Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Keynes was also making a lot of bad assumptions, like that we'd all be collecting dividends from capital markets and that the TRPF wouldn't be compelling us to work longer hours despite ourselves.

Yandat posted:

we should work a lot less

quote:

Working conditions will aim to enhance the humanity and dignity of all workers. The working week will be 30 hours. Child care for workers will be provided by the socialist government at no cost to the parents. There will be cultural and athletic opportunities for all workers during and after working hours.

Infernot posted:

http://liberationschool.org/program-of-the-party-for-socialism-and-liberation/

This is part of PSL's program, and most of the other demands that they have for a "socialist" government sound just like capitalism considering they talk about wages, paid leave, working weeks, income, etc. Even a charitable reading of the Critique of the Gotha Program doesn't sound anything like what PSL is describing here for socialism.

Yandat posted:

socialism is when the government does things and the more the government does the socialister it is

Yandat posted:

socialism is when the government does things and the more the government does the socialister it is

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

The difference between capitalism and socialism lies in who controls the means of production, and how economic decisions are made. Money, wages, etc., are all tertiary concerns. Socialism will behave in ways that the people themselves determine, and the important thing is that it's the people making that determination.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Keynes was also making a lot of bad assumptions, like that we'd all be collecting dividends from capital markets

Infernot posted:

Socialism is whatever people say it is then, am I right? Marx set out to describe capitalism in a detailed way, and by disregarding "tertiary" concerns such as money and wages you're destined to just recreate capitalism with a worker controlled economy that's still subject to the law of value, TRPF, and most of the other aspects of capitalism. Hence why Marx and Engels went into depth about the necessity to cease commodity production and Marx wrote tomes about the way commodities are circulated, produced, and exchanged.

But I suppose this is assuming you're a Marxist or one of those other groups who piece together Marx's critique with their own strand of whatever.

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

Being able to overcome commodity production means realizing a global communist state, and in the meantime you need a transitory stage to develop towards that point. Socialism is that state. The PSL isn't campaigning to become the world's socialist government, it wants to take control in the United States, and even if you realize socialism in the most powerful and advanced economic state in the world you won't be able to fully escape the logic of commodity production, because we will still have to trade with capitalist powers for the things that we need until global revolution is realized.

The assumption that you can avoid the constraints of the global order, and somehow realize Communism in One State is ahistorical and unscientific.

quote:

Will it be possible for this revolution to take place in one country alone?

No. By creating the world market, big industry has already brought all the peoples of the Earth, and especially the civilized peoples, into such close relation with one another that none is independent of what happens to the others.

Further, it has co-ordinated the social development of the civilized countries to such an extent that, in all of them, bourgeoisie and proletariat have become the decisive classes, and the struggle between them the great struggle of the day. It follows that the communist revolution will not merely be a national phenomenon but must take place simultaneously in all civilized countries – that is to say, at least in England, America, France, and Germany.

Infernot posted:

The transition away from capitalism isn't socialism, I'd hazard that that's standard for even most Leninists who make the distinction about the lower and upper stages of communism (wherein they say socialism is the lower stage, communism the higher stage). The dictatorship of the proletariat would be what PSL is describing, where the working class takes control and begins transitioning to socialism. You are right in the fact that you couldn't realize socialism in one nation which is why it doesn't make sense to say they'd have a transitory "socialist" state to wait for global revolution, as far back as 1847 Engels talked about this in the Principles of Communism.


This seems like a problem of semantics but I think if the PSL and others don't understand what the whole point of the dictatorship of the proletariat is and how it differs from socialism / communism (if you'd like to make the stage distinction) then that is anti-Marxist and unscientific.

Yandat posted:

we should work a lot less

HorrificExistence posted:

https://twitter.com/Reuters/status/1005531825631055872

no

Pener Kropoopkin posted:

This is all pure semantics, and you're assuming the Marxist-Leninist PSL doesn't know what the point of communism is, because they're selling Americans on the promise of shorter work weeks and better pay.

Jeb! Repetition posted:

Even though everyone who's ever voted for PSL is an rear end in a top hat I respect them for not trying to do prison abolition

quote:

Penal institutions will be organized on the principle of social education and rehabilitation. Those convicted of unlawful acts will maintain political rights while participating in their rehabilitation.

