How Will Communism Differ...

[Publius]

...from socialism?

Under socialism, people have been given things for free; under communism people would be given necessities for free.

I understand the differences between the two, but why couldn't socialism provide for the common good but communism could?

How can "give out free shit" be a bad principal under socialism, but an ideal one under communism?

Can the removal of government make that much of a difference? I don't see how the existence or non-existence of a government greatly effects the actual production and distribution of commodities.

Why then am I to believe said distribution would be different, or better, under communism?

[Eleutherios]

You don't see the difference between a representative government distributing the resources and a decentralized, directly-democratic collection of worker's councils doing it?

[Whitten]

In the end the primary difference is that a centralised state is not going to be able t tell people their exact needs, and so meet them inefficiantly

[Connolly]

To be honest publius, and im sure you know - this is the most "scrapped" about thing that leftists talk about. Whether we require a state or not during and after revolution.

The difference - first off between the socialsim and communism is the existance of the state under socialism (that is debatable).

The second - is the existance of bourgeois opposition to the newly established social relations - this opposition - if it is to be bourgeois (by definition) must require a state, as without a state - the bourgeois have nothing to justify their existance as owners of the production. If under socialism, a bourgeois state dose not exist in opposition - then the opposition that remains - will be fellow proletariat. Whether anarchist, Marxist - or whatever - this factor is accepted to be socialism.


I understand the differences between the two, but why couldn't socialism provide for the common good but communism could?

As in - why not just stick with socialism - if it is just as good?

Socialism is just a title to a transitionary phase which includes both the establishment of proletarian production relations - but also the existance of pro bourgeois reaction (be it by a bourgeois state or just proletariat).

So communism has the same production relations - but no reactionary opposition left.

So both provide for the common good - one with (as Janus called it) 'strife', the other without.


How can "give out free shit" be a bad principal under socialism, but an ideal one under communism?

I wouldnt agree with that. Proletarian production relations are proletarian production relations - no matter if communism or socialism. "Free" shit would be given out under both.


Can the removal of government make that much of a difference? I don't see how the existence or non-existence of a government greatly effects the actual production and distribution of commodities.

The purpose of the government (state) is to protect and justify the bourgeois property relations, and therefore, their control over the systems of production.

The removal of the bourgeois state removes the existance of the bourgeois themselves, and from that, their production relations which are inherently restrictive. Putting proletarian production relations in place removes these restrictions on production - allowing surplus (depending on how advanced they are at the time) amounts to be produced.

So the removal of the state allows for the old, inherently flawed, production relations to be broken.

As it stands today (even), we continuosly produce more than what bourgeois restrictions allow. Such as milk for example, which when overproduced here in Ireland - is poured away down the drain due to milk caps farmers must obey for the purposes of maintaining milk prices on the market.

As of now - it is difficult to predict whether production could ever reach a stage in which surplus is produced for everything. However, unless we are to believe humanities production potential has reached its maximum - there is no reason why we shouldnt.

The developments of automated production, removing the old and inefficient methods of manual labour - are very promising.

The development - to the capitalists favour initally - of renewable energy, renewable resources (metals, plastics, paper, wood even) and the simple development for production to remain sustainable and even more productive - is also very promising.

As Redstar 2000 said many a time, and of course Marx believed, we need to be able to produce more then whats needed for general consumption.

It is the removal of scarcity which solves a most fundamental problem - greed.

This is why many still believe human greed exists :rolleyes: - they say -" look at the USSR (or whatever social experiment), people couldnt overcome greed - its naturally inherent".

What they fail to notice is that the Soviet Union could not provide for its people. You see the usual western propaganda on TV, showing people only getting a loaf of bread for the day, when the state was spending on weapons. No doubt this was true - but that shows us that fundamental problem of scarcity was not solved, and therefore greed existed. And it must exist - as long as our productive forces can not provide.

The nonexistance of human greed as a human characteristic can be seen on a daily basis - its nothing but a myth.


Why then am I to believe said distribution would be different, or better, under communism?

Because it would be based on need, in that, greed no longer exists.

[Si Pinto]

Good post Red Banner.

I think this sort of discussion raises important questions about the revolution and the creating of the communist world.

Most people on this board seem to think that one day there will be a revolution (I'm one of them), but some seem to think that the day the revolution wins, that night they will go to bed and the next morning there will be a communist world.

i.e. - without transition.

It simply isn't going to happen that way. The practicalities of the capitalist framework won't work for a communist system and changes can't be effected overnight. It will take quite a while to redistribute the resources out to everyone, and get the framework in place to keep that happening.

Industries and businesses that previously worked for a profit would work on a supply and demand basis, this requires a large overhaul of the current logistical techniques, which would also need to take account of climate control.

Providing universal health care to everyone will involve some pretty large scale reorgainising, retraining etc.

These are just a few of the physical practicalities we face on revolution day +1.

There are also the long term educational issues, a post revolution world would be taught the basic subjects obviously, but History, Economics, Law, Social Sciences, Ecological studies etc would be totally different. We would also be responsible for teaching capitalism out of the children, for instance, a 11 year old child, midway through his/her basic education when the revolution comes, will have pretty drastic changes made to his/her curriculum or at least in terms of content anyway.

Now some people on this board also seem to think that all this can be done 'en masse' without the need for controls or commitees.

This again is wrong, it simply can't happen that way, do people really expect us to hold a referendum everytime a.....warehouse needed building....or a new product needed developing.

Commitees would be required to oversee most things in the period of transition between the capitalist system we've just defeated in our revolution and the communist world we aim to create in it's place.

These commitees would be elected by the people and would have no 'perks' at all, and they would only have a mandate to get the job they were set up for done, in the best and most efficient way possible. Once this was done the commitee would disband.

Now we can speculate as to how long this transition would take, my guess would be some years, possibly a generation, before everything is in place, and 'up and running'.

But the point is that a transitional period is inevitable and to think otherwise is to be unprepared for Revolution Day +1.

Now I wouldn't call this transitional period 'socialism' as such, but in practicality it would be similar, it would even have to deal with those people (call them bourgoise or capitalists, whatever you want) who reject our move towards our communist system.

[ebeneezer]

I'll tell you how communism will differ from socialism. Socialism will continue killing people, tossing the milk down the drain and stepping on initiative in order to deliver an ineffective health system which remains unable to cure serious ailments and a sordid ineffective educational system which fails to deliver an education within a reasonable timeframe. School hours/years are instead based around the idea of providing union jobs for the boys delinquent teachers who are not much good for anything else.

Communism will never exist so there is nothing to compare this hell to. Thats the difference.

[Dean]

The argument abot giving free shti misses the core principle of socialism and communism.

They will and can be better because under such a humanistic philosophy intra-personal relationships are governed by the idea "we are the caretakers of each other" as opposed to the current idea, which is that we are and sshould be enemies. In such a setup, those who wish to "loaf around" are considered psychology unhealthy; under the socialst system, where Marx's "new man" is rearing his head, we become more attached to our production - but still more important and compelling, our fellow man. We experience true love, not simply for the other man but as received from men.

In a word, we learn that love is freedom.

The benefits of this ideology are clear and obviously humanistic and viable.

[Connolly]

I'll tell you how communism will differ from socialism. Socialism will continue killing people, tossing the milk down the drain and stepping on initiative in order to deliver an ineffective health system which remains unable to cure serious ailments and a sordid ineffective educational system which fails to deliver an education within a reasonable timeframe. School hours/years are instead based around the idea of providing union jobs for the boys delinquent teachers who are not much good for anything else.

Communism will never exist so there is nothing to compare this hell to. Thats the difference.

Great arguments ebeneezer. Its a real pitty you dont actually know what the definition of socialism is :rolleyes: - they could have meant something :lol:

[Publius]

You don't see the difference between a representative government distributing the resources and a decentralized, directly-democratic collection of worker's councils doing it?

I see the difference in the means, but I don't see how the intent differs, or how the ends would differ.

[Si Pinto]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 09:20 PM

You don't see the difference between a representative government distributing the resources and a decentralized, directly-democratic collection of worker's councils doing it?

I see the difference in the means, but I don't see how the intent differs, or how the ends would differ.
One basic difference is that the workers council (I call it a commitee) will only have a mandate to do the job it was set up to do, once that task was complete they would disband.

Whereas a 'government' implies that this group of people would have control of all aspects of the society, or most of them anyway, for whatever length of time they were in power.

One interesting thing about governments (be them cappie or socialist) is that they generally break up into commitees anyway when involved in the different aspects of governance.

[Publius]

Socialism is just a title to a transitionary phase which includes both the establishment of proletarian production relations - but also the existance of pro bourgeois reaction (be it by a bourgeois state or just proletariat).

