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Ian Winthorpe III posted:I'm not the one kicking Haiti when it's down, my posts here aren't going to make any different to the conditions of the slums of Port-au-Prince. Maybe Haitians could though? I'm dying
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Nov 6, 2014 02:05
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Race Hate Kramer posted:I'm dying you wouldn't have that problem if you were already dead Vote Skeleton Party!
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Nov 6, 2014 02:09
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Race Hate Kramer posted:I'm dying Yeah, the thought that people in a small, relatively homogenous nation state with substantial natural resources and political sovereignty might be able to improve conditions for their people is laughable huh. Better for them to wait around til western Marxism comes to save the day huh.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:09
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Race Hate Kramer posted:I'm dying for a poster named Race Hate Kramer, i'm not sure this is a negative outcome
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Nov 6, 2014 02:10
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:Yeah, the thought that people in a small, relatively homogenous nation state with substantial natural resources and political sovereignty might be able to improve conditions for their people is laughable huh. I don't know that the guy just asking questions about why countries of blacks and Latinos are poorer than countries of whites and the non-Indian kinds of Asians really has room to start calling people racist or whatever, but to answer your question, Americans are lazier, inferior beings to the Swiss.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:15
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Gantolandon posted:I really don't get all the bitterness and hatred for the Occupy movement coming from the left. It was the first time since at least 30 years where such a large strata of society demonstrated their disappointment with capitalism. In a country which for a long time presented itself as a champion of economic freedom and recently scored a decisive victory against its archenemy. I don't think anyone should have expected them to immediately start a revolution or form a successful political party and oust Obama in presidential elections. It's like being angry at the guy, who had an accident with a spinal injury and is in the middle of rehabilitation, for not winning a marathon. Because we're watching people bumble about around "capitalism has bad things in it and I don't like the bad things" but not bothering to go out and check if anyone before them might have also noticed that or if they could learn anything from them. They are, by and large, people who think "anarchism" means chaos and "communism" is bad mustache man frozen gruel and vodka. I can't really blame them considering they've been told that their entire lives, but it's still frustrating. We can't exactly compare notes when they're raised to be actively hostile to our ideas, the only thing we can do is hope for them to go "maybe I've not been told the truth" and go looking for answers themselves. Of course, there were communists and anarchists at occupy. There were also wingnuts who think obama is a marxist. The majority was just random people who were unhappy, reinventing leftism from it's earliest beginnings at the same speed it was originally done. Assuming people aren't too busy playing videogames to care, see you at the destruction of the new york commune in fifty years. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 02:24 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 02:19
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Effectronica posted:I don't know that the guy just asking questions about why countries of blacks and Latinos are poorer than countries of whites and the non-Indian kinds of Asians really has room to start calling people racist or whatever, but to answer your question, Americans are lazier, inferior beings to the Swiss. the Swiss speak weird, unintelligible moon German, so no
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Nov 6, 2014 02:33
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icantfindaname posted:the Swiss speak weird, unintelligible moon German, so no Singaporeans are probably the real master race, but Finland is close too.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:37
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Effectronica posted:Singaporeans are probably the real master race, but Finland is close too. 
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Nov 6, 2014 02:39
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Obdicut posted:They don't invest in more productive enterprises, but in more profitable ones. The decision of 'how much' work is done is not decided by the investment, it is at most influenced. Likewise, who does it is not decided by the investment. And yes, a committee would have to make decisions about resource allocation, but it doesn't take the seizure of the means of production, just a non-profit enterprise. I don't disagree necessarily with anything in the first two paragraphs, other than to note that to Marx a more productive enterprise is necessarily more profitable because the capitalist is getting all the surplus value of the production. But you can see how your point in the first two paagraphs--the capitalist's role in investment has indirect impacts on production that are very difficult to measure-- makes it impossible to determine how much of the surplus value created he is responsible for. Marx asserts the answer is zero, which can't be proven, any more than the capitalist could prove he deserves all the profits. Thus The existence of a differential between a workers wage and the value of the labor he performs is not necessarily evidence of exploitation.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:46
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I suppose what i'm getting at is that this is one of Marxism's biggest blind spots to me: the role of tradition, culture, family, spirituality or ethnicity in determining how politics is played out. I think there's some truth to the Marxist notion that many of a societies morals and values arise from the circumstances of material production and class structure, but the tendency to dismiss these things as false consciousness or fundamentally irrelevant has been proven wrong time and time again. When Communism in Eurasia collapsed around 1990 one of the first things people in many areas did was to start killing and shooting each other along lines that go back many many centuries. So when a Marxist says something likequote:kicking Haiti while it's down does nobody any good and there are far more productive discussions that we could have. It suggests to me that they're not being very serious.
