, and how is the magnitude of the weighting decided?

There are numerous other problems with your idea, such as IQ tests measuring the ability to complete IQ tests rather than actual intelligence, also why should long-term unemployment be a consideration?

PS: voting is a political act, not a technical one.

[CommunityBeliever]

How would you do without saving? Run the whole memory on disks (horribly slow), or have only RAM (huge costs, constant need for electricity)? Especially 20 years ago?

You are thinking about this the wrong way. It isn't a choice between RAM and Disk. There is something called Virtual memory (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Virtual_memory) which unifies these forms of data storage.

However, computers also have a word size. The word size determines how many bits your pointer can have, and therefore how large of a Virtual address space it can point to:


2^32 bytes = 4 gigabytes
2^48 bytes = 262144 gigabytes
2^64 bytes = 17,179,869,184 gigabytes
If your pointer can only go up to 4 gigabytes, that is a big problem on modern computers, since most of them use much more memory. To solve this problem separate address spaces are used in RAM, which means that you need a file system and distinct file formats to save data onto disk.

A computer that has a 64-bit processor has a huge address space that can deal with all modern tasks, so it doesn't ever need separate address spaces or separate file formats. This means the computer can automatically save any data in RAM to disk for you as part of the Virtual memory, so you never have to deal with saving ever, even when you are programming.

http://sombrero.engineering.asu.edu/sombrero.htm

Modern computer hardware has matured sufficiently that it can now provide a unique address for every datum that it must store. Modern computer operating systems are lagging behind this opportunity. OS designs remain ram-centric requiring all information to be translated into and out of a temporary volatile store which is inadequate to contain all of the data at once. This limitation forces the use of alternate name spaces such as file systems, and multiple virtual address spaces. The main limitation which forces this use of alternate name spaces is the lack of address space. In the past few years the advances in silicon fabrication technology and VLSI design techniques have led to the manufacture of microprocessors with 64-bit internal data paths, registers and arithmetic units. These modern processors can support a 64-bit virtual address space.


Well, call me when socialists develop something better.

We already created the Lisp machines. Single address space auto-saving is just the start of what they can do. It also didn't have to deal with the compile/pray/debug cycle. In fact eval (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eval) is a Lisp invention. The Lisp machines also had no distinction between code and data, so you could have code that writes code, which is a first step towards a computer that can program itself.

It is capitalism that has failed to develop something better then this twenty year old technology. Programming on a Lisp machine is still vastly easier then it is on modern private-capitalist created machines.

And it is not like socialists will stick to using computers that were developed twenty years ago, we can develop computer systems that are vastly better then ever before, we can even lead to what you refer to as the "technological singularity" where we will develop friendly human-level AI.

Don't expect for moderately intelligent computing architectures (like the Lisp machines) to ever come out of capitalism let alone any sort of artificial intelligence. People like Ray Kurzweil that believe capitalism will lead to AI in ~30 years are total idiots.


Social (welfare) capitalism neatly solves the wage slavery problem present in pure capitalism - with good welfare system the dichotomy between having to work or any wage or dying of lack of basic necessities vanishes.Who is the ruling class in this hypothetical society? Is it still going to be the capitalists? If so, there is no reason to expect they won't do what is their own interests, which is what they are already doing. If the ruling class is the workers, there is likewise no reason to expect that they won't build socialism. So I fail to see how this sort of society will ever work.


Because, as I have said, communism (or socialism, communism is impossible to work without free energy, strong AI robots and matter replicators) is equality of results, not only chances - thus it greatly diminishes incentive and motivation to work and innovate.As I have already mentioned, that is false. It is actually the state that has created most of the innovations of the 20th century, like the Lisp machines, spacecraft, nuclear technology, etc. They all came from the state, not from private capitalists.

Capitalism doesn't increase the will to innovate, which is why we are stuck with poorly-designed computer systems and a lack of technological progress.

We are in a turbulent transitional period from a type-0 society, that is ran on constantly depleting fossil fuels, towards a type-1 society that uses more advanced forms of energy.

This transition will entail industrialising the exosphere of the Earth and filling it with solar-powered satellites rather then bourgeoisie-hotels (http://www.revleft.com/vb/new-outer-space-t160404/index.html) as well as developing nuclear fusion (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_fusion) and other advanced energy technologies.

Capitalism has failed to confront this challenge, and it is failing to develop our technology much or at all, especially our information technology which is dominated by proprietary software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software) and numerous other capitalist-induced problems. Ultimately if humans want to develop a sustainable type-1 civilisation, with new technologies like friendly AI, they will need to turn to socialism.

[Rusty Shackleford]

I'm not denying the existence of super profits. I'm questioning your assumption that the capitalist collect up all this profit and spend it on workers welfare. You must think the Western bourgeoisie is a saintly institution!
what i was getting at was that the richer countries can afford workers benefits and stuff because it makes workers more complacent (from their point of view). From the workers perspective, it is a necessity, but it should never be enough.

Like, for example, Social Security in the US. Labor demanded it, labor got it. But, the US bourgeoisie had two options. fighting it, or making the concession. Seeing as just 20 yearsish prior, workers defeated a major world power and the intervening armies of the worlds leading powers, they concession route was granted. Cost-benefit. And since then, profits have only begun to soar, especially after WWII and the US establishing itself as the premier empire.

Another example. US went off the gold standard because the Soviet Union was a major producer and stockpiler of gold.

[xub3rn00dlex]

Inject humor into serious conversation here:



Well, call me when socialists develop something better.

We have invented this great thing called piracy. Sharing is caring.

Carry on with serious conversation in 3, 2, 1...

[Tommy4ever]

Because the peasants were actively prevented from leaving the feudal relationship with their lords, and actively prevented from taking part in capitalist mode of production, with force.

1). No such thing is happening now, noone forces the workers to work for private employer, they can leave at any time, and noone prevents the workers from forming their collectively owned socialist companies, they can do so at any time.

Definition of socialism:
Common ownership of the means of production.

There is nothing about monetary system, profit or lack of it. Market socialism also exists, actually due to Economic Calculation Problem it is probably the only a bit viable socialist ideology.




2) I had to stop at this. Self-exploitation? Really? Thats a whole new twist in marxist theory. :D Is my right hemisphere exploiting the left one or what?

There can be no talk about exploitation without an employer, and when the worker owns means of production and the whole profit goes to the workers.
You seem to think that workers do not have their own free will or are incapable of rational decisions. If they are exploited, they should at least FEEL exploited.



3) Consumer does not care what mode of production produced his new car, only that it is better or cheaper.
If their products are not worse, they should succeed. If they are worse, then the socialist system is clearly suboptimal. Its really that simple.

1) Here you are wrong. Whilst in feudal society the means of preventing people from moving into productive forms were formal and often decreed by law (laws tieing peasants to the land and even setting wages at stagnant levels etc), in capitalist society it is informal and accomplished through a simple thing money.

Can a worker abandon his job? Not unless he wants to be unemployed, and aside from a tiny minority no one actually wants to be unemployed. The only other situation in which someone is therefore allowed to leave their job is if there is another one available - with such a high level of unemployment in the western world you will face heavy competition for any work. But the point isn't whether someone can leave a particular job, but whether people can leave the capitalist mode of production and create a socialist mode of production.

Well no. Lets say for example that a collectively owned industry is the socialist mode of production. In the majority of cases one thing prevents people from forming a collectively owned industry. Fucking money. You need moeny to buy the capital, money to run the buisness, money to have the most up to date tech and money to compete with the larger firms who are almost certainly benefiting from massive economies of scale. not to mention having much, much, much more fucking money than a group of unemployed workers would be able to get together.

2) I didn't read what you were talking about here so I will give a brief definition of exploitation:

In any situation of wage labour, the capitalist will be exploiting the worker. As labour creates all value, in order to make a profit the capitalist will have to take a portion of the value created by the worker for himself. Therefore, the capitalist has exploited the worker by taking some of the value produced by him without offering anything in return. I think they call that stealing.


3) Consumer probably cares whether he is able to consume or not. If he cannot then the systemis probably sub-optimal.


4) I had to return to this. Yes, I also believe everyone deserves a voice, but the voices should not be equal when it comes to decisions. My ideal government system is direct democracy with techno/sofocratic elements:

All citizens can propose laws and vote through the internet directly about the proposed laws submitted by other citizens (kinda like national internet forum with poll option), BUT the individual votes would not have the same weight - vote weight would depend on the individuals education, maybe test results (both general knowledge, IQ and EQ), criminal record, expertise and degree in the issue the law relates to, longterm unemployment may lower the weight, special achievements like Nobel prize may increase it etc..

Democracy 2.0 :)

This direct government system also eliminates another downside of current social capitalism democracies, and that is corruption of government representatives by the rich, since there are NO representatives. :)

Fuck man. Just .... fuck. What always amazes me is that people who do not even consider themselves particularily right wing are so into ideas like this. A rigid, arbitrary caste system similar to Plato's Republic or Feudalism in its general idea - 'the best shall rule'. But trying to sound 'modern' and 'fair' by saying ''the smart people can rule!'' durrrrrrrr.

This comes from your basic idea that you are smarter than the ignorant masses - in other words you're an arogant twat. Hate to say this because I don't know you, but the people who propose systems like this are always just arogant dicks who see themselves as somehow better and smarter than the majority of people. I know because there was a time in my life when I thought these sorts of ideas were pretty neat, and I have known and continue to meet people who also share this idea of the intellectual caste system. At the end of the day these people are all the same.

Who decided who is the smartest? Why should general knowledge be in the test? Is there any test that accurately measures intelligence? How can you be sure that methods will not be used to rig the test so people who are already empowered stay empowered? What makes you think this system will be more effective? Was there not already an experiment in technocracy - the post war Soviet Union? Did that experiment not go rather badly? Why is unemployed included as part of your measurement? When the vast majority of unemployed are so not out of choice but due to a lack of work, how in any way is this fair? Are awards like Nobel Prizes not a rather subjective category? Like how is a biologist more capable of deciding how much money should be invested in infrastructure than a worker who commutes every day to work and therefore has an idea of the quality of his local road network?

This idea is essentially the mental masturbation of the middle class - people who do not have the wealth to have any influence in their society but look down upon the poor due to a false sense of superiority. Its the same motivation that turned the middle classes of Italy, Germany, Poland etc towards Fascism in the 20s and 30s and its the same motivation that leads many of them towards ultra-libertarian views today (the idea that in a really free market things would be fair for the capable).

You are not smarter than working class people, neither are you naturally more gifted. You are not better than the 'ignorant masses' and have no greater right to political power.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Because the peasants were actively prevented from leaving the feudal relationship with their lords, and actively prevented from taking part in capitalist mode of production, with force.

No such thing is happening now, noone forces the workers to work for private employer, they can leave at any time, and noone prevents the workers from forming their collectively owned socialist companies, they can do so at any time.

False analogy.



Back then, the bourgeoisie was the middle class. Under the arisocracy, above the serfs. no edict could stop it from its accumulation of wealth and capital. the bourgeoisie, and bourgeois society was growing. Remember the Medici? Hanseatic League? Guild leaders?

Preventing them from leaving the land? What about land enclosures that forced the peasantry into the cities to be exploited by the new bourgeoisie and guild masters?

Peasants were forced to become proletarians. Proletarians are forced to remain proletarians. Dont like your job? enjoy possible homelessness. dont like your job? join the army and die for the rich. dont like your job? have a heart attack in your late 30s because you didnt leave. oh the choices! the freedom!



If they are exploited, they should at least FEEL exploited.
If you are being fooled, tricked, lied to, backstabbed, and led astray, you should be smart enough to know it.

Your parents tell you santa clause is coming to town. you think santa clause is actually giving you the presents you open the next morning. since you dont think you are being lied to, then from a 3rd point of view, you arent being lied to then, right?


if you dont feel like you are being lied to then its obvious a lie has not occurred, right?





Consumer does not care what mode of production produced his new car, only that it is better or cheaper.
If their products are not worse, they should succeed. If they are worse, then the socialist system is clearly suboptimal. Its really that simple.a "consumer" is a worker who is out shopping. say a worker goes to buy something that is close to the field they work in? dont you think they think about the chain of events that take place to make that happen? even on occasion?

[CommunityBeliever]

We have invented this great thing called piracy. Sharing is caring.That is actually a very good point. I would say that capitalism already lived up to its productive potential and it started to collapse during the Great Depression. To get out of the depression there was state-capitalism, fascism/Nazism, and socialism.

Then when the Soviet Union collapsed it wasn't really replaced by capitalism, it was replaced by criminality. The criminals, thugs, mobsters started their own black market. This is also happening in the U.S, there has been more and more crime, more black markets, and more "piracy."

Capitalism is gone. Now we have criminality and "piracy". Bring back socialism if you want to bring back productivity.

[Dumb]

Regarding technocracy/sofocracy...anybody here ever read Lies My Teacher Told Me? In one chapter, the author points out research showing that increased education correlated with increased support for the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. Subsequent research also shows that higher education is associated with increased support for "fiscal conservatism" - right-wing, conservative economics, or "social capitalism" minus the "social."

Education, let alone quality education, is disproportionately available to the wealthy - and under a capitalist society, education will unfailingly support that current status quo. Therefore, rule by technocrats and sofocrats will always favor the wealthy and the status quo.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Regarding technocracy/sofocracy...anybody here ever read Lies My Teacher Told Me? In one chapter, the author points out research showing that increased education correlated with increased support for the war in Vietnam in the 1960s. Subsequent research also shows that higher education is associated with increased support for "fiscal conservatism" - right-wing, conservative economics, or "social capitalism" minus the "social."

Being "educated" (especially at some toff establishment) is not the same thing as having scientific literacy.


Education, let alone quality education, is disproportionately available to the wealthy - and under a capitalist society, education will unfailingly support that current status quo. Therefore, rule by technocrats and sofocrats will always favor the wealthy and the status quo.

Isn't this backwards? Surely if quality education is only available to the wealthy, then the opinions of educated people will reflect that?

[StarCityPartisan]

I only care to make two comments: majority of the IT advancements were made because of "defense contracts" at the urging of the Ruling Class in the western world. When the technology was tested in the civilian market, there was always a new war started. Read To Kill a Nation about the balkan war of the early 90's. It was done for two reasons, because the region was proving socialism mght actually prevail as a superior economic system AND because NATO need to test new missile guidance systems. (FYI that war was started because The U.S. funded Al Alqaeda (Bosnian), The Ustashe (Croatian branch of the Nazi Party that was responsible for second most successful attempt at genocide since Hitler, and the Serbian Nationalists that committed great atrocities) Finally my second point... are you suggesting that under your "perfect system" people have three choices in life? Wage Slavery (because after all you say its a voluntary option), Welfare, or Robotic Mechanic? Without a genuine sense of purpose I assure you suicide rates and drug/alcohol abuse will be rampant. Given either of these comments (I could have went on for days) does your system have any morality to it? After all people generally adhere to an ideology for the greatest social benefit. Aaahhh! This must be your benevolence.

[Skooma Addict]

Well, social capitalism has you call it is bound to fail beccause capitalist will always try eventually to wreck it for short time gain and increased worker submission.

has long has the exploitative element remain, shit will happen beccause those with this great power who are unaccounted for will use it for their own gain.

Communism is the economic version of democracy, and while democracy in itself isnt perfect, its always better than dictatorship.

There is no middle ground with the concept of dictatorship, you either want it or you dont.

Who is supporting a dictatorship?

[Tommy4ever]

Who is supporting a dictatorship?

He was calling capitalism economic dictatorship.

[DinodudeEpic]

He was calling capitalism economic dictatorship.

Actually, that would be more like the Soviet Union's economy. Capitalism is economic meritocratic oligarchy. Plutocracy. Which is better then economic dictatorship and economic aristocracy, but is not as good as economic democracy.

[Revolution starts with U]

Riddle me this...

If collectively owned companies are really better than privately owned when it comes to technical advancement and fulfilling consumer wishes, why havent they defeated capitalist companies in an open market?

If its really true that collective ownership is equally vital in innovation and enterpreneurship, why havent any collectively owned companies even appear? Its not like someone forbids workers from peacefully leaving their employers and forming their own collectively owned companies now, or someone forbids collectivist enterpreneurs. If collectively owned companies are viable, and really better than private companies, then there should be no need for revolution!

In other words, if socialist mode of company ownership is really viable, possible to appear without stealing ideas and means of production from capitalists, and BETTER, why havent it appeared at least once, and defeated all capitalist companies in competition, or at least established itself as widespread alternative?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
You don't really know what you're talking about. Cooperatives exist, and thrive. And are generally better able to protect themselves from market crash than normal private companies.
But, they make more income for all, rather than more profit for a privelaged few. That makes it "hard" for them to get investment from the ruling class. Why would I invest in a socially beneficial low profit company, when I can invest in individually beneficial high profit company?


I had to return to this. Yes, I also believe everyone deserves a voice, but the voices should not be equal when it comes to decisions. My ideal government system is direct democracy with techno/sofocratic elements:

All citizens can propose laws and vote through the internet directly about the proposed laws submitted by other citizens (kinda like national internet forum with poll option), BUT the individual votes would not have the same weight - vote weight would depend on the individuals education, maybe test results (both general knowledge, IQ and EQ), criminal record, expertise and degree in the issue the law relates to, longterm unemployment may lower the weight, special achievements like Nobel prize may increase it etc..

Democracy 2.0 :)

This direct government system also eliminates another downside of current social capitalism democracies, and that is corruption of government representatives by the rich, since there are NO representatives. :)

Dude.. wtf?! That's democracy .5 at best. Do you even realize you just said "we will disenfranchise most of the population, but that will be even more democratic."
Sounds more like Fascism 2.0


Who is supporting a dictatorship?
You, when you support private ownership of economic decision making.

[Revolution starts with U]

Actually, that would be more like the Soviet Union's economy. Capitalism is economic meritocratic oligarchy. Plutocracy. Which is better then economic dictatorship and economic aristocracy, but is not as good as economic democracy.

But that would only be true of the corporation. The self-propreitorship (Like Mars candy) is still the economic equivalent of monarchy.

[danyboy27]

I had to return to this. Yes, I also believe everyone deserves a voice, but the voices should not be equal when it comes to decisions. My ideal government system is direct democracy with techno/sofocratic elements:

direct democracy implies that everyone have an equal voice on a certain issue. if you implement a system where a bunch of intellectual elite can just shurg it off when they feel like it, its no longer a democracy, its just another form of dictatorship with a nice facade.



All citizens can propose laws and vote through the internet directly about the proposed laws submitted by other citizens (kinda like national internet forum with poll option), BUT the individual votes would not have the same weight - vote weight would depend on the individuals education, maybe test results (both general knowledge, IQ and EQ), criminal record, expertise and degree in the issue the law relates to, longterm unemployment may lower the weight, special achievements like Nobel prize may increase it etc..

i dont see why criminals or people scoring lower on a bullshit IQ test should have a lesser right to have a say on how their daily lives are run. Exclusive systems of this kind where organized on the past and where ultimately abandonned beccause of its inability to provide a sufficient degree of representation to the people to calm down the continuous revolt and riots.
Remember when in europe and the U.S when you had to own land to vote?
After a shitload or rebelions, riot and wars, they had no choices but to just fucking do away with this.




Democracy 2.0 :)



This direct government system also eliminates another downside of current social capitalism democracies, and that is corruption of government representatives by the rich, since there are NO representatives. :)

yea, the only one running the countries would be those elite scientists and lawyers, the lucky ones coming from a priviledgied class of rich folks.
its so much better.

[StockholmSyndrome]

Let me break it down.
Most of the First World: Social Capitalism
Most of the Third World: Predatory Individualist Capitalism

Haven't you ever had the wild idea that maybe social capitalism can only exist because of the horrible exploitation of the third world through a more predatory capitalism? That the first world is locked in an economic relationship with the third world? And that through that relationship it can provide welfare to its workers while starving the grand majority of workers. Oh and another thing, most of the time welfare still leaves you in the shit, say all you want about the Soviet Union but everyone had a job, everyone had a purpose, and everyone earned the fruits of their labor.