So communism has the same production relations - but no reactionary opposition left.

So both provide for the common good - one with (as Janus called it) 'strife', the other without.

But in order to demolish the state, you would have to functionally destroy the society.

I can't imagine, for the life of me, the people saying "Government's doing great, now let's scrap it."

Even granting success as far as socialism, I see no impetus to destroy that social order and move forward.

People only revolt if they're pissed; they won't be pissed under socialism, right?

You're positing revolution based on 'classes', which is just absurd. People don't care about 'class' as long as they aren't directly harmed, and I can't see that they would be.

In fact, I imagine running an economy without a central system would be even more difficult and less efficient.

Any way you look at it, some central system needs to be set up to tally things.



The purpose of the government (state) is to protect and justify the bourgeois property relations, and therefore, their control over the systems of production.

The removal of the bourgeois state removes the existance of the bourgeois themselves, and from that, their production relations which are inherently restrictive. Putting proletarian production relations in place removes these restrictions on production - allowing surplus (depending on how advanced they are at the time) amounts to be produced.

So the removal of the state allows for the old, inherently flawed, production relations to be broken.

Why?

You could easily distribute goods the same with a state, and democratic control, if that were your goal.

And any difficulties you would have would exist under communism; what's the difference, really?



As it stands today (even), we continuosly produce more than what bourgeois restrictions allow. Such as milk for example, which when overproduced here in Ireland - is poured away down the drain due to milk caps farmers must obey for the purposes of maintaining milk prices on the market.

I understand this, but this is a governmental scheme that could easily be done away with.



As of now - it is difficult to predict whether production could ever reach a stage in which surplus is produced for everything. However, unless we are to believe humanities production potential has reached its maximum - there is no reason why we shouldnt.

The developments of automated production, removing the old and inefficient methods of manual labour - are very promising.

The development - to the capitalists favour initally - of renewable energy, renewable resources (metals, plastics, paper, wood even) and the simple development for production to remain sustainable and even more productive - is also very promising.

As Redstar 2000 said many a time, and of course Marx believed, we need to be able to produce more then whats needed for general consumption.

It is the removal of scarcity which solves a most fundamental problem - greed.

But this seems to me to be a non-answer.

"Given that the economy advances enough to give everyone enough of everything to please them, the economy would be perfect, therefore, communism is perfect!"

See the logic flaw here?

None is disputing that an economy like that would be idea; but what are you really saying other than that 'a perfect economy would be perfect'?



This is why many still believe human greed exists :rolleyes: - they say -" look at the USSR (or whatever social experiment), people couldnt overcome greed - its naturally inherent".

What they fail to notice is that the Soviet Union could not provide for its people. You see the usual western propaganda on TV, showing people only getting a loaf of bread for the day, when the state was spending on weapons. No doubt this was true - but that shows us that fundamental problem of scarcity was not solved, and therefore greed existed. And it must exist - as long as our productive forces can not provide.

The nonexistance of human greed as a human characteristic can be seen on a daily basis - its nothing but a myth.

I disagree.

Humans can be shown to be greedy in many areas.

It's a natural vice, part of the human psychology. If humans fear a shortage, they'll hoard, irrationally.

Now I know it's part of the communist philosophy that greed can just be done away with, but that's simply non-sense.

Unless you can give everyone everything they want, greed will exist.

[Publius]

One basic difference is that the workers council (I call it a commitee) will only have a mandate to do the job it was set up to do, once that task was complete they would disband.

Why disband it if it's working properly?

[ZeroPain]

tossing the milk down the drain

Just like how depression era farmers burned tomato’s to keep the price high?

[chimx]

i can't for the life of me think of a time when a socialist government has ever worked properly.

[Si Pinto]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 10:06 PM


One basic difference is that the workers council (I call it a commitee) will only have a mandate to do the job it was set up to do, once that task was complete they would disband.

Why disband it if it's working properly?
Well why not?

The point is that a commitee, setup to do a particular task would be made up of people trained and skilled in that task.

So for example..a commitee set up to build some warehouses and food storage areas in a place that needed them would consist of architects, engineers, food hygiene people, construction workers etc.

This should ensure that the job was done as speedily and as efficiently as possible.

Once that job was done ...in that particular area..they have no other role. So they disband.

If the same job was required in another area on the other side of the world then obviously different people would be required but with the same skills, and this would be important so as to maintain the various skill levels across the world rather than have a 'governing body' that is neither skilled nor equipped to do the jobs required but simply sits 'in governance'.

Publius - If I may, I'd just like to say that it's a relief to have a decent discussion with someone on OI rather than the rabid bullshit I normally have to wade through. At least your asking serious and fundemental questions. I appreciate it.

[ebeneezer]

Publius - If I may, I'd just like to say that it's a relief to have a decent discussion with someone on OI rather than the rabid bullshit I normally have to wade through. At least your asking serious and fundemental questions. I appreciate it.

Thats because he's not allowed to do anymore than ask or you hit the roof eh?

[Si Pinto]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 11:30 PM

Publius - If I may, I'd just like to say that it's a relief to have a decent discussion with someone on OI rather than the rabid bullshit I normally have to wade through. At least your asking serious and fundemental questions. I appreciate it.

Thats because he's not allowed to do anymore than ask or you hit the roof eh?
From the sublime to the ridiculous... :rolleyes:

So what are you here for?

Judging by your other posts it certainly isn't 'open and learned discourse'.

and you'd KNOW if I hit the roof

[ebeneezer]

Originally posted by Si Pinto+Jul 22 2006, 11:35 PM--> (Si Pinto @ Jul 22 2006, 11:35 PM)
[email protected] 22 2006, 11:30 PM

Publius - If I may, I'd just like to say that it's a relief to have a decent discussion with someone on OI rather than the rabid bullshit I normally have to wade through. At least your asking serious and fundemental questions. I appreciate it.

Thats because he's not allowed to do anymore than ask or you hit the roof eh?
From the sublime to the ridiculous... :rolleyes:

So what are you here for?

Judging by your other posts it certainly isn't 'open and learned discourse'.

and you'd KNOW if I hit the roof [/b]
Oh really? How would I know?

[Si Pinto]

Originally posted by ebeneezer+Jul 22 2006, 11:47 PM--> (ebeneezer @ Jul 22 2006, 11:47 PM)
Originally posted by Si [email protected] 22 2006, 11:35 PM

[email protected] 22 2006, 11:30 PM

Publius - If I may, I'd just like to say that it's a relief to have a decent discussion with someone on OI rather than the rabid bullshit I normally have to wade through. At least your asking serious and fundemental questions. I appreciate it.

Thats because he's not allowed to do anymore than ask or you hit the roof eh?
From the sublime to the ridiculous... :rolleyes:

So what are you here for?

Judging by your other posts it certainly isn't 'open and learned discourse'.

and you'd KNOW if I hit the roof
Oh really? How would I know? [/b]
Did you notice how the emphasis was on the word know rather than the word you.

Are you trying to get me banned or something?

[ebeneezer]

Originally posted by Si Pinto+Jul 22 2006, 11:50 PM--> (Si Pinto @ Jul 22 2006, 11:50 PM)
Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 11:47 PM

Originally posted by Si [email protected] 22 2006, 11:35 PM

[email protected] 22 2006, 11:30 PM

Publius - If I may, I'd just like to say that it's a relief to have a decent discussion with someone on OI rather than the rabid bullshit I normally have to wade through. At least your asking serious and fundemental questions. I appreciate it.

Thats because he's not allowed to do anymore than ask or you hit the roof eh?
From the sublime to the ridiculous... :rolleyes:

So what are you here for?

Judging by your other posts it certainly isn't 'open and learned discourse'.

and you'd KNOW if I hit the roof
Oh really? How would I know?
Did you notice how the emphasis was on the word know rather than the word you.

Are you trying to get me banned or something? [/b]
No, I just want to know why would supposedly get upset over a words of capitlaist truth? Cos you know deep down we speak the truth.

[Si Pinto]

Originally posted by [email protected] 22 2006, 11:57 PM
No, I just want to know why would supposedly get upset over a words of capitlaist truth? Cos you know deep down we speak the truth.
Your right :blush: .....absolutely right.. :blush: .....forgive me...I don't know what came over me. :unsure:

Your truth does come from 'deep down'. :)














Out of your fucking arse. <_<

[Comrade-Z]

Under socialism, people have been given things for free; under communism people would be given necessities for free.

Wait a second, when have people ever been able to appropriate products from society as they saw fit? And also, in all the varying definitions of socialism, I have never seen the principle of free appropriation given once.

