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Helsing posted:Japan's growth was state driven and ended up requiring imperial conquests in Korea and China. It's an impressive period but it hardly counts as international isolation when you're invading your neighbours to take their resources. Also Japan acquired considerable amounts of technological expertise from overseas which they turned to gear up, and this required a friendly relationship (to a point) with Western countries. If Japan had truly remained diplomatically isolated and technology importation was far more limited, it may have turned out very differently. The Soviets in comparison had to work either in secret or simply try to bootstrap their own technological development. Anyway, what this thread seems to be talking about anyway are various ranges of mixed economies, which while Marxist are nevertheless are still wildly criticized for any state involvement.
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Feb 7, 2015 00:01
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To the OP: Is Marxism dead? I don't think it is entirely, but I wouldn't count on any Workers' Paradise or Utopia to arise from a pro-communist dictatorship. It seems that the complaints that Marx raised against Capitalism are valid ones; competition of any kind builds character and self respect and innovation but unfortunately can corrode morals if left unchecked.
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Feb 7, 2015 00:13
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Characteristics of the capitalist mode of production: Private ownership of the means of production Wage labor and the extraction of surplus value Distribution of commodities in markets Any system with these characteristics is capitalist. Progressive taxation, welfare, meddling bureaucrats and regulations do not preclude an economy from being capitalist.
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Feb 7, 2015 01:47
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Helsing posted:Japan's growth was state driven and ended up requiring imperial conquests in Korea and China. It's an impressive period but it hardly counts as international isolation when you're invading your neighbours to take their resources. Heh and this is supposed to contrast the Soviet Union? Unlike Japan, the Soviet Union had plenty of resources. Another reason why the isolation part is less significant. Also the early period of Soviet industrialization was a period where trade driven growth wasn't really a thing. Like I said, shipping technology never supported wholesale industry trade until containerization decades later. Building out capital was necessarily a "bootstrapping" process as it was for the U.S. and Western Europe. Technology always can be transferred but it actually was, and because of reduced complexity it was actually easier in many ways to transfer technology than today. Consider that electricity, the internal combustion engine and the telephone represented state of the art at the turn of the century. There is a reason why names of individuals like Bell, Tesla and Mercedes are still attached to companies in these industries. A single workshop with a handful of people represented a car factory at the time and therefore that knowledge could be easily transferred and replicated. Both the Russia and Japan had auto manufactures by 1915 for example. quote:If anything it seems like examples such as this one demonstrate that the most impressive periods of capitalist growth relied very heavily on state directed expansion and coordination. That doesn't mean you can't count these as capitalist success stories but let's be perfectly frank about what the implications of that claim are. That a healthy state is probably the most important thing for economic growth? I agree. quote:Oh Jeeze. We weren't actually. The soviet Union's golden years were from 1928-1970 per an earlier discussion. More than half of that came after WWII. quote:And claiming that China "chose" to open its door is an incredibly misleading way to describe what happened. The US decided to open up relations with China as a way of isolating the USSR and regaining ground it had lost during the Vietnam war. It's incredibly misleading to present this situation as proof that the socialist countries could have simply chosen to engage in more trade with western countries. So prior to that China wanted to trade with the U.S. but the U.S. just didn't let them? It's probably some of both. quote:It's up there. Yeah maybe it's "up there" but go back to the original argument that got us here. It was the idea that Soviet economic history provides examples we might want to replicate today. First it assumes we can separate its economic achievements from the political baggage. But even allowing that, I'm still not seeing exactly what I should want to take. If I'm trying to imagine economic world history like a buffet, I'm still not seeing what I want from the soviet table. At best I can see someone coming in and talking about welfare, unemployment or inequality, but we all know these weren't what they were supposed to be in actual socialist states. quote:There's probably something to this argument but it doesn't really explain how the Soviets achieved so many technological successes, such as in the early space race. The USSR had did a pretty impressive job of developing high technology. Yeah they did. It came partially at the expense of the consumer sector. Also space and military are always government driven so it's not like their U.S. competition was drastically different in those sectors (as it was in the consumer space). quote:Well, once again I'd ask you to offer some kind of definition for what counts of capitalist. While I don't disagree that Japan and Korea are capitalist countries all the success stories you're pointing to were examples of state driven and/or export oriented industrialization. In the case of China it is highly questionable whether it should be counted as a "capitalist" success story at all. Not Socialist. Socialism means having all or nearly all capital publicly owned. Capitalism has private capital and markets. I admit there is probably room for refinement of these terms but in this specific example, China, it's not terribly contentious to use the word "capitalism". Ardennes posted:Also Japan acquired considerable amounts of technological expertise from overseas which they turned to gear up, and this required a friendly relationship (to a point) with Western countries. If Japan had truly remained diplomatically isolated and technology importation was far more limited, it may have turned out very differently. The Soviets in comparison had to work either in secret or simply try to bootstrap their own technological development. The Soviet Union actually had plenty of interaction with U.S companies like public contracts with Ford for example prior to WWII. Exactly what technology do you think the Soviet Union was lacking access to prior to WWII? asdf32 fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 01:59
