Majorian posted:

LOL, I'm not even a Marxist, but okay.

Majorian posted:

I think he's under the impression that "Marxists," as a group, have a specific, unified program for what they're going to do when they take over the US or the world or whatever.

Raskolnikov38 posted:

theimmigrant is a stupid motherfucker???

asdf32 posted:

Who cares if they agree. I'd love to see any heterodox believer explain what they actually want to functionally change beyond removal of the legal title "owner" and thus the technical elimination of "exploitation".

Disinterested posted:

Every time it's revived, it's revived by some smug rear end in a top hat who is super sure Marxism is 'irrelevant' because [dumb reasons] [soviet union] [maoism] [20th century economics].

Bob le Moche posted:

Here is an infographic for explaining the secret Marxist world domination plot
Keep in mind that most people who are Marxists (including Marx himself) don't really care about any of that stuff and would rather focus on analyzing and understanding the currently existing capitalist economy than trying to figure out what the post-capitalist future will look like (the "recipe for the cookshop of the future").

asdf32 posted:

Critism outside the context of an alternative is necesarily useless.

namesake posted:

To be fair much of the revolutionary left is split because it's full of lovely, lovely egotistical idiots rather than serious political disputes over how to implement socialism.

Bob le Moche posted:

It's cool how I wrote "analysis" and "understanding" and you read that as "criticism"

Hmmmm isn't it weird how ideology works where just trying to actually lay out existing social relations and to get a clear picture of economic reality is perceived as this dangerous politically-charged act which provokes a defensive reaction?
It's almost as if efforts to de-obfuscate the material reality of how a class society operates actually go against the interests of those who benefit from it.

namesake posted:

Also the presentation of an alternative without an understanding of the present will be unnecessary, flawed or utopian.

Also for what it's worth I think the removal of private property as the basis of our economy/society will allow a naturally more egalitarian discussion to happen about who receives the fruit of industry. With the system no longer automatically running on a need for capital accumulation and a automatic allocation of ownership to the capital owner it's vastly likely that people will be successful in ensuring their portion of the pie is adequate to live and satisfactory.

asdf32 posted:

The thing you casually present as "vastly likely" is a thing that's been completely and consistently rejected by the field of economics.

Also it's a thing which if it is "vastly likely" should be pretty easy for you to break down with an example, like say Bangladesh.

asdf32 posted:

The thing you casually present as "vastly likely" is a thing that's been completely and consistently rejected by the field of economics.

asdf32 posted:

Critism outside the context of an alternative is necesarily useless.

SedanChair posted:

But Marxism failed. *grows a beard longer than Marx's*

namesake posted:

Ok real quick because I'm going to bed:

Take any given space containing people and things. Magically nullify all property rights over business assets and domiciles. It's quite likely that those people would like to keep living and using those things but without legal ownership to distribute them how can they organise? Yesterday they were all working at the businesses so they'd probably keep wanting to do that, but how are the proceeds of that work divided? Well they contributed so they'd better get a share. How much? I guess the workers had better discuss it and share it in a way that they want to do it again tomorrow.

Build out from there.

namesake posted:

Ok real quick because I'm going to bed:

Take any given space containing people and things. Magically nullify all property rights over business assets and domiciles. It's quite likely that those people would like to keep living and using those things but without legal ownership to distribute them how can they organise? Yesterday they were all working at the businesses so they'd probably keep wanting to do that, but how are the proceeds of that work divided? Well they contributed so they'd better get a share. How much? I guess the workers had better discuss it and share it in a way that they want to do it again tomorrow.

Build out from there.

Bob le Moche posted:

Here is an infographic for explaining the secret Marxist world domination plot

Majorian posted:

This strikes me as a fair question, on the other hand, and I'd be interested in hearing various answers from various standpoints.

Best Friends posted:

This thing is really unintentionally funny / revealing in that for capitalism, there is a pool of unemployed people in response to more efficient production, but in socialism and communism those undesirable elements simply disappear.

Aeolius posted:

Aeolius posted:

It is a really good and important question, and it's one I enjoy discussing. Implementation issues in socialism have even been discussed a few times in this thread, contrary to the narrative of certain parties over the last page or so. This is part of why I've decided I'll only answer asdf32's questions when they're also being asked by someone who isn't terminally and contentedly pig-ignorant. And you seem alright!

