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Anti-capitalists: what should fix/replace capitalism?
- Thread starter thefil
- Start date
It does not always need a market incentive. Market incentives certainly increase the chances someone will do something though.
Certain kind of labor is unlikly without an incentive yes. That is what I had said in that post.
Newton didn't need that incentive. That was the point. Increasing incentives will probably lead to more people doing it, but you're assuming too much profit motivation here. I'm more talking about academic scientists by the way. I don't know much about industry ones. They are out of my period, and I have no personal friends who are non-academic scientists.
I'd call that second one logistical.
I'm not really sure what you're arguing here.
I said that market incentives are not the only reason people do things. Then you seem to disagree, but also kind of hedge that disagreement.
CornBurrito
Member
Granted, the Soviet Union wasn't actually the people or workers owning the means of production. And had a high degree of corruption. But even with that corruption they got results.
Lonewulfeus
Member
Yup, I'd argue without having to worry about potential profitability that the type of people who want to discover and create things would have free reign to do so and wouldn't have something they invented or discovered tossed to the side just because it wouldn't make one group of people ludicrous amounts of money.
So if I need item A that group A makes, B from B, and so on, to start my business... do I wait until they all prioritize me enough to fulfill my need? Or do I offer them some part in the collective in exchange for those items?
Wait what
Before we go any further please list three criticisms of Stalin that you agree with.
cpp_is_king
Member
Where did they get the money to pay the people? Investors.
Why did the investors invest? Because they thought they would make a profit.
Why were they even able to succeed in the first place? Because they lured in the best and the brightest with crazy salaries and perks
Imagine if the government tried to fund the development of Google instead of private investors and the market at large. It would probably be a half baked piece of shit. Not enough money, subpar employees, basically a bunch of people just coming to a 9-5 to get their shit done and go home. What would make me want to work there over some other average run-of-the-mill company if every company was basically the same.
That's what non-capitalism leads to. An entire world of mediocrity.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
Granted, the Soviet Union wasn't actually the people or workers owning the means of production. And had a high degree of corruption. But even with that corruption they got results.
I wonder how much of this is reliant on taking Soviet propaganda at face value. That's ignoring that it ignores the literal millions deliberately killed, starved, and/or imprisoned by the government.
My disagreements with the communist movement are more fundamental and extend to what I think are fundamental aspects of human psychology and discourse, itself, but the sophistry of tankies is certainly a nice surface target.
CornBurrito
Member
Its a meme. I didn't mean it as a fully serious argument.
As an economic historian from a history department, I think you're quite close to the mark with this.
But this is Vulgar Marxism 101. John Locke's philosophy was not about protecting the acquired property of the wealthy class against the reactionary royalty. I mean I know that's the kneejerk, intellectual history is nothing but silly superstructure that we can ignore reaction, but come on. You're actually ignoring Marxist historians when making that claim. The Bourgeoisie had not become the ruling class in England by 1688, and James was not reactionary. Moreover, the Bourgeoisie was certainly not the ruling class in Scotland, which had a far more radically liberal 1688.
Moreover, Locke was not at all against the poor, and was deeply troubled by the question of the poor and it's place in his philosophy.
This take becomes even less tenable when you get to the Scottish Enlightement.
Locke was writing in the context of the beginning of the Industrial Revolution? Maybe Smith, but that's a really generous take. You'll find most economic historians date it to the 1820s since Craft's revisions in the 80s.
This is probably somewhat accurate though. The new economic reality demanded new epistemological understandings of society.
That second point is I think a pretty important one at least though. A lot of the arguments against it are from a perspective of it not leading to economic growth because the USSR and China were poor. Of course this ignores the fact that they were poor countries on the even of their revolutions.
CornBurrito
Member
Value comes from neither. It comes from people valuing things they want. It's one of Locke and Smith's, and therefore Marx's, greatest flaws
cpp_is_king
Member
I'm not sure what part you disagree with. But value comes from both labor and capital. You can think of the employees' brains as capital. And how effectively they work depends on that capital.