I think it is kind of anti-working class to look at Western reformism as a product of imperialist profits. It is a theory that pits proletarians of different nations against each other and plays into the imperialist game. It is contrary to a Marxist class line based on internationalism. All nations are players in the imperial arena.

[danyboy27]

Who is supporting a dictatorship?


anyone who is willing to keep the economical system the way it is right now support in some way a form of dictatorship, economic dictatorship that is.

Sorry for being anti-dictatorship, i guess its beccause i am a vile extremist if i believe in freedom and democracy.

and please dont bring me that crap about how i can quit a buisness and work for a coop, beccause that wont change a damn thing about the impact and inflience the economical system have on my environnement.

Its like Hotel California, you can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.

[eric922]

What is profit?

Profit is achieved when you provide something people want. Why should we spend lots of resources (yes, money represents resources) on something only few people want (unprofitable venture)?
And money in social capitalism is still spent on many things which are not profitable, at least not in the short term, so this again does not apply to social capitalism.

As for your slaves example, yes, it would be foolish for romans to use engines when they have lots of cheap slaves, assuming the engines delivered inferior performance.
Anyway, I would still like citation for such claim.
It was actually the Greeks, not the Romans, but it is called the Hero Engine: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hero_engine

[Tatarin]

Profit motive incentive (desire for more wealth) + passion for the work = incentives to work and innovate in capitalism

passion for the work = incentive to work and innovate in communism

2 is more than 1.


Let us say that technological development in communism will be slower, is that so much of a problem? Is it better to be forced to work, or work at a pace where work will do both good and create a stable society?

Besides, take a look at Scandinavia. Sure, it hasn't ever been a perfect social capitalist region, but neither does it seem many people support it today. In Finland, the "True Finns" have become the third biggest party. Sweden is selling out state-companies to private owners, cutting social benefits and job security. In Denmark, as in Finland, the ruling parties have been led by the Danish People's Party. Who are these people? The very same people who were born in social democratic Finland, Sweden and Denmark. Norway have "survived" longer, yes, because they have had their oil resources.

In any case we can see capitalism getting more and more space, pushing out the "social" in social capitalism. On numerous occasions, all of these "social" countries have always chosen the west over the east in the cold war. They were only "third way" on paper, not in reality.

In the end, either social has to win, or capitalism.


As for empirical evidence, just compare shitty soviet products after 40 years of profit motivation absence with western products of the era...

You mean 40 years of holding the line against capitalism, plus helping other countries and groups such as the ANC against racist South Africa? 40 years of schooling for all, food for all, housing for all, medicine when needed? 40 years of low-crime societies where people actually looked and talked with each other? 40 years of practically racism-free societies?

And you are also forgetting that the Soviet Union came after just right after centuries of feudalism, made it through a civil war, stood up, pushed back and made Hitler shoot a bullet through his head. The USSR is probably the only country that has managed to go from the world's greatest cemetary to the world's second superpower in less than 40 years.

Now, I'm not saying the USSR is the picture perfect vision of communism, nor was it the absolutely best society ever built. But if you actually take the achievements of the Soviets during all their existence, it is a pretty big step from nothing.



Anyway, how do you explain this:
"SpaceX plans to get humans on Mars"


What one or the other corporation plans is completely irrelevant until it actually happens. I don't deny that they can get people to Mars, but before they can do anything they will have to create demand, which is quite difficult when we're talking about spending 6 months in space to go and stay on Mars for a year and watch red rocks.



Publicly owned non-profit NASA failed to get us out of LEO in 40 years, after billions spent.


Then again you have to look closer. While NASA is paid by tax money, it isn't controlled by the taxpayers. People can't vote for NASA's next project. People can't even decide not to pay for NASA, the government does, a government consisting of those "wise men" of two parties.

On the bright side, no corporation has yet put a man on the moon, which NASA did in response to, yes, the USSR's place in history as the first country to put a man in space.


For-profit private enterprise SpaceX is planning to go to Mars by 2020, and already has superior technology.

Superior technology based on NASA? You are also forgetting that no private enterprise ever wanted anything to do with space before NASA, and it is only now, 50 years after NASA's creation, they come out and want to put millionaires in space. That's because they see a vision of profit, not development or the betterment of humanity.

[Revolution starts with U]

Also, "what is profit? Profit is supplying people with wants" is by far the WORST definition of profit I have ever seen in my life.
And am I the only one who noticed this guy said "yes, we should use slaves if they are inferior to technology?" C'mon man, you're basically a supporter of some kind of weird crypto/neo democratic fascism. Just face it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Because the peasants were actively prevented from leaving the feudal relationship with their lords, and actively prevented from taking part in capitalist mode of production, with force.No, there were merchants and capitalists under feudalism, they had some restrictions on them because of the caste system but more importantly they were just hampered by feudal land-control and the lack of a large labor force because most of labor was geared towards induvidual peasant farming production.


No such thing is happening now, noone forces the workers to work for private employer, they can leave at any time, and noone prevents the workers from forming their collectively owned socialist companies, they can do so at any time.

False analogy.I said nothing about forcing people to do anything, this is irrelevant to what I am talking about. The peasantry wasn't a fetter on the growth of capitalist social relations because the peasants themselves were tied to the land - like I said - there were already people engaged in capitalistic production and activities, it was just small scale until this "middle class" - the bourgeois - could have a large workforce to draw from and weaken some of the feudal order.

And there are laws in place to protect capitalist relations - copyright laws, laws on corporations even to ensure that must do everything they can to return a profit. Laws against vagrancy and squatting The loan conditions and structural adjustment programs by the World Bank and other institutions force indebted nations to privatize their resources in return for loans that if they don't agree to it they will end up isolated and unable to secure trade deals or loans.

The capitalists use their hegemony on society to maintain their social relations just as every other ruling class has done. They will even invade and overthrow countries that attempt a variation of capitalism sometimes. They would certainty try and immediately strangle and kill any region that had an actual worker's revolution. Look at the history of the Paris Commune or the early part of the Russian Revolution.


I had to stop at this. Self-exploitation? Really? Thats a whole new twist in marxist theory. :D Is my right hemisphere exploiting the left one or what?Exploitation does not mean "taking advantage of" - if you own your own business and work there, then you may decide to work longer hours when needed to, you may pay your teenage children who work for you little or nothing since you all eat the same food and pay the same bills. This saves labor costs and helps give your business an edge.


Consumer does not care what mode of production produced his new car, only that it is better or cheaper. If their products are not worse, they should succeed. If they are worse, then the socialist system is clearly suboptimal. Its really that simple.Capitalists modes of production were much more productive than feudal - so why did England have capitalist relations while France or Spain, much more powerful regions, have feudal relations for maybe 150 years to 200 years after capitalism developed in England? Ruling classes do not just throw away the basis of their power and order of society. In they are a feudal monarch, they may take the capitalist money and tax them - they may even begin to depend on the wealth generated through capitalist enterprises, but they will not give up the feudal order and caste system. This is why capitalism went from "middle class" to ruling class through a series of religious revolutions (England, parts of Northern Europe) then national revolutions (France) and then through a sort of state-initiated capitalism (Germany, Japan).

[RGacky3]

Learned a lot about cooperative buisinesses in this thread.

[Maslo]

Having memory management completely separated and agnostic from underlying memory storage mechanism in an environment where memory storages are vastly different - some memory is fast (RAM chips) and some slow (disk), and more importantly, some memory is permanent and some volatile doesnt seem like a good idea at all..

As for word size, I fail to see how it is a fail. 32bit was enough for computers before 2000, when it ceased to be enough, 64bit was promptly developed. Where is the problem?


We already created the Lisp machines.

FAIL:

"Lisp was invented by John McCarthy in 1958 while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)."

"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

Lisp was created by capitalism.


Don't expect for moderately intelligent computing architectures (like the Lisp machines) to ever come out of capitalism let alone any sort of artificial intelligence. People like Ray Kurzweil that believe capitalism will lead to AI in ~30 years are total idiots.

People who think anything besides replicating the human brain neural network will lead to true AI are total idiots. Strong AI will not come about from programming from scratch. It will come from mapping and reverse engineering (eventually evolving) the human brain neural network (connectome) and implementing it in silico. And if Moores Law continues to hold, in 30 years we will have the computing power to simulate brain sized NNets. Kurzweil may be very optimistic, but he has the right idea, thats the sure way to go.


As I have already mentioned, that is false. It is actually the state that has created most of the innovations of the 20th century, like the Lisp machines, spacecraft, nuclear technology, etc.

Nope. Majority of science and research funding (around 70%) comes from private sources.
And government can step in in cases when the profit is too uncertain or far in the future to interest private capital, so that may be a point against pure capitalism, but not against social capitalism I speak of. Government is good at funding initial bootstraping of new inventions, but not at maturing and perfecting the technologies which comes after that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science
"In the OECD, around two-thirds of research and development in scientific and technical fields is carried out by industry, and 20% and 10% respectively by universities and government, although in poorer countries such as Portugal and Mexico the industry contribution is significantly less.[1]"


Who is the ruling class in this hypothetical society? Is it still going to be the capitalists? If so, there is no reason to expect they won't do what is their own interests, which is what they are already doing. If the ruling class is the workers, there is likewise no reason to expect that they won't build socialism. So I fail to see how this sort of society will ever work.

The ruling class will be the PEOPLE, more specifically wise and educated people (its direct democracy with technocracy/sofocracy elements), regardless of whether they are employers or employees or self-employed or any other possible means of making a living.


This transition will entail industrialising the exosphere of the Earth and filling it with solar-powered satellites rather then bourgeoisie-hotels as well as developing nuclear fusion and other advanced energy technologies.

IV.th generation nuclear power (liquid fluoride thorium reactors, integral fast reactors) is superior to solar-power satelittes IMHO. The only remotely efficient solar power proposal is Stratosolar CSP. Fusion is still far in the future, does not scale well, and with nuclear breeders which can provide humanity with plenty of energy for millions of years it may not be needed at all.

[Maslo]

1) Here you are wrong. Whilst in feudal society the means of preventing people from moving into productive forms were formal and often decreed by law (laws tieing peasants to the land and even setting wages at stagnant levels etc), in capitalist society it is informal and accomplished through a simple thing money.

Can a worker abandon his job? Not unless he wants to be unemployed, and aside from a tiny minority no one actually wants to be unemployed. The only other situation in which someone is therefore allowed to leave their job is if there is another one available - with such a high level of unemployment in the western world you will face heavy competition for any work. But the point isn't whether someone can leave a particular job, but whether people can leave the capitalist mode of production and create a socialist mode of production.

Well no. Lets say for example that a collectively owned industry is the socialist mode of production. In the majority of cases one thing prevents people from forming a collectively owned industry. Fucking money. You need moeny to buy the capital, money to run the buisness, money to have the most up to date tech and money to compete with the larger firms who are almost certainly benefiting from massive economies of scale. not to mention having much, much, much more fucking money than a group of unemployed workers would be able to get together.

2) I didn't read what you were talking about here so I will give a brief definition of exploitation:

In any situation of wage labour, the capitalist will be exploiting the worker. As labour creates all value, in order to make a profit the capitalist will have to take a portion of the value created by the worker for himself. Therefore, the capitalist has exploited the worker by taking some of the value produced by him without offering anything in return. I think they call that stealing.


3) Consumer probably cares whether he is able to consume or not. If he cannot then the systemis probably sub-optimal.



Fuck man. Just .... fuck. What always amazes me is that people who do not even consider themselves particularily right wing are so into ideas like this. A rigid, arbitrary caste system similar to Plato's Republic or Feudalism in its general idea - 'the best shall rule'. But trying to sound 'modern' and 'fair' by saying ''the smart people can rule!'' durrrrrrrr.

This comes from your basic idea that you are smarter than the ignorant masses - in other words you're an arogant twat. Hate to say this because I don't know you, but the people who propose systems like this are always just arogant dicks who see themselves as somehow better and smarter than the majority of people. I know because there was a time in my life when I thought these sorts of ideas were pretty neat, and I have known and continue to meet people who also share this idea of the intellectual caste system. At the end of the day these people are all the same.

Who decided who is the smartest? Why should general knowledge be in the test? Is there any test that accurately measures intelligence? How can you be sure that methods will not be used to rig the test so people who are already empowered stay empowered? What makes you think this system will be more effective? Was there not already an experiment in technocracy - the post war Soviet Union? Did that experiment not go rather badly? Why is unemployed included as part of your measurement? When the vast majority of unemployed are so not out of choice but due to a lack of work, how in any way is this fair? Are awards like Nobel Prizes not a rather subjective category? Like how is a biologist more capable of deciding how much money should be invested in infrastructure than a worker who commutes every day to work and therefore has an idea of the quality of his local road network?

This idea is essentially the mental masturbation of the middle class - people who do not have the wealth to have any influence in their society but look down upon the poor due to a false sense of superiority. Its the same motivation that turned the middle classes of Italy, Germany, Poland etc towards Fascism in the 20s and 30s and its the same motivation that leads many of them towards ultra-libertarian views today (the idea that in a really free market things would be fair for the capable).

You are not smarter than working class people, neither are you naturally more gifted. You are not better than the 'ignorant masses' and have no greater right to political power.

1. here you are wrong, empirical data simply does not support such conclusion:
http://www.consumerismcommentary.com/most-wealthy-individuals-earned-not-inherited-their-wealth/

If private individuals can do it, why not collectives of individuals?

Empirical data shows that new ideas and means of production are born in private hands (otherwise there would be no need for socialist revolution), so if you remove private hands, much less new means of production will be created, which will lead to economic downfall.


much more fucking money than a group of unemployed workers would be able to get together.

If single individuals can do it, why not collectives of workers, which I assume would have far more money together?


In any situation of wage labour, the capitalist will be exploiting the worker.

He said that in market socialism, where there is no capitalist, but there is still money, workers are "exploiting themselves". That is clearly false even by marxist theory standards, not to mention illogical.


Consumer probably cares whether he is able to consume or not. If he cannot then the systemis probably sub-optimal.

If the consumer cant consume more after he produced more value, system is suboptimal and not fair.


Fuck man. Just .... fuck. What always amazes me is that people who do not even consider themselves particularily right wing are so into ideas like this.

I dont care of ideologies and brackets, if the idea is good I will support it no matter who came with it.


What makes you think this system will be more effective?

Because ability to decide what is best for the society is that, an ability. We are not born with it, we learn it. So system with some sofocratic elements will on average make better decisions than purely democratic system.

If anything, I would keep education and knowledge in the relevant field as the criterion for increased vote weight. Why not?


Was there not already an experiment in technocracy - the post war Soviet Union?

Nope, that was EXACTLY the opposite of sofo/technocracy - uneducated people with worker or farmer background were preffered in the communist government, and intelligentsia was deemed bourgeoise and repressed, even killed.
And it was not a direct for of government, there were representatives prone to corruption.

[RGacky3]

FAIL:

"Lisp was invented by John McCarthy in 1958 while he was at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)."

"The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private research university located in Cambridge, Massachusetts."

Lisp was created by capitalism.


MIT is a non-profit university, with a huge government backing, thats not capitalism.


Nope. Majority of science and research funding (around 70%) comes from private sources.
And government can step in in cases when the profit is too uncertain or far in the future to interest private capital, so that may be a point against pure capitalism, but not against social capitalism I speak of. Government is good at funding initial bootstraping of new inventions, but not at maturing and perfecting the technologies which comes after that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Funding_of_science)
"In the OECD, around two-thirds of research and development in scientific and technical fields is carried out by industry, and 20% and 10% respectively by universities and government, although in poorer countries such as Portugal and Mexico the industry contribution is significantly less.[1]"


The R&D of industry is much much differnet from the R&D of government, for example, capitalism creates a new Ipod, the government invents the internet.


The ruling class will be the PEOPLE, more specifically wise and educated people (its direct democracy with technocracy/sofocracy elements), regardless of whether they are employers or employees or self-employed or any other possible means of making a living.


The people who contorl the means of production are the ruling class ... why? Because no matter who has political power its always subservient to economic power.

[Maslo]

What you said about the peasants confirms my point. They were prevented with force to leave the feudal relationship. This is not the case now.


Dont like your job? enjoy possible homelessness. dont like your job? join the army and die for the rich. dont like your job? have a heart attack in your late 30s because you didnt leave. oh the choices! the freedom!

I am speaking about social capitalism with basic income (NIT) welfare system and universal healthcare and free education up to university level.

None of which you say is applicable to it. Your points are valid only against laissez-faire capitalism.


a "consumer" is a worker who is out shopping. say a worker goes to buy something that is close to the field they work in? dont you think they think about the chain of events that take place to make that happen? even on occasion?

I am talking about majority of consumers, they wont decide based on mode of production, but based on quality/price ratio. And thats how it should be, let the best mode of production prevail. If you are afraid of the competition, something is fishy. Dont blame the failure of market socialist mode of production on the capitalist boogeyman.

[Maslo]

Education, let alone quality education, is disproportionately available to the wealthy - and under a capitalist society, education will unfailingly support that current status quo. Therefore, rule by technocrats and sofocrats will always favor the wealthy and the status quo.

This is not the case with welfare state and free education up to the university level I speak of.

Stop using arguments applicable against laissez-faire capitalism when it comes to social capitalism.

[Maslo]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondragon_Corporation
You don't really know what you're talking about. Cooperatives exist, and thrive. And are generally better able to protect themselves from market crash than normal private companies.
But, they make more income for all, rather than more profit for a privelaged few. That makes it "hard" for them to get investment from the ruling class. Why would I invest in a socially beneficial low profit company, when I can invest in individually beneficial high profit company?

Now this is what I am talking about. If cooperatives appear, they are allowed to exist. There goes your argument against capitalists actively preventing collectivist competition out of the window.

And your second point illustrates why cooperativas are inferior to private companies, and the same thing would happen in socialism. People would not invest into collectivist companies, because there will be little profit for them, and people are motivated by profit motive. Thus cooperativas would be inferior when it comes to innovation to capitalist mode of production.

[Maslo]

Also, "what is profit? Profit is supplying people with wants" is by far the WORST definition of profit I have ever seen in my life.
And am I the only one who noticed this guy said "yes, we should use slaves if they are inferior to technology?" C'mon man, you're basically a supporter of some kind of weird crypto/neo democratic fascism. Just face it.

So define profit better. How do you make profit with unwanted product? How can you say noone wants your product, if you jsut sold it with profit?

I didnt say we should use slaves now, because I dont consider slavery moral, and now its also uneconomical.
I have said it was more economical to use slaves for the ancient romans than using their inferior steam "engines". Just like it was more economical to use human labor than the first few electrical motors invented. But they got better over time.

[Revolution starts with U]

Cooperatives are still capitalist models, that operate in the capitalist system.
People invest in coops. The problem is getting the ruling class to invest in them.
Profit is having a positive net income; gross income minus expenses.
You would agree that were slavery to become more economical again, it would be in societies best interest to reinstitute it?

[Maslo]

MIT is a non-profit university, with a huge government backing, thats not capitalism.

MIT is a privately owned university with government backing. And yes, its not capitalism, its social capitalism. I advocate socialism/capitalism hybrid, exactly the system which came up with this invention, not laissez-faire capitalism. Stop thinking in brackets and false dichotomies :)


The R&D of industry is much much differnet from the R&D of government, for example, capitalism creates a new Ipod, the government invents the internet.

So? Govermnent is better in initial bootstraping of new technology fields, private R&D is better in maturing the technologies and putting them into practical use. Both are needed, thats why combined public-private system is the best.


The people who contorl the means of production are the ruling class ... why? Because no matter who has political power its always subservient to economic power.

If most people in direct democracy agree to raise taxes of big corporations to 90%, it will happen. Economic power is subservient to political power, especially in the system which is direct, so there is no representative to corrupt for the economic powers, unlike now.

[Maslo]

Cooperatives are still capitalist models, that operate in the capitalist system.
People invest in coops. The problem is getting the ruling class to invest in them.
Profit is having a positive net income; gross income minus expenses.


Definition of socialism:
Common ownership of the means of production.

No, cooperativas are socialist companies. Yes, they currently operate in a free market system which also includes capitalist competition, but thats where they should prove themselves - if they are better than capitalist mode of production, they would thrive. If they are worse, socialism is suboptimal as an economic system.

