|
Zeppelin Insanity posted:Great thread. I've got a couple of questions and observations that hopefully will add a different perspective. Hello fellow Poland-grown goon. The fact that you need to participate in capitalism for import/export is indeed one of the ways imperialism works, however the idea that "you can't easily obtain raw material" falls flat on it's face: the centrally planned economy could create exports, and trade them for imports. That's it. The unsung reason it "doesn't work" is because outside forces like embargoes make it not work: ironically, only reinforcing the validity of predictions of Marxist economics. As to how to beat it, well, there's reasons communist countries tended to stick together. I can now also offer the example for anarchist societies: the Zapatistas, in order to be able to participate in import, need to get money from the world market. To do that, they use some of their available space for the most profitable crop they can grow organically, which is coffee. That coffee gets distributed in the outside world by a network of allied anarchist and socialist organisations in the world: some of the profits go to sustaining the local groups doing the distribution, while a significant part goes towards the Zapatista economy. The advantage they have is that a small anarchist group is actually very capable on a local level, while being too small and too difficult to deal with in the classic imperialist way - and they can use a network of those groups across the globe to facilitate participation in the global economy on a more equitable level. A whole enormous country needs the backing of another country.
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 13:15
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 09:47 |
|
|
This was touched earlier in the thread, but regarding cities, they are more efficient for various reasons. But do those efficiencies take into account the costs of health impacts and quality of life in a city? I know air pollution etc is worse, and frankly I can't stand the noise and people just being in NYC a couple times, much less a much denser city. So is there some happy medium of density WRT to socialist culture ? Because we evolved to roam the landscape and live in nature, not crammed into concrete sardine cans. Do eco-socialists want everyone to live within nature to an extent rather than cities ? Or whats the outlook on cities vs more ex-urban or green towns ?
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 14:40
|
|
|
Really good posts, you all. I am learning a lot as well and I am happy that so far, we are making this work.Zeppelin Insanity posted:In capitalism, with money you can buy resources and build factories; in centrally planned economies, you can do more or less whatever you want but can't easily obtain raw material from outside your borders since you need lots of money for that. Would you consider this to be accurate? Is this the heart of the issue of poverty in a lot of centrally planned economies? That you can allocate your resources more efficiently, but especially with embargoes you're very restricted in the total amount and variety of resources you have access to? Is a lot of the perception down to poverty being more visible, spread around everyone, rather than "hidden" within the underclass - as in, there is a lack of goods in stores because most can afford them, versus a surplus but one available only to the comfortable or rich? I think that this was a very aggressive reductionist position your teachers had. Trade was a concern of the Comintern (the Communist International) but being a planned economy also meant that the thing before the World Trade Organization screamed that it was cheating and didn't want them in their playground anyway. Instead, going from what I remember from political and soviet econ, the major problem that was systematically reproduced in centrally planned economies was a combination of, essentially, these things: 1 - how to create a value assignment mechanism, measured through aggregate labor value, that truthfully and reliably matched the social demand (this is the big one); 2 - organize the consumer goods industry based from 1; 3 - through 1 and 2, create the according and necessary means of distribution and information feedback, while also ensuring a social guarantee for these means. However, all of them happen simultaneously. Central planning absolutely crushes capitalism in terms of building things whose outputs can be estimated from the start. Steel mills? Crushes it. Concrete factories, chemical plants, shipyards... Done and done. As those things are simply limited by X many resources needed and Y labor required in a planned economy, it becomes pretty easy to build a factory anywhere necessary and do some monumental feats in that regard. Consumer goods are way more problematic, however. It is not that we cannot plan for them, it is that planning for them requires a lot more effort and development than anyone anticipated back then. A common historical mistake seen here is that people think stuff like appliances as lacking, when it was actually one of the easiest ones: how many fridges do I need to make? Why, I have a housing census because I organize all the housing, make one for each that requires so and make a stockpile for replacement. However, clothes. There is a problem. Clothing is a durable consumer product, yet falls into variable demand. I don't have a lot of clothes and I use them a lot, but I like good shirts, jackets and boots because I enjoy looking fashionable, thank you very much, so I present a problem to our Workers' State to Come: how the gently caress do we plan for dgcf's clothing? If we extrapolate from this example and take into a much great abstraction, we can rephrase the question as, how the gently caress do we plan for the wants of our population? Let's put a pin on that. The soviet planners managed to figure out planning of needs rather well and rather early, but even so, they pointed out that logistics and information feedback was going to be THE challenge of the soviet economy in terms of providing for individual demands. Even before going into the Urals, each city away from Moscow, Petrograd, Kiev meant more and more planning delays and greater unreliability. An example: most human necessities (and I really mean what is necessary here) can be observed as constant, fixed demands over time. Soap is a very good use case. When planning for the demand of soap of a city like... [checks map of Russia] Ekaterinburg, which is aprox. 