If they have ancient hardware, they'll never get anything done because it will take too long. If the servers are outdated, they won't be able to process queries fast enough.
You seriously think that 100,000 people spinning wheels by hand could create something like google.com?
Value and Capital make things that we value. They do not themselves produces value.
You can call the laborer capital as well. And how effectively they work depends on that capital.
This is essentially meaningless though because then you're redefining capital to mean any input.
This argument doesn't make any sense. No one is saying get rid of capital. They are saying change how capital is allocated.
Have you actually worked for many companies?
The primary motivator to come to work is believing that your work has value, that your management recognizes what you do and values it, and that your coworkers also believe in the work you are doing together.
These things are independent of money or capitalism.
Locke certainly was engaged in arguing extensively why Native Americans didn't do any real work while European colonialists didn't and so deserved their property and the land they stole from the Native Americans. It highlights what Locke's philosophy meant when acted out on a more practical matter and what his motivations and ideology were. singled Locke out because he is perhaps the most famous liberal philosopher. During his time, there was no real capitalism and Industrial revolution yet, but certainly a form of early capitalism and already an emerging class of wealthy, property owning merchants and similar occupations, varying greatly between the different European countries.
Well, so was Jeremy Bentham.
CornBurrito
Member
If you give me a plow and I plow 100 fields for 100 customers who pay 10 each, how much of that 1000 am I entitled to?
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
That Locke may have had an enormous blindspot with respect to Native Americans does not imply that argument for ensconcement an oppressive and unequal status quo is the "real" motivation of his philosophy, so much as it implies that he was incapable of seeing his philosophy through to its logical, universal conclusions due to various biases of the time that had nestled in him.
I mean sure. That's not what you were saying though. This says nothing about the intentions of the thinkers involved.
How does it say anything about his motivations. He wasn't trying to provide a justification for taking over land from the natives. People weren't questioning that. It's something that followed from his ideas.
I'm not saying it's a good thing. I'm saying your mischaracterizing his motivations.
Eh I think most people are fine with accepting Capitalism had emerged by the late 17th century. The most common argument is if it's Dutch/English in the late 16th century or Northern Italian before that.
Kinda sorta, but those classes, and we generally use the word middling sorts because they aren't really a class by that point, did not yet have a class consciousness and were not yet in power.
Exactly.
Orthogonal
Member
Utter non-sense. Instead of brushing it off, try to explain or understand why every attempt at communism inevitably degenerates into a cult of personality dictatorship.
It's not brushing it off. Communism has a definition, and it has never happened in practice. It would be one thing if this were moving goal posts, but the goal posts remain where they have been since Marx.
cpp_is_king
Member
I don't see how this analogy is relevant to anything we're even discussing.
Lenin.
He literally said "let's do the communism thing but first let's have a dictatorship to get things organized and train everybody up. Then when the country is ready he'll just be replaced by the proletariat."
This turns out to have an unexpected failure point.
CornBurrito
Member
Who provided more value in that scenario? The capitalist who owned the plow? Or the worker who plowed 100 fields?
How much of a share of the profit is each person (capital vs labor) entitled to?
The history of 20th century socialist nations is one almost entirely of movements inspired by or funded by the USSR, which became the central icon of socialism because it had proven that it could rapidly modernize without capitalism. It is not a shock that they all followed the outline of the biggest self-proclaimed socialist state.
It was not, however, actually socialistic since it wasn't democratic!
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
This is fair, but as long as communism continues to rely on the intensely collectivistic philosophy that I would argue is at the heart of why Communists seem so universally to have been okay with using murder, imprisonment, and exile to achieve their goals (and which I think is also at the heart of many of the more ridiculous dustups of current liberal activism, such as the recent acts at Evergreen State University), it is not, I think, unfair to point out what the results have been of attempts to implement it, imperfect a representation of Marx's visions though they may have been.
Orthogonal
Member
Quite ironic that in order to create a classless society it hinges first on the benefactor of the ultimate class disparity.