I say let them compete and let the better survive. If socialism fails in competition with capitalist mode of production, it means it is suboptimal.


You would agree that were slavery to become more economical again, it would be in societies best interest to reinstitute it?

No, but from moral, not economic reasons.

[Revolution starts with U]

Definition of a cooperative; a private business owned by its workers/members. It may be socialist-ic compared to a self-proprietorship or corporation, but it is still a private entity. And they are competing quite well on the market, and have only gotten more prolific over time.

Just as a side note; were you proved to be of sub-optimal intelligence (crazy I know, but just indulge my hypothetical) and had a far less weighted vote... would you still support this system? Dont answer, because I know you won't be honest in a public forum. Just sit and home and think about it.

[StoneFrog]

Wait did he just come here and TELL US what socialism is?

[Maslo]

Definition of a cooperative; a private business owned by its workers/members. It may be socialist-ic compared to a self-proprietorship or corporation, but it is still a private entity. And they are competing quite well on the market, and have only gotten more prolific over time.

What is more socialist than company equally owned by its workers?

I am glad they are competing well, and I personaly think capitalism will over time evolve more socialistic ownership relations (workers owning shares of their companies, companies owned by thousands of shareholders..), but I dont agree with violent revolution. If its really better, it will come about naturally, assuming the state will protect individual freedoms and rights of both collectivists and capitalists.


Just as a side note; were you proved to be of sub-optimal intelligence (crazy I know, but just indulge my hypothetical) and had a far less weighted vote... would you still support this system? Dont answer, because I know you won't be honest in a public forum. Just sit and home and think about it.

Yes, I have no problem with delegating decisions on more knowledgeable individuals if I think they can make better decision about the matter at hand than myself. I dont think I know everything.
I would agree that for example university economics professor should have greater deciding power about economic matters than me, even now, since I an not a professional economist.

[Maslo]

Wait did he just come here and TELL US what socialism is?

So tell me what is socialism according to you, in one sentence. I have used the Wikipedia definition. Is it not correct?

[RGacky3]

And yes, its not capitalism, its social capitalism.

No its not social capitalism, its a university, Capitalism by definition is for-profit, market based, and private propertied economy, a university is not the means of production.


So? Govermnent is better in initial bootstraping of new technology fields, private R&D is better in maturing the technologies and putting them into practical use. Both are needed, thats why combined public-private system is the best.


Actually Prave R&D is better at taking things the state produces for either public good or military use, and profitiing from them, using intellectual proerpty laws to monopolize them, and turn them into for profit things.

THere is no reason why public R&D would'nt do a better job.


If most people in direct democracy agree to raise taxes of big corporations to 90%, it will happen. Economic power is subservient to political power, especially in the system which is direct, so there is no representative to corrupt for the economic powers, unlike now.

And then big corporations wil lgo to China, also corporations can control the media and so on.

BTW, if your gonna have direct democracy you have to revolutionize the economy system, the plutocracy will NEVER allow anything close to direct democracy.


No, cooperativas are socialist companies. Yes, they currently operate in a free market system which also includes capitalist competition, but thats where they should prove themselves - if they are better than capitalist mode of production, they would thrive. If they are worse, socialism is suboptimal as an economic system.


Thats Bullshit, if you have a company feeding the poor, and another company producing golden dildos for rich housewives, the company feeidng hte poor will not make a profit and loose inthe market place, even though the former is socially better.

The market does'nt reward things that better society, they reward things that get the most money while spending the least, which generally means screwing poor people and serving the wealthy.

There is a reason the companies that cause hte most damage are the wealthiest.

Cooperatives do work under the communist mode of productoin btw, even though they work in a capitalist market (cooperatives are not wage labor industries, they are non-exploitative).

[Jimmie Higgins]

If anything, I would keep education and knowledge in the relevant field as the criterion for increased vote weight. Why not?Why, well first what are the criteria for "intelligence" and who decides. Many scientists agree that "intelligence" in species in general is flexibility and adaptability. I think that makes sense because intelligence is not applied objectively, it is subjectively utilized. Think about intelligence in Feudal systems where the "smarties" spent their time debating about theology and things like how many angels can fit on the head of a pin. These ideas seem silly to us because we no longer believe that God has created perfect and static harmony where every person and every animal and plant is where it is according to God's will. But in feudalism these ideas did have a use - which was to justify a society where people were put into specific castes from the cradle to the grave. Thinkers of that epoch found wild and elaborate and very detailed ways of explaining that organization of society as natural and eternal.

The same is true today where scientists look for genes to explain away social problems created by the system or was true of Social-Darwinism 100 years ago. These thinkers were intelligent and educated but only applied this within the framework of the class-nature of our society. Being educated or witty or smart does not mean you will come to the correct conclusions about anything because more importantly than abstract wit is who is applying the knowledge and for what purpose.

Many people look at the economy today and think, what how could these guys be so short sighted, how could they have made such mistakes. While there are structural problems in the economy, there were also subjective "mistakes" and decisions which shaped the manner in which the economy crashed. Was it because investors or bankers were unintelligent or unskilled? No, it's because their skills and knowledge are applied for a specific purpose. Economic bubbles are like a catch-22, investors can see them, but they have to take part in the bubble or else others will and they will be driven out of business - if Banks didn't go in for the risky schemes, then they would have stagnated while other Banks cashed in on the bonanza and then when the system failed, the stagnating banks would have been in a bad position anyway.

So intelligence applied to a flawed system is not going to overcome the inherent contradictions or flaws.

In short, class and social relations trump intelligence or skills. Any group of people are going to have slightly different levels of experience, skill, personal interests, and so on. The important thing is how they apply those abilities and to what purpose.

The idea that a bunch of "intelligent" people could run society the best (really - wow - a throwback to enlightened despotism?!) is pure idealism.

[StoneFrog]

I guess you found your own pitfall, you asses it on a short summary.
The fact that socialism is a collective ideology, creates issues when it tries to survive in a system that is designed for individualism. A market system cannot support socialism, especially with lack of equality which you seem to seek in your capitalist technocracy.

With regards to the post i made few pages back, how does this Social Capitalist system prevent corruption which is inherent to capitalism? The fact that rich can influence the ones who have been put into power is something the state cannot mend.

[Maslo]

No its not social capitalism, its a university, Capitalism by definition is for-profit, market based, and private propertied economy, a university is not the means of production.

Means of production is an arbitrary category. If university produces research and technology, it is a means of production, with knowledge and technology being its product. We are no longer in the 19th century, the definition of means of production only as factories with big smoke stacks is obviously flawed.


Actually Prave R&D is better at taking things the state produces for either public good or military use, and profitiing from them, using intellectual proerpty laws to monopolize them, and turn them into for profit things.

THere is no reason why public R&D would'nt do a better job.

There is a reason, and it is lack of profit motive.


And then big corporations wil lgo to China, also corporations can control the media and so on.

Let them go, we will insitute tariffs in addition to taxes. :)

Corporations can control the media? So what? Havent you people just said that ordinary people are intelligent? They will see through the propaganda, especially with the internet. If people are not intelligent enough to see through some media propaganda, they are not intelligent enough to make democractic decisions about the government, much less the economy.


BTW, if your gonna have direct democracy you have to revolutionize the economy system, the plutocracy will NEVER allow anything close to direct democracy.

Switzerland.


Thats Bullshit, if you have a company feeding the poor, and another company producing golden dildos for rich housewives, the company feeidng hte poor will not make a profit and loose inthe market place, even though the former is socially better.

Why should companies feed the poor, or those so poor that they are unable to feed themselves? Thats the role of government welfare and charities (the social part of the social capitalism). As long as the poor are fed, I dont care how it happened.


The market does'nt reward things that better society, they reward things that get the most money while spending the least, which generally means screwing poor people and serving the wealthy.

It means bettering the society. Is McDonalds only serving the rich? Is Tesco only allowing the rich to enter? You have a very narrow view of capitalism.

If poor are taken care of, let them sell the golden dildos.


Cooperatives do work under the communist mode of productoin btw, even though they work in a capitalist market (cooperatives are not wage labor industries, they are non-exploitative).

Yes, thats what I was trying to say.

[CommunityBeliever]

Having memory management completely separated and agnostic from underlying memory storage mechanism in an environment where memory storages are vastly different - some memory is fast (RAM chips) and some slow (disk), and more importantly, some memory is permanent and some volatile doesnt seem like a good idea at all..It is likely you already are using a computer with Virtual memory. It is a good idea.

Extending it over all of memory makes logical sense when you have a large enough word-size.


As for word size, I fail to see how it is a fail. 32bit was enough for computers before 2000, when it ceased to be enough, 64bit was promptly developed. Where is the problem?The problem is in modern operating systems which have failed to take advantage of this development.


Lisp was created by capitalism.Lisp was created by John Mccarthy, a human being.

On the other hand, the Lisp machines were created by various non-profit organisations like the MIT CS/AI laboratory, which got funding from DARPA for missile defense programs such as Reagan's "Star Wars."

So no, the Lisp machines, like most other modern technologies, were not developed by capitalists, they were developed in large part by the state and DAPRA, then around the time they lost their funding, their market collapsed. Now we have senseless computing architectures instead.


IV.th generation nuclear power (liquid fluoride thorium reactors, integral fast reactors) is superior to solar-power satelittes IMHO. The only remotely efficient solar power proposal is Stratosolar CSP. Fusion is still far in the future, does not scale well, and with nuclear breeders which can provide humanity with plenty of energy for millions of years it may not be needed at all. The capitalist ruling classes prevent the advance of science of technology and especially of nuclear fusion and plasma tools which threaten their oil capital assets, so it is no wonder that you consider nuclear fusion to be "still far in the future."

[Maslo]

I guess you found your own pitfall, you asses it on a short summary.
The fact that socialism is a collective ideology, creates issues when it tries to survive in a system that is designed for individualism. A market system cannot support socialism, especially with lack of equality which you seem to seek in your capitalist technocracy.

With regards to the post i made few pages back, how does this Social Capitalist system prevent corruption which is inherent to capitalism? The fact that rich can influence the ones who have been put into power is something the state cannot mend.

First, there are no representatives, so no corruption in the decision process. Anyone trying to influence the decision process will have to corrupt 100 000s of people who vote about it.
Second point I would like to have is transparency - everything about the state decisions, executive and spending of taxes would have to be publicly disclosed on the internet, every state contract would be there.
Third point would be harsh penalties for corruption, such as confiscating of all property of the corrupt government workers.

There may still be some corruption, but considering the absence of better alternatives (someone simply HAS to execute the decisions, thats also the case in socialism) its acceptable.


A market system cannot support socialism

So how will socialism allocate the resources? There will be no currency? Thats communism (Zeitgeist), not socialism.

[RGacky3]

There is a reason, and it is lack of profit motive.


Never been a problem for the NON-PROFIT universities and governments, and the vast amounts of other breakthroughs coming out of non-profit entities.


Let them go, we will insitute tariffs in addition to taxes. :)


Not worth shit if you don't have a domestic market.


Switzerland.


A: its not a complete direct democracy, infact much of it is representative.

B: It started in the 1800s out of the revolutions of that period, a time where capitalism was not nearly as developed as it is today.

If you want that in other countries you'll need a revolution.


Why should companies feed the poor, or those so poor that they are unable to feed themselves? Thats the role of government welfare and charities (the social part of the social capitalism). As long as the poor are fed, I dont care how it happened.


The point is that the market is not a good berometer of what companies are productive and which are not.


It means bettering the society. Is McDonalds only serving the rich? Is Tesco only allowing the rich to enter? You have a very narrow view of capitalism.

If poor are taken care of, let them sell the golden dildos.


McDonalds and Tesco, are one model of driving down wages to drive down price, and taking advantage (McDonalds) of the fact that capitalism has robbed working people of itme, to profit off their need for cheap fast food. Tesco basically works the same way as wallmart.

The point is that Markets do not reward bettering society.

BTW, what about industries of national importance? Energy, banking, and so on, you gonna leave that to for-profit private corporations?

[Maslo]

t is likely you already are using a computer with Virtual memory. It is a good idea.

Extending it over all of memory makes logical sense when you have a large enough word-size.

How can it be a good idea when undelying physical memory storage technologies are so vastly different? Regardless of word size.


The problem is in modern operating systems which have failed to take advantage of this development.

I have a 64bit operating system and majority of applications I run are 64bit. Where is the fail?


Lisp was created by John Mccarthy, a human being.

On the other hand, the Lisp machines were created by various organisations like the MIT CS/AI laboratory, which got funding from DARPA for missile defense programs such as Reagans "Star Wars."

So no, the Lisp michens, like most other modern technologies, were not developed by capitalists, they were developed by the state and DAPRA, then when they lost their funding their market collapsed.

All is possible in social capitalism, so I dont see your point. I am not arguing for laissez-faire. Government funding of science and research is a vital part of a mixed system.


The capitalist ruling classes prevent the advance of science of technology and especially of nuclear fusion and plasma tools which threaten their status, so it is no wonder that you consider nuclear fusion to be "still far in the future."

Examples?

[StoneFrog]

First, there are no representatives, so no corruption in the decision process. Anyone trying to influence the decision process will have to corrupt 100 000s of people who vote about it.
Second point I would like to have is transparency - everything about the state decisions, executive and spending of taxes would have to be publicly disclosed on the internet, every state contract would be there.
Third point would be harsh penalties for corruption, such as confiscating of all property of the corrupt government workers.

There may still be some corruption, but considering the absence of better alternatives (someone simply HAS to execute the decisions, thats also the case in socialism) its acceptable.


Aren't those 100 000s of people also going to be apart of private companies? Since i doubt your going to hire 100 000s of people for each field of expertise, i presume that only those who are qualified are to vote yet they still belong to private organizations, and will have those organizations interests and not societies interests?




So how will socialism allocate the resources? There will be no currency? Thats communism (Zeitgeist), not socialism.

I think you are creating a differentiation between socialism and communism that is not there; communism is a type of socialism. Maybe you should continue to read down that little wikipedia page you like to only read one sentence of, Marxism is a socialist theory.

In my experience most socialist to to remove the market system, implementing a type of open distribution system based on need not market value.

[CommunityBeliever]

How can it be a good idea when undelying physical memory storage technologies are so vastly different? Regardless of word size.The virtual memory combines RAM and inactive memory into a long range of contiguous addresses:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/32/Virtual_address_space_and_physical_address_space_r elationship.svg/500px-Virtual_address_space_and_physical_address_space_r elationship.svg.png

A dynamic-address-translation function is implemented to allow for this procedure to occur:


virtual memory address → physical memory addressThis has several advantages: it makes more efficient use of the hardware and it makes programming much easier by hiding low-level memory management tasks.

Extended across the entirety of memory, this leads to a SASOS, which can have a pointer which can point to any datum in the computer and thereby allow for the implementation of orthogonal persistence and the sharing of pointers across application instances.


Examples? Feel free to read my recent blog post (http://www.revleft.com/vb/blog.php?b=6357) which gives a detailed critique of world capitalism and the progress of technology.

[Maslo]

Aren't those 100 000s of people also going to be apart of private companies? Since i doubt your going to hire 100 000s of people for each field of expertise, i presume that only those who are qualified are to vote yet they still belong to private organizations, and will have those organizations interests and not societies interests?

They will be part of thousands of competing companies and different economic relations.

Interest of organisations of which 100 000s of citizens are a part = societal interest


I think you are creating a differentiation between socialism and communism that is not there; communism is a type of socialism. Maybe you should continue to read down that little wikipedia page you like to only read one sentence of, Marxism is a socialist theory.

Communism is currently unrealistic, just like Zeitgeist.

Socialism can be either market socialism (can work, but suboptimal), decentralised planning socialism (very vague proposals with many flaws, just like Zeitgeist, probbaly wouldnt work), or centralised planning (wont work due to economic calculation problem).

[RGacky3]

(very vague proposals with many flaws, just like Zeitgeist, probbaly wouldnt work)

Actually decentralised socialism ha sworked, and worked extremely efficiency, see anarchist catelonia.

Or how about mutualism, or participatory economics and so on.

Welfare Capitalism was tried and over time got stripped down.

You can't keep Capitalism.

[StoneFrog]

They will be part of thousands of competing companies and different economic relations.

Interest of organisations of which 100 000s of citizens are a part = societal interest


The whole global warming thing would cast a very great shadow over your ideal there, do you really think that oil companies and those who work within it are going to go along with global warming and limited fossil fuels? Reality has shown otherwise, capitalism is for profit not societal interests.




Communism is currently unrealistic, just like Zeitgeist.

Socialism can be either market socialism (can work, but suboptimal), decentralised planning socialism (very vague proposals with many flaws, just like Zeitgeist, probbaly wouldnt work), or centralised planning (wont work due to economic calculation problem).

Your discussion abilities astound me, nah theirs no such thing has gravity, just some gremlins that push everything down. How do i know this because gravity probably couldn't work.

[Maslo]

Actually decentralised socialism ha sworked, and worked extremely efficiency, see anarchist catelonia.

Or how about mutualism, or participatory economics and so on.

Welfare Capitalism was tried and over time got stripped down.

You can't keep Capitalism.

I dont think anarchist Catalonia can be described as successfull or efficient. Industrial production never reached pre-revolution levels, every worker wanted to have highest wage in a collective while doing as little as possible (see my earlier points about the effects of the lack of profit incentive), collectivisation created only new "capitalist" class from former workers and after initial period of true anarchy everything was centralised under "anarchist" government which was no different than other governments of the time. Not even talking about human rights abuses during the revolution. Catalonia was anarchist or truly socialist (worker controlled collectives) only on paper, reality was different.

Here is an interesting (albeit rather lenghty) critique of anarchist Spain, I suggest you read it:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.txt

[Maslo]

The whole global warming thing would cast a very great shadow over your ideal there, do you really think that oil companies and those who work within it are going to go along with global warming and limited fossil fuels? Reality has shown otherwise, capitalism is for profit not societal interests.





If people preferred alternatives to fossil fuels, alternatives would be more successfull on th market. If people preferred alternatives to fossil fuels, they can limit them through laws in social democracy.
Dont blame capitalism for the fact that majority of people are shortsighted and dont really care about GW and want their oil fueled cars. The same thing would happen in socialism with the same people.


Your discussion abilities astound me, nah theirs no such thing has gravity, just some gremlins that push everything down. How do i know this because gravity probably couldn't work.

Show me one instance when socialism worked better in practice than social capitalism.
Theoretical masturbations do not count. Purely theoretical and vague assertions (decentralised non-monetary socialism could work) can be dismissed with theoretical counters (economic calculation problem, and many other theoretical problems with proposed systems like Parecon).

[NewSocialist]

Here is an interesting (albeit rather lenghty) critique of anarchist Spain, I suggest you read it:
http://econfaculty.gmu.edu/bcaplan/spain.txt

Caplan's little hit piece on syndicalist Spain has been thoroughly refuted numerous times now http://anarchism.pageabode.com/anarcho/rightspain.html I suggest you read it (as well as the links provided therein).

By the way, nice quote by the infamous racist, reactionary piece of shit, Charles Murray. Let me guess, the extent of your "social" capitalism consists of a negative income tax to provide a little safety net for the lower class, right? The very policy promoted by the likes of Charles Murray, Milton Friedman, and co.

You're keen on emphasizing the "efficiency" of capitalism, but socialists like myself are perfectly willing to concede certain forms of socialism (e.g., market socialism, parecon, etc.) may well be somewhat less efficient than capitalism, but they're still capable of fulfilling various other desirable social goals which capitalism is fundementally incapable of acheieving. Suffice it to say, there's more to life than being able to produce a new version of the fucking iPod every year.

[RGacky3]

I dont think anarchist Catalonia can be described as successfull or efficient. Industrial production never reached pre-revolution levels, every worker wanted to have highest wage in a collective while doing as little as possible (see my earlier points about the effects of the lack of profit incentive), collectivisation created only new "capitalist" class from former workers and after initial period of true anarchy everything was centralised under "anarchist" government which was no different than other governments of the time.

Your full of shit, read actualy sholarship on anarchist Catelonia.