1800 kilometers from Moscow, you can't depend on people traveling back and forth from the capital, you need bureaucrats there. And you need that those bureaucrats are going to provide 100% reliable information. But Ekaterinburg has soap for a goddamn year in surplus. Moscow says, "hey, my plan says you need soap right now", Ekaterinburg goes "actually you sent us way over these last three months and we had the same conversation", Moscow goes what the gently caress and turns out that some planner in Ekaterinburg did a huge mistake, the other in Moscow covered his rear end in return for a favor and a guy in Voronezh saved everyone's rear end when the excess production was actually meant to go there. This was not a fault of production planning. This was a fault of information and distribution, further complicated by bureaucratic/political difficulties, which led to compensatory measures. Such compensations meant resources being divested from other needs. Producing soap meant the requisite raw materials being not used elsewhere. Which bring us to the matter of wants. Although problems happened, necessities were still provided for, or else the soviet union would not have lasted as long as it did. The great, big target that the West always went for was this one, though. Prosperity does not mean "getting by", it means that you are enjoying a higher standard of welfare, which also includes the satisfaction of wants, and that goes back to Marx himself along many others (like Kropotkin) have espoused repeatedly: no true revolutionary society can rely on bread and shelter alone. Hell, the Marxist aestheticians were among the first to point out that the Soviet Union had that problem. To attend the demand of wants, it is necessary a certain sophistication in economic relations, as it starts to produce things that are beyond necessity or to address necessities with other concerns in mind, such as aesthetics, ergonomics, etc. Like, furniture is a necessity associated with shelter; through a greater degree of economic development, one can be concerned with attending the need for furniture along the want of pretty furniture. We need clothing, but we certainly like it a lot more when it is stylish clothing that also feels great to wear. Going back to that, making a solicitation of "hey I want some really, really nice shirts" to the relevant bureau would be a matter of "lol really" and a black market proposal of a missing bale of textiles to this guy's mother who is an impeccable seamstress, and that would be the better way to go for it. Here's the kicker: because the valuation mechanism was state-driven in a way that required its nominal control of all production, there was no official way for artisan work to happen, which was (and still is in many places) the historical go-to way of having demands of want being satisfied. Once the seamstress says the price of her shirt is X, she is giving her assessment of value which diverges from the state, and then everybody has a problem. (this intuitive form of assessment is seized by capitalism through monetary valuation, by the way) The thing is, once computers started to roll around with enough power, people noticed that hey, this is a computational problem. Once again, planned economies have the "superpower" of having to deal only in terms of fundamentals: how many X of things with Y amount of labor to produce Z. This can be churned out. Likewise, means of distribution and information are also computational. Wal-Mart and Amazon are pretty much loving pseudo-soviet logistics bureaus at this point given the amount of planning they do and the effects on the economy they have, lol. And by having those factors accounted for through computation, turns out that you overcome the capitalist advantage of "free enterprise" through self-organized collective initiative, or in other words: you do not need to plan for a specialized clothes factory when it is better to provide material means and space for things like workshops or studios, where seamstresses and tailors are guaranteed to provide those items at a labor-credit cost of X, which comprehensively factors in the cost of inputs and their cost in labor as part of the collective capacity of production of society. And this is not the only one way to do things, others say that given today's computational power, the hypothetical revolutionary state could go all-in regarding production of scale and make factory complexes devoted to wants. Take a bunch of measures of yourself, go into a website and you would just not pick which clothes you want, but ask to get them made for you. Resource and production rationalization for the benefit of society, not for profit. etc (this is a subject dear of mine and I study computer-touching now so I get carried away quite easily about it haha)
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 17:02
|
|
|
dead gay comedy forums posted:(this is a subject dear of mine and I study computer-touching now so I get carried away quite easily about it haha) It is a great post, though! What little I read about Project Cybercyn indicated that apparently it worked really loving well before the CIA got involved. I think that's something else that needs addressing. "Centrally planned economies cannot have innovation" is an argument that gets thrown around constantly. Except that if that was the case, how the gently caress would communist scientists have been so influential on science? Even in the Cold War lens, how the gently caress was the Soviet military capable of feats of engineering that made Western analysts poo poo their pants on like, what, a few % of the military budget of the West? So, that's another common argument that falls flat on its face. And another argument I've found effective in using to de-indoctrinate people is: how come that in times of great desperation, like total war, governments resort to quasi-communist economics if they're less efficient? How come they are the fallback when it's do-or-die? WW2 catapulted the US into being the dominant industrial superpower - and guess what, it happened with central planning.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 18:12
|
|
|
Zeppelin Insanity posted:I think that's something else that needs addressing. "Centrally planned economies cannot have innovation" is an argument that gets thrown around constantly. How does patent law work under Communism - abolish it completely and everything becomes public domain? True scholars would donate their ideas for the greater good, but a niche guy in tech who's used to grifting and is needed to design parts for a factory might be a harder sell Do you just say "make this happen/fix this or we shoot you/deport you"? If I write a book or a play, do I retain ownership over the copyright? Can I sell it through a government market? Is it automatically public domain?
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 18:28
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:How does patent law work under Communism - abolish it completely and everything becomes public domain? If you have housing, food, education, healthcare, etc., why do you need to sell your play?