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Nov 6, 2014 02:48
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Friendly Tumour posted:Same as Russians are responsible for Stalin. Why did those fools elect him? Those fools, curse them Actually Stalin is good 
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Nov 6, 2014 03:21
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JeffersonClay posted:I don't disagree necessarily with anything in the first two paragraphs, other than to note that to Marx a more productive enterprise is necessarily more profitable because the capitalist is getting all the surplus value of the production. No, I'm drawing distinction between the market utility of the goods and their real value. That's what I mean. An investor may decide to invest in cigarettes, say, or an advertising company, or something else that produces stuff of negative or no real value in use terms. quote:But you can see how your point in the first two paagraphs--the capitalist's role in investment has indirect impacts on production that are very difficult to measure-- makes it impossible to determine how much of the surplus value created he is responsible for. No, again, that is not the role of the capitalist. That might be the role of a CEO, or a manager, or the Chairman of the board, but the mere act of investing does not influence--as I pointed out, investment normally isn't at the start of a company, it's just buying stock. you're treating 'investment' as though it is always starting off a company. Furthermore, even when someone does savvily invest in a business with a lot of foresight, very quickly the initial investment doesn't matter, the revenue stream of the company takes over. To clarify, imagine a guy who has an idea for a product. He pitches it to a Shark Tank dude, who invests in his company and takes a 50% equity position in it. He invests a million bucks, which covers the first half-years costs, the company gets profitable a month ahead of schedule, everything's bacon. Shark Tank guy made a savvy investment and did the 'labor' of deciding to invest in it. But there's another path: the guy instead goes and gets a loan, because he has excellent credit and he's hella good at pitching. Someone in the Small Business Administration backs him up, and he gets a hundred thousand dollar loan, payable back at 8%. He has to start smaller and it takes longer, but in the end he gets a business with the same revenue stream. He pays back the loan and owns the company outright. The third guy starts out with a piece of string and it takes him a long, long time to work his business up because he has to labor for wages and scrimp and save, but he invests in his own business and slowly builds it up, and in the end has the same revenue stream. The fourth guy, thirty years later, buys the business on the advice of his accountant. These are very different 'capitalists', and the existence of capital credit via the bank complicates the situation even further. But what is shown in both cases is that the revenue stream, the successful business, is what matters, not the investment itself. The investment makes it easier, but investments can come from a variety of sources, they can come from labor. You can labor your way to capital, you can't capital your way to labor. And in those four scenarios, the 'work' done varied wildly, with the first capitalist and the banker doing the same work but getting vastly different rewards, and the third capitalist doing much more work, and the fourth doing none at all. As was quoted above, Marx was aware of all these types, and they don't present a challenge to the theory. In each case, the ongoing labor is still what the actual engine of the company is. Also I'm about to start drinking.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:24
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There has always been the view that we're supposed to look past what divides us as ethnic groups and work together for our mutual benefit as human beings. It's not so much a blindspot as it is a deliberate stance that all that poo poo is really dumb and a distraction from what matters. Not that that in itself doesn't lead to dumb poo poo on the part of marxists, who very often take it to the conclusion that all the problems of racial/gender/sexual oppression will go away when we rise up and smash capitalism and therefore aren't important. This leads to white dudes crying "identity politics!" every time a comrade wants to speak about those issues, and thus utterly shuts down any attempt to fix them or even draw attention to them within the communist movement itself. Thankfully everyone has caught on to brocialist bullshit by now.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:29
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Obdicut posted:No, I'm drawing distinction between the market utility of the goods and their real value. That's what I mean. An investor may decide to invest in cigarettes, say, or an advertising company, or something else that produces stuff of negative or no real value in use terms. Once again you don't seem to get that Marxist conceptions of use-value vs exchange-value are not by any means universally recognized and are just presenting it as fact. Advertising, or the stock market, or cigarettes, have value that can't be objectively distinguished from that of a comic book or a car, even if you may subjectively think they don't have any Obdicut posted:No, again, that is not the role of the capitalist. That might be the role of a CEO, or a manager, or the Chairman of the board, but the mere act of investing does not influence--as I pointed out, investment normally isn't at the start of a company, it's just buying stock. you're treating 'investment' as though it is always starting off a company. Furthermore, even when someone does savvily invest in a business with a lot of foresight, very quickly the initial investment doesn't matter, the revenue stream of the company takes over. You're completely ignoring time and economic efficiency here. Sure, you might get the same end result, but if it takes you 50 years and 100 net abstract units of labor that's clearly less efficient than if it took 1 year and one net unit of labor. The capitalist improves efficiency of the allocation of resources icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 03:37 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 03:31