As far as efficiency of Capitalism, look at the Capitalist food market, is that efficient? Even with commodities, to keep markets going they need to waste so much (a car that lasts over 20 years is a problem for markets), and the waste in the financial sector.

Capitalism is grossly inefficient due to the constant need for growth.

[Maslo]

By the way, nice quote by the infamous racist, reactionary piece of shit, Charles Murray. Let me guess, the extent of your "social" capitalism consists of a negative income tax to provide a little safety net for the lower class, right? The very policy promoted by the likes of Charles Murray, Milton Friedman, and co.

Yes. And you have yet not provided any advantage full socialism would have over such social capitalism, only disadvantages (less efficiency, less incentive to innovate).


You're keen on emphasizing the "efficiency" of capitalism, but socialists like myself are perfectly willing to concede certain forms of socialism (e.g., market socialism, parecon, etc.) may well be somewhat less efficient than capitalism, but they're still capable of fulfilling various other desirable social goals which capitalism is fundementally incapable of acheieving. Suffice it to say, there's more to life than being able to produce a new version of the fucking iPod every year.

What additional social goals is social capitalism fundamentally incapable of achieving, which are possible under socialism? Abolishing poverty and inequality of chances is perfectly possible with basic income NIT welfare and public healthcare and education. What else is needed?
And not just any additional possible goals, but goals that can justify decreased incentives, efficiency and progress when compared to combined system. I am very keen technological progress, so justifying decrease in it requires a very strong arguments for me.

[RGacky3]

Yes. And you have yet not provided any advantage full socialism would have over such social capitalism, only disadvantages (less efficiency, less incentive to innovate).


u6XAPnuFjJc

The incentive argument has never held up, innovation is by no means limited to Capitalism, infact many times Capitalism holds back innovation, and there is no reason that innovatino would'nt happen under socialism, and there is no reason that society would'nt reward people that innovate under socialism.

YOur using argument based out of ignorance.


What additional social goals is social capitalism fundamentally incapable of achieving, which are possible under socialism? Abolishing poverty and inequality of chances is perfectly possible with basic income NIT welfare and public healthcare and education. What else is needed?


What else is needed is democratic control of the economy and the workplace.

THe welfare states are falling apart, Sweeden, France and so on hae been dismanteling their welfare states.


And not just any additional possible goals, but goals that can justify decreased incentives, efficiency and progress when compared to combined system. I am very keen technological progress, so justifying decrease in it requires a very strong arguments for me.

Me too, which is why I'd prefer funding for cures to cancer rather than new iphones, which is not the way things work in capitalism.

BTW, whats your definition of social capitalism? Tax and Welfare??? We've tried that.

Partial nationalization? Worker control? Co-determination? What is the actual policies.

Tax and Welfare has been tried and its a failure, for obvious reasosn that Socialists could have told you before it was tried.


Dont blame capitalism for the fact that majority of people are shortsighted and dont really care about GW and want their oil fueled cars. The same thing would happen in socialism with the same people.


No I do blame Capitalism because it FORCES you to be short sighted and take the cheaper option, because no other option is provided unless there is a clear profit incentive, and that incentive does'nt exist yet, because the majority of peopel take the cheaper option because of financial insecurity.

But again Maslo, define social Capitalism? European social-democracy comes in many shapes and sizes.

[Rafiq]

What gives you the right to define what extreme is?

What If I said Fascism was the moderate way and that everything around it was extreme? What if I said the same of individualist anarchism?

Okay, the point being, is that extreme does not exist. It is a way to measure the constraint that your political thinking is, or, in your case, the political thinking of society.

[Maslo]

u6XAPnuFjJc

The incentive argument has never held up, innovation is by no means limited to Capitalism, infact many times Capitalism holds back innovation, and there is no reason that innovatino would'nt happen under socialism, and there is no reason that society would'nt reward people that innovate under socialism.

YOur using argument based out of ignorance.



What else is needed is democratic control of the economy and the workplace.

THe welfare states are falling apart, Sweeden, France and so on hae been dismanteling their welfare states.



Me too, which is why I'd prefer funding for cures to cancer rather than new iphones, which is not the way things work in capitalism.

BTW, whats your definition of social capitalism? Tax and Welfare??? We've tried that.

Partial nationalization? Worker control? Co-determination? What is the actual policies.

Tax and Welfare has been tried and its a failure, for obvious reasosn that Socialists could have told you before it was tried.



No I do blame Capitalism because it FORCES you to be short sighted and take the cheaper option, because no other option is provided unless there is a clear profit incentive, and that incentive does'nt exist yet, because the majority of peopel take the cheaper option because of financial insecurity.


See this study:
http://www.econ.yale.edu/~dirkb/teach/pdf/l/lazear/2000-performancepay.pdf

Its done in the actual workplace. Your video is based on this study:
http://www.bos.frb.org/economic/wp/wp2005/wp0511.pdf
which does not accurately reflect real situation IMHO. Not to say that conclusions from the study are greatly exaggerated in the video.

If you provide innovative products or found a successfull company under capitalism, you will get rich, if you work you will stay middle-class or lower class (depending on the value of your work).
If you provide innovative products or found a successfull company under socialism you will have the same quality of life as if you are an ordinary worker in the company you found (since all employees are equal, even founder is an ordinary employee). And when you employ more than 1 man, you will lose control of your company, since its controlled by democracy. Thus the incentive to innovate is greatly reduced.

The welfare states are not falling apart, they have consistently the best quality of life on this planet. There is a recession so there are problems everywhere, but situation is not so bad, and once the recession ends, or current financial system falls apart, social capitalism will again prevail like happened after WW2, because its objectively the best system (best of both worlds).

Alternatives to fossil fuels are not pursued because they are currently inferior to fossil fuels in physical characteristics, market price only reflects that physical reality. Solar and wind and electric cars are physically inferior, regardless of the economic system. This is slowly changing with the development of better batteries or stratosolar power, so once they become comparable we will see the change.

Except nuclear of course, situation in nuclear energy is caused by left-wing antinuclear propaganda and stupiduty of the average joe. More democratic control without technocratic/sofocratic elements preventing stupidity getting in the way of progress will only make it worse.


But again Maslo, define social Capitalism? European social-democracy comes in many shapes and sizes.

I prefer scandinavian model. Very free market when it comes to regulations and bureaucracy, but higher taxes and good social safety net.

Here is the tax and welfare system I think would be the best. Its a completely new model, combining NIT and basic income without the shortcomings of both:

https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Yuh_9_Oy5SPeKGppOhNPTpv3h5TTvpB6rQ46SQ54O7 8

:thumbup1:

[Bud Struggle]

Your full of shit, read actualy sholarship on anarchist Catelonia.


Anarchist Catelonia never existed. It was a best a temporary stare that existed with a good deal ruthlessness to achieve a very mixed end.

It was killed from the inside in part by women--wives, daughters, of the revoltionaries who felt the excess of the men was uncalled for. Enough was enough.


If you provide innovative products or found a successfull company under capitalism, you will get rich, if you work you will stay middle-class or lower class (depending on the value of your work).
If you provide innovative products or found a successfull company under socialism you will have the same quality of life as if you are an ordinary worker in the company you found (since all employees are equal, even founder is an ordinary employee). And when you employ more than 1 man, you will lose control of your company, since its controlled by democracy. Thus the incentive to innovate is greatly reduced.


Spot on.

[#FF0000]

It was killed from the inside in part by women--wives, daughters, of the revoltionaries who felt the excess of the men was uncalled for. Enough was enough.

wat

do you have like

a source or something for this

[Bud Struggle]

wat

do you have like

a source or something for this

Let me dig one up--I was told that in Spain the other day.

Here's one: I'll continue.

http://spanishcivilwar.devhub.com/blog/534317-women-and-the-spanish-civil-war/

[eric922]

Let me dig one up--I was told that in Spain the other day.
And everyday in America I'm told how great that group of, slave holding, native killing, aristocrats, we call the Founding Fathers are. Just because someone says something doesn't make it true.

[Bud Struggle]

And everyday in America I'm told how great that group of, slave holding, native killing, aristocrats, we call the Founding Fathers are. Just because someone says something doesn't make it true.

Right. I'm finding sources. Then you will see it's true. :)

[NewSocialist]

What additional social goals is social capitalism fundamentally incapable of achieving, which are possible under socialism?

As many others have pointed out, the welfare state has been on a gradual decline for decades now - the reason, of course, being that wealth is so concentrated within the capitalist class, that they have the means to buy off politicians in order to reduce their tax burden (see rent-seeking and Thomas Ferguson's work on the Investment Theory of Politics (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VwbKcVy6JWE).)

As for what socialism can provide which capitalism cannot: (1) Giving people a say in decisions in proportion to the degree they're affected by those decisions (aka freedom), (2) ecological sustainability, (3) remunerative justice, (4) an end to authoritarianism in the workplace, (5) an end to wars caused by imperialism/bourgeois interests, (6) all of the benefits the welfare state formerly provided, (7) full employment, (8) fewer or no economic crises, etc., etc.


Abolishing poverty and inequality of chances is perfectly possible with basic income NIT welfare and public healthcare and education. What else is needed?Basic income is incapable of producing the meritocratic society you think is possible under capitalism. Why? Because that alone does nothing to address the nepotism and cronyism which is widespread in capitalism, or the fact that the wealthy possess the means to give their children the best advantages possible (tutors, and what have you). Moreover, even if it were feasible to create a completely meritocratic capitalism (which it isn't), it would do absolutely nothing to redress exploitation, being overcompensated simply for having won the genetic lottery (i.e., being somewhat brighter than others and going into a field wherein your labor has higher bargaining power), ecological catastrophe, etc.

You also seem to forget that bourgeois economists frequently cite vast efficiency losses if your basic income model were to be adopted. Their rationale being that fewer people would want to work if they were provided with the means not to. This would compel employers to try to entice people to work for them, which would cut into profits, which would, in turn, reduce the rate of savings and investment, etc. You see where I'm going with this.


And not just any additional possible goals, but goals that can justify decreased incentives, efficiency and progress when compared to combined system.Your contention that incentive to innovate under socialism would decline is mere conjecture. You simply juxtapose the former Eastern bloc with capitalism are draw your comparison therefrom, which is bogus because no one here (of very few) promote returning to state socialism. There's no telling how innovative parecon, market socialism, or what have you, would be because such modes of production have never been tried yet - therefore there's no empirical evidence to base any conclusions on. You can try say that there's reason to suspect socialism would be less innovative than capitalism, but you're leaving out the possibility that over time people would care less about material incentives (i.e., profit) and more about social incentives (i.e., social acclaim received for providing society with something people value).

With that said, the actual reason the Soviet Union lagged behind in innovation wasn't because people were no longer creating innovative ideas, but because of problems with having new ideas being incorporated into the central plan (see Prof. David M. Kotz's "Socialism and Innovation (http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=2&ved=0CCMQFjAB&url=http%3A%2F%2Fpeople.umass.edu%2Fdmkotz%2FSoc_a nd_Innovation_long_00.pdf&rct=j&q=Kotz%20%22socialism%20and%20innovation%22&ei=t79rTouFFsHKsQLnuJnWBA&usg=AFQjCNHNkvJ8JCzMXK8bc2P943w9uddsoA&cad=rja).")


I am very keen technological progress, so justifying decrease in it requires a very strong arguments for me.Who gives a shit if you're "keen on technological progress"? You're one person (and a racist asshole, at that). To think society as a whole, or the working-class in particular, values frivolous bourgeois techno gagets more than social justice is absurd. Capitalism engraves desires into people for shit they don't need via the multibillion dollar advertising industry. If no new models of the iPod came out, I assure you that no one would lose sleep over it. Technological progress will continue with or without capitalism, the actual speed of that progress is of no concern to me - and I would dare say, most people.

[Bud Struggle]

Who gives a shit if you're "keen on technological progress"? You're one person (and a racist asshole, at that). To think society as a whole, or the working-class in particular, values frivolous bourgeois techno gagets more than social justice is absurd. Yes they do. The Proletariate buy and put themselves into debt keeping up with the Jonses. They have no class consciousness. It's all Democrat or Republican in the USA (and similar abroad.) Revolutions are happening all around and none of them is even remotely Socialist let alone Marxist. What world are you living in Comrade?


Capitalism engraves desires into people for shit they don't need via the multibillion dollar advertising industry. If no new models of the iPod came out, I assure you that no one would lose sleep over it. Technological progress will continue with or without capitalism, the actual speed of that progress is of no concern to me - and I would dare say, most people.The so called Socialist states of Eastern Europe were no match for Capitalism. Communist China developed much more under Capitalism than Communism--you need to prove your point Comrad.

[NewSocialist]

Yes they do. The Proletariate buy and put themselves into debt keeping up with the Jonses.

I already conceded that point. And why do you think they feel the need to "keep up with the Joneses"? Because it's genetically hardwired in them, or because the advertising industry cultivates these desires in people, and commodities confer social status under capitalism?

*P.S. Have working people ever been given a choice as to whether they would prefer the benefits socialism would provide over tech trinkets? No need to answer, it's a rhetorical question.


They have no class consciousness.Yet.


It's all Democrat or Republican in the USA (and similar abroad.)Again, is this the result of "human nature" or capitalism? The two party system is bullshit and most Westerners don't partake in politics because they correctly conclude that they have no real power over the system.



Revolutions are happening all around and none of them is even remotely Socialist let alone Marxist. What world are you living in Comrade?They're struggles for democracy. Democracy is completely socialist in nature. Capitalism is authoritarian. In time you'll see a struggle for socialism in the middle east - once the people see liberal democratic capitalism is incapable of providing them with any decent standard of living.


The so called Socialist states of Eastern Europe were no match for Capitalism.:rolleyes:


Communist China developed much more under Capitalism than Communism--you need to prove your point Comrad.And yet China continues to be the preferred sweatshop of the capitalist West. The "development" which has taken place has benefited only a privileged minority, the average worker lives little better than did the chattel slaves in the antebellum south.

[Rooster]

Social capitalism like this?

"It was state capitalist under Lenin and Stalin as well. That was how Lenin defined socialism - state capitalism made to benefit the people to the point that it isn't capitalism anymore. After Stalin the economy was reformed to be based around profit part of which went into the pockets of party bureaucrats who had become a new bourgeoisie basically."

http://www.revleft.com/vb/group.php?do=discuss&group=&discussionid=5124

[REVLEFT'S BIEGGST MATSER TROL]

i'm pretty sure some form of extremism will lead to something good. Cause if history is any judge, the outcasted extremes of politics were the ones that were actually found to be correct.

I'm going to guess that things haven't changed that much, and we have a lot more to go as a specicies than futher refinement of the "social capitalist" model.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Because, as I have said, communism (or socialism, communism is impossible to work without free energy, strong AI robots and matter replicators) is equality of results, not only chances - thus it greatly diminishes incentive and motivation to work and innovate. It introduces its own huge problems.

Social capitalism solves problems of capitalism (not just diminishes), without introducing additional problems, or negating the good side of capitalism - high individual motivation to work and innovate.

I think Yuri Gagarin or any Cuban doctor would probably take issue with the emboldened.

But anyway, you are flawed:

Given that Capitalism is, as it says on the tin, the 'rule of capital', not the democratic rule of the people, 'Social Capitalism' as you put it, could only ever be a temporary phenomenon. In fact, we have an historical example with European Social Democracy from 1945-70s. It died because (aside from Keynes' analysis of the Phillips Curve being wildly inaccurate) it existed under Capitalism, the rule of capital, and they used the period crises of Capitalism (yes, even Social Capitalism would always suffer from these) to re-assert their dominance.

Also, Social Capitalism does not change the power relationships in society. Yes, it may effectively be 'Capitalism with a smily face', but it is not democratic, and it still excludes the overwhelming majority of the populace from any sort of democratic input. If you're willing to accept that, then go and join New Labour or something and start some wars, cut some jobs and preside over a shit, imperial economy.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Also, I don't know about you, but i'd say there are millions of unemployed people in the UK, plus millions more on low paid, shitty jobs, who would disagree that Capitalism gives high motivation to work.

[Bud Struggle]

I already conceded that point. And why do you think they feel the need to "keep up with the Joneses"? Because it's genetically hardwired in them, or because the advertising industry cultivates these desires in people, and commodities confer social status under capitalism? Yes--and it's part "B" of your sentence that is "hardwired" into people. They respond like lemmings to advertising. Foolish them.


*P.S. Have working people ever been given a choice as to whether they would prefer the benefits socialism would provide over tech trinkets? No need to answer, it's a rhetorical question. Yes, of course--and every Revoluion has been nastier than the last. If Revolutionaries can't take Marx seriously--why should I?


Yet. Indeed.


Again, is this the result of "human nature" or capitalism? The two party system is bullshit and most Westerners don't partake in politics because they correctly conclude that they have no real power over the system. I agree. So what. Either grab it for yourself or forget it. You think the disinfranchized will rise up and take what's theirs and no more and redistribute the rest? Good luck.



They're struggles for democracy. Democracy is completely socialist in nature. Capitalism is authoritarian. In time you'll see a struggle for socialism in the middle east - once the people see liberal democratic capitalism is incapable of providing them with any decent standard of living. The middle east does nothing--without oil the entire middle east has the GDP of Finland. Every goat and donkey hurder in the middle east is subsidized by oil. If they weren't==they would starve.




And yet China continues to be the preferred sweatshop of the capitalist West. The "development" which has taken place has benefited only a privileged minority, the average worker lives little better than did the chattel slaves in the antebellum south.I agree. Welcome to the future of Communism.

We have to think of something better than 1500 guys (and 12 women) here on RevLeft plotting Communism.

[Agent Equality]

I agree. Welcome to the future of Communism.

We have to think of something better than 1500 guys (and 12 women) here on RevLeft plotting Communism.

Lol you're funny. You make me laugh :) You must be having fun here.

[Bud Struggle]

Lol you're funny. You make me laugh :) You must be having fun here.

No. Actually I'm deadly serious. I want a better world. Really. Truly. Deeply. Honestly. And RevLeft is the best I've found. I'm a Capitalist at the moment. It works best for my personal well being. If I could make that well being universal I would do it.

If you can find a joke in that--you are welcome to it.

[RGacky3]

Let me dig one up--I was told that in Spain the other day.

Here's one: I'll continue.

http://spanishcivilwar.devhub.com/bl...ish-civil-war/ (http://www.anonym.to/?http://spanishcivilwar.devhub.com/blog/534317-women-and-the-spanish-civil-war/)

Where in that link does it state your claim ... that it was killed from the inside by women .... Your talking bullshit.

Seriously you simply cannot accept that Anarchist socialism worked and worked well.


If you provide innovative products or found a successfull company under capitalism, you will get rich, if you work you will stay middle-class or lower class (depending on the value of your work).
If you provide innovative products or found a successfull company under socialism you will have the same quality of life as if you are an ordinary worker in the company you found (since all employees are equal, even founder is an ordinary employee). And when you employ more than 1 man, you will lose control of your company, since its controlled by democracy. Thus the incentive to innovate is greatly reduced.


Except empirically thats just not the case, people invented stuff ALL THE TIME before patents, and the facts of the study remain the same.

Under Capitalism most people that invent, or innovate are not the people that get rich, its the financeers, the companies that take it over, infact most of hte innovation is done by the non-profit sector (the state and so on).


The welfare states are not falling apart, they have consistently the best quality of life on this planet. There is a recession so there are problems everywhere, but situation is not so bad, and once the recession ends, or current financial system falls apart, social capitalism will again prevail like happened after WW2, because its objectively the best system (best of both worlds).


Actually the only 2 countries that hav'nt really been touched are Norway and Germany, Norway due to major nationalizations, and Germany due to workers control.

France suffered, the UK suffered, Sweeden suffered, Greece suffered, they were all tax and welfare systems. Also they have slowly been dismanteling their welfare states.


I prefer scandinavian model. Very free market when it comes to regulations and bureaucracy, but higher taxes and good social safety net.

Here is the tax and welfare system I think would be the best. Its a completely new model, combining NIT and basic income without the shortcomings of both:

There is no scandanavian model, different countries have different systems in scandanavia.