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 18:55
|
|
|
Going back a bit to the question of why people praise capitalist markets: I think a bit of it, at least, is a bit of a misunderstanding (through propaganda or otherwise) of what the efficiency of the free market even means. A free market which meets several assumptions will, inevitably, maximize utility for a very specific definition of utility. The assumptions are that there's lots of buyers, lots of sellers, and that both buyers and sellers have the option to just go home at the end of the day without making a deal. Needs are not well modeled by this because at the end of the day, every buyer has to buy food from someone. They don't have the option to just not buy food. Industries dominated by a few large megacorporations (which is incresingly every industry) are not well modeled by this because the math behind it makes the assumption that there's so many buyers that you can pretend the price distribution is a smooth curve rather than a jagged histogram. And the actual definition of utility that is maximized is this: the amount of money in excess of your worst-case scenario that you walk home with. So like, let's say I'm in the market to buy a shirt. And I'm willing to spend up to $30 on it. If I actually spend $20, then I generate $10 of utility under this definition. Meanwhile, the shirt seller was willing to go as low as $15 before they just decide they'd rather get out of the shirt business entirely. So they generated $5 of utility under this definition, and the sale generated $15 of total utility, adding up the buyer's and the seller's. In a free market, with lots of buyers, lots of sellers, and with nobody needing to make a purchase or sale, will trend, over time, to having a distribution of prices that maximizes utility. This has been verified both mathematically and empirically. I believe this phenomenon was what Adam Smith described as the invisible hand of the free market, though I haven't read him so don't quote me on that. You may notice that this definition of utility is not necessarily what you actually want to maximize for a well-functioning society, and that the assumptions of the model are not met very often in the western world (the less prosperous an area, the closer they tend to be true, because you need a certain amount of wealth in society to allow the accumulation of enough capital to even get megacorporations). I have often wonder if it would be possible to have a hybrid economy of centralized planning for necessities and a free market for luxuries. The property that less-desirable luxuries will over time get produced in smaller quantities and become more easily acquired (as the price falls) is just sort of a natural emergent property of free markets, provided you make sure to use the power of the state to prevent the formation of large luxury corporations. I'm also not 100% sure how labor would work under this scenario. Obviously if you're selling labor, then this is just capitalism with a strong welfare component. If you're not, how does labor get distributed amongst the various luxury producers who are, in this scenario, not supposed to receive any favoritism? As I said, this is an idle musing, not a coherent philosophy. It may be impossible to achieve in practice.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 19:10
|
|
|
Lumpy posted:If you have housing, food, education, healthcare, etc., why do you need to sell your play? Why wouldn't established artists just move to another country if they can no longer profit off their art in their homeland If America went red, they would just build New Hollywood in Canada or something - no way they work for free
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 19:13
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:Why wouldn't established artists just move to another country if they can no longer profit off their art in their homeland And that is a problem because.....?
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 19:14
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:Why wouldn't established artists just move to another country if they can no longer profit off their art in their homeland How many artists really make fat stacks off their work? Most artists already effectively "work for free" or make just enough to cover the bills.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 19:17
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:
The only solution that comes to mind is a semi-utopian one. One that I think is very easily achieved technologically, but difficult socially (due to the influence of Capital). Surely the optimum outcome comes with mass-ownership of personal means of production - for example, advanced home 3d printing systems. At that point, if access to relatively universal techno-goo types (like we already have with different types of filaments, resins and powders for different purposes) is easy and affordable, you can do a lot with wants and a free creative community. A lot like the free creative community that already exists. For luxuries, I think a decent system would be a secondary currency - one specifically only expendable on luxuries, with no crossover with provided needs. As an example, a Universal Basic Income consisting of: -rations for raw material -allocation for necessities like food etc. -funbucks for luxuries -i dunno, something to do with ability to travel or trade with the outside world or something would allow free choice of what luxury goods people value. Different manufacturers or individuals could easily set prices for luxuries at any level of funbucks they wanted, without the moral issue of wealth (if funbucks are equally distributed). In a way, this market would arguably be much more free than a regular capitalist one.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 19:21
|
|
|
Beowulfs_Ghost posted:How many artists really make fat stacks off their work? Most artists already effectively "work for free" or make just enough to cover the bills. Very few creatives make art for the money because there's no money in it. Creative pursuits like art and science are driven by higher motivators than the lust for bigger number. In full-on gay space communism where everyone has their survival needs met, those artists and scientists will STILL be arting and sciencing, arguably more because they don't have to work poo poo jobs to feed themselves. Also, Intellectual Property is a succlib concept derived from the Great Man view of history. Every single god damned patent arose from someone using society's resources to produce that patented idea yet that single person then maintains control over that which required society to create. It's bullshit and an alien concept under socialist systems.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 19:36