I think you misunderstand the nature of communist distribution. People would not be "given" things for free--people would "take" as they saw fit. Products would be shipped from the factory to the supermarket (or some other type of distribution point). People would take from the shelves what they saw fit. They would probably either "ring up" the item themselves or get a supermarket worker to do it for them, solely in order to keep track of demand (so that the factory knows how much stuff is being appropriated and thus how much stuff they need to be supplying). There would be no exchange or money involved.


But in order to demolish the state, you would have to functionally destroy the society.

How so? I think you are treating "The State" as a mythical entity. It is an idea for a form of organization under which a ruling class prescribes limits on what everyone else can do. It exists only as long as people adhere to its idea. "The State" has no material existence. Institutions such as the army enforce the rulings of those ruling The State. But when you abolish the army and in its place constitute rotating workers&#39; militias, you don&#39;t abolish the millions of people who materially constituted the army. You just change their relation to society. You change the idea that they adhere to in their behavior and social organization. And, in fact, no one person can accomplish this abolition of the State and change this ideological conception in the minds of all the people affected. Those people affected must, in themselves, change what idea of social organization they adhere to.

So, are you arguing that the new proletarian-run order, with its workers&#39; militias and workers&#39; councils, will be unfit for the task of managing production, distribution, and making sure people don&#39;t rape each other? Fair enough. But I would disagree. After all, you still think that the capitalist class is "fit to rule" and the proletariat is "unfit to rule," and at this point it would appear that most people agree with you on that. A communist is distinguished by the fact that he/she thinks that the capitalist class has become "unfit to rule" and the proletariat "fit to rule."


I can&#39;t imagine, for the life of me, the people saying "Government&#39;s doing great, now let&#39;s scrap it."

Indeed, and as long as the government demonstrates its "fitness to rule," why would people be dissatisfied enough with it to overthrow it?


Even granting success as far as socialism, I see no impetus to destroy that social order and move forward.

Why allow the continued existence of an armed minority that you must obey when its same functions can be accomplished even better through a system that you help control?


People only revolt if they&#39;re pissed; they won&#39;t be pissed under socialism, right?

If they have to continue to endure being threatened and possibly killed by armed men over whom they exercise no control, yeah, they&#39;ll be pissed.

And you seem to assume that the individuals comprising the unrecallable State would allow the continued existence of an egalitarian economic system. They would have both the means (the professional army under their unquestioning command) and the motive (self-interest) to abolish the egalitarian order and re-constitute a class society with themselves as the ruling class controlling the means of production and everyone else as their employees. In fact, just look at the USSR for an example of this.


You&#39;re positing revolution based on &#39;classes&#39;,

OBVIOUSLY&#33;


which is just absurd. People don&#39;t care about &#39;class&#39; as long as they aren&#39;t directly harmed, and I can&#39;t see that they would be.

Obviously, you haven&#39;t experienced life as the lower class if you don&#39;t think they are directly harmed by class society.


In fact, I imagine running an economy without a central system would be even more difficult and less efficient.

Funny, most supporters of capitalism seem to think that centrally-planned economies function much less efficiently than decentralized economies.


Any way you look at it, some central system needs to be set up to tally things.

That can be accomplished, but it doesn&#39;t necessitate a class society with an armed minority swearing alliegiance to an unrecallable elite.


You could easily distribute goods the same with a state, and democratic control, if that were your goal.

Like I said before, if a centralized, unrecallable State still existed, what makes you think that such a State would permit an egalitarian distribution? The State would use its power to grant itself economic priviledge.

And the only way to assure that the "State" would remain democratic would be to make all of the elected officials subject to immediate recall and to abolish the armed forces&#39; unquestioning obedience to those individuals comprising the State. As long as those individuals have the unquestioning obedience of the armed forces, they aren&#39;t going to stand by while they are recalled and voted out of office. They will use their command over the armed forces to maintain their power and economic priviledge.

[red team]

i can&#39;t for the life of me think of a time when a socialist government has ever worked properly.

That&#39;s because most socialist governments happened in countries where you&#39;re confined to operating within the dominant economic paradigm of debt owed for manual labour in the form of money wages. They&#39;re simply redistributing labour and redistributing wages, but operating under the same motive for work which means they can&#39;t think outside the box because the material conditions don&#39;t exist for them to think outside the box.

[Connolly]

Ok, I feel, looking at your original post - and the responses of others - I have missed the actual questions you wanted answering, in my initial post. So, I think this will have mixed things up for me a bit. Your question was a little vague to be honest.


But in order to demolish the state, you would have to functionally destroy the society.

Thats what its all about, replacing the old form of society - with its class structures, production relations and state with a new one. I really dont like the way you put it - "destroy society". And, I really dont know what you mean by that. I will continue and hazzard a guess.

The new form of society &#39;grows&#39; within the old. The infrastructure needed to establish proletarian production relations would be almost already there. The new method of production, and that being of proletarian production, automation, would be nearly established by capitalist need to remove manual labour. Society would not be destroyed as such - rather re-arranged around almost already existing production methods.

Its just that - as I already said previously - this new mode of production growing within capitalist society can only be brought so far without inherent production restrictions which limit the furthering of technological advances and productive capacity. And, of course - this does not exist yet.

The fight of the proletariat becomes one of either to assume state control to install its own production relations - eliminating the bourgeoisie as a class, - or a struggle for the abolition of the state completely. This is a question for Anarchist and Marxist debate - one I would not like to take a definite position on just yet.


I can&#39;t imagine, for the life of me, the people saying "Government&#39;s doing great, now let&#39;s scrap it."

See this is where I got mixed up. Are you referring to the bourgeois government or a socialist one?

The need to eliminate a bourgeois state is obvious, and so would the eventual development of such wants by future proletariat pretty clear.

As in socialism? and a socialist government doing great?

Again - that depends on your definition of socialism. Anarchists also use the term socialism to define a transitionary phase.

Why would workers want to get rid of a "great" socialist government?

Maybe because that governmental structure isnt as you know it. Maybe that governmental structure is made directly by the proletariat themselves being in collective control - them governing society. Maybe this governments purpose as a collective is to maintain order by eliminating reactionary opposition, and as reactionary opposition fades - so does the need to maintain order and therefore governance.

I say maybe because whether the proletariat needs governance over distribution, production and order - is well beyond my limits -and continues to be most divisive amongst the left. Each coming up with their structures - as you see Si Pinto with his council communism - others with their centralised leninist vanguard.

Some can be discredited - others, such as council communism - are far more difficult to find theoretical flaws.

I maintain a position of - "I dont know what form of state will emerge, or what way the workers will organise" - I can tell you it will be based on objective material conditions, creating something universal as a means to overthrow and install proletarian production relations. But I just dont know. Nor can we. But its fine to believe in a particular form of governance one finds theoretically sound - whether it happens is another thing.


Even granting success as far as socialism, I see no impetus to destroy that social order and move forward.

But the social order would be vertually identical - only with the necessary "tweaks" to maintain that social order from opposition.

When the opposition is destroyed - those tweaks would also diminish as their existance are no longer necessary.

If that question were directed at an anarchist - it would mean very little.


People only revolt if they&#39;re pissed; they won&#39;t be pissed under socialism, right?

Revolt is not necessary to transform socialism to communism - since who is there to revolt against in a classless society?

You seem to think socialism as being USSR style - which just aint true.

As quoted in MKS&#39;s signature (I think his) - "Lenin destroyed socialism" - Noam Chomsky.

Thats coming from an anarchist, and from reading "Chomsky on anarchism" - socialism just aint what you speak of - rather a title imposed on something unrelated, such as USA and Bush equals democracy. It has no meaning.


You&#39;re positing revolution based on &#39;classes&#39;, which is just absurd. People don&#39;t care about &#39;class&#39; as long as they aren&#39;t directly harmed, and I can&#39;t see that they would be.

Im not sure (yet again) what you mean by this.

Class conflict is the basis of revolution. No social revolution throughout history was fought other than on the basis of class relations to production.

Its not a matter of being "class proud", or just simply being aware of what class you are - its a matter of seeing, and taking action in your interest. And since you are a member of a class relation to production - your interest just happens to be the same as those of others related to production the same way you are.

So, being a class conscious individual - you would want particular political change to benifit you. But what you want is not unique - infact - others - with the same production relations, want the same. So, class conscousness (and therefore your own personal political opinions) have been defined by production relations - it no longer becomes about what harms you, but what is harming others of your social class too. It becomes a class action - not individual. IMU, class consciousness dosnt exist at the moment amongst anyone - even us revlefters.


In fact, I imagine running an economy without a central system would be even more difficult and less efficient.

Any way you look at it, some central system needs to be set up to tally things.

How do you mean &#39;running&#39; an economy?