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HorseLord posted:There has always been the view that we're supposed to look past what divides us as ethnic groups and work together for our mutual benefit as human beings. It's not so much a blindspot as it is a deliberate stance that all that poo poo is really dumb and a distraction from what matters. Leftist infighting is still hilarious, so I think you should keep it up
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Nov 6, 2014 03:33
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icantfindaname posted:Leftist infighting is still hilarious, so I think you should keep it up 
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Nov 6, 2014 03:34
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icantfindaname posted:Once again you don't seem to get that Marxist conceptions of use-value vs exchange-value are not by any means universally recognized and are just presenting it as fact. Advertising, or the stock market, or cigarettes, have value that can't be objectively distinguished from that of a comic book or a car, even if you may subjectively think they don't have any Your second paragraph isn't a response to anything he said, and if you're willing to go to bat for cigarettes as valuable, well, hopefully I'll have the chance to help pay for your emphysema treatments in a glorious future of socialized medicine. icantfindaname posted:Leftist infighting is still hilarious, so I think you should keep it up Your posts have convinced me that I actually dislike social liberalism, rather than capitalism, and so I'm going to inflict extreme violence upon you at some point.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:37
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HorseLord posted:There has always been the view that we're supposed to look past what divides us as ethnic groups and work together for our mutual benefit as human beings. It's not so much a blindspot as it is a deliberate stance that all that poo poo is really dumb and a distraction from what matters. 'What Matters' being the belief in a utopian ideology rather than a realistic appraisal of how human affairs are conducted? Like, I get that, and it's admirable I guess but it's sentiments like yours that push me towards categorizing much Marxism as theology.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:37
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:'What Matters' being the belief in a utopian ideology rather than a realistic appraisal of how human affairs are conducted? What? That sort of "realism" is what led people to assume that slavery was eternal, or that it was impossible to hold civil society together if women voted, or that allowing homosexuality to exist would be the end of humanity. It's conservatism for its own sake, without any ideas, goals, or motivations. Nobody could ever really make a belief system of that.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:40
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Effectronica posted:What? That sort of "realism" is what led people to assume that slavery was eternal, or that it was impossible to hold civil society together if women voted, or that allowing homosexuality to exist would be the end of humanity. It's conservatism for its own sake, without any ideas, goals, or motivations. Nobody could ever really make a belief system of that. that sounds like a challenge to me
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Nov 6, 2014 03:41
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:But the problem in areas of severe poverty like sub Saharan Africa of India isn't a lack of money to pay for energy but rather incompetence in governing, building and maintaining infrastructure. The difference between $2/megawatt (or whatever) and $0/megawatt isn't going to eradicate poverty and feed and clothe the people of a country like the D.R.C hmmm yes the problem with Angola,Mozambique and Congo is the ~~~~bad government~~~~, not entire decades of brutal imperialist repression of anti-colonial movements and then some more decades of foreign financing of terrorists and bribes to to the local upper class and governments until economic policies that pleased the west could be implemented. Ian Winthorpe III posted:I suppose what i'm getting at is that this is one of Marxism's biggest blind spots to me: the role of tradition, culture, family, spirituality or ethnicity in determining how politics is played out. I think there's some truth to the Marxist notion that many of a societies morals and values arise from the circumstances of material production and class structure, but the tendency to dismiss these things as false consciousness or fundamentally irrelevant has been proven wrong time and time again. When Communism in Eurasia collapsed around 1990 one of the first things people in many areas did was to start killing and shooting each other along lines that go back many many centuries. So when a Marxist says something like Similarly, if there are cities in Portugal outside of Porto and Lisbon whose traditions and cultures haven't been pillaged and prostituted to hell in the name of entrepreneurship then those cities probably elect Communist majorities or the communists compose a strong position in the area. Friendly Tumour posted:Occupy isn't confined to America though. Podemos grew out of the Spanish 15-M movement, which in turn was the Spanish equivalent of the Occupy movement in the states, sharing their ideals. What I'm saying is that there is a widespread feeling of discontent in the younger generations across the western world. The fact its first public manifestations didn't amount to much is irrelevant in that sense. The emotion and the motivation are still there, waiting for a new outlet. And new movements will come, and they will still be inspired by the same emotions that drew the people on the streets on the height of Occupy. Or that's what I predict anyway. Ian Winthorpe III posted:'What Matters' being the belief in a utopian ideology rather than a realistic appraisal of how human affairs are conducted? Do you think people inside a communist party just literally read Marx and that's it? They probably read more Engels than Marx because that motherfucker knew how to write some hard hitting sociological books before sociology even existed. Nigga wake up.