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Yeah wow capitalism! Unlike Marxism it didn't fail, it succeeded! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_5Hr1C62Smk&t=3299s
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Feb 7, 2015 02:01
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asdf32 posted:If I'm trying to imagine economic world history like a buffet, I'm still not seeing what I want from the soviet table. At best I can see someone coming in and talking about welfare, unemployment or inequality, but we all know these weren't what they were supposed to be in actual socialist states. The soviet union made it illegal to evict someone, capped rent at 5% of income, gave everyone free childcare until that kid finished growing up, and even in it's earliest days focused on building a welfare state so comprehensive and in depth they went to the furthest reaches of the backwoods and went door to door asking who'd like to learn about crazy city people ideas like toothbrushes and reading. Hell, a bunch of minority groups lacked any written form of their language, so they invented them. But yeah, you feel free to imply they didn't come through on the welfare or equality things.
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Feb 7, 2015 03:20
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asdf32 posted:The Soviet Union actually had plenty of interaction with U.S companies like public contracts with Ford for example prior to WWII. Exactly what technology do you think the Soviet Union was lacking access to prior to WWII? Their oil industry specifically, after the early 1920s they had less and less interaction with foreign companies (not the only one but I have actually done archival research on it). But more specifically I think you are being dishonest here, because the amount of Western expertise was far more fluid in regards to Japan than the USSR even if the Soviets interaction wasn't zero. Also specifically Soviet attempts at providing housing, transportation and education in what was for a large portion of its existence a war-torn developing country is something to consider, specifically one that had to bootstrap many of these developments because of international isolation and the necessity of large degrees of defense spending. If anything the Soviet Union is an example of still achieving improvements in standards of living despite often extreme circumstance. Ardennes fucked around with this message at 03:43 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 03:39
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HorseLord posted:The soviet union made it illegal to evict someone, capped rent at 5% of income, gave everyone free childcare until that kid finished growing up, and even in it's earliest days focused on building a welfare state so comprehensive and in depth they went to the furthest reaches of the backwoods and went door to door asking who'd like to learn about crazy city people ideas like toothbrushes and reading. Hell, a bunch of minority groups lacked any written form of their language, so they invented them. Well a toothbrush would be a gamechanger. Which infographic is your source for this?
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Feb 7, 2015 03:40
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asdf32 posted:Well a toothbrush would be a gamechanger. Which infographic is your source for this? Well, if you need your facts in easy to chew pretty picture format, here's the soviet state's attempt to introduce the concept of regular bathing.  So, yeah, saying they started at the brush-your-drat-teeth level isn't hyperbole. The first welfare state in the world also had the highest burden to bare, and they never gave up. 
HorseLord fucked around with this message at 04:00 on Feb 7, 2015 |
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Feb 7, 2015 03:58
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Ardennes posted:Their oil industry specifically, after the early 1920s they had less and less interaction with foreign companies (not the only one but I have actually done archival research on it). But more specifically I think you are being dishonest here, because the amount of Western expertise was far more fluid in regards to Japan than the USSR even if the Soviets interaction wasn't zero. What I'm saying is that it would easy to underestimate how much technology transfer actually took place. And second, it's worth noting how technology disparities in general weren't what they are today. The point with the auto industry was that it spread not through the trade that we take for granted today but through the actual spread of manufacturing. Russia had the ability to build cars and trucks and tractors that were more-or-less up to modern standards. The primary problem was their overall low levels of capitalization and the need to simply build more of those trucks and tractors etc. But here again, isolation was less significant because shipping technology didn't support large scale imports anyway (every country was economically isolated by modern standards, hence why the U.S. was still making cheap consumer goods until the 70's).
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Feb 7, 2015 16:13
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It's pretty stupid when people go "a socialist country did a bad thing in 1937" as if historical record of sate-committed atrocities came out in favor of capitalism in any conceivable way.