[Bud Struggle]

Where in that link does it state your claim ... that it was killed from the inside by women .... Your talking bullshit.

Seriously you simply cannot accept that Anarchist socialism worked and worked well.[quote] No I'm suprised how bad it actually did work.We need to take it apart.

[quote]Except empirically thats just not the case, people invented stuff ALL THE TIME before patents, and the facts of the study remain the same. the wheel? the stone ax?


Under Capitalism most people that invent, or innovate are not the people that get rich, its the financeers, the companies that take it over, infact most of hte innovation is done by the non-profit sector (the state and so on). Well yea. But that's kind of like trueism stuff. Plenty of inventers make plenty of money.

I put a bit of English on an old tried and true method--and I did OK.


Actually the only 2 countries that hav'nt really been touched are Norway and Germany, Norway due to major nationalizations, and Germany due to workers control.

France suffered, the UK suffered, Sweeden suffered, Greece suffered, they were all tax and welfare systems. Also they have slowly been dismanteling their welfare states. All nice--but really--nobody is interested an anything Socialist. Not now at least. And little countries are NOTHING. Norway is as big as Palm Beach County--and we did plenty good these last couple of years too.


There is no scandanavian model, different countries have different systems in scandanavia.There certainly is a Scandinavian model. Never have a Revolution and always have a king. :)

[Agent Equality]

No. Actually I'm deadly serious. I want a better world. Really. Truly. Deeply. Honestly. And RevLeft is the best I've found. I'm a Capitalist at the moment. It works best for my personal well being. If I could make that well being universal I would do it.

If you can find a joke in that--you are welcome to it.

There are numerous contradictions in your post here. First You want a better world. And yet you think Capitalism will achieve that? Then you go on to say only because it works best for your personal well being. But not for others? Right after that you say you want that well being to be universal. How would a system, that glorifies competition between individuals and the expansion of profit no matter the cost, give everyone else the same well-being you have if everyone is fighting for that same well-being?

I'm so confused here. That's great if capitalism works for you personally (confirmed as bourgeois). but what in a non-existant God's green earth makes you think that it will work for the vast majority of earth's population that has close to nothing? I must ask you this, WHO exactly do you want a better world for? You or others? Everyone? Then why are you a capitalist? Yourself? Then why would you want to share your well-being?

You seem to not know what capitalism is really about. Surely you must realize your whole objective and mindset is to make profit, regardless of what happens to other people. That is unimportant. What is important is that you make money and destroy all the competition. Or are you not a capitalist? Perhaps you're just abiding by the system but you think it is immoral and defunct? Then why defend the system?

I find your whole argument a joke, not simply that post.

[Rafiq]

No. Actually I'm deadly serious. I want a better world. Really. Truly. Deeply. Honestly. And RevLeft is the best I've found. I'm a Capitalist at the moment. It works best for my personal well being. If I could make that well being universal I would do it.

If you can find a joke in that--you are welcome to it.



It is natural. It is because capitalism best serves your class interest, as a member of the bourgeoisie.

But you must understand that the proletariat's interst is best represented by the revolutionary socialist movement

[CommunityBeliever]

Communism is the highest stage of human development it will only occur after terran civilisation becomes Kardashev-1 and has an abundance of food from industrial agriculture (which is one thing we already have), a complete abundance of energy from technologies like nuclear fusion, an abundance of materials from advance manufacturing techniques like matter replication, the elimination of menial work from friendly AI, etc, etc. I think even Maslo recognised this to some extent when he said:

communism is impossible to work without free energy, strong AI robots and matter replicators

If some of these technologies sound far-fetched to you, like free nuclear fusion or friendly AI, it is only because of capitalism's deterrents to technological progress. For example, in the case of nuclear fusion, it represents a serious threat to the capitalists oil, coal, and uranium assets, so it is in their interests to prevent in from being developed.

Socialism (an earlier stage of development) will allow us to get out of this capitalist-onset global recession/new dark ages and allow for all of these new technologies to be developed which will lay the technological grounds for a world communism (which may happen around the ~2100) where there is such an abundance of goods and mechanized labor that nobody needs money and they can all work on creative jobs like art, music, programming, sciences, etc.


Communist China developed much more under Capitalism than Communism

As communism is the highest stage of human development, and it is a worldwide effort, no country has ever achieved it yet, even China (some countries have achieved socialism though). Additionally, I would also say that China has never really been capitalist (at least in the traditional/Western sense).

It was a fuedal/colonial state when comrade Mao developed "New Democracy" which was meant to skip the capitalist stage of development and which layed the material grounds for Deng Xiaoping's so called "Socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics."


I am very keen technological progress, so justifying decrease in it requires a very strong arguments for me.

You claim to be keen on technological progress yet you seemingly fail to comprehend our current capitalist-onset technological dark ages/global recession, which has prevented terran civilisation from developing important technologies in the last ~20 years or so.

I explained this in detail earlier, such as when I explained that modern computer operating systems are lagging behind the opportunity to use complete virtual memory (thereby forcing us to continue to use stupid/unnatural process of "saving").


Some people are lazy and greedy.
majority of people are shortsighted and dont really care
stupiduty of the average joe.
stupidity getting in the way of progress
I am not a fan of pure democracy. There is a reason Aristotle put it between the worst forms of government. Its simply mob rule, dictatorship of the majority. And while it may be preferable to bad dictators, it is clearly inferior to benevolent dictatorship. Here we see your true colors. You are an elitist through and through.

Good luck with your "benevolent dictatorship."

[eric922]

I am not a fan of pure democracy. There is a reason Aristotle put it between the worst forms of government. . Normally I'm not one to nitpick, but if your going to be elitist at least get your facts right. It was Plato, not Aristotle, who said democracy was among the worst forms of government. You certainly share Plato's disdain for anyone who isn't an elite.

[Lucretia]

Social capitalism? Is there such a thing as "asocial" capitalism? It sounds like the original poster has a profound misunderstanding of the distinction between capitalism and socialism as distinct modes of production. "Capitalism" and "socialism" are not ideal types that can be blended together along some kind of spectrum in the same way that red and yellow paint can be combined to produce an orange color.

Because socialism represents the negation of class power, it cannot coexist with capitalism in the same way that capitalism could co-exist with feudalism. Socialism necessarily entails a political transformation in how so-called economic decisions are made and executed, a transformation that eliminates in its entirety class power. Present-day societies might have state-owned enterprises, which are more or less under some degree of popular control. But because these state-owned enterprises always exist under the shadow of a state whose power is ultimately derived from capitalist class power, it is wrong to consider them "socialist" in the proper sense of the word. This is where reactionaries are profoundly mistaken in taking industries run by class-based political institutions (Western states) and using them as examples of why "socialism" could never work.

What you are advocating is not some form of capitalism tempered by socialism. It's just another form of capitalism, where the essential relations of capitalism remain the fulcrum of how people are permitted to live their lives.

[Maslo]

As many others have pointed out, the welfare state has been on a gradual decline for decades now

Citation needed.


being that wealth is so concentrated within the capitalist class, that they have the means to buy off politicians in order to reduce their tax burden (see rent-seeking and Thomas Ferguson's work on the Investment Theory of Politics.)

Yes, that is a problem in current representative system. It is not applicable to internet direct democracy government with no representatives I propose. You dont need communism to solve this problem at all, just direct democracy.


(1) Giving people a say in decisions in proportion to the degree they're affected by those decisions (aka freedom)

No. It takes freedom of being an employer or to employ people from the people, nothing more, thus it REDUCES freedom of association.
There is nothing in current system preventing worker collective companies, but there will be something in communism preventing capitalist companies. Freedom is reduced.


Basic income is incapable of producing the meritocratic society you think is possible under capitalism. Why? Because that alone does nothing to address the nepotism and cronyism which is widespread in capitalism, or the fact that the wealthy possess the means to give their children the best advantages possible (tutors, and what have you).

How is some level of nepotism and cronyism incompatible with meritocracy? Why do you think basic fact of human nature (preferring family and friends over people you dont know) will dissapear in communism?
Unless you want to take all children from their parents and raise them by the state as absolute equals, it is impossible to prevent what you dislike.

Why do you think absolute equality is good or desirable? It is not. That noone falls below some line in quality of life or equality of opportunities is enough, no need to limit the other side of the spectrum.


being overcompensated simply for having won the genetic lottery

nature << nurture. Or are you a racist?
Also see my above point about absolute equality at all costs not being necessary, it should just not fall below some limit when it becomes harmful (or more harmful than proposed solutions).


There's no telling how innovative parecon, market socialism, or what have you, would be because such modes of production have never been tried yet - therefore there's no empirical evidence to base any conclusions on. You can try say that there's reason to suspect socialism would be less innovative than capitalism, but you're leaving out the possibility that over time people would care less about material incentives (i.e., profit) and more about social incentives (i.e., social acclaim received for providing society with something people value).

I simply dont see a reason to risk it revolution and possibly waste another half a century in failed social experiments, when we have social capitalism which can fix all practical problems with capitalism while retaining the incentives, and is proven as the best already tried system to date. Just keep on tweaking it.
I can agree with evolutionary socialism paradigm, that is social capitalism may over time as technology progresses, welfare state expands and ownership of companies becomes more decentralised (companies owned by thosands of shareholders, employers having shares in their companies) evolve into some form of socialism. But revolutionary socialism is too radical and uncertain for me to support it.
Why dont you do it like Jacques Fresco? Not stealing your socialism from capitalists, but building your own socialism experiment, and if it really works better, people will naturally prefer it? That is an idea I can agree with.


To think society as a whole, or the working-class in particular, values frivolous bourgeois techno gagets more than social justice is absurd.

I would say its the other way around. To say that society as a whole, assuming there is social capitalism (welfare, public healthcare and education) values social justice in the socialist sense (absolute equality and abolishment of wage "exploitation") more than "techno gadgets" and progress is absurd. Overwhelming majority of people I know greatly value science and technology, but almost none support "social justice" in the marxist sense.

So who are you to say what society wants?


and a racist asshole, at that

Where the hell have I said anything racist?? I am certainly not a racist. :confused:

[Hit The North]

Citation needed.


You don't need a citation, buddy, you just need to look at the austerity drives being implemented in European economies right now to see the contradictions inherent in welfare capitalism. Or take a look at the way American capital and the political right has reacted to attempts to socialise medical provision in the USA. If you think that the USA can be transformed into your version of "social capitalism" without a deep and sustained struggle, then you are fooling yourself.

Meanwhile, you have still not shown how wage exploitation can be abolished without abolishing capitalism itself. Exploitation isn't a faulty add-on to the economic system - it is its very life blood.

[Maslo]

Communism is the highest stage of human development it will only occur after terran civilisation becomes Kardashev-1 and has an abundance of food from industrial agriculture (which is one thing we already have), a complete abundance of energy from technologies like nuclear fusion, an abundance of materials from advance manufacturing techniques like matter replication, the elimination of menial work from friendly AI, etc, etc. I think even Maslo recognised this to some extent when he said:

communism is impossible to work without free energy, strong AI robots and matter replicators

If some of these technologies sound far-fetched to you, like free nuclear fusion or friendly AI, it is only because of capitalism's deterrents to technological progress. For example, in the case of nuclear fusion, it represents a serious threat to the capitalists oil, coal, and uranium assets, so it is in their interests to prevent in from being developed.

Socialism (an earlier stage of development) will allow us to get out of this capitalist-onset global recession/new dark ages and allow for all of these new technologies to be developed which will lay the technological grounds for a world communism (which may happen around the ~2100) where there is such an abundance of goods and mechanized labor that nobody needs money and they can all work on creative jobs like art, music, programming, sciences, etc.



As communism is the highest stage of human development, and it is a worldwide effort, no country has ever achieved it yet, even China (some countries have achieved socialism though). Additionally, I would also say that China has never really been capitalist (at least in the traditional/Western sense).

It was a fuedal/colonial state when comrade Mao developed "New Democracy" which was meant to skip the capitalist stage of development and which layed the material grounds for Deng Xiaoping's so called "Socialist market economy with Chinese characteristics."



You claim to be keen on technological progress yet you seemingly fail to comprehend our current capitalist-onset technological dark ages/global recession, which has prevented terran civilisation from developing important technologies in the last ~20 years or so.

I explained this in detail earlier, such as when I explained that modern computer operating systems are lagging behind the opportunity to use complete virtual memory (thereby forcing us to continue to use stupid/unnatural process of "saving").

Here we see your true colors. You are an elitist through and through.

Good luck with your "benevolent dictatorship."

I still fail to see how operating systems with full virtual memory are so advantageous over status quo with past or current hardware. You need huge amount of non-volatile memory as fast as RAM (something we currently do not have) to make them better than operating systems with saving in such environment. Saving is a physical necessity with RAM and magnetic disks, because these memory types are incompatible in performance and volatility, something you cannot get rid of by software solution.

Anyway, there is virtual memory is Windows, its called Page File. Its just not used if you have a lot of RAM, since performance would be slower due to reasons above.
Stop promoting virtual memory like some kind of jack-of-all-trades capitalists conspire against. Its simply a solution which is sometimes advantageous, and many times not.


Here we see your true colors. You are an elitist through and through.

Yes, I am an elitist (technocrat) when it comes to education, acquired abilities and effort. These are all things you can relatively easily obtain in social capitalism with free education and basic income, if you want and are not lazy. So where is the problem?

If you dont like the fact that you have inferior deciding power in technocratic democracy when it comes to decisions requiring specialised knowledge (almost everything in current society) compared to experts, them BECOME ONE. Its not like ignorance is a skin color or gender you cant change.

[Maslo]

You don't need a citation, buddy, you just need to look at the austerity drives being implemented in European economies right now to see the contradictions inherent in welfare capitalism.

Temporary measures due to recession. Anyway, I dont think current european social democracies are ideal, and I have my own vision. Problems of current social democracies are greatly reduced there.


Or take a look at the way American capital and the political right has reacted to attempts to socialise medical provision in the USA. If you think that the USA can be transformed into your version of "social capitalism" without a deep and sustained struggle, then you are fooling yourself.

Its far more probable USA will be transformed to social democracy than full blown socialism, so if you want to use this feasibility argument, fine, but it applies to socialism far more.


Meanwhile, you have still not shown how wage exploitation can be abolished without abolishing capitalism itself. Exploitation isn't a faulty add-on to the economic system - it is its very life blood.

I dont subscribe to labor theory of value which deems voluntary contracts, or this so called "exploitation" a problem. If wage contracts are mutualy voluntary (with BI NIT welfare they are), they are not a problem, no matter the wage/profit ratio.

My problems are practical and real (poverty, lack of access to basic necessties, inequality of chances, true wage slavery - work or die), not some made up theoretical "exploitation" notion majority of workers not even agree with. I am not a marxist, I am a social democratic capitalist.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Maslo: there was still poverty, inequality of chances, and lack of access to basic necessities under the European Social Democracy post-war. It's well documented, really.

Social Capitalism doesn't aim to abolish unemployment, it merely seeks to control the very worst excesses of Capitalism and give the greatest chances to the greatest number (that Capitalism can). In a medium size country (the UK), this always leaves at least 1-2 million people unemployed and economically inactive, living in poverty, since Social Capitailsm's (Keynesianism's) 'full employment objective' is employment = >3%.

And I don't know how you can even talk about Social Capitalism abolishing wage slavery. Wage slavery is THE key feature of Capitalism. As someone who doesn't support the Labour Theory of Value (and i'm assuming that as a Capitalist, you don't support free access or anything like that), you should be well aware that you are supporting a system of wage slavery.

Bud Struggle: If Capitalism is best for your personal situation right now then you're obviously not a worker, will never understand the need for Capitalism to be replaced and are an enemy of our movement, hence your ridiculously naive and un-truthful characterisation of Socialism as '1500 internet guys' plotting to turn the world into a sweatshop. Either that or you've literally ignored every post ever made on here, in which case I don't know why you still post on here if you're not even attempting to understand the varied and often intellectually honest posts on this forum (obviously, every political philosophy has idiotic tendencies, i'll admit).

[RGacky3]

BTW social democracies in europe only came out of revolutionary struggles.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Yes, I am an elitist (technocrat) when it comes to education, acquired abilities and effort. These are all things you can relatively easily obtain in social capitalism with free education and basic income, if you want and are not lazy. So where is the problem?

If you dont like the fact that you have inferior deciding power in technocratic democracy when it comes to decisions requiring specialised knowledge (almost everything in current society) compared to experts, them BECOME ONE. Its not like ignorance is a skin color or gender you cant change.

1. Free education + basic income =/= good education and the ability to break the cycle of poverty. Again, all I need to do is point to the shocking failure of the educational system in Britain 1945-79, both with Secondary Moderns and the Comprehensive system, to point out that free education + basic income + Keynesian 'full employment' does NOT equal an educated populace nor the eradication of poverty.

2. Not everyone can become a technocrat, obviously. The very idea of technocracy is to make decision making elitist and un-democratic. If everyone were an expert, technocracy would not exist. And, i'm afraid, just as some people are born to a certain ethnicity, or with a penis/vagina, poverty-stricken people often cannot leave poverty, no matter how hard they try, under Capitalism. Sure, there's always a few success stories of upward working-class mobility, and people like you will seize on these as proof that 'social mobility' is anything other than fable/mythology. Statistically, however, it has been proven time and again that the significant factor in poverty, the 'vicious cycle', holds true. No amount of free education, no amount of Keynesian ditch digging will help this.

[CommunityBeliever]

I still fail to see how operating systems with full virtual memory are so advantageous over status quo with past or current hardware. I have tried to explain this to you over and over again (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2227615&postcount=123). Since you have hitherto failed to understand this, here is a nice bulleted list of advantages:


It makes the computer easier to use by eliminating the unnatural process of saving.
It makes the computer much easier to program and maintain by allowing for the sharing of pointers across namespaces, and eliminating unnecessary "software solutions" like costly IPC, file systems, multiple Virtual Address spaces, unnecessary mappings and other overhead associated with conventional Distributed Shared Memory and IP addresses, etc.
It provides for superior performance, especially for programs such as OOP databases.

Further reading:

http://sombrero.engineering.asu.edu/sasos/ipccc99.pdf
http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/publications/papers/Klein_DE_09.pdf


Saving is a physical necessity with RAM and magnetic disks, because these memory types are incompatible in performance and volatility, something you cannot get rid of by software solution.You can unify RAM and disk by using virtual memory, and doesn't even have to come at a performance cost which has already been proven by SASOS's like Mungi. Actually, SASOS's provide a considerable performance advantage over MASOS's on many programs, such as ones that use lots of interprocess communication/sharing.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCYQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2 Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.13.1026%26rep%3Drep1%26ty pe%3Dpdf&rct=j&q=SASOS%20performance&ei=W41sTp84z9eIAreI1MgO&usg=AFQjCNEqBeidFlt3kfU0yNR8CxJdEkjgsw&sig2=hfN97BGvY7nRr-GwSjH6Og&cad=rja

Besides these advantages for application programmers, there are also benefits on the system level. A SASOS avoids problems with virtual caches created by address aliasing in multi-address-space systems: as every datum is always accessed through the same address, different cache lines are guaranteed to refer to different data. It has also been claimed WM96] that the simplified model significantly reduces the complexity of the operating system, and leads to improved performance.


Anyway, there is virtual memory is Windows, its called Page File. Its just not used if you have a lot of RAM, since performance would be slower due to reasons above.Indeed. Most modern operating systems do use some form of virtual memory - but they are lagging behind the opportunity to centralise it in a single address-space eliminating the need for file-systems and therefore file saving.

Provided with the right hardware (a modern 64-bit processor) this would not hurt performance, in fact it would be beneficial for many tasks by cutting out costly IPC. It certainly wouldn't hurt performance on Lisp machines - which have the hardware prerequisites necessary for a smarter computing architecture free of the stupid process of saving.


Stop promoting virtual memory like some kind of jack-of-all-trades capitalists conspire against. Its simply a solution which is sometimes advantageous, and many times not.I didn't at all imply that "virtual memory" is a jack-off-all-trades conspired against by the capitalists. I have merely offered that as one good example of our current social failure.