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Nov 6, 2014 03:41
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Ian Winthorpe III posted:And Haiti is the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere after two centuries of independence so I would hardly call their revolution a stirring success. It was also among the poorest in the Western Hemisphere prior to Independence, so I don't know what you think this proves. Practically speaking, there would probably be one much better off country if all of Hispaniola was a unified country. Whether it spoke French, Spanish, or both wouldn't matter much. Friendly Tumour posted:The bitterness is a result of the political left's failure to bring about the changes called for by the Occupy movement. What were those again?
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Nov 6, 2014 04:20
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Relevantly: Haiti was forced at cannon-point by France to pay "reparations" post-Revolution equaling (inflation-adjusted, 2009) US$12.7 billion. One imagines that this would prove rather crippling to even medium-sized industrialized countries, to say nothing of a primarily agrarian country that was one of the biggest pariah states of its time as a consequence of what it theoretically entailed to any world powers that still relied on slavery.
Vermain fucked around with this message at 05:28 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 05:25
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Mans posted:hmmm yes the problem with Angola,Mozambique and Congo is the ~~~~bad government~~~~, not entire decades of brutal imperialist repression of anti-colonial movements and then some more decades of foreign financing of terrorists and bribes to to the local upper class and governments until economic policies that pleased the west could be implemented. That actually seems like the same thing to me. Those places have bad government as a result of imperialism. But the solution isn't necessarily socialism. Mans posted:Interesting enough, the Soviet Union and the warsaw pact managed to conserve a lot of folklore and local traditions that were actually lost in the west, specially notable in Germany. Communists: noted defenders of cultural heritage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/USSR_anti-religious_campaign_(1928%E2%80%9341) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cultural_Revolution Pictured: Soviets in the act of preserving Russian traditions and culture 
icantfindaname fucked around with this message at 05:37 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 05:32
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Mans posted:Interesting. fuuuuck 
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Nov 6, 2014 06:13
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icantfindaname posted:That actually seems like the same thing to me. Those places have bad government as a result of imperialism. But the solution isn't necessarily socialism. the answer is, naturally, to ignore it and not care because we all know that as long as Capitalism retains its choke-hold on western values nobody is ever going to give a poo poo about poor black people or do anything about it. But don't worry guys, I'm sure it'll work out. Why bother wasting time talking about socialism?  edit: I really admire and, in a way, aspire to the Soviet's blood-boilingly furious anger towards Fascist scum and those who espouse it, but I think the admiration definitely ends there... Digi_Kraken fucked around with this message at 06:19 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 06:17
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Obdicut posted:No, I'm drawing distinction between the market utility of the goods and their real value. That's what I mean. An investor may decide to invest in cigarettes, say, or an advertising company, or something else that produces stuff of negative or no real value in use terms. Once you recognize the value of management in general you no longer have any clear differentiators between management and ownership. Owners are just the top of the management chain. Ask yourself for example why the CEO or the Chairman are doing productive work (you recognize they do) and the answer goes back to ownership. CEO's would happily collect paychecks for doing nothing if they could get away with it right? Why is the CEO working if it's not because of pressure from ownership? And didn't ownership chose them? The relationship between owner(s) and CEO is basically identical to that of any manager to the people below them. Note also that it's completely uncontroversial among this audience to recognize the potential hazards of ownership and profit incentive - recognizing that means you recognize the influence of ownership over company behavior. This influence is responsible for productive outcomes as well. As for the idea that trading stock has no influence on existing companies - it's dead wrong. An increasing stock price opens up a whole range of potential benefits for an existing company including increased access to loans, the potential for new share issues and stock based acquisitions. And to attack this issue from another angle let's assume for a second that ownership wasn't productive, and therefore profit was basically parasitic. It's reasonable to assume that if this was true companies would recognize it right? So if