The Technomancer
card-carrying scientician
I would hope we could all agree that communism proper is impossible until, at the very least, food housing and medicine are not only post scarcity but we understand mechanisms for their equitable distribution. I won't say that that's the only reason why all communism to this point has failed, but it is certainly why they weren't capable of succeeding. But I also fully believe that is within our grasp
That's not an argument for communism, btw, I'm not sure where I land on that. Just an observation that what was impossible may become possible
That's not an argument for communism, btw, I'm not sure where I land on that. Just an observation that what was impossible may become possible
There are a lot of things we can do without abandoning capitalism:
A direct tax on wealth: The U.S. doesn't tax wealth, just the transfer of assets. Why not assign a 15% tax on assets above $10 million. We can have waivers for assets put to beneficial work.
A "maximum" wage or income cap: No individual can make more than $10 million per year. A business entity can, but individual owners can only pull down $10 million, etc. One way to do this is with steeply progressive taxes: anything over $5M is taxed at 70%, over $9M at 90%, etc.
Or a maximum wage based on a multiple of minimum wage: You can only make 1000 times the minimum wage. At the current U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year yields an annual income of only $15,080. So the max anyone can make is 1000 times that, or $15M. If you want to make more, better start rallying for a higher minimum wage!
Tax unused or underused assets: you can still have 10 houses, but we tax houses based on their use. A primary residence isn't taxed. Two homes have a 10% tax. 5 homes have 25% tax. Something like that. Same thing for unutilized land, or other assets.
A direct tax on wealth: The U.S. doesn't tax wealth, just the transfer of assets. Why not assign a 15% tax on assets above $10 million. We can have waivers for assets put to beneficial work.
A "maximum" wage or income cap: No individual can make more than $10 million per year. A business entity can, but individual owners can only pull down $10 million, etc. One way to do this is with steeply progressive taxes: anything over $5M is taxed at 70%, over $9M at 90%, etc.
Or a maximum wage based on a multiple of minimum wage: You can only make 1000 times the minimum wage. At the current U.S. federal minimum wage of $7.25 per hour, working 40 hours per week, 52 weeks per year yields an annual income of only $15,080. So the max anyone can make is 1000 times that, or $15M. If you want to make more, better start rallying for a higher minimum wage!
Tax unused or underused assets: you can still have 10 houses, but we tax houses based on their use. A primary residence isn't taxed. Two homes have a 10% tax. 5 homes have 25% tax. Something like that. Same thing for unutilized land, or other assets.
superdeluxe
Member
Some want communism In the states, honest question. What would be different about communism here that it would not fail compared to places where it has. On another matter, why has it succeeded in China compared to other communist countries
China is a crony capitalist country.
I think it's fair to point out that attempts to implement it have been pretty terrible. But the arguments I've seen are very rarely about the attempts to implement it. They are generally some weird utility arguments that are totally ahistoical and poorly thought out.
I don't want communism, but the most obvious answer is that communism would be happening in an advanced developed country with a recent history of stable political structures.
JordanN
Banned
I think communism will succeed once we enter automation.
It will be impossible to juggle a capitalist society and a society that employs robots. Humans can't compete against machines that work faster than them and never tire out.
We can use these same robots to do planning for us. Never being subject to error like human politicians are.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
This is the same reason I never really believed the "Trump is like Hitler and will usher in fascism" rhetoric, fwiw.
China is not a communist country. It's not even socialist. It's pretty much the definition of state capitalist. China succeeded economically because it liberalized its markets while retaining state direction over them, and it did not open up its political system or speech laws like the USSR did, thus preventing internal political strife and nationalism. That was the real death knell for the USSR.
Socialism in the US would likely work better compared to previous attempts for a number of reasons. First of all, nearly every country that attempted socialism in the 20th century started off poor. The US is already rich and does not need to rapidly industrialize like the USSR or China or other nations did. Marx believed socialism would first take off in the imperialist nations because they had the most advanced economic systems and largest proletariats; it's ironic it didnt happen, but the bureaucratization of the USSR could have likely been severely curtailed if the German Revolution had succeeded and the two countries had linked up as planned. Stalin's Socialism in One Country was adopted specifically because the USSR was isolated and poor. That's not a problem for the US.