It would be simple when various factors and restrictions are removed. Its difficult to run an economy presently when there is fighting over productive forces, when there is fighting as to who exactly its to benifit.

Whether to produce too much of this, or restrict too much of that. Limit the production of this, destroy whats been produced there etc. etc.

There is presently class fighting over productive forces as it is. The bourgeois want to restrict and limit - while the progressive productive forces naturally want to advance and increase production.

When an economy is as complex as this one is - with wage labour, commodity value, market value, overproduction and resource allocation - it needs &#39;running&#39; and a state to prevent it imploding to collapse.

When things are simplified, when an economy is to benifit just one class - rather than balancing the needs and conflicts of two - it becomes a matter of input - process - output.

It needs no &#39;running&#39; such as needed now - it simply needs to produce.


Why?

You could easily distribute goods the same with a state, and democratic control, if that were your goal.

And any difficulties you would have would exist under communism; what&#39;s the difference, really?

Again - this comes down to my initial mix up. I have answered this question above in relation to what socialism is, and why its distribution is the same as communism. The production relations are the same.


I understand this, but this is a governmental scheme that could easily be done away with.

Really?.........so you believe we can create overproduction - while remaining under a class system?

I mean - allow that overproduced milk to be placed on the market?

In who&#39;s interest would that be in?..................it certainly wouldnt be in the interest of the bourgeoisie, since existing milk prices would plummet.

And you believe the state would implement this against the class by which it represents an protects?


But this seems to me to be a non-answer.

"Given that the economy advances enough to give everyone enough of everything to please them, the economy would be perfect, therefore, communism is perfect&#33;"

See the logic flaw here?

None is disputing that an economy like that would be idea; but what are you really saying other than that &#39;a perfect economy would be perfect&#39;?

Perfection is relative. Whats perfect to one is not perfect to another.

But since you say &#39;perfect&#39; - yes it would be &#39;perfect&#39; (in the way you use it).

Do you deny that productive forces could produce enough to satisfy need?

Does satisfying need mean something to be defined as perfect? - if so, then yes.

From my perspective, I do not see communism as perfect - as communism is more than just production - its a society of people interacting with one another just as we have today - social interaction amongst individuals just isnt always perfect.

I could easy say capitalist production is not perfect, but the way in which proletarians relate to one another is perfect within capitalsim. Of course - I dont believe that - but if it were true - there would be no logical flaw.

So - communist production is perfect, with no other possible improvement - but individual relations within communism are not - but improved over other previous societal forms.


I disagree.

Humans can be shown to be greedy in many areas.

It&#39;s a natural vice, part of the human psychology. If humans fear a shortage, they&#39;ll hoard, irrationally.

Exactly - you have pointed out the exact root of greed - shortage and scarcity.

We no longer live in a fucking jungle with berries and wild bore - nor do we live in a society where climate controls survival.

We live in a society which continuously becomes able to control its own destiny, control its own food production and whatever else.

For greed to always exist - is to assume that scarcity will also always exist.

That just aint the case - since the productive forces continue to advance away from the necessity of scarcity and shortage. Thats why humanity even bothers to invent and be curious - to control our own existance as an animal species.


Now I know it&#39;s part of the communist philosophy that greed can just be done away with, but that&#39;s simply non-sense.

Its nonsense to believe we no longer have the ability to eliminate scarcity and shortage - and therefore greed.

It just defies history and the development of production. It denies humanity of its increasing control of its phsyical environment.

It denies progress.


Unless you can give everyone everything they want, greed will exist.

We can, and will, by smashing productive restrictions.

[Publius]

Wait a second, when have people ever been able to appropriate products from society as they saw fit? And also, in all the varying definitions of socialism, I have never seen the principle of free appropriation given once.

I think you misunderstand the nature of communist distribution. People would not be "given" things for free--people would "take" as they saw fit. Products would be shipped from the factory to the supermarket (or some other type of distribution point). People would take from the shelves what they saw fit. They would probably either "ring up" the item themselves or get a supermarket worker to do it for them, solely in order to keep track of demand (so that the factory knows how much stuff is being appropriated and thus how much stuff they need to be supplying). There would be no exchange or money involved.

I see no reason why a socialist economy could appropriate goods freely if a communist one could.

I don&#39;t see how production could be increased under communism past socialism (ignoring, of course, capitalism) or how distribution could be improved.

I know, idealogically, the difference. But I don&#39;t know, pragmatically, what the difference is.



How so? I think you are treating "The State" as a mythical entity. It is an idea for a form of organization under which a ruling class prescribes limits on what everyone else can do. It exists only as long as people adhere to its idea. "The State" has no material existence. Institutions such as the army enforce the rulings of those ruling The State. But when you abolish the army and in its place constitute rotating workers&#39; militias, you don&#39;t abolish the millions of people who materially constituted the army. You just change their relation to society. You change the idea that they adhere to in their behavior and social organization. And, in fact, no one person can accomplish this abolition of the State and change this ideological conception in the minds of all the people affected. Those people affected must, in themselves, change what idea of social organization they adhere to.

So, are you arguing that the new proletarian-run order, with its workers&#39; militias and workers&#39; councils, will be unfit for the task of managing production, distribution, and making sure people don&#39;t rape each other? Fair enough. But I would disagree. After all, you still think that the capitalist class is "fit to rule" and the proletariat is "unfit to rule," and at this point it would appear that most people agree with you on that. A communist is distinguished by the fact that he/she thinks that the capitalist class has become "unfit to rule" and the proletariat "fit to rule."

What is that belief predicated on, other than a faithful adherence to Marxian philosophy?

Even accepting &#39;the proletariat&#39; as a meaningful designation (I no longer think it is), why should one think they are able to &#39;rule&#39;?

If there has to be goverance (and indeed there does), why should I believe the proletariat should govern? Why are they likely to govern better?

Communists seem to take it on faith, that people can vote meaningfully. I think that&#39;s manifestly false.



Why allow the continued existence of an armed minority that you must obey when its same functions can be accomplished even better through a system that you help control?

Government is democratically controlled.

There is, or ideally shouldn&#39;t be, a minority control of a democracy.



If they have to continue to endure being threatened and possibly killed by armed men over whom they exercise no control, yeah, they&#39;ll be pissed.

I&#39;m presuming an idealized form of democratic socialism.



And you seem to assume that the individuals comprising the unrecallable State would allow the continued existence of an egalitarian economic system. They would have both the means (the professional army under their unquestioning command) and the motive (self-interest) to abolish the egalitarian order and re-constitute a class society with themselves as the ruling class controlling the means of production and everyone else as their employees. In fact, just look at the USSR for an example of this.

So then how is &#39;Communism&#39; to move past the Socialism stage of progress?

We&#39;re going to go from Wal Mart to workers councils over night?



Obviously, you haven&#39;t experienced life as the lower class if you don&#39;t think they are directly harmed by class society.

I was again referring to an idealized socialist society.



Funny, most supporters of capitalism seem to think that centrally-planned economies function much less efficiently than decentralized economies.

I was trying to divorce myself from capitalism there, and argue from socialism.

Obvioiusly I think capitalism is able to allocate goods most effectively. Actually, I think some form of market socialism would be the ideal system, but I haven&#39;t quite been able to think up how that would work.

It&#39;s in progress.



That can be accomplished, but it doesn&#39;t necessitate a class society with an armed minority swearing alliegiance to an unrecallable elite.

Even that doesn&#39;t exist now.



Like I said before, if a centralized, unrecallable State still existed, what makes you think that such a State would permit an egalitarian distribution? The State would use its power to grant itself economic priviledge.

And people wouldn&#39; collude to do this under communism? The State is the will of the people, manifested, is it not?



And the only way to assure that the "State" would remain democratic would be to make all of the elected officials subject to immediate recall and to abolish the armed forces&#39; unquestioning obedience to those individuals comprising the State. As long as those individuals have the unquestioning obedience of the armed forces, they aren&#39;t going to stand by while they are recalled and voted out of office. They will use their command over the armed forces to maintain their power and economic priviledge.

When has that happened in a liberal democracy?

This isn&#39;t the Praetorian guard.

I think your concept of state power are highly expressive of Marxist dynamics but little expressive of the real-world.

Yes, &#39;according to Marxists&#39; the state does x and y, and should do z, but I can&#39;t think of any precedent for democratic leaders just up and hoarding vast sums of money for themselves; most make only a few hundred thousand a year, a trival sum. I can&#39;t think of the last time a leader of a liberal democracy used the army to prevent an election result. Governments often engage in activities that are, for all their inadequecies, egalitarian in intent.