I'm a large profit seeking company who recognizes that ownership is parasitic the most profitable business tactic would be to avoid doing business with other parasitic companies, to own my own capital and manage as much of the supply chain as possible. We don't see this. Companies, even very large ones routinely position themselves so they're completely dependent on other profit seeking companies. Walmart sells stuff but doesn't make a single thing (at most it uses it's own labels). Apple designs phones but contracts Foxonn to build them. Alcoa produces aluminum, but then sells it all to other firms who mark it up before it reaches any end-customer. Businesses routinely outsource huge chunks of their operations (supply chain, shipping, IT, accounting, engineering) to other companies. Much of this is voluntary (obviously so when the players have names like Apple and Wal-Mart), and the only explanation is that these businesses think their partner's profit is roughly in-line with the value delivered. If it wasn't, they'd go elsewhere or do it themselves. If that was the case, the entire structure of the economy would be vastly different. asdf32 fucked around with this message at 06:30 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 06:26
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Mans posted:hmmm yes the problem with Angola,Mozambique and Congo is the ~~~~bad government~~~~, not entire decades of brutal imperialist repression of anti-colonial movements and then some more decades of foreign financing of terrorists and bribes to to the local upper class and governments until economic policies that pleased the west could be implemented. Past acts of imperialism are actually pretty terrible at explaining circumstances today. If you want great examples of imperialists completely ravaging other countries you can't do much better than what western europe did to itself for example. They actively beat the poo poo out of each other for centuries and are still all rich. It took all of 20 years for Germany to go from devastated WWI loser to steamrolling it's previous conquerors with an army of modern tanks. Then it lost again and was back on its feet in another couple decades (half of it anyway). Imperialism sucks but there are reasons to look elsewhere to explain contemporary problems.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:44
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asdf32 posted:If you want great examples of imperialists completely ravaging other countries you can't do much better than what western europe did to itself for example. They actively beat the poo poo out of each other for centuries and are still all rich. If you are seriously failing to see the economic and political differences between third world nations with no power and Europe you are absolutely dense.
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Nov 6, 2014 06:47
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Wish I had more time to go into detail about the following and to answer some of the points that were brought up in the past few pages, but I think it's pretty interesting that there was a discussion about hypothetical post-scarcity robot economy because the question of automation is one that marxism has a lot to say about and there seemed to be a bit of confusion about it so I'll write a quick overview of it: Throughout the history of capitalism, more and more advanced techniques of automation have made it possible to achieve a higher rate of productivity per worker than before, sometimes by orders of magnitude. To take a hypothetical example, a new technique which simply increases productivity two-fold could in theory make possible a situation where workers are receiving the same salary, producing just as much, and getting the benefit of now working half the hours than they did before! What marxism points out is that with privately held means of production this cannot happen because those who own the machines will only use them in order to maximize their profits so they would rather fire half the workers instead and pay half the wages to get the same amount of products to sell. The availability of better techniques then is something which actually works to the detriment of the worker under capitalism, because labour becomes less important to the production of a given quantity of goods. A simplified way to think about it is that workers lose their jobs to the machines, or that they have to compete with them and therefore work for a lower salary (low enough that it's not cheaper for a capitalist to buy machines instead of hiring people). This however, doesn't mean that technological progress is "bad" or anything like that. It's more complicated than this. It is partly these increases in productivity that eventually push capitalism to its final point of crisis, and makes another mode of production possible. Socialism cannot happen unless the productive forces are developed enough first, but once they have been then the only obstacle to being able to both provide for everyone and work less is the capitalist order itself, where the means of productions are held by a minority while everyone else is struggling to find ever-scarcer jobs to survive. Seizing the means of production means the bourgeoisie reliquishing control over them, and they'd probably rather all the now-useless-to-them poor people be slaughtered than to let that happen. 