|
|
|
Beowulfs_Ghost posted:How many artists really make fat stacks off their work? Most artists already effectively "work for free" or make just enough to cover the bills. Agreed. Artists, musicians, and performers have never been rich on the whole, it's always just a few who make it big. Famous artists and artisans during the renaissance were either nobility or relied on the patronage of nobles. During the age of opera, most musicians had measly compared to a very few famous opera stars or conductors. Famous Classical and Romantic composers all paid their rent through teaching, either taking private students, or later through professorships. The heights of theater in the US and early Hollywood were full of Jewish people who couldn't get work elsewhere, most of whom made peanuts. The vast majority of signed bands and authors that receive advances don't recoup them, and effectively see no royalties from their work. Even popular twitch streamers and youtubers receive very little money in ad revenue and sponsorships. Artists already don't make money, but human beings can, will, and do entertain each other, for no reward but the satisfaction it brings them and others. The democratization of content creation through the dropping price of audio and camera equipment, and distribution through streaming services already puts us in one of the most fruitful periods of artistic production in western history. For every hour you spend working as a freelance artist, you spend two communicating, pitching and sorting through pitches, advertising, networking, and doing anything you can to find the next gig. Imagine what you could do with your time, what any of us could make and perfect, if we didn't have to worry about starvation if you don't make it big. Even if under a communist system most artists or artisans had to work at least some of the week doing service work, maintenance tasks, or working in a factory or whatever, who the gently caress cares? That's how the world looks right now! There will be plenty of art, and plenty of good art under communism, even if Katy Perry or Walid Raad defects to capitalist Brazil. Octatonic has issued a correction as of 20:00 on Jun 17, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 19:51
|
|
|
Zeppelin Insanity posted:Surely the optimum outcome comes with mass-ownership of personal means of production - for example, advanced home 3d printing systems. At that point, if access to relatively universal techno-goo types (like we already have with different types of filaments, resins and powders for different purposes) is easy and affordable, you can do a lot with wants and a free creative community. A lot like the free creative community that already exists. What if every community had a community center/library/post office/distribution center with a 3D printer - and if you can't print something, you can check stock with other communities and have one sent over "I need a butter knife" "We can print a plastic one for you now, or have a nice metal one here within two days for pickup" And every community center can broadcast free wi-fi within the vicinity for home use That's another good point - how would the internet be regulated under Communism - would right wing speech be banned/violators sought out and re-educated? That would be a good way to withhold their social credit. "No more wi-fi until you shut the gently caress up and get vaccinated"
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 20:18
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:Why wouldn't established artists just move to another country if they can no longer profit off their art in their homeland No need to go red. This happens already with artists who make big going to countries friendlier to tax avoidance and evasion. But that is, imho, a very narrowminded approach. Your success case is "artists who have done well under capitalism", not "great artists". This is a critical difference. How many great actors have been spurned or not been able to pursue their craft because they did not have the looks, the connections or the sheer force of will to endure debasement and humiliation to deal with the industry? Let us go further than that. Let me put it this way: how many great actors, musicians, painters, photographers, sculptors, writers, poets, dancers, cinematographers, directors and artists in general did not come to be because of capitalism? How many people, having their necessities secured as a basic guarantee, would drop their current jobs to try their hand at such crafts? How many brilliant minds have not realized their capacities in invention and science because they had to toil and drudge and had to be reduced, broken as human beings, and because of that they would not amount to anything of worth in their lives according to the wealthy and privileged? One of the unspoken great crimes of capitalism is the sheer waste of human potential it causes, particularly contrasted with the wealth it generates.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 20:52
|
|
|
A great example of that is JK Rowling. I wouldn't call Potter particularly artful or good, but it has undeniably been enjoyed by many. Capitalism has valued it incredibly highly in amount of "wealth" the franchise represents. Rowling used to openly discuss how she was only able to write Potter by having the state pay her unemployment subsidy. It was through not having to work that she was able to write something that society valued many orders of magnitude more than the value of a regular job. Of course, being a vocal liberal, she has been strongly campaigning for pulling up the ladder behind her so "undeserving" people don't get the unemployment money. It's a concern of hers it's susceptible to fraudulent claims - which she knows very well since hers were fraudulent.  Whatever our personal opinions of artistic merit, the fact is that Capitalism thinks Potter is a seminal work of art... so, even in a Capitalist frame of reference, logic would imply that providing the conditions for more people to create would in fact be better. As for the money that gets spent by the rich on art, we must remember that it absolutely does not go to the artist. The insane sums you hear about? Stuff selling at auctions for hundreds of thousands, or millions of dollars? The artist is not the one who profits.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 23:02