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Feb 7, 2015 16:20
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Bob le Moche posted:It's pretty stupid when people go "a socialist country did a bad thing in 1937" as if historical record of sate-committed atrocities came out in favor of capitalism in any conceivable way. No but see they weren't bootstrapping enough and,
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Feb 7, 2015 19:58
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Bob le Moche posted:It's pretty stupid when people go "a socialist country did a bad thing in 1937" as if historical record of sate-committed atrocities came out in favor of capitalism in any conceivable way. Single party control is impossible without state terror. Brutality may coincide with capitalism but it is required for a communist state.
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Feb 7, 2015 22:13
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Best Friends posted:Single party control is impossible without state terror. Brutality may coincide with capitalism but it is required for a communist state. Sure but is a single party state a necessity for a socialist or communist society?
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Feb 8, 2015 12:01
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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. You're correct to note that the matters in question were deeply contingent (which was more or less what I was getting at), and that changes in the economic order will lead to friction among disparate elements of society. The only aspect that has the character of a "law" might be this: No ruling class has ever abdicated its privilege without a struggle. Thus the landowning kulak class resisted collectivization, etc. Many Marxists hesitate to use "class" to describe the nomenklatura, since their power was political rather than economic, but nevertheless: The purges owed in part to a party bureaucracy ossifying into an elite at a time when Stalin and his associates were attempting, believe it or not, to decrease the role of the party in national governance (a push that failed multiple times). Also, I should note that there is a certain irony barely visible here: for all the damage Stalin's era did to the left's views on "top-down" implementation, the greatest excesses during the purges were in fact a "bottom-up" phenomenon; the average citizen had far more to fear from a neighbor with a vendetta than the state acting on its own intel. More to the point, though: Yours are questions any person of conscience must take seriously, and they hold as well for any society in existence as for a communist society. As I've noted, I'm an adamant opponent of the death penalty and much of what society currently accepts in the practice of incarceration — and it does seem as though criticisms of communist states very often boil down to criticisms of those things. Criminology has advanced quite a lot since that time, and while bastions of freedom such as the USA don't practice them, we are at least aware of alternatives. In short, I'm totally on the same page as you on the thrust of your remark, though I also view with some suspicion the "totalitarian" perspective. As J. Arch Getty puts it: "The nature and growing volume of anomalous conclusions drawn already, along with the violent defensive attacks on the new scholarship from the adherents of the totalitarian thesis, do suggest that the development of Soviet historical studies is following a recognizable process of scholarly evolution and change, similar to that which normally occurs in any field of study." Helsing posted: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. Cultural Logic was down for a day or so, but it's back now, so that link should work again. I found it to be a persuasive and important argument, definitely check it out. As for specific criticisms, I'd need to see them spelled out I suppose. Prioritizing heavy industry doesn't necessarily mean you're underselling light industry in the long run, since the growth of the former is necessary (though not sufficient) for the growth of the latter. That is, I'd venture to say it's more about taking a longer view on the question of growth. Helsing posted: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. That's just a function of a large population, really. It's a problem for all democracy, and it's a reason why the local level of politics is every bit as important as the macro decisions that characterize the central leadership. I don't know that there's a single clear-cut solution to this; as with any social order, we're talking about systems that are and will always be works in progress. namesake posted:Holy crap this is a lot of hairsplitting and nonsense to try and imply that China is still heading in a direction friendly to communism. It's a debate worth having, I think. I don't expect he'll solve every problem but I'm fairly optimistic about the steps Xi has been taking so far. Best Friends posted:Single party control is impossible without state terror. Brutality may coincide with capitalism but it is required for a communist state. You got that backwards; can't have imperialism without brutality, and you can't have capitalism for too long without imperialism. Anyway, you think you're not in a single-party state right now? (You think that's air you're breathing?) The chief division between Republicans and Democrats is over whether to focus on protecting capital's short-term or long-term interests, respectively. But doing away with the smokescreen makes life all the more brutal because...?
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Feb 8, 2015 12:08
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Krowley posted:Sure but is a single party state a necessity for a socialist or communist society? No, you can skip straight to state terror and dictatorship.
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Feb 8, 2015 12:13
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Aeolius posted:It's a debate worth having, I think. I don't expect he'll solve every problem but I'm fairly optimistic about the steps Xi has been taking so far. I think hukou, SARs and the loving Chinese stock exchanges pretty clearly show the only debate to be had is when it went wrong.