Bob le Moche fucked around with this message at 07:35 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 07:26
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Do not respond to IWC. He will not argue in good faith. Ever.Bob le Moche posted:This however, doesn't mean that technological progress is "bad" or anything like that. It's more complicated than this. It is partly these increases in productivity that eventually push capitalism to its final point of crisis, and makes another mode of production possible. Socialism cannot happen unless the productive forces are developed enough first, but once they have been then the only obstacle to being able to both provide for everyone and work less is the capitalist order itself, where the means of productions are held by a minority while everyone else is struggling to find ever-scarcer jobs to survive. Seizing the means of production means the bourgeoisie reliquishing control over them, and they'd probably rather all the now-useless-to-them poor people be slaughtered than to let that happen. rudatron fucked around with this message at 08:07 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 07:47
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Nostalgia4Infinity posted:You tell me. I don't think it's dead, but something must be done to revitalize it. I actually wrote my thesis on this; I argued that the revolutionary subject needed an injection of postmodern ironic humor through things like wonder Showzen or The Yes Men to become viable in the current climate. I don't understand how the economic system can pretty much collapse, as it is wont to do, and meet with no more resistance than Occupy. It was a noble effort but the kids were uninformed and unsure of what was required. But then aren't we all?
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Nov 6, 2014 08:12
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JeffersonClay posted:I'm not trying to suggest that Piketty hates Marx or that Marx has zero influence on mainstream economists. If I had to guess I'd say Piketty thinks Marx was an interesting philosopher but a bad economist. Piketty's a French economics PHD; he got a decent serving of Marx through his academic training at a minimum-- although it was much more likely to be secondary sources than big chunks of Das Kapital (which is totally fine, by the way, you can understand evolution perfectly well without reading a word from the Origin of Species). Also his parents were apparently french communists of some sort so perhaps this is all precocious defiance! My point in bringing this up was to refute the idea that the Marxist critique of capitalism has any significant degree of acceptance in mainstream economics by showing that reaching somewhat similar conclusions to Marx is not the same thing as accepting his views or even being influenced by them. My point is that I really doubt Piketty wasn't actually influenced by Marx even if he has some personal hangups about him. He doesn't use Marxian theories of value but at the same time, it is hard not to see him as trying to come to the same conclusion with the knowledge of what Marx already wrote. Ultimately, one big issue with Piketty is his work if anything is very limited even if it backed up with data, but data alone doesn't save a work and also he is even more limited in offering a solution than Marx and if anything leaves it a big question mark. As far as modern economics, I honestly see real gaps in it and if anything I think there is a ideological motive to reject Marx as much as possible due in part to the legacy of the Cold War. I went to the University of Chicago, I know the rants they go on. However, I think Western economic theory is a largely lacking because it refuses to address many of the issues brought up by Marx and to be honest, I don't think "Marx should be considered dead." If anything the 1990s was more or less their golden age, and at this point we are entering new territory. Zorars posted:I don't think it's dead, but something must be done to revitalize it. I actually wrote my thesis on this; I argued that the revolutionary subject needed an injection of postmodern ironic humor through things like wonder Showzen or The Yes Men to become viable in the current climate. I don't understand how the economic system can pretty much collapse, as it is wont to do, and meet with no more resistance than Occupy. It was a noble effort but the kids were uninformed and unsure of what was required. But then aren't we all? Ultimately, it is much bigger than Occupy though and if anything failures of capitalism in this day and age won't be from Occupy storming buildings by fissures in the developing world. Syria and Libya offer interesting representative cases of this, and show what a real breakdown of society looks like without the need of Marxist or leftist revolutionaries being remotely involved. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 08:19 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 08:14
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Race Hate Kramer posted:If you are seriously failing to see the economic and political differences between third world nations with no power and Europe you are absolutely dense. rudatron posted:Do not respond to IWC. He will not argue in good faith. Ever.  icantfindaname posted:That actually seems like the same thing to me. Those places have bad government as a result of imperialism. But the solution isn't necessarily socialism.  