|
|
|
Zeppelin Insanity posted:I think that's something else that needs addressing. "Centrally planned economies cannot have innovation" is an argument that gets thrown around constantly. Except that if that was the case, how the gently caress would communist scientists have been so influential on science? Even in the Cold War lens, how the gently caress was the Soviet military capable of feats of engineering that made Western analysts poo poo their pants on like, what, a few % of the military budget of the West? So, that's another common argument that falls flat on its face. it's worth noting that science itself is a collaborative and government-funded process, even in the capitalist West. Think of the major technological innovations of the past few decades -- the internet, smartphones, genome sequencing, etc. All these things are the result of massive amounts of government funding and research. In the U.S. in particular, the military is a huge money funnel. Many of the new consumer products we use were originally developed in the military, or by military contractors. Chomsky lays this out very well: quote:The military is somewhat misunderstood I think. Actually I'm in a pretty good position to know it, I've been at MIT for 65 years. MIT is a good example of one crucial function of the military system. For many years, right into the 1970s, MIT was almost 100% funded by the pentagon. It was also one of the main academic centers of resistance against the Vietnam war. My lab, in fact, was one of the main academic centers, I was up for a long jail sentence... The pentagon didn't give a drat. If you wanna overthrow the country that's your business, they don't care. But what they did give a drat about was creating the next-phase of the high tech economy. The military was, and remains to a large extent, a kind of funnel into which taxpayers pour funds, deluded into thinking "we're protecting ourselves from whoever". And the money is used to develop the next stage of the high-tech economy. people have problems with chomsky, which is fair, but I think this point is pretty well-put. private industry isn't responsible for most innovation, it just slaps a price tag on it. the state is already funding most serious technical innovation. (note that the military proper isn't what's being talked about here -- he's not saying that, like, army grunts produce lots of new technology. he's saying that the military procurement label is used to justify massive state subsidy of research and development, which is where a lot of "capitalist" innovation comes from.) animist has issued a correction as of 23:49 on Jun 17, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 23:42
|
|
|
Yeah, I'm a scientist and I've been trying to think about how much the forces of capitalism apply to my income (obviously they apply to my expenses), because academic funding is really weird. Almost all funding comes from government agencies, either because they announce they have money for science and you submit an application to get a slice of it, or, if you're a big enough name, because they come to you with a scientific question they think you're qualified to answer. But it's not quite like a gig job, because you're still salaried by the university you work for. When you apply for the grant, you tell the government "hey I think this will take me a year, and this is my yearly salary, and I need this much for equipment". It's not like you just pocket the difference between your expenses and the sum of the grant. And on top of that, many of the government agencies that regularly fund science (such as NASA) have, as part of their mission statement, a desire to fund education. So they'll pay ridiculous overhead costs on top of the money you actually see, to fund the educational budget of the university. Agencies that don't have a mandate to fund education will usually negotiate smaller overheads with the idea that that represents the cost of the administrative overhead. I don't quite know how to describe this setup but it definitely isn't unfettered capitalism.
|
|
#
?
Jun 17, 2020 23:55
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:Yeah, I'm a scientist and I've been trying to think about how much the forces of capitalism apply to my income (obviously they apply to my expenses), because academic funding is really weird. Almost all funding comes from government agencies, either because they announce they have money for science and you submit an application to get a slice of it, or, if you're a big enough name, because they come to you with a scientific question they think you're qualified to answer. But it's not quite like a gig job, because you're still salaried by the university you work for. When you apply for the grant, you tell the government "hey I think this will take me a year, and this is my yearly salary, and I need this much for equipment". It's not like you just pocket the difference between your expenses and the sum of the grant. And on top of that, many of the government agencies that regularly fund science (such as NASA) have, as part of their mission statement, a desire to fund education. So they'll pay ridiculous overhead costs on top of the money you actually see, to fund the educational budget of the university. Agencies that don't have a mandate to fund education will usually negotiate smaller overheads with the idea that that represents the cost of the administrative overhead. I, too,
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 00:31
|
|
|
Mariana Mazzucato, one of the very rare Good Economists out there, has done a lot of research on what she calls the "Entrepreneurial State" (also the name of her book), which I feel that describe a lot of what you scientist comrades are talking about. I haven't read it, but seems to fit right in about the subject from her talks and articles.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 01:24
|
|
|
I don't know a whole lot about Georgism, though what I've seen tends to make a lot of intuitive sense (ie the infamous billboard in the vacant lot) Is it merely meant to be something for reforming a capitalist system of land ownership towards a more socialist system, or is it incompatible with communism entirely due to the state owning everything? Actually for that matter, how did taxes work in the USSR?