I have thousands of examples of things like this, such as the fact that most people are still using QWERTY keyboards, despite the fact that they were designed to prevent old typewriters from jamming and often lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.

http://www.computerhope.com/help/qwerty.gif

[Maslo]

MasloSocial Capitalism doesn't aim to abolish unemployment, it merely seeks to control the very worst excesses of Capitalism and give the greatest chances to the greatest number (that Capitalism can). In a medium size country (the UK), this always leaves at least 1-2 million people unemployed and economically inactive, living in poverty, since Social Capitailsm's (Keynesianism's) 'full employment objective' is employment = >3%.

Why should our objective be full employment? Our objective should be quality of life and progress, nothing else. If some people do not posess skills which are required by society, its better they are unemployed (and receive basic income) and can fully concentrate on finding work, education or requalification than doing unneeded jobs just for being employed.


And I don't know how you can even talk about Social Capitalism abolishing wage slavery.

Definition of slavery:
"Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property and are forced to work.[1]"

People under social capitalism are not treated like property, they can leave at any time if they wish, they have full individual rights.
People under social capitalism are not forced to work, either by direct force, or by threat of lack of basic necessities, since there is a welfare system which takes care of their basic necessities as well as education even when they are unemployed, or employed for low wage (with NIT).

Now if you mean that people are forced to work in order to obtain luxuries, then yes, thats how it is, and thats how it should be. But thats not slavery at all.

You are confusing wage slavery and marxist concept of "wage exploitation" or "excess value".

LTV has been debunked by Marginal theory of value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism)

[Maslo]

I have tried to explain this to you over and over again (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showpost.php?p=2227615&postcount=123). Since you have hitherto failed to understand this, here is a nice bulleted list of advantages:


It makes the computer easier to use by eliminating the unnatural process of saving.
It makes the computer much easier to program and maintain by allowing for the sharing of pointers across namespaces, and eliminating unnecessary "software solutions" like costly IPC, file systems, multiple Virtual Address spaces, unnecessary mappings and other overhead associated with conventional Distributed Shared Memory and IP addresses, etc.
It provides for superior performance, especially for programs such as OOP databases.

Further reading:

http://sombrero.engineering.asu.edu/sasos/ipccc99.pdf
http://www.ertos.nicta.com.au/publications/papers/Klein_DE_09.pdf

You can unify RAM and disk by using virtual memory, and doesn't even have to come at a performance cost which has already been proven by SASOS's like Mungi. Actually, SASOS's provide a considerable performance advantage over MASOS's on many programs, such as ones that use lots of interprocess communication/sharing.

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&source=web&cd=3&ved=0CCYQFjAC&url=http%3A%2F%2Fciteseerx.ist.psu.edu%2Fviewdoc%2 Fdownload%3Fdoi%3D10.1.1.13.1026%26rep%3Drep1%26ty pe%3Dpdf&rct=j&q=SASOS%20performance&ei=W41sTp84z9eIAreI1MgO&usg=AFQjCNEqBeidFlt3kfU0yNR8CxJdEkjgsw&sig2=hfN97BGvY7nRr-GwSjH6Og&cad=rja

Besides these advantages for application programmers, there are also benefits on the system level. A SASOS avoids problems with virtual caches created by address aliasing in multi-address-space systems: as every datum is always accessed through the same address, different cache lines are guaranteed to refer to different data. It has also been claimed WM96] that the simplified model significantly reduces the complexity of the operating system, and leads to improved performance.

Indeed. Most modern operating systems do use some form of virtual memory - but they are lagging behind the opportunity to centralise it in a single address-space eliminating the need for file-systems and therefore file saving.

Provided with the right hardware (a modern 64-bit processor) this would not hurt performance, in fact it would be beneficial for many tasks by cutting out costly IPC. It certainly wouldn't hurt performance on Lisp machines - which have the hardware prerequisites necessary for a smarter computing architecture free of the stupid process of saving.

I didn't at all imply that "virtual memory" is a jack-off-all-trades conspired against by the capitalists. I have merely offered that as one good example of our current social failure.

I have thousands of examples of things like this, such as the fact that most people are still using QWERTY keyboards, despite the fact that they were designed to prevent old typewriters from jamming and often lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.

http://www.computerhope.com/help/qwerty.gif

SASOS may become advantageous again with modern 64bit processors, and there is indeed a renewed interest, but thats not applicable to the 80s. PCs simply outperformed Lisp machines and SASOS then, thats why Lisp was abandoned. The same with AI promises and expert systems, which simply failed to deliver compared to PCs. Its was a correct decision at a time.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Winter


I have thousands of examples of things like this, such as the fact that most people are still using QWERTY keyboards, despite the fact that they were designed to prevent old typewriters from jamming and often lead to carpal tunnel syndrome.

Why should millions of people already accustomed to QWERTY learn new layout? Whats so bad about QWERTY layout? Will the advantages of new layout justify such huge expenses? Carpal tunnel syndrome is independent on keyboard layout, and can be easily prevented by ergonomic keyboards.

[CommunityBeliever]

SASOS may become advantageous again with modern 64bit processors, and there is indeed a renewed interest, but thats not applicable to the 80s.It is applicable to any machine that is designed for a single-address-space going back at least twenty years, including during the eighties.

But the "free market" and profit-driven companies like Intel produced and is continuing to produce computer processors that don't support single address space orthogonal persistence (e.g the x86-64 that use 48 bit address spaces on a 64-bit processor). These processors are incapable of being used to develop smart computing architectures and they therefore doom developers into artificial stupidity. This is a continuing social failure, not a good organised technical decision.


PCs simply outperformed Lisp machines and SASOS then, thats why Lisp was abandoned. The same with AI promises and expert systems, which simply failed to deliver compared to PCs.What definition of "failed to deliver are you using"? People today are still using twenty year old Lisp machines (including me):

http://groups.google.com/group/comp.lang.lisp/msg/b2c0190dc30c3e5f?dmode=source&output=gplain

I still just use my Lisp Machine. It's right here next to my PC, and on a regular basis I just move to the other chair and edit in Zmacs. 6 years after heavy-duty development ceased on Zmacs, it still whomps the competition and makes me not care that processor speeds have gone up a zillionfold in the meantime. Others will tell you the same I WISH I could use features like that on a fast processor. that would be great. But it isn't likely to happen soon.

If you ask me the only thing that has failed to deliver is the free market, which technically could have continued to improve the Lisp machines and continue to build AI/expert systems but it did not due to social failure.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Winter (http://www.anonym.to/?http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/AI_Winter)Did you not see that I linked you to that same article many posts ago?!

The AI winter is a fantastic example of capitalist market failure. They stopped developing AI when they lost their state funding leaving us with stupid and immanently deficient computers of today.


Why should millions of people already accustomed to QWERTY learn new layout? Whats so bad about QWERTY layout? Will the advantages of new layout justify such huge expenses? Carpal tunnel syndrome is independent on keyboard layout, and can be easily prevented by ergonomic keyboards. If capitalism wasn't an immanently deficient system, then perhaps we could have switched away from QWERTY around ~30 years ago so nobody would've had to become accustomed to it in the first place. We had the alternatives to it decades ago, yet we kept that layout for no good reason, further perpetuating its use.

As for now after decades of capitalist failure, yes I think we should all switch over to alternatives, that way we can prevent QWERTY from further perpetuating itself, but we aren't seeing a mass transition today because capitalism is an immanently deficient system that has caused a technological dark age.

[CommunityBeliever]

Another fantastic example of capitalist-onset social failure is the world wide web. The web is stuck using a deficient format essentially defined in 1998 (HTML 4). This is the perfect example of what happens when you take a fantastic technology developed by the military (the internet) and put it in the hands of private capitalists - they develop (or rather fail to develop) these sorts of deficient technologies.

[Maslo]

But the "free market" and profit-driven companies like Intel produced and is continuing to produce computer processors that don't support single address space orthogonal persistence (e.g the x86-64 that use 48 bit address spaces on a 64-bit processor). These processors are incapable of being used to develop smart computing architectures and they therefore doom developers into artificial stupidity. This is a continuing social failure, not a good organised technical decision.

Most of the developers dont seem to mind. If significant part of developers demanded fully 64bit address spaces, I am sure there will be profit in making such processors.


If you ask me the only thing that has failed to deliver is the free market, which technically could have continued to improve the Lisp machines and continue to build AI/expert systems but it did not due to social failure.


In 1987 (three years after Minsky and Schank's prediction) the market for specialized AI hardware collapsed. Workstations by companies like Sun Microsystems offered a powerful alternative to LISP machines and companies like Lucid offered a LISP environment for this new class of workstations. The performance of these general workstations became an increasingly difficult challenge for LISP Machines. Companies like Lucid and Franz LISP offered increasingly more powerful versions of LISP. For example, benchmarks were published showing workstations maintaining a performance advantage over LISP machines[27]. Later desktop computers built by Apple and IBM would also offer a simpler and more popular architecture to run LISP applications on. By 1987 they had become more powerful than the more expensive Lisp machines. The desktop computers had rule-based engines such as CLIPS available.[28] These alternatives left consumers with no reason to buy an expensive machine specialized for running LISP. An entire industry worth half a billion dollars was replaced in a single year.[29]

Seems like free market delivered a better system. That does not seem like a failure.

As for expert systems, they are a niche paradigm and suffer their own problems. Conventional PCs were more suitable for majority of tasks ordinary users wanted.


By the early 90s, the earliest successful expert systems, such as XCON, proved too expensive to maintain. They were difficult to update, they could not learn, they were "brittle" (i.e., they could make grotesque mistakes when given unusual inputs), and they fell prey to problems (such as the qualification problem) that had been identified years earlier in research in nonmonotonic logic. Expert systems proved useful, but only in a few special contexts.[1][30] Another problem dealt with the computational hardness of truth maintenance efforts for general knowledge. KEE used an assumption-based approach (see NASA, TEXSYS) supporting multiple-world scenarios that was difficult to understand and apply.

The expert system has a major flaw which explains its low success although the principle has existed for 70 years: knowledge collection and interpretation into rules, the "knowledge engineering". Most developers have no method to perform this task. They work "manually" what opens to many possibilities for errors. Expert knowledge is not well understood, there is a lack of rules, rules are contradictory, some are poorly written and unusable. Worse, they most often use an engine unable to reasoning. Result: the expert system works badly and the project is abandoned[22


If capitalism wasn't an immanently deficient system, then perhaps we could have switched away from QWERTY around ~30 years ago so nobody would've had to become accustomed to it in the first place. We had the alternatives to it decades ago, yet we kept that layout for no good reason, further perpetuating its use.

People were accustomed to QWERTY from the time of typewriters, that was far sooner than 30 years ago.
And you still have not provided any reason why even use different layout. Actual layout is not that important, writing training is. Why not use QWERTY?

[CommunityBeliever]

Most of the developers dont seem to mind.They probably don't even realise there is an alternative to the status quo. The university computer science education system is based upon deficient bloated corporate technologies like Java (they want to "get developers ready for the market"), with basically no mention of alternatives like Lisp machines. I was a developer for ~5 years before being learning of the existence of Lisp.

Capitalists want replaceable workers, which is why they favour flawed technologies like Java and C++ over Lisp and this is also why computer science education and the IT industry as a whole sucks and will continue to suck.


By 1987 they had become more powerful than the more expensive Lisp machines. The desktop computers had rule-based engines such as CLIPS available.[28] These alternatives left consumers with no reason to buy an expensive machine specialized for running LISP. I know that the Lisp machine market collapsed during 1987. However, the Lisp machines could have continued to develop and compete against the PCs, had they continued to receive state funding from organisations such as DARPA. That would have prevented the capitalist-onset technological disaster known as the AI winter.

This quote also fails to explain the feature lost like single address space orthogonal persistence, hardware support for dynamic typing, single address space orthogonal persistence, homoiconicity, reflexivity, introspection, etc. The fact remains that modern PCs have failed to catch up to these features.

Instead, modern computers are full of bloat/unnecessary duplication, malware such as viruses/sypware/adware, historical bagage, proprietary/closed-source software (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proprietary_software), and digital rights management:

http://www.defectivebydesign.org/

DRM products have features built-in that restrict what jobs they can do. These products have been intentionally crippled from the users' perspective, and are therefore "defective by design".


XCON, proved too expensive to maintain. The deficient capitalist price system tells us that AI is inefficient and too expensive to develop. I disagree, and I think we ought to build AI so that we can have smart computer systems.


And you still have not provided any reason why even use different layout. Yes I have. It is a keyboard layout designed to prevent old typewriters from jamming rather then based upon efficiency. I personally think we should use things that are designed to be efficient and which are therefore easier to use/learn (Dvorak).


Actual layout is not that important, writing training is. Why not use QWERTY? The layout is important. QWERTY has 30% of its keystrokes on the home row, Dvorak has 70%. That is a huge advantage since you don't have to move your hands all over the keyboard just to type things, users have reported considerable gains from switching away from QWERTY.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Why should our objective be full employment? Our objective should be quality of life and progress, nothing else. If some people do not posess skills which are required by society, its better they are unemployed (and receive basic income) and can fully concentrate on finding work, education or requalification than doing unneeded jobs just for being employed.



Definition of slavery:
"Slavery is a system under which people are treated as property and are forced to work.[1]"

People under social capitalism are not treated like property, they can leave at any time if they wish, they have full individual rights.
People under social capitalism are not forced to work, either by direct force, or by threat of lack of basic necessities, since there is a welfare system which takes care of their basic necessities as well as education even when they are unemployed, or employed for low wage (with NIT).

Now if you mean that people are forced to work in order to obtain luxuries, then yes, thats how it is, and thats how it should be. But thats not slavery at all.

You are confusing wage slavery and marxist concept of "wage exploitation" or "excess value".

LTV has been debunked by Marginal theory of value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism)

So what you're advocating is that minimum wage is paid to every unemployed person?

If you're not working on the full employment objective, then using NAIRU at around 6%, you're talking about spending an extra 20 billion quid supporting unemployment. Do you actually think that is in any way economically literate?

Wage slavery exists, as currently the unemployed are not paid enough to get by. Most people are forced to stick in a job where they are treated like property, they cannot leave because there are no other jobs and they have to provide food for their families, possibly children, put a roof over their heads.

In any case, this is going round in circles since the experience of Britain 1945-73(9) has proven Social Capitalism/Social Democracy/Keynesianism to be:

1. Thoroughly flawed as a macro-economic system
2. Nothing to do with democracy nor alleviating the problems of lack of skills, employment and thus poverty associated with under-education/inadequate education.
3. Nothing more than a short-termist allieviation of the worst ills of Capitalism, since Capitalism is the 'rule of capital'. Hence, after a period (normally sooner rather than later), capital will re-assert its politico-economic authority via the likes of Thatcher, Blair et al.

Really, you've not addressed the above 3 points at all, other than embracing technocracy and anti-democracy against point 2.

[W1N5T0N]

social capitalism has "worked" to some extent in the prosperous countries such as Germany, France, the BENELUX, and several other western european countries.
However, with the rise of predator capitalism and the legalisation of the ever-hungry predator corporations, legislation to have "social capitalism" is virtually worhtless, as now they can outsource their labour needs to poor countries, with inhuman labor conditions and extremely low wages, where unions are forbidden and human rights are neglected. Through this, they can then produce cheap goods which they can then send back into the home market, all the time staying under price of what it would cost them to produce in the home country.

Therefore, social capitalism can only work as long as it is "social capitalism in a union of countries", not "social capitalism at home-predator capitalism abroad".

Another issue are the markets, where there is chaos. There is no government regulation, nor any feedback to the people, no control, and they have little actual attachment to the real world.

[eric922]

Holy contradictions Batman! First you say this:
I am not a fan of pure democracy. There is a reason Aristotle put it between the worst forms of government
Then you say this:

Yes, that is a problem in current representative system. It is not applicable to internet direct democracy government with no representatives I propose. You dont need communism to solve this problem at all, just direct democracy.So on one hand you are agreeing with Plato,again not Aristotle, who said democracy was among the worst forms of government, and now you are advocating for the very type of democracy Plato despised.

[Hit The North]

I dont subscribe to labor theory of value which deems voluntary contracts, or this so called "exploitation" a problem.


Then you don't understand capitalism. Plus, the notion of voluntary contracts, as if the worker and the capitalist were equal, is a fantasy of the most basic and infantile bourgeoisie economics.


My problems are practical and real (poverty, lack of access to basic necessties, inequality of chances, true wage slavery - work or die), not some made up theoretical "exploitation" notion majority of workers not even agree with. I am not a marxist, I am a social democratic capitalist.

So you keep saying but you still haven't answered the question of the incompatibility of a welfare state and a thriving free market capitalism, over the long haul. The problem is that state welfare is a drag on capitalist accumulation. For a start, the state monopolises welfare provision, shutting down the possibility for profit-making in many sectors of health, education and welfare. It has to do this because decent and affordable social welfare needs to be kept insulated from the dynamics of the market, otherwise the poor and needy are priced out of provision. Secondly, the state needs to raise colossal taxation in order to pay for this provision. High tax regimes are not acceptable to capitalist interests. You might recognise this as a common feature of corporate and right-wing argument and policy over the last four decades or so. Moreover, any social capitalism worth its salt will need to implement a progressive taxation policy which will hit the rich the hardest. Another policy that is unacceptable to the wealthy classes, but it will need to done in order to slightly equalise the relation between rich and poor. This will demand a large degree of autonomy on the part of the state from the influence of the rich and powerful, who will continue to be the owners of capital in society. In particular, it will mean heavily policing the rich so they don't evade their taxes or transfer their capital out of the country - something they will threaten and implement as soon as your "social capitalist" government is elected.


LTV has been debunked by Marginal theory of value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism)



How can LTV have been debunked when marginal theory is a theory of prices, not a theory of value, and the LTV is not a theory of prices?

Even in its own terms as a theory of prices, it is woefully inadequate. As the Marxist Ernst Mandel is quoted as arguing in the article you link to:


It is, moreover, unable to explain how, from the clash of millions of different individual "needs" there emerge not only uniform prices, but prices which remain stable over long periods, even under perfect conditions of free competition. Rather than an explanation of constants, and of the basic evolution of economic life, the "marginal" technique provides at best an explanation of ephemeral, short-term variations.

[Maslo]

So what you're advocating is that minimum wage is paid to every unemployed person?

Basic income, which may or may not be equal to current minimum wage.


If you're not working on the full employment objective, then using NAIRU at around 6%, you're talking about spending an extra 20 billion quid supporting unemployment. Do you actually think that is in any way economically literate?

Its not additional, BI NIT system (Contribution Bonus (https://docs.google.com/document/pub?id=1Yuh_9_Oy5SPeKGppOhNPTpv3h5TTvpB6rQ46SQ54O7 8)) will replace all current welfare benefits. And its feasible, actually it may cost less in the long run. Here is a detailed document with feasibility study for Slovak economy which proves it. And our economy is not particularly developed when compared to western ones, so if it can work here, it will surely work in the developed world:
http://www.sulik.sk/media/contribution_bonus.pdf


Wage slavery exists, as currently the unemployed are not paid enough to get by. Most people are forced to stick in a job where they are treated like property, they cannot leave because there are no other jobs and they have to provide food for their families, possibly children, put a roof over their heads.

Yes, the value of BI should be chosen to be enough to provide for basic necessities. There must be a balance when BI is enough to provide for them, but not too high for luxuries, because incentive to work would needlesly go down.


1. Thoroughly flawed as a macro-economic system

No such thing has been proven.


2. Nothing to do with democracy nor alleviating the problems of lack of skills, employment and thus poverty associated with under-education/inadequate education.

I am unfamiliar with the education system of Britain, but I think there are school tuitions. In that case I dont support Britain version of social democracy, at least the education part. Education should be completely free at the point of use, most I can agree with is paying for education after you finished it and become employed, with income above some limit.


3. Nothing more than a short-termist allieviation of the worst ills of Capitalism, since Capitalism is the 'rule of capital'. Hence, after a period (normally sooner rather than later), capital will re-assert its politico-economic authority via the likes of Thatcher, Blair et al.

Not applicable to social capitalism with direct internet democracy government I advocate. There are simply no representatives for capital to corrupt.