Secondly, the US already has a strong tradition of democratic institutions, unlike most other countries that attempted socialism, so it would continue to be an aspect of the movement at the forefront.
Thirdly, we already have a powerful military so other countries would be insane to try to sabotage us, unlike what the West did to the socialist nations. We'd have to deal with hacking and six like now but there would be no threat of a NATO equivalent on our border or whatever.
Technological progress also means planning would be easier. We are already on the cusp of the automation revolution, which is what can liberate humans from labor.
Specifically he thought it would be the Irish in Britain that would lead the charge.
Snowman Prophet of Doom
Member
I mostly think the average person is much more Homer than Lisa Simpson, and if housing, food, and healthcare are guaranteed, there will be relatively little political capital to stir people up against the owners of the means of production because they would not give much of a fuck one way or the other.
LoveCake
Member
Wait, what?
You get that the robots that can drive cars and build stuff in factories cannot make policy decisions, right?
Those are problems of a different caliber. We're still in the indeterminate/maybe impossible stage when it comes to AI that can replace a politician.
travisbickle
Member
Americans are as brain washed as North Koreans. "Movies wouldn't exist without capitalism".
He wasn't entirely off the mark. There was a huge socialist impetus in Ireland that kicked off around the end of his life, but petered out after Ireland became independent on bourgeois terms. Socialism has been a quiet current in Irish politics up until the present. For instance, most IRA factions have been vaguely Marxist.
In the UK, proletarian organizing by Irish immigrants and native Brits scared the bejeezus out of the government. They refused to harbor the Romanovs after the February Revolution due to fears that this might trigger a workers' revolt in their own country.
JordanN
Banned
*looks at President Trump*
I think I'll take my chances with Robot Obama. And if things go wrong, we can replace him with another robot.
See, automated communism works!
This is just gibberish. Trump is evidence that intelligence and judgement are still heavily required to be a politician. That's why he's so destructive (that plus the Nazis).
Chaos2Frozen
Member
Do you know how slow progress would be if we have to wait for an Einstein or Archimedes every generation?
Like exactly as fast as it currently is?
Chaos2Frozen
Member
No? Because we have a lot of research and advancement incentivised by money.
I'm still waiting for one of the acolytes of capitalism to explain how they want to adress the fundamental fact that not ripping the earth completely of its resources in the near future, PLUS the fact that every human being on this planet even having a quarter of the living standard of a citizen of a developed western nation is OBJECTIVELY impossible in an economic system that is fundamentally build on the idea of never-ending growth, profit and the possibility of achieving wealth for everyone (which is and was already a lie, but it will be more than ever in the near future)
Everything with refugees happening right now and the reactionary, racist, crypto-fascist counter-movements in western societies right now is merely a shadow of what will happening in the near future, especially if you factor in climate change and other kinds of disasters related to environment and resources. Yet western societies still have the audacity to separate refugees into "real" refugees and "economic migrants", as if having to live in a poor as fuck third-world-country isn't very often nothing less than the deciding factor over life and death.
Liberals seem to have no other answer to all of this then "Lol people are stupid and racist dunno why people vote Trump/Le Pen/Brexit/whatever, let me post this shallow VOX article proving it".
Everything with refugees happening right now and the reactionary, racist, crypto-fascist counter-movements in western societies right now is merely a shadow of what will happening in the near future, especially if you factor in climate change and other kinds of disasters related to environment and resources. Yet western societies still have the audacity to separate refugees into "real" refugees and "economic migrants", as if having to live in a poor as fuck third-world-country isn't very often nothing less than the deciding factor over life and death.
Liberals seem to have no other answer to all of this then "Lol people are stupid and racist dunno why people vote Trump/Le Pen/Brexit/whatever, let me post this shallow VOX article proving it".