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 01:36
|
|
|
mycomancy posted:I, too, The upside is, I assume, that if you're working on a vaccine or something that will benefit a good chunk of humanity, the government can handle production and not sell it off to some private enterprise, as Canada did with the Ebola vaccine it developed. Which is a pretty good story anyway since it was a struggle to even finish it because the private industry wasn't interested in developing a vaccine to Ebola.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 01:41
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:What if every community had a community center/library/post office/distribution center with a 3D printer - and if you can't print something, you can check stock with other communities and have one sent over I’ve heard this line of thinking referred to as “library socialism,” ie turn that CVS/WalMart/Home Depot into community lending facilities instead with a thousand hammers in stock instead of selling tens of thousands of the cheapest units to individuals.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 02:07
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:How does patent law work under Communism - abolish it completely and everything becomes public domain? the open source community is a good example of what this could look like. generally this assumes that basic needs are satisfied so coal miners aren’t forced to code or whatever the gently caress and people can align their hobbies/passion projects with their work
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 02:10
|
|
|
question: what's the deal with Trotsky? I've read a little of his work and found him quite readable and sensible, but some people seem to regard him with distaste. I don't really have a strong understanding of the Russian revolution, wonder if I'm missing something.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 02:25
|
|
|
animist posted:question: what's the deal with the stigma around Trotskyists? I've read a little Trotsky and found him quite readable and sensible, but I've gotten the impression that his actual followers are pretty wacky. after I am done with maoism for leftist babbys I will do trotsky the thing about him is that most people use trotskyite as a swear even in contexts that make very little loving sense, like goddamn Labour Party liberals calling the socialists of the party as such (when going by the rationale behind calling someone a trotskyite, they would be the ones, actually). His early thought is quite loving bonkers and Lenin did shove him to calm the gently caress down a few times, and seems to have worked because his later thought has useful and interesting stuff, particularly some of his takes on why poo poo went sideways with Stalin. Ultimately, in terms of legacy, he had to suffer the worst under Stalin, so there was a very extensive purging and demonizing against his figure that went on for years after his assassination.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 02:39
|
|
|
I am a newbie to the world of left theory and I would like to present some observations and questions that those more experienced could hopefully flesh out, respond to and answer for me.Sylink posted:This was touched earlier in the thread, but regarding cities, they are more efficient for various reasons. But do those efficiencies take into account the costs of health impacts and quality of life in a city? I find pondering this stuff to be interesting really. My guess (from an uneducated, hobbyist 'urban-layout-as-a-special-interest' kind of perspective) is that cities would involve a lot more public green space. Commodification of public space is a huge issue iirc. Another point is that a sizeable chunk of air and noise pollution originates in part from road vehicle traffic, especially private cars, taxis, trucks and buses. Ban cars (or make their use in cities hell through narrow streets, scarce usable streets/roads/parking/fuel/charging points, congestion penalty/credit etc.), raze the freeways, electrify the rest, etc. etc and all that yadda yadda. Of course, with the stick, you need a carrot, which is why you invest in good walkability, cyclability, mixed-use zoning/other spatial solutions and public transit too. For noise pollution, good planning/zoning law could address this (keep the factories and party districts away from dwellings, ban cars, etc.). The 'sardine-can' aspect of city living is another issue I have been thinking about. For one, my 'spidey-sense' intuition is that capitalism encourages the construction of smaller, shoddier, more 'packed-in' dwellings to maximise profits. Living in NYC (which is the capitalist Mecca of the world), I would imagine that the use of apartment living as an investment vehicle would affect the quality of life in the buildings significantly. For example, most dwellings in Sydney, which were constructed recently to capitalise on a real estate boom with no consideration for the needs of the residents, were built to and out of substandard practices and materials, and are falling apart as we speak. Zeppelin Insanity makes an anecdotal observation earlier that useable apartment space in Poland dwindled significantly in the transition to capitalism. I imagine that in a world where housing is decoupled from the profit motive towards human needs, apartments would be larger on a m^2 basis and surrounded by ample social facilities and greenspace. They would also be constructed using the newest advances in soundproofing and energy efficiency (see this for an example of what I mean). For the cases who just cannot stomach the notion of living in a city no matter what, I would imagine a good planned economy would have good ideas (some sort of needs-based, locality-wide lottery which factors in mental health cases like this.) As an aside, special needs could be addressed this way too. Communal ownership, for one, could do well to negate the worries of, say, musicians, who would be too loud in some instances for even the best residential grade soundproofing. Are you a babby drummer? Does practicing annoy your neighbours too much even in our fully-soundproof and insulated FALGSC apartments? Well walk to your neighbourhood music centre (of which there are quite a few in this city) and reserve a drum slot or, if you own a kit, a practice room. I am a babby leftist, still learning, so any detail as to how this is achieved could be fleshed out in detail by an elder, I would be incredibly interested. My point is that to an extent, cities themselves do not necessarily succ innately, but the current status quo contributes a lot to their succ. e: one addendum (as a question I would like answered) is how an urban-centric, centrally-planned socialistic society would deal with the 'people' side of the question presented. I am pretty introverted (throughout the course of my study day) and my travel through the