[Maslo]

Holy contradictions Batman! First you say this: Then you say this:
So on one hand you are agreeing with Plato,again not Aristotle, who said democracy was among the worst forms of government, and now you are advocating for the very type of democracy Plato despised.

I should have said I dont agree that pure egalitarian democracy is the best form of government, since best form of government is direct democracy with technocractic elements IMHO.

But if I have to choose between current corruptible representative democracy and direct democracy, then direct democracy (even if there are no technocratic elements) is far better.

[Maslo]

Then you don't understand capitalism. Plus, the notion of voluntary contracts, as if the worker and the capitalist were equal, is a fantasy of the most basic and infantile bourgeoisie economics.

Voluntary contract does not require equality of participants, just absence of force (positive and negative liberty).


For a start, the state monopolises welfare provision, shutting down the possibility for profit-making in many sectors of health, education and welfare. It has to do this because decent and affordable social welfare needs to be kept insulated from the dynamics of the market, otherwise the poor and needy are priced out of provision.

I dont understand. Can you rephrase? There is nothing incompatible between welfare and markets, and capitalist competition for a necessary service can exist alongside cheap public option (assuming they provide better value/price ratio than public option).


Secondly, the state needs to raise colossal taxation in order to pay for this provision. High tax regimes are not acceptable to capitalist interests.

Contrary to right-wing propaganda, higher taxes do not hinder economic growth very much. What is bad is when market is not free - unnecesary regulations and bureucracy. Scandinavian model has proven that very free market economy with higher taxes is attractive to capital.

And my proposal does not require raising taxes. With better spread of tax burden effective tax burden per person will actually decrease.


Moreover, any social capitalism worth its salt will need to implement a progressive taxation policy which will hit the rich the hardest. Another policy that is unacceptable to the wealthy classes, but it will need to done in order to slightly equalise the relation between rich and poor. This will demand a large degree of autonomy on the part of the state from the influence of the rich and powerful, who will continue to be the owners of capital in society.

Thats why the government should be direct democracy.


How can LTV have been debunked when marginal theory is a theory of prices, not a theory of value, and the LTV is not a theory of prices?

Marginal theory is a theory of value. Average societal value = price on the market of course. It makes no sense to separate the two when we talk about economic products.


Even in its own terms as a theory of prices, it is woefully inadequate. As the Marxist Ernst Mandel is quoted as arguing in the article you link to:

His criticism makes no sense to me. Prices are not constant.
And its obvious value of an individual product should depend on supply/demand ratio. Supply is of course influenced by labor required for production, but labor required is not all that determines value of a product. Value is also in the eye of a beholder (consumers).

[DinodudeEpic]

I actually agree with Maslo in terms of the economy. There should be free markets, moderate amount of regulations, and welfare. But, I think that the workers should control the means of production via cooperatives/labor unions and the abolition of the corporation.

[Tim Cornelis]

Voluntary contract does not require equality of participants, just absence of force (positive and negative liberty).



I dont understand. Can you rephrase? There is nothing incompatible between welfare and markets, and capitalist competition for a necessary service can exist alongside cheap public option (assuming they provide better value/price ratio than public option).



Contrary to right-wing propaganda, higher taxes do not hinder economic growth very much. What is bad is when market is not free - unnecesary regulations and bureucracy. Scandinavian model has proven that very free market economy with higher taxes is attractive to capital.

And my proposal does not require raising taxes. With better spread of tax burden effective tax burden per person will actually decrease.



Thats why the government should be direct democracy.



Marginal theory is a theory of value. Average societal value = price on the market of course. It makes no sense to separate the two when we talk about economic products.



His criticism makes no sense to me. Prices are not constant.
And its obvious value of an individual product should depend on supply/demand ratio. Supply is of course influenced by labor required for production, but labor required is not all that determines value of a product. Value is also in the eye of a beholder (consumers).


Voluntary contract does not require equality of participants, just absence of force (positive and negative liberty).

So bondage slavery (more than 10 million people today) is completely justified in your opinion?

[Tim Cornelis]

LTV has been debunked by Marginal theory of value (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marginalism)

Haha, no. Marginal productivity has been debunked by facts.


If the marginal productivity was correct it would mean the increase in wages would increase in proportion to the increase in labour productivity, i.e. if labour productivity rose by 5% wages will correspondingly rise. Yet, "real wages have fallen in the US since the mid 1970s to where the average hourly wage adjusted to inflation was lower in 1994 than in 1968. Moreover, this decline has in real hourly wages has occurred despite continual increase in [labour] productivity. Between 1973 and 1998 labor productivity grew 33%. Collins and Yeskel calculate that if hourly wages had grown at the same rate as labor productivity the average hourly wage in 1998 would have been 18.10 dollars rather than 12.77 dollars - a difference of 5.33 dollars an hour, or more than 11,000 dollars per year of a full-time worker" (source: the ABCs of political economy by Hahnel, p.22, he cited "economic apartheid in America").

EDIT: You also might want to check out chapter 5 of Debunking Economics: http://books.google.com/books?id=KdITT4ukfhoC&printsec=frontcover&hl=nl#v=onepage&q&f=false

[Agent Equality]

I actually agree with Maslo in terms of the economy. There should be free markets, moderate amount of regulations, and welfare. But, I think that the workers should control the means of production via cooperatives/labor unions and the abolition of the corporation.

hence why you're restricted

[DinodudeEpic]

Well, I disagree with Malso's elitist perspective, and his disdain for workers control. Which matter more then free markets, regulations, and welfare.

[RGacky3]

Voluntary contract does not require equality of participants, just absence of force (positive and negative liberty).


Property laws always are backed by force.

(If you own land with apple trees and I come pick it I can get arrested, which is why I gotta buy it from you, its a free contract, but not really because the other option is prevented by force, or I can pick it for you, get a wage, while you keep the apple)


There is nothing incompatible between welfare and markets, and capitalist competition for a necessary service can exist alongside cheap public option (assuming they provide better value/price ratio than public option).


Which they don't ... EVER, unless artificially induced, this is because private options need to make a profit and pay for overhead, this is unless your rich, in which a private option is better becuase you don't have to worry about the pesky other people that can vote.


Marginal theory is a theory of value. Average societal value = price on the market of course. It makes no sense to separate the two when we talk about economic products.


Thats total bullshit, it would be the case if everyone had the same amount of money, but they don't, meaning the richer peoples "value" is reflected much more in the market, whereas poor peoples "value" are not at all usually.


And its obvious value of an individual product should depend on supply/demand ratio. Supply is of course influenced by labor required for production, but labor required is not all that determines value of a product. Value is also in the eye of a beholder (consumers).

Supply and demand being equal the value is always the labor value.

[Maslo]

Haha, no. Marginal productivity has been debunked by facts.

Explain the rationale for this: "If the marginal productivity was correct it would mean the increase in wages would increase in proportion to the increase in labour productivity, i.e. if labour productivity rose by 5% wages will correspondingly rise. "

It does not make sense. If labor productivity rises, but demand for workers falls, or number of available workers increases (supply), its perfectly possible for wages to fall or not increase. Its not incompatible with marginal theory of value, labor behaves simply as another commodity.

LTV assumes labor is somehow special, but there is no reason why price of goods should depend only on labor, and not on for example know-how, technology, capital and most importantly, demand. Especially in an economy where human labor becomes increasingly substituted by robots.

[Maslo]

Well, I disagree with Malso's elitist perspective, and his disdain for workers control. Which matter more then free markets, regulations, and welfare.

I am all for workers control, assuming these workers wont steal from capital owners, but take the risk themselves, and form their own collective companies, or buy them from their owners.
If a handful of enterpreneurs is able to to found successfull companies, it should be easy for thousands of workers working together, who collectively own far more capital and labour power than a few people.

Why are they not doing it? The only answer I can think of is that there is something else needed for successfull company, such as idea or know-how (which then invalidates marxist argument that its only workers who contribute to production and not capitalists).

I simply disagree with stealing and violent revolution.

[RGacky3]

LTV assumes labor is somehow special, but there is no reason why price of goods should depend only on labor, and not on for example know-how, technology, capital and most importantly, demand. Especially in an economy where human labor becomes increasingly substituted by robots.

No it does'nt infact LTV was the theory from Adam Smith, and Ricardo, it was'nt a Marx thing, the LTV deals with value, supply and demand deal with price, they are both related but not the same thing.

Labor is treated as a commodity, but its different because its also a variable capital instrument to create commodities.


I am all for workers control, assuming these workers wont steal from capital owners, but take the risk themselves, and form their own collective companies, or buy them from their owners.

Steal from capital owners? Thtas the same as taxes. Capital owners routinely steal from workers legally through labor exploitation.

But anyway, are you infavor of a German co-determination law?


Why are they not doing it? The only answer I can think of is that there is something else needed for successfull company, such as idea or know-how (which then invalidates marxist argument that its only workers who contribute to production and not capitalists).


They arn't doing it because they can't afford it numbnuts. Even if you have an idea if you fail you loose everything, if you make it financers get most of the profit, if it works but odes'nt make a big profit your still screwed. Plus yo ustart a company chances are a larger more established company will screw you over anyway.


I simply disagree with stealing and violent revolution.

The only reason there are social democracies or welfare capitalist states in Europe is due to the threat of violent revolutoins.

[Maslo]

Property laws always are backed by force.

(If you own land with apple trees and I come pick it I can get arrested, which is why I gotta buy it from you, its a free contract, but not really because the other option is prevented by force, or I can pick it for you, get a wage, while you keep the apple)

Breaching of property rights requires force just like protecting property, so this is not really an argument.


Which they don't ... EVER, unless artificially induced, this is because private options need to make a profit and pay for overhead, this is unless your rich, in which a private option is better becuase you don't have to worry about the pesky other people that can vote.

Yes. Where is the problem? People who can pay for it can have private option, for others there is public option. Everyone is happy and satisfied, noone suffers from lack of basic necessities, and capitalist motivations are retained.


Thats total bullshit, it would be the case if everyone had the same amount of money, but they don't, meaning the richer peoples "value" is reflected much more in the market, whereas poor peoples "value" are not at all usually.

Yes, thats necessary to retain capitalist motivation and justice - the more you produce, the more you can consume. As long as this wont result in lack of basic necessities (there is some line below which your ability to consume never falls - welfare), I see no problem here. Its only fair you can consume more only of you produce (earn) more.


Supply and demand being equal the value is always the labor value.

What is "supply and demand being equal"? They are always equal if everything is sold and price is stabilised.

And labor value (of wage laborers) is just a part of demand determinants, you are ignoring ideas, know-how, technology, capital, risk, machines etc..

[RGacky3]

Breaching of property rights requires force just like protecting property, so this is not really an argument.


Not really, take the apple farm, you just end the laws, and people can pick their own apples, or hte workers that pick the apples get the full profit.

If the owner contributed something usefull, maybe they'll give him a cut to do it.

Property rights are ALWAYS state constructs, and if you believe in democracy then they should be subject to democratic controls.


Yes. Where is the problem? People who can pay for it can have private option, for others there is public option. Everyone is happy and satisfied, noone suffers from lack of basic necessities, and capitalist motivations are retained.


Sure, try open up a private optoin in a country with a public option :P, its not gonna go anywhere.


Yes, thats necessary to retain capitalist motivation and justice - the more you produce, the more you can consume. As long as this wont result in lack of basic necessities (there is some line below which your ability to consume never falls - welfare), I see no problem here. Its only fair you can consume more only of you produce (earn) more.


Three is no corrolatoin between productoin and consumption, the richest people in the world don't produce shit, hell all of wallstreet produces nothing.

If we are corrolating production to earnings thats one thing, but there is nothing in capitalism that does that.

Capitalism rewards finance and ownership, not productivity or innovation.


What is "supply and demand being equal"? They are always equal if everything is sold and price is stabilised.

And labor value (of wage laborers) is just a part of demand determinants, you are ignoring ideas, know-how, technology, capital, risk, machines etc..

Prices are never stabilized, (and we are talking about commodities here btw.)

ideas, know-how are all labor.

Risk is something else, but its bullshit, if a company owner fails he can sell his company and live ok, invest in something else, the workers however loose all source of income, even if they had nothing to do with the downfall.

You know what in Monarchies Kings also risked a lot when they went to war, they could loose their kingships, does'nt justify their monarchies.

[Maslo]

abor is treated as a commodity, but its different because its also a variable capital instrument to create commodities.

There are many capital instruments (commodities) needed to create products in a modern company besides labor - ideas, know-how, technology, means of production (machines and equipment). Why is wage labor special?


Steal from capital owners? Thtas the same as taxes.

Taxes steal from everyone with income. Or should. Not just capital owners.


Capital owners routinely steal from workers legally through labor exploitation.

You have weird definition of theft.
If the workers voluntarily agreed to wage contract, its not stealing anymore than selling other posessions besides labor is theft. There is nothing special about selling labor.


But anyway, are you infavor of a German co-determination law?

Yes. As long as the owners of a company have the upper hand (more than half of the director board). Otherwise it would be stealing.


They arn't doing it because they can't afford it numbnuts. Even if you have an idea if you fail you loose everything, if you make it financers get most of the profit, if it works but odes'nt make a big profit your still screwed. Plus yo ustart a company chances are a larger more established company will screw you over anyway.

So making a successfull company from scratch is actually hard? But I thought only workers contributed to its success, and only wage laborers are needed. Those filthy capitalist enterpreneurs never contributed anything and only exploited the poor workers, company would exist without them! Oh wait.. :D

[RGacky3]

Yes. As long as the owners of a company have the upper hand (more than half of the director board). Otherwise it would be stealing.

So basically as long as its meaningless, the German law requires half of the board to be representatives of the workers, Germany calls their system a social-market system, your to the right of that, and you buy into all the Capitalist economic nonsense.

BTW, its not stealing because the workers are producing all the profit.


There are many capital instruments (commodities) needed to create products in a modern company besides labor - ideas, know-how, technology, means of production (machines and equipment). Why is wage labor special?


Because its the only thing that actually creates the commodities. ideas/know how are part of the labor. also labor creates the technology and the means of production.


Taxes steal from everyone with income. Or should. Not just capital owners.


So your not for a progressive tax?


You have weird definition of theft.
If the workers voluntarily agreed to wage contract, its not stealing anymore than selling other posessions besides labor is theft. There is nothing special about selling labor.


Your definition of theft is dependant on your definition of valid property, I don't consider land and capital property to be valid property.

Its not a voluntary wage contract because the worker has no option, the capitalist has state-protected ownership of the means of production, the workere does not, so the contract comes out of an absolutely unfair difference of power.

Selling labor is essencially renting a person, its a step above slavery.


So making a successfull company from scratch is actually hard? But I thought only workers contributed to its success, and only wage laborers are needed. Those filthy capitalist enterpreneurs never contributed anything and only exploited the poor workers, company would exist without them! Oh wait.. :D

The capitalist only contribute the capital and finances ... which they gained from exploiting workers.

If there was a capialist rapture tomomrow (and all their capital and finances were left behind) the world economy would work absolutely fine, if all the plumbers were raptured tommorw (and all their tools left behind) the world woul have a major problem.

Read what I wrote, its the capital and finances that are the problem.

[Maslo]

Not really, take the apple farm, you just end the laws, and people can pick their own apples, or hte workers that pick the apples get the full profit.

If the owner contributed something usefull, maybe they'll give him a cut to do it.

Property rights are ALWAYS state constructs, and if you believe in democracy then they should be subject to democratic controls.

No, in the absence of state private property develops naturally, since wealth in born in private (individual) hands. History has shown us that overwhelming majority of societies beyond tribal levels of development recognised private property and the crime of theft. Exceptions were rare and temporary.
It takes state to breach it without consequences (taxes). In the absence of state owners would defend their property and anarchocapitalism would ensue since people who own useful property have on average always more power than thos who dont (altrough any anarchy is always temporary until the most poverful entity in a society defeats/absorbs all others and dictatorship develops).

Anarchosocialism is a contradictio in terms, since collectivisation requires organised force - state or analogue of state.


Sure, try open up a private optoin in a country with a public option :P, its not gonna go anywhere.

When you dont provide better service (value/price ratio) than public option yes. Where is the problem?

We have public healthcare, but there are still private hospitals which provide top-notch care, but for direct payment. So its possible for competition to exist in such an environment, you just have to provide far better services than public option.


Three is no corrolatoin between productoin and consumption, the richest people in the world don't produce shit, hell all of wallstreet produces nothing.

If we are corrolating production to earnings thats one thing, but there is nothing in capitalism that does that.

Capitalism rewards finance and ownership, not productivity or innovation.

Implying ownership of useful assets should not be rewarded. Rewarding ownership of useful assets incentivises development and production of useful assets.

And I agree that many wall street speculants now produce nothing, and stock market should return to its roots - for a start I would ban crazy derivatives of derivatives and micro transactions.

But there is nothing wrong with legit stock market or normal ownership of a successful company.


ideas, know-how are all labor.

Yet you want to steal from those who acquired what they have by ideas and trading with voluntary contracts (company owners).
Just because capital was acquired mainly by previous labor or trade does not mean you can steal it.


Risk is something else, but its bullshit, if a company owner fails he can sell his company and live ok, invest in something else, the workers however loose all source of income, even if they had nothing to do with the downfall.

selling company and living OK or investing in something else does not sound like much of a failure.

If thats the case, why workers wont become company owners?

And in social democracy with welfare, workers DONT loose all source of income, you are talking about laissez-faire capitalism.


You know what in Monarchies Kings also risked a lot when they went to war, they could loose their kingships, does'nt justify their monarchies.

Monarchies and kings were bad because they had absolute power over their people, even power to infringe upon fundamental rights such as right to live, and often used this power (dictatorship).

This is not the case with capitalists under social democracy, everyone has fundamental rights.

[Baseball]

[
QUOTE=RGacky3;2231825]Not really, take the apple farm, you just end the laws, and people can pick their own apples,

Most people do not live within easy commute of apple orchards. And those who do, do not always have time to go pick their own.


or hte workers that pick the apples

yep, that would be the obvious solution to the above problem; labor whose job it is to pick apples.


get the full profit.

They receive the value of their labor to the process.


If the owner contributed something usefull,

Most likely the owner cared for the trees (arranged for the fertilizer and the like), organized the sale and distribution of the apples, and of course assumed the risk that the value of the apples is greater than the costs associated with growing them.


maybe they'll give him a cut to do it.

Maybe make him a wage slave.

[RGacky3]

No, in the absence of state private property develops naturally, since wealth in born in private (individual) hands. History has shown us that overwhelming majority of societies beyond tribal levels of development recognised private property and the crime of theft. Exceptions were rare and temporary.


Actually not really, most societies had property entirely under the authority of the church/temple or the state.

Infact capitalist style property is relatively new.


It takes state to breach it without consequences (taxes). In the absence of state owners would defend their property and anarchocapitalism would ensue since people who own useful property have on average always more power than thos who dont (altrough any anarchy is always temporary until the most poverful entity in a society defeats/absorbs all others and dictatorship develops).


It does'nt take the state to breach it, the state could just say "we no longer recognize corporations" and there we go, or they could juts say "we no longer recognize land ownership" and its quickly finished.

AnarchoCapitalism is a contradiction in terms.

Anarchy is temporary because OUTSIDE FORCES have taken over, its never been becuase of some internal character taking over. Its always been quite literally, outside armies from nations.


When you dont provide better service (value/price ratio) than public option yes. Where is the problem?

We have public healthcare, but there are still private hospitals which provide top-notch care, but for direct payment. So its possible for competition to exist in such an environment, you just have to provide far better services than public option.


Sure ... but I guarnatee you those private hospitals get tons of government subsidies and protections, if they did'nt they probably would'nt survive.


Implying ownership of useful assets should not be rewarded. Rewarding ownership of useful assets incentivises development and production of useful assets.


Why should ownership sould be rewarded? Owning something does'nt do anything other than restrict other people from use.

We should reward development and production, not ownership, most of the Capitalist economy is people owning getting the reward and people producing getting the crums.


And I agree that many wall street speculants now produce nothing, and stock market should return to its roots - for a start I would ban crazy derivatives of derivatives and micro transactions.