Anyway, the first and probably most important thing to bear in mind is that we can't speak of "the" communist system unless we do so in the broadest terms possible, much in the same way we discuss capitalism. As far as actual application to reality goes, this means that there is not one communism but rather many communisms, just as the USA, the UK, Finland, Indonesia, and Jordan each represent a different approach to a capitalist polity. And, as with capitalism, different communist countries have often been very critical of the implementation their peers have chosen — see, e.g., Sino-Soviet polemics, or late-20th century Albania and the USSR. And make no mistake, China is not a capitalist nation, despite Deng's reforms. It's easy to hate on Deng because of his trashing of Mao and the serious inequality that grew out of his policies, but I think there's definite merit to what he was trying to do.

The point is not to remove "legal titles" but rather the real social relations that legal titles at best codify and at worst obscure. That means the elimination of private appropriation of social labor — private industry. In the simplest terms possible, this amounts to the replacement of competition with coordination, which we might envision as the structuring of the economy more like a single abstract firm — more specifically, a co-op.

In terms of how this has been pursued in practice, again, take your pick. I would argue that the USSR, particularly up to the mid-1950's, was one of the best-planned economies the world has seen, and has elements that can be applied just as fruitfully today. (Before the discussion diverts to Stalin: Yes, I am 100% against the death penalty, forced labor, and even incarceration as it currently exists in the world; I'm speaking purely of the economic system. There can be more or less draconian socialist states, just as there can be more or less draconian capitalist states. That's a question of policy, not of the manner in which society reproduces itself.)

As we discussed some time around November, in subsequent decades it faltered, and I believe the reasons for this lie chiefly in the gutting of its program of subsidies — a program the USA was basically copying via its pentagon system during the "golden age" of capitalism — in favor of more market-oriented incentives, with an important subsidiary role played also by Cold War pressures.

This is both another striking example of the diversity of socialist arrangements, and an object lesson of sorts. We can see how a country might utilize the thought of "capitalist roaders" in conjunction with a dynamic and proactive system to subsidize growth to its benefit, or concede too much to them and wind up with a hybrid that has the innovative advantages of neither capitalism nor socialism (as in the USSR under Khrushchev and beyond).

So, functional changes beyond mere titles would have to, in some fashion, include A) Structuring the state so as to nullify the influence of money/capital in politics and increase civic participation in day-to-day decision making B) Give primary precedence in production not to profit but to the plan. How these are pursued concretely, that's a question for a democratic process, innit? What's clear is that there's an enormous variety of ways to skin a cat. Maybe A) would involve the creation of more worker council type entities at local levels. Maybe B will involve a larger or smaller role for some market process of some sort. Even Stalin, in his final years, was writing about the continued existence of the "law of value" in consumer good production, even if the production of means of production was fully under the provision of the plan. In the long run, it would have to be addressed. But there's probably no better demonstration of how communism is best thought of not as an end state, such that you build a few economic institutions and voila! you're there; it's a process. Further, it's a process that must be sussed out (in untidy and generally argumentative ways) by real people in historical time.

In conclusion, smash all workers' paradises.

Hope that's helpful.

Bob le Moche posted:

Under capitalism more efficient production leads to unemployment, and when you're unemployed you don't get money to buy things.
Under socialism/communism more efficient production leads to less hours worked for producing the same amount, and you still get your share of socialized production like before. Now you can spend the extra time working out / videogames / reading capital vol. 1
Hope this helps!

Edit: Also under capitalism "undesirable elements" (ie people who have little to no hope for sustainable employment, no stake in the system, and whose labor has little to no value to capital) "disappear" by being forced into ghettos, criminalized and jailed, or fenced inside the gaza strip and bombed

quote:

There are at least five ideas of Marxism:
1. The empirical/historical study of Karl Marx's work and theories as expounded by him, in his lifetime. This is Marx taken historically - his views change and move over time, and sometimes his views are unclear or have contradictory or unintended implications.
2. Take Marx not as a historical figure, but try to turn Marx's views as a coherent doctrine, as if you were trying to create an official or religious view of Marx's views. Trying to turn Marx's views into a coherent structure, though, involves us making value judgements about which of his views are most relevant/rational etc.
3. Marx as a 'conceptual revolutionary' - someone who initiates a tradition of thinking about the world in a specific kind of way.
4. Marxism as a hodge-podge of different thinkers without a central identity - Lenin, Adorno, Trotsky, Gramsci
5. Marxism not as theoretical propositions, but as as an applied philosophy - such as the reality of the DDR or the USSR and other states that present themselves as Marxist, including their law as well as their practised form of government.