city usually entails contact with unfriendly, careerist wankers. It seems the current capitalistic system is set up, at least in my area, to cater to precisely one sort of personality: irritating, confident folk whose success usually entails talking at others and stifling the voices of people who do not fit the mould. I would imagine a hypothetical socialist society would hopefully be a bit friendlier to the more introverted? another question I have is to do with disabilities, such as ADHD, Autism, Tourettes, etc.. The later SU, from my loose, uneducated understanding of it, was a very 'worker-centric' society, and accommodations for the disabled (outside of war veterans and other special cases) seemed to be few and far-between. as an individual with the ol' 1-2 punch (ADHD/Autism) that significantly affects my ability to complete tasks and function in a social workplace, what sort of accommodations would our hypothetical society have for those who want to contribute and have skills, but are limited by circumstances out of their control? I don't want to start a fire in my replies but I found this article actually which answers some of my questions regarding early advances but describes some pretty unsavoury conditions towards the end. How can we guarantee that voices such as mine are not stifled and oppressed? apologies for bad wording and lack of sources, I am more posting from a position of curiosity. trainzrk00l has issued a correction as of 08:25 on Jun 18, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 07:33
|
|
|
I have a question, where does the term “milieu” come from? seems like one of those left terms that exists mostly to signal how well read someone is, idk
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 07:46
|
|
|
dex_sda posted:It's not, but it does assume some familiarity with Marx and the Communist Manifesto. What you got from this thread and reading the Manifesto is probably enough. I'm only a third of the way through The Conquest of Bread but it owns extremely hard and has already voiced nearly ever concern I have over other forms of socialism and tried to answer them If in the remaining 2/3 it can provide a satisfying answer to the question of how an anarchist society can address problems that require collective sacrifice to overcome (i.e., climate change) then there's a good chance I'm gonna end up an anarchist I won't abandon my tour of leftist thought though. Maybe Lenin will be even more convincing
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 08:07
|
|
|
Centrist Committee posted:I have a question, where does the term “milieu” come from? seems like one of those left terms that exists mostly to signal how well read someone is, idk a quick check with a dictionary says it's just a loanword from french with more or less the same meaning, and showed up in english in the 19th century.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 08:09
|
|
|
cheetah7071 posted:I'm only a third of the way through The Conquest of Bread but it owns extremely hard and has already voiced nearly ever concern I have over other forms of socialism and tried to answer them For more pointed ideas of collective action in anarchist systems, you really will want to get familiar with anarcho-syndicalism. Unfortunately it doesn't have a tome as condistently awesome as the breadbook. But it has very much in common with anarcho-communism so maybe it doesn't need it so much. dex_sda has issued a correction as of 10:39 on Jun 18, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 10:36
|
|
|
Sylink posted:
You might want to check out Murray Bookchin for this. He was the pioneer for green theory on the left and a kind of Anarchist/Marxist hybrid. His theory revolves around urban organization and the role of communes as the revolutionary unit of organization (as opposed to factory councils or soviets. I'd recommend Limits of the City and Post_Scarcity Anarchism Bookchin argued around basing society around smaller more sustainable communities that integrated elements of the local ecology. That way you could have proper local democracy and play to the strengths of renewable energy which he believed could power these smaller communities but not larger ones (he was writing in the 70s and 80s and therefore couldn't anticipate the progress made in green tech). The communities would then be confederated to coordinate more large scale initiatives such as education, healthcare etc. You also solve the conflict the oppressive nature of the "town over country" as Max and Engels talk about. With the progress of green tech, as well as the fact that Bookchin's project basically involves dismantling large metropolitan areas, I'm not sure how realistic this approach would be, at least in the short term. In his later works he elaborates on this and gets rid of the anarchist stuff. I think he even goes as far as to advocate for some degree of coercion and a sort of vanguardism. I haven't read Ocalan but I think you can see the influence of this on how Rojava is structured (at least from the little I know). ToxicAcne has issued a correction as of 12:32 on Jun 18, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 12:10
|
|
|
Out of genuine curiosity, what is the anarchist response to Lenin's conclusions in State & Revolution, where a state is defined as the apparatus for the oppression of one class by another, and to that end consists of legislative bodies, courts, prisons, and so called "special bodies of armed men". Lenin emphasized that the existing bourgeois state would need to be completely dismantled, i.e. "smashed" and restructured from the ground up to allow the proles to oppress the still existing bourgeoisie who will most certainly retaliate, aka the dictatorship of the proletariat Not being glib here at all, but the common ML joke is that anarchists will perform incredible feats of mental gymnastics to explain how their own "special bodies of armed men", reeducation centers, traffic departments, whatever, is somehow *not* a state despite having all the appearances of one, I'm sure there's a fair bit of oversimplification there. In the examples of existing anarchist organization given, the Zapatistas and Rojava namely, it seems to be acknowledged that their system has worked well, but is still pretty small scale. How would one scale this up in a workable manner, and how would one prevent a particularly well connected or supplied commune, syndicate, etc, from going rogue and absorbing/colonizing the others near it, and your network of communes degrading into factions of warring city-states after communication breaks down? The Democratic centralism practiced by AES Nations seems to attempt to sidestep this, at least in theory, by enforcing strict party discipline in ensuring that everyone toes the line after democratically made decisions are reached. Any good examples or reading in regards to how an anarchist not-state would function?