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Feb 8, 2015 14:22
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Best Friends posted:Single party control is impossible without state terror. Brutality may coincide with capitalism but it is required for a communist state. Brutality is absolutely necessary and required for the institution of private property to come into existence and to continue to exist, state violence is also necessary for capitalism to survive through the crises it engenders and prevent revolution, imperialist war itself and colonialism are a consequence of the need for constant growth and capital accumulation. You would know all of this if you knew anything about the history of capitalism and understood how it functioned in actual reality beyond the idealistic notions you have about that stuff.
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Feb 8, 2015 14:35
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Aeolius posted:You're correct to note that the matters in question were deeply contingent (which was more or less what I was getting at), and that changes in the economic order will lead to friction among disparate elements of society. The only aspect that has the character of a "law" might be this: No ruling class has ever abdicated its privilege without a struggle. Thus the landowning kulak class resisted collectivization, etc. Many Marxists hesitate to use "class" to describe the nomenklatura, since their power was political rather than economic, but nevertheless: The purges owed in part to a party bureaucracy ossifying into an elite at a time when Stalin and his associates were attempting, believe it or not, to decrease the role of the party in national governance (a push that failed multiple times). People are always happy to scream about how Stalin killed a million trillion people, and mysteriously silent about when Stalin was going "Hey, stop calling your neighbors kulaks because they won't give you their chickens, rear end in a top hat, you're ruining everything".
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Feb 8, 2015 15:36
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HorseLord posted:People are always happy to scream about how Stalin killed a million trillion people, and mysteriously silent about when Stalin was going "Hey, stop calling your neighbors kulaks because they won't give you their chickens, rear end in a top hat, you're ruining everything". One wonders where those people got the idea of informing on their neighbors and calling them kulaks in order to justify taking their possessions. Personally, I think capitalism is to blame.
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Feb 8, 2015 17:42
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namesake posted:I think hukou, SARs and the loving Chinese stock exchanges pretty clearly show the only debate to be had is when it went wrong. The argument was that, whatever tack it's adopted, and however corrupt it is, the Chinese state never reverted to a bourgeois state. Thus, it has the capacity to swing back left without necessitating another revolution. If you take issue with its use of capitalist tools (to say nothing of its crappy administrative organs) then that's totally understandable. Most of the left seems to have disowned China at this point. But I think the above detail is far more important than is commonly acknowledged. Aeolius fucked around with this message at 18:11 on Feb 8, 2015 |
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Feb 8, 2015 17:46
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Sakarja posted:One wonders where those people got the idea of informing on their neighbors and calling them kulaks in order to justify taking their possessions. Personally, I think capitalism is to blame. Throwing your fellow man under the bus in order to get ahead in the competition does sound like a value capitalism would teach people.
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Feb 8, 2015 18:12
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HorseLord posted:Throwing your fellow man under the bus in order to get ahead in the competition does sound like a value capitalism would teach people. Agreed. If only they could have followed the example of the General Secretary, instead of succumbing to the siren song of capitalism. Alas.
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Feb 9, 2015 00:01
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Bob le Moche posted:Brutality is absolutely necessary and required for the institution of private property to come into existence and to continue to exist, state violence is also necessary for capitalism to survive through the crises it engenders and prevent revolution, imperialist war itself and colonialism are a consequence of the need for constant growth and capital accumulation. You would know all of this if you knew anything about the history of capitalism and understood how it functioned in actual reality beyond the idealistic notions you have about that stuff. Private property predates capitalism by either classical or Marxist definitions of capitalism. I don't know what you mean by capitalism needs state violence to survive the crises it engenders, and capitalism certainly does not require "imperialist war or colonialism" to grow or continue. Most war we've seen in the past few centuries, and most colonialism, has in fact been contrary to the interests of capitalism. War is expensive, it kills workers, and it kills consumers. National pissing contests impeded the flow of capital. Strong states threaten the holders of capital. This is why capitalism has a strong interest in supernational organizations. The weaker states are the less states can interfere in the interest of capitalism, so long as all states subscribe to a capitalist framework. This has both positive and negative implications