Aeolius posted:

In terms of how this has been pursued in practice, again, take your pick. I would argue that the USSR, particularly up to the mid-1950's, was one of the best-planned economies the world has seen, and has elements that can be applied just as fruitfully today. (Before the discussion diverts to Stalin: Yes, I am 100% against the death penalty, forced labor, and even incarceration as it currently exists in the world; I'm speaking purely of the economic system. There can be more or less draconian socialist states, just as there can be more or less draconian capitalist states. That's a question of policy, not of the manner in which society reproduces itself.)

quote:

As we discussed some time around November, in subsequent decades it faltered, and I believe the reasons for this lie chiefly in the gutting of its program of subsidies — a program the USA was basically copying via its pentagon system during the "golden age" of capitalism — in favor of more market-oriented incentives, with an important subsidiary role played also by Cold War pressures.

quote:

So, functional changes beyond mere titles would have to, in some fashion, include A) Structuring the state so as to nullify the influence of money/capital in politics and increase civic participation in day-to-day decision making B) Give primary precedence in production not to profit but to the plan. How these are pursued concretely, that's a question for a democratic process, innit?

asdf32 posted:

Step back for a second explain why you're examining the Soviet Union again. Besides being [not capitalist] what positive feature of the Soviet system are we supposed to be extrapolating from?

Like we've discussed before, if we agree to set aside all the problems and baggage included in the Soviet Example (and I agree it's the best planned economy that existed), and take the period you cite (few decades around the 50's), we have an economic example in terms of growth rates that's "good", but has been bested by numerous capitalist states.

quote:

If all you want to get is "socialism might work" that's great. But if you're trying to point to things in the Soviet Union that were actually demonstrably better, that's hard to do given the number of successful capitalist states we have to draw upon for alternative examples.

Best Friends posted:

I am absolutely not showing up to work at MegaCorp tomorrow if I don't get some sort of direct incentive to. Some people are lucky enough to enjoy their job, or derive a lot of satisfaction from it, and some know that for as tough as it is, their job makes the world a better place. Sadly neither I, nor I think most people, fall into these categories of employment.

So, we agree to take a fraction of the profits and continue with MegaCorp (ignoring for now what profits mean in a world with no property). How do we do that? MegaCorp has tens of thousands of people all across the world. All of whom believe they are underpaid, and they don't know how much by. How do we determine what is fair and what isn't? How do we even get all the tens of thousands of people to know we're dividing this up in the fist place? What happens when, like a restaurant bill, no matter how often we pass things around it ends up with a discrepancy between compensation available and compensation wanted? How do you prevent 1000 very organized people from hijacking things?

The answer to these problems in most (all?) communist societies was "well we have an absolute authority with all the power that can tell everyone what to do" and that is a really lovely solution that ends up making life much worse than it would be under capitalism.

Aeolius posted:

And make no mistake, China is not a capitalist nation, despite Deng's reforms. It's easy to hate on Deng because of his trashing of Mao and the serious inequality that grew out of his policies, but I think there's definite merit to what he was trying to do.

Helsing posted:

I'm skeptical that you can neatly separate the political and legal design of the USSR from its economy. While Stalin's repressive policies were excessive in scope they didn't come out of nowhere. The Soviet government faced a lot of resistance to its policies from both internal and external threats. It's hard to imagine that the USSR could have collectivized farming without some kind of legal repression for instance.

If you're calling for a dramatic top-down reordering of the social and economic system then you're inevitably going to face resistance and you're going to need some way to overcome that resistance. How do you overcome that resistance without suspending democracy or civil liberties? Or, if you're forced to suspend those things due to some temporary emergency, how do you get them back afterwards?


I haven't had time to go through your links (one of which appears to be dead) but your response seems to neglect two factors that I regularly see cited when people critique the Soviet economy, specifically the neglect of light industry and agriculture.


Is it possible to enact such sweeping changes democratically? I feel as though a rapid and decisive change between systems may prove impossible under normal democratic conditions. I'm also not clear on how compatible truly centralized planning would be with a democratic political system. I wouldn't say it's impossible to combine them but typically the more centralized you make something the harder it is to have meaningful democratic input.