The Stock markets roots are what lead to the wallstreet we have now, this hyper cpaitalism is the natural outcome of capitalism, you can't turn the clock back.

Sure Ban derivatives, but the base of the problem is still there.


But there is nothing wrong with legit stock market or normal ownership of a successful company.


Actually there is when that company is required to create continual profits for stockholders who have no stake in the company other than profits, that creates the need for perpetual growth ending up in economic crisis, or bubbles that end up in crisis.


Yet you want to steal from those who acquired what they have by ideas and trading with voluntary contracts (company owners).
Just because capital was acquired mainly by previous labor or trade does not mean you can steal it.


Actually the people who benefit from ideas under capitalism are the ones who finance them, not the ones who have the ideas, and these contracts were not volutary, its basically not develop your idea, or develop your idea nd give us 90% of hte profit.

BTW, its not stealing to give capital back to its legitimate owners, i.e. the workers.

Also if you think people in capitalism are rewarded faily ... Why not have compensation be democratically decided? If CEOs are worth what they paythemselves, then put it up to a vote.


selling company and living OK or investing in something else does not sound like much of a failure.


yes, if the company fales, and you strip it, the company has failed, but the capitalist has not, because he still get the money, if he ran the company bad, he gest away ok and the workers suffer.

What kind of incentive system is that?


If thats the case, why workers wont become company owners?


Because they dont have the money idiot.


And in social democracy with welfare, workers DONT loose all source of income, you are talking about laissez-faire capitalism.


yes, they become welfare recipients, great.


Monarchies and kings were bad because they had absolute power over their people, even power to infringe upon fundamental rights such as right to live, and often used this power (dictatorship).

This is not the case with capitalists under social democracy, everyone has fundamental rights.

Actually the monarch just is excercizing his property rights :).

Social democracy (the type you like), is like giving morphine to a cancer patient, but not treating the cancer.

[Maslo]

BTW, its not stealing because the workers are producing all the profit.

They work without machines and means of production provided by owners? The company would exist even when owners never existed?


Because its the only thing that actually creates the commodities. ideas/know how are part of the labor. also labor creates the technology and the means of production.

So before the owner of a company employed first wage worker, there was no means of production? How can worker produce anything then? First there was means of production provided and payed by the company owner, then the workers were employed. Not the other way around.


So your not for a progressive tax?

Depends on the actual implementation. I support the idea, but in practice flat tax rate often proves advantageous for economy because of bureucratic simplicity and less risk of tax evasion, as was proven in our tax reform in 1998. I would maybe support continuous progressive tax, but not income brackets.

My proposal for welfare and tax system posted earlier has effective continuous progressive tax - tax rate is flat, but there is negative income tax up to middle class which makes the system progressive.


Your definition of theft is dependant on your definition of valid property, I don't consider land and capital property to be valid property.

The problem is that anything can be classified as capital with enough fantasy. If someone uses his car for obtaining profit, say as a taxi driver, his car is his capital. Is it not his valid property?

You can define that property rights are only negated if you rent the thing to others to produce profit. But if you want to be internally consistent, you must make any borrowing for mutually agreed compensation illegal. Now that surely requires powerful and repressive state to enforce, so its incompatible with your anarchism.

It simply does not make sense to arbitrarily exclude "means of production" from property rights, while keeping other things in. Especially not if you are an anarchist.
In anarchy, either most people would be able to enforce their property rights, regardless of if the thing in question is "means of production" or not, or thieves would win, and stealing would ensue regardless if thing in question can be used as a "means of production" or not. Thieves would then become owners and the cycle repreats.


The capitalist only contribute the capital and finances ... which they gained from exploiting workers.

Implying they havent gained it by themselves. Many people become enterpreneurs and start to employ people when they acquire starting capital by being employees, or they borrow it. And the capitalist often contributed also ideas and know-how.


If there was a capialist rapture tomomrow (and all their capital and finances were left behind) the world economy would work absolutely fine, if all the plumbers were raptured tommorw (and all their tools left behind) the world woul have a major problem.

If capital (machines, factories, means of production) disappeared, we would have a major problem. The same with workers.

If the money dissapeared, economy would also have a big problem - monetary deflation is the cause of economic crises after all. And I am sure people who have some savings would also be deeply affected. :P

[RGacky3]

They work without machines and means of production provided by owners? The company would exist even when owners never existed?


Yes actually, because the owners did'nt create the means of production, other workers did, owners are just middle men.


So before the owner of a company employed first wage worker, there was no means of production? How can worker produce anything then? First there was means of production provided and payed by the company owner, then the workers were employed. Not the other way around.


No, because workers created means of production.


Depends on the actual implementation. I support the idea, but in practice flat tax rate often proves advantageous for economy because of bureucratic simplicity and less risk of tax evasion, as was proven in our tax reform in 1998. I would maybe support continuous progressive tax, but not income brackets.


Actually, it has many disadvantages, for example its on wohle regressive (A progressive tax, plus salves tax = regressive) and thus hurts demand.

Tax evasion happens no matter what, as long as rich people can afford accountants and offshore accounts its gonna happen.


The problem is that anything can be classified as capital with enough fantasy. If someone uses his car for obtaining profit, say as a taxi driver, his car is his capital. Is it not his valid property?


Well, thats something that should be up to the electorate, and yes it is technically his capital, but he's not depriving anyone else of it, and it a non-exploitative enterprise. He's doing the work and getting the revenue.


You can define that property rights are only negated if you rent the thing to others to produce profit. But if you want to be internally consistent, you must make any borrowing for mutually agreed compensation illegal. Now that surely requires powerful and repressive state to enforce, so its incompatible with your anarchism.


Property rights are 100% accountable to the public good, if its personal property, i.e. your not depriving anything of anyone, and it does'nt need special property laws, then I think it should be ok.

Borrowing is unneccessary when everyone has access to resrouces and means of production, but I have no problem with not-for profit community banks.

It does'nt require a repressive state at all, infact a state is required to enforce contracts, and to enforce property enough to hte point where borrowing at such an interest rate where it could be profitable becomes a phemonomon.


It simply does not make sense to arbitrarily exclude "means of production" from property rights, while keeping other things in.

Absolutely it does, if it needs special property laws, then its not property, nad property rights should be entirely subject to social accountability and review.


In anarchy, either most people would be able to enforce their property rights, regardless of if the thing in question is "means of production" or not, or thieves would win, and stealing would ensue regardless if thing in question can be used as a "means of production" or not. Thieves would then become owners and the cycle repreats.


Well too bad that was'nt the case in every example of social-anarchist.

BTW, I'm much more of a syndicalist socialist than an anarchist.


Implying they havent gained it by themselves. Many people become enterpreneurs and start to employ people when they acquire starting capital by being employees, or they borrow it. And the capitalist often contributed also ideas and know-how.


Often ... Actually rarely, btw, most cpaitalist nowerdays, and the most powerful capitalist are finance capitalists, that do not innovate or produce.

BTW, if enterpreneurs actually did contribute alot to the company by innovating, I'm sure when compensation is democratically decided amung hte workers that will be taken into account :).

But if you have a capitalist choosing the compensation by himself, chances are other peoples innovation won't get ocmpensaited fairly, and he'll always be paid the most. The evidence for this is all around.


If capital (machines, factories, means of production) disappeared, we would have a major problem. The same with workers.


yeah, but capitalist don't make machines or factories or means of production do they, they just own them.


If the money dissapeared, economy would also have a big problem - monetary deflation is the cause of economic crises after all. And I am sure people who have some savings would also be affected.

if all the money dissapeared, yes you'd have a problem, not deflation, but the collapse of an excahnge system, but soon after production would resume and people would find another way to distribute resrouces, capital and commodities.

THe point is Capitalist and bankers don't do shit. What they own does shit, if they all died, and their stuff stayed beyind, we'd be fine, not so with workers.

[Tim Cornelis]

Explain the rationale for this: "If the marginal productivity was correct it would mean the increase in wages would increase in proportion to the increase in labour productivity, i.e. if labour productivity rose by 5% wages will correspondingly rise. "

It does not make sense. If labor productivity rises, but demand for workers falls, or number of available workers increases (supply), its perfectly possible for wages to fall or not increase. Its not incompatible with marginal theory of value, labor behaves simply as another commodity.

LTV assumes labor is somehow special, but there is no reason why price of goods should depend only on labor, and not on for example know-how, technology, capital and most importantly, demand. Especially in an economy where human labor becomes increasingly substituted by robots.

Marginal productivity argues wages are reflected by productivity of the worker, hence the more productive the higher the wages. You cannot tell me that when real wages are continually falling while labour productivity is continually rising this does not contradict the theory that wages are reflected by productivity.

Which is a complete strawman argument.


LTV assumes labor is somehow special, but there is no reason why price of goods should depend only on labor, and not on for example know-how, technology, capital and most importantly, demand. Especially in an economy where human labor becomes increasingly substituted by robots.

Which is a complete strawman argument. Indeed, the LTV assumes only human labour can create value. The Labour Theory of Value is a theory of value, not of price. Although they are closely tied they are not identical. The LTV does not ignore demand, that's a strawman.

See: http://anarchism.pageabode.com/blogs/afaq/secCapp.html question: 3.1 Doesn't the labour theory of value ignore demand?


Especially in an economy where human labor becomes increasingly substituted by robots.

Yes, and LTV-advocates will argue that since robots replace human labour profits tend to fall because less value is created. This is because even automated factories have to keep their prices low in order to say competitive. And less labour costs means automated factories can lower their prices. But other factories will soon follow and automate their factories so they can lower their prices and prices will drop industry-wide and as a result profits. At least that's the argument as I know it. But I'm no advocate of the LTV

And I don't see how "know-how" increases or decreases value or price.

If I am intelligent and I create toys and my mentally challenged co-worker creates identical toys the prices for each will be the identical. Or is that not what you meant?

------------------------------------------
And this is by the way a lil' bit derailing the thread.

Capitalism sucks because it's survival of the fittest.
Social capitalism attempts to diminish the social ills, but can only do so by coercively imposing restraints--which limit freedom also.
And the business cycles continue.

Socialism:
full employment.
humans are more important than the profits of the few.
Workers have more freedom because of the absence of an obnoxious authority figure in the workplace.

[Skooma Addict]

He was calling capitalism economic dictatorship.

Ideological rhetoric with no substance.


anyone who is willing to keep the economical system the way it is right now support in some way a form of dictatorship, economic dictatorship that is.

Sorry for being anti-dictatorship, i guess its beccause i am a vile extremist if i believe in freedom and democracy.

and please dont bring me that crap about how i can quit a buisness and work for a coop, beccause that wont change a damn thing about the impact and inflience the economical system have on my environnement.

Its like Hotel California, you can check out anytime you want, but you can never leave.

I fail to see where the dictatorship element comes into play.

[Maslo]

Yes actually, because the owners did'nt create the means of production, other workers did, owners are just middle men.

Implying it would have happened in reality without the "middle men" providing the initiative, idea, and money. Often also a lot of work (many enterpreneurs are self employed before they start to employ other people).


No, because workers created means of production.

Not alone, otherwise they would not wait for the capitalist to provide "something" to enable them to do it.


Actually, it has many disadvantages, for example its on wohle regressive (A progressive tax, plus salves tax = regressive) and thus hurts demand.

I dont agree with sales tax, I prefer only one tax - income tax. That would be ideal.


Tax evasion happens no matter what, as long as rich people can afford accountants and offshore accounts its gonna happen.

Progressive taxation increases motivation for tax evasion. When our progressive tax system was replaces with flat tax, tax revenue actually increased, because it was no longer worth to optimalize.
Progressive taxation sounds good in theory, but practical effects are often different, when you take human psychology into account, humans are not robots.
That actually summarizes whats also wrong with socialism. :thumbup1:


Well, thats something that should be up to the electorate, and yes it is technically his capital, but he's not depriving anyone else of it, and it a non-exploitative enterprise. He's doing the work and getting the revenue.

Should electorate have the right to steal a car from a taxi driver? Thats totalitarian. How can you be an anarchist and support this? Anarchist is anti-government and pro individual personal rights and freedoms. Just because the government is democratic does not mean its no longer government.

Thats the hypocrisy of left-anarchism - arche (government, coercion force) is all right, as long as its majority controlled and opresses the minority. At least anarchocapitalists truly value individual rights and freedoms over any arche, regardless of who controls it.


Property rights are 100% accountable to the public good, if its personal property, i.e. your not depriving anything of anyone, and it does'nt need special property laws, then I think it should be ok.

Borrowing is unneccessary when everyone has access to resrouces and means of production, but I have no problem with not-for profit community banks.

It does'nt require a repressive state at all, infact a state is required to enforce contracts, and to enforce property enough to hte point where borrowing at such an interest rate where it could be profitable becomes a phemonomon.

In the absence of state anyone with weapons or money (for mercenaries) would be able to enforce any contracts and private property rights he wants. They only ones who would not have property rights properly enforced would be the lower class.
The notion that people would not defend what they think is their in the absence of state is illogical. I certainly would.


Absolutely it does, if it needs special property laws, then its not property, nad property rights should be entirely subject to social accountability and review.

Social accountability and review implies coercion force controlled by democracy - state.


yeah, but capitalist don't make machines or factories or means of production do they, they just own them.

They initially made them / bought them. You are implying something which you bought or made should be taken from you against your will - theft.


THe point is Capitalist and bankers don't do shit. What they own does shit, if they all died, and their stuff stayed beyind, we'd be fine, not so with workers.

And over time another capitalist class would emerge from former workers / self-employed.

[Maslo]

Marginal productivity argues wages are reflected by productivity of the worker, hence the more productive the higher the wages. You cannot tell me that when real wages are continually falling while labour productivity is continually rising this does not contradict the theory that wages are reflected by productivity.

Wages are determined by more than marginal productivity - demand for workers (falling with automatisation) and supply of workers (increasing with population increase and immigration). Therefore wages can fall even when marginal productivity rises.

[CommunityBeliever]

Progressive taxation sounds good in theory, but practical effects are often different, when you take human psychology into account, humans are not robots.
That actually summarizes whats also wrong with socialism. :thumbup1:A fundamental advantage of socialism is that it actually does take human psychology into account.

[RGacky3]

Implying it would have happened in reality without the "middle men" providing the initiative, idea, and money. Often also a lot of work (many enterpreneurs are self employed before they start to employ other people).


The only applicible part of that is the money, which is really a non starter, I say the finances should be socialized so society doesn't rely on people with money to start buisinesses. If no middle men existed, and the money was there socially, it would work just fine.

The vast majority of hte economy is made up of huge corporations, not self-employed mom and pops.


Not alone, otherwise they would not wait for the capitalist to provide "something" to enable them to do it.


That "something" is the money, the capitalist have the money, thus thats they get to choose what is produced and what is'nt, who is employed and who is'nt.

If we gave that decision to the people we'd have a much better system.


Progressive taxation increases motivation for tax evasion. When our progressive tax system was replaces with flat tax, tax revenue actually increased, because it was no longer worth to optimalize.
Progressive taxation sounds good in theory, but practical effects are often different, when you take human psychology into account, humans are not robots.
That actually summarizes whats also wrong with socialism. :thumbup1:


It summarizes whats wrong with socialism, if you have no idea with socialism is, socialism is democratic control of the economy.

So your for a flat tax? What do you think that will do to demand?

BTW, slovakia is a new economy, so its had time to grow, also its at around 12% unemployment, the flat tax probably boosted foreign investment, which of coarse will have short term benefits, but int hte long run will hurt demand and stagnate wages.

progressive taxation has nothing to do with socialism, know what your arguing against, socialism is democratic control of the economy.


Should electorate have the right to steal a car from a taxi driver? Thats totalitarian. How can you be an anarchist and support this? Anarchist is anti-government and pro individual personal rights and freedoms. Just because the government is democratic does not mean its no longer government.


Probably not, but its perfectly legitimate for societal regulations on the car.


Thats the hypocrisy of left-anarchism - arche (government, coercion force) is all right, as long as its majority controlled and opresses the minority. At least anarchocapitalists truly value individual rights and freedoms over any arche, regardless of who controls it.


Anarchism is against unjust power, which includes state and capital power, when it comes to choosing between un-accountable capitalist power and democratic power I pick democratic.

Anarcho-Capitalists live in lala land, and don't realize that capitalism is a state construct. They are also perfectly fine with a situation where someone owns land and thus controls the lives of any one in the land, which is monarchy, but as long as its not a democratic institution they are fine with it.


In the absence of state anyone with weapons or money (for mercenaries) would be able to enforce any contracts and private property rights he wants. They only ones who would not have property rights properly enforced would be the lower class.
The notion that people would not defend what they think is their in the absence of state is illogical. I certainly would.


No because the person with weapons would have to contend against the whole society, also money only works if its universally recognized.

The notion that a minority would be able to take control without authortarian structures like capitalist property and the state to back it is ludicris.


Social accountability and review implies coercion force controlled by democracy - state.


Not really, if your in a group and acting like a dick going around kicking people in the shin, your gonna get stopped by the rest of the people, thats not a state. If your in a group and splitting a Pizza, your not gonna be able to take all the slices, because other people won't let you.

The only way you'll take all the slices is if you have something backing you up that stops the other people from stopping you.


They initially made them / bought them. You are implying something which you bought or made should be taken from you against your will - theft.


Not made them/bought them, BOUGHT THEM, we are talking about the real world here.

I'm implying that the capitalist system is a totally unjust one and that the market is unjust considering its controlled by the wealthy, who gian their money from exploitation.

So yeah, if they bought them with money they extracted with surplus labor, which is almost universally the truth, I advocate taking it from them.

Because guess what property rights are, and always have been granted by either states or societies.


And over time another capitalist class would emerge from former workers / self-employed.

Never happened in hte past, never will, especially if workplaces and economies are democratic.

Its like saying a monarchy will grow out of a dictatorship.

BTW, forget the moralizing, how about the fact that Capitalism simply does'nt work, and all the internal contradictions neccessarily cause it to fail after concentrating wealth, and the fact that social-capitalism does'nt fix these contradictions at all, it juts tries to treat the symptoms. How about the fact that capitalism necessarily leads to huge inequality, and ultimately power inequality, plutocracy an then collapse?

We can argue ethics till we are blue in the face it does'nt change the reality of the situation.

[Demogorgon]

Progressive taxation increases motivation for tax evasion. When our progressive tax system was replaces with flat tax, tax revenue actually increased, because it was no longer worth to optimalize.
Progressive taxation sounds good in theory, but practical effects are often different, when you take human psychology into account, humans are not robots.

I can't remember the details of Slovakia's tax system, but I am guessing it is not overly different from other Eastern European shifts to a flat tax. Where revenue increases it is usually because a flat tax means a tax rise for most people. That is to say the new flat tax is higher than the basic rate of tax under the previous system. Not to mention flat taxes are usually supplemented by Value Added Taxes.

Moreover tax revenue always increases (minus a big tax cut) when the economy is growing and Slovakia's economy grows steadily, but thanks to a strong export economy, not the tax system.

Empirical evidence around the world shows that flat taxes will not in fact see much benefit for anyone besides those receiving major tax cuts.

[kerryhall]

That's not true, revisionist social democracy has failed. The idea that you can unleash market forces and use the state to address the problems has been found unworkable- have you not been paying attention over the last 30 years of reaction to revisionist social democracy?


Can you give as many examples of this as possible? You can be concise too, just brief bullet points, I can research them more on my own, I just need examples to give to people.

Thanks!

[KxWaal]

Social capitalism does not deal with the issue of hierarchy, which is one of the main issues us Anarchists have with capitalism.

[Platonic Sword]

I'd like to see the data that supports this assertion. As far as I know, the welfare states of Europe are paid for through taxation or through government borrowing. How does the super exploitation of workers in Indonesia by corporations like Disney, Nike, etc., help to support the welfare regimes of Europeans and Americans?

I think they subscribe to dependency theory. Apparently it's making a comeback after 2008.

[RGacky3]

I think they subscribe to dependency theory. Apparently it's making a comeback after 2008.

Really? Dependency theory?

Capitalism as a whole is dependant on the state.