from a humanist viewpoint. On the positive, decreased incentives for great power war. On the negative, those same international accords and weakening of state controls on capital encourage a "race to the bottom." It is necessary for communists to argue up and vastly inflate the, already substantial, negatives of a global capitalist framework. Similarly, it is necessary to fudge as much as possible the difference between present reality and the reality of a communist state, like this: Aeolius posted:Anyway, you think you're not in a single-party state right now? (You think that's air you're breathing?) The chief division between Republicans and Democrats is over whether to focus on protecting capital's short-term or long-term interests, respectively. But doing away with the smokescreen makes life all the more brutal because...? This is because honest communists, such as I think you, and Aeolius, understand that the communist state can only come into being through massive violence, and can only be maintained through terror. Consequently, those of an idealist bent must believe capitalism is bloodier, more brutal, more impoverishing that communism, and holding everything else (like the above charge that a single party state ain't no big deal) even, no matter how silly. The challenge, from the communist perspective, is that making that human rights argument in light of the communism we saw practiced in the 20th century means anything and everything bad onto the shoulders of capitalism. Tribal conflict, racism and racism based imperialism, nationalist pissing contest over unpopulated islands, even feudalism, become capitalist problems when convenient to add up body count, even if the forces of capitalism combated, mitigated or ended them. Killing is not profitable, you lose a consumer and you lose a worker. Violence precludes predictable investment. National conflict restricts capital movement. Imperialism sacrifices state coffers and forgoes the economic potential of the conquered lands so that politically connected, generally feudally descended elites can enrich themselves under the pre-capitalist robber baron model. It is not a coincidence that western colonialism has declined to effectively 0 with the wholesale replacement in Europe of feudal money and power with capitalist elites. Again, this does not mean that capitalism is faultless or free of any blood, especially in capitalist history. But to get to a higher proportion of death and misery per unit person that Stalisism in capitalism, you have to make absolutely absurd reaches, to where suddenly a bunch of inbred dukes running through Africa with mercenaries recreating their own little Norman conquest becomes an example of capitalist excess. "Perfect" capitalism would be a horror show, but it's a horror show where everyone has an exact value they provide to the capitalist class, and the cases where that value is absolute 0 are rare, where in contrast, in communist societies we see that a good fraction of the population becomes "unproductive" or "class enemies" and consequently outright enemies of the state. This is also why the remaining few communists in the world are disproportionally weird misanthropes one formative Doom experience away from being school shooters: for them, the potential of state terror and potentially being an agent of that terror is the entire appeal. Best Friends fucked around with this message at 02:00 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 01:57
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I got up to the point where it was insisted that colonialism was an aristocratic/feudalist venture, and stopped. Even AP European History would blow an idea like that out of the water by talking about the encomienda system, the East India Companies, or the importance of the fur trade to the establishment of Quebec. I guess these joint-stock ventures and systems predicated on getting returns on investment don't count as capitalism, with nary a steam engine in sight. Lord only knows what the Opium Wars were about, if not the desire to open China for trade. I guess you could replace this entire post with a quote of the relevant section, a quote of the sections about interpreting data selectively, and a gigantic, ironic cat. Edit: I got to the part about how we should be happy in slavery and snickered.
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Feb 9, 2015 02:44
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Effectronica posted:I got up to the point where it was insisted that colonialism was an aristocratic/feudalist venture, and stopped. Even AP European History would blow an idea like that out of the water by talking about the encomienda system, the East India Companies, or the importance of the fur trade to the establishment of Quebec. I guess these joint-stock ventures and systems predicated on getting returns on investment don't count as capitalism, with nary a steam engine in sight. Lord only knows what the Opium Wars were about, if not the desire to open China for trade. I guess you could replace this entire post with a quote of the relevant section, a quote of the sections about interpreting data selectively, and a gigantic, ironic cat. The point of contention is whether capitalism needs colonialism. Not whether it has existed along side it.
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Feb 9, 2015 02:47
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asdf32 posted:The point of contention is whether capitalism needs colonialism. Not whether it has existed along side it. Well, uh, funnily enough, the colonialist Europe developed capitalism to a much greater extent than China or SW Asia or India and ended up dominating the world since, so from a historical perspective... I take it that you endorse the claim that everyone disagreeing with you in this thread is a nascent mass-murderer, then?