It&#39;s just a-historical. Yes, it&#39;s all very self-consistent, and it all makes sense, but I don&#39;t think it has any historical precedent or accurately applies to the real world.

People aren&#39;t actors in a Marxist drama; they aren&#39;t that calculating, that logical. They don&#39;t understand &#39;class dynamics&#39; or even their own self-interest. Essentially, they meander through life with no idea of what makes things go, which in the Communism view would be our relation to the means of production.

I guess you think that will change, but that&#39;s another thing you&#39;re positing that strikes me as absurd.

The whole idea behind communism, that people can behave collectively for any meaningful purpose strikes me as hopelessly idealistic; I don&#39;t think people have that type of consistency. I can&#39;t imagine a functioning democratic economy; I don&#39;t even know what that would mean. Perhaps that&#39;s simply a limitation of my imagination.

[Publius]

RedBanner:

Instead of responding to your whole post (I covered it, basically, in my response to Z), I want to discuss greed.

You say it will go away when scarcity goes away. First of all, this is untrue because production is limited; goods are limited. There can never be *no scarcity*. That&#39;s just non-sense.

But you seem to think that when people&#39;s needs will be fulfilled, their greed will go away.

This is, I think, self-evidently incorrect. Greed isn&#39;t based on absolute needs or absolute poverty. The poorest people, the ones in need of the most, are not as greedy as CEOs or what have you.

That&#39;s a simple fact. People can have billions upon billions of dollars, more money then they will ever spend (scarcity is no longer an issue for them), and they&#39;ll continue to be greedy.

Clearly there&#39;s something else to the problem.

People have enough to live on, comfortably, in the modern West. You can live fairly cheaply, if you buy a cheap car, buy a reasonable TV, buy a modest house, etc. But people don&#39;t do that.

Now I presume you&#39;re next going ascribe this problem to capitalist society, to consumer culture, and in that I agree with you. But I don&#39;t believe that the modern consumer culture has to exist; it can be fixed within capitalism. Human attitudes and priorities need to change.

It&#39;s not economics, it&#39;s culture. It&#39;s status. It&#39;s humans being social animals and wanting prestige in their social group.

It&#39;s sociology and psychology.

[red team]

First of all, this is untrue because production is limited; goods are limited. There can never be *no scarcity*. That&#39;s just non-sense.

That really depends on your definition of scarcity. Any given person can only consume so much personally at any given time. Think about this for a moment and you will realise this to be true. You cannot live in two houses at the same time. You cannot occupy more than one room at a time so hundred room mansions are useless most of the time if it only houses a family of four. You cannot consume 100 kilograms of food in a day. You can only drive one car at a time which means if you have 20 cars to drive per day only 1 car is actually of personal utility in 1 day out of a total of 20 days. The other 19 days it is left idle, but nevertheless securely guarded.

What we have is not a problem of scarcity since for people who are super-wealthy they simply have too much that can be personally consumed at any one time which means that for the things that they own, most of it are left idle simply from the fact that they own it not because they can actually use it even for selfish hedonism.

What we have is a problem with the definition of ownership. Ownership right now means the legal justification to hoard as much as possible even if it is of no personal use. It&#39;s entirely irrelevant if it is left idle most of the time. The important thing is control not ability to use from a legal perpective so if you own an entire city block full of empty houses it&#39;s entirely legal to do so regardless of whether or not it&#39;s wasting resources.

We are actually past the point where things have to be rationed because there&#39;s not enough to go around. Even with present technologies providing for more than can be personally consumed is not a problem. There are still people who defend ownership from the perpective of control not ability to use though and this is where we get into the problem of pathology.

[Comrade-Z]

I see no reason why a socialist economy could appropriate goods freely if a communist one could.

Again, I&#39;m confused by what you mean by "socialism." If what you mean by socialism is "democratic proletarian control of the means of production," then socialism is very close to being the same thing as communism. The only thing that is different is the system of distribution (production for exchange rather than general use).


I don&#39;t see how production could be increased under communism past socialism (ignoring, of course, capitalism) or how distribution could be improved.

Production would be increased under communism in the same way that production is increased now under capitalism. Except the proletariat would be directing things, and building a factory, for instance, would not require money, but just the approval of your community council and suppliers. The community council(s) would approve your project, with its expenditure of resources, if public consumption data and surveys indicated that people wanted more of the product that your factory will produce. So you would appropriate the materials that you thought the project required, according to your plans, and you would build your factory.

And distribution would work so much better because products would actually be distributed according to demand. As it is right now, I can demand a TV all I want, but if I don&#39;t have the money to make the exchange, I don&#39;t get the TV, and meanwhile that TV lies useless and dormant on the shelf and its use-value remains unrealized. Such inefficiency&#33;&#33;&#33;

In the supermarkets, people will take things off of shelves and ring them up in order to indicate to the inventory system that various items have been appropriated. Workers at the supermarket will look at their inventory system, see what they are low on and what past consumption patterns have been, and ask for amounts of various products accordingly. Furthermore, customers can file requests for items that they demand but which aren&#39;t available at the moment, and the supermarket workers will try to hook up with suppliers for these products. These stores could also do periodic surveys asking about what items people wished the store offered. All this information on public demand would be relayed back to the suppliers so that supply & demand could be coordinated.


What is that belief predicated on, other than a faithful adherence to Marxian philosophy?

Even accepting &#39;the proletariat&#39; as a meaningful designation (I no longer think it is), why should one think they are able to &#39;rule&#39;?

Well, because they run the vast majority of the day-to-day workings of society as it is now. Workers at a supermarket will still know what needs to be done without having a boss to tell them what to do. In fields that are more specialized (like chemical, aerospace, pharmaceutical, etc.), experts will still be valuable, and if the revolution is popular enough, there will be enough experts who choose to side with the proletariat that those will still be able to function. If not, then we&#39;ll have to train a bunch of people as quickly as possible. But I don&#39;t foresee that as being a problem. Sure, in the Czar&#39;s day, when intellectual capital was more difficult to come by, that would have been a problem, but in an era in which 35% of the population attends college?


If there has to be goverance (and indeed there does), why should I believe the proletariat should govern? Why are they likely to govern better?

It&#39;s not so much an issue of proletarians being more "competent" or having higher IQ&#39;s. It&#39;s about the fact that proletarians are more likely to govern in the interests of proletarians more effectively. I am more likely to govern better in my own interest than Sam Walton or any other capitalist is, you see.


Communists seem to take it on faith, that people can vote meaningfully. I think that&#39;s manifestly false.

Voting will only be a very small part of it all. Just as voting for the president is a very small part of a capitalist&#39;s actions in managing his sphere of society, so will most of the "governance" of the proletariat consist of in-the-workplace stuff.

But certainly, the proletariat will have to be a bit more sophisticated than "I&#39;m voting for X as trade-union delegate because he has southern accent like me&#33;"


Government is democratically controlled.

There is, or ideally shouldn&#39;t be, a minority control of a democracy.

:rolleyes:


We&#39;re going to go from Wal Mart to workers councils over night?

Well, how long did it take people in Russia to form soviet councils after the start of public revolt in February 1917?

But yes, I would expect councilist and syndicalist trade union organizations to be in existence before the revolution (such as the IWW or CNT). These organizations will help facilitate the revolution, and then immediately after the revolution they will take up the managing of society.


The State is the will of the people, manifested, is it not?

The State is a tool of the ruling class, although, being made up of individuals with their own ambitions, it is like a metal snake or a firehose; it can get away from its handlers and do some serious damage if its handlers aren&#39;t careful. The bourgeoisie maintains control of the State through its control over the means of production and its ideological sway in society. If a government were to start seizing capitalist property and make a bid for supplanting the current bourgeoisie and assuming the position of a new bourgeoisie, the bourgeoisie would be up in arms&#33; They would precipitate capital flight, bombast the State through the media that they control, use mercenaries and private military forces (think Blackwater or Halliburton) to guard their property and set up a new State apparatus, and appeal to the lower classes for help in overthrowing the "monstrous government and its usurpations of the inalienable right to property, etc." In this way the bourgeoisie possesses a sort of informal "recall" power over the State.

With this in mind, the proletariat needs to take several precautions in order to ensure that it maintains control of its State apparatus, whether it comes in the form of federations of councils or a centralized elective administration. It must have the ability to immediately recall the State administrations. In order to give material substance to this declared power, the proletariat must keep direct control of the means of production at all costs. It must act with solidarity if one section of the proletariat gets struck. It must maintain its own military arms. And its ideas must be "the ruling ideas of the epoch."


When has that happened in a liberal democracy?

This isn&#39;t the Praetorian guard.