sure, but whereas imperialism here refers specifically to the highest stage of capitalism, your set of alternatives is pretty slim. Would you prefer feudalism? A classical slave society? Perhaps primitive communalism?icantfindaname posted:Communists: noted defenders of cultural heritage Quick note on cultural autonomy et al: Roland Boer posted:[Tito's] Yugoslavia is one of the best examples of what has been called ‘affirmative action’ in relation to ethnicities, cultures and religions. Given the range of peoples and regions in Yugoslavia, the constitution was explicitly designed as an affirmative action constitution. The Socialist Federal republic of Yugoslavia comprised six republics and two autonomous provinces that were part of the socialist republic of Serbia. Given the great ethnic diversity of Yugoslavia, the constitution and the framework of the laws sought to ensure that smaller groups were not discriminated against by larger ones. The measures included very strong anti-discrimination laws, with heavy penalties for vilification in terms of ethnicity, language, and religion. Further, in provinces and regions, local people were encouraged to take up government positions, and local languages, cultures, social formations and education were fostered. At a federal level, all republics and autonomous regions, no matter what the size, had equal representation in the federal government. This entailed toning down the dominance of the larger parts, so they didn’t lord it over the others. The Cultural Revolution was directed against reactionaries, "capitalist roaders," and corruption and authoritarianism within the party and society. See, e.g., Dongping Han's The Unknown Cultural Revolution: Han posted:Because a corrupt institution would not be able to exercise leadership in an effective manner, ultimately [the increasing corruption of individual party leaders] would lead to its death. ... The Cultural Revolution was Mao's last resort after the previous campaigns failed to do the job effectively. It differed from all the previous political campaigns because for the first time in the CCP's history it circumvented the local party bosses and stressed the principle of letting the masses empower themselves and educate themselves. So, start with a radically horizontal, radically pro-free speech, pro-dissent and pro-democracy movement of internal critique, reorganization, and modernization. Then, with that context firmly in mind, note the following passage in the Wikipedia article you shared: "Although being undertaken by some of the Revolution's enthusiastic followers, the destruction of historical relics was never formally sanctioned by the Communist Party, whose official policy was instead to protect such items. Indeed, on May 14, 1967, the CCP central committee issued a document entitled Several suggestions for the protection of cultural relics and books during the Cultural Revolution.[103]" Yeah, the USSR got pretty reactionary vis-a-vis religion. Communists have learned from such mistakes. You won't find communists today supporting Stalin-era homophobia, either. (Of course, I doubt I'll be able to convince you of this, since only capitalist nations have the luxury of blaming "bad policy," whereas all undesirable outcomes in a socialist state are because of socialism.) Aeolius fucked around with this message at 09:34 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 09:21
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Aeolius posted:Yeah, the USSR got pretty reactionary vis-a-vis religion. Communists have learned from such mistakes. You won't find communists today supporting Stalin-era homophobia, either. (Of course, I doubt I'll be able to convince you of this, since only capitalist nations have the luxury of blaming "bad policy," whereas all undesirable outcomes in a socialist state are because of socialism.) The CPRF (CPSU with a new name to get around the ban) still aren't exactly progressive about gays. I'd pin that on it being literally russia though, it's no big surprise a society with a huge homophobia problem produces a communist party that reflects this. Maybe It'll change after Zyuganov dies. I know in the wider communist movement it's overflowing with LGBT people, Huey Newton did tell homophobes to shut the gently caress up decades ago, after all. Speaking of Marx being dead, I think the CPRF is a pretty obvious pulse. Second most popular political party in Russia, and probably would have already taken the tricolour down and swapped it for the red flag already if it wasn't for Putin's internationally known and extremely obvious vote rigging. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 12:49 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 12:47
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asdf32 posted:Once you recognize the value of management in general you no longer have any clear differentiators between management and ownership. Owners are just the top of the management chain. Except for the clear differentiation between being owner and a manager, you mean. Seriously, what the hell does this mean? Yeah, you can easily distinguish between someone who owns 5% of the stock through a mutural fund and someone who actively manages the company. quote:Ask yourself for example why the CEO or the Chairman are doing productive work (you recognize they do) and the answer goes back to ownership. CEO's would happily collect paychecks for doing nothing if they could get away with it right? The CEO or chairman may or not be doing productive work, what we can say is that they're trying to do productive work, assuming the best. Anyway, the answer does not go back to ownership, since CEOs and the Chairman are not necessarily owners, and very unlikely to be majority owners. quote:Why is the CEO working if it's not because of pressure from ownership? Because they get paid money to do so. quote:And didn't ownership chose them? The relationship between owner(s) and CEO is basically identical to that of any manager to the people below them. The board chooses a chairman, the board represents but is not identical to ownership, as I went over, most owners do not actively make those choices, no. quote:Note also that it's completely uncontroversial among this audience to recognize the potential hazards of ownership and profit incentive - recognizing that means you recognize the influence of ownership over company behavior. This influence is responsible for productive outcomes as well. Those two things don't follow from each other, no. There are risks in investment, but that doesn't mean that owners are actively involved. Most ownership decisions are made post-facto: they look at