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Feb 9, 2015 03:08
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Colonialism obviously made a lot of people really rich, and that money fueled capitalist development, that's obvious. It also pretty obviously didn't produce optimal wealth outcomes, as visible both by the lack of modern application of that model, and the decaying estates in the new and old worlds much of that money was pissed away on. Marxist theory is that stripping wealth from the third world fueled the industrial revolution, and from there capitalism could begin its rise and self-perpetuate. Where Marxism starts to stutter and disagree with different lines of thinking is why that stopped. The mainstream position is that that continues to this day, and a Vietnamese capitalist owning a Vietnamese sweatshop is effectively indistinguishable from the British Raj, or that, should communism worldwide fall, the western powers will go right back to 19th century style imperialism again. They haven't, and a Vietnamese capitalist is obviously quite different from a state granted fur monopoly or wholesale military imperial domination. There is no coherent or consistent explanation in Marxism for why the United States is not acting like it was in the 19th century where it can, but capitalism offers a pretty simple explanation: it's more profitable not to. There is more money to be made by local self-organization in a capitalist framework than there is through imperialism. Those examples of imperialism have in common state granted monopoly corporations, the benefits of those state monopoly corporations aimed primarily at non-capitalist power structures, the wholesale denial of the profit potential of local markets, and state expenditure to maintain that imperialism. Those are not things capital wants. If existing power structures take over India anyway, capital will pillage what it can, but that's not the optimal outcome for capitalism, quite the contrary. Imperialism was not abandoned because the west is nice, or the capitalists became less powerful.
Best Friends fucked around with this message at 03:55 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 03:45
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Best Friends posted:Colonialism obviously made a lot of people really rich, and that money fueled capitalist development, that's obvious. It also pretty obviously didn't produce optimal wealth outcomes, as visible both by the lack of modern application of that model, and the decaying estates in the new and old worlds much of that money was pissed away on. Marxist theory is that stripping wealth from the third world fueled the industrial revolution, and from there capitalism could begin its rise and self-perpetuate. Where Marxism starts to stutter and disagree with different lines of thinking is why that stopped. The mainstream position is that that continues to this day, and a Vietnamese capitalist owning a Vietnamese sweatshop is effectively indistinguishable from the British Raj, or that, should communism worldwide fall, the western powers will go right back to 19th century style imperialism again. They haven't, and a Vietnamese capitalist is obviously quite different from a state granted fur monopoly or wholesale military imperial domination. There is no coherent or consistent explanation in Marxism for why the United States is not acting like it was in the 19th century where it can, but capitalism offers a pretty simple explanation: it's more profitable not to. There is more money to be made by local self-organization in a capitalist framework than there is through imperialism. Those examples of imperialism have in common state granted monopoly corporations, the benefits of those state monopoly corporations aimed primarily at non-capitalist power structures, the wholesale denial of the profit potential of local markets, and state expenditure to maintain that imperialism. Those are not things capital wants. If existing power structures take over India anyway, capital will pillage what it can, but that's not the optimal outcome for capitalism, quite the contrary. Imperialism was not abandoned because the west is nice, or the capitalists became less powerful. Ah, the all-powerful god-investor. Alternatively, colonialism was abandoned because of indigenous resistance and the world has actually changed instead of medieval guilds just lacking Six Sigma training.
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Feb 9, 2015 04:16
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Of course the world has changed. That doesn't say anything. But if you think conquest and pillage is impossible in this modern world, look at Crimea. The west cannot comprehend Putin's actions in Crimea not because they are immoral, but because they are unprofitable. That is where Merkel was going with her "19th century mindset" comment.
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Feb 9, 2015 04:24
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Best Friends posted:Of course the world has changed. That doesn't say anything. But if you think conquest and pillage is impossible in this modern world, look at Crimea. The west cannot comprehend Putin's actions in Crimea not because they are immoral, but because they are unprofitable. That is where Merkel was going with her "19th century mindset" comment. You just said that the world did not change, implicitly, by explicitly saying that the reason colonialism isn't still going on is because it wasn't "optimal". I'm beginning to suspect you have no idea what words are spilling forth from your fingers, and your bizarre response to my saying "things are not entirely created by the desires of rich people" is another piece of evidence. Or a warning sign that you belong in a mental institution. Which is it? Are you stupid or crazy or both?
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Feb 9, 2015 04:42
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Effectronica posted:I got up to the point where it was insisted that colonialism was an aristocratic/feudalist venture, and stopped. Even AP European History would blow an idea like that out of the water by talking about the encomienda system No, because the encomienda system was pretty much serfdom. It was how the Spanish incorporated their vast colonial conquests into their feudal hierarchy.