Infernot posted:

I think it's kind of implied here in their program

Larry Parrish posted:

i generally think the people who want to abolish money and wages and stuff are masturbatory navel gazers. money and even limited markets are an easy way to handle resource distribution between individuals or small groups for the foreseeable future. unless one of you utopian communists sees a way around scarcity without inventing clean fusion power and a space elevator. that said the way forward from capitalism is decommodifying everything it takes to achieve a decent living. we will always have limited luxuries and personally I think the best way to distribute that is a market economy instead of like, rationing them out as equitably as possible. So even if we aren't paying for houses and healthcare and food and stuff out of our wages, how do you handle people who want cigarettes still? How do you handle people who want to go camping or on road trips. I guess some of the insane tankies online think there just shouldn't be anything that isn't provided to everyone equally but the truth is people want different things, and I'm ok with people getting my share of caviar or whatever

Dreddout posted:

The irony is that the length of the working day hasn't decreases at all in the west post-keynes. With the notable exception of France

Dreddout posted:

My main problem with that logic is markets have to expand and we live on a finite planet with many resources projected to run out within our lifetime.

namesake posted:

rudatron posted:

Socialism is worker control of capital,

rudatron posted:

'Minimize costs' and 'maximize gains' are mathematically interchangeable, they both represent the extraction of surplus. It's also not quite true either - a slave economy has 'low costs'.

An anarcho syndicalist society, where everything is a worker cooperative, has only shifted the logic of commodity production & incentives from the 'individual' level to that of the 'firm' level - it will exhibit the same distortions and contradictions as any market economy. The 'agent' of capital accumulation, which follows systemic incentives in pursuit of its self interests, at the expense of everyone else, will simply manifest at level of inter-cooperative competition.

It's capitalism Jim, but not as we know it.

quote:

All of this lays the groundwork for raising the critical question of profit. There are two ways to think about the function of profits under capitalism. In the Marxist conception, capitalists’ restless search for profit drives the pace and shape of economic growth, making it the ultimate “motor of the system”— but it’s judged to be an erratic and arbitrary motor that ought to be replaced by something more rational and humane. In mainstream economics, on the other hand, profits are understood simply as a benign coordinating signal, broadcasting information to firms and entrepreneurs about how to satisfy society’s needs most efficiently.

Each of these versions contains some truth. Look at the mainstream account. Its logic is straightforward: a firm’s profit is the market value of the output it sells minus the market value of the inputs it buys. So the pursuit of profit leads firms to maximize their production of socially desired outputs while economizing on their use of scarce inputs. On this logic, profits are an ideal coordinating device.

But the logic only holds to the extent that that an item’s market value is actually a good measure of its social value. Does that assumption hold? Leftists know enough to scoff at that idea. The history of capitalism is a compendium of mis-valued goods. Not only do capitalists draw from a treasury of tricks and maneuvers to inflate the market value of the outputs they sell (e.g., through advertising) and drive down the value of the inputs they have to buy (e.g., by deskilling labor). But capitalism itself systematically produces prices for crucial goods that bear little rational relation to their marginal social value: just think of health insurance, natural resources, interest rates, wages.

So if profit is a signal, it invariably comes mixed with a lot of noise. Still, there’s an important signal there. Most of the millions of goods in the economy aren’t like health insurance or natural resources; they’re more banal — like rubber bands, sheet metal, or flat-screen TVs. The relative prices of these goods do seem to function as decent guides to their relative marginal social values. When it comes to this portion of firms’ inputs and outputs — say, a steel company that buys iron and sells it manufactured as steel — profit-seeking really does make capitalists want to produce things people desire in the most efficient way possible. It’s those crucial mis-valued goods — labor, nature, information, finance, risk, and so on — that produce the irrationality of profit.

In other words, under capitalism firms can increase their profits by efficiently producing things people want. But they can also increase them by immiserating their workers, despoiling the environment, defrauding consumers, or indebting the populace. How do you obtain one without getting the other?

rudatron posted:

'Minimize costs' and 'maximize gains' are mathematically interchangeable, they both represent the extraction of surplus. It's also not quite true either - a slave economy has 'low costs'.