I think you'd be hard pressed to find capitalist states that grew as rapidly as the USSR under similar conditions of domestic backwardness and international isolation. Anyway, if you're going to repeatedly state that there are "numerous" examples then you should name some of them.

Bob le Moche posted:

Under capitalism more efficient production leads to unemployment, and when you're unemployed you don't get money to buy things.
Under socialism/communism more efficient production leads to less hours worked for producing the same amount, and you still get your share of socialized production like before. Now you can spend the extra time working out / videogames / reading capital vol. 1

quote:

Edit: Also under capitalism "undesirable elements" (ie people who have little to no hope for sustainable employment, no stake in the system, and whose labor has little to no value to capital) "disappear" by being forced into ghettos, criminalized and jailed, or fenced inside the gaza strip and bombed

wikipedia posted:

In 1937, the Politburo decided to accommodate children of the enemies of the people in normal orphanages administered by the Narkompros. Educational staff underwent training by the NKVD (People's Commissariat of Internal Affairs), and the orphans’ names were kept on record.[32] This reflects the Communist Party’s theory of socially inherited criminality, often informally described by the traditional Russian proverb, “an apple never falls far from the tree”. Orphanages existed not only to provide welfare, but also to prevent counter-revolutionary ideas from contaminating society.[33]

There were no official orders to discriminate against children of enemies of the people.[34] Yet orphanage staff often beat, underfed, and abused such pupils.[35] Any misbehavior was understood as the product of a counter-revolutionary upbringing, and punished harshly.[36] Treating children like budding criminals had diverse effects. In some cases, the induced "class guilt" inspired orphans to prove their loyalty to the ideals of Communism. In other cases abusive treatment was to incite resentment toward the state.[37]

If judged to be “socially dangerous,” the NKVD sent orphans to either a colony for young delinquents or a Gulag labor camp.[38] The tendency was to place all difficult orphans in colonies, which sought to re-educate children using a labor regime.[39] Children over fifteen were liable for at least five years in camp for being a “family member of a traitor to the motherland”.[40]

namesake posted:

Is your objection to work itself or the terms and conditions under which you perform that work?

TheImmigrant posted:

Oh, how you earnest cunts make me laugh.

Helsing posted:

You're going to need to explain why you think those three examples are appropriate, why you deem China capitalist, and why you think think the USSR's diplomatic isolation was self imposed. Also, whether or not the USSR's economic isolation was voluntary (a very strange claim to make unless you're intentionally being very obtuse about what you mean) I do not fundamentally alter the underlying point that the USSR was isolated and yet it grew rapidly and successfully in its early decades, which is arguably a much more impressive and hard to achieve feat than Japan or China's export oriented growth models.

asdf32 posted:

You may want to argue about isolation, I'd like to point out that central economies have never thrived at high levels of economic development or modern levels complexity. Meanwhile capitalist standouts like Korea (Japan too) have flown through that transition to attain first world standards of living.

Disinterested posted:

There is loads of central control and government interference in the Japanese economy, even if it's far from communist. Even moreso during the boom years. It was just very backroom and informal, or reliant on traditional adherence to authority.

asdf32 posted:

Every real life capitalist state has massive government involvement in the economy typically ranging from 25-50% of the economy.

asdf32 posted:

When I say Japan im talking Meji industrialization, not post WWII. Japan was similarly backward and industrialized rapidly in a fashion that wasn't primarily driven by trade (trade at modern scale wasn't really possible anyways).

quote:

Again it's sort of hard to claim isolation when your sphere of influence is 50% of the globe. And also, deep in the Cold War while clearly still communist, China chose and succeeded in opening its doors.

quote:

Again the Soviet Union was absolutely a good example of growth for that particular time period, but if I've got all of history to pick and chose economic examples from, the Soviet Union isn't at the top of the pile.

quote:

Another reason for this is that I'd strongly contend with the "they became too profit oriented" hypothesis and instead correlate their stagnation (which was paralleled by other socialist states) to the end of low hanging labor substitution development.

quote:

You may want to argue about isolation, I'd like to point out that central economies have never thrived at high levels of economic development or modern levels complexity. Meanwhile capitalist standouts like Korea (Japan too) have flown through that transition to attain first world standards of living.

asdf32 posted:

Every real life capitalist state has massive government involvement in the economy typically ranging from 25-50% of the economy.

Zeitgueist posted:

Why can't any real world capitalist movements deliver on their promises?