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Feb 9, 2015 04:52
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JeffersonClay posted:No, because the encomienda system was pretty much serfdom. It was how the Spanish incorporated their vast colonial conquests into their feudal hierarchy. The encomienda system was about extracting wealth to make a return on the investments used to fund the expeditions, the encomenderos had no obligation to contribute troops to the Crown, a central part of the feudal system, and the majority of soldiers among the conquistadors were common or from extremely low ranks in the nobility, including the encomenderos. Assuming that free labor is more important to the definition of capitalism than the idea of making money through investment seems particularly bizarre.
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Feb 9, 2015 05:04
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Effectronica posted:The encomienda system was about extracting wealth to make a return on the investments used to fund the expeditions, the encomenderos had no obligation to contribute troops to the Crown, a central part of the feudal system, and the majority of soldiers among the conquistadors were common or from extremely low ranks in the nobility, including the encomenderos. Assuming that free labor is more important to the definition of capitalism than the idea of making money through investment seems particularly bizarre. Well, the concept of return on investment, or profit are certainly not unique to capitalism.
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Feb 9, 2015 05:10
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asdf32 posted:Well, the concept of return on investment, or profit are certainly not unique to capitalism. If you want to play that game, feudalism specifically discouraged profit through mechanisms like the "fair price", and the wealth of the nobility was supposed to be used for the purposes of defending the people they were responsible for, ho ho ho. Quick edit: It's disturbing to see people arguing, completely seriously, that the main thing Christopher Columbus was looking for was not a cheaper way to trade with China or a way to make money of off the landmass in the way of this, and that the gold and silver was completely ancillary, and all the things that fall out of treating the conquistadors as being primarily motivated by a desire to spread feudalism. Effectronica fucked around with this message at 05:17 on Feb 9, 2015 |
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Feb 9, 2015 05:15
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Effectronica posted:If you want to play that game, feudalism specifically discouraged profit through mechanisms like the "fair price", and the wealth of the nobility was supposed to be used for the purposes of defending the people they were responsible for, ho ho ho. It's not a game. They're very general concepts that apply to any economic activity. Within capitalism it takes certain specific forms. But if you're trying to argue that any state engaging in behavior with the expectation of reaping future benefits such as land, cattle or spices is capitalism you're making an obvious mistake.
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Feb 9, 2015 05:21
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asdf32 posted:It's not a game. They're very general concepts that apply to any economic activity. Within capitalism it takes certain specific forms. But if you're trying to argue that any state engaging in behavior with the expectation of reaping future benefits such as land, cattle or spices is capitalism you're making an obvious mistake. That's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that early colonialism, organized as essentially mercantile ventures funded by direct investment (in the form of joint-stock companies in England and France, in the form of bank loans in Spain and Portugal), was essentially capitalistic in nature, focusing on the extraction of wealth to benefit the investors, rather than the feudalistic model of establishing a stable and mutually-dependent society, and that any attempt to read colonialism as feudalistic runs head up against the meritocratic and plutocratic society of the colonies, the emphasis on extraction rather than farming in the first century of colonialism, the primary purpose of the initial colonies being to export bullion rather than to become self-sufficient, and so on down the line.
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Feb 9, 2015 05:41
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Effectronica posted:You just said that the world did not change, implicitly, by explicitly saying that the reason colonialism isn't still going on is because it wasn't "optimal". I'm beginning to suspect you have no idea what words are spilling forth from your fingers, and your bizarre response to my saying "things are not entirely created by the desires of rich people" is another piece of evidence. Or a warning sign that you belong in a mental institution. Which is it? Are you stupid or crazy or both? I've never said the world hadn't changed and have made clear throughout that this change is in part explained by capitalists entirely supplanting previous power structures in the west. Effectronica posted:That's not what I'm arguing. I'm arguing that early colonialism, organized as essentially mercantile ventures funded by direct investment (in the form of joint-stock companies in England and France, in the form of bank loans in Spain and Portugal), was essentially capitalistic in nature, focusing on the extraction of wealth to benefit the investors, rather than the feudalistic model of establishing a stable and mutually-dependent society, and that any attempt to read colonialism as feudalistic runs head up against the meritocratic and plutocratic society of the colonies, the emphasis on extraction rather than farming in the first century of colonialism, the primary purpose of the initial colonies being to export bullion rather than to become self-sufficient, and so on down the line. I somewhat agree, colonialism was a hybrid of nascent capitalism and prior power structures / wealth structures (including feudalism). It's not optimal for the capitalist, and as capitalism entirely supplanted prior wealth and power, colonialism was disregarded in favor of more profitable methods of interacting with the developing world. What you're doing is saying "there is some capitalist elements, therefore it is entirely in the capitalist category" - this does not understand the situation or provide useful categorization outside of communist propaganda, where everything that has interacted with capitalism becomes a symptom of capitalism, so that communism's brutalities can be therefore excused in comparison.