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 17:02
|
|
|
my one piece of advice to anyone reading this thread is to get involved in a party or organization if you see yourself as a socialist and have not done so already. some people think they need to read a bunch and understand everything before they involve themselves in class struggle and this is totally backwards and will actually probably make you completely incapable of organizing effectively. if you say to yourself "i need to read marx/lenin/whoever before I join an org or get active" you are 100% incorrect and while it is important to read and understand ideas about socialist and revolutionary organizing it cant be divorced from the actual experience of being involved in class struggle. the most absolutely worthless "leftists" you will find are folks who have read All The Important Books and can argue endlessly about ideas but dont know a single union member or what social/economic justice organizing is happening in your community. unfortunately these are often the people you are most likely to encounter online because that is where they spend 100% of their time. so yeah, dont just ask "what should I read" thinking once you read enough youre ready to be a socialist, go out and get involved in struggle, see where class consciousness is now, and then it becomes a lot clearer what you should read because it will be things that relate to the current conditions you find yourself in, and what you read wont just be knowledge sitting in your head but practical advice on how to advance and win the struggle youre engaged with. like say theres a strike happening that you can intervene in, welp lets bust out teamster rebellion by farrell dobbs and learn what they did so we can be effective. also more important than just reading is discussing what youve read with comrades so that the key lessons can be drawn out in ways that are actually useful and applicable.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 17:15
|
|
|
Stockwell posted:Out of genuine curiosity, what is the anarchist response to Lenin's conclusions in State & Revolution, where a state is defined as the apparatus for the oppression of one class by another, and to that end consists of legislative bodies, courts, prisons, and so called "special bodies of armed men". Lenin emphasized that the existing bourgeois state would need to be completely dismantled, i.e. "smashed" and restructured from the ground up to allow the proles to oppress the still existing bourgeoisie who will most certainly retaliate, aka the dictatorship of the proletariat One take is that the functions of these state entities (like the traffic department) are upon closer inspection, total bullshit and a use of coercive power to privilege some people over many others. Traffic enforcement is a good example because highly effective traffic safety designs like the Dutch Sustainable Safety model (https://sustainablesafety.nl/content/1-about/10-years-of-sustainable-safety.pdf) are self-reinforcing and designed around human scales and human limitations without requiring automated (signalization) or manual (traffic cops) enforcement of rules that were designed from day one to get richer people in cars to their destinations at the expense of poorer people on foot or on bikes. So the response is to fire all the traffic cops, tear down the traffic lights, and let traffic self-organize. And it actually works. This doesn't always work out because there are problems such as public health that are not solvable by individuals using human sense to solve problems at small, hyper-local scales, but it works out a lot more frequently than you might think it would.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 17:20
|
|
|
apropos to nothing posted:my one piece of advice to anyone reading this thread is to get involved in a party or organization if you see yourself as a socialist and have not done so already. some people think they need to read a bunch and understand everything before they involve themselves in class struggle and this is totally backwards and will actually probably make you completely incapable of organizing effectively. if you say to yourself "i need to read marx/lenin/whoever before I join an org or get active" you are 100% incorrect and while it is important to read and understand ideas about socialist and revolutionary organizing it cant be divorced from the actual experience of being involved in class struggle. the most absolutely worthless "leftists" you will find are folks who have read All The Important Books and can argue endlessly about ideas but dont know a single union member or what social/economic justice organizing is happening in your community. unfortunately these are often the people you are most likely to encounter online because that is where they spend 100% of their time. If I think the DSA has their heart in the right place, but their end-goal of reforming the Democratic Party is worthless as a concept, are they even worth getting involved with at this point? Communist Party USA has a smaller membership in my area but seems more aligned with where my mind is with everything - would that be a better bet?
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 17:29
|
|
|
MorrisBae posted:If I think the DSA has their heart in the right place, but their end-goal of reforming the Democratic Party is worthless as a concept, are they even worth getting involved with at this point? look at what organizations are doing around you locally and who do you feel is doing good work that you want to be involved with? look at organizations around the country and what are they doing and would you want to be involved in doing the same work? even if there isn't an already organized chapter or group of the organization you feel is doing the work you should be involved with around you already, you can be the individual to begin organizing a chapter where you're at. its not easy but someone has to be the first person to start the process. I can't answer what organization you should join and neither can anyone else though. personally I am a member of socialist alternative and so if you have any questions about us, our politics, how to get involved I'm happy yo try to answer them best I can here or in PMs or whatever. Kind of ties back into my point above about reading stuff. if youre intersted in DSA or CPUSA, look at their websites/newspapers, read some of their political perspectives and see what you think. do you agree with them? do you disagree? what their approach to current and ongoing struggle is like is way more important than what their take on struggles that happened 100 years ago is imo. now often those perspectives on the past shape their current perspectives but how you really feel and what you think about their approach is going to be way more apparent based on how you feel about their perspectives on current events than on events none of us were alive to experience. hope that helps, know its kind of a non-answer but yeah if you have any questions happy to answer them, sure theres others around who would do the same.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 17:48
|
|
|
My experience with orgs like the DSA is that it varies by the individuals in the chapter locally. Many do gently caress all other than poo poo post on Twitter. IMO find a pet project you want to pursue, like "clean up all the garbage in a 3 mile radius" and go from there.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 17:49
|
|
|
I just discovered Workers World Party and they seem well aligned with my values and have a large presence locally Thanks for the advice 
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 18:08
|
|
|
|
| # ? Jun 1, 2024 09:47 |
|
|
Sylink posted:My experience with orgs like the DSA is that it varies by the individuals in the chapter locally. Many do gently caress all other than poo poo post on Twitter. This. My chapter started a Mutual Aid Network, does tons of awesome stuff, but there are a lot that are pure performative bullshit.
|
|
#
?
Jun 18, 2020 18:09
|
|