quarterly reports and buy or sell. Or, they look at forecasts and buy or sell. This is like saying that consumers drive a company by buying or selling the product; true in a way, but not having anything to do with the actual labor process. quote:As for the idea that trading stock has no influence on existing companies - it's dead wrong. An increasing stock price opens up a whole range of potential benefits for an existing company including increased access to loans, the potential for new share issues and stock based acquisitions. I didn't say it had no influence, I said that it had an attenuated influence. And yes, a company, if valued highly can possibly get more loans. That potentiality isn't influence, and it's not even necessarily to the benefit of the company. Further, it is not the actual buying of the stock that raises this option, but the valuation of the stock. The stock doesn't have to be bought to increase in price, that is just the most obvious way to re-price the stock. quote:And to attack this issue from another angle let's assume for a second that ownership wasn't productive, and therefore profit was basically parasitic. It's reasonable to assume that if this was true companies would recognize it right? So if I'm a large profit seeking company who recognizes that ownership is parasitic the most profitable business tactic would be to avoid doing business with other parasitic companies, to own my own capital and manage as much of the supply chain as possible. No, this doesn't make any sense on any level, and I have no clue why you think it does. The other companies aren't parasitic just because the owners are. There's no level on which this makes sense. On the other hand, when a company is dealing with a rent-seeking company, they do do everything they can to avoid that relationship; when a company is acting parasitically by seeking to extract value without adding value to the process, other companies will do what they can to not work with them. But anyway, you just completely hosed up by saying that since an owner is 'parasitic'--that an owner extracts surplus value from the company--that the company is. There isn't any way that makes any sense at all. quote:Companies, even very large ones routinely position themselves so they're completely dependent on other profit seeking companies. Walmart sells stuff but doesn't make a single thing (at most it uses it's own labels). Apple designs phones but contracts Foxonn to build them. Alcoa produces aluminum, but then sells it all to other firms who mark it up before it reaches any end-customer. Businesses routinely outsource huge chunks of their operations (supply chain, shipping, IT, accounting, engineering) to other companies. Yeah, but that doesn't matter, because you made the leap between "The owners are parasitic" to "The company is parasitic", which was dumb as hell. quote:Much of this is voluntary (obviously so when the players have names like Apple and Wal-Mart), and the only explanation is that these businesses think their partner's profit is roughly in-line with the value delivered. If it wasn't, they'd go elsewhere or do it themselves. If that was the case, the entire structure of the economy would be vastly different. Again, you conflated the owner's parasitism with the company being parasitic, which makes no sense.
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Nov 6, 2014 13:26
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HorseLord posted:The CPRF (CPSU with a new name to get around the ban) still aren't exactly progressive about gays. I'd pin that on it being literally russia though, it's no big surprise a society with a huge homophobia problem produces a communist party that reflects this. Maybe It'll change after Zyuganov dies. I know in the wider communist movement it's overflowing with LGBT people, Huey Newton did tell homophobes to shut the gently caress up decades ago, after all. icantfindaname posted:That actually seems like the same thing to me. Those places have bad government as a result of imperialism. But the solution isn't necessarily socialism.
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Nov 6, 2014 15:34
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Mans posted:It's always sad to see earnest communists of Ukraine and Russia because they're all about proletariat struggle and imperialism and their party is cool and poo poo but then they really do their best not to actually talk about their party because they know their party is either pressured to near total neutrality (Russia) or bribed to be another oligarch pawn (Ukraine, well not anymore, the democratic forces banned the communist party while using fascists as a back bone of their support, lol) To be honest, both the CPRF and the CPU are really poor parties, they pump out rhetoric but honestly more or less are implicitly happy with the status quo in both Russia and Ukraine (before February 2014). Don't get me wrong they talk about imperialism a bunch but they really haven't made any real pushes at fixing what are almost torturous conditions in both countries. If you live over here you are look at pretty much very possibly political group and be mostly disgusted because of how little they want to actually change things. Neo-liberals, right-authoritarians, far-right fascists and the communists in economic terms are much closer together then you would think and socially many times they aren't that far apart either. Basically, the big differences are mostly ethnic nationalism.
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Nov 6, 2014 15:46
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^ Eh, it's the nature of things I suppose. They have to play multi-party democracy then get nowhere because lol, rigged election. And any attempt to get all revolutionary would be destroyed by the forces they themselves created when they were in power. HorseLord fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Nov 6, 2014 |
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Nov 6, 2014 15:46
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