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Feb 9, 2015 05:53
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Yo, BF, help me make sure I'm interpreting you correctly:Best Friends posted:I don't know what you mean by capitalism needs state violence to survive the crises it engenders, and capitalism certainly does not require "imperialist war or colonialism" to grow or continue. Most war we've seen in the past few centuries, and most colonialism, has in fact been contrary to the interests of capitalism. War is expensive, it kills workers, and it kills consumers. National pissing contests impeded the flow of capital. I.e.: "I'm still not 100% on what you're referring to when you say 'imperialism.' I'd welcome some elaboration, though." Best Friends posted:This is because honest communists, such as I think you, and Aeolius, understand that the communist state can only come into being through massive violence, and can only be maintained through terror. "In fact, I may have missed the point of your posts in general. I do sincerely apologize if I've misrepresented you in any way." Best Friends posted:Tribal conflict, racism and racism based imperialism, nationalist pissing contest over unpopulated islands, even feudalism, become capitalist problems when convenient to add up body count, even if the forces of capitalism combated, mitigated or ended them. Killing is not profitable, you lose a consumer and you lose a worker. Violence precludes predictable investment. National conflict restricts capital movement. "It seems to me that war and markets cannot 'share a square,' and therefore imperialism is simply absurd. I mean, I haven't actually looked into the historical record, or taken into account the theories themselves, but if I'm just reasoning it out on my own, that's what seems right to me." Best Friends posted:Imperialism sacrifices state coffers and forgoes the economic potential of the conquered lands so that politically connected, generally feudally descended elites can enrich themselves under the pre-capitalist robber baron model. It is not a coincidence that western colonialism has declined to effectively 0 with the wholesale replacement in Europe of feudal money and power with capitalist elites. "I sometimes joke with my friends that my home for the last several decades has been the narrow space between a rock and the soft earth beneath. Obviously, this is not literally the case, but it is sometimes startling how much of recent history I've missed. It's not something I'm proud of, and I'd like to fix it, but for the time being, let's not beat around the bush." Best Friends posted:Again, this does not mean that capitalism is faultless or free of any blood, especially in capitalist history. "I do know this: Most blood shed historically by capitalism was shed during the history of capitalism. Haha. Yeah, I know. Go easy on me, k?" Best Friends posted:But to get to a higher proportion of death and misery per unit person that Stalisism in capitalism, you have to make absolutely absurd reaches, to where suddenly a bunch of inbred dukes running through Africa with mercenaries recreating their own little Norman conquest becomes an example of capitalist excess. "Perfect" capitalism would be a horror show, but it's a horror show where everyone has an exact value they provide to the capitalist class, and the cases where that value is absolute 0 are rare, where in contrast, in communist societies we see that a good fraction of the population becomes "unproductive" or "class enemies" and consequently outright enemies of the state. "But of communism, I can say virtually nothing of factual merit. I can kind of hazily recall some of what I heard in 10th-grade history, if that's any use? Let me know!" Best Friends posted:This is also why the remaining few communists in the world are disproportionally weird misanthropes one formative Doom experience away from being school shooters: for them, the potential of state terror and potentially being an agent of that terror is the entire appeal. "Full disclosure: I also don't know any communists personally. I mean, there was that one kid in high school who used to draw hammers and sickles on stuff to weird people out, but if I'm being honest, I dunno if he counts. What ever happened to that guy, anyway...?" That about right? If so, maybe we can work on these issues, point by point. If not, I don't think we can be friends, let alone best friends. 
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Feb 9, 2015 06:15
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"This guy, uugg, he doesn't, mmmpph (fists clenching) agree with my philosophy or its historical analysis" - man who has literally expressed the belief that the soviet union could/would have designed the iphone I referred to you as honest because you openly and correctly note that communism requires a very substantial amount of bloodshed to install, and a continual state terror to maintain. If you think that is me somehow apologizing to you, you may wish to acknowledge that you have a very odd definition of apology. Eventually, after much prompting, you admitted that your belief in communism's superiority came down to "the Soviet Union was extremely cool and good" so I have high hopes you will eventually make a meaningful commentary on this sub-topic.
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Feb 9, 2015 06:39
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