A full list would be too exhausting to post. The few that come immediately to mind are Allende in 1970, Arbenz in 1954, Mossagdeh in 1953, Papadopoulos in Greece in 1973, the Spanish State in 1936, Italy in 1921, the Weimar Republic in 1933, the Jaruzelski regime of Poland in 1981, etc. Any time that the State isn&#39;t doing its job (of protecting the rule of either the native capitalist class or, in the cases of Guatemala, Iran, etc., of the imperialist capitalist class) well enough in the eyes of the capitalist class, it is removed and replaced with a State that can more competently perform the tasks that the capitalist class needs done.

Needless to say, the capitalist class learns over time. Nowadays the capitalist classes in the advanced capitalist countries have their handling of the State and the tweaking of society in their interests down to a science, almost, so that they rarely have to mess with the messy business of coups and fascism. Although as society becomes more difficult to tweak in their favor, more vigorous measures may once again be necessary.


but I can&#39;t think of any precedent for democratic leaders just up and hoarding vast sums of money for themselves; most make only a few hundred thousand a year, a trival sum.

It is no wonder that they get paid less. Those "democratic leaders" are not of the ruling class (unless they are people like Cheney who dabble in both worlds). They are simply tools of the ruling class--tools for executing the directives of the capitalist class in the interest of keeping society running along smoothly with the capitalist class in power. Of course, the capitalist class doesn&#39;t weigh in on every little decision, but its influence is there behind the big decisions that really matter. Usually the capitalist class can quietly express its wishes through simple lobbying. Sometimes the capitalist class may resort to media campaigns aimed at drumming up grassroots pressure.

[Connolly]

First of all, this is untrue because production is limited; goods are limited.

Yes, of course things are limited in the sense of limited material resources and limited by time itself. We cannot create infinite goods at any one time - only the act of the supernatural could do that.

But relative to human need, we can create the virtual unlimited - more than what satisfies it.

Goods and production are not limited in this sense.


There can never be *no scarcity*. That&#39;s just non-sense.

Again - relative to human need there can be &#39;no scarcity&#39;.

Air is not scarce?....................are we begining to "hoard" it?

Seaweed is not scarce?.....are we beginning hoard that?.............I mean - if it were as rare as Gold - I dont think people would just walk by it on the beech.

Thats the only reason Gold is hoarded in a &#39;greedy&#39; mannor - its rare. If a truck spillled over with gold bars going all over the place in a busy street - people would dive on it.

If it were seaweed, or even bars of plastic or aluminium - would we have the same effect?.....................I bet my life on it - no.


But you seem to think that when people&#39;s needs will be fulfilled, their greed will go away.

Not just that. I mean - my &#39;needs&#39; have been been fulfilled interms of essentials. A bourgeois&#39;s needs have been satisfied in terms of what he needs of necessity.

Yet both me and the bourgeois are greedy, even though our needs have been satisfied.

The reason is the awareness that these things may not be everlasting - one needs to be assured to "stock" up for survival in a dog -eat dog social arena. Wealth for one is less for me.


Now I presume you&#39;re next going ascribe this problem to capitalist society, to consumer culture, and in that I agree with you. But I don&#39;t believe that the modern consumer culture has to exist; it can be fixed within capitalism. Human attitudes and priorities need to change.

Capitalsim restricts production - and therefore surplus - human greed will always exist under such restrictions.


This is, I think, self-evidently incorrect. Greed isn&#39;t based on absolute needs or absolute poverty. The poorest people, the ones in need of the most, are not as greedy as CEOs or what have you.

They are in different material circumstances. A poor man might be "greedy" to grab scrap metal off the side of the road to sell - a CEO wouldnt exactly do that now would he?

Both of their immediate priorities are different.





Look - quite simply, the argument for human greed can be removed by analogy.

Place a single apple tree on a street - there will be a dash for the apples. Place an apple tree on every street or every garden - that just wouldnt happen.

If there was this &#39;instinct&#39; to hoard things - or take more than what one needs - there would be no plums growing along the street in Turkey, lemons along the street in Lebanon or oranges along in spain. Hash wouldnt grow wild in Mongolia, a leftover sandwich on a bench in Ireland wouldnt remain for long or even blackberries would be dived on.

Greed simply makes no sense when people would hoard them under one condition and not under another.

It must do with the availability of the item itself - nothing more.

A sort of "artificial value" placed on things - defined by production and availability.

A person could be greedy for milk - but only when in short supply.

This is what capitalsim does - it perpetuates this greed - which is nothing but an artificial value on something - by limiting its production.

If milk rained from the sky, or all trees grew gold leafs - greed and the desire to "hoard" them wouldnt exist.

Thats why money and wealth are the main source of greed. Money is something which cannot be available to all - and therfore, as a means of exchange for - everything else.

This is, I must say - very simple to understand. Its not difficult to see the absence of greed under certain material conditions.

The idea is just laughable and completely void of real observation.

[Si Pinto]

Originally posted by The [email protected] 23 2006, 10:48 AM

Now I presume you&#39;re next going ascribe this problem to capitalist society, to consumer culture, and in that I agree with you. But I don&#39;t believe that the modern consumer culture has to exist; it can be fixed within capitalism. Human attitudes and priorities need to change.

Capitalsim restricts production - and therefore surplus - human greed will always exist under such restrictions.
Actually, when considering the practicalities of modern capitalist techniques, they do produce far more food and drink than would be necessary to feed everyone.

Hence the &#39;food mountains&#39; and &#39;milk lakes&#39; around the industrialised countries.

The difference is that the capitalists restrict the availability of these items to keep the prices inflated.

Thereby &#39;killing two birds with one stone&#39;.

a) Restricting the availability to create the &#39;need&#39; (or greed) depending on what you call it.

and

b) Gaining the maximum profit.

So modern capitalism is more about restricting the availability of the results of production rather than production itself.


But I don&#39;t believe that the modern consumer culture has to exist; it can be fixed within capitalism. Human attitudes and priorities need to change.

It is capitalism that drives human attitudes and priorities, both for the capitalist and the worker.

To break that mould (without a socialist/communist takeover) would require capitalists to give up their profits for the sake of equality of supply.

Firstly, I don&#39;t know many (or any) capitalists who are prepared to &#39;write off&#39; profits in the name of equality, do you?

Secondly, if there were, they wouldn&#39;t be capitalists anymore, they would be virtually advocating socialism anyway.

[Connolly]

Actually, when considering the practicalities of modern capitalist techniques, they do produce far more food and drink than would be necessary to feed everyone.

Hence the &#39;food mountains&#39; and &#39;milk lakes&#39; around the industrialised countries.

The difference is that the capitalists restrict the availability of these items to keep the prices inflated.

Thereby &#39;killing two birds with one stone&#39;.

a) Restricting the availability to create the &#39;need&#39; (or greed) depending on what you call it.

and

b) Gaining the maximum profit.

So modern capitalism is more about restricting the availability of the results of production rather than production itself.

Your right. That was an error on my part.

What I meant to say is that what has been &#39;overproduced&#39; has been either destroyed or stored - therefore not reaching the general market. So in that sense - yeah - it does produce more - and isnt just restricted.

Whether we can overproduce everything at this moment in time is another thing.

But - yeah - an error on my part, :D

[red team]

Seaweed is not scarce?.....are we beginning hoard that?.............I mean - if it were as rare as Gold - I dont think people would just walk by it on the beech.


Also, relative to human need Seaweed is quite edible. Gold, not edible. Only reason why gold is valuable is because it&#39;s used as a medium of exchange. And a scarce medium of exchange which makes it valuable. Other than that gold is just a shiny yellowy metal.

[Comrade-Z]

Also, relative to human need Seaweed is quite edible. Gold, not edible. Only reason why gold is valuable is because it&#39;s used as a medium of exchange. And a scarce medium of exchange which makes it valuable. Other than that gold is just a shiny yellowy metal.

Well, gold has some limited application in the electronics industry, but yeah, your overall point remains valid.

[Connolly]

Also, relative to human need Seaweed is quite edible. Gold, not edible. Only reason why gold is valuable is because it&#39;s used as a medium of exchange. And a scarce medium of exchange which makes it valuable. Other than that gold is just a shiny yellowy metal.

I see what you mean to the most part - seaweed being edible and all :lol:

Maybe my example was wrong in that bit.

But then the question arses as to why gold is used as a medium of exchange - not aluminium, rocks and other non edible metals and whatever else.


Gold is valuable because its rare on the market (I mean, the total gold contained in and on earth could cover its surface knee deep - buts thats different) - its rare to find and, as you said - has limited use.

As with rare rocks such as ruby&#39;s etc.

Ruby&#39;s arnt something of particular exchange such as the way gold is - its not on a general basis hoarded in various nations banks and used as bargaining tools.

Coins were not made from it (maybe cause its stone :lol: )

Maybe iv fumbled all that. But the question is why gold became a medium of exchange.

It was rare - distinct and had properties which could be tailored to ones specific use.

I would still maintain that if a truck full of other valuable materials spilled over - such as oh, say, brand new Playstation 4&#39;s - which, being so rare (not even sure if its been invented yet) and not on the market yet - there would be a dash.

They are not a medium of exchange. They are end products which happen to be rare, expensive and useful.

A truck full of apples - or even non edible clothes pegs - even old computer monitors from the 80&#39;s no longer in use - spilling over would not have the same effect.

They are not rare, not a means of exchange - clothes pegs could be potentially usefull - but I doubt people would be diving on them in an act of greed.

So, yeah - my analogys were a load of bollox :lol:

[ZX3]

Originally posted by red [email protected] 23 2006, 02:53 AM

We are actually past the point where things have to be rationed because there&#39;s not enough to go around. Even with present technologies providing for more than can be personally consumed is not a problem. There are still people who defend ownership from the perpective of control not ability to use though and this is where we get into the problem of pathology.
[QUOTE]

But why are we past that point? It would seem to be the case because of the productive power of capitalism. Smash that system, and what guarantees that such a state of affairs will continue?

[MrDoom]

This thread was a month old, no need to rez it.

However, just as feudalism created the neccessary productive forces to create capitalism, capitalism will create the neccessary productive forces to create socialism. In each case, the old mode of production collapses.

[Tungsten]

Si Pinto

The difference is that the capitalists restrict the availability of these items to keep the prices inflated.
Now this is a blatant lie. They don&#39;t restrict availablility at all. Unless you think that restricting availability comes in the form of not giving it away for free.

To break that mould (without a socialist/communist takeover) would require capitalists to give up their profits for the sake of equality of supply.

Firstly, I don&#39;t know many (or any) capitalists who are prepared to &#39;write off&#39; profits in the name of equality, do you?
I don&#39;t know that many workers who&#39;d give "unrestricted access" to their "products" (time and labour) either, so I guess that&#39;s you screwed.

The RedBanner

But then the question arses as to why gold is used as a medium of exchange - not aluminium, rocks and other non edible metals and whatever else.
Because you can&#39;t print gold like you can print paper money, therefore inflation and currency forgery becomes difficult, particularly for the government, which is why many libertarians support a return to a gold standard.

[red team]

Now this is a blatant lie. They don&#39;t restrict availablility at all. Unless you think that restricting availability comes in the form of not giving it away for free.

Now this is a blatant lie. They do restrict availability otherwise there would be no cases of throwing away food and clothing (at massive quantities) and demolishing abandoned buildings occupied by squatters.


I don&#39;t know that many workers who&#39;d give "unrestricted access" to their "products" (time and labour) either, so I guess that&#39;s you screwed.

Simple:

"We&#39;re starting a new public project at such and such location at some particular time want to help out?"

"No, alright enjoy your time on government rations, we&#39;ll get somebody else who&#39;s more interested."

Not too difficult to come up with a solution is it? You&#39;ll have shelter, food and a minimal allowance for whatever else so it&#39;s actually even better than the situation now for workers. Work if required gets announced to you, so you don&#39;t have to go begging some rich, pompous asshole for your livelihood. You&#39;ll just won&#39;t have the income to buy luxury items if you choose not to contribute volutarily.

I guess I&#39;m really screwed when the above described society develops, eh? :lol:


Because you can&#39;t print gold like you can print paper money, therefore inflation and currency forgery becomes difficult, particularly for the government, which is why many libertarians support a return to a gold standard.

Translation: because gold is scarce so that it is valuable and you can&#39;t make gold more abundant so that it is less valuable, particularly for an institution which supposedly represents the population which elected them, which is why many greedy wealth mongers who likes to make things arbitrarily scarces for everybody else so as to encourage workers to work for them to increase their real material wealth support a return to a scarce mineral as a medium of exchange.

See, simple. Why hide behind weasel words and terms like "inflation" and "currency forgery" and "gold standard". If something like currency can be "forged" that means anything else can be "forged". Perhaps something that people can actually used can be "forged" like food and shelter for instance instead of pieces of "official" paper or pieces shiny metal of limited quantity, so "forgery" viewed from this perspective makes the whole concept meaningless.

[Tungsten]

Now this is a blatant lie. They don&#39;t restrict availablility at all. Unless you think that restricting availability comes in the form of not giving it away for free.

Now this is a blatant lie. They do restrict availability otherwise there would be no cases of throwing away food and clothing (at massive quantities) and demolishing abandoned buildings occupied by squatters.
You evidenlty do. Why doesn&#39;t that surprise me.

Simple:

"We&#39;re starting a new public project at such and such location at some particular time want to help out?"
Erm...no. That&#39;s not unlimited access. "I command, you obey." That&#39;s unlimited access. I can&#39;t see many people agreeing to that.

Work if required gets announced to you, so you don&#39;t have to go begging some rich, pompous asshole for your livelihood.
You don&#39;t have to do that anyway.

I guess I&#39;m really screwed when the above described society develops, eh? :lol:
You will, unless you happen to be the one in charge of it. Don&#39;t try and pretend that you&#39;re interested in voluntary cooperation after the psychotic stuff you&#39;ve posted.

Translation: because gold is scarce so that it is valuable and you can&#39;t make gold more abundant so that it is less valuable, particularly for an institution which supposedly represents the population which elected them, which is why many greedy wealth mongers who likes to make things arbitrarily scarces for everybody else so as to encourage workers to work for them to increase their real material wealth support a return to a scarce mineral as a medium of exchange.
I&#39;m experiencing deja vu because I swear we&#39;ve had this conversation half a dozen times before. What comes next on the script? Oh yes. That explains why there&#39;s only half a dozen cars in existence and they all cost &#036;1000000000000 each. The greedy car companies are creating scarcity to increase their profits...Zzzz.

See, simple. Why hide behind weasel words and terms like "inflation" and "currency forgery" and "gold standard". If something like currency can be "forged" that means anything else can be "forged".
Forging the money for a car isn&#39;t the same as forging a car, which is why it shouldn&#39;t be allowed. If you find anyone willing to accept forged currency for a car, good luck.

Perhaps something that people can actually used can be "forged" like food and shelter for instance instead of pieces of "official" paper or pieces shiny metal of limited quantity, so "forgery" viewed from this perspective makes the whole concept meaningless.
Money is more universal and practical. I mignt not want to swap what I have for what you have.

[red team]

You will, unless you happen to be the one in charge of it. Don&#39;t try and pretend that you&#39;re interested in voluntary cooperation after the psychotic stuff you&#39;ve posted.

For someone who advocates this sort of stuff...

Psychotic aren&#39;t we?

http://www.sadashivan.com/boot_polish.jpg
http://www.sadashivan.com/Heera_child_labour.jpg

I&#39;m not qualified to judge.

But they are. Once they have the choice of refusing this sort of shit and enrolling in school instead, I wonder what verdict they would give to their former masters.

I would imagine their judgement and punishment to hand out to their former masters would be more creative than mine.

[ZX3]

"We&#39;re starting a new public project at such and such location at some particular time want to help out?"

"No, alright enjoy your time on government rations, we&#39;ll get somebody else who&#39;s more interested."

Not too difficult to come up with a solution is it? You&#39;ll have shelter, food and a minimal allowance for whatever else so it&#39;s actually even better than the situation now for workers. Work if required gets announced to you, so you don&#39;t have to go begging some rich, pompous asshole for your livelihood. You&#39;ll just won&#39;t have the income to buy luxury items if you choose not to contribute volutarily.

Presumably, somebody, at some point, has to annouce that work is needed to provide those minimal allowances. Its never been explained how everyone will be guaranteed minimal standards, when nobody has to provide it.

[Tungsten]

For someone who advocates this sort of stuff...
I don&#39;t advocate child labour, shoe shining or riding bikes as part of my manifesto. You&#39;ve been misinformed.

Psychotic aren&#39;t we?
"For the sake of the chidren" is a time-honoured favourite of people with coercive political agendas.

I&#39;m not qualified to judge.

But they are.
On what grounds?

Once they have the choice of refusing this sort of shit and enrolling in school instead, I wonder what verdict they would give to their former masters.

I would imagine their judgement and punishment to hand out to their former masters would be more creative than mine.
Punishment for what? Not getting on my knees and pandering to the every whim of the "needy"?

No thanks. I&#39;d rather die on my feet than live in my knees as a slave. Especially not in a system which is little more than fascism turned on it&#39;s head- that will be disposed of too.

[red team]

Originally posted by ZX3
Presumably, somebody, at some point, has to annouce that work is needed to provide those minimal allowances. Its never been explained how everyone will be guaranteed minimal standards, when nobody has to provide it.


"Selfishness", he declared, "is unnecessary and...unrationalizable...War is obsolete..."


he concluded that everyone alive today can potentially live like a "billionaire." Hence he described the human race as "four billion billionaires."

Who said it? Buckminster Fuller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller). One of the greatest minds in our times who like Einstein never did well in "formal" education. Nevertheless his ideas were revolutionary.

An Obsolete System


"The Price System grew out of the days of scarcity, when trading his crude materials or stealing them, was the only way in which man could acquire the articles which he required."

The way we get to the new society without money

Energy Accounting (http://www.technocracy.ca/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=6&page=1)

There&#39;s far more energy and labour saving devices now in use to allow anybody to live a minimal and relatively comfortable lifestyle without being forced to work. Voluntarism is entirely realizable with the technology we have even now.

Why cling to an outdated system which only produce inequality and poverty for the many while giving obscene luxury and opulence for the few?

The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. To have the current state of affairs continue on while there is enough resources to do away with it completely and forever is an unexcusable injustice.

[Tungsten]

red team

Who said it? Buckminster Fuller (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buckminster_Fuller). One of the greatest minds in our times who like Einstein never did well in "formal" education. Nevertheless his ideas were revolutionary.

An Obsolete System
Isaac Newton was also one of the greatest minds of our time too- and a biblical fundamentalist. Are you going to jump on that bandwagon too? :lol:

The way we get to the new society without money

Energy Accounting
I&#39;ve refuted this before. What people do or don&#39;t value is still derived subjectively. Expending energy at random doesn&#39;t create weath.

Why cling to an outdated system which only produce inequality and poverty for the many while giving obscene luxury and opulence for the few?

The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. To have the current state of affairs continue on while there is enough resources to do away with it completely and forever is an unexcusable injustice.
I thought justice was relative and irrelevent? Or is that only when it suits you?

[red team]

Isaac Newton was also one of the greatest minds of our time too- and a biblical fundamentalist. Are you going to jump on that bandwagon too? :lol:

So at what time did Isaac Newton lived in? What better explanation of the universe was out there at that time? He was a product of his time and to say otherwise is to ignore reality, but I&#39;m sure you&#39;re very good at doing that by now.

The difference between Isaac Newton and politicians is that he sought to change reality by understanding it objectively. By doing that, despite his personality flaws, he did more to advance human progress than all the inane ramblings of royal court philosophers justifying the divine right of kings to inherit economic power from one generation to the next.


I&#39;ve refuted this before. What people do or don&#39;t value is still derived subjectively. Expending energy at random doesn&#39;t create weath.

What is "wealth" then? It&#39;s depends on people wanting a product that is made. If nobody want&#39;s it then production would be cut back no matter what the cost of making the product. How does that refute anything of what has been observed as the objective cost of making a product in the first place.

You mean to say that objectively if I pay &#036;100 dollars per gallon of oil will mean that I will get 5 times as much energy out of it then if I pay &#036;20 dollars per gallon?

How do you also make sense of the fact that few people demand or can afford to buy luxury items like jewelry that have absolutely no utilitarian use?

You&#39;ve refuted nothing. Objective material and energy cost of production has no correlation to the consumer demand of a product.


I thought justice was relative and irrelevent? Or is that only when it suits you?

Justice has always been relative throughout history. For the powerful and rich to eliminate the rebellious masses was justice in their eyes. Similarly for the poor to overthrow a decripit system that no longer serves them is justice for them.

Who are you to state objectively what is absolute justice? Who are you to know what is absolute justice. Who are you God? "Justice" is entirely relative depending on what you want to achieve and what your social position is.

So in answer to your question: Yes, justice is entirely relative to when it suits the person&#39;s social and economic interests, otherwise police officers will not go to your house to violently take down a poor beggar who&#39;ve broken in to take your stuff and violent revolution will not be necessary for the poor to overthrow a social system that no longer suits them. Justice in the end is only about officially condoned violence to serve the social/economic ends of a particular social class.

[Tungsten]

red team

You mean to say that objectively if I pay &#036;100 dollars per gallon of oil will mean that I will get 5 times as much energy out of it then if I pay &#036;20 dollars per gallon?
No, I&#39;m not the one who believes in objective values or that energy=wealth.

How do you also make sense of the fact that few people demand or can afford to buy luxury items like jewelry that have absolutely no utilitarian use?
Maybe it&#39;s because values are subjective. :rolleyes:

Objective material and energy cost of production has no correlation to the consumer demand of a product.
I never said they did. Material and energy production don&#39;t necessarily correlate with wealth, either.

[red team]

No, I&#39;m not the one who believes in objective values or that energy=wealth.

As opposed to prices being wealth?

Objectively energy runs everything in the universe, so by denying this fact then you are implying support for your position that trading in monetary tokens equals wealth.

Since prices are arbitrarily determined by the supplier to gain a maximum return of money to the supplier what are we to make of high prices for energy which is the basis of all production?

It might not be realized wealth in the way that consumer want what is produced, but how is limiting potential wealth by limiting the quantities of what can be produced going to make anybody materially more abundant unless of course wealth by your definition that is the monetary definition of wealth have no correlation to potential material abundance.

There is one conclusion. Prices does not correspond to production costs and therefore does not correspond to wealth in any objective material sense. In other words its a psychological con game.


Maybe it&#39;s because values are subjective.

So is the divine right of royalty, but we got rid of that garbage didn&#39;t we?

Thanks for proving that monetary pricing have no objective legs to stand on. That is it&#39;s a fraud useful in so far that it produces high value from scarcity. Diamonds are scarce aren&#39;t they?


I never said they did. Material and energy production don&#39;t necessarily correlate with wealth, either.

So arbitrarily vendor set prices correlates to wealth? :lol:

That can easily be ripped to shreds by the fact that consumer demand for a product rises proportional to a drop in the price for the demanded product. Why is that? It is because the vendor receives less profit so that the price more accurately reflects the true cost of production via energy labour and materials for a particular product as opposed to some arbitrarily manipulated value for the benefit of the vendors.

Conclusion, a more accurate reflection of the true cost of production benefits consumers by increasing material abundance for demanded products. Consumers have an increase in wealth from the purchase of demanded products that is sold at cost. Profits and artificially manipulated prices are entirely extraneous and the most accurate measure of the cost of production is energy needed to shape matter into useful forms.

[ZX3]

Originally posted by red [email protected] 2 2006, 01:49 AM

The way we get to the new society without money

Energy Accounting (http://www.technocracy.ca/modules.php?op=modload&name=Sections&file=index&req=viewarticle&artid=6&page=1)

There&#39;s far more energy and labour saving devices now in use to allow anybody to live a minimal and relatively comfortable lifestyle without being forced to work. Voluntarism is entirely realizable with the technology we have even now.

Why cling to an outdated system which only produce inequality and poverty for the many while giving obscene luxury and opulence for the few?

The good of the many outweighs the good of the few. To have the current state of affairs continue on while there is enough resources to do away with it completely and forever is an unexcusable injustice.
Even if it is true that the world is sufficiently advanced nobody has to work, of what value is such a state of affairs to the socialist? We would be at this point because of capitalism. So the socialist would have to smash what caused that happy time. If the system is changed, then results change.

I sometimes think that socialists do not understand the implications of socialism.

[Phugebrins]

"We would be at this point because of capitalism"
And when capitalism started, we were at that point because of feudalism. What&#39;s your point?

[ZX3]

[QUOTE=Phugebrins,Sep 3 2006, 10:52 AM] "We would be at this point because of capitalism"
And when capitalism started, we were at that point because of feudalism. What&#39;s your point?

The system changes, the results change. Often, socialists are under the impression that under socialism, things will just keep on going the way they have been under capitalism, except that things will be more "fair" or "just" as the kinks of capitalism are removed.

Socialism requires change. The processes which (allegedly) produce such a happy time in humanity will have to be destroyed and substituted with something else. Else the socialist is simply defending a version of capitalism. There is no way around it. And when that occurs, the socialist cannot rely upon the productive proccesses to be producing the way they have under capitalism, which (allegedly) created that happy moment in the first place.

[Huelguista]

On this subject, this is what i&#39;ve seen/heard...suggesting that there is a revolution in the US to become a communist country, its pretty much impossible due to industrialisation (sp?) I read somewhere that a true communist utopia can only exist before there are major breakthroughs in technology...so the only thing that the Us could really hope for is some type of socialism.

I would like to hear what someone has to say about this ^...